‘If not Danielle, who?’: Activists pushing for Premier Smith to face leadership challenge
Political commentator Marty Belanger told the Buffalo Roundtable he’s willing to give Danielle Smith a year, and that changing leaders now “would not be a smart idea.”
Jeffrey Rath says Danielle Smith bought the Wexit contact list in 2022, sold UCP memberships to separatists on the promise she was secretly one of them, and should now face a leadership challenge.
But political commentator Marty Belanger, known online as MartyUpNorth, isn't buying it.
On Wednesday's Buffalo Roundtable, Sheila Gunn Reid and Lise Merle played Rath's CTV interview, in which the Alberta Prosperity Project figure said Smith “betrayed the base that elected her” and “can't get elected without us.”
“I disagree with Jeff on this one,” Belanger said. “I will try to convince people that changing leaders at this point would not be a smart idea. She's got a year. I'll give her a chance.”
As for the list: “I don't know if she bought the Wexit list and frankly I don't care,” Sheila said. “It's just a list of people.” Belanger agreed. “The voter list is a phone book. A list is a list is a list.”
If Smith used it to pitch separatists on “a strong Alberta within a united Canada,” Sheila added, “it's not like she's some crypto-separatist. She campaigned against the 10th question.” Lise called the CTV claim “a humongous nothing burger.”
Belanger said the real story is in the numbers.
Smith told the Manning conference last week that 6,000 people had bought tickets to the November AGM, with another thousand expected. “We're not out here because we love you guys,” Belanger recalled telling MLA Shane Getson at last year's convention. “If you were doing a great job, we wouldn't be here.”
An insider also told him, he said, that UCP membership peaked at 110,000 in 2024 and has fallen to about 40,000. “People have not renewed. We call it voting with your wallet.”
The panel then turned to Cory Morgan's assessment that Rath's Washington meetings cost the leave side at least five points. Belanger offered a football analogy. “We owe Mitch Sylvestre, Jeff Rath, Dennis Modry, all those guys a huge debt of gratitude,” he said. “If somebody like Jeff picks up the ball and moves it forward 20 yards, but then suddenly does fumble and it comes back to the 15-yard line, he still moved it forward 15 yards.”
Still, he conceded, “I had a lot of people meet with me privately and say, ‘Hey, can you tell Jeff to tone it down?’”
Sheila said the outrage over the U.S. trip exposed a double standard. “Jacques Parizeau did the same damn thing, and everyone's like, ‘Yeah, that's what you do when you try to start a country.’”
“It wasn't even a secret,” Belanger said. “They weren't selling our water, they weren't selling our oil.”
The Buffalo Roundtable streams live Wednesdays at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.
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COMMENTS
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Bruce Atchison commented 2026-10-22 21:05:22 -0400Jeff Rath is ruining the image of us separatists. Danielle Smith is doing a much better job than other provincial leaders. Let’s focus on changing her mind about Ottawa, net zero, and not using our leverage.
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Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-10-22 17:51:22 -0400The fact that 1 in 4 of voters indicated that they wanted to pursue the idea of independence is not a trivial matter. It indicates that they were either dissatisfied with the current arrangement or Danielle Smith didn’t do enough to convince them that remaining was a better choice.
Perhaps a review of her leadership would be in order.
