Derek Fildebrandt is joined by Corey Morgan Shalom, Elise Mills, and Nigel Hannaford to discuss the Alberta teacher strike, Doug Ford's $75 million ad campaign in the United States, and much, much more.
00:03:56.420But then I thought, ah, we're not thinking about this from the perspective of Americans.
00:04:01.120Because as much as Canadians are adamant, we are not 51st state, we are not Americans, we also still think of ourselves as Americans.
00:04:09.180That we're allowed to intervene in their domestic politics and spending three quarters of a billion, no, no, no, no, 75 million dollars to intervene in American domestic electoral politics immediately before the midterm elections.
00:04:27.160That's where control of the House is up for stake, possibly the Senate, probably less of the Senate, but maybe.
00:04:37.480We don't think, we think of ourselves as we're not American, but then we immediately think of ourselves as completely American and fully entitled to meddle in their politics.
00:04:46.460So, you know, I ask Canadians who are thinking, you know, starting with Doug Ford here, how would we feel if Donald Trump spent an American equivalent sum of money in Canada arguing against supply management?
00:05:05.240I think supply management should be gone, but I think, I would certainly think that is dangerous and illegal foreign meddling for a foreign government to run advertisements on stations in Canada telling us to change our foreign policy.
00:05:23.380Yeah, well, I think anybody who thinks about it would take it that way.
00:05:27.140There's more to it though than, or there seems to be more to it.
00:05:30.720First of all, Carney was apparently, Mr. Carney was apparently advised that these ads were going to run, and he didn't kill the idea.
00:05:42.560So why would it suit Mark Carney to have that out there?
00:05:47.260First, to your point about whether there was any misrepresentation, I gather that the order of Reagan's speech had been altered somewhat, but whether it was, it wasn't, or whether it was completely misrepresented,
00:05:57.760why did it suit Mr. Carney to poke Trump like that at this time?
00:06:05.600Well, it's the good cop, bad cop routine.
00:06:07.320Well, he plays the diplomatic good guy, Ford plays the pugnacious bad guy, but no one was falling for it this time.
00:06:21.440This is the guy who, right six months ago, threatened to cut off the electricity supply to three northern tier United States, states of the U.S.
00:09:04.280And that small man mentality, with a splash of, which reveals, I think, an inherent misogyny,
00:09:13.420took a, that propelled him to take a massive swipe out of Daniel Smith,
00:09:19.460who was working towards building a relationship because she trusted her instincts and they were right.
00:09:26.500What Canadians have forgotten about is likability and common values are not just okay, they're essential to this particular administration.
00:09:58.340He likes to think he's Canada's chief economist.
00:10:01.000In fact, his spokesperson said that the, a couple of weeks ago now, that he's essentially Canada's chief economist.
00:10:06.320I, he is, Carney, I expected to see more finesse, but I want to say this.
00:10:13.480I don't understand why, I think it's a weakness on Carney's part that he wants to, I think he's sort of overwhelmed by Doug Ford, which is not a good sign.
00:10:23.520But from all I understand, the Canadian team was doing really well before that ad dropped.
00:10:30.940And I would say a couple of days before that ad dropped, things started to, the milk, the cream started to curdle.
00:10:39.000And there were a couple of reasons that I, I, I'm not privy, I'm not allowed to necessarily talk about.
00:10:46.800But the ad was like, was a punch in the nose and a thumb on the scale.
00:10:51.800And I wrote about that, not in our paper, but on Twitter.
00:10:54.840It really was a punch in the nose and a thumb on the scale.
00:10:57.280So the reason it's landed that way, and it doesn't matter what anyone's opinion is, it doesn't matter what my opinion is, or Doug Ford's, that's immaterial to this.
00:11:07.580This is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
00:11:09.360And I worked this off with Lumber deal.
00:11:12.440They, the way that this GOP, the way that this White House, the way that this new generation of Republicans envisioned Ronald Reagan,
00:11:21.100is a really important thing that we Canadians need to understand, if we want to get in the business of appropriating their guy.
00:11:29.420It's also ironic, because that speech has been manipulated, when in reality, that was the beginning of a speech where he lays down some of the highest tariffs on Japan.
00:11:38.420There was a huge trade deal, or trade argument there, but Ronald Reagan was standing up, what he said, bullies against American workers.
00:11:48.040And it was the beginning of sort of the tech revolution as well.
00:11:54.440Then you're right, Derek, there is the thumb on the scale, not just midterms or it being an off year, but there is the Supreme Court issue.
00:12:02.360The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether Trump's tariffs are legal, and that is not something they want to see during what they believe is their national pastime.
00:12:13.420And now we've rolled into what I think is an even more concerning issue, which is the trouble that we're seeing and reports that we're seeing with the U.S. ambassador,
00:12:22.900who, by the way, the stories that you're hearing about David Patterson, the Ontario's rep to D.C., is not 100% accurate.
00:12:31.480And I'm not here to defend the ambassador, but I will tell you, I'm seething.
00:12:36.000I wish I could speak about it, but I think this is a far bigger issue.
00:12:39.160And I can tell you, the ambassador has said directly, now no longer will there be a deal done by American Thanksgiving.
00:12:45.760And we were much closer to that deal than we had ever been before all of these shenanigans popped out.
00:14:46.500Why would the national media, the chattering classes, the political classes, why would they, do you think they would react so differently if Danielle Smith had done something similar and had the same catastrophic result come from it?
00:15:00.040Well, it's because we have a political culture war going on in this country, really.
00:15:03.680And the battle lines are drawn almost between the Ontario legislature, the federal parliament and Premier Smith, who's really kind of the last bastion of an unapologetic conservative in this country.
00:15:13.580Scott Moell, I guess, arguably could be the same thing, but she's the figurehead of it.
00:15:18.300And the legacy media for the most part are supportive of this progressive approach, this nouveau liberal approach, and they want to take any opportunity they can to undercut Premier Smith.
00:15:30.220They can't allow her to have successes.
00:15:31.740They can't allow to have her look competent and they will go far out of their way to put a spotlight on any errors she makes.
00:15:41.060So there's a motivation going on out there, and we're only going to see more of it.
00:15:46.180So there is that double standard, you know, Ford stepped in it, in my view, stupidly, but they're going to give him a pass because he's on the right side of the fence as far as they're concerned.
00:15:56.180And it's not going to change anytime soon.
00:15:59.340Yeah, this elbows up performative stuff.
00:16:03.360As long as it feels good, you get a pass.
00:16:05.680It doesn't matter if it's the smart thing to do or not.
00:16:32.420There's no real avenue for appeal here.
00:16:34.960And that's a fake made up charter right.
00:16:36.640The union rights are as a charter right.
00:16:40.100That's a made up one that was read into it by activist judges after the charter was passed into law as a part of the Constitution of Canada.
00:16:47.920There is nothing in the charter about unions.
00:18:34.000Your thoughts first on, you know, is this a political win?
00:18:39.660A lot of polls have showed support, I guess, for the teachers.
00:18:42.300Because teachers are a nice, happy profession to have, even though they're very greedily just demanding more money from taxpayers when they only work 200 days a year.
00:19:05.040I mean, if Smith had come in while, say, there was some sort of offer on the table from the teachers and they were negotiating something, then you've gone and cut off a negotiation.
00:19:29.700So I think with more nuanced discussion in the longer run, I mean, as I've been pushing and coming in my column, coming up in a bit too, I think we're going to see more support for people looking for charter schools because they want stability for their kids and looking for non-union options.
00:19:46.940Because again, they want stability for their kids and not this push and pull going on.
00:19:51.640Even if they like the teachers, they don't like the fact that their kids have to pay the price during these labor disputes.
00:19:57.200So I think in the longer game, the teachers have really, well, done themselves harm as far as a union idea goes.
00:20:03.440I think maybe it's a good thing for all of Alberta because we'll start to reimagine our whole education system.
00:21:12.480You know, I don't think they actually were honest about what they want.
00:21:16.800I struggle to be fair to the teaching profession at large, but individual teachers, some of whom are my friends and are actually conservative teachers, they're part of that 11 percent that actually voted in favor of the contract.
00:21:32.440You know, the problem here is immigration.
00:21:37.020We have had so many people brought into Alberta in the last couple of years that it is very hard for some teachers in some classrooms to get their heads around it.
00:21:49.160What are you going to do if you've got a class of 50 kids?
00:21:52.220And that's not typical, but it does happen.
00:21:56.420And, you know, 30 of them don't speak English very well, and five of them don't speak English at all.
00:22:09.860But the satisfaction that comes from teaching is actually seeing your students learn and do well.
00:22:18.300I mean, the school that you go to, that your little girl goes to, that's how they see it, Dada.
00:22:24.580That's why those people teach in that environment.
00:22:29.360So the satisfaction of the job isn't there for quite a few people, but they won't come out and say, this is the problem.
00:22:38.320They just say, oh, well, the government is terrible.
00:22:40.340Well, and there are, I'm afraid, there's an awful lot of people who make a lot of noise that the teachers, the ATA meetings, I actually wouldn't even want them teaching my kids.
00:22:51.240You know, like these are the people who think that they should be running the education system, determining the wages, determining the curriculum, and parents stay out of it.
00:23:00.040Well, to the degree that Danielle Smith is taking on that mentality, we've got to back her all the way.
00:23:06.360But there is a bit of an issue with too much being thrown out of the system all at once.
00:23:13.980Well, yeah, I guess, I mean, immigration never really got into the debate on the teacher strike in Alberta, Elise, on any of the surface level.
00:24:31.300I even thought it from a fact perspective.
00:24:32.600I thought it from a perspective of how frustrating it is.
00:24:35.420They need all these teaching assistants in the class because half the kids aren't even functionally speaking English.
00:24:43.680They're not speaking English in the home, so they're not really getting it there either.
00:24:47.040But yeah, I think this debate, it's a big debate, but it didn't reach the surface level because the two parties in this was the government, which is going to be politically risk-averse.
00:25:00.280And then the teachers' union, which is hyper-woke, loves mass migration.
00:25:07.080But yeah, we just don't hear the unions at least saying, perhaps we should just not bring in 3 million people in a single year kind of thing.
00:25:16.240That might alleviate our class size issue.
00:25:19.580Well, and you have us naughty British Columbians, you know, crossing the border, running across the border, speeding across the border to Alberta.
00:25:37.680That's also largely to do with why your politics have changed from between Atlantic Canada coming out for oil and gas and British Columbians escaping.
00:25:44.620The fabric of your conservative union is slowly, you know, pushing and pulling.
00:25:51.960But I do think as a parent, what I did notice in British Columbia is ground zero for strikes, teacher strikes specifically.
00:25:58.840My daughter had six years of rolling strikes from kindergarten to grade six.
00:26:02.260And we don't have the same situation as you do in Alberta.
00:26:08.900So, number one, we can barely build a school.
00:26:11.820You know, we can't even get ferries built as well.
00:26:14.320So we're terrible at delivering and executing on that type of funding.
00:26:19.160So we are, teachers have a very, I'm supportive of their concerns about what's in their classrooms, like, in regards to the demographic.
00:26:28.060But there's the other issue is that Canadian parents, whether you're in Alberta, and I think if you're in Alberta, you have a better chance economically, socioeconomically, than the rest of us do, especially in British Columbia.
00:26:39.500But there's the breakdown of family, and it's the breakdown of family in the sense of this country is so hard to survive in if you are not making more than, say, $75,000, $80,000.
00:31:43.960So it's possible that they actually fall short a bit if they don't have enough signatures that turn out to be valid.
00:31:51.340But prima facie, let's just say they've got the signatures now.
00:31:56.320Corey, does that mean that the referendum question that goes forward is exactly this one?
00:32:00.900I feel like regardless of what side you're on, the question should be as neutrally worded as possible.
00:32:08.120Like if you want independence, the question should not be, should the kick-ass land of the free Alberta be the coolest, richest, most amazing country in the world and leave those dirtbag freeloaders in Canada?
00:32:22.740You can't, that's not a fair question.
00:32:26.380You know, a fair question here should be, you know, if you wanted to word it from their side, should Alberta remain in Canada or should Alberta become an independent country?
00:32:36.860I think that would be a very, that'd be fair.
00:32:39.720And I'd still ask the question with the yes on their side, the no on the independent side.
00:32:45.180Is there any opportunity, like, is the question as is, is that it or?
00:32:51.680And that's where the referendum, if it were to be called, gets called and they can rejig the framing of the question.
00:32:58.780So if they're staying true to the question, I mean, if they, you know, made it a question about something completely unrelated, that would be violating the basis of the thing, but they could change it to, you know, should Alberta become an independent province?