Op-ed - AB Conservatives Look Weak-Kneed in Not Challenging Dani’s Dare
Pro-Canada supporters rallying in Medicine Hat on Friday. (Photo Owl News)
Premier Danielle Smith’s separation referendum is political madness which is splitting this province apart.
Smith can blame whoever she wants for the craziness that’s been unleashed - the likes of which hasn’t been seen since her predecessor’s May 2021 “best summer ever.” But, as she so clearly indicated to the UCP president when he tried to take a pass on the referendum, she’s the leader.
An earlier op-ed the Owl published this week may have made a serious miscalculation in thinking there are enough common sense conservatives in this province to know this premier is toxic to their cause and Albertans in general. A thought based on the articulated premise that former premiers Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein represented the best this province had to offer when it came to doing what’s best for Albertans.
Trying to portray the damage Dani’s dare is doing as something Lougheed or Klein would even consider is to the benefit of all Albertans is a fantasy. And while Smith has wrapped herself in the cloak of those previous successful and re-electable premiers, her appeasement of the separatist sentiment that she now claims she wants to stomp out through closer relations with Ottawa should signal the end of such comparisons.
In the past week, Albertans have seen a bunch of mealy-mouthed former conservative politicians acting like washed up has beens by not calling Smith out by name, trying as hard as they can to try to avoid labelling the premier as the province’s disrupter-in-chief.
While former premier Jason Kenney has been vocal in his opposition to Smith’s actions, it’s time to call her out as the architect of this folly.
Kenney might be feeling a bit burned by the party he was instrumental in creating, and unceremoniously dumped from, but he needs to start labeling Smith as the chaos agent she is.
Former Medicine Hat MP and Brooks native Monte Solberg made his position clear as an avowed federalist in a recent op-ed in the Calgary Herald, waxing poetically as to how he came to that position. But, like the cliche victim in a horror movie, he appears oblivious of the separatist perpetrator being inside his home Brooks-Medicine Hat riding.
Making up the trio of former Alberta conservative politicians in the Vote to Stay, pro-Canada advocacy group with Kenney and Solberg and launched last week is former provincial finance minister Travis Toews.
Toews called out Smith on some of her worst separatist leanings reflected in what she then proposed to be included in the Sovereignty Act, warning of possible economic chaos if that were come to pass while both were UCP leadership candidates.
Why he can’t call Smith out now while he’s criticizing the referendum is the epitome of a weak-kneed Alberta conservative.
This Vote to Stay group is as good as any conservative-minded, pro-federalist organization to lead the effort to stop this referendum by ousting Smith as UCP leader. That’ll be easy as there are enough disgruntled UCP members to join forces with to get the job done. And it should say something that it’s a faction of the most dedicated separatists and fierce acolytes which share Smith’s waffling sovereignty position that make up the her current base of support. It’s a base that won’t be enough to save her leadership whether she goes now or later.
Smith’s removal would rid Albertans’ primary threat to their future. And if the pause button is put on this referendum, conservatives can try to piece together a United Conservative Party worthy of such a name.
If Alberta conservatives can’t pull it together, then the UCP needs to fail as the party name will become a testament to failure.