Jason Kenney on Energy, Recovery, and Canada’s Resilience | Election Special Ep.3

In this episode of Power Struggle: Election Special, former Alberta Premier and federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney joins Stewart Muir to discuss Canada’s most pressing challenges — from addiction policy to energy infrastructure and national defense.

Kenney contrasts Alberta’s recovery-focused approach to addiction with Vancouver’s harm reduction model, while also tackling issues like Bill C-69, Indigenous equity partnerships, and Canada’s need to invest in energy security and military readiness.

Key topics:
- Alberta’s alternative addiction strategy
- Federal legislation and energy investment
- Indigenous ownership in resource development
- Arctic sovereignty and defense spending
- Economic resilience and national security

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Episode Transcript

Jason Kenney (00:00):
We are now the equivalent of the 50th, ie the
poorest US state, alabama Interms of.
If you take all of the entireCanadian economy divided up by
the 40 million people, we arethe equivalent in
currency-adjusted terms as thepoorest of the US states.
Now remember Donald Trump.
When asked, I think January12th in Mar-a-Lago, mr President

(00:24):
, do you intend to use militaryforce to annex Canada, he said
no, that's not necessary.
We'll just exert so mucheconomic pressure that they're
going to want to become the 51ststate.

Stewart Muir (00:48):
Welcome to Power Struggle.
I'm your host, stuart Muir.
This month, the show istraveling across the country for
a special series on Canada'sfederal election campaign,
looking at energy issues fromall sides.
We started out here in thestudio in Vancouver and then,
just a few days ago, I stoppedin St John's, newfoundland,
where I sat down with one of thecountry's most intriguing

(01:08):
thinkers.
Today, I have the pleasure tobe joined by a remarkable and
accomplished Canadian, jasonKenney.
Jason became leader of theAlberta Progressive Conservative
Party after it had been castout of a long reign as the
province's natural governingparty.
To come back to power, he hadto first merge with the Wild

(01:32):
Rose Party to form the UnitedConservative Party.
No mean feat and a testament toJason's political skills.
From there, he won the 2019general election and served as
the 18th premier of Albertauntil 2022.
Before provincial politics,jason served in various federal
cabinet posts, includingnational defense, immigration
and economic development underPrime Minister Stephen Harper

(01:54):
from 2006 to 2015.
More recently, he became asenior advisor for the law firm
Bennett Jones, and he's joinedme here today in the studio.
So great to see you, jason.
Likewise, you're someone who'sfrequently come to Vancouver
over the years.
You know it well, we're abeautiful place, but also one
that has a tourist hotspot, forall the wrong reasons, a few

(02:16):
blocks from here.
One of the issues that everyVancouverite feels, and I know
you feel strongly about, is thehuman face of despair and
addiction and degradation here.

Jason Kenney (02:28):
Right.
There's been an object lessonin bad social policy in the
downtown east side of Vancouverfor going on 15 years.
I mean, we know that in oururban cores, big cities, there's
always been a population oftransient people, indigent
people, people with mentalhealth or addictions problems.
But what was a fairlyconventional urban core problem

(02:51):
in the downtown Eastside 20years ago has become a charnel
house with ever-rising rates ofaddiction, social disorder and
overdose-related deaths andcrime-related deaths.
And what I find so disturbingabout this is that this has been

(03:12):
expanded and amplified bywrongheaded policy.
Now, maybe it waswell-motivated.
The so-called harm reductionmovement thought that if they
were just to start todestigmatize and normalize
illicit drug consumption andmaybe facilitate it in
quote-unquote safer consumptionsites and so forth, that they

(03:34):
could somehow diminish theassociated deaths.
What we saw year after year thepast 15 years since Vancouver
Vancouver politicians, aided andabetted by the BC government,
the federal government and anentire poverty industry in the
downtown Eastside where hundredsof millions of dollars have
flowed to nonprofit agencies isjust an ever more strident,

(03:58):
unhinged pursuit of facilitatingdangerous drug addictions.
And you can see the results.
I mean ordinary objectivepeople have seen the results
mounting the more they try tofacilitate addiction providing
product, now destigmatizing it,making it easier to use and to

(04:21):
access in effectively a law-freezone, has resulted in thousands
and thousands and thousands ofdeaths and a lot of that model
has spread to other parts ofCanada.
Unfortunately, it's a publicpolicy model up and down the
West Coast into the UnitedStates.
Most places are turning sharplyaway from it.
In Alberta we observed this andit started to hit us and we

(04:42):
said, look, we're not going tolet this happen in our province.
We're going to take a differentapproach, a recovery-oriented
approach, which was about amassive expansion of a seamless
system for intervention, detox,treatment and lifetime recovery.
Now, that doesn't work foreveryone, it certainly doesn't
work all the time, but thestarting point is that addiction

(05:06):
to toxic drugs is actually badand that there is an alternative
, a life-saving alternative, andif we can help to get people
into that, we do it in Albertanow through the alternative
sentencing in the courts.
We have treatment centers injails and in prisons.
We have a seamless connectionwith the social services
agencies to try to move peoplefrom homelessness who are

(05:28):
addicted into the various kindsof treatment programs.
Look, it's not perfect, ithasn't eliminated overdose
deaths, but it's providing, Ithink, a life-saving alternative
to the charnel house that wesee in the downtown east side of
Vancouver.

Stewart Muir (05:44):
Do you think that one view is eventually going to
become the dominant view,because surely both of these
can't be the right way to go?

Jason Kenney (05:51):
Yeah, I think it is.
And you see, even here in theBC government they were
ideologically rigidly committedto expanding, for example, what
they called the latest versionof the harm reduction movement
was safe supply, where theywould replace toxic street drugs
with supposedly thepharmaceutical alternative.

(06:14):
So they just use that as acommodity to sell into their own
black market to generate moneyto buy the ever more potent
illicit products.
So it hasn't reduced theavailability or the consumption

(06:38):
of the toxic street drugs, butit has increased addiction with
the secondary market for thegovernment-issued opioids.
And I mean, where did all ofthis start was 20 years ago with
the opioid crisis fueled byrapacious mega pharma companies
that were pushing OxyContin andother products in.

(07:00):
You know dangerouslynormalizing those, the
prescriptions of those products.
So why did we forget thosebasic lessons?
You know dangerouslynormalizing those, the
prescriptions of those products.
So why did we forget thosebasic lessons that addiction
generates more addiction?
And so even the BC governmenthas backed up on that.
As you know, even the BCgovernment has said there are
certain places where we oughtnot to be facilitating open drug

(07:20):
use, like near schools, godforbid.
But just this past week, as wetaped this, an Ontario court
ruled.
They suspended a law from theOntario government to a similar
law to prohibit open consumptionat, or in the end, so-called
safe injection sites, safeconsumption sites at or near

(07:42):
schoolyards, playgrounds andplaces where kids can't go.
So part of the problem here, Ibelieve, is courts that have
some judges who have had adisordered sense of where to
locate rights.
Where's the right of the localcommunity?
Where's the right of the people, the longtime residents of
Vancouver, chinatown, to livepeacefully?

(08:03):
Where are the rights of thefamily members of hardcore
addicts who lose their loved one?
Where are the rights of thefamilies of those kids in those
playgrounds littered withsyringes and used condoms and so
forth?
Where are the rights of thecommunity to live a basically

(08:24):
peaceful life?
So I think that there's been ahuge shift in the debate since
people started paying attentionand witnessed a recent study
that's come out, a really highquality empirical study
concluding that so-called safesupply and other aspects of the

(08:47):
harm reduction strategy have notreduced deaths or addictions.
Much of this stuff has beendriven by a veneer of
evidence-based policy.
That's what we always heardfrom the advocates of drug
decriminalization anddestigmatization that it was all

(09:07):
evidence-based.
Well, it turns out when youlook under the surface, as
people like journalist AdamZeebo have done, you see that
most of those so-calledsupportive studies are actually
very low-quality surveys, peoplebeing questioned who come from
the entire ecosystem that ispromoting safe supply and

(09:30):
legitimization of toxic drugs.
So, you know, I think we need tobe discerning about this.
Put to the side these let'scall them faked, rigged or
infected studies, and we need tosee more hardcore, empirical
stuff, which it's very clear.
The more of this we have had asa function of policy, of

(09:50):
funding, of promotingavailability to toxic, illicit
drugs, the more addiction we'vehad, the more death, the more
criminality, the more socialdisorder.
By the way, it's not exactlylike.
What I've just described isentirely intuitive.

Stewart Muir (10:07):
And it gets worse.
Jason, you came in in 2019 asthe new Alberta Premier.
There was a lot going on.
You were calling one of thepieces of federal legislation
the no More Pipelines Act.
There was the tanker banaffecting the West Coast.
There was a continuation of thelawfare against a federally
approved project in the nation'sinterest the Trans Mountain

(10:29):
Pipeline from Edmonton toVancouver and you came into
office and this stuff was stillhot.
What was your initial reaction,day one in the job on those
issues?

Jason Kenney (10:40):
Well, it wasn't just a reaction, because I knew
what was going on and my wholeplatform was built around
getting resource infrastructurebuilt, because obviously for
Alberta that's kind ofexistential I think.
I believe we're increasinglyseeing under the shadow of the
Trump threats.
That is existential for Canada.
Let me just say, to back up astep, I think that in parts of

(11:00):
urban Canada, perhaps includingVancouver, toronto, montreal,
ottawa there is a really kind ofblinkered and false distorted
view of the Canadian economy andwe have these highly urbanized
areas and where most people havezero experience or direct

(11:21):
visibility of the naturalresource extractive industries
which have always been the coreof Canadian prosperity, and I
know some people would like towish that away because they
think these industries are dirtyor they're the past or we're
going to transition past them.
I'm not just talking about oiland gas, I'm talking about
logging, mining, agriculture,all of it.
And the truth is I'll tell youthis, I was part of a federal

(11:44):
government, all of it.
And the truth is like, I'lltell you this, I was part of a
federal government Harpergovernment that increased
Canada's free trade agreements,but with 39 countries, we went
from six to 45 free tradeagreements during the Harper
decade, partly through theTrans-Pacific Partnership and
the Canada-Europe TradeAgreement, precisely to
diversify our export markets sothat we would be less dependent

(12:06):
on the United States, which, ofcourse, is now a big imperative
in light of the Trump threats.
But when we actually look at howour export profile has grown
with those 45 countries sincethen, hardly at all, and partly
because we don't export much inthe way of manufactured stuff.

(12:27):
What?
What do we export that is ofhigh value Commodities, um,
potash, uranium, canola oil, oiloil by far the number one
lumber uh, to some extentnatural gas, which is hugely
untapped and other commodities.
So if we are going to becomeresilient contra Donald Trump,

(12:47):
we have to develop thoseindustries.
So that wasn't something I kindof stumbled on in 2019.
But when I became premier in2019, the federal government
Trudeau government was, asyou've said had tabled in
parliament Bill C-69, theso-called Impact Assessment Act,
which was replacing thelongstanding Canadian

(13:11):
Environmental Impact Assessmentprocess, and it was so Byzantine
, with no time limits at all andthe ability of the federal
cabinet to override the decisionof independent federal cabinet,
to override the decision ofindependent regulatory bodies,
to politicize it, which wouldmean that a project proponent
that has to spend hundreds ofmillions or potentially billions

(13:33):
of dollars on a proposal, wouldnot know what the ultimate
threshold was.
And then, even worse, they keptchanging the game by
improvisation.
I'll give you one exampleEnergy East, ok, transcanada
Energy, tc Energy had spent $800million seeking approval of

(13:56):
that process.
And then the feds come alongand say well, now you're going
to have to account for the upand downstream GHG emissions
associated with that pipeline,by which they meant the carbon
footprint of producing theenergy up in the Canadian oil
sands.
And if it's shipped down to NewEngland, the diesel that's

(14:19):
burned by the trucks in Boston,you're going to have to account
for that too.
Well, how the hell does apipeline company account for
these things?
By the way, when a tanker comesinto the Bay of Fundy from
Saudi or Algeria or the US GulfCoast, nobody is tracking.
There's no Canadian regulatorpenalizing the marine vessel for

(14:45):
its carbon footprint or theupstream or downstream emissions
associated with it or thecontents of that ship.

Stewart Muir (14:49):
At ResourceWorks we did a study recently.
We found that in Canada theprice of carbon for industry
that produces oil is $58 a tonwhen it's netted out.
The oil that is shipped toCanada there's not a lot of it,
but especially on the East Coast, there's a substantial amount
that goes to St John, to therefinery 30 cents per ton.

(15:12):
Wow, that's the global average.
So we are paying just onecountry We've found.
This is astonishing what I'mabout to tell you that one third
of all the carbon taxes paid inthe world are paid in Canada.

Jason Kenney (15:24):
Yeah, so we saw all of that, which is why I said
one of my top commitments aspremier would be to launch a
constitutional challenge to BillC-69.
Now, by the way, I went down toOttawa, day three of my tenure
as premier, and I said to JustinTrudeau I can be an ally with
your government on a lot ofthings, for example internal
trade, but on this you have tounderstand this.

(15:48):
Bill C-69 would be kind of theequivalent of telling Quebec
that you're going to shut downtheir aviation sector.
We will get no major projectsapplied for, let alone approved,
under this.
I went to the Canadian Senate,I made that case.
They accepted my argument.
They accepted all of Alberta'stabled amendments which

(16:10):
basically gutted C-69, went backto the House of Commons.
Trudeau reverted to theoriginal form of the bill.
It became law.
I sued him and we won.
We won four to one in a magnumopus decision at the Alberta
Appeal Court which said that itwas a constitutional Trojan
horse, a clear violation of thepowers of the federal government
.
Because under it's alreadygetting wonkish here, but I know

(16:32):
you've got a well-employedviewership we do Under section
921A of the Constitution Act,which Peter Lougheed got
embedded during negotiations onpatiation in 1981, it says the
provinces have the exclusivejurisdiction to regulate the
production of natural resources,including oil and gas.
So basically, we won on thatgrounds, also at the Supreme

(16:53):
Court, on a I think it was afive to two or six to two
decision on the Supreme Court ofCanada.
Unfortunately, that was twoyears ago and the Fed still
haven't amended the legislation.
I mean, the Liberal Partyalways frames themselves as the
great champions of the CanadianConstitution.
Somehow they were in flagrantviolation of that.
By the way, I also sued themunder the Emergencies Act and

(17:14):
they were found to have violatedthe Constitution, the charter
there, but they still haven'tacted on it.
By the way, what I said in 2019about C-69 proved to be
prophetic, because not a singlemajor project has been approved
since that became the law.
So this has to be a centralissue in this election if we're

(17:34):
going to be more resistant tofight the threats from down
south, we need this energyinfrastructure.
We need to diversify ourlargest export products away
from total dependence on the USas an export market.
That means LNG, it means oilpipelines, it means more rail,
it means bigger ports, it meansall of the above.

Stewart Muir (17:53):
One thing I want to hear from you directly,
because every time I go toToronto, inevitably with a
friend, someone I meet, I getthis talking point, which is
well, trudeau built TransMountain and before 2015, harper
didn't build any pipelines.
So this is a vacuous claim thatTrudeau was not in favor of

(18:14):
building pipelines.

Jason Kenney (18:16):
It's qualified credit because the federal
government did step in andbought the Transmountain
Expansion Project from a UScompany, Kinder Morgan, and now
that the project's beencompleted we can see the huge
economic benefit.
There's been a measurableincrease in our national GDP as

(18:40):
a result of just that oneproject, because it's half a
million additional barrels a dayat about, with no price
discount, unlike what we sellthe Americans, which is going to
global markets.
That is an immediate lift atabout $75 a barrel.
You do the math.
This is real.
Wealth flows back intogovernment coffers and

(19:01):
eventually the debt in thatcrown corporation will be paid
down because there's tolls,there's revenues that come off
that pipeline every day,predictably for 25 years.

Stewart Muir (19:09):
And you know, even if a lot of that oil goes to
California, it's going withoutthe discount.
They're taking the full price.
Really important point whichgets overlooked.

Jason Kenney (19:18):
So you know what Credit there they never should
have.
Kinder Morgan.
If we had a normal, functioninglike first world regulatory
environment, as opposed to whatmany regard as kind of banana
republic regulatory environment,kinder Morgan wouldn't have
bailed.
Now let me just say this Idon't want to sound completely

(19:38):
pessimistic, because I actuallyam optimistic about this stuff.
If we dial back five or 10 yearsago, the number one impediment
to Trans Mountain Pipelineexpansion, northern Gateway, et
cetera, and a lot of otherprojects was a lack of clarity
around Indigenous consultation.
Under Section 35 of theConstitution Act, the honor of

(20:01):
the crown requires thatindigenous communities be
consulted on projects that mightaffect their traditional
territories.
Okay, granted, but nobodyreally knew what that meant in
detail.
So there was like 20 years oflitigation around it, lots of
uncertainty.
Tmx was a perfect example, butfinally, thank goodness, the

(20:23):
Supreme Court of Canada in acritical decision in 2019, gave
us clarity and they said youdon't need unanimous support
from every putative Indigenousrights holder on a project.
You need to engage in goodfaith efforts and basically, in
layman's translation, they saidyou need to see that there's

(20:43):
broad support or at least notwidespread opposition.
Well, according to the SupremeCourt, they upheld the finding
of the BC Superior Court thatthere was 110, I think of 119,
interested indigenouscommunities who were either
supportive of or not opposed toit.
And at the end Stuart, youwould know better than me, I
think there were only reallythree First Nations who were

(21:05):
opposed, which is why theproject was built.
So now we have legal certainty.
The next piece was and, by theway, we've moved even further on
the Indigenous front and thisis something I'm particularly
proud of as Premier I created acrown corporation called the
Indigenous OpportunitiesCorporation to backstop to
provide Alberta credit, backstopto help First Nations get

(21:31):
access to commercial rates ofcredit to buy equity in major
projects and other economicinvestments.
Because what I found was thereal problem was that First
Nations were only getting token,marginal industrial benefit
agreements with loggingcompanies, mining companies, oil

(21:53):
pipeline companies, et cetera,but they didn't have an
ownership stake because theydidn't have balance sheets, they
had no experience in complexcommercial transactions, they
didn't have the financial weightto buy into these projects.
So we, recognizing that gap,that kind of if you will, kind

(22:13):
of market failure, we haveprovided access to the
provincial balance sheet so theynow are buying into these
projects.
It's been a huge success, agame changer.
Bc has replicated it.
Saskatchewan, ottawa companiesare stepping forward.
This is the new table stakes.
If you want indigenous support,you have to facilitate

(22:35):
indigenous ownership.
That's why I'm veryenthusiastic.
So we've got, I think we'velargely well, never completely,
but largely solved for the kindof uncertainty around indigenous
objections a decade ago.
Now, if we can fix theregulatory piece with sensible
replacement to C-69,depoliticizing it very quick,
timelines New Zealand style,one-stop permitting, if we can

(22:58):
get that in place, we're goingto cook with gas, so to speak.

Stewart Muir (23:01):
Yeah Well, alberta has innovated a lot of things
Recently hydrogen proliferationas a fuel in the economy,
industrial carbon pricingstarted in Alberta.
The AIOC Alberta-.
Indigenous opportunities youstarted, that it was copied by
Saskatchewan BC and, as you say,the federal government, which

(23:21):
just doubled the capital pool to$10 billion.
So another influential ideawhich I think Alberta you know
as a born-in-Alberta guy.
I think sometimes it doesn'tget the credit it deserves for
being a forward thinker, usuallydriven by market ideas, which
is not always true everywhereelse.

Jason Kenney (23:39):
I think that's look.
I mean, I'd like to say thegovernment I led was very
forward leaning and innovativein these areas.
And let me add something tothis when I made this commitment
in the 2019 Alberta election tocreate a special crown corp to
basically encumber theprovincial balance sheet to
assist First Nations in equityparticipation, at that time

(24:02):
there were like tens ofthousands of out-of-work
blue-collar folks from the oilfield and adjacent industries,
and many of them had beenunemployed or underemployed for
four or five years.
There was a malaise, there'dbeen five years of economic
decline and stagnation, and Iwas a little concerned that this

(24:23):
could be misperceived as, or itcould be exploited by divisive
voices as a special giveaway toindigenous people, to First
Nations.
We're unemployed.
Why is he helping those folks?
Well, I'm so proud of Albertansbecause they got it right away.

(24:43):
They understood, and theyunderstand deeply, that we have
to be partners full, real,substantial, not just like token
and marginal, but full and real, substantial partners with
First Nations if we're evergoing to get any of this stuff
done.
So I think this also marks akind of social progress as well.
There's a lot of sad history inthis country, and part of it in

(25:06):
the past was racism, not to sayit doesn't exist.
But I think this is a mark ofreal social progress, of social
unity, where green organizationstried to exploit, I think,
first Nations in what Ellis Rossand others have referred to as
eco-colonialism and wherecertainly you talk about those

(25:26):
Toronto Laurentian elites.
When you go down there, youtalk to anybody within spitting
distance of like the CBZheadquarters, the CN Tower in
Toronto.
You get an reflexive view thatall Indigenous people are
opposed to all resource projects.
And why are you even talking tous about this?
I think we've demonstratedincreasingly in Western Canada
that the opposite is true, thatthey have economic rights to say

(25:49):
yes, not just legal rights tosay no.

Stewart Muir (25:53):
And some of the best deals that exemplify this
are in Alberta, in BCSaskatchewan, because I think
the resource sectors out here,which are so prevalent in the
economy, have collaborationstarted five or 10 years ago.

Jason Kenney (26:18):
It's been built on a foundation.
Look, some companies got itterribly wrong.
Some companies came to firstnations.
Well, way too late in theprocess, or net or or or only
offered scraps in terms of, uh,economic benefits.
You know, it would offersometimes a couple dozen jobs
for running the shuttles ordoing night security jobs or
clearing the vegetation, but theidea like so.

(26:44):
There were companies thatweren't star performers in this
respect, but others that havebeen really deeply integrated
and, by the way, the mostbeautiful example of this is the
Fort McKay First Nation nearFort McMurray in the oil sands
region of northern Alberta.
When you drive around thatreserve, I mean you might as
well be driving around abeautiful middle upper, middle

(27:05):
class town in anywhere in Canadabeautiful manicured lawns,
brand new trucks, bunch ofmillionaires on that reserve,
full employment and, with therevenues they've generated
because of the commercialpartnerships, building all sorts
of amenities and beautifulcontinuing care facility for the
seniors, rec facilities for thekids.

(27:27):
It's a model of what we could doand have been doing in Alberta.
Now we need to move this modeleastward when we get to like
talk about the Ring of Firemining projects for critical
minerals in Northern Ontario.
Those First Nations have lessof an experience like this, and
when you get further east, likethe Mi'kmaq in New Brunswick,

(27:48):
they really have no historicalrelationship of this nature with
resource development companies,and so there's been a lot of
reflexive opposition to naturalgas development, for example
fracking in New Brunswick.
So we've got to take and Ithink indigenous leaders in
Western Canada, whosecommunities have moved from
poverty to prosperity throughthese economic relationships,

(28:10):
can be very helpful to spreadthe gospel of growth, as it were
, to their counterparts downeast.

Stewart Muir (28:26):
This federal election in the early days,
including the days just before,seemed exceptional because it
was the first one I can rememberever where energy issues were
the number one talking point outof the gate.
And whether that persists we'lljust have to wait and see, but
in these early days it wasabsolutely fascinating as, at
least amongst the two majorparties, there was a jockeying

(28:46):
to find out who's the mostenthusiastic about pipelines.
But is everyone completelycandid?
Is there a litmus test?
Because I would like to givethe listener here a bit of a
touchstone so, as they gothrough the next couple of weeks
, the wisdom that you can impartfrom your experience, Jason, to
tell what's true and what isn'ttrue and which statements

(29:07):
should be held up to closerscrutiny.

Jason Kenney (29:09):
Well, I think it's a fairly accurate observation,
at least of the two main parties.
But I find it interesting thatthe parties that have lost half
of their historic support theBloc Québécois and the NDP are
the parties who are reflexivelystill opposed to energy
infrastructure and pipelines.

(29:30):
I find that very interesting.
I don't think it's just thatone issue, but I think Canadians
are getting the bigger picture,which is, with the Trump
threats, we need to grow, weneed to diversify, we need to
build big things, infrastructure, and so that old message of no,
the NIMBY message, has ashrinking electoral constituency

(29:52):
in Canada.
So you've got two parties thatare, you know, the conservatives
is really central to theiragenda is energy infrastructure,
big projects, massivelyaccelerating approvals for those
projects, etc.
And the liberals are kind of anapparent course correction from
the extremism on this that camefrom the Trudeau government.

(30:14):
How sincere they are, I don't.
I mean, I think that's a bigquestion in this election.
I'm concerned, like maybe evenif, first of all, mark Carney
supported the cancellation ofNorthern Gateway, the oil
pipeline, the oil pipeline, yeah, he has been obviously the
leading advocate in globalfinancial markets, capital

(30:37):
markets, to effectivelydisinvest from oil and gas.
By the way, let me just make anaside here Most of the oil and
gas developed in the world isdeveloped by state-owned
enterprises or quasi-SOEs, likein Russia.
I mean, they're ostensiblypublic companies but they're all

(30:57):
controlled effectively by Putin.
So Canada and the United Statesare really the only two major
producers where you havenon-government companies,
publicly traded, governmentregulated, but private
enterprise developers.
So when a guy like Mark Carneycomes along and says you pension
funds, you banks, insurancecompanies at all, you have to

(31:20):
move your products away fromhigh emitting industries.
That doesn't affect SaudiAramco.
He in fact, through Brookfield,invested in a pipeline in or a
bid on at least he bid on apipeline in Saudi.
It doesn't affect Gazprom, itdoesn't affect the Mexican

(31:43):
state-owned enterprise or anyyou know, the Qataris.
It affects Canada and theUnited States.
So what he was trying to dothrough his financial coalition
on decarbonization was veryprejudicial to resource
development in Canada.
And then finally he's got folkslike Stephen Guilbeault, who's
an absolute nut on these issues.
You know, former Greenpeacecivil disobedience guy for whom

(32:06):
this stuff is religion.
Gregor Robertson, the formermayor of Vancouver, who was the
perhaps the leading opponent tothe Trans Mountain expansion.
Presumably they would both becabinet ministers Guilbeault
would be for sure, because he'sKearney's Quebec lieutenant,
which is one of the mostpowerful positions in the
government.
So I'm very concerned.
Look, I don't want to be overlypartisan here, but if you're a
voter who's concerned aboutprosperity and resource

(32:29):
development, I would say it'snice that there's some
moderating messages coming fromMr Kearney.
But I would say that there'sstill a real lack of credibility
there.

Stewart Muir (32:40):
I'd just like to play a bit of tape.

Jason Kenney (32:42):
Kinder Morgan's pipeline is a bad deal for
Vancouver's environment and oureconomy.

Stewart Muir (32:47):
This project is not in Vancouver.

Jason Kenney (32:49):
BC or Canada's interest.

Stewart Muir (32:54):
That, of course, is the then mayor of Vancouver,
gregor Robertson, with his viewon Trans Mountain, not in
Vancouver or British Columbia orCanada's interest.
On the day it was approved,years ago, he continued to
oppose that pipeline, includingby taking part in legal actions
to fight it, including being outthere pretty much every chance

(33:15):
he got to say what a terribleidea it was, including being out
there pretty much every chancehe got to say what a terrible
idea it was.
Now he's just been parachutedin, that is to say acclaimed
into the new federal writing ofVancouver, fraserview, burnaby,
south.
So he's going to be the LiberalParty of Candidates candidate
for parliament there and Iwonder if that previous stance,
which was no secret and he's ofcourse not going to be able to

(33:37):
even attempt, and he probablywouldn't attempt, to deny it, is
going to be a difficult one tocompare with what Mr Carney is
saying in terms of you know whathe wants the government to do,
because surely a star candidatelike Mr Robertson is headed for
cabinet.

Jason Kenney (33:53):
Well, I don't know what Mark may have said in the
past about TMX, but I do know heopenly opposed Northern Gateway
and I've never heard him objectto the way they effectively
strangled Energy East.
Who here is going to take onthe BC government's policy about
electrification of any futureLNG compression on the West

(34:17):
Coast, which could kill LNG,canada train two and the future
of large scale LNG?
So you know, I think if you'rea voter who wants responsibility
to develop Canadian resources,partly as a response to the
Trump threats, then I at leastwould not hire the guys who

(34:40):
brought in Bill C-69, who killedNorthern Gateway, who killed
Energy East, who surrendered toJoe Biden's veto of the Keystone
XL pipeline on day one as hisfirst executive order.
Not a peep from the Trudeaugovernment.
If they're elected, they willhave a caucus filled with Gregor
Robertsons and Stephen Gibbos.
Even if Mr Carney has had akind of change of view on these

(35:04):
issues, I'm not sure how hewould be able to carry a caucus
for whom their environmentalcommitments are analogous to
religious doctrine.

Stewart Muir (35:15):
So here we are, a few days into the election
campaign.
A lot of people are saying thatthis election is about Trump.
It will all be decided aroundhow voters see that.
Others are saying, well, maybeit's not so much that, it's
partly that, but it's aboutaffordability for a city.
Right right, economic issuesmore directly.

Jason Kenney (35:34):
Yeah Well, I think that's the big competition here
.
And you've got a large cohortof voters, typically younger
people, who have been completelybody slammed by what people are
calling the lost decade thedoubling of housing costs, the
decline in real incomes, thesocial disorder in our big
cities, all of it.
They feel hopeless and helpless.

(35:56):
Homeownership the dream of thatis forever out of reach for
many people sort of under theage of 50, certainly under the
age of 40.
And you've got this totalinversion of historic voting
patterns along age categories.
Historically, not just inCanada but in every developed
democracy, the 65 plus crowdwere the most reliable electoral

(36:21):
clientele of center-rightparties and the sort of 30 under
crowd were the most reliableelectoral cohort for parties of
the left.
There's been a total inversionon that.
So I don't know how that's allgoing to work itself out.
I think you've got a lot ofboomers, people over 60, 65, who
are living in mortgage freehomes whose value have doubled

(36:45):
or more in the past decade,tripled or quadrupled over the
past 20 years.
So they're asset rich, sothey're in many ways protected
from inflation.
Many of them are on indexdefined benefit pensions and are
just less sensitive to thesecost-of-living issues that are
driving the deep frustrationamongst younger voters.
Who shows up?

(37:05):
Where's the greater intensity?
I think that's a big X factorhere.
You know, some commentators aredismissing Mr Polyev's rallies
the largest we have ever seen, Ithink, in Canadian politics,
with the possible exception of aMaple Leaf Gardens rally that
Trudeau had in 76 or something.
But these are mega rallies thatreflect a degree of intensity.

(37:28):
So I think you're going to haveprobably unprecedented turnout
amongst the people who have lostin the last decade and are
ticked off about it.
But you may also haveunprecedented turnout amongst
those whose only issue is Trump.
Now I think Mr Polyev's message,which I find rational, is yes,

(37:53):
like I don't, by the way, Ithink rhetorically he's been
stronger on Trump than Carneyand they're completely aligned
on reciprocal tariffs and theneed to inflict targeted
countermeasures on the Americansin this trade war.
But where his message I thinkis more credible is what's the
long game here?
How do we rebuild a moreresilient Canadian economy that

(38:18):
can defend itself, and are wegoing to do that?
Mr Carney suggested, with a $2billion grant, to turn Southern
Ontario into producing domesticvehicles for Canada.
Is that realistic?
Or how about a couple moremajor LNG projects that can
reduce global GHG emissions andanother coastal oil pipeline to
gather those things and, by theway, getting critical minerals

(38:40):
unlocked.
Should we develop our ownsupply chains on lithium and
other critical minerals?
Those would be big strategicgame changers and I think Mr
Polly was making a credible casethere.
But will all that get lost inthe anger and the vibes around
Trump?
You know who's going to decidethat.
Donald Trump, yeah, I think.
If he stops using Canada as aplay toy, to be cynical, for the

(39:05):
next month, it gives Mr Pauly achance to move the key ballot
question back to change in costof living.
But if Trump continues toinsult this country, threaten
our sovereignty and attack oureconomy, that will probably be
the dominant question.
So I for one don't want let himto decide how we think about
the next four or 10 years inCanada.

Stewart Muir (39:27):
Well, there is some polling that suggests
Canadians are at a historic highin their understanding and
support of the economic benefitsof the resource industry.
The poll I saw specifically wasoil and gas, but I suspect that
extends to critical minerals aswell, and probably.
I think, it's at 88%, 88%, yes,and what do you make of that?

Jason Kenney (39:44):
That's astonishing , and we see now super
majorities underline that, supermajorities for, for example,
lng and pipelines generally inQuebec.
You know, let me tell you alittle story.
In 2019, just shortly after Ibecame premier, I went down to
Quebec.
By the way, when I becamepremier, the night I was elected
, I spoke for like five minutesin French to Quebecers because I

(40:05):
knew I had a national audienceand I speak reasonably fluent
French and I said basicallylet's be partners in prosperity.
You get $13 billion a year inequalization payments.
We don't begrudge you that.
As long as you, let us developand sell the resources that pay
for those bills.
Let's be partners in prosperity.
I went down to Quebec City withthat message.

(40:26):
Mr Legault said to me basicallywell, jason, for political
reasons, I can't touch oil.
I used to support Energy East,but there's no social license
for it.
License for it.

(40:48):
Mais il m'a dit je suis avecvous autres sur le gaz naturel
et le gaz naturel liquéfié.
I'm with you on gas and LNG.
Let's work together on LNGSaguenay, a big project that was
then moving forward.
That was spring of 2019.
A year later, he came outagainst the project that he
asked me to help finance LNGSaguenay, and he put a ban and
moratorium on all natural gasdevelopment, seizing the leases

(41:09):
that companies had bought to donatural gas development.
And I always challenged him.
He always told me this waspolitical.
I said, francois, I don't see amajority of Quebecers opposed
to responsible resourcedevelopment, especially on
things like natural gas,especially if you were to lead
on this.
Well, now we see the public'sahead of him and he's modifying
his position.
So I think at least on naturalgas we have a truly national

(41:32):
consensus and we also have amarket.
When Justin Trudeau outrageouslysaid to the German chancellor,
the Italian prime minister andothers there's no business case
for natural gas, let the marketdecide that.
I'll give you one example.
We have the Spanish ownedRepsol LNG import terminal in
the Bay of Fundy which could beconverted, I think, if we did

(41:55):
this under emergency rules, toan export facility very quickly.
And then how about NewBrunswick saying yes to
responsible natural gasdevelopment in its own economy?
So I think we are at thatinflection point.
We just have to keep themomentum going.

Stewart Muir (42:12):
Energy realism is a term we've been hearing a lot
and Canadians seem to understandwhat it means, but we're not
hearing it much from some of theparties that are vying for
their vote, so maybe that willneed to sharpen up a little bit,
because it's showing upeverywhere.
You know the acceptance of LNGin the West.
People on the coast they knowwhat it is.

(42:34):
They understand the attachmentto First Nations, prosperity and
all these opportunities.

Jason Kenney (42:38):
It's really, and can I just say you know, there's
nothing more powerful inpolitics, in public opinion,
than creating facts.
Okay, so we have a fact, whichis the commissioning of TMX.
Trans Mountain Expansion beenoperating now for six months
safely.
Every day there's about fivetankers leaving the port of

(43:00):
Vancouver.
There've been no crazy protests.
There's been no crazy protests,there have been no
environmental problems.
It's all operating efficiently.
It's expanded the Canadianeconomy, it's made us less
resilient on the Americans.
It's a win, win, win, win.
And people can see that thefear of the unknown is what the

(43:24):
opponents of economic progressalways use.
When LNG Canada at Kitimat iscommissioned next year and you
start to see big tankers comingin and taking liquefied gas out
like they do safely all aroundthe world, and people see the
economic benefits a lift to ourGDP, the government revenues,
the associated jobs and noenvironmental hassles that will

(43:48):
create more facts.
So I think that's one of theways that we build on this
momentum, which is to dispel thefear of the unknown with a safe
operation of incrediblysophisticated projects like this
.

Stewart Muir (44:01):
I think those are good words and could be taken
away as an example.

Jason Kenney (44:04):
I hope people do that and that's, by the way, why
Indigenous communities innorthern Alberta.
They've been up there, right inthe oil sands region.
They're traditional territoriesand they are overwhelmingly
supportive of the industrybecause there's no unknown for
them to be afraid of.
The known is this thatIndigenous Canadians who work in
the oil and gas sector makethree times more income than

(44:27):
those who don't.

Stewart Muir (44:30):
The other piece here I wanted to get into and
you have so much depth on thisas former National Defense
Minister is the Arctic Greenland51st State.
We're going to redraw yourborders or rip up border
treaties.
All this stuff some of itnonsense, perhaps some of it,
who knows but definitely we haveother external threats from our

(44:51):
northern border which we don'tthink about as a neighbor, but
that's Russia.
And where do we go from here?
What is the path towardsrestoring our sense of security?
Because we seem to be losingthat.

Jason Kenney (45:02):
Yeah Well, listen.
If there's one good thing thatcomes out of these outrageous
Trump threats, it will be, Ihope, a new national consensus
about taking our own securityseriously.
Let's face it, he's right aboutone thing we have been living
under the American securityumbrella for decades without

(45:24):
paying our dues.
We are at the very bottom ofNATO in terms of defense
expenditures a share of oureconomy even though we have the
second largest landmass and thelargest coastline in the world.
So we just haven't done enough,and so I think the table stakes

(45:45):
are getting our defenseexpenditure up to 2% of GDP
within the next two or threeyears.
And I think there's ways we cando that quickly, very quickly.
Increasing military salaries toturn around the 30,000
personnel gap and the decline inrecruitment.
Improving investing in baseinfrastructure, better housing,

(46:07):
all of those things, of course,massive acceleration of
procurement for weapon systems,for new military systems those
are just like immediate thingsthat we could do in the next
couple of years to get us closerto 2%.
So then at least, whoever ourprime minister, can go down to
the White House and say we areat least paying our fair share.

(46:28):
That's a starter and that weneed to do for our own interests
.
It's not because the Americansare lecturing us.
It's because if we want to getall elbows up about our
sovereignty, then we damn wellbetter pay the bills to be a
sovereign country and that is alegitimate point that means
investing, probably, I think, ina bigger submarine fleet,

(46:52):
potentially a nuclear submarinefleet in the future that can
operate under the Arctic ice cap.
And we have committed Canadahas committed to a significant
renewal of the NORAD um as radarsystem and including an over
the top system.
Uh, that's a bipartisan point.

(47:12):
Mr Polyev has a very detailedplan for Northern sovereignty,
including, uh, expanding all ofour military infrastructure in
the North, expanding the ArcticRangers, et cetera.
So these are all de minimis.
Like these are all I.
I don't want to hear folks whoare all of this.
Both this elbows up renewedCanadian patriotism, wanting to
continue to cheap out of theNational Defense Expenditure in

(47:40):
terms of interdicting contrabanddrugs, fentanyl, precursor
products and immigration as well.
I mean, let's not forget all ofthis.
Trump stuff started ostensiblyon fentanyl and illegal
migration from Canada into theUS.
I think a lot of that wasmassively overblown and, let's

(48:02):
note, he hasn't talked about itfor several weeks, but we've had
tens of thousands of Canadiansdie from fentanyl.
We know that those precursorproducts are largely coming from
China.
We know a lot of the processedproduct comes up from Mexico.
We are not doing enough to stopthis.
To inspect container shippingcontainers.

(48:22):
Cbsa needs to be significantlybetter resourced.
For all of that To bust up, thepolice need be significantly
better resourced.
For all of that to bust up, thepolice need to be better
resourced and, unlike here inVancouver, they need to be given
a priority mandate to enforceagainst trafficking of dangerous
drugs and also the immigrationsystem.

(48:43):
One thing that, as the longestserving minister of immigration
in Canadian history, I'mparticularly sore about it's how
the Liberals took what was theworld's model system Canada's
with real integrity and blew amassive hole through it.
So we need, through asylumreform, cracking down on
immigration fraud and, frankly,just reducing the overall

(49:04):
numbers to be in line with ourabsorptive capacity as a country
.
We need to get that right aswell.
So it's not just defense.

Stewart Muir (49:12):
I was in Newfoundland last week and they
are complaining there becausesuddenly there's no immigrants
coming to fill the jobs thatthey have and they're now
sitting empty.
So they're going to Ottawa tosay what have you done?
And so this rather mangledimmigration policy that wasn't
working, except it was maybebringing lots of numbers up.

(49:35):
What's the way to fix that?

Jason Kenney (49:37):
Well, let me just on this point the key to the
successful Canadian immigrationsystem in the past, which
represented a bipartisan ormulti-partisan consensus
Canadian immigration system inthe past, which represented a
bipartisan or multi-partisanconsensus, was that it was a
system based on a it was calleda high human capital model,
where we typically selectedeconomic immigrants with the
criteria we knew, the attributeswe knew would lead to, based on

(49:58):
data on economic and socialintegration.
So that included higher levelsof education, english and or
French language proficiency,younger as opposed to older
immigrants, relevant workexperience, et cetera, et cetera
.
Well, we've largely pushed,squeezed that down to facilitate
enormous numbers oflower-skilled temporary foreign

(50:18):
workers and foreign students,most of whom have come not all,
but most of whom have come intothese one-year diploma meal
programs so they could get openword permits which the liberals
gave them, and this has createdlike.
Basically, this is so.
We've switched from ahigh-skilled immigration program
to a very low-skilled one inthe course of a few years and

(50:40):
this is the single biggestdriver of the precipitous
decline in Canadian per capitagross domestic product.
Now, I know, for somebody who'sstruggling to pay their grocery
bills or their mortgage, aconcept like per capita GDP is
not the top of mind votingconcern, but what it means
effectively is we are poorer, wehave been declining.

(51:02):
We are poorer, we have beendeclining.
In the club of industrializedwealthy countries, 34 of them.
In the OECD Organization forEconomic Cooperation and
Development, canada comes 33 outof 34 on per capita GDP growth
in the past decade.
That's the lost decade and thesingle biggest driver has been

(51:24):
increasing the denominator, thenumber of lower skilled people
earning very low incomes, payingvery little tax.
So we need to get back.
I'm sorry if this upsets youknow Tim Horton's operator in St
John's but maybe they have toraise their wages to bring
people into the workforce and ifthat means raising their prices
, so be it.
Or maybe they have to invest ingreater productivity, enhancing

(51:46):
stuff.
So I'm not having been in thechair for five years at
immigration, two years atfederal employment, minister, I
don't buy the sob story from thebusinesses that used, and often
exploited, I think, low-skilledtemporary foreign workers as a
labor market model.
I think that's been a massivepolicy failure and we need to

(52:11):
get back to, not exclusively,but to focusing on a
high-skilled selection ofimmigrants who we know are more
likely to generate higherincomes, contribute to the
innovation sector, et cetera, togenerate higher incomes,
contribute to the innovationsector, et cetera.

Stewart Muir (52:24):
Well, we don't have an economy that will
attract those skilled workers.

Jason Kenney (52:29):
Because Canada, if it was, a state and this was
before the 51st state thingbecame a meme it would be
Alabama.
Yeah, exactly, that was anotherpoint on this per capita gross
domestic product decline.
When Stephen Harper left officein 2015, we were the equivalent
of Montana.
We were like the equivalent of,I think, the 15th wealthiest

(52:49):
state.
We are now the equivalent ofthe 50th, ie the poorest US
state, alabama.
In terms of if you take all ofthe entire Canadian economy
divided up by the 40 millionpeople, we are the equivalent in
currency-adjusted terms, as thepoorest of the US states.
Now remember Donald Trump.
When asked, I think January12th in Mar-a-Lago, mr President

(53:14):
, do you intend to use militaryforce to annex Canada?
He said no, that's notnecessary.
We'll just exert so mucheconomic pressure that they're
going to want to become the 51ststate.
So if you give that anycredence at all, and the fact
that he has been talking openlyabout rewriting the illegitimate

(53:35):
border treaties and all of thiscrazy talk, if he's the least
bit serious, then I think thegame plan here is to fund him.
He sees us as a weak mark.
One thing we know about a guylike Donald Trump is he has an
eye for weakness and he wants toexploit it.
And I think he sees us aseconomically weak and I think he

(53:57):
imagines that if we have acontinuation of the economic
policies of the last 10 years,we'll become even weaker.
And so I think that's why Imean for me Polyev's message of
economic strength and resilience.
Getting it right on resources isabsolutely critical, so that if
we actually start mining thosecritical minerals, they're going

(54:19):
to realize they'd rather bebuying that stuff from Canada
than the US.
If we actually get morepipelines built and we get more
greenfield upstream investmentin oil and gas production, if we
go from four and a half millionbarrels a day to, let's say,
seven or eight million barrels aday, he's going to want to buy
more of that from us at adiscount.

(54:40):
Make him realize that 80% of USfarm fertilizer comes off of
Saskatchewan potash.
Make them realize that asnuclear grows as an alternative
zero-emitting fuel source in thefuture, that we've got the
second largest uranium plays inthe world in Saskatchewan, etc.
But we have to be able todevelop those projects.

(55:00):
That's why this election is soimportant.

Stewart Muir (55:02):
Trump is obsessed by American dominance, but
shouldn't he be more obsessed byNorth American dominance,
because he surely can't expectAmerica to be this
internationally dominant countrywithout Canada?
Because without Canada, howcould they do that?
Without the oil, without thetrade, it?

Jason Kenney (55:21):
really makes no sense.
You would take this incrediblyresource-rich, friendly ally and
turn it into an adversary anddo everything possible to
alienate us, humiliate us, turnus against them, diversify
export markets by export markets.
I don't think that'sthree-dimensional chass, I think

(55:44):
it's improvisational, it'simpulsive and I don't think it's
in the interest of the UnitedStates.
And, by the way, the rationalekeeps changing.
First it was fentanyl andmigration.
He hasn't mentioned that for Idon't know six weeks.
Then it was the $200 billionCanadian ripoff, which is
actually our $90 billion tradesurplus.
Well, in fact they run asurplus against us on everything

(56:08):
, essentially, except our oilexports to the US, which they
buy at a 15% discount process intheir Gulf refineries, sell
products at 3x the input costs.
That's a huge win for theUnited States.
I always used to tell people inWashington 65% of your oil
imports come not from SaudiArabia or OPEC, but from Alberta
, and you don't have to park aUS naval fleet off the West

(56:30):
coast of Canada to protect thatsupply.
So these are basic things.
That that I don't think they.
He says we don't need theCanadian oil, but he wants to
build Keystone XL or a versionof it, because at some level he
understands that they benefitfrom Canadian energy supply.
So I think we have to be coolheaded about this.
We cannot show weakness.

(56:51):
That's why I believe that bothMr Carney and Polly have a right
about reciprocal tariffs and wehave to be prepared to play our
long suit.
The one thing that got hisattention, apparently, was Doug
Ford's threat to cut offelectricity export not cut off,
but to tariff electricityexports to the United States.
So all of this, we have to bestrong, but we have to build a

(57:14):
more resilient Canadian economy.
That will not happen withoutresources and I want to thank
ResourceWorks and all the goodwork it's done over the years to
make the case for that.

Stewart Muir (57:24):
Thanks, Jason.
Appreciate that this has beenPower Struggle with today's
guest, Jason Kenney.
Our special federal electionseries will continue every week
during the campaign, deliveringa deep dive into the most
important questions facingCanadians on Voting Day, April
28th.
Thanks for tuning in.