N.L. premier calls out lack of female leaders at Council of the Federation meetings

Dwight Ball saysit's not the lack of Liberal premiers that bothers him at this week's Council of the Federation conference in Saskatoon, but the lack of female representation.

The Newfoundland and Labrador premier is at the meetings this week, along with the rest of the country's provincial and territorial leaders.

Looking around the table, he said he was disappointed.

"Most of my political career I was used to coming to those meetings and seeing strong female voices at the table and that was missing today," he told CBC on Wednesday night.

Ball brought Lisa Dempster, the MHA for southern Labradorand a provincial cabinet minister, along with him for the week.

He said Dempster attended a meeting on Indigenous affairs, and she was the only woman at thatmeeting as well.

The country has lost threefemale premiers in the last three years, withChristy Clark ousted in British Columbia, Ontario voters choosing Doug Ford over Kathleen Wynne, and Alberta electingJason Kenney over Rachel Notley.

As a Liberal premier, Ballsaid he wasn't fazed by being left out of Kenney's Calgary Stampede breakfast plans before the meetings, which saw five Conservative premiers wearwhite cowboy hats and flip pancakes for the crowd.

Despite their political differences, Ball has a similar goal with Kenney atthese meetings making changes to Bill C-69 to alleviate any harm to the oil and gas industry.

"I'm very confident from an offshore development point of view that we will get offshore exploratory wells exempt and that we will maintain joint management [of the industry]."

Energy routes, pharmacare key issues for N.L.

Part of Wednesday's agenda was on trade corridors, which included talk of pipelines for most provinces.But moving Muskrat Falls hydroelectric power down through the Maritimes was more important to Ball.

"For us, energy transmission and getting a trade corridor throughNew Brunswick so we can help New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to get off of coal," he said.

Ball said the two provinces need to replace 1700 megawatts of coal power by 2030, and he wants Newfoundland and Labrador to be the answer to their problem.

On Thursday, Ball will lead a talk on health care sustainability and pharmacare.

"I want to make sure that becomes part of the national agenda as we lead into the next fall election," he said.

"We can actually challenge federal leaders, no matter who they are or what political stripe they are to put in a pharmacareprogram. Canada is the last G7 country to be doing this and I think it's long overdue."

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