I spent my weekend watching Preston Manning’s Alberta West Assembly online. It was, I presume, a group of people who are in Preston Manning’s rolodex from western Canada (and a few people they recommended) all gathered to offer their thoughts and ask questions of people Preston Manning wants to hear talk about separatism. He also invited Stephen Carter to be the lone voice saying “absolutely not”.
Danielle Smith was there on the first day, offering sentiments out of both sides of her mouth, which is why somewhere around 90 per cent of Albertans don’t believe her. Separatists and Danielle Smith supporters believe she’s voting to stay because she said she would.
Albertans who are neither separatists nor Danielle Smith supporters believe she’s not going to vote to stay in Canada because of her actions; changing and amending the law at least four times to help them get their question in front of Albertans, and then offering a referendum question about having another referendum when the courts said she couldn’t just forego Indigenous consultation.
Some, like me, think that if you need a new mandate from Albertans, you should hold an election and run on the things you want a new mandate for rather than hiding behind a citizen’s initiative referendum that only happened because of your efforts to help them along.
Yet, here we are— facing a cost of $130 million for a referendum, unprecedented pressure on our elections staff, allegations of interference in the process (again), and the general feeling that we shouldn’t have to be dealing with this bullshit at all when no voter was told this was what Danielle Smith and her limp AF caucus would do if they were elected.
And Preston Manning is out here trying to relive the glory days of Reform.
There’s an audience for it, to be sure, but that’s more of a testament to how deep our triggers are in this province.
If I didn’t know that Preston Manning wrote an “apology” opinion piece for “his role” in Danielle Smith’s 2014 floor crossing, or that Danielle Smith had played a major role in the Manning Centre’s events since, or that she appointed Preston Manning to chair the COVID inquiry panel (and paid him $300k to do it), I might not think Mr. Manning offered her yet another opportunity to try and convince Albertans that she’s totes on the ‘stay’ side. However; I do.
Not because I’m not being charitable but because I can’t look at the history and convince myself otherwise (let alone you). I also remember how, from 2015-2019, the Alberta government and federal government tried to help out of work oil and gas employees go back to school for a trade. Conservatives mocked and derided that program and then went all sad face after forming government in 2019 when Alberta really needed more qualified tradespeople.
Political rhetoric has so many consequences.
We’re living them.
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