There is treason afoot, as well as a colossal waste of Canadian tax dollars. With increasingly serious threats to Canadian sovereignty from the United States, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and the U.S.- hedge-fund-owned Postmedia empire, are looking guilty.

Smith started her current term as Premier by taking part in a stunningly exploitive greenwashing campaign at the climate conference in Dubai a year ago, which cost taxpayers nearly $200,000, and included stays at luxury hotels.

Smith also masterminded the highly misleading “Scrap the Cap” campaign, which wasted millions in tax dollars on what she represented as a plan to protect Alberta’s business interests, but was actually a clumsy attack on Trudeau’s federal Liberal party in hopes of buoying Conservative fortunes across the country.

Now, most shockingly of all, in an interview with American far-right Breitbart News, Smith appeared to be in support of Trump. While discussing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, she said “the perspective that Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think… the new direction in America.” This came after a whirlwind tour of conservative cocktail parties, visits to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and hobnobbing with the oily Kevin O’Leary, and that academic for morons, Jordan Peterson, who was recently published on the front page of the National Post urging Canadians to take Trump up on his offer.

Smith suggested that American politicians might want to tone down their rhetoric and tariff talk just long enough for “solid ally” Pierre Poilievre to be elected Prime Minister.  

She clearly implied that Poilievre would happily override Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in the same way Trump has shredded the constitution and rule of law and is now creating a new oligarch-ruled petrol-regime to replace its fake democracy.

More recently, she appeared at a secretive Florida gathering where she enjoyed a fireside chat with the demonically conservative Ben Shapiro at — and this couldn’t be any more revealing — a lavish fundraiser for a group devoted to denying climate change-science, rolling back queer rights and women’s rights, and stamping out pro-Palestinian activism on campuses everywhere. She helped them raise over a million dollars.

Smith, who laughed along with Shapiro as he joked about “Canada becoming the 51st state,” is now characterizing these appearances as her courageous attempts to change the minds of Trump’s cabinet  on these will-o-the-wisp tariffs that are destabilizing economies across the globe. She claims that she is appealing directly to U.S. influencers because she believes they will sway Trump in his decision-making. 

Smith must think all Canadians are idiots. 

What Danielle Smith is doing is treasonous. She is colluding with the enemy during war time and suggesting they interfere with a Canadian election. Last month she traveled to Florida to speak to a media platform dedicated to promoting “pro-American values”.

Despite this, with the exception of the CBC, which has had a number of talking-heads panels discussing the issue, the Canadian corporate media’s response has been rather muted.

In fact, Fox News of the North, the National Post, owned, as so much of our media is, by Postmedia, seems to be downright supportive of what Smith is doing. While some of the corporate media softly questions Smith’s motives, the National Post headlines remain neutral, dwelling on Smith’s enjoyment of what she’s doing, rather than the damage she’s inflicting on the rest of the country. A confusingly argued column from Chris Selley tells us that “Smith’s brand of U.S. outreach is the right way” and artfully manages to never prove its assertion in a convincing manner.

But it must be pointed out, the National Post, like Danielle Smith’s fake celebrity twirl among the U.S. soulless, wouldn’t exist if we weren’t so deeply beholden to the fossil fuel industry. 

The National Post was started by a former convicted felon, and dilettante human being, Conrad Black, to push Canada’s media further to the right of the already solidly right-wing Globe and Mail. It was also created with the stated mandate of supporting oil and gas companies at all costs. 

At Postmedia there has always been an illusion of balance despite corporatism being promoted as the ultimate arbiter — anything that didn’t support growing the economy was, not just inconvenient, but unnecessary.

And yet, a mere 26 years after its founding, it is the Post that is now unnecessary.

The country’s major newspaper chains, who were meant to be on the cutting edge of disseminating information and predicting what was coming, were somehow caught unprepared by the digital/internet revolution and floundered as both subscribers and advertisers dumped them in favour of mostly free digital content. That led to two decades of cuts, layoffs, and shuttered newsrooms. 

Eventually Trudeau’s Liberals stepped in with controversial measures meant to save media that included a plan for a bailout, which is still unfolding. Even former National Post columnist Andrew Coyne has denounced this move, opining, “If this goes through, everything will be subsidized: print, broadcast, the works — a whole industry of CBCs. You couldn’t do a better job killing the news business.” He neglects to mention the damage done by his own publisher.

In order to retain readers, the Post has largely replaced journalism with paid content and right-wing propaganda that sneers at anything even vaguely centrist. They are particularly obsessed with downplaying climate change in order to promote the need to exploit the environment for profit, cleaving to one of their original mandates. Conrad Black, a man who admittedly has little time left on Earth and therefore less to lose, is constantly attacking any efforts to address these issues. 

Despite not being Canadian-owned, the country’s largest newspaper chain, Postmedia, is eligible for a potentially huge share from the $100 million-dollar Google fund, the result of the Online News Act, which was intended to force tech companies like Google and Meta to help subsidize Canadian news media, except Meta ended up blocking news on its platforms anyway. 

Postmedia — majority-owned by a hedge fund that’s headed up by a wealthy donor with ties to Trump — is a big reason numerous communities across Canada no longer have a local paper. Independent journalistic outlets continue to disappear at an alarming rate. Postmedia has already budgeted for the Google money, part of the profits for their shareholders, or perhaps used to pay bonuses to top execs. Yet, many of the emerging Canadian-owned independent outlets are not even eligible for it. 

Poilievre has made it clear that his plans for the country include turning over vast swaths of the land for billionaires to exploit, defunding the CBC to silence critical coverage and redirect money to friendly partisan outlets like Postmedia or even Rebel Media, while dialing back human rights related to Indigenous people, women, and minorities — necessary in order to repair a “broken” Canada. Both Smith and the National Post support him wholeheartedly in these ambitions.

But the political winds have shifted dramatically in the past couple weeks and Smith and Poilievre now find themselves backed into a corner. Canadians are no longer buying the message that Canada is “broken.” 

At a press conference this week, it was a Postmedia reporter who pressed Smith hard on whether she will call a referendum on Alberta’s secession, and seemed genuinely surprised and disappointed that she wasn’t more enthusiastic about the idea of breaking up the country.

Canada needs leaders and media outlets that have the interests of Canadians in mind, not politicians and American billionaires whose main priority is getting rich through fossil fuels.

Brad Fraser is a writer, dramatist, and cultural critic. He is originally from Alberta but currently residing in Toronto, a city in a province that is also currently run by a right-wing ideologue with few accomplishments. He has written for many media outlets including the National Post and The Globe and Mail. His memoir, “All the Rage” is available at better bookstores.