Well, so much for the “Team Canada” approach.
Premier Danielle Smith’s weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago to meet president-elect Donald Trump was very much a solo trip.
Solo in the sense no other Canadian politician joined her as she continued to push for “carve outs” for Alberta’s oil and gas from Trump’s tariff threat.
But she wasn’t on the trip alone.
With her were Jordan Peterson, the tirelessly controversial celebrity psychologist whose climate change denial is but one facet of his populist brand, and Kevin O’Leary, the tirelessly blowhard celebrity investor who wants to send Canada on a slippery slope towards 51st statehood.
These are Smith’s people, her fellow travellers, both figuratively and, this weekend, literally.
Smith was at Mar-a-Lago as a guest of O’Leary and chatted informally with Trump Saturday evening and again Sunday morning.
In December, she called Trump “hilarious” for suggesting Canada merge with the U.S. and has praised his tendency to make “bold decisions” that “get people talking.”
Smith called her weekend conversations with Trump “friendly and constructive,” but apparently she did not have enough persuasive facts about the Canada-U.S. trade relationship to sway Trump, a man noted for being reliably impervious to reality.
“We need to be prepared that tariffs are coming,” a sombre Smith told reporters during an online news conference Monday morning. “The biggest irritant to the United States are trade deficits.”
Even though, as Smith has pointed out repeatedly, the deficit is a mirage. The U.S. is not “subsidizing” Canada to the tune of $100 billion a year, as Trump insists using what appears to be a made-up figure. To put it simply, the U.S. buys more of our goods than we buy from them. They consume our products, most notably oil, and they pay us money. But, again, Trump either doesn’t know or doesn’t care — or both.
Oily diplomacy
“They will have a national unity crisis on their hands at the same time as having a crisis with our U.S. trade partners,” Smith told journalists, pointing out that provinces own their resources (but not mentioning international trade is a federal responsibility). “We just won't stand for that.”
Smith has insisted in the past she supports a “Team Canada” approach, but the optics and substance of her Mar-a-Lago trip belie that. She is looking for “carve outs” for Alberta oil and gas if Trump follows through on his 25 per cent tariff threat.
“Our job is going to be to work overtime to make sure that we can make the case for carve outs if that potential does happen,” said Smith. “I think an obvious way of making the argument is to be talking about this important energy relationship. So I wanted to begin that conversation.”
Indeed, Smith wants to double Alberta’s production of oil — a point she reiterated at a news conference just hours after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation plans last week.
Alberta first
Asked if her “carve out” advocacy is undermining the position of other premiers or the country as a whole, Smith had an inventive, if confusing, answer: “I'm looking at using our energy relationship in a different way than I'm hearing other Canadian leaders talk about it. I'm talking about using the basis of our strong energy relationship as the reason why we shouldn't have tariffs on any of our Canadian products. I hope that's not unclear.”
Well, I would hazard to say it is indeed unclear.
There might be no “I” in “team” but there certainly are the necessary letters to spell “me.”
And for Smith “me” means Alberta. She is doing all she can to protect and promote Alberta’s energy industry that shipped more than $130 billion worth of energy products to the U.S. in 2023 — and damn anyone who thinks she’s not being patriotic. She is, to Alberta.
It’s a new twist on Smith’s unofficial motto: “More Alberta, Less Ottawa.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is heading to Washington, D.C., this week to put her own pressure on the incoming Trump administration. But with the federal Liberal government in a tailspin, it’s Smith who seems to be making the first moves and making headlines.
She’ll be meeting with her provincial counterparts this week to discuss next steps.
But left to her own devices, it would seem Smith’s focus is on Alberta’s oil, not other things such as Ontario’s cars or British Columbia’s lumber or Quebec’s cheese.
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