It didn’t take United Conservative Party (UCP) Leader and premier designate Danielle Smith long to change her story about why there will be no by-election in the Calgary-Elbow riding, which has been without an MLA for two months.
On Friday, the province’s premier designate told a CBC interviewer there would be no by-election in the Calgary riding previously represented by former cabinet minister Doug Schweitzer because it would cost too much.
This was obviously nonsense, but not really a surprise. Smith is well known for glibly confident explanations that are only tenuously connected to the facts.
Yesterday morning, Smith offered her new story at a news conference with Brooks-Medicine Hat MLA Michaela Frey, who has agreed to step aside to let the new UCP leader run in her rural riding.
Smith knowingly told reporters that “there has been a convention that when a leader is chosen who does not have a seat there’s an expectation that she will seek a seat at an early opportunity, so I think the exception can be made for this by-election, but there is also a convention as well that if you’re within a year of having a general election that you don’t need to call by-elections.”
Most of this isn’t quite right, but the key message is closer to the facts than her statement Friday.
There is a constitutional convention that leaders without a seat in the Legislature must seek and win one within a reasonable period of time, generally considered to be three or four months.
However, calling a by-election now to accommodate that convention would not require an exception to any Parliamentary rule or practice, as she suggested.
In addition, there is a law in Alberta that a by-election to fill a vacancy like the one left by Schweitzer must take place within six months of the member’s resignation.
However, as former Clerk of the Legislature Rob Reynolds has explained, the Legislative Assembly Act “states that orders for by-elections arising from vacancies ‘need not be made’ if the vacancy occurs ‘during the last year of the legal life of the Assembly.’” (Emphasis added.)
Note the wording. The by-election in Calgary-Elbow need not be called, but nevertheless can be.
The drafters of the legislation clearly contemplated circumstances in which it would be appropriate to call a by-election despite there being less than a full year until the next general election.
For example, one such circumstance would be if a riding had already been without an MLA for two months and if the general election were not scheduled for an additional eight, by which time the riding would have been without representation in the Legislature for nearly a year.
In addition, if another by-election were also planned on an earlier date, given the standard practice throughout Canada of holding multiple by-elections on the same day, the already compelling case would become overwhelming.
These are, of course, precisely the circumstances in which the voters of Calgary-Elbow find themselves and which Ms. Smith is determined to ignore.
The reason Smith intends to avoid a by-election that her party might not win – especially now that she has insulted the voters of Calgary-Elbow – is transparent.
Historically, most Canadian governments facing this situation, including recent Conservative governments, would have suffered the loss in one location to get their leader elected in another.
Voters in Calgary-Elbow have every right to be furious with their treatment by the UCP and its new leadership.
As an aside, Smith’s claim there’s a parliamentary convention to have adjacent MLAs take care of the issues in neighbouring ridings is preposterous, for the obvious reason that adjacent ridings are frequently represented by politicians from different parties.
This is not the only Danielle Smith tall tale that changed within hours of her election as leader of the UCP in a close vote by party members.
As Rob Anderson, the influential chair of Smith’s campaign who will now take over as director of the Premier’s Office, admitted to the CBC in an interview recently, her much-touted though never seen “Sovereignty Act” won’t attempt to let Alberta disregard Supreme Court rulings after all.
He should know. He’s one of the three authors of the “Free Alberta Strategy” whence the Sovereignty Act scheme springs. They’re probably still rewriting drafts in anticipation of the government’s lawyers getting their hands on it.
Perhaps Anderson has just realized that if Alberta is going to empower itself to ignore the Supreme Court, British Columbia might do the same thing with some interesting impacts on Western Canada’s pipeline politics.
University of Calgary constitutional lawyer Martin Z. Olszynski observed yesterday on social media in a message to Smith’s supporters in the UCP: “What was that, less than 48 hrs? … you got duped. We tried to tell you — to warn you — that it wouldn’t fly, that she was exploiting you. Now she’s premier & y’all are back to gnashing your teeth.”
I suppose we can expect another flip-flop soon on Smith’s charmingly mistaken belief that you can re-litigate cases that have been decided by the Supreme Court of Canada if you believe circumstances have changed.
Nope. Res judicata. Here endeth the lesson.
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