EXCLUSIVE: Alberta premier Danielle Smith speaks out on Trump, tariffs, Trudeau and why it's time for new elections

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith can sometimes perform like Canada’s real prime minister—at least when it comes to negotiating with President Donald Trump over his proposed 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods. Trump apparently respects and likes Smith, perhaps almost as much as enjoys trolling Justin Trudeau as the "governor" of the "51st state." She was the only Canadian politial leader invited to Trump's inauguration.

In an exclusive interview with The Post Millennial, Smith said it is time to for Canada and the US to resolve their trade differences and move forward to mutual prosperity, even as she arugued that Canada needs a new federal government to make its point with Washington.

Smith said she is prepared to keep on working for Alberta and Canada. "I will go to the United States as often as I need to. I'll be going down to ... the big energy conference in Houston in March. And I'm hoping that that will be be able to have a really constructive conversation about how we might be able to get more oil and gas pipelines built so that we can, we can help with the US aspiration of energy dominance. I think that's important for for global energy security."

The premier called for a federal election in Canada, sooner rather than later.

"Well, look, I don't want to overstate it, but I recognize that the relationship between Canada and the US is is prime minister to president, and it's very important that we have a prime minister in that chair who has a four year mandate, because they're the ones who are going to be negotiating our international trade deals," Smith said.

"What I can do is put the issues on the table that I think we've been able to do successfully so far. I mean, the provinces have a voice. The fact that the feds are now talking about our NATO commitment and NORAD bases and Arctic security and fentanyl czars, that's because the it's the premiers who've been saying you've got to address these issues in a serious way. I think the reason why, when they were talking about 25 percent tariffs, that they were prepared to give a 10 percent tariff on energy resources, because of the arguments that we're making about how the US is reliant on oil and gas and critical minerals and electricity and all of that allows the Americans to make to make products more cost effectively and create American jobs."

Although the premier acknowledges the Trudeau government has failed on border security in the past, she cautioned that the situation at America's northern border is not as stark as it has been on the Mexican side.

"I would say that the issue in Canada is slightly different than in Mexico. In Mexico, they have people who are streaming across the border. I think in turn, numbers like two to 3,000 per day was what was happening prior to the most recent crackdown. That that's not the same nature of the problem that we have here. So it means that we have to use slightly different tools," she said.

"We've got to look at money laundering," Smith continued. "We've got to look at our finance financial institutions. We look at what's happening if there's money laundering through casinos. This has been alleged in different provinces. If we can take an all hands on deck approach using all of our different law enforcement mechanisms, I think the end result will be fewer drugs on the streets in Canadian cities, but also fewer drugs going across the border."

Smith has taken the lead in raising these border issues and has done most of the heavy lifting on Canada’s fight to avoid the the Trump tariff. She talked to Trump and evidently impressed the American president because he invited her to the inauguration. Neither Trudeau nor any other provincial premier recieved an invite.

When asked what kind of relationship she has developed with Trump, Smith said. “Well, I had a couple of opportunities to meet him. I went to Mar-a-Lago at the invitation of Kevin O'Leary, and then the next day to his golf club, and then was at the inauguration as well. And it does seem to me that President Trump is the ultimate decision maker. That's one of the things that I've learned by talking to those who are around him, and our job as sub-national government leaders is to reach out to as many contacts as we can to talk to those who have influence on him so that we can, we can change the pathway and the trajectory that we now find ourselves on,” she said.

"That is precisely how you have to approach any discussions with Trump because he is heavily influenced by his closest advisors, the people he trusts the most, and I have often heard people who know Trump well say that he can make a decision on any given issue based on the last conversation he had."

Smith says the best and not the worst is yet to come with Canada's relationship with the US. “I think that there is a pathway with diplomacy. I think we have an incredible argument to make about the way in which our integrated economies help to support not only our interests, but also create great American jobs and produce great American products that Canadians buy back in larger volumes than anyone else on the planet,” she said.

“And this is a relationship that we should maintain. And we're in a bit of a rocky patch, there's no doubt about it, but I would say that as long as we are identifying the things that are in our mutual interest to solve, I think that we're going to be able to avoid tariffs. When the President said he was worried about fentanyl, we needed to get serious about fentanyl, and it took a little while to get there. But now we have a fentanyl czar,” she continued.

The jury is still out on the Trudeau government’s promotion of Kevin Brosseau as the "Commissioner of Canada’s Fight Against Fentanyl." He is a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP and a former deputy minister in the Trudeau government and senior advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“So I think all of that is being acknowledged, and there will always be irritants in this relationship that we have with the United States. So let's just make sure that we're dealing with the security issues, the legitimate security issues that are being raised, and then we can get on to talking about some of those other irritants and hopefully keep this 99 percent tariff free relationship going,” Smith insisted.

Smith told The Post Millennial that she will hold fast to her province's Constitututional authority over natural resources, including the oil and gas that Alberta sells to the US.

“To single out Alberta energy for an export tariff that could, if it was applied at 25 percent, generate $40 billion for Ottawa, because tariffs go to Ottawa so that they can distribute it to places that are more friendly to voting liberal—that's an equalization program. We've seen that newsreel many times before. We fought that in [Alberta Premier] Peter Lockheed’s day, when the original Trudeau tried to impose an export tariff, and we simply will not allow for that.

"We know that if there's any agreement to that kind of approach, we'll never get rid of it," she continued. "And this is the kind of thing that the federal government has been trying to do to us time and time again." Smith noted that any decision by the feds to limit the supply of oil and gas will hurt Ontario and Quebec as much as the US “because 100 percent of the product they get comes by way of the United States or comes by by way of shipments from overseas. Why? Because they wouldn't let us build a pipeline Energy East to be able to feed the consumer market there.”

Smith was not willing to say that Trudeau has been seeking a trade war with the United States, even though he often taunts Trump in speeches, such as the one where the prime minister suggested Trump winning the 2024 presidential election—and not former Vice President Kamala Harris—was a slight against women.

Apparent Trudeau successor Mark Carney has also adoped an anti-American tone, as if he would rather fight the the next election against Trump rather than the Opposition Conservatives. “I would hope that you don't have a group of leadership candidates that are gunning for a fight. Everybody gets hurt by a tariff war. We are one-tenth the size of the US economy. We cannot win a tariff war if it's tit for tat,” Smith said.

“I would say that the very best approach is why I have taken the approach of diplomacy. We should be avoiding these tariffs altogether. We should be doing the things that we need to do to address these issues that the Americans have raised, but because they're good for us too,” Smith pointed out.

“It's good for us to meet our 2 percent NATO commitment and be a reliable partner in international security. We should have Arctic security … We should want to stop fentanyl on our streets so it's not killing our people. So it may well be that these issues being raised by the US president are ones that are a priority to him, but they should be a priority to us too, and we shouldn't be itching for a fight. A fight on this kind of front is devastating to millions of jobs, millions of families, and I would really hope that that isn't on the mind of any of the liberal leadership contenders.”