CALGARY—Just two days after being sworn in as Alberta’s new premier, Jason Kenney was face to face with one of his biggest campaign foes: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The images from Kenney’s Thursday meeting with Trudeau in Ottawa weren’t exactly jubilant. After an election race where the United Conservative Party relentlessly slammed the federal government, Kenney looked tense in his first appearance with Trudeau. And when they finally shook hands for the cameras, the prime minister gave a wide grin while the Alberta premier barely cracked a smile.

Kenney already knows Trudeau from his time in the federal Conservative Party. A year ago, he called the prime minister “an empty trust-fund millionaire who has the political depth of a finger bowl” — comments he later said he regrets. More recently, he raised the spectre of what he called the “Trudeau-Notley alliance” in virtually every campaign speech to illustrate the way he said NDP Leader Rachel Notley had failed to look out for provincial interests. And he is openly calling for Trudeau to be replaced by federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer in this fall’s federal election.

Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt said the photos from Kenney’s first trip east as premier convey a carefully crafted message. And if anyone was expecting him to bury the hatchet with Ottawa after the provincial election, that isn’t the signal Kenney is sending.

“He was campaigning against Trudeau more than Notley. That’s the real opponent — he has zero respect for Trudeau,” Bratt said.

“The campaign message was ‘we need someone to fight Ottawa.’ That’s what those pictures portray.”

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The new Alberta premier didn’t waste much time before heading for Canada’s capital — it’s just day three of his fledgling government.

Mount Royal University policy studies professor Lori Williams said the UCP has a big job ahead to switch gears from four years of NDP rule, but Kenney has likely been planning his first days in office for a long time. Unlike the NDP’s 2015 win, the UCP knew they were on track for a victory this year, and Kenney can focus on other issues while the well-oiled gears of changing government keep turning.

Former premier Notley had her own frosty exchange and less-than-friendly handshake photo with Trudeau last year in the wake of a court ruling that reversed the decision to allow the Trans Mountain expansion construction to go ahead.

Then, and now — with construction on the pipeline still not approved — the Alberta leaders are aware that it isn’t in their political interests to look like they’re aligned with the federal government. So it’s no surprise Kenney travelled to Parliament Hill so quickly. A Thursday morning Senate committee meeting gave him a chance to issue a scathing critique of Bill C-69, which would create a new process for reviewing major resource projects, such as pipelines. The UCP also came out swinging against the bill during the Alberta campaign.

“(Kenney) doesn’t want to look like he’s Trudeau’s buddy, but he wants to look like he’s advocating to the current prime minister in Alberta’s interests, and that’s an easy enough thing to do,” Williams said. Whether he can effectively work with the federal government to accomplish goals in Alberta’s interests, she added, will be a much bigger test of his leadership.

University of Calgary political scientist David Stewart added that Kenney’s trip is a chance to show that he’s serious about taking the Alberta “fight back” strategy to Ottawa.

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“I think the message he’s intending to get across is he’s not going to shy away from confrontation. He’s going to take Alberta’s case directly to the federal government.”

The provincial campaign may be over, but the federal election is just months away, and Kenney is among a coalition of conservative Canadian premiers that will be making their opinions known as the race heats up.

As long as it’s a Liberal heading up the federal government, “This gets us back, really, to an earlier stage in Alberta politics,” Stewart said. “The government doesn’t pay as much attention to the provincial opposition as it does to the federal government, which it presents as its main opponent.”

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