Danielle Smith in UCP-land: between a rock and a moderate place

When Jason Kenney duct-taped two parties into Alberta's United Conservatives, blue truck mythology and all, many longtime Progressive Conservatives bemoaned what they felt was a Wildrose takeover. 

Five years later, the stalwarts were unequivocal: This past weekend at the UCP's annual meeting, they were attending what was, for all intents and purposes, a Wildrose convention. Even to some old Wildrose hands who'd been absorbed into the UCP government operations, this felt mighty familiar, like the pre-merger days.

The suits and dress shirts appeared well outnumbered by windbreakers over plaid. Most attendees weren't there for networking and the open bars at hospitality suites, but for internal party process matters. And the longest-serving former Wildrose leader, infamous for abandoning her flock, got celebrated anew on the throne: Premier Danielle Smith.

Her UCP leadership victory earlier in October was supposed to mark a turn for Smith, from her lengthy conversation deep inside Alberta's conservative community — much of it about those darn COVID vaccines and rules — to dealing with the broader wants and needs of a more variously-opinionated whole province.

In fact, Smith has spent nearly her entire first two weeks since being sworn in as premier hunkered down and tending to her internal UCP audience. She has made zero policy changes or other initiatives, which breaks with the more recent trend of new premiers making hit-the-ground-running initial moves, to show action and resolve.

Dept. of internal affairs

Those may come, some perhaps this week. But in her premiership's early moments, she was quietly organizing, learning the ropes, and retreating with her caucus for three days of team-building — perhaps reasonable given the MLAs' fractious habits, but there's a whole populace also keen to meet-and-greet the premier.

Then, immediately after unveiling her cabinet, she sequestered into UCP-land once again for three days, for the party convention at Enoch Cree Nation's casino resort.

But there's a clear understanding from Smith's team that, more than before, the rest of Alberta is watching, too — even when she's in a conference hall surrounded by 2,000-ish friends and well-wishers. 

That would be why Smith, in her convention speech, emphasized affordability and inflation relief, such as coming announcements to curb electricity costs and perhaps axe fuel taxes. And not a word in the speech that recalled Kenney's COVID policies, even if her line about the vaccines drew her biggest applause on leadership victory night.

It's clearly an issue that still animates her base, as evidenced later that Saturday afternoon, when members debated a policy resolution to protect individuals' "health care choices" (read: right to refuse vaccines and not face consequences). When a woman stepped to the debate microphone and argued that "certain choices, such as vaccination, may affect broader society," UCPers roundly booed her — so much so that the moderator pleaded with the crowd to show civility.

Hard memories of COVID can stoke the leader's passion too, even if speechwriters kept her quiet on that front in the convention's main hall. At the news conference immediately afterwards, she gamely accepted a Rebel News reporter's question about apologizing for Alberta's enforcement of COVID rules, saying on the spot she's "deeply sorry."

She also expressed interest in getting public health advice from a "larger number of people," with specific concern for the "doctors who didn't follow the narrative," — and reaffirmed she wants to find a way, if it's legal, to pardon or provide amnesty for those who have been or are being prosecuted for violating the public health law.

Sometimes, this party/public balance will involve Smith saying different things to different crowds. In an interview to the decidedly conservative Western Standard, the premier flagged that Alberta Health Services has some partnership with the World Economic Forum (a nefarious group to right-leaning social media realms). "That's got to end," Smith stated.

Yet when reporters asked the following day, she attempted vagaries. When pressed, she accused journalists of being merely part of the "entertainment industry" like she formerly was, hungry for clicks and attention.

(To put a spin on Kenney's common refrain when he disliked journalists' queries, Smith rejects the premise of her questioners. Though it's ready fodder for a conservative base whose leaders, from Donald Trump on down, have encouraged a distrust of established media.)

Base booster

This weekend signalled Smith is caught between a rock and a moderate place. For all her speechy bits on affordability and health waiting times, the lone standing ovation her speech prompted was for her constitutionally-dubious but grassroots-riling idea, the Alberta Sovereignty Act.

Smith spent a lengthy section near the top of her speech on intentions to better support Ukrainian refugees from Russia's invasion, likely further atonement after apologizing for her comments earlier this year that resembled Russian propaganda lines. Though the UCP convention audience ultimately applauded her words, there was much shifting in seats, muttering and questioning glances; and the same online forums that had lionized her before were aggrieved about her apology to the "woke" mob.

She doesn't appear to be someone who's opportunistically currying favour with populist elements; she was expressing doubt about vaccines and actually left her past radio job because of pressures to stick with the "narrative" long before she entertained this year's return to politics.

"My friends, I did not campaign by saying things to win your favour and your votes only to change the channel on you later," Smith told her throng Saturday.

There's both principle and pragmatism behind this. While she does nod toward appealing beyond them, she routinely expresses fear of a right-wing splinter faction rising.

This is the group she wants to keep active, keep fighting with her, and keep from turning on her like they did on Kenney when the pandemic showed he wasn't as unflinchingly libertarian as many may have believed.

And this weekend, the crew that played a large role in the UCP dumping Kenney charged into the party's establishment. Take Back Alberta, a grassroots group which coalesced around hatred of COVID rules, enlisted several hundred political newcomers to register for this AGM — even helping some pay the $350 entry fee — to elect their preferred crop of party board candidates.

They elected nine out of nine, nearly a board majority of insurgents. (It easily overwhelmed others in the party, as these elections are typically sleepy sidebar events in a convention, and don't create the 90-minute queues that newcomers eagerly persevered and the longtime members were more likely to avoid.)

And the group's followers intend to carry forward the same zeal at the riding level, to rush in and pick new UCP election candidates and perhaps overturn some existing ones picked while Kenney was in charge.

Would this be further evidence of a Wildrose-over-PC takeover? Vincent Byfield, a Take Back organizer and now UCP board director, told CBC it's more like "freedom faction" over Kenneyite. 

Watch this space, as Smith's last bid leading a party was plagued by problematic candidates she didn't rein in; but how much reining in will this unapologetically freedom-loving grassroots group tolerate?

The Takebackers have counted Smith as one of their "freedom" fighters, and when she made the rounds of party suites this weekend, she made sure to visit theirs, too. Their lingering passions about COVID rules may not be shared by an Albertan majority, but they are forming a critical mass within the party the premier has remade as her own.