Bell: Danielle Smith on top, now to the pull-no-punches main event
Danielle Smith #DanielleSmith
I hate Trudeau as much as you do. I love freedom as much as you do.
Danielle Smith didn’t speak these exact words to this crowd Thursday.
But that’s what she ran on and that’s what she won on and this coming Tuesday she’ll be premier.
It is a hell of a redemption story no matter how you slice it, seven years in the political wilderness, seven years of what she sees as a necessary atonement for letting people down by bailing on them in a notorious floor-crossing.
The vote was down to the wire. Close.
This was far from a first-ballot wipeout.
Two candidates were left standing. Smith 53.8% with Travis Toews, the former budget boss, getting just over 46%.
Now the rough ride begins.
Smith has until May to put the UCP Humpty Dumpty back together again.
She has until May to convince Albertans she is the right one for a job only a slim majority of UCP members have given her.
She has to face off against all the naysayers, including those who will insist she is out to lunch or dangerous or playing only to the most angry.
You will hear these shots again and again and again in the days ahead.
For now, Smith celebrates.
Right off the top she speaks of Alberta’s place in Canada and not asking Ottawa for permission to be prosperous and free.
Smith picks her targets.
“We will not have our voices silenced and censored.” Take that, woke crowd!
“We will not be told what we put in our bodies in order that we may work and travel.” Put away that needle!
“We will not have our resources landlocked or our energy phased out of existence by virtue-signalling prime ministers.”
Justin Trudeau, always Trudeau!
And yes, Smith, for the umpteenth time, speaks of her 2014 defection to the PCs along with other Wildrose politicians.
“It was a mistake in judgment.”
Smith announces fellow UCP leadership candidate Todd Loewen, a man of courage kicked out of the UCP legislature group for daring to speak truth to power, is back in the fold.
She takes a few sentences to thank Premier Jason Kenney, a required part of the speech though he savaged Smith on the campaign trail. Often.
Smith takes a page from the playbook of federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
Crippling inflation, affordability. Ottawa and all its spending fuelling the cost-of-living crisis.
The callousness of the NDP-Liberal coalition in Ottawa tripling the carbon tax.
Red meat for the faithful!
Then she lines up her sights on her biggest target. Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley.
She uncorks her well-worn tag line.
“Albertans want nothing to do with the Notley-Singh-Trudeau alliance of economic destruction.”
She tells the crowd this alliance will lie and say her Sovereignty Act is a move toward separating from Canada.
She tells the crowd Albertans don’t want socialism.
On another hot-button gripe, Smith tells the crowd Alberta Health Services will follow orders, like doubling the number of ICU beds.
“If they can’t do that, then we will find those who can take their place.”
Smith knows she’s got a public record, as a past politician and as a free-wheeling talk-radio host.
She says her opponents will “dredge up old statements and mistakes from the past.”
You can take that to the bank.
She attempts to insulate herself from attack, pointing to cancel culture and fear-mongering.
She pledges to keep the United Conservatives united and not to punish fellow conservatives for the past.
“Now is not the time for settling old scores and rivalries,” adds Smith, talking of “wiping the slate clean.”
In the early days of her quest to be premier, deep-thinkers in the Smith camp didn’t think their triumph would be a lead-pipe cinch.
They thought they had a shot. They thought they could win.
But they knew they had a flawed candidate with a chequered past, a hurdle of history to jump over or plow through. Baggage.
They knew in the last seven years she had been out of elected politics but not out of the public eye or, in this case, in the public ear on the public airwaves.
They knew she had a record her opponents could find without reaching for a magnifying glass.
They knew she said some things others could use as ammo against her.
In the UCP leadership ballot battle, Smith didn’t get a free ride but her rivals did not pull out all the stops. Far from it.
But that won’t happen with Notley and the NDP.
The NDP are locked and loaded with their political ammo.
They’ve been waiting for this day. You can smell it.
Buckle up.
rbell@postmedia.com