On its face, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s screwball scheme to create a provincial border patrol force intended to prevent Canadian citizens from crossing the U.S. border into Montana is blatantly unconstitutional.
As evidence, I give you section 6.1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.”
Plus, of course, controlling the border is clearly federal jurisdiction – never mind Smith’s hypersensitivity about federal intrusions, mostly imagined, into provincial jurisdiction.
If truckloads of Alberta Sheriffs passing their time driving around in the vicinity of Coutts or Del Bonita have probable cause to believe a passing pickup is carrying a load of fentanyl, for example, they would be within their rights to pull the vehicle over and take a peek in the cargo bed. After all, we have criminal laws in Canada about that kind of thing.
If the driver and passengers of the pickup are not Canadian citizens, the situation might be murkier, but only slightly.
But if the occupants of the pickup intend to present themselves properly to U.S. officials at the border, the Smith’s promised squad of border Sheriffs have no business harassing them.
And if they do not, well, that’s not our problem!
Indeed, that is why our neighbour’s government has its own United States Border Patrol with a budget of $5.4 billion US in 2022 and which, by all accounts, is quite capable of doing its job properly, at least along the long border with Canada.
If large numbers of Canadians are sneaking into Montana to improperly spend their Loonies buying cheap garments made in American Samoa at the Target store in Great Falls, the two national governments presumably know what number to call to discuss what to do about it.
There is in fact, notwithstanding Smith’s unseemly rush to defend Trump’s crude fantasies, not much of a problem on the Americans’ northern border – at least going in a southerly direction.
Yes, it is well understood that a significant number of American truckers – indeed, almost all of them – illegally bring firearms into Canada whenever they cross the line to carry fresh vegetables from California or Arizona to Canadian grocery shelves. But this is largely winked at by Canadian authorities because they understand the truckers need firearms for protection back home in the Benighted States and are unlikely to discharge them at passers-by in the short time they are north of the border.
As for illegal migrants, we Canadians are the ones who should be preparing to harden the border to prevent an unmanageable flow of refugees from the United States, including many U.S. citizens, who are bound to try to cross into Canada if Trump keeps some of his non-tariff promises.
In the unlikely event Trump is actually able to impose his 25-per-cent tariff on All Things Canadian, then searching trucks originating in the United States and impounding their drivers’ firearms would seem like a perfectly reasonable and constitutionally defensible activity for the Canada Border Services Agency to engage in.
But as was noted in this space yesterday, Trump’s fairy tale about an influx of illegal border-crossers from Canada or shipments of dangerous illegal drugs manufactured in Canada is performative, intended to justify his use of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act to impose tariffs on an emergency basis without the assent of the U.S. Congress. Even so, such tariffs would be restricted to 15 per cent, for 150 days, without Congressional approval.
Smith knows this, too, of course, and she is gaslighting when she claims Trump has a sound point, as she did again today when she published a whiny official statement about Trudeau’s meeting with Trump to discuss tariffs (embarrassingly spelled “tarif” in the notice emailed to media), which she used as an excuse to complain about the federal emissions cap the UCP persists in calling a production cap.
Premier Smith’s repeated defence of Trump is based more in her sympathy with the president-elect’s MAGA worldview than any honest belief his complaints about the U.S.-Canadian border are justified, which they clearly are not.
Evidence? Well, the UCP and its federal Conservative allies certainly never hesitated to attack policies of recent Democratic U.S. presidents like Barack Obama or Joe Biden with whom they disagreed, or to ignore them if they could.
It is becoming increasingly clear from her words and deeds that this premier and close advisors like Chief of Staff Rob Anderson, one of the authors of the “Free Alberta Strategy,” despise Canada, distrust Canadians, and wish Alberta could be remade in the image of the United States.
So this nonsense about creating an Alberta border patrol is intended above all to poke a stick in Ottawa’s eye, open another front in the UCP’s taxpayer supported campaign against the Liberal Government, and create incursions into federal jurisdiction to see if anyone will push back – which the preoccupied Trudeau Government never seems to do. That’s a pity.
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