How an American from Wyoming became the best premier Alberta never had
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
143.64534
Summary
Ted Morton is a professor at the University of Calgary, a former finance minister, a senator, a founding member of the Calgary School of Politics and a long-time friend to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He's also the author of a new book, Strong and Free, which is out now.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
There are few people who didn't become Premier who are more consequential in the politics of
00:00:24.000
Alberta than Ted Morton. Ted Morton has just written his autobiography. Ted Morton is with us tonight.
00:00:32.000
Welcome Ted. Thank you Nigel. I'm happy to be here with you. Great to have you Ted. It's a tremendous
00:00:39.840
record of public service. Let's just do a quick fact check for people who were still in grade
00:00:47.840
school when you were in politics. We're all getting older so Ted Morton was. I think everybody
00:00:57.680
knows you're a University of Calgary professor and that you're part of the famous Calgary School of
00:01:02.960
Politics which informed Prime Minister Harper. You also signed the firewall letter and I'm going to
00:01:10.480
ask you to explain that because that was 25 years ago or nearly. You also did a stint for
00:01:17.680
policy for the Reform Party back in 2001. In Ottawa yes. I mean it's a great thing to
00:01:24.240
have on your resume. You become a sort of a scholar practitioner. It also cured me of ever wanting to
00:01:31.760
go to Ottawa. A lot of people wanted me to go as an MP and I said no. If I'm going to get into politics
00:01:39.120
it's going to be in Edmonton. And you were elected a senator-in-waiting so that could have so easily
00:01:44.880
gone wrong for you couldn't it? You never got appointed but. Maybe thankfully but I shouldn't
00:01:50.480
say that but yeah okay. Yeah no no we want to elect our senators here. But I think even more important
00:01:57.600
for the purposes of this discussion for 10 years you were in the bear pit of Alberta politics.
00:02:04.400
You held three top flight ministries energy, environment, I guess they call it sustainable resource
00:02:12.960
development but it was the ministry of hunting and shooting and fishing and of property rights. And
00:02:20.080
then of course you were a minister of finance. And you made a very serious run at becoming premier of
00:02:27.840
the province. I want to come back to that too. But federally and provincially Ted you've seen it all
00:02:34.320
from the inside. And I have the scars to prove it. And you've got some funny stories I see as well.
00:02:44.160
But I've known you for nearly 25 years Ted and I think it was actually Danielle Smith who introduced
00:02:49.760
us back in the corridor of the Calgary Herald editorial board. But you always struck me as
00:02:55.840
somebody a little bit in the Stephen Harper mould who wanted not so much to be something as to do
00:03:03.040
something. And that little resume that we've just been over is a record of doing things. Maybe they
00:03:08.400
weren't always as successful as you intended but you were there because you wanted to see change and
00:03:16.320
change in in the conservative mould. And this is actually here's a pre-release copy. I need to
00:03:26.160
strong and free. That's the book. And I guess it's going to be available in bookstores throughout
00:03:32.480
Alberta next next Wednesday. Two days time. September 25th yes. September the 25th. And I'm not even going
00:03:42.560
to tell you what the price is because the price is offered its bargain for the information on the
00:03:47.440
law that's contained in here. But here's the thing. It's a different sort of political memoir Ted.
00:03:53.360
What you so often get is somebody's quest for self-gratification, a little malice perhaps and
00:04:01.680
some self-exculpatory paragraphs. And this book is not like that at all. It's more of a history
00:04:09.840
of a mission by a lot of people. Like when you go through the index it takes a while and you suddenly
00:04:15.120
see I know these people. This person and this person and this person. Everybody who has had anything to do
00:04:20.480
with the Grand Canadian March or the Grand Alberta March. The Alberta March yes. The Alberta March is
00:04:26.480
probably going to see themselves or somebody they know very well in the index. And then of course like
00:04:31.280
everybody they'll look to see whether they're in it and so forth. Now here's the thing. When you
00:04:36.400
became an activist Ted, when all this started, what was driving you? Was it Senate reform?
00:04:43.120
Well, in the beginning, yes. At a deeper level, I became aware in the first decade that I was
00:04:54.160
teaching at the university. So that's the 1980s of Alberta's history and the imbalance between
00:05:01.520
Western Canada and Central Canada. Not just the recent imbalance, but you know, going right back to
00:05:09.600
the confederation 1905 that all the other provinces got their natural resources, crown resources upon
00:05:17.520
becoming provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba did not. That took a 25-year battle to just to get
00:05:25.600
that equality. And the Senate reform, again, with my American background and coming from a small state,
00:05:33.040
Wyoming in the U.S., I saw how the U.S. Senate protected the smaller states to defend their
00:05:40.320
interest and something that didn't happen here in Canada. So the Senate reform, the reform party,
00:05:46.160
that was my entree, I guess, into Alberta politics. So, Ted, why did it matter to you? You came from the
00:05:56.160
United States. You could have gone back there if you like that system, but you decided you wanted to
00:06:01.360
change Alberta. Why? I think like thousands or tens of thousands of other people that have come to
00:06:09.120
Alberta from other places, I fell in love with it. We have the mountains, the foothills, the prairies,
00:06:16.960
incredibly beautiful province, a wonderful culture too. I think it's very much a meritocracy.
00:06:25.360
Certainly the Alberta, the Calgary I grew up in, people didn't care, you know, where you were from.
00:06:31.920
What church you belong to or no church or what, if you could, if you were hard working, honest and
00:06:38.720
committed, they wanted you on the team. So I think that has been part of Alberta's success. Part of the
00:06:46.080
success in an abstract way, I guess, for liberal democracies everywhere. I wanted to, I want to keep
00:06:52.880
that. And I could see in many respects, it's very much under attack, even then and even more so now.
00:06:59.920
So it's, we have something very good here in Alberta and it's worth fighting to defend it.
00:07:05.520
Well, I 100% agree with you on that. What did we actually achieve in terms of Senate reform?
00:07:15.760
Zero. The Senate reform thing, in theory, it makes sense. It's not just the United States,
00:07:25.360
I've been to Australia, I've actually spoken to the Australian Senate, why Canada wants what,
00:07:31.040
what us, or at least Western Canada wants, what Australia has. It's a way for the less populated
00:07:39.360
regions to articulate and defend their interest in a legitimate way.
00:07:44.000
So in theory, all other federal, mature federal states have a second chamber, a Senate or something
00:07:52.320
like a Senate to allow for that and to create the balance. We don't. And we've paid a price for it,
00:08:00.000
both nationally, but particularly provincially. But it's not going to happen now. The Supreme Court,
00:08:07.760
when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, of course, he brought in some draft legislation to create
00:08:15.520
voluntary, non-mandatory elections for other provinces like Alberta has. The Supreme Court
00:08:21.840
declared it unconstitutional. In my opinion, I've written about this, a very, very weak, and frankly,
00:08:28.560
I think, I better be careful what I say, a very weak opinion. And then also, in the mid-90s,
00:08:36.000
the Chrétien government passed something called the Regional Veto Act, which says the federal
00:08:41.680
government won't approve any constitutional amendments unless all the provinces, or at least,
00:08:47.440
well, specifically, if Quebec doesn't approve it, Ottawa won't. So Senate reform is dead. And I would,
00:08:54.720
in theory, it's a great idea, it would address our issues, but it's not going to happen
00:08:58.640
in my lifetime or your lifetime. I think provincial abolishing the Senate would be a much more fruitful
00:09:04.960
way to approach things. And I think, you know, part of our plan was more Alberta in Ottawa or less
00:09:14.960
Ottawa in Alberta. And the more Alberta in Ottawa, that was Senate reform, and it hasn't worked. I don't
00:09:20.880
think it's going to work anytime soon. So the alternative is less Ottawa in Alberta. And that's
00:09:27.360
what the firewall is about. And I think that's what Daniel Smith's Sovereignty Act is about.
00:09:32.480
Well, you wrote in the firewall letter that a referendum in Alberta on a clear question,
00:09:40.720
such as on equalization, could lead to meaningful negotiation. Now, we had a referendum.
00:09:48.720
And we got a clear majority on a clear question. I thought it was clear. Nothing happened.
00:09:57.680
No. And so you could say it was a waste of time. I don't think it was. The clear majority on a clear
00:10:03.840
question. Those aren't my words. Those are the words from the Supreme Court of Canada. And that was
00:10:08.480
their answer to Quebec, the Quebec secession reference. And of course, when it's Quebec that's
00:10:15.840
knocking on the door and asking, surprise, surprise, the justices pay much closer attention to keeping
00:10:23.840
everybody happy. So they said, with respect to a referendum to secede, for Quebec to leave,
00:10:30.160
that if there was a clear majority on a clear question, constitutional question,
00:10:34.320
then there was a duty to negotiate. So that's the Supreme Court that said that. That's now a
00:10:40.080
constitutional precedent. And in the Constitution, it didn't say just for Quebec. It said,
00:10:48.960
it said in general terms, it applies to everybody. So did the liberals ignore it? Of course they
00:10:54.160
ignored it. But it's worth, it's a way of mobilizing public support and raising public awareness of the
00:11:01.200
double standard, the hypocrisy, certainly of the liberal party, federal liberal party, but also,
00:11:06.800
I'm afraid to say the Supreme Court, where there's one standard or one rule for Quebec,
00:11:12.240
and then a different set of rules for the rest of us. And it didn't result in yet in changes in
00:11:21.280
equalization. I think it raised awareness, consciousness, and it's a fight worth fighting.
00:11:26.560
We're still losing close to $20 billion a year in net transfers out of province to Ottawa,
00:11:32.960
and most of it goes to Quebec. Yes. Well, I think that's one of those realities,
00:11:38.640
like the legality of the Income Tax Act, that you can have a very refined discussion and probably
00:11:44.320
win the argument, but in the end, the system rolls along and they just can't afford to lose the money,
00:11:49.840
so they find a way. That's my opinion, not yours, of course. But here's the, before we leave the
00:11:59.120
Senate, we've just had two Alberta appointments. And you said five minutes ago that abolition of the
00:12:05.680
Senate might be a step forward. And I look at the two recent appointments and I have to agree.
00:12:11.360
I have to agree, exactly. Was there a message there?
00:12:18.800
Well, not only could almost no Albertans tell you who our senators are, but I can tell you
00:12:26.400
that in the caucus, in the government up in Edmonton, no caucus members or even cabinet ministers
00:12:35.040
could tell you who could name more than at the most, one or two senators. When we would go to Ottawa,
00:12:41.200
you didn't, if we had a real Senate, you'd go to Ottawa and spend time with your senators,
00:12:45.760
because that would be the forum in which the smaller, less populated provinces could articulate
00:12:50.640
and defend our interest. But the Senate is meaningless. It's just a retirement home for,
00:12:58.000
well, one of the two most recent appointees from Alberta. Nobody has, except you and I,
00:13:05.520
maybe 20 or 30, don't even know who they are. One's, you know, I'll be careful what I say,
00:13:12.080
a very generous donor to the Liberal Party of Canada, surprise, surprise. And the other is a big
00:13:17.840
crusader for LGBTQ rights. So, and he, I think he's only 50 something. So he'll be crusading against
00:13:26.480
parents' rights, parents' rights that are enshrined in, you know, the United Nations Declaration of
00:13:32.960
Rights, the right of parents to choose the education and be informed about the education of their
00:13:37.040
parents. That'll be our other senator for the next 25 years. So yeah, let's abolish it.
00:13:42.000
I see. Well, the case for abolition makes itself.
00:13:49.760
Okay. Before we leave the idea of the Senate, the fact is that it is in being. They do have
00:13:59.440
some power, maybe not as much as they think they have, but they do have influence.
00:14:04.720
And legally, legally, constitutionally, they do.
00:14:10.560
Yeah, they do. Now, one of the little known facts is that when you were running for the Senate,
00:14:17.280
you had a volunteer working with you, a University of Calgary student, who is today the leader of the
00:14:23.920
official opposition, Pierre Folliver-Polyave. He could very well be Canada's next prime minister. So,
00:14:35.520
Let's hope he is, yes, of course. But for him, the Senate is going to be an issue. I think
00:14:41.440
something like 85 senators out of, what is it, 108 have been, 103 have been appointed by the present
00:14:48.640
prime minister. Admittedly, they market themselves as independents, but they all get...
00:14:58.400
I don't buy it either. They all get the emails and they all
00:15:00.880
think the same way, but otherwise, they wouldn't have been appointed. So,
00:15:07.440
what advice would you give Mr. Polyave, if he were to ask for it,
00:15:15.040
on how to stick handle important legislation through the Senate?
00:15:20.400
Well, if the Liberal dominated, if Justin Trudeau's Liberal Senate tries to block
00:15:28.000
policies elected by a United Conservative, or excuse me, Conservative Party of Canada,
00:15:35.520
majority government, led by Pierre, if they try and block the democratic mandate of the Canadian election,
00:15:44.800
that's a constitutional crisis. And the fault, all the positive is on the side of an elected,
00:15:53.040
new elected majority government, and it cannot be blocked by a bunch of appointed, unelected,
00:15:58.560
unaccountable senators sitting over there in their couple hundred thousand dollar a year
00:16:03.840
Senate cures where they do whatever. They can talk all day, but they do virtually... All of a sudden,
00:16:10.080
they get all of a sudden... Again, it goes back to the double standard. And if they try... Did they ever
00:16:16.640
stop anything from Trudeau and the Liberals? Of course not. So, it's the double standard,
00:16:21.280
and it would be a crisis. But I think Pierre Plyave is up to handling that.
00:16:29.280
Well, I certainly believe he is, but he has shown a remarkable political acumen.
00:16:36.640
In the book, you talk about what you call the unlikely marriage of rural conservatives and
00:16:46.720
Calgary conservatives to form the 40-year PC dynasty.
00:16:54.400
You could make the argument, and I think you do, it's there, that the marriage is back together in
00:17:00.800
the United Conservative Party under Danielle Smith. But it seems less dependable now, especially after
00:17:09.360
COVID. Do you think that there... I mean, without... I think Danielle is doing a wonderful job. But if
00:17:18.720
the... There was some other person in there, they would face the same party structure.
00:17:25.520
Is there anyone else who can keep these factions of the party marching in lockstep?
00:17:36.080
Well, all parties, and particularly all majority governments, are coalitions of different interests,
00:17:43.040
different geographic interests, different economic interests, different social interests. So party unity is
00:17:49.120
always a challenge. Alberta has historically, I think, been unique in the last couple of decades,
00:17:55.680
where conservative governments were... Well, certainly it was a 40... I lost count, it was a 44-year dynasty,
00:18:02.800
where we, the conservatives, were able to win majorities, both in the cities and in rural. So
00:18:09.680
that was the coalition that I'm talking about. But there are obviously tensions in that coalition.
00:18:14.640
COVID brought them out. Let's knock on wood that we don't have any... We don't have another
00:18:20.400
COVID-type experience again. I think any premier, any conservative premier would have been hard-pressed
00:18:26.960
by the COVID, because given the nature of our coalition, as all parties are coalitions, the libertarians
00:18:33.680
thought that Jason Kenney did way too much, way too many restrictions. But of course, lots of people in the
00:18:42.800
middle of the moderates thought he didn't do enough, too much or not enough. It was... He got crucified
00:18:49.200
on that issue. And I'm not sure... I don't think I would have done much better. So I don't... Hopefully,
00:18:58.320
something like that won't happen again. But I think... I would hope that the members of the caucus and the
00:19:05.280
members of the UCP now realize that we can have big arguments inside the party. And let's have those
00:19:13.120
arguments, because these are important issues. And neither side, nobody has a monopoly on the right
00:19:18.480
answer. But what we don't need is two conservative parties again, and dividing the conservative vote.
00:19:25.520
That's a recipe for electing, as we've seen, NDP or Liberal governments. And so, let's have the
00:19:31.840
arguments. They can be strenuous arguments. But let's treat each other with respect and accept that
00:19:39.920
whoever wins the argument, whatever the issue is this year, it's open for the other side to win next
00:19:45.600
year or the year after. But let's not get back into dividing the conservative vote with two different
00:19:52.800
parties again. That was one of my big criteria, something that led me in not deciding to, you know,
00:20:01.680
go to the wild rose after I lost the BC leadership party. Because I thought two parties is a guaranteed
00:20:07.680
recipe for Liberals and Indies. And that's, of course, what happened.
00:20:11.520
So, yes, Ted, I mean, since you brought up your own run at the leadership, it invites me to comment
00:20:19.120
that the system we have of choosing leaders, where there are three, and because number one isn't far
00:20:27.360
enough ahead of number two, you end up with number three, seems to still be the party mechanism for
00:20:34.320
choosing a leader. Do you feel that that's, to me, that looks like how they lost in 2015. There are some
00:20:46.640
other issues. But the fact that we had the wrong leader in 2015, perhaps, was a big part of losing
00:20:57.920
government. Or am I just misinterpreting the landscape? What do you say?
00:21:02.320
Well, I think by 2015, the conservatives were destined, destined to defeat. It had been
00:21:12.960
the discrediting of the party over both certainly in terms of fiscal management, but also in terms of
00:21:22.000
social policy. The rural urban coalition had come completely apart at the wild rose. You know,
00:21:28.640
Prentice came in and tried to put things back together. But again, Prentice, like the predecessors,
00:21:35.920
like Redford, like Stelmack, the PC party never endorsed or accepted the Western alienation issue,
00:21:45.760
the fair, the firewall agenda, the fair deal, the demand for a better deal, a fair deal from Ottawa.
00:21:52.800
And, you know, by 2015, we've been fighting for that federally for over 20 years, back into the 90s,
00:22:01.760
25 years. And federally, Albertans were voting overwhelmingly for that. And you still had a PC
00:22:09.600
party led by someone and led by three people in a row. After I didn't win in 2006, Stelmack,
00:22:19.040
Redford and then Prentice, who didn't embrace the need for change and reform. So I understand why
00:22:26.240
people voted wild rose. In fact, I, if you go on the internet long enough, even on my Facebook page,
00:22:35.520
I think there's a picture of me supporting a couple wild rose candidates in Calgary who had helped me
00:22:41.280
in east northeast Calgary had helped me back in the one of the leadership races. So the PC party
00:22:49.040
basically destroyed itself by failing to embrace the issues that Preston Manning, the reform party,
00:22:56.240
and all of us that worked with Preston, the reform party argued for, and were winning big majorities
00:23:02.000
across the province for two decades, the PC party, and the people we kept, well, because of the screwed
00:23:08.480
up leadership selection process, we kept selecting leaders who were the least conservative of any of
00:23:16.240
the candidates. So would you go so far as to say that towards the end, the party wasn't really
00:23:21.760
conservative in any recognizable way? Well, I think Redford would have been a, as a liberal in any
00:23:29.680
other province. I mean, the fact of the matter was, after the Lougheed, the Lougheed years, if you wanted
00:23:37.600
to be in government, if you wanted to be in government and have, be part of a majority government,
00:23:42.640
you had to put on the Tory blue. And so one of the things I discovered very quickly when I went up,
00:23:51.520
when I was elected in 2004 and went up to the caucus, was that it was filled with lots of people
00:23:57.200
who were elected as conservatives, but who in fact were not particularly conservative at all.
00:24:02.480
But if you wanted to be on the dance floor in Alberta, you had to put on the Tory blue silks.
00:24:07.280
That was particularly true of, I would say, a lot of the people from a lot of the
00:24:14.240
PC MLAs from the Edmonton area. And of course, for reasons of self-interest, they became strong
00:24:20.480
lobbyists for policies, and this worked very well for Stelmeck, that were not very conservative,
00:24:27.120
because that's how they were going to get reelected up in Edmonton. So there was a problem.
00:24:31.120
Ted, we're going to be out of time here quite quickly, but I want to bring you back to where
00:24:37.440
we began about the sort of the march of the generations in pursuit of this conservative
00:24:43.760
cause. And the left has its own long march through the institutions. I mean, you've probably taught
00:24:49.760
that, the political science. And it's in the appendix. There are a couple of appendices to the book,
00:24:56.480
and the second appendix addresses that issue very specifically.
00:25:00.080
Okay. Well then, so we have, and you are a large part of our own conservative in Alberta,
00:25:08.160
march from somewhere to somewhere. What was the journey? Who were the players?
00:25:16.400
What satisfaction do you take from seeing Mr. Poliev in Ottawa, Danielle Smith, Premier of Alberta?
00:25:29.760
What does the next generation do? Just, you know, just talk about it. Free fire.
00:25:34.320
Well, I dedicate the book to Preston Manning. And I say very explicitly in the dedication,
00:25:42.400
right in the front of the book, that without Preston Manning, there would have been, you know,
00:25:48.320
no Stephen Harper, no Jason Kenney, no Danielle Smith, no Pierre probably ever. This has been,
00:25:59.040
he started the march, excuse me, he restarted the march that you can trace back. Lougheed did his bit,
00:26:08.000
another Manning before Lougheed, Alberta premiers. We've had a series of very wonderful premiers,
00:26:15.600
but everything they've gotten from Ottawa, they fought for. As I said before, that the beneficiaries
00:26:20.560
of the status quo don't give up their privileges voluntarily. You got to push, you got to take. And
00:26:27.920
the newest version of that was started by Preston and the Reform Party in the 80s and 90s.
00:26:32.560
And certainly my attempt to seek the leadership of the PC Party in 2006 was an attempt to bring that
00:26:43.920
movement into the PC Party inside of Alberta. I failed. But I think the work that I did, and again,
00:26:54.880
Preston, myself, you can't have leaders without followers. You can't have leaders without supporters.
00:27:00.560
And part of the reason I wrote this book was to send a message to everybody that helped me and
00:27:05.360
worked for me and supported me. We lost the leadership race and we didn't achieve what we
00:27:10.480
wanted to as early as we did, but we set the foundation and did a lot of the training for
00:27:17.360
the success enjoyed more recently by Kenny Smith and Paulie Everett. So I think the last sentence of the
00:27:28.080
last chapter says something like, hey, we want a fair deal. We want a strong and prosperous Canada,
00:27:36.800
but a fair deal for Alberta. And the next chapter is going to be written by the next generation of
00:27:41.920
leaders. So part of my reason for writing the book was, one, tell people that our generation, what we
00:27:48.960
did mattered and helped, but also send a message to all the people we just named that keep on marching.
00:27:57.520
Remember, that was the slogan of Alberta's first senator-elect to be appointed.
00:28:05.600
Ted, it's a great story, and it's a story that shouldn't be lost. You, I think,
00:28:12.240
we're explicit about that, and it's one of the reasons why you wrote the book, so that we have
00:28:17.360
a record that is both a testimony and also an encouragement going forward to other young
00:28:23.920
conservatives. So look, Ted, it's been great to have you on the program. Thank you so much for taking
00:28:29.520
the time. You have a book launch event on the 20th?
00:28:34.320
26th. Yeah, there's still room. I think if you go online, you can find an online way to register,
00:28:41.680
and I think they're taking... Ted Morton book or something? What would people type in?
00:28:49.600
Ted Morton book launch, strong and free, something like that.
00:28:53.360
Okay, that'll get there. Good. I think we have over 100 people already have RSVP'd,
00:28:59.760
and we'd like to get it up to 150, 200 people. Preston's going to be there. Preston's going to
00:29:05.360
speak. I'll speak. And I think there'll be a lot of familiar faces. It'll be a little bit of a
00:29:12.880
celebration. I think it will. It's going to be quite a week between your event, the Ted Byfield event,
00:29:18.480
which of course the Western Standard is pleased to support, and also let's not forget the Justice
00:29:25.120
Center having their George Jonas Awards on Friday. Conservatives getting together over food and drink.
00:29:32.320
What could be more? Thank you for inviting me, Nigel. Thank you for being on the program, Ted.
00:29:38.800
It's been a great pleasure. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:29:55.120
If the name Ted Byfield brings back fond memories, well, we got a party coming up for you guys.
00:30:01.600
On September 25th, Toasting Ted is what it's called. It's going to honor a great conservative
00:30:06.240
who published Alberta Report News Magazine. It's going to be bagpipes, singing, live auction stakes,
00:30:11.760
speeches by Premier Smith, Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, quite a lineup. The Western Standard is the
00:30:16.880
final incarnation or the latest incarnation of Alberta Report that Ted Byfield founded. And I mean,
00:30:22.480
he was a great Albertan. He really made his mark on this province and this evening of celebration
00:30:27.120
for him is really going to be outstanding. You get there, toastingted.ca. That's the website.
00:30:31.840
You can get your tickets. This one's going to sell out. I mean, again, if you want to see Smith,
00:30:35.360
Manning, Harper, all in one spot, one night, be sure to get there.