October 11, 2022

By Regan Tate

Premier Smith issues statement following comments on discrimination

Oct 12, 2022 | 2:00 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Premier Danielle Smith has issued a statement after comments she made on Tuesday during a media briefing caused some controversy.

She says she did not intend to trivialize in any way the discrimination faced by minority communities and other persecuted groups and her office will set meetings with minority community stakeholders in the coming days.

When responding to questions from reporters, Smith indicated that the unvaccinated faced the most restrictions on their freedoms over the last year.

She said she has never experienced in her lifetime a situation where a person was fired from their job, prevented from attending a kids’ sporting event or travel on an airplane because they were not vaccinated.

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“They have been the most discriminated against group that I have ever witnessed in my lifetime that’s a pretty extreme level of discrimination that we have seen.”

Reaction was swift on social media.

Courtesy Twitter

Courtesy Twitter

Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley also weighed in calling Smith’s comments completely disrespectful and tone-deaf.

In Medicine Hat on Wednesday to help launch Gwendoline Dirk’s campaign in Brooks-Medicine Hat, the NDP’s Shannon Phillips said the comments were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful on a number of different levels and give investors and people thinking of moving to Alberta cause to think again.

“We are now in what, day five of this person’s mandate and she has already introduced more conflict, more instability, more, just chaos into our reputation as Albertans and to our overall trajectory for our health-care system, for business, for economic growth more broadly,” the Lethbridge-West MLA said.

On Wednesday, Smith issued the following statement to clarify her comments.

Statement from Danielle Smith