Juno News - June 27, 2024


Alberta NDP wants a divorce from Jagmeet Singh

Topics
bill c59 emissions cap impacts change in federal government
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Rebecca Schultz Jagmeet Singh Nahid Nenshi Jack Layton Danielle Smith Mary Holland Stephen Guibault Andrew Lawton Rachel Notley Pierre Poilievre Andrew Lawton Show Christine Van Gein Stephen Guibo Emrit Parhar Alberta MLA Wilkinson Versace Gilboa Kipo and 2 more
Liberal ministers rally behind Justin Trudeau Liberals in panic mode

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

181.35

Word count

8,363

Sentence count

336

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this week's episode of The Andrey Lawton Show, host Geoff Tkachuk sits down with Alberta's Environment Minister, Rebecca Schultz, to discuss the federal government's ongoing battle with Alberta on environmental policy, and why she thinks her province is going to come out on top.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30 Thank you.
00:01:00 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19 north hello and welcome to you all one more episode for the week here on this thursday june
00:01:30 27th 2024 great to have you aboard the program here on the andrew lawton show canada's most
00:01:37 irreverent talk show and we have an absolutely wonderful show planned for you today i've been
00:01:42 working on this for a little while not not because it was like this giant giant thing it'll be good
00:01:47 but just because it was very difficult to pin down the scheduling, it seems like every week,
00:01:52 sometimes multiple times a week, there have been more and more things where Alberta is going up
00:01:58 against Ottawa in a very substantive way. And it oftentimes comes back to environmental policy. So
00:02:04 that is where we're really looking at this changing relationship, this changing federalism
00:02:09 relationship, and specifically with Alberta and Ottawa. And so at the center of it, obviously,
00:02:14 is Alberta's Environment Minister, Rebecca Schultz, who we've had on the show in the past.
00:02:17 She actually ran for the leadership against Danielle Smith, but has since become a very
00:02:22 supportive and strong member of Danielle Smith's caucus. And I wanted to just do a deep dive with
00:02:28 Minister Rebecca Schultz on this, a deep dive on how Ottawa and Alberta are going at it and how
00:02:35 she certainly, I would assume, thinks Alberta is going to come out on head. So in about 10 minutes
00:02:40 or so minister rebecca schultz will join me we'll have a whole half hour with her so if you have any
00:02:44 questions you want me to put to alberta's environment minister about alberta's environmental
00:02:48 policy but in general about how provinces can assert their autonomy please do let us know in
00:02:53 the comments we'll try to put a couple of those to the minister later on uh interestingly i should
00:02:59 just say i'm still doing it's kind of winding down now but i've been doing for the last few weeks the
00:03:04 the media rounds on my new book,
00:03:05 The Biography of Pierre Polly Evieux.
00:03:08 So unsubtly see over my right shoulder.
00:03:11 I think it's right for you.
00:03:12 Yeah, it would be a right shoulder for you
00:03:13 because otherwise the text on this would be backwards.
00:03:15 But anyway, so I've done this
00:03:18 and despite my criticisms of the legacy media,
00:03:20 they've been very, very gracious in having me on.
00:03:22 I've been on CBC.
00:03:23 I have done, believe it or not,
00:03:25 I think 34 interviews with CBC.
00:03:28 That is a lot of CBC interviews.
00:03:30 I did one more yesterday.
00:03:32 it was a cbc radio call-in show in saskatchewan and i did the interview it was a lot of fun and
00:03:38 then the host was taking calls from people and this is saskatchewan this is a province that has
00:03:43 i believe every single seat being conservative but that doesn't mean every single person is
00:03:48 conservative and boy some of the callers had some strong thoughts not about me they were all
00:03:53 directing them at polyab one of them i thought was going to make a compliment they're like well
00:03:57 you know, he seems very Harperite to me. And then they followed that up with he's a fascist. And I 0.90
00:04:02 said, Oh, okay, well, that escalated quickly. And there were a few people that had very, very deep
00:04:06 concerns about his pledge to defund the CBC, which I guess is not all that surprising, given that they
00:04:11 were listening to CBC radio in Saskatchewan when they have other great private stations like CJME,
00:04:17 for example, that I was on a couple of weeks back, but it was a lot of fun. And I also had an event
00:04:22 in norwich ontario and a number of listeners came out viewers of this show so thank you so much to
00:04:27 those who did it was great to meet you in person and see a couple of you again but let's just talk
00:04:32 a little bit more i swear we're going to move on from the toronto st paul's by-election after this
00:04:36 week but i cannot overstate how significant a development this by-election was in the broader
00:04:42 political landscape now uh sean this this just came up so if you could try to get that clip of
00:04:48 of Mark Holland that one of our colleagues was sharing. This is a tremendous clip that I want
00:04:54 to share with people. It just came like a second before we went on air. I won't give it away too,
00:04:59 too much. But I will tell you that I think the NDP has been getting a little bit of a pass here
00:05:04 because it's easy to point out how this was a grand failing for the Liberals. And it was. It
00:05:08 was easy to point out how Justin Trudeau absolutely just crapped the bed on this and has a coterie of
00:05:15 cabinet ministers now coming out to pretend that everything is fine and they have great confidence
00:05:20 in him. Meanwhile, all of these anonymous caucus members from the Liberals are blabbing to reporters
00:05:25 at CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and saying, yeah, Justin Trudeau's got to go.
00:05:30 And that's all fine. And I think we need to have that discussion. But can we talk about how much
00:05:35 of a profound failure Jagmeet Singh's NDP was? The NDP ran a candidate here, Emrit Parhar, who got
00:05:42 10.9% of the vote. 10.9% of the vote in Toronto. In Toronto. Remember, the NDP is incredibly strong
00:05:54 provincially and provincial politics in Toronto. But federally, the NDP was an absolute non-entity
00:06:00 in this. 10.9% of the vote. Just to give a little bit of context, in 2021, the NDP had 15.89%.
00:06:07 percent uh sorry no in uh well that's redistributed so 15 to 16 percent uh because the boundary had
00:06:14 changed a little bit that was in 2021 in 2019 the ndp had 15.78 percent in 2015 around 15 percent
00:06:22 and that was with noah richler who's a bit of canadian royalty but the ndp again not a huge
00:06:28 player but a drop from 15 or so percent to what do we what do we have again for this year
00:06:34 a drop from 15 to 10.9 percent and i don't even know if jagmeet singh really uh that's my book i
00:06:44 see on the screen there pierre paulieva political life yes that wasn't an intentional ad but you
00:06:48 know glad you got to see it again uh the jagmeet singh uh did not even really campaign didn't even
00:06:54 go there i'm not even convinced that he visited the riding during the by-election if so i i don't
00:06:59 follow his moves really really closely because i prefer to you know pay attention to people who
00:07:02 matter and are relevant but uh he was there and what was fascinating to me in all of this is that
00:07:09 the ndp are the ones that i think are have an opportunity here to be the principled lefties
00:07:14 of canadian politics they have the opportunity to be the principled voices for all of the things
00:07:19 that justin trudeau pretends he cares about and pretends to stand up for and they don't do that
00:07:24 so i've heard rumblings and rumors the kind that you always have to take with you know 17 000
00:07:29 and grains of salt in that the NDP are really going to consider strongly, which I know sounds
00:07:35 equivocal as it is, pulling their supply and confidence agreement by the fall. And it might
00:07:40 even happen over the summer, but it's a bit of an empty gesture because MPs are not going to do
00:07:45 anything until they go back to the House of Commons in the fall. But the NDP, I mean, could
00:07:51 finally try to assert some sort of independence, some sort of autonomy, some sort of a goal here.
00:07:57 But what's fascinating is that provincially, the NDP wants nothing to do with the NDP federally
00:08:02 when it comes to Alberta.
00:08:03 So Nahed Nenshi, who is the new leader of the Alberta NDP as of Saturday, has now decided
00:08:10 to go full steam ahead on really pushing for a divorce between the Alberta NDP and the
00:08:15 federal NDP, which right now are harmonized, where if you get a membership in one, it comes
00:08:19 with a membership to the other.
00:08:22 Now, Rachel Notley had not been as far left as Jagmeet Singh on a number of issues, notably
00:08:27 energy issues, but even she never wanted to sever these two things, whereas Nenshi is looking at
00:08:32 the Jagmeet Singh NDP brand in Ottawa and saying, like, this is just not at all something that we
00:08:38 want anything to do with. So I'll talk about that in a second, but I wanted to play the Mark
00:08:41 Holland clip because this is Mark Holland explaining why the Liberals really lost in
00:08:46 Toronto St. Paul's. Thank you very much. I will point out just the record. It was not hypothetical
00:08:52 for 40,000 people in Toronto St. Paul's on Monday. They did actually make a decision.
00:08:57 So let me take let me take the the first part of what you said, because you're right. People in
00:09:01 St. Paul's made a decision and we're responding to that. But I I think that people in St. Paul's
00:09:05 knew they weren't changing the government. They were saying we're upset at the world right now.
00:09:10 People I knocked on those doors. I didn't hear anybody saying I love Pierre Polyev's plan for
00:09:14 the country because he doesn't have one you know uh he's reflected the anger that exists in the
00:09:19 world well well done you know where are people happy in the world right now it's a tough time
00:09:24 to be alive as a human being um and you know so that that that was about frustration of being able
00:09:30 to express it without changing governments and i understand that and that message is heard loud and
00:09:35 clear and for terry dan and i like yeah we're gonna like dig deeper i'm gonna wake up in the
00:09:40 morning and try to work harder and try to do more and try to meet the frustrations of those people
00:09:45 with better effort and and clearer communication but you know i don't think saying that they made
00:09:52 a decision about the kind of country or government they want is at all accurate
00:09:55 people are just venting where else are be no one's happy people of course are unhappy it's like
00:10:03 my goodness absolutely fascinating uh to me that he's so tone deaf it's basically now
00:10:10 everyone's unhappy so he's doing the polyev thing that the liberals criticized him for doing of
00:10:14 saying everything is broken in canada uh he's just oh yeah everyone's miserable of course they're
00:10:18 all they're just venting everyone's just blowing off steam it's like the boys will be boys of
00:10:23 political punditry following a by-election loss but to go back to the ndp for a moment what
00:10:28 nahid nenshi is saying here is that the federal ndp is not at all not at all on board with what
00:10:37 he thinks the NDP needs to be in Alberta. And I think a lot of people in the province realized
00:10:41 that they had their, you know, dalliance, they had their mistake of Rachel Notley, they wanted
00:10:46 to get away from that. And I think are probably going to take another 30 years before they do
00:10:51 something so foolish again. And I think he realized that the only way to exist and to be 0.95
00:10:57 successful, if that's at all possible, is to be a more moderate party. I mean, sure, take the NDP
00:11:02 brand and resources and history and all of that. But the NDP brand itself in Alberta
00:11:08 needs to be separate from the NDP brand federally. So where is that leaving you in the province of
00:11:16 Alberta? Well, remember here that what they're looking at is an NDP federally that no longer
00:11:22 wants to be the party of the working class. It no longer wants to be, I mean, Jack Layton,
00:11:27 I feel like I owe Jack Layton an apology in a way, because I used to, as a young, rambunctious, right-leaning Canadian, see him as being this left-wing radical by virtue of leading the NDP.
00:11:38 And now I would long for a Jack Layton to be running.
00:11:41 I would long for a Thomas Mulcair to be running the NDP, because these folks at least had a solid understanding of the confines of political reality, of just reality in general.
00:11:52 You know, Nikki Ashton today, who's one of the most far left members of Canadian politics and of the Parliament of Canada, had come out and she was doing this press conference with these self-loathing Jews at Independent Jewish Voices and saying we need to stop any charities that are putting money in towards, quote unquote, colonizing Palestinians.
00:12:13 So she basically doesn't want any Canadian charities to give money that goes to Israel at all.
00:12:18 And not the state of Israel, but, you know, just Israeli enterprise and Israeli humanitarian work.
00:12:24 And I responded on Twitter.
00:12:26 I haven't gotten a response, and I'm not really expecting one from her.
00:12:29 You know, is she concerned about all the charities that are funneling money to Hamas?
00:12:32 No, she's not.
00:12:33 Because she's so committed to this colonizer, colonize-y dichotomy that she views everything from,
00:12:40 she is not interested in dealing with reality.
00:12:42 There are far too many NDPers right now who think the biggest threat to the world is no one recognizing their they, them, zim, zir pronouns and not perhaps mobilizing us labor.
00:12:54 So, you know, if you're a blue collar union worker, the NDP no longer speaks to you.
00:12:59 And this is one of the reasons that Pierre Polyev has had such success, because Jagmeet
00:13:03 Singh, who again is a Rolex-wearing, Versace bag-toting, Bay Street lawyer, is not the
00:13:10 working class representative in Ottawa.
00:13:13 He just isn't.
00:13:14 This is the guy who outs celebrities Justin Trudeau.
00:13:17 Was it Esquire or GQ that did the full takeout on Jagmeet Singh?
00:13:21 I can't remember.
00:13:22 And look, you know, no one would put me on the cover of a magazine.
00:13:25 It would be like the worst selling magazine in the history of the publishing industry.
00:13:29 So I don't fault him for it.
00:13:30 Maybe you want to say I'm jealous that he got like the whole Jagmeet Singh centerfold.
00:13:33 Well, maybe not a centerfold.
00:13:36 I take that back.
00:13:36 But, you know, the whole point is he has not done a thing to advance the NDP cause.
00:13:44 And look, I'm not a new Democrat.
00:13:46 So you may be saying, why do I care?
00:13:47 I care for two reasons, one of which is politically.
00:13:50 I think our system works best when you have a voice for the left, when you have a voice
00:13:55 for the center left and a voice for the right.
00:13:57 I think that has historically been a good balance, but the liberals have not been interested
00:14:01 in being a centrist voice.
00:14:03 They've certainly not even been interested in being a center left voice.
00:14:06 The liberals have pushed the NDP in so many ways.
00:14:09 So far to the left, they don't have much wiggle room.
00:14:12 And you see some panic online about this, where lefties are going after their own parties
00:14:18 in the same way that some conservative aligned people were before the merger of the alliance
00:14:23 and PC parties federally.
00:14:25 And they're saying, we need to unite the left.
00:14:26 we need to bring the liberals and the NDP together. Otherwise, conservatives are going to win and
00:14:30 they're panicked. And they think the alternative to that is basically a two-party system where you
00:14:34 have the left-wing party, you have the right-wing party, and we're supposedly going to have a
00:14:39 functioning system that works in that sense. But what I'm going to be fascinated to see is what
00:14:45 happens in Alberta, because Alberta NDP members are going to get to vote on this. Nahed Nenshi
00:14:50 is the leader. He had a large mandate. I think it was like 85% of the vote, just absolutely
00:14:55 massive. And this was above like former cabinet ministers in that party. So he clearly has
00:15:01 resonated with voters. I don't know if the members are going to support this push of his. And I don't
00:15:08 know in what numbers, because if they don't, if they say, no, no, no, we're, we're new Democrats
00:15:12 and we're happy to be aligned with the federal NDP, then fine power to them. I think they're
00:15:16 relegated to the dustbin of history as basically an accidental government in the same way that Bob
00:15:22 raised in Ontario was back in the, I guess, was it 1990, I think that election was, or 80, 88,
00:15:28 89, I don't know, it was around then. But then you look at the other side, if they conversely
00:15:34 vote to sever and vote to divorce, it's a huge rebuke of the federal NDP. If you have one of
00:15:41 the most legitimate provincial new democratic parties, the Alberta NDP, saying to the federal
00:15:47 NDP. We are just not that into you. So again, look, I think liberals need to have a very serious
00:15:54 discussion about whether their leaders is representing them well at the federal level,
00:15:58 but new Democrats really do. Because as I've said time and time again on this show,
00:16:02 Jagmeet Singh could have been the most powerful player in Canadian politics for the last
00:16:07 two years or so, the last two and a half years. He could have been tremendously,
00:16:12 tremendously effective if he were a person that had a more solid head on his shoulders and knew
00:16:18 what he was doing he could have wielded tremendous power but has chosen not to and still he could he
00:16:23 could i mean better late than never he could if he wants force an election but then he would be
00:16:27 resigned to accept that canadians don't particularly want him and i think the toronto st paul's by
00:16:32 election is just as much a wake-up call for the ndp as it is for the liberals but as i said i
00:16:38 wanted to do something very special on this show. I want to talk about, it'll start with Alberta
00:16:43 versus Ottawa in a lot of ways, but if you're not from Alberta, I want you to pay attention because
00:16:48 there's a bigger story here about how provinces can assert their own autonomy and assert their
00:16:54 own sovereignty. And I think we've seen in the last year in particular, more and more provinces
00:16:59 get a little bit more emboldened in this sense, not just on pushing on the parental rights
00:17:05 discussions like we saw in New Brunswick and Alberta and Saskatchewan and for a moment in
00:17:09 Ontario but pushing back against Ottawa's encroachment on provincial domain and provincial
00:17:15 territorial sovereignty and just yesterday we spoke to Christine Van Gein from the Canadian
00:17:20 Constitution Foundation about the federal course the federal court of appeal case going on this
00:17:26 week as the government federally defends its plastics ban and you have provinces saying like
00:17:32 it's not even about whether the ban is good or not you don't have the right to do this you don't
00:17:36 have the right to snap your fingers and say this is a criminal law matter just because you don't
00:17:40 want people to be able to use straws that aren't going to disintegrate within five seconds when
00:17:45 they go out for lunch or dinner at a restaurant so one of the provinces that has been leading the
00:17:50 way not just on pushing back against this but a number of other similar encroachments from the
00:17:54 feds has been alberta and so much of this comes down to environmental policy i thought it would
00:17:59 be great to do a deep dive with Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schultz. Minister, good to have
00:18:04 you back on the show. Thanks for coming on today. Yeah, it's great to see you again. We've been
00:18:09 trying to set this up for weeks and you're so busy because the federal government basically
00:18:14 keeps giving you things that you need to fight them on. So I'm glad we were able to get a bit
00:18:18 of time today. Just before we get into the plastics ban, I wanted to ask you about the budget because
00:18:24 putting in the federal budget this ban on oil and gas companies touting their environmental records
00:18:31 is i i think particularly disgraceful because you don't even really get to debate this policy
00:18:36 in isolation uh you know i remember when people first started talking about it and they say oh
00:18:41 bill c59 and you look up c59 and like well this has nothing to do with oil and gas this is a
00:18:45 budget implementation bill but what the government is doing is is effectively what charlie angus was
00:18:50 mocked for proposing a few weeks ago which is saying that oil and gas companies should be
00:18:55 treated like tobacco companies effectively and banned from talking about what they're doing
00:19:00 well explain what the effect of that would be in in your province but in canada generally
00:19:05 yeah and you know i was actually just gonna joke it's it's a good thing that it took us a little
00:19:10 bit longer to set up this interview because now we get to talk about bill c59 yeah now we have
00:19:15 more material to work with oh my gosh it's it's honestly it is the topic that everybody wants to
00:19:21 talk about and you know this week uh i had a meeting with the calgary chamber of commerce
00:19:26 and a number of their members and just a round table and i can tell you that c59 was the topic
00:19:31 of conversation and you're exactly right uh there wasn't a lot of conversation about it because it
00:19:36 was snuck in there uh this as an amendment and when mp charlie angus raised essentially his private
00:19:45 members motion I think people did they laughed it off like this isn't gonna be something that
00:19:49 happens in Canada and uh that's exactly what this is this is a gag order not just on energy on you
00:19:57 know any business that wants to talk about their uh environmental record uh and it is I think
00:20:03 because of the the outrage that we've seen from some of the NGOs and I would say the more radical
00:20:09 left this is exactly what they were trying to do with this amendment and so it really does put
00:20:15 industry and businesses in a position where they're not able to talk about their their true
00:20:18 record or their true facts um in the public without risk of massive fines 15 million dollars
00:20:25 and obviously there are concerns around a percentage of of uh their revenues which is
00:20:31 a massive risk for for industries but it's not just energy this is a major risk uh for agriculture
00:20:38 i would say you know when we have a a federal environment minister that says you know we're
00:20:43 going to build any more roads i think anybody in transportation should be highly concerned um but
00:20:48 really this impacts any and all industries that are working to do the right thing for the environment
00:20:53 that just a couple of of whether it be more folks on the more radical uh eco left uh or or certain
00:21:02 end goes can bring these challenges forward just because they don't like uh the record that a
00:21:08 company is sharing and uh you know i think when we look here in alberta we do we do tend to talk a
00:21:13 lot about energy because we're very proud of our energy production here but the facts are that
00:21:18 while production goes up to meet canadian and global demand for energy that that demand is
00:21:24 rising every single day we're also proud of our environmental record that emissions uh intensity
00:21:30 is going down so that's per barrel emissions um in the oil sense they've been down over 20
00:21:35 percent. You know, when we look at our methane emissions, those have been reduced by 45%. We
00:21:40 were able to do that three years ahead of schedule. We worked with industry. We took a different
00:21:45 approach than the federal government. We saved industry $600 million as we worked to roll that
00:21:50 out. Electricity emissions are down. And again, like overall emissions are down while demand and
00:21:58 production rise. That is a success story. And that is a story that, you know, quite frankly,
00:22:03 the Trudeau liberals, but I also say it's not just one person. This is the entire NDP liberal
00:22:09 coalition that is seeking to shut down voices that don't fit the narrative that they believe in. And
00:22:15 that is a problem. Like last week being in Washington, I was asked, do you not have
00:22:21 a protection, a freedom of speech in your constitution? Like that's an embarrassing
00:22:28 place to be as a country. And that should be really concerning for Canadians.
00:22:32 Yeah, you're fielding questions as though you're, you know, some delegate from some like tin pot dictatorship. And that's the way that, you know, our allies to the south are looking at us here. And just to put this in context, Pathways Alliance, which is a group that I think, I mean, some energy advocates have always criticized Pathways Alliance for being not pro-energy enough, which is funny because it is a, you know, an industry representative group.
00:22:55 They shut down their website because they don't believe that they will be compliant with C-59 because their whole thing is touting the environmental achievements of the oil and gas sector.
00:23:04 And it's amazing because there isn't even in this a defense of truth, which in any other free speech case, you could always lean on the defense of truth.
00:23:14 It's not even like these companies are given the benefit of the doubt in that sense with what the government is doing here, where if they can verify the claims, it's fine because no one is disputing the actual facts of it.
00:23:23 They're just saying, I don't want oil and gas to tell a positive story.
00:23:27 Yeah, you're exactly right.
00:23:29 And, you know, I think we see that.
00:23:31 I mean, even when we were talking about our methane emissions reduction, of course, there
00:23:35 was a group out of Carleton University supported by an anti-fossil fuel, ENGO, that was really
00:23:40 quite critical of our numbers.
00:23:42 And look, we're very proud of our work on methane emissions reduction, but also our
00:23:46 methodology for measuring and reporting that is more transparent than the vast majority
00:23:52 of places around the world, we're proud of that record. And so, you know, of course, it wasn't
00:23:58 just one group, it wasn't just pathways. But I mean, oil sands per barrel emissions intensity
00:24:03 is down. So for every barrel that they're producing, those emissions have gone down
00:24:08 by I believe it's 21% and more to come on that front. But it's not just them. I mean,
00:24:14 the Business Council of Alberta, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers,
00:24:18 The Chamber of Commerce, again, not just energy companies saying that this is problematic, but there was even a liberal appointed Trudeau appointed senator who said, look, we've got some issues here.
00:24:30 We don't have enough information about how this is going to work to actually put this through.
00:24:36 That said, I mean, they they've they rammed it through, obviously, the House and the Senate anyways.
00:24:41 But because there's so much uncertainty right now about what this looks like, what this
00:24:46 actually means for these businesses, what the process is going to be, you know, companies
00:24:50 have investors, they have shareholders, there's, you know, a lot of uncertainty.
00:24:55 And I mean, the government of Canada has come out and said, okay, now we're going to consult
00:24:58 on maybe what that's going to look like.
00:25:00 This has massive implications for our businesses in a variety of industries.
00:25:06 Like I said, like, yeah, sure.
00:25:08 It's a gag order.
00:25:09 uh this is censorship absolutely but like these again this is just another policy and a long
00:25:15 list of policies that are in driving investment out of canada i i'm wondering if there is any
00:25:22 concern that you've heard from other industries that feel it might not stop with them i mean
00:25:28 obviously charlie angus liked to compare oil and gas to big tobacco but i think you could easily
00:25:32 see you know the food services industry for example be targeted with something quite similar
00:25:37 yeah and you know i just i'm writing down as you ask the questions because you you touched on the
00:25:42 the comparison to big tobacco like that is wildly disingenuous people cannot live without oil and
00:25:50 gas we definitely can't in canada like think about that think about what that looks like in the middle
00:25:54 of winter uh you know when we're at minus 40 and beyond like people can't live without it we also
00:26:00 can't live our day-to-day lives uh without things that have been produced by oil and gas or the
00:26:06 petrochemical industries um everything from our cell phones everything to um you know the tools
00:26:13 uh needed to do medical procedures like this would shut down uh our entire lives and and quite
00:26:20 frankly would risk people's well not just well-being it's like health and safety this is
00:26:25 this would be a life or death situation if we actually did shut down fossil fuels which is
00:26:28 what those folks are looking to do um you know it has been raised with me though uh to your point
00:26:34 the agriculture industry i mean was it just uh a year ago or two years ago now it i mean the the
00:26:39 bad policies from the liberals are endless um but you know when they were seeking to limit fertilizer
00:26:45 use um yeah sure of course they're coming after agriculture i mean again ministry both saying
00:26:52 we're not going to build any more roads you better believe transportation is next manufacturing you
00:26:57 know what happens when uh auto manufacturers uh are targeted right like i mean it's one thing for
00:27:03 for this to be a conversation and it's starting here in Alberta uh you know we we did a lot of
00:27:08 work to flag this um our energy uh industry and other industries uh have come out uh in opposition
00:27:14 to it but like they're they're not going to stop at energy this is going to impact um I would say
00:27:20 almost all areas of of our economy and it should be pretty concerning let me ask you if I can about
00:27:27 the plastics ban too because it's easy to focus on the silliness of this I know uh premier Danielle
00:27:33 Smith did a photo op with a big, long plastic straw. I had done one up a couple of weeks earlier,
00:27:37 and I just like drank out of 20 straws at once because to celebrate the federal court striking
00:27:42 down the plastics ban. But it's not just about straws. And it's also about something far more
00:27:46 fundamental, which is the federal government trying to rewrite or reinterpret the Constitution
00:27:50 for its own ideological convenience. And I know Alberta is fighting this in court. As it stands
00:27:56 now, the ban has been defeated. But who knows what will happen at the federal court of appeal
00:28:01 or at the Supreme Court.
00:28:02 But is this not one of the most insidious examples
00:28:07 of the government really trying to just make up
00:28:10 the Constitution on the fly?
00:28:12 Absolutely.
00:28:13 And I mean, I've raised that with Minister Kipo
00:28:15 and certainly our Premier has raised that
00:28:19 on a number of different occasions.
00:28:20 I mean, you have a federal government.
00:28:23 I actually love how Premier Smith talks about it.
00:28:25 She says, we have a federal government
00:28:27 that is acting lawlessly because they are.
00:28:29 They're acting like the Constitution.
00:28:31 You know, it doesn't it doesn't impact them like they don't have to follow it.
00:28:36 And just to interject there for a moment, Minister, I recall when the Sovereignty Act was proposed, you had a lot of critics and academia from the Liberals that were saying it was Alberta that was doing the end run around the Constitution, when really it's the exact opposite.
00:28:48 The Sovereignty Act is a response to the Feds doing end runs around the Constitution on a regular basis.
00:28:54 Well, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, I would say we definitely see it in plastics, but we also see it in policies like the emissions cap, the Impact Assessment Act. And so, you know, certainly with where the courts have come out on this plastics legislation and the Impact Assessment Act.
00:29:13 I mean, I have some hope for where we're headed now, given that the courts have said, look, this is unreasonable and unconstitutional.
00:29:23 You know, unfortunately, we have a federal environment minister who told me when I raised those rulings from the court.
00:29:29 He said, you know, those aren't decisions. Those are just opinions, opinions of the highest courts in our country.
00:29:36 sure. But, you know, then you have the complete and utter mixed messages coming from the federal
00:29:43 liberals again, that, you know, you have, I think, you know, it was safe to say everybody was really
00:29:49 excited to see Dow make a final investment decision for a petrochemical facility in Alberta.
00:29:55 Minister Wilkinson and Freeland were there, you know, yay, we want to see this investment,
00:29:59 we wanted it to come to Canada. And yet you have Minister Guibault bringing through this
00:30:03 plastics legislation that creates so much uncertainty about that plastic circular economy,
00:30:08 that's a problem. That is completely a contradictory message. And that plastics
00:30:13 legislation, you know, I mean, we were obviously very vocal against it alongside a number of the
00:30:20 colleagues and other, or sorry, a number of the companies and other provinces. We're happy to
00:30:25 see that investment come here. We want to see a plastic circular economy. That's actually good.
00:30:30 When people are recycling and we can take plastic waste and turn it into new materials, that's actually an environmental win.
00:30:38 And that is what is at risk with Stephen Guibo's plastics legislation.
00:30:43 And so that's where, again, you know, it's completely ideological and ignores common sense and the reality of what's actually happening out here.
00:30:52 And I think that's where you hear the frustration from people across the country, but also provinces and, of course, from the business community that we're seeing.
00:31:02 Speaking of Minister Gilboa, one of the things that you mentioned and goes in a lot of these eco radicals before.
00:31:08 I mean, I don't know if they've ever had one of them as the environment minister, which I think very much applies to Gilboa,
00:31:15 given his longstanding track record as an activist and protester and one who was criminally arrested for his displays.
00:31:22 But you've called and the premier has called for him to be fired.
00:31:26 So obviously that doesn't suggest that there's a rosy relationship that you have.
00:31:31 But do you actually speak to him? Do you have a relationship with him?
00:31:35 And have you had any success with him on any file?
00:31:38 You know, I would say, of course, we have conversations and I imagine we'll be meeting again this summer.
00:31:43 You know, I have talked publicly about our meeting, you know, when we were at COP and Minister Yebo was unwilling to share information on the oil and gas emissions cap, that when I asked for details on that cap, his response was that I should sign an NDA and that he couldn't actually give me details of something that was about to be announced 48 hours later.
00:32:04 that is not that is not how this federal provincial relationship is supposed to function
00:32:11 and again like when you have this federal government that is just so very utterly and
00:32:18 completely disregarding the laws of our country we have no choice but to defend ourselves that said
00:32:24 we still have to have conversations about areas where there is overlap and you know I think the
00:32:30 challenge is that you know you have a conversation um we view the world i think in in very different
00:32:37 ways and ultimately we have despite the fact that we have provided data and i'll use clean electricity
00:32:44 but the oil and gas emissions cap would be the same the work on methane would be the same that
00:32:49 we have officials in in both of our departments working to share information to um you know look
00:32:56 at data that you know what do we actually know uh look at socioeconomic impacts of these proposed
00:33:02 policies the problem is is we still have a minister that says okay well sure those are
00:33:08 your numbers but i'm going to make this decision anyways uh regardless of job impacts economic
00:33:13 impacts um very real uh environmental impacts i would say uh in those cases so we continue to meet
00:33:20 we we have discussions is there any area where you know we've come to agreement on um you know
00:33:26 I would say we had a relatively positive conversation about oil sands mine water. We're
00:33:31 very committed to addressing those concerns. I also raised concerns I had with politicians,
00:33:39 I would say, making a political spectacle of something like water, which impacts people
00:33:44 they're really concerned about. We have some of the safest, highest quality drinking water
00:33:49 in the country in these areas. And so, you know, I did ask for him to ensure that he's not
00:33:56 sharing misinformation and being honest and open with communities while we have conversations
00:34:01 about some of the bigger issues we need to tackle. You know, on, I would say maybe some
00:34:08 issues around drought, we had some good conversations where we really were keeping
00:34:13 the federal government up to speed on the situation and what things were looking like here.
00:34:17 But again, I mean, you know, we have a Minister of Environment who is not, I would say it's not even a partisan thing. It's that he is an environmental activist, and he is making decisions that put his ideology ahead of the well-being of Albertans and Canadians that we were respectively elected to represent. And that, I think, is bad for democracy.
00:34:39 Yeah. And on the big picture issues, you don't have an ally in Ottawa. And just to go back to the federalist relationship here, ideally, the federal government, the national government and provinces are supposed to be partners rather than provinces being subordinated to the federal government.
00:34:56 And that's why, you know, the federal government doesn't have a veto over provincial laws.
00:35:02 And what was so tremendous about this is that the federal government has often acted, this current one, and past ones as well, as though they're really the father, if you will.
00:35:14 And, you know, they're the ones that get to, you know, parent the provinces.
00:35:16 And they do it in a very disingenuous way.
00:35:19 I mean, just as recently as a few weeks ago, the government was saying, no, no, no, the emissions cap isn't going to cut oil and gas production.
00:35:24 And then I think it was just last week, you get a report from Deloitte saying, oh, well, actually, as everyone but the federal government acknowledged, yes, it will.
00:35:32 Yeah. And that's not the first report. I mean, the Deloitte report.
00:35:35 No, it's the third, isn't it?
00:35:36 It's the third report. And so, you know, again, and I mean, I've been asking Minister Kibo, do some analysis.
00:35:44 Do you have any economic or socioeconomic analysis on the impacts of these policies that you're bringing through?
00:35:51 And, you know, he has discredited the analysis that we have provided, that others have provided, like SNP and the work that CAP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, had done, which really covers more the conventional side.
00:36:07 Again, there have been others. And, you know, his response is, well, you know, that that doesn't really take in. We haven't even rolled out what our policy is going to be. So that doesn't take into account, you know, where we're going to set this cap at.
00:36:21 I mean, come on, they've been talking about what this emissions cap is going to look like.
00:36:26 I mean, that also supports our concern that they haven't shared any information.
00:36:32 They're not having real conversations with either provinces or industry.
00:36:37 And, you know, again, like if you're going to have a conversation, you have to have the
00:36:43 conversation with the area that has jurisdiction, which is the provinces, whether that be on
00:36:47 clean electricity regulations, where we have the responsibility to ensure that our residents have
00:36:53 access to safe, affordable, reliable electricity. Same thing on an oil and gas emissions cap. This
00:36:58 will impact production. There is absolutely no question that as global demand continues to rise,
00:37:05 we want to meet that demand with our environmentally responsible, I would say,
00:37:10 socially responsibly produced energy. We want to meet those demands. We're going to continue to do
00:37:16 that and at some point your emissions cap is without question going to impact production
00:37:21 and so i think you know it and canadians are concerned i mean we see it across the country
00:37:27 you see it a lot when it's in relation to the carbon tax that i think people right across canada
00:37:34 see that this government has ignored the very real concerns and basic needs of canadians and
00:37:40 have put this environment environmental ideology at the forefront and i i think you know many have
00:37:47 said this is uh one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation since the national energy program
00:37:52 i mean uh that's that's big this has massive impacts on on us as a country and you know at
00:37:59 the beginning we talked a little bit about me being in washington and the trade relationship
00:38:04 that we have with the us i mean we provide the us with almost 60 of their oil imports
00:38:10 So not only are we meeting Canadians' needs, we're supporting other major countries' needs.
00:38:16 You know, that energy should come from us.
00:38:17 And if it's not coming from us, it's coming from China, India, Russia, places with fewer environmental regulations.
00:38:26 Again, emissions, air moves, emissions are shared.
00:38:30 It has the exact opposite impact on global emissions.
00:38:33 So it's pretty dangerous.
00:38:36 Yeah, I think you're right about that. And I would also point out that it's amazing how the government in Canada never wants to talk about the global picture. I mean, if you just look at the sheer numbers, Canada's emissions are what, you know, 1.4% of global emissions thereabouts.
00:38:52 And the reality is you have in China new coal plants being open.
00:38:56 You have in India, the just transition that we have shoved down our industry and our throats in Canada is basically non-existent.
00:39:05 And, you know, I remember a few years back or two years ago, I spoke to India's petroleum minister and because he had been on a panel on at a global conference in Davos.
00:39:15 And he was talking about the need to accelerate the transition.
00:39:17 And I asked him on the street after when I ran into him, he said, oh, yeah, I just sort of said that in the room.
00:39:22 that's not practical here. So, you know, you have all these other countries that are the beneficiary
00:39:26 of Canada, really taking aim at its energy sector. And, you know, the global emissions picture is not
00:39:33 being affected by anything Canada is doing. And even Canadian emissions are not being affected
00:39:37 by these things like the carbon tax, like emissions have gone up. Yeah, you know, I would say
00:39:43 that's where when we look at our emissions reduction goals as a province, we are hitting
00:39:48 our targets. Well, production continues to rise. We have decided to take an approach where we work
00:39:55 with industry to say, look, what technology exists? What's reasonable? How do we do things
00:40:01 better? How do we do things smarter? How can we change our policies, but still incentivize
00:40:05 industry to do the right thing for the environment? On the flip side, you have Canada just taking a
00:40:13 punitive approach, which again, you're exactly right. I mean, it drives investment out. It also
00:40:21 drives the production of energy out to other countries. And you're right. Then at the point
00:40:28 where we look at our little piece of the emissions pie, we could shut down all of our major industries,
00:40:33 all of them, not just the energy industry. And that emissions reduction space would be eaten up
00:40:38 in a very short amount of time by those other countries and that other type of development,
00:40:42 like coal like what we've seen over the last couple of years and so um you know i think this
00:40:48 is really where canadians want to see a government that is reasonable that shows common sense um that
00:40:55 isn't really just driven by uh an ideological activist perspective and you know i think when
00:41:03 it comes to these policies the federal government's approach is just deny deny deny like let's not
00:41:07 talk about it like canadians want to talk about the carbon tax and we have a federal government
00:41:12 who just essentially closes their ears and said,
00:41:15 yeah, we're not going to listen to that.
00:41:17 We're not going to listen to that.
00:41:18 And that's why I think they're in free fall in the polls.
00:41:21 I think the by-election that we just saw this week,
00:41:23 I mean, wild, right?
00:41:26 But I think it shows that what they're saying
00:41:28 completely disregards the very real concerns,
00:41:32 the everyday concerns of Canadians.
00:41:36 Let me ask you about what you'd like to see
00:41:39 moving forward here.
00:41:40 And I guess I'll compound this question and ask it in two parts here.
00:41:44 Number one, is there a sense that this is just a Gilbo issue or is it a liberal issue or is it an Ottawa issue?
00:41:53 And you're not convinced that, you know, even if there was a change in government, that these problems would go away.
00:41:57 And and beyond then, what would you like to see? What would you like to see moving forward?
00:42:01 You know, I mean, I say all of the time, I mean, as a conservative MLA in Alberta, I do believe that a change in government would solve a lot of problems because we would have a common sense government that cares about, I would say, the needs of everyday Canadians, especially when it comes to affordable and reliable, secure energy.
00:42:28 I mean, energy security for our country and for North America is very important. And so
00:42:34 these are things that, again, this federal liberal NDP coalition has completely ignored.
00:42:40 And that kind of answers your first question, which do I think this is a Gibbo issue? 0.99
00:42:45 Not solely. Absolutely not. Do I think it's just a Trudeau issue? No, because despite the fact that
00:42:50 they're driving this agenda, there's an entire cabinet that's just going along with it.
00:42:55 And so, you know, I think that this just shows that the entire liberal NDP coalition is so wildly out of touch.
00:43:02 You know, they say they care about affordability, yet they want to support the carbon tax.
00:43:07 You know, they say that, you know, they're listening to everyday Canadians.
00:43:11 You know what? Canadians really do care about having access to affordable, reliable electricity and energy.
00:43:17 They do. I can tell you they care about it in the middle of summer when it is hot and they need an air conditioner.
00:43:22 I can tell you that they care about it in the winter when, you know, baseload capacity is a is a very real concern in some provinces.
00:43:30 You know, we saw that here in Alberta in January. Right.
00:43:34 You know, we can't live off of solar and wind when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
00:43:42 So, you know, I think that this is a this is a bigger issue than just one or two people.
00:43:48 This is a complete disregard of everyday Canadians by the Liberal NDP coalition.
00:43:54 It just happens to be championed by Stephen Guibault and Justin Trudeau right now.
00:43:59 Fair enough.
00:44:00 Well, let me just ask you briefly, because I was talking about it before.
00:44:03 We had the new NDP leader in your province, Nahed Nenshi, say that he thinks they need a bit of a divorce from the federal NDP.
00:44:11 Do you think that will be enough to have the NDP in Alberta taken a bit more seriously by voters?
00:44:16 You know what, I'll tell you this, like as a Alberta MLA, when I was door knocking, the number one thing that I heard is, is how do we see a change in federal government? Like enough of Justin Trudeau, enough of the liberals. And I mean, come on, Nahed Nenshi is Justin Trudeau's choice for NDP leadership here in Alberta.
00:44:39 you know, I think we've seen that relationship over the last number of years. And so, you know,
00:44:45 whether or not they are linked through their bylaws and constitution as a party to the
00:44:51 to the federal NDP or not, make no mistake, Nenshi is very much linked in with the federal liberals.
00:44:59 And that's something that I don't think Albertans want to have anything to do with right now.
00:45:03 All right, fair enough. Environment Minister in Alberta, Rebecca Schultz,
00:45:06 Thanks so much for coming on today.
00:45:08 Really appreciate it.
00:45:09 Yeah, it was a pleasure.
00:45:11 All right.
00:45:11 Thank you.
00:45:12 That does it for us for today.
00:45:14 I am off for the rest of the week because that's when the show ends on Thursday and we come back on Monday.
00:45:19 But I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of Off the Record.
00:45:22 So we'll catch you then.
00:45:24 But in the meantime, thank you.
00:45:25 God bless and a good day to you all.
00:45:27 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:45:30 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:45:36 We'll be right back.