Western Standard - NATION OF PEOPLE ｜ Why the West is still fighting Pierre Trudeau’s Canada

00:00:00.000 This is the first of 20 episodes to consider the political future of Alberta

00:00:05.120 and possibly the West with a business plan style approach.

00:00:10.120 People are angry, frustrated and anxious about our nation,

00:00:14.200 our province and ourselves personally.

00:00:18.080 We can figure this out calmly and intelligently.

00:00:21.280 We'll start today by looking at the very foundations of the nation.

00:00:25.440 We'll compare the 1867 British North America Act and common law with Trudeau's 1982 Constitution.

00:00:35.540 You'll see how much it changed Canada and how it relates directly to many issues of the West.

00:00:43.040 Welcome to A Nation of People.

00:00:55.440 Hi, I'm Natalie St. Hilaire, with me is Randy Royer.

00:01:07.240 This is A Nation of People.

00:01:09.680 Over the coming episodes, we will be inclusive, informative, and ultimately we hope to be

00:01:14.800 inspirational.

00:01:16.520 Like any good business plan, we need to understand the very foundations first.

00:01:21.740 any nation, its foundation is the constitutional structure.

00:01:26.740 Great, great.

00:01:30.820 So where we start is at the base.

00:01:33.900 So the basic thing of any nation is its constitutional structure.

00:01:38.440 And so that's what we're going to start with.

00:01:40.500 And I think we need to explain that Canada is kind of bifurcated between two very, very

00:01:48.360 different structures.

00:01:50.220 before 1982 so we'll call that pre pre 1982 Canada and then what happened post

00:01:57.720 after the Trudeau Constitution was brought in and implemented the so we'll

00:02:04.380 start off with comparing those two things and why they're different and

00:02:08.340 really why people don't understand that they're that they're different they

00:02:12.260 don't understand what Canada was beforehand and what Canada became

00:02:16.100 afterwards. It was a monumental change. So in 1867, the colonies, four colonies agreed

00:02:24.540 to come together and form a country. So that was formed by an act of the British Parliament

00:02:32.780 because they were all colonies. And so it's important to note that that was an act. It was

00:02:38.000 a constitutional structure. It wasn't a constitution per se. And then what happened

00:02:45.620 in 1982 was that Trudeau in conjunction with the provinces created a codified constitution

00:02:55.260 which is different than a non-codified constitution in that a codified constitution

00:03:02.940 becomes the underlying law unto which all other laws have to adhere to.

00:03:11.520 So the example is that Britain today and New Zealand don't have codified constitutions.

00:03:21.520 They are just pure parliamentary systems and the constitutional structure is defined by precedence,

00:03:29.440 by common law and by things that we believe to be true. In a codified constitution,

00:03:36.800 the word is supreme the word of the constitution itself is supreme so all laws are based on how

00:03:44.120 they relate to that to the words of that constitution and then a number of things

00:03:50.220 happen first of all pre-1982 we were not a nation state we were a constitutional monarchy

00:03:58.980 that had this this form of government that was was was free-flowing and under that form of

00:04:06.440 government the sovereignty rests in the people and and the people have the final say on everything

00:04:12.440 when Trudeau switched us over to a constitutional system he switched us over to something that is

00:04:21.760 actually an American concept and the concept is that the base law the constitution itself

00:04:29.360 is supreme and and and and it gives the word constitution maybe put it this way the word

00:04:37.260 constitution comes from the concept that we are creating a state it we are constituting the state

00:04:43.720 and and so the state is suddenly supreme not the people but the state so the sovereignty

00:04:50.260 is in the state and it in turn extends certain rights to the to the people so the purpose of a

00:04:58.160 Constitution is to constitute the state itself. So pre 82, pre 82, we had no codified Constitution, people were sovereign, and that tends to push collaboration. It tends to, it respects the self sovereignty of the individuals. And, and the most important thing is that it's evolutionary.

00:05:28.160 as opposed to a codified constitution where it becomes no longer evolutionary only changes can

00:05:34.000 be made by the judiciary which is the supreme entity or by a an amendment to the constitution

00:05:43.920 which in canada we have even tried to do any amendments so a constitution like in the united

00:05:49.920 states it's divisive because the winner takes all and it's adversarial because it's it's like

00:05:56.800 it's based on a court system so it's adversarial in nature and it's even more power it's more

00:06:02.640 partisan uh and more uh more more divisive the worst thing about the constitutional system is

00:06:10.080 that the constitution or the law who or whoever controls the interpretation of the constitution

00:06:16.400 effectively defines the moral standing so just to clarify and for my own personal understanding too

00:06:24.000 What I'm hearing you say is that before 1982, we had the opportunity to negotiate the moral line, for lack of a better way of saying that.

00:06:35.760 So, you know, what we could decide at any given time or with any given situation could be based on the present moment and the beliefs of the common people at that time.

00:06:44.660 so hence common law and and now we are always beholden to what's written in this constitutional

00:06:52.020 document and then what the judiciary does to interpret what's written and so the people don't

00:06:57.780 no longer have the ability to negotiate for themselves where that moral line sits is that

00:07:03.940 how you see it well and with an added complication is that the way the judiciary will look at it

00:07:09.460 is they will think about what was the intention of the author and so the author was pierre trudeau

00:07:15.380 so what was the intention of pierre trudeau when he allowed this con you know how allowed words to

00:07:21.140 go into the constitution so effectively post-mortem he's defining our moral position well that makes

00:07:27.780 sense because i know um they're always talking about that in the united states about going back

00:07:32.820 to the founding fathers and interpreting what it is that the founding fathers meant in the

00:07:37.860 the Constitution. So what you're saying, and it rings true in my watching of movies and TV shows

00:07:43.480 when the Constitution in America comes up, but I don't know that I had ever related that in Canada

00:07:48.640 to the idea that Pierre Elliott Trudeau had defined our nation and that we're always looking

00:07:54.780 back to his legacy and his meaning to define us going forward. I don't know if a lot of people

00:08:00.640 really understand that that's what our Constitution is. Well, that's how constitutions work.

00:08:07.860 Because the constitutions constitute the nation state, the people in charge of the nation state, unless the constitution says otherwise, the people in charge are the appointed judges.

00:08:17.500 In Canada, those are all appointed by the prime minister.

00:08:20.860 I think the current Supreme Court is the majority is appointed by Justin Trudeau.

00:08:28.220 And so their instructions are to determine all current events on the basis of the first, the words of the Constitution, and second, the intentions of the Constitution.

00:08:42.980 And so the intentions are, what was the original author intending?

00:08:47.520 The original author is Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

00:08:50.220 Well, it's hard not to get a little angry.

00:08:53.100 Oh, he's haunting us from the grave.

00:08:56.080 I have my own feelings about that but there's a lot of things that that people don't realize

00:09:03.900 were there I mean first of all it was sold as a patriation of the constitution which was

00:09:08.800 well let's call it a good marketing strategy we didn't have a constitution before it was

00:09:15.560 non-codified so we weren't repatriating any constitution and it what it did was it covered

00:09:21.400 the fact that what they were doing was they were actually creating a nation state where there

00:09:26.120 wasn't one before. I guess the other thing is we moved before under common law, we had absolute

00:09:33.700 rights. And then what we found out was that our rights became conditional. So what you mean by

00:09:41.700 that is we had the ability to negotiate the rights based on the moment, the situation,

00:09:48.240 the common understanding and now we have rights that are just conditional on the constitutional

00:09:52.800 document that's the difference there um the word negotiate is probably not right i think the the

00:09:58.000 the the uh the the right word is is that it was under common law so what common law says is that

00:10:04.320 if we all believe it then it's true and so it was uh and if somebody else gets away with something

00:10:11.040 or gets a certain line of of of rights then the next person can expect the same thing so a good

00:10:19.440 example of this is set aside your opinion of the truckers for a second i'm gonna just going into

00:10:25.120 deep water here but just set aside your opinion of what they did whether it's good or bad but

00:10:32.720 think about the rights that they were extended so when you see it the the way that the truckers were

00:10:37.920 were dealt with their their rights were significantly truncated relative to the

00:10:43.680 rights of all others and and justin trudeau said a couple of things that we want to underline

00:10:49.200 one he said about the truckers he said this is starting to become illegal now let that sink in

00:10:55.440 for a second this is starting to become illegal i mean what does that mean either it's illegal or

00:11:01.600 it's not illegal but what he was really saying is that he personally because of our centralization

00:11:10.320 of power he personally could determine what was illegal and what wasn't because the constitution

00:11:16.160 says that we have reasonable rights and he is the one in our practical system in our the practical

00:11:21.920 aspect of our system he's the one that gets to determine what those rights are so the only

00:11:29.760 structure government structure that i can think of where the leader of the government gets to say

00:11:35.680 when something's illegal is the kingdom right royal prerogative yeah when they when the king

00:11:44.560 has the prerogative to decide you know what is legal and what's not legal who who has what

00:11:49.920 rights who doesn't have those rights um it's it's we have parliamentary prerogative sorry prime

00:11:55.680 minister prime ministerial prerogative effectively okay good and as opposed to and that was a major

00:12:04.000 difference in the united states they have all these checks and balances on the on the power

00:12:08.160 of the president in canada when we ultimately did the constitution we don't have those checks and

00:12:15.280 balances other than the sovereign rights of the provinces that's our only check and balance on

00:12:21.440 the power of the Prime Minister. He appoints everybody. He appoints the RCMP leadership,

00:12:28.480 he appoints the Supreme Court, he appoints the Senate, he appoints everybody. And that's not

00:12:36.080 the way it is in the United States. They have checks and balances that are very, I mean,

00:12:39.520 they can be challenged and they can melt away at times, but we have nothing. And other than

00:12:45.760 the sovereignty of the provinces, and what we're seeing now is those sovereignties are being

00:12:50.800 attacked over and over again. Right. Well, and I also want to just highlight back to the

00:12:56.040 constitution that we don't have like all of the rights listed in the constitution. They're not

00:13:02.140 comprehensive. That's right. Like it's not that we don't have a very deep list of rights. And

00:13:10.380 there's of course section one, which sort of says, you know, as long as it's reasonable,

00:13:14.540 which gives them the ability to, I think, make that decision about when something's becoming

00:13:19.560 illegal yeah so but one right that's been particularly attacked lately or seems under

00:13:26.200 attacked is the right of land ownership exactly well and and you know to that point about land

00:13:32.200 ownership there's no protection in our basic law there's no protection of land ownership in our

00:13:39.400 in our constitution there's if you look at all the countries in the world only new zealand and

00:13:45.160 canada don't have protection of land ownership new zealand has protection under the common law

00:13:52.280 concept so under under common law for example if it's generally believed that you have the right

00:13:59.640 to own land then the courts need to uphold that in canada because we no longer rely on common law

00:14:06.680 they look to the constitution the constitution doesn't say anything it's it's mum about about

00:14:14.360 land ownership rights okay another issue that we want to make sure we cover about the constitution

00:14:19.560 is judicial supremacy so could you say a little bit about that randy sure so the the constitutional

00:14:26.200 structure by necessity by design when it's codified somebody has to interpret it so a

00:14:32.600 codified constitution is like a court of law that you have two different sides and then the judge

00:14:38.440 sits there and decides which one he picks you're the winner we're going in your direction that's

00:14:42.200 what they do the other guys go away steam off and they try to figure out how to get rid of that judge

00:14:46.920 and get a new judge that's going to go in their direction so that's the constitutional structure

00:14:51.480 it's it's adversarial in nature so when we we took this constitution we elevated and it's not this

00:15:00.840 has nothing to do with judges themselves they didn't ask for this but the constitution elevates

00:15:06.280 those the judges up into the top level of our of our democracy they replaced what previously was

00:15:12.760 the people now it's the judges and um and so they get to interpret the constitution and decide what's

00:15:20.200 what's right or what's wrong and uh and so uh and they get to interpret it based on the words or

00:15:29.240 they sometimes come up with crazy ideas that go that end up going off on a on a tangent and a

00:15:36.280 So an example of it is, and we'll go to the United States again, because they've got 250

00:15:40.680 years of experience, but segregation was a horrible thing in the United States,

00:15:45.880 the segregation between the blacks and the whites. And it was all approved in 1894 0.93

00:15:51.240 at the Supreme Court in a case called Plessy v. Ferguson. And what they decided at the time,

00:15:57.800 it was a 7-1 decision. They said that equal, but separate. That became the buzzword, if you will.

00:16:05.160 it was equal but separate. And where that all started, believe it or not, was in 1849 in a case

00:16:13.840 called Roberts v. Boston City, City of Boston. It was a little black girl that lived in a nice

00:16:24.460 neighborhood and wanted to go to a school that was down the block. And the school didn't want her 0.99

00:16:30.080 because she was black and it was on all white school.

00:16:33.320 So her dad takes the case to court and stands in front of a guy named Lemuel Shaw.

00:16:40.080 And he decides that what the constitution actually says is that

00:16:47.560 all men are equal except for, but they don't have, but they can be separate.

00:16:51.640 So he defines in 1849, he defines for this little girl going to school.

00:16:57.400 this whole concept, this principle of equal but separate. Fast forward almost 50 years

00:17:05.360 and the Supreme Court says, well, the whole nation should be based on this principle

00:17:10.540 of equal but separate. Again, fast forward another 80 years to 1945 and there's a million blacks 1.00

00:17:21.240 that go to World War II in Europe and they're fighting for freedoms and rights that they don't

00:17:28.500 even have. After the war, Europeans basically mocked the Americans and said, how can you do

00:17:36.180 this to people that have fought for our rights and you don't even extend those rights? And then in

00:17:41.660 1954, in a case called Brown versus School Board, the Supreme Court reversed their decision and said

00:17:49.860 that equal but separate was, in fact, a mockery,

00:17:54.660 which it actually absolutely was, and reversed it.

00:17:57.440 And that's what started the civil rights movements.

00:17:59.680 Now, what's important is a couple of things here.

00:18:01.580 One is that one silly little decision by the courts

00:18:05.900 went way off on a tangent and created something that was horrific. 0.65

00:18:10.160 The other thing was that the morality of the country

00:18:13.840 moved to the line that was set by the courts for 80 years.

00:18:19.860 Everybody accepted segregation.

00:18:22.920 And then when the United States was mocked, and by the way, Hitler's Germany actually used the American segregation laws to define how they treated the Jews in Germany, which is incredibly sad.

00:18:38.480 And so when they finally reversed it, the only ones that could reverse it was the Supreme Court.

00:18:44.200 There was no popular movement by the people.

00:18:47.000 It was only the Supreme Court that could change it.

00:18:50.780 So there's no other mechanism.

00:18:51.980 And that's what the essence of both judicial advocacy and judicial supremacy is.

00:18:58.880 And why the hell we signed up for that?

00:19:01.260 I have no idea.

00:19:02.780 It created a mess in the United States for 80 years.

00:19:06.480 And we signed up for it in 82.

00:19:10.340 Just to explain that comment.

00:19:12.240 And before 82, the courts did not have the right to define our democracy.

00:19:18.180 It was only the parliament could do that, and the courts were instructed to interpret

00:19:24.120 the parliament's laws.

00:19:26.820 If the parliament didn't like their interpretation, they could change the law.

00:19:30.680 But it was the people that were in charge through parliament.

00:19:33.040 Right, because people are elected to parliament.

00:19:37.360 So I can elect somebody if I disagree with judges' decisions and interpretations of

00:19:44.360 our law that would change the law and that would agree with me versus if it's all up

00:19:49.120 to the judiciary, I don't have any ability to elect those people that are appointed by

00:19:54.460 our prime minister.

00:19:55.460 And in this case, most of our current judges have been appointed by Justin Trudeau is what

00:20:00.340 I understand.

00:20:01.500 And so that's a different thing.

00:20:03.500 it helps me understand that in common law, the weight of the interpretation is with the people I

00:20:10.380 elect versus this constitutional structure, which now the weight of the interpretation of our law

00:20:17.420 and the rule of law is with the judiciary, which are appointed. That's correct. So it's important

00:20:22.940 to say both systems have the rule of law. The question is who applies the rule of law? In the

00:20:29.500 codified constitution it's the judges that are the ultimate decision maker on who on what the rule of

00:20:35.580 law is and my example uh about the you know segregation shows that they had no the judges

00:20:43.100 had no responsibility to what impact it would have on the country and so they decided you know

00:20:50.380 separate is is equal as opposed to in in the british parliamentary system where you work

00:20:56.620 with common law, it's the parliament that is responsible for what actually happens in the

00:21:02.620 country. And it's the people that get to decide. But in the example of segregation, the American

00:21:09.820 people didn't have any right to get rid of segregation. It was the law of the land. That's

00:21:14.300 what they moved to. That was it. Don't ask any more questions. Right. They couldn't elect anybody

00:21:18.780 to get rid of it. That was as soon as it goes to the Supreme Court level and gets decided on,

00:21:23.100 the only people that can then take that away or change that is the supreme court yep and all the 0.61

00:21:28.780 civil rights laws that happened in the 1960s only happened because of brown versus school board

00:21:35.340 because of the decision that the court the courts changed and why we didn't have that conversation

00:21:42.300 about what we were doing in 1982 absolutely baffles me well i know that you were there

00:21:47.740 and we'll talk about that a little bit later, but I wanted to touch on one more area where we lost

00:21:53.420 rights, which is we lost the collective rights. We lost our rights as provinces in some cases.

00:21:58.300 Can you say a bit about that? Well, again, under common law, and again, common law has this

00:22:05.580 principle of stare decisis, which we've said it a couple of times, which is that that which we

00:22:13.660 exists and we believe to exist is in fact the law. So a rule of law is defined by what we believe

00:22:24.060 there to be. And so that's what common law is, as opposed to constitutional law, which is the

00:22:29.580 judges get to make the decision. And so part of what we had pre 1982 was we had the concept of

00:22:37.020 equality between provinces and that all Canadians were equal. After 1982, that was thrown out the

00:22:45.100 window and the government again was given the ability to decide who was equal and who wasn't.

00:22:52.700 That's both on an individual basis, my example of the truckers, and also provincial. So since 1982,

00:23:00.860 the federal government has many times decided that Alberta and Alberta's industry and Alberta's

00:23:05.820 interests are not equal to other parts of the country and that's i think a lot of what a lot

00:23:11.740 of what we've seen and a lot of what has rubbed us the wrong way yeah if there's one thing people

00:23:15.980 don't like it is when they are treated unfairly and that is i think an instinctual human thing

00:23:22.460 is to know when i'm being treated fairly and when i'm not um yeah so i mean all of that having been

00:23:28.540 said um what what is there left to inspire us to give us hope given our current situation first of

00:23:36.220 all and i've said this before is that in 1948 uh albert canada signed on to the universal declaration

00:23:43.660 of human rights and this was this was really a thank you to all the people that had suffered in

00:23:48.220 world war ii to to uh help help human rights and so um canada signed on to it and they promised

00:23:55.420 they would never decrease the rights of its citizens without their informed consent.

00:24:03.180 In 1982, they did exactly that. So that's the first problem that it promised that it wouldn't

00:24:09.580 do it. And then it did it. Hmm. So, well, like this has been in place now for some time,

00:24:16.540 our constitution, you know, and it's sort of like, people always talk about there's no appetite for

00:24:21.340 our conversation about the the 1982 constitution i think i heard that mentioned on the cbc just last

00:24:27.340 week um but does it actually mean that we have less ability to do anything about it because so

00:24:33.900 much time has passed there's no limits on a responsibility of the of the provinces to have

00:24:40.540 a referendum on and to seek our consent that's first thing the second thing is that um it's

00:24:46.700 pretty kind of easy for the political elite to say that we shouldn't look at the constitution because

00:24:53.740 the the structure of the constitution really gives them a lot of power

00:24:57.420 and uh and we're going to talk about the character and the character difference between the west and

00:25:02.300 the east and uh and i can understand given the character of the east they don't want to

00:25:07.580 look at these hard issues but the character of the west is that we want to solve problems

00:25:13.260 And this is a problem and this is one of the things that we can and should solve. 0.53

00:25:17.900 And we have to accept that they're not going to like it in the East. 0.99

00:25:20.620 Yeah, it kind of starts to sound like a marriage and a separation slash divorce conversation

00:25:25.400 where one partner wants to address problems and another partner wants to just ignore them and move on.

00:25:30.800 And, you know, there's a conversation that needs to be had,

00:25:33.520 regardless of whether that conversation leads to an actual permanent separation or not.

00:25:39.480 I think that understanding the issues where they come from and the conversation that we're about

00:25:43.800 to have will help everybody to understand the moment that we're in and what we want to create

00:25:49.240 going forward, which is so important. Well, it's really easy for people to feel just

00:25:53.720 discontented. I'm not happy about what's happened. And they tend to focus on the superficial things

00:25:59.080 that are happening. And what we are going to try to do is we're going to try to drag them down

00:26:04.360 to the underlying causes and i think people because we listen to you know like you said

00:26:11.400 the cbc saying well there's no no interest in a constitutional discussion right now well because

00:26:16.360 we kind of have that in our background and we really don't know what the constitution was

00:26:20.120 we tend to not look at the root causes but like you said in a marriage you got to kind of go down

00:26:26.040 to the root causes and try to figure that out and that's what we do and so what you're what we're

00:26:31.160 really saying is that whatever you think the solution is to the current problems we're facing

00:26:36.840 in Canada, to the grievances that are going on, that the fundamental structure that we rely on

00:26:43.000 is the primary cause. It's the underlying, the root of the issue. And we have to address it

00:26:50.440 regardless of what a province decides to do as far as having a separation referendum or not.

00:26:57.720 because were we to separate we would need a new constitution right now the constitution as it is

00:27:04.440 is trying to define us and we are expected to move to that constitution and uh what i would

00:27:11.400 propose is that we can do it the other way around where and i'm not i don't think we can go back to

00:27:16.760 common law again because we're kind of locked into expectations but the good thing about constitutions

00:27:22.840 is that they can be whatever you want them to be.

00:27:25.280 So, for example, Australia introduced the Constitution in 1900.

00:27:30.680 They specifically ruled out or ruled against judicial supremacy,

00:27:36.280 and they had a referendum that was approved in the country.

00:27:39.720 So we need to look at those kind of things.

00:27:42.160 Yeah, and I love that this conversation is starting between us

00:27:46.240 and it's starting in Alberta because we're in Alberta,

00:27:49.760 but I'm sure there will be other people in other provinces

00:27:52.560 that might have an inclination to follow

00:27:55.400 and have their own dialogue about our structures and foundations

00:27:59.180 because there's such an entrepreneurial spirit.

00:28:05.180 I've lived in both Ontario and in Alberta

00:28:08.360 and traveled across the country.

00:28:11.580 And what I love about Alberta is the energy

00:28:14.680 and the hope and the vision in this place

00:28:18.980 that really energizes our whole province

00:28:22.360 and I feel that it's appropriate that Albertans find a way to lead.

00:28:26.440 Well, I think that's exactly right. Alberta has an extraordinary nature as far as I'm concerned,

00:28:31.080 and it's a little bit of the pioneer spirit, and it's a little bit of the vision of treaty,

00:28:36.680 and those two things came together to create a people that want to build. They want to solve

00:28:42.520 problems. They want to make something new, and we're not afraid to throw whatever it is that

00:28:49.720 doesn't work we're not afraid to throw it out and start over again this spirit is to me is shared

00:28:56.920 largely in all of the west but it's very different in the east and so we'll talk about that in a

00:29:03.640 couple of episodes but but i think that this is our opportunity to lead and i couldn't agree with

00:29:08.600 you more well thanks randy i look forward to our other conversations one of the most important

00:29:14.360 ideas we talked about today was really to ask the question, are we angry at Canada or are we angry

00:29:21.220 at what Trudeau made Canada to be? The next episode, we're going to explore why our consent

00:29:28.480 over the 1982 constitution is required and why the amendment formula won't work. We're going to hear

00:29:35.600 from someone that voted against the constitution back then, and then we're going to get some

00:29:40.880 thoughts from Brian Peckford, the last living signatory of the 1982 Constitution.

00:29:46.240 You'll be surprised what you hear. Join us.

Western Standard - August 07, 2026

NATION OF PEOPLE ｜ Why the West is still fighting Pierre Trudeau’s Canada

Episode Stats

Transcript