Western Standard - September 06, 2024


Alberta Senator elect Erik Barootes chats with Cory on Canada's Senate & Alberta's attempts to refor

Topics
Senate reform in Alberta
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Charles Adler Stephen Harper Daryl Finlater Jason Kenney Paula Simons Mike Check Mike Duffy
Nenshi denounces Alberta government for changing scope of Calgary’s Green Line Jagmeet & Justin breakup

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

175.26

Word count

852

Sentence count

47


Summary

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

In this episode, we talk about the current state of the Canadian Senate and what we can do to improve it. We discuss the role of the Senate, its role in Alberta, and how it can be improved.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 We have had a history of elected senators in Alberta in between 2012 and 2015.
00:00:08.580 We actually had two of the three in the last Senate election be appointed.
00:00:14.140 The reason why it kind of came to be was wanting to have a voice for Albertans, which is the role of Senate.
00:00:19.240 It's not a specific group. It's not a woke agenda item.
00:00:23.620 It is actually about having a voice for the entire province.
00:00:28.720 And so in 2021, aligned with the last municipal election, there was several of us, three of us,
00:00:37.520 which ran under the Conservative Party of Canada under new legislative changes by then Premier Jason Kenney
00:00:43.700 and a whole slew of independents that wanted, again, to be able to stand up for Alberta in the upper chamber,
00:00:52.300 in the red chamber to make sure that when bills are passing, that our region is definitely considered.
00:00:58.420 And that perspective is being brought. Now, fast forward from 2015 to 29 or from 2015 till now,
00:01:05.800 we've had Justin Trudeau, who I'm not even sure if he believes in the Senate,
00:01:10.760 but who hasn't respected Alberta's elected senators.
00:01:15.600 Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper did, but we've had an individual named Mike Shake,
00:01:20.040 who sat for a very long time. Who knows if that'll be my future as well.
00:01:24.820 But we do have three individuals that were elected by Albertans with, I'll say, quite large numbers.
00:01:31.380 It's larger than, you know, any leader, any premier, any political party individual gets.
00:01:39.840 So there was a big uptake by Albertans to actually elect and vote for these individuals.
00:01:46.700 So, I mean, a lot of, when I talk to Americans, they're just flabbergasted that we actually appoint our senators.
00:01:52.440 I mean, how on earth could you possibly, how undemocratic do you get?
00:01:55.920 Well, yeah, I'm afraid that that's the reality.
00:01:59.440 To kind of work around or make that sugarcoat it a bit, I mean, Prime Minister Trudeau has claimed all the senators he's elected now are independents.
00:02:07.020 They aren't party senators. It's a little hard to believe, isn't it?
00:02:12.300 Well, it is, especially with the most recent appointment in Daryl Finlater.
00:02:17.240 He has been a conservative fundraiser.
00:02:20.760 Even when he was a member of the PC party in Alberta, it was a federal liberal fundraiser for Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party.
00:02:28.320 So, I mean, that's one that really frustrates me because I think he does.
00:02:32.260 I mean, he has a great resume from his professional career, I think a perspective he could bring, but don't call that an independent senator.
00:02:39.740 Just say they're going to go join the Liberal Caucus.
00:02:42.900 And I think that Justin Trudeau would actually hold a little bit more street cred within the individuals that love and respect the purpose of the Senate.
00:02:51.840 Well, another aspect of Senate abuse, and to be fair, over enough years, we can see some terrible examples of it from conservative and liberal governments.
00:02:59.760 It's a partisan role that can be used as an incentive for people or a handout, a plumb.
00:03:06.220 And, you know, somewhere it frustrates us a lot, of course, is when media members are suddenly popped in there.
00:03:10.960 Yeah, I'm going to speak of Charles Adler.
00:03:13.080 Paula Simons was the first before Charles, too.
00:03:16.460 And others prior to that.
00:03:19.400 But, I mean, you know, unfortunately, we shouldn't be seeing media members dancing around trying to curry favor with the federal government.
00:03:27.060 Mike Duffy was another example.
00:03:28.400 He didn't turn out to be actually, he was a conservative appointee.
00:03:30.760 It didn't turn out to really be the best senator we could hope for.
00:03:35.360 If we could take away that reason for the government to appoint senators, it would bring some more honesty into that House.
00:03:40.900 Yeah, I definitely think, and something I did campaign on, was the need for Senate reform.
00:03:44.880 So I don't think that the Senate is currently working in the way it was either intended or the way that it can best suit Albertans.
00:03:52.040 We have seen a few pieces of legislation, including the original, you know, censorship bill that the Senate actually shut down and put back.
00:04:00.400 So we have seen some examples where the Senate has actually acted as that sober second thought.
00:04:05.940 But if you're looking at even the lay of the land of individuals that are currently senators in Alberta, I think most Albertans would find it very hard to sit there and say that these individuals have a track record of standing up for the values and beliefs that our province upholds.
00:04:21.560 And so I think there is an argument that, you know, I'm sure you and I would both agree mainstream media or former journalists probably aren't the best candidates.
00:04:32.400 But I do think that there is, you know, concern by others that we also shouldn't have the partisanship or if you're going to be partisan, at least own it.
00:04:41.740 And I think that that's some of the challenge for people that maybe don't understand or support what the current Senate, how it operates and what is it, what's its purpose.
00:04:51.560 Thank you.