Alberta premier now a regular guest on FOX News because of leadership void in Ottawa: Nixon

In her fight against Donald Trump’s threat of 25 per cent trade tariffs on all Canadian products, Alberta’s premier has made FOX News a preferred weapon.

“I’m hoping we can avoid (tariffs) altogether, it’s looking less likely,” Danielle Smith told Fox Business hosts Monday morning.

“We really are the best customer for the United States.”

Smith has appeared on the right-leaning U.S. network seven times since early December. She also did an interview with CNBC on New Year’s Eve.

Smith’s minister for seniors, community, and social services said Tuesday the political chaos in Ottawa, leading to a Monday resignation announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has left Smith no choice.

“The premier, and other premiers are having to step into that leadership position and defend our province and our country,” Jason Nixon told CityNews.

“A lot of those challenges would go away if Trudeau would call an election, and we can get a stable prime minister in charge of Canada.” 

Smith has been politely trashing tariffs as bad for jobs and affordability on both sides of the border while selling Alberta as a friendly supplier of oil and gas.

Doing so via FOX News and its millions of viewers, is worth a shot, believes political strategist Lori Williams.

“FOX News has an enormous audience and some of those folks don’t get their news from anywhere else,” said Williams, from Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“So if you want to reach people and answer their questions and correct misinformation and so forth, there’s at least the possibility and opportunity to do that.”

Smith has given credit to Trudeau at times, for approving the Keystone XL Pipeline Expansion for example, but veered from her typical messaging Monday to bash the outgoing prime minister and his Liberal party.

“They used to be more of a centrist party, the same way your Democrat party was more of a centrist party,” Smith said when asked about Trudeau’s resignation.

“But with the wokeism, with the extreme environmentalism, with the punitive approach to taking anything from mining all the way through to the development of oil and gas, excessive carbon taxes, making life more unaffordable, spending like mad, seeing the increase in inflation, I think we’ve seen parallel experiences over the last four years.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has also done interviews down south, appearing on CNN this week.

He’s taken a tougher tone with Trump, both threatening to stop energy exports and firing back at Trump’s repeated suggestion Canada become the 51^st state with a joke about Ottawa instead of buying Alaska.

Political strategist Stephen Carter believes Ford’s plan is better one than Smith playing nice and beefing up border security to try to make Trump happy.

“If you’re going to go putting your head into the lion’s mouth, you better have a good strategy,” Carter, president of Decide Campaigns, told CityNews.

“And right now, all I can see is she reminds me of (Neville) Chamberlain with (Adolf) Hitler. It’s appease, appease, appease, and I’m not sure that’s the way to win over Donald Trump.”

So far, it appears nobody has been able to soften Trump’s tariff stance.

On Tuesday, the U.S. president-elect said his country doesn’t need some Canadian products like cars, dairy, and lumber. He also threatened to use “economic force” to join Canada and America.