Juno News - Will the UCP in Alberta stay united？ (Feat. Danielle Smith)

00:00:00.000 Today we'll hear the other side of the story in the world of conservative politics in Alberta.

00:00:04.500 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:16.900 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program.

00:00:19.500 So last week, as you probably saw, you may recall we had Brad Tennant on the show.

00:00:23.660 Brad is a former president of the United Conservative Party in Alberta.

00:00:26.800 He's also a former senior campaigner and staffer for Premier Jason Kenney.

00:00:31.400 And we had him on to talk about the situation in Alberta, the leadership review against the Premier and why he finds himself in that position.

00:00:38.680 So as you may expect, Brad defended Premier Kenney and predicted that he will easily survive the upcoming leadership vote that is happening in Alberta.

00:00:47.280 Well, today we wanted to revisit that topic, but also to hear the other side of the story in Alberta.

00:00:52.940 So also coinciding with that interview, last week, I think it was the next day, a familiar face re-emerged into Alberta politics, announcing her intention to regain a seat in the Alberta legislature.

00:01:04.220 And if Jason Kenney is indeed ousted as leader of the party in this leadership review, she has announced her intention to run as leader of the party.

00:01:11.720 Of course, I'm talking about Danielle Smith.

00:01:13.820 Danielle, welcome to the program.

00:01:14.900 It's great to have you on.

00:01:16.120 Thanks, Candice.

00:01:16.740 Lovely to be here.

00:01:17.420 So just to give people your bio in case they don't know, Danielle Smith is the former leader of the Wildrose Party in Alberta.

00:01:24.300 She's a former leader of the opposition in the Alberta legislature.

00:01:28.340 In 2014, Smith attempted to merge her Wildrose Opposition Party with the governing PC party led by the late Premier Jim Prentice.

00:01:35.360 So the merger went sideways.

00:01:36.980 Smith left politics where she has been away from.

00:01:39.640 She's turned back into a journalist.

00:01:41.320 She was a morning radio host, a columnist with Post Media.

00:01:44.100 More recently, she served as the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group.

00:01:48.600 And now she's stepping back into the political arena.

00:01:51.180 And full disclosure, so that viewers know, I once worked for the Wildrose.

00:01:54.460 I worked for Danielle Smith on and off between 2010 and 2012.

00:01:58.840 So all that being said, Danielle, it's great to have you on the show.

00:02:02.160 Great to have you back.

00:02:02.820 You've been a frequent commentator on True North broadcast as well.

00:02:06.420 So you wanted to come onto the show to sort of take issue with some of the things that Brad and I talked about,

00:02:11.140 or at least offer a different side of the story.

00:02:13.800 So first of all, why don't we talk a bit about that interview?

00:02:16.660 And if there's anything in particular that you thought that something that Brad said that you just disagreed with?

00:02:21.660 You know, it was my assistant who saw the interview and thought it would be good for me to come on and give the other side of the story.

00:02:29.540 I must admit that I didn't watch the full interview.

00:02:32.440 And so if you want to raise some things that he alleged that I could respond to, I'd be happy to do that.

00:02:37.360 But the reason that I'm running is because I got asked to in Livingston-McLeod.

00:02:42.140 My constituents came forward and said that they wanted stronger representation.

00:02:46.980 And I can understand why.

00:02:47.920 I mean, I spent the last year talking about issues of energy security, and now we're seeing growing issues of food security emerging.

00:02:55.060 I think you probably saw U.S. President Joe Biden said to a NATO meeting that Americans have to be prepared for food shortages,

00:03:03.640 which is just mind boggling to think that we're in a world where we might have food insecurity.

00:03:07.980 And so in my constituency, it's very rural southern, and so we've got lots of ranching families, lots of farm families.

00:03:15.820 So that's where a lot of our food producers are, and I'm hearing from them loud and clear.

00:03:19.600 We've seen a doubling of fertilizer prices, a tripling of electricity prices, 60 cents more for diesel.

00:03:26.580 All of this is having a huge impact on the cost of inputs.

00:03:29.980 At the same time, because of supply chain disruption, many of them weren't able to get their crop to market last year.

00:03:37.500 So they've got marketed grain and a contract sold, but they can't get it delivered.

00:03:41.480 One farmer I just spoke with just finally got his grain offloaded last week, and so just in time to be able to buy into this market.

00:03:49.240 But they're buying in at a really high rate.

00:03:51.420 So these are the things that I'm concerned about.

00:03:53.620 Same as well.

00:03:54.700 When you look at where our constituency is situated, it's near the southern border.

00:03:58.900 It doesn't include coots, which is where the Freedom Convoy ended up blockading.

00:04:04.540 But many of the truck drivers in my riding, I'm being told as many as 40 percent who normally haul goods cross-border are unvaccinated.

00:04:13.380 And that was the main issue for the Freedom Convoy that is still unresolved.

00:04:16.960 So if we're in a world where we've got food insecurity, then we need to be talking about how we're going to eliminate those restrictions.

00:04:22.920 One of the grain traders that I spoke with, he does hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trade every year.

00:04:29.660 He can't get on a plane to go and do his business the way he used to in the past.

00:04:33.780 And yet he's had Delta.

00:04:34.840 He's had Omicron.

00:04:35.920 He's had antibody testing.

00:04:37.120 His levels of antibodies are higher than mine.

00:04:39.580 And I have the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

00:04:41.360 Yet I can travel and he can't.

00:04:42.980 And he's responsible for helping to ensure a good portion of the world gets fed.

00:04:46.440 That doesn't make any sense.

00:04:47.620 So those are the kind of issues that I'm hearing about in my constituency that has motivated me to want to get back into politics.

00:04:55.100 It's so true. 0.84

00:04:55.980 Like, so much of the COVID policy just makes no sense.

00:04:58.360 I was talking to a friend and her parents live in Ecuador.

00:05:01.220 And they were just told to get the first vaccine available.

00:05:04.140 And the vaccine that they took was the Russian vaccine.

00:05:06.220 But that doesn't allow them to travel.

00:05:07.820 So they're protected, in theory, against COVID, even though, as we know, so many people are vaccinated.

00:05:13.680 But they can't come to Canada to visit their daughter and their granddaughter because the vaccine that they took doesn't align with our standards.

00:05:21.880 And so many people are stuck in the situation.

00:05:24.220 Danielle, you raise a good point about how if the U.S. is actually facing food shortages or the threat of that, that could create a huge opportunity for Alberta.

00:05:31.780 And yet Albertans are being blocked.

00:05:33.980 Well, I'll just revisit quickly the interview that I did with Brad, because we talked about the decision that was made by the UCP brass to change the leadership review vote against the premier from in-person, as it was scheduled to be in Red Deer, to a mail-in ballot.

00:05:50.800 And so when that change happened, I know a lot of people were sort of crying foul, like, you know, the ability of transparency and how it's going to work logistically.

00:05:57.920 Brad made the claim that having that many people, I think there was 13,000 people who registered to vote and probably many more would register in the weeks leading up to it, would have just been impossible, like, even just in terms of finding parking to go into the convention center.

00:06:12.560 And so he claimed that there was the only option was to go to this mail-in ballot.

00:06:16.420 So I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond to that and let us know what your thoughts on that rationale is.

00:06:22.560 Well, I think the premier knew he'd lose if he ended up going into that in-person vote.

00:06:27.460 He was recorded on tape saying that normal leadership reviews, people roll in the day after having had a bender and they just mark their ballot and there's a few grumpy people and then it's really just a matter of routine.

00:06:39.000 But this clearly is not a matter of routine to have this many people sign up, prepared to pay $100 and drive multiple hours to get to a single voting station.

00:06:47.520 I don't think he would have won it.

00:06:48.760 I think there probably was a facility that they could have done an in-person vote.

00:06:52.380 The Westerner Center is a place that does large concerts and public events.

00:06:56.320 So the idea that they couldn't have found an alternative venue in Red Deer, I don't actually buy that.

00:07:01.700 And they had plenty of money, too.

00:07:03.120 So because they were charging, they could have hired people to man the stations and had multiple ballot stations.

00:07:08.260 So be that as it may, what the constituency presidents wanted from the beginning was to have a vote in every single constituency so that it would be made accessible.

00:07:16.320 And there were all kinds of reasons why the leader's office argued against it at that time.

00:07:20.420 I think at a bare minimum, what they could have done is created ballot stations in eight of our major centers.

00:07:26.300 We've got a population based in Fort McMurray, Grand Prairie, over in the Lloydminster Cold Lake area, Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, and then, of course, in the south, and Red Deer in Medicine Hat and Lethbridge.

00:07:37.240 And if they had allowed for 80 ballot stations, then they could have had more people be able to vote within a pretty quick driving distance.

00:07:46.540 My main concern with mail-in ballots, because I've been through this before with the Wild Rose, is that it is fraught with problems.

00:07:54.080 It's very difficult to get the ballots out in a timely way, marked and returned in a timely way.

00:08:00.320 Because rural addresses are often different than their mailing addresses, sometimes things go awry, sometimes things don't show up, sometimes they get lost in the mail.

00:08:10.340 I remember commiserating about this with Corey Morgan, who's in the media as well now, because he was in the office after the vote came in.

00:08:19.800 And there were weeks, sometimes months, where errant ballots would turn up in the mail.

00:08:25.680 So I'm really worried that you're going to see a lot of disenfranchisement of rural Albertans wanting to vote in this process.

00:08:32.680 And I'm worried that it's not going to have the credibility if you end up with hundreds or even thousands of ballots coming in after the fact, people are going to question the result.

00:08:41.760 And that's not what you want out of a leadership review.

00:08:43.820 You want a solid mandate for the leaders so that they can have the confidence their party is behind them so that they can go forward.

00:08:50.200 I just fear that this is going to be a bit of a schmozzle and they made a mistake. 0.98

00:08:53.500 I was calling on them to return to an in-person balloting like I just described, but nobody asked me what I thought.

00:09:00.620 So I guess we'll see whether or not my prediction of it being a bit of a mess turns out to be the case.

00:09:07.180 Well, we just witnessed this, right?

00:09:08.800 Like there's already, living through COVID, there's a huge decrease in trust in institutions, just given the fact, like we were talking about, the fact that so many of the rules are contradictory.

00:09:17.300 There's so many hypocritical people who are making the rules.

00:09:20.720 When it comes to the U.S. presidential election in 2020, the fact that they allowed mail-in ballots in so many of the states led to this crazy situation.

00:09:29.540 We didn't know the winner of the election for a week after election day.

00:09:33.000 Usually it's determined that night or the next morning.

00:09:35.440 And because of that, there's so many Americans who just don't trust the outcome of the election.

00:09:39.160 They don't believe it.

00:09:39.920 They don't think that Biden actually won.

00:09:41.700 And so you're right that changing the rules this close to the game will lead to a lot of people contesting the results.

00:09:49.760 I want to talk about the sort of underlying issues, though, Danielle.

00:09:52.600 Why do you think that so many people on the conservative side of the equation in Alberta are so dissatisfied with Jason Kenney?

00:10:01.860 Why is it that so many people are calling for him to be removed as leader and a premier of the province?

00:10:06.700 I think there's three main groups that are unhappy with the premier's leadership right now.

00:10:12.300 And first of all, I should say it's certainly not uniform.

00:10:14.580 I mean, I was a supporter of the premier up until very recently, up until he made the decision to bring in vaccine passports in September of 2021.

00:10:24.960 And he didn't need to do that.

00:10:26.120 I'll get into that in just a minute.

00:10:27.400 But he has done tremendous work on attracting business to Alberta.

00:10:32.600 He talks about some of these big name investments coming here, Dow Chemical with a net zero petrochemical plant.

00:10:40.160 You've got Infosys, emphasis of growing tech sector investment that's happening in Calgary, Air Sprint, that is going to be a net zero hydrogen plant.

00:10:49.240 We're going to be at the hub of a new hydrogen economy.

00:10:51.260 These are all really exciting things.

00:10:53.020 And they should continue.

00:10:54.260 And you can tell that the premier is delighted every time he talks about those things.

00:10:58.440 And I think that's very positive.

00:11:00.420 But the problem was that there were just too many flip-flops on the issue of vaccination.

00:11:05.860 I think people expected, especially because we're so close to the United States, that we would see Alberta, at the very least, follow the same lead that we're seeing in the red states in the U.S., principally Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem, but more recently, John Abbott and others, is that there's a different approach that you can take to protecting people.

00:11:26.660 Ron DeSantis, back in the first summer, actually, he did do a lockdown, just like everyone else did in April.

00:11:33.600 But then he started reaching out to the medical community and found the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Jay Bhattachary and Sinatra Gupta, Martin Koldorf and Scott Atlas.

00:11:43.780 And he held press conferences to say he was switching gears, he was going to do focus protection, he was going to make treatment with monoclonal antibodies widely available, and he was going to allow for life to get back to normal.

00:11:56.080 And so I was watching that saying, okay, Alberta's got to be the next one.

00:11:59.580 And instead, just when we should have been going in that direction, we ended up being hammered with a vaccine passport. 0.96

00:12:06.460 He tried to call it something else, a restriction exemption program, but it was a passport.

00:12:11.320 Nonetheless, he closed down and kept targeting restaurants and gyms for some reason.

00:12:17.520 He rejected the idea of focus protection.

00:12:21.180 The kids have been in and out of school, in and out of sports, in and out of being able to have cohorts.

00:12:27.000 And I think the big issue that we have now is that they won't recognize natural immunity.

00:12:32.700 And by doing so, you've got people, I think he could have solved this problem.

00:12:36.120 So especially now that we've had Delta and Omicron and this new variant that is just spreading like wildfire, if people are getting a natural level of antibody protection from exposure, then we should acknowledge that.

00:12:47.640 We should be pressing the federal government to allow for that to be the ability to get on planes and to recognize that for cross-border traffic.

00:12:57.260 So I think that the premier could do a lot more on that.

00:12:59.420 The other part of the problem is that he just continued with the same language that we see out of Justin Trudeau, calling it initially a crisis of the unvaxxed and pitting vaccinated people against unvaccinated people when it was clearly not true.

00:13:14.720 Everyone has the same potential risk of getting this virus.

00:13:18.780 And so we need to really be moving to a test and treat type strategy, which they are doing in the United States.

00:13:24.340 And I think it was unnecessary because unnecessary division.

00:13:26.920 And when the premier says that the people opposing him are extremists and lunatics and bigots, he's not showing much empathy for what people have gone through over the last two years.

00:13:37.360 There's a lot of people who are really hurt that they've had friendships break down and family break down and fighting with grandparents and siblings about whether or not to vaccinate kids and not being able to see their kids hockey game, not being able to travel, not being able to do their business.

00:13:55.120 Some getting fired from work still like these are these are things that are perplexing to most Albertans.

00:14:01.120 They never would have thought that that would happen here.

00:14:03.820 And it was really only the freedom convoy that caused the premier to change direction.

00:14:09.580 He was initially saying he wasn't going to end any of these restrictions till the end of March.

00:14:13.960 And fortunately, with the pressure, he ended up switching gears.

00:14:17.720 And I think people are grateful for that.

00:14:19.900 But why did we have to go down this road in the first place?

00:14:22.300 So that's that's the second part.

00:14:24.020 But the third thing is that there is a real sense that this is a premier that isn't putting Alberta first.

00:14:29.200 He's had lots of opportunities, especially with the equalization referendum, to demonstrate that he's going to get tough with Ottawa.

00:14:35.500 We should collect our own personal income tax.

00:14:37.120 We should have our own provincial police.

00:14:38.460 We should collect our own employment insurance.

00:14:39.940 We should start talking about whether we should create our own Alberta pension plan.

00:14:42.960 All the things that Quebec already does, because there's a hard line that we have to draw.

00:14:48.080 The federal government now, especially with the alliance between Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, they have Alberta in the crosshairs.

00:14:57.380 They want Alberta, our energy industry, to reach a ludicrously aggressive target, 42% of emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2030, seven and a half years from now.

00:15:09.520 At the same time as they're expecting us to be the principal funder of all of these grand national schemes for child for daycare and for long term care and for pharmaceutical care and for dentistry.

00:15:20.520 It's got to be a hard no at some point.

00:15:22.620 They can't just keep on pummeling our industry and then expecting us to pay the lion's share into the these national programs.

00:15:29.220 And we've got to start pulling that back and acting like Quebec saying, no way you stick to your knitting.

00:15:34.100 You've got a lot of knitting to stick to.

00:15:35.480 You've got defense commitments through NATO.

00:15:37.520 You've got foreign aid commitments.

00:15:39.020 You've got settlement issues of Ukrainian refugees.

00:15:41.260 We've got international trade issues that we've got to deal with as we're having a geopolitical alignment.

00:15:45.420 There's lots to do without micromanaging how we run social programs.

00:15:49.240 And we just don't get a sense that the premier is pushing back and taking the mandate that he was given.

00:15:54.260 So those are the reasons why a lot of people are very frustrated.

00:15:57.620 Well, just to pick up on that third one, it seems that when the focus is on the sort of internal domestic issues in Alberta,

00:16:03.340 the premier doesn't do very well on those issues, as you laid out very clearly there.

00:16:07.600 When it comes to the external things, so that's sort of where he's better set.

00:16:11.400 Like you can look at some of the recent polls and see that the provincial NDP look to be pulling ahead of the UCP.

00:16:17.840 And that would be very bad news.

00:16:19.640 It's May 2023, sorry, that the general election will be.

00:16:25.920 But then, you know, when you look at the price of oil has gone up.

00:16:28.800 That's good news for Jason Kenney because it allows his government to do so much more and more people work, less complaints.

00:16:35.840 But also this idea that you're not just running against Rachel Motley.

00:16:39.200 You can now run against the Trudeau-Jagmeet Singh alliance.

00:16:43.340 That sort of seems to help, Jason.

00:16:45.200 So I'm kind of wondering if you could give us a little bit of a prediction or analysis of whether you think that he has the numbers to survive

00:16:52.580 or whether you think that this is the end of his time as premier.

00:16:55.820 Well, it's certainly an advantage to him that it's now a broad-based vote of all members.

00:17:00.560 I think there's 55,000 members that signed up.

00:17:04.740 And that's a huge amount of interest because I think they were as low as 10,000 at the beginning of the year.

00:17:10.080 So they really had, the party really was demoralized.

00:17:14.060 So it has been energized and it really could go either way.

00:17:17.140 But the main thing is that we need to have strong voices pushing him to go in the direction that we always thought he was going to go.

00:17:23.440 I mean, remember when he first launched into his campaign, he got in the big blue truck and drove around rural Alberta and promised the grassroots guarantee.

00:17:32.620 And so I haven't seen any evidence, actually, of grassroots decision-making.

00:17:37.340 I haven't seen any evidence that MLAs are given any autonomy to raise issues.

00:17:42.420 And so those are the reasons why I'm entering as an MLA is that I've done the job before.

00:17:46.960 I know how this province historically has treated its frontline MLAs.

00:17:52.120 And we don't do things the Ottawa way.

00:17:53.820 I mean, the Ottawa way is everything centers out of the prime minister's office.

00:17:58.540 And then there's the guys in short pants that go around badgering and bullying everybody to fall into line with whatever comes out of the leader's office as an edict.

00:18:06.360 The way we operate in Alberta is that we allow for our MLAs to go out into the community, hear what the issues are, raise them to caucus.

00:18:14.620 If the issue is big enough in caucus, then the minister is charged with resolving the issue.

00:18:21.580 And then if the minister can't resolve it, then it gets kicked up to the premiers.

00:18:24.680 It's actually the opposite.

00:18:25.700 And so this Ottawa-style top-down politics where MLAs have no role and are just expected to sit down and shut up is not what Albertans expect.

00:18:35.400 And so if I can be a voice in helping to create the balance of what it is this province should operate like so that we can get better decision-making, that's what I'm going to do.

00:18:44.380 Well, it's interesting.

00:18:45.680 So the way that – I don't know if this is accurate.

00:18:47.380 The way that the media has characterized your reentry into politics is that it's sort of almost a divisive move that you're challenging the leadership of the premier and that you're sort of announcing your intention to run as leader.

00:18:59.300 We saw Jason Kenney himself dismiss your candidacy in a press conference.

00:19:03.200 He called you a voice of division.

00:19:05.080 And then a Twitter account run by United Conservatives said that you had – I'll just read what they said.

00:19:14.200 I've always found it surprising that two people whose only track record is losing general elections somehow feel that they have the answers.

00:19:20.780 The Western Standard characterized that as nasty tweets from Kenney's crew.

00:19:24.940 So I guess my question to you is, do you see yourself as a divisive figure in the UCP?

00:19:30.400 Do you see yourself as someone who could potentially fracture the party?

00:19:34.100 Or are you someone who could continue to unite conservatives in Alberta?

00:19:37.560 I will unite it.

00:19:38.740 And I'll tell you a couple of things.

00:19:40.640 Like, I think that the premier acts very undignified sometimes when he doesn't take – I mean, I've been advising the government over the last year on a whole variety of policy issues.

00:19:49.340 I've had him on a podcast.

00:19:50.700 I've hosted him for his first event coming out of COVID the first time over a summer.

00:19:55.580 So there really isn't much point in trying to make me the enemy.

00:19:59.200 I just wanted to put my name forward because people were asking me to.

00:20:01.860 People were saying, why don't you put your name on the ballot on that April 9th vote?

00:20:05.860 Because there's a lot of confusion about what a leadership vote is.

00:20:08.380 And so I just wanted people to know, absolutely, if there is a desire to change leadership, I'm prepared to put my name forward for that, as is Brian Jean.

00:20:16.560 I mean, as will probably be a dozen other people.

00:20:19.700 You can't really run for a job that isn't open.

00:20:21.920 You can only run for a position that may be.

00:20:24.080 So that's why I've devoted my efforts to Livingston-McLeod.

00:20:27.480 The thing I'd say about my riding in rural Alberta, and this is really important, is if you look at the poll results that you were citing, the NDP is already ahead in Edmonton.

00:20:37.760 And so we fully expect that they will sweep Edmonton as they did last time.

00:20:40.560 There's only one UCP cabinet minister there, Casey Maddow.

00:20:44.680 In Calgary, they're also polling ahead, which means they will win probably enough to form government with Calgary and Edmonton alone if these trends continue.

00:20:54.500 But even worse and more surprising to me is that the NDP are polling at 32% outside of Calgary and Edmonton in rural Alberta.

00:21:03.020 And in my area in particular, if there's a vote split, like there was before, they have a very strong candidate who ran last time from a prominent ranching family.

00:21:12.520 The government bungled its release of the coal policy changes.

00:21:16.420 And there's a lot of really angry people down here.

00:21:18.380 I'm trying to run under the UCP banner because I want to keep all of the various conservative factions under one umbrella.

00:21:24.980 That's what I learned from the events of 2015 is that we're at a point now in Alberta where there is such a strong united progressive movement coalesced around a capable leader and a formidable leader in Rachel Notley.

00:21:39.440 There's not very many politicians who've lost government and managed to keep their job to win to fight another day.

00:21:45.960 So she's formidable.

00:21:47.280 But the fact is that if we do see the Wild Rose Independence Party gain ground or Brian Jean decide to create a new party or Todd Lowen or Drew Barnes,

00:21:57.840 those are other names here that have been kicked out of the UCP caucus talking about creating a new party.

00:22:02.080 If we split the conservative movement five ways, this riding in rural Alberta is at risk of going to the NDP.

00:22:09.900 So I want to do what I can because I have friends in the Wild Rose movement.

00:22:14.480 I have friends from my former PC days.

00:22:16.740 I was a PC for many, many years before joining the Wild Rose for six years.

00:22:21.220 And because the constituents came and asked me to run, that's why I felt like I could be the one to make sure that this riding stays in this column as opposed to going NDP.

00:22:32.520 And I think that's a very real threat and concern in other parts of rural Alberta.

00:22:37.240 Yeah, that's such an interesting perspective.

00:22:39.260 I wanted to ask you a final question here, Danielle, about this CBC opinion piece that I saw written by a well-known Mount Royal political scientist named Dwayne Bratt,

00:22:49.020 where he is talking about your political comeback.

00:22:52.680 He wrote that time has not healed the wounds of the 2014 betrayal, as he calls it.

00:22:57.560 You cannot come back from something like that.

00:23:00.520 So first of all, I want to get your take as someone who's worked in the media and politics as well.

00:23:04.900 What do you make of the CBC publishing opinion pieces or that political scientists who are often cited as outsiders and people that are neutral writing opinion pieces accusing you of betrayal?

00:23:17.140 And then also, what's your analysis of that claim that you betrayed Wildrose members and that you can't come back from that?

00:23:25.580 Well, I'm not a political scientist like Dwayne Bratt, but if he was to go look at political history, he would see that it's about 50-50.

00:23:33.020 It is true that half of people who have changed parties have not been able to get reelected.

00:23:39.040 And my recollection is that about half of people who did switch parties were able to get reelected.

00:23:44.160 Probably the most prominent example from history is Winston Churchill, who's changed parties three times.

00:23:49.400 So it's not necessarily the only deciding factor on why people choose to cast their ballot.

00:23:56.640 And I don't think Dwayne Bratt was a Wildrose supporter.

00:24:01.040 So I don't think he was particularly hurt by my decision in 2014, but there were a lot of people who were hurt.

00:24:09.280 And I understand that.

00:24:10.940 I took a lot of heat when I still wanted to play a role in public life, which is why I immediately went back on the radio when I was given the opportunity to do that.

00:24:19.860 And I spent six years talking to people about the decision.

00:24:24.020 I spent six years reacquainting them with me.

00:24:27.260 I spent six years learning a lot about the concerns that they have.

00:24:31.320 And so I've talked to many, many people since I made the announcement.

00:24:35.320 And even before then, they said, yeah, I was really mad at you, but you won me over on the radio.

00:24:39.640 And so that's what I'm going to bring to it.

00:24:42.640 I spent almost six years interviewing on every topic under the sun, interviewing everyone I possibly could on a whole range of issues.

00:24:51.420 I also found that the call-in section was my favorite part because that's when you got to have some really raw stories being told about the decisions that were being made and how it was impacting real people.

00:25:03.220 And so I developed, I think people thought of me more of as an opposition leader last time I was in elected office because that was the job I was hired to do.

00:25:14.160 But I think that people need to be respected.

00:25:17.360 You need to hear from all sides.

00:25:19.020 You need to be gentle with people because especially now, people are very damaged.

00:25:22.600 And we need to be trying to chart a course that will bring everybody together.

00:25:26.680 There's been so much division over the last couple of years.

00:25:29.740 And so I have a bit of a unique perspective having played that role for the last six years.

00:25:34.260 So I know that there are some who want to pretend that my whole career just exists from the brief time that they saw me in politics a few years ago.

00:25:44.240 But I have done a lot since then.

00:25:46.940 I've been a business advocate for an Alberta-wide organization talking about some major investments that our private sector makes and helping them to try to navigate through the regulatory process.

00:25:58.500 I've been giving speeches all over Alberta for the last number of years, hearing from different communities and groups and trying to take their issues forward.

00:26:06.160 And I started my own business.

00:26:07.420 So I was on the front line dealing with all of the shutdowns of restaurants over the last few years and having to manage payroll and staff through that period of time, too.

00:26:16.300 So people grow.

00:26:17.240 People change.

00:26:17.840 And the fact that people have come forward asking me to run.

00:26:20.900 I think that Dwayne Bratt may still bear a grudge.

00:26:24.600 But I can tell you that a lot of my constituents are willing to recognize that people make mistakes.

00:26:29.600 As long as you understand and learn from them, then they're prepared to give you another chance.

00:26:35.320 I mean, the human story is a story of redemption.

00:26:37.520 We allow people to come back into public life after they've made amends.

00:26:41.360 And I guess we'll find out if people think I've made enough amends.

00:26:44.640 Well, you come from a unique perspective as well that you cross the floor, switch parties from one party to another that are now merged together.

00:26:51.280 So it's really one party now.

00:26:53.520 And that's sort of what the vision that you saw back then.

00:26:56.520 It is.

00:26:56.920 And may I just add on that?

00:26:57.980 I mean, I have been asked by others to try to lead a new party or to join one of the other parties.

00:27:04.220 And I've said no, because I think the UCP is the right vehicle.

00:27:07.400 Jim and I went about it the wrong way, absolutely.

00:27:10.720 But I think the aspiration of trying to keep conservatives up together under one tent was what we were trying to do.

00:27:16.520 And the fact that conservatives are together now and when they're together, they win.

00:27:20.560 I want to do what I can to preserve that.

00:27:23.340 Well, absolutely.

00:27:23.920 I completely agree that conservatives must be united, especially in a province like Alberta.

00:27:28.280 They need to be united.

00:27:29.780 Thank you so much, Danielle, for joining the show.

00:27:31.580 It's been great to hear your perspective, great to hear more from you.

00:27:34.980 And I hope that you are able to have the impact that you're setting out to have, because certainly the way that things have been run over the past few years, the mindset that has led us down this dark path and some of the most draconian policies that we've ever seen in our history that needs to change.

00:27:50.340 It cannot be the same mindset, the same thinking that gets us out of this mess.

00:27:55.440 We need new perspective, fresh new thinking, and we need fundamental change across the board, federally, provincially.

00:28:01.900 And locally.

00:28:03.080 And I applaud you, Danielle, and your efforts.

00:28:05.740 Thank you so much for joining us.

00:28:07.940 My pleasure.

00:28:08.380 Thank you.

00:28:09.340 All right.

00:28:09.640 That's Danielle Smith.

00:28:10.360 I'm Candice Malcolm.

00:28:11.020 And this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:28:12.300 Thank you.

00:28:12.360 Thank you.

Juno News - April 06, 2022

Will the UCP in Alberta stay united？ (Feat. Danielle Smith)

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