Canada’s female “Trump mini-me” - Danielle Smith.

A very interesting post on the parallels with Trump. The full post is a must read.

Some highlights from the post … “So what are Canadians to make of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, an open admirer of Trump who has visited Mar-a-Lago, echoed his grievances, courted his allies, and adopted what can only be described as a Trumpian style of “ungoverning”? The answer is not that Smith is Donald Trump. Canada is not the United States. Alberta is not Washington. Context matters. Institutions matter.

But trajectory matters too.

The uncomfortable truth is that Danielle Smith is treading the same authoritarian path. Not in rhetoric alone. In behaviour. In institutional contempt. In her willingness to subordinate democratic norms, minority rights, and the rule of law to ideological and political ends. She is not a clone yet. But she is unmistakably a Mini-Me.”

“Several years ago, political scientist Duane Bratt described Smith as a libertarian populist. More recently, after watching her govern, he changed his diagnosis. Smith, Bratt now argues, is a libertarian authoritarian — the same term Professor Trish Miller-Roberts has applied to Trump. The distinction matters. Libertarian populism flatters “the people” while railing against elites.

Libertarian authoritarianism uses the language of freedom to justify the concentration of power and the erosion of checks and balances, she argued in an insightful paper. Henry Ford’s famous aphorism neatly illustrates the paradox at the heart of libertarian authoritarianism. He said that customers could have their cars in any colour they wanted as long as it was black. Citizens can exercise their freedoms in any way they choose as long as the libertarian authoritarians agree with it. If they don’t agree, then they are happy to use the power of the state to enforce compliance.

Smith’s governing record fits that latter description with growing precision .

The shift is not semantic. It is structural. It reflects a move away from democratic contestation toward executive dominance, where governance is respected only insofar as it produces the “right” outcomes and institutions are tolerated only when they comply with the “right” ideas.”

The conclusion … “Smith is pushing at norms. She is weakening institutional checks. She is redefining rights as inconveniences. She is surrounding herself with extremists. She is cultivating grievance, as her never-ending complaints about federal overreach amply demonstrate. She is making peace with separatists. She is building an executive-centric model of governance that treats opposition, courts, and civil society as obstacles rather than partners.

That is the perilous path Trump walked. Step by step. Until the pattern became undeniable.

The final form of Alberta authoritarianism will not look exactly like Trump’s version. It doesn’t need to. Fascism is adaptive. It borrows local colours. It exploits local resentments. In Canada, it may arrive draped in libertarian language rather than national flags. In provinces, it may advance through administrative power rather than coups.

But the warning signs are no longer subtle.

Danielle Smith is not an aberration. She is a prototype. And that is what should worry Canadians most.”