Archive
https://archive.ph/5ryfl "As far back as 2005, Ms. Smith argued in the Calgary Herald that the province should hold an independence referendum if Ottawa doesn’t agree to adopt a U.S.-style Triple-E Senate, weaken the power of unelected judges and phase out transfer payments to provinces. “Either way, Alberta would get the federal system it wants,” she wrote ominously.
Even 20 years ago, before Ms. Smith was on anybody’s radar as a potential provincial politician, she advocated instrumentalizing the threat of an independence referendum to fundamentally restructure Canada.
It’s one thing to make this case as a newspaper columnist for provocation’s sake, but the separatist threat is now being wielded by Ms. Smith to advance public subsidies for a new bitumen pipeline to the B.C. coast and a carbon capture project favoured by Canada’s biggest oil companies. She’s found a willing partner in Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has overseen a simultaneous gutting of Canadian climate policy to advance industry’s prerogatives.
Advancing separatist ambitions is a means to an end; the end is simply power. But it’s not Ms. Smith who’s actually in charge. She’s just the friendly conduit for the forces that brought her into the position she’s in."
