It becomes ever more obvious that Alberta's separatists and the UCP are so tight they squeak. And now, the separatists are bent on deepening their influence on the party. Some might call it a takeover.
That explains, I'd suggest, why Premier Danielle Smith is so anxious to shift blame for the latest uproar to the NDP. She argues that the NDP should have told the government when it learned elections data was being used on a video meeting of the Centurion Project. At one point, ex-premier Jason Kenney's details were on the screen.
A senior UCP caucus official was in that meeting. He didn't report anything amiss. The NDP learned about the meeting and immediately alerted the RCMP, then later released the information. Now, Smith flails away at NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi for keeping the story from the government.
Nenshi replied in the legislature: "The premier's staff didn't tell her. Now she expects the Opposition to tell her. Alerting the authorities doesn't mean calling the bank robber and telling him the cops are on their way."
The scene in the legislature has been raucous, almost riotous. The premier's argument provokes widespread hilarity, and not just with her political opposition. Longtime conservative activist Ken Boessenkool, a co-signer of the Firewall Letter, said it's a dubious messaging choice to argue that "our political opponents are bad because they must have recognized something we were too dumb to recognize."
Former NDP MLA Shannon Phillips has popped up as a significant voice in this controversy. She knows how it feels to have her personal data misused. In an infamous case, Lethbridge police officers stalked and photographed Phillips because they didn't like her politics. She thanked Kenney for reaching out to her at that time — a cross-partisan gesture that seems unlikely today, if not impossible.
Phillips posted: "If there's one thing I know about conservatives in Alberta, it's that they know how to campaign. They have good organizers and good training. They know the voters' list is under lock and key and isn't available to just anyone. This argument is not believable."
Smith's case is so bizarre that it has people talking. And maybe that is the point. Every episode involving the separatists, including this one, shows how deeply and successfully they have infiltrated the UCP. The relationship often seems cosy, friendly, perfectly natural. There's a photo online of the UCP official who was on that meeting sitting at a table with separatist firebrand David Parker. Parker is said to have revealed Kenney's personal data on the call.
I'm not suggesting the official is a separatist or that he recognized what was going down. Many people on video calls aren't paying much attention. But time after time, we see this relationship. When Smith blasted the NDP, and deplored illegality, she didn't have an unkind word for the separatists.
