Juno News - May 12, 2025


Preston Manningļ¼š Mark Carney will be Canadaā€™s LAST Prime Minister


Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

168.467

Word count

5,469

Sentence count

315

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning joins The Candice Malcolm Show to talk about his time as a politician, the recent election results, and what he thinks of the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. He also shares his thoughts on the current state of the country, and why he thinks it's time for Canada to separate from the United States.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. I hope everyone had a wonderful
00:00:06.580 weekend and to all of the mothers out there, happy Mother's Day. I hope you were spoiled
00:00:10.400 and I hope you had a wonderful time. Of course, I'm a mother of four small children and my
00:00:14.600 kids absolutely love Mother's Day. They've been making Mother's Day cards for like a
00:00:18.800 month and as soon as Mother's Day was over, as soon as they gave me the cards, they started
00:00:22.800 immediately on making their Father's Day cards. So it was all very fun and very cute. I want
00:00:27.380 to give a quick shout out though to my own mother because so much of the reason that
00:00:31.500 my life is the way it is and the way that I am able to have four kids and also run a business
00:00:36.960 and be a journalist and have a podcast is because my mom actually lives with us and she does
00:00:40.620 so much. So having a basically a stay-at-home grandmother is like the best gift that we
00:00:45.200 could give to our children and she's actually out on her own adventure right now. She's not
00:00:49.260 here. She is in Spain. So her and her sister have decided to go off on sort of the adventure
00:00:54.360 of a lifetime. They're doing the Way of St. James or as it's called in Spanish, the Camino
00:00:59.080 de Santiago, where they're basically walking across Spain doing an 800-kilometer pilgrimage
00:01:04.300 from Balboa. They flew into Madrid and then up Balboa and then they are walking across the
00:01:12.060 country, a 30-day trek and they're really having the adventure of a lifetime. So I'm so proud
00:01:17.120 of my mom for going and doing this with her sister, having this time for herself, for her health
00:01:21.600 and her faith and everything like that. And we really miss you and we can't wait for you
00:01:25.380 to come home, grandma. Okay. Now to get to the news today, I am very pleased as an interview
00:01:30.600 I've been trying to set up for some time because this person is so relevant to the conversation
00:01:35.120 that we are having in Canada. Right now I'm talking about Preston Manning. Preston is the
00:01:39.240 founder and the leader of the Reform Party. He led that party from 1987 to 2000 and he was
00:01:44.220 the leader of the official opposition from 1997 to 2000 and always just a voice of wisdom
00:01:50.640 in these troublesome times, especially talking about the pathway towards independence or the
00:01:55.520 question of independence for Western Canada and for Alberta. So Preston, welcome to the show.
00:01:59.880 Thank you so much for joining us today. Okay. Well, thanks for having me. That was a good
00:02:03.400 reference to Mother's Day too. That's a very important point to make.
00:02:11.800 Well, thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I haven't spoken to you in a while. We had you on the show
00:02:16.380 a few months ago when we were talking a little bit about this issue, but obviously it's really
00:02:20.300 flared up. So first of all, why don't you just tell me what your reaction to the recent election
00:02:24.860 was? Were you surprised to see the Liberals get reelected? And what do you make of Mark
00:02:29.180 Kearney as the Prime Minister? Well, the election shifted from the expectation was that Mr. Trudeau
00:02:35.860 was going to be the Prime Minister and the Liberal leader. And the official opposition was well
00:02:42.080 tuned up to deal with all the inadequacies of the nine years of Trudeau reign. But of course,
00:02:49.860 when that changed and President Trump intervening himself in our election and Mr. Carney becoming
00:02:58.160 the quickly becoming the leader of the Liberals, the whole scene changed. And I'm disappointed with
00:03:05.680 the election results because like a lot of Canadians, particularly in Western Canada, we wanted a change
00:03:10.660 in administration, just a complete change. And the fact that that didn't happen has led to a lot of
00:03:17.160 unrest and discouragement with the results of the election.
00:03:22.360 Well, you had a really interesting op-ed in the Globe and Mail back on April 2nd. The headline that
00:03:27.960 they gave it, I don't know if you wrote this or if that's just what the editor put, but Mark Kearney
00:03:31.400 poses a threat to national unity. And so you write that politicians, the media, voters in Central
00:03:39.480 Canada, whether they realize or not, the greatest threat to national unity is emerging not from Quebec, 0.65
00:03:43.580 but on the Western Front. Again, revealed by a recent Polaris survey on account of mismanagement of
00:03:49.660 national affairs by the Liberal government and its consistent failure to address those issues of
00:03:54.160 greatest concern to Western Canadians. Large numbers of Westerners simply will not stand for 1.00
00:03:58.640 another four years of Liberal government, no matter who leads it. So I'm wondering what compelled you
00:04:04.500 to write this op-ed in the Globe and Mail? And what do you make of the sort of, I mean, it went, you
00:04:11.040 know, it was really noticed by the elites in Central Canada. Many of them didn't like it at all.
00:04:15.980 And what did you make of the backlash to this piece?
00:04:18.700 Well, I'm glad that the Globe managed to print it. It's not in line really with the Globe's own
00:04:25.500 editorial policy, but I think it's a message that voters and elites in Central Canada need to hear,
00:04:33.320 that there's enormous unrest in the West and dissatisfaction with the way the federations
00:04:40.360 manage, particularly the intrusion of the federal government in the natural resources sector, which are
00:04:48.060 so fundamental, not just to the Western economy, but to the entire economy. There's no pipelines, bills,
00:04:53.920 there's bans on making it difficult for energy to get to seaboard, that that unrest is just building
00:05:01.640 and building. And there's an indifference to it in Central Canada. They think this is just
00:05:08.220 some kind of regional whining. And I think it's a lot more serious than that. The Central Canadian
00:05:14.800 media often always seem to think this is just an Alberta phenomena. And the polling shows this is much
00:05:22.540 broader than Alberta. It's just as strong. This feeling of unrest is just as strong in Saskatchewan,
00:05:30.220 in rural parts of Manitoba and in Eastern Central and Northern British Columbia. So I wrote that to try
00:05:37.900 to get the voters in Central Canada and Atlantic Canada to realize that if you reelect the Liberal
00:05:43.820 government and you have the population to do it, you're going to see an increase in this Western
00:05:48.940 unrest rather than a decrease in it. It'll be interesting to see the polls, the polling is being
00:05:54.580 done as to post-election to see if that Western sentiment increased or stayed the same or decreased
00:06:01.780 as a result of the election. I expect it will have increased.
00:06:06.680 Well, there has been some polling. I'll get to that in a minute. But I just wanted to highlight a few
00:06:10.500 more pieces from your op-ed and just get you to reply. I mean, first of all, that line there that
00:06:14.800 no matter who leads the Liberal Party, a large number of Westerners will simply not stand for 0.71
00:06:20.480 another four years. You also write to voters, particularly in Central Atlantic Canada, need to
00:06:25.120 recognize that a vote for the Kearney Liberals is a vote for Western secession, a vote to break up
00:06:31.180 Canada as we know it. And then you finish a piece by saying the next Prime Minister of Canada,
00:06:35.440 if it remains Mark Kearney, would be identified in the history books, tragically and needlessly,
00:06:40.420 as the last Prime Minister of a united Canada. And so I'm just wondering if you could elaborate
00:06:45.340 on that. Do you really think that Western Canada is at the point where it won't last another four
00:06:50.240 years, it won't stand for it, and that that is perhaps how Mark Kearney will go down?
00:06:54.100 I think it's the combination. The Quebec secession sentiment is there as well. It looks like the
00:07:02.780 party Quebecois is destined to form the next government in Quebec, the first plank in their platform.
00:07:10.420 is to hold another referendum on the secession issue. So you're going to have that continued
00:07:16.300 problem probably increased on the Eastern Front. And then you combine that with this
00:07:22.820 unrest in Western Canada, dissatisfaction with the way the Federation is working.
00:07:28.240 Those are two forces that, if they start operating at the same time, have the potential to blow the
00:07:34.560 country apart. And what's most worrisome in Western Canada is the utter indifference of the central
00:07:41.440 Canadian elites and media to this phenomenon. And even the misreporting on it, they keep thinking
00:07:49.800 it's just an Alberta phenomenon. Polling shows it's broader than Alberta. They also think that the only
00:07:56.620 thing that's being talked about is secessions, the separation. That's not the only thing that's been
00:08:01.280 talked about. The other thing that's being talked about is how could the Federation, the federal
00:08:05.320 government react in such a way as to diminish that unrest. That's just as much on the table. It's been
00:08:11.660 advocated by Premier Smith and Premier Mo of Saskatchewan. So there's other options besides separation, but it's
00:08:20.000 not all Alberta. There's other options other than secession, but central Canada and elites better pay
00:08:26.180 attention to it. It's got the potential to wreck the Federation.
00:08:30.960 Well, you say that central elites might be indifferent to it. In some ways, it seems like they're
00:08:36.320 deliberately hostile. I'll point to this Toronto Star article op-ed. It wasn't even an op-ed, Preston, because
00:08:42.460 it was written by someone who writes for the paper, a business columnist. And the title is, Is it time for
00:08:48.140 Alberta to go alone and break from Canada? And the sort of way that the Toronto Star was promoting this was let
00:08:54.380 them go. Yes, it's time for Alberta to go let them go, as in there's some kind of a burden to the rest of 0.99
00:08:59.280 Canada. Reading that as an Albertan, what goes through your head when you see that kind of thing?
00:09:04.320 Well, that's typical of the Toronto Star. In fact, if you wanted to fan the flames of secession in
00:09:11.440 Western Canada, the best way to do it would be to give every Westerner a subscription to the Toronto Star.
00:09:17.800 Because A, the indifference, B, the hostility, and C, the ignorance of the role that the Western
00:09:29.180 provinces, particularly Alberta, play in the Federation. The revenue that is generated for the
00:09:35.460 national government, the proportion of GDP that is generated particularly by the petroleum industry,
00:09:41.260 that op-ed just indicates a complete ignorance of the relevance of that fact and its relevance to
00:09:47.860 even to central Canada. Well, it is something that I think a lot of Albertans know is how much
00:09:53.060 Alberta contributes to the rest of the country above and beyond what it gets back in services. I don't
00:09:57.560 know that that's common knowledge to folks in Ontario and Quebec, although it should be. I'm curious to hear
00:10:03.680 your thoughts, Preston, on how Premier Danielle Smith has sort of responded. So the day after the election,
00:10:08.920 April 30th, she came out and announced changes to the Citizens Initiative Act, which basically lowers
00:10:14.180 the threshold by which a referendum can be prompted through a sort of democratic process where
00:10:21.600 signatures requirement went from 20% of all voters down to 10% of all voters, and the threshold timeline
00:10:28.280 was increased. And then last week, Premier Smith came out and announced what she calls the Alberta
00:10:34.880 Accord, which is a plan to basically guarantee more pipelines for the future. She made four
00:10:40.340 major demands, including a corridor to get Alberta energy and oil to tidewater in the Pacific,
00:10:48.400 Arctic and Atlantic. She said that they wanted the feds to stop interfering with the development
00:10:53.900 of natural resources, including getting rid of the No New Pipelines Law Bill C-69, as well as the
00:10:59.200 oil tanker ban. They also demanded that the government refrain from imposing export tax or
00:11:05.080 any restrictions on Alberta's natural resources. And finally, basically an end to equalization,
00:11:11.040 that they wanted to create a new formula whereby big wealthy provinces like Quebec, Ontario and British
00:11:17.500 Columbia no longer get the transfers from Alberta. So what do you make of Premier Smith's actions and
00:11:25.120 sort of what she's laying out on the table here? Well, I think it's a responsible approach. I think
00:11:29.640 it's supported by a large number of Albertans. And what the approach she is basically taking,
00:11:37.080 say that there's a list of conditions that have to be met by the federal government and the federal
00:11:43.040 parliament for the West to remain content within the Federation. And she spells them out. Premier Moe's
00:11:50.340 done the same thing. And I think her list is correct. It's very much based on this fundamental
00:11:57.900 fact that apparently large numbers of Canadians don't get, that the biggest economic strength of
00:12:05.120 this country is its natural resources. Canada is the largest country, second largest country in the
00:12:11.760 world by landmass, which means you have the second largest or maybe the largest stock of natural
00:12:18.100 resources, agriculture, energy, mining, forestry, and the fishery. And the fact that under the Trudeau
00:12:24.400 administration, those sectors were treated as relics from the past and environmental liabilities.
00:12:32.240 Those are the building blocks to the Canadian economy. And what she's doing is asserting there's
00:12:38.100 certain things that have to be done to remove the obstructions to the development of those sectors
00:12:43.180 by the federal government. And that's not just in Alberta's interest, that's in the national
00:12:47.660 interest. And the ball is now in the federal government's court and people are going to watch
00:12:51.800 the throne speech. And not just the speech, there's been talk, talk, talk about all this for a long
00:12:57.980 time. They're going to watch whether there's any action on the part of the federal government to
00:13:03.000 address those things on her list. And in terms of the referendum, of course, Alberta, again,
00:13:09.280 Western Canada tends to favor more democratic mechanisms, referendums, citizens' initiatives,
00:13:17.080 freer votes in the legislatures than the parliament. And this is quite in accordance with that tradition.
00:13:22.840 And basically, the referendum gives people a chance who want a particular position to be
00:13:27.840 adopted by the governments to have a referendum to see how much support there is for it.
00:13:34.060 Well, you mentioned earlier about having popular support and you'd be curious to see what the
00:13:39.300 polling numbers show. Well, last week we did get some polls. So according to a new poll released by
00:13:44.880 City News, 36 percent of Albertans and a majority of UCP voters want to leave Canada. An Angus Reid poll
00:13:52.780 also found that roughly half the people in both, to your point, Alberta and Saskatchewan would be
00:13:59.360 interested in independence. And so I'm wondering, though, like, I mean, Canada's constitution does
00:14:06.800 allow for provinces to separate. If there's a popular will, there's a formula. Do you think that
00:14:13.500 there really is that type of sentiment enough to push this over?
00:14:18.100 I think the sentiment is out there. What those polls don't mention, there are other options besides
00:14:22.340 separation, like what the premier's offering. There's several others. And I'm involved with a group that
00:14:28.840 wants to put on what we're calling a Canada West Assembly, where you would get a bunch of
00:14:36.500 representative people from the four provinces, almost like a legislature, and then have these
00:14:42.180 major propositions for what should the West do, put in front of that, and subject to cross-examination
00:14:49.940 and debate and everything else. And one of the options certainly would be the secession option.
00:14:55.740 But again, secession to do what? To form an independent country? Maybe that's one option.
00:15:00.780 Secession to form an independent country that would end up in some kind of union with the United States?
00:15:06.100 That's another option. All of those should be put on the table. Too much of this is done in the back
00:15:11.360 rooms and small groups working on it. Don't get it out in front of a democratic forum and have those
00:15:18.120 options looked at. And then take some votes as to which ones would be best to recommend to the provincial
00:15:26.580 governments. One of those is the secession one. It's not nearly as simple as people think it is.
00:15:33.560 You could hold one of those references. Quebec is further along this road than the West is. But
00:15:39.940 suppose you have to have, according to the Clarity Act, you have to have a clear question and a clear
00:15:47.620 majority on it. So let's suppose, let's take Quebec, but it could be the West. You have a question,
00:15:53.580 should Quebec secede from the Canadian Federation and form a new country? Clear question. And then you've
00:16:01.240 got to get a clear majority. And there's a big argument, what's a clear majority, but it's probably
00:16:05.360 60% plus. But suppose you get it. Suppose you get that. What's going to happen then? Is that entity
00:16:14.160 going to secede automatically, get out of the Federation? No. No. What that'll trigger is a big
00:16:20.840 federal, provincial, constitutional conference triggered by a crisis and focused on that particular
00:16:28.200 problem. But that's all that that triggers. And then you're basically going to have a debate about
00:16:35.140 whether you can reconfederation. And that would happen whether Quebec does it or whether Alberta
00:16:41.180 does it. It's not simple. And a lot of these people that are advocating that just think it's
00:16:46.260 that simple. That idea should get in front of some people that know what it's all about.
00:16:50.660 And not antagonistic to it, but just say, here, you should understand constitutional law. And
00:16:56.060 it's not as simple as you make it. Right. And so, I mean, just to go back to your op-ed
00:17:02.100 in the Globe and Mail, you predicted that Carney, if he's reelected, might be identified, you said
00:17:08.000 would then be identified in the history books as the last prime minister of United Canada. So
00:17:12.180 presumably you do foresee something like this happening in the next four years.
00:17:16.260 Well, no. If the federal government responded to some of this, then some of this could be
00:17:22.080 averted. But there's a real skepticism in the West. I mean, Mr. Carney's done a 180-degree
00:17:28.720 turn on. He used to be a total champion of climate change. Now that's been put in the
00:17:35.340 background. The Liberal Party was opposed to hydrocarbon energy development, opposed to pipelines,
00:17:43.120 et cetera. Now he professes to be in favor of these things. Standing behind him at present,
00:17:50.800 he's going to maybe change this tomorrow, was a cabinet of 23 people who just three months before
00:17:56.300 were saying exactly the opposite of what he's been saying. So you can forgive Westerners for being 1.00
00:18:02.820 pretty skeptical. And they'll be skeptical about the throne speech, too. More words, more words,
00:18:07.360 probably words that try to address it. Where's the action? And that's what the premiers are watching.
00:18:15.040 Well, one of the themes that relates to this is, or if I was in the federal government's shoes and
00:18:22.000 wanted to send a signal to the provinces to try to reduce this federal provincial conflict, which
00:18:29.200 virtually exists with every provincial government, I would introduce an act respecting provincial
00:18:36.640 jurisdiction. And what that act would do is amend the major statutes, the federal statutes that
00:18:43.440 authorize intervention in areas of provincial jurisdiction, like the Canada Health Act. Health is
00:18:50.160 a provincial responsibility, but the federal government intervenes under the Canada Health Act. Natural
00:18:56.560 resources development, the constitution is perfectly clear that this is in provincial jurisdiction,
00:19:01.680 but the federal government passes legislation that directly interferes with it. The Impact Assessment
00:19:07.840 Act, the No Pipelines Act, there's half a dozen of them. And then municipal government, the constitution
00:19:15.200 is perfectly clear, municipal government and municipalities is a provincial responsibility. The
00:19:20.960 federal government intervenes through the Canada Housing Act and through the Canada Mortgage Bank
00:19:25.840 Act, where the mortgage bank makes big loans to municipalities without even talking to the
00:19:32.080 provincial government. And then the constitution also says property and civil rights is a provincial
00:19:38.720 responsibility. The federal government intervened in that area through the Emergency Act and the courts
00:19:44.480 even mentioned that some of that intervention was unconstitutional. So if the federal government passes
00:19:51.040 a statutes like that pulling back out of those areas by amending the statutes and give it the power
00:19:56.080 to do that, that would be a pretty clear signal to the provinces that the federal government understands the
00:20:02.160 basis of unrest. But more speeches, more press conferences saying we're going to do something, etc., etc., etc.,
00:20:10.240 I don't think that it's going to take some action to remove the skepticism on those points.
00:20:17.680 Well, I think it's granted. I mean, just the recent election that we just fought, I mean, this issue
00:20:22.080 was basically never raised. I don't think I heard anyone put the question to Mark Carney. The focus
00:20:28.160 of the campaign was almost entirely on our relationship with the United States, on President Donald Trump,
00:20:33.840 potential tariffs. If anything, you know, we had two federal debates. One of them was in French,
00:20:37.840 where the entire debate was basically focused on Quebec and how to appease them and how to give them more.
00:20:42.800 And I don't think that Alberta was even mentioned. So, you know, what kind of hope do you have that
00:20:49.280 Mark Carney cares about this? I mean, he doubled down on Bill 69. He said he's not getting rid of it.
00:20:53.520 So is there any expectation that he will meet any of Daniel Smith's?
00:20:57.120 Well, the skepticism is that he won't. Now, that puts the ball in his court to prove that that's
00:21:02.160 that that's not the case. But the other thing that, again, rankles Westerners,
00:21:13.760 no part of North America has had more experience with populism, not just populist movements,
00:21:21.600 populist governments, populist movements that became governments, than Western Canada. If anybody ought to
00:21:29.040 be able to figure out a strategy, how to deal with Donald Trump, because he's on top of a populist
00:21:35.040 movement. In fact, the whole axis for looking at the political landscape, I think, has changed. The
00:21:43.280 old landscape, it's all left, right or center. If we're the left, right and center. No, that's not the
00:21:49.840 axis anymore. The axis is this way, bottom-up democratic populist movements versus political
00:21:56.080 parts dominated by aristocratic elites. That's the new axis. And if you want to interpret the
00:22:03.280 American landscape, that that's what's happened there. You've got this bottom-up populist movement
00:22:09.040 that put a leader at the top. Whether he's a populist or not, time's going to tell. But he's on
00:22:15.200 top of a populist movement. Well, by Western Canada's experience, how do you get to the leader of a
00:22:20.080 populist movement? Not necessarily, but going to Washington. I mean, maybe there's a place for that.
00:22:26.480 You get to him through his own followers. That's how you get to him. Trump has to pay attention to
00:22:32.880 the people that got him there. And one of the promises he made to the people that got him there
00:22:37.520 was he'd lower their cost of living. Now, what tariffs and counter tariffs do is increase. It's a
00:22:43.520 consumer that ends up paying in those non-productive tariff wars. So I think there's a way to get to
00:22:50.240 Trump, if you want to, say, reduce his policy on tariffs. It's not to counter tariffs, although
00:22:58.080 you can maybe make a short-term argument for them. It's by getting to his followers. And when
00:23:04.560 Premier Smith went down and got on one of these big American talk shows that's got 30, 40 million
00:23:10.960 followers, that's what she's doing. She's getting to Trump's constituency. And there's going to be 0.84
00:23:17.360 senatorial elections in the third of the states in 2026. Canadians ought to be involved in those
00:23:23.920 and get anti-tariff Republicans to get into the Senate. And Western Canada has some wisdom on how
00:23:33.120 you deal with populist movements and populist governments. Central Canada doesn't have the foggiest
00:23:38.800 notion about. And most of those commentators, I say to political science students, particularly if
00:23:46.320 your prof is still talking about politics, left, right, center, left, right, center, left, right,
00:23:50.720 center, ask him, does he also think the earth is flat? Operating in a framework that I think doesn't exist.
00:23:59.760 I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the Oval Office bilateral meeting that we saw last week between
00:24:06.720 President Trump and Mark Carney, because it seems to me that if you're watching online and you saw
00:24:12.160 the commentary from Axe and YouTube, it was very critical of Mark Carney. And it basically said that
00:24:17.200 this guy was out of his league and Trump basically just had him for breakfast. Whereas if you're watching
00:24:22.560 the traditional media, the CBC and others, they were very complimentary of Mark Carney saying that it was
00:24:28.800 sort of masterful, playing a game of chess and whatever. My own perspective is that I think
00:24:33.520 Trump kind of humiliated him. Like he gets that Mark Carney is there because of Donald Trump. And
00:24:39.280 like they're sort of denying that. Like Donald Trump came in, he created this huge political
00:24:42.880 problem in Canada, and Mark Carney was seen as the one who could solve it. Mark Carney got elected
00:24:47.200 basically off of bashing Donald Trump. And Trump almost kind of appreciates that. He was having fun with
00:24:53.200 Carney, sort of saying like, you know, this is one of the greatest political comebacks of all time,
00:24:57.360 even better than mine, right? And almost kind of taking credit for the fact that he was there,
00:25:01.840 laughing at the fact that Carney had been bashing him, maybe open to some kind of a discussion or
00:25:06.800 debate. But in my perspective, it seems that Carney was unwilling to make the concessions, right? Like,
00:25:13.920 Trump is concerned about the trade imbalance. Carney has no interest in reducing many of our own
00:25:19.680 barriers and our own subsidies and our own sort of supply management issues. And he was more interested in
00:25:24.640 just hitting back like dollar for dollar tariffs and all that kind of stuff. So I'm curious to hear
00:25:29.760 your thoughts on that exchange. Well, for one thing, I find it embarrassing from a democratic
00:25:35.840 standpoint that an American president can dominate and almost dictate a Canadian election. The fact that
00:25:46.480 there was a fair increase or holding the line on the voter turnout, you know, what does that say about
00:25:53.920 Canadian democracy that only a threat and statements by an American president can get people to wave the
00:26:01.760 flag and be patriotic? Like, what does that, is there not enough in this country regardless of who the
00:26:09.200 American president is to be proud of? Is not our economic strength through the resource sector
00:26:16.000 something that should make you proud? Is not our history, although it gets trashed by the professors
00:26:21.680 at a lot of the universities and teachers? Haven't we got enough to be proud of regardless of what the
00:26:28.480 president of the United States does? And I find that embarrassing and worrisome that that's what it takes
00:26:37.040 to get Canadians to feel patriotic, act patriotic and wave the flag? I think we've got enough to be proud
00:26:44.400 of regardless of who the president is. One hundred percent. Okay. Well, I did, I have one question just
00:26:50.320 sort of imagining a future independent Western Canada or Alberta. One thing that often gets raised is say
00:26:56.720 Alberta and Saskatchewan did decide to leave Canada and go it alone, they would be landlocked. And so they
00:27:03.200 potentially would be met by the same kinds of issues where they can't get their product to
00:27:08.400 Tidewater because they would still have to deal with Canada. That's an assumption that this worry is
00:27:13.920 just confined to Alberta and Saskatchewan. It isn't. It's broader. It does go into Manitoba so that you
00:27:20.720 could get access to the Atlantic through a port at Churchill. It's very strong in British Columbia,
00:27:31.440 including in the area that has the deepest deep water port in the country. Like it's,
00:27:38.080 if you just confine it to those two provinces, yes, you've got this landlock problem. But if you
00:27:42.800 broaden it out to the entire West, then that goes away. Well, it doesn't go away, but there's ways of
00:27:50.080 meeting it. Well, one of the other challenges, and this is one that a lot of the people that talk about
00:27:54.480 secession haven't addressed is what will be the status of indigenous groups that have treaty
00:28:00.640 arrangements with the Crown and with the federal government under those circumstances.
00:28:06.080 How is that going to be handled?
00:28:07.440 It's one of the challenges. One of the proposals will be that they be treated as, be given municipal
00:28:14.560 status. But will some of them settle for that? Back in 1995, when people forget that there was a
00:28:22.880 referendum in Quebec that came within 34,000. If 34,000 people out of four and a half million had
00:28:28.800 changed their minds, you would have had a yes vote for secession from Quebec. And I was a member of
00:28:34.400 Parliament at that time. We had representatives from the Northern Cree come to our office and say,
00:28:41.440 we don't care what Quebec does. We are under federal jurisdiction. We expect the federal
00:28:45.680 government to continue to deal with us and look after us. And so what would have happened? And some
00:28:52.240 of these people were quite threatening. We can do some real damage to Quebec hydros towers in our area.
00:28:58.800 Maybe blink the lights in New York was one of the phrases that were used. Maybe that would get some
00:29:03.280 attention to our concerns. There's issues like that that would have to be resolved and not easy.
00:29:09.680 Interesting. And yeah, we are still sort of dealing with those concerns. Whereas some of the
00:29:16.880 First Nations in Alberta say, you can't do this. Juno News talked to constitutional lawyers that said
00:29:22.080 that there isn't standing for them to block a citizen's initiative like this. So that's definitely
00:29:27.360 an interesting, outstanding issue. Well, Preston, we always really appreciate your time. Sorry,
00:29:32.160 did you have any final thoughts on that? Well, just on just what you said there.
00:29:37.520 This business is trying to shut up the people that want something different, secession or whatever
00:29:42.880 the options are. I don't think that's a democratic way either. I think the democratic way is let them
00:29:48.960 put that position together. There's about 10 groups working on this in the behind and they're not
00:29:55.440 unified. Let them get their position together and let them get it out in front of the public.
00:30:00.320 And let the public have a kick at it. I think by suppressing the talk about these things,
00:30:06.160 you do more damage than getting them out and having a genuine political discourse.
00:30:10.480 And if this assembly we're talking about comes about, one of the things we're hoping is to
00:30:16.560 demonstrate maybe for a week or 10 days, what genuine democratic discourse is about. It doesn't occur in
00:30:24.640 the legislatures now that are just partisan divided. It certainly doesn't occur in the Parliament of
00:30:30.480 Canada and I know about that. But can we not for 10 days have people present positions clearly and
00:30:38.480 they're listened to? Can we not have them cross-examined by asking questions and getting answers?
00:30:46.480 Can those people not be obliged to listen to other people? We're going to listen to you,
00:30:50.640 but you got to listen to something else. And can you not take some votes at the end that indicate how
00:30:55.680 much support there is for a particular proposition? Where today is there genuine democratic discourse?
00:31:03.280 Hopefully, maybe this assembly can demonstrate it and demonstrate it on an issue of the future
00:31:08.720 position of the West in the Federation.
00:31:11.480 Well, it's so interesting. Preston Manning, thank you so much for your time and your insights.
00:31:15.880 We're really looking forward to, I hope that comes to fruition and maybe we will have some real
00:31:20.760 debate and real democratic discussions in this country. Thank you so much for everything.
00:31:25.720 Well, thank you for having me.
00:31:27.160 All right, folks. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:31:30.600 I'm Candace Malcolm. This is the Candace Malcolm Show. Thank you and God bless.
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