Who’s Really Pulling Danielle Smith’s Strings, Asks Notley

It’s hard to imagine David Parker, founder and de facto leader of the Take Back Alberta political action committee, was very happy to hear Opposition Leader Rachel Notley signal clearly last week that the NDP considers his group a legitimate target in the election campaign already unofficially underway.

In Grande Prairie to speak with supporters and media, Notley called on Premier Danielle Smith to make it clear just how much she agrees with views of radical preacher Artur Pawlowski and “the very extremist views advanced by her key support group, Take Back Alberta.”

Parker, who has been called “the power behind the throne” on which Smith now sits uneasily, has bragged about forcing former United Conservative Party premier Jason Kenney out of his job.

The far-right Take Back Alberta, registered with Elections Alberta as a third-party advertiser, is actively seeking to dominate UCP constituency associations throughout the province.

It now controls half the party’s governing board positions and is bound to try to seize control of the remaining nine board seats when it gets the chance.

“Albertans deserve to know whether they are on the verge of selecting a premier whose views are deeply extreme and offside with the opinions of the vast majority of Albertans,” Notley said during the news conference, in response to a question from Dean Bennett of the Canadian Press.

“She has to stop slipping and sliding and ducking and diving and changing her story every day,” the former Alberta premier continued. “Albertans deserve better from someone who is seeking to lead the province.”

“A number of the view espoused by Art Pawlowski as well as many of the folks within Take Back Alberta, who support him, who were critical to Danielle Smith becoming leader of the UCP, are very concerning.”

Notley asked, “Which of their extremist views are not acceptable to her, and which ones are? “She needs to speak openly… in very clear detail.”

Referring to the investigation launched April 10 by Alberta ethics commissioner Marguerite Trussler into whether the premier interfered with the administration of justice, Notley added, “I would also like to make the point that it is unprecedented, really, that you’ve got a candidate for premier going into an election who is under the cloud of an ethics investigation, the outcome of which we very possibly will not see until after the election.”

After a couple of stories last month about Take Back Alberta’s efforts to take over UCP constituency associations, media interest appeared to wane, no doubt to the relief of Parker, who has described himself as a sort of “black belt” expert on how political parties run.

Asked for a response to Notley’s comment by the Canadian Press, Parker said, “Power behind the throne? I’m not sure what that means.”

“Does it mean that we are puppet masters? Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m part of a third-party advertiser. I can’t even show up and door knock for a party.”

But Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt, who first described Parker as the power behind the premier’s metaphorical throne, told the Canadian Press “the great insight of David Parker was to take over a party from within.”

In a Postmedia op ed last month, Bratt and Sarah Biggs of Olsen-Biggs Public Affairs warned that “a Take Back Alberta government” would mean a full-blown assault on public education, including attempts to take over local school boards by TBA cadres and legislation to weaken public health measures.

We could also expect a Take Back Alberta government to make good on Smith’s advocacy of an Alberta-autonomy agenda, they wrote — “creating Alberta provincial police to replace RCMP, an Alberta tax collection agency to replace Revenue Canada and an Alberta pension plan by pulling out of the Canada Pension Plan.” Eventually, we might also see “a referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada.”

“This is not hyperbole or fearmongering,” they warned. “These are all statements coming from Take Back Alberta.”

In a March 15 column in the southwestern Alberta community newspaper she owns, Crowsnest Pass Herald publisher and municipal councillor Lisa Sygutek described the takeover of her UCP constituency association by Take Back Alberta.

“I believe in the party, well, the party I used to know and understand, and I must tell you I don’t understand this party anymore,” the lifelong Conservative wrote. The “takeover by the ‘Take Back Alberta’ faction,” she wrote, was bizarre. "There was honestly a sense of extreme hostility in the room. It felt like a coup.”

Before Notley’s news conference in Grande Prairie with the NDP’s Peace River candidate, Liana Paiva, the Opposition leader hammered the credibility of Smith’s claimed Damascene conversion to the benefits of public health care on the eve of an election in which voters are known to be worried about the face of the health-care system.

“Jason Kenney also pledged to support public health care with a cardboard platform,” she said. “And then six months into office, he started talking about firing nurses, delisting health-care services, and then, of course, they ripped up the deal with doctors. All of those changes spurred widespread chaos. And the government actually never even let up on that, even as a global pandemic imposed unprecedented pressure on hospitals and frontline health-care providers.”

“Flash forward four years and there’s Danielle Smith trotting out the same old tired guarantee. But this time we know better. Not only do we have the UCP’s record to look at, we also have Danielle Smith’s own words to hold her accountable.”

“Less than two years ago, she openly advocated repeatedly for forcing Albertans to pay out of pocket to visit their doctor and to pay a deductible should they need surgery in the hospital.”

“Albertans know that’s just wrong,” Notley said. “So I ask them to consider who it is they can trust to provide better public health care free of charge. My record and my position hasn’t changed in the last two years. It hasn’t changed, actually, in the last two decades.”