SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alberta Institute Founder Peter McCaffery Holds Big Government To Account
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Summary
Peter McCaffrey of the Alberta Institute joins me to talk about the importance of municipal politics for people who care about small government, and how some of Jason Kenney's most promoted legislation has kill switches built in.
Transcript
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Oh, hello, Rebels. You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, aptly called The Gun Show.
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However, you know what? This is the internet. Listen or watch whenever you feel like that's the freedom of not being on terrestrial TV.
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Now, tonight my guest is Peter McCaffrey of the Alberta Institute, and we are discussing, well, we're discussing a lot of things,
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and I didn't even get to all the things I wanted to talk about because I'm sure he has a lot to say about Justin Trudeau,
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but we talked about the importance of municipal politics for people who care about small government
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and how some of Jason Kenney's most promoted legislation has kill switches built in.
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Now, if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love watching it,
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00:02:06.580
Who's watching the government when citizens are
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too busy first just living their lives, but also too busy going to work to pay for the government
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to keep a watchful eye on the government? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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At Rebel News, I think my primary journalistic focus is sort of twofold.
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Now, first and obviously top of mind is fighting for civil liberties.
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Now, we do that every day here at Rebel News through our largest civil liberties initiative
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to date, fightthefines.com. We do this in partnership with the registered Canadian charity,
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The Democracy Fund, where we put regular people with lockdown infractions, fines,
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ticket summonses, in touch with top criminal and civil litigators to fight their fines in court
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at no cost to them. I think it's really important to teach the government a lesson
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about human rights, even if there's a pandemic going on, and actually,
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especially if there's some form of declared emergency.
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But my other main focus has been for quite some time, government transparency and accountability.
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I know this is going to sound weird, slightly crazy.
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And even though I complain a little or a lot bit about it, I actually like reading internal
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government emails, receipts, documents, and planning notes. I know. I know exactly how
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insane that might sound to you. But I think it's really important for us as citizens to be
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able to know what the government is doing behind closed doors when they think nobody's watching
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and also when they think nobody even cares. I kind of want to know what the government and the
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bureaucrats and the politicians are saying behind our backs. I want to know what they're spending
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our money on when it comes to themselves. And I especially sort of want to know how they feel
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about unfriendly media coverage, like the stuff that I give to them. Now, the folks at the Alberta
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Institute do a lot of this transparency work too. For example, they keep track of municipal votes.
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If you want to know how your municipal politician voted on issues, the Alberta Institute can help
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you. Did they perpetually vote to increase your taxes? Is this a bit of a trend? Are politicians
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indifferent to showing up to work? You know, the job that you voted them to do and that you also pay
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them to do? What's their attendance at work like? And when the government, provincially, federally, and
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even municipally, when they're passing these big laws, what are they putting in them? Especially when
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the average person doesn't have the time or interest to read them? Well, the Alberta Institute does in-depth
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analysis of these things. They read these things so you don't have to waste your life doing it. Now, the Alberta
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Institute is nonpartisan. They believe in small government. And I am really embarrassed. It took
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me this long to have someone from the Alberta Institute on the show. So joining me tonight in the
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first of hopefully many appearances going forward is Peter McCaffrey. He's the founder of the Alberta
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Institute. This is an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
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So joining me now from his office in Calgary is Peter McCaffrey from the Alberta Institute. And I'm
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embarrassed that it took so long to have you on the show because it's been on my radar for a very,
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very long time. But I was able to see what you were able to do with like a literal shoestring budget
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to help get the dreaded Olympics stopped in Calgary. And now you're working while you founded
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the Alberta Institute. So I guess first things first, you might be a new face to a lot of rebel
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viewers. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and then tell us what the Alberta
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Institute does. Sure. So my name is Peter McCaffrey. As you said, I'm the president of the Alberta
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Institute. Before that, I worked at a number of other think tanks and organizations doing public
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policy research and advocacy and things like that. And yeah, in 2007, as you mentioned, we sort of just
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as we started getting going, we started running a campaign on the Olympics. And then since then,
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we've expanded out to a whole bunch of different projects and all sorts of different work on everything
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from municipal to provincial to federal issues. So yeah, we do a lot of work on local issues in
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Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Red Deer, Medicine Hat. We do public policy research across the province
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for provincial issues. We also do a lot of work on Alberta's place in confederation and some of the
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challenges that we've been having not getting a fair deal. And we do that all from a libertarian
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leaning free markets, free minds, free people perspective. So that's that's kind of our mission
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and our vision. You know, and I think it's great that you do I noticed on your website, you do have
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a large focus on municipal politics. And it's one of those things that I'm constantly banging the drum
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about. And I feel like I'm a bit of a crazy person just shouting at the clouds, old lady shouts at clouds
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about municipal politics, because conservatives kind of look at the macro issues, when we really should
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be looking at holding our local politicians to account, because even at the most practical level,
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those bad local politicians fail upwards. I mean, when you look at, especially during the Redford times,
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your worst MLAs were sort of came upstream through local politics, municipal politics. And, you know,
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those are the politics that affect us. First, if our garbage doesn't get picked up, it's one of our
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largest tax bills with our property taxes. And yet, conservatives don't really focus on it. And
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even with cultural issues like education, and the things that our kids are being taught in school,
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we're not focused enough on the local school board, because we're too busy fighting Justin Trudeau.
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Yeah, I think that I think municipal issues are often seen as a little bit boring,
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you know, like it's filling in potholes. And like you said, collecting garbage and stuff,
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you know, people who want to be involved in politics are attracted to the provincial and
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federal level, because it has more prestige and more power and things like that. But that's,
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that's one of the problems. You know, like we, we actually don't want people running our provinces
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and our country who are there because they want the power and they want to be in control of people's
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lives. We actually want people there who understand the idea of smaller government and competition and
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allowing the private sector to do the day to day managing and, and understand that, you know,
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the government has maybe a role to play as an arbitrator and to enforce, you know, private
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property rights and contracts and things like that. But when you have a system where the government has
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become so powerful over, you know, over the decades, it's got more and more powerful, then that position
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for people is more attractive. It's more, it's more, it's more, I don't want to say, not fulfilling, but it's,
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it's more of an important role to be in charge of something, if that thing is more powerful. And so the
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provincial and the federal governments have more appeal for politicians and people who have, have that
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ambition, that the municipal level, particularly in smaller places, you do tend to have more of a community feel,
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more of just a regular Joe or Jane wanting to get involved and help out. But we also see a trend,
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particularly Calgary and Edmonton, where, like you said, you have sort of budding politicians wanting
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to get involved in municipal politics, seeing it as a bit of a training ground, a way to get the foot in
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the door. And then because they have those ambitions, they actually want to increase the power of the
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municipal governments and increase their power and their influence. And they do that by taking on more
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and more, a responsibility for the municipal government, often in areas that aren't the job municipal
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government. So, so particularly Calgary and Edmonton, it's now not the job just, it's not just the job of the city to
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collect the trash and fill the potholes. They actually spend a lot of their time doing all sorts of other things on
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healthcare and housing and, and all sorts of areas that really shouldn't be their responsibility. But because there's an appeal for
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municipal politicians to, to accumulate that additional power, there's an incentive
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for them to go and do that. So I think it's important that people who believe in free markets
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and competition in the private sector are getting involved at all the different levels, because we
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actually have to push back against some of that idea, those ideas, we actually don't need every level
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of government doing everything, we don't need a municipal government that gets involved in provincial and
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federal issues. We need a municipal government to focus on their core job of municipal issues and
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leave the other stuff to the other levels of government and vice versa as well. You know, and
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there's some, I don't know what I would call it, maybe like performative politicianing. I don't know what the
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right word is. When you get these municipal politicians wanting to demonstrate how good they would be at
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another level or, you know, just spending other people's money to prove how tolerant they are, how
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green they are, whatever it is. I think one of the best examples of this is probably the Edmonton
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solar farm, um, that's going up in our river Valley. It's going to make a statistical rounding error of the
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city's electricity every single day, because the city has this initiative to power one water treatment
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plant for a little bit each day. And so they're putting up acres and acres and acres to
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of solar panels, toxic solar panels in the river Valley. And you're not hearing anything from the
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people who are normally like, I don't want a pipeline in my backyard. Don't, you know, don't
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dig for coal here. They're perfectly fine with this stuff. And it's done by a council that, you know,
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it almost feels like short guy syndrome where they're like, Oh, we're from Edmonton. We have to
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show the world how metropolitan we are. Look at our solar panels.
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I, I think that is part of it. And then I also think there's another element, which is that if
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you were, if you're on the left and you hold the ideology that government is the solution to
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problems, then, you know, and I've, I've seen them say this, whether it be in council meetings or
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public meetings, things like this, if you're a local official and you don't like what the province
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or the federal government is doing on a public policy area, that is technically the federal or
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provincial governments. Um, but you think that this is such an important thing that, you know,
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it's a, it's a crisis, whatever the thing might be a crisis about. Um, and therefore it needs to be
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done. Then they say, well, for the greater good, we're going to ignore the fact that this isn't our
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jurisdiction and we're going to do it anyway. Right. So, uh, you know, that evil provincial
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government isn't spending enough money on policy X and technically it's their responsibility, not ours,
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but we have to step in anyway, because it's our moral obligation to do so. And we couldn't possibly
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allow the provincial government to not do their job properly. And, and, and so we have to get
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involved, but that presents a challenge for those of us that do believe in smaller government, because
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when you had effective, um, a separation of powers between the different levels of government,
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then, uh, whether that level of government increases or decreases its powers can be, can be
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determined by lobbying or controlling or advocating to that level of government. We're now in that
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situation where even if we win a debate at the federal level, the province might step in and
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replace the federal government. Or if we win the debate at the provincial level, the federal
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government will step in and say, well, the province isn't doing its job. So then we're going to step in
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and we're going to mandate it. Or we win the debate at the municipal level and the province steps in,
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or we win the debate at the provincial level and the municipal government steps in. So we almost now have to win
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win this debate and win these arguments and promote our ideas and, and, and convince people at every
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level, uh, at the same time in order to win on an issue, because it's, you know, it's like whack-a-mole,
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right? We, we convince the correct level of government to do the right thing. And then just a different
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level of government steps in and start spending a ton of money on it instead. Right. So, so I think
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that I think one municipal politics are really important anyway, um, because like you said, they are local,
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they affect people and people should be paying attention. They should be getting involved.
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And also because we have this breakdown in the division of jurisdiction and powers in Canada
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now where, you know, constitutional delineation between what different levels of government's
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supposed to do is kind of blown apart and doesn't exist anymore. Realistically, if you want influence
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on provincial issues, you have to get involved in the municipal level as well. Um, so that's another
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reason to do that. And so, you know, it's, like you said, it's not the only thing that we do,
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but it's a big part of what we do. We, we, uh, in, in all the major centers in Alberta,
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now we have projects where we keep an eye on what city hall is doing. Uh, we have, you know,
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weekly updates and emails and newsletters and stuff that let people know, uh, what happened
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at city hall last week, what's coming up this week. Um, even just that, and that really high
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level transparency, keeping an eye on things, uh, letting the counselors know that when they vote
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on something, people will find out how they voted. Um, you know, it's remarkable for, for how long
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counselors have been able to go hang out in the chamber at the city hall, vote for something,
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and then nothing happens, right? Maybe there's, uh, one municipal reporter in the little local
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paper that writes a column once a week, and they might mention something that happened in city hall.
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Well, now we're there, we're telling people all the important votes, how their representatives voted,
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what the, what the impact of the, the idea or the thing that city hall will be and actually trying
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to get people engaged. And, and even just that first step of getting people to pay attention,
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I think is going to have a huge impact on improving what happens at all these city halls
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across the province. Yeah. I think that's really great because even it serves also as, you know,
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just a documentation of the history of these politicians who expect to fail upward into another
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level of government that what they've done beforehand is documented by somebody, um, and somebody who
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is non-partisan, you guys are, I mean, you're transparent about, yeah, we're libertarian. We
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believe, you know, government should fit on a postage stamp. Um, but you, we, we support policies and ideas
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and issues, but we don't support any particular candidate or party or council or anything like that. Uh,
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we would love if all of the candidates and all of the parties adopted our ideas that that would be
00:17:00.320
great. Our mission would be complete then. Um, so no, yeah, we're non-partisan. Um, we've,
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we've had instances, you know, one of the things we do in Calgary and we're hoping to expand out to
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other cities is publishing vote records of the council. So we do that on an individual basis.
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When a vote happens at city hall, you know, we'll report what the result of the vote was if people
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are particularly interested, but we also have been collecting every vote by every councillor, uh,
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all the way back to, I believe 2010, uh, into a database. And we've published a few editions of
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that in the past. And we, we have another one coming up later this year as well. So people can
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actually go and they can search and they can look at an issue and be like, okay, on taxes,
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how did this guy vote for the last eight years on cycle tracks or on, um, housing or, you know,
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development things, all the different issues. You'd be able to actually go and look and see how people
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voted. And, uh, you know, we've, we've had some pushback from certain councillors who say, well,
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you know, you don't have all the context, you know, you don't understand the issue or, um, you
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know, we, you, you have to understand that, you know, I only voted this way because of this way.
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And like, maybe occasionally they have a point where like an issue is really complicated, but you
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know, what, if there's a track record of voting, you know, if you voted 19 times out of 20 for higher
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taxes or 16 times out of 17 to, you know, increase spending on something, well, then that's a track
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record. Right. So, and, and people will be able to go and they'll be able to see that for
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themselves. And Hey, look, like I said, it's nonpartisan. If you want councillors who raise
00:18:24.580
taxes, cause you think taxes should be higher, you'll be able to use our database to go and find
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who you should support. If you want higher taxes too. Yeah. I also saw that you guys have a report
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that documents the attendance of the councillors. Um, you know, these guys are, that are drawing a
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paycheck for sometimes what I would describe as a part-time job. Um, and, uh, you can't get them to
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show up. Sometimes they just show up for high profile votes and you've documented all of that. So
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that's a really great campaign resource for, um, anybody who wants to use it, if they're opposing,
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um, or, you know, like a libertarian who wants to change things, Hey, go find out, use, um, the
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Alberta Institute's research, find out and, uh, right. Get your tech ad going. Great example. When we
00:19:05.320
published, um, that, that first report, the first time we did it, we had councillors complaining. They
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said, Oh, well, you know, there was a reason I was away or, you know, it was on council business,
00:19:15.300
or it was this conference thing. It was like, okay, great. Uh, how about you guys sit down with
00:19:19.980
the city clerk and you convince the city clerk to do something we've been asking for for a long time,
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which is instead of just reporting the absences report, the reason for the absence.
00:19:29.580
Right. Um, and guess what we've been trying, we were trying for years to convince the city clerk to
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do that, provide more transparency, more detail, more, more information for the public. The moment we
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published the report about the councillors and people could go and see whether they were there or not,
00:19:44.560
suddenly the councillors went to the city clerk and said, you know what, we need to publish the
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reason why we're not there now so that we can like have more transparency for the public. So it's
00:19:53.500
a little things like that where, you know, even just by bringing attention to the fact that, Hey, here
00:19:57.600
are the attendance rates. Maybe they do have a perfectly legitimate reason for being away, but they
00:20:01.980
don't tell us what it is. Uh, just by publishing that suddenly we were able to get the city to change
00:20:07.020
their policy. And now they tell us what the reason for the absence is. So yeah, that's, that's the sort of
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thing we're trying to do on that really micro scale right across the province and lots of little
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towns, improving the information that's provided the public, the accessibility of how they're being
00:20:20.980
represented and just, just helping them know what's going on at city hall. You know, as the old saying
00:20:25.380
goes, sunlight really is the best disinfectant. Um, you've also done some pretty, I would suggest
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it's in-depth analysis into things that I think the conservative movement by and large in Alberta
00:20:38.440
neglects to completely examine and I'll, I'll, I'll drill down deeper. Um, and I'll let you do that
00:20:46.500
too. Um, and that's the, the citizen initiative act and the recall act. So everybody, you know,
00:20:52.840
sees this and they think, okay, great. We're going to get our say thanks Jason Kenny for giving it to
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us, but really this, both of these have poison pills built into them. And you guys, um, really sort
00:21:04.760
of sounded the alarm bells by taking a pretty serious, um, analysis of this and you published
00:21:10.400
it on your website. People can find it there. Um, but, um, you really, again, sunlight being the
00:21:16.860
best disinfectant, you're trying to show the public that these things aren't really what they say they
00:21:21.740
are. Yeah, I think, um, I, you know, that that's, that's what we try and do on, on every issue. Um,
00:21:30.820
I think in this particular case, you're right. Um, the government really promised recall and
00:21:37.100
referendum as part of their campaign platform. Um, and a lot of people said, okay, well,
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the government's been elected. They're going to do it now. The fight's over. Um, but what actually
00:21:46.880
ended up happening was, you know, the, the, the details of how you do it is as important as whether
00:21:52.620
it gets done. So, so we're very pleased that Alberta now does have a recall and a referendum act
00:21:57.520
in place. Um, because I think despite all the problems, it will be much easier to improve that
00:22:03.800
legislation in future than to introduce an entirely new bill. Um, but from a, from a practical
00:22:09.720
perspective, I doubt either of those bills will ever get used unless they're amended. Um, and the
00:22:14.840
reason for that is just the thresholds that are required to be met to, uh, to get a recall or a
00:22:21.880
petition underway or to get a referendum underway. And, and, um, you know, so, so we, um, this could,
00:22:30.380
there's a couple of main areas where this can be impacted. So first is, um, the number of signatures
00:22:36.240
that you have to collect in order to get a recall or a referendum, uh, happening. The second is the,
00:22:42.480
the period of time in which you have to collect those signatures. Cause obviously a, a higher number
00:22:47.340
of signatures might be more doable if you have a decent amount of time available. Um, and then the
00:22:53.040
third is all the other kind of like little conditions that are required, sort of the time
00:22:57.120
window, it can be collected and things like that. So, so for recall, for example, um, we suggested,
00:23:02.820
uh, sorry for citizens initiated referendum, we suggested that, um, for, for, for policy proposals,
00:23:10.180
you should have to get 5% of eligible voters to sign the petition. Um, and then for constitutional
00:23:18.500
issues, we thought, yes, there should be a higher bar. That should be 10%. Um, the government
00:23:23.220
unfortunately decided that it should be, uh, 10% of eligible voters for legislative and 20%
00:23:31.220
for constitutional. Now that might not sound much different. Yes, it's double, but you know, that,
00:23:37.240
but it might, you know, still sound possible, but when you, when you realize, when you start
00:23:41.560
to dig into the details, okay, say 20% of eligible voters, well, some elections in Alberta, only 40 to
00:23:49.060
45% of people actually vote. And, and that's when people go out to ballot booths and do it themselves.
00:23:56.360
You have to remember to get a citizen's initiated referendum or a recall legislation. You have to go
00:24:01.320
door to door and get a physical signature from these people. So you would need, um, like 20%
00:24:10.120
of eligible voters, um, which is like almost half of the number of people who, who usually vote in an
00:24:17.880
election and you would have to get them to sign that petition within 90 days. Um, it's just, it's just
00:24:24.960
not practical that people who haven't been out in political campaigns, who haven't do or not,
00:24:29.580
who haven't talked to real voters probably don't understand why that's difficult. Um, you know,
00:24:35.060
even if every single person you knocked on the door of signed the petition, right? Cause obviously
00:24:39.900
you have to persuade them and that's fair enough. You should have to persuade people to, to support,
00:24:43.940
you know, having one of these recalls or referendums. But even if you assume that every
00:24:47.960
single person you met would sign it, that's still an incredibly high bar, um, for recall,
00:24:52.580
it's even worse, uh, for recall, we suggested it should be 10%, um, of eligible voters. The same
00:24:59.120
as for constitutional issues. Um, the benefit with recall, of course, is you were just doing it
00:25:03.640
within one constituency, you're not having to do it across the whole province. Um, the government
00:25:08.520
made it 40% of eligible voters to recall. Um, so in some elections, in some writings, that means you
00:25:18.060
would need more people to sign a recall petition than actually voted in the election, not, not voted
00:25:22.600
for the winner, like voted for any candidate in the election. Um, and so that's just, that's just
00:25:27.080
impossible. And, and for recall, they only gave 60 days. So even less time. Um, so, so it's just,
00:25:33.840
it's just not practical. 40% of eligible voters in order to get a recall petition. Um, and, and so,
00:25:40.800
you know, you, you can pass laws like this, but if they're not practical and not actually going to be
00:25:44.860
able to be used, well, then it's kind of a, it's kind of symbolism, right? The other restriction
00:25:48.840
on recall, there's two other, there's two other catches with recall. You can't do it in the first
00:25:53.500
18 months after an election. Um, and you can't do it in the last six months. And there's really no
00:25:59.100
reason for those restrictions. You know, if you elect somebody and then you find out the day out
00:26:03.160
after they've been elected, that they hold some offensive view that, or they bring in the carbon tax,
00:26:07.940
Rachel Notley. Yeah. But, but you know, like the, the whole process of a recall can take six months
00:26:13.560
anyway. Um, so you've only got this tiny window in which you can do it. And then the second thing
00:26:18.240
is, and nowhere else that we can find in the world does this happen. Um, even though the government
00:26:22.520
kept saying they've modeled this on best practice from around the world, even if you get the 40% of
00:26:27.520
eligible signatures, which no one is ever going to get, but even if you do, that doesn't actually
00:26:31.840
get rid of the, the elected official that then triggers a vote on whether to remove the elected
00:26:38.960
official or not. And only if you win that vote, then do they get removed from office and then you
00:26:44.980
can hold a by-election. If we're else in the world, once you hit the signature threshold and it's
00:26:48.760
verified, the person is kicked out. And then if they want to run in the by-election again, they're,
00:26:53.060
they're free to do so. You know, if they don't agree with the signature collectors and they want
00:26:57.100
to run again, and if they're able to win again, then fair enough. Right. Um, but yeah, so there's all
00:27:01.440
these little caveats and all these really high thresholds. Um, and it, you know, look, um,
00:27:09.360
I, I think it's important for people to know about the details like that, because if you,
00:27:15.840
if you just read the government announcement, it's like, Hey, we're doing recall. We're doing
00:27:18.520
referendums. You'd be like, Oh, great. Problem solved. We've won that one sort of move on to
00:27:23.040
something else. We actually went through the bill. We looked at the details. We ran the numbers. We figured
00:27:27.240
out this is not practical. This isn't how it works in other places, uh, in the U S for example,
00:27:33.120
way, way lower thresholds. I think it's like five or 7% in, in California and 10% in the UK. So it's,
00:27:40.400
it's yeah, it, it's a shame, but I predict this will, neither of these will ever get used until
00:27:46.340
they're amended. No, as you were talking, I actually pulled up the requirements for California
00:27:52.420
because that's top of mind right now. Gavin or gruesome is in for the recall election.
00:27:57.240
And the amount of signatures required must equal 12% of the votes cast in the previous election for
00:28:05.880
that office. So it's not even like a percentage of eligible voters. It's a percentage of the previous
00:28:10.880
votes cast in total. So that's, that's going to be more like six or 7% of eligible voters in
00:28:19.480
California for that recall versus 40%. And if I'm remembering correctly, I believe they have six
00:28:25.940
months to collect the signatures in California. Um, whereas we've been given two months in Alberta.
00:28:32.680
Yeah. Um, and, um, once they reached that target, the election must be scheduled within 60 to 80 days.
00:28:40.200
So it sounds like in the 2021 recall election, they had to reach 1.5 million signatures across all of
00:28:47.480
California, which is a reasonable target. Um, they were able to meet it. Um, but these things should
00:28:53.180
not become insurmountable goals for the electorate. Otherwise it's just a prohibition by regulation.
00:29:01.580
There's actually, there's actually another difference with California. And that is that
00:29:04.660
in California, you're allowed to pay people to go and collect signatures. Um, so people can actually
00:29:10.260
go out and be paid for their time of actually talking to people and collecting signatures.
00:29:15.420
Yeah. I, I think the, you know, I think there are pros and cons of that approach. Uh, I can see
00:29:20.320
reasons why you might not want to pay because you might just end up with unions or large corporations,
00:29:25.020
just paying thousands of people to collect signatures permanently. Um, you know, I'm not
00:29:29.380
necessarily opposed to that either way. There are pros and cons, but if you do ban people from being
00:29:35.160
paid to collect signatures, meaning it's basically just something they have to do in their spare time,
00:29:38.900
that should also be reflected in the number of signatures required to be collected and the time
00:29:44.120
in which you have to do it. So, so Alberta has actually made it way, way more difficult to collect
00:29:49.280
signatures than in California and made the thresholds and the requirements way, way more difficult. So
00:29:55.360
yeah, it's as, as disappointing it is, I don't think anybody is going to be getting recalled in Alberta
00:30:01.380
anytime soon. No. And I think the politicians like it that way. Now we're way over the 20 minutes
00:30:07.300
that I promised you that this would take. So I will have to have you back on again because we
00:30:11.420
didn't even really touch on federal politics. And I'm sure you've got things inside you that you just
00:30:17.320
need to get out about federal politics. I know I do. Yeah. We look at the municipal stuff, I think
00:30:22.240
is the most unique thing that we do. There's not many other people doing that kind of work. So it's
00:30:25.480
really interesting to be able to talk about that and thanks for the opportunity, but yes, we do do a
00:30:29.280
lot of provincial and federal stuff as well. And so, yeah, you mentioned earlier, if people want to go to
00:30:33.300
our website, albertainstitute.ca, we've got all of the different information on there that
00:30:37.180
they can take a look at both municipal, provincial, and federal, sign up for the newsletter.
00:30:42.080
Now, that's another thing I want to touch on because you guys are wholly independent,
00:30:45.940
which as a rebel means that we are fellow travelers. And so I want to give you an opportunity
00:30:52.640
to invite people to support the work that you do, because again, you are up against the,
00:30:57.160
you know, the Pembina Institutes of the world and the Broadbent Institutes of the world,
00:31:02.460
and they've got deep pockets and union funding, and in some instances, foreign funding. And you
00:31:08.000
guys are just a grassroots organization trying to make your politicians accountable.
00:31:12.780
Yeah. We don't, we don't take any money from government. We never will. That's really important.
00:31:17.520
I think people should be free to donate their money to groups that they agree with, not have to
00:31:22.780
be forced to fund it. So that applies both to government funding and government grants,
00:31:26.880
but also, like you said, union donations where people have to make compulsory donations to unions
00:31:31.940
and then that gets passed on to political causes that they may or may not agree with. And yeah,
00:31:39.000
because of that, it means we're reliant on a much larger number of smaller donors, but that's great.
00:31:43.620
I think that's really good for protecting our independence. And, you know, look, the moment an
00:31:48.260
organization takes money from the government, you know, that there's always going to be the question
00:31:53.220
in the back of the mind as to, well, should we be saying this thing or should we taking this position
00:31:57.540
because we may not get the next grant or we might not get the next contract for some kind of research
00:32:03.160
or something like that. So no, everything we do is fully funded by donations that people are
00:32:07.680
able to give themselves having made that choice themselves.
00:32:12.000
Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll have you back on again very,
00:32:15.560
very soon. I just, I want to hear more of what you have to say, especially about Justin Trudeau.
00:32:20.480
I think that'll be great. Great. Thanks. Good to be with you. Thanks.
00:32:31.320
Like I said in our interview, the people looking to hold the government to account
00:32:36.720
are the ones doing it on an absolute shoestring budget and they make every dollar count.
00:32:43.540
They're the ones making sure the government doesn't blow even more of your money on bad
00:32:50.120
ideas and constant virtue signaling. And as Peter pointed out, when you start measuring
00:32:56.680
some of these things, you can actually change them. For example, when Peter's group started
00:33:02.240
keeping track of attendance, the politicians wanted more transparency and context to be able
00:33:09.240
to explain away their attendance or lack thereof. Either way, more information for the voter and
00:33:14.940
the taxpayer. It's always a good thing. Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank
00:33:19.280
you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next
00:33:24.080
week. And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.
00:33:44.940
more detail on the economic camaraderie that we heard about носitaries today.