The Critical Compass Podcast - Alberta Republican Leader Cameron Davies on Corruption, Accountability, & A New Vision for Alberta

00:00:00.000 Most of the UCP caucus is not informed of the budget in its entirety until right before it's

00:00:08.340 tabled. And by informed, I mean zero consultation. Most MLAs have no input. If you're not in cabinet,

00:00:16.800 you have very little say. And it's made clear to those MLAs, you're not actually part of the

00:00:24.100 government. You're part of the caucus. The government is the cabinet. The cabinet makes

00:00:28.900 all the decisions. You just are told to vote for it. That's this Westminster system we have. It's

00:00:35.320 deeply flawed. And it shouldn't be that way. But here we are. And so Scott Sinclair stood up.

00:00:42.400 Immense respect for him. He got kicked out because he spoke up. So is that a government that is showing

00:00:51.020 inclination of accountability, transparency? Is that a government that's showing us that

00:00:58.080 you just have to accept what we do? Because we're not the NDP. I don't think that's good

00:01:03.960 enough. I don't think that's good enough for Albertans. I think we deserve more from our

00:01:07.640 government.

00:01:26.780 Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. My name is Mike, and this is James. And we are lucky to have

00:01:31.920 with us today Cameron Davies, a former longtime UCP campaign manager, spokesman, kind of ran the show

00:01:41.580 before it was popular and helped join the two parties of the Wild Rose and the Alberta Progressive

00:01:48.920 Conservatives. And very recently, you may have seen Penn DeLetter expressing his desire to no longer

00:01:57.200 be associated with the party. He has now recently been announced as the leader of the Alberta

00:02:03.260 Republican Party. So first off, congratulations on that, Cameron. And thanks for joining us on the

00:02:09.820 show. Well, hey, guys, thanks for having me. Love the name of the show. Appreciate you reaching out and

00:02:14.900 looking forward to a great discussion tonight. Right on. Yeah, I guess maybe we'll start with

00:02:20.380 I guess, you know, can you give us a little bit of a of a background, just, you know, whatever you

00:02:27.960 think kind of the greatest hits are of what got you involved in Alberta politics in the first place?

00:02:34.780 Sure. So I always grew up around politics. Growing up, senior statesmen now from the Reform Party and

00:02:43.660 and the Ralph Klein era, PC government were frequent visitors around the dinner table as a as a young

00:02:50.980 child, growing up just west of Edmonton and Spruce Grove, which has changed exponentially over the last

00:02:57.860 30 years from from when I grew up there. And so kind of growing up around politics and and like like

00:03:06.220 any young Alberta guy went right to work in the oil patch and had a had a great career is up to a

00:03:14.240 driller and punched a lot of holes in the ground between Alberta and Saskatchewan and a lot of a lot

00:03:20.860 of learning and a lot of lessons along the way became involved in the Wild Rose and Alberta Alliance

00:03:28.740 merger 2007-2008 as a as a as a teenager and had been involved on federal boards. In fact, I was on

00:03:40.020 Jason Kenny's board as a youth member in those years as well, which later in life got me into a bit of

00:03:48.140 trouble when I I did things that I was asked to do and didn't ask questions. So that's a lesson to all

00:03:54.480 the young people out there that want to get involved in politics. Ask the tough questions. Don't be afraid

00:03:59.940 to ask the tough questions. Don't don't just do something because you're asked to do it by someone

00:04:04.620 in a position of authority. And so we take those lessons in life and we approach them from a place

00:04:10.420 of humility and from learning and and we get through them. There's always lessons in politics. And so

00:04:15.940 2008-2009, we had a by a by-election in Calgary. Paul Hyman won that by-election. It was a great

00:04:23.640 injection of energy into our Wild Rose movement at the time. Sorry, I'm giving a bit of political

00:04:29.040 history here because I've been been doing this for for some time. And please do know. So it's

00:04:33.720 it's a lot of fun when you kind of reminisce and look back, you kind of see that the failings and

00:04:38.760 the flaws. And if you learn from that, and you apply that to the future, which is what we're trying

00:04:42.520 to do now with the upper Republican Party, you can kind of see some of those missteps that have been

00:04:46.380 made in the past and dodge those those Saskatchewan road pitholes that we try to not have as many

00:04:54.220 here in Alberta. So 2012 election came along. I was I was heavily involved on a few campaigns

00:05:01.260 for the Wild Rose. In that time frame, 2013 comes along. 2014, I was seeking a nomination in Calgary

00:05:09.180 Southeast. I'd signed up around 2000 members for the party. And then the current leader of the UCP

00:05:15.080 decided to cross the floor, as we're all aware of, and took the majority of the Wild Rose MLAs to the PC

00:05:22.800 party. That was a tough December. I doorknocked, re-doorknocked, all of the members that had signed up to

00:05:31.020 vote for me in a nomination, refunded their memberships, you know, deeply apologized. This wasn't their fault.

00:05:37.560 It wasn't our fault, necessarily. It was it was leadership at the time that had made a tragic choice

00:05:42.760 and an affront to democracy. And early 2015, I was asked to manage the leadership campaign for Mr.

00:05:52.480 Brian Jean, who's now a UCP minister. We ran that campaign successfully, went on to run the 2015

00:05:58.680 campaign. And we we effectively rallied Albertans. I was it was not a singular effort. It was Albertans who

00:06:07.900 really rallied behind the Wild Rose brand and resurrected a party that had been decimated by

00:06:14.220 opportunism and self-serving decision making. And we brought the party from four seats back up to

00:06:20.240 22 or 21 seats, which was greater than what it had been before. And then we begin to see some of those

00:06:27.180 fissures. The NDP obviously won the 2015 election, which there were only a couple instances of vote

00:06:33.960 splitting. The vast majority of those of those splits that occurred were effectively between

00:06:42.100 between the PC vote collapsing and people choosing the NDP versus necessarily the NDP actually coming

00:06:50.640 up the middle, as it were. There was a lot of 2015 election is often misunderstood as a massive

00:06:55.740 exercise in vote splitting. But it's actually not. It's a it's a it's a lesson that when conservative

00:07:02.400 parties don't govern like conservatives, that they lose, that people all across the spectrum want

00:07:09.800 to vote for the real thing, whatever that real thing is, then choose something that's conservative

00:07:15.320 light, or the Diet Coke. And so 2015 election was was a lesson in that, that, you know, if we're not

00:07:25.140 true to our values and our principles, we don't run on them, we don't do what we say we're going to do.

00:07:29.100 So 44 years in government, and and the PC Party, that was the legacy that that it ended on. And so

00:07:36.120 2016, as I mentioned before, had a great had a great time, a lot of opposition in the Wild Rose

00:07:43.300 to unity. And the former leader, interim leader of the Wild Rose Party, Heather Forsyth, MLA for Fish

00:07:51.000 Creek, and Dave Rutherford, and former PC Party President James, Jim McCormick, and I, we toured

00:07:58.940 the province, and we began having rallies to talk about unifying the two parties. And I will say this,

00:08:06.600 in hindsight, unity between the two parties was was, I believe, the wrong decision. It seemed like the

00:08:13.800 right idea at the time, one plus one kind of seemed like it would equal two. But now in hindsight,

00:08:19.040 looking back, I think Alberta is actually best served in a in a coalition style government,

00:08:25.920 a government where you have two conservative parties that keeps that accountability, that

00:08:32.260 ensures there's a check and balance, that a singular party cannot be trusted, whether it's conservative or

00:08:39.900 NDP, to not drift towards the center or the far left, to keep their hand out of the cookie jar,

00:08:46.700 to combat corruption that becomes rampant when you are in a majority government in our current system.

00:08:54.500 And so, and so that that kind of led to the focus of, okay, UCP, here we go, let's, let's,

00:09:00.840 let's try and make some changes. We've tried to make changes from the inside, whether that be through

00:09:04.900 COVID, a number of disappointments there. The entire COVID cabinet is still in power. The decision makers

00:09:12.540 are still there. And so what we have now in the UCP is a government that has chosen power for the sake

00:09:20.640 of it, instead of looking at how can we make these changes to serve Albertans. It's not a government

00:09:27.020 that is making decisions as a socially conservative government. It's certainly not a decision making

00:09:33.980 government on the side of fiscal conservatism. And so many Albertans are left asking, well,

00:09:40.380 what type of conservatism is this exactly? $5 billion deficits, bloated bureaucracy.

00:09:48.660 And now we've got a heavy cloud of corruption and, and hanging over this entire government right

00:09:55.120 now. And does that serve Albertans well? And I don't think it did. And so that's kind of the back

00:10:03.620 history of how I approach this and looking at this from, there's lessons that we can learn along the

00:10:11.040 way in politics. There's battle scars. Every, if you've been in politics long enough, you're going

00:10:15.000 to have battle scars. That's just the fact of it. Every campaign you help in, there's people who win

00:10:21.500 and there's people who don't. And how you repair those relationships, how you learn to repair those

00:10:25.160 relationships afterward, they matter. And so the, the impetus of that letter that you referenced

00:10:32.740 is that continued observations of decision-making in Edmonton by the current UCP government

00:10:42.360 and decision-making, not in so much as the, as the allegations of corruption, but the efforts to

00:10:51.680 cover it up. And that old saying, where there's smoke, there's fire. There's a lot more to this

00:10:58.620 onion that has yet to be peeled back. And we're seeing it slowly unpeel in front of the media today.

00:11:03.820 There was an article that, that highlighted and confirmed that the minister of justice is a relative

00:11:11.080 of the individual at the epicenter of the AHS scandal. The individual who received over $600 million

00:11:21.320 in government contracts via the alleged pressure from the premier's office is a relative of the

00:11:31.600 minister of justice. And we're supposed to trust the government to investigate itself. That's the

00:11:38.080 message to Albertans that you're a UCP member. You should just trust us to investigate ourselves.

00:11:43.780 Any attacks are just NDP attacks. It's nonsense. If you look at political history across

00:11:51.300 Canada, one of the greatest political scandals that really reshaped provincial history was the

00:11:58.660 grant divine PC government scandal in the nineties. And it led to a complete lack of trust in the PC

00:12:07.160 party for over a decade. In fact, since then, they haven't been elected since then. The SAS party,

00:12:13.940 after, after over 10 years of NDP government, finally cobbled together enough votes to, to form a

00:12:19.840 government and kick the NDP out. We can't afford that in Alberta. We, we had a rough time with four

00:12:26.260 years of, of the NDP. We cannot afford a so-called conservative government that is governing, if I might

00:12:35.920 add, to the left of where the Rachel Notley NDP government has been governing. We had less deficit,

00:12:42.660 less debt, lower bureaucracy under Rachel Notley, as much as that pains me to say, but it's the truth.

00:12:51.940 So if we're not getting the real thing, we have to speak up about it. It's not a, it's not a

00:12:58.500 bury your head in the sand moment. We are two years from an election. And if you can't call out these

00:13:04.260 things in the government, then you will see it fall. And so I was in a position as a, as a long time

00:13:10.300 UCP member, a founding member of UCP. I was a member of both the Wild Rose and the PC parties,

00:13:16.060 helped in the delegate selection meetings, helped in the unity vote, made sure dozens of ridings voted

00:13:21.740 in favor of unity. Organized in the, in the, in the leadership races that said that followed,

00:13:27.900 helped as much as I could in, in, in dozens of campaigns across the province in the 2019 election.

00:13:32.700 And if we can't call out corruption and scandal and conflicts of interest in our party, then who will?

00:13:45.260 And so after attempting to do so and seeing the level of, of coverup and wagon circling that's

00:13:53.900 occurred, it became very clear to me that those values and principles that the UCP espouses to uphold,

00:14:03.020 are not actually the values that they've chosen to live by and govern by. And so that's what led me

00:14:09.100 to formally resign my membership. Not as a singular moment of protest, but just to open that conversation

00:14:17.740 in a way that other UCP members can look at it and say, maybe I should be asking these questions,

00:14:24.380 see what kind of answer I get to. And there's nothing wrong with it. Ask those questions.

00:14:30.540 Please, if you're still a staunch UCP member, ask the questions. And if you're given an answer of just

00:14:40.620 trust us,

00:14:42.540 then use, use your judgment on how you would want to proceed. If the answer is, don't worry,

00:14:48.940 we're going to investigate ourselves. Don't worry, just wait until these investigations play out. Well,

00:14:53.660 those investigations are being conducted internally.

00:14:57.260 So if that's the answer you're given, then, then maybe consider that, maybe consider your involvement

00:15:03.500 in an organization that, that has that for an answer when it comes to a heavy cloud of corruption

00:15:09.340 over top of it.

00:15:09.820 So we, we've had a, uh, on the show, we've kind of had a rule of have no heroes in the way that like

00:15:20.700 we've gone through example after example of people that maybe somebody puts a lot of either too much

00:15:28.460 trust or they don't ask the right questions because they idolize, um, somebody as a savior,

00:15:34.620 et cetera. And I've made that mistake.

00:15:37.340 Yeah, I've made that mistake.

00:15:39.020 And so now I, I, I work very hard to help others not make that mistake. And sometimes it, it, it,

00:15:44.940 it may be the, the, the lone, the lone voice in the wilderness, but, uh, I, I attempt to do that

00:15:51.900 and ensure that people understand, Hey, look, I've been down that road. Um, I've been in the place of

00:15:56.780 idolizing the, the, the leader or the politicians and, and, and just following blindly. And I've made

00:16:02.140 that mistake and it costs me, but I learned from it.

00:16:04.860 Yeah. And it takes that self-reflection and that bravery to do so. And what, one thing we haven't

00:16:12.140 seen so far in Canada, we really haven't seen a, a successful party or movement for a small

00:16:21.740 government has not taken, it hasn't made enough impact. And so right now, none of the parties at

00:16:31.260 any of the levels are really, they're not implementing the mechanisms that would

00:16:37.900 reduce that bloat, reduce that bureaucracy, or have those checks and balances of the existing

00:16:44.460 framework. Cause if you just put in a few more MLAs or MPs, you have the existing engine

00:16:51.900 that hasn't changed. And if you have the same engine, you're going to have the same results in

00:16:57.820 a way. So then the questions like, well, can you adapt this engine? Can you just, what would it

00:17:04.460 take to actually rewire things? Or sometimes do you have to start fresh with something that's purpose

00:17:11.260 built with the right checks and balances?

00:17:17.740 Yeah. And I think, I think you hit the nail on the head with, with the system itself. You can't add

00:17:23.500 a few clean drops of oil to, to a drum of dirty oil and expect it to change.

00:17:30.620 You've got to, you've got to flush the whole tank.

00:17:34.140 And that's, and that's just the reality of it. And from time to time, an oil flush is needed.

00:17:39.420 In this particular political context, we have a system where the local MLA's voice

00:17:45.020 has only exercised up to a point of tolerated permission. So you cannot voice your concern

00:17:55.980 beyond what's permitted by the leadership of a caucus or, or of a party. And so it's a system

00:18:04.140 that really is, is quite deeply flawed. When you, when you look at other systems around the world,

00:18:08.220 30, 30 member nations of the Commonwealth have chosen a different system for a reason.

00:18:14.940 We, we, we will operate in a, in a really wonky Westminster system. That's not fully a

00:18:21.340 Westminster system. It's kind of a, a bridged version of that. And so part of the, the aspect

00:18:28.380 of the Alberta Republican party now is we need a system change. We're advocating for independence.

00:18:32.700 We're advocating for separation from Canada, but with that comes an advocacy campaign and a political

00:18:39.820 campaign, um, that would completely revise and rewrite the system with the will of Albertans,

00:18:45.100 uh, because we need checks and balances. But until we get there, the only method of having a check and

00:18:52.700 balance is by forcing a conservative government into a coalition with a conservative party.

00:19:00.220 So that you have two conservative parties working in coalition cooperation to ensure the NDP don't win.

00:19:11.020 But if either conservative party has their hand in the cookie jar, the whole house of cards comes

00:19:16.540 tumbling down. If either conservative party doesn't move forward in a principled way and, and reduce

00:19:25.820 government, get back on a principled fiscal path, then they lose government.

00:19:32.860 It's, it's, it's a guardrail. It's a, it's a safety release, having two conservative parties in a coalition.

00:19:41.100 Yeah, that's an interesting point. It's, um, something you said earlier reminded me of, of, uh, of a couple

00:19:47.180 quotes, actually, when you were mentioning how it just feels like no matter, no matter how conservative these parties

00:19:53.180 campaign without opposition, they just keep gradually sliding to the center. There's, um, I don't know if

00:19:58.860 you're familiar with either of these guys, but there's a, um, I just was hearing, uh, a podcast I

00:20:03.980 listened to, uh, they were mentioning this quote, uh, Curtis Yarvin is a, uh, uh, a conservative

00:20:08.140 political commentator. He has the quote, uh, Cthulhu, Cthulhu may swim slowly, but he always swims to the

00:20:14.860 left. And, uh, and then there's a, there's a man named, uh, Robert Conquest. He's a, uh, was a British,

00:20:21.340 uh, uh, historian novelist. He had a great quote. He said, um, any organization not explicitly right-wing

00:20:30.140 sooner or later becomes left-wing. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic

00:20:35.540 organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. And so I'm wondering what

00:20:41.740 your thoughts are on that. Like, why does it seem that? Cause we've had that same thought. We've talked

00:20:45.420 about it on the show where it's like, we loved the, the Daniel Smith of like 30 seconds before

00:20:54.140 she became premier. You know what I mean? And then ever since then it's been, it seemed like she's been,

00:21:01.260 you know, she's kind of been a shadow of that. I don't, I don't know what, what, what are your kind

00:21:04.940 of, what are your thoughts on that? Well, look, the, the, the first, the first action item of the UCP

00:21:11.500 government following the leadership race in 2022 was to water down, dismantle and push through

00:21:20.460 a, a, a pablum version of what had been sold to Albertans for almost a year as a hard hitting

00:21:26.940 sovereignty act. That sovereignty act quickly became a sovereignty act within a United Canada

00:21:33.500 because we're now team Canada. And, and the only thing was missing was elbows up.

00:21:39.100 Yeah. And so that was the first action item. And so if that wasn't a red flag for Albertans,

00:21:46.460 right off the hop, I don't know how much more clear the direction of this government could have been

00:21:52.060 to those who, who supported particular campaigns in that leadership race.

00:21:56.060 And so do governments drift to the left? Absolutely. It's the path of least resistance. It actually takes

00:22:02.300 some, some thought to be a conservative. You have to think through, okay, there's, there's some

00:22:07.980 sacrifice that has been made. We have to tighten our belts. We've got to cut deficit spending because

00:22:12.540 this isn't about me, myself and I in this moment. This is about my kids, my grandkids and their future

00:22:19.340 prosperity. We have to live within our means. We've got to save up for that house. We've got to save up

00:22:24.860 for that new car. We don't just get to throw everything on the credit card and pass along the debt to our

00:22:29.260 kids. They can pay it off when they start getting a job. It doesn't work that way in our personal

00:22:33.340 life. It doesn't work that way in government and it shouldn't work that way, but it is the path of

00:22:37.820 least resistance that governments follow. Unless there is a guardrail and a safety that is provided

00:22:47.260 with the necessity of a coalition. If you cannot form government without a group of individuals who will

00:22:56.060 hold your feet to the fire, hold you accountable, make sure you govern on the principles you are elected,

00:23:02.940 then you will drift to the left because it's far easier to hand out goodies than it is to make sure

00:23:09.660 your kids go clean the room. It's easier to give them ice cream and cookies and, and, and, and watch a show

00:23:14.140 on TV and say, Hey, go, go clean your room. And that's conservatism versus, versus socialism.

00:23:20.700 Yeah. And it's very Jordan, Jordan, Peter and Peter Ian of you. Yeah. I like it.

00:23:24.860 Well, and, and it does actually water down the responsibility of if you are increasing deficits

00:23:31.180 to pay for everything. And if you're afraid to say no, you are just, that's just kind of a stealth

00:23:36.700 tax that's passed on to everybody and it gets watered down and you don't really feel it in the same way

00:23:43.820 that you feel it when you say, have to say no to something or you downsize. And I think people are

00:23:49.500 afraid of anything being cut. And I think in the federal election, we saw that fear.

00:23:56.300 I was even chatting with some friends and family and like they had their misconceptions and obviously

00:24:02.860 things could have been done better. Like we got, we got liberal light in a way from the conservatives, but

00:24:09.820 the fear that drove a lot of people was they're going to cut services and we're going to get

00:24:18.540 less and that's going to be bad rather than saying, well, why don't, why doesn't the average

00:24:25.420 family have enough to actually provide for the basic kind of goods and services that they need?

00:24:33.180 Why is it the government's role to do that? So again, we're not actually having real conservative

00:24:39.340 conversations. No. And because of that, because we're afraid to actually talk about these things

00:24:45.020 or actually take a principled stand or to look at root cause, the left seems to dominate some of these

00:24:52.540 issues. And then you end up playing their game and then you end up turtling and avoiding actually

00:24:59.100 taking a stand. And we're seeing this as a losing strategy time and time again at the provincial level,

00:25:05.580 as well as the federal level. Yeah. And just, you know, going after cuts without explaining

00:25:14.220 how much money in healthcare, healthcare is the hot topic, nearly 50% of our provincial budget now goes to

00:25:21.260 healthcare and you're still going to wait eight hours in emergency. I'm hearing red deer. It's about

00:25:26.700 eight hours in emergency on, on any given night. It's, it's absolutely insanity, but throwing money at

00:25:33.740 the problem stems from the belief that government can solve your problems to begin with. And so there's a

00:25:40.140 lot of work that has to be done on educating people to say, look, is it the role of government to,

00:25:47.500 to step in every time there's something that's, that's made a mistake on? And I think that there's,

00:25:52.540 there's a, an education piece there that throwing money at the, at the problem over and over and over

00:25:58.300 again and getting the same results, maybe we should try something different. And if we're not looking at

00:26:03.420 efficiencies and if we're not looking at how we can restructure a system so that we don't have a doctor

00:26:10.300 shortage, why, why are we not able to do these things? If we're going to build trains to nowhere,

00:26:17.180 wouldn't that money be better served on a doctor retention program or a doctor training program?

00:26:22.380 Let's, let's educate them here in Alberta. Let's make sure they stay here in Alberta for at least 10

00:26:26.300 years after they complete their degree at U of A or U of C. Why aren't we doing those kind of things?

00:26:31.840 There's no reason for emergency rooms not to be open because there's no doctors. It's insanity. These are problems

00:26:37.460 that can be solved, but it takes the political will to say, you know what? We've just received

00:26:42.260 a four-year mandate. We're going to rip the bandaid off and make structural immediate changes.

00:26:48.340 Not, not this, you know, this, this siloing of what's happening with, with AHS right now. And

00:26:53.100 when you take a business and you split it up into four, do you increase your administrative capacity

00:26:59.680 or do you decrease it? Well, you increase it. You've got more middle-level managers than you've ever had

00:27:03.960 before. We have the largest, which is the whole problem to begin with. It's the whole problem to

00:27:08.080 begin with. And it's, it's, it's just mind boggling because in the years from, from 2007, all the way

00:27:13.940 to 2015 with the Wild Rose party, uh, almost eight years reducing the size of government was something

00:27:20.360 that we championed time and time again, every single election and bi-election we ran on. We've got to

00:27:26.260 reduce the role of government. We've got to reduce the size of the bureaucracy. And, and then now we see

00:27:32.980 fast forward, you know, 2025 and it's grown exponentially and there's been no efforts to

00:27:38.340 reduce it. We've grown it as, as a so-called conservative government. It's, it's rather

00:27:42.760 disappointing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and this, I don't know, this might be exactly related or this

00:27:51.640 might be switching gears a bit, but I, um, I was, I was reading an article about you and, uh, one of the

00:27:58.720 points that in, in the article that it really focused on was about how your one, one of your

00:28:04.540 primary issues, which you had talked about prior to your, um, prior to this, this letter that you

00:28:09.940 had published was the, the issuance of gag orders, uh, and the, and the purging of dissenters, uh, from

00:28:18.220 within the party, principled MLAs, as you called them. Um, do you, can you speak to, I mean, you don't

00:28:25.000 have to get into specifics if you don't want, but can you speak to a little bit about the, the

00:28:29.120 culture that sort of, when these, when these major issues like, why are we trying to fix

00:28:35.260 healthcare by bloat, even further bloating it than from how it was, what is the kind of

00:28:40.400 culture that's percolating under the surface there that just, that doesn't allow that discussion

00:28:45.100 to happen and would rather shove it under the rug?

00:28:48.260 Right. So it's, it's been interesting observing this. And, and if you go into any political

00:28:55.560 meeting, you know, provincial political meeting, and you ask, you know, who was here back in

00:29:03.920 the early 2010, 2015 era politically, who was politically involved here, Wild Rose, PC, whatever,

00:29:11.620 or even the 2012 election, who, who, who in this room, 200 people, 300 people who volunteered

00:29:16.560 or worked on a campaign in 2012 election or 2015 election. And the number of people that

00:29:22.360 raised their hand is, is less than 20%. And that's both a positive and a negative. The number

00:29:31.820 of new people since really the COVID era that were kind of, kind of awakened during COVID to

00:29:36.620 say, Hey, you know what? I have to be politically engaged has grown exponentially and that's good.

00:29:41.180 But what comes with that is a lack of political understanding and, and, and maturity, if you

00:29:48.960 will, just not having been involved in, in a system that preys on your enthusiasm that says,

00:29:58.720 now I'm the person you follow. You have to have a really a cult like mentality or you're out of the

00:30:05.180 club. And that's unfortunate. And we're seeing that. And it's going to take some time. It's going to take

00:30:10.760 some time to, to change. And it's going to be hard lessons for a number of people that put their

00:30:17.560 absolute faith and confidence in a individual to do what they say they're going to do. And then the

00:30:22.000 disappointment that follows when they don't. And so when we look at, at the gag orders, you know,

00:30:28.680 look, Minister Guthrie, um, he was one of the first MLAs to stand up to Jason Kenney.

00:30:34.180 He is a man of, of deep integrity and the things that he's, he's, he was made, he was aware of

00:30:44.320 and then made aware of, and then the observations and he's exposed most of this now, uh, in the

00:30:50.380 legislature, he tabled dozens and dozens of documents now as independent MLA to say, look guys,

00:30:57.400 here's what I saw. And here was the reaction. And here's what I was told. I see something wrong.

00:31:06.020 I'm questioning you about it. And you're telling me to sit down and shut up. 0.99

00:31:09.980 And that's why I made, made a stand and left. And so as a member who's been quite involved with,

00:31:16.680 with dozens of MLAs and helping them on their campaigns, when I see someone take a stand like

00:31:23.240 that, a principal stand and they're kicked out for it, that raises every fire alarm bell in the house.

00:31:33.600 Scott Sinclair, he may have not been in, you know, deeply as involved and although he posted

00:31:39.600 some great pictures of a hockey game down in, down in Florida, which ministers had said,

00:31:44.480 and staff had said that they weren't at now. Apparently they were at, um, they claim to have

00:31:49.140 paid their own way yet. I'd be really interested to see if they, if they can show the flight manifest

00:31:54.340 or their tickets, because, uh, it's rumored that they were all on a private jet, which is, uh,

00:31:59.480 not allowed in their capacity. Uh, so maybe they've made some tickets up. Be really interesting to see

00:32:05.880 their receipts on that. I've heard the receipt makers are going into overtime, uh, in the premier's

00:32:10.800 office. So his stand though, wasn't necessarily on, uh, on the corruption angle of things. His stand was

00:32:18.900 on the fiscal angle and I have deep respect for Scott. Um, I, I helped Scott in his, in his nomination

00:32:24.540 campaign. He's a great MLA. He listens to his constituents. He, he doesn't need the job.

00:32:32.600 He, this isn't, this isn't the pinnacle of his career. He stepped up to serve for, for all of the

00:32:37.860 right reasons. And he was secure in his position to say, you know what? I see, I see things being done

00:32:44.180 that don't serve my constituents well, and I have to speak up on it. A $5 billion deficit that's

00:32:51.340 prioritizing pet projects, $120 million for a park aid for the, the Edmonton oiler group, the,

00:32:58.740 the, the waste in certain, in certain ministries, uh, a ballooning deficit, no attempt to focus on,

00:33:06.720 you know, 20 highway or a helicopter pad for my hospital and my riding things like that,

00:33:12.780 that would make sense to ordinary Albertans. And so he highlighted a number of things that he saw

00:33:17.580 as just being wasteful spending. Who's, whose pockets are being lined here? What's going on?

00:33:22.440 And just for calling that out, he was removed from caucus. He actually voted for the budget.

00:33:31.180 If you go back and look, he actually voted for it just so that it wouldn't bring the government down.

00:33:36.200 Hmm. But he did the principal thing and standing up and saying, is this how things should be done?

00:33:44.280 Now, I think to give some context to your listeners, most of the UCP caucus

00:33:50.940 is not informed of the budget in its entirety until right before it's tabled.

00:33:57.520 And, and by informed, I mean zero consultation. Most MLAs have no input. If you're not in cabinet,

00:34:05.260 you have very little say. And, and it's, it's made clear to those MLAs. You're not actually part

00:34:12.680 of the government. You're part of the caucus. The government is the cabinet. The cabinet makes

00:34:17.700 all the decisions. You just are told to vote for it. That's, that's this Westminster system we have.

00:34:23.800 It's, it's deeply flawed. Uh, and it shouldn't be that way, but here we are. And so Scott Sinclair

00:34:29.940 stood up. Immense respect for him. He got kicked out because he spoke up. So is that a government

00:34:38.020 that is showing inclination of, of accountability, transparency? Is that a government that's,

00:34:44.400 that's showing us that you just have to accept what we do because we're not the NDP?

00:34:50.620 I don't think that's good enough. I don't think that's good enough for Albertans.

00:34:54.900 I think we deserve more from our government. Yeah. And that's not a, that's not a hallmark of,

00:35:03.640 that, that's not the kind of open source mentality of like, here's a document. The more eyes we have

00:35:10.280 on this, the more we can find fundamental flaws. Or if you find a flaw in the code of this software,

00:35:17.760 like, we want to know because we want this to run, run well. So in this case,

00:35:23.480 it's, if an MLA is the voice of their constituents,

00:35:29.400 then they should be able to speak up for their constituents, even if it ruffles a few feathers

00:35:37.940 within the party. Ideally, if they're supposed to be representing the people, we're not seeing that.

00:35:43.140 No, no, it's, it's unfortunate, but we're not. And so the perspective is, is that, okay,

00:35:49.440 we've had organizers, activists, long time founding members of the UCP, MLAs, a cabinet minister

00:36:02.640 from the bottom to the top of, of the party apparatus, attempt to raise alarms, attempt to ask

00:36:10.800 the tough questions. And to a T, they have all been sidelined, denigrated by the internal party

00:36:18.600 structure. You're asking questions. You obviously are now an NDP supporter. You must be part of the

00:36:26.400 WEF to undermine the UCP government. You must be a saboteur, even though you've been here for 10

00:36:33.480 years, building the conservative movement. I've heard all of these things, by the way, I'm not just

00:36:37.000 being hyperbolic. There's an element of, of grassroots members within the UCP who have bought

00:36:43.760 into this cult-like worship of a leader that the party can do no wrong. If we don't toe the line

00:36:53.560 from, from A to Z, if we ask questions, we are, we are allowing the NDP to win.

00:37:01.040 And that is simply not true and is wrong. Yeah. You have to ask the questions. You have

00:37:08.480 to. Yeah. Well, and, and anyone with integrity would, I mean, that's, that's the name of the

00:37:14.720 game. If you're, you're, you're not out to, you're not out to just follow a leader. You're

00:37:19.100 out to represent principles, right? That's right. And which is a, I think a perfect segue into

00:37:24.540 maybe, what, 48 hours ago news where Mr. Cameron Davies, the new leader of the Alberta Republican

00:37:31.980 Party, formerly the Buffalo Party, if I'm correct. That's right. And so I suppose, well, maybe,

00:37:40.240 maybe we can have you kind of explain the, the main, I don't know if you have a, you know,

00:37:44.780 a published platform, but I assume one of the major points of your party is going to be Alberta

00:37:51.980 independence. Our listeners actually, whenever we talk about Alberta independence with, with

00:37:57.760 Marty up North, we get a lot of hits, we get a lot of love and a lot of hate. Sure. And

00:38:02.080 so, and so that's great. So more of that, please. So please, if you could maybe give your thoughts

00:38:07.240 on how do you feel about the, the Alberta independence movement, maybe prior to 72 hours ago on Monday

00:38:17.180 night to today and, and what's going to be different with it going forward?

00:38:22.720 Well, I think, I think when it comes to the independence movement broadly, um, it's been

00:38:29.880 around for a while. This isn't, this isn't something that's, you know, just a brand new concept.

00:38:36.140 And I'm, I'm, I'm a historian. And so I look back at the history of how things have been done.

00:38:41.960 Let's learn from that and let's build something better. And so in 1980s, you know, I reached out

00:38:49.240 to, to the first MLA that had been elected under a separatist banner in the West, uh, MLA Gordon

00:38:55.120 Kessler ran in the old, uh, Didsbury area. And, uh, you know, for, for a guy in his mid eighties,

00:39:01.540 he's got a lot of fire in the belly left for this issue. He's very passionate about it and he's got

00:39:07.000 lots of good advice. And so I like to bring people into, to my circle of advisors that

00:39:12.400 will, will give me the hard truth and say, Hey, you know, here's the things you got to watch for.

00:39:16.380 Here's the things that we did right. Here's what really went wrong. And here's where I think you

00:39:20.260 guys can, can make a difference. We need, we need people of a new generation. It's our generation

00:39:24.360 that's getting screwed right now by Ottawa. Uh, we're, we're the ones that are going to be paying 0.61

00:39:28.820 the bills here in 15, 20 years, uh, if we haven't moved. Uh, and so, um, you know, there's lots of

00:39:37.620 lessons to learn in, in the history of that, where the movement is now is there are five independence

00:39:47.480 parties in the province. There are about a half a dozen advocacy groups of various stages. Some are

00:39:57.420 doing, uh, uh, survey petition, uh, not the actual petition, but like pre surveys, I guess, if you

00:40:05.560 will, uh, letters of intent, you know, it's, it's a, it's a survey plan. It's a survey. Do you,

00:40:12.920 do you support Alberta independence? Yes or no? Sign up here. Give us your email address. We'll keep you

00:40:17.540 informed when we decide to knock on your door. And those things are great. There's educational groups

00:40:22.320 out there that are talking about, here's why here's the 1998 Supreme court, um, decision on,

00:40:29.040 on the necessity and the obligation of Ottawa, the provinces and first nations to negotiate with a

00:40:34.680 province that is seeking to leave confederation. Uh, you know, there's, there's organizations that

00:40:40.000 are talking about the clarity act and the wording and, and parliament's ability to interfere with the

00:40:46.340 process if they chose to. And so there's lots of education out there that has to be done on the, on

00:40:53.620 the political side though, there has been a lack of, of effective organization, professionalism and

00:41:03.580 discipline in our messaging and our activism efforts to ensure that the political will for independence has

00:41:12.340 been created. And that's, what's been missing thus far. And so our objective, uh, with the upper

00:41:18.160 Republican party, our rebrand or rename, uh, was, uh, to create that professionalism. Let's bring in

00:41:26.860 people who have the experience of successfully organizing campaigns, referendums. This is what

00:41:34.640 it's going to take. If we're serious about getting the job done, this isn't a rally the legislature every

00:41:39.220 Saturday kind of movement. That's not going to work. Uh, and, and I would go back to the education

00:41:45.560 side because I think that's really important. Political parties can't be the education side

00:41:50.020 of this effort. It, it will take dozens of groups to focus on various demographics within our province

00:41:59.200 to educate Albertans on how independence is good for this province and their families.

00:42:04.720 But the necessity of the political side comes from having the political will to, to enact a binding

00:42:15.680 independence referendum. So the last referendum that Alberta had was on equalization.

00:42:23.440 The Alberta government pushed that referendum forward, spent tens of millions of dollars

00:42:29.900 informing Albertans as to what equalization was about. The pros, the cons, mostly cons and, and informing

00:42:41.260 Albertans as to what equalization was to begin with. And then we had a referendum on it.

00:42:48.620 If the existing government is not in favor of a referendum,

00:42:55.980 will they spend time fighting it? Will they spend our dollars fighting it? Probably.

00:43:04.620 The odds of success of a referendum will go down significantly,

00:43:09.580 but the added compounding factor to that, and we use this word purposefully, is that it needs to be a

00:43:15.500 binding referendum. The citizen act initiative that the UCP government just put out is, is a trap.

00:43:24.060 If you have a government saying, go do a referendum, we'll make it easy for you,

00:43:30.780 but we're not going to support it. Why do you think that is?

00:43:36.140 Why, why, why would a government that doesn't want something to happen to say, hey, go, go and try?

00:43:39.980 Why? So that's an easy answer. If something's disorganized or you don't actually have the

00:43:47.180 political will behind it and you have a half dozen groups going at it and you have a weak

00:43:54.300 referendum push and it fails, then that kills the movement for however many years.

00:44:02.380 So without this, this is where you're seeing the sentiment kind of pop up of like, okay, you get,

00:44:07.660 everybody's hot and bothered because of this election, but you cannot rush this and it has to

00:44:14.140 be done right. And you need enough support and you need enough organization that like, you can't give,

00:44:22.620 you can't be reckless. You can't give ammo to the left. Um, you can't lean into 51st state that comes,

00:44:31.980 even if that was a option that has to come after, like you need enough political will to even,

00:44:39.980 even look at Alberta's sovereignty first before that conversation even has. And we don't even know

00:44:46.300 if there's enough political will under that. So you can't jump the gun. That just gives ammo to

00:44:51.420 people currently suffering from TDS. Sure. You, you, you can't put your dance. You,

00:44:56.860 you shouldn't put your dancing shoes on before you have finalized your divorce. It's the bottom line.

00:45:02.540 And we're in abusive, toxic relationship with Ottawa. We need to, we've tried mediation. We've tried

00:45:08.700 compromise. We've had so-called conservative governments that have done all the strongly worded

00:45:13.980 letters and lawsuits. I see today, actually, they've come out with another, we're going to

00:45:16.860 sue Ottawa over something else. For what? Spend, spend that time and energy dissolving the relationship

00:45:26.300 because it doesn't work. It's completely broken. So, so back to the point on the, on the binding

00:45:32.860 referendum, the political will aspect of that is if you look at the referendum on equalization,

00:45:37.420 there was no action taken. Well, why is that? Because the government wasn't obligated to.

00:45:41.580 Hmm. They weren't obligated to act on the will of the people. And so they said, okay,

00:45:48.460 well, we gave you a vote. You expressed your dis, your displeasure with equalization. We heard you.

00:45:54.380 What else do you want? And so without the binding independence referendum from the political side,

00:46:03.740 forcing our elected officials to negotiate the exit from Canada, following a referendum,

00:46:10.220 referendum, without that type of legislation being passed and tabled, it will be another finger in

00:46:15.980 the wind. Albertans had an outlet. They expressed their displeasure. They don't like how things are

00:46:20.540 going. Okay, good. Now they'll calm down for another five or six years. And that's what we have to avoid.

00:46:27.180 If this movement is to be successful, we have to look at how we can actually not only succeed in a

00:46:33.820 referendum, but make sure that is immediately acted upon.

00:46:40.460 Um, giving, if, if we were just to, to, to try and be as charitable as possible, we'll give,

00:46:46.860 we'll give Danielle and her government, um, the most charitable response here, the most benefit of

00:46:52.700 the, of the doubt. It seems to me that this was ready to go. I mean, it's, I don't think it's any,

00:46:58.620 it's any coincidence that, you know, not, you know, 12 hours after the election results, she had a

00:47:03.820 statement ready to go about how they're going to, uh, adjust the referendum, uh, requirements or,

00:47:08.620 you know, you know, signature requirements, things like this. But by saying, you've been in politics

00:47:13.580 too long, you're sounding cynical. Well, you know, I'm of two minds about it because I, I, I look at

00:47:19.740 that and I say, okay, well, they were prepared if, you know, if we didn't get the conservative

00:47:23.740 government, we were all hoping for, um, this was going to be the next response. But by her saying,

00:47:29.580 hey, you know, we're, we're taking a hands-off approach about this. We're going to let the,

00:47:32.940 you know, the citizens do what they may. That might, my thoughts are maybe that insulates her

00:47:38.380 from a little bit of, you know, extremely caustic blowback from the, from the national media. She can 0.99

00:47:44.620 at least fall back on that and kind of let the movement happen underneath her. And she doesn't

00:47:48.860 become the focus of that. Is there anything to that you think, or am I being,

00:47:52.140 rather than maybe being too cynical, am I being too optimistic of her, of her motives?

00:47:56.700 I think if, I think if you give any politician the opportunity to, to attempt to have their cake

00:48:02.460 and eat it too, I think they'll try and take it. And so this is where the, the, the Albertans broadly

00:48:09.180 need to say, well, you're telling us to go do one thing, but the other side of your mouth,

00:48:15.340 you're telling us that you're going to basically fight us and not support us in this endeavor.

00:48:19.980 So the, the, the, the cynical aspect of that is to think that, that a leader of a province

00:48:28.700 can somehow look at a large segment of Albertans. And I, I think it's much higher than 30% now.

00:48:35.260 We've been conducting polling for the last several days and I don't want to step on the, on the

00:48:41.020 narrative, but I can tell you that is much higher than 35%. It's not over 50, but it is higher than 35.

00:48:48.220 And, and we're seeing that sentiment grow, but to think that you can get away with a dismissive

00:48:55.420 nature of, we let you have your vote. It didn't work out because we didn't want it to work out.

00:49:03.180 Now sit down and shut up. And to think that you can get away with that is not only cynical, 0.98

00:49:09.100 but it's just disrespectful to Albertans. It seems like we haven't seen movement on

00:49:15.420 the equalization front, even after that, like, even with that support. So no action on that,

00:49:22.140 no action on the firewall, uh, no action on the, well, Alberta collecting

00:49:29.660 were our own taxes here because that would be needed for the equalization. So there are a few things that

00:49:34.860 could be done to increase the amount of sovereignty, uh, within, within the constitution that Alberta

00:49:42.300 has over its own jurisdiction. And these things at a minimum, haven't been done. They haven't really

00:49:49.260 been addressed and talked about. They've kind of been a little bit of movement and then they fizzle

00:49:56.060 out and it's not mentioned. So I, I think that's maybe where some people lose a little bit of the

00:50:02.220 trust of like, well, we, we can't put all our eggs in the UCP if they're not doing these things

00:50:10.700 that are within their own power. Yeah. We've had, we've had, we've had years, uh, three years now.

00:50:17.740 Plus, I mean, if you go back to the, to the previous administration, um, up to five years,

00:50:22.860 six years now of conservative, uh, governments that have not accomplished a single thing

00:50:32.700 in relation to Alberta autonomy within Canada, not a single thing. And so we're to believe,

00:50:41.180 just trust us. We'll keep writing those strongly worded letters, those assertive tweets. We'll file

00:50:48.700 some more lawsuits with your money to make you feel better about how much you aren't happy with

00:50:53.980 Ottawa, but that is the extent and limitation of our ability as a government. We cannot accept that

00:50:59.820 anymore. Yeah. Um, we've, uh, as the conversation around Alberta independence has sort of ramped up

00:51:08.700 pretty significantly, uh, online over this week. Um, we've been noticing a lot of the same sort of,

00:51:15.260 uh, comments from, from naysayers or, you know, federalists who, who just, you know,

00:51:20.540 balk at the concept of a, of an independent Alberta. Um, maybe in, you know, just a, a short,

00:51:26.540 you know, whatever you, whatever you feel that the major bullet points are, um, we've had you on for

00:51:31.500 just about an hour here. So if you want to hit us with a, hit us with a, uh, uh, I'll give you a call

00:51:36.380 to action. Yeah. Give us a call to action. Give us a, give us a response to those, like, well, 0.82

00:51:41.100 we won't have port access and we will have to change a currency and like all that kind of stuff.

00:51:45.740 Like what, what is your response to that? What's your call to action?

00:51:48.780 We should, we should line up a rapid fire Q&A. Cause those are really fun, but, uh, really,

00:51:52.940 really quickly. Cause I, we, we, we run into this at every town hall that I'm at. Cause it's fine.

00:51:57.420 It's, it's, it's the left, the, the Eastern narrative is, is you can't. And the fact of the

00:52:02.460 matter is Alberta was built on, we can, we have a can do attitude, a can do spirit. Um, growing up,

00:52:10.300 my mom always said, can't, can't do anything. And so we have to approach this problem. We're,

00:52:15.340 we're problem solvers. We roll up our sleeves, we get up in the morning and, and we get stuff done.

00:52:21.260 And so the whole notion of, we can't, is predominantly the, the exact reason why folks

00:52:26.940 decided to stay in the comfort of their homes in Toronto and Montreal and not move out west to begin

00:52:31.180 with, because they didn't think they could. And Alberta was built by people who said, yes, we can.

00:52:36.140 Yeah. And so landlocked province, well, you better not tell Switzerland that cause they're

00:52:40.140 doing pretty good. And we would have more access to international markets under international access

00:52:45.420 to, to market, uh, laws, um, than we do right now within Confederation. Yeah.

00:52:52.860 There are free trade barriers within Canada. It's not actually even a real country at this point.

00:52:57.340 Uh, nation states don't have barriers of trade within its own borders, but we do apparently,

00:53:02.940 um, our own currency. Look, we get to decide as Albertans, what currency we want to use. We get

00:53:10.940 to decide, we leave this abusive relationship. We get to determine what relationships we want to

00:53:16.060 engage with and foster, which ones we don't, what our relationship looks like with Canada after the

00:53:21.020 divorce. Are we going to be friends? I hope so. But you know what? The NHL has two nations in it right

00:53:27.980 now. And it probably would be great with a third and the Oilers and Calgary flames can keep on repping

00:53:34.220 under a Republic of Alberta, just fine within the NHL. And I think that would be absolutely phenomenal

00:53:40.380 to see. I agree. I agree. And for anyone wondering if you want to look this up, because we've, we've

00:53:46.220 gotten into enough arguments about this ourselves. Uh, you look up UN CLOS. That's a UN convention on the

00:53:53.660 law of the sea. That's international law that guarantees port access. It's not an argument.

00:53:58.780 It'll be better than we have currently with the government of BC with interprovincial trade

00:54:03.020 barriers. So yeah, agreed. Well, Hey, you know, Asian markets are, are waiting our LNG that we can 0.91

00:54:09.900 provide. There's no excuses for it. And it would produce a prosperity here in the province. Like

00:54:15.260 we've never seen opening those access to markets, uh, our relationships with, with the United States,

00:54:20.380 with El Salvador, Argentina, being able to negotiate our own free trade agreements across the world,

00:54:25.820 South Korea, Japan, um, former Commonwealth nations. Uh, there's a lot of opportunity there

00:54:31.580 for us to bring even more prosperity to a province, uh, even, even more so than reducing our equalization

00:54:39.020 CPP transfers back East every year. So if you're, if your viewers are interested in how we can actually

00:54:45.340 achieve change, go to albertarepublicans.com, become a member, sign up to volunteer, host a

00:54:54.140 Republican party in your riding. We have to build the political will in this province to act to ensure

00:55:01.580 that Alberta can truly become strong and free as an independent Alberta Republic.

00:55:07.180 That's awesome. That's, that's an awesome closer. Uh, James, do you have anything else you want to

00:55:13.820 ask Cameron before we wrap her up here? The, uh, no, I think that covers everything.

00:55:20.140 Well, I've had fun guys. This is great. We'll do this again. Sometimes I, I, I really enjoy the

00:55:24.860 questions and a great conversation. Well, thanks a lot, man. We, uh, we know you're, you're super busy

00:55:30.140 as a new, uh, new party leader and, uh, and we appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. We

00:55:34.460 definitely will do it again. Thank you guys. Have a good evening. Thanks a lot, man. Cheers.

The Critical Compass Podcast - May 16, 2025

Alberta Republican Leader Cameron Davies on Corruption, Accountability, & A New Vision for Alberta

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