Alberta Premier Danielle Smith defends oil as "positively good," essential for global demand, and criticizes federal policies—like Trudeau’s 2035 net-zero car mandates and methane regulations—as anti-humanist, targeting Canada’s production while ignoring major emitters like Saudi Arabia or Russia. She highlights Alberta’s 200 billion barrels of reserves, CO₂ sequestration advancements, and the industry’s role in producing 6,000 products, including critical plastics for food security. Blocked projects like Keystone XL and Trans Mountain expansion prove federal interference stifles growth, forcing Alberta to consider Crown corporations via its Sovereignty Act if courts don’t intervene. Smith’s fight aligns with Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe against a global push to phase out oil, despite its proven value. [Automatically generated summary]
A one-on-one interview with Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta.
You can hear the echoes around me.
I'm in the Alberta legislature as I record this.
I'd love it if you got the video version of this interview.
I think you'd find it more engaging.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a feature interview with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
It's March 22nd, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Ezra Levant here for Rebel News.
Behind me, watching over me, is Ralph Klein, the late great premier of Alberta.
The great conservative populist who I think had a grassroots touch.
And he also knew that quite often the opponent wasn't on the opposition aisles, but rather the opponent was in Ottawa.
Well, I'm back in the Alberta legislature, which can only mean one thing.
A sit-down interview with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
I've talked to her a few times about an assortment of issues.
Today, I chose to focus on oil and gas.
Here's how that conversation went.
Thanks for meeting with me.
You're so busy.
It's great to see you.
I'd like to talk about oil and gas.
It's so important for Albertans.
Some people, like Stephen Gilbeau, would say that oil is an evil we have to get rid of.
Others would say, well, Alberta oil is the lesser evil.
It's more ethical than other countries.
And some people, like Alex Epstein, would say, no, it's a moral good.
It's a positive.
It lifts people out of poverty.
It makes people happier, healthier.
Where do you fit on the spectrum?
Is oil evil, a necessary evil, or is it positively good?
Positively good.
There's no question about that.
We have to address issues of emissions, but we have always had to, with everything we produce, try to find ways to have less impact on the environment.
This is just the latest challenge.
But I've often said that the issue is not transitioning away from oil and natural gas production.
The issue is addressing is transitioning away from emissions.
And we can do that now.
We have all kinds of technology that allow for us to strip out the CO2, bury it, embed it into useful products.
And I believe because we have so many industries that have a strategy to be carbon neutral by 2050, that innovation is going to solve this problem, which allows for us to get this essential product to the world.
One thing that I think people forget is that a barrel of oil isn't just gasoline and diesel.
You can make 6,000 products out of a barrel of oil.
So it could well be that there may be fewer combustion uses for it, but we still need asphalt for roads.
We still need petrochemicals.
We still need lubricants.
We still need so many of the things that come from a barrel of oil.
So I am more than happy to talk to the world about Alberta's story because it's a really good one.
No other industry that I can think of has an artificial cap put on it.
The airline industry, the tech industry, the auto industry, and yet it's become normalized to talking about capping the Alberta oil sands.
Should there be any artificial limit to production in Alberta?
We've got close to 200 billion barrels of oil in the oil sands that are proven reserves, and there's 10 times as much in place.
Should there be any artificial limit to how much we produce?
I don't think so.
I mean, I've said we can reduce emissions and double our production.
And I think we should do that because one of the things that I've learned is that our heavy crude actually is very highly prized because it can make so many products.
And there's a shortage of being able to provide heavy crude to our refineries.
And so especially in the Gulf Coast, that's why you hear them saying, maybe we should be looking at getting some oil from Iran.
Maybe we should be looking at getting it from Venezuela.
And my solution is we're right here.
We are your friend.
We are your ally.
We already have the interties.
We've got the pipeline system.
We have the ability to produce.
When I was just down in Houston at Sera Week, to put it into context, as I said, we've got 170 billion barrels of proven reserves, maybe more than that, as technology keeps on improving.
That is five times the amount of proven reserves in America as a whole.
And we are just north of the border.
So I think in some ways we kind of get forgotten, and it's up to us to be able to assert ourselves.
Now, I recall during the dark ages when you had both Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley both going to work on the oil industry at the same time.
There was this phrase that without social license, without paying the carbon tax, without all these regulations, people will, customers will not buy Alberta oil.
It was an absurd thing to say.
And they talk about social license because these projects already had real licenses.
They had environmental licenses.
Have you ever, in any of your travels, come across some refinery that said, no, we won't take Alberta oil unless you jump through these social license hoops of a carbon tax?
Like I can't imagine that the refineries that are buying from Saudi and Venezuela and Iran would say, no, no, no, we're not going to get Alberta oil if it doesn't pay the carbon tax.
Was that whole thing just a ruse?
Like I've never heard any proof of that theory.
It's funny because I just met with some of the principles with Reliance, which is the largest refinery on the planet.
It's in India.
And when we were talking about, well, can you accept our crude?
Do you know that it's heavy?
They said the heavier the better because that allows them to produce more products.
So I think that we should stop apologizing, really, that there are other ways that we can reduce emissions to be able to reach carbon neutrality.
People need this product.
We are one of the only ones who can safely provide it.
And we should be making sure that our friends and allies have the product that they need.
As you know, 10 years ago, I wrote a book called Ethical Oil.
And I tried to compare what I called ethical oil with conflict oil because the world buys over 100 million barrels a day.
And if it's not going to get it from us, it's going to get it from someone else.
And most of the other someone else's are morally questionable regimes.
And look at Russia, which has been using its oil and gas to fund its war in Ukraine.
Look at Qatar, which has been using, especially its natural gas, to fund terrorist groups.
I suppose my question is: why when the Chancellor of Germany visited Trudeau, and when the Prime Minister of Japan visited Trudeau, both of them said, please give us some of your ethical energy to displace Russian and Qatari energy.
Like they were both basically saying, give us the good stuff, please.
Why did Trudeau say no to both of them on behalf of the industry?
Why did he say there's no business case?
Why did he basically turn them away the one thing they could have really used from Canada?
It's a funny dynamic because you probably saw in the last couple of days they've announced a deal with Germany to send green hydrogen made from offshore wind.
And if it comes to fruition, you know, bravo to Newfoundland and Labrador, it'll be $200 billion in additional revenue for them.
The issue is that we just don't have the efficient means of being able to get our product to the East Coast because Quebec has stood in the way.
Quebec has said that they don't want to develop their own resource.
They pulled licenses.
They were obstructionists when it came to any discussion of pipelines.
And so maybe there isn't a business case if you're not prepared to work with Quebec to get the pipeline infrastructure that you need to.
But there absolutely is a business case off the West Coast.
And that's where we're going to be focused.
When you've got LNG Canada, that really is months away from being able to be up in operation.
They also need to make a final business investment decision next year on whether or not to expand that.
Right now, they have two trains.
They could double the size of their project.
If they can get the certainty, they'll be allowed to go ahead.
There are at least two or three other projects that are getting to final investment decision.
There's the potential for us to export hydrogen and ammonia using our existing rail lines going to Port of Prince Rupert.
So I feel like whatever conversation the federal prime minister has had when looking on the other side of the country, it doesn't apply on our side of the country.
And so we, but it's also our job.
It's the job of us in British Columbia to be making that case and to be finding our markets.
I understand that the Trans Mountain pipeline is getting close to operational.
That's such a crazy story because Trudeau did everything he could to block it.
And then when it looked like he would kill it, he bought it, basically quadrupled the cost of it, like it's some ArriveCan app or something.
But it looks like it might actually be ready for operation.
But do you actually think that the environmental extremists will let it operate?
Do you actually think oil will flow from Alberta through British Columbia to a port in BC?
Yes, I do.
And I know it's been a big challenge all the way along.
And I'm grateful that they finally did end up putting it to getting it to the finish line, pretty close anyway.
I'm grateful that they were willing to pay all of the cost overruns and take on some of the political heat for that.
But it wouldn't have been necessary if they hadn't created the environment in the first place, because it could be that Northern Gateway was the better project, or Keystone XL was the better project, or Energy East was the better project.
All of the above let the market decide.
Completely.
And the only ones that managed to get done is the Line 3 expansion on an existing right-of-way and the Trans Mountain expansion on an existing right-of-way.
But I do believe that it will get to market, but we should have had all of them.
It should have been all of the above.
And they wouldn't have had to step in to de-risk that project if they hadn't created the political uncertainty in the first place.
Yeah, they provided both the problem and the solution.
How about the Premier of British Columbia?
Has he expressed a view on Transmountain?
You know, I see they're talking about the tankers again.
Are you worried that there will be some provincial pushback or is he in sync with this?
I would say, I mean, look, he's in a certain stage in his election cycle.
And so you know how when you get pretty close to election, they tend to focus more on the domestic issues.
When I work with Premier EB, we try to find the areas of common ground, and there are many, many areas of common ground.
I hope it doesn't become a political issue, because it shouldn't.
It really shouldn't.
They export, I think Vancouver is our busiest port in Canada.
I think it has 170 million tons that get exported in and out of there every day.
And so to have a few of those tankers or a few of those ships be tankers, it really shouldn't have that kind of focus.
There's a lot of activity that happens in that port, and it's great for the entire country that it has that activity.
Yeah.
You know, there's different reasons to be against oil.
I don't think any of them are valid, but when I listen to Stephen Gilbo, sometimes it sounds ideological.
Sometimes it sounds like a regional bias, like an anti-Alberta animus.
I note that both Gilbo and Trudeau are avid jet setters.
I mean, they never stop traveling around.
Gilbo sometimes says weird things, and then he pulls back.
He says, I don't want to invest in roads anymore, which I think betrays an ideology.
But I've never heard either Gilbo or Trudeau criticize oil from other jurisdictions.
They always seem to either ignore conflict oil from OPEC or even favor it.
For example, they don't put the carbon tax on imports from OPEC.
What's going on with those two?
Is it some legacy from Pierre Trudeau, sort of hate the West?
Is it like a liberal tradition to hate oil and gas?
Is it ideology?
Is it tax greed?
What's going on?
All I can think of is when Trudeau got elected, he said Canada is back.
He thought that was very important that the UN knew that a particular ideology had returned to Canada.
And I think it goes back to Maurice Strong, who was one of the first proponents of shutting down the fossil fuel industry and having Canada take the lead with the approach that this country took on Kyoto and all of the subsequent UN conventions on climate change.
And so I think that there really is an ideology, and we saw it when what was called the tar sands campaign started up in 2008.
One of the issues behind that was the environmentalists thought, well, we've effectively managed to demonize coal, and they were happy with the progress they were making in phasing that out.
But then they said, well, what's the next big problem?
Well, it's transportation fuel.
And so they said, where does America get its product from?
And it was Saudi Arabia and Canada.
And it's probably not very safe to go and campaign and protest in Saudi Arabia.
So the whole strategy came, shut down the access from Canada into the United States.
Now, in the meantime, the Americans have dramatically increased their own production.
And good for them.
I'm jealous.
And yet, the strategy has still been isolate Canada, stop them from being a world player, which is so defeatist.
I mean, that is not why you elect a federal government.
You don't elect a federal government to shut down industries, to interfere with resource development, to interfere with wealth creation, to cripple an economy.
And yet that, the only way that I can describe the last two years of what we've seen under Stephen Guibot has been precisely that.
Because everywhere you turn, there is a new targeted policy aimed at phasing out fossil fuels, whether it's the emissions cap on oil and gas, the methane CAD, whether it's the new plan for net zero cars being the only kind of car we can buy by 2035,
whether it's the promotion of green hydrogen and the reluctance to talk about blue hydrogen, whether it's the tanker ban that they had off the west coast, whether it's the lack of enthusiasm that they've had to promote pipeline development.
You see one thing after another all leading to if you can take Canada out of the mix, maybe we'll be able to tell our friends in the international community that we're one of them.
And that is not our job.
Our job is, and the job of a federal government, is to make sure we get our products to market, is to make sure that every region is able to develop to its full benefit and to make sure that we are a reliable friend and ally to our partners.
We can be a central role in addressing issues of energy security, energy affordability, reliability, and we can reduce emissions.
It's such a good story to tell.
Solar Power Challenges00:07:24
But I think we've seen a real turn in the last couple of years with this particular environment minister.
And the reason I say that is I was reminded at CERA Week that Justin Trudeau did speak there in 2016.
And he got a standing ovation four times.
And the memory of his message was no one would ever look at all of this incredible resource wealth and just say, let's leave it in the ground.
So something's happened in the last couple of years.
Maybe it's because he's longer into his mandate.
He thinks he can get away with more aggressive action against our industry.
But I'll just put it out there.
They do not have the authority to shut down our energy industry.
They do not have the authority to curtail our production.
And we'll be fighting them every step of the way.
Sometimes I think Stephen Gilbo just does things for theatrics.
I mean, Trudeau himself is a former drama teacher.
When Gilbeau broke into the CN Tower, when he climbed on the roof of Ralph Klein's home when Ralph Klein wasn't there, but his wife was, just terrified her.
Those are actually criminal acts.
If you tried doing that in Russia or an OPEC country, you'd be in prison.
Those are both much larger producers than Canada.
I think maybe he's sort of cosplaying some ideological gear.
I'm just trying to understand, do you think he really believes it?
Do you think Stephen Gilbo is a true believer?
I think he is.
I think he, there is an ideology out there, and we've seen it expressed for many years in our country, but even in the more extreme environmental movement, they have this vision that you can power an industrialized economy off solar and wind and battery power, and that everything is supposed to then be on the grid, including all of your home heating and all of your transportation.
And then it's all supposed to be free energy because the sun is free and the wind is free.
But there's some problems with that proposal, is that the infrastructure isn't free.
And the infrastructure takes a lot of energy to build.
There's also another problem that you can't create a solar panel with a solar panel or a wind turbine with a wind turbine.
You need coal to make the steel.
You do.
And you need all kinds of resources in order to be able to put the batteries together.
So I think that there is a bit of a blind spot about the kind of environmental harms caused by certain types of energy production.
And then on the other hand, all they talk about is the environmental, purported environmental harms of oil and natural gas.
So the solution is get rid of oil and natural gas in the minds of those extreme environmentalists.
And I have no doubt in my mind that that is the ideology of our current environment minister.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
People do change.
But I can tell you when I began in this job, I was told by some of my fellow premiers, you know, good luck to you, but he's an ideologue.
You're not going to get anywhere.
And that's what I discovered, is that we were having these constructive tables, talking about things where I think we really can work together, creating a regulatory framework for small modular reactors, our hydrogen economy.
A number of our net zero projects have gotten federal support from François-Philippe Champagne in particular.
And so there are some areas that we can work together.
But I think the problem is the foundational philosophy coming out of the Environment Department, which appears to have free reign, is doing everything they can to interfere with our ability to produce our resources.
And that is absolutely obvious.
I want to be respectful of your time.
I really appreciate you fitting me in.
I just have two more quick questions.
One is a counter thesis.
You said the eco-dream, the green dream, is that we all have plentiful energy on the grid and solar and wind.
But sometimes if you listen to Gilbo and Trudeau, they don't talk about plenty.
They talk about nudging people, making it too costly to burn carbon dioxide, that they're penalizing what they call pollution.
And I think energy poverty, which is what a lot of Canadians are experiencing, that's not a bug.
That's the feature.
That's the designed outcome.
They want people to drive less, keep their home less.
I actually think that their ideology is not one of plenty and prosperity.
It's one of poverty and a reduced footprint, reduced reuse recycle.
In some ways, it's sort of anti-humanist.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, Canada is a big country, and we all can't take public transit.
And it's a cold country.
It's a cold country.
And it's spoken, that kind of framework for what the future should look like is spoken like somebody who's never left Montreal, never left downtown Montreal, doesn't understand that.
Thinks we can all bike to work.
And it's impossible.
And so especially if you want to produce all the things that we need, whether it's energy or whether it's food, that happens out in our rural areas.
So I think that there is an ideology there that is just incompatible with a flourishing economy and maybe human flourishment.
And so the solution shouldn't be, how do we stop living?
How do we stop doing the things we want to do because we want to protect the planet?
It's how do we keep doing the things we want to do and protect the planet?
That is, I think, the framework we have.
We have a framework of abundance that we can produce more energy.
We can reduce the impact from emissions or waste.
And that is indeed the story of the oil and gas sector.
I remember when a professor who I saw years and years ago at a Liberty conference talking about the story of oil.
And it was that we wanted to use kerosene.
And so we started off taking kerosene out, and there's all this sludge and muck.
They said, what are we going to do with this?
And some brilliant entrepreneur came along and said, well, let's turn it into this product or that product.
And that's why we have 6,000 different things that come from a barrel of oil now.
CO2 is really just the latest waste stream that I believe they're going to find some useful purpose for.
They already have.
I mean, Heidelberg is going to embed that CO2 into their cement to make a stronger concrete.
The energy sector has already taken that CO2 and injected it underground to be able to produce more oil.
They will find uses to CO2.
We just have to trust in the entrepreneurs, which I do.
And then we can have an attitude of abundance and still feel good about the impact that we're having on the planet.
Last question.
There was a terrible, dark time in Alberta when companies who had permission to develop, who had huge proposals or applications, looked around and said, there's too much political risk here.
We're out.
And they took billions, they took tens of billions of dollars, mines, oil sands.
And they actually moved to places that I would think were much riskier, Kazakhstan, Iraq.
Imagine thinking it's less risk to operate an oil and gas project in Iraq or Kazakhstan than Alberta.
Have those companies, looking at Trudeau and looking at Gilbo, said it's still too risky?
Or have some of those companies said, you know what?
The grown-ups are in charge now.
The radicals are outside the gates.
We can put our money back in Alberta.
What's it like in terms of investment?
Still too risky.
Yeah, I'm afraid to say.
I've talked to those who may want to do, for instance, a natural gas power plant, even with carbon sequestration, and having gone to three different banks, being told by all three, sorry, your asset might be shut in, or you might be out of compliance with the federal rules by 2035.
So it's Trudeau that's the risk.
Paper Straws vs Plastics00:03:08
Yep, that's right.
And so, but they'll say, but we will fund you if you want to do a solar project or a wind project, even though we need baseload natural gas.
It's part of the reason, and it's going to be challenging, I know, because we've always prided ourselves on free enterprise and letting the private sector take the lead.
But what are we supposed to do when the private sector says, because of federal interference, we're not prepared to deploy our capital?
It's part of the reason why when we invoked the Sovereignty Act for the first time, it was we don't want to do it, but if we have to set up a Crown corporation in order to de-risk these projects so that we can build natural gas plants and have that baseload so the lights don't go out, we're prepared to do that.
And we're hoping by demonstrating our confidence that we'll be able to have a private sector partner work with us.
But I'm telling you, we have to be bold when it comes to our production as well.
We have to produce our bitumen, we have to produce our conventional oil, we have to produce our conventional natural gas as well, because America is going to need our product, the world is going to need our product, and we have to find a way to de-risk that too.
Maybe it'll take a change in government, but barring that, it's going to take a heck of a lot of legal challenges.
And we've won at least a couple of those.
So I think that the courts are heading in the right direction.
I can't resist asking you one last silly question.
Do you think that when the cameras aren't on him, that Stephen Gilbo actually uses a paper straw?
Or do you think he uses a plastic straw like the rest of us?
I have to tell you, the paper straws are terrible.
Try drinking a root beer flow of paper straws.
I don't think anyone likes him.
And I don't think Stephen Gilbo himself.
I think he looks around.
And if no one's in the room, I think he uses a plastic straw.
Well, it's true.
And the war on plastics is sort of the next thing that we're fighting.
The idea that plastics are toxic, when you think about all of the food security that we have now and the decrease in foodborne illness because we have packaging, plastics and packaging that allows us to keep that food safe.
When you look at, we went through the COVID crisis for two years with masks and gloves and syringes that are all made out of plastic.
Our medical community wouldn't be able to have the sanitary conditions without plastic.
So it's absurd that they would call it toxic.
And that's another example, again, of the war on our petrochemical industry because of hydrocarbon fuels.
When you look at all of the policies that they've taken, all roads lead back to.
They just want to reduce production.
And we're just not going to let them do that.
It's great to catch up with you.
Thanks for so much time.
You got my interview with Danielle Smith.
What do you think?
I think she's dead right about plastic and paper straws, don't you?
That was just a fun question I threw in at the end, but I think she had a lot of serious things to say.
I think she realizes that she's up against people who want to destroy the oil and gas industry.
And I think she realizes it's important to fight back using the Sovereignty Act, if necessary, and finding other provincial allies.
For example, the one that she has in Scott Mo in Saskatchewan.