Cut the bullshit

Danielle Smith keeps digging and no one is coming to her rescue.

Maybe you caught the Premier’s address on Thursday last week, or maybe you just saw some of the reactions online. If you’re really lucky, this is the first you’ve heard of it (seriously). The shorthand version is that Danielle Smith has decided her provincial referendum questions will be mostly asking for permission to do things she already tried doing, including cutting healthcare access for certain visa holders, and may add the nuclear option if the separatists get their signatures.

They’ve set up the questions to all answer in the affirmative to provide an easy campaign for the “yes” side which the governing party will ostensibly use public funds to campaign on. These are their chosen questions, after all, so it makes sense that will be their position. Totally coincidentally, I’m sure, it also lines up with the affirmative response that the separatist’s are seeking with their own question, should it be added, “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be part of Canada to become an independent state?”

Danielle Smith has thus far spent her time in government making ideologically-based decisions as if the only possible outcome is the one she wants it to be. From her incredible 2022 claim that she would “fix healthcare in 90 days” to Albertans dying in emergency rooms, or still dealing with closed emergency rooms three years later. She’s taken “unsustainable” costs for surgeries and tripled-down on doubling them so long as they take place in private clinics.

The same Premier who boldly claimed just two years ago she wanted to increase Alberta’s population generally to 10,000,000— more than double the population then— to give the province more leverage with Ottawa, and somehow increase the modest-sized city of Red Deer (pop. around 112,000 in 2024) by 10 times to 1,000,000.

All this… to “own the libs”… in Alberta.

Certainly, people can change their minds when they realize they’ve completely made a mess of things. The former Wildrose leader even went so far as promising to “follow the example of our dear departed friend - Premier Ralph Klein – admit to it, learn from it, and get back to work." To hear her tell it today, increased migration to the province over the past few years was actually the devastating result of unchecked, unsustainable immigration policies of the Trudeau government. I guess if she can’t admit to her mistakes, she’s certainly not going to manage to learn from them.

Solving yesterday’s problems

I spent a few days in the weeds of Danielle Smith’s referendum questions; I read numerous op-eds, went through the online response, and participated in a few discussions about it.

A few discussions. This was just a brief moment in time.

In the end it came down to a few simple problems with the Premier’s referendum gambit; migration to Alberta peaked in 2023 and was back to normal levels, according to the province’s own dashboard, by the end of 2025, it brought out the hometown racists, plus, the people she has been bending over backwards to appease are just as angry about it as those you would expect. It has eerie similarities to Jason Kenney’s health mandate hell.

There was the expected response from those who don’t have the luxury of ignoring reality, and those in opposition to much of the ridiculousness from Danielle Smith and her governing party, but there was also an unexpected response from the very people the Premier has gone out of her way to appease: the separatists. The Conservative punditry appears to be pushing the idea that these lame duck questions are Danielle Smith’s “third way”. Instead of having to clearly champion a side between Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian petition and the separatist movement, she can offer more sweet nothings to Albertans about taking control of items of federal jurisdiction.

I don’t agree separation is a reasonable answer, let alone the cure-all, but they have a point that all this talk has gone nowhere; though that’s what happens when you entertain gobbledygook fantasy as if it’s a legitimate grievance. Like, they’ve been promised a pie in the sky from conservative politicians for literal decades and even when they got the guy who campaigned on fixing equalization and getting that Triple-E senate, even though he was given two minority governments, followed by a majority, he still wouldn’t budge to make their fever dreams come true.

Danielle Smith and the UCP, lord help us, are trying to make those dreams a reality. They don’t care that provincial policing will cost (320 per cent!!!) more, or the forewarned effect of two-tired healthcare (not to mention trying to make up for the fight the first iteration of the UCP created with doctors), or that they’re risking the livelihoods of Albertans— possibly for a generation, like Quebec— with a separation referendum. Alberta governments past have taken not just the possible effects of these ideological decisions into consideration, but they have refused to implement them because Albertans are barely convinced they should pay for services that cost less and none wanted to be in the driver’s seat to tell them it would actually cost more.

Danielle Smith has managed to sidestep that problem by refusing to acknowledge the possibility, let alone the reality. Somehow, this hasn’t hurt her yet, but the days of hiding behind a blank stare may soon be coming to an end.

“Cut the bullshit.” ~ NDP Deputy Leader Rakhi Pancholi

It may not be the official slogan of the NDP but it’s by far the best thing they’ve come up with in the past two years and with it, they are finally reaching past their base of loyal supporters. They’re finally speaking the language that every single Albertan can easily relate to. They’ve found a perfectly simple retort that was tailor made for Danielle Smith. The woman lies constantly and talks out of both sides of her mouth at every turn. She says one thing while actively doing another. It’s actually perfect.

On X; quoted tweet

Albertans who are done with this government’s bullshit needed an outlet. I hated “Corrupt Care”. You know what would have worked every time Danielle Smith got caught lying when she’d said she didn’t know anything about alleged fraud that benefitted the dude she was chumming around with two years? Cut the bullshit.

When Danielle Smith said she didn’t know what kind of referendums people would bring forward? Cut the bullshit.

When Justice Minister Mickey Amery said he didn’t tell the Premier that he was not only good friends with the dude who benefitted from alleged fraud in health procurement but was also related to him by marriage? Cut the bullshit.

When Danielle Smith claims Alberta’s oil didn’t get increased export capacity from TMX under a Trudeau government? Cut the bullshit.

When Finance Minister Nate Horner blames outside influences for another budget deficit? Cut the bullshit.

When Danielle Smith points her fingers at decades of tax cuts and no rational attempt to collect enough revenue to meet expenses, while ignoring her predecessor’s slashing of corporate taxes? Cut the bullshit.

I don’t even care if Rakhi Pancholi was just so completely frustrated that she said it out loud. This, finally, is something Albertans can work with. And it’s about time.

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