Alberta Premier Danielle Smith came into the federal election campaign hoping her words would leave an imprint.
Well, maybe not like this.
She wanted her points about oil and gas regulation, and her demands on pipeline approvals, to influence the conversation. Less so her weeks-old remarks to a Trump-friendly media outlet about a strategic Washington “pause” on tariffs to avoid boosting Liberal fortunes, and that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was “in sync” with the direction of Donald Trump.
After her interview with Breitbart News surfaced on the eve of campaign launch, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was most forceful in denouncing Smith’s talk of advising Trump administration officials to pause tariff plans “so we can get through an election” and ideally elect Poilievre to deal with the U.S. president.
“Shameful,” Singh termed it.
“If you’re loyal to this country, if you care about Canadians, you say, ‘Stop the tariffs. Don’t hurt Canadian workers. Don’t hurt Canadian families. Don’t hurt Quebecers,'” Singh said while on the stump in Montreal.
But this would overlook the fact that Smith has repeatedly argued against tariffs for the benefit of Canadian workers and families, in her province’s lucrative oil sector and in other industries.
She even did so in the same Breitbart interview on March 8: “We really should maintain this tariff-free relationship between our two countries. Our industries are so integrated. And it’s good for both partners.”
Alberta’s premier has been arguing in U.S. media interviews about the folly of tariffs for months. What was different about the Breitbart interview — to a more niche conservative audience than CNBC, CNN or Fox Business — was that she added electoral calculations to her bundle of arguments.
And told the pro-Trump crowd they’ll like what they see with Poilievre.
Smith was, let’s remember, a media pundit in her past career(s) — known to workshop or test-drive different ideas or theories live on air. Rhetorical spaghetti flung on the wall.
Had the remarks been publicized when she made them, in early March before Mark Carney was elected Liberal leader, they could have landed less explosively. But they surfaced just as the prime minister was calling the election.
Smith has pushed back against the interpretation of her own comments, saying her pitch for a campaign-long moratorium on U.S. tariffs was “exactly the opposite” of the foreign interference some critics suggested it was. However, it was her comment that Poilievre is more “in sync” with the U.S. tariffer-in-chief that federal politicians have weaponized.
Carney wondered at a campaign event who Canadians want to deal with Trump: “Someone who, to quote Danielle Smith, is in sync with him, or is it someone who’s going to stand up for Canadians?”
In fact, Smith’s analysis about Trump-Poilievre lines up well with a Liberal ad that matches up things the two right-leaning leaders say about “radical left” and “fake news.”
When asked about Smith’s comments about him, Poilievre himself began to discuss his conservative counterpart, but pulled himself back.”Well sh…,” he began, stopping before a “she” could cross his lips. “People are free to make their own comments. I speak for myself.”
He’s previously had a friendly relationship with the United Conservative premier he largely agrees with on energy policy. Last spring, he invited her to speak at an anti-carbon-tax Conservative rally in Edmonton, praising Alberta’s “common-sense Conservative leader, the great Danielle Smith!”
Poilievre wouldn’t be the first Conservative leader with Alberta roots chafing at a compatriot’s remarks spilling onto the campaign trail.
In 2004, then-Liberal leader Paul Martin took advantage of comments that the day’s Alberta premier, Ralph Klein, made about health care reforms that Martin warned might violate the Canada Health Act. The delay in releasing those plans until after that June’s election was proof, Martin insisted, that Conservative Leader Stephen Harper had a hidden agenda for private health care.
Tom Flanagan, Harper’s campaign manager, wrote in the 2007 book Harper’s Team that Klein’s private health musings “certainly did nothing to help our stagnant poll numbers.”
Flanagan wondered about Klein: “Was it just the general sloppiness that marked the final years of his time as Alberta premier, or was he being deliberately mischievous?”
Asked about that two decades later, former Conservative official Yaroslav Baran remembered how his party’s war room dreaded Klein’s election entree.
“I remember us saying, ‘Ahh, come on, we don’t need this right now,'” he recalled to CBC News. And not so much because it validated anything real, he added, but because it pulled his party off message for a while.
Baran said Poilieve is “somewhat inoculated” from what Smith said by Trump’s own remarks last week that he’d rather not work with the Conservative leader, who “stupidly is no friend of mine,” as the president said.
Baran said he doesn’t expect Smith’s comments to hurt Poilievre like the premier hurt the conservative leader two decades ago.
“This is not going to penetrate down to Main Street,” he said.
One important difference between Klein’s health comments and Smith’s Trump-tinged remarks is the timing.
Yes, both hit during the campaign, but Klein’s came in the final week before the 2004 election; Smith’s Breitbart interview surfaced in the first days of a five-week campaign.
Plenty will surely happen between now and April 28, including planned Trump tariffs next week and inevitably more provocative remarks from the president and his social media accounts.
Smith might make more international waves of her own.
She’s signalled her intention to to keep playing U.S. diplomat — “foreign interference my ass,” her top aide scoffed on social media — including a speaking engagement Wednesday in Florida with former Breitbart commentator Ben Shapiro, at a $1,500-a-plate fundraiser for a conservative education group.
Federal parties may be just as keen to find out what she says at that private gala. If politicos and the public are still talking about Smith’s advice to Americans about Canadian politics five weeks from now, that may not bode well for conservatives at any level, provincial or federal.
