Unifying Her Party and Winning Over Albertans: Tasks Ahead for Smith if She Wants to Remain Premier

Danielle Smith waves to supporters after being chosen as the new leader of the United Conservative Party and next Alberta premier, in Calgary on Oct. 6, 2022. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

With less than eight months to go before the 2023 provincial election, Danielle Smith has her work cut out for her as she tries to unite a notoriously fractious party, beat the rival NDP to remain premier, and deliver on her campaign promises, such as tabling a sovereignty act.

Ted Morton, a former Alberta cabinet minister and professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, says Smith can win a majority government if she works to achieve party unity while also focusing on solving the issues that Albertans are faced with.

On the party unity issue, Morton said Smith got off to a good start in her victory speech, in which she acknowledged and praised her leadership rivals.

“[She should] treat them with respect and offer them important positions in government,” he said in an interview.

Smith also said the United Conservative Party (UCP) needs to do more than just focusing on beating the federal “NDP-Liberal coalition,” and being known only for its emphasis on “economic growth and balanced budgets and debt reduction and lower taxes.”

“We also need to show Albertans that we can be trusted to compassionately care for our vulnerable and our seniors, especially in this time of crippling inflation,” she said.

Marco Navarro-Genie, president of the Haultain Institute, says it remains to be seen whether Smith can “rally the party” to her side, but he thinks she’s up for the task.

“These sorts of contests, they tend to be pretty divisive, and she can heal those wounds as it were. … It’s not all her responsibility to do that, but it is part of her responsibility. If she reaches out and does the right thing, likely they'll respond well,” he said.

Contrast With Federal Tories

Melanee Thomas, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, notes that Smith’s win wasn’t anywhere near the “unequivocal supermajority” that saw Pierre Polievre become the leader of the federal Conservatives with 68 percent of the vote. Smith won on the sixth ballot with 53.8 percent of the vote against Premier Jason Kenney’s former finance minister Travis Toews.

“[After Poilievre’s win,] the Jean Charest part of the party basically learned that ‘there’s not much base for us,’ and most of the party is OK with that. The United Conservative Party is clearly not in the same position,” she told The Epoch Times.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the language of unity is anything other than the veneer that goes on at this point.”

Smith emphasized in her speech the importance of unity for the UCP, asking the supporters of other candidates to now unite to ensure the NDP can’t win, a reminder of the 2015 provincial election where the NDP won in a historically conservative province to form a majority government for the first time.

Thomas says there will be different indicators as Smith’s tenure as premier progresses to project how she may fare in the 2023 election, including whether donations to the UCP ramp, or NDP manages to get more donations.

“Most new leaders, in the first year of news coverage after they start government, … get this honeymoon period, and then it kind of drops off to more neutral. [Former Ontario premier] Kathleen Wynne didn’t get that [honeymoon period]. They were losing donations all over the place,” she said.

“I would use that as an indicator. … It’s a tough row to hoe. There’s lots of moving parts.”

Sovereignty Act

During the campaign, Smith garnered a lot of attention, both positive and negative, with her proposal for a sovereignty act to oppose federal policies seen as infringing in Alberta’s jurisdiction.

Morton says it matters how the act will actually be implemented.

“The act itself is 10 percent. Ninety percent is implementation,” he said. “The premise is it’s time for Alberta to play offence rather than defence.”

Smith has said a sovereignty act would give Alberta the same powers that Quebec has within the confederation, governing itself as a nation within a nation.

Throughout the campaign, she said precedents include Quebec passing a unanimous motion that the Emergencies Act invoked by Ottawa in February shouldn’t apply in Quebec, B.C. receiving a federal exemption to decriminalize the use and possession of hard drugs, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe refusing to enforce Ottawa’s fertilizer reduction regulations in his province.

Areas where a sovereignty act are sorely needed, Smith has said, include enabling the province to circumvent Bill C-69, termed by conservative parties as the “no new pipelines law,” and opposing federal cuts to fertilizer use, federal mandatory vaccination polices, and federal firearms ownership regulations, among others.

Morton says struggles between Alberta premiers and Ottawa has been a constant theme over the years, and the premiers “usually lost in the courts, but they knew they were going to lose in the courts.”

“But within a year or two after that they were able to convert their legal loss to a policy victory,” he says.

He adds that the same can be possible for Smith.

“With some hard work, and coalition building, and public attention, it’s possible to convert legal losses into policy wins,” he said.

“And frankly, Quebec has done that time and time again in the area of language legislation. They lose in courts, but then they extract concessions from Ottawa.”