The Paul Wells Show - Thank you, Alberta

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Here's how the Paul Wells Road Show: Calgary went. On Sept. 28, Paul Wells was at the sold-out Martha Cohen Theatre in Calgary to celebrate Alberta's unique place in Canada and ponder its uncertain future. Guests include Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas, economist Trevor Tombe, city builder Kate Thompson and musical guests Jesse Morrison and The Dust Collectors. Follow all of Paul Wells's writing at paulwells.substack.com

Good evening and welcome. I'm Jonathan Love, the new VP of programming here at Workland Center. Thank you. I am so happy to welcome you to the Martha Cohen Theater for an evening discussion of hot topics of the day, a live performance from some local Calgarian musicians. Oh, and future arts funding in perpetuity. I just added that.

Yeah, all right. September is a very exciting time for all of us here at Workland Center as we launched the new season of live events that are going to energize and inspire us over the next year. And I'm thrilled to be here meeting all of you. I'm a lifelong Calgaryan who's performed on all of these stages, either as an actor, an MC or a singer with my boy band, the Heibi-Geebies. Pause for applause. Thank you. I couldn't be more excited to join the team here at Workland, especially in this transformational time in our city's arts and cultural history. There's so many big things happening here at Workland Center, and none of it happens without all of you. So please take a moment to give yourselves a round of applause in all of this.

Now, as we gather here in the spirit of sharing of ideas and enjoying each other's company, I want to ground us in the knowledge that we're privileged to live, work and share on land that's the original home of the Blackfoot, the Iyahe Nekota, and the Sotina First Nations. To share this territory, this home to the Ota Pemsook, Méti government of the Métis Nation within Alberta's districts five and six is a gift that we all share. And as the original peoples of this land, these nations have always understood that the earth is sacred and that all living beings are connected. For us, a land acknowledgement is an act of responsibility of reciprocity and of respect.

And on behalf of the staff and board here at Workland Center, I thank these nations for reminding us of all of our collective responsibility to the land, to all of creation, and to each other. We're pleased to continue to gather to share stories and ideas that affect all of us in this community. But none of this work happens without the incredible active community. And with that in mind, I want to thank our presenting. sponsors, Camico and the Transition Accelerator, as well as our gold sponsors, the Canadian Bankers Association.

And to that, please join me. No, let's hold your applause because I want to make this big for him, folks. It's a small role, but it's a very important role in the production of all of this. Please welcome Dale Austin of Camaco to the stage. Thank you very much. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the sold-out Martha Cohen Theater. at the Workland Center for the Calgary edition

of the Paul Wells Road Show. As you heard, I'm Dale Austin with Camaco. Camaco is a global nuclear energy company headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that is committed to powering a secure energy future here in Canada and around the world. We're also thrilled to be the presenting sponsor of this season's Paul Wells Roadshow and podcast,

because we believe in the journalism and in the open, honest dialogue and debate that Paul offers to his subscribers. We need more of it. A premier, a mayor, and an economist walk into a crowded Calgary concert hall. Here with the punchline, Canada's leading political commentator, Paul Wells. You know, I'm told by the mayor that it's okay to make some noise in this town. up to a point. Let's do that now. Hey Calgary. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells Road Show. Calgary. Thank you so much to everybody for being here. We've got a full house tonight. 30% bigger, 50% more expensive than anywhere else I've done one of these shows.

Thank you for reaching deep to come out and enjoy the Paul Wells Road Show. You know, over the last year I've done shows in Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, but Martha Cohen theater is the biggest one yet. And it is, because it's one of Canada's leading theaters, a place that has seen premieres by Brad Fraser and Ronnie Burkett and so many wonderful Alberta creators and creators from across the country, the boards soak that stuff in and they're going to give us energy tonight. So it's really a privilege to be here. You're coming here as a vote of confidence. I thank you for it. And I'm also grateful to my presenting sponsors, Camaco and the Transition Accelerator, who, as Dale said, are supporting every episode of my podcast this year and

every live performance. And it's also great to have my old friends from the Canadian Bankers Association on board for this show as our gold sponsor. I believe that there are friends and associates and people who work at all of those organizations here. You all are welcome here too, and thank you so much for your help. Now, I'm told that Albertans are being asked to make some important decisions next month. With ten referendum questions on one night, we are going to spend part of the night talking about that. The mayor, Jeremy Farkas, is here.

Premier Danielle Smith is on her way. I have asked her three times for interviews since she became Premier. She says yes every time. I appreciate that, and we're glad she's going to be joining us. And we're going to talk about some other stuff, too. The politicians aren't my only guest tonight. And every time I do one of these shows, I also try to make it a showcase. for creative people.

All night long tonight, you'll be hearing from a fantastic band that's based right here in Calgary. Let's welcome them now. Please say hello to the dust collectors. How's everybody doing? We are the dust collectors, as Paul said. We are from, I want to say,

a driving radius of 10 minutes of here. So really stoked to be here. We've never got to play the Martha Cohn before. So thank you so much for having us. We get so sad, ways well we get so inside of everything is upside down and I can't find my way to the ground singing oh lord you ever gonna find me swimming in a sea of sinners guess I'll just act to sing to the bottom instead because I watch that boat let's guess I'll just ask us the dust collectors ladies

Ladies and gentlemen, they'll be back a few times tonight. In Vancouver, I had opera singers. It was fantastic, everyone loved it. It was fantastic, everyone loved it. They said, what are you going to have in Alberta? I said, the dust collectors. They're fantastic and everyone will love them. And I know you will agree with me that the only thing that could possibly top that is an economist.

Trevor Toome is a professor at the University of Calgary's Department of Economics and the Director of the Fiscal and Economic Policy at the School of Public Policy. He's got carte blanche tonight. I said, Trevor, I'm just going to throw you the keys. You have so much credibility and you're going to be in a room full of people. The band was really excited to meet Trevor Toome. You're going to be a roomful of people who have a lot to think about at a time when there's a lot going on. Tell them what you think they need to know. We are lucky to benefit from his expertise tonight. Please welcome Trevor Toome. Well, thank you very much, Paul. And thank you to all of you for taking the time.

this evening. I'm thrilled to be here, have always been a fan of Paul's writing, his podcast, now the show. And, you know, as he mentioned, Albertans do face a few choices in a couple of weeks' time, one of which is, of course, separation. So there's a lot of aspects to this issue, and economics is just one, but as an economist, I will stick to that one issue. But I want to start with some context. I think it's important to look back, to understand where we are and appreciate some of the forces that are with us today, because we as Canadians from one part of the country to another have been facing very similar issues right from the start. And so these kind of regional tensions, these fights that we have over fiscal transfers and equalization over tariffs or

whatever else have been with us for a very long time. So I'm going to go back in time, not to Alberta, but to Quebec. But not to the Quebec you might be thinking. I'm going to go back 235 years to when Upper Canada and Lower Canada were first created. Now, I do only have a few minutes with you this evening. I promise you won't be asleep for all of them. So why am I showing you this picture of Upper and Lower Canada? Well, if we zoom into Montreal, there's a set of rapids that are right there

that at the time made it very difficult for ships to get past the Port of Montreal. What does this have to do with fiscal fights? Well, most government revenue at the time, all the way up until World War I, came from tariffs, came from taxes on imports, largely from ships bringing cargo in from abroad. None of them could really get past Montreal. And if you squint, you can kind of see where the border is between Upper and Lower Canada, and unfortunately, for Upper Canada, it was past Montreal. And so none of the imports went there, so none of the

tariff revenues accrued to that colony at the time. Even though it was importing through Montreal, it was lower Canada, Quebec at the time, keeping all of the revenue. You can imagine lots of fights, many fights, negotiations that came to deals that then fell apart, that got really acrimonious at multiple points. We had cabinet ministers in Upper Canada advocating to annex Montreal, petitioning the government in the United Kingdom, and the UK Parliament needed to impose a sharing agreement for tariff revenues at the time, and the fights just kept continuing. And for the better part of more than two centuries ever since, we have fight after fight. Our first separatist party was not in Quebec, actually, was in Nova Scotia, the anti-Confederates, over a lot of issues.

But fiscal transfers and fights for better terms was a big motivating factor then. Or when Newfoundland and Labrador joined Confederation, they didn't quite settle all the details around what the federal transfers would be to the province. and they had fight after fight, and Diefenbaker was being burned in effigy in St. John's. No exaggeration. And those fights continued. You had provinces launching lawsuits over equalization. BC was the first to do that in the 1970s, Saskatchewan doing it, Newfoundland and Labrador doing it just a couple of years ago. These are common throughout Alberta history, throughout Canadian history.

It spans multiple political parties, even separation in Alberta, advocating to exit Confederation, you can trace back to at least 1911, where you had sitting members of the legislative assembly advocating for home rule for Alberta. So what we're discussing now is very much in line with Canadian history. And so I'll just leave you with two book recommendations. If you take nothing away from this talk other than two books you should read, it is one by my colleague Anthony Sayers and others on the left, the dawn of competitive party politics in Alberta. That gives a lot of our history in this province. And then on the right, Donald Savoy's book on Canada, Beyond Grudges, grievances, and disunity, really mapping this out for the broader country as a whole. And one of the

takeaway points here, a point that I share is that these fights are often very positive. They don't feel that way at the time for sure, but they lead to better policy. They lead to us developing an ability to compromise and to share, not just financial resources, but power and identity as well. So there are some positive aspects of this kind of fractious federation that we have. But there are tradeoffs. There are costs as well. And so that's what I want to focus the rest of this evening on, the potential consequences for Alberta in its economy and its public finances in the event of separation. And there is a lot at stake for this province.

Our economy is stronger than any other in the country. If you look at how much is produced, how much income is generated, how much GDP economists say per person, that's what we're looking at here, and Alberta is far and away stronger in terms of this measure of economic activity than any other province. About 30% above the national average. There is a lot at stake economically,

And why do I say that? Well, it's because trade is so important for prosperity in the province. I estimate about 55 cents of every dollar earned in Alberta is embodied in an export that we send, of course, internationally, a lot in the form of oil and gas to Alberta. That's only about half the story. A little less than half. The rest is exports to other provinces

or non-oil-and-gas products to buy. other countries. But one in three jobs in the province is supported by exports, either to the rest of the country or abroad, and even more than that here in Calgary. And so separation means a lot of things, but one thing that it almost certainly means is it gets more difficult to trade with other parts of the country.

We'd have a new national border in place. Regulatory differences would rise, tiny little frictions would mount on businesses trying to operate on either side of this new border. And as we're learning in real time with the United States, trade costs matter. If we have higher costs to exchange, then we will exchange less. We'll trade less. We'll gain from trade less.

Lower productivity, lower incomes. And in the short term, fewer jobs. So a report released by the University of Calgary School of Public Policy just the other day kind of goes through a lot of different scenarios. exploring what this might mean. And it finds roughly trade would fall by about a third in the event of separation, just because of these modest additional frictions to exchange with the rest of the country. You probably saw some news headlines around the report,

and really it talked about two scenarios that were put forward, one smooth, one difficult. But if you read the appendices where the real action is, you would have seen about 96 different scenarios explored. Some positive. On the right, these are changes in the size of Alberta's economy, and each dot is a different scenario. And full credit to a colleague of mine, Professor Kent Fellows,

who put a lot of this work together in a detailed model of Alberta and Canada. Averaging across these, you have the economic activity in the province contracting by 8 to 10% or so. Some not quite as bad as others. You can see a huge range of potential futures. But basically, the economy will be smaller in almost all of these scenarios because of trade costs.

And there's some other factors too, but trades that I want to emphasize. So smaller economy, there's a cost. It might be a cost worth paying, but it's a cost that we should have in mind. What about public finances? Well, this comes up all the time. Any discussion around equalization involves Alberta paying out more to the federal government

than it receives back either in programs or transfers and other things. And here what we're looking at is just federal financial flows in and out of Alberta. On the left, these are the inflows. These are the inflows to the federal government, taxes, personal, corporate income taxes, GST, and so on. On the right, it's payments by the federal government, either to Albertans, to Alberta businesses, to operate federal programs here in the province. Now, notice, there's a gap between revenue and spending, and at least the latest data that we have available shows that gap at about $19 billion. So you often hear political leaders talk about the $20 billion in additional funds that are paid out to Ottawa. That's true. That's in the data.

And so some view this as money for the taking, as a windfall available to a separate Alberta. If we were to separate, we'd get all the federal revenues. And even if we took over all of the federal transfers and other programs, we'd have this $19 billion gap now available for us to deploy on our own priorities or lower taxes or whatever you want to spend it on. But a few things kind of get in the way of that conclusion. It's not a result you want to hand your head on. First, the economy would be smaller as we just talked about.

That means income tax revenue would be a little lower. And if the economy is contracting by 8 to 10%, revenues are going to fall by quite a bit. And then operating what is now federal operations from border security to a revenue collection agency, to all sorts of other things that the federal government does, does for us, but not here in Alberta, would need to be replicated in the province. There's uncertainty there around how much it costs, but we estimate that maybe about $12 billion.

Kind of replicate what the federal government does. And there would be some additional costs thrown in there as well. We're smaller, so per person it might cost a little more to deliver the same services. Alberta, at least for a time being, would be a little bit riskier and interest rates would be a little bit higher. Our creditworthiness would be a little lower as a result of the disruption. That would add to higher borrowing costs

and so on. And then you layer on top of that, the smaller economy, shrinking income and therefore income tax revenue and therefore government revenue, and you go from a $19 billion surplus there on the right, sorry, left, to an over

$13 billion deficit here on the right. And so separation by shrinking the economy by leading to additional costs also leaves us with fewer financial resources, fewer public financial resources available to operate the province. We do not have that $19 billion windfall. And of course I mentioned 96 scenarios. There's all sorts of uncertainty around these bars, but basically this conclusion of there not being a windfall is quite robust. Now I've lost track of time, but I'm pretty sure I am getting near the end. So let me consider.

conclude just on another more generic point for us to take away. One motivated by some work that a University of Alberta colleague, Jared Wesley, and a project that he leads called Common Ground, Alberta, where they regularly do focus groups and surveys and have for many years. And this was a result in a recent report that they released that I thought was pretty interesting. You have about one in five Albertans who express support for separation. Other polls kind of have a very similar share there. I know a recent one from Janet Brown through CBC, finding very similar share support as they do. But when asked what you think, other Albertans think about the topic, they find much higher levels of presumed support for separation. Among those who themselves

support separation, they think the provincial level of support separation. exceeds 50%. 53. But among all Albertans, the average is that we tend to think one in three Albertans support separation, even though this specific poll, finding only one in five. So we think support is larger than it is. You could draw a number of conclusions from that, one that Jared and the team there draws, It's perhaps, though a minority position in terms of support, it should be seen as a mainstream

or almost mainstream position in that most of us think that many of us support it. So it's a topic that can be engaged with and discussed rather than dismissed. And I think that connects into this final point I'll leave you with that most of us hold dual identities. And other polls show this too, but when asked, are you an Albertan or are you a Canadian, many, one in three, will say, I am both equally. Others say Albertans first, Canadian second, others are the other direction, but 85% of us hold both identities. This is true in other regions as well, bringing us right back to the beginning, where we're always in these tense fights. We're a very diverse country, a very decentralized country.

Fairness around how transfers are designed and where resources go are common throughout our history. And as I mentioned earlier, I think I should leave you with this point, they can lead to some good outcomes. They can lead to policy reform and improvement. They have in the past, and they likely will again. But there is a cost, and we should be aware of those costs, both economically and fiscally. So thank you very much for your time. I think I will throw it back to Paul. Trevor, too.

Trevor, thanks so much for that. It was really illuminating. And the first question is the kind of mind are kind of human questions. What's it like at the University of Calgary right now in the School of Public Policy with all this going on, with, I assume, at least some division among your students? Well, regardless of what your position is or what perspective you take on separation, there's a lot of interesting questions here.

How do you model what the economic and fiscal implication of separation will be. There's different approaches that you can take. How do you try and estimate what it costs to replicate a service that hasn't existed in Alberta before? There's a lot of approaches that you can take. And so I think the intellectual exercise is quite stimulating, to be honest. I think that's broadly something that is shared across the university. No matter what your field is, people are trying to pursue answers to questions that we don't yet have those answers too. And what are the implications of separation is one of these questions where we want to know the answer. And there's probably not a precise answer, but there's a lot of insight that we can get as researchers.

I think it's a very exciting environment. I'm glad that you spoke about the perception, the entirely natural perception of a fiscal imbalance in this country. I saw one slide this afternoon that said that the rest of the country is into Alberta for about $300 billion over the course of the history since Confederation. I mean, that's got to be frustrating. Well, you can find a School of Public Policy Report that I'm a co-author on where we estimate the transfers net out of Alberta are over $600 billion just from 1961.

Out of Ontario, over a trillion. So redistribution is unavoidable in a country where you have some areas of economic strength and others of economic weakness. And it's not because of equalization. Think about the United States. They do not have an equalization program. They're the unique federation. Most federations do have a kind of program like this.

But the U.S. federal government redistributes financial resources across U.S. states by roughly the same amount as Canada does, despite us having a transparent program to do so. And I think that's better for Canada. We can argue about the formula design. We can look at it and tweak it and change it. But by having it so transparent, it also draws people's eye and leads people to conclude that it might be unfair when they're not receiving a payment, but others are. But redistribution, every federation is going to experience this. And even if we didn't have provinces, we would experience it because there would be transfers between individuals.

High income people paying higher personal income taxes, lower income people less so. I covered a sovereignty referendum 31 years ago in Quebec and I seem to recall that people weren't waiting on economic arguments before they decided how they felt

that extraordinary piece of the work I'm hurt man I was at the Montreal Gazette I was writing this all of this stuff at length right and and yet there we were. But this extraordinary study that the school put out at the request of the government, do you think that it is, it's clearly getting quoted an awful lot? Do you think that it's

having an influence or that it's becoming part of the discourse over what happens next? So I mentioned the Common Ground Alberta initiative that does these polling on support for separation. And if you look over the past five years, the same question is garnering roughly one in five, one in five, one and five throughout a little bit of wiggles here and there, but it's fairly consistent. And so I'm not sure this is an issue where you have big moves in opinion one way or the other, even when you have really difficult moments of economic challenges or boom times when oil prices are above $100 a barrel as they were in 2022 and 2023 or as they might be returning to now, pretty consistent support. And so I think just that alone suggests it's not really the

dollars and cents, but when asked what people's frustrations are, why do you support separation or sending a message to Ottawa, it is often connected to issues like concern around the equalization program. And I don't have a good explanation for why people will in Alberta often connect their support to separation to fiscal issues, but not change support, you know, either when the policies themselves are adjusted, or when their workings are clarified, or when the economic and fiscal costs of this as an option reveal that it's perhaps not a solution to the economic and fiscal grievances that you might have. But I mean, that's not an economic issue. I think the grievances are real in a sense that fights over fiscal transfers is just part of Canadian

political dynamics and always have been, but high inflation. challenging uncertainty internationally and economically, that kind of strain on individuals might also lead to a desire to express frustration with the way things are. And that's what option two might be for some. Well, I expect we're not going to settle everything tonight, but we made a good start on it. I have to say, I couldn't be more thrilled.

Not only did I bring an economist out here, not only did you have charts and graphs, but you told the audience to read the appendixes. That's a trifecta. Thank you very much. Trevor Toom, thanks so much for being here tonight. Now, I'm so busy hiring bands and getting economists and stuff like that for these shows that I need reminding sometimes that some of you folks actually come to these things to see me.

And so I have started to implement something that I call Storytime. And if you'll bear with me, I'll go over there where I've got my prepared remarks and my clicker, and I'll tell you a little story about Paul Wells and Alberta. Now, as far as I can remember, the first time I visited Calgary was in 1981. I was 14. My brother David lived near here, as he does now, and he took me straight to Peter's drive-in in Crescent Heights. Yeah, the drive-in you can't drive by, it said on the sign, and you still can't, as most of you know, it's still there today. Back then, Peters was having a moment.

They just moved across 16th Avenue to a bigger location. I ordered a burger and a small order of French fries. I guess Peter's the definition of small as a relative thing. I think I finished eating those fries a few years later. The first time I came here as a journalist was in 1997. Quebec had voted on whether to leave Canada, and it was close. The idea still had a lot of momentum. So Ralph Klein and the premiers of the other provinces

were trying to think of nice things to say about Quebec. That led to something called the Calgary Declaration. Kids ask your parents. Off we went to Calgary so they could tell us what it said. Before I left Ottawa, a friend of mine from a Quebec City newspaper called me to say that a bunch of the Quebec reporters would be going out for dinner during the Premier's meeting and would I like to join them.

It was nice to be invited, but I was nervous. Are we going to speak French? I said. Is that okay in Calgary? He just laughed. Of course it was okay, and of course dinner was better than okay. I believe we had steak. And that was the first of many good times I had as a grown-up in Calgary. Now, journalists have been visiting Alberta forever

because journalists love a story, and there are always a bunch of them here. In 1955, a magazine published a special issue to mark 50 years since Saskatchewan and Alberta joined Confederation. The editor of that magazine in those days was Ralph Allen from Oxbow, Saskatchewan. The local museum there is still named after him. Here's some of what he wrote in that special issue. I'm going to quote him at length.

He wrote, the belief that the West goes on repeating itself, mile after mile and year after year and generation after generation has never stood up under close scrutiny. Neither has the belief that it is almost wholly populated by the same kind of people. doing the same kind of thing for the same kind of reason. There is scarcely a man or woman living anywhere in Europe or North America who could not, somewhere in Saskatchewan or Alberta, find a sizable community that speaks his language, sings his songs, and worships his gods.

But he would still be, first of all, among Canadians. Ralph went on to write, In the 8,000 miles I have traveled this year in Saskatchewan and Alberta, nearly everything I have seen has confirmed my boyhood belief, tested by countless excursions after gophers, learning, money, girls, and salvation, that anyone who thinks he knows what to expect next from that part of the world is an optimist. Not an optimist about the West itself, for there is a great deal of ground for optimism there,

but an optimist about his own powers of divination. 21 years later, in 1976, Christina McCall wrote about Alberta for Saturday Night magazine. Christina is one of the household gods of my generation of Canadian journalists. I never met her, but she influences almost everything I write. Now, Christina was from Toronto, and it showed, but she was a frequent visitor to Alberta at the height of the 70s oil boom. She wrote, every time I go there, as soon as the interviews begin,

over lunch in the owl's nest at the Calgary Inn, say, with the interviewee sipping his first bloody Caesar and people at nearby tables talking at the top of their enthusiasm range about wellheads, bull semen, rapesee, drilling rigs, and riding rings, I get a feeling both unsettling and exhilarating that somehow I strayed into a foreign land. And she wrote about a new generation of blue-eyed cheeks about Peter Lougheed, Don Getty, Merv Leach, Hugh Horner,

She said, these men have strengthened resolutely their end-de-pondantes position, making moves that have caused complaints that they're covert separatists. Now, as for me, my own connection to Alberta began before I started tucking into that order of fries of Peter's drive-in. In important ways, my connection to Alberta began before I did. My father, Alan Wells, he's the little guy, was born in January 1931 on a homestead just south of Fort McClough. out. 1931 was not a good year in which to be born in Alberta, he wrote in his memoir. The price of marketed wheat had fallen to below the price of seed. The constant dry winds carried topsoil, newly planted seed and hope all away together.

Crop failure led to bank debt, a bad tenant led to bank default and foreclosure. The family moved to West Bend, Saskatchewan, where they lived probably eight people in two rooms for two or three years. Back home in Alberta, my dad went to school in Vermillion and then in Isley, usually with his older sister Jean, sometimes on horseback. He reports that fairly often he would fall off the horse, and Aunt Jean would put him back on it. By the time he was 13, he was in grade 10, which is two years ahead of schedule. In 1947, he became the youngest student to study agriculture at the University of Alberta.

He graduated in 1951 at 20 years old. Soon after that, he left Alberta. he never went back for long, but his mom lived out her days here, and his sisters Margaret and Jean. For most of my life, there's been more Wellses in Alberta than in Ontario or anywhere else. There were also a bunch of Samson's, which I didn't know anything about until I married one. None of this gives me any special insight into the Alberta soul. Everybody has parents, but it might help explain why I'm always surprised when people start talking as though there's some kind of line between here and where I usually live, or as though there

should be. I'm not blind. I know we had a prime minister who didn't push back hard enough against the polarized politics of our time, and who spent the last years of his career desperately trying to turn that polarization to his advantage. I know too many people in my part of the country say Alberta as though it's a bad word. Still today, too many do. And I know because I've spent my adult life watching separatist movements that people often don't vote to leave because they want to reject something. They vote that way because they feel rejected. The thing that's not as clear to me is what anyone hopes to gain

by turning the dotted line of a provincial boundary into the unbroken line of an international border. Who precisely are they hoping to keep out? And who win? In the 2025 federal election, there were twice as many conservative voters in Ontario as there were in Alberta. And there were twice as many NDP voters in Alberta

as there were in Manitoba. I don't know where you draw a line that will leave all of one kind of people on one side and all of another kind on another. COVID vaccinations. In 2023, the rate in Alberta was 94% as high as in Ontario. Immigrants share of the population

higher here than anywhere except Ontario and BC. Opinions of Donald Trump, increasingly about the same all over. I follow enough of the politics here that I know, as Ralph Allen did 71 years ago, that the belief that this place is populated by the same kind of people doing the same kind of thing for the same kind of reason still doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I get the impression that for a lot of people here, the main question you'll be asked on October 19th is getting easier to answer.

But that doesn't mean people are glad to be asked. This too is something I've seen before in other places. Simply being asked to choose your first. group from among all the various groups that Trevor showed us people feel in allegiance to, being made to make that choice can be hard on people. It can make you focus on the ways you're different. It can make you worry that you're disloyal to the people from home or that you're being played by people from somewhere else. This summer I was having lunch with two Albertans I love. And they said they're tired of Alberta being treated like the black sheep of the Canadian family.

One said she knew somebody at university who was afraid to set foot in Alberta. The other said she knows somebody at work today who feels the same way. And I know that's true. Canada's always had people in it who are looking for a reason to hate or mistrust or just to feel superior. But those people are outvoted by all the people across Canada who beat a path to Alberta every chance they get. Most years Alberta wins big and most other provinces lose from interprovincial migration. People come from outside Alberta to study at its universities at a higher rate than go to Ontario or Quebec universities. More people come here for Stampede from the rest of Canada than from the rest of the world, which of course should come as no surprise.

Increasingly, just as a business proposition, if you're not here for Stampede, you don't know what's going on. I rarely spend time in Alberta without hearing people speaking Quebec accent in French. Some seasons in Banff, I'd have sworn I was at Montremblan, except somehow the train. trails got better. Some people will say, well, sure, of course people come here when they want to work or make money or have fun or start a new life or fall in love. To which I would say yes, those are indeed the sorts of things that people do. In particular, they're what people do in a country. But just having this debate can make people feel lonely. I felt it too. My wife and I have a family friend who we sometimes have lunch with up in Bragg Creek. She said something about all of this that stuck with me. She said, you know what would be nice? If somebody just said thank you, thank you for all the energy and the minerals and the beef and the hard work, just thank you.

Now, I didn't come here with any mandate from anybody unless it's from you, but that's something I think I can do. Thank you, Alberta. Thank you for the oil and gas, legal, useful, and valuable as they are. Thank you for driving a century's worth of progress with those resources, and for the extraordinary and ceaseless ingenuity and hard work that generations of Albertans put into getting it out of the ground. Thanks for generations of innovation in our party politics, for sending us Preston Manning,

for taking Stephen Harper when he moved here as a young man from Etobico, and then sending him back east with reinforcements. Thank you for Ken White, K.D. Lang, Mark Messier, Brad Fraser, for Marshall McLuhan and Brett Hitman Hart, for six Stanley Cups, and for showing the world in 1988 on a second try that actually Canada could run an Olympics well. Thank you, Alberta, for my wife. And thanks for my dad. My next guest was sworn in as Alberta's 19th Premier.

On October 11th, 2022, she represents the writing of Brooks Medicine Hat in the Legislative Assembly. She studied economics and English at the University of Calgary. She's a longtime broadcast journalist. Our paths overlapped a little bit during that phase of her career. She was president of the Alberta Enterprise Group, and she's a former leader of the official opposition. She lives in High River with her husband, David, his son, and their dog Buck. Please welcome Danielle Smith.

It's great I have people to take the microphone out of the chair and put it where it's supposed to be. Thank you so much for that, too. I have to assume this is not your first event tonight. What are you up to tonight? Well, today I had this stage. with Doug Ford, and he announced he was going to be putting money into building the Northern Shield pipeline to Sarnio, which is pretty amazing. I also had an announcement with Eleanor Olshevsky, who's the minister for Prairies Can.

They're backing our high-speed rail from Calgary to Edmonton through the major projects list, yeah. And then went to a roundtable with a number of business leaders and have. an Inserva event today, 600 people went to a fundraiser and here I am with you. So you've peaked here. Well, the truth is when people ask me, why would you go and talk to Paul Wells? I said, because I like his wife. Yes. I don't know if you know this.

I get a lot of that. Just knowing the questions you're going to ask me, I don't know if you know this, but Lisa was the president of the Reform Students Association when I was on campus at the University of Calgary. I was the president of the Progressive Conservative Campus Club, and she was on the no side of the Charlottetown Accord, and I was on the yes side of the Charlottetown Accord. And so it's over the years, of course, as politics is progress, conservative movements tend to split apart and come back together and split apart and come back together. But I've watched her career with a really great interest. And I don't know if she's here this evening, but I think,

Hi, nice to see you. But I also know that one of our joint mentors, Preston Manning, is here this evening as well. And it's so nice, Preston, that you're here. Took me a little while to become a reformer, but I got there. So you say you changed parties. I hadn't heard that part. I stay on the same side of the spectrum, at least. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. Whereas I tend to veer a bit. I'm just checking my watch because I want to make sure that we don't take too much of your time. but we're going to take some of it. And let's get right to it. I am struck by an element of the discourse that I see in the debate leading up to the referendums in which some people advocate,

some people say that if you really believe in Canada, you should vote for option two, which is the option to hold another referendum on separation. Keith Wilson from Let Alberta Decide says that a vote for option two is not a vote for separation. He writes, you don't have to be a separatist to vote for option two. You just have to believe that Daniel Smith should not walk into talks with Ottawa empty handed. Along with many other separatists, he's been saying that a vote for option two gives the premier leverage or leverage.

Is that leverage that you want? Well, I think I should just, I don't know how much you've talked about the referendum questions. We put nine questions on the ballot. And those nine questions are ones that I heard from Alberts that they wanted us to gain more autonomy over. There's some immigration questions about judges, the Senate, and provincial jurisdiction when it comes to our laws and our program spending.

The 10th question was put on there through a citizen initiative process. 400,000 people signed a petition saying they wanted a vote to remain. 300,000 signed up petition saying they wanted to vote to leave. And so we felt that putting a question forward that gives both of those options really reflects what the grassroots

sentiment is of most Albertan. 700,000 people, that's about a quarter of our voting population. I'm voting for Remain. I'm voting for Option 1, and I've been trying to encourage as many people as possible to do the same. I understand the sentiment that is behind those

who want to vote for option 2, which would start the process towards a binding referendum. But I think most people really just, there's a few things that I hear. They're angry, so there's a lot of people angry at how we were treated for 10 and they want to send a message.

And then there's, as you describe, that some of the leaders of the leave side believe that it gives more leverage to have a higher vote. I think the way you can give me leverage is to give me a strong mandate on those nine other questions. Because if I'm able to say,

look, we need to change the way our immigration system works so that we can prioritize economic migrants, so that we need to abolish the unelected Senate that doesn't represent us, that we need to appoint our own judges and we need to get Ottawa out of our affairs. If I can get a super majority mandate on those, then I could go to the prime minister and say,

even people who wouldn't normally vote for me, agree with me on these things. And that, I think, is what would give me leverage. And that's the kind of leverage that I'm asking for. But some people say that to supercharge your talks with Mark Carney, you should have in your back pocket a strong mandate for a referendum to secede. So you can say it's my way or the highway.

Do you buy that logic? No, and I think one of the things is it would do is it would erase the past 18 months that we've experienced. I mean, what I would say is you can't treat the new leader of a party the same way as you treat the old leader. The old leader, Justin Trudeau, with Stephen Guboe as his henchman and help from Jugmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP, these were extremist positions.

on energy policy that governed the way our country ran for 10 years. And why do I see it's an extremist position? Because a legey poll a few weeks ago asked, do you believe that energy is a vital part of the Canadian economy? 87% of our fellow Canadians said yes. 2% said no. And that 2% were the ones who were governing the country on policy. So I think what we have experienced is that we've got a prime minister

who's systematically undone most of the nine bad laws that we're holding our industry back. He also seems to engage in the kind of cooperative federalism that I think was envisioned by our founders where you actually go to a province and say, hey, how can we help you out on your priorities and then goes through and signs agreements to do so? It's not just me.

You'll find other premiers feel the same way. And isn't that how the country's supposed to work? I mean, I guess this is my question, is that if we're already beginning to see the progress that we were asking for in the last 18 months, shouldn't there be some validation? That, you know what? Things aren't perfect, but we're going to vote to remain so that we can work on those other things that aren't perfect. That's what I think would be a recognition, is that I think Albertans are, I think we're grateful.

I think that we have the ability to show gratitude. We have the ability to show thanks. We have the ability to recognize when people make mistakes and when they just, they switch course, and that's what I'm hoping that we see on October the 19th, that there's a recognition that things are very different than they were 18 months ago. And it's not that everything has been resolved, but we're certainly moving in the right direction, which is something I wouldn't have said under the previous leader.

Some people say the extremist position is to hold a referendum on secession while all this is going on. Do you regret that choice? Well, again, it's a citizen initiative, and I suppose that, that it's unusual in Eastern Canada because none of the Eastern provinces have that. But British Columbia has citizens initiative. In fact, they had a successful one because the BC Premier at the time wanted to have an HST

and 700,000 people said, nope, we don't want to do that. Got enough signatures and sure enough, they were able to vote it down. I always wondered how that happened, but it was a citizen initiative process. Saskatchewan has a citizen-initiated referendum. I don't know that they've ever used it. And there's 29 U.S. states that do the same thing.

So because it's a citizen initiative process, we feel like we have to honor the legislation that was put into place, and that's why we put it on. I would say it's better to have a citizen-initiated process than what we're witnessing right now in Quebec, which incidentally the national media seems to be very uninterested in the fact that we're about to have a true separatist government, maybe with a majority, based on the polling today, with only 30% of the vote. And to me, the process we're going through that is a reflection of what people, genuine grassroots, people are feeling, is far better than having a political party sort of sneak in on a very minimalist mandate. And then they're going to all, as they promise, subject us to a national referendum that may well be successful a couple of years from now.

So I would just say that we have to honor what people are saying. This is part of the grassroots process, part of the grassroots nature. I think I learned a lot about waiting for the wave and populist movements that happen in this province. That's a lot of how our provinces govern. And this just happened to be 10 years in the making of a lot of built-up anger. And I think that we perhaps weren't able to move fast enough on addressing the issues. And I guess we'll see if we've convinced enough people on October 19th that the country, is working and it can continue to work better and better.

Okay. There seems to be substantial disagreement about your own position in this referendum. Dan Arnold at Polara found that by a margin of two to one, respondents think you're campaigning for separation. And if you break the numbers down further, Remain voters believe three to one that you're campaigning for separation, and separatist voters believe three to one that you're campaigning for Remain. That's such an odd situation that I'm left wondering whether it's the one you wanted.

Well, I suppose we could have a long conversation about the poor job that the media does in accurately depicting what politicians have to say. But I can tell you, I'm not sure what more I can do, aside from sanding on a stage with the prime minister, signing an agreement that we're going to build a pipeline together. I don't know. I don't think that any of the separatist leaders in Quebec are doing things like that, We're standing on a stage today with Doug Ford talking about how we're going to build a pipeline together. We're standing on a stage with Scott Moe talking about how we're going to build nuclear power together with our friend up in the Northwest Territories.

I'm showing with my actions that this is how Canada can work, is that we find areas where we can agree, we partner together, and we work on getting our products to market. I've sat on a stage with Tim Houston, and we're providing him support so that he can also develop out his, substantial natural gas industry in Nova Scotia. I went and visited Premier Freshette, hoping that we'd be able to collaborate in her brief time as Premier on finding ways that we can support the Quebec manufacturing sector.

So I have demonstrated, I think, through my actions what it takes to make this country work. And I'm dismayed that that hasn't been conveyed as accurately as I would like, but I'm going to keep on doing this. Okay. When you announced the first nine referendum questions in February, you said your budget challenge was, quote,

low oil prices combined with out-of-control federal immigration policies. Since then, oil prices have been high, and federal immigration policies have changed starkly. If the situation changes, shouldn't your response changed? Do we still need those first nine referendum questions and the policy changes that they would lead to? Well, I think we should try to put. this into context that we...

You can clap for us both at the end. I appreciate the divided enthusiasm. Actually, I kind of love it. But you could just clap for us both at the end. Okay, so imagine what we've had to be faced with in the last five years. 600,000 people moving to Alberta in the space of five years. Imagine having to build out half the size of Calais. with everything that you need, roads and schools and hospitals and seniors care and supports

for vulnerable, vulnerable Albertans, in five short years. And I can tell you it's impossible. It takes me 10 years to build a hospital. It takes me four years to build an acute care facility. It takes me four years to build a school. And so when you have 90,000 brand new students, a net new 90,000 students come into Alberta in five years. You get overcrowded classrooms. You get very unhappy teachers and education assistance. You get parents saying, my kid's not getting the attention that they need. And you need to build 161 schools, and you can't do that overnight.

That's just a reality. You have to be able to welcome newcomers at a pace that you can afford to build to provide the services for them. Because there's always going to be a percentage of people who will need health care and a percentage who will need social services. And we certainly saw a large number of temporary residents bring entire members of their family here as well. And that was a surprise. That was new. We never used to have that in our immigration system. You used to have to come as a temporary worker and then make a commitment to being a lifetime taxpayer through permanent residency.

At that point you would bring over your family because you've committed to being a lifetime taxpayer. But that isn't what happened. And so we found we have 46,000 children of temporary residents who are in our school system. We found that the combination of education and health care costs were a total of a billion dollars a year, and yet the amount of revenue those workers are generating is 150 million. Like that kind of mismatch isn't, like no one asked Albertans, no one asked Canadian. if that's the kind of change that we wanted to create in our immigration system. What we're saying is let's go back to the way it was before.

We had a 40-year program for how we managed immigration, prioritizing economic migrants, having a clear pathway, whether you're a temporary worker or a temporary student, a clear pathway to become a permanent nominee and then go on to citizenship. And that's what we've got to get back to. So I'm not the only one saying this. You're right. The liberals are saying this too. They've dramatically cut back on those programs, but they still haven't solved the foundational problem.

The foundational problem is we don't have enough ability to nominate permanent residents. We have 34,000 people backlog on our list. We get calls all the time saying, I have this great worker. They've been here four years. I'd like to make them a permanent resident. And we have to say, go call Ottawa. And Ottawa says, well, you know, we're giving preference for those who speak French. like that's maybe what makes sense in New Brunswick

and maybe what makes sense in Quebec but that's not what makes sense here and those are the frustrations that we have actually literally met somebody who's a chemical engineer her husband is a chemical engineer from Estonia and he's learning French because that's the only way he thinks he'll get the advantage to be seen through the to get the permanent residency

and that just doesn't make sense so that's what we're trying to correct is let's make sure that we have the authority at the provincial level. Like Quebec, look what's happening in Quebec right now, the debate that they're having. They're having a debate over whether they continue to have 45,000 permanent residents, or they go down to 35,000. They're having that debate there. We can't even get an allocation that is anywhere remotely close to what we need.

We have an allocation of 6,400. That's about the same as Manitoba. Why does Manitoba get to have the choice of more permanent residents than Alberta when we are the ones who are creating more jobs than anywhere else in the country? 80% of all the job creation last year happened here. We're four times the population of Manitoba. It's that foundational unfairness that we continue to see in all of these programs. And so maybe they've managed to solve a couple of aspects of the frustration that we have, but they haven't addressed the problem that we see, that we have way too.

much need in our economic stream that is simply not being met at all with the approach that the federal government's taking. We've got to take that over so that we can do a better job of matching, not only for our own economy and our own businesses, but also for the success of the newcomers when they arrive. Okay. You say let's go back to the way things used to be. Let's go back to your 2023 throne speech three years ago in which you said, by 2050 our provinces projected to be the second largest in the country with a population approaching 10 million

people. And then you said to reporters after the throne speech on high-speed rail from Calgary to Edmonton, when you have that kind of population, it all of a sudden becomes economic. So becoming the second largest province in the country, with the population approaching 10 million people, was the plan three years ago. I've done the math. It's not clear to me how you get there without substantial numbers of newcomers coming from the rest of the country or the rest of the world. Well, I'll tell you, I certainly didn't expect that the federal government would go from having about 450,000 a year to 2.8 million people a year. They had over 2 million people in the three years following COVID. I don't think any of the premiers expected that to be the case.

And if you look at what you can reasonably support for a newcomer population, I think we probably could reasonably support 1%. So if we're 5 million now, and we're... and we're inviting 50,000 newcomers here, then over time, you can do the math on that. You can end up growing. I think with a relatively modest rate of growth, we're anticipating to get to 7 million by 2050. Maybe we get to 10 million by 2100,

but we certainly weren't trying to get to 10 million over nine. And I think what we discovered is that there's a limit to how quickly we can keep up with the level of growth. And so 150,000 people coming, every single year, it was too much. It almost broke all of our social programs and our system in our schools and hospitals.

And so 50,000 per year, maybe that's the right number. But that's, again, if we get the mandate to take over immigration, that's going to have to be the work that we need to do, is what is the right number? Especially when you look at the kind of programs that we're talking about. I mean, we've got a huge new data center project being proposed up in Sturgeon County with META,

We've got a $4.6 billion natural gas plant and pipeline associated with that. I've got pipelines going in all directions, northeast, south, for oil, for natural gas liquids, for gas. We've got all these fulfillment centers that are happening in the area. We've got a growing aviation industry. We've got a defense sector with the incredible resources that we have at Suffield and Cold Lake and Edmonton and Wainwright. Maybe 50,000 is probably is going to be the right amount because we're going to have a lot of new job creation happening across the board here. But we do also have to recognize that when people arrive here with very high needs, as many of the temporary workers did, and put a lot of pressure on our social programs, that's what created the problem. If you focus on economic migrants, chances are they're probably not going to be a very heavy touch.

on your social programs which again explains why it is we have to change the focus and that's what we're seeking a mandate for and hopefully we'll have the federal government who will work with us as well as they've worked with Quebec Quebec has had their Quebec Alberta or their Quebec Canada agreement on immigration since 1991 they've been doing it for a long time I think the way to understand maybe what Alberta is wanting to do right now is them as you get to be big and strong and powerful and rich you kind of want to do more things I I I it Use this analogy at the Municipalities Association this past week.

You know, when you're a less than 500 population city, you need the province to do a lot more for you. When you become a 50,000-person city, you kind of want to do more. And when you become Calgary and Ebbenton, you want Alberta out of your affairs altogether. That's sort of what happens that I've seen at the municipal level. And I think we're seeing the same kind of thing. We've become stronger.

We're more powerful. We can do more things. We want to do more things. And I think you've said it very well. I think Alberta really, I think there was a lack of respect from some federal politicians towards our province for too long. I don't feel that from our fellow Canadians. I don't feel it from the current prime minister.

I mean, heck, he's an Evanton Oilers fan, which I know might not go over well in this room, but at least it's an Alberta team. So I would say that things have changed a lot. And I think in seeing that change, I think Canada can work, and we've got to work towards that. Well, I asked about half the questions I had ready, but I think it's time for me to give you back to the people of Alberta so that you can talk about these issues among yourselves for the next three weeks. I always appreciate that you come out when I ask you to talk, and I always appreciate your frankness. Daniel Smith, thank you so much for joining us.

Ladies and gentlemen, once again, the dust collectors. We're going to find that lover, never going to find that friend, never going to find that savior, and it's all to feel that sweet wind blow that. Does, I feel that sweet vibration hits you in the chair of the star. As you might know from listening to my holiday show from Ottawa, I am the world's worst guitar player. So one reason I had these guys come out was that I wanted to watch and play their guitars. And I think you're probably enjoying that too. Thanks to the dust of the way. And I know what you're saying, you're saying, Paul, that's awful fun.

But do you have anyone from the Calgary Municipalance Corporation? And I got you covered. perhaps walking in you notice that it's a bit of a construction zone out there. Calgary's having a moment and it has nothing to do with those questions that you're going to have to answer in three weeks. Since we're in Workland Center, which is going through a $680 million transformation, thanks in large part to Mr. Workland, who's here tonight. Thank you, sir. I thought we could talk about some of the stuff that's going on around us. Calgary is changing. A lot of that changes in arts,

culture and creation. You see the signs all over, whether it's the Glenbow Museum, the old planetarium, the National Music Center, or right here, this city is making a series of huge investments in imagination and creation. That's not the way people always think about Calgary. I'm not sure it's always the way that Calgary thinks about itself, but making it happen is my next guest's full-time job. Kate Thompson is the president and CEO of the Calgary Municipal Lands Corporation, which is the organization that has piloted a bunch of these transformational projects. She's an architect by training, and she's here to help us understand this new Calgary in the heart of historic Calgary. Please welcome Kate Thompson.

Now, I'm given to understand you've got some slides. Do you have any of my dad? None of your dad, so I'm already losing. But yeah, great to be here. I have to say I also came to Calgary from away. I came from Winnipeg. I had Peters driving. and now my family and I live walking distance for my sons to walk to Peter's driving in Crescent Heights, so we're set.

I'm given, I think, three minutes to go through 20 years of history, 13 of which I've been involved in with CMLC, Calgary Municipal Land Corporation. You didn't make it sound really exciting, but it is pretty great. Actually, no, cool job. It's a cool job. So I'm going to blast through these slides and then Paul will pepper me with questions, no doubt. So Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the city of Calgary, created in 2007, primarily created to revitalize this picture. This is East Village for people who are not from Calgary.

I had seen series of decades of fits and starts, really didn't move forward, despite best intentions for many people looking at it. When you look at this image, you can look at glass half full and say there's a lot of opportunity, or you can look and say, who, that's a lot of challenges. How do we get those empty lots into something more manageable? So insert CMLC that has an underpinning the first tax increment financing, which in Alberta, of course, we don't call tax increments financing. We call community revitalization levy. And it's been alive and well since 2007 funding.

The thesis is very simply invest to remove barriers, public investment to remove barriers, allow private investment to come. So you'll see images that show that thesis. playing out. So this is East Village in 2009, circa. You can see the Simmons building there for those from Calgary and then you can see all the progress being made since that time in 2000 and this is 2026. So a series of investments that have been made 400 million, attracted to $4 billion worth of private investment. I'll show you some of the projects that came about. First things first, get people in here, have them moving along the river re-take

over the riverbank for strollers, biking, walking, and all the rest. Cover as much public art as you can. I know in Calgary Public Art has been a conversation, but we use it to our advantage, bring vibrancy, bring local artists into the fray, and really bring some new dynamic things happening. Connection, connection, connection, how do you reconnect the neighborhood?

You build bridges, you build underpasses, you build pathways, you let people come and see what they're supposed to be seeing. You also get the challenging mandate in 2013 to build a library. Over a rising, curving train first time in Calgary it had been built over a train. First, a public investment in a building of this scale since the 88 Olympics, and it turned out pretty well. Five years of my life working on that, it was a pleasure.

Fantastic team. So then the team gets asked also, here's another piece of dirt that's actually kind of complicated near the CPKC rail line over top of a train that dives underneath, build a parkade that doesn't look like a parkade, and that can in the future be something other than a parker. parkade. So we built this. This one was creative team that said, let's look at the floor-to-floor height, and in the future, if it needs to be something other than a parkade, you can rip off the siding and make it an officer residential. So that's what we built. We look at every challenge through, obviously, a design land, but also how could you bring more people to it? This is a public

washroom slash pickle court. So we look at all scale of projects. And back to the investment thesis, These are projects underway about $200 million of private investment happening in these fields right now, bringing about 700 new units. The largest amount of announcements of new units since pandemic. I'm actually doing a groundbreaking in tomorrow. Many people joke about when they see me around town that do I have a shovel in the back of my backpack that I just go around to do groundbreakings recently. This is the south half of the district that we oversee, the 500 acres that we oversee. This is the Culture and Entertainment District. big major projects, over $2 billion of private investment happening in this area,

not the least of which is the new Convention Center, about $500 million. And then you can see Events Center, Scotia Place, being constructed right there. Convention Center has attracted in 2025 about 370 different events, 50 net new to the city, and $100 million economic impact per year for this project, and we can't build hotel rooms fast enough to keep up. This is another shot of that project. And then we always concentrate. Anyone who's been to a great city,

it's not just about the big anchors, the shiny buildings. It's also about the walk between those buildings and making sure that it's great and interesting and we're doing all of that work as well. And then we end on one of the busiest cultural campuses in North America, hosting more than 2,000 events a year in this facility, the Worklands Center,

and turning away over 600. events a year. Hence the expansion, apologies for all the construction across the street. That is the rendering that you see behind me, the Workland Center Transformation Project coming together and sitting right next to Olympic Plaza Transformation, which will be a place to skate, a place to dip your feet into the water, a place to gather, and to be right in the heart of our downtown. There you go. That's the summary. I'm so glad you're able to tell this story, and to some extent my function is to come here from far away and to let you know

it is sure getting noticed. In cultural circles in urban design circles, Calgary is making a lot of people rethink not only what's going on here, but what's going on in our own communities. For one thing, I think you shamed Ottawa into building a proper library. So thank you for that.

You're welcome. You know, it's the same conversations I'm having. We get developers from all over North America that come and say Calgary is investing in themselves to a level that they've never seen. You know, people from Denver, San Francisco throughout Canada for sure. And it is true. I talked about

2018 opening the library. That was the largest investment since the 88 Olympics, but we've had over a billion in the last since up to 2020 2018 and since then there's eight billion in the in the queue for other projects including the the Glenbo National Music Center completed before 2018 but Green Line I can go on and on. One point four billion worth of hotel announced in the last year, it's significant, and people do notice. Does success breed success, do you get a sort of a flywheel effect where it just builds more and more momentum? Or at some point do people say, look, we did culture? Move on.

Check that box. Well, the mayor's here, so I feel that it's got to be the flywheel that we have to do more. No, I think the benefit of what we've been able to do as a city, as a CMLC team, as everyone, is look beyond political cycles or just short-term thinking. We're able to look how to actually build a city. And so we've had a 40-year mandate, started with a 20-year mandate. But that's really how cities get built.

They don't get built in three-year increments. The library took five years. Convention Center took five years. They're big, long projects. That's kind of why we do public art too, because it's faster and you get vibrancy really quickly. But you have to make the first. right decisions and service of the city that's beyond what you're thinking of today.

Well, Kate Thompson, this was a brief visit to essentially the future, but I really appreciate you taking the time to come and share it with us. A handy reminder that it's builders who build and that there's just a hell of a lot of that going on here in Calgary. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. My pleasure. Thanks. we had before I started browbeating the premier we had five extra minutes in the program now we're just going to

take those five minutes anyway for one of my favorite things tonight I'm having a great night here I hope that you're all having a great night too but we are most of us to some extent just visitors in this building there are people who work here all the time

there are people for whom the work on center is home base and one of them is Jesse Morrison He's a viola player in the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, which plays down the hall at the Jack Singer Hall many weeks through the year. The viola, as some of you know, lives in the space between the violin and the cello. It's a little bit bigger than a violin. It's got a distinctive sound to it,

and it doesn't often get a chance to show off. Last year, Jesse, who I haven't met, about to meet, caught my attention by releasing an album of solo music for viola. I'm here to tell you that nobody releases an album of solo music for viola to get rich. You do it because you've got something you want to say on your instrument. I checked that album out. It is fantastic. So I reached out to him and I asked him if he would play some of it tonight. Here to play the Alamond from Derek David's Partita for Solo Viola.

Please welcome Jesse Morrison. That partita for solo viola is a musical depiction of of someone who loves Bach and is going through some stuff. And I am so delighted that Jesse Morrison was here to play it. He's been working as a session musician for the last couple of weeks

because my friend Katie George has been recording a Christmas album here in Calgary with music direction from Mark Lamacher. I don't know where you're at, but I know you're here tonight. And so you'll hear Jesse playing more calmly in the viola section for that. Jeremy Farcus was born and raised in East Calgary.

In 2017, he became a city counselor. Four years later, he ran for mayor. It didn't quite work out. He came in second. And then, since running didn't work out, I guess he decided to walk. In 2022, he hiked the Pacific River. Crest Trail, 4,300 kilometers from Mexico to Canada to raise over $225,000 for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Calgary. And if you're walking, it's a good idea to walk some more. A year later,

he hiked 25 Rocky Mountains in 25 days to raise over $43,000 for the Alex Community Health Center. Pretty soon it was starting to look like there was only one way to get him to slow down. So when he ran for mayor last year again, he won. It was close. But with 26.1% of the vote, it looks like he's been doing about 100% of the job. Some of us first noticed him this summer when a bunch of people tried to paint him into a corner over noise bylaws and the Cowboys tent. Some people called him the fun police. I don't know about that.

He sure looked like he was having fun. Please welcome the 38th mayor of Calgary, Jeremy Farkas. Thanks for coming out. You know, let's hear it for Meg and the amazing Workland Center staff. Your Worship, can I begin by thanking you for not right? I only make no head and inch. You call me that. Really? I meant to...

It's one of those nights. I meant to go back and look in the archives. How did you two get on when he was the mayor and you were on council? You know, we butt heads. I pissed him off. He pissed me off. But the thing is, we could always leave it on the ice. And what I realized is after, like we would hash it out, but I think behind the scenes, we always had a pretty good working relationship.

We had a good common rules of engagement. And what really struck me is after I lost that first election for mayor, is anyone who's been in public life or maybe been crazy enough or stupid enough or stubborn enough, but put your name on the ballot realizes after you lose that election, the phone goes silent, right? And I assumed that the people who supported me politically were going to be the, the ones that still gave a damn about me, and I assume that the people who weren't fans of me politically would be the opposite. And what I think that time and support of Ken and the amazing

team at Big Brothers and Big Sisters really taught me is life is so much more messy than that. And to my shock, and in hindsight, it shouldn't be as much of a surprise as it was, but he was one of the first to pick up the phone to try to get me out of the house to go see Avengers endgame, all sorts of fun stuff like that. And he's a nerdy guy. He likes doing that, and so do I. But it really shocked me and I think it challenged me to realize, you know, maybe I'm wrong about other people, maybe I'm wrong about myself and, you know, maybe a little bit of the public's wrong about me too. I want to talk about the job or the mandate. Let's start with the mandate. You came pretty close to not winning. Does that affect your ability to do the job? And just more generally, I mean,

I think, you know, a municipal office in a big city, you, you, you know, you're, you, you, you win the election, you think, I'm going to be the mayor of Calgary. And then you think I'm only the mayor of Calgary. I've got the province on my back. I've got a bunch of counselors who I have to sort of rally for individual. I mean, it's sort of constantly pushing stuff uphill, it seems. How many of you in this room didn't vote for me five years ago? How many of you think I'm doing okay these days?

So the votes you get is one piece of it, but it's a leadership proposition with the rest of council. And I think our election was more unique in that I and a couple others were running very expressly against the political parties, these being intruding into municipal politics. And what makes the mayor's chair so special is you get to build that coalition with different faces around the table, right? I have 14 amazing colleagues who I get to work with. And what you'll find is that the path to be able to get to different issues is different depending on the interests of the local wards. There's some things decisively where counsel has to act, like bringing up. the recent motion in support of remaining the best city and the best province and the best

country in the world. That is so critical. But again, running as independent allows me to be much more pragmatic than if I was locked into that party dynamic as exists at the provincial and federal level. What does it mean to be mayor of Calgary? What are you welcoming people to when you welcome them to this city? Well, for me, and I think what has made this whole Alberta separation debate so divisive is that it's pit neighbors against neighbors.

My father, he came as a refugee, as a newcomer, and we're on the cusp here in Calgary, and Kate did such amazing job articulating this, but we're about to welcome our two-millionth resident. And for me, one of the reasons I want to throw my hat in the ring is we see a lot of the BS that's occurring south of the border. We see even other levels of government, other politicians, scapegoating newcomers,

blaming them for the economic issues, blaming them for issues around, say, health care or education and whatnot. I wanted to put a plan in front of Calgarians to say, welcoming our two millionth resident is exciting. Right now, 40% of Calgary was not born in Canada, let alone North America. And at the same time, we lead the nation.

Yes, we lead the nation in terms of small business job creation, entrepreneurship, the economy. What it means is that it's the world's best people who are coming here to Calgary to be able to solve the world's stuff. office problems. So the growth, newcomer populations, all the rest, this is only a challenge if we are not prepared for it, but it's the most exciting thing possible to be the mayor right now on the cost of walking mayor two-month-calgarian, because that is a great thing.

And yet, some of the challenges that you face are not of your own making. They long predate your arrival on council or in the mayor's office, but I'm thinking about this whole drinking water problem that has really been plaguing both your predecessor and you. How is it possible to have a pressing drinking water shortage in one of the richest cities on earth? Well, I do not care who was responsible, but I am the mayor today. I am accountable. Public safety is my responsibility. I think it's been incredibly frustrating to see amongst a very small minority of folks, but the finger pointing, the blame game, we are here and now, and we are rallying to fix this.

I think I also benefit from my predecessor of Mergondek who learned a lot of the lessons early around communication that allowed us the second time around in terms of the shutdown to be able to pull it off in a much better way. But look, very few cities are in a situation where we have about 60% of our drinking water going through one single pipe. And for us to shut down this pipe,

it would be an impossibility. But I think at this point as a city, we are old enough to know, but still young enough to do. Nobody's told us that it's impossible to shut down this pipe. Because what we would take is that Calgarians reducing their water uses,

only filling their dishwasher when it's full, taking a shower maybe every other day. And to my, it shouldn't be surprising to anybody, but Calgarians, we've rallied. We've rallied behind our first responders. We've rallied behind our engineers. And we're pulling off in one single year, in less than a single year, 11 months,

what would take other places four years. And we're going to have that pipe built and operational baby by December 1st. I think the bigger picture, though, is that in Canada, I think we've sort of forgotten that we're capable of great things. And I think here in Calgary, here in Alberta, there's a nascent excitement and optimism and enthusiasm.

Other places have sort of been around for so long that they've decided that these things are too hard, that they're impossible. But, you know, frankly, our youth and naivete, nobody's told us that it's impossible, so we're doing it. You're doing it under substantial resource constraints. I was watching your latest Instagram video from the LRT. Incidentally, do you have to do like 17 takes of those?

Hey, it's the mayor. They don't call me 50 takes farquist for no reason. It's like some days it's got to feel like you're walking up from Mexico. But what you were saying was that the fire department has to respond to sometimes, dozens of overdose calls a day and that everyone involved is trying their best and this is an important service to have and interventions in people's lives but that's not the fire department's job and that it'd be kind of nice if you had more resources so that so that budgeting could go a little bit more according to what

you know rational planning would have it be yeah the issue here is just a legitimate partnership between us as a municipality with our provincial government. And to be clear, if somebody in Calgary is in trouble and you call 911, we will respond. Our fire department will respond. The challenge, though, is when we live in the context of provincial decisions, federal decisions, we know, for example, the recent closure of our supervised consumption site at the Sheldon Schumer in the Beltline has ultra-concentrated the social disorder issues around the East Village, around the library, and has caused an explosive rise in overdoses.

So we want to be able to work in collaboration with the provincial government. We want sane evidence-based policies. But, again, the challenge will be how we do this cost-effectively and how we work together legitimately in partnership. And that sometimes means asserting ourselves, pushing back against provincial intrusion into areas of municipal domain. I don't want to be debating where by claims will go or which books should be banned or not.

I want to build pipes. I want to build housing. I want to fix these issues so the Calgarians can rely on the best, safest quality of life in the city. What's on your to-do list for the next year or so? Our upcoming few days here is going to be critical. We are making a decision that is so critical for us as a future. And I think it's been incredibly damaging to the social fabric of our community. I think just even being asked, The question, as was alluded to earlier, is so damaging. It's pitting neighbors against neighbors, friends against friends. I have a kid come up to me at our city hall school and said, well, am I a real Canadian? The fact that they even have to ask that question in a place like Calgary, no matter who you are, you belong here.

No matter who your parents are, you belong here. No matter how you pray, you belong here. No matter who you love, you belong here. And the fact that any kid out there, like myself growing up in East Calgary, would assume that they wouldn't have a place here in the best city and the best province and the best country in the world, we have a lot of work to do. So, again, my fear is that based on how the separatist movement has been operating, that we cannot, I don't think putting this to bed is going to be even possible. So we're going to have to fight to live another day. And ultimately, it's going to be infrastructure. It's going to be how do we tap into Calgary?

advantages as a globally connected city. We have 200 plus languages being spoken in various households around this community and as we pivot away from the United States we are the solution to a lot of the challenges the Canada is facing. So, you know, I could not be more excited but you know it's it's it's it's disappointing to see that rhetoric and it's disappointing for me to feel as the mayor of Cal there that anybody in this community is made to feel that they are less to being made to feel that they're the other or that they don't belong. So I'm told by the provincial government

that I'm not allowed to take a position but vote option one, vote to stay. Send a strong so so sue me let's send a message that no matter who you are you belong here in the city, this province,

this country. Well they told me something. For all of the economic reasons and everything Trevor told you, he's got in in the appendices I'm told. Those appendices, I'm telling you. Well, they told me something was happening here in Calgary at City Hall, and so I thought I would come and see for myself. Thank you so much for watching the whole show,

and then for coming out to cap it off. Jeremy Farcas, thank you. Hey, we're almost done. Two people told me to remind you that there's a reception afterwards. I will come out in schmooze. I'm told there's charcutory plates. Why would you leave? It is this kind of fellowshiping and socializing is a big part of these shows,

and so I hope to see them. a lot of you out there later. There's one more thing on the bill for tonight, but I want to proceed it with my thank yous. I am grateful all the time to my presenting sponsors for this season, Camaco and the

transition accelerator. I am really pleased to have our old friends at the Canadian Bankers Association back here as my gold sponsors for this event tonight. I want to thank Alex Sarian and his extraordinary team here at Workland Center. They made us

at home all through the preparations for this. I want to thank my own producer, Suzanne Hancock, who makes me look so much more competent than I really am. So thank you, Suzanne. And I want to thank all of you. Here to take us out with a song that distills all that everyone loves about this beautiful place. Let's welcome back the dust collectors. Thank you very much. We were going to do our favorite piece by back, but Jesse, so this we'll have to do instead.