Alberta Premier Danielle Smith likes to call herself an “innovator.” That might not be the first word that comes to mind for many Albertans thinking about her “innovative” ideas for an Alberta Pension Plan, or restructuring the healthcare system, or overturning the management of AIMCo, the government’s $170-billion Crown corporation.
But it’s certainly the word Smith uses to describe how she is blurring the lines between the United Conservative Party and the United Conservative government.
The two, of course, are not the same. The party is responsible to its members. The government is responsible to all Albertans.
But that is not how Smith governs. In the weeks leading up to the party’s annual general meeting (AGM) last November in Red Deer, Smith embarked on a cross-province tour. She held a series of closed-door town hall meetings with UCP members where she reassured them she would table legislation to, among other things, crack down on gender pronouns in schools, ensure “parental rights” in education and protect Albertans’ supposed right to bear arms.
She fulfilled her promises, and in the fall legislative session also banned the use of ballot-counting machines in municipal elections and amended the Bill of Rights to give workers in government-controlled facilities such as hospitals the power to refuse to be vaccinated.
It is worth noting none of these were part of her campaign platform during the 2023 provincial election, where a majority of Albertans were concerned about affordability issues and the economy. These recent changes came only after listening to the demands of UCP members who passed policy resolutions on the floor of previous AGMs. Historically and by convention, governing parties usually treat such resolutions as non-binding suggestions—an opportunity for members to blow off some steam and share a pretense that they’re sort of running the show. The UCP’s resolutions, though, often pass overwhelmingly with little to no debate—and tend to end up as government policy.
Smith takes the resolutions so seriously that during last November’s AGM she held an “accountability session” on stage with two of her cabinet ministers to go over how she responded to the previous year’s resolutions.
During a year-end interview in December, I asked Smith how listening to 6,000 people at a partisan party convention to formulate legislation was democratic. “I look at them as a pretty big focus group,” she said of her members. “They come from all over the province, all different backgrounds, rural, urban, different perspectives.” Smith tellingly went on to say “we have to remember how politics works” and “I don’t become a leader unless I get the support of members.” She added she doesn’t simply take resolutions as fait accompli government policy, but first talks to stakeholders.
The government is responsible to all Albertans. But that is not how Smith governs.
However, Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt says Smith’s approach dangerously narrows the gap between party and government and is therefore undemocratic. “Governments have to balance the interests of winning elections and appealing to a large population versus just listening to the core, hard-nosed group of activists within their own party,” says Bratt. “That’s always been the pattern—federally, provincially, NDP, conservative, didn’t matter. That has completely been put on its head by the UCP under Smith.” It’s a strategy that could come back to haunt her, says Bratt, if she continues to formulate government legislation on the back of party resolutions.
In November, members passed contentious resolutions that included declaring sex reassignment surgery to be on par with elective cosmetic surgery, and therefore ineligible for coverage by Medicare. Another declared CO2 to be pretty much nothing but harmless plant food and so the government should scrap its target to make Alberta net-zero by 2050. Because of the precedent set by Smith, she’ll have to explain during the party’s next “accountability session” what happened to those resolutions.
Smith, though, has learned it is better to speak to UCP members than to simply dismiss their directives—as then-UCP leader Jason Kenney did at his own peril in 2018 after promising members a “grassroots guarantee” on policy ahead of an AGM. When members passed a controversial resolution that would essentially “out” students to their parents, Kenney shot down the resolution: “I will take the resolutions adopted today as important input, but I hold the pen on the platform.”
Kenney was maintaining a boundary between his party and his (future) government. He went on to win the 2019 provincial election. But by ripping up the “grassroots guarantee,” Kenney arguably planted the seeds of his own demise when his socially conservative base turned against him in a leadership vote.
On the other hand, Smith handily survived her own party leadership review last November with a 91.5 per cent vote after letting her membership base dictate government policy.
You might think that to be undemocratic. Smith says she is simply being an innovator.
Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal political columnist.
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