00:00:00.000I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.
00:00:27.560Today, we're going to be joined by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
00:00:33.040The Premier announced just the other day that nine questions are going to be put to Albertans in a referendum coming in this October.
00:00:44.180Five of those questions revolve primarily around questions of immigration, Alberta taking more control over immigration,
00:00:51.740being able to limit it and limit the benefits that go to immigrants who are not here without Alberta's permission
00:00:59.160and are drawing more from the tax system than they're paying into it.
00:01:03.160She's also putting forward four constitutional questions that ostensibly should oblige Ottawa and the other provinces
00:01:10.880to respond and negotiate on reforming the Canadian Constitution.
00:01:14.720Things like giving all of the provinces more power over appointing appellate court judges, abolishing the Senate, allowing provinces more autonomy in areas that are supposed to be their exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, in areas like health care, education, and giving provincial laws primacy over federal laws where they collide in areas of shared jurisdiction.
00:01:44.700So in addition to that, though, I'm going to ask the Premier about the timing of all of this,
00:01:50.760because right now there is a ton of people going around Alberta gathering signatures on a petition
00:01:55.960to trigger a citizens initiated referendum on independence.
00:02:02.440And the Premier has said previously that if that happens, that independence vote will take place on the same day
00:02:08.460as all of these other referendum questions.
00:02:11.020So that would be a potential of 10 referendum questions.
00:02:13.740but four of those questions are about reforming the canadian constitution
00:02:19.740should albertans be voting on reforming the canadian constitution at the same time as they're
00:02:25.500voting on essentially leaving the canadian constitution creating its own constitution
00:02:29.260it's an interesting question so for that we're going to bring in alberta premier danielle smith
00:02:35.540thank you premier smith for uh joining me today yeah my pleasure all right uh well you've got
00:02:42.180budget coming right up. But what I really want to talk about is the series of referenda that
00:02:48.940Albertans can expect in the coming October here. Let's talk about the questions first themselves,
00:02:55.000not individually. We don't have time to go through because you've put nine questions forward to
00:02:59.840Albertans. We'll talk about them primarily as clusters. We'll start with the perhaps the
00:03:04.980non-constitutional questions, which are all largely focused around immigration,
00:03:11.540Alberta taking control of immigration, you know, requiring the consent of Alberta's government before certain migrants can qualify for benefits that they're paying into the system, not just taking out, requiring identification to vote, which a lot of people are shocked that we don't already do, I think.
00:03:32.180um you know you and i both came from kind of the wild rose direct democracy tradition uh i'm a fan
00:03:40.520of a lot of these kinds of things but i i was mildly critical of this not in terms of the
00:03:47.780policies you're proposing for these referenda but the why you wouldn't just do it uh i i think that
00:03:55.840there's a very broad support for the measures you're talking about requiring identification
00:04:00.060proof of citizenship to vote um albert taking control of immigration limiting migration i think
00:04:05.900these things have broad uh support in alberta even canada more broadly um why is it you feel
00:04:11.740the need to put these two uh these items in particular to referendums rather than just
00:04:17.580implement them as uh policy well there's a couple of reasons i mean one is that it's a change of
00:04:22.620direction um from from where we were in 2022 when i when we did go to the people to seek a new
00:04:29.340mandate. Because you have to remember back in 2022, we were just coming out of COVID and our
00:04:34.440unemployment rate was 4.9%. We had major big projects on the horizon and we were concerned
00:04:39.300we weren't going to be able to attract the skilled workers in order to fill the jobs.
00:04:43.320And so that's when the Alberta is Calling campaign started. But what we didn't know
00:04:46.840is that Justin Trudeau was going to take all of the restrictions off all of the programs
00:04:51.220over the intervening few years. And as a result, 600,000 newcomers came into Alberta in that time.
00:04:57.940And so what we're asking is a question that Justin Trudeau should have asked.
00:05:02.020Justin Trudeau never asked anyone whether or not they wanted him to change the policy.
00:05:06.560What we're asking is, do you want to go back to the kind of immigration policy that we had before?
00:05:11.180But more importantly, do you want Alberta to assert so that it doesn't happen again, that we have more control over economic migrants the way they do in Quebec?
00:05:18.600So that's a bit of a change in policy that has emerged in the period of time since we got elected.
00:05:22.840That's part of the reason why we think we've got to go to the people.
00:05:24.860And the only other thing I'd say is that, as you know, when we're in debating circles and policy sessions, people who are really engaged talk about this stuff all the time.
00:05:36.140The general public doesn't necessarily even know that this is what political parties are contemplating.
00:05:41.280And that's part of the reason why you want to go to a general referendum is that you don't want that confirmation bias that just because we heard about it loud and clear in the Alberta Next and in our survey results and at policy meetings,
00:05:51.280We want to make sure that this is something that the general electorate wants us to do.
00:05:55.600And that's part of the reason for a referendum.
00:05:58.080On immigration, I think, you know, a lot of people who were very pro-immigration are now, I'd say, moderate restrictivist.
00:06:05.700People who were moderate restrictivist before are now very restrictivist.
00:06:11.200You know, a lot of people have had their views change on this over time.
00:06:16.980You've talked about bringing migration in Alberta down to one percent.
00:06:20.960Now, if we're talking interprovincial migration is very easy to handle.
00:06:25.360There are people who, they almost all speak the language.
00:07:06.120We have a lot here who many, like myself,
00:07:10.880would think should not be here at this time.
00:07:15.880Now, I understand you're talking about taking more control
00:07:18.020from the federal government, but certain things like deportations would still probably be under
00:07:22.380federal. Do we not want to look towards net negative migration at this time, at least among
00:07:30.440newcomers who are here, first of all, illegals, but also those who are not kind of the higher
00:07:37.980level skillset people that we were traditionally attracting to Alberta, but people who are bringing
00:07:42.800less to the table economically? Do we not want to move towards net negative migration?
00:07:46.560I think it's worth a discussion. I can just tell you in trying to figure out what the right level is, we were trying to, I've been talking with a number of people who give some serious thought to that. We know that what we have experienced is too high. Getting $150,000 or more per year is clearly unsustainable. Can't build schools fast enough, hire doctors fast enough. There's not enough grocery stores to be able to support those extra demands.
00:08:12.940And so you end up with everything escalating from food prices to housing prices to rent prices and so on.
00:08:18.360So we know that $150,000 is not sustainable.
00:08:22.100Is it possible that 1% is sustainable or less?
00:08:25.900I guess that's one of the things that we will have to do some modeling on and figure out.
00:08:29.860But it does seem to be more in sync with the kind of policies that we saw in the Stephen Harper era.
00:08:36.200It might have been a little bit lower.
00:08:37.120I think we saw about 0.6% brought in internationally over a long period of time.
00:08:43.400But I think that that's more in the ballpark of where it is that we need to be.
00:08:47.840But our basic premise is this, that the first opportunity to have a new job in Alberta should go to an Albertan.
00:08:56.320And especially our young people who I feel have been crowded out of the employment market.
00:09:00.840You can see that with historically high unemployment levels.
00:09:05.840The role of economic migrants have always been to identify roles that can't be filled and often high skill, high skill roles that can't be filled by somebody in the local market.
00:09:17.520And so that's what we're going to have to take more control of.
00:09:21.160Let's have a proper labour market opinion.
00:09:23.240Let's make sure that the job search does give opportunities to Albertans and Canadians first.
00:09:28.540And then let's reach out into the international community to find out where the holes are.
00:09:32.980But I just wanted to put something out there about what I was thinking would be a little bit more along the lines of reasonable.
00:09:39.680And we can see it now, because especially with the large number of Ukrainians who came here under the evacuee program, many of whom do have jobs,
00:09:47.020there's a really big demand on our provincial nominee program for permanent residency.
00:09:52.420And the federal government continues, even after all this, after all of the asks that we have made to allow us to have more control over economic migrants,
00:09:59.640we still only have the ability to choose about 6,400, whereas we've got about 30,000 who are
00:10:06.000asking if they can have that pathway. So that's where the mismatch comes in. And we've got to do
00:10:10.060a better job of making sure the provinces take the lead on it. It's nothing unusual. Quebec does
00:10:14.340it. It's not unusual in the Constitution. Section 95 says that the provinces have the right to
00:10:19.320determine their immigration policy. It's just a matter of us reading the Constitution and
00:10:23.100asserting our powers under it. Real quick before I move on to the constitutional questions you're
00:10:27.960putting forward uh thomas lukasik and rachel notley uh good friends of yours uh they have
00:10:35.040said that this is racist uh that this is fascistic that this is nazism do you have any reply at all
00:10:42.320to that kind of thing it's hysterical i mean i i think that like literally they're in hysterics
00:10:47.600and i think they need to dial it down it's disgraceful and disrespectful to the jewish
00:10:51.660community to use such outrageous language to talk about something which ontario is already doing
00:10:56.940Ontario already has a policy where you don't get automatic coverage of families of temporary foreign workers.
00:11:03.900This is very common in Australia and some of the social democratic nations of Europe.
00:11:09.520If you're coming on a temporary basis, you're treated as a tourist.
00:11:14.680If you were to decide to go and live somewhere temporarily for a year and bring your family,
00:11:18.620you wouldn't expect the government there to pay for your health care and your education and your social services.
00:11:24.180You'd be expected to take care of yourself and you'd accept that.
00:11:26.620And so we just have to have a policy that aligns with what they do in the rest of the world. And that is not unusual. What is unusual is what we're doing right now, which is disadvantaging, I think, the workers in our local economy. And it's also disadvantaging. The parents of the kids who are in the school system, as well as the people who need to have health care, we need to make sure that we've got sustainable social programs and a sustainable level of growth so that we're not putting excessive pressure on them.
00:11:54.420Okay. I want to switch into the constitutional questions you're putting forward here. We don't have a lot of time, so I have to be pretty high level about it. These are, for the most part, pretty reasonable. These are constitutional reforms that could be recognized in some form from the Reform Party, although you have Senate abolition rather than Senate reform.
00:12:20.920Yeah, let's go through them one by one, because I'm kind of interested in your take on that.
00:12:32.920You're proposing to abolish the Senate.
00:12:35.140I'd agree that no Senate is better than the current Senate, which is wildly unfair to Alberta and Saskatchewan, British Columbia.
00:12:42.480I take no Senate over the current Senate, but every functional democratic federation in the democratic world has some kind of functional upper house.
00:12:53.460This would make Canada the only democratic federation in the world without one.
00:12:57.920Well, I guess I would say that it's the job of the provinces to hold the federal government to account.
00:13:01.960And we've got a constitution that is one of the most decentralized in the entire world as well.
00:13:07.060And so I would say that in some ways, the Senate usurps the role of the provinces by having a pretense that they're there to represent regional interests.
00:13:16.820Well, just look at the complexion right now of the senators that are up there in Ottawa, supposedly representing Alberta.
00:13:25.360And ask yourself the question if any one of them would have been able to get a democratic mandate and if any one of them ever talks about the things that matter to Albertans.
00:13:33.100So I would say that in some ways they impair our ability to get the regional representation that we need.
00:13:38.860The second thing I would say is tell me a circumstance when Quebec will ever agree to reduce from 24 Senate seats down to six, like Alberta.
00:13:48.780Tell me why Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would ever reduce from 10 down to six.
00:13:54.440And maybe have a look, too, because I seem to recall that we used to have a provincial Senate in Alberta at one point and we don't anymore.
00:15:46.940is maybe the judges would be a little bit more accountable
00:15:50.000if they were drawn with the values based on the province that they represent.
00:15:56.660The other one, though, too, when we're talking about some of the federal spending powers in our areas,
00:16:02.820I think that those are ones that we could probably get a lot of buy-in as well.
00:16:07.080When you look at, for instance, we have a policy right now or parliamentary practice of parliamentary supremacy.
00:16:15.720And so when there's laws in conflict, the laws of the parliament are the ones that stand, but maybe it should be the other way. Maybe in our areas of jurisdiction at the provincial level, if there's a conflict, then our laws should stand, that maybe we should be the ones who are able to chart a bit of a different pathway.
00:16:32.440And I'd like to see that kind of reversal in how we approach issues, especially where we end up with these conflicts, because we do all the time, because we just have different approaches on the administration of justice and on our policing priorities.
00:16:45.340And it does seem to me in this stage that we've gotten to, I think Albertans want policing and justice in their province to reflect a little bit more of their local values.
00:16:53.320Okay, so you just touched on the fourth of the constitutional questions, reforming the Constitution to protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving provinces laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of jurisdiction priority or federal laws where they conflict.
00:17:09.040um in general i'm sympathetic but i i am concerned a lot of people who are angry at
00:17:17.020kind of alberta first people who want you know the feds out of our backyard they don't understand
00:17:21.960that what we want actually a separation of powers that the federal government not that it has no
00:17:26.960power but that it has it stays in its lane and it exercises powers within its lane appropriately
00:17:31.560so my concern with this i i i'm not set one way or another i want your take is that you know
00:17:38.660provincial laws are trumping federal laws wherever they run up against each other this would mean say
00:17:44.020bc then would be able to more effectively veto a federally approved pipeline through its territory
00:17:52.020what how would you respond to that well i guess i would look at the areas where we we do genuinely
00:17:57.700have concurrent powers so agriculture and immigration are supposed to be concurrent
00:18:01.460powers and if you read the constitution it says to me that the provinces are supposed to
00:18:05.700to be the principal decision maker in that area. The other area I would say would be around
00:18:12.740policing and administration of justice. We come into conflict all the time because the criminal
00:18:16.260code is set federally, but then we're supposed to enforce the laws. So those would be a couple
00:18:20.020of areas. But quite clearly, municipal issues, healthcare, education, social services, there's
00:18:27.060a whole variety of areas where we have exclusive jurisdiction. And in those areas, the federal
00:18:33.780government keeps on interfering and and trying to tell us what to do there always will be a
00:18:38.500attention in areas of joint jurisdiction in areas of trade and commerce i mean i accept that the
00:18:42.980federal government has the right to determine a cross-border um infrastructure like transmission
00:18:48.420lines and pipelines and i think they've been irresponsible in the past and in vetoing those
00:18:52.580because i think their job is to help us get our products to market but i think we've seen a bit
00:18:55.780of a change in an approach happening at the federal level but i would say that in areas of pure
00:19:47.260rest of Canada. Ever since the failure of Meach Lake and then Charlottetown, especially,
00:19:53.020the constitution has been considered sealed in stone, set in granite. It can never be touched
00:19:58.560Again, the critics of your, Andrew Coyne, critics of your reforms here have said, well, Albert's got no right. It's never changing. And I, for different reasons, I tend to agree with them that the Constitution is largely set in stone. It can't, that's why many people like myself are open to ideas like independence, because we don't believe it can be reformed.
00:20:22.960how we had the vote on equalization a number of years ago, which is the same kind of thing,
00:20:29.180kind of a Clarity Act referendum on a clear constitutional question. And I don't even
00:20:33.560think we got a post-it note back from Ottawa. We were just utterly ignored. So how confident
00:20:39.900are you that a successful referendum on these four constitutional questions would be taken
00:20:45.120seriously by Ottawa and the other provinces first, and then two, that anything would ever
00:20:50.720potentially happen on this front? Well, I can tell you that that's why there's a smaller number
00:20:55.420of constitutional questions, because I think you have to find the coalition of the willing. Some
00:21:00.620of our constitutional changes require unanimous consent across all jurisdictions. Some of them
00:21:06.160only require 7 out of 10 provinces representing 50% of the population. And so the question of
00:21:10.920the Senate, do we agree that all of the provinces might agree to abolish it? Maybe, because I don't
00:21:16.180think it's working particularly well for any of the provinces. I don't think it's a regional voice
00:23:39.640the feds will never sign including both houses of parliament and a parliament will never sign off
00:23:45.000on a deal i think at this point that does not have uh quebec sign up so i i am skeptical that
00:23:50.960we can get any one-off deals because quebec will not allow it unless their grab bag of issues are
00:23:55.100addressed to so-called sign the constitution um which kind of brings me to the timing of this all
00:24:02.720It's not yet confirmed, but I put it to you that it's highly likely that the campaigners trying to get signatures for an independence, a vote on independence in Alberta, they're going to succeed.
00:24:17.620And we'll then, I guess, at some point be having an independence vote.
00:24:22.220Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you've said that that would likely then take place at the same time as all these other referenda.
00:24:28.220And I would ask you if maybe that's something you'd reconsider, because you're putting forward the four constitutional questions are about reforming Canada.
00:24:38.160And it seems odd to me that people would vote on reforming Canada and vote on leaving it to become an independent country at the same time.
00:24:47.260I think the vast majority of Albertans, including most people who say they support independence, would prefer a reformed Canada if it was possible.
00:24:54.400Would it not make more sense then that we vote on these referendum questions in October and we give some reasonable period of time, three months, four months, whatever, after that, before the vote, the citizens initiated a vote comes on independence?
00:25:13.740that they should probably be at two times.
00:25:17.060It just doesn't make sense to vote on reforming something
00:25:20.980Just give it a little time to see if reform actually has a chance of working
00:25:24.380before we vote on something more radical like independence.
00:25:27.720Well, there's sort of a practical reality, I think,
00:25:30.140that how many times can you ask the public to go to the polls?
00:25:35.180If you ask them too frequently, you might end up seeing less voter turnout,
00:25:39.760and then you have to question the validity of the results.
00:25:42.180So I think when you look at California, they regularly have 10 or 12 propositions on their docket when they do citizen-initiated referenda.
00:25:51.300And so I think Albertans can figure it out.
00:26:06.820These series of changes are another part of it.
00:26:09.340I have also already raised it with the federal government that the issue around the gun grab is another thing that is causing incredible tension and fueling this movement as well.
00:26:19.380And they've got to address that since nobody wants it.
00:26:24.440But it is the case that there are two active citizen petitions right now and a third one that we're considering as well that was done, the Forever Canada petition.
00:26:34.860And if it is the case that all three of those are able to get the requisite number of signatures with the support of their petitioner, then all three of those will go on to the ballot as well.
00:26:43.860I hear you. But I mean, when Quebec had its referendum in 1995, I'll wrap it up here before I get in trouble from your team here.
00:26:50.840When Quebec had its vote in 95, they had it was almost total turnout.
00:26:55.600It was like an Australian election. It was 98 or 99 percent.
00:26:58.600And when a populace is being asked to vote on something as existential as independence or remaining, there's no real get out the vote campaigns needed because everyone tends to vote.
00:27:09.880So I don't think that if we had a referendum on reforms in October and then we had another referendum in January or February, then on independence, that no one's going to come out to vote on independence, that they'd be exhausted by it.
00:27:24.640So it just seems to me that these are, the timing of it seems incongruent that we'd vote on reforms and then have zero time to see if these reforms have any chance of succeeding.
00:27:37.420We would just, on the same piece of paper, possibly, we then also vote on independence.
00:27:44.800Well, again, as I say, from a timing point of view, it takes more than a few months to be able to create an entirely different immigration system.
00:27:53.240And so if you're saying wait another few years before...
00:27:56.720I'm talking about just to see if we get a response back from Ottawa, response back...
00:28:00.320No, we've already got a response back.
00:28:16.520If people feel strongly about any of these questions, then they will come out.
00:28:21.680If people feel strongly about the petition campaigns, they will sign the petition.
00:28:25.420If those questions are on the ballot, people can figure it out.
00:28:28.340I have a lot of confidence in Albertans that they'll be able to read through all of the questions and be able to make the decision that's best for Alberta.
00:28:35.100And so I don't fear having more questions on the ballot.
00:28:38.840I think that Albertans are going to see the proof is going to be in how the federal government responds.
00:28:43.620I've always told the federal government that Justin Trudeau created the separatist movement.
00:28:47.640And it's going to be up to them to demonstrate that Canada can work again if they're going to see those numbers go down.
00:28:53.420So part of my job is to put forward the policies to address the very real pressure points that I'm hearing from people and to come up with some alternatives for how we might be able to solve them.
00:29:03.880The independence group has a different idea, but it's ultimately going to be up to Albertans to decide.
00:29:09.500It's Albertans' choice on the future of this province.
00:29:12.460all right premier danielle smith thank you very much for being uh available with your time uh
00:29:17.960while you're up in edmonton uh we'll uh hopefully chat with you again soon you bet thanks derek