In the face of the abject failure of Danielle Smith’s appeasement tour of Mar-a-Lago and Washington, D.C., last month, Alberta’s premier has declared victory with the fatuous claim the Trump tariffs imposed on Canadian oil and gas are only 10 per cent thanks to her.
“We note the reduced 10 per cent tariff for Canadian energy,” she sniffed in a statement Saturday on the Alberta government website that urged a supine response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war on Canada. “That is partially a recognition of the advocacy undertaken by our government and industry to the U.S. administration.”
No it isn’t. If it’s anything, it’s recognition of panicked calls from Republican donors with money in some of those Midwest refineries that have been tooled up to handle oilsands dilbit.
It’s hard to argue with Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi’s assessment. “Danielle Smith’s Washington, D.C., selfie tour and balls-and-parties charm offensive has failed every Albertan and every Canadian.”
But in Danielle’s World, all other exports from Canada to the U.S. will deservingly have harsh 25 per cent tariffs slapped on them by the premier’s political and ideological hero because premiers and the federal government failed to adopt her collaborationist strategy of surrendering before the negotiations even begin.
If you want to know what Alberta’s thoroughly MAGAfied United Conservative Party government really thinks of Trump’s declaration of trade war, consider the gleeful tone of her chief of staff’s tweet Sunday.
“Dear Rest of Canada,” gloated Rob Anderson, who is also a co-author of the separatist Free Alberta Strategy. “Are you ready to build Energy East and Northern Gateway yet? How about cutting absurd taxes and anti resource development laws to be more competitive? Or are we just going to sit back and listen to this sitting down while wrapped in the flag? Tick Tock.”
Anderson included an image of a Trump tweet about how “Canada should become our Cherished 51st State.” That’s an outcome, we can be pretty sure based on what he says, that would be just fine with Anderson.
Meanwhile, someone in the Premier’s Office churned out a similar but longer op-ed to be published under Smith's name advocating her collaborationist position, published, naturally, by the U.S.-owned National Post.
“As premier of Alberta, I am calling on my fellow premiers, the prime minister and all of our national leaders to de-escalate the rhetoric as much as possible and look to diplomacy and advocacy as our primary tool to resolve this conflict,” she whinged in that sad effort.
No doubt by every Postmedia political peanut gallery pundit will be attempting to lend Smith’s appeasement dialogue some spurious credibility.
But to borrow a hockey metaphor from Globe and Mail sports columnist Cathal Kelly: “Ask a former NHLer how much good constructive dialogue does you when someone’s got hold of your shirt and the first blow is incoming.”
This is all an excellent illustration of how Smith’s United Conservative Party government has nothing to offer but bullcrap and bad ideas — although it would be hard to come up with a worse idea than Smith’s call Thursday for Canada to cede control of the Northwest Passage to the U.S. by allowing it to open a military base in Canada’s Arctic.
The premier’s ChatGPT account must’ve been working overtime churning out dangerous drivel when her office came up with that one!
Presumably inspired by the neoliberal strategy that a perfectly good crisis should never go to waste, Smith used her official statement Saturday to evangelize for more pipelines, more mining, less “red tape” and an even weaker federal government.
Then she concluded, “Alberta stands ready to do our part if this true Team Canada approach is taken.”
I am indebted to University of Calgary political scientist Lisa Young for noticing Smith’s significantly conditional “if.” Talk about the words of a true Canadian patriot!
“Smith’s repeated insistence that Canada must do what Trump wants looks increasingly naive,” Young observed. “In the face of the president’s intransigence and expressions of expansionary ambitions, the Smith government must reconsider its charm offensive. Jetting off to Washington to pray with the political leaders who are enabling Trump through their inaction is as tone deaf as a trip to Hawaii in the middle of a pandemic.”
And, by the way, if you’re wondering where Health Minister Adriana LaGrange disappeared to when she was needed to explain why the UCP had liquidated another entire Alberta Health Services board of directors or how it came to pack its COVID-19 response “task force” with anti-vax nuts, she too had slipped off on a prayer pilgrimage to the imperial capital. She won’t be back until Saturday.
So when Smith’s statement promises that “Alberta will continue diplomatic efforts in the United States to persuade the U.S. president, lawmakers, administration officials and the American people to lift all tariffs on Canadian goods as soon as possible and to repair our relationship with the United States,” all Canadians should feel a shiver of fear run down their spines.
Even the federal Conservatives’ seemingly irrelevant leader, Pierre (Canada is Broken) Poilievre, appears to have come around to the necessity of retaliatory tariffs, although he wants to pair them to tax cuts — an obviously ridiculous idea at a moment in history when we’re going to have to draw deeply on our national financial reserves to save Canadian jobs and industries.
Sad to say, Smith’s collaborationist instinct is not unique. “We strongly encourage the federal government to focus on diplomacy and de-escalation and avoid further blows to our economy through retaliation,” snivelled Calgary Chamber of Commerce president Deborah Yedlin in a statement Saturday.
Who would have thought a stronger statement opposing U.S. tariffs on Canada would be published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?
Pathetic!
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