Juno News - January 29, 2025


Smith's approach to Trump's tariff threat pays off

Mentioned
Donald Trump Danielle Smith Justin Trudeau Vashi Capellos
Dr. Davidson on his pandemic report, Covid vax injuries & informed consent Danielle Smith calls for a Canadian BORDER CZAR

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

193.96

Word count

1,654

Sentence count

97

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Danielle Smith is the new Prime Minister of Alberta, Canada's second female premier, and she has been in office for less than a year. In that short period of time, she has had to deal with the fallout from Donald Trump's trade war with the United States, including the threat of tit-for-tat tariffs.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I think that Danielle really went out on a limb with her approach to the trade war and Donald Trump's threat of tariffs, and she was pretty roundly criticized for that. We saw the establishment media really going after her. She was accused of being a traitor, really horrible things. And I think that it's paying off for her, not only on the home front, but also nationally.
00:00:22.280 So let's start by talking about Alberta first. Certainly her approach to advocate for Alberta and for Alberta's interests first is what the Albertan people want. We elected a premier to stand up for our interests, not to stand up for Ottawa, especially at a time when there was so much friction between the province of Alberta and the federal government, who has seemed really not to be vested in or care about our economy and to continuously attack Alberta's energy.
00:00:48.200 And the point that Danielle Smith made was we tried to expand our exports to go west or to go east, and the rest of Canada said no. And so we are entirely reliant on our exports to the United States for our economy and for the Alberta government to generate revenue. And if you shut that off, it will devastate, it will devastate the Alberta economy.
00:01:09.600 And so we have no choice but to continue having a positive trade relationship with the United States. And I think she recognized that the relationship between Justin Trudeau and between Donald Trump had completely broken down.
00:01:20.680 And so she took matters into her own hands and she went over to the states and she began advocating for Alberta. And initially we saw that the rest of Canada was attacking her for this.
00:01:28.800 And now we've seen sentiment shift, not only in public opinion, but also in the fact that other premiers are also following suit because I think they're recognizing that not only would a ban or retaliatory tariffs impact them, as you said, Alberta's energy also lights up Ontario and Quebec.
00:01:45.680 So it's not simply a matter of just turning off the pipes because it will impact the rest of Canada, but also that her approach with Donald Trump is working and that the Americans do want collaboration with Canada, but they're also tired of a Canadian government that really hasn't done its part, for example, with meeting its NATO commitments, with protecting its border.
00:02:05.540 And yeah, I know people always say, well, there's the immigration crisis is way worse at the Mexican U.S. border than the Canada U.S. border. OK, but we also have like really serious terrorists here.
00:02:16.160 We had one of India's most wanted terrorists in Canada. The United States is paying attention to this. They recognize that our security is abysmal and they realize how easy it is for these people to cross from Canada into the United States.
00:02:28.000 And so what America is really asking is they're saying, Canada, you haven't done your part for nine years. It's time to do your part again. And then we can maybe look at, you know, not implementing these tariffs.
00:02:38.700 But right now, Canada is in a very, very weak position. And I think for the people who are criticizing Donald Trump for the economic impact that we're about to feel from the tariffs are severely misguided.
00:02:49.520 It is right that he would do the best by his country and that he would protect our national, his national interests.
00:02:55.700 I just wish that we had a prime minister who also cared about protecting our national interests.
00:03:00.220 And there's no way that Canada is vetting when it comes to national security. We just don't vet the way that the Americans do.
00:03:05.060 We used to and we should, but we certainly do, which is why we end up with terrorists.
00:03:09.020 And to your point, I mean, we reported this in True North, that the number of people on terror watch lists sneaking into the United States from Canada is five times more than Mexico.
00:03:20.560 So, yes, Mexico has far more people coming through the border. But when it comes to the actual terrorists, there's actually significantly more from Canada.
00:03:29.480 Let's go back to Danielle Smith, though. She was on with Vassi Capellos on Sunday evening talking about how she wants to avoid a trade war.
00:03:37.820 So, you know, this is her kind of marquee position that we don't want to do a tit for tat.
00:03:42.460 It's not a good idea to have a trade war with a trading partner who's so much bigger than you, so much more powerful than you and can more easily, you know, have tariffs without without such a big notice.
00:03:57.080 So let's play this clip of Danielle on CTV question period.
00:04:01.240 I always think that you should try to avoid a fight, especially when you've got, you know, a bigger, a bigger adversary that you're fighting against.
00:04:08.760 The American economy is 10 times the size of Canada. And if we get into some kind of tit for tat retaliatory tariffs, neither country is going to benefit from that.
00:04:18.760 And Canadian consumers are going to be harmed. That's why my approach has been what can we do to avoid the fight?
00:04:24.060 That being said, I think we all know, based on previous experience, that having a proportionate response is what is normally expected when these kinds of things occur.
00:04:33.540 And so I know that the federal government is working on what that proportionate response would look like.
00:04:38.620 I hope we don't have to roll it out at all. I hope we can avoid tariffs altogether.
00:04:41.840 And I'll just play one more clip. This is the same interview a little later on.
00:04:46.760 She talks about how Albertans are just not going to accept an export tax on their products.
00:04:52.980 I've asked the federal government on I don't even know how many occasions over the last number of years about those extra markets and building capacity to them.
00:04:59.900 But even putting that aside for a moment, we're in the moment we're in.
00:05:03.100 I've also asked ministers in the past week if they would do the same thing that that people are threatening over oil with auto exports,
00:05:09.480 which would have an equally proportionate impact on Ontario.
00:05:11.940 And they said yes. Like they're not they're not making it a national unity crisis.
00:05:15.540 Aren't you? I don't think that will happen, first of all.
00:05:20.920 And second, they're not taking it off the table. That's the point. Right.
00:05:23.300 Maybe logistically, like you say, both are not really great options, but they're not saying, no, I would never do that.
00:05:29.220 Well, I think the problem that we saw is that we were getting together as a group of premiers and the prime minister saying,
00:05:35.140 let's not negotiate this in public. And I did my part saying, let's focus on the things that we know the Americans care about,
00:05:42.360 national security and border security. And everybody else went off freelancing.
00:05:45.820 And the thing they kept returning to was punishing Alberta and punishing energy.
00:05:49.540 So I just wanted to make sure that we get back to talking about the things that unite us rather than divide us.
00:05:55.380 And so Albertans are just simply not going to accept an export tax on this product.
00:06:01.200 They're not going to accept the federal government blocking the export of this vital product.
00:06:06.000 And I don't think that that demonstrates to the Americans that we are a reliable trading partner, which is what we are trying to do.
00:06:13.320 Danielle Smith is just 100 percent right there. 0.65
00:06:15.380 She is making the points and she's the one that's standing up not just for Albertans.
00:06:18.680 Yes, she is standing up for Albertans. And I think they appreciate that.
00:06:21.020 You can let me know what you think. But she's standing up for, I think, what's in the best interest of all Canadians by avoiding a trade war.
00:06:26.480 What do you think?
00:06:27.900 That's exactly what I've been hearing from people who are on the ground.
00:06:30.460 They're saying that Danielle Smith has been accused of being a Canadian trader.
00:06:35.860 But when she's in Washington, D.C. and when she's at Mar-a-Lago, she is playing for Team Canada.
00:06:41.220 She is fighting for all of Canada when she's trying to secure a deal. 1.00
00:06:43.980 And as she has said repeatedly, and she's been the one saying this the loudest from the beginning, let's do our best to avoid these tariffs.
00:06:50.680 And I just can't help but wonder why we haven't heard that same line from other premiers.
00:06:54.220 It's immediately been, OK, well, if you if you do this to us and we're going to do that to you, exactly as she said, it's been a tit for tat instead of understanding the Americans' concerns and saying, we do not want these tariffs to tell us exactly what we need to do to avoid them.
00:07:07.940 We will get serious about security at the border.
00:07:09.700 We will get serious about vetting newcomers to Canada. 0.99
00:07:12.360 And we are willing to meet you where you're at to avoid these tariffs.
00:07:16.220 That has never really been the federal government's approach. 0.54
00:07:19.000 They're really just too pigheaded to look at their own mistakes, realize where they went wrong.
00:07:23.640 And certainly to make some of the changes that Donald Trump has requested, they would be acknowledging error in their immigration policy and in their vetting policy. 0.87
00:07:31.660 And we know that Justin Trudeau and his liberal party, they are not willing to even own an ounce of their mistakes.
00:07:38.220 They are so pigheaded when it comes to making changes that would benefit Canadians because it might mean an acknowledgement of wrongdoing on their part.
00:07:46.360 And I believe that is a big part of the reason why we're seeing them proceed in the manner that they have, because they are not willing to change their policy because it would be acknowledging wrongdoing.
00:08:01.660 Thank you.