Latest news with #Danielle Smith
CBC
6 days ago
- Politics
- CBC
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith suggests premiers start constitutional talks
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says it could be time for premiers to hold another constitutional convention. At the province's first Alberta Next panel town hall meeting in Red Deer Tuesday evening, the premier gauged the crowd's appetite for getting other premiers together in a room to discuss reopening the constitution. "There is a real appetite to fix some of these things that are just foundational," Smith said near the end of the meeting. Canada hasn't engaged in formal constitutional negotiations since 1992, when the premiers and then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney failed to get Quebec to sign on to the 1982 constitution in the Charlottetown Accord negotiations. The risk of reopening the constitution, Smith said, is that other provinces could attempt to include changes that Albertans may not want. In a conference hall in Red Deer's Westerner Park, a panel of 16 politicians, business leaders, medical professionals and others sat before six Alberta flags, hearing ideas, questions and comments from a crowd of at least 400 people. Up for discussion at the town halls are the potential merits and drawbacks of creating a provincial police service, a provincial pension plan, and assuming more provincial responsibility for tax collection. Organizers showed a series of videos asking attendees questions, such as considering changes to federal transfer arrangements — including equalization — changes to constitutional powers, and potentially withholding social benefits from some immigrants. Smith said the number of sheriffs working in policing roles for a new provincial police service could double in size in the near future. Event emcee and premier's office staffer Bruce McAllister also held impromptu straw polls, asking attendees to raise their hands and hold them up if they supported creating an Alberta pension plan or an Alberta provincial police service. Roughly 80 per cent of the people attending raised their hands in support of both. Several residents, who said they came from Red Deer, Trochu, Sylvan Lake, Stettler and beyond, implored elected officials to act upon the proposals, adding that the government doesn't need to hold referenda to make a decision. Alberta law would require the government to hold a referendum before giving notice to pull out of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). A minority of attendees complained about the panel's videos and online surveys, saying the information is biased in favour of acting on the proposals, blames Ottawa for provincial problems, and fails to consider the cost of such decisions. Some attendees hoping for separation Wade Collinge of Sylvan Lake was among speakers advocating to the panel for the separation of Alberta from Canada. Reopening the constitution to make change is no solution, given the necessity of securing the support of Ontario or Quebec for any change, he said in an interview before the event. "The west will never become equal in Canada, from what I understand, unless we can open the constitution, and opening the constitution is pretty much ironclad shut," said Colligne, who was wearing an Alberta Prosperity Project tank top, and button that said, "Commonwealth of Alberta." The Alberta Prosperity Project is a separatist advocacy group. Bill Tompkins drove an hour from Rocky Mountain House to attend the meeting to hear ideas about the province's future, he said. Tompkins, a separation advocate, likes the idea of a provincial police service and Alberta's own pension plan. He said the federal government interferes too much in Alberta, and uses coercion by attaching conditions to spending federal funds. "I feel that the federal government has mismanaged the taxpayers' money — not only Albertans' but all of them," he said. Attendees asked the panel to limit money flowing to Quebec through equalization, but also suggested emulating Quebec policies, including by holding a referendum on independence, so the rest of Canada takes Alberta's grievances seriously. Smith said Quebec is sitting on a cache of natural gas that it isn't extracting, and that untapped revenue should be factored into Quebec's share of equalization funding. Some speakers pushed back against separatist sentiment, telling the panel that Albertans should be willing to support their fellow Canadians. After the event, Dave Travers, who's from Red Deer, said there was a large far-right wing element to the crowd, and that he doesn't think their sentiments reflect most Albertans' perspectives, as shown by public polling. "Danielle Smith's having a hard time just making her bed. And the house is looking awfully dirty," he said, referring to the struggling health-care system, allegations about mismanagement of health contracts and procurement, and the rapid spread of measles in the province. A few protesters gathered outside the venue, including Cassidy Simone, who said talk of separation ignores the rights of Indigenous people. "I'm really concerned that we're going to forget about Indigenous peoples and all the reconciliation that we have been working toward and trying to achieve within the past year," Simone said. Heather Plaizier, who lives near Sundre, stood outside the venue holding a sign saying, "UCP policies hurt water, wildlife, people." She said she couldn't get a ticket to get inside the event. Plaizier said the panel has shared biased surveys and information. She doesn't feel the members are listening to the public. "I feel like there's kind of a set agenda and it doesn't matter what we say," she said. "I hate to go into a consultation with that expectation, but I would love to see actual consultation happen." A second town-hall panel is scheduled for the Edmonton area on Wednesday evening.
CBC
13-07-2025
- Politics
- CBC
A farmer protested policy at a Danielle Smith town hall. 5 days later, it was paused
Chad Anderson had travelled 90 minutes from his farm near Cremona, Alta., to bend the premier's ear, but it was starting to look futile. He'd come to a town hall with Danielle Smith and Agriculture Minister RJ Sigurdson in Okotoks, an apparent rehearsal of sorts for the Alberta Next panels that kick off next week, with Smith presiding as chair. Last week's Okotoks event was approaching its end, and a too-long lineup of attendees separated Anderson from the question microphone, all of them hoping to plant a seed in the premier's mind. Believing he'd miss his chance, Anderson told others what he wanted to ask about — changes to a farm program that would rein in his farm's licensed but uninspected slaughtering business. They let him jump ahead in line, he recalls. "Last year we sold 30 [head of] beef ... we've done it safely and of the highest quality," Anderson told the July 2 town hall south of Calgary. "Last week I got an email from Alberta Ag effectively cancelling the program," he added, to scattered boos in the crowd. Anderson listened to Sigurdson defend the government's policy change and emphasis on meat safety. But the rancher was struck by the premier sitting quietly next to her minister, glancing over with what Anderson described as a "what's going on?" look. Five days later, on July 7, Alberta Agriculture announced that after hearing farmers' concerns, it would indefinitely pause the limits to on-farm slaughter licenses that it had just brought in. Anderson believes he has the premier to thank for halting the change, even if he can't prove it. "I think it was probably critical to it," he told CBC News in an interview this week. " She cares about small business. She cares about the entrepreneurial spirit." More than three decades after Ralph Klein won his first election as premier on the slogan "He listens. He cares," another Alberta premier has carved out a reputation for hearing Albertans' pleas and then acting on them. The five-day turnaround from town hall complaint to policy bulletin may be a pronounced example of Smith's responsiveness, but she has repeatedly demonstrated this approach to supporters, especially those in the United Conservative base. The premier whose government has banned vote tabulating machines, restricted health care treatments for transgender youth and — just this week — banned books with sexual content in school libraries is also the leader whose party has passed convention resolutions requesting those changes. At last year's UCP annual gathering, Smith even held an "accountability session" to go over every policy resolution the party had made since her leadership, and excitedly shouted "done!" for each of the many requests she had enacted. Tuned in Many Albertans have come to understand or expect this tendency from the premier. During her bi-weekly Your Province, Your Premier radio call-in show, Smith will often ask a caller with a unique pitch to discuss it further off-air with an aide. At a Smith-hosted town hall in Three Hills in June, one woman travelled from 150 kilometres south along with a German doctor friend in tow who'd come to offer theories about the harms of renewable energy installations. The premier urged them to arrange a meeting with her scheduler to hear more. That woman showed up again weeks later at the Okotoks event, to raise alarm about solar and battery projects in the region. Smith recognized her, and recalled that her doctor associate had discussed safety issues. "I've talked with my utilities and affordability minister on that, but I didn't have contact information for you," the premier said, urging the resident to connect with a premier's aide in a white jacket. Not everybody's protests or questions get embraced with the same warmth. Several attendees at the Okotoks meeting came to criticize the Smith government's lifting of the moratorium on new coal mining. Each time, she defended the provincial policy on mining for metallurgical (steel-making) coal. "We need steel. We need solar panels. We need all of the things that get produced from those [mines]," Smith told one questioner. "So we just have to figure out the way to do it that has the minimal impact on the environment." It seemed that night like Anderson's criticism about the on-farm slaughtering policy might also amount to tilting at windmills. Anderson is one of several dozen Alberta farmers who have held an on-farm slaughter operator (OFSO) licence since 2020. It's a pandemic-era program that expanded the ability of small livestock producers to sell live animals to customers and process them on site for the buyers' own consumption — instead of going through a provincially or federally inspected slaughterhouse. There are strict limits that this meat cannot go to any store, restaurant or other business, but the government did not cap the number of cattle, farm, chickens or other livestock a farmer could kill and sell in a year. A new licensing policy that took effect July 2 — the day of that town hall in Okotoks — capped farmers at selling 5,000 pounds of live-weight animal per year. That amounts to around three or four cattle. Farmers slaughtering 30 to 40 bovines without inspection was pushing them toward the scale of small provincial abattoirs, Sigurdson replied to Anderson, the Cremona rancher. "We saw a huge proliferation of offices across the province growing at a rate and processing levels that didn't provide a lot of faith that we're going to be able to maintain that food safety across the entire network," the minister said. He suggested Anderson speak to ministerial aides about getting an abattoir license. Anderson said later he had no interest in the high costs of erecting a specialized building and getting the municipal rezoning and permits, instead of his existing outdoor slaughtering process. He worried the rule would decimate his farm business and others like it around Alberta. "We've done nothing wrong, and then the government effectively cancels the program and sterilizes and strands our investment," Anderson said in an interview. "So I think those are all things that would deeply concern the premier." After his town hall appearance, Anderson worked with other OFSO licensees to arrange a letter-writing and social media campaign. Conservative activists joined in, including separatist movement leader Jeffrey Rath: "Please have everybody tell @ABDanielleSmith and [Smith's chief of staff] what they think about the socialist bureaucrats that they refuse to rein in or fire," he posted online. Anderson first spoke to Smith and Sigurdson on the eve of Thursday's kickoff of the Calgary Stampede, a calendar-busting period for a premier and agriculture minister. But by Monday, Sigurdson announced the OFSO license changes were immediately paused for further consultation, after learning of "unintended consequences" to the viability of some 88 farm businesses. Feedback from several farmers, not just Anderson, prompted the government to reconsider its policy, Sigurdson spokeswoman Darby Crouch said in an email. She did not directly answer when asked if the premier or her office had any input in halting the new slaughter limits. But the premier has made it known that she's got an open mind, especially when it comes to fellow conservatives' concerns or protests. Albertans will get more chances this summer to line up at microphones to offer Smith their ideas. The Alberta Next panel hearings on federal-provincial relations kick off Tuesday in Red Deer — a series of three-hour town halls, chaired by Smith herself. Agriculture issues may be off-topic, but Albertans will find out soon how wide-ranging the policy pitches are, and how persuaded she is by them.
