Notley faces almost constant threats

E DMONTON • Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has been subjected to threats of harm far more often than her recent predecessors, show newly released statistics that confirm a disturbing escalation of security concerns over the past two years.

The numbers from the protection services unit were obtained by the Edmonton Journal through an access to information request that took more than two and a half years to be resolved.

The statistics show that from 2003 to 2015 — a period that saw six different premiers — Alberta sheriffs recorded a total of 55 security incidents involving the premier.

Nineteen of those came in the last half of 2015, which happened to be Premier Rachel Notley’s first months in office. At least three of those incidents required police intervention.

Then in 2016, protection services changed its process of reviewing and monitoring security threats, in part to include more surveillance of social media. That year, there were 412 reported incidents involving Notley, 26 of which were forwarded to police as they were deemed to have approached a criminal threshold.

It’s not known how many resulted in charges or convictions.

“In the back of our minds as a society, we have to keep in mind there are these individuals out there,” said Neil LeMay, who served as the Alberta government’s director of protection services from 2009 to 2013.

“Sometimes we say it’s overkill ( to investigate), but not only do we not want our premier to avoid getting hurt but we also want government officials to operate at their best. We don’t want people to shy away from difficult topics just because somebody is going to threaten them.”

Details on the nature of the threats and how they were handled were not disclosed, due to the need to maintain secrecy around security practices. However, the documents show that until recently, the executive protection unit categorized threats as low, medium or high.

In the 2003-15 period, the vast majority of the recorded threat incidents were graded as low, with just two rated as medium and two others rated as low-medium. The high category was never employed.

The statistics begin with a notorious incident in July 2003, when then- premier Ralph Klein was hit in the face with a banana cream pie while appearing at a Calgary Stampede breakfast.

“While a pie-throwing incident can seem amusing to some, at the time of the event, when you’re actually right there, there’s a lot of shock and uncertainty about what’s going to happen next,” Klein said at the time.

The thrower eventually pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to a 30- day intermittent jail sentence.

Ed Stelmach was also targeted by a pie-throwing protester at a Stampede event in 2007, though the attempt was unsuccessful. Curiously, that encounter does not appear to be listed among the 14 threats Stelmach faced, nor does a more serious incident from later that year when an intoxicated man called his office and left a menacing message.

Reached for an interview, Stelmach said he still remembers the phone-call incident because sheriffs took it seriously enough to send RCMP to his farm to check on his wife. The man who left the message was sentenced to 90 days in jail for three counts of uttering threats and possession of 14 unlicensed rifles and shotguns.

Despite the stir that case raised, Stelmach said he remained unconcerned about his safety to the point that he even drove himself to church and other venues on the weekends.

“It never really entered my mind in terms of the risk,” he said. “It’s part of the job, but I can tell you I was always confident we wouldn’t have the same risk as we see in the U.S.

“Of course, that was well before social media was as active as it is today.”

Alison Redford, Alberta’s first female premier, faced a fairly steady stream of threats throughout her 2 ½ years in office. Provincial statistics record 16 incidents — an average of one every two months — the most serious of which appears to have been a medium-level threat in January 2013. Another incident from the previous summer resulted in charges.

Redford, who was the subject of much criticism and controversy during her time in office, showed the strongest signs among recent Alberta premiers of being concerned about security.

The province paid the Calgary Police Service nearly $ 640,000 over a 16- month period to provide added pro- tection for Redford when she and her family were in that city.

Notley and Redford could not be reached for comment.

LeMay said that during his time with the province — prior to the recent explosion in social media — protective services staff rarely conducted proactive surveillance of online postings.

He said the rise of social media has brought with it a big increase in these kinds of posts, providing a challenge for investigators to determine who is just blowing off steam and who might be more dangerous.

“What ends up happening is people coalesce around posters and a discourse gets going in the cyber world where there are no checks and balances,” said LeMay, now a senior consultant with Global Enterprise Security Risk Management.