‘He hasn’t been very constructive now, has he?’ Danielle Smith pushes back against Eby comments

Prime Minister Mark Carney is seen with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith at the start of a meeting in Ottawa, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Alberta premier Danielle Smith wants to know if British Columbia Premier David Eby is still on Team Canada or not.

On her Saturday radio program, Your Province, Your Premier, Smith called out Eby for being a disappointing provincial teammate at a time when she said the whole country has to come together to find new markets for their resources.

“He hasn’t been very constructive now, has he?” Smith said to host Wayne Nelson. “I know everybody talked about Team Canada and open markets, let’s trade with each other -- and then when it comes right down to what that looks like, which is Alberta is landlocked and we’ve got to find a way to get our product to the coast, I think that the messaging has changed a little bit.”

As the federal government and Alberta work towards an agreement that could include federal support for a new pipeline, Eby called out Smith and Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe, who he said should “know better.”

Multiple provincial and federal government sources have told CTV News that Alberta and the federal government could be days away from an announcement of a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

It could include changes to the industrial carbon price and support for a new pipeline to the west coast that would require an exemption under the federal tanker ban.

Smith said Saturday that her government has been negotiating with the federal government almost daily for the better part of the last two weeks and that they hope to have an agreement ready and available to be released soon.

Moe, meanwhile, told reporters on Wednesday that he was also involved in ongoing negotiations about a deal for a potential pipeline.

Speaking to CTV Power Play with Vassy Kapelos on Thursday, Eby said he was “caught off guard” by the reported terms of the forthcoming deal, claiming he learned about the details through the media.

“There certainly was not discussion about a meeting between Saskatchewan, Alberta and the federal government negotiating the terms by which a project will be delivered in British Columbia without British Columbia at the table,” Eby said.

The tanker ban was enacted in 2019 and prohibits oil tankers carrying over 12,500 metric tons of crude or persistent oil from docking, loading, or unloading at ports on the B.C. north coast.

Eby said lifting the ban would threaten projects already in development in the region and consensus among coastal First Nations.

“(Smith and Moe) feel to me like two tourists wearing sandals wandering off into the woods in the north shore of Vancouver, saying, ‘Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.’ They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Eby said.

‘So much uncertainty’

Saturday morning, Smith pushed back, saying the intra-provincial squabbling doesn’t help anyone -- and that she has been supportive of Eby’s major project pitch to Ottawa.

“We know that this is the reason why we have had so much uncertainty in the investment climate,” she said. “It’s because of statements made by people like the (B.C.) premier and his allies that have put a chill on investment.”

Smith also called out federal NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis, who has said he’s against any energy infrastructure being built -- which she said would pit him against the provincial NDP led by Eby.

“That would kind of dampen Premier Eby’s aspirations too since he’s been very supportive of liquid natural gas,” she said.

Team Canada

Smith said she wanted to keep the team together, despite their differences.

“I’m going to challenge everyone to really think through what it means to be Team Canada and what it is we are in the process of,” she said. “We are in the process of trying to find new markets, so that we are not overly dependent on a single market in the U.S.

“There are only a couple of ways to do that,” she said.

If you’re not going to run your pipeline south (through the U.S.), you’ve got to run them east or west – and I would just love to be able to have some (provincial) partners who support us as much as I support them,“ she said.

“I have not objected to a single project that is coming forward. Premier Eby has gotten support to build a publicly-funded $6 billion transmission line to open a bunch of new mines in his golden triangle. Bravo! Good for him!” she added.

Legislation to fast-track construction of a northern power line squeaked through the British Columbia legislature last week thanks to a deciding vote by the Speaker for the bill that Premier David Eby said would force an election if it failed.

“So I would say that my spirit entering into these negotiations is (that) I take people seriously and at their word when they said that they were on Team Canada.

“I am on Team Canada,“ she said. ”I’m showing it.”

“I have said, we’re not just supporting a pipeline. We’re also supporting Pathways, which is a lower intensity carbon barrel going through there which is important to some of the markets in Asia and Europe,” she said, “but foundationally, we have to address the bulk of those nine bad laws so that we have some confidence with our (energy) producers that when they go to their shareholders saying, we want to expand our production, that they’re not going to shut down in five or 10 years.

“All of those things have to be dealt with together.”

With files from The Canadian Press, CTV’s Stephanie Ha, Caitlin Brezinski and Vassy Kapelos