Danielle Smith fuses far-right appeal with mainstream caution at UCP AGM
The premier offers something for everyone in the UCP fold, rallying party support while appearing to temper its most radical demands—at least, for now.
The UCP’s annual general meeting kicked off Friday at the Red Deer Resort in Casino in what is being billed as the biggest political convention in Canadian history.
Think of it as the closest Canadian equivalent to the Republican National Convention, but instead of Hulk Hogan tearing off his shirt on stage, we’re stuck with Theo Fleury watching from the sidelines with a media pass.
If the ubiquity of the “Vote Yes Premier Danielle” buttons throughout the convention hall were any indication, not to mention the uproarious applause she seemingly received after nearly every remark, Danielle Smith’s leadership review this afternoon is going to be quite the cakewalk.
Since Smith made her triumphant return from political oblivion in 2022, she has deftly triangulated between the party’s centre-right and ultra-right, wholeheartedly embracing the values of the latter while watering them down sufficiently to avoid alienating the former.
Smith, for all her incoherence as a political thinker and inanity as a policy maker, has an obvious gift for communication, which she honed in her years as a talk radio host.
She knows how to command a room, offering something for everyone in the party fold while constantly inching the broader political discourse rightwards.
When I was last in Red Deer, for the Canada Strong and Free Network regional conference in September, I spoke to a failed UCP nomination candidate for a Calgary constituency who lost to a Take Back Alberta-backed zealot.
She said she’d like to see Smith, if not deliver on her pledged tax cut for people who earn less than $60,000, at least offer some sort of token tax relief towards the UCP’s neoliberal, establishment wing.
I was quite surprised to hear her say she planned to vote in favour of Smith’s continued leadership at the AGM, because she sees Smith as a bulwark against the “crazies” in the party.
These are the cultural conservatives Smith has been appealing to with three anti-trans bills introduced this week, but as we know from the policy resolutions set for debate tomorrow, elements within the party would like to see Smith go even further.
Another segment of cultural conservatives the premier has been pandering to is represented by the so-called “Black Hats Group,” (formerly known as the Black Hat Gang) based in the premier’s riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat.
They’re the force behind Smith’s effort to beef up the Alberta Bill of Rights to include the right to refuse medical treatment—that is, vaccinations, but most certainly not addictions recovery—and to own firearms.
But they too want Smith to go further. Delegates are scheduled to debate a special motion proposed by the Black Hatters tomorrow calling for a 22-point Bill of Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities, which reads like an 18th century Massachusetts Bay Colony text.
For the old PC guard, Smith is the only thing standing between them and the party’s full takeover by the TBA and Black Hatter crowd. For TBA and the Black Hatter, Smith is their best shot at bringing their ideas into the mainstream.
This dynamic was on full display in how Smith navigated Friday’s main event, in which she joined her cabinet ministers (save for Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver, who had to attend a funeral) onstage to take questions from attendees about specific policies.
As attendees lined up on each side of the soundstage, Smith said something that revealed a stark contrast with the rigidly hierarchical leadership approach of her predecessor, Jason Kenney:
One of the things that he talked about as a leader is how it's part of his job to lift his team up, but he says that what happens in return is his team lifts him up. And that's exactly how I feel about this incredible team of cabinet ministers you have on the stage here.
Kenney would never lower himself to the level of his cabinet subordinates, which is one reason why he was only able to obtain a pitiful 51.4% support for the leadership of the party he founded.
After a couple softball questions, Smith was given the opportunity to demonstrate her mastery of meeting the conspiracy-brained far-right where they are and making their view more palatable to the mainstream in real time.
Sheane Meikle, a member from the Ponoka-Lacombe riding represented by transphobic turd Jennifer Johnson, asked Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis why he supported the City of Edmonton’s “hate crime snitch line,” alluding to the capital city’s status as the UCP’s favourite punching bag.
“We all know there’s no such thing as a hate crime. It’s either a crime or it isn’t,” said Meikle.
Ellis, a former Calgary cop with the charisma of a turtle, noted that this was a CrimeStoppers initiative, which the province funded as part of its commitment to law and order.
“I think we can all agree nobody supports hate in this province,” said the minister in an incredibly weak response that begs the question, if nobody supports hate, then why is there a need to investigate hate crimes?
The premier interjected to explain hate crimes in language palatable to hard-right cultural conservatives by speaking in religious terms.
“There's vandalism of places of worship, whether it's churches being burnt down or synagogues being defaced,” said Smith.
“There are people who are being targeted because they were religious apparel and they get attacked, so if there's vandalism, that's a crime. If there’s assault, that’s a crime. Those are the things we’re trying to stop.”
A young man from the Edmonton-Glenora delegation asked how the government intends on addressing fertility rates being “well below replacement rate” in the province.
It sounded an awful lot like he was asking the premier how she plans to get him a girlfriend. I thought he was going to propose something along the lines of the “enforced monogamy” the premier’s friend and political ally Jordan Peterson, who was rumoured to be a planned attendee at the AGM, proposed in 2018.
But, instead, the delegate’s remarks took a notably xenophobic turn:
I know that you guys have a lot on your plate, but before you have any plans in store to address this, because there's only so much immigrants that we can take to sustain our population, and if we're going to truly grow and build ourselves some culture, we do need to be able to raise our families.
The premier fielded that thorny inquiry, suggesting perhaps the province ought to develop its own tax credit for families with children, which would, presumably, co-exist with the direct cash payments the province already provides to low and middle-income families with kids and the federal government’s Canada Child Benefit.
“Look, if anyone here has some good policy around that, just make a note of that. Put it through the policy process. Next year, we can debate some of your ideas,” said Smith.
She avoided addressing the delegate’s insinuation that immigration is an impediment towards cultural unity, but just last week Smith called on the feds to drastically reduce immigration levels on strictly economic grounds.
Ultraconservative Calgary political operative Craig Chandler intended to air grievances with McIver about campaigns he was involved in to overthrow the mayor and council in Cochrane and protect the wildly corrupt mayor of Chestermere.
“But now that I have to ask you, Danielle, I’ll be a bit nicer, because I like you,” he said to audience chuckles.
Chandler was miffed that a petition he helped circulate for to initiate an investigation into Cochrane town council, which had the support of a local councillor and TBA, wasn’t accepted by the Municipal Affairs, despite having what he claims was double the required signatures.
In Chestermere, McIver used his power to dismiss the local QAnon-adjacent mayor, three town councillors and three administrators after they refused to implement reforms he ordered following an investigation that found severe mismanagement of city funds, including the former mayor using a city credit card to to pay for booze and meals with tips totalling 50% to 100%.
Smith noted that Chestermere had a byelection to replace the four dismissed elected officials, in which all four ran and lost.
Admitting that she doesn’t know as much about the case in Cochrane, Smith speculated that having a recall effort so close to next year’s civic elections “is just going to result in having a double election.”
“Craig, you and I can talk offline so I can find out what's going on in Cochrane,” she added.
Guys like Chandler have the politically useful effect of making Smith appear sensible to the broader electorate by point of comparison. In turn, her willingness to hear out their concerns, however detached from reality, signals to them that she’s on their side.
It would be difficult to find a more glaringly symbiotic political relationship.
Will all of Smith’s cheerful triangulation be enough to satiate her party’s hard-right flank?
We’ll find out this evening.