497. Alberta vs Ottawa： A New Vision of Health ｜ Minister Dan Williams
Summary
The culture war that plagues the west is playing out very intensely in Canada, perhaps more intensely than anywhere else given that our prime minister is the poster boy for the progressive left. And so it's worthwhile paying attention to the Canadian political scene, oddly enough, to the tension between the progressive Left and the centre itself. In this episode, I speak with Dan Williams, who is the Minister of Mental Health and Addiction in my home province of Alberta, Canada. We talk about the political structure of Canada, the challenges faced by the Trudeau Liberals, and the conservative solutions to one of the biggest public health problems that besets North America in particular today: homelessness and drug addiction. We also discuss the role of the federal government in Canada and the role that the provinces play in providing services to their own citizens. And, of course, we talk about Bitcoin! Welcome to the first episode of the crypto-dividend podcast, where we discuss Bitcoin, Bitcoin, and all things crypto-currencies. I m keeping it simple: I'm keeping it small, starting small, trading on Kraken, and starting with the 10 bucks in your pocket. If you like Bitcoin and want to learn more about Bitcoin, you can do so here. Have a question or would like to debate Bitcoin or other crypto-related topics related to Bitcoin? Then hit me up at sws@sws.co/askme/cryptocode and we'll get back to you in the next episode. ;) Timestamps: 0:00:00 - What's your favorite cryptocurrency? 1:30 - Bitcoin? 3: What's a good day in Canada? 6:15 - What s your favorite piece of advice? 7:00 | What do you think of Bitcoin or crypto? 8:30 | What s a good piece of food? 9:00 11:30 12:15 | What are you looking for? 13:00 // 14:30 // Is Bitcoin or Bitcoin s role in the culture war? 16:40 | How do you like it? 17:40 15: Is Bitcoin a good thing? 18:40 - How do I feel about Bitcoin and other stuff like that? 19:00s? 21:30s - What do I think I m looking at Bitcoin & other stuff? 22:40s - How much do you want to know more about bitcoin?
Transcript
00:00:00.780
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So I had the pleasure today of speaking to Dan Williams, who's the Minister of Mental
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Health and Addiction in my home province, Alberta.
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And there was a variety of reasons why I had the conversation, why I wanted to pursue it,
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some of which I think are relevant to an international audience.
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The culture war that plagues the West is playing out very intensely in Canada, perhaps more intensely
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than anywhere else, given that our prime minister is the poster boy for the progressive left.
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And I mean that in the most literal possible sense.
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And so the political drama in Canada is emblematic of the political drama that is characterizing
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the international scene in the developed world.
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And so it's very much worthwhile paying attention, oddly enough, to the Canadian political scene.
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And the tension between the progressive left, let's say, the marginalized types who are trying
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to occupy the center and the center itself is quite well demonstrated in Alberta in consequence
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of the tension between the federal government run by the Trudeau liberals, insofar as they're
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running anything, and the Alberta government, which is, what would you say, emblematic of
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typical, the typical track of Canadian conservatism with a entrepreneurial bent that makes Alberta
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And so we talked about that dynamic as well in the Canadian political dynamic.
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But also, because Alberta has an entrepreneurial flair, there are policy movements in that province
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that are of, I think, compelling international interest.
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And one of those is the attempts made by the Alberta government to seriously address the
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And Dan helped elucidate the Alberta approach to that problem, which is practical, scalable,
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and by all evidence, preliminary evidence still, because the programs are relatively new, much
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more effective than the foolish enabling policies of the radical Canadian left.
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So join us for a walk through the culture war, the way it's played out in Canada as an emblem
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of that, and a discussion of practical conservative solutions, let's say, to one of the biggest
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public health crisis that besets North America in particular today.
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Let's begin with just an overview of the Canadian political structure.
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We have a lot of international viewers, and Canadians themselves could use a refresher.
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So maybe start by outlining the provincial, federal government structure, and then talk
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about your riding, how you're elected there, what it means to be a minister of the crown,
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and how the premier is, and well, and the prime minister, for that matter, are selected.
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So just give us a primer with regards to the Canadian political structure.
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The start of the system starts with the British North America Act, which is effectively the
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So it was established by an act of the legislature, Parliament in London, England, in 1867.
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And that sets out the framework that the political structure of Canada hangs on.
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And so there is a federal government, which meets in Ottawa in Parliament there.
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The prime minister is the individual that can hold the confidence of the House of Commons.
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And then every single province, there are 10 of them, get to have their own legislature.
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And the premier of each of those provinces is the one who holds the confidence of that,
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meaning has the most votes in the legislature or the House of Commons.
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The reason that's so important is because in that British North America Act or constitution,
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it delineates very clearly different areas of jurisdiction.
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So right from the very authority, the foundational document that sets up Canada,
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there are some areas of jurisdiction that are exclusively the responsibility of the federal government.
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There are other areas that are responsibility of each province,
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like in the United States, like a state would have its own responsibility.
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So what happens is if you're talking about questions of education or health care or transportation,
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those are questions that the provinces get to decide themselves.
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And it's not as though the federal government has given us permission to do that.
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It's not devolved the way you might see in the UK with, you know, the Welsh Senate or the Scottish Parliament.
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It is, from the very start, different sovereign authorities in those areas, established in our constitution.
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So that means Alberta, province I'm from, has authority in the constitution to make decisions to do with, say, health care.
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I'm a minister of health with mental health and addictions.
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And then we can collaborate with other provinces.
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And sometimes the federal government has funding or initiatives that they might want to do.
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But it is within the four walls of the province of Alberta, our responsibility to deliver that, to set the policies and to move forward.
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And so the way that the political structure works is there is this natural division,
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and sometimes, as a consequence, natural tension between the interests of a federal government in Ottawa and a provincial government in Alberta.
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And that sets up the framework in which we talk about the political divisions within Canada.
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So in Canada, people running for political office, either provincially or federally, are allied with a political party.
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And in Canada, there are basically three main parties.
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There's the Liberals, who rule federally most of the time.
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There's the various versions of the Conservatives, who've been around for a long time and are the second most popular party, generally speaking,
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although more frequently than that on the provincial side.
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And that's been the case in Canada really since the early 1960s.
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And those parties, with some variation, operate at a provincial level and at a federal level.
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And so if you're running provincially, what would be a typical campaign for you, for example,
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when you're attempting to gain your seat in the House in Alberta?
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So before the general election campaign comes, where individuals would run for that seat to be a member of the legislature
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or perhaps federally member of parliament, there's first often a nomination.
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That nomination is an election within the political party to decide who's going to be our candidate that we put forward.
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And so you need to be a member of that party to be able to vote in that.
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And then you would be able to, from there, if you're a member of that party, exercise your interest in saying,
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I want to vote for Dan or I don't want to vote for Dan.
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If I win that sort of pre-election, the nomination, then it goes to a general election.
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And in Alberta, along with much of the prairies, so Western sort of prairie provinces,
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it's really a debate between the conservatives on one side in some form and the NDP, the New Democratic Party on the other.
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And the NDP is, as you stated, they're self-defined as socialist in their own constitution.
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Interestingly, the roots of the conservatives within Alberta and all the Western provinces
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and the roots of the NDP come from the same place, this sort of populist, prairie populism movement.
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Which doesn't have the same connection to populism that people associate with the rest of the world.
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It existed long before populism became a common sort of attack in public commentary referring to Trump and others internationally.
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Prairie populism is what the socialists grew out of with the CCF,
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which was actually formed at the Royal Canadian Legion in Calgary, from my understanding.
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And out of that branch also came a grassroots reform movement.
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It came as a social credit party earlier on in Alberta's history,
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and then eventually became sort of the conservative articulation of populism.
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Right, so there's a bottom-up, bubbling up of political sentiment that's very characteristic of Western Canada.
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It makes itself manifest on the centre-right and on the centre-left.
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And the socialists in Canada were really a working-class labour union party up until, what, 20 years ago?
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I mean, you come from the same part of Alberta I come from, where Grant Notley,
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who was a member of the legislature at the time for the Socialist Party,
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was elected in rural Alberta, which is as deep blue, i.e. as deep conservative as it gets in Canada.
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You can even look at George Grant, who I think is one of Canada's greatest political authors and public commentators,
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who started off supporting the CCF and the NDP and then quickly realised that this was not the brand that he wanted to get behind
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And he wrote his famous book, Lament for a Nation, with the defeat of Diefenbaker in the 62 election.
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Right. So in Canada, for a reasonable amount of time, I think it was appropriate for the socialists,
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especially on the Labour Party end, to represent themselves as emblematic of working people.
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And the Conservatives were more and regarded more as the party of large business enterprises.
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And so, and that's shifted substantially in Canada now, both at the federal and the provincial level.
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Yeah, I'd say that it was really the Liberals that were the corporatist party for the longest time within Canada.
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If you look at Diefenbaker's campaign, you look at the NDP,
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they both were fighting over a working class population with different values that inform it,
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but it was the Liberals that were the corporatists more than anything else.
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And that changed with the West generally, whether you're looking at the UK, US, the entire Anglo sphere,
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you saw that Conservative parties became more associated with corporate interests.
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That's not the historical roots of Conservatism in Canada, right?
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It was, as you said, bubbling up, grassroots, different versions of a blue-collar interest
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that grew out of the same place within the prayers.
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It's similar in some ways to what's happening with the MAGA movement in the United States,
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although Americans are more dramatic and they have more of a flair for showmanship.
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So there's an over-the-top theatricality about American politics that has really been absent in Canada.
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We're much more sedate in our political operations.
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can you talk a little bit about the restrictions on campaigning in Canada?
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Yeah, so dollars and cents are much more limited within Canada.
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So the campaign that I would run, the provincial law limits to approximately $50,000 within my constituency,
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I have to put up some signs and be able to host some coffees and be able to get around the constituency,
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It's about 100,000 square kilometres, the same territory you're from.
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So it's the same size as the island of Newfoundland,
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or, I mean, I bet you I could find a half dozen American states that are smaller than my constituency.
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And so it's quite a large area, and that's where a lot of the dollars go.
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So the politics is different because of the limitations on dollars and cents, for sure.
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Yeah, well, and there's a duration limitation, too, right?
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So the intense campaigning is, what, 90 days, generally speaking?
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Yeah, well, the writ period is normally about 30 days.
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As we move to a more of an American fixed election date,
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that is becoming less of an important distinction.
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Historically, with snap elections in the Westminster system,
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where we know every four years there's going to be an election in whatever,
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whether you're talking presidential or a Congress election,
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What instead happened in Canada and the UK and the Western Westminster system,
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with an attempt to campaign before you know there's an election did not make sense.
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So the 30-day writ period really was effectively that official campaign,
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Increasingly, there are more jurisdictions like Alberta
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there are more and more use of campaign resources happening
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I want to talk about a little bit or ask you a little bit about
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the situation of Alberta in relationship to the federal government
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because I think that what's happening in Canada
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is emblematic of what's happening in the West in general,
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Now, one of the things you pointed out is that the provinces
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and the federal government have very different jurisdictions of power.
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And we should be clear, just so everybody understands,
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that the jurisdictions of power that the provinces have in Canada
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of what might be considered normal, important politics.
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Now, there's a reasonable amount of tension in Canada
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some of the provinces in the federal government.
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So let's talk about province-to-province tension at the moment.
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So walk us through the equalization payment issue.
00:14:36.000
So equalization is a wealth redistribution mechanism.
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In fact, it's a suite of different mechanisms that happen.
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just in the way that the federal government collects taxes
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and the way that they spend those taxes afterwards.
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is that some provinces at different times in history
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They've been able to support their own residents
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we want to make sure the entire country is able to manage.
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and they want to see the rest of the province succeed,
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the tune of billions of dollars leaving Alberta
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but want to shut down the industry at the same time.
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to which the bulk of Albertan transfer payments go,
01:18:46.220
people even further it's become abundantly clear
01:18:58.860
when really addictive substances are handed up by
01:19:01.760
the government on mass and you can look at examples
01:19:11.920
authority for a 12 year old who recently passed away
01:19:16.020
in British Columbia was given drug paraphernalia so
01:19:19.560
that she could continue to use that was the state
01:19:22.000
response to the addiction of minors and and Alberta
01:19:25.460
has said instead the state response is addiction is
01:19:28.760
rampant it's widespread and it's going to continue to be
01:19:31.540
unless we give people an off-ramp out of addiction
01:19:34.260
and so whether we're talking about individuals who have
01:19:39.880
intermittently homeless maybe they're from a neck of
01:19:42.220
the woods up northwestern Alberta they might have an
01:19:44.560
indigenous background and they are maybe suffering from
01:19:48.220
mental health crisis maybe psychosis brought on by the
01:19:50.600
drug use or pre-exists it maybe they're disposed to an
01:19:54.000
addiction already those individuals have next to no
01:19:57.700
recovery capital they're not holding on a job they don't
01:19:59.940
have family they've lost almost all connection to
01:20:02.260
everyone else right there needs to be an intervention in
01:20:04.920
those individuals lives and interventions come in all
01:20:07.960
shapes and sizes whether you're talking about a run-in with
01:20:10.900
a justice system or you talk about a health care crisis
01:20:14.060
they run into there's going to be an intervention of one
01:20:16.300
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01:20:19.600
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01:20:22.380
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01:20:25.560
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01:20:29.440
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01:20:34.080
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01:20:37.280
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01:20:40.140
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01:20:43.760
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01:20:47.240
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01:20:50.020
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the state needs to be there to support with the broader society individuals that don't have that
01:22:29.100
ability that institution maybe that workplace environment to get them into the opportunity
01:22:34.620
to recover as well so you don't hold any kind of hope a snowball chance in hell of trying to help
01:22:41.000
people through their crisis if you don't address that fundamental um heart of a problem which is
01:22:47.280
some sort of trauma some sort of issue driving them to addiction and so most of the addiction
01:22:52.540
treatment we do after medical detox it's one disease of addiction right and it doesn't matter
01:22:58.460
whether it's a process addiction like you know eye gaming for example or it's an opioid addiction
01:23:03.540
when you get through that medical detoxification so much of its social cycle and how is that
01:23:08.240
undertaken how is the medical detoxification undertaken so if you're if you're taking
01:23:12.420
people off the street for example if they're homeless what's the first and and addicted what's
01:23:17.280
the first step in the process the first step is building a network of detox centers uh and
01:23:24.140
stabilization across the province so since we came into power in 2019 we've increased approximately
01:23:29.360
50 percent of our treatment capacity that's about 10 000 spaces per annum that we have in alberta
01:23:35.200
per annum per annum this is distributed in the major urban centers it would be across the entire
01:23:39.540
province and the majority of those are detox spaces because they're short episodes of stay
01:23:43.640
detox is just the first step to moving towards that so how long does that typically last it could be
01:23:49.640
a week perhaps less sometimes two weeks when you're talking medically supervised yeah medically
01:23:55.580
supervised uh in alberta we have a license regime for this uh and so if it's talking about alcohol
01:24:01.420
or benzos that is a much much more um precarious situation there could be all sorts of really
01:24:07.600
negative health outcomes if it's not done with appropriate medical supervision uh but that could
01:24:12.300
last say a couple of a couple of days to to two weeks once that happens we're building a network we
01:24:17.680
have now funded mass amounts of not-for-profits community-based treatment centers of all different
01:24:23.660
varieties many of them are indigenous some are faith-based some are not we have no particular
01:24:29.120
predilection towards what that looks like beyond being about recovery and about trying to get
01:24:34.620
people to help a variety of different approaches we're allowing lots of different providers to come
01:24:38.980
into the space and how do you evaluate the consequences so we have my recovery plan uh which
01:24:44.180
is a metric we're using to talk about someone's recovery capital so we're seeing um it a lot of it is
01:24:49.520
is subjective analysis of where are you at now where do you want to be uh we have hard metrics as
01:24:54.840
well that go into that analysis and the idea is that as we build out this recovery continuum
01:24:59.440
all along the way right from the very first time you get into detox all the way to a year later
01:25:04.760
when you look at the end of treatment in your post-recovery housing integrating the community
01:25:09.200
are you seeing recovery capital continue because right now tragically the only metric really used
01:25:14.840
across canada i'd say probably across all of north america is overdose deaths which obviously i want
01:25:20.840
to see as few as possible that's why i'm about the compassionate option of giving everyone a chance
01:25:25.900
at recovery but before that's a latent indicator you're talking about overdose reversals and overdose
01:25:30.860
deaths i mean i want to be able to see before someone gets there how are we doing are they steering in
01:25:35.840
the right direction so do you you look at so your your indicators you talk about let's let's delve into
01:25:40.660
the issue of recovery capital a bit so you know you mentioned that people are homeless family-less
01:25:46.000
with no economic ties and no friends okay so they're not they have no integration whatsoever
01:25:51.200
into the community at any level so part of what recovery capitals sounds like in in your formulation
01:25:58.680
is assessment of what their embeddedness in the social structure yeah that's very right it's
01:26:04.760
their embeddedness in the social structure it's relationships and connections to outside it's a sense
01:26:08.620
of purpose in their life and and to a degree an achievement of that in their life right right and so
01:26:13.500
and and you want to be able to measure that through subjective and objective measurements as much
01:26:17.040
as you can and and much of the treatment when it comes to addiction as i mentioned it is after that
01:26:23.060
medical detox it is social it's psycho it is relational and so it it's a really important that we're seeing
01:26:30.120
our people head in the right direction before they end up in an emergency room and on death's door
01:26:35.380
with an overdose and cerebral hypoxia where they are drowning in daylight that is a horrible way for a
01:26:41.260
policymaker to start looking just to that metric i need to be considering that as an end state of
01:26:46.880
making sure we don't end there right but also way before that and i'm not even talking about you know
01:26:51.720
early intervention prevention i'm talking about those in addiction can we steer their recovery capital
01:26:57.300
to a positive earlier so how are people signing up so to speak i mean if i remember correctly when i
01:27:04.300
talked to mr nixon um some of those tent encampments were actually being dismantled by the government
01:27:11.380
and people were being bused with their family with their dog to treatment center multi-dimensional
01:27:17.740
treatment center to a navigation center yeah and so this navigation center was a hub and from there
01:27:22.800
you could get a number of different supports i mean if maybe your id list you need an id um but also
01:27:28.080
if you were someone interested in detox then we are there to sort of intervene and say let's help you
01:27:33.180
get to that space it can be difficult to manage they don't know how right and the window that
01:27:38.400
someone says look because of whatever circumstance maybe it's the the dismantling of the tent that
01:27:43.560
they were living in tent is too charitable i mean these are open drug sites with drug cartels
01:27:49.000
yeah right extorting individuals we shouldn't be talking about tent it's it's not like going
01:27:53.120
camping on the weekend they're gang encampments yeah yeah 100 right and so run by brutal people
01:27:58.900
with threats of rape and we've had instances of individuals being burnt in them um and tragically
01:28:05.520
sometimes even even death happens through this with extortion of paying taxes to the these drug
01:28:10.520
laws lawless encampments run by thugs yes with minus 40 degrees celsius right in the middle of winter
01:28:17.540
yeah yeah yeah and so uh so what happens is they get to this navigation center it's meant to reroute
01:28:22.980
them and perhaps and we've had a number of individual individuals that say i want to get treatment
01:28:27.280
now yeah and the first step to that is going to one of those 10 000 spaces we created much of those
01:28:31.980
are going to be detox from there we're going to be connecting them to a network of recovery communities
01:28:37.040
and therapeutic living communities across the province we even have inside our provincial
01:28:41.580
correction facilities or prisons we have units that are dedicated to those who voluntarily want to
01:28:46.620
take on recovery as an opportunity and you go to these places and you have i will i've never been
01:28:51.860
more emotionally touched in my life what the hard work these young men are taking to say
01:28:55.800
i could be looking at porn and getting high in the rest of the facility but i've decided instead i
01:29:00.740
want to re-knit my family when i get out i have an estranged family member i have children i want to
01:29:05.540
be able to see i know between my crime and my addiction this is going to be a disaster and it's
01:29:10.160
just going to continue on and they voluntarily say i want into this therapeutic living unit and we
01:29:14.880
have them in red deer we have them uh and these are in the prisons they're in the prisons and we have
01:29:20.020
for lack for better expression a captive audience and we option we give that opportunity for
01:29:24.960
individuals to say i want to start working on my addiction and into recovery how many people in
01:29:30.340
that um well we have about three or three open right now uh and there's anywhere from 11 in some
01:29:36.680
other to 20 in others and and so and that's an expanding program in principle we're continuing to
01:29:41.940
expand across the entire system uh the idea is that across the whole continuum i want to give
01:29:47.020
everyone an opportunity at recovery because the alternative to recovery is unconscionable and there's a
01:29:52.000
moral imperative we have this isn't just dollars and cents in economics it's not simply a public
01:29:56.860
safety question it is because canadians and albertans deserve not to have to you know cross in
01:30:02.480
front of the gentleman fencing with the wind with a used syringe speedballing methamphetamine
01:30:06.640
and fentanyl instead they should be able to know that going into the main street shopping center or the
01:30:12.220
recreation center for swimming lessons for little jimmy or sue should be absolutely a safe thing to do
01:30:18.220
but beyond that as well parks as well absolutely beyond that i mean informed by my principle as a
01:30:25.260
canadian as an albertan and i'd say as a conservative i believe in the dignity of every single life and
01:30:30.460
that's inalienable and cannot be divorced from someone no matter what actions they've taken and it's
01:30:35.880
society's job to help that and one function of that in government is to say let's build this capacity
01:30:41.240
so we're building 11 long-term high quality free access drug and addiction recovery treatment centers
01:30:49.540
for those who are in active addiction who have gone through detox they start a very long phase of
01:30:55.560
addiction anywhere from months to up to one year and the data shows really clearly that if you can get
01:31:01.560
the more time you have in sobriety and where you have say opioid agonist therapy which i'd be happy to
01:31:07.540
talk more about the innovative program we have there which is help for those who have addiction
01:31:11.920
medically so that they can have reprieve from that desire to continue seeking what are you using
01:31:17.400
we're using well there's methadone but increasingly more we're using sublocate sublocate is a
01:31:23.380
buprenorphine buprenorphine product it's an injectable subcutaneous and it gives you 30 days of slow
01:31:29.520
dispense all the way through you don't need to show up at the dispensary daily it continues 30 days
01:31:34.540
because addictive potential for it uh is incredibly low almost non-existent you cannot get high on it
01:31:40.320
most oh oh okay and it's most it's mostly a craving reduction so it reduces cravings but it also
01:31:47.660
protects because the affinity for your in the opioid receptors is higher for the buprenorphine than it is
01:31:52.340
for the for the opioid so it's a blocker too so it's a blocker so you cannot continue overdose is
01:31:56.760
incredibly hard um when you're when you're on this and for many individuals 30 days 30 days oh yeah
01:32:02.760
that's i mean protection continues even past that but 30 days i think is what the label um requires
01:32:07.480
and so the the value of that is it gives them a breath of fresh air it allows those who have this
01:32:12.760
physiological pull to continue seeking the addiction to say not only do i have reprieve from the from the
01:32:18.680
withdrawal symptoms not only do i have a reprieve from the desire to continue seeking the opioid if i
01:32:23.520
try i can't even get high i'm going to give this a good shot and so when you look at opioid agonist
01:32:28.820
therapy and our data that we have at the canadian center recovery excellence surrounding good outcomes
01:32:34.180
with with uh sublocate is incredibly good we're going to be publishing on it partnering with
01:32:38.860
institutions to do that but when you pair that opioid agonist treatment that medical treatment
01:32:44.060
along with social psychotherapy it's incredibly good for outcomes we see it like they just come
01:32:49.560
together in this synergy that allows much better outcomes and so if we support individuals
01:32:54.880
in detox and we get them onto the virtual opioid dependency program to give them a breath of fresh
01:33:00.320
air with that medical treatment and then we get them into one of our long-term recovery centers and
01:33:04.920
then we support them through minister nixon in long-term recovery housing you can get to 24 months
01:33:10.180
you see the rate of long-term recovery in the data is incredibly high by comparison you get to that
01:33:15.680
two-year mark and you see long-term recovery is much much much more likely and so a lot of likely
01:33:21.240
what kind of what kind of what are you looking at now and so look we should preface this by saying
01:33:25.460
that um for most addictive treatment processes the risk of relapse is overwhelming people can go
01:33:34.660
through detoxification they can go through withdrawal they can even stay drug-free if they're away from
01:33:40.920
the normative structures of their community but as soon as you put them back in their community they
01:33:44.620
tend to relapse yeah right and so so the reason i'm letting everybody know that is because i want to
01:33:50.800
preface your description of the statistics with with what would the observation that um this is a very
01:33:56.760
difficult thing to do the probability of failure is extremely high and so what what kind of success
01:34:02.640
are you having so our program is relatively new we need to make a distinction between a single
01:34:08.060
instance of recidivism versus long-term recovery right yeah and so there could be instances most people
01:34:14.220
who live into long-term recovery will have multiple instances of recidivism before they really end
01:34:20.160
up in that long-term um period so uh over i mean data can show and there's no example that has the
01:34:27.100
full continuum of care that alberta is building out which is why our data collection and long-term
01:34:32.620
longitudinal studies along with the canadian center recovery excellence is going to be so important
01:34:36.740
to prove this out yeah but i mean some data shows over 50 percent if you look at a different instance you
01:34:42.920
look at um maybe the original therapeutic living community in san patrano in italy i believe the data
01:34:50.060
they showed me when i spoke to them from this study from the university of bologna shows long-term
01:34:55.900
recovery rates are at over 72 percent last time they studied that's a three-year stay um in a very
01:35:03.180
long-term uh and very community-oriented living um recovery community in italy so really good data when
01:35:10.960
you have long periods of treatment uh we haven't really seen this in north america to that degree yet
01:35:16.780
we're really the idea of therapeutic living communities is coming back um in the literature
01:35:21.380
as one of the most exciting opportunities to build recovery into an addiction treatment policy okay so
01:35:27.160
let's let's close this then with a discussion of um pitfalls you know because one of the things
01:35:33.820
that's rattling around in the back of my head is um how do you reconcile this relatively
01:35:40.940
interventionist strategy let's say with the minimalist approach to government intervention that
01:35:48.020
often characterizes conservatism right and so you know you can see two you can see a philosophical
01:35:53.120
conundrum there but then you can also see a practical conundrum because a conservative skeptic
01:35:58.080
might say well what you're implementing is another bureaucratic growth community that's going to
01:36:04.220
expand at the rate of 10 percent a year indefinitely with you know with dubious outcome like it's just
01:36:10.140
so so tell me how you reconcile that philosophically and then tell me what what you think you guys have
01:36:17.200
done to what would you say protect protect against the pitfalls that might that might accrue as a
01:36:23.740
consequence of building another adjunct to the health care system right so uh the health care system
01:36:29.480
fundamentally the entire premise of of peace order and good governance comes from the idea
01:36:34.860
that each of us have dignity unto itself conservatism i would say from my mind is not a form of
01:36:41.460
libertarianism um conservatism is fundamentally an idea that people have intrinsic dignity uh that we
01:36:47.940
should labor towards the common good and so uh one of the lies that we've been told in addiction
01:36:52.980
across north america and it's really true when you look at this sort of radical activist claim
01:36:58.640
on the progressive left is that canadians have a choice you can either be compassionate towards
01:37:04.480
those in addiction or have safe communities right and canadians as you said are level-minded reasonable
01:37:10.920
people that want to trust the institutions and want to trust the authorities uh it's a part of the
01:37:15.840
the heritage that we grew out of as a part of uh colony within the british empire the institutions
01:37:21.800
we've built have largely worked up to now of course we want to to do that and that is the lie that is the
01:37:27.580
false dichotomy that's there in fact caring for those who are in addiction and being compassionate
01:37:33.680
towards them and having safe communities are one in the same because there's nothing compassionate
01:37:38.260
about having the individual who is not in any moral way a free agent choosing to drink water or not
01:37:44.720
the way you and i have today choosing whether or not to vote for the conservatives or the liberals
01:37:49.900
there is no free agency in that same way for those who are suffering who are in the worst
01:37:56.140
articulations of active addiction and so society needs to intervene in that in that sense because
01:38:02.440
they're vulnerable in the same way that we would want to protect anyone who is vulnerable especially
01:38:06.660
if we talked about those who are underage we talk about those who who have been compromised and don't
01:38:12.760
have the the agency and the capacity to make decisions for themselves that is what a well-ordered
01:38:19.540
state does and it does it through compassionate mechanisms so first of all the lie has been put
01:38:25.400
there in the first place you have to choose but it's not enabling compassion like it's really
01:38:29.160
important to distinguish between compassion and enabling i mean the psychoanalysts have been doing
01:38:33.280
that for like a hundred years if your brand of compassion is uh okay dear you can do whatever
01:38:39.480
terrible thing you want and i won't intervene because i don't want to hurt your feelings that's
01:38:43.160
not compassion that's i don't even know how to describe that well it's enabling it's a devouring
01:38:47.820
form of enabling yeah and so like the compassionate thing often to do with someone who's in real
01:38:52.960
trouble is to use judgment right and to think well no that's pretty much going to come to a stop this
01:38:58.120
is not acceptable and we need to do something about it and so that's partly why i think the alberta
01:39:02.820
approach is so interesting is francis george an american clergyman once said that that fundamentally
01:39:09.400
our society is one that permits and allows and encourages everything but forgives nothing and i think
01:39:15.620
that there's something really transcendent about that it's fully on display here that fundamentally the
01:39:21.260
idea of of the the the addiction anthropology adopted by the left is that those in addiction
01:39:27.240
we need to sort of continue to palliate their addiction indefinitely with higher and higher
01:39:31.140
powered opioids that's the most radical articulation of what was called harm reduction and in that state
01:39:36.560
becomes a harm production right that's that's not the case from my perspective is that instead of just
01:39:44.000
saying everything's permitted like an important redress to addiction is that there are consequences for
01:39:48.640
actions now i'm not saying this as a minister of justice i don't want to criminalize this but
01:39:54.100
continuing to just destroy your life and cause threats and harm to your community more broadly
01:40:00.220
shouldn't be permitted in society and the consequence of that is right so that's the conservative edge of
01:40:04.940
it i would say philosophically as well is that these these tent encampments these these gang
01:40:11.020
encampments are threats to civil order like fundamentally on the on the criminal side on the civil side
01:40:17.300
also with regard to their capacity to undermine our sense of a high trust society and a high trust
01:40:23.240
society is an incredibly valuable resource and and fleeting and oh and and easy to disrupt like
01:40:28.800
terribly easy to disrupt and it's just not acceptable for the public landscape to be littered with
01:40:34.680
with with with what would you say with the with the evidence of systemic and civilizational collapse
01:40:42.880
in the form of homeless people who are completely overcome by their fentanyl induced pathology and
01:40:51.040
so there's nothing about that that's acceptable that fentanyl induced pathology as you describe it
01:40:56.000
um i would say as a public communicator that individual that overdose 186 times the 187th time
01:41:02.820
might be death right and so the alternative to treatment um is is tragedy right those are our two
01:41:10.920
options here which is why i'm going to be introducing legislation next spring uh tragedy by omission that's
01:41:16.960
the complex thing we can just let you die or help you die because well i mean that's that's the
01:41:21.700
assumptions that they said there's no problem with just continuing to facilitate addiction as long as
01:41:25.620
it's a safe drug indefinitely that's not my assumption that my assumption is instead that that
01:41:30.160
life is valuable it has dignity we ought to help it um we have to help all individuals and health care
01:41:35.620
should heal and not harm which these assumptions are radical when you talk about the public health
01:41:41.320
policies across all of you know canada for sure i'm going to be introducing legislation called
01:41:46.480
compassion intervention and so if somebody is a danger to themselves or others due to their substance
01:41:52.520
use or addiction within a reasonable amount of time are going to cause harm to themselves or others
01:41:56.820
then it's a society's responsibility to intervene because the alternative to that intervene
01:42:01.740
intervention is is tragedy it's death it's also other forms of societal intervention because those
01:42:08.560
people are going to come to the attention of the public health or the health care system at some point
01:42:12.700
in the er or they're going to come to the attention of the police and the judicial authorities there
01:42:18.180
isn't an obvious no intervention pathway here that's just it's it's earlier or later and i guess the
01:42:24.500
intervention also needs to right now if you tell someone struggling with an opioid addiction
01:42:28.600
that after they get arrested because say a criminal act that they were pursuing and seek to
01:42:33.560
and trying to seek for more opioids or you name it and you say well jordan about six months from now
01:42:39.440
there's a 25 chance that a court might slap your wrist right and then you have effectively um bail for
01:42:46.320
zero consequences and you get to continue to do what you're doing what would you do if you're an opioid
01:42:50.780
addict well of course you just continue what you're doing that's that's future jordan's problem
01:42:55.080
this jordan today has got got an issue where i need to find some fentanyl right and so instead of
01:43:01.080
that right we need to have a system that has a true recourse to treatment and recovery so the policy
01:43:08.120
that i'm planning to introduce and say if you're a danger to yourself or others and there are
01:43:11.880
appropriate checks and balances to make sure it's not abused then we have an obligation as a society a
01:43:17.260
moral obligation to say we will not let you continue to destroy your life that 187th time that you
01:43:22.700
overdose and die we will not let you risk public safety because of erratic psychosis induced from
01:43:29.480
the methamphetamines or name the drug that you're high on we instead are going to help you through
01:43:36.000
this intervention and it could come in less formal ways it could come through an airline industry with
01:43:41.460
standards and regulations that force this and say there's not a 40 chance six months from now it could
01:43:47.160
come from a law like the one i'm planning to introduce that says instead of just turning you through a
01:43:51.900
system that has no real recourse to help you or bring back confidence to our system and our
01:43:57.300
institutions in canada the recourse will have a consequence that consequences one that is charitable
01:44:02.980
one that is compassionate one that brings long-term likelihood of success for you and for our community
01:44:10.180
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slash jordan that's preborn.com slash jordan okay okay yeah yeah and at what point what point do you think
01:45:33.960
that i'm thinking about re-evaluating this say at some point in the future at what point do you think
01:45:40.040
that you're the data that you're producing is going to be of sufficient quality and magnitude to
01:45:46.520
review intelligently i mean you have some of it already have some of it now i would say we have some
01:45:52.060
very good data now around the virtual opioid dependency program and others when you're talking
01:45:56.680
about the good sufficient quality data you need longitudinal data yeah yeah that's the nature of this
01:46:01.180
problem right and some of the problem if you look at the really really bad sort of i call them
01:46:05.580
community college professors trying to torque this data and try and argue for unsafe supply and they
01:46:11.760
position themselves as experts and authorities this is another institution that has failed dramatically
01:46:16.080
and canadians and the west has a lot of blame to lay on academia that's and the lies that they have
01:46:22.840
pushed ideologically so if you look at some of the data around unsafe supply they don't just
01:46:28.240
distinguish between opioid agonist therapy and unsafe supply and so they say they have the same
01:46:36.020
outcomes of the good they only track some of this data one or two weeks afterwards i mean you don't
01:46:41.580
need to know one or two weeks after an intervention you need to know after you know if you're if you're
01:46:46.920
mass supplying a high-powered opioid unwitnessed how are they doing two years later and so that's the data
01:46:52.340
we need to collect so i'd say within a few months we're going to have a lot more data on the early
01:46:57.380
stages of our system but this is going to continue to be proved out and we're going to partner with
01:47:01.560
institutions like harvard uh and yale and others to to to credibly and internationalize this because
01:47:08.920
this incredible myopic view that we've seen in canada of these community college professors and
01:47:14.140
activists that have completely claimed the entire space and have not allowed a policy alternative and
01:47:19.580
they bully and and they degrade and they threaten in terms of how they position this academically
01:47:26.000
and they condescend uh that needs to stand up to true scrutiny and if you go international you see
01:47:32.480
these policies have been on offer yeah and they don't want anything to do with it for right reason
01:47:37.120
canada has such opportunity and i think the conservatives interestingly are the group that's
01:47:42.340
bringing forward compassionate social policy and we're winning we're winning in alberta for the first
01:47:48.140
time on an important social debate in decades uh and and we're going to continue to face the
01:47:53.780
obstacles of uh institutions like academia that rail against us the media that have um have guidance
01:48:00.600
for using terms like safe supply rather two billion dollar a year government subsidized that's right
01:48:05.720
those guys we are going to continue and we're going to end up with with challenges all the way
01:48:09.940
through including in the courts where we see the supreme court uh unfortunately has become a place
01:48:15.260
of political activism that at least in the united states they've recognized as antonin scalia said the
01:48:20.840
former supreme court justice the people will have their say if they realize the decisions they care
01:48:25.660
about are not being made in congress and are being made at the supreme court they will politicize those
01:48:30.200
appointments unfortunately the political left in canada has recognized that but the conservative
01:48:35.020
right in canada has just sort of watched every single decision made not through democratic will of
01:48:41.600
the people not through acts of parliament or legislatures but instead by fiat and declaration of nine
01:48:46.640
oligarchs and red and white robes and the supreme court dismantle the institutions that we used to
01:48:51.860
trust and continue to push the most radical and i mean that truly the most radical policies in the world
01:48:57.240
and defend them and and we will continue to fight against the array of all these different institutions
01:49:02.920
that have failed canadians because fundamentally one the policy is right it is working and that is
01:49:10.080
demonstrably true even if you look at opioid overdoses over the last four months of our public
01:49:14.080
reporting in alberta we've seen anywhere from 42 to 50 decreases year over year oh yeah whereas you
01:49:19.700
look at bc you don't see anything near that for obvious reason that it's starting to work the
01:49:24.860
culture of recovery is working that's the number one reason we're going to keep doing it right that
01:49:28.600
it's working but secondly not only is that common sense that isn't working it's the right thing to do
01:49:33.440
and i think conservatives need to appreciate that we have a moral argument to make that we care
01:49:38.420
compassionately for those who are vulnerable that when we want to do yeah the conservatives have got to
01:49:43.360
get better at taking the moral upper hand away from the progress and because they don't have the moral
01:49:47.640
upper hand no they know how to moralize but but they're they do not come to uh to the debate with
01:49:53.740
any kind of monopoly on the space and conservatives have abandoned it and sometimes the conservatives
01:49:59.200
as a movement broadly across the west have gotten it wrong i'm not defending every instance what i'm
01:50:04.180
saying is you look at where we are now as a society and it's completely different from your
01:50:09.260
childhood in canada when i'm 37 uh and so you're 30 years older than me you said the world you grew
01:50:15.020
up in is categorically different and there's no reason to think that these radical activists that
01:50:19.560
are completely consumed by this intersectional marxist ideology uh that that populate whether it
01:50:25.880
be our academic or our activist lobby groups or our courts there's no way to think that they're
01:50:30.360
going to take the foot off the gas because what they've done has won for so long and so it's going
01:50:34.580
to require a confidence you're going to have to know what you're talking about but you're going
01:50:38.860
to have to also frame this in a moral language that we are doing what is best for those who are
01:50:43.200
vulnerable we truly care and the other side has not only abandoned them it is it has made it just
01:50:49.020
a carnage for those who are suffering from addiction and this is true across almost every
01:50:54.220
social policy that you look at that the left has controlled in canada for the last 30 40 years
01:50:59.500
and i think there's a wonderful opportunity and pierre polyev is doing a terrific job of
01:51:04.040
articulating this federally danielle smith is doing an incredible job just today announced even more
01:51:09.020
policy uh when it comes to gender uh and protecting families and protecting young individuals great oh
01:51:15.420
today announcement today so uh there is there is the wider population is just craving not even
01:51:22.420
hard-caring conservatives canadians broadly albertans broadly they care about saying this has gone
01:51:28.860
too far and this is this has pushed me into a spot where it seems unrecognizable and so the policies
01:51:34.900
that we have to adopt need to be framed in a way that says we care about the common good we care about
01:51:39.940
our communities and we are not simply talking about it from a dollars and cents perspective we care about
01:51:44.900
the welfare of those who are most vulnerable we care about the success of our community broadly
01:51:49.060
and i think that's an exciting thing happening in canadian politics and and it's alberta largely and this
01:51:54.400
has a great file to demonstrate that we're leading and we're winning that's an excellent place to
01:52:00.440
stop so thank you very much for walking us through that thank you well it would be very useful it would
01:52:06.640
be very useful and i'll do what i can to facilitate it to facilitate communication about these sorts of
01:52:11.740
programs on the international side because what you guys are doing in alberta is interestingly
01:52:17.240
uh practical it's revolutionary in an interestingly practical sense and it would be lovely to see it
01:52:25.580
succeed and be and be adopted elsewhere i would say that it is alberta is this wonderful place that
01:52:31.480
is grounded in a place of heritage of who we are it's a province and these values but we're willing
01:52:36.160
to be entrepreneurs yeah right in that sense and yeah you have to give credit to premier daniel smith
01:52:40.460
for taking the lead on this and yeah that's for sure incredible and jason kenney as well before her
01:52:45.180
when it comes to this addiction file it was an innovative policy that he spearheaded as well
01:52:49.520
so i think we've had terrific leadership in our province that have allowed us to get to the spot
01:52:53.460
where we're starting to see the fruits of this where we see overdose deaths reducing it's just
01:52:58.180
credible to see those those activists who oppose the policy they have to explain why they're against
01:53:03.160
40 to 50 percent overdose deaths for opioids year over year in these last four months uh and and it's
01:53:09.120
it's incredible how obvious it puts squarely that this is ideal ideology for them right they don't
01:53:15.100
care about about those who are suffering uh sadly those activists are more committed to an ideology
01:53:21.900
than they are to to the dignity of the human person they're more committed to their self
01:53:27.200
aggrandizement for for bearing the standards of the ideology than anything else yeah all right sir
01:53:33.060
that was very nice talking to you absolutely so we're going to continue this discussion on the
01:53:38.320
daily wire side for another half an hour so that you can join us there um i think i'll talk a bit
01:53:43.360
in a bit more detail about the alberta and canadian political landscape and the relationship between
01:53:49.480
that and uh well the international culture war i suppose for lack of a better word and and uh so
01:53:56.800
and i could i'll talk a little bit too uh about what we're doing on the alliance for responsible
01:54:03.240
citizenship front to start to shift the cultural narrative in ways that are already starting to
01:54:08.940
happen in places like alberta and may happen much more broadly in canada when pierre polyev takes
01:54:14.080
the helm which is highly likely sometime in the next year depending on how rapidly mr trudeau
01:54:20.360
continues to degenerate and perish so all right join us on the daily wire side