All for one — except for one

The dust is still settling. But two things are clear.

The first thing: Canadians, by a vast majority, are glad Prime Minister Mark Carney stood up to U.S. President Donald Trump. Worried about the impact the pending tariff slugfest will have in Canada — precarious jobs, prices, incomes, yes, but we’re not about to knuckle under.

Canadians, and our premiers, are lining up behind and beside Carney to protect his back and flank him with our support. We have a big fat trade war on our hands and we are ready to fight.

The second thing, however … and it’s not disconnected by any means from the trade issues … Alberta Premier Danielle Smith needs to read the room, knock off her cheesy and destructive political posturing, set aside her grievances and stand with the rest of us to fight this thing.

In the months and years to come, there needs to be not a single, infinitesimal crack in Canadian political solidarity. Even notoriously independent-thinking Quebec has fully recognized that — perhaps in part because the Americans just tried to erase its unique culture and language rights.

That U.S. booze thing is the glaring example of political self-serving; Alberta and Saskatchewan are the only provinces where American booze has stayed on the shelves. And yes, there’s an argument to be made that Canadians can just choose not to buy the stuff. We are grown-ups, presumably. Nonetheless, I’d love to see sales figures for U.S. booze in those provinces. I hope there’s a fair amount of dust gathering on the sharp shoulders of the Jack Daniel’s bottles.

There will be special interest groups looking to buttress preferential positions in these times. Fine, and fair — just please, guys, take your arguments behind closed government doors and when you’re out in public, stick with the united front.

Right now, this is about Canadian political unity in a far broader context, at an utterly unprecedented, critical time in our history, when every effort is being made (short of landing U.S. troops on our borders) to destroy us.

That’s not, by the way, an apocryphal statement. The demands that pushed the Canadians to walk away included reducing us to a vassal state, asking permission to make trade agreements with countries other than the U.S., and — though Carney carefully avoided publicly airing ugly details — threatening our cultural sovereignty and the special status of Quebec within Confederation.

Trump and his acolytes showed their hands in the waning hours of that extortion masquerading as negotiation. It’s damn obvious now.

It should be damn obvious to Smith.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe tends to walk in careful lockstep with Smith, but even he has stepped up with the other premiers — after a very quiet weekend, during which he no doubt mulled over the betrayal of American politicos he has visited and cozied up to on their home turf and read the polls on our turf.

Smith, however, has already whinged about escalating prices for farm equipment, urged that we not implement retaliatory tariffs and insisted we get back to the bargaining table immediately. Presumably she prefers not to poke the bear with a stick, despite the fact that the bear has all claws fully extended and fangs out and is busily mauling the rest of the country into a bloodied heap.

She has her own, self-inflicted troubles at home; the Alberta referendum she decided to stage after a questionable petition from local Maple MAGAs has sparked disturbing influencing efforts (interference, really — a duck is a duck) from Russia, which loves meddling for the hell of it in other nations’ internal business — and from the U.S., where MAGAs in general and Trump in particular would love to see Canada fracture into provincial pieces so Trump can hoover up all our juicy resource-rich bits.

In this burgeoning war, Alberta and Saskatchewan possess the untrammelled economic joy of being massive sources of both oil and potash for the U.S. — two critical resources, blessed with vanishingly rare tariff exemptions — even the 50 per cent the U.S. just threw onto the trade bonfire. More than four million barrels of oil a day flow from Alberta to the U.S., and Saskatchewan supplies more than 90 per cent of the potash that American farmers badly need.

Both Alberta and Saskatchewan owe their bank accounts to the generous incoming American money; a free flow made possible through federal policy that’s holding firm, so far not using oil or potash as bargaining chips against the U.S.

Carney has pointedly insisted energy is not a bargaining chip he’s willing to use — at the moment. If you ask me, that’s damn noble of the feds, and both Alberta and Saskatchewan need to recognize they are enjoying financial special status in Confederation at the moment.

Moe seems to have realized that.

Smith needs to grow up, shut up, put aside her selfish politicking and put up her fists, alongside the rest of us.

» Retired Winnipeg journalist Judy Waytiuk has not bought one single thing with U.S. origins since January 2025. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.