At Issue - Is Danielle Smith undermining Canada’s tariff response?

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

At Issue this week: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith bails on the ‘Team Canada’ approach to Donald Trump’s tariff threats. Mark Carney officially enters the Liberal leadership race. And what’s Kevin O’Leary doing at Mar-a-Lago? Rosemary Barton hosts Andrew Coyne, Althia Raj and Jason Markusoff.

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Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, January 16th. Team Canada, premiers are united after a meeting with the Prime Minister, except for Danielle Smith, who is worried Alberta oil will become leverage against Donald Trump. I don't blame Danielle Smith for speaking up for her industry.

That's part of her job. But every single premier other than Danielle Smith then chose to put Canada first. The leader of the official opposition says this is not the way to face down the president-elect. The Liberals are trying to divide one province against another. This week we are asking are there cracks in the Team Canada approach and could that affect Canada's response to Donald Trump's tariffs? Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj and Jason Marcusoff join me to talk about that. Plus we'll talk about Mark Carney announcing his candidacy for Liberal

Leader and how that race is shaping up. Jason as I said to you before we started, grateful that you're here tonight so I'm gonna start with you. You know there's if you're outside of Alberta you're here tonight, so I'm going to start with you. If you're outside of Alberta, you're kind of wondering what Daniel Smith is doing. If you're inside of Alberta, you might think that she's doing exactly the right thing. So tell me what you make of her position here. I mean, I think there's a lot of people

who are on both sides of the fence within Alberta right now. She does not deserve, you know, have universal support. Her party is leading in the polls. It forms a majority here. But I think, you know, there are support. Her party is leading in the polls. It forms a majority here. But I think, you know, there are a lot of people who are Alberta firsters here, a lot of people who really value the, you know, the oil patch and the threats that historically have been levied on it from Ottawa, various, especially liberal

governments. But a lot of people are Canada first here. I think more people would say they're first and foremost a Canadian. In fact, polls show that than would say that they're first and foremost in Alberta. And that pretty much goes across the country except for Quebec. This was a very, I think a week that really changed the way that the rest of the confederation's leaders view Danielle Smith. People thought she was a bit populist, maybe a bit unruly, even for conservatives, even

if there are more traditional conservatives. But this was the week that she took her Alberta first step to a lot of people's minds too far. Protect the oil patch, certainly, but to say that we won't work on this team unanimous Canada approach took people the wrong way. But I think people outside of Alberta and even those who are from Alberta have to understand is that yes, Doug Ford in Ontario was talking about throttling back his electricity exports, but that's in service of their major to protect

tariff impacts against their major industry, the automobile sector. In Alberta, this is the be all end all. This is the pit and prune juice. This is the lifeblood. Would Doug Ford have advocated using the auto sector as a bargaining chip? I'm not sure. Althea, what did you make of it?

Well, everything should be seen to be on the table. I think that's where the error lies. And whether or not it is on the table, you know, that comes later. But everything at the moment should be seen to be on the table. That's how you have a strong negotiating hand. I think Daniel Smith hurt very forcefully Pierre Poilier because he was unable today in his press conference to take a side against Daniel Smith. He was unwilling to go there and the Prime Minister of the

country should at least be Canada first. For a lot of conservatives, especially Western conservatives, who are really upset by a Bloc Québécois bill just a few months ago that aimed to carve out supply management from any future trade deals, it's rather convenient that when it starts to be about oil they've completely changed their tune because the rationale is the same. You should not purposefully say out loud to the person negotiating on the other side of you, I'm unwilling to touch this. That's not how you have a strong negotiating hand. That's the point of the Prime Minister.

That is the point of all the other premieres who are around that table. Premieres who have their own self-interest, Saskatchewan, Quebec, who surprisingly decided, hey, you know what? We need to be united before we start negotiating, and then we can disagree, ask for compensation in our own industry if needs be,

but we need to have a strong hand. And she's hurting everybody by doing what she's doing. It was interesting, Andrew, to hear people like Scott Moe and of course Doug Ford defend the position that they should all be united and everything is on the table. It also, as Althea rightly points out, puts Pierre Poilier in a difficult position, I think, as well. Yeah, he didn't take much of a stand one way or the other when he was under questioning. Look it'd be one thing if this was we're talking

about signaling out Alberta that we were just going to put an export tariff or an export ban on oil and gas or on Alberta's oil and gas. I think a lot of people would say that would be unfair and unwise but there's by the same token there's no case for making giving Alberta special treatments, singling them out for special treatment. And if you look at what Premier Smith has been after, that's what she's going for. That's why she went down to Mar-a-Lago on that trip with Kevin O'Leary, was to ask for a carve out for Alberta's oil and gas on the tariff.

Now let's supposing Donald Trump is shrewd enough to grant her her wish, either because he doesn't want to see a spike in oil prices for his consumers or because he just wants to sow chaos and mischief in Canada. Well in that case, then, Alberta would be, and oil and gas would be the only sector that wasn't facing a tariff, and if the feds put on an export tariff on that, that would simply be leveling the playing field across all of the different sectors of Canada's economy. And that's, it seems to me, ought to be the principle that's applied here is a common front, shared sacrifice. If the premiers of other energy producing provinces, whether oil and gas or hydroelectricity, if

Andrew Fury from Newfoundland, if you know, François Lagarde from Quebec, if Doug Ford from Ontario, if even Scott Moe can sign on to this, why can't Daniel Smith? And I'm not sure what the answer to that is. Yeah, I wonder, Jason, whether she had got some sort of assurance in Mar-a-Lago that we haven't heard about yet. Like, that to me would be the only kind of maybe understanding for this political play. But certainly she hasn't said that, so I don't really understand where she thinks this is going.

I mean, she came out of that Mar-a-Lago visit, supported by Kevin O'Leary, saying that she's convinced that there are going to be no carve-outs, that there are going to be tariffs applied everywhere. So she certainly couldn't hang a mission accomplished banner after that meeting. You know, the history will record that this week and the last several weeks, Daniel Smith has done far more, been far more critical of

Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government than the, than Donald Trump or the U.S. administration, coming administration that are threatening this hugely crippling thing. But there is a legacy that Daniel Smith is leaning on. First of all, her own habit of attacking Ottawa every which way, but there is this legacy of punitive taxes and measures punishing and singling out Alberta oil for the benefit of other country, of other

jurisdictions and to Andrew's point certainly she's obfuscating the historical link between that and what's happening now which as you said would be probably to equalize the impact and put pressure on the Americans. Now just to, if I could just pick up on that point, where she's got a germ of a point is, you know, the Rassica, British Columbia and Quebec in particular, were not particularly helpful and not particularly friendly to Alberta when the issue was trying to get Alberta's oil to other markets besides the United States. They were effectively trying to basically landlock them. And when they're only, therefore, they're only available customers in the United States. They're effectively trying to basically landlock them. And when they're only available customers in the United States,

I can see why you'd say at that point it's a bit rich to be saying that we should be cutting off our only export market. So fine, maybe one part of this Team Canada United Front thing is we get a little bit more sensible about helping fellow provinces get their oil to market and things that were previously politically impossible perhaps for a premier of British Columbia or a premier of Quebec, maybe in this kind of crisis that can move some of those ice flows. Last 30 seconds to you, Althea. I don't know if there's that much more to add.

I think it was actually kind of a sad day for the country. And while, and you know, everybody said this. Doug Ford said this, the Prime Minister said this. We understand why the Premier of Alberta is taking the position that she's taking. But frankly, that's a position she should be taking behind closed doors. That is not a position that you verbalize out loud

in the middle of really crucial negotiations with somebody that does not have the country's best interests at heart. At issue, liberal leadership, Mark Carney has officially entered the race. I'm back home in Edmonton to declare my candidacy for leader of the Liberal Party. As the conservatives tried to paint him as more of the same, Carney came out swinging against Pierre Poilieff. Well, I'm focused on building our economy. He's out chasing endorsements from Donald Trump

and Elon Musk. Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould are also expected to announce in the coming days, with Freeland saying she's ready to scrap the consumer carbon tax. So lots to talk about there. Is the carbon tax dead? How are leadership candidates positioning themselves?

Andrew, Althea and Jason are back. Althea, I'm going to start with you. Let's start on that issue of the carbon tax because you wrote about that today. The fact that Chrystia Freeland is going to ditch it. Sounds like Carney is headed down that road as well. How does that change this race and potentially the election too? Well what he's told liberal MPs, both Freeland and Mark Carney have been on the phone trying to get endorsements and trying to get people's networks to join

their team and he has told MPs who have raised a lot of concerns about the carbon price that he will walk away from the consumer price on carbon. He will focus on large industrial emitters but he will also recognize that actually the government's rationale was correct that more money went into more people's pockets and in order to continue along that and to stress that point he will offer, he has told them, a middle-class tax cut. point he will offer, he has told them, a middle class tax cut. So they seem actually quite happy about this plan and it does take away I would say one bullet that Pierre Poilier has been repeatedly using. He's dubbed Mr. Kearney carbon tax Kearney and so I think in the eyes of people if they think that that issue is

off the table now and that frankly I think Donald Trump's return to the White House really has changed the focus and we talked about that a little bit last week but it you know the chances that we fight the next election even if it's in March on the carbon price is really really low we will probably be fighting the next election on who is going to be the best Captain Canada who can defend Canada's interest vis-a-vis renegotiation of Kuzma with regards to Donald Trump, defend the border, how we're going to address the economic crisis this country faces. And so, and in that vein, I think despite Mr. Paulia's best efforts to

either attack on the carbon price, call for carbon election, or now even on the capital gains inclusion rate increase, which Mr. Kearney has also told MPs he's gonna get rid of. A lot of the bullets that, to keep that analogy going, that Pierpoli have had are vanishing. These are no longer the things that he needs to be focusing on. So give me your take, Andrew, about how you thought Mark Carney made the case for himself. Today's saying, you know, these are not usual times, and so we need someone who's not a

usual politician sort of addressing the elephant in the room right away. Yeah, well, not a politician generally, which is a strength and a weakness. So he has a bit more, maybe a little more distance from the current government, the current prime minister. Particularly, I think that will be more apparent in his messaging than in his biography. In other words, yes, he's been advising, but it's pretty clearly he's coming out and being quite critical of them in terms of loss of focus in the economy, not emphasizing growth enough, etc. Obviously, we'll see whether that's enough.

But this is an extraordinary thing he's attempting, which is we've never seen anybody in our history attempt to step into the prime minister's office without ever having held elected office or run in an election before. And it's not an entry-level job. To do so in the middle of a minority government that's on its last legs in the middle of a national crisis is, you know, it takes moxie or guts or foolery. I'm not sure exactly which. We've seen in the last week both of his strengths and weaknesses. He was very good, obviously, on Jon Stewart. He's good off the cuff. He's good in an unscripted setting. Not so good at least at this point at giving a speech.

I think he took a lot of the air out of the room. But that's the sort of thing presumably one can get better at over time. I'll just say, just in passing, you know, it's a real shame that we're going to give up on carbon pricing in this country because it's not like we're going to save consumers money. They're going to pay one way or the other. They're going to pay for all the regulatory schemes that are going to replace it, only they're not going to have the offsetting rebates. So this is, it may be smart politics. They take away both Justin Trudeau and carbon pricing from the conservative targets, but at the real cost to sensible public policy in this country.

Yeah, there was a lot in the speech. You know, we were talking about it in the newsroom, but it was kind of, it was a little flat. So we'll see whether he can get there, because he doesn't have an awful lot of time to get better at that kind of thing. Jason, give me your take on how he did it and whether the carbon tax is really actually dead now at this stage. I mean, the concert conservatives have put so much emphasis

and so much of the definitions of the government and in Carney specifically on the carbon tax. I think they'll figure out their ways to resurrect it or argue against it. What will be interesting to see is if they wind up becoming against all carbon policy or all climate policy, including the industrial carbon tax that even Alberta has consistently supported.

His, I mean, first of all, Andrew talked about him, that he has time to change things. Not, not really. We're talking about, you know, March 9th to, you know, what, six weeks or so to become leader and then to run, almost instantly run an election. That is not a lot of time to hone your chops while building. I mean, in addition to the fact that he has this unique situation where he has to first

woo the liberal membership, which is tens of thousands of people, and then start wooing millions of Canadians. He probably has to do both at the same time. And his outsider thing is going to be tricky for people if he's also simultaneously boasting that he's restored the economy of two major G7 countries. What are you waiting to see from Chris? Oh go ahead Althea, go ahead. I just, I know Shantel's not here but I think we need to say Carney's French was terrible, like terrible, almost worse I think than when last time I

saw him in September in Nanaimo. I don't know if he's not been practicing, if he doesn't have enough French staff, but he was making grammatical errors in his written speech. And you know, if I was Christy Clark watching that, I would wonder why I decided not to run because if that's what is my competition maybe my French wasn't so bad. That is going to be a huge handicap. I don't know what his organization looks like in Quebec but he really needs to work hard in French because that is that's not a passable grade. Or he finds someone who can bring him Quebec right someone that could

support him and bring him. But in an an election, I mean, he is the one that's going to be doing a debate. If he wins, he would be the one doing the debate. Pierre Poilier, whose French is excellent. Yeah. Francois Blanchet would, I mean, I don't know if Mark Kearney would be able to get a word in. It was really bad.

I mean, I also speak French like you, Elthea. I thought it was OK. But I also thought he was very clearly nervous, and maybe that coloured it. I don't know. But maybe. He was better in the scrum. He was better in the scrum. To Andrew's point as well about the speech, maybe he should stop doing speeches.

Okay, quick last word to you, Andrew. Quick last word to you. He stays within a very narrow range in French. Look, in normal circumstances, I don't think he'd be a candidate. But we're not in normal circumstances. The party is in such trouble. And the case for his candidacy, I think, really hinges on Trump. So it's the two things.

One is that there's no perfect candidate out there for the liberals at this point. Ms. Freeland has her own failings and drawbacks. But also, the case that can be made for them, or they'll try to make for them, is who do you want standing up to Donald Trump? Who do you want in the same room with him? Who's got the cool, who's got the experience to be able to stand up to him? At issue, Kevin O'Leary, theary the Canadian born businessman says he's been giving advice to the president-elect about Canada and says what Trump really wants is an economic union. I asked Trump

to ignore those meetings because those people are going to get eradicated in the next election and I hope he took my advice stop wasting your time with Trudeau. So what's O'Leary doing how dangerous is this kind of rhetoric? Andrew Althea and Jason are back. We were inspired by Andrew's column to dig into this a little bit, Andrew. How dangerous is this and why on earth would... I mean, I don't know that you know the motivation. I just don't quite understand what Kevin O'Leary is up to. Yeah, well first of all, he just freely confessed himself that he was advising the President of the United States about how not to deal with Canada.

He was not advising him in the Canadian national interest. He was advising him in Donald Trump's interest. Secondly, when Donald Trump started talking about the 51st state annexing Canada, let's get rid of the border, Kevin O'Leary popped up everywhere saying, well, yeah, this is a great idea and I'll be the guy to negotiate it, which nobody wants him to be and nobody wants to proceed with that project. Well, he got a lot of blowback for it. So then, you know, last few days he starts coming out and saying, well, it wasn't about

annexation. This is just about economic union, which Donald Trump has never said. But let's supposing that there's any kind of truth in that. What does economic union mean? If it means a free trade agreement with a free flow of, you know, goods, services, and capital, well, we've got that now under the free trade agreement. We're trying mightily to preserve it against Donald Trump, among other people. If it means something more deeper than that, and he has himself talked about, for example,

a common currency, well, what common currency would that be? Would that be some new currency, like in Europe, the euro with a supranational central bank and a supranational parliament and a supranational executive and all the trappings that, no, the Americans are never going to accept anything like that. It would mean, although he hasn't had the guts to say it, it would mean adopting the U.S. dollar. You adopt the U.S. dollar, you basically mean you have no more monetary sovereignty and with monetary sovereignty gone, you lose a lot of other levers. So that on its own, if it's talking about an economic union, would imply something pretty close to annexation.

And if you did go the full European Union route, again, the Europeans, it's 27 or however many countries it is, with all of these separate standalone institutions that they all kind of contribute to, it's not just one country taking them all over. And the Americans are never going to set up all those super national institutions. It would just be about essentially submitting to U.S. institutional authority. So it's a distinction without a difference.

In the North American context, economic union would mean political union. And it is wildly unhelpful, let me just add, Althea, to have someone who can get a meeting with Donald Trump say things that are not helpful to his country of origin. Kevin, do you mean? Yes. Well, I don't actually think Kevin O'Leary has Canada's best interests at heart. I don't even think that he pretends he has Canada's best interests at heart.

I think he has Kevin O'Leary's best interests at heart. And at the moment, Kevin O'Leary wants to buy a TikTok. And for that, he believes he needs the incoming president's seal of approval. And so I think through that lens, we can understand all of the things that he's been saying out loud and all the sucking up that we are seeing on social media and in local newspapers,

even in that surprisingly candid piece that he wrote for the Daily Mail in the UK about how, in order to court favor with Donald Trump, you need to buy a $1 million membership to Mar-a-Lago or be lucky enough to be invited. I mean, this is not the way democracy's supposed to work. Haven't we moved away from that? I guess not.

But in any case, so I think Kevin O'Leary, I don't know, I'm not rich enough to get sued, so I'll just leave it there. I think Kevin O'Leary, I don't know, I'm not rich enough to get sued so I'll just leave it there. I think Kevin O'Leary is just looking out for himself. Jason, I mean at the very least it would I think make a lot of Canadians question why he's doing this at a really, really critical time for this country's economic future and success.

It's turning him into the talk of politicians that he never always dreamed of, perhaps being when he was running a board of leave for the conservative leadership all those years ago. I mean it was interesting to hear Justin Trudeau today challenge Pierre Poliev. Do you stand with all the premiers and myself or do you stand with the likes of Daniel Smith and Kevin O'Leary and dare I say Donald Trump? So he's becoming this whipping post along with Danielle Smith. He always registered to lobby or anything like that.

He's made this big public pitch recently for a big AI data center in rural Northwest Alberta, which would gobble up heaps of natural gas. And he's talking about this as some kind of $70 billion project. And he's gotten Danielle Smith cheerleading for this idea. And here he is giving her in-person access to Donald Trump, not once, but twice last weekend. So his angles are very curious. And I don't think anybody is going to argue that he's trying to play for the best of Canada's interests, certainly

not Canada's national interests, by saying do not listen to anything the current Prime Minister says. Okay, got to leave it there. Jason, so glad you that we had you this week. Thank you all very much. That's that issue for this week. What do you think of Daniel Smith's holding out for Alberta oil? Does it help Alberta hurt Canada's response to Donald Trump? Let us know you can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca and remember you can catch me on Rosemary Barton live Sundays At 10 a.m. Eastern. We'll be back here in your podcast feeds next week. Thanks so much for listening for more cbc podcasts go to

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