Danielle Smith became Alberta's premier with the support of her party's right wing. Is her job now at risk because of it?

Depending on who you ask, it’s been a bewildering rise for a conspiracy-curious former radio host viewed, according to recent polling, with skepticism by the majority of city dwellers, or a redemption story for the ages for a grassroots politician many wrote off a decade ago.

So when she faces her next vote next week, it will be her fourth trial-by-voter in just two years. But this will be a test of a different kind. If she clears this hurdle, it’s open road, theoretically, until the next election. But she’s not facing four-and-a-half million Albertans, or even the 85,000 members who voted in the leadership race. Instead, it’ll be a leadership review by the roughly 6,000 people who are passionate enough — and arguably, ideological enough — to make the drive to the annual general meeting happening Nov. 1 and 2. Not to mention, Alberta conservatives have a history of eating their own. (Just ask Kenney.)

Her supporters argue that the famously affable Smith has done a good job of getting both her caucus critics and regular Albertans on board, and will have no issue getting the 50 per cent approval rating required to keep her job. Her cabinet is bigger than Kenney’s and, raising eyebrows among some conservatives, she’s increased government spending more in two years than Notley did over a full term. She’s also sparred plenty with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and made good on pledges to begin to dismantle the central health authority, introduce forced recovery for people with severe drug addictions, and targeted public safety fears by putting ankle monitors on high-risk offenders.

“I think ultimately she’ll be successful,” said Erika Barootes, a former Smith staffer and past UCP president. “Regardless of that number, she will hear from the membership and do everything in her power to continue to show that she’s listening and that she’s going to do the best job she can.”

But other observers argue her rise to power has been dependent on a wing of the party that is further to the right and more extreme than most Albertans are used to. It’s this group, so the logic goes, that Smith must now keep happy.

“She’s worried,” said Duane Bratt, a professor of political science at Mount Royal University in Calgary. As evidence, he points to the series of party-member-only meetings Smith held in small towns over the summer, or the more right-leaning policy proposals that he argues are designed to appease the right-leaning wing of the party responsible for putting Smith in the top job. Think the proposed restrictions on health care for transgender youth, or the push to enshrine the rights of gun owners in a newly updated Alberta Bill of Rights.

Just a few weeks ago, Jennifer Johnson, the MLA who was not allowed to sit in caucus after she was discovered to have compared transgender students in schools to having a batch of cookies with “a little bit of poop” mixed in, was readmitted. (On social media, she apologized for using an “inappropriate analogy” and said “all children working through gender identity issues” are “cared for, valued and respected.”) 

Among the many quirks of Alberta politics is that voters tend to be ideologically loyal — this is the province that voted in Progressive Conservative governments for 44 years straight — but tough on leaders. To that end, recent premiers have tended to get booted out not by the general public during elections, but by their angriest internal critics. Sometimes, but not always, that involves a performance review. 

Most parties conduct regular performance reviews of their leaders, but many — including the federal Liberals and Conservatives — tend to reserve them for after an election loss. Not so in this prairie province. “Alberta has always been a laboratory for, let’s say, enthusiasm for democratic principles,” said Evan Menzies, a former director of communications for the UCP and now a vice-president with Crestview Strategy in Calgary. Keeping the leader accountable to membership has always been important across the conservative political spectrum here, he added. 

The rules of the United Conservatives state that the leader’s performance must be put to the test at every third annual meeting. While the process is skipped during election years, sitting premiers are otherwise fair game. An approval rating less than 50 per cent automatically triggers a race to find a new leader, although most leaders aim somewhat higher. Kenney squeaked through his last review with just shy of 52 per cent, only to take the stage and announce to the stunned crowd that he would step down anyway.

Caucus turmoil isn’t a new problem for the Alberta right wing. Before Kenney, the last conservative leader to win an election in Alberta was Alison Redford in 2012; she was the province’s first female premier and leader of the Progressive Conservatives, one of the parties that would eventually fold into the UCP. She got a respectable 77 per cent in her leadership review, only to resign after being caught up in a spending scandal over, among other things, her plans for a new luxury penthouse apartment dubbed the “sky palace,” forever earning a space in Alberta political lore. Before her, Ed Stelmach got what was then the largest mandate ever for a first-time Alberta premier and passed a leadership review only to also get bogged down by controversial spending and caucus discontent before also resigning. 

Even Ralph Klein — a charismatic and often-lionized premier who led the PCs to victory in 1993 — got only 55 per cent in his last review, which also helped end his political career. 

The pandemic has arguably made it even tougher to keep the right side of the spectrum banded together. Much attention has focused on a group called Take Back Alberta, a grassroots collection of freedom advocates, convoy supporters and vaccine critics that was founded in the wake of the pandemic and has been credited with helping turn out enough voters to help take down Kenney.

A former federal cabinet minister, he had led the party he’d help cobble together from across the conservative spectrum to a majority victory three years earlier, but had faced severe criticism from within his own party over pandemic measures. (In a audio recording leaked to media ahead of the vote, Kenney was heard saying that the mainstream conservatives in the party were under siege from those with extreme or bigoted views: “The lunatics are trying to take over the asylum.”)

Take Back Alberta’s relationship with Smith is debated — some have speculated that the group has significant pull over the premier, while Smith herself has worked to distance herself from leader David Parker. But the group nonetheless now controls many of the UCP board seats, and observers wonder if their organizing prowess extends to pushing Smith out. It’s not the only group of far-right activists out there, either.

Their influence can be seen in the list of policy resolutions that will be debated at the meeting, Bratt argues. While annual general meetings of political parties tend to lean in ideological directions that don’t automatically become official policy, the UCP list this time around gives a glimpse of what the party’s base is interested in, he says. It includes resolutions for the party to abandon net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets — “the earth needs more CO2 to support life” — acknowledge only two genders on government forms, and ensure transgender health care is not publicly funded.

Some have wondered about Smith’s own beliefs, such as when she was recently asked about chemtrails — a reference to a conspiracy theory that someone is spraying the sky with chemicals for nefarious reasons — at a recent town-hall meeting.

In a video from the event, the premier is shown saying that she’d asked, and no one was allowed to go up and spray, before then noting that someone had told her it might be linked to the American government and, if so, she might not be able to investigate. “I have some limitations in what I can do in my job,” she said. It was an exchange that horrified critics, who felt Smith was giving fodder to a false narrative without any evidence.

But what people miss about Smith is the curiosity, openness and lack of pretence that made her a successful radio host, says Barootes, the former staffer who now co-hosts a politics podcast called “The Discourse.” (After Smith won the UCP leadership, her caucus donned coveralls to play paintball at a retreat, and Smith was pleased when someone actually nailed her with a glob of paint, Barootes says, taking it as a sign that she was being treated like an equal.) 

When trying to lead a big-tent party — and particularly one that has splintered badly in the past — he says success depends somewhat on being open to a very wide range of issues. “When the critics are like, ‘She’s only catering to this group,’ that, to me, is unfair, because some other people in society wouldn’t give those people the same equal respect that they deserve as a human being.”

Still, given the history, the Alberta conservative movement has been enjoying its “greatest period of peacetime in quite a while,” said Menzies. Promised polices are rolling out and the economy is humming, which brings with it a sense of “let’s not shake the boat,” he said. (Party unity may also be reinforced by the knowledge that the UCP must inevitably face newly minted NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, the outspoken former mayor of Calgary, who has made no bones about being on a collision course with Smith.)

Still, “there is a constant risk,” he added. “That’s why we’re talking today about small factions within the party trying to create noise, and so the premier has to keep her eye on the ball.”

First there’s the question of whether Smith will pass her leadership review. While her supporters say they’re confident, a less-than-decisive endorsement — say, less than 70 per cent — could still open her up to considerable opposition, Bratt says. Then there’s the fact that even if she’s successful, she will eventually have to pivot back to the rest of the province.

After she won the UCP leadership, Smith immediately pivoted to talking less about guns and vaccines and more about her middle-of-the-road policies on things like public safety and health care. Bratt says that change in focus may be tough to do a second time, if winning a leadership review by a few thousand party faithful comes at the cost of alienating several million Albertans. 

“I think the bigger challenge for Smith is not getting through the race, but what happens after.”