Western Standard - October 25, 2026


HANNAFORD： Alberta’s fight for constitutional reform has only begun

CORY MORGAN SHOW： Premier Smith stands alone

Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

134.93

Word count

3,264

Sentence count

190

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

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Hate speech

2

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Hannaford. It is Thursday, October the 22nd.
00:00:23.720 One of Alberta's deep thinkers on how Albertans should deal with the rest of Canada is Ted Morton.
00:00:30.000 who has not only taught the Constitution as a college professor, but worked under its constraints at the ministerial level as an elected politician.
00:00:38.980 He is also one of the signatories to the famous firewall letter in which he laid out, along with Stephen Harper and a number of others,
00:00:49.000 how the constitutional relationship between Alberta and the rest of the country ought to look.
00:00:56.120 Ted, that makes you what they call a scholar practitioner.
00:01:00.300 Welcome to the show.
00:01:02.340 Good evening, Nigel. Always good to reconnect.
00:01:05.960 Good. Ted, before Monday's referendum,
00:01:08.820 you wrote that a 30 to 40 percent vote for option B,
00:01:13.760 even from people who don't actually want to leave Canada,
00:01:17.340 would force Ottawa to take Alberta's grievances seriously.
00:01:21.440 it looks like the number came in at around 25%. Slightly less, perhaps. That
00:01:27.680 sounds like a mess, but I say that if one person in four is dissatisfied, there's
00:01:35.620 still a problem that neither Ottawa nor the government of Alberta should or can
00:01:41.780 ignore. So, scholar practitioner that you are, did Alberta do itself any good on
00:01:50.780 Monday or did the result simply let the rest of the Canada conclude that the
00:01:56.540 separation threat is manageable and that the status quo can continue? Well, we
00:02:02.020 won't know the answer to that question for the next four months, 12 months, maybe
00:02:06.600 24 months, but I had hoped for a higher number of support for B, but I wasn't
00:02:14.480 surprised by the result. But I think that the important takeaway here, one of the
00:02:19.300 important takeaways is that 25% of voting to move to the next stage, separation, another
00:02:27.200 referendum, that's double what it would have been a decade ago.
00:02:30.780 And if the next decade is a repeat of the past decade by the referendum that will be
00:02:39.100 held in 2036, that's 50% or 50% plus one, then that's a problem.
00:02:48.700 So I think that's an important takeaway.
00:02:52.780 And I hope that message gets to Ottawa and business and political leaders in the other provinces.
00:03:00.440 So I think you're saying that this is by no means over.
00:03:05.700 No, not at all.
00:03:07.700 25% is a lot.
00:03:09.020 It's double what it would have been a decade ago.
00:03:11.540 And so what's going to happen in the next decade? 0.53
00:03:14.600 Obviously, Danielle has some important decisions and choices to make, Premier Smith.
00:03:19.680 But I think in a way, the ball is in Carney's court, in the Liberals' court.
00:03:24.540 He talks about, you know, now he's suddenly Canada is going to be an energy superpower.
00:03:29.620 There are three new or expanded pipelines for West Coast, both for LNG, gas and oil.
00:03:38.860 Even talk of a fourth pipeline across from Western Canada to Eastern Canada.
00:03:43.820 So is this the new Liberal Party? Is this going to be a whole new relationship where energy security trumps climate change and changes what we've experienced for the last decade?
00:03:58.740 Or is this just a temporary thing within, you know, if the price of oil goes back to $70 or $80, are suddenly all of these commitments, all of the talk, all of the Carney talk, is it just going to dissolve?
00:04:16.680 Because, as I'm sure you know, and I think most people listening know, all the people that, who are committed climate change activists are opposed to everything Carney's doing right now.
00:04:28.740 And that's an important part of the Liberal Party coalition.
00:04:32.460 So is Carney bigger than the Liberal Party or is the Liberal Party bigger than Carney?
00:04:36.880 It's going to take, we'll see in the next four, eight, 12 months.
00:04:41.560 You know, the talk of the energy superpower takes me back to the days of Stephen Harper
00:04:46.520 when that was very much the conservative line.
00:04:50.300 The difference is that today it seems to be led, or if it happens,
00:04:54.460 it's going to be led by the Kearney government as opposed to the industry itself.
00:05:01.660 What do you make of that? Is that an intentional thing, do you suppose, on the part of this
00:05:08.780 government to try and aggregate power to the middle? Or is it just kind of what falls out
00:05:14.780 out of a rather tumbling political situation
00:05:19.680 that includes Alberta's concerns over the future as well.
00:05:25.160 Yeah, well, again, I don't know the answer to that question.
00:05:28.120 We're going to see it in the next four, eight, or 12 months.
00:05:31.060 But clearly, for these pipeline proposals and initiatives to work,
00:05:37.360 there has to be significant private sector participation,
00:05:42.240 in other words, financial commitments.
00:05:43.900 And that's not going to happen without certainty.
00:05:47.540 It's the lack of certainty.
00:05:49.460 Everybody talked about how the referendum was going to create a fiscal flight.
00:05:54.000 All the investment was going to leave Alberta if the separatist vote had a majority.
00:06:00.000 Well, hell, $100 billion.
00:06:02.500 There's been fiscal flight going on for the last decade.
00:06:05.480 $100 billion worth during the decade of Justin Trudeau, what I call NEP 2.0.
00:06:13.900 And so, again, let's, is, is Carney, is Carney going to, is he committed to this?
00:06:22.900 Does he, is it not just political talk, but actually as an economist, is he, has he linked
00:06:29.440 on to this? 0.64
00:06:30.400 The, the energy security issue, it's obviously exacerbated now because of the ridiculous
00:06:35.360 things that Trump has done in the Middle East with the closing of Straits of Hormuz and
00:06:41.380 the Red Sea and all of that.
00:06:42.520 But believe me, for people that pay attention to strategic military concerns and strategic fiscal global concerns, energy security has always been more important than climate change.
00:06:55.720 So, again, we'll see what choices Carney makes and what choices the Liberal Party makes in the coming months and years.
00:07:06.960 So, Ted, let's just go back to the results of the referendum for a moment.
00:07:12.720 We've got this 25% of Albertans who basically said they want to leave Canada.
00:07:20.360 Now, there's not an exact overlay here, but I noticed that in that 25%, there would probably
00:07:32.160 be a very high correlation of people who were resistant to the COVID regime five years ago,
00:07:40.560 were deeply suspicious of vaccines. Some probably refused to take them and lost their jobs as a
00:07:48.320 result. So there's a certain memory of bitterness there. I would say there's probably a strong
00:07:56.400 correlation of legal gun ownership with people who also said they wanted to
00:08:04.620 leave Canada. There's a whole kind of mindset there that just is not
00:08:13.320 sympathical with the way the central government chooses to govern and to
00:08:19.380 operate. They're freedom lovers. Now, you drew attention to me earlier that although only 25%
00:08:30.180 voted to go, more than twice that voted for constitutional reforms that would play very well
00:08:39.220 to people who were resistant to the government line on COVID and on so many other things.
00:08:46.660 In fact, in some of the key results, it was nearly two-thirds, and I'm inclined to think
00:08:53.860 that those numbers are understood. On questions one through nine? Say again? The two-thirds was
00:09:00.500 on questions one through nine? More in five through nine, actually. Five through nine, okay.
00:09:10.820 Yes, yes. So my thought is that there is also a group of people who may not actually want to
00:09:22.020 leave Canada but have very serious concerns about the way Canada is governed.
00:09:28.180 Absolutely. I think in a way, Premier Smith got what she wanted, a no vote on leaving,
00:09:37.140 or referendum on another referendum, but a yes vote on most of the immigration questions
00:09:42.940 and the constitutional reforms.
00:09:46.300 And the fact that almost a third of the people that voted against leaving turned around and
00:09:53.120 voted for the reforms, I think, shows that there's a path down the middle, you know,
00:09:58.040 not the status quo, not separation, but something down the middle, which I know a number of
00:10:05.840 People have criticized me for calling it Beech 2.0.
00:10:11.400 That's my dog calling me saying it's time to go hunting,
00:10:16.840 but I'll tell the dog to wait.
00:10:19.020 Well, the viewers should appreciate that you are, in fact,
00:10:22.160 donating generously your hunting time to this interview,
00:10:25.760 so thank you for that.
00:10:27.600 Anyway, I don't know what you did with that device,
00:10:31.440 but the dog certainly would be quieting down right away.
00:10:35.840 don't even want to know anyway um i'm sure you uh what did you so but back to your point i think
00:10:44.760 this is an important takeaway that of the 75 that voted against uh separation uh a third of them
00:10:54.080 turned around and supported it and pushed the support for the questions uh you know whether
00:11:01.260 It's five through nine or six through nine, above 50%.
00:11:04.220 So there's a middle ground out there.
00:11:06.600 And I think that Premier Smith has already been working with other provincial premiers
00:11:14.000 who are getting tired, both politically and fiscally, with the Liberal Party of, you know,
00:11:21.620 Ottawa knows best, one size fits all.
00:11:23.640 And I think that gives her a green light to continue on those reforms, not just for Alberta,
00:11:28.780 but for all 10 provinces.
00:11:33.280 And again, in the couple of years that she's been in office now,
00:11:36.840 she's continued what I think Jason Kinney started
00:11:40.680 of working more closely with other provincial premiers
00:11:44.440 who see the problem with the liberal one-size-fits-all
00:11:50.720 out of one-knows-best.
00:11:51.620 so do you think there's a that this uh divides on male female lines i mean generally speaking
00:12:01.180 men have a different way of looking at things women tend to hate conflict
00:12:05.140 and my concern on danielle smith's behalf is that there is going to be a considerable number of
00:12:11.680 of women who either don't like her in the first place but in the second place think that she
00:12:18.120 should be easier to get along with and don't like the combative stance that she has adopted
00:12:22.960 towards ottawa right from the beginning uh i would admit i of the i could think of a couple 0.91
00:12:33.480 dozen women alberta women that i have conversations with and obviously surprise surprise often
00:12:40.100 political conversations and uh more of them are have doubts about danielle smith than uh
00:12:47.380 their uh their spouses or partners so i think i think that's there i don't think that's fatal uh
00:12:54.580 and uh how to explain it uh i i'm gonna pass on that well you know the the the the stereotype
00:13:03.620 that i'm actually describing has an unquestioning loyalty to the idea of canada which is good i
00:13:09.860 guess but when you point out the real issues they tend to shrug them off as less important
00:13:16.900 the national unity. So if three people out of four don't even think about it, maybe the rest
00:13:22.280 are just wasting their breath. I mean, is there a future for separatism? Well, is there a future
00:13:29.880 for reform? Normal people, in other words, people not like you and me, and probably not like the
00:13:36.180 majority of people that are listening tonight, normal people are so busy with their kids,
00:13:41.940 their jobs, their car loans, their mortgages, what's going on in the neighborhood, hockey,
00:13:48.640 soccer. They don't have time. They don't have time to worry about policy or constitutional reform.
00:13:56.100 So what you're describing is actually pretty normal. And I would point out that almost all
00:14:01.840 reform movements in any democracy, not just Canada, anywhere, start off as minorities. 0.87
00:14:09.040 The best example would be in the U.S. would be the abolitionists, the abolished slavery people. 0.52
00:14:14.240 You know, they worked from 1800 to 1860.
00:14:17.480 They were considered a troublemaking minority by the majority.
00:14:21.360 1860, suddenly a new party, the new coalition, the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln becomes president.
00:14:29.380 But it all starts off as a minority.
00:14:32.340 The suffrage movement, the women's vote movement in Canada and the U.S. started off as very much a minority movement.
00:14:37.960 So, yes, that is the nature of reform movements, and some succeed and some don't.
00:14:47.300 I would like to be optimistic to think that our logic, the facts, the things that people like you and I,
00:14:56.060 probably a lot of the people listening tonight, the truth, the facts are on our side.
00:15:01.560 And again, what's going to happen in the next 12 months, two years, five years?
00:15:12.280 Is it going to be a repeat of the last decade?
00:15:15.700 If it is, then I think the support's going to, as I said, it's going to go up not 25% to 50%.
00:15:21.560 And if it turns out that Carney succeeds in remaking the Liberal Party's relationship with energy and the West, then I'd say a lot of what we've been fighting for will have won.
00:15:38.380 Now, you said if Mr. Carney succeeds in rebuilding the relationship of the Liberal Party with energy and the West, do you actually think that he wants to do that?
00:15:51.560 or is this a carefully stage-managed uh project for that's a very important question and of course
00:16:00.120 like many important questions i don't i i don't know the answer but uh if you look at the uh uh
00:16:10.120 the climate change activist groups and a lot of the media that comes uh certainly out of bc
00:16:16.440 Everybody that supported the anti-oil and gas, anti-Alberta policies during the Justin Trudeau decade are very much opposed to everything that Carney's proposing to do, the three new pipelines and all of that.
00:16:32.320 So which way are Carney and the liberals going to go?
00:16:36.740 Are they going to make a new coalition that does not include those climate change activists, the anti-pipeline activists, or not?
00:16:49.460 I certainly hope that they, you know, I guess, will those people migrate over?
00:16:55.880 Is the MDP going to become the climate change party?
00:16:59.940 that'd be interesting because then that would begin to split the left of center vote instead
00:17:07.520 of the right of center vote being split. But we'll see. Well, I think it's well known that
00:17:13.540 you and Premier Smith know each other quite well and see things in much the same way most of the
00:17:18.160 time. Now, you've both been publicly opposed to independence and the Premier has welcomed
00:17:24.580 the remain result. Do you welcome it? Well, yes and no. I said I hoped it would be higher,
00:17:31.800 but I think 25% is still significant. I think, you know, she got what she wanted. She got a
00:17:40.100 no vote on question 10 and majority support for most or almost all of the other nine questions.
00:17:47.000 So I think she could go forward thinking that and calling it a win.
00:17:53.320 The key is going to be two things.
00:18:00.180 One, continuing to work closely with Carney and the people around Carney to keep their focus on moving these pipelines to the next stage.
00:18:09.420 There's the announcement on the Pacific Lake.
00:18:14.200 The next deadline is September 1st, uh, next year, 20, 20, 27. That has to have, that happens. Uh, then she'll be in a good position going into the fall election here in Alberta. But the other thing that is less visible and less politically relevant, I guess, in terms of elections, but just as important is working with other premiers, uh, as she's been doing, but continuing that certainly potential allies.
00:18:44.200 in Ontario. We'll have to see with the new separatist government in Quebec, but their
00:18:50.740 leader, how do you pronounce his name? I don't have it. He came to Alberta before the election
00:19:00.780 and talked about overlaps between what the PQ wants and what Alberta, at least a portion
00:19:09.740 of Albertans wants. But I think, again, the key is it can't just be about what Alberta wants. It
00:19:17.540 has to be what building, again, what I've called kind of the Beech Lake Coalition.
00:19:23.080 Well, let's talk about that, Ted. You compared some of the constitutional questions in the
00:19:27.840 referendum to Beech Lake. That's part of what you were writing about. And you talked about
00:19:31.820 working with other provinces. With the separation option now clearly on the back burner,
00:19:37.960 at least in the eyes of the general public, is the realistic third way still a package of reforms
00:19:45.120 that Ontario and Quebec might actually accept, or has the decisive remain result taken the pressure
00:19:51.720 off so completely that Alberta is back to one-sided pleading? What do you think?
00:19:56.660 Well, possibly, but that's why I emphasized for Premier Smith not just the relationship with
00:20:06.520 Carney and the Feds, but with the other provinces, the whole liberal approach to national unity
00:20:17.760 used to be about Quebec separatism, now it's not just Quebec, Alberta, is we're going to
00:20:25.420 solve this problem through centralization, stronger and stronger central government.
00:20:30.880 And they did that by basically buying, well, a number of ways they did it.
00:20:36.180 One was bind their way into areas of provincial jurisdiction, health, education, social programs with grants.
00:20:44.540 And of course, at the beginning, that sounds like a good deal.
00:20:49.060 Ottawa is going to come in and return money from Ottawa back to the provinces and help with policies in those areas.
00:20:55.680 But of course, those grants come with strings attached.
00:20:58.040 So all of a sudden, taking the money, you have to accept the conditions well.
00:21:01.680 You've lost control of policy areas that are clearly within provincial jurisdiction.
00:21:08.800 And that's obviously an issue in Quebec.
00:21:10.700 It's an issue in Alberta.
00:21:11.800 It's an issue in Ontario.
00:21:13.180 We'll see what happens in B.C.
00:21:18.060 I've got a horrible feeling.
00:21:19.620 There's a new conservative government in B.C.
00:21:22.960 Part of Peter Lougheed's success back negotiating with Trudeau, Pierre, back in 8081, the Constitution
00:21:30.680 act was his alliance with the premier of bc premier of saskatchewan all from three different
00:21:37.000 parties conservative liberal and uh and uh uh so okay so uh again that's another possible next
00:21:47.960 chapter next step in the next in the next 12 months do you think we're out of time ted this
00:21:55.880 This is the last question.
00:21:58.860 Do you think Canada will survive?
00:22:02.860 I hope it survives.
00:22:07.480 You and I and lots of people we know, we've lived in different parts of Canada.
00:22:13.400 We've traveled around the world.
00:22:14.640 We have lots of friends in Canada who've come from other parts of the world.
00:22:19.060 And it's still arguably, if not the best, certainly one of the best places in the world to live, work and raise a family.
00:22:29.280 That's certainly the case.
00:22:31.580 It worked for us.
00:22:33.520 And that's why I'm committed.
00:22:35.240 But there's a structural problem.
00:22:37.260 We have a 21st century economy and a 19th century constitution, which is focused on giving privacy to Quebec and Ontario.
00:22:47.060 the rest of us are basically almost second class. Ontario and Quebec together have 200
00:22:53.720 members of parliament, 200 MPs. A majority is 172. So the Liberals can and do regularly win
00:23:02.620 majority governments with little or sometimes absolutely no support from Western Canada.
00:23:08.300 It was famously summarized, what was his name? Keith Davey, Pierre Trudeau's campaign manager
00:23:14.720 in 1980, screw the West, we'll take the rest. That structural liability is still there and
00:23:25.360 the Liberals like to play it. I mean Justin basically used the same playbook his father
00:23:30.400 used 30 years earlier. So I hope we're moving away from that. If the Liberals stick with that
00:23:39.920 strategy, then the future of Canada becomes problematic. But let's see what's going to
00:23:48.480 happen in the next six, 12 months, two or three years. Very good, Ted. Thank you for that. And look,
00:23:57.200 good hunting. Thank you. I'll tell the dog that I'll be ready to leave in about five minutes.
00:24:04.400 All right. Thank you very much, Ted. It's great to hear from you again.
00:24:07.440 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.