Alberta is sick of fighting Ottawa, Daniel Smith raises ‘anti’

Editor’s Note: CBC News and The Road Ahead commissioned the poll in mid-October, six days after Daniel Smith won the lead of the United Conservative Party.

As with all polls, this is a snapshot in time.

This week, Albertans got a glimpse of the Trudeau government’s strategy for dealing with new Prime Minister Daniel Smith and her dedication to being tough on Ottawa, or at least liberal Ottawa.

This early strategy is to simply show up with a novelty-sized check in hand. While Smith won a local by-election this week, the Liberals stormed the state to tout their fall economic statements.

Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne visits Edmonton hydrogen projectFinance Minister Chrystia Freeland said: Calgary Chamber of CommerceSenior Minister Kamal Kela said, elderly projectCalgary Legislator George Chahal announced support for high-speed Internet.

The parry from the United Conservative prime minister seemed traditional. open letter He retaliated against the prime minister with complaints about the carbon tax, the Project Evaluation Bill C-69, and energy security. The next piece of legislation Smith has promised later this month is an untraditional (and constitutionally problematic) Alberta sovereignty law that will raise temperatures.

But something interesting has happened in the last few years as the UCP decided that Jason Kenny’s anti-Ottawa act needed a more belligerent upgrade and installed Smith. Albertans are less angry about federal issues than at any point in the last four years, with less appetite for firewalls, fair dealing and similar programs.

Boiling?medium-low heat, probably

Findings from CBC News’ latest Alberta survey don’t point to Ottawa’s love-in. On the contrary, 61% of Albertans still believe the equalization program is unfair to Alberta, and 57% believe the rest of Canada takes precedence over Alberta, regardless of who is in charge of the federal government. I feel that

But after years of fistfighting between Smith and Kenny, Referendum on equalizationnegative sentiment toward federal subsidies to worse states is lower than it was last year, 2020, or during the Notley government in 2018, according to a poll of 1,200 people in Alberta , felt that other states were better served by Janet Brown opinion poll.

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Pro-separatist sentiment has also fallen, which should please federalists of all political leanings in Alberta. but feel they would be better off in the provinces if they left Canada.

Of course, no matter how Smith was accused by critics (including some now) of fostering separatism through her sovereignty laws, which run counter to federal law. in her cabinet), the prime minister insisted that it was not her game. It shows that

Smith campaigned to exclude Albertans from the Canada Pension Plan, but 60% of Albertans opposed the idea and only 31% agreed. That’s down from 36% in March 2020 when they were busy reviving some of the old “firewall letter” ideas from frustration.

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Smith also plans to bring in Alberta’s police force to move away from the local RCMP detachment, showing more enthusiasm for the idea than Kenny’s team. The idea has barely won the support of his quarter of Albertans, fewer than a few years ago.

Opinion polls show that a state-only pension scheme will provoke particular fears among Alberta’s seniors, a group UCP can’t afford to instigate. Only 22% of them support the idea of ​​an Alberta pension plan.

Smith’s stance on policing is also dismissive of another key component of UCP’s constituency: small-town and rural residents. People living in communities with RCMP detachments are likely to oppose a state police takeover, as are residents of Calgary and Edmonton, who already have their own police forces.

The poll did not ask questions about Smith’s sovereignty laws. It’s hard to say exactly what it will do before Smith actually introduced the much-touted law in late November. Just under half of Alberta (46%) said they should strive to This means, at the very least, that support for the broader objectives of Smith’s federal agenda is relatively growing. ethnic minorities.

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But these are all plays to frenzy her political base. Polls show sharp divisions between partisans. 82% of UCP supporters want greater sovereignty for Alberta, compared to 16% of NDP supporters. For state pensions, 57% of UCP voters like it, compared to 9% of New Democratic voters. Over 48% wins for Team Smith and over 8% wins for Team Notry when ditching the RCMP.

Even Smith’s campaign slogan, “Alberta First,” is similarly divisive. Half of United Conservative supporters say they feel more attached to Alberta than Canada, but he is just 9% of NDP voters. Albertans in general are most likely to have equal attachments to both the country and the state.

Smith’s challenge in choosing the UCP side of these polarizing debates is that more and more Alberta’s favor the NDP. She trails her Rachel Notley party by nine percent.

It’s also clear that Ottawa’s problems aren’t a major concern for Albertans, inferior to healthcare, inflation, or even the headaches caused by the state government. There are signs that the new Prime Minister will focus on these higher public priorities.

Yet, in her by-election victory speech, Smith channeled some of her most fierce rhetoric in the direction of Ottawa: “Under Trudeau, the Commonwealth devolved into a toxic and divisive parentage. Albertans don’t seem to think it’s all that toxic.

States will be watching intently to see just how corrosive or flat the sovereignty laws will eventually be, so let’s wrap up by chewing on another open question. The question is, is Smith associating himself with ideas that are becoming unpopular, or are these ideas unpalatable when they are associated with Smith?

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CBC News randomized survey of 1,200 people in Alberta using a hybrid method between October 12 and 30, 2022 by Edmonton-based Trend Research under the direction of Janet Brown Opinion Research was implemented. The sample is representative of regional, age and gender factors. The margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points, which is 19 in 20. For subsets, the error bars are larger.

This survey used a hybrid method that gave survey respondents the option of contacting them by phone and completing the survey at that time or another convenient time, or receiving an email link to complete the survey online. did. Trend Research contacted people using a random list of numbers that consisted of half landline numbers and half mobile numbers. The phone number was dialed up to five times during her five different times of the day before another phone number was added to the sample. Valid numbers (that is, residential and personal) had a response rate of 16.3%.