Shaun Newman Podcast - #709 - Premier Smith

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

The Premier of Alberta was in studio and we discussed Coutts verdict, Alberta Bill of Rights, the Alberta Pension Plan, immigration and cutting taxes.  Clothing Link:⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Tom Romago. This is Alex Craneer. This is Lila Micklewaite. Hi, this is David Collum. Hey, this is Gordon McGill. This is Kirk Libdemo. This is Chris Sims. This is James Lindsay, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday. Before we get on to the Premier, as I'm sure you're all raring to go for that, let's start here. There's a deal at Silver Gold Bull. They say, they're providing the SMP listeners. That's all of you find, folks, an opportunity. on smaller than one ounce silver coins.

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So go to expatmoney. Oh man, expatmoneysummit.com. Spit that out a few times in a row and see what happens. Kristen McGowan, McGowan Professional Chartered Accountants, as we announced on the mashup this past week, she is looking for a CPA, she's willing to wheel and deal for you fine folks out there.

She wants to hear from you. And, you know, she's willing to work around you. And, I mean, she's looking for somebody top notch. Like, she's turning away customers. She's got a great business. And I think she's looking for that right one person. And if that is you, reach out via magowan, cpa.ca.ca. Shoot me a text.

I can always put you in contact. and would love to get a lady who offers accounting and bookkeeping, business consulting and training, financial planning, and tax planning, who is bursting at the seams and needs a CPA some help here in Lloyd Minster, and she's looking for that right person, and if that's you or if you know who that is, reach out. In the show notes that you've got substack, so you can subscribe for free, and you're going to get an email right now once a week, Sundays at 5 p.m. It comes with kind of the week in the review.

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down the show notes. Finally, I got late. legacy interviews I've been doing between here and Christmas. I'm starting to line them up. We've got three left. I'm only doing five. And if that is something you're interested in, reach out. We've got a couple different options for pricing and would love to hear from you.

Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. She is the 19th premiere of Alberta. I'm talking about Premier Daniel Smith. So buckle up. Here we go. Okay, well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I'm joined by the Premier Daniel Smith. ma'am thanks for being back in here well so nice to see you again every time i come to lloyd minster i feel

like there's something missing if i don't have a chance to sit down and talk with you well i hope everybody hears that and if they're rolling through the bustling metropolis of lloyd minster they make sure to stop in here it is bustling i'm here for the heavy oil show and there's 600 people at that show it's been going on for 40 years it's amazing how how has the show been it's fantastic i was there last night so we had the opening ceremonies premier mo was there along with the MP, along with local MLAs. Reminder to Premier Moe, when we do this next time, I'm going to make note of getting you both in here.

That would have been something. Sean is not thinking. He might still be around because he and I are on a panel this afternoon. So maybe if you just put in a request, poke him a little bit. I'll poke him a bit when I see him too. You were talking about different things. I'm going to make sure I don't forget this. Now that I know you can accept this, there you go.

There is a silver one ounce coin, silver gold bull, another Alberta company. We've been talking about different Alberta companies. I was saying that the Ark coffee is sitting in your cup and you got a Kalani cup too. And you've got King Charles on the back too. So it's brand spanking new. You got a bunch of Alberta companies.

And you know, last time you asked me, why the silver coin? What's the thing? And I'm like, well, friend of ours, Chris Sims, walk around with the debt clock, 1.2 trillion in Canada. That's true. The United States is well above that, right?

We're talking $27 trillion or is it over 30 now, folks. And so I think, I don't know, maybe I'm reading between the lines, but our money isn't worth what it used to be. So going back to silver and gold and being aligned together, there's a nice synergy there with what I do. If you want to talk about debt, though, I mean, we're in the best position of any province. Sure. Especially from a net debt perspective where we used to have net assets.

It's kind of sad how things have turned in the last 20 years or so since Ralph Klein left office. That would be my great hope is that we could get to a net debt position of zero, meaning we have just as many assets as we have liabilities and then start going to the positive again. That's very much on my mind. And part of the reason why we've made some of the changes that we have around our budgeting process. Well, the first thing I wanted to talk to you about, we've had big news in Alberta this week. I don't think you will be shocked about talking coots, but it's actually, there's a series of things here. You know, one of the things I was saying on a video earlier this week is we're supposed to be the bastion of freedom in Canada.

And you obviously know where I stand on a lot of different things. We met during the middle of the pandemic. And one of the things I've admired immensely about yourself is, you know, I've stared a lot of politicians. I was staring at the Trump-Kamala debate last night, and that's a side note. I told myself I wouldn't bring it up, but it comes to mind. And one of the things I admire about you, you know, you're well-spoken, you're well-spoken, charismatic and in my limited dealings with you I see how strategic you are so you know I look at how you're approaching different things and I'm like okay we're going to give your time we're going to do

these different things and then six and a half years to Tony Aolinick Chris Carbert and I go aren't we supposed to be the bastion of freedom isn't Alberta supposed to be that and I look at the judicial system I've done a bunch of different round tables on this topic and I'm like of all places for it to happen Alberta and I'm like lots of COVID stuff You weren't around. And me and you've talked about that, right? You've been come in trying to untangle a whole bunch of mess, AHS, on and on this rabbit hole goes. But, you know, your thoughts on Coots and the decision this week. Well, look, I mean, I wasn't in the courtroom. I didn't see the evidence. It was a jury of their peers, which I think is important because a jury trial is sacrosanct in our country and in our province.

And they looked at the evidence, rejected some of the charges and accepted some of the others. And so that's where we, I think that's where we find ourselves. I think we've got to support the process because that is, I think everybody wants to be able to know that if they're facing any kind of criminal justice issue, that a jury of their peers will be who they go before. And that's what the outcome was. So I don't want to judge what the jury saw, why they came to the verdict that they did. But I think people should feel some confidence that the jury trial system is an important part of our process. and that's the outcome that it had. The resounding feeling I get from Albertans

is they don't trust the judicial system. And they're looking on, not yourself, but I think the name that keeps coming up is Mickey Amory, the Justice Minister, and whether or not he's going to look into it. And, you know, I listened to our last conversation, and I want to make sure that I'm clear on this. You'd mentioned getting in trouble with the Ethics Commissioner

on talking two different things. One of them was a simple phone call to the justice minister, correct? So I can put it out there, but as soon as you comment on that, that becomes taboo. Am I wrong on that? Well, look, I mean, just look at what the NDP did. They wrote a letter to the RCMP asking to investigate me under criminal code interference in the justice system. So I have a lawyer. I take my lawyer's advice, and I can't comment on criminal justice matters.

You have a, well, UCP's got their AGM coming up November 1st second. I plan to be in attendance. One of the things that's going to come up is a leadership review, right? And I don't know how to, you've been doing this tour of all these Alberta towns, right? Or Alberta communities is maybe the better way to put it. And I've seen some of the video. I've listened to some of it. You can probably talk to some of the frustration from Albertans and what you're seeing there.

But one of the things I am not shocked by, like obviously I understand, but one of the things I'm starting to notice. you know, and on this side I just noticed trends and then you, you know, you talk about it and maybe you can address it, maybe you can't, is people that were staunch Daniel Smith supporters when you ran for UCP leadership are starting to question that and are starting to wonder about your leadership. What is, what are your thoughts around that? Well, look, I mean, I know that there were a lot of things that our members asked us to do. And we were going to be implementing a number of things in the fall. I think one of the education processes that I go through what I do by town. halls is to let people know that when legislation is introduced into the legislature, that is the last step of a very long process. I think the public sometimes thinks that's the first step of the process. But when we got direction from our members last year to amend the Alberta Bill of Rights, we started on that right away. I got a committee of, first of all, Mickey Amory to lead it. I got Jason Stephan, who is our legislative review committee and a lawyer himself, to meet with

a number of people. We met with hundreds of people on trying to figure out if we're going to open up this bill, how do we make sure that we modify and address the things that need to be addressed and hearing from our members? So we went through that whole process. We have a cabinet policy committee process where we were able to vet it there. We have to go through cabinet. We have to go through caucus. We have to go through the legislative review committee. And then you're able to introduce the legislation. And I think people will see that the direction that we got from members is is going to be something that guided our decision making on that. When is the Bill of Rights being unveiled? Like the new update. Well, as you know, the way our legislative

sessions work is we have a shorter session in the fall. It starts at the last week of October, and then it goes to the first week of December, and then we have a longer session in the spring. So I would say very quickly after the legislative session resumes. I saw a life site. Me and Chris Sims were talking. I guess she's going to get a little air time today. We were talking about the life site news out of bringing up... Not true. None of it's true? Not true.

None of it? Look, how can I talk about making sure that everyone has the right to accept or refuse medical treatment and then go that direction? I believe in choice. And importantly, I believe in the right to be able to say no to a medical intervention, including being able to say no to a vaccine. And that is what we are guiding principle going into it. And so that's what people will see.

Okay. So when we talk specific, you say soon, and I always push on Getson with this, I'm like, soon isn't a date. And I know you're not going to say, well, rubber stamped October 12th. No, let me tell you. So we return to session. I can look up the exact date that we return to session. I think it's October the 28th because we return on the Monday. We haven't proroged parliament or legislature, so it means that we can continue on.

So I don't need to have a throne speech. So the way it works is that you introduce Monday as private members business. So it would be private members bills that would come forward. Government business comes forward Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So we have three full days to introduce our legislative agenda for the fall. So probably one of those days. Well, one of the things I'm learning about politicians, you know, is soon. I'm like, well, soon isn't a date, Danielle, and Premier.

Once again, you get in this room and I'm like, what's protocol here? We knew each other before in the old times. It's strange, right? People have been, a lot of people are concerned. You know, can I also just say, I mean, part of the reason why, I think people should know this about me, that I travel the province because I travel the province. That's just the type of premier I am. When I was running for leadership, I traveled the province. After I won the election, I traveled the province.

First year after the election, I'm traveling the province. I'm going to travel the province next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer after that as well. Because you cannot know what people care about unless you're going to. you go to to see them in their communities? When you were running, right, in traveling the province, I felt like you were greeted like a hero. Has that changed? And when you look at it, what are people's frustrations? Well, I can tell you, when I go to my meetings, my town halls, people greet me with a standing ovation. They grumble a little bit about some of my answers as we're having the discussion,

and at the end, they thank me with a standing ovation. And I think that that is just the part of the process. I mean, conservatives want to be. to challenge their leaders. We have a process to be able to do it. I mean, think about that. The federal liberals don't have a process to remove their leader. They don't have a leadership review. There isn't a mechanism for any expression of dissatisfaction with their leader. And so we have a number of processes that allow leaders to be accountable to the people. And I have always felt like Jim Dinnings approach. Let's mention Chris Sims again in Canadian Taxpayers Federation. She wasn't there at the time. But Jim Dining always valued the role

the Canadian taxpayers played because if he said if they didn't criticize him from the right, he would have been pulled further to the left because that was what the opposition was. And the legislature created the room to do more. So when I hear some of the criticism or some of the issues that our members want to address, I'll tell them a couple things. Number one, we take direction through our AGM process. I'm not, you have to go through, you have to debate things, you have to have them vetted, you have to demonstrate to me that the majority of the people,

who show up at the delegation as a delegation are supportive of that approach. But once that has happened, I take that very seriously. And so I'm getting a bit of a gauge as I go through about some of the issues that people are concerned about. And I'll be watching what comes forward at our AGM once again in the fall. One of the things that has been brought up to me a ton has been taxes, right? You ran on a cut in the taxes. There's been no tax cut.

And people see it as like, you sold us this. We didn't get it. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, when I was running on the platform of reducing taxes, I'd talk to my team and I said, look, the way can he introduce the corporate income tax is he did it in phases. So we will look at where we are at the time. And if we have to introduce it in phases, we have to be prepared to do that. So I was always thinking that I would love to introduce it in the first budget. But we also hadn't made a commitment that we've got to make sure we don't run deficits.

So when my finance minister came to me and said, look, we don't know what's going to happen with oil prices this year. We don't know if Transboundent's going to open on time. We don't know if coastal's going to open on time. We don't know if it's going to increase our production. And so we're razor thin on our deficit projection. It was $300 million at the budget time. The tax cut is $1.4 billion. He said, we just need to play this out a little bit and see what happens.

Make sure we have the room so that when we cut taxes, we're doing it in a sustainable way and not going into deficit. And I'm feeling pretty encouraged about some of the things that have happened. I mean, look at oil prices today. $67. Our budget has it at $74 on the annual basis in order for us to be able to balance. So that's part of what we're trying to juggle is we want to make sure that when we cut taxes, we do it in a way that's sustainable. One of the things Donald Trump, I can't believe I'm bringing this up, but he's talked about

bringing in Elon Musk. Kind of the same thing he did to Twitter. Walked in, cut 80%, found a way to just keep it moving along. And some would say better, some are going to argue worse, regardless it's still moving along. He's thought that approach into the governmental structure, the public sector, would be whether you're going to get 80%. That's extreme. But I just look at Alberta government.

I go, you've been in there now for a time. You look at trying to save Albertan's money, find ways to get it back into their pocketbooks. Every Albertan, who's a conservative, believes the government's got too big. Have you found ways to reduce that size? Well, I think one of the things we have to realize is that the provincial government delivers health care. We have a socialist system for health care, and our principal job is to deliver health care. We don't have private sector operators that deliver it. So if you're talking about cutting 80% of the health care budget, you're talking...

80% was just what he did to Twitter. I'm just saying, but I'm just saying, the health budget is almost 40 to 45% of our total budget. And if we cut it 80%, you'd be cutting $10 to $15 billion out of health care. We know the problem that we have in rural Alberta is that we've seen emergency rooms closing at 6 o'clock. It's not giving great service. People are waiting too long to be able to get surgeries, which is why we're opening charter surgical centers to give another option. And then look at education too. Like we, again, that is the job of the provincial government to deliver on education.

We only have a very tiny number of people who have their kids in private school and homeschool. I think it's less than 5%. And even then, we pay 70%. of the cost of the per student grant for operating. So do I cut education 80%? I just don't think we can do that. We're seeing, we've seen, I think. So what you're saying, though, is in your time,

you haven't found any ways, like, I get the health care. I'm not here to push that you cut health care 80%. I'm even sad that I brought up the 80% number, just that that's what everybody watched Elon Musk go into a company like Twitter into. It's different than government. I get that. But all governments, look at the Trudeau's government. size grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and function less and less and less.

Yeah, it's true. And so this is part of the reason why we're trying to find different ways to do things. And I'll give an example, because it's hard work and it takes time. But one example is land titles. So we came in there and we had a 110 day delay in having properties transferred for land titles. That's a big deal. I mean, we talk about energy being a big part of our economy. Property, real estate being transferred is a huge part of our economy. And so, you know, So you can't have a 110-day delay. So what did we have to do? We had to hire 60 people to clear the backlog because it's a paper-based process.

And that doesn't make sense when you have that many transactions. So then we had to spend $60 million to create a technology-based solution so that we could get same-day transfers, and we're in the process of rolling that out. And when we do that, we won't need those 60 people anymore. But that's the challenge that we're facing is that sometimes you have to spend money to create the efficiencies so that you realize the savings in your three and four and beyond. And so we're going through that process across our entire government. I've got Nate Globusch.

He's now focused as technology and innovation. And one of the things that we have seen is how do we automate processes? How do we make the experience that the taxpayer has with the government more efficient? So you're not being pinged around to different voicemail boxes or pinged around to different departments. And I think that the approach that we took on affordability payments where we created a web portal within two months and we're able to efficiently deposit money into the accounts of low-income people to help them through the worst of the inflation crisis. That's an example of how you can use technology to be able to deliver more efficient services with a tiny amount

of investment. So we are going through program by program and looking and asking that question, is there a way to do this better so that we can deliver better service at lower cost? Can we bend that curve and we're doing it across all of government? Because you know what? No one's done this before. I'll tell you what happens. No one's done what before. I'll tell you what happens. What happens in government is you enter in and you say, okay, we've got $65 billion worth of spending. Here's our program of what we want to do And everything you want to do costs money And so it's just adding, adding, adding.

And then no one ever says that $65 billion we inherited Is all of it being spent on the high priorities that we have today? Or is there a different way of doing things? And so that is the process that we're going through right now. Is there a way that we can look at everything that we're doing and then be able to take money from low priority areas and put it into the high priority areas that we ran on? And it is not a simple process.

How long is the process take? We've gone through, we started about, and it's going to be just a regular process of government, because I think we should do that. It should just be a matter of good practice. So I would say that we're doing this as a lead-up to the budget plan. So we start doing our budget deliberations in the fall, and then the budget is introduced in February. So we wanted to do some of that work now. But we're going to keep on doing that on an annual basis. We should always be looking at the way we deliver services and try to do it better. At the end of our last chat, I kind of laughed when this exploded, but you said something along about the population growth of Alberta. You go back and listen to the full interview, folks, and hey, go back and listen to it. It's the end of January. And you just say, oh, yeah, I want Alberta double.

And you could tell I wasn't ready for that. I was like, what? And then we talked about that, and then that exploded, and then you went on the Western Standard and talked about it and everything else. you still want Alberta to grow to 10 million? People, and I should clarify this question, as a ton of people who listen to the podcast, are like, you got to follow up on this.

Look, I mean, you have to put things into context, a couple of things, I would say, is what frustrates me is Quebec has more political power than we do. And you can see it right now. Le Mansette. Oh, Blanchet, yes. Wanting to form a partnership with the liberals to prop them up so he can extort more money out of Alberta.

That infuriates me. And the reason they are able to get away with that is because Quebec has double our population. So my thinking is, if we had more population, we'd have more political clout. That was sort of the context of him. We were also receiving 200,000 people in 2023.

So if you just do the math on that, 200,000 people over 25 years is going to double our population. Sure. That being said, I don't think any of us, I don't think any of us anticipated that the liberals were going to just blow the borders open. We, when you look at the most recent column. And that's a 30 year solution to a problem we have right now. I think that's when I come back to like, I listen to our interviews.

I've listened to a lot of your talks. I just listening on Jordan Peterson, right? Like what you taught? I'm like, oh, but that's a 30 year solution. Like, why not, you know, you look at hunger. You guys brought up hunger. You know, I don't know how many people have talked about hungry. It's like four kids and I don't have to pay, you know, it's like, and I guess I should

flush that idea. In Hungary, their prime minister came out with if you had four kids or more, then you don't pay income tax, right? Yeah. And you imagine how many ears are perking up and large families and the building block of Alberta is like, yeah, we could do that. Like, I mean, we're already doing that and we're struggling. Look, a couple things.

We, our Alberta's calling campaign was advertising. was advertising to our friends across Alberta or across Canada in low employment areas to bring them here so that we could employ them. That was the original intention of the strategy. But what I will say is the liberals brought in 1.84 billion people in in 2023. A normal level of immigration and newcomers is somewhere in the 1% range, 400 to 500,000 people. They blew that out of the water. created all kinds of problems for us, for Quebec, and for every other destination point. We don't have enough school space to be able to accommodate the kids. We don't have enough housing and we can't build it fast enough to accommodate that number of people.

We are seeing stress in our social services. We are seeing people having to live in campgrounds or in shelters. And so you have to sort of calibrate saying, aspirationally, do we want to be larger so we can have more political clout? Fine. But we have to have a level of immigration that is normal and manager. and we have to be able to keep up with growth. So I would put all of that into context.

And at the moment, and you will see all of the premiers said this, is that we have to get back to a more reasonable level of immigration. And the federal government has heard because they've scaled back dramatically, the temporary foreign worker program, good. And they've scaled back dramatically international students, good. And now we have to work on getting the newcomers who come to our province in particular

able to match the jobs that are available for them. So I think we're slowly seeing the feds turn in the right direction, but that's the context. Have you ever considered Hungary's thought process? You know, I did just have a conversation with my finance minister yesterday, and I asked him if there was any costing out of the proposal that Travis Taves actually had forward. When he was running for the leadership, I think he talked about having an extra personal exemption of $2,000 for every child. And I'm interested in seeing what that costing would look like. Alberta pension plan.

I feel like this was like this big, whoo, here we go. And then I'm like, I don't know. I feel like it's dead in the water. And I could be wrong on this, but it just is like, I haven't heard a thing about it. And I go, maybe Sean's got his head under a rock. It's possible. Lots of people will say that.

But I'm in the space. I don't hear anything about it. And then I come back to my earliest comments about you, that you're very strategic, that, you know, like I look at you in, this isn't, it's either by, you're looking at the federal race going, well, if Pierre's in, maybe there's a deal to be had, don't know. Obviously, I assume I'm not going to be privy to some of your conversations, or there's something else going on. Where is the Alberta pension plan sitting? Well, look, we have a member, Mitch Sylvester, who's doing an amazing job, going around,

having townhouse talking about the pension plan and explaining why he's supportive of it. I'm supportive of it. I said so. That's part of the reason why, when I looked at the report and released it, I said, Albertans need to know this. Albertans need to know what the legislation says, that you put money into the account. If you put more money in, then you need in benefits, and it grows over time, you're entitled to that amount.

That we can leave the plan because we legislatively and constitutionally have the right to do them. And our calculation, remember, we hired a left-wing firm to do this. We hired Morneau-Chapelle to do the analysis of the legislation. And they came back and said, yep, this is what the legislation says. And based on this, Alberta is entitled to more than $300 billion. If it's $300 billion, we would be able to give a rebate to the seniors who have overpaid all those years, maybe $10,000. So where is it? Let me tell you.

You're so impatient. Let me tell you. You want to know why I'm, I got time ticking away on me. Okay, I'll tell you. And I just wanted to know. But I'll tell you. So we also, with that $300 billion, would have been able to reduce premiums on each individual by $1,425 on employers by $1,425. So this is why I released the report. And so the federal

government came back and said, no, it isn't. And we said, well, yeah, it is. And they said, no, it isn't. And we said, yeah, it is. And you can go back and forth saying, no, it isn't. Yeah, it is. You don't get anywhere. So we pinned Christopher Rowland down. We pinned the chief actuary down and said, if we're wrong, tell us what your number is. They hired three different independent firms. and they told us they'll come back to us with their number in the fall. So when we get that number, we'll have to decide if they're being unrealistic and unreasonable about it. Because remember, the first reaction was, oh, no, it should just be based on equal per capita. If it's equal per capita, then that means I'd have to tell Albertans.

It's about $93 billion that would be transferred. We wouldn't be able to reduce your premiums and we wouldn't be able to increase your benefits. Is it still worth it? Is the juice worth the squeeze? That's why it matters what the number is. That's why I can't just be in a he said, she said, kind of battle with the Fed. I need some numbers. And so we're getting the numbers in the fall,

and then we'll go back out and ask Al Burton's. When you say the fall, that's a big time frame. Do you know more specific? This fall, sometime we get the numbers, and then we'll have a better idea. My finance minister, again, I do a weekly check-in with my finance minister. So I literally had this conversation with him

to see if he's heard anything from the chief actuary. He said he hasn't yet. I've asked him follow up. I'll let you know. You go, you just want to know, you're rushing me. And I go, that's because I got time. and you know the time is ticking here. You've been on my stage before.

With only a minute left, anything else that you want Albertans to know that you can have the final word. You never let me have the final word. We'll see. Well, look, I really value these kinds of platforms. I think is really important that we have an independent media, and I think the alternative media is going to become more important than ever.

The federal government is being outrageously, reckless with some of the policies they're coming through that violate free speech that are trying to regulate these kinds of online platforms. And I think that's the fact that you ask the questions that the mainstream media won't ask is part of the reason I keep coming back to your show and why I'm on the show of all other alternative media. So keep doing what you're doing. And if we have to do more to be able to protect freedom of speech, protect freedom of the press, then we will do whatever we can too. I'd like to know if there's any challenges that you face from the federal government because this is the reason we're able to have a civilized democracy is we're able to

talk issues through and we've got to preserve that. Thanks for coming in. My pleasure.