The Cat that Ate the Canary

By Ray Rivers

November 30th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

You just knew these two were going to get something going: turned out to be a Memorandum of Understanding. Does that equal a Valentine? Photo credit: Carney meets with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith during a stampede breakfast July 4, 2025. Photo by Darren Makowichuk 

Like the cat which ate the canary, Danielle Smith had the biggest smile as she sat down with the prime minister to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU).  And why not, she got virtually everything she had asked for from the PM.  She’d worked hard for this – a license to make Canada’s richest province even richer.  But where is the thanks from her political base?

The ultra right wing of Danielle Smith’s UCP (United Conservative Party) is made up of Alberta separatists from the former Wildrose Party.  To keep those radicals on-side and to blackmail the federal government into giving her another pipeline she has deliberately fanned the separatist flames in her province.  Her oxymoronic motto “a sovereign Alberta inside a unified Canada” says it all.

This is not going to end well.  She was booed by delegates at this weekend’s UCP convention – 65% said they would vote for independence if a vote were held today.  Smith’s MOU is a pyrrhic victory – she may get her pipeline and all the carveouts on emission reductions, but she may well lose her base and the next provincial election unless she can change the channel.  Once promised independence, the party zealots will not be content with just another pipeline.

Mark Carney is a brave man and has embarked on the biggest gamble of his career.  In the process of painstakingly sucking up to Alberta he made a detour on Canada’s highway to reducing climate changing emissions.  And his driving has alienated his former political allies in B.C. and those among the indigenous community.   Liberals are supposed to be big on the environment – even Elizabeth May thought so.  So what was he thinking?

Prime Minister Mark Carney: Perhaps uppermost in his mind may have been the need to increase the diversity of Canada’s export markets. 

Perhaps uppermost in his mind may have been the need to increase the diversity of Canada’s export markets.  Oil is the country’s most valuable export but most of it currently goes to a now unpredictable USA.   If America’s fickle US president slapped a whopping 50% tariff on Canadian heavy crude would American refiners retool to use abundant American oil and stop importing?

And then there is Alberta separatism.  Albertans selfishly lay the blame for their hatred of the rest of Canada squarely on the Trudeaus – both father and son.   But it was the anti-federalist former premier Peter Lougheed who first ignited the fires of separatism, poisoning federal-provincial relations in an uncomfortable parallel with Quebec’s René Lévesque.  “Let those eastern bastards freeze in the cold”.

Mark Carney is paying the price for bending over for Smith.  He has lost (from Cabinet) Steven Guilbault, the former environment minister – the environmental conscience of the Liberal party.  Now, the electric vehicle mandate, banning new gas guzzlers by 2035, is pretty much all that stands between him and what Stephen Harper stood for.  Other things being equal, Carney’s party may well lose most of its B.C. seats and probably many in Quebec and Ontario in the next election, which might now come sooner than later.

His goodwill with the indigenous communities has been shaken if not lost.  And he is unlikely to swing any Liberal voters to his side in tribal Tory Alberta anyway.  After all, they have been cultured to hate the Liberals even more than they want to get out of Canada.  Trading Canada’s climate change strategy for possible peace in Alberta may well turn out to a big price to pay.

But Mr. Carney can take a bow for the 3rd quarter GDP growth numbers (2.6%) in Canada’s economy, despite Trump’s tariffs.  That will be harder to maintain once the USMCA is gone, starting in the summer of 2026.  But there is $70 billion in investment promised by the oil rich UAE.  Also Mr. Carney has negotiated an important trade deal with Indonesia, the fourth most populist country in the world, and we are on track to better trading relations with both India and China.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is reacting to an audience booing her this weekend.

So just maybe, Mr. Carney knows what he is doing and it’s working.  But he might want to listen to the remarks Smith delivered in her speech to the UCP convention this weekend.  When Smith had raised, signing the MOU with the PM on the first day of this convention, she was greeted with a round of boos.

So Smith decided to double down on some Alberta strong and free, anti-federal rhetoric.  This included the upcoming sovereignty legislation which can nullify federal laws, including the gun laws, according to her.  Perhaps she was just playing to the crowd, but I have a feeling this is just the beginning.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

 Background links:

Separatism – Richest Province –  UCP Convention –  Smith/Carney –

How Alberta Sees It –    MOU –   Lougheed –    Smith Booed by Separatists –