The Critical Compass Podcast - April 14, 2026


An Independent Alberta Doesn't Need to Change Anything - Just GET RID of Ottawa | Matthew Rowley


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

149.10838

Word count

786

Sentence count

31


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 so before we go making drastic changes and especially before we go trying to undo potential
00:00:08.800 ills or to right past wrongs through dramatic fixes we should be careful about what we do
00:00:15.620 just one example is this idea of term limits everyone's really excited about term limits
00:00:20.280 we're going to show them nobody will be able to be a professional politician
00:00:23.780 and my response to that is wouldn't you love to have a term limit on surgeons and doctors you
00:00:31.680 know what you can be a surgeon for eight years can practice really well get really good but you
00:00:36.860 know what after that it's time to get a new surgeon let's get a fresh pair of hands in fact
00:00:41.500 let's get someone who doesn't even know anything about surgery because they're going to be able
00:00:45.960 to do something useful they're going to change it up we would never even dream of doing that right
00:00:51.280 you want the best guy who's been practicing the longest. In government, it's not about length of
00:00:56.780 tenure, it's about amount of corruption. One of the best premiers we ever had was Ernest Manning,
00:01:02.480 and he was premier for 25 years. And he did a darn good job for 25 years. Now, should we have
00:01:10.360 looked at him and said, oh, nope, sorry, as much as you're doing a great job, let's get rid of you
00:01:14.120 after eight. That's just one of those examples of, we are fed up with bad politicians, but the
00:01:20.060 solution is not to get rid of the good ones after a certain amount of time. The solution is to get
00:01:24.440 rid of the bad ones and don't wait until, well, they've been in for eight years. No, don't let
00:01:28.880 them get in in the first place. And we have that ability actually with a system of responsible
00:01:34.080 government, which we used to have. Shame caused them to resign where now no amount of shame can
00:01:41.800 ever unseat a politician. At the end of the day, usually, and you'll probably find this if you have
00:01:47.660 kids, you can't make enough rules to make them be good. You actually have to teach them how to be
00:01:54.120 good. And it's the same with government and with politicians. It's the same with our entire society.
00:02:00.600 So my real pitch is let's not change anything. Let's just get rid of Ottawa and then start
00:02:08.240 cleaning up the mess. The Criminal Code, Canada Health Act, Indian Act, all of these federal laws
00:02:16.160 and federal impositions that have done so much damage.
00:02:19.560 Let's fix those things and then see where we are.
00:02:22.700 Maybe then we say, hey, we want to change this, or we want to change that.
00:02:26.540 But let's do some change, see how it sits, go slow, go steady.
00:02:32.200 And then we're not going to get to a point where one day we go, oh man,
00:02:35.540 we got rid of the czar because he really sucked.
00:02:37.620 And now we've got the communists and they're killing us.
00:02:40.680 So I can see where you're coming from, but I might push back
00:02:45.960 on this idea that it's for a lot of people that it's purely out of purely a reactive or like a
00:02:52.460 hate like an anger lashing out the movement's not new it's like we're it's 120 years old i think when
00:03:00.600 it comes to how some of these ideas for a new structure it comes from looking at well here's
00:03:11.680 what's common in all these different countries, all these different systems. We're seeing some
00:03:17.000 of the breakdowns because of this or that, or you're, you are essentially observing and diagnosing
00:03:23.180 based on more of a critical analysis through first principles. I think that's, that's how
00:03:29.620 you'd get to some of this. And just to push back on the, um, the term limits is it's assuming that
00:03:37.840 You need the level of management required that needs a surgeon level of skill to run a government versus a system that puts more of the responsibilities on individuals, families, communities, and building from the ground up rather than top down.
00:03:57.020 So I think this is where some of these ideas, they are starting to challenge some of these fundamental pillars of do we need a managerial state to manage people or do you set up a framework that limits certain things?
00:04:16.300 like you can't go around, you can't just shoot random people. You can't infringe on other
00:04:20.160 people's rights. And you need somebody to adjudicate these fundamental laws. But do you
00:04:26.900 need somebody micromanaging the way that you live? And I think these are some of the conversations
00:04:32.220 that are underpinning some of these suggestions when it comes to revising the system.
00:04:46.300 Thank you.