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Smith aims to go from pariah to premier

Ex-Wildrose leader who famously crossed the floor and then lost her seat pledges sovereignty

KIERAN LEAVITT

As the race to replace Jason Kenney heats up, the Star is talking to the candidates seeking to become the next leader of Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party — and premier. First in a series.

EDMONTON Just south of Calgary, in the town of High River, sits a little renovated railway car restaurant that Danielle Smith bought with her husband in 2017.

“My husband and I both love trains,” says the United Conservative leadership hopeful.

The decommissioned dining car, built in the 1940s and used on the Transcontinental railroad until the 1980s, serves homey meals to patrons who sit not far from a skyline of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains off in the distance.

For Smith, it also served as a place to learn some hard lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic, lessons she says she plans to bring with her if she takes the controls in the Alberta premier’s office come Oct. 6.

“That, I think, has been such a great education for me in trying to manage through government regulations, rules, and sort of the constantly shifting direction that we were given,” she said.

“That was a pretty unique experience that I didn’t have when I was in politics last time around.”

Last time around, things did not go smoothly for Smith.

In fact, her crossing the floor to the governing Progressive Conservatives as Wildrose Party leader with eight other Wildrose MLAs in 2014 is legendary in Alberta. If there was a political science handbook for what not to do in this province, her story could arguably be in there.

But there isn’t a handbook, and while Alberta politics are not done with simple equations, Smith appears to have made a calculation that carrying a firebrand banner trumpeting more Alberta sovereignty is a winning formula. She’s an early front-runner, according to initial polls and party insiders.

It’s not often you get a second chance in the business of politics, but that’s exactly what Smith has at the tips of her fingers as she looks to inherit what she tried to help build with her devastating move to cross the floor — a united right-wing political movement in the UCP.

Now, though, she readily admits it was a mistake to attempt to unite the right in 2014 by crossing the floor to then PC Premier Jim Prentice’s caucus. It cost her personally, as she went on to lose the nomination in her own riding, and the province’s conservatives as well, as many saw the floor crossing as a precursor to the end of the 44-year PC dynasty in the province and the rise of the NDP in 2015.

“It failed when Jim and I did it because we went about it the wrong way,” she said. “It was premature. “We both got punished.”

Can she now turn her libertarian, anti-COVID lockdown politics into a winning formula in Alberta to keep the UCP, cleaved for over a year by constant political turmoil, together as one?

“We had a problem of leadership in the last two years that became so acute that the coalition was about to burst apart,” Smith said. “Now we’re healing that with a leadership race, with some really strong contenders.”

Smith, who spent years hosting a talk radio show in Alberta after leaving politics, looks like one of those contenders.

Outgoing Premier Jason Kenney was seen by some in caucus as being too controlling with a top-down approach to governing. Smith plans to reverse that and go to a grassroots style of speaking with the people (a promise Kenney made too, although insiders say he broke it).

But Smith will also inherit a caucus divided not only along old PC and Wildrose fault lines, but over COVID restrictions that left UCP members of the legislature split over whether what the government did was enough, or too much (in vaccine passports and mandates), in the face of rising case counts.

“There’s a collegiality that is missing in the UCP caucus,” she said. “But those things can be built, and I think they can be built quite quickly with the right leadership.”

It seems like a simple answer to a complex problem, but Smith isn’t the first political insider to note that one of the side effects of the pandemic was a severe lack of faceto-face time with others. It’s meant that for most of the UCP’s tenure in government, few in caucus were able to have an in-person discussion as the pandemic kept people apart, and that’s potentially fuelled some of the animosity.

But the problems stemming from the pandemic don’t end with caucus cohesion for Smith. She came out of the gate of the leadership race swinging, promising no more COVID lockdowns ever, and greater autonomy for Alberta when it comes to disobeying federal laws it doesn’t like — potentially including public health measures.

It was reminiscent of when Kenney pledged last year that Alberta would have the “best summer ever” with no more lockdowns and no vaccine passports. He eventually backpedalled on those promises and faced widespread criticism for painting himself into a corner while dealing with a complex pandemic.

Smith doesn’t seem worried about doing the same.

In Smith’s view, Alberta Health Services is partly to blame for hospitals being overwhelmed as AHS “hadn’t done their work” on increasing ICU capacity. She talks about a “major restructuring of Alberta Health Services” as well.

“You can’t continue living in fear,” she said. “We will always have respiratory viruses that are always dangerous and it can’t be a go-to to shut down restaurants and gyms, and put masks on kids. That can’t be the go-to answer. The go-to answer has to be who’s most vulnerable? How do we protect them?”

Smith also made waves in releasing her plan to introduce the Alberta Sovereignty Act on day one should she become premier. It would, ostensibly, allow Alberta to not follow federal laws it deemed as an attack on the province or unfair.

The proposal has been criticized by most candidates in the race as either a stone’s throw from full-on separatism, chaotic, unconstitutional or at least problematic, and a move that would drive away investment. For Smith it represents the logical next step in an ongoing fight for a fair shake in confederation.

“No one thought it was chaotic when Quebec declared themselves a nation within a nation,” she said.

“There seems to be a recognition that Quebec is able to control things within their own territory, and if you look at the Constitution, that’s how it’s written.”

Smith talks of keeping the governing caucus united as though it’s just a matter of having enough nights out at the bar together and visits to one another’s constituencies.

Whether her leadership would keep the country united on the foundation of the Constitution is another question.

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2022-07-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-07-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

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