Danielle Smith
Marlaina Danielle Smith is a Canadian politician, former lobbyist, former columnist and media personality who has served as the 19th premier of Alberta and leader of the United Conservative Party since 2022.
Born in Calgary, Smith attended the University of Calgary and earned degrees in English and economics. After briefly serving as a trustee for the Calgary Board of Education, she worked as a journalist in print, radio and television, sharing opinions on politics and healthcare. During this time she also worked as the director of provincial affairs for Alberta with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. She entered provincial politics in 2009, becoming the leader of the Wildrose Party. Smith contributed to the growth of the party, which formed the Official Opposition after the 2012 election. Smith won a seat in the Legislative Assembly for Highwood in that election, and served as leader of the Opposition until 2014, when she resigned to join the governing Progressive Conservatives. Smith was defeated in her bid for the PC nomination in Highwood for the 2015 election.
Between 2015 and 2022, Smith worked in talk radio and served as the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group. Upon Premier Jason Kenney's resignation announcement on May 18, 2022, Smith announced her campaign in the United Conservative Party leadership election. On October 6, Smith won the leadership on the sixth count. She was sworn in as premier on October 11 and became MLA for Brooks-Medicine Hat on November 8, 2022. She led the UCP to reelection as a majority government in the 2023 general election.
Smith's policies have primarily focused on extending Albertan provincial autonomy. In 2022, her government passed the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which seeks to protect Alberta from federal policies it deems detrimental to the province. Smith's government has also begun the process of withdrawing Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan to create a pension plan exclusive to the province's residents.
Early life and education
Marlaina Danielle Smith was born in Calgary on April 1, 1971, the second of five children. She is the daughter of Sharon and Doug Smith, an oilfield consultant and previously a board member for the Wildrose Party. She is named after the song "Marlena" by The Four Seasons. Her paternal great-grandfather, Philipus Kolodnicki, a Ruthenian from Austria, changed his surname to Smith after arriving in Canada in the early 1900s. Her maternal ancestors came to Canada via the United States. In 2022, Smith's claims of "mixed-race ancestry" and indigenous ancestry on her maternal side were questioned.Growing up, her family lived in subsidized housing. As a student she worked at McDonald's, at a bingo parlour and at restaurants bussing tables.
Smith described her parents as "reliably conservative" in an interview with the National Post. When Smith was a grade 8 student, she said she came home praising a teacher who spoke positively about communism, and her father argued otherwise. Smith said she had family in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. "Then he realized we needed to talk a lot more around the dinner table," Smith told The Canadian Press in 2014.
She is also a past member of the Girl Guides of Canada and was featured in a 2013 museum exhibit about prominent Girl Guides at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery. She is a fan of the young-adult fantasy novel Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and once considered becoming a novelist in the science fiction and fantasy genres.
Smith attended the University of Calgary and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1993 and economics in 1995. The university had a strong culture of conservative and progressive political activism and debate when Smith was a student. Her classmates included Ezra Levant; Rob Anders; Naheed Nenshi; and Kevin Bosch, who became an adviser to prime ministers Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau. One of her classes was taught by former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. The same class had Ian Brodie, who became chief of staff for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as a teachers' aide. It was at the University of Calgary where she met Tom Flanagan, a conservative political activist and advisor, who was a professor in the political science department while Smith studied economics.
In 1996, Flanagan recommended Smith for a one-year public policy internship with the Fraser Institute. During her time here, she coauthored a climate change denialist paper called "Environmental Indicators for Canada and the United States" with Boris DeWiel, Steven F. Hayward, and Laura Jones - which sought to "separate the facts from alarmist misinformation," and "bring balance to the environmental debate". The report argued that "contrary to public opinion, in most instances objectives for protecting human health and the environment are being met, pollution and wastes are being controlled, and resources and land are being sustainably and effectively managed".
Flanagan later became her campaign manager during the 2012 Alberta general election. She was active in the campus Progressive Conservatives and was eventually elected president of the club. She also became involved in political campaigning and met her first husband, Sean McKinsley. After graduating with an English major, Smith briefly lived in Vancouver where she worked as a waitress and as an extra in movie and TV productions.
Early political and media career
Calgary Board of Education
In 1998, Smith entered politics when she ran for the board of trustees of the Calgary Board of Education. She won, but less than a year later, the chairwoman complained that the board had become dysfunctional. In response, the provincial Minister of Learning, Lyle Oberg, dismissed the entire board after 11 months into their term.Years later, Smith said she had been far too strident during her tenure as a board trustee and said the experience taught her to be more tolerant of those with whom she disagreed. Subsequently, Smith pursued work as an advocate for ranchers, farmers and other rural landowners with the Alberta Property Rights Initiative and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute. During her time at the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute, she coauthored a paper on endangered species.
Career as Calgary Herald columnist and talk radio host
After her time as a school board trustee Smith joined the Calgary Herald as a columnist with the editorial board. During the 1999–2000 writers' strike at the Herald, she crossed the picket line as a strikebreaker writer for the paper, at that time owned by Conrad Black. Her columns included coverage of city hall and health reform, but also ventured into other topics. In 2003, she wrote a column supporting the legalisation of sex work and proposed the creation of a red-light district in Calgary. That same year, she also wrote an article titled "Anti-smoking lobby does more harm than good", in which she stated that smoking cigarettes can "reduce the risk of disease".She then went on to succeed Charles Adler as host of the national current affairs program Global Sunday, a Sunday-afternoon interview show on Global Television. She also hosted two talk radio programs focused on health policy and property rights.
She met her second husband, David Moretta, who was an executive producer with Global Television at the time and would go on to be a former executive producer with Sun Media.
In 2004, Smith was named one of Calgary's "Top 40 Under 40".
In September 2006, she co-hosted the Calgary Congress, a national assembly of citizens and economic and constitutional specialists to consider basic federal reforms for Canada.
Smith was hired by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in 2006, becoming a provincial director for Alberta. While employed here, she coauthored a paper called "Achieving Eco-prosperity"
Early provincial political career (2009–2015)
During the 2006 PC leadership election, Smith supported Ted Morton. Morton lost to Ed Stelmach, and Smith became increasingly disillusioned with what she called Stelmach's "free-spending ways". She cited the 2008 provincial budget as the point where she determined that Stelmach's government had 'lost its way'.Wildrose Party
Smith quit the PC party in 2009 and joined the Wildrose Alliance. The Tories sent MLA Rob Anderson, one of the more fiscally conservative members of their caucus, to talk Smith out of it. Years later, Smith recalled that Anderson told her that despite the Tories' reckless spending and unwillingness to listen to the backbench, they were the only credible centre-right party in the province. Smith refused to stay, saying that there was no hope of restoring Alberta to fiscal sanity under the Tories, and that the Wildrose was the only credible chance at electing a fiscally conservative government. As far as she was concerned, she told Anderson, "This government is beyond redemption. It's out of control."Later that year, Smith was recruited by Wildrose officials to run for the leadership of the party. During the course of the leadership campaign outgoing leader Paul Hinman won in a by-election in the riding of Calgary-Glenmore. His win meant he was one of four in the Wildrose caucus; by the time Smith was elected leader on October 17, 2009, support for the party had quadrupled since the 2008 election. After Smith was elected leader, support for the Wildrose Party continued to grow. Smith convinced three PCs who served in government to cross the floor to join the Wildrose Party: Rob Anderson and Heather Forsyth, and later Guy Boutiller.
In early 2011, she was featured in an episode of CBC Television's Make the Politician Work.
2012 election
For most of the time before the 2012 provincial election, it appeared that Smith was poised to become the first woman to lead a party to victory in an Alberta election. Numerous polls indicated that the Wildrose Party could defeat the governing Progressive Conservatives, led by Premier Alison Redford. The PCs had governed the province since 1971, the second-longest unbroken run in government at the provincial level.The Wildrose Party won 17 seats on 34.3% of the popular vote, and took over Official Opposition status from the Alberta Liberal Party. Smith was elected to the Legislature from Highwood, just south of Calgary, on the same day, defeating John Barlow, editor of the Okotoks Western Wheel and two other candidates.
Political pundits suggested Wildrose lost their early polling lead over the Progressive Conservatives due to Smith's defence of two Wildrose candidates who had made controversial remarks. Allan Hunsperger, running in an Edmonton riding, had written a blog post claiming that gays would end up in a "lake of fire" if they did not renounce their lifestyle. Ron Leech had claimed he would have a leg up on the competition in his Calgary riding because he was white. According to the National Post, Hunsperger and Leech's extreme views, as well as Smith's refusal to condemn them, cost her a chance of unseating Redford. Ultimately, Wildrose was denied victory mainly because it was unable to get any foothold in the urban areas. It won only two seats in Calgary and was completely shut out in Edmonton.
In appraising the election results at the Wildrose 2012 annual general meeting, Smith advocated freezing out candidates who cannot respectfully communicate their views in future elections. Smith asked members to adopt a forward-looking policy platform for the next election.