Alberta finally builds its ‘firewall’ to keep Ottawa out
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Summary
Ted Morton is the author of Strong and Free: My Journey in Alberta Politics, a new book about his time in the Alberta government. He also co-authored the so-called "Firewall Letter" with Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan, a document that laid the foundation for what would become the Wild Rose Party and the current Progressive Conservative government.
Transcript
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If you were involved in conservative politics in the early 2000s, one name that kept coming
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up again and again at both the federal and provincial level in Alberta is Ted Morton.
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Hello, my name's Brian Lilly, and this is the Full Comment Podcast.
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And today we're going to talk to Ted Morton about his new book, Strong and Free, My Journey
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And that is with something else that you helped write a long time ago.
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But you're famous as one of the authors for the firewall letter, something that you wrote
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with Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan, something that is now looks like it might be coming to
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So how does that feel so many years later, hearing some of the things that you advocated
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for being looked at a serious policy in the Alberta government?
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I mean, you were in government for a long time and some of that couldn't happen.
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Yes, Stephen Harper, I and several others in 2001 wrote the Alberta Agenda, aka Firewall
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We were, it looked like the Senate reform thing was going to go flat.
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So if we couldn't get more Alberta in Ottawa, which was the purpose of Senate reform, we wanted
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I spent about a decade and a half fighting for that in provincial politics unsuccessfully,
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led to the division of the two conservative parties and election of an NDP government in
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But Jason Kenney was able to achieve what I failed to achieve in 2018.
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Jason got the Wild Rose Party and the PCs to come together, won a majority government.
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And both of those, both Premier Kenney and now Premier Smith have taken those firewall policies
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and put them into practice or are moving them towards practice as government policy.
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Well, even the way that you described it and the way that I described it, you called it
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I think I've got a book around here called that.
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Talk to me a little bit about what the main thrust of the Alberta Agenda was, because it
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And even though I am an Eastern bastard, I've always looked at the Alberta agenda and the
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firewall letter and said, why are people outraged that Alberta wants what Quebec has or what
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So what was in it and why were you pushing for those things?
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Well, again, to have more control of what happens policy-wise and policy implementation-wise
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And as you've correctly pointed out, the firewall, well, let's backtrack.
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It keeps out unwanted interference in your IT base.
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And so there's nothing particularly controversial about a firewall.
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And the things that we proposed, policing, the provincial police force, rather than the
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RCMP, collecting our own taxes, having an Alberta pension plan, withdrawing from the
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I passed by officers with the OPP coming into the Ontario legislature today for this interview.
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Quebec has the SQ, the Certe de Quebec, provincial police force.
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And at one point, Alberta had its own police force and then opted to rent the RCMP starting,
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I mean, what benefit does it to say, well, the RCMP has to do highway patrol outside of
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Well, again, to kind of bridge to another issue that's problematic in Alberta, of course,
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if you want to go forward in the RCMP, you better be bilingual, right?
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Any federal bureaucracy, to move up the hierarchy, you have to...
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The higher you go, the more bilingual you have to become.
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And if you want to move up the RCMP ladder, you also have to be willing to move around in
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And there are a lot of young men and women in Alberta who are not bilingual and who want
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And therefore, but don't pursue policing opportunities, at least with the RCMP.
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If we had a provincial police force, I think you'd see a lot more capable young Alberta men
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The Quebec pension plan is often used in a very political way.
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And your mileage may vary on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
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Quebecers will often take pride that their pension money is used for propping up Quebec
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If you had your way and Alberta had their pension plan tomorrow, what would you be doing?
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Would it be just like the Quebec model where politically they decide we need to invest in
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this sector and therefore we'll put money in whether it's a good return or not?
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Or should it be more like the Canada pension plan?
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Right now they're spending a huge amount of money building a beautiful office in downtown
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Toronto that is mind-boggling, the money they're paying for that.
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On a high level, I'm in favor of fences around whether it's a provincial pension plan or in
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the case of the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund.
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As I document repeatedly in the book that comes out today, not just the conservative government,
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the NDP government, all governments in Alberta can't resist the temptation, and not just in
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Alberta, everywhere, to do short-term spending for short-term political objectives rather than
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long-term, economically sensible and well-advised types of investments.
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Certainly at a high level, I would favor the fence around to keep political influence to
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Just right now, as I say, perhaps a bit too independent when you're going to, I believe
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it's tens of millions of dollars on their new offices with features that you would get
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And by the way, the Canada pension plan is not outperforming the markets in any significant
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So do you think that, I know that there's been some polling that shows it's not a super
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Do you think that Premier Smith will move forward with this?
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There's a study underway, an independent arm's length study, about the nature and size of
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When that comes back, obviously, there'll be more discussion.
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People are understandably nervous about, there are a lot of people, including me, who get a
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And I understand, and obviously you understand too, why people are nervous about politicians
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putting their hands on things like your pension checks.
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But I think properly explained and with, as I said, the political fences around it to keep,
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to prevent short term, to let governments, not just the Smith government, but governments
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down the road using a Alberta pension plan for their own short term political purposes rather
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than longer term sound investment purposes, I think people can be persuaded.
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You took a long and interesting route to be someone who spent 30 years in Alberta politics.
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First off, you're originally from LA, and then you end up in Alberta.
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I grew up in Wyoming, which again, if you've traveled a little bit, you know, Wyoming,
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Wyoming, and certainly Casper, Wyoming, where I grew up was an oil and gas town.
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And in the old days, before big jets, when you still had DC3s, whatever they were called,
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the flights from Houston, Dallas, Denver, Casper, Billings, right up to Calgary.
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So I had friends, we knew people and I went to school with kids that were coming and going
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So for me to end up in Calgary and in Alberta was not that much of a stretch.
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And plus, as you and I've already mentioned, I spent four and a half years in Toronto where
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So I was, I knew Canada and I knew enough about Alberta to be comfortable there.
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I once interviewed one of the more famous people to come out of Wyoming, Dick Cheney.
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And there's a man who also knew Canada very well.
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And what was fascinating about him was finding out that he'd fished in every part of this
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country and had gone coast to coast and knew parts of Canada better than a lot of Canadians
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So, um, yeah, I haven't just, uh, you know, driven through all of that area.
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A lot of, of connections back and forth, but when you, uh, ended up moving to Canada, did
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you think that you would be so deeply involved in provincial and national politics?
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I, the reason I went to the University of Toronto is because there was a, uh, a person, uh, in
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the U of T philosophy department, Emil Fackenheim, who was the leading Hegel scholar in North
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And I wanted to do a PhD on, uh, on Hegel, the German philosopher.
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And, uh, like most graduate students, what I hoped is that I'd finish in, in three or four
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And I did, and then I'd get a job, but given the academic job market, you had to be willing
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I had, I left U of T in 78 and I taught at a small Catholic college in Boston for three
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The year I left U of T, one of my best friends from graduate school days, Reiner Knoth, uh,
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who's from, uh, from, from Ontario and who was in the same programs I was in at U of T.
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He went, he went to, uh, Calgary and three years later, 1981, he phoned me up and he
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We need somebody to come here and teach American politics and Canadian constitutional law.
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And I'd done part of my PhD was on Canadian constitutional law.
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So, uh, I flew out, got the interview, was offered the job and, uh, had to spend a little
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bit of time persuading my wife that she'd like, uh, the Western, Western, Western Canada.
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Uh, and Calgary has grown tremendously since then.
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When we, when we moved to Calgary, it was 600,000 people today.
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Uh, so looking back, uh, from when you first got involved to now, um, and I, and I know
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you, you know, go over various, uh, policies in your book, where have you changed your mind?
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Were, were there things that you were steadfast in 30 years ago that now you say, hmm, I'd
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take a different approach or I wouldn't be as, as strident.
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Uh, but one that I've never thought of before trying to think, um, the only thing that comes
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immediately to mind was I was very much opposed to the decriminalization of marijuana, uh, because
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like a lot of kids who were in college and university in the sixties, I smoked a lot of
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Uh, I stopped, uh, once I got to Toronto and once I had kids and then especially once
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I had a job, I wasn't going to do something that was illegal.
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And, uh, but I have friends that kept smoking, uh, and they still, they smoked through their
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And I think they've lived much smaller lives than they were capable of.
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So I was against decriminalizing marijuana, but I, over time in Calgary, I developed friends
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with a policeman, uh, several who said, Ted, uh, it's so widespread.
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It's, uh, we're wasting our time chasing people over marijuana.
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We need to get marijuana off, off the, the crime list and move on to the much, to the more
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So I was persuaded there based on advice and, uh, conversations with friends who are actual
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We need to take a quick break for, uh, for some commercials to pay the bills.
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But when we come back, I do want to ask you about, um, the triple E Senate, uh, that dream
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seems to be dead, but there's also been some recent, uh, Senate appointments that kind of
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annoying more than a few Albertans, more when we come back.
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Ted, one of the issues that you, uh, pushed for in your early days or not early days, but,
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I think that ship is, um, if it hasn't passed, it's definitely, uh, parked it's mooring.
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Recently, prime minister, Justin Trudeau, uh, appointed two senators from Alberta.
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Now you've got three senators in waiting who've been elected by the people of Alberta and yet
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he did not appoint any of them and instead appointed Daryl, uh, Fridhandler.
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He's a lawyer who has a very long track record of donating to the liberal party and organizing
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And then academic activist, Christopher Wells, that must've been a slap in the face.
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And, uh, but Senate reform in theory makes good sense.
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It's how in other federal states, not just the U S but Australia, Germany, uh, the less
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populated, uh, regions and states can articulate and defend their interest in a national legislative
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policymaking arena where most of the other power is based on represent representation by
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And, uh, case in point, uh, my, I arrived in Alberta just when Trudeau, number one, Pierre
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Trudeau brought in the national energy program, which devastated, uh, devastated Alberta economically,
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chased, uh, billions of dollars of, uh, oil and gas investment South of the border.
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Uh, and he did that because it was very popular in, uh, in Eastern Canada, it kept gas prices
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and heating prices lower in the U S the, uh, representatives and the house of representatives
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brought in identical legislation bills in the house of representatives and it passed.
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But when it went to the Senate in the Senate, the bill goes to a committee, natural resource
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committee goes to a subcommittee who sits on those committees.
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The senators from Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming, the oil and gas producing states had
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So there's a very graphic example of how, um, a Tripoli Senate could and would articulate
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and allow Western Canada and the Maritimes to articulate and defend regional interests that
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are not shared by Ontario and Quebec, but it's not going to happen.
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And I, as far as I'm concerned, I'm on complete, completely on the abolition ticket now for
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the Senate, which would also be incredibly, um, problematic because as you mentioned, the
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Supreme court decision in 2014, I don't think people realize the impact of that decision.
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I mean, Stephen Harper just abandoned, um, any attempt to alter or change the Senate.
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I think that's probably something that if we were having a frank conversation with the former
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prime minister today, he would say was probably a mistake leaving all those appointments open.
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Uh, Danielle Smith had an interesting, uh, musing the other day and created some controversy
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She was talking about increasing the population, doubling the population of the province dramatically
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in order to make sure that Alberta does have more clout, um, more population, more clout
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Immigration strangely under Justin Trudeau has become a, a hot button issue and is not
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quite, uh, looked on quite as fondly as it was.
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Well, again, she, she's right in theory, but in practice, I don't think, uh, none of that's
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Uh, immigration, uh, population grows through immigration, both, uh, immigration from the
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rest of Canada and immigration from, from outside.
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Uh, it's, this year, uh, Canada or Alberta, I think has already taken on an additional 200,000
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new people in just this year, but still in terms of Quebec and Ontario have, uh, 199 MPs,
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The majority is, uh, 170, uh, it'll be a long time before the population of Alberta or Saskatchewan
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are anywhere even close to that, uh, in terms of, uh, representation in the, in the, uh, house
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So long-term maybe, but it's short-term and it doesn't address much more pressing issues.
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And that's why she's on the, on the Sovereignty Act, which addresses short-term, immediate and
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short-term issues of, of importance to Alberta.
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Do you think the Sovereignty Act would survive a court challenge?
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Again, like a lot of policy, it depends on the specifics of how it's used in specific instances,
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but they've been, uh, very clear that, uh, under the Sovereignty Act, no individual and
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no private company, no corporation is going to be asked to, uh, violate any law, provincial
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Uh, so, uh, they've blocked off that liability, uh, that risk.
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Uh, and then again, depend, it depends on how they use it.
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I think what the Sovereignty Act does instead of Alberta challenging federal laws under the
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Sovereignty Act, suddenly, uh, Alberta is going to play offense and, uh, and it's going
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to be Ottawa that has to challenge, which is a lot.
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Well, and frankly, the model for that is Quebec playing offense rather than defense.
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As someone who, um, was there at the beginning with Preston Manning building the reform movement,
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like your sense on how you think, uh, federal conservative politics is going now, uh, you
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get some people who, you know, pine for, uh, uh, you know, a vision of the old progressive
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conservative party that I don't think is attached to reality.
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You know, Brian Mulroney, uh, if we ran, he ran on his platform today, uh, would be, you
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know, that would be described as far right and horrible and, uh, regressive.
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And that's how they described him back in the day.
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But some people think, oh no, it was a much more genteel party.
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And so, uh, they view Pierre Polyev's conservatives as, well, that's just reform and they're so
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What's your sense of where Polyev is, where the, the conservative movement is federally compared
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to what you were, were fighting for with, with Manning?
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They were there then, uh, Manning versus the federal conservatives and they're there today,
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But what are the, what are the polls say about Pierre Polyevra and the, uh, conservative party
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of, uh, of Canada that they, they're ahead in the polls by close to 20% and they, if there's
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an election, if things don't change before the next election, they could win, uh, as many
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So, uh, I would say at that level, uh, the conservative party today is, uh, quite successful.
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And again, I think, you know, but your, your listeners may not, uh, I've known, uh, Pierre
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probably ever since he was a student at UFC in the, in the 1990s.
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Uh, and I think Canadians now given the choice, prefer him to, uh, Justin Trudeau.
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Uh, so, so you're saying that his, uh, uh, political formation took place at the Calgary
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school as you and several of your colleagues have been dubbed over the years.
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And, but not just him, uh, Danielle Smith, uh, the, the list is, is actually pretty long.
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You, you know, a lot there, there are people who've actually held political office like,
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uh, Dan, well, Stephen Harper, Danielle, uh, Pierre, but for every one of those, there's
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another dozen or more people who have followed, uh, them to Ottawa, uh, or to Edmonton and become
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senior staffers either in ministry, in the, in, in the, in minister's offices or in, uh, in
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So, uh, the Calgary school has had a lot of influence and I'm happy about that.
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Well, it's been good to know, uh, many of, uh, your colleagues from that school over the
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And, uh, of course you, you, uh, co-opted Ian Brody, uh, into the school after he left
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He's, uh, you know, was an Ontario academic before he, he went and tried his hand at being
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And then I guess you guys, you offered him a filthy oil lucre or something and got him out
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Well, Ian's, Ian's in, uh, again, a classic example of, uh, I think some of the quality
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of people we've had in the conservative party in the last couple of decades, he grew up in,
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You may not know, he did his PhD with me at the university.
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And that's, that's where he met, uh, Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan.
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And then when, when Tom went to, uh, Ottawa with Stephen, uh, excuse me, uh, Ian first
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then after he left UFC, he went and taught at a Western for four or five years.
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Uh, but when Flanagan and Harper went off to Ottawa, he went, he went with them and he was
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I think he served, uh, four or five years then as Canada's representative in Washington,
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And then, uh, Jack Mintz brought him out to Calgary for the school of public policy.
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And so he's, he's lived and worked in all parts of Canada and in the U S he's a pretty
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And I'm, I'm glad he's at the university of Calgary now teaching.
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You've taught some impressive people, uh, Ted, let me ask you this then regarding Pierre
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Polly, you say you've known him a long time, you taught him, um, people that don't know
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him, at least this is my experience, but maybe I'm, you know, I've known him since he was
00:26:16.360
Um, and I've always known him to be an affable guy.
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You know, someone who cracks a good joke is willing to laugh, including it himself.
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But I'm sure you've heard the complaint as well.
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Um, what's the guy that, you know, like, and does he have an image problem that he needs
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to, to fix so that people don't think he's just an angry guy yelling off in the corner?
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Well, again, I go back to the polling that you're aware of and all, uh, your listeners
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He's, he's polling way, way ahead of, uh, Trudeau and the liberals right now.
00:26:51.960
So a lot of people seem to have changed their mind.
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Something you just said, which I consider critical, uh, in my judgment of people, whether
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they're conservatives or liberals or Indy, whatever, can they laugh at themselves?
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People who can't laugh at themselves make me nervous, uh, uh, and particularly political
00:27:13.720
And, uh, um, Pierre is, uh, laughs at himself all the time.
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And if you listen to his speeches, uh, he can, he gets people laughing pretty quickly and
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I think as a pair, they're going to be tough to beat.
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And, uh, and, um, I think that's reflected that their normal, ordinary Canadian, she's
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an immigrant, second generation immigrant, uh, loves Canada.
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Um, you know, Pierre was adopted, uh, grew up in a bi-unilingual, by, by French parents,
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French family in the West, but he grew up in Calgary.
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So he's been bilingual, fluently bilingual since he was a kid and, uh, grew up in Calgary.
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We knew him in the nineties as a college university student, but he's been in, uh, you know, Ottawa
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So he's, he, but he's everything Pierre has, he earned for himself.
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Everything Justin had was, was handed to him on a platter.
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Well, I, I also know that he's a policy wonk, so he may be one of the people reading your
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Um, although he did tell me recently, we were doing an interview and he told me that he's
00:28:27.460
now reading books while listening to the audio book version at double or triple speed.
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So you might have to do an audio book, uh, for, for him to finish everything.
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Ted Morton's new book is called strong and free.
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It is out now available wherever fine books are sold.
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This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.
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Remember you can subscribe on Apple podcast and you YouTube podcast, Spotify, or wherever
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