Danielle Smith's win in the Alberta election hands her the most starkly divided province confronting any premier in Canada, writes commentator Don Martin.
She should’ve won big in a walk, leaving the NDP in her dust as the orange-is-the-fade-to-black party.
The 2023 result wasn’t analogous 30 years later, of course. Smith spent outrageously to buy her votes whereas Klein miraculously campaigned on deep spending cuts. And the saviour roles were reversed. The PC party was rescued by Klein as a fresh-faced premier while rookie Smith was a ballot box handicap saved by the party’s deep rural roots.
To bridge the chasm between her progressive urban MLAs and those owing allegiance to the hard-right Take Back Alberta movement, which is a Republican Party Freedom Caucus equivalent, she will be forced to operate something approximating a coalition government. Trudeau’s environmental roadblocks to Alberta’s energy policy, liquified natural gas exports and the agriculture sector are serious economic impediments while talk of replacing the RCMP and Canada Pension Plan with made-in-Alberta alternatives are mostly western alienation fluff.But, pulling back the lens a bit, there are cautionary lessons in this result for political leaders beyond Alberta in general and for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in particular.
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