It’s reckless and potentially counterproductive to be enabling separatists and stoking a national unity crisis right now

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The federal election results speak for themselves: Despite the Liberals securing a narrow minority government and almost doubling their support in this province, Albertans overwhelmingly voted for change.

Nearly two-thirds of Albertans voted for the Conservatives, which I would imagine translates into close to 100 per cent of provincial UCP members and supporters. It’s therefore understandable that Alberta’s UCP premier would publicly demonstrate that she hears those frustrations and take up the fight for change.

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However, it’s reckless and potentially counterproductive to be enabling separatists and stoking a national unity crisis right now.

It’s fair to still give the premier the benefit of the doubt that she is not a separatist herself. Maybe she fears alienating the independence-minded segment of her base. Maybe she thinks she can play good cop to the separatists’ bad cop. Either way, this is all deliberate and she clearly knows what she’s doing here.

While announcing an entirely reasonable court challenge of the federal government’s most unreasonable Clean Energy Regulations (CER), Smith faced numerous questions about her government’s decision to lower the threshold under the citizens’ initiative legislation at precisely the moment separatists are angling to force a referendum.

Smith has been