Of course Danielle Smith opted for a constitutional crisis

Maybe, just maybe, that's the point.

Danielle Smith joined Kevin O’Leary for a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Credit: the internet

Ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on Sunday, leaders from across the country met in Ottawa to talk about next steps if Mr. Trump makes good on his threat to apply tariffs on Canadian exports. Well, not all of them, of course, because some people booked an extended winter holiday since nothing was really going on, work-wise.

After standing in line to shake Mr. Trump’s hand in Florida over the weekend, and rubbing elbows with stars of yore, Alberta’s Premier said that Canada should prepare for Trump’s tariffs.

She hasn’t said how Alberta will prepare for them, only that she doesn’t support retaliatory measures that include increasing export duties, or in any way disrupting the free flow of discounted product Alberta sends to the U.S. each day.

The Alberta premier has made appearances on FOX to provide “reasoned arguments” against tariffs, and finagled invites to state events and galas, ostensibly to try and educate state officials on the effect tariffs will have on their respective regions and rally support for excluding oil and gas.

Ms. Smith seems to be labouring under the impression that Mr. Trump will reconsider if only he can be convinced that his actions will negatively affect the people who voted for him.

Surely, she realizes that Mr. Trump can just blame Canada for making life more expensive; facts aren’t the trump-card they once were, after all.

It’s entirely possible that she has considered that and wants to be able to stand up and say “we didn’t do anything, though!” As if that would work.

She and I both grew up in a province where far too many people believe that a federal policy proposal caused a global recession. They believe it because many of Ms. Smith’s predecessors, and herself, saw a political advantage in making the claim that Ottawa is against Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

It doesn’t matter that a National Energy Program would have seen pipelines built from coast to coast to coast. Back then, very few people were concerned about a “climate crisis”, and the country would have been on the forefront of energy security. No, the leader who proposed that policy was a liberal, and therefore, he could only have wanted to use Alberta’s oil for their own purposes.

I have to wonder, if the NEP would have become policy, if the feds would have started building those pipelines right away, potentially staving off the worst recession in Alberta’s (and the U.S., and the U.K., and many other countries) history. Oh well.

Some of the people who bought into the lie the most helped Ms. Smith secure the UCP leadership in 2022.

They are people she answers to.

According to a recent poll, around 18 per cent of Albertans want to hand over the oil entirely to Trump’s government — anything is better than having to admit a liberal leader is the one who finally got a pipeline built across provincial borders in Canada.

While I never really considered the Premier to be a separatist, she certainly sympathizes with the fact that some Albertans took the bait laid out by generations of conservative politicians and became entirely unstable over it.

The concerning part is how much she idolizes everything American. She has helped push for more private care options and floated privately insured healthcare. She often expresses her support for their first amendment, even claiming a desire to protect this foreign right for Albertans, whose rights and freedoms are limited by their effect on the rights and freedoms of their fellow Canadians.

One of the promises that helped get her elected was that she would “pardon” pandemic mischief-makers. She said she was unaware she would not have the powers of a state governor as provincial premier.

As I was trying to come up with an answer to the question “what do you expect to see from Danielle Smith as Premier,” I found it incredibly difficult because she is a walking contradiction.

She can both believe that “the unvaccinated were the most discriminated group in (her) lifetime,” and in turn legislate discrimination against another widely discriminated group.

She is both a “libertarian” and a person who extoled the virtues of retiring in Panama because of all the “free” government handouts she would get there.

And she can both claim to be “standing up for Alberta’s oil and gas industry” by refusing to protect it from becoming Trump’s oil and gas industry.

Or maybe, just maybe, that’s the point.

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PS: sorry for the lateness — I became a first-time grand-mere on Monday!