MACLEOD: The beginning of the end for Danielle Smith?

Danielle Smith’s rise to Premier was built on one important promise: Alberta would stop asking Ottawa for permission.Her leadership campaign had energy because it spoke directly to a frustrated province. The phrases were clear, forceful, and memorable: the “Alberta Sovereignty Act,” “Alberta as a senior partner in Canada,” and a government that would “stand up to Ottawa for what is right for Alberta.” After a decade of federal hostility toward pipelines, firearms owners, resource development, equalization, tanker bans, carbon taxes, and endless regulatory delay, many Albertans believed Smith understood the moment.She was elected to push back. She was not elected to manage Alberta’s decline more efficiently.That is why the political shift now underway is dangerous for her. The issue is not simply that some Albertans disagree with her. That is normal. The problem is that many of the people who once saw her as Alberta’s strongest defender now see a Premier drifting back toward the same old Canadian compromise machine.The language has changed. The early message was defiance. The current message is “a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.” That may sound clever at the speaker’s podium, but to many of us, it now sounds like a slogan designed to contain anger rather than act on it. Smith has said she personally does not support independence, which she strongly reiterated in her recent address to the province on May 21, while also promising to respect Albertans' wish for a referendum if enough vote for the option on October 19. That balancing act may have been politically useful for a time, but it is becoming harder to maintain as Alberta’s autonomy movement grows more serious. That very phrase is now a problem. “A sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” may be a constitutional position, but politically it risks sounding like a halfway house. Alberta either has control over its economy, resources, taxation, policing, pensions, and constitutional future, or it does not. Albertans have heard “better deal in Canada” speeches for decades. The question now being asked is blunt: what has changed?.The independence movement has added pressure. Stay Free Alberta submitted nearly 302,000 signatures. That number is politically meaningful. It demonstrates that Alberta independence is no longer a fringe coffee shop complaint. It is organized, motivated, and capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Albertans. Then came the MOU. For Smith’s defenders, the Canada-Alberta energy agreement is a practical win: a pathway to a new West Coast pipeline, a more cooperative federal tone, and some recognition that Alberta energy matters. For her critics, especially on the autonomy side, it looks like another Ottawa trap dressed up as progress.The Prime Minister’s Office described the May 15 agreement as an implementation agreement flowing from the November 2025 MOU. It explicitly says the agreement maintains a path to net-zero by 2050, strengthens industrial carbon pricing, maintains a minimum floor for TIER credits (who gets to pay for that?), and commits Alberta to an effective carbon price of $140 per tonne by 2040, including headline benchmarks of $115 by 2030 and $130 by 2035. That is not a small concession. That is the Alberta government accepting the architecture of the federal climate agenda.Yes, the agreement also references a proposed pipeline to Asian markets. But that comes wrapped in conditions: indigenous consultation, engagement with British Columbia, linkage to the Pathways carbon capture project, and continued compliance with the emissions-reduction framework. In plain English, Alberta appears to have traded a real carbon tax increase for a conditional, even nebulous pipeline process.That is not sovereignty. That is a memorandum, a rather one-sided one at that..Reuters reported that the deal would raise Alberta’s effective industrial carbon cost to $130 per tonne by 2040 and that the proposed pipeline still lacks a private sector proponent. It also reported that the Oil Sands Alliance does not support the carbon tax changes, and that BC Premier David Eby and a motley collection of indigenous groups continue to oppose any pipeline, as well as repealing the northern tanker ban. Based on our past experiences, many Albertans see these as insurmountable obstacles.So what exactly did Alberta get?A possible pipeline, with no proponent, facing BC opposition, indigenous consultation hurdles, federal conditions, carbon capture obligations, and a higher carbon price. The timing is worse because the rest of the world is no longer marching in lockstep toward climate purity. The United States has again pulled away from the Paris climate framework, with the White House ordering withdrawal from international climate commitments in January 2025. Germany’s cabinet has moved to replace a controversial green heating law, easing mandatory renewable heating requirements after public and economic backlash. Even in Europe, carbon-market policy is being reconsidered through the lens of industrial competitiveness, with the EU examining ways to return more revenue to industry and reduce the economic burden of emissions policy. Meanwhile, Canada’s resource engine is being asked to accept higher industrial carbon costs while competing against the US, which has no national carbon tax. That is not a minor concern for competitiveness. It goes directly to investment, jobs, royalties, and the long-term future of the oil sands.Smith’s political problem is therefore strategic, not cosmetic. She cannot campaign as Alberta’s firewall and govern as Ottawa’s implementation partner. She cannot promise a tougher Alberta and then sign on to the net zero 2050 language without expecting consequences. She cannot ride the anger of Alberta nationalists during leadership campaigns and then appear surprised when those same people demand results..This is why the calls for new leadership inside the UCP matter. They may not yet be organized enough to remove her, but the sentiment is growing. The independence and sovereignty wings of Alberta politics are no longer merely asking whether Smith is strong enough. They are asking whether she still believes the arguments that brought her to power.Is this the beginning of the end for Danielle Smith’s premiership? Not necessarily. She remains a skilled communicator. The UCP still leads the NDP. Many Albertans still prefer her to any of the alternatives. But leadership movements usually do not collapse all at once. They erode when trust breaks between a leader and the people who carried her there.To correct course, Smith needs to stop trying to be everything to everyone. She needs to define, in measurable terms, what a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” actually means. Yet again, she needs to set hard deadlines for federal action. She needs to forcefully reject any carbon framework that damages Alberta’s competitiveness. She needs to make the pipeline conditionality public, transparent, and enforceable by the federal government. Most importantly, she needs to remember that Alberta did not ask her to improve the management of our economic decline.It asked for a premier who would fight back.

MACLEOD: The beginning of the end for Danielle Smith?

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