Western Standard - Danielle Smith Show： A Conversation with Gordon Tulk

00:00:00.000 Well, greetings, friends.

00:00:25.240 Welcome to a long form of the Danielle Smith Show.

00:00:28.560 I'm going to be trying to do these on a weekly basis. So if you've got some really interesting

00:00:33.040 newsmaker or thought leader that you want me to speak to, this is the time for us to do it,

00:00:37.680 because I do like the interactivity. I am going to try to monitor the text line a little bit more,

00:00:43.800 but sheesh, you know, I went into the locals community because of the vitriol that we see

00:00:53.280 on social media. What is wrong with everybody on social media? You're very angry. Let's see if we

00:00:59.520 can have a respectful conversation today and see if we can get to the bottom of some pretty

00:01:05.620 important issues. Because I want to talk to you, number one, about health reform. Many of you have

00:01:10.160 been asking what my ideas are on health care reform. And we also want to talk about how we

00:01:15.260 can renew our relationship with Canada. It has been my position for some time that if we were

00:01:21.460 to put the conditions on the table that we have right now for Alberta to join with the rest of

00:01:28.160 the country, would we sign on to this particular deal? Would we sign on to only having six Senate

00:01:35.240 seats when Newfoundland, when Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have 10? Would we sign on to Quebec

00:01:41.140 in perpetuity, no matter what their population being, having a certain number of seats, even

00:01:45.840 though our population is growing, would we sign on to $27 billion or more every year going to

00:01:53.360 support the rest of our fellow countrymen while we continue to barely scrape by with surpluses or

00:02:00.860 even run deficits? Would we put up with that? Would we sign on to the federal government coming

00:02:07.200 to us on every single area of our jurisdiction and offering us pennies on the dollar and then

00:02:12.900 telling us they want total control over how we run our programs, whether it's healthcare or now

00:02:17.460 childcare, or they want to get into long-term care and pharmaceutical care, I don't think we'd sign

00:02:22.760 on to that deal. So my first guest today for this new type of platform has lots to say on both of

00:02:30.940 these issues. And I will give some of my own thoughts as we go through this, but I want to

00:02:36.940 give him his uh his full due because you've probably heard me talking right about health

00:02:42.120 spending accounts and i never personally had a health spending account until i got into government

00:02:49.260 this is sort of the interesting thing isn't it so many of you who have been in large corporations

00:02:54.420 probably have had one of these mechanisms in your uh in part of your benefits package for some time

00:03:02.680 But I'll tell you how it works in the public service. Someone will have to correct me if

00:03:09.000 there's somebody on the line who's in one of the in one of the unions, but often the way they

00:03:14.040 structure the pay and benefits that politicians get is they want it to be roughly equivalent to

00:03:19.560 what is offered in the public service. So I can only assume that every member of the public

00:03:23.560 service has the same thing we did. As I said, someone will correct me if I'm wrong. But when

00:03:27.720 we got in they had a health spending account that was uh had an amount an allocation of 950

00:03:35.880 it's pretty high right i'm such a loser i didn't know how to use it so i think we only ever

00:03:40.520 withdrew it for david to get glasses and his optometry visit and the interesting part about

00:03:46.360 how it was structured is it was structured as use it or lose it so once you got to the end of the

00:03:52.120 year if you hadn't used it it would just reset to zero and then you'd get a a new setting so

00:03:58.840 a pretty substantial benefit if you think about it now the other thing about health spending

00:04:03.160 accounts because you're sort of probably scratching your head because we keep getting told

00:04:06.600 that all we have is a publicly funded system but as we know we do already have a lot of private

00:04:12.360 delivery in health care and there's a lot of services that are not covered by our publicly

00:04:17.400 funded system. The Canada Health Act has five principles in it. I wonder if I can list them

00:04:24.140 off the top of my head. So universality is one of the principles. Public administration is another

00:04:29.560 one of the principles. Accessibility, how accessible is it? They seem to have looked at the

00:04:36.540 lens of accessibility as whether or not you have to pay for access as opposed to whether or not

00:04:41.060 you're sitting waiting on a waiting list. There's portability as well and comprehensiveness. So

00:04:47.240 again, lots of things aren't covered by healthcare. So what a health spending account does is that it

00:04:53.180 allows you dollars in your account to pay for all the things that are not covered by the publicly

00:04:59.700 funded program. And so think about that for yourself, about the things that you have had

00:05:04.400 to pay out of pocket for. Things like laser eye surgery, things like braces, which I've had three

00:05:09.620 times. Things like the, there's some people, if you don't have a pharmaceutical plan, you'd be

00:05:15.720 able to pay out of a health spending account. There are physiotherapy, chiropractic, massage

00:05:22.640 therapy, dieticians, naturopath, and a bunch of different other implements too. So when you look

00:05:29.000 at the range of things you can pay for out of a health spending account, it does make you realize

00:05:33.520 that there actually is an awful lot that isn't covered by the publicly funded healthcare system.

00:05:38.080 The publicly funded healthcare system principally covers hospital services and

00:05:44.540 doctor's services. So if you want to think about where the dividing line, that seems to be the

00:05:48.600 dividing line. But here's the thing. That's my first experience that I had with the health

00:05:53.600 spending account. Send me a text or a note in the side here as we're chatting so I can find out

00:05:58.800 about your personal experience. But it occurred to me, if our Alberta public service already has

00:06:04.440 health spending accounts, that actually should be a good place to start when we're doing reform.

00:06:09.800 If it's good enough for those who are in the public service to have access to a little bit of

00:06:13.840 of money so that they can pay for the healthcare needs and their own priorities. Why wouldn't we

00:06:18.600 make that kind of approach available to everyone? Now, the seed got planted about how to transform

00:06:25.360 healthcare by my guest today. His name is Gordon Tulk. And I want to give you his background,

00:06:32.060 because some of you who have gone to the United Conservative Party conventions will know that

00:06:36.840 Gordon Tulk has a lot to say on almost every policy issue. Actually, literally every policy

00:06:42.340 issue. It was very funny. I went to the UCP convention in the fall. It was Gordon and one

00:06:47.900 other gentleman who got up and almost had dueling mics going on. I think, I don't know if you guys

00:06:52.460 plan that, that you have opposite takes on every policy issue. No, we don't plan that. But it was

00:06:58.600 very hilarious. You guys seem to. But let me give a more formal introduction to the kind of things

00:07:03.420 that you're doing so that people will understand why you have such an interest in this area.

00:07:08.240 because you've given a ton of thought to policy issues and I want to make sure that people know

00:07:12.860 the full breadth of it. You're born and raised in western Newfoundland after earning a degree in

00:07:18.620 agriculture from the University of Guelph. You worked in various agriculture jobs in Ontario,

00:07:23.360 Newfoundland and BC before moving to the Red Deer area in 1999 as an insurance broker providing

00:07:28.740 financial security advice and products to small business and since early childhood you've been

00:07:33.160 passionate regarding politics and policy now off the air i was i was talking to you about why you

00:07:39.960 you first how you first got interested in politics and in the uh renewing the relationship between

00:07:46.440 ottawa and alberta in particular and as a western newfoundlander you said one of your first

00:07:52.120 experience happened when you got to to present to the charade commission so tell us a little

00:07:57.160 bit about that story because i think it's going to frame a lot of our discussion uh yeah i locked

00:08:02.040 horns with jean charret this was during the meech lake uh debacle um and i worked actually quite

00:08:09.320 closely as i was saying off mic off camera uh with clyde wells and deborah coin there are people i'm

00:08:15.320 sure who are listening to this remember those names uh and i was vehemently against uh meech

00:08:22.280 lake primarily because of the injustice that was going to create with the distinct society

00:08:27.320 and basically giving quebec a veto over everything in the future and not having a triple e senate

00:08:33.720 which i think is frankly the only way this country survives long term and so i appeared

00:08:39.560 before the straight commission uh back in 89 it was my first public speaking appearance ever

00:08:48.280 and i went for 10 minutes and it was live national tv and at the end i basically looked over at the

00:08:53.720 block quebecois member of the commission i told them one day the demographics of this country are 0.86

00:08:58.120 going to change and we're going to say to hell with you um and that got recorded and answered but 0.92

00:09:04.840 as i as i say this i can feel my blood pressure rising as to how upset i was at that time how 0.84

00:09:11.320 you look back and the demographics have changed this country is vastly different now i was just

00:09:15.640 talking to somebody the other day about um clearly you've been now the lower mainland burnaby in

00:09:20.280 1989 was 75 77 percent uh anglo of british origin 77 well if you go to burn to be today

00:09:30.840 it's nothing like that demographically it's probably 80 visible minorities and that frankly

00:09:36.280 that part of canada doesn't give a rat's rear end if i can use that term about the distinct society

00:09:43.000 of quebec trying to tell somebody who's from the cantonese province in in china that they're not 0.74

00:09:48.120 distinct that somebody is more distinct than they are uh is frankly in the front and as a new philander

00:09:54.040 i resented it too but uh i'm surprised that you got away away with unparliamentary language 0.98

00:10:00.280 like using the word hell but you can use rat's ass on here if you want to as well 0.95

00:10:04.840 but the interesting part about that is the demographics have absolutely changed in the 0.96

00:10:08.920 rest of the country but but the francophone character of quebec i wonder in some ways

00:10:14.360 it seems to me that it may have strengthened because of all of the onerous legislation that

00:10:19.080 they brought in with the sign laws and now with their most recent anti-religious symbols law and

00:10:26.560 the control over their immigration to give priority to the francophone language. And I don't know that

00:10:32.720 the English minority in Quebec has been able to enjoy the same level of rights and flourishment

00:10:39.860 that we've seen in multiple communities outside of Quebec. So maybe there's just a different reality

00:10:43.500 there? I haven't spent a lot of time in Quebec lately. Certainly had a lot of dealings with

00:10:50.380 Quebec when I lived down in Eastern Canada, in Newfoundland. I think you could argue some

00:10:56.860 respects it's stronger, but I think it's also weaker because of the repercussions of the

00:11:02.460 xenophobic tools they put in place. And I find it very ironic that Quebecers are massive NFL

00:11:11.240 football fans they are massive fans of americana they don't have the same priors that we have

00:11:17.120 in the english side of canada being reflexively anti-american in that regard

00:11:21.440 um there's enough their their their reflexive actions are against us as opposed to the united

00:11:27.520 states and i suspect culturally they're a lot weaker i've had lots of conversations with

00:11:31.920 newfoundlanders from the demographic the demographics have changed down there a lot

00:11:35.160 and i and and actually i would argue that newfoundland is a far weaker place

00:11:39.140 spiritually and culturally than it was 30 years ago and certainly 50 years ago.

00:11:44.300 The reason why Quebec's attitude matters towards the rest of Canada is really important. I hadn't

00:11:49.240 heard you describe it that way, but it does explain to me why there's such a large population

00:11:53.540 of Quebecers that like to travel down to Florida. Yeah, Florida, big time. They love Americana,

00:12:00.360 they can't get enough of it. But if there's this underlying resentment against English Canada,

00:12:06.600 the reason that becomes so problematic is that with policies of distinct society and official

00:12:12.440 bilingualism and where our our capital city is situated on the ottawa whole border uh you end

00:12:20.520 up with a very large number of the federal civil service that is from quebec and so they would have

00:12:27.080 you'd assume their attitudes towards the rest of canada would be very reflective of what you see

00:12:32.840 in in quebec as a whole and that's that creates all kinds of problems because if there's this

00:12:38.120 vision of how the country ought to work that comes from one province's perspective it kind of

00:12:42.680 explains why there isn't the the same respect for regional diversity and provincial diversity

00:12:48.840 that that they would ask for for themselves do you have a comment on that well i have well as

00:12:53.480 you know if you want an opinion i'll give you one i know you will i have a lot um i think it was

00:12:59.560 michael bliss if you recall michael bliss uh talking about the new canada and the old canada

00:13:05.080 he's put that that marker line somewhere around the manitoba ontario border i think it's actually

00:13:09.800 much closer to uh bluer street uh and west of there i think if anything the new canada's moved

00:13:16.120 slightly to the west in terms or search to the east but you're dealing with and and lots of

00:13:23.160 people written about the laurentian elites i look at canada and the formation of canada and how it

00:13:28.360 proceeded and we see trappings of it all around and compare it to the united states united states

00:13:33.880 is an agrarian economy united states is is close corner to corner to corner to corner

00:13:40.440 it does four corners uh agrarian and in to farm you have to have a bank nearby you have to go

00:13:46.920 and uh buy your tools buy your seed have some place to deliver your food your things to market

00:13:53.480 and if you look at the american economy their banking system their regulatory systems are all

00:13:57.800 much more diffuse look at canada canada is a hinterland originally a hinterland economy that

00:14:03.560 was based at the headwaters in montreal and the headwaters at the hum at the humber river in

00:14:07.640 toronto and the upper and lower canada uh and what does it take to support fur trade

00:14:14.920 in terms of infrastructure nothing right guys are making birch bark canoes right they've got

00:14:20.120 local guides right you take a few beads a few blankets and you've got an ability to run a

00:14:24.520 company so you and you literally deputize the hudson bay company in the beginning and then

00:14:29.080 ultimately you deputize five banks five major banks to be the bank of canada representatives

00:14:36.360 uh west and east uh of the of the the the the true capital of the old canada was montreal

00:14:44.040 not toronto or ottawa for that matter and that hinterland viewpoint perspective still exists

00:14:52.120 I look at Jean Charest, I still see a guy who believes that it's the it's the center of Canada that matters the most.

00:14:59.340 Apocryphally, possibly, but it's been so long.

00:15:02.340 I remember during the constitutional wrangles back when we were repatriating or whatever you want to call it.

00:15:09.640 And Joe Clark famously said he saw Canada as 10, a string of pearls of 10 equal pearls.

00:15:16.780 And somebody asked Pierre Trudeau what he thought of that comment.

00:15:21.340 And Pierre Trudeau said, I see Canada as a gold chain with two diamonds in the middle, right?

00:15:28.600 And what were the diamonds?

00:15:29.980 The diamonds being Ontario and Quebec.

00:15:33.340 And we were the gold chain that was going to feed into that.

00:15:36.220 So a hinterland economy feeds into that central core.

00:15:39.440 That was the principal precept, if you will, of the National Energy Program.

00:15:43.780 That's the National Energy Program was going to pull that wealth that was being generated in Western Canada and was looking to be generated.

00:15:50.080 and that's what got me frosted back in the day was we were on the verge of a boom with hibernia

00:15:55.540 and all those developments on our coast and we were fearful uh brian peckford certainly was irate

00:16:01.980 about it that we were going to see a national energy program imposed on us and all the wealth

00:16:05.940 that we build up and grow funnels into ontario and quebec and that's we're seeing it again right

00:16:13.460 what's the carbon tax right why is Trudeau reflexively trying to stunt and

00:16:20.000 and and hobble Alberta and BC because he sees them as a threat to their

00:16:25.260 hinterland model of the economy and then the Russians leads are threatened

00:16:28.400 no I don't know if you've ever seen this map and I don't know if it's accurate

00:16:34.640 that's why I wanted to ask you about it but it it's a map of Canada and it

00:16:38.840 draws a line at the 49th parallel and so you end up with the little jut of montreal and toronto i

00:16:45.480 think below the 49th parallel and it says that 50 of canada's population lives below this line

00:16:52.360 it's a bigger number than that is it bigger than that so what what is it sort of remarkable because

00:16:57.000 then you see truly the way you're describing it this hinterland economy you see all of this

00:17:01.400 territory that is very lowly populated yeah and then we are we're like i said the united states

00:17:07.240 is this gigantic square and people say well canada's a bigger country than geographically

00:17:12.600 canada from an economic standpoint is just this ribbon about maybe at its deepest parts where we

00:17:18.840 are right now but for the most part it's five miles inside of the north of the american border

00:17:24.280 and that's it um that is what it is but the thing is you know in the last 30 years look at the

00:17:31.880 economic might that's come out of alberta even more than was already at the time you look at

00:17:37.400 the the demographic shifts the population shifts and just the sheer um the miracle

00:17:46.600 i don't know how up our viewers are on what everybody talks about canada being the great

00:17:51.400 compromiser and nothing could be further from the truth the great compromise the actual term

00:17:55.880 great compromise when you look it up in wikipedia and elsewhere refers to the convention in

00:18:00.840 philadelphia and the compromise was over what it was over a triple e senate they they battled it

00:18:07.880 for six months it was the one thing in the room that nobody ever wanted to deal with was that

00:18:12.600 the small states uh in in the 13 said we need equality somewhere at the federal level and

00:18:19.320 it was there's actually i remember watching an old pbs episode where

00:18:23.800 they reenacted the scene and and uh basically new jersey had uh double crossed a couple of

00:18:32.120 smaller states and they were literally going to walk out the door and uh uh benjamin franklin

00:18:38.440 physically blocked the door and wouldn't let them leave and pleaded with the larger states and said

00:18:43.320 if this is what's going to happen this this what we fought for this declaration we wrote

00:18:48.520 ends if we don't compromise on this and then compromise and it's remarkable too

00:18:53.800 And the United States doesn't exist today.

00:18:56.880 The greatest, frankly, in my opinion, the greatest, most powerful, most beneficial country ever created in all of humanity.

00:19:03.900 And what did we do in Canada?

00:19:06.000 Well, number one, we ran away from it.

00:19:07.900 My ancestors ran away from it to Ontario.

00:19:12.220 You know, ran away from the greatest idea in human history, which is the Declaration of Independence.

00:19:17.760 And then the Constitution that arose from it.

00:19:19.940 uh and then we have a meech lake and all these other rounds and we we never got to that point

00:19:27.700 where we said you know what if we're going to hold this country together long term

00:19:31.420 we have to recognize the equality of the provinces at the federal level so let's talk about that

00:19:37.140 because i think it gets into your your really kind of key idea about how we should rethink

00:19:42.660 canada because it's it's hard to imagine how america has been able to agree that a a state

00:19:50.860 with 30 million people which i think is what california is roughly would have the same 31

00:19:56.420 million okay would have the same the same getting smaller every day daniel well of course they're

00:20:01.400 all going to florida they're all leaving yes or texas but then the smallest state i think is rhode

00:20:08.500 island which has tell me no it's actually it's wyoming uh physically rhode island no actually

00:20:16.040 delaware would be smaller population smallest but but in terms of population it's wyoming

00:20:21.640 and what is it 540 000 okay so so let's just put this on the table because that's one of the

00:20:29.280 barriers we've had in this country is how can you equalize a 31 million population with a 500 000

00:20:36.980 population we've got a similar application should pei with 100 000 people have the same number of

00:20:43.220 senators as uh as ontario with call it 14 million or alberta with four and a half million that it's

00:20:49.780 hard to get over that barrier i mean america grew into it when they made their decisions back in the

00:20:54.740 1700s maybe they never foresaw that that that california and florida would be such high

00:21:00.180 populations they might not agree to it if they'd known but we are now in a situation where we do

00:21:04.820 have these disparities and how do you get people over the idea that that pei should have the same

00:21:09.940 voice you can tell by my eagerness i hope maybe people can see as enthusiastic as i am about

00:21:15.700 health care health care reform and equalization reform let me first pose the question that i

00:21:21.700 asked you i remember a while ago i asked anybody who i respect in terms of their opinion on this

00:21:26.820 and some people who understand the dynamics of this country do you i'll ask the viewers listeners

00:21:33.940 do you think canada can survive long term without reforming the senate and i'm pretty sure most

00:21:40.660 people would say no it cannot can i tell you what my answer would be my answer would be i think that

00:21:46.260 the senate's unreformable because we had we had people like burt brown and ted morton who just

00:21:51.780 gave it the good old college try let me let me map this out then you can counter me so i think

00:21:56.740 we've had great reformers who are strong voices who gave it the try we even had politicians who

00:22:02.180 who would appoint our elected senators, like Dan Waters, and then Burton and others got appointed.

00:22:08.560 But then we switch back to the liberals, and they ignore our Senate elections. We've just done a

00:22:13.760 Senate election, and people ask me if I was going to run. I say, well, why? You put all this effort

00:22:17.680 in, and you're never going to get appointed anyway. So I have looked at our country as the

00:22:23.440 counterbalance isn't the Senate. The counterbalance is a strong provincial premier that all of the

00:22:28.940 premiers have to assert their voice in having the constitution work the way it was intended.

00:22:35.120 So that would be my answer. So tell me why you think I'm wrong. Okay. First off,

00:22:39.960 you're saying it's unreformable. I think that, and just full disclosure, I'm part of Libertas

00:22:47.300 Alberta we created, and our whole efforts are to come up with policies and ideas and solutions that

00:22:53.120 are politically workable. It's no point to talk about a political solution if it's not

00:22:58.060 a goal we can get to and and healthcare reform is very much part of that as well

00:23:03.100 so let's let's back up a sec if you look at in the united states california's 30 million and

00:23:09.820 wyoming's 500 000 or whatever it is so maybe somebody can text and give us the actual actual

00:23:14.380 numbers race and and ontario is 11 12 13 million now and pei is 110 120 000 so the city of red deer

00:23:23.740 plus sylvan lake um the ratio largest province to smallest province is more extreme in cal in

00:23:37.500 in the united states than it is in canada okay on the largest to smallest but if you took

00:23:43.180 the majority you require so in the united states to have a majority and say you need 25 states plus

00:23:47.820 one to sway power. If you look at the math there, it's about 36% of the population would be 25

00:23:56.780 states, 25 small states. In Canada, it's less than 20. And in another 15 years, it'll be around 12

00:24:04.840 or 13%. The point being is that the bigger provinces have an argument to be made here that

00:24:11.320 the power balance is outrageous and it's getting worse if we allow a Tripoli Senate. And they're

00:24:16.560 right on that. And what my counter is that you can't just address the Senate. You have to address

00:24:23.780 what does it mean to be a province? And why are we high-binding our geographic provincial

00:24:33.440 boundaries on stuff that was agreed to 100 and whatever the heck years ago, 150 years ago in 1867?

00:24:40.460 pei was a much more important player and a much more dynamic populist base

00:24:46.860 in relation to the rest of canada alberta had how many people i mean

00:24:50.600 in terms of uh setting aside the the aboriginals that were there at the time

00:24:57.060 so the demographics have changed and we have to have some kind of a mechanism that says you know

00:25:03.260 what if you're below a certain population relative to the rest of canada for a 20 25 year period you

00:25:08.820 cease to be a province you become a territory you lose your senate seats you get one senate seat

00:25:14.500 on the flip side if you're a province and you can organize and delineate a part of the population

00:25:21.140 of that province that's five percent of the overall national population you should be able

00:25:25.460 to come a new province let the gta become a province i need you to pause here because what

00:25:31.220 you're putting forward is is a pretty radical redrafting of our geography and so i want to

00:25:37.220 make sure that people understand just give me one second i don't know if anybody has come back to us

00:25:40.740 and told us what the uh uh population of these two states are no one has laura i'm just going to make

00:25:46.660 a note to uh our our technical producer if there's an interesting comment that comes up just make

00:25:51.860 sure you flashed on the screens that everyone everyone can see it but what what i what i find

00:25:57.140 interesting is because it is the case that when you are born into a certain geographic structure

00:26:02.980 you think that's going to last forever it's kind of a it's miraculous to imagine the forging of

00:26:08.180 our two nations and at one point we were rupert's land right and then we had different denominations

00:26:15.380 and as we got higher population and more development provinces emerged we didn't emerge

00:26:19.460 in alberta until 1905 and saskatchewan same thing so what you're proposing is i just want to i want

00:26:25.780 to think that through so you're saying that probably under this scenario pei would become

00:26:31.300 a territory and would begin and would lose some of its provincial status would be a bit more

00:26:35.700 of a ward and require more federal intervention but then it's not to say that every province would

00:26:41.540 stay the way it is the provinces would be divided into multiple different provinces based on

00:26:47.940 different populations so walk me across the country if you could and tell me based on what

00:26:52.180 you've seen and what you've looked at how many how many provinces could we have in canada based on

00:26:58.420 what you're proposing okay so let's again let me just these these kinds of frictions are happening

00:27:04.260 in the u.s as well you're seeing separatist movements in california you're seeing people

00:27:09.300 in northern new york saying we should separate from from manhattan um and places like that my

00:27:14.580 dog's making myself it's okay you know it's a hazard now she's having nightmares about canada

00:27:20.420 in the next few years we don't fix it so what we propose and what we and obviously these are points

00:27:26.580 of discussion in libertas was let's this needs to be a very slow process that it'll be 25 years

00:27:32.740 before pei's essentially put on notice that they're below a certain level and they get another

00:27:36.980 25 years to get their their act together and either find a way to grow the population or maybe

00:27:42.020 they cut a deal with new brunswick and become part of new brunswick um all those calculations happen

00:27:46.980 so this isn't like tomorrow we're going to have it you know we're not going to draw a line through

00:27:51.060 northern india and call it pakistan and have a civil war over it but over the long term you could

00:27:56.900 see the atlantic province is essentially becoming maybe two problems in the brunswick and pei nova

00:28:01.860 scotia and flannel labrador you could see quebec divide into three right you could see ontario

00:28:07.940 divide into five entities you could have a capital in london a capital in toronto a capital in north

00:28:13.220 bay for all of northwestern ontario and then you've got what we call the capital region now the

00:28:19.060 giant money pot where we pay big amounts of money to blow snow off the rito canal

00:28:23.620 um into another province you could see alberta becoming two provinces you could see bc becoming

00:28:30.020 the lower mainland you could see vancouver island becoming a province one day potentially

00:28:33.940 so instead of being 10 hidebound locked in irritants to the whole harmony system place

00:28:40.420 that resists the flux that we need to have happening to keep the country going together

00:28:45.220 uh staying together allowing these provinces to evolve and devolve um it's interesting i brought

00:28:50.980 these conversation points up the group that got most irate and you're judged by the people who

00:28:57.220 agree with you and you're even better judged by the people disagree with people got most irate

00:29:01.860 are the separatists of canada of quebec sorry they cannot stand this because they know if this became

00:29:08.980 the rule of land montreal the island of montreal and a little bit of lower mainland or the eastern

00:29:13.940 townships would leave tomorrow right they would form their own province tomorrow in a heartbeat

00:29:21.140 if you think gta wants to be its own province you know the greater toronto area or the lower 1.00

00:29:26.420 mainland muses about it hey let's cut off bc at hope and the heck with all those rednecks in in 1.00

00:29:32.500 colonna and vernon um the the montreal is so culturally different from quebec city and in 1.00

00:29:42.180 the bose regions in those areas they would leave in a heartbeat and that's the divide and conquer

00:29:47.540 strategy frankly it's not a strategy or tactic but it's the result by dividing that separatist

00:29:53.380 nationalist force in quebec you make them weaker that you make them more of an interested vested

00:29:58.420 party in staying and keeping canada together talk to me about how that would impact resource

00:30:04.180 development so i'm trying to think because i think you're quite right some people do want i

00:30:08.420 think the more urbanized we become and the more authority that urban centers have to take over

00:30:15.140 because let's face it i mean when you get into any of our big cities vancouver calgary edmonton

00:30:20.180 probably regina saskatoon to some to some degree winnipeg uh toronto montreal let's just use uh

00:30:25.940 use those ones that you end up with more demands for services uh more complexity in delivering

00:30:32.340 services you've got transit systems you've got mental health issues you've got homeless issues

00:30:35.940 all of those are integrated there's a lot more involvement that the municipal council just have

00:30:42.020 to have to go across jurisdictions so i can see why if you're in a big city you may think hey

00:30:47.940 we're doing a lot of the work that should be provincial anyway so let's become a province

00:30:52.340 however then you have to have more rational policies about how you're going to fuel your

00:30:58.580 economy and get your energy and you're going to then have to negotiate with your neighbors

00:31:03.620 about how to get your food and and how to get oil and gas and i wonder if that would create a

00:31:08.340 healthier a healthier discussion i think it does it makes us all mutually dependent on one another

00:31:13.540 um and i would also point out that as much as excuse me the gta would want to separate how

00:31:18.420 would you like to be in sudbury if you could hey we can keep all our mineral resource revenues

00:31:22.820 uh in northern ontario not having to go to toronto get wasted on subway systems in toronto i mean

00:31:27.700 that's uh we i i mentioned the hinterland thing but we're all basically riverheads right and the

00:31:34.820 cities are the headwaters and are not the headwaters the headwaters no the other way what's

00:31:39.460 the there's the inlet there's the downstream yeah downstream downstream of the head what i find

00:31:44.340 people in big centers like the gta and the gva vancouver is even more uh lacking in understanding

00:31:51.940 that what drives their economy isn't the law firms that make all the money in vancouver and toronto

00:31:57.540 and elsewhere and the banking banks in toronto they're managing the banking needs of us upstream

00:32:05.780 and the only reason why we deal with them is that they're at that they're at kind of the river that

00:32:09.780 they at the at the at the downstream point if if and because they've got a system like in ontario

00:32:16.340 where they control all of it and they have the political population of the population to

00:32:20.980 politically control it it all gets run for their benefit i mean the injustices that we see across

00:32:27.300 canada alberta versus what's going on in eastern canada those injustices happen within provinces

00:32:32.340 too well i want to talk about that too so the the vision that you're painting let's say that we

00:32:37.460 could get up to 20 different provinces now you're having a legitimate discussion about how many

00:32:42.900 senators you can have because it never if you wanted to follow the american model having two

00:32:47.540 senators per province do you really want only 20 people deciding on pretty important issues if you

00:32:52.980 ended up having 20 provinces maybe you get four senators from each province now you're at 100

00:32:59.940 people now you've got some kind of parity to to the us is that is that how you would see it working

00:33:04.340 i could see it being something like uh six or eight per province um one gets elected every two

00:33:12.260 years and they have six-year terms something like that um so you're always the biggest thing is you

00:33:18.180 want those senate seats to senators you want to make it impossible for whoever is the ruling party

00:33:23.780 federally uh to uh outlast all the senators in a certain province so that they're able to manipulate

00:33:31.220 and control um so if it takes 18 years to turn over all the senators you're not going to probably

00:33:36.820 stay in power it's the same thing on the provinces i'm i used to be very wedded to the idea of those

00:33:44.020 senators being elected i'm kind of okay if you had that kind of setup you give it leave it up

00:33:48.740 to the provinces to decide how they want to pick their senators but interesting i see what you're

00:33:54.900 saying though it should be a provincial appointee as opposed to federal appointees i'm you know i

00:34:00.900 guess in the states i'd be called an originalist i think uh or a constructionist view of the

00:34:06.020 constitution provincial jurisdiction is provincial jurisdiction federal jurisdiction is federal

00:34:11.300 jurisdiction, and you don't meddle in the other's business. I very much hope that, and I guess I

00:34:19.280 pray, that Pierre Poliev is the next prime minister of this country. And I do think, I do trust him

00:34:25.800 that he feels the same way, that we need to get the federal government out of provincial jurisdiction.

00:34:31.340 And the way they do it is things like the Canada Health Act, where they're writing rules

00:34:35.020 because they have the fundraising capacity to tell the provinces what to do. I think-

00:34:40.280 i don't want to leave to help here yet we're gonna have a huge conversation but i just want people's

00:34:44.600 whose minds have now been blown to kind of really think through what this would mean and the

00:34:49.080 alliances we've formed if i might danielle yeah the reason why you bring that out is that the

00:34:54.200 biggest thing to get any constitutional change done is we need what we need 50 of the population

00:34:58.920 and seven of the provinces yeah once you bring in the idea that the quid pro quo on this is

00:35:04.040 triple if you want an equal and equal senate provincially um we're going to also change what

00:35:12.200 it means to be a province so then ontario says okay then that means pei is gone that means uh

00:35:17.320 newfoundland and nova scotia become one so we see a consolidation happening there uh you're going to

00:35:23.000 have bc sign on you're going to have alberta sign on manitoba i'm sure is going to go along for as

00:35:27.880 as a saskatchian that's four ontario is five uh i firmly believe that there are some smart people

00:35:35.400 in newfoundland and nova scotia who would say you know this is a really really good thing for us

00:35:40.920 uh and now we're at seven and we've got well over 50 percent and you take it to quebec and say this

00:35:45.480 is the way it's going to be um like i say the demographics of this country have changed you

00:35:51.240 and i both remember the big crisis that uh kretchen caused and we had this boat and brian

00:35:56.920 tovin and all these other clowns went down and they're captain canada are going to save the

00:36:00.760 country if that if we ever had that kind of a referendum crisis either here in alberta or in 0.92

00:36:06.120 quebec that's not going to happen we're not going to say save canada we're going to say okay right

00:36:14.600 so so let me let me i'm still trying to think through what a couple of these things would mean

00:36:19.080 so when we talk about when well i i've been thinking about this for some time because

00:36:23.560 initially you talked to me about it and i thought from a practicality point of view how difficult

00:36:28.840 it would be to implement but the way you describe it with the amending formula there is a pathway

00:36:32.360 that's possible especially if you've got a prime minister who has also come to the conclusion that

00:36:36.920 this country isn't isn't working as well as it was intended okay so so i just i want to explain how or

00:36:45.880 what I think, why the conditions are approaching this, okay? And before you get there, the question

00:36:54.900 I wanted to ask you is, what about the Laurentian elite? So are they going to have their own

00:37:00.060 separate province? And who are the Laurentian elite exactly? Is it essentially just draw a line

00:37:05.340 between Toronto and Montreal and everybody who lives within that corridor? Is that who we're

00:37:09.040 talking about when we talk about the Laurentian elite? Because that term gets used a lot, but I

00:37:13.400 know if people know exactly what the geography is and who those folks are uh well certainly

00:37:21.080 historically it was that axis up and down the ottawa river and it all it all goes back to

00:37:27.560 resource extraction and fur trade and all of that stuff and all the banking systems were there all

00:37:33.400 the law firms were there were no lawyers in in in red deer um and but beyond that it's it's it's had

00:37:41.880 it's um satellites if you will uh of of elites who are you know benefit from that and you see

00:37:51.800 vestiges of it in vancouver you see vestiges of it in ontario or sorry in in in halifax

00:37:58.360 to some degree in st john's um where yeah they're part of that you know they're like branch not

00:38:04.440 branch plants but they're kind of just a little outpost that very much uh benefit and and not

00:38:10.120 calgary edmonton not as much there's some of it for sure i would say edmonton there's a fairly

00:38:15.080 decent cohort i mean you deal with the that elitist but i think you know when you when

00:38:20.920 there's a wrenching and there's elite and i think that you know there's there's a there's a tearing

00:38:24.680 down of all the elites in every sector on the planet and uh when though when anything is

00:38:30.680 threatened like those the lorantian reads i think really see themselves as being threatened

00:38:35.160 so it's interesting though because look at the model you're talking about guard like you're

00:38:38.200 talking about a model where the where the extractive regions and restrictive extractive

00:38:46.520 industries have been established to essentially feed the centers now this new model you're

00:38:52.120 proposing is that the those regions and those resource development they would have autonomy

00:38:57.960 in their own right which would be an extraordinary way of changing of changing the country can you

00:39:03.320 just bring it closer to home for me about how it would work in alberta in particular i'm wondering

00:39:08.280 where the dividing line would be because i wonder if fort mcmurray would want to be its own country

00:39:12.520 because it's certainly got its own resources or if the dividing line when you say north south

00:39:16.280 would edmonton and that whole northern region you think that might be a separate yeah i would expect

00:39:23.240 that there would be a determination movement that would say let's let's be a province north of red

00:39:27.720 deer because then we get to keep the resource revenues coming out of the oil sands in our area

00:39:33.480 as opposed to flowing all the way down the calgary and head around those you know i'm not here to

00:39:39.000 dictate what those lines are and draw those lines far from it i think you need to be able to give

00:39:42.840 people the ability to to become those entities one of the big struggles in the united states for

00:39:48.040 example is there there's a big couple of chunks of california would separate tomorrow if they

00:39:54.200 they were not required to get the permission of the state of California and

00:39:59.080 state of California, of course, is blocking that effort.

00:40:02.580 One of the things is that if let's say the GTA wanted to separate from the rest

00:40:07.460 of Ontario, that the rest of Ontario would not be able to say, no, you can't.

00:40:11.120 Right.

00:40:12.780 So self-determination obviously is a huge thing in the world.

00:40:15.560 And, uh,

00:40:16.680 It is remarkable.

00:40:17.880 So, so you wanted to say why you think that we're sort of heading to some kind

00:40:21.060 an inevitability that we've got to have some kind of restructuring discussion and i and i don't

00:40:26.020 disagree with you i mean i i worry that if we don't proactively come up with some ideas about

00:40:30.900 how to make things work better then um there's going to be and i've already seen it i'm watching

00:40:36.180 there's a number of different groups that are out there holding town hall meetings and discussions

00:40:40.340 about do you want to have nation within a nation do you want more autonomy do you want to separate

00:40:45.460 these are active conversations that are taking place all over alberta right now and i have a

00:40:49.860 different view if you want to know my view i i would like to see and maybe it's it's funny

00:40:54.820 conservatives do tend to like to see bigger rather than smaller there's been the buffalo

00:40:58.500 project is a proposal that maybe alberta saskatchewan need to combine rather than be separate

00:41:03.220 or maybe we need to look at the west as a whole as a way that we can coordinate together from thunder

00:41:08.260 thunder bay all the way through to uh the port of prince rupert so that's been my frame of reference

00:41:13.940 so i think you're right something is coming and i want to understand why you think that these these

00:41:18.660 forces are a bit unstoppable well was it perazo used the term winning conditions was that was

00:41:25.540 that his phrase it was yeah yeah so i see the landscape especially in alberta and i but i'm

00:41:32.420 seeing it in saskatchewan i think you'd agree and i think in bc there's some fomenting certainly in

00:41:36.820 the interior um let's let's there's three groups they're the groups there's where i my core is i

00:41:46.580 think we can save confederation i think there is a way to fix it using an equal uh equalizing at

00:41:52.660 the senate level i see your camp danielle it's more a sovereignty association that we have powers

00:41:59.620 within the constitution currently that's maximize them and use them to their fullest and become

00:42:04.980 create a fortress if you will to push back and certainly alberta has a history of doing that the

00:42:09.860 The ATB, the Alberta Treasure Branch, was an attempt to push back against what was happening in the banking system in Canada, and still exists.

00:42:20.280 ATB and the injustices of the banking system in Canada.

00:42:23.940 And then there's another group that frankly says, we're out of here.

00:42:27.080 The best place for us to be is out of Canada.

00:42:29.960 Some say we should also be part of the U.S., but we need to be out of Canada.

00:42:33.560 Those three groups, tactically, all share the same tactics.

00:42:39.860 you want to see a more assertive Alberta government that that pulls all the levers

00:42:44.820 Paul Himman and the Wildrose Independence Party they want to do the same thing and I want to see

00:42:50.800 Alberta be far more assertive push hard against the equalization push hard for individual taxes

00:42:56.540 our own banking system our own police force all those things because it furthers my goal it

00:43:02.280 furthers yours and it furthers the end of the separatists and it's not just in Alberta it's

00:43:07.280 saskatchewan or other areas so there's we all share the same tactics we have different strategic

00:43:12.800 desires but that means our strategies ultimately we weld in terms of going okay we've got to create

00:43:18.780 the crisis right to make the next thing happen and that's what we're trying to do we and and what i

00:43:27.260 mean by crisis is the hinge and ontario people will tell you this all the time they see themselves

00:43:34.960 as the keystone of this country um the ontario's long believed that we are the heart of this

00:43:40.720 country we are and geographically they certainly are um we are the kind of the stabilizing force

00:43:47.600 in this in this country but if they see alberta and saskatchewan getting further and further

00:43:53.600 more aggressively towards leaving and hitting the exits ontario's got a choice to make ontario's 0.95

00:44:00.800 has got to say quebec shit sorry trying to swear stuff's going to happen here we've got to

00:44:08.840 accommodate these people we've got to make changes in the constitution to to save this confederation 0.95

00:44:14.460 and save what we see as being the heart of the country uh or we're gonna have to go with these

00:44:21.300 guys i think bush came to shove ontario goes with western canada ontario does not stay uh with the

00:44:27.700 rump of Canada, frankly, I'll probably get quoted on that, which would be Quebec and the Atlantic

00:44:33.320 provinces, which right now economically certain here are the rump. If it was to work out the way

00:44:38.420 you describe where let's call it 20 provinces and we have an equal Senate. And as you've described,

00:44:45.120 I understand now why you think more like six so that you can have two senators every six years

00:44:49.380 so that you can have a longer, more stable turnover. I get that. Where would the capital

00:44:56.300 city be i've always felt like it was situated in the wrong place i'd be quite happy for it to be

00:45:02.280 in winnipeg it seems a little more fair than being actually right dead center in our country that has

00:45:06.300 been proposed in the past i am totally okay with winnipeg and i'll tell you why okay yeah it's funny

00:45:12.080 we we always talked about in newfoundland we should put the for those newfoundlanders after

00:45:16.700 we used to use it the best place to have the capital newfoundland was bertie lake which was

00:45:20.780 kind of the center of newfoundland beautiful area really good fishing and all that kind of stuff

00:45:24.280 But the reason why you want to put it in Winnipeg is because nobody wants to live there.

00:45:28.380 That's the perfect place to have a capital.

00:45:30.580 Okay. 1.00

00:45:31.060 Except for Winnipeggers. 1.00

00:45:32.000 They love to live there. 1.00

00:45:32.820 In the summer, that little Forks area is quite amazing.

00:45:37.180 A beautiful architecture.

00:45:38.540 I get it away.

00:45:39.480 But we don't want, you know, Winnipeg, I'm totally okay with it being in the center of

00:45:44.660 there.

00:45:45.120 The point being is that, I don't know, that was a nasty thing to say.

00:45:50.420 No, but I know what you mean is that you don't want it to become a government town and for it to be because there is such a desire to move there, we end up with more government than we could possibly want because under your model, we want our government to be back in the regions principally.

00:46:06.180 And with 20 provinces or whatever, which are much smaller, much more diffuse, but also wanting their piece of that federal pie, I mean, it's not a fluke that all the military bases are built in the United States in smaller states.

00:46:24.580 Virginia and West Virginia, tennis, I'm picking states that have grown a lot since this was going on, but they were put in those areas because that was kind of the quid pro quo.

00:46:34.880 if you want my support mr big state and the senate to get what you want passed we need something back

00:46:40.080 our way and that imbalance has never existed i'll tell a real quick story um this is many years ago

00:46:47.440 back in the 80s um there was a opening up of quota off of newfoundland for tuna blue uh the big blue

00:46:58.400 fin tunas people remember and tuna at the time was trading for somewhere around 200 a pound

00:47:04.880 for bluefin tuna and that quota was very much wanted by korean fishermen uh primarily but also

00:47:14.560 uh japanese fishermen so this is these are fishermen who aren't even in the same ocean okay

00:47:22.320 wanted quota off of newfoundland and of course newfoundland would be very interested in catching

00:47:26.240 fish that literally were worth 20 and 30 thousand dollars a fish and then boats my friends had

00:47:32.000 ships that were ships vessels that were uh you know capable doing it tomorrow and it was announced

00:47:39.200 that all of the quota was going to korea it was also announced at the very same day not uh

00:47:45.760 unintentionally that a very significant wiper blade plant was being built just north of hamilton

00:47:52.640 by trico to supply wiper blades to the japanese manufacturers in ontario and the the hundi was

00:48:04.000 just becoming an entity at the time and that was a quid pro quo right that was a quid pro quo do you

00:48:10.880 think that happens if there's a senate where newfoundland senators have equal representation

00:48:15.120 not in a minute does that happen right well it's the kind of stuff that albertans don't hear about

00:48:20.800 those are the kinds of disturbing deals and the first one that albertans really became aware of

00:48:26.640 was the cf-18 contract that was pulled out of manitoba and put in quebec and that was the

00:48:33.680 beginning of the end of the conservative part progressive conservative party well and the

00:48:38.240 conservative movement has never really been united after that and i think that's part of it is that

00:48:42.400 we we observe this i think i think there was um some jubilance when stephen harper got elected

00:48:48.880 and then he did a couple of things for the the west he got rid of long gun registry he got rid

00:48:52.960 of the canadian wheat board but then it was you have a leadership race that was centered around

00:48:58.960 how do we win votes in quebec and i think that we've i think that was part of erin o'toole's

00:49:03.760 problems is that he wanted to get western support which he did to win the leadership and then he

00:49:09.760 changed to try to win support in quebec and that's i think one of the big frustrations is that there

00:49:15.200 does seem to be these kind of trade-offs but i don't know that the trade-offs necessarily

00:49:19.200 ever benefit the smaller regions it does seem that it all flows in one direction

00:49:24.320 i would also argue that the party is still divided around laurentian elite lines

00:49:28.320 and the new what new canada look um uh you look at what what does jean chariot represent really

00:49:34.800 what did aaron o'toole truly represent he represented that return to the elites um you

00:49:40.960 You know, the policy book that earned his man with a plan policy book was a complete abandonment of the Conservative Party of Canada's policy documents.

00:49:50.260 It was a betrayal, frankly, and that's why he got ousted.

00:49:53.380 And it's why Jean Charest can't draw more people in my neighbor's garage sale this afternoon.

00:50:01.260 Those elites are dying and those elites are running in fear.

00:50:07.260 and they're doing uh you know they're going to do some pretty catastrophic things if they get a

00:50:12.060 chance i hope not let's let's bring it closer to home because um i don't know if you want to

00:50:16.660 comment on sort of our political environment that we find ourselves in right now because i think

00:50:19.840 it's also a very similar battle this is what i've noticed with the what i loved about the convention

00:50:24.020 was that i saw all my old friends from my pc days because i was a pc from 92 to 2008 and then i saw

00:50:30.240 my old friends from the wild rose days 2009 to 2015 all in one room together going to the

00:50:35.520 hospitality suites together, debating policy together. And it

00:50:38.440 seemed to me like the merger has been successful. However, I

00:50:42.960 think we still have this battle between having government run

00:50:46.580 for the people, and local representation and grassroots

00:50:51.140 versus the elites. I think we're seeing this play out in

00:50:53.840 Alberta, too. Do you agree?

00:50:55.380 Like I said, we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing elites

00:50:58.180 under threat, under siege. Can I just say I know I know, this is

00:51:04.500 relevant i think um so and i think we would agree and actually barack obama just made a very uh i

00:51:10.820 think landmark speech for how wrong it was uh this past week talking about all the good old days when

00:51:17.040 we only had three networks and i'm sure there's people who who reminisce and say it was so good

00:51:21.920 back when we only had cbc and ctv and it was that was it and everybody talked about the same things

00:51:27.740 at the water cooler uh you and i would vehemently disagree and we're literally on a format that is

00:51:32.760 unimaginable 30 years ago but i want to use a metaphor because i think it's so powerful to

00:51:38.600 explain where we are um because every a lot of people think that social media is a terrible

00:51:43.480 terrible thing that this new format is just such wrenching and so much destruction and turmoil and

00:51:49.960 people are at each other's throats and on and on and on um the gutenberg press was invented

00:51:57.240 and the first guy who really used it as you probably know i know you know is martin luther

00:52:01.560 and he went out and nailed his what was it 56 theses 95 theses i think i'm not i came from a

00:52:06.760 catholic background that was so sorry you will have to correct me exactly yeah theses with a t

00:52:11.480 not an f and and nailed them nailed them on people's doors and the world changed and it's

00:52:18.840 almost overnight you're this was as big an attack on elite as the world has ever seen it was an

00:52:24.360 attack on the the catholic church and over to it spark it sparked the 30 years war which was fought

00:52:32.360 primarily a civil war in what we know now mostly as germany and austria and over 60 of the people

00:52:39.720 in that region died 60 in 30 years now i bet if we ask somebody in year 31 was the reformation a

00:52:49.720 good thing was the gutenberg press a good idea they probably would say no it was a terrible idea

00:52:55.400 right but today we would say the gutenberg press is one of the most significant important ventures

00:53:01.080 in human history social media we're living in the gutenberg 30 years war phase and we i probably

00:53:07.160 won't survive long enough to see the the much greater uplifting and positive end to it but

00:53:13.080 that's what's happening is is those the elites are under threat because we have other channels to find

00:53:17.960 out what's going on this special general meeting vote that's happening doesn't happen without

00:53:22.840 social media and all the all the ability to organize and oppose it so the elites within

00:53:28.600 the party primarily it's the old pc party elite that had to uh swallow its uh angst and bitterness

00:53:36.920 and join up with the wald rose party to create the ucp um that convention that i was at obviously

00:53:43.480 conspicuously so um uh uh the discussions in the evening did get heated no question about it there

00:53:51.720 were those who supported kenny and those who thought he should go and i was on record thinking

00:53:56.920 that he should go um because the only divisive force i think in the ucp and frankly in the in

00:54:04.680 the province in in large in an even bigger level is jason kenny um within the party when i was

00:54:11.960 having those discussions and i'm sure you had them too nobody was really speaking out that he's been

00:54:16.760 a great leader and this and that they're just saying if we get rid of jason who do we replace

00:54:21.400 him with right and that's battered wife syndrome in my opinion that's somebody who says i gotta

00:54:27.000 leave this guy but if i leave him what's what you know i might be worse off and you cannot run your 0.96

00:54:32.440 life and you cannot run a party that way and yeah and the chicaner that's been going on daniel you've 0.98

00:54:38.600 heard lots i've heard just recently some just absolutely horrifying reports of the kind of 0.93

00:54:43.960 corruption and manipulation that's happening it is i i yeah i was shocked what i heard on thursday

00:54:50.120 you know i have said and i should say it again because i have uh talked to the brian gene camp

00:54:55.240 and they're of the view that the level of potential manipulation is is is low there were 45 000

00:55:04.280 memberships that came in that weren't billed to a one particular credit card those might be a little

00:55:09.080 bit on the line but they were surprised to see relatively few problems with the mailing list

00:55:15.000 though i've heard personally of people who verified their address in the database for the ucp and then

00:55:21.160 received their ballot fortunately came through to them with a totally wrong address on it i don't

00:55:25.480 know how that actually happens those are the kind of things that i've heard about but i don't want

00:55:28.840 to act as if i'm sort of quickly jumping over that to get to the next topic what are you concerned

00:55:33.320 about that you're seeing well well the first off just to get the numbers right we i was told at a

00:55:38.600 meeting a with the public i guess for all intents and purposes that the president of the party uh

00:55:46.760 on a on a call with over 35 ca presidents said that yeah 4200 not 40 000 but 4200 memberships

00:55:57.800 not attendance to the convention but memberships were bought before the deadline using four credit

00:56:04.040 cards in jason kenny's riot and they call them white label memberships now in our bylaws the

00:56:10.840 ucp bylaws you're not allowed to buy a membership unless it's for yourself or a family member

00:56:17.400 but the societies act as you know was changed just before prior to deadline not making that the rule

00:56:24.120 for all societies so they're not in legal jeopardy but they've clearly contravened the uh

00:56:30.280 the intent of of our own documents so that's but that's just one of many things right and

00:56:37.480 and they didn't buy this is before the decision quote-unquote was made uh not quote-unquote but

00:56:43.080 before the decision was made to make it a mail-in ballot so why would you buy 4200 memberships and

00:56:49.640 and not buy the ticket to come to Red Deer

00:56:53.920 if you didn't know that the board was gonna change its mind

00:56:58.020 and make it a mail-in ballot.

00:56:59.080 Like the manipulation that's happening

00:57:00.760 is absolutely stunning.

00:57:02.540 It's a shame because it erodes trust.

00:57:06.020 But what I would say is that if there's 59,000 members

00:57:09.320 and there's 4,200 that are questionable,

00:57:12.260 that still means that the majority of the memberships

00:57:14.920 were probably bought legitimately.

00:57:16.280 And so people should be encouraged

00:57:18.200 to participate in the process.

00:57:19.380 worried that people are thinking let's just be clear boycotting the process is the absolute

00:57:24.740 wrong thing to do okay you've got a ballot fill it out mail it in but on that i don't know if you

00:57:31.140 heard about the kerfuffle over the postal coding of those ballots being mailed in that that postal

00:57:36.020 code does not exist and i have talked to the brian gene team about that as well because we used to do

00:57:41.860 a lot of direct mail back in my day in politics and when you do a large direct mail this is what

00:57:46.660 i was told um is that they assign you a special a special a postal code so it goes to an individual

00:57:52.900 box i'm encouraged that that is going to deloitte because that means that there is a chain of

00:57:57.300 custody that stays with the those who are auditing the vote i understand that people have tried to

00:58:02.340 put registered mail have been found have found all the postal code doesn't match but i i was

00:58:07.300 told by the brian gene camp uh vitor marciano that that was that was actually justifiable

00:58:12.580 and fairly routine are you still concerned about it though i'm still concerned because i'm not

00:58:16.420 sure where all those ballots are going what what concerns me more is the scrutineering of the

00:58:20.340 ballots so we'll have lots of people to look there and open the ballots but only one person is allowed

00:58:25.620 to see the entire ballot list one person jason kenny so how do you scrutine your ballots when

00:58:32.660 you don't get access to the membership list how is that possible i'm gonna have to do a follow-up

00:58:38.180 on that as we get you know if i was a scrutiner a regular general election polling station i have

00:58:44.180 the list of voters for that booth that polling station and i match them up how do you do that

00:58:51.140 right how do you do that when you can't access the list so what's yeah okay it's a ballot it's

00:58:56.340 got a guy's name on it but i don't know if he's legit i don't have any idea who he is

00:58:59.940 it's so funny that i think is how they do scrutineering at the municipal level you're

00:59:03.460 just supposed to say hey i was in an advanced polling station and i saw that guy and now here

00:59:08.100 he is again like who's who's gonna be in this able to do something like that i take your point that

00:59:12.980 there probably needs to be a bit more work done if we don't if it isn't a landslide either way

00:59:18.500 like 85 15 if it's close within 5 000 votes uh it's it's a mockery absolute mockery and it'll

00:59:26.900 always be in doubt um there are what 14 or 15 appeals to the arbitrator about misconduct and

00:59:33.140 all the things that are going on and all of this chaos all of this division all this upset is

00:59:38.980 because of one factor and if that factor is gone the party's as unified as it's ever been now you

00:59:45.940 can say brian gene will be the business development if he's leader i'm going to tell you that i don't

00:59:50.020 think he's the only option and i think there are options out there who would be more unifying and

00:59:53.780 more importantly uh and i'm going to kind of trample over my own arguments i guess but if

01:00:00.020 jason kenny is still premier in march or may of next year i still think the ucp crushes the

01:00:05.380 the the ndp this isn't about the wealth whether or not we beat the ndp i think i think it's

01:00:10.420 do we want to have a party that's built on ethics and trust and and and uh you know what we say we 0.89

01:00:17.860 stand for as conservatives or do we return to the battle days of the pc party and all the chicanery

01:00:24.020 and inside track and and frankly uh a politburo level of uh command and control um and i don't

01:00:32.500 know if you want to get into psychology jason kenney we had a good chat on the phone about that

01:00:35.940 one day we will do that another day how things go marty 18 but it's the reason i decided that i

01:00:41.780 wanted to jump back into politics as well seeking the nomination down south is that i think we do

01:00:46.100 need to have a bit more of the wild rose culture reflected in the ucp for it to keep the the parties

01:00:51.780 united but let's use the transition to talk about why it is the premier finds himself in trouble

01:00:58.420 into the topic of health care we don't need to talk about about covet in particular unless you

01:01:02.900 unless you want to but i think what what we observe regardless of whether you're on the

01:01:09.140 vaccination side getting your boosters and 100 um are behind the decisions the government made

01:01:15.700 or whether you're you're you want to take more time so this is how i look at those who are

01:01:19.860 described as being anti-vaxx is they want to see the long-term studies before they they make a

01:01:24.660 decision especially for their kids so i'm i'm very sensitive to both sides of the argument so

01:01:29.060 if we can put that aside for a minute i think we can all agree that the health care system did not

01:01:35.860 fail because of coven it was uh the health care system was already failing and covet just revealed

01:01:41.380 it that it did not it did not pass the stress test is if it was stress tested it was um an utter

01:01:48.100 failure and i you know i don't i don't want to to um to celebrate when somebody gets fired it's

01:01:54.020 always hard when someone gets fired but i said that dr verna you should never have had her contract

01:01:58.340 renewed it was pretty clear that she was given the direct order to increase the number of icu beds

01:02:06.020 to a an additional 1089 and she absolutely utterly failed at that task in fact if you look

01:02:12.660 at where we were where we said the stated number of icu beds at the beginning versus partway through

01:02:17.540 they actually decreased them and then they announced that they had a surge which brought

01:02:20.980 them up slightly but our level of icu beds is woefully inadequate for our level of population

01:02:27.380 and our seniors population the number of icu beds that are able to to support our various populations

01:02:32.900 throughout the entire province is woefully inadequate and the fact that they couldn't

01:02:37.380 they couldn't pivot and deliver even though they were given two years to do so it's no surprise to

01:02:41.700 me that she was like oh i just think they should have brought some fresh uh some some fresh

01:02:45.620 perspective in a year ago so i think that a lot of what is um is problematic that we're having

01:02:50.660 right now is that we have a health care system that has failed us, but I don't know that we

01:02:55.960 have the confidence that anybody in positions of power, whether it's an NDP or the current

01:03:00.940 leadership in the UCP, know what to do about it, but you do. So give me your sense of whether or

01:03:05.440 not you think my interpretation or observation is accurate, or if you disagree with anything.

01:03:11.360 Well, I think you're very much on, again, to come back to this elite's discussion.

01:03:15.820 and uh this covid obviously has been a terrible terrible thing for many many reasons but it's

01:03:24.840 been a great great thing long term and i think one of the bigger benefits is for a lot of canadians

01:03:31.700 shattered their preconceived frank smugness about health care about how we should trust our

01:03:38.880 bureaucrats to do the right thing the biggest mistake with only a few exceptions politicians

01:03:44.440 made around the world was to trust the bureaucracy to solve a solution to a problem that they'd

01:03:50.600 never encountered before. 0.99

01:03:53.940 Bureaucrats are paid to legislate, regulate, and operate. 1.00

01:03:58.480 They're not paid to innovate.

01:04:00.960 And what was needed to address the crisis that we had for IC capacity required innovation.

01:04:05.920 Can I read a quote?

01:04:07.080 Yes.

01:04:07.820 Okay.

01:04:08.440 This is from a book by C.S. Forster, who wrote Horatio Hornblower.

01:04:14.260 he wrote a book called the general uh about uh world war one and the generals and of course we

01:04:20.260 know all the slaughter and and bullheadedness that uh that they caught that their attitudes

01:04:27.540 caused the deaths of millions so this is what he says about that he says accustomed only to nails

01:04:33.140 they had made one effort to pull out the screw by main force and now that it had failed they

01:04:39.060 were devising methods of applying more force still of obtaining more efficient pincers of using

01:04:44.980 levers and fulcrums so that man more men could be bring their strength to bear they could hardly

01:04:50.500 be blamed for not guessing that by rotating this group it would have come out after the exertion

01:04:56.260 of far less effort it would be a notion so different from anything they had ever encountered

01:05:02.020 that they would laugh at the man who suggested it okay and isn't that a quote that applies to

01:05:07.780 bureaucracies unfortunately that's exactly what happened we gave it to the bureaucrats you would

01:05:12.660 say hey what about if we did some other way of vaccinating how about you know we pay i suggested

01:05:19.300 to jason kenny in a in a web web web session with him very early on when when vaccines were coming

01:05:24.580 out let's pay everybody 150 to get vaccinated and pay him another 150 let's pay them a bounty

01:05:31.700 there were so many people were saying you know while i live east of stetler i only go to the

01:05:35.700 to Costco once a month. I'm not worried about my condition and they're 80 years old. So they

01:05:41.400 wouldn't get vaccinated. If you've offered them $150 per shot, they'd be in tomorrow morning to

01:05:45.840 get their vaccine. So, but that's, that's again, the nail in the screw. All they saw was nails.

01:05:52.440 The bureaucrat solution and the politicians that were in their, in their sway, they just came up

01:05:57.340 with more rules, more restrictions, more regulations. Do you know what happened though,

01:06:01.100 Gord. It sounds like they ultimately took your advice, but they came after the bulk of people

01:06:06.240 had gotten it. And what was the reaction of people? And it was a lousy hundred dollars.

01:06:10.000 And everybody says, so I got gypped by not getting, not waiting. And my son who got his

01:06:16.380 vaccination, his roommate didn't and says, Hey, I'm going to go get a hundred dollars and then

01:06:22.480 kind of dancing in this, you know what I'm getting at? Like, that's just unbelievable what was going

01:06:26.840 on so on the icu thing and this was proposed to him by myself and others do not rely on

01:06:33.160 the department of health to do acquiring icu beds we alberta is one of the great logistics

01:06:43.240 developers in the world atco all these guys we're building massive camps up in the oil fields

01:06:48.920 go to those providers and say okay we need a thousand beds in these locations go negotiate

01:06:53.960 with the delta hotel to take over the hotel downtown calgary you know in eight hours notice 0.90

01:06:59.800 go get containers full of all the equipment to handle icu go out and hire semi-retired doctors

01:07:06.600 retired nurses on a on-call basis if we pull a switch and we need to fill that bed you're getting 1.00

01:07:11.800 350 bucks an hour to be the doctor whatever let them facilitate it and they had the power 0.99

01:07:18.120 they had the political capital but they didn't have the courage to face down their bureaucracy

01:07:24.680 to tell those generals that they don't know what they're doing we're going to fire those

01:07:28.120 generals and get new generals and they never fired they never fired the bureaucrat you're

01:07:32.280 talking about right but this is what this is by design this is by design it is by design

01:07:38.920 that governments have decided that they uh end up uh offloading decision-making power

01:07:46.280 to all of these agencies boards and commissions and the alberta health services is just one of

01:07:50.280 those agencies give them a pile of money hire one employee so that anytime somebody comes along and

01:07:56.520 criticizes they say oh well you know we have to leave it to the doctors we have to leave it to

01:07:59.880 the experts we have to leave it to this independent agency but it means that the vast majority of our

01:08:05.480 spending the vast majority of our health care dollars aren't under control of the people that

01:08:10.440 we elect to oversee it it's it's kind of bonkers but it's by design right and when and when our

01:08:15.560 healthcare system looks like it's failing what do they do they go to the bureaucrats and say we need

01:08:19.400 more money right um and we need more control so we need a super bowl or whatever and to get back

01:08:27.080 to the original start of this conversation health spending accounts just a little bit of background

01:08:31.560 for the listeners i guess i'm an i'm just a meatball insurance advisor as you know danielle

01:08:37.320 and i take care of about 450 groups through my company for health and dental benefits we process

01:08:44.840 through our providers and our group of four people somewhere in the neighborhood of three

01:08:50.280 and a half million dollars of drug and dental claims so a year i've been doing it for 20 years

01:08:55.800 so i kind of know how healthcare works clearly the biggest thing developed in the last 30 years has

01:09:01.400 been health spending accounts and they're getting more and more popular and more and more uh uh

01:09:07.160 sophisticated frankly to put a plug in one of the providers i use is called my hsa which is developed

01:09:13.000 in calgary by a couple of guys i know truly groundbreaking technology as good as anything

01:09:18.120 in the world using uh and expanding upon the use of blockchain for privacy purposes and audited

01:09:23.400 trails um excellent excellent guys to deal with we have we we have literally got the systems and

01:09:29.480 health health spending accounts today in alberta now um uh to to do the kind of things we need to

01:09:36.760 do to make healthcare work uh the broader spectrum the whole so pause there for a minute because

01:09:44.120 people are a bit mad at me i spent a whole week at a blockchain conference and so my first three

01:09:48.120 episodes this week were on blockchain but but i talked mostly about bitcoin because i think

01:09:52.520 there's some really interesting things happening there and have have the potential to to really

01:09:56.840 create a new a new business um uh industry group in in auto in albert and diversify our economy

01:10:02.440 but can you explain a little bit um because i i took a blockchain course and my my my project

01:10:09.080 was health coin because i had this notion that you need to give people some kind of token so

01:10:14.680 that we can start getting transparent pricing as they're going around using the various services

01:10:19.000 so i'm glad to see that somebody else has actually put that into practice and the big thing with

01:10:23.800 blockchain is the ability to protect privacy and and audit trail and what the what the last i

01:10:29.320 remember talking to these guys about was they're looking at to track fraud so you move from a group

01:10:35.400 one group carrier get dental work done you go to the new group carrier next month and they do the

01:10:39.540 exact same dental work and bill it and that's you're breaking the law blockchain would be able

01:10:45.100 insurance companies to share those data points and say hey that guy just got that done here

01:10:49.760 and flag it and and penalize it without having to give up confidential information from one

01:10:54.560 insurance company to another those kinds of yeah the technology is huge and listen calgary is a

01:10:59.960 massive leader in all this stuff um alberta i should say i apologize to the rest of alberta but

01:11:05.640 uh so health spending accounts the whole key of a health spending account and in my experience

01:11:12.340 working in benefits is it delivers accountability it's your money as the employee you spend it how

01:11:19.300 you see to be in your best interest and the provider of that also is on the on the firing

01:11:27.140 line i go to a certain guy what do you know i this is not insurance this is my health spending

01:11:31.620 account i need a new pair of glasses what are you going to charge me for it versus what john

01:11:36.580 down the street is going to charge um as opposed to some kind of standard fee schedule that an

01:11:41.700 insurance company might pay so enter introducing that kind of uh processing and accountability

01:11:49.940 is absolutely key because it's essentially a metric and what's measured changes and metrics

01:11:57.460 matter and and the best person to be measuring whether it's working or not is the person who's

01:12:02.340 getting the services provided and it's their money so as we've talked about and i've harped

01:12:07.380 on for many years now you know danielle um is i don't know how where you want to go with this

01:12:13.460 danielle i i can give you kind of what the solution looks like well i want i want people

01:12:18.900 to know sort of how you've mapped it out because it's been quite influential on my thinking

01:12:23.300 and i know that you have you have quite a vision for where you take it so here's what i've done

01:12:28.100 with with the idea that you planted with me years ago what i feel like we need to do right now is

01:12:33.460 we need to establish health spending accounts for every alberton and probably seed it with about

01:12:39.300 350 that's the number that's in my mind because when i think about all of the collective trauma

01:12:44.660 that we've suffered over the last two years and the different type of services people might need

01:12:49.220 they're all services that aren't covered by health care so massage therapy and chiropractic and

01:12:53.700 dietitians nutritionists the mental uh mental health therapy the psychologist all of these

01:12:59.860 things i think if we gave somebody the mechanism to help take care of whatever issues they've had

01:13:06.260 over the last two years that would go a long way to healing our society and getting over the last

01:13:09.700 two years of trauma that would be one thing but then it sows the seed of us having a a broader

01:13:14.580 conversation because what i was thinking then is you'd say to albertans we will we will any dollar

01:13:21.940 that we find in savings from our alberta health system we will forward to you in your health

01:13:28.500 spending account now you've got 4.4 million albertans rooting for you to try to find some

01:13:34.580 efficiencies and savings in the healthcare system so i look at it as being central to getting the

01:13:39.940 buy-in once again that we can't keep doing the system the way that we are so so take that initial

01:13:45.700 thought because the other part that i would say um and this is where you and i might disagree

01:13:50.500 one of the things that bothers me about a health spending account is that it does come to an end

01:13:54.900 at the end of each year and you don't really want to incentivize people to use up as much of their

01:14:00.900 dollars as you can like i might want to save up for laser eye surgery i think i might need a little

01:14:05.220 correction on one of my eyes i got it done in 1999 i might want to save up for braces again i've had

01:14:10.500 them three times maybe i'll need a fourth maybe i'm going to keep myself healthy so that i have

01:14:16.340 a little pot of money that when i get into long-term care i'm able to use that to subsidize

01:14:21.540 my long-term care so i i'm trying to think of how if you if you create the incentives and you're

01:14:27.380 increasing the amount each year let me add another part you could maybe get employers to match what

01:14:31.940 you have in the house spending account maybe you could put your own money in tax-free so now you're

01:14:36.900 actually growing up a pot of money that allows for you to take care of all the wellness parts of your

01:14:43.060 health care as opposed to just waiting to get sick and need hospital services which is how we fund

01:14:47.220 the system so that's sort of how i'm envisioning it and i want to hear what what your vision is

01:14:51.220 since you you got me thinking along these lines so let's let's let's and this is a big thing we

01:14:55.680 talk about libertas you know my meme for health care is it's the everest of public policy right

01:15:02.320 if you're if we conquer everest if we conquer if we fix health care to use the term that's like

01:15:08.640 climbing everest and just like climbing everest you can't do it tomorrow afternoon you and i can't

01:15:13.120 have a couple of nice uh cocktails together and solve it and implement it tomorrow there's a

01:15:18.580 stages and process to do it so you're you're you're on the right track let's start off with a

01:15:23.860 modest uh health spending account that's voluntary on both the provider and the the person who wants

01:15:31.060 to uh take advantage of it set it at a fairly low number let's say 350 dollars uh and and cover

01:15:38.020 services that currently are outside of the public system right now but are demonstrably medically

01:15:43.540 beneficial for people and that and the and the easy frankly that's not the right way to put it

01:15:47.900 but the uh the low-hanging fruit the ones that would be quickest and easiest to implement are

01:15:53.100 the paramedical services so paramedical services acupuncture naturopath um osteopaths which are

01:15:59.480 fascinating in the field that's really getting more and more traction massage therapy etc and

01:16:04.680 with that health spending account you got 350 one of the big things in my world that i've learned a

01:16:09.360 time ago is you always have to have a copay at least at the and small smaller amounts so you

01:16:14.320 don't just get 350 dollars it's at 80 coverage or the optimal level of if uh when i read some

01:16:21.120 research from the dean esmail years ago the number of the perfect number is 75 percent

01:16:26.080 they've done lots of studies on that so so just so we know how that works so if you go

01:16:29.760 into a chiropractic visit 100 you pay 25 you can use your health spending account for 75.

01:16:36.160 now it's voluntary so you have to download the app off your phone we all know how to do that

01:16:41.440 you go into the chiropractor and he says i want to get a chiropractic service done

01:16:47.520 and he says oh i'm not signed up for it well he goes online he puts in his particulars

01:16:52.640 most of these guys are all signed up online with various uh uh insurance companies so the

01:16:58.640 technology is out there this is very this is this is hardly inventing the wheel um he gets signed up

01:17:06.160 And he gets paid through the system, through that app on your phone for $75.

01:17:11.900 And away you go.

01:17:13.020 Now, the interesting factor is it's because it's voluntary.

01:17:15.280 If I walk in and I'm not aware that this program exists, guess who's

01:17:18.420 going to help me get enrolled?

01:17:20.400 It's going to be the chiropractor.

01:17:21.520 The service provider is going to say, why not?

01:17:23.380 You have access to this account.

01:17:24.380 We don't have to advertise.

01:17:25.840 Let the service providers, they'll go out and get it done.

01:17:28.400 And then, oh, by the way, Mr.

01:17:29.900 Service provider, you now have to publish what you're charging for services.

01:17:34.000 and you have to allow uh your people who get your services to rate you and i need to be able to go

01:17:40.800 and say hey i want to get a massage therapy i go on my app my health spending account app who's the

01:17:45.560 best rated who's the closest who specializes in needs or in in back or neck issues who's who's

01:17:52.940 got the you know i don't know uh the right uh looking office whatever whatever we want we

01:18:01.180 should be able to get but there's an accountability i get to look okay i get very much like because

01:18:06.140 we already we're used to this because we use air and we use uber so we know how what a rating system

01:18:11.440 looks like yeah amazon all those stuff so it's it's a meme that we're a a way of dealing with

01:18:17.220 so once you've got that going once you've got a lot of buy-in i'm sure it'll be very popular

01:18:21.540 it's not going to bankrupt the system people will understand how to work it then you start to expand

01:18:27.080 into the things and work your way into the hospital environment and then you say okay let's do

01:18:31.420 diagnostics that way right let's do doctor's visits that way now the doctors have to be

01:18:37.300 accountable now the doctors have and but at the same time allow the diagnostic shops to charge

01:18:41.980 what they want to charge so let me pause you because what that would mean is that if you were

01:18:46.680 to then make diagnostics and that would i guess include the whole range like mris and ct scans

01:18:52.040 whatever else there's probably a certain additional so that budget that we currently

01:18:56.360 have allocated for that within the centralized system would get flow flowed through to the health

01:19:01.160 spending account so let me put a pin right there for a sec so let's say i've got 350 in my account

01:19:07.400 and i don't use it okay what we would say to you is okay if you don't use it half of it stays in

01:19:13.240 your account and half of it goes into what we're going to call a stop loss pool okay and so if you

01:19:21.480 run out of money if you're uh you haven't got the funds then you have to deal with drawing on

01:19:28.520 the stop loss pool to cover the fact that you've run out of that those funds so fifty percent fifty

01:19:34.040 percent so if you're healthy that account builds and builds and builds so maybe you go get your

01:19:37.880 orthodontics or whatever and there's always a copay built in um and then we slowly move further

01:19:44.120 and further into health services now we're talking serious dollars but now well because we're seeing

01:19:48.520 competition because we're seeing doctors being held accountable and my ability to say you know

01:19:53.880 what i need stitches in my or let's let's move back to the hospital i want to go see somebody

01:19:58.840 about uh my knee i want to go see a specialist um well a guy who specializes only in uh sports

01:20:06.360 uh orthopedic injuries um he's 450 a visit but my knee is just sore i just want to spend 150

01:20:14.360 dollars so let the doctors set their pricing let deregulate the pricing right do you think okay so

01:20:21.240 here's the thing i can i can see all of the services that are not currently under the

01:20:27.240 legislation and not currently offered in other provinces so call it canada health act compliant

01:20:32.600 services i can see or exempt canada health i can see those very easily being ones you can adopt

01:20:40.520 you get into difficulty when you start talking about doctor services and hospital services

01:20:45.560 and i don't know if you can bridge that gap without then having the federal government come

01:20:50.280 in and and pull back on your on your transfer payments because that's always been the big

01:20:54.360 hammer that they have it's one of the things i find your brilliant idea here runs up against

01:20:59.400 barriers because then the federal government could come along and say so all right well we're

01:21:03.480 clawing back four or five or six billion dollars this is why i'm calling on pure

01:21:07.720 and others to say we need to end the canada health act we need to say that the provinces decide let's

01:21:14.200 give the provinces the gst let's give the provinces tax points on the income tax to pay for their own

01:21:19.560 services and let equalization that's another topic fix fix fix fix equalization and let it

01:21:26.440 deal with filling in the fast fiscal limitations that certain profits have versus others let the

01:21:32.040 provinces be the provinces and do their jurisdictional duties and get the federal

01:21:36.120 government out of it okay let me let me just talk about i want to get to the to the end and then i

01:21:42.120 want to come back and just see if you can if you can answer some of the questions about why you see

01:21:45.800 this a little bit differently so let's say this starts for a young person because i think i think

01:21:49.480 young people increasingly are used to doing things on apps on phones and i i imagine they would pick

01:21:55.160 it up quite easily and so let's assume that you started at age 20 with this proposal that you have

01:22:01.720 and you have a reasonably healthy life all the way through so you've got a pot of money at the end i

01:22:06.600 don't know if you've done some projections about what that how big that pot of money might be by

01:22:09.800 the time you hit 65 or 70. but what happens then well here here's what i've two things and i have

01:22:17.480 fond memories of us talking about this the first time many years ago daniel um is that let's let's

01:22:24.440 assume we're covering a much larger scope of things and we're covering them from childbirth and

01:22:29.640 let's say it's a five thousand dollar number so if you don't spend the money 2500 stays there

01:22:34.200 in another 25 and under 25. so at the time you're 50 just to put a number out there there's a

01:22:39.160 cup quarter million dollars in there whatever um how much would you pay me as a private insurer

01:22:46.040 to cover you from a heart attack so you don't lose that 250 000. and oh by the way when i

01:22:51.640 turns when you turn 65 or pick an age but let's say 65 that quarter million dollars now you get

01:22:59.240 paid five percent of the balance every year as a pension so it's your money if you don't if you

01:23:05.000 live a healthy life and that account accumulates and grows to that number you get the money as a

01:23:09.320 pension and when you die it goes to your kids tax free right that's the thing now the the real key

01:23:16.600 on this and i want to come back because this is really really important because people say well

01:23:19.800 what if my child was born with spina bifida or some horrific dread disease and they're going

01:23:25.320 to blow up their health spending account every year without fail that's why there's the stop loss

01:23:31.480 fund okay the stop loss fund is half that balance that isn't used goes in to cover that but the real

01:23:37.960 hanger on this and i could pinpoint exactly where i saw the light go on for you was if you have it's

01:23:46.120 your money i'm buying insurance to protect the risk of my health spending account by doing so

01:23:51.960 i am also paying premiums that indirectly protect the stop-loss pool because i've now buffered for

01:24:00.280 my own self-interest i bought insurance but essentially that insurance is protecting the

01:24:04.120 stop-loss pool as well what i like about your proposal is that it does have this mix of personal

01:24:10.120 autonomy taking care of your own health but it still maintains that community aspect of knowing

01:24:15.160 that not all of our friends and neighbors have the same house. Exactly. It's still universal.

01:24:22.200 It's still a safety net. It gives you the choice. It gives doctors and other providers the ability

01:24:28.820 to innovate, to be creative about how they do it, how they bill. We need to do the same thing

01:24:34.780 in pharmaceuticals. We need to have a whole long discussion about the deregulation of pharmaceuticals.

01:24:38.700 We need to let people innovate, expecting Alberta, the Super Board, to be the innovator and finders of economies is ridiculous.

01:24:48.400 Well, it gets even more ridiculous, though, Gord, because now we're not talking about this kind of decentralization.

01:24:55.440 We're now talking about Ottawa making the decisions about our pharmaceutical coverage and Ottawa making the decisions on our long-term care coverage.

01:25:02.920 and and so it seems like we do you always do we have these forces of centralization versus

01:25:07.980 decentralization and government control versus personal autonomy but i i feel like that's going

01:25:13.160 to be we need to push back with something novel that has community buy-in otherwise the default

01:25:19.820 is going to be that ottawa comes along dangles a little bit of money and then tells us that we've

01:25:24.380 got to run it in the same old centralized fashion with the same old bureaucracy and we're going to

01:25:29.240 end up with the same old problems. And it disappoints me to no end that you see Scott

01:25:33.380 Moe and Brian, Jason Kenney, not throwing it back in their face and saying, we want nothing to do

01:25:39.460 with it. And what you're seeing with pharmacare and dental care, even more so, is essentially

01:25:44.840 what's going on in the States with Medicare and Medicaid. And anybody who knows anything about

01:25:48.440 Medicare and Medicaid knows that it is an unmitigated disaster. In Orange County, there's

01:25:53.680 what four and a half million people in orange county medicare medicaid there are i believe

01:25:58.720 last i looked 50 doctors in all of orange county who will do medicare medicaid services because

01:26:05.200 the what they're paying for the service is so low um and you're going to go and tell a dentist what

01:26:12.240 they're going to charge for teeth cleaning like forget about it well you know and i should also

01:26:16.840 mention i just did a an interview with a woman who's involved in the tech space in health care 0.79

01:26:21.260 in silicon valley and one of the things that they're doing all kinds of um of approach with

01:26:28.460 with medical care using the genome doing testing finding out what your predisposition is and now

01:26:33.260 you're doing tailored medicine it's very expensive when it first comes on stream but it will become

01:26:38.460 less and less expensive as we go over time but if if we continue with the type of approach that

01:26:43.580 we're taking we're not going to be able to to take advantage of the some of the innovations

01:26:47.500 that we're seeing in in jurisdictions where they do allow for that personalized care when you have

01:26:52.540 a monopoly and you have no uh price signal to use milton friedman's term when i think he stole it

01:26:59.340 from somebody else when there's no price signal when there's no accountability loop you wind up

01:27:04.060 with rationing of care uh lowest common denominator levels of service and worse outcomes and that's

01:27:13.580 exactly where we're headed and that's where we're going to get further and further into until we

01:27:17.980 start building building in some accountability on both sides both of the consumer and and the

01:27:23.660 provider so somebody's asking just for clarity about please uh adela's saying please clarify

01:27:29.180 who is the financial contributor of this health spending account i mean i look at it as a three

01:27:33.900 party let me tell you my view on it and you can tell me how you get i think it needs to be a

01:27:37.820 three-party contribution that the federal the provincial government flows through a portion

01:27:43.740 you can you can match it if you want your employer can match it if you want if if they want to do it

01:27:47.740 as well like i think all of these innovations will develop i bet as well for some of our low

01:27:52.540 income populations i bet there would be charities that would set up so that non-profits could also

01:27:56.620 make contributions to individuals health spending accounts it provides a mechanism to make sure that

01:28:01.580 everybody has access to the kind of services that currently aren't covered by healthcare that's how

01:28:05.180 I see it. How do you see it? At core, it would be the provincial government would provide that

01:28:09.300 funding. And we based on whatever the costs of all the services being run, you have to be an

01:28:14.000 actuarial calculation on how much we need to fill our stop loss pool. And that's why you kind of

01:28:18.120 have to move it in on a gradual basis. But I can see there being obviously rules saying, hey,

01:28:22.720 if you put cash into this account today, because you had a good year for tax purposes, we'll let

01:28:27.380 you write it off and expense it to your personal income tax or your corporate income tax. It stays

01:28:32.700 the health spending account forever and if you use it for health services down the road it's

01:28:37.660 it comes out tax-free now if you start taking it as a pension maybe we have to tax it to some degree

01:28:42.460 but yeah let you put your own money in there you have a good year and you want to reduce

01:28:45.660 your tax rate throw it into your health spending account you've just described why it is we need

01:28:50.140 to collect our own personal income taxes so that we can start developing these kinds of approaches

01:28:54.060 Well, yeah, and I was going to say that we need to have so much more signals to consumers as to what health care actually costs, right?

01:29:08.120 Once you know how much is being, you still hear it, we see it all the time, health care is free in Canada.

01:29:14.600 You know, there's no bigger fallacy out there.

01:29:16.900 uh if you looked at the can the calgary health region last i looked um spend somewhere in the

01:29:23.300 neighborhood of six or seven thousand dollars per resident on health care something like that okay

01:29:28.980 let's say six thousand so that means a family for twenty four thousand dollars okay as a group

01:29:33.780 insurer if you gave me twenty four thousand dollars and i could provide those services

01:29:38.180 to you privately do you know what kind of health care services we'd be providing you it would be

01:29:42.900 off the charts it'd be extraordinary except for if you have something catastrophic happen

01:29:47.540 like cancer or heart disease or we would we'd be sitting down with swiss re we'd be creating stop

01:29:53.780 loss funds to take that care of that stuff if we had the leeway to decide who our providers were

01:29:58.260 and oh by the way just a little sidebar on that i'm looking i'm working on an apple computer

01:30:03.700 you're working on a computer if the government what we're doing in healthcare is basically

01:30:07.620 mandating that all health care be manufactured and delivered in alberta or in canada why can't

01:30:14.820 we send people to india to get their knees replaced with a health spending account it's 0.59

01:30:20.580 four thousand dollars over there instead of twenty five thousand in in canby or three years wait or

01:30:28.340 five years or five years wait in in saskatchewan for a knee replacement so so let's think that

01:30:32.660 through because we do have a a lot of uh folks who would travel internationally so if you were

01:30:36.820 planning on being in india or malaysia or whatever anyway and you needed to get the you wanted to

01:30:41.780 convalesce with uh with family or friends while you're there then you would be able to put a

01:30:46.260 little allotment for that in the health spending account and then it would the same goes and i'm

01:30:51.940 gonna get i'm gonna have to put a mirror under my car tomorrow because i'm gonna say this publicly

01:30:56.740 but we should do the same thing with mexican dental services why shouldn't we allow people

01:31:00.660 to use their health spending accounts that we're talking about to put towards or you know implants

01:31:06.900 or whatever get it done in mexico for 20 of the cost in canada uh i know people who've done that

01:31:13.940 getting 20 or 30 000 quotes here and then it's only five or ten thousand down there but you know

01:31:20.340 we have no problem with the government of alberta buying computers for its employees built in china

01:31:25.380 or india right why do we not allow albertans to spend canada alberta funded provincial funded

01:31:32.420 dollars outside of the country to get the service done for a fraction of the cost here and what kind

01:31:37.380 of cost pressures and delivery uh pricing pressures does that put on uh alberta doctors

01:31:42.660 and alberta facilities a lot it would and that's what we need we need competitive pressures right

01:31:48.980 so so let me ask you this because anytime you implement a new program i walked through an

01:31:53.620 example for a 20 year old but what about somebody who's already 80 years old there is a bit and so

01:32:00.100 they already have higher health needs probably but they haven't had the benefit of building up an

01:32:05.140 account over those over those years there there is a bit of an equity issue that i that i think we

01:32:10.100 have to acknowledge and i don't know how you would deal with that well i would argue that the 20 year

01:32:14.580 old never got the freeload on the health care system for the last 80 years like that 80 year

01:32:18.820 old is okay well so the 80 year old has been able to use health services for the past okay fair

01:32:23.860 enough right so that 80 year old they get the same amount of money in their house spending account as

01:32:29.140 a 20 year old gets if they run out of funds there's the stop loss fund which is going to deliver

01:32:33.700 services as good or better than what they would have had under the previous system i'm not i don't

01:32:37.860 think that is a substantive argument um and plus it may be a way for an 80 year old to put money

01:32:42.820 into a fund on a tax you know there's a lot of 80 year olds on you who have certain tax issues that

01:32:47.940 would love the opportunity well once you get to be 71 you have a certain portion of your rsps that

01:32:52.100 have to be taken out so roll it over into your house from your roof into your health spending

01:32:57.060 account and then you'd be able to have a pot of money that you could grow up so that if you do

01:33:00.260 ultimately need long-term care you buy some insurance with it to protect you against the

01:33:03.700 catastrophic you know gord let's just talk just in our final minutes here about uh unless there's

01:33:09.140 anything more on this i think you've you've mapped out something really fascinating and it's why it

01:33:13.460 stuck with me all these years i think i met you in 2009 where you planted this seed with me

01:33:17.940 And it really has been something that I've been thinking about what's politically possible.

01:33:22.220 Everything we've talked about here today may not be politically possible, but we've got to get started somewhere.

01:33:27.700 But this is the thing that I find very frustrating is that, and I've said this before, what frustrates me about conservatives and conservative policies is that all we ever talk about is we want to generate more tax income through reducing taxes and having a better regulatory environment.

01:33:42.960 So we grow the pie and then we have all this new revenue and then we hand it off to the same old central planning bureaucrats to run the system in the same old way.

01:33:50.540 And what do they do? Well, they hire a bunch more bureaucrats.

01:33:53.740 We have a bunch more money being wasted on administrators and it stays within sort of this publicly funded, publicly delivered, heavily unionized environment.

01:34:01.500 So you hire more people who are very likely to vote NDP.

01:34:03.800 So our success on the economy gets translated into more votes for the NDP because we have no vision for how it is to deliver all of the services people care about in a conservative way with conservative principles.

01:34:17.640 What you've put forward, we're talking about individual autonomy over dollars.

01:34:23.080 We're talking about having free enterprise, choice, markets, competition, privatization.

01:34:29.540 There's still a sharing element to it, a community-based element to it.

01:34:32.340 These are all beautiful principles on which to transform our public services, but do it from a conservative perspective with the things that we know work in free enterprise.

01:34:42.520 Why doesn't it happen?

01:34:43.880 What is wrong with us in the conservative movement that we haven't been able to articulate and get buy-in and implementation on ideas like this?

01:34:52.480 I would argue what you outlined there in the first portion of that, what is the red Tory ethos?

01:34:58.300 okay um it's the in the american context that's the that's the rockefeller republican uh outlook

01:35:05.640 and that is we support free markets we support uh lower taxes because generates more government

01:35:13.160 revenue which means now we can spend more government money and have government be more

01:35:16.500 involved that is the red that is jean charret in big bold letters that is erin o'toole in big bold

01:35:22.560 letters pierre poiliev the one word you didn't use expressly was freedom okay and i think that

01:35:29.760 the if we look when we look back i won't be around to look back but when we look when they look back

01:35:34.400 they'll look at the real start of all this was preston manning and then moving into stephen

01:35:40.320 harper's tenure the first real attempts to make government smaller to bring in those kind of

01:35:46.240 strategies tfsa's landmark legislation all that kind of stuff the wheat board pierre qualiev in

01:35:53.040 my opinion is the heir apparent to that he's using the same rhetoric you're talking about

01:35:57.440 i think the canadians are absolutely keen to see more of that um and it's all associated it all

01:36:02.880 comes into one big ball that people realize we want more we want the ability to decide for

01:36:07.280 ourselves what we want to do we want the government to get out of our lives and i think the ideas are

01:36:12.560 are coming i i think ourselves at libertas i know there are other people are very keen

01:36:16.800 in coming up with some really interesting ideas and the more we get into that the more we develop

01:36:20.800 those things especially with a leader and a party being led by somebody like pierre pauliev

01:36:26.880 that is more open to those ideas and more determined to do those things

01:36:31.280 and has a mandate to do it i think that you know one of the things that stephen

01:36:36.560 harper had as a challenge was he was always on a knife's edge from a mandate standpoint i think

01:36:42.160 in the next election we're looking at a mulroney's first team term level of mandate that

01:36:47.760 that the conservatives get and then they can do the things that frankly mulroney being the red

01:36:52.400 tory that he was was philosophically incapable of executing on so i think those ideas are out

01:36:57.440 there i'm not the only one obviously um and a lot of people starting to push that ball down the road

01:37:03.360 we are in terms of conservative ideas where the united states was somewhere in around 1965 66

01:37:10.080 we're always a little bit behind the eight ball on that stuff but i think frankly in many ways

01:37:13.920 we're going to leapfrog the united states in terms of rds and innovations and and conservative uh

01:37:18.880 policies and thoughts so i sure hope so you know what it is it seems a lot of conservatives act

01:37:24.880 as if the only solution is to cut so when you hear oh i'm gonna cut then a senior is thinking

01:37:29.840 oh my goodness that's my pension or that's my health care or that's my long-term care a mom

01:37:34.320 thinks oh my goodness that's health care for my kids or it's their university or it's their

01:37:38.320 education i think we need to talk in terms of personal empowerment individual sovereignty

01:37:43.680 putting dollars in the hands of customers and individuals so that they can pay for the services

01:37:49.360 directly and hold them to account and that does that that i mean some people are saying oh are

01:37:54.000 you saying there should be a greater role for government i'm saying there should be a role

01:37:56.720 for government but it should be an appropriate role for government and what we have right now

01:38:00.800 is one where we're we're paying through the nose for all kinds of services we know that we're paying

01:38:05.600 higher than anywhere else. And we end up with taxpayers and recipients who are frustrated

01:38:10.320 because it seems like a lot of it gets eaten up in the bureaucracy and administration and not

01:38:14.420 the front line. And I think we can fix that. Yes. There's, there's, well, you're familiar

01:38:20.000 with the Laffer curve. You probably wrote papers. I know I love the Laffer curve. You should,

01:38:24.820 you know how I describe it. And if you, if I have it wrong, you should, you should,

01:38:28.220 it's sort of this, it's, if you, if you were to draw a line starting at the bottom,

01:38:32.600 you get a zero tax rate you get zero government revenue as you start increasing your taxes you

01:38:38.420 start increasing the amount of revenue until you get to a point where your tax rate becomes so high

01:38:42.660 that ultimately if you were taxing 100 you're also getting zero revenue because no one is going to

01:38:47.540 sit around and pay 100 of their income zero tax rate gets you zero dollars 100 tax rate also gets

01:38:54.200 you zero dollars and somewhere there's an optimal point of tax versus that and that's on a that's

01:38:58.900 of dollars since but there's also in my opinion a regulatory laboratory where over regulation you

01:39:05.620 get more and more diminishing returns and growth and worse and worse results that's what we have

01:39:10.820 in healthcare we're over regulated in healthcare we need to deregulate healthcare we were that way

01:39:15.700 with transportation years ago and now we're seeing the deregulation of transportation and guess what

01:39:20.340 we get way cheaper flights uh way more flights to go on uh and far more flexibility and service

01:39:27.220 and levels of service um so we need to move back down the laffer curve and regulatory from a

01:39:33.460 regulatory standpoint okay let me let me run one more idea by you i don't think we've talked about

01:39:38.740 this but people have asked me what i think needs to be done in health reform and so now people

01:39:42.660 have a better idea of why i'm so excited about the potential for reform with health spending accounts

01:39:48.100 the other thing though is that we can't maintain this hierarchical system where we basically hand

01:39:54.020 a check of $20 billion over to one person at the head of Alberta Health Services. So I've given

01:39:59.080 some thought on how we should restructure healthcare. And I understand why we got rid

01:40:03.260 of hospital boards. I remember back in the day, Ralph Klein said that we had hospital boards that

01:40:08.000 had no hospitals, that there had already been some consolidation, but the infrastructure and

01:40:13.140 administration stayed in place. So it started with that notion that, come on, we've got to

01:40:17.680 right size this. I think the error that they made is that this is what I would have done

01:40:22.360 if we could have done it again for every every facility needs to have its own board and I have

01:40:29.040 some experience on this because I was on the Calgary Board of Education which is just way

01:40:32.540 too big way too many schools to have a personal relationship and I was on the board of Weber

01:40:36.520 Academy and so I've seen that you can actually have a very effective local board and you can

01:40:41.680 be more involved in the decisions so if you had a if you went back and re-established hospital

01:40:46.500 boards and I think we've got a hundred facilities under the AHS umbrella we also know that the

01:40:50.960 province is pretty evenly divided with a major center in Fort McMurray, Grand Prairie, then of

01:40:56.820 course you've got Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge Medicine Hat, and then over in the

01:41:03.140 east you'd have a cold lake. So make sure that each of those centers has a robust regional hospital

01:41:10.680 that can provide most of the services that people will need. And then you can have all of your

01:41:14.940 individual hospital boards send a representative onto that regional board. But we also know that

01:41:19.960 Calgary and Edmonton have services that only they can provide. You look at NICU, for example,

01:41:24.400 the intensive care units for newborns, or you look at transplant surgery or brain surgery or

01:41:30.540 whatever. There's going to be some high level things that can only be done in Calgary and

01:41:33.460 Edmonton, which is why each of those regions needs to send somebody to a central board so some of the

01:41:39.360 planning and coordination can take place. So you actually get the benefits of coordination,

01:41:44.480 but you push the administration down to each of the hospitals where it should be, where they're

01:41:50.340 going to have salaries that are not stratospheric, where you're probably actually going to have more

01:41:54.880 people doing some administration and some hands-on work. And then you could start hollowing out that

01:42:00.080 layer after layer after layer of middle management. So I think there needs to be some kind of

01:42:05.120 companion governance change. That's my notion of it, but I bet you've got some ideas since I know

01:42:10.700 you think a lot about governance what would you well i think i think the reason why the the model

01:42:16.220 struggles currently is there is no price signal in that model okay there's no what does it cost

01:42:21.700 to get a stitch done at an er on a sunday afternoon compared to if you went to a clinic that was open

01:42:26.300 and was being run by a a semi-retired doctor right we don't get those choices but clearly there are

01:42:35.020 essentially monopoly elements within the health care system like you said there's only so much

01:42:40.580 uh nick you know intensive care things like that where but we should treat monopolies once we've

01:42:47.500 got the price signal in place and price system in place they should be turned into utilities we 0.97

01:42:52.880 should regulate them like a utility give them autonomy they do what they have to do now utilities

01:42:58.860 basically formerly used to work on a cost plus model they don't any longer they work on a cost

01:43:05.880 plus but if you innovate you get to keep some of the innovation as a profit so they devise more

01:43:11.720 efficient and better ways to do what they have to do they also have very as you know utilities

01:43:15.880 power delivery companies have enormously high levels of standards that they have to meet to

01:43:20.360 to stay in business so uh you know healthcare you can have just as owners the standards there as

01:43:25.720 as we need so but also allow just like we see in telecommunications there's your phone that you

01:43:32.040 You can get to your house and cable and whatnot, but there's, you know, where there isn't a monopoly environment, you let other providers get in there and fight it out for that dollar and that need.

01:43:45.020 So I think that once you've got the price system starting into that, then you give that autonomy truly gets to flex its muscles and starts to say, hey, let's run our ER a different way.

01:43:56.300 let's you know innovate and not have it's just beyond me why people think that the answer to a

01:44:02.920 problem is to make an ever greater and stronger more regulated monopoly where in all of the world

01:44:08.180 has that ever worked you know but conservatives always do that like we're the we're the our worst

01:44:15.120 enemies because we allow people we allow people to bracket us as cut and and uncaring uncompassionate

01:44:22.020 people. Right. And that is absolutely wrong. And I think

01:44:25.200 that what what's what's really flipped the dime with Pierre and

01:44:28.680 other people who are now deploying the freedom rhetoric

01:44:30.920 DeSantis the same way, is that we're still going to be there

01:44:35.760 for you. We're still going to provide those things. We're just

01:44:38.180 going to give you way more options and ability to, to seek

01:44:42.060 what you need, what you see in your best interest. We're not

01:44:44.520 going to tell you what you need to do or how to do it. We're

01:44:47.200 going to let you do it the way you see fit in your best

01:44:49.680 interests.

01:44:50.460 And it's going to be better.

01:44:52.020 way better and it needs the other thing that erin the thing that frustrated me so much about

01:44:56.600 erin otul and frankly uh andrew shear is that they weren't aspirational in their messages was

01:45:02.940 there a worse political message than secure the future right that's a defensive crouch

01:45:08.400 that's what that is it's not let's let's create the national dream let's create a transportation

01:45:13.060 utility corridor from coast to coast it's like own the own the podium own the future like get there

01:45:18.160 yeah and give people something to aspire for and see how it works and that's why getting back to

01:45:23.280 the health spending account even that little small start with 350 or whatever the number is

01:45:28.640 you get buy-in you get people saying hey i like this i want more of that if there's one thing

01:45:33.360 when i deal with group plans when i talk to employees what do they want more of we'd really

01:45:37.520 like a bigger house isn't that something right we like the flexibility well i don't know if you've

01:45:43.120 got any final thoughts we've gone on for a little bit longer than i thought we would and i'm just

01:45:46.960 delighted to have had this as our first long-form interview because you have been so influential

01:45:52.160 on my thinking over the years and i've always enjoyed our conversations and i wanted people to

01:45:56.640 to especially when you stand up to the mic at the next ucp convention to know just how much

01:46:01.280 how much knowledge and research is behind the the policy proposals that you put forward and argue

01:46:06.000 but there's any final thoughts that you want to give us today well first off danielle i want to

01:46:11.360 i am when i heard when i got the email from your assistant saying that you want to be the

01:46:15.840 first person on your long form i was absolutely flattered beyond the pale i was uh so thank you

01:46:22.560 very much for the opportunity uh i um people say how can you be you know all these things and then

01:46:29.840 we're seeing terrible things happening in our society and and affronts on freedom of speech

01:46:35.680 and all freedom to move etc but i am long-term extremely optimistic about where this country

01:46:44.000 could be and where this province could be and the only impediment to that greater brighter future

01:46:50.960 is ourselves we have to get over ourselves and i'm going to take the opportunity because i got it

01:46:58.320 uh i've long felt that canada is a national is a global embarrassment that we have the riches that

01:47:05.680 we have that we have the peace and security that we have and that we have squandered so much of

01:47:11.120 that opportunity over the last hundred years is a national disgrace an international disgrace we

01:47:16.720 need to become and to to not squander and truly become a beacon we should be the richest country

01:47:26.320 enter by a country mile we should be one of the most important uh military and diplomatic power

01:47:33.920 houses in this country in the world we should be what people look forward to and the only reason

01:47:38.400 why we aren't is our own bloody fault. But we can fix it. I see changes in our demographics to get

01:47:47.200 back to that meme. Going forward, we have the opportunity to make this the greatest country

01:47:53.980 on earth. And I very much think we won't squander it. It's not going to be an easy road, but I don't

01:48:00.720 think we're going to squander it. Well said. Thank you so much for your thought leadership. I sure

01:48:04.700 appreciate your time today that was gordon talk as uh and thank heavens we managed to attract him

01:48:10.620 here from newfoundland and labrador so we have this great thinking put to the problems of the day

01:48:15.260 you know i'm going to try to do more segments like that where we talk aspirationally about

01:48:20.620 what we can do what we can be because i i think that we spend a lot of time beleaguered and a lot

01:48:26.620 of time complaining about the the way in which we're being treated but when i if you look at

01:48:31.340 the theme that we've had over the past four days and i i hope i can continue this i can be a little

01:48:36.220 negative sometimes too i can be a little bit of a critic sometimes too but we can solve our own

01:48:41.340 problems that's really the main takeaway and we just have to be a little more innovative about

01:48:46.140 how we approach the problems so that we can do that so thanks so much for tuning in to this very

01:48:51.020 first episode of the long form danielle smith show and we look forward to doing this again

01:48:56.300 We'll do this again next Saturday. Thanks again.

Western Standard - April 24, 2022

Danielle Smith Show： A Conversation with Gordon Tulk

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