Update on the Calgary Ring Road
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Summary
Calgary s Ring Road is finally complete! Premier Bill Smith and his team cut the ceremonial ribbon on the final leg of the project, which marks the completion of the entire project, and marks the beginning of a new era for Calgary.
Transcript
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I wonder if you want to announce that I was coming in?
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Sam, why don't you come in and just sort of get things underway, and then we'll turn it over to Eric.
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Hello. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today.
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We're just going to start off with a quick prayer here, and then we'll have Emily Bouchard lead in with an introduction.
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This is a great honor for me to do the opening prayer.
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So I'm going to say the prayer in my own language.
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that was tanned down for a whole number of years.
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With that I'd be singing a song for our old people and was one of our trails back here
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and in recognition of our elders and our old people
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good morning everyone thank you all for being here today i'm pleased to be here on treaty
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seven territory i also acknowledge the metis people who share a deep history and connection
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with this land today is a great day for the city of calgary my name is eric bouchard and i am the
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proud mla for calgary law heed it's my pleasure to be here for this historic announcement and i'm
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honored to call on premier smith to share a few words of why we're here this morning thank you
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very much thank you eric and thank you so much uh elder for starting us off in such a good way
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i have so many people to recognize this morning and it's such a pleasure for me to be here with
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transportation and economic corridors minister devon dreeshan along with many current and former
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mlas and members of cabinet along with other elected officials and dignitaries who have joined
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us for what is truly an historic day for Calgary. And I say historic because today's announcement is
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a game changer for Calgarians and for all commuters who are traversing the city and going
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to bypass to get to the mountains. We were all just talking here about how each of us is going
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to be personally impacted by this. I know it's going to be a whole lot easier for me to go to
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High River to get into the mountains. And I'm so excited when this comes formally open. So let me
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just take a moment to acknowledge the many, many people who joined us today and who've been involved
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in this project, whether through their advocacy, their work at the cabinet table or other ways. I
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must tell you, this really is a Team Alberta effort. When you think of three different
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governments, multiple different transportation ministers who all kept up the effort to make
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sure this got to completion, it is quite a remarkable thing to be able to see that we're
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able to cut the ribbon on it today. So alongside Minister Dreeshan, we're joined by Matt Jones,
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who's Minister of Jobs, Economy, Trade, Minister Rick McIver, Minister of Municipal Affairs. Let
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me just say a special note of thank you to Rick McIver, as well as I see Chief Roy Whitney here
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with Sutina. When I think about how important it was for this leg of the ring road to get completed
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with the incredible work that you did with us as a nation, I greatly appreciate you doing that.
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Eric Bouchard, of course, as you know, MLA for Calgary Law,
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Heath Chantel DeJong, MLA for Chester Strathmore.
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We're also joined by a number of municipal councillors, including Mayor Jody
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Gondek, city councillors, Evan Spencer, Richard Putmans, Dan McLean, Rocky
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View Reeve, Crystal Kissel, Rocky View councillor, Samantha Wright.
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And as I mentioned, this project has been moved along by many, many hands.
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everyone today's opening of the ring road marks the completion of the entire project
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creating 101 kilometers of free flowing traffic encompassing the city and that'll mean less
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congestion for calgary's inner roads less time with fighting stop and go traffic and safer
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commutes for all drivers it will save calgarians thousands of hours a year time people spend in
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their cars that can be better spent with their families and it will make it that much easier
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for parents who work in the north to make it on time to their kids soccer games in the south and
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and it will mean that folks heading to Canmore or Banff from the east or from the south can easily
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and seamlessly skirt city traffic to make it to the mountains that we all love to see as we drive.
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The completion of this ring road will have an immediate and noticeable effect on the residents
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in the Calgary area, and it also means safer routes for long-haul truck drivers and commercial
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carriers. As part of the longer east-west corridor, the Calgary ring road provides a more efficient
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and non-stop route for drivers to get Alberta's goods and services to other markets around the
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province and across the continent. So make no mistake, we are committed to economic growth
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and the completion of this road is one more way that we encourage it. Today's announcement is
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historic for another reason. It also celebrates the fact that the Ring Road project has been
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completed 10 months earlier than planned. That is an accomplishment that most governments don't get
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to announce. And of course, we're not most governments. We're a government that wants
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to get things done for Albertans. And we do so with the help of our many, many partners. I want
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acknowledge those whose hard work and vision turned today into such a wonderful reality.
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Together we are making life better for all Albertans. Thank you and now I'm going to invite
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Minister Drishan to share more details with us.
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And before Minister Drishan comes up, we'll hear a word or two from Mayor Jodi Gondek.
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Thank you. Oki Dada Nistada Ambawastich Tansay.
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greetings to all of you in the mother languages of the indigenous peoples who have stewarded these
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lands for generations before many of us came to settle here on behalf of my calgary city council
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colleagues and our mobility teams i'd like to thank premier smith minister dreeshan and the
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provincial government for this expedited opening of stony trail on the west side my gratitude also
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extends to chief roy whitney and the sutuna nation for being such great partners and neighbors
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in our mission to strengthen the sense of community in the calgary region
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and thank you to Mayor Kissel and the Rocky View County Council and administration who were able
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to join us as well. Today's announcement means we'll have better options for anyone traveling
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the west side of the city. It's also a significant addition to our goods movement strategy,
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ultimately aiding economic growth for Calgary, for the Satina Nation, for Rocky View County,
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and the Calgary metropolitan region as a whole. And while Councillor Putmans couldn't be here
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today. He's passing along his well wishes for the residents of Ward 6 and the residents at
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Sutina Nation. He's looking forward to easing some of the serious traffic pressures and creating
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better flow between communities. For our part in this project, the City of Calgary has invested
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approximately $25 million to make a number of improvements to prepare for the opening of the
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West Ring Road. There's new roadway, pathway, and sidewalk connections that were constructed to
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provide safe and efficient access to the West Ring Road, including the widening of Bow Trail.
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Several key intersections, such as Bow Trail and Old Banff Coach Road, Bow Trail and 85th Street
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received capacity upgrades to maintain efficient access to the West Ring Road. New and upgraded
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traffic signal infrastructure has been installed at several key intersections, and we will continue
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to further coordinate with Alberta Transportation to place temporary cameras so that we can monitor
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traffic on the new section of the ring road we'll monitor traffic flow and make signal timing
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changes 24 7 as they are needed and we'll provide opening information on dynamic message signs
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traffic radio as well as social media and google street view that all-important tool will also be
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updated accordingly all of this to say that we believe in strong partnership between governments
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because that's when we can deliver projects that add to people's quality of life thank you
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well thank you mayor gondek for that and for premier smith for this historic announcement
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uh it's it's great to be here as as transportation minister uh the final leg of such an important
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project uh for a bad football analogy it feels like i'm just the guy at the one yard line with
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the football that goes in the end zone and gets a touchdown so so so much work went into this
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project when you tally it all up from 1999 till now it's about over four billion dollars went
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into the completion of this ring road as premier smith noted 101 kilometers now free flowing around
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the city so really uh christmas came early for calgarians this year uh 10 months ahead of
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schedule on budget this final leg here which essentially i'd like to thank graham construction
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and CarMax and Vinci for further work on this project.
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You also were with me as going across the finish line at the very end
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It was fantastic to work with you from the department standpoint.
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And I'd also like to thank the officials within transportation
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It's a pleasure to work with you because as government officials,
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as bureaucrats, you want to make sure that the province gets built
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And so it's a it's an honor and a privilege to work with you day in and day out.
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But yeah, decades in the making of this project, over four billion dollars, thousands of jobs.
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And really, it's it's incredible. And for many of the transportation ministers here, you're it's almost a full circle moment.
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Sorry, there's going to be more dad jokes coming along. So buckle up.
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But special thanks to Walter Pazowski, Ed Stelmack, Lou Coulette, Brian Mason, Rick McIver, Prasad Panda, Raj Nsani, all had their marks on this important project.
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And really, it's easy for politicians to take credit for other people's work, but this was a huge team effort.
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And actually, you go back all the way to the visionary leadership of Premier Loughey.
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Back in the 70s, he actually had the foresight to set aside land to build a transportation utility corridor to make this highway that we're standing on here a reality.
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And even predating that, back in the 1950s, the Social Credit Party envisioned what it would look like to have these types of ring roads around Edmonton and Calgary.
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So, you know, from the late 1970s, high level planning and land acquisition, construction beginning in 1999 and all the way to today to be able to see nearly 200 bridges built along this new highway, 48 interchanges.
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And if you actually stretch the 101 kilometers and all the single lanes into one lane, it would be over 1,300 kilometers in a single highway.
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So that would take you almost to Winnipeg if you went east, Las Vegas going south, Yellowknife if you went north.
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And if you really wanted to go west, you'd be somewhere in the Pacific if you went that far out.
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so opening this ring road means obviously new travel options for calgarians seamlessly connects
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major highways such as the trans canada east and west and a highway two going north and south
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the road has been designed to accommodate up to 100 000 vehicles per day and with this final
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section opening drivers will save about in the west side here on calgary will save about 20
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minutes one way traveling through this area and the highway also draws traffic away from heavily
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congested areas, whether that be the Deerfoot, 16th Ave, Glenmore Trail, and obviously Sarsi
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Trail. And for Calgary drivers, that means less time stuck in traffic and more time at home doing
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the things that they love. And also on the economic side, for commercial truck drivers,
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this ring road provides an efficient bypass route, saving time and money for delivery of
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products and goods around Alberta and North America. And the ring road is critical to growing
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economic corridors here in the province the highway is also important part of the canamax
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corridor which connects alberta to highway networks in the us and mexico an efficient
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modern transportation network sends a strong signal that alberta is open for business and
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we will compete with other jurisdictions to attract people and investments here in our province
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now the ring road is a major boost for calgary's economy new businesses have already set up
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businesses set up shop along this route and just once again thank you for everybody that's been a
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part of this project through planning design and construction and i also want to thank the families
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along this route for their patience as this project has progressed over the years you put
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up with extra noise and dust and traffic and construction uh more than more than others have
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so thank you for your understanding your patience throughout this entire project so it's great to
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ring in a new era of travel options here in calgary and thank you for joining us here today for this
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historic uh occasion and i think we're gonna go straight into a q a but uh don't leave uh right
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after that there there are some some fun uh hockey games we'll be raffling off some christmas trees
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and uh santa is here probably should have led with that um so uh so so try to have fun uh get into
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the the christmas spirit and the holiday spirit and thanks everybody for coming here today and
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happy to turn things over for questions thank you minister
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We will now be the media Q&A portion for media we will be going with one question one follow-up for
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those in person there is a mic just off to your right behind the cameras we're going to start off
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here on the phones. Operator could you put through our first caller please? Rick Bell Calgary Sun.
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uh good morning and uh congrats on the ring road i if if ray down there i'm saying hello
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um i see i see luke i'm trying to see where ray is i think he was supposed to be here yeah
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he's waving in the back message message received the message received thank you um so uh first
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First off, Premier, if you could tell us exactly what the status is of the tax cut for all Albertans that you rolled out on the first day of the election campaign earlier this year.
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Well, I'm working with my finance minister on working through a time frame for implementation because, of course, we know how hard it is right now for families and especially seniors.
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that is going to apply on incomes $60,000 and below,
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which would save Albertans up to $750 per year.
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And we're working with caucus and our finance minister
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to roll out the tax cut we do want to see it implemented in the mandate and you'll you'll see
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that in budget 2024 we obviously have to need to balance the softening of oil prices oil prices are
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now sort of hovering around the the 68 to 72 dollar range and so we have to be mindful that
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we have to phase in a tax cut over um to ensure that we also don't end up getting back into
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deficit that's our number one framework uh so uh when you look at what happened with the corporate
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income tax cut jason kenney faced it in over three years so we'll work out that phasing
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um but when it comes to affordability we know as well the two most important issues we've got
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to deal with in the new year are insurance which we are working on as well as electricity we've
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already seen a bit of a moderation in in prices but we'll have a lot more to say about that as
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well but we we recognize there's still a lot more to work work to do on affordability
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and um supplementary is just so is there going to be you're saying there's going to be a phase
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in so am i clear that there might be is it necessary that the first part of the phase
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in will start in budget 2024 or i'll work that out with my how will how will that look like is
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this like a three-year phase in or two-year or is it going to start this coming year the 24 budget
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well the budget is scheduled to be on february 29th so we'll have an answer for you then but
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i'm i'm very mindful that our finance minister's number one goal is to make sure that we maintain
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balanced budgets and so i'll be taking his advice on that we're we're still in inactive conversation
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but you'll see the the phase in schedule in the budget in february 29. thank you rick and operator
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could you put through our next caller please shaylan skulski ctv
00:27:37.140
thank you very much for taking my question my question is for the premier i'm hoping that you
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can comment on allegations of your political interference in the revocation of dr hinshaw's
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position within alberta health services last spring so your question is
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can you confirm uh the allegations in his resignation letter to dr cowell dr mads states
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that he's reiterated concerns several times that you the premier were reaching down four levels
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into ahs and instructing them to rescind an approved contract what do you say to that
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allegation well i can tell you that i put dr cowell in place to make these decisions i talked with him
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on a weekly basis we talked about staffing decisions a lot and we have a major restructuring
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that we're doing in alberta health services as well so uh ultimately it's the it's the official
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administrator and now the board and the uh and the ceo who will make those decisions and it was
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the it was the case in in this instance too the decisions of ahs were made by ahs thank you nicole
00:28:42.420
did you have a follow-up uh sorry yes and i do have a follow-up on that same topic in in that
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resignation letter dr mann states that dr cowell said that after speaking directly with you on a
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phone call on june 1st he said at a group meeting that the premier is firm there can be no hiring of
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of dr hinshaw can you confirm that you had that phone call on june 1st with dr cowell and you
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outlined that dr hinshaw could not be hired look as i said i talked with dr cowell all the time
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about uh about staffing decisions and he always made it clear that the decisions by hs were made
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by hs so for him in con in conjunction with the ceo thank you shay operator could you put through
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our next caller please sean polzer western stanford
00:29:25.620
Oh, hello. Thanks for taking the call. I'm really happy about the Ring Road. I live in
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Bonass, so it's going to make my trip out to Brad Creek. But the question I had was,
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this is your first media availability since COP28 conference. Can you comment on COP28
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and maybe how effective the Alberta and maybe even Saskatchewan presence was there given the
00:29:56.900
policy pronouncements that came from the federal government out of that meeting?
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Well, I can tell you that the federal government would have gone much further.
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They wanted to announce a complete phase-out of fossil fuels within a very short time frame.
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There were a number of countries that were there asking for that. I'm very disappointed that we
00:30:13.940
have a federal government that is actively working against the interests of the oil producing
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provinces and actively making policy pronouncements in an area that they have no constitutional
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authority so i think what you saw with cop is the strong presence of myself and scott mo from from
00:30:29.060
saskatchewan as well as many of the other oil producing nations we were able to get something
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far more reasonable which is a recognition that carbon capture utilization and storage is going to
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play a key part in reducing emissions the uh the assertion that we need transition fuels like
00:30:44.820
natural gas which is what we have always said and that we'll ultimately be moving towards a balanced
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energy usage and we've all we agree with a balanced approach we're exploring small modular nuclear
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we're building out our hydrogen network we have a number of carbon capture projects already
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underway for petrochemicals for hydrogen for for cement so so we share an aspiration of being
00:31:07.620
carbon neutral by 2050 but we know that fossil fuels are going to continue to be a part of the
00:31:12.740
energy mix for a long time to come and alberta is going to be right there offering the best
0.87
00:31:17.060
barrels in the world and we stand firm on that and as a follow-up uh what would be the next steps
00:31:24.420
in terms of the negotiations with uh the federal government in terms of the round tables and that
00:31:30.500
you had previously suggested i think back in the summer that uh perhaps uh alberta would walk away
00:31:36.580
or uh or shut them down is that on the table well it's pretty clear we can have no relationship with
00:31:43.300
environment minister steven gibault he's uh he went to cop with an agenda in mind he didn't loop us
00:31:49.380
in on it he had a number of pronouncements that he made not in his area of jurisdiction he forced us
00:31:55.140
if we wanted to to even hear what he was going to announce to sign non-disclosure agreements i'm
00:31:59.940
telling you that is that is not the spirit of collaborative federalism that the federal
00:32:04.020
government has been admonished to do in two court decisions now one at the supreme court level and
00:32:08.340
one at the federal court level so we are finalizing a letter on what our future engagement will be
00:32:14.500
with the federal government i think we can engage on a couple of things i think we're having some
00:32:18.260
constructive discussions around the issue of hydrogen we're having constructive discussions
00:32:23.060
around the issue of small modular nuclear we've had a great discussions on carbon capture utilization
00:32:28.100
and storage but i'm not going to pretend that stephen gabaud has any authority to dictate to
00:32:32.820
Alberta the pace of production of our oil and natural gas resources and and we have to be super
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clear about that and if that means shutting down a couple of the tables I'm prepared to do that.
00:32:41.300
Thank you Sean, thank you Premier. We do only have time for one more question we'll go to our
00:32:45.140
mic here in person uh feel free to go ahead uh the questions for Mayor Gondek please.
00:32:50.900
And just state your name and outlet for the record as well please.
00:32:53.300
Kian Bexie with the counter signal uh over 13 000 people have now signed a petition calling for your
00:32:58.740
resignation after they say that you humiliated and disrespected the jewish community in calgary
00:33:03.300
i'm wondering if you've given any serious consideration to that resignation and if not
00:33:07.620
if you could give those 13 000 people almost as many people who are going to be using this road in
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a day uh why you're not resigning i made a very clear statement about why i chose to not attend
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an event that statement is public it has been public for quite some time and there are measures
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in place in this province by which elected officials are monitored how we are evaluated
00:33:33.060
for our performance and nothing i've done is outside of that that's my statement i'll just
00:33:39.860
give a follow-up and ask about the ring road since nobody else really did that
00:33:43.780
you finished it uh 10 minutes ahead of schedule minister dreeshan um that's obviously a great
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accomplishment but what's on the agenda next like what's actually going to happen uh in this
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province in terms of building it up thanks yeah great uh great question um 1.2 million was this
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last final leg of this ring road but when you look at big nation building projects and what's next
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for for alberta uh we're actually currently working on highway 686 which would be a brand
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new 200 plus kilometer from fort mcmurray going west essentially going to pierless trout lake and
00:34:14.900
over to grand prairie so that's a huge undertaking that we've been working with the three first
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nations along that route actually kind of flipping the script as it were giving them the upfront
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consultation ability to say where that route should be and so that's that's kind of the first
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step we're still in that step right now but we'd love to be able to see that as a opening up our
00:34:37.780
north and resources safety egress for for people in the event of wildfires so that i say would be
00:34:44.020
probably that the next big project coming for the province thanks for taking the question thank you
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kian that's all the time we have for questions today so thank you everybody for joining us and
00:34:52.180
as minister trishan said we have uh some facilities going on here that you can all partake in thank you