An Interview with Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall
By Elizabeth Dial Pinkerton
“Saskatchewan is the best place in North America to invest right now.” That’s the bold claim of Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, Canada in an exclusive interview with the Diplomatic Courier—and he has plenty of evidence to back up his statement.
Last month Premier Wall was in Washington, DC to meet with Members of the U.S. Congress and Senior Members of the Obama Administration. Premier Wall came to Washington with a sense of genuine enthusiasm about the economic potential of his province and what the future holds for this area of just over one million people.
Top items on his agenda included energy and trade policy. While much of the attention in the U.S. has shifted from “cap and trade” to economic concerns and health care issues, Premier Wall recognizes the need to remain focused on these issues, which have far-reaching consequences on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.
Premier Wall’s optimism about Saskatchewan wasn’t just boosterish pride. As he explained, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business—rated five Saskatchewan cities among its top ten cities to do business in throughout Canada. In addition, Saskatchewan’s unemployment rate, listed at 4.4 percent in October 2009—up only slightly from the previous month—is the lowest rate of any other Canadian province.
Saskatchewan has benefited from tremendous growth in the energy sector, as technological improvements have enabled producers tap into many of the area’s vast natural resources. Premier Wall believes this has been a key factor in helping Saskatchewan buck the economic trends faced by other areas. “Recent technology has come along that has unlocked this huge, vast reserve of sweet crude,” he told the Diplomatic Courier. Today, Saskatchewan exports more oil than Russia and the U.S. already buys more oil from Saskatchewan than it does from Kuwait.
And there’s plenty more where that came from. In 2010, the Premier expects Saskatchewan will become Canada’s number one producer of conventional oil.
Understandably, energy is a top agenda item for Wall. Saskatchewan, like many areas in the U.S., relies on coal for 50 percent of its energy. Mindful of greenhouse gas concerns, Wall’s province has become a pioneering leader on carbon capture and sequestration.
Canada is currently considering its own climate change legislation. Premier Wall wants to see Canada and the United States work closely on this and wants to ensure there is a level playing field in regards to emissions. He believes Canadians and Americans are inevitably engaged in an important cooperative debate, even as many in Washington have turned their focus to health care. “We need a North American approach to climate change and we will all be stronger for it,” he declares.
When it comes to the issues of trade policy, there are three issues of concern to Premier Wall: “Buy American” provisions, country-of-origin labeling, and “thickening” of the U.S.-Canadian border—that is, the border becoming less permeable to trade and traffic.
It is easy to take for granted how integrated the economies of the U.S. and Canada have become: thirty-five U.S. states list Canada as their number-one customer.
According to Patrick Kilbride, Director of Western Hemisphere Affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, "Bilateral trade supports 10 million jobs in the United States and Canada.” He says: “Our countries have not just a shared border, but shared interests and shared values, and there is no substitute for personal relationships between our government officials, our business leaders, and our citizens if we are to continue to prosper together."
There is a supply chain that crosses the border and companies like General Electric maintaining a value chain relationship with interests on both sides of the border, and this is what we risk. According to Premier Wall, the Obama Administration and Canada’s new Ambassador to the U.S. Gary Doer, a former Premier himself, are looking into ways to fix this. Premier Wall is optimistic, but he remains concerned about the U.S. adopting a more protectionist stand. He sees “the rattling of projectionist sabers in the U.S. “We’ve seen this movie (referring to protectionism) before and it doesn’t have a very good ending.”
Premier Wall is a cheerleader for Saskatchewan and the great relationship that exists between the U.S and Canada, but he is also frank: “If the border continues to thicken and if it gets harder and harder to sell things here in the U.S.—the world wants what we have, our oil. I work for the people of the province of Saskatchewan and that’s who I am responsible to and so we have to be mindful of that.”
Premier Wall remains committed to continuing the dialogue between Canada and the United States and plans to return to Washington, DC to attend the National Governors Association’s Winter Meeting in February 2010.
That session will be an important opportunity for the Premier to build on existing relationships with American governors and get to know two new governors, from New Jersey and Virginia, and for America’s governors to get to know him better. And there is no foreign leader more determined to strengthen all those relationships.
