Two Alberta boys go to Ottawa

Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre grew up in Alberta. That's a big deal for our province.

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Two Alberta boys go to Ottawa

Prime Minister Mark Carney (source: Mark Carney / Facebook)

The political landscape in Canada has totally shifted under the weight of American President Donald Trump’s threats to impose harsh tariffs on Canadian goods and annex Canada as the 51st State.

Trump’s daily rambling threats against his country’s northern neighbours, mixed with the departure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from Canadian politics, has erased the huge lead in the polls that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre had been riding for the past year.

The swearing-in of former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney as Canada’s new Prime Minister appears to have brought the Liberal Party back into the electoral game, for now, but such huge swings in public opinion in such a short time mean it could be impossible to predict what will happen next.

Poilievre’s Conservatives had tapped into a pulsing vein of national anger and concern about affordability and the cost of living but, for the moment, they appear to have lost the plot and with it the huge lead that would have won them more than 200 seats in the House of Commons.

This is what political pundits mean when they say that one week is an eternity in politics.

What does this mean for Alberta?

Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government have been actively campaigning against Trudeau’s Liberals for years and has been banking on a big win by Poilievre’s Conservatives. With the two Conservative parties tied at the hips, Smith has extended her government’s anti-Liberal campaign against Carney, who the Premier has dared to immediately call a federal election.

Missing from Smith’s public communications after Carney was sworn-in as Prime Minister was a simple congratulatory note or even a recognition that he is now only the second Prime Minister in Canada’s history to have grown up in Alberta. Carney spent his youth in Edmonton, which is where he launched his campaign for the Liberal Party leadership last December.

Carney’s father, Bob Carney, was an education professor at the University of Alberta, executive director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association, and a Liberal candidate in Edmonton South in the federal 1980 election. There is speculation that the junior Carney could run in Edmonton Centre in the upcoming federal election but I’m skeptical about that (keep reading to learn why).

Carney isn’t the only major party leader to have Alberta roots. Poilievre was born and raised in Calgary. He lived there and was active in Reform Party and Canadian Alliance politics as a young activist until moving to the Ottawa-area to run for a seat in Parliament more than twenty years ago.

Carney’s Alberta roots don’t fit into Smith’s political narrative but the fact that two people who grew up in Alberta are running the show in Ottawa should be celebrated by a Premier who constantly whinges about how alienated her government feels from the national capital.

It’s troubling that the Premier’s Office couldn’t recognize that even a basic level of decorum from Smith would actually sharpen her criticisms of Carney when an election is called and if his Liberal government is re-elected.

Smith sharing a stage with Ben Shapiro

I expect the Premier’s Office is hoping that a federal election could create a distraction from the now six separate investigations into the Dodgy Contracts Scandal and unrest in the UCP Caucus that has led to Lesser Slave Lake MLA Scott Sinclair being removed from caucus and former cabinet minister Peter Guthrie being placed on probation.

But the UCP may not be so lucky.

Calgary Liberal MP George Chahal, who is running for re-election in the new Calgary McKnight riding, released a video last weekend criticizing Smith for the private surgery contracts scandal. The video is an indication that the Liberals see Smith as a vulnerable Conservative target in the federal election.

Alberta might play an outsized role in this election campaign, not because of where the two main party leaders spent their youths, but because of Smith’s freelance diplomacy in the United States.

The federal election campaign could be underway when Smith travels to Florida to share a stage later this month with ghoulish pro-Trump podcaster Ben Shapiro at a $1,500 a plate fundraiser for American right-wing advocacy group and media organization PragerU.

Shapiro has endorsed Trump’s threats to annex Canada and mocked former Prime Minister Trudeau on his social media channels. Smith’s office says the Florida trip is part of her diplomatic efforts in the United States, but spending taxpayer dollars to fly to Florida to share a stage with an anti-Canadian media personality like Shapiro feels quite tone deaf for the moment.

While I am not a fan of the idea that provincial Premiers should always march in step, Smith’s desire to be accepted by the MAGA media world that fuels Trump’s agenda puts Alberta at risk of becoming the weak link in Team Canada’s response to the American President’s threats against our country.

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Where will Mark Carney run?