The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Government bureaucracy will not help get projects built.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:14.200 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton-Gaworth Lakes, with new content for

00:00:18.200 you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and

00:00:23.280 share this program. On today's show, we are talking about the murder of Charlie Kirk.

00:00:27.840 Parliament has resumed. And Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, has announced five

00:00:33.140 nation-building projects. He says new, we say otherwise. To talk about this and much, much

00:00:39.140 more, we bring on Dan Albus, the Member of Parliament for Okanagan Lake West South Kelowna.

00:00:45.720 It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?

00:00:46.900 Holy smokes. I had your old writing name memorized. This one throws me off, but I'm sure it's beautiful.

00:00:53.960 Kelowna's beautiful. Okanagan's beautiful. Well, especially for the Speaker. Just think of what

00:00:58.820 the Speaker has to go through with all these new Conservative MPs. That's true. And especially

00:01:02.960 they're so excited about representing their areas. So it's been a great week because of the energy that

00:01:09.580 these new caucus members bring to our cause. Absolutely. And sadly, I bring this up a few

00:01:15.400 times and we'll get on to the other stuff, but when you look at what's been happening, a lot of things

00:01:20.420 happening in 2025. Parliament's only sat for about a month. Up until now, it's only been a month because

00:01:26.000 we rose for Christmas, as per usual, in December. Parliament's prorogued. We had the leadership

00:01:32.880 race for the Liberals. Mark Carney took over at the election, sat for a month, and summer recess,

00:01:39.320 and now we're coming back. So there's a lot going on, but Parliament has not been involved in much.

00:01:44.040 No, no. And that's why I think the accountability has to come back.

00:01:48.740 Yeah, I agree. So I think it would be just crazy not to talk about Charlie Kirk,

00:01:57.480 Conservative commentator in the United States, brutally murdered in front of thousands while

00:02:02.900 talking at a campus in Utah, just using his words, just using words in debate. And he was

00:02:10.900 murdered for it. 31 years old, has a wife, two children. And so obviously our hearts go out to

00:02:18.900 them, you know, to be, to have, to have your father taken away, have your husband taken away so suddenly,

00:02:24.560 especially being such a bright and articulate person. And this reaffirms, and we've been seeing

00:02:31.480 it from some sides, I'd like to say all, but at least from some, that political violence is never

00:02:37.460 justified. And I think Charlie himself would be the first to say, use words, persuade.

00:02:44.480 Yep. Keep talking. Keep the conversation going. And that's the way it's always been.

00:02:48.760 Like there, there seems to be this, this movement where you must agree with everything,

00:02:54.340 you know, but we've never really agreed on everything all 100% of the time. And that's

00:02:59.420 what the conversation, that's what debate's all about.

00:03:01.900 The best ideas are the ones that stand to scrutiny. That's right. And, and again, if someone comes up

00:03:08.900 with a good idea that doesn't necessarily meet with the status quo, that's how we talk about these

00:03:15.180 things. And then we learn from them. Anyway, but like I said, where my heart goes for is to the family.

00:03:23.240 Yeah, it was just completely awful. And just for someone who just tried to engage youth,

00:03:27.460 get them thinking, get them talking to one another. And, and unfortunately his life was

00:03:32.700 taken, but he leaves a pretty strong legacy in the fact that he had a movement behind him. That's

00:03:38.560 good. But again, his family, his two kids will grow up without, uh, without knowing their father too

00:03:44.060 well. So absolutely sad and horrific. Um, moving on to more domestic politics, as we talked about,

00:03:50.820 uh, parliament is resuming this week. However, we had some pretty bad news not too long ago.

00:03:56.720 The Canadian economy shed 66,000 jobs in August. Our unemployment rate stands at 7.1%. That's the

00:04:04.480 highest since the pandemic. I think we on the ground as members of parliament and probably our viewers and

00:04:09.920 listeners have been feeling some uneasiness in the economy at their local level. Um, so for some,

00:04:17.100 this might not be a surprise, but after 10 years of liberal government, you know, we predicted,

00:04:22.660 sadly, uh, this ball getting to where we are now in this court. Absolutely. And we we've seen that,

00:04:29.240 uh, GDP per capita numbers continue to fall. Uh, we saw our gross domestic product in this last

00:04:35.540 quarter fall and unemployment in the last two months. That's 105,000 Canadians that no longer have

00:04:42.160 a job. So, you know, our hearts are with them, but we also need to start asking questions like,

00:04:46.300 what is the plan and having a plan to have a plan or, you know, talking, uh, you know, that you have

00:04:52.260 a plan, but really not doing anything is not going to cut it for those individuals. Uh, you know, I was

00:04:57.120 asked recently to, to comment on, uh, the prime minister's, uh, press conference where he was

00:05:01.880 talking about a whole bunch of different measures. If I was someone who just received a pink slip

00:05:07.980 and listening to the word salad that was offered at that particular press conference,

00:05:12.380 and I'm not the only one to say that there was a word salad of a press conference,

00:05:15.820 I wouldn't have left with one tangible thing, uh, that was going to improve my condition.

00:05:22.040 And you know what, Jamie, we're back to work here, um, holding the government accountable for its

00:05:28.160 promise because this government has made a ton of promises and especially around economic growth.

00:05:32.440 And right now we're going in the wrong direction. Well, it's, sadly, I want to like the man with the

00:05:38.600 plan, right? We're told in the election, man with the plan, he's got this all

00:05:42.300 laid out, you know, nothing but winds at our back kind of thing. The five new nation building

00:05:47.040 projects. So when, when they talk, when Mark Carney announced, this is obviously before the

00:05:51.460 big announcement, the list came out. Oh, oil pipelines, not on that list at a time when the

00:05:57.500 world's begging to get off Russian oil and natural gas. Canada has lots of it. Be great to get it to

00:06:03.940 new markets, but the government said no, but it did list five new projects. Phase two of the LNG

00:06:10.420 plant in Kitimat, BC in your home province, the Darlington nuclear project in Clarenton,

00:06:16.220 Ontario, which is near me. However, as we talked about off air, this has already been a project

00:06:20.840 in progression for years. It's already got its license, work's already going. Uh, so it's not

00:06:25.760 new. It's talking about a project to expand the port of Montreal, um, expanding a copper mine

00:06:32.820 in Saskatchewan and expansion of a mine in Northwestern BC. So it looks like things that

00:06:39.080 are already in process, probably already going through the permitting process itself. They just

00:06:44.960 finally gave the green light to it. Well, and this is the really curious thing. These projects are well

00:06:50.620 established, well-known and are proceeding in spite of all the damaging bills like C 69, C 48, uh, and

00:07:00.960 all, all, all the things that Justin Trudeau did. Um, and it's not because of C five, which is, uh,

00:07:08.300 it's a new legislation that was passed in the spring, uh, under the Mark Kearney watch it. These things are

00:07:14.220 happening in spite of not because of C five. And so when I see that list, I hear you go through it

00:07:21.480 at Darlington. We've known that, that, that is a long last, a long, uh, lasting project. Um, and I,

00:07:28.240 I just don't see as we studied in C five, uh, that's one of the areas where the minister can't just

00:07:33.600 simply say we're proceeding without going through all these guidelines. They have to go to the Canadian

00:07:37.740 Nuclear Safety Commission. So I just don't see these as being a new contribution. Um, I just think

00:07:44.760 that they're, they're just re-Christianing these old projects, uh, because they don't have any of

00:07:49.020 their own. But this has been similar. And what we've been experiencing the last few months, ever

00:07:53.420 since prime minister Cardi was sworn in before the election and after he's making all these grand

00:07:59.380 statements, but there's no action behind it. Absolutely. It's, it's almost like, it's almost like

00:08:05.260 Justin Trudeau continues. Oh, uh, absolutely. C five itself, the one that the legislation that

00:08:11.440 allowed for these, uh, these national interest projects to, to be exempted from the, uh, rules

00:08:17.460 that Justin Trudeau put into place. Um, those specifically, uh, you know, to me, uh, are an

00:08:25.140 indictment that you can't build anything under the regulatory frameworks that we have for

00:08:29.600 environmental assessments under Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney. So essentially they've created

00:08:34.020 this, this exemption process, which is going to, uh, be one of the most heavily lobbied,

00:08:39.940 uh, issues. Right. Uh, and so that's where I just look at this list and I say, there's,

00:08:45.620 he's not bringing anything new to the table here, uh, from, from a C five angle.

00:08:49.580 And we talked about this a few times on previous shows. When you, when you set up a process where

00:08:55.500 ministers can circumvent pieces of federal legislation that's on the books already, argument would be

00:09:01.260 just get rid of or streamline that regulations and process. That way you don't have to worry

00:09:07.820 about creating this magic piece of legislation. But now that you have the minister and the

00:09:11.540 government deciding which projects goes ahead, that leaves it up to lawyers and lobbyists and

00:09:16.160 donors to the party and who, who can suck up most gets the green light, not the market demanding

00:09:21.480 or the market choosing its path. Oh, absolutely. And there's, and there's probably hundreds of

00:09:26.440 potential pro projects that already have done considerable work that are not going to have

00:09:32.600 the political connections. And so they're forced to wait in a very long line, uh, a long line, uh,

00:09:38.560 wait to, to get their proper review. So rather than focus on the problem, which is a overly complex

00:09:44.860 regulatory environment where no one wants to see things, uh, or don't believe that they can get

00:09:50.580 it through without years and tears. Um, what do they decide to do instead of performing that?

00:09:55.080 They, they decide to exempt, uh, because it's so complicated as to what they've done.

00:09:59.740 And the fact that there is no, uh, oil pipelines whatsoever, because, um, for the case of British

00:10:06.260 Columbia, Jamie, let me just put this into it. Not only does Canada send 97% plus, uh, of our,

00:10:12.400 uh, of our Canadian energy to the U S. So they're our biggest customer who pay us in, uh, U S dollars

00:10:19.400 at highly discounted prices. Um, but also in British Columbia, for example, we're, we're dependent

00:10:25.500 for one third of our, um, refined, uh, transport fuels like, like gas from Cherry Point in Washington

00:10:33.000 state. It's a refinery that's there. Uh, almost a good chunk of our jet fuel that's used at Vancouver

00:10:38.460 airport comes from Cherry Point. So we end up as VC, uh, consumers paying up the nose, uh, because we

00:10:46.780 were paying at premium prices, product that actually came from Alberta that they bought

00:10:52.200 at a discount. And then BC consumers pay at, at very high premium prices in Canadian dollars,

00:10:58.960 the U S, um, you know, to, to, to, to get that, uh, that stuff. So essentially we need to have a

00:11:07.280 change here. We need to get world prices for that, that finite resources that we have, but we also need

00:11:13.980 to become more sovereign in, in, in BC with our energy security. And, uh, you know, we saw in February,

00:11:20.820 uh, the, the former minister, uh, for the environment, Stephen Guibault, essentially canceled an

00:11:26.140 environmental assessment for a, uh, long standing, uh, issue for getting a, uh, new refinery in British

00:11:33.460 Columbia. So again, we are, we are basically tying ourselves up into pretzels by keeping those,

00:11:41.780 uh, those bills like C 69, C 48, all from the Trudeau years. Um, essentially it's, it's, it's hurting our

00:11:50.620 sovereignty, our ability to fund our healthcare, our ability to fund our military, all of these things.

00:11:55.520 Uh, the price of groceries is heavily dependent on fuel costs. So for me, as a BC based MP,

00:12:01.840 seeing taxes everywhere, seeing an oil pipeline in any direction, uh, that can get us tight water

00:12:08.940 and get us access to world prices, uh, makes us less dependent on the Americans and helps, uh, you

00:12:15.180 know, I think improve our sovereignty. Unfortunately, not a single one of those projects seems to get,

00:12:20.440 to get onto, uh, Mr. Um, Carney's, uh, list. And let's just bear in mind when he was running for

00:12:27.100 the leadership, he came to Kelowna and said, I will use the emergency powers of the federal government

00:12:33.100 to approve national infrastructure. And it was in response to a question about pipelines.

00:12:38.940 Five days later, he goes to Quebec and says, I won't impose it.

00:12:42.480 Well, Stephen Gilboa, I believe was standing in that press conference, you know,

00:12:46.800 so, so, so this is one of those things. If we are going to see an increase to our sovereignty,

00:12:52.040 we need to support legislation that will repeal a lot of this. That's why the Canadian Sovereignty

00:12:57.340 Act, uh, this is something that, uh, Pierre Polyev and Shannon Stubbs have been working so hard on,

00:13:02.220 would essentially eliminate all of those obstacles. So rather than C5 exempting from some of those

00:13:08.260 obstacles and still allowing premiers, uh, to put up vetoes, um, this, the, the Canadian Sovereignty

00:13:14.920 Act would actually remove all of those things. And we get back to, you know, less political,

00:13:20.260 politicalization where a prime minister or a premier can put a thumb on the scale. Uh, we should just let

00:13:26.540 these projects go through if they prove that they can be run, uh, commercially. So no public funds.

00:13:33.160 Yep.

00:13:33.300 And also that they meet environmental standards that Canadians expect.

00:13:37.280 And the fact that they weren't on the list tells us something too, right? Maybe Justin Trudeau was

00:13:43.300 right. I remember him saying a lot of silly things. One in particular was telling world leaders that 0.91

00:13:48.640 came to Canada one after one after one, asking, begging in some cases for Canada, Canadian oil and

00:13:55.940 gas, that there's no business case, right? Well, maybe there isn't because as you just pointed out,

00:13:59.980 C69, the no more pipelines, that makes it very difficult. But even if they were, companies were

00:14:06.520 able to get an approval, which would take so many years, investors would, you know, probably lose

00:14:11.480 their shirts. You still have the tanker ban. You can't get it outside of BC anyway. So,

00:14:17.080 so let's not be surprised.

00:14:19.160 Yeah, that there's no pipelines on that, right?

00:14:21.360 And this is what I see on Twitter. Well, there's no proponent, Dan. Well, yeah, no one wants to put

00:14:25.480 themselves on a project that they believe the law has forbidden to ever proceed. So again, this is,

00:14:33.060 this is where the, the, the, uh, Carney liberals, uh, you know, will say all the right things when

00:14:38.600 they're in Calgary or at Edmonton or places like Kelowna, uh, to say, oh yes, we understand

00:14:43.480 saying 97% of our, our, our oil to one customers is not good for Canada, but then they just leave the

00:14:49.840 status quo in play. Yeah. Or they blame that there's no proponent. Which is another good one.

00:14:55.660 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Meaning because if you're trying to make a pitch to a board of directors

00:15:01.220 at which project to put your resources into, right? You got all these other countries where

00:15:05.960 things are moving a lot faster than Canada. It's, it's a no brainer to say, well, we can probably get

00:15:11.480 this permit a heck of a lot quicker months, if not years faster. We can start production and start

00:15:17.600 getting a return on investment and, and seeing some profit. They're not, they're not getting

00:15:21.900 that, that warm, fuzzy feeling from Canada. I think that there is probably, um, uh, and again,

00:15:27.720 I'd have to check online to see if this is true, but I bet you there are more Canadian pipeline

00:15:32.300 companies that are doing projects in Mexico and the United States than Canada. And that is telling.

00:15:41.180 Yeah, absolutely. Dan, we're pretty much out of time. Um, the guests always get the last word.

00:15:46.620 So the floor is right. I just want to do a quick shout out, uh, to the, the conservatives

00:15:51.160 on our transportation infrastructure and communities, uh, the committee over the summer,

00:15:56.580 we were busy working on calling out Mark Carney's, uh, and Christia Freeland's essentially watching

00:16:03.300 our, our jobs sail away to a Chinese shipyard. Uh, so what I'm talking about is the BC ferries

00:16:10.180 is receiving a loan from the Canada infrastructure bank for over a billion dollars. And we held hearings

00:16:16.160 over the summer. Um, new MP, for example, Aaron Gunn was there as long, uh, as well as, uh,

00:16:21.820 longstanding MPs like Phil Lawrence and, uh, Leslyn Lewis, two of our other shadow ministers.

00:16:26.920 And it was great to see that kind of accountability, uh, because when we asked, uh, the government to

00:16:32.440 explain itself, they basically said, well, you know, we're, we're dismayed that the province

00:16:38.420 is doing, but what we can't do anything. Yeah. That's certain, there's a normal line.

00:16:42.120 Well, there's, there's this thing saying, no, you can stop it. And, uh, and so rather than,

00:16:48.900 um, to address it right up front and say, let's not reward, uh, the communist, uh, government in

00:16:55.200 Beijing with a billion dollars funded by tax, uh, paying Canadians. Let's, let's try it. Let's cancel

00:17:02.300 that loan. And let's see if we can build these ships here in Canada where those, those steel 0.98

00:17:07.500 aluminum and shipbuilding jobs happen here. And so, uh, you could really tell that those ministers

00:17:14.080 weren't happy to have that kind of accountability. So what I'm going to finish on with is, is that now

00:17:18.800 that parliament's resumed, I think we're going to see a lot of, of, of similar responses for ministers

00:17:24.160 where they have nothing good to show for what they're, what they're doing for Canadians and for

00:17:29.680 the tax dollars that they're spending on their behalf. And so I'm excited, uh, to be joining my

00:17:33.940 colleagues, uh, on those things. And like I said, these new members of parliament from places we

00:17:38.240 haven't won in a long time, uh, it's great to have that energy and they're doing, they're ready to do

00:17:43.080 their jobs. Absolutely. Another idea, crazy idea. Let's take the industrial carbon tax off our steel 1.00

00:17:49.520 manufacturers to make our steel more competitive. That would be amazing. It would absolutely be

00:17:54.440 amazing. And actually that's another part of the Canadian sovereignty act. So the, so I have to say

00:17:59.240 if Mark Carney wants to, wants to take a conservative idea and put it to work,

00:18:03.580 he should start first with the Canadian sovereignty act. He might learn a thing or two.

00:18:07.400 I like how you think. Dan Albus, member of parliament for Okanagan, Lake West, South Kelowna.

00:18:13.300 Thanks very much for your time. And thank you for yours. Don't forget to like, comment,

00:18:18.040 subscribe, and share this program. You can also download it on platforms like CastBox,

00:18:21.780 iTunes, Google play, and Spotify. You name it, it is out there. New content for you every single

00:18:26.840 Tuesday, 1 30 PM Eastern time until next week. Remember low taxes, less governments,

00:18:32.060 more freedom. That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - September 16, 2025

Government bureaucracy will not help get projects built.

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