In this episode, Alberta s premier, Rachel Notley, sits down with Alberta s finance minister, Shep Miller, to discuss a variety of topics, including the province s youth unemployment crisis, the need for more agricultural workers, and the need to address the growing problem of youth unemployment.
00:00:00.000We'll be announcing some policies next week to address the very serious crisis of youth unemployment.
00:00:06.740Normally, youth unemployment, it's a few percentage points above the general unemployment rate.
00:00:12.860Right now, it's at 17%. It should be more around 11 or 12%.
00:00:18.880There's always reasons, because kids are students and that sort of thing.
00:00:21.760There's always a reason why it's slightly higher, but it is massively higher.
00:00:25.300So we know that there has to be a connection between these things, because we're hearing the stories of the kids who put out dozens of resumes and don't get a call back.
00:00:34.580And we're seeing Michelle Rempel do some great work, where she is showing how fast food jobs, which used to be the very first place a kid would get their first job, are preferring to hire temporary foreign workers rather than hire locally.
00:00:47.960So it's out of balance. We know that agriculture is an area that needs to be exempted.
00:00:54.480And those are true seasonal workers. And many of those are also high-skilled labor and higher-paid laborers.
00:01:00.900It really is the low-income worker that is competing with kids for their first job.
00:01:06.840That's what we've got to get a rein on.
00:01:08.880So I'm glad to see that Pierre Pollyov is pushing the envelope. I think we've got to rein that in.
00:01:14.380So I want to have a question about Western separation sentiment and a potential right crime. How soon do you see that in the ballot?
00:01:26.380It depends on what happens with the petition campaign. There is currently a petition campaign that has been launched asking if you want to remain in Canada, yes or no.
00:01:37.380And so I'm waiting to see what happens with the collection of those signatures.
00:01:42.520If they are successful, because the period of time under the old rules, they have to collect, I think, 293,000 signatures by the end of October,
00:01:52.400then we'd be looking probably in the spring for a vote of the people.
00:01:58.720I had a chance to give you a question, Matt, and recently we were talking about a sovereign nation versus sovereignty within Canada itself. What are your thoughts on that?
00:02:08.080I've always been supportive of Alberta's sovereignty within a united Canada.
00:02:12.000That has been the framework that I've, going back to my very first bill, which was named Alberta's sovereignty within a united Canada.
00:02:19.680We're doing this Alberta next panel, and Michael Binion, who I believe is a founder here, he is on the panel.
00:02:26.140And one of the things he talks about is responsible government, that what happens in a responsible government is that you take on more duties as you develop more capacity to administer those programs.
00:02:37.560So maybe when we were bankrupt in the 1930s, maybe we couldn't have taken over all of the programs that Quebec has.
00:02:45.740But now that we are the third most powerful economy in the country, five million people strong, maybe it is time for us to do as Quebec has and have our own personal income tax collection,
00:02:56.980our own provincial police, our own pension, our own control over immigration, and a few other things.
00:03:02.200That's what we're consulting on right now.
00:03:03.920So we're getting some interesting feedback on our surveys and at our town halls, but that consultation process finishes October the 1st,
00:03:11.600and then we'll convene as a committee and make some recommendations about the path forward.
00:03:17.360Any more questions from the right side over here?