Sheila Gunn-Reid sits down with Alberta s premier, Danielle Smith, to talk about her year-end interview, and a cop who was disciplined and punished for making a $50 donation to the truckers. Plus, a police officer who donated $50 to a trucker convoy is in court again. And finally, I have a little bit of news for you about my new book.
00:02:30.860They had to fly to Winnipeg and then drive four hours through Minnesota and into Ontario to this little town.
00:02:37.920This is the little town, you might recall, where the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal punished the local council for not flying the pride flag.
00:02:47.780By the way, they don't even have a flagpole.
00:02:51.420And the lawyers who went after this town, they don't even live there.
00:02:55.980What's so outrageous is they went right into the bank account of the mayor, part-time mayor, obviously, 77 years old, and seized five grand like he was in the trucker convoy or something.
00:03:07.020And speaking of trucker convoys, in a moment, I'm going to talk with James Manson, a lawyer for the Justice Center, about a cop who, on his own time, privately donated $50 to the Give, Send, Go crowdfund campaign for the truckers.
00:03:22.080He was prosecuted for misconduct by his police force, even though that trucker convoy was not illegal.
00:09:41.180Ezra, as per usual, you've hit the nail on the head.
00:09:44.480This is exactly what happened to Constable Briscoe.
00:09:47.740The only thing that I would add to your correct, you know, statement of the facts is that he was, at the time he made the donation, he was on, you know, in kind of like a leave of absence.
00:11:41.720And so ultimately, on the basis of all that information, and in that information, it wasn't, by the way, videos and photographs of buildings on fire and people murdering everybody in the streets, right?
00:11:55.940It was literally Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford and chief of police slowly, as we remember him from Ottawa, these people saying things like, this protest is becoming illegal.
00:12:08.340This is an unlawful gathering, whatever.
00:12:10.840They have no authority to make those types of declarations.
00:12:37.840Anyway, Ezra, the investigator did her thing.
00:12:41.240She, you know what, here's the thing, the scandalous thing as well.
00:12:44.180The data that came from the breach, the hacking incident, the police recognized in the beginning that there were holes in the data.
00:12:54.000One of the investigators said to another, it's possible that the hacker, the illegal hacker that we never investigated, it's possible that they manipulated the data, added information, deleted information to the donor database.
00:13:11.260And anyway, so then the investigating sergeant, she recognized that maybe she couldn't rely on this information if it was just that was all there was.
00:13:20.500But what she did was she used her powers under the investigative sections of the act, of the legislation, and she compelled Constable Briscoe to go to an interview.
00:13:32.700And then she could ask him questions on the record.
00:13:35.900And because this was a disciplinary proceeding, right, not a criminal matter.
00:14:06.400And so then we went before a hearing officer.
00:14:09.280Our organization, Ezra, was not involved at the original hearing.
00:14:14.420And so one of the things that I was a little bit disappointed was that nobody at the hearing originally decided to argue that this whole thing stunk from the beginning.
00:14:26.240That it was what we call in the legal business an abusive process.
00:14:32.240When you've got an investigator getting this information, recognizing it's not good, it's got holes in it, using it, though, to springboard a compelled hearing interview to ask this guy questions that he can't refuse.
00:14:49.440And, you know, what it also does, Ezra, it incentivizes this type of behavior, doesn't it?
00:14:55.980I mean, you've got hackers now looking at what happened, and they're saying, hey, if I want to challenge my enemies, personal, political, who knows what, I can hack in here.
00:15:09.140Clearly, they're not going to care because they didn't investigate.
00:15:11.820But maybe what they're going to do is they're going to investigate my enemy and penalize him.
00:15:16.720What kind of a message does that send to us?
00:15:28.720And the timing of it was so clearly choreographed to suit the government's needs.
00:15:34.860It was published immediately by the CBC State Broadcaster.
00:15:38.540Clearly, an illegal act, and we need to do a lot more investigating, and I hope that one day, perhaps it'll need there to be a new government in place, that there should be an investigation, perhaps even a hearing, into the illegal conduct by the government during the convoy, including this hacking.
00:16:00.180You know what I would respond to that, Ezra?
00:17:04.580But anyway, what happened was we said, hey, the evidence that you guys trotted out to convict this guy was ridiculous.
00:17:12.520You can't convict a guy on 25 newspaper articles where nobody who has the authority to make a declaration that a protest is illegal, you know, that's all they said.
00:17:27.220My point as well, we've got the Charter of Rights here.
00:17:30.300This guy's got every right to make a donation.
00:17:36.480Now, there were a couple more technical arguments.
00:17:38.540We also trotted out, Ezra, the abusive process argument.
00:17:42.620And I suggested in the appeal that this whole thing stunk to high heaven and it should have been tossed out.
00:17:49.740Now, the problem with that was, unfortunately, Ezra, the guy, the lawyer, the counsel who assisted Constable Briscoe below in the initial hearing, he didn't raise it.
00:18:01.020I don't know why he didn't raise it, but he didn't raise it.
00:18:03.240So that brings up for the viewers a difficult situation because normally, Ezra, as you know, you're not really supposed to bring in these new arguments at the appeal level.
00:18:15.980You're supposed to argue everything first and then argue that there were mistakes made.
00:18:20.860You're not supposed to bring in new, have new kicks at the can, if you will, on appeal.
00:18:26.380And that's kind of what we were trying to do.
00:18:33.360You have to explain to the court why it's important, that it's not going to cause anybody any trouble, that the prosecution is not going to be taken by surprise.
00:18:44.440You know, Ezra, we said, look, there's going to be a miscarriage of justice.
00:18:48.620If you don't hear this appeal, if you don't hear my argument about abusive process, how can it be, how can it be that in the way this investigation started, that this is fair to this man?
00:21:33.900We had the Windsor Police Services Council, the prosecution, making their pitch.
00:21:38.020We also had the actual commission itself.
00:21:41.600In these types of things, sometimes the actual commission will get one of its staff lawyers,
00:21:47.320and they will show up and they will make some neutral statements about, you know, the proper procedures and the proper ways that they do things.
00:21:56.240They don't take a position formally in this, but they want to be helpful to the reviewing court.
00:22:34.220I think that's nice because you can actually understand where the judges' concerns are and you can try to, you know, address them, right?
00:22:40.840In any event, I was expecting a very hostile panel because this has to do with COVID, as you know, and the freedom protest.
00:22:49.880And I can tell you that we in the civil rights organization space, we've had a rough ride with these cases, with the courts in the last few years.
00:23:00.760The judges have not been on our side for one reason or other.
00:23:05.480So, anyway, I was expecting a rough ride.
00:24:04.560Well, usually a case like this, when you're talking about a judicial review, you're almost always talking about sending it back.
00:24:14.100Usually what happens when there's an unreasonable decision that the court finds, they will instruct the commission to take it back, take the case back.
00:24:54.200You know what, it feels a little bit like the persecution of Tamara Leach, who has the longest running mischief trial in Canadian history, indeed the history of the entire Commonwealth, over, you know, even if you look at the worst case, inciting mischief, which I don't even think happened.
00:25:21.160And it'll be interesting to see what the court does.
00:25:23.720Well, when the result comes out in the new year, please let us know, because I am interested in how things work out for Constable Michael Briscoe.
00:26:28.600And I'm here in beautiful downtown Calgary.
00:26:30.640I'm at the McDougal Center and I'm sitting opposite someone who I think is the greatest opposition Justin Trudeau has ever faced in his nearly 10 years in office.
00:26:40.320That is to say, I'm sitting across from Alberta's Premier Daniel Smith.
00:26:44.660Premier, thank you so much for agreeing to sit down to this interview with me.
00:27:08.060A couple of things I'd say is that we've known for some time these were problems.
00:27:11.440So if you look at when I came in, one of the first announcements we made was a collaboration with Paul Brandt on human trafficking, which is a serious issue internationally.
00:27:21.500And he's got his Not In My City campaign that we wanted to make sure that we partnered with him on.
00:27:25.940We have also faced a very serious overdose crisis with opioids and illegal fentanyl to the point where we've created an entirely new model for delivering a recovery-oriented system of care.
00:27:37.140But the flip side of that is that we've got to stop the people who are victimizing those who are drug addicts.
00:27:42.000So I had asked Mike Ellis, my public safety and emergency services minister, to create new specialty sheriff teams.
00:27:49.800And we've created a specialty sheriff team already that is our scan team that shuts down drug houses.
00:27:55.680They're shutting down one almost every week in communities all over Alberta, as well as the surveillance team that works in collaboration with their other police counterparts,
00:28:05.460as well as our fugitive apprehension team, which has been very successful.
00:28:08.520And he was in the process of training up for two other new teams that I asked him to do, which is a specialized fentanyl sheriff team and a specialized border team.
00:28:19.200So we knew that this was a serious issue for Canada, for Alberta in particular.
00:28:23.760And it just so happens that because it's a priority for the U.S. administration, we accelerated our plans.
00:28:28.900We were going to announce it in March, so we were able to get it through Treasury Board and announce it early.
00:28:32.720And I think that people should realize that it may well be that it's a U.S. priority, but it should be a Canadian priority, too.
00:28:40.320I'm glad you said that because cracking down on illegal human trafficking and drug trafficking is, of course, in Canada's best interest.
00:28:48.480Why do you think the prime minister is so reluctant to fix that problem and is instead talking about a trade war?
00:28:54.400Well, I think that, sadly, two of the things that have created the problems that we have today are federal decisions to allow for safe supply experiments in British Columbia in particular,
00:29:08.420which has added hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal high-powered opioids into the market and turned out to be a total failure to the point where we're now seeing British Columbia taking more of a recovery model approach.
00:29:20.600And they want to do compassionate intervention as well.
00:29:22.960So I think that that is a validation of the approach that we've taken, plus the revolving door on bad guys going in and out of jail.
00:29:30.200It's been incredible frustration for our chiefs of police to go out, apprehend somebody, and then they're back out on the street before they've even processed the paperwork.
00:29:38.880And so we managed to get some tightening up of what was Bill C-75, but it's not working.
00:29:44.640Clearly, we're continuing to see some of the worst offenders getting back out and re-offending.
00:29:49.480And so I would say that, unfortunately, it's been some of the federal decisions that have created the crisis that we have today.
00:29:56.540And now it falls on to the provinces to do something with our power over policing to address it.
00:30:02.580And this is the best thing that we know how to do.
00:30:05.460Now, since the election of President Trump, you've taken a real active role in building stronger relationships with your American counterparts and the incoming administration.
00:30:17.520At the same time, these are my words, not yours.
00:30:20.340I would suggest that Justin Trudeau is making active steps to undermine a lot of the work that you're doing by running off at the mouth about Trump.
00:30:29.600Now, over the past year, opinion polls have put Trudeau at least 20 points behind Polyev.
00:30:37.320Do you think that Trudeau is talking about a trade war because he'd rather campaign against Trump than Polyev so that he has somebody else to blame for the carnage that exists in the Canadian economy right now?
00:30:49.420I sure hope that what we're seeing is just a lack of discipline in messaging.
00:30:54.880And I hope it's not deliberate to try to antagonize the American president because we can't win that game.
00:31:05.660Any kind of tariff war will be crippling to us.
00:31:09.580It might hurt them in certain key areas, but it will be crippling to us.
00:31:12.680So that's why I've taken the approach of let's accept what the American people decided.
00:31:16.940They put the U.S. president in the White House, and they also gave him the Congress as well.
00:31:22.220And so he has a mandate to move forward, and that's what he's doing.
00:31:26.060And if his mandate includes making sure that we're taking serious efforts to address our border, then we should take that seriously and address that as well.
00:31:35.780I think that I would like to see a whole lot more conversation around our joint interests rather than saber-rattling around tariffs.
00:31:43.020I told my counterparts when we had the call, and I'm happy to say so publicly, tariffs only hurt consumers.
00:31:50.66025% tariff on all goods coming into Canada just makes all of those products more expensive.
00:31:57.380Even using the examples that Justin Trudeau talked about, 25% more expensive for bourbon or ketchup or playing cards or cherries.
00:32:07.940And same in reverse, but that's where I think we have our strongest arguments to make.
00:32:12.020A 25% tariff on oil will end up increasing the cost of gasoline by a dollar a gallon.
00:32:18.420That is going to have an influence on American consumers at a time when the U.S. president has also promised to bring consumer prices down.
00:32:27.000We lead with talking about how Americans benefit from our energy, how they benefit from electricity, how they benefit from critical minerals, how they benefit from the cross-border trade in food and the cross-border trade in manufactured products, especially for our auto industry.
00:32:42.260I think we've got a great story to tell, and we should lead in telling that story as opposed to talking about tariffs, which really don't benefit anyone.
00:32:50.800Moving on to the next topic, this fall you introduced a slate of what I think the mainstream media is calling anti-trans legislation.
00:32:59.500In reality, it protects children's futures, parents' rights, and fairness in sport.
00:33:05.860As was the case with Saskatchewan, Justin Trudeau's well-funded activists in EGAL immediately announced legal action.
00:33:14.260Saskatchewan did something different, though.
00:33:15.860They shrouded their parents' bill of rights in the notwithstanding clause.
00:33:45.680As long as you can demonstrate that something is reasonable, that it's proportionate, that it's evidence-based, that's the Oaks test, then the courts should side with us.
00:33:54.580Because as we have demonstrated, it is entirely reasonable to put restrictions on the decisions that young children make.
00:34:02.260And when you're talking about a child making a decision that will have a permanent impact on their fertility, that is a decision that has to be made as an adult.
00:34:11.240When it comes to evidence-based, we have already seen the CAS report that came out of the UK that was the most comprehensive review of the literature.
00:34:19.640And it found it lacking, the long-term effects and studies on the impact that this has on kids, the long-term information on what happens when these kids become adults.
00:34:33.380I think the very idea that the state would interfere in the relationship between a parent and their child when it comes to something this foundationally important, I just don't think that that's a reasonable thing.
00:34:44.360So we're prepared to argue it on the basis that what we were doing was well-considered and that it was reasonable, and we'll see what the court decides.
00:34:53.840I hope we don't have to use the notwithstanding clause, because I think that this is exactly the kind of careful lawmaking that we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for.
00:35:04.000We have been careful, and we're prepared to argue it to the fullest extent in the courts.
00:35:08.480Now, what happens if portions of these laws are overturned?
00:35:11.660Do you go back to the drawing board, fix the law, or do you just drop it?
00:35:17.260Or do we use the notwithstanding clause at that point?
00:35:19.620I mean, I'm not completely averse to using the notwithstanding clause.
00:35:23.560I thought that the place we might have to use it is on our Compassionate Care Intervention Act.
00:35:28.680Even then, we are trying to write the law in a way that is also very reasonable and proportionate and evidence-based.
00:35:36.180And so we're going to try to section one argument there as well.
00:35:39.440But I'm just watching this case in California that's going on right now of a 20-year-old girl who got puberty blockers, I think, on the first visit to a doctor, was on cross-sex hormones the next year at age 13, had a double mastectomy at age 14.
00:35:55.380And then at 20, just realized that she had severe issues, mental health issues that went unaddressed, and she's now suing.
00:36:02.280So I think when we see those kinds of cases coming forward all over the world, that makes the case that we've just had about why it is that we need to make sure that these decisions are made by kids when they're old enough to understand the consequences of it.
00:36:16.760So I feel like we've done our work, and I'm prepared to make the case in court.
00:36:21.380Now, a lot of conservative premiers, I'll say Doug Ford as an example, he's not even talking about this stuff.
00:36:28.340Why was this an important one for you to tackle?
00:36:30.920Well, I think part of it was that I have been, I mean, I was in the media before I got into politics.
00:36:38.720And so I was watching as this was unfolding in the United Kingdom.
00:36:43.560I saw some of the concerns that were being raised there, why it is that they launched into this review in the first place.
00:36:53.220We've been seeing the international evidence as well.
00:36:55.700There's been other European countries that have gone in this direction.
00:36:58.180And so we just don't want to be in a position where 20 years from now, someone looks back on this era and says, why didn't somebody do something?
00:37:09.420I think that when you're making decisions that could sterilize people, especially children, I just don't want that weighing on my conscience.
00:37:16.400I want to make sure that if anyone makes that choice, that they're supported in doing so as an adult.
00:37:21.700But these are definitely adult decisions.
00:37:23.800I want to talk to you about Bill C-59.
00:37:26.460That's the anti-greenwashing legislation.
00:37:29.580It was floated as a thought bubble by radical green and DP MP Charlie Angus.
00:37:36.340I laughed it off at the time because it was so crazy.
00:37:40.520But then the liberals adopted a version of it, which ended up changing the Competition Act.
00:37:46.520And it's bizarre to call it greenwashing to talk about the technologies that are advancing efficiencies in the oil patch, and especially when a government that is telling you that if you give them carbon taxes, they'll give you more back in return.
00:38:01.820And then the National Park won't burn down.
00:38:05.020I know the province has responded to the censorship of the Competition Bureau, but will the province be considering joining in or intervening on court cases against it?
00:38:18.500I think we're considering that right now.
00:38:19.980I think there are a couple of organizations that have stepped forward saying that they are going to challenge it.
00:38:24.260I want to say it's the Business Council of Alberta and Alberta Enterprise Group.
00:38:27.940And so I've raised that with my Justice Minister to see if there's an opportunity to intervene.
00:38:31.920And we've done that before when Dow Chemical and the other plastics manufacturers took forward a case against the declaration of plastics as pollutant and toxic.
00:38:42.300We intervened in that case on the constitutional grounds, so we were prepared to do things like that.
00:38:47.160I'm not sure of the status of that in particular.
00:38:49.580But the other thing that we've done is we've indicated that we are passing more legislation under the auspices of our sovereignty within a United Canada Act to address this very issue.
00:39:01.860So they gave a carve-out to provincial governments to be able to talk about emissions.
00:39:06.040So what we're going to do is have all of the energy companies who develop our resources on our behalf as a condition of their license, they have to report their emissions to us.
00:39:17.760And we will be able to herald the incredible reductions that our industry is making and the progress that they're making.
00:39:24.140And we'll make sure that they're not able to divide and conquer and pick on any individual producers.
00:39:28.760So they've pushed us into that position, where if they're going to make it illegal for companies to talk about their true environmental record, well, we'll do it on their behalf, and happily so.
00:39:39.400Now, earlier you touched on the Alberta recovery model.
00:39:44.240And I think that's one thing that really sets Alberta apart in their approach to this across the province.
00:39:50.700Now, just like with your moves to protect the southern border, you are building treatment centers on reserve, even though both of those things are under the federal government's purview.
00:40:04.860I've seen academics and activists alike say that even though opioid poisonings in Alberta are decreasing, we should not consider that a success of the Alberta model.
00:40:17.160Why do you think there's such resistance to admitting that what is happening in Alberta is changing things?
00:40:29.500There's this reluctance to admit the success of what's happening here.
00:40:33.700I think a lot of people fall in love with their solutions, even if they're the wrong ones.
00:40:38.640I have one of my colleagues in the legislature said, as I said, the NDP, they identify a problem.
00:40:44.120They come up with a solution that will make it worse, and then they demonize conservatives when they come up with alternative solutions.
00:40:50.000And I've seen that formula play out over and over.
00:40:52.180And I think that's what happened, is that 20 or 30 years ago, the left embarked on this strategy, saying that this would be a way to be able to reduce deaths.
00:41:00.500And it's been a failure, whether it was initially the safe consumption sites that have morphed into safe supply, that have morphed into a permissive approach on criminals.
00:41:11.280It's led to more criminality, more danger, and more deaths.
00:41:16.600And I think that declaring failure is something they're unprepared to do.
00:41:21.320We were prepared to do that five years ago.
00:41:23.260We looked at what was happening and said, we don't want that to happen here.
00:41:26.680It was happening all up and down the West Coast.
00:41:29.240We said, we've got to try something different, especially after COVID, when we started seeing these massive encampments emerging in our large centers,
00:41:36.740and even in our mid-sized communities, which we hadn't seen before.
00:41:39.960So I would say that we had somebody who was, I think, pretty inspirational in the new approach, Marshall Smith, who was my chief of staff.
00:41:49.160And we're about five years in to an eight-year plan, and it's multifaceted.
00:41:54.440So we still have consumption sites, although we have shut down one in Lethbridge, and we'll be in the process of shutting down one in Red Deer at the request of their counsel.
00:42:06.780But we have the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program that gets people on suboxone or sublocate with an immediate prescription.
00:42:14.820We have the same-day counseling services.
00:43:30.320And so that's what we're taking to the approach of this really deadly disease.
00:43:34.540It is those who have a predisposition for addiction.
00:43:37.820It's very hard to get them onto a pathway towards abstinence and recovery with life.
00:43:42.680And sometimes it takes a little extra effort in doing things a different way.
00:43:45.880We're going to do that because we want to give people their lives back.
00:43:48.160And I think we were very gratified to see.
00:43:51.720I mean, it's now been a few months that it's been going in the right direction.
00:43:55.240But we look at what we're seeing in British Columbia, with the numbers continuing to go up, our numbers continuing to come down pretty dramatically.
00:44:02.520And that seems to be a validation of everything that we're doing.
00:44:25.720And if it goes on for very long, which I hope it doesn't as well.
00:44:29.440So that's why we're doing our part to address the border issues as well as trying to do what we can to avoid tariffs altogether or avoid them on energy in particular.
00:44:39.620I mean, I think that we've got to be prepared to do what we can to meet the Americans halfway on some of the things that they've raised with us.
00:44:48.120But if we don't have that, I mean, to me, everything is looking up.
00:44:52.760I just saw a press release before I came in.
00:44:55.020Three oil science companies are talking about increasing their production.
00:44:58.760It's been a long time since we've had that level of enthusiasm in the energy sector.
00:45:03.540Same thing with the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors.
00:45:08.620They said that we've seen an increase in drilling rigs from previous years.
00:45:13.720We've got major investments in AI data centers being developed, major investments in alternative energies, whether it's geothermal or hydrogen.
00:45:22.100We've got a vibrant and robust film industry.
00:45:24.540We've got more investment happening in venture capital, in AI.
00:45:27.880We've got $3 billion that have been announced in investment in agri-food industry.
00:45:32.400I've been told by the forestry industry that we've got one of the best markets for investing in forestry.
00:45:37.240It seemed like everything is ticking on all cylinders.
00:45:39.220And so with that big threat hanging over us, that's a real problem.
00:45:44.800But if we can have that go away, I think Alberta is just going to continue to boom.
00:45:48.900Premier, thank you so much for taking the time.