Western Standard - The Danielle Smith Show - May 16, 2022

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Well, 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.

00:01:24.000 But 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.

00:01:34.760 And 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.

00:01:45.120 I think our provincial politicians are kind of mum about it, too.

00:01:47.740 and then when the only level of office that decided to stand up against them were our mayors

00:01:51.900 everybody got upset because they said well it's not the mayor's job to talk about this so let me

00:01:56.320 see if we can if I can walk through some of this with you one of the things I did last week was

00:02:00.560 I moderated all right I was a discussant in a presentation by Peter McKinnon I don't know if

00:02:07.800 you can see that oh this is the problem with green screen do do do do it was Canada in question

00:02:12.860 exploring our citizenship in the 21st century by Peter McKinnon. Now you might recognize the name

00:02:18.460 he's a scholar he's the executive director of the school of public policy his wife Janice McKinnon

00:02:23.100 was the finance minister in Saskatchewan in the NDP government interestingly but one of the things

00:02:29.360 that he explores and I think it's such an important topic is we have spent so much of the last couple

00:02:35.360 of years maybe it's been longer than that in identity politics dictated by the left dividing

00:02:42.680 us all into groups and dividing us against each other. I mean, I suppose the latest permutation

00:02:49.760 of identity politics is, are you vaxxed or are you unvaxxed? And no one is talking about the

00:02:55.080 things that unite us. I find it interesting in Saskatchewan, as we mentioned a couple of shows

00:02:59.900 ago, that Saskatchewan has formed a new party called Saskatchewan United. And it's not left or

00:03:05.580 right conservative or liberal. It's just trying to find the common things that bind people together

00:03:10.640 in citizenship? What makes for a Saskatchewan identity? What are the projects you can work on

00:03:16.180 together? And that's the thing we need to start talking about in Alberta too, because there really

00:03:21.200 is far more that unites us than divides us. And we do have a unique culture in this province.

00:03:27.360 I'll show you a few graphs that will underscore just how different we are. And there's a reason

00:03:33.160 for it. Even though we continue to get targeted by offensive federal legislation, massive

00:03:38.860 cancellation of major projects somehow we just keep ticking along somehow we just keep on going

00:03:45.340 and growing and this is going to create a real problem for citizenship in this country we need

00:03:50.620 to start talking about what if we're going to have a canadian federation that survives and thrives

00:03:57.100 we've got to start talking about the things that unite us rather than the things that divide us

00:04:01.660 and you know one of the biggest things that divide us it's quebec let's be honest about it we have

00:04:07.580 had a charter of rights and freedoms and a repatriation process of the constitution that

00:04:12.540 took place in 1982 they didn't sign on to it and they've been sort of thumbing their noses at the

00:04:17.420 rest of the country ever since every single time it's almost like they look for reasons to invoke

00:04:23.260 the notwithstanding clause they look for reasons to find some offensive piece of legislation

00:04:29.660 that they can say we're passing this anyway and we don't really give a rep what the rest of the 0.96

00:04:33.340 country says when you look at all of the special ways in which we accommodate quebec and they don't 0.93

00:04:39.420 really think about the rest of us at all so uh when you look at the quebec identity i think it's

00:04:44.540 different than the english-speaking canadian identity and maybe that is one of our foundational

00:04:51.020 problems in trying to find something that unifies us as a country is that we've got one particular

00:04:56.940 player that doesn't want to play along doesn't want to be part of a unified country and i think

00:05:01.420 I'm a bit surprised to see under Francois Legault that they're going in the direction that they are.

00:05:06.580 I sort of expected it when Pauline Merroix from 10 years ago attempted to pass the religious charter.

00:05:14.720 I kind of thought that was par for the course for the separatists,

00:05:18.700 that they were going to try to become more and more insular.

00:05:21.580 I had been sold on Francois Legault that he was more of a businessman, that he was more conservative.

00:05:27.020 And so I kind of anticipated that he wasn't going to go down that track, and yet he's doing exactly the same thing.

00:05:33.860 So 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?

00:05:43.820 I wonder if I can share a story with you here.

00:05:47.020 I'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.

00:05:54.740 when anything that involves Quebec, nobody seems to want to actually talk about it. So let me see

00:06:01.320 if I can do this for you properly. Okay. Why almost nobody in Ottawa wants to talk about Quebec's new

00:06:08.100 language bill? With the prospect of an early election looming, few party leaders are willing

00:06:14.020 to cross Premier Legault. So here's what happens. You've got this bill that is coming into place

00:06:20.320 that is now going to ensure that no one who wears a religious symbol, a kippah or a turban or a hijab

00:06:29.180 or even a Christian cross is allowed to wear that if they're in a position of authority as a public

00:06:34.660 servant, police officer, teacher. Now, the interesting thing is that this bill got upheld

00:06:40.040 at the highest court level in Quebec, but at the same time, the parts applying to English-speaking

00:06:47.880 schools ended up getting struck down. So now it's being appealed to the Supreme Court.

00:06:53.860 That is where you ended up with Patrick Brown, interestingly. Let me see if I can find this

00:07:00.060 story here. Patrick Brown jumped into the mix and said, I'm having a hard time here. Here we go.

00:07:06.420 He jumped into the mix and he challenged the other mayors to put $100,000 each into a legal

00:07:15.120 challenge to Bill 21. That's where Jody Gondek, the Calgary mayor, tried to get approval to do

00:07:21.440 that as well. So if you had 100 municipalities with $100,000 each challenging Bill 21 at the

00:07:28.340 Supreme Court level, it might have some chance of being funded and ultimately being defeated.

00:07:33.360 But isn't it interesting? Everybody freaked out at Jody Gondek when she stepped up on this.

00:07:38.360 But it isn't. As you can see, Patrick Brown is running for the leadership of the Conservative

00:07:42.240 party of canada he he's this is not a partisan issue what this is an issue of is a lack of

00:07:48.640 courage is that anyone who wants to win votes in quebec doesn't want to say anything that might

00:07:53.680 upset the uh francois legault and and ultimately lose votes but doesn't that tell you something

00:07:59.680 about the difference in our two provinces or that province and the rest of the country

00:08:05.600 because you can sub in imagine i want to do a bit of a thought exercise with you because

00:08:10.800 the what has happened now and i think i i briefly flashed on the screen the the fact that there were

00:08:16.720 major protests taking place in quebec on the on the weekend so this is a new bill coming in large

00:08:23.040 protests held in downtown montreal against quebec's controversial controversial french language bill

00:08:28.720 english speakers say the law will hurt them and restrict access to services in their language so

00:08:33.920 what does this bill do and as i'm talking it through imagine any other province coming through

00:08:39.680 with legislation like this and what the federal government's reaction would be if they could.

00:08:45.920 Now, this bill was initially touted as the bill that would declare Quebec a nation within a nation,

00:08:52.620 which you know what I'm all for. If you want to be a nation within a nation, superb, because it

00:08:56.740 means that the rest of us can also go down the track of being a nation and within a nation.

00:09:00.080 And I want you to get an idea of just how far they are willing to go when they make that

00:09:05.720 declaration. By saying they're a nation within a nation, they're basically saying we don't

00:09:10.240 actually share any of the things that we agreed to in the Constitution. So here's what they're

00:09:14.800 going to do. It says it updates the charter of the French language, which was adopted as

00:09:21.300 Bill 101 in 1977. So they've been doing this for some time. Begins by saying that they are going

00:09:27.640 to use the notwithstanding clause. So they've already preemptively said that they are going

00:09:33.860 to go forward on this bill regardless of what the rest of the population has to say. And so they

00:09:39.420 want to have it guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freemasons. When you invoke the 0.92

00:09:42.520 notwithstanding clause, you have to re-invoke it every five years. They don't seem to have a problem

00:09:46.000 doing it. It's so remarkable that the notwithstanding clause is so controversial in every part of the

00:09:50.940 country, but in Quebec it's routinely used. So immigrants will have six months to learn French.

00:09:56.360 After that, they won't be able to receive services in a language other than French. I am trying to 0.99

00:10:02.520 imagine how that's going to work. Because I just recently met with a woman who works for the

00:10:07.860 Mexican embassy in the last week. She's been providing translation services to the Spanish

00:10:13.400 speaking population of temporary foreign workers in our province for, oh, I don't know, about 11

00:10:18.240 years. And if you're a temporary foreign worker, it means you're intending to return home. It's

00:10:23.400 hard to learn a new language. And so what is it is a person like that going to be criminalized

00:10:29.140 trying to provide Spanish translation services to somebody who's a temporary foreign worker in

00:10:35.320 Quebec or any other language. So there's one problem. And question is, how are they going

00:10:40.900 to enforce it? Well, hold on a second. We'll get right to that. Only historic Anglophones will be

00:10:46.220 able to attend English school. So if you want your child to, because part of what happens when 0.92

00:10:52.160 you're trying to learn a second language is you learn one language at home and then you send your

00:10:57.200 child to school so they can become bilingual in the other language. What they're basically saying

00:11:01.540 here is they do not want Francophone children to become bilingual because it's going to be harder

00:11:09.040 if you cannot send your child to an English school for them to learn English. The number of students

00:11:13.380 allowed to attend English CGIPs, we don't have that here. I think that's more of an Ontario and

00:11:17.900 Quebec thing. It's a pre-university prep school, vocational school, so it seems like it's a bit of

00:11:23.020 mix of a college and university preparatory. But the number of English students is going to be

00:11:29.440 capped at 17.5%. You can imagine what that means. If they're going to cap that, it means then over

00:11:36.020 time they're also going to reduce the number, would be my anticipation, until when? I don't know,

00:11:42.240 zero. Temporary foreign workers' children will only be allowed to attend English school for three

00:11:48.660 years. So if you do have a temporary foreign worker who is attending school, they can attend

00:11:53.600 English school, but if they stay longer than three years, then bang, they've got to go over 0.90

00:11:57.400 onto the Francophone side. Services to the public have to be provided in French, and employees must

00:12:03.220 not be required to speak French. Now, when I said, how are they going to force this? Oh, the ever

00:12:08.660 popular snitch line will be trotted out again. There'll be a snitch line if Francophone feels 1.00

00:12:15.560 that the right to communicate in French was violated. And as we've seen, people love to

00:12:20.500 use that snitch line to rat on their neighbors. So you're going to see all kinds of folks trying

00:12:26.140 to provide translation services to people who don't have the facility and anything other than

00:12:30.660 their mother tongue, I guess, getting arrested, getting fined. Another one here is the language

00:12:36.560 police. And they do actually have an office for the language police. It's called the

00:12:42.320 Office Québécois de la langue française. It's given the power of search and seizure without a

00:12:48.580 warrant to ensure compliance. Like isn't this loony bin stuff? Can you imagine? Business contracts

00:12:53.580 have to be in French. Disputes have to be resolved in French. Pleadings in the court have to be in

00:12:56.740 French. Judges will no longer need to be bilingual. And this language police is now going to apply

00:13:02.260 to small businesses with 25 or more employees. The previous threshold was 50 employees. And then

00:13:09.220 here's why the municipalities got into the mix. There will be a new French language minister

00:13:14.320 who will ensure compliance and withhold grants or subsidies to municipalities if they don't comply

00:13:22.860 with the new charter. A bilingual municipality will lose its bilingual status when the population

00:13:29.200 of English speakers drops below 50%. So as you can see from this image, there's a lot of people

00:13:36.100 in downtown Montreal who are unhappy with the direction that the government is taking.

00:13:43.660 And I don't know, it just seems to me that we haven't heard an awful lot about it. Now,

00:13:48.460 why am I concerned about this? Because again, I think Quebec should be free to do whatever it is

00:13:54.740 they want. I think we should be free to do whatever it is we want. But the thing that irks me

00:13:59.220 is the conditions the federal government places on us whenever they want to use their federal

00:14:07.320 spending power to dictate to us how a program should be implemented. So we had, for instance,

00:14:15.660 and I've talked about this before, our child care program. We were going to implement it in a really

00:14:20.760 reasonable way. I thought that it was going to be a sliding scale of support for parents based on

00:14:25.740 level of income. So if you had two income family and they were minimum wage, they would get full

00:14:30.700 subsidy. If you had two lawyers making $300,000 a year, they wouldn't receive any subsidy. That

00:14:35.140 would make some sense to me. But no, no, no, no, no. The condition that the federal government

00:14:39.760 put on us to receiving a portion of that money back, $2.8 billion, which is only going to fund

00:14:45.040 a fraction of the program, was we had to do it Quebec's way. We had to implement the program

00:14:50.700 the way they already have in quebec with the ten dollar a day limit and access to everyone and

00:14:56.380 here's the other the other kicker is that there are a lot of private daycare operators in our

00:15:02.620 province and the condition of receiving that money was that the 10 000 new spaces had to be created

00:15:09.820 and they all had to be non-profit so what they're trying to do with the child care plan is ultimately

00:15:16.620 incrementally, bit by bit, as the progressives are known to do, what they're going to do is

00:15:22.320 ultimately make it very much like the Canada Health Act, where the federal government dictates

00:15:28.920 all the rules. Now, here's what I don't understand. Why can't this same power be used by the federal

00:15:34.740 government to say, here's the condition of equalization, is that you can't be discriminating

00:15:40.220 against newcomers in providing health care and social services. You can't be punishing

00:15:45.640 those who are trying to provide a service in communicating with somebody in their mother

00:15:51.180 tongue as a temporary foreign worker to make sure that they receive vital services, why

00:15:55.720 can't the federal government say, here's the condition of equalization, is that you

00:15:59.880 actually have to follow the Constitution and you actually have to have some respect for

00:16:04.560 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

00:16:05.700 Why is it that we continue, us, the rule followers out West, we continue to be punished

00:16:11.680 and Quebec can do whatever it is they want without having any conditions placed on the

00:16:17.640 grants that are given to them. The other reason that I care about this is because there is a,

00:16:23.620 there is a, at some point, we are going to have to confront the reality that this country cannot

00:16:31.240 continue operating in the future under the constitutional rules that we currently have.

00:16:37.440 Now, 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.

00:16:52.160 But 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.

00:17:03.580 In 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.

00:17:16.740 And we had the failed Leach-Lake Accord and the failed Charlottetown Accord, and no one wants to open the Constitution again.

00:17:23.560 Therefore, we should just leave it.

00:17:25.140 we can't leave it anymore. Because if you go through and read the Constitution, it's very

00:17:29.600 clear that the conception of Canada was of two founding nations. And the two founding nations

00:17:36.880 of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, were developed enough at that time

00:17:42.960 that they deserved to mention. But the rest of us were the colonies. We had only 160,000 people

00:17:49.720 in alberta at the time that we became a province in 1905 and quebec in 1905 had 1.65 million so

00:17:58.040 they were 10 times their size so you can see under those circumstances that that might have been a

00:18:03.000 perfectly legitimate way to run the country from the center because there was a lot of resources

00:18:08.200 out here but not a lot of people fair enough but i want to i want to show you what is going to be

00:18:13.160 happening over time. And then you tell me if the status quo that we have under the rules of our

00:18:20.060 country, and you tell me whether or not you think that those are going to hold up. So look at this.

00:18:24.300 So this is a population projection for Canada by province in 2020 and 2043. I know these numbers

00:18:32.460 are a bit small, so let me read them. So clearly, Ontario is going to continue to be the number one

00:18:38.600 destination for newcomers and growth and population. I don't think any of us should be 1.00

00:18:44.180 surprised by that. And look at what's happening in Quebec. So Quebec is expected to grow from

00:18:50.120 8.5 million, call it, I'm going to just round the numbers to make it easy, to 9.5 million in

00:18:58.080 2043. But look at what happens in British Columbia. British Columbia grows from 5.1

00:19:05.480 million to about 6.2 million. But look what happens to Alberta. Alberta is set to grow from

00:19:11.500 4.4 million up to 6.6 million. And by 2043, be the third most populous province. We're going to

00:19:19.840 end up overtaking British Columbia. Now, why in the world do you think that StatsCan didn't project

00:19:28.060 out past 2043? Why did they only project out 25 years? Well, McLean's did that work for us.

00:19:35.440 They did a study back in 2014 looking at these numbers. I remember 2014 was before the great

00:19:41.460 collapse of our oil and gas prices. So that'll be relevant for the next slide I show. And they're

00:19:47.940 kind of cute the way they look at this. They say this is our completely unscientific look at a

00:19:52.080 very distant future. Projections being what projections are. I mean, part of what you can do

00:19:57.280 with population projections is we've got a pretty good idea based on our growth pattern. It would

00:20:04.760 take something fairly catastrophic to catch us off our stride and something fairly remarkable for 0.66

00:20:11.400 Quebec to be off the stride, especially now. I mean, look what Quebec is doing. I'd be surprised

00:20:15.640 if they even grow that much over the course of the next 25 years, because clearly they're wanting

00:20:20.960 to create an environment where it is going to be unattractive for people to move to Quebec.

00:20:26.260 They 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

00:20:34.640 Let's have as many people here as possible. Let's continue to grow our economy and let's continue to grow.

00:20:39.240 So someone asked me the question why I would put any faith in these projections.

00:20:45.260 And I think we just have to understand that we are growing as a country.

00:20:50.360 We can look at what has happened in other jurisdictions.

00:20:52.320 We 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.

00:21:03.220 Now, 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.

00:21:17.060 But here's the other interesting part is this is the GDP figures. They believe that our GDP

00:21:24.320 is actually going to surpass Quebec's much earlier than that. And I have been watching

00:21:29.420 these numbers for some time because we were pretty close a couple of years ago prior to us going into

00:21:35.580 the COVID crisis, which hit us harder, obviously, than it hit Quebec. So the numbers right now,

00:21:43.040 I think I looked them up, are 378 billion is the size of the Quebec economy. 323 billion is the

00:21:50.740 size of the Alberta economy. So we're half the population, but we almost have the same GDP. We

00:21:55.160 will surpass them as the second largest economy in the country very shortly. And then what?

00:22:04.640 Well, isn't that the question? Because part of what we've been watching is that Quebec is doing

00:22:11.980 everything it can to maintain the structure of the House of Commons, the Senate, and the Supreme

00:22:18.500 Court that we have right now. But if you're looking out into the future, and there is a group

00:22:23.180 out there that proposes that Canada is going to get to 100 million people by 2100, that's sort of

00:22:30.540 a big, aggressive projection for 2100. Not impossible to achieve when you think of how

00:22:37.280 small our population is and how large our land base is. But that future also contemplates Alberta

00:22:43.660 being the second largest, most populous province behind Ontario. And we already are going to be

00:22:51.400 the largest GDP. And so it'll be even more so by then. We'll be on our way to catching up with

00:22:56.920 Ontario at that time. So how, I ask you, can we continue operating this country on the basis of

00:23:04.600 rules that we currently have in place let me look at the house of commons first so house of commons

00:23:09.480 some of you are wondering why it is we keep on protecting quebec so so look what's happening

00:23:15.160 quebec under the existing seat allocation if we were doing it just by population should only have

00:23:22.760 71 seats but because of historical factors and representation factors they're going to get 77

00:23:29.000 and they're raising a stink about that because they're losing one seat they have 78 currently

00:23:32.600 and they don't think they should lose any at all. Meanwhile, Alberta gets 37 seats. So is anyone

00:23:38.740 going to seriously argue? This is a question I put to you. If we entrench these rules now and we see

00:23:43.880 this projection going forward, is anyone going to seriously argue that when Alberta is the second

00:23:48.580 most populous province and the second largest economy that Quebec should have a greater number

00:23:54.700 of seats than we do? Is someone really going to put forward that argument seriously? If you then

00:24:00.680 go on and look at a couple of the other factors. Look at the Senate seats. I don't know if I have

00:24:05.140 the Senate seats here. I might. Hold on. Let me see if I can find that for you. Yeah, I can find

00:24:09.880 the Senate seats for you here as well. So you can have a quick look at what we have on the Senate

00:24:15.860 because the Senate is the one that really chaps me up. And there's good reason for that. So look

00:24:22.400 at where we're at with our Senate seats. And Burt Brown, bless his heart, he emblazoned into his

00:24:28.220 field, the triple E acronym years ago when he was trying to fight this battle. And here's what

00:24:35.400 the set number of senators that we have based on history. So Ontario has 24 seats. Quebec has 24

00:24:44.100 seats. I'll return to that in just a minute. British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan,

00:24:51.780 we've got 24 seats in total but six seats each look at this nova scotia new brunswick each have

00:24:59.940 10 seats they both have less than a million population but they each have 10 senate seats

00:25:04.580 prince edward island has four newfoundland and labrador has six if you actually add in what you

00:25:10.180 have in the atlantic region it was initially the maritimes had 24. they added in newfoundland and

00:25:16.180 labrador and then didn't reshuffle any of this around so now the uh atlantic the uh atlantic

00:25:22.020 region has 30 senate seats to the west's 24. i'll continue on and get back to that in a second

00:25:30.180 northwest terry territories has one yukon has one nudibin has one now just play a little exercise

00:25:35.460 with me here so we go out to early 2050s alberta has the second largest economy in uh in canada

00:25:44.340 and has the second largest population so you're seriously going to tell me that when that is our

00:25:49.860 reality alberta is going to have six senate seats and quebec is going to have 24. you're going to

00:25:56.740 seriously tell me that the mayor the atlantic region which already has only half of our

00:26:01.380 population is going to continue to have 30 senate seats and alberta is going to have six

00:26:07.700 when we are the second most populous province and the second largest economy like it's

00:26:14.340 Am I the only one who sees how absurd this is getting? So let me also then go to the Supreme

00:26:20.840 Court, because this is vitally important. This is existential for us, because I'm

00:26:26.440 stunned and astonished by the number of commentators after Bill C-69 was rejected

00:26:34.260 in an advisory ruling from our Alberta Court of Appeal. The number who have said, well,

00:26:41.240 going to go to the supreme court of canada anyway and it's it's going to be rejected now remember

00:26:45.960 how the supreme court is composed it's got nine judges including the chief justice of canada

00:26:52.040 all of whom it's a they have to have tenure standing blah blah blah but the relevant part

00:26:57.160 of here is where do they come from the cabinet that's what governor and council is the cabinet

00:27:02.920 has appointed three judges from ontario two from the western provinces so alberta doesn't even get

00:27:10.120 a guarantee of one of those two because it's two from one of the four western provinces

00:27:15.080 or northern canada oh jeepers like brought it out even further and one from the atlantic provinces

00:27:21.080 and why is that because three of them have to come from quebec so let's just one more time walk this

00:27:28.840 through you're going to tell me that in the early 2050s when alberta is the second most populous

00:27:35.400 province with the second largest economy, that we're going to persist with the situation where

00:27:41.260 the nine Supreme Court judges, we don't get to appoint a single one and Quebec continues to

00:27:46.920 appoint three. How can people not see that we are on a collision course here? That this is part of

00:27:54.960 the reason why there is an enormous amount of pushback against the current status quo, because

00:28:04.200 these are the numbers everybody is looking at. And it gets even worse than that. I think I have

00:28:09.340 one more that I want to show you because while we have been struggling since 2015 over the last

00:28:17.600 number of years, while we've been struggling and running deficits and racking up debt, Quebec has

00:28:24.360 just been having a grand old time. They, as you know, have been running surpluses. They've started

00:28:29.880 their own sovereign wealth fund so that they can sock money aside because they're having all of

00:28:34.820 these additional surpluses and they are apparently the economic powerhouse of Canada. So let me

00:28:42.880 share with you this story. If you didn't see it, it came out a couple of weeks ago or maybe a

00:28:48.760 couple of months ago. I'll tell you the story. How Quebec became Canada's economic powerhouse

00:28:53.400 in the middle of a pandemic. Quebec has been laying a foundation for an economic renaissance

00:28:59.780 for a decade, writes David Olive. Here's how it outpaced every other province last year.

00:29:05.000 So for the first time in history, economic growth in Quebec last year outpaced every other province

00:29:08.880 with GDP growth of more than 6% in 2021. Quebec is expected to have posted a pandemic economic

00:29:16.200 recovery more powerful than that of the United States, the European Union, as well as its

00:29:21.580 Canadian peers. Those numbers become official in a couple of weeks, but Quebec's strong performance

00:29:26.560 in the first three quarters of 2021 alone ensures it the crown now how is it that they are doing

00:29:32.800 this so one of the major factors is that they do a massive amount of economic support for so they've

00:29:40.720 got economic diversity knowledge economy migration but look at this abundance of business capital so

00:29:48.400 we are struggling in alberta to attract business capital because of environment social governance

00:29:54.880 and we are on the dog list because of our energy sector and a number of divestment campaigns are

00:30:02.160 taking place to try to starve out our industry but business is booming in quebec and why is that

00:30:08.480 it finances their ambitions their ambitions with an unmatched array of deep-pocketed funders that

00:30:14.560 includes the castle de paul placement de quebec uh investment uh investment quebec and labor-back

00:30:21.520 fond de solidaire ftq so among the companies it's nurtured over the years they've got a whole bunch

00:30:26.480 of new national darlings nuve cope edify ndt uh cae which is an and element testing that's uh

00:30:34.080 the circle case uh trucking company tfi international and so here's what's happening

00:30:39.920 my friends what is happening is that we are sending an additional amount of money to ottawa

00:30:46.960 from this province and we know it's been substantial i think it's something in the

00:30:50.000 order of $600 billion over the last 40 years. Ottawa then takes the lion's share of that money

00:30:56.000 and sends it to Quebec. Quebec uses that money to subsidize its business community,

00:31:01.600 and its business community then ends up growing into these international rock stars that then

00:31:07.040 continue on being able to grow internationally and attract even more investment capital.

00:31:12.080 So we are, at the same time, they then asked to impose additional restrictions on Alberta that prevent us from being able to raise capital.

00:31:24.060 Why are we doing this to ourselves?

00:31:26.860 Why do we continue to play the victim here?

00:31:30.760 This is what I am mystified by.

00:31:32.860 Because we have a mandate from the people to end equalization.

00:31:37.000 We 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.

00:32:02.440 Why 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.

00:32:17.180 yes we do because if we don't open up the constitution and refederate and solve some

00:32:22.780 of these problems now asserting alberta and british columbia as equal economic partners

00:32:28.700 in confederation we are going to end up with more and more division like we're getting to a breaking

00:32:32.940 point here it may still be another decade away and politicians being what politicians are they

00:32:39.660 only want to look forward to the next election cycle but we certainly we built a constitution

00:32:45.260 unfortunately on principles that uh uh do not stand the test of time i suppose we can forgive

00:32:52.940 our founders for not believing or understanding that alberta would develop a kind of culture that

00:33:01.020 continues to thrive and it's you have to understand this doesn't happen by accident

00:33:06.620 alberta we can we can say that we have uh resource development and we've got an abundance of

00:33:12.860 resources but look what's happened over the last number of years we haven't been able to expand

00:33:16.300 them nearly as much as we wanted to there are a lot of stories in the world of basket cases

00:33:21.340 that have a an amount of of natural resource wealth just look at venezuela how they can't

00:33:26.860 even get it out of the ground the the reason we are able to to develop our resources for the

00:33:33.820 benefit of our people is because of the culture that we have built here a culture of people who

00:33:39.500 want to be entrepreneurial who want to be innovative who want to solve problems and a

00:33:44.300 government who in most of its history has provided a clear path forward for doing that for creating

00:33:50.380 a relatively less cumbersome regulatory environment although in the stories i hear that's not perfect

00:33:57.420 but certainly a low tax regime as well people want to live here we've got a lower cost of living

00:34:01.660 we've got a lower cost of housing and we've got beautiful mountains two uh great cities to give

00:34:07.580 you an option of where to live multiple different uh larger mid-sized communities to develop we're

00:34:12.700 only going to keep on growing we've got we've got everything you could possibly imagine when it

00:34:17.100 comes to energy uh coal oil natural gas when it comes to forestry products when it comes to food

00:34:23.500 products our food producers are produce the whole array of products in in livestock as well as in

00:34:29.420 greenhouses and so we've got we've kind of got it all here and that's the reason why as long as we

00:34:35.900 are allowed to continue to grow and attract capital and not be punished unnecessarily by

00:34:41.260 an unfair confederation we're going to continue to grow so when is when is the breaking point

00:34:46.220 when does somebody say we've got to find the things that unite us as a country and if quebec

00:34:52.300 wants to go its own way as nation within a nation status then we've got to figure out what the rest

00:34:57.820 of us do in the country if if that's going to be the relationship where essentially they'll keep

00:35:02.700 the Canadian dollar, keep the Canadian passport and do their own thing, then we have to stop

00:35:07.340 placating to them. Maybe they should stop sending representatives to the House of Commons altogether

00:35:11.900 and we can just have bilateral trade agreements with them. Maybe if that's what they want,

00:35:16.300 then maybe we should figure out a new form of partnership that doesn't have all of our

00:35:21.420 politicians chasing their tails trying to win seats in Quebec when their values are completely

00:35:26.300 opposite from the rest of the country because that's creating more division. If we're going

00:35:29.740 going to find the kind of things that bind us as a nation. We have to talk about citizenship that we

00:35:34.300 can all buy into. We have to find the unifying themes that we can all buy into. And if Quebec

00:35:38.700 doesn't want to play ball, then I think we've got to accept that reality. And we've got to figure

00:35:43.100 out a way to redraft the constitution so that it's fair to those of us who do want this country to

00:35:49.340 work. All right, guys, that's all for me for today. And I'd love to get your feedback. You can always

00:35:54.300 feel free to send me an email danielle daniellesmith.ca you can go on to my website daniellesmith.ca

00:36:00.220 sign up for my newsletter and we'll talk to you again on wednesday oh what's happening wednesday

00:36:04.940 well wednesday is the day of the uh leadership count on the vote my i'm hearing from uh little

00:36:11.740 birds that there was about 30 000 votes that turned out of the 59 000 so what does that mean

00:36:18.780 if only 50% turned out. That sounds like a very high apathy number to me. And they haven't started

00:36:25.220 counting them yet. And so we don't really have any idea of which way it's going to go. It depends

00:36:28.980 on who you talk to. If you talk to Premier Jason Kenney backers, say he's going to get 60%.

00:36:35.060 If you talk to those who are not Jason Kenney backers, they say he's going to get 43%.

00:36:39.460 So it'll be somewhere between those numbers. And I guess we'll see what happens on Wednesday night.

00:36:44.340 Anyway, we'll tune in and talk more about that on Wednesday. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm

00:36:47.760 Danielle Smith. This has been The Danielle Smith Show.

Western Standard - May 17, 2022

The Danielle Smith Show - May 16, 2022

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