Danielle Smith’s populism outrages critics, but keeps her base

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The celebrated Alberta writer Fred Stenson asked a provocative question this week: “Why does rural Alberta support Danielle Smith? She shafts our municipal governments. Won’t force oil companies to pay their municipal tax debts. Drives off our doctors and nurses, forcing clinics to close. Please, why?”

The question has some bite. Stenson isn’t an out-of-touch city guy. He grew up in near Pincher Creek and lives outside Calgary in Cochrane. He’s the author of more than 20 books and a columnist for Alberta Views. If a sharp country guy like Stenson can’t figure out what drives his own neighbours to support Smith, how can big city residents do so?

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The question is also timely. Premier Smith will soon face a United Conservative leadership review that will be decided in large part by rural Albertans, and Smith just now outraged her many big-city critics again with her new gender policy guidelines and her musings on chemtrails.

On gender policy, Smith says legislation will soon come out that prohibits gender reassignment surgery for all Albertans under age 18 and bans any new treatment for puberty blockers for minors under the age of 16. It also requires parental notification at schools for any teacher talks about sexual identity and for any student seeking to change their name or their pronouns.

From what I’ve seen, these moves were greeted with applause in traditional family-friendly rural Alberta but with upset from a significant percentage of city folks.

But it’s no great mystery when it comes to what moves rural Albertans. Like everyone else, they want what’s best for their family and friends and they vote accordingly. More than that — and this is crucial in grasping Smith’s popularity outside our big cities — rural Albertans like, and listen to, people who like and listen to them back.

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Amazing, isn’t it?

On her call-in radio show, Your Premier, Your Province, I can’t recall Smith getting nasty or even short with someone who disagrees with her or comes at her with their own wild complaints or theories. Instead she hears people out. She often makes a commitment to dig into the matter.

Smith is open to others, even to a fault, as we saw this week with the chemtrails dust-up. I’ve never delved into the chemtrails rabbit hole, but I gather the theory is that some evil entity is spraying bad things out of airplanes into the air to harm us all.

In a recent UCP town hall in Edmonton, Smith was asked for her take. She said she had checked with various government authorities and found such spraying wasn’t happening here, but noted someone had told her if anyone is doing such spraying of us, it’s the United States Department of Defence.

Unsurprisingly, Smith was torched for her chit-chat musings on this conspiracy theory.

Prof. Tim Caulfield of the University of Alberta, who digs into the topic of misinformation, offered some advice: “Dear Premier Smith. For future reference, the correct answer is: ‘This is a conspiracy theory. It isn’t true.’

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He added: “It’s just horrifying to see a political leader not simply and explicitly correct the conspiracy theory.”

Smith would have avoided trouble if she’d done what Caulfield suggested. At the same time, if you or I had to persuade someone deep into chemtrail anxiety to reconsider their ideas, would the best approach be to firmly assert to them they are wrong, as Caulfield suggests?

Or might it not work to hear out their concern, then explain you’ve dug into the issue and assured yourself at least that there’s likely no major issue?

Caulfield’s tough talk might work. Could Smith’s more conciliatory approach also have merit? I used a softer approach than Caulfied’s in recent a discussion, nudging a chemtrails enthusiast to do more research before taking a hard line. But I suspect both approaches have merit.

There’s no doubt, however, that Smith’s empathy goes a long way in rural Alberta, especially as this quality doesn’t come so easily to some of her political opponents on the left. They are more likely to have contempt for those who disagree with them. For example, a recent University of Alberta study found that Albertans who identify as NDP are twice as likely as those who identify UCP to be uncomfortable with someone from the opposing party marrying into their immediate family.

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To answer Fred Stenson of Cochrane, then, rural Albertans like and listen to Smith because she likes and listens to them. She might not get it right on every policy, but the intention is evidently there to lend a kind ear and a helping hand.

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