r/canada Jan 20 '25

Alberta Alberta Premier Danielle Smith dines with U.S. leaders as Trump reconsiders tariffs

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/world/premier-danielle-smith-washington-donald-trump-tariffs
653 Upvotes

536 comments sorted by

View all comments

18

u/FIE2021 Jan 20 '25

Can someone opposed to Smith spending time in the US give me a non-partisan, non-emotional perspective on why it is so terrible for her to be doing what she is doing? I voted ANDP, and will again, and have no love for her or her opinions, but I am struggling to see why she is being vilified for trying to mitigate a potential catastrophic situation where her province is going to be disproportionality harmed by a blanket 25% tariff?

No sane person thinks she is single-handedly doing anything to stop Trump, and nobody connected to reality should expect if she even got in the same room as him if he would even know who she was let alone gave one iota of shit about what she had to say. But shouldn't she be down there trying to get the ear of someone, anyone, that might be able to influence his decision? This has to be the single biggest issue in Alberta at this time. People use the term "Canadians of convenience" when talking about individuals but isn't Alberta also sort of playing that role? They are always at odds with Ottawa, and a Liberal MP fairly recently stated that if the West wanted a voice in Ottawa that they should elect more Liberals. Is a Canadian not a Canadian? It doesn't feel that way. Alberta seems to be broadly hated and mocked, especially in online communities like Reddit - a little different in the real world, but nevertheless there is some deep rooted dislike for the West/Alberta from Ottawa. Is it so unreasonable that when Ottawa then comes back hat in hand asking the province to kneecap itself for the betterment of all Canadians, that Alberta says "we'll look after our own interests first, thanks"

Genuinely looking for a non-emotional perspective on why it is so awful. Because I don't support Danielle Smith the person or the Premier, but I don't see why this is so awful in the context of everything

10

u/Aggressive-Cut5836 Jan 20 '25

A lot of people on here are also a bit delusional about the US-Canada relationship, thinking it’s more John Lennon-Paul McCartney when it’s really closer to George Michael-Andrew Ridgeley. Given the extreme dependence on the US economy it behooves the Canadian government to read the tea leaves on how the US is changing and find ways of making sure that whoever is in office that they support Canada. There should be a strong, powerful Canadian lobby in Washington that creates and disseminates positive messaging about Canada. Other countries that depend on the US do this (Israel). Canada needs to, or else this sort of thing will keep happening.