Why Danielle Smith Walked a Tightrope at a Calgary Town Hall

“The funny thing about truth is that it's often ridiculed and violently opposed, and then accepted as being self-evident,” Calgary-Lougheed MLA Eric Bouchard said to a crowd at the Southside Victory Church in Calgary last week.

The event, a “One on One with Premier Danielle Smith,” drew 473 people eager to hear her answers to their questions, according to organizers.

Emails advertising the Q&A encouraged Calgary-Lougheed constituents to submit questions for Smith to answer during a “lightning round.”

“Whether mRNA and excess deaths, an Alberta Pension Plan, importing police from other countries, or any other issue,” the email read. “It is your chance to ask about what matters most to you!”

Before introducing Smith, Bouchard told the crowd about another Q&A organized by the Calgary-Lougheed constituency association in July 2022. Then, Smith was a candidate in the United Conservative Party leadership race.

Smith was interviewed in 2022 by constituency association president Darrell Komick, who, according to Bouchard, asked many “difficult questions.”

“She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and candidly,” Bouchard said.

This Q&A proved to be a little different, however. In total, 64 questions were approved for the session. The Tyee asked the Calgary-Lougheed constituency association who wrote questions not submitted by attendees, but did not hear back in time for publication.

Questions covered a wide variety of topics, from discrimination toward anti-vaxers to the controversial Olympics 2024 opening ceremony.

The crowd’s reactions to her answers were mixed — while applauded for some answers, Smith was heckled repeatedly for others.

When Komick, who interviewed Smith again this year, asked if the UCP government would support class-action lawsuits seeking compensation for damages caused by COVID mandates and regulations, Smith said it wasn’t up to them to support judicial proceedings.

The crowd booed.

“Well, it's illegal, guys, like it's illegal for a politician to offer an opinion on an active court case,” Smith said in response. “It actually is in the Criminal Code that I'm not allowed to do it.”

“There's a lot of things in the code that don’t seem to matter,” Komick responded.

Other times, the crowd reacted positively to what Smith was saying. Before launching into the Q&A, Smith provided updates on the work her caucus has completed or started since being elected last year. One example was the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which Smith said, although initially “seen as divisive and controversial,” is now widely supported and accepted as “Ottawa continues to roll out disastrous policy after disastrous policy.” Smith added that the Sovereignty Act was used for the first time to oppose the government of Canada’s plans to establish net-zero electricity grids by 2035.

“We are planning to use this legislation again against the NDP-Liberal coalition’s pending emissions cap. They want an emissions cap on oil and gas, they want an emissions cap on methane,” Smith added. “You've probably heard they've started taxing cow farts in Denmark. I am quite sure that if [the federal government] could get away with it, that would be next.” Crowd members laughed and cheered in response.

Lisa Young, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, said the mixed reactions are indicative of the tightrope Smith has had to walk since she re-entered politics in 2022.

At the time Smith “presented herself as a populist” to Albertans who felt their concerns were being disregarded. In particular, Smith appealed to those who felt then premier Jason Kenney mismanaged the COVID pandemic and “hadn’t done enough to stand up to Ottawa,” Young said.

“Those are really the two sorts of sources of support that she was able to tap into to get people mobilized to support her for the UCP leadership,” Young said.

Now Smith is held accountable by three groups who do not always see eye to eye on these issues: her original voter base, the UCP caucus and the wider Alberta electorate.

As a result, Smith walks a fine line in maintaining support from those who supported her leadership bid, while showing the rest of caucus that the UCP are still electable, Young said.

Early on in the Q&A, Komick asked Smith about the efficacy and safety of COVID vaccines, particularly for children. He mentioned the Injection of Truth Town Hall, hosted by Calgary-Lougheed a few weeks earlier, which hoped to explore claims that unexplained and excessive deaths in children increased by 3,380 per cent.

Smith answered that her caucus was looking through data in an effort to find an explanation, but allowing parents to make the personal choice on whether to vaccinate their children against COVID.

She added that the “information is terrible,” which was why the process was taking a long time.

In a followup, Komick asked why the government was not prioritizing informed consent if the “data is bad” when it comes to vaccine injuries and death.

“Because right now it looks like the government endorses the vaccines, the way they're positioned on the chart,” he said.

Smith answered that she campaigned on medical choice and that she felt people were smart.

“No, they’re not,” Komick and the crowd said in response.

Smith said six per cent of Albertans were choosing to vaccinate their children against COVID, while 94 per cent were not. She quoted Dr. Byram Bridle, one of the attendees of the Injection of Truth Town Hall, and said the definition of vaccines is that they are one dose that “protect you for life.”

Komick also asked Smith about the Alberta pension plan, asking why a referendum is necessary to establish it.

“Wouldn't it be better to say to pensioners, you know, here's actually how much more money you could have, even if we didn't get money back from the feds, and that would be our gift to Canada?”

Young said these questions stem from the notion that core supporters “control the government,” so their preferences should be imposed, even if the rest of Alberta doesn’t agree.

She added that this is another example of Smith walking a fine line between listening to her supporters and the rest of Alberta.

“There are things that the base of her party want her to do, on the one hand, that are undemocratic but also politically disastrous,” Young said.

She added that if Smith were to introduce an Alberta pension plan without a referendum, “it’s reasonable to assume she would lose the next provincial election.”

“Here’s where being in government puts her in a position to have to moderate some of the impulses of the grassroots of her party,” Young said.

Young noted Smith faces a leadership review in November. “Her attention is turned more toward the party grassroots, including those people that she brought into the party, and less toward the broad Alberta electorate,” Young said.

Kenney’s time as premier shows the importance of maintaining grassroots support, Young said.

“There is an expectation that the UCP leader will demonstrate themselves to be accountable to the party's grassroots,” Young said. Not attending events like the town hall “would be potentially politically dangerous for Smith, particularly in the months leading up to the leadership review.”

Young added that events like the Q&A “play to Smith’s strengths as a politician” and demonstrate she’s willing to sit and engage with her supporters on the issues that matter to them.

“She’s able to respond in ways that demonstrate that she has sympathy with the things that they're saying without making really firm commitments about what her government will do,” Young said.

“I think it's quite disarming in some ways for the people who want to hold her to account, because they come out of these meetings feeling considerable sympathy for her, even if she hasn't promised to do everything that they hoped for.”

That’s likely why Smith was asked questions about topics that had very little to do with her caucus, policies or political priorities, like the Olympic opening ceremony, Young said.

Directly following a question about COVID vaccine mandates, Komick asked Smith about the controversial opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, which he said “actively belittled Christians by mocking the biblical apostles of the Last Supper.” He asked Smith if her cabinet supports “woke attacks of Christians under the shrug and excuse of freedom of choice.”

“It was outrageous, there’s no two ways about it,” Smith responded. “You would never see that kind of disrespect to any other religion.”

Attendees likely wanted to “reassure themselves that she's one of them,” Young said, while also asking questions that were top of mind at the time of the Q&A.

However, there were some questions Smith was not willing to answer.

Near the end of the event, Komick gifted Smith an Alberta passport, while criticizing Canada’s immigration system and the recent influx of immigrants to Alberta.

“It seems to me that really the only thing that a Canadian passport gives you is travel,” Komick said. “Why can’t we issue Alberta passports to create a constructive immigration program here? If you want to have referendums, let's have a referendum to see how many people want to have 10 million people [move here].”

He then said that when Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees entered Canada with “zero screening.”

“We have people walking around wearing swastikas because no screening was done,” Komick added. “They walk in proudly wearing them and they give you the evil look like, ‘I'm here because I was allowed to be here.’”

Smith said she hadn’t seen that but agreed that it was important to ensure immigrants fit into Albertan culture prior to immigrating.

Young said Smith’s response was likely because Smith had “learned a lesson early on” when it came to commenting on the war in Russia and Ukraine. Smith initially questioned Canada’s support for Ukraine, then apologized.

“I think that it's become very clear to her what an important constituency [Ukrainians are] for the UCP,” Young said. “So it's not surprising at all that she was quick to say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not aware of any of that. Let's not engage in that kind of misinformation.’”

However, Smith can’t afford to alienate UCP members in Calgary-Lougheed by challenging their comments with the leadership review looming, Young said.

“I don't think she would have been inclined to say that those views were unacceptable, but it would also have been strategically very damaging to her, because it would have led them to start mobilizing... in a way that could be damaging for her.”