Getting schooled
Danielle Smith seems annoyed that media is bringing concerns from Albertans to her. She also has a time-honoured response that Albertans love: it’s your fault.
Despite leading a government with record royalty and other tax revenue, the UCP couldn’t manage to make the numbers work. Oddly enough, it’s not because they funded provincial responsibilities. No; that’s why they had to hit Calgary and smaller centres with higher education property taxes. According to the Premier, those record numbers of people who moved to Alberta settled mostly in Calgary and if they want properly-funded education, they’re going to have to step up and pay for it.
Strangely, considering education is a provincial responsibility rather than a municipal one, not every municipality is being asked to make the same contributions. Albertans in the NDP stronghold of Edmonton, for example, are being asked to pay half as much as Calgary for education tax. Most rural areas were hit less hard, unless you count UCP strongholds like Chestermere, Airdrie, Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat, and Red Deer.
To be fair, some of those areas are slated for new schools. Edmonton— like Cochrane, Strathmore, and Coalhurst— are on the list as well but aren’t being asked to pay more education tax. It’s possible that the provincial government has some formula they’ve decided will equalize costs of providing services around the province. I couldn’t say.
It certainly seems fair that the Premier would point a finger at Calgary since it was their silly idea to double the province’s population without doing anything to prepare for it. Whoops. Maybe that’s a bad example.
With provincial costs ballooning, yet program funding being cut, and provincial obligations left unmet, some Albertans are starting to ask why the math doesn’t add up.
Of course, it’s not like a majority of Albertans were demanding that Danielle Smith break up Alberta Health Services and then create a Crown Corporation to hide what they were doing from the public at a cost of $2.3 billion; that was just a minority of her supporters who are still really angry that Jason Kenney had to make tough choices during the pandemic.
Although every government has supported chartered surgical facilities since the days of Progressive Conservative leadership, it’s only been under Danielle Smith that there was a concerted effort to refuse to fund those surgeries in public hospitals. Though there’s usually less support for an alleged scheme to defraud Albertans of more than half a billion in healthcare contracts, some leaders can probably be convinced to look the other way if they can get an opportunity to look like a hero. Once that alleged fraud comes to light, of course, Albertans could be forgiven for thinking the UCP would act quickly; though it probably depends on how many times they get caught.
It’s also not like most Albertans were begging the Premier to create a provincial police force. Even with Jason Kenney consistently lying about the costs, it never managed to become more popular outside of a small contingency of separatist-leaning UCP supporters who seem to think a government-run police force is a great idea when they like the government but are incapable of considering what it might mean if they didn’t.
While the budget cuts funding for low income seniors and their drug coverage, it also increases funding so that the UCP can have access to a few dozen million for their anti-Canadian referenda. As Danielle Smith was determined to welcome as many people to Alberta as possible so “the province” could have more leverage, the Premier and caucus turned that provincial decision, emphatically by both her (even to the consternation of more loyal followers) and former Premier Jason Kenney, into an immigration problem.
Receipts exist to the contrary, however.
“(Ms. Smith’s mandate letter) fails to provide a plan to create a welcoming environment where newcomers feel welcomed, find meaningful work, and build a life in Alberta. The mandate letter doesn’t also live up to the urgent need to provide funding to settlement organizations to support the influx of newcomers to our province,” Haji said. “The recent layoffs at the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary and other organizations across the province is a very sad example of this.”
NDP Critic for Immigration and Accreditation Sharif Haji, July 27, 2023
Refocusing the public’s attention to the federal government is not a new tactic in Alberta by any means, but it’s especially important as the UCP pushes ahead with the unnecessary expense (as well as stress and uncertainty) of a fall referenda to placate the Premier’s supporters. Following Jason Kenney’s lead, Danielle Smith is promising to put federal jurisdiction and constitutional change to the people once again, with the expectation that she can add a question on separation as well if UCP members are successful in gathering the 177,000 signatures they require to allow the Premier to sidestep responsibility for that, too.
Placing the blame at the feet of the federal government is not just important for Danielle Smith to try and insulate herself from the potentially disastrous consequences of her actions generally, new polling shows that a majority of Albertans believe Premier Smith would vote for separation, despite her protestations to the contrary.
That little nugget spells trouble for Danielle Smith.
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