Danielle Smith slams Trudeau’s “costly” climate agenda
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.71022
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with Alberta s premier, Danielle Smith, to talk about her carbon tax and why it needs to go. I also get to hear her take on the federal government's carbon tax, and why she thinks it should go.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Give it up for Premier Danielle Smith, that was wonderful, thank you.
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Don't let the media tell the story is the great cue for the journalist to come on stage, by the way, so thank you for that.
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Just to give a bit of disclosure, Premier Smith and I have known each other for many years.
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We used to work together in radio and now I'm a podcaster and she's the Premier, so take from that what you will.
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But whenever Andrew would sub in for me when I was on the air, when I came back, I got a ream of text saying,
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oh man, I like Andrew so much better, can't we have him instead?
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Yeah, I was her guest host, which I'd have to check the constitution, but I believe that means I'm acting Premier in Alberta,
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because I've never formally been released from that.
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But you ended on the carbon tax, and I spoke about this a fair bit yesterday with Premier Higgs,
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who I'm glad was not tired of me after that interview that he's returned.
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And you have said so much and have been such a strong voice on this,
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and that comment about it being a syntax on productivity I quite like.
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But I have to ask how those arguments do not apply equally to the gas tax,
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which in Alberta has gone up this year, has gone up again within the last couple of weeks.
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It treats something that for a lot of Albertans is necessary, driving around, as though it's an elective choice.
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Well, you'll see that we added a tax on electric vehicles, and when we put that $200 tax in,
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we calculated it as being essentially the equivalent of what an average driver would spend in fuel tax,
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so that electric vehicles are paying their fair share of our road maintenance.
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That's what the connection is in most provinces, between the tax we charge.
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And then the federal government layered on their $0.10 a litre tax.
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And of course, Stephen Guibault doesn't want to build roads anymore.
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We're zero for nine in our province in getting cost share.
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I don't know if Premier Higgs has had any better luck on that.
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But then they've also now levied on, I think what amounts to $0.17.6 in the carbon tax.
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And then on top of that, they charge GST on all of it, so they're charging tax on tax,
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which is, I think, another $0.7.5 at prices the way they are today.
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So, yes, we do accept $0.13 a litre to pay for roads, and they accept $0.35 to essentially pay for nothing.
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So, I would say that I cannot sacrifice our need to gain revenue, to build roads,
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to make room for them to continue with a punitive tax that does nothing.
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The argument that they make that it will encourage people to change behavior,
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they completely undermine because Stephen Guibault admitted that the carbon tax isn't going to have an effect until 2060,
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which means we're all paying punitive taxes until then.
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I talked to any of the automakers and the auto dealers.
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If you wanted to go out and switch to an electric vehicle tomorrow to avoid the tax,
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you couldn't because there aren't enough of them being produced,
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and the infrastructure isn't in your home to do it,
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and the infrastructure isn't there for a public charging station to do it.
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But if you wanted to go out and buy a hydrogen zero-emissions vehicle,
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you couldn't because they're not producing enough of them.
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If you wanted, in my province, where I think 90% of the homes are heated with natural gas,
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you simply couldn't switch to a heat pump because they don't work in minus 35,
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and you can't get insurance if you do without having a backup of some other type of heating.
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So all it is, then, if there isn't a reasonable way to switch to an equal or lower-cost option,
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But when the Alberta government offered fuel tax relief,
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and it was a recognition that life was unaffordable.
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There's inflation, carbon tax, fuel tax, general cost of living.
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Well, let me say, when we brought through our relief program,
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So that would have taken it down from $1.89 down to $1.76.
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And right now, today, gas prices in Alberta are $1.58.
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So we will continue with our program that when oil prices go beyond $90,
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In fact, I'd love to see the federal government do the same.
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Make it variable so that when the prices get up above a certain level,
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Take the tax off at that point so that you're not adding to the problem.
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And I should mention that we remain, along with Saskatchewan,
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the second lowest in the country in our overall price of fuel.
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Manitoba followed our lead, reduced the carbon tax,
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or took their fuel tax off after Wab Canoo got elected.
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But the other provinces, I think British Columbia,
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who are the poor souls from British Columbia facing $1.98?
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And that's the first promise that I made to Albertans.
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And that extra $0.04 a leader that we added back on just on April 1st,
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that's the difference between us running a $400 million surplus or not.
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So when those additional revenues come in, absolutely.
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Our strategy is to give the money back to Albertans.
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A couple of nights ago, Boris Johnson was on this stage with Tony Abbott,
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and they had a spirited discussion on climate policy.
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And Boris Johnson had made a comment, which some people have asked me about,
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and I wanted to get your thoughts on, that basically it's Pascal's wager.
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So we should accept that, oh, maybe global warming is a big hoax,
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But he said basically there are no costs to acting as though it is something that is a grave and pressing threat.
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And then I noted, I think it was yesterday on Twitter, Stephen Gilbeau had met Boris Johnson and was praising him,
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which is inherently the endorsement you don't want.
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But I reject that premise, and I assume you do, Premier, as well,
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going along with what Boris Johnson's government did in the UK, is without cost.
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Well, if you try to accelerate things, as Stephen Gilbeau wants to do,
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net zero power grid by 2035, net zero vehicles by 2035, net zero homes, that's the new approach.
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They want net zero homes, which I think will ultimately mean no one's allowed to hook up to natural gas.
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You're not allowed to be able to have electricity that comes from an emitting source.
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So I'm already, if you can imagine, what's it going to cost you to buy a new car?
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What's it going to cost you to change out your home heating?
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What are the extra costs associated with building net zero construction?
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What's the cost associated with taking all of our home heating off of the natural gas system
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One of our leaders in Alberta says that's a $70 billion cost.
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What's the cost associated with upgrading our grid
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so that you can plug in more than two electric vehicles in a home?
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Because if you put two vehicles on a home city block, your transformer will blow.
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So you need to upgrade your transformer, which is $40,000.
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And that right now is going to the cost of the third guy who ends up buying the electric car.
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So how much has that transformed over our entire system?
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Probably hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars.
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I think it was $1.6 trillion, in fact, that was estimated to implement the Guibo vision
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of everything being on the power grid, your car, your heating, as well as current electricity
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from all sources, including industrial, and then having all of that be from non-emitting sources.
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So yeah, it's very costly when you're trying to do that.
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Now, the approach I would take is I have no problem with a transition away from emissions.
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We found clean ways to be able to take sulfur dioxide out of coal plants
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We found ways to find an alternative for chlorofluorocarbons to address ozone.
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And I believe that we're already seeing with carbon capture utilization and storage
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in some of the incredible mines that we have that we'll be able to find a way to capture the CO2
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and turn it into useful products, which has been the history of our industry.
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It is not a transition away from the production of oil and natural gas.
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A barrel of oil provides 6,000 different products for us now.
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How are we going to be able to have lubricants?
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How are we going to be able to have petrochemicals?
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How are we going to be able to have food-safe materials?
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How are we going to be able to have medical-safe materials if we don't have petrochemicals?
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How are we going to have roads to drive our zero-emissions vehicles on?
00:09:10.100
Because they're made of asphalt, which comes from the bitumen that is produced in Alberta.
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So the approach that I believe the left is taking is defeatist.
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It doesn't look at the incredible innovation that we have, the brilliant minds that we have
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who are able to take what are traditional waste streams and turn them into something valuable.
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He has done some great work in elevating and showcasing.
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He's saying with Second Street, I don't know if Colin Craig is here.
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Elevating and showcasing the kind of products that are being made out of CO2.
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So in my province, Heidelberg is a cement company that is going to take the CO2,
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embed it in their cement, and make a stronger concrete.
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And they'll be the first net-zero cement plant in the entire world.
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Dow Chemical has, yeah, truly, Dow Chemical is taking the CO2, working with a company called Lindy.
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The Lindy is creating hydrogen, and then they're burying the CO2.
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They'll be the first net-zero petrochemical plant.
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And then on top of that, we've already got Air Products, which is taking the CO2, burying it,
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That's what an emissions-reduced world looks like.
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You cannot snap your fingers and have innovation.
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But I think it's our job as government to champion what it is the industry is doing,
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to support them so everybody knows that there's a different way of doing it.
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The guys on the left have a single-minded approach to how they want to do things.
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And then they fear-monger that, oh, look at those guys on the other side.
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And then we support our industry and those non-profit players that we believe will get there.
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Making it worse is actually the headline of the broadband conference just down the road there.
00:11:03.380
So I guess transition is a logical segue to the next topic here.
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Let's discuss your approach to gender in Alberta because I discussed with Premier Higgs yesterday how New Brunswick was the first to really go into this terrain.
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But Alberta was the most extensive in terms of what you proposed because you didn't just talk about parental rights and consent and knowledge in an education context.
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You also extended it to sports and also to the health care sector when, you know, interventions, medical interventions are concerned.
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So I'm hoping you can provide a little bit more detail in what you hope to achieve.
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And one particular aspect of this is the protection of single-sex spaces, so women's shelters and also prisons, you know, or jails, rather, in Alberta.
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I mean, are you proposing something where biologically male inmates who identify as female would not be permitted to go into female jails?
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Well, look, let me tell you my starting point because I've talked with many transgender individuals over the years from the first time I got into politics all the way through when I was on radio until as recently as yesterday
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because we've got transgender conservatives that are fellow travelers with us who want to give us advice on implementing the policy.
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But the issue that I began with was, are we giving good medical care to those who do transition?
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Because in our province, we don't do the surgeries.
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We have people fly out to Quebec to receive surgery, and then they fly back home, and we don't have good post-operative care.
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In fact, a lot of these surgeries have complications, and so that was one of the starting points.
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Those who have decided to transition as well need lifelong support for hormone treatment and also lifelong support for the consequences that might happen of doing that transition.
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And so then you get, so that's where it was, where it began, is how do we give good medical care for those as adults who make that transition?
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But then you have to have the conversation at what age is the right age to make those decisions.
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And if you look at Dr. Hilary Cass, the Cass report was just released in the UK, and she listed the most comprehensive review of the medical literature and the science behind this.
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And what she discovered, quite frankly, is there isn't very good science.
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So notwithstanding what the left like to tell us, there isn't good long-term data about how many kids go on puberty blockers and whether it impacts their future fertility and at what age.
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There isn't long-term information about what happens to those kids by the time they reach 25.
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Do they continue with the transition? Do they detransition?
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We're not going to assign puberty blockers as a matter of course, and we're going to be a lot more deliberate in going through and making sure that you're part of a medical team when those decisions are made,
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as well as that there's long-term studies on it.
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So we're watching what the emerging scientific evidence is in the world.
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This is what science looks like as you follow the information where it goes.
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And then, of course, because the first step of transitioning is changing name, changing pronouns, dressing on the opposite gender,
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you cannot be out to your entire school community, and the only people who aren't allowed to know are your parents.
00:14:28.060
And that's important context, but will that protect single-sex spaces?
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So one of the transgender individuals I spoke with has not transitioned below, and she likes to go for spa days with her girlfriends,
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and there's locker rooms where she just told me it wouldn't be the same experience for me if I had to be in a separate locker room
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I think the issue is modesty, that you cannot, if you have not been fully transitioned, then you shouldn't be exposing yourself in female-only spaces
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You should either be behind in a washroom stall or you should show modesty, and then it doesn't become an issue.
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It's when there is, when women feel that they're private spaces, when they're alone and they're naked,
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that's when they want to make sure that their places are protected.
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I've not seen anything in Alberta that leads me to believe I have to do anything about that.
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I mean, I'm watching what's happening internationally and what's happening in the rest of the country,
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but in our own province, I haven't seen anything that rises to it.
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Because remember, in provincial jails, I think it's two years less a day that you serve,
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so I have not observed any emergence of problems that might happen that I'm seeing elsewhere.
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As we close here, what's the message from Alberta to Ottawa that you want to bring while you're here?
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My message to Ottawa is that federal politicians, and the Prime Minister in particular,
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should do his job and stop trying to do my job.
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And I don't know if Premier Higgs would have said the same thing,
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but when we meet as premiers, the really interesting thing is it doesn't matter whether it's NDP or Liberal
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or Progressive Conservative or UCP or Saskatchewan Party.
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We all come from different parties and different perspectives,
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but we are united in that the federal government should stay focused on the things which they need to do.
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They need to shore up national defense so that we're not an international embarrassment.
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They need to make sure that our foreign policy is aligned with our allies instead of our enemies.
00:17:00.900
They need to make sure that they're expanding international trade
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so every single one of our ten provinces and territories can get our product to market.
00:17:10.420
They need to build critical infrastructure like the Trans Mountain Pipeline,
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which is going to be getting to the finish line.
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That is the kind of things that they should do more of.
00:17:24.200
They should be building highways, Stephen Guibault.
00:17:26.800
They should be making sure that they are living up to their obligation and their treaties with First Nations.
00:17:32.200
They should be funding health care on reserve, mental health and addiction treatment on reserve,
00:17:37.140
water on reserve, building out economies on reserve.
00:17:40.880
They should make sure that the value of our dollar is not diminishing internationally.
00:17:44.760
They should make sure that they can process passports efficiently.
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They should make sure that the Pearson Airport is a lovely experience to go through
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and that all of our airports are operating efficiently.
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There is no shortage of things that the Prime Minister can do.
00:18:05.640
So, when you see in Alberta that we are going to take a posture more like Quebec,
00:18:18.840
which is no thank you, we don't need your policy advice on school lunch programs,
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That is, just give us the money and trust that we'll be able to deliver on this.
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That's the approach that we're going to take and we're going to be pretty vocal about doing so.
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And I hope to see some of the other Premiers do it.
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Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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