One-question rule makes Smith’s scorn clear By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Apr. 20, 2023

Opinion

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This article was published 20/04/2023 (897 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘It’s an election, that’s why.”

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith offered that succinct but nevertheless confounding explanation last week for her decision to limit reporters and/or media outlets to one question and no followups as the ruling United Conservative Party heads toward an end-of-May provincial election.

Ms. Smith elaborated slightly on a call-in radio show, stating “We’re sort of getting into election mode, so we have lots of people (and we) want to answer lots of questions.”

The rationale, as laid out by the premier, is that limiting reporters to a single query and no auxiliary questions will allow her to “make sure that we’re getting to as many people as possible” in what’s expected to be a large press following on the campaign trail.

What’s obvious despite being unstated by Ms. Smith is that this restrictive policy — which at present is being described as applying only until after the Alberta election — shields her from having to face in-depth questioning about issues she would rather not have to address while promoting the UCP’s re-election platform.

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Ms. Smith and controversy have, of course, been anything but strangers throughout her meandering career, which has variously found her acting as a confrontational radio pundit or a mercurial political player. Most recently she has found herself the subject of an ethics investigation for allegedly interfering in the judicial process related to the trial of a high-profile opponent of COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates.

It’s one of many issues on which the Alberta premier would clearly rather not have to respond to persistent media questions.

While a general disdain for traditional news media has become very much de riguer on the political right in recent years — from Donald Trump’s cries of “fake news!” to Pierre Poilievre’s lobbying for Twitter’s labelling of CBC as “government-funded media” to the increasing reliance on social-media (mis)information as a primary source of current-events enlightenment — what Ms. Smith seems not to recognize is that her refusal to answer questions is not just a slap at meddlesome news media; it’s also an expression of contempt for the citizens on whose behalf those questions are being asked.

Now, it might be argued that the Alberta premier is at least being up-front about her intention to evade accountability. By stating plainly what she will not do, she’s laying bare her scorn for both the media and the public.

Here in Manitoba, no formal declarations have been made regarding limited media access to government officials, but it’s difficult to find a political news story that doesn’t include a sentence similar to this one in Monday’s edition of the Free Press: “The health minister’s press secretary later said she was not available to speak to reporters after question period.”

Accountability is an essential element of politics. Seeking to avoid it disserves democracy.

While the times and media landscape have changed in the last 30 years, the public’s tolerance for insult most decidedly has not. Ms. Smith might be well served by a reminder of what befell federal Conservative party leader Kim Campbell in 1993 after she declared an election campaign was “not the time… to get involved in a debate on very, very serious issues.”

Voters got the message, and replied with one of their own. Her party was all but wiped off the political map, losing 154 of its 156 seats in the House of Commons.

Were Ms. Smith to ask herself why this is an opportune moment to treat the voters of Alberta with something other than disdain, perhaps this might be the answer at which she’d arrive:

It’s an election, that’s why.