Bruce Anderson

That is something that they believe is better for them and better for Albertans than staying in Canada.

So when she says, well, they're economically disaffected and I've worked out a better arrangement with the current prime minister in Ottawa,

Therefore, you shouldn't leave.

I did see somebody write this morning.

I apologize in advance for not remembering exactly who it was, but I thought it was really well put.

The idea that that would make a wrath the head of this separatist movement go, OK, then let's forget the whole idea.

He thinks that making a deal with Ottawa is the reason Alberta has to leave, because he doesn't think that it's possible for Alberta to do better within Canada and to be better off outside.

You know, it comes back to the same problem that the Conservative Party nationally has had, and now the UCP in the context of the old Wild Rose Party, is that if you put a really radical faction into a Conservative political party, it could happen theoretically on the left, it just hasn't happened in the same way that we can see anyway.

And you have a leader who isn't really good or willing to focus on managing that schism.

Stephen Harper was pretty good at it.

But Daniel Smith is not good at it.

Daniel Smith has been playing both sides of her party, and she's paying a political price right now.

And the question is whether the province will pay a price or the country will pay a price because of that.

I don't know.

I mean, she should be.

She should be vulnerable.

But just starting that process towards the referendum does create certain dynamics.

In particular, somebody then needs to be described as the leader of the stay side, right?

So she will say that she's going to occupy that position.

She's the least effective of the potential leaders of that idea, I think.