Alberta Premier and United Conservative Party (UCP) leader Danielle Smith has been doing something that even a year ago that few would have predicted: she’s been loudly and repeatedly touting her alliance with a Liberal Prime Minister. While many in her UCP movement have no love for the Liberals, she’s been vocal in celebrating her deals with Mark Carney as it pertains to pipelines and oil.
To a certain degree, this is cold pragmatism: she feels this will be good for Alberta’s resource sector, so she’s going to play nice with Carney as he assists her.
“This country cannot work if separatists, separatist premiers, get all of the attention of the federal government.”
But something more is happening here, especially given how Smith is preparing to empower far-right Alberta separatists with a referendum despite ostensibly opposing Alberta leaving Canada. Indeed, as Smith has moved closer and closer to empowering those who would break up Canada, she’s gotten closer and closer to Carney. And in doing so, she’s drawn the lines of federal politics clearly.
To Danielle Smith, it’s clear that she’s on Team Carney against the NDP and its leader Avi Lewis. First, Smith released a recorded statement where she emphasized how both the Carney Liberals and Pierre Poilievre Conservatives support her pipeline plan, meaning 85 per cent of federal officials are on board. She then took upon herself to paint the NDP and others as “extremists” trying to kill Canadian industry. And while there is some evidence that some Liberal MPs are questioning Carney — including the recent resignation of Steven Guilbeault from Parliament — the Smith narrative is that Carney and company are happily in her corner. And she isn’t wrong.
But as telling as this remark is — that there is a Smith-Carney-Poilievre coalition against the NDP — the second clip is even more instructive as it addresses the question of separation. At a Friday press conference in Calgary, Smith praised her deal with Carney, all while attacking Avi Lewis and BC NDP Premier David Eby. To her, the NDP daring to criticize her is what created “the environment we find ourselves in,” which justified her effort to push forward with a plebiscite while solidifying her fossil fuel projects with Carney. Later that same day on the CBC, she said that while she and Carney had cooperation, it was the dastardly Avi Lewis who was putting it all at risk.
“This is laughable, coming from someone who has been winking at the MAGA-aligned separatist movement for years.”
This lays out the stakes pretty clearly, in my view. Mark Carney is knowingly emboldening a premier who is giving oil-loving extremists the key to destroying this country while she attacks one of his federal rivals. And this is having provincial effects, especially regarding BC’s NDP government. There, Eby explained how Carney is endangering Canada by placating the separatist far-right:
“The message to the prime minister is simple. This country cannot work if separatists, separatist premiers, others get all of the attention of the federal government and those provinces where we’re standing squarely behind Canada, where we are fighting for Canada, where we couldn’t be more pro-Canadian in the projects we’re advancing.”
Lewis himself would directly respond to Smith and her assault on Canada:
“This is laughable, coming from someone who has been winking at the MAGA-aligned separatist movement for years. People who are losing sleep over climate change are not the ones tearing our country apart: we’re trying to save it. This summer Canada could well be burning faster than we can build it.”
Looking at all this, some might argue that Carney would rather cozy up with “separatist premiers” and their climate catastrophe agenda before cooperating with a democratic socialist movement that actually supports this country. Heck, Carney continues to make deals with potential separatists while other, non-separatist premiers beg Carney to save pharmacare from imminently collapsing and First Nation leaders are shut out completely.
It’s a sad reality that the Prime Minister might well believe in capitalism, pipelines, and Danielle Smith more than Canada itself. Perhaps he doesn’t, but his actions speak loudest of all.
Christo Aivalis is a political commentator and historian, holding a PhD in Canadian History from Queen’s University. His writing has appeared in Jacobin, The Breach, Canadian Dimension, Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, and the Washington Post.
