Nuanced. - 163. Danielle Smith: The Premier of Alberta

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith joins to explain why the province is holding a separatism referendum, whether Mark Carney can deliver a new pipeline, how politics changed her relationship with Naheed Nenshi and where her government has fallen short on the deficit and healthcare with host Aaron PeteSend us Fan MailSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Premier Daniel Smith, Alberta is projecting a $9.4 billion deficit. Does the province have a spending problem, a revenue problem, or is it just an economy that's too dependent on oil? Government revenues are still too reliant on oil and gas, and that's a very different problem. Your approval rating fell to 39% when the separation controversy started. Then it rebounded 7 points to 46% after progress on the pipeline took place. What do you think Albertans are trying to tell you? That's what I'm trying to tell Albertans that, yeah, the country didn't work so well in the past 10 years. But it's working better today, and it's going to keep on working better if we keep on working at it.

And I told the Prime Minister I take the separatist sentiment seriously. I told him he should take it seriously as well. Globe and Mail journalist Robert Fife came on the show, as well as Tony Keller, who's also a journalist with the Globe and Mail. They both said Prime Minister Mark Carney has had a remarkable year. Do you agree? There has been a major change and a major difference. in tone, but we still have to see some progress. I mean, it's one thing to make an announcement. It's another thing to do. Do you have any areas on all the different issues you've tried to

tackle and your government's tried to move forward on that you say we didn't do that right? That didn't land. That didn't work. We could have done it differently. Do you have any regrets? Premier Daniel Smith, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. It's a privilege to have you on the show. You're well known across Canada, but for those of our viewers who don't know you, would you mind briefly introducing yourself? Sure. I'm the, the Premier of Alberta. I got elected in October of 2022, and we've been on a mission to restore confidence in the Alberta economy, the investment environment, double our oil and gas production, fight back against bad Ottawa policies and do some reform of our health system and various other

social programs along the way, as well as addressing some of the woke activism that we've seen take root over the last decade to try to get back to a more balanced conversation. that we aren't constantly worried about cancel culture and some of the extreme abridgments of free speech that we've seen. So that's sort of the approach that I've taken to government in the last few years. And it seems that, you know, there's always going to be people who agree with you and people who disagree with you. But we try to chart a pathway where we think we're in sync with what the majority of Albertans want. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I just wanted to say, nuanced is completely independent and self-funded.

We're not asking you for money. We're asking for 10 seconds of support. Like this video, subscribe, send this episode to a friend, and if you're listening on any podcast platforms, please rate us. Every new viewer helps us bring more of Canada's most consequential voices to the table. And my promise in return for your support is to keep doing the work and having the honest, thoughtful conversations I believe our country needs. Thank you so much.

you have a fascinating origin story and I'd like to take you all the way back to one of the courses you took, executive federalism that was taught by Peter Loheed is how we say it in British Columbia. And one of the people that was in that class was Nahed Nenshi, who's now your opposition leader. I'm wondering, can you bring us back to that class? What was going on then? And is it, what are your reflections on the fact that now you're sitting across the aisle from him. It was a very popular course. And so the main professor was Professor Keith Archer at the time, because Professor Roger Gibbons had been conducting it, but I think that he was on vacation. That's my recollection. He was on some kind of sabbatical. And then what would happen is that

Peter Laheed is how we normally say it in Alberta. He would come in and he would be the moderator of the final forum. And the forum was a model first minister's conference. And So there was a federal team, and then each team representing each of the provinces. And then there was also a media team. And so I was on the federal team. I was the Indigenous Relations Minister. And Nhad Nenshi was on the Quebec team. There were a couple of other notables.

Rob Anders, who went on to get elected at the federal level. He was on the Alberta team. And there have been various others who I still run into in different roles that they've taken on in either. political advocacy or lobbying or some other way. Ezra Levant was another one, correct? I don't think Ezra was in that course in the year that I was in. He was on campus at the same time because he had been the immediate past president of the Reform Club on campus.

I was the current president of the Progressive Conservative Club on campus. And so there were some areas we disagreed, but at that time, more areas of disagreement than agreement. But he's become a good friend over the years since we both. left university. But yeah, and Nath Nenshi was also, I believe he was the president of the progressive or the campus political science association. And so we had this wonderful club's office where whether you were a reformer or progressive

conservative or not aligned or a liberal or an NDP, we would all sit around and hash out our ideas. It was a pretty healthy political environment to be in at the time. I always wish that we could return to those days where people of different political views could be together in the same room and have a robust conversation but respectful conversation.

I interviewed Nenshi, and he said that you guys were in the same social circle, remained in contact many years after, and once you sought political advice from him, since he became opposition leader, he says you guys have exchanged perhaps a hundred words.

Do you think partisan politics destroyed your guys' friendship? Well, I think, you know, My view is that I try to be respectful to those who are respectful of me. And the tone that I've seen from, from the head mentioned since he got in opposition hasn't really been conducive to having a very constructive relationship. But sure, yeah. I mean, when he was on, when he was mayor of Calgary, I was a commentator and radio at the time. And so I would often have commentary about the decisions that he was making. We did also. see each other at various social environments. When I left politics, I left it a pretty bad way the first time you may recall back in 2015. I did call him to seek advice about what life might look like after politics and if he had some advice for me. But yeah, I mean, we're in an environment, unfortunately, where I think that the oppositional role, you don't need to be oppositional

on everything. I mean, when I was in opposition, I took a bit of a different view because I was running a conservative party, the Wild Rose Party at the time. I was wanting to replace the progressive conservative party. But somebody asked me if I was, if I was always oppositional. And I went back and I said, no, we voted with the government on 75% of their agenda. It was just that there were certain key areas that we felt that we needed to be oppositional on. I haven't seen that with the current opposition member. I don't think he votes with us on anything. In fact, it seems like he's taken the view that he's got to oppose everything that we do. And so I think that's part of the reason why it's it's actually the way he's conducting himself in opposition which

I think has led to to to more of that polarization. I'm always prepared to talk to folks to try to find some common ground where we can work together. I feel shares it because look at the absolute transformation in the relationship that I've had with the current federal government. I mean, I had lots of reasons to oppose Justin Trudeau and Stephen Key Boe backed by the federal NDP at that time. Jug meet Singh, but as soon as Mark Carney came in and did and chose not to look to the NDP for his political fortunes and was willing to work with us. And, you know, that was the spirit that I discussed a number of changes that we've been able to make. And I think we've had, we've had great progress in undoing a lot of the bad laws that sadly had been advocated and advanced

because of the NDP liberal coalition at the federal level. So I think I've demonstrated that I can reach across the aisle and find areas of common ground. And I'll continue to do that. I'll share hopefully as good news. I did ask Mr. Nenshi if he could say anything good about your government and your work. And he did offer three examples. The most important one from his perspective was your approach on recovery. And he said there are some things I'd tweak, but overall the recovery model that we're seeing in Alberta is effective and probably one of the most successful approaches. But Nenshi also said that on your first day in his first day in the legislature, you told him a story about getting a better grade in that university course by doing something.

he considered unethical or perhaps cheating. What story did you tell him? Well, I don't know that it got a better grade as a result, but there was a, the Alberta team made the mistake of leaving their paper in the political club's office. And one of my friends grabbed it and copied it and gave it to me. And I was able to use it to craft our own strategy as the federal team. And we ended up winning that round. So I guess I'll leave it to others to decide whether or not that that's fair game or not. But it was certainly helpful when we went into the round of negotiations to know what the other side's bargaining position was. There's something fascinating I find about conservatism, which is that it has different kind of personifications. I think you're one, Pierre Pauliev is one, and then Doug Ford is one.

Can you just help me understand what are kind of the core philosophical differences or similarities that you see? Because you're kind of the main three players we hear about a lot in the news when we talk about conservatism. Well, just walk me through that again. So tell me the three that you want me to compare against. Pierre Pollyevs, Doug Ford's, obviously, they are very, they disagree on a lot, I think, about where conservatism is. And then there's yours. And I've seen some commentary saying yours is like conservatism in action. It's being personified by you in the strongest way through commentary I've read online. So I'm just curious, do you think that you're all kind of on the same page about issues or, Are there stark differences between all of your views on what conservatism looks like?

Well, I would say conservatism is different depending on which part of the country that you're in. And conservatism takes on a different tone depending on who the leader is as well and what the priorities are. I think for our approach, we always try to find areas of common ground. And so I say our conservative movement is an act of will. And so when we get together at our AGMs, if we only ever focused on the things we would disagree on, our movement would split apart. And it has split apart in the past. And I've been responsible for some of that split in the past. But my approach to it now is let's focus on the areas where we can agree. And so I think on areas where Pierre, Apolli, of Doug Ford, and I would all agree is, number one, we've got to keep our level of taxes as low as we possibly can. Number two, we've got to focus on investment because the best approach for somebody to be able to support themselves is to have a good paying job. And to create an environment that allows that, it's a low tax environment, but it's a low regulatory environment. I think generally we probably also take the approach that more competition is better than less competition because it's through competition that you end up with innovation.

And it's through competition that you end up getting better ideas. And so we apply that to how we approach government services. We like to have a lot of different providers of government services. Education is a prime example where we have public school, Catholic school, independent school, charter school, homeschooling, because we think that competitive environment gives more choice to families. I think that that would be another commonality. I think that we probably would also agree on our approach to our hardworking blue-collar

tradespeople, that they are the ones that when we build big, ambitious projects, it's the pipe fitters and the electricians and the carpenters and the welders who are going to benefit from that. And so I would say that the conservatives have done great work in making sure that we've elevated in esteem, the skilled trades and professions so that we can get more people into those. So I can go through a number of things where we could find common agreement. And those would be very different than what we see on the left. I would say that on the left, we see that they tend to increase taxes, increase regulation.

They shut down entire industries, the oil and gas industry being one of the latest that they had been working to shut down. And I think that they've actually sacrificed the interests of working people on the altar of an extreme environmentalism that is basically an unoppose-everything kind of approach. So that's why I'm saying broad brushstrokes. Conservatism has some very strong strain. So whether it manifests in Ontario slightly differently than it does in Alberta, slightly different than federally, I would say that the economics is what binds us. What I find is in Alberta is we have the ability, I think, to undo a lot of the damage of wokeism and cancel culture, maybe because we have a bit more support of our public and a little bit more of an approach that favors free speech.

And so that's part of the reason why we've been able to take ideology at the school. and why we were able to pass the Peterson law so that we could rein in our out-of-control professional colleges that were targeting professors like Jordan Peterson for no other reason. Then he did some mean tweets on Justin Trudeau. It's not a good enough reason for us to sanction and send people for re-education. So we've done some things along those lines. We also took a strong position on protecting women and girls in sport and making sure that young children didn't make decisions about transitioning their gender

before they were adult enough to understand the long-term consequences and supporting parents' rights. I mean, that's another thing that we lead with is that parents always need to know what's going on with their kids. So it could be on some of those social issues because we've got a broader societal consensus in Alberta. We're able to move a little bit faster on some of those. But I would say on a lot of the big things, we're in great sync with the federal conservatives as well as Doug Ford. That's a really interesting point you raised. and I'd be interested in your thoughts on, I've interviewed, you might know, Francis Whittowson,

and she came out early on the unmarked graves controversy in Kamloops, and many other people did, and they've been maligned by many people for coming out with their positions on, hey, like, you have to dig in order to confirm whether or not there's 215 unmarked graves in that location. And with Jordan Peterson, with Francis Widowson, there's kind of this attack on people who come out early, on issues. And your movement on some of the ideology in schools and stuff, you came out early. And then we started to see other states, other countries, start to take action in a similar way after the fact. So it

can be very hard to come out early on an issue like these that are considered very controversial at the time. And then society starts to move. And now I'm being invited onto campuses as a First Nations chief to talk about what Kamloops should do in response to these things. They don't want Francis still. They they still are nervous about having those conversations with those individuals. How do you think we should think about people who come out early on issues? And it's very controversial at the time. And then the zeitgeist changes and their views start to become more normalized. Well, let me see a word about Francis.

I mean, it's a shame that we can't have a conversation on that. Because I remember, I think I was on the air at the time when that came out. And someone called in and said, priests and nuns were murdering children and burying them in mass graves. That's what she thought was happening based on the reporting that she has read, which is a pretty extraordinary thing for someone to say. There is an argument about perhaps some graves had wooden headstones, and the wooden head markers are gone.

And perhaps there are also kids who died in the schools, and their parents weren't informed. We actually have to be able to have a true understanding of what happened here if we're going to have an honest conversation about it and if we're going to address it in a way to make sure that we reconcile with the past. And I think it's a shame that we're not able to have an honest conversation about when on there because it's it seemed to be something that is so controversial. Understanding is important because that one woman who I just started my story with, that is a pretty outrageous impression to leave people. with, which has immense implications on society, immense implications on those whose accusations are being raised against them. But if we don't know what occurred there, then we're not also going to be able to make a proper reconciliation with the past. So that's all I'll say on that,

and I hope at some point we are able to have an honest conversation so that we know what actually did occur there. But I don't think that we're in that state now. And I think that people should be a bit more open-minded in hearing the arguments so that we don't end up with the misapprehension of what occurred in history. You have to know what really occurred in history if you're going to develop appropriate policies to address it in the future. The approach I take is, look, I mean, it took us a long time on the issue of our approach to dealing with hormone treatment and surgery for children.

It took us a long time to get to the right position. And we talked to a lot of people about it. But I think what it came down to for me, because we did have. have some transgender individuals who were advising us. What it came down to for me was they said, I want to know what's going on with my kid. Didn't matter for them. One in particular has children now and said, I want to know what's going on with my kid. And then it also was really struck me that one said, you know, if I had transitioned as a young person and not been able to have children, then yeah, it's harder for me to transition now, but you know what, I wouldn't have my kids.

And so that's what I took by it, is that you have to be willing to talk to people who might disagree with you on your sort of broader agenda, but you have to hear the full perspective if you're going to make the right decisions. And then, of course, just watching young girls and women in sport feeling like they were being disadvantaged by not being able to compete against other women and girls in sport. And I think we have to ask the sales question. If a woman's category and a girl sports category exists, why does it exist? What's the foundational reason for that? And the foundational reason for that is because there's differences in physiology between men and women. If there weren't differences in physiology between men and women, we never would have developed a women's category and a girl's category in the first place. And so I try to be very practical about it.

I try to be very logical about it. I try to make sure that we're being measured in how we approach different issues. And then once we've landed on a pathway forward, then we have to go and we have to explain. the reasoning. And I think in explaining the reasoning, we did manage to get the majority of Albertans on our side. Your approval rating fell to 39% when the

separation controversy started. Then it rebounded 7 points to 46% after progress on the pipeline took place. What do you think Albertans are trying to tell you? I would say that the approach that I felt I needed

to take on the issue of the referendum was that we have to follow the law. And our law in Alberta says that if a certain number percentage of petition signatures are gathered on an issue, that we're obliged to put it forward to our fellow citizens for a vote. That's the law here. BC has a similar law, in fact, that's part of the reason why British Columbians ended up with a referendum on the HST. It's because they got the requisite number of signatures. And there is also a similar law in Saskatchewan. So I know it's unusual in the rest of the country to have that kind of citizen initiative. But we had 700,000

people, 400,000 signed one petition to remain and 300,000 signed a petition to leave. And we felt like to follow the law, we had to put something forward. That being said, there was no perfect question to put forward, because at the moment, the court has also said that we couldn't put forward a binding vote on separation without extensive indigenous consultation. So I wanted to test the waters. So we've put forward a motion that allows people to vote to remain, option one, or to start the process to leave, which is option two. And so I think that that approach got everybody mad. Those who wanted to remain just wanted a yes, no question.

Those who wanted to leave just wanted a yes, no binding question. And those who didn't want a question at all didn't want me to ignore the law. So I think the approach again that I took was one where I'm demonstrating respect for. for everyone who went through the process to try to get this meaningful debate to happen in Alberta. I trust Albertans, and I need to know what they have to say. I need to know what direction they want me to go, and they'll have that option to tell me that on October the 19th. Mr. Nenshi came forward and basically argued that the 400,000 who had petitioned to stay wouldn't want the question asked to begin with, and that's what he's hearing. How do you take that criticism?

Well, I know that there's a bit of rewriting of history going on there. But if you look at the proponent of that Forever Canada petition, he was very clear in his media commentary, multiple interviews, and in the petition that he filed in the first place, that he was asking for a referendum on whether to remain in Canada yes or no. And if you do that question, there's consequences. What if we had just put that question on as it was? What if the majority of people voted, no?

What was I supposed to do then? So we as a government took the time to figure out how we could get that, question on the ballot, and it is on the ballot. Do you want to remain in Canada? Is option one. But we also felt like we needed to clearly understand what it would meant if people voted the opposite, that they didn't want to remain in Canada. It means, in our view, they want to start the process to hold a binding referendum to leave. And so I think that unfortunately they maybe were trying to play a little bit too cute. And then at the end of it, when they got what they wanted, it was like the dog that caught the car, then they

tried to change their mind and saying, we don't really want this after all. But I have to look at it's saying 400,000 people signed that petition campaign, expecting there to be a referendum. And so there is. And that's what the law says. If you get enough signatures, then it will be put to the people for a vote. I don't think I have a right to comment on your province's politics because I live in British Columbia. And the experience, I try and put myself in the shoes of an Albertan and some of the frustrations I've heard about how equalization payments work, how Ottawa has influenced your economy's ability to grow and flourish. Those are all factors that influence my understanding of why this is happening. But on top of that, correct me if I'm wrong,

but it kind of also feels like there might be a strategy here that your conversations with Mark Carney and Ottawa, in order for those to be fruitful, having something like, hey, if we don't see movement, if we don't see progress, there is a group of people who want to separate from Canada if we're not able to land on terms, which, to be honest with you, seems like it gives you great negotiation power when speaking with Ottawa. Is that the case? And was any of that factored in to the decision to proceed with a referendum?

Well, as I said, the most important thing that the liberals did is not get into a coalition government with the NDP. Because let's look at where the NDP has situated themselves now. Abbey Lewis is called our West Coast pipeline a national disaster. he thinks it would be a disaster for the climate. But you know what? It would actually be a disaster if we continued down the pathway that the NDP want us to go down, which is to phase out all fossil fuels. And they're not even talking just about Alberta's pipeline.

They're also talking about liquid-natural gas as well. So that's the extreme view of the NDP. And that's the view that the current iteration of the federal liberals have rejected. And that opened up an avenue for me to have an honest conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney, about where we find ourselves in Alberta, that because of the extreme environmental positioning of his predecessor and the NDP, that has created this alienation in Alberta. There's no other industry that was targeted in the same way that the liberals targeted us with the NDP backing out and out talking about leaving it in the ground, failing to develop

it, phasing it out. Those are the language that we use. When I went to Quebec, I had a meeting of various business leaders. And I said, imagine if I came here as an Alberta politician and said, it's my mission to shut down your hydroelectric industry. It's my mission to make sure you never build another aluminum smelter. Imagine if I did that, because that's what Stephen Giebeau did to us when he came to Alberta. And now you can understand a little bit about why we have tension in the country. So I think on that basis, the prime minister and I have been prepared to have a reset.

And I think that you've seen we've given a little, they've given a little. And we've gotten to a place where I think this is going to be good for the country for us to develop the West Coast pipeline. And it's only a small number of very extreme voices in the NDP and the Green Party that don't want us to do this anymore. And so that's part of the reason why I feel encouraged, more encouraged than I have for a long time, that when you've got two major government-ready parties, the conservatives and the liberals, that both of them are of the view, that we need to develop our resources

and we need to get them to market, we need to work together, that's really positive for the country. And so that's what we're building on. That's what I'm trying to tell Albertans, that, yeah, the country didn't work so well in the past 10 years. But it's working better today,

and it's going to keep on working better if we keep on working at it. And I told the prime minister, I take the separatist sentiment seriously. I told him he should take it seriously as well. But I think you've also seen that the two of us are willing to work together to address the issues. And that's really what it's about. You don't address issues by ignoring them.

You address issues by validating that they are significant, they are real, and that we have to do something positive to be able to turn things around. And that's what I think is going to be persuasive to Albertans. It's not just papering over the 10 bad years. It's actually addressing the reasons why. that sentiment developed. And it was getting rid of the emissions cap, which we did, getting rid of the net zero power rigs, which we did just today. One of the other main ones they announced for sure

that we're not going to have net zero vehicles as well because it would have added something like $56 billion in cost to the economy. So someone has to be the one to say you're going in the wrong direction. You're driving the entire country off a cliff. I tend to be the person who is the first to stand up and say that. It takes me a little while to persuade others. to my viewpoint, but I'm glad to see that others are seeing the same thing that we saw three and half years ago. On the note of Mark Carney, I'm just wondering, a Globe and Mail journalist

Robert Fife came on the show, as well as Tony Keller, who's also a journalist with the Globe and Mail. They both said Prime Minister Mark Carney has had a remarkable year. Do you agree? I would say that he, if you want to compare him to where we were under Justin Trudeau, that there has been a major change and a major difference in tone. But we still have to see some progress. I mean, it's one thing to make an announcement. It's another thing to do. And so we are acting in good faith, going through the major projects office approach

to get our West Coast Pipeline approved. And I think I'll feel a lot more able to answer that question when I see some shovels in the ground. But I think the tone has absolutely changed. But we still need to see some progress. We need obviously to see an agreement on them, the Canada, U.S.-Mexico agreement, which is foundationally important to every part of our country to make sure that an agreement of that type continues in whatever form it's going to continue in the future.

I've been encouraged that there's a number of new trade agreements that have been signed with other markets. And it'll, again, with the passage of time, we'll see what that does to our exports. We also have another conference that's coming up in September that I'll be. attending with try to attract additional investment dollars with all the big sovereign wealth funds. So what comes out of that I think will also be important. So I think that there's a lot of steps and policy reversals that have occurred, which have set the stage for some positive things. But I think we still need to see some action. We still need to see some deliverables.

Two more quick questions. I know you're busy. So thank you so much for doing this. Alberta is projecting a $9.4 billion deficit. Does the province have a special? problem, a revenue problem, or is it just an economy that's too dependent on oil? It's not an economy that's too dependent on oil and gas, because our economy is doing great. We have had 300,000 jobs that have been created since I got elected in October 2020. We have more people working in the tech industry and in the tourism industry than we do in oil and gas. And so we have huge opportunity across a whole range of diversified industries for people to have meaningful, paying jobs here. We have got the largest workforce participation rate. We've got the highest

weekly earnings. Our investments are going up. So our economy is great. Government revenues are still too reliant on oil and gas. And that's a very different problem. Now, what we chose to do, predecessors to mine in Alberta, is chose to have lower tax rates and to subsidize the difference with oil and gas revenues. And what happened over the years is that more and more of the oil and gas revenues went to do those subsidies. So we've got to find a fine. find a way to get those two things in balance. We can now balance our budget on $74 WTI. But we need to get to a point where we can balance the budget if WTI goes down to 65. Because if you look at what happened with the budget, we were expecting at that time that

a WTI would be trading at $60, which would have resulted in that shortfall. So those are the conversations that we have to have right now is how do we slow down the rate of growth of our programs so that our revenues grow faster than our expenditures and so that we can become less and less reliant on oil and gas revenues. And that's an active conversation that I'm having with my finance minister now. Whether people agree with you or not

or your government or not, you have done a lot on a lot of different files and made significant moves on a lot of different files. I'm just wondering, as a leader, I think it's important to stay humble and be mindful of where you potentially fall in short. Do you have any areas on all the different issues you've tried to tackle and your government's tried to move forward on that you say we didn't do that

right, that didn't land, that didn't work, we could have done it differently. Do you have any regrets? Well, I have to tell you in virtually every area, you have to ask that question because the biggest challenge in leadership is you have to be able to make a decision. Because if you don't make a decision and keep moving forward, everything gets bottleneck. And so, yeah, I do make a lot of decisions. And sometimes we have to do some slight modifications and do some course. correction in order to be able to address them. There's lots of things that we have done on health care. And many of them have been very successful. We now have more doctors and nurses that are offering nurse practitioners that are taking on private patients. We've got a robust pharmacy area,

which offers a fuller scope of practice for our pharmacists as well as paramedics to be able to operate in our market. We're building more long-term care facilities, which is going to be really important on mental health and addiction. We've seen a 40% decrease in opioid deaths since we started down our recovery path, which is focusing on recovery rather than safe injection sites and safe supply. So those are things in healthcare that are working, but we haven't made as much progress on improving the patient experience in the hospital environment. And that's number one for me over the next year is now that we have taken and are making progress in those other areas of health, how do we make sure that when a person walks through the

door that they're seen and treated and released or seen and and, uh, uh, and, uh, and admitted to hospital efficiently so that they're not waiting for hours and hours in emergency rooms. We have to also make sure that, that, uh, we, we have, uh, fewer and fewer people who are waiting longer than, than medically recommended. And so we're trying new things. So we tried a few things and they didn't get us the progress that we want. And so now we're doing dual practice. We're doing a preventative health testing. People are going to be able to, if they think something's wrong, go and pay for their own preventative health test. And if they find that there's something that

they need to get treatment for, we'll get them in right away. And we're also doing patient-focused funding. We're having funding, follow the patient to receive the surgery that they're seeking so that we can reward hospitals that are able to find a way to do more surgeries. And so

that's sort of the next stage. Not everything was able to get all of those outcomes immediately, but you don't just stop and say, oh, gee, that didn't work. You say, okay, well, that didn't work perfectly. Let's try to find something else. And so that's what we're going to keep on doing. Well, thank you, Premier Daniel Smith, for sharing your time. I'll say one thing that I think is important from my perspective. I have complimented the Alberta next panel that you went through

because I think it is democracy in action. And I've urged the Premier David Eby and British Colombians to consider that process. We have a lot of controversial stuff going on in our province right now. And we just need to hear from citizens. We just need to know where the temperature is on so many different issues. And I've promoted your process. I get that a lot of people might disagree with some of the questions and some of the ideas that came from that.

But that has nothing to do with me. I just believe citizens should be consulted. They should be invited into conversations. They should be able to participate. And it just reminds you that democracy can be so scary to people. The idea that you're doing this separatism referendum conversation,

a referendum about whether or not to have a referendum, scares people. And it's like, do you not trust the citizens to make an informed decision? Like I am a First Nations chief. I just implement what my citizens and what my community members tell me they want. It has nothing to do with me. I'm not, I don't know what's best for them.

They know what's best for them. I'm just letting them make their decisions and I'm here to enact what they want. And I know that's controversial to some people, but I just think it's so important. Immigration was an area federally that we did not get to vote. We did not get to participate in a process to make such a major decision that really reshaped our relationship with immigrants in a worse way. that I don't support, I don't think we should be mean to people because they had, they legally came to this country.

I think we should be mad to the federal government for how they handled the file and that they didn't consult with Canadians. And when you don't do that and you have issues arise with the process, then you get people thinking, okay, you didn't make this decision for me as a Canadian. So who did you make it for? Lobbyists, the WHO, like the World Trade Organization, who isn't making you make these decisions? And that's where a lot of those conspiracy theories came from,

is like you're not doing it because I didn't vote for this. I didn't say I want more immigration at this level. And so I just, I respect your ability to go back to your citizens and go get their feedback and let them guide your decision making. And I'm urging my government in British Columbia to consider taking that approach. We might not like what we hear.

It might be tough to hear some of the comments they have. But that's your job as an elected leader. And so that's my, my compliment for you is I just, I see you do that and I see you take a lot of tomatoes for that. And I just don't understand how we can live a democracy and not like the fruit that democracy bears. Well, let me then just add one more to that because we had a very controversial decision for a major road bypass that needed to be made. And the Soutina Reserve was right near the city of Calgary.

And they took it to their people to get a referendum to go ahead with it. And guess what? The first referendum failed. And so then their leadership went back and negotiated a different arrangement. And then it went to the people and it got approved. And it's been an incredible economic opportunity for the nation. There's been so much positive that has come out of it. But I think it was a better process that they had the buy-in of their own citizens through a very similar type of process.

So referendum, it doesn't have to be. It's only done in Alberta or it's only done in non-Indigenous communities. It can be done anywhere. It's the kind of approach that if you really care about what your people say, you need to hear them out. And if you get it wrong, then you need to find a way to either. change the deal to be persuasive to get it right or you need to switch direction. So thanks for the compliment. But I think it's a type of approach that can be used in more in more environments and in more questions. And I think it'd be good for democracy to do it. I think you're completely right. Thank you

again, Premier Daniel Smith for sharing your time today. You bet. Thank you.