Has Danielle Smith thanked Trudeau for TMX pipeline?
A complaint sent to my attention this week had several compelling elements that piqued my interest.
At issue: staff in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s office expressed concerns to the Star over an opinion column we published last weekend about Smith, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a new $34-billion oil pipeline out west.
You had me at hello.
In a nutshell, the May 4 article by freelancer Graham Thomson, a seasoned political columnist who has covered the Alberta legislature for decades, concluded that the Alberta Premier hasn’t given enough credit to Trudeau — hasn’t mentioned his name enough — in her statements about the completion of the massive Trans Mountain (TMX) pipeline expansion.
Smith’s handlers reached out to the Star on Monday to say that conclusion is inaccurate and that Smith has repeatedly thanked Trudeau, his ministers and his government for helping push the mega project across the finish line.
They demanded that the Star publish a correction for the column and they even submitted suggested revisions. They said the online headline — which mentioned Trudeau’s efforts on the pipeline as being “all but ignored” — is false, along with other elements of the story.
Given “recent examples of the Premier thanking the federal government, the Prime Minister as well as several cabinet ministers, I believe it’s misleading to suggest the Premier did not give the federal government credit for completing TMX,” Sam Blackett, press secretary to the premier, wrote in an email sent to Thomson the freelancer and later the Star.
To be clear here, Thompson didn’t write about the Alberta premier not giving the federal government enough credit.
His point was Smith hasn’t specifically given the prime minister his props.
“I don’t buy the argument that thanking the federal government is the same as thanking Trudeau. It’s not the same as thanking the prime minister personally,” Thomson said in a telephone interview from Edmonton this week, as I looked into the complaint from Smith’s office.
The TMX expansion, the construction of a twin pipeline running parallel to an existing one, will mean significant economic prosperity for Alberta. The new infrastructure will, as Thompson noted, move almost 900,000 barrels per day of crude from Alberta’s oilsands to British Columbia’s Pacific Coast for shipment overseas. That’s almost triple the output that existed prior.
TMX is a big deal out west and will have significance for the Canadian economy.
Trudeau and his government have taken quite a bit of heat for the project. For one thing, Ottawa purchased the project from Kinder Morgan, a massive U.S. energy infrastructure firm that had threatened to pull the plug on financing the project.
There were also major challenges to TMX that the Liberal government under Trudeau faced from environmentalist and Indigenous groups. In addition, the cost of the project quadrupled, and it took longer to build than initially thought.
“Like everything about Trudeau’s foray into the Trans Mountain expansion, he gets plenty of blame but not much credit,” Thomson wrote in his column.
He went on later to add that “in March, for one brief moment, Smith did offer her ‘gratitude’ to Trudeau but within days was once again on her hobby horse blaming Trudeau for not building more pipelines from Alberta to ‘tidewater.’
“She continued asserting a cynical narrative that began two years ago when she lambasted him as a ‘virtue-signaling prime minister’ who was determined to ‘landlock our resources,’ ” Thomson added.
But in their correspondence to the Star, Smith’s office pointed to several instances they argue clearly show Smith was generous in her thanks and praises to Trudeau. They took issue with Smith’s acknowledgment to Trudeau in March being described by Thompson as a “brief moment.”
Ahead of that March 13 meeting with the prime minister, Smith said during a photo op: “I’d also like to thank the prime minister for getting the Trans Mountain Pipeline nearly to the finish line. It’s gonna be a major boost, not only for Alberta, but also for the entire country.”
On the same day, after that meeting, she told reporters in part: “I also expressed gratitude for the progress on the Trans Mountain Pipeline and how I’m encouraged by the federal conversations taking place …”
At an Alberta Municipal Leaders conference March 15, Smith credited finance chief Chrystia Freeland, saying in part that the minister navigated “really difficult things through, through finance, the final the payments on Trans Mountain pipeline …”
Other examples Smith’s office cited:
A May 1 interview on CPAC, where host Michael Serapio mentions her thanking Trudeau for getting TMX expansion opened. Smith replies in part, saying “it’s quite remarkable really because the federal government, even though they’ve been perceived as being anti-pipeline, they have also produced, they’ve also (allowed permits for) and seen two pipelines get built under their watch.”
In her official statement last week on the opening of TMX, Smith said: “the province also wants to thank the federal government for seeing this project through.”
From my vantage point as public editor, I don’t see any factual errors that need correcting in Thomson’s column. The complaint from Smith’s office is more about duelling perceptions, of the nature I’ve often had to look into, in my role at the Star. As an opinion columnist, Thomson has a “wide latitude” to express his views. He has a deep well of experience writing about and analyzing Alberta politics, both as a freelancer for us and other publications and as a staffer for outlets including the CBC and Edmonton Journal.
I have no doubt Smith and her staffers feel wronged, but to me, she is a shrewd, polished and intentional speaker. I listened to several of her interviews for this column.
I’m left with the impression that Danielle Smith, a staunch western Conservative, knows there’s probably not a lot to be gained politically by namedropping a Liberal prime minister who is lagging behind badly in public opinion polls.