I can't even...

My plan was to write only one newsletter this week.

I thought about devoting one to what on earth might have convinced Rachel Notley it was a good plan to agree with Danielle Smith that the federal government’s ‘just transition’ plan was bad. But I restrained myself.

This afternoon broke my resolve, though. You know it’s bad when your Laurentian Elite friends start texting to ask if you have a ‘go bag’ packed if you need to escape the province. And they’re not entirely joking!

So let’s start with the COVID inquiry. Here’s an issue I agree with Premier Smith on: Alberta absolutely needs to look at its COVID response and reflect on what went wrong.

But that’s where our paths diverge. I think we need an inquiry that asks first and foremost whether 5400 deaths (and counting) from COVID was too many. Whether it was sound public policy to allow COVID to circulate at a higher rate than in the rest of Canada. And how to build social cohesion during a public health emergency.

(Source: my chapter in the forthcoming Blue Storm edited volume - on shelves soon!)

The terms of reference for Smith’s panel mention “mental health” three times. And a big fat zero for the terms “death” “fatality” or “disability.”

And Manning as panel chair. He spent the fall trying to get a “citizens’ inquiry” into the pandemic off the ground. And wrote to the federal justice Minister two years ago to demand that he “take the lead in balancing our COVID response with the rights and freedoms that are enumerated in the charter.” Hardly the impartial figure we might hope for.

But wait, there’s more!

I was barely done being irked about this when the CBC’s Megan Grant and Elise von Scheel broke this doozy of a story. The Premier hadn’t contacted crown prosecutors, but “a staffer in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's office sent a series of emails to the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, challenging prosecutors' assessment and direction on cases stemming from the Coutts border blockades and protests.”

And so, the news for the next few days will be focused on asking whether the Premier directed the staffer to do this. Whether she was aware of this. Whether the staffer is still employed in her office. Why? Because this stinks of political interference in the administration of justice.

What’s next?

Honestly, who knows.

There’s one wing of the governing party that’s delighted at the day’s events. They’ve got Manning set up to give a thin veneer of respectability to the view that more Albertans should have died during the pandemic. And it turns out that their Premier was trying to live up to her promise to make things right for the anti-mandate protesters.

But there’s another wing of the party that knows that the election is only four months away, that public opinion is not with Smith on COVID and that Calgary voters might not shrug away the improper actions by the Premier’s office.

Will there be a caucus revolt? Possible, but not probable. Taking down the leader four months before an election is a tricky proposition, and lends credibility to the assertion that the party’s internal chaos makes it unfit to govern. More likely: demands from caucus that some of the premier’s advisors be fired. But if that demand is made and met, there will be danger of revolt from the Take Back Alberta folks who are taking over the machinery of the party organization.

What a province.