UCP Leadership Hopeful Danielle Smith visits Mundare

UCP Leadership Hopeful Danielle Smith visits Mundare

Michelle Pinon - News Advertiser

UCP leadership hopeful Danielle Smith hosted a pancake breakfast at the Mundare Recreation Centre on July 23 with approximately 70 people in attendance.

Smith is no strange to politics and served as Leader of the Wildrose Party before crossing the floor to join the Progressive Conservatives in 2014.

She referenced the lack of trust people have with politicians and said she was partly to blame for that. Referring to her 2014 decision, Smith told the audience, “I know how much I let you down. I do know it was a mistake. I lost my nomination. Jim Prentice lost the election. We ended up with Rachel Notley for four years. I think I was ready for unity of our party faster than the public was, and you can’t push these things, and let people come to their own conclusions.

The things I learned is that you do as a leader have to make sure that you are always representing the grassroots and not say come follow me. You’ve got to bring people along with you. So, that’s part of the reason why I wanted to come back in, to make some amends. I’ll never do that again. I want to come back again because we are in for a fight, and I want to fight for you, and I think I am the best person to do it.

When we talk about unity. It’s not enough to say follow me and we’ll be unified. We have to identify the reasons why we have disunity in our party and in our movement right now.

Part of what I’m seeing is that there’s a real appetite to push back against Ottawa and some frustration that we didn’t do anything with the mandate got in the equalization referendum. So, I have decided to launch my campaign with something Alberta Sovereignty Act.

It says we have a Constitution and Alberta has been given exclusive rights in various areas under sections 92 and 92A under the Constitution, especially the exclusive right to develop our resources. It would also say the Charter of Rights and Freedoms matter and we have an obligation in the province of Alberta to protect the charter rights of our citizens.

And so, if the federal government comes through with policies that violates the Constitution and violates our Charter rights, we will not enforce them, we will push back. That’s what the Alberta Sovereignty Act is all about.”

She touched on reasons for the failure of several major oil and gas and mining projects that have been thwarted by the federal government and Quebec’s role in that. She also spoke about the creation of economic corridors to give Alberta the ability to get its products to market.

Smith said she’d work with First Nations to build a new highway, broadband, internet,infrastructure, and bring clean drinking water, electricity, heating and biodiesel going up to northern communities. She proposed building energy infrastructure for oil and gas pipelines to Churchill, MB and to create opportunities to expand to Thunder Bay and to the Great Lakes system to Tuktoyaktuk and port of Prince Rupert.

She made it clear her three priorities would be not to have lockdowns in the fall, not to have mandatory vaccinations and to get hospitals to perform better. Smith is proposing a facility audit for all the hospitals in the province. She also wants health spending accounts put in place and to address such issues as chronic health conditions, transition facilities for seniors waiting for permanent placement in long term care and having teams of paramedics in place at hospitals to care for patients so ambulances can return to their home communities.

“We have to get back to making local decisions, local communities, local oversight and we’ll get better services overall.”