Corey rants about Canada's economic woes, the UCP, and why a referendum should never happen. Also, Canada's economy is a basket case, and it's not because of Canada's oil output, it's because of the federal government.
00:08:55.520And I mean, I know some people will say, oh, it's some idiot who will go out there and flick a cigarette.
00:08:58.960But, you know, the idiot who's going to flick a cigarette and digress isn't going to be smart enough to stop going in the woods if Premier.
00:09:54.300They've got a furry mascot called Boy.
00:09:58.680Boy, you know, as in boy, boy, yeah, that might be the better way to pronounce it.
00:10:03.460So every year they do a thing with an Alaska hockey school, try and keep interest in Alaska and hockey.
00:10:09.700So they decided the thing to do would be to go to the epicenter of grizzly bears in the entire world.
00:10:15.980Brook Falls, where the hundreds of bears sit and wait for salmon and put this stuffed animal thing, mascot, in the middle of the river, fly fishing with a player, a Seattle Kraken player.
00:10:31.760And then, of course, you see the grizzly approaching on the pathway and his eyes light up.
00:10:39.560Oh, exotic food, a sushi or something nice and fluffy out there.
00:10:46.280So, of course, the bear charges into the water.
00:10:49.020And the poor Bowie and the hockey player, I mean, I'll give them credit.
00:10:54.380They didn't scream like little girls like I would have.
00:11:14.120Our editorial we can talk about is praising American Eagle for standing by the lovely Sidney Sweeney and not collapsing in the face of all that incredible woke outrage.
00:11:31.920I mean, you know, even moving towards a celebration of ugly, it kind of comes more towards that one of my commenters talking about the tall poppy syndrome.
00:11:38.920There's just certain people who just feel, well, guys, tear everybody down.
00:11:41.600Okay, we didn't all get the good genes of Sweeney, but we can still put them out and advertise and appreciate them for crying out.
00:18:32.960But it's one of those indications, again, of a conservative party that Premier Smith has got to worry about trying to maintain some degree of unity.
00:18:39.520Or she could, you know, get into some devastating splits before the next election.
00:20:54.240One of the biggest moments of the decline, though, is I have seen pride and arrogance ruin more people in this business than any scandal ever will.
00:21:02.720And when a leader thinks that he or she is all that in a bag of chips, that's when the consultations stop.
00:21:09.660And that is, at that very moment, is when the bad decisions start.
00:23:08.080But the flip side to that is if we have multiple conservative parties again, that poses a problem for us, even in Alberta, as we saw in 2015.
00:23:17.260And that could be a real problem going on.
00:23:22.400It's funny, when you're talking, though, about, and I mean, you're a lawyer.
00:23:27.740You've been actually, you know, outspoken on with that.
00:23:30.480We would talk about with some of the law societies and challenges going on there and independence in those areas.
00:23:36.300But with data mining, I mean, it's understandable.
00:23:39.280Okay, the exercise, for example, that Mr. Lukasik's got going on, those signatures, though, any signatures going towards a referendum, that data should not be used for any other purpose, aside from giving to the electoral officer to invoke an election, right, or a referendum.
00:24:00.320So our privacy legislation, there's the Freedom of Information Protection of Privacy Act, and then there's the Personal Information Protection Act.
00:24:06.920There's an exception there for politics.
00:24:10.080So, for example, if I knock on your door and your issue are people using your washroom at your, at your, at your, at your restaurant, I will write that down.
00:24:18.620I can give that to a different candidate.
00:24:20.460But it's a little bit different, though, with something like this, is that it should not be used for other purposes.
00:24:25.660And I happen to know that the chief electoral officer will salt lists.
00:24:29.940For example, we'll put a John Q. Simpson in that doesn't exist.
00:24:34.220And then if that John Q. Simpson is called from somebody else, that discloses that that's been used.
00:24:39.340So it's not against the privacy legislation.
00:24:41.840But for something like this, as you point out, it is actually against the Elections Act.
00:24:46.720Yeah, actually, that, that's all take a list.
00:24:49.180We did that with one of the Wildrose leadership contests going on as well, just to make sure that people weren't sharing lists elsewhere.
00:24:55.940And we let them know, because there's no sense being a secret.
00:24:58.360Don't, don't be surprised if that list actually was shared.
00:26:34.320Some of them are not Canadian citizens, uh, or coming.
00:26:37.220That's great that they're coming here.
00:26:38.460Uh, but, uh, you, you, you're, you're going from a very, uh, a very, uh, large group that you need to go and attract in a very short period of time.
00:26:47.880Yeah, so now the, the electoral officer has, uh, you know, put forward the Alberta Prosperity Projects question to the court of King's bench to have them review it for constitutionality.
00:26:59.340Uh, Premier Smith has, uh, expressed ire with that, but we, I mean, the premier doesn't want to get into a scrap with the chief electoral officer.
00:27:06.220That's got some of the worst optics you could possibly have, but at the same time, does this need to go before that?
00:27:12.560I mean, I thought the Supreme Court and the Clarity Act pretty much laid it out as long as you have a clear question, it shouldn't be a problem.
00:27:18.580So the Clarity Act says it must be a clear question at a clear majority.
00:27:22.080So the clear question, if you go back to the 1995 Quebec referendum, that was a very, very long, uh, question that Lucie Bouchard had put up.
00:27:29.940I actually think the better question that would be there is, do you want to separate from Canada or something very similar to that?
00:27:35.720So a clear majority would mean something more than 50%, probably not 80%, but something more than 50%.
00:27:43.140I want to just preface this comment that I'm not criticizing any judge, not criticizing any court here whatsoever, but I do question, why does this need to go to a court?
00:27:53.160To me, that this is a political exercise.
00:27:55.620Uh, this is something that can be cited by our elected officials.
00:27:59.120I don't know why it's going to a court.
00:28:02.940And, you know, I, I've dealt with elections, Alberta.
00:28:05.120I've always actually, despite a lot of people having conspiracy theories and everything, I find they bend over backwards very hard to remain as unbiased.
00:28:11.840As possible when it comes to partisan things.
00:28:14.080I mean, that's the very core of their being that they cannot apply a bias or it's the worst possible area for such in a bureaucracy.
00:28:22.400But when he's taken it upon himself to put that towards the court of King's bench, it, it, it kind of raises a little questions on, you know, does he feel that it's worth, I don't want to question the integrity of the chief electoral officer, but.
00:28:35.600No, no, no, actually, you know, for the most part, I, like I've acted on a few judicial recounts at different levels of government.
00:28:40.880For the most part, our democracy in Canada is pretty good.
00:28:43.280It's never going to be perfect, but it's pretty good.
00:28:45.920You don't really have like these mass voter fraud issues and stuff like that you see in other democracies.
00:29:15.080I mean, how long do you think it'll take before a judge could look at that and then give a ruling, whether it's a thumbs up or thumbs down?
00:29:20.260Well, there's always a bit of mystery when it comes to the judges and they often talk about the lack of judicial resources, which is real.
00:29:26.240Alberta, by every metric to our ratio of judges to population, has always been at the lower margin.
00:29:33.820And that's largely because of the people from Saskatchewan like me who keep coming here, people from other provinces, other countries here coming here.
00:30:13.800So she would probably be, if she wants to get this done, she wants that band-aid peeled off next year so that whatever way that referendum goes, she's dealing now with an election the year after, not that.
00:30:50.920It's just only with one final thing, though.
00:30:52.800Would it be possible then, even if there hadn't been a ruling for the premier just to say, well, we're pulling the trigger.
00:30:57.320We can allow these guys to start petitioning now regardless.
00:31:00.140And we'll find out the constitutionality of it later.
00:31:02.280That could be a little dangerous because what could happen is a party could apply for an injunction stopping that.
00:31:09.140But on top of that, there's such a matter of a judicial independence order.
00:31:12.260The Chief Justice of Alberta can then go and issue a judicial independence order.
00:31:15.680I reminded him once a conversation I had with Mr. Nenshi in 2012 when he wanted me to put the arrest processing unit at the bottom of the Calgary Courthouse.
00:31:23.320I said, buddy, I will get a judicial independence order slapped against me if I go and do that.
00:33:08.540Or is that a sovereign nation of Alberta?
00:33:09.800Or is that in conjunction with others?
00:33:11.040They made it pretty clear in a sentence in some of the Prosperity Project.
00:33:14.440As Jonathan mentioned, the Quebec referendum, for those who remember from 1995, that question was a giant word salad of ambiguity and ugliness.
00:33:23.820And that's why it went, you know, because you could read that 10 different ways.
00:33:28.740And how are you going to get people to vote on something?
00:33:33.240And I'm pretty, I'm confident, though the judge might not agree with me, I'm confident that what the Alberta Prosperity Project put forward is clear.
00:33:45.900And I mean, while we've got Lukasik, I've seen some of the discussion on the comment scrolls.
00:33:49.580So, I mean, just to, for some people who don't watch this closely, so Alberta's referendum legislation just came into being, or just at least got amended recently.
00:34:00.480Jason Kenney first brought it in and he set it to a ridiculous bar that made it pretty much impossible for anybody to meet it.
00:34:06.660That's why the, that's the recall legislation's in there as well.
00:34:09.840That's why to recall Jody Gondek under that old legislation took more signatures on a petition than people who actually voted in the election.
00:34:20.600And it's been scaled down, but Lukasik thought he'd jump the gun and he applied to petition to have a referendum held before the new legislation came into power.
00:34:37.080There's policy referendums and there are referenda and there's constitutional ones.
00:34:42.760Now, his would be under a policy one under the old legislation.
00:34:46.040It means he needs nearly 300,000 signatures and he only has 90 days to get them.
00:34:52.260I'm hearing different numbers from them.
00:34:53.800I mean, they already flubbed up and stepped in it by attacking Alberta's flag in a safe way and embarrassed themselves and shut down one of their Facebook groups.
00:35:16.360You've got to have a person registered holding that clipboard to another person, witnessing them to fill out their full name, home address.
00:36:07.800Duplicates are going to be thrown out.
00:36:08.980If you're doing it, you see, part of what Fabio there, Lukasik, is doing is he's going to farmers markets and public events and they're getting signatures there.
00:39:06.660Also, if you get somebody who comes to their doorstep and says, I'm going to kick you in the privates if I ever see one of you guys on our doorstep again or anything like that,
00:39:14.880you should probably note that in the other clipboard too so you don't waste time going out there.
00:39:19.140Because you see, there's two campaigns.
00:39:20.800Right now, we're just in the petitioning campaign part.
00:39:23.380Just the part of trying to get the question on a referendum ballot.
00:39:30.260But then a date has to be set for the referendum.
00:39:35.940As Jonathan said, politically, I think Premier Smith will want this sooner rather than later because she doesn't want to be dealing with whatever way this goes.
00:39:45.380When a general election comes, we're looking at, what, two years now?
00:39:51.060She won't want that to be hanging over onto that.
00:39:54.720And then the referendum campaign means you have to convince a clear majority of Albertans.
00:39:59.740And there's another one of those areas of big ambiguity.
00:40:02.200And this is going to be one of the huge ones.
00:40:03.920A clear majority of Albertans saying they want to go.
00:40:08.380And I've been fighting with a few independents minded people about that already.
00:41:05.960Cause as, as, as pointed out with that, when you're petitioning, every person who does that, then they got to bring their petition and swear an affidavit to a commissioner of oaths that they witnessed the signatures is on it.
00:41:14.940Like this is not a minor affair folks.
00:41:17.120And the more people who are commissioners of oaths, the better.
00:41:21.300I don't know the process of my wife, Jane, I don't even know if she still has that status any longer, but she was a commissioner of oaths.
00:41:27.840She did that for a while when she ran a business center.
00:41:30.480Um, and, uh, I'm pretty sure the process is online.
00:41:34.740I don't know what, everything that goes into it necessarily.
00:41:38.560Uh, but I mean, some of the discussions of what's going to be needed, a dark group saying APB needs more canvassers than commissioners of oaths.