In order to get Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives elected as prime minister and government of Canada, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told an interviewer from pro-MAGA Breitbart News in a March 8 podcast, she’s asked officials of the Trump Administration to “put things on pause” until the election if over.
This admission resurfaced on the weekend and has turned into a major brouhaha in the lead-up to the April 28 federal election called by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The Breitbart interview is a fairly typical example of Smith’s habit of stream-of-consciousness gaslighting, which may or may not contain elements of truth, that has now blown up in her face. Rest assured, though, the premier is confident the ensuing furor in Canada can be made to go away with even more gaslighting. She has been here before and it usually works.
In the tumultuous days since March 8, Liberal Justin Trudeau quit as prime minister, Carney was sworn in as his replacement, and yesterday an election was called. Polls, we are told, put Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in a near heat, a big change from when Trudeau was still at the tiller and the Opposition enjoyed a huge lead.
On its face, what Smith told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle would seem to meet the definition of a politician wittingly participating in a foreign government’s effort to influence the outcome of a Canadian election.
Alert readers will recall the uproar in Canada last June when the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians released its bombshell report on foreign interference in Canadian democracy. “The Committee has also seen troubling intelligence that some Parliamentarians are, in the words of the intelligence services, ‘semi-witting or witting’ participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics,” the NSICOP report said in a passage that was widely quoted by journalists at the time. (That quote is found in Paragraph 164 of the report. The emphasis comes from the original.)
That report set off weeks of demands by Conservative politicians for an inquiry. The word “traitors” was frequently on their tongues. Allegations of successful interference by China and India were bandied about. However, while the subsequent Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue found lots of cause for concern, it turned up no actual “traitors.”
Nevertheless, what Smith has confessed to on March 8 certainly confirms the name of one politician who was a witting participant in something that doesn’t sound quite kosher under the current dire circumstances, in which a U.S. president is talking openly about battering Canada into economic submission in order to occupy our territory, integrate it into the United States, and steal our water and resources.
The trouble is, we can’t really tell from the Breitbart interview what Smith’s collaboration with U.S. officials was intended to achieve, or to whom who she was talking.
Was she simply saying, “Please leave us alone”? Or was she saying, “Leave us alone until we can get someone more co-operative with your MAGA agenda elected, then go for it”?
The context may be important. Or maybe not. Here’s a slightly longer version of the question and answer pulled from the Breitbart report:
Matthew Boyle: “Are the Canadian people ready to go back the other way here and go away from the liberal side that we’ve seen under Trudeau and whoever replaces him?”
Danielle Smith: “Before the tariff war, I would say yes. I mean, Pierre Poilievre is the name of the Conservative Party leader, and he was miles ahead of Justin Trudeau. But because of what we see as unjust and unfair tariffs, it’s actually caused an increase in the support for the Liberals. And so that’s what I fear, is that the longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now. So I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I’ve told administration officials. Let’s just put things on pause so we can get through an election.” (Emphasis added.)
From this, we can’t really say with certainty what she had in mind. It sure sounds as if she was, in fact, attempting to assist the Trump Administration with a strategy to influence the outcome of the election.
Others certainly agree. Here’s Sheila Copps, former Liberal Cabinet minister, deputy prime minister of Canada and fierce Opposition politician: “The premier should be investigated for conspiring with a foreign government to influence the federal election.”
Smith’s press secretary, naturally, said the opposite, blowing off the notion that the premier was conspiring with Unites States to interfere in Canada’s election as “offensive and false.”
We don’t have to trust Sam Blackett’s assertion to concede that it would not have been outside the realm of possibility Smith was simply exaggerating a conversation with an insignificant individual with some vague connection to the Trump Administration to make herself sound important.
One thing is obvious. She’s not helping Poilievre’s campaign, especially when she suggested, no doubt accurately, that his policies would align closely with Trump’s MAGA insanity.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
