‘It’s disrespectful’: Smith pushes back at Carney comments

Danielle Smith is focused on interprovincial trade as she travels east, and some Alberta businesses say quick action is needed to sell product within Canada.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Prime Minister Mark Carney was being disrespectful last week with comments he made about her role in the trade war with the U.S.

Last weekend in Victoria, Carney joked about Canadian premiers appearing on Fox News, the conservative U.S. media outlet, saying it would be a “bad idea” to put Smith on the network to advocate for cross-border diplomacy.

“We’re sending (Ontario Premier) Doug Ford on to Fox News to show them that we’re not messing around up here,” Carney said.

“And we’re going to send Danielle next, we’re … well, no, maybe we won’t send Danielle,” the Liberal leader said. “No, maybe we won’t. We won’t send Danielle. We’re going to keep her. No, it was a bad idea.”

Smith has been criticized for a March interview published in Breitbart, where she said that she thought Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre would be more closely aligned with the Trump administration’s political values in Washington than Carney and the Liberals.

‘Strong conservative women’

On her weekly radio show “Your Province, Your Premier,” Smith revisited earlier comments she made about how progressive men such as Carney and former prime minister Justin Trudeau are proudly feminist until they run into a strong conservative woman.

“I’ve noticed this with progressive men and how much they talk about how much they support women until they meet a strong conservative woman,” Smith said in Edmonton on April 7.

“This is a pretty consistent type of approach that I’ve seen, not only from the current prime minister, but the former one as well.”

On Saturday, she expanded upon her earlier remarks, pointing out that it was the premiers who rallied to push back against U.S. tariffs while the federal Liberals went through a leadership transition at a time of national crisis.

“I try to be fair in my criticisms of the federal government,” she said. “I try to stay focused on policy because that is where we’re going to end up identifying the issues that need to be addressed.

“Just making offhand comments that are dismissive of the efforts that myself, Doug Ford and other premiers have made – we have to remember, we (provincial) are the level of government that has consistently been there, at the table, all through this tariff threat.

“We have a federal government that hasn’t met – been in Parliament – in over 120 days,“ she added. ”We have a (federal Liberal) leader that doesn’t have a seat (in Parliament).

“We have had a (federal Liberal) leadership race that we had to go through,” she added. “We have had multiple different (federal Liberal) faces at the table (meeting with U.S. officials) – and this is the work that myself and (Ontario Premier) Doug (Ford) have had to do to try and make sure we get some stability in our relationship with the U.S.

“A little appreciation for those efforts, I think, would show the kind of respect we deserve,” Smith added.

“I think his comments were disrespectful,” she said, “And I hope we don’t hear them again.”

With files from The Canadian Press