Shaun Newman Podcast - #372 - Premier Danielle Smith

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Live with Premier Danielle Smith. January 22nd SNP Presents: Rural Urban Divide featuring: Vance Crowe, QDM & Stephen Barbour.   Get your tickets here: snp.ticketleap.com/ruralurbandivide/ Sylvan Lake February 4th Tickets/More info here: https://intentionallivingwithmeg.com/sovereignty Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

background. So might get photo bombed. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by premier Daniel Smith. You know, uh, well, first welcome, I think, is probably in order. Nice to talk to you. I feel like I have a different job every time I talk to you. And I think I do. Pretty much. You know, the last time you're on was episode 279. That was June 17th, uh, of 2022. Um, of course, uh, for the podcast goers today, I'm at episode 3702, so it's almost 100 episodes later for me, which is, you know, full beard, full teeth, all those good things. You recall my journey and growth as well.

But for you, you know, back then, you were hoping to become Premier. Now you are the Premier. How have things been going? Wow, what a different six months makes, hey? I would say that I'm so delighted after getting elected that everybody was able to put their differences aside. so that we could be unified. It's interesting when I started out,

especially during the leadership, everyone was talking about how unity was going to be the number one issue. And I tried to set the tone by saying, I understand how leadership races are a bit rough and tumble. Let's let bygones be bygones and forge a head together. And I must say, everybody has taken me up on that. And so we worked as a team to identify the issues

that we care the most about, standing up to Ottawa, jobs and economy, affordability, health care. And those are the things that I've been, I've been busily working on it because we're unified as a caucus, it's allowed us to take some pretty bold steps, ones that I think are going to make a difference for Albertans. So I'm pretty pleased with, I mean, I think I've only been technically, I got a point, I got sworn in October the 11th. So I am just over the three months mark. You're three months in. Quite a ride. Yes, yes.

You know, you, your words, I think, you ran on three things and correct me if I'm wrong here, standing up to Ottawa, defeating Rachel Notley, and restoring our freedoms. A couple of the ways that you talked about doing that was for the Standing Up to Ottawa, an Alberta Sovereignty Act, which has turned into an Alberta Sovereignty Act within the United Canada. You know, you talked about restoring our freedoms. I know on this side of the mic, no more lockdowns, no more mandates, I know to certain people, including myself, there are lingering mandates that are still in there with companies and everything else, but there hasn't been a lockdown, there hasn't been mass

put back on kids, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, defeating Rachel Notley, well, we'll wait and see what May brings. But have you, like, how do you feel so far in the first three months? I'm kind of rehashing the same thing. You ran on things. I feel like you've delivered on a lot of it. But certain people, a lot of people, feel like maybe there's more to be done. there may be more to be done and and I'm always open to suggestions on on how to approach that. I was actually glad to see that the mandates for the most part have been lifted by companies on their staff and on their customers. That's what I was hoping for. I don't think that we should have a province where there's any discrimination.

So my views on that are well known. And I'm, you know, I'm always still, you know, watching to see whether or not there are any additional issues that we have to address. So if there are, I'd like to be, I'd like to be informed of those. But the, there are also, it's interesting, you probably see this too. I think now that we are past the worst of the last two and a half years, the sense that I get is that people really want to look forward. I think we need to learn from what happened in the past. But I think learning from it is let's assess whether the practices and the laws that we had in place did the right balance. and then in the future, do we have to make any legislative changes?

That's kind of the conversation that I'm having right now is looking forward. Do we need to adjust how we approach future pandemics? And I think that's for the most, that's a lot of what I'm hearing from people is they want to know what happens if we get some new variants, some new virus. What are we going to do next time? And I think we have to have a robust plan to deal with it. You know, looking at the future, I thought it was, I laughed. I laughed aloud this morning, Danielle, because I,

I came in here and I was kind of like, you know, getting things ready. I was up early. I couldn't sleep, you know, as people can probably imagine. And I'm like, ah, I wonder what starts today. I wonder what's going on. And it's funny because the last time me and you talked, we talked about Klaus Schwab, and I don't want to pull you into all these different things, except we both agreed he's written a book on it and he's been pushing it.

And what starts today? Of course, the World Economics Forum in Davos starts this week. Do you pay any attention? Are you paying close attention? to what happens out in Davos? I'm watching Andrew Lawton. I mean, bless his heart with True North. He's gone, I think, the last couple of years.

And he pointed out, I think, in his tweet today, that I think it costs $650,000 to be a member of that group. It costs $250,000 to attend. And politicians attend for free. I think here's the thing. We have to wonder if there's an appetite in the public for me as a politician to be spending time in a paid access venue where the leaders brag about how much control they have

over politicians. I don't see any value in going to that. I'm focused right here in Alberta. I'm watching what comes out of it through the reporting by Andrew Lawton because I think that they, unfortunately, have an aspiration for our economy to shut down our energy industry.

We've been hearing all about the just transition ever since we started the beginning of the year. And if you look at the report that came out from Blacklock's reporter, they've done a story today that confirms my worst fears that they talk about how we need to transition oil and natural gas workers into jobs like janitors and driving trucks for solar companies. This is the language that they're using in the bureaucracy. That doesn't come from nowhere. That comes from a large, concerted effort by a number of people who want to shut down our oil and natural gas industry. And I won't stand for that. Nor I'm going to rub shoulders with people who share that aspiration.

We're going to make sure that our oil and natural gas industry stays strong. There are good paying jobs for the long term, that we transition our energy use in a way that makes sense for Alberta, which I've talked a lot about, carbon capture and hydrogen and bitumen beyond combustion and petrochemicals and exporting LNG. That's what I think our future is, but it is not on side with some people. And I think it's my job to make sure I stand up for Alberta. You know, when you say it's not outside for some people, I think of our, uh, the fearless leader of the country, Justin Trudeau. Um, the just transition, you know, is, is something, you know, out here in, um, rural Alberta, Saskatchewan, you know, Lloyd being right on the border, you know, oil industries is big out here. And basically it's talking about phasing out, you know, with all these different climate goals over the next, you know, as early as 2025 to 2030, uh, you get the point. Um, how, how, you know when you're just a you know on a podcast on a on a radio show you know when it's just us to talking you know months and months and months ago it's it's one thing now you're sitting in the

chair where you have to deal with the federal government you're speaking for a province you know you're trying to be as you'd put it a senior partner at the table how have those conversations been going have there been conversations when you're trying to defend you know Alberta's you know vital industry. Well, that's the shocking thing, is the only communication I had with Justin Trudeau was sort of a courtesy call when I first got elected as Premier. And I didn't waste an opportunity to let him know exactly where Alberta stood. I told him that we were going to make sure that we defended our full constitutional areas.

I told him we were sending a delegation to COP 27 to make sure that our views are represented internationally. We did. We also sent a delegation to COP. 15, which is on biodiversity. I told him that we expect that he'll work with us to export LNG and get credit for it because the Paris Accord allows for us to get credit if we reduce emissions elsewhere. So I didn't waste the opportunity. But here's the thing that I find so shocking is that they keep on announcing all of these policies that are not in their area of jurisdiction. And they don't even call to tell us what's on their mind, what it is that they want to do. I would also add one more thing. The only reason why Justin Trudeau continues to have a government

is because he's being propped up by the NDP. So Jugmeet Singh has made it a condition of their partnership until 2025 to pass just transition legislation. So no wonder the NDP leader here has been running away every time she's asked the question about it, about whether she supports standing up for our oil and natural gas workers or whether she supports the agenda in Ottawa. I can, I'm not, I'm very clear about where I stand.

To me, I'm going to make sure we do everything we can to preserve these jobs and to make sure that we're doing it, that we're reducing emissions in a way that makes sense for Alberta. I wish that she would do the same. I wish she would use her position to tell her, to tell her national boss that this is not on, that this is not going to work for us. Because I have to tell you, I also know a little bit about your area.

Of course, agriculture is big there too. This report says that the most jobs that are going to be impacted are in agriculture. There's 2.7 million jobs across our manufacturing, agriculture and oil and gas industry, but they say the most jobs are going to be impacted are going to be in agriculture. What on the world do they have in mind there? They announced a few things while we were in process of our leadership. They want a massive emissions cap on fertilizer 30 percent by 2030. They want a massive emissions cap on oil and natural gas. They proposed 42

percent by 2030. They said that we should reduce methane emissions, 75 percent by 2030 as well. all of these things are going to impact two of our largest industries. And we need to stand up against that. We need to do everything we can to fight back. I'm pleased to see that Scott Moe is doing the same thing. Not only is it going to impact our industries. It's going to impact the people. I mean, like we're dealing with inflation out of the wazoo right now and part in the technical term. But I mean, what's going on right now is not good for the common person. And then you start to talk about not only food but energy, where that leads is not good. With LNG, you bring up working to export LNG, have you, I feel like I've heard you talk about

Germany was one once upon a time. Japan's another one that's come up recently. Have you reached out? Have you talked directly to either of those, I don't know the, the proper way. Like a consul general? You know, the Japanese consul general has come to a couple of events and he gave me a business card at the WestJet announcement, because you probably saw that WestJet has announced direct flights from Calgary to Tokyo. So that gives you some indication of how strong our ties are. We've actually had a trade office for Alberta in Japan for 48 years. So we've got a staging area to be able to advance that partnership.

I wrote a letter to Justin Trudeau before his meeting with the prime minister of of Japan basically telling him, don't blow it this time, because last time he blew it with a German chancellor saying there was no business case, I underscore with, you know, three, three underscores that there is a business case to export to Japan. I mean, Mitsubishi, for instance, is one of the investment partners in an LNG project on the West Coast. Of course we have a case to expand the LNG. The easiest way to do it would be to double the capacity of that existing plant when it comes

on stream. And there are three additional lines that have already been approved. They're just looking for an LNG export partner, but they need an indication from the federal government that they're going to do what finance minister Christopher Lund said, which is to fast track energy projects to benefit our allies. And I'm not getting very clear responses from that. So nice to see that we've got a team Canada. Let me just say they did announce they're going to do a team Canada trade mission. And I can tell you my energy minister, Pete Guthrie, has already reached out and said he's going to be on it. So that, that I think is the approach that we'll take. We've got to be there to make our own case because I just don't trust that Ottawa can make it for us. I don't think anyone out

West thinks they can make it for us. I'm curious, is there any way, have you had discussions with your team or maybe even the Western provinces? Is there any way to, you know, you talk, I've heard you talk lots about, you know, sometimes you just can't wait for the federal government when it comes to, you know, I'm thinking of the, the HHS, right? You didn't sit around and wait for things to happen, you acted, you got moving. On something like this, I'm just wondering, is there a way to act to push the ball, to move it down the court so that it can actually be enacted relatively quick instead of waiting for the federal government to act like it's going to do its best for Alberta. Meanwhile, they talk about just transition and pulling us out

of a whole bunch of things and reducing emissions and all these different targets that they've set, when we could be helping parts of the world that are struggling. There's two major pieces of work I need to do. One is that I need to talk to the new BC Premier, David E.B., which I'll be doing this week to see how much common cause we have. I've been delighted to see, actually, that British Columbia has been on board with LNG export. I think they understand that as we export more LNG to the world, it does reduce global emissions. I'll give you an example.

So when LNG Canada is up and running, it will export for BCF a day. If you calculate how much coal that would displace, it's 15 megatons for every one BCF. That's 16 megatons of emissions if it's going to displace higher emitting fuels. That's positive. So that says to me that we should be building more of them. That's the case I'll certainly make to Premier Eby. And then on top of them, I've had very constructive conversation with some treaty eight chiefs. one, one, Chief Isaac, who has offered to take the lead on helping to establish economic corridors.

He's already been doing some of this work. I said, you know what? You tell me what you think would be the best route, and we will work with you on that. Because I think the future, I think the future for economic reconciliation is going to be these constructive partnerships and equity partnerships with our first nations. Do you think to the West, you know, BC has not been the easiest to deal with when it comes to Alberta exports or pipelines or a whole list. of different things. You think that's the best way to go, Daniel, is to the west and not working with, say, Saskatchewan, Manitoba with some different things through the Hudson and that type of thing. I know that's been discussed at length. I think it's both, really. And I would

say that I was told recently that there's about five BCF of natural gas that comes from British Columbia through Alberta to get to U.S. markets. So I'm quite pleased that British Columbia, that were able to provide that assistance to British Columbia, so that there to sell their product, have local jobs created, get royalty revenues. I would just ask for the same in return. Hey, look, we're assisting you, getting your product to market. Let's see if you can assist us, getting our product to market. We'll see how that conversation goes. But in addition, we certainly do have to work with our partners in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. And that would be something that I would look to the leadership of our First Nations in identifying the corridors

assisting me in the consultation and also assisting me in figuring out how the joint ownership of that would work. So that work is already, the conversations have begun. And now we just have to see if we can engage further with them on making some progress. Some of these things are a little bit slow. But I've said during the campaign, my aspiration would be for us to identify corridors with our First Nations partners going east, west, north, connecting into Thunder Bay. So we have the great lake system access. I really think that we should be looking at as many routes as possible. and looking at it as a real opportunity to bring jobs and prosperity to all of our First Nations communities. Switching gears here, Annette Lewis has been in the news now for quite some time.

And if listeners, I assume listeners are up to date, but essentially she's lost two court bids to be reinstated on an organ transplant. Geez, can't spit it out this morning. List after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. It's all the way up now asking the Supreme Court. to Canada to hear her case against AHS. I mean, there's millions of Canadians that are watching this. Certainly where we sit at today with all the different information that's come out about the COVID-19 vaccines and everything else, there's just an incredible amount of information.

And the fact that she's being held off of a list because of that, you know, you'd mentioned this is now a month, month and a half ago about getting a Second medical opinion, different things like that. Where does it sit in your mind right now, especially at being an Alberta resident? I did seek advice from a transplant expert. And one of the pieces, what I got back was this, that transplant decisions are very difficult to make because there's just a limited number of organs. It's life-threatening conditions.

And they have to look at it through a lens of what gives the patient, the recipient, the greatest chance of survivability because they're on immunosuppressant drugs to make sure they don't do organ rejection afterwards. And this is one of the new deadly viruses that are out there. And the medical opinion was that it's one of the things that ensures greater survivability. On my second opinion, I didn't get anything that contradicted that. And so I'll watch the court play the process out. I understand the frustration that people have. But I think that we have to be aware there's just so many factors that go into determining the best patient and the likelihood of survivability. I'm just not qualified to make that kind of judgment.

And so I think we do have to rely on the medical experts on this. And if there is some legal challenge that would overturn that, then we'll see how it goes at the Supreme Court. I worry about the precedent it is setting to deny a person who has chosen not to put that, you know, one thing, and that would put her back on the list. Like to me, it just seems so obvious. And when it comes to the medical experts, you know, I'm not trying to regularly get into this conversation,

so I'll just say it. It has been very one-sided. We're starting to see more come on media. Mahaltra has been a guy out of Britain, who's been very vocal, he was even on BBC, talking about different things. But I think that's very, very concerning to a lot of people, and I'm probably using light terms that we're not like and I don't know you know it's probably

one of the hard things in your position Daniel I I'm curious maybe you can give the listener a bit of like you know it's not like you can just walk in and swap things down or maybe again I don't know yeah I think my views on this are well known I do believe in in medical choice I think that issue of transplant is a bit unique because we're talking about putting people on immunosuppressant drugs and I think we've all acknowledged that those who are immunosuppressed have greater risk on a whole variety of viruses, including influenza, and COVID has been added to that list. So I look at that as a little bit different, and that's why I want to defer to the medical experts on that.

But if it was applied more generally, I mean, quite clearly, I have said that we need to preserve medical choice. And that's what we've done in Alberta. I've made my views very well known. I've been placed to see that most of the companies. and operators in Alberta have gone down that same track. But the question of what can you do? It is a bit frustrating.

There's no question that once the wheels of justice roll on certain cases, that there really isn't anything a politician can do other than watch it play out. And as cases are decided to see whether that recalibrates the decision-making on the two things that a prosecutor has to consider, is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction and is it in the public interest? So we're watching these cases unfold. And I think that we'll see that that's the kind of decision making that we have to leave to the Crown prosecutors.

I know that because we've been so influenced by the states, I think that some people, I think that a premier has the same power as they do in the states of clemency or offering pardons. And I've not observed that that's the case in Canada. We just have a different criminal justice and different legal system. and once things have been handed over for prosecution, politicians have to be hands-off. So I'm watching it all with great interest. I'm watching to see what those judgments are, but I do have to let that process play out.

I appreciate a little bit of clarification, or at least a little bit of understanding, because as a guy who sits here, you know, I think a lot of people believe, you know, the premier changes out and you're like a knight in shining army, you walk in and just, you know, And yet that isn't the way democracy and a whole bunch of different institutions work. Well, let me tell you how it does work, though. As you know, I held the medical profession and the medical professionals giving us advice accountable for the advice they were giving to politicians, which I think was flawed. And so we've got brand new leadership at the chief medical officer of health.

We also have new leadership at the helm of Alberta Health Services. The board has been removed. We have an interim CEO. We have an official administrator who is working every single day to solve the problems within the health system. And we're on a recruitment for a new chief medical officer of health. We had some changes within our cabinet leadership. Those are the things that I can do to give people some confidence that I listen to heard. And the things that I have under my power, I'm doing everything I can to make sure that we get an adjustment to a sort of an endemic world of dealing.

Is there a way for more transparency on the data? I follow a lot of people who really follow the data closely. You know, one of the things I always praised Alberta about all through COVID was their website. It just broke everything down. You could just see it in real time, as close to real time, I mean, as you could get. And I know lots of people have talked about it in the last six months. That's really disappeared. And I guess, I don't know, the concerning thing here is I'm closing it on time with

Yeah, I should have warned people. We only have, you know, we don't get the three hours that me and Danielle are accustomed to. And I do appreciate you giving me some time this morning. But one of the things about transparency they were talking about was, you know, like there's this worrisome trend. And maybe it's a logical explanation. But as you have new people in the medical side of things, has anybody been paying attention to this worrisome trend of the cause of death in Alberta being unknown? You know, like it wasn't, you know, it just, it was there five years ago as unknown. There's probably always some unknown cases.

But now it's been trending to where in 2021, you know, it was the highest cost. And then 2022 stats haven't come out yet, folks. So we can't say what it's going to be in 2022, but the trend shows that it's going up. Has that side been? Because I know for people to build trust, they just want transparency. They want to know what's going on. They want to understand the problems. Yeah, I'm inactive conversations with.

health about how we can do a bit of a data review so that we can get some answers to those questions. As I understand, part of the issue is that we do have a backlog in cases at the medical examiner's office. There have been a bit of turmoil in the medical examiner's office. So I think there's been a backlog in assessment. And so once we do the assessments, I would hope that some of those causes of death would be added to the death certificate. Here's the really sad reality. The really sad reality is that we have a lot of lot of fentanyl deaths, drug poisoning, overdoses, suicides. And those take a little longer for us to be able to find out what the cause of death is. As I understand it, fentanyl has been the drug of

choice for addicts and it leaves the system very quickly. So that's not a good news story if we've seen a spike in those kind of deaths. And that's part of the reason why we've made mental health and addiction, such a strong focus of our government. You may have seen last week that we opened our very first recovery community where addicts are going to be able to go and get peer support from others who are recovered addicts that are going to have therapy in the morning and have to do chores in the afternoon to keep the place going and vice versa and hopefully learn some marketable skills. Like this is something we should have been doing years ago when this emerging crisis came about. And so I think those two things are connected, but I agree with you

that we probably just need to take a closer look at our data here to make sure that we have those questions answered. I don't want anybody having any doubt about the, competence of our ability to collect and analyze data. So thanks for making me aware of your concern on that and just know it. It has been raised with me and I'm working with health to see how we might be able to address it. Well, I appreciate you giving me time this morning. Premier. Jeez, that's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Either way, I told you 25 minutes and how quickly does that go by? I tell you what, well, I look forward to the next time we hopefully get to sit and chat. I was hoping to talk about, you know, you got 10 different topics. You're, you're, you're,

you're raring to go with and somehow that's all that gets out so either way thank you so much for giving me some time this morning best of luck here as we proceed closer to may and i think everybody's paying very close attention obviously there's a lot of a lot of pressure put on the next couple months on you and everything else going on as the election looms a little closer you bet we'll do this again i know i know how you like to talk for three hours i don't think i'll be able to give you three hours but maybe we'll give you three hours over enough long periods of time in 25 minutes segments you're talking with you Sean thanks premier