Alberta Premier Danielle Smith joins Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins to discuss the state of the province’s healthcare system, the push for a separation referendum, private investment in a potential West Coast pipeline and more. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: Concerns have been raised over healthcare resources following the death of a 44-year-old man in an Edmonton emergency room. What does that say to you about the state of Alberta’s health system? Danielle Smith: Let me deal with it in two parts. In the first part, what a terrible tragedy for Mr. Sreekumar and his family. I can’t imagine the devastation they’re having. It should tell you something when we decided to call a fatality inquiry. We had two expert doctors take a look at the records, and something clearly went wrong there. We want to get to the bottom of it so the family knows and the public knows. More broadly, we were in the middle of a very terrible respiratory virus season. Influenza was,sadly, taking a lot of lives, and there was a lot of pressure on the emergency system. That’s now subsided. We had about 1,000 patients in hospital at the end of December, I think we’re down to about 300 now, so that eases the pressure. But the main thing we’re focused on right now, and you’ll hear more about this next week, is what they call alternative level of care patients. Those are patients who have been in the hospital for longer than 30 days, so they’re well past the acute stage. It’s a matter of getting them the proper home care and the proper environment so they can move out of those beds so they can be used for others coming into emergency. We’ve been working very, very hard on that. We’ll have some updates on that next week. MH: Capacity has been a focus point in a lot of discussions. Apart from a standalone Stollery, will there ever be another publicly funded hospital built in Alberta? DS: There certainly needs to be. We’re in the middle of Red Deer being upgraded. The Stollery itself will free up somewhere in the order of about 236 acute care beds. We’re adding 350 beds to the Grey Nuns, 350 beds to Misericordia, about the same amount to South Campus. We’re trying to build on the sites where we already have the expertise and the personnel so we can add more beds. There’s probably some need in North Edmonton and North Calgary for a brand new hospital as well. The main thing we’ve also seen is there’s been under-building on continuing care units. That’s why we announced that we are going to be building 1,500 continuing care units every year for the next 10 years, because that’s who goes into the hospital. Maybe they’ve had a stroke, maybe they’ve had a fall, they can’t return home. They have to be able to go somewhere. We were just very constrained on space because of under-building. That’s another reason why we launched that campaign as well, to make sure we have another 15,000 beds in the next 10 years MH: Lots of focus right now on the petition for a referendum on separation. Petition organizers say members of your caucus have signed it, which you’ve said they are free to do. Why have you given your MLAs that freedom? DS: I didn’t know if it was true. We just had a caucus meeting and I can still tell you I have no idea if it’s true, but my personal view is that this is a citizen process. We have citizen-initiated referenda for a reason. It’s because they’re putting forward policy that’s perhaps at odds with the government policy. Our government policy is we support a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, but citizen-initiated referenda allow for people to express views that might be different than that. We have to remember that we had 10 really hard years under Justin Trudeau. A lot of people were really hurt. It’s sad to say, but there are a million or more Albertans, based on the polling I’ve seen, who’ve lost hope in Canada. My view is that my job and the Prime Minister’s job is to give people hope back. That’s why we signed the MOU, and it’s why we’re working really hard to implement it, to address some of these frictions. I hope that gives those Albertans some comfort that the last 10 years are not going to be repeated for the next 10 years. But we’ve got some work to do on the implementation of that. MH: What message do you have for Albertans who are opposed to separation? DS: That is the majority of Albertans. For the polling, it spiked after the election up to over 40 per cent. I think most recently, it’s down to 30 per cent and I think that’s a demonstration as we start making progress on addressing some of the issues. There’s another one that just happened today, the [Liberal government] abandoned the net zero vehicle regulations. That was one of the nine bad laws I identified as creating real problems for not only consumers, but certainly for our industry. I would say slowly, but surely, we’re seeing the new government has seen the policies they had were damaging to the economy – not just (ours), but generally – and they’re repealing them. If we can keep on doing that, then it should give some comfort to those who’ve lost hope in Canada that it can be fixed. That’s what I’m working towards. MH: What’s your comfort level with petition organizers representing Alberta in direct discussions about independence with U.S. officials? DS: I believe the U.S. government should respect Canadian sovereignty and Alberta sovereignty and deal with elected officials. I’ve made that point clear to my envoy in Ottawa, as well as in Washington, and asked them to convey that to the administration, and I know that they have. MH: You’ve also yet to signal how you’ll deal with Thomas Lukaszuk’s petition. DS: We’re going to have to put that to a committee, because it’s a little bit more complicated. He’s now withdrawn his request to have it go to a general referendum, and we have to consider that because the actual question that was on there talked about having a referendum. We have 10 sitting days to be able to put it to a panel. I think we’ve got five in the last session. So early in the new session, we’ll strike that panel so we can contemplate what it is we should do with that. We didn’t want the separatist movement to piggyback on a question that he put forward to try to demonstrate support for Alberta. I think there may have been a number of people who signed it thinking they were going to vote ‘no’, but that’s why the separatists have to do their work and see if they can get a similar number of petition signatures. We’ll make a judgment at that time, once we see whether those petitions are successful. I think we’ll know by the beginning of May. MH: On your efforts to drive development of a new pipeline, how close are you to pulling necessary private sector investment on side? DS: We have every pipeline company at the table giving us their technical expertise. We’ve ruled out one particular port I know was problematic in British Columbia, Kitimat. There’s something like 140 kilometres of channel that would have to be navigated. What we’re looking for is a deep-water port so you take the pipeline directly to the coast, so there are fewer issues around tugging it out for hours and less potential for mishaps, which I know is very concerning for those who live on the coast. We also are working and talking about having a robust marine response in answer to anything that might be problematic. We want to have an equity stake, a significant equity stake for nations in British Columbia and Alberta. My minister is working very hard to build those relationships so when the consultation begins, we’ll be able to have them at the table. I would say we have to clear a few hurdles. You have to remember TC Energy, Enbridge and others lost billions of dollars in regulatory processes, going through and filing the papers and dotting all the I’s and T’s and even getting permitted approvals and then having the rug pulled out from under them. They’re not that keen to go through that again; they want some certainty that a pipeline is actually going to be built. We’ll do our work, put it into the Major Projects Office, and then we would hope to get a positive response before the end of the year so we can start seeing who will come forward and start building it. MH: What are you prepared to do to bring B.C. on side? DS: There’s so much that [B.C.] Premier Eby and I can work on together, and have been. I’ve been delighted he’s been supportive of an expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. We’ve already announced the first phase of a three-phase project that could add 360,000 barrels a day. We were working together on LNG projects. Ksi Lisims is one that was recently put on the major project list, that one is going to probably be about 60 per cent filled with gas from Alberta. We’re cheering that along. We’re working on expanding port access to Port au Prince Rupert, and the rail line there, as well as interties, because our surplus of wind and solar is a pretty good backup for their water. Their water power can be used as a battery backup when we have a lot of wind and solar come on stream. We also have renewable diesel with canola destined for the B.C. market. When I look at the list of things we can work on together, if we’ve got that much common ground we just need to be mindful of the very serious issues they’re raising. That was part of the reason why I wanted to reassure Premier Eby I’d heard him and Kitimat is a terrific port for LNG. The boats are a little bit smaller. They’ve got the social license and the buy-in from the Indigenous communities, but let’s find a different port so that we can mitigate some of the concerns. MH: The finance minister is already signalling tough choices with the February 26 budget. What do Albertans need to expect from the sitting of the legislature? DS: We’ve had about 500,000 newcomers come to the province, and you just can’t build fast enough to keep up with the schools and the hospitals and all of the other infrastructure. We also know we’re facing an affordability crisis. Albertans just can’t handle additional taxes as well. The only choices we have when you end up seeing oil this low, and it’s down to $60 a barrel, when we’ve been accustomed to having it around $74 a barrel. So for a time, you’re going to have to run deficits. We do our best to minimize them, but the best way we can ensure we don’t have deficits in the future is to continue with the plan with the Heritage Savings Trust Fund to grow to $250 billion, get a better deal with Ottawa so we don’t see so many dollars coming out of Alberta to be distributed in the rest of the country through programs like equalization, and then get pipelines built. Because as soon as pipelines are built, it adds more revenue, not only to us but also to the federal government as well. That’s a longer-term option, but there’s certainly going to be some short-term pain we’ll have to deal with in terms of deficits. We want to make sure that the core programs people rely on, schools and health care, are prioritized, and we make sure people get the care they need.
