The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks with Premier Scott Moe about the absence of Leadership in Canada at the Federal level

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Ben speaks with Premier Scott Moe about the absence of Leadership in Canada at the Federal level Guest: Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is now my pleasure to welcome to the show the 15th premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe. Mr. Premier, thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show. Well, thank you, Ben. And I was wondering if you could maybe do a come do a little bit of help with us as we do consultations, the way you introduced the opinion line and how folks should give a call in and say how awesome you are. We can use some of that, some of that lead in and some of the consultation in the government world. Mr. Premier, I heard a journalist say that in his entire time covering politics, he has never seen premiers of this nation taking a more activist role in foreign policy and foreign relations as he's witnessing right now with regards to the incoming Trump administration. So a two part question for you. Do you agree with that assessment? And if you do, to what do you attribute it?

I don't know if it would be the time. There's never been a time like this before. Premiers have been involved before. And I would just point more recently to the lead up of the USMCA signing where we worked alongside a Krister Freeland with Robert Lighthizer down in the US. Maybe it wasn't all premiers but five or six were down there often. Maybe it is slightly more this time. Because of the seriousness of the situation, this isn't a steel tariff, this isn't a potential uranium tariff, this is a broad tariff across the board that will have an

impact on Americans when they fuel their vehicles and go to the grocery store but it will also have an impact on Canadians and I would say more broadly and more strategically, a very negative impact on us as North Americans providing for ourselves food security, energy security, manufacturing security for the goods that we need. So, premiers are doing their level best in their part at the sub-national level, engaging with the members of the incoming Trump administration, governors, senators, congressmen, anyone that we can get in front of and using the contacts collectively that the 13 of us have,

which is quite extensive. Yeah. Talk to me about what the impact of the Trump tariffs, if they come into effect, what they would have on the Saskatchewan economy. Well, they would be, I would say, first of all, disastrous for the Saskatchewan economy, impacting, you know, about 65% of our of our exports go to the US. We're probably proportionally less dependent on the US than than many other provinces. However, they're our largest and most valued trading partner, like every other province. So that the impact on Saskatchewan in the potash

mining industry, in the uranium mining industry, our agricultural industry, some manufacturing that we do in the ag and mining space in the oil and gas industry would be nothing short of unmitigated disaster for our economy. And I think likewise across Canada, it would also be disastrous for the consumer in the US, the American consumer, and I would say American industries as well as our. We provide energy security for North Americans and for many other countries around the world together alongside the Americans. Crude oil from Saskatchewan and Alberta will find its way down to the Gulf Coast where people go to work refine that oil, provide that source of energy for North Americans and other countries.

If they're not going to get it from Saskatchewan or Canada, there's other much less desirable places that they will have to access those products from. Uranium, for instance, is also produced in Belarus or Russia. Saskatchewan is a much more solid supplier and provider of that product. The same with agricultural products, the same with oil. It's going to hurt across the board to Canadians, but I would say largely what's not being talked about is the impact on Americans and it's going to be just as severe for the American consumer and the American industries.

Minister Mélanie Jolie, Foreign Minister Mélanie Jolie was on the Canadian airwaves over the weekend really sort of taking aim at the federal conservatives saying they need to get in line So when I have spoken with premier of various premieres, including the premieres of Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, they have said, well, we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this

because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this

because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this because we're going to have to do this the argument. But then when I have spoken with premier, various premieres, including the premieres of Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, they have said that they feel that there has been an absence of leadership at the federal level, which is one of the reasons they have taken such a prominent position and in order to sort of shepherd Canadian and provincial interests forward south of the border. What is your assessment of leadership coming out of Ottawa on this all important file? There is an absence of leadership coming out of Ottawa. In fact, I would say worse than that,

the Liberal Party of Canada has put Canadians in a very vulnerable position with all of the chaos that's happening within that party who happened to be our governing party today. That is not the only reason but it is one of the reasons that I think the work of the premiers and the engagement work that the premiers are doing is really being highlighted. And I think largely beneficial to us, you know, advancing the facts of the matter, which is our economy with the US is very much integrated and we're very much reliant on one another in how we provide the energy security, food security and the general security for North Americans.

That being said, we aren't going to, premiers aren't going to be able to close this deal. We're going to need someone with a mandate to sit at a table across from what will very shortly be President Trump to ensure that we move forward with market access, non-tariff based market access. President Trump is not going to sit across the table from somebody that has no mandate to speak on behalf of Canadians and so I would encourage and I look forward to having an election in this nation as quickly as possible and I say that very much in a nonpartisan way. We need someone with a mandate. And in order to have that, we need to have an election.

And so I'm not, you know, doing the conservative liberal, you know, partisan speaking here. We just need someone at that table that has a mandate. Donald Trump, president elect Trump has the strongest mandate of recent history and the strongest mandate of any government that I've seen in my time here. So we need the same in Canada and the only way to get to that is an election and I would hope that happens sooner rather than later. I'm speaking with the Premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe and Mr Premier, while on certainly on the file of Canada versus the United States,

it does feel like our Premiers as a team are working very well together. That's not to say we don't have our own problems, our own internal issues to deal with. And one of those that you and your fellow Western premier, Danielle Smith, are dealing with is the contentious equalization program. What is the state of play there? Well, it is a flawed program. And you've seen the increases over the last number of years. And I would say this is, you know, multi-government. This isn't just at number of years. And I would say this is multi-government. This isn't just at the feet of the current government, but multi-government is going

back years and years and years. But the escalators that are occurring in the equalization program are really unfair to Canadians. If you look in Western Canada, for example, we have, you know, Manitoba has removed their gas tax. They received $4.7 billion in equalization this year. I'm not sure we can afford to remove our gas tax in Saskatchewan and we received $0 in Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada,

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quite likely not this government, but some government down the way we want to contribute. And we want to contribute as Canadians to ensure that we do have services that are equal. But I think it's going a little bit beyond that. And I just provided you about one example of that. And if the polls are to be believed, Pierre Poliev's conservatives will form the next government if the polls are to be believed, they'll form a majority government. So what would you want to tell him about what Saskatchewan needs from the federal government on this file? On this particular first, we need to pull, remove and change a number of policies

that have been put in place that are impacting how we create wealth in Saskatchewan and how we create wealth as Canadians in the industrial sector and the ag sector and such. That would be priority number one. When it comes to equalization, I think we need to have a very level-headed non-political conversation around what the equalization conversation is, which is to equalize some of the taxation bases that we have across the nation and to ensure that Canadians can access health care, for an example, regardless of where they might be or

where they might live in Canada. I'm not sure that's happening with the very rigid fundamentals of the formula that is there and so I would say in a nonpartisan, nonpolitical way, have a look at the formula or a task someone with having a look at the formula in the eye of changing it to make sure that it is still delivering what it was intended to deliver when it was brought into fruition years ago. RG Mr. Premier, Premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, thank you so much for this conversation. I hope it is the first of many. Thank you very much, Ben. I look forward to speaking to you again, and I'm wishing you and your listeners all the best in 2025. At BC Children's Hospital, healing requires a great team.

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