Western Standard - November 04, 2023


‘She has a wider message than Alberta’

Topics
parental rights motion
Mentioned
Christine Cusinelli Danielle Smith Christine Cicinelli Alison Redford Nigel
UCP 2023 AGM Update UCP AGM Day 2

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

196.06

Word count

856

Sentence count

61


Summary

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

In this special edition of the Western Standard, former minister Christine Cusinelli joins me to talk about the Alberta Premier's Speech from the Throne, her thoughts on parental rights and the Alberta Pension Plan, and her hopes for the future of the province.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 With me here now, ladies and gentlemen, is another veteran of the Alberta politics,
00:00:08.260 Minister of Tourism, 10 years ago, when I think Alison Redford was Premier.
00:00:14.700 Thank you to welcome Christine Cusinelli, who has just watched the Premier's speech.
00:00:20.440 How did she do, Christine?
00:00:21.940 Well, you know, I served with Premier Smith.
00:00:24.660 I was going to say Danielle.
00:00:26.360 And you know what?
00:00:27.340 I have to say I'm a huge fan.
00:00:28.640 When I think about the words that she spoke today, I happen to be at the speech from the
00:00:35.620 throne on Monday as well.
00:00:37.320 And she's definitely paralleling the same speech.
00:00:40.860 And I think that what we have to look forward to is a Premier that is actually going to be
00:00:45.460 very open-minded.
00:00:46.960 She's going to be listening to people.
00:00:48.780 To me, her promise is not just a statement.
00:00:52.320 It is actually something that she's going to follow through on.
00:00:54.720 So I am so proud to see a woman take the lead like she's been doing and showing a government
00:01:01.720 that I think in the very near future is going to express itself to Albertans as being agile
00:01:06.940 and really ready to make sure that they are open for business and that people are going
00:01:11.380 to be drawn to Alberta.
00:01:12.660 We are seeing, I think, on the horizon an economic huge boom.
00:01:16.640 And I think that a lot of it is going to be attributed to the moves and the decisions that
00:01:21.780 she's going to be making in the very near future.
00:01:23.520 One of the languages in her speech seemed to be directed outside of Alberta.
00:01:28.900 It's almost like she was making a pitch for national notice.
00:01:33.040 Did you get that impression?
00:01:34.300 Well, and that's just what we need right now.
00:01:36.340 Less Ottawa, more Alberta.
00:01:38.320 So I'm pretty happy to hear that.
00:01:40.120 And I think a lot of Albertans are feeling the same way right now.
00:01:42.860 So the biggest ovation that she got was for parental rights.
00:01:47.460 I look at that and I see the potential for blowback because people who are on the other
00:01:53.700 side of that issue are very vocal and very committed.
00:01:56.940 And I also noticed that she didn't have anything to say about the Alberta pension plan.
00:02:01.340 Do you think these two issues together could be a serious problem for her as she goes forward?
00:02:06.900 Well, I have a lot of confidence in how she's going to manage and handle the outcome of both
00:02:12.180 of those.
00:02:12.740 So let's break it down.
00:02:13.880 The first one being the parental rights.
00:02:15.560 This is a topic that's been around a long time.
00:02:18.220 I spent over 20 years in education and I worked for a Catholic system.
00:02:23.240 And in the Catholic system, we were always proponents of parents being the primary educators
00:02:28.600 of their children.
00:02:29.800 And I think that it is high time that we start talking about this at the level of government
00:02:34.680 because it has long been a piece that people have been able to take for granted.
00:02:39.540 And I feel like with some of the rhetoric that's going on out there, it is no longer something
00:02:43.620 that we can take for granted.
00:02:44.700 And just like she stood up to Ottawa, she is now standing up to some of this extreme talk
00:02:50.080 about who is going to be educating children in our schools when, in fact, the most important
00:02:55.440 primary person to be educating kids is their parents.
00:02:59.400 So that's my stance on that.
00:03:00.200 Do you think this motion is going to pass?
00:03:02.060 I think so.
00:03:03.500 I hope so.
00:03:04.140 I mean, obviously in the room, this was the appetite for it.
00:03:07.500 And I, for one, am a big supporter of parental rights and education.
00:03:12.660 You're on the pension plan.
00:03:14.240 Do you think that's got wings?
00:03:15.460 Well, you know what I love about it is that there isn't this sort of like hardline approach
00:03:20.860 to, oh, this is the direction we're going in.
00:03:23.100 And there's a lot of people who are out there touting, oh, stay hands off of my CPP.
00:03:28.140 But this is a question that she is putting before the electorate to say, you know what?
00:03:32.960 I'm going to consult with you.
00:03:34.500 I want to hear what you have to say.
00:03:36.860 And in the end, that's how government is going to govern and make decisions.
00:03:41.060 That's a huge difference from governments in the past where there is a kind of a, even
00:03:46.620 in the government that I served in, which I can admit, it came across to the public that
00:03:50.940 we were just making decisions because these were, you know, this is the direction we wanted
00:03:56.180 to go in.
00:03:57.040 And you have to have that grassroots perspective.
00:03:59.440 And I feel like Danielle Smith is going to be agile and be able to listen to the grassroots.
00:04:05.380 And we're going to see a lot of really, really great things happen.
00:04:07.960 Whether or not it passes really doesn't matter.
00:04:10.120 We're giving opportunity to everybody to have a say.
00:04:13.220 Isn't that what democracy is about?
00:04:15.320 Absolutely.
00:04:16.160 Christine Cicinelli, thank you very much for dropping by the Western Standard.
00:04:19.740 Always my pleasure, Nigel.
00:04:21.320 Thanks so much.