The Week in Alberta Politics: It’s Not Looking Good

For several days the sordid tale of how a Globe and Mail journalist was stalked and photographed by a person or persons as yet unidentified has been one of the best-read, least-reported stories in Alberta.

Best read because prima facie evidence of the harassment in the form of photos of reporter Carrie Tait talking to two women published on social media, and scathing comments by supporters of the United Conservative Party government angered by her stories about allegations made in a lawsuit by fired Alberta Health Services CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos, were there for all to see on social media.

Least reported because most responsible journalists and commentators presumably didn’t want to make Tait’s situation worse, and because everyone was waiting to see how the Globe would respond to the anonymous account on X — ginned up to look like an unrelated account that has broken significant stories about the UCP government — that was promising to “start exposing Carrie Tait’s sources.”

Two days ago, the newspaper published its response, and the story is a doozy, certainly worse and more troubling than I expected it to be, and I expected it to be pretty bad.

The Globe report — which, unfortunately, is behind the newspaper’s online paywall — also described how phone calls were made to several of Tait’s contacts from a phone that spoofed her phone number, and how the author of the anonymous X account appeared to have personal medical information about the reporter obtained from a pharmacy.

The Globe quoted the premier’s press secretary, Sam Blackett, saying, “The Premier’s Office has no involvement with this account or Mr. David Wallace,” the latter being a podcaster and self-described political “fixer” associated with a number of figures in conservative political circles in Alberta who had also weighed in on the photos.

In the absence of any definitive evidence to the contrary, we have no choice but to take Blackett’s word for that, but surely this story suggests how the UCP’s angry and confrontational style is debasing political discourse in this province. One really hopes the Globe will take its paywall off this story so that all Albertans and Canadians can see what’s happening here in Alberta.

Blackett also refused to comment on what Premier Danielle Smith thought of her supporters trying to intimidate reporters who wrote critical stories about her government. “The Premier’s Office does not comment on the random postings of anonymous social media accounts that it has no involvement with,” he told the Globe.

An obviously annoyed Smith made the same point to a reporter at the premiers’ meeting in Ontario on Monday.

Attacking the press, trying to influence the courts

Meanwhile, Smith has dropped her demand that the town of Jasper apologize to her and withdraw a consultant’s report that found fault with the provincial government’s conduct in the July 2024 fire that destroyed about a third of the Rocky Mountain national park community.

When Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland told reporters at a news conference July 21 that “we don’t doubt the report at all” but that it wasn’t intended to be a political document, Smith chose to interpret that as an apology of sorts, and attacked the messengers instead.

Picking up on a statement in a town news release, obviously intended to pour oil on troubled waters, that “we take exception to the politicization of the After-Action Review and its observations, especially in the media,” Smith complained on Facebook that “some media outlets chose to misrepresent and politicize the content and tone of the report.”

Sorry, but that is nonsense. While it tried to set a generally positive tone, the report based on interviews with 300 firefighters and officials said what it said, and what it said is that actions of provincial officials “contributed to confusion, increased safety risks and hindered effective allocation of resources.”

As Opposition Leader Naheed Nenshi put it, “the UCP government exploited a life and death moment to pick more fights with the feds. And in their response to this report, rather than accepting responsibility and promising to do better, they do what they always do: lash out at any criticism, insult others, and refuse to accept blame for the mistakes they have made.”

Also on July 21, in an obvious attempt to influence the courts, federal Conservative leader and Alberta byelection candidate Pierre Poilievre jumped to the defence of convicted insurrection convoy leaders facing serious jail time for their activities during the February 2022 occupation of the national capital.

Poilievre and other prominent Conservatives, members of a political movement generally associated with calls for harsh justice to be meted out on those convicted of even minor crimes, accused the courts and prosecutors of seeking political vengeance.

“How is this justice?” the Conservative leader complained. No wonder voters in his former Ottawa-area Carleton riding sent him packing on April 28!

Meanwhile in Red Deer, a MAGA MLA

And here in Wild Rose Country, Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan published a muddled screed attacking King Charles III for being too much like Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Carney for being too much like Justin Trudeau, or something.

Apparently Stephan doesn’t approve of constitutional monarchy when the wonderful example of the American republic is right next door, and furthermore thinks Canada has the “worst version of the Westminster system elevating the prime minister of Canada to powers of a de facto king between elections.”

Well, first ministers indeed can have a lot of power in a majority government in the Westminster parliamentary system — as is the case in the rather dictatorial provincial government Stephan is part of. But the MAGA MLA seems to have missed that the current Liberal prime minister saw his party fall three seats short of a majority in the April 28 federal election.

Stephan also complained about prime ministers who don’t like Alberta. In addition to Carney, like Stephen Harper, I suppose, and Joe Clark, perhaps? Every one of them an Albertan, just like the seatless federal Opposition leader Poilievre, and the potential NDP leader Heather McPherson.

After quoting Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln — one could find worse Americans to cite, it’s true — Stephan promised more rambling lectures on “increasing freedom and prosperity for Albertans.”

I wonder how long it will take for him to get around to advocating that we become the 51st state?

Taken together as a wellness check, these four stories do not suggest the Alberta conservative movement is in a healthy state of mind.