What does Alberta s conservative government have in store for us Albertans in the upcoming legislative session? On this episode of The Gunn Show, host Sheila Gunn-Reed and her guest, Corey Morgan of the Western Standard, discuss Alberta s Throne Speech from the Throne Speech and what we can expect in the next few months.
00:00:38.700We're delivering on that promise today.
00:00:43.240If passed, the Alberta Taxpayer Protection Amendment Act will shield families and businesses from future tax hikes.
00:00:49.740The Act already bans the introduction of a provincial sales tax without a referendum.
00:00:54.780What we'll do with this Act is strengthen that.
00:00:59.000With our amendments, increases to corporate and personal taxes will not happen without Albertans' permission.
00:01:04.420This includes increases through the reduction of personal income tax brackets or through decreases in the basic personal spousal and equivalent to spouse credit amounts.
00:01:15.700Thanks to this legislation, everyone from single parents to entrepreneurs will have an extra dose of certainty so that they can budget and save for what truly matters to them.
00:01:24.120Monday here in Alberta, we heard the speech from the throne.
00:01:27.480That's where the government of the day sets their agenda for the next legislative session.
00:01:33.260And it sounds like Alberta's Premier Daniel Smith has a lot of fighting with the federal government planned for Justin Trudeau.
00:01:42.140Now, joining me to break down what we saw from the speech from the throne and what we can expect in the next few months from the Alberta government is my friend, Corey Morgan.
00:01:52.760He's a columnist with the Western Standard.
00:02:29.160A lot of it was, I guess, kind of predictable, very much focused on making Alberta a destination for business.
00:02:35.540That's the messaging she wants to get out, you know, reducing regulatory regime and also for people with the affordability front, reducing the tax bracket.
00:02:43.600Keeping that theme of pointing at Ottawa as the enemy to defend against.
00:02:49.160Again, politically, it's always a good approach in Alberta and they always give us lots to work with on that front.
00:02:55.760The thing that kind of came out of left field there was the high speed train proposal, though, which I don't remember anybody campaigning on or anybody even asking for.
00:03:05.180And to have it actually inserted into a throne speech gets me actually kind of uncomfortable.
00:03:08.960Yeah, that was sort of a thing I didn't expect to see.
00:03:15.440I knew it was something that Jason Kenney was sort of poking around examining.
00:03:19.560I hadn't seen the business plan for that.
00:03:21.900But it seems like every five or six years, someone's like, you know, we definitely need is a monorail from Edmonton to Calgary stopping, I don't know, in Innisfail and Red Deer along the way.
00:03:35.100I mean, I don't know what the usership would have to be to make that affordable.
00:03:39.900If it's a government run project, I mean, we'll have we will just be able to teleport through a private company by the time the government gets a monorail finish.
00:03:50.560So, again, I'd like to see the business model on that.
00:03:53.680But you touched a little bit on the tax relief issue.
00:03:57.040There's Bill one, which I think we should definitely talk about, and also suspending the gas tax until the end of the year.
00:04:05.960We keep doing this, suspend the gas tax until a certain date.
00:04:10.360I don't understand why we just don't get rid of it altogether.
00:04:12.780If we realize that it is driving up inflation and hurting Albertans in their pocketbooks, why wouldn't we just get rid of it altogether?
00:05:37.180But they're getting to a point of really just immediate opposition to everything.
00:05:41.420And I don't think it's serving them at all.
00:05:44.140This sort of thing does remind us of Ralph Klein.
00:05:46.480He brought in the Balanced Budget Act to say that, you know, the government could not go into deficit.
00:05:51.000The very first time I ever attended a live legislative session in person was to watch the Stalemac government put a quick motion in, repeal the act, and then go into deficit.
00:06:01.460So these acts, they're good because it makes the government at least have to go pretty public and eat some crow and make a motion to get out of their own legislation if they do want to raise taxes.
00:06:16.220This is different that it calls for a referendum if they wanted to do it, which I can't see any referendum winning when somebody's saying, we want to raise your taxes.
00:06:26.700But, I mean, people also should realize that it's not set in stone.
00:06:29.740Any majority government can always repeal these things.
00:06:32.600But it makes it more difficult for them down the road to try and raise taxes.
00:06:36.180And anything that hinders the government's temptation to raise our taxes further is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
00:06:41.640Yeah, it's just so odd to see the NDP campaign against giving people the option, giving people a voice in the legislative process.
00:06:54.220I think they're decrying it as undemocratic when it's probably the most democratic thing that I think the government could do.
00:07:02.360And, you know, you point out that Stelmac repealing that law gave way to the NDP to bring in the largest deficits this province had ever seen.
00:07:14.040We're still crawling our way out of this hole.
00:07:16.900Yeah, and then the NDP just can't even remain silent, perhaps, on a policy.
00:07:22.440I don't think they're doing themselves any favors on that one to say it's undemocratic.
00:07:26.960Well, you're asking, we're talking about a policy to give citizens the right to vote on a policy.
00:07:32.540It doesn't get any more democratic than that.
00:07:35.380But I swear they can't hear themselves speak sometimes.
00:07:38.880Now, there was something that wasn't in the throne speech, and I was hoping to see it.
00:07:44.240But I think maybe the government was caught a little bit flat-footed, although I think the writing was on the wall.
00:07:49.280I thought there might be something in there for firearms owners, given that the federal court has just upheld Justin Trudeau's, again, there's that word, undemocratic, order in council banning.
00:08:01.280It started at 1,500 long guns, and now it's closer to 2,000 long guns.
00:08:06.720The federal court said that doing that is completely within the government's power and that the government didn't act unfairly by arbitrarily making people criminals overnight through the stroke of a pen.
00:08:22.300I thought, given Daniel Smith's strong stance on property rights and firearms rights and public safety, that I would see something like that in the throne speech.
00:08:32.860I think they weren't prepared for that.
00:08:39.600There's so many balls in the air right now, it's hard to cover every possible issue in a throne speech and then to realize there was going to be a ruling come out at this point so close to it or during that they couldn't hit on it.
00:08:53.280But, I mean, Premier Smith has never shown any support for the federal firearms plans or track.
00:09:00.540Ironically, Premier Kenney was actually always well outspoken for that.
00:09:04.060He brought in Terry Bryant, I believe it is, the firearms officer.
00:09:07.900She's been very common sense in that issue.
00:09:12.560So, I think they will, as you said, it was notably absent in the throne speech.
00:09:16.780Maybe they're trying to appeal more to the urban crowd too, though.
00:09:19.880I mean, everything's tactical when it comes to this.
00:09:22.360And they realize that's a strong rural issue, but they've already got strong rural support.
00:09:26.900They want to make sure that Calgary stays solid because they came so close to potentially losing the election over some of the Calgary seats that, while I don't think they would lose support over bringing the firearms issue into the middle of the throne speech, it wouldn't have necessarily gained them anything as well.
00:09:42.680So, that might be part of why they didn't touch upon it as well.
00:09:45.340I suspect they're going to stand up for our property rights, at least as much as they're capable of within the federation.
00:09:52.980Now, and on the flip side, I don't know how much more they could say or do, given that they've already said,
00:09:59.940we're not going to allocate RCMP resources to kicking in our friends and neighbors' doors all across the province to get a bunch of firearms that really, frankly, nobody knows where they are.
00:10:12.540So, on the flip side, while it was notably absent from the throne speech, I don't know what else Daniel Smith could say, except if Justin Trudeau demands the RCMP go around and kick in doors.
00:10:23.460And I think that's the only way to go get them, frankly, that our cops are not going to do it.
00:10:30.500No, and Premier Smith's been working almost incrementally towards bringing in a provincial police force, at least encouraging areas like Grand Prairie to say, you know what, we're going to go with a municipal force rather than RCMP.
00:10:41.780And expanding the reach and the scope of the sheriffs, she won't come right out and say we're going to form an Alberta provincial police force, but she's on that direction.
00:10:49.160Another thing absent from this speech as well was the pension plan, not a peep on it.
00:10:55.600And that's sort of been the top issue of this government since the last couple of months when they brought up that study on it.
00:11:02.940I suspect they seem to have hit this poorly prepared.
00:11:07.980We've talked about an Alberta pension plan for a long, long time, but now that they've sort of really made a solid move towards examining it,
00:11:15.580the blowback was anticipated, of course, but they didn't seem to respond strongly to it.
00:11:20.980They can't give good, strong numbers on it.
00:11:23.300And they're sort of, I'm just thinking, circling the wagons a little bit and trying to think of how they're going to approach it from here on in.
00:11:28.300Because if they wanted to hit it hard, you'd think that would have been right in the middle of that throne speech.
00:11:32.200And they made a point of not having it in there at all.
00:11:34.300So I think their support on it is softer than they hoped for.
00:11:36.860And I think maybe the fact that Polyev came out and said, hey, Alberta, please don't.
00:11:44.800I think that might have rattled the UCP a little bit.
00:11:48.680I don't know if they expected that from him.
00:11:52.340But, you know, you very rarely see Alberta break with the federal party on these issues.
00:12:00.680And, you know, it looks like there's a bit of a fracture there on this one.
00:12:04.320Well, it puts Polyev in a rock and a hard place.
00:12:07.620I mean, if Alberta exits the plan, despite whatever people might claim, it will certainly cost every other Canadian a lot more money.
00:12:15.560The only thing that's disputable is the amount of the principle that Alberta may be entitled to on the way out.
00:12:20.860But if Alberta left even, you know, with a small percentage of the plan, that plan is suddenly going to be underfunded by a few billion dollars a year.
00:12:29.340And any liberal would be able to, if Polyev supported that, would be able to beat pretty hard on them and say, hey, all your pension plan contributions are going up because of that plan you supported or that exit you supported in Alberta.
00:12:44.780And while there's, you know, the UCP and the federal conservatives aren't formally linked, they aren't like the NDP, there's certainly a great deal of overlap between the members and the players and the political people in there.
00:12:54.360So I suspect perhaps there was at least a polite request saying, can you can you take your foot off the pension plan gas a little bit because we were having trouble here responding to it on the federal front?
00:13:04.800Yeah. And it is a good point to make that whether it is 50 percent of the federal pension plan or 30 percent, it's going to leave a big hole right in the middle that doesn't matter what party is in power.
00:13:17.840They absolutely cannot deal with it without major tax hikes across the board in other areas.
00:13:24.360Yes. And so, again, as a federal thing, I think perhaps, well, the better front might have been on Polyev's end just to stay silent about it.
00:13:32.880I mean, he wasn't getting pressure or attacked from what I've seen as being supportive of it.
00:13:37.540He preemptively kind of came out and opposed it, which upset a fair amount of Albertans.
00:13:41.440It's not like, well, we've got to remember the politics of Canada, right?
00:13:44.320Mr. Polyev has nothing to lose in Alberta, just as the liberals have nothing to lose in Alberta.
00:13:48.500That's our biggest fault as a province. We're pretty predictable with our votes.
00:13:51.360So that's why they always cater to central Canada.
00:13:54.640And an Alberta pension plan is never going to be a popular item in central Canada or pretty much anywhere outside of Alberta, I'm afraid.
00:14:04.000Now, Bill 3 expands Alberta's ability to become engaged in class action lawsuits against the opioid manufacturers.
00:14:12.320For some reason, BC is engaged in lawsuits against the opioid manufacturers while simultaneously allowing people to use hard drugs anywhere and everywhere, and the police turn a blind eye to it.
00:14:24.560But Alberta is going to expand its ability to recoup some of the costs from the opioid manufacturers for, I guess, the overprescription of opioids leading to deaths.
00:14:49.340I think it's a step in the right direction to hold people to account for how these things were first described to people looking for pain relief.
00:15:00.060Well, I mean, there's certainly a lot of evidence when it came to OxyContin and things like that, that it was clearly they were understating the addictive nature of it.
00:15:08.840They were giving a lot of incentives to physicians to prescribe it for pretty much anything.
00:15:13.360So if you could find a definite intent to get people addicted to this, then those people should be held accountable.
00:15:22.200I do worry about some of these sorts of things, though.
00:15:25.140I mean, this is like going after the tobacco companies for the damage of cigarette smoking.
00:15:30.220And, of course, by extension, we also see these lawsuits coming out going after energy companies because of climate change.
00:15:36.340And I'm not big on the government doing that.
00:15:38.320But they should be looking at the illegal use of opioids, which is a bigger issue than some of the legitimate use.
00:15:44.920I mean, I horrified the world when I posted pictures of my colonoscopy on my show a while back.
00:15:51.020But you're just trying to show, you know, these procedures.
00:15:59.680So I, you know, aside from the pictures, I had no memory of it, which was fine by me.
00:16:03.260But, I mean, there are legitimate uses for these opioids.
00:16:07.220And if you keep hitting the manufacturers on them, you could actually knock research down on things, you know, these sorts of drugs and breakthroughs.
00:16:19.280We'll see what becomes of it, I guess, if it's a reasonable class action against true, you know, misguided or even corrupted practices with drug manufacturing or pushing or use.
00:16:30.760But they could also cause more damage than they're solving.
00:16:51.540I think if there is evidence of corruption, that the opioid manufacturers knew that their drugs were more addictive than they were telling doctors.
00:17:01.740And if the opioid manufacturers were incentivizing doctors to overprescribe, which I'm not necessarily sure happens in our system.
00:17:12.840But if that were the case, yes, let's hold them to account for that.
00:17:15.980But also, as somebody who believes in personal accountability, I want to make sure that people are responsible for their choices in the mix here.
00:17:26.700Well, that's it, with the attacks on tobacco companies, which, yeah, they were selling a dangerous, nasty product.
00:17:33.080But, I mean, I remember people claiming we didn't know that it was dangerous.
00:17:55.360It's to, as you said, try to put the responsibility on somebody else besides the user or, of course, besides the government itself that taxes and makes off quite well off of tobacco product sales.
00:18:04.480So, again, I'm not terribly enthused with them jumping on the potential class action thing.
00:18:10.100But they are taking at least the opioid crisis seriously.
00:18:12.600And that's something that the Smith government's been very good about.
00:18:15.200They talk a bit around and they're being careful with it.
00:18:17.920But possibly having, you know, compassionate intervention is the way to put it.
00:18:21.140But basically, possibly trying to enforce treatment on people when they're very far along with addiction.
00:18:26.520So, I'm still very enthusiastic and optimistic about where the Smith government may go with dealing with this addiction crisis.
00:18:33.560But I'm not sure if this class action was one of their best moves with it.
00:18:36.580Yeah, I think it is the Smith government attacking the opioid crisis from all fronts.
00:18:45.100You know, through opening up voluntary drug treatment beds so that that is not a hindrance to people seeking treatment to possibly introducing the grabbing, I guess, and forcibly taking off to treatment violent drug addicts, people who are threatening their families and threatening violence upon themselves in the community.
00:20:52.320He did a great deal of work in that front.
00:20:55.760And then Premier Smith is continuing with it.
00:20:57.740The area that will get controversial is with the intervention with people.
00:21:01.820But when they've hit the point, when they've hit the point when they're in the alleys, when they're on the streets, when you see them down there, their teeth are falling out of their head.
00:21:30.300I'm sure parents, family members, friends would say, please step in, do whatever you can, even if it's a long shot because it's better than the path they're on right now.
00:21:38.940And I really appreciate the Smith government's courage to look at that as an alternative to deal with this, as opposed to enabling, as we see in pretty much every West Coast city in North America.
00:21:48.660Yeah, it's, I believe it's called the Alberta model.
00:21:51.960And some of the more atrocious cities of the world, Portland, Seattle, they're studying the Alberta model.
00:21:57.560And luckily enough for us here in Alberta, but tragically for the people in BC, we have two different models that we can study for effectiveness.
00:22:05.220We have the Alberta model, which has more beds, enforcing the drug laws, considering rounding up drug addicts when they become violent towards their friends and families and start to become a plague upon the neighborhood versus the complete and total enabling of people into the grave in British Columbia.
00:22:24.940So I guess time will tell which system works.
00:22:31.740But of course, the NDP are like, actually, let's not give them drug treatment.
00:22:35.840Let's just give them drugs and see how that goes.
00:22:38.960And I've never made a secret of my being a recovering alcoholic.
00:22:42.640And I know that if they were handing out shooters at my AA meetings, I would still be drinking today, if indeed I'd still be alive after drinking that much.
00:22:51.060So the absurdity of the NDP approach is, I think most people realize it.
00:22:59.960Now, I wanted to talk to you before I let you go about something I think isn't really being talked about all that much in the mainstream media.
00:23:09.980And I think it's because they were really, frankly, a member of the NDP street team.
00:23:14.540There was a one man insurrection, to use the language of the left, at the throne speech where an environmental activist tried to disrupt the thing.
00:23:23.580And let me tell you, if that were, let's say, Bernard Hancock during the NDP days, generations of Bernard's people would be canceled from existence on social media.
00:23:39.800But the NDP activist, member of the NDP street team acting up during the throne speech, no big deal.
00:23:48.440By the way, how did that person get invited to the throne speech?