00:32:06.960So it would take a lot of work. We all know that. And it's one of the bigger challenges that would
00:32:11.920come with a referendum on independence. We saw that in the most recent Quebec referendum. And
00:32:21.120indeed, really it was because of some of the First Nations in Quebec saying, well, wait a minute,
00:32:26.800just because all non-Indigenous Quebecers might vote for independence doesn't mean that we would
00:32:35.040want to leave Canada and so that opened up a whole another debate during that referendum campaign,
00:32:42.880Corey, and it really resulted in the Supreme Court recognizing a fundamental issue and that is that
00:32:49.600if the country is divisible, if Canada is divisible and they determined that it was,
00:32:55.920if you follow a certain process, then so too are provinces divisible and of course I've pointed
00:33:02.720to the fact that even if the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island of British Columbia might
00:33:07.600vote overwhelmingly to stay with Canada and effectively become like Alaska is to the southern
00:33:13.60048 states, that doesn't mean that the remainder, that's sort of the 90% of British Columbia,
00:33:22.320wouldn't vote overwhelmingly to go the other route and join with Alberta and Saskatchewan and
00:33:27.120potentially Manitoba and form a new nation. So a lot of questions, Corey, and not many answers,
00:33:34.320but that's the best I can do at this point in time. Certainly, we intend to be wide open and
00:33:40.320welcoming to our First Nations and to the Indigenous people of Western Canada and try
00:33:45.520to negotiate with them. And the other point I'd just add to that is that I've often referred to
00:33:51.280the fact that if you think that the majority of Western Canadians are unhappy with the way
00:33:58.000Confederation works, that we're treated like a colony, still like back in the 1800s for Central
00:34:04.320Canada, for this transfer of wealth. Imagine how the First Nations feel after all these years and
00:34:11.120still being under the Indian Act and this paternalistic relationship with the federal
00:34:17.120government so i think that they would be very open to a new relationship with a government uh
00:34:23.680a government of western canada but it'll take a lot of negotiation yeah well and that was an
00:34:30.480interesting thing you opened up because the the stalemate i guess you can almost say we have in
00:34:35.520first nations issues uh due to that horrific document called the indian act i mean it's
00:34:40.960outdated it's racist it it limits people on race-based policy and it holds them back
00:34:45.840but it would take nothing less than something coming close to the point of independence to
00:34:49.740have that opportunity to maybe redraft the entire agreement because the current agreement is failing
00:34:54.500anybody who's worked on or spent time on on native reserves particularly the isolated ones
00:34:59.600they're having a terrible time this is not a system that is serving them well at all it's
00:35:04.260awful to to see people uh in that sort of condition when we're in such a prosperous nation obviously
00:35:08.680the current system isn't working but we just it's like everything else we can't seem to
00:35:12.880get anything done we butt our heads against the wall and we try through conventional means so
00:35:17.240an independence push you know and it's just a nice way to frame it could be more opportunity
00:35:21.540for a lot of positive changes aside from just equalization and local things exactly yeah no
00:35:27.940that's exactly right so yeah and you'd mentioned bc and and uh you know partition like this is uh
00:35:36.160something that people are arguing against independence quite often point out they say
00:35:40.080well what if edmonton doesn't want to go and and what if uh you know how far and how small do these
00:35:46.000uh do these cuts come like i and it's it's interesting questions and they're tough ones
00:35:50.960to answer you know i look at switzerland i see it as a fantastic model they got all of those cantons
00:35:56.560into a tiny little nation there and they've got a great deal of independence the cantons to canton
00:36:00.400i could be pronouncing them wrong but it's their version of a province uh and it's run quite a bit
00:36:05.760by direct democracy as some of them are very socialist leaning some are quite conservative
00:36:09.760leaning and they still are managed to be bonded in one nation uh in a small geographic area uh
00:36:16.800but still i mean how much would we want to slice and dice the west before it becomes dysfunctional
00:36:23.120well i guess i wouldn't use that term of slicing and dicing i would say that uh what you you you
00:36:30.720want to start from the premise that it's the the people of Western Canada that deserve to have a
00:36:36.080say and all too often down through down through our the history of our country we have not had a
00:36:44.480say and you only need to look at the results from past elections to see that by and large central
00:36:51.200Canada with some support from the east determines who our government is going to be and how we're
00:36:57.040going to be governed before we even get a vote, which really puts paid to this whole issue of
00:37:02.800vote splitting, as it were. I think that the primary purpose of Maverick is to give people
00:37:14.800an alternative and give them some means to express their opinion about the system that we're governed
00:37:22.640by. I've taken to calling our system of democracy in Canada tyranny of the majority and having spent
00:37:29.72017 years of my adult life, very proudly I might add as a representative for a constituency in
00:37:37.600Ottawa as a member of parliament and later as a cabinet minister, I've of course witnessed
00:37:43.140that situation up front. And what do I mean by tyranny of the majority? Well, it's very simple.
00:37:49.400The vast majority of the seats and thus the power of Parliament is in central Canada.
00:37:56.540And any party, and I go back to my earliest party, the Reform Party of Canada that I first ran for back in 1988.
00:38:06.140And when we decided to expand eastward and become a truly a national party and eventually went through all sorts of macinations,
00:38:16.740Canadian Alliance, the United Alternative, and eventually under Stephen Harper and Peter McKay,
00:38:22.820we merged the Canadian Alliance with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to form the existing
00:38:30.140Conservative Party. But what you end up with, and it's true of the People's Party under Max Bernier
00:38:36.260as well, as soon as you're a national party under our system of government, then you must appeal to
00:38:42.580where the votes are. It's just mathematics. It's not difficult for any Canadian to understand how
00:38:47.680this works. So if you want to be government, and what party doesn't, other than the Maverick Party,
00:38:53.860if you want to be government, then you have to appeal to those people in Central Canada.
00:38:58.220And I would submit, Corey, that the views of the average Torontonian or Montrealer are
00:39:07.060dramatically different than the average Calgarian, and even far more different than the average
00:39:13.860farmer in Western Canada, the rural energy worker working on a drilling rig or what have you.
00:39:20.980And we're never going to have a meeting of the minds. And so that's why Maverick Party has
00:39:26.340limited itself to run only candidates in Western Canada, because we recognise that we want to
00:39:34.260represent we want to be a true voice for western canadians and give them that alternative
00:39:40.100for the first time and that's what we intend to do well that's great and i mean something you
00:39:47.220know it can't be understood the amount of influence a party can have even if you aren't in office
00:39:51.700some people might forget that but uh if you looked at the the chretien liberals they balanced the
00:39:58.020budget they were actually quite fiscally responsible in a great number of ways and a large part of the
00:40:03.220The reason for that was because the official opposition was breathing down their neck and pushing them on spending and items like that, and they were forced to act.
00:40:11.640So, you know, it can't be dismissed the impact that reform had.
00:40:16.160And as you spoke, though, I mean, the complete tone of reform changed absolutely once they started looking to try and get east of Ontario and all those.
00:40:25.140Yeah, the Canadian Reform Alliance Party.
00:40:27.320And I remember Guard was formed, I believe, by Bruce Stubbs, which was Guardians Against Reform's demise.
00:40:31.520I mean, it was quite tumultuous because we felt that the movement we'd built was being watered down and would just turn into the same old thing.
00:40:39.320And I hate to say it, it took a while, but that's pretty much what happened.
00:40:42.880I mean, I don't see a lot to distinguish O'Toole's current conservatives from the old Mulroney PCs of the past.
00:40:51.620I think that's a very accurate statement, Corey.
00:40:54.200And it's certainly one that, you know, I readily admit today to being a slow learner.
00:41:00.600I mean, I went through, as I say, 17 years of elected service, and it wasn't until the results of the 2019 election.
00:41:13.060I mean, obviously, I had some inkling to what had happened during our conservative governments under Stephen Harper and subsequent to that with the 2015 first election of Justin Trudeau.
00:41:26.760I might add that I think that I echo the concerns of certainly a lot of Western Canadians in how appalled I am that this gentleman is our prime minister.
00:41:39.180I think he's the most unqualified, incompetent prime minister, certainly in my lifetime, if not the history of our country.
00:41:46.860And for the people of central Canada, not all of them, obviously, you can't generalize in that sense.
00:41:53.340but for the majority of the people of Central and Eastern Canada to continue to support this
00:41:58.080individual is just appalling to the average Westerner. And we have this great divide now.
00:42:06.660And then when we get decisions like the Supreme Court's decision last week, you know, it just
00:42:13.960really inflames the sense of Western alienation and the disunity in our country because it really
00:42:27.400does show in stark terms the disparity of thinking politically between East and West.
00:42:35.720And so, yeah, I couldn't agree more with your statement. I mean, we have put some comments and
00:42:44.360some posts on our Facebook page and on our website, really reinforcing what you just said,
00:42:51.000whether it's with a cartoon or a meme or a post of some kind, just to bring home in stark terms,
00:42:59.560the difference of opinion between East and West and Canada today.
00:43:06.240Yeah, it does just flabbergast us and it shows that difference in thought. I mean, when we look
00:43:11.180at this, we've got this prime minister who, you know, I hang my head in embarrassment with his
00:43:16.860India trip when he was dancing around like an imbecile. He wore blackface not once, but three
00:43:23.120times that we know of. I mean, that was not just a one-off, it was a parlor trick for this guy.
00:43:28.880The scandals, SNC-Lavalin, the WE scandal, yet none of it seems to chip away at a Central
00:43:35.720Canadian support, which really feeds that sense of futility we have out here when it comes to that.
00:43:42.420Now, getting on further, though, I mean, so I don't want to knock the entire CPC. There's some
00:43:47.240very good and outspoken members of parliament, even Pierre Polyev in Ontario, but getting out
00:43:54.820to the west a great deal of good mps uh when i was with the wild rose party of course one of our big
00:43:59.940turning points when when we moved forward was bringing in some floor crossers once they'd
00:44:05.300hit the wall and in frustration does the maverick party have a plan or a policy or something in mind
00:44:10.660if that becomes a consideration or an alter an option for them uh well we don't have a plan in
00:44:19.120place per se, but maybe I'll touch on a couple of issues dealing with your question, Corey.
00:44:25.760First of all, we want to make it very clear that we're not running against your local member of
00:44:31.360parliament. We're not even going to run against Erin O'Toole or even Justin Trudeau for that
00:44:35.520matter. We're going to try to suggest to Western Canadians where we are going to contest in certain
00:44:43.360ridings, that their alternative in voting for a Maverick is a vote against a system that very
00:44:51.040clearly doesn't work. As I said, I'm a slow learner, but I have learned that the system is not
00:44:57.200working in the best interest of Western Canadians. And so that's going to be our message. It's not
00:45:01.920going to be that Michelle Rempel or Blake Richards or up in my riding, Bob Zimmer, any of these
00:45:08.360Conservative members of Parliament, they're good people. In most cases, I think that they're nice
00:45:12.900people. They're hardworking people. So what we're doing is offering an alternative. If you believe,
00:45:19.140as we do, that the system is at fault, not the individual, then yes, you have to vote differently.
00:45:27.380The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different
00:45:32.020result. Well, we've been doing that for more than 100 years. Surely to goodness, at some point in
00:45:44.220interests, we need members of Parliament in Ottawa representing only the West's interests. It just
00:45:51.300makes sense given the difference of thinking and the reality, as you just said, that Central
00:45:58.320Canadians continue to support Justin Trudeau despite all of the scandals, despite the hypocrisy.
00:46:05.040And this is what really sticks in my craw. And I'll just use one example. But you could go down a long list of hypocritical positions that this gentleman has taken. The position that they are imposing with this recent Supreme Court ruling, they're imposing this national carbon tax against the wishes of at least three provinces.
00:46:31.000and a lot of people, a lot of Canadian citizens, they're imposing this. At the same time,
00:46:36.640they continue to import billions of dollars of oil from other countries that don't have
00:46:44.500our environmental standards, that don't have our labour standards. You know, it's the hypocrisy
00:46:50.980is just astounding. And yet, you know, this government, this Liberal government in Ottawa,
00:46:56.620just shrugs their shoulders and says, well, just accept it.
00:47:00.760Well, excuse me, Maverick Party is not willing to accept that hypocrisy anymore.
00:47:07.060And that's really what strikes at the heart of it.
00:47:09.620So like I say, we're not going to run against the Conservative MPs.
00:47:12.940We're going to be running against a system that basically censors them
00:47:17.240because the Conservative Party of Canada, under Erin O'Toole or any other leader,
00:47:23.620If they want to be government, they have to appeal to where the votes and the seats are in central Canada.
00:47:31.120And therefore, if we're going to change things, you've got to vote for the only party in western Canada that stands for real change, fundamental, substantive change, and that's Maverick.
00:47:53.420they they speak up for themselves and they assert themselves and they rather than getting bitter
00:47:58.140from it i've always said we should try to learn from them i mean we there's aspects of what they
00:48:03.340do that we should emulate but when i led the uh alberta independence party way back when
00:48:09.660i actually sat down and met with uh um richard marceau he was a member of parliament for quebec
00:48:15.020with the bloc quebecois i knew him well yeah and it was a very interesting conversation with them
00:48:20.620him and a great chat. And, you know, he was kind of sent by Gilles Duceppe. And we were interested
00:48:25.000in Western and Quebec independence movements, you know, being in communication with each other.
00:48:31.280My own membership of the party was furious to find out that I'd even spoken with him.
00:48:35.480Unfortunately, there is some misgiving sometimes when it comes to any dealings with Quebec and
00:48:39.800some, you know, hurt feelings, I guess, just over a lot of the politics over generations with this.
00:48:45.660But is there, I mean, if we get a pizza parliament, that's something I think would almost be good for us if we had a, yeah, who knows which one is considered prime minister.
00:48:54.820But if we got a number of parties that have to form coalitions to get things done, would Maverick consider things such as working cooperatively with the Bloc Republic or other members like that?
00:49:05.480Well, I don't want to put the cart before the horse to use an old Western adage, Corey.
00:49:10.400There again, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know exactly how that would unfold.
00:49:15.660More often I'm asked about whether a small number of Maverick members of Parliament elected in the West could work with a minority Conservative government were the Conservative Party and Aaron O'Toole to be successful in their head-to-head battle with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in Central and Eastern Canada.
00:49:36.920Certainly, I would believe that, and it's part of our guiding principles, that a Maverick Caucus
00:49:46.040of Members of Parliament is going to hold to one of our guiding principles, which is that
00:49:51.960they will operate, they will speak, and they will vote in the House of Commons if the legislation
00:49:59.440motion or whatever in front of the House of Commons is in the best interests of the West
00:50:10.480and they make no bones about it. At the beginning of this most recent parliament,
00:50:18.320the Bloc leader, when he was walking into the House of Commons, was stopped by the
00:50:22.800inevitable media scrum and asked what his strategy was for the upcoming session,
00:50:30.800the opening session of this parliament. He was very clear and very simple. He just said,
00:50:36.160well, if it's good for Quebec, we vote for it. If it's not, we vote against it.
00:50:42.080Pretty simple strategy. That's the strategy I hope that the Maverick MPs, if we're fortunate
00:50:51.360enough to be elected in a few ridings in Western Canada, that's the strategy they will follow for
00:50:56.320the west well it should be refreshing to get that unapologetic voice i just want to see somebody say
00:51:02.400no we will not vote for that we will not support that because damn it it's gonna harm my
00:51:07.760constituents and they're not under the thumb of a central leader who say please don't speak up on
00:51:12.560that because it'll harm our chances here here and here well then our voice gets lost i mean
00:51:18.080the point of parliament is to at the very least even if you lose the vote we spoke up we we talked
00:51:22.480we got our viewpoint out there. Well, just on that point, Corey, I've often remarked since Bill
00:51:31.760C-48, the Northern tanker ban, and here I've already mentioned the hypocrisy that exists in
00:51:39.020Canada, that tankers come in and out of Eastern ports and down to St. Lawrence every damn day,
00:51:46.120no problem, but for some reason off the north coast of the Pacific, we're not allowed to have
00:51:52.520oil tankers. So, Bill C-48, that tanker ban that this government passed, Bill C-69,
00:52:00.520you already mentioned, brought in even more bureaucratic hurdles for private sector companies
00:52:07.160in the building of energy infrastructure, predominantly, other infrastructure as well,
00:52:13.720but it's especially been called the No New Pipelines Act because it basically makes it
00:52:19.720impossible. That's driven billions of dollars of investment out of Canada and the jobs with it.
00:52:25.880How many Canadians are working south of the border now? It's just astounding,
00:52:30.200and it's appalling as well. I've often remarked when people say, well, what good would
00:52:35.960constitutional change? What difference would it make in my life? Now, of course,
00:52:40.120as I already remarked in this program, just look at this most recent Supreme Court decision.
00:52:45.240But look at Bill C-48 and C-69. Do you believe for a minute that if we had a Triple E Senate
00:52:51.080to protect the interests of the lesser populated regions of the country like they have in the
00:52:55.240United States and Australia, do you believe that those bills would have been passed that are so
00:53:00.600clearly against the best interests of one region? Not a chance. And so constitutional change
00:53:09.880does matter if you want to keep canada together then get involved with the maverick party and
00:53:16.120support our option a if that's your choice if you're still not uh you know somebody that's
00:53:21.640supportive of independence but get involved in one of the tracks because nothing is going to
00:53:27.160change if people don't demand the change yeah well and the senate i mean it's just such a
00:53:34.120it's an embarrassment to democracy i mean the way it's structured they're appointed they aren't
00:53:40.040balanced by population or region i mean they're purely formulated just as a as far as i'm
00:53:46.040concerned a political pasture uh for for well-connected people uh one of the things that
00:53:51.400that i found even more odious and deceptive was when trudeau said we were taking the partisanship
00:53:55.800out of it and these are now independent senators oh yes you just took the label off it and appointed
00:54:00.120more liberals you you've cloaked your liberals these are stealth liberals but they're still
00:54:04.140liberals and they're still going to do your bidding in there they're beholden to the person
00:54:08.100who put them in and i worked in the united states a lot in the past at the oil field because it was
00:54:12.760already going down here so if i needed to find contracts i had to go to texas and pennsylvania
00:54:16.600and you know if we'd be having a beer and talking politics and i'd explain that our senators are
00:54:21.980appointed they were appalled how can it doesn't even compute for them why on earth would you have
00:54:27.900appointed people in such positions of authority. I wish I had a good answer for them. And we've
00:54:34.700got more battles coming. So C-69 is a go-to to shut down Western development. And with that
00:54:40.420hypocrisy again, yeah, the tankers fly up and down the St. Lawrence, you know, there's beluga whales
00:54:44.980there. There's many concerns and populated areas, but apparently it's just British Columbia ones
00:54:49.640that are a problem. But we're looking at, I've seen people proposing alternatives to get our
00:54:54.480product to market. Like we are seeing the world is going to recover. We're seeing resource prices
00:54:59.560going up. We're sitting on these great resources. If we could just get them out, it would help our
00:55:03.380own recovery from this horrific year. And there's some creative ideas. The Alberta to Alaska rail
00:55:08.840line was pitched and some were talking about it. And within days, Trudeau came out and said,
00:55:12.580well, don't forget, that's going to be the C-69 is going to apply to that too. That was his way
00:55:16.180of saying that's not going to happen. So they just cork our bottle no matter how we try. And I've
00:55:21.380seen now some very detailed plans on potentially getting rail export to Hudson's Bay so we could
00:55:26.220have tankers run our product out of Hudson's Bay to get it to markets, European markets and other
00:55:31.460markets. They haven't responded to that yet, but I got a feeling if we try that, we're going to
00:55:35.240have to fight tooth and nail to get that through too. Well, and that's why I've said that in many
00:55:40.020respects, the West would be better off as far as marketing our energy resources. We'd be better
00:55:45.820off as an independent country. We would have more authority. We would have more possibilities
00:55:50.960than we do as provinces under Confederation as it exists today. And you're quite right.
00:55:58.240Part of the policies that we've developed as Maverick, and as I've already indicated in many
00:56:03.280areas, we have not yet put together our election platform on some key issues. But one of the ones
00:56:09.040we have already passed as a board is this idea of energy corridors. You already described two of
00:56:17.120them, if you look at a map of where Fort McMurray is and our oil sands, it wouldn't be difficult
00:56:26.160to run a bit North West through the Yukon and tie in with the Alaska pipeline,
00:56:33.040which is being underutilised now, and to make a deal and export some of our oil through Valdez
00:56:40.800in Alaska, which has been exporting oil as we know for decades and decades.
00:56:45.360The other is to run a corridor virtually straight east across Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba to
00:56:51.040Churchill and utilize that port. And as you say, make that a world-class port for the export of
00:56:59.440oil tankers through the Hudson's Bay. And then of course, Keystone, British Columbia out through
00:57:06.480Prince Rupert or Kitimat through Quebec. This is why, Corey, if people take the time to go to
00:57:15.200maverickparty.ca and take a look at the five amendments that we've proposed to
00:57:20.240the Canada's constitution, the first deals with market access, the second deals with provincial
00:57:27.200rights. And I've been assured that if our second amendment had been in place,
00:57:32.800The Supreme Court ruling the other day would have been different.
00:57:37.320There's no way they could have passed that ruling that they did by that six to three vote
00:57:43.160if our Second Amendment actually to Canada's constitution was in place.
00:57:48.440So I urge people to take a look at the work that Maverick's been doing
00:57:52.580in trying to achieve a greater autonomy, greater fairness, greater respect for Western Canada.
00:58:02.800Okay, so we've talked a little bit about it. You touched on it a couple times. I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, but you'll hear it thousands more at the doors when an election comes. How do you avoid the vote split? How do we avoid coming in with the best of intentions, but potentially coming out with a worse outcome than we went into the election with to begin with?
00:58:20.920And Albertans in particular, you know, and there were a number of reasons for it, and that's a whole other show, but we ended up with an NDP government, the unimaginable for four years, due to us conservatives, you know, busy cutting each other's heads off and, you know, crawling over each other to try and win the golden prize there.
00:58:39.380So how can you answer the people asking those questions?
00:58:43.400How are you going to comfort them in knowing that they're not going to make things worse by casting a ballot for you?
00:58:48.520Well, the first is to just completely refute this whole idea of vote splitting in this first
00:58:55.120election that Maverick's going to contest, Corey. First of all, I'm well aware of the issue of vote
01:05:07.060So going farther ahead, and as you said, this is a party, not an advocacy group.
01:05:12.000And those are two different roles, two different things, even if they could share some common goals.
01:05:16.100But we appear to be leading towards a fall referendum on equalization, which would be, again, it's one of those exercises where we're just kind of exerting our voices.
01:05:26.860But unless Ottawa actually wants to do something about it, there's not much we can do.
01:05:30.740But I think it's a great exercise to bring that issue to the head, to bring it to voters, almost a practice run for other referendums if we want to talk about it that way.
01:05:37.740Would Maverick take a stance in that and be active within such an exercise?
01:06:01.220We're a little different of opinion, and we'll see where Jason and his government goes with the intended referendum on equalization.
01:06:12.960We originally looked at, Corey, looked at what they're advocating, which is basically removing the clause in Canada's constitution that allows for or that doesn't allow for, I guess it demands the equalization principle.
01:06:31.540and we decided as a party that we weren't going to go that direction, that the problems we have
01:06:40.360is with the formula, not with the principle of sharing and we believe that the government,
01:06:49.080if they follow through with that particular question, the removal of the principle of
01:06:53.380equalization, they're going to unnecessarily run into problems where people are going to say,
01:06:58.360well, what's wrong with the principle that provinces that have more wealth share with
01:07:04.880provinces that don't? You know, I mean, that's the Canadian way that we're generous people that
01:07:10.680we don't mind sharing. So, it isn't the principle that Maverick feels is at dispute here. It's the
01:07:18.260formula. Why is it that all of the revenue from our oil and gas as a non-renewable resource
01:07:25.520is included in the formula in a calculation of wealth.
01:07:30.740And yet one of the biggest wealth generators for Quebec,
01:07:33.880their hydroelectricity that they export much of it
01:07:37.420to the Eastern seaboard of the United States is not included.
01:07:41.880So I think that's where the problem and where the focus should be,
01:07:45.040not on the principle of sharing, but on the issue of the formula itself
01:07:50.760and that it's not right, it's anything but fair,
01:07:53.820and that has become home in spades here in the last little while. I just want to
01:07:58.260revert back to an earlier question that you had that I didn't really answer and that is
01:08:05.980the whole issue of potentially people joining, other members of parliament joining
01:08:15.620the Maverick Party, Corey. And as I said, I believe that down the road a piece,
01:08:23.300once we've established our credibility, we could see more and more people that are willing,
01:08:27.500not just members of parliament, but people from all walks of life that have been successful,
01:08:33.260that are very guarded about attaching their name and their reputation, like yourself,
01:08:39.100people like yourself uh you know coming out uh squarely behind maverick party and it'll take
01:08:45.100some time for us to establish our credentials yeah well you're certainly at a formative point
01:08:51.580i know it's made it difficult to make a lot of answers i appreciate that i mean you get that
01:08:55.660that grassroots respect i mean you we can speak broadly about policies and issues but until it
01:09:00.860can go to a membership to actually choose these things uh then then it's not really fair to commit
01:13:09.020Okay. Well, that was, you know, a good discussion at length. I see John Williams has been responding
01:13:15.300in the uh comment section as well uh as stephanie asked you know can i buy a membership if i'm
01:13:21.580already a conservative member yes you can with party memberships i mean that's your freedom you
01:13:25.900can own as many memberships and whatever parties as you like uh that that's been one of the
01:13:29.780challenges with party organizations and again as a wild rose or a member in the past some people
01:13:33.800saying we should have a party policy making it illegal for a person to have another membership
01:13:37.780well how do you find out where do you go down that rabbit hole uh the goal is to get people
01:13:42.820and bring them in and if they happen to hold a membership somewhere else uh so be it it's where
01:13:47.200they're going to participate and vote and and you know contribute and do those sorts of things that
01:13:52.080matter um but jay's certainly got his work cut out for him along with all of the volunteers and
01:13:58.840it's it's a questionable area there's a lot of question marks still hanging up there you know
01:14:04.060will votes be irreparably split i mean if they stick to the the writings they had spoken of
01:14:09.980then then it won't have that impact on it. But then in that case, will it have an impact on the
01:14:13.860election? A lot depends on what comes in these these these next few months here and what sort
01:14:19.520of events come along and how they do it. Bridget Frost, it says you just can't sit on multiple
01:14:24.840party CA boards. Again, actually, well, it depends on what party enforces their own things from
01:14:29.960within. But I mean, if you're openly on another board for another party, and you know, one of the
01:14:34.160other parties finds out they're going to say, Hey, you know, what are you doing? Because there's
01:14:36.800some inside information that can be shared grassroots organizing is something I don't
01:14:42.420know masochistically I've been involved in since the 90s with reform with the wild rose party it
01:14:50.140was Alberta alliance prior to that of course the Alberta independence party which I led to a
01:14:54.080catastrophic loss in 2001 but it's essential it's something we really do in the west and we quite
01:15:01.400often do it well so i i wouldn't dismiss uh where where the maverick party is going i mean they're
01:15:08.040you know getting steps and stumbles like any other new movement would have but uh jay is of the old
01:15:14.040school from under preston manning and as i said you know from the days of when deb gray was that
01:15:18.600lone member sitting up there in beaver river uh they can turn that into something much bigger and
01:15:24.200and with this uh frustration that we're seeing already hitting the wall you know and it just
01:15:30.520just seems no matter what we do, nothing changes. It's refreshing to see another option. And then
01:15:37.000Jenny saying, Corey, you need to come back. Well, I'm back. I'm here making noise through columns
01:15:41.260and on this show and in other areas, but I don't belong in politics. I'm way too crabby. I don't
01:15:49.320work well with committees and it would just be destructive. So, I mean, I'll certainly be
01:15:54.760involved in politics from a commentary point of view and writing and speaking in many things,
01:15:58.620But rest assured, I would make a terrible member of parliament or MLA or any of those things because I would be sure to be thrown onto the backbench for misbehavior in short order.
01:16:10.980So speaking of misbehaving individualist minded folks, I've got Derek Fromm coming on.
01:16:16.980As I'd said earlier, he's you might have heard him on Daniel Smith's show.
01:16:21.740he'd worked with uh constitutional issues uh as a lawyer always outspoken on independence issues
01:16:28.120and personal liberty issues which of course are near and dear to my heart uh glad to have you on
01:16:34.280derek there's so much to cover and talk about see that magnificent seek justice shirt on you there
01:16:40.340again that's right with any luck my uh internet uh hurt his internet will be behaving a little
01:16:49.100better today than it was the other day. So we had a good long talk with Jay there on the Maverick
01:16:57.080Party and their organization and where they're going for it. So that's one pronged approach to
01:17:01.120the status quo that we're locked in within Canada. A number of issues came up. Where to go with you
01:17:08.520is assuming what i think to start with recently in the news um maybe if you turn your phone down
01:17:15.640just a little bit of feedback uh but i i have to go with headphones if that's helpful
01:17:24.280perhaps if you could try those it might come in a little better
01:17:27.800usually the echo cancellation stream yard works pretty well but maybe you're pretty good
01:17:45.120now we're still getting it oh wait seems to call that okay great there we go
01:17:51.160and we can hear from you more clearly so the supreme court of canada ruling on the challenges
01:17:58.280to the federal carbon tax there's a nice big legal area to dive into and start with
01:18:03.740what seems to have gotten my backup the most on it was it really sounded like from these judges
01:18:10.880that they acknowledged that the carbon tax wasn't constitutional it was an infringement on
01:18:17.780provincial jurisdiction but they decided as justices that this issue was so pressing that
01:18:22.700we will override and set aside provincial jurisdictions and impose this tax is my
01:18:28.200interpretation kind of right of what happened there well yeah i i think it fundamentally is
01:18:36.580as as all court decisions are and judges tend to be lawyers as well it um the language justifying
01:18:45.800what you just said is much more convoluted and flowery and there is a history to it
01:18:50.980but essentially at the end of the day, that's, that is what it boils down to is what you just
01:18:56.200said. Yeah. So, I mean, a constitution, a charter of rights, these are supposed to be things that
01:19:02.360vary only in the most extreme of circumstances. They're supposed to be to protect us.
01:19:07.660Would we ever suspend any of those things? You know, section one of the charter gives that,
01:19:11.260that clause. I can understand the rationale. I mean, an asteroid might hit or something and
01:19:15.220we need to set aside a few things to get our stuff in order, but the burden of proof really
01:19:20.340should be on the state to say why we have to you know it seems to be the other way around it's like
01:19:25.940we're going to take away your rights and now you can try and make your case as to why we were wrong
01:19:30.300and it seems to be a terrible reverse onus yeah and in this particular case that so we're talking
01:19:36.880about the decision that came out i think it was last thursday and it's the greenhouse gas pollution
01:19:42.280and pricing act the federal act we'll just call it carbon tax the federal carbon tax yeah so it
01:19:49.460It actually, the arguments made, I think, all the way through the various courts that heard these, where this act was referred to by provincial governments, were all based on the Constitution Act 1867.
01:20:06.860So 1867, that statute doesn't really have any Bill of Rights issues in it.
01:20:14.460And really, the crux of the entire argument was quite simple.
01:20:19.460There's two provisions in the Constitution Act 1867, and those provisions basically divide up all legislative matters.
01:20:29.640So everything from health care, education, the military, banks, et cetera, et cetera, pretty much everything you can think of is divided up, divvied up between the feds and the provinces.
01:20:41.720And at the end of the day, what happens is the Constitution says anything that isn't specifically addressed in these long lists of areas belonging to either the provinces or the feds goes back by default to the federal government.
01:21:59.680John A. Macdonald at the time actually was saying things like, I can't even conceive of a dispute between the provinces and the feds on jurisdictional matters because the Constitution is so clear.
01:22:19.620But the problem is that, you know, life has gotten more complicated than 1867.
01:22:24.640But the court has also, this may be controversial to some, but the court has also seemingly written itself new rules over time under the guise of what's called cooperative federalism, which basically says it's really hard for the feds and the provinces to get along.
01:22:44.380So we'll let them take over, incidentally take over and enact legislation that trenches upon the other government level of government's authority.
01:22:53.540Now, the Constitution is clear. They're watertight compartments.
01:22:57.400The word exclusive occurs in the Constitution.
01:23:01.480These powers belong exclusively to the feds or to the provinces.
01:23:06.400And so the court in the intervening years, it's relatively a modern phenomena in the court.
01:23:13.160they've developed this idea of cooperative federalism where they can dispense with the
01:23:18.620word exclusive and ignore the concept of watertight compartments so that the feds can actually
01:23:24.220bring in legislation it might only incidentally impact on provincial rights but we'll let it go
01:23:30.900even though the constitution says that it shouldn't happen and john a mcdonald said it would never
01:23:35.800happen so this is this is the problem we're at now because this federal carbon tax you know
01:23:41.400goes into areas that are quite obviously and uncontroversially places where the provinces
01:23:47.760have exclusive authority to legislate. But carbon tax is important because greenhouse gas transcends
01:23:56.840borders and provinces working together, that's just not a practical reality. It would never work
01:24:07.440Because, you know, let's say Alberta plays fair now and a future government might repeal a carbon tax.
01:24:15.160So we have all the provincial government.
01:24:37.440are we back was that was i gone oh there we go so yeah i'm having those those prettiest internet
01:24:58.120things if i do you know vanish there just please by all means keep speaking you're a lawyer you
01:25:02.840can go on at length. I know that. So more than just a lawyer, by the way, Derek is also, he's a
01:25:09.840writer. He puts columns in the Western Standard, and this is branching off of a column that Derek
01:25:14.400had writtenly put into the Western Standard. It is online at thewesternstandardonline.com.
01:25:20.940We are behind a paywall these days for a number of the articles. It's not a terribly expensive
01:25:26.440subscription, though. This helps us keep producing content, getting stuff out there without taking
01:25:31.320government dollars as so many other media outlets are right now and i know it sounds you know people
01:25:36.340get frustrated with paying to see something but think it wasn't that long ago you would pay 15
01:25:40.32020 a month without thinking twice for a newspaper uh subscription and and getting it brought to your
01:25:46.060door well this is 10 a month and it's right on your computer there's some fantastic news from
01:25:50.320dave naylor uh mike damore is now set up up in bc we're going to be getting some great bc news going
01:25:56.340and of course columns from Derek so there's my plug and interruption uh to to keep the gears
01:26:02.160turning with those so we we'll move on and we got so many constitutional things going on one of the
01:26:07.140things you pointed out was the the can be uh uh situation in health care because here's another
01:26:12.540area again where we go to the courts provinces are trying to do different things and we seem to
01:26:17.060hit roadblocks uh can you expand on that yeah so can be can be of course most people will realize
01:26:23.920is a private surgical facility in british columbia and they have for years operated legally
01:26:31.680because private health care is not illegal in that province and what they're doing is not illegal
01:26:37.680and what happened to them was dr brian day the founder of the clinic ended up having to sue
01:26:45.040the bc government now what led up to that was the nurses union got to be in their bonnet in bc
01:26:52.080that can be was extra billing and that's a farce that just wasn't happening but the nurses union
01:27:00.940sued the provincial government in bc saying bc enforce your own legislation against canby and
01:27:08.080shut them down that's essentially what it was so in order to save his his clinic which the bc
01:27:13.940government relied quite heavily on and still does for their workplace injury claims and you know
01:27:20.440issues like that, Dr. Bay was forced to sue the BC government and initiate a constitutional
01:27:26.700challenge. And I believe this whole journey started for him, I'm going to say 2009. And he
01:27:33.520finally received a decision at the trial level last October, so October 2020. And essentially
01:27:44.900what it was is a recapitulation of the Quebec Shawouli decision, but in the context of British
01:27:50.680Columbia. And the result wasn't, it was an adverse decision for Dr. Day. And so I'm not exactly sure
01:27:58.900what the plans are at this point. But I hope they have the means to initiate an appeal. Because
01:28:06.060after looking at the decision, there certainly are grounds for appeal. But it taught me,
01:28:11.020watching that litigation happen over the years taught me a lot about how governments work and
01:28:16.780function when they're in litigation. And so this is a very important issue. And it's one that's
01:28:22.940been decided in the context of Quebec already in the Shuley decision. So I believe 2005 off the top
01:28:28.560of my head. Went to the Supreme Court. Legislation in Quebec was struck down as restricting Section
01:28:37.380seven rights, section seven rights in the Charter. So that's life, liberty, security of the person
01:28:42.360and the right not to be deprived thereof, except according to the principles of fundamental justice.
01:28:46.780Kind of sad that I know that off by heart. But what ended up happening is a ban on private
01:28:53.560insurance was struck down in Quebec as a violation of those rights in the Charter.
01:28:58.780And so there was much this, there is much the same ban in BC. And the argument is essentially
01:29:04.880the same as shawuli look it's this ban on private insurance in an otherwise open market because
01:29:11.240health private health care is not illegal in an otherwise open market that prevents people
01:29:16.560from getting timely health care services delivered and in fact preventing people
01:29:22.400from getting timely health care not only endangers their life in many cases some of the plaintiffs
01:29:29.120in Dr. Day's case, in fact, lost their lives during the 10, 15 years of litigation.
01:29:42.840But the other thing is people suffer irreparable harm. And so one of the plaintiffs actually became
01:29:48.680paralyzed permanently directly because of having to wait for healthcare that BC just couldn't
01:29:55.820bothered to get around providing. Now, the reason this happens is because of healthcare rationing.
01:30:03.160And this is hard for some people to hear when they're not already familiar with the facts.
01:30:08.820But when government creates a budget on an annual basis, they try to decide how much healthcare
01:30:15.280will cost them annually. Like any business owner would, government does the same. And you know what?
01:30:20.780they have the same incentives as a business owner let's keep our costs down let's do everything we
01:30:26.300can to do this and then you know what we we're budgeting a million dollars for this this year
01:30:30.840so we're going to decide at the outset that we can only afford you know 30 000 hip replacements
01:30:36.840i'm making that up 30 000 hip replacements well you know what if there's 35 000 people in bc that
01:30:44.580need hip replacements 5 000 of them are going to have to wait and they wait and they suffer
01:30:50.460and they don't get the actual medical care that they are paying for they pay for these services
01:30:57.960and don't receive them so it's very important to look at it this way what bc is doing in that case
01:31:05.560and other provinces do much the same thing now the legislation is a little different in every
01:31:11.520province but what bc is doing is saying you have to get in line unless you can afford to pay out
01:31:19.460pocket for private care so if you're not able to afford that you have to get in line with everyone
01:31:23.700else and you don't have a choice and by the way we're not going to give you the health care
01:31:28.660services that you're in waiting in line for and so you know our socialist friends in the ndp
01:31:36.500sometimes make a good point let's just put more money into the system let's make 35 000 hip
01:31:42.740replacements possible well that would help because then people wouldn't be suffering and waiting in
01:31:47.780line but you know what you can't budget these things and you know the best way for demand
01:31:55.300and supply to meet at a reasonable place is to allow for private investment and that private
01:32:01.940investment in bc what dr day was hoping he would be able to do was strike down the legislation much
01:32:07.860like truly that prohibited private insurance because then a private insurer could sell a
01:32:12.900product to bc residents and if they were you know number 30 000 and one through 35 000 on that hip
01:32:21.060replacement list they could rely on their private insurance and get private care and you know what
01:32:27.620the queue for health care gets shorter it's more efficient people go back to work sooner people
01:32:33.220suffer less and it doesn't cost the public assent and so he didn't win and that's a very big
01:32:40.740disappointment and what i learned about the way government conducts itself in litigation is this
01:32:45.300there is some i think last count i remember hearing there's 80 experts and uh the trial
01:32:52.500was just winding up when justin trudeau was first elected as uh as prime minister and so
01:33:00.980here's a good example has nothing to do with the federal government this is bc litigation
01:33:06.740it's about a bc statute the plaintiff or the sorry the defendant is the bc government it's bc
01:33:13.220plaintiffs has nothing to do with the federal government but the federal government inserted
01:33:18.340itself as an intervener and brought two experts to the table one of the two experts was a professor
01:33:26.980living in belgium who was going to put forward his expert report that health care public publicly
01:33:35.620funded healthcare that mandates people wait in line for their treatment is so fundamental to the
01:33:43.400canadian character canadians couldn't possibly imagine this legit or this uh statute being
01:33:49.400struck down or modified by the courts it's lunacy but what happens then is this sort of expert comes
01:33:56.380along and all of a sudden dr day and his legal team have to respond to it and so you know what
01:34:03.060there's more costs. You've got to go find an expert to respond to, of all things, the ludicrous
01:34:07.720argument from a Belgian professor that healthcare is so fundamental to the Canadian identity that
01:34:13.960Canadians couldn't sleep at night if things were modified in any way. And so that sort of behavior
01:34:21.140by the government intervener and by the BC defendant government, you know, played out
01:34:29.860numerous ways at numerous times throughout the litigation, driving the costs up enormously.
01:34:36.120And what should have been a relatively straightforward legal argument, coupled with
01:34:41.120strong evidence from affected parties and some expert testimony showing that BC actually was
01:34:47.360responsible for delivering health care and failed to do so in a timely way, it should have been
01:34:52.760relatively straightforward and it should not have taken the years that it did. And I can't remember
01:34:57.940offhand but it was something like 200 hours of trial time which is unbelievable and many many
01:35:06.640many lawyers 80 experts which all have to be you know paid for their services and uh and so that
01:35:14.200i mean that's just in my opinion dirty pool and that's really governments working against the
01:35:20.440interests of the citizens for what for having their health care issues solved in a timely way
01:35:27.320having individuals not suffer, not risk their life, liberty, and security of the person.
01:35:34.260Basically, individuals asking the courts to vindicate their constitutional rights against
01:35:38.720the government who is refusing to give them what they've been promised. And that's very troubling
01:35:44.980to me. But it's a metaphor for so much that we see. In some ways, I think the carbon tax decision
01:35:50.900is much the same thing because we have a court very willing to run roughshod over the clear
01:35:58.240language of the constitution. And, you know, when you have 40 years of court decisions that are
01:36:03.940subtly moving the goalposts, suddenly you find yourself in a very different location
01:36:08.920than you originally anticipated. I used to like to give the analogy that
01:36:13.400if you were in a big sailing vessel, let's say like the one who that was recently stuck in the
01:36:19.680Suez Canal. If you were trying to chart a course from Halifax and sail directly to Dakar, okay,
01:36:27.840on north coast of Africa, I believe. And, you know, like, oh, it's over that direction. Let's
01:36:33.600chart our course. But let's say you're just out by a degree or two. Well, that degree, you know,
01:36:39.680every mile that you travel, every nautical mile you travel, that degree of error compounds. And
01:36:46.880And so by the time you arrive at what should be your destination, you find yourself in a very
01:36:51.900different place than where you intended to go. And that's what court decisions on issues like
01:36:58.160the carbon tax, issues like can be surgical clinics. That's the problem we face. And that's
01:37:04.120the problem that I think not only conservatives, but liberty loving Canadians, free market Canadians
01:37:10.820face, because there's an incremental change every time a court has a decision on something like this.
01:37:16.880It is a ratchet. And like ratchets, ratchets are intended to go one direction only.
01:37:24.740And so these court decisions have the effect of ratcheting things in one direction. And I think
01:37:30.060Canada has been made poorer off by these sorts of things over time.
01:37:35.780Yeah. And that's why I wanted to, you know, they seemingly almost unrelated, but they aren't
01:37:39.960in that general theme of things. I mean, the courts should be actually standing up for the
01:37:44.660rights of the individual is paramount and going under that presumption and asking others to
01:37:49.320justify why they would intervene on the and infringe on the rights of the individual it's
01:37:54.020going the other way around the government's infringing on the right and then you have to
01:37:57.920plead to the courts to explain why your right should be respected and and they're losing it
01:38:03.020the courts and i mean the costs of canada's health system our issue is the waiting list that's always
01:38:08.920the issue that's what happens socialized medicine as you said is rationed medicine
01:38:13.560we're seeing that with the impacts of the pandemic. It's interesting on how much stuff
01:38:18.680comes together, because one of the things that they've been saying is the reason the hospitals
01:38:22.200are becoming overwhelmed or at risk of it anyways, is because we jam everything into our hospital,
01:38:27.080these giant public facilities, because it's the most efficient way when you have a single
01:38:32.120provider, you might as well have it all in one building. But if you diversify your health
01:38:36.120provision, you could have a number of clinics, specialty hospitals, places distributed all over
01:38:41.000the place that you wouldn't have to close because you could segregate the hospital for infectious
01:38:46.520cases but you could still have that knee replacement clinic or that cambry doing hernia procedures or i
01:38:51.960think it was quebec that was doing the hernia ones that uh they had to go through their challenge
01:38:55.400but instead we've got the centralized system again which is rigid inflexible can't respond
01:39:00.600to pandemics like this and and they as you said the only solution to any of these issues is just
01:39:04.840for the government to throw more money at them yeah yeah and that's that's really a sad state
01:39:09.480and i think you're right like you you say that um that when when someone wants to challenge the
01:39:15.160government on some of these some of these issues that it's like the onus has been shifted to the
01:39:20.520individual to disprove what the government's position is and that's not the way certainly
01:39:26.200in charter litigation so the charter is different than what what the greenhouse gas uh case was the
01:39:32.280carbon tax case that was not a charter case but the charter is different than that but in
01:39:38.200in reality, in a practical sense, it doesn't end up far from that very often. So one of my
01:39:46.300favorite provisions in the charter, well, there's two that I think are quite wonderful tools for
01:39:52.260freedom-loving individuals. And that's section two, which has all the traditional English
01:39:57.540immunities like freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, those sorts of
01:40:02.400things. They're listed there. And then section seven, when you get into legal rights, which is
01:40:06.640life liberty security the person now the way that constitutional law works is that tests
01:40:11.920are developed by the courts to decide when an issue actually rises to the level of severity
01:40:19.280to warrant state and or the court's intervention so if you read a court decision on on freedom of
01:40:28.240expression the court will have developed a test like a three-point test or something like that
01:40:32.880i can't remember it off the top of my head um for when someone's freedom of expression has been
01:40:39.440violated and then they'll go through the test it's a it's a little bit of a
01:40:43.840a shell game in some ways because it all depends on how you define things but
01:40:47.600there's case law and how things should be defined so it's not completely arbitrary
01:40:52.400but then if the court says well actually your freedom of expression was infringed you met the
01:40:57.120test then it flips to section one of the charter which everyone's heard about recently because of
01:41:02.560covid section one now section one is where the government is supposed to say okay we violated
01:41:10.160your rights but we had a really good reason it it was necessary for us to do this and uh that's
01:41:17.680that's where the onus is supposed to shift to the government and in the end i would say the
01:41:23.680practical effect of that is well legally it does like it's a fact the government has to is does
01:41:30.720have to prove its case at that point but the other side of it is when you look at you know hate to
01:41:35.920sound like a marxist here but there is a sort of intimidating factor for lawyers and for plaintiffs
01:41:42.800who are challenging the government when they look across the court and uh they see well this happened
01:41:48.720to me once in ontario at the ontario court of appeal looked across the court and there was me
01:41:53.200by myself against four government lawyers you're really up against a machine there is hate to say
01:42:03.940it but a sort of power disparity between the two sides it's the individual fighting against the
01:42:09.280state it's a david and goliath sort of moment and that's problematic too because although the law
01:42:16.860very clearly states and the courts do function this way too that the onus shifts to the government
01:42:21.520it becomes very difficult for a plaintiff to afford to interact with the government at that
01:42:29.740level and explain why it is that the government's infringement of rights are not justified the
01:42:37.860government has nearly infinite resources there's many experts who are very very qualified in the
01:42:45.740government working for in the ag's offices they know what they're doing they're sophisticated
01:42:50.800people and you run up against a lawyer who you know might work at a big downtown firm in Toronto
01:42:57.060or Calgary but for the most part they're dealing with clients and they're not up on constitutional
01:43:01.540issues and at the end of the day I mean they're running a business they're not looking at the
01:43:06.220policy impacts of these things very often and it's very very difficult to prove the government wrong
01:43:14.280and the other side is the the courts have really stacked the deck in favor of the government
01:43:20.380winning at that stage. I have an ongoing beef with some of my conservative friends
01:43:26.460about Section 1 and their view of parliamentary sovereignty. And it seems like many conservatives
01:43:35.420have this idea of parliamentary sovereignty that I think is completely unsustainable
01:43:39.660and antithetical to freedom. And that's meaning this, that parliament under the Westminster
01:43:48.220system should be able to do whatever it wants. It's parliamentary sovereignty. We can't have
01:43:52.260the courts interfering with what Parliament really wants to do. And there's no real historical
01:43:58.580basis for this, by the way. If you look back, I'm kind of a pathetic person. I'm very concerned
01:44:05.280about the history of this sort of sovereignty idea. And this history, this is a very modern
01:44:11.040creation, the idea that Parliament can do what it wants and that it's unbound. Prior to Thomas
01:44:16.760Hobbes and Jean Baudin, who are early Enlightenment philosophers, this idea didn't exist. And it was
01:44:23.500the concept of a sovereign was that a sovereign was able to act in what seems to be an arbitrary
01:44:30.100matter, and he was unencumbered. But back in those days, in the medieval period and leading up to the
01:44:36.940modern era, sovereigns were actually bound, what they thought, by the authority of God. And so a
01:44:43.840king was not truly able to do whatever he wanted his people would come around him and say look
01:44:49.960what you're doing is an offense to god you can't do this and a king would conceivably listen or he
01:44:55.680would be a bad king this idea of parliament being able to do whatever it wants is a wholly modern
01:45:03.320creation that has not does not have a long history and i think is antithetical to the notion of
01:45:10.040individual liberty and freedom and so what then happens is our courts when our courts get to the
01:45:18.660section one they often often employ this phrase called a margin of appreciation and it's at the
01:45:26.780same time the short court sewing uh showing some humility but it's also writing incidentally
01:45:33.280writing, you know, a writ of do whatever you want to the government. This margin of appreciation
01:45:40.580is the court saying, look, we're just a court. We didn't have two years to debate this like
01:45:46.820Parliament did. There weren't public consultations with people brought in and experts consulted and
01:45:53.000individual parties who were affected consulted. Parliament does a lot of work that a court is not
01:45:59.020equipped to do. So in the lack of good evidence that Parliament should be able to do this,
01:46:06.320we don't have good evidence one way or the other, so we're just going to let them do it.
01:46:11.380To me, that's deeply problematic because that sounds to me like a court abdicating its role.
01:46:20.000That's not judicial activism. That's something different. That's a court that abdicates its
01:46:26.380responsibility to hold the government to account and you know there's other people that will say
01:46:33.260well you know judicial review is a modern thing but i again i i wouldn't say that that's the case
01:46:39.740there's a long history of laws not being enforced of laws being found um to be contrary to morality
01:46:49.560and i mean the power of disallowance that the government has for it or that the queen has for
01:46:53.980instance is a good example of that so i think the problem is there's some systemic problems where
01:47:00.860the government has given much too easy a task to establish its case under section one
01:47:07.880and the courts often and maybe rightly so maybe it's humility that's being shown
01:47:13.700recognizing that they are ill-equipped to deal with these issues but the net result in the end
01:47:19.180is that the government gets to do what it wants. And I think COVID is a great example of that.
01:47:25.320Yeah, well, and getting on to a very critical historical right, which is free religion,
01:47:30.760and we're seeing a pretty contemporary example going on right now. I mean, there's a reason it
01:47:35.240was entrenched in the charter. There's a reason, I mean, historically around the world, you know,
01:47:40.180oppression of religious groups, minorities, so on, has been some of the most horrific human actions
01:47:44.700in history, which is why the framers of constitutions charters try typically in good
01:47:51.640nations to protect these things. So Pastor Coates has been trying to, James Coates has been trying
01:47:57.200to exercise that and holding services. He was spent a month in jail. He got released with a
01:48:03.240$1,500 fine recently, but chided very heavily by the justice who sounds like he wanted to keep him
01:48:08.660in uh former premier rachel notley went on a rampage uh because uh coats had held a service
01:48:15.400yesterday and demanded that the government intervene and lock him up again um it's it's a
01:48:21.940dicey area though it is uh difficult and uh now they're in a rock and a hard place but the fact
01:48:28.960that they dropped most of the charges and backed off i'm getting a feeling that maybe they feel
01:48:32.900is this a matter of the court of public opinion or did the government think they wouldn't be able
01:48:36.560win if they went to an extended court challenge with this with pastor courts coats i should say
01:48:43.040it's a good question i mean there's a lot there uh and it probably is relevant to to like the
01:48:48.880restaurants and other such businesses that were given tickets under the public health orders here
01:48:54.000in alberta um from my understanding is that there's probably not a lot of political will in edmonton
01:49:02.400to see these people find or go to trial and my guess is that most of the fines will result in
01:49:13.680not guilty pleas so when you get your fine plead not guilty send it provincial court
01:49:18.640you'll get a court date scheduled a year and a half from now and between now and then this issue
01:49:25.120will have gone away i hope and there'll be no political will in edmonton to see those carried
01:49:32.320through and the charges will all be dropped but now coats is a different situation um i understand
01:49:38.640that this is a confusing situation to people who don't understand either the religious mind
01:49:45.360or who don't understand the actual risks of covid and rachel notley i believe does understand the
01:49:54.880risks but she's playing a game because she knows her base well enough to know that her base one
01:50:02.080they're not religious people they don't care they're likely big fans of the um irreligious
01:50:09.520left and so she can take pot shots at religious people like coats as she chooses
01:50:18.700and uh her her base won't care so it's a it's i think for her it's a political calculation
01:50:26.320where she can stick a knife and grind it in Kenny's back because at the same time Jason
01:50:31.880Kenny's in a tough political situation because I think he also knows better he can read the data
01:50:38.180and he's making a political calculation to keep the restrictions in place as they are
01:50:43.460and so I don't know what polling he has but looking at the data that's currently coming out
01:50:50.660it seems puzzling to me but and this is a little aside so i grew up in a town of about 2 000 people
01:50:56.680and so the other day i thought to myself well how big is covid in alberta currently
01:51:03.620in in a scale that i could understand when i grew where i grew up and so 4.4 million people
01:51:11.200i think we have less than 300 in the hospital so that roughly works out i think if i remember
01:51:16.620correctly, to about 0.12 people in the town where I grew up. So less than one person,
01:51:25.520significantly less than one person. This is the scale of the pandemic as we currently have it.
01:51:32.480And I think, you know, even though there's talks of variants and other such things now,
01:51:38.580and they're doing their best to work us up into a lather about it, but we can look across to
01:51:44.840England, where the variant that's most dominant here is from, and it doesn't seem like it's had
01:51:50.180all that much of an impact on the English population. So unless I hear why Albertans are
01:51:56.100more inherently susceptible to this variant than people living in the UK are,
01:52:03.420I'm not sure I should be all that scared about it. Jason Kenney knows these things. He's being
01:52:08.240advised on these things and so it's a political calculation on his part but the other side of it
01:52:14.940is he knows better he uh i mean i don't know personally but i i believe he's a religious
01:52:21.380person i you know he talks about going to church and i've heard through mutual friends that he
01:52:29.260once considered entering the priesthood if the political game didn't work out for him i mean this
01:52:34.240is not an unbeliever. This is not Rachel Notley. And so I'm a little disappointed, but I think
01:52:43.040what he's really hoping here is that it just all goes away and that he does nothing and people
01:52:48.500forget. And I think that's a poor strategy. I think he needs to actually maybe take a stand
01:52:57.280on this issue, but it is tough. Now, what James Coates has done, I think has been, you know, a
01:53:04.160wonderful beacon on the hill, as it were, to Albertans. This is exactly what people like him
01:53:13.060strive to do with their lives, to be positive examples. And before everyone gets all upset
01:53:18.560about me casting him as a positive example, you need to do your homework and read or listen to
01:53:25.560what he has written and said about this issue. His church did comply with the COVID regulations
01:53:31.560until they became very convinced by reading the data, which we all are capable of, and your
01:53:39.340responsibility is, as a good citizen of Alberta, to inform yourself about these things. He became
01:53:46.240convinced that the risks are far overblown. And then they started monitoring their own congregation
01:53:52.200and realized we have no evidence of any transmission happening here.
01:53:58.460They're not harming people, is basically what he said.
01:54:01.240So why would we give up something so important to us
01:54:06.520for what essentially, in their case, is not based in reality?
01:54:14.880And what's happened, too, is the religious mind is different.