Juno News - Premier Smith attacks “extreme left” climate policies

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host Rachel Emanuel. I hope you're

00:00:13.620 having a great weekend so far. Here's what we're going to be looking at today. Alberta Premier

00:00:17.760 Daniel Smith has weighed in on ESG. Pastor Tim Stevens has been acquitted. We're also going to

00:00:23.680 be taking a look at the UCP fundraising numbers. And Tamara Leach testifies. Finally, an Alberta

00:00:30.880 Justice Minister is accusing the federal government of withholding information that would be embarrassing

00:00:35.420 to Ottawa. All that and more happening now on the Alberta Roundup. Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has

00:00:40.760 spent the last week campaigning in Brooke's Medicine Hat, where she's running for the by-election as you

00:00:45.200 know. That vote will happen next week on November 8th. And in all candidates debate in the riding on

00:00:50.420 Wednesday night, Smith pitched herself to voters as someone that's in a decision-making role and

00:00:55.260 spoke about the need for health care reform. The candidates were also asked about how they would

00:00:59.980 improve Alberta's ESG rating. ESG, of course, is the controversial environmental, social, and

00:01:05.720 governance. And it's increasingly used as a rating that socially conscious investors consider before

00:01:11.340 determining whether they want to invest in a given company or region. The NDP candidate, Gwendolyn Dirk,

00:01:16.640 was the first to be asked about how she would improve Alberta's ESG rating. And she seemed rather

00:01:21.520 caught off guard. Take a listen to her response here. I have to confess, I'm not too sure how to answer

00:01:26.740 that question. Let me just think for a moment. After a moderator stepped in to explain what ESG is,

00:01:37.360 Dirk was able to respond. She attacked Daniel Smith's proposed Alberta Sovereignty Act and said it would chase

00:01:43.180 away investment in the province. She also said an NDP government would reinstate tax credits the UCP

00:01:48.520 government did away with. Second to answer the question was Premier Daniel Smith. And I'll let

00:01:53.100 you listen to her remarks for yourself. You may have noticed that Saskatchewan just passed or introduced

00:01:58.400 a Saskatchewan first policy. So I think it's catching on the idea of standing up to Ottawa. And there's a very

00:02:04.400 good reason to stand up to Ottawa. Ottawa's hostile policies towards us has been led by the most extreme

00:02:12.560 left on environmental, social and governance ratings that focus so narrowly just on the issue of

00:02:20.440 greenhouse gas emissions and the demonization campaign that has happened against our energy

00:02:24.780 industry, which sadly, the federal government with Stephen Gilbeau is aligned with. And sadly,

00:02:32.020 the NDP is aligned with the Liberals at the federal level. They have proposed a policy that would put

00:02:37.540 a specific cap and trade program on our oil and gas industry mandating that they would reduce

00:02:42.940 their emissions 42% by 2030. That is going to devastate the industry. I've talked to industry

00:02:49.360 players, they would expect to see a massive decline in their share value. If that comes through, this is

00:02:54.580 the reason we have to stand up to Ottawa is because they have no right to regulate our industry. If you go and

00:03:00.540 look at our constitution, natural resources are the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces, they have

00:03:05.440 no business getting in this area. And this is why Sonia Savage is going to COP 27. She is going to go 1.00

00:03:11.060 there to talk about the Alberta way of reducing emissions. You know what the Alberta way of reducing

00:03:15.760 emissions is, is let's export clean LNG to the countries in the world that are still using polluting

00:03:21.760 fuels like wood and coal and dung for home heating and for cooking. That's causing 44 million deaths a year

00:03:27.580 in indoor air pollution. If we do that and get credit for it through the green transfer mechanism,

00:03:32.480 we can reduce global emissions. Another thing that we'll be talking about is building out our

00:03:36.340 hydrogen economy. We are going to be at the heart of the hydrogen economy and that is going to reduce

00:03:40.740 overall emissions. We are also a world leader on carbon tech so that we can capture carbon dioxide

00:03:46.800 and embed it in products so that we can make them more durable or put it underground. You will never see

00:03:52.100 Ottawa or Stephen Gibault defending Alberta in the way that we are going to defend Alberta. That's

00:03:57.740 how we'll stand up for our ESG rating. Thank you. Another big story coming out of the province this

00:04:03.000 week, Alberta pastor Tim Stephens was acquitted on charges of breaching the province's public health

00:04:07.920 orders which required physical distancing. Stephens spent a total of 21 days in jail in regards to the

00:04:13.880 charges. In a statement, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom said Stephens was

00:04:17.380 illegally arrested for having allegedly violate public health orders which have since been shown

00:04:22.420 to be, quote, ineffective and harmful. Quote, this decision sets the record straight about the

00:04:26.940 justifiability of his actions and about the importance of respecting charter rights and freedoms.

00:04:32.320 We are pleased that the court has acquitted pastor Stephens on the charges of not complying with a

00:04:36.940 public health order. Meanwhile, the United Conservative Party had its best fundraising quarter

00:04:41.200 since former Premier Jason Kenney's pandemic crackdown. Let's take a look at these numbers. The party

00:04:47.280 raised around $975,000 from the third financial quarter. That's from the beginning of July to the

00:04:53.040 end of September and it also occurred during the leadership race to replace Kenney. Those numbers

00:04:57.880 mark the most that the UCP has raised since the third financial quarter in 2021 which ended just one

00:05:03.720 week after the former Premier implemented a vaccine passport in Alberta. Now the UCP were still out

00:05:09.640 fundraised by the Alberta NDP who raised over $1.4 million but of course the UCP numbers don't include

00:05:16.120 all the fundraising from the seven leadership candidates and that includes Travis Taves and

00:05:20.140 Danielle Smith who each raised over a million dollars for their campaign alone. This week Freedom

00:05:25.820 Convoy organizer Tamara Leach testified at the Emergencies Act inquiry in Ottawa. She said she was

00:05:31.700 motivated to get involved with the convoy because there were so many people committing suicide in

00:05:36.000 her town that they stopped reporting them. Leach is of course from Saskatchewan originally but now lives

00:05:41.780 in medicine hot. Her testimony was incredibly powerful. Take a listen to her remarks now.

00:05:46.160 I was seeing families torn apart. The suicides in my hometown were so numerous that they stopped

00:05:56.300 reporting them. Elderly people were dying by themselves in long-term care facilities and saying

00:06:07.600 goodbye over iPads. My grandma is 94 years old and she was locked in her little apartment by herself 0.96

00:06:19.240 for two years and now that she can go out and do things she's not healthy enough. She lost two years

00:06:27.480 of her life. My father is, I'm so sorry. Take your time. My father is a very social man. He is the coffee row

00:06:39.760 Saskatchewan father and I remember him telling me one day that he went down to the local restaurant

00:06:48.440 that he went to every single day and these are small towns where everybody knows everybody and he was asked to

00:06:54.920 leave. And I didn't want my children and my grandchildren to live in a world like that. I was becoming increasingly alarmed

00:07:12.400 listening to my Prime Minister call me a racist and say that I shouldn't be tolerated.

00:07:21.800 I found his rhetoric to be incredibly divisive and I'm a believer that if you're a leader of a country

00:07:31.580 you have to lead all of your people even if you don't agree with them. It's worth noting that this

00:07:38.300 is one of the very few times the public has heard from Leach. She was arrested for her involvement with 0.54

00:07:43.060 the convoy in February while in Ottawa and her bail conditions have barred her from speaking publicly

00:07:48.340 or even contacting other organizers at times. Let's move into the controversy of the week. Alberta Justice Minister

00:07:55.000 Tyler Shandro says the federal government is withholding official communication about a federal provincial

00:08:00.720 territorial meeting because Alberta asked the government to name the four provinces opposed to its gun grab scheme.

00:08:07.760 Okay guys, let's dig into the details here. The 2022 federal provincial and territorial meeting for ministers of public

00:08:14.060 safety and justice ministers occurred on October 13th and 14th. Typically after these meetings, the federal

00:08:20.120 government releases official communication to relay what was spoken about and discussed. This is called a

00:08:24.920 communique. However, in this instance, Ottawa did not release a communique saying they could not agree

00:08:30.000 on the language. But Tyler Shandro says no, Ottawa simply didn't release the communication because Alberta asked

00:08:36.740 them to name the four provinces opposed to its gun grab scheme in that communique. You guys know the details of the

00:08:42.120 story by now. Four provinces have told Ottawa they do not want their provincial policing resources to act as

00:08:46.840 confiscation agents as part of the Trudeau Liberals gun buyback program. They aired those concerns to their

00:08:52.940 federal counterparts at that meeting. And then Alberta asked for those provinces to be named in the

00:08:57.260 communication. But it appears that Ottawa is unwilling to do so as they have not released the official

00:09:01.620 communication. Let's take a look at what else Shandro had to say. Quote, the disagreement over language

00:09:06.580 centered on Alberta's request that provinces oppose to taking police officers off the street to confiscate

00:09:11.980 firearms be listed by name in the communique. Shandro also said that Quebec is routinely listed in

00:09:17.120 communiques as a province that disagrees to federal initiatives. Quote, apparently a lack of consensus for

00:09:24.160 the same courtesy to be extended to other provinces and territories was enough for the federal government

00:09:28.800 to decline to issue a communique. Alberta has asked over and over again to be treated as an equal

00:09:34.200 partner in confederation on par with Quebec. The federal government made it clear that is unwilling and

00:09:39.900 just interested in even taking a small step in that direction. What we're watching in the weeks to

00:09:44.900 come, Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has said she's done with masks. Specifically, she said she will not

00:09:49.980 permit kindergarten through grade 12 students to wear masks at school any longer. Quote, the detrimental

00:09:55.500 effects of masking on the mental health, development and education of children in classroom settings is

00:10:00.620 well understood and we must turn the page on what has been an extremely difficult time for children

00:10:05.360 along with their parents and teachers. Her comments come after an Alberta judge ruled last week that a

00:10:11.460 February order lifting the mask mandate was unreasonable because it came from cabinet, not the

00:10:15.660 province's chief medical health officer. But Smith has said she's directed her justice minister,

00:10:19.660 Tyler Shandro, to examine whether to appeal. All right everyone, thanks so much for tuning in.

00:10:24.320 Please subscribe to True North if you haven't already so you don't miss an episode. You can find me on

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00:10:32.200 And if you support our work, please visit www.donate.tnc.news. Show us your appreciation.

00:10:38.220 Thanks so much, have a great week and God bless.

Juno News - November 05, 2022

Premier Smith attacks “extreme left” climate policies

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