Western Standard - Oil jumps on Iran war, Alberta deficit shrinks accordingly

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

00:00:21.440 Western Standard. It is Thursday, March the 5th. With us tonight is Rob Anderson, Chief of Staff

00:00:27.580 to premier daniel smith welcome mr anderson hey good to be here nigel nice to see you

00:00:33.660 last week premier smith's government gave us a nine billion dollar deficit budget this faces

00:00:40.360 this raises a lot of questions for smith loyalists the deficit was the last thing anybody expected

00:00:46.740 from her when she came to office three years ago but there we are oil prices were down and we're

00:00:52.720 billion dollars in the whole. Two questions then. First, what would it have meant for Albertans if

00:00:59.320 the government had done what her critics are demanding and made the cuts it would have taken

00:01:04.360 to balance the budget? Well, look, deficits are obviously not good. It stinks. I mean,

00:01:13.520 no one likes deficits as a fiscal conservative, which Premier Smith is, and obviously her team 0.98

00:01:18.880 and our cabinet are as well. It's tough. But fact of the matter is, is that when we, when Premier

00:01:27.080 Smith was first elected, oil, the average price of oil is $90. And this year, it's budgeted to be

00:01:35.660 $60. Each dollar difference, every single dollar of difference in the price of oil is $750 million.

00:01:43.980 dollars so we're talking we're not talking about a few hundred million we're talking about a

00:01:48.020 difference between 90 dollar oil and 60 dollar oil is 10 12 billion dollars it's massive it's a

00:01:54.360 massive difference on our bottom line and so in order to balance the budget um you know you would

00:02:02.380 literally have to cut um essentially a third of the public service and when we say public service

00:02:10.620 we're not talking about bureaucrats pushing paper in some building we're talking about nurses on

00:02:13.920 the frontline. We're talking about paying a third less doctors. We're talking about a third less

00:02:19.840 teachers. And this after 600,000 people have come here in the last few years. So that just isn't

00:02:27.820 something that the vast majority of Albertans would consider. Now, we have to have a plan

00:02:33.840 and to get out of this. We can't do this forever. Obviously, that's not, and we can't rely on $90

00:02:40.120 oil, obviously. But the plan that the premiers put in place is a short, long, and medium term.

00:02:51.220 Long term, it's grow the Heritage Fund to $250 billion. We've already doubled it in the last

00:02:55.260 four years. And of course, when we do that, we'll be able to replace oil and gas revenue with the

00:03:01.800 interest from the fund. But the key is now not to raid that Heritage Fund, to leave it in place,

00:03:06.760 to continue to grow it as Norway and other jurisdictions have for the next 20 years or more

00:03:13.300 until it's there. Medium term, it's doubling our oil and gas egress pipelines because, of course,

00:03:19.960 even at lower prices, if you're selling more oil, exporting more oil, it means more revenues.

00:03:24.640 That's the medium term 10-year plan, 5-10-year plan. And then the short-term plan is to make

00:03:30.100 sure that we hold spending well below inflation plus population growth. Obviously, we had some

00:03:35.060 catch up to do with this 600,000, um, uh, new individuals coming to Alberta in the last few

00:03:42.000 years, we need to get a hold and get under control immigration. And that means taking it over from 0.98

00:03:46.700 the federal government and making sure that we don't have these absurd open border policies 0.66

00:03:51.840 affecting Alberta and our budget, uh, any longer. And it, and it means doing, looking at some of

00:03:56.860 these programs going forward and saying, look, some of these things need to be income tested.

00:04:00.680 We have the most generous social programs, you know, in the country.

00:04:05.380 And we just got to make sure that they are appropriate and that they are right size and for those who really need them.

00:04:14.380 And we're not giving away taxpayer money to those that are wealthy enough that they can do fine.

00:04:21.840 So who actually is out there who's getting money who maybe doesn't really need it?

00:04:26.060 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.

00:04:43.800 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.

00:04:56.060 or even in some cases, the mental capabilities to take care of themselves.

00:05:02.340 That's what we should be targeting those programs for. 0.87

00:05:05.680 Those programs are not meant for, you know, individuals that are, you know,

00:05:12.420 between two income homes that are making $300,000 or $250,000 or so forth

00:05:19.060 or have net worths in the millions as we see in some cases.

00:05:23.720 It's like, we just, we can't give, we can't be all things to all people.

00:05:28.620 We've got to focus and target our social supports to those that truly need them and make sure

00:05:35.660 that we're those that can take care of them themselves do so without taxpayer expense.

00:05:41.540 I'm just struggling to imagine who might be having an income of $300,000 a year and qualify

00:05:49.100 for support.

00:05:51.200 Are there very many people in that?

00:05:52.920 I'll give you an example, a senior couple that's worth several million dollars, net worth of

00:05:58.720 several million dollars and completely able to take care of themselves, still qualifying for

00:06:04.020 certain senior benefits. There's, there's examples of this and it's just that we've let it, we've let

00:06:09.700 it go along so far. We've passed the hot potato so long and allowed for these things to happen,

00:06:14.260 but obviously we need to look in and at these things and right-size them because it's, it's not,

00:06:20.680 It's not good for taxpayers, and there's other examples of that.

00:06:25.800 So let's just talk about the situation in the Middle East and how that affects things.

00:06:30.140 I looked this morning. Oil is up. This is an hour ago. It may have changed.

00:06:33.840 Oil was up to $78, West Texas, U.S. dollars.

00:06:39.500 Obviously, that's better than $60, even if it isn't $90.

00:06:43.680 How much does this help?

00:06:45.620 well i mean obviously uh it's going to help um for those who don't know budgets are april to uh

00:06:54.900 april 1st to march 31st that's our fiscal year and so for uh the the budgets that just is coming

00:07:03.880 to an end budget 2025 26 um it certainly will have an impact um if you recall um i don't have

00:07:11.900 the exact budget number in front of me right now but the deficit was going to be about five billion

00:07:16.060 dollars well there's a chance it will have been cut in in half uh by by the end of the uh by the

00:07:22.820 end of the year if this if these prices continue you could see it in kind of the mid twos something

00:07:27.460 like that so just which is great um now for the budget going forward which starts april 1st the

00:07:33.600 one that's obviously was just announced um it will have probably some impact because um you know

00:07:41.080 we're, we're seeing forecasts being revised for the year up, um, you know, anywhere from five to

00:07:46.080 $10. Uh, so obviously that's going to have an effect. Uh, obviously we could, we, I don't think

00:07:52.000 we can count on, uh, $80 oil for the entire year. I mean, if that happened, yeah, well, poof, we'd

00:07:58.180 have a balanced budget and large surplus, but, um, you know, I don't think we can count on that.

00:08:02.920 And, and we shouldn't count on that. I mean, the key is, is that when we get these, when we get,

00:08:07.200 when oil becomes $80, $85, $90, $95 a barrel for the year, what we need to do is make sure that

00:08:14.940 we don't spend those large surpluses on operational. That we did what we did in 2022-23

00:08:21.080 when Premier Smith was first elected. The large $11 billion or so surplus was put into debt

00:08:28.120 repayment, which is a one-time cost, of course. The Heritage Fund, one-time investment, of course.

00:08:34.300 And then obviously we were going through a massive affordability challenge at that point.

00:08:39.000 So some of the money was actually provided directly back to Albertans.

00:08:41.460 But the key is those are all one-time investments or costs.

00:08:46.600 And when we have these big surpluses, we still need to keep operational spending below inflation plus population

00:08:52.700 so that when the price of oil drops again, that we're not blowing the budget.

00:08:58.680 because obviously when it goes down to, say, $60, we see the results, large deficits.

00:09:05.240 One last point on the immigration.

00:09:07.060 It actually leads to one of the other questions on the referenda.

00:09:10.220 But obviously we had a massive increase in population last year and the year before.

00:09:16.000 Is that still continuing?

00:09:17.980 Are people still moving in at that same rate?

00:09:20.460 Have we managed to put the brakes on a little?

00:09:24.020 I would say yes, kind of.

00:09:26.580 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.

00:09:42.460 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.

00:09:57.320 So they've taken some steps.

00:09:59.100 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.

00:10:11.940 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.

00:10:24.340 So not only that, but we already had 600,000 people in the last four years.

00:10:29.100 They're here now.

00:10:30.240 So we have to take care of that issue.

00:10:33.680 And what I mean by that is if you look at the referendum questions, we have to decide

00:10:38.220 when we're going to have temporary workers, temporary guests in our province pay for the

00:10:46.140 social services that they use.

00:10:47.540 We're not talking about citizens.

00:10:48.820 We're not talking about permanent residents that have paid taxes for years and so forth.

00:10:52.820 talking about people that are here as guests of our of our country and i mean i don't know what

00:10:59.000 you nigel but when i go travel somewhere or if i wanted to live somewhere for four months or a year 0.97

00:11:05.000 or whatever it was i'm not sure any albertan doing that would think that oh that government

00:11:10.060 has a responsibility to pay for my health care my education my social supports my my this that

00:11:16.360 the other thing that would be insane to think that of course that would be i mean i i say that's

00:11:21.720 unalbertan to think that and why then do we do that on the other side of the ledger and say yeah

00:11:27.540 come to alberta uh and the moment you get here even though you haven't paid a lick of tax

00:11:32.180 we're just going to give you all our social program we'll take care of you that's that's

00:11:35.960 a silly economically insane thing to do and it needs to stop because if we keep doing it

00:11:42.600 um all we're all we're doing is is what we're bankrupting ourselves and it means poorer you

00:11:48.800 know, or more stressed programs, education, healthcare, social supports for those Albertans

00:11:54.140 that have, that are citizens that had been here, uh, for, you know, their entire lives or a large

00:12:00.140 portion of their lives paying taxes. And then, you know, they see not enough schools, not enough

00:12:05.080 nurses, not enough doctors. So we've got, we've got to just, you know, we'll, we'll have to ignore

00:12:09.660 the, you know, the infantile comments of, of Nenshi and others that call it racist to deal

00:12:15.860 with this with this issue um it's not it applies to it applies to all guests uh guests uh temporary

00:12:23.800 residents in our in our uh province regardless of what their backgrounds might be and it's making

00:12:30.560 sure that we um that we attack that we attack this issue we're talking we're taking the problem

00:12:37.180 is not with immigrants the problem is with the system the immigration system an open borders 0.95

00:12:42.640 policies that Prime Minister Trudeau brought in, and it has caused massive strife across

00:12:50.740 the country, from social disorder to, you know, to stretch social services and everything.

00:13:00.040 This leads quite naturally to the question of the referendum on immigration that you

00:13:05.020 proposed for later in the year. Great idea, Rob, those and the other things where the government

00:13:13.660 is actually going to the people to find out what the people want. But I'm wondering, you're having

00:13:19.260 it on the same day as the referendum on independence. If the answer on independence is yes, there's not

00:13:30.860 much point in having an opinion on all these other things. Why don't do it on two different days?

00:13:37.580 Well, first off, there's a couple of reasons. First off, the stay-free Alberta petitioners

00:13:45.980 have not reached their signatures yet. So there may not be a referendum unless they reach those

00:13:52.460 signatures. So that's number one. Number two, a referendum is extremely expensive.

00:13:58.540 a referendum is going to cost upwards of 30 million 40 million dollars uh it costs about

00:14:05.460 the same as a provincial election like we're not talking about small change here um and so

00:14:11.100 especially in this environment that we're in uh it does not make sense to have two separate

00:14:15.600 standalone uh referendums so if the state uh free alberta petitioners i think if i'm getting that

00:14:23.480 right if they get their uh signatures the premier's been very clear that'll be added to the

00:14:27.540 referendum uh ballot and and we'll see what albertans uh have to say about it all right

00:14:33.920 okay a few moments ago you made a reference to people coming to alberta from central canada

00:14:40.480 uh liking what they see and staying they should uh what about bc i mean if i wanted to get out

00:14:50.040 of anywhere i would get out of there property rights are up in the air and nobody knows if

00:14:54.860 even exist anymore. I want to ask you a little bit about our approach to that entire question

00:15:00.940 of indigenous ownership or not ownership of the land. Alberta is ceded land,

00:15:08.220 the whole of it. It's held under one of several numbered treaties. However, in a judicial system

00:15:14.700 that habitually rewrites laws and agreements from the bench, how sure are you that these treaties

00:15:20.780 are going to hold up and mean anything of all the people who could have been premier right now

00:15:26.240 danielle smith cut her political teeth on property rights how is her government preparing for this 1.00

00:15:34.320 well there's a big difference between alberta and bc right the the number one difference is we have

00:15:41.460 uh very clearly worded um clearly understood uh treaties treaties six seven and eight

00:15:49.220 uh and with with uh first nations partners and um you know there's been obviously a lot of

00:15:57.580 litigation and um constitutional discussions about those treaties and what they include and

00:16:05.920 what they don't include and so forth so it's very settled law uh in alberta and that's been very

00:16:10.680 positive for us because it allows us to um to negotiate with our first nations partners

00:16:18.000 on various economic projects and so forth

00:16:23.600 that have been very mutually beneficial

00:16:25.540 for both Albertans and including First Nations

00:16:31.460 that are located in Alberta.

00:16:33.900 So it's been positive.

00:16:37.160 BC is very different.

00:16:38.260 I'm not an expert in hereditary rights

00:16:41.620 and these sorts of things,

00:16:43.500 so I'm not going to comment too much on that

00:16:46.480 just because I don't have a lot of knowledge of the subject matter.

00:16:49.520 But they don't have the same treaties that we do

00:16:52.740 that are clearly articulated.

00:16:55.280 Obviously, I look at what's going on in the Lower Mainland

00:16:58.240 and, yeah, it's shocking.

00:17:02.120 As someone who believes that property rights

00:17:04.700 are one of the key foundations of our democratic system of government,

00:17:13.240 I look at what's happening there

00:17:15.720 and it's distressing

00:17:17.220 and all I can say is that

00:17:20.280 I don't believe we have

00:17:22.360 those same problems in Alberta

00:17:24.160 I don't believe we're going to have

00:17:25.260 those same problems in Alberta

00:17:26.320 and this Premier and this government

00:17:28.780 have been very clear

00:17:29.560 that the protection of personal property rights

00:17:31.560 is sacrosanct

00:17:32.740 and will not be compromised

00:17:34.020 for any reason whatsoever

00:17:35.640 I think we should stop offering

00:17:38.020 land acknowledgments

00:17:39.180 that's what I think

00:17:40.040 what do you think?

00:17:42.520 Trying to get me in trouble here Nigel

00:17:44.180 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

00:17:53.220 but uh it's uh you know if you enough people enough time say you know what we're actually

00:17:59.780 on your land thanks very much it does start to give people ideas about personal ownership in

00:18:06.880 the way they'd never thought of otherwise let me move on i want to talk about energy security a bit

00:18:13.080 you've just talked about how many people have moved into Alberta.

00:18:18.680 So now we need more power. I seem to recall that during Ms. Smith's first winter as premier,

00:18:25.320 that would be January 2023, we had a near-miss brownouts. We all had a lesson that

00:18:31.240 interruptible power sources like sun and wind couldn't be depended on. But we still had the

00:18:37.000 the Trudeau government, as it then was, demanding net zero on the grid, and we had to discuss

00:18:43.300 indemnifying power generation CEOs if they went ahead and produced the power it took to keep

00:18:49.340 people alive in Alberta's bitter winters. Since then, we've had another half a million people

00:18:55.820 move in, you know, 16% population growth in three and a half hours. How are we doing in balancing

00:19:04.320 demand for electricity with supply a lot better than we were uh and you can you can tell that

00:19:11.560 obviously by the power uh the power prices which have dropped um substantially uh since when

00:19:18.220 premier smith took office and you know obviously we had a huge issue with um far too much far too

00:19:25.640 many renewables being brought on the the grid and um and it was you know obviously when you needed

00:19:31.840 the renewables most in the winters and on uh dark nights um they weren't available and uh but yet we

00:19:38.720 were um you know getting to a situation where no one was building uh you know any uh new baseload

00:19:46.400 electricity from natural gas uh it was all renewables and of course you know renewables

00:19:51.440 have their place and they can be very beneficial if done properly and and in the right ratio with

00:19:57.040 uh with baseload electricity um but it had the ratio was completely out of whack and so obviously

00:20:04.080 we took took many steps that were controversial to get that ratio back to where it should be

00:20:08.720 we were successful um obviously the the mou signed with um the federal government was a massive

00:20:16.720 victory and that we were able to get them to finally abandon their um the clean electricity

00:20:23.040 regulations, as they call them, the net zero power regs. This has opened up a flood of new

00:20:27.900 investment in natural gas-based power for AI data centers, but also just for baseload.

00:20:34.900 So things are looking up. It was a disaster ready to happen. Obviously, we had brownouts.

00:20:41.600 We came within a hair's breadth of grid failures several times in the first couple of winters

00:20:50.800 that following Premier Smith's election as Premier.

00:20:58.000 And, you know, obviously the one we'd just gone through,

00:21:01.060 the winter, we're just, we're not done it yet.

00:21:03.060 Obviously, this is Alberta.

00:21:04.040 There's still probably another month or two left of winter.

00:21:07.000 But so far, nothing remotely close.

00:21:09.440 And that's with 600,000 more people here.

00:21:12.920 So we've done, you know, the Premier's done a remarkable job

00:21:15.440 of that, finalizes Minister Newdorf.

00:21:17.540 And, you know, we expect things to calm down and get back to equilibrium as we move forward.

00:21:23.400 So how much baseload generation have we built in the last three years added to the grid?

00:21:28.740 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.

00:21:38.840 I'd have to get that information for you separately.

00:21:42.420 All right. Are the coal plants capable of being resuscitated?

00:21:46.400 if there was the need and the will to do it?

00:21:49.320 Well, they've already been retrofitted.

00:21:54.600 They've always been retrofitted to take natural gas.

00:21:58.540 So I'm not sure there would be much reason to do that,

00:22:02.440 especially because natural gas is actually,

00:22:06.900 in our view, is the fuel for electricity

00:22:13.040 for the next decade, two decades, maybe even more.

00:22:17.840 It's very cheap in Alberta, as you know.

00:22:20.560 We have an ocean of it under our feet.

00:22:22.580 It's clean.

00:22:25.500 It's easy to stand up relatively quickly.

00:22:29.300 The technology is very settled, understood.

00:22:36.220 It's a really good way to create baseload power

00:22:39.200 at a cheap cost for rate payers.

00:22:40.820 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.

00:22:50.000 And then, of course, so an appropriate amount of renewables in places that make sense.

00:22:57.020 And then, of course, transitioning over time, probably over decades to nuclear, which is probably the long, long term solution for our electricity mix.

00:23:09.460 So last question, last thing we want to talk about with you, Rob.

00:23:13.000 We have an education system in a conservatively-minded province

00:23:17.940 in which this conservative government is paying a left-wing Alberta Teachers Association

00:23:25.800 to churn out future NDP voters.

00:23:29.400 Seriously, they are prescribing left-wing diatribes as textbooks in the teachers' training colleges.

00:23:35.820 Now, this has been going on for all of the three years that Ms. Smith has been in government.

00:23:42.480 What is the plan to deal with that?

00:23:46.360 Well, you should have Minister Nicolaides on your show because he's already done and is continuing to make several reforms

00:23:57.920 that return our classrooms to what they should be,

00:24:04.500 which is institutions where our children learn reading, math,

00:24:10.880 basic social studies, geography, countries, science,

00:24:17.540 the things that you send your kids to school for.

00:24:20.740 I mean, I've got five boys.

00:24:22.920 They've all been through the public system.

00:24:25.880 Some years were great.

00:24:27.080 we had fantastic teachers um that followed the curriculum closely and didn't politicize

00:24:32.860 anything whatsoever that we're aware of and that the kids were aware of uh which is great those

00:24:37.400 are those teachers are awesome and um you know i uh i have an extremely soft spot in my heart for

00:24:43.160 those uh for those teachers because they you know i don't even know what their political affiliation

00:24:47.700 is and i appreciate that i don't want to know especially if they're teaching my kids uh but

00:24:51.840 yeah we like probably every parent in alberta have also had the uh the um experience of uh of

00:24:59.360 a teacher uh or two or three uh that have decided to use their um their position of authority to

00:25:09.880 push their agenda uh their personal political agenda and that's unacceptable that's not what

00:25:15.180 they're there for uh i don't know who you know when when you get a teacher at the beginning of

00:25:18.820 the year you don't know who they are you don't know what their background is you don't know what

00:25:21.620 their political beliefs are and you shouldn't have to and that's the point we need to get politics

00:25:26.500 and you know uh social warriors uh uh out of the out of the political or sorry out of the classroom

00:25:34.680 that's not what the classroom is for it's for teaching basics and that's our percent agreed

00:25:40.040 yeah so i think in that point through to gil mcgowan as he tries to lead the working people

00:25:44.460 of alberta in stride and revolt against the uh fascist government that governs the

00:25:50.460 governs the province, right?

00:25:52.900 Well, look.

00:25:53.900 Maybe the 29th all out on strike

00:25:56.140 or whatever the game is.

00:25:58.680 Hey, you know, free speech.

00:26:00.040 Fill your boots, Gil.

00:26:01.340 Yeah.

00:26:02.060 It's not, I don't think we, you know,

00:26:05.200 Gil McGowan's kind of embarrassed himself

00:26:06.580 over the last couple of years

00:26:07.580 with his silliness and idle threats and so forth.

00:26:12.780 But if he wants to have a big protest,

00:26:17.120 that's certainly his right.

00:26:18.420 and it's the right of anybody who wants to join in.

00:26:20.560 And that's okay.

00:26:21.360 I mean, that's part of free speech.

00:26:23.420 We, you know, we can, what's the term is, you know,

00:26:28.720 like you may not agree with the word the other side says,

00:26:32.420 but we need to be willing to defend the right to say it.

00:26:35.480 So that's what we think.

00:26:37.000 I don't know whether they're so emphatic themselves,

00:26:39.300 but look, we're out of time.

00:26:41.080 I'm sorry.

00:26:41.440 This is great stuff.

00:26:42.580 I appreciate you coming on the show, Rob.

00:26:45.340 I just want to thank you.

00:26:47.720 Pleasure, Nigel. Always good to see you.

00:26:50.560 You too.

00:26:51.760 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - March 06, 2026

Oil jumps on Iran war, Alberta deficit shrinks accordingly

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