Danielle Smith Calls Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) “Inevitable”

In an article released 4 months ago on the website Todayville Red Deer, former MLA and leader of the defunct Wildrose Party, and current candidate for the United Conservative Party leadership, Danielle Smith, wrote about how she sees the world of finance moving towards digital and cryptocurrencies.

Smith’s article describes the differences between transacting in cash, Bitcoin, and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and even references articles written by The National Telegraph on the subjects, but one concerning element of the piece is how Smith openly tells readers to “soldier on” in the face of what she sees as an “inevitable” move towards a Bank of Canada CBDC. 

Smith doesn’t appear to be in favour of CBDCs per se, but she seems to not see the prospect of having the central bank control Canadian bank accounts as a particularly pressing issue, or at least not one she would fight back against.

At one point in her article, Smith seems to dismissively cast people who want to have physical cash to stay the foundational basis of the economy as people who want to “[trade] their baked bread and jars of chutney at the automechanic,” or “withdraw cash from the bank and put it under their mattress,” before saying CBDCs are where things are headed. 

Smith states:

People say they want politicians to level with them. But now that I’m leveling with you about what is coming and how you can counter it, you are telling me you are too afraid to listen so I should just shut up about it.

I acknowledge your fears.

But I would ask you to soldier on and try to understand how the world is going to change. Because the World Economic Forum compendium document on digital currencies released in November 2021 shows a central bank digital currency is where the central bankers of the world are moving and it has already started in China and Russia.

The key to understanding Smith’s article is where she makes definite statements. She tends to make a lot of vague statements about CBDCs and other cash alternatives as if she wants to haggle on her real positions at a later date. 

It should raise red flags Smith is telling people to “soldier on and try to understand how the world is going to change,” the keyword, in this case, being “is;” as if the WEF and central bankers trying to force people to accept massive negative changes in the way the monetary system works, is something we should just resign ourselves to.

However, Smith uses even more evasive linguistic tactics in the article. In another instance, she uses these tactics in order to not to take the threat of CBDCs seriously by saying that their adoption is “inevitable.”

Her specific quote was:

The reason I think this is inevitable and that it will happen before Pierre Poilievre gets elected in 2025 and gets a chance to stop it, is because the momentum to do something to address our damaged currency is already too great.

These are great political weasel words that really mean that while Smith thinks CBDCs are somewhat bad (although she later partly defends CBDCs in the article), there is no point pushing back on their implementation because they are “inevitable.”

Quite a strange way of brushing off the issue of CBDCs for someone claiming to be willing to take on any infringement on Alberta provincial autonomy, and Albertans’ personal liberties with the hypothetical ‘Sovereignty Act.’ 

Daniell Smith even makes the gloom and doom prediction that:

As we’ve seen in China, if it were implemented as a pilot project I suspect a large number of Canadians would simply sign up. We saw through COVID that at least 90 percent of the public (or more) will do whatever the government tells them to do. So I suspect there will be a high uptake of the digital coin.

Smith then goes on to say although CBDCs can be tied to ESG scores and would allow the government to track all your spending, and make further infringements on your privacy that there are monetary benefits for digital currencies when it comes to government debt and inflation.

Although Smith is being partly tongue-in-cheek about how the benefits are mostly only good for central bankers, she clearly does not take the issue of Central Bank Digital Currency as seriously as Polievre has. 

It is good to see Smith acknowledge that Bitcoin is a good way of avoiding some of the issues with central bank monetary policies, but at the same time just mentioning that Bitcoin exists seems like a rather weak move from someone who casts herself as wanting to take the fight over Alberta autonomy to the federal government. 

You cannot claim to be willing to take the federal government to task over the carbon tax but then sit back and take an ‘its inevitable’ when it comes to Trudeau implementing a CBDC which would be far more damaging to Albertan/Canadian’s individual liberties and financial health.

Truly, all the current United Conservative Party leadership candidates should take the issue of a Central Bank Digital Currency more seriously and demonstrate how they will fight back if the Trudeau Liberals and the Bank of Canada move to implement one.