Last June, Naheed Nenshi began his campaign to lead the Alberta NDP by observing that Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party “only know how to do two things: They know how to pick fights and they know how to waste money.”
About the same time, Calgary-Varsity NDP MLA Luanne Metz refined that concept a little, noting that they “pick fights and waste your money.”
Smith and the United Conservative Party (UCP), meanwhile, apparently remain determined to prove the truth of the new NDP leader’s observation.
The UCP war on doctors hasn’t ended
If you were relieved that the UCP’s long War on Doctors appeared finally to be over, thanks to the pay agreement with the province’s physicians announced last spring, you’re in for a disappointment if not a complete surprise.
The Alberta Medical Association (AMA), which bargains collectively on behalf of the province’s physicians, revealed yesterday that while the pay deal is ready to be implemented, the government appears to be stalling. AMA Past President Paul Parks told media the deal was supposed to take effect this month. Instead they’re being told the Treasury Board is still twiddling its thumbs.
“The impact of indecision and inaction is that Albertans’ health-care access will deteriorate and many will suffer and some will sadly and needlessly die,” Dr. Parks told a news conference. “You can’t sign a lease, you can’t hire staff, and you can’t run a clinic based on hope.”
The new pay formula, moving away from the fee-for-service model, was supposed to stop the province from haemorrhaging doctors, if readers will pardon the metaphor. It’s probably too soon to call it a broken promise, but the delay does suggest the UCP doesn’t really mind if a few more docs pull up stakes and depart for greener pastures.
Municipalities are stuck with the tab for UCP’s MAGA policies
Alberta’s municipalities, traditionally the farm league for aspiring Conservative politicians, no longer seem to have the ear of the UCP.
Many municipal politicians are furious about the UCP’s decision to channel MAGA conspiracy theories and ban electronic tabulation machines, which they say will slow down counting and dramatically increase local election costs.
St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron said she’ll be taking a motion to the Alberta Municipalities convention tomorrow in Red Deer calling on the group to beg the province to allow the use of tabulators, which are not the same as U.S. voting machines.
St. Albert, a city of 70,000 northwest of Edmonton, has been using the tabulators for years, she told the CBC. “They’ve provided timely, efficient, and quite honestly accurate counting of our residents’ votes. So we want to continue that because now we’re going to get the exact opposite. We’re going to get less timely, and less accurate, and much more costly counting of the votes.”
Heron said the City of Red Deer has estimated the tabulator ban will cost it $1 million to count the results of the October 2025 municipal election. And she said Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver told her the province doesn’t actually distrust the machines, it’s just that “a certain part of the population” has indicated they don’t trust ’em. We all know what part of the population that is and why McIver is paying attention.
Heron called the policy a knee-jerk reaction, which seems fair. Alas the province is unlikely to change its tune when it falls to municipalities to pay the freight.
Premier gratuitously insults new Alberta Senator
In an appearance Saturday before the Canada Strong & Free Network, the re-branded Manning Centre, Smith lit into the federal Liberals’ choice of Kris Wells, a post-secondary educator and champion of Alberta’s 2SLGBTQI+ community, assailing the St. Albert resident as “a radical, extreme LGBT activist.”
Yeah, we get it. The premier would have liked it better if the prime minister had appointed the Conservative winners of the province’s performative and constitutionally meaningless “Senate nominee elections,” and it’s all very well for her to complain they were not chosen. But to gratuitously insult the new Senator shows a distinct lack of class.
By contrast, Senator Well’s response was genuinely classy. “I’ve known @ABDanielleSmith for over a decade,” he tweeted. “She knows my door is always open to meet with her any time she wants to talk about evidenced-based policy, rule of law, and human rights. There’s nothing radical about following the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms.”
Some MAGA UCP members take aim at Danielle Smith
To be fair, Smith doesn’t pick every fight she gets into.
Consider the email to members of the UCP’s MAGA base risibly accusing Smith and the UCP cabinet of “holding secret meetings on how to implement Sharia law here in Alberta.” The email bears the name of Nadine Wellwood and the “1905 Committee.”
Wellwood was once an anti-vaxx former People’s Party of Canada candidate and UCP nomination candidate in the Livingstone-Macleod riding that Premier Smith calls home. In November 2022, she was skidded by the UCP’s candidate selection committee for comparing vaccine passports to Nazi policies. The 1905 Committee appears to be a new home for disgruntled Take Back Alberta cadres.
The proximate cause of the dissatisfaction with the premier appears to be comments made by Smith last spring to members of the Muslim community that the UCP would consider allowing mortgage financing structured to accommodate the religion’s prohibition of interest charged on loans, as well as finding ways to “give Albertans the flexibility to observe major faith-based cultural holidays more easily.” The letter also suggests the group thinks tax money for religious schools should only go the Christian variety.
Now, with a leadership review vote at the party’s November 1 and 2 annual general meeting in Red Deer, such policy considerations appear to have put the premier in conflict with some of her previously most passionate MAGA supporters in the party’s base.
NOTE: Yes, everything political seems to happen in Red Deer. The simple explanation is that the city of 100,000 or so souls is exactly half way between Calgary and Edmonton. Smith, who complains bitterly that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is sending too many immigrants to Alberta, also suggests she’d like to see Red Deer grow to a million people. You can’t make this stuff up.
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