Western Standard - HANNAFORD： 'No tax-cuts... Alberta must stay disciplined'

00:00:00.000 Good evening Western Standard viewers and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show of the

00:00:24.480 Western Standard. It is Thursday December the 11th. As 2015 closes out you could say that it has been

00:00:33.760 a tempestuous year for Alberta politics and especially for Premier Daniel Smith. A quasi-agreement

00:00:40.960 with the Prime Minister over pipelines that may or may not lead anywhere. Separatists in her party

00:00:48.160 and out of it who see pipelines as a litmus test of leadership. Where will that go? The support was

00:00:57.040 solid at the party conference three weeks ago but there were boos. Teachers legislated back to work

00:01:05.360 and in response the Alberta labour movement takes on the government with a total of 21 recall procedures

00:01:12.800 initiated already including that of Premier Danielle Smith. And creeping progress on healthcare.

00:01:22.000 When people were hoping for and to be fair what was promised was quantum improvement three years ago

00:01:29.600 and of course she is famous now for using the notwithstanding clause four times in three years.

00:01:35.920 The miserable weather outside McDougal House here in Calgary could almost seem like a metaphor for

00:01:46.880 the Daniel Smith government as the year ends. But what does the Premier think? Let's find out.

00:01:55.360 Well thank you for this Premier. My pleasure. Good to see you. Well it's good to have you on the show. It's kind of

00:02:01.120 you to do it. Madam Premier may we start with health education and pipelines. Three quick questions in that order.

00:02:09.040 Yesterday you announced significant funding for assisted living and one of the purposes was to free up

00:02:17.280 acute care beds in hospitals which were occupied people by people who needed care but not hospital

00:02:23.280 care. All of that is great but I remember our first interview when you had just been

00:02:31.200 become Premier and you said this is what we're going to do. We're going to get people out of the hospitals

00:02:37.440 and into assisted living and here we are and we're announcing yesterday that we're going to do this again.

00:02:48.640 When are we going to do the grand openings on these things? Well the thing that we had to do is

00:02:54.320 create the authority to make some of these decisions. Remember when we first started, AHS controlled

00:03:00.640 everything. They were the purchaser, the provider, the evaluator, they contracted with themselves,

00:03:06.080 contracted with others and we didn't really have line of sight into what was happening in the hospitals.

00:03:11.200 When Jason Nixon became the minister who was the lead on September 1st, one of the first questions he asked

00:03:18.480 was how many beds do we pay for in continuing care and how many of them are empty? And the answer was they

00:03:25.440 didn't know. What was happening was that they didn't keep track of this. If the bed opened up, somebody

00:03:31.440 made a phone call and somebody was supposed to keep track of it. He ended up having to hire a call

00:03:36.160 center to figure out how many open beds that we had. We've now since automated that. There's going to be a portal that

00:03:41.440 comes out very soon. So that was one of the changes that needed to be made. We were also told that there

00:03:47.200 were about 460 people who were living in a hospital who needed long-term care. Well that number turned

00:03:54.560 out not to be true. It was closer to 2000. And so one of the first things that we did is looked at our 16

00:04:00.640 acute care hospitals to find out where the problems were. There were some hospitals in the Edmonton area

00:04:05.600 where 40% of the acute care beds were filled with alternative level of care patients. We just

00:04:11.520 didn't have that information until Jason went in and started asking for it. It is the Fraser Institute

00:04:17.600 adage, if it matters, measure it. So we started measuring it. And as a result, we're now down to

00:04:23.600 less than a thousand in our 16 acute care hospitals. We're bringing the Edmonton area down into alignment.

00:04:29.200 Where did you put them? I mean, it's great that you've moved them out of the hospital.

00:04:32.320 Do you mean you had these places that they could have gone just sitting empty?

00:04:38.800 We had some beds, yeah, that were sitting empty that we were paying for. And we had to have

00:04:46.480 a conversation with our service providers saying we need to find places for these individuals.

00:04:51.280 Some of them were very complex. There were seven people who'd been in hospital for a thousand days

00:04:56.400 or more. And if we add it up, it was a collective 18 years of them being in hospitals. We had to find

00:05:01.600 dedicated places for them to support their complex needs. When we say complex,

00:05:07.600 some have dementia or mental health issues. Some have addiction issues. Some have anger management

00:05:12.240 issues. Some of them are seniors. Some of them are not senior. These things all have to be dealt with.

00:05:16.800 But our hospitals can't just be a catch-all for a difficult to place patient. We've got to find ways

00:05:22.720 to place those patients. We discovered some patients were in hospital because the long-term care

00:05:27.040 facility wouldn't take smokers. Well, how efficient is it to have nurses and doctors rolling somebody

00:05:33.520 down for a smoke break? Not very. So that's another conversation we had to have with our service

00:05:38.000 providers. So those are all things that we needed to do is to make sure we were making use of our

00:05:42.560 existing beds, finding ways to pay a proper support for those who were complex. And now we just have to

00:05:49.520 build a whole lot more. We're probably about 3,000 beds short of those who need long-term care.

00:05:56.080 And when do you think that you're going to be able to have those 3,000 beds added to the inventory?

00:06:01.920 There's a couple of things that Minister Nixon is doing. One is repairs on existing beds. So there's

00:06:07.200 about 800 that will be brought on stream. There's another 1,500 that are currently in operation.

00:06:11.520 So those will come on stream this year. And then every year... This year? Like 2025? Yes, 2026.

00:06:18.000 2026. Okay. Yes, coming year. So then every year after, we're going to be investing 1,500 beds a year

00:06:25.360 until 2030. That's the kind of pace that we need in order to keep up. But the other part is the culture

00:06:32.480 that we're trying to create and the structure we're trying to create. We know people want to live

00:06:38.640 at home in their own homes for as long as possible. So let's begin with giving the wraparound supports

00:06:45.920 with home care and personal care and renovations. And then let's see if we can develop a kinship care

00:06:51.200 program. So maybe they can move in with a daughter or son. And then you can move into independent living

00:06:57.840 with assist. And then the continuum goes on to the round-the-clock care. And so if we can keep people

00:07:04.400 in their own homes as long as possible, that really should be something that's going to be

00:07:08.640 beneficial, not only for taxpayers, but I think more importantly, for the person receiving the

00:07:13.440 care of themselves. So we are well on our way. And we just wouldn't have been there if we hadn't

00:07:17.520 made some of the structural changes that we did September 1st.

00:07:20.240 Well, let's talk about structural changes. Yesterday, I was speaking with a nurse, real person,

00:07:26.000 and not one of these people you invent to make a point, real person. And her question was,

00:07:36.080 I know we need change, but what's it going to look like when it's done? Why will it work better?

00:07:44.080 Can you explain what it is that Danielle Smith is trying to do with health?

00:07:48.560 Well, I can say that the restructuring is now done. And so rather than have a single authority

00:07:55.600 responsible for everything, what we're going to now have is that Alberta Health Services will be

00:08:00.960 responsible for the facilities they run on our behalf. They run 107 facilities and their job will

00:08:07.920 be to improve the patient experience from the moment you walk in the door to the moment you receive

00:08:12.480 treatment to the moment that you're discharged. Their job will also be to maximize the use of their

00:08:18.000 surgical theatres. We've been upgrading our surgical theatres and many of them sit empty.

00:08:22.080 Why was none of this possible under the model that you inherited?

00:08:26.000 I think lack of focus perhaps because you had AHS who was also managing Covenant Health and AHS was

00:08:32.000 managing 50 different charter surgical centres and AHS was determining whether or not we would have

00:08:36.640 international medical grads and AHS was running the public health system and AHS was running long-term care.

00:08:42.560 So it's a focus issue. So now they will be focused on running the 107 facilities

00:08:47.840 that are under their purview. And we will have under our primary and preventative care,

00:08:55.040 we will be making sure that everybody is attached to a family doctor. That's going to be a separate

00:08:59.760 area so we can do international recruitment to make sure we have enough doctors and nurses

00:09:04.160 so that everybody has a family practitioner. The long-term care will be a separate entity and mental

00:09:08.560 health and addiction will be a separate entity.

00:09:09.840 So what are the new incentives that are going to make the individuals, I mean there was a sorry

00:09:16.160 story you told me earlier about the beds being available but nobody thought to pick up the phone

00:09:21.440 and let anybody know. Clearly somebody was not on top of their job, okay we have a new structure,

00:09:28.880 what are the incentives that are going to keep officials?

00:09:31.920 Well the notion that we have is funding following the patient to the facility that's best able to

00:09:38.320 give them the treatment. And one of the reasons we know this will work is when we look at our charter

00:09:43.200 surgical facilities, and there's 50 of them, we pay them based on the surgeries they do.

00:09:47.440 Right. And as a result they've gone from doing 40,000 surgeries when we first started to 65,000

00:09:53.440 surgeries. At the same time AHS has just gotten back to the level of surgeries that we started doing,

00:09:59.680 you know, that we were doing in 2019 even though they've had three and a half billion dollars more.

00:10:03.600 So everyone is now going to be paid on the basis of the surgeries that they do, especially on the

00:10:08.320 elective side. And we think that that's going to increase the number of surgeries that are done.

00:10:14.080 I'll tell you an example of what I think will happen in practice. If you want to go look at the

00:10:19.200 Humber River model, it's a public hospital in Ontario. And what they realized is that if they gave

00:10:25.280 a surgeon two operating room suites in the same eight-hour block, they could get way more production

00:10:32.160 out of those operating room suites. Because a lot of what happens in hospitals is downtime.

00:10:36.320 You go and do your surgery, then you sit back and wait for 45 minutes until the surgery,

00:10:40.800 until the operating room is re-established with the patient in there. And then you go in. So

00:10:46.720 our typical... Unlike what the dentists do. Completely. Go back and forth between the rooms.

00:10:51.120 So I'll tell you what happens. So normally you might get four surgeries done in a surgical time

00:10:55.440 block in a public hospital in Alberta right now. Humber River, they did 14 in the same eight-hour

00:11:01.360 time block. So that's the kind of thing we're trying to incentivize is that if you can do more surgeries

00:11:06.400 in a more efficient way, find a way to restructure your staff, find a way to restructure how you

00:11:12.880 manage your operating rooms, then we want to reward you for it. That's going to make a big difference.

00:11:17.040 Okay. Got it. Education. One of the big problems is clearly that there's a lot of people who don't

00:11:24.960 speak English being pushed into the classrooms and then the door closes and you've got one teacher

00:11:30.880 there and it's very hard to teach. Correct. Why don't we stream people? Well, we're having that

00:11:35.600 conversation now. One of the things I'd say about what we've learned about the complexity issue is that we

00:11:42.400 have a number of kids who are in the classroom who have very high needs, aggression issues, or very

00:11:50.000 high medical needs. And so we know that there are specialized classrooms in a lot of different school

00:11:55.760 systems where those kids are getting smaller classrooms more one-on-one. Maybe we need to do

00:12:00.000 more of that. But when we looked at the data, what we discovered is that the number of kids who speak

00:12:05.440 English as a second language has doubled in the last three years. It is now up to 96,000 students

00:12:14.880 in a school system of 750,000 kids. And so the good news about English language learners is it's one of

00:12:24.320 those things that with the right resources, somebody can become well-spoken in English. So we have to find

00:12:30.720 new ways to make sure that those kids get connected with resources. And I can give you an example.

00:12:35.760 We had a large number of Ukrainians who came in the immediate months following the Russian invasion

00:12:41.840 of Ukraine. And many of them found themselves in the school system. I met a couple of young girls,

00:12:46.800 one who'd been here six months, one who'd been here nine months, and they were able to give a

00:12:50.400 presentation about a business idea, a junior achievement after being here for a very short period of

00:12:54.720 time. But you have to put the dedicated resources in so they can develop that ability in English,

00:12:59.840 so that they can then go on to be integrated into a classroom. So I think what you'll see in the new

00:13:04.720 year, as we've identified that that is the biggest part of the pressure in our classrooms, we will have

00:13:09.200 some dedicated resources for that. Okay. All right, let's talk pipelines for a moment. Yesterday,

00:13:16.000 in British Columbia, the court ruled that BC legislation has to conform to UNRIP and UNRIP

00:13:24.560 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons has to, all their legislation

00:13:30.400 has to conform to that. That puts an awful lot of leverage in the hands of indigenous BC leaders.

00:13:38.240 Just at a time when you have a memorandum of understanding with the prime minister about

00:13:42.880 pipelines that even he fell short of saying, well, if we say it goes, it goes. Everybody has to be on

00:13:50.880 side. I know you still believe in the pipeline, but why? There seems to be so much working against it.

00:13:58.480 Well, I can tell you, I've been critical of judges' rulings and how it's upended a lot of

00:14:06.640 the legislative agenda that we've wanted to do. And I've had to use the notwithstanding clause a few

00:14:11.520 times. I noticed with great interest that Premier David Eby is now saying how outraged he is at the

00:14:16.800 decisions coming down on the court that has upended his private property and land titles legislation,

00:14:22.800 as well as his mineral investment regime. So he is going to, it sounds to me, like do some

00:14:29.360 either modifications to the legislation or challenge that in court. So I think we're all beginning to see

00:14:34.960 that from time to time, judges don't always make a decision that's in sync with the people and they're

00:14:42.640 not always right. So I'm going to watch to see how that unfolds. But when it comes to indigenous

00:14:49.200 resource development, one of the things I would point out in British Columbia is it was actually

00:14:55.280 the indigenous communities that led the development on LNG. I know we had a hard time getting coastal

00:15:00.640 gasoline built, but in the end, the reason why LNG Canada and Solisms and Wood Fiber and others are

00:15:08.000 being proposed is because there's indigenous proponents to it. So we think that that's a

00:15:12.800 good common ground to start from. And so my indigenous relations minister has been going to BC quite a

00:15:17.680 lot and having a number of meetings to begin the engagement. If we find the right port, and I have

00:15:23.440 to tell you, I mean, I just saw an interview with the Prince Rupert Port Authority saying that Prince

00:15:29.200 Rupert is probably the safest port in Canada because it's right on the water, deep water, very little

00:15:35.040 navigation, straight run to Asia in eight to 10 days. I think that that is a good starting point.

00:15:41.280 If we're talking about safety and talking about the way in which we can get our products to market

00:15:45.360 on an established port, and we've got to work with the nations in order to have a joint ownership.

00:15:52.080 So you still believe we'll get a pipeline out of all of this?

00:15:55.040 Sure. All right.

00:15:56.400 I wouldn't have signed the MOU if I didn't think so. But in the meantime, we also got rid of the emissions

00:16:01.840 cap. We also got rid of the clean electricity regs. Those were the two things I've been advocating

00:16:06.000 against for the past three years. We had national advertising campaigns, and it's already demonstrated

00:16:11.040 that it's having an impact on investment decisions. You've got Enbridge, you've got Trans Mountain,

00:16:15.920 you've got South Bo all talking about new projects to increase the amount of egress for pipelines.

00:16:22.160 You've also got Capital Power talking about how now that the clean electricity regs are gone,

00:16:27.600 they want to do a major investment in natural gas power generation, which will fuel AI data centers.

00:16:34.000 So those two things alone, I think, are going to make a huge impact in our investment climate. And then

00:16:38.960 just have a little bit more work to do to work out the technical specs for the pathway and route

00:16:44.560 on the pipeline to the BC coast. But I'm confident that we'll be able to-

00:16:48.800 Maybe so, because for some members of your party,

00:16:52.080 that getting a pipeline is a sort of a litmus test on leadership. One last thing before we go.

00:17:00.080 Well, let me just say that though. So if we get 400,000 barrels from Enbridge mainline,

00:17:06.720 if South Bo does another 650,000 barrel line, if Trans Mountain expands 360,000 barrels, if we get oil by

00:17:14.400 rail to Sydney, Nova Scotia, if we end up with a pipeline going to Churchill so that we're able to

00:17:21.200 export, I would look at all of that as success. And it's going to take a little bit longer to do the BC

00:17:26.480 pipeline. But what we needed to do is create an environment where all of those projects would go

00:17:32.960 ahead. And that's what I'm hoping that we'll see in the coming months.

00:17:37.760 I notice, to end on a frivolous note, that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation gave you a big thumbs up.

00:17:45.440 They have a naughty and nice list that they publish every year. And apparently, the fact that you've

00:17:51.120 used the notwithstanding clause and saved Alberta taxpayers $2 billion puts you on their nice list.

00:18:00.880 I don't think anybody would disagree with that. Now, the thing is to stay on the nice list. So for 2026,

00:18:08.960 a tax break for Alberta taxpayers? Well, we're looking at it. We did our tax break. We accelerated

00:18:17.120 our tax cut this year. So $750 for each individual, $1,500 for a family. But I can tell you, we have a

00:18:23.920 $7.5 billion deficit that we're looking at. Because the reality is that our budget needs $74 oil to

00:18:30.480 balance. Oil has been below $60. You can just do the math on that. For every dollar that WTI is short,

00:18:36.880 it's $750 million to our Treasury. So that's a big problem that we've got to deal with. We're

00:18:41.440 starting to deal with it because we're investing the income from the Heritage Fund into the fund

00:18:45.680 so that it can grow to $250 billion to generate a new income source for us. But we have to stick

00:18:51.680 with that plan. And we, quite frankly, we're not going to be able to balance our budget under the

00:18:58.560 current environment. So that's very much top of mind about how we're going to get back into balance.

00:19:04.720 Madam Premier, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for this. And Merry Christmas.

00:19:09.200 Merry Christmas to you. Good to see you. Thank you.

Western Standard - December 18, 2025

HANNAFORD： 'No tax-cuts... Alberta must stay disciplined'

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