Those free hockey tickets make some of Premier Danielle Smith’s allies even angrier than her enemies.
When that happens, you know a politician has badly slipped up. Smith further stokes embers of rebellion that were already flaring in the base of her own party.
Tickets get wildly expensive during a Stanley Cup run. For Game 6 of the Oilers-Panthers series, the cheapest seat available cost more than $1,800.
Unless you’re Smith or one of her cabinet ministers and staffers. Then you can accept free admission to a luxury box from eager interests. This path was greased by the UCP itself when it loosened the rules for gifts just before Christmas.
As the Globe and Mail reported, Smith and her insiders got free passes in both Vancouver and Edmonton. An Edmonton host for ministers and staffers was MHCare Medical and its CEO, Sam Mraiche.
The company was tied to the purchase of children’s pain medication from Turkey, a Smith brainstorm that ended up costing the public $75 million with little health benefit.
Without denying these details, the premier says it was all in the name of hockey. The citizens need to know their leaders are cheering for the home side.
The people might agree — if the politicians bought their own tickets once in a while. You’d think a premier who earns $186,000 a year could manage that.
NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi teed off.
“Having ministers and staff sit in lobbyists’ luxury boxes while we are facing an affordability crisis in this province not only looks bad, it shows they’re living in a different world than the average Albertan,” he said on X.
“The revelations about multiple ministers, staff members and the premier herself attending playoff hockey games on lobbyists’ dimes should come as no surprise to Albertans given the level of cronyism shown by this government.”
Even stronger, and more surprising, is the word from deep inside the premier’s own conservative base.
“I think it’s very disappointing. It puts into people’s minds what other political favours are being proposed and done in secret behind closed doors,” says Nadine Wellwood, spokeswoman for the 1905 committee, a new pressure group offered as an alternative to David Parker’s Take Back Alberta.
“I think every Albertan would expect our premier to be at an event like a hockey playoff when our team is being represented. It’s how she chose to do it, shrouded in secrecy.
“So I think it was a real disservice, a breach of trust.
“You combine this with things like her desire to bring the Heritage Trust Fund under the premier’s office, and the fact that she’s appointed Alison Redford.
“It’s not just one thing. All these things are building.”
The committee raised a petition against Smith’s recent decision to appoint former PC premier Redford to the board of Invest Alberta Corp.
Redford was run out of office in 2014 after findings that she misused government aircraft for personal purposes and planned to have a personal living space — the so-called Sky Palace — constructed in a government building.
Wellwood herself has a history with Smith and the UCP. She was disqualified as a candidate in Livingston-Macleod for advocating alternate COVID treatments and equating vaccine passports to Hitler’s Nazi regime.
The party was determined not to hand the NDP points of attack in the coming election campaign. But many UCP members agreed with Wellwood then, and still do today.
Marco Van Huigenbos, a former Fort Macleod councillor who was convicted of mischief for his role in the Coutts border blockade, believes Smith is heading for a serious challenge in the UCP leadership review vote set for Nov. 2.
Many conservatives are “disgusted” by the ticket episode, Van Huigenbos says. “There’s trouble in conservative land, and if they don’t take these concerns seriously it could mean a big problem for her in November.”
It’s been obvious since the UCP was created that the uprisings start in this active, aggressive, deeply conservative corner of the party base. These people hate cronyism, undue influence and politicians who exploit their elite status.
Now they’re starting to see Smith that way. Those hockey tickets may carry a price after all.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
X: @DonBraid