Transcript: Episode 42 June 23

THE WEST BLOCK

Episode 42, Season 2

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Host: Tom Clark

Guests: Alberta premier Alison Redford, Minister of State for Finance and Alberta MP Ted Menzies, Former Conservative minister Jim Prentice, newly-independent MP Brent Rathgeber.

Location: Calgary, Alberta 

******Please chck against delivery

http://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-west-block/

Tom Clark:

Good morning and welcome from Calgary.  Call it Alberta strong, this city may be down but it sure isn’t out.  On this Sunday, June the 23^rd, I’m Tom Clark and this is The West Block.

The sudden unexpected fury of nature has left in its path destruction and even death.  We’ll bring you all the latest.

And the floods have washed away this week’s Conservative convention.  We’re going to talk about what might have been talked about.

And political upheaval in Northern Alberta, a Conservative riding deals with defection.

But first, some of the sights and sounds of this flood are simply jaw dropping and throughout this broadcast, we’re going to bring you some of the most extraordinary examples of that.  Now one person who has seen most of it is Alberta premier, Alison Redford and late yesterday afternoon, I caught up with her at an evacuation centre near High River Alberta, one of the hardest hit areas of this province.  Here’s that interview:

Premier Alison Redford Interview

Tom Clark:

Premier Redford thanks very much for the time.  This is an incredible time for you.  You’ve seen so much of the destruction across Southern Alberta so far and you’ve got a personal connection to this part of the world.  What’s your personal thoughts about what you’ve seen so far?

Alison Redford:

Yeah, I’ve seen communities destroyed and some of them are completely impacted like High River but even communities like Medicine Hat and Canmore where if you looked sort of statistically, perhaps there hasn’t been that same sort of impact or loss but we’re still in a crisis.  We don’t know what comes next.  You know we have water impacting roads, impacting infrastructure, impacting rail and of course impacting houses but most importantly, its people.  You know we’re here in Nanton today at one of our evacuation centres where I just met a family, a mom and a dad and a little girl named Sienna, who is five years old who told me she lives in High River but she can’t go because there’s water and there’s a boat on her street.  And when she says that and looks at her mom, her mom’s starting to tear up, which Sienna doesn’t understand.

Tom Clark:

But you’ve have something to tell her about High River because you did a lot of your growing up there.  Your mom’s house was in High River.

Alison Redford:

It’s true, it’s true, it’s true and I was there this morning as well and the water is receding.

Tom Clark:

Did that really hit you when you saw your neighbourhood?

Alison Redford:

I was on a street today where I used to go shopping with my sisters.  There’s a coffee shop that it’s one of the last places I saw my mom and half of the street is completely destroyed and the other half is pristine.  And so what that tells me is that we’re going to rebuild.  And we’re going to make sure that the half of the street that’s pristine is open for business and we’re going to rebuild the other side of the street because we’re resilient. And as you said, these are experiences that we haven’t had in Alberta before but when you see the response from volunteers in the community, we’re going to get through this.

Tom Clark:

You know, it was interesting, I was thinking about the nature of disasters in particular how we have the technology to predict so much but we didn’t see this one coming.  Did you have any idea at all that this was coming?

Alison Redford:

Yeah, well what’s been really interesting in the discussion is that this flood was like…not just in terms of magnitude like no flood that we’ve seen in Southern Alberta but the way that it flowed was entirely different.  I hear that in every community that I go to that even though they’ve had floods before and they’ve experienced floods before, that the speed and the volume has changed the direction of rivers in a way that has never happened before.  So this was an entirely different experience even for people that have been through floods in the past 10 years.  And it’s very interesting to see how real time the information is.  You know our Alberta environment is tracking river flows on a continual basis but still, water is something that’s so hard to control and some ways what we’re doing is tracking and trying to get ahead of the water to make sure that we’re evacuating where we need to as a prevention, not after the fact and not once property is wet but before.  And we’ve had some good news stories where there’s been sort of what we call anticipated evacuation areas where we’ve asked people to leave and now we’re at a place where as rivers are starting to recede, their property didn’t end up getting flooded so there’s been some good news.  And we’ll now have to deal with the fact that there are a lot of people that have been impacted.  I tell you though, I talk to people, I was talking to some friends of mine today in Calgary and I called their home…, not their home but their cell phone and what I hear in the background is a family spending time together and laughing.  Grandparents and cousins and they’re really appreciating what they do have.  And that’s something else that’s really about the human spirit.

Tom Clark:

Silver linings.

Alison Redford:

Be grateful for what we have and that’s a hard thing.  I mean that’s not the case for everyone and the uncertainly particularly in High River where people don’t know exactly what the state of their home is yet is really, really difficult and we’re going to have a lot of work to do.

Tom Clark:

How are you going to pay for all of this?

Alison Redford:

Well we know that we need to support infrastructure.  We know that we need to support community.  There is no doubt that we have an obligation to make sure that we have hospitals, and schools and roads.  It’s a challenge but you know we are blessed in this province to have a lot of resources.  This is going to be about setting priorities which is always is in government but what we do have is the opportunity here is to work with partners.  We know that there is going to be an impact and we always have contingency plans with respect to disaster relief in any event so we’ll work through it.

Tom Clark:

Do you feel that you have enough support from Ottawa to do what you need to do in this province in the months ahead?

Alison Redford:

Well the prime minister was here yesterday and we had a very good discussion about that.  My sense is that he’s going to be and that the government is going to be there to support what we need to do.  This is an experience like we’ve never had before and so there will be a lot details to work out but we’re very comfortable with that relationship, two days in.

Tom Clark;

Final question for you:  how much sleep have you had in the last days?

Alison Redford:

Well I had two hours on Thursday night, maybe three and then I did get probably four or five but you know, quite frankly, I’d rather not be sleeping.  I was up early thinking about what  we needed to do and going to visit an evacuation centre where we had some seniors that had been moved out of continuing care last night and I just want to be able to see what’s going on.  And not always but where appropriate, talk to people, see how they’re feeling and talk to their families and see what’s going on in the community.  But you know there’s lots of people who have had a lot less sleep than I have and I’m really grateful to them.

Tom Clark:

Have you been hearing the messages from the rest of the country because it’s just been phenomenal?

Alison Redford:

Yeah, it’s been really wonderful.  Of course, apart from Twitter and social media, I’ve heard from all premiers across the country and of course some have experienced this and some haven’t but their thoughts certainly they’ve said are with us and I know that they are.  And it’s been very kind and we very much appreciate it.

Tom Clark:

Premier Redford thanks very much for taking a few minutes out of what is a very busy time for you. I really appreciate it.

Alison Redford:

Thank you Tom.

Tom Clark:

Well the federal government shoulders a big responsibility in all of this as well and joining me to talk about that is Ted Menzies, who is the minister of state for finance but more importantly today, Ted you’re the minister, or the Member of Parliament rather for Macleod, an area that’s been really hard hit.  You’ve been filling sand bags for the past few days.  I mean give me an idea of what it’s like in your riding?

Ted Menzies:

Well we started filling sand bags at the beginning and then realized it was far and beyond sand bags.  Tom, we’ve never seen…this part of the country has seen many floods.  High River has seen many floods but no one has seen this come up so fast and be so devastating for so many people. It’s heart wrenching watching people.  I’ve been trying to help put moms together with their kids.  It’s been tough but you know the thing, and I’m sure you’ve heard this, is the community has come together.  The people have come together that if the one blessing in this, people are still there to help people.

Tom Clark:

Well I know that you’re going on very little sleep and right now, the whole thing is taking care of the crisis and as you say, taking care of the families but in the back of your mind as a politician, the question of money of course comes up.  I know that the federal government is involved in helping to fund the recovery of Southern Alberta.  Is that open-ended or is there a cap to it?

Ted Menzies:

Well that this point, we have no idea what the number is going to be.  It’s going to be massive.  The prime minister’s been very clear and we’ve all praised all different levels of government Tom because they’re working shoulder to shoulder.  We saw that.  We saw the mayor of Calgary with the premier and the prime minister.  And the prime minister has said that we will be there to help people through this.  We’ll talk about the money later but there’s a process.  This has happened before in other parts of this country.  The process is there and it will work its way through.  Most importantly, we’ve got military.  I’ve been back and forth with Minister MacKay, you know sent him some pictures with his guys on the ground, Princess Patricia Canadian Light infantry they’re on the ground, 1,500 of them.  I passed 15 police cars, RCMP coming all the way from Lloyd Minster today to help us out.  The federal government is there to help.  The province has been working very hard, all levels have.  There’s a lot of mayors in this region that haven’t had much sleep.

Tom Clark:

Speaking of mayors, and again, this is more on the money question that maybe has to be decided down the road but you know, Naheed Nenshi, the mayor of Calgary here was saying in Ottawa just a couple of days ago that cities need more money from the federal government for infrastructure.  Well boy if there’s every a time when you’re going to build infrastructure, it would be about now.  Can you see more money going to the cities to help out with infrastructure especially after something like this?

Ted Menzies:

Well we have to.  Certainly we have to.  I mean we put a process in place in this budget to renew the building Canada plans.  So we have a Building Canada fund that starts to roll out in 2014.  We may be having to move some of that up because we’ve got bridges…we’ve got communities that are cut off here Tom that they can’t even get supplies and food, and people in and out.  We’re helicoptering 6-800 people off rooftops in High River.  You know that’s an incredible support that military have brought to us but we’ll be there for these people as they start to go back to their homes, clean up and put their communities back together.

Tom Clark:

Ted Menzies I know you’ve been very busy and I appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your day to talk to us and on behalf of all of Canada, the best to your community.

Ted Menzies:

Thanks Tom.

Tom Clark:

Ted Menzies, joining us, thanks very much.

Well coming up, the flooding has forced the Conservatives to cancel their convention that was supposed to take place here in Calgary.  When we come back we’re going to check up on the state of the Conservative movement here in Canada, but first, some sights and sounds of this incredible disaster.  Take a look.

Flooding visuals and sounds:

Male 1:

You know I keep telling myself it’s not Syria, It’s not some night in Syria.  You know it’s all relative isn’t it, the grand scheme of things, but still, it sort of changed our life for a while that’s for sure.

Male 2:

And in our basement you could actually hear the cracking and I thought well shoot the whole house is going to be gone.

Break

Tom Clark:

Welcome back to The West Block from Calgary.  Well time was in Alberta you could always count on two things: dry summers and Conservative dominance in politics.  Both have taken a little bit of a hit over the last few months.  Nobody knows more about Alberta life than my next guest, Jim Prentice, a former Member of Parliament, a former cabinet minister, currently the executive vice-president and the vice-chairman of the CIBC.  Jim good to have you back again.

Jim Prentice Interview

Jim Prentice:

Nice to be here.

Tom Clark:

You know you can’t spend more than a couple of hours here on the ground without being really impressed by the people and the spirit of Alberta.

Jim Prentice:

Well the floods been devastating obviously here in Calgary, especially places like High River as well and we’re worried about Medicine Hat.  But this is a resilient community as Albertans were resilient.  I mean the response here in Calgary, 100,000 people evacuated in an orderly way.  Many of them are returning home now.  And the community has really pulled together.  At this point, it’s about people helping people.  All of us have had friends and relatives in our homes over the last couple of days and so we’re a resilient place and we’ll deal with this.

Tom Clark:

You know a lot about money.  You’re a banker.  The destruction here, is, it’s going to take millions, hundreds of millions, maybe into the billions of dollars.  How does a place rebound when the bill is that big?

Jim Prentice:

Well one of the great things is that all of the levels of government have been working together.  The mayor here has done a great job.  The premier’s been involved.  The prime minister’s been here.  They’re all working together.  Certainly attention will have to turn to those questions. The damage to public infrastructure, there’s been hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and then of course all of the private damage as well.  One thing that’s great is the corporate community has been incredibly generous, led by many of the companies here, our bank and others have contributed and that money has gone to the Red Cross and so everybody is pulling together.

Tom Clark:

How much does this set the city back though?  I mean the downtown is closed for another few days at least.  How does this really hurt Calgary?

Jim Prentice:

I don’t think this will set Calgary back at all.  We’re resilient and we’re determined.  The mayor has said we’re going to proceed with the Calgary Stampede and you’re going to see some of the determination in the city…

Tom Clark:

I think he said: come hell or high water, I think is the new expression for the Calgary Stampede.

Jim Prentice:

Calgary is a strong, determined community and this will bring out the best in people.

Tom Clark:

Let’s turn to politics for a minute, something else that you know a fair amount about.  The convention as I said has been washed away.  It’s a little bit of a metaphor for conservative fortunes these days.

Jim Prentice:

Cancelling the convention was the right thing to do for sure.

Tom Clark:

Well let’s talk a little bit about what might have been talked about in the corridors of that convention.  You know the government is down in the polls, it’s beset by scandals.  What if anything, can they do to turn that around?

Jim Prentice:

Well firstly, dealing with the convention, it would not have been the right time to host it here in Calgary.  There are still 30,000 people that are out of their homes.  I would have expected a strong convention that focused on our strength as a government.  And I know the plan is to get the convention rescheduled and to bring it on.  And I expect you’ll see a strong Conservative convention.

Tom Clark:

What though about where the party is right  now.  I mean there’s a sense of malaise; I think a lot of people would say.  The scandals certainly haven’t helped the party.  Poll numbers are down.  They’re kind of weak.  You know is there something that they can do to turn it around?

Jim Prentice:

Well to be sure, it’s been a tough spring but you know this is a strong party.  We have a strong prime minister at the helm of the party and we’ll deal with those issues. We will host a convention and we’ll come together and we’ll deal with that.  The prime minister presumably at some point, if the news can be relied upon, will have a cabinet shuffle.  There’s great bench strength in the government and you know we’ll press on as a majority government.

Tom Clark:

A lot of people though saying that it’s not so much the process but the policy.  A lot of people taking a look at the government and saying well where is the legislative agenda?  Where is the purpose of having a majority government other than to just have power, which was the criticism that you always had of the Liberals.  What is that great next Conservative idea that’s going to take them through the next two years?

Jim Prentice:

Well I think it will continue to be a focus on the economy.  That coupled with transparency in government.  You know…

Tom Clark:

Well some might say that’s the great weakness.  Transparency and accountability is the very thing that’s got you into a bit of a mess right now.

Jim Prentice:

Well in terms of the Senate certainly everyone’s been disappointed but bringing in the auditor general has been the right thing to do.  And so people want to be reassured in our democratic institution and so that’s all a good set but the economy will continue to be the focus; the trade agreements that the government is negotiating internationally, and a focus on making sure that we have a strong economy here in the country.

Tom Clark:

Very quickly everybody was expecting we’d have a free trade deal with Europe by now. We don’t.  How damaging is it if we don’t have a free trade deal with Europe?

Jim Prentice:

Well these are tough agreements to negotiate.  We’ve made a lot of progress.  The Americans are now also engaged with the Europeans but our country is an incredibly strong country.  We have resilience and determination in this country that everybody else in the world envies, economic strengths that we’ll capitalize on.

Tom Clark:

Are you coming back to politics?

Jim Prentice:

I’m quite happy being a banker thank you very much.

Tom Clark:

Okay, I think it pays better than politics.  Anyway, Jim Prentice thank you very much for being here.  I appreciate your time today.

Jim Prentice:

Nice to be here.

Tom Clark:

Well coming up on The West Block, politics as part of the landscape as well of course other than the floods.  And in one riding, politics has been nothing short of a revolution.  But before we get to that, here are some more incredible scenes from Alberta.  Take a look.

Flood visuals

Female 1:

We got helicoptered out.  Our motor home is in between two bridges that are out and so we just feel really lucky that we didn’t get washed away.

Female 2:

…Completely gone.  Step on the edge of the deck, it just goes right down into the creek.  Before we used to step on the edge of the deck and we’d have 200 feet of green space behind us.

Break

Tom Clark:

Well the water here in Calgary is finally beginning to subside but the damage is extraordinary.  The Saddledome right behind me, virtually all the wiring and electronics destroyed.  Downtown Calgary will be shut for the next couple of days.  But politics, ah politics never shuts down.

If there’s a heart land for Conservatism in Canada, it is the province of Alberta.  And in that province, there’s a town called St. Albert, near Edmonton where they’ve been voting Conservative for 60 years.

So we’re walking along the main street of St. Albert here, what sort of things have you been hearing from your constituents along this street?

Brent Rathgeber:

Well the support for my decision has been overwhelming.  I think we could sort of show you the stack of yay versus nay emails that we’ve printed out and it’s easily 95 per cent positive.

Tom Clark:

Hi guys, do you know your MP?

Constituent:

Yes, you know what, congratulations.  Honestly, like we’re so proud of you.

Brent Rathgeber:

Thank you so much.  Your name is?

Constituent:

My name is Paula.  We’re just really proud of you because I don’t think maybe Tory MP’s have a sense of just how discontented people are.  Never does anyone, it seems anyway from the government ever stand up and sort of say we were wrong.  You know we could have handled this better.  People, even if the government makes mistakes, all they want is an accounting, an apology once in a while, honesty.  You know, it’s that transparency issues.

Brent Rathgeber:

And people who were involved in the local riding association, some of them are much less complimentary.  If you’re a party operative, volunteer organizer or even a really dedicated supporter, you probably feel a sense of betrayal when your Conservative Member of Parliament decides to resign from the caucus.

Tom Clark:

What are you hearing on the streets or in the town here?  Do you think that most people think it was the right move for him or do you think people are undecided about whether it was a good idea or not?

Male Constituent:

Well I think most people were very impressed with the integrity and the fact that an MP stood his ground knowing the political consequences.  I think people are impressed by that. Generally speaking, I think people in the community are looking for what is going to come of it, what’s the fall out?  We’ve spent a lot of time in Alberta in the political hinterlands as it were, waiting for some power and some say in Ottawa and so we’ve I think benefitted from having a strong Alberta caucus.

Brent Rathgeber:

The actual ability of a backbench MP to have significant clout inside the caucus, I think is really, really overstated.

These are my friends from…Tom Clark.

Tom Clark:

Hi Willy, how are you?

Willy:

You have friends?

Brent Rathgeber:

I do.

Tom Clark:

(Laughing) Should he have friends?  You know what he did, he left the…

Willy:

That’s right he should have friends.

Tom Clark:

What did you think of him leaving the caucus?

Willy:

I appreciate what he’s done.

Tom Clark:

Yeah, why is that?

Willy:

Very much so.

Brent Rathgeber:

Thank you.  Thank you for your support.

Willy:

I thought you were just…the last election when it came around, I thought you were just another politician but I changed my way of thinking.

Tom Clark:

What do you think about what he did by quitting the caucus?

Female Constituent:

You’ve done right, very good for you.

Brent Rathgeber:

Thank you for your support.

Tom Clark:

You thought that he did the right thing?

Female Constituent:

Sure, sure.

Tom Clark:

Why is that?

Female Constituent:

You know the whole party is such arrogant so they move to Ottawa they are bad.  I don’t like what’s going on there.

Tom Clark:

What did you guys think about what he did, leaving the Conservative caucus?

Brent Rathgeber:

Didn’t know did you.

Female Constituents:

No.

Tom Clark:

Really?

Female Constituents:

Honestly, bad, I don’t really pay much attention to politics but I am Conservative so that’s not bad.

Tom Clark:

Okay, so what happened was that he quit the Conservative caucus, good idea?  Bad idea?

Female Constituents:

Good idea.

If you’re standing up for what’s right and that’s good.

Absolutely.

Good luck.

Brent Rathgeber:

Thanks, I may need it.

I do believe that the base is beginning to re-examine the party and whether or not the party has lost sort of touch with the Conservative values that brought them to Ottawa in the first place.

Tom Clark:

Well the emphasis for the next few days is going to be on community not on politics and the extraordinary spirit of Albertans.  If you want your faith in humanity restored, come on out here to Alberta.

Well we leave you now with some more sights and sounds of these extraordinary past few days.  This is also our last show of the season so we’d like to thank you for being with us every Sunday.  Have a great summer and as they say, we’ll see you in September.  From Calgary, Alberta, I’m Tom Clark.  Have a great summer.