In this episode, we are joined by law professor Bruce Pritchard, who has been a prominent voice in the Alberta independence movement. We discuss the reasons for the movement, the challenges facing the province, and the path forward.
00:00:00.000Except there's a lot of attempts that I have seen in trying to tell people, you know, don't worry, you'll be able to keep this or that, you know, this won't change, you'll be able to keep your citizenship, you still have your passport, you'll get your pension just the way it is.
00:01:26.720Because today we are pleased to be joined by Mr. Bruce Party, a law professor from Ontario who has involved himself in the Alberta independence discussion.
00:01:38.180I guess that would be the softest way to put it.
00:01:41.280That's that's actually kind of what I wanted to start off this discussion with.
00:01:44.860So thank you so much for joining us, Bruce.
00:01:46.740And maybe you could give us a little bit of a kind of a introduction as to how you got interested in and involved as such a prominent voice in this topic.
00:02:16.840And the answer, I think, is in part that I'm a Canadian, of course, and this country is in big trouble.
00:02:28.500And I mean, that's been obvious for a while, but it's never been more obvious than during COVID, I think.
00:02:34.040COVID revealed an awful lot of things about how the country actually works.
00:02:38.280Those things are not all new, unfortunately, but, you know, the curtain was pulled back on them.
00:02:45.140And it seems to me that the country is in such bad shape that, in a sense, the only real way to fix it now is to cause a existential political earthquake.
00:03:00.600And the only real opportunity to do that is Alberta.
00:03:06.940And Alberta seems to have a critical mass of people, unlike many other areas of the country, people who understand that something is not right.
00:03:18.340And you combine that with a set of historical grievances that Alberta has, and I think quite rightly has, you've got the table set for the potential of actually doing something that doesn't exist in many other directions.
00:03:38.700If you look around at what the prospects are for Canada to fundamentally rethink what it has become, there really aren't any other good choices at the moment.
00:03:50.920So my inclination is to try to encourage Albertans to seize the moment that they have and to save themselves, first of all.
00:04:01.640I mean, they don't have a responsibility to save Canada, I don't think, but they might do so by saving themselves.
00:04:08.840And I've also started saying this as well, which is save yourself, save Canada.
00:04:13.820And for that matter, who knows, you might end up saving Western civilization itself because Western civilization is not in great shape right now.
00:04:22.760And so, you know, you've got to seize the day.
00:04:28.660Alberta has a moment, and I'm hoping that enough Albertans will understand the path that lies before them, potentially anyway, to get on this horse and ride away.
00:04:39.800So maybe, maybe that's a perfect point to expand on is, well, the path forward, there's like by seizing the moment, part of that is just getting a critical mass because you'll need a clear majority.
00:05:07.800And a lot of them will point to the Clarity Act, which from my understanding is a interpretation of the Supreme Court decision.
00:05:15.580And there's some differences between both of those in the role of the federal government.
00:05:20.860And that's getting kind of a little bit strange because if Alberta's entire grievance is that the federal government has overstepped its bounds into provincial sovereignty matters, then is defaulting on the Clarity Act.
00:05:40.980Like, is that, like, is that not just, again, reasserting the federal government's power as a parent in this relationship rather than equals in Confederacy?
00:05:53.340So is the Clarity Act, is that the only way, like, for Alberta to achieve independence, what does that actually look like?
00:06:03.780And what are the other options if this one way does not actually come to fruition?
00:06:10.760Oh, James, I thought you put that very well.
00:06:12.780That's exactly what the Clarity Act is.
00:06:15.180It's a federal interpretation of the Supreme Court of Canada decision from 1998.
00:06:20.900And so it's not irrelevant, but it's also not the whole story.
00:06:25.560And it is, in fact, exactly, again, as you described, it's the federal version of things.
00:06:33.280And so in that sense, it could be the federal starting point for negotiations.
00:06:39.400But let's just go back a step to the Supreme Court decision itself.
00:06:43.580The Supreme Court decision doesn't actually say all that much.
00:06:47.060It says if a province passes a referendum on a clear question and a clear majority of people support it, then that province then has a mandate to negotiate its separation from the country.
00:07:00.820And the federal government and the rest of the country has a responsibility to enter into political negotiations to that end.
00:07:10.660OK, so neither neither side has a unilateral right to declare anything, to do anything.
00:07:18.200But it is also a political negotiation and not a legal one in the sense that the courts have said, well, the Supreme Court has said, you know, after at that stage, you know, we're out.
00:07:28.420So it is it is a purely political negotiation.
00:07:31.520And so you would expect both sides in that kind of a process to have a starting position.
00:07:36.380And I think the Clarity Act is probably a good place for the federal government to say that's that's our position.
00:07:44.540Now, that doesn't mean that position prevails.
00:07:47.980That means that that's what they're saying.
00:07:50.140Now, Alberta might say something different, in which case now you have a back and forth and negotiation.
00:07:54.860And the thing is, what happens after that?
00:07:59.080Nobody knows because we've never been here before.
00:08:03.400And the Supreme Court has only said those very few things.
00:08:07.680And so after that stage, we are into undiscovered country.
00:08:11.740And and and people who suggest that, you know, it's got it's got it's going to it's going to definitely be that way or definitely be this way.
00:08:18.500They're making your best guess like everybody else.
00:08:22.980So you have to you have to tolerate some uncertainty in this territory once you get past that threshold.
00:08:30.540So that's that's a really good point, Bruce, that that term tolerating uncertainty, which is, I think, a thing that both people who are in favor and against Alberta independence have a hard time rationalizing, intellectualizing.
00:08:44.000Is there a are there a couple of like major, you know, uncertainties that you hear a lot that you could maybe that a person could use if they were trying to, you know, say, convince their friend or family member about, you know, how it actually like things would actually be OK?
00:08:59.400Well, so sometimes I say this, I say, look, imagine if at the time of the American Revolution, Americans who were generally in favor of the idea insisted upon knowing exactly what was going to happen afterwards and what kind of country America would become.
00:09:18.280Like, so lay it out for me exactly what kind of thing is this going to be?
00:09:22.200Well, of course, if anybody had tried to tell them, they would have told them something that might not have turned out to be true, because who who who would have known?
00:09:32.140That that project would have turned out the way that it has.
00:09:34.540And and so certainly is just something that that you have uncertainty is something that they just have to accept.
00:09:41.840There's a lot been a lot of attempts that I have seen in trying to tell people, you know, don't worry, you know, you'll be able to keep this or that.
00:09:51.660You know, this won't change. You'll be able to keep your citizenship.
00:09:55.000You still have your passport to get your pension just the way it is.
00:10:51.680So it seems like almost there's a balance of we've got to paint a positive vision vision for the future that includes reimagining what a new Alberta would look like, because we can't repeat a broken system because we'll just end up with another broken system.
00:11:11.920Minutia, we can't be you can't have so many cooks in the kitchen trying to craft the exact plan that is subject to negotiations.
00:11:19.920So then the question is, like, what is what is what is a balance that is honest and also will help convince people?
00:11:27.780Because sometimes honesty can feel defeatist to be like, well, we don't know what will happen.
00:11:33.160That that may not convince everybody, but I feel like you can't promise things that can't be promised.
00:11:40.240And you see that, yeah, with the pensions, you see that with citizenship, you see that with the aboriginal rights side and the treaties, which I feel like maybe that's a point we should touch on is you've said some more spicy things on that front.
00:11:57.760But they're not really spicy if you if we're talking about the fundamental layer of like, well, what what like what does it mean to have aboriginal rights?
00:12:09.260Like what are special rights and what would that mean in the context of a new Alberta?
00:12:15.140Like what what which how should we be thinking about this particular problem?
00:12:47.700Do you just mean you want to be free from Ottawa or do you actually want to be free?
00:12:54.360And if it's the latter, then all right, let's talk about what a free country is.
00:12:59.080And for my money, one of the features of a free country is a system of justice, a legal system that is blind.
00:13:08.160You know, you know, you know, the statues of Lady Justice wearing a blindfold, right?
00:13:12.960Blind justice means that the law doesn't care who you are in the sense that it applies rules and rights and freedoms in the same way, regardless of your identity.
00:13:43.620If you have a legal system that distinguishes between people on the basis of their lineage, on the basis of their genes, on the basis of their parents, on the basis of their culture, on the basis of their identity, then you do not have a system of blind justice.
00:14:00.120And in a newly constituted free country, I think one of the very first principles ought to be equal protection of the law.
00:14:09.960It's an idea that's actually in the U.S. Constitution.
00:14:13.460There's a version of it also in the Canadian Charter, but it has an exception to it.
00:14:18.560And over time, the Supreme Court of Canada has made the exception into the rule.
00:14:22.400So we do not have that in Canada right now, the idea of equal protection or equal treatment.
00:14:27.000But a new Alberta, I would like to hope that that would be one of the very first features of this newly independent and free country.
00:14:36.860Yeah, that's, and that's, you know, we've talked about that before about you, you know, how it feels like you, you approach these sort of issues with that, this notion of first principles.
00:14:50.880You know, you're taking a principled stance and it's not colored by history or circumstance or, you know, because so many of those subjectivities can add up and kind of distort, you know, an otherwise, you know, firm concept.
00:15:06.240So I guess to follow up with that, you had recently been in a debate with Jeff Rath and we know Jeff and, you know, we appreciate his gumption for Alberta independence and, you know, he's doing some good things.
00:15:23.120But when watching that debate, something became very clear in that he didn't, he didn't really approach your argument as charitably as, as I would have liked.
00:15:33.760And he, he was, he repeated a line several times, if you recall, where he said that essentially he tried to boil down your argument into you wanting to remove the rights of 300,000 Albertans, obviously the, the indigenous population in Alberta.
00:15:48.940Um, obviously I don't think you mean that, uh, can you, can you be, cause I don't think you were given the opportunity to really expand on that.
00:15:57.020Can you sort of explain Jeff's main, main problem with this, with this point was that he believed it to be a non-starter as far as Alberta independence goes.
00:16:07.300So do you think it's a non-starter or do you think that there's a way around this?
00:16:13.840Right. Okay. So those are two very different questions. So let me do the first one first.
00:16:59.280You're equalizing. And so, and to that end, what I've suggested as a transitional measure is to take reserve lands in Alberta and to, so just a clarification at the moment,
00:17:12.420indigenous people who belong to, uh, bands who have reserves do not own plots on reserves.
00:17:23.560They do not own, they do not have title to that land. It's a group, right. It's a group possession.
00:17:30.140So what I've suggested is you take those reserve lands and you, you make them into lots and you give title to those lots, to individual indigenous people.
00:17:39.420So that they can do with that land, what everybody else can do with their land, which is to improve it or sell it or lease it or bequeath it, mortgage it, whatever they want, because that's what everybody else gets to do.
00:17:54.640At the moment in individual indigenous people are subject to the tyranny of the group and subject to the tyranny of the group's leaders.
00:18:02.820You're, you're, you're, you're caught, you're stuck within the concept of the group, right. You cannot make decisions for yourself.
00:18:10.320Now you can leave the reserve and go and live in the city and do what everybody else can do.
00:18:14.460The fact of the matter is that off reserve, individual indigenous people have the same rights as everybody else in Canada.
00:18:22.140And that's the way it ought to be, but it ought to be that way everywhere.
00:18:25.100So that, that's my answer to that 300,000 people question.
00:18:30.460It's, it's not quite the way it was framed, but there is some truth to it in the sense that it is, it is trying to make, put everybody on the same level and have them being treated the same way.
00:18:44.380There's a, there's a saying, I think comes from Thomas Sowell.
00:18:47.320He said, when you're used to special treatment, equal treatment, seems like discrimination.
00:19:00.020And what I'm suggesting is to get rid of the discrimination, to get rid of the practice of seeing people in different ways.
00:19:07.000In other words, as far as the law is concerned, there should be no such thing as different peoples.
00:19:14.360The law should simply apply to people.
00:19:18.460Now, to your second question about, you know, how practical this is in a political sense.
00:19:25.380Well, you know, you guys might know better than me because I'm not on the ground in Alberta.
00:19:29.740Now, on the other hand, I've been in contact with a lot of Albertans.
00:19:33.440People have communicated with me in various ways.
00:19:35.360And an awful lot of people have said, yes, we agree with the aboriginal point.
00:20:32.560I try to keep things in reality when looking at Alberta moving towards independence because we still have very left progressive cities.
00:20:45.180We've got still, the NDP is still, still thriving in these writings.
00:20:52.640And even just talking with friends and family, there are a lot that see kind of DEI initiatives, these, the redistribution to achieve equality about outcome or equity.
00:21:05.940They see that as the ultimate good and we must organize society in a way that redistributes to take care of the people who have less.
00:21:18.420And I feel like that mirrors, you see this on the, like, in the indigenous side, but you also see this in any time anything's made to try to address a DEI policy or saying, like, well, we need single-sex bathrooms.
00:21:34.260They're like, well, you're removing the rights of trans peoples.
00:23:15.180And what a future Alberta ought to look like in terms of its government and how it works and what its policies are can be discerned from that contest.
00:23:28.180So if you create a new Alberta, and the Alberta is, again, a free one.
00:23:34.080And by a free one, I mean it protects the ability of individuals to decide their own affairs.
00:23:40.180If it's based upon the idea of individual autonomy, the ability of you to make your own decisions about your own life, your own career, your own money, your own property, your own family, your own children.
00:23:51.560If that's the kind of Alberta we mean, then we can tell the kinds of things that have to go by whether they are consistent with that vision or whether or not they belong to the collectivist thinking that you refer to.
00:24:03.720So here's a big one for a lot of Albertans, I think, which is single-payer public health care.
00:24:11.880Single-payer public health care is a collectivist program.
00:24:15.740It's a socialized program of health care.
00:24:19.220If Albertans mean it about being a new and free country, single-payer public health care has to go because it is inconsistent with the vision.
00:24:31.960Now, a lot of Albertans think, well, but I want to keep my health care because they're scared to wander into the unknown of what a future different health care system might be.
00:24:44.240The one that you have does not match the aspirations you're identifying.
00:24:49.620So, again, you have to walk into the unknown and trust that the principle upon which your new country is based will provide, will provide for health care, will provide for needs of all kinds.
00:25:06.320You know, food and housing, everything that's important is provided by a free market in a country where people have independent rights.
00:25:15.240That's the way it works, and it is a centralized, planned country that is determined to dictate the outcomes on all those things first, right?
00:25:27.420So, one of the challenges is to get Albertans to get out of the mindset of how government's supposed to work.
00:25:34.160Government is not supposed to plan ahead and provide for things.
00:25:39.260It's supposed to back off, get its hands off the market, and let people figure things out for themselves.
00:25:44.840And that is, from what I can tell, is an idea that lies deep in the heart of a lot of Albertans.
00:25:52.220Self-sufficiency, independence, your own decisions, by your own hands.
00:25:57.960And if there are enough of those people, then you've got a shot.
00:26:00.800Otherwise, if we're stuck on the central planning, you know, collectivist thinking, then this is going to go nowhere.
00:26:07.260Yeah, and that's one of the major hurdles that this movement is going to face because there's just so much, you know, whatever industry you talk about, if you talk about healthcare, you talk about unions, you talk about, you know, the fact that we have a huge bloated public sector in many different fields.
00:26:26.640You know, you're going to face a lot of opposition from that because there's just so, so much of our everyday is just based on the government dole right now that it's pretty rough.
00:26:37.240I mean, it's the, you're going to have, like, we're going to have to balance this notion of a free independent society with, you know, but things might be tough for a while.
00:26:47.960Well, and that, I wanted to just, I highlighted this section here, and we'll link this in all the notes here, but your Alberta Declaration of Independence, amazing read.
00:27:00.360I highlighted this one section because it's so, it's so poignant, I find, kind of near the bottom third here.
00:27:07.480You say, we find ourselves members of a beleaguered, corrupted, manipulated society.
00:27:13.280Vested interests and sacred cows make meaningful reform impossible.
00:27:16.380Canada is a country in retreat, more interested in redistributing wealth than in producing it, more resolved to administer than to build, and more prone to languish than to strive.
00:27:26.000Its people have traded freedom for the appearance of safety and competition for the solidarity of victimhood.
00:27:31.480Its culture pushes risk and rewards conformity.
00:27:34.640Sorry, its culture punishes risk and rewards conformity.
00:27:37.240Its elites collaborate with foreign powers and global institutions.
00:27:40.420They sacrifice the interests of the people to plunder the country of what remains of its prosperity.
00:27:45.160For a privileged class of public servants, Canada has become a grift.
00:27:49.840And I suppose my question then, that's 100% nail it.
00:27:55.560But what do you think, all that being true, do you anticipate any sort of, maybe a, I don't know the word I'm looking for, but sort of a harsh response from the federal government?
00:28:11.400Say that a referendum does go through, and we do vote for independence.
00:28:15.580There's a lot at stake there for the feds.
00:28:17.660Do you, have you thought about what their response might be?
00:28:39.520And, in large part, Alberta is the cow of confederation.
00:28:49.540Now, do we really think that the federal government, if Alberta, you know, holds a referendum, and it passes with a clear majority, the federal government's just going to say, oh, well, you ticked all the boxes.
00:30:12.140And it is going to be dangerous and risky and a challenge, an existential challenge, to the powers that be that you're trying to get away from.
00:30:21.860They're not going to just let it happen.
00:30:24.140So, this is going to take some courage.
00:30:26.780It's going to take some tolerance of not knowing what's going to happen in the future.
00:30:31.780It's going to require people to take a step into the dangerous unknown because it's necessary.
00:30:39.480Because the only alternative is the stuck status quo.
00:30:59.280And they said, like, this is the way forward and you've got to support our group.
00:31:03.180Or we saw this with the demonization of the Alberta Republicans, which is both a good name and a terrible name because it accurately describes a party that wants Alberta to be a constitutional republic.
00:31:20.740It's a terrible name because it reflects how many on the left and the right don't understand what a republic is and they have this adverse immune system reaction to anything that reflects the United States.
00:31:35.720And in this case, I feel like part of the Alberta Prosperity Project feels that we just need a clear citizen-led grassroots initiative and we need to go through Alberta's referendum process.
00:31:53.760And then that will be passed and then we'll enter into negotiations if there's a clear majority.
00:31:59.760I believe the Alberta Republicans were saying, well, who are we trusting to negotiate with us?
00:32:10.160And they were saying, well, even like the Alberta government right now could pass legislation issuing a binding referendum.
00:32:21.500It doesn't just need to be like that citizen-led initiative if there is a clear support.
00:32:27.520So I guess like if there's enough support, there are multiple avenues through.
00:32:35.320But in any case, like right now, we are putting a lot of trust into a provincial government, the UCP, who has expanded the public sector, who has maybe hasn't fully proved that their mindset is in a fully independent Alberta.
00:32:55.500And I was curious that like if a few independence minded, like if there's a few MLAs that are fully independent or pushing hard for independence, does that help build some accountability if it is a like if it is the UCP doing the negotiation?
00:33:20.880So I feel like it's less of a zero-sum game of either it's this one group or another group.
00:33:27.100And I'm thinking like, can these coexist?
00:33:32.400Or what kind of pressure or feedback or criticism should we be putting on the UCP right now, considering that they are the ones that are going to be carrying us through the negotiation process?
00:34:08.940Sometimes this question is, sometimes the presumption is that the main conflict that you have in this enterprise is the federal government.
00:34:25.060Your main contest right now is inside Alberta.
00:34:29.400And that's reflected by your question.
00:34:31.000The main test, the main contest, the main task right now is inside Alberta to try to get your own people or enough of them on the same page, to get enough political actors with power on the same page.
00:34:45.580And in principle, the way to get the political actors to get with the program, so to speak, is to demonstrate to those actors that the parade is going in a certain way.
00:35:02.400And it is in their interest to be at the front of the parade, right?
00:35:09.120I'm not sure that's clear yet to them.
00:35:11.880And that might be why some of them are trying to walk a tightrope between two things.
00:35:18.540And yes, it's going to be very contentious about who it is that gets to do the negotiating on the part of Alberta, assuming a referendum passed.
00:35:26.880Because for sure, I mean, absolutely, that is going to determine the kind of deal that you get.
00:35:44.380Albertans have to deal with Albertans to try and figure this out and to try and gather up enough of a critical mass of people, like hopefully, like a clear, clear majority, not 51%, but more.
00:35:59.820I would love to see more than that to demonstrate to the political powers that be that if they're interested in their own futures, everybody's interested in their own future.
00:36:11.620Everybody acts in their own self-interest, ultimately, and that's part of the future of a free country, right?
00:36:17.760But in acting in their own self-interest, the political powers that be have to see that their own interests lie in taking on this cause.
00:36:27.340And if they don't, then, you know, who knows what happens after that?
00:36:33.180What you mentioned of, you know, some political actors right now walking a tightrope, leads me to wonder your opinion on, do you have a read on Danielle Smith?
00:36:48.280Like, do you, did, it seems like from day to day, you know, it's, it's hard to tell, you know, some days it feels like she's all in, she's, you know, easing the restrictions on getting citizen-led initiatives through and heard in the house or, or, you know, and then some days it feels like she's pulling back, you know, with Alberta and United Canada type of speech.
00:37:07.520And then just today, you know, she announces the creation of a, of a Alberta, uh, provincial police force, which has long been talked about and kind of been sleptwalked for a while.
00:37:16.620Do you get kind of a sense of like where her intentions kind of lie?
00:37:21.220I, I, I don't, I mean, I know Danielle a little bit.
00:37:58.560I mean, surely Albertans already know enough to know that Canada is not going to be fixed.
00:38:05.020And by the way, the, the demand letter that she sent to Kearney a little while ago with nine, nine policy demands, you know, get rid of this, get rid of, get rid of the tanker ban, get rid of single use plastics and the emissions cap and, you know, all those things.
00:38:43.440No, I don't think there's much chance of that, but let's just say hypothetically, let's say those policy demands were met and you've got a pipeline and you got rid of the emissions cap and you got rid of the tanker ban.
00:39:26.100And you've, you've also poured some cold water on the, on the independence movement, you know?
00:39:29.920So in one sense, it could be, yeah, it could be the smartest thing that the federal government could do, but I don't think that they're smart enough to necessarily do it.
00:39:37.380I agree with you, but that's exactly why I think it's the worst thing that could happen.
00:39:41.020It would take the air out of the tires of the whole, of the whole cause.
00:40:28.920And you're trying to use that as an excuse that like, try to prove that it's not going to be any different this time.
00:40:34.840I feel like is a short sighted, but even, I feel like even if a referendum fails, the amount of conversation, I wonder if that can shake up enough people in the other provinces.
00:40:49.080Cause now you're talking about like Saskatchewan, there's like some people wanting like, but how big is a independence movement in Saskatchewan?
00:40:58.700Are they not in the same kind of position as Alberta to have that same kind of momentum?
00:41:04.260Um, will it just get back to status quo if this settles down or do you feel like a failed referendum is enough to shake, shake the tree?
00:41:14.660No, I mean, Saskatchewan is another possibility.
00:41:18.300I mean, if Alberta did pass a referendum and resolve to leave, then I wouldn't be surprised if Saskatchewan said, well, don't leave us behind.
00:41:26.800We're coming to, you know, that would be great.
00:41:35.560Then you shouldn't expect any results from that.
00:41:40.280I mean, the people, people who are in control are going to take that as an indication that everything is fine.
00:41:48.800Just the way we said, everything is fine.
00:41:51.640The people of Alberta said, no, we want to stay.
00:41:54.100We're going to run the country the way it's always been run, the way it's being run right now.
00:41:59.340And all those people who are in power and, you know, the Laurentians in Ontario and Quebec are going to take that as an indication that nothing needs to change.
00:43:18.180The fact of the matter is, whatever the chances are, it's the best chance going.
00:43:23.040Well, chances are it's going to change over time because we know demographic changes will also influence the ability to get a clear majority.
00:43:35.240Especially, like, we're talking about, like, well, part of the profile of the average person in Edmonton is, like, you've got a lot of public sector workers.
00:43:46.000Or you've got people reliant on handouts that feel like voting against their own job or against their own benefits is not in their own best interest.
00:44:00.060Therefore, Alberta independence would never be something they would support.
00:44:05.520So if not in the next year or so, think of another five years of population shifts in Alberta.
00:44:12.980Alberta, it's a clear majority is even less likely.
00:44:17.040Whatever the chances are now, it's going to be less likely.
00:44:20.160So this is kind of a unique, a very unique time coming off of, like, very real tyranny that we saw on all levels of government through COVID.
00:44:33.460And then we saw the disappointment and the sheer difference between, like, Western voting habits in the federal election and the East.
00:44:43.080So we've also demonstrated kind of how this system does not reflect the interests of the people that it's supposed to be representing.
00:45:34.600So he's a big proponent of remigration.
00:45:38.120I was, when you were saying about, you know, how you don't necessarily see a route to any other outcome, what if there was a, I don't anticipate this happening, but can you see a focus at a federal level of satisfying people's desire for remigration, getting rid of the bad term?
00:46:01.000But, you know, enforcing the temporary foreign worker, you know, end of the visas and things like this, if they make a push for this, can you see that as a means by which that might also cool some of these sentiments?
00:46:15.340Do you anticipate that as a response by the federal government?
00:46:19.820Well, first of all, no, I don't think they would do that.
00:46:51.260I mean, I have no objection to them enforcing the law in this area.
00:46:56.560But I don't see that it changes anything else fundamentally.
00:47:00.280Number one, again, it's simply a policy change.
00:47:03.480And number two, I mean, think of all the things that are wrong.
00:47:09.660It's not just failure to enforce those provisions.
00:47:14.420It's, if you like, built into the Constitution.
00:47:20.880Or even if you, like I've suggested, this is also built into a national character.
00:47:27.700Like, I like to go back to the founding of the United States and what happened to Canada at that time.
00:47:34.680And this is largely, you know, Eastern and Central Canada, of course, because that's what Canada was at the time.
00:47:39.080But if you imagine this in terms of the Americans' foundational story, if you like, they wanted to get out from under the thumb of the king.
00:47:50.180They wanted to be free because they were being mistreated.
00:47:53.820And they invited the Canadians, as they then were, to join them, to become a continental free country.
00:48:39.300The Canadian story is, and this is the way my energy probe colleague, Lawrence Solomon, has put it.
00:48:46.080The Canadian story, Confederation, essentially, is regions and provinces signing on in order to receive subsidies and grants from the federal government.
00:49:00.320I mean, this is not people joining the country for a grand vision of a noble, you know, nation.
00:50:17.060But also another thing that kind of plagues Canadian, the Canadian mindset we've we've noticed is that rather than defining ourselves and we've noticed this, you know, you've probably seen it a lot since since November last year.
00:50:30.880Rather than making a positive vision or a positive definition of what a Canadian is, a lot of Canadians just define themselves and Canadian life, Canadianism in opposition to what it means to be an American.
00:51:24.080And I feel like part of this is having better conversations with like, obviously, with those on the right.
00:51:31.160Some are federally minded conservatives.
00:51:34.240Others are more independent supporting.
00:51:37.820And there are a range of ideas of how that looks.
00:51:41.440But having better conversations, that's one.
00:51:44.040On that, on the right, but also the conversations with like, when I'm talking with more left leaning family and friends, like that gets very tricky.
00:51:56.060And I guess the Socratic method only goes so far when trying to break down these deeply ingrained ideas about how the world works.
00:52:06.820Especially when it's, I feel like the longer this goes, the harder it is to change partially because you've had a shift from, you look, look back to the 50s and look at the average skill set that the average person had.
00:52:28.500Like the average father had like some mechanical skills, some automotive, they have a little bit of knowledge in multiple areas.
00:52:37.500So the way I feel like each individual was better powered as a check and balance on some of these systems because they had a little enough knowledge that they could call out the BS.
00:52:49.960And as we get hyper specialized, people just, they just hand everything off to an expert.
00:52:56.740It's like, well, I am not qualified to even have a thought about this.
00:53:21.200Well, this is where, if you're, if you increase your sampling of ideas, we're going to get a better, we're going to get a little bit closer to truth.
00:53:31.040If we're getting multiple, like consensus from independent parties, et cetera.
00:53:36.940And I feel like some of the most valuable people are the deep generalists, those who have a bit of knowledge in multiple areas and also very deep fundamental, deep fundamental understanding of systems.
00:53:52.520And this is where like, you get some of these engineers, you get some of these other professionals that have solved complex problems, like with multiple variables.
00:54:02.960And they're seeing patterns that maybe some of these hyper specialized, highly credentialed people are not seeing in some of the ways.
00:54:12.740So I feel like this also has a very, it's a very good opportunity for some of these other professionals with other skill sets to have a voice and have their input when, when talking about a vision for, for new Alberta.
00:54:30.080But, but there is a cautionary tale as well.
00:54:32.960Which is this, so part of what you're referring to quite rightly, is the emergence of a managerial state, where everything is centrally planned, it's controlled by authority somewhere else with technocratic expertise, right?
00:54:48.820And that exists in Canada, as much as anywhere else.
00:54:52.960They also have that in the States, it's all over the Western world.
00:54:55.700And yes, we need generalists who have the freedom to exercise their own judgment about things.
00:55:05.840The cautionary tale I'm referring to, though, is, is the idea that people with, you know, some knowledge of systems can come in and redo it, like reorganize.
00:55:22.240Like, okay, so this doesn't work where we have it now.
00:55:47.940The state has no business, the state has no business in trying to fix things so that it works.
00:55:56.940Its job is to leave us all alone so we can fix things for ourselves.
00:56:02.500And that's a really hard thing for people to grasp today because that's not the way it works today.
00:56:08.400Those people who want to fix the problem, understandably, I admire their desire to fix the problem, but I don't want them to fix the problem.
00:56:16.100I want them to go and fix their own problems and to establish – the only real problem we have to fix is to establish a constitutional order that allows people to fix their own problems and to prevent the government from fixing them for them.
00:56:34.320Yeah, there's a large contingent, and this has, I'm sure, been by design over many, many generations of Canadian news media,
00:56:42.560but there's a large contingent of the Canadian population that truthfully, honestly, in their heart, believes that the people who are in government are there because they're the best people, they're the most intelligent, they're the best of us.
00:57:01.060They believe in technocratic expertise.
00:57:03.260If you were to ask them on, you know, take a person on the sidewalk, you know, what do you think government is for?
00:57:09.820They would be perplexed at the question, first of all, and then if you managed to get it out of them, they would say that, well, government is there to solve our problems for us, our social problems, our economic problems.
00:57:55.760Because we've taken up enough of this gentleman's time.
00:57:57.900So my first quote, I was thinking about this when, Bruce, when you were talking about how much of this is going to end up being a negotiation.
00:58:06.100And it reminded me of a Chris Voss quote where he said, he's that former FBI hostage negotiator that writes like business books now, if you're familiar.
00:58:15.280He, in his book, never split the difference.
00:58:18.100He, the quote that stuck out to me the most was, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take a better deal.
00:58:26.200So that's, that's what I'm, that's what I've got my fingers crossed for, for us.
00:58:29.460And then the question that I think I'd like to leave it off with, let's say that next year, Alberta has a referendum.