Calgary's Arena Deal And Smith's 2012 Trauma

On What The Arena Deal Tells Us

Not that it matters, but let’s be very clear about something – Danielle Smith does not believe giving public funds to an arena that will help make a private entity (the Calgary Flames) money. There is no universe in which she thinks this is a good use of public funds, given everything she’s ever said or done on the topic. But, to try and win an election, she’s willing to wheel and deal.

Will it work? I’m sure Flames stability and the prospect of getting a final answer to this incessant fight is popular in Calgary, and I’m pretty sure the NDP is going to have to match the offer so that Smith can’t fight this campaign saying that Rachel Notley is a threat to the Flames’ stability (even though opposing this deal is very much not a threat). And, on the heels of days and days of campaign-style spending commitments in Calgary from the UCP, mostly contingent on them winning government again as opposed to announcing what they have funded, we’re on the precipice of a campaign and the general story of the campaign is congealing – the UCP are ahead, and they’re not going to let little things like principles get in the way of that.

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The arena deal will probably play a very small role in the campaign itself – the NDP’s only statement so far is that they’ll review the deal and have more to say soon, which is decidedly not opposition. Whatever fancy language they dress up their support for it with – words about value for money and economic certainty and assurances on overspends or whatever – they’ll end up backing this deal. But what this deal does illustrate is the struggle that the Federal right are having that the Smith UCP isn’t – which is what to do when principles get in the way of politics.

The story of Danielle Smith is one of conflict, and I think that’s why she’s a misunderstood figure. She is an ardent ideologue, most of the time. Being leader of a right wing splinter party because the main conservative party isn’t conservative enough is absolutely the work of an absolutist and someone who believes in their beliefs, but she’s also the same person who sold that party out in 2014 to try and get some future gig under Jim Prentice. Now, in her second act, she both won’t stop focusing on COVID prosecutions but also is willing to throw all her fiscal beliefs out the window.

The answer is that Smith has always held the view that she can do a lot of good, and that therefore she can justify to herself doing things she doesn’t believe to mollify her left flank because she will do more good if she wins. How she rationalizes what she despised in Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford is simple – she has faith in Danielle Smith being properly right wing, but every time Stelmach or Redford would tilt left, it was proof they were soft and not really conservative.

Smith, for good or for ill, is willing to say anything that will win her an election. Was she always willing to do so? No, but the thing is, 2012 still looms large, and having been deprived of one chance at a proper term as Premier, she is unwilling to lose another by being too rigid. Everything Smith is doing now is an attempt to not lose an election she has no business losing, having already lost one before.

Unlike in 2012, when Smith lost in large part because she couldn’t bring herself to condemn the Lake Of Fire comments, Smith is now proactively getting ahead of anything that might cause her any problems. Her Public Health Guarantee might be a fraud, but she wants to be able to go around the province saying those three words so she doesn’t get pulled into a contentious fight about exactly what parameters there are on when a doctor’s visit might be billed to the patient.

Show this arena deal to 2011 Danielle Smith and she’d have a meltdown. If Alison Redford had proposed this in Edmonton Smith would have chained herself to the old arena there to stop the monstrous waste of taxpayer dollars, but now, having lost an election she should have won, her sense of principles are gone. And that’s a really difficult thing to campaign against if you’re the NDP. Smith will not be constrained by what she’s said before, based on all this evidence, and hypocrisy claims only go so far in modern politics. What they’re facing is a Premier unchained to anything, which means she can be anything to anybody.

Will the arena deal move votes? Maybe, maybe not, but what will is Smith being able to say she supports any idea that the UCP tracking polling says is popular. She is not going to be an easy target to pin down, because that’s the whole advantage of being divorced from ideological qualms – you can just do the popular shit to win.

Can the NDP do the same? I don’t know – Notley hasn’t shown a willingness to buck the Edmonton base of the party much in the name of electoral expediency, but if she’s going to beat the moving target of Smith she’s going to have to. Notley will need to tell the Edmonton wing of the party to shut up and sit down while she goes to win, and winning will involve a lot of compromises – whether in rhetoric or in announced policy – that Edmonton left wingers won’t like. Smith has the license from her party to say whatever it takes to win again. I don’t know if Notley does. And that’s what makes the arena deal so telling.

Political analysis is so often fighting the last war, but for politicians, it’s often fighting their last trauma. Why’s Olivia Chow running for Toronto Mayor? Because she doesn’t want her last act in politics to be getting her ass kicked by Adam Vaughan in 2015. For Smith, her last trauma is 2012, and the election not won, so she is willing to throw everything she’s ever believed overboard to win.

Will it work? I think so – the thing about cynically meeting the electorate where they are is that it usually works because you end up where the electorate is. And whatever you want to say about it, the arena deal made clear just how far Danielle Smith will throw her ideology to win this election. And that should send a shiver down the spine of Notley and the NDP.