Western Standard - March 06, 2026


Oil jumps on Iran war, Alberta deficit shrinks accordingly

Topics
oil prices and budget impacts energy security education reforms in Alberta
Hosted by
Nigel Hannaford
Mentioned
Smith Danielle Smith Trudeau Rob Anderson Gil McGowan Nicolaides Newdorf
War： What is it good for？ Alberta’s budget THE PIPELINE： War： What is it good for？ Alberta’s budget

Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

157.38

Word count

4,234

Sentence count

187

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Rob Anderson, Chief of Staff to Premier Danielle Smith, joins the show to talk about the Alberta government's nine billion dollar deficit and the challenges the province faces in balancing the books. He also talks about the need for a balanced budget and what the government should do about immigration.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Good evening Western Standard viewers and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show of the
00:00:21 Western Standard. It is Thursday, March the 5th. With us tonight is Rob Anderson, Chief of Staff
00:00:27 to premier daniel smith welcome mr anderson hey good to be here nigel nice to see you
00:00:33 last week premier smith's government gave us a nine billion dollar deficit budget this faces
00:00:40 this raises a lot of questions for smith loyalists the deficit was the last thing anybody expected
00:00:46 from her when she came to office three years ago but there we are oil prices were down and we're
00:00:52 billion dollars in the whole. Two questions then. First, what would it have meant for Albertans if
00:00:59 the government had done what her critics are demanding and made the cuts it would have taken
00:01:04 to balance the budget? Well, look, deficits are obviously not good. It stinks. I mean,
00:01:13 no one likes deficits as a fiscal conservative, which Premier Smith is, and obviously her team 0.98
00:01:18 and our cabinet are as well. It's tough. But fact of the matter is, is that when we, when Premier
00:01:27 Smith was first elected, oil, the average price of oil is $90. And this year, it's budgeted to be
00:01:35 $60. Each dollar difference, every single dollar of difference in the price of oil is $750 million.
00:01:43 dollars so we're talking we're not talking about a few hundred million we're talking about a
00:01:48 difference between 90 dollar oil and 60 dollar oil is 10 12 billion dollars it's massive it's a
00:01:54 massive difference on our bottom line and so in order to balance the budget um you know you would
00:02:02 literally have to cut um essentially a third of the public service and when we say public service
00:02:10 we're not talking about bureaucrats pushing paper in some building we're talking about nurses on
00:02:13 the frontline. We're talking about paying a third less doctors. We're talking about a third less
00:02:19 teachers. And this after 600,000 people have come here in the last few years. So that just isn't
00:02:27 something that the vast majority of Albertans would consider. Now, we have to have a plan
00:02:33 and to get out of this. We can't do this forever. Obviously, that's not, and we can't rely on $90
00:02:40 oil, obviously. But the plan that the premiers put in place is a short, long, and medium term.
00:02:51 Long term, it's grow the Heritage Fund to $250 billion. We've already doubled it in the last
00:02:55 four years. And of course, when we do that, we'll be able to replace oil and gas revenue with the
00:03:01 interest from the fund. But the key is now not to raid that Heritage Fund, to leave it in place,
00:03:06 to continue to grow it as Norway and other jurisdictions have for the next 20 years or more
00:03:13 until it's there. Medium term, it's doubling our oil and gas egress pipelines because, of course,
00:03:19 even at lower prices, if you're selling more oil, exporting more oil, it means more revenues.
00:03:24 That's the medium term 10-year plan, 5-10-year plan. And then the short-term plan is to make
00:03:30 sure that we hold spending well below inflation plus population growth. Obviously, we had some
00:03:35 catch up to do with this 600,000, um, uh, new individuals coming to Alberta in the last few
00:03:42 years, we need to get a hold and get under control immigration. And that means taking it over from 0.98
00:03:46 the federal government and making sure that we don't have these absurd open border policies 0.66
00:03:51 affecting Alberta and our budget, uh, any longer. And it, and it means doing, looking at some of
00:03:56 these programs going forward and saying, look, some of these things need to be income tested.
00:04:00 We have the most generous social programs, you know, in the country.
00:04:05 And we just got to make sure that they are appropriate and that they are right size and for those who really need them.
00:04:14 And we're not giving away taxpayer money to those that are wealthy enough that they can do fine.
00:04:21 So who actually is out there who's getting money who maybe doesn't really need it?
00:04:26 Well, I mean, I think the piece there is that there's a lot of social supports that are intended for people that are financially not able to take care of themselves.
00:04:43 And that's always been, you know, conservatives agree that that social safety net is important and we need to make sure it's strong and that the money is getting to those people that do not have the financial wherewithal.
00:04:56 or even in some cases, the mental capabilities to take care of themselves.
00:05:02 That's what we should be targeting those programs for. 0.87
00:05:05 Those programs are not meant for, you know, individuals that are, you know,
00:05:12 between two income homes that are making $300,000 or $250,000 or so forth
00:05:19 or have net worths in the millions as we see in some cases.
00:05:23 It's like, we just, we can't give, we can't be all things to all people.
00:05:28 We've got to focus and target our social supports to those that truly need them and make sure
00:05:35 that we're those that can take care of them themselves do so without taxpayer expense.
00:05:41 I'm just struggling to imagine who might be having an income of $300,000 a year and qualify
00:05:49 for support.
00:05:51 Are there very many people in that?
00:05:52 I'll give you an example, a senior couple that's worth several million dollars, net worth of
00:05:58 several million dollars and completely able to take care of themselves, still qualifying for
00:06:04 certain senior benefits. There's, there's examples of this and it's just that we've let it, we've let
00:06:09 it go along so far. We've passed the hot potato so long and allowed for these things to happen,
00:06:14 but obviously we need to look in and at these things and right-size them because it's, it's not,
00:06:20 It's not good for taxpayers, and there's other examples of that.
00:06:25 So let's just talk about the situation in the Middle East and how that affects things.
00:06:30 I looked this morning. Oil is up. This is an hour ago. It may have changed.
00:06:33 Oil was up to $78, West Texas, U.S. dollars.
00:06:39 Obviously, that's better than $60, even if it isn't $90.
00:06:43 How much does this help?
00:06:45 well i mean obviously uh it's going to help um for those who don't know budgets are april to uh
00:06:54 april 1st to march 31st that's our fiscal year and so for uh the the budgets that just is coming
00:07:03 to an end budget 2025 26 um it certainly will have an impact um if you recall um i don't have
00:07:11 the exact budget number in front of me right now but the deficit was going to be about five billion
00:07:16 dollars well there's a chance it will have been cut in in half uh by by the end of the uh by the
00:07:22 end of the year if this if these prices continue you could see it in kind of the mid twos something
00:07:27 like that so just which is great um now for the budget going forward which starts april 1st the
00:07:33 one that's obviously was just announced um it will have probably some impact because um you know
00:07:41 we're, we're seeing forecasts being revised for the year up, um, you know, anywhere from five to
00:07:46 $10. Uh, so obviously that's going to have an effect. Uh, obviously we could, we, I don't think
00:07:52 we can count on, uh, $80 oil for the entire year. I mean, if that happened, yeah, well, poof, we'd
00:07:58 have a balanced budget and large surplus, but, um, you know, I don't think we can count on that.
00:08:02 And, and we shouldn't count on that. I mean, the key is, is that when we get these, when we get,
00:08:07 when oil becomes $80, $85, $90, $95 a barrel for the year, what we need to do is make sure that
00:08:14 we don't spend those large surpluses on operational. That we did what we did in 2022-23
00:08:21 when Premier Smith was first elected. The large $11 billion or so surplus was put into debt
00:08:28 repayment, which is a one-time cost, of course. The Heritage Fund, one-time investment, of course.
00:08:34 And then obviously we were going through a massive affordability challenge at that point.
00:08:39 So some of the money was actually provided directly back to Albertans.
00:08:41 But the key is those are all one-time investments or costs.
00:08:46 And when we have these big surpluses, we still need to keep operational spending below inflation plus population
00:08:52 so that when the price of oil drops again, that we're not blowing the budget.
00:08:58 because obviously when it goes down to, say, $60, we see the results, large deficits.
00:09:05 One last point on the immigration.
00:09:07 It actually leads to one of the other questions on the referenda.
00:09:10 But obviously we had a massive increase in population last year and the year before.
00:09:16 Is that still continuing?
00:09:17 Are people still moving in at that same rate?
00:09:20 Have we managed to put the brakes on a little?
00:09:24 I would say yes, kind of.
00:09:26 And what I mean by that is, like, just, you know, last year, our population still grew by 2.5% in 2025. It's huge. That's a huge one-time growth rate. It's, you know, our population is now over 5 million people.
00:09:42 Now, 2026, we think it's slowing down a bit, mostly because we're having less temporary foreign workers coming in because the federal government, even the federal government has admitted that this has gotten out of control.
00:09:57 So they've taken some steps.
00:09:59 However, because of interprovincial migration of people already here, Alberta will still be probably the only province with substantial growth in 2026 just because we have these are where the jobs are.
00:10:11 This is where the opportunity is. This is an amazing place to live. And so when people get to Ontario, come back in other places, and then they look west and say, that's somewhere I want to be a part of, and they come.
00:10:24 So not only that, but we already had 600,000 people in the last four years.
00:10:29 They're here now.
00:10:30 So we have to take care of that issue.
00:10:33 And what I mean by that is if you look at the referendum questions, we have to decide
00:10:38 when we're going to have temporary workers, temporary guests in our province pay for the
00:10:46 social services that they use.
00:10:47 We're not talking about citizens.
00:10:48 We're not talking about permanent residents that have paid taxes for years and so forth.
00:10:52 talking about people that are here as guests of our of our country and i mean i don't know what
00:10:59 you nigel but when i go travel somewhere or if i wanted to live somewhere for four months or a year 0.97
00:11:05 or whatever it was i'm not sure any albertan doing that would think that oh that government
00:11:10 has a responsibility to pay for my health care my education my social supports my my this that
00:11:16 the other thing that would be insane to think that of course that would be i mean i i say that's
00:11:21 unalbertan to think that and why then do we do that on the other side of the ledger and say yeah
00:11:27 come to alberta uh and the moment you get here even though you haven't paid a lick of tax
00:11:32 we're just going to give you all our social program we'll take care of you that's that's
00:11:35 a silly economically insane thing to do and it needs to stop because if we keep doing it
00:11:42 um all we're all we're doing is is what we're bankrupting ourselves and it means poorer you
00:11:48 know, or more stressed programs, education, healthcare, social supports for those Albertans
00:11:54 that have, that are citizens that had been here, uh, for, you know, their entire lives or a large
00:12:00 portion of their lives paying taxes. And then, you know, they see not enough schools, not enough
00:12:05 nurses, not enough doctors. So we've got, we've got to just, you know, we'll, we'll have to ignore
00:12:09 the, you know, the infantile comments of, of Nenshi and others that call it racist to deal
00:12:15 with this with this issue um it's not it applies to it applies to all guests uh guests uh temporary
00:12:23 residents in our in our uh province regardless of what their backgrounds might be and it's making
00:12:30 sure that we um that we attack that we attack this issue we're talking we're taking the problem
00:12:37 is not with immigrants the problem is with the system the immigration system an open borders 0.95
00:12:42 policies that Prime Minister Trudeau brought in, and it has caused massive strife across
00:12:50 the country, from social disorder to, you know, to stretch social services and everything.
00:13:00 This leads quite naturally to the question of the referendum on immigration that you
00:13:05 proposed for later in the year. Great idea, Rob, those and the other things where the government
00:13:13 is actually going to the people to find out what the people want. But I'm wondering, you're having
00:13:19 it on the same day as the referendum on independence. If the answer on independence is yes, there's not
00:13:30 much point in having an opinion on all these other things. Why don't do it on two different days?
00:13:37 Well, first off, there's a couple of reasons. First off, the stay-free Alberta petitioners
00:13:45 have not reached their signatures yet. So there may not be a referendum unless they reach those
00:13:52 signatures. So that's number one. Number two, a referendum is extremely expensive.
00:13:58 a referendum is going to cost upwards of 30 million 40 million dollars uh it costs about
00:14:05 the same as a provincial election like we're not talking about small change here um and so
00:14:11 especially in this environment that we're in uh it does not make sense to have two separate
00:14:15 standalone uh referendums so if the state uh free alberta petitioners i think if i'm getting that
00:14:23 right if they get their uh signatures the premier's been very clear that'll be added to the
00:14:27 referendum uh ballot and and we'll see what albertans uh have to say about it all right
00:14:33 okay a few moments ago you made a reference to people coming to alberta from central canada
00:14:40 uh liking what they see and staying they should uh what about bc i mean if i wanted to get out
00:14:50 of anywhere i would get out of there property rights are up in the air and nobody knows if
00:14:54 even exist anymore. I want to ask you a little bit about our approach to that entire question
00:15:00 of indigenous ownership or not ownership of the land. Alberta is ceded land,
00:15:08 the whole of it. It's held under one of several numbered treaties. However, in a judicial system
00:15:14 that habitually rewrites laws and agreements from the bench, how sure are you that these treaties
00:15:20 are going to hold up and mean anything of all the people who could have been premier right now
00:15:26 danielle smith cut her political teeth on property rights how is her government preparing for this 1.00
00:15:34 well there's a big difference between alberta and bc right the the number one difference is we have
00:15:41 uh very clearly worded um clearly understood uh treaties treaties six seven and eight
00:15:49 uh and with with uh first nations partners and um you know there's been obviously a lot of
00:15:57 litigation and um constitutional discussions about those treaties and what they include and
00:16:05 what they don't include and so forth so it's very settled law uh in alberta and that's been very
00:16:10 positive for us because it allows us to um to negotiate with our first nations partners
00:16:18 on various economic projects and so forth
00:16:23 that have been very mutually beneficial
00:16:25 for both Albertans and including First Nations
00:16:31 that are located in Alberta.
00:16:33 So it's been positive.
00:16:37 BC is very different.
00:16:38 I'm not an expert in hereditary rights
00:16:41 and these sorts of things,
00:16:43 so I'm not going to comment too much on that
00:16:46 just because I don't have a lot of knowledge of the subject matter.
00:16:49 But they don't have the same treaties that we do
00:16:52 that are clearly articulated.
00:16:55 Obviously, I look at what's going on in the Lower Mainland
00:16:58 and, yeah, it's shocking.
00:17:02 As someone who believes that property rights
00:17:04 are one of the key foundations of our democratic system of government,
00:17:13 I look at what's happening there
00:17:15 and it's distressing
00:17:17 and all I can say is that
00:17:20 I don't believe we have
00:17:22 those same problems in Alberta
00:17:24 I don't believe we're going to have
00:17:25 those same problems in Alberta
00:17:26 and this Premier and this government
00:17:28 have been very clear
00:17:29 that the protection of personal property rights
00:17:31 is sacrosanct
00:17:32 and will not be compromised
00:17:34 for any reason whatsoever
00:17:35 I think we should stop offering
00:17:38 land acknowledgments
00:17:39 that's what I think
00:17:40 what do you think?
00:17:42 Trying to get me in trouble here Nigel
00:17:44 you're gonna give me a drill here um yeah look well it's not a you know i won't push you on that
00:17:53 but uh it's uh you know if you enough people enough time say you know what we're actually
00:17:59 on your land thanks very much it does start to give people ideas about personal ownership in
00:18:06 the way they'd never thought of otherwise let me move on i want to talk about energy security a bit
00:18:13 you've just talked about how many people have moved into Alberta.
00:18:18 So now we need more power. I seem to recall that during Ms. Smith's first winter as premier,
00:18:25 that would be January 2023, we had a near-miss brownouts. We all had a lesson that
00:18:31 interruptible power sources like sun and wind couldn't be depended on. But we still had the
00:18:37 the Trudeau government, as it then was, demanding net zero on the grid, and we had to discuss
00:18:43 indemnifying power generation CEOs if they went ahead and produced the power it took to keep
00:18:49 people alive in Alberta's bitter winters. Since then, we've had another half a million people
00:18:55 move in, you know, 16% population growth in three and a half hours. How are we doing in balancing
00:19:04 demand for electricity with supply a lot better than we were uh and you can you can tell that
00:19:11 obviously by the power uh the power prices which have dropped um substantially uh since when
00:19:18 premier smith took office and you know obviously we had a huge issue with um far too much far too
00:19:25 many renewables being brought on the the grid and um and it was you know obviously when you needed
00:19:31 the renewables most in the winters and on uh dark nights um they weren't available and uh but yet we
00:19:38 were um you know getting to a situation where no one was building uh you know any uh new baseload
00:19:46 electricity from natural gas uh it was all renewables and of course you know renewables
00:19:51 have their place and they can be very beneficial if done properly and and in the right ratio with
00:19:57 uh with baseload electricity um but it had the ratio was completely out of whack and so obviously
00:20:04 we took took many steps that were controversial to get that ratio back to where it should be
00:20:08 we were successful um obviously the the mou signed with um the federal government was a massive
00:20:16 victory and that we were able to get them to finally abandon their um the clean electricity
00:20:23 regulations, as they call them, the net zero power regs. This has opened up a flood of new
00:20:27 investment in natural gas-based power for AI data centers, but also just for baseload.
00:20:34 So things are looking up. It was a disaster ready to happen. Obviously, we had brownouts.
00:20:41 We came within a hair's breadth of grid failures several times in the first couple of winters
00:20:50 that following Premier Smith's election as Premier.
00:20:58 And, you know, obviously the one we'd just gone through,
00:21:01 the winter, we're just, we're not done it yet.
00:21:03 Obviously, this is Alberta.
00:21:04 There's still probably another month or two left of winter.
00:21:07 But so far, nothing remotely close.
00:21:09 And that's with 600,000 more people here.
00:21:12 So we've done, you know, the Premier's done a remarkable job
00:21:15 of that, finalizes Minister Newdorf.
00:21:17 And, you know, we expect things to calm down and get back to equilibrium as we move forward.
00:21:23 So how much baseload generation have we built in the last three years added to the grid?
00:21:28 I don't have those numbers in front of me, but a lot of several thousand megawatts have come online just in the last year.
00:21:38 I'd have to get that information for you separately.
00:21:42 All right. Are the coal plants capable of being resuscitated?
00:21:46 if there was the need and the will to do it?
00:21:49 Well, they've already been retrofitted.
00:21:54 They've always been retrofitted to take natural gas.
00:21:58 So I'm not sure there would be much reason to do that,
00:22:02 especially because natural gas is actually,
00:22:06 in our view, is the fuel for electricity
00:22:13 for the next decade, two decades, maybe even more.
00:22:17 It's very cheap in Alberta, as you know.
00:22:20 We have an ocean of it under our feet.
00:22:22 It's clean.
00:22:25 It's easy to stand up relatively quickly.
00:22:29 The technology is very settled, understood.
00:22:36 It's a really good way to create baseload power
00:22:39 at a cheap cost for rate payers.
00:22:40 So I think our, what we're focused on is making sure that, you know, we have natural gas, electricity coming into our province to help with our base load.
00:22:50 And then, of course, so an appropriate amount of renewables in places that make sense.
00:22:57 And then, of course, transitioning over time, probably over decades to nuclear, which is probably the long, long term solution for our electricity mix.
00:23:09 So last question, last thing we want to talk about with you, Rob.
00:23:13 We have an education system in a conservatively-minded province
00:23:17 in which this conservative government is paying a left-wing Alberta Teachers Association
00:23:25 to churn out future NDP voters.
00:23:29 Seriously, they are prescribing left-wing diatribes as textbooks in the teachers' training colleges.
00:23:35 Now, this has been going on for all of the three years that Ms. Smith has been in government.
00:23:42 What is the plan to deal with that?
00:23:46 Well, you should have Minister Nicolaides on your show because he's already done and is continuing to make several reforms
00:23:57 that return our classrooms to what they should be,
00:24:04 which is institutions where our children learn reading, math,
00:24:10 basic social studies, geography, countries, science,
00:24:17 the things that you send your kids to school for.
00:24:20 I mean, I've got five boys.
00:24:22 They've all been through the public system.
00:24:25 Some years were great.
00:24:27 we had fantastic teachers um that followed the curriculum closely and didn't politicize
00:24:32 anything whatsoever that we're aware of and that the kids were aware of uh which is great those
00:24:37 are those teachers are awesome and um you know i uh i have an extremely soft spot in my heart for
00:24:43 those uh for those teachers because they you know i don't even know what their political affiliation
00:24:47 is and i appreciate that i don't want to know especially if they're teaching my kids uh but
00:24:51 yeah we like probably every parent in alberta have also had the uh the um experience of uh of
00:24:59 a teacher uh or two or three uh that have decided to use their um their position of authority to
00:25:09 push their agenda uh their personal political agenda and that's unacceptable that's not what
00:25:15 they're there for uh i don't know who you know when when you get a teacher at the beginning of
00:25:18 the year you don't know who they are you don't know what their background is you don't know what
00:25:21 their political beliefs are and you shouldn't have to and that's the point we need to get politics
00:25:26 and you know uh social warriors uh uh out of the out of the political or sorry out of the classroom
00:25:34 that's not what the classroom is for it's for teaching basics and that's our percent agreed
00:25:40 yeah so i think in that point through to gil mcgowan as he tries to lead the working people
00:25:44 of alberta in stride and revolt against the uh fascist government that governs the
00:25:50 governs the province, right?
00:25:52 Well, look.
00:25:53 Maybe the 29th all out on strike
00:25:56 or whatever the game is.
00:25:58 Hey, you know, free speech.
00:26:00 Fill your boots, Gil.
00:26:01 Yeah.
00:26:02 It's not, I don't think we, you know,
00:26:05 Gil McGowan's kind of embarrassed himself
00:26:06 over the last couple of years
00:26:07 with his silliness and idle threats and so forth.
00:26:12 But if he wants to have a big protest,
00:26:17 that's certainly his right.
00:26:18 and it's the right of anybody who wants to join in.
00:26:20 And that's okay.
00:26:21 I mean, that's part of free speech.
00:26:23 We, you know, we can, what's the term is, you know,
00:26:28 like you may not agree with the word the other side says,
00:26:32 but we need to be willing to defend the right to say it.
00:26:35 So that's what we think.
00:26:37 I don't know whether they're so emphatic themselves,
00:26:39 but look, we're out of time.
00:26:41 I'm sorry.
00:26:41 This is great stuff.
00:26:42 I appreciate you coming on the show, Rob.
00:26:45 I just want to thank you.
00:26:47 Pleasure, Nigel. Always good to see you.
00:26:50 You too.
00:26:51 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.