Premier Danielle Smith continues to defend her tactics for lobbying against tariffs, and says a poll showing majority support for putting an export tax on oil and gas is "garbage."--CP FILE PHOTO
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Premier Danielle Smith defended her tact in lobbying against U.S. tariffs as well as her plan to survey Albertans about the province’s future in Canada next fall, during a rural roads announcement in Brooks on Tuesday.
She also called a poll showing few Canadians and even Western Canadians support her stance to leave potential energy export tariffs off the table in a trade war launched by U.S. President Donald Trump as “garbage.”
Smith has been vehement the province’s major industry should be sheltered as much and as long as possible as the U.S. administration imposes a variety of tariffs on Canadian goods.
She’s published a list of demands for the winner of the current federal election that she claims will address Alberta’s concerns and key resource development and export capacity.
“I love Canada and I want Canada to work,” she told reporters. “But I’m also premier of Alberta and at some point Canada has to work for Alberta.”
Otherwise is to continue “dysfunctional relationship that harms Alberta.”
“We’ll get through this election and see who ends up winning … That’s part of the reason why we’ll proceed with a ‘what’s next’ panel.”
Smith, also the MLA for Brooks-Medicine Hat, told the audience of her biweekly radio show on the weekend that she planned to launch a series of town hall meetings next fall to discuss the province’s relationship with the federal government.
Leader of the opposition Alberta New Democrats Naheed Nenshi has said Smith is putting herself ahead of the country.
“(Smith is) playing fast and loose with Canada,” he told the press on March 24. “She want’s to be the centre of attention, telling everyone, ‘Oh no, we want to cause a national unity crisis.’ … I’m old enough to know just how fragile this nation that we built together (is).”
Smith exclusively told the News last week that while she could understand the frustration of groups calling for independence, like one headed by former Medicine Hat MP LaVar Payne, her government wasn’t planning on unilaterally putting the issue on a ballot.
She reiterated that Tuesday when asked directly.
“No, I can’t foresee that,” Smith said. “We do have citizen initiative referenda and it will be up to Albertans what sort of questions they want to put forward.
“I’ll give whoever is in the chair (of prime minister) six months to make good on trying to address those critical problems for Alberta (before a panel). We can’t stop trying to get the right policies in place.”
Former Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes has called for a ballot issue on separation for several years, believing a question two years away is more attainable, but said recently he thinks another panel is redundant.
“The panels we’ve had have changed nothing to the point they’ve been almost useless,” he said last week. “When Albertans pushed a little bit on having a provincial pension plan … (Smith) has put zero effort and zero resources behind it.”
Barnes was part of the Fair Deal Panel, struck by former Premier Jason Kenney, and recommended stronger steps than the panel’s majority opinion on building up provincial jurisdiction.
He said the ballot initiative route is “unattainable” considering the requirements – it would require 20 per cent of Alberta voters (about 600,000) to sign a petition over a 90-day period and show at least 20 per cent support in two thirds of Alberta’s 87 ridings.
Some of Smith’s political opponents have also argued that since Trump has a lower tariff on oil, it shows that the U.S administration recognizes that country has a strategic reliance on Canadian imports which could be used as leverage.
CTV reporters asked about a Nanos poll commissioned by the network that shows three quarters of Canadians, including 58.8 per cent in the Prairie provinces, would support putting export tariffs on energy products like oil, natural gas and electricity.
“I think it’s a garbage poll, frankly, and you can let your bosses know that,” she said.
“People need to look at a map and see where Ontario and Quebec get their oil, gas, gasoline.”
If it meant the U.S. would retaliate by shutting off exports to eastern Canada, “I think you’d get a different answer,” she said.
Last month at a border security announcement at Medicine Hat, Smith said her government was aware of several major north-south pipeline proposals that could help the U.S. administration’s goal of boosting energy processing capacity.
Those should proceed when trade normalizes, alongside infrastructure projects to move more oil to Canada’s coasts for overseas export markets.
