John Bolton - Bruce Pardy - A Strong Ontario Voice For An Independent Alberta

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel.

00:00:06.100 Terrific to have you here again today.

00:00:08.560 Thank you very much for joining me on the channel.

00:00:11.200 And today I've got a couple of guests with me.

00:00:13.140 We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to get right to it.

00:00:16.200 My good friend, Jason Levine, joining me from The Levine Show.

00:00:20.140 Jason, thanks so much for being here.

00:00:22.340 John, always a pleasure to come on and thanks for recording with me

00:00:26.220 because we're very excited to bring some new tours to Alberta.

00:00:30.000 Yeah, and that's the guy you're seeing on the screen with you, Bruce Party.

00:00:33.240 I'd like to welcome Bruce back to the channel.

00:00:35.040 Last time I spoke with you, Bruce, was prior to the telethon a month or so ago.

00:00:39.500 And it's good to see you once again.

00:00:42.200 A lot to talk about here, as well as a book that you've got.

00:00:45.040 I want to get into that quickly.

00:00:46.240 But I'm just wondering, are you going to eventually move out to Alberta?

00:00:50.480 You spend a lot of time here, Bruce.

00:00:53.220 Jason was asking me the same question.

00:00:55.280 And the answer is, hopefully, yes.

00:00:56.980 I've been poking around.

00:00:58.480 I haven't done it yet.

00:01:00.000 uh it's very interesting times as you are you you know better than i do in alberta and uh there's a

00:01:06.940 lot of a lot of of things to come so i hopefully the answer is yes but i haven't done it yet

00:01:12.260 great stuff you know i was putting together a thumbnail for this prior to starting up this

00:01:16.880 video and the way i titled it was a bruce party a strong ontario voice for an independent alberta

00:01:23.820 i think that's interesting because you certainly are a very strong voice for this you're going to

00:01:28.440 be on a tour basically with Jason. He's got you very busy. Paul and Jason have very busy right

00:01:33.660 from the 13th all the way through the 19th of September. And we'll get into that in just a

00:01:38.500 moment. Why are you so interested in this? Why do you have the stand you have on Alberta when it

00:01:43.800 comes to independence, Bruce, just off the top? Because Alberta, more than any other place in

00:01:49.080 this country, has the sense that Canada is not working well, that the country is unraveling.

00:01:55.040 Its status quo is unacceptable, and there's more potential in Alberta to do something

00:02:00.460 about that than any other place, and I'm hoping that by saving itself, Alberta could

00:02:07.660 inadvertently save the country, even by breaking it apart.

00:02:12.500 What we require in this country is disruption, because the status quo, which is very solid

00:02:18.300 and reinforced by a whole lot of powerful interests, it's very difficult to shake, and

00:02:23.980 only something in the in the nature of a political earthquake could could could shake things up and

00:02:30.780 and that earthquake is is alberta independence you know i want to come back around i have a question

00:02:36.300 to end this so if i don't ask the question remind me at the end because i typed it on my screen here

00:02:40.380 i have a question for you right at the end of this interview jason you keep bringing bruce back here

00:02:44.940 he's been very well received i know i was at one of your events with dennis kalma and matthew

00:02:50.140 rally talking about a constitution. Actually, Bruce has written a book, A Constitution for an

00:02:55.120 Independent Alberta, called Articles of Freedom. I'll ask Bruce about that in just a moment. There

00:02:59.360 it is right there. We'll ask him about that in just a moment. But he has been very well received.

00:03:04.600 You were talking constitution, talking about different types of constitutions.

00:03:09.100 Bruce's idea for a constitution, very popular, Jason. It is very popular. And one of the good

00:03:15.020 things about Bruce is he's not in Alberta. He's not in the echo chambers. He's not here just

00:03:19.780 seeing one side or you know doing the fight in the trenches he's seeing it from a different view

00:03:24.900 and i think that's what gives a lot of value to his perspective is he's seeing it from the outside

00:03:29.380 and he also sees it as an opportunity as he said there for canada itself to get repaired and being

00:03:35.300 from ontario he's pretty close to the power itself he sees how ontario runs he sees how quebec runs

00:03:41.440 and he's he's using his lens on alberta's sovereignty as a way to kind of maybe fix

00:03:46.460 canada and that's also why stockwell day is a great voice to be adding to this conversation

00:03:50.960 he's from bc so now we have two gentlemen who are going to come together to alberta to have

00:03:55.460 some conversations from their perspective from the outside looking in yeah we'll get around to

00:04:00.600 that in the tour in just a moment because it is you got a couple of different things going on here

00:04:04.780 hold up your book again uh would you bruce i'd appreciate that we'll put a link below uh it's

00:04:09.560 available on amazon right now i'm wondering you know it looks rather thick but i know your

00:04:14.700 constitution is it like 200 pages of government leave me alone is that what it says it's it's

00:04:22.740 actually it's actually quite thin you know I I think and I think um it's it's important to be

00:04:29.860 concise when you're drafting a constitution if it goes on and on and on the likelihood is you've got

00:04:34.500 all kinds of detailed rules about too many things a constitution really should be a set of principles

00:04:40.400 and our architecture that make it impossible for any future government to dishonor part of the

00:04:47.000 problem with the canadian constitution is that we rely on the honor of the people who are in power

00:04:51.480 to to to comply with what we think are the ideas within it and if your constitution

00:04:58.220 is dependent upon the honor of the people with power then the the the history shows

00:05:06.480 that your constitution doesn't work and what one of the purposes of the of the sessions that we're

00:05:12.900 going to do that jason and paula have organized that these workshops is to explore why it is

00:05:19.640 that the canadian constitution does not work what kinds of things need to be changed what kinds of

00:05:26.040 things could be changed so that you have a constitution that no government could possibly

00:05:31.180 dishonor once you've got that kind of idea then you've you've got something to work with

00:05:36.000 I apologize. My cat here is meowing at me. He wants to jump up on my lap. You're probably

00:05:40.260 hearing him in the background. And your idea for the Constitution was very popular. A lot of people

00:05:45.760 want to see less government in their lives. I know Dennis Calma was talking more of a United

00:05:50.760 States type Constitution. Matthew Rowley, more of the Constitution that we have right now here

00:05:55.800 in the country. When you talk about, I'm going to put the graphic up in post here. Jason was nice

00:06:01.060 is enough to send this to me, Bruce Party Book Tour and Workshops. When you talk about workshops,

00:06:07.160 Jason, what are you talking about here? What will people be able to do if they go out to your

00:06:10.680 events in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Edmonton, and Calgary? Well, one of the takeaways

00:06:16.380 that we had from the last time Bruce was out here with Matt Rowley and Dennis Kelma was,

00:06:21.100 it's very interesting. The gut instinct for many Albertans was, I like what Bruce is saying,

00:06:25.540 but the very next question was, but how does it work? And I want to get some more information

00:06:29.580 about it. Now, Bruce did publish a bit of an article, which was a very good overview of what

00:06:35.820 he has in mind. But people were looking for a little bit more detail and basically to expand

00:06:41.380 on that. So his book does a good job at that. But if you come to the workshop, we're going to be

00:06:45.860 able to do an interactive Q&A. Everybody's going to be sharing their idea. It's going to be a table

00:06:50.800 format where you're at a table working in small groups, picking it apart, trying to find where

00:06:55.540 the holes are, and quite frankly, where the holes in your understanding is. And we're going to do

00:06:59.480 our best to try and fill those holes. If you want to go to any of the events that Jason's putting on

00:07:04.000 thelevineshow.com forward slash events, thelevineshow.com forward slash events, you'll be

00:07:10.080 able to pick up. If you go to the event and you sign up 60 bucks, you'll get a copy of Bruce's

00:07:14.920 book. And you'll also get a copy of this one. I know the guy who wrote this, this is your book,

00:07:19.320 Jason. This has been very well received as well. I'll put a link in Amazon below if you want to

00:07:23.600 pick it up as well. But you wrote this book. It's nice to have two authors here today. You will be

00:07:29.120 in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Edmonton, and Calgary, and I'll put that graphic back up

00:07:33.920 on the screen right now. What do you hope to accomplish, Bruce, by talking to people about

00:07:38.200 this? Just opening up a conversation, there's been discussion about a constitution through

00:07:42.680 this process we've been going through. Many of us have said the real constitutional discussion

00:07:47.460 will happen after the second referendum question, which we're going to have in the spring.

00:07:52.100 yes yes right it's a chance to to talk with people and get them to think about why it is

00:08:01.560 the canadian constitution hasn't worked conceptually i mean it's a bit like a bit of a brain teaser

00:08:06.880 like okay so you have this document and it's supposed to be the supreme law of the country

00:08:11.120 and it says these certain things for example it's full of rights the charter of rights is full of

00:08:16.880 rights it says for example that everyone has the right to free speech and yet we don't and you can

00:08:25.080 tell we don't because of the laws we have in place i mean you have to send a tax return to the

00:08:32.200 government every year indicating how much income you made that's compelled speech you have to speak

00:08:37.820 to the government and tell them things that's compelled speech now everybody says well but

00:08:41.220 that's that's reasonable that's not the that's not the point the point is that's not what the

00:08:46.460 charter says so why is it that the statements that are clearly made in the document are not a

00:08:52.180 reflection of reality and how do you get to make a constitution where what it says is actually what

00:08:59.100 is and to do that what does it have to say in other words there's an awful lot of of of thinking

00:09:06.040 to do here conceptualization there's there's brain work to do why is it that we are in the

00:09:12.860 situation that we're in constitutionally and what would have to change and how could you change it

00:09:18.720 so that the society that you end up with the new country you're going to have

00:09:23.480 does in fact operate differently is in fact a genuinely free country on the ground in people's

00:09:31.580 lives how do we craft the constitution to do that when you were out talking with matt rowley and

00:09:38.340 dennis kalma certainly heard really different views of the constitution do you think i i know

00:09:45.620 you've got a you know now got a book on this but do you think it will eventually come out to be a

00:09:49.760 little bit of everything well it might but the danger with a little bit of everything is that

00:09:55.840 if you have that then you don't really have a model you have a a patchwork of all kinds of

00:10:07.280 ideas and ideas are great and they're not all incompatible but a constitution ideally should be

00:10:14.160 a set of principles that are consistent with each other the document has to be in internally

00:10:20.640 coherent it has to establish an architecture and that architecture is for the purpose

00:10:26.240 of making sure that no government is able to dishonor the ideas within it and if all

00:10:32.480 you have is a patchwork of ideas here's the inclination that a lot of people have about

00:10:36.560 constitutions they think if we just write down the values that we want well it's on the document and

00:10:44.080 therefore it will be done and that's not the case at all if you look at constitutions around the

00:10:50.240 world let's look at china for example the chinese constitution clearly says in black and white

00:10:57.600 that the power in the country shall be held by the people

00:11:01.280 and everybody knows that's not true so it's not it's not enough just to write down the ideas that

00:11:10.420 you want to see you've got to build it in an architectural way so that no government can get

00:11:15.480 around them are you um are you strong Reagan said uh the government that is best governs least

00:11:21.300 did you believe that is that sort of the basis of what you're talking about here absolutely

00:11:26.320 absolutely absolutely but on the other hand you do need a state for some minimal purposes

00:11:33.060 because otherwise we could just do away with one altogether we could just live in anarchy but

00:11:36.680 anarchy doesn't work right because you don't have borders you don't have police you don't have

00:11:41.220 peace you want a state to keep the peace and protect the country but you don't want it doing

00:11:47.760 all the millions of things that it does right now interfering in people's lives

00:11:52.200 Jason, you're pretty well connected.

00:11:55.360 You know Bruce.

00:11:56.480 He keeps coming out here.

00:11:57.620 I'm hoping he'll eventually move in with you and Paula, with the kids.

00:12:03.460 One more kid.

00:12:06.720 One more big kid.

00:12:08.440 You do know Stockwell Day.

00:12:09.700 I met Stockwell actually back in Red Deer.

00:12:11.960 I think it was in the springtime when I was up there for your Bearing Witness event.

00:12:16.260 I met him, talked to him for a little bit.

00:12:18.240 And you've got Stockwell out as part of the tour that Bruce is on with the book, with you.

00:12:24.360 He's going to be debating Stockwell coming up in Edmonton, Thursday, September 17th, in Calgary, Friday, September 18th.

00:12:32.140 Full schedule for Bruce.

00:12:33.780 Tell me about this.

00:12:35.680 Well, I want to honor what he says, and I'm supposed to call him Stock at this point.

00:12:39.300 So Stock is going to be coming back out.

00:12:40.880 You're like that, right?

00:12:42.900 He came out to one of my events and did a live presentation there.

00:12:46.780 He's been on the show a few times, and we did a great interview with him.

00:12:49.680 And if you follow his ex, he's just on fire.

00:12:52.000 Like, he's doing some great work out there, calling out the power

00:12:55.020 and making sure that people understand that we need to have some change.

00:12:58.440 But on one particular issue, which is the Alberta independence,

00:13:02.260 he has spoken publicly that he doesn't think Alberta will be able to do it painlessly,

00:13:06.980 and it will take an entire generation to do it.

00:13:09.080 So he's against making that move.

00:13:11.560 And I think it's fantastic that he's agreed to come out.

00:13:14.400 It started off as one date.

00:13:15.620 I got him to do two.

00:13:17.460 He's modified his schedule a little bit to make that happen.

00:13:20.060 And I'm really looking forward to these two gentlemen.

00:13:22.420 And I do want to kind of highlight a little bit to your audience that this format is going to be simply be one question.

00:13:27.580 And we're going to do like chess clocks.

00:13:29.840 They're going to have 30 minutes each.

00:13:31.120 They can use up as much time as they want.

00:13:32.700 And it's going to be a back and forth after the question is asked.

00:13:35.260 Should Canada, should Alberta remain in Canada?

00:13:38.340 So it'll be a very good conversation, I believe.

00:13:41.180 Very organic.

00:13:42.080 And they're going to work off each other.

00:13:44.000 And it's not going to be like you only have one minute to respond and 30 seconds to respond to that.

00:13:48.560 And then we're going to have a Q&A portion where the audience can write down their questions and both gentlemen will tackle it.

00:13:54.100 But I do thank Stock for saying yes to come out, have this conversation, because I think it's really important to have two sides to the conversation in order for people to get a better idea.

00:14:02.600 And I do welcome anybody, whether you're decided or undecided, from either side to come out and check this particular event out.

00:14:09.740 Yeah. I'm wondering, Bruce, you do know what Stockwell did. He thinks on a lot of issues. He certainly was in government. Is he the status quo? Do you think he can change his mind?

00:14:20.460 well i don't know if i can change his mind but one of the reasons that i i'm looking forward

00:14:26.460 to talking with him is is is jason alludes to on so many issues stockwell gets it like he makes a

00:14:34.860 lot of sense on so many things and it's on on this one particular thing that that that he's not signed

00:14:42.720 on and so that to me doesn't make sense and i i want to understand why he understands so many

00:14:49.740 issues so well he's one he's one of the former politicians that i actually respect he's reasonable

00:14:57.980 he's a reasonable guy he's perceptive he's intelligent he he understands an awful lot

00:15:03.540 of contentious issues in the right way but on this no so i i'd like to explore that yeah you

00:15:10.500 know it's on it's almost um unusual now to have a reasonable discussion about things so it's good

00:15:15.120 that you can go out and do something like this.

00:15:17.200 Again, if you want tickets, thelevineshow.com forward slash events,

00:15:21.720 and you can get all the information there.

00:15:23.720 So I won't hold you much longer.

00:15:25.180 I want you to quickly tell me about your books before we leave.

00:15:28.220 But I do have a question, and I mentioned it at the beginning of this.

00:15:31.900 As somebody from Ontario, do you have any advice for the last five weeks

00:15:36.180 of this campaign for people here, Bruce?

00:15:38.360 What would you say to people right now?

00:15:40.840 uh the you should expect the powers that be in this country to to do everything they can to

00:15:49.660 dissuade you from from deciding your own path because the powers that be are threatened by

00:15:57.040 what it is you're thinking about doing every time an established politician whether they're from

00:16:02.000 alberta or or from somewhere else in the country whether they're federal or provincial

00:16:06.880 comes out and says, you know, you really can't do this. You really shouldn't do it. You're

00:16:12.360 betraying your country. It's going to be unstable. All of those things, those are exactly the people

00:16:18.140 you should expect to object to this because you are threatening the established order of things

00:16:24.360 that gives them status. So they have an invested self-interest in making sure that this does not

00:16:29.500 happen. It is in your interest to do this. Don't listen to them. You know, I've got a graphic I

00:16:34.860 put together quite some time ago, and it's got a picture of Jason Kenney, Thomas Lukasik, Mark

00:16:39.140 Carney, Pierre Polyev, unfortunately, Danielle Smith on there, and it all goes to the middle,

00:16:45.240 and it says, the same. That's what it says in the middle. They're all the same. Tell me just

00:16:51.020 quickly a little bit about your book, and then we'll get Jason to kind of wrap up with a description

00:16:55.320 of his book and what he wants to tell you about these events. Your book, Articles of Freedom,

00:17:00.020 A Constitution for an Independent Alberta. What can people get from that if they read it?

00:17:03.920 well okay so it it it includes a very brief explanation for me as to why i think alberta

00:17:11.940 needs a different kind of constitution it won't do to take the canadian one and fiddle with it

00:17:16.480 at the margins it is flawed and i try to explain why it's flawed then i've included a complete

00:17:23.300 draft of what i would like to see as the constitution of alberta and then we go into

00:17:28.800 annotations as in look here's the first article here's why here's the explanation what does it

00:17:34.260 mean what does it say where does it come from and then at the back I've got some FAQs some

00:17:41.680 questions that we gathered up from the sessions that we had with Matthew Rowley and Dennis Kalma

00:17:46.800 that the Jason and Paula organized people were asking great questions and I took some of those

00:17:52.140 and gave the answers and so what you'll get in this fairly small package is I hope a clear picture

00:17:57.900 of a possible constitution that would solve all Alberta's problems

00:18:03.500 by making it an actually free country.

00:18:06.480 Terrific. And Jason, this is your book, Well Received.

00:18:09.580 What can people get out of this?

00:18:11.060 Oh, Canada, what have you done?

00:18:13.940 Well, it's certainly not a love story.

00:18:15.920 So if that's what you're looking for, this is not the book for you.

00:18:18.640 But if you want to understand how we got to where we are

00:18:21.540 with the current infrastructure and the way the foundation of Alberta

00:18:25.200 was created, then this is the book for you.

00:18:27.080 there's over 100 years of history there there's over 100 different statutes court decisions

00:18:32.400 and conversations with Ottawa that Alberta's had that has led to where we are there's sources for

00:18:39.220 everything and I break down in about a page or less maybe two pages or less each one of these

00:18:45.020 so it's just over 100 pages as well but if you want a chronological order of how we got to this

00:18:50.840 point in the history of Alberta this will be the book for you because it actually starts before

00:18:54.780 even Alberta was Alberta. But if you don't mind, John, I actually want to make a couple of comments

00:18:58.640 on Bruce's book, because I have read it, and then maybe he'll add a couple more about mine,

00:19:02.360 because an outside perspective usually helps as well. Bruce's book is very digestible. You can

00:19:07.920 absolutely read it from cover to cover. You're going to learn a lot. The only challenge I think

00:19:12.140 you're going to have is with your neck, because you're going to be nodding a lot as you're going

00:19:15.160 through this, trying to go, wait a minute, why don't we do this already? How come we haven't done

00:19:19.360 that? And I'm glad that he's bringing this up. I really like the annotations portion of it,

00:19:24.500 because it starts to break down

00:19:25.680 because the first part is a little bit legal

00:19:27.540 because it's the Constitution itself as a draft,

00:19:30.080 but then there's a good chunk of the book

00:19:31.660 that breaks it down even further.

00:19:33.320 And I'm glad he included the FAQs

00:19:35.280 because there was a lot of questions

00:19:36.420 that were coming up during those presentations he did.

00:19:39.640 And the workshop will dive even deeper

00:19:41.800 into like the FAQs and annotations,

00:19:44.260 but it's a very digestible book.

00:19:46.200 Bruce, you better have a good critique of this one

00:19:48.080 after what he just said.

00:19:49.100 What do you think of this book?

00:19:50.660 Well, the thing is, I do.

00:19:52.620 jason showed me you know a draft it's a terrific um compilation of all kinds of things that have

00:20:00.260 happened that has happened to alberta through the years at the hands of the federal government

00:20:04.800 both things that the federal government prevented alberta from doing or the things the federal

00:20:09.580 government allowed alberta to do out of the graciousness of its heart or the things that

00:20:14.120 the courts said that alberta could or couldn't do it's it's and many people will have heard of some

00:20:19.560 of these things along the way that people might have brought up during debates and so on but

00:20:23.020 here it is all in a package it's very digestible as as jason said they're all dealt with in a in

00:20:29.160 a page or two you can get the idea and then move on to the next one it's a terrific chronology and

00:20:34.100 history of the way alberta has been mistreated in confederation fantastic well listen the events are

00:20:40.920 uh for the bruce party book tour and workshops along with jason and his book as well uh sunday

00:20:46.900 September 13th, and then we run in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat on the 14th, Red Deer on the 15th,

00:20:54.380 Wednesday the 16th in Edmonton, and then the 19th in Calgary. And the debates with Stockwell Day

00:20:59.360 are coming up on the 17th and 18th. Go to thelevineshow.com forward slash events. Jason,

00:21:05.420 thanks for putting these events together. I mean, I've been to a number of them.

00:21:09.280 They're really enjoyable. People really like them and people want to get involved. So this

00:21:13.500 is a great opportunity. So thanks for doing this. We really appreciate it.

00:21:16.900 It's my pleasure. And it's basically the only way we can have date nights now, my wife and I, as we schedule these, we're there together, we can spend some time. But I really think it's important for Albertans to come and check these out. You can hear a different perspective with Stockwell Day. And you also can deep dive into what Bruce is working on. So you can understand it. It's not going to be rubber stamped as our constitution. There's going to be a whole conversation around that. But it's a great thing to start thinking about. Can we radically change the constitution? And Bruce has come up with a great idea.

00:21:43.800 Yeah, Bruce, thank you very much for coming out here once again. Thanks for being a strong voice for Alberta independence. We appreciate it. Looking forward to seeing you at the events in Calgary. I'll be at both of them. Thank you very much for this.

00:21:56.340 Oh, thank you, John. Thanks for having me. And it's always great to be in Alberta.

00:21:59.580 Okay. And that's Jason Levine, Bruce Pardee. Again, thelevineshow.com forward slash events. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. Ring the bell for notifications. I will see you in the next one.

00:22:13.800 You

John Bolton - September 08, 2026

Bruce Pardy - A Strong Ontario Voice For An Independent Alberta

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