Juno News - June 03, 2025


The REAL STORY behind Carney’s meeting with the premiers + Alberta independence (ft. Ted Morton)

Topics
decarbonized oil projects alberta independence discussions
Mentioned
Mark Carney Justin Trudeau Danielle Smith Ted Morton Tom Flanagan Harold Ron Bell Catherine McKenna Alberta Premier Gerald Butts Jack Mintz Jack Mance Bill C-63 X. He
Carney FLIPS on supply management, Food Professor explains why food inflation is going UP in Canada Mark Carney already lost a vote in the House of Commons

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

177.57

Word count

2,332

Sentence count

154

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Candice Malan talks about Prime Minister Mark Carney's meeting with the premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, and why she's a little worried about what's to come from this meeting. She also talks about what she thinks of the media coverage of the meeting, including some of the glowing headlines from legacy media outlets and the National Post.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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.
00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. We have a great episode for you
00:00:06.920 folks. We have Dr. Ted Morton joining the program in just a little bit. But first, I want to talk
00:00:11.720 about what happened yesterday in Saskatoon. So as you know, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with
00:00:17.280 the premiers in Saskatoon for their annual first ministers meeting. This meeting was focused on
00:00:22.240 nation building, focused on removing interprovincial trade barriers to strengthen
00:00:26.940 Canada's economy amid U.S. trade pressures. Now, if you listen to the legacy media, if you watch the
00:00:32.700 CBC, they will tell you that this meeting was a staggering success, that Mark Carney is a grown-up,
00:00:38.680 that he commanded the room, that he seems committed to working together, even with conservative
00:00:43.080 premiers, to grow our economy. Let me just give you a sample of some of the glowing media coverage that
00:00:48.820 he received. So here is our friends over at the National Post. The best meeting we've had in 10
00:00:53.160 years, Carney premiers united on nation building projects. Next, from the CBC, premiers express
00:00:58.080 optimism after pitching major projects to Carney. Next, CTV News says premiers heap praise on meeting
00:01:05.820 with Mark Carney, but no specific projects identified. That's a key point. We'll get to that in a minute.
00:01:10.460 Next, from Global News, Mark Carney and premiers say they're united on energy projects, but no final list.
00:01:17.160 And even the Calgary Herald, check out this headline, folks. Daniel Smith vows to work with Carney,
00:01:22.340 says he's way better than Justin Trudeau. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith hasn't scored a pipeline,
00:01:28.640 but she's willing to work with Prime Minister Carney, saying he is nothing like Justin Trudeau. So if
00:01:35.400 you just listen to that, you would think, wow, Canada's on the right track. Mark Carney has sure
00:01:39.340 gotten the job done. And I'm willing to hold out hope for optimism. I'm a generally optimistic person
00:01:44.660 about the future. Maybe Mark Carney really is nothing like Justin Trudeau. Maybe he really will placate
00:01:50.520 the radical environmentalist faction of his own party and commit to building pipelines.
00:01:56.220 But I am going to give it two straight. I'm a little more skeptical, a little bit more pessimistic.
00:02:02.140 And I'm going to tell you why. Let me just walk you through first what happened. So here is what
00:02:05.580 Mark Carney wrote on X. He posted this after his meeting. He writes, the premiers and I want to
00:02:10.960 make Canada a global energy superpower and build the strongest economy in the G7. Wow. So do I.
00:02:16.160 That's almost sounds like a conservative. He says, we're working together to break down trade
00:02:20.580 barriers across the country and get big nation building projects off the ground. I just have
00:02:25.020 to point this out. Check out this picture that he posted. And if we just zoom in on Premier Danielle
00:02:29.320 Smith, look at her face. She just doesn't look happy in this picture. What an odd choice for a photo to 1.00
00:02:34.600 post on social media. Next, here is Mark Carney telling reporters that the energy projects will be
00:02:41.080 selected using specific criteria to meet Canada's highest environmental standards. Let's play that
00:02:48.320 clip. I think there's a shared understanding based on our discussion of the main criteria for
00:02:53.500 consideration. I've listed them there in the communique. I'm not going to repeat them given
00:02:56.940 interest of time. What's being clear is what's being put in place or what is being proposed will be
00:03:02.860 proposed in legislation is the ability of the federal government to devote the right resources
00:03:07.720 to these projects to make quick decisions about those projects that way respect our environmental
00:03:13.940 responsibilities, other responsibilities, work with the provinces directly to move forward and to get
00:03:19.200 the country building. Now, specifically, he also said that Canada is open to building pipelines. This is
00:03:25.360 the big question, the big point of contention. Will there be new pipelines built under the Mark Carney
00:03:29.540 Liberal government? He said he's open to it, but it has to be specifically for what he calls
00:03:33.620 decarbonized oil. Let's play that clip. Specifically within energy, opportunities, yes, for an oil pipeline,
00:03:40.940 oil pipeline to get to tidewater. Now, within the broader context of national interest, the interest is
00:03:47.400 in, as mentioned in the press release, decarbonized barrels. So working alongside forms of decarbonization
00:03:54.640 for those barrels. That is absolutely in our interest. Decarbonized. Okay, we're going to break that down a
00:03:59.640 little bit. So at the end of the day, despite all the excitement, all of the positive praise from
00:04:04.100 legacy media and some premiers, there was no specific projects that were identified. We're not leaving
00:04:09.860 this meeting with anything concrete planned. There's no deal signed. There's nothing listed. Carney
00:04:15.720 emphasized that any project has to meet the highest environmental standards. So does that mean that he's
00:04:20.840 just going to say that he would, in theory, be okay with an oil pipeline, but then it will be destined to
00:04:26.940 get rejected once the environmental standards get applied. I mean, that's what Bill C-69, after all,
00:04:32.480 is all about. Next, Carney talked about decarbonized oil. So by this, he's meaning carbon catcher,
00:04:39.300 which is a hugely expensive project that basically the private sector doesn't see the willing, they're
00:04:45.520 not willing to invest in it because it's so expensive. It doesn't really help with their bottom
00:04:49.320 line. And there's no guarantee at the end of the day that the government will be in agreement with
00:04:53.720 future oil and gas development. So it's not really worth the investment. That's why the governments
00:04:57.280 have to get involved in the first place, because there isn't really a business case for this stuff.
00:05:01.180 And finally, Mark Carney says that, just like Justin Trudeau said, the projects need to have
00:05:06.180 First Nations involvement and essentially approval. So we're sort of talking about a veto power, 0.81
00:05:12.220 right? The idea that you could have 95 percent of First Nations agreeing with a project, but then you can
00:05:17.480 always find some unelected hereditary chiefs to block the project. That's exactly what happened with the 0.88
00:05:22.760 coastal gas leak pipeline in British Columbia. So forgive my skepticism. But this all sounds a lot
00:05:28.840 like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It sounds a lot like the liberal government that we've had
00:05:32.920 over the past 10 years. And at the end of the day, why would people like Gerald Butts, Kathleen
00:05:39.200 McKenna, and Stéphane Guilbault, why would they backmark Carney if they believed that he was just going
00:05:44.480 to turn on them and build the pipeline? I kind of think that there's more going on behind the scenes.
00:05:48.140 So we're going to have to wait and see. Maybe we should be optimistic. Maybe we should be happy
00:05:53.440 that Carney is at least at the table and having these discussions with people like Premier Daniel
00:05:57.780 Smith. And she seems like she's somewhat happy by the meeting. But again, I'm still a little bit
00:06:04.780 skeptical. Okay, I want to bring on our guest to get his comments and thoughts on all of this. I'm
00:06:09.720 very pleased today to be meeting with one of the biggest figures in politics in Alberta. I'm talking
00:06:14.860 about Dr. Ted Morton. He was a key figure at the Calgary School, the University of Calgary,
00:06:19.480 where he taught for decades. He co-authored the 2001 Firewall Letter, pushing for Alberta's
00:06:24.980 provincial autonomy. Of course, he was a progressive conservative MLA in that province from 2004 to
00:06:30.340 2012. And he's an author of a very important book that was published in 2020 called The Moment
00:06:35.660 of Truth, How to Think About Alberta's Future, that was published alongside economist Jack Mintz and
00:06:40.400 Professor Tom Flanagan. So, Dr. Morton, thank you so much for joining us.
00:06:46.280 It's good to be with you again, Candace.
00:06:48.180 So, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the first minister's meeting and all of the news that
00:06:54.400 came out of it.
00:06:55.560 Well, I listened to your introductory remarks and I guess I share your skepticism. I think we can be
00:07:02.560 confident that Mark Carney is a lot more intelligent than Justin Trudeau. But does that make him
00:07:07.800 better or more dangerous? And he still seems to be dancing around both sides. Decarbonized oil,
00:07:16.500 what's that going to mean? But I think to be fair, both to him and to Premiers Smith and Moe,
00:07:25.000 Saskatchewan and Alberta Premiers, I think we're kind of in a honeymoon period or a trial marriage,
00:07:31.460 whatever you want to call it. And they're hoping that I think Carney, the banker, the economist will
00:07:39.000 prevail over Carney, the politician. And I think one of the quotations I read from Daniel Smith,
00:07:49.020 Premier Smith of Alberta, was that any of these big infrastructure corridors that you want to build,
00:07:55.060 whether it's east, west or north, you're looking at billions and billions of dollars.
00:08:01.060 How are you going to pay for that? The only way you're going to pay for it is to start getting
00:08:04.420 more Western Canadian oil and gas to global markets or global prices at economically competitive rates.
00:08:16.040 So I think we're in a, as I said, a trial marriage or a honeymoon that lasts maybe a couple months,
00:08:23.520 maybe. But clearly, Moe and Smith, Alberta and Saskatchewan, are going to see the talk turned into action.
00:08:32.980 Well, and the fact that they're saying that behind the scenes or around the table,
00:08:36.560 he's much better than Justin Trudeau. I mean, I interviewed Premier Smith back when Mark Carney was
00:08:40.860 just running for liberal leader. And she worried that because of his book values and his ideology
00:08:45.780 that he professed, that he was going to be worse than Justin Trudeau. So I want to go back to some
00:08:50.720 of Smith's words right here in Calgary. Harold Ron Bell writes that Smith vows to work with Carney
00:08:56.040 and says he's way better than Justin Trudeau. The premier says Carney is a dramatic improvement over
00:09:00.440 Trudeau since he recognizes the value of Alberta oil and wants to get it to market and get it to Asia.
00:09:05.780 On X, she posted that she was encouraged by the discussions that she had.
00:09:09.180 And I want to play a few clips. So first, here she is yesterday speaking to reporters,
00:09:14.360 saying that specifically there are nine terrible laws and terrible policies that are hurting
00:09:19.520 investment and that this is what she wants to see addressed. Let's play this quick clip.
00:09:24.820 I think that there seems to be an appetite to talk about getting pipelines built so that we can get
00:09:31.040 oil and gas to market. The problem is, unless we address the nine terrible policies that have
00:09:36.160 that have damaged investor confidence, we're not going to get the proponents coming forward with
00:09:41.120 major investment. So she's laid out these nine terrible laws, terrible policies. She put it in a 1.00
00:09:46.220 letter that she gave to him before the meeting. And yet, I don't think that any of these were really
00:09:50.680 addressed. So yes, Mark Kearney is showing up at the table. Yes, he's giving lip service to the idea
00:09:55.300 of building nation building projects and getting Canada's economy off the ground. But the specific,
00:09:59.240 the devil's in the details. And I don't think that he's addressed the details at all. What do you
00:10:03.520 think of that? I would tend to agree. I saw nothing in the news coverage specifically referring
00:10:13.760 to the reversal or removal or amending of any of those nine policies. As I mentioned to you just
00:10:20.600 before we came on, of those nine policies, I think four or five have been enacted just in the four or five
00:10:27.200 past years. So the book that you referenced, Moment of Truth, that Jack Mance and Tom Flanagan and I did
00:10:35.480 five years ago, we thought we make the case then that it's time for the Western premiers to start
00:10:43.740 playing offense rather than defense because things were getting worse. And of the nine policies that
00:10:50.060 Smith and Mo have identified as necessary to move forward, almost half of those are since we wrote
00:10:58.100 that book five years ago. So things have been getting worse, not better. What's Kearney going to do?
00:11:04.720 Well, it's going to be an interesting six months. Well, I think you might have to write an updated
00:11:09.960 chapter on that book because I did interview you right after that book came out. And it was almost
00:11:15.000 more abstract back then. And now I'm just, I'm looking at the title again, right? So how to think
00:11:19.460 about Alberta's future. And you have a sort of like a weather vane or one of those signs pointing
00:11:24.980 different directions. And the options are go it alone, 51st state, let them freeze, roll over,
00:11:29.900 pop on a bust, or build a firewall, which seems sort of like you had a crystal ball and you were looking
00:11:35.300 into the future at what the conversation might look like in 2025. Well, that was the reality in 2020,
00:11:39.880 but then COVID hit and it pushed everything else off, off the, if you like, the political map,
00:11:45.700 the public awareness for what, a year and a half, at least. And so, but we're not just back to where
00:11:54.440 we were in many respects, the oil and gas producing provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and BC to what it's
00:12:02.420 considered are worse off today than we were five years ago. Certainly interesting. Okay. Well, I do think
00:12:08.000 that the elephant in the room in all of these discussions with the first minister's meeting
00:12:12.660 yesterday really comes down to the future of Alberta and Alberta independence. So I do want to
00:12:17.500 ask you a few questions about this, Dr. Morton, but for folks on YouTube, we're going to cut the video
00:12:22.360 off here. And if you want to watch the rest of the conversation, it's going to be good. Head on over
00:12:26.360 to Juno News, become a premium subscriber, and you can enjoy the rest of this interview right now.
00:12:38.000 Thank you.