Danielle Smith, Alberta’s UCP leader, frames the May 29 election as a fight against federal overreach under Trudeau and Guibot, citing healthcare crises—29-hour ER waits, 69,000 surgical backlogs—and economic revival with $500M in venture capital and hydrogen investments like Dow Chemicals’ Edmonton project. She questions C-11/C-18’s impact on media freedom, alleges federal censorship during lockdowns (e.g., Twitter/FBI), and praises Rebel News’ independent model while criticizing CBC’s ties to Ottawa. Smith’s Sovereignty Act mirrors Quebec’s pushback against Ottawa’s jurisdiction, positioning her as a defender of Alberta’s LNG exports and agricultural autonomy against carbon/nitrogen policies, contrasting with Canada’s declining consumer confidence. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a one-on-one interview with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
It's December 21st, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
Alberta's next general election is on May 29th, just five months away.
And it's actually neck and neck between the new leader of the UCP, the United Conservative Party, that was selected after Jason Kenney imploded.
between Danielle Smith, the Premier and leader of the UCP, and Rachel Notley, the leader of the socialist NDP, who was the accidental premier, elected in 2015, the same year Justin Trudeau was elected.
It was a double whammy for Alberta that put the province on the back foot for half a decade.
Well, this is going to be a very important election, and there's a lot of people trying to shake Danielle Smith already.
Remember, she was an outsider who took over the UCP.
It was Jason Kenney's baby.
He fused together the provincial progressive conservatives and the old Wild Rose Party, and he installed himself as leader in it.
It was his party in every way, but that unraveled pretty quickly and came to an end this spring.
In my view, it was two things.
Jason Kenney was too deferential to the federal government.
He was always keeping an eye at the bigger opportunity of later one day running for prime minister.
And I don't know what happened to him, but he became a lockdown enthusiast.
He went from being the Ron DeSantis of Canada, the freest, lightest touch, to being the guy who was arresting and jailing Christian pastors.
I don't understand it.
I don't think a lot of Alberta Conservatives did either, and thus he was not Premier.
I'll talk with the Premier.
That exclusive interview is next.
Thanks very much for meeting with me.
It's nice to see you in your home turf.
Nice to see you.
I want to ask you about this meeting because some conservative politicians get nervous about Rebel News, and other journalists do too.
We were banned from the Alberta Legislature Press Gallery by our rival reporters.
We have to get special permission from the speaker to come in.
Why would you meet with Rebel News?
What was your thinking there?
Because it's different than some of the people.
You know what I've liked about Rebel is that you've created a new model for journalism that I think is probably going to be the future of journalism.
I've been watching media struggle.
So print media has struggled, radio media has struggled, television media has struggled.
But you managed to find a subscriber model so that you're supported by the people who want to see you do well.
And so I'm seeing that that may just be the new wave of journalism.
And there's been a number of other alternative media that have come about in the time that you've been there.
I look at you as one of the first, but it's been left and right.
I mean, I look at Western Standard and Countersignal.
And on the left, you've got Canada Lands and Tai E.
And I think that we get really robust debate by making sure that all voices are represented.
So I think that you do a really good job of getting your viewpoint out.
Some of the companies you just listed are completely independent.
They don't take any government money.
Canadaland on the left really refuses to take government money to their credit.
But in Canada, most news media take government money from the federal government, from Justin Trudeau.
I believe that that's coloring their coverage, even of you.
I believe it makes them a little bit more obedient to the person who pays them.
Is that just me talking as a competitor, or to you as a political challenger to the establishment in Ottawa?
Do you sense that too?
I think there's been a couple of things.
I noticed this with the CRTC and the fact that radio and television do have really life or death decision of their broadcast licenses being held by the CRTC.
And if you get too many complaints, there's always this worry: are we going to be able to defend our licenses?
And I think what the net result of that is is that you end up with journalists less willing to take risks because a lot of stories are very controversial.
And if something is likely to elicit a strong reaction, I fear that the media will keep on pulling its punches.
And so what's happening is that you're beginning to see alternative media go where the mainstream media is afraid to go.
But I think in the end, that whole universe of opinion is vitally necessary to make sure that we have robust public decision making.
Because if you only have one view represented and a politician is looking to be able to get good advice about the decisions that they need to make, you're just not going to get good decisions if everybody is saying the same thing.
And so I welcome the many, many voices that we see now.
One more question about media.
It looks like the federal government is set to pass a series of bills, C11, C18, and others to come, that would regulate these independent media, could even regulate independent individuals on Facebook or Twitter.
And one of the things that the federal liberals are talking about is changing the algorithm so that government-approved sources would be boosted by Facebook and Instagram and Google and YouTube.
Is that something that you've given any consideration to?
I know it's in federal jurisdiction to a large degree, but that strikes me as meddling with our constitutional rights.
Well, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press should be foundational to our country, foundational to our charter.
During the campaign, I talked about whether we might be able to invite and entice Elon Musk to come up here with his Starlink and if that becomes one of the ways in which you can continue to have an opportunity to broadcast freely into our province.
I don't know if we can do that.
I mean, part of the issue is that when you've got all of the various carriers that are regulated by the federal government, then they seem to hold all the cards.
So I'd be interested in seeing if there's some way that we would be able to assist those who want to continue to have that free speech platform.
For instance, I know that there's a broadcaster who broadcasts into the Ontario market from Florida.
So he already saw that this is the direction things were going.
And so he's now moved outside of Canada so that he's able to broadcast freely into Canada, which who would have ever thought that that would be the thing that we'd be talking about years ago?
I think the federal government has done a massive overreach here.
And the question will be: how much are we able to provide an environment that will allow for that kind of freedom?
Part of the issue around Facebook and Twitter is it sounds like they want to pull out because of how they're being regulated by the federal government.
And the alternative media I've spoken with have said that they look at those platforms as a way of getting their message out more broadly.
They're quite happy with the status quo.
The question is, can we do much about that?
I don't know the answer to that yet.
You mentioned Elon Musk.
He recently bought Twitter and he actually called it a crime scene.
And over the last few weeks, he's released hundreds of internal documents showing that the FBI and politicians and bureaucrats were able to get Twitter to boost certain voices or to censor other voices.
And they were really directing and commanding Twitter to do so.
That's riveting for Americans.
But I wonder if that was happening in Canada.
I don't know why it wouldn't.
It was the same company.
They react to politicians and cops the same way.
Are you worried that governments, the federal government, maybe even previous provincial governments, maybe even your predecessors, were directing Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to muffle critics and boost propagandists?
Do you think that happened in Canada?
I wonder if it would ever rise to a level where Musk would allow for a journalist to go in and look at that.
Because I've been watching, I think it's Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss and Michael Schellenberger.
So I've been reading the threads as they've come out as well.
And it's shocking.
I've already heard that in the U.S., they're going to be, I believe they're going to be doing a congressional hearing in January to find out what exactly went down there because the idea that you would have law enforcement stepping in to suppress certain voices on the pretext that they're stopping misinformation, when in fact, it's really just to try to tip the scale in favor of one particular political view.
I sincerely hope that hasn't happened in Canada, but those big tech companies have had an undue influence on determining what gets printed in our mainstream media coverage.
I think Twitter probably is the worst, but I suspect that we're seeing the same thing with Facebook as well.
So I'm watching it with interest.
I haven't seen anything yet that suggests that the same thing has happened here, but we should be asking the same questions since it was quite clear that there was an extraordinary amount of intervention by the FBI in coverage on Twitter and what was allowed to be printed.
It's one thing for the company to make censorship decisions.
I don't like it, but I can understand their statement.
This is a private company.
You start your own Twitter.
But when a government agency, when a health agency like Dr. Fauci, when the FBI get involved, and especially when they pressure the private company, then it feels like government action.
I want to ask you, and I don't want to put you on the spot, but you made me think of it.
We can only wait for Twitter to release things about Canada, but you as Premier have access to what the Alberta government did in the past.
Would you consider, and I don't want to put you on the spot now, but you could release the Alberta government side, if there's anything.
I don't know if during the lockdowns, for example, public health officials were ordering Twitter to silence certain voices and boost others.
It might be something that you would shine a light of scrutiny on the same way Elon Musk is doing it to his own company.
It's a good point.
I'd be interested in knowing if there was any of that going on.
You know what the sense that I got of it is that everyone was doing what everyone else was doing.
And I thought that YouTube, and Sundar Pachai made it very clear when he was in congressional hearings in the U.S., he said he wasn't going to allow anything to go on YouTube that contradicted Anthony Fauci.
And that seemed to set the tone for what mainstream media covered.
And it seemed to have had an overlap effect in Canada.
So it may be just that everybody was following the lead of these tech giants.
But if there's something more there, we should know the answer to that.
I'll make a note to look into it.
I haven't had anyone break me on that topic.
Well, I don't think they would.
I think they'd probably want to hide it as they hid it from Elon Musk.
And we talked briefly about the lockdowns.
And I think you're right.
There was sort of a mania.
And everyone, it was like a giant game of Simon Says.
Everyone would do what the other jurisdiction did because I guess if everyone was doing it, you couldn't get in trouble for doing it.
And I think there was a madness that took over.
But we're almost three years to the anniversary of the two weeks to flatten the curve and the beginning of the lockdown.
So I really think Alberta has moved on completely.
You don't even see NDPers wearing masks anymore.
Well, you do in the legislature.
That's right.
What am I saying?
For theatrical purposes, I guess.
But I think that a lot of people moved on in Canada and around the world.
But I feel like some parts of this government have not.
Just last Friday, a pastor from Calgary, Arthur Pavlovsky, was in court being prosecuted for a potential $100,000 fine for a public health order that's a couple years old now.
Now, it was stayed and there was no conviction, and he's won a few of his other cases, but there's another pastor, Church in the Vine, $80,000 fine.
They're still battling in court.
There's a restaurateur named Chris Scott.
So there's all these pastors and small businessmen, none of them violent.
And the world has moved on, but Alberta Health and Alberta Justice are still prosecuting.
And they haven't had a lot of wins, but they've had a few.
And it just feels like a hangover from a bygone era.
It doesn't feel like it's in sync with the times.
Is there a way to move on?
It feels like a vendetta from some prosecutors that really want to punish these guys.
Now, I'm coming from a very strong point of view.
I support these guys.
And I know you've got to be, you can't meddle in a judicial process, but boy, it doesn't feel like it's in the public interest.
You know, I think we learned a lot about how our justice system works in watching things at the federal level and how the Attorney General and the Crown have an independence from the Premier's office.
The questions that I can ask and have asked and continue to ask is, is it in the public interest?
And is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction?
And I think the longer that we go on seeing that prosecutions are not being successful, it makes a stronger case on both of those fronts.
That if the conviction isn't likely, we know that we have a lot of pressure on our courts.
And if the public has now come to terms with wanting a different approach, is it in the public interest?
It's becoming increasingly hard to answer those two questions.
Now, I put it to the prosecutors, and I've asked them to do a review of the cases with those two things in mind.
And I'm hopeful that we'll see a true turning of the page.
Because I think you're very right that something changed in February when the Freedom Convoy took place.
That I think people realize that now we know more about this virus, we have more effective means to be able to address it, that some of the extreme measures that may have had a lot of widespread support early on, they just don't have the same widespread support today.
And so do you continue on in prosecuting when the public has moved on?
That's the big question that the Crown has got to come to terms with.
That's really how marijuana decriminalization happened.
I mean, it did happen legislatively, but for years, prosecutors just did not prosecute small possession of marijuana, even though it was against the law.
There are three truckers from Lethbridge, not violent, no firearms.
One of them was a town councilor in Fort McLeod.
They're being prosecuted.
The prosecutor wants 10 years in prison.
Quebec's Emissions Reduction Plans00:14:26
This is for the Coots blockade.
I'm glad you're looking into that.
Yeah, well, and you can see as well, I mean, we do have some latitude to decide how we're going to prioritize our policing resources.
I mean, we've seen our justice minister, for instance, say that he does not think that the federal gun confiscation scheme is in line with what our policing priorities are.
Our policing priorities are going after hardened criminals, people who are smuggling guns across the border.
And so I think that we're in the process of trying to sort through some of that.
Remember, I've only been in office now for like 11 weeks.
I just finally became an MLA on November 29th.
So there is, I do know I'm asking the questions.
And I'm doing it in a way that I think is consistent with how our system works, that in the end, if there is no reasonable likelihood or conviction and it's not in the public interest, the Crown's going to have to be mindful of that.
My next question is partly a lockdown prosecution, but it actually makes me think about oil and gas.
Because that same pastor Pawłowski's on trial in February for violating the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act.
I don't think it's going to succeed, but that law was designed to fight eco-terrorism, designed to fight anti-oil patch activists.
It's never been used for that purpose.
What is the state of play in the globally funded, globally directed war against Alberta's oil sands?
Because oil has never been more in demand from Russia, from OPEC.
Natural gas has never been more in demand.
This war in Ukraine proves that.
But we still don't have access to blue water.
Yeah.
I would say that there is, again, we're in the middle of, I think, a reassessment.
We have to be because people are now seeing a spike in their gasoline and diesel bills.
We're seeing electricity go up.
We're seeing home heating go up.
We're seeing the cost of everything go up.
And consumers, especially those who are low income on fixed incomes, they're really hurting.
So I think that that's creating a bit of a wake-up call for politicians that affordability is number one.
We know here we've had to make a number of measures to try to address some of that affordability crisis.
Energy security, too.
This is an interesting thing I'm seeing in the U.S. as well, is that those on the Democrat side are concerned about affordability.
Those on the Republican side are worried about energy security.
And they're all looking up to Canada and saying, hmm, maybe that's one of the answers.
We sent Sonia Savage to COP27 because, quite frankly, I just don't think the federal government does a very good job of representing our views.
That's the global water summit.
Correct.
And we had John Kerry ask the environment minister, Stephen Guibo, what are you doing up in Alberta?
What are you doing up in Canada?
You guys are miles ahead of us on environmental issues.
And so if we are the very best in the environment, the very best in energy security, and also able to provide affordability, that seems to me to be a way of restarting the conversation.
So I'm hopeful that we'll be able to have a bit of a breakthrough with our American friends, because I think that that's very influential on Justin Trudeau.
I'm almost, I'm getting a sense as well that there's some pragmatism at the federal level with Champagne and Chris Freeland and Jonathan Wilkinson.
I think perhaps they recognize just how much Alberta contributes to federal coffers.
I mean, we're only, what, 10% of the population contributing 16% of GDP.
That has an impact on federal revenues.
And if there's a way for us to be able to achieve all those targets, we should be working together rather than fighting.
I still think we have an incredible, incredibly ideological environment minister, Stephen Guibot, and he's going to be a constant challenge for us.
It's part of the reason why we put up the shield of the Sovereignty Act, is that we, during our leadership race, he started floating ideas like a 30% emissions reduction on fertilizer and a 42% emissions reduction on oil and natural gas, but before we'd even put a new premier in place.
So I think the federal government was taking us for granted, just thinking that they could pass laws and that we would just sit back and then hopefully spend years fighting it through court.
But we can't do that anymore.
This is just too crucial.
So I don't know that we've seen necessarily a complete change, but I was encouraged by the fact that Guibo did not sign on to the final agreement at COP27 because he recognized it wanted to talk about a phase out of oil and natural gas.
Recognize that's provincial jurisdiction and that he would face a legal challenge from the provinces that he would not win.
So maybe we're having a bit of a breakthrough and I'm delighted to see that Scott Mo is going down the same track as we are with the Saskatchewan First Act.
I think this is the kind of conversation we need to have.
I've heard you mention Scott Moe before, and he's very strong on these things.
Have you had any communication with other premiers?
And I'm actually thinking of Quebec here because the language you're using about the Sovereignty Act, if you were saying it en francais, every Quebecer would say, oh, yeah, we've been saying that for a generation.
It's only when Alberta talks about being masters in our own house that you get this odium from the media party.
Have you talked to all the other premiers?
Some of the other premiers have been talking about the other people.
I've talked to all the other premiers.
We've had a couple of meetings together as premiers, and it's interesting to hear them all say that they've got the same frustration with the federal government.
That in different ways the federal government is invading a provincial jurisdiction.
Is there any support for your sovereignty act from other provinces?
Is it just wait and see?
Or, I mean, other than Scott Mo, who's sort of emulating it, has Quebec given you a view on it?
Quebec, when I've spoken with Francois Legault, part of what he, I think, sees us now as an ally when it comes to federal interference in our jurisdiction.
The federal government always wants to overtax and then dribble money back to the provinces with strings attached.
And we've taken the view: if you want to cost-share with us, great, but we're going to run our programs our own way.
And that has been a consistent position that Quebec has taken.
And I think they're very pleased that we're doing that too.
I'm still trying to have a breakthrough with Quebec because they've got immense natural gas resources.
And they really could be a champion in developing their natural gas, talking about hydrogen, getting into this green technology world.
We do great work with carbon technology, carbon capture.
They could do all the same things.
And can you imagine if Quebec actually decided to develop its resources and offered itself as a solution to the energy crisis in Europe?
I think that that would be really powerful if we could partner that way.
I haven't had that breakthrough yet, but I'm working on it.
And how about with Justin Trudeau?
Sometimes politicians have a public banter that's more aggressive than a private working relationship.
I don't want you to give away any confidence because obviously you need a working relationship with the Prime Minister, but how has he been in his dealings with you?
Well, I can tell you a couple of things that I've raised with them.
I've said that if you want to move down this pathway of reducing carbon emissions, just know we're not doing it Quebec's way.
We're not going to be shutting in oil and natural gas.
I think our solution is more LNG export.
If you can reduce the amount of reliance on other heavier polluting fuels, that should be a win for the planet.
We have a great amount of interest in developing out a hydrogen economy.
We've got a number of different companies that are looking at small modular nuclear and other technologies so that they can reduce the amount of emissions that they have.
And if they want to partner with us on those things, then we can get along just great.
But if they think that they can put unilateral arbitrary restrictions on our industry, we're going to fight them on it.
So I'm hopeful that we will find some common ground there.
The prime minister has said he's not interested in a fight.
It remains to be seen.
If they come through with some of the things that they've been talking about in the last couple of years, or the last year in particular, then they will get a fight.
Because we just know the kind of aggressive targets they're talking about.
They call them emissions caps.
If you cannot achieve them because the timeframe is too short and the technology doesn't exist, it's a de facto production cap.
And if you are trying to limit our production, that's a violation of the Constitution.
And so we're going to make sure that we defend that vigorously.
Trudeau has a hatred for carbon, which is very strange.
It's just an element on the periodic table.
And I think he is developing a hatred for nitrogen, another element, in respect of farmers.
And I know in other countries like the Netherlands, they've actually had a farmer uprising, a farmer rebellion, because just out of the blue, they said we're going to transition off of fertilizer-intensive food production.
Are you worried that that is going to be Trudeau's next transition away from a real economy to his fantasy utopia economy?
Have you talked about that at all with that?
Well, I mean, when you look, I mean, that was one of the issues that came up during our leadership contest.
And Scott Moe, to his credit, he drew a hard line and said, no, we're not doing this.
And it seems like the federal government backed down.
But then it appears that federal agents were going onto private property and testing water to presumably to see what the nitrogen levels were.
So Scott Moe took another step and said that he was going to charge those officers with trespassing.
So I think what you'll find is that Alberta and Saskatchewan are very much in sync on working together to defend our jurisdiction.
And it's not the only one.
You also recall in the last year they talked about having a warning label on ground beef as well.
And I think that that expands out the war onto our ranchers as well.
So we know that all of these things are interconnected.
And we know that there are better ways to achieve the outcome that they're looking for.
And that's what we're going to put on the table: if we want to have better environmental quality, lower emissions, we can do that.
But we've got to do it in a way that works for our economy.
It's my observation, and I'm not the first to make it, that any Alberta premier is successful defending Alberta against Ottawa.
I mean, it goes back to the day this province was born.
I think that one of the failings of Jason Kenney's tenure was that he never really grappled with Ottawa.
In my mind, I think Kenny was looking to maybe run federally one day, and so he didn't want to do anything that was too pro-Alberta that he might have to defend later when he's running in Ontario and Quebec.
I think he didn't stand up strongly enough.
Other than the Sovereignty Act, are there other issues?
Like, I look at Ron DeSantis, who's a governor of a state, but he finds legitimate ways to push back against Joe Biden.
And he not only wins Florida, but he wins sort of national support.
He's become a kind of national hero.
Do you see yourself as an counterweight to Justin Trudeau?
Or do you see yourself as just I'm the Premier of Alberta and I'm just going to flick away Trudeau if he comes marauding around?
But could you be a kind of alternative or opposition to him even?
I think the way I'm looking at it is anything Quebec is doing, we should be doing too.
Because I think Quebec is really operating within its full sphere of jurisdiction the way our founders intended.
And so it's part of the reason why I've asked our finance minister, for instance, to look at what would happen if we collected all of our own taxes.
Should we have an Alberta pension plan?
I've charged our public safety minister with looking at creating an Alberta provincial police.
I've asked our immigration and citizenship minister if we can establish higher targets so that we can manage our own immigration program.
Not just Quebec does that, but so does Manitoba.
So when I look at the firewall letter, for instance, from back in 2001, that put forward a strategy for how we would start taking over those areas of jurisdiction.
Agriculture is another one.
We could be far more self-sufficient in how we regulate our agriculture industry.
That's under Section 95 of the Constitution.
You can see as well with our justice minister, we have a really great firearms officer, Terry Bryant.
And it was her suggestion that we take over the administration of the firearms act.
And so we've announced that we're going to be doing that.
So I'm looking for more and more ways that we can take over those areas of jurisdiction.
I think that the federal government used to be helpful.
Maybe that's why we allowed them to assist us in delivering our programs.
They're not helpful anymore and haven't been for at least the last seven years.
And because they're being unhelpful, and I think in some ways outright destructive to our ability to attract investment and to manage our economy, we've got to become more self-protective.
So I'm looking for all of those areas so that we can stand on our own two feet.
I think that's what we're supposed to do as a province.
We're now at a point where we're almost the second largest economy.
We're neck and neck with Quebec, which is quite remarkable considering they're twice our population.
And we have the means to be able to start doing more things on our own.
And I think we should, because when the federal government comes and interferes with telling us how to run our programs, they always undershare when it comes to cost.
And then they have all of these new rules and restrictions for how to run the program, which makes it more expensive.
And so it would be far better for us to just take the Quebec approach.
No, thank you.
We'll run our programs our own way.
Transfer us money if you want to help cost share.
But we think that we can do things better.
I just have two more quick questions about the campaign.
I appreciate your time that you're spending with us.
I know it's very busy.
Two political parties that are trying to beat you.
And one is Rachel Notley's NDP.
And they're a lot more able, a lot more competent, a lot more experienced, a lot better funded, a lot more familiar now than they were when they accidentally wound up in government in 2015.
But I think there's an even deadlier political party.
We Can Do Things Better00:04:04
I call it the Media Party.
And I've observed a swarm of think-alikes in the media party.
Just getting back to our first point about government-funded media.
And I see the CBC leading the charge on that.
And I wonder how can you resist 20 think-alike media party voices saying, how dare you talk about the Sovereignty Act?
They are a more powerful opposition party because they have the megaphone.
Rachel Notley has to borrow their megaphone.
They have one.
How do you not succumb to the siren song of the media party?
How do you stay in touch with what real Albertans want?
Again, I think that was a failure, a failure of your predecessor.
I think Kenny fell out of touch.
He used to drive around his pickup truck and go to town halls.
And I mean, the ban on gatherings probably stopped that.
He really had dome syndrome, as they call it.
How do you make sure you're not oversampling the bickering CBCers?
And how do you stay rooted?
Well, from time to time, I'll do a shift washing dishes at my husband's restaurant.
I'm going to be doing that on New Year's Eve, actually.
But washing dishes, okay, you're talking to the other.
But that's part of it.
And that's one of the things that Klein always did was that he made sure to go where real people were to have real conversations.
And I have so many opportunities to do that because I live in a small community.
And so there's plenty of opportunity to just go out to the local restaurants and people will always come up.
And I always have interesting conversations with people.
I try to go to as many public events as I can and be in as many communities as I can.
And that, I think, is going to be the key.
One of the things I learned on radio is that the things that the Twitterverse talks about are totally different than what real people talk about.
I used to often say Twitter's not the real world.
And I think it's unfortunate that so much news media coverage is driven by what trends on Twitter, especially going back to our original conversation, knowing how heavily curated and influenced it has been over the last number of years.
But that's the only thing that you can do is you've got to make yourself available to real people.
So I have done my show on Saturdays.
My premier, my province, always make sure to get lots of call-ins so that people can tell me what's really on their mind.
And I'll just keep on talking to regular people.
I think that in some ways, the new ways of communicating have created an advantage to be able to directly get your message out to people in a way we never used to before.
We used to always have to use the media filter.
Now you've got alternative media that you can talk to.
You can do long-form interviews.
You can do podcasts.
You can do your own videos.
You can do Facebook lives.
You can do telephone town halls.
And so I think you're right that there has been, it's surprising to me that I'm not seeing a lot more balance.
I grew up in a media environment where fairness, accuracy, and balance was the mantra.
And I hope that the mainstream media gets back to that again one day.
But in the absence of that, we have to make sure that we're getting our message out directly and that I've got to make sure that I'm always in touch with regular people.
Last question.
You know, when people go to vote, they vote for their party, they vote, how their family voted, they vote based on personality.
But often they vote on the issue of the moment, the ballot question.
What is the defining ballot question that when someone goes in to vote in the spring that you want them to be thinking about that you think will push them towards the UCP?
Because the party's had a bumpy ride.
It has.
What is the one way to pull a majority back or at least get it out of the hands of the socialist horse?
Two Keys to Success00:02:42
I think there's two things.
One is that if we don't make some real progress on helping to improve the capacity of healthcare, that's going to be a problem.
I mean, I inherited a system when I came in where I was reading about 29-hour waits in emergency rooms and ambulance lineups that were 22 deep as people waited to get dropped off at the ambulance and a surgical backlog of 69,000 surgeries.
So, and the fact that so few people even have a family doctor, those are four areas that it's part of the reason why I realized that we just couldn't rely on the same people who've been making the decisions for the last 15 years that we needed to put an official administrator in there so that we could make some real progress on those.
So, I think if we can demonstrate that we listened, we heard, and we can solve problems and we can do it competently and you can trust us, that is going to be one issue because I think that that's maybe where some of the confidence has been shaken based on what has happened over the last three and a half years.
The other is that the people in this province just want opportunity.
People come from all over to be able to get a job, get a well-paying job, be able to get trained in an area that allows for them to make sure that they can potentially go down a path to be an entrepreneur, start a business, bring their family here.
And those are things that were the reverse in the previous government.
We had six consecutive quarters of people leaving the province.
We had an energy minister who told people, well, you know, maybe go hang out in BC for a while until things improve.
And so we have seen that totally reverse because of the policies of this government, that we've been able to attract large investments, massive investments, not only in the Edmonton area with hydrogen, Dow Chemicals, and air products, but also in Calgary with emphasis and emphasis, big tech companies.
We have seen an increase in venture capital.
God, as low as $24 million a year.
Now we're over $500 million a year.
We've got consumer confidence at 2.9%.
It's up.
The rest of the country, it's down.
And that doesn't happen by accident.
That happens on purpose.
Those are because of good policies, good tax policy, creating a good environment, being open for business, celebrating entrepreneurs, wanting to have wealth creators here, reducing red tape.
And that, I think, is going to be, I think, the point of differentiation is, do you want to go back to the way things were under the other guys, or do you want to just keep on going forward?
Yeah, we have a little bit of trust that we need to restore.
But I think if we can give people confidence that we can competently manage the business of government, but also be able to create an environment where they can flourish, I think that those are going to be the two things that make all the difference.
Good Policies Boost Confidence00:00:34
Well, thanks very much for meeting with me.
And Merry Christmas and good luck to you.
It's a difficult job, but we'll know soon.
I mean, it's coming up soon, right?
Yeah, it's only a few months.
It is.
Good luck to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Well, that's my sit-down interview with Premier Danielle Smith.