When the pivot spirals out of control
What a day she had.
Before being sworn in, Premier Danielle Smith went on Ryan Jesperson’s Real Talk podcast where she spoke about how she would have handled the pandemic. She spoke positively about the Great Barrington Declaration, a document released in fall of 2020 that advocated dropping all pandemic-related restrictions and letting individuals manage their own risks. (You can read Deena Hinshaw’s 2020 commentary on the GBD here). And went on to suggest that Sweden and — wait for it — Florida were models Alberta should have emulated. (At Florida’s death rate of 379/100,000, Alberta would be at about 17,000 COVID deaths by now).
After being sworn in, Smith held a news conference.
There, the pivot was in full view. The Alberta Sovereignty Act had been transformed overnight from a tiger to a pussycat. The rule of law will be respected! We must respect the rulings of the Supreme Court, even if we don’t like them! In short, whatever Act is eventually introduced will be palatable to Smith’s critics in caucus.
But then she kept answering questions.
Channeling her inner Donald Trump, she announced that Deena Hinshaw would be replaced as Chief Medical Officer of Health. And the leadership of AHS and Alberta Health would also be gone.
And then, on day 1, she made a comment that will haunt her: the unvaccinated are the “most discriminated against group” she has ever witnessed in her lifetime.
There will be at least three lasting consequences of this press conference:
First, her credibility with part of her base is now in question. Those drawn to her campaign by her COVID-related stances will be satisfied, but supporters focused on the Sovereignty Act will surely resent the immediate bait-and-switch.
Second, she has just made it significantly more difficult to recruit competent leaders to AHS and the Ministry of Health. The job of the search consultant working to support recruitment of an outstanding leader for AHS just got much harder, as leading candidates reconsider whether they want to work in a province where they might be fired by tweet by a premier enamored by pseudo-science.
Third, Smith has now given every Albertan who is a member of a group that has experienced discrimination reason to question her judgement. Her decision to include an advisor on Indigenous relations on her transition team was a positive signal; but how should Indigenous people view this initiative knowing that she thinks the unvaccinated suffered worse discrimination than people whose families were torn apart and subjected to unspeakable abuse for generations in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society?
While Smith might have silenced her critics within the caucus with her pivot on the Sovereignty Act, her out-of-control spiral in the press conference must have some UCP MLAs thinking carefully about whether they are willing to run in 2023 with her as leader.