Red Deer – daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics and Elections

Danielle Smith joins Team Canada reluctant to use oil & gas trump card

One full day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial premiers Doug Ford in Ontario and Wab Kinew in Manitoba announced retaliatory measures in response to American President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on Canadian products, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith entered the fray.

“This economic attack on our country, combined with Mr. Trump’s continued talk of using economic force to facilitate the annexation of our country, has broken trust between our two countries in a profound way,” Smith said at a press conference where she was flanked by Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Justice Mickey Amery, Deputy Premier Mike Ellis, and two law enforcement officers (one wearing a bullet proof vest and carrying an assault rifle).

“It is a betrayal of a deep and abiding friendship,” she said.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

Quick note: Thank you for reading today’s Daveberta Newsletter! Paid subscribers can keep scrolling to read about the upcoming Edmonton-Strathcona provincial by-election and the federal Conservative Party candidate nomination votes being held in Bow River on March 6 & 7, Red Deer on March 8, and Edmonton Griesbach on March 9.

Read the nearly 800 policy proposals from United Conservative Party members

You might have read about them in Don Braid’s Postmedia column today, but if you want to take a deeper look, here are the full list of draft policy proposals submitted by United Conservative Party members for debate at the party’s founding convention on May 4, 5 and 6, 2018 in Red Deer.

The documents mostly include generic and predictable partisan conservative policy proposals with a focus on repealing many of the laws and policies implemented by Rachel Notley‘s New Democratic Party government since 2015. But not surprisingly, a number of policies submitted from the right-wing fringe of the UCP make it into this list.

Introduction of more private schools and increased parental control in education (code for undermining student-led Gay-Straight Alliances), removing funding for abortion services, cutting the size of the public service and public sector employee pay, allowing MLA recall votes, and defining family as the union of a man, a woman and their offspring are among the controversial proposals included in the list submitted by UCP members.

While many of the policies included in this document will not actually become official party policy, the list of proposed policies provides a glimpse into the priorities of the UCP membership in 2018. As noted in Braid’s column, a “final list of resolutions, about 250, won’t be disclosed until members and journalists get their convention packages on Friday.” Those policies will be debated by members at this weekend’s UCP meeting.

UCP member proposed policies:

United Conservative Party Constitutional Document 2 – Member Policy Declaration – V2.0 (Member Proposal Con… by davecournoyer on Scribd

UCP member proposed amendments to the party’s Statement of Principles

United Conservative Party Constitutional Document 1 – Statement of Principles – V2.0 (Member Proposal Conso… by davecournoyer on Scribd