There are many things I can say about Danielle Smith but something we don’t spend near enough time talking about is how effortlessly, and spectacularly, she self-promotes. Years of media training and experience has taught her to be her own biggest cheerleader and her penchant for play-acting shone through on the first evening of the government-backed Alberta Next Panel held in Red Deer. While Donald Trump’s base is falling apart over his refusal to release “the Epstein files” down south, Danielle Smith is wrapping hers in the warm cocoon of generations of anti-Ottawa sentiment and conservative-on-Alberta victimization.
The panel videos have been reported on before, so I’ll just add the new “welcome” video. TL;DR: we’re the smartest and the richest, but Ottawa is standing in the way of us being richer.
The panel began with a video of a smiling Danielle Smith talking about how great Alberta, and Albertans (who support her) are. She gave shout-outs to industries and those who work in them, listing off the sectors that contribute most to the province’s GDP, almost in order of most to least taxes paid. In Alberta, your value is derived directly from that of your bank account balance.
Let’s face it. Alberta’s being held back. Our economy has been under attack for most of the past ten years. Frankly, off (when Conservatives are in power) and on (when Conservatives are not in power), for decades long before then. Not by a foreign country, or by world economic forces. No; Alberta’s biggest threat to our prosperity and growth has come from our own nation’s capital (which is why we have always been, and will remain, a poor, destitute province).
Alberta has an Ottawa problem (off and on, obviously).
For the last ten years, Ottawa, led by successive Liberal governments — propped up by their NDP allies — have taken direct aim at Alberta’s core industries (and it is why no one has prospered in Alberta since).
Ottawa’s Bill C-69 killed several major pipeline and resource projects (not including the Teck Resources Frontier oil sands cancellation that pointed at environmental regulatory uncertainty under Jason Kenney — while still moving forward with projects, and looking at new ones, in British Columbia — or creating barriers for other energy projects under Danielle Smith).
Their west coast tanker ban (put into legislation in 2017, but had been voluntarily observed since 1988) specifically blocks Alberta oil from accessing world markets (from one part of the coast alone, where there is no port, no infrastructure, and no pipeline to fill tankers anyway).
Their excessive industrial carbon taxes (a made-in-Alberta plan that began in 2002) and the new oil and gas emissions cap are designed to keep our world class oil and gas reserves in the ground (yet the Alberta government keeps funding emissions reduction research as if that’s not really the point at all). And net zero mandates on everything from electricity to vehicles are causing the cost of living to increase, business costs to soar, and are even endangering the stability of our power grid in the dead of winter (it’s actually extreme weather endangering the stability of power grids in Canada and the U.S. where Canada’s “net zero mandates” don’t apply, but don’t let facts get in the way of a good fish tale).
And the effects on Alberta’s economy have been staggering. In just the last five years alone, more than $500 billion dollars — that’s half a trillion dollars — of global investment dollars destined for our resource sector has disappeared (not just in Canada; between 2015 and 2025, investment in fossil fuels in the U.S. has dropped from 60 per cent of energy investment to 40 per cent, while green energy investment hit a Danielle Smith-like brick wall in Trump’s budget, and China claims it may have reached peak demand for fossil fuels already). It walked away from Alberta and Canada and instead headed off to Texas, Asia, and the Middle East (don’t forget B.C.!); to places that welcome resource development and jobs.
That cost Alberta and Canada quite literally hundreds of billions in GDP, corporate taxes and resource royalties for healthcare, education, and public infrastructure (this from the premier who oversees one of the lowest provincial per student funding in education, soaring healthcare costs, and has more promises of public infrastructure spending than spent). It cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and thousands of healthy and growing businesses. It was national self-harm on a level never seen and no province was hurt more than ours (because no province relies as much on an industry in transition as ours).
And those costs keep building; every single day (especially since Trump showed up).
But we’re not just losing investment, we’re losing trust (on the point we agree, though the subject may differ).
As I said, the story is bigger than just the last decade. Alberta has been treated unfairly for decades long before that (video of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Premier Peter Lougheed).
We (Canada) build roads, rail, power, jobs and prosperity for this country, yet we’ve (Alberta) been told to keep quiet and be grateful while sending $20 billion more a year to Ottawa than we receive back in funding each year (except during the pandemic). In fact, since 1980, Alberta has contributed $653,000,000,000 more to federal taxes than we receive back (any idea how wealthy one has to be to pay $653,000,000,000 as a mere portion of income? Some people made out like bandits at Alberta’s expense).
That means over half a trillion dollars went directly from Alberta to fund other provinces mostly with economies larger than ours (please) through programs, transfers, and equalization.
And despite this, we have continued to be the economic engine and juggernaut of this country (turns out taxes aren’t disincentives to making more money after all) and have opened our province to those from every corner of Canada looking for work and opportunity (other Canadians work in Alberta and then some of their taxes go to support their home provinces? Plot twist!)
And when we point out these facts (loose definition), how do Ottawa politicians and eastern elites (aside from those working, or gaining opportunity in Alberta, obviously) respond? Our concerns are dismissed. Our values (of thinking we should contribute less than every other Canadian?) marginalized. Our leaders vilified, and our industries remain targeted.
Most Albertans are or want to be proud Canadians. We fought for this country, fed this country, and powered this country (just like many other Canadians from across this great country) but the status quo relationship with Canada cannot continue.
It’s time for Alberta to take a stand. With ideas, with facts, with our voices and with action.
If Canada is to be a strong and unified country, it must include a strong and sovereign Alberta (so the status quo remains), able to pursue our own potential without being held back by our own country.
Danielle Smith; Alberta Next Panel “welcome” video, Red Deer, July 15, 2025
The peppering of BS throughout makes it difficult to listen to, and I’m sure reading it is not easier. The audience is separatists who want to get back at Canada because Alberta’s government screwed them over to keep corporate donations coming. The audience is people who trust anyone who calls themselves a conservative and will blame the feds when their money is misused by a provincial government who will always put money in the pockets of their friends first.
These panels will be used to justify paying more to duplicate a tax system provincially, a rural provincial police force, and the UCP pulling our pension dollars out to prop up oil and gas, or any other whim they have.
I caught some live-tweeting of the Sherwood Park town hall and audience questions sounded quite similar to the one in Red Deer.
The separatists are turning out for these town halls.
They represent 18-20 per cent of the population and 50-75 per cent of those answering the straw polls in the rooms.
Albertans whose love of country isn’t tied to a dollar amount, or which signs the people in government were elected with, better start signing up.
Registration opens two weeks prior to the scheduled dates.
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No surprise that Mrs Moretta and I fundamentally disagree when it comes to business, loyalty and citizenship.
She was raised and trained to be a victim, me; not so much.
She’s unable to be forward thinking, or strategic generationally. Rather she thinks about immediate cash flow. Oh, and how do I look and sound!
Mrs Moretta, as she plays to her base and her primary employer the Enterprise Group, does not understand that they will move assets and money to where it makes more. Business for the most part has no soul, no conscious and no empathy and as she will find out - no loyalty. She’ll be left behind by them.
Had the interim premier had some concept of transition she would have recognized that green based energies are not a threat but rather a compliment.
In my Alberta Mrs Moretta we don’t play the victim card- we step up to the job. But that’s not something you do is it?
Most of us in Alberta BUILD Mrs Moretta, we don’t whine, we don’t complain, we innovate and we execute. And you know what, if that doesn’t work we try again.
Mrs Moretta I’m more than happy to pay your moving expenses to the US or Panama , your pick.
To anybody who thinks these participants are turning up spontaneously with questions they wrote all by their little selves... bless.