Danielle Smith began 2024 talking about Alberta sovereignty. She ended it defending Canada’s.
Honestly, things get weirder by the day in this country. But that’s what happens when the national government ceases to function at a time when it is needed most.
In two weeks, Donald Trump will once again take over as U.S. president, threatening to immediately unleash tariffs of 25 per cent upon Canadian exports crossing our southern border.
This could be catastrophic to our country, given more than three-quarters of our exports go to the U.S., including about 4.3 million barrels of crude oil each day, the vast majority coming from here in Alberta.
Now Trump, addicted to deal making as he is, could be bluffing. We don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t even know himself. But this is not some minor issue that can be simply sloughed off.
But who is there in Ottawa to answer this national challenge? Well, nobody, really.
Certainly not our nominal prime minister, who, as with everything Justin Trudeau has done in his nine years of power, is making a total cock-up of quitting, effectively shuttering Parliament for months while his dreadful Liberal Party looks for a successor capable of saving itself from looming political oblivion.
Outside of a declaration of war, it’s impossible to find a worse time to have nobody in charge of this country. Who is going to negotiate with the U.S. president? Certainly not Trudeau, a man Trump despises at the best of times, never mind when the Canadian PM is now the lamest of lame ducks.
But, when there’s a vacuum in politics, it’s certain someone will rise to the challenge of filling it. So, come on down Premier Smith, who has suddenly chosen to don the Captain Canada uniform.
Our premier is becoming a regular on Fox News, the station most watched by the millions of Trump supporters, in speaking up for Canada and explaining why such threatened tariffs wouldn’t be good for either country and how the U.S. has no stronger supporter than its northern neighbour. She did a bang up job at it too, not surprising given her media background.
Smith will also be attending Trump’s swearing-in as president on Jan. 20 and is scheduled to meet with U.S. governors during a conference on energy security, something Trump himself is pushing in his Make America Great Again crusade.
It’s a full-speed-ahead diplomatic broadside aimed at preventing such a blow to this country’s economy, launched at a time when our own federal government is becoming a laughing stock in political circles across the U.S.
This is a remarkable turnaround for Smith considering it wasn’t that long ago she was judged to be as toxic as any politician in all of Canada.
Nobody, other than perhaps herself, imagined she could somehow revive a political career after her infamous party-crossing antics back in 2014 while leader of the Wildrose bunch. But in the decade since Smith has somehow outdone Lazarus himself.
First she eked out a victory in the race to replace Jason Kenney as Alberta premier and leader of the UCP government, then she successfully held off the NDP in the following provincial election before getting a massive show of support this past fall from party members in a scheduled leadership review – no easy feat in the testy arena that internal Tory politics has become.
Frankly, it is one of the most stunning comebacks witnessed in the entire history of Canadian politics.
But she’s not done yet. Because today, when those in power in the U.S. want to know what Canada’s thinking, they’re increasingly turning to Danielle Smith.