EDMONTON — The Alberta NDP removed their video on Thursday that used clips from a documentary to link Premier Danielle Smith to US President Donald Trump, after the film’s director said the snippets were taken out of context. “Danielle Smith: A friend to Donald Trump. Not a friend to Canada,” read the caption of a video posted on social media by the Alberta NDP on Wednesday.The brief montage featured two clips of Smith saying, “I don't think Canada will exist in a decade” and “He said Alberta will become the 51st state of the United States,” along with a clip and photos of the premier interacting with Trump. The video then transitioned to the president musing about Canada joining the U.S.Smith’s clips came from the recently released documentary Section 38, directed by Matthew Embry. The film examines the history of Alberta’s independence movement and the motivations behind it, while also exploring questions surrounding Canada’s natural resources and its relationship with the U.S..The Alberta NDP’s video drew attention online, prompting Embry to record a response in which he said the party had used the clips without his permission and taken them out of context. The footage came from a 2019 interview with Smith, who was working as a radio host at the time.“To me, this is unbelievable,” Embry said. “I'll be sending a cease and desist to the NDP party or the Alberta NDP right away, and I find this just incredibly disappointing that not only they would do this to a filmmaker, to an independent filmmaker, but they would bend the clip in such a way to not give the audience a fair or a truthful understanding of what the clip was, when it was shot, what she truly said.”“They re-edited the dialogue to make it look a certain way.”The Alberta NDP removed the video on Thursday and told the Western Standard that it had done so “out of respect for the filmmaker,” but that its message tying Smith to Trump remained unchanged.“Danielle Smith has openly mused, for years, on video and radio, about making our province the 51st state,” the party wrote in a statement. “It’s important for Albertans to know that Danielle Smith, despite her denials, is a separatist and she leads a separatist UCP.”.The documentary shows Smith discussing what she described as an imbalance in the relationship between Alberta and the federal government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau. She argued that the federal government and other provinces had attempted to shut down Alberta’s oil industry while continuing to accept the revenue it generated. She spoke about the need for change.Smith also discussed Peter Zeihan's 2014 book, The Accidental Superpower, in which a chapter addresses a scenario in which Alberta makes continued unsuccessful attempts to increase resource development and improve its fiscal relationship with Canada.Zeihan suggested that frustration could eventually lead Albertans to vote to leave Canada and become a state, since that would make more sense than independence. This is where Smith's "51st state" reference comes from.Smith released a video on Wednesday ahead of Monday’s referendum, saying she had officially voted for Alberta to remain in Canada. She has also publicly expressed support for federalism in recent months, saying she favours a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.”
