The lady doth protest too much, methinks. 

In addition to blaming everyone but herself for the national unity crisis she’s been trying for months to foment, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith used a news conference in Calgary yesterday to insist repeatedly that no one’s more loyal to Canada than she is and for sure she’ll be doing everything she can to get everyone to vote to remain in Canada when the referendum nobody wants to happen is held next October.

That is to say, not an actual referendum on separation – which would be OK with the United Conservative Party’s separatist base, if no one else – but the confusing vote on whether or not to have a referendum on separation that Ms. Smith wants to hold to keep the issue alive in the face of court rulings that have blocked the Alberta Prosperity Project-approved wording she really wanted to see on the ballot. 

“I’m fiercely loyal to both Alberta and Canada,” the premier asserted in the first seconds of the newser, the motivation for which appeared simply to be to crossly roll out all the same talking points she made yesterday in her 15-minute prime-time televised message to us Albertans. 

Over the next 34 minutes according to my count, Ms. Smith repeated at least 13 times that she supported Alberta remaining in Canada and would be campaigning hard to ensure that happens. 

• “My position is to stay”
• “I believe Albertans should remain in Canada”
• “I would ask that all Albertans join me in voting to remain a province of Canada”
• “I will do everything I can to convince Albertans that the choice should be to remain”
• “Once again, I’ll be doing everything I can to convince my fellow Albertans that the choice should be to remain”
• “I’ll be doing town halls and meetings and telling people about why it is I think we should vote to remain”
• “If you want to remain in Canada, as I do, vote to remain”
• “I hope it goes the other way as well, that the remain side wins”
• “I’ll be very clear about the position of my caucus and my government and why does it think we should vote to remain”
• “I’ll be trying to do everything I can to convince our fellow citizens to vote to remain”
• “I’ll be campaigning hard to try to convince my fellow Albertans of my position, which is to remain”
• “I’ve said what side I’m on, that I want to convince my fellow Albertans to stay”
• “I will be focusing my efforts on remain”

Of course, I may have missed a few. A lot of words were spoken during that half hour, and my note-taking’s not what it used to be. 

In addition, at least two more times Ms. Smith insisted that she’s always been working to save Canada. “Everything I have done from the moment I got elected, with the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, has been to work to find the issues that were causing division and resolve them,” she said at one point. “I have been actively campaigning to save our country and to resolve these issues from the moment I got elected,” she said at another. 

All of which begs the question, if this is true, why the hell is she doing everything she can to make it easy for a bunch of separatists with ties to a foreign country to break up the country? 

Look, not to be mean, but if she really sincerely believes what she’s saying, even if she only believes it when she’s saying it, then that’s a prima facie case right there for a 30-day psychiatric remand!

Or maybe she’s just gaslighting us and being obvious about it because she’s starting to realize that almost everybody in Alberta is infuriated by her antics right now. I’ll let you be the judge. 

True to form, as widely reported, Ms. Smith blamed everybody but herself for the present state of affairs. Justin Trudeau got special mention, of course, and his father probably deserved some too, although to be fair she didn’t think to mention old Pierre. 

Jagmeet Singh also populates the list of the usual Suspects, as seen by Danielle Smith. She whinged about uppity judges, of course, and the poor abused law-abiding gun owners of Wild Rose Country. 

The premier also singled out: 

• “The 14 cowards who signed a letter to the prime minister trying to derail our MoU,” a reference to the group of Liberal MPs who wrote Mark Carney before the memorandum of understanding was signed to complain about environmental rollbacks;
• “People like Avi Lewis, who continues to campaign to keep all of our fossil fuels in the ground;”
• And “leadership in British Columbia who continues to try to put barriers in the way of getting our product to market” …

… “That is the reason we having this crisis right now,” she averred. “… That’s what’s created the situation we find ourselves in today!”

Ms. Smith stuck to her talking point that 700,000 Albertans who signed petitions want to hold a vote on separation, notwithstanding the fact that most of the more than 400,000 verified signatories to the pro-Canada Forever Canadian petition wanted no such thing and as far as we know none of the 300,000 signatures on the separatist petition have been verified. She said nothing about the personal information of three million Albertans now in the hands of a Trump affiliated campaign company south of the world’s longest undefended border or what role the huge data breach may have played in getting signatures on the Stay Free Alberta petition.

If you were looking for actual news from this news conference, there wasn’t much, and it wasn’t particularly good.

Will the premier step down, one reporter asked, if the vote doesn’t go her way? Forget about it. “As I’ve said, I will accept the outcome of these referendum questions,” she said. If the separatists win, “then we will commence the legal processes to get to the point of a binding referendum on it.”

Asked another: Why not just call an election and settle the matter that way? “Well, because I had until October 2027 in my mandate.” She went on to suggest that the questions she wants answers to are so important that the government needs to get direction on them – which an election would provide, but never mind that. At least not until the UCP’s province-wide gerrymander is complete. 

And how big a vote would be enough to proceed to a full separation referendum? “Fifty per cent plus one. That’s what a majority looks like. Yes.”

Judged on her actions, not her words, Ms. Smith is a separatist. Ergo, this problem isn’t going away any time soon. Leastways, not until she summons up the courage to kick the separatists out of her party like almost all Conservative Alberta premiers have done from time to time.