465. Alberta： The Promised Land for Canada’s Future ｜ Premier Danielle Smith
Summary
In this episode of the Daily Wire Plus podcast, host Jordan Peterson talks to Alberta s premier, Danielle Smith, about her opposition to Bill C-59 and the ongoing battle between the fossil fuel industry and environmentalism in Canada. Dr. Peterson explains why the conflict in Alberta is so important, and why it has implications for the rest of the country, and the world, as a whole. He also talks about the challenges facing the Conservative Party of Canada, and what it means to be a conservative in the 21st century, especially in the face of growing environmentalism and climate change. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Jordan Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way. In his new series, he provides a roadmap towards healing, and shows that, while the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Dailywireplus now and start watching Jordan B. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. - let's all work together towards a brighter, more positive, more hopeful future. . - Jordan B Peterson Dr. B. P. Peterson, MD Peterson, PhD, PhD is an expert on depression, anxiety, depression, and anxiety, and stress management, and PTSD, and is dedicated to helping others find a way to feel better, not just better, better, more peaceful and more peaceful, more productive, less stressed and less stressed, more purposeful, happier, more fulfilled, more of a life that they have a brighter future they deserve it all so they can live a life they can be a better life they know they're not alone, a better version of themselves so they don't have a better future they can achieve their best version of their best life they're all they're better than they're a more beautiful version of who they're going to live up to what they're truly deserve, a more positive version of life they deserve, and more of what they are capable of, they're being helped to achieve, they deserve to be.
Transcript
00:00:00.940
Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480
Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740
We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100
With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420
He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360
If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780
Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460
Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420
So I'm talking today to Premier Daniel Smith of Alberta, and Alberta is a very interesting province because it's extremely energy rich, fossil fuels in particular.
00:01:20.040
And so Alberta is perhaps the foremost jurisdiction in the world where the battle between anti-human green environmentalism and the industries that promote cheap and accessible energy is being fought.
00:01:40.760
And so it's always interesting to me to concentrate on the situation in Alberta because it has international repercussions.
00:01:47.340
So I'll give you an example. Within the last two years, both the leaders of Germany and Japan have come to Canada asking for liquid natural gas.
00:01:57.540
And Premier Trudeau, our narcissist-in-chief, has decided that that interferes with his vision of, I don't know, his progression through the WEF ranks or something like that.
00:02:08.680
God only knows. But we turned Germany and Japan away, cap in hand, which was a colossal error.
00:02:15.220
So that's a good example of why what's happening in Alberta has international significance.
00:02:20.760
So I talked to Premier Danielle Smith, a very sharp lady today, about, well, about the conflict between the energy industry and the radical environmentalists being played out in Canada.
00:02:33.140
With Justin Trudeau being, what would you say, the face of the top-down globalist utopians who would ravage the poor in their counterproductive attempts to fail to save the planet.
00:02:48.380
We talked about the development of an invitational vision on the conservative side.
00:02:52.400
What it is now that conservatives have to offer young people.
00:02:56.160
And it's essentially something approximating the invitation to the responsible adventure of life.
00:03:03.500
A vision predicated on the idea that the best things that you do in your life are going to be the things associated with your willingness to take responsibility.
00:03:11.180
So we might as well dive right in and attack something simple.
00:03:20.440
And the, what would you say, the relationship between federal energy and environment policies and, well, let's call it the whole economy of the West and probably of Canada as well.
00:03:32.480
So do you want to first lay out the territory with regard to Bill C-59?
00:03:37.460
Because that was the occasion for this particular conversation.
00:03:41.720
Well, it's funny because Bill C-59 reminded me of American policymaking, where ostensibly it's about one thing.
00:03:49.040
And then they stuff in hundreds of pages of other things, knowing that it has to pass.
00:03:54.780
And all of those terrible other addendums are going to pass along with it.
00:04:02.480
Because in our parliamentary system, if you don't pass the budget, you end up having to go to an election.
00:04:08.400
And so you're ending up having to swallow a lot of terrible policy because there's things in there that you support.
00:04:13.840
Like there's things in there that we do support as well when it comes to some of the tax measures that they're taking.
00:04:19.020
But what they slid in at the last minute was this crazy policy that had initially been put forward by one of our most extreme NDP members of parliament,
00:04:34.100
This is kind of his last-ditch effort, I guess, to try to have an influence on the national stage.
00:04:39.140
And Catherine McKenna, the former Environment Minister as well, she has been hired on as a UN envoy on, I don't know if it's a UN envoy on EcoTruth or something.
00:04:52.440
But it's very clear that she had an influence in sliding into this budget implementation bill, making it illegal for the energy sector, oil and gas, to talk about their positive environmental record, what they're doing to reduce emissions,
00:05:08.860
the successes that they've had in addressing the environment.
00:05:11.840
It's now rendered essentially illegal unless they can conform with some kind of international standard for reporting, which is undefined.
00:05:26.500
And the industry is very fearful that they're going to end up with a whole pile of frivolous lawsuits that'll bind them in the courts for months or, in our case of our country, years.
00:05:40.060
The energy industry takes the path of least resistance.
00:05:42.340
They want to focus on creating prosperity and investment in developing resources.
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They don't want to be fighting extreme eco-justice warriors about whether or not they were overstating any particular measure of their history.
00:05:59.540
So, what we're seeing now is the only people who are going to be allowed in this space are those who, quite frankly, many times are not telling the truth about our energy sector.
00:06:14.560
It's certainly not good for the world because we want to be the reliable provider of energy to our trade partners.
00:06:21.000
And I think that they've taken us a step backwards with this, a massive step backwards.
00:06:27.460
So, I do remember that this bill came up, the one you're referring to that now got slotted in.
00:06:35.200
This bill came up perhaps a year or a year and a half ago.
00:06:39.180
And the buzz around it was that it essentially criminalized speech that was related to promotion of the fossil fuel industry.
00:06:47.260
And there was enough of a furor around that it seemed to kill it.
00:06:52.220
But obviously, it just went underground and reemerged in this more serpentine form, very underhanded move.
00:07:02.580
So, first of all, why is this not unconstitutional?
00:07:06.940
Second, why can't the corporations already be prosecuted for fraud if that's actually what they're engaged in or false advertising?
00:07:15.120
And then these international standards that hypothetically exist, who sets them even in principle?
00:07:24.680
And like, is that an elected body or is that some unelected cabal of top-down globalists like the UN?
00:07:31.560
And so, let's start with the, well, why isn't this an unconstitutional move?
00:07:37.800
Why isn't this another abrogation of free speech in Canada?
00:07:42.240
And this is the thing that's so remarkable is that I was reading an analysis of the liberals.
00:07:47.140
And the liberals are the most illiberal government we've ever had.
00:07:50.560
When you look at what liberalism, classical liberalism is supposed to stand for,
00:07:55.360
it's supposed to stand for those foundational freedoms.
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Foundational freedoms that I thought were enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
00:08:02.640
certainly enumerated in various bills of rights.
00:08:05.380
And freedom of conscience and the ability to speak your mind is the first enumerated freedom.
00:08:12.720
And yet, it is being trampled all over, whether it's with the internet censorship bills,
00:08:18.900
whether it's the hollowing out of the media and them having to scrabble after federal dollars.
00:08:24.460
I don't know what kind of strings attached that are associated with that,
00:08:28.340
or whether it is what we're seeing now with the speech codes,
00:08:33.320
whether it's in universities, professional associations, and now this is a new speech code.
00:08:39.700
The good news is, is that they have a carve-out for the other orders of government.
00:08:45.320
And so, as the leader of the Alberta government,
00:08:48.060
and we are the owner of this resource, oil and natural gas,
00:08:55.040
I have made it very clear that we are not going to stop our advocacy.
00:08:59.200
What we hope to be is that source of solid information about our environmental record.
00:09:06.340
And then by providing that validation and showing our work, showing our sources,
00:09:10.580
we hope that we'll be able to give that same information to the other advocacy groups and industries
00:09:18.660
But that's the situation we now find ourselves in,
00:09:21.620
is that we're having to have a government take on the role of being the advocate
00:09:28.180
because they're crowding out the private voices,
00:09:31.040
which I think has got to be the most illiberal approach to take to the discussion of these kinds of issues.
00:09:37.940
So, we are intending, on behalf of the industry,
00:09:42.100
to challenge this from a constitutional perspective
00:09:44.560
and to challenge it as well from a charter perspective.
00:09:50.520
we will be reaching out to others to see if they want to join us as well
00:09:53.760
because we've had some success in beating back the federal government.
00:10:00.340
is that because they have a period of time where it is the law of the land
00:10:04.440
until you can get it struck down through the various stages of the court,
00:10:07.940
and in the meantime, they put such a chill on investment
00:10:14.740
because they've just put it in as the fact by having it implemented in their parliament.
00:10:24.820
if the fossil fuel companies used information that you had already promoted?
00:10:32.720
We're hoping that we'll be able to almost provide a shield
00:10:36.740
that if we become, because you asked who sets the standards.
00:10:43.940
I mean, we under our constitution have the right to develop our resource
00:10:50.140
is also making sure that we can tell the environmental message.
00:10:54.920
and I've spoken with energy executives about this
00:10:59.260
they actually have an international requirement
00:11:02.700
in reporting to their shareholders as publicly traded companies
00:11:12.320
You have to be able to give them that latitude.
00:11:14.620
So we are hoping to be able to provide them a bit of that shield
00:11:18.020
and be able to also lead on the legal issues and the judicial issues.
00:11:26.640
why this was put into the legislation at the last minute.
00:11:30.360
And it's because the liberal government with their NDP supporters
00:11:34.260
want to crush any confidence in developing our energy sector.
00:11:39.320
They want to crush the production of oil and natural gas,
00:11:42.500
even though they use weasel words to try to pretend otherwise.
00:11:59.200
what do you actually think their vision for the Canadian economy might be?
00:12:09.500
of differentiating ourselves in a more sophisticated way,
00:12:13.340
certainly under the liberal leadership in Ottawa.
00:12:16.620
They've done a disastrous job of assuring an increase in Canadian productivity.
00:12:21.960
I think we're now down to 60% on average GDP production per capita compared to the US,
00:12:28.820
with real estate that's twice as expensive, right?
00:12:40.920
Canada is now equivalent to in terms of GDP productivity,
00:12:52.420
Is this merely climate paranoia of the type that's fostered by the WEF?
00:13:01.600
And is there an idea that's lurking in the back of what passes for the minds of people like Stephen Gwobol?
00:13:11.100
because that's actually the only way out of the climate catastrophe?
00:13:13.920
Like, I don't understand what's lurking at the bottom of this precisely,
00:13:17.840
and so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that matter.
00:13:22.180
I mean, I started studying the environmental movement when I was an intern at the Fraser Institute in 95, 96,
00:13:29.640
and it was just after some of the early climate conferences.
00:13:37.180
and the role that a Canadian by the name of Maurice Strong had played in asserting
00:13:42.760
that we needed to put an approach on emissions reduction that was very aggressive.
00:13:50.220
And there has been, I think even it goes back further than that,
00:13:54.440
to the Club of Rome concept, I think, came out in the late 1960s,
00:13:59.460
and earlier than that, the Paul Ehrlich and Limits to Growth,
00:14:03.900
this whole notion that the world did not have enough resources
00:14:09.860
to be able to keep up with the population growth,
00:14:12.040
that we would ultimately outpace our ability to feed ourselves.
00:14:15.280
That was sort of the flawed principle that came out of the late 1960s and early 70s.
00:14:21.180
I mean, there was, it was even, if you look at the culture and how it's shaped by movies,
00:14:29.200
and it talked about, you know, a catastrophic future,
00:14:33.740
which I think we've now superseded in the date that they expected it to happen,
00:14:41.380
so you had to have a manufactured product to keep people alive.
00:14:44.400
And so, this is the, I think, the flawed premise that goes all the way back there.
00:14:49.060
And it doesn't matter how much we're able to develop new resources
00:14:56.420
and outpace the global population with our production,
00:15:03.780
And you hear it even today, where they talk about,
00:15:06.700
you need five Earths to be able to support the number of people that we have on the planet.
00:15:13.340
because the way economics works is as something becomes more scarce and precious,
00:15:20.820
And it's been the history that we always find a solution to be able to meet these concerns.
00:15:28.880
And one of the reasons I mentioned Morris Strong is he was an appointee
00:15:34.040
in Justin Trudeau's father's era, in Pierre Elliott Trudeau's era.
00:15:39.260
And I think that that is the vision that our prime minister has,
00:15:43.600
is he felt like that was a moment of relevance for Canada,
00:15:46.900
is look at us, we are going to be the first to go forward on these kinds of aggressive policies.
00:15:53.520
And it's the only way I could understand when he got re-elected,
00:15:56.460
for him to use the international forum, he had to say, Canada's back.
00:16:00.680
And back in the worst possible way for Canadians,
00:16:07.520
I've actually heard the carbon tax referred to as a sin tax on productivity,
00:16:12.460
which really helps to identify the way they look at the production of methane and carbon dioxide.
00:16:18.900
And all of the attendant policies that have been put forward,
00:16:23.380
we're far more aggressive than any of our trading partners in establishing net zero policies.
00:16:34.420
Or we've got to have unrealistic targets to phase out combustion engine vehicles faster than anyone else.
00:16:39.680
And I think it's really just this flawed interpretation of what it means to be relevant on the international stage.
00:16:46.340
I mean, I think being relevant on the international stage for Canada means meeting our commitment on defense spending,
00:16:52.540
being a reliable ally when we go into conflict zones,
00:16:55.800
making sure that we have an effective immigration system,
00:16:58.900
so that we are able to assimilate people into our economy and not drive up and have massive inflation,
00:17:05.700
manage our money supply, effectively manage our passports,
00:17:09.440
so that we can ensure that we've got those kind of documents available without months or years worth of waste.
00:17:15.120
I mean, there's just some very practical things that we can see the federal government do to be relevant on the international stage.
00:17:21.200
How about provide natural gas to Germany and Japan?
00:17:29.060
I mean, to have foreign, this is part of what I was observing before I got into this position,
00:17:33.920
is that the world assumes when they come to Canada that the leader, the prime minister of the country,
00:17:42.560
is going to be an advocate for the country and an advocate for the resource development.
00:17:46.680
It's part of the reason we structured our country the way we did.
00:17:49.040
We've given trade and commerce powers and we've given international trade power agreements to our federal government
00:17:54.120
to negotiate in our best interests on our behalf.
00:17:59.980
He's actually using it to put up trade barriers, not build the infrastructure that we need,
00:18:05.080
and interfere with our ability to get our product to market.
00:18:09.420
So it's part of the reason I've had to take the stance that I've had.
00:18:12.340
It's not the role necessarily of a provincial premier, a subnational government,
00:18:17.540
to have to go to the COP28 or COP29 international conferences.
00:18:22.540
But if we're not there, our voice doesn't get heard.
00:18:28.120
We don't have an opportunity to talk to international trading partners,
00:18:32.320
whether it's Germany or South Korea or Japan or India,
00:18:35.700
about how we might be able to solve their energy security problems.
00:18:39.240
So I found myself, as you've got a federal prime minister who seems to be more interested in doing my job,
00:18:46.020
talking about dentistry programs and school lunch programs,
00:18:49.640
I'm finding increasingly I'm having to do his job in reaching out to the world
00:18:53.340
and making them know that we are going to be a trading partner
00:18:57.180
and we are going to be a secure supply of not only energy but food as well.
00:19:01.260
So that's the weird upside-down nature we find ourselves in in Canada right now.
00:19:12.500
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So, Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb and is still kicking around,
00:20:29.300
made a very famous bet with an economist, Julian Simon.
00:20:32.620
He asked Simon to propose a basket of commodities,
00:20:37.680
and they bet on whether those would be less or more expensive by the year 2000,
00:20:42.020
because that was the doomsday date as far as Dr. Ehrlich was concerned.
00:20:46.140
And he famously, Simon, who was an absolute genius,
00:20:50.080
as opposed to Ehrlich, who certainly presumed he was one,
00:20:53.740
famously collected on that bet shortly after the millennium switch,
00:20:56.980
because the basket of commodities became far less expensive rather than more expensive.
00:21:03.280
And, of course, the entire economic history of the world since that point has indicated exactly that.
00:21:08.400
And the reason for that, because it really started to accelerate after 1989,
00:21:12.040
was that the developing countries in particular stopped generating the absolutely catastrophic economic policies
00:21:20.560
that were part and parcel of the communist deal,
00:21:22.880
and just mostly got the hell out of the way of their people.
00:21:25.840
And all of a sudden, we had no problem whatsoever feeding the 9 billion people that are on the planet.
00:21:31.160
And we're going to peak out at something like 13, maybe less.
00:21:35.440
And there's absolutely no doubt that we can manage that number of people.
00:21:40.000
So this whole zero-sum terror streak is a, I don't, it's a,
00:21:47.380
I think it's a means by which those who wish to obtain power by utilizing fear
00:21:52.740
can terrorize the public into giving them the reins.
00:21:56.760
Now, I wanted to ask you more specifically about pollution,
00:22:01.840
because my sense is that the energy industry in general
00:22:05.820
has taken the wrong tack with the green environmentalists.
00:22:09.800
By trumpeting their successes on the emission reduction front,
00:22:14.440
they've led credence to the idea that we face, say, a carbon dioxide crisis.
00:22:19.920
Now, I know particulate emissions are an unpleasant and unhealthy thing,
00:22:24.940
and it's definitely good for companies to produce the least amount of waste they can
00:22:31.940
But I've been looking as deeply as I can manage into the carbon dioxide issue for about 10 years.
00:22:38.160
And my sense is that if you take a dispassionate look at the data,
00:22:43.840
that carbon dioxide production on behalf of the fossil fuel companies is a net good.
00:22:51.200
And one of them comes mostly from work that I got introduced to through Patrick Moore,
00:22:56.080
because Moore has documented what I think is the unassailable fact
00:22:59.860
that we are currently in a carbon dioxide drought by natural standards,
00:23:05.480
extending back, let's say, over a period of time of approximately 100 million years.
00:23:12.480
That we were actually approaching a carbon dioxide level that was sufficiently low
00:23:19.260
And so one of the things that's happened, so there's that, and I looked at his data,
00:23:24.760
and it's not his data specifically, but the data that he's aggregated,
00:23:28.260
and it seems to me to be much more powerful than the alternative explanation that,
00:23:33.460
you know, compared to 500 years ago, there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
00:23:37.080
It's like, well, what bloody time frame are you looking at there, guys?
00:23:40.320
You can't just pick some arbitrary time frame that fits your story.
00:23:46.960
One of the consequences of that, and some proof that he's right,
00:23:51.100
is that NASA itself has indicated that the planet has become 20% greener since the year 2000.
00:24:05.800
It's a surface area equivalent to twice the continental US.
00:24:12.620
Plus, that's produced a 13% increment in food production because crops do better.
00:24:18.280
Plus, the greening has taken place in precisely the semi-arid areas
00:24:23.540
where the climate doomsayers said the deserts would expand.
00:24:30.580
And so when I look at all the data, I mean, you could make the case that
00:24:35.040
if we change the atmospheric constituents, the rate of change is rapid enough so there will be some disruption.
00:24:43.880
And so maybe we aim for not rapidly transforming large biological systems.
00:24:52.840
But on the carbon dioxide side, as far as I can tell, all the evidence is positive.
00:24:58.560
Plus, there's another fact that Bjorn Lomberg has nailed home very effectively,
00:25:02.700
which is that people don't die from heat, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
00:25:09.700
And it's already been the case that the measures taken by the EU, for example,
00:25:14.180
to recommend that people turn down their thermostats,
00:25:16.840
have produced a spike in deaths, especially among the elderly.
00:25:23.620
So the reason I'm going through all of that is because I think the fossil fuel industry has made a big mistake.
00:25:32.220
Like, controlling particulate pollution and, what would you say,
00:25:37.360
the production of the kind of waste that pollutes territory,
00:25:40.300
which is, you know, a concern with the oil sands in particular.
00:25:43.260
I can understand why they're proud of their accomplishments on that ground.
00:25:49.780
And perhaps you could even give some credit to the environmentalists for pushing that along.
00:25:53.820
But on the carbon dioxide side, by being apologetic, I think that they're just,
00:25:58.100
all they're doing is validating the claims of exactly the people you described.
00:26:01.900
And these are the zero-sum, anti-human depopulationists that are motivated by,
00:26:07.460
of all people, Paul Ehrlich, who couldn't have possibly been more wrong scientifically in his prognostications.
00:26:14.420
You know, and he could say, well, what I said was true, the time frame was wrong.
00:26:19.880
It's like, no, buddy, if you're going to make a scientific prediction,
00:26:25.540
You don't get to say, well, eventually I'll be right.
00:26:34.400
So I don't know what you think about that, but I've been wrestling with this
00:26:38.320
because I've been very unhappy with the environmentalists and their anti-human bent for a long time.
00:26:43.820
But it's actually shocked me that when I took what I think is a dispassionate look at the data,
00:26:51.160
that you can make a very strong case that we know enough now to presume that carbon dioxide increases
00:26:57.460
a beneficial byproduct of the very fossil fuel industries that have enabled us to lift the poor worldwide out of poverty.
00:27:11.840
Lombard reviewed data showing that if you get poor people up to a level of income
00:27:18.360
that exceeds $5,000 a year, GDP per capita, their time frame switches
00:27:24.820
so that they start becoming concerned about issues that will affect their children and their grandchildren
00:27:30.080
because they're not scrabbling around in the damn dirt trying to find enough dung to have fire for lunch, you know?
00:27:40.580
And so what that implies, and the data support this as far as I can tell,
00:27:45.120
is that if you provide cheap energy to the poor, which is essentially wealth,
00:27:49.900
then they take a long-term view of the world and they start greening the planet.
00:27:54.620
They don't have to eat the animals that are local.
00:27:58.340
And so they can concern themselves with a viewpoint that's 40 or 50 years long.
00:28:02.100
So, like, that's a lot of data on the pro-fossil fuel side.
00:28:06.820
And so I don't understand why the fossil fuel industry and maybe, well, maybe the Alberta government as well
00:28:13.040
just doesn't, like, flip to the offensive instead of, even instead of giving the devil his due
00:28:19.780
because there's a big devil there and you don't want to give it too much due.
00:28:29.120
did the energy sector make a mistake in trying to rise to the challenge that had been put in front of them?
00:28:38.260
Maybe they became enticed by the engineering challenge of being able to do it.
00:28:44.000
Maybe they became enticed by the notion that they could figure this out.
00:28:48.560
And as a result, they began going down a pathway of saying,
00:28:54.120
This is the kind of progress that we're making.
00:28:56.260
Not really realizing that as they began to make progress,
00:29:02.900
Because what I have seen, and part of my role in government has been to see what industry is saying.
00:29:09.000
And when I came in, I heard industry saying that they could get to net zero by 2050.
00:29:14.840
We have a number of projects here where they've already been able to do that.
00:29:18.440
And it's gained because of a marvel of technology and ingenuity.
00:29:22.160
They've figured out how to capture CO2 and bury it underground.
00:29:28.180
And the reason why they did that in our province was for very good reasons.
00:29:32.200
Once you capture the CO2 and you put it in reservoirs that have been depressurized,
00:29:36.800
you can actually repressurize and you can develop more oil.
00:29:39.220
So there's a very practical reason why we develop this expertise.
00:29:50.980
the energy industry went down a pathway of thinking they would get remorded by the market for doing it.
00:29:55.800
That if we become the best barrel in the market,
00:29:58.400
which is what everyone says they want, the greenest barrel of the market,
00:30:03.820
If we can develop the technology to capture CO2 and put it to useful purpose,
00:30:09.520
then that should be ultimately able to develop a revenue stream.
00:30:13.240
And those are good reasons, actually, to engage in free enterprise.
00:30:17.660
And I would tell you that that's the history of our energy sector,
00:30:24.380
It was initially kerosene, and there was a whole bunch of sludge left over.
00:30:28.480
And then somebody said, gee, I wonder what I could do with that sludge.
00:30:31.500
And out of that, develop petrochemicals and lubricants and asphalt
00:30:37.260
We now get 6,000 barrels or 6,000 products out of a barrel of oil.
00:30:41.580
I think the industry looked at the CO2 challenge as just the next waste stream
00:30:46.380
that we've got to try to find something useful for us to do with it.
00:30:50.460
And so if it's framed that way, that's why I've been very supportive of the industry
00:30:56.620
In fact, part of the reason why we're able to feed so many people on the planet
00:31:01.980
It was a chemistry breakthrough of Haber-Bosch,
00:31:04.480
where they figured out how to capture nitrogen from the air
00:31:09.060
But this is, I guess, the—and I think you touched on it,
00:31:12.480
when I'm so glad you told the story about Julian Simon and the Bat with Paul Air.
00:31:16.000
Like, it was very much in my mind as I was giving my first answer to you.
00:31:20.680
But I remember when I got into property rights advocacy,
00:31:23.600
which was very shortly after my time at the Fraser Institute,
00:31:26.240
and I read an article about how the way in which tyrannical governments
00:31:32.500
exercise control over their populace is they control energy and they control food.
00:31:43.240
and you keep them unable to be able to heat their homes or cook their food,
00:31:48.160
that is a way in which you, if you're bent towards trying to control your population,
00:31:58.800
And so I've been—having read that article probably in the late 1990s,
00:32:03.280
it's been fascinating and shocking and disheartening
00:32:06.320
for me to see that all of the policies being devised
00:32:09.700
by the extreme environmental movement have been to control exactly those two things,
00:32:20.360
And I think it comes down to this fear that has been unsubstantiated
00:32:29.380
that scarcity is going to result in a calamity for humanity.
00:32:53.300
And I think that is just such a more hopeful view of humanity.
00:32:57.440
So when it comes to what should the energy industry do now,
00:33:01.100
I don't mind the energy industry still trying to take an aspirational approach
00:33:05.180
to continuing to innovate and finding solutions.
00:33:07.820
Because I think we're going to find some really interesting solutions
00:33:11.740
since we already have found one that actually makes economic sense.
00:33:14.900
But I think that we have to talk in terms of why we want to continue delivering this product.
00:33:21.260
We have to talk in terms of eliminating global poverty,
00:33:25.200
acknowledging that 3 billion or more people on the planet
00:33:30.240
are cooking their food with dung and wood and coal,
00:33:36.520
I mean, this is something I've been very interested to see,
00:33:51.000
but let's also solve the problem of global poverty.
00:33:53.520
We've got to bring everybody up to our level first.
00:33:56.260
You cannot cut off the avenue for prosperity in these nations prematurely.
00:34:01.640
And I think that that is where the conservative messaging should be,
00:34:04.440
is that, yes, let's continue to get better and better
00:34:09.180
but let's make sure that we're bringing everybody up.
00:34:11.880
The radical left have indicated very, very clearly
00:34:15.200
their willingness to sacrifice the poor to the planet, right?
00:34:22.800
between the low energy prices that were clearly necessary
00:34:26.940
to continue lifting the world's poor out of poverty,
00:34:30.120
which you would think would be the primary concern of the left, right?
00:34:33.880
In principle, they stand for the marginalized and oppressed.
00:34:37.500
And in principle, perhaps primarily along the economic dimension.
00:34:42.020
At least that was the classic left that we had contended with,
00:34:46.340
dealt with for, you know, a century in the West.
00:34:49.140
But now we saw on the energy and environment front
00:34:57.040
will trump any concern whatsoever for the inhabitants of Africa
00:35:05.520
Because the Africans are energy poor, as are the Indians,
00:35:11.120
although they're rectifying that very, very rapidly.
00:35:13.760
And so it seems to me that there's an unbelievable opportunity
00:35:16.420
for the classic liberals who are willing to divorce themselves
00:35:20.920
from the idiot progressives and the conservatives to say,
00:35:23.880
now, look, if you want a real policy to alleviate poverty,
00:35:33.060
that even comes close to the provision of cheap energy by whatever means.
00:35:37.040
Now, you want to keep the pollution under control.
00:35:41.980
that increasing wealth at the bottom decreases environmental load,
00:36:08.280
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because it actually improves the planet from an environmental point of view.
00:37:23.820
and I think Michael Schellenberger has done good work on this as well.
00:37:27.020
But one of the things that I have heard as I've gone out
00:37:30.220
talking about the value proposition that Alberta has to offer,
00:37:34.220
is I'm told that if we don't provide that secure supply of LNG
00:37:40.180
so that they can be using it for their energy needs,
00:37:43.560
they're actually quite worried in places like the Asian countries and in India
00:37:52.040
whether it's ammonia or LNG or some kind of hydrogen carrier,
00:37:55.860
that they're just going to have to keep on developing coal fire plants.
00:38:07.340
And so, of course they're going to turn to coal.
00:38:09.960
Because there's absolutely no way that these developing countries,
00:38:15.360
are going to be able to withstand the pressure from the population
00:38:19.240
with regards to the necessity of economic growth.
00:38:22.320
And so, well, we already saw this, Rameen Smith.
00:38:26.100
The Germans took this demented tilt towards green environmentalism.
00:38:31.160
And all that's happened is that their electricity is five times as expensive as it should have been.
00:38:45.180
They shut their nuclear power plants down, which was utterly insane.
00:38:48.500
And so, what's happened in Germany is they're more dependent on, like, Putin, for example.
00:38:55.460
Their energy costs have spiraled out of control.
00:39:01.640
So, like, the only way that's a victory is if all you wanted to do to begin with
00:39:06.760
was cause as much havoc and disruption as possible.
00:39:09.880
You know, it's funny you should say that because one of my MLAs in the legislature,
00:39:13.420
and just listening at what our opponents in the New Democratic Party had to say,
00:39:18.460
he came up with this formula that the progressives have,
00:39:23.500
and then they identify a solution that will make things worse.
00:39:26.900
And then they criticize conservatives who have solutions that are actually a lot more practical
00:39:31.680
and may work, and try to demonize the solutions that we take.
00:39:35.060
But you're absolutely right, is that there's this,
00:39:40.520
it's plausible that the approach that they would take would work.
00:39:43.160
It's plausible that if you built out an economy based on nothing but wind and solar and batteries,
00:39:52.720
and it would be unlimited because the wind is always blowing somewhere,
00:39:58.360
And if you just interconnected enough, then it should work.
00:40:01.400
And I think that that plausible lie has been at the heart of why it is
00:40:05.500
we've had such dysfunctional policy around how we develop our energy sector.
00:40:12.960
It should go without saying that a fuel source that only works 10% of the time in the case of sun in our market,
00:40:22.500
is not something that you can power an industrialized economy on.
00:40:27.960
if you try to add everything onto the power grid,
00:40:30.480
so that all of your industrial use has to come from electricity,
00:40:35.480
all your transportation has to come from electricity,
00:40:38.480
at some point it gets absurd and gets obvious that it is unachievable.
00:40:42.620
But I think that there's this aspirational approach that they put out there,
00:40:50.840
and so they continue to endorse policies that are completely incapable.
00:40:57.960
And it's our job as conservatives to understand where that aspiration comes from.
00:41:04.280
They actually want to have less impact on the planet.
00:41:08.480
And so we want to make sure that we're not doing anything that's going to impact biodiversity.
00:41:12.200
So I think that there is a human need to be in touch with nature,
00:41:15.900
that they're able to, I think, take advantage of,
00:41:22.080
So we have to make sure we understand where that human motivation is coming from,
00:41:25.880
and say, look, we can achieve that a different way.
00:41:28.620
And then we have to propose what that different way is.
00:41:35.440
just like there was a shadow side to the fossil fuel industry's presumption
00:41:41.180
that if they marketed themselves in a green way,
00:41:43.380
that that would be a net economic advantage to them.
00:41:46.540
That all presumes that the people that you're contending with are playing a fair game.
00:41:52.020
And I actually don't believe that that's the case with much of the environmental nonsense.
00:41:56.540
I feel that way, for example, when I go into a hotel,
00:42:00.000
and I see signs everywhere telling me that they're only going to do laundry every two days
00:42:07.580
They're not doing laundry because it saves money, and fair enough.
00:42:10.480
But they can cover that with this claim of environmental virtue.
00:42:14.520
And so many of the people who signal virtue signal on the environmental side,
00:42:19.340
and this is particularly true in the political realm on the left,
00:42:22.420
are doing that not because they care for the environment in the least,
00:42:25.120
not if it came to actually making personal sacrifices for doing something about it.
00:42:30.340
They want to be seen to be the saviors of the planet without doing any of the work,
00:42:35.460
any of the background work, any of the research,
00:42:37.820
any of the industrial innovation that would be necessary to carry it out.
00:42:42.260
They want to be seen as experts without noting, for example,
00:42:45.480
well, how the hell are you going to interconnect all the world's power grids together?
00:42:53.200
Not only that wind works 10% of the time, but when it doesn't work,
00:42:57.180
you have to have a parallel energy system in place.
00:43:01.000
And if that's not nuclear, it has to be fossil fuels.
00:43:03.740
And so then instead of having just a fossil fuel grid,
00:43:10.740
you have to have a wind and a solar grid plus a fossil fuel grid.
00:43:14.360
Well, how in the world could anyone with any sense whatsoever
00:43:19.620
Especially when you also decide, let's say, to take nuclear out of the equation,
00:43:24.460
which is the last thing you'd do if you actually cared about carbon dioxide production.
00:43:28.500
And so for me, it's mostly, it's not even, there is an element of care
00:43:38.500
but there's a much larger element of being seen,
00:43:42.240
to be seen praying in public, to put it bluntly,
00:43:49.000
And so that NDP in particular are good at that.
00:43:57.460
I do have to blame the companies themselves or the industry themselves.
00:44:04.300
he did an assessment of how did nuclear get demonized the way it did?
00:44:09.540
And I think he's traced it to some proponents in the natural gas
00:44:13.880
and traditional fuel industry that demonized nuclear.
00:44:17.300
Well, then, of course, wind and solar come along,
00:44:20.540
and now they're the ones demonizing coal and oil and wind.
00:44:23.940
And now we're in a position where because they're trying to virtue signal,
00:44:30.900
Now we have a situation where virtually none of our fuel sources are considered to be green enough.
00:44:37.760
Nuclear has, of course, the issues of how you deal with the waste.
00:44:42.880
Wind and coal, oil and natural gas, we're dealing with carbon dioxide emissions.
00:44:47.720
Hydroelectric, it's not considered green in the U.S. because it damages biodiversity.
00:44:55.040
So, and wind and solar, I mean, I think I may have made this point with you before.
00:44:59.780
Like, as long as we're taking coal and turning it into solar panels,
00:45:07.980
As long as you're needing to use coal to create the steel that goes into the wind turbines,
00:45:15.440
So, if you want to start saying, I'm greener than you,
00:45:21.900
And now we're in a point where there is no answer.
00:45:29.300
Like, if the goal is degrowth, deindustrialization, and population reduction,
00:45:33.720
then the demonization of all industrial fuel sources is perfectly in keeping with the underlying ethos of the radical types.
00:45:42.440
And that is what's been driving this, as you rightly pointed out, since the early 1960s.
00:45:47.600
I wonder if they've gone a step too far now, though, on attacking agriculture.
00:45:52.700
Because they've been waiting to do this, and I've been watching this for some time.
00:45:56.020
I've been giving speeches for years, telling our beef farmers, as well as our other food producers,
00:46:01.920
that they started with a campaign against coal.
00:46:07.920
They shifted again to a campaign against oil sands.
00:46:14.740
And they were very delighted after COP28 to say,
00:46:20.260
And I remember reading an article from an extreme environmental website
00:46:23.840
decrying the fact that 80% of food production comes from fossil fuel energy.
00:46:29.460
They need fossil fuels to be able to operate their equipment
00:46:32.840
and be able to get the grain to market and do all the transportation.
00:46:35.900
But when you look at when you attack our food producers, it dramatically backfires.
00:46:43.760
Denmark, I have just read, is now putting a tax on belching and flatulating cattle.
00:46:55.500
And you have to wonder at what point are people going to say enough, it's not.
00:47:00.480
Because I'll have to tell you, like the next logical step is,
00:47:03.660
if belching and farting and breathing is now a sin,
00:47:07.240
how long before they start putting a carbon tax on human beings?
00:47:11.920
We're all belching and farting and breathing creatures as well.
00:47:15.380
So I think they may have overplayed their hand in going after our food producers.
00:47:21.180
Our food producers are some of our most highest esteemed industries and professionals in any economy.
00:47:28.160
Certainly far above lawyers and used car salesmen and politicians.
00:47:33.460
And so to go after our food producers in this way, it doesn't make sense.
00:47:37.760
Especially since the entire practice of food production is understanding the carbon cycle.
00:47:43.220
When you have a grain that you're producing, you have to capture CO2 from the air.
00:47:47.420
It goes into the head of that grain, people eat it, and then it gets recycled again.
00:47:51.560
The entire process of food production works with the carbon cycle.
00:47:55.660
And so for them to be attacking the very nature of food production and how the carbon cycle works,
00:48:02.720
I think it's one thing to apply this weird paradigm on industry.
00:48:06.740
I just don't think that they can carry it over to food production
00:48:09.520
without having the kind of outcomes that we're seeing around the world,
00:48:12.400
where farmers are pushing back and people are pushing back.
00:48:19.620
Okay, let's turn our attention, if you don't mind, back to Canada for a moment.
00:48:33.180
brought in the national energy policy and devastated the Western economy.
00:48:36.580
And so, and that was a massive overreach of federal power
00:48:40.320
and an invasion by the feds into a domain that wasn't constitutionally theirs.
00:48:46.440
And, well, and things went very sideways in the West as a consequence.
00:48:53.580
and we have his son in office who is, if anything,
00:48:57.680
as narcissistic and less competent than he was.
00:49:00.360
And we have what's essentially a schism in the Canadian structure.
00:49:08.880
I found out recently that Quebec has enough natural gas
00:49:12.040
to supply its own needs for 200 years or the EU for 50, given known reserves.
00:49:17.840
And the Québécois have decided that they're not going to utilize that resource,
00:49:22.600
even though they sold the rights to its development
00:49:24.680
to someone who's back, who they later turned their back on.
00:49:29.580
And at the same time, they're receiving massive transfer payments from Alberta
00:49:33.100
and demonizing the Alberta economy as the producer of the very wealth
00:49:38.640
That doesn't seem particularly sustainable to me.
00:49:41.060
And so I'm curious, like, how do you contemplate?
00:49:45.680
I know there is going to be an election in a year,
00:49:47.620
and probably Trudeau and his minions are going to vanish into the haze with any luck.
00:49:51.800
But how do you envision a relationship in a continuing Canada,
00:49:57.100
given the mass split between, let's say, the interests of the West
00:50:00.960
and the apparent interests of consumers and governments alike in central Canada
00:50:08.300
So on the optimistic side, what do you see as the way forward?
00:50:15.780
Well, if I was to express a preference for Pierre Trudeau's approach
00:50:20.220
versus Justin Trudeau's approach, I actually preferred the Pierre Trudeau way
00:50:28.620
This current, Trudeau the Younger actually wants to destroy our wealth.
00:50:34.240
And I just can't imagine how he thinks that that is good for the entire country.
00:50:39.320
Because Alberta, as you rightly point out, is a major contributor,
00:50:43.200
not only to the prosperity of our own province,
00:50:45.440
but because so much of the corporate tax revenue and personal income tax revenue
00:50:51.600
they are a massive beneficiary of the fact that we have a strong and growing economy.
00:50:55.500
So my way of dealing with that is to just point out,
00:51:00.540
they don't really have a mandate to govern in any meaningful sense.
00:51:04.920
He only got 32% of the vote in the last election.
00:51:11.480
which I see Jagmeet Singh spends almost as much time criticizing Justin Trudeau as I do,
00:51:20.220
He's the worst hypocrite in Canadian politics ever, I think.
00:51:25.500
because look at the result that just happened in Toronto,
00:51:35.080
I mean, the public is seeing that they are one in the same
00:51:39.180
in the kind of damage that they're causing to our economy.
00:51:48.200
I remind him that he has the ability to solve his own energy problems.
00:51:53.400
And it's going to get to a crucial point in Quebec,
00:51:55.360
and I'm quite interested to see how it plays out.
00:51:57.860
You may recall that Quebec signed a very favorable deal
00:52:06.340
a 70-year deal that has the value that they pay
00:52:12.840
I think they're only paying a fraction of a cent right now
00:52:25.520
They can't offer 20-year power purchase agreements
00:52:30.060
because they don't own the right past 18 years.
00:52:38.000
as I've seen National Bank just did a study on this,
00:52:41.340
where their energy exports are going to fall off.
00:52:43.540
Their energy exports have been part of the reason
00:52:51.060
but also have the ability to subsidize their own population.
00:53:05.860
even longer to build than a pipeline in our country.
00:53:13.920
and it took decades before they finally got to a point
00:53:19.600
for the amount of megawatts that are coming on stream.
00:53:22.800
And so that isn't going to be a solution in Quebec.
00:53:31.680
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But even if you use the language from the agreement
00:54:53.580
And that transition, maybe it's into a hydrogen economy.
00:54:56.880
And I will put it to Quebec every time I see them,
00:55:03.640
How do you use the technology that we have already developed
00:55:13.980
They have the ability to solve this problem themselves,
00:55:16.520
but they have become so invested in a negative approach
00:55:30.860
They're just not going to be able to grow their economy
00:55:32.740
unless they figure out how to be able to bring in
00:55:35.080
a secure supply and an affordable supply of electricity.
00:55:44.040
I can imagine the world would be very, very different
00:55:50.180
you know what, we are going to develop our resources
00:55:54.880
He's always been very effective at saying that.
00:56:02.260
but then we can also help our friends in Europe
00:56:07.780
so that they don't have to rely on rogue regimes
00:56:16.640
but it's going to be up to Quebec in their own language
00:56:40.140
with regards to everything I can possibly think of.
00:56:52.120
but it seems to me that it's the West in its entirety
00:57:52.180
and he obviously seems much more interested in that.
00:58:54.820
and that'll change our natural gas markets as well.
00:59:11.500
even though it takes much longer than it should,
00:59:29.180
and then just hope that they don't do more damage
01:00:23.260
is making life more unaffordable for Canadians.
01:02:53.260
And I don't hear them talking that way anymore.
01:03:20.680
so that people can just afford the basics of life.
01:03:24.400
And I don't know when the liberals stop caring,
01:04:05.800
and now I think the case for that is unassailable
01:04:19.320
to be speaking directly to the working classes.
01:04:24.560
We're going to get rid of the idiot environmental taxes
01:04:27.040
that do nothing but make your life more difficult
01:04:32.080
And I think Polyev has done that very effectively.
01:04:40.780
let's say, of the conservative movement in Canada now?
01:04:47.740
who seem to be ideologically on board with your approach.
01:04:56.620
and I don't know what your relationship is like with Doug Ford.
01:05:04.520
and is very much likely to be the next prime minister.
01:05:06.940
I mean, so what is your view of Canada's future
01:05:23.060
is that the Canadian economy is far worse than people think
01:05:27.200
and that we're going to discover a lot of things
01:05:29.220
under the carpet that were hidden by the Trudeau government.
01:05:32.240
Now, the evidence of that is he has a bloody scandal every week
01:05:35.220
that should be sufficient to bring down his government,
01:05:39.360
about the airlifting of the Sikh people out of Afghanistan.
01:05:46.420
that we don't know about the second Pierre Polyev is elected,
01:05:49.640
and they're going to be instantly blamed on him
01:06:10.900
And it's going to be, like, really a rough go for him.
01:06:48.860
and he also was tracking the number of mortgage renewals
01:06:54.440
The more people who are having to renew their mortgage
01:07:28.800
or whether it's my colleagues across the country,