Alberta Premier Danielle Smith believes she’ll have allies in her battle against so-called federal overreach when she attends this week’s meeting of provincial and territorial premiers in Winnipeg.
Smith made the comments Monday at the annual Premier’s Stampede Breakfast in Calgary, where she flipped pancakes for a crowd of hundreds just hours before her scheduled departure for the three-day premiers’ conference.
The guy who made Danielle Smith premier came to Calgary on Friday.
And yes, I do mean Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Without him and the Liberals to kick around, it’s doubtful that Smith would have won the May 29 election, or even the UCP leadership last October.
PM Justin Trudeau gets heckled by a group of protesters in Calgary, Alberta.
I tried to get an answer from the PM if he has a job offer lined-up after the election.
The campaign speech from one of his minister was a disaster, follow @MediaBezirgan for more.
Support my… pic.twitter.com/kLEtrjIA1q— Mocha Bezirgan (@BezirganMocha) July 8, 2023
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau turned up at the annual Calgary Stampede on Friday, he was wearing his annual good-guy white cowboy hat.
But for many Albertans, Trudeau is forever the bad guy in the black hat, the Snidely Whiplash of Alberta politics who, politically speaking, evicts widows and ties people to train tracks.
Premier Danielle Smith says her government will bring in arson investigators from outside Alberta to trace the cause of wildfires that have been plaguing the province of late.
“I’m very concerned that there are arsonists,” Smith told podcast host Ryan Jespersen on June 8. “And there have been stories as well that we’re investigating, and we’re bringing in arson investigators from outside the province.”
It was eight minutes into her 12-minute victory speech when Danielle Smith got into the stuff the United Conservative crowd liked more than anything, other than the victory itself.
The “warning to Ottawa” — the one she said she hoped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals were listening to (at a few minutes before 2 a.m Eastern on Tuesday morning).
The premier, now armed with a mandate, urged Ottawa to scrap its plans for a net-zero electrical grid in 12 years, as well as the Liberals’ proposed regulations to cap emissions from the carbon-intensive oil and gas sector.
OTTAWA — The federal Liberal government says the re-election of a Danielle Smith-led United Conservative government in Alberta will not hinder Ottawa’s efforts to advance aggressive climate action policies.
The morning after Smith’s victory speech took clear shots at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s environmental policies as a threat to Alberta’s economy, Trudeau slipped into a cabinet meeting via a back door after attending a national prayer breakfast, leaving key cabinet ministers to react to the overnight news of her victory.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party retained control of Canada’s top oil-producing province in an election Monday, setting up a series of energy-policy clashes with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Alberta’s United Conservatives have scraped a majority government, narrowly defeating the rival New Democrats in what proved to be the province’s closest ever election.
The triumph for incumbent premier Danielle Smith foreshadows more friction between the western province and Canada’s federal government on environmental regulation, with Smith using her victory speech to attack the climate policies of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
Danielle Smith leads UCP to Alberta majority government
UCP majority winner Danielle Smith's victory speech sends a clear warning to Trudeau
I will not let Trudeau’s federal policies be inflicted upon Albertans.pic.twitter.com/n4ztDjjQ3Q
— Mad Yet (@HaveWeAllGoneM1) May 30, 2023
Today is election day.
Many Albertans have already made their voice heard during last week’s advance polls with 758,550 votes cast, smashing the previous record of 700,476 in 2019.
If all goes to plan, by the end of tonight Albertans will have elected 87 MLAs to represent them in the province’s 31st legislative assembly. Although Calgary has been cited as the deciding battleground, there are plenty of ridings to watch with every election offering its own surprises.
The conclusion of the Alberta provincial election on Monday will herald yet another stage in the federal-provincial relationship, often characterized in recent years by either tense co-operation or outright opposition.
Where political analysts in Alberta often talk about the province’s three electoral “regions” — Edmonton, Calgary and rural areas — Ottawa has also been a point of focus throughout the campaign.
Opposition to the federal government is a “baseline” for both of Alberta’s major parties, Corey Hogan, a political commentator and strategist, said in an interview on CBC’s The House that aired Saturday.
OK, I get it. Albertans don’t have to be New Democrats to think Premier Daniel Smith spent too much time during her first months in office re-fighting pandemic battles.
From October through January, I wrote several columns urging her to drop her fights over lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passports, and to move on from her close associations with the loopiest elements of the pandemic protest movement.
Sitting at a cafe terrace overlooking a park commemorating the birthplace of the vast oil industry in the western Canadian province of Alberta, Audrey Cerkvenac and Ernestine Dumont, wrestled with a political dilemma.
In a province long the epicenter of Canada’s conservative politics, the two older women had been unwavering conservative supporters.
But now, as Monday’s provincial election approached, they said they had been turned off by the strident right turn the province’s conservative party had taken as it ruled Alberta during the pandemic, fueled by extremist protests against Covid restrictions and baseless claims about vaccines.
NYT hit piece …
CBC News poll suggests United Conservative Party headed for victory in Alberta
Imagine, if you can, an Ontario premier or member of the provincial parliament badmouthing that province’s auto sector and fighting to stop the creation of a new auto plant in the province — because automobiles (even electric ones) and manufacturing creates greenhouse gasses.
OTTAWA — It was perhaps inevitable that, moments into Thursday’s Alberta leaders’ debate, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh would be dragged into the fast-paced sparring match.
For one thing, it’s a common trope in the United Conservative Party when attacking the Alberta NDP to suggest that Singh pulls leader Rachel Notley’s strings.
For another, Notley hasn’t been shy about distancing herself from the NDP’s leader in Ottawa, particularly on his stances on climate and energy policy.
Somehow I’m just not buying this.
