Alberta Republican Leader Cameron Davies on Corruption, Accountability, & A New Vision for Alberta
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we chat with former Alberta Progressive Conservative Party (APC) Spokesperson and former Wildrose campaign manager, Cameron Davies. We talk about his political career, how he got into politics, and some of the lessons he learned along the way.
Transcript
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Most of the UCP caucus is not informed of the budget in its entirety until right before it's
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tabled. And by informed, I mean zero consultation. Most MLAs have no input. If you're not in cabinet,
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you have very little say. And it's made clear to those MLAs, you're not actually part of the
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government. You're part of the caucus. The government is the cabinet. The cabinet makes
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all the decisions. You just are told to vote for it. That's this Westminster system we have. It's
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deeply flawed. And it shouldn't be that way. But here we are. And so Scott Sinclair stood up.
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Immense respect for him. He got kicked out because he spoke up. So is that a government that is showing
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inclination of accountability, transparency? Is that a government that's showing us that
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you just have to accept what we do? Because we're not the NDP. I don't think that's good
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enough. I don't think that's good enough for Albertans. I think we deserve more from our
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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. My name is Mike, and this is James. And we are lucky to have
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with us today Cameron Davies, a former longtime UCP campaign manager, spokesman, kind of ran the show
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before it was popular and helped join the two parties of the Wild Rose and the Alberta Progressive
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Conservatives. And very recently, you may have seen Penn DeLetter expressing his desire to no longer
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be associated with the party. He has now recently been announced as the leader of the Alberta
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Republican Party. So first off, congratulations on that, Cameron. And thanks for joining us on the
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show. Well, hey, guys, thanks for having me. Love the name of the show. Appreciate you reaching out and
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looking forward to a great discussion tonight. Right on. Yeah, I guess maybe we'll start with
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I guess, you know, can you give us a little bit of a of a background, just, you know, whatever you
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think kind of the greatest hits are of what got you involved in Alberta politics in the first place?
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Sure. So I always grew up around politics. Growing up, senior statesmen now from the Reform Party and
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and the Ralph Klein era, PC government were frequent visitors around the dinner table as a as a young
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child, growing up just west of Edmonton and Spruce Grove, which has changed exponentially over the last
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30 years from from when I grew up there. And so kind of growing up around politics and and like like
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any young Alberta guy went right to work in the oil patch and had a had a great career is up to a
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driller and punched a lot of holes in the ground between Alberta and Saskatchewan and a lot of a lot
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of learning and a lot of lessons along the way became involved in the Wild Rose and Alberta Alliance
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merger 2007-2008 as a as a as a teenager and had been involved on federal boards. In fact, I was on
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Jason Kenny's board as a youth member in those years as well, which later in life got me into a bit of
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trouble when I I did things that I was asked to do and didn't ask questions. So that's a lesson to all
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the young people out there that want to get involved in politics. Ask the tough questions. Don't be afraid
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to ask the tough questions. Don't don't just do something because you're asked to do it by someone
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in a position of authority. And so we take those lessons in life and we approach them from a place
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of humility and from learning and and we get through them. There's always lessons in politics. And so
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2008-2009, we had a by a by-election in Calgary. Paul Hyman won that by-election. It was a great
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injection of energy into our Wild Rose movement at the time. Sorry, I'm giving a bit of political
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history here because I've been been doing this for for some time. And please do know. So it's
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it's a lot of fun when you kind of reminisce and look back, you kind of see that the failings and
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the flaws. And if you learn from that, and you apply that to the future, which is what we're trying
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to do now with the upper Republican Party, you can kind of see some of those missteps that have been
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made in the past and dodge those those Saskatchewan road pitholes that we try to not have as many
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here in Alberta. So 2012 election came along. I was I was heavily involved on a few campaigns
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for the Wild Rose. In that time frame, 2013 comes along. 2014, I was seeking a nomination in Calgary
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Southeast. I'd signed up around 2000 members for the party. And then the current leader of the UCP
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decided to cross the floor, as we're all aware of, and took the majority of the Wild Rose MLAs to the PC
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party. That was a tough December. I doorknocked, re-doorknocked, all of the members that had signed up to
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vote for me in a nomination, refunded their memberships, you know, deeply apologized. This wasn't their fault.
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It wasn't our fault, necessarily. It was it was leadership at the time that had made a tragic choice
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and an affront to democracy. And early 2015, I was asked to manage the leadership campaign for Mr.
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Brian Jean, who's now a UCP minister. We ran that campaign successfully, went on to run the 2015
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campaign. And we we effectively rallied Albertans. I was it was not a singular effort. It was Albertans who
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really rallied behind the Wild Rose brand and resurrected a party that had been decimated by
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opportunism and self-serving decision making. And we brought the party from four seats back up to
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22 or 21 seats, which was greater than what it had been before. And then we begin to see some of those
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fissures. The NDP obviously won the 2015 election, which there were only a couple instances of vote
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splitting. The vast majority of those of those splits that occurred were effectively between
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between the PC vote collapsing and people choosing the NDP versus necessarily the NDP actually coming
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up the middle, as it were. There was a lot of 2015 election is often misunderstood as a massive
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exercise in vote splitting. But it's actually not. It's a it's a it's a lesson that when conservative
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parties don't govern like conservatives, that they lose, that people all across the spectrum want
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to vote for the real thing, whatever that real thing is, then choose something that's conservative
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light, or the Diet Coke. And so 2015 election was was a lesson in that, that, you know, if we're not
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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.
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So 44 years in government, and and the PC Party, that was the legacy that that it ended on. And so
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2016, as I mentioned before, had a great had a great time, a lot of opposition in the Wild Rose
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to unity. And the former leader, interim leader of the Wild Rose Party, Heather Forsyth, MLA for Fish
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Creek, and Dave Rutherford, and former PC Party President James, Jim McCormick, and I, we toured
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the province, and we began having rallies to talk about unifying the two parties. And I will say this,
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in hindsight, unity between the two parties was was, I believe, the wrong decision. It seemed like the
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right idea at the time, one plus one kind of seemed like it would equal two. But now in hindsight,
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looking back, I think Alberta is actually best served in a in a coalition style government,
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a government where you have two conservative parties that keeps that accountability, that
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ensures there's a check and balance, that a singular party cannot be trusted, whether it's conservative or
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NDP, to not drift towards the center or the far left, to keep their hand out of the cookie jar,
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to combat corruption that becomes rampant when you are in a majority government in our current system.
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And so, and so that that kind of led to the focus of, okay, UCP, here we go, let's, let's,
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let's try and make some changes. We've tried to make changes from the inside, whether that be through
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COVID, a number of disappointments there. The entire COVID cabinet is still in power. The decision makers
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are still there. And so what we have now in the UCP is a government that has chosen power for the sake
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of it, instead of looking at how can we make these changes to serve Albertans. It's not a government
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that is making decisions as a socially conservative government. It's certainly not a decision making
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government on the side of fiscal conservatism. And so many Albertans are left asking, well,
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what type of conservatism is this exactly? $5 billion deficits, bloated bureaucracy.
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And now we've got a heavy cloud of corruption and, and hanging over this entire government right
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now. And does that serve Albertans well? And I don't think it did. And so that's kind of the back
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history of how I approach this and looking at this from, there's lessons that we can learn along the
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way in politics. There's battle scars. Every, if you've been in politics long enough, you're going
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to have battle scars. That's just the fact of it. Every campaign you help in, there's people who win
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and there's people who don't. And how you repair those relationships, how you learn to repair those
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relationships afterward, they matter. And so the, the impetus of that letter that you referenced
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is that continued observations of decision-making in Edmonton by the current UCP government
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and decision-making, not in so much as the, as the allegations of corruption, but the efforts to
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cover it up. And that old saying, where there's smoke, there's fire. There's a lot more to this
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onion that has yet to be peeled back. And we're seeing it slowly unpeel in front of the media today.
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There was an article that, that highlighted and confirmed that the minister of justice is a relative
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of the individual at the epicenter of the AHS scandal. The individual who received over $600 million
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in government contracts via the alleged pressure from the premier's office is a relative of the
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minister of justice. And we're supposed to trust the government to investigate itself. That's the
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message to Albertans that you're a UCP member. You should just trust us to investigate ourselves.
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Any attacks are just NDP attacks. It's nonsense. If you look at political history across
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Canada, one of the greatest political scandals that really reshaped provincial history was the
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grant divine PC government scandal in the nineties. And it led to a complete lack of trust in the PC
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party for over a decade. In fact, since then, they haven't been elected since then. The SAS party,
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after, after over 10 years of NDP government, finally cobbled together enough votes to, to form a
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government and kick the NDP out. We can't afford that in Alberta. We, we had a rough time with four
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years of, of the NDP. We cannot afford a so-called conservative government that is governing, if I might
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add, to the left of where the Rachel Notley NDP government has been governing. We had less deficit,
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less debt, lower bureaucracy under Rachel Notley, as much as that pains me to say, but it's the truth.
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So if we're not getting the real thing, we have to speak up about it. It's not a, it's not a
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bury your head in the sand moment. We are two years from an election. And if you can't call out these
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things in the government, then you will see it fall. And so I was in a position as a, as a long time
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UCP member, a founding member of UCP. I was a member of both the Wild Rose and the PC parties,
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helped in the delegate selection meetings, helped in the unity vote, made sure dozens of ridings voted
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in favor of unity. Organized in the, in the, in the leadership races that said that followed,
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helped as much as I could in, in, in dozens of campaigns across the province in the 2019 election.
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And if we can't call out corruption and scandal and conflicts of interest in our party, then who will?
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And so after attempting to do so and seeing the level of, of coverup and wagon circling that's
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occurred, it became very clear to me that those values and principles that the UCP espouses to uphold,
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are not actually the values that they've chosen to live by and govern by. And so that's what led me
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to formally resign my membership. Not as a singular moment of protest, but just to open that conversation
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in a way that other UCP members can look at it and say, maybe I should be asking these questions,
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see what kind of answer I get to. And there's nothing wrong with it. Ask those questions.
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Please, if you're still a staunch UCP member, ask the questions. And if you're given an answer of just
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then use, use your judgment on how you would want to proceed. If the answer is, don't worry,
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we're going to investigate ourselves. Don't worry, just wait until these investigations play out. Well,
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those investigations are being conducted internally.
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So if that's the answer you're given, then, then maybe consider that, maybe consider your involvement
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in an organization that, that has that for an answer when it comes to a heavy cloud of corruption
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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
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we've gone through example after example of people that maybe somebody puts a lot of either too much
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trust or they don't ask the right questions because they idolize, um, somebody as a savior,
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And so now I, I, I work very hard to help others not make that mistake. And sometimes it, it, it,
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it may be the, the, the lone, the lone voice in the wilderness, but, uh, I, I attempt to do that
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and ensure that people understand, Hey, look, I've been down that road. Um, I've been in the place of
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idolizing the, the, the leader or the politicians and, and, and just following blindly. And I've made
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that mistake and it costs me, but I learned from it.
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Yeah. And it takes that self-reflection and that bravery to do so. And what, one thing we haven't
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seen so far in Canada, we really haven't seen a, a successful party or movement for a small
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government has not taken, it hasn't made enough impact. And so right now, none of the parties at
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any of the levels are really, they're not implementing the mechanisms that would
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reduce that bloat, reduce that bureaucracy, or have those checks and balances of the existing
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framework. Cause if you just put in a few more MLAs or MPs, you have the existing engine
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that hasn't changed. And if you have the same engine, you're going to have the same results in
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a way. So then the questions like, well, can you adapt this engine? Can you just, what would it
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take to actually rewire things? Or sometimes do you have to start fresh with something that's purpose
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Yeah. And I think, I think you hit the nail on the head with, with the system itself. You can't add
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a few clean drops of oil to, to a drum of dirty oil and expect it to change.
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You've got to, you've got to flush the whole tank.
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And that's, and that's just the reality of it. And from time to time, an oil flush is needed.
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In this particular political context, we have a system where the local MLA's voice
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has only exercised up to a point of tolerated permission. So you cannot voice your concern
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beyond what's permitted by the leadership of a caucus or, or of a party. And so it's a system
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that really is, is quite deeply flawed. When you, when you look at other systems around the world,
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30, 30 member nations of the Commonwealth have chosen a different system for a reason.
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We, we, we will operate in a, in a really wonky Westminster system. That's not fully a
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Westminster system. It's kind of a, a bridged version of that. And so part of the, the aspect
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of the Alberta Republican party now is we need a system change. We're advocating for independence.
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We're advocating for separation from Canada, but with that comes an advocacy campaign and a political
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campaign, um, that would completely revise and rewrite the system with the will of Albertans,
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uh, because we need checks and balances. But until we get there, the only method of having a check and
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balance is by forcing a conservative government into a coalition with a conservative party.
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So that you have two conservative parties working in coalition cooperation to ensure the NDP don't win.
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But if either conservative party has their hand in the cookie jar, the whole house of cards comes
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tumbling down. If either conservative party doesn't move forward in a principled way and, and reduce
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government, get back on a principled fiscal path, then they lose government.
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It's, it's, it's a guardrail. It's a, it's a safety release, having two conservative parties in a coalition.
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Yeah, that's an interesting point. It's, um, something you said earlier reminded me of, of, uh, of a couple
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quotes, actually, when you were mentioning how it just feels like no matter, no matter how conservative these parties
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campaign without opposition, they just keep gradually sliding to the center. There's, um, I don't know if
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you're familiar with either of these guys, but there's a, um, I just was hearing, uh, a podcast I
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listened to, uh, they were mentioning this quote, uh, Curtis Yarvin is a, uh, uh, a conservative
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political commentator. He has the quote, uh, Cthulhu, Cthulhu may swim slowly, but he always swims to the
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left. And, uh, and then there's a, there's a man named, uh, Robert Conquest. He's a, uh, was a British,
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uh, uh, historian novelist. He had a great quote. He said, um, any organization not explicitly right-wing
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sooner or later becomes left-wing. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic
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organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. And so I'm wondering what
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your thoughts are on that. Like, why does it seem that? Cause we've had that same thought. We've talked
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about it on the show where it's like, we loved the, the Daniel Smith of like 30 seconds before
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she became premier. You know what I mean? And then ever since then it's been, it seemed like she's been,
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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
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a, a, a pablum version of what had been sold to Albertans for almost a year as a hard hitting
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sovereignty act. That sovereignty act quickly became a sovereignty act within a United Canada
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because we're now team Canada. And, and the only thing was missing was elbows up.
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Yeah. And so that was the first action item. And so if that wasn't a red flag for Albertans,
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right off the hop, I don't know how much more clear the direction of this government could have been
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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
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kids. They can pay it off when they start getting a job. It doesn't work that way in our personal
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life. It doesn't work that way in government and it shouldn't work that way, but it is the path of
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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
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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.
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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.
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
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
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,
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,
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
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.