00:01:00.000Well, greetings, friends. I'm Danielle Smith. This is the Danielle Smith Show. Welcome back once again. I'm going to go through some of the topics I explored in my newsletter this weekend. If you haven't had a chance to sign up for that, you can sign up at daniellesmith.ca. In theory, I have archives of my past issues, but in practice, I've been a little bit busy and haven't posted them. So I'm just reminded myself I've got to do that.
00:01:24.000But I got to thinking quite a bit about citizenship this past weekend, especially as we watched in Quebec massive protests taking place on the streets of Montreal.
00:01:34.760And it's odd to me that we have such a controversy taking place over two bills passing in Quebec and our federal politicians are mum about it.
00:01:45.120I think our provincial politicians are kind of mum about it, too.
00:01:47.740and then when the only level of office that decided to stand up against them were our mayors
00:01:51.900everybody got upset because they said well it's not the mayor's job to talk about this so let me
00:01:56.320see if we can if I can walk through some of this with you one of the things I did last week was
00:02:00.560I moderated all right I was a discussant in a presentation by Peter McKinnon I don't know if
00:02:07.800you can see that oh this is the problem with green screen do do do do it was Canada in question
00:02:12.860exploring our citizenship in the 21st century by Peter McKinnon. Now you might recognize the name
00:02:18.460he's a scholar he's the executive director of the school of public policy his wife Janice McKinnon
00:02:23.100was the finance minister in Saskatchewan in the NDP government interestingly but one of the things
00:02:29.360that he explores and I think it's such an important topic is we have spent so much of the last couple
00:02:35.360of years maybe it's been longer than that in identity politics dictated by the left dividing
00:02:42.680us all into groups and dividing us against each other. I mean, I suppose the latest permutation
00:02:49.760of identity politics is, are you vaxxed or are you unvaxxed? And no one is talking about the
00:02:55.080things that unite us. I find it interesting in Saskatchewan, as we mentioned a couple of shows
00:02:59.900ago, that Saskatchewan has formed a new party called Saskatchewan United. And it's not left or
00:03:05.580right conservative or liberal. It's just trying to find the common things that bind people together
00:03:10.640in citizenship? What makes for a Saskatchewan identity? What are the projects you can work on
00:03:16.180together? And that's the thing we need to start talking about in Alberta too, because there really
00:03:21.200is far more that unites us than divides us. And we do have a unique culture in this province.
00:03:27.360I'll show you a few graphs that will underscore just how different we are. And there's a reason
00:03:33.160for it. Even though we continue to get targeted by offensive federal legislation, massive
00:03:38.860cancellation of major projects somehow we just keep ticking along somehow we just keep on going
00:03:45.340and growing and this is going to create a real problem for citizenship in this country we need
00:03:50.620to start talking about what if we're going to have a canadian federation that survives and thrives
00:03:57.100we've got to start talking about the things that unite us rather than the things that divide us
00:04:01.660and you know one of the biggest things that divide us it's quebec let's be honest about it we have
00:04:07.580had a charter of rights and freedoms and a repatriation process of the constitution that
00:04:12.540took place in 1982 they didn't sign on to it and they've been sort of thumbing their noses at the
00:04:17.420rest of the country ever since every single time it's almost like they look for reasons to invoke
00:04:23.260the notwithstanding clause they look for reasons to find some offensive piece of legislation
00:04:29.660that they can say we're passing this anyway and we don't really give a rep what the rest of the0.96
00:04:33.340country says when you look at all of the special ways in which we accommodate quebec and they don't0.93
00:04:39.420really think about the rest of us at all so uh when you look at the quebec identity i think it's
00:04:44.540different than the english-speaking canadian identity and maybe that is one of our foundational
00:04:51.020problems in trying to find something that unifies us as a country is that we've got one particular
00:04:56.940player that doesn't want to play along doesn't want to be part of a unified country and i think
00:05:01.420I'm a bit surprised to see under Francois Legault that they're going in the direction that they are.
00:05:06.580I sort of expected it when Pauline Merroix from 10 years ago attempted to pass the religious charter.
00:05:14.720I kind of thought that was par for the course for the separatists,
00:05:18.700that they were going to try to become more and more insular.
00:05:21.580I had been sold on Francois Legault that he was more of a businessman, that he was more conservative.
00:05:27.020And so I kind of anticipated that he wasn't going to go down that track, and yet he's doing exactly the same thing.
00:05:33.860So when Bill 21 came up last year, we have to ask the question, why did no one want to talk about it at the federal level?
00:05:43.820I wonder if I can share a story with you here.
00:05:47.020I'm going to talk, I'm going to share this story with you because it's not, it's not just me who, who observed that this is one of those areas.
00:05:54.740when anything that involves Quebec, nobody seems to want to actually talk about it. So let me see
00:06:01.320if I can do this for you properly. Okay. Why almost nobody in Ottawa wants to talk about Quebec's new
00:06:08.100language bill? With the prospect of an early election looming, few party leaders are willing
00:06:14.020to cross Premier Legault. So here's what happens. You've got this bill that is coming into place
00:06:20.320that is now going to ensure that no one who wears a religious symbol, a kippah or a turban or a hijab
00:06:29.180or even a Christian cross is allowed to wear that if they're in a position of authority as a public
00:06:34.660servant, police officer, teacher. Now, the interesting thing is that this bill got upheld
00:06:40.040at the highest court level in Quebec, but at the same time, the parts applying to English-speaking
00:06:47.880schools ended up getting struck down. So now it's being appealed to the Supreme Court.
00:06:53.860That is where you ended up with Patrick Brown, interestingly. Let me see if I can find this
00:07:00.060story here. Patrick Brown jumped into the mix and said, I'm having a hard time here. Here we go.
00:07:06.420He jumped into the mix and he challenged the other mayors to put $100,000 each into a legal
00:07:15.120challenge to Bill 21. That's where Jody Gondek, the Calgary mayor, tried to get approval to do
00:07:21.440that as well. So if you had 100 municipalities with $100,000 each challenging Bill 21 at the
00:07:28.340Supreme Court level, it might have some chance of being funded and ultimately being defeated.
00:07:33.360But isn't it interesting? Everybody freaked out at Jody Gondek when she stepped up on this.
00:07:38.360But it isn't. As you can see, Patrick Brown is running for the leadership of the Conservative
00:07:42.240party of canada he he's this is not a partisan issue what this is an issue of is a lack of
00:07:48.640courage is that anyone who wants to win votes in quebec doesn't want to say anything that might
00:07:53.680upset the uh francois legault and and ultimately lose votes but doesn't that tell you something
00:07:59.680about the difference in our two provinces or that province and the rest of the country
00:08:05.600because you can sub in imagine i want to do a bit of a thought exercise with you because
00:08:10.800the what has happened now and i think i i briefly flashed on the screen the the fact that there were
00:08:16.720major protests taking place in quebec on the on the weekend so this is a new bill coming in large
00:08:23.040protests held in downtown montreal against quebec's controversial controversial french language bill
00:08:28.720english speakers say the law will hurt them and restrict access to services in their language so
00:08:33.920what does this bill do and as i'm talking it through imagine any other province coming through
00:08:39.680with legislation like this and what the federal government's reaction would be if they could.
00:08:45.920Now, this bill was initially touted as the bill that would declare Quebec a nation within a nation,
00:08:52.620which you know what I'm all for. If you want to be a nation within a nation, superb, because it
00:08:56.740means that the rest of us can also go down the track of being a nation and within a nation.
00:09:00.080And I want you to get an idea of just how far they are willing to go when they make that
00:09:05.720declaration. By saying they're a nation within a nation, they're basically saying we don't
00:09:10.240actually share any of the things that we agreed to in the Constitution. So here's what they're
00:09:14.800going to do. It says it updates the charter of the French language, which was adopted as
00:09:21.300Bill 101 in 1977. So they've been doing this for some time. Begins by saying that they are going
00:09:27.640to use the notwithstanding clause. So they've already preemptively said that they are going
00:09:33.860to go forward on this bill regardless of what the rest of the population has to say. And so they
00:09:39.420want to have it guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freemasons. When you invoke the0.92
00:09:42.520notwithstanding clause, you have to re-invoke it every five years. They don't seem to have a problem
00:09:46.000doing it. It's so remarkable that the notwithstanding clause is so controversial in every part of the
00:09:50.940country, but in Quebec it's routinely used. So immigrants will have six months to learn French.
00:09:56.360After that, they won't be able to receive services in a language other than French. I am trying to0.99
00:10:02.520imagine how that's going to work. Because I just recently met with a woman who works for the
00:10:07.860Mexican embassy in the last week. She's been providing translation services to the Spanish
00:10:13.400speaking population of temporary foreign workers in our province for, oh, I don't know, about 11
00:10:18.240years. And if you're a temporary foreign worker, it means you're intending to return home. It's
00:10:23.400hard to learn a new language. And so what is it is a person like that going to be criminalized
00:10:29.140trying to provide Spanish translation services to somebody who's a temporary foreign worker in
00:10:35.320Quebec or any other language. So there's one problem. And question is, how are they going
00:10:40.900to enforce it? Well, hold on a second. We'll get right to that. Only historic Anglophones will be
00:10:46.220able to attend English school. So if you want your child to, because part of what happens when0.92
00:10:52.160you're trying to learn a second language is you learn one language at home and then you send your
00:10:57.200child to school so they can become bilingual in the other language. What they're basically saying
00:11:01.540here is they do not want Francophone children to become bilingual because it's going to be harder
00:11:09.040if you cannot send your child to an English school for them to learn English. The number of students
00:11:13.380allowed to attend English CGIPs, we don't have that here. I think that's more of an Ontario and
00:11:17.900Quebec thing. It's a pre-university prep school, vocational school, so it seems like it's a bit of
00:11:23.020mix of a college and university preparatory. But the number of English students is going to be
00:11:29.440capped at 17.5%. You can imagine what that means. If they're going to cap that, it means then over
00:11:36.020time they're also going to reduce the number, would be my anticipation, until when? I don't know,
00:11:42.240zero. Temporary foreign workers' children will only be allowed to attend English school for three
00:11:48.660years. So if you do have a temporary foreign worker who is attending school, they can attend
00:11:53.600English school, but if they stay longer than three years, then bang, they've got to go over0.90
00:11:57.400onto the Francophone side. Services to the public have to be provided in French, and employees must
00:12:03.220not be required to speak French. Now, when I said, how are they going to force this? Oh, the ever
00:12:08.660popular snitch line will be trotted out again. There'll be a snitch line if Francophone feels1.00
00:12:15.560that the right to communicate in French was violated. And as we've seen, people love to
00:12:20.500use that snitch line to rat on their neighbors. So you're going to see all kinds of folks trying
00:12:26.140to provide translation services to people who don't have the facility and anything other than
00:12:30.660their mother tongue, I guess, getting arrested, getting fined. Another one here is the language
00:12:36.560police. And they do actually have an office for the language police. It's called the
00:16:05.700Why is it that we continue, us, the rule followers out West, we continue to be punished
00:16:11.680and Quebec can do whatever it is they want without having any conditions placed on the
00:16:17.640grants that are given to them. The other reason that I care about this is because there is a,
00:16:23.620there is a, at some point, we are going to have to confront the reality that this country cannot
00:16:31.240continue operating in the future under the constitutional rules that we currently have.
00:16:37.440Now, I haven't spoken that much about federal reform, and I haven't spoken that much about the composition of the Senate and the House of Commons and the Supreme Court and the dysfunctionality that it creates in the country.
00:16:52.160But I had cause after reading Peter McKinnon's book to really take a closer look at this again, because there's a breaking point coming that nobody seems to want to talk about.
00:17:03.580In fact, I read a C2C journal article from a few years ago in 2014, where they said that the only reason to open up the Constitution was to try to bring Quebec back in to sign on.
00:17:16.740And we had the failed Leach-Lake Accord and the failed Charlottetown Accord, and no one wants to open the Constitution again.
00:17:25.140we can't leave it anymore. Because if you go through and read the Constitution, it's very
00:17:29.600clear that the conception of Canada was of two founding nations. And the two founding nations
00:17:36.880of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, were developed enough at that time
00:17:42.960that they deserved to mention. But the rest of us were the colonies. We had only 160,000 people
00:17:49.720in alberta at the time that we became a province in 1905 and quebec in 1905 had 1.65 million so
00:17:58.040they were 10 times their size so you can see under those circumstances that that might have been a
00:18:03.000perfectly legitimate way to run the country from the center because there was a lot of resources
00:18:08.200out here but not a lot of people fair enough but i want to i want to show you what is going to be
00:18:13.160happening over time. And then you tell me if the status quo that we have under the rules of our
00:18:20.060country, and you tell me whether or not you think that those are going to hold up. So look at this.
00:18:24.300So this is a population projection for Canada by province in 2020 and 2043. I know these numbers
00:18:32.460are a bit small, so let me read them. So clearly, Ontario is going to continue to be the number one
00:18:38.600destination for newcomers and growth and population. I don't think any of us should be1.00
00:18:44.180surprised by that. And look at what's happening in Quebec. So Quebec is expected to grow from
00:18:50.1208.5 million, call it, I'm going to just round the numbers to make it easy, to 9.5 million in
00:18:58.0802043. But look at what happens in British Columbia. British Columbia grows from 5.1
00:19:05.480million to about 6.2 million. But look what happens to Alberta. Alberta is set to grow from
00:19:11.5004.4 million up to 6.6 million. And by 2043, be the third most populous province. We're going to
00:19:19.840end up overtaking British Columbia. Now, why in the world do you think that StatsCan didn't project
00:19:28.060out past 2043? Why did they only project out 25 years? Well, McLean's did that work for us.
00:19:35.440They did a study back in 2014 looking at these numbers. I remember 2014 was before the great
00:19:41.460collapse of our oil and gas prices. So that'll be relevant for the next slide I show. And they're
00:19:47.940kind of cute the way they look at this. They say this is our completely unscientific look at a
00:19:52.080very distant future. Projections being what projections are. I mean, part of what you can do
00:19:57.280with population projections is we've got a pretty good idea based on our growth pattern. It would
00:20:04.760take something fairly catastrophic to catch us off our stride and something fairly remarkable for0.66
00:20:11.400Quebec to be off the stride, especially now. I mean, look what Quebec is doing. I'd be surprised
00:20:15.640if they even grow that much over the course of the next 25 years, because clearly they're wanting
00:20:20.960to create an environment where it is going to be unattractive for people to move to Quebec.
00:20:26.260They don't really want anyone to move to Quebec unless they're going to be French speakers, whereas Alberta, our attitude is let her rip.0.91
00:20:34.640Let's have as many people here as possible. Let's continue to grow our economy and let's continue to grow.
00:20:39.240So someone asked me the question why I would put any faith in these projections.
00:20:45.260And I think we just have to understand that we are growing as a country.
00:20:50.360We can look at what has happened in other jurisdictions.
00:20:52.320We can see what has happened historically and get a pretty good idea that at some point in the future, Alberta's population is going to be higher than Quebec's.
00:21:03.220Now, McLean's here in their unscientific projection, just based on the same numbers that they plugged in from StatsCanon, just going on a little bit further, they suggest that's going to happen by the early 2050s.
00:21:17.060But here's the other interesting part is this is the GDP figures. They believe that our GDP
00:21:24.320is actually going to surpass Quebec's much earlier than that. And I have been watching
00:21:29.420these numbers for some time because we were pretty close a couple of years ago prior to us going into
00:21:35.580the COVID crisis, which hit us harder, obviously, than it hit Quebec. So the numbers right now,
00:21:43.040I think I looked them up, are 378 billion is the size of the Quebec economy. 323 billion is the
00:21:50.740size of the Alberta economy. So we're half the population, but we almost have the same GDP. We
00:21:55.160will surpass them as the second largest economy in the country very shortly. And then what?
00:22:04.640Well, isn't that the question? Because part of what we've been watching is that Quebec is doing
00:22:11.980everything it can to maintain the structure of the House of Commons, the Senate, and the Supreme
00:22:18.500Court that we have right now. But if you're looking out into the future, and there is a group
00:22:23.180out there that proposes that Canada is going to get to 100 million people by 2100, that's sort of
00:22:30.540a big, aggressive projection for 2100. Not impossible to achieve when you think of how
00:22:37.280small our population is and how large our land base is. But that future also contemplates Alberta
00:22:43.660being the second largest, most populous province behind Ontario. And we already are going to be
00:22:51.400the largest GDP. And so it'll be even more so by then. We'll be on our way to catching up with
00:22:56.920Ontario at that time. So how, I ask you, can we continue operating this country on the basis of
00:23:04.600rules that we currently have in place let me look at the house of commons first so house of commons
00:23:09.480some of you are wondering why it is we keep on protecting quebec so so look what's happening
00:23:15.160quebec under the existing seat allocation if we were doing it just by population should only have
00:23:22.76071 seats but because of historical factors and representation factors they're going to get 77
00:23:29.000and they're raising a stink about that because they're losing one seat they have 78 currently
00:23:32.600and they don't think they should lose any at all. Meanwhile, Alberta gets 37 seats. So is anyone
00:23:38.740going to seriously argue? This is a question I put to you. If we entrench these rules now and we see
00:23:43.880this projection going forward, is anyone going to seriously argue that when Alberta is the second
00:23:48.580most populous province and the second largest economy that Quebec should have a greater number
00:23:54.700of seats than we do? Is someone really going to put forward that argument seriously? If you then
00:24:00.680go on and look at a couple of the other factors. Look at the Senate seats. I don't know if I have
00:24:05.140the Senate seats here. I might. Hold on. Let me see if I can find that for you. Yeah, I can find
00:24:09.880the Senate seats for you here as well. So you can have a quick look at what we have on the Senate
00:24:15.860because the Senate is the one that really chaps me up. And there's good reason for that. So look
00:24:22.400at where we're at with our Senate seats. And Burt Brown, bless his heart, he emblazoned into his
00:24:28.220field, the triple E acronym years ago when he was trying to fight this battle. And here's what
00:24:35.400the set number of senators that we have based on history. So Ontario has 24 seats. Quebec has 24
00:24:44.100seats. I'll return to that in just a minute. British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
00:24:51.780we've got 24 seats in total but six seats each look at this nova scotia new brunswick each have
00:24:59.94010 seats they both have less than a million population but they each have 10 senate seats
00:25:04.580prince edward island has four newfoundland and labrador has six if you actually add in what you
00:25:10.180have in the atlantic region it was initially the maritimes had 24. they added in newfoundland and
00:25:16.180labrador and then didn't reshuffle any of this around so now the uh atlantic the uh atlantic
00:25:22.020region has 30 senate seats to the west's 24. i'll continue on and get back to that in a second
00:25:30.180northwest terry territories has one yukon has one nudibin has one now just play a little exercise
00:25:35.460with me here so we go out to early 2050s alberta has the second largest economy in uh in canada
00:25:44.340and has the second largest population so you're seriously going to tell me that when that is our
00:25:49.860reality alberta is going to have six senate seats and quebec is going to have 24. you're going to
00:25:56.740seriously tell me that the mayor the atlantic region which already has only half of our
00:26:01.380population is going to continue to have 30 senate seats and alberta is going to have six
00:26:07.700when we are the second most populous province and the second largest economy like it's
00:26:14.340Am I the only one who sees how absurd this is getting? So let me also then go to the Supreme
00:26:20.840Court, because this is vitally important. This is existential for us, because I'm
00:26:26.440stunned and astonished by the number of commentators after Bill C-69 was rejected
00:26:34.260in an advisory ruling from our Alberta Court of Appeal. The number who have said, well,
00:26:41.240going to go to the supreme court of canada anyway and it's it's going to be rejected now remember
00:26:45.960how the supreme court is composed it's got nine judges including the chief justice of canada
00:26:52.040all of whom it's a they have to have tenure standing blah blah blah but the relevant part
00:26:57.160of here is where do they come from the cabinet that's what governor and council is the cabinet
00:27:02.920has appointed three judges from ontario two from the western provinces so alberta doesn't even get
00:27:10.120a guarantee of one of those two because it's two from one of the four western provinces
00:27:15.080or northern canada oh jeepers like brought it out even further and one from the atlantic provinces
00:27:21.080and why is that because three of them have to come from quebec so let's just one more time walk this
00:27:28.840through you're going to tell me that in the early 2050s when alberta is the second most populous
00:27:35.400province with the second largest economy, that we're going to persist with the situation where
00:27:41.260the nine Supreme Court judges, we don't get to appoint a single one and Quebec continues to
00:27:46.920appoint three. How can people not see that we are on a collision course here? That this is part of
00:27:54.960the reason why there is an enormous amount of pushback against the current status quo, because
00:28:04.200these are the numbers everybody is looking at. And it gets even worse than that. I think I have
00:28:09.340one more that I want to show you because while we have been struggling since 2015 over the last
00:28:17.600number of years, while we've been struggling and running deficits and racking up debt, Quebec has
00:28:24.360just been having a grand old time. They, as you know, have been running surpluses. They've started
00:28:29.880their own sovereign wealth fund so that they can sock money aside because they're having all of
00:28:34.820these additional surpluses and they are apparently the economic powerhouse of Canada. So let me
00:28:42.880share with you this story. If you didn't see it, it came out a couple of weeks ago or maybe a
00:28:48.760couple of months ago. I'll tell you the story. How Quebec became Canada's economic powerhouse
00:28:53.400in the middle of a pandemic. Quebec has been laying a foundation for an economic renaissance
00:28:59.780for a decade, writes David Olive. Here's how it outpaced every other province last year.
00:29:05.000So for the first time in history, economic growth in Quebec last year outpaced every other province
00:29:08.880with GDP growth of more than 6% in 2021. Quebec is expected to have posted a pandemic economic
00:29:16.200recovery more powerful than that of the United States, the European Union, as well as its
00:29:21.580Canadian peers. Those numbers become official in a couple of weeks, but Quebec's strong performance
00:29:26.560in the first three quarters of 2021 alone ensures it the crown now how is it that they are doing
00:29:32.800this so one of the major factors is that they do a massive amount of economic support for so they've
00:29:40.720got economic diversity knowledge economy migration but look at this abundance of business capital so
00:29:48.400we are struggling in alberta to attract business capital because of environment social governance
00:29:54.880and we are on the dog list because of our energy sector and a number of divestment campaigns are
00:30:02.160taking place to try to starve out our industry but business is booming in quebec and why is that
00:30:08.480it finances their ambitions their ambitions with an unmatched array of deep-pocketed funders that
00:30:14.560includes the castle de paul placement de quebec uh investment uh investment quebec and labor-back
00:30:21.520fond de solidaire ftq so among the companies it's nurtured over the years they've got a whole bunch
00:30:26.480of new national darlings nuve cope edify ndt uh cae which is an and element testing that's uh
00:30:34.080the circle case uh trucking company tfi international and so here's what's happening
00:30:39.920my friends what is happening is that we are sending an additional amount of money to ottawa
00:30:46.960from this province and we know it's been substantial i think it's something in the
00:30:50.000order of $600 billion over the last 40 years. Ottawa then takes the lion's share of that money
00:30:56.000and sends it to Quebec. Quebec uses that money to subsidize its business community,
00:31:01.600and its business community then ends up growing into these international rock stars that then
00:31:07.040continue on being able to grow internationally and attract even more investment capital.
00:31:12.080So we are, at the same time, they then asked to impose additional restrictions on Alberta that prevent us from being able to raise capital.
00:31:32.860Because we have a mandate from the people to end equalization.
00:31:37.000We have two offensive bills, Bill 21 and Bill 96, that are offside with Canadian values that give us the justification for saying, sorry, we are not going to underwrite programs in your province that are done in a way that are not embracing of Canadian values, and therefore we are going to stop paying equalization to underwrite this effort.
00:32:02.440Why is no one saying that? That's the obvious thing to say. But even secondarily, is that if we are going to continue to see these demographic trends go the way they are, we have to stop saying nobody wants to open up the Constitution again.
00:32:17.180yes we do because if we don't open up the constitution and refederate and solve some
00:32:22.780of these problems now asserting alberta and british columbia as equal economic partners
00:32:28.700in confederation we are going to end up with more and more division like we're getting to a breaking
00:32:32.940point here it may still be another decade away and politicians being what politicians are they
00:32:39.660only want to look forward to the next election cycle but we certainly we built a constitution
00:32:45.260unfortunately on principles that uh uh do not stand the test of time i suppose we can forgive
00:32:52.940our founders for not believing or understanding that alberta would develop a kind of culture that
00:33:01.020continues to thrive and it's you have to understand this doesn't happen by accident
00:33:06.620alberta we can we can say that we have uh resource development and we've got an abundance of
00:33:12.860resources but look what's happened over the last number of years we haven't been able to expand
00:33:16.300them nearly as much as we wanted to there are a lot of stories in the world of basket cases
00:33:21.340that have a an amount of of natural resource wealth just look at venezuela how they can't
00:33:26.860even get it out of the ground the the reason we are able to to develop our resources for the
00:33:33.820benefit of our people is because of the culture that we have built here a culture of people who
00:33:39.500want to be entrepreneurial who want to be innovative who want to solve problems and a
00:33:44.300government who in most of its history has provided a clear path forward for doing that for creating
00:33:50.380a relatively less cumbersome regulatory environment although in the stories i hear that's not perfect
00:33:57.420but certainly a low tax regime as well people want to live here we've got a lower cost of living
00:34:01.660we've got a lower cost of housing and we've got beautiful mountains two uh great cities to give
00:34:07.580you an option of where to live multiple different uh larger mid-sized communities to develop we're
00:34:12.700only going to keep on growing we've got we've got everything you could possibly imagine when it
00:34:17.100comes to energy uh coal oil natural gas when it comes to forestry products when it comes to food
00:34:23.500products our food producers are produce the whole array of products in in livestock as well as in
00:34:29.420greenhouses and so we've got we've kind of got it all here and that's the reason why as long as we
00:34:35.900are allowed to continue to grow and attract capital and not be punished unnecessarily by
00:34:41.260an unfair confederation we're going to continue to grow so when is when is the breaking point
00:34:46.220when does somebody say we've got to find the things that unite us as a country and if quebec
00:34:52.300wants to go its own way as nation within a nation status then we've got to figure out what the rest
00:34:57.820of us do in the country if if that's going to be the relationship where essentially they'll keep
00:35:02.700the Canadian dollar, keep the Canadian passport and do their own thing, then we have to stop
00:35:07.340placating to them. Maybe they should stop sending representatives to the House of Commons altogether
00:35:11.900and we can just have bilateral trade agreements with them. Maybe if that's what they want,
00:35:16.300then maybe we should figure out a new form of partnership that doesn't have all of our
00:35:21.420politicians chasing their tails trying to win seats in Quebec when their values are completely
00:35:26.300opposite from the rest of the country because that's creating more division. If we're going
00:35:29.740going to find the kind of things that bind us as a nation. We have to talk about citizenship that we
00:35:34.300can all buy into. We have to find the unifying themes that we can all buy into. And if Quebec
00:35:38.700doesn't want to play ball, then I think we've got to accept that reality. And we've got to figure
00:35:43.100out a way to redraft the constitution so that it's fair to those of us who do want this country to
00:35:49.340work. All right, guys, that's all for me for today. And I'd love to get your feedback. You can always
00:35:54.300feel free to send me an email danielle daniellesmith.ca you can go on to my website daniellesmith.ca
00:36:00.220sign up for my newsletter and we'll talk to you again on wednesday oh what's happening wednesday
00:36:04.940well wednesday is the day of the uh leadership count on the vote my i'm hearing from uh little
00:36:11.740birds that there was about 30 000 votes that turned out of the 59 000 so what does that mean
00:36:18.780if only 50% turned out. That sounds like a very high apathy number to me. And they haven't started
00:36:25.220counting them yet. And so we don't really have any idea of which way it's going to go. It depends
00:36:28.980on who you talk to. If you talk to Premier Jason Kenney backers, say he's going to get 60%.
00:36:35.060If you talk to those who are not Jason Kenney backers, they say he's going to get 43%.
00:36:39.460So it'll be somewhere between those numbers. And I guess we'll see what happens on Wednesday night.
00:36:44.340Anyway, we'll tune in and talk more about that on Wednesday. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm
00:36:47.760Danielle Smith. This has been The Danielle Smith Show.