Rebel News Podcast - Lorne Gunter： Trudeau and the West

00:00:00.000 Tonight, Alberta and Canada, will they fit together in the year ahead or will they fight?

00:00:21.720 A feature interview with our friend Lauren Gunter.

00:00:24.720 It's December 26th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:30.000 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:33.520 There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:37.600 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:48.960 Well, 2015 was a year of a triple disaster for Alberta's oil and gas sector.

00:00:56.000 The price of oil fell around the world and that made it for tough times for the oil patch.

00:01:03.260 But then in the spring, Rachel Notley and the NDP won the election in that province for the first time ever on an anti-oil platform, including higher taxes, including a carbon tax.

00:01:16.900 Then came Justin Trudeau that fall and before long, pipelines were being canceled and a federal carbon tax was coming.

00:01:25.640 Well, 2019 marked the end of Rachel Notley's reign.

00:01:30.340 She was thrown into the dustbin of history by Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party.

00:01:35.120 Justin Trudeau, however, was re-elected prime minister if with a reduced seat count.

00:01:41.220 How will Alberta fare in 2020 and beyond?

00:01:46.300 Is it enough that Jason Kenney runs the province and the price of oil has generally come back?

00:01:51.720 Or does the fact that Justin Trudeau was re-elected and there's a recalcitrant new Democrat government in B.C.,

00:01:58.920 will that spell doom for Alberta in 2020?

00:02:02.000 Joining us now via Skype from Edmonton to talk about these and other prospects for Alberta next year

00:02:08.220 is our friend, Lorne Gunter, senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun.

00:02:11.960 Lorne, nice to see you again.

00:02:13.500 Good to see you.

00:02:14.880 I think Alberta had probably the worst four years since the Great Depression.

00:02:23.640 And it was about as long as the Great Depression.

00:02:26.640 And unfortunately, it continues.

00:02:28.300 While other oil patches around North America, Texas, North Dakota, have fully rebounded,

00:02:32.780 I don't actually think it's over for Alberta yet, this recession, this divestment of investors.

00:02:40.560 No, I mean, we've seen that, right?

00:02:42.120 We've seen Encana, we've seen Husky, we've seen all sorts of other resource companies either move

00:02:48.660 or certainly lay off people.

00:02:52.820 Several of the big companies have also announced that they are going to put a cap

00:02:57.260 on their drilling activity for the year.

00:03:00.560 Others are going ahead.

00:03:02.880 And I think there are some signs that things will be better under a UCP government

00:03:08.840 than they were under the NDP government.

00:03:10.640 But boy, there was a big, big pin popped Alberta's balloon on October 21st

00:03:18.220 when the Liberals won minority re-election,

00:03:22.040 largely based out of greater Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

00:03:27.260 Because those are the three most anti-Alberta areas in the country.

00:03:32.360 And so the Liberals have to pander to those areas of the country,

00:03:36.580 plus to the NDP and the Greens to keep them in power. 0.94

00:03:39.960 And, you know, the people in the oil business aren't stupid.

00:03:42.720 They know what that means for their industry. 0.86

00:03:44.640 Yeah.

00:03:44.920 I think one of the things that irks Westerners, 0.55

00:03:47.540 and I regard myself as sort of a spiritual Westerner,

00:03:50.000 even though I've been out East for many years now,

00:03:52.460 is that so many Liberal candidates, and even Trudeau himself,

00:04:01.360 felt free to disparage Alberta and the oil patch to their voter base out East.

00:04:07.360 And even the fact that they handpicked a star candidate, Stephen Gilbeau,

00:04:13.800 the head of Equiter, which is like the David Suzuki Foundation of Quebec,

00:04:17.640 and they appointed him to cabinet immediately.

00:04:20.260 You had all these other Liberal MPs who had just served four years.

00:04:24.280 No way.

00:04:24.720 This new guy goes straight to the front.

00:04:26.400 Now, they didn't put him in environment,

00:04:27.660 but he's in cabinet, and he'll have his say on environmental issues for sure.

00:04:33.640 I think that what's different, what's worse,

00:04:37.700 is how Trudeau publicly demonized Alberta and didn't care that we knew.

00:04:43.580 That was sort of, yeah, that's the point here.

00:04:45.400 I'm trying to shore up the antipathy towards Alberta

00:04:49.080 and big, rich oil companies.

00:04:52.680 They actually demonized those companies. 1.00

00:04:54.980 Yeah, well, and look at Catherine McKinnon, 1.00

00:04:58.080 who had been the environment minister until the election.

00:05:01.280 I mean, she talked all the time about having to go after big oil,

00:05:05.840 and the oil companies are so awful,

00:05:07.560 and we're going to keep an eye on those oil companies.

00:05:10.360 And, you know, it became tedious.

00:05:13.600 And maybe that doesn't sound like much to people who live outside of a resource region.

00:05:20.040 You know, it's just political pandering.

00:05:21.720 It's posturing by some politicians, some candidates, some minister.

00:05:26.860 But, boy, when they're going after the industry that keeps your region alive,

00:05:32.240 actually keeps much of the country going, too,

00:05:36.040 even though the rest of the country might not understand that all the time.

00:05:39.020 When they're going after that industry,

00:05:40.840 and you know it's closely attached to how your region fares,

00:05:45.560 you take that personally.

00:05:46.960 And why wouldn't you take that personally?

00:05:48.600 If you started to talk about, no, we have to cut down on hydroelectric transfers

00:05:53.940 to the United States, or we have to cut back on asbestos exports,

00:05:58.840 or we have to do – do you think the people in Quebec would not understand

00:06:02.280 what you're talking about?

00:06:03.480 Yeah.

00:06:03.720 You know, and that's exactly what –

00:06:05.900 even when they weren't mentioning Alberta by name,

00:06:10.420 Albertans understood what they were talking about.

00:06:12.260 And it was clear, like it had been in 1980.

00:06:16.140 In 1980, the federal election, Clark had miscalculated with his minority government.

00:06:21.980 The liberals had cleverly stacked the commons one night, forced a new election.

00:06:26.980 Now they're running to try and regain their majority.

00:06:31.040 And the motto inside the liberal war room in 1980 was,

00:06:35.120 screw the West, we'll take the rest.

00:06:36.900 And at that time, Vancouver would still vote conservative.

00:06:40.620 So you didn't get a single liberal seat outside of Winnipeg in the entire west of the country.

00:06:50.880 And this time around, they weren't quite as clever.

00:06:54.560 They didn't have a motto like that.

00:06:55.940 But it was very obvious that they had decided.

00:06:58.220 There were no votes for them to be had in Alberta, Saskatchewan, the interior, B.C.

00:07:02.860 So they wouldn't care what they said about those regions.

00:07:07.240 They were pandering to the greater Toronto area, to Montreal, Ottawa, that golden triangle,

00:07:12.640 and then to the core areas of Vancouver.

00:07:17.040 And that won for them.

00:07:18.760 At least it preserved them from having a loss.

00:07:21.560 They only won a minority, of course, but they kept that –

00:07:24.900 they kept their power because, in part, because of slamming the oil industry

00:07:31.520 and indirectly by slamming Alberta and Saskatchewan.

00:07:34.580 Yeah.

00:07:34.980 Well, I don't think any credit is due to Justin Trudeau,

00:07:39.520 but it is simply a fact that Catherine McKenna is no longer the environment minister.

00:07:44.780 And I thought she was so ill-informed about anything and so strident in her mindless repetition 0.51

00:07:55.400 of a few clichés that it was almost like she was deliberately irritating anyone in the West.

00:08:02.660 I mean, I know that that's just how she sounds and she's just that shallow. 1.00

00:08:07.140 Just who she is.

00:08:07.900 So, yeah, I mean, I don't think Justin Trudeau said who's the most fingernails on a chalkboard,

00:08:15.000 screechy, annoying – I don't think – I think it just happened that way.

00:08:19.480 And she is no longer –

00:08:20.940 And I think she sounded like that to them inside Cabinet, too,

00:08:23.880 because if you look where she is now, she got demoted. 1.00

00:08:27.480 There is no question that being moved from environment down to infrastructure is a demotion.

00:08:33.360 You know, she's going to do ribbon cuttings for the next two or four years, 1.00

00:08:37.520 however long she's around in that portfolio.

00:08:39.220 Well, she had a few moments that I think just absolutely crystallized what Westerners think.

00:08:46.520 An amazing one was when she went into a bar in St. John's and did what, you know,

00:08:53.320 they tell drunk sorority girls, don't do. 1.00

00:08:55.920 Don't drunk dial your ex.

00:08:58.600 Don't drunk tweet.

00:09:00.860 Don't do it.

00:09:01.940 Don't take – and she drunk tweeted, I think. 0.99

00:09:07.140 Here she is at a bar sort of shouting, here, see for yourself.

00:09:12.420 Take a look.

00:09:13.220 But, you know, I actually gave them some real advice.

00:09:16.080 I said that if you actually say it louder, we've learned in the House of Commons,

00:09:19.460 if you repeat it, if you say it louder, if that is your talking point, people will totally believe it.

00:09:24.760 Yeah.

00:09:25.160 She basically says if – just keep repeating something until it's true.

00:09:31.160 Yeah, we got you, sister.

00:09:32.440 I don't think you've changed any minds.

00:09:33.800 Let me show you one more clip, Lauren, just one more clip. 0.99

00:09:36.280 This is when she was stone cold sober.

00:09:38.120 And she was saying that her new great vision under Bill C-69 was to have gender analysis of factories.

00:09:48.660 This is the Brazil speak.

00:09:50.360 Just take a quick look at this.

00:09:51.840 Gender impact, how does that fit into a pipeline approval process? 0.99

00:09:54.480 So I'm really glad you asked that because I think people are like, well, what is this gender thing?

00:09:58.460 Well, imagine that you have a huge number of people going to a remote community, many men.

00:10:06.040 What is the impact on the community?

00:10:07.880 What is the impact on women in the community? 1.00

00:10:09.860 And actually, once again, smart proponents understand this.

00:10:12.620 So they're going to put measures in place.

00:10:14.120 That's all it is.

00:10:14.860 It's just taking a smart approach to thinking about, okay, what's going to be the impact of a major development in a particular area?

00:10:20.960 Yeah, I'm just glad she's no longer there because I don't think she moved a single vote towards the liberals.

00:10:29.840 She may have enthused the liberal base that hated Alberta, but I don't think she won a single vote for Trudeau.

00:10:36.240 So really, what's the use other than irritating the West?

00:10:38.560 And she's out of that portfolio now.

00:10:40.560 Yep.

00:10:41.520 Okay, well, let me ask you this.

00:10:42.660 Chrystia Freeland is now the next shrill, shallow talker assigned to Alberta. 0.56

00:10:50.600 Chrystia Freeland, who was in New York before coming back to be our foreign minister, now she's being deputized to appease the West. 1.00

00:10:57.760 Do you think it's got a chance of working?

00:10:59.640 You know what?

00:11:00.400 This is one of the biggest laughs I've got.

00:11:03.200 It's a big kick I got out of the cabinet appointment.

00:11:06.160 Maybe, you know, in our line of work, I should have been better informed.

00:11:11.920 But I honestly did not know that Chrystia Freeland was born and mostly raised in Alberta until she's made the intermediary between the prime minister's office and the prairie provinces.

00:11:27.660 So it's not like she's ever been extra proud.

00:11:32.720 And I'm not saying she's disparaged or whatever.

00:11:35.480 Like, it's not something that you knew because she was always talking about it.

00:11:41.100 But now, all of a sudden, she's the proud daughter of the peace country of Alberta and in touch with everything going on in the West.

00:11:50.300 And she's going to save the relationship between the prairie provinces and the federal.

00:11:55.000 No, I mean, she's not as shrill nor as shallow as McKinnon.

00:12:01.360 But she's she's McKenna. 0.66

00:12:04.620 She's up there, though.

00:12:05.980 And, you know, she got big strokes, for instance, during the the free trade negotiations in in Washington a couple of summers ago because she bought the press gallery ice cream.

00:12:17.580 Yeah.

00:12:18.580 In heaven's name, does that have to do with anything?

00:12:21.940 It has nothing. It has nothing. But that that gives you an idea of how eager most mainstream reporters are to like liberals.

00:12:31.420 Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

00:12:32.920 She's just such a delight. She comes and she talks to us and she brings us ice cream. 0.82

00:12:36.560 And that must mean she's doing a good job on free trade.

00:12:39.240 Yeah. Well, there's a total disconnect on those two things.

00:12:41.740 But OK. Well, I mean, it reminds me of during the election where Justin Trudeau handed a CBC reporter a little bowl of poutine and said, we take care of the CBC.

00:12:53.820 And listen, that's Trudeau making an unfunny joke that's actually a true statement.

00:12:58.900 But then for that reporter to gleefully dig in showed absolutely the master servant relationship that that's that's what I took away about that scene.

00:13:08.660 It's not just how shallow Christian Freeland was, but how obedient, how easily pleased and domesticated the media were.

00:13:17.140 I think some of the media in Alberta will be easily persuaded that way.

00:13:24.180 But I think that there's a growing sense, even amongst what I call the media party in Alberta, that there are real problems and simply, you know, the shallow tricks like that aren't going to solve them.

00:13:38.620 A couple of examples of what I think is more serious are things that Trudeau said, either directly or indirectly, indirectly in the throne speech.

00:13:48.060 You know, they spent about the first quarter of that throne speech, which was mercifully fairly short.

00:13:54.400 They spent about a quarter of it talking about increasing their commitment to fight climate change, which we are always very worried about and need to be very worried about in the web.

00:14:05.980 That's been about a quarter. And then there's a sort of throwaway line.

00:14:10.240 Oh, yes. And we we promise to use equal effort to get the West's resources.

00:14:16.100 No, you don't. Nobody buys that. If you've just spent all your time talking about climate crisis, emergency must do drastic things, get bolder, take more action.

00:14:26.960 And then you say, oh, yeah, yeah. By the way, we are going to get we are going to work just as hard on getting your resources to market.

00:14:35.600 And that's it. That's the statement. There's you know, there's no counterbalance in terms of time or or tone or urgency.

00:14:42.760 Nobody's going to buy that here. And then the second thing was over the weekend, Trudeau gave a speech and he said, yes, I want to assure the energy workers in the prairies that we hear their problems and their voices.

00:14:58.580 And first of all, we don't like to be talked to like we're at some group counseling session in in a fern bar in downtown Toronto.

00:15:07.800 But so he said, you know, I want the workers to know that we understand your struggle since 2014 when the prices of world prices of oil came down.

00:15:19.580 We know it's been never any recognition, never that the prices came back to a level in 2016 that was high enough to make money.

00:15:29.140 Yeah. And that other, as you said earlier, other oil producing areas in North America are doing just fine.

00:15:36.440 Thank you very much. And that the problem here, the barrier in Alberta is not geology.

00:15:47.400 We know where the oil is. We know how to get it out of the ground.

00:15:50.300 It's not geography because we can get it to market if you let us. It's political.

00:15:55.940 And so he glosses over in that speech he gave on the weekend the fact that for the last three years, his government's policies have been choking the Western economy.

00:16:06.440 Yeah. And until I mean, I don't I don't expect him to come out and apologize to us the way he would if we were an indigenous people whose leaders had been hung injudiciously by the federal government 150 years ago.

00:16:20.820 I don't expect him to apologize to us like that, but I do expect him to understand and recognize, articulate that there are policies in play from the federal government that that have led to the choking off of Alberta's economy.

00:16:36.660 I mean, they could easily have stood up. In fact, at one point, he promised Rachel Notley he would stand up against B.C.'s obstruction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

00:16:47.020 He'd stand up. He'd have a motion passed in the House of Commons that said the federal government is asserting its constitutional power over interprovincial movement of goods.

00:16:55.500 And we are going to have the Trans Mountain Pipeline built two years, almost two years since he said that.

00:17:01.920 Never done that yet. So those are the sorts of things that that I think are deeper.

00:17:07.160 I mean, I think it's important to understand how unlikely Chrystia Freeland is by personality and character to do anything that that's going to appease the prairies.

00:17:18.660 Yeah. But but we need to look even a little bit of what the prime minister says.

00:17:24.580 And it doesn't give me any hope at all that they even understand how they've alienated the West, let alone know how to fix it.

00:17:31.580 You know, if I may be permitted an anecdote, I you may know that I was sneaked in to a press conference in Ottawa by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

00:17:43.520 He was having a joint press conference with Chrystia Freeland. Chrystia Freeland wouldn't let us in.

00:17:49.480 So I had I asked Mike Pompeo's office, could we come in with your media entourage?

00:17:54.960 And he said, yes. So Chrystia Freeland's people were shocked that I mean, it was that sounds like a gossipy story,

00:18:02.120 but it shows you how brittle and averse to any criticism Freeland's people are.

00:18:07.980 I met her director of communications and this is like the big summit.

00:18:13.320 Here's the U.S. secretary of state. Very busy guy.

00:18:16.020 If he's not dealing with Russia or Saudi Arabia or Israel or India or China or Mexico, you know, like he's the busiest guy in the world other than the president, let's say.

00:18:26.500 And for that big fancy day, Chrystia Freeland's director of communications showed up without socks on as some weird fashion statement. 0.75

00:18:36.120 And he was flitting about. And I thought, what are you doing? You can't even put on socks for the for the secretary of state.

00:18:42.040 And here's a picture of the squad.

00:18:44.100 Did he at least have shoes on?

00:18:45.520 Yeah, he had shoes on.

00:18:46.900 But here's a here's a picture of Chrystia Freeland.

00:18:50.220 And I call this Chrystia's angels, her four millennial staff, each of them who knows less than the next guy.

00:18:56.900 But they've all got a bachelor's degree and are super woke and they all know about Instagram and Twitter.

00:19:04.420 And the thing is, in foreign affairs, the older you are, the smarter you are, because there's nothing new under the sun.

00:19:12.100 Maybe if you were the minister of digital, this and that, you'd want a young woke staff.

00:19:18.420 But if you're about trade treaties and diplomacy with, you know, countries that have had relations with Canada for decades, you don't want 20 nothing straight out of school.

00:19:29.820 But but that style that we know what's going on.

00:19:33.280 And unlike you, unhip Stephen Harper, we know how to get China and India and America like they were clueless.

00:19:40.880 That's what I'm worried about, Lauren, is that this fake glamour gal, Chrystia Freeland, who loved to jet to Paris and New York and Geneva and loved to be celebrated in Toronto in the high salons. 1.00

00:19:57.200 Now she's got to slum it in the West. 1.00

00:20:00.680 And worst of all, she's got to deal with people who wear hard hats and talk about oil.

00:20:06.780 And, you know, this is going to be such a comedown for her communications director, who it's too cold in Alberta not to wear socks.

00:20:14.040 I just think you've got this this woman who was a who was sort of famous for being famous, but not even famous.

00:20:21.020 Yeah.

00:20:21.340 She was like a hanger on.

00:20:23.020 She was like the Cato Cato.

00:20:23.660 There's so many of them like that, though, right?

00:20:25.580 Pardon me?

00:20:25.860 She was sort of the Robin Leach of her generation.

00:20:30.380 But not as interesting.

00:20:31.980 Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous kind of reportage with a lefty edge to it that, I mean, her book called Plutocrats talks about how, oh, the rich are getting richer and it's hurting all the rest of us.

00:20:47.440 And so it feeds into Trudeau's mistaken narrative that the middle class is shrinking.

00:20:53.620 Well, if it is shrinking, who's taking its money?

00:20:56.940 It's not big business.

00:20:59.300 It's, you know, I have the ability to deal with Amazon or Walmart or Imperial Oil or not as I choose.

00:21:07.600 I have no choice in dealing with the government.

00:21:11.240 If I don't give the government the money that it demands, it comes to my house and puts me in cuffs.

00:21:17.520 Well, no one's given more giveaways to large corporate Canada.

00:21:21.640 I think of Catherine McKenna's $11 million free fridge grant to the wealthiest family in the country.

00:21:28.320 Anyway, let's get back to what the theme of this.

00:21:30.980 I mean, I'm enjoying our conversation, but let me get out of the federal sphere and down to the province of Alberta, because, of course, Alberta's problems are rooted in part in Ottawa.

00:21:41.520 And I don't think Christy Freeland's going to fix them.

00:21:43.960 But, of course, Jason Kenney has certain tools at his own disposal.

00:21:47.940 How do you think Jason Kenney is going to do?

00:21:50.940 What are your thoughts on his first, I guess, seven or eight or nine months in power?

00:21:56.420 How do you think he's done so far and how do you think he's going to do?

00:22:00.020 I think he's done fine.

00:22:03.900 They've undone most of what the NDP did in four years.

00:22:07.000 So there was a session of the Alberta legislature that finished in the middle of December.

00:22:11.560 And it undid 16 different regime, regulation regimes or laws that the NDP had passed.

00:22:24.740 For instance, I mean, I know you were very involved in covering Bill 6, which was the farm safety law that the NDP brought in and had no clue when they brought it in.

00:22:35.160 That they were going to set off the hornet's nest that they did, because it was an insult to the way farmers do their business. 0.99

00:22:43.560 It implied that ordinary family farmers in Alberta are nothing but slave labor camp operators who are out to hose their farm workers and sort of twirl their mustaches and laugh sinisterly.

00:23:02.260 So there were all sorts of things that the NDP brought in that got undone in June, May and June, in their spring setting.

00:23:09.840 And then the rest of what was left over was undone pretty much in the October to December system.

00:23:14.880 The UCP, for instance, got the NDP law change that allowed the provincial government to get into the electrical market in Alberta and meddle around with all the different prices.

00:23:25.960 So lots of good things that they have done.

00:23:28.560 They're very slow on turning around the fiscal side of things.

00:23:33.680 We're still going to ramp up a lot of debt before they start to turn this giant ship around.

00:23:40.020 But they have signaled that they're going to hold firm in labor negotiations with the public sector unions in Alberta.

00:23:48.760 So during the four years at the NDP, where the government income in the private in the private sector dropped a net 8 percent.

00:23:59.040 So it was 8 percent lower in 2019 when the NDP were kicked out than it had been in 2015 when they came in 8 percent.

00:24:05.660 If you account for inflation, it's much bigger than that.

00:24:08.560 But I don't know of any government that would ever have survived that.

00:24:12.780 But in the public sector, while the NDP were in power, no layoffs versus 60,000 net layoffs in the private sector.

00:24:23.360 And income kept it kept increasing.

00:24:26.540 It's about six or seven percent above where it was when the NDP came in.

00:24:30.240 But nonetheless, public sector unions in Alberta were preparing to ask for almost 8 percent increases in

00:24:38.560 from the NDP and the NDP were prepared to give it to them.

00:24:41.800 UCP comes in and says, no, no, no.

00:24:43.600 We want you to roll back 2 percent, just 2 percent.

00:24:46.380 That's one quarter of what the amount that incomes have dropped in the private sector. 0.61

00:24:51.560 We think that's fair.

00:24:52.860 You've had a pretty good run for the last four years.

00:24:54.820 And by the way, there are going to be some layoffs.

00:24:57.420 OK, that's pretty good.

00:24:59.380 I think they've not been as hard fiscally as they could have been, but they have been way better than the NDP.

00:25:05.780 And, you know, they're going to get things righted.

00:25:10.280 I really do have confidence this is not just show for one year and then they'll go back to spending freely.

00:25:16.560 So they've done lots of good things.

00:25:18.220 But the question now is, where do they go from here?

00:25:22.980 Because the big problems that they're going to have going forward are not undoing NDP mistakes.

00:25:30.620 It's going to be taking on the feds and, you know, ringing concessions out of Ottawa that are meaningful to the Alberta economy.

00:25:40.840 And I'm not sure how you do that.

00:25:42.460 I mean, I think they need to start work on an Alberta, made an Alberta pension plan, get out of the CPP.

00:25:50.560 We fire that across the aisle because we contribute as a province, as individuals in our province, about $3 billion more every year than our seniors take out.

00:26:01.660 And if we left, we'd have that $3 billion to invest as a provincial pension fund.

00:26:08.460 And the rest of the country wouldn't have that $3 billion and they'd have to find either higher premiums or some other way, lower benefits to make up for that.

00:26:18.560 And I think that would wake people up a bit.

00:26:21.080 So there are things like that that they can do.

00:26:22.740 But as you and I have been talking about in this segment, really, an awful lot of the stuff they have to rely on convincing Ottawa, convincing the liberals to do things that are not in their DNA.

00:26:35.940 They'd have to undo Bill C-48, which is the tanker ban on Alberta oil off the north coast of BC.

00:26:41.740 They'd have to substantially change, if not undo.

00:26:44.800 I'd rather they just undid C-69, which is the new environmental review process that also includes gender equity review and social justice review.

00:26:55.280 I wish they'd undo that, too.

00:26:57.080 Are the liberals going to do that at the threat of losing votes in downtown Toronto and Montreal and Ottawa and Vancouver?

00:27:03.520 No, I don't think they're going to.

00:27:04.520 So a lot of the things that stand in the way for Alberta coming in 2020 are things that Kenny has to convince the feds to do.

00:27:15.080 He can't do it himself.

00:27:16.300 He can't use his majority in the Alberta legislature to repeal any of this.

00:27:21.540 And I think this is going to be a very interesting year for the UCP as they try very hard to change Ottawa's minds with, I think, very little hope of doing that.

00:27:33.820 Yeah. Well, I mean, you were kind enough to be on panels we had at our town halls in Alberta.

00:27:40.640 We had about 500 people in Calgary and just under that in Edmonton for two nights there in a few weeks ago.

00:27:50.640 People were concerned.

00:27:52.360 And I mean, I remember some of those folks from Preston Manning's The West Wants In moment of the Reform Party.

00:27:58.800 And here we are 30 years later and they're saying, well, we tried the West Wants In.

00:28:02.940 Now, time the West should get out.

00:28:06.040 But curiously, a lot of those people were also Jason Kenney UCP members.

00:28:10.720 So here's what I kept on thinking.

00:28:12.400 My big takeaway was Jason Kenney is going to try and do all these things through negotiation and through taking back certain constitutional jurisdictions under provincial powers.

00:28:22.800 No powers. But at the end of the day, if there's no or else, Trudeau can ignore much of it.

00:28:31.160 Yeah.

00:28:31.460 And I don't think Trudeau, like you said, I don't think he's going to sacrifice support in Montreal and Toronto.

00:28:38.560 I'm still a skeptic that the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion will never happen.

00:28:43.840 But I also am pretty sure in my bones that Jason Kenney will never even give sympathy to a Wexit movement.

00:28:52.360 I think he'll, in fact, turn against it soon enough if it starts to get any momentum.

00:28:57.600 So if Alberta can't get changes from within Confederation, do you think there's any chances that Alberta could try and leave?

00:29:04.780 Or is that just a hopeless pipe dream?

00:29:07.100 No, and I would put the amount of solid support for leaving at somewhere just north of 20 percent, 25 percent, maybe.

00:29:18.960 I don't think it reaches a third just yet, although there's easily 40 or 45 percent of Albertans who are in the yes, let's go or the, well, we could think about it.

00:29:28.840 Yeah.

00:29:29.060 Camp, I mean, I think if there were an independence referendum held in Alberta today, it would probably fail because the case hasn't been made yet sufficiently for what we would benefit from leaving.

00:29:47.100 I mean, gut feeling, lots of people have the gut feeling that it's time to go, that as you correctly said, you know, when Preston Manning came along in 1988, 1989 and said, no, no, wait a minute here.

00:29:59.320 The West wants in.

00:30:00.760 It doesn't want out.

00:30:01.620 A lot of people who were thinking about leaving at that point, thinking about becoming nationalists, separatists, whatever, said, OK, OK, let's let's go all in on a West wants in scheme and see whether or not we can get anything out of that.

00:30:18.800 But there are a lot of people, as you also said, who went through all that, who are not saying, yeah, we tried that.

00:30:25.940 It didn't work.

00:30:26.760 And there's no reason to believe it's going to work this time either, because you remember the Reform Party tried that with a conservative government.

00:30:34.560 Yeah.

00:30:35.460 In Ottawa.

00:30:36.500 Now you've got a liberal and you've got a liberal who's named Trudeau.

00:30:40.060 Yeah.

00:30:40.420 In Ottawa.

00:30:41.280 What do you think the chances are?

00:30:42.840 Yeah.

00:30:43.020 So, you know, I think it's going to be a tough year for the UCP.

00:30:50.500 They're going to have to deliver a few things from Ottawa.

00:30:54.960 Premier Kenney and a lot of his ministers went to Ottawa just before Christmas to meet with their federal counterparts and see if anything will come out of that.

00:31:03.680 Nothing's going to come out of it because it's the party season.

00:31:06.240 So, you know, they went there.

00:31:07.840 They said their piece.

00:31:09.080 They did not come back with any major concessions, but they maybe came back with a couple of extra pounds because they stopped to have some cookies and eggnog in the West Block.

00:31:20.800 But but yeah, it's going to be it's going to be a tricky year because as much as Kenny can change and Kenny is not going to suck up to Trudeau the way Notley did.

00:31:33.580 And Kenny is not going to go after the social license idea that, you know, if we just impose an awful lot of environmental controls on ourselves, the environmentalists will get out of the way and let us build pipeline.

00:31:44.800 He's not going to buy into any of that who who he I mean, I just that's just hokum that stuff.

00:31:51.600 Yeah.

00:31:52.120 He's not going to do that.

00:31:53.020 But the ability then to to extract anything out of Ottawa is still fairly limited.

00:31:59.740 And I think I mean, you had those panels you were talking about.

00:32:02.300 You had an idea, which I think is very, very good.

00:32:04.740 If I were Kenny, I wouldn't say I would say, you know, I'm a federalist.

00:32:07.920 I want Alberta to stay very much in Confederation.

00:32:11.360 But I think it would be very, very good.

00:32:13.500 He's got his fair deal panel now that's looking at ways of sheltering Alberta from federal intrusion.

00:32:19.840 But I think if when that is done, the next step for him would be the what else that you were talking about.

00:32:27.600 And that is, well, let's just let an awful lot of big thinkers in Alberta come up with ideas for what would we do about the currency if we left?

00:32:35.440 What would we do about monarchy versus republic?

00:32:38.120 What would we do about deals with the United States?

00:32:42.520 Would we look to become a protectorate of the United States?

00:32:44.780 Would we simply have a nice trade arrangement with them?

00:32:47.640 Would we look to them? I mean, you remember in those panels that Barry Cooper, a professor, very respected professor from the University of Calgary, said, I think we're going to have to go to the Americans and ask them to send troops so the federal government doesn't try and take over Alberta.

00:33:01.460 So, you know, work out all those scenarios so that they're constantly worried.

00:33:07.320 I mean, if they were worried that the yellow vests were coming to kidnap Justin Truth, if the provincial government of Alberta decides it's going to let all the academics and legal scholars in the province loose,

00:33:18.940 and the financial experts on what do we do the day after a successful independence referendum, the way Quebec worked all that out before the 95 referendum, work that out just to show them we're serious.

00:33:34.380 Very interesting. Holy cow.

00:33:36.600 I tell you, something has to be done.

00:33:38.320 And I think Alberta, once the most entrepreneurial province in Canada, still is, by the way.

00:33:43.960 Yes.

00:33:44.240 But you go in four years and then eight years and maybe 12 years under Trudeau.

00:33:48.880 And then I think like Detroit, which was once the mightiest city in all of America, things can change.

00:33:55.740 Oh, and you know, you remember for years and years, you and I have heard this from a hundred experts, experts, that as people move to Alberta from other parts of the country, the political culture in Alberta would change.

00:34:10.760 We'd become more moderate.

00:34:12.220 We'd become more left-leaning.

00:34:13.820 We'd be big on the welfare state like the rest of the country is.

00:34:17.600 And it never happened because Alberta was prosperous.

00:34:20.600 And when people got here, Alberta changed them more than they changed Alberta.

00:34:25.940 But if Alberta is, as you say, eight or 12 years stuck in this recession and it's not working, maybe that, not the prosperousness of Alberta, but the destitute nature of eight or 10 or 12 years will change the political culture.

00:34:44.300 And I would really regret that.

00:34:46.260 Yeah, very sad.

00:34:47.080 Good. Well, Lorne Gunder, great to see you again.

00:34:49.120 And here's hoping 2020 is a better year than either of us are now predicting.

00:34:54.020 Nice to see you, my friend.

00:34:55.000 All the best to you in this Christmas, Hanukkah season.

00:34:58.520 And we'll see you in the new year.

00:35:00.500 You bet.

00:35:00.960 All right.

00:35:01.760 Well, there you have it, folks.

00:35:03.080 Thanks for joining with us.

00:35:04.560 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:35:09.980 We'll see you in the new year.

Rebel News Podcast - December 27, 2019

Lorne Gunter： Trudeau and the West

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