Preston Manning on the broken state of Canadian politics
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Summary
Former Reform Party of Canada leader Preston Manning joins us to talk about the current state of Canadian politics and the use of fear as a tool to get people to support public policy. He also talks about Western alienation and how to deal with it.
Transcript
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Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of Full Comment with me, Anthony Fury. I'm
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really excited about our conversation today and chatting with our guest today, Preston
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Manning, a populist before it was all the rage, the original bad boy of Canadian politics,
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founder of the Reform Party of Canada and leader of the opposition back in the late
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1990s. We're doing it all today, folks. We're having all the conversations, breaking down
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all the topics, big government abuses during the time of the pandemic, whether or not
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politics is really speaking to the people today. Do we need some sort of a political revolution
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in Canada, or at least, I don't know, Alberta separating? How seriously should we take that
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issue? What's going on with Western alienation? What about the green agenda, reconciliation,
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the tearing down of statues? What do we think about all of that and more? What does Preston
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Manning think about that? He joins us now. Preston, sir, welcome to the program. Great
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to have you here. Well, thank you very much. How are you doing? How have things been for
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you of late? Well, I'm doing well. Yeah, I'm keeping busy. I was trying to retire, but that's
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sort of hard to do. But yeah, trying to cope with the aftermath of the COVID business and
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the impacts on the economy like everybody else. But I'm doing well. Thank you for asking.
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Yeah, I know you've been offering your insights in the pages of a couple different papers here
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across the country. And when we talk about the idea of the state of the nation, I mean,
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what is the state of Canada right now? Canadian politics, how we are feeling as a country,
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unified or not unified? What's your sort of big picture sense of Canada at this moment?
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Well, a couple of things, Anthony. First of all, I do think there is a growing disunity, which
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is worrisome, particularly if you're in the federal political arena, this polarization over virtually
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every issue, the use of fear as the main motivator for getting people to support a particular
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public policy. And then as you already referred to the regional tensions, there is this growth of
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Western alienation. It's not just confined to Alberta, just Western concerns and aspirations
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and the feeling that the current federal government, the federal parliament is simply insensitive to
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those and not addressing them. I worry more about probably the unity problems than anything else.
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And I think one of the challenges for the federal political parties is each of them, in my judgment,
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should have a section in their election platform addressing Western alienation and proposing measures
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to deal with it. And they're going to be asked at the doors when candidates knock on the doors,
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they are going to be asked by an increasing number of voters,
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what specifically do you propose to deal with some of these Western concerns? So that's a big feature of
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the current political landscape in my judgment. And Preston, when you say fear out there, fear
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mongering, I mean, what do you mean? Justin Trudeau, he first ran on that platform of sunny ways,
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it's all going to be positive. But to your point, we're actually hearing a whole lot of negative from him
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of late. Well, yeah, and I worry about this, that the cheapest, easiest way to motivate people to
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support a public policy these days, and there are consulting firms that make no bones about
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employing this as a strategy is to scare people that this has been done on the climate issues to
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tell people that the planet's going to come to an end in x years, unless they do this and support that.
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A lot of the government messaging on how to respond to the COVID crisis was fear, using fear as a
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mechanism. And that's, again, it's a negative approach. And I think it's dangerous that there's
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got to be more positive ways of encouraging people to support a particular public policy than just
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scaring them to death. Now, is it just the liberals and Justin Trudeau who are bad for that? Is this
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sort of a broader rot that we have right now just in Canada or North America?
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Yeah, I think this is a general thing throughout the Western world. It's very prominent in the
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United States. I mean, their last presidential election was just fear, fear, fear, fear. If you
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elect the other guys, this is the disasters that will happen. It was employed by both sides.
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So I think it's a general condition. And it's not good for democracy. If the only reason people
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support a public policy is because they've been scared into doing so, that's not a very
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I mean, I guess there are a lot of things that people are genuinely afraid of out there,
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whether or not their fears are warranted. What would be the counter to that? I mean,
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what would you say are the positive things that should be said and should be kind of embraced right now?
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Well, I've just been reading a book on Churchill's first year in office where
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almost the opposite tactic was taken. You're in the middle of a war and people have a right to be
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afraid. But what he was promoting was fearlessness. He was promoting the exercise of courage and
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fearlessness in the face of a disaster rather than cowering in fear. You had Roosevelt's famous
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speech to the U.S. after Pearl Harbor that Americans had nothing to fear but fear itself.
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So I think the advocating the need for fearlessness and for courage in facing these problems
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and approaching them and being motivated to deal with them out of courage and fearlessness
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is an alternative to being motivated simply by fear.
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Now, I know we're talking more kind of long-term issues and broader politics, but everything you're
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saying, I can't help but of course think about what's going on in the pandemic right now, where
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all of the news we hear, all of the items we're supposed to focus on are kind of the bad news,
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how things can go awry, how, you know, maybe cases will go up, maybe hospitalizations will go up,
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vaccines won't work, etc., etc. You know, lots of bad news, lots of fear. We found that thankfully
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this virus is not as severe as people thought it may have been when it first cropped up, but we
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still had to kind of ramp up all the potential negatives. I guess fear is, you know, the issue
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of the day. We did a recent episode on the podcast with an infectious disease doctor saying, look,
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we got to stop fearing every aspect of that. You know, in what way have the fears around COVID
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Well, I think, again, you've cited just another example of fear being the main
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technique used to motivate support of a particular public policy. I do think that there's going to be
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a wholesale evaluation of how the governing parties in particular have handled the COVID crisis.
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And I think it's going to reveal some pretty serious flaws in that management.
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I wondered right from the beginning, why on earth the federal government decided to assign
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the management of the response to COVID-19 to the health department bureaucracy?
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And I think the fact that they did it then encouraged the provinces to do exactly the same
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thing because federal money was tied to whether you went along with the federal government's general
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approach. And I don't think bureaucracies are well equipped to handle emergencies. And in fact,
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the emergency measures organizations which exist on the federal level and in every province,
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they were set up in the early days precisely because it was determined that the health care
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bureaucracies themselves could not handle emergencies. And if we get into that investigation,
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it's going to raise some pretty pertinent questions. One of them is, why did the
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health officials, and I'm not criticizing them as individuals, I think they're well-meaning in doing
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what, you know, the best they could do. But why was there no assessment of the impact of these
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health protection measures on the rights and freedoms of Canadians guaranteed by the Charter?
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There's been hundreds of thousands of violations of those rights and freedoms, everything from freedom of
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association, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, etc., etc. And if you put that question
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either directly or indirectly to the health care officials, basically their reply, whether they do it
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directly or not to say, that's not our department. We're just in charge of the health. The rights and
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freedoms aspect, well, that's the Justice Department, the Attorney General of the Human Rights Commission.
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If you ask them, why was there not any assessment done of the economic impacts of health protection
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measures that killed jobs, killed incomes, killed small businesses? Again, the bureaucratic response is,
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well, that's not our department. We're the health people. That's the responsibility of finance or the
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economic development department. This is one of the problems of assigning crisis management to a
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bureaucratic system that departmentalizes the solution to the problem and the dealing with its
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secondary impacts. So I think there's going to be a lot of assessment has to be done after as to
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why did we do it that way and was there not a better way to proceed. The other consequence that I think
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will come out of the evaluating the COVID response is the need for health care reform, that our health
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care system is simply not robust enough to handle both the consequences of COVID-19 and all the other
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health challenges that people have. There's some people have speculated that there will be more deaths on
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the waiting lines than there ultimately than there will have been from COVID-19. And I think what this
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will suggest is that Canada's got to follow the same path that most of the other Western countries,
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including the Scandinavian countries that used to be at the forefront of this towards a mixed public and
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private healthcare system with universal coverage and timely access. All of these things are, I think,
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specific ideas and consequences that will come out of an evaluation of how we have handled the COVID crisis.
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One of the things that I find remarkable is just how little real sort of public debate there's
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actually been about this whole year and a half and what we've gone through and all of those liberties
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violations that you've spoken of. It's just kind of been an assumption that, yes, you know, this has to
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happen. And I guess any voices who want to complain about it either didn't get an opportunity, they didn't
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get much of a public airing. And yet, you know, I'll say for myself, this is definitely the most wildest thing I've
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gone through in my lifetime, you know, other than people who've gone abroad to war or what have you.
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I mean, this is kind of it. And yet we've spent far greater energy debating or, you know, nitpicking
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the nuances of some little tax policy or what have you, that has much smaller consequences on our
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lives than on this, than the prolonged, you know, locking down of society and so forth. I'm just still
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You know, I think that this points to a danger and a weakness in democracy. If people won't engage
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in debate on these major issues, they just get tired of it, or they don't want to be attacked
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for taking a position different than somebody else. That's not, doesn't speak well for the future of
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the democratic process. There's a number of people I meet that just say they're turned off by the whole
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thing. And I always remind them what I call the iron law of democratic politics. If you choose
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to not involve yourself in the politics of your province or your community or your country, you
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will be governed by those who do. So, you know, you don't like what's happening by those who do.
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Staying quiet, not saying anything, not doing anything, opting out is not really a viable,
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Well, Preston, let me get your take then on what people who are thinking about whether or not they
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should run for politics, what you would tell them or what you tell to young people who do come to you
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for advice. Because I hear, and I don't know if this is true. I mean, tell me if you think this
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assessment is correct, that things are more brutal than it's ever been in terms of just digging up
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dirt on people, dirt that, you know, go back into their high school years, what have you, or just
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saying extremely nasty things about people just to sort of shame them out of the political arena and
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so forth. The basic idea that, you know, good people are looking at what's happening now and
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they're saying, yeah, you know what, I'm going to take a pass. I don't want to subject me and my family to this
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and so forth. It's just not worth it. Is it different than than it was?
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Well, that's a very, very good observation. And I've been involved in candidate recruitment ever since
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1968, either at the provincial level or the federal level. And I've never found it as difficult as it is
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today to persuade a competent person with experience and capability to put their, to throw their hat
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into the political arena. A number of years back, the biggest single reason or the number one reason
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why people wouldn't do it is to say they couldn't take the hit on their personal financial situation.
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They weren't in a position to put their assets in a blind trust. They couldn't take the drop in income,
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for which many competent people it would be a drop in income to get into the political arena. They
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couldn't do that. But today, the biggest single reason is exactly the one that you mentioned.
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People say, I will not submit myself. And more often they mention their family. I will not submit
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my family to the abuse that I will be subject to if I get into the political arena. And that's become
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the biggest single reason for not being able to get competent people. Now, there's a way to
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cope with that. You can give people training on how to live with that kind of abuse. I'm a great
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believer in the need for more training for people getting into the political arena. You know, to become
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a barista at Starbucks, you need 15 hours of training to know the difference between a mocha and a latte.
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You can become a lawmaker in the parliament again without one hour training. Is that wise?
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But one of the things you can tell people, I grew up in a political family. So I grew up with
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just knowing the kind of abuse that you took. My father was premier in Alberta for 25 years.
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And so that kind of abuse never bothered me much. I basically would ignore it. And you can teach
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people how to do that. But even that has its downside. One of the worries is you build up a
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shell around yourself that you don't let any kind of message that would hit you emotionally to get
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through. And it's a great defense against abuse in the political arena. But sometimes that shell can
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become so hard that other messages, maybe family messages or messages from constituents that ought
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to get through, don't get through either, because you've just learned to ignore a whole bunch of
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signals. But you put your finger on the biggest single reason why today it's extremely difficult to
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get competent, experienced people to run for public life. What do you think about how the regular
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person, the individual is feeling about politics right now? I know we hear, oh, folks are tuned out
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of politics, but we hear that sort of perennially. That's a common complaint as well. But I don't
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know if it's getting, if people are more tuned out than ever before. I know the sort of team sport
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debate on social media, in some sense, people are more engaged in politics than ever. We call it the
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politicization of everything. What's the general sense that the sort of non-politician person
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is feeling right now with politics? Well, I think the danger in the
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phenomenon that you're referring to there is that there's a tendency today to substitute the discussion
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of political issues and issues in general for actually doing something about them or participating
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in a way that will institute changes. Particularly young people, I noticed that they'll discuss an
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issue, they'll blog about it, they'll tweet about it, they'll network about it, but it's all a
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discussion. When you ask, what did you specifically do to advance a particular position that you hold,
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they almost think that they've done something by just discussing it.
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And so I think that's one of the liabilities of the social media. It gives people a sense that they've
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participated and done something by talking and blogging and tweeting about it, but they haven't
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actually done something. And I try to encourage the political people I talk to in giving speeches or
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even in leading group discussions in small groups. At the end of your talk, whatever it is you're
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talking about, give people three or four things they can do.
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Say, okay, if you go along with what I've just said, or you agree with 80% of it, here's three
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things you could do to advance this, to try to counteract this discussion. In fact, last year,
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I put out a book entitled Do Something, 365 Ways You Can Change. And I ended every chapter with,
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if you agree with half of this stuff, here's something you can do to advance it or counter whatever
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we're talking about. What about people doing things in the civil sphere, in civil society?
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One thing I've been concerned about now is just the erosion of civil society. I feel like now when
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people say, I want something to be done, they just mean, well, I want the government to go and
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do it for me. Stuff that a few decades ago, you go, that's not even the government's place to do it
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for you. It used to be, you know, it's the old cliche that people would sort of build the farm
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or the barn themselves and rally together as a community to do it, and now they don't do it
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anymore, that kind of thing, based on, you know, real sort of community involvement.
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Well, I think that is something that needs to be countered. This idea that if you've got any
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kind of a problem, just the government should deal with it. That's a way to, A, surrender your
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your freedoms. And it's also a way to just add enormous burden of cost because government doing
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anything is not the least expensive way of getting it done. When my father retired, he was 33 years in
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the Alberta legislature, say 25 years as a, as premier. And when he retired, one of the things he
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thought he might do is, is put something around the cabinet in Alberta, used to meet in the cabinet
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room, and there was a, around the top of the ceiling, there was a place to put, carve something
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into it. And he was going to carve into it that when the cabinet was discussing something, they
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should ask the question, is there somebody else out there who could do what we are talking about here
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before we get too committed to it? Interesting. There's an onus on the government's side and the
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political people's side too, to not encourage this, that some action by us, some action by the
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government, some expenditure, taxpayers, money is the answer to everything else. And part of that
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gets around to people understanding that there are certain things governments can do, but there are
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certain things they can't do. And so asking them to do everything is not a wise course of action.
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I shouldn't spend too much time on stories, but there was a young civil servant in Alberta way
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back that was a very up and coming lawyer with the social development department. He ultimately got
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so interested in the work of the social department that he switched careers to actually become a director
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of a major social program. And Pierre Trudeau and Marc Lavon got to know him, and Marc Lavon swiped him
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away and took him to Ottawa, where he became a very senior deputy minister. And before he left Alberta,
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a few of us that knew him put on a little dinner to pay tribute to him and wish him well, but we composed
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a poem for him. And the first verse will be familiar to you, but the second two won't. The verse went,
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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the king's horses and all the king's
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men couldn't put Humpty together again. And what is the moral of this little rhyme, a moral with meaning
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for folks in our time? The moral is this, and its lesson is true, there are certain things that the
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state cannot do. If all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put an egg together again,
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is it not a false hope and illusion of sin to ask civil servants to reconstruct men?
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I love it. We complain today. I have small kids at home, and you know, we say, oh, all the movies
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today are bashing corporations. And no, I didn't realize the original nursery rhyme we're telling
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them is a libertarian nursery rhyme. That's good to know. I didn't really think of that lesson.
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That's right. And this principle applies to the political parties too. I have in this book of
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mine, I have a diagram where I have the, if you want to get into political action, I have the
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sort of a pyramid with the political party, the people will actually get the elected people at the
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top of it. But underneath it, I have what I call the movement. In my case, I'm talking more about the
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conservative movement. But underneath the actual political activists that run for office, there's
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a need for communications people, there's a need for policy development people, there's a need for
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advocacy people, there's need for fundraising people, there's a need for candidate recruitment
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people. There's a whole, in fact, these political parties are only as strong in many instances as the
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movement and the structure beneath them. And these are all other ways of participating in the
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political process without actually running for office. And I often encourage people, if you can't
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run or won't run for office, can you play some role in the movement? Don't just opt out of the
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political arena all together. Changing gears a little bit, the phrase populism, we've been hearing
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it a lot the past few years, the past five years or so. Mid-1980s, you find the Reform Party of Canada
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goes on to be the opposition party. But first you were, it was a fledgling party. You were out there
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getting the word out. It was described as a populist party. What did that phrase populism,
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what did it mean to you throughout your career? Well, it means a lot. And one of the things I
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try to get across to Canadians, and there's a lot of discussion on populism these days,
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particularly in the United States, and I often see Canadian commentators sitting on
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panels or talking to think groups in the US. And many of even our Canadian commentators forget that
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Western Canada has had more experience with populist movements, populist political parties,
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and populist governments than virtually any other area of North America. And there are lessons to be
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learned from that. And this goes a way back. The old progressive party, which was basically a
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farmers party, was a populist party. The first woman that got elected to parliament, Agnes Campbell
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McPhail, did not come up through the traditional party system. She was elected by a populist party.
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The farmers parties that formed governments, not just parties, formed governments briefly in Ontario,
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but certainly in Alberta and Manitoba, they were populist parties. They were bottom-up political
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parties. The Depression generated two populist parties in Western Canada. The CCF, which eventually
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morphed into the NDP, and the Social Credit Park. And then reform in the 1980s, early 1990s, it had a
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populist base as well. So the West has had an enormous amount of experience with populist parties,
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and lessons to be learned. And one of the lessons is that populist parties do have a wild and woolly side,
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and they can be dangerous and get out of control. But if they're properly managed and led, they can
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contribute, they can achieve positive and progressive objectives. And as I say, I mentioned,
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the getting women recognized as persons in Canadian law, which was achieved by the famous Alberta Five.
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Four out of those five women were members of populist parties or populist movements. The CCF, whether you
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agree with it or not, Medicare came out of a populist movement, a populist party.
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So populism is definitely a political phenomenon. Canadians ought to know more about it than virtually
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anybody else. And the challenge is, how do you channel that political energy that populist movements
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represent? How can you channel it into constructive objectives? And one of the analogies we used to use in
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the reform days was from the oil patch. You know, in the oil patch, there's such a thing as a wildcat
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well that's drilled into a formation where you don't know what's down below, so you're not sure
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what you're going to hit. And then there's such a thing as a rogue well where you hit the pocket of
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oil or gas under enormous pressure, and it can blow the drilling platform off the wellhead. It can catch
00:26:15.840
fire. It can be a very dangerous thing. But there's an enormous amount of energy there if you could ever
00:26:20.480
capture it. And one of the ways of harnessing that energy is to drill in a relief well from the side.
00:26:27.200
And the angle has to be right. If it's too shallow, it won't take off enough pressure. If it's too
00:26:32.240
deep, it can turn into a rogue well. But if it's just right, it can take off enough pressure, valves
00:26:36.880
can be installed, and that energy can be harnessed to useful purposes. And in many respects, what reformed
00:26:42.320
was a relief well in our day, there was a very major concern and interest in Western secession.
00:26:50.480
And it was broader than it was today. It went all the way from Winnipeg, which was matted and
00:26:54.400
boiled owl over losing the CF-18 contract to Montreal, to Vancouver Island. We won
00:27:01.280
all but one of the seats on Vancouver Island. And so what reform did was tap into that. We had to
00:27:07.360
identify with anger and with the frustration and the concerns and aspirations that were fueling the
00:27:15.360
rogue well. But then we took the approach, and instead of blowing everything up, why don't we
00:27:19.840
harness this to some objectives? So the West wants in. The West wants some changes. The West wants
00:27:26.480
Senate reform. The West wants balanced budgets. The West wants a greater respect for the energy sector. And
00:27:32.000
we drilled in the leaf well from the side. And I guess I'm rambling on here, but I think the
00:27:42.080
important thing for Canadians is to recognize one part of our country has more experience with
00:27:46.400
populism than virtually any other part of North America. And we should learn the lessons from that
00:27:51.920
and apply it to the populist movements of today. One of the things that I found interesting, you bring
00:27:56.560
up the pressure valve in terms of just, you know, getting some of that pressure out there, but
00:27:59.840
rather ironically, some of the people have been getting their pressure out by doing this vandalizing,
00:28:05.280
damaging, tearing down of statues, including one of the famous five, a statue of Emily Murphy,
00:28:10.800
who fought in that person's case, who fought to have women declared as persons in the 1920s,
00:28:15.040
was vandalized with red paint back the other month in Edmonton. And you look at that and you go,
00:28:19.920
wow, that situation, the tearing down of statues, the defacing of statues,
00:28:24.240
I really descended quickly to go from, you know, Sir John A. Macdonald or it have you to Emily Murphy.
00:28:29.760
What did you make of that episode? I don't know if it's come to a conclusion, there's still periodic
00:28:35.600
church burnings going on, but that series of headlines we had where people were pretty much
00:28:40.080
tearing down everything they could. Well, I think it's scandalous and that what it calls for from the
00:28:46.960
political people and all of the parties is a reaffirmation of the rule of law. The charter,
00:28:54.400
as you know, the preamble of the charter, says that Canada is founded upon principles that recognize
00:29:00.720
the supremacy of God and the rule of law. That's right in the beginning of the charter before it
00:29:06.000
even gets into rights and freedoms as a fundamental principle on which the country is built. And if
00:29:13.840
people don't like the laws or the policies that are supported by particular laws, the remedy is to
00:29:21.040
elect people to the parliament or the legislature that will change them in whatever way you wish,
00:29:26.000
provided they can get majority public support. The way of changing it is not to break the law,
00:29:32.160
which defeats the entire purpose. So I think there has to be the public authorities have to come down
00:29:40.560
hard on. If you just take the criminal code, the criminal code is a Canadian law. There's a section
00:29:47.360
in it that says if you destroy property, including public property, such as toppling statutes or defacing
00:29:54.400
them, it's an indictable offense under the criminal code. There's another section of the criminal code that
00:30:00.240
says if you burn down something, somebody else's property, that is a criminal offense. If you are part
00:30:10.640
of a group that plans a violent act, such as toppling down a statue or burning a church, you can be charged
00:30:18.080
under the criminal code with conspiracy to commit an indictable offense. If someone should happen to lose
00:30:23.600
their life in one of those set fires, you could be charged under the criminal code with second-degree
00:30:31.040
murder. These are laws, they're on the statute books, and the obligation is for the authorities
00:30:40.160
to enforce it. And one of the regrettable things that Mr. Trudeau did when there was this illegal
00:30:47.120
blockading of rail lines, for example, a short while ago, the federal government did nothing,
00:30:52.320
did not enforce the law. And in response to these church burnings, one of the Prime Minister's
00:30:58.400
advisors said this was regrettable but understandable. Well, not just understandable, it's illegal
00:31:06.480
calling forth enforcement by the authorities. So that's going to be a question, I think, in the
00:31:12.720
federal election. When the candidate knocks on the door of the voters seeking their support,
00:31:18.640
a fair number of people are going to ask, what is the position of yourself and your party on affirming
00:31:24.080
the rule of law? And what specifically do you propose in order to do that?
00:31:29.360
And yet there's an incredible divisiveness around this in Canada, because there are many people who
00:31:33.360
say what you've said, we've got to reaffirm the rule of law, why are people not being charged by this?
00:31:37.360
But there is a whole other cohort of individuals who were content to see this and wanted to see more
00:31:42.400
such incidents. Yeah, burn it all down. I believe there's one lady at a civil liberties association
00:31:47.680
who, I guess, lost her job or resigned or what have you, because she was basically goading this
00:31:52.320
on and somewhat applauding all of this. And there are, I think, a whole lot of people who would be
00:31:55.760
incredibly indignant if people did face legal consequences for doing this stuff.
00:32:00.800
Well, I think the only thing you can do there is point out to people, if you don't like the law,
00:32:04.400
there are ways of registering your protest, but it's not to break the law. It's to elect people
00:32:11.840
that will change whatever it is you find objectionable in the current law and get it changed,
00:32:18.400
if you can carry the judgment of a majority of Canadians. And I don't know why these people that
00:32:25.600
break the law, in order to try and get changed, don't see that that's a two-edged sword. So you get
00:32:32.080
the change you want, and somebody else objects to your law. And so what do they do? They go and
00:32:36.880
break that law. And on what grounds can you protest that? That's exactly what you said should be done
00:32:42.640
if you don't like a law. They just don't happen to like your law. So they're going to break that.
00:32:46.560
It's a two-edged sword that has no good consequences for anybody that wants either the status quo or
00:32:54.160
constructive change. Now, of course, the whole reason all of this flared up in the first place,
00:32:59.280
conversations around the history of residential schools, around reconciliation, around Canada's
00:33:04.320
first peoples. Preston, what should be done for this issue on this file for those first peoples out
00:33:12.240
there who want more prosperity, more success, and so on, and sharing in the spoils?
00:33:17.280
Well, I think this, again, is another issue that's got to be near the top as we
00:33:22.560
approach a federal election. It's not just the residential school issue. It's the broader issue
00:33:30.080
of the well-being of Canada's aboriginal peoples. And I think part of the root of the problem goes
00:33:38.640
away back to the Indian Act itself. The Indian Act of 1876 was first passed by Canada's first liberal
00:33:48.800
government, first liberal federal government, Alexander Mackenzie's government, 1876.
00:33:54.240
It had a philosophy around it, which you can understand by the standards of the 19th century.
00:34:05.040
The actual original Indian Act incorporated two previous statutes that had been passed by the
00:34:12.640
legislature of upper and lower Canada with the approval of the British government.
00:34:18.480
One of those acts was called the Gradual Civilization Act. And you even get from the
00:34:25.360
language, you can see what they were trying to do. You'd encountered these people with a hunting and
00:34:29.840
gathering culture. And the people of Canada, the new people and the new governments were going to
00:34:38.320
use, and they use the word, civilize them, or going to westernize them, and even Christianize them.
00:34:44.880
And it was felt this was a good thing to do. They thought they were doing a good thing. It was a
00:34:48.560
better alternative than Americans declaring war on the aboriginal people, which was the American
00:34:55.360
solution. But that philosophy of, I think, permeates the Indian Act and its administration by
00:35:05.520
the governments, not just by what the churches did in the residential school question. And so,
00:35:12.320
if there's a solution, it's to move beyond the Indian Act. I think we need to do away with the
00:35:19.040
Indian Act and replace it with something else. And with something else that's derived this time from
00:35:24.160
very intensive consultation with aboriginal people themselves. There was no consultation with aboriginal
00:35:29.600
people at all on either the original Indian Act or a number of other versions of it. When I was in the
00:35:35.280
parliament on one occasion, I can't remember whether it was in committee or in the chamber proper,
00:35:41.280
but I asked the question, if the Indian Act did not exist today, is there anyone in this chamber who would
00:35:48.080
stand up and move its adoption? And there's dead silence on all sides. Nobody was proud of it. So
00:35:57.600
I do think that's part of the, what's the, if you replace the Indian Act, what do you replace it with?
00:36:03.280
What do aboriginal people themselves want to replace it with? But what would be something that the rest of
00:36:08.720
Canadians would support? The other big aspect of this, Anthony, and the way you touched on it, is that
00:36:14.800
the biggest tragedy for aboriginal people is the state of poverty among so many aboriginal people.
00:36:20.560
Right. And we have tried to fix poverty, not just with aboriginals, with others, by
00:36:26.080
one mechanism for the last 80 years, namely the redistribution of income through progressive taxation,
00:36:35.120
taxing the higher income people, taking the money and giving it to people that are
00:36:40.080
suffering from poverty and underdevelopment. And that has not worked very well. And it has not worked
00:36:47.200
particularly in relation to aboriginal people. Some reserves have done well, but others have not.
00:36:53.840
So what's the alternative to that? And the alternative that I've advocated for years, even when I was in the
00:36:59.760
private sector as a consultant, is a redistribution of the tools of wealth creation.
00:37:04.640
That aboriginal people need to be given the tools of wealth creation, not just
00:37:10.480
redistributed income, access to markets, access to capital, micro-capital, not just macro-capital,
00:37:18.320
access to technology, access to connections with other economic actors that they can build upon.
00:37:25.760
There's a whole screed of literature on this redistribution of the tools of wealth creation as
00:37:30.320
distinct for the redistribution of income. And it seems to me that that's an approach that
00:37:36.080
eventually has to be taken to get aboriginal people out of the poverty, which is the distinguishing
00:37:42.320
characteristic of so many of the reserves. Let's move on to western alienation right now. Just how
00:37:47.840
raw is it? What is the sense on the ground right now? I know we've had periods a couple decades ago when
00:37:54.480
it's been extremely raw. I hear some people say though it's almost worse than it was back then.
00:37:59.680
Well it certainly is a factor and I worry that particularly in central Canada there's no
00:38:06.080
awareness of this about how serious it is. Right now the most intense expressions of
00:38:15.920
western alienation in the form of people saying they would seriously consider secession are in
00:38:21.360
southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan and the rural areas. But there's large numbers of people
00:38:28.000
people that are prepared to consider secession if the west's major concerns and aspirations are not
00:38:37.040
dealt with. And these concerns and aspirations have been articulated ad nauseam but getting no
00:38:45.840
reaction, particularly from the federal government. And some of the major ones is the west wants
00:38:51.280
unobstructed transportation corridors to the Pacific and the Atlantic and the Arctic so you can move
00:38:57.520
resources and goods from interior provinces to tidewater and world markets. And the fact that you can't
00:39:05.120
build a transcontinental, transprovincial, you couldn't build a rail line today, you couldn't
00:39:12.160
but you can't build a pipeline, you'd have trouble building an electricity transmission line. I heard of a meeting
00:39:18.080
where one of the Canadian companies, actually TransCanada Pipeline was trying to raise money
00:39:24.080
somewhere in the US and this is just hearsay so I don't know if it's how true it was but apparently
00:39:29.040
some American investor got up and mocked the name. TransCanada Pipeline, TransMountain Pipeline.
00:39:36.240
You Canadians can't trans anything. You can't build across three or four provinces. The Chinese
00:39:42.560
are building a silver highway across 10 countries. You guys can't even build something across your own
00:39:48.720
country. So that's something that simply has to be addressed. And again, I think when the candidates
00:39:54.320
knock on the doors at the federal election in Western Canada, they're going to get a lot of
00:39:58.880
people are going to say, are you or are you not committed to using the federal power to create
00:40:04.480
unobstructed transportation corridors from the interior to tidewater? And if you aren't committed to that,
00:40:11.440
and you don't know how to do it or won't do it, you're not going to get our support. And then there's
00:40:18.240
other issues. The need to recognize the resource sectors, fisheries, agriculture, mining, energy,
00:40:28.800
agriculture as foundational building blocks of the Canadian economy, not relics from the past,
00:40:35.680
but fundamentally important to the country, including the energy sector. There's a desire
00:40:41.200
to see that recognized. There's a lot of Western Canadians cannot understand the foolishness of a
00:40:47.920
federal government that here you have a country, Canada, that has the second or third largest petroleum
00:40:54.720
resources in the globe. And you have a demand situation where the world is still using 100
00:41:05.280
million barrels, almost 100 million barrels of oil a day. And the choice is whether that oil is going
00:41:11.200
to be produced by people that are environmentally responsible and sensitive and sensitive to human
00:41:16.000
rights, or whether you're going to get it from other sources. And the fact that Canada, the federal
00:41:20.000
government turns its back on that industry, turns its back on that resort, is just considered
00:41:25.920
inexplicable. And so you're going to get again asked at the door, are you or are you not committed
00:41:32.480
to recognizing and supporting the resource sectors of this country as fundamental building blocks
00:41:39.360
of the country? And if the federal party can say yes, and demonstrate how they're going to do it,
00:41:44.400
they're going to do better than ones that ignore that. And there's a list of these concerns and
00:41:48.720
aspirations that if they're not met, they will fuel the secessionist argument. If they are met,
00:41:56.480
that these can be met within Confederation, then that will abate.
00:42:01.200
But aren't we at the point where they have not been met for so long? This is why we're seeing
00:42:06.320
things like the Maverick Party materialize. I mean, we remember that old liberal slogan,
00:42:10.080
the liberal saying years ago, you know, screw the West, we'll take the rest. And it seems like that
00:42:15.040
calculus in the liberal war room is playing out right now. I mean, they know that they don't get
00:42:19.440
many Alberta seats, and it seems like they don't really care.
00:42:22.240
But they'll have to then decide how are they going to handle a full-blown Western secession movement,
00:42:28.400
and it'll be different than the Quebec movement. And I was in the parliament when my worst night in
00:42:35.040
parliament was the night of that secession referendum in Quebec, where the country came within a hair of
00:42:42.160
actually cracking up. But the liberals have no idea what they will face if there's a full-blown
00:42:48.720
secession movement in the West. The economic arguments that your independent country will
00:42:53.760
not be economically viable, which was one of the main arguments used against Quebec, cannot be used
00:42:58.880
against the West, because you can't make that argument. It doesn't hold true. So the liberals can
00:43:04.080
ignore and ignore and ignore. But the result could be faced with a full-blown secession crisis. And how
00:43:11.520
would the next liberal prime minister like to go down as the prime minister that presided over the
00:43:16.800
crack-up of the country? Talk about a national disgrace, that that would be the ultimate disgrace.
00:43:24.720
Preston, we began our conversation talking about divisiveness, fear, obviously a lack of unity.
00:43:31.520
After everything we've talked about, Alberta, the other issues, are you an optimist that we're going to
00:43:36.800
find some unity? Or are you concerned that we've got further splits to go?
00:43:41.520
Well, you know, you've heard this old joke about the definition of a Canadian optimist is somebody
00:43:46.480
that thinks things could be worse. I'm optimistic and that's it. No, I believe, and I've always
00:43:55.040
believed this, I think none of these problems, the ones we've talked about, health care reform,
00:43:59.760
dealing with the bureaucracy, the finance of the federal government, the aboriginal well-being. I
00:44:07.520
don't think any of them are insoluble problems. But they do require a will on the part of political
00:44:14.720
people to address them, to address them in new ways, not just keep doing what we've done in the past.
00:44:20.080
And the need for issue campaigns and advocacy campaigns to get public support for particular
00:44:24.960
solutions. So I think these things can still be done, but they have to be attended to. And I would
00:44:33.920
say, when I say these have to be attended to, I'm talking about something more than discussion.
00:44:39.040
I'm all for discussion. You and I aren't having a discussion. But at the end of the day, I'd say to
00:44:44.240
people that are listening to this podcast, if you are exercised about any of these issues,
00:44:51.280
try to figure out one or two things that you can actually do. And with the federal election coming
00:44:58.000
up, one of the small things that a voter can do is you have a list, maybe it's a very short list,
00:45:04.000
of when that candidate, no matter what party, any party, knocks on your door. You say,
00:45:11.040
here's something, I want to know what your commitment is. And you should understand that
00:45:17.280
my support for you and my opposition to you will depend on what you are committed to do on this
00:45:23.280
file or on this issue. Preston Manning, thank you so much for your insights today. It's been a great
00:45:27.920
conversation. Well, thank you. I enjoyed it. Full Comment is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony
00:45:33.760
Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive
00:45:39.680
producer. You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and we're now on Amazon
00:45:45.600
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00:45:50.320
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