Juno News - December 02, 2019


＂Albertans aren't looking for a special deal, but a fair deal,＂ Jason Kenney sits down w⧸ Candice


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

171.22403

Word Count

2,033

Sentence Count

117

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Jason Kenney is the Prime Minister of Alberta and Leader of the United Conservative Party of Canada. In this interview, Jason Kenney talks about his vision for the future of the party and what he's looking for from the federal government.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 All right. Well, I am delighted to be joined by the Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney.
00:00:09.240 Jason, thanks for joining us today.
00:00:10.920 Thanks for coming out to cover our convention, Candice.
00:00:13.120 Yeah, it was great. So last night you gave your speech and I went to a session earlier
00:00:16.320 in the day about your new Fair Deal program and plan. It seems like the members of this
00:00:20.840 party have a lot of support for it. But my question is, what are you going to do if,
00:00:25.440 I mean at the end of the day, Ottawa has the last say. What are you going to do if they
00:00:29.200 say no? What kind of leverage do you have against them? Have you thought about maybe putting
00:00:33.040 some kind of a deadline saying, you know, if we don't have our pipeline built by X date,
00:00:37.840 we're going to do Y? Or what's the plan?
00:00:40.000 Well, yeah, it's all about building leverage. And let me just say, we Albertans are not looking
00:00:45.120 for a special deal, but a fair deal. And we basically define that as being able to develop
00:00:50.960 the resources that we have, get them to global markets so we can get a fair price,
00:00:56.320 so that we can continue being by far the largest fiscal contributor to Canada. We contribute
00:01:01.280 about $23 billion a year net, more that we pay in taxes to Ottawa than we get back in services and
00:01:06.320 benefits. So there's a lot of ways to address that. But fundamentally, we're trying to maximize
00:01:12.800 our leverage. So here is an example. If the federal government doesn't guarantee or complete the
00:01:17.920 construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and repeal what I call the No More Pipelines Law Bill C-69,
00:01:22.800 a new Environmental Assessment Act, we will hold a referendum on amending the Constitution Section 36,
00:01:29.520 which is the principle of equalization. That's one part of the $23 billion in net transfers that we make.
00:01:36.240 Now, holding that referendum, I totally grant, doesn't actually change the Constitution or the
00:01:42.800 equalization formula. But what it does is to create a very significant political fact. It elevates
00:01:50.960 our fight for fairness to the top of the national agenda. Another example would be withdrawing from
00:01:56.320 the CPP and creating our own Alberta Pension Plan. We would obviously take care of all beneficiaries
00:02:01.760 in Alberta at the same benefit level. But we could reduce our premiums significantly, perhaps by a few
00:02:08.400 hundred dollars a year for Albertans, because we have the youngest population in the country, which means
00:02:13.360 that we are major net contributors through the CPP. So Ottawa should be concerned about that. They should
00:02:20.000 be concerned about Alberta withdrawing and losing a net $3 billion contribution to CPP. So those are just
00:02:26.560 a couple of examples of how I think we can maximize leverage. And a third way is really forming alliances
00:02:31.920 with other provinces. After this interview, I'm off to Toronto to meet with my colleagues, the other
00:02:37.760 premiers. And I'm pleased to say that we've got very, very broad support for a number of our demands.
00:02:47.360 Well, right now, Alberta already has a significant political block. There's no MPs for the Liberal
00:02:52.560 Party elected in either Alberta or Saskatchewan. So you could argue that there already is that political
00:02:58.160 pressure. Why not consider a deadline saying, you know, if the pipeline isn't built by January 1st, 2022,
00:03:05.840 you know, we're going to move forward. We're going to, we're going to...
00:03:08.080 That's what I have to, I have a deadline. We will have a referendum on October 16th, 2021,
00:03:13.680 on eliminating equalization if we do not have, if we're not very close to completion or have commissioned
00:03:18.960 the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline. So we've actually set a deadline on that. And sometimes I get
00:03:23.920 frustration from some of our supporters saying, well, do this now. My response to them is, folks,
00:03:31.120 we need to be strategic and not tactical. This is chess, not checkers. We need to think three or four
00:03:36.560 moves ahead. We need to maximize our leverage. If we blow all of our ammunition now, we have no
00:03:42.960 leverage to ensure the completion of a coastal pipeline. Look, our fight for fairness is about
00:03:47.200 more than a coastal pipeline, but that is essential, essential to our economy. If we get a coastal
00:03:53.280 pipeline built, then suddenly the average price for Alberta oil goes from, well, we go to the global
00:04:00.640 price from a $20 discount. Okay. Just changing gears a little bit. So before you were premier of Alberta,
00:04:06.800 before you came to Alberta to run for office, you were the minister of immigration. And you sort of
00:04:11.920 single-handedly made that one of the most high profile and important ministries in the government.
00:04:16.720 You cracked down on illegal immigration. You brought in reforms for people coming and claiming asylum.
00:04:22.800 Watching the last few years, five years, four years of Justin Trudeau sort of systematically
00:04:27.360 dismantling a lot of your reforms must be frustrating. Canada is dealing with a surge of illegal
00:04:32.240 immigration. Tens of thousands of folks are walking illegally across the border. Prime Minister Justin
00:04:36.960 Trudeau has just appointed a new immigration minister, Marco Mendocino. He has a background,
00:04:42.160 you know, he was a federal prosecutor. He helped put members of the Toronto 18 behind bars. So,
00:04:46.960 you know, he's a serious person that cares about national security. What advice do you have for him?
00:04:52.160 What would you like to see him doing when it comes to dealing with this problem of illegal immigration
00:04:56.960 in Canada? Well, you know, you're right. When I was minister of immigration for five years,
00:05:03.840 my general approach was that Canada is and should be a welcoming country, that we need the talent and
00:05:08.960 hard work of newcomers. But to maintain a generous immigration system and public support for it,
00:05:17.040 you must show that it is a system with fair rules, without cue jumping, a system with integrity. And
00:05:26.560 that's why I reformed the economic immigration programs to get folks with more relevant kinds of
00:05:32.640 skills and to get them in here faster, to be honest with you, as skilled workers. But to crack down on
00:05:40.240 the abuse of our generosity. You know, I will never forget a lovely lady of Jamaican origin who
00:05:45.040 approached me in Scarborough to say, I love your immigration policy, Mr. Kenny, because you're telling
00:05:50.320 folks if they want to come here, get in the queue and wait to come through the front door. But you went and
00:05:55.120 locked the back door and closed the side window through which people were sneaking into the country.
00:06:01.120 And that's a pretty good metaphor. You know, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times liberal columnist,
00:06:07.520 said that an ideal, and he said this long before Donald Trump, because this would not be
00:06:13.200 an acceptable metaphor today. He said that the ideal immigration system has a wide gate,
00:06:18.480 but a tall fence. In other words, there has to be integrity. And what concerns me, and I really,
00:06:25.360 I should avoid getting too much into this. I'm not the immigration critic in the federal opposition.
00:06:30.800 But I'll just say that I think this is something that the current federal government does not really
00:06:36.160 appreciate. When you see large scale illegal border crossing, it undermines public confidence in legal
00:06:44.400 immigration. And if you don't believe that, look at the, frankly, anti-immigration sentiment that has
00:06:50.560 developed in the United States and in Europe in response to, to large scale illegal migration.
00:07:00.800 And on the particular point of the border crossings, Candace, we had some, when I was minister,
00:07:07.680 we had some of those border crossings happening. They were much smaller scale. There were groups of
00:07:13.520 10 or 20 people every now and then walking across the border into, from Vermont into Quebec. We also,
00:07:20.480 at the same time, had large vessels carrying smuggled migrants from South Asia to the west coast of
00:07:30.800 Canada. Very dangerously. Very dangerously. And there were hundreds of passengers using dangerous old ships.
00:07:38.320 And so we cracked down. We brought in a series of policies and laws to combat human smuggling because
00:07:45.440 tens of thousands of people die every year in human smuggling operations. Until the liberal government
00:07:50.640 in Australia stopped the boats, as they say, through similar provisions, thousands of people every year
00:07:59.200 were dying in marine migration smuggling operations off the north coast of Australia. So what we did was we
00:08:05.280 brought in a new law to basically to change the business model, to say that if you come through
00:08:10.560 a designated smuggling event, you will not, and you get asylum, you will not necessarily get permanent
00:08:17.840 residency. You'll not be able to sponsor family members. You'll put, by the way, you'll be put into
00:08:22.320 immediate immigration detention on the presumption that you've come here illegally and for bad purposes.
00:08:30.000 And you won't get the same access to all the benefits that regular, like say, government-assisted
00:08:37.280 refugees get. And we did that not to be hard-hearted, but in fact, in fact, and this is something liberals
00:08:43.840 have a hard time understanding, to be compassionate because we didn't want people dying in the snow,
00:08:48.640 walking across the border in the middle of the winter. We didn't want people dying in some rickety ship
00:08:53.840 that they hired from a basically mob gang in South Asia through a human smuggling operation.
00:09:01.280 We needed to reduce the value of coming to Canada so they would, so the smugglers could not make money
00:09:08.960 off of those operations. It's about changing the smuggling model. We also worked with police services
00:09:13.840 in that case in South Asia to help interrupt their operations. All of that was hugely effective,
00:09:20.480 Candace. After we brought in those laws and those tactics, the smuggling basically went to zero,
00:09:27.040 both across the U.S. border and from abroad through marine smuggling.
00:09:31.600 Well, we know that there are smuggling operations. I mean, I've been to the border
00:09:34.880 myself, Jason, and I've talked to taxi drivers. There's all kinds of kind of schemes happening to
00:09:40.800 get people from New York airport up to, you know, where they cross. And to your earlier point,
00:09:47.200 there was just a report released through the immigration department finding that newcomers
00:09:51.680 and new Canadians were the most irked by illegal immigration because they feel it's undermining
00:09:56.880 their stake in Canada. Candace, as you know, I was Minister for Multiculturalism for nine years,
00:10:01.600 and I was Minister of Immigration and Citizenship for five of those years. So one of the things that kind
00:10:07.600 of informed my perspective as Immigration Minister was my very deep contact with, my deep relationships with
00:10:18.320 new Canadian communities. And overwhelmingly, that's where I heard the greatest distress
00:10:24.720 about large-scale illegal migration. And I just told you the story about Ivy Johnson was a perfect
00:10:31.760 example of that. But folks who wait patiently in the queue for years to come here are those who
00:10:39.120 are most distressed to see people zipping around and queue jumping and then getting benefits to reward
00:10:46.400 them effectively for doing so. And they're right to be distressed by it. Why am I talking? Because
00:10:52.400 I am pro-immigration. I welcome more newcomers, because I know that you're going to have some lefties
00:10:58.720 watching this video, and they'll call me names, like they call you names. Don't worry about that.
00:11:03.360 But I welcome more newcomers to Canada as Minister of Immigration than any immigration minister in
00:11:09.360 Canadian history. It doesn't stop the people from accusing me of being somehow racist for welcoming
00:11:15.840 more newcomers than any minister in history, increasing the number of resettled refugees that we brought to
00:11:21.040 this country, bringing, by the way, 25,000 folks from persecuted minorities in the Middle East, for example,
00:11:29.120 so anyway, here's the point. If you want to maintain strong public support for immigration,
00:11:38.720 you cannot tolerate queue jumping and illegal migration.
00:11:42.400 Premier Kenny, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us and to talk to our supporters
00:11:46.880 and fans at Trunmark Nation. I know everyone really appreciates hearing from you.
00:11:49.840 Thanks for coming out here to listen to what's going on in Alberta, Canada.