What Is Danielle Smith’s Real Plan for Alberta?

When pundits try to figure out why Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is so friendly towards separatists in her province, they tend to point to her need to satisfy a voter base rife with populist grievances.

These are the angry right-wingers, some paranoid, whom she fostered and depended on to oust previous premier Jason Kenney and win her the United Conservative Party leadership. The idea of Alberta breaking away from Canada and becoming its own country is impractical, nutty even, but it serves Smith well to indulge such thinking, goes the argument.

But what if Smith is dead serious about Alberta going it alone?

What if she is pursuing a strategy that aims to forever and fully integrate Alberta’s oil and gas production with the U.S. economy, even if it means breaking up Canada?

And what if she’s decided that Canadians’ roused patriotism and self-reliant desire to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s America is a roadblock to her ambitions?

Let’s rewind the tape on her machinations since Trump was re-elected and look for answers.

I. STOKING US ‘ENERGY DOMINANCE’

When the US Oil & Gas Association held its annual directors meeting at the posh Willard hotel in Washington, D.C., in May 2025, two Albertans were in the room. The USOGA is the pre-eminent fossil fuel lobby in the United States, with over 5,000 members and more than a century in the business.

It was a high-level affair, featuring Donald Trump’s secretaries of the interior (responsible for the resource) and labour (responsible for the workforce).

One of the Albertans was Gerry Protti, chairman of the board of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a prominent Ottawa-based think tank.

The other was Jamie Tronnes, director of Macdonald-Laurier’s Washington outpost, the Center for North American Prosperity and Security — CNAPS, pronounced, they claim, as “synapse.”

Protti did the talking. His topic: “Canada as a Partner in North American Energy Dominance.”

With the vast scale-up in artificial intelligence and its wildly growing demand for power, a report on Protti’s presentation told us, “Canada’s natural gas reserves offer a massive energy asset to meet the demand coming from American AI servers as they strategically compete with China for AI dominance.”

“America needs Canadian energy to maintain energy dominance,” Protti said.

America also needs Canada’s heavy crude oil to bolster the energy security of North America, he added. Canada exports about 4.5 million barrels of oil a day to the United States, three-quarters of which is heavy oil that U.S. Midwest refineries are set up to process.

Protti knows the fossil fuel industry intimately: he is former head of the organization that regulates the industry in Alberta, the Alberta Energy Regulator, and also former head, and founder, of the organization that lobbies for the industry, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Regulator and lobbyist. Who better to make the case that Canada is an essential partner for North American energy dominance?

Now he leads the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, where policy to promote energy development is a priority.

Protti is also president of an organization called Collaborative Canadian Energy Solutions, a non-profit that advocates for the fossil fuel industry in Canada and makes linkages with North American industry players. He is even a member of the USOGA board, so these are his fellow directors he is addressing.

The phrase “North American energy dominance” surfaced in Washington several weeks later, in early June, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith came to town with a team of cabinet ministers. They met with Republican members of Congress and industry leaders. Smith was keynote speaker at the 10th annual Washington Energy Summit on June 4, where the 24 senators and congressmen who also spoke were exclusively Republican.

Two days later, at the S&P Global Oil Sands Dialogue, Alberta Energy and Minerals Minister Brian Jean participated in a panel titled “The Future of North American Oil Integration.”

And Smith met with fossil fuel industry leaders to discuss the future of North American energy dominance at an event hosted by Jamie Tronnes at CNAPS.

Is there a connection between Smith’s government and Macdonald-Laurier? There’s Alberta’s Protti, of course. When Protti, as former president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, was appointed to the board of the energy regulator in 2013 by the Progressive Conservative government of the day, a storm of protest erupted, led by First Nations, environmental and other groups. Smith, then head of the Wildrose Party, dissented. She felt that Protti was the best person for the job.

Protti joined Macdonald-Laurier as chair in 2024. In 2025 the think tank appointed Smith’s former energy minister, Sonya Savage, as a senior fellow.

Within a month Savage had co-written a lengthy piece for Macdonald-Laurier justifying the rise of western alienation as being due to federal government trampling of both western constitutional rights and the fossil fuel economy. Leave us alone and let us get on with developing our resources, she argued.

More of the same push for dominance or integration might come from a grant of $6.5 million that Smith’s government gave to the University of Calgary School of Public Policy just before her trip to Washington. The stated purpose is to increase understanding of how Canada-U.S. relations and policy are changing in the era of Trump and to keep ties that bind.

As Smith proclaimed at the unveiling of the newly minted New North America Initiative: “A strong and collaborative relationship with the United States is essential to Alberta’s long-term success.”

Trump had just shut down operations of the Canada Institute, a bipartisan think tank on Canadian-U.S. relations. This had been an important vehicle for Canadian politicians and academics to disseminate their messaging in Washington.

The Smith-backed New North America Initiative will bypass Washington and focus directly on academics and other actors in the U.S. heartland — prairie, mountain and southwest states including Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and Texas. A lot of energy products change hands between these states and Alberta.

II. ‘THE GRAND BARGAIN’

All of this and more is to counter the sweeping executive order Donald Trump signed on Day 1 of his presidency, to unleash U.S. energy and restore prosperity.

The United States doesn’t need Canadian oil and gas, he declared four days later during his virtual address at the World Economic Forum. “We have more than anybody.”

Smith, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Protti and Canadian energy interests are going all out to change that narrative. If the United States truly wishes to achieve energy dominance, they say, it needs Alberta oil and gas.

For some, like Macdonald-Laurier, the desired relationship between the two countries goes well beyond energy integration.

A commentary, published by CNAPS early in the Trump presidency, called for a “secure ‘Fortress North America.’” Canada and the United States “should move from a trade agreement to a broader and closer economic union,” it argued. The author is a former economic adviser in the office of the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and a corporate lobbyist.

Then, in July 2025, CNAPS and Macdonald-Laurier launched an entirely new program called the “Grand Bargain,” which will “forge a transformative agreement that goes far beyond traditional trade deals.”

The program consists of three pillars: a North American Prosperity Pact, Fortress Am-Can and North American energy dominance, which Macdonald-Laurier and the Smith government have already been pitching. (If all this has a familiar ring to some, see sidebar to learn why.)

While Danielle Smith doesn’t include in her talking points the phrases “Security and Prosperity Partnership” or “Grand Bargain,” on the issue of energy integration she is a passionate and effective advocate, according to staffers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based bipartisan think tank.

After a lengthy interview with Smith, Joseph Majkut, director of the center’s energy security and climate change program, says she is a “spectacular communicator,” largely because of her background as a think tanker and a media personality.

Plus, added associate director Quill Robinson, she appears regularly on Fox News and has developed an audience in the United States and in President Trump.

Yet she still needs the support of the industry. And she is getting it.

This became clear when then-prime minister Justin Trudeau flew to Florida at the end of November 2024 for an unannounced dinner with president-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Seated at the table, along with Trump, Trudeau and other insiders, was Julia Nesheiwat, a vice-president of Calgary-based TC Energy, one of the largest fossil fuel pipeline operators in North America.

Nesheiwat had been vice-president of policy and insights for the pipeline giant since October 2022 and, in a high-profile example of the revolving-door syndrome, was a homeland security adviser to Trump during his first term. She is married to Mike Waltz, at the time Trump’s incoming national security adviser, who was seated between Trump and Nesheiwat.

Energy and pipelines were specific topics of conversation, Trump confirmed on his Truth Social platform, as did unnamed government officials.

The Investigative Journalism Foundation’s exposé of the connections between TC Energy and the incoming Trump administration lists more than a dozen cases of the revolving door, including connections between TC Energy’s lobbying firms and the administration.

Smith wasn’t at the Trump-Trudeau dinner, but she did meet with TC Energy’s CEO and Nesheiwat in Washington the day before Trump’s inauguration. In the bland language of government newspeak, they discussed “the vital role Canadian oil and gas plays in supporting energy security for the United States.”

“Alberta’s resources are the backbone of North American energy, and we’re ready to do more,” the post said.

But is TC Energy even a Canadian company that Trump could block from transporting oil and gas to the United States? Or is it in fact the very model of cross-border, Alberta-U.S. energy integration that Smith and her allies are flogging?

While eight of the 13 directors of the Calgary-headquartered company are Canadian — five are American — just over one-third of the company’s shares are owned in Canada, with a similar proportion in the United States. (The ownership of the other third is located elsewhere or unknown.)

The vast majority of TC Energy’s Canadian-owned shares are held by institutional investors like the largest shareholder, RBC, Canada’s largest bank. A significant, but not publicly available, percentage of RBC’s shares are owned in the United States and elsewhere. So it’s unclear what TC Energy’s ultimate Canadian ownership is.

RBC is not merely an investor in fossil fuel companies; it is a player promoting the fossil fuel economy.

One example: in preparation for the June 2025 G7 meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta, RBC published a report calling for expanded use of methane gas, especially as liquefied natural gas.

A contributor to the report was Robert Johnson, the new director of energy and natural resources policy at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, where Premier Smith had just provided the $6.5-million grant to reset Canada-U.S. relations.

III. REJECTING ‘TEAM CANADA’

Danielle Smith has been a warrior on the right for most of her adult life. She earned a second BA in economics at the University of Calgary in 1995. (The first degree was in English.) There she came under the mentorship of political scientist Tom Flanagan, unofficial head of the Calgary School (and later Stephen Harper’s chief of staff). Flanagan sent her to a yearlong internship at the Fraser Institute, where she specialized in attacking environmentalism.

The Calgary School was a notable collection of neoliberal and neoconservative academics in political science, history, philosophy and economics at the university who had enormous influence on the development of the Reform Party and the expansion of conservatism in the West.

Some Calgary School professors migrated to the School of Public Policy. Several of the economists were associated with the Fraser Institute.

Smith then worked for an institute that lobbied for private property rights and opposed endangered species legislation. She was then hired as an editorial writer for Conrad Black's Calgary Herald and went on to host television and radio talk shows for several years, promoting libertarian and conservative viewpoints.

Smith was subsequently appointed the Alberta director — lobbyist — for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

She entered official politics in 2009, winning the leadership of the Wildrose Party — Tom Flanagan was her campaign manager — and then a seat in the legislature in 2012. With Wildrose eventually facing declining popularity, in 2014 Smith crossed the floor and joined the Progressive Conservatives, a move so unpopular that she couldn’t win a nomination in the next provincial election.

For the next seven years she worked in talk radio and corporate lobbying.

In the face of an NDP government (2015-19), the Wildrose and PC parties merged in 2020 to form the United Conservative Party. After a term with Jason Kenney as premier, his popularity faltered and he resigned. Smith won the leadership contest and in 2022 became premier.

Three years later Smith, when not making statements bashing Ottawa, was shuttling between Edmonton and Washington and Florida, meeting and greeting Republican lawmakers and influencers.

In January, she met with the president-elect on a Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago for dinner on the invitation of Canadian celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, and for lunch the next day at Trump’s golf club. (She posed for photos with O’Leary and far-right provocateur Jordan Peterson.) She had two 10-minute conversations with Trump.

Was a deal in the making? Did she and Trump discuss the possibility of Alberta becoming the 51st state? Did he offer inducements to help Alberta separate?

What was said is not known, but what is known is that three days later she declined to join the united front of premiers and prime minister in their efforts to fight looming U.S. tariffs. “Alberta will simply not agree to export tariffs on our energy or other products nor do we support a ban on export of these same products,” her statement read.

She had already been appearing regularly on Fox News — at least seven times since Trump’s election. “Fox News has an enormous audience and some of those folks don’t get their news from anywhere else,” observes Mount Royal University’s Lori Williams.

Smith met frequently with Republican governors to pitch Alberta’s oil. She and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe joined the Governors Coalition for Energy Security, a lobby group of Republican governors with oil and gas resources in their states, pushing for more exploration and production.

Then it was off to Washington on a five-day mission that included the inauguration. She had a right to be there, she explained, because of the sizable exports of Alberta crude to the United States. Fifty-two per cent of all U.S. oil imports come from Canada, and the vast majority of that comes from Alberta, in 2023, amounting to $132 billion.

While in Washington she attended several Republican election celebrations: the Florida Sunshine Ball at the Marriott Marquis and the Texas Black Tie and Boots Ball at the Washington Hilton.

In February she sent three cabinet ministers and three staff members to Washington to attend the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump was the main speaker, to lobby for Alberta oil and gas.

In early March she did an interview on Breitbart News, “the platform of the alt-right,” according to former executive chairman Steve Bannon. The interview occurred the day before Mark Carney became Liberal leader. Smith said that “the perspective that Pierre [Poilievre] would bring would be very much in sync with, I think, the new direction in America.”

Then she met with Doug Burgum, Trump’s secretary of the interior and former governor of North Dakota, who manages natural resources on federal lands. “My good friend,” she calls him.

Later in March she spoke at CERAWeek in Houston, the fossil fuel industry’s most influential conference, with over 10,000 attendees. She was on a panel about mega energy centres that combine production, consumption and storage.

Two weeks later she appeared at a secretive fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida, for PragerU, a far-right advocacy organization, with the popular U.S. right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro. No members of the press were allowed and there was no livestreaming of the event. Even the location was kept secret. However, the National Observer and DeSmog obtained audio of the event.

Among other revelations, Smith praised U.S. efforts to turn away from 2050 climate targets.

With a vast budget from right-wing billionaires, PragerU beams thousands of short videos into schoolrooms in red states. According to the program’s many critics, these videos contain misleading or factually incorrect information on topics such as creationism, climate change denial, racism and slavery — “Slavery has been around forever,” one video claims.

Then in June Smith made her trip to Washington to meet with members of Congress and key partners, and to attend her session at Macdonald-Laurier’s CNAPS. The result, she proclaimed, was a “breakthrough” in conversations with U.S. officials on Canada’s role in helping its neighbour establish “energy dominance.”

Later in June, at an Albertan separatists summit held in Red Deer, a leader in the movement revealed that at a meeting he attended in Washington, D.C., Trump officials dangled the promise of a $500-million loan to back the cause of Alberta independence.

The person making the claim was Dennis Modry, CEO of the Alberta Prosperity Project, whose wording of a referendum question about seceding from Canada is under review by courts because the province’s chief electoral officer worried it violates Canada’s Constitution.

A rival question, far less torqued to please secessionists, was approved by the same electoral officer. That angered Danielle Smith and her minister of justice, who argued the question as crafted by the separatists was just fine.

That wording, by the way, is this: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?”

That’s a small step away from another question: “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and apply for admission to the United States as the 51st state?”

Any bets on how Danielle Smith would vote? This may offer a hint. On June 2 she published an op-ed in the conservative Washington Times, summing up her stance:

“If America wants true energy dominance, not just independence, it must consider its allies. No ally is more energy-rich, reliable or integrated with the American economy than Alberta.”

Alberta, not Canada.