Alberta responds to Trump’s trade war still obsessed with border security
Danielle Smith joins Team Canada reluctant to use oil & gas trump card
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One full day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial premiers Doug Ford in Ontario and Wab Kinew in Manitoba announced retaliatory measures in response to American President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on Canadian products, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith entered the fray.
"This economic attack on our country, combined with Mr. Trump's continued talk of using economic force to facilitate the annexation of our country, has broken trust between our two countries in a profound way," Smith said at a press conference where she was flanked by Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Justice Mickey Amery, Deputy Premier Mike Ellis, and two law enforcement officers (one wearing a bullet proof vest and carrying an assault rifle).
"It is a betrayal of a deep and abiding friendship," she said.
Smith announced that the Alberta government is changing its procurement practices to not purchase services from American companies and that the Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis Crown corporation will halt purchases of American alcohol and video lottery terminals.
The government will also encourage stores to label Canadian products and launch an advertising campaign to promote where Canadian products can be purchased.
Smith reiterated her previous calls to remove inter-provincial trade and labour mobility barriers and to build more pipelines to export Canadian oil, which she cheekily described as Canada’s “trump card.” But if it ever came to actually restricting the sale of oil and gas to the United States, that’s a trump card Smith is unlikely to support.
Oil and gas as the trump card
While Premier Ford has openly threatened to add a tax on electricity exports to the US, it is highly unlikely that Smith would ever support the federal government stopping the flow of Canadian oil from Alberta to the US.
Oil and gas is Canada’s most important export to the US and would be a powerful stick to use if Trump continues to escalate his wild and unhinged threats to destroy Canada’s economy.
If it is in Canada’s national interest to undermine Trump’s trade war by any means possible, even if that means inflicting domestic pain on Canadian industry and workers, Smith will have a hard time convincing the rest of Canada that Alberta’s fossil fuel industry should be exempt.
Cutting off oil and gas to the US could, as Smith mentioned during her press conference, also cut off the oil that is transported through pipelines in Michigan to Ontario refineries like the one in Sarnia.
The Alberta government should make clear that if the federal government does decide to gently turn down or totally turn off the oil taps to exert economic pressure on the US, the rest of Canada will need to step up to support the workers who will be impacted.
Trumpiest Premier joins Team Canada
This press conference couldn’t have been easy for Smith, who, as I’ve written before, is Canada’s Trumpiest Premier, and she undoubtably believes that many politicians in Trump’s orbit should be her natural allies.
Smith is walking a narrow political line on this issue. Her challenge is that while most Albertans don’t think very highly of Trump, most of the 21 percent of Albertans who have a favourable view of the US President are almost certainly supporters of her United Conservative Party.
While Smith might be one of the most underestimated politicians of her generation, that’s still a precarious position for the leader of a party whose membership is prone to revolting against its own party establishment.
Smith has spent a lot of her own political capital trying her hand at freelance diplomacy in the United States. She mingled and dined with Trump supporters in Washington DC during the Presidential Inauguration balls and parties in January and made a high-profile surprise visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi was quick to jump on Smith’s freelance diplomacy when Trump’s tariffs were announced.
“She thought her balls-and-parties tour of Mar-a-Lago and Washington D.C. would get Albertans a reprieve from devastating tariffs that will wreak havoc on our jobs, our industries and our way of life,” Nenshi said.
“She ignored the threats to our sovereignty and genuinely thought that laughing at President Trump’s insults while schmoozing and taking selfies with Republican officials would help us. It didn’t,” she said.
Smith’s stateside trips appear to have made little difference.
When Trump announced on Wednesday that he was already making changes to the tariffs he announced on Tuesday, it was Ontario’s auto industry that got a temporary exemption, not the oil and gas sector Smith spent so much time lobbying for over the past few months.
Trump and his supporters have made a mockery of every Canadian attempt at diplomacy and reasonable discussion about the tariff threats. Trump continues to refer to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “Governor” and repeats almost daily his threats to annex Canada as the 51st State. Trump’s staff publicly mocked provincial premiers after a meeting at the White House and his senior advisor, Peter Navarro, claimed on Fox News yesterday that Canada is run by Mexican drug cartels.
It’s not actually about the border
While Smith will be back in Houston next week to meet with oil industry CEOs, she took the off ramp from her previous version of freelance diplomacy with Trump’s administration yesterday and merged into a lane closer to other provincial premiers. But her message went off the rails when she focused again on what the Alberta government is doing to secure the border that Trump says is a reason for his tariffs.
The reality is that what happens at the Canadian border probably doesn’t actually matter to Trump. While he says that it’s one of his demands, it’s been clear from the beginning that Trump is not interested in actually negotiating anything and that Canadians cannot trust his word.
Probably the biggest example of how much security of the US-Canada border doesn’t actually matter for the Trump administration happened this week when American Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem made a mockery of herself when visiting a community that sits on the Canada-US border between Quebec and Vermont.
According to a report from the Boston Globe, when visiting the local public library that sits on the border, Noem gleefully hopped from side to side of the floor tape signifying the border, saying “USA Number 1!” when landing on the American side and “51st State!” when hopping on the Canadian side (just like that episode of The Simpsons but without the punch in the face).
Trump tariffs distract from trouble brewing in UCP
Trump’s tariffs have helped distract from the biggest scandal now brewing in Alberta politics. Smith announced her government has hired a former judge from Manitoba to conduct a third-party review of the allegations in the Dodgy Contracts Scandal and just today the RCMP confirmed they have launched an investigation into the allegations.
Meanwhile, Lesser Slave Lake UCP MLA Scott Sinclair broke from the pack last week when he announced on social media that he will not support the provincial budget tabled by Minister of Finance Nate Horner last week:
“The budget projects a $5 billion deficit this year, with additional deficits forecasted for the next three years. While I’m relieved that we’re finally implementing a tax cut, there’s little else to celebrate. In fact, I’m furious at the amount of money being funneled into Edmonton and Calgary (as usual) while Northern Alberta and our riding are largely ignored. The continuous flow of our GDP to urban centers while rural Alberta— the backbone of this province— gets left behind is appalling. It feels like we’re dealing with a provincial version of federal equalization payments, with rural communities footing the bill for the big cities.”
Sinclair, who was first elected in 2023, has the backing of local UCP constituency president Chad Bowers who posted his support on Facebook:
We are deeply concerned about the current state of our region’s infrastructure, medical services, and education systems. These issues require immediate attention, yet the current budget does not seem to adequately address the specific needs of rural communities like ours. For example, our children face dangerous daily commutes of over an hour to school on highways in desperate need of improvement, which poses a serious risk to their safety. Additionally, our healthcare and educational facilities are under significant strain, struggling to meet the growing demands of our population.
Sinclair’s remarks are stunning coming from a party that is dominated by rural MLAs and activists. Rural MLAs hugely outnumber MLAs from Calgary in the UCP caucus and cabinet, so if those rural MLAs aren’t feeling like their communities are being properly represented then there is a big problem in Alberta’s conservative government.
Edmonton-Strathcona by-election
Ministerial Press Secretary Darby-rae Crouch is the second candidate to join the race for the UCP nomination in Edmonton-Strathcona.
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