Juno News - May 08, 2025


What would an INDEPENDENT ALBERTA really look like？ (with Bruce Pardy)


Episode Stats

Length

30 minutes

Words per Minute

171.65369

Word Count

5,207

Sentence Count

288

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:00:05.160 We have a great episode. I'm really excited. We have Bruce Party joining the program a little
00:00:09.320 later on. I want to start, though, by talking about something we talked on the show yesterday,
00:00:13.660 and things have just escalated a little more. So I want to go through this quickly. And I'm
00:00:16.820 talking about the battle of the premiers, the sort of war of wars that's happening right now
00:00:21.140 between the more progressive left-wing premiers like David Eby in British Columbia and Doug Ford
00:00:27.360 in Ontario. And yes, I'm sorry, Doug Ford, you now fall into the more liberal progressive
00:00:31.920 premiers because of what's going on in the country. And they're fighting against the more
00:00:36.320 conservative, independent-minded premiers like Alberta, Danielle Smith, and Saskatchewan Scott
00:00:41.220 Moe. So they dragged Scott Moe into this and speaking to reporters, kind of trying to drill
00:00:46.600 him on what his position is. We talk a lot about Alberta independence, but people in Saskatchewan
00:00:51.780 feel, you know, just equally as burned by the feds and equally as disappointed in the
00:00:57.160 outcome of the recent election as the brothers in Alberta. So here is Scott Moe responding
00:01:03.160 to the question on the pathway towards independence for Saskatchewan.
00:01:07.100 Would you vote to make or would you vote to stay?
00:01:09.580 It is my job to put a question to the people of Saskatchewan. If people in Saskatchewan trigger
00:01:15.040 the legislation for plebiscite, it's the job of the government then to formulate a question
00:01:18.780 for the people of Saskatchewan. Now you're getting way over your skis with respect to what that
00:01:23.300 process might be or what that process might entail.
00:01:26.240 And so he's right. You know, it's not up to the premier to say, hey, we're done, we're
00:01:30.800 going to leave. In Canada, this is all spelled out in the constitution. This is all spelled
00:01:34.480 out because of a Supreme Court case that has decided that, yes, provinces have the right
00:01:39.520 to secede. They have to meet certain thresholds and they have to answer a clear question. And
00:01:44.960 so, yes, there's been a lot of talk about Alberta and them possibly going it alone. Well,
00:01:49.300 Saskatchewan has the same process. They have the same constitutional legal rights governing
00:01:53.240 them. And Scott Moe just very clearly points that out. Now, on the other side, we have
00:01:58.300 British Columbia Premier David Eby calling on Premier Smith and Moe to push back strongly
00:02:05.620 against any kind of separation, separatist sentiments by that club.
00:02:10.880 I understand. You know, you've got a couple of conservative premiers in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
00:02:16.360 Their preferred candidate was not successful in the federal election. They have strong bases
00:02:20.620 of support for the Conservatives in those provinces. They have they're navigating tricky
00:02:24.440 waters. But I certainly encourage them all, Premier Smith, Premier Moe to and I believe
00:02:32.020 that they're on board for this, to work together for the good of the country, to hold the country
00:02:37.600 together and to push back strongly on on any kind of separatist sentiment.
00:02:42.440 It's interesting because this whole idea that people in Alberta and British Columbia,
00:02:47.000 or people in Alberta and Saskatchewan are just being poor sports, like their candidate didn't
00:02:50.900 win, oh boo hoo, like pick it together and let's all go ahead with Team Canada. It's just
00:02:55.580 so missing the point. It's so surface level, right? It's like the idea that these two provinces
00:02:59.780 and particularly people all over Canada have just been blatantly disrespected by the federal
00:03:04.720 government for over a decade and that other people in other parts of the country have decided
00:03:08.780 to double down on this. Like I said this throughout the election, I thought it was an incredibly
00:03:11.720 important election and that we were faced with a fork in the road. And I don't like the way that
00:03:16.240 our country is going. You know, the saving grace for me is that it's a minority government. I do
00:03:19.940 believe we'll be at another election. In another two years, maybe that one will be the most important
00:03:23.860 election of our lifetime. But if we keep doubling down on this path of just ruin, like economic ruin,
00:03:30.400 we're heading towards poverty, we're heading just towards an economic collapse,
00:03:34.320 socialism, big government, everything is taking over. It's changing the mindset of Canadian. It's
00:03:39.020 just not a good path. And if saying enough is enough, you know, that's not like being any kind
00:03:43.620 of like a traitor to your country. That is actually standing up for your people and for what is best
00:03:47.940 for everyone. So going back to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, we played the back and forth with him
00:03:53.340 and Danielle Smith yesterday. Well, later in the day, yesterday on Wednesday, he sort of clarified and
00:04:00.560 struck a slightly more reconciliatory tone saying that he does support the people of Alberta and
00:04:05.240 Saskatchewan and that there's not the big rift that people are playing it up to be. Let's play that clip.
00:04:11.060 We get along. I think there's this big misnomer that we don't get along. I could call her up right
00:04:16.000 now and say, you know, come to Toronto, we'll be going out for lunch. So there's not this big rift
00:04:20.560 that everyone's playing out. You know, I just want to support the people of Alberta and Saskatchewan
00:04:26.220 have been ignored for a decade now. And I support them. It's as simple as that.
00:04:31.820 So just to remind you, this is what Danielle Smith said the previous day on Tuesday,
00:04:37.300 talking about Ford. She also said they have a great friendship, that they have a constructive
00:04:40.120 friendship, but that she doesn't tell him how to run his province. He shouldn't tell her how to run
00:04:46.480 her province. Let's play this clip to refresh our memories.
00:04:49.400 Well, Doug and I have a great friendship and we don't agree on everything. In fact,
00:04:53.460 I think we supported different people in the last federal election. And so we don't have to agree
00:04:58.680 on everything. But what I will say is we have a constructive conversation at the cough table.
00:05:04.460 I continue to look forward to having a constructive conversation with him at the cough table.
00:05:09.500 But he's the Premier of Ontario. I'm the Premier of Alberta. We just have different issues that we
00:05:15.000 have to respond to in our respective jurisdictions. I don't tell him how he should run his province.
00:05:19.320 And I would hope that he doesn't tell me how I should run mine. But we have a very respectful
00:05:24.060 relationship and I hope that continues.
00:05:26.520 And so, of course, Premier Smith is not herself a separatist. She's said that many times.
00:05:30.020 But again, in Canada, our constitutional order and previous Supreme Court decisions have meant
00:05:35.220 that Canadian provinces do have the right to separate. There is a pathway. And of course,
00:05:40.040 as someone who respects democracy and just wants what's best for the people of Alberta,
00:05:43.480 she would be willing to do what the people basically tell her to do. And so I find this
00:05:48.220 topic of Alberta independence, Alberta separatism really interesting in some ways. It's sort of like,
00:05:53.440 you know, people have just had enough of Canada. They've had enough of this liberal government
00:05:56.820 and driving our country into the ground to totally disrespecting individual rights and freedoms,
00:06:01.760 our heritage and our tradition as Canadians. And, you know, pushing this sort of like left-wing
00:06:05.980 globalist, utopian, environmentalist scheme onto all of us. Let's go it alone. And on the other side,
00:06:12.180 it's kind of optimistic. It's like, hey, we can build something better and determine our own
00:06:15.940 future and build something that will make us truly free. And so to talk a little bit more about this
00:06:21.260 idea of Alberta independence, I want to bring on Bruce Pardee. Bruce is a professor of law at
00:06:27.160 Queen's University, a legal scholar with the Fraser Institute, a senior fellow. And so I had Bruce on
00:06:32.300 this show back in February. He wrote an essay calling for an Alberta Declaration of Independence.
00:06:37.640 Isn't this interesting? So three months ago, before all of this stuff was flaring up,
00:06:41.200 before the Alberta Accord, which Alberta Premier Daniel Smith recently announced, we went through
00:06:46.400 this on the show, basically just calling out the federal government and making it very clear all
00:06:51.180 of the demands that Alberta has for the future, that Alberta requires basically economic freedom
00:06:57.260 and the ability to get its products to market and end to equalization payments and stopping
00:07:02.240 subsidizing other big, rich provinces, all totally reasonable things. You know, it seems that
00:07:08.660 every few years or maybe after the last few Justin Trudeau victories in Ottawa, there has been a
00:07:16.440 bigger and bigger separatist movement. And then it kind of goes away. And then it comes back. I think
00:07:20.880 if Pierre Polyev had won the election, it wouldn't be flaring up quite so much. But because we got
00:07:25.720 another liberal government with Mark Carney, it seems to be back. So Bruce, first, welcome to the show.
00:07:30.560 Thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you walk us through your essay and walk us through the sort
00:07:35.420 of timeline of independence for Alberta and Western sort of separatism?
00:07:39.560 Yeah, it's been very interesting to watch. And the election, of course, was perhaps, you know,
00:07:49.100 you put it as a fork in the road or a threshold. You know, you could probably tell ahead of time that
00:07:54.680 if there was one outcome, things would die down. If it was a different outcome, the one we actually
00:08:00.480 got, that things would ramp up. And that's what's happened. And that's predictable. You're right
00:08:08.040 about the back and forth over time. And one of the dangers here for Alberta is that they will forget
00:08:16.760 that old saying that goes, when people tell you who they are, believe them. Because Canada and
00:08:27.620 especially the federal government has told Alberta over and over again, what it really is. And yet the
00:08:35.020 inclination, and understandably, on the part of Albertans is to go back again and say, well, let's try
00:08:43.020 this one more time. You know, please do the following things and make us happy. And if you do, then we'll
00:08:48.980 stay. But they've demonstrated, the federal government now has demonstrated quite a number of times already
00:08:56.040 that is not really interested. And it might be that Albertans have more faith in both the country and in
00:09:05.520 the federal government than, than the real picture actually deserves. So, and there's an irony here as
00:09:13.580 well, that there's a big picture going on. A lot of Albertans perceive, I think, that the dispute with
00:09:25.580 the federal government is all about money. And to an extent, it is. The federal government is, is, uh,
00:09:35.060 obstructing Alberta's primary industries. It is, uh, Alberta has always been the, the, that the payer into
00:09:47.340 equalization. In, in, in these and many other ways, it is in fact about money in the sense that the
00:09:54.860 federal government is making Albertans poorer, or at least not as wealthy as they ought to be.
00:10:01.040 But there's a much bigger picture going on.
00:10:04.760 If you like, the conflict between Alberta and the federal government reflects a larger conflict,
00:10:13.160 even an ideological conflict between two different visions of the way governments and countries and
00:10:19.460 societies are supposed to work. Now, I don't want to overplay this because, you know, it, there's all,
00:10:24.860 obviously nuance and gray and so on. So, but, but, but symbolically you could put it this way. The
00:10:32.600 irony here is that Alberta at the moment with its separatist inclinations is the nationalist entity
00:10:42.200 and the federal government are the globalists. Right. And so the, the, the, the response to the
00:10:51.260 Alberta inclination to separate that goes, you know, you, you are being a traitor to your country.
00:10:58.220 Well, it's actually probably the reverse. It is the Albertans who want to separate, who are concerned
00:11:05.720 about the forces that have taken over this country, the country that they thought that they knew.
00:11:11.000 The country that they thought that they knew and are discovering that it's not that country at all.
00:11:15.320 What Albertans want is for Canada to be the country that they have in their heads.
00:11:21.440 And that country is one that is governed by the rule of law. It's a capitalist country.
00:11:30.280 It's a country that is free enough for you to find your own way, to apply your own skills and to
00:11:38.580 apply your own determination and to earn what you can. The fact of the matter is that that is really
00:11:46.260 not the country that Canada is now. It may have been at one time. It's not Canada now. Canada today
00:11:54.460 is a socialist progressive country.
00:11:59.100 And if Alberta's asks are essentially asking the federal government to make Canada not a socialist
00:12:10.780 progressive country, that's not going to happen because those ideas are now deeply embedded in the,
00:12:19.180 in the Canadian fabric, if you like, in the way the constitution's been interpreted, in the way the
00:12:24.660 federal government behaves. Even equalization, as an example, equalization, the idea of equalization
00:12:32.880 is in the constitution. The constitution says, not, not, not the specifics, not the particular policies,
00:12:40.560 but the idea of equalization is in the 1982 constitution. It, it embeds as a constitutional principle,
00:12:49.500 the socialist idea that money will be taken from some areas and given to other areas. It is a
00:12:56.460 constitutional mandate for redistribution of wealth. Okay. So if Alberta thinks, well, we're going to come
00:13:03.420 in and we're going to fix this because, you know, we're upset, that's not going to happen because the
00:13:08.620 country unfortunately is now built on these kinds of ideas. And so it won't be able to function if it,
00:13:15.740 if it, if it accepts those, those requests. I agree that I think Danielle Smith's requests
00:13:21.500 in the Alberta Accord are very unlikely to be met by Mark Carney and the liberals. Like it's basically
00:13:27.100 saying, imagine if conservatives had been elected over the last 10 years and done all the things that
00:13:31.580 they had promised to do, not even the things that they would have been actually able to do, but all
00:13:34.860 the things that an ideological conservative would have wanted to do. It's interesting. I watched,
00:13:40.380 I recently watched Jordan B. Peterson's video on Mark Carney sort of talking about why he thinks
00:13:45.900 Canada's in deep trouble and basically talks about how Mark Carney's values as laid out in his book
00:13:50.940 values are not Canadian values, right? They are progressive environmentalist lefty values. I think
00:13:57.740 this was the thing that used to drive me crazy about Justin Trudeau is that he purported to be Mr.
00:14:02.700 Canada and his Canadian values were fundamentally different than my Canadian values. I don't recognize
00:14:07.820 Canadian values. That's my point. That's my point. I think this is, I think this is a mistake.
00:14:14.220 It's not, it's not just Carney and it's not just Trudeau. Those values you're talking about here, here,
00:14:21.100 here is the uncomfortable possibility. Those values you're referring to are Canadian values. Those have
00:14:32.940 become Canadian values. We just had an election and 60, well, you could put, you could, you could put it
00:14:40.460 two ways. You could say that, you know, either 60% of the, of the people who voted, voted for a progressive
00:14:49.100 socialist party, or, or you could say, well, almost a hundred percent of voters voted for a, some kind of a
00:14:57.020 progressive party because most of the parties running were, have progressive policies. No, all, all the
00:15:02.380 parties, all the parties running. You're right. There, there, there was no traditional conservative
00:15:07.180 party running. So that idea, and I, and I'm, I'm on the same page as you, that I would like Canada to
00:15:13.180 not be what you're describing. I would like Canada to be a country that does not embrace the set of values
00:15:19.260 that you referred to. But I'm afraid that it is. I mean, we, we saw this, we saw what Canada really
00:15:27.980 was, for example, during COVID. And that was not a mirage. That was, that was pulling back the curtain.
00:15:36.620 And so we have to deal with the reality that the country is not what we would like it to be. And
00:15:44.060 the question that follows is, is it productive to try to change it into that, which we imagine it
00:15:51.500 ought to be, or to accept the reality that we've now been confronted with and decide,
00:15:57.500 well, I'm speaking now Alberta to decide, you know what, this just isn't going to work anymore.
00:16:02.860 We have tried. And you'll note, you'll note the kind of response
00:16:06.540 that, that the sentiments in Alberta are receiving compared to the sentiments,
00:16:16.220 the separate sentiments from Quebec long ago. Okay. Again, I don't want to, to, to overgeneralize,
00:16:23.900 but you could put it this way. When Quebec long said, you know, we are unhappy,
00:16:31.500 the response sometimes was, well, we're sorry, you're unhappy. What can we do to help? Because
00:16:38.860 we want you to stay. The, the, the central Canada federal, and even sometimes Albertan
00:16:49.340 response to separatist sentiments has been not, we're sorry, you're unhappy. How can we fix it? It's,
00:16:57.900 how dare you? It is an accusation of betrayal. And, and that is, I think a,
00:17:10.700 a gauge of the, of, of one of the differences between this conflict as it unfolds and the one
00:17:18.380 that happened with respect to Quebec. Well, I, it's interesting because I think many people,
00:17:24.060 just because Quebec has its own language and they have a French speaking culture that they are seen
00:17:28.940 as being culturally distinct. And it's interesting the way you're framing it, that because of like,
00:17:33.900 almost like commitment to more conservative, free market, liberal values, like small L liberal,
00:17:39.020 classical liberal from 150 years ago values, uh, when the country was founded, um, that, that, that
00:17:44.940 Alberta in some way is a distinct society as well. But I wonder, Bruce, like, is, is that really the case?
00:17:50.780 I mean, you know, we just talked about how you could say, you could argue that both, uh, that every
00:17:54.140 single political party running in the Canadian election was in some ways progressive. Like,
00:17:58.220 none of them hold, uh, traditional Christian values. Um, none, none of the candidates running,
00:18:02.460 even for the more libertarian or conservative parties, they, they, they didn't have anyone who
00:18:06.540 was pro-life for instance. And, and, and yet like, you know, in, in Alberta, I, I wonder, like,
00:18:11.820 I lived in Edmonton for four years. I have a lot of friends who live in Calgary. It's, it's also a
00:18:15.020 rather progressive place in many ways. And I believe at this point, the separatist sentiment is somewhere
00:18:20.300 floating around 30%. So I, I worry that even in conservative, the bastion of conservatism in
00:18:25.500 the heartland of Canada, that this, this toxic sort of ideology, the thing that you and I are
00:18:30.540 talking about and that we, in our careers, in our lives, we fight against, um, that it's, it's such
00:18:35.420 a stranglehold around our society that, that, you know, even, even a movement like this wouldn't create
00:18:40.700 the sort of, you know, a, a better path for people who are, are, are worried about, uh, this ideology.
00:18:46.060 I think it's a fair point. I think it's going to be a test, right? And here's one of my favorite
00:18:50.620 tests for Albertans. So part of the sentiment around this issue is the idea that they want to
00:18:58.140 be free. They want, you want Alberta to be a free country, if you like, certainly a free province.
00:19:03.740 And, and fair enough, good for them. But the test is, all right, so does that mean that you agree that
00:19:12.220 socialized medicine has to go? In other words, free countries don't have single-payer healthcare
00:19:17.820 systems. And the danger is this, that Albertans will perceive that their problems are,
00:19:27.180 lie specifically with a particular federal government and its specific policies,
00:19:31.500 federal government and its specific policies. And the, the, the, the large trends and features
00:19:39.820 of Canada as a country. Now, one of those features, of course, is our socialized system of medicine.
00:19:47.100 And people get used to what they get used to.
00:19:50.940 If you really want a free place to live, whether it's a province or a country, independent country,
00:19:55.660 if you really mean that word free, then you do not mean a system of medical care that is run
00:20:05.660 and controlled and paid for by the government. And so this is one of the things I like to ask the
00:20:11.580 Albertans who, who profess a determination to be independent and free to say, does that include
00:20:20.220 your healthcare? And when they say, well, we need to help, we need to keep our healthcare.
00:20:24.620 Then my response is, well, then you don't really mean it. You don't really mean what it is that
00:20:28.540 you're saying, or you're, you mean it is a completely different thing than the word suggests.
00:20:34.700 Right. And so how is it then like, if someone, I mean, you, you wrote this, you're not yourself
00:20:38.860 from Alberta, you're from Ontario, you live in Ontario. But you know, like we said, back in
00:20:43.100 February, you wrote this declaration of independence for Alberta, where you believe that it is time
00:20:48.060 for them to just cut ties, cut loose and start something new. So can you walk us through like,
00:20:54.540 why you think that and whether you think it's something that could possibly happen?
00:20:58.060 Yes, sure. So if you, if you go back to the time of the American Revolutionary War,
00:21:04.220 and declaration of independence for them. At that time, they wanted the Canadians as they then were
00:21:11.420 to join them, to get out from under the thumb of the British crown. And the Canadians, of course,
00:21:17.900 said no, they, they wanted to be subjects. And so if you like the, the, the, the founding story
00:21:28.220 of these two countries are diametrically opposed. I mean, America's is life, liberty, pursuit of
00:21:35.100 happiness, independence. And the, the Canadians origin story is obedience, deference to authority,
00:21:45.580 not to rock the boat. Canada, if you like, exists to, to, to resist the Americans. We have maintained
00:21:55.500 that idea underneath our skin ever since. And so a lot of people in Canada, and especially in the West,
00:22:07.420 have this idea that has been sort of unconsciously adopted from the Americans,
00:22:14.060 that their constitutional order is about individual autonomy too.
00:22:21.260 But it really isn't. I mean, the Americans are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:22:25.660 And the Canadians are peace, order, and good government. That is deference to authority.
00:22:30.940 Mm-hmm.
00:22:32.380 So you're dealing with two different ideas. And in many ways, my, my sense is, and you're quite right,
00:22:38.140 I'm, I'm not from Alberta, I'm from Ontario, but I, but from a distance, it looks to me like
00:22:43.100 Albertans think more like Americans in these terms than they do like many Canadians.
00:22:48.060 Well, it's really interesting when we think of Canada as a country in the history and the idea
00:22:53.020 that Canadians are literally just loyalists who are fighting against this idea of the American
00:22:56.700 revolution. But, but it would be for me, I'm from Western Canada, I grew up in Vancouver,
00:23:00.460 and I'm, I think I had like a fifth or sixth generation Vancouver person on at least part
00:23:05.820 of my family. And it's interesting when you go back far enough in the history of British Columbia,
00:23:10.780 like the, that didn't, that wasn't originally part of Canada, right? And, and, and the original
00:23:14.940 settlements by the British, it actually went all the way down to the Columbia River. So it was part,
00:23:19.820 it was, it was its own separate entity before. And it was because Sir Johnny McDonald promised the
00:23:24.300 railway that British Columbia decided to join in with Canada rather than the United States,
00:23:28.060 and they moved the border. And for Alberta, I mean, I was in, I was at the University of Alberta
00:23:33.100 in 2005, when they celebrated the centennial, 100th anniversary of Alberta joining the Confederation,
00:23:39.980 joining Canada in 1905. That's not a very long time. Like that's a, that's a blink of an eye in
00:23:45.260 terms of, and so, you know, this idea that, that just because, you know, Canada was the one that,
00:23:51.820 you know, claimed all this territory and convinced these provinces to join them rather than the United
00:23:56.700 States that necessarily that was the right decision or the decision that will stand until the end of
00:24:01.020 time. Like it's, it's, it's very much as a short period in history. And so it's interesting to think
00:24:05.580 of, well, maybe that's not actually the best fit. And maybe there is a better arrangement,
00:24:09.660 not necessarily that these places should be part of the United States, maybe they just have a
00:24:13.020 different milieu and a different ethos than Eastern Canada, or maybe, maybe it's all been merged
00:24:18.380 together in the modern world. And so, you know, the idea of the Laurentian elite controlling Canada,
00:24:23.660 you know, there's a little mini Laurentian elite that operate in Vancouver and in Calgary and in
00:24:28.140 Edmonton and probably in Saskatoon as well. I don't know, but in, you know, that, that, that mindset,
00:24:33.260 the people who are glued to the CBC and they hear propaganda day and night, you know, those people
00:24:38.860 have internalized this sort of anti-Americanism that does define Canada. I mean, when Justin Trudeau
00:24:44.620 went on his sort of post resignation media tour in the United States, he kept repeating this, that
00:24:51.260 Canadian identity is just not being American. That's it. Not Americans.
00:24:54.300 That's right. And he wasn't far off. That's, this is, this is, this is the thing. I mean,
00:25:01.500 people love to fault all the, all the crazy things that Justin Trudeau has ever said,
00:25:05.500 but, but that statement is actually not too far off. I mean, uh, forget who it was who said it now,
00:25:11.260 but, but somebody once said that a Canadian is someone who asks, what is a Canadian? And, and one of the
00:25:18.460 the best answers is if somebody who's not American, uh, cause that, again, going back to the origin
00:25:23.420 story, that's part of the origin story of the, of the place, but you know, back to BC and Alberta,
00:25:28.300 I mean, it's not too late. It's not too late for the people in those places to decide that it was a
00:25:33.660 bad call to reorganize yourselves because you find you are, you are, you are. So let's put, let's try an
00:25:40.540 analogy. Here's a metaphor. Canada is like a family and there's, there are tensions in our
00:25:48.620 constitutional architecture. On the one hand, the federal government and the provinces are supposed
00:25:55.740 to be as a equal, equal powers, uh, with sovereignty over their particular heads of power as, as identified
00:26:08.780 in the constitution. In other words, they're, they're, they are an equal level to each other
00:26:14.220 and they each exercise their own powers. That's, that's, that's one view or one way to, um, to, to
00:26:21.420 imagine it. The tension is though, that the, in other respects, the federal government is seen as the
00:26:29.500 parent and the provinces are seen as the children. And you can see that in various ways, like for example,
00:26:37.180 uh, in the paramount doctrine and in the fact that the federal government is the one that appoints
00:26:44.140 all the judges to the highest courts, including to the provincial courts. So the federal government
00:26:48.700 is appointing the highest courts to the provincial courts of appeal, for example.
00:26:54.220 And that's the way for the federal government tends to behave. So for example, with respect to the
00:26:57.900 carbon tax, they've said, well, we have to do this because, you know, the provinces won't do it on
00:27:03.340 their own. So, and of course, over time, the Supreme Court of Canada has had a,
00:27:09.340 I think it's fair to say an inclination towards a federalist centralized, um, point of view rather
00:27:17.500 than the reverse. Okay. So you have these, these, these two ideas and here's the thing, this parent,
00:27:25.260 the federal government has 10 children
00:27:30.300 and has its favorites. And Alberta is not one of them. I don't need to tell you who the favorite
00:27:38.620 child is. It's a child that gets a lot of Alberta's money and refuses to have any pipelines.
00:27:46.780 And it's not going to be effective for Alberta as a child to go to the parent and say,
00:27:52.060 you know, this is no good. You know, please change all this. Please change everything you do
00:27:57.740 because we're unhappy. That's not going to change who the favorite child is.
00:28:03.420 It's not going to change the basic parameters and assumptions and premises of the country.
00:28:09.980 And so I, I have a little ex my expectations are very low for this attempt to go back again and say,
00:28:20.540 please, because that hasn't worked in the past. There's no particular reason why it should work now.
00:28:27.820 Well, that's sort of a grim, uh, note to end the conversation on there, Bruce. Um, I, I, you know,
00:28:34.060 in some ways I find the Alberta independence discussion and movement exciting. Like it seems to
00:28:40.060 have a purpose and maybe a promise for a better future. Obviously for those of us that are attached
00:28:45.820 to Canada as a country and you know, the, the, the, the patriotism that comes with Canada,
00:28:50.460 it would be sad to see the, you know, productive, more conservative part of the country just up and
00:28:56.700 leave. What would it mean for the rest of Canada? I mean, I don't, I don't know that I would really
00:29:01.500 want to live in that country, uh, to be perfectly honest, if there was no countervailing force to the
00:29:05.660 globalists, as you described. So I don't know what would happen after that, but I do find it to be
00:29:10.300 an interesting, uh, conversation. Any, any final thoughts on this? Yes. Well, so this is, is one
00:29:16.380 of the hopes of, of the rest of us who are not in Alberta, that Alberta in pursuing its own interest,
00:29:23.180 which it ought to do, could be the catalyst for actually being able to change the country.
00:29:29.180 So if Alberta resolved to leave and whether it actually did or, or not, that would throw
00:29:36.700 potentially the country into turmoil and turmoil is what we need in the sense that if you simply
00:29:42.460 ask nicely, nothing's going to happen. But if you actually go and do it, then the, the, the, the way
00:29:51.820 that the country operates will become not feasible anymore. And that's the, the impetus I think we need
00:29:59.100 for actual real change. Well, that's, uh, that's super interesting and, uh, appreciate your thoughts on
00:30:04.460 us. We're going to have you, uh, back again for another segment on the tariffs and what Canada,
00:30:09.180 the correct response, uh, to Donald Trump and the tariffs are, but, uh, thanks for this conversation, Bruce.
00:30:13.900 Really appreciate it. All right, folks. Thank you so much. We'll be back again. I'm Candace Malcolm.
00:30:17.660 This is Candace Malcolm show. Thank you. And God bless.