Premier Alison Redford sat down with the Gazette in mid-December for a year-end interview. The interview, done at Government House in Edmonton, was about 10 minutes long. Below is a transcription of the second part of the interview. The first instalment was published on Wednesday, Dec. 21.
Gazette: Our local MLA Ken Allred announced that he is retiring and I sat down with him yesterday. He was elected the same year you were and he said he was very surprised that when he got to the legislature that there wasn't a lot of debate, that the legislature had become more about attacks and catcalls than about real debate on the issues. I am wondering if you have found the same thing and I am wondering if that is something you hope to address as your time goes on?
Redford: In the same way that I have talked about elevating the standards for our cabinet, for the public service, even for stakeholders, I would like to think that we could elevate the standard of debate in the legislature.
The last couple of sessions I think there has been an awful lot of back and forth that hasn't really been either constructive or about serious public policy debate. At the end of the day I believe that is what we do as a government. I believe that our MLAs are very committed to that and ultimately that is what we take forward to the election and say that is the reason we hope that we have been able to earn your trust, is that we are doing the work that you have asked us to do and we haven't let the debate devolve into something that is so unconstructive that it doesn't really resemble a legitimate public dialogue anymore.
Are there specific ways you can think of to change that atmosphere in the legislature?
I think it is about smart public policy and it is about saying, look: If you have comments with respect to legislation, then we want to hear them. If they are legitimate — because when I was justice minister I did this — we will make amendments to the legislation. If MLAs are prepared to engage in a real discussion then we are going to be responsive, we are going to make sure that is part of the process that we respect.
One of the other things is to make sure we are getting field policy committees to do the work that they need to do in a public way and hold everyone sitting in the legislature accountable for their conduct.
Within days of you being sworn in, or possibly even before, there were attack ads against you. Were you surprised by that and do you think this is what we can expect in the election?
I don't know what you can expect in the election. I wasn't surprised by it. I think it was fairly predictable from what we had seen in the political dialogue. I believe at the end of the day that everyone makes choices as to how to conduct themselves and Albertans will decide what the consequences of that will be.
You went to Ottawa and to Washington within a few weeks of being sworn in and you talked a lot about a Canadian energy strategy. I am wondering what that looks like?
What that means is that we as Canadians have a number of sources of energy across the country that we need to be able to use internally and we need to be able to market outside of our borders.
And that [also means] we are going to be under scrutiny, not just Alberta but all of us as to whether or not we are solid stewards of the environment when we look at how we are using our energy and how we are producing our energy. And so, when I think about that, what I want to say to other premiers and to other Canadians is we all have to work together to find those ways where we can develop mutually beneficial agreements that will allow for all of us to thrive in terms of the energy economy.
Now for us in Alberta that means oilsands and pipeline and environmental stewardship. In Quebec it means working with them on pipeline development so that they can enhance their refinery construction and finding those particular initiatives where we can partner to come together and make sure we are saying that on behalf of Canada we are making the right decisions around energy.
What is the problem that a national energy strategy would solve?
Well, at the moment if I am the premier of Alberta and I go to Durban — or Diana McQueen our minister of environment was in Durban — I want to make sure that when she is there talking about the work we have done as environmental stewards, that we are not hearing comments from other parts of Canada about how we haven't been good at that.
We are now seeing much more of an understanding that there needs to be a partnership, because we need other provinces to support our environmental record in the same way we support their environmental record, perhaps with respect to nuclear, or hydro or maybe fracking in southern Quebec. So we are seeing a common theme around how we can all be proud in an energy economy.
On the secular school issue in Morinville, I know the education minister has really attacked that. Do you think that will be resolved soon?
He is a fantastic minister … great example of change. I know he has met with the school boards and he has said our first choice is to have school boards resolve this and come up with a long-term solution. He has certainly asked them to do that by the middle of January.
We have to ensure that parents feel confident that they can get the education they need to get for their children in their community. And as the community changes we need school boards to respond to that and if we can't find that long-term solution among school boards, my understanding from my discussions with him is that he is prepared to be involved to facilitate that.
We are certainly going to want wherever we can to have local decision-makers make that decision, but at the end of the day we are guardians of the overall public interest for kids in public education and it is the role he will take if he has to.
