'Hey Premier Smith! Don’t blink!'
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
189.91318
Summary
Danielle Smith is Alberta s new premier, and she has a mandate from the people of Alberta. But what will it take for her to continue down the path of reform that Ralph Klein took in the early 90s?
Transcript
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and I'm sure she's getting it from all directions.
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So, Danielle Smith, I mean, she's gone against all conventional wisdom and political advice.
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She's defied and ignored polls, pundits, and academics that all predicted her political demise,
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and in dismissing those naysayers, she's found herself elected as Alberta's premier of the majority government
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Now, the night of the election, Danielle Smith invoked the late Ralph Klein
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in referencing what was called his miracle on the prairie,
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The similarities between the 1993 general election won by Klein
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and the 2023 election in Alberta are remarkable when you look at them.
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When Klein took the reins of the Progressive Conservative Party in the early 1990s,
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It was polling down at sometimes as low as 20% against Lawrence DeCore's liberals,
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and many were declaring the PCs as electorally dead in the water.
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The elites, of course, and the chattering classes dismissed Klein as an uneducated bumpkin
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who stumbled his way into the premiership and would become a little more than a footnote
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Voters, though, they felt otherwise and gave Ralph Klein a reduced majority government
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The Alberta establishment, of course, they were aghast, but at least somewhat humbled.
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Now we come all the way up to 2022, and we've got the governing UCP,
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and they were polling as low as 22% under the leadership of Jason Kenney.
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That led to the end of Kenney, and among a number of things.
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And when Kenney was replaced by Danielle Smith, the usual establishment suspects
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were all but confident this would be the beginning of the end of the UCP's reign in government.
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There's no way a leader with such a controversial history as Smith could turn around the fortunes
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Well, Smith proved her detractors wrong and pulled a reduced majority win from what was
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the most personal and negative provincial campaign in living memory.
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And while she may have fewer seats than the 1993 PC's did under Klein, she actually has
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Her opponents can no longer claim she doesn't have a mandate from Albertans.
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Now, if Premier Smith wants to continue down a Klein-like path, she needs to take another
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The election might be behind Smith right now, but her opponents are far from gone.
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Notley's remaining as the leader of the NDP for now, which ensures the negative tone of
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the opposition against Smith is going to continue.
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Legacy media is as biased as ever against Smith, and they're going to pan every move
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Just the other morning, I listened to a local talk radio station begin its newscasts saying,
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Since when is the second place celebrated in a two-party system?
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They won't even give Smith a win in headlines when she just had a literal win.
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I mean, you mentioned that the NDP won the largest opposition after you mentioned the
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UCP won a majority, but not in the media environment of today.
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Unions, academics, and media will all oppose Smith's every move, just as they did with Klein.
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There's going to be people within Smith's own party.
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And as her opposition to her policy starts mounting, they're going to put pressure on
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She needs to ignore her opponents and reassure her allies.
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Most of all, though, or again, she can't blink.
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Klein was counseled to back down as he put Alberta's finances back in order.
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He was told by the experts he was moving too far or too fast.
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He was upsetting the apple cart, and surely he'd be punished at the polls.
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And political pundits assured us he'd be punished dearly in the next election.
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Well, in 1997, Ralph Klein increased his majority with another 11 seats on top of that, and took
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Smith has a mandate, and she needs to pursue it.
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She can't succumb to the temptation to pull the political reform band-aid off slowly through
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For one thing, her opponents are going to go wild no matter what she does, even if they're
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So you've got nothing to lose in going for the big ones.
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Secondly, that's how Jason Kenney tried to govern, and look how well that turned out.
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Albertans are willing to embrace positive political changes, even if it comes to the health
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Smith needs to bring about all these reforms quickly, and to offer no quarter to her opponents
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Changes need to be made in the first two years in power so the results can be measured in
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the second two years before she faces the electorate again.
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She can't let the civil servants, union heads, or even her own advisors slow roll her mandate.
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Premier Smith isn't showing any indications of being a shrinking violet in office.
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I don't expect her to tiptoe around with policy.
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I mean, Smith's historical biggest mistake ever, though, was to crumble under strong headwinds
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and led the disastrous floor crossing from the Wild Rose Party to the Progressive Conservatives
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The pressure got to her back then, and she sought an escape hatch.
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Now, Daniel Smith's been given a second political life that nobody would have expected of her
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for her after that catastrophic lapse in judgment in 2014.
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Let's hope, though, she's absorbed the most important lesson of all, especially when you're
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