In an unhinged commentary recorded by Danielle Smith on November 10, 2021, the day before Remembrance Day, Alberta’s future premier compared Albertans who got vaccinated against COVID-19 with Germans who voted for Hitler.
A clip from the video appeared on social media Sunday and has circulated widely since.
“I notice you’re not wearing a poppy,” Smith says to Andrew Ruhland, founder of a Calgary investment company called Integrated Wealth Management in the snippet from a 90-minute video podcast that has since disappeared from the site on which it was posted.
“I’m not wearing a poppy,” she immediately adds.
“They ruined it for me, this year,” Smith offered by way of explanation. “The political leaders standing on their soapbox pretending that they care about all the things that you’ve just talked about, pretending they understand the sacrifice, and not understanding that their actions are exactly the actions that our great men and women in uniform were fighting against.”
Smith’s discourse continues about how the Netflix series How to Become a Tyrant explains how Adolf Hitler (whom she referenced specifically, by name) got elected, and asks whether citizens of 21st century democracies like Canada would do the same thing in the same circumstances.
“One academic says, I know so many people would say – I think they must have filmed this before COVID-19 – so many people would say that they would not have succumbed to the charms of the tyrant, somebody telling them that they have all the answers, and he said, ‘I guarantee you would.’
“And that’s the test here, is – we’ve seen it.”
“We have 75 per cent of the public who say, not only ‘Hit me,’ but ‘Hit me harder,’ and keep me away from those dirty unvaxxed. And even on the cover of the Toronto Star, saying, ‘I want people who are unvaxxed to get sick and die and I don’t even care, I don’t want them to get treatment.’
“We’re already hearing about people being denied treatment for not being vaccinated, being taken off the organ donor list.” (She meant the organ recipient list, of course.)
In a voice full of lamentation, the premier adds: “What are we becoming? What are we becoming?”
“It’s diabolical,” pipes up Ruhland.
“It is diabolical,” replies Smith.
Reaction, naturally, was swift, as is usually the case when Smith’s more bizarre bloviations resurface.
B’nai Brith Canada, the well-known Jewish Human Rights organization, tweeted, “There is no justification for politicians to make contemporaneous comparisons to the Nazi regime. Our leaders must do better.”
Canadian Anti-Hate Network Chair Bernie Farber told the CBC that Smith was “wilfully ignorant or is in dire need of participating in our workshops on understanding the roots of anti-Semitism.”
In a statement distributed to media, opposition NDP Leader and former premier Rachel Notley called Smith’s comments horrifying.
“In the middle of a global health crisis, Albertans came together to protect themselves, their neighbours, their communities, and their hospitals,” Notley said. “They rolled up their sleeves and took part in a province-wide effort to reduce and prevent hospitalizations during the rapid spread of COVID-19.”
The premier, Notley added, “also disrespects the wearing of the poppy, saying its significance was ruined by decisions made by political leaders during the pandemic.”
“What we have here is a premier who is looking at over 75 per cent of Albertans who stepped up — who followed the science and respected the requests made by public health officials to protect themselves, their neighbours and Alberta’s most vulnerable — and she is comparing them to the architects of an anti-Semitic genocide.”
Reaction from many individual Albertans was often much harsher.
Smith responded with a characteristic non-apology apology sent to major media by a staffer. “As everyone knows, I was against the use of vaccine mandates during COVID-19,” she said.
“However, the horrors of the Holocaust are without precedent, and no one should make any modern-day comparisons that minimize the experience of the Holocaust and suffering under Hitler, nor the sacrifice of our veterans.”
“I apologize for any offensive language used regarding this issue made while on talk radio or podcasts during my previous career,” she concluded.
This is an excuse she has used before, that what she said on radio, in podcasts, or really anywhere shouldn’t count, because it was just entertainment or something.
This must be a bitter pill for Nadine Wellwood to swallow.
Readers will recall that Wellwood, a former UCP nomination candidate in the Livingstone-Macleod riding where Smith resides, was disqualified by the party on November 12, 2022, for making very similar comments.
Like Smith a year earlier, Wellwood had also compared so-called vaccine passports, proof of vaccination documentation, to the genocidal policies of the Hitler regime in the 1930s and 1940s.
Wellwood appealed the decision of the UCP board and was told to get lost.
That, however, was then. This is now, so we’ll just have to make do with an insincere apology.
Premier Smith’s emerging commentary, increasingly, seems demented.
Is this an appropriate candidate to lead Alberta for four years?
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Nick Seebruch, editor
