Alberta Premier Danielle Smith addresses United Conservative Party members at 2024’s annual general meeting in Red Deer.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will likely walk into this weekend’s United Conservative Party annual convention basking in the afterglow of a new energy accord with the federal government.
But the proverbial good vibes may not last at the Edmonton gathering for a Premier who is facing growing pressure from all sides.
While some critics to her left point to her plans to dramatically reshape health care by relying more heavily on a hybrid public-private model, it has been her invocation of the notwithstanding clause – first to force striking teachers back to work, and again to protect her legislation affecting transgender and gender-diverse residents – that has ruffled the most feathers. All of these decisions have led to 14 of her MLAs facing citizen-initiated recall efforts to oust them from office.
This weekend’s gathering, however, will happen under a bubbling strain of separatism among the party faithful. Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump began musing about Canada becoming the 51st state a year ago, Alberta’s independence movement has been galvanized.
And while Ms. Smith has not disavowed the separatist movement, she remains steadfast that a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada is the best approach.
“We are not a separatist party. We are not an independence party. We are a party that believes at this point in time that Alberta belongs in Canada,” UCP president Rob Smith said in an interview.
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The Premier’s leadership is not under the spotlight at this year’s AGM. But half the UCP’s board seats, including the president’s, are up for election in a vote that could result in the reshaping of the party.
Jeff Rath, a leader of the pro-separation Alberta Prosperity Project, said his primary goal at the convention is to help elect a board “100 per cent in favour of independence.”
“These are people that will not be voting with the Premier to limit discussion at future AGMs or special general meetings dealing with independence,” said Mr. Rath, who added that he lobbied on Ms. Smith’s behalf during her leadership review last year.
Until mid-October, it was expected that a panel would be held on the Friday of the AGM featuring federalist and separatist voices, and one representing the “sovereign Alberta within Canada” model advocated for by the Premier, Mr. Smith said.
The party president, who is no relation to the Premier, was elected in 2023 with the blessing of Take Back Alberta – a network of social conservatives whose rise was largely fuelled by resentment over COVID-19 public-health measures. He championed the idea of the panel shortly after Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals secured a minority government in April.
Mr. Smith said he felt after the federal election that the UCP needed “to crack a pressure valve at our AGM” because of a groundswell of support for separation.
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But at a board meeting on Oct. 21, which the Premier attended by phone, Mr. Smith voted against having the panel, breaking a 7-7 tie. He said he changed his mind because party involvement in any future separation referendum would be detrimental to the independence movement.
“To do something that actually could put asunder the potential positive outcome of an independence vote – knowing that we have a significant number of members in favour of that – that was why I broke the tie the way I did,” he said.
Mr. Smith also said discussing independence could scare off undecided voters in a general election.
The majority governing UCP has begun preparations for a provincial election scheduled for fall 2027 at the latest; the party finalized its regional election strategies earlier this year.
Independence will be an undercurrent that board candidates for party president have called the “elephant in the room” inside the UCP, which was founded eight years ago through a merger between the Alberta Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose Party.
Janet Brown, a pollster in the province, said polling she gathered in May found close to half of UCP voters support the idea of separation, and the highly engaged AGM attendees likely harbour the sentiment in even greater numbers.
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But the Premier has exhibited a knack for managing her base’s expectations while appealing to swing voters, Ms. Brown said: “I did not predict that she’d be able to walk this tightrope as long as she has.”
Alberta’s reception to Ms. Smith’s agreement with Mr. Carney will be a major test of her ability to keep her base and the general electorate happy, she added.
Ms. Smith, when asked at a recent news conference whether she believes there’s room to discuss separation at the AGM, said members will have an opportunity to ask her questions at various open-mic sessions.
The party’s annual convention has become a can’t-miss date for UCP faithful. In excess of 4,000 people have bought tickets to this year’s AGM, according to party officials – second only to last year’s, when more than 6,000 came out for the Premier’s leadership review.
While independence will be absent from the agenda, members will vote on a raft of policy resolutions, including ending public funding for third-trimester abortions, reintroducing coal-fired electricity and banning community water fluoridation. Though these resolutions are non-binding, some resolutions at past meetings were later the basis of legislation.
This weekend, Mr. Smith will face Calgary-Lougheed constituency association president Darrell Komick in the vote for party president. At a UCP candidates’ forum in south Calgary earlier this month, Mr. Komick said he’s running because of the board’s decision to kill the panel discussion on separatism.
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The 17-minute debate at that forum between the two presidential candidates solely revolved around Mr. Smith’s vote to keep the panel discussion off the agenda.
“Without having those conversations … it just kind of builds and builds and builds, and then it blows up,” said Mr. Komick, who spearheaded a party event featuring vaccine-skeptical physicians and another focused on “building a framework for a sovereign Alberta.”
In his debate with Mr. Smith, Mr. Komick lamented that caucus members were not representing the grassroots, arguing that UCP MLAs appear to permit the “creep” of liberal ideas once they’re in government.
Former UCP president Cynthia Moore said in an interview that she’s nervous about this year’s AGM because she believes some board candidates have an outsized view of their function.
“There’s some people who don’t realize that their role is to support the leader, and that’s been difficult,” she said. “It’s been a problem.”
Ms. Moore did not run for re-election in 2023.
“The last thing we need is a party board running around thinking they should have an opinion about what goes on in government caucus and, in some cases, contradicting the leader,” she said, noting her support for the Premier.
“They need to stick to keeping the party strong, the infrastructure strong and fundraising and getting us ready for the next election.”
Tim Hoven, also a former TBA acolyte and current speaker for the Prosperity Project, said many grassroots members felt the decision to nix a separation debate from the schedule has left “a bad taste in people’s mouths.”
“For … a lot of the people who worked very hard to get Danielle elected, separatism is now the important issue. They see that intimately connected to their future prosperity and their future well-being.”