Jason Kenney, former Alberta premier (and former federal cabinet minister), joins our Stewart Muir in this election-special Power Struggle podcast. Among other points, he notes that Canada was once equivalent to Montana, the 15th wealthiest state. “We are now the equivalent of the 50th, i.e. the poorest US state, Alabama.”
ADDICTION POLITICS
Before getting into national (and international) politics and economics, Kenney took a look at addiction problems in Canada, and the “wrong-headed policy” on Vancouver’s downtown east side.
He said hundreds of millions of dollars have been given to non-profit agencies to tackle dangerous drug addictions and their impact. It might have been well motivated, he says, but look at what has happened under the harm-reduction movement.
“The more they try to facilitate addiction, providing product, now destigmatizing it, making it easier to use and to access in, effectively, a law-free zone, has resulted in thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths and a lot of that model has spread to other parts of Canada.”
In contrast, he said, Alberta is trying to move addicts into treatment programs.
NATURAL RESOURCE ISSUES
The former premier took Ottawa to task over its regulatory controls over natural-resource development.
For example, there was Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, which Kenney labels “Byzantine.” For one thing, it gave the federal cabinet power to override the decision of independent regulatory bodies. So a project proponent could spend millions or billions without knowing how the game would work.
And then, Kenney says, the feds kept changing the rules: They introduced a requirement that an oil pipeline company would have to account for the emissions from the oil when it was burned as a fuel in some foreign country.
“Well, how the hell does a pipeline company account for these things?”
Kenny did have good things to say about the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion, now owned by Ottawa, which bought it from Kinder Morgan as that company scrapped its plan.
The purchase means a “huge economic benefit” to Canada.
But, Kenney adds: “If we had a normal, functioning, like first-world regulatory environment, as opposed to what many regard as kind of banana-republic regulatory environment, Kinder Morgan wouldn’t have bailed.”
INDIGENOUS EQUITY
Kenney calls Indigenous ownership a new key to resource development.
He cites Alberta’s Indigenous Opportunities Corporation, a Crown corporation, helping First Nations get access to commercial rates of credit to buy equity in major projects.
“The real problem was that First Nations were only getting token, marginal, industrial benefit agreements with logging companies, mining companies, oil pipeline companies, et cetera, but they . . . didn’t have the financial weight to buy into these projects. . . . We have provided access to the provincial balance sheet so they now are buying into these projects. It’s been a huge success, a game changer. BC has replicated it.”
Now, he says, we need to see the model used on mining projects in Ontario and natural-gas development in New Brunswick
CANADA AND TRUMP
Kenny says he hopes “these outrageous Trump threats” will lead to a new national consensus about taking our Canadian security seriously.
He says we indeed need to crack down on contraband drugs, as demanded by Trump, and we are not doing enough about it.
But he adds that we have been living under the American security umbrella without paying our dues.
“We are at the very bottom of NATO in terms of defence expenditures. . . . The table stakes are getting our defence expenditure up to 2% of GDP within the next two or three years. And I think there’s ways we can do that quickly, very quickly.”
He also says Canada needs to crack down on illegal immigration, another issue raised by the US president, and on immigration policy. “So it’s not just defence.”
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