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

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 1.00

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. 0.98

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.

Juno News - May 08, 2025

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

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