Transcript Season 4 Episode 35

WATCH: Full broadcast of The West Block with Tom Clark, aired May 10, 2015.

Guest Interviews: Alberta Premier-designate Rachel Notley, former opposition leader in Alberta Danielle Smith, federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, military jouralist Scott Taylor

Location: Calgary

On this Sunday, a stunning upset in Alberta, after four decades of Conservative rule, the NDP now hold the reins of power. We’ll talk to the premier designate about her plans for the province.

Then, take from the rich, give to the middle class: Justin Trudeau unveiled his party’s economic platform and he’s here to defend it against critics who say, ‘it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.’

Plus, fallout from the government’s own security breach: showing the faces of special op soldiers serving overseas.

It is Sunday, May the 10^th. I’m Tom Clark with a special edition of the West Block from Calgary.

The provincial election here in Alberta last week is still sending political shockwaves right across the country.

In about two weeks, Rachel Notley will become the Premier of Alberta. The NDP will be ruling this province for the first time in its history. Winning 53 seats in the 87-seat legislature, obviously a lot of Albertans wanted change. But still, some here are worried. I sat down with Rachel Notley in Edmonton to talk about what is to come.

Premier Notley, welcome.

Rachel Notley:

Thank you.

Tom Clark:

And first of all, congratulations.

Rachel Notley:

Thank you very much.

Tom Clark:

Rachel Notley:

Tom Clark:

Six months ago, honestly, six months ago, did you really believe that you’d be elected Premier of Alberta?

Rachel Notley:

Well you know, I will say this, that six months ago, we had started to sense a truly, not only sort of a change in Alberta because I’ve always made the argument that in fact, Albertans haven’t really changed that much. It’s just been, there haven’t hadn’t been to express themselves politically. And, I started to sense that there was definitely a change through our own leadership race. We got out there and spoke to people a lot more than we had been before and there was just a much warmer reception than we’d had before. Whether I believe that was going to get us to government, maybe not quite so much.

Tom Clark:

How different is Alberta going to be in four years from now than it is today?

Rachel Notley:

Well, I’m hopeful that our economy will be more diversified, that we’ll have created more stable long term jobs that the prosperity which we have in Alberta, which is founded on our unprecedented level of resources, will be more thoughtfully capitalized on for the benefit of more Albertans.

Tom Clark:

Let’s deal with that because in many ways, that’s the elephant in the room: the oil industry, the business community in general. How do you reach out to them in these first few days? And specifically, what do you say to them to calm them down?

Rachel Notley:

Well you know, my platform’s been fairly clear all along and it’s been founded on this idea that what we want to do is build our economy and we want to ensure that we create more stable long terms jobs for Albertans because we know that that’s fundamentally important. We have a long history of being a very healthy place for investment in Alberta and I have no interest in changing that. I just want to ensure that as we move forward, the planning and the discussion around that, that the interest of Alberta citizens are front and centre with respect to the development of that economy.

Tom Clark:

Okay, so you know though, that in the very first meetings that you’re going to have with the senior oil people in this province, they’re going to look at you and say, ‘Premier Notley, are you going to get behind Keystone and Northern Gateway?’ So, what are you going to tell them when they ask?

Rachel Notley:

Well, what we’re going to say is, you know, I mean each of those pipelines have different issues attached to them, and we’re going to have good, thoughtful, comprehensive discussions with them. And we’re going to hear what they have to say and we’re going to talk about some of the concerns that exist but we’re also going to do it within the constraints of—listen, how do we make sure that, as I’ve said, that our economy grows, that stability is not only maintained but enhanced, and that jobs grow.

Tom Clark:

That doesn’t necessarily sound like ringing support for Keystone.

Rachel Notley:

You know, what I’ve said all along is that my concern about Keystone as it’s currently thought out, and of course, it doesn’t need to be exactly what it is right now, is that it’s going to ship a lot of jobs south of here. And so we need to talk about what economic incentives will be paired with it or not with it, as the case may be to ensure that we’re also focusing on getting back to first principles that frankly were introduced by Peter Lougheed many decades ago, which is that the resources that we have in this province are used for the long term benefit of Albertans. And so,

Tom Clark:

And he said famously, ‘slow it down; there’s no rush to take all of this stuff out of the ground.’

Rachel Notley:

Right, and well, and I’m—you know, and the other thing that he said is, ‘let’s upgrade here’. Let’s develop and enhance the complexity and the sophistication of our industry here in Alberta. So, let’s diversify within the energy sector and let’s make sure that we have more upgraded product and more upgrading here because the higher up the supply chain you get, the more a drop in oil prices helps those higher up in the supply chain. So, let’s make sure some of that’s happening here in Alberta. And, I’m not saying all of it but I am saying that we need to look towards being more than simply drawers of water and hewers of wood.

Tom Clark:

The other side of this coin of course is the environment and you know, that Alberta has a reputation of brand around the world, as being a very dirty province. How do you change worldwide perceptions about Alberta being the outlier when it comes to environmental responsibility?

Rachel Notley:

Well, and you know, one thing I’ll say about that is that you know, maybe not all industry, but some leaders in industry I think really are prepared to have the common cause with us on that because I think there are some responsible leaders in industry who understand that jobs and economic growth on one hand are not the polar opposite of environmental responsibility. And then in fact, if you do both responsibly, they work together quite effectively to open markets and deal with those kinds of issues around international reputation. But what you do need to do is be serious about it, be thoughtful about it and do meaningful stuff. You can’t simply put out press releases and be surprised when people say after a while, geez you know, you haven’t actually done anything on the environment for the last 20 years.

Tom Clark:

Well then, let me ask you specifically, will you raise the carbon tax in this province?

Rachel Notley:

Oh, that’s—I mean that’s the kind of thing that there’s a great deal of conversation that needs to go on both internally in Alberta amongst industry stakeholders as well as community stakeholders, environmental stakeholders and also outside of the province because our approach to environmental and climate change is something that needs to take into account what’s going on across the province. So, you know, as I’ve said before, the PC government’s been promising a climate change strategy since I’ve been elected and it’s been delayed ever since I’ve been first elected which was in 2008, so I think we’re going to need a little bit more time before we come up with the specifics.

Tom Clark:

What news is there in your victory for the federal scene, for Tom Mulcair?

Rachel Notley:

Well, you know, I think that what it shows is that the NDP is an absolutely reasonable choice for people that are looking for responsible, fair-minded thoughtful change and that if the people of Alberta can look to the NDP for that kind of way forward, then they can look to the NDP in other parts of the country too.

Tom Clark:

Premier-elect Rachel Notley, thank you very much for joining us. Good to have you on the show.

Rachel Notley:

Thank you, it’s a pleasure.

Tom Clark:

In the last provincial election, it was Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Party that stood to gain from this need for change in Alberta, but then just four months ago, she and members of her caucus crossed the floor and joined the Progressive Conservatives and Jim Prentice. We know that didn’t turn out all that well. So what’s her thinking now? We caught up with Danielle Smith in Calgary.

Danielle Smith, good to have you on the show.

Danielle Smith:

My pleasure.

Tom Clark:

A lot of people are saying that you were the reason that the conservative movement fell apart, that your defection from Wildrose over to the PCs destabilized the movement. Do you buy any of that?

Danielle Smith:

No, I don’t. I think that Rachel Notley’s rise to become a majority government would have happened regardless of whether I’d stayed Wildrose leader or not. What I began to see, especially when Jim Prentice came back to Alberta to lead the Progressive Conservatives, is that that effectively blocked Wildrose’s ability to continue to try to attract that vote to come over. Jim, on paper, was textbook what you want for a political leader and what we saw with the by-election results, is that the Wildrose was stalled out at about 30 per cent and had not made a breakthrough in voters in either Calgary or Edmonton. And, if you can’t win in Calgary or Edmonton, you can’t win. So, part of what I was attempting to do, was to save the conservative movement by realizing that now is the time to bring the two parties together. Did it the wrong way, did it the wrong time and it didn’t work out.

Tom Clark:

Yeah, and I mean, do you think—did you think on election night, my gosh, if I had stayed as the leader of the Wildrose, at the very least, I would have been Leader of the Opposition and maybe things would have played out even better for you.

Danielle Smith:

No, I did not think that for one second. I think what I think people may be missing is what has happened on the progressive side of the political spectrum in this province for the last number of years. The election of Mayor Naheed Nenshi in Calgary, the election of Don Iveson in Edmonton as mayor, they have revitalized the progressive movement in this province, not only among union supports, but also young activists with a message that government can have a positive role in our lives, that community matters. And, because they’ve been able to revitalize that movement in our two big cities, it was only a matter of time before that spilled over to the provincial level. Now, I wasn’t expecting that to happen this election, certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen with the NDP, but in my view, it was inevitable which is why I thought it was important for the two parties to come together, and I think it’s even more important now.

Tom Clark:

So, if the politics of Alberta has fundamentally changed, as you say, has been changing for some time. From the conservative side of the ledger, what has to happen now? The merger didn’t take place. Your crossing didn’t do anything, so what has to happen for the conservatives to come back as a real force in this race?

Danielle Smith:

I think both the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose need to realize that under these circumstances with a unified progressive vote behind Rachel Notley’s NDP, neither of them can win a majority government without the other. So, what does that mean? I think we look to successful revitalizations of Conservative movements elsewhere. David Cameron just won a majority in Great Britain. I think after Tony Blair, everybody would have thought that it would have been impossible for the Conservatives to rise again. They’ve done some very important things over the last 10 years to be able to tap into a more populous and a more localized type of Conservative voter. And, I think if we look to what has happened there, we might be able to get some hints about what needs to happen here. It’s a two-part process. The two parties do have to come back together in some way and there does need to be a new galvanizing vision for Conservatives to be able to attract that new generation of voters.

Tom Clark:

How long is this going to take, just in the 20 seconds we’ve got left? Is this a generational thing, a generational challenge for the Conservative movement in Alberta?

Danielle Smith:

It depends. If the right people come together, if it’s a grassroots process and members from both parties decide that this is what they want to do, it could happen before the next election. They’ve got four years, more likely because of the animosity that is built up between the two parties. It may well be that it takes one or two, or even three election cycles but I think the groundwork has to begin now.

Tom Clark:

Is there danger for Stephen Harper in all of this?

Danielle Smith:

Tom Clark:

Danielle Smith, thank you very much for joining us.

Danielle Smith:

Thank you.

Tom Clark:

Next, Justin Trudeau’s economic plan puts him squarely on Stephen Harper’s tax cutting turf. Trudeau’s pitch is next.

Break

Tom Clark:

Welcome back.  Well, the plan seems relatively simple, you create a new tax bracket for Canadians earning over $200,000 a year. And, the money that you collect from that pays for a tax cut for the middle class, defined by the Liberal Party as anyone making between $44,000 and $89,000 a year. Then throw in some new Child Care benefits and you have the latest page in Justin Trudeau’s economic policy. Justin Trudeau joins me now from Toronto.

Mr. Trudeau, welcome to The West Block. I want to start with talking about the Alberta election, and NDP majority government. This is now friendly territory for Tom Mulcair but did you get anything out of this?

Justin Trudeau:

Well, I think there’s a lot positive. First of all, anyone who’s trying to draw lines that are too direct between provincial fortunes and federal fortunes is taking a risk in terms of the extrapolation they make. But, the bottom line for me is, that this was an election about people wanting a change. This was an election where people are tired of being taken for granted and looking to a credible, responsible alternative. Rachel Notley ran a campaign that was positive, that was substantive and demonstrated that there was an option out there that was not the one that people expected it to be.

Tom Clark:

Well, both the federal NDP and the federal Conservatives now have political machines that they can use in Alberta but the Liberal Party here almost disappeared—just got one seat. How are you going to compete?

Justin Trudeau:

Well, we’ve spent an awful lot of time working on the ground in Alberta because this trend that culminated with Premier Notley’s win on Tuesday was something that we’ve seen on the ground for quite a while in Edmonton and across Alberta. So, the fact is, we’ve got great campaign teams, great candidates. We’re working really hard. On a personal level, when I was running for the leadership, I made my very first campaign stop, after launching in my own home riding, in Calgary because I wanted to send a message that I knew that Albertans were looking at different options and tired of being taken for granted.

Tom Clark:

Let’s switch over to your economic policy that you announced last week. And since that time, several economists have come forward to say that when you raise the marginal tax rate to over 50 per cent for high income earners, all you create are a bunch of tax cheats. Are you concerned by that?

Justin Trudeau:

I’ve heard those concerns, but the fact is our plan is focused on fairness for the people who need it in this country. And, giving a $3 billion dollar tax cut to the middle class will go a long way towards helping the people who need it most through difficult years that they’ve had over the past while. The fact is, that in Canada, we’ve always been able to ask those who’ve done very well to help out those who haven’t. This has been something that is part of the story of this country. And, the fact that people need a real and fair chance to succeed and a government that actually focuses on giving help to those who need it, as opposed to giving tax breaks and benefits to the wealthy the way this government currently does, I think that’s a step in the right direction.

Tom Clark:

Well many of those same economists say that you’re going to get nowhere near the $3 billion dollars that you say you’re going to get for that tax hike and that in the end that means your numbers don’t add up.

Justin Trudeau:

We were responsible and conservative in our estimates, if I can use that word in its purest sense and not in the sense that it is around here. We really made sure that we checked with a lot of great academics, researchers and financial experts, including economists. We have a great economic team on the Liberal Party with our finance critic, a former finance minister, with a former chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada. We’ve got a lot of great people who know that this plan is responsible and prudent in its calculation.

Tom Clark:

I’m wondering though, if all that’s happening here is that you’re now fighting on Stephen Harper’s ground. In effect, you’re saying look, my tax cuts are better than his tax cuts. It’s hardly the traditional Liberal message that the government can be a force for good.

Justin Trudeau:

Actually, it was the Liberals in the 90s that brought in the first of the progressive child benefits that were giving help to those who need it. The changes that Mr. Harper made when he came into office 10 long years ago, was all about helping wealthy families as well with those benefits and that was what we disagree with the most. The fact that families like mine or his qualify for thousands of dollars every year in tax benefits and that’s why we’ve chosen to do more for the people who need it by doing less for the people who don’t. I think that’s what Mr. Harper hasn’t understood is that his continued reliance on giving tax breaks and benefits to the wealthiest Canadians is actually hurting people across this country who are having to make choices between saving for their own retirement or paying for their kids’ education, and that’s not a choice that anyone in Canada should be having to make.

Tom Clark:

Justin Trudeau, Leader of the Liberal Party. Good to have you on the show this morning. Thanks a lot.

Justin Trudeau:

It’s always a pleasure, Tom.

Tom Clark:

Still to come: a security breach committed by the Prime Minister’s Office against Canadian soldiers in Iraq.

Break

Tom Clark:

Welcome back. When it comes to covering the Canadian military overseas, there are often rules about what we in the media can and cannot show for the safety and security of the soldiers. Not filming special operations soldiers in any way that can identify them is certainly one of the biggest rules of all, and yet last week, the Prime Minister’s Office itself broke that rule during the shooting of a promotional video of Stephen Harper visiting Iraq, the video clearly showed special operation soldiers in the background.

Well joining me now from Ottawa is Scott Taylor. He is the publisher and the editor of Esprit de Corps Magazine, a magazine for and about Canada’s military community.

Good morning Mr. Taylor, good to have you here. What have you heard so far from the military community about this?

Scott Taylor:

I think they’re beginning to feel a little bit like the Conservative Party’s whipping boy, if you will. I mean, they keep trying to serve this government’s interest and to put things forward that the government wants them to, even staging this elaborate photo-op and taking the prime minister and the defence minister over to Kurdistan Iraq and then Kuwait and then they end up getting thrown under the bus yet again when these videos surface. And the initial reaction was that the PMOs office said that these videos had been vetted and cleared by DND, which of course was not the case. So, I think there would be a bit of resentment on the fact that part of the government—or sorry, on the part of DND that they keep getting hit in the head with this.

Tom Clark:

Well let’s go to the basics of what’s known as ‘operational security’. You know the media in war zones and on this most recent trip were warned by both the government and the military that revealing the identity of the soldiers would put their lives in jeopardy. Do you buy that?

Scott Taylor:

I think the chief of defence staff was correct when he said that the fact they were only up there briefly means that the risk is fairly low. I don’t think that, personally, that ISIS is anywhere near as sophisticated a threat as we’ve been lead to believe by this government. I mean again, keep in mind, it was—this is the first mission that we’ve sent our troops over, overseas where we aren’t even allowed to show just the common soldier as they embark on a plane. We’re not allowed to show the faces of airmen who are stationed in Kuwait, so they’ve pumped this up to be a really terrible sinister threat to our shores here and that these threats may come back and attack the families of the soldiers. So, it’s the government that’s put this forward and now of course, the government have violated their own rules and regulations.

Tom Clark:

So, do you then think that the government has put soldiers’ lives at risk?

Scott Taylor:

I think it certainly has. I mean, I understand that for the JTF2 (Joint Task Force 2) for them to operate in the cloak of secrecy that they must. I mean it’s always been the case since the unit was founded back in the early 90s that we don’t identify who those people are. But, it’s a little bit different of course with Afghanistan. We didn’t protect the identities of soldiers who were serving over there, even though the Taliban was a very real threat and our soldiers were in danger, we never thought the threat would come home. This has of course been reinforced, this idea that ISIS can come and get us here in our bedrooms because they’ve said so on a video and now we’ve taken these extra precautions to protect the identities of any soldiers that have been sent over.

Tom Clark:

Well, and we all know that when something goes on the internet, it’s there forever. It’s what we tell our kids, right?

Scott Taylor:

Correct. And, again, the fact that the government is the ones that are trying to downplay their own breach, this is like, what was the rush to put these videos up and out there? I mean, we saw enough footage already that the prime minister had visited Kurdistan and then visited Baghdad, and he went to Kuwait. We all knew that but they had to push this out, this unseen video. It just seems a little bit ridiculous that they would do that. And then, as I said, immediately try to claim the DND had in fact vetted these and approved them when that was not the case.

Tom Clark:
Scott Taylor, Esprit de Corps Magazine, thanks very much for being here.

Scott Taylor:

My pleasure.

Tom Clark:

And that’s our show for this week. And, what a remarkable week it has been here in Alberta where politics will never be the same again.

Before we go, a special shout out to all the mother’s in Canada, may you be treated royally today. Well, we’ll see you back in Ottawa next Sunday with another edition of The West Block. In the meantime, have a great week ahead.