Is Pierre Poilievre too 'in sync' with Donald Trump?
The Alberta premier thought it was a good thing — a top Conservative strategist begged to differ
Aaron Wherry
2025-03-29T04:00:00-04:00
The most controversial statement of the federal election so far was uttered before the campaign even started — not by a federal politician, but the premier of Alberta.
In an interview taped on March 8 with a right-wing American media outlet, Danielle Smith said that, while there would always be disagreements, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would be "very much in sync with … the new direction in America" and that Canada and the United States would "have a great relationship" for as long as Poilievre and Donald Trump were in office.
"If we do have Pierre as our prime minister, then I think there's a number of things that we could do together," Smith said. "Pierre believes in development, he believes in low-cost energy, he believes that we need to have low taxes, doesn't believe in any of the woke stuff that we've seen taking over our politics for the last five years."
Yes.
Yes, and it's deeply concerning from a democratic perspective.
When Danielle Smith admitted she asked the Trump administration to delay tariffs to influence our election outcome, that's textbook foreign interference. The integrity of our elections shouldn't depend on the timing preferences of foreign governments.
What's equally troubling is how our winner-take-all electoral system makes us more vulnerable to this kind of manipulation. In systems with proportional representation, a single foreign influence campaign can't swing an entire government - there's more resilience built in.
This isn't about whether Poilievre's policies align with Trump's. It's about protecting our democratic sovereignty. No Canadian official should be inviting foreign governments to time their actions to influence our elections, regardless of which party benefits.
The "sync" between Trump and Poilievre is less concerning than the undermining of democratic norms and processes that should keep our elections free from outside interference.