Op-Ed: Hat is Better Off being the Forgotten Corner than Ignored One under Smith

Premier Danielle Smith in Medicine Hat in 2023 as part of that year’s budget tour announcing the Highway 3 twinning project between Taber and Burdett that would be complete by 2025 along with plans widening of Hwy. 41 south to Elkwater. Neither project is complete as of February 2026. (Photo Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta)

Premier Danielle Smith is failing Albertans by turning a more than $11 billion surplus in 2022 into a more than $9 billion deficit for this upcoming fiscal year.

During previous political incarnations, Smith has shown zero sympathy for PC or NDP governments who’ve blamed the price of a barrel of crude for this province’s financial woes.

Under those circumstances no quarter should be extended to Smith now that she’s facing the same situation.

As MLA for Medicine Hat her failures have been just as spectacular as the city continues to stagnate.

But immigrants to the province are the cause, according to Smith.

If that’s the case, there is no reason why Smith shouldn’t hold up Medicine Hat as an example of an ideal situation when it comes to migration as we have had minimal population increases in the past decade. The loss of daily air service to the city should act as an exclamation mark as to how to make sure people don’t move to Medicine Hat, along with the shortage of jobs and minimal income levels.

Except, that would highlight the failures of a premier whose actions demonstrated so far are of a representative who sees Medicine Hat as little more than a political tourist stop.

A stop which is only serving to strip our municipalities decision making ability, along with federal ones, in an effort to consolidate power in Edmonton.

Smith needs to understand you need to do more than take a single tour on the Sunshine Trolley to adequately represent Hatters.

Medicine Hat isn’t Premier Smith’s home, home away from home or home in spirit.

And it’s brutally obvious every time she tries to communicate to Hat constituents.

While across the province municipalities have grown, Medicine Hat has looked on in envy as it has functionally lost BATUS, felt the brunt of a renewable energy moratorium and is now losing its only commercial air service.

This issue of provincial revenue being tied to international hydrocarbon prices has existed across Smith’s lifetime in Alberta but the premier is trying to suck and blow at the same time when it comes to explaining that the current situation isn’t her fault.

There is nowhere else in this country that has more experience dealing with the boom, bust economy linked to a commodity market than this province with Smith’s lifetime in Alberta correlating to the most extremes of that cycle.

When Alberta’s booming, anyone with a pulse can get a job in this province, industry groups are advocating to get more immigrants here and, in recent years, Smith and her predecessor Jason Kenney launched and maintained an “Alberta is Calling” initiative.

There might have been some fine print in that program but, unlike an Ozempic ad, the side effects of getting a bunch of people to move to Alberta wasn’t something put on a Toronto billboard. It certainly was glossed over when it was pitched to Albertans.

The only thing worse than Medicine Hat being the centre of the forgotten corner of Alberta is it being the ignored quarter of the province by a premier who represents the city in name only.