UCP leader and premier-designate Danielle Smith spoke at Jeffries Park on Saturday afternoon as she announced she will be seeking election in the Brooks-Medicine Hat constituency.--NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Danielle Smith made the first of what she hopes is many trips on Saturday from her home in High River to Medicine Hat.
The UCP leader and premier designate was at Jeffries Park announcing she will seek the southeastern seat of Brooks-Medicine Hat in a byelection. The move came with no surprise after Brooks-Medicine Hat legislature member Michaela Frey, who had earlier declared she did not intend to run in the 2023 provincial election, resigned her seat Friday.
If successful in the byelection, Smith says she will be making frequent trips to the Brooks-Medicine Hat area and will host town halls to ensure she stays in touch with constituents.
“I know that our rural ridings didn’t feel like they had the strongest voice at the table during the last years of the COVID pandemic,” Smith said while announcing her intention to run for the seat. “I hope this sends a signal not only to the residents of Brooks-Medicine Hat, but to the residents of all rural Alberta, that their voice will be heard, it will be prominent and it will be respected.”
Frey said she was proud to have served the riding and would support Smith in any way she could.
“We need somebody who understands that rural Alberta needs to be treated fairly. We need someone who understands that Alberta needs a strong place in Confederation, and without a strong Alberta, there is no strong Canada,” Frey said.
Smith won the leadership of the United Conservative Party on Thursday and set up the announcement in Medicine Hat days later and will be sworn in as Alberta’s 19th premier today.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office issued a statement Saturday saying he’d spoken with Smith on Friday to congratulate her on the leadership victory and to “discuss key areas for cooperation.”
The statement said the two discussed “energy and climate change, and opportunities for Alberta and Canada to become reliable sources of energy and natural resources in a net-zero world.”
Smith has said she plans to take the federal carbon tax back to the Supreme Court, after it ruled just last year that the policy is constitutional. When asked about the CO2 and hydrogen projects on the go by the City of Medicine Hat and the private sector to address the carbon levy, she said the projects should continue as she takes issue with the carbon tax on retail customers.
“… 90 per cent of our power grid is fuelled by natural gas and almost all of our home heating is fuelled by natural gas – the cost associated with trying to switch away from that is extraordinary, Smith said. “We’ve seen already a spike in power bills and we’ve seen unaffordable spike in heating bills that happened in the winter months of the year, it is creating real hardship for our seniors and for those on fixed incomes. So it’s going to be a priority for us to address that.”
She also spoke about her first priorities being the twinning of Highway 3, linear assessment and addressing the “severe mental health, homelessness and addiction problem” in Medicine Hat.
Smith also said she would be meeting later in the day with Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes, who was kicked out of caucus and has been sitting as an independent for criticizing outgoing premier and UCP leader Jason Kenney.
“I’m very hopeful that we can welcome Drew Barnes back into the UCP family, we are the United Conservative Party after all,” Smith said.
Smith said Saturday she would not be calling a byelection in Calgary-Elbow, suggesting there’s a convention that byelections aren’t needed if a general election is less than a year away.
“There may be other candidates who are also stepping away, and so I think that rather than have a rolling series of byelections, we may as well just stick with the convention of having the adjacent MLA take care of the issues in the riding and we’ll stick with the fixed election date of May 29,” said Smith.
Calgary-Elbow was once the seat of former premier Ralph Klein and was won by Schweitzer in 2019 with over 44 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the nearest challenger, Janet Eremenko of the NDP, at just over 23 per cent.
Frey won Brooks-Medicine Hat in 2019 with just over 60 per cent of the vote.
Alberta Party leader and former Brooks mayor Barry Morishita will run in the byelection, as will newly selected NDP candidate and retired teacher Gwendoline Dirk.
— with files from the Canadian Press
