Danielle Smith Needs To Put Canada First

On Smith’s Sellout Stunts

(Bryan Breguet came by the Scrimshaw Show to talk Carney, Freeland, and the state of the Liberal Party. Give it a listen!)

If the Canadian response to the Trump tariffs was genuinely targeting one province - say, by expecting one province’s industry to shoulder a significant source of the pain of the retaliation - it would be condemnation worthy. If a Liberal government was genuinely expecting a province that elects minimal or even no Liberal representatives to shoulder the burden alone, it would be a national scandal, and every genuine patriot would have a moral obligation to put pressure on the Feds to change policy.

If that’s what was happening.

That’s the narrative Danielle Smith and her defenders want to spin, but it’s fundamentally not true. Smith is trying to make her out to be a defender of Alberta against a Federal government that is acquiescing to more politically useful places for it. She is more concerned about federal outreach than the fact that Trump is about to destroy our economy - Alberta’s, Ontario’s, and the rest of the country’s too - on the basis of petty vindictiveness and a misunderstanding of how the world works. But the defenders of Alberta are just lying.

Doug Ford has said he would turn off Ontario energy going to the US if he has to. The idea that Doug Ford - somebody not usually praised in these pages! - is on the right side of this is a lesson. The notion that Alberta would be willing to sacrifice if only the burden was spread around - as raised by a former Spokesman for Pierre Poilievre - is either naive of him or a lie. Retaliatory tariffs will hurt us all, but the idea that Alberta’s oil interests somehow deserve some special dispensation because the rest of the country is so mean to them is ludicrous.

Do we seriously believe that Francois Legault and Doug Ford and Wab Kinew and the rest of the Premiers aren’t zealously representing their provinces’ interests? Of course they are, but they understand that this is a moment for private disagreements and public shows of unity. Hell, Smith could get her ass down to Mar A Lago with a man who is actively undermining the elected government here, but couldn’t bother coming to Ottawa to do her fucking job or answer any media questions. Apparently the plan is for her to take this week off in Panama, go to the Inauguration, and then come back to Alberta. It’s so pathetic as to be disqualifying.

National crises are moments for leaders to name themselves. It’s a moment for people to rise to the occasion, and to cement themselves as willing to put their people above their petty selves. It’s transparent that this is what Smith is failing to do. Danielle Smith is - even by the admission of Andrew Leach, who for reasons passing any understanding is defending Smith here - more focused on Team Alberta than Team Canada. It’s offensive, it’s disloyal, and it’s the exact sort of thing that so many Albertans would never forgive if it was someone else. Imagine - IMAGINE - the indignation if Quebec walked to the table and said that they would go it alone if the rest of the country didn’t agree to take any chance of Quebec suffering from the response tactics off the table. Don Braid would have column fodder for the rest of his miserable life.

But this is Alberta now. It is what the public wanted - a government so vindictive, so petty, so small and small minded, led by someone who is disgracing the office she holds. Say what you will about Jason Kenney or Rachel Notley or Redford or Stelmach or Lougheed or even Ralph Motherfucking Klein, absolutely none of them would even countenance the idea of selling out the rest of Canada like this. That she is doing so is beneath contempt. She doesn’t care about Canada, she doesn’t care about the jobs and the livelihoods of Ontarians or Quebecers or Newfies, she just take one last shot of Standing Up To Trudeau before she loses her best whipping boy. It’s disgraceful!

Again, if her premise was valid I’d be marching in the streets. If the plan really ends up being using Alberta oil and Sasky potash and little of anything else to force Trump’s hands then I’ll join her in her outrage. But as of right now she’s just making shit up and hoping that people will blindly believe her and ratchet up the heat on the person that’s politically helpful for her to oppose. She’s willing to attack Trudeau when we’re under attack from a man her voters probably quite like. And she’s siding with our attacker.

If her argument is that any use of oil and gas as a stick in this war is “disproportionate” - the language Andrew Leach used Wednesday night - then that’s your right. But respectfully, the honest truth is we can take that argument and shove it. If Alberta would like to not be so heavily invested in export capacity, they’ve been free to diversify their economic capacity for the last how many years. Their desire to bet it all on black (literally) is not particularly my problem. Because the alternative to Leach’s formulation is that Alberta gets out of the retaliation without paying price, placing a similarly disproportionate burden on the rest of Canada. And that’s a sack of shit.

The actual answer is that Alberta drew a bad set of cards here, and they deserve acknowledgement of that fact and some form of consideration from the Feds. They have the best retaliatory measure in their hands, and if they’re going to take a “disproportionate” hit for it they deserve some consideration for it. Maybe the Feds can pay for one of the hospitals they keep promising and then never building. But you negotiate that shit behind closed doors and you don’t sell out your country.

The worst source of western superiority has always been their claims to love this country and to be the real patriots, while those bastard Eastern Canadians don’t have any national pride or belief. It is their differentiator from Quebec, to hear them speak - they would never engage in the kind of unCanadian politics of hostage taking that Quebec does. Except they did now.

Danielle Smith needs to walk back her threats, get back to Canada, and make clear that she will not put Team Alberta above Team Canada. It is fine to advocate for fairness, but not to make the rest of Canada take a hit you escape. You made your point, now get in line.