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Danielle Smith Is Making Alberta Great for Trump

Her embrace of MAGA has given separatists powerful American allies—allies who see the province as a prize

O n May 21, 2024, conservative Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid wrote that Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) is “building its sovereign Alberta in a way no government has done before . . . laying the foundations brick by brick, from the ground up, preparing the province, Quebec-like, for the fullest degree of independence possible.”

Separatist sentiment has always bubbled below the surface in rural Alberta, coming to the fore when there’s a Liberal government in Ottawa, which every Alberta premier must be prepared to contend with. But no premier has gone further in legitimizing their grievances and advancing their agenda than Smith.

For the separatist set, Trump was both a model for emulation and a potential liberator from the meagre constraints Canadian federalism has placed on fossil fuel extraction and the exercise of executive power. More than any other Canadian leader, Smith’s policies were influenced by Trump, his Make America Great Again movement, and its allies. Soon after Trump’s election, Smith met with officials of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative US think tank, “to see if we could frame our interests and talking points in terms of the US president’s interests.”

The foundation was behind Project 2025, a blueprint for expanding presidential power and remaking the federal government. The Free Alberta Strategy, co-authored by Rob Anderson—Smith’s 2022 campaign chair and later executive director of the premier’s office—has been likened to that playbook.

Though much shorter and narrower in scope, it provided a similar guidebook for Smith’s dismantling of state institutions and building new ones loyal to the ruling party. Its proposals included refusing to enforce federal laws that conflict with provincial prerogatives; creating a provincial police force, pension plan, revenue agency, and banks; and seizing control over judicial appointments.

Once Trump began threatening Canada with punishing tariffs and speaking openly of integrating his northern neighbour into the United States, Smith took a far more obsequious approach to him than any other premier, becoming a prominent voice in far-right US political circles by ingratiating herself to Trump and his allies.

A strong indication that Trump’s second presidency would depart from relative normalcy came when the president-elect began speaking of incorporating Canada into the US. After threatening to impose 25 percent tariffs on both Canada and Mexico if they didn’t impose measures to stop the flow of migrants and drugs across their borders, Trump soon moved to publicly mocking “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.”

Smith used the........

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