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Smith will need more than tears to mask latest separation dodge
CALGARY—Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s crocodile tears are nauseating as she tries to dodge accountability for the political trap she has set for herself.
In case you missed it, last week, a political earthquake ruptured the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) dominance of the Alberta landscape. On Sept. 14, the provincial riding of Calgary–Shaw served Smith’s UCP government a significant provincial byelection defeat. Alberta NDP candidate Kyle Campbell edged out UCP candidate Mike Derry by 582 votes. The riding is a right-wing bastion, only changing hands to the NDP once in 2015 since it was formed in 1986. Its last UCP MLA, former environment minister Rebecca Schulz, resigned this past January. In 2019, the NDP lost this riding by 40 points. The rot in the UCP is evident.
Immediately, one would be correct to assume this is a bellwether for the quasi-separation vote slated to take place on Oct. 19. The Globe and Mail reports that “political experts described the looming provincial referendum on independence as an albatross around the government’s neck that turned the by-election into a protest vote.”
In his interview with CTV News, Campbell confirmed hearing similar sentiments while door-knocking, namely “that the looming vote on whether Alberta should remain in Canada or if the province should move forward with a binding referendum on whether to separate from the country was another prominent concern for voters.”
Even Stevie Wonder can see that Smith has been canoodling with separatism as a double agent for American interests in the province under the guise of diplomacy. Earlier this month, she vacationed in Tennessee, meeting with the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and other local groups. As she said to CBC News, travelling to Tennessee was “a good time to discuss leveraging Calgary’s assets.” Evidently, that framing was not met with confidence from the voters of Calgary–Shaw.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith teared up while speaking about Ottawa-Alberta relations during a Sept. 19 virtual conference on the province’s upcoming referendum. Screenshots courtesy of CBC News
Smith has been playing fast and loose with separation, which ended up with her straddling the proverbial fence. Now that she’s split her pants, she wants to cry, elicit sympathy, and absolve herself of any accountability for her actions. One would think she knew how to read the room, especially since Prime Minister Mark Carney shut down trade negotiations with the United States after the latter demanded a pound of flesh with a side of sovereignty. Her manufactured emotions that were on display during a Sept. 19 virtual appearance are an example of “white woman tears,” which conveniently flow when white women are aggressors of a conflict that backfires on them, making themselves out to be the victims. It’s the same thing Ed Sheeran did when he was exposed for being a Judas.
It also evoked the memory of Hillary Clinton’s white woman tears in 2007 when she cried after losing to Barack Obama in Iowa in the Democratic primary for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She was languishing in the polls until she turned on the waterworks, and next thing you knew, she won. The Guardian recalled: “The emotional moment in a café on the eve of Tuesday’s poll was widely credited yesterday for bringing female voters back to the Clinton fold after their defection in the Iowa caucuses last week. Their strong support, as well as a surge for Clinton from traditional Democratic voters in the large towns of New Hampshire, propelled her to victory when polls were forecasting a double-digit win for Obama.” The only problem for Clinton was that those tears didn’t propel her victory for long. The truth is, you can only use those once, and after that, people see through the manipulation.
And that’s all they were on Smith’s part—manipulation. Those of us in this country with some level of discernment have seen through her remain-in-Canada act, and now she needs to pivot; the tears act as a hinge for that pivot.
This is how I can tell that we were being conditioned: instead of taking accountability for the fact that she might be leading her party towards a political buzzsaw with this referendum vote, she decided to double down by attacking immigrants. She tweeted: “Temporary residents contribute about $150-million to our tax base annually, yet the cost to provide services for them is over $1-billion. It’s simply not fair to Alberta taxpayers.” She provides zero sources for these numbers, yet we are supposed to take them as facts. Blaming immigrants or minorities of some kind are where the conservatives naturally turn when things are going wrong for them. This displacement of blame allows Smith to refocus attention in an attempt to obscure the fact that she has been privatizing Alberta health care and education throughout her premiership, thereby defunding public services for private interests.
Be careful of politicians who have shown themselves incapable of empathy suddenly growing a heart. They are not the Tin Man on the Yellow Brick Road to meet the Wizard of Oz. They are merely trying to capitalize on your emotions to manipulate how you view them.
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