With a history in media, Danielle Smith has a litany of questionable articles and recordings to her name. Her party also either fails to vet prospective members, or ignores serious issues.
A certain amount would be expected, but this much? For this long?
Smith isn’t smart
Smith isn’t smart, and she isn’t ashamed to show it. Even with access to countless specialist advisers, and the same functional internet that allows the collation of the information on this very site, she says and does the dumbest things.
- 2003 – Writes article that maybe smoking is good for you.
- 2012 – Tweets that tainted meat from a recall should be fed to the homeless
- 2020 – Tweets that covid can be 100% cured
- 2021 – Compares the 75%+ of vaccinated Albertans to those who followed Hitler
- In the same podcast, she says that November 11th is “ruined”
- 2022 – On her podcast, likens the situation with Ukraine and Russia to Canada having nuclear weapons next to Russia. (Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees from the West.)
- 2022 – Muses about deputizing Albertans on airplanes to get around vaccine restrictions (the restrictions were on destination countries like the US, so this would have had no effect)
- 2022 – Interviews a naturopath, and says that cancer can be prevented prior to stage 4.
- 2022 – The day after being sworn in, is forced to attend a meeting made just for her by the Ministry of Justice on how Canada isn’t the US.
- Later tells everyone, on camera, about how she’s dumb enough to need a remedial class on what was now her job.
- 2022 – Said she’s going to “fix” healthcare in 90 days. Doesn’t.
- 2022 – Promised to completely clear the “backlog” of patients awaiting surgical procedures far longer than medically advisable. Hasn’t.
- 2023 Jan – Says she has directed crowns prosecutors
- 2023 Jan – Says she has not directed crown prosecutors
- 2023 March – When asked about a lower retirement age, Smith proposes raising it to 70+ instead.
- 2023 May – Both B’nai Brith and Royal Canadian Legion post releases repudiating Smiths comments
- 2023 May – The AB Ethics Commissioner finds Smith to have breached guidelines. The report quotes her reason as wanting Artur Pawlowski to “go away” as his public announcements would be embarrassing.
- 2024 June – Smith does the math for cancer-cases-per-year divided by Alberta oncologists, gets 191. Says “you would think that they should be able to treat 191 patients, that’s less than one patient a day”. Because obviously a single doctor can cure a single patient of cancer in a single day.
- 2024 – Insults rural doctors suggesting they work one day a week (this from her radio show at time 5:55 (immediately before a question from a clinician about being unable to hire doctors))
- 2024 Aug – At the same press conference, touts “Compassionate Intervention” where Albertans can be forced in to medical treatment… while simultaneously promoting changes to the Alberta Bill of Rights to make it “illegal for the government to discriminate against anyone who refuses a medical treatment”.
Gullible
Smith is one of the most gullible leaders we’ve ever elected. If there’s a conspiracy theory going around, she’s likely to believe it. Here’s a partial list of the conspiracy theories Danielle Smith has fallen for.
- Untrustworthy voting machines
- Hydroxychloroquine cures Covid
- Thinks that “BC gives fentanyl to minors”
- Believes rugby star Joanne Lagona is a trans man
- Thinks Norway “banned cow farts”
- Seriously asked about “chemtrails“
Cronyist
A lot of Danielle’s past friends and co-workers have found themselves in fairly well-paid positions requiring little to no effort on their part. Smith will also favour those with similar views with generous amounts of Albertan’s tax dollars.
She is also pretty tight with some very unpleasant people.
- Preston Manning
- Paid 2M$ for a report he’d already released for free
- Anti-covid doctors
- Paid 2M$ for a secret report only the Premier would see. Panel consists of a 1/2 dozen either discredited, conspiracy-minded (or both) doctors.
- David Yager
- Part of the secretive covid report panel
- Owns well cleanup tech company
- David Parker
- One-time leader of “Take Back Alberta”, a white supremacist, and close friend of Smith
- Derek Fildebrandt
- Resigned from the UCP for financial and criminal issues
- Has on at least one occasion threatened local children
- Owns the Western Standard, an online media website that got a $17.5k sole-sourced contract for advertising from the Alberta government.
- MaKami College donated at least $15k to her campaign, was later rewarded with regulation changes.
- Todd Loewen is minister of Forestry while owning a sports hunting outfitter. He orders increases in various hunting quotas without consulting conservation specialists.
- Tyler Shandro and Ed Stelmach are board members of Covenant Health, a billion dollar religious-oriented private healthcare provider being handed Alberta hospitals.
- Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson were both involved in Russian funding (or worse) while Smith entertained various events with them
- Repeatedly disclosed new public policy at private UCP events
- Reportedly promised land development permits with no public review to Kevin O’Leary
Bossy and mendacious
The wide and varied institutions of government are meant to provide ministers with information vetted through years of experience, education, and public involvement. Danielle Smith reverses this by wielding these as an excuse for her own decisions.
- Said the government had consulted on “parent’s rights” when it had not
- Announced that the pause in renewable energy construction was due to a request from the AESO – in fact the AESO was surprised by the announcement and had serious concerns, but had been ordered to support Danielle Smith 100%.
- After pushback on Bill 20, said Alberta Municipalities would be consulted (but they weren’t)
- Said she’d “fix” healthcare in 90 days. Didn’t.
- Promised to completely clear the “backlog” of patients awaiting surgical procedures far longer than medically advisable. Hasn’t.
- Campaigned on not privatizing hospitals – plans to privatize hospitals.
- Said that Covenant Health had “never closed rural hospitals” when they had.
- After her plan to for a provincial police force was rejected by Albertans, she dropped it from her re-election campaign. But is doing it anyway.
Smith and the UCP have lost Albertans Millions
The UCP has as “Statement of Principles” to effect of “Fiscal responsibility, including balanced budgets, debt reduction, and respect for taxpayers’ money.” and “Control spending and dramatically reduce the size of government and encourage municipal governments to do the same.“, but they have spent, fumbled, and mis-directed billions.
- Blew 80,000,000$ on painkillers from Turkey that arrived (as she was warned), way too late to be of any use.
- Her party gave away a billion dollars to oil companies for literally nothing.
- May have lost an expensive court case due to the Alberta Energy Minister’s unwise comments.
Smith says one thing, but does another
Did she mean when she said it, or does she just say what’s expedient at the time? Sometimes she’s not even changing her mind, she holds opposing views at the same time!
- Accused Redford of “questionable decision-making“, then appointed her to the board of Invest Alberta
- Said she had directed crown prosecutors on what cases to look at.
- Said she had not directed crown prosecutors
- Said she isn’t sure what she said but whoops all the emails are gone
- Wants to make it “illegal for the government to discriminate against anyone who refuses a medical treatment”… but also force addicts in to medical treatment programs.
- Said initially that AHS needed “fewer managers“, but it was pointed out that her splitting up AHS would result in more administrative roles, said that’s good because Alberta health needs “more decision-makers“.
- Started the “Alberta is Calling” campaign, wanted to double our population, and demanded that even more Ukrainian refugees be allowed to Alberta – but reversed course when her rural base started getting uppity.
- To promote the UCP addiction program, said AB had the lowest opioid-death level… to support her border security plan said it had the highest.
- Unveiled a “Public Health Care Guarantee” promising no delisting of services “No exceptions” – then delisted eye care programs.