Her mouth runs habitually rogue, her policies are often renegade and her connection to Ottawa is all resistance all the time.
For those reasons and a few more, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is my newsmaker politician of the year.
This is not to say Smith’s basking in a glowing political honeymoon following her United Conservative Party election win in May, which had appeared set for an easy win by former NDP premier Rachel Notley a year earlier.
Her action plan since has wonky elements and not all of it is swooning the electorate, which fits with the political theory that the first half of a four-year mandate is for trial and error while the last half is for damage control.
Her advocacy for Alberta to leave the Canada Pension Plan, taking half of its assets with it, freaked out Ottawa and her fellow premiers and could be doomed by negative public opinion at home.
She has ripped up the province’s health care organization chart and fired the system’s top bureaucrats, a plan to stabilize acute care which could decide her future re-electibility.
UCP Leader Danielle Smith makes her victory speech in Calgary on Monday May 29, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
And then there’s Smith’s specialty – declaring multiple-front war on Ottawa with particular wrath reserved for federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, whom she accuses of “treachery.”
To fight federal clean electricity regulations, which aim to make the sector net-zero by 2035, she has unleashed the Alberta Sovereignty Act.
It would order provincial and municipal authorities not to follow the federal regulations. But those regulations haven’t been finalized yet and probably won’t be forthcoming if the Trudeau government loses the 2025 federal election.
In almost every sense, notwithstanding that the Act itself is likely unconstitutional, the move is mostly symbolic.
But it’s the comeback that makes her seven months as elected premier such a spectacle.
After spending much of the pre-election period apologizing for her controversial history of hot-headed words and actions, Smith has set out to bridge the divide between severely normal Albertans and the rebel alliance of anti-COVID mandate types who fly under the Take Back Alberta banner.
It’s no easy task. She owes her UCP leadership to the rebels and her mandate to the masses.
To walk that tightrope, Smith has mostly gagged her earlier foot-in-mouth tendencies, given up on the silly stuff like creating a provincial police force and protecting the unvaccinated under human rights legislation. And she made plenty of hay from a Supreme Court ruling that the feds overstepped their jurisdiction in environmental legislation.
Her strange mix of pragmatism and shock politics fits with the long, strange trip that’s marked her career. It started with her days as a controversial school trustee without kids to outspoken Calgary Herald columnist to no-holds-barred radio talk show host and into the political mainstream as pro-choice leader of the PC breakaway Wildrose Party.
Then came her disastrous defection to join the Progressive Conservatives in 2014, a botched effort to reunite the right which ended with the PCs rejecting her as a candidate for the next election.
At that point, Danielle Smith was finished, a toxic personality without a political future.
But fate had different ideas as Jason Kenney’s UCP leadership imploded in 2022 and Take Back Alberta members crowned Smith as his (hard) right replacement.
Now with four years to make or break her reputation in a province with a sizzling-hot economy, Smith’s showing intense zeal for remaking Alberta into her own image, be that good or bad, and making sure she’s imposible to ignore.
After all, it took considerable gall for her to attend Dubai’s COP28 global climate change conference this month to defend oil and gas production, a move akin to hauling a truckload of chainsaws into a national park’s old-growth forest.
Through it all, this rebel-minded premier has achieved middle-of-the-pack popularity in a recent Angus Reid poll on voter approval of Canada’s leaders.
If getting Ottawa’s attention was her mission, consider it accomplished. And fighting the feds is always a winning strategy in Alberta.
Danielle Smith’s no repeat of Ralph Klein’s famous 1993 Miracle on the Prairie victory, but her resurrection 30 years later is impressive enough to make her the year’s most interesting political personality.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will not be taking advice from Pierre Poilievre after the Conservative leader challenged him to bring down government.
“I say directly to Pierre Poilievre: I’m not going to listen to you,” said Singh on Wednesday, accusing Poilievre of wanting to take away dental-care coverage from Canadians, among other things.
“I’m not going to listen to your advice. You want to destroy people’s lives, I want to build up a brighter future.”
Earlier in the day, Poilievre challenged Singh to commit to voting non-confidence in the government, saying his party will force a vote in the House of Commons “at the earliest possibly opportunity.”
“I’m asking Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to commit unequivocally before Monday’s byelections: will they vote non-confidence to bring down the costly coalition and trigger a carbon tax election, or will Jagmeet Singh sell out Canadians again?” Poilievre said.
“It’s put up or shut up time for the NDP.”
While Singh rejected the idea he would ever listen to Poilievre, he did not say how the NDP would vote on a non-confidence motion.
“I’ve said on any vote, we’re going to look at the vote and we’ll make our decision. I’m not going to say our decision ahead of time,” he said.
Singh’s top adviser said on Tuesday the NDP leader is not particularly eager to trigger an election, even as the Conservatives challenge him to do just that.
Anne McGrath, Singh’s principal secretary, says there will be more volatility in Parliament and the odds of an early election have risen.
“I don’t think he is anxious to launch one, or chomping at the bit to have one, but it can happen,” she said in an interview.
New Democrat MPs are in a second day of meetings in Montreal as they nail down a plan for how to navigate the minority Parliament this fall.
The caucus retreat comes one week after Singh announced the party has left the supply-and-confidence agreement with the governing Liberals.
It’s also taking place in the very city where New Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat on Monday, when voters go to the polls in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. A second byelection is being held that day in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood—Transcona, where the NDP is hoping to hold onto a seat the Conservatives are also vying for.
While New Democrats are seeking to distance themselves from the Liberals, they don’t appear ready to trigger a general election.
Singh signalled on Tuesday that he will have more to say Wednesday about the party’s strategy for the upcoming sitting.
He is hoping to convince Canadians that his party can defeat the federal Conservatives, who have been riding high in the polls over the last year.
Singh has attacked Poilievre as someone who would bring back Harper-style cuts to programs that Canadians rely on, including the national dental-care program that was part of the supply-and-confidence agreement.
The Canadian Press has asked Poilievre’s office whether the Conservative leader intends to keep the program in place, if he forms government after the next election.
With the return of Parliament just days away, the NDP is also keeping in mind how other parties will look to capitalize on the new makeup of the House of Commons.
The Bloc Québécois has already indicated that it’s written up a list of demands for the Liberals in exchange for support on votes.
The next federal election must take place by October 2025 at the latest.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is defending her decision to turn off comments on her social media accounts — with an announcement on social media.
She posted screenshots to X this morning of vulgar names she’s been called on the platform, and says comments on her posts for months have been dominated by insults, to the point that she decided to block them.
Montreal’s Opposition leader and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have criticized Plante for limiting freedom of expression by restricting comments on her X and Instagram accounts.
They say elected officials who use social media should be willing to hear from constituents on those platforms.
However, Plante says some people may believe there is a fundamental right to call someone offensive names and to normalize violence online, but she disagrees.
Her statement on X is closed to comments.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
