Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is frequently attacked in the Canadian media for her conservatism and her antagonism of the Trudeau government. This week, however, she was targeted for answering a constituent's question about chemtrails.

In their rush to condemn Smith for supposedly "sowing fears" and engaging with "conspiracy theorists," critics and other political opportunists glossed over at least one good reason why Canadians might suspect that planes are dumping toxic chemicals over their heads — namely the fact that the Pentagon has a history of doing just that.

Prairie chemtrails

During a recent United Conservative Party town hall in Edmonton, an audience member asked Smith about the occurrence of chemtrails over Alberta. Smith indicated that she did some asking around but has yet to see any evidence confirming public or private operations that would qualify.

'If anyone is doing it, it's the U.S. Department of Defense.'

Chemtrails refer to the theory that governments or other groups use airplanes to dump toxic chemicals or biological agents into the atmosphere, which appear as lingering condensation trails.

At temperatures below 45°F, contrails — usually the result of soot particulate from jet fuel and water vapor freezing — cannot evaporate again and typically end up persisting until dispersed by the wind. Although there are multiple versions of the chemtrails theory, some of which reference the 1996 Pentagon study "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025," the suggestion is there is a malevolence behind these puffy contrails.

"The best I have been able to do is talk to the woman who is responsible for controlling the airspace, and she says no one is allowed to go up and spray anything in the air," said Smith. "The other person told me that if anyone is doing it, it's the U.S. Department of Defense."

Although apparently open to conducting a formal investigation, Smith intimated that it would ultimately be a federal undertaking.

"I have some limitations in what I can do in my job," said Smith. "I don't know that I would have much power if that is the case, if the U.S. Department of Defense is spraying us."

The premier's office said in a statement to Global News:

The premier has heard concerns from many Albertans about this topic. In response, the provincial government looked into the issue and found no evidence of chemtrails occurring in Alberta. The premier was simply sharing what she has heard from some folks over the summer on this issue. She was not saying that she believed the U.S. government was using chemtrails in Alberta.

A spokesman for NORAD and U.S. Northern Command told the Canadian press in a statement, "NORAD and U.S. Northern Command are not conducting any flight activities in Canada that involve the spraying of chemicals."

Although she denied having seen any evidence of chemtrails, Smith was still attacked for daring to even broach the subject.

Timothy Caulfield, a professor at the leftist University of Alberta's School of Public Health, told Global News, "The premier is making room for and, I would argue, legitimizing a conspiracy theory."

"She could have said, 'Look, I hear your concerns but the reality is that this is not true,'" added Caufield.

Trudeau cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault similarly attacked the premier, telling reporters, "I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that Premier Smith is using her office to peddle conspiracy theories."

Nathan Ip, a member of Alberta's socialist NDP, joined his fellow travelers in mischaracterizing Smith's remarks, telling the Canadian Press it was "truly horrifying to see the premier of Alberta spread conspiracy theories."

'They said they were testing what they characterized as a chemical fog.'

Operation LAC

While the likes of Caufield, Boissonnault, and Ip appear keen to reject the possibility of aircraft dumping chemicals overhead, there is precedent in their province.

Over a decade ago, St. Louis Community College sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor obtained U.S. Army documents through a Freedom of Information Act request revealing that in the mid-1950s, the Army used motorized blowers atop the roof of a low-income housing high-rise in St. Louis to test whether a chemical fog could shield ground targets from aerial observation. The fluorescent material blown into the poor neighborhood was zinc cadmium sulfide, reported the Associated Press.

This test was not an isolated case.

'In principle, spraying an aerosol chemical mist over a populated area is criminal.'

Additional classified documents obtained by Martino-Taylor indicated that between July 9, 1954, and Aug. 1, 1953, six kilograms of zinc cadmium sulfide were sprayed in aerosol clouds over the unsuspecting city of Winnipeg via U.S. Army aircraft, reported the National Post.

This was part of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps' broader Operation LAC.

"In Winnipeg, they said they were testing what they characterized as a chemical fog to protect Winnipeg in the event of a Russian attack," said Martino-Taylor. "They characterized it as a defensive study when it was actually an offensive study."

"In principle, spraying an aerosol chemical mist over a populated area is criminal, to say the least," pharmacologist Frank LaBella told the Winnipeg Free Press. "At the time, there were no reports of illness but, if present, they could not be distinguished from other illnesses. If there were lasting effects, we'll never know."

Just over a decade later, aircraft conducted similar chemical dumps over the Albertan cities of Suffield and Medicine Hat, according to Martino-Taylor.

When the U.S. Army returned in 1964 for yet another chemical dump, Canadian officials expressed concern that an "American aircraft was emitting distinctly visible emissions."

A visible stream of toxic chemicals trailing out of a government aircraft engaged in a secret military experiment would likely qualify as a not-so theoretical chemtrail.

A bigger umbrella

Lewis Brackpool, an independent journalist and the host of the podcast "The State of It," told Blaze News, "I believe that we shouldn't be using the term 'Chemtrails' anymore as it carries a lot of toxic baggage (ironically) and is just an easy way for the media class to shut down the conversation and dismiss someone as a crank or a conspiracy theorist, similar to when people use the term 'the great replacement' instead of 'replacement migration.'"

Brackpool suggested that to open the conversation to the wider public and overcome the stigma, alternative terms, such as "climate engineering" or "geo-engineering," might be prudent.

After all, some of the renewed interest in chemtrails has been driven in part by recent controversies over governmental and private efforts to meddle with the weather and alter the skies, such as cloud seeding and solar radiation management.

Cloud seeding is the controversial weather modification technique whereby aircraft, rockets, cannons, or ground generators release various chemicals and tiny particles, such as potassium chloride, into clouds in an effort to artificially increase precipitation.

Like the U.S., the United Arab Emirates has conducted cloud-seeding missions for decades. The Gulf state's National Center of Meteorology reportedly conducts more than 1,000 hours of cloud-seeding missions every year, using aircraft equipped with hygroscopic flares full of nucleating agents.

Blaze News previously noted that a government meteorologist blamed the cloud seeding operations when Dubai was rocked in April by the heaviest downpour in 75 years and fatal flooding. The government subsequently denied responsibility.

Cloud seeding has proven fatal before.

Blackpool noted that declassified documents show that the Royal Air Force experimented with artificial rainmaking as part of Operation Cumulus the same week that some of the worst flash floods to have ever hit Britain stormed the village of Lynmouth, killing 35.

In addition to cloud seeding, some groups are feeding chemtrail theorists' suspicions by openly plotting to pollute the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide in hopes of replicating the effects of volcanic eruptions on blocking sunlight and lowering global mean temperatures.

The MIT Technology Review reported that last year, researchers in the U.K. used a high-altitude weather balloon to dump sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Their use of "Stratospheric Aerosol Transport and Nucleation" or SATAN balloon systems was allegedly "an engineering proof-of-concept test, not an environmentally perturbative experiment."

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