Danielle Smith

Alberta Spirit

Danielle Smith possesses a unique spirit of political entrepreneurship. In taking on the leadership position with the upstart Wildrose Alliance party in Alberta, she has assumed considerable risk, but she does not see it that way. Her belief is that there is a clear need for what her party is offering, and it would have been a great mistake to pass up the opportunity to challenge the ruling Progressive Conservatives.

When asked about her tolerance for uncertainty, Smith points to her past work as the Alberta Director of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses. “I was always amazed at these entrepreneurs who would mortgage their homes, max out their credit cards, borrow from family and friends,” she recalls, “and I would ask them very much the same question: why on earth would you do this? Why would you take such a huge risk? Their answer was, ‘I didn’t see it as a risk. I saw it as an opportunity. It was so obvious to me that there was a hole in the market, and that I had the ability to be able to capitalize on that’. So people have said to me as well that this political venture we’re on is a big risk, but I didn’t see it that way at all. It seemed to me so obvious that we have a declining Tory dynasty, an exhausted government that’s completely out of ideas.”

The following interview took place at the Wildrose Alliance office in Calgary. Smith gives perhaps the most intriguing indication yet what specific policies she would seek to implement if elected Premier of Alberta. The Tories have held power in the province for nearly four decades. Smith has attempted to position the Wildrose Alliance as another conservative option for voters, but one more in tune with the past and future of the province. The conversation starts with a discussion of the nature of conservatism in Alberta and throughout Canada. For the Alberta native, the core element of life in her province that must be conserved is liberty.

When asked what else is in need of conserving, Smith talks at length about the importance of environmental conservation. The most controversial elements of her public pronouncements to date have been her opposition to carbon capture and storage programs, and her doubt regarding the severity of climate change. Here she offers a more rounded view of her approach to environmental management, and states that the conservation of natural resources is integral to her political outlook. “That is another important element of conservatism, that we respect nature and we respect the land, and we respect those things that allow for us to not only have a healthy economy but also a healthy environment at the same time. That’s not always present in every conservative movement, I don’t think.”

Smith believes that the best way to improve the environmental record of Alberta is to ‘green’ the electricity grid. She thinks it would be misguided for the provincial government to give subsidies for the development of clean coal technology and for carbon capture and storage initiatives. Companies generating electricity by burning coal have enjoyed too many privileges, says the former journalist. “I look at our system here as one where we have an established industry - coal - that has received a lot of additional benefits and supports and breaks that their competitors haven’t. My first goal would be to level the playing field so that all those other additional types of challengers can enter into the market.” This means that government must establish the correct mix of tax rebates and incentives to allow increased investment in environmentally friendly technologies by both businesses and consumers.

Danielle Smith states that her ideas are underlined by her belief in ‘creative destruction’. New products and services will always challenge the old, and the role of government is to allow that competition to happen. This belief is joined by what she calls her ‘fundamental faith’ in the spirit of entrepreneurship.

CI: Let me begin in a general way. You have presented yourself as a ‘fiscal conservative’. In my understanding of conservatism as a political philosophy, it has always been about preserving – conserving – what is good about a particular society. In your view, what is good about Alberta that is especially threatened right now?

DS: I think this is part of the reason why labels are so difficult as society changes. Being a conservative back in the early part of the nineteen hundreds is quite different than being a conservative today. In fact, if you go back to the nineteen hundreds, Liberal Wilfrid Laurier actually talked more about the things that we talk about as modern conservatives today. For us, it goes back to values.

I should also say that I think, in Alberta, the political centre is in a different place than the rest of the country. It is certainly in a different place than it would be nationally, and it is definitely in a different place than it would be in Quebec. We see this a lot with poll results. If you take a public opinion survey in Alberta, you could almost flip the results of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and get the results in Quebec! There is that kind of difference in our country. That is part of the reason why I’m running at the provincial level. I think in this province people think of themselves as being conservative. It goes back to some of the values that our province was built on.

When I talk to people about the values that our party is built on, I talk about our belief in free enterprise. We believe that risk-takers and entrepreneurs should be rewarded for their efforts. We do believe that there is a role for government in regulating, setting the rules of the game and enforcing them, but then that government should get out of the way and allow businesses to compete. We also believe that it is the government’s role to protect our individual freedoms, whether it is freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, religious freedom, or economic freedom, which is underpinned by a respect for private property rights. We are a party that also believes that government should not be the first resort, that it should be the last resort, and that individuals and families and communities should be free to govern themselves in their own way without a whole lot of interference from those ‘under the dome’ in the Alberta legislature.

Finally we agree on decentralized decision-making. I think that this idea is that the level of government closest to the people is the best able to make decisions in the interest of those they serve. That applies whether it is a local school, a local hospital, or a local city council. I guess the final step that we would have – and again, this goes back to a lot of our history – is that we have a grassroots heritage where we truly believe that average individuals are the ones that are represented by their MLAs, that MLAs don’t work for the leader of a party, that they work principally for the people who elected them.

So those are the values that, if you go through our history and look at some of our successful political movements, I think that many of those values are consistent. What we see with our current government in Alberta today is that, even at the beginning of their history and throughout their history, they have ascribed to those values too, but in the last five or six years they have lost their way. There is nothing identifiably conservative about the party anymore, other than a portion of their name. I think this is the reason that it has created an opportunity for our party to go back to those values that made Alberta so great, to talk about them and say ‘these are not values that are old-fashioned and out-of-date. They have actually served us very well over our past hundred years. They will serve us well over our next hundred years’. That seems to be a message that is resonating with people.

CI: For people outside the province who are looking at this situation and trying to understand the politics of Alberta, it seems to me that, in your definition of conservatism, what is being conserved is liberty, and specifically the liberty for entrepreneurs to get out there and take risks, and to get just the minimal support that they need from government in setting the rules and regulations. In the rest of the country, or certainly in the Maritimes and Ontario, there have been a lot of different strains of conservatism, and liberty is one of the things to be conserved, but there is typically a whole package of other things. What else is there in Alberta?

DS: Well, I can’t really comment on how conservatism is different in eastern Canada. I know that it is. This, I think, is something that some conservative parties get tagged with because we support free enterprise and entrepreneurship; there is confusion that that also means supporting directly corporations. We don’t believe that’s the case. I think fundamentally that a free enterprise economy and direct grants to corporations are at odds, completely at odds! What you are saying when you are giving billions of dollars in bailouts to a company is that you don’t actually trust free enterprise, and you don’t trust the market to be able to weed out those failing and dying industries and create something new and exciting.

I guess maybe because I have read some of the Austrian economists, I believe in this concept of creative destruction. Every time you have some new entrepreneurial product or service, it is going to affect the existing players. Every time you have a Smart car or a hybrid car, it’s going to phase out the old-fashioned gas-guzzling cars. Every time you’ve got a new gadget, an iPod or any of the new interesting technology formats that we’re using, it phases out old-fashioned tape recorders. To me, I think that’s exciting! I think there are people who obviously need assistance in being able to transition out of those old jobs into new economy jobs, but when governments think that their job is to step in and try to stop that transition by propping up big companies so that they don’t have to make those changes, I think that is a failed approach. That can be described as being conservative because you don’t want things to change, but I think that is at odds with the value of free enterprise, which is why that is where my starting point is. I have a fundamental faith in entrepreneurship to be able to deliver better products and services at better value and better quality – if you allow for the market to work. Whereas I think those conservatives who think that they have to preserve and conserve and support existing industries, I think they do so at the expense of new entrepreneurs.

The other thing that I would say, I suppose, about conservatism, which I don’t see in other strains of conservatism and which is very strong here, is the idea of environmental conservation. I mean, ‘conservation’ and ‘conservative’ – they have the same root word! Here there is a very strong environmental ethic among our landowners, ranchers and farmers who have worked the land in some cases for over a century. I think what you see here is a really interesting dynamic, and I think a healthy tension, between development of our natural resources, particularly the energy sector, but also the restraint that happens in making sure that we respect landowner interests and we preserve the environment, whether it’s soil, or whether it’s protection of our watersheds, or whether it’s minimizing air quality concerns. That is another important element of conservatism, that we respect nature and we respect the land, and we respect those things that allow for us to not only have a healthy economy but also a healthy environment at the same time. That’s not always present in every conservative movement, I don’t think.

The other issue is social conservatism. In some places, social conservatives have advanced certain moral issues. I think what we have in this province is more of a live-and-let-live attitude, that we think it’s okay for us to have a party where we have quite different views among existing members, or even existing elected members, that aren’t one hundred percent in alignment, that we don’t need to. If we have division on contentious moral issues, we choose not to foist our view on our friends or on those people in our party. We choose to realize that we should be focussing on the things that unite us rather than divide us. For some conservatives, talking about moral issues is at the top of their list; for me, making sure that we respect that a wide variety of people have a wide variety of opinions, there are contentious issues, it’s okay to talk about them because we believe in free speech, but it’s not okay to foist your views on others. I think that is maybe a different way in which we embrace freedom of speech and freedom over some of those other social conservative values that other conservatives advance.

So I agree with you. There are different kinds of conservatism. For me, I’m more of a libertarian conservative. For me, it all goes back to freedom.

CI: Let me pick up on one thought that you had earlier about bailing out failing businesses, and on the other hand supporting emerging businesses. In the ‘Vision for Alberta’ on your party website, under a section called ‘Incentives For and Enforcement Of Environmental Management’, it states that your party will ‘provide tax incentives to industries and individuals to invest in environmentally friendly endeavours’. With what you said earlier, I immediately thought of Ontario. We have put a massive amount of money into auto companies to try to keep those businesses going. At the same time, the government has put high price points in place to try and develop the solar power industry, for example. In a position of the Wildrose Alliance being in power, on stimulating new environmental technologies and industry, what would you do, what would your government do, to stimulate that?

DS: I think that you have touched on something that is really important. Often what happens is that governments take these issues in isolation. They see no conflict between supporting the auto industry and then also encouraging electricity production in a greener way. We have tied those two together as well. We support the production of hydrocarbons in this province, and I think when you look at the consumption of hydrocarbon fuels around the world - as soon as that changes is when you’re going to see some major changes on the environmental front. As long as people still want to drive cars, and as long as people still want to heat their homes, and as long as people still want to do airline travel, there is going to be a demand for fossil fuels. I think that we have to acknowledge that and we have to respond to it. We are one of the safest sources of energy, of hydrocarbon fuels, in the world, and I think we have to take that role very seriously, but we acknowledge that, when you develop hydrocarbon fuels, there is an environmental impact. So you have to have some kind of way of offsetting that impact.

I think, in Alberta, the opportunity is in greening the electricity grid. We have a lot of coal-fired electricity generation in our province. It’s, I think, more than half of our electricity that is generated that way. I think coal has enjoyed a few benefits. The coal-fired electricity companies, the generators, get it basically for free. We charge a very small royalty on it - it’s fifty-five cents per ton – compared to the royalty we charge on oil or natural gas. So they basically get it for free. We have a transmission system that has been built essentially to help bring the electricity down from where it’s produced, up north, to down south, where the population base is. And now they’re also asking for government subsidies to be able to develop clean coal technology and to be able to do carbon capture and storage.

Whereas it seems to me – I’m asking the question here – why is it that we’re continuing to support this industry, which really is the most polluting fuel, the most inefficient fuel? And we have a lot of transmission that we need to build, and billions of dollars to be able to support it. Shouldn’t we be levelling the playing field so that other types of electricity can be generated? We had, for a time, a limit for instance on the amount of wind power that could be generated. Fortunately that’s been taken off. We have a micro-generation policy that allows for people to have micro-generation units in their own business, or farm, or even in their home, generate their own electricity, and whatever they don’t use, sell it back into the grid – but we’re not promoting that! We’re not allowing people to understand how they might be able to do it, or making it very easy for them to do it. So, to me, there is a huge opportunity for changing the way that electricity is generated in this province. An interim step, I think, is moving to more use of natural gas, which allows you to not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, if that’s your top concern, but also other toxic pollutants like sulphur, NOx, and particulate matter and mercury. To me, allowing and enabling that kind of transition is levelling the playing field so that everyone can compete. I look at our system here as one where we have an established industry - coal - that has received a lot of additional benefits and supports and breaks that their competitors haven’t. My first goal would be to level the playing field so that all those other additional types of challengers can enter into the market.

The other thing I would say about providing tax incentives – we agree with across-the-board tax incentives – we have a policy in Alberta, a program that was created, this ‘carbon capture and storage fund’, a two billion dollar fund where government is giving direct grants to some of the largest corporations in the province. I have to say that makes me very uneasy because, as I understand it, there were fifty different projects that put forward their proposals; four ended up getting chosen. How am I to know that the government made the choice of the right four? In fact, I think that we can be almost guaranteed, from past history, that they made the wrong choice! How do you then encourage a market where all fifty of those projects want to go ahead? That is really what you want to do. You want to have as much experimentation as possible so that the guy with the right idea ends up then being able to market that to the world. We would far rather have an approach where you have a generous tax credit, say like the accelerated capital cost allowance that we had to help the manufacturers in Ontario, where you could write off one hundred percent of your investment costs in the first year against other income, so that you reduce your overall tax burden. Those are the kinds of things that we would support, the kinds of tax incentives that are available to anybody who wants to make an investment in this field, rather than the direct subsidy approach that the government has taken.

On the consumer side, I think there is a huge amount of goodwill on the part of consumers to want to adopt some of these greener technologies, so providing rebates for hybrid vehicles, or if you switch out your windows so that you’re conserving more energy, or if you want to experiment with micro-generation. There are these natural gas units, for instance, that you can get for your home - ENMAX is one of the groups that is hoping to be able to install some of these as a pilot project – that produce not only heat, but also steam that can be converted into electricity. So you can have these units in your home where you’re self-sufficient, producing your own heat and your own electricity, and you don’t need to use the grid, you don’t need to use the principally coal-fired generation on the grid. To me, finding a way to allow for people to access these kinds of new goods and services, I think, is something that would allow us overall to improve our environmental record. Those are the kinds of things that I support: not direct subsidies to particular businesses, but broad-based tax rebates or tax incentives to allow industries and consumers to invest in those on their own.

CI: Let me switch gears and pick up on something that we were talking about earlier. There is definitely in your party a spirit of entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, and there are some similarities to starting your own business. As you got involved in this, was there a particular moment that you can pinpoint in which you decided this was a viable enterprise, and that this was something that you thought would work? There is great risk involved. Forever you will be tied to this, success or failure. When did you decide that this was something that you could put yourself into?

DS: It’s funny because before I got into the political world I was with the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, the Alberta Director. I was always amazed at these entrepreneurs who would mortgage their homes, max out their credit cards, borrow from family and friends, and I would ask them very much the same question: why on earth would you do this? Why would you take such a huge risk? Their answer was, ‘I didn’t see it as a risk. I saw it as an opportunity. It was so obvious to me that there was a hole in the market, and that I had the ability to be able to capitalize on that’. So people have said to me as well that this political venture we’re on is a big risk, but I didn’t see it that way at all. It seemed to me so obvious that we have a declining Tory dynasty, an exhausted government that’s completely out of ideas. It’s disconnected from the values that made this province strong. It’s disconnected from Albertans. It’s disconnected from its own members! You’ve got the leadership disconnected from his caucus and from his cabinet. They’re making decisions with a very small leadership group. They’re not consulting. They’re making errors. They’re not admitting their errors. They’re changing course and making further errors!

I think, when you see this kind of dynamic, we have basically experienced now in Alberta a government that has lost the ability to govern. People in this province, I think, will abide a government for a long period of time. We’ve seen this in our history, as long as they’re basically getting good management. What they won’t abide for too long is incompetence. I know that most people in this province think of themselves as conservatives. You can just look at our poll results here over the last number of decades to get a very clear idea! Twenty-seven of twenty-eight MPs at the federal level are Conservative. In the last election, we elected seventy-two out of eighty-three MLAs under a Conservative banner, but sixty percent of people stayed home. What that says to me is that those sixty percent of Albertans didn’t like any of their options. More people come out and vote at the federal level, for the federal Conservative party, than come out and vote at the provincial level, for the Progressive Conservative party. To me, there is a disconnect. There is a very clear market need for a new party with new ideas to be able to tap into that disenfranchised base of people who feel that they have no one to vote for.

I think that we’ve been able to create a party, based on the values that we discussed earlier, that I think Albertans are craving. In this province, we had become accustomed to being a leader, not only in Canada but also around the world. We have a leadership now that has decided that it’s okay to be mediocre, that we don’t really need to lead, we can follow. And that’s offside with how Albertans see themselves. I think we see ourselves as innovative, entrepreneurial, cutting-edge, and we want our government to reflect all that as well. This is where we’re positioning ourselves as a party. We’ve had some early successes, which is nice. We’ve got an MLA who was elected in September. We’ve had two other MLAs join us, crossing the floor, because they believe in the same things that we believe in. The big test will come in the next general election. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then, but from the reaction that I get when I travel the province, the reaction that I get when I speak to people, I know I’m on the right track. People want to see the values they hold reflected in their leadership and in their government, and in the political party that they support. That’s what we’re providing them.

CI: With a couple years before the next election, how concerned are you that right now voters are using the threat of voting for the Wildrose Alliance as a way to correct the course of the current government?

DS: To me, that’s what an effective opposition does. If it turns out that we are so effective in putting forward good ideas that the government steals every last one of them, then I think Albertans will be better off for it. They are welcome to our ideas! I’ve been in the public policy realm for twelve years. I was at a policy think-tank, the Fraser Institute, when I first graduated with my English and economics degrees. I worked in policy advocacy for property rights for the first part of my career. I got elected to the school board on a change platform. I worked in the media as an advocate as well for libertarian values. I was an editorial writer and columnist, so I was able to have an opinion piece every week in the newspaper. Then in the last three years I was an advocate for small business, and creating the kind of market here that will attract small business. So I’ve been an advocate for all these issues for my entire adult career. This is just a new phase of that advocacy for good ideas. So I don’t mind if they decide to adopt some of the policies and principles that we stand on. I think all Albertans will be better off for it.

CI: Two quick final questions. You have extensive experience in the media, in television, radio, and print, I understand. Do you feel to this point that you’ve been treated fairly here in Alberta and nationally by the media?

DS: The media is more than fair. I think conservative politicians make a big mistake when they criticize the media. I know they’ve got a job to do. I know that some days I’ll say things that will resonate with the media and I’ll get a positive media story. Other days I’ll say things that will be idiotic and I’ll get a negative news story! But the controlling of the message comes from the mouth of the politician. You can only do so much to get your own message out. There will constantly be critics of every decision that we make as a party, or that I make as a leader. If you don’t have a thick skin, then this is the wrong business to be in, and if you don’t appreciate the role that the media plays in democracy, in getting the ideas out and in challenging the ideas, then you shouldn’t be in this business either.

The media especially in this province has essentially had to take on the role of the official opposition for a number of years because we have so few opposition MLAs elected. To me, the media plays an absolutely essential role. I’ve been saddened to see how much the media has struggled in this new media environment to try to maintain the level of coverage that it enjoyed when I started in media. I started in the media in ninety-nine. I remember my first job at Fraser: the Internet was so new that we just had one office computer in the library that had Internet! If we needed to search for something, we would all go there. That was only in 1996! Three years later in 1999, when I joined the media, it was still very much in the early phases of trying to grapple with the new media and the impact that it was going to have. I think, over the past ten years, we’ve seen that they haven’t managed to be able to get ahead of that curve. We’ve seen a lot of cuts in the media. We’ve seen a lot of cuts in the coverage. I think that we’re poorer off for it. I’m hoping that we’re able to see some new media emerge to fill this void that’s being created.

From my perspective, the fact that the media has taken such an interest in our party and our movement - I’m delighted by that! I’m shocked by it. I remember having a conversation with my husband when I decided that I was going to run for leadership of this party. He was worried it might change our lives a little bit! I said, ‘honey, don’t worry. When the Liberals had their leadership race, they didn’t cover it. They’re not going to cover our party. I’m running for the leadership of a fourth-place party that, at the time, didn’t even have any seats in the legislature. If I’m remotely successful, they might start covering our party in 2012 when the next election happens.’ So those were my expectations a year ago about where we would be!

The fact that the media has found something of interest in our movement - I’m delighted by it. Absolutely I don’t always get the news stories that I would like to see. I don’t always get positive coverage, but to me that’s just the way that the business works. You have to be prepared to take the good with the bad. As you can see, because I start from a base of values I am very clear about what I think the pillar on which our party should be built ought to be, that I’m not all that fussed when people disagree with me. Not everyone is going to agree with the values that I talked about, but I think that we will have enough Albertans agree with those values, that those values will resonate with enough Albertans, that we will be able to run a full slate of candidates in the next election, and with any luck, hopefully form government.

CI: You have two backgrounds in education, in English and in economics …

DS: Correct. Got English first, and then worked for a little while and realized that I needed something a little more practical. So I went back and got economics.

CI: Out of curiosity though, in English, what was your specialty? What were the books that you enjoyed?

DS: That’s a good question. In English, you have to take a broad range of courses. The ones that I enjoyed the most were Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë. I liked that whole period of writing. I find that a fun read because it’s such a different world than what we have today. The reading that I enjoy most now is actually on the economics side. I tend to spend a lot more time reading books like The End of Energy Obesity, and The End of Poverty, and Freakonomics. Those are the books that I tend to read a lot more today.

There are books that bridge the divide for me, that are great fiction as well as important from an economics point-of-view. This is why Ayn Rand is one of my favourite authors because I think she is able to, in a very entertaining way through her fiction, talk about very important foundational concepts for how government should interact with entrepreneurship, how government should interact with individuals, and the role of liberty, freedom, property rights. To me, I think she is the author that best bridges the divide between my economics interest and my English interest.

Date of Interview: 03/19/2010
Location: Wildrose Alliance Office, Calgary, AB
Link: www.wildrosealliance.ca