Alberta Premier Danielle Smith talks about why Canada’s resources are so important to the U.S., how Ottawa’s retaliatory plans to U.S. tariff threats have demonstrated the value of Alberta’s oil and gas industry, and why she is not looking forward to Mark Carney as the likely next Liberal Party leader.
You can listen to this episode on Amazon, Apple, and Spotify.
The following is an automated transcript. If you are quoting from or referencing this episode, please refer to the audio to verify.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, the publisher of the hub. I’m sitting in on this episode of hub dialogues for Sean Speer, our editor at large, and we’ve got a really special guest on the program today. We’re gonna have the opportunity to have an in depth conversation with Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta. She’s had a remarkable couple of months dealing with everything Canada us and a whole bunch of other things included too. Premier Smith, welcome to the program.
DANIELLE SMITH: Nice to talk to you. Rudyard, thanks for the opportunity.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Likewise, we love it when prominent politicians like yourself talk to independent media. It’s a great way for us to reach our audience and to have important conversations, as we will with you this half hour, I want to begin Premier Smith with just the roller coaster you had since the Trump tariffs really emerged as a pressing and urgent threat facing this country. And therefore my first question to you is, if you think back over that time and your interactions with his President and his administration. What’s one lesson that you could impart to other decision makers? Maybe world leaders tuning in right now trying to figure out, how does one interact effectively with the Trump administration? How do you get to somewhere? Maybe it’s not yes, but somewhere better than maybe when you start out initially engaging with Trump and his officials.
DANIELLE SMITH: One of the things that I would say, and it’s a line that Kevin O’Leary has used, is that you’ve got to be able to separate the signal from the noise. And I think what he means by that is that there’s a lot of things that the President says, and he’s always serious, but he’s not always literal. And so when, when a nation or a jurisdiction ends up finding themselves in his line of sight, you you don’t want to make it worse by by picking the fight and escalating the fight. You want to try to find out what, what is the at the bottom line? What is the irritant that we’re trying to address here, and then address it in a serious way. And I think that it took our federal counterparts a little while to get to that point. But I think here we are with a reprieve in the most recent tariff announcement, some encouraging words about the efforts that they’re seeing us making on border security, having a fentanyl czar, and some of the other issues. And so I think we ultimately got to where we needed to be, but getting there faster, I think, would have been in everybody’s interest to avoid some of the uncertainty we currently have in our economy.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Want to talk federal provincial relations with you in a moment, but just to keep on the Trump administration for a bit. As you understand, a lot of Canadians are very nervous about the President’s seeming inability to move off rhetoric about Canada as the 51st state as our prime minister. Justin Trudeau, you know, being called a governor repeatedly by the President. What? What do you make of this premier Smith, I mean, is this, is this theater? Is this spectacle, or is there something behind this, some larger theory of the case that the the President is trying to advance?
DANIELLE SMITH: I’ve talked to Dominic LeBlanc, who was at the table, and he said that the first time he said it, it was, it was everyone at the table laughed. So I think it was, it was initially floated as a bit of a joke, but Canadians aren’t finding this very funny. It’s continued on too long, and I don’t like the reaction that we’re now seeing. I mean, we’re seeing people, we’re seeing booing happening of anthems at games, which I think is disrespectful to veterans. That’s what the purpose of country’s national anthem is, is to show respect to men and women in uniform who fight for our respective nations. And so I don’t like the way in which it’s creating a balkanized approach here. I think that we have so somewhat such a strong relationship with the US. We have fought wars together. We’ve, you know, bled and died together. We have a very strong trade relationship, and I’m worried that the constant antagonizing is going to have a really negative and detrimental impact on our relationship. So I hope that it’s pretty clear Canada is not interested in being a 51st state. We are strong, independent. We’re more committed than ever to addressing some of the issues that we have internally that are causing us to not be able to trade with each other. So there has been a positive that has come out of that, is that we’ve really had to be self reflective and come up with you. A better approach so that we can support each other. I’m seeing a renewed interest in talking about building pipelines east, west and north. I’m seeing a renewed interest in trying to have comprehensive mutual recognition approaches so that we we tear down into provincial trade barriers. I’m seeing a common interest in in finding a way to protect our Arctic and meet our defense commitments and find new trade partners. And so I think in some ways, it’s making us much stronger as a country, and that’s that’s a positive outcome. I don’t like how we got here, but I’m glad that’s where we find ourselves right now.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Final question about US politics, you’ve distinguished yourself by going and talking to a whole bunch of governors, senators, congressmen and women, when you’re interacting with them and you’re making the kind of sensible arguments that you’ve just put forward now about the history of our relationship with the United States, the extent to which we share these deep values. We fought alongside each other, as you just mentioned, how did they react to those, those kind of important factual, you know, cornerstones of our our relationship. Do they? Do they acknowledge them? Are they internalized into the conversation, or has something changed and they’re thinking about other things? What’s in their interest? How they can advance America’s priorities, and those other, maybe older concepts of why we share this largest under defended border in the world. Just don’t have the residency that they used to.
DANIELLE SMITH: I think our approach to the Americans has to be to talk about how we mutually benefit from our long standing relationship. The Americans are very focused, especially with this President, to put America first. And I think anytime we can make an argument about how we are able to support a North America wide, energy security policy, national security policy, food security problem, food security priority, I think if we can be making those arguments about how Canada feeds into the broader American objectives, then that is going to be what has more resonance. One of the things I’ve learned from the many members of the administration that I’ve spoken with is that this is a president who is going to be making a lot of the decisions himself. I think we saw that in the flurry of executive orders that I think is pretty much unprecedented to see that many executive orders before a cabinet’s in place, not bypassing the election chambers.
I that is not the usual way that decisions are made in the United States. And so what it lends itself to then is, how do you have influence on the people who are influencing the president. And so there’s some key governors who are influencers, Governor Gianforte of Montana, Governor Dunleavy of Alaska. Or there are important and influential senators like Senator Markwayne Mullin in Oklahoma and Senator Steve Daines in in Montana. There’s there’s influential Cabinet members like former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and new energy secretary. He’s Doug Burgum, incidentally, as interior secretary, you’ve got Chris Wright, who’s the energy secretary, and I’ve had and many others like those are the relationships that I am making to make exactly these arguments about how if America wants to have energy dominance, they need Canada to be able to do that. They need to be able to get our western Canada select heavy crude going to their refineries that have have really been custom built in order to be able to receive our heavy oil so that they can have cheap product for their American consumers, and then be able to export their WTI product abroad so that they can meet their national security goals if they want to be able to have a base for critical minerals, Canada is the answer.
We have. We have everything that they need, and we’re right next door. Whereas China has locked up the supply chain on I think somewhere upwards of 90% of the critical minerals in the world electricity is another way, whether it’s British Columbia or Manitoba or Quebec or Ontario, being able to provide cheap power to the United States. That is resonance. And you can tell because when we were talking about, call it the fentanyl tariffs, the ones that are put on to demonstrate that they need us to get serious about stopping the flow of fentanyl, that they were prepared to make a smaller tariff of 10% on energy resources writ large, not only just oil and gas, but electricity as well as critical minerals. So I think the message is getting through, and we’ve got to keep making it. We can make it on almost every product you can imagine that we sell to the United States, being able to sell timber so that they can make lumber so they can have lower cost houses, being able to sell food products, whether it’s our wonderful beef or whether it’s our grain products or or vegetables or other products so that they can have lower food costs for for for their consumers, being able to even have intermediate goods like auto parts, so that they can have cheaper, cheaper cars for their citizens. I think every product that we sell to the United States, we can make the argument that by doing so, we benefit, and they benefit. The other argument that I’d like to make is that we are the Americans best customer. That’s that’s the other thing that is is so important and actually quite surprising, considering we’re the ninth largest economy in the world. We’re 10% of the size of the United States, and yet we buy more American goods and services than any other nation on the planet, and that has got to count for something that allows for them to not only have the value added jobs that come with upgrading and creating those wonderful products, but then they sell those wonderful products back to us, and we benefit too. So so there’s a lot of really great arguments we can make. You can’t always get right to the President and to make them but if we can get to the proxies around him so they can make it on our behalf, it’s going to make a difference.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: It will. Let’s hope so. Let’s turn to federal provincial relations, because when this whole kind of terror threat kicked off, it seemed like there were some, some delicate moments there where there could have been a reaction here in central Canada that might have put Alberta energy into play faster, certainly than you thought it should have been dealt as a as a possible card, a retaliatory card in a tariff response that Canada was formulating. What lessons do you think we’ve learned about that, that near death experience, if I put it that way, and has that now been kind of baked into our thinking going forward? Are we going to be more respectful and understanding of, you know, the regional variations across the country, the extent to which different provinces have are exposed to the US market in different ways, and that both the threat of tariffs affects each jurisdiction differently, but so too does the retaliatory response, if one is indeed ultimately needed.
DANIELLE SMITH: Well, and I hope that that last point is the one we can start with. I hope it’s not needed. I hope we’re able to answer the issues that the US administration is raising to a point where we can maintain our 99% tariff free relationship. That should be the objective, because tariffs hurt both of us. Putting tariffs on Canadian goods to the US makes makes the goods expect more expensive for Americans. Putting import tariffs on American goods makes goods more expensive for Canadians, and when you’re having an inflation crisis and an affordability crisis and uncertainty in the job market, that’s the last thing either country needs. So that’s what I’ve been approaching it as, is, let’s find a way to avoid this fight when it comes down to why I had to part company with the federal government initially in this these discussions is we’d have these really great meetings where we’d all talk about what our approach might be, and everyone would agree, let’s get out there. Let’s talk about what we’re doing on the border. Let’s talk about the issues that that have been raised. And every every time I open a newspaper or turn on TV or radio, I kept hearing one minister or another talking about how they wanted to slap energy or tariffs on energy or cut off energy supplied to the United States. And I had to say, No, we didn’t talk about that, and we didn’t agree to that. So why do they keep on raising it? And the fact that they kept raising it suggested to me that that’s what they really wanted to do. They wanted to create an a tariff on the export of Canadian energy, which would help fall disproportionately heavily on Alberta, generate somewhere in the order, if it was 25%, $40 billion that would all go to Ottawa so that it could be spent in places in the country where they generate more votes than they do out of Alberta.
This is the an equalization program by another name, and we had a pretty fierce battle about this back in the 1970s when Peter Lougheed fought against another Trudeau who wanted to put an export tariff on so I’m not going to be a prime, a premier that is going to give up that ground, because I know that if they start doing that kind of thing, that it will never end, and it will just be another transfer of wealth out of Alberta at a time when, and I must tell you, my great frustration with that is it, I found it hypocritical, after everything our province has been through in the last 10 years, seeing Northern Gateway canceled, seeing a ban of our export of bitumen off the west coast, having Energy East canceled, having the tech frontier oil sands mine canceled, having Keystone XL canceled without even a peep of support from our federal government, to then say, Oh, well, let’s just use Alberta’s energy resources as a chip in this game with the United States. That’s unfair to our province. It’s disrespectful. And so I just wanted to draw a line in the sand and say, You know what, if you love energy this much and you see the value of it now. Well, how about you stop blocking pipelines? How about you let us build a pipeline to the west coast so we can export into Asian markets. How about you let us build a pipeline to the east coast so that we can not only provide energy security to our friends in Eastern Canada, Ontario and Quebec, but also be able to export to European markets. Let’s have a pipeline go up north so that we can, we can help build out strategic and economic and Arctic security like these are the kind of things that I think are now.
We’re finally having the conversation we should have had for the for the last 10 years, and I think it is going to be very positive. I should say one more thing about them. We had the federal government intercede and invoke the 1977 pipeline treaty to stop line five from being shut down. If line five is shut down, you have to remember looking at a map is that it goes through Michigan to be able to get to Sarnia, and then from Sarnia, it feeds line nine that goes up to Quebec. And so if you start talking about using energy as a weapon, you’re playing into the arguments of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who’s been trying to shut that pipeline down for years, and it’s also a violation of the of the treaty, because in 1977 we agreed not to use energy as a weapon. We agreed not to to interfere with the with the flow of energy across our borders. So I don’t think that that’s a principle we should easily give up. And remember, in Ontario and Quebec, the hammer is much harder the other way the ever. If the Americans ever decided to do that, it puts Ontario and Quebec in the dark, because they get all of their energy by way of either the United States or have to bring it in offshore, because we never built Energy East. So those are the things that I think we all need to understand if we’re going to talk about energy, we have to be understanding where we get our energy from in the first place, and how exposed we are. And quite frankly, eastern Canada is way more exposed than we are in the West.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Let’s talk about free trading Canada. Because one of the things that people have gotten excited about, it’s probably something we should have done them a long time ago, regardless of whether and how this tariff threat evolves. What’s your view on that? Are you willing to to have Alberta lead in a conversation about dropping internal tariff barriers to the movement of goods, services and people? How optimistic are you that your other provincial counterparts are similarly enthusiastic.
DANIELLE SMITH: We are working on a comprehensive mutual recognition agreement. And I can tell you there are several premiers who are already there, including Alberta. I don’t want to speak out of turn for some of the other provincial leaders. I think you’ve probably seen a few that have been very vocal, BC, Premier David Eby and Nova Scotia, Premier Tim Houston, but certainly us, we already have the least number of exemptions. We, I think, have six other jurisdictions have up to over 30. And so we’ve always taken the view that we believe our consumers benefit from being able to freely move and sell goods and services, freely move and take up residence and have a job, but there’s more work that we can do. So we’re very keen to have a comprehensive mutual recognition agreement, and that’s kind of what we would need to do, because in Canada, it’s illegal to tariff products coming in from other jurisdictions, and so our Tariff, our non tariff barriers, are a little harder to to identify, but I’ll tell you a couple of the things is is, one is that we may not recognize the certification of a particular job category from one province to The next. May require extra training, may require extra job experience, may require expensive exams, and that’s that’s frustrating if you know, if you’re okay to be a dentist in Nova Scotia, you should be okay to be a dentist in Alberta, there’s no reason why there should be any additional barriers. So so we’re very keen to work with the other provinces on tearing those down, and one of the big ones, I think that will make a big difference in the transport of goods to improve the trade between our provinces, is figuring out how a truck that is loaded up at Vancouver harbor can drive across the country and get all the way to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick without Having different weight restrictions and axle restrictions and height restrictions and different colored flags that you’re allowed to use for safety restrictions. I think what we should assume is, if they said it was safe when it left in Vancouver, it’s still safe when it arrives in Halifax, and that, I think, is going to be where you see all of the provinces keen to go.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: long overdue. All this is going on, Premier Smith at a time when Parliament is prorogued, the Liberal Party is in the throes of a leadership contest. To what extent is that making your job more difficult, and to what extent do you think it is impeding our ability to innovate, to collaborate and to address this terror Threat head on.
DANIELLE SMITH: I think this is why you’ve seen the province, the provinces, take on a leadership role. I think the first time all premiers have gone down to the United States was when we were just down there last week. And the reason we’re working our relationships and we’re cultivating that is because of the uncertainty at the federal level. We have a Prime Minister who will be there for another 17 days, and then a new prime minister who could be there for a month or longer, and then there’ll be another election, and maybe even a third Prime Minister. And so I have felt from the beginning that what we really needed was an election before the Prime Minister made the decision to step down. That’s what I was calling for. Is Let’s settle this once and for all. Let’s have an election so that we have a four year mandate for whoever is sitting in the chair, and then we would be able to move forward. I think the real problem that we have right now is that we don’t have somebody who can say, You know what? You can throw whatever you want at me, but I’m I’m going to be here for four years, so it’s far better for us to deal and get this resolved, that that’s the kind of certainty that we need to have at the table. And I hope that happens sooner rather than later. As soon as the liberal leadership contest is wrapped up.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: In a future federal election, as you say, we could be into one in a matter of weeks. What are the types of policies that you’ll be looking for that, that you think that Albertans would support from either the liberals or the conservatives. What’s important to your province? What’s important you think in this, this moment that the country faces?
DANIELLE SMITH: Well, I can tell you one thing that that I’ve heard from the people of Alberta is that this idea that Alberta is going to have its constitutional rights violated by a federal government Those days are over. We are not going to put up with a the federal government presuming to regulate our electricity, presuming to regulate our emissions, telling us what we can and cannot produce, telling us we can and cannot export. And so regardless of who ends up winning the leadership contest or who ends up winning the next general election, that is, that is something that that we have asserted since I got elected, we are co equal levels of government. Read our Constitution. It gives us the exclusive jurisdiction to manage multiple different areas of our federation, and we are going to continue to press that, and I would hope that who, whoever ends up becoming Prime Minister, is going to respect that, not just for us, but for other provinces who feel the same frustrations.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: And are there some areas where you’d like to see the federal government, you know, maybe retrench a bit, refocus on on its its constitutionally mandated prerogatives. If so, what are those? Is there the potential here for a bit of a deal premier Smith, for the federal government to exit some of the spaces that they’ve moved into under under Trudeau, and for you in turn, possibly to to relinquish something in turn, to strengthen the Federation, at a moment where I think Canadians are feeling we do need a stronger federal presence to deal with this, this fast changing world.
DANIELLE SMITH: Well, I can tell you how strange it’s been as we’ve been at the Council of the Federation table, especially in the last year and a half or so. We’ve got a federal government who wants to talk about child care and school lunchroom programs and taking over pharmaceuticals. And those of us at the at the Premier’s table have been saying, Maybe we should need to meet our 2% NATO commitment. Maybe we need to invest in Arctic security. Maybe we need to build more icebreakers. I mean, it’s been reversed. The federal government is acting like they want to be a premier, and it’s caused the premiers to take on increasingly, a leadership role in advocating for the things the federal government should be focused on. So yes, I would. I would far rather be focused on managing our own school lunch program and figuring out to how to how to improve our health care system. Those are my jobs. The federal government’s job is to make sure that our trade relationship with our most important partners is not in jeopardy, but because we’re not pulling our weight on meeting our NATO commitment, we need to make sure that we are a reliable and trustworthy partner when it comes to defending our northern territories, because we’re seeing increasingly aggressive action from not only Russia but also China, and those are the kind of things that really should be on the federal radar. They should be talking about more NORAD joint efforts and joint bases, more ability for us to build ports in our Arctic waters so that we can build out strategic infrastructure. We should be talking about how we can streamline the the process for more mining development so that we can, we can extract those 32 or 35 critical minerals that are going to be needed in the future, not only for defense applications, but also for AI and data center applications. So yes, I think the federal government has been very distracted for for the for the last decade, and now it’s a Bit of a wake up call, and there’s a lot of things that deserve their attention, and it’s time for them to focus on all of those.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Penultimate question, you have been a successful politician in the post COVID era. That’s, you know, something increasingly rare. What is your advice to Pierre poilievre, as he now potentially is dealing with a resurgent Liberal Party and buoyed by the prospects of the potential for Mark Carney to become its next leader. What do politicians like Pierre poilievre need to do to succeed in this, this post COVID environment of voters who are on edge, often angry and looking for change.
DANIELLE SMITH: Well, let me say a word about about Mark Carney. I mean, I’m not looking forward with any enthusiasm to his potential leadership. You have to remember that he is the author of net zero banking, and he has been advocating for years to de bank or defund any investment in oil and gas. He’s part of the reason why we have had such a difficult time over the last 10 years. So I’m not looking forward with any enthusiasm to that kind that those kind of hostile policies continue. So I think that Pierre poilievre is far more aligned with the kind of approach that we want to take. And you can tell just by the things that he things that he’s talking about. He’s talking about Canadian excellence. He’s talking about us trading with each other. He’s talking about about having a strong military again, that we can all feel proud of, and secure borders that we can all feel proud of. So I I think that those are the things that that are very much what what Canadians want to hear. I think that there has been, sadly, and you’ve seen it with poll results, a diminishment in national pride. And people want to feel that again. You can tell just look at how we’re approaching the four nation hockey games. Everybody wants to feel like we’ve got some esprit de corps that were supporting each other. And I think that the politician who is best able to give us back that spirit is going to be the one that’s going to galvanize the public. We’re ready for it. We’ve beaten up for some time here, and we want something to give us hope again and to feel proud of again.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Well said last question I have to ask about the allegations of corruption that have been made in various lawsuits regarding your public health authority. What are you going to do for to ensure Albertans that you get to the bottom of this issue, and if there are reforms that need to be put into place, and if there are people that need to face the proverbial music that that that’s going to happen.
DANIELLE SMITH: Yeah, we’ve been concerned for some time about Alberta Health services procurement policies. It’s why we announced over a year ago, November of 2023 that we would be taking over that function from them. And it says, Because Alberta Health Services is in a foundational conflict of interest, you cannot be a provider of services and then have the sole authority to be writing up the contracts for your competitors, because it leads to unfairness, it leads to delays, and it leads to foot dragging, and so those are the kind of things that we were asking questions about. Is okay, well, we’ve told you that we want charter surgical centers to be able to deliver more surgeries. We’ve already got 50 of them. There’s several RFPs that ahs awarded, and has taken years for them to get to the finish line on writing up those contracts. So the question we’re asking is, why? So I think that we have to be mindful that if there are some things that need to that are going wrong in the procurement process, we want to correct them. We want people to feel confident that when we do contract with service providers, that not only we’re giving great care, but we’re also getting great value. And so we’ve created a couple of we’re calling them sort of legal complex walls. We’ve got an outside, external reviewer that is going to look at all of the documents and let us know if there’s anything wrong with our procurement process. Those same documents are being shared with our auditor general so that he can give us some advice, and if there’s any modifications we need to make, we will. If there’s any wrongdoing, there’s going to be repercussions. So I hope that this isn’t a lengthy process. I hope that we can wrap this up within a matter of months, but the bottom line remains the same, that we are going to make sure that we get the best health care for Albertans. And what we have found is that by contracting out to independent surgical centers, we’re increasing surgeries, we’re getting great service, and we want to make sure the public continues to have confidence in that, so that we can make sure that we’re clearing those backlogs and getting people the care they need.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, it’s definitely the way healthcare is going, and some of the results are impressive, so we’ll all continue to watch that space. Premier. Danielle Smith, thank you so much for coming on hub dialogs today. I really appreciate having you and your voice on independent media in Canada. The Hub takes no government subsidies. We are Not funded by these large scale payroll subsidies that have inundated the media. You’re a former member of the media, so you know the corrosive effects of government funding on public trust. So for you to come on this program, to have an open exchange of ideas with us in the format that we’ve just enjoyed is a privilege, indeed, and I salute you for that.
DANIELLE SMITH: Well, thank you. And I think that independent media has such an important role to play. And unfortunately, in the mainstream, we’ve seen a narrowing of the range of topics and range of views that have been aired and allowed to be represented. And I think independent media allows for a very robust and full hearing of all perspectives, and that’s what we need in our democracy. So a salute to you for doing that.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: well again. Thank you for coming on the program. I hope we’ll talk with you again soon. We’ll let you get on with the rest of your busy day.
DANIELLE SMITH: Thank you.
