Rob Breakenridge: Danielle Smith might want to lay low for a while
It’s not helpful for Alberta’s premier to be touting any sort of closeness between Pierre Poilievre and Donald Trump.
By: Rob Breakenridge
She won’t be appearing on any ballot, but Alberta’s premier is hellbent on being a factor in the April 28th federal election. To what end, and to whose benefit, remains to be seen.
Since the election formally kicked off on Sunday, she has dominated the headlines.
First, it was her list of demands to Liberal leader Mark Carney, underscored with a threat of an “unprecedented national unity crisis” if said demands were not met. That was followed by much bigger headlines originating from an interview she did with a conservative U.S. media outlet early in March, spawning accusations that Smith was soliciting foreign election interference. Through her press agent, Smith has said that any insinuation that she was attempting to persuade the U.S. to interfere in Canada’s federal election was “offensive and false.” The full interview is amply available for anyone who wishes to listen to it in full and decide for themselves. Smith’s own statement failed to clear the air on any of this.
None of this is helpful to the Conservative cause. In fact, none of it seems really helpful to anyone other than Danielle Smith. And not even necessarily to her — she may have overplayed her hand here and the best thing now would be for her to take a step back.
Publicly, Smith will no doubt be a high-profile and enthusiastic supporter of Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, but that doesn’t mean their interests are completely aligned. As the last few days have illustrated, Smith could pose some real problems for the Conservative campaign.
There are a few important points to keep in mind here. For one, Danielle Smith does not have national political aspirations. There is, though, a clear desire to raise her own profile as a prominent Canadian conservative, which also speaks to her efforts to build street cred and notoriety with prominent American conservatives.
That’s been evident in Smith’s own freelance approach to the tariff crisis and her from-one-conservative-to-another outreach efforts to Republican officials and conservative media. Every premier is worried about the impact of a Canada-U.S. trade war and everything should be on the table, but there’s no doubt Smith seized an opportunity to try to look like the hero.
Furthermore — and this is a crucial point — Smith does not necessarily have a vested political interest in a Conservative victory. Her political agenda comes first, and the single largest component of Smith’s political agenda has been Alberta standing up to Ottawa. She’s already lost Justin Trudeau as a fruitful political foil, but that entire enterprise vanishes if the Conservatives win next month. Not that Smith wants Liberal policies imposed on Alberta, but rather, she needs to be the one seen to stymie them.
Her recent actions make more sense when viewed through this lens. As noted above, when her press secretary called it “offensive and false” to suggest Smith asked the U.S. to interfere in Canada’s election, it’s probably because that actually wasn’t Smith’s intent. Her words are pretty clear, though. As she stated in the March 8 interview with Breitbart: “The longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now so I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I’ve told administration officials. Let’s just put things on pause so we can get through an election.”
Maybe that’s her way of buttering up her American host and American audience, but it should have been obvious how that would come across to Canadians. The same goes for Smith’s remarks about Poilievre: “I would say, on balance, the perspective that Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think, the new direction in America. And I think we’d have a really great relationship for the period of time they’re both in.”
Again, it’s not helpful for Alberta’s premier to be touting any sort of closeness between Pierre Poilievre and Donald Trump, especially when the former is trying to win an election in the shadow of the threat from the latter. Not Smith’s problem, I guess.
Of course Poilievre is going to have to face questions about all of this, and it’s hard to imagine that he’s happy about the distraction this creates.
That’s also true of Smith’s list of demands to Liberal leader Mark Carney and her not-so-veiled threat about a national unity crisis. Poilievre offered a brief remark about how Smith has some “reasonable demands,” and quickly shifted into listing off other Liberal failures. The Conservative leader would much prefer to craft his own policies and would not want to be seen as being led by the nose by Alberta’s premier.
No one would expect Smith to foment any sort of unity crisis under a Conservative government in Ottawa. With Trudeau gone, though, it’s important to convince Albertans that the threat — and therefore the need for a combative premier — is still very much real. And if the Liberals are going to be ousted, then best to squeeze every last drop of milk out of this proverbial cow while she still can.
Many Albertans feel — with much justification — that the Liberals are well past their best-before date and that a change is needed. Alberta does have legitimate objections to a whole host of Liberal policies, including the oil and gas emissions cap and the Clean Electricity Regulations. Carney has signalled (albeit vaguely) a willingness to be flexible on such matters, as well as an openness to expedite and build new energy infrastructure. Time will tell if the Liberals get another shot at governing and just how real any and all of this proves to be. If Mark Carney remains prime minister, he should take heed of Albertans’ frustrations.
Smith’s antics, however, are arguably helping to make Carney’s re-election more likely. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Conservatives quietly ask her to put things on pause until after the election, which would be most ironic given her own poorly thought out words just a few weeks ago.
Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based broadcaster and writer. He can be found at breakenridge.ca and on X (Twitter) @RobBreakenridge and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com
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It's very important that Smith point out that the likely consequence of Ontario forcing another Liberal government on Alberta is secession.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but if I put myself in the shoes of the then-caretaker government of Justin Trudeau during the recent Liberal leadership, I would probably and similarly echo Smith’s message to the US administration: that it should put a pause on things until a Canadian election was held. Canada’s active capacity to meaningfully negotiate with the US was obviously knee-capped the moment Trudeau announced he prorogued parliament and was stepping down. It’s been clear as day that Canada can’t have meaningful or concrete engagements with anyone until a parliament and government with a mandate is eventually elected. So the notion of a US pause against Canada until Canada is ready to engage is not at all unreasonable. As for Smith’s opining on potential cross-national relationship probabilities with Trump: that’s all it is — opining! If the Trump administration or Canadians want a better understanding of those relationship possibilities, that would be best informed by the leaders themselves holding direct dialogue with Trump. Last I checked, none of the leaders have had such direct dialogue. Until that happens, everything on that front is entirely speculative.