Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her government will not negotiate new pipeline deals with the U.S. while the tariff war is underway, saying America needs Alberta and Canada to achieve global “energy dominance.”
Smith announced her province’s plan to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on Wednesday, vowing to remove American alcohol off of shelves, end procurement deals with the U.S. and promote free trade between Canadian provinces.
“My government will enter into free trade and labour mobility agreements with every province that is willing to do so the goal is to have no exceptions, just free trade and free movement of Canadian workers right across our province,” she said.
She said she has directed her cabinet to alter the province’s procurement practices to ensure that the government, its agencies, school boards, and municipalities purchase all needed goods and services from Albertan and Canadian companies or from countries which honour free trade agreements with Canada.
Smith also said the provincial liquor stores will be halting sales of U.S. alcohol.
“Until further notice, we just have to drink a bit more BC wine and Alberta craft beer and spirits, and that’s just fine with us,” Smith said. “There’s $292 million worth of U.S. liquor products sold in Alberta. In the 2023-24 fiscal year generated $84 million in markup revenue for the province.”
She said a collective move by premiers to remove U.S. products will result in an estimated $3 billion revenue loss for American suppliers, motivating them to lobby Congress for an end to the tariffs.
Smith said her government would assist grocers and other retailers with labelling all Canadian products in Albertan stores and is asking retailers to “voluntarily” purchase their stock from Albertan, Canadian producers or nations who respect free trade agreements with Canada. Alberta’s government will also launch an advertising campaign to help Albertan’s identify Canadian products.
She noted that Albertan oil and gas is Canada’s “secret weapon” or “trump card” in the trade conflict. She said Alberta has one of the largest deposits of oil and natural gas on the planet, significantly larger and “far more accessible” than the “quickly declining”oil and gas reserves located in the United States.
“Whether the US President wishes to admit it or not, the United States not only needs our oil and gas today, they are also going to need it more and more with each passing year, once they notice their declining domestic reserves and production are wholly insufficient to keep up with the energy demands of U.S., consumers and industry, let alone having anything left over to export.”
She said Alberta would rather double oil and gas exports to the U.S. through pipelines, and Trump has even said he wants to get up and running, such as the Keystone XL pipeline that former President Joe Biden cancelled.
“They buy about $100 billion a year of highly discounted oil from Alberta, which 10s of 1000s of US workers and refineries then upgrade into $300 billion worth of value to sell around The world. We have made a lot of Americans very wealthy,” she said. “It’s in both of our country’s best interests to double the amount of Canadian crude moving south.”
She said new pipelines will help Trump achieve his goal of reaching U.S. energy dominance over the world.
“Stated simply, the US cannot be anything approaching any energy dominant without Canada supplying a portion of the oil and gas,” she said. “It is just a fact the Alberta government wants to facilitate and to partner with us companies and even the US government to achieve their energy goals.”
She noted that Alberta cannot and would not expand pipeline access to the U.S. while Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports and 10 per cent tariff on energy products continued to “devastate” the province and country.
“So until our U.S. friends come back to reality, we will focus on efforts and financial means to export one of the largest oil and gas deposits in the world elsewhere,” she said. “We will look to our own nations, west and east and north coast. We will partner with industry, provinces, First Nations and the federal government to build multiple oil and gas pipelines to all of our coasts for the purpose of dramatically increasing Canadian energy sold to Asia and to Europe.”
She said Alberta would welcome a tariff-free trade relationship with the U.S. and believes that whichever party wins the next general election will only do so if they support interprovincial energy expansion via cross-province pipelines.
In response to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s proposal to tax energy outputs into the U.S., Smith said Alberta would not as doing so would impact Alberta more than it would the U.S. She fears hiked prices and retaliatory taxes on oil going back to Canada from the U.S. which would be sure to heighten the impact of the tariff war on Canadians.