Watching Danielle Smith switch back and forth from striving to get her party’s large contingent of separatists to settle down to trying to keep severely normal Albertans who want no part of separation on side is enough to give you whiplash.
It’s starting to feel like we’re watching a really fast game of tennis while sitting too close to the centre line of the court.
And speaking of courts, Thursday the Alberta government sent its legal help off to the Edmonton courthouse to file an appeal of the May 13 decision by Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard that tossed the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project/Stay Free Alberta referendum question on the grounds the province had failed in its duty to consult with First Nations about the impact of secession.
For all intents and purposes, Justice Leonard’s ruling siding with First Nations that challenged the referendum process put the SFA pro-separation question, which has been championed by Smith from the get-go, on ice not long after its organizers submitted petition sheets they claimed contained more than 300,000 signatures to Elections Alberta.
So while Smith had just got finished infuriating her party’s aggressive separatist rump by admitting that turning Alberta into an independent country would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars” and promising to fully cost out that sum by August, she’s now going to throw a bone to the same faction by wasting more time and money appealing Justice Leonard’s decision.
The Alberta appeal claims Justice Leonard made 14 errors in her ruling, The Canadian Press reported. I’m no lawyer, but this seems extremely unlikely. But, whatever, it might only require the appeal court to find one to send the whole thing off to the Supreme Court at enormous additional expense to the taxpayers of Alberta.
The government, taking the side of the separatists again, argued Justice Leonard “misinterpreted provisions of a bill passed in December that allowed the separatist group behind the petition to reapply after its first application was hung up in court,” the CP reporter explained.
Significantly, there was no official press release on this from the government, which presumably doesn’t want to put the impression it’s trying to create for the separatists in black and white on a sheet of paper where other voters might see it.
The government also argues that the whole thing should be considered moot anyway because next October’s referendum won’t be binding, even though it could lead directly to a binding separation vote. Or something.
Readers are advised not to get too tied in knots by this. The smart money suggests that the UCP is happy to use taxpayers’ money to prolong this fight and generate some good PR for the party’s anti-Canadian base and, as an added benefit, stave off the danger and embarrassment of separatist constituency associations trying to remove Smith as party leader.
Given the mood of the seppies, as this crowd is coming to be known here in Wild Rose Country, this seems unlikely. But, as they say, any old port in a storm!
Chief Allan Adam of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, one of the groups that challenged petition, asked CP’s reporter: “Hasn’t Danielle Smith been running around lately saying she’s Captain Canada? Now she wants to support the separatists again? It’s hard to tell whose best interests she has at heart. I’m not sure she knows herself.”
This is a good question. It sounds as if Chief Adam was being polite, though. Smith has her own best interests at heart and she’s painted herself into a corner with this foolish, dangerous and increasingly unpopular referendum.
Alberta’s premier is known to be a skilled gas-lighter and has talked herself out of tight corners before, but the obvious contradictions and risks of her separation strategy may be contributing to her declining popularity.
“Smith’s approval falls drops to an all-time low at 39 per cent after weeks of controversy over her government’s plan to hold an October referendum related to Alberta’s place in Canada,” the Angus Reid Institute said in its periodic popularity poll of nine of Canada’s 10 provincial premiers. (ARI always ignores P.E.I., which is darned poor form even if the place isn’t much more populous than Red Deer or Lethbridge.)
To give Ms. Smith her due, at 39 per cent she’s still doing slightly better in the Reid survey than Nova Scotia Conservative Tim Houston (34 per cent), B.C. New Democrat David Eby (31 per cent), and Ontario Conservative Doug Ford (a pathetic 21 per cent).
