Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alberta Institute Founder Peter McCaffery Holds Big Government To Account

00:00:00.000 Oh, hello, Rebels. You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, aptly called The Gun Show.

00:00:08.300 However, you know what? This is the internet. Listen or watch whenever you feel like that's the freedom of not being on terrestrial TV.

00:00:17.540 Now, tonight my guest is Peter McCaffrey of the Alberta Institute, and we are discussing, well, we're discussing a lot of things,

00:00:24.560 and I didn't even get to all the things I wanted to talk about because I'm sure he has a lot to say about Justin Trudeau,

00:00:30.260 but we talked about the importance of municipal politics for people who care about small government

00:00:36.780 and how some of Jason Kenney's most promoted legislation has kill switches built in.

00:00:49.320 He'll explain it better than I can.

00:00:51.040 Now, if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love watching it,

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00:01:58.580 You're listening to a Rebel News Podcast.

00:02:06.580 Who's watching the government when citizens are

00:02:11.160 too busy first just living their lives, but also too busy going to work to pay for the government

00:02:17.300 to keep a watchful eye on the government? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:02:36.580 At Rebel News, I think my primary journalistic focus is sort of twofold.

00:02:44.440 Now, first and obviously top of mind is fighting for civil liberties.

00:02:47.700 Now, we do that every day here at Rebel News through our largest civil liberties initiative

00:02:52.400 to date, fightthefines.com. We do this in partnership with the registered Canadian charity,

00:02:57.820 The Democracy Fund, where we put regular people with lockdown infractions, fines,

00:03:02.800 ticket summonses, in touch with top criminal and civil litigators to fight their fines in court

00:03:08.360 at no cost to them. I think it's really important to teach the government a lesson

00:03:12.080 about human rights, even if there's a pandemic going on, and actually,

00:03:17.500 especially if there's some form of declared emergency.

00:03:21.560 But my other main focus has been for quite some time, government transparency and accountability.

00:03:26.960 I know this is going to sound weird, slightly crazy.

00:03:29.980 And even though I complain a little or a lot bit about it, I actually like reading internal

00:03:36.980 government emails, receipts, documents, and planning notes. I know. I know exactly how

00:03:42.120 insane that might sound to you. But I think it's really important for us as citizens to be

00:03:48.240 able to know what the government is doing behind closed doors when they think nobody's watching

00:03:54.680 and also when they think nobody even cares. I kind of want to know what the government and the

00:04:01.880 bureaucrats and the politicians are saying behind our backs. I want to know what they're spending

00:04:07.900 our money on when it comes to themselves. And I especially sort of want to know how they feel

00:04:14.880 about unfriendly media coverage, like the stuff that I give to them. Now, the folks at the Alberta

00:04:20.080 Institute do a lot of this transparency work too. For example, they keep track of municipal votes.

00:04:25.680 If you want to know how your municipal politician voted on issues, the Alberta Institute can help

00:04:31.180 you. Did they perpetually vote to increase your taxes? Is this a bit of a trend? Are politicians

00:04:37.020 indifferent to showing up to work? You know, the job that you voted them to do and that you also pay

00:04:42.380 them to do? What's their attendance at work like? And when the government, provincially, federally, and

00:04:50.460 even municipally, when they're passing these big laws, what are they putting in them? Especially when

00:04:58.560 the average person doesn't have the time or interest to read them? Well, the Alberta Institute does in-depth

00:05:04.160 analysis of these things. They read these things so you don't have to waste your life doing it. Now, the Alberta

00:05:09.280 Institute is nonpartisan. They believe in small government. And I am really embarrassed. It took

00:05:14.320 me this long to have someone from the Alberta Institute on the show. So joining me tonight in the

00:05:19.700 first of hopefully many appearances going forward is Peter McCaffrey. He's the founder of the Alberta

00:05:27.020 Institute. This is an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.

00:05:39.280 So joining me now from his office in Calgary is Peter McCaffrey from the Alberta Institute. And I'm

00:05:50.560 embarrassed that it took so long to have you on the show because it's been on my radar for a very,

00:05:56.420 very long time. But I was able to see what you were able to do with like a literal shoestring budget

00:06:03.140 to help get the dreaded Olympics stopped in Calgary. And now you're working while you founded

00:06:11.440 the Alberta Institute. So I guess first things first, you might be a new face to a lot of rebel

00:06:17.100 viewers. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and then tell us what the Alberta

00:06:21.980 Institute does. Sure. So my name is Peter McCaffrey. As you said, I'm the president of the Alberta

00:06:27.980 Institute. Before that, I worked at a number of other think tanks and organizations doing public

00:06:34.140 policy research and advocacy and things like that. And yeah, in 2007, as you mentioned, we sort of just

00:06:41.420 as we started getting going, we started running a campaign on the Olympics. And then since then,

00:06:48.620 we've expanded out to a whole bunch of different projects and all sorts of different work on everything

00:06:52.820 from municipal to provincial to federal issues. So yeah, we do a lot of work on local issues in

00:07:01.320 Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Red Deer, Medicine Hat. We do public policy research across the province

00:07:08.480 for provincial issues. We also do a lot of work on Alberta's place in confederation and some of the

00:07:13.720 challenges that we've been having not getting a fair deal. And we do that all from a libertarian

00:07:21.520 leaning free markets, free minds, free people perspective. So that's that's kind of our mission

00:07:26.180 and our vision. You know, and I think it's great that you do I noticed on your website, you do have

00:07:30.580 a large focus on municipal politics. And it's one of those things that I'm constantly banging the drum

00:07:35.840 about. And I feel like I'm a bit of a crazy person just shouting at the clouds, old lady shouts at clouds

00:07:40.720 about municipal politics, because conservatives kind of look at the macro issues, when we really should

00:07:48.000 be looking at holding our local politicians to account, because even at the most practical level,

00:07:54.740 those bad local politicians fail upwards. I mean, when you look at, especially during the Redford times,

00:08:02.400 your worst MLAs were sort of came upstream through local politics, municipal politics. And, you know,

00:08:10.660 those are the politics that affect us. First, if our garbage doesn't get picked up, it's one of our

00:08:15.660 largest tax bills with our property taxes. And yet, conservatives don't really focus on it. And

00:08:21.260 even with cultural issues like education, and the things that our kids are being taught in school,

00:08:26.380 we're not focused enough on the local school board, because we're too busy fighting Justin Trudeau.

00:08:32.140 Yeah, I think that I think municipal issues are often seen as a little bit boring,

00:08:38.120 you know, like it's filling in potholes. And like you said, collecting garbage and stuff,

00:08:43.040 you know, people who want to be involved in politics are attracted to the provincial and

00:08:48.980 federal level, because it has more prestige and more power and things like that. But that's,

00:08:53.140 that's one of the problems. You know, like we, we actually don't want people running our provinces

00:09:02.780 and our country who are there because they want the power and they want to be in control of people's

00:09:06.540 lives. We actually want people there who understand the idea of smaller government and competition and

00:09:11.900 allowing the private sector to do the day to day managing and, and understand that, you know,

00:09:15.980 the government has maybe a role to play as an arbitrator and to enforce, you know, private

00:09:20.220 property rights and contracts and things like that. But when you have a system where the government has

00:09:25.380 become so powerful over, you know, over the decades, it's got more and more powerful, then that position

00:09:30.980 for people is more attractive. It's more, it's more, it's more, I don't want to say, not fulfilling, but it's,

00:09:40.340 it's more of an important role to be in charge of something, if that thing is more powerful. And so the

00:09:47.360 provincial and the federal governments have more appeal for politicians and people who have, have that

00:09:51.740 ambition, that the municipal level, particularly in smaller places, you do tend to have more of a community feel,

00:09:58.900 more of just a regular Joe or Jane wanting to get involved and help out. But we also see a trend,

00:10:06.200 particularly Calgary and Edmonton, where, like you said, you have sort of budding politicians wanting

00:10:11.060 to get involved in municipal politics, seeing it as a bit of a training ground, a way to get the foot in

00:10:15.900 the door. And then because they have those ambitions, they actually want to increase the power of the

00:10:20.920 municipal governments and increase their power and their influence. And they do that by taking on more

00:10:25.980 and more, a responsibility for the municipal government, often in areas that aren't the job municipal

00:10:31.020 government. So, so particularly Calgary and Edmonton, it's now not the job just, it's not just the job of the city to

00:10:39.800 collect the trash and fill the potholes. They actually spend a lot of their time doing all sorts of other things on

00:10:44.600 healthcare and housing and, and all sorts of areas that really shouldn't be their responsibility. But because there's an appeal for

00:10:50.280 municipal politicians to, to accumulate that additional power, there's an incentive

00:10:55.320 for them to go and do that. So I think it's important that people who believe in free markets

00:11:01.960 and competition in the private sector are getting involved at all the different levels, because we

00:11:07.100 actually have to push back against some of that idea, those ideas, we actually don't need every level

00:11:11.560 of government doing everything, we don't need a municipal government that gets involved in provincial and

00:11:15.440 federal issues. We need a municipal government to focus on their core job of municipal issues and

00:11:22.420 leave the other stuff to the other levels of government and vice versa as well. You know, and

00:11:26.780 there's some, I don't know what I would call it, maybe like performative politicianing. I don't know what the

00:11:33.040 right word is. When you get these municipal politicians wanting to demonstrate how good they would be at

00:11:39.860 another level or, you know, just spending other people's money to prove how tolerant they are, how

00:11:45.700 green they are, whatever it is. I think one of the best examples of this is probably the Edmonton

00:11:50.740 solar farm, um, that's going up in our river Valley. It's going to make a statistical rounding error of the

00:11:57.760 city's electricity every single day, because the city has this initiative to power one water treatment

00:12:03.560 plant for a little bit each day. And so they're putting up acres and acres and acres to

00:12:09.860 of solar panels, toxic solar panels in the river Valley. And you're not hearing anything from the

00:12:15.420 people who are normally like, I don't want a pipeline in my backyard. Don't, you know, don't

00:12:19.300 dig for coal here. They're perfectly fine with this stuff. And it's done by a council that, you know,

00:12:25.100 it almost feels like short guy syndrome where they're like, Oh, we're from Edmonton. We have to

00:12:30.840 show the world how metropolitan we are. Look at our solar panels.

00:12:34.680 I, I think that is part of it. And then I also think there's another element, which is that if

00:12:39.900 you were, if you're on the left and you hold the ideology that government is the solution to

00:12:45.640 problems, then, you know, and I've, I've seen them say this, whether it be in council meetings or

00:12:49.960 public meetings, things like this, if you're a local official and you don't like what the province

00:12:56.080 or the federal government is doing on a public policy area, that is technically the federal or

00:12:59.940 provincial governments. Um, but you think that this is such an important thing that, you know,

00:13:04.660 it's a, it's a crisis, whatever the thing might be a crisis about. Um, and therefore it needs to be

00:13:10.740 done. Then they say, well, for the greater good, we're going to ignore the fact that this isn't our

00:13:15.660 jurisdiction and we're going to do it anyway. Right. So, uh, you know, that evil provincial

00:13:20.240 government isn't spending enough money on policy X and technically it's their responsibility, not ours,

00:13:25.400 but we have to step in anyway, because it's our moral obligation to do so. And we couldn't possibly

00:13:31.080 allow the provincial government to not do their job properly. And, and, and so we have to get

00:13:35.340 involved, but that presents a challenge for those of us that do believe in smaller government, because

00:13:39.280 when you had effective, um, a separation of powers between the different levels of government,

00:13:45.440 then, uh, whether that level of government increases or decreases its powers can be, can be

00:13:52.620 determined by lobbying or controlling or advocating to that level of government. We're now in that

00:13:58.080 situation where even if we win a debate at the federal level, the province might step in and

00:14:02.680 replace the federal government. Or if we win the debate at the provincial level, the federal

00:14:07.080 government will step in and say, well, the province isn't doing its job. So then we're going to step in

00:14:10.580 and we're going to mandate it. Or we win the debate at the municipal level and the province steps in,

00:14:15.560 or we win the debate at the provincial level and the municipal government steps in. So we almost now have to win

00:14:20.360 win this debate and win these arguments and promote our ideas and, and, and convince people at every

00:14:26.900 level, uh, at the same time in order to win on an issue, because it's, you know, it's like whack-a-mole,

00:14:32.840 right? We, we convince the correct level of government to do the right thing. And then just a different

00:14:38.180 level of government steps in and start spending a ton of money on it instead. Right. So, so I think

00:14:42.580 that I think one municipal politics are really important anyway, um, because like you said, they are local,

00:14:48.040 they affect people and people should be paying attention. They should be getting involved.

00:14:51.640 And also because we have this breakdown in the division of jurisdiction and powers in Canada

00:14:56.980 now where, you know, constitutional delineation between what different levels of government's

00:15:01.340 supposed to do is kind of blown apart and doesn't exist anymore. Realistically, if you want influence

00:15:06.180 on provincial issues, you have to get involved in the municipal level as well. Um, so that's another

00:15:10.780 reason to do that. And so, you know, it's, like you said, it's not the only thing that we do,

00:15:14.880 but it's a big part of what we do. We, we, uh, in, in all the major centers in Alberta,

00:15:19.960 now we have projects where we keep an eye on what city hall is doing. Uh, we have, you know,

00:15:24.280 weekly updates and emails and newsletters and stuff that let people know, uh, what happened

00:15:28.780 at city hall last week, what's coming up this week. Um, even just that, and that really high

00:15:34.180 level transparency, keeping an eye on things, uh, letting the counselors know that when they vote

00:15:39.660 on something, people will find out how they voted. Um, you know, it's remarkable for, for how long

00:15:45.580 counselors have been able to go hang out in the chamber at the city hall, vote for something,

00:15:49.940 and then nothing happens, right? Maybe there's, uh, one municipal reporter in the little local

00:15:55.460 paper that writes a column once a week, and they might mention something that happened in city hall.

00:15:59.880 Well, now we're there, we're telling people all the important votes, how their representatives voted,

00:16:04.380 what the, what the impact of the, the idea or the thing that city hall will be and actually trying

00:16:10.300 to get people engaged. And, and even just that first step of getting people to pay attention,

00:16:14.260 I think is going to have a huge impact on improving what happens at all these city halls

00:16:18.460 across the province. Yeah. I think that's really great because even it serves also as, you know,

00:16:23.960 just a documentation of the history of these politicians who expect to fail upward into another

00:16:30.000 level of government that what they've done beforehand is documented by somebody, um, and somebody who

00:16:37.320 is non-partisan, you guys are, I mean, you're transparent about, yeah, we're libertarian. We

00:16:42.260 believe, you know, government should fit on a postage stamp. Um, but you, we, we support policies and ideas

00:16:49.280 and issues, but we don't support any particular candidate or party or council or anything like that. Uh,

00:16:55.840 we would love if all of the candidates and all of the parties adopted our ideas that that would be

00:17:00.320 great. Our mission would be complete then. Um, so no, yeah, we're non-partisan. Um, we've,

00:17:04.760 we've had instances, you know, one of the things we do in Calgary and we're hoping to expand out to

00:17:08.260 other cities is publishing vote records of the council. So we do that on an individual basis.

00:17:14.440 When a vote happens at city hall, you know, we'll report what the result of the vote was if people

00:17:18.320 are particularly interested, but we also have been collecting every vote by every councillor, uh,

00:17:23.880 all the way back to, I believe 2010, uh, into a database. And we've published a few editions of

00:17:29.420 that in the past. And we, we have another one coming up later this year as well. So people can

00:17:33.520 actually go and they can search and they can look at an issue and be like, okay, on taxes,

00:17:37.160 how did this guy vote for the last eight years on cycle tracks or on, um, housing or, you know,

00:17:44.000 development things, all the different issues. You'd be able to actually go and look and see how people

00:17:47.440 voted. And, uh, you know, we've, we've had some pushback from certain councillors who say, well,

00:17:52.200 you know, you don't have all the context, you know, you don't understand the issue or, um, you

00:17:57.800 know, we, you, you have to understand that, you know, I only voted this way because of this way.

00:18:01.520 And like, maybe occasionally they have a point where like an issue is really complicated, but you

00:18:05.660 know, what, if there's a track record of voting, you know, if you voted 19 times out of 20 for higher

00:18:09.960 taxes or 16 times out of 17 to, you know, increase spending on something, well, then that's a track

00:18:15.840 record. Right. So, and, and people will be able to go and they'll be able to see that for

00:18:19.160 themselves. And Hey, look, like I said, it's nonpartisan. If you want councillors who raise

00:18:24.580 taxes, cause you think taxes should be higher, you'll be able to use our database to go and find

00:18:28.560 who you should support. If you want higher taxes too. Yeah. I also saw that you guys have a report

00:18:32.660 that documents the attendance of the councillors. Um, you know, these guys are, that are drawing a

00:18:37.880 paycheck for sometimes what I would describe as a part-time job. Um, and, uh, you can't get them to

00:18:43.480 show up. Sometimes they just show up for high profile votes and you've documented all of that. So

00:18:47.680 that's a really great campaign resource for, um, anybody who wants to use it, if they're opposing,

00:18:53.480 um, or, you know, like a libertarian who wants to change things, Hey, go find out, use, um, the

00:18:59.680 Alberta Institute's research, find out and, uh, right. Get your tech ad going. Great example. When we

00:19:05.320 published, um, that, that first report, the first time we did it, we had councillors complaining. They

00:19:10.920 said, Oh, well, you know, there was a reason I was away or, you know, it was on council business,

00:19:15.300 or it was this conference thing. It was like, okay, great. Uh, how about you guys sit down with

00:19:19.980 the city clerk and you convince the city clerk to do something we've been asking for for a long time,

00:19:24.880 which is instead of just reporting the absences report, the reason for the absence.

00:19:29.580 Right. Um, and guess what we've been trying, we were trying for years to convince the city clerk to

00:19:34.240 do that, provide more transparency, more detail, more, more information for the public. The moment we

00:19:39.600 published the report about the councillors and people could go and see whether they were there or not,

00:19:44.560 suddenly the councillors went to the city clerk and said, you know what, we need to publish the

00:19:49.420 reason why we're not there now so that we can like have more transparency for the public. So it's

00:19:53.500 a little things like that where, you know, even just by bringing attention to the fact that, Hey, here

00:19:57.600 are the attendance rates. Maybe they do have a perfectly legitimate reason for being away, but they

00:20:01.980 don't tell us what it is. Uh, just by publishing that suddenly we were able to get the city to change

00:20:07.020 their policy. And now they tell us what the reason for the absence is. So yeah, that's, that's the sort of

00:20:11.540 thing we're trying to do on that really micro scale right across the province and lots of little

00:20:15.680 towns, improving the information that's provided the public, the accessibility of how they're being

00:20:20.980 represented and just, just helping them know what's going on at city hall. You know, as the old saying

00:20:25.380 goes, sunlight really is the best disinfectant. Um, you've also done some pretty, I would suggest

00:20:32.900 it's in-depth analysis into things that I think the conservative movement by and large in Alberta

00:20:38.440 neglects to completely examine and I'll, I'll, I'll drill down deeper. Um, and I'll let you do that

00:20:46.500 too. Um, and that's the, the citizen initiative act and the recall act. So everybody, you know,

00:20:52.840 sees this and they think, okay, great. We're going to get our say thanks Jason Kenny for giving it to

00:20:57.540 us, but really this, both of these have poison pills built into them. And you guys, um, really sort

00:21:04.760 of sounded the alarm bells by taking a pretty serious, um, analysis of this and you published

00:21:10.400 it on your website. People can find it there. Um, but, um, you really, again, sunlight being the

00:21:16.860 best disinfectant, you're trying to show the public that these things aren't really what they say they

00:21:21.740 are. Yeah, I think, um, I, you know, that that's, that's what we try and do on, on every issue. Um,

00:21:30.820 I think in this particular case, you're right. Um, the government really promised recall and

00:21:37.100 referendum as part of their campaign platform. Um, and a lot of people said, okay, well,

00:21:42.060 the government's been elected. They're going to do it now. The fight's over. Um, but what actually

00:21:46.880 ended up happening was, you know, the, the, the details of how you do it is as important as whether

00:21:52.620 it gets done. So, so we're very pleased that Alberta now does have a recall and a referendum act

00:21:57.520 in place. Um, because I think despite all the problems, it will be much easier to improve that

00:22:03.800 legislation in future than to introduce an entirely new bill. Um, but from a, from a practical

00:22:09.720 perspective, I doubt either of those bills will ever get used unless they're amended. Um, and the

00:22:14.840 reason for that is just the thresholds that are required to be met to, uh, to get a recall or a

00:22:21.880 petition underway or to get a referendum underway. And, and, um, you know, so, so we, um, this could,

00:22:30.380 there's a couple of main areas where this can be impacted. So first is, um, the number of signatures

00:22:36.240 that you have to collect in order to get a recall or a referendum, uh, happening. The second is the,

00:22:42.480 the period of time in which you have to collect those signatures. Cause obviously a, a higher number

00:22:47.340 of signatures might be more doable if you have a decent amount of time available. Um, and then the

00:22:53.040 third is all the other kind of like little conditions that are required, sort of the time

00:22:57.120 window, it can be collected and things like that. So, so for recall, for example, um, we suggested,

00:23:02.820 uh, sorry for citizens initiated referendum, we suggested that, um, for, for, for policy proposals,

00:23:10.180 you should have to get 5% of eligible voters to sign the petition. Um, and then for constitutional

00:23:18.500 issues, we thought, yes, there should be a higher bar. That should be 10%. Um, the government

00:23:23.220 unfortunately decided that it should be, uh, 10% of eligible voters for legislative and 20%

00:23:31.220 for constitutional. Now that might not sound much different. Yes, it's double, but you know, that,

00:23:37.240 but it might, you know, still sound possible, but when you, when you realize, when you start

00:23:41.560 to dig into the details, okay, say 20% of eligible voters, well, some elections in Alberta, only 40 to

00:23:49.060 45% of people actually vote. And, and that's when people go out to ballot booths and do it themselves.

00:23:56.360 You have to remember to get a citizen's initiated referendum or a recall legislation. You have to go

00:24:01.320 door to door and get a physical signature from these people. So you would need, um, like 20%

00:24:10.120 of eligible voters, um, which is like almost half of the number of people who, who usually vote in an

00:24:17.880 election and you would have to get them to sign that petition within 90 days. Um, it's just, it's just

00:24:24.960 not practical that people who haven't been out in political campaigns, who haven't do or not,

00:24:29.580 who haven't talked to real voters probably don't understand why that's difficult. Um, you know,

00:24:35.060 even if every single person you knocked on the door of signed the petition, right? Cause obviously

00:24:39.900 you have to persuade them and that's fair enough. You should have to persuade people to, to support,

00:24:43.940 you know, having one of these recalls or referendums. But even if you assume that every

00:24:47.960 single person you met would sign it, that's still an incredibly high bar, um, for recall,

00:24:52.580 it's even worse, uh, for recall, we suggested it should be 10%, um, of eligible voters. The same

00:24:59.120 as for constitutional issues. Um, the benefit with recall, of course, is you were just doing it

00:25:03.640 within one constituency, you're not having to do it across the whole province. Um, the government

00:25:08.520 made it 40% of eligible voters to recall. Um, so in some elections, in some writings, that means you

00:25:18.060 would need more people to sign a recall petition than actually voted in the election, not, not voted

00:25:22.600 for the winner, like voted for any candidate in the election. Um, and so that's just, that's just

00:25:27.080 impossible. And, and for recall, they only gave 60 days. So even less time. Um, so, so it's just,

00:25:33.840 it's just not practical. 40% of eligible voters in order to get a recall petition. Um, and, and so,

00:25:40.800 you know, you, you can pass laws like this, but if they're not practical and not actually going to be

00:25:44.860 able to be used, well, then it's kind of a, it's kind of symbolism, right? The other restriction

00:25:48.840 on recall, there's two other, there's two other catches with recall. You can't do it in the first

00:25:53.500 18 months after an election. Um, and you can't do it in the last six months. And there's really no

00:25:59.100 reason for those restrictions. You know, if you elect somebody and then you find out the day out

00:26:03.160 after they've been elected, that they hold some offensive view that, or they bring in the carbon tax,

00:26:07.940 Rachel Notley. Yeah. But, but you know, like the, the whole process of a recall can take six months

00:26:13.560 anyway. Um, so you've only got this tiny window in which you can do it. And then the second thing

00:26:18.240 is, and nowhere else that we can find in the world does this happen. Um, even though the government

00:26:22.520 kept saying they've modeled this on best practice from around the world, even if you get the 40% of

00:26:27.520 eligible signatures, which no one is ever going to get, but even if you do, that doesn't actually

00:26:31.840 get rid of the, the elected official that then triggers a vote on whether to remove the elected

00:26:38.960 official or not. And only if you win that vote, then do they get removed from office and then you

00:26:44.980 can hold a by-election. If we're else in the world, once you hit the signature threshold and it's

00:26:48.760 verified, the person is kicked out. And then if they want to run in the by-election again, they're,

00:26:53.060 they're free to do so. You know, if they don't agree with the signature collectors and they want

00:26:57.100 to run again, and if they're able to win again, then fair enough. Right. Um, but yeah, so there's all

00:27:01.440 these little caveats and all these really high thresholds. Um, and it, you know, look, um,

00:27:09.360 I, I think it's important for people to know about the details like that, because if you,

00:27:15.840 if you just read the government announcement, it's like, Hey, we're doing recall. We're doing

00:27:18.520 referendums. You'd be like, Oh, great. Problem solved. We've won that one sort of move on to

00:27:23.040 something else. We actually went through the bill. We looked at the details. We ran the numbers. We figured

00:27:27.240 out this is not practical. This isn't how it works in other places, uh, in the U S for example,

00:27:33.120 way, way lower thresholds. I think it's like five or 7% in, in California and 10% in the UK. So it's,

00:27:40.400 it's yeah, it, it's a shame, but I predict this will, neither of these will ever get used until

00:27:46.340 they're amended. No, as you were talking, I actually pulled up the requirements for California

00:27:52.420 because that's top of mind right now. Gavin or gruesome is in for the recall election.

00:27:57.240 And the amount of signatures required must equal 12% of the votes cast in the previous election for

00:28:05.880 that office. So it's not even like a percentage of eligible voters. It's a percentage of the previous

00:28:10.880 votes cast in total. So that's, that's going to be more like six or 7% of eligible voters in

00:28:19.480 California for that recall versus 40%. And if I'm remembering correctly, I believe they have six

00:28:25.940 months to collect the signatures in California. Um, whereas we've been given two months in Alberta.

00:28:32.680 Yeah. Um, and, um, once they reached that target, the election must be scheduled within 60 to 80 days.

00:28:40.200 So it sounds like in the 2021 recall election, they had to reach 1.5 million signatures across all of

00:28:47.480 California, which is a reasonable target. Um, they were able to meet it. Um, but these things should

00:28:53.180 not become insurmountable goals for the electorate. Otherwise it's just a prohibition by regulation.

00:29:01.580 There's actually, there's actually another difference with California. And that is that

00:29:04.660 in California, you're allowed to pay people to go and collect signatures. Um, so people can actually

00:29:10.260 go out and be paid for their time of actually talking to people and collecting signatures.

00:29:15.420 Yeah. I, I think the, you know, I think there are pros and cons of that approach. Uh, I can see

00:29:20.320 reasons why you might not want to pay because you might just end up with unions or large corporations,

00:29:25.020 just paying thousands of people to collect signatures permanently. Um, you know, I'm not

00:29:29.380 necessarily opposed to that either way. There are pros and cons, but if you do ban people from being

00:29:35.160 paid to collect signatures, meaning it's basically just something they have to do in their spare time,

00:29:38.900 that should also be reflected in the number of signatures required to be collected and the time

00:29:44.120 in which you have to do it. So, so Alberta has actually made it way, way more difficult to collect

00:29:49.280 signatures than in California and made the thresholds and the requirements way, way more difficult. So

00:29:55.360 yeah, it's as, as disappointing it is, I don't think anybody is going to be getting recalled in Alberta

00:30:01.380 anytime soon. No. And I think the politicians like it that way. Now we're way over the 20 minutes

00:30:07.300 that I promised you that this would take. So I will have to have you back on again because we

00:30:11.420 didn't even really touch on federal politics. And I'm sure you've got things inside you that you just

00:30:17.320 need to get out about federal politics. I know I do. Yeah. We look at the municipal stuff, I think

00:30:22.240 is the most unique thing that we do. There's not many other people doing that kind of work. So it's

00:30:25.480 really interesting to be able to talk about that and thanks for the opportunity, but yes, we do do a

00:30:29.280 lot of provincial and federal stuff as well. And so, yeah, you mentioned earlier, if people want to go to

00:30:33.300 our website, albertainstitute.ca, we've got all of the different information on there that

00:30:37.180 they can take a look at both municipal, provincial, and federal, sign up for the newsletter.

00:30:42.080 Now, that's another thing I want to touch on because you guys are wholly independent,

00:30:45.940 which as a rebel means that we are fellow travelers. And so I want to give you an opportunity

00:30:52.640 to invite people to support the work that you do, because again, you are up against the,

00:30:57.160 you know, the Pembina Institutes of the world and the Broadbent Institutes of the world,

00:31:02.460 and they've got deep pockets and union funding, and in some instances, foreign funding. And you

00:31:08.000 guys are just a grassroots organization trying to make your politicians accountable.

00:31:12.780 Yeah. We don't, we don't take any money from government. We never will. That's really important.

00:31:17.520 I think people should be free to donate their money to groups that they agree with, not have to

00:31:22.780 be forced to fund it. So that applies both to government funding and government grants,

00:31:26.880 but also, like you said, union donations where people have to make compulsory donations to unions

00:31:31.940 and then that gets passed on to political causes that they may or may not agree with. And yeah,

00:31:39.000 because of that, it means we're reliant on a much larger number of smaller donors, but that's great.

00:31:43.620 I think that's really good for protecting our independence. And, you know, look, the moment an

00:31:48.260 organization takes money from the government, you know, that there's always going to be the question

00:31:53.220 in the back of the mind as to, well, should we be saying this thing or should we taking this position

00:31:57.540 because we may not get the next grant or we might not get the next contract for some kind of research

00:32:03.160 or something like that. So no, everything we do is fully funded by donations that people are

00:32:07.680 able to give themselves having made that choice themselves.

00:32:12.000 Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll have you back on again very,

00:32:15.560 very soon. I just, I want to hear more of what you have to say, especially about Justin Trudeau.

00:32:20.480 I think that'll be great. Great. Thanks. Good to be with you. Thanks.

00:32:31.320 Like I said in our interview, the people looking to hold the government to account

00:32:36.720 are the ones doing it on an absolute shoestring budget and they make every dollar count.

00:32:43.540 They're the ones making sure the government doesn't blow even more of your money on bad

00:32:50.120 ideas and constant virtue signaling. And as Peter pointed out, when you start measuring

00:32:56.680 some of these things, you can actually change them. For example, when Peter's group started

00:33:02.240 keeping track of attendance, the politicians wanted more transparency and context to be able

00:33:09.240 to explain away their attendance or lack thereof. Either way, more information for the voter and

00:33:14.940 the taxpayer. It's always a good thing. Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank

00:33:19.280 you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next

00:33:24.080 week. And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:33:44.940 more detail on the economic camaraderie that we heard about носitaries today.

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Rebel News Podcast - July 08, 2021

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alberta Institute Founder Peter McCaffery Holds Big Government To Account

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