Juno News - Danielle Smith is returning to politics

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 welcome back to the andrew lawton show here on true north last week we spoke to premier jason

00:00:13.860 kenny who was defending his leadership right now united conservative party members are voting by

00:00:19.400 mail about whether jason kenny has their confidence to stay on as leader and interestingly

00:00:25.300 enough i asked premier kenny what he thinks a win is because historically in a leadership you want

00:00:31.680 in a leadership review to have 60 maybe even 70 percent of your members back you but he was saying

00:00:36.960 50 plus one that's a mandate and i think there are some lower expectations coming there nevertheless

00:00:43.160 that's what we talked about and jason kenny has been taking aim at other people in his party

00:00:47.700 who are taking aim at him two notable examples of this are brian gene the former wild rose leader

00:00:53.760 who's now the ucp mla in uh fort mcmurray lacklabish i can't remember the order of the the riding name

00:01:00.240 or something like that and he won in a by-election again saying he wants to remove and replace jason

00:01:05.920 kenny and then a couple of weeks ago danielle smith announced that she was seeking the nomination 0.74

00:01:10.440 in livingston mcleod for the ucp and she also said if the leadership of the party becomes available

00:01:16.840 she will seek that as well but in the meantime seeking the nomination in livingston mcleod just

00:01:21.820 south of alberta covering i think okotoks and high river all that area beautiful part of the province

00:01:26.720 and the country and any case enough about geography it's good to have danielle smith on the show again

00:01:32.180 danielle thanks so much for your time nice to talk to you too andrew now i have to just put it out

00:01:37.120 there i mean you and i have known each other for many years we used to work for the the same company

00:01:41.000 and i had the chance to guest host for you on a number of occasions we're also involved in the

00:01:46.080 conservatives who care and libertarians who care uh projects we've spoken at conferences together

00:01:51.740 so so we go way back and i i don't want my listeners to think otherwise here but why go back

00:01:57.300 into politics now you've just been doing so much since you uh left as leader of the wild rose and

00:02:02.860 and ultimately were unsuccessful in your nomination as a pc candidate like why are you getting back into

00:02:08.560 this my husband asked me the same thing maybe i'm just a glutton for punishment part of it is you know

00:02:13.880 i've always been in public policy advocacy when i think about the common thread through my political

00:02:19.160 and media and business advocacy career it really has been trying to identify really good public policy

00:02:25.420 to move things along mostly in alberta i have done a bid on federal policy and and some on municipal

00:02:31.840 policy too which i find interesting but provincial politics and provincial policy has always appealed

00:02:36.720 to me and so i i have had three bouts as a business advocate i was the property rights advocate

00:02:43.520 in my initials uh days when i first came back after being an intern at the fraser institute then i did

00:02:49.040 advocacy for small business with cfib and then more recently for mid-sized private businesses with

00:02:54.140 alberta enterprise group i've been in the media several times i've done radio and television prints

00:02:58.640 and podcasting and i've been in politics twice so i was a a school board trustee as as well as being a

00:03:05.420 member of the legislative assembly and i wasn't quite ready to give it up uh even though i did get fired

00:03:10.060 by the members of the pc party they didn't want me to be their candidate and i figured that was time

00:03:14.240 for me to go sit in the penalty box for a while learn about the things that i had done wrong and

00:03:19.440 try to to identify uh things that i could do that would make it right so i i was on the air for six

00:03:25.000 years it was just an amazing experience i learned a lot and a lot more about policy and it just seemed

00:03:31.060 like there needs to be a few strong advocates and a few strong voices back in the provincial

00:03:36.600 legislature especially after the last couple of years that we've had where we haven't seen

00:03:40.660 strong advocacy so that's part of the reason why i want to get back in you've changed as you just

00:03:45.720 indicated there but also the political climate and the circumstances of alberta have changed

00:03:50.240 dramatically as well we have a united conservative party now a party that didn't exist around the time

00:03:55.900 of your last political campaign and you also have had the covet pandemic which i think has shaken

00:04:02.700 what otherwise probably would have been a relatively uncontroversial uh jason kenney government to a lot

00:04:09.420 of conservatives so how much are the circumstances themselves thrusting you back into politics right

00:04:14.720 now well i think part of it is that we we've seen with the premier and i supported him um and i i tried

00:04:20.660 to offer good policy ideas and i think he did some things uh some things very well especially in his

00:04:26.500 first year i think he's created an environment that's continuing to attract business investment

00:04:30.620 so i want to see those things continue but he he really went sideways on the covet policies and not

00:04:37.680 not so much in the early stages a lot of people were making mistakes and a lot of people were trying

00:04:42.600 it was trial and error a lot of people didn't know what was going on there was a lot of well let's see

00:04:46.360 what they're doing and let's follow suit but he he really could have taken a different path when he

00:04:51.540 promised that there was going to be no vaccine passports no vaccine mandates and he took a hard turn

00:04:56.400 back in september of 2021 when it was becoming pretty clear from looking at what was happening

00:05:01.980 in israel that the vaccination was wearing off that people were just as likely to get to get covet if

00:05:08.440 they were vaccinated or unvaccinated there really wasn't any reason to bring through this this vaccine

00:05:14.360 passport there wasn't any reason to fire hs staff members for being unvaccinated he also began to put

00:05:20.860 pressure on businesses to have vaccine mandates and that seemed like a betrayal of everything he said

00:05:25.400 he stood for especially since we looked down south at the red states particularly florida governor ron

00:05:31.120 de santis and south dakota governor christy noem among many others and i think there was an expectation

00:05:36.940 especially since alberta is a more conservative province that we would have followed the lead

00:05:41.600 of those states and we didn't so i think that created real problems for him

00:05:45.580 in that he was he's never going to win over the ndp vote but then he alienated a huge chunk of his

00:05:52.980 own base particularly in rural alberta and even even the doug ford's government i thought did a bit

00:05:58.300 more of a nuanced job same with british columbia did a bit more of a nuanced job in having lesser

00:06:03.500 restrictions in some of the more rural areas that was not the case in alberta and i think sadly as it

00:06:08.660 went along and the restrictions got harsher and harsher it really was the the freedom convoy that broke the

00:06:14.780 spell here and as soon as the the massive uprising of just regular folks saying we've had enough

00:06:21.140 occurred that's when the premier finally changed course and good for him but there's so many people

00:06:24.740 who just think it's a little too late and the trust has been broken so i i believe the ucp is the right

00:06:29.400 vehicle i believe conservatism has the right policies and principles that will see us through

00:06:33.780 this next phase that we're going through probably more than ever now with the spending problems that

00:06:38.100 we have with affordability crisis with energy security and food security being on the radar

00:06:42.580 those are all things that i think conservatives will be able to manage better but i think we have

00:06:47.040 to be realistic that um the conservative movement's in danger of blowing apart in alberta and i want to

00:06:52.800 do what i can to help try to keep it together i've said i'd put my name forward for leadership if it

00:06:56.920 comes about if it doesn't i still intend to run for the uh ucp nomination in livingston mcleod and

00:07:02.740 hopefully be a strong voice in the legislature just as a an elected member i think that is an important

00:07:08.260 point though because the ucp right now is in the midst of a leadership review uh we don't know at

00:07:13.260 this point what that is going to mean for jason kenny's leadership of this party by the time you

00:07:18.260 you might get the nomination if that happens how could you run and serve under a jason kenny government

00:07:23.840 with all of these issues that you've identified with his government and his leadership i guess the

00:07:29.200 way i look at the role of an individual mla is different maybe it's because i come from the wild

00:07:33.400 rose tradition as opposed to the ottawa conservative tradition that the wild rose tradition is very

00:07:39.400 similar i think to even how ralph klein and and um and peter laughy managed their caucuses back in in

00:07:46.040 the day uh with the progressive conservatives here those are two of our historic party leaders on the

00:07:50.600 conservative side and there really has been a respect for grassroots decision making that the job of

00:07:56.600 the mla is to go into the community find out if there's a problem and then bring it to caucus and

00:08:01.400 if other caucus members have similar problems then it gets elevated to the minister and then if the

00:08:05.480 minister doesn't get resolved get it resolved then the pro then the the premier is supposed to come in

00:08:10.360 and help to resolve it that is how politics has worked historically in this province ralph klein was

00:08:15.480 was uh well known for telling his cabinet ministers that they had to get their policies past caucus

00:08:22.440 three times once in the initial idea stage and then as they were hammering out the details and then

00:08:26.600 finally before it went into the legislature otherwise it wasn't going to fly he even would leave caucus

00:08:31.400 i'm told so that the debate could happen without him so that he didn't influence the outcome and

00:08:36.600 that's the kind of culture that we're used to having in a political party in the conservative

00:08:41.000 movement here the the stephen harper top-down federal ottawa conservative style is what jason kenney

00:08:47.400 has brought here and that is unfortunately one where you uh strict party discipline it's the 20 and 30

00:08:54.360 year old kids who are going around bullying mlas about what they can and cannot say and i think it's i think

00:08:59.000 that's the reason for the schism in the party quite frankly is that the mlas have not been allowed to 0.99

00:09:03.160 do their job so i'm i'm pretty good at making my voice heard i'm pretty good at being an advocate

00:09:07.640 i'm pretty good at uh identifying local issues making sure that they get profile and so i i just

00:09:12.040 want to bring a bit of that culture to the party brian gene i think incidentally wants to do the same

00:09:15.960 thing and so if there's a few more of us from the wild rose tradition then we might get a little

00:09:20.440 bit more balance back in the ucp which would then allow us i think to gain a little bit more

00:09:24.600 traction with the public i want to play a clip of jason kenney responding to you announcing that you

00:09:31.720 were getting back into politics and and get you to then respond to the response here what i have said

00:09:37.240 is as long as i'm leader of the united conservative party i will not permit a re-run of the the lake of

00:09:45.960 fire incident a conservative party was blowing out in a election in 2011 because of a failure of

00:09:57.080 leadership to block extremists from getting on the party ballot that is a lesson that i thought people

00:10:03.960 would have learned as long as i'm leading this party it will be a mainstream conservative party and

00:10:08.600 i welcome voices who disagree with me on a whole range of policy issues always have always will we've

00:10:15.720 demonstrated greater openness and tolerance for uh dissenting views in our caucus and party than

00:10:21.560 anything i could i've ever seen because we are a grassroots party but um there has to be a limit

00:10:29.320 and for me the limit has always been a commitment to our members that we will not tolerate a hateful

00:10:35.080 extremism that promotes uh violence or hateful views towards entire categories of people so as you

00:10:44.520 just saw there he he's not only bringing up the the lake of fire incident from about a decade ago but

00:10:49.720 but also it sounds like calling your supporters and perhaps even you extremists which i i find quite

00:10:56.040 interesting uh you know he talks about violence i've never heard that from you i mean what on earth is he

00:11:01.240 doing he he unfortunately has this bad tendency of fighting with everyone he fights with his party members he

00:11:08.840 fights with his caucus members he he fights with the opposition he fights with the media and i i think

00:11:14.200 we're looking for a little bit more statesmanship from from our our our chief leader and chief

00:11:20.440 spokesperson i mean if you go back to 2012 i'm glad that uh i was able to serve as a learning experience

00:11:26.680 for everyone every conservative leader who came after but if we want to be frank about it back in 2012 i mean

00:11:34.120 jason kenny was talking about how gays could marry but not each other he also was proudly talking about 0.65

00:11:39.400 how he ended the first spousal benefits law in california and so dying aids patients weren't

00:11:45.080 allowed to go and see their loved ones um he has has said some pretty uh uh radical things about the pro

00:11:51.720 the pro-choice movement so he is the kind of candidate i would have had to refuse on my ballot back in 2012.

00:11:56.760 now i accept that people's views moderate over time and he has said that his views have moderated too

00:12:03.080 but uh to i i'm was always a free speech advocate and a freedom of religion advocate i'm pro-choice

00:12:08.840 myself and also have always been in favor of lgbtq rights and gay marriage so i i would have to say

00:12:15.880 that i i've always been on the side of freedom and being on the side of freedom these days is is one

00:12:21.800 that i i think conservatives ought to take i think part of the reason the premier's in the trouble that

00:12:26.200 he's in is he's not been on the side of freedom and so i i wish he would uh accept the the that

00:12:33.240 we're those of us he's alienated by his positioning are the ones he needs to win back

00:12:38.600 traditionally in alberta you need to have calgary and some of edmonton and most of rural alberta if

00:12:45.720 you're going to cobble together enough support for him to run around calling it all those who oppose

00:12:50.440 him extremists and bigots and lunatics he's not going to win that back and that's fundamentally

00:12:55.240 the problem here is that we're seeing um we're seeing a situation where the ndp are pulling ahead 0.86

00:13:00.760 in edmonton they're pulling ahead in calgary they're pulling even 32 percent in rural alberta

00:13:06.920 and if we have a leader that is going to continue to create division and disunity it's going to

00:13:11.640 create a bunch of new parties there's a group called the alberta prosperity project that is

00:13:16.200 running around having hundreds of people come out to their events in rural alberta there is paul

00:13:20.600 hinman's wild rose independence party that has pulled between 15 and 25 percent you've got brian

00:13:25.960 gene and drew barnes and todd lowen all saying they might create separate political parties so

00:13:30.520 if you end up with the conservative movement splitting five or six ways and then you end up

00:13:35.480 with the ndp having consolidated the progressive vote that's just that that's just a recipe for ndp

00:13:41.000 government so i think that the the premier unfortunately just doesn't know how to build those

00:13:45.240 bridges and those of us who've been trying to assist him and trying to point out the things that

00:13:49.320 he's done wrong over the last couple of years he just turns to attack rather than trying to find a

00:13:53.320 way to to have some self-reflection about how he's caused the problem i think that's part of the reason

00:13:58.520 why he's polling so low in the polls and why it is he's facing this leadership challenge you mentioned

00:14:04.120 i mean the social conservatism factor in alberta politics is stronger than it is in any other

00:14:09.080 provincial political environment and party and i would have to ask you how this has changed in a lot

00:14:15.160 of ways because i remember a lot of social conservatives were quite uncomfortable with you

00:14:19.320 coming at it as a libertarian quite to the contrary of of the the image that jason kenney put forward

00:14:25.080 and jason kenney was the the preferred candidate for social conservatives and in the last couple of

00:14:29.800 years i think social conservatives and libertarians have started to align on a lot more things whereas

00:14:35.240 traditionally they haven't and i think locking down churches has been a big reason for that so

00:14:40.040 i'm just curious how you think the coalition is is shaping up because you do have as you as you note

00:14:45.560 other options for voters that aren't happy with the ucp right now yeah there is a a billboard

00:14:51.400 along one of our major highways coming out of edmonton that says that jason kenney has jailed

00:14:56.120 more christian pastors than communist china has and i i don't know if that's entirely true but it does 0.77

00:15:01.400 tell you that just because somebody might be aligned on certain hot button political issues doesn't

00:15:07.080 mean that they they they will they will support religious freedom i mean i thought i was appalled

00:15:12.520 when he when he jailed pastor james coats i i did interview pastor coats as well as his wife aaron

00:15:18.920 coats and then there were other pastors that have been jailed since one most recently arthur pavlowski i

00:15:25.080 think he spent a month in solitary confinement and it strikes me that most other western nations have

00:15:31.480 been able to get by through covet without throwing pastors in jail what why is it that we keep on

00:15:36.360 uh targeting pastors in this province and that has something to do with the the leadership that

00:15:40.760 we're seeing so religious freedom these days means being left alone and and i think that that should 0.99

00:15:46.840 be the most important thing for for those who value religious freedom there are also i mean i have a dutch

00:15:52.440 reform in in my riding and they're very concerned about um uh about vaccination because some of the

00:15:59.320 vaccines have been created from fetal stem cell lines from aborted fetuses that's one of their moral

00:16:05.240 issues about why it is they don't want to get vaccinated we have to be able to respect that

00:16:09.080 there are some people who will take that view and not take the view that oh well if you don't do it

00:16:13.560 you can't see your kid play hockey or go to a restaurant or travel on an airplane we have to be

00:16:18.600 if we're going to be respectful of of religious freedom and respectful of my body my choice then

00:16:23.960 we should be respectful of those who want to to make their own choices about their health care i think

00:16:28.360 that's another big issue i think that the coalition of social conservatives and libertarians needs

00:16:34.520 to begin to center around pro-family issues because i think what we're seeing is there are

00:16:40.200 uh a number of people i talked to somebody in my riding for instance as kids are going through the

00:16:44.520 process of adopting because they're not able to have children of their own it's costing 50 to 70

00:16:49.560 000 to do a private adoption why can't we why can't we talk about ways in which we can encourage more

00:16:55.720 women to make a different choice if they're pregnant and support unwed mothers and support 0.98

00:17:00.520 women through the adoption process why can't we do what we can to make sure that we've got counseling 1.00

00:17:05.080 for families that they see together because we know that intact families are the best environment

00:17:09.240 for kids to grow up in why can't we develop an agenda around support having those community

00:17:14.360 supports because so much of what we've seen over the past two years has eroded community and that when

00:17:20.040 you end up with somebody in distress if they don't have a community group that can support them

00:17:24.440 it can lead to terrible outcomes i i think that we can develop a strategy and an agenda around that

00:17:30.600 and to me those are the most important issues those are important community building family building and

00:17:35.640 society building issues and that's where i would come down on on it i i don't know that there's any

00:17:41.160 point in pressing hot button social issues that just alienate people we always try to find the areas

00:17:47.480 where we disagree i think we should find the areas where we agree and we should press forward on those

00:17:52.200 i heard you uh deliver a talk a few months back on health care and you laid out a very detailed and

00:17:58.040 comprehensive plan that we'd have to have you back on the show for much longer to to delve into but it

00:18:03.160 was clear that you had given some thought to the big structural and institutional issues in health

00:18:08.120 care you've been on this show talking about carbon capture again another area where you could bring a

00:18:12.600 public policy focus to an issue that very much needs it so you obviously have an ambitious plan

00:18:17.960 if you're going back into politics how much do you think you can do this as a lone mla if you're not 0.89

00:18:23.320 the leader you can always have influence and i think for me this is what i've learned in my various

00:18:28.760 roles in advocacy and media is that politicians move when there's enough public support for it

00:18:35.480 politicians always get it backwards is that they they go into elections and they they don't do enough

00:18:41.480 time i think paving the groundwork for people to be open to their ideas that that was was one of my

00:18:47.080 mistakes back in 2012 i wanted i wanted to campaign on health spending accounts but we hadn't done any

00:18:53.640 groundwork in talking to people about it and it's a very confusing concept i think anyone who's had a

00:18:58.680 health radical concept i mean anything apart from the status quo is just seen as uh just a complete

00:19:04.120 third rail in canada completely and if i tried to campaign on it at the time the whole conversation was

00:19:09.400 oh my goodness two-tier american-style healthcare and so we made the decision not to not to campaign

00:19:14.760 on that but i've been talking about health spending accounts now that i've discovered after i got

00:19:18.760 elected all of the public service has a house spending account it's part of their contract so

00:19:23.560 if all of the public service has health spending account why don't out regular albertans have access

00:19:28.600 to that and the way they work is that you just get a certain pot of money that's deposited into an

00:19:33.640 account for you and you can use it for all the things that aren't covered by healthcare so your

00:19:36.920 chiropractic and mental health nutritionist dietitian if you want to save up for laser eye

00:19:42.040 surgery maybe your kids need braces so if if we've been able to already cross that bridge with

00:19:47.880 our public service that they see the benefit of it maybe that sows the seed for how we can deal with

00:19:52.920 the two years of trauma that people have suffered through covid but also create an environment where

00:19:57.880 we're we're funding health care as opposed to just sickness care and to me that would be the

00:20:02.680 beginning because you can implement a policy like that without it violating the canada health act

00:20:08.360 in fact i think it's actually more in alignment with the canada health act because it's more

00:20:11.560 comprehensive it gives people the means to take control over their own health care as well it's

00:20:16.840 accessible it's portable there's all kinds of reasons why you can build on that and if you start

00:20:21.560 building around that concept then you can start having the discussion with the public about if we

00:20:28.040 find some savings in our health care system we can flow that through to you in your health spending

00:20:32.200 account now all of a sudden you've got 4.4 million people rooting you along to try to find efficiencies

00:20:37.240 in the health care system and then you can have a conversation about well what kind of things do you

00:20:41.400 cover in your medical spending account versus what kind of things do get covered by catastrophic

00:20:46.120 insurance but you've got to start somewhere in getting the buy-in and you've got to start somewhere

00:20:51.080 in getting that relationship between the patient and the doctor back on track the system we have right

00:20:56.040 now where no one knows what anything costs no one has there's really no controls over what type of

00:21:02.280 access somebody has to the system there's no customer service in any part of the health care system as

00:21:08.040 soon as you empower people with dollars they become the auditors of the system they become the ones who

00:21:12.440 hold it to account and i think you could do some amazing changes if you just start there we've got to

00:21:16.680 start incrementally and then we have to be able to broaden it out after we we see the successes

00:21:22.520 there's this is i guess what i have brought to my thinking on public policy because i've always

00:21:27.640 been in startup type of organizations whether it's been in media or in advocacy and watching

00:21:35.560 entrepreneurship sometimes you just have to do a pilot project and start something and build on it

00:21:40.840 i think the pro the error we make in government is thinking that anytime you implement a policy it has

00:21:46.520 to be 100 perfect across the board covering all citizens at all times for all reasons and then

00:21:52.760 you end up with mammoth programs that take forever to get to get implemented and a lot of mistakes get

00:21:58.120 made so why don't we try it a little bit differently why don't we try it the way people actually do

00:22:02.120 operate which is you try a pilot project you see what works and you tweak it and go along i think that

00:22:07.000 we could apply that kind of approach to changing the way we deliver public health services across the

00:22:12.600 board public health services education services for instance look at the uk they've identified that

00:22:18.840 these two years of education disruption have caused a lot of kids to fall behind why not create a little

00:22:24.760 a little fund for for students so that they can get remedial upgrades if they're having problems in

00:22:29.800 math or reading or get tested if they're falling behind in school and they need to get some other

00:22:34.440 remedial help i think we need to start empowering parents as as as the payers or patients as the payers

00:22:42.280 as opposed to just sitting back and thinking that centrally planned bureaucracies can do it for

00:22:45.960 all of us they've demonstrated they can so why don't we try something different why don't we try to

00:22:49.640 build out our public services using conservative principles free enterprise and choice and competition

00:22:56.920 and empowerment of the individual user and if we can start doing that i think we can make some amazing

00:23:02.440 changes danielle smith ucp nomination candidate for livingston mcleod by the way if you win are we

00:23:10.040 losing you at uh conservatives who care and libertarians who care probably i mean it's one

00:23:15.080 of those things where where people i mean i've lost so many jobs now in the in the last week because

00:23:21.400 as soon as you get involved in politics people say oh well we're a non-partisan organization we

00:23:26.040 can't be involved it's a it's a real challenge i think it's why a lot of people don't end up putting

00:23:29.960 their name forward in politics because um it is hard to just decide to go without an income for

00:23:35.800 a year and so i will we'll have to see how it goes forward i understand why people make that that

00:23:40.840 kind of choice that they they want to make sure that things aren't perceived to be tainted by politics

00:23:45.960 but i wish we'd be able to have a better approach that we could attract more people into politics

00:23:51.320 very well said danielle thanks so much for coming on best of luck thank you thanks for listening to the

00:23:55.480 the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - April 21, 2022

Danielle Smith is returning to politics

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