Juno News - ＂We're seeing a repeat of what his father did,＂ Dr. Ted Morton sits down with Candice Malcolm

00:00:00.000 I'm joined by former finance minister and original author of the Alberta Firewall letter,

00:00:10.840 Ted Morton. Ted, thank you so much for being here with us today.

00:00:14.480 I'm happy to be here, Candice.

00:00:15.960 So, you know, there's a big question at this convention here, this AGM,

00:00:19.540 about the fair deal proposal that the Kennedy government has put forth.

00:00:23.360 And if you look back at the firewall letter, the original letter that you wrote with some

00:00:27.000 of your colleagues, a lot of the things that you asked and demanded of Ralph Klein are now included,

00:00:32.280 you know, in an Alberta-based pension plan, removing funding from the police, and some other things.

00:00:38.920 So how do you think, Kenny, is handling the idea of helping Alberta become a little bit more independent?

00:00:48.040 And what do you think of the current political situation?

00:00:52.280 Well, a lot of us have seen what's happened in the last few years under Justin Trudeau's

00:00:56.920 kind of a repeat of what his father did in 1980-81 with the National Energy Program.

00:01:02.400 It seems like an NEP 2.0, right?

00:01:05.640 And yet this time it's hit even harder in terms of its impact, not just in corporate head offices,

00:01:11.380 which are half empty in downtown, but it's hitting Main Street and families as well.

00:01:17.240 You know, unemployment, there have been over 150,000 jobs lost.

00:01:19.860 So it's a tough situation right now.

00:01:23.440 And the last election showed yet again that the liberal strategy of buying votes in central Canada

00:01:31.120 with transfers, financial transfers, out of western Canada.

00:01:35.800 You've got a whole bunch of voters but no oil and gas in eastern Canada.

00:01:40.040 You've got a little number of voters out here, but with lots of oil and gas.

00:01:43.800 And if you can move money from the west to buy the votes in the east, you don't elect any seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

00:01:51.720 It doesn't make any difference.

00:01:52.440 We don't have enough members in the House of Commons to make any difference.

00:01:55.000 So just like Trudeau didn't win anything, Pierre didn't win anything in 1980, but he still got a majority government.

00:02:00.880 Justin only got a minority government this time, right?

00:02:02.880 But it's a depressing pattern, and I think it'll keep repeating itself unless Alberta takes steps to maximize its autonomy,

00:02:12.520 its ability to be self-governing, and so forth.

00:02:14.620 And that's what the firewall was about back in 2000, 2001.

00:02:19.240 And I think both the Alberta people and Premier Kennedy have seen that it's time to take some steps like that

00:02:25.840 to basically protect Alberta's future.

00:02:28.860 So that letter was written, what, 20 years ago now, and you argued in a recent op-ed that in so many ways,

00:02:36.640 Alberta's in a worse situation now in Confederation within Canada than it was 20, 30 years ago,

00:02:42.220 despite all of the political movements, all of the achievements that we have seen, you know, the west once in,

00:02:47.700 and then with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the west was in.

00:02:50.820 And yet here we are in 2019 coming into 2020, and we see the country sort of falling apart in many ways.

00:02:57.900 You know, when the CN rail strike was happening, ground to a halt, and we can't seem to build critical infrastructure.

00:03:03.580 We have a resurgent bloc in Quebec and a new separatist movement out here in Alberta.

00:03:08.520 So how has it happened that we're in such a bad situation today?

00:03:12.460 Well, it was a very depressing piece for me to write because my bottom line was what my generation,

00:03:19.780 the kind of the baby boom generation of Alberta political leadership, you know, I was sort of mid-tier,

00:03:23.980 but we had great leaders, Peter Lougheed, Preston Manning, Stephen Harper.

00:03:28.460 And despite that leadership, despite all the hard work, I think it's been proven in the last couple of years

00:03:34.720 that we're even more vulnerable today than we were back in the 1980s, 1990s.

00:03:42.660 And I walked through 15 different, I think it was about 15 different points,

00:03:46.380 where what we had in 1980, we've either lost or it's been eroded.

00:03:50.100 But the bottom line for me was it would be wrong for my generation to tell your generation,

00:03:56.860 just keep fighting the good fight.

00:03:58.200 What we did was well-intentioned, hard, great leadership, good ideas, but it didn't work.

00:04:05.260 And so I think the bottom line is your generation has to come up with a plan B 0.99

00:04:09.880 to figure out how better to protect not just Alberta, I think it was certainly Saskatchewan,

00:04:14.840 but even British Columbia gets soaked pretty well by all the federal transfers as well.

00:04:20.000 That what structural changes can we take internally to better protect ourselves against this?

00:04:26.300 And can that then be used as leverage to get some changes out of Ottawa and the rest of Canada

00:04:31.540 to make Canada work better?

00:04:33.400 Canada's not working right now.

00:04:35.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:04:35.720 It's almost like the framework is there because Quebec is sort of this special circumstance

00:04:39.500 where they view themselves as having their own culture and being their own nation of people.

00:04:42.820 Canada is designed to be a very decentralized federation in a way that the United States

00:04:47.120 really isn't.

00:04:47.820 So we have the weak federal government and the strong provinces,

00:04:50.740 and yet we're still in a situation where that's not really being borne out.

00:04:54.900 So do you think that the changes can be made within the framework of the existing confederation?

00:05:00.160 Or what do you say to people who think that Alberta needs to go it alone

00:05:03.280 or Western Canada needs to separate?

00:05:04.980 Well, I think you have the status quo, which an increasing number of Albertans and Westerners

00:05:13.040 think is just unacceptable because we're just too prone to being economically pillaged

00:05:19.900 by the Liberal Party of Canada to buy votes in the East.

00:05:24.640 And then on the other extreme, you have the separatist option,

00:05:27.540 and then suddenly instead of it being kind of a fringe 5% or 10%, it's up, what, to 20% or 25%.

00:05:32.420 But there's a whole bunch of room, policy room in between.

00:05:35.880 And I think what Premier Kenney is doing with the Fair Deal panel and the Fair Deal initiative

00:05:42.580 is to say, let's go out and look at some ideas that were already out there.

00:05:48.140 We're bringing them back, putting them on the table.

00:05:49.680 Well, let's discuss them and let Albertans decide what are kind of the middle grounds

00:05:54.800 between the two extremes of the status quo or separatism,

00:05:59.200 both of which I think Premier Kenney has made pretty clear are unacceptable to him

00:06:02.940 and also unacceptable to a growing number of Albertans.

00:06:05.760 So I think it's an exciting time.

00:06:07.440 I think it's going to be kind of democracy in action, lots of policy discussion,

00:06:13.960 which is what democracy is supposed to be about.

00:06:15.920 And I think, again, Premier Kenney was smart when he said any of the big decisions,

00:06:22.280 like an Alberta pension plan, this won't be a decision that just Jason Kenney makes

00:06:27.080 or the UCP caucus makes.

00:06:28.540 He said, if we go down this road, it'll be Albertans' choice,

00:06:31.400 and he said he'll put it to a referendum.

00:06:33.260 So I think that should give Albertans a certain amount of confidence

00:06:36.860 to have a really robust, open discussion about all these options

00:06:40.600 because at the end of the day, it's going to be Albertans who make the decision,

00:06:43.860 not just Jason Kenney and the UCP.

00:06:45.740 So I thought that was both clever of him to do, but also the right thing to do.

00:06:49.860 Great.

00:06:50.140 And just one last question.

00:06:51.740 So you look down in the United States and you spend some time in the northern states

00:06:55.220 and their energy industry is booming and there's low unemployment

00:06:59.480 in places like North Dakota.

00:07:01.780 Things are going really, really well.

00:07:03.640 You look at Canada and it's almost like if you talk to the pundits and economists,

00:07:08.840 people are saying that we're going towards the end of oil and gas production in Canada.

00:07:13.320 Why is it so different?

00:07:15.160 You know, just a couple miles away, you know, you have a booming industry.

00:07:18.420 What can Canadian leaders learn from leaders in the United States

00:07:21.920 and why is it such a drastic difference?

00:07:24.480 Well, it's being caused by policy, not price.

00:07:29.500 Everywhere in North America, all the oil and gas producing states and provinces

00:07:33.340 had a recession, a fallback in 14-15 because of a price collapse.

00:07:38.260 But since late 2015-2016, the oil and gas sector has totally rebounded south of the border,

00:07:44.580 as you just noted, whereas we've gotten worse and worse.

00:07:47.760 So there's a global demand out there.

00:07:49.680 There's a North American demand out there.

00:07:51.380 But a combination of very well-funded, well-organized, Rockefeller Foundation-funded,

00:07:58.200 you know, landlocked the oil sands, no more pipelines.

00:08:01.420 They have a strategy pouring lots of money into Canada, frankly.

00:08:05.040 Outrageous political interference in Canada's elections and democracy to stop pipelines.

00:08:13.180 And you have then a Liberal Party and, much worse, the NDP and the Greens that have bought into it 100%.

00:08:19.440 And so we're at a crossroads.

00:08:24.300 We have been, say one thing, good that my generation has done.

00:08:28.840 We've made Alberta the single largest contributor to Canada's economy, right?

00:08:33.440 Both in terms of a single sector, not just GDP, but also all the transfers,

00:08:40.400 that $600 billion over the last 30 years, $200 billion just since 2000.

00:08:46.680 And now these same people, well, again, mostly Quebec, or certainly led by Quebec,

00:08:52.400 the very people that are getting 66 cents of every equalization dollar

00:08:56.000 now want to shut down the very economy, the energy sector in Western Canada

00:09:01.540 that generates this kind of wealth.

00:09:03.000 So we're at a crossroads.

00:09:06.380 It's an important time for Alberta and for Canada.

00:09:10.000 I'm very excited about the Fair Deal Committee,

00:09:12.200 and I'm looking forward to a really robust public discussion of what our options are.

00:09:17.240 That's going to be a discussion inside of Alberta. 1.00

00:09:19.460 But then also there's going to be a discussion between Alberta and the rest of Canada,

00:09:23.080 and that's going to be a good discussion too.

00:09:24.940 Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Ted Morton.

00:09:26.720 Thank you for joining True North Nation and our True North Report.

00:09:29.540 We really appreciate it.

00:09:30.460 I'm happy to be here this morning.

00:09:33.000 Thank you.

00:09:34.380 Thank you.

00:09:34.740 Thank you.

00:09:34.840 Thank you.

00:09:35.260 Thank you.

Juno News - December 06, 2019

＂We're seeing a repeat of what his father did,＂ Dr. Ted Morton sits down with Candice Malcolm

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