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On November 26, 2014, Danielle Smith stood before cameras and publicly condemned fellow Wildrose MLAs Kerry Towle and Ian Donovan for crossing the floor to the ruling PCs. In that speech, she looked Albertans in the television cameras and vowed: “There will be no more floor crossings”.¹

She was so appalled at this alleged betrayal that she said of her friend Towle, “We were friends, and I say that in the past tense… She’s a member of the party across the aisle”.²

Three weeks later, on December 17, 2014, she did precisely what she had pledged she would not do, orchestrating an unprecedented mass floor crossing — never before in Canadian history, either federally or provincially, had the leader of the opposition joined the government³ – taking eight Wildrose MLAs with her and betraying the more than 440,000 Albertans who had voted Wildrose.⁴

She later admitted that her discussions of joining the PCs had in fact been ongoing for months⁵ meaning that at the very moment she was publicly shaming her colleagues for crossing the floor and promising Albertans it would never happen again, she was already secretly negotiating to do exactly the same thing herself. She did not merely break a promise. She manufactured outrage at the very act she was already planning to commit.

There are all sorts of lies, lies of omission, lies of context, lies due to error, sophistry, etc. What Danielle Smith did wasn’t one of these. This wasn’t a matter of circumstances or personality changing. Danielle Smith lied about what she believed, what she was willing to do and how she would act on behalf of her voters fully aware of her hypocrisy and did so for manipulative, self serving reasons.

Smith repeatedly claimed Cherokee ancestry, including in the Alberta Legislature and during her UCP leadership campaign. An investigative report by APTN worked with Canadian and Cherokee genealogists and examined U.S. census reports from the late 1800s and found no evidence of the premier being Indigenous. Cherokee genealogist Kathy Griffin could not find proof that any of Smith’s ancestors were members of the historical Cherokee tribes, and her ancestors did not appear on the Dawes Roll.

Smith’s response? Her office released a statement was that Smith hadn’t done a “deep dive into her ancestry but is proud of her roots.”

How much of a deep dive does it take to know if a grandparent or great grandparent was or wasn’t indigenous? And almost as concerning what sort of person makes statements of fact about things they’re completely uncertain about?

Covid, cancer, vaccination – Danielle Smith has a documented pattern of promoting medically dangerous idiocy (misinformation). While we won’t comment on whether she is representative of the stupidest and most dangerous people in our society, we can say with certainty, that she truly represents some of the stupidest and most dangerous people in our society.

As a radio host in 2020, she retweeted a false claim that hydroxychloroquine could defeat COVID-19. A year later, she backed ivermectin, which was touted and later debunked as a possible COVID-19 cure. In a podcast with a naturopath, Smith said about cancer: “Once you’ve arrived and got Stage 4 cancer… that’s completely within your control and there is something you can do about that that is different.” Not only is it a profoundly ignorant comment but as cancer patients and oncologists pointed out it was also incredibly cruel.

She later appointed a panel of pseudo-scientists and quacks to issue a COVID-19 report to support many of her positions, including her embrace of purported remedies such as ivermectin, which scientists determined was ineffective and was condemned by nearly 70 medical doctors and health experts. (Sources: CBC News, Lethbridge News Now, Globe and Mail, Canadian Encyclopedia).

Not only does Smith not believe in following science, she manufactures false and disingenuous science to undermine trust in the system.

Hanlon’s razor says we should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. As such let me put a disclaimer on this – it is unlikely but plausible that Danielle Smith believes the things she says. While this would certainly speak well of her intent it forces us to ask – why would someone vote for someone so thoroughly ignorant, grossly misinformed and incapable of basic critical thinking?

Here are some instances where Danielle Smith has trivialized the holocaust, fascism and Canada’s war dead-

• Compared vaccinated Albertans to followers of Adolf Hitler (November 10, 2021)⁶⁷
• Likened COVID vaccine mandates to Nazi medical experiments / invoked the Nuremberg Code⁸
• Boycotted wearing the Remembrance Day poppy to protest public health measures (November 2021)⁹¹⁰
• Declared the unvaccinated “the most discriminated against group” she had seen in her lifetime¹¹¹²

Smith trivializes and downplays the atrocities of the holocaust and sacrifice of Canadian soldiers. What makes this so egregious and even more hypocritical is that while stoking the flames of fake issues she engages in actions which are quite clearly fascistic or at the very least un-Canadian and not in the best interest of the country or its people.

• Danielle Smith invoked the notwithstanding clause, a clause that is meant to be used in emergencies to temporarily curtail the Charter rights of Canadian citizens, 4 time in 2 months in 2024 and 2025. She used it to strip public school workers of their rights to collective bargaining. (This us unquestionably wrong. It should be noted that Prime Minister Carney tried something similar (also very wrong) but didn’t go ahead in the face of public opposition).
• Danielle Smith’s signature legislation, her flagship policy if you will, is the Alberta Sovereignty Act. This legislation, her flagship policy, was supposedly a provincial defense against bureaucratic overreach of the Federal government but in actuality it would give members of the provincial cabinet the power to nullify federal laws within Alberta without any legislative oversight whatsoever. Critics across the legal spectrum noted this circumvents parliamentary accountability. 30+ Alberta lawyers, including former Progressive Conservative justice ministers, wrote that it aligned her government with authoritarianism.¹³¹⁴
• Meeting with Trump officials and far-right U.S. media during a Canadian election Smith traveled to Florida to speak to a media platform dedicated to promoting “pro-American values,” and audio obtained by DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer revealed she and Ben Shapiro discussed how to help Canada elect “solid allies” to the Trump administration during a private gala. Ricochet Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi suggested Smith had invited a foreign country to interfere in Canada’s election — a claim that spread widely. Smith’s office called any such suggestion “offensive and false.”
  In light of the Trump regime now meeting all the criteria of both fascism and authoritarianism one must again say, either she associates and supports bad people or she’s too stupid to distinguish ¹⁵¹⁶

There are many more but then lets look at when she has remained silent when a political leader, when any leader, is expected to speak up.

• Trump’s annexation threats against Canada Many Canadians were very focused on national unity and standing up for Canada against threats coming from the United States. Instead, literally like a secessionist, Danielle Smith who previously met with these people in the middle of the Canadian election to discuss with MAGA people how to elect more Trump friendly Canadians didn’t say a word about Canadian sovereignty but instead focused on trying to ‘maintain relationships’ with the regime threatening our Sovereignty. Now I am not going to conclude solely on this that she is a traitor, but I wouldn’t vote for someone who has a habit of putting their own best interests ahead of the people who elect them.
• Alberta separatists meeting with Trump administration officials B.C. Premier David Eby called out the leaders of Alberta’s separatist movement and their widely documented meetings with Trump administration officials, saying: “To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason.” Smith’s response was to defend them: “I’m not going to demonize or marginalize a million of my fellow citizens when they’ve got legitimate grievances.” Critics noted nobody was asking her to demonize every supporter of separatism — only to denounce the three specific people who had met with the Trump administration. That she wouldn’t do it was seen as both telling and deliberate. National Observer
• Her pro-Russia Ukraine stance and refusal to retract Smith faced criticism for comments she made about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, urging Ukraine to accept neutrality even as its people were fighting and dying in the Russian invasion. She also opined on social media that there may be parts of Ukraine happier to break away from the mother country. Opposition critic Sarah Hoffman said: “The fact she refuses to apologize leads one to believe that she does believe the things that she said — that she is absolutely choosing to side with Vladimir Putin over the people of Ukraine who are fighting for their lives.” CBC News
• Her attempts to undermine justice and politicize the selection of judges (see the section below)
• There are many more, from her continuing support of right wing MAGA nuts to her demanding that the report on the Jasper fires saying she and her office made it worse with their interference¹⁷ be retracted, etc. etc. etc.

This post isn’t about Danielle Smith’s fascist tendencies however, it is about her trustworthiness or honesty – her invoking the memory of holocaust in false equivocation while actively promoting fascists tells us one cannot and should not trust her. Danielle Smith quite clearly, by her actions, harbours pro-fascist tendencies if not being a fascist herself. The person who says the things above is not a friend of democracy.

Smith, has already been found guilty of violating the conflict of interest Act for interfering / giving the appearance of interfering with the administration of justice – in a criminal case no less¹⁸. Now she is trying to interfere in the appointment of higher-court judges.

In a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney made public in late January 2026, Smith threatened to withhold provincial funding for new judicial appointments unless the federal government gave Alberta more say in the selection of judges for the Court of King’s Bench, the Alberta Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. ¹⁹

Legal experts from across the spectrum joined in criticizing the threats to withhold funding as a risk to judicial independence, with one expert noting that her rhetoric around “Alberta values” and statements that federally appointed judges are not “legitimate gatekeepers to democracy” suggests “a real concerted effort to delegitimize the role of the courts in policymaking in Alberta” and that “the politics seem to fit a pattern with this premier of attacking the judiciary as a means of trying to consolidate her own power over policymaking in the province.”²⁰ (emphasis added by author)

Oh, she also mentioned on her radio show that she wished she could “direct” judges in how they make decisions — remarks that prompted Alberta’s three chief justices to issue a rare joint public statement emphasizing that judicial independence is the foundation of a healthy democracy Something Danielle Smith either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about.