Smith hears mixed reviews for Alberta Next pitches from Edmonton crowd
Premier Danielle Smith and members of her Alberta Next panel faced more mixed reviews from an east Edmonton crowd Wednesday night than the largely positive response the evening prior in Red Deer.
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The event was branded as the panel's Sherwood Park town hall but was held in an Edmonton hotel ballroom just west of the suburb community.
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Smith's panel along with the boisterous crowd of roughly 500 in attendance, and over 40,000 livestream viewers, heard from 72 speakers primarily on the six topics raised on the panel's website regarding Alberta's relationship with Ottawa.
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The second event in a cross-province series came after Smith and the panel debuted before a largely receptive town hall audience in Red Deer on Tuesday.
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On Wednesday, Smith drew a round of applause on entering the room to begin the event, but her opening remarks listing grievances against Ottawa were interrupted by heckles and laughter before concluding with another round of applause.
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'Alberta has an Ottawa problem,' she said. 'Regardless of what each of us believes about these issues or what path we think is best, we as Albertans have to be able to respectfully debate and discuss the issues her.'
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The discussion of topics to push back against Ottawa was preceded by the same videos that must be watched before taking one of the survey's on the panel's website, with the pre-recorded messages together taking up roughly half an hour of what was a two-hour and 45-minute-long event.
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The most vocal opposition from the crowd came from speakers addressing a potential Alberta pension plan.
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Two of the 11 speakers on the issue were in favour of leaving the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
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Those opposed to leaving CPP stressed the risks of a making that move as well as how the issue appeared to have been settled.
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'Why is this question even a question when we've already done this survey,' a speaker named Nicole asked, pointing to the province's own survey from 2023 that Postmedia prompted the province to publish after it withheld the results for 21 months. That survey showed just 10 per cent of respondents wanted a provincial pension plan.
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Fort Saskatchewan's Roberta Stasyk called a provincial plan 'a horrible idea' while questioning how it made Alberta look to the rest of Canada.
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'We sound like bratty children.'
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