Western Standard - December 01, 2023


Alberta’s Sovereignty Act

Mentioned
Alberta Sovereignty Stephen Guibault Nathan Newdorf Stephen Guibo Scott Moe
The gross hypocrisy of globetrotting environmentalists Increasing capacity for veterinary medicine

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

202.12

Word count

940

Sentence count

55

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I sit down with Alberta s Premier Rachel Notley and Environment Minister Stephen Guibault to discuss Alberta s ongoing fight with the federal government on issues such as clean energy and climate change. We talk about the Supreme Court of Canada's recent ruling on the sovereignty act, and how Alberta is fighting back.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 How did we get to this point?
00:00:02.200 It's very frustrating because I can tell you that on some projects, we're making great progress with the federal government.
00:00:08.980 We've got a number of tables where we're discussing the use of hydrogen.
00:00:12.740 They've been with us for joint announcements on geothermal, on net zero plastics, which just happened this week.
00:00:19.980 I know we're going to talk about that in a little bit.
00:00:21.860 We are working on a plan for how we might be able to roll out small modular nuclear.
00:00:25.720 And yet on the issue of trying to align them with our 2050 target for carbon neutrality, you've got Stephen Gabow, the environment minister, who has just dug in.
00:00:36.300 We've now had two court decisions that have admonished the federal government.
00:00:40.380 They've said this is not cooperative federalism.
00:00:42.580 You cannot use the pretext of it being federal jurisdiction to invade provincial jurisdiction.
00:00:47.320 You've got to work collaboratively.
00:00:49.020 They're just not doing that.
00:00:49.880 And I know that when I first started talking about the Alberta Sovereignty within the United Canada Act, the media were saying, are you going to respect the court decisions?
00:00:59.360 I always said yes.
00:01:00.380 I think what is shocking to me is that the federal government is ignoring the courts.
00:01:05.380 And that's what brought us to this point.
00:01:07.560 Well, your government isn't the only one pushing back against Ottawa.
00:01:10.660 Scott Moe and Saskatchewan have been doing it.
00:01:13.220 Premier, how will the resolution work?
00:01:16.220 Like, how will it protect Albertans from future brownouts and blackouts? 0.99
00:01:19.340 Well, we've put everybody on notice.
00:01:20.820 And I feel like when we have a major departure in government policy caused by the federal government and we need to take future action, that's what the Sovereignty Act is all about.
00:01:29.600 It's putting the legislature on notice that there will be new policy coming forward, there will be new resolutions coming forward, and there may be new legislation coming forward.
00:01:39.840 So we are waiting to see what the federal government does with their final version of the regulations.
00:01:46.220 And we've been asking for a car vote so that we can continue down the path of getting to carbon neutrality by 2050.
00:01:53.480 If not, there's a couple things we'll have to do.
00:01:55.760 We'll have to become the generator of last resort in Alberta.
00:01:59.620 And that means that rather than just sitting back idly while these private sector companies turn off our baseload power because they're trying to meet some arbitrary target of the feds, we would have to take those over and we would have to run them until the end of their natural life while we're waiting for new projects to come on stream.
00:02:16.340 If there's so much uncertainty that the private sector won't build us new baseload natural gas, and I can tell you Capital Power has gone to an investor conference and they've said the same thing.
00:02:26.660 They said, I'm sorry, with the federal government rules, it's too risky for us to invest in natural gas, then we'll have to do it.
00:02:34.140 We are a natural gas basin and 90% of our power on most days comes from natural gas.
00:02:38.900 It is still the most cost-effective option for us, and we'll proceed with the best available technology on the issue of emissions abatement.
00:02:47.600 And if that puts us in conflict with the federal government, I'm prepared to say that they can take us to court and I think we'll win it.
00:02:54.720 You know, I think Albertans clearly understand that message.
00:02:57.580 Your ministry has, you know, Nathan Newdorf and others have been good about communicating that, but Ottawa isn't listening.
00:03:05.380 Maybe they weren't listening.
00:03:06.540 If the Prime Minister were here or Stephen Guibault were here, what would your message to them be?
00:03:12.700 Listen to the court.
00:03:13.860 The court was very clear that the Constitution matters.
00:03:17.180 We are not a lower level of government, as one journalist asked me this week.
00:03:21.060 We are an equal level of government.
00:03:23.460 They have certain powers.
00:03:24.640 We have certain powers.
00:03:26.040 And in areas where we overlap, we've got to work together.
00:03:28.680 I've been asking to work together right from the moment I got elected leader in my very first conversation with the Prime Minister.
00:03:34.840 But I think they're caught in this paradigm where they do look at the provinces as a subordinate level of government.
00:03:41.840 They do think that just because they've passed something in the parliament that it's legal and they can do whatever they want.
00:03:48.060 And I'm telling you that that's not how the court sees it.
00:03:50.640 So we're going to continue to advance our interests.
00:03:53.340 We're going to continue to assert our areas of jurisdiction.
00:03:56.240 And if all of these issues end up in the courts, it'll be them taking us to court for a change.
00:04:00.840 Because what I've observed about what they do is they pass unlawful legislation, unlawful being that because it violates the Constitution, which is the highest law on the land.
00:04:12.080 Then they force us to go to court for years, creating all the economic uncertainty, all of the investment that flees.
00:04:18.700 And then we win and they act like it didn't happen.
00:04:20.780 Well, we're not going to let that happen this time.
00:04:22.020 We're turning the tables on them.
00:04:23.000 We're going to proceed, make sure that we've got investor confidence, make sure we're continuing with these projects.
00:04:28.780 And if they think they can mount a case about why they should violate provincial rights and why they should violate the Constitution, then power to them.
00:04:35.980 They can go to the court and they can make that case.
00:04:37.660 But once again, I think we'll win it.