82 Facts About Danielle Smith

Danielle Smith entered provincial politics in 2009, becoming the leader of the Wildrose Party.

Danielle Smith contributed to the growth of the party, which formed the Official Opposition after the 2012 election.

Danielle Smith won a seat in the Legislative Assembly for Highwood in that election, and served as leader of the Opposition until 2014, when she resigned to join the governing Progressive Conservatives.

Danielle Smith was defeated in her bid for the PC nomination in Highwood for the 2015 election.

Between 2015 and 2022, Danielle Smith worked in talk radio and served as the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group.

Danielle Smith was sworn in as premier on October 11 and became MLA for Brooks-Medicine Hat on November 8,2022.

Danielle Smith led the UCP to re-election as a majority government in the 2023 general election.

Danielle Smith's policies have primarily focused on extending Albertan provincial autonomy.

Danielle Smith's government has begun the process of withdrawing Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan to create a pension plan exclusive to the province's residents.

Marlaina Danielle Smith was born in Calgary on April 1,1971, the second of five children.

Danielle Smith is the daughter of Sharon and Doug Smith, an oilfield consultant and previously a board member for the Wildrose Party.

Danielle Smith is named after the song Marlena by The Four Seasons.

Danielle Smith described her parents as "reliably conservative" in an interview with the National Post.

When Danielle Smith was a grade 8 student, she said she came home praising a teacher who spoke positively about communism, and her father argued otherwise.

Danielle Smith said she had family in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time.

Danielle Smith is a past member of the Girl Guides of Canada and was featured in a 2013 museum exhibit about prominent Girl Guides at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery.

Danielle Smith is an admirer of Ayn Rand, John Locke and Margaret Thatcher.

Danielle Smith is a fan of the young-adult fantasy novel Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and once considered becoming a novelist in the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Danielle Smith attended the University of Calgary and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1993 and economics in 1995.

The university had a strong culture of conservative and progressive political activism and debate when Danielle Smith was a student.

Danielle Smith's classmates included Ezra Levant; Rob Anders; Naheed Nenshi; and Kevin Bosch, who became an adviser to prime ministers Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau.

Danielle Smith was active in the campus Progressive Conservatives and was eventually elected president of the club.

Danielle Smith became involved in political campaigning and met her first husband, Sean McKinsley.

In 1998, Danielle Smith entered politics when she ran for the board of trustees of the Calgary Board of Education.

Danielle Smith won, but less than a year later, the chairwoman complained that the board had become dysfunctional.

Years later, Danielle Smith said she had been far too strident during her tenure as a board trustee and said the experience taught her to be more tolerant of those with whom she disagreed.

Subsequently, Danielle Smith pursued work as an advocate for ranchers, farmers and other rural landowners with the Alberta Property Rights Initiative and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute.

Danielle Smith's columns included coverage of city hall and health reform, but ventured into other topics.

Danielle Smith then went on to succeed Charles Adler as host of the national current affairs program Global Sunday, a Sunday-afternoon interview show on Global Television.

Danielle Smith hosted two talk radio programs focused on health policy and property rights.

Danielle Smith met her second husband, David Moretta, who was an executive producer with Global Television at the time and would go on to be a former executive producer with Sun Media.

In 2004, Danielle Smith was named one of Calgary's "Top 40 Under 40".

Danielle Smith was hired by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in 2006, becoming a provincial director for Alberta.

Morton lost to Ed Stelmach, and Danielle Smith became increasingly disillusioned with what she said were Stelmach's "free-spending ways".

Danielle Smith cited the 2008 provincial budget as a turning point where she determined that Stelmach's government had 'lost its way'.

Danielle Smith quit the PC party in 2009 and joined the Wildrose Alliance.

Years later, Danielle Smith recalled that Anderson told her that despite the Tories' reckless spending and unwillingness to listen to the backbench, they were the only credible centre-right party in the province.

Danielle Smith refused to stay, saying that there was no hope of restoring Alberta to fiscal sanity under the Tories, and that the Wildrose was the only credible chance at electing a fiscally conservative government.

Later that year, Danielle Smith was recruited by Wildrose officials to run for the leadership of the party.

Danielle Smith's win meant he was one of four in the Wildrose caucus; by the time Smith was elected leader on October 17,2009, support for the party had quadrupled since the 2008 election.

Danielle Smith convinced three PCs who served in government to cross the floor to join the Wildrose Party: Rob Anderson and Heather Forsyth, and later Guy Boutiller.

For most of the time before the 2012 provincial election, it appeared that Danielle Smith was poised to become the first woman to lead a party to victory in an Alberta election.

Danielle Smith was elected to the Legislature from Highwood, just south of Calgary, on the same day, defeating John Barlow, editor of the Okotoks Western Wheel.

Danielle Smith asked members to adopt a forward-looking policy platform for the next election.

Danielle Smith was dealt a second blow at the Wildrose annual general meeting, when an anti-discrimination resolution that she strongly supported was voted down while she was out of the room.

Danielle Smith told CBC News that the defeat of the anti-discrimination resolution led her to consider returning to the PCs.

On December 17,2014, Danielle Smith announced that she, deputy leader Rob Anderson, and seven other Wildrose MLAs were crossing the floor to join the PCs.

Danielle Smith said that several conversations with Prentice revealed that they shared much common ground, particularly on fiscal issues.

Danielle Smith was defeated in her bid for the PC nomination in Highwood by Okotoks Councillor Carrie Fischer on March 28,2015.

Danielle Smith's defeat was attributed to her floor-crossing which angered many in her riding.

In July 2021, Danielle Smith wrote an opinion article supporting Jason Kenney's referendum on equalization payments, held on October 18,2021.

In June 2019, Danielle Smith registered as a lobbyist for the Alberta Enterprise Group, an association where Danielle Smith was the president.

At that time Danielle Smith lobbied the provincial government on behalf of industry for the RStar program.

On May 18,2022, Danielle Smith announced that she was launching a campaign to seek the leadership of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, after the resignation of sitting premier and UCP leader Jason Kenney.

Danielle Smith was perceived to be the frontrunner among party members in the race to replace Kenney according to internal polling released to the Calgary Sun.

Danielle Smith's campaign ran a deficit of $26,792 after spending $1,389,829 on her successful campaign.

The remarks faced criticism for alleged trivialization of discrimination faced by minority groups, for which Danielle Smith did not apologize.

The incumbent, fellow UCP MLA Michaela Frey, resigned soon after Danielle Smith was elected leader and premier, and had encouraged Danielle Smith to run.

In late-November 2022, Danielle Smith withdrew her plan to introduce a bill that would add unvaccinated individuals as a protected class under the Alberta Human Rights Act; Danielle Smith continued to promote an intent for herself and her ministers to contact businesses and organizations that were still "discriminating" via COVID-19 vaccine mandates and ask them to "reconsider their vaccination policy in the light of new evidence".

Danielle Smith stated that "most employers have made the responsible decision to not discriminate against their workers", and for people to inform their MLAs "If there is still discrimination".

In May 2023 as wildfires swept the province and a state of emergency because of wildfires was declared by the province, Danielle Smith was asked about the UCP government's cuts to the firefighting budget.

Danielle Smith had previously promised pardons for those guilty of COVID-19 violations and indicated she was in regular contact with Crown prosecutors.

In May 2023 the ethics commissioner found that Danielle Smith had contravened the Conflict of Interest Act by discussing criminal charges against Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski with the justice minister Tyler Shandro and with Pawlowski himself.

Danielle Smith thus became the third woman to lead a party to a win in an Alberta general election, after Redford and Notley.

Amid US President Donald Trump's discussions of potential tariffs on Canada and remarks about the possibility of annexing Canada, Danielle Smith was the only premier that refused to sign a joint statement by all other Canadian premiers to co-ordinate a response in case Trump acted on his threats.

Danielle Smith was scheduled to attend Trump's inauguration, but was unable to because the event was moved into a small indoor venue due to bad weather conditions.

On March 20th 2025, it was revealed that Danielle Smith did an interview with Breitbart two weeks before in which she said that she pressed the Trump administration to pausing the implementation of tariffs as a way for Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to be elected as Prime Minister.

Danielle Smith said that her reasoning was because the implementation of the tariffs would benefit the Liberal Party of Canada polling numbers and that Poilievre would be more inline with the Trump administration.

In February 2025, The Globe and Mail obtained a letter from lawyers of Athana Mentzelopoulos, the former head of Alberta Health Services, that the Danielle Smith government dismissed her two days before she was scheduled to meet with the province's auditor-general to discuss her investigation into procurement contracts and contracting processes as well as alleging that the premier's then-chief of staff, Marshall Danielle Smith, interfered in AHS contract negotiations.

Danielle Smith has been described as media-savvy and adept at presenting a professional and polished image.

Danielle Smith shared a mentor, political scientist Tom Flanagan, with former Reform Party leader Preston Manning and former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Danielle Smith has an affinity towards Manning's movement and Harper's government.

Danielle Smith distanced herself and the Wildrose Party from Flanagan in February 2013, after he made controversial remarks over child pornography.

Danielle Smith announced a ban of trans women competing in women's sports in Alberta.

Danielle Smith argued for a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine and advocated for Ukraine's neutrality.

Danielle Smith has since apologised for making statements on E coli and said that her statements on cancer were meant to express that preventative health measures are an important means to help combat cancer.

On May 17,2023, an investigation by Marguerite Trussler, the Alberta Ethics Commissioner, found that Danielle Smith had violated section 3 of the Conflicts of Interest Act by talking to the Alberta Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Alberta about charges in an ongoing criminal case against far-right street preacher and COVID-19 protestor Artur Pawlowski.

Danielle Smith added that Smith's comments contribute to the "normalization of conspiracy theories" such as "lizard aliens and a flat earth".

Danielle Smith has made claims about her ancestry that have been debunked by genealogists and Canadian immigration records.

Danielle Smith claimed Crowe was a victim of the Trail of Tears and forcibly relocated to Kansas in the 1830s.

Kathy Griffin, a Cherokee genealogist in Texas who worked with APTN, could not find proof that any of Danielle Smith's ancestors were members of the historical Cherokee tribes, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, or the Cherokee Nation.

Danielle Smith's ancestors did not appear on the Dawes Roll, a US registry cataloguing members of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole.