If Alberta Premier Danielle Smith intends to defy an all-party, all-province, national consensus on how to respond to Donald Trump’s tariff threats, she should call a provincial election and get a mandate to do so.
After all, notwithstanding the disproportionate number of MAGA ideologues and Alberta separatists in her United Conservative Party (UCP) caucus and cabinet, most Albertans are loyal Canadians who put their country first.
We Albertans have been learning to live with Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a form of government ever since Smith became premier in 2022. The trouble is, it isn’t funny anymore now that she’s become a serious national problem.
We need a government in Alberta with a clear mandate if we are to step outside the national consensus in what is potentially the gravest economic crisis our country has faced since the Great Depression.
Premier Smith petulantly refusing to join the other premiers in a joint statement on how to protect Canadians from Trump’s planned sanctions, in the form of high U.S. tariffs on all Canadian exports, “is one of the most irresponsible and selfish acts of a government in Canadian history.” (To borrow phrase from something Smith said about another politician just the other day.)
Nevertheless, she said yesterday in an official statement insultingly posted on Trump ally Elon Musk’s X social media platform, “Federal government officials continue to publicly and privately float the idea of cutting off energy supply to the U.S. and imposing export tariffs on Alberta energy and other products to the United States.”
“Until these threats cease, Alberta will not be able to fully support the federal government’s plan in dealing with the threatened tariffs,” she stated.
Needless to say, Canada can hardly defend itself without making some threats. So this is obviously a gift to Trump.
Premier Smith and her UCP government have not just become a liability to Canada in this crisis precipitated by Trump’s election victory in November. If you happen to be one of the many Albertans who hope Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives will win the next Canadian federal election, she has become a liability to you as well. After all, like it or not, in politics, guilt by association is a thing.
Premier Smith may not be a traitor, but she is sure acting like a virtual Quisling, more loyal to Trump and his MAGAfied United States than to Canada.
Thanks to behaviour like yesterday’s refusal to play ball with Team Canada from her holiday redoubt in Panama, a small country that is ironically another of Mr. Trump’s chosen victims, Smith increasingly risks being seen by the public in Alberta and elsewhere as disloyal to the country. At this rate, she may be the only Canadian premier not to be in line for an Order of Canada!
Despite having raced to Florida to pay obeisance to Trump, she couldn’t even be bothered to come to Ottawa to let her fellow conservative premiers try to persuade her to do the right thing.
In her absence, Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford didn’t quite call her a turncoat, but he sailed close in a statesmanlike way. “That’s her choice,” Ford said of Smith’s focus on protecting the oil patch at the expense of everything and everybody else. I have a little different theory: protect your jurisdiction but country comes first. Canada’s the priority.”
Trump, Premier Ford said after the premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got together in Ottawa, “is going full tilt at Canadians. We need to be united. United we stand, divided we fall.”
I guess those bromantic days when Ontario and Alberta premiers finished each other’s sentences are over now.
For crying out loud, even former Conservative PM, UCP éminence grise and Trump White House visitor Stephen Harper is complaining about what the U.S. president-elect has been getting up to! “I have a real problem with some of the things Donald Trump is saying,” he told the Toronto Star on Monday. “It doesn’t sound to me like the pronouncements of somebody who’s a friend, a partner, and an ally – which is what I’ve always thought the United States is for our country.”
At least Ford and Harper, by the sound of it, can tell which way the wind is blowing.
So what possessed Alberta’s premier to ensure that Canada appears to be divided as it pivots to defending itself from Trump when he’s sworn in as U.S. president on Monday?
“Smith has a cabinet and caucus full of Trumpkins,” Mount Royal University political scientist Keith Brownsey explained yesterday. “She is in a difficult situation. Her position within Canada is becoming increasingly untenable, but she may face a caucus revolt if she doesn’t follow the Trump line. This is one reason she visited Mar-a-Lago.”
“She is profoundly parochial,” he added. “She has no conception of Canada as a nation.”
This is something for traditional Conservatives, if there are any left in the UCP cabinet and caucus, to think about. If they continue to support Smith, history – and voters – will remember. If they value Canada, now might be a good time to resign their cabinet posts and consider sitting as independents.
Alberta voters will certainly take note when corporate headquarters start to quietly abandon Calgary for Canadian cities in other provinces. This has happened before.
Dr. Brownsey noted that while the management of natural resources is assigned by the Constitution Act 1867 to provinces, something Smith talks about a lot, Parliament retains the right to makes laws concerning the export of non-renewable natural resources, and when the laws of Parliament and those of a provincial legislature are in conflict, the law of Parliament prevails.
An unconstitutional Sovereignty Act doesn’t change that.
Carneymania anyone? Is that even possible?
Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, will launch his campaign to lead the Liberal Party of Canada in Edmonton today. Thanks to his U.S. soft launch Monday on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he’s already a frontrunner. It was pretty entertaining, so we’ll see if that’s enough to generate some Carneymania. Can that even happen to a banker? If so, one supposes, brutal polls for the Liberals notwithstanding, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will have one more thing to be extremely cranky about. Stand by for more mean nicknames, Poilievre’s sophomoric trademark. Fortunately for Carney, Edmonton Centre’s embarrassing Liberal MP, Randy Boissonnault, is backing the other Liberal frontrunner from Alberta.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
