The Danielle Smith Show - May 18, 2022
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Summary
In this episode of The Danielle Smith Show, host Danielle talks about the Flames and Oilers playoff series, the vote count on the Tory leadership, and much, much more. She also gives her thoughts on the Flames/Oilers playoff series and whether or not it should be called the Battle of Alberta.
Transcript
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well greetings friends it's danielle smith welcome again to the danielle smith show
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let's talk a little bit about uh what's happening today there's so much going on yes of course
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there's the big game between the calgary flames and the edmonton oilers i'm just going to put it
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on the record right now that i support daryl setter's attitude on this when he says we do
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not call this the Battle of Alberta because why are we fighting with each other? We're in the
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middle of getting through the past two years of trauma and division. This should be a unifying
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series. I'm looking forward to it. I have said that I support both teams and this is the reason
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why. So the Calgary Flames, I became a huge fan of them back in the days of Neu and Dyke and Vernon
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and Doug Gilmore. My favorite player was actually Gary Roberts, number 10 at the time. And then
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And also, I think it was, of course, an Edmonton Oilers fan going back to the days of Gretzky
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And who couldn't have been an Oilers fan at the time?
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I remember my brother's going to hate me for saying this.
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I remember him crying when Gretz was traded to the LA Kings.
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Once you become a committed fan of the Edmonton Oilers, you're not going to drop them.
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And once you become a committed fan of the Flames, you're not going to drop them either.
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The nice part about this is that, of course, my team's going to win no matter what.
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So woohoo, go Alberta. That's number one. Number two, there is going to be a vote count today. You've probably heard that is going on of the premier on his leadership vote. Some folks have asked me what I think is likely to happen there. And quite frankly, just like you, I've got no idea. Here's what I am hearing.
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What I am hearing, just as I process what has happened, is that number one, there were about 32,000 ballots that were counted of about 59,000 that were submitted.
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There were some duplicates, as we know. So I gather that's about a 62.5 percent turnout.
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Well, it means that 38% of the people who could have voted didn't, either because they didn't get their ballots.
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And I have heard, especially in the last few days, of a number of people who didn't get their ballots.
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There is also a problem as well, I think, of perhaps enthusiasm.
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Maybe the party has an enthusiasm deficit at the moment.
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And they're prepared to let those who did want to participate make the decision for them about which way this goes.
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The other things that I have heard has been, we've all obviously talked about the Alberta,
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Elections Alberta investigation, 4,691 ballots that were purchased on what it turns out to be
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eight credit cards, which appears to be a violation, not only of party policy, but also
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of the Elections Alberta rules. And so I guess we'll see how that process plays out. But it is,
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when you look at the larger scheme of things, a relatively small number of memberships that
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were purchased on behalf of others with or without their knowledge. The other part, though,
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is that about two-thirds of the ballots I'm hearing were from rural Alberta. Now, I would
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just put it to you that I don't think that there's a huge groundswell of support for the Premier
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coming from rural Alberta, but the cities don't seem to have the same problem with some of the
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issues that rural is raising. So I guess this is just it. Who knows what's going to happen?
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The Premier is out there saying he's going to get 70%. I think people are skeptical that would be
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the case that it would be that high. I don't think that would be consistent with some of the
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polling that we're seeing. And some of the polling that we're seeing has been particularly bad. I
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don't know if many of you saw the Common Ground. It's a University of Alberta research group that
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did some polling and asked the question about do you think the premier should stay or do you think
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the premier should go? I think it was actually worded a different way. Do you think that the
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united conservative party should keep premier kenny as their leader or do you think they should
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uh see him go now keep in mind this would have been a general view of the general public which
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is different than what party members vote on relatively small number of party members are
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going to be making this decision today but when you ask the general public it uh it gives you a
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bit of a yikes moment because it didn't seem to matter whether it was urban suburban or rural
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it didn't seem to matter whether it was male or female didn't seem to matter whether it was a 18
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to a 25 age group the age group above that or seniors didn't seem to matter if it was calgary
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or edmonton it's around 25 percent say that the pro that the ucp should keep uh the premier kenny
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and it's around 75 percent who say he should go somewhere around there so it doesn't matter across
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any demographic all across alberta and you know maybe this is just the way it goes i've been
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talking with um my ea about this and laura and one of the things that that we both observed is that
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when you look at winston churchill and his political history he's got a very interesting
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political history incidentally he began in politics in 1900 if you can imagine the reason
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i mention him is because i know that the premier puts him out there as a bit of a role model and a
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hero so 1900 he got elected and he served four years under the conservatives and then he crossed
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the floor and joined the liberals and became a cabinet minister for a number of years got
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disaffected with the liberals and tried to run as an independent a couple of times failed and then
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got back into politics as a conservative so cross the floor twice if you can imagine that
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and he spent 10 years out of cabinet by the time we got to 1939 he was kind of a political has-been
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at that point but because he'd been a strong voice on making sure that we that we were following the
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german threat and talking about the need for the uk to or great britain at the time to increase its
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defense spending, it thrust him into the leadership role in 1939 after Neville Chamberlain and his
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appeasement didn't work. But you know what's so interesting? So look at this history. So by the
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time he got to 1945, won the war, the citizens were well and truly done with him. And he got
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voted out within a few months of winning the war. And so when you look at that political history,
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it's interesting to me that somebody who is responsible and revered today as having defeated
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the defeated fascism, defeated authoritarianism. By the time people were done with the trauma of
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the war, they just didn't want to see his face again. And that may be what we're experiencing
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here is that regardless of the kind of actions the premier is trying to take to demonstrate that
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we're moving on from COVID, I think that there's a lot of hardship and a lot of harm and a lot of
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hurt feelings. And so if it goes against him, that would be the reason why. But I thought you would
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find that some interesting historical context that even leaders who have a winning record
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sometimes end up losing. The reason I mentioned this, though, is because the premier has had
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a good couple of weeks. When you look at the tour that he did of Senator Joe Manchin, the
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Democrat senator from Virginia, who's been such a champion and ally of Alberta and our energy
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sector and a very strong voice in the Democrat ranks and trying to get some kind of sensible
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policy around oil and gas development. He came up here toward the oil sands and then returned the
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favor by inviting Jason Kenney down to present to the Senate committee. There was a full hearing
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of the Senate committee on energy and natural resources. And so I want to put this into context
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for you because when you look at the at the room it looks pretty empty most of the time so he was
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not presenting to the full senate he was presenting to this this this particular committee and at any
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given moment it looks like there's about five senators in the room but as the two hour and 18
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minute hearings went on i think it was maybe two hours until they started a little bit late
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As it went on, I think what you would observe happening is that senators were sitting in their
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office, maybe monitoring what was going on, and then it was their turn to come up. They would
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come down and ask her questions. So he actually ended up getting most of the senators there,
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even though at any given time, there were only a couple. The other thing you'll notice,
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which I find just a little bit irritating about American politics, is the grandstanding on the
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questions. Of course, I love it when Senator Rand Paul does it. I love it when Jim Johnson does it
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too. But I think if this is about trying to find the common ground so that we can get both the
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House of Representatives and the Senate and the executive branch all on the same page, that we
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need to develop our resources. I don't know that that's particularly helpful, if you want the honest
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truth, that you've got Republicans clearly using the premier's visit to score political points
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against Biden, especially since they happen to be in an election year. Now, be that as it may,
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I mean, I had hoped what we would see out of these hearings is that you would end up with both
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Democrats and Republicans realizing it is an American interest for us to develop the resources
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in Canada for our collective energy security and for our collective energy affordability.
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So that's one thing that you should be aware of if you decide to watch the whole thing.
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The second thing that surprised me a little bit is that Jonathan Wilkinson, the natural
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He was there in video form and said he had to cut out early, but it didn't look like
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And so he also provided some perspective and context.
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And I'm not sure that the Premier's message and Jonathan Wilkinson's message were exactly the same.
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I want to play for you a few of the exchanges, just so you can see.
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They both had five-minute statements, so I'm not quite sure if I can play all of them for you.
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But I want to play for you enough so that you kind of get the tone and flavor of how the proceedings took place.
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The other interesting guests that were there as well, though, was the Quebec, the Quebec also had representation there. Maybe you won't be surprised by that. But let me just make sure I have the name of the minister correctly here.
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So Natalie Camden, she is the Associate Minister of Mines for Quebec. And again, I'm not entirely sure her message was consistent with the message that we were trying to get across because she kept touting the electricity grid being 99.8% emissions-free and renewable because, of course, Quebec relies so much on hydro.
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And it's fascinating to me because, as you probably know, because we've done shows on this before, the difficulty we are having getting pipelines across the border for our two countries, they're having an equivalent difficulty getting electricity transmission lines going across because the Americans don't look at hydroelectric power as being green because it has an impact on the environment.
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Like, let's be frank about it. If you're going to be flooding vast, vast tracts of land, you're going to be impacting indigenous rights, you're going to be impacting landowner rights, you're going to be destroying biodiversity and habitat, you're going to be having methane production from all of that rotting foliage, you're going to be impacting fish habitat.
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So they don't look at it as particularly green, interestingly.
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So Natalie Camden was there to make the case about why it should be considered green if we're looking at non-emitting sources, interestingly.
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The other point that she was making, though, was that the Americans have in the past looked at Canada as being a strategic provider of defense necessary resources and minerals, which is sort of an interesting way of contextualizing this.
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And one of the things that she touted was the aluminum that is produced in Quebec and aluminum being produced in Quebec using hydropower as the main source makes it one of the lowest emitting sources for aluminum.
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So that was the essence of what she had to say. Oh, there's my dog barking. It's photobombing me.
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And so that was the essence of what she was having to say.
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But the other part that I think that Quebec brought to him was that they have a process for how they are trying to streamline their development of rare earth metals and minerals for the purpose of battery production.
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And I'm surprised that we didn't mention that at all because we've got a huge resource in lithium in our province.
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I'm not actually quite sure what our cobalt and nickel capacity is.
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if somebody knows, you should send me a text because that is really what they were pushing
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in Quebec. Because in America, if you can believe it, they think that we have a streamlined
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regulatory process for our mines and mineral development. Like color me surprised. Aren't
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we just in the middle of a Supreme Court challenge over Bill C-69 because it adds an extra layer
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of decision-making process and creates an endless repeat loop where we have no finish line on the
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project. So that I found a little bit surprising that the Americans are under the impression
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that it takes as little as two years for us to develop our resources and get permitting
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for our mines and mineral development. So that's not true. In fact, in Quebec,
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the Camden said that what they have done is created a process that once you finish all
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your environmental reports and submitted them. It only takes 48 to 60 months to get it approved.
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So that's a four to five year process at the best. And that is after you've done
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all of the environmental work. So if you could imagine, the Americans were excited about that
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because the American process can take 10 to 15 years. And even then at the end of it,
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you get all of your approvals and guess what happens? Some extreme environmental group ends
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taking it to court and bingo bango you're back to the beginning again the americans have a really
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difficult time in developing their resources so i thought you'd find that interesting um the third
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person on the panel was francis bradley president and chief executive officer of electricity canada
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and he didn't get that many questions but he certainly did also tout the interties and
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interconnectedness between our two markets and especially if you're going to layer on
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that everyone's going to be need more electricity certainly at ease for electric vehicles plugged
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into the grid he's clearly making the point about why you need those interties although he did do a
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bit of a shout out to capital power and the carbon capture a project that they have to be able to
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capture the co2 from their natural gas power plant and then either bury it underground or oh no
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actually um they're planning on using it for carbon nanotubes which is a really interesting
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development. I may have to do a segment on that because carbon nanotubes, as you know, can be used
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for a new construction material. So I thought that those were all very interesting. A couple other
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things that stuck out for me is how different our two countries are in how we deal with natural
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resources. And it makes me understand a little bit more about what's going on with C69. The Trudeau
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government is trying to make a play for the federal government to assert its right over
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our resources, our development and management of our resources that the Americans already
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So it was very significant in our country when the federal government decided to transfer
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crown lands and all the mines and minerals therein to the provinces because they transferred
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over the jurisdiction and it sounds like they've regretted it ever since.
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So that was one of the things that was very interesting at the Senate committee is because,
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remember, senators represent their states. They're looking at Canada and say, golly gee,
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I sure wish we at the state level had the ability to develop our resources and have
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approvals the same way you do. At the same time as there's this weird subtext going on that, yeah,
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we kind of have the ability to do it, but now we've got this layered on process with the federal
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government. No one really wanted to elaborate on that. So Dwayne Bratt, the easiest way I think if
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want to get to the the page that i'm going to show you uh the easiest way to get there is i must tell
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you like duane bratt is the the best resource he tweets things out with their link and then you can
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just go through so go on to duane bratt and you'll see that he's got a full link to the full committee
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hearing to examine the u.s canada energy and minerals partnership and part of what i want to
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try to do here is just i want to play for you a little bit of the the tone so that you could
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understand what was said how our premier performed because quite frankly i think he performed really
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well um he i've never had any beef with the premier when he is going abroad and representing
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our industry i think he does a a really good job of of representing um alberta's interests
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hold on a second i don't know this is one of the hazards of broadcasting from home
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and get interruptions. I don't know how many kids or grandkids running around me, but my dog is
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deaf. And so he is constantly trying to do some guarding to make sure that we know he's doing
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his job. So let me just play for you the first opening statements, because I want you to hear
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how it was responded to by the Premier, as well as so that you can see the different responses
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that we have from the federal government and our provincial premier. I'm just making sure I got all
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these up lined up correctly because I've got to do my share screen and make sure that you can hear
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it. So let me just tell you a little bit of the background here. So Senator Manchin is the
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Virginia senator who asked the premier if he would come down and give the presentation. And so let me
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just see if I can get for you the very first response that we have. Hold on. I just want to
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make sure that I am not missing out on. This is the thing about StreamYard. I shared something
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last time and we ended up not sharing the audio. So I'm going to just make sure that I share the
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system audio so that I don't end up screwing that up this time. I think I got it. I think I got it.
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Here we go. Let's show this. And this is Senator Manchin putting the question about what the
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relationship between our two countries could be listen to what he had to say and how our premier
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responded turn on your uh your mic there's a little button there oh i see he had the same
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problem as i thank you so much german mansion and to you members of the committee thank you
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especially for uh having visited us in alberta i'm sorry we didn't offer good weather but uh
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come back great i thought it was all canada uh senators if you remember one thing from today's
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hearing i hope it will be this that the province of alberta is by far the largest source of u.s
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energy imports u.s energy security depends on alberta and alberta can be a huge part of the
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solution to the problem of american energy inflation and the cost of living crisis senators
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last year over 60 percent of u.s oil and gas imports came from alberta that's six zero not one
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60%. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that last year, the United States imported
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2.2 billion barrels of crude oil, 1.4 billion of which, or 62% came from Canada and virtually all
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of that from Alberta. Let's put that in perspective. Last year, 13% of U.S. oil imports came from all
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OPEC countries combined and only 6% from Saudi Arabia. So Alberta supplies the U.S. with 10
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times more oil than Saudi Arabia and five times more than all of OPEC. The same is true for natural
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gas. Last year, my province shipped 4.8 billion cubic feet of gas per day to the U.S. That's 63%
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of your gas imports. And I'm proud to say that Alberta is home to the world's third largest
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proven in probable oil reserves, about 180 billion barrels worth, and one of the world's
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largest reserves of natural gas. The province of Alberta owns those resources and has the
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exclusive constitutional jurisdiction to regulate their production. Now, after your country has
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spent hundreds of billions of dollars in recent decades defending security in the Persian Gulf
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area, it turns out that the solution to the challenges of energy security is your closest
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friend and ally vladimir putin's brutal invasion of ukraine has proven the danger of allowing
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dictators to dominate global energy markets and weaponize oil wealth using it to spread violence
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instability and terrorism around the world and that's why we were frankly so taken aback when
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president biden vetoed the keystone xl pipeline it would have safely delivered 830 000 barrels a day
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of responsibly produced Canadian energy to the U.S. more than displacing the 670,000 barrels a day
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that you all bought from Putin's Russia last year. We were also perplexed with the administration's
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response to sky-high gas prices was to plead with OPEC to produce and sell more oil while working
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to lift sanctions on dictatorships like Iran and Venezuela. White House officials have reportedly
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discussed a presidential visit to Saudi Arabia to press for more production of their oil and
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their exports to the U.S. Oil that is used to buy cluster bombs dropped on Yemeni civilians.
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Well, Senators, Calgary is a lot closer to Washington than Riyadh, and you don't need
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the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet to patrol the Great Lakes. To quote former Montana Governor Brian
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Schweitzer, we don't have to send the National Guard into Alberta. Chairman Manchin, we truly
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appreciated as i said your recent visit to alberta to see firsthand the amazing progress that is
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being made to reduce emissions and improve the environmental performance of canada's oil sands
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to see also the deep partnerships between our energy producers and our indigenous people
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and to discuss the development of a north american energy alliance we invite other members of this
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committee to visit alberta and see for yourself judge for yourself draw your own conclusions about
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whether Alberta is a preferable solution as a source of imports to OPEC.
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Between current unused capacity in the North American pipeline system and the prospect of
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pipeline optimization, plus the scheduled completion of the Trans Mountain expansion
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pipeline to Canada's west coast next year, Alberta will be able to increase our crude exports to the
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the U.S. by upwards of a million barrels a day over the next couple of years, helping to reduce
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prices at the pump. But with political will from Washington, we could also get another major
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pipeline built that would forever allow the United States to free itself from imports from hostile
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regimes. Mr. Chairman, where there is a will, there is a way. The government of Alberta is keen to work
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with you and friends in the United States to get another major pipeline built to achieve the dream
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of North American energy independence and security. At the same time, we must work together to
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maintain current supply. And that's why I call on the United States government to join Canada in
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demanding that the governor of Michigan respect the 1977 Canada-US pipeline transit treaty by
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abandoning her efforts to decommission the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline that has safely delivered
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over 600,000 barrels of Canadian energy to the U.S. for six decades. Her plan to do this would
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only worsen the energy and cost of living crisis at the worst possible time. And we
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must work on both sides of the border to remove regulatory barriers to the production and
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shipment of energy. Senators, replacing conflict oil imports with Canadian energy is not a
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threat to the environment. We take seriously the need to cut emissions and to address climate
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change. Alberta's oil and gas producers and pipeline companies have some of the world's
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highest ESG rankings. Alberta was the first place in North America to implement carbon pricing.
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Through massive investments in clean tech, we've reduced the carbon footprint of an average barrel
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of Alberta oil by 36 percent since the year 2000 to below the global average for heavy oil.
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Our oil sands producers are committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions in their
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operations by 2050, in part through a big expansion of our world-leading carbon capture,
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utilization, and storage infrastructure. We're on track to reduce methane emissions by at least
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45 percent. We're leading Canada right now in renewable energy investments, and we're set to
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become a global hub in the production of net zero and low-emitting hydrogen. So thank you,
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Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions and ongoing collaboration on developing a North
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American energy law. So you see what I, you see what I mean? Hold on. Let me see if I, uh, I'm
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still, hold on one second. I'm still hearing this in my ear. So I got to make sure that you guys
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aren't hearing it. So here's the thing, like, uh, premier is at his best when he's talking about
00:26:30.200
energy issues. And I thought that was an excellent presentation. What I, if you go through and you
00:26:34.900
watch the full hearing, what you will see is that the senators were particularly interested
00:26:40.120
in everything that we've done to reduce our methane emissions by 45 percent there I mean
00:26:44.920
I would have liked if the premier talked about some of the ways in which we're doing that there's
00:26:48.720
all kinds of really interesting technology where they're especially with bitcoin mining where
00:26:53.660
they're capturing the methane turning it into energy so that they can then mine bitcoin and
00:26:59.080
then then turn it essentially into a different product that can be exported but there's also
00:27:03.960
another company that's working on capturing the methane and turning it into protein for animal
00:27:07.760
feed. We also have a drone technology that is able to spot methane emissions on pipelines from,
00:27:15.240
I think, 150 meters away, and then you can plug them. So there's some fantastic technology. That
00:27:20.020
was of great interest to them. The other, of course, was the hydrogen piece. And the interesting
00:27:27.240
thing that I found about the response there is that the Americans seem to want to be going towards,
00:27:32.580
as they called it, one of the senators called it dual purpose pipelines. So this, I think,
00:27:38.620
sows the seed of a potential breakthrough for us in future. I remember one energy company executive
00:27:43.920
I've talked about saying maybe the way to restart the Keystone XL pipeline process
00:27:48.360
is to not propose it as a heavy oil pipeline, but propose it as a natural gas pipeline that
00:27:55.240
can ultimately be repurposed to hydrogen as the Americans build out their hydrogen economy and
00:28:01.480
hydrogen infrastructure and that may be a way in i so i would mention that to you because that
00:28:07.320
that was also one of the things that came out in the in the question and answer and then there was
00:28:11.880
also the uh the displacement of russian oil they were pretty keen to uh and i thought that was a
00:28:20.040
pretty good hit to mention that we had six that the americans had 680 million uh 680
00:28:26.040
be a thousand barrels per day coming in from Russia and that we would have been able to
00:28:31.560
displace that a hundred percent if we had built the Keystone XL pipeline. So there were a bunch
00:28:35.400
of barbs going back and forth between the two. The other thing that he got asked on twice and
00:28:39.940
was able to reiterate twice was the ways in which we would be able to increase our pipeline capacity
00:28:46.260
in the next few years. So obviously Trans Mountain Pipeline, which is going to be finished
00:28:50.960
in 2024 is one aspect. But we also have the ability to do optimization of our pipelines.
00:28:58.460
As I understand, there's a couple of things that they would do there. Some of them are line
00:29:02.360
reversal. Some of it is using different additives to make sure that you reduce the drag so that you
00:29:08.680
can end up having more throughput. We also currently have, I guess, 300,000 barrels per
00:29:14.920
day of additional capacity that has yet to come on stream. So that, I think, perked everybody's
00:29:20.000
interest. And also just that earlier point that was made by the Quebec minister about how you
00:29:28.520
could fast track these processes if you got approval under federal policy for defense policy.
00:29:34.820
That was also suggested as a way to get more pipeline infrastructure approved as well. So
00:29:40.240
I thought, so I think the premier did a great job in representing that position. There is one more
00:29:47.740
thing that i wanted to play for you though because i thought that this was a little bit concerning
00:29:52.860
because you're not going to get anywhere in uh in the us if you don't have some kind of support on
00:30:00.380
the executive branch it's it's beginning to make me realize uh i i always thought that the in the
00:30:06.380
u.s the congress and the senate had a lot more power but if the federal government is in control
00:30:14.300
of all resource development on all crown lands and they own most of the crown lands and they're
00:30:19.260
in control of this permitting process you really do need to have executive buy-in if you're going
00:30:25.020
to to make any progress and so there was an interesting exchange here that happened i think
00:30:29.900
i can play both for you the uh the response that the premier gave as well as the response that the
00:30:37.020
uh our um our federal minister of natural resources jonathan wilkinson gave because i think there's a
00:30:42.140
little bit of air between the two of them so let me play this for you as well this is uh joe uh
00:30:46.460
senator barrasso who's the uh the ranking member for the republicans he's from wyoming so he
00:30:52.140
obviously has a lot more affinity to us and our our energy projects and the relationship that
00:30:59.660
we've established than the current biden administration but i want you to hear this
00:31:03.500
question and hear the answer you ask the question about how what kind of of progress we're making
00:31:09.500
on the executive branch in the in the biden white house and i thought you'd want to hear this answer
00:31:13.260
too have you been in contact with our administration here or your counterpart minister wilkinson or
00:31:19.580
premier uh kenny uh any other than us speaking to you from the from the legislative branch
00:31:28.220
from the executive branch anybody speaking to you all concerning increasing oil natural gas
00:31:33.820
the things that we're going to need in order to help our allies you can start with yourself and
00:31:38.780
and now I'm going to miss it. Thank you, Senator. The answer, well, I don't have a counterpart in
00:31:45.840
the U.S. government as I'm the leader of a sub-national government, but yesterday I did
00:31:51.900
have meetings with officials at the U.S. State Department that we initiated. I will say we found
00:31:58.840
it passing strange that following the invasion of Ukraine, there were clear efforts by the
00:32:05.040
administration to reach out to OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran. But we have no record of any
00:32:12.560
effort by the administration to reach out to Alberta, which, as I said, provides 62 percent
00:32:18.200
of U.S. oil imports. Minister Wilkinson, did you all have any conversations or anyone reach out
00:32:23.240
to your counterparts from the U.S.? Yes, thank you, Senator. Yes, we have had ongoing conversations
00:32:28.600
with the administration. Certainly, I have spoken with Secretary Granholm many, many times
00:32:33.720
since the invasion of Ukraine, and I was at the White House last week having similar conversations.
00:32:39.320
As you know, we have had a number of in-person meetings to discuss how to address this.
00:32:44.580
I think you and I actually met in Paris at the International Energy Agency when Secretary Granholm was there.
00:32:50.880
And the focus very much in terms of increasing production was our announcement of 300,000 additional barrels a day,
00:32:58.400
which we worked with premier kenny and the industry on um was partly the product of those
00:33:03.200
conversations because of course the offtake uh to get it to the gulf has to come from the united
00:33:07.360
states and we continue to talk about issues like lng exports for example have you all have you all
00:33:12.080
increased your production well yeah for the u.s for us to be able to help our allies around the
00:33:17.760
world i'll say yes last year was a record year uh for production and exports we had i think in
00:33:24.320
December, 4.1 million barrels a day. But Senator, we believe, frankly, we frankly don't agree with
00:33:34.200
the 200,000 barrel estimate just offered by Minister Wilkinson. We have about 300,000 barrels
00:33:43.700
of daily unused capacity in the North American pipeline system, which we expect to fill this
00:33:50.840
year through increased production. Once that's filled, the economics will probably work for
00:33:57.440
additional shipment by rail, which could be upwards of an additional 200,000 barrels a day.
00:34:02.680
In addition, if midstream companies get serious about it, and if regulators approve it, we could
00:34:07.940
see a series of technical improvements through pipeline optimization and line reversals over
00:34:13.620
the next year or so that could add upwards of another 400,000 barrels a day of potential capacity.
00:34:20.440
And then finally, in Q4 of 2023 and Q1 of 2020.
00:34:26.020
This would also reduce the American, United States' reliance on OPEC or Saudi or?
00:34:30.880
Well, I would certainly hope that American, yeah, I think American refineries, I know,
00:34:35.480
would prefer to buy locally, partly because they get our energy on a discount,
00:34:45.220
And I do know that Gulf refineries are very keen to get more access to our heavy supply.
00:34:51.280
OK, so what I found what I found interesting about all of that as well is that the it appears that our relationship with the Joe Biden White House is 100 percent centered around Jonathan Wilkinson's reach out.
00:35:05.260
And that should leave us very, very concerned, because as you go through and you see how he frames this, he is our ally, definitely, when it comes to hydrogen. And that is really positive, because there's lots of ways that we can get hydrogen to market. You can either do it through LNG export, through natural gas export, through ammonia, extract the hydrogen, and I think that that's likely going to be the future.
00:35:29.060
but that still requires a huge amount of infrastructure to build out. What do you do in
00:35:34.380
the meantime? And that's where I feel like the federal government is a bit hostile to our
00:35:38.420
interests. One of the things that you should know, just so you understand the vision of the federal
00:35:43.620
government of where they're going, one of the things that they said is that even after 2050,
00:35:49.220
when we reached the net zero targets, he went on to say that we're going to have to continue to use
00:35:56.760
one quarter of the current production of oil and one half of the natural gas for non-combustion
00:36:05.440
purposes. So if you're going to, and I personally think that those are probably quite low. So one
00:36:13.360
of the things I think we're seeing with the federal government is that they're going to
00:36:17.580
continue to grind away on making sure that we do not use oil or natural gas for combustion purposes.
00:36:27.800
Bitumen, this is perhaps a rebranding opportunity for us.
00:36:31.160
Bitumen can be repurposed for carbon nanofiber, which can be used for construction materials,
00:36:37.740
And look, if we're going to be having electric cars, we're still going to need some roads
00:36:42.880
So that, I think, is the direction that the government is going.
00:36:45.740
But the idea that our power grid could be completely off of natural gas by 2035, which
00:36:53.680
the aggressive target that the federal government has put forward um it it's not going to happen
00:36:58.560
especially this is what doesn't make any sense actually is that if we're going to be moving
00:37:04.160
towards a hydrogen economy out of which uh methane is going to be the principal feedstock for that if
00:37:10.320
you're capturing the co2 we shouldn't be um bent on trying to completely eliminate this source of
00:37:16.480
fuel from our from our electricity grid so i would say that there is not 100 simpatico with our
0.60
00:37:21.920
federal and provincial governments on that. And I thought you'd want to be interested in knowing
00:37:26.240
that context. But I think the premier did a good job there. And it's always great when we can go
00:37:30.740
abroad, talk about our message. My only concern is that did the message get out to enough people
00:37:36.760
and enough decision makers? If you've got a small Senate committee on energy, does that information
00:37:41.180
get widely disseminated to the other senators? Do you end up having the House of Representatives
00:37:47.180
weigh in on it? Are any of the candidates for future presidential campaigns paying attention
00:37:54.260
to that? It's great information, but are we getting it widely disseminated enough?
00:37:58.740
Sonia Savage was down there, the Energy Minister. Jason Nixon was down there, the Environment
00:38:03.200
Minister. Let me just give a little shout out to James Rajat, who's really done such a tremendous
00:38:07.900
job on our behalf. At the federal level, he was an MP, and I think he was also chair of the Natural
00:38:13.020
Resources Committee when he was elected with the Conservatives, but he has since been appointed to
00:38:17.660
be our representative for Alberta in Washington, and he was also there as well, so he clearly
00:38:22.860
arranged the trip. All right, friends, so clearly the Premier's ending on a high note before he
00:38:29.620
goes into the vote tonight. We will find out at, I think, five o'clock today which direction that's
00:38:34.980
going to go. Would be interested in hearing your feedback. You'll hear a little bit more from me
00:38:38.760
later today. I'll be doing a little bit of commentary with Corey Morgan as we get into
00:38:43.540
getting some of the results. And I'll be watching very closely, just as you will as well. Thanks so
00:38:49.300
much for tuning in today. I'm Danielle Smith. This has been the Danielle Smith.