Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she travelled on a private plane on behalf of the Saudi government last fall.
The premier and a few members of her staff had travelled to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in late October and early November to discuss potential collaborations on energy development, artificial intelligence and more.
The premier’s office had never discussed the flight publicly before but Smith confirmed it at a legislature committee meeting Tuesday in response to budget questions put to her by Opposition NDP leader Naheed Nenshi.
Smith said the provincial ethics commissioner had signed off on any non-commercial travel ahead of the trip and that it was proposed by the Saudi government for efficiency purposes and to visit places with limited commercial airline services.
She said one of the stops was at a major oilfield that produces over a million barrels per day and that has since been shut down in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
“Having that perspective was really important for me to have,” Smith said of the oilfield visit.
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Smith told the committee that she had met the Saudi energy minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, a few years ago at an energy convention in Calgary. He is a member of the Saudi royal family.
“He and I had a bond over the fact that we believe that we should be reducing global poverty at the same time as we’re reducing global emissions and making sure we have energy security,” Smith said.
The premier said it was the pair’s friendship that led the minister to invite her to visit and to be hosted by the government.
She said she also stayed in accommodation provided by her counterparts, which was social protocol and also approved by the ethics commissioner in advance.
Smith said she had met with a number of other officials as part of the trip, including the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, multiple ministers in the UAE government, and an official with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.
The premier’s comments came in response to Nenshi asking about apparent receipts missing from the trip and noting that the premier and her staff had flown into Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and flown out of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
Nenshi had said the trip cost Alberta taxpayers some $64,000, and questioned Smith’s claim that there was limited commercial airline services between the two centres, saying it was one of the most popular commercial flight paths in the world.
He also called on her to table in the legislature any advice she was given by the ethics commissioner on accepting the flight.
Nenshi said in a statement later Tuesday that he was disappointed that Smith “waved off questions about the appropriateness of accepting the flights.”
“I asked her twice to table her correspondence with the ethics commissioner and I expect her to do so.”
Travel expenses were a key theme of the committee meeting, with Nenshi also asking Smith to justify the nearly $20,000 spent on her trip last year to a fundraising gala in Florida where she spoke alongside controversial conservative media personality Ben Shapiro.
“Gosh, I guess that was March of 2025, so not only not this past (fiscal) year, but I guess the previous (fiscal) year. So, it’s two public accounts ago,” Smith said Tuesday about the trip.
She said PragerU, the company that the event was benefiting, has connections to members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party and her goal was to discuss how bad the president’s tariff plan was for the economy on both sides of the border.
Smith, responding to Nenshi saying Shapiro has anti-Muslim values and that her appearance with him harmed the community, said her appearance doesn’t mean she agrees with everything Shapiro says.
“At least we agree that tariffs are bad, and I think that that’s a very positive message for him to be getting out.”
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