Smith meets Carney, demands oil policy changes and warns national unity at stake

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says that in her first face-to-face meeting with the new prime minister she gave him an earful on wildfires and oil sales and warned him national unity hangs in the balance.

“I provided a specific list of demands the next prime minister, regardless of who that is, must address within the first six months of their term to avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis,” Smith said in a statement Thursday after a morning meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Alberta capital.

Smith has been a longtime critic of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, saying federal Liberal government policies for years have illegally encroached on Alberta’s resource rights and strangled its wellspring oil and gas industry.

Smith said it was Carney’s idea to meet and it was a “frank discussion.”

“I made it clear that Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we’ve been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years,” she said.

Smith repeated a number of policies she wants changed, including unfettered cross-boundary access to build pipelines and an end to the proposed greenhouse gas emissions cap, which Alberta says would hamstring resource production.