Looks as if Smith was only bluffing

It was only three months ago that Canadians were rattled by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act. Was Alberta planning to separate? Were we on the cusp of a constitutional crisis? How would it affect the country as we know it?

The UCP were so keen on the Sovereignty Act it was pushed through in the middle of the night only 10 days after it was introduced. “It’s not like Ottawa is a national government,” Smith told the legislative assembly just before members voted.

For Smith, the Sovereignty Act provided ammunition to push back hard at the federal government, especially the Trudeau government, whenever it “intruded” into provincial affairs; to make Alberta more like Quebec.

But now it simply looks like an act to impress her most rabid supporters; the people who supported her in the UCP leadership race after they had ousted premier Jason Kenney because they believed he hadn’t taken on the feds with enough vigour.

But Smith has yet to use the Sovereignty Act and in fact has shied away from confrontations with the federal government. She certainly didn’t resort to it last week when Steven Guilbeault, the federal environment minister, demanded to know why he hadn’t been informed of the leakage of toxic waste water from an oilsands mine tailings pond that started nine months ago and rather than being cleaned up had gotten worse.

Guilbeault found out about it from First Nations in the area who were concerned about the toxic sludge spreading under the land they hunt on and into their water source — the Athabasca River which also flows into rivers in the Northwest Territories

Guilbeault condemned the lack of reporting and strongly suggested Alberta needs a stronger regulatory regime. He and Alberta Environment Minister Sonya Savage met to discuss the situation and agreed to collaborate on seeking a longterm solution for the treatment and remediation of tailings ponds.

So Alberta played nicey, nicey with the feds instead of running them off. Given that one of the main purposes of the Sovereignty Act was to exert more provincial control over environmental policies that impact the oil industry surely this would have been a good test case. Smith obviously thought otherwise.

There are other examples of Smith backing down from promises designed to keep the federal government “in its own lane” as she has often said.

There was no money in the recent budget for an Alberta Police Force which the UCP have been pushing even though the majority of Albertan’s don’t want one. For now, the RCMP, or the federal police, as the UCP likes to call them, will remain in detachments across the province.

The UCP also made a big deal of announcing plans for an act designed to keep federal inspectors from “trespassing” on private land in Alberta. But as far as I know no one stopped the federal environment inspectors from testing water near the tailings pond leak.

Smith also had to drop her pledge to enshrine the rights of the unvaccinated in Alberta’s Human Rights Act. Another failed jab at the federal government and its vaccine mandates.

And she didn’t complain very loudly about the strings attached to the billions of dollars by the federal government for health care; she just took the money.

Some of her staunchest allies are starting to notice.

“I suppose it was inevitable. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s revolutionary new government is showing increasing signs of adapting to the traditional Canadian politics of a more bland, milquetoast centrism,” Derek Fildebrandt wrote recently.

He’s the publisher of the Western Standard an online news site with a definite right-wing slant.

Smith is well aware that she needs the more centrist voters in urban centres, particularly Calgary, if the UCP is going to win the May election.

But of course she could regain that “revolutionary” zeal if the UCP wins the election.

Who knows what would happen then.