The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Is the F-35 Purchase Worth the Multi-Billion Dollar Price

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Bruce Anderson grab-bag from cameras in the House, to the F-35 huge price tag, to Nexus cards to Danielle Smith.  Smoke Mirrors and The Truth and lots to discuss.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. Wonderful Wednesday. That means smoke mirrors from the truth with Bruce Anderson. I remember when we used to say wonderful Wednesdays, anything to sort of, you know, show the week was halfway gone. So Wednesdays were wonderful. And we usually all go out and have a big dinner somewhere. These were my Ottawa days way back. But that was kind of a thing, right? On Parliament Hill, Wonderful Wednesdays.

Oh, it was a thing. I didn't think, yeah, yeah, it's still, you know, I think there's still a lot that goes on socially around here on Wednesdays, but it's not the same, as in most things aren't the same as they used to be. How could they be without, you know, without us? You were always renowned as somebody that. No, I wasn't. All right, never mind. All right, let's get to business.

Let's get to business. And actually, I'm going to start with it. I'm throwing this one at you. This is a bit of a surprise for you. You watched that kind of circus in the House of Representatives last week, right? Correct. One of the things about it that made it fascinating and had a lot of people watching it,

there were like millions of people watching on C-SPAN last week, was that C-SPAN got permission to go in there and supplement the regular kind of boring coverage, static wide shots, by moving its own cameras in and taking all kinds of action shots, which delivered some really great scenes. Well, C-SPAN is now suggesting, you know, we should do this all the time. What a terrible idea.

No, they're suggesting, hey, we can make this interesting if you allow us to put cameras in, supplement the basic coverage. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of the members of Congress are saying, yeah, right on. Yeah. Including Matt Gaetz, who's no stranger to the camera. You know what? If you want to design something that's going to really work to enlighten the

public and that sort of thing, who else would you turn to for the design and something like that? But a Matt Gates or a Lorraine Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene, that's who you want to figure out what our democracy needs in terms of the nature of the coverage. I take your point. Steve Scalise says he's interested in the idea as well. So let me throw that out there as a reason why,

I mean, obviously I'm all for more coverage and make things more interesting. You know, Gates said the old system's antiquated, it's been boomer-fied, which I thought was an interesting way of describing it. But hey, it's no different than what we see thought was an interesting way of describing it but hey it's no different than what we see in canada right i mean that house of commons feed is pretty dry you don't see any cutaways you don't see who's being talked to you don't see the fact that the place is basically empty 90 of the time uh because they kind of fake it by putting a couple of people around whoever's speaking. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know that because you like this idea that if you sort of transpose the idea to the days when you were reading the news on the national that you would

think that it would be a great idea to have cameras all surrounding you in the studio. So there could be multiple action shots, as you put it. Different ways of having insight into the work that you were doing and how you were looking and feeling the way you were doing it, how you were interacting with other people. When you were lecturing, you know, all of the Andrew Coins of the world and others who would say things that you didn't agree to. I know I'm just saying that as a joke. That never happened.

But my point is this, Pete. I get why people in journalism in particular would think that this is a good idea. I also know that in politics, having more pictures, more cameras, more intrusively makes people not be more themselves. It makes people act more as they're expected to act for the purposes of a broader audience. And so if we want more staging, we already know how to do that, put cameras in the House of Commons, because after that happened, we've had several decades of journalists saying, why is the House of Commons so staged? Why do people perform there? Well, you know, the cameras do that. So I don't think the right answer is to have no cameras, but I, you know,

if you just sort of erase the line and, you know, they start talking about body cams and kind of hidden mics and all this kind of stuff. I love watching that on the NFL. That's a great idea. I like that idea. Let's go for that. They can each have a little camera on their head, right? I love that in sports. I love that on the sidelines of the NFL games, and I like it when they mic golfers sometimes. I think that's all cool. I don't know that if I take what I like in that entertainment world

and I just say, let's plug and play that into politics, that it makes for better public policy. Mr. Boomerfied. Yeah, that it makes for better public policy. Mr. Boomerfied. Yeah, I'm very boomerfied. Boomerfied Bruce. Whatever. I don't know.

I think there's probably some happy medium between what we're getting now and what we could have. Sorry, the entertainment value is not what you want, but. Well, it's not just entertainment. It's information. It's trying to make it more interesting so you can see how our democracy works. Hey, that sounded pretty good. Let me write that down. Oh, dear.

Okay. Well, so much for that idea. I still think it's a good idea. It'll be interesting to watch what the Americans do, because if they do that, you can bet it's going to happen here too. Because everything they're doing is working out so well. Even the British do a version of it that's way better than ours in terms of giving you a sense of the world.

I think their cameras are better than ours. I think their House of Commons looks kind of bizarre in the sense of how many people crowded in, sitting on these benches. I like the way ours looks as a place where you expect people to go and conduct the business of the country. But they do have more dramatic video coming out of theirs than we do ours. And we could improve that way. I just don't know about this. Let's let cameras roam around and see what they can find

because it will either give people some incorrect and bad examples of what the norms are, or it will make everybody just turn into more robotic than normal and uh i don't think anybody wants that okay well i think we uh what do you think folks i i think we sort of pulled bruce along um once he suddenly realized that the brits were when he suddenly realized the brits were ahead of us. Why don't we call it a draw? When he suddenly realized the Brits were ahead of us, quite convincingly in the way they film and broadcast their questions. Yeah, this is a strong argument.

Good for you. You won. Okay, thank you. Moving on. Let's see if I can win this one. F-35s. I remember the first time I heard about F-35s was somewhere in the mid-90s when we decided, well, not just we, but the allies in general decided, you know, we should all have the same kind of

fighter and we could, you know, we could make that work for us as a united group and let's explore that. So, Cray-Chan signed on to that idea in the mid-90s, and they started looking at it. And the idea was this F-35, which is, you know, state-of-the-art, et cetera, et cetera, for that time, 1995 or whatever it was. And we've been up and down, as you well know, signed on, signed off, signed on, canceled, this, that, promises in campaigns, which were not the first time. Justin Trudeau promised not to buy the F-35, just like Crayton had promised not to buy whatever helicopter that was

back in 92 or 93. And then, of course, reversed those decisions. So now we've reversed it again, and we're buying. We're all in. We're all in for like gazillions of dollars. Whatever it is, 87, 88 F-35s, total cost up front of $19 billion. But over time, over the life of these planes,

which is supposed to last forever, $88 billion or some astronomical figure. Already some are wondering, well, you know, is the f-35 already past its time are we getting in late here there are all kinds of benefits to a contract like this domestic benefits in terms of uh production i know about no doubt about that um but the question becomes is this the plane for our times or is it the plane for the 1990s i mean we've seen a lot of changes as a result of the ukraine conflict in terms of the way the generals and the military analysts are looking at conflict at war in today's world so that question is a relevant one you know is is the f-35 the right one for us

for protecting the north for protecting the right one for us, for protecting the North, for protecting Arctic sovereignty, for doing all that? And is this cost worth it? So where are you on that one, Mr. Boomer-fied Bruce? Yeah, well, you know, I loathe to get into this. You're a former pilot in the military. Let's not exaggerate. I flew chipmunks.

I mean, it's not quite the F-35. Although I have been in the cockpit a couple of times of the CF-18s. Right. Tom Cruise. Right. So, well, look, Peter, I think on the question of is it the best plane, I have really spent a lot of time thinking about that or reading anything about it. I haven't heard of another plane that people are saying would be a better plane than this.

I do know that the F-35 has under, there were questions about whether it was fully proven, whether there were glitches, whether others were going to buy it or not, or whether we were going to be, you know, the beta testers writing a big check to try something that might or might not turn out as the manufacturer had hoped. And now we've got, I think the thing that I was reading this morning indicated there was many as eight of our, eight other countries, most if not all of them allies of ours, that were now using the F-35. And so that there has been plenty of time for the concerns about glitches to have been worked out. And apparently our people who evaluate these things are satisfied that this plane will operate the way that we want in the climate that we have performing the functions that we we want it to perform and i think the other thing that's a little bit different

about um not so much the crescent era uh discussion about this, but the Harper era discussion about it is you may remember that in the case of the Harper government decision, it was characterized as a sole source decision rather than a competition. And there were reasons for that in terms of the way in which this project came together. I don't mean to suggest that the government just said, we have a favorite supplier. But the idea was packaged differently from the standard, this company says, buy our plane, and we'll do this in your country. And another company says, buy our plane, and we'll do this. In this case, the manufacturer said, we want all countries that agree to be part of the buyer group to compete for contracts to do different things in support of it. It was an interesting idea, and it sort of made the notion of a sole source contract more palatable. But at the same time,

the Auditor General criticized that process and said that it put Canada's interests at some risk. So since then, the Trudeau government has had a competition, has looked at the alternatives and ultimately decided that this was a good one. And in the meantime, the manufacturer has allowed Canada to bid on pieces of work in support of the F-35. And we've done significant work, as I understand it, as well. So I think on the whole, it's a good decision in a world where you wish you didn't have to buy expensive fighter planes. But we see a world that's quite unstable on some days. And so we have to do our part, I think. Yeah. First of all, let me correct a couple of the numbers. 19 billion upfront is correct. 88 is the number of these that we're buying, the F-35s. 70 billion, not the number I used earlier.

I can't remember what I used, but 70 billion is the correct number for the cost over time. Now, that's going to change. That'll only go up. Even the way you said it, you said billion, as though this was somehow shocking. Like, you do need to buy tires for these, and you need to put fuel in them, and you need to maintain them. Yeah, but $70 billion. I mean, this is my problem with all military, and I'm a military guy.

I have a lot of time for a lot of elements of our military, and I believe in the women and men who are in Canada's military. But the problem on procurement on the military side is you can quickly get behind the times because times change, especially in uh in an era of uh defense and offense on the military front and this is a long-term purchase right i mean i i like the idea that all the allied nations are using the same kind of equipment i think that's smart and gives you much more of a worldwide reach. But I do worry that when you're buying something that's supposed to last for 50 years or longer, and you're spending that kind of money, that you're making some really tough decisions about what you think the world is going to look like.

Not 50 years from now, but 10 years from now or five years from now. And as we all know, it's rapidly changing. I mean, the F-18 has been a great aircraft for us for 50 years. 40 years, right? 40 years we've been using it. I can remember covering the debates surrounding the purchase of it in the 1980s. But 40 years for an aircraft, just not that long a time.

You know, the B-52s, still the kind of heartbeat of the American Air Force when they're in real conflict, when they're in a real war. B-52s were built first in the 50s, the early 50s, and they're still building them. And they will still use them probably into the 50s, the early 50s, and they're still building them, and they will still use them probably into the 2050s. So it'll be a 100-year-old aircraft. Well, I don't know what argument you're making.

I mean, I get it that there's always risks. But that's what I mean. It is a tough decision to make these decisions, just as tough on naval vessels as it is on on aircraft yes um i worry but you know i have a particular thing about the north they keep telling me that this is going to be fine in the north well you know it can't land most most places in the arctic because they don't have the right kind of runways to to handle this kind of uh aircraft in in my understanding of things. And so the whole idea is to get up there to intercept Russian bombers or what have you.

Well, you might be able to get there in time. You know, I could either be anxious about the thing that makes you anxious, or I could read what Defense Minister Anand said yesterday, is that this we've evaluated this in terms of the work that we wanted to do in the north and it will do that yeah i've had this conversation with her right here which do i want to go with your anxiety or her reassurance i think that she's put a little bit more time into this maybe and i'm gonna go with that oh good so that's one for me. Well, I don't know if it's one for you.

Time will determine. Yeah. I don't think there's any doubt it's the right aircraft for conventional stuff. We have a different mandate than almost every other nation that's buying these. Not all of them, you know, but almost every other nation that's buying these not all of them you know but almost every other nation we talk about arctic sovereignty we're going to show the world that we own the north you know what i'm a little bit more concerned about from a security standpoint is that um yes we need to buy conventional military equipment like ships and planes.

But cybersecurity, I mean, right now I'm looking at a story that says all flights are grounded in the United States. I don't know if it's a cybersecurity issue, but there are a lot of cybersecurity issues all the time now. Shut shutting down infrastructure, holding businesses to ransom. And we're going to need to invest significantly in that area and talk more about it as well. Yeah, that situation in the States this morning, you know, given the timing of when we're recording this, I don't know whether it's still going on or the after effects of it are. But it too reminds us, not of the discussion we've just been having, but about how vulnerable we can be on the most simple of things. NOTAMs, as they're called.

They used to be Notice to Airmen when I was back flying, and they obviously came along with the times, and now it's, I think, notice-to-air missions, but they're still called NOTAMs. And they kind of warn pilots on an hourly basis of different things. You know, such and such a runway at such and such an airport is closed, and there's this, that, or the other thing you should be aware of when flying into this area.

And, you know, they're important, and they've been a mainstay of the flight system, not just in the States, but around the world forever, ever since flying started. And by most people's recognition, this is the first time something like this has happened where they have to shut down the system because of a problem. Now, is it an antiquated system? Was it cyberterrorism? Who knows? Maybe they'll know by the time this is on the air.

But it does continually remind us of how vulnerable we are in a high-tech world to all kinds of things that we hadn't imagined and suddenly are on us. And now at a time when air traffic has had its incredible problems in the last year, this gets thrown on top of it. Probably a good thing it didn't happen Christmas week. There were enough problems there already.

But it certainly was the problem for today. Okay, we've exhausted that. You concede once again you've lost on that one. We can move on to the next one. I like this score. Okay, we'll take a quick break. Back in a moment. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge. The episode is Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Vance, which I'm in Toronto today. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. Or, because it's Wednesday, you're watching us on our YouTube channel, and how exciting could this be? It's exciting. It is for me. Okay, next subject. I think we actually agree on this one. Well, let's see.

I shouldn't assume anything, right? It's about the Nexus card. Now, it's made travel a lot easier over the years since they came out about a decade ago. It basically allows Americans and Canadians to have a much easier time at the border if they go through the process, the security check of getting a Nexus card. It's always taken a while to get that card.

It's been really problematic kind of ever since COVID. But it seems that the leaders of our two countries, Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden inxico city have agreed to moving along the nexus rules along with a number of other things between canada and the united states um and it's funny because just this past weekend i was had to apply for renewal and that is a laborious process to go through and it basically warns you this could take 6 to 18 months to get your renewal. It's like, wow, maybe this will make it faster. But talk to me about what you think this means, and it's not really just about the Nexus card.

It's kind of bigger than that. Yeah. Well, I was really encouraged by the news coming out of the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City yesterday. I was happy to see that the prime minister and the president had agreed to a few things and announced them. One is that the president is going to come and visit Canada and talk with the Canadian government about a variety of issues. And that's going to happen in March. Two is that the Canadian government agreed to announce that they were buying a surface to air missile defense system and donating that to Ukraine.

Three, that the two governments had come to an agreement to speed up and to resolve the differences that were in place between them on the nexus issue, and then to increase capacity significantly so that the issue that you raised of the time to get a nexus card approved should come down, not just from the standards that we saw during COVID, but to a better level than we've seen before. At least that's the plan that was announced by Minister Mendocino and his U.S. counterpart. All of that, I think, is especially good news. And I also noticed that in the readout of the conversation that the Prime Minister and the President had as they talked about softwood lumber, and I believe they also talked about Canada-U.S. trade and protectionism issues, which I think are really the most important issues. And you and I and Chantal have talked about this before, this idea that there was going to be legislation from the Biden administration that was a Buy America provision. And through some pretty diligent lobbying by our ambassador and our officials in the political side of government, we ended up with a Buy North America model,

which is very much to our advantage as a country. So I noticed that some commentators were saying, why did it take so long for Biden to agree to come to Canada, setting aside the fact that things are pretty combustible in the United States and there's still a lot of COVID out there? I don't think the timing of the trip matters. I think the substance of the relationship is in relatively good shape. And there were a lot of fears about it a couple of years ago because of the sense that this version of the Democratic Party was going to be more labor-oriented, more protectionist from that standpoint. And so far, we're making good progress, I think.

You know, there used to be a time where the first trip, or the belief was that the first trip by an American president after election was always to Canada. And in many cases, that was the case. Yes. It was the case for Obama, and it was the case for many others. Joe Biden's probably made a dozen trips outside of his country since he became president, none of which were to Canada.

But, hey, this is a very different time. And I'm not sure anybody was looking at a scoreboard on that one. So I tend to agree with you on that. I mean, he's coming now, and they've actually got concrete things to discuss. As opposed to those early trips by other presidents because they were so early the rare i would also say buying those fighter jets and resolving that you had a a pretty strong set of uh bonding elements going on in this latest conversation right buying the military equipment for Ukraine, buying the fighter jets, agreeing on a nexus solution. And, you know, I think that the,

I forget what the Americans finally called that big omnibus bill where they were basically pushing a lot of money towards electric vehicles and cleaner energy. But that worked out well for us as well. So, you know, relative to where we were under Trump, it's a lot better. But I also think that we're making progress behind the scenes on some tricky issues that could have been more problematic even than during the Obama times. We actually got 27 minutes into this podcast without mentioning Trump's name, which is a rarity on Wednesday. You like to slip it in every once in a while.

You managed to get it in there. Just once so far. That trivia question that'll be asked at some time in the future. Did Bruce Anderson ever miss the opportunity to mention Trump on Wednesday on the bridge? I don't think it's going to happen. Nobody should take the over on that. Okay, next topic.

We're cramming a lot into this one today. And, you know, in her defense, I believe on day one of the Sovereignty Act, on introduction, Danielle Smith, she was under, you know, she was playing defense a bit, but she did make it clear that she had no immediate plans to use the Sovereignty Act. Everybody assumed she was going to, but she did say that, and she said that a number of times in those opening days. Well, she said it again yesterday, that she doesn't plan to use it yet, or at all, if she doesn't have to. But the fact her words from yesterday or this week

have been, you know, played a fair amount is suggesting to some that she's, after, you know, there was a public outcry on a number of elements of her initial announcement, that she's backing off. She's backing away. She made her point just by saying it. She doesn't have to use it. Where are you on that?

I don't think she's off to a very good start, to put it mildly. I think that she loved to talk about this Sovereignty Act as a weapon, a rhetorical weapon. And I think that what she realized is that it rallied certain people in her province, but it made others feel anxious about the nature of the relationship that she was going to have with the rest of the country and the way in which Alberta was going to be expressing itself on the international stage. Whether or not there were going to be questions about how stable a place it is for an investment in the economy. So she backed off. She also backed off because I think people were giving her advice to the effect that it doesn't really make a lot of sense as a piece of legislation.

And if you use it once, how do you stop using it every time you have a disagreement? What is the exact nature of the line that you want to draw where you say, this is one step too far? And of course, on this question of a just transition, you would have been excused for thinking that if there was ever going to be an issue set where Danielle Smith was going to use the Sovereignty Act, it was going to be around the treatment of the energy sector in Alberta, because that's pretty much what she said motivated it in the first place.

And a couple of days ago, when she was talking about this federal transition plan, she described it as, you know, kind of a horrible idea meant to visit pain and suffering on Alberta, dreamt up in Ottawa that Alberta was not going to stand idly by for. So one could have been excused again for thinking, well, this is the situation where she made that act to solve. And now she's like, well, I'm not sure that I'm going to do that. So why is she backing off? In addition to the fact that nobody really knows how that law would work or hold up. I think about this Transition Act as a poorly named but well-intentioned and smart idea. Basically, what it is, is the federal government saying in those parts of the country, principally those two prairie provinces that have a lot of oil, what we want to do is help people in those economies do the things that are necessary to build the next industrial capacity around clean energy in a decarbonizing world. So it's exactly what you would want to have done. Incentives to help people make the changes that, generally speaking, most people, including most Albertans, think should be made. Most Albertans believe that their province should embrace the fight against climate change and should transition from so heavy a reliance on fossil fuels. And so the Just Transition Plan is really meant to provide funding and policy support and programmatic support for those who want to lead the charge on

that in those provinces. It's a good idea. I don't like the name because the name kind of implies that it's a soft landing for people, that it's meant to sort of help make the pain of losing their economic industries more bearable. And I think it's called that because it was built through a process that involved an awful lot of conversations with people in the labor movement. And that term has a particular meaning in the labor movement, which is that you don't leave workers standing by the side as industrial change happens. You need to help workers find their place in that new economy.

I think that's all good. I think the idea of doing this in a just way is good. I sometimes think though that the name, a just transition or that terminology ends up looking more like a social program rather than an economic redevelopment plan, which is what I think it truly is. So I think Smith is wrong to ring alarm bells about this. I think she would be better advised to make the program the best that it can be for Albertans and to stop wandering

around talking about this sovereignty act unless she really does intend to use it somewhere for some reason, which isn't clear to me at all. Or she runs the risk of just sounding like she's crying wolf and not delivering on it. But let me go back to one thing you mentioned. You said most people think this is the right way to go. Is that most people Canada or most people Alberta? Both. Both. And in Alberta, really, the only rub that you see is around the question of fossil fuels, and in particular oil, and whether oil can have a future provided that the emissions

are netted out to zero. And so for most people, that technology is carbon capture and storage. It's the idea that you're going to take the carbon produced in the extraction of oil, and you're going to deal with it in a way that eliminates its polluting effects. Carbon capture and storage, Daniel Smith was saying yesterday has been working extensively in Alberta. I think she overstated that. I think that there is an effort underway to increase the use of that, the exploration of it, to get it to scale. And I think that's what has to happen in order for that industry to thrive in the future. Because I think the world markets are moving towards lower carbon forms of energy.

So if those barrels can be lower carbon barrels, they'll have a better chance of succeeding. She may be misleading people a little bit on the question of, if we don't do that, will our oil have a future? I don't think it will have as good a future. I don't think it'll have a very long-term future. I do think there will be oil used for a long time. And so the race should be to get our barrels to the lowest possible carbon profile or carbon emitting profile that we can. And I do think that the federal government is trying to nudge, push, incentivize in that area, and she should get behind it. On that question, though, of whether or not Albertans feel that way.

Yes. What's the data you have on that? The data is that the majority of people in Alberta, the large majority, want action on climate change, want Alberta to participate, believe that the future of the Alberta economy depends on figuring out how to adapt to a lower carbon world, how to build economies that aren't so dependent on fossil fuels. And a majority of Albertans actually even support the carbon tax, the federal carbon tax as a policy. I think it's 55, 56 percent. But it's nowhere near the idea that Albertans sit as an island of public opposition to climate action or to reducing carbon. That is a falsehood. But there would be clearly a higher percentage in Alberta than elsewhere. or to reducing carbon. That is a falsehood.

But there would be clearly a higher percentage in Alberta than elsewhere. A higher percentage in Alberta that what? Are opposed to the idea of transition, etc. Yes, but it's probably more like, depending on the nature of the idea, it's probably more like a 10 to 15 percentage difference against the backdrop of, you know, about 80% across the country saying the world's going to change, we need to be kind of active in the economic opportunity in that space. And that's where I think if you look at urban Alberta in particular, you have a lot of people who say, well, we have the skills and the aptitudes. We understand technology. We understand energy markets. We should be the leaders in these new energy businesses.

And there are companies that are. And there's a lot of innovation going on there. And so there's this kind of how the province is acting economically and industrially, especially in those in those kind of businesses that are adjacent to the energy marketplace or right in the middle of it. And then there's the politics of the UCP, which is still disproportionately influenced by, I would say, rural Albertan conservative voters who have not generally seen the climate change issue the same way and sometimes look at policies like this and say, if Trudeau wants it, it's got to be poison. And I don't think that's reflective of the province as a whole. And that's clearly her base, right? I mean, that's her majority support is in the... It has been. And I think the real question, as I look at the Alberta numbers, is if she doesn't do better in Calgary,

I don't see how she beats Rachel Notley. And, you know, to the point that we're talking about, there are a lot of people who work in the energy sector in Calgary. And if Calgarians are thinking, maybe the NDP has this more right than Daniel Smith, they might not be wrong about that in terms of the architecture of the economy of the future and the kind of thinking creatively and how Alberta interacts with the rest of the world, including the investment marketplace. That Daniel Smith point of view on this needs to to be more um urban and outward looking and forward looking it seems to me in order to appeal to a bigger cross-section of alberta's

we're gonna have to talk to kathleen petty again uh in a little while about about all this and we'll come yeah i know your connections to alberta um are solid and allow you to speak the way you do, and you do a lot of research and data collection on the situation in Alberta. But just one last question. How much closer to Ottawa thinking, federal government thinking, is Rachel Notley than Danielle Smith? Well, quite a bit i think um you know i think the ndp under notley in alberta was arguably the most centrist ndp that you could find anywhere in the country uh it's a it it had to, by nature of the province that we're talking about, be familiar with and supportive of the business community. It had to, by nature, including it sometimes putting itself at odds with the federal NDP leadership, have a point of view on energy and the idea of transition that, you know, that probably federal

New Democrats, or at least many of them, would have found not as aggressive, not as left as they wanted. And so in that sense, the Alberta NDP is kind of closer to the center of the spectrum, and that would make it naturally closer to the center of the spectrum. And that would make it naturally closer to the federal liberals. But the federal liberals have also long recognized that to get our emissions into the place where we want them to be as a country, we need to help find solutions that work in Alberta and Saskatchewan around the energy sector. It's not a question of how do we punish Albertans for not voting as a federal government? How do we punish them for not

voting liberal? We've made these undertakings internationally, and we are going to be held responsible for meeting them. And a lot of that work has to be done in those areas. And so we need to have policies that support that transition. And I think it would be better if we had politicians in Alberta who are saying, maybe we don't like this aspect of it or that aspect, or let's turn the dial and tweak this policy this way, rather than looking like they just want to have a fight all the time. Oh, I'm looking forward to the mail coming in on this little segment. Because it's going to be there from both sides. I mean, we get a lot of mail from Albertans who are saying,

she, Danielle Smith, does not speak for us. That's not our thinking on these subjects. But we also get a lot of mail on the other side that this is finally we have a tough voice well you know peter i think something that you might want to do is is have a show where you talk to some of the leaders in the oil industry yeah yeah no no because they're not looking to challenge climate action They're looking to find a way to have their businesses thrive in the world that they see in the future. So they want constructive policy in this area, and they are active in conversations with

people at the federal level. These policies don't get made in a vacuum. Okay, good idea. We'll work at that. That's it for our time. So I'll let you get your extra cameras set up in your room. So for next week, we'll be able to see every angle of how you handle this. I'll order them now.

We'll see how you live. Okay. All right, Peter. Thank you, sir. That's it for this day. Thanks so much for listening. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Um, that's it for this day. Thanks so much for listening. Uh, tomorrow is your turn.

So get those cards and letters coming in and you should get them in today. All right. Uh, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Also the ranter and some surprising reaction. A lot of it to the ranters rant some surprising reaction, a lot of it, to the ranter's rant last week where he said it's time for higher taxes.

Wait till you hear some of those letters. That's tomorrow. Friday is good talk. Bruce is back. Chantel will be here. Look forward to talking to you then. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you again in just 24 hours.