Danielle Smith puts petroleum over country

Petroleum over country. For Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, that appears to be the guiding philosophy behind her unscheduled visit to Mar-a-Lago this week. Appearing as a guest of Kevin O’Leary, the television celebrity who openly petitioned for an economic union with the United States, Smith tried to sell incoming President Donald Trump on the value of exempting oil and gas from his promised tariffs. “Our job is going to be to work overtime to make sure that we can make the case for carve outs,” she said.

The good news here, if you can call it that, is that her pitch hasn’t worked yet. Exempting oil and gas might be good for Alberta’s oil and gas sector, but it would be disastrous for every other part of the Canadian economy — including Alberta’s agriculture and forestry sectors. Trump’s tariffs will raise the price of fuel in America, which in turn will pressure his administration to lift them. By exempting oil and gas, he could theoretically sustain the rest of the tariffs for much longer — and do far more damage to Canada in the process. 

It’s not exactly surprising to see a quasi-separatist like Smith put Alberta and its oil and gas industry ahead of her own country. But for someone who never seems to tire of standing up to other levels of government, her appetite for pre-emptive surrender to the United States and Trump’s irrational demands is a bit jarring. “We need to be prepared that tariffs are coming,” Ms. Smith told reporters Monday morning. “The biggest irritant to the United States are trade deficits.” 

Never mind, for the moment, that trade deficits aren’t inherently or automatically bad, or that America’s trade deficit with Canada is entirely the product of our oil and gas exports. What’s worse than Smith’s unwillingness to educate the American president is her apparent enthusiasm for indulging him. “I think the solution is that we find ways to buy more American goods,” she said. “I’ll put that on the table.”

Um, okay. There’s little the federal government could really do to force Canadian businesses to buy more American goods, and even if it could, it would almost certainly entail replacing made-in-Canada items. More to the point, the surest way to close the trade deficit is to reduce our exports of oil and gas to the United States — something Trump has mooted repeatedly — and sell more of it to ourselves. If this ends up with Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre promoting a repackaged version of the National Energy Program, it might almost be worth all the trouble. 

Even so, it’s worth pointing out just how far Smith was willing to travel — politically as well as geographically — to bend the knee to Trump. She was, after all, the personal guest of Kevin O’Leary, someone who has been engaging of late in what might be described as light treason. As he told the CBC’s David Cochrane, he actively interfered with the sitting federal government and its attempts to negotiate on behalf of the country they represent. "I asked Trump to ignore those meetings [with Trudeau] because those people are going to get eradicated in the next election. I hope he took my advice.” 

O’Leary’s attempt to cozy up to the incoming president has nothing to do with Canada. Instead, he’s reportedly trying to sell the incoming president on his bid to buy TikTok — and, simultaneously, the premier of Alberta on his fantastical idea for a $70-billion data centre (one that local Indigenous leaders say they found out about through a press release). Two birds, one stone. 

But Smith’s clearly divided loyalties here ought to be a bigger issue. Her eagerness to sell out the rest of the country on behalf of the oil and gas industry is a stark contrast to the patriotism of one Stephen Harper, who now chairs the Alberta Investment Management Corporation. As the former prime minister said during a recent interview, "I have a real problem with some of the things Donald Trump is saying. It doesn't sound to me like the pronouncements of somebody ... who's a friend, a partner, and an ally, which is what I've always thought the United States is."

Nobody can question Harper’s affinity for the oil and gas industry. His government was dedicated to advancing its interests, even as it often ended up doing the opposite. Even so, Harper’s loyalties still extend beyond the narrowly-drawn vantage point of one sector of the Canadian economy. Smith, on the other hand, seems determined to sacrifice almost anything in order to protect that sector. It's worth wondering if there's anything she wouldn't surrender in order to serve it — and if Trump already knows that.