Premier Danielle Smith was slagged all over national media Wednesday. They had her down as the next thing to a traitor for refusing to sign a first ministers’ communique, and vowing never to accept an export tax on oil and gas.
That hit the premiers’ meeting hard, as they sought harmony among themselves for the dispute with the Americans over tariffs.
In the private meeting, Smith tried several times to get assurances that Ottawa would not impose an export tax on natural gas, or cut oil shipments to the U.S., as a response to President-elect Donald Trump’s promised tariffs.
She feels that if regions are to be compensated for economic damage caused by tariffs, that’s Ottawa’s job, not Alberta’s.
Smith apparently got no assurances that an export tax is off the table. Participating virtually from the U.S., where she’s on holiday, she refused to sign.
Afterward, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about her decision in a news conference, he said Alberta oil and gas is never mentioned by Trump as a target.
But Ontario is under dire threats from Trump, Trudeau said. The president-elect even claimed that all the auto manufacturing could be done in Detroit.
Ontario faces desperate trouble, no doubt of that. To the Albertans, though, Trudeau’s comments showed exactly what’s going on. They’re convinced that when Ontario gets hammered, Alberta will pay the price.
Some knowledgeable people say the feds have no plans at all for such a tax. If oil and gas are hit by U.S. tariffs, there would be no sane argument for export taxation anyway.
But the Liberals have imposed export taxes on Alberta oil twice before. The second time — a levy that endured for five years in the 1980s — helped convince former premier Peter Lougheed to cut oil shipments to Ontario.
Smith is planning to create a provincial agency that would buy oil and gas intended for export, and sell it to the American buyers.
(Public ownership would exempt the exports from federal taxation.)
The premier did agree to most elements in the statement. Her refusal to sign over one point comes with a strong whiff of political theatre.
This was not the Magna Carta, after all, just another windy emission from the premiers and Trudeau, binding on no one.
But in sending Ottawa a powerful message, Smith shattered any illusion of provincial-federal harmony in the face of Trump’s threats.
Trump’s UCP loyalists will love this, but there’s no doubt that she infuriated many Canadians across the country.
They wonder why Smith is so fixated on the enemy within, when the real threat is from the president-elect she met recently at Mar-a-Lago.
Smith will have to live with that uncomfortable image for a long time. There’s no sign that she cares one bit.
The whole business took me back more than 40 years, (a lot of things do that these days), to PC premier Lougheed’s decision to sharply cut crude oil shipments to Ontario refineries, as a response to the federal National Energy Program.
Lougheed was also painted as a traitor, a turncoat, an enemy of the people, for “turning down the taps.” In truth he was a tough western leader and loyal Canadian who refused to be ruled by the Ontario-federal cabal of that day.
In 2012, Lougheed was named the best Canadian premier of the previous 40 years in a national survey.
Danielle Smith would love to be known that way, someday.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald