The Critical Compass Podcast - Author of 'The Value of Freedom' Document Explains Why Alberta Independence WILL WORK

00:00:00.000 The way I look at it is this would be, the document we've got now would be input into the

00:00:04.960 constitutional conference. It would have the benefit of several years work by a number of

00:00:10.160 people. It would have been stress tested over the months it's been released by accepting comments

00:00:15.460 and feedback. And then you get to the constitutional conference. And one of the things we also are

00:00:22.080 trying to do is to start the transition planning for, okay, we win the vote. What happens the next

00:00:28.000 morning. Well, one of the things you've got to start doing is planning this constitutional

00:00:31.700 conference. And it needs to have a combination of representations and no change to the

00:00:38.240 constitution to be adopted without a majority of each of those groups agreeing to it.

00:00:58.000 Hi, guys. Welcome back to The Critical Compass. My name is Mike, and of course, my co-host James

00:01:07.280 is with us. Today, we are very happy to be joined by Mr. Dennis Kalma. He is the principal author

00:01:13.700 on the Value of Freedom document for the Alberta Prosperity Project, and he's a retired corporate

00:01:19.480 executive. And thank you very much for joining us on the show, sir. How are you?

00:01:23.780 Doing just fine and glad to be on the program.

00:01:25.560 Well, right on. James, I know you had some very good questions lined up for our guest here. So I'll let you start and then we'll carry on from there.

00:01:35.720 Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. And I guess the value of freedom document has been getting a lot of traction and it's been passed around and people are discussing the numbers, looking at it.

00:01:50.580 I'm just curious, and I think a lot of people are curious, how did that all happen?

00:01:55.980 What was the birth of that project?

00:01:59.100 Well, I'm going to go right back to the very beginning because my involvement started actually at the Kearney election back last year.

00:02:07.460 And I was on X just temporarily and I saw Jeff Raff posting things that I liked.

00:02:14.060 So I contacted him and said, hey, I think I can help.

00:02:16.680 And we got on the phone a little while later, and he said, have you ever written a business plan?

00:02:21.020 And I said, hundreds of them.

00:02:23.020 And he says, well, let's write one together.

00:02:24.860 And we talked about the general parameters.

00:02:27.040 And over the course of about six weeks, we wrote the document.

00:02:33.800 And jokingly, I was on the phone with him so often, my wife started calling him my girlfriend.

00:02:40.300 Because at 11 o'clock at night, Jeff and I are arguing some detailed point of policy or whatever.

00:02:45.080 So that's how the thing started.

00:02:48.680 So it sounds like a bit of a labor of love.

00:02:53.100 When you dive into these things, you're stress testing these numbers.

00:02:58.260 And I'm curious, like, was there anything while diving into the numbers?

00:03:05.760 Like, we already know that Alberta sends more.

00:03:08.980 It's a net contributor.

00:03:10.320 So Albertan taxpayers send more out than we receive back in all transfers,

00:03:14.820 all subsidies, all federal services. But I'm curious, is there something that really surprised

00:03:21.740 you when you started diving into the numbers in this capacity? Actually, two things really

00:03:27.500 got me going. Number one is the difficulty of finding accurate numbers. You take, for example,

00:03:33.580 StatsCan, which we used quite extensively, and then you compare it to CRA, same theoretical

00:03:39.280 transfer or cost, and you see radically different numbers. So it was really hard to extract

00:03:45.100 numbers that made sense. That's part of the reason why we have such big bans on the numbers,

00:03:50.560 because there's a range of numbers in the data available to us. The second thing that amazed me

00:03:55.540 is actually just the number of ways the federal government extracts money from the provinces,

00:04:02.620 Alberta in particular. It's not just personal income taxes and corporate income taxes and so

00:04:09.740 forth. There is fees for marijuana. There is gaming fees. There is excise taxes. There are

00:04:16.340 duties at the border. There's, of course, EICPP and so on payments. And everywhere you look,

00:04:22.380 there's another fee leaving one way or the other out of the province of Alberta into the hands of

00:04:27.340 the feds. And that's part of the reason why people say, well, your numbers are bigger than,

00:04:32.400 for example, Danielle Smith quotes. You know, yeah, because she's looking narrowly at things

00:04:36.820 like personal income tax, corporate income tax, and so forth. The document of the value of freedom

00:04:42.280 looked at every penny that we could find that leaves Alberta and ends up in the hands of the

00:04:48.560 government of Canada.

00:04:51.600 Dennis, in your opinion, and to your

00:04:54.660 knowledge, is the amount, like to what

00:04:57.500 you say there about the amount of kind

00:04:59.540 of the nickel and diming and all the

00:05:01.040 different ways that Canadians are taxed

00:05:03.240 and feed and all this, is this something

00:05:05.240 that's unique to Canada or is this

00:05:07.400 something that we see in other, you know,

00:05:09.640 maybe Commonwealth or Western countries

00:05:11.700 as far as you know?

00:05:12.940 I don't think it's uncommon.

00:05:14.500 I think what is different, and Mitch

00:05:16.340 Sylvester speaks about this, just the

00:05:18.360 number of different taxes and fees. If I got the number correct, it's about 58 different forms

00:05:23.280 of taxation that are levied on Canadians one way or the other. And of course, many of them flow from

00:05:29.580 provinces to federal government. Near as I can tell, most other countries are more like

00:05:35.560 20 or 30 of such taxes. So we have a very extensive and deep tax regime and that is different.

00:05:42.200 And so it almost seems in a way I know there's some people that will argue or will talk about equalization and they'll they'll try to they'll do the modern Bailey where they say like, well, Alberta doesn't pay anything.

00:05:58.220 It's Alberta taxpayers.

00:05:59.680 We all pay the same rate.

00:06:02.380 But again, they're not looking at net inflows versus net outflows.

00:06:06.820 And when you start comparing, from my understanding, even Quebec, the math they're doing for the equalization formula to determine if they – to determine their fiscal capacity is different than what Alberta calculates for our oil revenue.

00:06:23.440 The major difference being that their – I guess their hydro is considered a public utility, so the revenues are not counted.

00:06:33.000 Is that correct?

00:06:34.000 Yeah, the big difference is, look at Hydro-Quebec, very large electricity production, much of it used domestically to service their industry, but a fair chunk is shipped to the U.S. or connected to the U.S. for that.

00:06:48.880 That was not considered resource revenue in the same way as oil and gas is.

00:06:54.600 So that made Quebec look artificially less wealthy, you could argue.

00:07:01.180 Now, that was a concession made by Harper to get Quebec on side with some of the changes he made.

00:07:08.360 But the net of it is, if you put the Hydro-Quebec revenue into the calculation,

00:07:14.320 certainly the amount of money flowing to Quebec would go down by quite a bit.

00:07:18.600 And that's what they were fighting for, of course.

00:07:20.940 So this is essentially, a lot of these programs, they come from a place where, I guess in confederation to you,

00:07:28.280 So there's some compassion where you want other provinces to be supported if they're struggling, but where is that line of dependency?

00:07:37.900 Because we know that Quebec has a billion cubic meters of natural gas that is untapped.

00:07:47.620 So is that a have-not province?

00:07:50.260 And like, why should, if so, if Alberta just kept all the resources in the ground, technically, at some point, we would qualify for equalization. 0.88

00:08:02.620 We could go from a have province to a have not if we just stopped producing value.

00:08:09.500 Absolutely.

00:08:10.060 I mean, Alberta has been the economic engine of Canada for a number of years, 50 plus.

00:08:16.420 And it's only received ever a very small amount of funds very early in its life.

00:08:22.080 Yeah, I mean, because it's one, Alberta industry thrives.

00:08:25.400 It's a hardworking province.

00:08:27.140 Second of all, of course, the oil and gas revenue is very large.

00:08:30.180 And it's a relatively small population.

00:08:32.560 So you add all those factors in.

00:08:34.620 Yeah, we're the economic engine of Canada.

00:08:37.320 and that permits other provinces like Quebec

00:08:41.880 to essentially say,

00:08:43.060 well, we'll keep our natural gas on the ground.

00:08:45.000 We won't count our resource revenue.

00:08:46.720 And by the way, send some of that money

00:08:48.080 from Alberta our way.

00:08:49.520 And that's exactly what happens.

00:08:52.240 Yeah.

00:08:52.740 And we've said on the show before as well,

00:08:54.880 it seems to me that, you know, Quebec is one thing,

00:08:58.560 but specifically with the maritime provinces,

00:09:00.920 this could actually be,

00:09:02.400 the amount that we subsidize them

00:09:04.060 could actually be an impediment

00:09:06.180 to them ever actually, ever reaching the critical mass

00:09:09.780 necessary to develop their own industry.

00:09:12.740 Well, I mean, I'm Dutch by ancestry

00:09:14.880 and the Netherlands has nothing,

00:09:17.760 sits on the middle of the ocean

00:09:19.380 and somehow it's become very, very prosperous over time

00:09:22.580 by leveraging the ability of its people

00:09:25.580 to come up with clever ideas and monetize them.

00:09:29.780 And I actually don't think you do a lot for a province

00:09:33.360 by giving them money and allowing their population

00:09:36.620 to essentially sit back fat and happy

00:09:40.920 because someone else is paying a big chunk of the bill.

00:09:44.920 So, you know, I don't want anyone to starve.

00:09:47.760 I mean, no one does.

00:09:48.800 I don't want anyone to be, you know, indigent on the street. 1.00

00:09:52.180 But beyond that, I don't think provinces

00:09:54.740 should be supporting each other

00:09:56.820 to bring everyone up to the same level.

00:09:59.180 I think it should be the basics and that's it.

00:10:01.560 And that's not what we're doing.

00:10:02.560 look at manitoba what is it five billion goes to manitoba for crying out loud what's up with that

00:10:08.520 so in the value of freedom you outline um you're projecting based on calculating all these sources

00:10:18.380 that leave alberta that if alberta becomes independent that given that there's now a

00:10:25.780 a buffer we would be in the green even if we needed to like make our own passport offices or

00:10:31.440 Or you factored in these federal services.

00:10:34.220 Yeah, so what we did, I mean, just to walk through the process, the thinking was, let's find all the sources of revenue.

00:10:42.280 Let's leave the provincial spending exactly the way it is.

00:10:45.820 So the province actually operates most of the things you and I use every day, you know, everything from police forces to education to health care and so forth.

00:10:54.560 So we said, we're not going to touch that at all.

00:10:56.580 We're not going to try and optimize it, nothing.

00:10:58.000 And then we're going to say, okay, there is federal transfers coming back for healthcare, Canada social services and so forth.

00:11:06.980 Put those back in, they have to be covered.

00:11:09.920 And then we looked at the services that the federal government does provide to us, everything from the military to Indigenous affairs to the courts and so forth, and said, okay, what would it cost to stand them up, to set them up?

00:11:23.640 And then what would it cost to operate them?

00:11:25.800 And you basically do that math.

00:11:28.000 All the revenue, less all the expenses, province, and so forth, and what you have left over.

00:11:32.760 And that's where the number comes to somewhere between $27 and $45 billion a year net after doing all those things that remains in Alberta.

00:11:43.320 And that's the amount of money that's really being drained out of Alberta on an annual basis.

00:11:49.160 Yeah, so because you're calculating the services.

00:11:51.460 And this document is, I guess it's not exactly prescriptive in saying Alberta is like, this is exactly what we would always spend on each one of these services.

00:12:02.880 You are doing a thought experiment to translate what is covered from Canada, if that was covered by just Alberta dollars here in Alberta, if Alberta becomes independent.

00:12:17.080 which i guess this is where i think people are curious uh there's almost a tendency to want

00:12:28.320 some people want certainty certainty and they want like the full vision crafted out

00:12:34.280 right now but you can't do that we don't have a mandate now no you can't like you can't develop

00:12:40.680 a whole like design a whole country before a petition's even done before a referendum's done

00:12:46.800 but you also can't have nothing to go by because you need you you need to demonstrate that it would

00:12:54.320 work yeah that there's enough there and so i feel like this is helping to balance out that middle

00:13:00.220 ground and it starts these conversations that we saying that like here what the numbers show

00:13:07.700 we can then now talk about well what is an ideal alberta or where to like how are we going to

00:13:15.420 allocate this money, let it be reducing taxes, or there are some people that want to advocate for

00:13:22.280 more social services. There's some people who want to hybridize systems or have more of a private,

00:13:28.800 but that comes when you have that flexibility if money isn't leaving to the same degree.

00:13:35.520 Yeah, and the way to look at this document in some respects is more as a feasibility study

00:13:44.480 than an actual fiscal plan.

00:13:47.020 The fiscal plan has got lots of calculations around

00:13:50.080 what's the effect of changes in oil price,

00:13:53.280 what happens if we optimize government,

00:13:55.880 what happens if we take out the effort required

00:13:58.360 to support federal regulations, on and on and on.

00:14:00.660 That's a much more extensive document.

00:14:02.540 It will need to be built at some point.

00:14:05.200 But as you rightly point out, that is once we have the mandate,

00:14:08.600 once we have the clarity, and most critically,

00:14:11.400 once we have the constitution or the structure of the country set and we know who actually will

00:14:16.740 make those decisions on you know will we put more into social services will we do tax reduction if

00:14:22.580 so how much goes each way so so this is more of a feasibility study and um and that's why we took

00:14:29.420 that very very conservative approach of trying to say look what's the worst it could be

00:14:35.260 And like, even if we give a lot more to Indigenous people, even if we take the low end of all the ranges, what happens then?

00:14:45.600 And we still say, look, we're still $25 billion to the good.

00:14:50.020 And in that situation, then you say, well, that money then gives you options.

00:14:55.740 And what those options are, that's going to be selected by the people of Alberta in an independent country with its own constitution.

00:15:02.400 Uh, Dennis, one of the most common objections we hear to the, not necessarily just the value of freedom document, but the, the Alberta's plan for independence in general is that, well, all of your numbers are, you know, are, are sort of, um, you know, say, say all of your numbers are irrelevant because, um, really what will happen if a, if a independence referendum passes is that

00:15:32.400 the international investor confidence in the province will diminish to a point where rather

00:15:39.240 than increasing our, uh, economic value, we'll actually decrease with business loss because of

00:15:44.700 the uncertainty. Do you, do you have a thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty strong

00:15:50.580 opinion about that. And I know there's, there's guys like Trevor Toome out there that, and, and,

00:15:56.120 um, Dwayne Bratt who, you know, the place will fall apart, everyone will run away. Uh, you'd be

00:16:01.400 left with a shell of a province. I actually want to look more broadly. My view is Canada will be

00:16:09.680 hit harder by us leaving than Alberta will. Both are at risk. You have to be honest about that.

00:16:16.860 But I think that after the first week of anger and upset, I think, and once the hangovers are,

00:16:22.780 you know, covered from, I think then the wiser heads both in Alberta and in the government of

00:16:29.940 Canada will say, look, we're both going to bleed ourselves to death if we don't get this resolved

00:16:36.880 in a pretty good way pretty quickly. And the governor of Canada is going to say, we have to

00:16:42.180 stop the bleeding. And Alberta is actually in a stronger position because face it, we'll just

00:16:48.840 stop sending money to CRA. We'll just keep it. That'll be act one, literally, of the new government

00:16:54.740 to say, no more sending money to Winnipeg, keep it in some Alberta bank. So we'll have the cash.

00:17:01.460 And we can, with that authority, say, businesses, we are going to have a lower tax regime. We're

00:17:08.100 going to maintain business as usual. We're backstopped by the Americans, as you've heard 1.00

00:17:12.300 publicly a number of times. Yeah, it's going to be a nervous time, but we'll be okay. We've got

00:17:17.420 the cash to do it. Canada doesn't have that. They've lost their economic engine. They now

00:17:23.640 have an orphaned province separated by a separate country of Alberta. They've got a bunch of things

00:17:29.760 going against them. There's dependencies they have on us as well. Burnaby runs out of gas in four

00:17:35.360 days. Line five is ours to turn off or shut off, as we will, and that services much of southern

00:17:43.580 Ontario. So if people want to play stupid games, yeah, both sides can play them. So I think the 0.99

00:17:49.600 wiser heads will prevail and people will sort that out and say, okay, you're leaving, we get it.

00:17:56.480 Here's some things we got to have to make it work. Here's what the other party needs. Let's

00:18:01.860 settle it, get a structure in place within a small number of months, and then it will be several

00:18:06.500 years to disentangle. That's the way I see it untolding. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

00:18:13.740 We've sort of, in discussions with other Alberta independence advocates, kind of come to similar

00:18:19.580 conclusions that in as much as Alberta would be quote unquote landlocked to get its resources to

00:18:26.980 the West Coast, well, similarly, it works the other way as well for BC to get Pacific goods

00:18:34.580 through to the Eastern part of Canada, correct? Well, exactly. And 85% of Alberta trade is North

00:18:39.700 South already over the Montana border. So we're dealing with a 15% that's different. And I looked 0.99

00:18:45.480 at the interprovincial flows between Alberta and the rest of Canada. And actually, we're going to

00:18:51.900 be probably publishing something on that fairly soon. But the guts of it is most of the exports

00:18:58.060 from Alberta are energy, not easily replaceable. It's about half. And most of the imports from

00:19:04.220 the rest of Canada are either manufactured goods, which we can buy from the US, or their goods and

00:19:09.520 services like banking and consulting, which the Americans would happily provide. And I don't think 1.00

00:19:15.260 it would make any sense for the rest of Canada to say, we're not going to do those things. We're

00:19:19.380 going to cut you off. And they're going to cut off their nose to spite their own face. So I think 1.00

00:19:24.940 they're going to, like I said, the wiser heads will wake up a week or so later and go, let's work

00:19:29.040 this out. That's what I think is going to happen. And when it comes to risk, even, I think people

00:19:35.900 are quick to talk about, they look at Alberta, but they don't look at the risk of Canada's

00:19:43.360 trajectory. And when they're talking about Alberta, they're looking at risk in this isolated bubble

00:19:51.040 where it's more comparative in the nature. So let's say Alberta sets a foundation of

00:19:57.240 like an investor-friendly policies, removing bureaucratic bloat or red tape. And it doesn't

00:20:06.380 need to be perfect day one. You just need to be a little bit more friendly to investors than Canada.

00:20:13.360 So Canada's done everything it can to slow down projects of all kinds of sorts.

00:20:20.240 And we can point to even like Kinder Morgan as an example of a certain cost that was going to be adopted by the private sector, which they wanted out.

00:20:35.240 Canada adopts that.

00:20:37.080 The cost balloon by six or seven times as delays.

00:20:43.360 keep on like as with more uncertainty more delays a project that would have cost 4 billion is now

00:20:50.180 into the 30 30 plus billion so if that's the trend that canada is setting then alberta

00:20:56.720 does not need to perfect every little thing day one well exactly i mean people lose sight of the

00:21:04.820 fact that you know those pipelines many of them flow right over the alberta border um that's a

00:21:11.040 real tangible assets the Americans want, for example, they're going to keep the cash flowing.

00:21:17.060 They're going to want the oil, we're going to keep producing it, and they're going to send

00:21:20.140 the cash back. Well, then you're in that situation I mentioned earlier, which is we've got the money,

00:21:24.940 we can afford to be generous with it, and we can maintain some stability much more so than the rest

00:21:33.120 of Canada. So I think we're going to be, okay, now will it be easy? I mean, I don't kid myself.

00:21:39.040 Some of these negotiations will be extremely difficult.

00:21:43.280 The negotiation on pension is one.

00:21:45.780 The negotiation on parks is another.

00:21:48.820 The negotiation on what share of the national debt we take.

00:21:54.420 All these ones are discussions that will be very difficult.

00:21:58.480 Dennis, I'll hit you with another devil's advocate question here because we see this a lot too.

00:22:03.460 There is some discussion about an independent Alberta potentially having, if not no income tax for Albertans, at least a very significantly reduced income tax burden for the average Albertan.

00:22:18.900 One of the common objections we hear to that as well, the numbers in the value of freedom document require or are being based on the current tax burdens being sent to the federal government.

00:22:35.140 And so if that's the case, then don't those tax burdens have to stay the same just going to the provincial government, which then, you know, by default becomes the national government, and therefore the tax burden on the average all burden remains largely the same?

00:22:51.680 I mean, you're right.

00:22:52.720 So we keep on taxing the way we were.

00:22:55.040 So that's why we took the approach saying, okay, well, let's say we did exactly what you said.

00:22:59.400 We'll just keep the tax rates exactly the way they are, keep collecting what is now the federal portion and putting it in the Alberta bank account.

00:23:08.160 But we have that $25 billion surplus, $25 to $40 billion surplus.

00:23:13.620 Well, yeah, the government can just keep it sitting in the bank if they want, but I don't think they're going to do that.

00:23:18.940 They wouldn't want to do this.

00:23:20.180 We said, okay, we'll just extract less tax to essentially eliminate that surplus or most of it.

00:23:28.100 And that's where those tax numbers came in, where he said, okay, we have two options.

00:23:35.260 We looked at one, removing essentially the provincial taxes, other than removing the federal taxes.

00:23:41.480 And the tax cut we can give on day one is somewhere between 30% and 40%, you know, for personal income taxes and corporate taxes.

00:23:49.720 So that's, and that then would result in the provincial government getting the money they get today.

00:23:55.160 that would result in still having enough money

00:23:58.340 to pay for all those services we have to replace

00:24:00.520 and replace the transfers that come from the rest of Canada

00:24:03.920 and we would still then be able to offer a tax cut.

00:24:08.140 And people say, well, where does the money come from?

00:24:10.340 How do you support the government?

00:24:11.940 Royalties.

00:24:14.460 So that's the financial side.

00:24:17.180 I'm curious because that doesn't exist in a vacuum as well.

00:24:22.520 You're also working on like a constitutional framework.

00:24:27.560 Yeah, there's been a team of guys working on this.

00:24:31.720 There's actually for several years a big group in Medicine Hat called the Black Hatters.

00:24:37.820 They've been working on it.

00:24:40.580 And there's been other inputs as well.

00:24:44.080 So I was asked a number of months ago, actually late summer, to take all the inputs and consolidate them into a

00:24:51.600 a single constitution that's sort of trimmed and finalized.

00:24:55.600 So I guess, for lack of a better term, I'm the editor of the thing.

00:24:59.240 So that draft constitution has been completed.

00:25:02.600 It's been reviewed.

00:25:04.200 It's now in the hands of the APP deciding when to release it.

00:25:08.340 And they're, of course, wanting to say, look, let's get through the petition stage first,

00:25:13.220 and then we'll release it as a document for discussion.

00:25:16.260 So, yeah, and it's an important part.

00:25:18.700 I can talk to some elements of it pretty clearly, but yeah, it's something that's been drafted.

00:25:25.600 Dennis, for the parts of it that you can speak to, what are maybe some of the standout things that you have liked to see that they came up with?

00:25:34.880 The main thing that people really, really want to see is the accountability for government is with the voters.

00:25:46.020 That's probably the first principle.

00:25:47.460 They want to make sure that there's no PMO, Prime Minister's office, that can just write laws by itself.

00:25:56.420 They want visibility and transparency.

00:25:58.840 And that's actually a key element.

00:26:02.720 Very close to that, if not equal, is very clearly very comprehensive rights.

00:26:08.900 So that's everything from your property rights to the normal ones, freedom of speech, freedom of association, so on and so forth.

00:26:16.000 without the caveat that is currently in Canada's constitution,

00:26:20.380 which is subject to the government saying that's a good idea,

00:26:24.180 you get your rights.

00:26:26.020 And people really want to see what are called textual rights,

00:26:30.040 which is the text defines what it is, no more, no less.

00:26:34.640 It can't be reinterpreted by a judge.

00:26:37.640 It can't be eroded over time by just reading a little different.

00:26:42.600 And that's the kind of things really people want to see.

00:26:46.000 So the other aspect they want to see is balance and that people realize there's interests of the majority. There's also regional interests. I mean, rural Alberta is not the same as Calgary. Calgary is not the same as Lethbridge, so on and so forth.

00:27:05.120 So they want to have a balance between essentially the majority and the region.

00:27:11.100 So that's one element.

00:27:12.520 The second thing is the judiciary.

00:27:14.880 They want the judiciary to be balanced on the other two,

00:27:19.460 but also that it cannot do anything but interpret the laws.

00:27:25.960 It can't write them in like they do in Canada right now.

00:27:29.200 So those are probably some of the major ones.

00:27:31.340 And I can go on and on about this.

00:27:32.660 I mean, when you get buried in it, you know, I could probably talk for an hour just about the constitution, but it's, I'll stop there and see where you want to take this.

00:27:40.820 Well, I think just as a comment on that before James asks you the next one, I think that that's been a common refrain amongst Alberta independence advocates that we've spoken to and we've interacted with over the last few months that they're very concerned that whatever constitution that an independent Alberta comes up with, they don't want it to just be a slightly modified, essentially, copy of what we have now.

00:28:07.580 They want significant changes and they want to, like you said, and I think is very reassuring, enshrine some things that the Canadian Constitution, for what it's worth, simply just hasn't.

00:28:22.180 Yeah, and actually there is a school of thought amongst the people working on the Constitution that we should actually just go back to the Westminster system like it was prior to Pierre Trudeau.

00:28:34.620 and that's something

00:28:36.820 actually I got educated in

00:28:39.000 and

00:28:39.860 Westminster's system is completely separate

00:28:42.900 it's not my favorite approach but I understand

00:28:44.980 it a bit better but the main thing is

00:28:47.000 Trudeau when he repatriated

00:28:49.220 the charter

00:28:49.780 actually changed the basis of power

00:28:52.880 in Canada from being

00:28:54.740 parliament as supreme

00:28:56.480 authority to the courts

00:28:58.780 being supreme authority

00:28:59.820 and that's why you see so many times

00:29:02.800 now is that

00:29:04.620 Part of it can say whatever the heck they want.

00:29:06.940 But if the judges say, nope, we don't like that, or that's not constitutional, it's done.

00:29:12.220 And that was a change Trudeau brought.

00:29:13.900 So the school of thought is, let's go back to the pre-Trudeau ages.

00:29:18.200 Let's fix it up, put in property rights amongst other things, and put some more strength in it, but essentially keep the core of it.

00:29:26.100 That is a fair school of thought.

00:29:27.860 It's not one that I really support, and I think a lot of people in the movement don't support.

00:29:32.500 but it is a thought worth considering.

00:29:35.960 I'd also add Dr. Party, Dr. Bruce Party,

00:29:38.380 we've had discussions with him.

00:29:40.200 He has a very libertarian,

00:29:43.100 very conceptually brilliant constitutional structure

00:29:46.820 and there's a lot of charm to it.

00:29:50.700 As a physicist, I love conceptually clean things

00:29:54.420 and it is very conceptually clean,

00:29:56.660 but it's a very hard sell to the average voter

00:29:59.580 because you just don't see the clear laws saying you can have your firearms,

00:30:05.080 you can keep your property, you know, so on and so forth.

00:30:08.160 It's more abstract than that.

00:30:10.480 So we look at a bunch of different options.

00:30:12.700 I think the one we're going to land on is the Constitutional Republic,

00:30:15.700 more like the American system than any other.

00:30:18.000 And I think that's what a lot of people want,

00:30:20.740 and that's likely where we're going to end up.

00:30:23.940 And so this is a draft, this is a framework,

00:30:27.920 And essentially, if Alberta becomes independent, then there would have to be a constitutional convention of actually deciding on these ideas.

00:30:40.860 And rather than starting from zero, we're already like you've already stressed out some of these ideas.

00:30:49.000 You're already kind of mapping out, seeing which ones are like make the make the most sense.

00:30:57.160 And I guess this also gives somebody clarity that, let's say this releases like late spring or early summer that the APP publishes it, that gives multiple months of now these ideas out in the open to give people something to orient towards.

00:31:15.360 Rather than an aimless vision, it's a, well, this is a positive vision of the future in a way.

00:31:22.320 Yeah, and that's what I'm hoping APP decides to do.

00:31:25.600 So the way I look at it is this would be, the document we've got now would be input into the constitutional conference. It would have the benefit of several years of work by a number of people. It would have been stress tested over the months it's been released by accepting comments and feedback.

00:31:45.080 And then you get to the constitutional conference.

00:31:47.300 And one of the things we also are trying to do is to start the transition planning for, okay, we win the vote.

00:31:55.840 What happens the next morning?

00:31:57.600 Well, one of the things you got to start doing is planning this constitutional conference.

00:32:02.540 And it needs to have a combination of representations to make it work.

00:32:07.540 So obviously the existing provincial government would need to be there.

00:32:10.960 So some of the UCP people, indigenous people need to be there, representation from them, probably some from academia, some from business, so on and so forth.

00:32:20.700 So the way I'm imagining it is it would be six or seven different groups or contingents, including maybe a group of just normal citizens almost selected at random, like a jury.

00:32:31.720 and no change to the constitution could be adopted without a majority of each of those groups

00:32:39.540 agreeing to it. So imagine you put a sentence up on the screen, says clause 27, and people say,

00:32:48.680 take a vote on it. It's got to get a majority of each of the groups to pass. And if not,

00:32:54.540 crack it open and start debating it again. And that way it ends up being a broadly based

00:32:59.320 constitution, hopefully largely based upon what we were able to give to it.

00:33:03.960 And then the next step after that, of course, is now you have the structure of

00:33:08.560 government, you have to run an election, you have to vote them into power, and

00:33:13.340 then that's when the lawmaking really starts.

00:33:15.300 So it's a fairly logical process we're imagining, but it's got some complexity to it.

00:33:21.160 One thing that we've, um, sort of become familiar with over the last, uh, five, six years is a concept, um, that's referred to as, uh, uh, the tyranny of the majority.

00:33:35.120 And what I think, uh, speaking about Bruce Party, who we, big, big fan of Bruce, we've had him on the, on the show a couple of times.

00:33:42.520 We really appreciate his mind as well. Like we tend to lean, me and James, you know, fairly libertarian in our thinking as well, sort of, you know, Mises Hayek style libertarianism.

00:33:54.600 And I suppose one of Bruce's main claims, and this is where he differs with the APP's general stance, is on Indigenous rights, where he believes that an independent Alberta must start from a blank slate of not recognizing any unique individual rights based on group membership.

00:34:18.460 Now, regardless of your position on that or how you want to speak to that on behalf of the organization, in an event where a group or a consortium of groups is voting on a new constitution on propositions,

00:34:37.800 How would you, in your mind, how would we avoid, say, if you had, you know, 60% of the groups brought to the table wanted to abolish Indigenous, unique Indigenous, you know, continuation of treaties or things like this?

00:34:53.040 How do you, have you thought about how you would approach a situation like that?

00:34:56.960 Well, I understand Dr. Pardi's point of view, and it's actually, the outcome is something that he and I agree on.

00:35:07.020 I think we all want to end up with a country where all are equal before the law.

00:35:12.800 There are no special rights.

00:35:14.320 There are no special carve-outs.

00:35:16.820 And people are equal and can be equally successful as well.

00:35:21.880 The part where I begin to diverge is there has to be a recognition that, like it or not, we inherit those agreements that came from the 1850s or so.

00:35:36.740 And we have to discharge that contract, as it were.

00:35:40.920 That was an agreement that was made with them.

00:35:43.180 And one of the options, of course, is we just tell them,

00:35:45.700 okay, you stay with Canada, you're under the Indian Act.

00:35:48.480 But I'm actually dealing with a couple of Indigenous folks

00:35:50.980 and actually was talking to them to our phone call a few days ago.

00:35:57.060 And they're saying, look, we get that.

00:36:01.020 We don't want to have a special status anymore either,

00:36:03.700 but we need to discharge that obligation.

00:36:05.860 And so I suspect my personal bias would be something like, okay, what did the treaty say?

00:36:13.740 The treaty said you're entitled to reserve lands.

00:36:16.580 Okay, they're your lands, you know, forever, you know, and you own them.

00:36:21.980 They're yours to do with as you see fit.

00:36:24.580 The second thing I would see is, okay, we promised you trade goods.

00:36:28.600 We promised you farm implements and so forth, a certain amount of cash in perpetuity.

00:36:33.320 okay, let's figure out the net present value of that contract and say, pick a number out of the

00:36:39.560 air, $20 billion. Here's a $20 billion trust fund for your nations to manage. Do what you want with

00:36:46.660 it. That's the payout of the contract. Now you guys are citizens like all of us. Now you have

00:36:54.920 your own land. You have equal rights to everybody and let's go forward and be successful. That's

00:37:00.500 how I would discharge it.

00:37:01.980 And I think if we begin

00:37:02.740 couching things in those terms,

00:37:05.160 I think that

00:37:05.780 constitutional conference,

00:37:08.000 I like to think based on the people

00:37:09.600 I'm speaking to who are Indigenous,

00:37:12.800 they'd say,

00:37:14.100 we'll take that deal.

00:37:16.700 You know, there's a transition

00:37:17.680 going to happen.

00:37:18.780 It's not going to happen overnight.

00:37:19.980 Get all that.

00:37:21.240 But we'll take that deal

00:37:22.360 and then we'll be

00:37:24.140 masters of our own destiny.

00:37:25.320 Because one thing

00:37:26.140 they've told me,

00:37:28.600 and this is just a few people,

00:37:30.020 so it's not representative.

00:37:31.720 They hate the Indian Act.

00:37:34.500 They feel oppressed.

00:37:35.620 They're not even really citizens.

00:37:37.540 They're stewards of the crown.

00:37:40.120 So the one fellow I spoke to, he said,

00:37:42.160 I want to be a citizen.

00:37:43.560 I don't want to be a subject anymore.

00:37:46.140 So I think we can make this work.

00:37:48.780 I think we can discharge that contract.

00:37:51.320 I think we can get them part of our nation.

00:37:53.580 And I think that's what we want.

00:37:55.360 I think that's possible.

00:37:57.200 Well, and part of that is even the current setup is that the reservations are still owned by the federal government.

00:38:09.980 And then the individuals living on the reservations, they'll get a house, but it's not their property. 0.95

00:38:17.560 They can't improve it.

00:38:19.240 They don't get the equity in that home. 0.60

00:38:21.840 They're not building generational wealth.

00:38:24.120 and like any other system when the incentives align with behavior you get an outcome that's

00:38:32.600 quite predictable if you do not own your own house and you have no incentive to improve it

00:38:38.080 to invest in it then it'll go into disrepair you'll be given another one and so like what

00:38:46.580 What does a system do to behavior? That's what I'm always curious of is when a system is structured in one way. The other thing that kind of pops up is people, you'll get different voices, some on the left saying that, well, they'll say the UCP is corrupt or this group's corrupt.

00:39:09.620 Or they'll point to something and say, look at what happened in this system. It's corrupt, therefore our team needs to go in. And what I push back on is saying, if you truly believe that these corrupt people have been able to do these corrupt things in a system, what you're speaking to is you're basically admitting that the system is so fundamentally flawed that enables corruption at any level.

00:39:39.620 level of government enables corruptions in the reservations with banned chiefs not having the

00:39:44.560 accountability for where the money's going. It affects pretty much you have people, you have

00:39:51.480 this trickle-down effect where the people under it are getting the short end of the stick.

00:39:57.340 But if the system allows that, then wouldn't this be a good opportunity

00:40:01.820 to revise a system, put checks and balances in place, and to make a system that's

00:40:09.620 can't be corrupted as easily.

00:40:13.140 Well, I mean, I completely agree with that.

00:40:15.840 I mean, I think that Indigenous people are just as smart as you and I,

00:40:20.780 just as capable.

00:40:21.780 I mean, they've got a bunch of, you know, cultural challenges to deal with

00:40:25.220 around how they've been treated over the decades.

00:40:27.900 But I think that, you know, you give them property,

00:40:31.580 they get the pride of ownership,

00:40:33.800 they get their trust fund, whatever you call it, to manage

00:40:37.480 so they can keep that open and transparent.

00:40:39.620 and then they can get on with their lives and be successful.

00:40:43.040 And I think you're completely right.

00:40:44.340 The system does actually drive the behavior in some respects

00:40:48.760 because, for example, Jeff Rath,

00:40:51.040 who knows way more about Indigenous people than I ever will,

00:40:54.440 he told me that CMHC prevents houses of greater than about 1,200 square feet

00:41:01.040 from being built on the reserves.

00:41:03.560 And the trouble is they're essentially a family-oriented culture,

00:41:07.660 as Jeff relates to me.

00:41:09.620 And so they've got several families living in that one structure.

00:41:13.460 Well, you take 30 people and put them in one 1,200-square-foot house,

00:41:17.680 it's not going to last very long.

00:41:19.880 So what they probably need is to have a 6,000-square-foot house.

00:41:23.380 It's got, you know, five suites in it,

00:41:25.820 and they live in the style in which they would like to live.

00:41:29.340 So why not let them do that?

00:41:31.420 I mean, let them run it the way they want to run it.

00:41:33.500 They want to build a 6,000-square-foot house to run five families,

00:41:36.820 let them do that.

00:41:37.620 don't make the system force them into behavior that's not consistent with what they believe.

00:41:44.340 So I think if we, I think this is a real opportunity for us to really rethink the

00:41:50.980 relationship with Indigenous people, get them into a situation they're comfortable with and

00:41:56.820 we're comfortable with, and let them live their lives successfully. That's where I see it going.

00:42:02.080 needs to go um maybe maybe switching a little bit um sort of related to that last point you know

00:42:10.460 there are so many uh little things like that in canadian bureaucracy that we find you know when

00:42:15.600 you really look into like you can't do this you got to build to this code into that you know every

00:42:20.280 little example we find of this and every uh federalist complaint about the uh the alberta

00:42:26.300 independence movement seems to in and of itself kind of justify why we have to be doing this

00:42:32.060 Um, in your, in your, uh, time writing this document and, and studying and researching these issues, what were maybe some of the more egregious examples that you can recall of, um, not even necessarily just, uh, uh, economically, but, but just Ottawa's encroachment into Alberta's affairs that just doesn't need to be there.

00:42:53.140 Well, I, I mean, I just ended up quoting all the various C type bills, the anti-tanker ones.

00:42:58.560 The one that completely blows my mind is, you know, we don't allow tankers on the West Coast, yet the Americans sail them by every day.

00:43:06.600 Same water, same issues, same risks, and yet we have a law against it, but on the East Coast, it seems to be fine.

00:43:13.780 You know, what happened to the baby seals on the East Coast?

00:43:16.400 Are they suddenly much tougher and could take an oil spill better than they used to be able to?

00:43:20.600 So I think that, I mean, I just go through the whole C-list and just see the crossover where the government is starting to impair the province's ability to act.

00:43:32.280 And that's where I support Danielle saying, look, we're going to start pushing back. 0.94

00:43:36.520 Another one is this stupid blanket zoning you see in cities. 0.99

00:43:40.240 Why is that being done? 0.99

00:43:41.740 Because the federal government is bypassing the provincial government, giving cash directly to cities if they put in blanket zoning.

00:43:48.380 well that's just foolishness

00:43:50.980 I mean I live in Calgary 0.59

00:43:53.400 I can drive for five minutes

00:43:55.340 and see dirt as far as the eye can see

00:43:57.340 we're not constrained on size here 0.99

00:43:59.640 I don't even want to do stupid things 0.99

00:44:01.680 but you sure the heck don't need to try 0.99

00:44:03.500 and build up because you have no room

00:44:05.460 as I said earlier I'm Dutch

00:44:07.060 they have no dirt they had to build their own

00:44:09.600 they had to recover it from the sea

00:44:11.080 my apartment in the Netherlands

00:44:13.320 is the third story up

00:44:15.140 and its floor is at sea level

00:44:18.380 So, you know, I mean, it's sort of weird.

00:44:21.600 So I think if we can relax those laws and, you know, people say, what would you do if you were in the government or part of the negotiating team?

00:44:33.560 Probably the number one choice is to become the equivalent of Elon Musk and Doge.

00:44:38.700 I would want to go through those regulations with an axe and just clean them up and get rid of, just erase them, get rid of them.

00:44:48.380 So you're kind of describing that as more as there's more money flowing into the government bureaucracy and more of its handing back, essentially, it becomes a tool of whatever ideological force occupies that arm of the government.

00:45:10.380 um and so if you wanted resistance against ideological capture what you do is you limit

00:45:20.860 how much funnels through this apparatus yep you'd want to sever that tie so it can't be

00:45:27.540 wielded by people that don't share the same views as you and it shouldn't matter if you're left or

00:45:32.840 right, you should want the same thing of preventing that power from being abused against you because

00:45:41.240 you can't always guarantee that the people with the exact same views as you will stay in power.

00:45:47.660 No, but we can put some structures in place to make it awfully hard for an ideology to take over.

00:45:52.520 So I'm going to pick a couple of them that I really like. One is term limits. I mean,

00:45:58.420 One thing where Dr. Party and I agree completely is get away from the managerial state where you've got professional politicians who essentially manage the country for you frequently without us knowing what they're doing.

00:46:10.500 When you put in term limits, including for senior civil servants, and say, okay, you can be a senator for eight years, one term of eight years, you're done.

00:46:20.640 Well, what's that going to attract then?

00:46:22.920 Not people who want a career.

00:46:24.500 It's going to attract retired businessmen or successful people who say, let me give back to the country, put in my eight years as a senator or whatever office they hold, and then they're done.

00:46:35.800 They've done their service.

00:46:37.440 So I think that's one element.

00:46:39.080 The second one, and we built this in the constitutional draft, is a budget based upon a fixed percentage of the previous year's GDP.

00:46:51.740 So it's not based on a projection.

00:46:53.460 It's based upon what the GDP of the country actually was.

00:46:57.240 Pick a number out of the air.

00:46:58.520 Let's say it's 20%.

00:46:59.400 That's your budget.

00:47:01.680 And there's a constitutional prevention from you overspending or borrowing.

00:47:07.260 So government, whatever strike you're made from, you have to live in that 20%. 0.74

00:47:13.100 That's it.

00:47:15.120 You want to put money into something?

00:47:16.920 It's got to come out of something else.

00:47:19.760 Make the decision.

00:47:20.780 And so I think structures like that can actually, one, I think it'll force the end of political parties as we know them today.

00:47:31.100 It'll become a much smaller deal.

00:47:33.000 The second thing is it'll prevent government from growing without control.

00:47:37.820 It'll be locked down and prevented.

00:47:40.280 So those are the kind of structures I think we can put in place.

00:47:43.280 Those are the things that'll make a difference.

00:47:45.720 And let's be really clear here.

00:47:47.700 no government structure is perfect we'll still have the need for things like recalls

00:47:56.140 built in the constitution to say yeah dennis we thought you're gonna be a great senator but 0.98

00:48:00.580 you're not you're real jerk we're gonna pull you out of office yeah if anyone's been watching this 1.00

00:48:07.740 podcast for the last 47 minutes that sure is the assumption they'd get about you hey a real jerk 1.00

00:48:13.480 um uh that's such a great delicate tooth the uh the term limits is essential and another thing 0.95

00:48:21.740 that i've heard that i really liked um was uh the idea that your salary as a as a government

00:48:29.620 official an elected official would be the median income of your riding that you're representing

00:48:36.640 and so you're that's not bad right that that's that's an idea flowing around i think

00:48:43.700 I don't remember if it's in the draft.

00:48:44.900 I think it might be.

00:48:46.540 I think what we're trying to do, though,

00:48:48.300 is the overall concept is stop this from

00:48:50.800 becoming a profession.

00:48:52.280 Yeah.

00:48:53.140 You know, we're going to have to pay people

00:48:56.640 in the civil service, you know, well enough

00:49:00.580 to keep them in that civil service the time

00:49:03.020 they're there.

00:49:03.940 But it comes to politicians, this should not

00:49:07.700 be a moneymaker.

00:49:08.900 Yeah.

00:49:09.600 Yeah.

00:49:09.900 You know, if you're a lawyer and you're making

00:49:11.740 a whack of cash and you want to keep on

00:49:14.800 being a lawyer, go for it.

00:49:15.740 But by the way, you're not going to make

00:49:17.960 a lot of money on the government.

00:49:19.880 Yeah.

00:49:20.380 Your net worth should not triple during

00:49:24.620 your couple of years in government.

00:49:27.120 Absolutely.

00:49:28.600 Well, and what you said too, Dennis, about

00:49:30.320 the main goal essentially being the

00:49:34.540 avoidance of political parties essentially

00:49:38.360 turning into special interest groups,

00:49:39.780 fighting special interest groups.

00:49:40.920 This was something that Mises identified, Ludwig von Mises identified in the 50s. And he talked about how in the US, like, people have this fraudulent idea that they're voting for a Democrat and against a Republican or for a Republican and against a Democrat. And really all they're voting for is a representative of a particular set of special interests.

00:50:05.200 You know, the like I think the example used in one of his books is like I think it was maybe like you're voting for a member of part or a congressman in Arkansas.

00:50:15.460 But really what you're voting for is like a representative of the silver lobby in Washington.

00:50:20.340 You know, like it's you know, these aren't necessarily correlated things.

00:50:24.020 So why should you know, why should my representative be so heavily invested and funded by these people that don't have to do with how things are being run in my writing?

00:50:32.860 You know, well, so imagine we put in a system the way I imagine.

00:50:40.640 So let's say there's a riding in where I live and I want to run for office.

00:50:47.260 Well, why do I need a big political machine to run for office? 0.96

00:50:50.840 Yeah.

00:50:51.100 I got to attract maybe 150,000 people.

00:50:54.800 The government won't fall if they lose a vote.

00:50:57.600 That's one key element.

00:50:59.200 So I can sort of pay for a political fund out of relatively small donations and essentially stumping within my neighborhood, as it were.

00:51:09.020 So you don't need a big political machine.

00:51:11.980 People can talk to me.

00:51:13.900 They can come visit me in my house because I live in the riding.

00:51:17.000 And we can work it out.

00:51:19.200 And then you get real, I think, representative people who people know what you stand for.

00:51:27.000 So just like we're talking here and, you know, I say I believe this and believe that and don't believe this, you have the same point of view.

00:51:33.820 Well, people can hear that and say, yeah, I like Dennis better than I like Mike or, hey, James is the best of the three of them.

00:51:39.440 Let's pick James.

00:51:40.580 And I think if we do that kind of thing, that kind of structure, I think then the need for strong political parties disappears.

00:51:48.260 And it really becomes, goes back to, hey, this is a member of that community, representing that community, its interests and its objectives and trying to solve its issues.

00:52:00.600 If you get back to that, I think it'll be a stronger formal government.

00:52:05.080 Yeah, and having more just a series of people collaborating.

00:52:10.860 collaborating. And this is maybe one thing I'm excited about for Alberta Independence is that

00:52:19.080 we're seeing an origin story develop. And the more we're fought on this and the more pushback

00:52:25.500 we get, we are gluing Albertans together with more of a shared purpose as well. And I think

00:52:32.900 if we realize that this is not like nothing's going to be a cakewalk um there's going to be

00:52:40.720 difficult questions some muddy answers there's going to be things that are going to take a lot

00:52:46.340 of work um but in a sense anything good should not be it should not be easy like if it's worth

00:52:55.780 doing and it's hard then yeah it doesn't matter if it's hard like if alberta independence is worth

00:53:02.000 it. If this shift in governance structure is worth it, because we look at the benefit that

00:53:07.780 this would have with everybody in Alberta, with our children, if we want to build a better world

00:53:13.460 for our children, then it doesn't matter how difficult this is going to be. So I think

00:53:19.040 if we can use this referendum, this petition, this referendum, the negotiation process as a

00:53:26.240 demonstration of our ability to come together and work, that's going to set the tone for

00:53:32.440 everything that follows.

00:53:35.220 I completely agree. I mean, I'm frequently blown away by just how Albertans have stepped up to

00:53:42.680 this referendum. I mean, I spoke at a number of events prior to the referendum being called,

00:53:47.640 or the petition being called, and I mean, these weren't professional organizers. These were just

00:53:53.960 average people saying, hey, I believe in this, what can I do to help? I mean, I'll pick my own

00:54:00.100 case. I've never done anything political in my life. You're perfect for the job.

00:54:06.780 Thank you. But the guts of it is, when I was talking to Jeff Rapp, that first phone call,

00:54:12.220 he said, well, can you write a business plan? I said, yeah, of course. He says, well,

00:54:15.240 we were having trouble finding someone who can. And I said, well, I've got a million of them.

00:54:21.240 He says, well, what are you willing to do?

00:54:22.360 And I thought, well, if I don't do it, who else will do it?

00:54:25.640 And that's the way a lot of people think.

00:54:27.360 And that's where this thing really has some strength.

00:54:30.240 And I think it'll just continue after we win the referendum.

00:54:34.520 And even the Constitution, you say it's not going to be easy.

00:54:38.040 It's not going to be easy because we're trying to find balance that'll last for 200 years.

00:54:44.240 And really trying to work that through.

00:54:46.380 And I've read a lot about the American Founding Fathers and all their challenges and meetings and discussions and documents and all the stuff they went through.

00:54:55.640 But they came through with something that survived 250 years.

00:54:59.840 And I think we can do at least that well.

00:55:02.820 The difficulty aspect, it translates to these other areas where people say, well, you need to make a border and you need to make a passport office and you need to like set up ambassadors and this and that.

00:55:17.860 And it's been done before.

00:55:20.680 We're not doing anything new.

00:55:22.140 We can just be like, well, who in the world has the best, most efficient passport office?

00:55:27.280 And we just ask them like, yeah, how do you ship your passport in four weeks?

00:55:31.200 like ours to Canada takes six months how do you get in four weeks and then we just do what they do

00:55:37.840 well that's a humorous one so I had one guy challenged me on x and uh he said the own

00:55:45.200 passports are going to cost a fortune I said no way so I get online and start searching

00:55:49.040 government of Nepal struck a contract for passports for seven bucks a passport

00:55:55.500 that's complete with the picture and the little barcodes and all the crap that's inside there 0.89

00:56:00.260 Seven bucks. 0.94

00:56:01.640 Okay.

00:56:02.420 So, okay, well, whoever those guys are, we'll hire them.

00:56:06.820 You're going to have our police force doing the vetting to make sure you're not an axe murderer.

00:56:10.560 And we send it to them and say, okay, Dennis gets a passport.

00:56:13.080 Here's his picture.

00:56:14.240 Here's the pieces you need.

00:56:15.700 Seven bucks later, there's your passport.

00:56:18.420 This is not rocket science.

00:56:20.300 And I guarantee you, if you get people in to these various areas and say, don't figure out the most elaborate way.

00:56:27.980 Don't look at what way it's done today.

00:56:30.260 What's the most effective way to do passports?

00:56:33.540 Another one we discussed is Canada Post.

00:56:36.960 Not my favorite organization, just be fair.

00:56:39.940 But so people said, what the heck? 0.79

00:56:42.940 Amazon delivers my junk in a day. 0.72

00:56:45.900 Can we just outsource our Canada Post, our postal service,

00:56:48.740 to some combination of Amazon, Federal Express, DHL, and UPS?

00:56:54.660 Give them a five-year contract, make them compete for it every five or 10 years,

00:56:58.260 and get out of the business.

00:57:00.260 Why not?

00:57:04.220 Well, the reason why not is because, well, that makes a government department redundant.

00:57:10.260 And we can't have that, can we, Dennis?

00:57:12.040 Oh, no, no.

00:57:13.260 No, we got to keep all those civil servants employed. 1.00

00:57:16.980 Yeah.

00:57:17.200 No, that's, my point is that when citizens see the direct connection, when their elected representative is not 4,000 kilometers away in Ottawa,

00:57:26.360 where they're literally a drive down the street

00:57:29.980 or a three-hour drive to Edmonton

00:57:32.180 or wherever we put these things.

00:57:34.560 You can go in there and berate the guy and say,

00:57:37.100 why are you wasting my money?

00:57:39.020 And you can have that direct connection.

00:57:41.660 And I think that that'll, for me,

00:57:44.360 that's almost the best part

00:57:45.780 is I don't have to worry about,

00:57:48.300 well, you know, Parliament sits like three days

00:57:51.140 out of a year, it seems like,

00:57:52.900 and they discuss things I don't care about.

00:57:56.360 pass laws I don't like, and what is my only option?

00:58:01.000 You know, vote for the local guy every four years,

00:58:03.560 and my vote doesn't matter because it's settled by the time it hits Manitoba.

00:58:07.400 Yeah.

00:58:08.140 So I do have one other thought, though,

00:58:12.180 because when we're talking about setting up a constitution,

00:58:17.020 a lot of that's directed towards the federal side of things.

00:58:20.260 Yeah.

00:58:20.840 And then that kind of seeps down into provincial and municipal.

00:58:26.360 Um, and I do feel like there's a lot of blame that goes towards federal, but if you look at what's actually under municipal and provincial, there's a lot there, but the tone is set because of the, our confederation structure of what falls under and or how things need to be structured from a provincial and municipal standpoint.

00:58:50.060 I think also people will argue that maybe at least the municipal, even in small towns, some of them are starting to become a little bit more captured by certain ideas where they want to turn everything into a European city of like transit and high density and electric this and above and beyond what the actual people living there really want.

00:59:18.380 And so, are there any thoughts on what kind of reforms would also translate down at the provincial and, well, municipal level?

00:59:30.960 Because now, I guess we don't need like…

00:59:35.060 Don't need two levels of government.

00:59:36.440 Yeah, we don't need two levels.

00:59:37.680 We need one.

00:59:37.880 So, we would have to shift things.

00:59:40.640 Yeah.

00:59:41.720 So, actually, if you read Nevalia of Freedom, and actually it's in the constitutional draft as well,

00:59:46.020 The mindset right now is to essentially remove a lot of the powers

00:59:50.720 that municipalities have to date.

00:59:52.760 So, for example, remove their ability to tax.

00:59:56.240 Get rid of property taxes is a big part of that.

00:59:59.600 Essentially fund them with direct grants per capita

01:00:03.300 or whatever basis you want to choose.

01:00:06.240 Don't allow them to pass any laws other than essentially

01:00:09.420 anti-jaywalking laws kind of thing.

01:00:12.880 That all operation of the city is subject to the Constitution, like anywhere else, and really transformed the cities into just the operating arm that manages the city on behalf of the country.

01:00:28.100 It's a funded department in many ways, more than an actual separate political entity.

01:00:33.700 That's the kind of structure that's in play right now.

01:00:37.260 It's the kind of structure I want.

01:00:38.720 I've got to tell you, this one's near and dear to my heart

01:00:40.760 because I find city councils, especially under our dear friend, Mr. Nenshi,

01:00:45.280 completely screwed up about Calgary and its culture, I think,

01:00:48.740 almost irreparably by just raising taxes continuously

01:00:52.920 and getting the city into businesses that it has no business being in.

01:00:58.100 So I think we can find some structures in there,

01:01:00.840 and that's the one that we're working on.

01:01:02.000 But I don't see a need for a real level of government for municipalities.

01:01:08.060 It's an operating arm.

01:01:10.320 That's interesting.

01:01:11.520 And something that I have been thinking about too that, and I can't recall off the top of my head if it's really ever been, if it's in the document or if it's been discussed much by the APP.

01:01:23.860 Would there be a, are there any plans or has there been any discussion about what like, so assuming Alberta is an independent nation.

01:01:32.000 Do we then have an idea about what smaller provinces or states within that nation might look like geographically?

01:01:41.380 Is there much discussion about that?

01:01:43.540 I think there's no provincial structure imagined.

01:01:46.980 I think what it is, is a bicameral legislature.

01:01:50.660 So one population-based and one region-based and probably much smaller.

01:01:56.500 So imagine you might only have like 20 senators, 20 regents in the whole province, the whole country, and probably a similar number of elected legislators.

01:02:10.840 So the total sitting government would certainly be under 100, probably more like under 70 or 80 maximum.

01:02:18.500 And now you've got a much tighter group, and that would be the end of the structure.

01:02:24.000 Now, I've discussed with one fellow about Saskatchewan, and my starting place for Saskatchewan is

01:02:31.280 when they leave, we don't set them up as a separate province. We just roll it into a

01:02:36.720 single country. And we just have more representatives, of course, to cover that area.

01:02:43.600 But I mean, it's reduce and simplify. I mean, my corporate experience, and I mentioned to you at

01:02:50.560 at the beginning of our chat

01:02:52.260 that was around dealing

01:02:53.680 with large organizations in distress.

01:02:56.500 And it's always been a mindset of mine

01:02:58.940 to reduce and simplify.

01:03:00.860 What's the easiest way to get this done?

01:03:02.620 What's the simplest way?

01:03:03.560 What's the least you need?

01:03:05.280 Rather than how complicated can I make this?

01:03:09.040 And I think if we apply those kind of concepts

01:03:12.160 to how we run our government,

01:03:14.020 I think we'll be successful.

01:03:18.360 James, I got one more question,

01:03:19.680 if you, if you don't mind. Oh yeah, go for it. This is, uh, maybe just slightly going back to

01:03:26.040 the economic side of things. I am curious about your thoughts. Um, I know the general idea is

01:03:30.480 that, excuse me, on a, um, on a successful referendum. And then when, when we're deciding

01:03:37.260 how to deal with our, uh, money supply, I know the general idea is that we start, um, by, uh,

01:03:45.920 employing a swap line in USD. In your opinion, is the ultimate long-term goal an Alberta dollar?

01:03:55.780 This is actually, I guess, a three-part question. Is it an Alberta dollar in the long term?

01:04:00.940 Is it a commodities-backed currency? And how long do you think that trend, if so, for those,

01:04:08.420 how long do you think that transition period is between USD to an Alberta currency?

01:04:13.020 So there's a plan been developed, not by me, but I'm much smarter than me.

01:04:21.720 Essentially, it's a one to two year plan.

01:04:24.420 So the reason why Alberta would change the U.S. dollar immediately would be because we think the Canadian dollar is going to drop like a stone.

01:04:31.080 Yeah.

01:04:31.800 And we don't want to be subject to the whips and changes that that currency is probably going to suffer as things progress.

01:04:38.960 So that sort of gives us a little bit more stability, backed up by the credit line, that credit swap that the Americans are talking about.

01:04:46.560 So that's one thing.

01:04:47.800 But really, you'd move as fast as you could to a number at a dollar.

01:04:51.880 You need some stabilization time.

01:04:53.980 Obviously, finalize the agreement with Canada, get it largely in place.

01:04:57.840 And I think everyone I've talked to in APP is against fiat currency.

01:05:04.540 You need some sort of backing.

01:05:06.860 And the discussion in play was some combination of our proven reserves, our precious metals, you know, for example, gold stash, and some elements of modern cryptocurrency.

01:05:21.920 And I don't know enough about that last one to support it or not, but that's the kind of concept that's there.

01:05:27.680 And then you can only create more dollars, more Alberta dollars, if the value of those assets actually goes up in real terms.

01:05:34.560 and uh so it should make it a very stable currency um people say well you're too small

01:05:40.880 and i go we're about the same size as new zealand uh new zealand seems to have no trouble with being

01:05:46.320 in a currency you know why not yeah you know so it it's this is all doable um we are i think the

01:05:55.540 general consensus is not a big fan of a really fancy central bank that sets interest rates and

01:06:01.960 whatever. Let that be market set. You need some sort of central authority, but that's about it. 0.85

01:06:06.440 So some of this is, again, the reduce and simplify approach. Excellent. James, what do you think?

01:06:14.280 Got anything else for our distinguished guest? Oh, I'm just looking forward to

01:06:21.140 the constitution coming out. I'm looking forward to the discussions. I'm looking forward to

01:06:27.060 how these ideas will be stress-tested in public.

01:06:32.100 And yeah, we appreciate you coming on today.

01:06:35.940 This sheds a lot of light on these things.

01:06:39.260 Well, much appreciated.

01:06:40.260 And I think this is what the APP stands for

01:06:43.780 is the education thing.

01:06:44.980 And I'm not a formal member.

01:06:47.360 I work with them.

01:06:48.060 I joined probably like you guys did.

01:06:50.920 But I know it's really important

01:06:53.920 that we educate people on these concepts

01:06:56.760 and ideas and methods, because unfortunately, we as Canadians have been ignorant of our own

01:07:05.040 politics and our own system for too long. And most people, when I go through conversations like this,

01:07:11.460 go, oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't realize Trudeau changed the basis of government.

01:07:16.580 You know, and people go, oh, I get it now. So I think the more we can educate, bring people

01:07:22.740 to a knowledgeable decision,

01:07:24.920 then at that point,

01:07:26.060 it's the will of the people.

01:07:27.620 And I'm a believer

01:07:28.860 we will win the referendum.

01:07:32.280 Dennis, where can people

01:07:33.300 find you online, sir?

01:07:35.160 So I'm really only on the X platform.

01:07:37.700 I'm not a big social media guy.

01:07:39.500 It's just at Dennis Kalmas,

01:07:41.340 so my name.

01:07:42.460 And I try and answer

01:07:43.660 as many questions as I can.

01:07:45.780 And happy to respond

01:07:48.540 to anyone who contacts me

01:07:49.700 through that platform.

01:07:51.460 Fantastic.

01:07:51.900 Well, hey, thank you again, sir.

01:07:53.500 This has been really educational for us.

01:07:55.660 Again, we really appreciate your time

01:07:57.340 and we look forward to having you back on

01:07:59.840 maybe in six or seven months,

01:08:02.300 so after a successful referendum.

01:08:03.780 Thank you for your work.

01:08:05.080 Thank you so much for having me on

01:08:07.020 and look forward to talking to you in the future.

01:08:09.660 You take care.

01:08:10.480 Thank you.

01:08:11.260 Cheers.

01:08:11.660 Bye-bye.

01:08:21.900 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

01:08:23.060 stampede.com

The Critical Compass Podcast - March 12, 2026

Author of 'The Value of Freedom' Document Explains Why Alberta Independence WILL WORK

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