File photo of Danielle Smith at an event in Lethbridge on Tuesday, July 26, 2022. Smith claimed victory in the UCP leadership race on Thursday, October 6, 2022. (Photo: LNN)

By Chris Brown / CHAT News Today

Danielle Smith claims victory in UCP leadership race

Oct 7, 2022 | 6:40 AM

CALGARY, AB – Members of Alberta’s United Conservative Party have chosen Danielle Smith as party leader and the next premier of Alberta.

The former Wildrose Party leader won on the sixth ballot with 53.77 per cent of the vote Thursday night, beating former finance minister Travis Toews, who got 46.23 per cent.

“I’m back,” Smith said to start her victory speech.

She said the province is now a senior partner in confederation, and that Thursday night marked the start of a new chapter in the Alberta story.

“No longer will Alberta ask permission from Ottawa to be prosperous and free. We will not have our voices silenced and censored,” she said.

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In a nod to anti-vaccine and anti-mandate supporters, Smith said, “we will not be told what we must put in our bodies in order to work or to travel.”

In her remarks, Smith said a federal NDP-Liberal coalition is to blame for an inflation and affordability crisis and said the provincial NDP leader is not putting Alberta first. She called on Rachel Notley to urge federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to stop the carbon tax and called the Notley-Trudeau-Singh coalition a recipe for economic destruction.

“We will not have our resources landlocked or our energy phased out of existence by virtue-signalling prime ministers,” Smith said.

She also stressed unity among party members to avoid an NDP win in the spring general election and welcomed Todd Loewen back into the UCP caucus. No mention was made of Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes, who with Loewen was booted from caucus in May 2021 after repeated criticism of then premier Jason Kenney and the provincial government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both have sat as Independents since that time.

Former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean, who lasted until the fifth ballot, and former ministers Rajan Sawhney, Rebecca Schulz and Leela Aheer, as well as Loewen also ran for the UCP leadership.

Aheer was eliminated on the first ballot, followed by Sawhney, Loewen and Schulz.

Smith, who must win a byelection to get a seat in the legislature, said she will be officially sworn-in as premier next week.

Close to 124,000 party members were eligible to vote. Many voted by mail-in ballot, while others voted in-person Thursday morning at one of five stations around the province.

The announcement was delayed more than two hours. It was set to begin at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday but by mid-afternoon, the party said it was getting additional volunteers to count the close to 85,000 mail-in ballots received.

Smith was long-perceived as the frontrunner in the leadership campaign and drove the conversation around it with her Alberta-first stance.

Her proposed sovereignty act was created to be used to defend the province from what she calls continuous economic and constitutional attacks by the federal government. An overview released by Smith in September said the act would affirm that the province has the authority to refuse provincial enforcement of specific federal laws or policies that violate Alberta’s jurisdictional rights.

Other leadership candidates and constitutional law experts have criticized it as unconstitutional, and Jason Kenney called it “cockamamie”.