00:00:00.000Well, William, I know that the viewers have been complaining about how your hair always looks bad on camera.
00:00:03.840So I think it was nice of you to put a little effort in this morning.
00:00:07.120Well, I would take issue with always complaining, considering I've really only been in camera once in the entire time.
00:00:14.520But I want to look good for our True North supporters and True North people who like our programming.
00:00:21.020That's not true. You were a pretty regular during the Alberta election, if I remember correctly, and on our election night show.
00:00:28.380Well, that's true. We, you know, as an Albertan, I'm always excited when we cover Alberta topics.
00:00:36.000A real strength that we have as an organization is we have dedicated and wonderful journalists like you and Isaac covering Alberta and its important issues.
00:00:45.220It's the second time you've lied on the show. You're talking about how much you admire us and that you only did your hair the one time.
00:02:55.320So, obviously, there's a lot of things within Bill 20.
00:02:58.200But when I first read it, one of the things that stood out to me was the introduction of political parties at the municipal level.
00:03:06.120I mean, obviously, this is a huge change to municipal politics within Alberta.
00:03:13.140And so, they're introducing a pilot project for local political parties, which will occur in Edmonton and Calgary during the next municipal election.
00:03:23.420And local candidates aren't required to join a political party, but will be given the opportunity to do so.
00:03:28.620As far as I understand, all the candidates on the voting list will have a party next to their name.
00:03:34.220And obviously, it could show independent if a candidate did not want to join a party.
00:03:39.320Also, something interesting to note is that each municipal party will be independent in the sense that a municipal party within Edmonton versus one in Calgary will have no relation.
00:03:48.400There's lots of rules around that, how they can't even share with the provincial government, the federal government, their parties within those.
00:03:55.380They can't share any information, that kind of thing.
00:03:56.980I think that was one of the more, you know, people, something we're more excited about that part of the bill.
00:04:02.360Not everyone accepted it, but I think that was one of the more accepted things of the bill.
00:04:05.860Another thing that it's going to do is it's going to ban tabulators.
00:04:08.560So, in provincial elections and in municipal elections, tabulators, which are used to tally the vote, will not be allowed to be used anymore.
00:04:15.580Of course, some people took issue with this, but a lot of praise for the premier on this.
00:04:18.780And then on the controversial side of things, one of the things that the bill would also do is it would allow the provincial government to fire city councillors
00:04:26.900in extreme circumstances and also to basically undo city bylaws.
00:04:32.240Say, you know what, we're going to cancel that city bylaw.
00:04:34.180We have Calgary Mayor Jody Gondek responding to this bill.
00:04:38.140Let's play that clip of what she had to say about it and some of her concerns.
00:04:41.160So, right now, all it says is removal of the council member if it's in the public's interest, but public interest is not defined.
00:04:50.080I do know that Minister McIver has said something to the effect of public interest can be defined as public push or, you know, public request.
00:04:59.580I still don't know what that looks like.
00:05:01.500And in an age where recall exists, does it now mean that you can file a recall petition against someone and that becomes the grounds for cabinet making a move towards removal?
00:05:22.620Well, I would have to laugh because I think one of the reasons Mayor Gondek is so concerned is because of how deeply unpopular she is.
00:05:31.000And, of course, she's concerned about a public push because at 30 percent approval, she could well be a target of removal.
00:05:38.720So I can understand why she's a big concern.
00:05:40.720All of that being said, I think the goal of the bill is simply to have a mechanism to remove city councillors or other municipal elected officials when they really go off the wire and maybe move into areas or adopt policy positions that are completely contrary to what has been established in areas like that that are outside their area of jurisdiction.
00:06:04.480So areas that are under the governance of the province.
00:06:06.320That being said, there's already mechanisms to deal with errant elected officials.
00:06:13.360I'm not sure there's a lot of need to have a separate bill to enshrine that power.
00:06:19.740But I do think it reflects the fact that so many of our city councils have gone way off the deep end on issues.
00:06:24.860Mayor Gondek herself, for example, said one of her jobs was to lead the resistance to the province's changes to gender rights and parental rights policy.
00:06:33.980Well, I really don't think that's actually the job of the mayor of Calgary.
00:06:37.160The job of the mayor of Calgary is to try and deliver the core services that Calgarians expect.
00:06:42.080Plowing the snow, filling the potholes, collecting the garbage.
00:06:45.180All things, by the way, that Calgary does not do particularly well, despite taking a lot of dollars from our property taxes.
00:06:52.320Yeah, I have to say that I'm inclined to agree with you.
00:06:54.700I think there's already mechanisms for a lot of the things that the government can deal with here, especially when it comes to removing city councillors.
00:06:59.820I do like the areas of this bill that focus on, for example, banning the tabulators.
00:07:04.140I don't have any issue with creating, you know, political parties and municipalities.
00:07:14.560Even in extreme circumstances, I don't think the solution to bad government is more government.
00:07:19.260I think this is government overreach from the provincial government.
00:07:21.380I think that in Calgary, if we say this city councillor sucks or our city council as a whole sucks,
00:07:26.500that's when Calgarians need to get involved and do what they can to remove those councillors.
00:07:31.200We just had a recall petition for Jody Gondik.
00:07:33.960That was unsuccessful, partly because the parameters for the petition were so extreme.
00:07:38.640They needed over half a million signatures.
00:07:40.660I interviewed the individual leading the petition on many occasions.
00:07:44.200He said, well, there's no way we're going to get that many signatures because there's such a large portion of the population in Calgary that doesn't speak English.
00:07:49.940We can barely talk to them to explain to them what we're doing here.
00:07:53.120But the provincial government has already said, you know what, we're going to look at the petition and we're going to amend that legislation so that it's more reasonable.
00:07:59.560So they already have an avenue for dealing with that.
00:08:01.720You know, if Calgarians take issue with their government, they need to really get involved and vote them out at the next election or seek to recall them.
00:08:07.680But I don't like this provincial government stepping in and saying we're going to have rights.
00:08:11.060And for people who do support this, for conservatives who do support this piece of legislation and the mechanism specifically for the provincial government to step in and fire city councillors,
00:08:20.060how would they feel if we had an Alberta NDP government right now?
00:08:23.120Pushing forward this legislation because we might have an Alberta NDP government again one day and I would be curious to see which city councillors they're going to be targeting.
00:08:29.760So I think this legislation needs to be severely, severely amended.
00:08:35.640Another thing the Alberta government is doing right now is they are pushing a high speed railway.
00:08:40.840Now, I did a show on it this earlier this week and I had a lot of viewers say, oh, we've been talking about high speed rail in the province for years.
00:08:47.940And while Alberta Premier Daniel Smith seems to love trains and seems that she really wants to push this forward, the government has said they're going to spend $9 million studying what this would look like.
00:08:57.800That includes ridership demand and infrastructure needs.
00:09:04.480And there would be six phases to this plan.
00:09:07.080First of all, they want to connect the airports in Edmonton and Calgary to the downtown cities.
00:09:12.040They also want to connect Edmonton and Calgary to each other through a high speed rail and they want to connect places like Calgary to Banff and Edmonton to Jasper.
00:10:12.580I mean, Daniel Smith has always been a big fan of rail.
00:10:16.460This was something when I worked for her back in the Wellrose days.
00:10:20.000She was very gung-ho on rail opportunity.
00:10:23.580The question is, is there a business case for it?
00:10:25.760Does it make financial sense for Alberta?
00:10:27.640Anyone who's driven Highway 2 in the past couple of years knows that we are absolutely at capacity on that corridor, that you can't put thousands more car trips every day onto that road at just two lanes for large chunks of it.
00:10:43.540So I do think there's a conversation to be had around what we're going to do about overcrowding on Highway 2 between Edmonton and Calgary and how we can alleviate that.
00:10:53.880Speaking personally, I would love a train that goes from downtown Calgary to the airport.
00:10:59.700You know, I think my family who lives in Edmonton, they live in downtown Edmonton.
00:11:03.860Getting from downtown Edmonton to their airport is a $120 taxi trip, and that's each way.
00:11:10.000So $240 tacked onto your trip in order to be able to take a flight somewhere, go away for a vacation, I think is an issue.
00:11:20.060Whether or not high-speed rail or commuter rail is the answer, I don't know.
00:11:22.740I suppose that's what we'll learn from the study.
00:11:25.740But I don't think we should commit to anything just because we like rail or we think trains are cool.
00:11:31.540I thought trains were cool when I was a kid.
00:11:33.640I didn't get billions of dollars to go out and build a train set or build a train because of it.
00:11:38.060So let's see, I guess, what the study turns out.
00:11:41.340Yeah, I think that what you've addressed sort of goes back to one of the reasons that the government is pushing this is just the population growth.
00:11:47.380There's about 4.9 million people in Alberta now.
00:11:49.660That population has already increased rapidly just in the last few years.
00:11:52.800And the government is predicting 7.1 million Albertans by 2051.
00:11:57.260So they are expecting rapid population growth.
00:12:28.680Obviously, I've lived in Alberta almost all of my life.
00:12:31.980And it's nice to conceptualize, I suppose, a railway system similar to the ones they have in Europe, where you can kind of just take the train wherever you want to, especially the mountains.
00:12:43.200But like you said, I mean, that's without thinking of all the issues that come along with it.
00:12:47.240Like, oh, when you actually get to the mountain, then what?
00:12:49.280But just speaking quickly to the rails, I remember when I first wrote my rail story, the lead I went with was the Alberta government said that this time will be different.
00:12:59.940Because as you both know, we've been talking about railways in Alberta for what seems like forever now.
00:13:05.680But the key difference to note here is that the government has said, look, in the past, we've kind of just tried to focus on this project or this project or this project.
00:13:14.520But this thing we're doing now, this master rail plan is a holistic approach.
00:13:18.440We're looking at all these projects together.
00:13:54.480Basically, if you're pulled over on an Ontario highway, you will be forced to take a breath test no matter what.
00:14:03.940They don't need suspicion because of legislation that was passed in 2018, which essentially gives police the right to do this if they have an approved screening device on their persons, which when I talked to criminal defense lawyer, Sean Robichaud, he said that all police forces are starting to just equip all their officers with these automatic devices.
00:14:26.860So basically, anyone who's pulled over on the highway, regardless of the reason, so speeding, seatbelt, anything, you're going to be forced to do a mandatory breath test.
00:14:35.540And if you refuse to do it, I wouldn't recommend that because you'll be subject to essentially being guilty by default.
00:14:42.700And, yeah, just a quick note was that when I initially wrote the story, I just used breathalyzers, but Robichaud reached out to me saying, hey, just so you know, automatic screening devices, which the police have on their persons, are different from breathalyzers, which are normally at police stations, which are a much larger device.
00:15:00.720And as far as I understand with the legislation, they don't actually need cause to administer the breath test with the automatic screening device, but they do need cause to do the breathalyzers at the police station.
00:15:14.240And what's been some of the public reaction to this so far?
00:15:16.780Are people generally supportive or are people taking issue with this, Isaac?
00:15:20.340Yeah, so the public reaction, especially on our Twitter posts that we've posted on True North, people are very, I guess, upset.
00:15:28.900You know, a lot of people are obviously concerned about this being a charter violation.
00:15:33.220When I talked to the criminal defense lawyer, Sean Robichaud, he said the opposite, kind of.
00:15:38.720He said, look, the charter is a simple document.
00:15:41.800It's used to help courts determine what legislation and laws are.
00:15:46.220But once those laws are determined in the courts, which he said this has been up to the Supreme Court of Canada, the laws are what they are.
00:15:52.560So the charter doesn't really help you in that sense.
00:15:54.500And just to read the charter here, Section 8 of the charter states, everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.
00:16:02.160And Section 9 states, everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.
00:16:06.700But I guess the Supreme Court of Canada found that this is a minimally intrusive thing that the police are doing with these automatic breathalyzers.
00:16:16.640You know, I have to say that I think this is largely a response just to some of the mass immigration that we're seeing, especially in Toronto and the GTA area.
00:16:25.300I lived in Niagara for most of my life.
00:16:27.280In the past few years, there's so much traffic from Toronto to Niagara, from leaving Toronto, heading out towards the east, towards Ottawa, increasing amounts of accidents.
00:16:38.900Seems like people don't know what they're doing on the road these days.
00:16:41.020I obviously haven't lived in Ontario for a couple of years now, but it seems like every summer my family's messaging me saying traffic is just getting worse and worse.
00:16:47.700You can't even get in that stretch from Beamsville to St. Catharines without getting plugged up.
00:16:51.740And there's just been a lot of really horrific accidents.
00:16:53.620So I would assume this is sort of a response to some of the issues that we're seeing with people really not driving well.
00:16:59.320Maybe there's also some issues with people actually not really knowing how to drive in addition to people driving under the influence,
00:17:05.360which is becoming more common since we've legalized marijuana, obviously.
00:17:08.440You know, I'm not going to say I'm in favor of the policy, but I would say that it's sort of a natural reaction to simply letting too many people in the country think that we actually need to start fixing some of the real issues as opposed to just putting band-aid fixes on things.
00:17:23.320Yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone objects to getting drunk drivers off the road.
00:17:28.200I think as a policy goal, pretty well everybody's united that we shouldn't have people who are drunk out there driving.
00:17:35.280The worry is, is that well-intentioned pieces of legislation can set bad precedents and they can allow the erosion of our freedoms and our rights under the guise of trying to achieve positive policy outcomes.
00:17:49.700So I think we have to be very careful whenever there's a new law that in some way curtails or limits something that we have enjoyed as a right or a freedom,
00:17:58.860even if we think that the goal of the policy is well-intentioned.
00:18:04.000And I think that's in this case, what the concern a lot of people have is not about getting drunk drivers off the road,
00:18:10.080but simply giving law enforcement more power to exercise in an arbitrary manner against ordinary Canadians.
00:19:26.140It was quite a fiery exchange between the two.
00:19:28.400Have you made recommendations with your management team as to whether or not the eight top executives get bonuses for the 2023-2024 fiscal year?
00:19:52.800We will present the results of the financial year and the results of the KPIs.
00:19:58.780And we will have an opportunity to discuss them.
00:20:02.180And the HRGC, which is the Human Resources and Governance Committee, will review them.
00:20:08.460And they will make their recommendation to the board.
00:20:12.180Basically, Thomas pushed and said, we really want to see some data on whether or not they're getting bonuses.
00:20:19.840Catherine Tate, in a pretty emphatic manner, saying that information isn't available, which I think is surprising for a lot of people, considering the fiscal year is already well over.
00:20:29.400And just, you know, looking at CBC's performance, particularly in the past year or so, you really have to wonder how they're justifying executive bonuses.
00:20:39.340They're laying off hundreds of their employees.
00:20:42.180They're planning to lay off hundreds more of their employees.
00:20:48.960There is an absolute crisis happening about what the role of the CBC is, whether or not it's justified, whether or not existing in its current format is in any way a positive net for Canadians.
00:20:59.180And, of course, likely future Prime Minister Pierre Pallievre has said that there will be a massive shake-up at CBC, if not an outright defunding and shutting it down.
00:21:10.440So all of that put together, I'm not sure, equals big bonuses for CBC executives are justified.
00:21:17.060Catherine Tate was actually the winner of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation Teddy Waste Award, beating out even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:21:24.160So I don't think it gets much worse than that, beating out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for an award on waste.
00:21:30.020But, yeah, you can see how indignant she is there when she's being questioned.
00:21:33.900You know, seems a little bit like someone who maybe has a little bit something to hide.
00:21:37.240But this is the issue that we always see, whether it's with just the federal government or anything that receives federal funding, is just sort of the lack of accountability.
00:21:43.860And as soon as there's government money in a situation, it seems that people, they just don't care.
00:21:48.480They're not accountable to the private sector where there's actually much higher standards.
00:21:51.680They're handing out bonuses for who knows what, I guess, for losing all those viewers, for handing all of them to us, I think is probably what they're celebrating there.
00:21:59.960Maybe Catherine Tate is secretly a conservative.
00:22:02.080And she's actually celebrating that, you know, her organization's bad coverage, biased coverage has sent a lot of people over to outlets like us.
00:22:14.320The first thing that comes to mind is, as you mentioned, Rachel, there's obviously a lack of accountability there.
00:22:18.700The CBC is getting over a billion dollars in taxpayer dollars on an annual basis.
00:22:23.260And all their shows are bleeding money.
00:22:27.120Their organization as a whole can't even show a profit.
00:22:30.380So I don't know how any of that money is warranted.
00:22:33.220And as you mentioned, William, it'll be very interesting to me to see if Polyefra takes office, what he's going to do with the CBC, because obviously he's been very vocal in his pledge to defund them.
00:22:46.200But I don't know that he can I don't know that he can really just squash the company as a whole.
00:22:52.580And I don't know how either how it could really be reformatted into something that could be justifiable long term in the sense that it won't be biased towards whatever governments in power can actually be what it's supposed to be, which is, I guess, an unbiased state broadcaster.
00:23:09.580I mean, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
00:23:11.460Well, I don't I just don't think we need a state broadcaster.
00:23:13.960I think we don't need to squash the CBC.
00:23:15.800We just need to take taxpayer dollars from them.
00:23:18.300You know, if they want to do the hard work of finding those private dollars on their own, which I know they already do receive some private funding, they can continue to do that and make a go for it on their own.
00:23:26.480It's just I don't want to be funding it.
00:23:27.980I don't agree with my tax dollars being used to push a liberal narrative and to run cover for the Trudeau liberals time and time again.