Danielle Smith Deputy Campaign Manager Was Doing Work For BC NDP During July 2022

Earlier this week, The National Telegraph reported that UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith had her campaign employing Mike Butler as the deputy campaign manager for Alberta North. Butler is a multiple-time NDP/Liberal candidate and strong supporter of Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley during both the provincial and federal elections in 2015 and 2019.

We had included an audio recording showing Danielle Smith feigning not knowing who Butler was, and then saying “we are trying to build a big tent here” when his left-wing background was explained. 

Since then Smith and her campaign have defended Butler as being someone who has politically shifted to the Conservative side, which Butler also did in an op-ed he wrote for the Western Standard, and a statement he sent to Rebel News. 

Smith’s campaign and Mike Butler claim that his political views changed after 2021 when he said he refused to get vaccinated and felt “isolated,” thus making him gravitate in a Conservative direction and ultimately Danielle Smith’s campaign.

Well, that seems to be a load of bologna, seeing as The National Telegraph has been made aware of the fact that Butler was still doing work for the BC NDP in July of 2022, a year after he supposedly had moved away from the left-wing pro-mandate parties. 

Photos have surfaced showing Butler at a British Columbia BC NDP event, hosted by MLA Adam Walker, where he is holding a banner and wearing an NDP volunteer t-shirt.

Butler had also previously praised the BC NDPs pandemic response in February 2021, in a post made on Facebook where he also said he was “obviously still a strong federal Liberal.” 

This openly contradicts what Butler said in his op-ed in the Western Standard where he said that in 2021, in response to not wanting to be vaccinated and feeling “isolated,” that:

Very few people are standing up for the little guy right now. In fact, it is the conservative movement which has become the voice for the middle class right now. So like many Canadians, I have now changed my perspective on who I want to see in government.

It would be foolish to assume Butler has actually changed many of his political views if he is still volunteering and doing work for a BC NDP MLA who is part of a provincial majority government that has been continuing to discriminate based on vaccination status. Even recently requiring doctors, dentists, and other regulated professionals, to be vaccinated to continue working. 

It should be noted that the BC NDP is also far more hostile to the Alberta oil and gas industry than Rachel Notley’s NDP, and passed a similar policy to Notely’s NDP to collect race-based data to decide how public service jobs are staffed.

Danielle Smith has to take ownership over the staffing choices her campaign has made, especially with her history of having ignored and then defended Butler’s employment as a deputy campaign manager.

UCP members deserve answers, especially when their donations to Smith’s campaign are being paid to a man who has a long history of supporting parties who are hostile to their values.

Danielle Smith and her campaign cannot wave this issue away by continuing to say that those of us who have been scrutinizing the quality of conservatism represented in her campaign is engaging in “cancel culture.” 

(Below is a screenshot of a comment Mattew Althiem, a campaign manager for Danielle Smith (who Smith said was in charge of all hiring) left underneath our original article about Mike Butler.)