While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Graham Thomson.
The chickens are coming home to roost for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. And as we prepare for 2026 to dawn, so many chickens are coming home she’s pretty much running a political poultry farm.
In her political with Alberta’s 51,000 striking teachers, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has exploded the constitutional equivalent of a nuclear bomb and set in motion a possible wildcat strike by thousands of provincial workers protesting her actions. As onlookers yelled “shame” in the legislature’s public gallery early Tuesday morning, Smith’s government swiftly rammed through a piece of legislation, Bill 2...
Alberta wants to be the next Quebec. Or a sovereign province.
Alberta’s separatist movement fell flat on its face Monday night in three provincial byelections. The Opposition NDP held on to two Edmonton ridings with leader Naheed Nenshi winning one of them, and the governing UCP was again victorious in the rural riding of Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills.
Here is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s reaction to the federal election boiled down to one ominous sentence: “I will not permit the status quo to continue.” It is a threat disguised as an olive branch.
Try as she might, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has discovered she can’t keep a lid on a brewing scandal threatening her government. It is boiling over into something of a political mutiny. Not enough of a mutiny at this point to capsize Smith’s leadership, but an insurrection nonetheless.
Premier Danielle Smith, the great disrupter of Alberta politics, is now disrupting the federal scene. At least, that’s the perspective of those who don’t know Smith and haven’t followed her career as United Conservative premier the past two years. Smith is in fact all about disruption and even chaos to gain power and influence at both the provincial and federal...
When Finance Minister Nate Horner tabled Alberta’s provincial budget in the assembly on Thursday afternoon, he and every other government MLA should have been wearing a neck brace. And maybe two for Premier Danielle Smith.
Alberta’s UCP government never sleeps. It is always up, always moving, always finding new things to chew on. It is the shark of Canadian politics. Just over a week ago, Alberta was fixated on the drama surrounding Premier Danielle Smith’s leadership review at the United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer.
To survive a leadership review at this weekend’s United Conservative Party convention, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is relying on two old adages: “dance with the one that brung you”; and “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” That’s why Smith is pandering to the same social conservatives who helped topple Jason Kenney as UCP leader...
If you were thinking Alberta’s politics is getting particularly crazy these days — you’d be right. I mean, how else to explain why Premier Danielle Smith was recently dabbling in the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory. If you were thinking that’s because Smith has spun out of control — you’d be wrong. Smith is very much in control. She’s just worried about...
Too soon? Is it too soon after the devastating fire that ripped through Jasper last week, creating a human tragedy and an ecological disaster, to talk about the fraught politics of wildfires in Alberta?
It was a bloodless coup. Alberta’s opposition New Democratic Party is now being led by a man who wasn’t even a member of the party until entering the leadership race in March.
Into the placid waters of Alberta’s NDP leadership race comes a rogue cannonball. Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi ended weeks of speculation Monday afternoon to announce he has entered the contest to replace New Democratic leader Rachel Notley.
In a show of defiance that is one part sabre rattling and one part constitutional threat, with a large dollop of political theatre tossed in, Premier Danielle Smith has finally pulled the trigger on using Alberta’s Sovereingty Act. Smith is invoking the controversial act, introduced one year ago, to oppose the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, specifically Ottawa’s insistence...
To fulfil a reckless election promise, Premier Danielle Smith has slapped a pair of handcuffs on herself, figuratively speaking. She wants to prevent her own government — and any subsequent Alberta government — from raising personal taxes. Ever. (Or at least to make the process so difficult as to be nigh impossible.)