Shaun Newman Podcast - #575 - Danielle Smith

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

The Premier of Alberta was in the studio. We discuss Coutts 4, emergency alert for the power grid, nuclear energy and Tucker Carlson.   Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Phone [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Danielle Smith. This is Tammy Peterson. This is Alex Kraner. This is Curtis Stone. This is Tom Longo. And you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday.

How's everybody doing today? Man, we've had a busy stretch here. And we're not slowing down today. Before we get on to the Premier. Yeah, that's right. The Premier being back on. Let's start here, shall we? Silver Gold Bowl, their North America's Premier, precious metals dealer.

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Tell him I sent you. Now, shall we get on to that tale of the tape? She is the 19th Premier of Alberta. I'm talking about Premier Daniel Smith. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the studio. Hi! You know, I was thinking about this.

You know, I only got a short window here, but I'm going to tell this a little story anyways. The first event I ever did was well before you were a Premier, and you were one of the guests on. stage and I thought it's funny because at this time at that time I don't think I had this studio and certainly it's kind of grown by leaps and bounds but it's it's pretty cool to finally get you in studio studio yeah I was I was thinking I was going to be coming to your home and it was going to be in your basement yeah everybody thinks I'm this tinfoiled hack guy sitting in my basement no this class I actually got going on here well I got to leave you with something to talk about

when you leave I'll be talking about it you know what I'm supposed to do I'm supposed to all the guests that come here I'm supposed to give them a silver coin but since you're an elected official I'm like I don't think I can do that. Probably not. Probably not. Because I'd have to go to the Ethics Commissioner. If it was less than $500 in value, I can actually accept it. Can you?

I can't. So a silver coin would be less than $500 in value. Oh, here we go. Look at this. Now, what's the significance of you giving me a silver coin? Is it because you want hard currency? Is it part of what happens with a lot of my first responders? They give me a coin.

I love having a former radio show host. It's a challenge coin. So if I don't have a coin and we go to a bar together and I don't pull the coin on, I'm the one who has to pay for a round of drinks. Is that why you're giving it to me? What you got? Liberty. Well, that says it all, doesn't it?

So that is a silver gold bull coin. Should I'm holding it up somewhere? So people can see what it is. Sure. Yeah. So a silver gold bull, well, you were at Tucker the other night. They were one of the major sponsors. are one of my major sponsors. Fantastic.

And so for anyone who travels to Lloydminster, because, you know, I'll joke with the Premier here. Once upon a time in younger years, you're like, it's the edge of the world over here. And I was like, the edge of the world, this is my home. I guess we live on the edge of the world. So anyone... Well, you know my family hails from here.

When my great-grandfather, maybe he's a great-great-grandfather, came up here, they settled in the Lloyd-Mister area, but actually on the Saskatchewan side, and I still have family who are in Lloyd-Mister. I tease. everybody thinks Lloyd Minster in both provinces at the edge of the world. So anyways, for somebody who make a trip all the way out to Lloyd Minster,

which happens now quite frequently, me and Silver Gold Bull talked. And I was like, we should give them something. We should give them something cool. It is really cool. So now and more people are going to want to come up here. I think so.

All right. I mean, you did it. For a good reason. Well, there is it. And I thought I couldn't even give you the bloody coin. Well, what is the value? You better just disclose right now. I don't know, $40.

$40. $40. Okay. That's allowed under our test rules. check the actual price today, but it's, it's well under 500 for a silver coin. I will find a place to mount it. Thank you. There you go. Okay. You, we started here. We only got a short period of time. It's funny because my phone has been blowing up this morning because there's a little bit of a convoy on the anniversary heading towards the Coots border. And I guess they did it last year too. It sounds like they go down and then they come back. You know, I had a Mocha

Bersergan, young Turkish reporter now living in Canada who's covered a lot of different things. Very sharp lad, like very, obviously for me to bring them up with you. Anyways, it's happening today. I've been getting text about it, and then I had late in gray on, and everybody's, you know, this Coots 4 thing. They've been in jail now, or not in jail, remand, for 712 days. The entire Canada looks at Alberta like it's kind of, you know, Texas of the North. We've got the best premier.

We've got a lot of things going on, and yet we have four guys sitting in jail for 710. 12 plus days now. Yeah, people know that I believe in the Constitution. And whether it was a mistake of our founders or not, the fact of the matter is criminal code is federal jurisdiction. And I will always assert our right to be able to exercise our jurisdiction where it's denominated. But when charges get laid and it falls into the policing process, it is completely out of the hands of politicians. I know I know people want to raise hope that somehow I can step in and provide pardons and amnesty and stop these cases from going ahead? I cannot.

I cannot. I went as far as I could in raising the questions in an appropriate way, which was to ask the question, is it in the public interest? I did that publicly. And is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction? I asked that publicly. I posed it to my justice minister, resulted in an ethics investigation. I think people should understand that even talking to my justice minister about a different

case resulted in an ethics investigation and I was not found. It was found that I shouldn't have made that call. So I wish people would understand that my heart is with freedom, but I understand also the limitations of the law. I guess us Canadians are so used to Justin Trudeau and his way of government that the ethics violations just stack up and it doesn't seem to matter. You went to Tucker Carlson. That was an interesting evening. Let's start with the liberals coming out the next day. Did you see Goebo and Rodriguez say that they should call on Pierre to basically denounce Tucker Carlson and all these different things? This is happening in our country.

You're like, well, this is interesting. Did you see all that? I saw some of it, but, you know, look, I've made no secret out of the fact that I think Stephen Gubo should be fired. And I know that Tucker, whenever he talks in scathing terms about federal politicians, he always talks about Justin Trudeau and Christopher Flynn. I said, hey, could you save a little bit of that for Stephen Gibo? Because Stephen Gibo is terrible for our country, terrible for national unity. He's an ideologue.

No one can work with him. And he's continuing to make decisions that are creating uncertainty and investment and causing harm to people. So I feel very confident in continuing to ask for Stephen Gibo to be fired. But you should, I mean, you know, because I come from the world of talk radio, and I believe that having robust conversations with a large number of people is the way that we exercise democracy and it's the way that we get better decisions. We're not going to get great decisions if all we ever do is only listen to the people we agree

with. We have to also listen to people we don't agree with. Find out where the common ground is. Find out where the differences are and see if we can forge some kind of public consensus. So I am all for free speech. That's one part. The other part is Tucker Carlson, just by demonstrating, he brought 4,000 people out and Calgary, 8,000 people out in Edmonton, and he also has, I don't know, like millions of people

watching each one of his broadcast. It would be ludicrous as provincial premier. If I didn't use the occasion of his visit to try to get out, our beautiful, amazing Alberta story, which is we can be the secure supplier of energy, an ethical supplier of energy, so that they have energy security, energy affordability, and we can reduce emissions. That was my message. And I think that I think it would have been irresponsible if I didn't use the opportunity to send that out. It was hard not for my ears to perk up at one of the things you said, and I even had guests from the states perk up at one of the things you said, and that was doubling oil output. Yep. Why not? I've talked to a number of people in the industry, and I've also talked to the

providers of our pipeline services, and there's ways to optimize our pipeline so that we can get more product going through them. So we've got Trans Mountain, which is coming on stream, imminently. We've also got coastal gas link that is finished and a number of different spur lines that can come off that will also increase our LNG export. We know that ammonia is going to be an increasingly important export product, as is hydrogen. So why wouldn't we double our combined production of both oil and natural gas you may have seen as well at the University of Alberta? They talked about how they've managed to find a way to turn bitumen into carbon nanofiber, which is going to be a component for construction materials.

There are 6,000 products that come from a barrel of oil. And if we move towards using them increasingly in different roles, if we're going to continue burning them, capturing the CO2, or if we're going to use them for construction materials and other components, I don't see any reason why we should be talking about reducing our production. We should be increasing it. And so that's the reason I thought we should put out a big goal. Let's double our production,

demonstrate to the world that we can increase, Canada's footprint, Alberta's footprint, and also reduce emissions and be responsible. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the industry respond to that challenge. Last time I had you on, you mentioned maybe we should talk about nuclear in Lloyd Minster. And I went, that's going to be for a different time when you come in person, because I'm going to leave it. But we're sitting in Lloydminster. You mentioned nuclear. What is it that you have in your mind or have been talking about or we're hinting,

alluding to with Lloyd Minster and Nuclear? Well, part of it is that Saskatchewan already has vast supply of uranium. Saskatchewan also is moving down the pathway of being able to identify sites where they can roll out small modular nuclear. And I think they've already gone through this process before, whereas we haven't. And so as a wonderful border city, maybe there's a way that we can collaborate with Saskatchew. That's what I was thinking, because it looks like Saskatchewan wants to move in that direction. We've signed on to an MOU with Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick. You've probably saw Capital Power, has talked with OPG about where they might be able to,

how they might be able to roll out small modular nuclear. The members of our party as well have also said that they're supportive of small modular nuclear. We've got several municipal leaders who said, hey, pick me. We'd like to be able to pioneer this, including some First Nations communities. So I think that there's a changing conversation. And so I like the idea that the Lloyd Minster seems to want to be an advocate for it, seems to be interested in having that conversation.

So we'll do the work because there's a lot of regulatory work that needs to be done. But I think it's important to have it as part of our energy mix, especially what we experienced on January the 12th. If we're going to have a diversified energy mix, we need baseload power. That's going to continue to work at 6 o'clock at night when the sun goes down. And the wind is blowing. And it's minus 40? And it's minus 40. Or what was it with the wind chill here?

Minus 50. Minus 50. Exactly. And so I think people now understand that it is difficult to rely 100% on natural gas as well because we had two of our natural gas. natural gas generators that were down. One because of a planned maintenance. The other, just because of mechanical failure, that can happen in really cold weather too, is that we're so grateful that all of our generator, most of our generators were able to operate, but having a 100% natural gas system is not going to give us the certainty that we need either. We need to have additional

base load power. Maybe it's hydro. Maybe it's intertized with other provinces. Maybe it's small modular nuclear, maybe it's geothermal, maybe it's a hydrogen, but that's the direction that we need to have the conversation going. How big of a shock was it to you? You know, the reason I, you know, I'm glad you bring up the possible brownouts because I'd had Shane Getson and Nathan Neuthorpe on it, just walk us through it, you know, what actually would happen? It's minus 40 out.

What are you going to do? And they get talking about, well, you'd be 30 minutes here and then 30 minutes there. And, you know, I got friends and listeners from all the world. over the world texting me going, isn't Alberta like energy rich? Um, yes, we are, but we've lost some coal. We've lost some other things. We've relied heavily on things that don't operate in really frigid temperatures, or no light and on and on it goes.

So when that day came, you know, how quickly are we pushing making sure that never happens again? Well, I've known that this was a danger for years. Um, I, I knew that there was a danger of price spike. So I was constantly trying to encourage people to get on a fixed price contract because I had been counseled that as soon as Cole came off, we were going to end up with greater volatility. I was pleading with people to get onto fixed price contracts. When I first got elected, I talked to my minister at the time saying, we have to solve this problem. We have to look at how intermittent power is contributing to instability in the grid because we had already started to have those alerts on our grid.

level three alerts means that you're in danger of having to move to brownouts. We're now at 14 of those level three alerts that have happened in 18 months. We went through a period from 2006 to 2017 where there were three. So that's the difference between having base load power on coal versus having an over-reliance on intermittent power and having to try to get natural gas to fit in. So we've created a market where we're rewarding instability and unreliability. we've got to create a market where we're encouraging the reliable sources to come on. So I knew we were going to be in trouble.

I had hoped that because we've got a couple of conversions that are coming to the end, Cascades power was coming on as well as two others. We're supposed to get 2,700 megawatts of new power coming on this year. I'd hope that the timing would work out and we wouldn't have ended up getting as close as we did. But that day, when it was 4 o'clock at night and Nathan Neudorff was watching what was happening with the increasing demand for power because people get home, you turn on their lights, they might need the extra space heater, they're cooking dinner, they're trying to do homework with their kids.

Went up to 12,393 megawatts, the highest that we've ever had. We had a couple of generators for gas that were down. And guess how much solar was generating at 5 o'clock at night when the sun went down? Zero. Guess how much wind was generating when it was that cold? Seven megawatts. And part of the reason is that when you've got sustained weather below my, minus 30, even if there is wind blowing, those turbines have to power down because there'll be

mechanical failure. So we've actually built a system that will not work with wind and solar when it's in the dark at minus 30 in the dead of winter, which can sometimes happen for weeks on end. And we can't be in a position where you say, well, you know, just wait until the sun comes up in the morning. What are people supposed to do between 5 p.m. and 9 o'clock in the morning? So we were 40 megawatts away from having to do rolling blackouts. And that would have meant 30 minutes at a time, people would have had their dinner interrupted, kids' homework interrupted, sitting in the dark, not knowing when the lights were going to come back on again. I can't imagine the terrifying situation that would have put people in.

And can I just say, Sean, that is terrifying. Because I was impacted by this because I watched what happened in Texas. Because Texas built their power grid very much like ours. And they had a similar problem with a couple of natural gas plants that went down and the wind and solar wasn't there to provide the backup. And 346 people died. And so this isn't just some sort of idle fight that I'm having with Stephen Gebo. It's a life or death fight. We're talking about minus 30.

Anyone in this province knows. Minus 30 normally, I mean, this year has been a strange year. I will give it that. But normally, in the middle of January and February, we will get weak, if not two, on a long stretch of minus 30 straight into minus 30. 40. So it is insane. One, two, you know, I could pile on wind and solar and on and beat that horse, but, you know, I had added some mortis-on, Chase Barber. That was a very interesting conversation. And he brought me back to maybe not crapping on wind and solar every step of the way, because it does have its place, just not baseload. As long as it's got a reliable backup, I mean, what should

happen in our system? But I mean, to act like we're going to put windmails in a province where we have parts of the year where they just aren't even efficient to use. Return on investment. Like, I mean, this isn't $10 to get a windmill going. This is something much larger. It's a major investment. And one of the things I've been surprised by, and I think I have to address it because I just find it so counterintuitive. So you have an event like that that occurs. And some of the commentary that you see on social media is, see, that's why the pause on wind and solar was wrong, and we need to build more wind and solar. And I have to want to want to. wonder what is that person thinking? So if you get zero power generated at five o'clock on a winter

night from solar and wind when you have 6,000 megawatts installed, why do they think that there would be more power generated if you had 50,000 megawatts installed? You still have no sun and you still have no wind able to operate under those conditions. The only thing that will work is base load power. So you need to be able to have natural gas that can come on when the wind and when the wind and solar aren't working, and you need to have some of those other things that we're talking about. So we need to be very clear about that. We're going to continue to grow as a province. Our energy demand is going to double by 2050, which means we have to continue adding new

substantial projects onto the grid. And so this isn't, if we don't keep up with that growth, then we're never going to get ahead of these level three alerts. And that's what we need to be. We need to be ahead of them. I told Chris Sims, I wasn't going to ask you this the last time, because she said it wouldn't happen. And then it happened.

So then I told Chris Sims, Chris, I'm going to have to ask now. Nine cents on fuel. Why? Because we have to come to terms as a province with how much money of our resource revenue we're spending on operations. We are getting $20 billion in in resource revenue this year. And $14 billion of it is being spent on operations. Now, remember what happened when oil and gas prices went at their lowest.

It was only generating $2 billion a year in revenue. for us. So if people want me to be able to get us off the revenue roller coaster, which I believe they do, we can't spend every single cent that we get. And we can't continue to cut the long-term sources of revenue that we have. The deal that we have with Albertons is when oil and gas prices are high, it means that your price at the pump is high, which means we'll take the gas tax off so that you're able to fill up at a reasonable rate. That program is going to be in the place, in place so that when gas, again, WTI gets above $90, we'll take the gas tax off. But oil has been trading in the low 70s to mid-70s.

And that's when the prices come down at the pumps, so the fuel tax comes back on. And we're going to continue to be that flexible. So what you're trying to say, then, if I'm reading this correct, is we won't see the high of highs, but we'll never see the low of lows. Absolutely. And I think that that's fair for Albertsons.

They should benefit when we have higher prices. But we can't be in a position where we continue to roll. rely this much on our oil and gas revenues because we'll end up in the same position that we have been every single time that other governments have done this. When there's a surprise in the market and the prices go down, we end up with massive deficits. And I'm a conservative, right? So I love the Lohyde vision of building up the Heritage Savings Trust Fund. I love the Klein vision of being debt-free.

And I love the Selmaq vision of keeping up with managing growth pressures as we invite more people into our province. So we've got to balance all three of those things. We've got to put money in the Heritage Fund, keep the investment income there so that we can grow it substantially. We've got to pay down our debt to a point where we're finally paying it off. And then we also have to make sure that we're investing in the roads and schools and hospitals and everything that goes to support it as more people come here. One more before I let you out of here, because I know I can just feel the time ticking away. But the Emergencies Act deemed unjustifiable.

Well, I mean, you know where I sit and probably 90% of my audits. if not 100% sit, except for me when you come on. I'm sure we bring in some other people that don't normally follow me. That's big news for our country. You know, when you saw that news, did you have any thoughts on it? Well, as you know, Alberta intervened in that because even though we were having our own issues in Alberta, they got resolved through the normal means of having them resolved. We didn't need the emergencies act, didn't want the emergencies act.

And so I was pleased to see that outcome. I guess the fact that the federal government didn't accept their error and just say, whoops, I guess we're wrong, we'll never do that again. And they're appealing it. That tells you a lot about the psychology of the federal government. They do this all the time. They enact laws that are unconstitutional. They're illegal.

They get called up by the court. And then they just fight it out right to the end. And even when the Supreme Court rules, they just ignore them. So we've got a lawless federal government. And I hope that more of these actions, as they build on precedent, it ultimately people are going to realize we can't do this again, that if there is a health emergency that happens, we've got to manage it differently next time.

That was the whole reason I put together the Manning report. And with his recommendations, we'll do a better job next time to make sure that the liberties of people are respected. Well, I can safely say I'm going back to the start of this where I go, yeah we're so accustomed to the liberal way and maybe I'm using liberal a little bit too wide I'm certainly used to the Justin Trudeau the Christia Freeland and on and on it goes the way they govern and how they deal with it I mean I never thought of myself as a media journalist person right and then you see a journalist rebel news or not right

whether rebel at times can be a little bit aggressive or not what they did on the street and arresting him, right? Like, I mean, we're seeing the state of our country. I don't think we, nobody's seeing this. We're seeing it over and over and over again. And so we're just so accustomed to the government, breaking the ethics violations and moving on, getting a judge saying, no, actually it didn't, we're going to appeal.

And not acknowledging what is actually going on. So appreciate you coming in and doing this. I can tell we need to wrap up. So, well, I'll just say on that. I mean, one of the things that I've been trying do in in as far as I can is create an environment in Alberta where people feel safe and respected that was part of the reason why when I first got elected saying we're pivoting away and we are going to to treat COVID as endemic and we have um we have a respiratory virus season where we've actually got the

worst flu season that we've seen in years lots of hospitalizations as a result of that but we're we're being balanced in taking care of all three of those influenza COVID and RSV and I think it's brought the level of panic and fear down And that's important because people need to feel like their health care system will be there for them. Because remember what happened is we were told all of those restrictions needed to happen because our health care system was going to collapse. Well, fair enough. Fire the people who managed it into such a state of ruin and then rebuild it.

And that's what we're doing because we need to make sure that we never get into a situation again where we're told that we all have to shut down our businesses and kids can't go to school and we're not able to participate in life because the hospital can handle the patient loads. We've got to figure out how to handle those patient loads. So I'm putting that message out and you know what, I think people are responding to it. I think people are coming to this province because they know that we do things differently here. That we respect free enterprise, we respect individual liberty, and we want to make sure that people are not interrupted in their lives that way again

and that we're also taking care of the health issues. And the fact that so many people come to our province, I look at that as a positive and we want to keep that going. That's why I've said, let's have an aggressive target to double our population. I'm going to put this out there because I've said that in the throne speech. I want people to understand how important that is. We have to be that bastion of liberty. And people are going to want to come here. And we want to embrace them.

And we want to be able to build this place out so that we can actually have the political clout in Alberta that we deserve. Because right now we're being treated as a junior partner by Ottawa. and if we end up with the strongest economy, we'll double our oil production. You want to go from rough numbers, you probably know the number better than me. 4.7 million, roughly? We're almost at 5 million.

Okay. So you want to double it to 10 million? Yep, I do. Why? Because then we'll be the second largest province, will be the second most populous province. Where are 5 million people going to come from? They're going to come from the rest of the country, number one.

We're also recruiting people internationally to come here from self-reliable. Africa, from India, from China, who are investing in our province, who are getting engineering and technical degrees, who are building our province out. That's one thing I should say is that I have always felt like we should be embracing. Everything that we have to offer is so unique in the country that we have an obligation to be that bastion of freedom. And I think we should welcome the people who want to come here and enjoy it with us. And so that's why we have to take that multi-track approach, where we want to, you

build out our economy as well as create all of that opportunity. One final one on the doubling of the population. You caught me out of a curveball there. How long to double? The projections I've seen have said that we could get there somewhere around 2050, just based on the kind of, when you think of where Laheed was, I mean, when Laheed came in, I think we were only at 1.3 million people. What year was that?

He came in 71. Seventy-one. And so we're now approaching 5 million. So we've seen a double-dubling in the space of 50 years. So will we double again by 2050? I think we need to be aspirational. I think that we need to understand that bringing in more people to help us build this place and celebrate all of the things that make us unique.

I think that's a net positive for the country and we should keep on doing that. Well, that's a thought for people to think on and probably yell at the text line and everything else when it comes out Monday. Appreciate you stopping in and doing this. And well, look forward to seeing what comes here in the near future, I'm sure, for Alberta and for you, Premier. You bet. And we'll be back again. I'll hold you too back.

I know you will.