Former NDP Leader, Tom Muclair, talks about Alberta using the Sovereignty Act
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Summary
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the federal government has jurisdiction over clean electricity in Ontario. Premier Danielle Smith says she may use the Act for the first time against federal clean electricity regulations. What does that mean for the Trudeau government and their clean electricity program?
Transcript
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Premier Danielle Smith says she may use the act for the first time against federal clean
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electricity regulations. What could that mean for the federal government and their clean
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electricity program? It means that it's going to have to get settled by the courts, nothing more,
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nothing less. I mean, the province of Quebec recently claimed that it could even change the
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1867 British North America Act, the foundational part of our constitution. They could change it
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unilaterally. They put in that French was the only official language of Quebec and that Quebec was
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a nation. Mr. Trudeau didn't challenge that. What Premier Smith is doing right now is simply
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saying, look, we've got jurisdiction as well and the courts are going to have to settle that. She
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has an act of her legislature that she's going to use as the fulcrum to try to lean a little bit into
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what the feds are going to do. But when Ontario got rid, for example, of its coal-fired plants with
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which it was making electricity, it wasn't imposed on it by the feds. Here the federal government says
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we have jurisdiction in the interest of future generations to do this. But recently, as we saw,
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Rene, whether it was regard to a relatively small thing like single-use plastics and plastic straws,
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the feds had overstepped the bounds. The legislation didn't allow them to define that as being toxic.
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They didn't meet the test of their own legislation. And also there was a whole new part of the federal
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government's environmental review process that was thrown out by the courts. So whether you're in the
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Supreme Court of Canada or in the federal court, the federal government has been overreaching
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because they're actually not opposing the goals. They're just saying they're coming too fast.
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Instead of in the 2030s, they were hoping to get closer to 2050. So we'll see whether or not she's
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successful in that. If Mr. Trudeau were smart about this, he would sit down and talk to her again. She
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said in that same radio show that she actually hoped that that would have been possible and that she had
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had some discussions at the beginning with Mr. Trudeau, but it seems to be in advance. By definition,
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and the courts have confirmed this over and over and over again, it's a shared jurisdiction when
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it comes to the environment. There's not one level of government that is in charge of the environment.
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It's federal and provincial depending on the topic and so forth. So yes, there is a real chance that
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other provinces will try to take a shot at some of this. And this is why, as you're putting it together,
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you actually have to continue the conversations. Even if you're not going to agree, you at least have to
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know where the resistance is going to be coming from. And I think that some of this is as blindsided
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the Liberals because I don't think that they expected to lose that big case on environmental
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review recently. And I know they certainly didn't expect to lose the case on plastics, but they've got
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to respect the constitution. They've got to respect their own statute. That was the case of the
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single-use plastics. They had regulations that didn't respect the law. So they're going to have to
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start playing by the rules as well. Smith isn't, you know, isn't completely lost in her approach
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here. She's got some solid backing by what's been happening in the courts. So we'll see how she