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Hey guys, you ever see that really old movie The Matrix? You surely remember the part where Joey Pants meets online with the fearsome Agent Smith to make a deal to betray his people mainly because he likes the taste of simulated steak better than the slop that serves as supper in a dystopian wasteland run by AI.
Canada now finds itself in a similar situation as the crew of the good ship Nebuchadnezzar, where the capacity to strike back against a high-stakes threat is undermined by a scheming backstabber. Someone who also happens to really like a good steak.
Cow flesh is one of the province of Alberta’s main exports, and Premier Danielle Smith is currently beefing with her fellow premiers over what to do exactly about the mad king to the south who is yammering about slapping 25 percent tariffs on imports from America’s largest trading partner. Or maybe just 10 percent. Who knows? Certainly not him!
Smith, the leader of the chaotic, MAGA-adjacent United Conservative Party, has refused to sign a joint statement with (still) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the other nine provincial premiers promising to keep all economic cards on the table for potential retaliation. And she has a big ace up her sleeve by being in charge of the place where we keep our oil.
Raising prices on PEI potatoes, Canada Dry ginger ale, or Saskatoon berries doesn’t pack quite the same punch with a new adversary that gets more than half of its crude oil and nearly all of its natural gas imports from us.
Not that an unwanted trade war erupted as promised on Day One, surely the most depressing Blue Monday of all time. Turns out it’s a bit more complicated than simply pressing a “tariffs” button like the one used to summon Diet Cokes to the Oval Office, the reinstallation of which reportedly WAS a pressing priority for his transition team.
The last time the Very Stable Genius pulled this shit was when it “only” applied to Canadian steel and aluminum products rather than pretty much everything, which would involve Crom only knows how many different levels of government and regulatory bodies to enforce, and he instead offered a variation on the standard empty promise of “in two weeks” you may recall from the first round with this dumb motherfucker.
“I think we’ll do it February 1,” he told reporters at a press conference following the first and hopefully last presidential inauguration ceremony to feature Sieg Heil salutes and Snoop.
Former deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, one of two front-runners for her old boss’s job, laid out a compelling case for Canadian unity in a fiery op-ed in the Toronto Star, the country’s largest remaining newspaper. It’s worth quoting at length, not least because it’s being kept behind a paywall during a national crisis. Not that Zuckerberg allows Canadians to share news stories on Facebook anymore even if it wasn’t. Including this one.
While it may be tempting to turn the other cheek, we must take President Trump at his word. Hope is not a strategy and capitulation is not an option.
Now is the time for us to be strong, united and smart.
Being strong means being clear with our American neighbours: we love our country just as much as you love yours. If you hit us, we will hit back. We will not escalate, but we will never back down.
Being united means recognizing that our differences pale in comparison to our love for our country. We must urgently build a true Team Canada response, uniting every province and territory; business and labour; and Canadians from every walk of life. This is not a time for partisan agendas.
Being smart means retaliating where it hurts. If President Trump imposes 25 per cent tariffs, our counterpunch must be dollar-for-dollar — and it must be precisely and painfully targeted.
Florida orange growers, Michigan dishwasher manufacturers and Wisconsin dairy farmers: brace yourselves. Canada is America’s largest export market — bigger than China, Japan, the U.K., and France combined. If pushed, our response will be the single largest trade blow the U.S. economy has ever endured.
Smith made the trek to DC for the big day but the preening petrostate preem hilariously got left out in the cold after she wasn’t deemed important enough to join groveling billionaires, Wayne Gretzky, sundry sycophants, Secret Service, and SS stans after the shameful event was moved inside at the last minute due to cold temperatures most Canadians would shrug at.
It’s possible organizers confused her with Daniel Smith, Joe Biden’s acting secretary of State before Anthony Blinken’s confirmation, who obviously would be persona non grata as a woke enemy of the state. The former oil industry lobbyist was instead reduced to watching it on television at the Canadian embassy like a common Canadian.
Not that it was the childless dog lady’s first visit to the MAGAverse this month; Smith also joined “Shark Tank” blowhard Kevin O’Leary in Palm Beach to ostensibly pitch the importance of unimpeded bilateral trade relations. There’s no record of the chat — not unlike the time the president had a performance review with Putin in Helsinki back in 2018 and the translator’s notes were destroyed — so we’ll have to give her the benefit of the doubt she didn’t promise him Alberta oil wouldn’t be banned for export or subject to levies as part of a domestic response if we don’t build a wall Mexico might be open to chipping in for and/or peacekeeping our way to ending the War on Drugs.
Here’s O’Vichy describing the meeting on Instagram:
I just got back from Mar-a-Lago, where Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and I sat down with Donald Trump. We tackled tariffs, pipelines, and why a strong Canada-U.S. partnership matters now more than ever.
I told Trump straight: the Trudeau policies have been a disaster, but Canada isn’t done. Alberta has massive potential, and Danielle is leading the charge to bring capital back.
But if it turns out she also, say, personally guaranteed a Connor McDavid trade to the Florida Panthers or threw other industries such as wheat (worth roughly $2.3 billion a year at last count) or beef ($1.9 billion) under the bus while protecting her oilpatch pals, it could likely spell the end of her troubled tenure as the boss of Alberta.
A majority of voters might finally clue in that, as the host of an early aughts reality show might say, Danielle Smith is the weakest link.
Or even an actual Agent Smith.
[Toronto Star / Global News / The Observatory of Economic Complexity / BlueSky]
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