Western Premiers meet for “awkward” get-together with Premier that wants to separate
B.C. Premier David Eby didn’t mince words. After Danielle Smith announced she would put the question of whether to start the legal process of preparing for a separation referendum, Mr. Eby said it hardly made sense to talk about trade and economic cooperation with a Premier who might not be a Canadian Premier long.
Danielle Smith, who claims to want a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada”, said the B.C. premier was in need of some self-reflection. Then she said that the coast didn’t belong to B.C. anyway— it was Canada’s. Self-reflection, indeed.
Ms. Smith said that B.C. premiers had been blocking Alberta’s prosperity since Christy Clark. As the premier of a province that routinely elects empty vessels with blue signs, and is currently deciding how to gerrymander the electoral districts so Albertans can never get rid of this separatist-fawning liar, Ms. Smith is under the impression that everyone can just run roughshod over their voters without risking their electoral power.
Christy Clark tried to build social licence for pipeline infrastructure. Then, in 2017, her B.C. Liberals came up short during the election; as did John Horgan’s NDP. The Green Party, with three seats, held the balance of power and offered to support whichever party was willing to oppose the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX). Ms. Clark couldn’t credibly promise that (and I don’t even think she tried). Mr. Horgan did. The rest is history.
If Danielle Smith was a true federalist who was only trying to help the separatists because they control her fate as Premier, then you’d think she’d have more sympathy for B.C. premiers who are forced to take unpopular positions.
Reason number two why it’s hard to believe she really did all that work “under duress”.
I also highly recommend watching the video from the press conference afterward where Ms. Smith was asked about challenging the duty to consult Indigenous People. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew interrupted after she revived her now famous dumb-as-rock with doe-eyed deer eyes response that she just doesn’t understand what “duty to consult” means so she’s going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court to find out (shrugs shoulders, bobs head dumbly).
Mr. Kinew explained, for at least the second time, that citizens who propose a referendum do not have a duty to consult when the provincial government tries to put their rights up for a vote, her government does.
Meanwhile, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said that he’s a federalist who is sad that the laws that got a pipeline built from Alberta to B.C.’s coast in 2024 are still in place today… while pipeline conversations are happening.
Yes, it sounds ridiculous because it is.
It was about a pipeline when we couldn’t get a pipeline. It was about Trudeau when there was a Trudeau in government. It’s about federal programs when we have a deficit.
And through it all, we’ve had provincial governments claiming everything they don’t like is Ottawa’s fault.
Monsters. Leopards. Schadenfreude. Etc.
Danielle Smith’s party wants to have a difficult conversation, too
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has spent the past year doing everything possible to help the separatists in her party get their referendum in front of Albertans.
She chose to do it.
She asked Albertans to entertain tough conversations with their neighbours and family who don’t want to be part of Canada anymore and want to make their problems with Canada our problem in Alberta.
She implored us to be patient because they have “legitimate concerns” that somehow gives them the right to threaten our homes, livelihoods, and futures.
Apparently, this is something we should be “civil” about.
The Premier wants us to have this conversation for the next five months— maybe even the next few years.
Sounds like a fabulous idea that will increase investor confidence doesn’t it?
Now, the loud people are mad at the Premier and they’re turning to their fellow UCP members because they have new “legitimate concerns”— this time with Danielle Smith’s leadership. They make it sound like she pinky promised them they would have their referendum.
Mitch Sylvestre, a UCP constituency association president and the person who filed the separatist question with Elections Alberta, is now trying to get 21 more CAs to call a special general meeting. He thinks Ms. Smith can probably eke out enough support to pass a leadership review, so he is considering a vote to reconfigure the principles of the UCP to make it an explicitly separatist party. After all, they were elected and now their party controls the provincial government, so why not?
It’s hard to think of anything Danielle Smith would have done differently if she was leading an explicitly separatist party. She says she’ll accept the outcome of the vote and hopes everyone else does too, whatever voters decide.
I’ve long said that Danielle Smith is not invested in the future of this province and being that cavalier about the outcome of a vote that could destabilize the province’s economy, housing market, and our future, does nothing to make me think I was wrong about her. We’re not voting on where to have dinner ffs.
That’s something you don’t really concern yourself with. Separation is different.
Unless you know it won’t affect you either way.
At this point, I’m not sure what I want to see happen. Do I want Ms. Smith to go down at the hands of the people she propped up? That might be enjoyable for a brief moment. Would I like her to just resign? Yeah, that would be okay, too. Really, though, I’d rather be able to laugh about it. So I suppose a 2014 redux of the floor crossing that was meant to kill the Wildrose, but didn’t because not everyone crossed with her, and then losing government and unintentionally forcing an election would tickle my funny bone the most.
Ultimate chaos, Danielle Smith-style; finish burning both ends of the bridge she’s standing on.
Amen.
Emergency Cabinet maintenance
After Danielle Smith announced she would put Alberta’s future to a referendum, news came that Finance Minister Nate Horner and Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones were stepping down from cabinet because neither was seeking re-election (in October 2027, allegedly). They both reiterated their unending support for everything Danielle Smith and the UCP was doing, even though both now former ministers said they didn’t believe the governing party should put a separation referendum to a vote.
Ms. Smith likes to say things like “it’s not me and my government, it’s a citizen-led referendum” that she helped along, but apparently that wasn’t enough to convince the now former Ministers to go along with it anyway. Allegedly.
Jason Stephan, Ms. Smith’s Parliamentary Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, apparently quit after penning a plea for Albertans to sign the separatist petition. I say apparently, because Ms. Smith didn’t announce it, which is odd, if she’s a federalist and her party is on the side of remain. Mr. Stephan didn’t announce it either, as if he wasn’t proud of the fact that he is standing up for separatism.
Curiously, neither gave a reason for his decision to resign; that may mean that it had nothing to do with his cheering on the separatists or that neither is confident enough in their standing to champion it.
In my experience, however, a quiet resignation no one wants to talk about means something notable (yet to be good) is on the horizon.
Final thoughts
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No matter how many people with credibility tell her she's wrong, she's not. I'd probably feel better rolling a rock up a hill all day! ;)
A couple more tidbits...
DS fact-check #239: No, BC did not block a pipeline. They tried, and failed. Exhibit A: The completed pipeline. Exhibit B: the Supreme Court decision telling BC they could not block an interPROVINCIAL pipeline (emphasis mine).
From the May 22 West of Centre podcast, a treat for those listening to the very end: The observation that there is now less daylight between the Alberta and federal governments on pipelines, than there is between the Alberta government and the oil industry. Everything between Edmonton and Ottawa is all rosy, but the oil guys have Questions. Like, presumably, who's covering all the financial risk here? And, most certainly since last week, will this be crossing a provincial border, or an international one?