Western Standard - Feds hint withholding funds from Alberta if Smith moves forward on gender policies

Learn English with the Prime Minister of Alberta, Rachel Notley. In this episode, Rachel talks about her recent meeting with Premier Rachel Singh, her opposition to proposed changes to the Canada Pension Plan, her concerns with the proposed childcare policy, and her concerns about gender affirmation in schools.

00:00:00.000 Mr. Wilkinson and I met with the Premier and members of her team earlier today and we discussed how to collaborate on energy projects, critical minerals, hydrogen, which Minister Wilkinson will talk about in a minute.

00:00:12.480 I raised concerns that our government has with the Premier's reckless and irresponsible idea to pull Albertans out of the Canada pension plan and by thus weaken the pension for Albertans plus all Canadians.

00:00:22.780 I also issued my strong concerns about how she's managing the childcare file, which we were able to make some progress on and we also talked about the mismanagement of the healthcare system, how the billions of dollars that we should be using should be put in the right place and then I voiced strong opposition to what the Premier's proposing with the 2SLGBTQ2 community and so we had a conversation that was frank and robust. 0.95

00:00:48.620 I was focused primarily with Premier Smith on a lot of the energy related issues and the economic opportunity sets of issues.

00:00:55.880 We certainly talked about the clean electricity regulation, we talked a little bit about the oil and gas cap, but we spent a lot of time talking about the future of ammonia, the future for small modular reactors,

00:01:06.320 the work that we are doing across a range of different things including critical minerals, where I think the province has great ambitions and where we want to work together to enable the economic opportunities for all Albertans, at the end of the day, we represent Albertans, she represents Albertans and Albertans want us to find pathways to make good decisions, so with that.

00:01:26.960 There's not, there's not going to be a lot of common ground in the short term on this, I indicated to the Premier that I thought she had to go back to base principles and talk to people in the community, she said to me that she had personal experience in this space and so I encouraged her more than once to meet with members of the trans community, to talk with medical professionals, to sit down and talk with teachers and I was very clear that what I see in the proposal is to take schools and make them less safe for gender questioning kids and also

00:01:56.940 that it's an othering and that you're going to have kids in school looking over their back wondering who's going to out them and that this simply doesn't make kids safe. There was a disagreement on when kids can avail themselves, when youth can avail themselves of gender affirming care and I said there are already rules in place and so I was very clear to the Premier that she needed to broaden the consultation, change these regulations or that our opposition would continue.

00:02:22.940 If she does end up bringing this policy forward as proposed, did you mention anything about what the federal government may do in that case, for example withholding funding from the transfers?

00:02:32.940 That didn't come up but as I've said before, ministers of health and our government have held money back from jurisdictions that contravene the Canada Health Act and we will do so in the future.

00:02:42.940 Thank you.

00:02:43.940 Thank you.

Western Standard - February 06, 2024

Feds hint withholding funds from Alberta if Smith moves forward on gender policies

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