Western Standard

00:00:00.000 Premier Smith, welcome to the Western Standard again in this special edition of Hannaford.

00:00:20.760 It's Friday, July the 18th. For decades, you've been a Heritage Fund militant. You've argued that

00:00:26.920 instead of spending all of its resource revenues as it comes in, Alberta should build up the

00:00:32.860 Heritage Fund for the benefit of future generations. And I think, in theory, most people agree with you.

00:00:38.660 How long have you been saying that? Well, I seem to recall, I'd have to go back and check the records,

00:00:44.320 that the first column I wrote on it was in 2001. Because I think at that point, we made substantial

00:00:50.000 strides in getting our debt to zero, or at least putting money aside to pay it off. We were at a

00:00:56.140 point where we were reducing taxes. And the only missing piece was building that fund up. If I

00:01:00.740 remember what I wrote about at the time, it was that if we had saved the interest and the investment

00:01:06.820 income in that fund, by 2001, it would have been worth already $150 billion. So I said, well,

00:01:12.500 best time to have started would have been before, next best time is now. And here we are,

00:01:16.820 I guess almost 25 years later, and we are finally starting to do it. So I'm very pleased to finally

00:01:22.240 be able to implement the policy I've been thinking about for decades. So that was really good news

00:01:26.080 this morning, when you and Minister Horner announced that with a $2.8 billion contribution

00:01:30.780 today, the fund has, well, you tell us, how big is the fund now? So keep in mind, when we first came

00:01:37.300 in as a government, in the 2019-2020 year, the fund was worth $16.3 billion. Can I give a history lesson?

00:01:45.520 Peter Lougheed put $12 billion in the fund. And then they were inflation proofing it modestly for a

00:01:51.560 period of time. So by the time we came in, it was only at $16.3 billion. And with this additional

00:01:57.680 contribution, it's now at $30 billion, which just shows the strength of compound interest,

00:02:04.060 shows the strength as well of having a little bit of discipline. And I think what we're hoping is

00:02:08.620 people will see that if we stick with this policy, absolutely by 2050, we'll be able to be at a point

00:02:14.500 where it's worth $250 billion or thereabouts, and able to generate enough income to help wean us off

00:02:20.260 the royalty rollercoaster, which everybody has been so concerned about for so many years. So I'm

00:02:24.720 really pleased that we're able to make such progress so quickly.

00:02:28.020 Well, let's just talk about, I mean, there are some people who are going to say that according

00:02:31.760 to the fiscal plan released with the budget, spending is up for the year to come. Revenues

00:02:36.880 aren't particularly. Oil prices are not that strong. Gas prices are about where they've been

00:02:42.140 for 15 years. So do we have the room to do this? How does this work?

00:02:46.540 Well, I would tell you, I mean, I think my finance minister has a pretty good line that you don't

00:02:51.300 use your RRSP to pay your grocery bills, you still have to pay your RRSP, you still have to pay down

00:02:56.640 your mortgage, and you also have operational expenses. And that's how we're looking at it,

00:03:00.400 that we can't be sacrificing our long term fiscal prosperity and the future of our kids and their

00:03:05.900 ability to have a reasonable tax rate on the demands of today. Now, when it comes to today's

00:03:11.760 spending, you have to remember, Alberta as a government is a service provider of some pretty

00:03:16.880 important programs that people rely on. We provide health care, which is about a $29 billion budget,

00:03:22.460 we provide K to 12 education, which is about a $10 billion budget, we provide university support,

00:03:28.060 we also provide social services to our most vulnerable, we provide infrastructure services.

00:03:33.200 And so yes, it makes sense as our province continues to grow, as more people come here,

00:03:36.840 more people are going to demand those services. So the budget will go up. Our solution is to be

00:03:41.380 looking for ways that we can reduce duplication, overlap, waste programs that aren't serving their

00:03:46.300 purpose. We go through a process every year of analyzing that so that we can move money from

00:03:50.520 low priority areas to high priority areas. And we'll keep on doing that. And at the same time,

00:03:54.900 we also know, especially with the turmoil out there, the inflation crisis that we have,

00:03:59.380 the tariff threat that people needed to break, they needed to have a few more dollars in order to be

00:04:04.260 able to manage their household expenses. So with accelerating the income tax cut,

00:04:09.360 that'll put $1,500 back into the pocket of a two-income family. And we think it comes at exactly

00:04:14.140 the right time.

00:04:15.920 Can't come too soon. Premier, you referred to the fact that you had been writing about this

00:04:21.320 from your days on the editorial board at the Calgary Herald. And it seems to me that from those

00:04:28.060 days, there are quite a number of things that you talked about then, which you're doing now,

00:04:32.460 which is really rather a remarkable political story. But tell us about your passion that you

00:04:37.860 once had for having the voucher system in the health system. Now, I know you've introduced

00:04:45.220 activity-based funding. Does that mean that the person who wants medical treatment is going to

00:04:51.420 have a little shit of paper and they can take their pick of whichever hospital they want to go to

00:04:56.280 to get it done? Well, I don't know if we will go that far initially, but I can tell you what we

00:05:02.040 are going to do with the hospitals. Right now, we do what's called a global budget, which means we

00:05:06.800 give a lump sum of money and then the hospital is supposed to provide all the services, emergency

00:05:11.420 and surgeries and all of the support for patients who need to be inpatients. But the problem that we

00:05:18.120 observed is that we were giving more and more money to Alberta Health Services, three and a half

00:05:22.720 billion dollars more, quite frankly, since we became government. And they were doing fewer surgeries

00:05:27.020 this year than they had done back in 2019. Meanwhile, we fund charter surgical centers on an

00:05:33.940 activity basis. They got to do the work in order to get the money. And as a result, we've seen that

00:05:38.100 charter surgical services have increased their number of surgeries from 40,000 to about 65,000 over

00:05:45.100 that same period of time. So that just got us thinking, well, if it's working over in this area of

00:05:49.880 surgical provision, let's do it for everything. And we've already done our first step doing an

00:05:54.720 analysis of how much it costs to deliver basic surgeries for joints at different hospitals.

00:06:01.440 And it's pretty dramatic. We see that there's an average of 8,800 at some of our regional facilities

00:06:07.240 like Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. And then it goes as high as $26,000 per surgery at places like U of

00:06:13.500 A Hospital. So that is really illuminating. What you want to do is you want to find out what the best

00:06:19.140 practices are. And then you want to share those best practices. And you want to get everybody

00:06:23.400 trying to operate within a band for normal types of procedures. There's always going to be the ones

00:06:28.020 that are complicated. You want to reduce complications. And then we want to be able to do

00:06:31.600 more surgeries with the same amount of money. And I think activity-based funding for joints will be the

00:06:36.080 first step. But that's how we want to ultimately fund all of our elective surgeries that are being done

00:06:41.380 in hospitals. Will that open up the way to more surgeries being contracted out to non-AHS facilities?

00:06:50.980 I suspect it might. I mean, this is an opportunity for AHS to really show us what they're made of. We

00:06:56.680 have taken away from AHS all of the things that wasn't their core business. They were managing

00:07:02.500 international medical students. They were saying yes and no over certain primary care functions. They

00:07:07.860 were doing public health. They had Indigenous care as one of their areas. They were doing mental

00:07:13.920 health, addiction, long-term care. It was all jumbled into all of our facilities. And so as a result,

00:07:19.660 they weren't specializing at any of them. So now they are focused on hospital and acute services.

00:07:25.140 They have an advantage in that they do the vast majority of our services right now. We've invested

00:07:30.780 in surgical suites for expansion. They manage most of our hospital facilities. It's up to them.

00:07:37.220 If they want to excel at what their core business is, they will get more surgeries and more dollars.

00:07:42.200 If they don't excel, then it will be other surgical facilities that we're going to use to bridge the

00:07:46.980 gap. So I would say that this is very much on the shoulders of Alberta Health Services to perform,

00:07:51.720 and we're expecting them to. So what they're saying in the food fair where old men in bullcats 0.96

00:07:56.500 gathered to talk about the politics of the day is, fine, are the wait times coming down?

00:08:02.320 Are the wait times coming down? We're seeing that, yes. I don't have the stats right in front of me,

00:08:07.820 but we were looking at what were the average wait times for knees and hips in particular

00:08:12.880 from one year to the next. And this was, I think we've got a Canadian Institute of Health Information

00:08:18.700 Statistics that look at 2023. And why that's important is that they compare with other jurisdictions.

00:08:24.440 And in those areas in particular, in joints, we are seeing that we're doing better on average than

00:08:30.820 most of the other jurisdictions. Still not good enough. What we are aspiring to is that every

00:08:35.720 single person who needs a surgery gets it within a medically recommended period of time. That

00:08:40.580 doesn't necessarily mean tomorrow. It might not even mean a week from now, but most surgical procedures

00:08:46.160 should be done within a few months. And that's where we'd be looking at it. We don't want anybody

00:08:50.300 waiting longer than medically necessary, finding that their condition's getting worse, having to

00:08:55.060 live in pain, suffering with a lower quality of life. That is where we're aspiring to get to.

00:08:59.780 And activity-based funding, along with multiple service providers, are going to allow us to get

00:09:04.620 there. The main thing that we know is nobody really cares where they get their surgery done. They just

00:09:09.780 don't want to have to pay out of pocket and they just want it done. And that's what we're aspiring to.

00:09:15.420 Let's talk a little bit about Ottawa. Premier, before the last election, nearly three months ago,

00:09:19.520 you laid out what has come to be known as your initial nine demands. Then you said you would

00:09:25.700 suspend judgment on whoever was elected for six months to see how they dealt with it. Now we're

00:09:30.840 talking about things like the repeal of the West Coast tanker ban and the No New Pipelines Act. Well,

00:09:36.960 here we are. We're almost three months along from the election. And it turned out to be Mr. Carney.

00:09:42.360 Carney, do you think Mr. Carney is paying attention on what happens on day one of month seven?

00:09:47.200 Well, the clock is ticking. Remember, they are returning to the legislature and scheduled for

00:09:52.780 September 15th. So we literally are three months away from seeing whether they've taken us seriously

00:09:58.820 and are going to either substantially revise or repeal these nine terrible laws. And it's necessary. I

00:10:04.260 mean, we want to get a bitumen pipeline to the Northwest BC coast on the national projects list,

00:10:10.460 because we think that a million barrel a day bitumen pipeline is going to be what we need to

00:10:15.480 get our economy going, not only in Alberta, but also nationally. It bridges a missed opportunity that

00:10:21.840 we had when the Northern Gateway pipeline got cancelled. But in order to have a shiny new

00:10:26.440 pipeline, you need to have producers willing to do the production to put product into it. And unless we

00:10:31.620 get rid of an emissions cap, which is really a production cap, unless we get rid of all the policies

00:10:36.940 that have led to a negative investment climate, we're going to end up failing at the exercise. So

00:10:43.020 that's what we're putting to them, to the prime minister, if we truly want to be an energy superpower,

00:10:47.780 let's send the right signals to the investment community. Let's repeal the terrible laws that have

00:10:51.980 impacted the investment and chased it away. And then we can really start talking about what that

00:10:57.480 collaboration looks like. So three more months, we're going to work with the federal government, but we want to

00:11:01.400 see some action very soon.

00:11:02.480 Well, Mr. Carney would probably say, well, look at the action I've already taken. We forced through

00:11:06.860 Bill C-5, which is how Canada is going to become an energy superpower and rebuild the country, which

00:11:13.820 is a wonderful sentiment. But there were a couple of very clear letouts over indigenous rights and

00:11:21.100 agreement of the provinces, brackets Quebec. So how much confidence or how much encouragement do you take

00:11:30.940 from the passage of that legislation? Do you think Mr. Carney actually has something there

00:11:36.640 that he can do what he says he is going to do?

00:11:39.040 Well, I was pleased to see, I mean, it's not usual to see the official opposition stand with the

00:11:43.120 government on policy. And the fact that the conservatives did, I think that that says that

00:11:48.640 we all have some hope that they're going to be heading in the right direction. I think what the

00:11:52.940 projects list does is they need to do something dramatic to tell the investment community,

00:11:58.580 we are here and we want your money back. We want you to take another look at Canada. That's what I

00:12:04.520 think the national projects list is. It's a message to the investment community that the approach is

00:12:10.800 changing in Ottawa. That being said, it is a necessary condition, but it's not sufficient. We need to have

00:12:16.620 all of those other bad policies repealed or, again, substantially revised if those dollars are going

00:12:22.700 to flow back here. I mean, I'm not the only one saying it. If you look at the letter that the 38 CEOs

00:12:28.600 wrote, they're also reiterating the same issues that we are putting on the table. So I think that

00:12:35.200 the Prime Minister, he has done some action, but not enough. And so now we've got three more months

00:12:40.660 to see if he's going to move on some of those other important issues.

00:12:44.320 Has he given you any informal cues as to how he's thinking?

00:12:48.600 Well, I would say we're meeting as we've got government officials on our side and they've

00:12:56.800 got some government officials on their side. Remember, he's just got a new chief of staff.

00:13:01.000 He's got a new clerk. So there's been some staffing issues that he's had in place. And so

00:13:06.420 we're going to work the process. We're going to be patient. But we know that we've been able to put

00:13:13.420 forward new policy and write legislation in a limited window. It is possible. So that's what

00:13:20.560 I'm saying. I'll be able to maybe tell you in three months' time whether or not our efforts have

00:13:25.520 come to fruition in a satisfactory way. We're still working on it.

00:13:30.060 So last night, the night before, and the night before that, you were chairing two of Alberta Next

00:13:35.660 panels, one in Red Deer, one in Edmonton. Looked like a lot of people went. Looked like there was a lot

00:13:41.860 of enthusiasm. What do you make of what came out of those sessions?

00:13:49.260 Well, I was really pleased to see that there wasn't a lot of overlap in people in Red Deer versus

00:13:55.100 the one that was just outside Sherwood Park. Sometimes that happens that people get so

00:14:01.140 enthusiastic that they just go around from one to the next to the next. And we really do want to get

00:14:05.320 an understanding of how different people living in different communities feel about these same issues.

00:14:09.320 So there's obviously very passionate people who got up to the mic and made their points. And we're

00:14:16.280 grateful even to the ones who don't agree with us that they're willing to have that confidence to tell

00:14:20.760 us what they really think. We've had over 30,000 people who participated in our survey, including over

00:14:26.420 12,000 that have written in. So those are going to be analyzed to see if there's some good ideas that are

00:14:31.840 coming out of them. But we do know that the six issues that we identified that we wanted to get

00:14:36.880 feedback on, we've been hearing about those for years, if not decades. And we want to know if now's

00:14:41.440 the time for us to move forward on some of them. So I'll be able to tell you a little bit more when

00:14:45.760 we get to the end of the process about how the Albertans that we spoke with felt about it. But some

00:14:51.360 of these items are very likely going to have to go to a province-wide referendum because there are going

00:14:55.760 to be some substantial changes. And we want to make sure that every Albertan has an opportunity to weigh

00:15:00.480 in on a few of these things.

00:15:01.920 Well, talking of substantial changes, you were asked, I think it was in Red Deer, about whether it was time

00:15:08.240 for Alberta to pull out of supply management for dairy products. And you said it was an idea worth

00:15:13.120 considering. Could you enlarge on that a little?

00:15:16.480 I've been annoyed for a long time that Alberta producers do not have their share of quota. It's exactly how

00:15:23.520 this country always works, that they kind of locked in Quebec as the largest producer, and then they

00:15:29.840 also have an increase in the amount of quota that they get as our population increases. I think I read

00:15:34.640 recently that Quebec has 32% of the quota. Albert only has about 7%, even though we're about 12% of the

00:15:42.080 population. So if the idea behind supply management was that the producers in a jurisdiction are

00:15:48.400 supposed to be able to be matched with the consumers, it's just simply not fair. And our producers, if

00:15:52.720 they do want to be able to increase their operation, have to pay a much, much higher price

00:15:57.440 for quota. So yeah, I'm annoyed by that. That's just one more example of the way in which a lot

00:16:04.240 of decisions are stacked against Western Canada and Alberta in particular. So the person mentioned if

00:16:10.080 we could opt out of the national system. And I think the implication was, could we create our own

00:16:14.640 provincial system? And, you know, I want to talk with the producers and see what they think about

00:16:19.760 that. There's also those who think that we should move to a market-based system altogether. So let's

00:16:24.400 have the conversation. Remember, these are the reasons why we're having these panel discussions is

00:16:30.080 that if there are issues that Albertans want to put on the table, and that was an item that came from

00:16:35.920 the audience, then we have to give fair consideration to it.

00:16:38.480 Sure. Last question, Madam Premier. Are there any more ideas from 25 years ago on the editorial board

00:16:46.880 that are going to be pulled forward, just as with the Heritage Fund and with the voucher? Well,

00:16:54.960 it's not the voucher system, but activity-based funding. Anything else coming forward?

00:16:59.040 I mean, you know me quite well, because we used to edit each other's work. But yes,

00:17:04.800 the Heritage Fund was an important one to me. Also, transforming healthcare to make it more

00:17:12.080 with local control, local decision-making, funding-following patients, responsive,

00:17:16.560 competitive. There's a whole series of health reforms that we're making in that regard.

00:17:21.040 Also, property rights. As you saw, we did some major changes to our Bill of Rights. I've been wanting to

00:17:27.440 have a clause in there that guarantees just compensation if government takes your stuff

00:17:31.920 for public use. That is one of the big missing pieces that we had in our Bill of Rights, as well

00:17:36.400 as protection for firearms owners. So we put those in there as well. Those are things that I advocated on,

00:17:41.520 going all the way back to my property rights advocacy. And I started as well as a landowner

00:17:46.160 advocate, as you may know. And so cleaning up this inactive and suspended well problem that we have.

00:17:53.760 We've got over 200,000 wells that have been drilled, and not enough of them have been cleaned up and had

00:17:58.960 the land returned back to its natural condition. So that's going to be another major effort that we

00:18:03.360 have to try to get serious about getting that cleaned up so that we can restore the relationship between

00:18:09.440 our oil and gas industry, landowners, municipal governments, and make sure that we're prepared

00:18:15.120 for what might be another boom. I want to see oil and gas production double in this province, because I

00:18:20.160 think the world needs more Canada and the world needs more Alberta in particular. And so we do

00:18:26.240 that when we all have a consensus about how we're going to move forward together and balancing the

00:18:30.320 issues around environment and access. And so there's a few more bits of unfinished business that we're

00:18:36.640 going to continue working on. Wonderful. Madam Premier, thank you for being with us today. All the best.

00:18:42.320 You bet. Talk to you soon.

EXCLUSIVE HANNAFORD： Smith's save now, spend later plan gets a boost

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