Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says Canada should address U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's border concerns in the next two months, before he's back in the White House, instead of comparing our situation to Mexico's and arguing the tariff threats are unjustified.
"We need to address those issues," Smith told CTV News Channel's Power Play host Vassy Kapelos in an interview on Tuesday. "We can't downplay them, and we can't play the 'yeah, but' game, and we can't pretend that the economic interests are going to override those very legitimate interests."
Trump stated in a social media post Monday night he’d implement 25 per cent tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, until the two countries fix the "long simmering problem" of drugs and illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.
While Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called the move "unjustified" in a press conference on Parliament Hill Tuesday, Smith refused to make the same classification.
Instead, she said, Canada has "got to address the issues that have been identified as pressure points and alleviate them," pointing specifically to the border, worries China is using Mexico as a backdoor into North American free trade, and defence spending as particular concerns of Trump's.
The majority of what Alberta sends to the U.S. is energy exports. And Smith said in a previous interview with CTV's Question Period that Alberta has a $188-billion trade relationship with the United States.
In Tuesday's interview, the premier said the impact of the tariffs on her province would be "enormous" and "incredibly damaging."
Smith added she's "hopeful" Alberta can make the argument to the Americans that oil and gas should be exempt from the tariffs in order to bring down energy prices. But, she also said she takes "this president at his word."
"If he doesn't think that we're making movement on the things he cares about, then I think that we'd be facing across-the-board tariffs," she said.
When asked whether Trump is justified in issuing the threat of tariffs to both Canada and Mexico, despite the statistical reality that the flow of illegal drugs and migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border far surpasses that of the northern border, Smith wouldn't directly say.
"Just saying we're not as bad as the other guys is not going to fly in this case," Smith said, pointing to the growing number of illegal migrants at the Canada-U.S. border and the drug crisis as issues that should not be downplayed, but rather focused on.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency has seized 43 lbs of fentanyl at the Canada-U.S. border in the last year, excluding October, compared to 21,148 lbs at its southern border with Mexico in the same time period.
When pressed repeatedly on whether Trump threatening 25 per cent tariffs on all imports is a justifiable response to his concerns, Smith still refused to say, again pointing to her own concerns around the border and the drug crisis.
"That's why we have to demonstrate that we take our border control as seriously as the Americans do," she said. "I believe that if we try to change the subject without addressing the underlying irritants, we are not going to be successful, and we'll be facing 25 per cent tariffs in two months' time."
"One of the things I would say is that he's given us two months' notice to clean things up and two months' notice to address these issues," she added.
Smith said she plans to tell Trudeau and Canada's other premiers at their newly scheduled meeting on Wednesday that they need to address Trump's concerns before he moves back into the White House at the end of January.
"There are issues that are impacting Canadians just as much as the U.S. president sees that they're impacting his citizens as well," Smith said. "We have a common interest in addressing it."
"And if we can work together in a common interest, we'll probably be able to have a very fruitful relationship with the Americans, as we always have," Smith also said.
You can watch Smith's full interview in the video player at the top of this article.
