As the conservative heartland, Alberta’s election could be a sign of what’s to come nationally

The Alberta election is in full swing—minus time taken out of campaigning to deal with the wildfire situation in the province—and has already seen a number of bizarre incidents that I can’t say I ever would have expected, including incumbent premier Danielle Smith needing to apologize for equating people who got vaccinated against COVID-19 with followers of Hitler. No, seriously, that actually happened. But why does this matter nationally? Alberta is frequently considered the spiritual heartland of conservatism in this country, and things that happen in that province can have a reverberation nationally as the federal Conservatives take cues from the province’s movements. And some of those developments are troubling.

Contrary to the stereotype, most Albertans are not really rednecks or even overtly social conservatives in large part. I mean, those hard-core right-wingers exist, but largely in rural parts of the province. Rather, conservatism in the province has largely become a tribal affiliation which bears little resemblance to actual conservatism, as recent Alberta governments have spent profligately and have not rolled back any Charter rights (even if they make a show of being dragged kicking and screaming through the courts). Over the four-decade-long dynasty of the province’s former Progressive Conservatives, Alberta was by and large fairly centrist and socially progressive, with a few spasms of social conservatism along the way. Nevertheless, they hold a social identification as conservatives because there is also a reflexive opposition to Central Canada.

This started to change in 2008, with the formation of the Wildrose Party, which hoped to install/promote a more right-wing, fiscally conservative ideology within the province. When Smith became its leader in 2009, she tried to steer that more right-wing party toward the centre socially, proclaiming herself to be in favour of things like gay rights. Her electoral chances in 2012 were sunk, however, following the “Lake of Fire” comments by one of her candidates. Smith did not disavow or repudiate the comments, and the party went down to defeat, proving that most Albertans didn’t have time for that level of social conservative rhetoric. This was an election that Conservatives in Ottawa at the time felt she should have won, which was telling.

At the end of 2014, Smith crossed the floor, with the majority of her party, to the Progressive Conservatives under then premier Jim Prentice, who was one of the reddest of Red Tories, in the hopes of uniting the parties and their voters. It didn’t work, and when Albertans were scandalized in the 2015 election after Prentice encouraged them to engage in some self-reflection around their demands for high services and low taxes, they grew angry and voted for Rachel Notley and the NDP en masse (because they were the only organized opposition party, it should be stated). Many quickly grew to regret it. There was something about Alberta as an NDP province that conflicted with their tribal self-identification as conservatives, regardless of ideology. And it didn’t matter that Notley was extremely centrist for a New Democrat and governed near indistinguishably from the Progressive Conservatives before her, with one or two exceptions. It was that self-conception that Albertans clung to as Jason Kenney pandered to them on his way to unseating Notley in 2019.

In the years since her 2015 defeat, Smith started to go down rabbit holes, and when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she was fully into conspiracy theories about the virus and the public health measures used to contain it. As someone who made her non-political career in media as a professional contrarian and controversy-monger, she has done away with any critical thinking filters she may have possessed and now espouses wholesale the things she comes across, whether it’s from antisemitic blogs, or the constitutional lunacy that her primary advisor likes to proclaim, as Smith rails about the World Economic Forum and repeats Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine. With this in mind, it’s little wonder that she has made such odious comparisons such as equating the vaccinated to Hitler’s followers, because she apparently has no filter for this kind of thing, and there are too many malleable members of her own party who just hold their nose and go along with her, because the alternative—not being in power—is unthinkable for them.

To add to this, there are political activists in the province who go by the name Take Back Alberta (TBA) who are organizing on Smith’s behalf, and with whom she has friendships. Their rhetoric can be shocking. “This is a war between the pro-humans and anti-humans,” TBA leader David Parker is quoted as saying in reference to abortion. He also is quoted as saying, in reference to the NDP: “You can vote your way into socialism. You almost always have to shoot your way out,” which is ahistorical nonsense. But this kind of rhetoric also tends to quickly turn against queer and trans people, even if that tack has taken a back seat in the current campaign to date (likely because Smith is gun-shy after the “Lake of Fire” incident). 

But these same organizers and their rhetoric also have ties to the federal Conservatives. TBA’s Parker claims to have helped bring down former federal leader Andrew Scheer, and worked on Erin O’Toole’s leadership campaign. There is a very real danger that if Smith does win the Alberta election that this kind of apocalyptic (and frankly deranged) rhetoric will have been “proven” to work and be acceptable discourse in an election, and that this will further encourage the federal Conservatives to lean into it, even more than they already have been (and there has been an awful lot of conspiracy-theorizing from them).

A win from Smith will very likely set a tone federally as Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre will feel emboldened. As it stands, those who espouse conspiracy theories remain on his front bench; an ivermectin-pusher was made his critic for civil liberties; and Poilievre has not marginalized backbenchers bringing forward backdoor abortion-banning bills. A Smith victory will only make this worse, as he ratchets up his culture war in order to try and best Justin Trudeau at the ballot box.