Alberta Premier Smith faces second challenge from caucus member in less than a week

Backbencher Scott Sinclair, in a weekend statement on social media, said he won’t support the budget, citing its projected multibillion-dollar deficits and money for big cities while the rural areas are left wanting.

Sinclair, who represents the rural constituency of Lesser Slave Lake, wrote Saturday, “I don’t know who (the budget is) meant to serve, but it certainly isn’t for me, my family, my friends or my constituents.”

He couldn’t be immediately reached for an interview.

Last week, Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie quit Smith’s cabinet to sit on the back bench, citing concerns with government-wide contracting processes amid an ongoing scandal involving high-level political pressure in overpriced multimillion-dollar private surgery contracts.

The proposed budget tabled by Finance Minister Nate Horner last week forecasts a $5.2-billion deficit this year and multibillion-dollar deficits expected for at least the two years after that.

Key services like education and health care are seeing funding increases but less than the rate of population growth and inflation.

Sinclair wrote that he finds years of potential deficits tough to stomach.

He said he’s “furious” at the amount of money pledged for Alberta’s two major cities, including more than $100 million to fund a new event space near the Edmonton Oilers’ downtown arena and to demolish the team’s old facility.

“If the government insists on running multiple deficits (which I strongly oppose), then I would expect to see real investments in one-time infrastructure projects for northern Alberta — fixing our roads, bridges, building new schools, and upgrading regional airports,” he wrote.

“Health care in northern Alberta has hit rock bottom, and while I hear about positive changes happening elsewhere, they aren’t happening here.”

Smith, in a statement, said they are investing in rural areas and in the north, adding, “We will continue working with all our MLAs, including MLA Scott Sinclair, to ensure that we are meeting the needs of all Albertans.”

Political scientist Lisa Young says it’s hard to know if Smith is facing a growing caucus revolt or whether Sinclair and Guthrie are outliers given they are pushing back over different issues.

The stakes are high in budget votes.

Under parliamentary convention, the budget is considered a confidence motion. If a government cannot pass it, it’s expected to resign or seek a dissolution of the house.

Many more United Conservative members would have to threaten to vote against the budget to put Smith’s majority government at risk, as the UCP holds a 12-seat majority in the 87-seat house.

Young, with the University of Calgary, said she doubts Smith would let it come to that. “She would backtrack … and come back with a budget that was acceptable to her caucus,” Young said.

Francesca Ward, the mayor of Slave Lake in Sinclair’s riding, says she and the rest of town council echo his concerns.

“I fail to see the logic between having a provincial budget that is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tear down an arena when we can’t have a highway maintained, and we can’t keep our (emergency room) open,” she said in an interview.

Ward said Highway 88 connecting her town to the hamlet of Fort Vermilion to the north is not just a case of maintenance but of fundamental safety.

“Not to be dramatic, but it (the highway) is costing lives now,” she said. “It needs more than asphalt being topped on the surface. It needs passing lanes (and) it needs shoulder widening.”

Ward also backed up Sinclair’s concerns about rural health care, saying the emergency room at the Slave Lake hospital was closed at least twice in the past year due to low staffing levels.

“We’re asking for basic rights that Albertans in cities get to experience,” she said.

The government’s budget does pledge some capital spending over the next three years to address rural health care in the north, such as $189 million to replace the Beaverlodge Health Centre and $80 million for the community health centre in La Crete. Both facilities are 350 kilometres away from the town of Slave Lake.

Christina Gray, who leads the Official NDP Opposition in the house, said Sinclair’s comments suggest a bigger problem for Smith.

“It’s unprecedented for a government MLA to criticize the budget their own colleagues have tabled,” wrote Gray.

“What the budget does seem to provide is division within the UCP caucus and even more UCP MLAs standing up to the premier.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 3, 2025.