Premier Danielle Smith needs Albertans to believe she didn’t mean many things she said in the past. Her voluble history is a serious danger to the UCP in the coming election campaign.
This forces her to govern against some of her own core beliefs. The most striking example came this week, when she announced the UCP’s “Public Health Care Guarantee.”
The question will be whether voters believe what she says now, or what she said before. It’s a toss-up, frankly, because she was so specific and passionate about her earlier prescription for user-pay health care.
On Tuesday, the premier said: “The UCP is committed to all Albertans that under no circumstances will any Albertan ever have to pay out of pocket for access to their family doctor or to get the medical treatment that they need.
“It means that a UCP government under my leadership will not delist any medical services or prescriptions now covered by Alberta health insurance, no exceptions.”
She repeated this several times, topping it with: “Rest assured, you will never use a credit card to pay for a public health care service. You will only ever need your Alberta health care card.”
To make the point, the premier stood beside a big sign showing the card most of us carry around.
Smith said the NDP is “lying to Albertans” and engaging in “fear and smear” when they accuse her of threatening universal public payment.
But Smith herself sowed some of that fear with great conviction, and not just in throwaway lines on talk radio.
She wrote it all down in a 2021 policy paper for the University of Calgary. Her full article was published along with those of other participants under the title Alberta’s Economic Future.