In this episode, I sit down with Alberta s Premier Rachel Notley to discuss her vision for the future of the province and the energy sector. We discuss the challenges facing the oil and gas sector in Alberta, the need for more infrastructure, and the need to diversify the economy.
00:00:00.000Our environment minister, Stephen Gilbeau, has set and come out today as well as Prime Minister Trudeau with some very aggressive emissions reduction targets that are probably going to pressure the Alberta oil field very heavily.
00:00:13.760What kind of response do you have to that sort of planning and rejection, I guess?
00:00:18.120Well, I think it's very important that any policy that we implement takes into account the regional uniqueness of the West and just how reliant that economy is on oil, natural gas, LNG production.
00:00:36.200And so I think that we have to take that into consideration and any policies that are implemented should also look at how much of this product are we importing.
00:00:48.340And if we're not dealing with the importation of that, then again, what we're doing is we're creating policies that's just going to stymie production in certain areas.
00:00:59.100It's going to create alienation, exacerbate the already existing alienation.
00:01:04.620Because if you look at the policy of the regulation Bill C-48 and Bill C-69, we know that those regulations favored foreign production and it really crippled our local industries.
00:01:21.240And so we witnessed corporations fleeing Canada, going to other places that had more enabling legislation.
00:01:33.820And so we have to make sure that our environmental policies are all encompassing and look at our natural gifts and our natural resources and our natural endowments, such as the accessible oil reserves that we have.
00:01:48.720So in getting further with infrastructure, because, I mean, there is quite a demand for oil at this time and gas and ethically produced Canadian products, but we're having a very hard time getting it to market.
00:02:01.000Our pipelines have been stopped in almost all directions, whether Keystone to the south or Northern Gateway to the west or Energy East, of course, to the east.
00:02:09.060Would a government under you be examining more ways for Canadian products to get to Tidewater?
00:03:03.320It's more efficient than trucking and rail transportation.
00:03:09.940And I think it's very important that we get our product to Tidewater because we will be able to offset some of the dependency on Russian oil that we see in Europe.
00:03:22.440And it will also bring revenues into our country and assist us with some of the issues that we're having with the high rates of unemployment that we're facing post-COVID.
00:03:35.140And then getting into more governance issues, I guess, and such, an area of concern for us has always been equalization.
00:03:41.460We held our referendum on that recently in Alberta.
00:03:44.140We do understand it's constitutionally entrenched.
00:03:46.460It's not easy to address, but the formula is within the ability of the federal government to set and determine.
00:03:53.240A lot of people in the West feel that perhaps the formula hasn't been fairly treating out like provinces.
00:03:57.780Would you be looking at reviewing the formula and how equalization has been applied?
00:04:01.760I think it's important that we look at some way of making the formula more equitable.
00:04:07.140And if you take, for example, what's happened with COVID, you'll see that the current formula, there's a three-year lag period.
00:04:16.280And because of this three-year lag period, in times of real hardship, just that we've experienced in COVID, the West have been paying,
00:04:27.760provinces like Alberta have been paying equalization payments based on days of prosperity.
00:04:34.380And right now it's days of famine, basically.
00:04:39.300And the formula has no mechanism of being altered to account for that current reality.
00:04:48.080So we have to, I think, even though it is constitutionally entrenched, I think Canadians are fair.
00:04:54.260And that when they recognize that something is not working in the best interest of, say, a particular province and that it's unfair in certain respects,
00:05:05.960I think they will come to the table and find ways to modify the formula so that it's more equitable.
00:05:16.400Your leadership competitor, Pierre Paglia, the other day put out a release talking about digital currencies and facilitating the expansion of those within the Canadian market.
00:05:27.740Have you determined a stance or looking at those sorts of things going forward as we have something of a new developing whole kind of industry and means of commerce on our hands right now?
00:05:37.720Well, many people are concerned about digital identification and just the infrastructure that blockchain will bring in for facilitating that digital ID.
00:05:52.960So I think it's very early to say that that is something that you're going to implement without knowing whether or not this is something that the people want.
00:06:05.180I think it's a little bit presumptuous and it's not something that is in our campaign at this present time.
00:06:13.860Although we haven't put out fully our policies yet, we will be putting out our policies.
00:06:18.760But we're also very sensitive to the fact that people are very concerned about the digital ID and the repercussions of the blockchain on altering how we do things.
00:06:33.340Something I've been asking each candidate as I get them on, something of a tradition in Alberta since the late 80s has been, we at least go through the motions of electing senators to nominate and propose towards Ottawa.
00:06:45.080And often if we have a favorable government, they will appoint the ones we've chosen.
00:06:49.240Would you commit to appointing senators if a province should elect them?
00:06:52.420Well, to be honest with you, I actually like the way that Alberta does this because it's not patronage.
00:07:02.900And so the senator-in-waiting campaigns that took place last year, I found them very, very interesting because the candidates were out meeting with the people, engaging, seeing what the response was.
00:07:24.100And then the members were able to vote on who they wanted.
00:07:29.660And so in such a process, the person that is most connected to the community is the one that represents it and not someone that's handpicked by the government because of past favors or because of connections.
00:07:45.180So I think that the Alberta system is very, very good.
00:07:51.300And absolutely, if the people have said that this is who they want to represent them, I think that that should be honored by whichever prime minister is in place.
00:08:04.820Economically, we've got inflation, of course, has been a very strong issue all over the world now.
00:08:10.160A lot of it's been related to the pandemic, related to overseas conflicts.
00:08:14.000But I mean, a lot of it's been probably, you know, can be directly related to the amount of government spending and borrowing we've done.
00:08:20.120Is there a plan to rein in borrowing and spending and some of the output from the Bank of Canada?
00:08:26.820I think what's important is that we have to make sure that we bring our supply chains home and that we up our manufacturing production.
00:08:36.780And so we want to start being more of a production economy where we're producing things, we're generating wealth rather than the government just basically indebting future generations and creating a debt society.
00:08:57.020The only way that you could really do that is to bring back confidence in the economy by either incentivizing or promoting and encouraging small and medium sized businesses who employ over 80 percent of the population to start reinvigorating, reemploying people and taking chances again.
00:09:18.440And once we are able to get the economy kickstarted again, up our production, then you will see a reduction in inflation because you'll have real dollars, real dollars, not just debt, not just debt in our economy.
00:09:39.100And people will have real money that they can buy products rather than fewer products out there being chased by lots of debt dollars.
00:09:50.820Great. Another thing that's put pressure on a lot of consumers when it comes to staples like foodstuffs is Canada's supply management system.
00:09:58.480It's a touchy issue. It always has been, but it's one that certainly comes with a cost.
00:10:03.740Is there any consideration of possibly reforming or moving away from that system?
00:10:06.860Well, the problem is, is that our our production, our products that we get from supply management, I actually enjoy the fact that we have a superior production and output.
00:10:22.440And if you look at some of the things that the enhancements that are used by, say, in the United States, like BST on on their cows and the just the amount of pus that you would get in milk.
00:10:40.880And I just find that those products are not on the same level as our Canadian products.
00:10:47.460And so you have to pay for quality. And when you look at some of the industries worldwide and you ask our smaller producers to compete with them,
00:10:58.040they would be they would be completely overshadowed that we would not have independent industries.
00:11:04.140And so while I am a free market person and I do believe in free market and I think it's I would I would still think that we would need supply management to to assist our farmers or else they would be overtaken by foreign production.
00:11:24.360OK, I'll pivot a little. I mean, something that's quite new on the scene for us, unfortunately, but it's in foreign affairs.
00:11:31.500You know, the world certainly has changed now with the Ukraine, Russia conflict.
00:11:35.380It seems to have expedited the prime minister in finally getting forward to buying the F-35s for Canada that they've sort of shelled for quite some time.
00:11:44.780But where do you land on Canada's military spending in force or where would you envision Canada's military being in the future?
00:11:50.640Well, it's it's been years since they they should have bought those F-35 jets years ago.
00:12:01.200And I'm glad to see that they're making some commitment to do that now.
00:12:06.880I think that our military has been underfunded and this government has failed to provide for our military and to make sure that they were properly equipped.
00:12:18.280I think that we had a lot of wasted time and there was a lot of vulnerabilities there.
00:12:23.620But when you see the recent acts of Russian aggression and you realize that we technically share a border with Russia.
00:12:31.480So our Arctic, our Arctic coast is something that is very, very fragile.
00:12:38.780And we have to make sure that we have the capacity, the military capacity to protect our borders.
00:12:48.260Even beyond that, even beyond the jets, I think that we Russia has over 40 icebreakers and we have zero.
00:12:57.400We need to up our military capacity and invest in in making sure that we can defend ourselves.
00:13:05.120Great. Well, I think we've already it goes fast.
00:13:07.460Right. The time we'd allotted to sit down with you.
00:13:09.340I hope we get more chances before the end of the campaign.
00:13:11.380But is there more you'd like to add before we let you go, Dr. Lewis?
00:13:14.380Well, I will be in Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba in the next week.