Last night’s Alberta Next town hall ‘couldn’t have been more contrived if it were a one-star Fringe show’
There’s no way Danielle Smith’s ‘Alberta Next’ roadshow can be described as a public consultation
Despite the United Conservative Party’s best efforts to do so, there’s no way Premier Danielle Smith’s “Alberta Next” travelling townhall tour can be described as a public consultation on this province’s role in Canada.
At best, it’s a pre-campaign roadshow intended to distract from several major embarrassments dogging Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party Government in advance of the early election most political watchers expect the UCP to call next spring before the fledgling Progressive Conservative 2.0 party can get off the ground.
These range from this province’s galloping measles epidemic, to ongoing destruction of public health care, to plans to level a Rocky Mountain or two to enrich an Australian billionaire, to the metastasizing dodgy contracts scandal.
At worst, it’s a shameless effort to shove sovereignty-association, outright separation, or U.S. annexation down the throats of Albertans and other Canadians.
Judging from witness accounts of the “Sherwood Park/Edmonton” separatist snake oil show in an east-side Edmonton hotel ballroom last night, it’s much closer to the latter than the former.
As Premier Smith said in her introduction – in what had to be a huge Freudian slip – “If Alberta is to be a strong and unified country, it has to include a strong and sovereign Alberta.” That threat would have carried more punch, it is said here, had she remembered to say “Canada” where her talking points called for it.
“It couldn’t have been more contrived if it were a one-star Fringe show,” observed Public Interest Alberta Executive Director Bradley Lafortune, who managed to slip into the meeting on a ticket ordered by a UCP member critical of the premier’s separatist antics.
“It would be funny, but it’s not just bad theatre,” he continued. “It’s refined propaganda designed to manufacture consent for Smith’s fascistic agenda.”
That said, unlike reports emanating from the first stop on Ms. Smith’s separation tour in Red Deer the night before, it sounds as if plenty of loyal Canadians were in the crowd in spite of the UCP’s obvious efforts to pack the meeting with supporters and separatists. (UCP members got advance notice, seats were limited, and, as Mr. Lafortune put it, “the room was virtually hand-picked by the Premier’s Office.”)
Every politically alert Albertan understands, of course, that everything about these contrived events – three more are scheduled in August and another five in September – including the panel’s deeply flawed push polls will be used as evidence of support for Ms. Smith’s dangerous plans.
A useful live-tweet thread by freelance journalist Lily Polenchuk, former editor of the University of Alberta Gateway student newspaper, provides a good sense of how the meeting progressed, including the way moderator Bruce McAllister of the Premier’s Office staff ignored a request for a land acknowledgement and then chided audience members who’d applauded the request. For those with the patience to sit through nearly three hours of video, you can watch the performance for yourself on YouTube.
Audience members had to watch each of the Alberta Next Panel’s propaganda videos before getting to questions on the topic areas, and by the sound of Ms. Polenchuk’s report, the premier sloughed off or dodged unsympathetic queries – for example, promising to get back to Mr. Lafortune’s question about the cost of an Alberta tax-revenue agency and then conveniently forgetting.
Most of the panel members at the event were not called upon by the premier to respond to many questions. University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe, in the role of a respectable intellectual fig leaf for the road show’s separatist propaganda, was trotted out several times, however.
“It’s too bad that many smart and dedicated Albertans like Trevor Tombe are allowing themselves to be used this way,” Mr. Lafortune observed. “The sooner this show run ends the better. It’s an insult to the intelligence of Albertans and of any real democratic process.”
Upcoming in-person town halls are scheduled in Edmonton (Aug. 14), Fort McMurray (Aug. 26), Lloydminster (Aug. 27), Medicine Hat (Sept. 2), Lethbridge (Sept. 11), Airdrie (Sept. 15), Grande Prairie (Sept. 17) and Calgary (Sept. 29). Online registration opens two weeks in advance and seats are bound to be limited and their occupants curated in those locations too.