A Maclean’s article alleges Alberta Premier Danielle Smith could spark a national crisis by keeping her “rebellious rural base happy.”.The The Unsteady Reign of Danielle Smith penned by Luc Rinaldi, starts with “a sunny Saturday morning this past April” during the election when Smith sent out election volunteers to canvass Calgary suburbs at the doors. It said Smith “unfailingly” pledged “to defy Justin Trudeau's edicts to decrease fossil-fuel emissions” and “pitched a roguishly romantic vision of Alberta.”.Rinaldi alleged “that morning was especially deflating” as “in ridings that had gone blue for decades, voter after voter confessed the unthinkable: they might defect to the NDP” — all because of Smith..“Smith is the most polarizing politician in Alberta — and arguably in Canada, thanks largely to her inability to keep her foot out of her mouth and her susceptibility to some truly out-there ideas,” Rinaldi wrote..These ideas, Rinaldi alleged, included private health care and denying the existence of mass graves around residential schools..“Last March, on a right-wing social-media platform called Locals.com, she trumpeted the fiction — embraced by QAnon—that Russia invaded Ukraine to fight neo-Nazis and shut down US-funded bioweapons labs.”.The article also complained Smith was like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis because she “can’t quit COVID” and had been “spreading misinformation” about the virus, asking her justice minister to drop charges against Pastor Artur Pawlowski and defending the unvaccinated as the most discriminated-against group that I’ve ever witnessed.”.The article said the “insurgent far-right group called Take Back Alberta” had given Smith the United Conservative Party leadership, which “inspired queasiness among moderates.”.Also, former Progressive Conservative MLAs had denounced Smith to endorse the NDP, as the “scandal-prone Smith did not seem to be the steadying hand the province needed.”.“At first, the party tried to offer up a gentler version of Smith: the folksy everywoman. And it’s true that Smith’s personal life is exceedingly vanilla,” Rinaldi wrote..“When the everywoman angle didn’t take, Smith’s team adopted a more cynical argument: vote for the party, not the leader. Don’t worry about Danielle, her colleagues told apprehensive voters. She’ll be gone in no time.”.On May 29, voters “held their noses” and elected Smith “with a smaller majority than any conservative government in decades.”.Yet, this did not stop the author from seeing ominous clouds..“Now Albertans are trying to figure out which Danielle Smith they’re going to get."."Will it be the poised, palatable, plain-spoken leader? The paranoid populist who spouts disinformation online? The Alberta sovereigntist who has all but promised to provoke a constitutional crisis to win concessions from Ottawa?"."And what of those extremist forces that helped propel her to power — how much, exactly, is she indebted to them? Smith’s mandate may be temporary, but whatever chaos that follows will shape Alberta, and Canada, for years to come.”.Smith’s mentors were Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Preston Manning, and Ayn Rand the article explained..Former premier Peter Lougheed also taught her in a class with future Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi and future Liberal strategist Kevin Bosch. Bosch remembered her as “warm, friendly and extremely smart.”.The article said “Nenshi often wonders what happened to that version of Smith” before “her metamorphosis from affable bookworm to pugnacious firebrand.”.They have no conclusions, except to say “something changed,” probably when she became president of the campus Progressive Conservatives. At the time, classmates such as her first husband Sean McKinsey and future MPs Rob Anders and Ezra Levant, were in the Reform movement and “badgered her to the right.”.Her “true conversion,” it was said, came when Tom Flanagan taught her in a Calgary school of social conservatives with “a deep wariness of the federal government.”.Smith “soaked up the School’s philosophies, adopting them as foundational pieces of her own persona,” the article explained..She interned at the Fraser Institute and went to the Leadership Institute, “a bootcamp in Virginia that trains young conservatives on how to get elected, pass policy, take over school boards and infiltrate newsrooms.”.From then on, the article states, “her new ideology was fully formed. She was no longer a soft-spoken moderate but a fed-bashing libertarian, immersed in a world of hardline reformers and Western populists.”.The article included smears made in private messages in 1999 when Smith was on a contentious Calgary public school board. Smith’s opponents on the board said she had “crappy hair” and was a “slow learner.” Alberta education minister Lyle Oberg fired them all..Smith joined the Calgary Herald as a columnist. There, some staffers had called her “Trash Can Dani” for her school board representation..Later, she became leader of the Wildrose Party. The author said they forfeited forming government because “the crackpot wing of the party re-emerged in very public fashion.”.This portion, the author said, had “vehement homophobia” and the party “was really a bunch of racists and rednecks.”.With Smith back in power, the author said Smith’s “rebellious spirit is spreading” to Saskatchewan, Quebec and Ontario, as “Smith is fast becoming the de facto figurehead of a growing strain of anti-federalism.”.Rinaldi’s final warning was that “Poilievre is Smith’s federal parallel. Like Smith, he owes his leadership in part to the cohort of Canadians who wave ‘F___ Trudeau’ flags on highway overpasses. Both must walk a razor-thin line between mainstream and fringe factions of Canadian conservatism.”
