Done properly, Smith’s brand of U.S. outreach is the right way

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It’s a fine line between engaging the United States and treason nowadays in the court of public opinion, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith knows perhaps better than anyone else. She is set to appear on Thursday with right-wing mega-podcaster Ben Shapiro at a fundraiser for PragerU, a conservative education NGO. Smith’s chief of staff Rob Anderson says she will present the case to “cancel or … delay tariffs for as long as possible.”

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A lot of folks are not happy about it — not about Shapiro, who has said mean things about Canada, and not about Smith’s previous foray into the American mediasphere. Words like “traitor” have been winging around the social media since Smith appeared on Breitbart News earlier this month, and said she had asked American officials to hold off on the whole tariff thing until Pierre Poilievre could safely be installed as prime minister.

“Let’s have the best person at the table make the argument for how they would deal with it,” she said she had told U.S. administration officials. “And I think that’s Pierre Poilievre,” whom she said would be more “in sync” with the new direction America was going.

Her planned trip to Florida Thursday has only reinvigorated those complaints, and not just among the usual Central Canada fainting-couch set.

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“In Canada’s current mood, Smith seems far too cosy with the adversary. Saying our national government should be in lockstep with Trump’s ‘new direction’ could hardly be more tone-deaf,” the Calgary Herald’s Don Braid thundered. “This isn’t the look Albertans deserve from their premier.

When it comes to the Breitbart appearance, I was more confused than offended. Presumably Smith thinks Poilievre or his relevant minister is the best person to have at the table opposite Trump’s tariff team because she thinks it would be in Alberta’s or Canada’s best interests to have him there, not just to make nice-nice. And that would presumably mean the installation of Poilievre and his relevant minister would not be in President Trump’s best interests. Why highlight that?

It behooves Canadians in general to engage Americans in a larger sense

It’s as if she misdiagnoses the problem. One of Poilievre or Carney might well be much better than the other at “dealing with Trump,” but we all know that’s ultimately up to Trump, not to Poilievre or Carney. (Trump has made clear he’s not a fan of Poilievre — a compliment that Poilievre has been happy to accept.) Other than financial countermeasures, on which Poilievre and Carney generally agree, the real difference is how much sway they and their allies and surrogates can exert over the American body politic writ large.

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If Canada is to come out of this era as unscathed as we hope, I doubt people will look back on any single argument or intervention that somehow won the day. I think it will be a matter of impressing upon as many people as possible just how dumb the Trump administration’s current course of action is — and people like Shapiro aren’t necessarily impervious to those arguments.

“Canada? What did Canada do?” an incredulous Shapiro asked recently on his YouTube channel (7.23 million subscribers). “The (administration’s) aim at Canada appears to the global markets to be a move away from America’s involvement in the world in total. The reality that America is the global hegemon is one of the reasons that the American economy continues to be the behemoth that it is.”

The key here: Shapiro’s other, less flattering comments about Canada were clearly in jest — about us greeting American annexationist forces “as liberators,” about Canada being a “silly country” that just makes maple syrup and irritating prime ministers. It’s a kind of MAGA mad-libs, and lots of Shapiro’s ilk indulge in it. It’s not funny or intelligent jest, but it largely is jest — from the influencers in Trump’s orbit, if not from Trump himself. It behooves Canada to engage those influencers (so long as they do it competently). And it behooves Canadians in general, I think, to engage Americans in a larger sense.

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Far be it from me to offer politically motivated travel advice — go where you like! — but let’s put it this way: If you’re cancelling a tour of the Kentucky or Tennessee distilleries, or skiing in Ontario instead of Upstate New York, you might at least theoretically be making a mark by withholding your tourist dollars. If you’re not going to the U.S. to see your American friends and family, or to meet its many wonderful people, you’re really not. Canadians and Americans clearly weren’t as close kin as many Canadians liked to imagine before Trump came along. In the long term, the goal should be to become closer.

Here’s hoping Smith can help in that regard, and not put her foot in her mouth again.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com

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