EDMONTON — Premier Danielle Smith has announced that many Albertans will receive a $100 energy rebate after listening to her closest advisor, a big wheel of policy ideas she keeps in her office closet.
“Albertans are financially stressed, politically divided, and dissatisfied with my leadership, so I spun the wheel and decided that you should all go out and buy yourselves a little something,” Smith said. “When you get screwed slightly less than usual at the grocery store or gas pump, be sure to think of me.”
Premier Smith’s large policy wheel features well-worn classics that she’s turned to throughout her time in office, including “Blame the opposition,” “Blame foreign oil markets,” and “Blame Trudeau,” the latter of which has been hastily scratched out and updated with Mark Carney’s name.
“The wheel has seen me through crisis after crisis, and it lights up,” Smith told reporters. “Can anyone in my cabinet light up? Only Jason Nixon, and only when he’s insulting people.”
Smaller segments on the wheel include “Abscond to Paraguay with a bunch of signed McDavid gear,” “Announce Alberta nuclear missile project,” “Blame whatever people are angry about on evil clone,” and “Regicide?”
“Fate has yet to make me tell Albertans that we’ve been trapped in an elaborate computer simulation since 2019,” but maybe someday,” Smith said, while looking wistfully at the wheel. “Maybe someday.”
Experts have mixed feelings on Smith’s policy wheel, which offers advice that’s generally subpar yet still superior to listening to the average UCP hardliner.
“Smith’s announcement is reminiscent of the 2006 decision to issue every Albertan $400, which then-premier Ralph Klein made after consulting his own close advisor, the liquor bottle that happened to be nearest to him,” a University of Calgary political scientist said. “But Premier Smith’s wheel doesn’t have Klein’s ‘yell at the homeless’ option, so there’s that.”
At press time, Smith was giving the wheel another spin and looking giddy as it approached “Add yet another question to the October referendum.”
