Premier Danielle Smith braces for crucial vote at UCP’s weekend conference

Thousands of members of Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party gather Friday in Red Deer ahead of a crucial weekend vote on the job performance of their leader, Premier Danielle Smith.

The party’s rules don’t say what level of support in a leadership review is considered a passing grade. But Smith has said that she’d like to see a higher level of support than the 54 per cent she received when party rank and file picked her to replace then-premier Jason Kenney in 2022.

Earlier that year, Kenney resigned as leader after receiving a lacklustre 51 per cent of the vote at a scheduled party leadership review.

The vote comes at the party’s annual general meeting, and at least 5,500 members are registered to attend.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Smith wouldn’t say what percentage she would like to receive, but said she thought the number of party members attending the event was a sign of support in itself.

“That’s a measure of how excited people are about what we’ve done over the last two years,” she said.

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“I’m really encouraged by the number of people coming.”

In recent months, Smith has toured the province speaking to party faithful while introducing policies critics say are aimed at keeping the party’s restless social-conservative flank from voting against her in the review.

This week, her government introduced bills aimed at putting in rules around youth using preferred pronouns at school, along with restrictions on transgender surgery and transgender players competing in female amateur sports.

She also announced a renewed legal fight against the federal carbon levy and introduced a bill to revamp Alberta’s Bill of Rights aimed at giving residents the right to refuse medical treatments, including vaccines.

Party members this weekend will also vote on non-binding policy resolutions such as abandoning net-zero greenhouse gas targets and banning transgender women from using women’s bathrooms and change rooms.

“Smith clearly is behaving like somebody who is worried about this,” political scientist Lisa Young, with the University of Calgary, said in an interview.

“What we’ve seen is the premier and the cabinet really focused for the past five or six months on pursuing a policy agenda that’s intended to ensure that the party membership is supportive of the premier.”

Lori Williams, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, agreed.

Williams also pointed to Smith’s recent promise to introduce legislation next year to restrict how professional regulatory bodies like the College of Physicians and Surgeons police their members – something the party’s base has been calling for since last year.

“It looks like she’s been working very hard, a concerted long-term effort, to shore up support from those who are likely to be attending the (annual general meeting),” Williams said.

Williams and Young said Smith will likely escape the leadership review unscathed, but it likely won’t be the only moment her leadership is under a microscope.

“I think she might have created a sense of expectation in the party grassroots that they get to drive party policy,” Young said.

“There may still be a moment of reckoning down the road.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2024.