Tasha Kheiriddin: Carney has no choice but to listen to Danielle Smith

Calgary Herald

06-05-2025

On the eve of Prime Minister Mark Carney's critical trip to Washington to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith stole the spotlight and turned it firmly on herself. In a twenty-minute 'address to Albertans,' she aired grievances against the federal Liberal government, from carbon taxes to Justin Trudeau's infamous 'no more pipelines bill,' C-69. Smith also presented a list of demands, from resource corridor development to greater provincial control over energy and immigration. And she pledged to hold a referendum on Alberta independence should 'enough' citizens demand one — while insisting multiple times that she doesn't support secession herself.
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The timing was no accident. Smith wanted to be a topic of conversation in the White House. Perhaps she's angling for another interview on Fox News. Or perhaps she is trying to stay in power, pacifying the same angry base that ousted her predecessor, Jason Kenney, in 2022 after he won only 51.4 per cent in a leadership review.
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Albertans often point to the success of Quebec in dominating the national conversation — and extracting concessions from Ottawa — by threatening separation. But Quebec's grievance is cultural, not economic — rooted in preserving a French-speaking enclave in an English continent. Alberta's complaint by contrast, is financial. The province sees itself as the country's cash cow, milked for equalization payments and dismissed by Laurentian elites for decades — and on this, Smith is not wrong.
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Alberta was created as a province in 1905, but the federal government retained Crown lands until the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement and directly controlled its resources until 1930. The province has a particularly bitter history with Liberal governments: Pierre Elliott Trudeau enacted the National Energy Policy in the 1980's, while son Justin brought in carbon taxes, emissions caps, and the aforementioned Bill C-69 in the 2010's.
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