00:13:27.500And we have a right to take public transit without fear of crime and open-air drug use.
00:13:33.200We will address gang violence, expand access to mental health and addiction treatments,
00:13:38.100and keep violent and sexual offenders off our streets.
00:13:41.340We are putting criminals on notice that Albertans will no longer tolerate being harassed and frightened or victimized.
00:13:48.500We will do whatever it takes for Albertans to feel safe on their streets, in their homes, in their communities, and riding public transit, period.
00:13:54.540And the United Conservative Party's Safe Streets Action Plan will do just that.
00:15:42.540And Mike Ellis will take the podium again. Thank you.
00:15:49.180Well, thank you very much, Holly. As many of you know, prior to being in politics, I spent over
00:15:56.10010 years as a police officer on the streets of Calgary. A lot has changed in law enforcement
00:16:00.820since my time on the streets, and as we've seen, a segment of the population aim to villainize the
00:16:06.800men and women of our police services who put their lives on the line every day and every time they
00:16:12.500answer a call to service. At the same time this villainization has been happening we've seen crime
00:16:20.020especially violent crime increase. This villainization is unacceptable. Albertans know it
00:16:26.820and the UCP know it especially during a time of increased social disorder in our communities.
00:16:32.980That's why I'm concerned about the number of quote defund the police unquote candidates
00:16:38.420running in this election and that's also why i'm so proud of this announcement today and a follow-up
00:16:45.220announcement by some of my my fellow candidates the ucp understands that the government has a
00:16:51.860role to play in keeping our families and communities safe that role includes effective
00:16:57.540and meaningful policy changes like the ones that we have taken over the past four years
00:17:03.140we've made strong legislative changes including the introduction of claire's law
00:17:06.820further work to protect survivors of human trafficking and preventing convicted sexual
00:17:13.220and dangerous offenders from being able to legally change their names the important role
00:17:19.060of government also includes actual supporting our law enforcement and not just talking about it
00:17:26.740you know i was humbled to take a significant action on this over the past six months with the
00:17:33.140creation of the new teams and increased funding for existing units and the UCP is committed to
00:17:39.300continuing this work. We expanded the mandate and powers of Alberta sheriffs for effective law
00:17:46.020enforcement across the province and further redeployed sheriffs in of course downtown
00:17:50.980Calgary and Edmonton. It was our UCP government that also took tangible action with the creation
00:17:58.980of the gang suppression units and firearms investigative units and launching a fugitive
00:18:04.740apprehension team united conservatives will do whatever it takes for albertans to feel safe in
00:18:10.500their homes in their streets and their communities and what we're promising today will build off
00:18:17.460those earlier steps it is no secret that fentanyl has devastated the lives of thousands of albertans
00:18:25.380Those on the left would look to completely decriminalize the incredibly dangerous drugs such as fentanyl.
00:18:32.380And let me be clear, this would only empower organized crime.
00:18:37.380It would empower the criminals and it would hamper the efforts of our law enforcement community.
00:18:43.380Criminals are profiting off the addiction and of course the death that is caused by this drug.
00:18:50.380And it's time that we say, as a community, no more.
00:18:54.380more. A new anti-fentanyl team led by the Alberta sheriffs will take the fight right to our
00:19:01.260U.S. border to stop these drugs from crossing into our province. And they'll be joined by an
00:19:08.460anti-gun trafficking team that will work to stop illegal guns from making their way into the hands
00:19:14.780of the criminals and the gang members. Because while the federal government targets legal gun
00:19:20.580owners we know that the gun violence being perpetrated on alberta streets come from
00:19:27.860illegal sales and trades of guns and people whose first thought unfortunately is violence
00:19:36.420i'm going to give you a small slightly anecdotal story i had the opportunity to walk the streets of
00:19:43.060Vancouver a few times over the last several years. I recommend people not go and walk the streets of
00:19:51.220Eastside Vancouver. It is extremely dangerous. Those are not just my words, those are the words
00:19:56.980that were coming from the law enforcement community in that particular area that I was speaking with.
00:20:01.380But I want to talk to you about a young fellow by the name of Colin. Colin was out with us. Colin's
00:20:06.900Colin's in recovery. Colin is a young gentleman who has spent a good portion of his life in jail.
00:20:14.900If you looked at Colin, you would probably be intimidated by Colin.
00:20:20.900He has a serious history when it comes to being part of a gang, and he certainly has a serious history of incarceration.
00:20:32.900But Colin and I got to know each other and we talked.
00:20:36.120And, you know, I asked him how long he had spent in jail.
00:20:40.400And he had indicated that he had spent probably over, you know, in and out of jail for probably well over eight years.
00:20:45.360And, of course, in Canada, that's actually a significant amount of time.
00:20:49.660Because of his addiction, I believe that I made an assumption that he was, you know, doing petty thefts in order to, you know, assist with his habit.
00:21:01.440Usually it was fentanyl or, quite frankly, crystal meth or a combination thereof.
00:21:08.660And Colin very sheeplessly put down his head and he's like, no, sir, Minister, that's not the crimes I was committing.
00:21:21.020I was committing armed robberies right across Canada.
00:21:24.000getting firearms, going to banks, other institutions, hopping on top of the tables and
00:21:31.860the desks, pulling out a gun, and basically saying, give me all the money. And he was doing
00:21:37.240that in order to feed his habit. Now I can tell you, I asked Colin, I said, Colin, I said, where
00:21:44.560did you, where did you lawfully purchase that firearm? I said, he looked at me with very stunned
00:21:51.060amazement. He said, Minister, what are you talking about? He said, I didn't lawfully
00:21:58.120purchase this gun. He says, we get it because it's smuggled across the border from the United
00:22:03.140States. And that's the point I'm trying to make. The evidence that comes, whether it
00:22:08.320be through anecdotal stories, or whether it becomes through our folks in the Alberta law
00:22:12.660enforcement response teams, will tell you that these illegal firearms, which are creating
00:22:17.560havoc in our communities are not coming from lawful gun owners. They are coming from the United States0.62
00:22:24.080or they are coming from lawful gun owners who have been robbed. That's the fact. Now, I must
00:22:32.580give credit to Colin as well. Although he's lived a very tough life, his addiction, he's overcome his
00:22:38.480addiction. And as a result of overcoming his addiction, he is leading a very productive life.
00:22:43.780So recovery, to ladies and gentlemen, for anybody listening, and you all know that I was Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, recovery is possible, and that's why we put all these supports in place.
00:22:53.820So folks, I just want to let everybody know that United Conservatives, we're putting criminals on notice.
00:23:00.940And our message to those who prey on our most vulnerable in our communities is quite simple.
00:33:58.700very quickly and so i'm i'm just so pleased to see the level of coordination that we have but i
00:34:03.500i think we have to to go back and realize that we we may not be able to stop these kind of ins
00:34:09.260of severe weather events and we have to do a lot more to protect communities so everybody feels safe
00:34:15.660hi audrey never had to canada the canadian press reported this morning that the former some former
00:34:21.340firefighters report that your government's eliminating of the rappel firefighting program
00:34:25.660is making it harder to fight fires right now because they can't be stopped early on so how
00:34:30.700much of this current emergency give you pause to reconsider restarting this program look we're
00:34:36.300going to have to make sure i mean as i said having a 10 times worse fire event from what we've ever
00:34:42.700seen ever seen historically is obviously going to have to make us analyze what what it is that we
00:34:47.580need to have for baseline support especially since we have the interagency forest fire center that
00:34:53.260allows for us to provide additional support to other provinces and internationally so i've already
00:34:59.100raised that with the with the civil service that let's let's make sure that we do an assessment
00:35:03.820so that we know what our base level should be make sure that we can handle a typical fire year
00:35:08.940and and and do that assessment i i know that because this was extraordinary it's pretty
00:35:15.500difficult to be able to to um to manage this without the interagency help it just um i don't
00:35:21.580know that that would be a reasonable expectation that we'd be able to manage this all on
00:35:27.260our own which is why I'm grateful that we've been working so hard for so many years on developing
00:35:31.740that interagency support so to give you some idea we have over 700 firefighters and we've made
00:35:36.380a request to have 1100 come in from other parts of the country and we're continuing to make requests
00:35:42.300we've identified 300 additional firefighters that are trained up through the canadian military
00:35:49.500that are as I said are being talked to now to see if we can recruit them in and yesterday we did a call as well to ask if individuals who had firefighting experience in the private sector would be willing to be embedded with our teams just to email us so that we would be able to see if we could also integrate them so at this moment it's all hands on deck and we'll have to do the assessment in future years about how we make sure that we have everything that we need to manage a typical fire year.
00:36:19.500Hello, Danielle. It's Duncan Kinney from the Progress Report. Oh, you all right?
00:36:24.620Haven't had a chance to chat with you since your radio show days, so good to catch up. Hi, Duncan.
00:36:28.940Yeah, so this could be a Mike Ellis answer, could be your answer, but I've got a freedom
00:36:34.060of information request that shows that just as visits to supervised consumption sites were
00:36:38.380dropping like a stone due to COVID, that calls for service to EMS for drug poisonings were spiking.
00:36:45.180UCB government didn't release this information, had to get it through a FOIP,
00:36:48.940and then the ucp government then shut down supervised consumption sites anyway knowing
00:36:53.180this information of what was happening to the ems system do you think you your chief of staff
00:36:58.060perhaps mike ellis you think you owe paramedics an apology for doing what you did to the supervised
00:37:02.940consumption sites and knowing what it would do to the ems system as well as to the workload of
00:37:06.700paramedics i i already hear mike ellis saying no behind me so i know he wants to jump in and answer
00:37:11.340your question so i'll let him do that duncan duncan we have the same amount of supervised
00:37:15.020consumption sites is when we took government in 2019. We're looking at opening up more supervised
00:37:22.220consumption sites in the Edmonton area and that work has continued to be ongoing. So look, I mean,
00:37:28.380as I've said before, you know, this fentanyl overdose is a very, very complex problem.
00:37:35.020There is no one single silver bullet solution to this problem. You know, there's some people
00:37:40.140that want to believe that the only answer is supervised consumption sites and as I've said
00:37:44.220before and I'm pretty sure you have been in the room is that it is part of the continuum of care
00:37:49.660it is just not the answer to a very very complex problem sorry just answer the ask the question
00:37:56.940again about paramedics okay well I would say this that um the the issue of this fentanyl crisis
00:38:14.220is worse than I've ever seen we've got stats going all the way back to prior when when fentanyl
00:38:19.900entered the the picture and the level of overdoses have not returned to what they were before and
00:38:25.820that's why I think fentanyl that's why I say I don't think there's such thing as a safe supply
00:38:29.740it's very very serious when it comes to paramedics I feel very proud of what we have done in the last
00:38:36.140four months to improve support for our paramedics we uh we've ended the system where they were
00:38:43.100waiting 15 to 20 ambulances deep at all of our major acute care facilities we have a drop and go
00:38:48.860system we have got nurses on site to receive patients and at any given time we have 10 to 15
00:38:57.020trained ambulance units ready to respond in calgary and edmonton we have effectively ended
00:39:03.980the ems code reds ems red alerts we we almost always have ambulances available and these have
00:39:11.900been the remarkable changes that have happened since dr john cowell became the official
00:39:16.780administrator i would encourage you duncan to to go and ask some paramedics about what the current
00:39:21.260state of the ems system is because it is one of the biggest success stories and one of the biggest
00:39:26.460reasons why i feel so proud that that we we made a different approach on alberta health services
00:39:32.140and put dr john cowell in there okay let's go to lisa and then i have to hit the phone lines
00:39:37.420thank you hi it's lisa johnson from the edmonton journal i have some questions just about the
00:39:40.860specifics of this announcement um the press release noting that you plan to make it easier
00:39:45.980for moms and dads to know the whereabouts of violent and sexual offenders i'm wondering if
00:39:50.380that relates to the bracelet monitoring program or what specifically that is and i'm also wondering
00:39:56.220if you can clarify what this other clause means make investments in women's shelters and sexual
00:40:02.060assault counseling because we saw obviously with the budget the association of alberta sexual
00:40:06.620assault centers services uh called your budget a snub it was 10 million dollars lower than
00:40:13.020than their request they'd requested 14 million dollar increase to deal with the demand and i
00:40:17.900think 4.2 million is is what uh what the budget saw increased um to them and as you know that
00:40:25.740kind of preventative service obviously prevents homelessness addiction some of the things we're
00:40:29.820talking about today so i'm wondering if you have that means the ucps plans to increase that budget
00:40:34.780So the $4.2 million increase we did end up giving that to other services the particular agency that you were talking about we had told them that we stood by on the ready to be able to write the check to them but they declined it and so we did find other ways to be able to support the sexual assault center community and we'll continue to find ways to work with those different communities in order to support that.
00:41:03.000The ankle bracelet monitoring is going to be very important.
00:41:08.080The main difference that we're going to see is that if the federal government does not address the issue of the catch and release, we know we have to step in.
00:41:17.700That's why we will be using the ankle bracelets in order to be able to monitor.
00:41:21.360And I think you've seen as well that when dangerous individuals are released into the community, the police often send an alert out to the community.
00:41:28.580So rather than just sending an alert, we'll have those two things together.
00:41:31.480I'll see if Mike has anything he wants to add.
00:44:47.060But when I got elected, I vowed to put those dark days behind all of us.
00:44:56.120It's part of the reason why a few weeks ago, when I went to a Red Deer prayer breakfast,
00:45:02.640one of the things they asked when they were saying that, what do you want us to pray for?
00:45:08.380I said, you know what, let's just pray for every Albertan that each of us can get over the trauma of the last three years in our own way.
00:45:19.820Every single Albertan was hurt over that period of time.
00:45:25.620And that's why I vowed when I got elected that we were going to put it in the past,
00:45:30.260that we were going to look forward that we were going to make sure that this was a place where everybody from every walk of life felt valued and respected and optimistic about the future.
00:45:43.500And that is what I'm going to continue to do.
00:45:46.060All right, operator, let's go to our last caller.