University of Calgary School of Public Policy

Uh, she began hosting a podcast for the Fraser Institute where she interned as a student, called Danielle Smith's Fraser Forum.

She wrote a policy paper for the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, despite not being an academic, where she advocated for all sorts of things that she was lobbying for.

Uh, healthcare privatization, giving people, you know, massive cuts to public spending, using oil revenues to save for the future, which in itself is not a bad idea, and is something that past governments have neglected to do.

But it also created a convenient excuse to starve, you know, public services of funding.

I'm Jennifer Winter.

I'm a professor at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy in the Department of Economics.

I'm an economist that studies climate policy, and I'm also interim director of Canadian Governance at the School of Public Policy.

Jennifer Winter, welcome to What on Earth?.

It's great to be here.

The, in terms of this information, there's been a bu- a bunch of these.

The province, uh, actually went to the University of Calgary School of Public Policy and had them commission a, a report into how much it would cost, and they gave a wide range of possible variables.

The separatist side has had their own, uh, report produced, where they came back and said, "It's all, it, it, it's the land of milk and honey.

It won't cost us a penny."

Canada? I would respond to it by juxtaposing that with the alternative, which is to separate.

And if you look at many of the economic studies that have come out recently, one of which I was involved with on the advisory panel for the government of Alberta's research done by the School of Public Policy, or whether it's Trevor Toombs' work, or any of the work done through Canada West Foundation and former bureaucrat Lenny Kaplan, the economic consequences of separation would far overwhelm any ability to be free from the shackles or the noose of Ottawa In fact, I've said that those who argue to Albertans that the way to solve the grievances that we have with things like equalization and pensions is to leave and we could do our own thing.

Frankly, we could set our own policy, our own legislation, but if we can't get what the world wants to buy from us, if we can't get our products, if we can't get our currency established, if we have to face higher borrowing costs, Those costs, that juice is not worth the squeeze because you can have no payments going to Ottawa, but your economy will be stagnating and you'll be a landlocked country without an ability to get your resources to markets.

And so it's an overwhelming response to a set of challenges that given the relationship that we're seeing with Prime Minister Carney and Premier Smith, they are making progress on a lot of these grievances and the challenges that Alberta's faced over the past 10 years.

I'm struck, Adam, that even in the optimistic scenarios of some of these reports, there are pretty significant short-term costs, as you say, in the form of foregone output or investment or job creation.

What do you think Albertans who are thinking about how ultimately to vote in this month's referendum need to understand about those economic costs?

Well, as you point out, the School of Public Policy, the government of Alberta supported project maps out two scenarios, a smooth scenario and a difficult scenario.

And really that's in terms of the friction separating from Canada and the ability to negotiate all of those things that would need to be negotiated.

Danielle Smith spoke at that.

Then there's been a couple of reports done, um, a couple of independent reports, one from the University of Calgary School of Public Policy on basically the cost to Alberta to separate from Canada.

And then remember we had the CEO of the Canada West Foundation, Gary Mar, on our show talking about they did a white paper, if you will, on the implication of Alberta's upcoming vote.

What are the realities, the implications, and what's the impact on the rest of Canada? There's a huge cost to it, for sure, and that's something that we saw, um, come out, I would say, fairly consistently in the reports and the discussions that have happened.

Uh, but I think one thing we can do is talk about everything political, so let's do that now.

[upbeat music] Delighted to welcome back to our little confab here Martha Hall Findlay, the former Liberal Member of Parliament, now head of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, and pinch-hitting for the aforementioned Tony Clement this week, Dimitri Soudas.

He was Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Director of Communications, and he joins us today from north of Toronto in King City.

Dimitri, um, yeah, you're a Montrealer originally.