Juno News - EXCLUSIVE： Premier Smith： “Ottawa created this problem.”

00:00:00.000 The reason why housing prices have spiked, why food affordability has spiked, why affordability on every front has spiked is just because if you have too many people chasing too few jobs, too few homes and too little employment, you're just going to end up causing problems. So the federal government blew it. And it's such a tragedy.

00:00:21.780 Mark Carney is spending money like Trudeau never left. The debt keeps climbing. The policies stay the same. And Alberta, once again, is treated as an afterthought.

00:00:31.780 But this time, the warning signs aren't being ignored. Alberta's premier is launching a new panel asking whether the province should take back control of immigration, policing, pensions, and maybe even more.

00:00:42.780 Because if Ottawa won't change course, Alberta just might have to chart its own.

00:00:46.780 I sat down with Premier Danielle Smith to talk about what comes next and what happens if the country can't be saved.

00:00:58.780 Well, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:00:59.780 Yeah, my pleasure.

00:01:00.780 To begin, I asked the premier about her new Alberta Next panel, a spiritual successor of sorts to the Fair Deal panel.

00:01:08.780 But this time, she insisted the stakes were higher and the clock was ticking.

00:01:12.780 The last time we did something similar was under my predecessor, and it was the Fair Deal panel.

00:01:18.780 In response to very similar frustrations that we were hearing with a liberal government that was out of touch passing policies that were harming our province.

00:01:26.780 And I think that there was a lot of disappointment that there was all of this last election, especially since so many of the same people who put in so many of the bad policies got reelected.

00:01:36.780 So I wanted to just take a temperature gauge on where people are at.

00:01:40.780 There were about 25 recommendations that came out of the first process.

00:01:44.780 And so we have a few things that we want to do some specific consultation on.

00:01:48.780 We want to talk about immigration policy and whether we should take more autonomy over that.

00:01:53.780 We want to talk about the Alberta pension plan, if there's an appetite for a referendum there.

00:01:59.780 Provincial police collecting our own income tax, as well as some of the constitutional changes that I know are causing frustration, like the unfair Senate seats, the unfairness in House of Commons seats, and whatever else Albertans decide to put forward.

00:02:12.780 And many of them may be subject to a referendum, which we'll do next year.

00:02:16.780 So when I heard that you were doing this, I thought, I've seen this movie before, and I think a lot of Albertans sort of thought the same.

00:02:23.780 And I think when they look back at Jason Ken's panel, they don't see it as a success.

00:02:28.780 There were a lot of recommendations.

00:02:30.780 How many of them were actually followed through on, I guess, is up for the day.

00:02:33.780 Yeah.

00:02:34.780 What's different now?

00:02:35.780 I think that, you know, the passage of time changes circumstances.

00:02:39.780 And I think I interpret it a little bit differently, because I looked at the panel recommendations, and many of them have been guiding principles for our government.

00:02:46.780 If you look at all of the ways in which Albertans asked us to express our own autonomy, we have about 15 different lawsuits that have been launched against the federal government, many of which we're winning on as a result of that process.

00:03:00.780 I think we've changed the entire narrative of the country.

00:03:03.780 If you remember where things were two and a half years ago when I first got elected, no one would even be talking about major projects.

00:03:11.780 Now everyone's talking about major projects and pipelines.

00:03:14.780 We have done poll after poll shows that the majority of Canadians want pipelines.

00:03:18.780 So that doesn't happen by accident.

00:03:20.780 That happens with dedicated, focused advocacy.

00:03:23.780 And a lot of that direction came from Albertans out of that.

00:03:26.780 We also have changed the discussion on equalization.

00:03:29.780 The very notion that small provinces should pay money into central Canada so that it can be spent in big provinces like Ontario and Quebec is offensive to people.

00:03:39.780 So much so that Newfoundland and Saskatchewan and British Columbia have launched a legal challenge against that.

00:03:44.780 I don't think that would have happened if we hadn't put our referendum forward, even though we didn't get exactly what we wanted.

00:03:49.780 We've changed the conversation.

00:03:51.780 So I'm looking forward to doing the same thing.

00:03:53.780 Let's see if there's a new take on some of those traditional issues and maybe some new issues that we have to address.

00:03:59.780 There are some.

00:04:00.780 Yeah.

00:04:01.780 The entire national zeitgeist on immigration has changed.

00:04:06.780 It has.

00:04:07.780 From when the Fair Deal panel was happening to now, there's a completely different opinion on immigration.

00:04:11.780 Totally true.

00:04:12.780 And I think maybe, you know, what we've heard from the Alberta government has shifted as well.

00:04:16.780 I think it's fair to say.

00:04:17.780 You know, when we started off, I had just gotten elected when the Alberta's Calling campaign had started.

00:04:24.780 And it was important because we'd had quarter after quarter of out-migration.

00:04:30.780 We were some of the first to get rid of the COVID restrictions.

00:04:33.780 And so we were ready to build again and ready to grow again.

00:04:36.780 And it was looking as well like there was increased enthusiasm to invest in the oil and gas sector.

00:04:42.780 So there was a very good reason why we were doing that Alberta's Calling campaign.

00:04:46.780 We were calling to those who were unemployed Canadians in other parts of the country to come to Alberta.

00:04:51.780 What we didn't anticipate was that the federal government was going to completely let off all controls of all streams of immigration at that time.

00:05:01.780 Temporary foreign workers, asylum seekers, international students, as well as the other immigration streams.

00:05:08.780 I think that that one year period, instead of a normal amount of immigration and newcomers arriving, which would be about 1% of the population.

00:05:18.780 So maybe around 400,000 people a year at 1.8 million.

00:05:23.780 And you've seen the result of it.

00:05:25.780 The reason why housing prices have spiked, why food affordability has spiked, why affordability on every front has spiked, is just because if you have too many people chasing too few jobs, too few homes, and too little employment, you're just going to end up causing problems.

00:05:44.780 So the federal government blew it.

00:05:46.780 And it's such a tragedy because Alberta is probably one of the most welcoming places for newcomers on the entire planet.

00:05:55.780 Our founding story from 1905 was one where we reached out to the world and said, hey, come here and help us build this place.

00:06:02.780 And diaspora after diaspora after diaspora has.

00:06:06.780 And we have one of the most diverse populations here.

00:06:08.780 So people want newcomers.

00:06:10.780 They want them to come here, be Canadian, be Albertan, leave their historic hatreds behind when they leave their home countries.

00:06:17.780 And I think what people are now observing is that it just went too far.

00:06:21.780 And I don't like seeing the fact that the sentiments towards immigration have changed almost 180.

00:06:28.780 I think people want to continue having people who will come here contribute to the economy and be able to grow this province.

00:06:34.780 But it's got to be a reasonable level.

00:06:36.780 What I hear is, I mean, it's, I guess, similar.

00:06:39.780 It's a little different.

00:06:41.780 They want jobs for their children. 0.72

00:06:43.780 Yep.

00:06:44.780 They want them to be able to go work at the Tim Hortons down the road.

00:06:46.780 Correct.

00:06:47.780 Like they did when they were a kid.

00:06:48.780 They want to be able to afford groceries.

00:06:49.780 They want to be able to take their kids to the hospital and go through an emergency line when they're having a problem.

00:06:56.780 Yeah.

00:06:57.780 And be seen within a few hours.

00:06:58.780 And they don't even view that, I think, as, oh, you know, Daniel Smith is not spending enough on health care.

00:07:03.780 They think there's too many people in line and trying to work.

00:07:05.780 And I think there's legitimacy to that.

00:07:07.780 It's pretty clear that I think we've had over, I mean, we just surpassed the 5 million person mark.

00:07:14.780 So we've had over 500,000 people come here in the last five years.

00:07:21.780 And you just can't build homes fast enough.

00:07:23.780 You can't hire doctors fast enough.

00:07:24.780 You can't build schools fast enough.

00:07:26.780 And so what we're asking for is to have more autonomy and control over immigration.

00:07:33.780 In fact, if you look at the Constitution, Section 95 gives special status to immigration and agriculture.

00:07:39.780 And it's written in a very precise way.

00:07:41.780 It says the provinces shall pass policies in the areas.

00:07:44.780 And from time to time, the Parliament of Canada will, too.

00:07:48.780 We flipped it on its head.

00:07:50.780 What has happened is that we've deferred to the federal government on both immigration and agriculture.

00:07:58.780 And they've blown it.

00:08:00.780 And now we have to try to find a way to take back more control.

00:08:02.780 That's similar to how Quebec has.

00:08:04.780 I watched him.

00:08:05.780 He's a bit of a cuss-mouthed real estate agent.

00:08:08.780 But I do love his TikToks.

00:08:10.780 You can go find him, you know.

00:08:11.780 But he just did one where he said, isn't it interesting that everybody else has had this explosion in housing prices except Quebec?

00:08:19.780 And why is that?

00:08:20.780 And he said, well, Quebec has more control over their own immigration.

00:08:23.780 They get to choose 55% of the newcomers who come to their province.

00:08:27.780 They're now looking to choose 100%.

00:08:30.780 They want to do it under the grounds of culture and language.

00:08:33.780 Well, you know what?

00:08:34.780 We do, too.

00:08:35.780 We have a different culture here.

00:08:36.780 We have a different set of priorities here.

00:08:38.780 We want people to come here and be able to flourish.

00:08:41.780 And they can do that if they've got a good paying job to come to and that they've got the support of a community around them.

00:08:47.780 So that's the kind of thing I think we'll be talking about is what is the right level of newcomers?

00:08:53.780 How do we take more control so that we have more economic migrants so that they fit in easier? 0.97

00:08:58.780 And how do we make sure that we're not getting too many people come here, which is going to then make it difficult for us to provide the social services that everybody enjoys?

00:09:08.780 With those social services, that's one of the questions that I'm sure you know on the Alberta NEXT survey that there's, you know, they're looking, I guess, they're not saying we're going to do this, but they're looking to see if there's an appetite from Albertans to deny social services to non-approved migrants, which is, I think, what maybe you're alluding to would be in Alberta's control to do.

00:09:28.780 I assume that means healthcare, education, is that what you're saying?

00:09:32.780 Yeah, I mean, you may have seen there's a recent story where there's a group who are trying to persuade us to change our policy.

00:09:38.780 We currently have a policy where you have to be in Canada legitimately in order to receive education services, as a for instance.

00:09:46.780 And what happens is that when people come here and there's a long process to get approved and then they get denied, they really should be leaving.

00:09:54.780 That's how our system is supposed to work.

00:09:56.780 In Ontario, they've made the decision to allow even undocumented workers to have social programs.

00:10:02.780 And so there's this discussion.

00:10:04.780 We don't right now.

00:10:06.780 And so we want to consult on whether or not that should still be the case.

00:10:09.780 As I understand it as well, that there are certain categories of newcomers where their healthcare has to be paid for by their employer.

00:10:17.780 So we do already have some of those limitations and policies in place.

00:10:21.780 The question would be, do we extend that?

00:10:23.780 Do we say since if we were responsible for choosing all the migrants that come to Alberta and we set it at a reasonable level, 0.99

00:10:32.780 which might be 1% of the population, that'd be about 50,000 people.

00:10:35.780 Anyone else who comes here who doesn't have an Alberta permit, we wouldn't pay for the supports for them.

00:10:42.780 Because our program is very different.

00:10:44.780 Our program ensures that somebody who comes here has a job. 0.99

00:10:46.780 So they're already coming here as a taxpayer.

00:10:48.780 And if you're coming here as a taxpayer, of course you're entitled to the same benefits as everyone else.

00:10:52.780 What we don't want to do is encourage people to come to Alberta just to take advantage of rich social programs,

00:10:58.780 whether it's daycare or education or healthcare or age.

00:11:03.780 We want to make sure that people understand that there's a social contract here,

00:11:07.780 that you have to work to the best of your ability and be a contributor.

00:11:11.780 And we provide a social safety net for those who fall through the cracks.

00:11:15.780 But I don't think Albertans want to be taken advantage of.

00:11:17.780 And then I turn to the elephant in the room, the recent by-election.

00:11:21.780 In a riding that actually once elected a separatist, the Republican Party finished a distant third,

00:11:27.780 even behind the NDP, in a rural conservative riding.

00:11:30.780 Still, their 17% showing has people asking,

00:11:34.780 could this new ostensibly right-wing party led by a leader who many people don't seem to either know or want to vote for,

00:11:43.780 could they split the vote just enough in the next provincial election to put socialist Naheed Nenshi in power?

00:11:50.780 I asked Premier Smith if she'd done the political calculus and if she was worried.

00:11:54.780 Well, we have always had independence parties on the ballot.

00:11:59.780 I've seen them get as low as, you know, a couple hundred votes, sometimes, you know, three or four or five percent.

00:12:05.780 This admittedly is the highest percentage that I've seen of a separatist candidate in my time watching politics.

00:12:11.780 I think the one that you mentioned was back in 1982 when Gordon Kessler got elected,

00:12:15.780 and he emerged in this campaign and he was advocating for it again.

00:12:19.780 What I take from that result is that people are unhappy,

00:12:22.780 but they're also willing to give my approach the benefit of the doubt,

00:12:27.780 that let's give this new leader a chance, let's put the issues on the table,

00:12:31.780 let's negotiate for a period of time, not too long,

00:12:34.780 and let's try to get a change to those nine terrible policies, among others, that have held Alberta back.

00:12:41.780 So I feel like this is time limited.

00:12:43.780 I take that sentiment very seriously, and I've told the Prime Minister he should too,

00:12:48.780 because one of the things that they need to understand is that they've created it.

00:12:53.780 This sentiment exists because of how Ottawa has treated our province in particular,

00:12:59.780 and some of our industries in particular.

00:13:02.780 They created it because they are passing policy in areas that are our jurisdiction,

00:13:07.780 and dictating to us to deliver different programs in a way that's offside with our values.

00:13:14.780 So this is an Ottawa-created problem, which means it has an Ottawa-created solution.

00:13:20.780 They've got to stop with the terrible policies, back off out of our jurisdiction,

00:13:24.780 and allow Alberta to chart its own course. 0.51

00:13:26.780 But it wasn't just about Alberta. It was about Ottawa as well.

00:13:30.780 I pressed the Premier. How much time will she give Mark Carney to repeal the Trudeau-era anti-Alberta laws,

00:13:37.780 Bill C-48 and C-69, before she considers him to be just more of the same?

00:13:43.780 I think the fall. I mean, I've been in government now for two and a half years.

00:13:47.780 We've passed a lot of legislation in two and a half years,

00:13:49.780 including some pretty landmark legislation within the first six weeks of me getting elected.

00:13:53.780 So I know that when you put the pedal to the metal, you can get laws drafted.

00:13:57.780 So they now have a break, and he has until September before he comes back in.

00:14:03.780 So I'll be seeing what kind of accommodations and revisions and revocations he'll be making in the fall.

00:14:10.780 I think it has to be that quick.

00:14:11.780 Because it doesn't make sense to say that you're going to create a two-year-to-yes window

00:14:17.780 and then dilly-dally for a year or two on fixing the underlying legislation

00:14:23.780 that you've just passed a law to do a workaround.

00:14:25.780 I mean, I think that the whole point of the workaround law is because it's a recognition

00:14:29.780 that the other laws have created such a chill on investment that it's unworkable.

00:14:34.780 So I think they could make some meaningful progress on a number of things starting in the fall.

00:14:39.780 And I would hope that they would take that opportunity.

00:14:42.780 I'm a bit disappointed that they haven't even started prepositioning any of those changes. 0.95

00:14:48.780 In fact, the most idiotic one that would be immediately on our doorstep is the net zero cars mandate. 0.92

00:14:57.780 Just when you think about it, Canada, starting on January 1st, 20% of all cars sold are supposed to be net zero. 0.94

00:15:06.780 So the hydrogen net zero vehicle industry doesn't really exist yet.

00:15:10.780 The electric net zero vehicles are not produced in that kind of quantity,

00:15:15.780 that 20% of all cars in Canada could be electric vehicles.

00:15:18.780 Alberta alone, we buy 200,000 cars a year.

00:15:21.780 We'd have to buy 40,000 electric vehicles starting in January, which are not produced in Canada, not produced in the U.S.

00:15:29.780 The only place we could buy them from is China.

00:15:32.780 And yet, because we don't want to buy them from China, we put 100% electric vehicle tax on it.

00:15:36.780 It is this kind of nonsensical pretzel logic that we would like to see some clarity out of the federal government on.

00:15:43.780 And this would be a perfect opportunity for them to very quickly tell people that whatever they want to do aspirationally over time,

00:15:51.780 they have to recognize that trying to implement it in January of 2026 is unachievable.

00:15:57.780 And all it will do is it will hurt Doug Ford's auto industry in Ontario because they're not producing electric cars.

00:16:04.780 It means that rather than buying the 10 cars that we do produce here, many of them hybrid,

00:16:09.780 we'd be having to look at something else or not buying them at all.

00:16:12.780 So this is not good for the country. It's not nation building.

00:16:15.780 And I think it would be a pretty easy win for him to find some way of modifying that policy to send a signal that he gets the message.

00:16:22.780 After the election, we saw Mark Crane was pretty chummy with Donald Trump.

00:16:26.780 And a lot of people sort of saw what he said during the campaign, that he was going to be elbows up

00:16:31.780 and then he was going to defend Canada against Donald Trump.

00:16:35.780 And he really positioned himself as the person who is going to do that compared to Pierre Coelho.

00:16:39.780 Do you think he's followed through on that or has he turned it into more of a thumbs up instead of elbows?

00:16:44.780 I'm the type of person who believes in diplomacy. What I find interesting is that I was criticized for taking that very same approach.

00:16:52.780 And now that the prime minister is doing it, it seemed to be a great statesmanship.

00:16:56.780 So I would say that we always should have taken a diplomatic approach with the Americans.

00:17:01.780 My approach has always been because I understand a little bit about the character of the U.S. President

00:17:05.780 because I covered it when I was on when I was in the mainstream media.

00:17:09.780 He's not going to be persuaded by an argument of don't do this or it will hurt me or do that to benefit me.

00:17:16.780 That's not his framework. We have to talk about how our relationship benefits America and American companies

00:17:22.780 and American economy and American energy dominance.

00:17:25.780 That's the framework that I have been putting forward. And it was successful.

00:17:28.780 We have zero tariffs on energy, zero tariffs on food, zero tariffs on most of the products coming out of Alberta.

00:17:35.780 And that happens because when you engage and you talk to people from their area and their perspective of interest,

00:17:43.780 you can get a breakthrough. So I'm hoping that the prime minister may have learned that lesson too.

00:17:49.780 And maybe we'll get a deal on the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement very soon.

00:17:53.780 You've already seen that he did something that was so simple that the former prime minister

00:17:57.780 refused to do and that all the premiers were telling him to do. Commit to the 2 percent NATO target. 0.78

00:18:03.780 We knew that if you didn't commit to the one thing that was so important to the Americans,

00:18:07.780 then it's going to impact our trade. And I heard I saw out of the NATO conference,

00:18:12.780 the prime minister has said 5 percent were there. So I think that that has already sent a signal

00:18:17.780 that we're going to have a different relationship with not only the other allies that we have,

00:18:23.780 but certainly with the United States.

00:18:25.780 And finally, I asked the question no premier wants to answer. Not yet, at least.

00:18:30.780 If a clear independence referendum landed on the ballot, how would you vote?

00:18:34.780 So first off, I would say that the last week has shown us just how vitally important a bitumen pipeline is to the West Coast.

00:18:42.780 When everyone's talking about, my goodness, what happens if Iran's supply gets disrupted?

00:18:46.780 Well, we're right here. That's exactly the kind of oil that we can provide to our allies,

00:18:51.780 which makes the absolute case that energy security and social and national security are tied.

00:18:56.780 So I'd put that out there. Secondly, I would say that when I talk to the producers,

00:19:02.780 they're very keen on getting more product to the U.S.

00:19:05.780 We know that the American production is subsiding.

00:19:08.780 And maybe there'll be new game-changing technology that will increase it.

00:19:13.780 But at the moment, it looks like 13 million barrels a day is what they're producing.

00:19:17.780 It consumes 19 million barrels a day. They need to get it from someone.

00:19:20.780 May as well get it from us. And so you've seen that the U.S. president has said that there is an interest

00:19:25.780 in restarting something like the Keystone XL pipeline.

00:19:28.780 So I know that there are already active conversations about getting more product moved south.

00:19:33.780 I don't think that would be a good commentary on Canada.

00:19:35.780 That's the whole reason why we're having this national conversation,

00:19:38.780 is that we have so much trade ties north-south because we make it so difficult to do business east-west.

00:19:44.780 But that's what I'd be prepared to do. I'd be prepared to continue working with our American counterparts

00:19:49.780 on getting more product down south. And that would, I think, solve a lot of our problems.

00:19:54.780 If we could get another 2 million barrels per day of production, that would be, at today's prices,

00:19:59.780 about 40 billion per year in additional GDP, of which governments take about 40% of that.

00:20:05.780 You can solve a lot of problems if you have additional sources of revenue.

00:20:08.780 So I think that there's always going to be Plan B. I would like to see all of the above options.

00:20:15.780 But I also trust Albertans. If Albertans make the decision that they're frustrated to a point where they get enough signatures,

00:20:24.780 that they want to put a question to their fellow citizens, I've already committed that I'm prepared to put that to Albertans,

00:20:32.780 and I'll let them decide.

00:20:33.780 Premier Smith says she wants to save Canada.

00:20:35.780 I still think my job is to try to save Canada.

00:20:37.780 But the frustration is real, and the clock is ticking.

00:20:40.780 Our difficulty right now is that we have to negotiate with British Columbia.

00:20:44.780 If there was a separate Alberta, guess who we'd have to negotiate with?

00:20:47.780 British Columbia.

00:20:48.780 You still have the same factors and difficulties, regardless of whether you go it alone or not.

00:20:54.780 And so I think that that's my job, is let's try to figure those problems out.

00:20:58.780 If Kearney delays, if Ottawa deflects, and if Edmonton doesn't come up with solutions, Albertans might not wait around.

00:21:05.780 Danielle Smith says she's going to let them decide.

00:21:08.780 The only question left, will they choose Canada or will they choose their own course?

00:21:14.780 How about you ask me in a year, if there is a petition campaign, if it is successful in getting the number of signatures,

00:21:20.780 we'll have lots more to talk about.

00:21:22.780 But in the meantime, I think my job is to advocate for a strong Alberta within a united Canada.

00:21:29.780 Thanks for your time, Premier.

00:21:30.780 You bet. Thanks, Kim.

Juno News - June 29, 2025

EXCLUSIVE： Premier Smith： “Ottawa created this problem.”

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