Western Standard - Smith's save now, spend later plan gets a boost

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00:00:30.000 comes in alberta should build up the heritage fund for the benefit of future generations and i think

00:00:36.100 in theory most people agree with you how long have you been saying that well i seem to recall

00:00:42.380 i'd have to go back and check the records that the first column i wrote on it was in 2001 because i

00:00:47.800 think at that point we made substantial strides in getting our debt to zero or at least putting

00:00:53.940 money aside to pay it off we were at a point where we were reducing taxes and the only missing piece

00:00:58.840 was building that fund up.

00:01:00.500 If I remember what I wrote about at the time,

00:01:02.940 it was that if we had saved the interest

00:01:05.900 and the investment income in that fund,

00:01:07.980 by 2001, it would have been worth already $150 billion.

00:01:11.480 And so I said, well, best time to have started

00:01:13.480 would have been before, next best time is now.

00:01:15.720 And here we are, I guess almost 25 years later,

00:01:19.020 and we are finally starting to do it.

00:01:20.740 So I'm very pleased to finally be able to implement the policy

00:01:23.400 I've been thinking about for decades.

00:01:25.040 So that was really good news this morning

00:01:26.560 when you and Minister Horner announced that

00:01:28.680 with a $2.8 billion contribution today,

00:01:31.460 the fund has, well, you tell us,

00:01:33.360 how big is the fund now?

00:01:35.740 So keep in mind, when we first came in as a government

00:01:38.020 in the 2019-2020 year,

00:01:41.520 the fund was worth $16.3 billion.

00:01:43.580 Can I give a history lesson?

00:01:45.540 Peter Lougheed put $12 billion in the fund,

00:01:48.560 and then they were inflation-proofing it modestly

00:01:51.180 for a period of time.

00:01:52.100 So by the time we came in,

00:01:53.380 it was only at $16.3 billion

00:01:56.100 dollars and with this additional contribution it's now uh it's now at 30 billion dollars which is

00:02:01.180 which just shows the strength of compound interest shows the strength as well of having a little bit

00:02:06.400 of discipline and i think what we're hoping is people will see that if we stick with this policy

00:02:11.080 absolutely by 2050 we'll be able to be at a point where it's worth 250 billion dollars of there

00:02:16.960 abouts and able to generate enough income to help wean us off the royalty roller coaster which

00:02:22.140 everybody has been so concerned about for so many years so i'm really pleased that we're able to make

00:02:25.920 such progress so quickly. Well, let's just talk about, I mean, there are some people who are

00:02:31.000 going to say that according to the fiscal plan released with the budget, spending is up for the

00:02:35.240 year to come. Revenues aren't particularly. Oil prices are not that strong. Gas prices are about

00:02:41.660 where they've been for 15 years. So do we have the room to do this? How does this work?

00:02:46.900 Well, I would tell you, I mean, I think my finance minister has a pretty good line that

00:02:50.720 you don't use your RRSP to pay your grocery bills. You still have to pay your RRSP. You still have to

00:02:56.360 pay down your mortgage. And you also have operational expenses. And that's how we're

00:02:59.740 looking at it, that we can't be sacrificing our long-term fiscal prosperity and the future of our

00:03:05.240 kids and their ability to have a reasonable tax rate on the demands of today. Now, when it comes

00:03:11.260 to today's spending, you have to remember Alberta as a government is a service provider of some

00:03:16.660 pretty important programs that people rely on. We provide healthcare, which is about a $29 billion

00:03:21.540 budget. We provide K-12 education, which is about a $10 billion budget. We provide university support.

00:03:28.080 We also provide social services to our most vulnerable. We provide infrastructure services.

00:03:33.220 And so, yes, it makes sense. As our province continues to grow, as more people come here,

00:03:36.860 more people are going to demand those services. So the budget will go up. Our solution is to be

00:03:41.400 looking for ways that we can reduce duplication, overlap, waste, programs that aren't serving their

00:03:46.320 purpose we go through a process every year of analyzing that so that we can move money from

00:03:50.540 low priority areas to high priority areas and we'll keep on doing that and at the same time

00:03:54.620 we also know especially with the turmoil out there the inflation crisis that we have

00:03:59.060 the tariff threat that people needed a break they needed to have a few more dollars in in order to

00:04:04.180 be able to manage their their household expenses so with the accelerating the income tax cut

00:04:09.100 that'll put fifteen hundred dollars back into the pocket of a two-income family and we think it

00:04:13.500 comes at exactly the right time can't come too soon um premier you you referred to the fact that

00:04:19.760 you had been writing about this from your days on the editorial board at the calgary herald

00:04:24.600 and uh it seems to me that from those days there are quite a number of things that you talked about

00:04:30.880 then which you're doing now which is really rather a remarkable political story but tell us about

00:04:36.460 your passion that you once had for having the voucher system in the health system. Now, I know

00:04:44.320 you've introduced activity-based funding. Does that mean that the person who wants medical treatment

00:04:50.980 is going to have a little shit of paper and they can take their pick of whichever hospital they

00:04:55.760 want to go to to get it done? Well, I don't know if we will go that far initially, but I can tell

00:05:01.660 you what we are going to do with the hospitals. Right now, we do what's called a global budget,

00:05:06.120 which means we give a lump sum of money and then the hospital is supposed to provide all the

00:05:10.460 services, emergency and surgeries and all of the support for patients who need to be in patients.

00:05:16.960 But the problem that we observed is that we were giving more and more money to Alberta Health

00:05:21.720 Services, three and a half billion dollars more, quite frankly, since we became government.

00:05:25.420 And they were doing fewer surgeries this year than they had done back in 2019. Meanwhile,

00:05:31.440 we fund charter surgical centers on an activity basis. They got to do the work in order to get

00:05:36.100 the money. And as a result, we've seen that charter surgical services have increased their

00:05:41.180 number of surgeries from 40,000 to about 65,000 over that same period of time. So that just got

00:05:47.160 us thinking, well, if it's working over in this area of surgical provision, let's do it for

00:05:51.360 everything. And we've already done our first step doing an analysis of how much it costs to deliver

00:05:57.540 basic surgeries for joints at different hospitals. And it's pretty dramatic. We see that there's an

00:06:03.940 average of $8,800 at some of our regional facilities like Medicine Hat and Lethbridge,

00:06:08.980 and then it goes as high as $26,000 per surgery at places like U of A Hospital. So that is really

00:06:15.320 illuminating. What you want to do is you want to find out what the best practices are, and then

00:06:20.460 you want to share those best practices, and you want to get everybody trying to operate within a

00:06:24.960 band for normal types of procedures. There's always going to be the ones that are complicated.

00:06:29.120 You want to reduce complications, and then we want to be able to do more surgeries with the

00:06:32.620 same amount of money. And I think activity-based funding for joints will be the first step,

00:06:36.900 but that's how we want to ultimately fund all of our elective surgeries that are being done in

00:06:41.540 hospitals. Will that open up the way to more surgeries being contracted out to non-AHS

00:06:50.500 facilities? I suspect it might. I mean, this is an opportunity for AHS to really show us what

00:06:56.080 they're made of. We have taken away from AHS all of the things that wasn't their core business.

00:07:01.240 They were managing international medical students.

00:07:04.420 They were saying yes and no over certain primary care functions.

00:07:07.820 They were doing public health.

00:07:09.180 They had Indigenous care as one of their areas.

00:07:13.420 They were doing mental health, addiction, long-term care.

00:07:15.660 It was all jumbled into all of our facilities.

00:07:18.800 And so as a result, they weren't specializing at any of them.

00:07:21.880 So now they are focused on hospital and acute services.

00:07:25.160 They have an advantage in that they do the vast majority of our services right now.

00:07:29.800 We've invested in surgical suites for expansion.

00:07:33.200 They manage most of our hospital facilities.

00:07:36.520 It's up to them.

00:07:37.380 If they want to excel at what their core business is,

00:07:40.320 they will get more surgeries and more dollars.

00:07:42.320 If they don't excel, then it will be other surgical facilities

00:07:45.160 that we're going to use to bridge the gap.

00:07:47.300 So I would say that this is very much on the shoulders

00:07:50.000 of Alberta Health Services to perform, and we're expecting them to.

00:07:53.320 So what they're saying in the food fair where old men in bullcaps 1.00

00:07:56.540 gathered to talk about the politics of the day

00:07:58.680 is fine. Are the wait times coming down? Are the wait times coming down? We're seeing that, yes.

00:08:05.700 I don't have the stats right in front of me, but we were looking at what were the average wait

00:08:10.880 times for knees and hips in particular from one year to the next. And this was, I think we've got

00:08:16.380 Canadian Institute of Health Information Statistics that look at 2023. And why that's important

00:08:21.400 is that they compare with other jurisdictions. And in those areas in particular, in joints,

00:08:27.400 We are seeing that we're doing better on average than most of the other jurisdictions. Still not good enough. What we are aspiring to is that every single person who needs a surgery gets it within a medically recommended period of time. That doesn't necessarily mean tomorrow. It might not even mean a week from now, but most surgical procedures should be done within a few months. And that's where we'd be looking at it.

00:08:49.420 we don't want anybody waiting longer than medically necessary, finding that their condition's getting

00:08:54.000 worse, having to live in pain, suffering with a lower quality of life. That is where we're

00:08:58.720 aspiring to get to. And activity-based funding, along with multiple service providers, are going

00:09:03.820 to allow us to get there. The main thing that we know is nobody really cares where they get their

00:09:08.820 surgery done. They just don't want to have to pay out of pocket, and they just want it done. And

00:09:12.820 that's what we're aspiring to. Let's talk a little bit about Ottawa. Premier, before the last election

00:09:18.640 And nearly three months ago, you laid out what has come to be known as your initial nine demands.

00:09:24.260 Then you said you would suspend judgment on whoever was elected for six months to see how they dealt with it.

00:09:30.460 Now we're talking about things like the repeal of the West Coast tanker ban and the No New Pipelines Act.

00:09:36.620 Well, here we are. We're almost three months along from the election.

00:09:40.480 And it turned out to be Mr. Carney.

00:09:42.460 Carney, do you think Mr. Carney is paying attention to what happens on day one of month seven?

00:09:47.200 Well, the clock is ticking. Remember, they are returning to the legislature and scheduled for September 15th. So we literally are three months away from seeing whether they've taken us seriously and are going to either substantially revise or repeal these nine terrible laws. And it's necessary.

00:10:04.000 I mean, we want to get a bitumen pipeline to the northwest BC coast on the national projects list, because we think that a million barrel a day bitumen pipeline is going to be what we need to get our economy going, not only in Alberta, but also nationally.

00:10:19.960 It bridges a missed opportunity that we had when the Northern Gateway pipeline got cancelled.

00:10:24.660 But in order to have a shiny new pipeline, you need to have producers willing to do the production to put product into it.

00:10:30.760 And unless we get rid of an emissions cap, which is really a production cap, unless we get rid of all the policies that have led to a negative investment climate, we're going to end up failing at the exercise.

00:10:42.900 So that's what we're putting to them, to the prime minister.

00:10:45.640 If we truly want to be an energy superpower, let's send the right signals to the investment community.

00:10:50.360 Let's repeal the terrible laws that have impacted the investment and chased it away.

00:10:54.800 And then we can really start talking about what that collaboration looks like.

00:10:58.600 So three more months, we're going to work with the federal government, but we want to see some action very soon.

00:11:03.240 Well, Mr. Carney would probably say, well, look at the action I've already taken.

00:11:06.120 We forced through Bill C-5, which is how Canada is going to become an energy superpower and rebuild the country, which is a wonderful sentiment.

00:11:15.780 But there were a couple of very clear letouts over indigenous rights and agreement of the provinces, brackets Quebec.

00:11:26.560 So how much confidence or how much encouragement do you take from the passage of that legislation?

00:11:34.400 Do you think Mr. Carney actually has something there that he can do what he says he is going to do?

00:11:39.080 Well, I was pleased to see.

00:11:40.260 I mean, it's not usual to see the official opposition stand with the government on policy.

00:11:45.260 And the fact that the conservatives did, I think that says that we all have some hope that they're going to be heading in the right direction.

00:11:51.500 I think what the projects list does is they need to do something dramatic to tell the investment community, we are here and we want your money back.

00:12:01.780 We want you to take another look at Canada.

00:12:04.080 That's what I think the national projects list is.

00:12:06.560 It's a message to the investment community that the approach is changing in Ottawa.

00:12:12.100 That being said, it is a necessary condition, but it's not sufficient.

00:12:15.340 We need to have all of those other bad policies repealed or, again, substantially revised.

00:12:21.500 if those dollars are going to flow back here.

00:12:23.980 I mean, I'm not the only one saying it.

00:12:25.980 If you look at the letter that the 38 CEOs wrote,

00:12:29.100 they're also reiterating the same issues that we are putting on the table.

00:12:34.160 So I think that the prime minister, he has done some action, but not enough.

00:12:39.400 And so now we've got three more months to see

00:12:41.060 if he's going to move on some of those other important issues.

00:12:44.160 Has he given you any informal cues as to how he's thinking?

00:12:48.640 Well, I would say we're meeting as we've got government officials on our side and they've got some government officials on their side.

00:12:58.800 Remember, he's just got a new chief of staff.

00:13:01.020 He's got a new clerk.

00:13:02.920 So there's been some staffing issues that he's had in place.

00:13:06.200 And so we're going to work the process.

00:13:08.480 We're going to be patient.

00:13:09.120 but we know that we i'm look we we've been able to put forward uh new policy and right legislation

00:13:16.880 in a limited window it is possible so that's what i'm saying i'll i'll be able to maybe tell you in

00:13:23.300 three months time whether or not our efforts have come to fruition in a satisfactory way we're still

00:13:28.500 working on it so last uh not last night the night before and the night before that you were chairing

00:13:34.300 two of alberta next panels one in red deer one in edmonton uh look like a lot of people went look

00:13:41.200 like there was a lot of enthusiasm uh what do you make of what came out of those uh sessions

00:13:48.660 well i was i was really pleased to see that there wasn't a lot of overlap in people

00:13:53.700 in red deer versus uh the one that was just outside sherwood park we we uh sometimes that

00:13:59.820 happens that people get so enthusiastic that they just go around from one to the next to the next

00:14:04.140 and we really do want to get an understanding of how different people living in different

00:14:07.560 communities feel about these same issues. So there's obviously very passionate people who

00:14:12.600 got up to the mic and made their points. And we're, you know, we're grateful even to the ones

00:14:17.580 who don't agree with us that they're willing to have that confidence to tell us what they really

00:14:21.620 think. We've had over 30,000 people who participated in our survey, including over 12,000 that have

00:14:27.460 written in so that those are going to be analyzed to see if there's some good ideas that are coming

00:14:32.300 out of them. But we do know that the six issues that we identified that we wanted to get feedback

00:14:37.260 on, we've been hearing about those for years, if not decades. And we want to know if now's the time

00:14:41.920 for us to move forward on some of them. So I'll be able to tell you a little bit more when we get

00:14:46.120 to the end of the process about how the Albertans that we spoke with felt about it. But some of

00:14:51.600 these items are very likely going to have to go to a province-wide referendum because there are

00:14:55.800 going to be some substantial changes. And we want to make sure that every Albertan has an opportunity

00:14:59.980 to weigh in on a few of these things well talking of substantial changes you were asked i think it

00:15:04.940 was in red there about whether it was time for alberta to pull out of supply management for

00:15:10.640 dairy products and you said it was an idea worth considering uh could you enlarge on that a little

00:15:16.340 i've been annoyed for a long time that alberta producers do not have their share of quota it's

00:15:22.820 it's exactly how this country always works that they kind of locked in uh quebec as the largest

00:15:28.620 producer. And then they also have an increase in the amount of quota that they get as our

00:15:33.100 population increases. I think I read recently that Quebec has 32% of the quota. Albert only

00:15:38.560 has about 7%, even though we were about 12% of the population. So if the idea behind supply

00:15:44.880 management was that the producers in a jurisdiction are supposed to be able to be matched with the

00:15:50.020 consumers, it's just simply not fair. And our producers, if they do want to be able to increase

00:15:54.620 their operation have to pay a much, much higher price for quota. So yeah, I'm annoyed by that.

00:15:59.640 That's just one more example of the way in which a lot of decisions are stacked against Western

00:16:06.120 Canada and Alberta in particular. So the person mentioned if we could opt out of the national

00:16:11.880 system. And I think the implication was, could we create our own provincial system? And I want to

00:16:16.600 talk with the producers and see what they think about that. There's also those who think that

00:16:21.960 we should move to a market-based system altogether.

00:16:24.000 So let's have the conversation.

00:16:25.680 Remember, these are the reasons

00:16:26.680 why we're having these panel discussions

00:16:29.840 is that if there are issues

00:16:31.880 that Albertans want to put on the table

00:16:33.440 and that was an item that came from the audience,

00:16:36.760 then we have to give fair consideration to it.

00:16:39.540 Sure.

00:16:39.980 Last question, Madam Premier.

00:16:41.940 Are there any more ideas from 25 years ago

00:16:45.360 on the editorial board

00:16:46.900 that are going to be pulled forward

00:16:50.040 just as with the Heritage Fund and with the voucher,

00:16:54.880 well, it's not the voucher system, but activity-based funding.

00:16:58.200 Anything else coming forward?

00:16:59.520 I mean, you know me quite well because we used to edit each other's work.

00:17:04.120 But yes, the Heritage Fund was an important one to me.

00:17:07.140 Also, transforming healthcare to make it more with local control,

00:17:13.400 local decision-making, funding following patients, responsive, competitive.

00:17:17.140 there's a whole series of health reforms that we're making in that regard. Also, property rights. As

00:17:22.620 you saw, we did some major changes to our Bill of Rights. I've been wanting to have a clause in there

00:17:28.420 that guarantees just compensation if government takes your stuff for public use. That is one of

00:17:33.520 the big missing pieces that we had in our Bill of Rights, as well as protection for firearms owners.

00:17:38.160 So we put those in there as well. Those are things that I advocated on going all the way back to my

00:17:43.300 property rights advocacy. And I started as well as a landowner advocate, as you may know. And so

00:17:47.940 cleaning up this inactive and suspended well problem that we have. We've got over 200,000

00:17:55.200 wells that have been drilled and not enough of them have been cleaned up and had the land returned

00:17:59.700 back to its natural condition. So that's going to be another major effort that we have to try to get

00:18:04.220 serious about getting that cleaned up so that we can restore the relationship between our oil and

00:18:10.160 gas industry, landowners, municipal governments, and make sure that we're prepared for what might

00:18:15.900 be another boom. I want to see oil and gas production double in this province because I

00:18:20.360 think the world needs more Canada and the world needs more Alberta in particular. And so we do

00:18:26.360 that when we all have a consensus about how we're going to move forward together and balancing the

00:18:30.520 issues around environment and access. And so there's a few more bits of unfinished business

00:18:36.460 that we're going to continue working on.

00:18:38.500 Wonderful.

00:18:39.000 Madam Premier, thank you for being with us today.

00:18:41.620 All the best.

00:18:42.500 You bet.

00:18:42.980 Talk to you soon.

Western Standard - July 18, 2025

Smith's save now, spend later plan gets a boost

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