Western Standard - EXCLUSIVE： Alberta Sovereignty Act “Simply put, we need less Ottawa in our lives,”

00:00:00.400 Sovereignty Act. There's a unique policy stance right off the bat, and it certainly stands out,

00:00:06.440 and it's a pretty loaded word right off the bat. So perhaps you can expand on what does that

00:00:11.040 encompass? Well, remember how our constitution is written. Our constitution is written so that

00:00:16.420 different entities have sovereignty over certain areas of jurisdiction. We are accustomed to hearing

00:00:22.520 our First Nations talk about sovereignty. They have the authority to make rules within their

00:00:27.300 boundaries. We're accustomed to hearing Quebec talk about sovereignty and how they have a right

00:00:31.680 to make their own rules, and they often invoke the Charter Notwithstanding Clause in order to

00:00:36.300 pretty well invoke whatever it is that they want. We've seen in both Quebec and Saskatchewan say that

00:00:43.420 they want to be nations within a nation. We've seen British Columbia ask for exemption from criminal

00:00:49.080 code laws. They for years didn't enforce cannabis regulation, and now they've asked for an exemption

00:00:54.320 so they don't have to enforce any possession or criminal code laws against fentanyl and cocaine

00:01:01.160 and crystal meth possession. And in addition, when you look at what happened at the federal level when

00:01:05.720 they came in with the Emergencies Act, the National Assembly in Quebec, they convened a special meeting

00:01:09.860 and said, we're just not going to enforce that here. So it's not actually that we would be proposing

00:01:14.080 doing anything different other than what other provinces are already doing, which is recognizing that

00:01:19.700 we have defined areas of constitutional powers. You can check it out in section 92. 92A is the one that

00:01:26.600 I find the most important, which is that we have the exclusive jurisdiction to develop our own resources

00:01:33.060 in our own way, which is an area that the federal government violates routinely. We just got a Supreme

00:01:38.040 or an appeals court decision a few weeks ago saying that they have no jurisdiction in interfering in

00:01:45.480 intra-provincial projects. Those are the ones that that exist completely within our borders. And with that

00:01:50.340 backing us, I think we need to just put some teeth to it saying, we're going to make sure that Ottawa is on

00:01:56.320 notice that when they try to invade our areas of jurisdiction, we're going to fight back.

00:02:00.800 Well, we know we would have to fight back. I mean, the government never really makes a secret of the double 0.69

00:02:05.960 standard. If Quebec wants to do something on their own, they will look the other way or even BC. But I mean, in

00:02:11.100 Alberta, we will need teeth. I mean, they're unapologetic about, you know, when Quebec has their 0.90

00:02:15.740 own pension plan, that's their God-given right. When Alberta does it, that means we're being selfish 1.00

00:02:19.940 and nasty. So this act would have some means then to push further if we do have a conflict with the

00:02:27.760 federal government? This is just one area. I mean, the ones where I think it would obviously come into

00:02:31.800 effect are, for instance, if they dare to invoke the Emergencies Act again. And we're watching with the

00:02:36.640 testimony. It was a false pretext that they used to try to invoke the act in the first place. And

00:02:40.920 they're getting busted on that. We would do what Quebec did and said, it's not going to apply here.

00:02:44.600 If they try to order our credit unions to start seizing accounts, we'll say, no, we have a

00:02:48.780 jurisdiction over our credit unions. That isn't going to apply here. If they decide that they want to

00:02:54.280 start punishing us because a new respiratory virus season, they want to start trying to impose

00:03:00.200 federal sanctions on us, we can say, no, we're going to take a different approach. I mean, I look at

00:03:04.420 what's happened in the U.S. on that issue in particular. The fact that Florida and South Dakota and other

00:03:10.380 red states were able to chart a different course that was different than the blue states or the

00:03:13.900 federal government, why didn't we? We can too. And I suspect it had something to do with the federal

00:03:18.240 government putting pressure on us. When it comes down to all of the provisions of Bill C-69, I mean,

00:03:24.700 we can't even build a 75 kilometer stretch of highway without the federal government declaring it

00:03:29.300 a federal project. We're not even able to approve a 200 megawatt power plant. I've talked to some of the

00:03:37.400 folks from the nuclear industry. Our oil sands operation want to decarbonize by bringing in

00:03:41.880 small modular nuclear. Once again, because this is an area that the feds have declared their

00:03:47.240 jurisdiction, it's going to delay us implementing that by 10 or 12 years. So I would say that we can

00:03:53.840 do a better job in managing our own affairs. Those are just a few examples, I think, of areas where we

00:03:59.880 would want to forge ahead on. And then let's reverse it. What they do is they invade our jurisdiction and

00:04:04.900 then they force us to go to court to fight back. Well, let's just say we're asserting our jurisdiction

00:04:08.860 and let them take us to court if they think that we've got it wrong. But there's so many things that

00:04:12.980 we can do that we've got to take the lead on. And I think it's about time we started doing that.

00:04:16.640 Great. Well, and that policy certainly gets you out of the gates and distinguishes you from some of the

00:04:20.980 other campaigns right off the bat. But while I got you for a few minutes, and since it's the

00:04:24.400 kickoff of the campaign, what else are you offering, you know, in your bid for the leadership?

00:04:29.740 What else can Albertans expect from you, presuming you win this?

00:04:32.600 I think you're going to see a lot more policy around this issue of how do we assert ourselves

00:04:37.240 in confederation. I mean, the important thing that came to my mind as I've been writing about

00:04:41.980 this over the last number of years is Alberta is going to be the second largest economy in the

00:04:47.480 country within the next couple of years. If you project out on our population growth, especially

00:04:51.900 since Quebec is stagnating, they don't seem to want to attract new population. At some point,

00:04:56.440 those lines will cross. And somewhere around 2050, we will be the second most populous province

00:05:01.080 in the country as well. So I have to ask the question, why are we acting like a junior partner?

00:05:05.720 We're going to be the senior partner in confederation. And so we should be collecting

00:05:10.320 our own personal income taxes. We should be enforcing our own laws with our own Alberta

00:05:14.340 provincial police. We should be providing for our seniors with our own Alberta pension. We should

00:05:19.800 be providing for our workers with our own employment insurance. We've got huge shortages of labor

00:05:24.860 that we need to be able to fill the gaps in construction, in oilfield, in farm work. We

00:05:31.280 should be taking control over attracting workers here as well, the same way Quebec and Manitoba do.

00:05:36.140 I think we've just been entirely too passive, really. I get the sense that we are still traumatized by

00:05:40.840 the NEP. And I guess we figured, well, if we just keep our heads down, we work really, really hard,

00:05:46.140 we keep generating revenue for the rest of the country, they'll leave us alone.

00:05:48.840 They won't. They're still coming at us. They won't leave us alone. And as a result, I think we've got

00:05:54.720 our marching orders. We've got to do something completely different. We've got to assert ourselves

00:05:57.960 and we've got to start acting like the senior partner that we're going to be.

00:06:02.120 So likewise, I mean, we've got some policies coming from the federal government that aren't regionally

00:06:06.280 targeted so much, but they're still pretty problematic when you'd be looking at provincial

00:06:11.040 challenges to things such as C11, C18, C21. I mean, all those Cs, the lists of authoritarian actions on

00:06:18.000 this government is getting really long and we need to find some sort of ways to counter these.

00:06:23.580 Yeah, I have this adage, anything Ottawa can do, we can do better. And so I would love to actually

00:06:29.300 start looking at ways in which we can maybe step on their turf and push into their territory. If they

00:06:34.560 can't seem to manage an effective way of managing our airports, maybe we should take that over.

00:06:38.680 If they can't manage our border crossings, maybe we should take that over too. If they are going to

00:06:43.400 over-regulate our radio and television internet broadcasters, maybe we should have a regulatory

00:06:49.180 process so that we can have them provincially regulated. It's interesting the way our constitution

00:06:53.900 is set up is that there does, we do have two tiers of regulation. Like for instance, with the banks,

00:06:59.240 the feds regulate the banks, but we get to regulate credit unions. The feds regulate cross-border

00:07:04.080 transportation and trucking, but we regulate our own boundary, transportation and trucking.

00:07:09.300 Why can't we just expand that concept out that if we feel that the federal government

00:07:13.800 is acting in a way that's intrusive, deficient, and doesn't respect our Charter of Rights and

00:07:18.340 Freedoms, why don't we see if we can develop our own areas of provincial regulatory authority

00:07:23.140 so that we can enact laws that are in keeping with what our citizens want. I'm prepared to push

00:07:28.580 the envelope as far as we actually need to, in order to make sure that Albertans' interests are protected.

00:07:33.540 Great. Now I'll close this out with a question I promised a first responder that I'm going to put

00:07:39.860 to every leadership candidate I get on. What would your plan be to address these ambulance response

00:07:44.900 times and this difficulty we're having all across the province that just seems to not go away?

00:07:49.300 I mean, we've been told now we need four months to study this. I got a feeling we could study it to

00:07:53.320 death. We know some of the answers. I know exactly what the answers are. Rick Fraser was one of my

00:07:57.920 colleagues in the legislature at the time. And what you have to do is have either a paramedic

00:08:02.100 or a nurse practitioner on site at every single hospital who can onboard patients and off-board

00:08:08.500 patients from ambulance so that ambulance are able to do a very quick turnaround. The issue is that

00:08:13.140 nobody wants to take responsibility when a patient is dropped off. And so they sit and make our ambulance

00:08:19.060 drivers wait for six or eight hours and sometimes an entire shift. That doesn't have to happen. We should

00:08:26.020 have a very efficient process where there's practitioners who have the same level of medical training,

00:08:31.700 able to receive patients so that we can get those ambulance back out and in their community. That

00:08:35.540 would be one thing. I've also talked to one community. I don't want to name them because I

00:08:39.220 don't want them to get into trouble, but they have two ambulances that get deployed in the regular

00:08:43.780 service and they keep one back so that their community is never left without having ambulance

00:08:49.380 in their territory. If we're going to make sure that we've got an integrated system, that we have to

00:08:54.340 have that same kind of backup so that no rural community is ever left without their seniors worrying that

00:08:59.860 they might not be able to to get an ambulance when the call is made. These are not difficult

00:09:04.500 problems to solve. It takes political will and it takes the federal, the provincial government

00:09:09.780 taking some control back from Alberta Health Services, which is mismanaging this and has been

00:09:14.100 mismanaging this from the start and start being more directive so that we can actually solve the

00:09:18.020 problems. Excellent. Well, thank you for a good quick, clear, concise answer on that. I'll let you go. I know

00:09:24.660 you're on a tight schedule today. I appreciate you coming in to talk to us and I hope and imagine

00:09:29.060 we'll talk a time or two again before the end of this race. Sure will. Thanks, Corey.

Western Standard - June 16, 2022

EXCLUSIVE： Alberta Sovereignty Act “Simply put, we need less Ottawa in our lives,”

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