Transcript: Season 4 Episode 14

Above: Watch the full broadcast of The West Block on Sunday, December 14, 2014. Hosted by Tom Clark.

Episode 14, Season 4

Guest Interviews: Paul Davis, Kathleen Wynne, Greg Rickford, Erin O’Toole

Location: Ottawa

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On this Sunday, a tale of two provinces, as Kathleen Wynne continues her very public push for a meeting with the Prime Minister. The Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador sat down for some face time with Stephen Harper. We’ll talk to both provincial leaders about their relationship with Ottawa.

Pushing pipelines with very little environmental cover, Canada’s natural resources minister is heading to Washington tomorrow to talk about North American energy. What’s his pitch? We’ll find out.

And the strained relationship between the government and the men and women it sent to war. How on earth did things get so bad?

It is Sunday, December the 14th and from the nation’s capital, I’m Tom Clark. And you are in The West Block.

Now Paul Davis, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador had no trouble getting a meeting with Stephen Harper. They met late on Friday. Now the Newfoundland Premier had threatened to quash the European Free Trade deal if the Prime Minister didn’t live up to his promise and give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Newfoundland fishing industry. Ottawa has a very different view about that promise, so we sat down with the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador after his meeting with the prime minister. Here it is:

Premier Davis good to have you here. You maintain that the agreement allows you $280 million dollars from the federal government. You went to meet with the Prime Minister to make that case, how did you do?

Paul Davis:

Well, you know it’s a very disappointment meeting with the Prime Minister. He’s…we’re in a very different place. We haven’t clearly reached an agreement on fund for a fishery innovation fund for Newfoundland and Labrador. And how this took place is important as well, Tom. They came to us. The federal government came to Newfoundland and Labrador. They had done deals with British Columbia. They’d carved out MPR’s on logging. They had introduced security measures for wine in British Columbia and wine in Quebec as an example, so they’ve done all of that. And then they came to us. They came to us and they said we need your MPR’s. The EU wants your MPR’s. So we reached an agreement. We had a negotiation…

Tom Clark:

And that has to deal with the fish packing industry.

Paul Davis:

MPR’s are minimum processing requirements. We have two legislative authorities left in Newfoundland and Labrador in our fishery and that strikes some people a little odd because we’re known as a fishing province and a fishing community, and a fishing industry. And we have…the federal government has rights to the quotas and how the fishing actually takes place. We have authority over when the fish lands in Newfoundland and Labrador that it be processed, and that’s through our minimum processing requirements. It’s a legislative requirement. And we also have licensing abilities. And that’s our two authorities. They’ve asked us to give up one of those authorities so that they can reach an agreement on CETA. And in order to do that, we had a discussion. We said how are we going to make this happen? We wanted an opportunity to renew our fishery. We want an opportunity to have a sustainable fishery for long term. So we reached an agreement based on $280 million provided by the federal government. They agreed to put in $120 million that would see a sustainable fishery for years to come. They’ve now changed the rules on that so we can’t access that fund.

Tom Clark:

In any part of the original documentation or the original negotiation that you had with Ottawa, did Ottawa ever once mention that this was only to be for loses and that you would have to demonstrate those losses before you got their money.

Paul Davis:

Never. It was never a part of the negotiations. They first wanted to talk about…very early, wanted to talk about MPR’s and we said let’s have a look at those. Let’s have a look at those impacts. So once we had a look at the potential impacts, we knew today, we can’t demonstrate a loss. Now we don’t know what a fishery is going to go in five or 10 years from now. Fisheries change as decades change and as time change. We don’t know where that’s going to go five or 10 years from now, but we know today, we can’t demonstrate that loss. And what the Prime Minister said to me is we need to demonstrate that. And I said we can’t demonstrate that, therefore we’re not going to be able to access the fund.

Tom Clark:

So what do you do now? You have the ability to not completely derail the European Free Trade deal but you’ve got the ability to throw a monkey wrench into it. Are you going to do that?

Paul Davis:

Well look, we bargained in good faith and we believed that we had an agreement in place. We have an agreement in place that we have a deal set. Prime minster is offside on that. And 17 months after we had come to an agreement, Minister Moore, Rob Moore now arrives who is supposed to be representing Newfoundland and Labrador by the way. He’s supposedly our representative in the federal cabinet. And he arrives is now and injected to the process and says that we have to come up with being able to establish a demonstrated loss. So I mean, really solidifies for me that you can’t trust the federal government. You can’t trust Stephen Harper’s government. That’s not what the deal was about. That’s not what the deal we had reached many, many months ago. Now they’re moving a goalpost. They’re changing the rules as we go along.

Tom Clark:

So what can you do?

Paul Davis:

Well we have a number of options available to us. Our support for CIDA is definitely high on the list and is at risk here. I had to return to our province, return to Newfoundland and Labrador. Going to have a very good discussion with cabinet, my cabinet and we have 28 member states in the EU. We know the EU asked Canada to remove MPR’s from Newfoundland and Labrador. We know that other jurisdictions in the country have agreements with the federal government on CIDA. They have their own bilateral agreements. There are industries have those in place as well. So I throw caution to them as well, as we believed that we had an agreement. And if I was another partner, I’d be having a very close look at the agreement in place to make sure that it’s going to look after their industry or their jurisdiction because it’s certainly not going to happen that way for us.

Tom Clark:

Premier Davis of Newfoundland and Labrador, thanks very much for being here, I appreciate your time.

Paul Davis:

Thank you.

Tom Clark:

Well the spat between Stephen Harper and Kathleen Wynne continues. More letters requesting more meetings.

As Stephen Harper had suggested, she had six of her ministers write letters to their federal counterparts requesting meetings, on topics like the Ring of Fire, a strategy for the automotive industry, and infrastructure investment. And she herself penned one more note to the PM and in it she writes this:

“As you may be aware, Friday, December the 5^th marked the first anniversary of our last face-to-face meeting. That is too long a time between a meeting of the Prime Minister and the Premier of Canada’s largest province, whose relationship should be one of collaboration, not confrontation.”

And joining me now, from Queen’s Park in Toronto is the Ontario Premier, Kathleen Wynne. Premier, thanks very much for being here.

Kathleen Wynne:

Thanks Tom.

Tom Clark:

You know, I spoke with the Prime Minister’s Office just a few moments ago and they said that they had nothing to say to you or to anybody else about this meeting other than to reiterate what he had said earlier and that is that you should stick to getting your province back on its economic feet again. How do you react to that?

Kathleen Wynne:

Well, let me just say first of all, Tom that we are doing exactly that. We’re working very hard. Those topics that you identified that I have asked my ministers to work on, whether it’s infrastructure, whether it’s the Ring of Fire, whether it’s a renewed partnership on the auto strategy, those are pillars of our economic plan. My contention that it’s important for the Prime Minister and the Premier of the largest province to meet together is not a personal request. This is a request on behalf of the people of Ontario to have a dialogue with the Prime Minister. I think it’s very important.

Tom Clark:

I’m wondering how much this is personal though, Premier because I mean the Prime Minister has met with I think virtually every other premier in the country, except for you. Do you believe that there is a personal element on his side on all of this?

Kathleen Wynne:

Well I’m not going to ascribe motive. You know, it’s certainly from my perspective not personal, and we have had a meeting. I think it’s just over a year ago and we have worked together well. The provincial government and the federal government have worked together well, for example on the auto file. So this is not about my personal desire for a meeting. This is a about the Prime Minister meeting with the Premier of the largest province in the country. I think that in order for there to be national well-being and a national vision, it’s very important for the provinces to have that working relationship with the Prime Minister. That’s why my ministers have written to the ministers, their federal counterparts and it’s why I will continue to propose to Prime Minister Harper that we sit down and talk about areas of mutual interest.

Tom Clark:

Is there any actual damage being done by the fact that you are not meeting, anything that you can quantify, any part of the economy that’s not progressing because there haven’t been these series of meetings?

Kathleen Wynne:

Well we continue to work on all of the files that you’ve identified and that our ministers are engaged in, but if you take the example, for example, the Ring of Fire. I think that it’s more a missed opportunity to move the file ahead and I think that we’ve set up a development corporation. We have put a billion dollars on the table. There are businesses that are interested in the development of the Ring of Fire and I believe that in working with First Nations, we’ve created the conditions now for us to move forward. But business and communities want to know that there is stability and they want to know that the provincial and the federal government are working together. I have no doubt we’ll get there Tom, but I’d like to get there sooner rather than later.

Tom Clark:

You know, some in the government have said that this is a publicity stunt and they’ve even suggested maybe that you releasing this letter publically about wanting this meeting comes at an opportune time. This is what I’m hearing because they say that this happened just days after your auditor general came out with a scathing report about your government at a time when the OPP was talking about furthering there investigation into the gas plant scandal and so on. Magicians call this misdirection. Is there any truth to that at all?

Kathleen Wynne:

Really not, I mean the fact is that this has been an ongoing issue. You know it has become a public issue because I was being asked on a regular basis whether I had met with the Prime Minister and when my next meeting with the Prime Minister was going to be and so I was having to answer those questions and it was in that way that this whole discussion between my office and the Prime Minister’s office became public. So this is not something new this week. This is something that has been ongoing. We’ve been looking for an opportunity to sit down with the Prime Minister for a number of months now and it is the reality that there are other things that are going on, but this isn’t again….it’s not about personality and it’s not about publicity. It’s about actually finding a way forward on files and investments and partnerships that are very important for Ontario, but are important for the country. It’s about a national vision. You know making sure that we have some alignment in terms of infrastructure, in terms of the investments that need to be made and the partnerships on business. Those are national issues.

Tom Clark:

Premier Wynne, thanks very much for your time and have a Merry Christmas.

Kathleen Wynne:

Thanks Tom, same to you.

Tom Clark:

Coming up next, a North American energy strategy, what does it look like? And can Keystone be part of that without emission controls on the oil and gas industry. We’ll ask the Natural Resources Minister, next.

Break

Tom Clark:

Welcome back. Well, against all odds it seems, the federal government continues its full-throated support for TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline. The latest to make the trek to Washington is Natural Resources Minister, Greg Rickford who joins me now from our studios in Toronto. Minister thanks very much. You’re heading to Washington tomorrow for a trilateral meeting with your colleagues from the United States and from Mexico on the North American energy grid and we know that the pipeline push is on your agenda. Do you really think that the Whitehouse is beginning to come around on Keystone?

Greg Rickford:

Well first of all, let me say that this is the fourth meeting that I will have had face-to-face with Secretary Moniz. Obviously this is $140 billion energy trade relationship.   Yes, we never miss an opportunity to talk about Keystone as between Secretary Moniz and I, but frankly he’s not seized of that decision and there are a number of other significant items on our agenda for Monday. They include energy data. They include Mexico’s recent massive regulatory reforms for the oil and energy sector, and Secretary Moniz and I will be briefed on what that means for Canada and the United States in an integrated North American market. And then finally, energy infrastructure which implicates to a certain extent Keystone and obviously to again advance our ongoing frustration and disappointment of the failure of the US administration to accept its own science and fact based report that this is environmentally sound, creates jobs and growth on both sides of the border, and these should be advanced.

Tom Clark:

You neatly led into my next point because the one person you have to convince about Keystone of course is President Barack Obama. And just so everybody remembers, let’s listen to what he said on late night television just a few days ago about Keystone XL. Take a listen:

Stephen Colbert: “You’re going to sign it, right? You’re going to sign it when the bill comes to you.”

President Barack Obama: “Essentially there’s Canadian oil passing through the United States to be sold on the world market. It’s not going to push down gas prices here in the United States. It’s good for Canada. It could create a couple of thousand jobs in the initial construction of the pipeline, but we’ve got to measure that against whether or not it is going to contribute to an overall warming of the planet, that it could be disastrous.”

Stephen Colbert: “Can I make a suggestion…”

Tom Clark:

Well Minister Rickford, it doesn’t sound as if he’s too convinced about the Keystone pipeline.

Greg Rickford:

Listen, the United States contributes more than 15 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions per year for the globe. Canada is 1.8 per cent. If he’s concerned about GHG emissions, it’s worth pointing out that pipeline, as opposed to rail, is the better way to go because the demand hasn’t changed. And furthermore, rather unfortunately for President Obama, it’s instructive for folks on the other side of the border to know that the pipeline does represent jobs on both sides of the border. Any decision to export it from the United States is solely a decision made by the United States. And the US State Department’s own report says it would be better to take oil from Alberta…from the oil sands and use it domestically. That would reduce the reliance on sources like Venezuela which of course are seriously problematic for the United States.

Tom Clark:

Okay, well speaking of problems, since your sniping at the Americans, it sure doesn’t sound to me as if you’re thinking that you’re close to a deal because people who make deals don’t talk that way. But also, you’re heading down to Washington at a time where the Prime Minister a few days ago stood up in the House of Commons and said no GHG emissions for the oil and gas sector in this country. You know that Obama is hanging his decision on, at least partly, an environmental decision. How hobbled are you? In other words, how is this making your job any easier having the Prime Minister saying no to GHG regulations in the oil patch?

Greg Rickford:

Well two quick points. First of all, we’re not sniping at all. I have a very effective and good working relationship with Secretary Moniz. The science and the facts in the US State Department’s own report should be the most destructive for the President of the United States, but Prime Minister’s remarks obviously are good common sense. There is no way that they should be imposing a penality…

Tom Clark:

Do they help you sell the pipeline to the White House?

Greg Rickford:

No way they should be imposing…if the issue is pipeline versus rail, pipeline wins the day and it reduces GHG emissions and obviously the United States is, it’s worth pointing out, the largest producer of oil and gas in the world right now. So, as I said, in terms of their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions year in and year out, it’s much higher than Canada. So I don’t think the argument or the discussion takes place there, Tom.

Tom Clark:
Okay, I don’t know, some people might call that sniping. But anyway, Greg Rickford, Minister of Natural Resources, safe journeys down to Washington, good talking to you.

Greg Rickford:

Thanks, Tom.

Tom Clark:

Well up next, day after day, Canada’s Veteran’s Affairs Minister is bombarded with demands for his resignation. How the government sees its relationship with our vets. That’s after the break.

Break

Tom Clark:

Welcome back. Well we send them to war to fight for our country with the promise of our full support when they return home. But many veterans say that support just isn’t there. For the past two weeks, we have asked Canada’s Veterans Affairs Minister, Julian Fantino to join us for a discussion. He has been unavailable. So joining me now is Conservative MP, Erin O’Toole, a veteran himself.

Tom Clark:

How on earth did things get so bad between your government and the veterans of this country?

Erin O’Toole:

Well I think Tom, Veterans Affairs has been going through transformative change. You know, 30 years ago, and even when I was in the military, Veterans Affairs was mainly about commemoration. The World War II veterans were in their mid-60’s. Canada hadn’t been in a combat mission for decades. Post-Afghanistan, that changed. We had some serious casualties. We had some deaths as you know. So Veterans Affairs has had to transform to serve veterans who are now the World War II, in their 90’s, and younger Afghan veterans, combat veterans with catastrophic injuries.

Tom Clark:
But in the process…forgive me for interrupting…but in the process of this transformation that you’re talking about, it went pear-shaped on you. I mean, I have never seen a government file so badly mishandled as the Veterans Affairs file. I’m just wondering, how did you allow it because this is your natural constituency. The military, the veterans, they’ve always been on your side. They’re not anymore and they’re angry at you. They’re mad at you. How did you allow that to happen?

Erin O’Toole:

Well the vast majority, Tom of veterans that I speak to are actually quite happy with their service from Veterans Affairs Canada. What we have to do is address anyone that’s falling through the cracks or rising areas of new need, like mental health. When I was in the military, there were no operational stress injury clinics; zero. We’ve opened 14 and are going to be going to as many as 25 clinics. This has all been done in the last decade because we’re starting to deal with post traumatic stress better but the auditor general showed us we have some work to do. We’re committed to make sure that we’re meeting that growing need. So this is about not doing things the way they were done in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. It’s adapting and I think we have to communicate it better, clearly after the last few weeks that people have an understanding of what we’re doing.

Tom Clark:
Do you think that’s the major problem, is just communication? I mean you’re spending an awful lot of money on advertising. In fact, you’re spending more on advertising than you are in many cases, in the front line service. You’re advertising budget is through the roof. Do you think it’s just a matter of communication or do you think it’s a matter of actually what you do?

Erin O’Toole:

I think it’s a bit of both, Tom. You know, we had the story about the estimates. We weren’t meeting some of our estimated spending and then there was a lapse in some of it. Some of it was new veterans. We’ve provided re-training and re-education money for new veterans, that’s north of $10,000 per veteran. But if they’re not drawing it when they leave the military, that estimate is not taken up. So advertising is partially to tell new veterans, hey when you’re transitioning to a new job, if you need new training, if you need re-education, if you need family support, it’s there for you. So, you have to communicate and I just think we need to try and do it better.

Tom Clark:

Since you came to power in 2006, Veterans Affairs has returned $1.3 billion dollars I believe it is to the federal treasury. Does that indicate then that in your mind, every veteran has received everything that is his or her due? That’s why you can return the unspent money. Do you think everybody’s been taken care of exactly to the penny from what they should get?

Erin O’Toole:

I think you’ve got to look at this in two ways. We’re spending on average about $800 million more than the previous government on veterans but we’re spending it in new ways.

Tom Clark:

Well wait a second now, you’re going back to before the Afghan War? I mean that seems ridiculous. Let’s stick with your government because you’ve been almost 10 years now. But are you saying that everybody has received every penny that they’re due?

Erin O’Toole:

What we’re saying is, the estimates…when we’re not meeting that estimated spend, most of those benefits are statutory. They’re going to go to the veteran if they apply for them. The main reason there’s been a lapse, we haven’t met the estimates are two reasons. The World War II cohort of veterans is passing away. So not as many of those are meeting that benefit. The newer Afghan veterans, not enough of them are applying for a range of benefits so we’ve got to reach out to them. We’ve got to do mental health better. So we’ve got some areas we’ve got to improve, but I can tell you Tom, this is a key priority for the Prime Minister. But making it a priority is not just doing things the way they were done in the 1950’s. So I think we have to explain to Canadians we’re meeting the needs of our traditional veterans but we’re also trying to meet the rising….

Tom Clark:

In the meantime, you’ve got an enormous political problem on your hands. You know that and everybody in government knows that.

Erin O’Toole:

Well I think part of that…that’s the communication part. We have to tell Canadians that this is a key priority for our government and we’ve got to…

Tom Clark:

You want to spend even more on advertising than you are right now?

Erin O’Toole:

Well I think we’re learning a lot from what the auditor general said. We’re not meeting in one area…one key area, disability benefits for mental health. We’re not meeting the expectations for veterans. Some of our changes will mean we have to work better to get those processing times down. Others will mean veterans need to get the service and support earlier so that they can treatment and get better. So we’ve got some challenges but I want Canadians to know it’s a priority.

Tom Clark:

Erin O’Toole, we’re out of time but thank you very much for dropping by. I appreciate your time today.

Erin O’Toole:

Thank you.

Tom Clark:

Well that is our show for today. We’re always eager to hear from you. You can find us online at www.thewestblock.ca. You can also reach us on Twitter and on Facebook.

Thanks very much for joining us. Have a great week ahead. I’m Tom Clark and we’ll see you back here, next Sunday.