Were Alberta truly strong and free, we’d be shipping copious amounts of our oil from a northwestern B.C. port today, and not waiting in vain for the duplicitous federal Liberals to remind us why we can’t.

But after losing her nerve over the summer, Premier Danielle Smith is now reverting to virtue-signalling as a lame ploy to halt the worrying drop in her approval rating over the past three months.

Maybe the words Wild Rose still give her nightmares, and that’s why Alberta is ditching that classic slogan gracing our licence plates, replacing it with Strong And Free — a shopworn piece of verbiage beloved by politicians everywhere, which currently serves as both wishful thinking and our provincial motto. (It’s a tad better than Blue Sky City, but not by much.)

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