The Critical Compass Podcast - Rights and Freedoms ｜ Alberta United, The Collaborate Vision Series w⧸ Eva Chipiuk

00:00:00.000 as we just push this live we've got a special episode for you and a couple special guests

00:00:09.180 we've got Angela Tabak and Eva Chipiek and it's great to have them both on and today

00:00:16.040 we're talking about rights and freedoms let's see if we're live on yes we are live on YouTube we are

00:00:25.420 live on X which is great to hear so uh cool welcome everybody it's great to have you on

00:00:35.460 thank you thank you

00:00:38.380 Eva of course returning a friend of the channel it's been a little while since we've had you on

00:00:45.740 how are you oh just great um the courts are keeping us busy so involved in that

00:00:52.280 do you still sleep

00:00:54.440 you've been a busy bee

00:00:55.480 in the legal text

00:00:59.320 I won't give away my secret

00:01:01.220 the secret is no sleep

00:01:03.600 no we have to

00:01:09.000 you need balance in this kind of work

00:01:11.560 so that might be why

00:01:13.540 you haven't seen me as much

00:01:16.980 trying to make

00:01:17.720 something had to give and it was

00:01:18.960 appearing on the critical compass

00:01:20.420 well and others so I had I had these lovely ladies ask and I could not refuse

00:01:27.940 well we're so glad that you agreed to do it because I know you are so busy so this is going

00:01:34.520 to be a lot of fun tonight yeah and like there's lots of talk too it's nice to have so many

00:01:39.660 different voices popping up and I think that's just incredible and the diversity of views and

00:01:44.920 the discussion just as long as it's elevated and and you know everyone has an opportunity it's

00:01:52.880 that's the lovely part of being in a society is we all get to have our thoughts and talk about them

00:02:00.800 and decide as a group finally in the end how it's gonna go but we all have a voice so that's the fun

00:02:09.660 part yeah that's interesting because i actually remember specifically hearing that um uh discussing

00:02:15.820 and and asking questions was actually unconstitutional so oh asking questions yeah

00:02:22.500 so unconstitutional

00:02:25.160 yeah it's it's treasonous to some people to ask that's right

00:02:30.380 so yeah i guess especially that we're out of the petition period now and this is where a lot of

00:02:39.220 these discussions start and we laid the foundation for this and now Albertans really have a chance

00:02:47.020 to get engaged and this is why I'm so excited about our chat tonight so Angela what's uh can

00:02:53.860 you give us a little bit of a outline of what this series is um where this idea came from

00:02:59.280 and what we're covering tonight absolutely so I'll just quickly introduce myself so

00:03:06.340 My name is Angela Tabak, and I'm one of the co-founders of a group called the Alberta Women's

00:03:13.060 Intelligence Network. And we have been going around the province for a little over a year now.

00:03:19.920 And our whole intent is to engage with women mostly, but we do have men that come to our

00:03:25.580 meetings as well. But women who perhaps historically have never, like personally never

00:03:31.800 been involved in politics never really been a part of the discussion have kind

00:03:35.700 of shied away from it for whatever reason and so our focus is really on

00:03:42.000 education and respectful dialogue and building community that way all around

00:03:46.320 the idea of learning about Alberta independence and kind of what our

00:03:51.600 options are giving a message of hope that way so as we have been doing this

00:03:58.040 the last year we noticed that the same questions were coming up over and over again and while we

00:04:05.020 have heard a lot about the economic benefits of Alberta independence sometimes it seems like the

00:04:11.820 discussion is a little off balance in that that is like the main focus when there's actually a lot

00:04:19.100 of aspects that we need to consider as Albertans when it comes to making decisions about what do

00:04:25.260 we want an independent Alberta to look like? So a few months ago, I saw on Sean Newman,

00:04:33.820 there was, he was interviewing retired Colonel David Redman. And David Redman had written a

00:04:43.060 paper about the six national interests. And his paper was basically a call to Canada to come back

00:04:51.140 to start focusing again on these six national interests now eva happened to had done a a series

00:04:59.580 with him on those six national interests so i watched those and i was like oh my goodness

00:05:04.640 this really can be kind of the launching pad for the conversation in alberta at the same time we

00:05:13.280 had one of our ladies that we had picked up over this last year who has become very involved

00:05:18.940 with the Alberta Women's Independence Network.

00:05:21.840 She approached us and she said,

00:05:23.320 we need to have some kind of a speaker series,

00:05:26.760 some kind of an online thing where it can be live streamed

00:05:30.580 and people can come and ask questions

00:05:32.420 and we can have different speakers.

00:05:34.140 So we put the two of those concepts together

00:05:37.060 using Colonel Redmond's paper

00:05:39.160 and using this idea of having live streamed conversations

00:05:43.640 that hopefully people can watch live

00:05:46.140 and they can be involved in.

00:05:48.240 they can ask questions, make comments, that type of thing. And then if they're not able to do that,

00:05:54.080 then they can watch the recordings later. But just as a start to these really important

00:06:00.100 conversations. So tonight, we have Eva Chipiak with us. And one of the national interests that

00:06:08.040 we're going to be talking about is protection of rights and freedoms. And so there's obviously a

00:06:16.380 reason why we asked eva to join us and she's been so gracious because i know she's so busy

00:06:20.980 but she's been so gracious to join us and to kind of lend her expertise

00:06:25.100 to this topic so that's how we ended up here tonight

00:06:28.940 yeah and it's uh it's really great that we're diving in and i know eva you are very much

00:06:39.080 focused on the civic engagement piece and i i would love to just i guess touch on that when it

00:06:47.640 comes to rights and freedoms because without people exercising and stepping up and being

00:06:55.840 aware of their rights and freedoms and or fighting for them like they will essentially wither away

00:07:03.620 is that is that uh uh yeah is that accurate from your kind of uh your perspective yeah and i was

00:07:13.360 just trying to pull up which i should have added or asked you guys to pull up um just what david

00:07:18.300 redmond had for rights and freedoms i don't know if you have that um available yeah just i think

00:07:24.980 it's a good thing but the thing i had written before and it's funny that that's the first

00:07:28.560 question you asked of a hundred percent i'm all about civic engagement so getting educated

00:07:34.880 and involved is the way i believe we can affect change and i wrote this earlier responsibility

00:07:41.360 is the price of rights and i think that's maybe something we could take through um today um

00:07:47.680 because it's dandy to have rights but if we don't know what they are or what the limits are or how

00:07:56.000 we can use them, challenge people when we're saying, hey, I have this right, we're not

00:08:06.760 going to get very far.

00:08:07.680 So I think that responsibility is the price of rights is something that is an underlying

00:08:16.160 theme that I think we can use for today's discussion.

00:08:20.240 again this is straight out of david redmond's rights and freedoms interest

00:08:26.300 yeah pulled up the slide here um the uh yeah so we've got the individual rights and individual

00:08:37.600 property rights uh but when we're looking at the fundamental freedoms that's freedom of

00:08:42.460 conscience and religion freedom of thought belief opinion expression um freedom of peaceful assembly

00:08:49.380 and freedom of association then there's the democratic responsibilities and rights

00:08:54.640 mobility rights legal rights equality rights and then he's alluding touching on the charter

00:09:03.240 of rights and freedom which is meant to reinforce and define those rights um so that everybody is

00:09:09.960 on the the same page and maybe while we have this up i think it's worth because this is why i like

00:09:17.300 these discussions it's something we could and I'm with you Angela when and I'm sure that the

00:09:23.540 when you've been doing these discussions people keep just asking well what about this and what

00:09:27.700 about that and my answer is these are one these are wonderful questions and this is a great time

00:09:33.180 to have those discussions so you know these are David Redmond's rights and freedoms that he's

00:09:38.280 identified I think they're pretty pretty spot on but I think it's worth like having a bit of a

00:09:44.160 discussion if there's something even the four of us think oh I don't know if this is missing or

00:09:50.120 we need to be more strict with something else because we have you know a charter of rights

00:09:59.760 and freedoms in Canada one so we know how it's been working what works what doesn't work so we

00:10:06.260 have an opportunity to build on that the other thing is that there's a rights and freedoms

00:10:11.040 identified in other countries that we could learn from and use as examples so you know these are

00:10:17.020 kind of high level ones um and they could be um cleaned up a little bit more and property rights

00:10:27.420 is one thing I suspect we could talk about today a bit more and why and how that wasn't in the

00:10:32.700 charter in Canada so anyway just given that those few are up here I just wondered if there's any

00:10:40.660 thoughts or discussion and actually the one thing i would say too is if you um and then i'm going to

00:10:47.020 be putting james to work here as well is if you actually could pull up the canadian charter of

00:10:53.660 rights and freedoms it's actually very interesting to see what those rights are that um david redmond

00:11:00.940 has identified and compare it to the canadian rights uh charter of rights and freedoms

00:11:06.040 because i didn't really recognize this one until i looked at that pretty um demo that

00:11:15.440 canada had put out is those ones kind of make up less than and i don't know if people recognize

00:11:25.960 that in canada so is that is that the charter of rights that we're all that we agree with

00:11:34.160 as canadians or did something go amiss when it was drafted that there was half of it

00:11:41.100 not related to those few interests so if you see here on the right hand side it says

00:11:47.740 we'll just skip over the first one but then fundamental freedoms which was exactly what

00:11:52.560 david redmond had then it's democratic rights i think he had mobility rights

00:11:57.860 legal rights and that's democratic he had as well equality rights is into the second paragraph and

00:12:06.360 then you notice the second part on the left side is official language the next line minority

00:12:14.120 language then you have enforcement which is important some general application of charter

00:12:21.280 and then the the section 33 not with standing clause that i suspect most people don't really

00:12:27.640 understand it is a little difficult to understand but if you see a big chunk there official language

00:12:34.680 and minority minority language rights and look at how much just literal room it takes on the charter

00:12:42.060 so i just found that um really interesting i don't know if people have thought about that

00:12:49.200 or recognize that and i think that's worth having a conversation about in canada whether this is

00:12:56.160 exactly um the way it makes sense in 2026 that is yeah and okay i'm actually sorry go ahead

00:13:06.320 yay we got some shocking news

00:13:09.200 yeah i was kind of intrigued well and the reason okay so because i've been looking at colonel

00:13:19.120 redmond's paper and i mean i'm not a politician by any means or political scientist or anything

00:13:24.860 like that but in reading his papers you know he has a six national interests and um the first one

00:13:32.340 was unity and that's what we talked to him about on monday and then of course protection of rights

00:13:37.560 and freedoms is another one um and a few other ones good governance uh personal what is it

00:13:45.740 personal responsibility economic prosperity that type of thing and but he made the very strong

00:13:52.060 point that everything that our government does should be focused on those six national interests

00:13:59.800 now i asked him where did the six national interests come from like did he just make them

00:14:03.680 up because he thought they were good but he said no every nation has those same six national

00:14:10.700 interests but what differentiates us from other nations like communist china from a democratic

00:14:18.440 country would be what they have done to express those six national interests there you go thank

00:14:24.480 you how they express that those particular interests is what differentiates us from

00:14:31.340 a democratic country or a communist country that type of thing and so to see the charter of rights

00:14:38.380 and freedoms like there's a whole huge chunk in there that has nothing really to do with those

00:14:44.320 six national interests that might explain a lot about Canada and kind of where we are right now

00:14:50.160 yeah um and and if some are taking precedence over others and you know is that the intention

00:15:00.040 or where did where did things go awry so yeah I'm with you on that interesting and it does seem like

00:15:07.720 a lot of people, if we're kind of linking this back to independence, one of the motivating factors

00:15:15.700 outside of economic concerns is the erosion of rights and freedoms. I think COVID was a big

00:15:24.620 wake-up call for a lot of people. They saw what happened during COVID, and then they saw

00:15:30.120 how reluctant governments were to provide any actual justification for the suspension of

00:15:38.320 rights during that so that's one very fresh example where people are they they see this

00:15:45.480 and they don't want that replicated in a new alberta uh if we have a successful referendum

00:15:51.360 um so i i feel like people are wanting more enshrined rights that can't easily be taken away

00:16:01.080 um and that's a common thing we we hear yeah and maybe i'll just mention one thing because

00:16:10.160 you know we're quite a few years out and then one thing that challenges me sometimes is when

00:16:18.060 I hear people saying, you know, I was fired because of not getting vaccinated and we should be suing.

00:16:28.760 There needs to be a class action suing the government because they infringed on my rights.

00:16:35.120 And unless you were working for the government, you wouldn't sue the government for something your employer did.

00:16:43.180 And so this is why, to me, educating people on their rights is so important.

00:16:48.060 And having that basic understanding, because yes, 100% during COVID people started, their rights were affected, but via who? There was, of course, some lawsuits that were directed to the government for government action, like the federal travel mandate, and I still am not pleased with how that case ended, because the courts found that it was moot.

00:17:15.360 But on that point, that was a government action. And the government said that you need to have your vaccinations in order to get on planes, trains, boats in Canada.

00:17:29.700 So the arguments were made in court on mobility rights under the Charter, some other rights as well.

00:17:36.720 So that was directly associated with the government. But when somebody's rights to work, for example, or they were let go from their work, we have to understand that that's something different. And so just that basic understanding, I think, is a very important starting place sometimes.

00:17:58.180 that's interesting so eva a question i have then is if we were to have if we are successful in our

00:18:12.440 referendum and we are to create an independent alberta what are some very particular things

00:18:18.100 that you would put in place to ensure that we don't end up back kind of where we are right

00:18:26.460 now in Canada where there has been some erosion of rights or where those the charter rights were

00:18:31.500 in many times completely ignored or violated yeah so now maybe if we could pull it up again James

00:18:38.640 the charter because it was the one I skipped over this to help explain why some of these rights were

00:18:47.060 eroded is there some wording in section one of the charter you have these nice rights starting

00:18:53.340 at Section 2, Fundamental Freedoms, but Section 1, and thank you for making it bigger,

00:18:59.680 oh, just Section 1 right there, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the

00:19:05.360 rights and freedoms set out in subject, set out in a subject only to reasonable limits prescribed

00:19:14.520 by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society so section one is a very

00:19:24.380 important section to understand and that so how it works in canada is you say okay let's look at

00:19:34.340 mobility rights every citizen of canada has the right to enter remain and leave canada that's

00:19:42.460 a right that's there it's absolute it's very clear and so as a citizen you have to demonstrate

00:19:50.640 that your right to enter remain in and leave Canada has been infringed okay that's what we

00:19:59.740 were doing in court with the travel mandate so that's the onus on the citizens to show that that

00:20:05.860 right was breached, infringed, affected. That was relatively easy to do in the travel mandate case

00:20:13.800 because people couldn't move in Canada. But then the onus turns on the government imposing and

00:20:21.640 breaching the section. And then if you go back up to one, they can then show that to the court

00:20:29.240 that there is a reasonable limit and it could be demonstrably justified that that breach is okay

00:20:38.000 and so we didn't get that far in the travel mandate case but in other cases that we were

00:20:44.260 seeing over the covid period that's that's how it works so you have to show there's a breach

00:20:50.560 and then the government has an opportunity to say hey hey we tried our best we had to do this

00:20:57.160 That's Section 1. And so there's a test under that one that courts utilize, and they were quite willing to allow the government those breaches because they said it was justified under Section 1.

00:21:15.720 So one thing that could easily, very quickly change the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is perhaps not having something like Section 1.

00:21:29.660 So then, yeah, go ahead.

00:21:32.800 Is there any, just to play devil's advocate, is there any, like, positive utility you can see in having something like a Section 1?

00:21:43.280 like is there anything that's you know it's I think just from how we've seen it used I think

00:21:49.780 it is sort of you know a fail a government fail safe a get out of jail free card essentially

00:21:54.860 can you make any steel man case for why it exists or why it might be reasonable for it to exist

00:22:01.140 yeah of course and originally it was in in good it was used in in better ways

00:22:09.340 unfortunately during covid it was just emergency we tried our best and kind of hands up

00:22:15.340 um but i think that through this period we've learned that maybe that's not necessary is that

00:22:24.580 i think there's other ways to get around it instead it doesn't have to be enshrined in the

00:22:30.480 charter um cases can then be developed through common law and we can have an understanding

00:22:36.780 but to give that kind of carte blanche it looks like to the government i don't know if that's

00:22:44.820 that was the original intention and it certainly wasn't used that way prior to covid as far as i

00:22:51.140 can see in in a sense some of these uh it feels like this works when you have engaged citizens

00:23:01.300 and you have a certain level of trust between citizens and a government.

00:23:06.680 And I think one hurdle right now is that trust isn't there.

00:23:10.500 So I think people have the tendency to want to reduce scope of government

00:23:16.260 because it would essentially reduce the amount that they can interfere with one's life.

00:23:22.780 So I think the trust piece is a in Canada, people in Alberta feel like the trust has been broken and that's a hard that's a hard sell.

00:23:36.240 And but I think Alberta, upon a successful referendum, that trust would be in a different situation.

00:23:44.540 But I was going to say that we're in a unique situation right now that the petition and the referendum that's coming up, it is getting people more engaged in 2026 than we've seen for a long time.

00:24:02.420 So if this is getting people more aware of Canada's history, more aware of the Charter as it currently stands, more aware of Confederation, then that is not a bad thing, regardless of whatever direction this goes.

00:24:16.280 And regardless if you're in Alberta or if you're in Ontario, this conversation is still valuable.

00:24:24.920 Yeah. Agreed.

00:24:29.000 Yeah, that's a really good point, James.

00:24:31.100 And I think that, you know, the more engaged that you have people, you know, the citizenry, the more engaged they are, the more accountable our government becomes.

00:24:44.560 And they can't get away with as much.

00:24:47.240 And perhaps we were all a little asleep at the wheel before COVID.

00:24:50.300 I don't know.

00:24:50.840 I know I was.

00:24:52.260 I had no idea.

00:24:54.840 I mean, I knew some things were off.

00:24:56.420 But, wow, COVID really was the thing that kind of woke me up.

00:25:01.100 yeah and then for a lot of us yeah and another point that you know um apart from section one

00:25:10.160 and then you know the parts that maybe don't aren't as i don't know important in a perhaps

00:25:17.940 independent alberta like minority language rights another part that i think is important for

00:25:24.540 the discussion to go is how important it is for courts to be accessible and transparent because

00:25:30.940 it's good to have these rights and for citizens to challenge them but one thing that i'm trying

00:25:38.160 to talk about as much as i can is how important it is to have open and transparent court systems

00:25:44.220 i like to watch sometimes courts in the united states and i hear people talking about traffic

00:25:51.080 court in the united states you could watch that online in canada we still have to go to the court

00:25:59.760 in order to watch it of course it's all open and accessible all the time unless there's some kind

00:26:03.840 of publication ban but with the technology we have now I don't see why on earth we don't have

00:26:10.540 more of the courts live streaming they can record them in the United States obviously you see clips

00:26:19.120 of them all over the media all the time in Canada that's not allowed and it's a big faux pas right

00:26:25.400 now in a lot of the cases I've been working on we've always been asking for the court to make

00:26:32.080 them public because of the big public interest that's involved so they can make it available

00:26:37.700 but that's the exception not the rule and I think that that needs to be flipped that's also a way

00:26:44.900 people like just by watching that you learn immediately more about your rights you learn

00:26:51.200 immediately more about the system just by watching it so I think that gets people more educated

00:26:56.920 involved and also and maybe this is why it doesn't happen so much is there's a spotlight

00:27:03.940 on the decision makers so they're there people can see what's going on what kind of decisions

00:27:12.800 are being made how people are being treated and I think that helps again right now we don't you

00:27:21.020 don't see it unless you go to court and i can tell you from being in court quite a bit the last few

00:27:25.680 years not a lot of people are there so if nobody's um watching with and holding these people to

00:27:35.580 account that's not a good sign either i think so it's fine and dandy to have rights but we also

00:27:43.480 have to be transparent when they're being applied does that does that feed evan your general theme

00:27:50.740 about a general level of apathy

00:27:56.340 that sort of is pervasive in the Canadian public

00:27:59.660 to their rights and freedoms?

00:28:01.620 I don't know if I would put this onto the apathy

00:28:04.140 because it's not easy to go to court.

00:28:06.600 Like if you're in Vegreville or Lethbridge

00:28:08.500 or Medicine Hat or somewhere,

00:28:10.320 and they have courts, sorry, don't get me wrong,

00:28:13.480 but lots of the big cases would be in Edmonton or Calgary.

00:28:17.240 So you'd have to travel.

00:28:18.360 It's also not super convenient.

00:28:20.740 I think that that one, I wouldn't ascribe to apathy. I also think that people are very

00:28:27.620 intimidated with the legal system and going to court, all of that stuff. I certainly was at

00:28:33.880 first, and I still am. You know, there's a hierarchy, there's procedures. And even that's

00:28:41.480 something that people could see. Sometimes judges are not really nice, even when somebody brings a

00:28:47.660 coffee so I don't think that's necessary to disparage or diminish people in attendance I

00:28:55.360 don't think that helps the administration of justice and people's understanding then of course

00:29:01.080 like if you're getting admonished for having a coffee and you didn't know that was the role also

00:29:05.400 is it so bad to have a cup of coffee in the courtroom I don't don't know why that role is

00:29:11.120 there like at least let's have a conversation about this let's talk about these things I think

00:29:15.840 there's more things we have to worry about than a coffee in the courtroom. But that's a serious no

00:29:21.600 no. And then people I don't think would will be interested to come again after they've been

00:29:27.240 told off in front of others. So, you know, these are things that we should be having discussions

00:29:34.460 about. And I don't know if I don't think I've ever heard anybody have a discussion about

00:29:39.420 having more accessible courts and transparency in courts the one thing that courts are really

00:29:49.040 good at but then this also takes a lot of time and I also can't describe it to apathy judges make

00:29:55.780 very long and thought-out decisions and that's the good part and they have to do that as part of

00:30:02.520 their work like if they're looking at a charter being breached they go through it in detail and

00:30:10.320 then they talk about how section one applies and they go in that to that in detail like the case

00:30:16.880 for example on whether or not invoking the emergencies act was constitutional was I think

00:30:27.600 200 pages long so that's also really intimidating for anybody to read that's a lot it's not the

00:30:36.020 easiest language to read I think by if you're watching it you're observing it then you kind

00:30:42.260 of get a better understanding but then if you just get like 200 pages to read at the end of it you're

00:30:47.760 like what on earth is this I have to go buy some bread I don't have time for this you know like so

00:30:54.840 I don't think I would ascribe that to apathy the court system could be a lot more friendly

00:31:02.240 it could be a lot more open and accessible and I think that the legal profession I actually just

00:31:07.960 admonish them a little bit today on social media could have played a much better role in during

00:31:16.500 this COVID time helped people understand their rights help them elevate the conversation but

00:31:23.220 instead it looks like a lot a lot was ideologically and politically driven as well

00:31:28.300 so when it comes to the judiciary in the courts so you're saying more transparency

00:31:36.580 more accessibility more user-friendly maybe I guess would be a word like just make it friendlier

00:31:43.500 for people not so intimidating is there anything else that you would change in an independent

00:31:48.020 Alberta what would you change in the judiciary you know sometimes we hear um oh we should elect

00:31:54.660 our judges that's an idea I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or other ideas well my thought

00:32:02.040 is let's have a conversation about it because I think that's another great conversation to have

00:32:06.580 and again just looking at the United States um they elect I uh I think quite a bit but on the

00:32:14.180 Supreme Court at least it's appointed but what happens in the Supreme Court and again I've watched

00:32:20.660 this on TV is that the Congress I think they get to question the Supreme Court justice nominees

00:32:27.420 and so you get a flavor of who that person is and then the people have an opportunity to dialogue

00:32:33.980 about that in Canada all week like you get this like memo and just today actually Minister Sean

00:32:42.000 fraser whoever it is now the minister of justice in canada appointed a judge in alberta and it's

00:32:49.700 just a memo that goes out and then he's an appointed judge in alberta and you the public

00:32:55.620 doesn't have an opportunity to learn about who this person is via like a question answer period

00:33:02.100 that's televised and you see how they're responding in real time they don't have an opportunity to buy

00:33:09.180 in and say hey you know and then and then engage with their elected officials and say that was a

00:33:14.420 really bad pick i don't really agree with that or whatever so then on the next uh uh judicial

00:33:21.080 appointment there could there could be that dialogue but we have again none of that i i

00:33:25.880 am kind of agnostic on whether or not judges should be elected or appointed right now but i

00:33:33.960 I would love to have that conversation. And I would love to hear the pros and cons about it.

00:33:40.120 Some people have even talked about term limits for judges. That I think is a little bit weird,

00:33:45.840 to be honest, because once you're a judge, you're kind of excluded from society because you're in

00:33:52.740 that kind of decision maker role. So they kind of have to take a step back and distance themselves

00:34:01.120 so that they can remain unbiased and all that stuff.

00:34:07.440 And so I don't see how that really makes sense.

00:34:10.300 But I'm happy to hear the discussion as well.

00:34:13.200 And then as an educated and informed citizenry,

00:34:17.460 we could then make those decisions.

00:34:19.500 But I think that's a really good option.

00:34:24.880 At least televise who these people are so we know.

00:34:28.280 yeah that would be nice yeah and it's interesting like i enjoy the ones that i see in the united

00:34:35.780 states um again you learn you learn they talk about cases that they've ruled on and so you

00:34:42.820 you again start to understand a little bit more about the process what the case was about or why

00:34:48.300 they ruled the way they did and again that's educating um the citizenry just through that

00:34:55.240 discussion so i was gonna say the uh we we recently chatted with michael wagner and he's

00:35:04.660 talking about kind of the history of how how things shifted but before 1982 when the charter

00:35:11.800 of rights and freedoms came into play and one of his points he was kind of reflecting on is that

00:35:18.760 that shifted Canada to being to have rather than the supremacy of the legislators now it's now the

00:35:25.940 supremacy of the courts in a way where these courts are now like obviously they're supposed

00:35:32.760 to be a checks they're supposed to be providing a check and balance but maybe that kind of ties

00:35:41.360 into why people are either either you take away a certain amount of supremacy from the courts or

00:35:48.000 you have the elected accountability because if you do not have like if they cannot coexist then

00:35:54.680 essentially you have a unaccountable in a in a sense like an unaccountable arm of the government

00:36:01.720 that like this can distort these laws from how they appear in the legislator and i know

00:36:10.300 they're supposed to interpret and be a check check and balance but i i think we're seeing

00:36:15.140 examples of of things being maybe courts overstepping a little bit which could still

00:36:22.580 be addressed by this accountability factor of like televising more of these courtrooms having

00:36:29.920 more people engaged um having more eyes on it would prevent abuse but i i think also then the

00:36:38.540 question is like how much power should courts have and and what would like a proper check and

00:36:44.880 balance look like yeah well those are good points the one thing i would just make uh too is supremacy

00:36:51.200 from the legislature to supremacy of courts i haven't heard that but it more so supremacy of

00:36:56.640 the constitution is what what is argued because it was the constitution that was come into place

00:37:03.040 i guess i could see what he's saying with that um what i would say too in response is and i think

00:37:10.280 this goes to what angela was saying we were asleep at the wheel and i think that there's so many um

00:37:15.980 like steps and checks and balances that are available to us easily like more accessible

00:37:25.120 courts and more transparent and friendly courts then going all the way to the end and saying you

00:37:30.660 know they're they're uh that there's so much judicial advocacy um and activism which i don't

00:37:37.900 necessarily disagree with but i like i do think it would be limited um if people can see it

00:37:44.700 straight up um the other thing is and i think this is what happened during covid is we saw a lot of

00:37:54.980 the faults in the system and now we're looking for a perfect system and i hate to break it to

00:38:03.220 everybody watching but there is no perfect system um so it's all about being understanding first

00:38:10.820 the problem so yes uh things went haywire over covid and the fact that we're still trying to

00:38:18.460 get some redress it affects me personally every day um but the first place to with all of that

00:38:26.420 would have been the political branch we re-elected in many cases the same people

00:38:34.100 that imposed these mandates so to to turn to the court and say that that was the failure

00:38:40.740 um i think that's the next step most of the issues we had were could have been

00:38:47.100 should have been addressed politically in alberta we did see that happen premier jason kenney

00:38:55.440 got ousted but look at what's happening he's like making a comeback and he's speaking this weekend

00:39:02.760 at a conference and talking about Alberta independence it's like sorry you literally

00:39:09.720 imposed health mandates that were found to be illegal so let's not sorry the microphone is

00:39:18.360 no longer in in front of you and you don't have this moral high ground anymore so but we're still

00:39:25.780 but he's still credible he still has them and people are still listening so that does not make

00:39:32.320 sense to me uh the courts actually found there was an issue and yet still politically he has

00:39:40.700 currency and that doesn't make sense to me because that's something that's where it's either the

00:39:47.980 apathy or the misunderstanding of citizens i don't know how to fix that one um but that is

00:39:57.280 very strange to me to say the least we've talked a little bit on this show about how it seems like

00:40:03.460 um i i promise this is related um if you ever go to like a tim hortons in another country

00:40:09.840 uh like there's lots in europe and there's lots in there's even some in asia and some in the u.s

00:40:14.600 oh yeah okay and you'll find that actually the food in those tim hortons is actually excellent

00:40:19.040 like it's it's it's very well made it's it's kind of catered to the local interests and the and it's

00:40:24.140 it's high quality food and then we get served slop here because we'll buy it you know the

00:40:28.880 canadians i think are have chronically low uh low standards and they are willing to accept

00:40:35.200 uh the most bottom of the barrel stuff i don't know if it's out of a out of an um perceived need

00:40:41.600 to be polite or accommodating or something like this but i think that bleeds into our politics

00:40:46.540 where we're like you know the average person is like jason kenny i remember that name that's a

00:40:51.480 politician's name you know and it you don't ever like get the the more in-depth conversation about

00:40:56.180 that like another jace uh justin trudeau like running around right now with katie parry like

00:41:04.500 he should be embarrassed we should have this canadians embarrassed him out of any uh social

00:41:11.040 limelight and instead he's parading around the world and it it's nauseating like that's the

00:41:17.660 that's my biggest frustration is when finally they're exposed and courts have ruled against

00:41:25.280 their behavior and it's still like nothing happened so so I wouldn't put put it all on

00:41:32.540 the courts that's for sure politically there needs to be a lot more accountability and what I love

00:41:39.220 about what's going on is you really see citizens engaged on that aspect and I do hope that a lot

00:41:46.300 more citizens get involved not just in this conversation but running and that's I think

00:41:54.180 that's what we need there was this political class and kind of this elitist class and I actually was

00:42:00.940 listening to Russell Brandt and Tucker Carlson and he just announced that he's going to be running

00:42:06.840 for mayor of london in 2028 you see spencer pratt in uh los angeles running for mayor and like

00:42:14.800 these are just regular people not at all like never interested in politics that are just like

00:42:21.620 enough is enough people need to have a say this is not working this political class and elitist

00:42:28.440 class is not doing us a favor so we have to start taking control here and and being the ones that

00:42:36.640 are governing not just allowing ourselves to be governed. Eva I think you bring up so many good

00:42:42.800 points and it reminded me of so in the 2023 provincial election I actually ran as an

00:42:52.180 independent because my MLA was a huge Kenny supporter and during COVID I tried to reach

00:43:01.020 him so many times to express some concern about you know what I was seeing happening to the young

00:43:05.600 people in my life due to the mandates and the interruption in their education that type of thing

00:43:12.020 I finally got a hold of my MLA and we kind of had it out because he was quite adamant that this was

00:43:20.720 the best they could do that they were doing what they were supposed to do so it was really

00:43:25.100 interesting when I ran you know I had the opportunity to go door to door and speak to people

00:43:30.460 and so often i heard folks say and i hate to categorize anyone but it was mostly older people

00:43:38.760 who said well they did the best they could and at that time when they would say that i would

00:43:45.560 actually pull out the alberta government's pandemic plan which was sitting on their website during

00:43:53.160 the whole thing in covid and i printed it off and i pulled it out and i said

00:43:57.640 this was the plan and they ignored it like how do you feel about that and for a lot of people that

00:44:06.860 was like oh my goodness I didn't even know that existed and when I brought it up to my MLA he

00:44:12.200 didn't even know that existed yeah um and I'm afraid that you know like I know where I live 0.98

00:44:19.040 there's a lot of older people and they almost use it as a flex especially the women they'll say oh

00:44:26.700 i don't talk about politics like as if it's that was some kind of a refined way to live or something 0.54

00:44:34.280 and i'm like do you understand that you have just basically and going back to your point

00:44:41.860 about responsibility is the price of rights by by saying i don't talk about politics

00:44:48.900 you have just given up your ability to defend your rights yeah because it's the politicians

00:44:57.700 that are going that will do what we saw during covid that will run roughshod over those rights

00:45:03.700 if we allow them to yeah and and once on that i i can understand the you know when people say i

00:45:11.560 don't talk about politics because it's been so divided and really unpleasant but i'm trying to

00:45:18.520 use the word civic engagement as much as i can because civic engagement is our responsibility

00:45:25.280 in a democracy and if we're not engaged uh civically then we're not living in a democracy

00:45:31.020 it's as simple as that so um maybe that's the way to frame it sometimes too because yeah politics

00:45:37.860 has a lot of and and it has been dirty and it has been unpleasant and you know life is hard and and

00:45:45.060 people play dirty so you have to understand that too that's part of politics but civic engagement

00:45:50.460 on the side of citizens to say I don't get involved in that the other thing I would say is

00:45:55.600 politics affects everything in our life how fast the speed zones are how what time you could go

00:46:04.100 and have a drink at the restaurant what time airplanes are going in and out what is in our

00:46:12.020 food like literally everything is affected so to say that you're not uh you don't talk about

00:46:21.200 politics okay but it affects everything in your life so maybe i think that's key one question is

00:46:31.720 then um how large of a government is necessary so it like do we need a bloated government

00:46:41.840 to control pretty much every part of our lives or like what would a lean government look like and

00:46:49.180 um i guess this is where a lot of albertans are they've observed a little bit of bureaucratic

00:46:58.040 bloat in canada and kind of observing the tendency that once you have institutions

00:47:04.180 they will grow above and beyond their original scope um maybe there isn't the same

00:47:12.340 like use of kind of downsizing that the private sector is pretty ruthless when it comes to

00:47:19.400 downsizing a company that is not necessary but government it seems like you have these um pseudo

00:47:27.100 So these arms of the government that maybe they go unchecked, maybe they are left to just spend money and there's no good paper trail, there's no good accountability, and it's just wasted taxpayer money.

00:47:47.400 So as the government gets larger, they have a larger capacity to interfere with their lives.

00:47:53.240 So my question to you is, like, what is an ideal size and scope of a government then?

00:48:01.580 Well, it's funny because, and I should have said this to Angela, when I had that conversation with David Redman, I always kept going to good governance.

00:48:10.560 That's my default with it.

00:48:12.680 All of the national interests.

00:48:14.260 And we're doing that again.

00:48:16.360 And I, again, don't have the answer, James.

00:48:19.600 Obviously, I think that we need less government than more, and there's good reason for that.

00:48:27.540 But again, my answer would be transparency and openness with our system.

00:48:34.280 I just think it would make perfect sense, and I don't even know why we haven't demanded this more already,

00:48:42.540 is all transactions should basically be public.

00:48:48.620 It's public funds. That should be open and transparent immediately when an expense is being made by the public. It should be accessible to the public to see. Again, like I mentioned with the courts, there's some exceptions, but that should be the exception, not the norm.

00:49:07.120 we shouldn't be begging the government to show us five years later what the spending is and then

00:49:13.900 I think very quickly we could analyze whether or not some of the programs we have make sense or if

00:49:19.320 we're getting the value for our money the other thing as we all know as individuals or a family

00:49:25.740 we can't exceed our budgets but so why are we allowing the government to do that and this is

00:49:32.760 the thing i think this goes to your point mike is the kind of slop i'm gonna use uh the word that

00:49:40.380 we're getting is i think most canadians don't mind having social services and paying for those social

00:49:48.400 services what i don't understand in canada right now is that we're paying very premium prices

00:49:54.540 for public services that are basically garbage going to a hospital right now and it doesn't

00:50:03.460 matter whether it's a NEP-led province or a conservative province our health care system

00:50:10.520 is not in good shape at all and why why on earth are we okay with that why on earth are we okay

00:50:19.480 with that the kind of spending that we're spending to get this kind of literal garbage um and i think

00:50:26.140 that's the conversation we need to have and that's you'll get the answer very quickly when

00:50:33.600 and there's there's already been quite a bit of assessments on showing how much for example in

00:50:39.560 germany that this one lady susan martin chuck i think is her name um and she wrote in the calgary

00:50:46.880 herald a number of articles that she was showing germany and canada spend this same amount i think

00:50:58.480 it is and i might be getting it wrong now but there's 10 times more in administrative

00:51:04.220 expenses in canada versus germany so that that's in germany it's going straight to services or

00:51:15.280 doctors whereas in Canada it's going to bureaucracy so we don't even need to assess whether or not we

00:51:23.840 need it we could see in Germany a more efficient and better system is working on less money so

00:51:30.260 but those middle managers need to eat what's that those middle managers need to eat too

00:51:36.240 yeah well the thing I would say too and it's not like I want to you know disparage these people

00:51:43.260 but there's going to be other opportunities like that's the thing i don't get is when people are

00:51:47.500 like well they need a job okay but there are other jobs that will be available and you know maybe we

00:51:54.540 could actually talk about health in the healthcare system instead of just um reactive solutions so

00:52:00.860 maybe some of those managers can do some of that well we we certainly have a problem in this in

00:52:07.320 this country of um you know they sometimes talk about in social psychology um truth filters

00:52:14.340 versus consensus filters how people parse information and um and i think we have a

00:52:21.400 so so if for example somebody parses information through a truth filter they their primary concern

00:52:26.840 when they hear a piece of information is is this is this piece of information true and then we can

00:52:31.460 make a decision based on that value if it's true or false and then you have people who parse

00:52:36.860 information through consensus filters and their their primary goal when they hear a piece of

00:52:41.120 information is what will people think of me if I say that this information is true and so Canadians

00:52:48.240 I think there still is a very high level of wanting to be perceived as what the they think

00:52:57.240 the common perception of a good person is or a nice person or a kind person when often those

00:53:03.720 um that is that is part of what causes the issue in the first place you know we we want to be

00:53:09.280 nice we want to be accommodating we want everyone to have nice things and uh and we all want it to

00:53:14.100 be free although we don't have it we don't have it to give we just don't have it to give that's

00:53:20.500 right and so rather than acknowledging that yeah it's easier for people to live in the fantasy land

00:53:25.460 yeah that's really interesting clearly i i don't live to through the consensus

00:53:29.960 we need more of that

00:53:37.720 they want to bring up uh this comment here suggestion a future model of constitutional

00:53:44.620 rights needs to have mechanisms in place to scrutinize any proposed legislation

00:53:49.200 to ensure that it's compliant with the new constitution that's from uh

00:53:54.980 aaron snell uh 997 and i'm wondering if that can be if what he's saluting to is something

00:54:04.580 woven in i don't know if it's like a technological piece or just a

00:54:08.660 like something that collects public collects and consolidates public feedback in a way that it's

00:54:15.300 forced to be addressed um i'm just plugging it in in in the legislator um

00:54:24.260 so yeah there's given that we're in 2026 like it's not like we have to rely on mailing paper

00:54:33.880 out for communication to be to to get through like there are i think there's some technical

00:54:41.040 technological ways that we could weave in accountability let it be you you alluded to the

00:54:48.960 the paper like the the digital trail like the accountability matrix for every dollar spent

00:54:56.360 um and if that's a public ledger ledger like the more transparent that is the better

00:55:02.420 uh and also just a way to consolidate all this feedback i know some people are writing into

00:55:09.720 their like mps and mlas when when a bill comes up but is there a way to aggregate or when there's

00:55:19.420 similar concerns to see a volume of that or a way of quantifying or um yeah i'm wondering if there's

00:55:25.720 a something that we could weave in so i don't know what your thoughts are on that to me i think a

00:55:32.920 little vets um i'm always the worst with the sayings but once the horse is out of the barn

00:55:40.780 maybe um and so did i get that one right um but that's so we elect representatives to enact laws

00:55:51.720 um and then if we're going to be questioning or having a check-in balance at that point to me it

00:55:57.300 seems a bit late in the process um what I would suggest and I think most of the things we're

00:56:05.420 talking about are in my book and I wrote to help educate and elevate people is the importance of

00:56:11.480 referenda and uh we're having this conversation now and look at what's going on the thing is in

00:56:18.680 Alberta or Canada too it's like we've been asleep at the wheel which we've already talked about and

00:56:24.160 it's like we could have been doing citizen initiatives although the threshold was high

00:56:28.720 before on a number of issues and making making that democratic well known to the government

00:56:35.300 um but we kind of went from nothing to then a ton of them at least the left really used those to do

00:56:41.960 recalls and all that stuff but now for uh we're just going to create our own nation but maybe we

00:56:48.720 could have had a citizen-led initiative for better public accountability on public spending

00:56:53.680 courts being transparent term limits not something we talked about but i know it comes up a lot all

00:56:59.080 of these things are um citizen-led petitions that we could have done and so that's another point i

00:57:05.020 would say is um referenda are a great way to get the people's voices out um and it doesn't have to

00:57:12.540 be once in a blue moon on the most you know controversial subject that a province is going

00:57:18.220 to put forward like the independence one um and you see that with like daniel smith has put in a

00:57:24.800 number of them and i i criticized it at first too because like i said we're going from nothing

00:57:31.460 to now those nine with subtext and if and i found them really confusing too um if we're not used to

00:57:39.800 that kind of participate participatory democracy maybe throwing 10 different questions at citizens

00:57:47.340 at one time all kind of related subjects might not be the best way to move forward on it there's

00:57:53.780 a lot of countries like switzerland for example my understanding is they do four to seven referenda

00:57:59.820 citizen-led referenda a year it's a very normal part of the process citizens are actively engaged

00:58:10.180 60% of the citizen-led referenda become law so that is a great turnout clearly it's something

00:58:21.340 that's working and we don't have to reinvent the wheel I think that's where one thing I was going

00:58:27.980 to say too is that seems like a good point to have a check and balance on proposed legislation but

00:58:34.520 my suspicion if we go back to apathy is we might not get people involved at that stage and I do

00:58:42.760 think it will be a little bit late in the game but there's a huge opportunity to be more proactive

00:58:48.540 and again just because I listened to it today the Russell Branton Tucker conversation is he said if

00:58:55.000 he becomes the mayor of London he basically wants it to be all participatory democracy he's like

00:59:04.420 with the technology we have right now I don't know I don't want to be the one always making

00:59:08.960 decisions I want the people to make decisions and he said uh populism has gotten such a uh like

00:59:16.220 has been viewed so poorly but should we be looking at it so badly instead we have um like you know

00:59:24.940 mob rule mentality has kind of taken they're suggesting that that's not the way to go but

00:59:32.500 maybe we need to have these conversations or at least give people an opportunity to contemplate

00:59:37.760 these things have discussions around these things and instead of just saying we got this we know

00:59:43.400 better don't don't you worry we got this that's what's gotten us into this place so let's worry

00:59:50.420 let's have these conversations even though they're uncomfortable and difficult sometimes but

00:59:56.660 let's start asking questions oh i totally agree eva and i really think that from

01:00:03.240 the conversations i've had over the last year um i really think that the apathy stems from a feeling

01:00:11.020 of my vote doesn't matter it doesn't matter i can write a letter to my mla i'm not going to get a

01:00:16.940 response or i can try and call my mp's office they may or may not get back to me um and as

01:00:23.100 Albertans you know a lot of us feel like well what's the point of even voting in a federal

01:00:27.440 election because they've already called the election before they even open up our ballot boxes

01:00:31.600 and so I think and this has been something that has just been really exciting to me

01:00:35.760 is seeing people get involved in the conversation around Alberta independence

01:00:41.540 having these kinds of conversations and realizing hey it doesn't have to be that way

01:00:47.380 um switzerland comes up all the time now again there's no perfect system um i've looked into it

01:00:54.240 a little bit there's some interesting history there um there would have to be some some kinds

01:00:59.840 of checks and balances put in place and maybe switzerland has fixed some of the historical

01:01:04.240 problems now they're they're uh the swiss women did not get the vote until the 1970s 0.98

01:01:11.320 due to their their process you know like so two and three generations behind the rest of the 1.00

01:01:17.640 western world type of thing and it was as a direct result of that particular system so you would have

01:01:23.660 to kind of have some kind of a constitution or charter of rights behind it um is my understanding

01:01:30.080 anyways but it's can i throw something at you though angela yeah it's funny the matter of fact

01:01:38.920 way you said you know women didn't have a right until 1970 so is that right did I get that wrong

01:01:47.680 no no in that like oh my gosh I can't believe it and this is going to be me playing the devil's

01:01:54.880 advocate a little bit in that maybe we should be thinking and having a conversation of what

01:02:03.440 should make us entitled to vote because that's something in canada right now it's like anybody

01:02:10.040 can vote anybody that literally is breathing can vote if they're over 18 i think that's the

01:02:16.140 only requirement if you're in jail charged and convicted of murder you can vote and that was a

01:02:24.960 supreme court decision it does that make sense i don't know perhaps we should have a conversation

01:02:31.300 about it are they contributing to society like you know and that was part of the chart everyone

01:02:35.720 has a democratic vote the end when we were in court on uh the independence petition and it was

01:02:42.160 the question of what's constitutional what's not i purposely put this example in before the judge

01:02:49.340 that maybe people over the age of 60 should not vote and i did that on purpose thinking that

01:02:58.440 the judge was probably over 60 and a number of the lawyers were over 60 and i'm like

01:03:04.340 thinking as somebody under 50 well you fellas had your chance and maybe the voice should be

01:03:11.380 with the younger generation now do i think this is correct i don't know but i think we should be

01:03:17.220 able to have a conversation because originally in canada i'm sure you know too you could only vote

01:03:23.120 if you were over 18 male that owned property so you were invested in the country does that make

01:03:31.080 sense i don't know um i also you you talk to people that don't understand if they're going

01:03:39.240 to vote for a municipal election what the municipal government is in charge of so perhaps

01:03:46.500 there could be uh two questions is does the municipal government do uh foreign policy

01:03:54.900 decisions or do they clean up the road and if people can't respond to that perhaps they shouldn't

01:04:02.020 vote i don't know that but it's a good discussion to have we have to have these discussions i think 0.96

01:04:08.580 it's a fair discussion and so it was funny you said that because that came up with the female

01:04:13.700 judge in the last one Justice Leonard that she said something about oh if you put it forward as

01:04:20.700 a citizen-led petition that only women can vote and I was like let's have that conversation I

01:04:28.040 don't care if that's the referendum question I just think as citizens we should be able to have

01:04:34.480 the discussion because by suppressing it it's causing me a lot of anxiety because nobody is

01:04:41.680 talking about anything anymore and they're just yelling at each other so why dismiss and discourage

01:04:47.560 these conversations I find them highly interesting I want to hear people's perspectives perhaps I'm

01:04:55.060 crazy perhaps I'm not but I'd like to get that feedback and that's always how I am so it's

01:05:01.700 interesting to me that people don't like to hear those kind of discussions but yeah that's come up

01:05:07.260 so I just thought I would throw that at you and Switzerland didn't okay maybe there was a good

01:05:13.560 reason for that but I don't know what it is but let's talk about well it was interesting to look

01:05:18.000 into the history of it but the and the beauty of referenda is that there is a check and balance in

01:05:23.680 there so if somebody let's say I decided to go full feminist or whatever and I'm like yeah I'm 0.99

01:05:29.540 gonna I'm gonna start a referendum on you know only women should be able to vote yeah I would

01:05:35.500 not get very far because people around me would be like that is crazy and but i i still should 0.99

01:05:44.020 have the right to put it out there and find out if i'm crazy or not that was literally our argument

01:05:48.520 angela in front of the courts so that's what we've been dealing with this whole time is just

01:05:52.960 let people have the say and if it's a silly proposition it's not going to get very far

01:05:58.880 yeah yeah we saw the recall petitions recently that didn't go and it's the same thing there's

01:06:05.480 those checks and balances built into the very system yeah exactly so eva i wanted to ask you

01:06:12.820 um this is another question that was in the chat from from a little while ago um i'll i'll wrap it

01:06:18.860 up in a little bow here so uh oftentimes rights are viewed in terms of negative or positive rights

01:06:24.540 So you have, I'm not explaining this to you, but to our viewers, so like a negative right

01:06:29.940 viewed as would be something like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, where essentially

01:06:33.640 it's talking about basically what the law bearer can't impose upon you.

01:06:41.960 Basically, you have the freedom to speak and the freedom to have your religion free from

01:06:46.900 interference.

01:06:48.800 And then people talk about positive rights, the things that you are entitled to.

01:06:52.460 so oftentimes people think that you know we have a right to health care or food or clean water

01:06:57.380 things like this do um just to bring it back to the charter um we saw earlier how much uh physical

01:07:06.720 real estate is devoted to language laws and uh somehow they didn't find any room in there to

01:07:13.760 write any rights related to property and so in an alberta and in an independent alberta i suppose

01:07:21.200 I guess I'm wondering, would you call it a positive right that a person has a right to own their property that they've paid for?

01:07:28.580 Or how would you classify that?

01:07:30.600 And what kind of language might you surround property rights to if you could write the clauses?

01:07:37.980 Yeah, so it's funny, and I'm glad you brought it up because this is something that needs to be addressed,

01:07:44.820 is that the reason I'm 99.9% confident

01:07:50.020 that it's not in the Canadian Constitution

01:07:52.480 is because the federal government under the Constitution

01:07:58.060 doesn't have the jurisdiction to legislate on property rights.

01:08:04.420 That was given exclusively to provinces.

01:08:07.560 So the Canadian Charter applies to the federal government,

01:08:10.800 all the provinces and territories.

01:08:12.300 So by default, it couldn't have it. But if you look at the Alberta Bill of Rights, it has property right protection. And that's why we're hearing right now, I think Saskatchewan and Nineveh and Alberta are saying that federal government don't even think about it.

01:08:29.040 gun owners are protected in provincially by their property rights. That's a property right

01:08:38.200 that the province can regulate. And that's been a discussion that the federal and the provincial

01:08:44.620 government have been having since the original firearms registration came into play, because

01:08:50.840 the provinces were asserting authority. And obviously, it was Quebec often leading the

01:08:55.300 charge saying we have authority and they've always been very strong about anything that

01:09:00.100 was a provincial responsibility or even a shared provincial responsibility like immigration is that

01:09:06.720 we don't need you federal government interfering other provinces have not been that strong

01:09:11.940 in their um thank you but no thank you federal government so um that would explain why there's

01:09:20.600 no mention of property rights in the charter in the canadian charter of rights and freedoms

01:09:24.720 provincially in the alberta bill of rights it's there and there is good wording they did change

01:09:30.880 it again and this is a conversation i think is very important because very freedom-minded people

01:09:36.460 don't even want it to say because it says something like uh you have the right to your

01:09:41.100 property unless uh and there must be due process if the government is going to take it in much more

01:09:48.880 sophisticated language and that has to do with one of the first like basic things is when we want

01:09:55.440 to create as a society as a public a road so the public has to acquire land from somebody to build

01:10:03.880 a road or to build an airport or to build a hospital and so some people in the freedom

01:10:10.720 community don't want the government to have any opportunity to take any rights even if there's

01:10:16.920 due process and even if there's compensation but that will very much um cause a lot of problems

01:10:23.440 when you're trying to build something for the public good so i i wouldn't suggest that that's

01:10:28.980 the way to go and my earlier career was uh representing landowners when their land was

01:10:35.820 being taken away by the government or uh oil and gas for the development of transmission lines or

01:10:43.580 pipelines or the road when in the case of the government in Alberta and then transitioned into

01:10:49.820 personal rights really more but that's a requisite and actually in Alberta the expropriation laws

01:10:57.020 when the government is taking your land is quite good so again it's as long as we understand what

01:11:03.980 the laws are ensuring that they're good that there's checks and balances but in Alberta the

01:11:11.900 expropriation laws are quite strong compared to other provinces and again you could see what

01:11:17.480 other jurisdictions are doing because it's clearly in every country land is taken away from

01:11:24.300 the private privately in order to build public facilities so just whether that's done

01:11:30.860 responsibly respectfully and people are compensated accordingly

01:11:35.480 so that's a huge conversation in the freedom community and like i don't know i hope i've

01:11:43.720 explained it but to me it makes sense that there has to be an opportunity of course the government

01:11:48.420 shouldn't run wild and be like we're going to take all your property but there there has to

01:11:53.460 be some kind of process in order to build a road yeah that makes sense and again a conversation we

01:12:01.680 should be having because of course we you know it's my private property and I get and actually

01:12:08.100 I'll just share this too is when I was doing a lot of that kind of work especially when it was

01:12:14.020 farms and people had you know it was generations of farms and their land is being taken there's a

01:12:21.700 whole grieving process that people go through but then in the end because the laws are pretty good

01:12:29.380 generally you know they end up okay and then you know sometimes people were like oh that actually

01:12:35.300 worked out and I was able now to have you know a house that was a bit closer to my children so you

01:12:41.960 know things can work out as long as we have the right checks and balances and it's not just

01:12:47.760 willy-nilly government intervention. So I'm going to throw this up from the wonderful

01:12:55.300 kathy flett how do we hedge against powerful lobbies buying our politicians and subverting

01:13:02.600 our rights and laws anyone have an answer

01:13:06.900 conversations yeah well one thing i was gonna say too and maybe this would be a fun citizen

01:13:17.220 engagement a citizen-led uh initiative because i get it that citizens are so annoyed when they're

01:13:24.680 elected officials don't respond and you know it's like you're talking to a wall and this wasn't how

01:13:32.580 things were before I actually worked I wasn't involved really politically but the MLA in my

01:13:38.820 area was a lovely man and I was working in his constituency office when I was going to university

01:13:43.820 and he had town halls open door policy at his constituency office he was out with the people

01:13:51.420 all the time and I believe that was how elected officials used to be and it wasn't that long ago

01:13:57.080 I was in university but now if you go to a constituency office you can't get in you have

01:14:05.180 to make an appointment they have these constituency offices that I think are just there for an

01:14:10.620 address but literally the elected officials aren't there I think a good citizen-led initiative would

01:14:17.500 be that um elected officials have to make i don't know have to have open door policy every friday

01:14:27.240 or i don't know something that could be thought up or 10 of the time they have to be in the

01:14:32.020 constituency with available to the public so that they can respond and so i don't remember exactly

01:14:38.820 what kathy's question was uh lobbying right because you should be able to lobby as yourself

01:14:46.620 like so citizens when citizens don't have an opportunity to lobby or correspond or engaged

01:14:53.460 with their own elected officials of course powerful lobbyists are the one they they have an

01:14:58.520 opportunity to talk to the elected officials and we don't so i think that's part of how lobbyists

01:15:04.800 got so strong too i could be incredibly naive saying that too but i also do know that not that

01:15:11.380 long ago you could talk to elected officials i actually heard this one just breaks my heart is

01:15:19.360 um there was this older lady in her 80s i met her in edmonton and she and her friend

01:15:25.220 went to an mp in edmonton a 80 year old lady and uh they were talking to the staff uh the mp wasn't

01:15:34.180 even there and they just said why do you have a um one of the pride flags because i don't think

01:15:40.340 that represents me and they kicked her out like if if somebody can't even ask that question

01:15:48.840 and she's a lovely 80 year old like you know culture has changed probably she's 0.66

01:15:54.400 like also we could be inclusive and kind to other people that have different views or don't

01:16:01.320 understand or whatever but was kicked out of the office for asking that question

01:16:07.040 i think that's wrong it is wrong somebody somebody has forgotten who's working for who

01:16:14.080 yeah yeah yeah i i haven't had the best conversations but i think it's because i'm

01:16:21.400 kind of loud and proud maybe like we know what you're gonna say anyway so my elected officials

01:16:27.640 didn't in edmonton didn't really want to talk to me which is fine i get to talk to other people

01:16:32.060 but other people shouldn't like i i i encouraged everybody um you know that was involved or

01:16:40.360 supportive of the convoy and things like that to talk to their elected officials especially if they

01:16:46.120 were on the other side and disparaging people they could have gone to their office or called

01:16:52.340 them and say look i support supported these people i believe that they should have been able to

01:16:58.220 protest whatever it is but instead what i found is if it was somebody from the other

01:17:03.380 and even on the side that we're on which i don't even know sometimes which is which anymore

01:17:09.620 um but they just didn't communicate those things really it was just i think um sometimes it's like

01:17:16.140 well that's what's going on in the public sphere so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna engage one-on-one

01:17:20.280 and i really think it's important to engage one-on-one and people to look in at each other

01:17:25.740 in the eyes especially if these are elected representatives meant to represent everyone

01:17:31.260 not just their own interests yeah i agree so there was a question or kind of a

01:17:40.380 uh let's see if i can pull this up um so rosie said just like our taxpayers federation maybe

01:17:49.100 we need a full-time group that will choose and organize questions and those like referendum

01:17:53.900 questions and or um kind of something to be relayed back to the government um if if not for

01:18:02.460 that um i've kind of been reflecting on the momentum that the alberta independence movement

01:18:09.740 has had i would love to see that amount of town halls and this like this same size crowds and this

01:18:18.060 same kind of week-to-week engagement even in a new Alberta like obviously we're leading up to

01:18:26.720 a referendum but imagine if we had multiple different groups all advocating all amplifying

01:18:34.220 all having conversations ways to connect with people that have concerns and like these groups

01:18:42.400 don't need to be elected they can be they can just continue to exist on their own but that can be a

01:18:49.680 a layer of accountability that isn't directly tied in with any specific like government structure

01:19:00.400 yeah and uh just going back to the comment and i'm sorry but i will i will

01:19:06.560 yeah it's just a little bit like well then that full-time group can do it for me

01:19:12.400 so that's disincentivizing yeah and taxpayers foundation like they do great job but that

01:19:19.040 doesn't mean that we don't have to and then if there's another group at and really we should all

01:19:26.300 be you know doing those things so that's the one thing i would say and it's not it's not hard like

01:19:33.660 um i met a woman this this last year that uh she was in one of the counties up north um where you

01:19:41.980 know they came across some some new bylaws or something that was going to be put in place

01:19:46.500 and it turned out it was just an absolute mess but she just kind of stumbled across it online

01:19:53.260 and then called up some neighbors and was like did you guys know that this was happening anyways

01:19:58.620 they ended up with like this permanent little group and it's just basically like an open door

01:20:03.840 come to my house on friday morning and we're going to look at the agenda for the next or every other

01:20:09.440 Friday for the next county council meeting and we're going to just talk about it over coffee and

01:20:16.260 if we like what we see great and if we don't like what we see we're all just going to get on the

01:20:20.300 phone real quick and it's made the huge difference in their county and it was just this very loosely

01:20:26.040 put together neighbors talking to neighbors over coffee and then picking up the phone and calling

01:20:32.820 their local counselor who just lives down the road and say you know what we're not cool with that

01:20:37.200 like no you gotta change that just make sure you're not in a courtroom while you're discussing

01:20:41.640 it over coffee yeah yeah well no don't do it there but actually that's the last another point

01:20:48.960 that i do try to bring up as much as possible is how important it is to be involved locally and how

01:20:55.820 quickly you can affect change locally and what you just said is so important the guy just lives down

01:21:03.240 the street and he so they're going to be held to account they're going to see him in the grocery

01:21:09.940 store and this is one point I don't know if I hear it that much uh in the independence over

01:21:16.200 the discussion but when how often have you ever been in the same room or vicinity as Prime Minister

01:21:23.920 Justin Trudeau uh Mark Carney I've had the opportunity to see and be in the same room as

01:21:32.140 premier uh daniel smith once with jason kenney i'm not but like people are close you know you

01:21:42.860 can't stumble across and see them mark carney will fly into edmonton for five minutes an hour

01:21:49.100 and he's out so he doesn't have an opportunity to connect citizens don't have an opportunity

01:21:53.740 to connect with them and i think having the opportunity to look people in the eyes and have

01:21:58.740 that discussion and that is why we have elected representatives but as we talked about before they

01:22:05.080 don't make themselves available that's a very big problem but I think local governance and having

01:22:09.740 people governing you that are in closer proximity than not is so incredibly important as well

01:22:15.360 because then it's kind of it's more proximal it's like you could just by chance see that person I

01:22:21.380 actually ran into the mayor of Edmonton twice I think last year just by chance

01:22:27.440 well and that's that is a huge part of one of my reasons for supporting about alberta independence

01:22:35.800 is because just the proximity yeah of having a government closer to you you're less likely to

01:22:43.160 have corruption and you're more likely to have a lot more transparency and that possibility

01:22:48.760 and that accountability because yeah they are closer to you not only that but they're going

01:22:54.700 to be more aware of the issues of the area of the region that need to be addressed yeah agreed

01:23:03.960 yeah so important uh james do you want to pop up kathy's but um she just had a good one uh yeah

01:23:13.700 i can kathy's hiding in the background so kathy's on fire we also need to ensure that we are not

01:23:19.540 susceptible to the tyranny of the minority or the majority yeah because right now it almost seems

01:23:29.700 like uh we're almost governed by the interests of special interest groups it's it's one special

01:23:38.580 interest group pitted up up against another special interest group and you can essentially

01:23:43.700 buy votes just by catering to a special interest yeah and you know i don't have the answer for that

01:23:53.060 but one thing i mentioned and we haven't talked about is term limits you know that's just a easy

01:23:58.640 way to kind of nip it in the bud if there's only a certain amount of time somebody can govern

01:24:05.460 um then they just you know can't make decisions for a long time the question is to um you know

01:24:14.440 and I think having that discussion about term limits is another like just an interesting topic

01:24:18.980 because there's pros and cons to it um in Alberta you could see what happened earlier we we had um

01:24:27.300 Ralph Klein for how many years and there was that dynasty but then you know that was good I think

01:24:34.160 but then maybe that was a problem because then the secession after wasn't so great and there's

01:24:39.340 been quite a bit of turn turnaround since so was that because there are no term limits i don't

01:24:46.640 have the answer but certainly something that we should be having a conversation about and aware

01:24:51.660 of do you think longer term limits would actually feed into that apathy and complacency

01:24:59.460 in a sense like if you're running if it's just on like oh yeah we voted our guys in again

01:25:05.400 are you less active now or is having more regular i guess like what what would invoke

01:25:15.040 more participation shorter term limits or longer term limits and then the other question is

01:25:21.220 what like how much of a managerial state do we have do we need does every part of government

01:25:28.880 need a certain amount of expertise or is there enough in the framework that it runs without

01:25:34.480 you needing like a surgeon level of skill just for that specific position

01:25:40.540 anybody want to take it

01:25:44.920 i like the idea of you know there are some mlas who have had a career who are already experts

01:25:57.700 in in their various you know whatever their wheelhouse was type of thing i'm thinking of

01:26:03.180 one in particular that i i know personally because i'm related to him you know who was

01:26:07.180 was an accountant and a tax lawyer and he's an mla now and he's able to bring that skill set

01:26:13.920 in right so uh fantastic great you know um i think the problem is is that when you get these

01:26:23.340 career politicians then you have to bring in other expertise because they don't have

01:26:29.020 you know life experience or other skills to bring with them to their position as an mla

01:26:35.420 i can think of a few of those that yeah are in that boat and i would add that i think that's

01:26:41.420 where the the bureaucracy comes in and could could be very helpful as they have that expertise

01:26:46.800 hopefully especially that that the bureaucracy wouldn't change in the same way and that's

01:26:52.320 something I would wouldn't suggest and some people talk about that too is that there should be term

01:26:57.740 limits for bureaucrats um again I like I don't know but it seems like that wouldn't make sense

01:27:07.160 to me it's an interesting thought yeah because it's not well or maybe it would complicate things

01:27:16.640 less but there has to be some consistency in you know the system and behind the scenes and

01:27:21.860 knowing the ins and outs um i don't know whether that's an interesting question james i haven't

01:27:28.460 put my mind to it either which is why i was hoping somebody else would get term limits whether that

01:27:33.500 adds to apathy or not well they i know that they talk about sometimes in related to u.s politics

01:27:41.560 about how you know people use terms like it sort of sounds conspiratorial but people talk about the

01:27:47.120 deep state and um and i've heard you know guys like rfk jr and other other people involved in

01:27:53.620 politics talk about what like truly the deep state is and it's essentially a managerial class of

01:27:59.720 bureaucrats that just stay consistent over the years and you think you're electing new people

01:28:04.560 to represent your interests and do you know exert the will of the populace but really it's the same

01:28:10.480 unelected bureaucrats under the surface who are influencing and implementing those policies so

01:28:15.580 So I don't know how you, I don't know how you control for that.

01:28:21.140 Perhaps there could be a way to, you know, there's lots of ways that government can hide and move around money and influence by just saying like, you know, yes, you've elected this person to be the minister of agriculture or whatever.

01:28:35.900 But if if the all of the contracts that this minister of agriculture is giving is, you know, goes to these unelected private enterprise bodies, you know, then like, what are we really doing here?

01:28:48.200 You know, this is not a this is not an accurate reflection of public will.

01:28:51.460 This is just a a, you know, an oligarchy of sorts.

01:28:55.680 Right.

01:28:59.300 Yeah.

01:29:00.160 Way to put more questions to us that we can't answer.

01:29:02.980 we're supposed to have all the answers here people no no we're not it's just a discussion

01:29:10.480 people thinking yeah yeah well maybe one kind of uh one thing to do is maybe zoom out if

01:29:19.400 we're having these conversations now is it worth talking about what what would happen

01:29:25.880 if Alberta

01:29:27.160 or like if Albertans voted

01:29:29.980 like in a clear

01:29:31.920 majority for independence

01:29:33.500 so obviously

01:29:37.800 we enter into negotiations

01:29:39.660 but there's talks

01:29:42.000 that we would have to have a

01:29:43.540 constitutional convention where

01:29:45.240 these ideas would be hashed

01:29:47.980 out in a more systematic

01:29:49.880 fashion

01:29:51.140 so it's good that we're talking about

01:29:54.000 it now I know there's a couple

01:29:55.880 proposed constitutions floating around there's uh the one developed by the app is likely going to be

01:30:04.920 i think released in the next month or so they were waiting till after the petition to release it

01:30:10.420 and we recently actually had a conversation with dennis kelma who was part of drafting that which

01:30:19.460 means that is another outline where those ideas will be in the public eye for people to stress

01:30:26.040 test these ideas discuss it poke holes in it and i i think all that is great that if we're starting

01:30:31.640 now we're not just jumping into it six months from now and expecting people to all be on the

01:30:39.280 same page because there's going to be lots of little disagreements term limits we've heard

01:30:44.400 different arguments on that like it's it's hard to know exactly what the right answers are but i

01:30:51.920 think another good exercise is to um you could look at like healthcare is one example of like

01:30:59.120 canada has a single-payer healthcare system and we're one of the few places in the world that has

01:31:04.000 it where most places have a mixed system so if we're able to look at other countries and if a

01:31:11.360 piece of this puzzle is doing exceptionally well in in one country we can always say like well

01:31:17.840 why does it do well there like we can learn we can learn from other countries and we can

01:31:23.200 implement that into the conversation as well

01:31:28.000 something else i'll throw at you and it was something you said earlier

01:31:33.040 i can't remember what it what it was but another um i think discussion we could have is maybe this

01:31:40.720 went to bureaucracy and it's you know how to get people involved and engaged and there are some

01:31:47.580 countries that have mandatory military service is that the right answer I don't know what about

01:31:55.120 a man or a mandatory also bureaucrat service so people have to when you come out of university

01:32:04.220 work patriotically for the nation you're in whether that's the military which some countries do

01:32:11.480 or an administrative role in the state then you learn part of how the system operates and that's

01:32:19.520 just a way of getting that buy-in from citizens and it not being such a foreign entity perhaps

01:32:26.560 I don't know again the answer but I just think that there's so much opportunity

01:32:30.800 there to have that discussion

01:32:33.040 I'll you know

01:32:34.600 but yeah

01:32:36.040 does that make sense

01:32:38.060 what are your thoughts on like

01:32:40.500 a mandatory

01:32:42.520 military service for example

01:32:45.060 you learn to

01:32:49.140 defend yourself

01:32:51.000 there are good

01:32:51.980 there's good parts to it

01:32:54.520 and then you know

01:32:56.340 you're doing giving

01:32:58.480 service to your country

01:33:00.200 yeah a lot of a lot of people hear that and they think you know that that means you have to be

01:33:07.220 you know a um like a machine gunner off of a boat or something you know like it's not really the

01:33:13.280 case like you can you can be in you know a medic unit or you can be in you know there's lots of

01:33:18.300 different roles in the military that don't involve combat um yeah i don't know it's an interesting

01:33:24.900 question because because part of me when i was growing up i was a you know a young liberal in

01:33:29.400 the city and i thought that the military was always bad and everything is anything war related

01:33:34.300 is always bad but the fact is that sometimes there are necessary military conflicts um i don't know

01:33:40.900 like there is that a way of of uh solidifying a person's uh fidelity to their to their nation

01:33:49.340 maybe that is the case um you've got some stake in the game it sort of you know somewhat calls

01:33:56.020 back to what you were saying earlier you know we used to we used to hedge uh participation

01:34:01.960 in politics on being a landowner um you know there are other qualifications there too some

01:34:08.700 people have even proposed things like um you know families uh you know if you have a you know some

01:34:14.000 some some countries do uh like tax benefits if you have over a certain amount of children and

01:34:19.140 stuff you know there's a certain amount of ways that you can incentivize investment into the

01:34:23.240 process and into your nation that's i think uh i think a military service of some type might be

01:34:29.480 might be one of them i don't know what do you think james we're we're young men of fighting age

01:34:33.280 still so i think too past the mandatory days but who knows yeah like there's there are people in

01:34:42.200 the military that are like engineers and there's the logistics side so that it's not just like

01:34:47.060 you going through like crawling through mud um i would say that the places that

01:34:53.780 are the good example of a mandatory military service have a a very strong sense of

01:35:02.180 like a very unified sense of purpose so they are i feel like they're more it you would need to be

01:35:10.180 more cohesive as a as a nation for that to work yeah and i i feel like in canada's current form

01:35:17.140 that would backfire because nobody's feels that strongly about like well they're like okay well

01:35:25.380 why are we forced to do this rather than it being treated as a almost like a a rite of passage

01:35:34.420 if that's culturally ingrained like it would have to be yeah like a privilege um having ways of

01:35:42.440 it depends on like the size of bureaucracy when you're talking about like uh or the the size of

01:35:47.620 government of everybody at some point participating let it be an administrative role in civil service

01:35:55.040 in some respect um but maybe maybe that could expand to other like like okay well we have this

01:36:05.160 event and almost like a mandatory like number of hours of oh we're volunteering and we've got this

01:36:12.060 like we've got our like national day and we're setting up fireworks and we have this and like

01:36:18.620 there are ways that like okay well it's mandatory you need to put in a certain number of hours as

01:36:24.160 that civil service that could be like volunteer hours or if you work for the civil service there's

01:36:30.360 other ways of conceptualizing this as a way of getting people involved so i don't think it needs

01:36:36.400 to be uh so cut and dry that it's just like a a job because you're not gonna let's say if alberta

01:36:43.460 is independent it's hard to well not that you would have five million jobs all at once but

01:36:47.680 you'd have that spread over lifetimes but you'd need a way of it having enough caring capacity to

01:36:55.120 cycle everybody through and then you'd have a leg period of like when you start that like

01:37:01.460 retroactively do all 67 year olds like they're not signing up for military service or they're like

01:37:08.140 it would take a few generations to actually unfold and get to a point where everybody's

01:37:14.220 like participated and contributed i think the idea is that too that you

01:37:20.600 well sorry angela you go ahead no no you go ahead no go ahead well i was just gonna say i think the

01:37:26.400 idea is that um in a like you alluded to james that in a healthy society um actually we wouldn't

01:37:34.600 view these things as um as obligate like negative obligations we would do these things as things

01:37:40.280 that we are we get to do in order to participate in the society things that we want to do

01:37:44.500 and that does require a um maybe more of a cohesive uh um national identity

01:37:51.820 that's exactly what i was gonna say mike um you know like we view when we look at our basic

01:38:00.200 education that our children receive you know to us it's very normal like oh go up to grade 12

01:38:05.320 well and it's just accepted that's that's what it is and this could be the same way right that okay

01:38:13.120 after you've finished your grade 12 now you're going to give or maybe after you're done university

01:38:18.260 you're going to give a year you're going to give 18 months two years whatever to your country

01:38:23.240 in in service and honestly I come from a faith community where it's very common for the young

01:38:33.320 people 18 19 20 into the early 20s to go overseas or to go out of the country for a year or two

01:38:40.620 to do service for the church but also for the communities that they're in and it is huge like

01:38:47.280 i'm always shocked when i see those young kids leave and i i know them they're in my community

01:38:54.340 and they come back after a year and a half or two years of wandering through africa helping

01:39:00.340 people there or south america or wherever the difference in that person in that young person

01:39:07.360 and the development that they have gained and to do that for your your community for your country

01:39:13.620 i i can't see a lot of bad to it and if we just viewed it as okay you finished your your education

01:39:22.960 up to grade 11 and grade 12 now you're going to go do this and it's just part of what we do

01:39:27.560 to develop as young people wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing yeah i was just thinking too

01:39:33.360 honestly in 12 years how much did you learn we could do half of it like in the

01:39:37.400 we could be more efficient in the education system our whole health care system can be revamped

01:39:44.620 completely and have like these integrated things that are more beneficial to the community and

01:39:51.100 inspiring people to be part of that society because right now it's just so divided i think

01:39:57.700 it's them it they're deciding and i'm just a peg in the in the system so yeah really interesting

01:40:07.100 when you said that well what do we think here what do we have all of the issues in the world

01:40:16.460 yeah have we solved all the problems yes i think we're pretty close i don't know

01:40:23.120 well dialogue is the way to do it honestly that's having these conversations and just

01:40:29.820 saying something even though it could be completely silly i don't like instead of

01:40:34.640 censoring it let's just have a conversation about it or say you know that way we can see

01:40:41.660 what makes sense and reflect on it and grow from it i just think that's the fun part

01:40:48.460 you know what i always say eva is i always say that it's dialogue over division that's

01:40:53.260 it's a thing that i say really smart must have thought of that

01:40:57.180 and then like some when i'm holding the government to account or saying something like

01:41:02.780 what about the those that are like my haters oh i thought you were about dialogue over division

01:41:08.400 doesn't mean i'm just gonna like bend over backwards like whatever is being handed to me

01:41:13.600 i'm gonna have a discussion about it i'm not gonna be hateful about it but i'm still gonna

01:41:20.720 talk about it haters i love it with a smile right that's what we're seeing with the alberta

01:41:32.400 independence movement it is people standing up exercising their voice and forcing the

01:41:38.000 the conversation which it's loud enough to a point that it cannot be ignored we're just hoping that

01:41:43.940 uh some of these sub conversations that appear are a little bit more productive than uh i guess

01:41:51.700 there's a bit of bit of rhetoric it's still treated as like a hateful movement it's still

01:41:57.120 a lot of misconceptions and i think this is where like all the town halls that are happening all the

01:42:04.200 live streams all the podcasts every event that we film we are creating a digital trail to

01:42:10.940 approve in real time like that these are genuine people expressing their concerns reaching out

01:42:18.740 in in a form and this is not a hateful movement by any by any sense so um i'm curious how this

01:42:26.480 will evolve in the summer um because we're just wrapping up the petition period it's now gone to

01:42:34.040 a point where it seemed like it was just fringe to oh this is actually a thing and that like this

01:42:40.040 this conversation is actually happening so people that were able to ignore it before can't really

01:42:46.080 ignore it now and and each of these six national interests they'll have to contend with it in some

01:42:54.600 kind of way because that will come up you can't talk about a new nation without having to like

01:42:59.820 you're forced to start thinking about these things,

01:43:02.840 start thinking about the history of Canada and federation, our culture,

01:43:07.380 the economics, all of it.

01:43:08.960 And it is a, like a mentally and cognitively taxing exercise.

01:43:15.700 But I, I feel it's a necessary one for, for everybody to go through.

01:43:20.680 Welcome to democracy.

01:43:22.520 Love it.

01:43:23.360 well uh angela why don't you um um send us away on a high note just give us a uh give us a rousing 0.99

01:43:33.680 uh rallying cry to uh to uh let our uh our distinguished guest here uh get on with her

01:43:39.780 night and we'll uh we'll uh discuss this uh in the backstage and when and when's the next one

01:43:44.960 as well yeah yeah yeah the details the next yeah you know what the next one is monday night

01:43:51.200 and oh my goodness do you think i can keep track kathy jump on and tell us where the next one is

01:43:57.780 um it is monday night for sure so we're doing monday and thursday evenings so this was the

01:44:03.140 first week so we've got two more weeks of that um and again we we've got uh different streamer

01:44:10.300 like different podcast podcasters that are helping us out with each one and um different guests some

01:44:18.220 of the guests will have one guest like we did tonight with eva uh some we have two i know for

01:44:24.380 sure i believe next week we have sam cooper and david redmond addressing national security that

01:44:32.160 will be on thursday on the 30th i believe um trying to think who's on this monday but yeah

01:44:38.340 and then we're going to actually wrap it all up speaking to bruce party and dennis calma

01:44:44.300 um and they're going to be talking about just kind of like constitutional stuff oh okay kathy

01:44:50.800 is saying personal and community well-being on monday oh that's a fun one too that is a fun one

01:44:56.740 and we're going to have tom marasso for that one so um looking forward to that one that will be good

01:45:04.280 um so yeah we've got these coming up for the next few weeks we do plan on so far i mean we've only

01:45:11.280 done one now we've done two uh depending on the amount of engagement we get and if people are

01:45:17.520 interested we do hope to do it again in the summer and then to do it again in the fall right before

01:45:23.680 the referendum uh getting different people i do want to kind of give a little bit of a heads up

01:45:29.760 to folks because when we had david redmond now colonel redmond he is a lovely man i have

01:45:37.120 so much respect for him and he is also an avowed federalist and some people were like why did you

01:45:43.360 get him and it's because we as albertans need to have hard conversations we need to be able to

01:45:50.880 have conversations where we don't always agree with the person that we are conversing with

01:45:57.040 and we also need to be able to recognize that we can get wisdom and information and expertise from

01:46:03.120 all kinds of people so for some of these we actually have folks that are from other parts

01:46:09.120 of canada and we actually have another one um where we have for good governance we have a man

01:46:15.040 from the states um i believe mike steger is his name from promethean action and he's going to be

01:46:21.600 speaking to good governance because we think that we can get wisdom and information and we just need

01:46:29.060 to be able to look at all kinds of different ideas from all around the world so yeah it won't always

01:46:36.160 be someone that that's already on board with Alberta independence but it'll be someone that

01:46:41.600 we thought would be able to contribute to the conversation so that's what we've got coming up

01:46:47.480 and Eva thank you so much it is so fun I'm so glad that you were willing to do this with us

01:46:54.420 tonight and you have just added so much to the conversation oh great i'm so happy to and glad

01:46:59.720 uh we're all going to be thinking about things yeah good and to mike and james thank you guys

01:47:06.220 yeah it's our absolute pleasure we're happy to host and uh yeah it'll it'll be interesting to

01:47:13.580 see how these other conversations unfold we'll be happy to join in the summer in the fall as well

01:47:19.440 by the way awesome thank you so much all right thanks guys

The Critical Compass Podcast - April 24, 2026

Rights and Freedoms ｜ Alberta United, The Collaborate Vision Series w⧸ Eva Chipiuk

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