The cost of "Your Province, Your Premier"

Launched in 2022, “Your Province, Your Premier” was billed as an unprecedented opportunity for Albertans to ask then premier Jason Kenney questions about whatever they wanted.

(He looked so happy back then)

One of the questions that Albertans immediately asked was, “ok, but what does this cost?”

At the time, according to CBC, there was no cost except for some promotional advertising to raise awareness at the launch of the show.

Further, “Alberta Politics” has reported that the show is produced “at no cost to taxpayers”.

But recent documents obtained by The Breakdown through Access To Information Act (ATIA) requests show that not only does it appear that there is a monthly budget dedicated to supporting the show, but Albertans are also paying for the hosting duties for the program.

But before we get into the breakdown on that, it’s worth doing a bit of a mini deep dive on the show and it’s place in Alberta politics.

Word broke on March 8, 2022 through a leaked email to The Progress Report

that...

“The premier will be live in studio joining former CHQR news anchor Wayne Nelson for a show focused on the key issues and topics that are on the minds of Albertans.”

This was confirmed the next day via press release from Corus Radio that the program would take place every Saturday (that changed pretty quick) with “no subject off limits”.

(Which given the recent apparent embargo on changes to AISH, changed as well.)

Back to the show.

The show is hosted by Wayne Nelson, a former broadcaster and according to this website he’s also a current realtor in the Calgary market.

He also has an instagram, where he posts videos that we used to confirm that the realtor is the same person as the host.

Those dulcid tones are unmistakable...

Kenney stopped doing the show when he stopped being premier, and Danielle Smith wasted no time in using it as a vehicle to return to the radio airwaves after having left the airwaves “of her own choice” https://globalnews.ca/news/7568250/danielle-smith-departure-corus-radio/ amidst rumors she was about to be fired for deeply controversial and problematic takes as well as sharing falsehoods on social media.

It’s been a particularly wild ride since Smith stepped behind the mic again. Not only is each airing a guaranteed spectacle because it’s a largely unfiltered stream of consciousness exercise for Smith, but there have been several major policy announcements that have been announced and even more shockingly, driven by callers to the show.

The nixing of daylight savings time despite a referendum result?

Smith is on the record attributing that and the strategy for the launch to a caller.

Course correcting health inspectors?

Smith intervened because a rural health inspector called in and plead her case.

Given that multiple media outlets (including The Breakdown) regularly tune in not only because of Smith’s penchant for speaking particularly candidly, but also because of the policy announcements she makes, that there will almost always be a guaranteed news story and that it is an arena where policy can be influenced on the fly, quantifying the value of the show can be a bit of an edgy proposition.

But at The Breakdown, we wanted to know whether or not the claims that no taxpayer dollars go towards the show were true.

Spoiler alert.

The claims are not true.

In order to get any kind of an answer, The Breakdown filed a series of ATIA requests.

Our first request was sent to the Premiers office on June 12th, 2026. We sent it to “Executive Council” given Smith’s consolidation of funding and communications into her office, under her direct control.

We asked:

“Please provide the total costs associated with the production of the radio program “Your Province, Your Premier” for the last 6 months.”

In something of a surprise, we received this response back letting us know that the records were held with “Communications and public engagement” and that the ATIA requests was being directed there.

On July 16th, we received this response...

That response also included this information.

So at this point we knew that taxpayers were funding “Your Province, Your Premier” for a lot more money that the nothing that had been previously reported.

On track to hit $100,000 in 2026 alone.

But unfortunately, the aggressively redacted results left us a lot of questions.

So on July 7th, we filed another ATIA request, because it had been reported in the past that there was supportive advertising done for the launch of the program and we wanted to know whether the costs were for advertising or production.

And we got an answer. Kinda.

So taxpayers are footing the bill for “Your Province, Your Premier” to the tune of almost $10,000 a month, and what we’re paying for can be broken down into 3 categories, The On Air Host, On Air Promotion and agency fees.

That’s probably the big takeaway. The headline.

(There’s probably a second subheadline about how the information from our first request had to be withheld but in the second request we got it. That second subheadline probably would highlight the wholly subjective nature of what the government is willing to be transparent on, but that’s a whole other article that would probably be better written in a more serious tone by someone like Matthew Black)

But we don’t know when to quit, so we’ve got a fun little thought exercise with math we wanted to try out...

If you take a look at the costs for each month, a pattern occurs.

We made a little chart...

In the months between February and June 16th (when we filed the initial ATIA request) there are two months where 1 episode was produced, two months where 2 episodes were produced and one month where 3 episodes were produced.

Which gives us some data to work with...

Because the difference between a one episode month and a two episode month is exactly $309. And the difference between a two episode month and a three episode month is exactly $309.

A reasonable person could look at this and interpret it to mean that the Alberta government has a baseline commitment of $8240 a month they pay for “Your Province, Your Premier”.

For each episode produced, there’s an additional cost of $309 per episode.

Unfortunately, because of the heavy redactions, we have no idea what cost centers any of that money is allocated to.

But we still have a lot of questions...

For example, how far back do these costs go? Have Albertans been paying almost $10,000 a month for “Your Province, Your Premier” since it started in 2022?

Because if we have, that would mean that taxpayers have spent almost half a million dollars funding the intermittent radio show to a government that has an entire Communciations and Public engagement department already at their disposal.

The same government that produces their own “Alberta Update” program.

Half a million dollars is a lot of money.

Another unanswered question is why these ATIA requests came branded with TBWA Canada, a “collective” marketing firm that has trademarked the word “Disruption”.

No really.

They trademarked it.

So needless to say, we’ve filed several more ATIA requests, because we want to get closure, and we believe that Albertans deserve to know how much money goes towards the premiers radio program.

Also, just to be clear, we did reach out to the Premiers office for comment, but for some reason, while Danielle Smith is happy to appear on separatist podcasts, her press secretary still doesn’t respond to any of our emails.

The Breakdown is a fully crowdfunded independent journalism publication and is only able to do these types of deep dives through the support of our audience. If you would like to help us continue to do this work, please sign up to be a supporter here on substack or via our Patreon!