In a democracy, reasonable leaders don’t pursue massive radical change without a mandate from voters.

Barring a miracle, Danielle Smith is about to deliver the Big Gamble that Preston Manning, the erstwhile Svengali and Godfather of the Canadian right, always wanted. 

That is to say, the woman who is about to be named Alberta’s unelected premier by less than 3.5 per cent of the province’s eligible voters will roll the dice on a radical right-wing reordering of Alberta society – with serious implications for all of Canada – in hopes that some of the gunk will stick to the wall.

With a little luck, her shadowy backers are crossing their fingers, the former Wildrose leader whose 2012 effort to become premier foundered in a Lake of Fire can even manage to get elected eventually.

But that’s not strictly necessary for the coup they’re planning, and I use that term advisedly, to succeed in throwing the Overton Window so far open that Hurricane Danielle can blow right into the kitchen. 

Democratic accountability? Who needs it? 

A mandate for radical change? Forget about it!

No, as a confident former Fraser Institute apparatchik told the Globe and Mail this morning in a startling interview, “We’re going to double down.”

That will start, she promised, immediately after October 11, the day she expects to be sworn in. Given her tone, one wouldn’t be surprised if, like Bonaparte, she snatches the crown and plops it on her own head!

University of Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper’s intentionally unconstitutional “Sovereignty Act” will be immediately enacted – doubtless with the full support of United Conservative Party (UCP) Caucus cowards who short days ago were berating it as unhinged and a harbinger of economic destruction.

Cooper, it is fair to conclude based on his past comments, is a separatist and wants 2022 to be Alberta’s 1775.

According to the Globe’s account: “Cabinet ministers who were once cool or silent on her policies have now signalled they’re at least ready to work with her. … She said she had spent hours and hours in recent weeks meeting with not only cabinet ministers but also MLAs, trying to make a break from the Kenney years and complaints from caucus that he didn’t listen.”

Perhaps Manning has been helping out again, as he did in 2014 when he pushed the Wildrose leader and her MLAs at secret meetings to cross the floor of the Legislature to join Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives, a tactic that resulted in the need for Smith to undergo eight years of political rehabilitation. 

An advocate of quack COVID cures and disseminator of dangerous pandemic conspiracy theories during her tenure in right-wing talk radio, Smith also plans a quick attack on the leadership and structure of Alberta Health Services. 

Decentralization will be the buzzword. Privatization will be the goal. Chaos will be the result. 

Don’t plan on getting sick in Alberta during Smith’s unelected premiership.

Pensions, Mounted Police, and public services will all be for the wood chipper too, by the sound of it. 

This is the program the UCP’s backers had hoped outgoing Premier Jason Kenney would deliver. But for all his flaws, he proved too traditional a politician to to fully take that risk.

Nevertheless, Smith told Calgary Sun political columnist Rick Bell in an unintentionally hilarious column published today, “I’m not the way I’ve been depicted by those who don’t like me. I’m a reasonable person.”

In a democracy, reasonable people don’t pursue massive radical change without a mandate from voters.

Alberta is about to have its Liz Truss moment. 

Forget Napoleon. Smith may be a market fundamentalist, but this sounds more like Bolshevism. 

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David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike... More by David J. Climenhaga

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