Danielle Smith has been roasted in the press recently based on her opposition to vaccine mandates and her opposition to federalist policies on climate change and resource development. Her policies however reflect the mindset of as lot of Albertans. When the Kenney government released vaccines for the public, the vaccination rate rolled off at about 70% of the population as a whole. In one municipality I remember the vaccination rate being closer to 30%. Both the Kenney government and the Trudeau government promoted the vaccines but a much larger portion of the population rejected them than anyone could have imagined pre pandemic. In the Delta wave of the pandemic, deaths and hospitalizations were primarily among the unvaccinated in Alberta, as most other places.
When I was in public school, we all got vaccinated at the school, likely for measles, mumps, and rubella. Only one family at the time refused to sign the consent form because they were Jehovah Witness adherents. This was in a time when the failure of live polio vaccines actually spread the disease to a portion of the population. Our parents or grand parents self evidently trusted medical system to make these decisions on our behalf. Between then and today there has been skepticism promoted against “Big Pharma” and a background anti vaccine narrative. My father was a pharmacist and my own opinion on the industry is that virtually all medicines have some risks but statistically you are better off with them than without. In the case of Covid vaccines, I was in a demographic that was particularly at risk. There was a narrative in the press however that the vaccine was “completely safe” but at the place where I got the vaccine you had to wait for 15 minutes in case you had an allergic reaction to the completely safe vaccine. If you want to develop an anti vaccine narrative there is more than enough ammunition on the internet.
Danielle herself has been vaccinated, although not with the MRNA vaccines obtained through the Canadian medical system which she went through a bunch of inconvenience to avoid. She is therefore not quite the lunatic fringe but Western Canada has more fringe than a psychic convention.
With respect to the rabid reaction to federalism, Alberta has gone from the frying pan into the fire. Jason Kenney, Smiths predecessor, was no friend of the Liberals. In fact Alberta and Saskatchewan have been Liberal deniers for decades, so Smith just continues a long history of railing at Ottawa. As a political target, the Liberals are a favourite piñata. Those disaffected with right of centre politics in Alberta have even bypassed them to vote NDP. The GTA however, like a huge political black hole, sucks power away from the west and really does not give a flying fig about what Alberta and Saskatchewan think.
Central to this discussion is the oil and gas industry. Before the Liberals started in on their climate change plans, the disaffection with the east was at a slow boil but it quickly stepped into high gear with the cancellation of pipelines and increased industrial interference. Does the federal policy towards climate change deserve the panic? 65% of Alberta’s exports are oil and gas and a large portion of Saskatchewan’s are too. This means that if replacement industries cannot be found for oil and gas, the green house gas emission targets that the federal government has for these provinces will result in a slow death. The GHG reduction achieved for shutting down the oil sands would also be insignificant on a global scale. This happens four decades after a federal Liberal government decided to nationalize a portion of the Canadian Oil and Gas industry. There are therefore more than enough reasons to panic given the history Alberta has with Liberal governments. Scott Moe, PM for Saskatchewan, is naturally on side.
Whether Smith can actually bend the Liberals to her way of thinking may not be possible under the constitution but any Albertan who understands their self interest can hardly blame her for trying. The real issue is how you sell the rest of the country on a different agenda for climate change. Quebec politics has trended heavily on the enviro activist side having dabbled in wind turbines, shutting down oil and gas development, and rejecting nuclear power. Meanwhile they are exporting surplus hydro to the north east US. Clearly Quebec has fewer issues going green. The exports of oil and gas to the US however help the Canadian dollar and shift equalization so Quebec is still a net beneficiary of the oil and gas industry although politically they court the green vote. Ontario has found out the hard way that being green can be expensive. In Ontario, after an initial push to solar and wind power by the Liberals, the PCs have had to opt for nuclear power upgrades to keep the lights on. Similarly, BC had an early flirtation with wind and solar power before opting for more hydro which ended up costing a lot more than anticipated. In the end, paradoxically, the only really affordable wind power in Canada was produced by a temporary NDP government in Alberta, although Conservative governments before that had pilot programs.
Danielle Smith and Alberta therefore have a federal government problem.