Alberta premier says Trudeau’s jibes ‘not helpful’ in tariff dispute

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump, calling opponent Kamala Harris’s loss a setback for women’s progress, was “not helpful” to ongoing negotiations over a potential 25-per-cent border tariff, said Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on Thursday.

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“I think the American people voted pretty decisively for the Republicans, and for President-elect Donald Trump in particular,” said Smith.

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Smith’s rebuke echoes similar comments from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said premiers raised their concerns with Trudeau on a call with the prime minister on Wednesday evening. Ford said he was “sure the prime minister got that message loud and clear.”

Smith was speaking to the media Thursday after Alberta announced a $29-million border patrol team intended to stop the flow of fentanyl over the U.S.-Canada border. Trump has demanded that Canada crack down on the drug and threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian goods if enforcement doesn’t improve.

“The concerns that president-elect Trump has expressed regarding fentanyl are, quite frankly, the same concerns that I and the premier have had,” said Alberta deputy premier Mike Ellis in an interview with the National Post on Thursday.

“The stuff is going all over the place,” said Ellis. “North, south, east and west.”

The section of the U.S. Border Patrol that includes Montana, Wyoming and Idaho has apprehended 1.2 kilograms of fentanyl at Canadian border crossings between October 2023 and September 2024, two-thirds of its total drug haul.

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Just one kilogram of fentanyl can yield up to 500,000 doses of the powerful synthetic opioid, say police.

Ellis said that he wasn’t worried the border patrol team would divert resources away from shutting down fentanyl super labs like the one recently discovered in the northwestern Alberta town of Valleyview, 1,000 km away from the Montana border.

“At the risk of stating the obvious, the facility in Valleyview wasn’t just manufacturing and selling product for the neighbourhood,” said Ellis.

Ellis said that there was only so much the province could do to curb the booming in-house production of fentanyl and other synthetic street drugs, which he attributed to Ottawa’s lax approach to punishing drug crimes.

“Production is up because of soft on crime policies,” said Ellis. “It’s as simple as that.”

“The consequences of getting caught (in Canada) are maybe a couple years’ house arrest. Whereas, I could be looking at 10 to 20 years in prison if I go and commit the same crime across the border in the U.S.”

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Ellis joined Smith earlier in the day for the unveiling of the Interdiction Patrol Team, a new specialized unit of the Alberta Sheriffs dedicated to sweeping the area near the province’s border with Montana for drugs, guns and human trafficking.

The unit will include 51 uniformed officers and 10 heavy-duty drones rigged for the area’s cold temperatures and high winds.

The unit is expected to be operational early next year.

Federal Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc is expected to announce new border security measures next week. LeBlanc’s office did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the announcement out of Alberta.

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

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