Alberta premier takes charge while Trudeau botches US-Canada trade

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be welcoming a trade war with the US as he waits to see if President Donald Trump will make good on his threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods by Feb. 1. Trudeau has spoken frequently about “retaliatory tariffs” and has insisted that all provincial premiers and federal opposition parties line up with the Liberal government’s “Team Canada” approach. Trudeau’s Liberal Party is anywhere from 20 to 26 points behind the Conservative Party and its leader Pierre Poilievre with an election imminent. Trudeau appears to be campaigning not against Poilievre, but against Trump.

On Thursday, Trudeau again attacked Trump for wanting “a golden age for the American economy. The federal government has continued to say, clearly, as I will, that everything is on the table if he does move forward on tariffs on Canada.”

Trudeau promised that "two things will happen. One, Canada will have a strong, robust response, because we don't want this, but we will respond if necessary. And two, prices for American consumers on just about everything will go up, and we don't think he wants that. So we're going to be there. He has talked about the border as being a great preoccupation for him.”

Trudeau continued to insist that the Canada-US border does not represent a problem for Trump, even though the president has repeatedly said he will slap a tariff on Canada because he is not convinced that Trudeau is taking border security seriously.

“We have highlighted that less than 1 percent of illegal drugs coming into the United States, less than 1 percent of migrants going into the United States come from Canada, but we're still investing over a billion dollars in strengthening our borders,” Trudeau said.

However that $1.3 billion referenced by Trudeau is scheduled to be phased in over six years, with very little being spent in the first two years of the program. The money was an afterthought in the 2024 Fall Economic Statement that was included in section titled “Safety, Security, and Fair Governance” that includes funding for a variety of woke programs from abortion services to “Establishing Canada’s Black Justice Strategy.”

Poilievre has largely been sidelined during the tariff debate, as he has tried to focus on his demand to “reopen Parliament now” while indicating this week that he also supports retaliatory tariffs.

The only Canadian politician who is actually negotiating with Trump and in regular contact is Premier Danielle Smith (UCP-AB) who has steadfastly told the Trudeau government that it has no authority to tell Alberta or any province whether it can sell oil and gas to the US or not since natural resources are a provincial jurisdiction under the Canadian Constitution. “Let's be super clear about why we find ourselves in the situation that we're in today,” Smith said Tuesday in an interview with the Calgary Herald. “It lands 100 percent at the feet of Justin Trudeau, who, even just a few weeks ago gave a speech where he thought it was an affront to women that Kamala Harris didn't win,” she said referencing Trudeau’s remarks lamenting Trump’s presidential win.

“We're in a trade negotiation with a brand new administration, and we have a prime minister who keeps on poking his finger in the eye of the current administration and has damaged that relationship. So if there's a failure, it lands at his feet, which is why I'm counting down the days to when he's gone and we can have a reset,” Smith said, adding that she hopes Trudeau “doesn’t continue torching the relationship in the meantime.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford called a snap election Friday, saying he needed “a mandate from the people to fight Donald Trump’s tariffs.” Ford has been in lockstep with Trudeau, insisting “everything is on the table” and threatening to cut off energy to the US while criticizing Alberta for refusing to embargo oil and gas

A lot of different scenarios could play out in the next two months. Trudeau announced the prorogation – or suspension – of Parliament until March 24 at the same time as he revealed that he would be stepping down as Liberal Party leader and prime minister when his replacement is selected. That declaration set off a Liberal Party leadership race that is supposed to select a new leader and prime minister on March 9. However, a Supreme Court challenge could end the prorogation and bring MPs and senators back by Feb. 14.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) has been leading the charge to get the prorogation nullified. JCCF attorney James Manson who spoke with The Post Millennial recently about why he thinks there is a viable chance of having the court intervene against Trudeau’s dismissal of Parliament and how it might result in a non-confidence vote and spring election that all polls indicate would mean the end of the Trudeau regime.

The precedent for that intervention occurred in Great Britain during the administration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson who attempted to shut down Parliament while the UK grappled with the decision to embrace Brexit.

“The UK Supreme Court found that because Prime Minister Johnson shut down Parliament for five of those eight weeks, Parliament couldn't do its job, and particularly at a very, very difficult period of time in the UK. So ultimately, they found that all of that meant that the Parliament had been unlawfully prorogued. And ultimately, they found that Parliament had never been prorogued. What the Court said was, ‘Look, you know, the prime minister's advice to the Queen was unlawful, and it basically was a nullity, meaning that it had never happened, and therefore Parliament had never been prorogued. And therefore, Parliament could go back to work the same or, I guess it was the following day. So in the UK, Parliament resumed sitting right away,” Manson said.