The Eagle had a one-on-one conversation with United Conservative Party leadership candidate Danielle Smith recently, covering a wide range of topics. Here is that conversation:
Q: You have some Ukrainian heritage in your family tree. How does that influence your reaction to what’s been going on in the war-ravaged country for nearly five months now?
Smith: My grandfather came over after the first World War, and they changed their name, so that’s where Smith came from. I think it was convention at the time, to anglicize the last names.
So I’ve always been very interested in the settlement of Ukrainians in Alberta and the incredible stories that so many have and I think the fact that we do have Ukrainian settlements here puts us in a unique position to help bring people over, have them settle seamlessly and be embraced with open arms.
I’m delighted to see Ed Stelmach and Thomas Lukaszuk have partnered in relief efforts. (Editorial note: The former Alberta premier and former MLA organized a donation drive to fill a plane with 35 tonnes of aid to Ukraine in May.)
I really hope that those who want to come will have an opportunity to do that and they’ll be able to make a home here.
Q: Cochrane is the fastest growing town in Alberta. Traffic is a big issue. In a recent survey done by the Town, a comment was repeated a few times by residents, that we should declare a moratorium on new housing developments until the infrastructure has had a chance to catch up. What do you think of that idea?
Smith: You know, that’s going to be a problem for every mid-sized city. I did speak to the mid-sized city mayors and they are on a trajectory that all these towns are going to have to be prepared – that they’re going to double and triple the growth between now and 2050.
Alberta is a destination point. We’ve got so much economic development happening, so much enthusiasm here, we have to figure out a way to keep up with the growth because increasingly, as people come here they’re going to want to live in the mid-sized towns because it’s a beautiful quality of life. I live in a mid-sized town, in High River.
I think the key is we’ve got to find a way to empower these local communities so they’re not waiting on the provincial government to make those critical infrastructure decisions.
One of the ideas I’ve started floating out is the idea that (former Alberta cabinet minister) Lyle Oberg first came up with, is that all of the property taxes raised in a town, need to stay in that town for municipal purposes.
Right now we have a portion called the Education Property Tax, which doesn’t go to education, it’s just a leftover vestige from before 1994.
If we were to keep those dollars, rename it so that it’s a provincial capital grant, and allow for municipalities to use that right away, it could change everything, because it would not only give them the money they need upfront to prioritize their projects, but it would also give them the provincial/municipal share right away so they could parlay that into a federal grant.
Plus, it would create a long-term revenue stream so they could do more borrowing, get more projects underway at once.
It seems to me that’s the real holdup – we’re making our municipalities wait on provincial decision-makers. If we can clear away a lot of the issues that are preventing that money from flowing freely I think we can solve some of those problems and keep up.
Because frankly, at this point, I don’t think there ever will be a reprieve. In the projections I’ve seen, we have the potential to double the Alberta population by 2050. And so I think the solution is to figure out how to keep up with growth, rather than stop it.
Q: Seniors housing is an issue in Cochrane, as it is across the province. We’re seeing more and more people who may be reluctant, after what they saw during the pandemic, to apply to go into long-term care or other types of seniors’ housing facilities. And the shortage of facilities persists. What do you think is the solution?
Smith: We have a few problems with the capital funding model. And we have the same problem with schools. When we think about how anyone, planning for the future on a capital project, normally they take out a 25 to 30-year mortgage, and I think one of the issues that’s getting us tripped up is we’re trying to fund things without using that long-term planning horizon. So you don’t approving anything until you have all the money in the bank to pay for it and then, by necessity, you’re only approving a handful of projects when the need is so great.
So there probably is a need for us to figure out a more flexible capital funding model, that allows for a number of projects to get started at once, and then get paid for over a 25 to 30-year time horizon.
The province has the ability to borrow money at the lowest rates, so perhaps we can be backstopping some of this, so we’re able to get more projects underway.
I hear about seniors homes, and obviously it’s a problem for schools, and I don’t know that I’ve got the perfect solution for it yet, but it’s very much on my radar.
We’ve got that dual demand that’s going to happen, with more young families moving here we’re going to need more schools, and with the baby boom generation retiring and downsizing and getting into health issues we’re going to need more seniors care. We have to plan for both of those being higher pressure.
Q: One of your supporters outside your recent meet and greet in Cochrane said he’s supporting you because you’re a proponent of stimulating economic development around the province, rather than having it centralized in Calgary and Edmonton. Is that something you’ve been promoting on the campaign trail?
Smith: Oh, completely. The stuff I’ve seen from StatsCan (Statistics Canada), it looks to me that by 2050 we’ll be the second most populous province, and have over 9 million people. So when you start thinking about that, pretty much everywhere has to double. I think it’s probably most likely that those mid-sized cities that are going to grow faster to be able to accommodate that.
So I know it’s uncomfortable for those living there right now, trying to imagine what that might look like if they double or triple, but I think that’s the environment we have to get our heads around.
And the only way we’ll be able to do that is making sure that we have good infrastructure, roads, good hospitals, good schools, so we can continue to attract people into those communities. The province has to be a partner in that.
