Alberta

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith believes she’ll have allies in her battle against so-called federal overreach when she attends this week’s meeting of provincial and territorial premiers in Winnipeg.

Smith made the comments Monday at the annual Premier’s Stampede Breakfast in Calgary, where she flipped pancakes for a crowd of hundreds just hours before her scheduled departure for the three-day premiers’ conference.

The guy who made Danielle Smith premier came to Calgary on Friday.

And yes, I do mean Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Without him and the Liberals to kick around, it’s doubtful that Smith would have won the May 29 election, or even the UCP leadership last October.

PM Justin Trudeau gets heckled by a group of protesters in Calgary, Alberta.

I tried to get an answer from the PM if he has a job offer lined-up after the election.

The campaign speech from one of his minister was a disaster, follow @MediaBezirgan for more.
Support my… pic.twitter.com/kLEtrjIA1q

— Mocha Bezirgan (@BezirganMocha) July 8, 2023

Premier Danielle Smith says her government will bring in arson investigators from outside Alberta to trace the cause of wildfires that have been plaguing the province of late.

“I’m very concerned that there are arsonists,” Smith told podcast host Ryan Jespersen on June 8. “And there have been stories as well that we’re investigating, and we’re bringing in arson investigators from outside the province.”

It was eight minutes into her 12-minute victory speech when Danielle Smith got into the stuff the United Conservative crowd liked more than anything, other than the victory itself.

The “warning to Ottawa” — the one she said she hoped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals were listening to (at a few minutes before 2 a.m Eastern on Tuesday morning).

The premier, now armed with a mandate, urged Ottawa to scrap its plans for a net-zero electrical grid in 12 years, as well as the Liberals’ proposed regulations to cap emissions from the carbon-intensive oil and gas sector.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party retained control of Canada’s top oil-producing province in an election Monday, setting up a series of energy-policy clashes with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Danielle Smith leads UCP to Alberta majority government

UCP majority winner Danielle Smith's victory speech sends a clear warning to Trudeau

I will not let Trudeau’s federal policies be inflicted upon Albertans.pic.twitter.com/n4ztDjjQ3Q

— Mad Yet (@HaveWeAllGoneM1) May 30, 2023

Today is election day.

Many Albertans have already made their voice heard during last week’s advance polls with 758,550 votes cast, smashing the previous record of 700,476 in 2019.

If all goes to plan, by the end of tonight Albertans will have elected 87 MLAs to represent them in the province’s 31st legislative assembly. Although Calgary has been cited as the deciding battleground, there are plenty of ridings to watch with every election offering its own surprises.

The conclusion of the Alberta provincial election on Monday will herald yet another stage in the federal-provincial relationship, often characterized in recent years by either tense co-operation or outright opposition.

Where political analysts in Alberta often talk about the province’s three electoral “regions” — Edmonton, Calgary and rural areas — Ottawa has also been a point of focus throughout the campaign.

Opposition to the federal government is a “baseline” for both of Alberta’s major parties, Corey Hogan, a political commentator and strategist, said in an interview on CBC’s The House that aired Saturday.

OK, I get it. Albertans don’t have to be New Democrats to think Premier Daniel Smith spent too much time during her first months in office re-fighting pandemic battles.

From October through January, I wrote several columns urging her to drop her fights over lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passports, and to move on from her close associations with the loopiest elements of the pandemic protest movement.