Western Standard - March 26, 2025


SMITH： I will not be silent, Alberta will not be silent

Topics
trade war
Mentioned
Donald Trump Mark Carney Winston Churchill Tim Houston Scott Moe Doug Ford Frighten Speaker Trudeau Suzuki Gore
It’s election time! Probably. Carney’s Alberta Oil Embargo

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

159.55

Word count

1,534

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Learn English with the Honourable the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein. Ralph Klein delivers a statement in response to the proposed 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods sent to the United States by President Donald Trump. He calls on Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta s premier, Rachel Notley, to speak out against the proposed tariffs.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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.
00:00:00.000 The Honourable the Premier has a statement to make.
00:00:03.680 Thank you Mr. Speaker. When U.S. President Donald Trump first announced his threatened
00:00:08.080 tariffs against Canada and began musing about our country becoming the 51st state,
00:00:12.960 many Canadians and Albertans feared for their futures. And why? Because regardless of our
00:00:18.720 political stripe we all knew that the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods to the U.S.
00:00:25.600 would cost the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, would depress our economy,
00:00:30.320 devastate our budget and damage the sovereignty of our country. And in the roughly four months until
00:00:35.520 just before last weekend's federal election call, Premiers, party leaders and Canadians were united,
00:00:41.760 other than perhaps the Alberta NDP, in working as hard as we could to convince the U.S. President
00:00:47.600 and Congress to reconsider these unjustified actions against our country. In fact, Premiers were all
00:00:53.280 encouraged by each other as well as by the former Prime Minister and his ministers to visit the U.S.,
00:00:59.760 to get on U.S. media, to speak with every U.S. official and influencer we could to convince the U.S.
00:01:06.160 President to refrain from imposing these tariffs. It was all about working as Team Canada for the
00:01:12.160 greater good. Enter Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney. Now all of a sudden it's apparently treason to talk
00:01:18.960 to American media personalities that we disagree with. It is disloyal to try and persuade high-profile
00:01:24.800 Republicans holding influence with the President to abandon his tariff policies on Canada. Indeed,
00:01:30.320 it's a high crime to try and convince U.S. officials to refrain from imposing tariffs until after our
00:01:36.320 country has elected a leader with a strong mandate. Shame on all who dare to speak with the enemy,
00:01:41.680 they now say. These are the Team Carney and NDP talking points. Their end game is quite obvious.
00:01:49.200 Frighten and divide Canadians. Try and make Canadians forget the utter incompetence of Liberal and NDP
00:01:55.200 policies that have been inflicted on this country over the last 10 years. Associate
00:02:01.040 Conservatives with President Trump. And if they play their cards just right and sprinkle in just enough
00:02:06.640 anti-Alberta rhetoric, presto, Canada might elect another Liberal-majority government.
00:02:11.920 Well, the Carney Liberals and the NDP are right about one thing. Our country is indeed vulnerable
00:02:19.200 right now. And the reason why is as clear as a sunny Alberta day. It is because for the last 10 years,
00:02:25.440 Liberal and NDP leaders across this country, both federal and provincial, have repeatedly sold out
00:02:31.760 Canada and Alberta with policies that have landlocked our immense natural resources, made nation-building
00:02:38.640 projects practically impossible to finance and build, and have made securing access to our parts
00:02:44.560 exercise in frustration and futility. These Liberal and NDP leaders, from Trudeau to Singh and now to
00:02:51.600 Prime Minister Mark Carney, have done everything in their power to sow investment uncertainty,
00:02:57.840 to add impossibly high costs on the development of our resources, and have disastrously weakened our
00:03:03.680 security and military. All in the name of their green extremist religion and its cult leaders 1.00
00:03:08.960 named Gibbo, Suzuki, Gore and Thunberg. And the results are obvious. Canadians are poorer than Americans, 0.66
00:03:16.480 overly dependent on the Americans, and vulnerable to many nations, including the Americans. Canada has indeed
00:03:24.080 been sold out. Big time. And it's been sold out by the utter incompetent, self-righteous, and extreme
00:03:29.600 policies of Liberal and NDP leadership across this country, including the Nenshi NDP right here in Alberta.
00:03:36.800 From C-69 to oil and gas production caps, to tanker bans, to a dozen other examples, the Liberals and their
00:03:43.120 allies have attacked the Alberta and Saskatchewan economies mercilessly. And despite all that, despite the 10-year
00:03:50.160 attack on Alberta by our own federal government, when tariffs were threatened on our fellow Canadians
00:03:58.000 and the federal Liberals realized they had no contacts or allies anywhere in the new U.S. administration,
00:04:04.080 what did the Alberta government do? Did we cower in the corner, madly texting our tweets about hating
00:04:09.360 Donald Trump on X? Did we turn into part-time TikTok rage farmers to stir up as much fear and
00:04:16.000 loathing of Americans as humanly possible? Did we give up, throw our hands in the air, express righteous
00:04:21.760 indignation, but do nothing to fight against the threat imposed on our province and country? No, that's
00:04:28.400 what the Nenshi NDP did, of course. But we, Alberta's UCP government, we did not. Instead, our government
00:04:34.480 did exactly what Albertans expected us to do. We decided to fight tooth and nail for Albertan and
00:04:40.320 Canadian jobs and sovereignty. My ministers, officials and I have spent hundreds of hours
00:04:46.000 over the last several months talking with, lobbying, educating and persuading every U.S.
00:04:51.120 lawmaker and media influencer that was willing to listen about how damaging and wrongheaded
00:04:57.520 imposing tariffs on Canada would be for Americans and for the millions of American jobs that would be
00:05:02.560 lost because of them. I've made this case repeatedly to the American people and their leaders, especially
00:05:08.160 Republican leaders, from the U.S. president personally, to members of his cabinet, to senators, to governors,
00:05:13.520 to members of Congress, to podcasters, to media personalities. I've lost track of how many nights
00:05:19.440 I've spent in uncomfortable hotel beds and airports doing everything humanly possible to stand up for
00:05:25.440 Canadian and Alberta workers and families, convincing U.S. officials to refrain from putting tariffs on any
00:05:31.760 Canadian goods. Asking that they respect the current free trade agreement and not begin renegotiations
00:05:38.400 until Canadians elect a new prime minister with a strong four-year mandate. Doing all we could in
00:05:44.560 Alberta to secure the U.S. border and urging the Liberals to do the same across the country so that
00:05:49.600 we could further delay the implementation of tariffs. And it hasn't just been Alberta. Several other
00:05:55.920 premiers, particularly conservative premiers, Premier Scott Moe, Premier Tim Houston, Premier Doug Ford,
00:06:02.800 have been doing the exact same thing. And the results, it has been almost four months since the
00:06:07.520 president first threatened tariffs on Canada. And although steel and aluminum are wrongfully being
00:06:12.640 tariffed at this time, the tariffs on remaining Canadian goods sits at zero today, rather than 25%.
00:06:19.520 And what has the Nenshi NDP done to contribute to this effort? Not a single thing,
00:06:25.440 other than raging against this government for every effort we have taken to protect Albertans.
00:06:30.320 Needless to say, there is not a doubt in my mind that had the Nenshi NDP been in charge during this
00:06:35.440 period, we would likely have long ago been hit with across the board 25% tariffs and lost thousands
00:06:41.200 of Alberta jobs already. Because the NDP have no idea what diplomacy is, as they don't know how to talk
00:06:47.360 constructively or effectively with anyone they disagree with. And glad we never need to find out.
00:06:53.200 Our government's advocacy has made a massive difference for Albertans and for Canadians,
00:06:57.680 and that is a fact. But now, we have another tariff deadline looming on April the 2nd.
00:07:03.120 And I am now off to the US, yet again, to try and speak to Americans, this time through the second
00:07:08.480 largest podcaster in the world, whose audience is made up of exactly the people we need to persuade
00:07:14.400 to convince their president to change course on tariffs against Canada. And what does Team Kearney want me to
00:07:20.080 do? They want me to abandon my post, remain in Alberta and do absolutely nothing to defend our
00:07:25.440 province. They want me to cower in the face of Eastern media pundits and politicians who favour
00:07:30.720 political grandstanding to effective diplomacy. I'm fiercely criticized for going into the lion's den
00:07:36.960 to change the hearts and minds of the very Americans that we need on Canada's side to avoid a trade war with
00:07:43.120 the most powerful economy on earth. They want this lady and Alberta to just sit down and shut up. 1.00
00:07:49.520 Well, here is my response to that. I will not be silent. Alberta will not be silent. We will not be
00:07:56.640 pushed around and called traitors for merely having the courage to actually do something about our
00:08:02.800 nations and provinces predicament other than merely indulging in self-righteous tantrums. And I, for one,
00:08:08.720 will never be silenced by the party in Ottawa that has sold out our beloved province for the last 10
00:08:15.520 years with the help of their NDP collaborators. I have and I always will put Albertans first. And until
00:08:22.160 this danger to Alberta and our economy is passed, they're going to have to have to roll me off off
00:08:27.440 in a stretcher before I will stop fighting for our province and our people. So they can call me in my
00:08:32.960 caucus, whatever name in the dictionary they want. As long as Albertans know that we are fighting for them
00:08:38.000 and their families, we could care less with the members opposite or liberal politicians in Ottawa
00:08:43.120 have to say about us. Because Albertans expect their premier and government to always put Albertans
00:08:48.880 first and lead them through this storm with fearless determination. As Winston Churchill once said,
00:08:55.440 fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. We on this side of the house have made the decision to act
00:09:02.800 with courage so that Alberta may remain forever strong and free.
00:09:15.920 Order, order.