00:00:45.680Well, you know, it's about building relationships.
00:00:50.060And whether that's with the previous Biden administration,
00:00:53.940Trump administration, or even other countries,
00:00:56.140and it's different in the U.S. and different under those two administrations,
00:01:00.000as it is in a country like China or India.
00:01:03.280And, uh, you know, we've been fortunate to be committed as a province to this for
00:01:07.200longer than I've been in this position under former premier, uh, Brad Wall was very committed
00:01:11.840to, you know, building those long-term trade relations with countries that, uh, um, you
00:01:17.280know, are specifically impactful to Saskatchewan.
00:01:20.880And so, you know, first and foremost, I would say what you do in years when it seems like
00:01:26.000things are doing well in the way of engaging matter, uh, when things get bumpy.
00:01:30.000and things are bumpy now, and I would say that Saskatchewan is one of the provinces,
00:01:34.880maybe not the only, but maybe the brightest example of a province that has never lost
00:01:41.680the commitment to engaging during the times of plenty, so that we have those relationships to
00:01:48.320draw on in the leaner times. And I think that would be first and foremost why Saskatchewan is
00:01:55.320able to really lead the path, hopefully back to the negotiating table with the Americans.
00:02:01.280Been able to lead the path back to the negotiating table with China. And I think is very much at the
00:02:07.580center of leading the path back to what would hopefully be a brighter trade future with a
00:02:15.240country like India as well. And these three meetings that you had, how long were they? How
00:02:20.600many people were in them? And what was the sort of the major things discussed? Because like just
00:02:26.680this past week they started talking about bilateral agreements and not renewing the, you know, the
00:02:31.840free trade agreement between the three countries and stuff like that. Yeah. Did they hint at that
00:02:35.680at all? Did they talk about it? Or is this something that just. Yeah, no, not in those
00:02:40.540particular meetings. However, as you remember, when we came to the close of the original USMCA
00:02:46.660agreement. Others talk about bilateral agreements and such. And I know in fairness, in the lead up
00:02:54.020in a few months ago, it was, you know, some Canadian leaders that were talking about bilateral
00:02:58.800negotiated agreements as well, which, you know, didn't sit real well with Mexico at that point
00:03:04.240in time. And so, you know, again, I'd say, you know, whether it's bilateral agreements,
00:03:08.580what that might be, you just, you need to just take a breath. You know, when the president or
00:03:15.320administration steps into a space and said, you know, we're going to do this, or we're going to
00:03:20.400do that, is to just take a breath, you know, get a full understanding of what actually the initiative
00:03:27.780is, how it impacts you. And, you know, the negotiations may or may not start from that
00:03:34.700point. You know, we just recently, after those meetings, and we talked about whether it was
00:03:39.060with Secretary Besant or Lutnik or Ambassador Greer, we talked about potash in each and every
00:03:43.900one of those meetings and the importance of the North American potash supply to American families
00:03:47.980and, you know, how a tariff ultimately would just simply ensure that American families would pay
00:03:53.620more. And then we've seen more recent announcements coming out of the trade relationship on potash
00:03:59.720with a country like Belarus. And so I, you know, Saskatchewan and Canada produce a lot more potash
00:04:05.280than Belarus does. However, you know, we pay attention when those types of decisions are made
00:04:10.100And it may or may not have an impact moving forward.
00:04:12.600And we're, you know, working with the industry and, again, reaching out to our American counterparts to, you know, ensure that we're, you know, always working towards what that broader term, longer term goal is, which is, you know, a low or no tariff trade environment across the board.
00:04:29.000And we are hopeful that we'll get there.
00:04:30.340But, you know, those meetings, to answer your question, that comes through a commitment to fostering that relationship, even in the good times.
00:04:40.100Are you concerned that the U.S. is turning to what we commonly refer to as adversaries for things like Belarus is clearly supportive of Russia?
00:04:51.620Yeah. And the U.S. has a friendly neighbor that's literally right here who we've traded with free trade now for close to 40 years.
00:05:02.860and we're now being sort of pushed to the back of the line
00:05:10.520when we used to be at the front of the line.
00:07:39.920Okay. Towards the end of the session, the NDP brought a lady to the legislature who has a rare disease, who's been seeking, trying to get treatment and hasn't been able to. She has even applied for MAID, medical assistance in dying.
00:07:55.760uh u.s commentator glenn beck saw it they offered to pay for it if there was a surgeon in the u.s
00:08:02.120that could help her what is what is the government doing now to help this lady particularly now that
00:08:08.360she's in the public eye like like because she says the the specialist she needs to see there
00:08:14.040isn't even one in the province um and what does that say also about the state of health care when
00:08:19.980we when there are people with rare diseases that just simply can't get help yeah i'd say a few
00:08:25.540things is uh you know one and without knowing too much about this particular individual situation
00:08:32.020is that uh you know it's this this is top and it's it's not fun uh in any way and i i feel for
00:08:39.620because uh you know the the the pain and challenges that she's been going through for a number of
00:08:43.900years are are uh you know very real and i i really do uh feel for and i hope that we're able to to
00:08:50.440work together as our health ministry in the Saskatchewan Health Authority or whoever to
00:08:55.780to find her you know some peace and a better life in her in her health journey that being said
00:09:03.560and I talked with the Minister of Health on this is it's my understanding that she has seen a
00:09:09.920specialist within the province has seen a specialist an additional specialist outside
00:09:13.540and is currently working with the ministry and at the, since this has become more public with the ministry and the minister's office to access at least one other individual specialist in Canada.
00:09:27.820And I'd said, you know, with respect to, you know, people's choice on if they are able to acquire health services in the U.S. or somewhere else in the world, that is their prerogative.
00:09:39.740It's our responsibility as a government and a publicly funded health system in Saskatchewan and across Canada to do everything we can to one, provide the specialists here in Saskatchewan and two, if those specialists aren't available in Saskatchewan to, you know, provide those avenues for that individual to access them in other parts of Canada.
00:10:03.040And we continue to do that in support of, you know, this individual or any other individual in this particular case.
00:10:12.180But I truly do hope, and I think everyone does, that she's able to find, you know, a solution to the health challenges that seem, I think I read a story recently, you know, complex and somewhat rare.
00:10:25.860And just reading from the periphery on the American piece,
00:10:31.020it doesn't sound like a very straightforward assessment
00:10:35.540on who can and who can't help in this case either.
00:10:39.020So I hope in some way, shape, or form is a specialist
00:10:42.080either in Canada or in this case some of the U.S. options
00:10:47.480that are being discussed that can bring her some better quality of life.
00:10:51.720and we're trying to do a weekend as the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health
00:10:56.820and the Minister's Office to support that, and have been all along.
00:11:00.460Okay. Now your government's fairly pro-immigration,
00:11:04.820you know, growing the province and so on.
00:11:07.400That puts a lot of pressure on things like health care and education, housing.
00:11:13.100What are you, like, you're asking immigrants to come, you want them to come.
00:11:16.700What is your government doing to make sure when they get here,
00:11:20.020they do have healthcare they do have a spot in education they do have a place to live
00:11:23.700yeah i'll just give you an example i got a phone call from principal one of the two biggest cities
00:11:30.220in town in this in the province uh and he had 15 kids from the same address in his school and in
00:11:37.180kindergarten to grade eight um and he's like like i can't run a school when the numbers like people
00:11:44.480are living so many in a home because there just isn't enough homes out there that it's putting
00:11:50.240pressure on a situation like that. And even in Harbor Landing, where my daughter went to school,
00:11:54.440um, they're building a second school, um, for the same amount of houses that are already there.
00:11:59.640Um, what is your government doing to try and help in all of those different areas?
00:12:05.580Well, then, you know, there, therein lies, uh, part of the reason I think, uh, that you're seeing
00:12:10.280some of the investments in, in healthcare and education.
00:12:13.040Um, you just opened with a, uh, a statement about this, this government
00:12:17.240being pro-immigration as government has also, uh, always said, uh, that we need
00:12:22.200to have a very, um, localized focus on economic immigration, uh, so that, uh,
00:12:28.900we firmly believe that when economic immigration is at the heart of, uh,
00:12:33.820whatever the assessments are, that is better for the person immigrating.
00:12:37.560It's better for the community where they're immigrating to, and it certainly is better for any family members that might be with them as they will be very much part of the economy in that said community and going to be contributing to a stronger community and a stronger province.
00:12:55.500I don't know, with all of the challenges that we've had with a federal government over the last number of years, and immigration largely is a federal policy, I don't know that we can say in every stream that we have, and the province has a small portion of the total numbers in the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program, that every stream has had that economic focus over the course of the last decade.
00:13:19.540I think you're starting to see that focus tighten with some of the decisions that have been made by the federal government.
00:13:25.820And I would encourage the federal government to continue to engage with the business communities across the nation, not just in Saskatchewan as well, but also engage with the provincial governments on what this does look like moving forward.
00:13:40.320Because when you have a robust immigration system with an economic focus, robust in the way of the checkpoints and qualifications for individuals coming in, as well as the economic touch points that they're going to have if it's an economic focus, it is going to be a stronger immigration system than maybe what we've seen in the last few years.
00:14:09.560And I think at one point in time, years ago, it was.
00:14:13.180It's moved away from that to some degree, and now it has to come back.
00:14:16.820And with that comes some tough discussions, whether that be in the post-secondary world
00:14:22.260in certain areas of Canada or what that might be.
00:14:24.820So the economic focus on immigration is imperative to the success of the future of immigration,
00:14:32.700quite honestly, in Saskatchewan and across Canada.
00:14:35.240All righty. Let's talk to the notwithstanding clause. The NDP came out with Bill 611, which was, they presented it as being to prevent your government from using notwithstanding clause in collective bargaining, which Daniel Smith had just done in Alberta.
00:14:58.160However, when I asked them about the bill, I said, is it only for collective bargaining?
00:15:02.200And they're like, no, it would kind of, that's what our focus is, but it could be used for any of the, any reason the notwithstanding clause is being used.
00:15:11.180So I said, so when the parents' rights bill comes back up, that means that this bill would put it to the court of appeals as opposed to the government able to use the notwithstanding clause and putting it in for another five years.
00:15:22.600that bill basically would have removed the use of the notwithstanding clause in Saskatchewan.
00:15:30.120Saskatchewan being one of the provinces that was a holdout until that was added in.
00:15:36.120What do you think that says about both the opposition's view of the notwithstanding clause
00:15:41.520and how they're almost trying to put like a Trojan horse in there so that when that parents rights bill comes back up,
00:15:48.700you wouldn't actually be able to use the notwithstanding clause without having to go to the courts?
00:15:54.180And essentially, at the end of the day, what a bill like that is trying to do is change the Constitution without changing the Constitution.
00:16:00.920The notwithstanding clause was part of the Constitution.
00:16:04.040It wasn't an add-on or anything of that nature.
00:16:06.040And so when people say the notwithstanding clause is there to, you know, in any way, you know, change or circumvent anything, no, it's part of very fabric of how this nation operates and functions.
00:16:24.760I won't speak for Alan Blakeney, but I doubt whether he would have signed on to the Constitution in Canada had the notwithstanding clause not been included.
00:16:33.080And he very succinctly had indicated that it was there to preserve the rights of the democratically elected individuals to represent the people that of their jurisdiction, in this case being Saskatchewan.
00:16:46.220What the NDP bill, and let's be clear, is essentially giving those rights back to the courts and giving those rights back to the judges.
00:16:54.620And in essence, in many cases, giving those rights back by taking them away, providing in our central government in Ottawa even more rights than they have here today.
00:17:04.880And so we're not in favor of giving rights to the courts and to unelected judges.
00:17:10.900We agree, ironically, with Alan Blakeney that the notwithstanding clause very much was part of the Constitution and a necessary part of the Constitution to preserve the rights that democratically elected governments have, not just today, but for decades into the future to represent constituents in an environment where all too often we see the courts making decisions that are, to some degrees,
00:17:39.780making, uh, you know, regular people in communities scratch their head a bit, uh, with respect to,
00:17:46.140you know, uh, you know, letting repeat offenders out on bail, uh, back out to, to live in the
00:17:51.560community and to ultimately all too often re-offend again, you know, people scratch their
00:17:56.280head at, at those kinds of, of decisions. And so the notwithstanding clause is part of the
00:18:00.360constitution, uh, for decades now, uh, and it's going to continue to be, uh, you know, part of
00:18:05.800the constitution, uh, I think for years into the future, and it isn't going to be circumvented or,
00:18:10.020or changed in a, uh, really an underhanded sort of way by a piece of legislation like this,
00:18:15.400as long as we have a majority vote in the house on behalf of, of, of the people of, of Saskatchewan.
00:18:21.960Um, that being said, I, you know, I don't think it's to be used lately and I don't think, uh,
00:18:26.720this government or really any other government has, has, has ever used it with the exception,
00:18:32.540maybe a Quebec, uh, has ever used it, uh, where
00:19:22.000Now, Tim McLeod was talking about it's similar to like when someone goes on suicide watch for 72 hours.
00:19:28.220Except in this case, we're talking three months, six months, eight months of treatment. How does your government balance the rights of an individual and the rights to try to help them if they're not wanting to do so? And what happens to that individual that's in the system? Like who pays their bills for three months when they're in a treatment facility they can't leave, for example?
00:19:52.800So I would say on, on the rights question, balancing of those rights, you know, carefully and, and with much consultation, um, now this is going to, uh, become relevant to a, a very small number, uh, total number of, of, of individuals.
00:20:10.320and I'll come back to that at the end, that number.
00:20:14.920But this was introduced in the last day of session for a reason
00:20:18.160as we want to continue to have discussion on how to get this piece of legislation right.
00:20:22.940There's three referring bodies, physician, family member, police officer,
00:20:27.240the courts essentially, that can refer someone for treatment.
00:20:32.560How the legislation began, one we saw some other provinces stepping into this space,
00:20:37.960but it was really through talking to families.
00:20:40.320And having family members say, if we just had a way to take our son or our brother and willing to go at one moment, but that addiction is so severe and has essentially taken over their decisions that we could help them.
00:21:03.340And so it's another tool that will be in the toolbox for families and for, you know, for physicians and to streamline some of what already can happen from time to time with the courts in some ways.
00:21:16.900And so it does streamline some of that process.
00:21:20.000I want to come back to the small number of individuals that this would likely impact and kind of in the scope of the rights that we do and don't have.
00:21:33.340Quite often, these will be individuals that have slipped into such a life of addictions that they're being faced with some other rights that might be removed by incarceration because of crimes they may have committed to support that lifestyle.
00:21:47.960And so this is, I think, in many ways, a much better path than being sent to jail, where you actually have an opportunity to enter a recovery lifestyle.
00:21:58.040And so this is about one step, one tool that is available for people to enter that recovery lifestyle.
00:22:04.860And we've talked simply about really two focuses or three points.
00:22:09.480You know, one is to have the capacity of those recovery beds and we have to have them and some will be public, some will be private.
00:22:16.440And then the access points, whether that's the urgent care center, the Compassionate Care Act that'll be coming.
00:22:21.980The complex needs facilities is another access point that we have.
00:22:25.680And then third is enforcement, um, to keep our communities safe and to ensure that, uh, you know, at the very core of all of this investment and initiative that the government has, uh, if we can agree on the fact that the streets are not the safest place for anybody living on the streets, uh, in particular, living on the streets with an addiction, uh, is the most vulnerable place for you to be.
00:23:05.360people that are supporting a life with addictions.
00:23:07.800That's where the investments in police officers
00:23:09.620has come in, whether it be the marshals,
00:23:11.220the 100 municipal officers, or the additional RCMP.
00:23:14.340Uh, and the next step now is to, uh, ensure we're enforcing the law, um, you know, dealers, uh, then people that are making, uh, these, uh, these poisonous drugs available in our communities, they need to be charged.
00:23:26.860Uh, but with respect to those that, uh, unfortunately are living that lifestyle, uh, in, uh, in an addictive state, um, we need, we need to start removing the drugs.
00:23:39.860We hear all too often of a particularly deadly strain of, uh, you know, whatever it is, crystal meth or fentanyl that's available in Saskatoon and killing.
00:23:49.000Uh, and so, you know, the next steps is to work with our enforcement, um, uh, officials, regardless whether they're municipal or marshals or RCMP, uh, and where the drugs are present, it's illegal to have them.
00:24:52.260I won't say his name because I don't say it.
00:24:54.740It's the people, it's those names after they've done their crimes.
00:24:58.140But how closely does the federal government listen to the provinces? Because you're not the only premier screaming, we need tougher bail laws, we need tougher jail sentences, etc. How engaged is the government, and particularly Kearney, because we know the relationship with the Chudeau government was not good between almost any province and the Chudeau government.
00:25:22.420But is, is there a, is there a difference with the Kearney government here, like engaging the provinces on issues like this?
00:25:28.700Yeah, I would, I would say a significant difference just at, I'll get to issues like this in a moment, but on, on engagement and collaboration with the provinces, a significant difference between, uh, the former, uh, the former prime minister, let's say he, who should not be named, uh, and, uh, and, and current prime minister, prime minister Kearney.
00:25:46.420The, you know, the collaboration is appreciated, regardless of the topic.
00:28:40.620We still have, and we can talk statistics all day long,
00:28:45.100I think it's the lowest deficit per capita across the nation,
00:28:48.020second lowest debt to GDP ratio of any province across the nation.
00:28:53.280But what you are truly seeing in the economic sector is economic space is, you know, Saskatchewan and Alberta really taking a different course, I think, with results with respect to many other provinces across Canada.
00:29:06.460That being said, we're feeling some of the impacts of not only the direct decisions of our largest trading partner in the USA on our revenue line, but some of the indirect consequences in countries like China and India and, you know, even interprovincially across the nation as well.
00:29:22.200They're having an impact on our Saskatchewan economy and, and I think more broadly an impact on the Canadian economy.
00:29:27.900And you're seeing that, uh, to some degree, not, it's not just investment, um, numbers that are driving the deficit nationally, but it, it, we have a Canadian economy that in the short term is, you know, it's, it's struggling.
00:29:40.140Uh, it's struggling for, you know, all the reasons that we see on the news, uh, each and every, each and every night.
00:29:45.920I would say just to look out a little farther than the choppy waters that are in front of us.
00:29:53.360Saskatchewan is well positioned in the medium to long term to do very well in providing what the world needs and in the trade relations we have.
00:30:07.720Well, thank you very much for joining me today and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family.
00:30:11.600Thank you. And I wish a very Merry Christmas to you, your family, to all your listeners. And, you know, I just hope everyone does have an opportunity to slow down, enjoy those that they love in their life and find a reason to be thankful.