Environmentalists destroy nearly 600 mining jobs in Nunavut： Here's why we aren't hearing about it
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
154.47952
Summary
A massive iron mine in Nunavut laid off 600 workers in a single day, and no one has a damn thing to say about it. Ezra takes you on a tour of the site, and shows you what it's like to live there.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey, Rebels. You know, I discovered something huge that I was oblivious to until today,
00:00:04.380
and that's always a little bit humbling. You think you follow the world, you follow your
00:00:07.720
own country, you know what's going on. I did not know until today about an enormous iron
00:00:13.260
mine in Nineveh called Baffin Land. It's obviously on Baffin Island. I learned so much about it.
00:00:19.740
It's so amazing. It's so huge. And there's some terrifying news today. They laid off 600 people.
00:00:26.480
And by the way, Nineveh only has 20,000 people in their entire labor force. This is
00:00:31.460
staggeringly bad news. And I look into why and what, and what is Baffin Land, and who shut it down.
00:00:38.080
And I'm very troubled. I'm thrilled to have discovered Baffin Land, but I'm terrified to
00:00:42.540
have discovered it in their moment of stress. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed today's monologue.
00:00:48.020
This one is one where you really have to see it to believe it, though. And I know you're probably
00:00:52.020
listening to this podcast in a place where you can't also watch a video. Maybe you're driving.
00:00:56.480
That shouldn't stop you from watching a video if you're careful. Maybe you're on the subway,
00:01:00.560
whatever. I want to show you what Baffin Land looks like. And in the video version of the podcast,
00:01:07.440
you see it. And it's unbelievable. It is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
00:01:14.580
To see the video version of this podcast, please become a premium subscriber. Go to premium.rebelnews.com.
00:01:21.920
It's $8 a month. And even if you, you know, I just want you to see Baffin Land. It sounds
00:01:28.380
like a made-up place, Baffin Land, or like a very Arctic Disney or something. No, it's even cooler.
00:01:34.880
All right. Without further ado, here's the podcast.
00:01:37.980
Tonight, environmentalists just killed 600 mining jobs in Nunavut. That's 3% of the workforce up
00:02:00.480
there. And not a peep. It's November 15th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
00:02:06.840
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:02:10.560
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:02:14.640
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my
00:02:25.520
Look at this story from the Nunatsiak News. Baffin Land lays off 586 contract employees,
00:02:36.600
halts planned work. And underneath it says, there is no date for remobilization at this time.
00:02:44.040
I checked, and this story isn't anywhere else in the media, at least at the moment when I wrote the
00:02:51.060
script about an hour ago. Let me read from the story. Baffin Land Iron Mines Corp says it has laid
00:03:00.900
off 586 contracted employees working at its Mary River mine. Of those contractors, 96 are Inuit and 490
00:03:09.400
are non-Inuit, the company said in an email to Nunatsiak News. Maybe I missed it. But I haven't seen a comment
00:03:18.200
even from Nunavut's newly elected MP, this young lady, Mamulak Kakak, if I'm saying her name right. I hope I am.
00:03:27.700
If she speaks up, I will let you know. But so far, silence. Now, she's obviously an Inuk woman herself.
00:03:34.120
She's just 25, but that's old enough to know how devastating these layoffs will be for her
00:03:38.880
community. Here's Nunavut's official labor force statistics from their provincial or their
00:03:45.660
territorial website. Very up-to-date, as you can see. The labor force is just 20,000 people in the
00:03:53.020
whole territory. That's how small Nunavut is. Smaller than the university I went to. Can you imagine?
00:03:58.980
People-wise, obviously, it's geographically huge. So you've got 20,000 people working in the entire
00:04:04.720
economy. And nearly 600 were just laid off in one fell swoop. That just jumped the unemployment rate
00:04:12.500
by 3%, like just in one move, in one day at one company, because it's such a huge and important
00:04:21.200
company. Baffinland. They have a huge iron mine. This is a video produced by Baffinland about their
00:04:30.540
operations up in Nunavut. And I'm going to let this play for as much as I can, because it's so
00:04:36.180
informative. It's so interesting. It's so well done. I learned so much from it. I think it's the most
00:04:43.380
amazing thing I've seen recently since the oil sands, except for everything up there seems harder
00:04:52.180
to do, harder to build, harder to get there, because it's so far north. At least in the oil
00:04:59.360
sands, you can bring in a lot of things by truck on the highway up from Edmonton. I know a lot of the
00:05:05.180
oil sands are out in the bush, in the swampy land still. This is a whole new thing. It's almost like
00:05:12.320
they're in Mars. They're so far north. Everything has to be brought in. Their iron mine, as you can
00:05:19.580
guess, it's called Baffinland. It's on Baffin Island. Most things are flown in. Look at this. Look at this
00:05:25.600
state-of-the-art emergency room. They built that. Look at that equipment. They brought that in.
00:05:32.880
Some things have to wait for the sea ice to thaw, and they're brought in on a ship. Look at that.
00:05:38.020
That's how they do it. They blast the iron. It's just unbelievable. Look at all that heavy equipment
00:05:44.740
up there. I'm in love. What can I say? It's just absolutely amazing men and machines and ingenuity,
00:05:53.100
and they say it's got the finest iron in the world in terms of purity. So that heavy stuff,
00:05:59.280
they got to wait till the thaw, and then they ship them in during the summer season,
00:06:02.300
and look what they built up there. In addition to mining the world's purest iron,
00:06:07.360
they built everything from scratch. They built the roads. They built the heavy-duty ports. They
00:06:12.800
built that little mini hospital. Everything. This company's building Nunavut.
00:06:17.440
I admit, I just very recently tuned into this place. I didn't know about it before. I'm just
00:06:24.540
learning. But let me read how important the company is and their plans are. Now, this is an article
00:06:30.060
from a few years back in the Globe and Mail. So it's not up to date. Baffinland has grown. Maybe
00:06:34.660
they've done this and more. Here's from the Globe a few years ago. It's a little dated. They say,
00:06:41.060
the impact on Nunavut will be profound. The mine is expected to triple the territory's annual gross
00:06:51.000
domestic product growth rate and provide nearly $5 billion in tax revenue and royalties to the
00:06:59.120
territory over the life of the project. It will create more than 5,000 direct jobs,
00:07:08.080
many more indirect positions, and offer training opportunities in an area of the country where
00:07:13.860
four out of every six people live in social housing, and life expectancy is 10 years lower
00:07:19.060
than the rest of Canada. That's amazing. Will you agree with me that this mine is the best
00:07:25.680
thing ever to have happened to Nunavut? I really don't have a connection to the Arctic.
00:07:34.920
I've been to the Arctic Sea, Arctic Ocean once, the Beaufort Sea. But I'm immediately as proud of this
00:07:41.700
mine as I am of the oil sands, even though I have no connection to it. I'm just proud
00:07:45.480
that they're doing this. I'm proud that this actually happened. And frankly, I'm a little embarrassed
00:07:52.180
that I didn't know about the scope of the scale. Look at this. Look at what they're doing. Iron.
00:07:56.300
Look at the red. Look at that red iron. That's what it looks like in the spring and summer. Doesn't
00:08:02.100
that look nice? I can tell you that two feet underground, it's still frozen thick. That's
00:08:06.620
what permafrost means. It looks gorgeous on the surface, but that thing is still so cold up there.
00:08:12.300
You dig a couple feet and it's just frozen. Look at that.
00:08:14.540
I'm still researching it, but if it really does employ as many people as the Globe and Mail
00:08:21.300
projected, it is irreplaceable in terms of not just economic life, obviously, but what that Globe
00:08:30.520
and Mail article talked about, all the things that come from it, jobs, training, and the moral and
00:08:37.460
spiritual benefits of people working for a living rather than being on some form of government
00:08:43.980
welfare. The skills training, the infrastructure. I watched some Baffinland videos today. And even
00:08:50.740
these roads. You see this road? That's a road that Baffinland built. They're building the roads
00:08:55.440
in Nunavut. Their own money. They're very proud of their roads. Of course, it's hard to get roads
00:09:00.200
that far north, keep them clear. They're building Nunavut. Yeah, they're mining iron, but as a byproduct,
00:09:08.300
they're producing a new territory, aren't they? And now, 600 people have just been laid off. Why?
00:09:21.060
And other than the new Nazi Act news, why haven't we heard about this? I mean, if 600 people were
00:09:27.520
laid off, anywhere in Canada, that would be big news. It's big news in Alberta, unfortunately,
00:09:34.780
not rare news to have 600 people laid off in Alberta's oil patch. 600 people laid off, but
00:09:40.680
still news. The day after the election, Husky laid off a few hundred. In a province of 4.5 million
00:09:46.140
people, 600 layoffs. That's 600 families. That's big news. But in Nunavut, it's bigger proportionately
00:09:53.840
than if the entire oil patch in Alberta were shut down, or the entire auto industry in Ontario was
00:10:02.560
shut down, or the entire dairy industry in Quebec was shut down. I can't even imagine how important
00:10:08.020
this is. I tell you, there's only 20,000 people working in Nunavut, and 600 of them just got a pink
00:10:12.440
slip. And this company just got hit with a sledgehammer. Why? Why? Well, let's read some
00:10:19.140
more from the Nunatsiak news. The layoffs come shortly after the Nunavut Impact Review Board
00:10:27.560
decision on November 6th to abruptly adjourn its public hearing on the company's expansion plans.
00:10:36.600
Due to the uncertainty of Phase 2 permit approvals, work associated with the 2019 work plan
00:10:42.980
has been demobilized. Salima Virani, a communications specialist for Baffinland, said in the email.
00:10:52.080
On November 6th, Nunavut Tungavik, Inc., President Aluki Kotyrk, brought forward a motion to immediately
00:10:58.560
suspend the final public hearing and defer its continuation for eight months to one year.
00:11:06.460
Throughout the hearing, Baffinland representatives went back and forth with interveners on their planned
00:11:11.500
construction of a 110-kilometer rail line north from the Mary River site to its Milne Inlet port.
00:11:19.700
The railway and additional port infrastructure would make it possible for the company to ramp up
00:11:23.780
its production from the current 6 million tons of iron ore per year to 12 million tons.
00:11:29.100
They want to build the north. And they were just told, no, thanks. No, thanks. We're going to take a year.
00:11:37.100
Why are you guys taking a year? Imagine if these people had been around when the CPR rail was built.
00:11:43.940
So what exactly is happening here? Well, let me show you this. That's the price of iron ore.
00:11:51.140
They look very strong to me. I don't know a lot about iron. I'll be honest with you.
00:11:56.040
But that graph is generally going in the right direction, ain't it?
00:11:58.900
Imagine doubling the capacity of the finest ore in the world.
00:12:05.240
Imagine all the construction jobs. Imagine all the permanent operating jobs. Imagine all the tax revenue.
00:12:11.740
Imagine all the Inuit kids getting skills training, job training. They don't have to leave the north to get work.
00:12:18.420
They can get a great job literally building their own homeland.
00:12:23.360
And it was stopped. Why? What were the objections?
00:12:28.620
I'll get to that in a minute, but let me quote just a little bit more.
00:12:33.080
In an email to Nunatsiak News, the Kikitani Inuit Association said it is very concerned about Inuit job losses at the mine.
00:12:43.140
QIA is very concerned about Inuit employment and contracts at the Mary River Project.
00:12:49.160
Our team has reached out to Baffinland to get more information about possible layoffs or termination of contracts with Inuit firms.
00:12:55.540
We are awaiting the company's response. QIA said.
00:12:59.520
Terry Dobbin, general manager of the Northwest Territory's Nunavut Chamber of Mines, told Nunatsiak News he hopes the project can continue to move forward.
00:13:09.200
Our members are watching this unfold with concern and hoping there is a resolution to the issue as the project is very important to Nunavut.
00:13:16.300
Baffinland is working hard with all parties to find an agreeable resolution to any outstanding issues, Dobbin said.
00:13:23.840
The company said there is currently no plan for when construction might resume.
00:13:29.920
It's almost like Trudeau's running the thing up there.
00:13:32.360
There is no date for remobilization at this time.
00:13:35.740
The demobilizing effort is due to the uncertainty of phase two, Verrani said.
00:13:47.540
You saw the folks representing the Inuit industries there.
00:14:23.460
Being an engineer, operating that heavy equipment.
00:14:43.820
This company, Baffinland, will do more to lift up the people of Nunavut than any government will,
00:15:03.380
Look at them loading the iron ore into those ships.
00:15:12.980
They have to fill up the ships with ore very quickly because, of course, it freezes over in the winter.
00:15:19.860
So they've got to get all those ships with the ore out in the summer.
00:15:22.820
Remember, three megaton, three million tons of ore.
00:15:29.960
And I've never even seen it with my own eyes other than through video.
00:15:33.620
So who's stopping this miracle, this oil sands of the Arctic?
00:15:39.320
So you can't really complain that, oh, it's going to leak.
00:15:54.180
The New Nazi Act News quotes one of them last week in this story.
00:15:57.760
Further information and assessment is needed, said Amanda Hansen-Main, advisor to the Mitti Metalik Hunters and Trappers Organization.
00:16:09.300
She said the project has a serious potential to impact the resources we depend on and maintain our sense of purpose and belonging in the world.
00:16:22.040
Now, it says she's with the hunters and trappers there.
00:16:27.700
Like I say, I've just been to Inovic and Tuk-Tiuk-Tuk.
00:16:37.160
And in the summer, it looks nice, but you dig this deep, it's frozen solid.
00:16:44.500
You can't really live in the north except at a subsistence level if all you're doing is hunting and trapping
00:16:58.660
Now, I'm sure that some Inuits still hunt and trap as a custom, as a cultural expression,
00:17:06.620
as a link to the past, as grandpas teaching their grandkids, as exercise, as fun.
00:17:13.840
But for food and fur and just like any hunters in the south would go hunting.
00:17:19.840
But that does not pay for a modern lifestyle with big old pickup trucks and skidoos and electricity
00:17:27.780
and satellite internet and first world health care.
00:17:32.460
Hunting and trapping, it's a nice bonus and it's culturally, you know, keeps the culture.
00:17:37.120
But it is not 1% of 1% of 1% of the economic impact of this mine.
00:17:45.340
But hey, Amanda Hanson-Main says we better stop the mine because it's damaging our feelings of belonging.
00:17:53.360
We've got to shut down the expansion for a year, maybe more.
00:17:57.160
Let's lay off 600 people because we've got to think about the belongingness here.
00:18:11.140
She's an environmentalist and a bureaucrat, originally from the south, Alberta and BC.
00:18:17.340
She calls herself an, let me quote her own biography that she wrote for herself,
00:18:27.160
Environmental professional with over 12 years experience working within Nunavut's regulatory regime
00:18:31.440
on major project developments across the territory.
00:18:34.260
Skilled in environmental and socioeconomic assessment, community engagement and consultation,
00:18:40.500
and developing and executing broad-based communication strategies.
00:18:44.040
So in other words, you don't have a real job and maybe you've never held one.
00:18:50.960
I saw in her biography, she actually even served on the Nunavut's Human Rights Commission.
00:18:55.540
I hope she's focusing on trans rights because that's really more important than getting
00:19:03.440
Now, I'm not really picking on her other than she was one of the people cheering the layoffs.
00:19:10.320
And by that, I mean the Nunavut that was 90% government.
00:19:13.660
And if you're government, and that's all her biography is really, you never get laid off, do you?
00:19:23.080
You have a job for life, really, and it's unionized and you have a ton of time off and
00:19:32.260
You got jobs no matter what, if you call them jobs.
00:19:35.960
I mean, good jobs for a white girl, being in environmental communications.
00:19:40.240
Yeah, how about real jobs for real Inuit families, like digging iron?
00:19:45.180
Well, Amanda says they'll have to wait because she's got some belongingness issues or something.
00:19:53.520
There are plenty of Inuit politicians and bureaucrats who are against this mind, too.
00:19:58.140
Usually, they're just trying to extract a few more million dollars from the mine for this
00:20:06.300
They shake down the mine for a million here, a hundred grand there.
00:20:10.340
I don't want you to think it's only white liberals from the South at work attacking Baffinland
00:20:18.080
But about that, I mean, if Justin Trudeau's Bill C-69, which applies to megaprojects, if it
00:20:25.100
were to be applied to this megaproject, of course, it would kill it.
00:20:29.780
That's the new law, remember, passed by Trudeau that adds layer upon layer of new environmental
00:20:40.220
The intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors, I swear to God, I'm not kidding,
00:20:46.420
it adds so many airy-fairy things to real life.
00:20:49.840
I mean, real life in Baffin Island, let's build a road, let's build a rail, let's dig
00:20:59.220
Hey, Iron Miner, you sit down, have you done your transgender analysis yet?
00:21:04.980
It would kill this project dead if it were ever implemented as written.
00:21:10.360
Project's decisions will be based on science, evidence, and indigenous traditional knowledge.
00:21:15.080
We're also taking a bigger picture look at the potential impacts of a proposed project.
00:21:20.660
Instead of just looking at the environmental impacts, we'll look at how a project could
00:21:24.780
affect our communities and health, jobs and the economy over the long term, and we'll
00:21:34.040
You saw the video that I ran at the beginning here.
00:21:39.760
I mean, it's the greatest, biggest, most industrial project ever done in the Canadian Arctic.
00:21:47.140
I mean, I bet you in Russia and Siberia they got stuff like that, but I've never seen anything
00:21:57.480
I mean, duh, they haven't done their transgender analysis.
00:22:00.160
She would probably shut it down because it hires too many men.
00:22:05.480
Gender impact, how does that fit into a pipeline approval process?
00:22:08.120
So I'm really glad you asked that because I think people are like, well, what is this
00:22:12.060
Well, imagine that you have a huge number of people going to a remote community, many men.
00:22:23.480
And actually, once again, smart proponents understand this, so they're going to put measures
00:22:28.440
It's just taking a smart approach to thinking about, okay, what's going to be the impact
00:22:35.340
Yeah, smart business people, smart operators know you have to do gender analysis.
00:22:39.620
I love that whenever I hear it as if Catherine McKenna has ever run anything other than her
00:22:45.680
Well, Baffinland, they look like a hell of an operator.
00:22:51.100
They're doing a lot of stuff and it looks like they're doing it well.
00:22:55.980
I've just learned about them today, I'll be honest.
00:22:58.440
But I think they're the best thing to happen to Canada's North in a long time.
00:23:02.480
And they just realized that because of politics, environmental politics, not even politics of C-69, that
00:23:14.360
They'll have to lay off 600 people, including almost 100 Inuit.
00:23:23.460
Maybe they'll all just learn to code or whatever Trudeau and McKenna want us to do.
00:23:29.140
That or, you know, maybe they can go work with that white girl Amanda, you know, talking about
00:23:38.580
The number one reason that Cuba is so poor as a country is because it's a socialist regime.
00:23:56.400
The number two reason is because of the economic embargo placed on that island nation by the United States.
00:24:04.500
It's economic warfare and it's been going on for more than 50 years.
00:24:09.520
Well, that same tactic is being applied to Western Canada, Alberta in particular.
00:24:14.480
And the oil patch, to get very specific, it is being blockaded.
00:24:19.920
The phrase used by environmental extremists is demarketed.
00:24:24.280
You can see it in the official campaign plans of the anti-oil sands extremists.
00:24:30.140
In this campaign document from 2008, you can see the actual maps of pipelines and proposed pipelines they plan to cut off.
00:24:40.440
Well, it's barely a decade later and they have succeeded with Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts in Ottawa
00:24:47.780
and the NDP in British Columbia and until recently in Alberta.
00:24:52.420
Energy East has been killed, the largest of all the pipeline proposals.
00:24:56.580
The Trans Mountain Pipeline is being strangled to death.
00:24:59.540
The Northern Gateway Pipeline has been outright vetoed by Trudeau.
00:25:03.480
And, of course, the Trans Canada Pipeline extension called Keystone XLM,
00:25:08.580
that has been tied up by activists in the court.
00:25:10.600
In short, Alberta has been hit with a Cuba embargo-style attack.
00:25:18.460
Well, now a scholar has proposed one way to solve the problem,
00:25:21.240
and that is to give Alberta and Saskatchewan their own access to the sea.
00:25:28.340
Those two landlocked countries being able to have their own fate in their own hands.
00:25:33.880
And joining us now via Skype from Alberta is the scholar who wrote the essay.
00:25:38.840
His name is Jared Lucician, and he is with Mount Royal University,
00:25:43.980
and he has written this paper for the Frontier Center for Public Policy.
00:25:48.980
Thanks for taking the time to come on the show.
00:25:53.440
What do you think about my analogy of the actual embargo or blockade of Cuba?
00:25:59.700
I mean, that's an extreme and dramatic analogy, but do you think that it fits?
00:26:08.620
Well, I guess the embargo part I would agree with in terms of landlocked Alberta and landlocked Saskatchewan.
00:26:17.980
And what we've seen over the last several years, obviously, is this economic infringement, maybe,
00:26:26.620
where we're being prevented from getting our most produced commodity, let's say, to market, in particular in Alberta,
00:26:37.980
So, in terms of an embargo, I think we would have to be careful with the term embargo,
00:26:44.820
but certainly the ramifications of what has been happening to Alberta and Saskatchewan for a number of years,
00:26:54.460
Yeah, I just read through your essay, and you talk about the right of a people or a country to have access to the sea,
00:27:03.000
and there are entire countries that are landlocked, when you think about Switzerland being an obvious example.
00:27:09.000
There's also countries in Africa and Asia with either no access to the sea or extremely limited access to the sea.
00:27:19.380
I find that a compelling argument, but the obvious counterpoint is, well, these aren't independent countries.
00:27:25.900
They have access to the sea right now, and under the Constitution, things like pipelines should give them,
00:27:33.540
you know, there is a constitutional power that the feds have to put the pipelines through.
00:27:45.880
Do you see any legal way to play that we demand access to the sea card,
00:27:54.700
Well, essentially, when I started the research for the paper,
00:27:58.800
one of the key elements was trying to figure out how and if you had the access to tidewater,
00:28:07.820
And one of the things that the research started out as is to let's, you know,
00:28:15.940
let's look at some countries that are actually in this sort of predicament where they are landlocked.
00:28:22.040
And that landlocked geographical boundary was due to cultural changes, political changes, war, etc.,
00:28:32.280
which is why a lot of these countries around the world become landlocked.
00:28:36.240
And so what we discovered when we were doing the research is that part of the UN is that countries around the world
00:28:44.220
have agreed that it is essential for every country to have access to the sea.
00:28:51.160
And as all countries agree to that, there's two fundamental principles that hold that premise up,
00:28:57.640
and that was freedom of transit and the concept of servitude.
00:29:03.260
Now, what we were looking at it was not necessarily looking at a separate country in terms of Alberta and Saskatchewan,
00:29:15.460
are the problems that we face in Alberta and Saskatchewan near the ones of a normal landlocked country?
00:29:25.920
They're the same problems and issues that we're facing here in Alberta and Saskatchewan is also facing.
00:29:33.180
And so I think when we look at the UN, it's not necessarily,
00:29:38.660
and some people have categorized as saying if we're separate, then we get access.
00:29:42.460
I think really what it spells out for us is that as Canada is concerned and Canadians are concerned,
00:29:50.260
we hold up that principle of the UN and those principles externally and internationally,
00:29:59.180
But we find it highly ironic or in some cases hypocritical,
00:30:03.940
where the government does not stand up for those exact same rights internally.
00:30:08.760
And so in terms of Alberta and Saskatchewan, when they were first formed,
00:30:14.060
they were not given access to the sea like every other province and territory.
00:30:22.140
You know, you just made me think for a second about certain rights that other countries have with us
00:30:27.460
as independent countries that Canadian provinces don't have,
00:30:33.060
Can a U.S. free trade, they're under the NAFTA or the revised NAFTA,
00:30:37.900
U.S. companies actually have the power to sue to remove blockades on their trade in Canada,
00:30:44.200
whereas provinces and businesses in Canada don't have that same right within our own country.
00:30:49.440
You know, one of the things that was well covered by the mainstream media about your report
00:30:54.480
were two maps that you sort of, I'm going to call them daydreaming maps,
00:31:03.220
Yeah, get the juices flowing, start talking it out about what Alberta and Saskatchewan could look like
00:31:21.180
And these were widely derided by Toronto know-it-alls.
00:31:25.800
And at first, it's sort of startling to look at those.
00:31:29.500
And then the next instinct is, well, maybe that part of B.C. doesn't want to join Alberta.
00:31:34.800
Maybe that part of Manitoba doesn't want to join Saskatchewan.
00:31:37.240
Although immediately, anyone who knows those areas know they would be culturally pretty good fit.
00:31:43.100
I think more parts of the B.C. interior would probably want to join B.C.
00:31:47.340
I tell you, go just a little bit over the Rocky Mountains there, like Albertans there.
00:31:51.680
But you also show a map of what the provinces were like before.
00:31:56.780
I mean, the delineation, the borders of Canadian provinces have not always been what they are.
00:32:03.280
Provincial boundaries, territorial boundaries, they changed.
00:32:06.900
We even created a whole new territory about 20 years ago.
00:32:10.360
So this is actually not as radical as the naysayers would suggest.
00:32:17.160
And, of course, when you look at the two scenarios which I proposed in the paper, one was based on a parallel-based boundary, new boundary, which follows the 54th and the 58th parallels, which would be in line with what we see the border is between Alberta and Saskatchewan.
00:32:36.500
And then the other one, which I would think is more economical, is an infrastructure-based boundary.
00:32:48.780
And depending on how you wanted to redraw the borders, if you will, they would follow the suit.
00:32:56.860
Now, the reason why, I think if you look at it along the geometrical lines, which is really how Alberta and Saskatchewan came to be back in the day in 1905 when they sat down in Ottawa and literally sat down and drew them,
00:33:12.820
there was no consideration back then about where these provinces were going to be 150 years later or 115 years later.
00:33:21.720
And, in fact, when you read the transcripts out of the House back then, the politicians and the leaders of the day, they were more concerned about making Alberta and Saskatchewan equi-proportionate in terms of land mass out of the districts that you see from the 1895 map.
00:33:41.060
Then they were worried about, you know, economic rights or future economic rights of these two economic powers.
00:33:49.920
And over the last 115 years, it's very clear that Alberta and Saskatchewan are now economic powers and they're being held in place by their coastal neighbours.
00:34:03.400
And so, I think if we examine the maps, and again, as you quote the people that are naysayers, our boundaries have always been in flux.
00:34:15.600
Part of the paper was to re-examine how easy it is to move a boundary.
00:34:20.620
And, in fact, when you go through the history of the boundaries of Canada, the internal boundaries, most of them are quite easily moved.
00:34:30.700
They get together, they'll negotiate, you know, the boundary.
00:34:33.980
And if that's not acceptable, then it was turned over, let's say, to a tribunal.
00:34:37.720
It was decided, order in council, and the new boundary was drawn.
00:34:42.600
So, I think, you know, unfortunately, in our day and age, you can't really do much justice in a 280-character tweet when half of it's emojis.
00:34:53.000
But I think if people take the time to actually read through the paper and the scenarios, they'll see that it's quite doable.
00:35:04.040
And, as you said before, you know, if you're sitting in downtown Victoria, the people that need to make the decision are the people in northern BC, not the people sitting in downtown Victoria.
00:35:18.040
Same thing, the people in northern Manitoba need to make the decision rather than the people sitting in downtown Toronto.
00:35:26.320
And so, I think what we need to take away from this paper is, as you said, start the conversation around perhaps the borders as they were drawn 115 years ago dealt with the issue of 1905, which are not the issues of 2020.
00:35:48.640
I talked about the two scenarios you outlined, but you show an old map dated, I think, 1895.
00:35:56.820
It's just a reminder of how interesting Western Canada was when the population was smaller and it wasn't formal provinces yet.
00:36:04.840
Of course, Alberta, Saskatchewan didn't join Confederation in 1905.
00:36:07.920
You'll see that there were things we don't even name today.
00:36:16.280
These are all absorbed into other provinces now.
00:36:20.300
I remember when I was the publisher of the Western Standard magazine, we had a semi-humorous columnist named Rick Dolphin who reminded us that it used to all be called Buffalo.
00:36:32.020
Buffalo, that there was a proposal for a mighty province, Alberta and Saskatchewan together, called Buffalo, which is a great name.
00:36:39.820
And, you know, and he daydreamed of a place called Albumbia.
00:36:43.520
I think he was sort of joking about the name, but that would include internal D.C.
00:36:47.420
It's funny, but when you look at the map from 1895, what's so funny about it?
00:36:53.520
I think a lot of the world's problems, frankly, have been guys sitting down a million miles from the place and drawing artificial lines on a map.
00:37:04.300
I think that's half the problems in the Middle East, frankly.
00:37:07.460
Just artificial countries created that make no sense in that case, often ethnically, religiously, culturally.
00:37:17.240
I don't know, I saw, I came across your essay through the mockery of it by the CBC Toronto Star types.
00:37:31.160
I thought, well, that looks sort of cool, and I saw the paper.
00:37:33.880
So, I don't know, I hope that, I hope people read it, and I hope it does get the juices flowing.
00:37:39.040
Why should only Nunavut get to be created out of nothing?
00:37:45.220
Yeah, no, I certainly agree with your analysis of the 1895 map.
00:37:52.180
Again, I think a lot of people over time have forgotten the history of Canada.
00:37:59.320
And again, I think when you look back over the boundary exchanges, where we've come from to where we are today,
00:38:13.220
We are now in the 2020 framework, and what we need to do is throw off these lines that were drawn back in the days when there was no GPS,
00:38:27.960
They didn't even know exactly how much land there was that they were talking about.
00:38:31.600
So, again, I think if people are really interested in having the conversation, this is one option.
00:38:41.400
That's another option where they actually form a new province out of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
00:38:47.460
But I think if people sit down and start to look at these redrawing the boundaries based on the economic potential of the provinces that we have
00:38:57.720
and consider the people within those geographical areas, obviously the current arrangement, as you look into northern BC and northern Manitoba,
00:39:08.640
the current arrangement doesn't seem to be working very well.
00:39:11.480
So I hope people take the time to read the paper fully, not just the tweet that somebody in downtown Toronto is weighing in on.
00:39:19.240
Yeah. Well, we'll have a link to your study underneath this video for people who want to see it from the south.
00:39:26.360
It's a little bit of history in there that I really appreciated getting a little bit of a refresher on.
00:39:33.580
The paper is called Tidewater Access, Redefining Canada's Internal Boundaries.
00:39:39.700
And we've been talking with Professor Gerard Lucician, who joins us via Skype from Red Deer,
00:39:44.820
and he's based at Calgary's Bouton Royal University.
00:39:52.200
Make sure to click the link below to read this study for yourself.
00:40:05.320
Hey, welcome back. Got some letters for you today.
00:40:11.540
I think that was a classy ad that Jeff Sessions produced.
00:40:20.280
Now, I know Trump doesn't really like Sessions,
00:40:22.200
and there are a number of other senators wanting that, people who want to be the senator.
00:40:27.640
I think he, I was, look, I'm not even an American, let alone an Alabamian.
00:40:33.000
But I was impressed by his dignity and that he's still loyal to Trump, even though Trump has really been mean.
00:40:39.580
Like, mean is the only word you can use to describe Trump on Sessions.
00:40:44.580
Well, that's what was so interesting, is that the president of Northwestern, I think his name is Morton Shapiro,
00:41:01.040
he sounded, I mean, I don't, again, I don't, I just know what I read you from the newspaper.
00:41:06.620
He said he supports protesters' right to protest, but not to shut the event down.
00:41:13.520
And when they stormed the hall through the windows and the doors, the cops stopped him.
00:41:19.420
I think that university president has a good balance.
00:41:23.040
He said he personally disagrees with Jeff Sessions, as if anyone cared,
00:41:27.780
but I think he's probably a Democrat, probably opposed to Sessions,
00:41:32.100
but he's making the point, I don't have to like someone.
00:41:35.320
I think it was important for him to say that, actually.
00:41:37.940
To show, look, I don't like this guy, but I let anyone speak whether or not I like them.
00:41:43.860
It's interesting that a university president cares more about free speech than student journalists.
00:41:51.800
You turn the clock back 50 years to the 1960s, Berkeley, probably Northwestern University too.
00:41:58.760
It was all the students saying, give us free speech, and the administrator cracking down on things.
00:42:06.340
R.J. writes, I feel like I owe Sessions an apology.
00:42:13.400
Well, R.J., I don't know what you have to apologize to Jeff Sessions for.
00:42:21.520
Who knows what intrigues there were between Trump and Sessions.
00:42:25.420
I'm sure a lot of it had to do with the Mueller investigation.
00:42:27.620
I don't know that Arcana, but I think Jeff Sessions is probably a good fit for Alabama in the Senate.
00:42:35.400
Look, I'm just not an expert, but I did think his ad was so unusual that I wanted to show with you.
00:42:47.000
I don't know if I mentioned this to you guys, but we're having a couple of Wexit debates in Alberta next week.
00:43:00.640
So we're having a panel discussion in Calgary and Edmonton.
00:43:07.780
Kian Bexty, Sheila Gunn-Reed, Lauren Gunter, and in Edmonton, Barry Cooper, a professor, will be joining us too.
00:43:14.800
Tickets, $15 each, unless you're with the CBC, in which case it's $40.
00:43:20.000
You can see that at wexitdebate.com, the different pricing.
00:43:38.420
You'll see the multi-tiered ticketing prices there.
00:43:41.100
I hope to see you Tuesday night in Edmonton, Wednesday night in Calgary.