Danielle Smith: realpolitik or political cynicism?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/05/2025 (210 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If revenge is a dish best served cold, then grievance is a condition best served hot.

The head chef for serving up grievance in Canada today is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. She waited but a nanosecond after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet was announced before launching a grievance against new Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin. The minister hadn’t even had time to crack open her new briefing books before the premier took a crack at her. “This is a step in the wrong direction,” she thundered.

In fairness, Smith is quite practiced in slamming federal environment ministers. She regularly hammered Steven Guilbeault during his tenure, calling him “radical,” “crazy,” and “a national embarrassment.” When you are in a perpetual state of grievance, then manufacturing one more is just grist for the mill.

But this all comes just days after this same premier had a post-election meeting with Carney that she called “positive.” Instead of giving time for the new Carney government to demonstrate how it would reset Ottawa’s relationship with Alberta as she had demanded and reasonable Canadians expect, she pounced to demonstrate that it would never work anyway. Why allow a honeymoon when you’re already pining for divorce?

The reason for this is Smith’s active nurturing of an incipient secessionist movement in her province. It has not grabbed a majority of Albertans but it has pocketed a majority of her own party, the United Conservative Party. A poll from Angus Reid Institute last week found that while 36 per cent Albertans currently lean towards a vote to leave Canada, that number is 65 per cent among UCP voters.

It is one thing for a premier to aggressively lobby the federal government to change its policies to favour your province. It is quite another to use the threat of secession that you are proactively enabling through a referendum to force a change in federal policies. This is what she is doing when her government introduced a bill to lower the threshold by which a citizen-initiated referendum on separation could be introduced.

Not days later, the Alberta Prosperity Project, a separatist front group doing just that, published its proposed question: “Do you agree that the province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province of Canada?” Lest there be local backlash against her provincial backlash, Smith’s government then raised the threshold for using the same citizen-initiated referendum process for recalling an MLA, such as a premier.

Smith has danced around the question of whether she favours secession or not or how she would vote. For now, she wants “a united Canada with respect for provincial constitutional sovereignty.” So, why enable all this? “If there isn’t an outlet, it creates a new party.” The premier’s response is a dazzling display of either realpolitik or political cynicism.

Alberta has legitimate policy differences with the federal government. These need to be addressed. Canada’s premier petro-province never took kindly to national climate change policies that might hinder oil and gas production, such as the emissions cap or C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, which created a more stringent set of rules and procedures before approving new pipelines, for example.

Never mind that crude oil production reached an eight-year high in 2023 and that non-conventional oil production rose some 70 per cent over the past decade. Never mind that federal taxpayers purchased the Trans-Mountain pipeline to ship Alberta oil to the West Coast for export. Never mind that Alberta remains the richest province in Canada with the highest per-capita growth and the lowest taxes, despite equalization. Never mind, never mind, never mind.

When it comes to grievance, what matters is not how things really are, but what they should be. We wallow in an age of grievance politics and culture. From identity politics to income inequality to social media influence, democratic societies are becoming more polarized and more populist. Facts matter less than feelings. And what feeling could be more grievous — or righteous — than anger?

Last month’s election is widely seen as an inflection point in our relationship with the United States. It needs to be seen as an inflection point in our relationship with each other. Calling this out is necessary if we are to keep Canada united and prosperous. Calling out for a change in federal policies by those of us who do not live in Alberta is part of this.

Strains and tensions in Canadian federalism are legion and legendary. Which is why we need to call out those politicians who traffic in secession to keep their jobs.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government. is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.