Alberta Premier Danielle Smith Says Conservatives Must Apply Their Values to Delivery of Public Services

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (R) speaks at the Canada Strong & Free Networking Conference 2023 in Ottawa on March 23, 2023. (Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times)

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says that for conservatives to win elections at the provincial and federal levels, they must develop a vision for “applying conservative values to the delivery of public services.”

“I have felt like conservatives will say ‘vote for me, and I will cut your taxes, cut your regulation, cut your spending,’ and we don’t really have a vision for what we are going to do with all of those dollars that get generated from taxes, other than just handed over to the same people that the guys on the [political] left hire,” Smith said.

Smith entered the United Conservative Party (UCP) of Alberta’s leadership race after Premier Jason Kenney announced his resignation in May 2022. Running on a campaign of extending Alberta’s sovereignty, she defeated six other UCP candidates to become leader on Oct. 6.

The next Alberta general election will be held on May 29. Smith highlighted a recent Abacus opinion poll that shows the UCP and NDP are tied.

Speaking on the second day of the three-day Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference 2023 in Ottawa on March 23, Smith said if Conservatives want to win more elections, they must figure out how to win in big cities.

‘Full Conservative Vision’

She said the “full conservative vision”—often found in rural communities—involves individual freedom; strong, multi-generational families; and philanthropy to give back to communities

But “when you get to larger cities, there are a few more disconnects,” she said, as families are not necessarily all together in the same city and there aren’t necessarily generational family business. “You don’t necessarily have people who even know their neighbours, let alone getting involved in community groups. So it’s a very different challenge in how you talk to an urban audience.”

Smith also said that while Canadians are increasingly drawn to the Conservatives’ “law and order” talk, they can’t “lead with law and order when you’ve got people who are struggling with mental health and addiction.”

The Alberta premier talked about the province’s Recovery-Oriented System of Care for addiction and mental health, which involves a network of personalized, community-based services for people at risk of or experiencing challenges.

“When they come out, they’re going to be recovered, they’re going to have a job, and they’re going to have a community wrapped around them,” she said. “That, to me is what success looks like from the conservative applied model, compared to what you see up and down the West Coast, the carnage there.”

Smith said the Liberal and NDP model of encouraging the safe consumption and supply of drugs, as seen in British Columbia, is “giving up on people ... and not pushing people to get their lives back.”

“In Alberta, we’re doing an approach where we’re applying our conservative values to the delivery of government services,” Smith said. “Because we can do that with free enterprise, with individual choice and accountability, we believe that that’s going to result in better public services, which will allow us to create a vision that will be a lot more compelling to those who live in Calgary and Edmonton.”

Biggest Threat to Alberta

Asked about the biggest threat to Alberta, Smith said it’s the “NDP-Liberal coalition in Ottawa and an ideological prime minister who has a very hard time understanding that he cannot just issue edicts and have them happen in the real world.”

Smith said the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act was passed as a way to “educate our federal counterpart on how our government is supposed to work.”

The legislation, which received royal asset in December 2022, gives the province a legal framework to push back against federal laws or policies that negatively impact it.

“We are not a unitary state. We do not pass our laws in our province ... with the consent of Justin Trudeau,” she said. “You don’t see me saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to set up passport offices ... or take over the management of the airports.”

Smith said it was equally absurd for the federal government to tell the provinces how to manage their resources, which is what was done via Bill C-69. The bill, which enacted the Impact Assessment Act in 2019, brought in changes to the process of project application and review and other amendments.

“That’s what this new environmental approval process has done. It’s not just about interprovincial pipelines. ... They’re controlling all of the resource development within the borders of every province.”

Biden’s Visit

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa on March 23–24, Smith requested that he highlights the “critical need for North American energy security.” “I recommend that the two governments work to fast-track energy projects in the name of economic security for our democratic partners, as committed to by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland,” she wrote.

At the Canada Strong & Free conference, Smith said the federal government’s proposed cap on carbon emissions and 30 percent reduction of fertilizer usage would reduce the province’s food production “at a time when we’ve got a global food security crisis,” while also making it more expensive for Albertans to heat their homes.

“But when you have an ideological government that wants to achieve unrealistic targets as quickly as they do, we’re on a collision course,” she said.