The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - September 21, 2024


Can Alberta handle Trudeau’s mass immigration policies？


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

164.25229

Word count

3,171

Sentence count

171

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

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

This week, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivered her Fall 2024 address. She announced more emergency school funding, but warned that this new investment may still not be enough to counteract Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mass immigration policies. These education investments are becoming an almost monthly occurrence for Smith, it seems.

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 .
00:00:00.000 Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivered her Fall 2024 address this week.
00:00:04.660 She announced more emergency school funding, but warned that this new investment may still
00:00:09.760 not be enough to counteract Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mass immigration policies.
00:00:14.620 These education investments are becoming an almost monthly occurrence for Smith, it seems,
00:00:19.020 as the school's capacities struggle to keep up with population growth.
00:00:23.540 I'm Isaac Lamoureux, your host of the Alberta Roundup.
00:00:30.000 This will be my second week hosting the show, and while I'm pretty happy with how the first
00:00:40.220 episode went, hopefully I can improve even more on this one.
00:00:42.680 After all, last week I literally made an error in the first sentence of the episode calling
00:00:49.100 Yves-Francois Blanchet Quebec's Premier, when he is in fact Bloch-Québecois' leader, as
00:00:55.540 many of you let me know in the comments.
00:00:56.840 And I immediately thought to myself, well, let me check my notes, and I did.
00:01:01.580 And in no case during my notes did I call Yves-Francois Blanchet Quebec's Premier.
00:01:07.360 At each instance, I called him the Bloch-Québecois leader.
00:01:10.480 So I'm really not sure how that error came to be, but I guess it's your first episode.
00:01:16.800 Things are just destined to go wrong, even if you prepare as well as you can.
00:01:20.440 Let me just double check my first line here.
00:01:22.520 Alberta Premier Daniel Smith, yeah, she did in fact deliver her Fall 2024 address this
00:01:28.520 week.
00:01:28.900 So this episode is already going better than the last one.
00:01:32.340 But let's jump back into that story now.
00:01:34.420 The Premier delivered her more than eight-minute monologue to the province on Tuesday night.
00:01:38.700 She said that more than 200,000 people immigrated to Alberta last year, which she added is like
00:01:44.340 adding two red-deer-sized cities in a single year.
00:01:47.780 She did say, however, that Alberta has historically always welcomed newcomers with shared beliefs
00:01:53.260 like freedom and hard work, along with those that contribute to society and abide by the
00:01:58.860 law.
00:01:59.380 She added, quote,
00:02:00.600 Equally as important, though, Canada's previous immigration policies under leaders like Prime
00:02:05.960 Minister Stephen Harper, as an example, focused on ensuring that immigration levels matched
00:02:11.000 our nation's economic needs and was commensurate with our ability to build enough houses and
00:02:15.800 infrastructure to keep up with that growth.
00:02:18.380 However, the Trudeau government's unrestrained open border policies, permitting well over
00:02:22.620 a million newcomers each year into Canada, is causing significant challenge and has broken
00:02:27.480 this delicate balance.
00:02:29.200 True North's Candace Malcolm previously reported that after accounting for permanent residents,
00:02:34.260 temporary foreign workers, international students, and illegal immigrants, about 2.2 million
00:02:39.600 people immigrate to Canada every year.
00:02:41.800 The unprecedented immigration has led to housing and job shortages, as well as problems with 0.99
00:02:47.440 social services like health and education, according to Smith.
00:02:51.180 She added that the additional strain affects all Albertans, old, new, and everything in between.
00:02:58.000 Smith vowed to join other provinces in the fight against immigration.
00:03:02.520 She said the following.
00:03:03.440 So I am joining with other premiers across our country in calling on the current federal
00:03:07.500 government to immediately reintroduce sensible and restrained immigration policies, similar
00:03:12.620 to levels we saw under Stephen Harper, so that all provinces have some time and resources
00:03:17.760 to sustainably catch up with growth and to ensure those coming here closely align with our
00:03:23.220 country's economic needs and our core values.
00:03:26.140 And if the current federal government won't make these changes, our government will certainly
00:03:29.840 support a new one that will.
00:03:30.980 The newly added education investment comes as the premier said the province is adding about
00:03:36.380 33,000 students per year, or equivalent to 35 schools.
00:03:41.380 Alberta already invested a record $9.3 billion in its education system for the year 2024-25.
00:03:48.700 The province added an additional $215 million in July to address the population boom.
00:03:54.740 Despite $2.1 billion of that investment being set towards the construction of new schools,
00:04:00.240 aiming to add about 33,000 spaces, it wasn't enough.
00:04:04.260 Smith announced a new school accelerator program on Tuesday, accompanied by an additional $8.6
00:04:10.380 billion increase to the province's K-12 capital budget.
00:04:15.200 The program is set to build 50,000 student spaces over the next three years and 150,000 spaces
00:04:21.740 in the subsequent four, which Smith said is the fastest and largest build the province can
00:04:26.820 feasibly manage with its available resources.
00:04:29.960 Additionally, a portion of the fund will be dedicated towards building 12,500 charter school
00:04:36.060 spaces and investment in non-profit private schools to emphasize school choice.
00:04:41.180 The extra funding might be possible to Alberta's recently revised surplus, which grew to $2.9 billion
00:04:47.100 from $367 million, an almost eight-fold increase.
00:04:51.600 Smith also mentioned that her promised income tax cut will be delivered in the next budget,
00:04:56.380 which she said will help address things like the federal carbon tax and other federal policies
00:05:00.920 driving inflation.
00:05:02.620 Sort of sticking with the provincial government, we'll now move to the back and forth between
00:05:06.680 the provincial government and Calgary regarding the Green Line LRT funding and leadership.
00:05:12.500 Alberta's Minister of Transportation, Devin Drieschen, delivered a five-minute monologue,
00:05:17.280 which he posted to X on Monday night.
00:05:19.280 He explained that the Green Line was introduced in 2015 by former Calgary mayor and current
00:05:25.160 Alberta NDP leader Nahid Nenshi.
00:05:28.820 The project initially promised to be a 46-kilometer line with 29 stations costing $4.65 billion.
00:05:36.580 Drieschen said the following about the city's planning.
00:05:39.440 The only issue, the city council back then failed to do any of the proper costing, engineering
00:05:45.000 or planning before coming up with that $4.65 billion price tag.
00:05:49.940 At best, it was drawn up on a napkin.
00:05:52.620 By 2017, due to improper planning, designing and engineering, Drieschen said that the project
00:05:58.820 was slashed in half to 23 kilometers and 15 stations.
00:06:03.740 The project was then cut further to 18 kilometers but was still deemed impossible.
00:06:08.760 The LRT project was cut even further to 10 kilometers and 7 stations.
00:06:13.740 Based on the initial projections, the LRT's distance was reduced by over 78% and the number
00:06:20.060 of stations by more than 75%.
00:06:22.620 So surely, as you'd imagine with all of these cuts, the price must have gone down as well.
00:06:27.140 Well, if you thought that, you would be incorrect because it in fact somehow did the opposite.
00:06:31.560 Yes, all of these cuts were accompanied by an additional cost.
00:06:35.760 The project somehow increased to cost $6.2 billion.
00:06:40.480 Drieschen said that based on the current costs of the project, taxpayers would be paying $630
00:06:46.400 million per kilometer.
00:06:48.660 Montreal's REM track cost about $86 million per kilometer, seven times less.
00:06:54.720 Drieschen said that based on the current costs of the project, the Green Line LRT in Calgary
00:06:58.960 would be among the most expensive and least effective LRTs in all of North America.
00:07:04.160 He said that with Calgary's ongoing water crisis, the city really doesn't have money
00:07:08.580 to waste.
00:07:09.820 Drieschen said that the provincial government must ensure that taxpayers' money are spent
00:07:14.420 responsibly.
00:07:16.180 We are not going to throw away billions of taxpayer dollars on a vanity project that fails
00:07:20.680 in every way to address the actual transit needs of Calgarians, he said.
00:07:24.880 Aside from this Calgary rail, the province promised a commuter rail to connect
00:07:28.940 the province at the end of April 2024.
00:07:31.420 The rail plan plans to be completed by summer 2025.
00:07:35.100 A 15-year delivery plan will be presented and the project aims to be completed by 2040.
00:07:40.720 Now moving to a different portion of Alberta politics.
00:07:43.640 Some of you may remember MLA Jennifer Johnson when she was previously excluded from sitting
00:07:49.520 with the UCP caucus after an uproar from the transgender community who said that she likened
00:07:54.780 transgender children in schools to quote, adding a teaspoon of feces to a batch of cookies. 1.00
00:08:00.480 So despite winning the 2023 election in Lacombe Pinocca by a country mile, as a UCP candidate,
00:08:07.340 Johnson has been sitting as an independent.
00:08:09.900 Following the remarks, Premier Danielle Smith reaffirmed her commitment to not letting Johnson
00:08:15.140 sit in her seat with the party she represented when she rightfully earned the seat.
00:08:20.000 However, Smith has recently hinted at potentially letting Johnson back into the party.
00:08:25.860 But that's not why we're here today.
00:08:28.320 Johnson recently attended a meeting with the Lacombe Pride Society, the Pinocca Pride Society,
00:08:33.460 the Central Alberta Pride Society, and others when she was confronted by a transgender woman
00:08:38.660 who essentially tried to hold her hostage.
00:08:41.060 The interaction caught global attention with famed author J.K. Rowling sharing the clip
00:08:47.220 to X with the caption, quote, honestly, you don't even need to turn up the sound and you
00:08:52.700 don't take one look and you can guess what's going to happen.
00:08:56.400 Will you state on the record right now that trans women are women?
00:09:02.260 I've never been asked that before.
00:09:04.540 Will you say that on the record right now?
00:09:07.240 No, I want to have some time to think on that.
00:09:09.120 Okay, well, that's me.
00:09:11.540 Have a great day.
00:09:13.080 And I will be speaking out against this meeting because you are clearly not ready to have this.
00:09:17.580 So I'm not going to be added to the list of meetings that you are going to have with people
00:09:21.100 where you say, well, I met this person and this person.
00:09:24.160 Because no, no, no, no.
00:09:26.500 You can't say I've had these consultations and use that as justification for you to work
00:09:30.600 your way back into caucus, which is why we know you're really here.
00:09:33.580 So I'll give you one last chance.
00:09:35.680 Are trans women women? 1.00
00:09:37.040 Will you say that on the record right now?
00:09:38.400 Victoria, we can disagree on things.
00:09:41.180 Not on that.
00:09:42.020 Not on my identity.
00:09:43.280 No, no, no, no.
00:09:44.120 Not on that.
00:09:44.340 And I can still care about you even if we disagree.
00:09:46.880 Wonderful.
00:09:47.480 But I will be speaking out against this meeting 100% if you can't say that right now.
00:09:52.440 Because I'm not going to have you add my name to the list of meetings that you've had
00:09:55.520 to show that you're, quote, doing the work.
00:09:57.680 Because you're not doing the work.
00:09:59.240 The work is the inner work.
00:10:00.820 You're learning the outer work.
00:10:02.180 You're learning what you're allowed to say in public and what you're not.
00:10:04.600 So you don't get in the situation again because you got caught saying what you really thought.
00:10:08.820 And you did think that.
00:10:10.540 But you haven't shown that you've changed.
00:10:12.980 Because if you can't respect us, then how can I work with you?
00:10:17.720 If you don't believe that I am a woman sitting right here, right now, how on earth are you
00:10:24.680 saying that you're working with me?
00:10:25.600 What work have you done, then, if you can't start with, yes, Victoria, you are a woman?
00:10:32.880 Can we disagree and still respect each other?
00:10:35.260 No.
00:10:36.100 Goodbye.
00:10:37.420 The clip garnered so much attention that even Elon Musk replied with a laughing face emoji.
00:10:42.960 But wait, it gets worse.
00:10:45.280 Members from the Lacombe Pride Society, Pinocca Pride Society, by the way, they spelled Pinocca
00:10:50.160 wrong in their release.
00:10:51.300 Holmes Red Deer, Central Alberta Pride Society, and Buchholz from Queer Citizens United and
00:10:56.780 Momentum Canada issued a joint release slandering Johnson.
00:11:01.260 The release said that, quote, Johnson stated that we would have to, and they quoted this,
00:11:05.920 disagree and respect each other, which firstly is a misquote because she did not say that.
00:11:11.180 The statement continues saying, this statement denies the livid experiences and reality of
00:11:16.480 transgender, two-spirit, and non-binary Albertans.
00:11:20.160 It demonstrates that Emily Johnson has not changed her views on the subject and should
00:11:24.520 not be welcomed back into caucus.
00:11:26.800 To do so would be a sign to all two SLGBTQ plus Albertans and their allies that homophobic 0.98
00:11:33.680 and transphobic views are tolerated within the United Conservative Party and caucus.
00:11:39.100 Wow, there were a lot of lies in that statement, but I really feel for Johnson, who essentially
00:11:44.460 just sat there during the whole interaction, getting attacked by Buchholz.
00:11:48.520 So Johnson released a statement of her own.
00:11:51.820 She said, quote,
00:11:52.720 This statement addresses the meeting between me, Jennifer Johnson, the independent MLA for
00:11:57.900 Lacombe-Pinocca, and the Lacombe Pride Society, Pinocca Pride Society, Central Alberta Pride
00:12:03.000 Society, and multiple others.
00:12:05.500 These societies requested a meeting with me, and I was happy to meet with them and hear
00:12:09.320 their concerns as my constituents.
00:12:11.700 I looked forward to a respectful and informative meeting with them.
00:12:15.320 This meeting was at the request and arranged by a constituent of the Lacombe-Pinocca riding,
00:12:19.880 and I was happy to accept their invitation to meet.
00:12:22.040 Danielle Smith, her office, and the UCP caucus and party were in no way involved in or aware
00:12:28.020 of this meeting.
00:12:29.220 And contrary to speculation, this meeting has nothing to do with my future as an independent
00:12:33.560 member of the legislature.
00:12:35.460 I support the work of Danielle Smith and her UCP government and look forward to working
00:12:39.940 with all members of the legislature in the fall session on the parental rights legislation
00:12:44.980 and other important bills.
00:12:46.220 Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me in the last couple of days.
00:12:49.860 I very much appreciate all of your kind words and encouragement.
00:12:53.460 Look, after this interaction, I should preface this by I didn't know too much about Johnson
00:12:58.640 previously, despite her previous controversies with the UCP government, but I am very interested
00:13:06.520 to see what happens with the future of Johnson's political career.
00:13:09.760 I certainly honor her for not bending the knee to a transgender person essentially trying 1.00
00:13:16.560 to impose authoritarian measures on her and saying that if you don't believe what I believe,
00:13:22.060 then you're not worthy of my time and I'm going to sit in a meeting for three minutes
00:13:26.060 essentially spending the entire time yelling at you.
00:13:28.900 Yelling at you for how bad of a person you are and not really listening to what you have
00:13:33.000 to say, not even giving you the time to respond.
00:13:35.260 I think in politics, we actually need more people like Johnson who are brave enough to stand
00:13:39.480 up to people like this who are trying to impose essentially authoritarian belief systems on
00:13:44.440 them.
00:13:44.820 All right.
00:13:45.060 I thought we'd switch to something a bit lighter for our last story of the day.
00:13:48.300 So just to lighten things up, we'll just cover Angus Reid's most recent poll, which
00:13:53.240 actually showed that Daniel Smith's approval ratings have recently improved since last quarter.
00:13:57.960 So the poll showed the approval ratings of all the premiers across Canada.
00:14:01.380 And yeah, Manitoba's Wob Canoe honestly led the race by a country mile with a 66% approval rating.
00:14:09.000 However, behind him in second place and tied with Newfoundland and Labrador's Andrew Fury,
00:14:14.320 who himself had fallen nine points, was Daniel Smith at 46% with a 1% rise from last quarter.
00:14:21.880 The premier with the lowest approval rating, interestingly, was New Brunswick's Blaine Higgs,
00:14:26.140 despite just recently doubling the province's surplus in their most recent fiscal projection.
00:14:33.220 In front of him in second last place was Ontario's Doug Ford.
00:14:36.640 The approval jump for Smith comes despite the survey highlighting that she accepted some
00:14:41.820 tickets to a Stanley Cup final game, but she defended that action saying that all the ethical
00:14:46.620 guidelines were followed.
00:14:48.020 The spike comes despite the previous story we discussed, which of course was the province
00:14:52.060 pulling funding from Calgary's Green Line LRT.
00:14:55.420 However, it could be that Calgarians and other Albertans agree with Smith when she said that
00:15:00.640 that she saved them essentially from what was, quote, in danger of turning into a $6 billion
00:15:07.400 boondoggle to nowhere.
00:15:08.940 The rising polling numbers for Smith probably come as a relief with her upcoming leadership
00:15:14.180 review on November 2nd.
00:15:16.240 Leadership reviews are held at one of every three AGMs on a non-election year, where delegates
00:15:21.160 get to decide whether they trust the current party leader or want to swap to someone new.
00:15:26.040 The UCP's governance manual reads, quote, a yes vote of less than 50% of the total valid
00:15:32.760 votes cast shall automatically trigger a leadership election.
00:15:36.720 I hope you guys enjoyed the stories today.
00:15:38.940 Let me know in the comments if you plan on voting at the upcoming leadership review.
00:15:43.160 Now, jumping into the comment roundup after my first episode.
00:15:47.080 The first comment comes from TemplarRising6299, who said, quote,
00:15:52.180 If the bloc was doing well, Quebec wouldn't need welfare from Alberta.
00:15:56.460 You hit the nail right on the head there, Templar.
00:15:59.080 And I've written about equalization in the past.
00:16:01.720 Remember in August when Smith demanded an overhaul of the, quote,
00:16:05.080 broken equalization and federal transfer scheme as Alberta shouldered the biggest burden?
00:16:10.840 She's not the only premier that feels that way, but I can't see Quebec vowing for change,
00:16:15.420 considering while Alberta contributed $244.6 billion between 2007 and 2022,
00:16:23.820 Quebec received $327.7 billion.
00:16:28.120 Next comment here from atbikechicklovestogroove, who said that coalition governments and appointing
00:16:33.940 senators should not be allowed.
00:16:36.120 I agree with you about the senators.
00:16:38.160 And as we've seen with the Trudeau government, they've stacked the Senate with left-wing partisans.
00:16:43.500 Again, something Smith called him out for after he completely disregarded Alberta's Senate elections
00:16:49.680 and handpicked senators that would follow his marching orders.
00:16:53.420 I agree with you, too, about the undemocratic nature, but I'd take it even a step further.
00:16:59.660 For example, the Conservatives won the popular vote in each of the two last elections.
00:17:04.700 How is it then democratic that they lost the election by such a large margin,
00:17:08.640 despite having the most people vote for them?
00:17:10.920 People argue that with our seat system, it gives smaller places like the islands more power,
00:17:16.520 but I don't know that that's necessarily true.
00:17:18.980 For example, almost every election year, the election is called before the West is even counted
00:17:24.500 because of the amount of power that Quebec and Ontario themselves hold.
00:17:29.260 So with popular vote, this would remain to be the case,
00:17:32.860 because obviously Quebec and Ontario have the highest populace,
00:17:36.520 so I don't really know what the best way forward is.
00:17:38.580 On to the last comment from tigsbigs8949, who said,
00:17:43.900 You got that right.
00:17:52.440 The rest of the country would be in shambles without Alberta,
00:17:55.840 but I'm not sure how easy separating is.
00:17:57.900 I'd be interested to see how the cost of everything would change.
00:18:02.180 Imagine if we saw a separation of the sort in our lifetimes.
00:18:04.880 I mean, it's hard to even imagine.
00:18:06.460 So I'd just like to thank everyone real quick for bearing with me through my second episode hosting the Alberta Roundup,
00:18:12.220 and I hope you liked it as much or even more than the first episode.
00:18:17.400 And I also wanted you to know that I do read every comment that you leave,
00:18:22.080 and I appreciate them all, even the negative ones, though there weren't that many.
00:18:26.840 Yeah, even for those who critique, there's little I value more than constructive criticism,
00:18:31.540 because I find it's often easier for others to see ways that we can improve rather than us finding them ourselves.
00:18:39.180 So I hope that you keep the comments coming, even the negative ones,
00:18:42.720 but I will be honest, I do prefer the positive ones.
00:18:46.520 So thank you all, and have a good day.
00:18:48.360 Thank you all, and have a good day.