Can Danielle Smith be trusted about anything she says?
Now that Alberta’s premier has introduced what is widely acknowledged to be the harshest anti-transgender legislation in Canada, rivalling that in some of the more benighted corners of the Republic to our south, we all need to pause and reflect on that question.
A CBC commentator called the suite of bills introduced by the United Conservative Party (UCP) “Canada’s most restrictive and wide-ranging set of policies governing the rights and aspirations” of transgender young people. The three bills, wrote Jason Markusoff, “put Smith on the hard edge of Canadian reforms.”
Senator Kristopher Wells, recently appointed to Canada’s Upper House for his advocacy for sexual minority rights, described the legislation as “the most discriminatory and anti-2SLGBTQ+ legislation in Canadian history.”
When passed by the UCP majority in the House, Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, will prohibit physicians from treating young people under 16 seeking transgender treatment with puberty blockers and hormone therapies.
Bill 27, the Education Amendment Act, will force students under 16 to get their parents’ permission if they want to change their names or pronouns at school. Bill 29, tendentiously named the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, will ban transgender athletes from competing in leagues not designated as co-ed, among other things.
When Bill 26 is passed by the United Conservative Party majority in the Legislature, it will interfere directly with medical decisions for strictly political reasons – principally the premier’s need to pacify her party’s radical MAGA base at leadership review vote taking place today in Red Deer.
So even if your medical concern is something more commonplace – say, getting your seasonal COVID-19 vaccination or reproductive health care, both of which like gender-affirming treatment have because obsessions of the American MAGA movement that now drives the UCP – you have to wonder what will become the next medical target for the social conservative busybodies of the premier’s caucus.
“This legislation will dictate what health care services Albertans can and cannot access,” said Friends of Medicare Director Chris Gallaway. “It is an appalling abuse of government power. Health care decisions are between patients and their doctors. The premier reaching in to set health policy like this sets a dangerous new precedent which should be of deep concern to all Albertans.”
Not so long ago, Smith stoutly defended the rights of citizens that she now wants to brush aside.
A decade ago, a Calgary Sun political columnist described Smith, then the Wildrose Party leader, choking up about the need for gay-straight alliances.
“Wildrose leader Danielle Smith stands in the Legislature Tuesday and talks about meeting kids at gay-straight alliances,” Rick Bell trowelled it on. “It doesn’t take long for her to choke up as she speaks.”
But, hey, it’s been 10 years!
Just last year, though, in a statement on Pride Month during the 2023 election campaign, Smith was still insisting “everyone deserves to feel safe, welcome and respected in our province.”
“That’s why we will continue to listen to 2SLGBTQIA+ Albertans’ concerns and find ways to strengthen our relationships through dialogue and tangible action,” Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid quoted her saying in a column headlined, “Why Danielle Smith will lean away from past flakiness, toward sensible government.”
It would appear Braid has come to regret that assertion. Well, good for him for admitting it.
Soon after last year’s election, Smith even trotted out a sympathetic story about a non-binary relative, real or imagined.
“I have a non-binary family member, and I believe these decisions are very personal, and it should not be debated in public,” she said. “We shouldn’t be making any child feel like the issues they’re struggling with are something that’s a political football.” (Emphasis added.)
Well, that was then, and this is a whole year later. Gender identity issues are personal? Forget about it! Now they’re among the biggest political footballs in Alberta history – and this is a province that’s had a quarterback and a punt returner as premiers! Now Premier Smith is doing the punting.
Aggressively defending her policy at a press conference on Halloween, the premier barked to a journalist that “we’re going to be making sure that our medical professionals know that this is a treatment that’s available for adults only.”
“Look, doctors were given a lot of latitude to prescribe opioids and now we have a fentanyl crisis as a result of inappropriate prescribing,” she told another reporter by way of explanation, defaming physicians in passing. “And we have had to put guardrails around who can prescribe opioids, how they can be delivered. And I would say doctors aren’t always right.”
She continued, claiming that puberty blockers and hormone therapies will have life-long consequences: “This has supreme consequences on young people,” she insisted. “… If you’re medicalized for life, it has consequences. If you are medicalized too early, it has consequences on fertility. And we believe that sometimes you have to step in and make sure you’re preserving choice and protecting the rights of kids so they can make those decisions as adults.”
This is sophistry, needless to say. “She doesn’t have the medical expertise to be able to make that decision about whether gender-affirming care is appropriate,” an Edmonton pediatrician and University of Alberta professor told The Canadian Press. “Secondly, calling some of these things irreversible or harmful is simply false,” added Dr. Tehseen Ladha.
Readers can decide whom they believe on this hitherto esoteric topic.
But there’s no argument to be made that Smith can be trusted to stand by anything she says.
Not every conservative politician would fail to do the right thing regardless of the consequences, but Smith has shown us clearly what she does when political expediency demands.
Don’t expect her to change after today’s vote in Red Deer.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
