the other Trudeau Pierre Trudeau he just wanted to steal our wealth he didn't want to extinguish it away from the entrance into Canada there was this Dynamic of Ottawa versus the west from the West it looks like they're stealing our oil again but from the East it looks like the wise civilized people are keeping the barbarians under control the logic of it is killing the goose that lays the golden egg but that's done on purpose welcome to Alberta the epicenter of the growing political and economi
c influence of western Canada and also increasingly much frustration angst and Western alienation from the imposition of carbon taxes to the tens of billions of dollars plundered through Equalization this is a province and region fed up with a federal government and prime minister that they view as antagonistic exploitive and directly undermining their legitimate aspirations so what does this mean for Canada and its future do more Powers need to be devolved to the provincial level do the West's
contributions need to be better recognized by the country as a whole or is the dream that was confederation already so far gone that it's best if we all just go our separate ways the problem you have in Canada I think is a structural one most provinces pay and Quebec as one entity receives there's just nothing Equitable about that so it's kind of a welfare of the Confederation that's how I see it now I don't see anything being proud of that my name is Aaron Gunn and this is politics explained se
paratist talks getting louder in Alberta at the same time several politicians are vying to be our next Premier by promoting a more independent Alberta separatist Signs Now replace election signs as the movement to leave the rest of Canada picking up steam look no further than this upside down Canadian flag where hundreds gathered to discuss separation we are going to make Alberta great again and that is when we cut ourselves off from the leech that is Eastern Canada throughout its 156 years of n
ationhood Canada has endured many great divides English versus French Catholic versus Protestant upper versus lower but while the national media has Preferred to focus its attention on the separatist Schism in Quebec another growing divide that has been decades in the making is threatening to again push Canadian Unity to its absolute limit this is the Divide between the East and the West [Music] in the west British Columbia Alberta Saskatchewan and Manitoba while in the East Ontario Quebec the m
aritimes and Newfoundland since their entrance into Canada Western provinces have found their wealth in resources whereas Eastern Canada primarily Quebec and Ontario rely more on secondary Industries manufacturing big business and bureaucracy this contrast in itself is not inherently bad but a series of decisions by Ottawa specifically targeting resource Industries has angered Western provinces and increasingly the people who live there projects shut down taxes imposed job killing made in Ottawa
regulations that have reduced investment collapsed production and put the very existence of Western Canada's most important industries into doubt these perceived attacks have led an increasing number of Western Canadians to question whether being a part of Canada is worth it at all according to a poll conducted in 2022 by research Co a third of albertans now say that Alberta would be better off as a separate country a higher percentage than even Quebec so what exactly is causing this and how lo
ng has the problem been going on to find out I flew to our nation's capital to meet John Robson a journalist and historian well-versed in the origins of Western alienation what do you think are kind of the the origin story of Western alienation in Canada some element of feeling looked down on by the east but you know in the days of Sir Johnny McDonald or even into the 20th century the West kind of was the poor cousin I think the core of the problem is that when the West grew up it wasn't treated
as an adult or a partner by Eastern Canada they continue to be exploited in terms of resources and I think that their viewpoints tended to be regarded not just that didn't just disagree with Western views it regarded them with contempt the line actually is and it's an old one is that it's 3 000 miles from Vancouver to Ottawa but thirty thousand miles per hour to Vancouver and I think the national energy program was an enormous example of how the East would treat the West not merely as something
to be ripped off but also something to be despised the national energy program was a policy brought in by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1980 following an election where the Liberals didn't win a single seat in BC Alberta or Saskatchewan the purpose of the NEP was to give Ottawa control over Western Canada's energy industry and to force the West to sell its resources to the east at below Market rates due to the NEP unemployment in Alberta increased from 3.7 to 12.4 percent the bankruptcy rate increa
sed by 150 percent and numerous families were left destitute and facing Financial ruin including famous saskatchewan-born entrepreneur Brett Wilson do you remember the national energy program do you remember uh were those the kind of the the seeds that were sown for for what we see today or 79 80 81 I was up in Edmonton came to Calgary bought a house we had 120 000 into it we sold it for 72 or 73 000 I was effectively bankrupt thanks to the NEP but many people walked away from their homes city b
locks became the overview of some of the banks I mean it was just it was horrible what was happening here and there's never been a thoughtful apology or reconsideration far from receiving an apology while unemployment was reaching near depression levels in western Canada Trudeau decided to take a vacation on a luxury rail car through the Rocky Mountains when he arrived in Salmon Arm BC he was met by a few angry westerners holding signs reading restraint and practice what you preach instead of ta
lking with the protesters Pierre Trudeau looked out his train car window and gave the protesters the middle finger the famous incident now known as the Trudeau salute sent a clear message to the West the national energy program was here to stay and Ottawa simply didn't care about how it affected what Western Industries it's easy to say well this was an example of Pier Arturo having a very shallow view of Economics but the critical thing was that he was going to keep the price of Western oil low
in order to subsidize Eastern Canada so Western producers were getting ripped off so the Eastern consumers could benefit and again the fact that the West Was outraged this was politically a huge matter and the East didn't care and that this to me it's not so much the initial mistake though it was bad economics and bad for National Unity bad in every way but when the West objected and made it clear this to us really matters that he said well you don't really matter to us so too bad this mounting
frustration in western Canada wasn't only directed at Trudeau in fact six years later under Progressive conservative prime minister Brian mulrooney another Scandal this time over Canada's f-18s would strain the East-West divide all over again see cf-18 contract in 9 1986 was a pivotal moment because what happened is that it was actually a Winnipeg company that won on its marriage the competition to do the maintenance on the cf-18s but Brian mulrooney who of course is from Quebec instead Awards i
t to Guess Who Bombardier the resources were all in Winnipeg the skills were all in Winnipeg and yet the contract was moved to Montreal in the end the skills and resources had to move to Montreal to follow the damn contract it was so deep profoundly wrong such a bad decision and such a stick in the eye for the West that did it for me and this tells westerners normally the Liberals govern the country and they despise you but when your conservative friends get in they despise you too that everybod
y in the East despises you this was an enormously damaging moment for National Unity just the whole sense that the deck is rigged in this country and especially it's rigged against the West the building anger in the west generated by the actions of both liberal and conservative governments galvanized westerners building the foundation of a new political movement that would soon take the country by storm right now the politicians are on the inside and the rest of Canadians are locked out only ref
orm has a plan to change the system reform now you have a choice the cf-18 contract clearly was pivotal in having that First Assembly with the West wants in but all of it you have to realize happens against a backdrop of a general feeling that they despise us and they don't listen to us that there is fertile ground on which these seeds fall and so when these things come along and Galvanize the local political Elites there's a lot of support in the populace because they know in their hearts that
the Laurentian Elite thinks they're a bunch of hicks founded in 1987 the Reform Party of Canada started out as a western protest movement but quickly involved into the largest Federal conservative party in the country this new party born out of Western frustration included a young MP named Stephen Harper who would go on to co-author the infamous firewall letter to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein that detailed how he believed the province could operate more autonomously within Confederation among the
letters five other signatories was Andy Crooks we didn't call it the firewall letter the media called it the firewall we don't want to create a barrier uh to the rest of Canada that's not the point it's as if you have a computer and you have a firewall to keep out the bad stuff they were looking for a conservative response to the perceived leaning against and oppression of the West five years after Penning the firewall letter Stephen Harper would lead a reunited conservative party to their firs
t electoral victory in 18 years let me just say one thing and let me be clear the West has wanted in the west is in now Canada will work but in 2015 Harper Was Defeated and a new prime minister with an all too familiar last name has seen the familiar themes of Western alienation and economic grievance resurrected all over again [Music] when Trudeau came out my comment to people in the West Was listen to him let's listen to him what he's saying at this time 2015 could be in the interest of Canada
so give them a chance I gave him a chance that might have been a mistake with the benefit of hindsight but again it evolved and his respect for the West is lost he just makes no efforts whatsoever he has no concern at one time he slipped and said we want to shut down the oil sands we can't shut down the oil sands tomorrow we need to phase them out what he's doing when he wants to shut down the oil sense is simply anti-alberta that he inherited 100 from his old man is Italian he doesn't show up
in the west very often and when he does it's to announce another just transition if you will if a full memo about the just transition is a fresh source of tension on this already difficult issue leaders in Alberta point to the document as evidence of the policy's destructive intent euphemistically called that just transition the federal government has launched a campaign to transition Western Canada's economy away from oil and gas and towards so-called green jobs leaving many in Alberta Saskatch
ewan and Northeastern BC to wonder what they'll do for work if the oil and gas industry is shut down by Trudeau I sat down with world-renowned Economist Dr Jack Mintz to find out what the impact of this so-called just transition will be and how it might amplify feelings of frustration within western Canada when the federal government starts picking on certain sectors to Bear the brunt of a policy rather than a more neutral approach given that we have concentrations of certain sectors in the econ
omy and you know in certain places and then then obviously that's going to have an impact but the problem that I have also had with this whole concept is is that people keep on talking about one job is just the same as another job but it's not in the oil and gas sector in non-conventional oil and gas basically the oil sands the amount produced by that sector is 985 dollars per working hour and the salaries that people get over a hundred dollars per working hour that's a lot it's the highest paid
sector in the economy if you fire all the people from oil and gas and you can start offering them jobs in the so-called green economy well the green economy is offering something like forty dollars per hour in in salaries so we're not we're not talking about the same type of job just transition is about taking the jobs that we have in the energy industry and transitioning them and they've even made comments that there'll be lots of jobs for janitors and drivers so to me if you're going to be ta
lking about just transition it's not just creating jobs it's it's equally paying jobs which I don't think is going to happen to put into perspective just how impactful this just transition could be consider that Canada's oil and gas industry currently contributes more than 108 billion to Canada's economy every single year and employs more than half a million Canadians primarily in western Canada unfortunately it seems this so-called just transition has already begun the government proposes that
the price on carbon pollution should start at a minimum of ten dollars per ton in 2018 Rising by ten dollars each year to fifty dollars per ton in 2022. in 2018 Justin Trudeau imposed a federal carbon tax on the country its point was to make it even more expensive for Canadians and businesses to produce and consume fossil fuels hammering energy intensive Industries like agriculture forestry and especially oil and natural gas many in the west saw the carbon tax as a direct assault on their most i
mportant industries even worse the tax didn't apply equally to all provinces leading some to think this was just another case of an Ottawa double standard the federal carbon tax is essentially an attempt to create a national standard for the prop references to enact their own carbon taxes or something that meets what Ottawa considers an acceptable carbon tax so what you have is a federal tax now that applies in some provinces and doesn't apply in others for some reason Quebec was given a pass on
this let people speculate about that their system is not a carbon tax their system is a different kind of mixed system this seemingly arbitrary imposition of a new federal tax on some but not all provinces angered those that did not want a carbon tax imposed but were forced to adopt one anyway especially provinces where the ability to profitably extract natural resources was now jeopardized by the sudden existence of the tax but was this Federal carbon tax mandate even legal to begin with the f
ederal carbon tax faces another legal test in an Alberta court today the province will make its case that the tax is unconstitutional when we heard that some of the provinces were looking to start challenging this in court for you know jurisdiction reasons we intervened in the Alberta case the Saskatchewan case the Ontario case and then again at the Supreme Court the right to extract and exploit natural resources is clearly a provincial right under the Constitution and is this was this something
to do with the 82 constitutional negotiations and Reni levack working with the premier of Alberta at the time and over as low is that what this is that's exactly 92a came out of that that negotiation you're talking about so you know the most recent legislative amendment to the Constitution and arguably the clearest expression of the words of the Constitution going back to 1867. show that natural resources is a provincial jurisdiction it's always been treated that way throughout Canadian history
on March 25th 2021 the Supreme Court of Canada the highest court in the country made a verdict on the case this was really a a jump ball when it got to the Supreme Court we lost obviously we disagree with their interpretation of the decision Supreme Court of Canada had a unique among courts is allowed to decide that the times have just changed and what the words of a law meant or the words of the Constitution meant 20 years ago they mean something else now this at least sows the seeds for the e
nd of Confederation because it's treating the provinces basically like municipalities rather than as their own Sovereign governments they've created an ability for the federal cabinet to dictate policy to the provincial governments in an area that everyone admits is fundamentally provincial jurisdiction despite at province's right over the development of its resources being enshrined in section 92a of the Canadian Constitution the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government leaving We
stern Industries that rely on hydrocarbons to pay up and shut up and far from dialing back or moderating its approach since the decision Trudeau has only continued to double down what is Bill c-69 why don't we start there bill c-69 is is carbon tax on steroids so the federal government has now been granted jurisdiction to regulating an area of provincial responsibility in respect of carbon and Bill 69 broadens that to not only include emissions of carbon but also to regulate projects which may c
reate future emissions of carbon whether a province builds a hospital or a pulp Mill or a mine wholly within that Province it's only within the problem holy within the province it's now according to this legislation subject to a full Federal Environmental review any project that produces carbon emissions of any sort um is this act of law right right now yes it is c69 has been dubbed the no more pipelines Bill and that's because they believe that ultimately the conditions will never be met it wil
l continually be a higher and higher bar to try to get uh pipelines put into into the country and with Alberta being a landlocked uh Province we need pipelines to be able to export our oil and gas to the rest of the world I mean this is the evisceration of separate provincial Powers it basically means that provinces can can do policing and run a health care System but they don't actually have any sovereignty anymore over the development of their problems so it was uh declared unconstitutional an
d illegal by the highest court in Alberta after being deemed unconstitutional by Alberta's Judiciary the fate of bill c-69 will be determined by the Supreme Court but judging by how the Supreme Court ruled on the carbon tax Western provinces certainly aren't holding their breath but why does the Supreme Court continue siding against western Canada well it could have something to do with the Court's composition according to the Canadian Constitution Canada is to have nine Supreme Court judges by
convention this includes one for the Atlantic provinces two for the Western provinces and three for the province of Ontario meanwhile the province of Quebec with just over 8 million people is constitutionally guaranteed three judges of Their Own essentially that means that six of the nine judges are lawyers who practiced in Montreal or Toronto or Ottawa three of the Supreme Court justices have to come from Quebec why well because that's the way the Constitution set up third of the Supreme Court
of Canada is already prejudiced in terms of Laurentian interests their decisions have shown this time and time again but it's not just the makeup of the Supreme Court that disadvantages westerners in many ways our constitution is designed to keep western Canada on the outside looking in representation in Parliament Quebec with its claim to a sacrosanct percentage of the hosts of parliament you know it's also the the makeup of the Senate like that's one where they get us they get a minimum number
of seats does not matter whether or not they have the population to to meet it or not even if Alberta had the same population size as Quebec we're still never going to have the same number of Senate seats as Quebec has at some point that's not going to work at some point that's going to that's going to break the Federation when your chief law body is broken down on Regional grounds and gives a permanent Monopoly of power to to the Laurentian Elite essentially so I almost every major political i
nstitution in the country serves the interests of the laurentians not the rest of us over the years like some of the biggest examples of corporate welfare have been to Pratt and Whitney and lombardier in Quebec I mean they've propped up the Aerospace industry in Quebec to the detriment of of a lot of other companies in this country that adds the fuel to the fire to people out west who look at it say you know why are they taking my money and doing that it's against a backdrop of knowing that West
ern votes don't matter that elections are decided in the East and they parties that get elected don't have a high regard for the West certainly you know we talk about money being spent seeing the flow of money from the West Alberta Saskatchewan Equalization is obviously the big one that's the one that gets most the headlines that's one that people have been very very upset about for years when it comes to Canada's Constitution maybe nothing angers the West more than Equalization payments but wha
t are they how do they work and why are they really needed to find out I traveled to Nova Scotia one of Canada's easternmost provinces and a recipient of Equalization payments I met with Alex Weyland an economist at the Fraser Institute to ask him about Equalization and how it affects the province he calls home explain what the equalization program is to the everyday Canadian sure so at its most basic form the equalization program is a payment from the government of Canada to recipient provinces
on an annual basis for the purpose of equalizing those provinces ability to deliver services to the residents that's the intent of the program they look at the formula they add up all of your potential revenues they look at what you're spending and they say okay well this province over here doesn't have as much opportunity to raise revenues as this one so let's give them more of the chunk of the pies it's a very large transfer program from the federal government to recipient provinces this year
the total amount of Equalization funding being dispersed will be about 24 billion around two-thirds of that goes to Quebec Quebec gets the biggest chunk of it they're getting over 50 percent of the revenue but the Atlantic provinces get it Manitoba gets it occasionally Ontario and Saskatchewan get it but it's been a long time fighting since BC and Alberta have ever got any any money at the equalization program roughly speaking uh Prince Edward Island receives about twenty seven hundred dollars
per person per year and is that like man woman and child just declared yes okay the babies are getting that much yeah okay yeah and do you have a sense of just how much this Equalization and Equalization transfer payments are costing for example the average Alberta yeah I mean if you look at just the average Alberta this year it's just under 700 per person that is being transferred from the pockets of albertans into the pockets of people in uh in in have not provinces this staggering amount of m
oney flowing west to east creates a tremendous amount of resentment among many Western Canadians but in principle Equalization is meant to create fairness to give every Canadian a piece of Canada's natural wealth but is it simply that the West has natural resources and the East does not or perhaps does it all have to do with actions of specific provincial governments we had a project four billion dollars investment in a small region the sagne northeast of Quebec the population out there was over
70 percent supportive of the project so there was social acceptability the government campaigned in favor of the project and when they got elected they flip-flopped this would have been the largest private investment in the entire province's history but when government had a choice whether or not to do it the ACT is a project so what is Quebec's rejection of the segnier LNG export facility really about is it simply because the project was meant to export Western gas to markets around the world
just outside Montreal I met with Eric Tetro the president of the Quebec energy Association to find out you hear a lot in Canada about our vast oil and gas deposits hydrocarbons western Canada even Newfoundland but how about here in Quebec is there any hydrocarbon resources that this province has we have natural gas and we have lots of it there's a lot of natural gas under that field right under our feet here there's natural gas absolutely that gas is just lying underneath unexploited between 50
and 200 billion dollars commercial worth of natural gas under our soil we just don't want to exploit it because we are different Quebec is sitting on as much as 186 billion dollars in natural gas and that resource is not being developed at a time when that Province receives substantial Equalization payments from provinces or from the federal government via provinces that develop their natural resources they would actually do a Net Zero no carbon emission extraction of the of the natural gas ther
e and the government's still saying no it's truly when they say no to that it's not about the environment but why would Quebec not develop their own abundant natural gas especially when it can be developed while producing no new net emissions and significantly reduce the province's dependence on Equalization natural resource revenues are a very important part of the equalization formula because we see that recipient provinces tend to have disincentives to develop their natural resources the prov
inces ended up trying to expand the Missouri sector they could actually not only lose resource revenues but also Equalization payments and in fact it was calculated for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland particularly that for every dollar of additional resource revenues that they receive the province would lose 95 cents some wow that they would get because of Equalization basically climb back any any of the gains if recipient provinces like Quebec develop their natural resources their Equalization pay
ments would be significantly reduced not to mention they may actually be forced to pay into Equalization instead creating a massive disincentive for provinces to develop the resources and grow their economies and if you look at for example a province like New Brunswick we actually modeled that if they developed 10 percent of their natural resources in other words a 10 boost in Revenue would be clawed back at a 97 percent rate are there any examples of resource development projects in recipient p
rovinces that may have not been pursued because of this this disincentive if you look at a province like Nova Scotia onshore natural gas exploration is banned New Brunswick for example academic research has shown that over about the past decade that province has given up 40 billion dollars in natural resource development 40 billion 40 billion dollars this very Province receives a significant amount of Equalization which is principally funded by some provinces that have been more aggressive in de
veloping their natural resources Decisions by New Brunswick Quebec and other resource-rich provinces to not develop their natural resources while receiving Equalization payments from provinces that do reeks of hypocrisy but not everyone in these so-called have-not provinces are happy with the status quo New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has aggressively pursued resource extraction pipelines and fought vehemently against both the carbon tax mandate and Bill c-69 and has Choice words for those wh
o gladly accept Western transfer payments in one hand while failing to develop their own natural resources here at home we're going to go chat now with the premier of New Brunswick Mr Blaine Higgs who's been really an outlier and has outspokenness against Equalization which is the the redistributive program that he's a recipient of as Premier so we're gonna go chat with Mr Higgs and see what he has to say do you feel like you understand the frustration and even alienation that many of those in w
estern Canada especially Alberta and Saskatchewan feel for what they perceive to be attacks against its most important industry I absolutely and I also feel that if you have the ability to raise your bar on on being more self-sufficient and and you're not willing to do that but yet you're willing to take that same support from another province that is doing it and I refer to oil and gas but it should be there for people that are not able to develop not not so much for those that just refuse not
to do so uh but no it's 14 billion to come back gets uh and this is money we're getting uh because we don't have uh the same level of wealth as other provinces but a reason why we don't have that same level of wealth is unfortunately because our government keeps putting hurdles and why does it keep putting hurdles is because when it takes an economically Sound Decision such as developing resources but one that's a little bit more controversial with some people it has to pay the full political co
st but it doesn't get the full benefit so it is disincentivizing uh development add the expense uh of of course those that pay into Equalization like Alberta Saskatchewan but also at the expense of Quebec workers that could get better paying jobs that could get better Essentials of living but that government is instead favoring its own Revenue instead of the people's Revenue unfortunately for quebecers their government has since gone one step further fully Banning the development of all oil and
gas projects in their Province via what's known as a moratorium and they didn't even stop there moving on to vigorously campaign against pipelines that simply would have transited Western Oil through Quebec from one Province to another acceptable there is no social acceptability for a pipeline that would pass through Quebec territory he says I am not embarrassed to refuse dirty energy while we are offering clean energy at a competitive price on October 5th 2017 energy East a pipeline that would
have taken Western Oil across the country to be refined consumed and exported from Eastern Canada was canceled due in large part to the hurdles put in place by Quebec predictably this infuriated many of the western provinces but they weren't the only ones affected by this decision they ended up going being part way along investing heavily in design and construction and all of the plans and and then then you know Quebec said you know not not in my backyard and and for Quebec to be allowed to just
shut us off here from the East for an energy project that meant such so much to the east coast it shouldn't be in a national program it should not be loud frankly I don't think it's acceptable that we say no to pipelines coming from western Canada but we still collect the money from it boats it's everywhere in the world right trains it's everywhere in the world but what are pipelines Associated to they're Associated to Alberta they're Associated to western Canada they are associated with Englis
h Canada and certainly quebecers don't want that right they want your money they don't want your pipeline and if Quebec should know one thing is that we had we had that train accident in luck big asset 48 people died it was not an oil accident it was a train accident right which carried oil and pipelines are a lot safer uh but I mean it's ridiculous right quebecers used fossil fuels they've got is the previous additional license from five kilometers or pipelines that distribute hydrocarbon energ
y all around but it's like oh it's the West yuck Western Oil that stuff stinks they don't mind importing it but not from the West so it tells you that you know quebecers like foreign countries they'd be to prefer Russia to the West well that hurts and it's just it's so glatur to sleep rude you'd think again Canadians are so famously polite you think someone could be polite to the West hey you guys are great you're Dynamic you're energetic you're a marvelous part of our country we're sorry about
the past we're gonna do better but you never get that yeah why don't you shut up yo you know greasy greedy know-nothings as if this wasn't all egregious enough even within the equalization formula itself Quebec somehow manages to get special treatment again the fact that Quebec is the virtually the lone recipient of Equalization payments and yet they proudly point out that they've got the lowest cost of electricity domestically so Quebec's approach to electricity pricing leads to major issues wi
th the calculation of Equalization payments on a yearly basis so I mean they are making money that's not considered in any way shape or form and part of Equalization we've done calculations that show that if Quebec were to charge Market rates for electricity their Equalization payments in a given year would be halved or less and to consider it Quebec have not provinces is ridiculous in terms of what what resources get put fit into the mix hydroelectricity is not one of them oil and gas is a majo
r one so it's not very hard to draw the conclusion that the federal government treats Quebec differently and we all know that there's lots of political reasons for that but it certainly doesn't make good law but perhaps it's not just Western provinces who are hurt by the special treatment Quebec gets from the federal government in fact those who are impacted the most may just be everyday quebecers themselves we speak to a little bit about some of the negative consequences of this program for tho
se who are actually recipients of it oh yeah I mean it's the old welfare trap right you talk about the people who get on welfare and they'd like to go get a job but if they get a job and they start earning a little bit of money then they get clawed back all their welfare money and that's exactly the problem is that we've created a province that do not want to develop their economy they do not want to create these jobs because they would lose out an equalization you know Equalization is obviously
bad for people like albertans and saskatchewanes that I have to pay into it but it's also bad for provinces like Quebec to receive it it is good for the government that gets it but it's bad for the people living in the provinces that get it because when Quebec or New Brunswick or other provinces say no to some reason hours of operative opportunities sure the government gets to keep its Equalization Revenue but what doesn't happen is all the jobs that could get created they don't get created the
n your economic activity the fact that we could have people with higher incomes higher standards of living that does not happen the only beneficiaries of Equalization are the bureaucrats that administer it and and I don't want to be a province that sits around and waits for a handout I would rather become a province that is that is making its own way we have the potential to be much wealthier in Quebec and unfortunately because the our governments are blinded by a Lobby expect we're not having o
ur full potential right now in the long run where Quebec is not winning that's what we have to understand we think that because we're getting a big check every year from the the welfare transfer payment program but in the long run what it does it doesn't kill our Dynamic Industries and and that's what's much more concerning for me in the long run as concerned as quebecers are about their place in Canada the alienation exploitation and sheer disrespect felt by many in the west is beginning to boi
l over embodied in many ways by the election of a new premier in Alberta ready to take on the federal government now we have been made aware coming week Trudeau is planning on bringing forward new restrictions on electricity generation from natural gas that will not only massively increase your power bills but will also endanger the integrity and reliability of our entire power grid and as Premier I cannot under any circumstances allow these contemplated Federal policies to be inflicted upon alb
ertans I simply can't and I won't this is not a road we can afford to go down if he persists he will be hurting Canadians from coast to coast and he will strain the patience and Goodwill of albertans in an unprecedented fashion [Applause] newly elected premier of Alberta Danielle Smith has introduced legislation in the spirit of Stephen Harper's original firewall letter Smith's law will put in place protections to Shield Alberta from federal policies that violate provincial jurisdiction and infr
inge on Alberta's constitutional rights while looking to expand Alberta's power and autonomy by potentially taking actions in the footsteps of those already taken by the province of Quebec something that Justin Trudeau isn't too happy about obviously we're going to look at this very very closely and think about the implications but our Focus remains on making sure the albertans are part of a growing cleaner economy and protect our environment for years to come the sovereignty Act was meant to se
nd a message to albertans that we're going to defend ourselves Danielle's legislation the UCP legislation is taking together all of the rights that Quebec already has in Quebec uses them as a shield and Danielle has tried to hammer those same materials into a sword certainly it was a signal to the rest of the country that albertans are still not happy with the equalization program and things need to change inspired by Alberta's sovereignty act Saskatchewan has now passed sovereignty legislation
of their own something that could maybe be the start of a trend of provinces finally standing up to the federal government but what remains to be seen is if the Supreme Court will continue to honor the original ethos and division of powers laid out by the Constitution and if Alberta and Quebec will be able to set aside their differences and join together as they did in 1982 to push back against the creeping centralization and increases in federal power favored by Trudeau all those both albertans
's cash one are telling Ottawa to mind its own business and let Alberta do Alberta Saskatchewan to Saskatchewan much like Quebec for years has been telling Ottawa to mind its own business and let Quebec be Quebec I think this country has always worked best when provinces understand and fight together against ottawa's tendency to centralize well there is a positive story to Canada and I think it's important not to forget this like well our contribution to the two World Wars to opening the West to
creating prosperity to becoming one of the bread baskets of the world all the great things that happen when Canadians don't get at odds with one another and Canada deserves better than it's received and so we all have to give it a try if it fails let it not be because we didn't make an effort we should find ways to have our country get stronger not not get weaker and recognition of us all doing our part but again it comes down to respect it's for me it's that simple we are a confederation of st
rong provinces that's when we work best and we need to they need to have that balance restored [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music]
Comments