THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 5, Season 6
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Host: Tom Clark
Guest Interviews: Brad Wall, Rachel Notley, John McKay, James Bezan
Location: Ottawa
On this Sunday, Canada’s plan for a carbon tax has the premiers divided. We’ll talk with Saskatchewan’s Premier Brad Wall who has called the federal plan “a betrayal.”
And, they may be neighbours but Alberta’s Premier Rachel Notley is here with what her province needs to support the federal carbon pricing plan.
And Canadian troops are spending more time at the front lines in the fight against ISIS and that means more risk, so how much should Canadians know about this mission? Two MPs will take on that question.
It’s Sunday, October the 9th, Happy Thanksgiving from the nation’s capital. I’m Tom Clark. And you are in The West Block.
Put a price on carbon or we will do it for you. That’s the ultimatum that Ottawa sent to the provinces this week and it wasn’t very well received by four provinces: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan walked out of the meeting when it was unveiled. Alberta said it will withhold its support, at least for now. So, what can those provinces do to fight back against Ottawa?
Well joining me now from Regina is Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall. Premier thanks very much for being here. Good to see you again.
Brad Wall: Thanks, Tom.
Tom Clark: I wanted to know, many days have now passed since the federal government surprised you with this ultimatum. Are you as angry today as you were back then?
Tom Clark: Well, I want to get into both those things but let’s just deal with the substance of this rather than the process. Is it your position, Premier, that you don’t think there should be a price on carbon at all?
Brad Wall: No, the timing is wrong is the first point. Secondly, I think I have some problems with sort of a universal carbon tax. What we had proposed is that when the energy sector had recovered a little bit, we would go ahead with a levy on high emitters, the proceeds of which would go into a technological fund and companies could then apply back to that fund to improve their own footprints, their CO2 footprints. This is a model similar to what Alberta had prior to them going to the broader based carbon tax. This would also help facilitate technological investment to actually do something about the problem. In our province, we do take this issue very seriously. We’re moving to 50 per cent renewables in our energy mix by 2030. And more importantly or moreover, I would say we made the largest public sector investment in fighting climate change in terms of technology, $1.3 billion to turn a coal plant into something that’s four times cleaner than a gas plant. And in a world where there are 2,000 coal plants being built right now as we talk, we think that’s probably more important than the 1.6 per cent emissions that come from this country.
Tom Clark: But here’s the thing. It is certainly what the federal government is arguing. They’re saying well wait a minute now, Mr. Wall. Yes, there is going to be this price on carbon or carbon tax, whatever you want to call it, but guess what—every penny of it stays in Saskatchewan. You get to decide who’s going to get that money or what you’re going to do with that money. So if it stays contained in your province so you can do whatever you want with it. You can give it back to the people who paid it in the first place. Why is that an issue?
Brad Wall: Here’s why it’s an issue. At $50 a tonne, which is what this eventually be, we’re talking about $2.5 billion out of the economy and they’re saying well we’ll give it back to you. You can I guess rebate it on income tax is something the minister of the environment has said. But remember this; by definition the tax will hit still some sectors, right? That’s how you get to revenue neutrality, someone’s gotta pay. In this case, it’s carbon intense industries, obviously. And in this case, our case, that’s agriculture, that’s mining, that’s oil and gas, that’s a pipe manufacturer here in Regina that employs 900 people. They compete not with other provinces; all of those sectors compete internationally. Our potash companies compete against the Russians and the Belarusians. They will not have a $50 carbon tax, period.
Tom Clark: But you can give the money back to them. You can give the money back to them.
Brad Wall: They’re back in oil formation goes into North Dakota and Southeast Saskatchewan. Our sector is going to have a $50 dollar carbon tax disadvantage over our competitors. And so what good is it to get your income tax rebated or get money from the feds to give back to the people of the province with respect to income tax rebates if you’re not working, or if you’ve lost income because the economic slowdown has happened because we’ve rendered ourselves in a less competitive position. It’s not revenue neutral. It’s not sector neutral and it’s risky. It’s very risky for our economy and that’s what I’ll be pointing out. I’m paid, I’m hired on to defend the interests of this province and I’m going to do it.
Tom Clark: I’ve literally only got a few seconds left. You legally don’t have the right to stop the federal government from doing this, so what are you going to do?
Brad Wall: Well, they legally might not have the right to tax another order of government like SaskPower or SaskEnergy, our crown gas and crown electrical utility. They—
Tom Clark: So are you going to take this to the Supreme Court?
Brad Wall: We’re canvassing all of our options legally, yes.
Tom Clark: And in the meantime, are you trying to stop anything from happening until there’s a legal judgement?
Brad Wall: Well we want to take our case to Canadians and say can you imagine in 2009 if the federal government had proposed a tax that would disproportionately hurt the car manufacturing sector? At a time when our energy sector, the resource sector in this country, which employs a lot of Canadians is reeling, that’s the time we’re talking about a new carbon tax to come in a year and a half in ’18 escalating to $50 a tonne. This doesn’t make any sense. And if western Canadians are feeling alienated you know why.
Tom Clark: Premier Wall, I’m going to have to leave it at that but I thank you very much for joining us, and to you and your family, a very Happy Thanksgiving.
Brad Wall: Happy Thanksgiving, Tom. Thanks for your time.
Tom Clark: Still to come, Canada’s mission in Iraq is growing and it’s moved into much more dangerous territory yet it is shrouded in mystery. What should Canadians know about our fight against ISIS? That’s next.
Tom Clark: Welcome back. Well, not all premiers had the same reaction to Ottawa’s carbon plan as Brad Wall did. Some supported the tax outright, but Alberta said its support could come at a cost.
And joining me now from the legislature in Edmonton is Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Premier, thanks very much for joining us today. I appreciate it. You said right at the beginning of this process last week that there may be a bit of a quid pro quo for your support, that perhaps if the federal government would go ahead and approve pipelines, presumably you’re talking about the Trans Mountain pipeline that’s coming up for a decision within a matter of weeks, you then might be persuaded to support the Ottawa plan on carbon pricing. Have you had any specific discussions with Ottawa about how that deal might work?
Rachel Notley: Well, you know we’ve certainly been talking to them all along. We were talking to them in a lot of detail before their announcement and certainly our officials have been speaking since then. But to just sort of reaffirm or review our position on it, I mean basically we understand and we support the notion of a common price for carbon across the country. I think it’s an important tool to ensure that the national as a whole moves forward on important emissions reduction programs on a province by province basis. The issue for us though as you know, because we have our plan, our climate leadership plan, which begins rolling out in January of 2017, is our plan was calibrated to work in the context of our current situation. And having the federal government come out and talk about a price that goes as high as $50 before we’ve been able to work collaboratively to put in place those economic fundamentals that would improve Alberta’s economic situation to the point that we could accommodate those extra prices, we’re not prepared to say yeah, we’re ready to go on this. But bottom line, we’ve said all along that the economy and the environment need to be aligned. Not seen as contradictory to one another, but rather complimentary.
Tom Clark: So, to be absolutely clear then. Is the Trans Mountain pipeline a deal breaker for the carbon price issue?
Rachel Notley: Well, you know at this point, I’m not going to talk about specific pipelines. What I’m going to say is that we need to get a pipeline to tidewater, the sooner the better. Obviously Trans Mountain is the next one that’s coming up, but the bottom line is this, we must be able to diversify our energy markets in order to get the greatest value for the owners of the resources and for our economy here as a whole here in Alberta and of course in Canada because frankly, the health of the energy sector has implications all across this nation.
Tom Clark: And Ottawa’s support for that pipeline or some other pipeline is the only thing that can bring your support for the carbon pricing plan. Have I got that right?
Rachel Notley: That’s exactly right. And obviously we understand that they have a lot of levers and a lot of authority. But we know from all the work that we’ve been doing to faze in our plan, which begins in just a few weeks, that it is a complicated, complex process and that if it’s going to be successful both from a policy perspective but also quite frankly, from a political perspective, that both levels of government have to be able to work together. And so what we’re saying is our jury’s out on that second part.
Tom Clark: Okay. You know, you lead into an interesting next phase though, talking about government’s working together. The next big thing between Ottawa and the provinces is going to be updating the health accord. There already seems to be some discord over the health accord. And when you took a look at the process that happened last week when Ottawa just unilaterally walked into that meeting and said here is the new deal on carbon pricing. Are you concerned that that process is going to play out again somehow on the health accord? And if so, are you somewhat less optimistic about things working out well on that front?
Rachel Notley: Well, I mean I think it’s a little bit too early to say one way or the other. I think it’s important to understand that on the carbon tax issue, as much as we were unaware of the timing of that announcement and quite frankly, don’t think that it was the best timed, the fact of the matter is, is that the premiers met in Vancouver in the spring to talk specifically about carbon pricing and there had been working groups set up between the premiers and the federal government that have been working on many of these issues quite diligently over the summer. So there was quite a bit of collaboration and work going on. Obviously the final decision-making process is what it is and there’s been a lot of commentary on that. But there was a fair amount of working together. That’s different than what we’ve seen on health so far. We have not yet had a good round of conversations between the prime minister and the premiers on the matter of health and we haven’t had the same level of engagement as we had on the other file. So, I would hope that the federal government would be interested in moving forward in a more collaborative way on this issue that of course is so fundamentally important to all provinces in the country.
Tom Clark: Okay. Rachel Notley, the Premier of Alberta. Thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us today and to you and to your family, have a very Happy Thanksgiving, Premier. Thanks a lot.
Rachel Notley: Happy Thanksgiving to you as well.
Tom Clark: Okay. Well coming up next, how Canada’s fight against ISIS is evolving. That’s next.
Tom Clark: Welcome back. Well in a rare update late last week, defence officials confirmed that Canada’s troops in Iraq are spending more time on the front lines bringing the fight to ISIS. The defence minister says “The risk has not changed to our troops”, but that’s not quite how National Defence describes it.
“What is different is that the mission has changed since the spring, as I mentioned. It’s gone from a more defensive posture to a more offensive one. The key takeaway for Canadians is that we are more engaged at the line. There should be no doubt about that. And by extension, the risk has increased to our troops.”
So, joining me now is the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Defence, John McKay.
John McKay: Tom.
Tom Clark: And from Winnipeg, Conservative MP and defence critic, James Bezan. Thank you both very much for being here. John, let me start with you. So who’s right because both can’t be right? The minister says no increase in risk. The general in charge of the mission says there is an increase in risk, so what is it?
John McKay: Well, I think today in Question Period, the minister clarified the position. Of course there’s an increase in risk. It’s a training, assist and advise mission. So the training part has been going on for quite a while now and that’s a less risky aspect to the mission. The assist and advise now is coming up to the fore because the fight is being taken to the Daesh people.
Tom Clark: Well let’s look precisely at that. When we talk about the fight being taken to them, Canadian troops are now fighting alongside Peshmerga troops. We’re engaging the enemy, is that correct?
John McKay: Well assist and advise are—
Tom Clark: Well what does that mean in English?
John McKay: Well assist and advise simply means that our rules of engagement do not allow Canadian troops to go into offensive situations.
Tom Clark: Not unless they’re being fired upon.
John McKay: Not unless they’re being fired upon.
Tom Clark: If they are being fired upon, they can let loose—
John McKay: Then don’t mess with our guys.
Tom Clark: The dogs of war, right?
John McKay: Yes, exactly.
Tom Clark: Okay. And how much have we done of that? How intensive have we been in response to taking incoming shots?
John McKay: Well, I think there has been an uptick in intensity. Clearly, it’s an Iraq security fight, the Iraq Security Forces. It is their fight. It is not our fight. And so that is largely dictated by the folks in Baghdad and the organizers of primarily the attack on Mosul.
Tom Clark: Let me bring James Bezan into this because Mr. Bezan, you were complaining late last week about the fact that we simply don’t have a lot of information about what’s going on over there. We don’t know the numbers. We don’t know exactly what type of practices we’re getting involved with. Is that your core complaint is that the mission is opaque as opposed to transparent?
James Bezan: Definitely, Tom. If you look at it when we were government, we were under pressure all the time from the Liberals when they were the third party saying that we weren’t being transparent enough, even though we had provided over 19 technical briefings during the time that our troops were on the ground in Iraq and our airplanes were in the combat mission against ISIS. And we also of course were providing updates as our troops came under fire. Now the Liberals are hiding behind a curtain of secrecy here doing very few technical briefings. This was only the fourth one in the year that they’ve been government. And of course, now they’re saying they’re not going to tell us when our troops are actually involved in combat operations. So we do support the advise and assist, the command and control that the Canadian Special Operation Forces are so well known for. But Canadians deserve to know exactly what is happening on the ground as it unfolds and without compromising the operational security concerns raised by the generals yesterday in the briefing.
Tom Clark: Let me throw that to John.
John McKay: Yeah, well James’ qualification there was without compromising and that’s always the delicate dance. It’s not all a bunch of nice people that watch your show, Tom. It’s actually some people from Daesh. And so we—
Tom Clark: But okay, I—
John McKay: And so we’ve got to be very careful about what we say.
Tom Clark: I get operational security. I’ve been in Afghanistan. I’ve been in a number of theatres of war. But the fact is, I was in Afghanistan. I was inside the wire and outside the wire in Afghanistan when we were fighting not too nice guys over there who also could get television reception and see what I was saying, so what’s the difference?
John McKay: Well I think there is substantive difference, a) you’re in a different theatre, but you’re actually in a far more confined theatre. And—
Tom Clark: Well Kandahar was pretty confined. We did not have a big area.
John McKay: But so also is Mosul. So also is Kurdistan. I think that’s the concern that the minister has that we would be inadvertently disclosing information which possibly would affect. And when James’ party was the government, bear in mind it was largely an aerial mission and it’s relatively easy to say well we had so many airplanes in the air—
James Bezan: Not at all, John.
John McKay: And so many bombs dropped and so many targets, things like that.
Tom Clark: James, get in.
James Bezan: Well, you know I don’t know if John’s sitting there with a smile on his face or not, I can’t see. But you know for him to say that it was easier for us, we had 69 Operation Forces members on the ground that were there in the advise and assist and were going to and from the front line as things were unfolding so they could give better instruction as well as provide better training. So now that there’s more troops, and we don’t even know how many more Canadian troops are on the front line, the environment hasn’t changed. Yes, it’s become more of an offensive for the coalition as they try to retake Mosul, but Daesh or ISIS as I prefer to call them, is just as sophisticated now as they were a year ago. Nothing has changed. They will get this information either through social media. They’ll get this information because other coalition partners will be reporting it to the public. But what we are seeing is a standard set by the Trudeau government mainly because the PMO doesn’t want people to start thinking that we are in a combat operation. They want to keep people in the dark and we still don’t know what’s going on now or what’s happening in Iraq. We don’t know what’s going to happen with the peacekeeping mission. There’s nothing coming before Parliament for votes, for debate, and this is complete break of a promise by the Liberals to be more transparent.
Tom Clark: Mr. Bezan, let me stick with you for a second here because when the Liberal government ended the air campaign, took the CF-18’s back to Canada, your party was saying that we were walking away from the fight. That we had given up the basis of the fight against ISIS. But you would agree, I would think right now that this is a much more robust mission than you ever directed when you were government.
Tom Clark: But you’re agreeing that your previous statements are now inoperable because in fact it is a much more robust mission.
James Bezan: Not all. We said, even when the minister proposed the more robust training mission that we’d support it. But again, they said training. The Liberals always backed away as Opposition and in the early months here as government, they walked away from command and control in the advise and assist. They were there on a training mission and that’s the bill of goods that they sold.
Tom Clark: Yeah, let John—
James Bezan: They sold that to a jury and campaign.
John McKay: It’s always been a train, assist and advise mission. And that language has not changed. That component of the mission has not changed. We are now moving to a different phase. There’s been a lot of training that’s gone on and apparently quite successful training because the Peshmerga are actually taking the fight to the Daesh. So the assisting and advising part is clearly a little bit more dangerous.
Tom Clark: But, you know in military speak—
James Bezan: But what we’re hearing, Tom, it is all hypocrisy coming from the Liberals because if you look at what happened in the campaign, if you looked when they were the third party when I was doing all the different TV panels, when I was a parliamentary secretary they were continually accusing us of being in combat because of the advise and assist role and now they’re doing just that, which we do support. But we haven’t changed our mantra. They are the ones that have changed theirs.
John McKay: Well the rules of engagement have been rewritten by the chief of defence staff. No chief of defence staff ever sends his troops into harm’s way without appropriate rules of engagement. The rules of engagement are not combat rules of engagement.
Tom Clark: I’ve only got a second left, but let’s just make sure that when we say training and assisting, we could take casualties, right?
John McKay: This is a theatre of war.
Tom Clark: Okay. John McKay and James Bezan in Winnipeg, thank you very much for starting this discussion, it’s one that’s going to keep on going. And Happy Thanksgiving to you both, thank you very much for being here.
And that is our show for today. We’re always eager to hear from you. You can find us online at http://www.thewestblock.ca. You can also reach us on Twitter and Facebook. Well thanks very much for joining us today. We wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. I’m Tom Clark and as we leave you, here’s some scenes of the beautiful countryside around your nation’s capital. See you next week.
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