Premier Danielle Smith..It will be hard for some to say as it took a while in 2006 for some of our friends in the mainstream media to wrap their un-conservative tongues around her ideological soulmate, ‘Prime Minister Stephen Harper.’.Now of course, as the balloons are burst at Calgary’s BMO Centre, the tinsel swept into the trash and an enthusiastic crowd given an upbeat speech designed to bring people who had been at war with each other into perfect peace, Danielle Smith’s down to the last-ballot ascent to the premier’s office looks natural, pre-ordained, even inevitable..Certainly after 33,000 km on the road, dozens of nights in hotels and more than 70 ballot party speeches — sometimes three a day — and being on the receiving end of hair-curling personal invective, it could also be called the just reward of a well-oiled, professionally run leadership campaign. The kind of thing you hope for in government, actually..All true. Also true that ‘now comes the difficult work,’ which is likely to be the prevailing theme in tomorrow’s news coverage elsewhere: Yes indeed, managing the transition, satisfying the voters and getting the herd of cats that is the United Conservative Party to chase the same nest of mice..However, Smith’s robust support among a very much enlarged party membership suggests something else — something not normal — is going on in this province..That's when everything is calm, only the truly faithful are interested: This time last year, UCP membership was about 10,000..However, things became un-calm. People became engaged, many of them deeply so. And so when a leadership review was called for March of this year, UCP membership exploded to 60,000 with 20,000 of them trying to sign up for a party conference in Red Deer..In a good year, that might have attracted 1,500 people. Among the new members were people outgoing Premier Kenney has since dismissed as variously ‘kooky’ and 50 shades of sinister, who had hijacked the party he built. (They could also have been, as one of our guest columnists suggested this week, just mostly small-c conservatives who don’t bother with party memberships when they perceive things to be in good hands.).Same in constituency meetings by the way. Usually sleepy affairs in which the MLA predestined to hold a super-majority of 5,000-plus will be chosen by 50 or 60 keeners, these gatherings were attracting crowds. The one in which MLA and leadership contestant Leela Aheer lost control of her board was attended by 450 people eligible to vote..Meanwhile, the leadership race itself attracted yet another 60,000-plus members, bringing the number of party members eligible to vote on the new leader to an unprecedented 123,000. More than 84,000 of them would cast their ballots..Obviously, something has been upsetting Albertans. People are certainly angry about the federal Liberal government’s attack on their energy industry. They're also keenly aware far more money goes out of Alberta in Ottawa’s direction than ever comes back to Alberta..Above all, they don’t like how the Kenney government handled COVID-19. And while the government protested it was ‘following the science,’ people apparently concluded that it was an arguable science that forced healthy, young people who were at an infinitesimally small risk of dying of COVID-19 to stay home and live on pogey in order to protect vulnerable elderly people in high-security care homes..The anger was widespread, beyond Alberta’s borders..All this was taking place at a time when supporters of the Freedom Convoy raised in a week what it takes the Liberal Party of Canada three months to squeeze from the pockets of its increasingly uneasy supporters: $10 million. In the end, Prime Minister Trudeau feared the anger and found a way to invoke the Emergencies [War Measures] Act, suppress civil liberties and freeze bank accounts. In doing so he merely confirmed our suspicions that behind that smiling mask of insincerity was the face of a child who wanted his own way..And Pierre Poilievre surfed that wave of rage all the way to Stornoway, to become leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and leader of the official opposition..Yes, something has been going on alright. To quote the classic (1975) film ‘Network,’ Canadians were ‘mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!’.None more so than right here in Alberta. It's that wave of anger and its implicit demand that leaders say what they mean and even more, to mean what they say, that created the conditions for the iconoclastic Danielle Smith to seize the crown..People say she will now tone down the rhetoric. Perhaps. Politics sometimes demands in your efforts to get to true north, you go around swamps and mountain, not through them..However, on one thing I am betting: Smith has a true north and knows she will be judged on whether she stays pointed in that direction..As her idol Margaret Thatcher said of herself, “The lady’s not for turning.”.Smith just can't afford to turn..And she doesn't need anybody to remind her.
