The Candice Malcolm Show - 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

00:00:05.000 us. We have a great episode. I'm really excited. We have Bruce Party joining the program a

00:00:09.140 little later on. I want to start, though, by talking about something we talked on the

00:00:12.780 show yesterday, and things have just escalated a little more. So I want to go through this

00:00:16.400 quickly. And I'm talking about the battle of the premiers, the sort of war of words

00:00:20.320 that's happening right now between the more progressive left-wing premiers like David

00:00:25.540 Eby in British Columbia and Doug Ford in Ontario. And yes, I'm sorry, Doug Ford, you

00:00:29.800 now fall into the more liberal progressive premiers because of what's going on in the

00:00:34.140 country. And they're fighting against the more conservative, independent-minded premiers

00:00:38.120 like Alberta, Danielle Smith, and Saskatchewan, Scott Moe. So they dragged Scott Moe into this

00:00:43.700 and speaking to reporters, kind of trying to drill him on what his position is. We talk

00:00:48.760 a lot about Alberta independence, but people in Saskatchewan feel, you know, just equally

00:00:53.960 as burned by the feds and equally as disappointed in the outcome of the recent election. As,

00:00:59.460 they're brothers in Alberta. So here is Scott Moe responding to the question on the pathway

00:01:05.100 towards independence for Saskatchewan.

00:01:07.780 Would you vote to leave? Would you vote to stay?

00:01:09.620 It is my job to put a question to the people of Saskatchewan. If people in Saskatchewan

00:01:14.840 trigger the legislation for plebiscite, it's the job of the government then to formulate a

00:01:18.560 question for the people of Saskatchewan. Now, you're getting way over your skis with respect

00:01:22.320 to what that process might be or what that process might entail.

00:01:25.620 And so he's right. You know, it's not up to the premier to say, hey, we're done,

00:01:30.680 we're going to leave. In Canada, this is all spelled out in the constitution. This is all

00:01:34.300 spelled out because of a Supreme Court case that has decided that, yes, provinces have

00:01:39.160 the right to succeed. They have to meet certain thresholds and they have to answer a clear

00:01:43.980 question. And so, yes, there's been a lot of talk about Alberta and them possibly going

00:01:48.700 it alone. Well, Saskatchewan has the same process. They have the same constitutional legal rights

00:01:52.900 governing them. And Scott Moe just very clearly points that out. Now, on the other side,

00:01:57.580 we have British Columbia Premier David Eby calling on Premier Smith and Moe to push back

00:02:05.020 strongly against any kind of separation, separatist sentiments by that clip.

00:02:10.960 I understand. You know, you've got a couple of conservative premiers in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

00:02:17.040 Their preferred candidate was not successful in the federal election. They have strong bases of

00:02:20.840 support for the conservatives in those provinces. They're navigating tricky waters. But I certainly

00:02:26.240 encourage them all, Premier Smith, Premier Moe, and I believe that they're on board for this,

00:02:33.780 to work together for the good of the country, to hold the country together, and to push back

00:02:39.080 strongly on any kind of separatist sentiment.

00:02:42.500 It's interesting because this whole idea that people in Alberta and British Columbia or people

00:02:47.820 in Alberta and Saskatchewan are just being poor sports, like their candidate didn't win,

00:02:51.300 oh boohoo, like pick it together and let's all go ahead with Team Canada, is just so missing the

00:02:56.180 point. It's so surface level, right? It's like the idea that these two provinces and thankfully people

00:03:01.020 all over Canada have just been blatantly disrespected by the federal government for over a decade and that

00:03:06.920 other people in other parts of the country have decided to double down on this. Like I said this

00:03:10.240 throughout the election. I thought it was an incredibly important election and that we were

00:03:13.200 faced with a fork in the road and I don't like the way that our country is going. You know,

00:03:17.840 the saving grace for me is that it's a minority government. I do believe we'll be at another 1.00

00:03:21.200 election in another two years. Maybe that one will be the most important election of our lifetime.

00:03:25.180 But if we keep doubling down on this path of just ruin, like economic ruin, we're heading towards

00:03:31.420 poverty, we're heading just towards an economic collapse, socialism, big government, everything is

00:03:36.800 taking over. It's changing the mindset of Canadians. It's just not a good path.

00:03:40.240 And if saying enough is enough, you know, that's not like being any kind of like a traitor to your

00:03:44.500 country. That is actually standing up for your people and for what is best for everyone. So going

00:03:49.600 back to Ontario, Premier Doug Ford, we played the back and forth with him and Danielle Smith

00:03:54.480 yesterday. Well, later in the day, yesterday on Wednesday, he sort of clarified and struck a

00:04:01.260 slightly more reconciliatory tone saying that he does support the people of Alberta and Saskatchewan

00:04:05.880 and that he's it's there's not the big rift that people are playing it up to be able to play that

00:04:10.340 clip. We get along. I think there's this big, big misnomer that we don't get along. I could call her up

00:04:15.860 right now and say, you know, come to Toronto, we'll be going out for lunch. So there's not this big rift that

00:04:20.940 everyone's playing out. You know, I just want to support the people of Alberta and Saskatchewan. They've been

00:04:26.580 ignored for for a decade now. And I support them. It's as simple as that. So just to remind you,

00:04:33.660 this is what Danielle Smith said the previous day on Tuesday, talking about for she also said they

00:04:38.620 have a great friendship, that they have a constructive friendship, but that she doesn't

00:04:42.440 tell him how to run his province. He shouldn't run tell her how to run her provinces. Play this clip 0.86

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00:05:11.600 So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at Wealthsimple. Start

00:05:17.640 now at Wealthsimple.com. Well, Doug and I have a great friendship. We don't agree on everything. In

00:05:23.420 fact, I think we supported different people in the last federal election. And so we don't have to

00:05:28.620 agree on everything. But what I will say is we have a constructive conversation at the cough table.

00:05:34.660 I continue to look forward to having a constructive conversation with him at the cough table.

00:05:39.720 But he's the Premier of Ontario. I'm the Premier of Alberta. We just have different issues that we

00:05:45.200 have to respond to in our respective jurisdictions. I don't tell him how he should run his province,

00:05:49.440 and I would hope that he doesn't tell me how I should run mine. But we have a

00:05:53.200 very respectful relationship, and I hope that continues.

00:05:56.720 And so, of course, Premier Smith is not herself a separatist. She's said that many times.

00:06:00.220 But again, in Canada, our constitutional order and previous Supreme Court decisions have meant

00:06:05.440 that Canadian provinces do have the right to separate. There is a pathway. And of course,

00:06:10.260 as someone who respects democracy and just wants what's best for the people of Alberta,

00:06:13.680 she would be willing to do what the people basically tell her to do. And so I find this

00:06:18.440 topic of Alberta independence, Alberta separatism, really interesting. In some ways, it's sort of

00:06:23.420 like, you know, people have just had enough of Canada, they've had enough of this liberal

00:06:26.540 government, and driving our country into the ground to totally disrespecting individual rights and

00:06:31.260 freedoms, our heritage and our tradition as Canadians, and, you know, pushing this sort of like

00:06:35.740 left-wing global, globalist, utopian, environmentalist scheme onto all of us. Let's go it alone.

00:06:41.060 And on the other side, it's kind of optimistic. It's like, hey, we can build something better

00:06:45.060 and determine our own future and build something that will make us truly free. And so to talk a

00:06:50.580 little bit more about this idea of Alberta independence, I want to bring on Bruce Party.

00:06:55.120 Bruce is a professor of law at Queen's University, a legal scholar with the Fraser Institute,

00:07:00.080 a senior fellow. And so I had Bruce on this show back in February. He wrote an essay calling for

00:07:05.680 an Alberta Declaration of Independence. Isn't this interesting? So three months ago,

00:07:09.760 before all of this stuff was flaring up, before the Alberta Accord, which Alberta Premier Daniel

00:07:14.580 Smith recently announced, we went through this on the show, basically just calling out the federal

00:07:19.520 government and making it very clear all of the demands that Alberta has for the future, that

00:07:24.340 Alberta requires basically economic freedom and the ability to get its products to market and

00:07:30.520 end to equalization payments and stopping subsidizing other big, rich provinces, all totally

00:07:35.760 reasonable things. You know, it seems that every few years or maybe after the last few Justin Trudeau

00:07:43.920 victories in Ottawa, there has been a bigger and bigger separatist movement. And then it kind of

00:07:49.000 goes away. And then it comes back. I think if Pierre Polyev had won the election, it wouldn't be

00:07:53.420 flaring up quite so much. But because we got another liberal government with Mark Carney, it seems to be

00:07:58.480 back. So Bruce, first, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you walk us

00:08:03.000 through your essay and walk us through the sort of timeline of independence for Alberta and Western

00:08:08.900 sort of separatism? Yeah, it's been very interesting to watch. And the election, of course, was perhaps

00:08:16.500 a, you know, you put it as a fork in the road or a threshold. You know, you could probably tell ahead

00:08:24.020 of time that if there was one outcome, things would die down. If it was a different outcome than when we

00:08:30.280 actually got, that things would ramp up. And that's, that's what's happened. And that's predictable.

00:08:37.560 You're right about the back and forth over time. And one of the dangers here for Alberta is that

00:08:45.900 they will forget that old saying that goes, when people tell you who they are, believe them.

00:08:54.260 Because Canada, and especially the federal government, has told Alberta over and over again, what it really

00:09:03.020 is. And yet the inclination, and understandably, on the part of Albertans, is to go back again, and say, well,

00:09:12.260 let's try this one more time. You know, please do the following things and make us happy. And if you do,

00:09:18.840 then we'll stay. But they've demonstrated, the federal government now has demonstrated quite a

00:09:25.300 number of times already, that it's not really interested. And it might be that Albertans have

00:09:32.260 more faith in both the country and in the federal government than, than the real picture actually

00:09:39.120 deserves. So, and there's an irony here as well. That there's a big picture going on. A lot of

00:09:51.280 Albertans perceive, I think, that the dispute with the federal government is all about money. And to an

00:10:00.220 extent, it is. The federal government is, is, uh, obstructing Alberta's primary industries. It is,

00:10:10.180 uh, uh, Alberta has always been the, the, the, the payer into equalization. In, in, in these and many

00:10:21.560 other ways, it is, in fact, about money in the sense that the federal government is making Albertans

00:10:26.800 poorer, or at least not as wealthy as they ought to be. But there's a much bigger picture going on.

00:10:34.960 If you like, the conflict between Alberta and the federal government reflects a larger conflict,

00:10:43.360 even an ideological conflict, between two different visions of the way governments and

00:10:49.040 countries and societies are supposed to work. Now, I don't want to overplay this because, you know,

00:10:53.840 you could, it, there's all obviously nuance and gray and so on. So, but, but, but symbolically,

00:10:59.020 you could put it this way. The irony here is that Alberta at the moment with its separatist

00:11:07.360 inclinations is the nationalist entity and the federal government are the globalists, right? And so the,

00:11:18.840 the, the, the response to the Alberta inclination to separate that goes, you know, you, you are being 0.94

00:11:26.200 a traitor to your country. Well, it's actually probably the reverse. It is the Albertans who want

00:11:34.440 to separate, who are concerned about the forces that have taken over this country, the country that

00:11:39.700 they thought that they knew, the country that they thought that they knew and are discovering that

00:11:44.180 it's not that country at all. What Albertans want is for Canada to be the country that they have in

00:11:50.280 their heads. And that country is one that is, uh, governed by the rule of law. It's a capitalist

00:11:59.560 country. It's a country that is, uh, free enough for you to find your own way, to apply your own skills

00:12:08.280 and to apply your own determination and to earn what you can. The fact of the matter is that that

00:12:15.340 is really not the country that Canada is now. It may have been at one time. It's not Canada now. Canada

00:12:22.860 today is a socialist progressive country.

00:12:29.320 And if Alberta's asks are essentially asking the federal government to make Canada not a socialist

00:12:40.980 progressive country, that's not going to happen because those ideas are now deeply embedded in the,

00:12:49.380 in the Canadian fabric, if you like, in the way the constitution's been interpreted in the way the

00:12:54.860 federal government behaves. Even equalization, as an example, equalization, the idea of equalization

00:13:03.080 is in the constitution. The constitution says, not, not, not the specifics, not the particular policies,

00:13:10.760 but the idea of equalization is in the 1982 constitution. It, it embeds as a constitutional principle,

00:13:19.700 the socialist idea that money will be taken from some areas and given to other areas. It is a

00:13:26.460 constitutional mandate for redistribution of wealth, right? So if Alberta thinks, well, we're going to

00:13:33.540 come in and we're going to fix this because, you know, we're upset, that's not going to happen

00:13:38.340 because the country, unfortunately, is now built on these kinds of ideas. And so it won't be able to

00:13:45.380 function if it, if it, uh, if it accepts those, those requests. I, I agree that I think Danielle

00:13:50.640 Smith's requests in the Alberta Accord are very unlikely to be met by Mark Carney and the liberals.

00:13:56.660 Like it's basically saying, imagine if conservatives had been elected over the last 10 years and done

00:14:01.220 all the things that they had promised to do, not even the things that they would have been actually

00:14:04.380 able to do, but all the things that an ideological conservative, uh, would have wanted to do. It's

00:14:09.300 interesting. I watched, I recently watched Jordan B. Peterson's video on Mark Carney sort of talking

00:14:14.980 about why he thinks Canada is in deep trouble and basically talks about how Mark Carney's values as

00:14:20.260 laid out in his book values are not Canadian values, right? They are progressive, environmentalist,

00:14:26.500 lefty values. I think this was the thing that used to drive me crazy about Justin Trudeau is that he

00:14:30.980 purported to be Mr. Canada and his Canadian values were fundamentally different than my Canadian values.

00:14:37.460 I don't recognize Canadian values. That's my point. That's my point. I think this is,

00:14:41.140 I think this is a mistake. It's not, it's not just Carney and it's not just Trudeau.

00:14:48.340 Those values you're talking about here, here, here is the uncomfortable possibility.

00:14:56.900 Those values you're referring to are Canadian values. Those have become Canadian values. We just had an

00:15:06.020 election and 60, well, you could put it, you could, you could put it two ways. You could say that,

00:15:12.100 you know, either 60% of the, of the people who voted, voted for a progressive socialist party, or,

00:15:20.980 or you could say, well, almost a hundred percent of voters voted for a, some kind of a progressive

00:15:27.620 party because most of the parties running were, have progressive policies. No, all the parties,

00:15:32.980 all the parties are running. You're right. There, there, there was no traditional conservative

00:15:37.300 party running. So that idea, and I, and I'm on the same page as you, that I would like Canada to

00:15:43.300 not be what you're describing. I would like Canada to be a country that does not embrace the set of 0.96

00:15:49.060 values that you referred to. But I'm afraid that it is. I mean, we, we saw this, we saw what Canada really

00:15:58.100 was, for example, during COVID. And that was not a mirage. That was, that was pulling back the curtain.

00:16:06.820 And so we have to deal with the reality that the country is not what we would like it to be. And

00:16:14.820 the question that follows is, is it productive to try to change it into that which we imagine it ought to

00:16:22.020 be or to accept the reality that we've now been confronted with and decide, well, I'm speaking

00:16:28.660 now of Alberta to decide, you know what, this just isn't going to work anymore. We have tried.

00:16:34.740 And you'll note, you'll note the kind of response that, that, uh, the sentiments in Alberta are

00:16:42.180 receiving compared to the sentiments, the separate sentiments from Quebec long ago. Okay. Again,

00:16:51.460 I don't want to, to, to, to overgeneralize, but you could put it this way.

00:16:58.260 When Quebec long said, you know, we aren't happy.

00:17:03.460 The response sometimes was, well, we're sorry you're unhappy. What can we do to help?

00:17:08.900 Because we want you to stay. The, the, the, the central Canada federal, and even sometimes

00:17:17.380 Albertan, um, response to separatist sentiments has been not, we're sorry, you're, you're unhappy.

00:17:26.500 How can we fix it? It's how dare you? It is an accusation of betrayal. And, and that is,

00:17:37.620 I think a, a gauge of the, of, of one of the differences between this conflict as it unfolds

00:17:47.700 and the one that happened with respect to Quebec. Well, I, it's interesting because I think

00:17:53.620 many people just because Quebec has its own language and they have a French speaking culture

00:17:58.180 that they are seen as being culturally distinct. And it's interesting the way you're framing it,

00:18:02.180 that because of like almost a commitment to more conservative, free market, liberal values,

00:18:07.700 like small L liberal, classical liberal from 150 years ago values, uh, when the country was founded,

00:18:12.980 um, that, that, that Alberta in some way is a distinct society as well. But I wonder, Bruce,

00:18:18.580 like, is, is that really the case? I mean, you know, we just talked about how you could say,

00:18:22.900 you could argue that both, uh, that every single political party running in the Canadian election

00:18:26.820 was in some ways progressive, like none of them hold, uh, traditional Christian values. Um,

00:18:31.300 not, none of the candidates running, even for the more libertarian or conservative parties,

00:18:35.300 they, they, they didn't have anyone who was pro-life for instance. And, and, and yet like,

00:18:39.860 you know, in, in Alberta, I, I wonder, like I lived in Edmonton for four years. I have a lot of friends

00:18:43.860 who live in Calgary. It's, it's also a rather progressive place in many ways that I believe at this

00:18:47.940 point, the separatist sentiment is somewhere floating around 30%. So I, I worry that even in conservative,

00:18:54.340 the bastion of conservatism in the heartland of Canada, that this, this toxic sort of ideology,

00:18:59.780 the thing that you and I are talking about in that we, in our careers, in our lives, we fight

00:19:03.940 against, um, that it's, it's such a stranglehold around our society that, that, you know, even,

00:19:08.900 even a movement like this wouldn't create the sort of, you know, a better path for people who are,

00:19:14.100 are worried about, uh, this ideology. I think it's a fair point. I think it's going to be a test,

00:19:19.620 right? And here's one of my favorite tests for Albertans. So part of the

00:19:24.100 sentiment around this issue is the idea that they want to be free. They want, you want Alberta to be

00:19:30.260 a free country, if you like, certainly a free province and, and fair enough. Good for them.

00:19:36.900 But the test is, all right. So does that mean that you agree that socialized medicine has to go? In

00:19:44.180 other words, free countries don't have single payer healthcare systems. And the danger is this,

00:19:51.300 that Albertans will perceive that their problems are a lie specifically with a particular federal

00:19:59.860 government and its specific policies. Well, as opposed to the, the, the large trends and features

00:20:09.940 of Canada as a country. Now, one of those features, of course, is our socialized system of medicine

00:20:17.300 and people get used to what they get used to. If you really want a free place to live, whether it's

00:20:24.020 a province or a country, independent country, if you really mean that word free, then you do not mean

00:20:32.580 a system of medical care that is run and controlled and paid for by the government. And so this is one of

00:20:40.580 the things I like to ask the Albertans who, who profess a determination to be independent and free

00:20:49.220 to say, does that include your healthcare? And when they say, well, we need to help,

00:20:53.140 we need to keep our healthcare. Then my response is, well, then you don't really mean it. You don't

00:20:57.700 really mean what it is that you're saying, or you're, you mean it is a completely different thing

00:21:02.180 than the word suggests. Right. And so how is it then like, if someone, I mean, you, you wrote this,

00:21:08.500 you're not yourself from Alberta, you're from Ontario, you live in Ontario. Uh, but you know,

00:21:12.660 like we said, back in February, you wrote this declaration of independence for Alberta, where

00:21:16.500 you believe that it is time for them to just cut ties, cut loose and start something new. Um, so can

00:21:23.940 you walk us through like why you think that and whether you think it's something that could possibly

00:21:27.540 happen? Yes, sure. So if you, if you go back to the time of the American, um, uh, revolutionary war

00:21:34.420 and declaration of independence for them at that time, they wanted the Canadians as they then were

00:21:41.620 to join them, to get out from under the thumb of the British crown. And the Canadians of course said,

00:21:48.340 no, they, they, they wanted to be subjects. And so if you like the, the, the, the founding story

00:21:58.420 of these two countries are diametrically opposed. I mean, America's is life, liberty, pursuit of

00:22:05.300 happiness, independence. And the, the Canadians origin story is obedience, deference to authority,

00:22:15.780 not to rock the boat. Canada, if you like, exists to, to, to resist the Americans. We have maintained

00:22:25.620 that idea underneath our skin ever since. Uh, and so a lot of people in Canada and especially in the West

00:22:37.620 have this idea that has been sort of unconsciously adopted from the Americans,

00:22:44.100 that their constitutional order is about individual autonomy too.

00:22:51.460 But it really isn't. I mean, the Americans are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:22:55.780 And the Canadians are peace, order, and good government. That is deference to authority.

00:23:01.140 Mm-hmm.

00:23:02.580 So you're dealing with two different ideas. And in many ways, my, my sense is, and I, you're quite

00:23:08.100 right. I'm, I'm not from Alberta. I'm from Ontario, but I, but from a distance, it looks to me like

00:23:13.300 Albertans think more like Americans in these terms than they do like many Canadians.

00:23:18.260 Well, it's really interesting when we think of Canada as a country in the history and the idea

00:23:23.220 that Canadians are literally just loyalists who are fighting against this idea of the American

00:23:26.900 Revolution. But, but it would be for me, I'm from Western Canada, I grew up in Vancouver,

00:23:30.660 and I'm, uh, I think I had like a fifth or sixth generation Vancouver person, um, on at least part

00:23:36.020 of my family. And it's interesting when you go back far enough in the history of British Columbia,

00:23:40.900 like the, the, the, that didn't, that wasn't originally part of Canada, right? And, and,

00:23:44.580 and the original settlements by the British, the, it actually went all the way down to the Columbia

00:23:48.740 River. So it was part, it was, it was its own separate entity before, and it was because Sir

00:23:53.300 John A. MacDonald promised the railway that British Columbia decided to join in with Canada rather than

00:23:57.700 the United States, and they moved the border. And for Alberta, I mean, I was in, I was at the

00:24:02.100 University of Alberta in, uh, 2005 when they celebrated the centennial, the 100th anniversary of

00:24:08.260 Alberta joining the Confederation, joining Canada in 1905. That's not a very long time. Like that's,

00:24:14.180 that's a blink of an eye in terms of, and so, you know, this idea that, that just because, you know,

00:24:20.340 Canada was the one that, you know, claimed all this territory and convinced these provinces, uh,

00:24:25.540 to join them rather than the United States, that necessarily that was the right decision or the

00:24:29.460 decision that will stand until the end of time. Like it's, it's, it's very much as a short period in

00:24:34.660 history. And so it's interesting to think of, well, maybe that's not actually the best fit.

00:24:38.180 And maybe there is a better arrangement, not necessarily that these places should be part of

00:24:41.540 the United States. Maybe they just have a different milieu and a different ethos than

00:24:46.580 Eastern Canada, or maybe, maybe it's all been merged together in the modern world. And so,

00:24:50.180 you know, the, the idea of the Laurentian elite controlling Canada, you know, there's a little

00:24:54.580 mini Laurentian elite that operate in Vancouver and in Calgary and in Edmonton and probably in

00:25:00.020 Saskatoon as well. I don't know, but in, you know, that, that, that mindset, the people who

00:25:04.420 are glued to the CBC and they hear propaganda day and night, um, you know, those people have

00:25:09.540 internalized this sort of anti-Americanism that does define Canada. I mean, when Justin Trudeau

00:25:14.820 went on his sort of post, uh, resignation, uh, media tour in the United States, he kept repeating this,

00:25:20.420 that Canadian identity is just not being American. That's it. Not American. 0.64

00:25:24.420 That's right. And he wasn't far off. That's, this is, this is, this is the thing. I mean,

00:25:31.700 people love default all the, all the crazy things that Justin Trudeau has ever said, but, but that

00:25:36.660 statement is actually not too far off. I mean, uh, forget who it was who said it now, but, but somebody

00:25:42.420 once said that a Canadian is someone who asks, what is a Canadian? And, and one of the best answers 1.00

00:25:49.300 is if somebody who's not American, uh, cause that, again, going back to the origin story,

00:25:53.940 that's part of the origin story of the, of the place, but, you know, back to BC and Alberta,

00:25:58.500 I mean, it's not too late. It's not too late for the people in those places to decide that it was a

00:26:03.860 bad call that to reorganize yourselves because you find you are, you are, you are. So let's put,

00:26:10.260 let's try an analogy. Here's a metaphor. Canada is like a family and there's, there are tensions in

00:26:18.580 our constitutional architecture. On the one hand, the federal government and the provinces

00:26:25.300 are supposed to be as a equal, equal powers, uh, with, uh, sovereignty over their particular heads

00:26:36.500 of power as, as identified in the constitution. In other words, they are an equal level to each other

00:26:44.420 and they each exercise their own powers. That's, that's, that's, that's one view or one way to, um,

00:26:51.220 to, to, to imagine it. The tension is though, that the, in other respects, the federal government is seen

00:26:59.220 as the parent and the provinces are seen as the children. And you can see that in various ways, like, for

00:27:06.980 example, uh, in the paramount doctrine and in the fact that the federal government is the one that

00:27:13.700 appoints all the judges to the highest courts, including to the provincial courts. So the federal

00:27:18.500 government is appointing the highest courts to the provincial courts of appeal, for example.

00:27:24.500 And that's the way for the federal government tends to behave. So for example, with respect to the

00:27:28.100 carbon tax, they've said, well, we have to do this because you know, the provinces won't do it on

00:27:33.540 their own. So, and of course, over time, the Supreme Court of Canada has had a, I think it's fair to

00:27:40.420 say an inclination towards a federalist centralized, um, point of view rather than the reverse. Okay.

00:27:48.820 So you have these, these, these two ideas and here's the thing, this parent, the federal government

00:27:57.460 has 10 children and has its favorites and Alberta is not one of them. I don't need to tell you who

00:28:08.420 the favorite child is. It's a child that gets a lot of Alberta's money and refuses to have any pipelines. 0.89

00:28:15.060 And it's not going to be effective for Alberta as a child to go to the parent and say, you know,

00:28:22.980 this is no good. You know, please change all this. Please change everything you do because we're

00:28:28.500 unhappy. That's not going to change who the favorite child is. It's not going to change the basic

00:28:36.020 parameters and assumptions and premises of the country. And so I, I have a little

00:28:46.020 my expectations are very low for this attempt to go back again and say, please,

00:28:52.020 because that hasn't worked in the past. There's no particular reason why it should work now.

00:28:58.020 Well, that's sort of a grim, uh, note to end the conversation on there, Bruce. Um, I, I, you know,

00:29:04.260 in some ways I find the Alberta independence discussion and movement exciting. Like it seems to

00:29:10.260 have a purpose and maybe a promise for a better future. Obviously for those of us that are attached

00:29:15.940 to Canada as a country and, you know, the, the, the, the patriotism that comes with Canada,

00:29:20.660 it would be sad to see the, you know, productive, more conservative part of the country just up and

00:29:26.900 leave. What would it mean for the rest of Canada? I mean, I don't, I don't know that I would really

00:29:31.700 want to live in that country, uh, to, to be perfectly honest, if there was no countervailing force

00:29:35.700 to the globalists as you described. So I don't know what would happen after that, but I do find

00:29:40.020 it to be an interesting, uh, conversation. Any, any final thoughts on this? Yes. Well, so this is,

00:29:46.020 is one of the hopes of, of the rest of us who are not in Alberta, that Alberta in pursuing its own

00:29:52.900 interest, which it ought to do, could be the catalyst for actually being able to change the country.

00:29:59.380 So if Alberta resolved to leave and whether it actually did or, or not, that would throw

00:30:06.820 potentially the country into turmoil and turmoil is what we need in the sense that if you simply

00:30:12.660 ask nicely, nothing's going to happen. But if you actually go and do it, then the, the, the, the way

00:30:21.940 that the country operates will become not feasible anymore. And that's the, the impetus I think we

00:30:29.220 need for actual real change. Well, that's, uh, that's super interesting and, uh, appreciate your

00:30:34.340 thoughts on this. We're going to have you, uh, back again for another segment on the tariffs and what

00:30:38.740 Canada, the correct response, uh, to Donald Trump and the tariffs are. But, uh, thanks for this

00:30:43.460 conversation, Bruce. Really appreciate it. All right, folks. Thank you so much. We'll be back again.

00:30:47.220 I'm Candace Malcolm. This is Candace Malcolm Show. Thank you and God bless.

00:30:51.940 Thank you.

The Candice Malcolm Show - May 08, 2025

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

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