Juno News - November 26, 2025Is the Alberta–Ottawa pipeline deal already dead？
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Summary
Is the proposed pipeline deal through northern B.C. already dead on arrival? Prime Minister Carney is expected to announce the signing of an agreement with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith tomorrow, but so far, Carney has provided no details and no timelines, and says BC will have a veto over any such project. Former Conservative MP Lisa Raitt says it may be time to put the whole issue to a vote in a pipeline election.
Transcript
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Welcome to Straight Up. I am your host, Mark Petroni. Is the proposed pipeline deal through
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northern B.C. already dead on arrival? Prime Minister Carney is expected to announce
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the signing of an agreement with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith tomorrow, but so far,
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Carney has provided no details and no timelines and says B.C. will have a veto over any such
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project. The leader of the Conservative Party says unless there's a timeline for construction
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set out from the get-go, the so-called pipeline deal is a pipe dream. On Thursday, he'll make
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one of his grand announcements waving around a meaningless so-called memorandum of understanding.
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If it's anything other than a public relations ploy, why won't he say on what date will construction
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begin on a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific? The memorandum of understanding that we're
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negotiating with Alberta creates necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions because
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we believe in cooperative federalism. We believe the government of British Columbia has to agree.
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We believe that First Nations right-holders in this country have to agree and support.
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Well, as you heard there, Carney says the project cannot move forward without British Columbia's
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say-so. Up to now, B.C. Premier David Eby has been adamantly opposed to the project, so again,
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is the pipeline project dead on arrival? If so, former Conservative MP Lisa Raitt says it may be time
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to put the whole issue to a vote in a pipeline election. Let's listen.
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At the end of the day, David, this comes down to an election, then let's go and let's figure out
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exactly what we stand for. Do we want an economic bright future or do we want to hold back different
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parts of the country because you're uncomfortable with your cut in a deal?
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Meantime, the CBC is reporting some liberals are grumbling about the prospect of a pipeline deal
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with Alberta. This headline, some B.C. Liberal MPs concerned about the prospect of a new oil pipeline,
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according to sources. Some MPs are worried about the backlash from anti-pipeline voters in their
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riding. Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith says the last pipeline deal that allowed Trans Mountain to move
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forward left a sour taste. Could you at any point support the government endorsing the construction
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of a new pipeline, even if those minimum conditions are met? Well, I lived through one grand bargain
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already in my political life at the beginning of, what, 2016, 2017. I don't think it went so well.
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So I'm a little skeptical of grand bargains. And look, I'll look at the overall picture of the deal
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in the MOU when it's announced on Thursday. And we'll see what the Prime Minister has to say today.
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And I'll have lots to say once I see the details.
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Prime Minister Carney may want to get rid of some of the holdovers from the Trudeau era,
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but at least one of them says not so fast. Industry Minister Melanie Jolie says she has
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no interest in leaving her current post for a rumored job as ambassador to France.
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Do you have any interest in becoming Canada's ambassador to France?
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Absolutely not. I'm focused on my job right now, which is to be the Minister of Industry
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and to fight for every single job in this country at a time of trade tensions. And so I'll continue
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to do that. And if she wants to keep her job as Minister of Industry, she may want to start reading
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the contracts that end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars, like the one that awarded
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Stellantis billions in subsidies with no jobs guarantee. Last month, Stellantis announced
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it's moving an assembly plant out of Brampton to Illinois, costing 3000 Canadian job. I'm now joined
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by Jeff Rath, who is a constitutional lawyer, and one of the leading voices when it comes to
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Alberta independence. Welcome once again, Jeff. Thank you very much for having me.
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All right. So people have been preparing for an announcement regarding the apparent pipeline agreement,
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a memorandum of understanding between Daniel Smith, Premier of Alberta, and the Prime Minister.
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What are your expectations for that announcement?
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Well, I mean, I think they've already discussed it in the House. Pierre Polly have pulled the rug
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out from underneath Daniel's feet. He referred to it as a meaningless public relations ploy. And I think
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that's a very good description of it. And then Mark Carney said something, it was like kind of
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not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary. It creates the necessary conditions,
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but not the sufficient conditions, you know, and that BC and the BC First Nations will retain a veto
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over pipeline construction. So she's no better off than she was six months ago, only she's burned up all
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of her political capital, like a drunk lighting cigars with $100 bills, right? So Danielle looks really
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foolish today. She got nothing out of her silly little ultimatum, you know, well, you know, you get
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rid of your nine bad laws or else and give us a pipeline or else. She's probably worse off than she
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was six months ago, because she's got everybody in Alberta questioning her sanity. I mean, we all told
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her she was going to get nothing out of talking to Mark Carney. She doesn't seem to understand that
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Nahid Nenshi, the leader of the Alberta NDP, was a card carrying liberal when he was the mayor of
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Calgary, and that he and Justin Trudeau were continually whipsawing Jason Kenney like a moron
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throughout COVID. Well, they're doing the same thing to her. So Nenshi and Carney are pulling
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the strings. They're making her look completely foolish. And her base is questioning her sanity.
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I mean, we're going to be at the UCPA GM this weekend. And she's going to be trying to, you know,
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sell this, you know, MOU with some massive achievement. And people are going to be laughing at her.
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It's going to be really, really bad for her. It's, you know, I'm embarrassed for her. It's awful.
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Yeah. I mean, how does she sign on to this memorandum of understanding with the feds and
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then sell that, to your point, to Albertans who will smell a rat a mile away?
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Well, that's the whole thing. We're not even calling her the memorandum of understanding
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anymore. We're calling it a memorandum of underachievement, right? That's the only MOU
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that we're looking at. I mean, it's, you know, she's failed in every respect to get anything done.
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The only option she has left is to declare, you know, herself in favor of Alberta independence
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and commit herself to leading Alberta out of Canada. But I don't think she's got the guts for
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it. And certainly the people around her don't have the guts for it. So she's going to be in a
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really, really tough position. And we'll know, I guess, at the end of this weekend,
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because the pro-independence forces are trying to get a 100% pro-independence board of directors
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elected for the UCP, which will have the ability to, you know, you know, select MLAs, to call special
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general meetings, you know, including a review of the continued leadership of Daniel Smith,
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should it come to that, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll know at the end of the weekend who controls
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that party, whether it's Daniel Smith or whether it's, you know, whether it's the forces of
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independence. Well, you helped spearhead that movement to get rid of the previous premier,
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right? Jason Kenney. I mean, yeah, I mean, at this point, Daniel's still very popular amongst our
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base and people, you know, it's this constant fear, oh, we can't get rid of Daniel because we don't
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want to split the party and get, you know, a communist government elected in Alberta. But the
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problem that we have is, is that Daniel's not leaving. You know, she's playing all these silly
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political games. She's having, you know, these goofy what's next panels over the summer,
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asking people whether we should have a referendum on things that she should have done two years ago,
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you know, like increasing Alberta's taxation jurisdiction, collecting more taxes in Alberta,
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ending immigration to Alberta at this point, because we're completely overloaded. Don't have
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enough water, don't have enough electricity, don't have enough schools, don't have enough hospitals,
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all of that, right? She hasn't done anything, except now she wants to have like six or seven
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referenda on asking questions about stuff she should have done two and a half years ago.
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The only reason she's doing it is to confuse the issue in and around the independence referendum.
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And we're not buying it. We're not very happy with it right now.
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And speaking of that, do you think that this so-called agreement, once it comes out and is rejected by many
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Albertans, that that's going to boost your cause, which is Alberta independence?
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Oh, there's no doubt. I mean, I mean, the best, actually, the strongest proponent for Alberta
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independence in Canada is Mark Carney. I mean, every time, every time that man opens his mouth,
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you know, we get another thousand volunteers, you know, him standing up in the House of Commons,
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effectively making fun of Daniel Smith, saying, Oh, yeah, this grand bargain, it's a nothing,
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you know, it's a nothing burger thing. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know,
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it's not sufficient to get anything done, but Oh, well, it'll keep the little lady happy.
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So we're going to throw her a little bone here. But, you know, nobody needs to worry.
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There won't be a pipeline built anytime soon. Like, I mean, literally, I don't know if you saw the clip
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or not, but it was, I think it was a week and a half ago. Somebody actually asked Mark Carney
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about a grand bargain with the Daniel Smith. He laughed out loud. He went, Oh, we call that an
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MOU. Right? It's like, don't pay attention to that. We call it an MOU. It doesn't mean anything.
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Oh, it's so silly that she thinks it does anything. All right. He's laughing at her,
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like literally laughing at her. And, you know, once I always say that once politicians,
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once people start laughing at them, their career is over. I mean, look at Stockwell Day
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and his jet skis, right? Or on the jet ski, right? So the minute people start laughing
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at you, you're done. And unfortunately, I think that's where Daniel is at. Somebody foolishly
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advised her to issue an ultimatum. When the six months was up, she then starts backpedaling
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to try to find a new date. Then she saw the so-called MOU as her big lifeline, you know,
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that's going to, you know, that's going to satisfy everybody. And that like, she can pretend
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that she's accomplished something in the last six months. Nobody is buying it. Like nobody.
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But why would she sign a bad deal? Why not say no?
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She's desperate, right? Mark Carney has put her, like Mark Carney and Nahid Nenshi have run
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her into a box canyon, right? Like she's in a box canyon ambush right now. And her only way
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out, I'm telling you this right now, is to counterattack. And the only way to, this is
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just, you know, this is just my, you know, my former days as a soldier speaking, you know,
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the only way out is to counterattack. And the only counterattack she's got is to lead
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Alberta in independence, which would be the best thing for this province, right? $70 billion
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a year we send to Ottawa, we get less than $20 billion a year back, right? You know, we
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have to run deficit budgets. We're borrowing money to pay for our doctors, nurses, teachers,
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all of that. Well, we send $15 billion a year to Quebec. None of this makes any sense. Alberta
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can literally eliminate federal income tax in year one of independence. And Danielle Smith
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doesn't have the guts to do it. Like, you know, it's as the conversation continues, and
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as Albertans figure out the value of freedom from Canada, more and more people are coming
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on board. We're polling over 45% now in favor of independence, and a referendum hasn't even
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been called, right? Like, it's every week that goes by, the movement just gets stronger
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and stronger and stronger, right? And just for fun, those statistics that I was throwing
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out, I was on a podcast not too long ago, and somebody, you know, like all the fact checkers
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decided to run my numbers through Brock. And apparently, I exaggerated a little bit, I say
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$78 billion a year leaves Alberta to get less than 20 back. Brock confirmed that it's $68.8
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billion a year that leaves Alberta. And we get less than $10 billion a year back in direct
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federal transfers. So it's, you know, there's the math, I mean, the math mitigates entirely
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But clearly, the Prime Minister is calling your bluff here. He doesn't take your movement
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very seriously. If he did, then perhaps he would push a little harder, in fact, a lot harder
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to get this pipeline green lit, rather than simply, you know, pushed off into the distant
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Yeah, and I think the only thing I can say to that is you can always tell a liberal, you
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You know, like, you know, I think they're in denial. I think, you know, I think they've
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got, you know, they've got their, they have their agents in Alberta, like Jason Kenney, you
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know, oh, don't worry about it. We've got this under control. They're just a bunch of
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Yahoo's, this isn't going anywhere. I mean, there's an economist by the name of Martin
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Armstrong. And Martin Armstrong specializes in looking at, you know, political economic
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movements, and then predicting, you know, where they're going to, you know, where things
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are going to end up. And he's got an amazing track record, you know, he predicted, you
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know, like, in terms of the things that he's predicted. Martin Armstrong has predicted
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that the economic case for Alberta independence is so strong, that he sees Alberta being an
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And I mean, I think that's the, I mean, I think that's the path we're on. We're looking
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to have a referendum, you know, by September of 2026. So, you know, less than a year from
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now. And I'm telling you, like, Alberta unemployment right now is at 9%. Youth unemployment is over
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20. Indigenous unemployment is over, you know, is over 60%. I mean, you don't think people
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are going to be ready to vote for independence, like 12 months from now, when Alberta unemployment
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is over 10%. Youth unemployment is over 25%. You know, I mean, it's, you know, people don't
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understand that Albertans deeply resent the Liberals turning Alberta into Newfoundland.
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You know, effectively, that's what they've done.
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And if you do have a successful referendum, then you might get the Fed say, all right,
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all right, we see how serious you are. We'll grant you your pipeline.
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I mean, yeah, but at that point, it's too late. We're gone. You know, it's like, you know,
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like, sorry, you punched us in the face for the last time. You know, we've got a divorce
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lawyer, right? We're working, you know, here's the papers. The only thing for you to do is
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to sign. And if people don't, if people think the United States isn't going to immediately
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recognize or support a yes vote in Alberta, they're not paying attention. Yeah, right.
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I mean, you know, the United States sees it in their national interest. And I've had these
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discussions with the Americans, they see it in their national interest for to get Alberta
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out from underneath the control of communist China. And, you know, the Americans, the Americans
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literally see Ottawa as being controlled by China. And that Ottawa is, you know, is literally
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managing the Alberta economy for the benefit of communist China, which is to say, destroying
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the entire Canadian economy so that the Chinese and Brookfield can come in and buy it up at
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And last time we spoke, you talked about going down to DC and having meetings. You didn't say
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with who. I mean, have those discussions with the Americans?
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Anyway, as I sort of said there, I mean, last time we spoke, you said you were in DC, you
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went to Washington, and had conversations with various players connected to the Trump
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administration about the possibility of Alberta's ultimate decision to go. Have those talks continued?
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I'm in touch with them weekly now. And we're talking about going back down again in December
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for further discussions. The long and the short of it is that, you know, the United States
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is very concerned about the fact that Kearney is busily turning Canada into a third world
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hellhole, right? They're doing little or nothing to stop, you know, the Chinese from shipping
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fentanyl precursor chemicals into Canada. They're doing little or nothing to address all of the
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gangs that are working in conjunction with the Ministry of State Security in China, shipping
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fentanyl precursor chemicals into Canada. They are deliberately thumbing their nose at the
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United States on an ongoing basis, right? We can eliminate our trade deficit tomorrow
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and our underfunding of NATO by simply announcing a $60 billion a year purchase contract for
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helicopters, surveillance drones, armored personnel carriers, all of the things that are needed
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to patrol the US Canadian border, right? We'd wipe out the trade deficit overnight, and would vastly
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improve our relationship with the US. But instead, what's Kearney doing? Oh, I think Canada should join
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the EU. I think we should enter into a $200 billion military buildup agreement with the Europeans, where we
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will only buy European equipment. You know, like, thanks, thanks, you know, thanks so much, United States for
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defending us for the last 30 years. Well, we didn't spend any money whatsoever on our military. Thank you
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so much for letting us live under your military protection and umbrella. But now screw you elbows
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up. You know, we don't want to talk to you anymore. Because, you know, Mark Carney has declared our
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relationship with the United States over. Well, we announced, you know, a strategic alliance with
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Communist China, who, incidentally, we're still at war with, because we've never signed a peace deal over Korea.
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You know, you can't make this stuff up. It's ludicrous.
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And I think maybe there are Americans who think, you know, as long as we get Alberta on side, have a
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relationship with them, or maybe even incorporate them into the American family, what do we need the rest of
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the of Canada for? Except, well, I mean, absolutely. Alberta in a free market with the United States with zero
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tariffs on both sides of the Alberta US border, who needs the Royal Bank? We'll have JPMorgan Chase, we'll have bank, you
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know, we'll have Wells Fargo, we'll have, you know, all the American banks, like Toronto
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Dominion. You know, like, you know, what's the problem, right? You know, everything that we're
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doing in Alberta could be so much better. Like, is that something people don't focus on, is that
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Alberta has 90% of its trade is with the US, only 10% is with the rest of Canada and the rest of the
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world. So we just need to make up 10% of that trade, which we can pick up through two pipelines,
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one, you know, out through Washington State, just like Nutrien announced recently, they're building
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shipping facilities for potash in Washington State, we could get a deal done to have an oil
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terminal for Alberta oil in Washington State overnight, to hell with BC, right? Start stopping
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every truck coming through BC and Ontario at the border, hold them up for two weeks, inspecting,
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inspect them for rats. You know, let's see how Evie likes that, you know, like if he wants to hold
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up a pipeline. I mean, you know, all the leverage doesn't, you know, doesn't, doesn't go one way,
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but Danielle Smith doesn't have the guts to do it. You know, empty threats and empty promises.
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Last question, Jeff. Tomorrow, once this deal is tabled, and I guess Danielle Smith tries to sell
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it to Albertans, what is the prognosis in terms of discussions going forward between
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the ongoing political issues that Danielle may very well have as a result of trying to pass off a deal
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that doesn't really exist because it pushes a pipeline construction into the distant future,
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Well, I think the problem for Danielle is she's completely blown all of her credibility
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with her base, right? So, you know, Albertans aren't stupid. I mean, we've been around this
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game for, you know, forever, right? So, you know, we know what liberal promises are worth.
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They're worth nothing. So, you know, and again, you know, if, you know, as a gesture of good faith,
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the first thing that, you know, Carney should have done was pass a bill in Parliament to get rid of
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the tanker ban. Because how do you raise money? Like, how do you raise private money to invest in a
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pipeline when there's federal law saying that the oil out of that pipeline can't be put into ships
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and taken offshore? You can't raise money under those circumstances, but they won't do it.
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So, you know, like these nine bad laws, I mean, you know, like, instead, oh, well, we'll increase the
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industrial carbon tax. You know, we'll get rid of the emissions cap, but we'll, you know, like,
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we'll double the industrial carbon tax. Like, what does that do to investment in Alberta? Like,
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it kills it. Like, we can't build AI centres in Alberta. Carney doesn't want us to anyway,
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you know, because we would hook them up to natural gas fields that we have 10,000 years
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supplies out of. No, no, he wants us all buying Brookfield nuclear reactors. So that every time
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we plug in, every time we plug in an electric car, we don't want the money gets siphoned out
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of our wallet through a wall socket into Carney's offshore bank account. Like, we're, we're fed up.
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Like, we're just, we're done. You can't make this stuff up, can you?
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No, you can't. We, you know, we're living the Confucian curse. May you live in interesting times.
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Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.
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It's a real, it's a real pleasure, Mark. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
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I'm now joined by Colin Craig from secondstreet.org. And he's got an update on a rather grim statistic,
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100,000 Canadians dying on waitlist since 2018. He's been crunching the numbers and he joins us
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now from Calgary. Colin, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. And good for you for
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gathering these numbers. I know it's not easy when you're dealing with different provinces with
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different rules, but this 100,000 number really stands out as a grim statistic. How did you come to
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this? And maybe you could talk a little bit about this grim milestone.
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Yeah. So, I mean, this, the story starts, uh, probably around 2018, 19. Um, when our think
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tank was getting up and running, we were reflecting on a sad story from Ontario, uh, Laura Hillier,
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young girl, she was, I think 19 at the time, died on a waiting list, um, because of delays
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in the healthcare system. And they just took too long to get to her. And we got thinking with stories
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like hers that got us thinking, like, how often does this happen? Because governments do not
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proactively tell the public, this is how many patients are dying on waiting lists. So we thought,
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well, let's try and gather some data. And we were successful at it. We've been able to gather data,
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um, at least partial data across the country for several years now. And that's how we tallied up
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over a hundred thousand cases now where patients have died waiting for, uh, appointments with
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specialists, diagnostic scans and, uh, surgeries. Yeah. I mean, the fact that people are dying because
00:23:09.840
they can't get like MRIs and other types of diagnostic tests. I mean, that's really bad. I mean,
00:23:17.360
you can almost expect that people will certainly die waiting for livers or, or kidneys, these types
00:23:25.600
of things, but they're actually dying because they can't get the proper testing that they need.
00:23:30.800
That is terrible. Yeah. It's, it's a wide array of cases that the data represents. So it's,
00:23:36.720
it's everything from heart surgery and heart procedures, which obviously, you know, if you're
00:23:41.520
not getting that in time, you can die to on the other end of the spectrum, things like maybe a hip
00:23:46.720
operation or cataract surgery. And people sometimes say, well, you're not going to die because you
00:23:51.120
don't get cataract surgery to which, you know, we often say, well, wait a second. What is a quality
00:23:57.200
of life thing for a lot of people? I mean, no one wants to spend the final years of your life with
00:24:01.280
cloudy vision, or maybe you've got severe pain because you're waiting for hip operation, whatever,
00:24:07.040
but you could also maybe have an accident because you've got cloudy vision and that you die because of
00:24:12.640
that, or maybe because you've got severe pain while you're waiting for your hip operation,
00:24:18.400
that you're not mobile, you're stuck in your apartment, you're not getting exercise. And we
00:24:22.960
all know exercise is so important for the body that, you know, if you don't get it, that can contribute to
00:24:28.240
a reason why you die, maybe like a heart attack or something like that. So, you know, I don't think
00:24:34.000
generally we can dismiss these numbers. I mean, they're not good. And what we want governments to do
00:24:39.200
more than anything is number one, do a good job tracking this information, analyze it, right? So
00:24:46.720
you can figure out where all the problem points are, make changes as necessary, but also to disclose
00:24:53.440
it to the public. So we, you know, that that's what needs to be done around this. More broadly
00:24:58.800
speaking, we need to change the system because the system has been failing for years. Too many patients
00:25:04.080
are falling between the cracks. It's really bad out there. And, you know, we're talking numbers
00:25:09.280
today, Mark, but there's lots of really bad stories, individual Canadian stories behind these
00:25:14.320
numbers. Absolutely. Each one of those numbers is a person. Yeah. You talk about disclosure and then
00:25:20.960
it sounds to me like some of these provinces would rather not say, you know, how many people are dying
00:25:26.640
on wait lists. Is that what's going on here? Are some of them just digging in their heels,
00:25:30.880
refusing to issue bad news because they don't want to make it public?
00:25:35.200
I think so. I mean, it's crazy if you think about it. You know, governments will hold a press
00:25:40.480
conference if they're buying like a new pencil sharpener for a school or something, right?
00:25:44.160
They find all these excuses to hold press conferences when it's good news. But, you know,
00:25:49.920
there's no disclosure of this data proactively. I mean, we can even tell that in many cases,
00:25:54.960
governments aren't even looking at the data themselves because we have, they'll give us a bill
00:26:00.080
and they charge us because they're having to go out and collect the data together. But if they
00:26:05.440
were already collecting the data, then they wouldn't charge us. So that's how we know that
00:26:09.280
they're often just not even really paying attention to these statistics. But I'll tell
00:26:13.760
you a crazy comparison, Mark, is if you look at the fact that across Canada, every single day,
00:26:20.560
you've got government health inspectors walking into restaurants. And if they find even the most
00:26:26.400
minor problem, they write it up and off and it gets posted publicly, you know, something like a
00:26:30.880
missing paper towel holder. Well, we have people dying in the government's healthcare system. And too
00:26:37.520
often we hear about these individual stories, not because the government comes forward to let the
00:26:42.160
public know they've let someone down, but because the patient's family comes forward. So there's a huge
00:26:48.800
element of hypocrisy here where the governments just are not holding themselves to the same standard
00:26:54.000
as everyone else. And in fact, these numbers may actually be low because some people, of course,
00:27:00.800
opt for suicide, essentially. The MAID program is sadly becoming more popular all the time. I think of
00:27:07.760
it as the fastest growing industry in Canada is death. And the government, it seems, would rather
00:27:14.640
offer people the, quote, easy way out for them because it's less expensive. And so you really don't
00:27:22.160
know, and maybe you'll be looking into this in the future, how many people are opting for suicide
00:27:29.520
rather than get on a wait list and just prolonging the agony.
00:27:34.160
Yeah, it is something that we're going to be digging into because we have heard these anecdotes
00:27:41.360
where someone has applied for assisted suicide from the government because they're living in chronic
00:27:47.680
pain. And we actually heard of one case where the government said, no, we're not going to give you
00:27:51.840
assisted suicide because there's a treatment for your problem. And the guy said, well, wait,
00:27:57.680
I've been waiting 20 years for this treatment. He'd been trying to get the government to provide
00:28:02.320
them the treatment that would help them and they wouldn't do it. And so, you know, it's crazy.
00:28:07.200
We want to know like how often that's actually happening. I mean, big picture, if I could leave
00:28:12.160
your listeners with one message, it's this. We have traveled to Sweden and France and Japan,
00:28:19.280
where they have public universal healthcare systems. That's what Canadians want, a working system.
00:28:24.960
And in those countries, they don't have the wait times like we have, you know, you're getting in much,
00:28:30.560
much faster. And so what we want is achievable, but we have to make the types of changes that will
00:28:38.160
bring our system closer to those European models in particular, giving patients choice between using
00:28:44.880
the public system or paying privately if they want to. This allows public systems to focus on helping
00:28:50.480
those who don't have the means to pay. Another big change is that in those systems, they fund services to
00:28:57.440
patients, whereas we fund healthcare systems. So governments throw money into a healthcare system
00:29:02.720
and they hope the money trickles down to help patients. It's a big difference. Their systems
00:29:07.920
are incentivized to help patients and make sure those dollars are spent on doctors and nurses rather
00:29:13.760
than bureaucrats. So, you know, those are just a couple differences, but the big picture point is we
00:29:20.320
can improve, but we've got to be copying what these other countries are doing better, particularly in Europe.
00:29:25.920
Yeah. I mean, we spend as much money as anybody else or most other countries,
00:29:30.080
I'm not mistaken. And so where's the problem here? Why aren't those dollars ending up,
00:29:36.400
you know, providing frontline care for people who need it, you know, to just walk into any emergency
00:29:41.840
ward these days and line up, you know, unless you're dying and seconds count, you know,
00:29:48.560
you end up waiting sometimes eight, 10 hours for a doctor to see somebody. I mean, that's absolutely
00:29:57.920
ludicrous in a country like Canada. It makes no sense. And so you have to ask, you know, since we
00:30:03.760
spend all this money, where is it going? Is it just going to the bloated bureaucracy, you know,
00:30:09.040
middle management, upper management, you know, at the expense of frontline care?
00:30:13.840
And, you know, what do you see as a possible solution here incorporating, you know, private
00:30:20.640
as well as public, you see a mix here, would that be a possible solution?
00:30:24.800
Yeah. So we need less ideology in healthcare. I mean, that's the fundamental problem or one of the
00:30:31.520
fundamental problems. And so what governments should be doing is deciding how much they're going
00:30:36.240
to pay for different procedures. You know, you get your finger operated on that's going to be less
00:30:42.000
complex than the heart surgery, right? So you figure out how much you're paying to fix a finger,
00:30:45.920
how much you're doing for heart surgery, whatever. And then governments should open it up to anyone
00:30:50.800
with qualified staff to do those types of procedures. Shouldn't matter if it's a government clinic or a
00:30:56.160
private clinic or a nonprofit, they'd all get the same flat amount of money when they provide that
00:31:00.960
service. And this approach would create a good, transparent level playing field, like I say,
00:31:07.360
that you often find in countries like France and over in Europe. And that way you start to get a
00:31:13.120
little bit more competition. You're incentivizing output because you're paying to get for something
00:31:19.200
when it gets done, rather than just throwing it into a system and hoping that the money makes its
00:31:24.880
way down to helping patients. It's early days. Has your study received any reaction, maybe from
00:31:32.880
political figures or others in the healthcare field, maybe patients?
00:31:38.320
Yeah, I mean, not at this point for this particular report. You know, we drew attention to a problem in
00:31:45.120
Manitoba earlier this year where a patient died on a waiting list and the government, you know, they
00:31:49.920
announced they were going to make some positive changes there. We're still waiting to see those
00:31:53.680
changes get done. But, you know, there's the two elements here. There's one, the whole accountability
00:31:59.920
aspect related to this. We need governments to change on that, track the data, analyze it, disclose it.
00:32:05.280
But we need the broader reforms to happen. And the good news is, is that when it comes to the broader
00:32:10.640
reforms to prevent these problems from happening in the first place, the Alberta government in particular
00:32:15.840
has announced a few major changes that they're going to make that will help to reduce waiting lists.
00:32:22.960
It will bring the Alberta system closer towards those European models that I was talking about.
00:32:28.400
Quebec is doing a couple of good things too. They're doing one thing that's not going over very,
00:32:32.800
very well with doctors there, which doesn't make a lot of sense. But, you know, we're seeing some
00:32:37.760
positive changes in the country, but by far the leader right now is Alberta. And we need to see
00:32:43.200
more provinces following Alberta's footsteps. How do people support your organization?
00:32:50.160
Well, thank you. I mean, people could go to our website, it really helps that people look at our
00:32:54.960
information, share it. And if they really like what we're doing, they can make a donation. Like I say,
00:33:00.480
it helps us pay to get this data and pry it out of government's hands.
00:33:03.760
Paul and Craig, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it.
00:33:07.440
Thanks a lot, Mark. And that is it for this edition of Straight Up. Appreciate
00:33:12.720
you tuning in, my friends. Let's do it again soon, shall we? Bye-bye for now.