Western Standard - August 11, 2026


The vote Canadians never got on Trudeau’s Constitution


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Length

37 minutes

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157.58

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5,869

Sentence count

267

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9

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Today, we are taking an even closer look at the 1982 Constitution.
00:00:05.400 We are going to talk about how we connected with someone that signed it, what they had to say about it, and we're going to talk to someone that voted against it.
00:00:12.960 We will also look at the plight of 180 homeowners in B.C. that are losing their land in large part because of it.
00:00:19.960 This is the second of 20 episodes taking a business plan style approach
00:00:24.940 to consider the political future of Alberta and the West in the context of the 1982 Constitution.
00:00:32.960 Welcome to A Nation of People.
00:00:49.960 Hi, I'm Natalie St. Hilaire, with me is Randy Royer.
00:00:57.760 In the last episode, we looked at how Trudeau's 1982 Constitution changed the country.
00:01:04.620 We lost rights and we were never given our informed consent.
00:01:09.080 We didn't ask for it, we didn't have a say in it, but we have the right to explore it,
00:01:15.660 to educate ourselves, and maybe even say no to it now.
00:01:19.440 explore this more deeply okay so let's start with the constitution and with um well we had
00:01:29.440 a an opportunity to connect with brian peckford and i understand that you had a little bit of
00:01:36.400 back and forth with him and i want to get your take on what brian peckford had to say about our
00:01:42.960 the process by which our 1982 constitution was formed well it was interesting uh to
00:01:49.040 To say the least, it was interesting because he's quite disappointed.
00:01:52.260 I think the, and we've got this all on our website, the entire correspondence, but he is of the view that what is happening is not what was intended.
00:02:01.920 He's mad at the judicial supremacy.
00:02:04.800 He's mad at the rise of the bureaucracy and what it's done.
00:02:09.860 And there's a couple of things that I queried him on the loss of rights.
00:02:16.680 And I'm looking at my notes here.
00:02:19.040 And his view was that they thought that it needed to be beefed up.
00:02:23.680 And I asked, why no for referendum?
00:02:26.500 And he said that he thought that they were elected to do this and they had the right to do it.
00:02:32.600 And I asked him, why didn't you look at other parliamentary systems,
00:02:37.700 other countries that have parliamentary systems like Australia and what have you?
00:02:41.360 And he said, well, no, that's not our jurisdiction and they didn't apply.
00:02:45.500 So I thought that was kind of a brush off.
00:02:48.200 And then he said, I told him our hypothesis about having a vote on the 82 Constitution, a referendum on it.
00:02:58.340 And he rejected that and said that we should use the amending formula.
00:03:02.820 And I said, well, we kind of did that in 2021 when Alberta actually had a referendum on equalization.
00:03:09.980 And it was a clear question with a clear majority that said we wanted to renegotiate the equalization program.
00:03:17.680 And it was completely disregarded, even though through the Clarity Act,
00:03:24.500 it says that the federal government had responsibility to do two things in the event of a clear question and a clear majority approval.
00:03:35.000 And the federal government didn't do either of those things.
00:03:37.320 So I said, look, Alberta trying to, and BC trying to do a referendum, sorry, trying to amend the Constitution is a non-starter.
00:03:47.900 And he didn't have an answer to that.
00:03:50.140 Yeah, it's really unfortunate that the moment we find ourselves in, in this discussion about separation percolating in Alberta,
00:03:57.240 maybe leading to another referendum, we have this history of actually already having done referendum on potential amendments to the Constitution.
00:04:07.320 being ignored. So Albertans have good reason to feel like frustrated with Confederation and with
00:04:13.580 our Constitution. So what was your overall impression of your back and forth with Brian?
00:04:18.580 What I realized is they didn't know what they were doing. I was completely surprised that he
00:04:23.600 didn't understand the momentous nature of what they were changing. And I didn't get the impression
00:04:30.140 that anybody else around the table other than Trudeau and his group understood what they were
00:04:36.240 actually doing. So I was kind of surprised. And I am not prepared to let go that Trudeau didn't
00:04:43.220 know what he was doing. I think he did. I think he knew precisely. But they seem to not know the
00:04:48.040 momentous change that we're bringing. How can you be annoyed that we have judicial supremacy? That's
00:04:53.920 the essence of a codified constitution. How can you be surprised that at the rise of the bureaucracy
00:05:00.860 That is the essence of the creation of a nation-state.
00:05:04.460 So I'm kind of thinking, what the hell did they do?
00:05:09.580 Well, do you think that they thought that they were just repatriating?
00:05:13.580 Because that's the Canadian public at the time, I believe, because I was two.
00:05:18.240 But from my understanding, the common way of talking about it is that they're repatriating Canada.
00:05:26.260 So we don't really need to look at the details of it or understand it with depth.
00:05:30.860 Is it just sort of like, this is repatriation?
00:05:33.940 I think they took care of themselves.
00:05:35.900 And I think they were a little bit sucked in
00:05:40.840 by the word repatriation.
00:05:43.240 But when you look at the notwithstanding clause,
00:05:49.180 it's an indication that they knew
00:05:51.040 that they were giving up their provincial powers
00:05:53.320 to the judiciary.
00:05:54.780 And so they wanted to introduce,
00:05:56.020 they introduced the notwithstanding clause
00:05:57.980 so that they could keep what is effectively
00:06:00.420 parliamentary supremacy for themselves. But nobody paid any attention to the fact that we,
00:06:07.920 the people, were losing rights and losing things. Now, I was talking to another politician that was
00:06:17.040 around at that time, and they said that part of the problem was nobody actually expected that
00:06:20.980 it would happen. And so maybe they got sucked in because they didn't think it was actually going
00:06:25.920 happen but well they didn't think they were going to be successful at getting the constitution over
00:06:31.840 the line it was put to me like uh trudeau had been kind of talking about this and nobody none
00:06:37.600 of the premiers specifically the premiers didn't uh on alberta and saskatchewan didn't give it any
00:06:43.920 credibility they didn't think that trudeau had the ability to push it through well i do believe
00:06:49.600 that we know someone who in fact voted against the 1982 constitution at the time don't we randy
00:06:57.680 why did i do it so that person that voted against the 1982 constitution was in fact me i'll admit
00:07:06.160 so you're probably wondering how that happened uh well i mean i've heard a little bit of the
00:07:10.480 story but let's enlighten everybody okay so uh the story behind it was of course there wasn't
00:07:16.000 the referendum. But there was a quest for the Liberal Party itself to get on board. So it was
00:07:23.760 brought to a convention that was on at the time. And I happened to be a voting member at this
00:07:31.380 convention. So wait a minute, you were a voting member of the Liberal Party, Randy? Is it too
00:07:36.140 soon to admit this? We haven't even had the candlelight or anything like that. No fancy
00:07:42.620 dinner. But I have an excuse. Actually, you know what, I joined the Liberal Party, lots of good
00:07:49.100 people in there, and they're just, you know, there's a bunch of people just toiling in the
00:07:53.260 system, and they don't understand how the system is skewed. But the story behind it was that
00:08:00.700 I'm from Lethbridge, and in Lethbridge, we were taught that we hired our politicians,
00:08:08.220 and the politicians went to Edmonton and Ottawa to represent our views.
00:08:12.280 And that's the way we viewed politics.
00:08:14.780 Of course, I very quickly found out that that wasn't the case at all,
00:08:17.920 particularly relative to Ottawa.
00:08:20.160 Our politicians were really to come,
00:08:23.000 their job was to come back and tell us what the country was going to do
00:08:25.960 and what the prime minister wanted them to do,
00:08:28.340 rather than the other way around.
00:08:29.960 So in high school, I got very possessed almost
00:08:35.800 with this concept of Western alienation, I thought, how can you have democracy if you're
00:08:42.680 completely detached from the decision-making process? How can you have a free spirit and
00:08:49.640 free freedom to self-actualize if you don't even have any input? Never mind, you don't even have
00:08:56.500 the right to compromise. You are told what you're going to do. And how does that work? So I became
00:09:02.240 very sort of possessed by uh by uh western alienation and the fact that we didn't have any
00:09:08.960 input into our governance at the federal level and um and then i uh went away to university and
00:09:15.280 i went to the university of western ontario uh the ivy business school and it was interesting
00:09:20.240 because i you know got along with everybody and i was the only person in our our class from uh from
00:09:26.480 Alberta from Western Canada. Actually, there's two of us. And there was a group of people that I
00:09:32.880 kind of, they sort of thought differently, and I didn't really get along with them really well. I
00:09:37.040 mean, I got along with everybody, but it's a bit of a different thing. And so I ended up asking
00:09:41.680 somebody, you know, what's the deal with these guys? And someone from Ontario explained to me
00:09:48.240 that they were from Upper Canada College, and that Upper Canada College, they were taught
00:09:55.360 that they were the leaders of the country and they had a responsibility to lead the country
00:10:00.400 when they got older and i looked at it and said okay i've got in alberta i've got western alienation
00:10:06.720 and then at upper canada college they're taught that they have the responsibility
00:10:11.600 to lead the nation it was almost like you know that colonial concept of of white man's burden
00:10:17.120 you know that white man is superior so therefore we we have to control all the colonies it was
00:10:22.960 almost that kind of feeling. And so I thought, this country is really strange and really messed
00:10:29.080 up. So I came back after graduation and got involved with, there's a kind of a group of,
00:10:36.400 there's about 15 of us, and we were all kind of concerned about Western alienation. We wanted to
00:10:41.340 try to fix it. We wanted to try to change our democracy. And so we decided that we were going
00:10:46.020 to do something. And the choices at the time were the Western Canada concept, which were the first
00:10:51.820 separatist group, and that was just emerging, or conservatives at the federal level, or liberals.
00:10:58.660 And we kind of decided that separatism didn't have enough legs at the time, so we didn't think that
00:11:04.800 that was going to have much opportunity to make change. And there was lots of good people already
00:11:10.080 in the conservative party, so we decided to be kind of counterintuitive, and we joined the federal
00:11:16.420 Liberal Party. So that's how I got started. Okay, so that's how you ended up. Well, I mean, that's
00:11:22.660 somewhat understandable. It was with good intentions. Yeah. But so then what happened
00:11:28.900 is we, this group of us, 15 of us went to this convention. We called ourselves the Young Turks
00:11:33.780 and found out what that actually meant afterwards. But so, and then we were sitting around at this
00:11:39.380 convention and someone decided we needed someone to run for the executive of the Liberal Party
00:11:44.420 canada in alberta and so we picked straws and i literally got the short straw literally the short
00:11:51.860 straw so i ran for uh the treasurer of the party i won and um actually in my speech someone from
00:12:01.460 the audience yelled out because i'm in the hotel business and so uh somebody yelled out if they had
00:12:06.420 wondered if they got a discount in the hotel and at the hotels and i said to him yeah sure just
00:12:12.180 go to the front desk and ask for the liberal discount well not surprising that's happening
00:12:17.380 at the liberal convention yeah exactly they want a discount yeah so um so i got involved with the
00:12:22.820 liberal party and then um and so i you know went to national conventions and stuff like that and
00:12:27.380 like i said lots of good people there was there was only a handful of of native-born albertans
00:12:32.820 and i was probably the only one that was really uh there was there were some of us that were
00:12:37.060 concerned about western alienation and what was important is we were trying to make changes and
00:12:44.660 at the time the crow rate was a big deal and the crow rate had preferential freight rates so that
00:12:51.140 eastern canada would do the food processing and we exported all of our our rough food food products
00:12:58.580 and it was sort of detrimental to the west and beneficial to the east and we actually got that
00:13:03.540 changed. And so they, you know, through our efforts, we actually made a change. And so I thought,
00:13:09.060 wow, great, this is a little bit of peeling back this concept of Western alienation.
00:13:14.900 And then, of course, in 1982, what happened was, this was a policy conference, and nobody had
00:13:25.620 talked about changing the Constitution, nobody asked for it, nobody was looking for it. And so
00:13:30.580 the upper ups in the party decided that they needed the consent of the party. And so they said,
00:13:36.420 well, let's have a vote at the convention. And so it was a show of hands. And, you know,
00:13:43.540 needless to say, almost everybody voted in favor of it, but I held up my hand and voted against it.
00:13:49.220 And what was interesting was, there was one guy that came over and he had a look of puzzlement
00:13:54.980 in his face. And he started coming towards me. And I remember he was from the Welland area,
00:14:01.940 and because he had name tags. And he looked like he was going to ask me
00:14:08.260 why I voted against the Constitution. And instead, he got close enough and he read my name tag
00:14:16.180 and saw that I was from Calgary, and his demeanor changed completely. And he said,
00:14:20.820 what's wrong with your people anyway oh wow i mean well that's a true story that actually happened
00:14:28.820 it actually happened yeah yeah well i think some of that sentiment's still alive i mean between both
00:14:35.060 areas i i you know we're a little bit at odds a lot at odds with each other well exactly and
00:14:40.580 yeah but you know i wanted to explain to him that i was against the constitution because
00:14:46.340 and we talked about this in the last episode, that we were moving to a codified constitution
00:14:53.560 from a non-codified constitution. It was going to mean judicial supremacy. It was going to mean
00:14:58.620 centralization of power. It was going to mean that my aspirations of solving Western alienation were
00:15:04.340 over because it was going to be, it's become static. Evolution goes out the window. And I
00:15:12.840 I understood that a codified constitution creates an organic state.
00:15:21.200 And so that organic state has a mind of its own.
00:15:25.000 It has an aspiration of its own.
00:15:26.600 It is separate and distinct from the people.
00:15:29.320 And what we were leaving was what's called a mechanical form of government,
00:15:34.660 which is just, it's a mechanical way of parties, different interests.
00:15:38.320 They come together, they figure out a way to live together and a plan to go forward.
00:15:42.840 And and they and they make laws to accommodate that.
00:15:46.640 So we were moving into this organic state
00:15:50.380 and I didn't want to do that.
00:15:51.540 I you know, the United States is probably
00:15:54.180 the most successful nation state in the world, but it is an organic state.
00:15:58.420 It has a life in existence that is separate and distinct.
00:16:02.360 And part of that, this separate entity is the bureaucracy around it.
00:16:07.200 So the bureaucracy for us,
00:16:09.260 it, what was once the civil service is now just a bureaucracy. And, you know, we saw in mandates
00:16:17.060 under COVID that that bureaucracy, and this is what Brian Peckford complained about, that bureaucracy
00:16:22.440 has a life of its own and it has, and it rules over the people. It's not responsible to the
00:16:27.580 people, it rules over them. And, and I knew that, I knew that that was going to happen. And, and so
00:16:33.900 didn't I didn't want to see that and plus there's history that if you look at it what happened
00:16:42.940 and do you mind if I just kind of ramble on for a second please it's informative yeah what I was
00:16:49.180 aware of is is you know start with you know democracy in in the western world started with
00:16:55.340 the Magna Carta and what that did is it took the sovereignty from the sovereign and that's where
00:17:01.980 the word comes from, took it away from the sovereign and brought it down to the nobles.
00:17:06.380 That was the first big move in 1215 in the Magna Carta. And what happened in the UK and in Britain
00:17:13.660 was that that sovereignty moved down and down and down to lower levels until the point where
00:17:20.540 it reached all people. And so that's our history in Canada. We are part of that. And then what
00:17:28.620 What happened is in 1763, there's the declaration of 1763,
00:17:34.760 and that's where the parliament in Britain, through the king,
00:17:40.580 had him declare that indigenous people also had sovereignty.
00:17:46.280 This was momentous.
00:17:48.140 And then in 1764, the king, in conjunction with the British parliament,
00:17:54.440 did the Quebec Act.
00:17:55.360 And the Quebec Act declared that French people had sovereignty also. 0.60
00:18:02.120 Not the French. 0.75
00:18:03.060 This is the French.
00:18:04.720 It was, at the time, was incredible.
00:18:07.000 In fact, it was so extraordinary that the Americans took those two acts as provocations.
00:18:14.260 And they viewed those as intolerable acts.
00:18:17.420 In fact, they called them the intolerable acts.
00:18:20.180 And so they, Britain was going in this direction
00:18:23.300 where sovereignty was going down to the people
00:18:26.320 rather than at the sovereign level, the king.
00:18:31.620 And the United States decided that,
00:18:33.880 no, those were provocations.
00:18:35.220 Those were intolerable.
00:18:36.460 And they took a right-hand turn.
00:18:39.160 And in their revolutionary war,
00:18:41.500 what they did was they took the sovereign power of a king
00:18:44.220 and they transferred that to the state.
00:18:46.120 And that is the first demarcation difference between Canada and the United States.
00:18:52.300 Oh, interesting.
00:18:54.080 So there is sort of a kingdom structure, only the king isn't a person.
00:19:01.240 It's a constitution.
00:19:03.200 It's an organic entity called the nation state of the United States.
00:19:08.420 And even in their constitution, it says, we the people of the United States, which implies
00:19:14.880 possession. So the United States owns the people. And that's when they do the Pledge of Allegiance, 0.80
00:19:23.280 what they're doing is they're giving up their sovereignty to the state. Now, to credit to the
00:19:30.400 formers of the union, the state gives certain protection of rights back, which is great if
00:19:38.880 you're kind of right person, but you know, the blacks had segregation for 80 years, so they didn't
00:19:44.080 quite cut it on that and you know now reproduction rights are so the state decides what rights they
00:19:49.520 have although the constitution says that you know they have all these rights
00:19:55.680 yes so interesting and you know a new way of thinking about it but similar to like
00:20:00.400 corporations like corporations become like they have the same uh their obligations they're
00:20:07.120 organic entities like that's something i learned you know in school was like a corporation actually
00:20:11.920 you can sue a corporation just like you can sue a person exactly it becomes its own thing and so
00:20:17.280 this is what you're saying the nation state is and the constitution i'm gonna say defines the
00:20:22.160 nation state is that how you would say it well that the constitution constitutes the state that's
00:20:27.280 where the word comes from other you know it is again with you know good marketing uh they tell
00:20:33.520 you that the constitution is to define human rights that's just good marketing uh the reality
00:20:38.880 is that we as humans have all the rights and we've surrendered them to the state and then
00:20:44.080 the state in turn says it'll protect our rights. It grants them back. So that's what a constitutional
00:20:51.760 structure is. Our non-codified constitution was that we have all the rights and we give rights
00:20:58.800 to the state on an ongoing basis and we can change that. So one of the interesting things of history
00:21:06.160 was that General Washington was also a surveyor.
00:21:10.660 That was his basic job, was a surveyor.
00:21:14.200 And he owned, and actually borrowed a lot of money from the banks in London.
00:21:20.820 And so he owed a lot of money to buy land in the Ohio Valley. 0.67
00:21:27.620 And of course, the Quebec Act made the Ohio Valley impregnable by the white settlers. 0.69
00:21:34.380 So it was reserved for the indigenous, and that would have been a financial disaster for Washington. 0.80
00:21:40.780 So he had a vested interest personally in the United States forming and then protecting his income. 0.93
00:21:49.000 I don't want to talk about that too much, but what it did was it created this concept of personal and corporate interest intertwined with the nation state.
00:21:57.660 And so what we saw, what we've seen in history is that the American nation state works in collaboration and support of, and vice versa, various corporate entities.
00:22:11.520 And the examples are the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, where the American government overthrew a democratically elected government in Guatemala to benefit the United Fruit Company.
00:22:24.600 We also saw that with Standard Oil in Iran, where Mogadagay, I'm not sure how to say his last name, but he was, the Iranian leader was democratically elected, but he nationalized oil industry that hurt Standard Oil of the United States.
00:22:44.820 American CIA went in and effectively overthrew the democratically elected government.
00:22:51.920 And so they're working hand in hand.
00:22:53.600 And you see that, I would suggest, you know, do your own soul searching on this one, but I would suggest we see that today with big tech and you certainly see it with big oil in Venezuela.
00:23:04.940 Well, and I see it, you know, even at a globalist level, like I see it with, I mean, I don't want to get us off track and get too far away from the 82 constitution, but I see it with organizations that are, you know, sort of structured the way that you're talking about at a global level.
00:23:22.620 But this isn't too far away from the 82 Constitution, because when we switched from being non-codified to being codified, we created a nation state.
00:23:32.600 And then that nation state has its own ambitions, it has its own aspirations, and it chooses companies that support it and vice versa.
00:23:41.780 I don't want to go into too much detail about SNC-Lavalin, but maybe there's an example there.
00:23:47.560 Yeah, well, so, okay, there, so before 1982, before we had a codified constitution, we were, I'm going to say more different than from America. 0.68
00:24:01.740 Yeah. Yeah. We were about compromise and the sovereignty of the people in that the people had the ability to elect people to say what the law was, regardless of what judges had said in the past.
00:24:18.160 We could elect new representatives and they could make new laws.
00:24:22.740 That's right. So we had a direct influence and impact on the law of the land.
00:24:26.860 And then after 1982, everything goes back to the codified constitution, which is defined and understood primarily through the judiciary.
00:24:38.940 So before 1982, Canada chose sovereignty of the individual and compromise.
00:24:48.100 The United States chose sovereignty of the state and adversarial direction.
00:24:54.200 And then at 82, what we did was we threw out our entire history and we joined the United States.
00:25:02.820 And the reason I voted against it, because in short form, is I didn't want Canada to become like America.
00:25:10.460 Interesting. Interesting that that sentiment was there with you, you know, even then, because I know it's alive and well today for a lot of people.
00:25:17.320 Okay, so what was the pressure? Why have this constitution in 1982? Why did Trudeau want it at that time? What was going on that made it happen? And why wasn't it better explained to all the people so we could make an informed and educated decision about some of the long-term impacts of what the agreement we were getting into was?
00:25:42.380 Those are all great questions.
00:25:44.120 And I think we need to explore the mind of Pierre Trudeau to answer those questions.
00:25:51.920 So I will claim that I had dinner with Pierre Trudeau probably six or seven times in a small group.
00:26:01.220 And I was one that said right to his face in a polite way that what he was doing in Western Canada was wrong.
00:26:08.700 Did he care?
00:26:10.200 No, he didn't care.
00:26:10.940 But what he cared about was Quebec, and he wanted to enhance the power of Quebec,
00:26:18.900 and that all started in the Thetford Mines thing, and he was always about that.
00:26:25.760 And so this is after the referendum, and the 82 was after the 1980 referendum,
00:26:32.160 and during the referendum, he said that he promised to Quebec
00:26:37.080 that he would do something to make them more comfortable in the rest of the country.
00:26:43.080 And that's number one.
00:26:44.120 And the number two thing that he said was he argued,
00:26:50.120 why should you just have a small piece of land that you're in control of
00:26:54.480 when you can control the entire country from coast to coast to coast?
00:27:00.300 And so those two arguments, he really wanted to deliver on those promises, if you will.
00:27:08.420 And so I think that he had a problem in that he had to socially engineer the rest of English Canada.
00:27:16.360 But he didn't have the power to do that.
00:27:18.220 Because common law requires equality.
00:27:21.160 And common law requires that the people decide who they are, not the other way around.
00:27:26.080 I personally think that he looked at it and said, English Canada has been overwhelmed by the bravado from the United States about how wonderful their constitution is.
00:27:38.320 And so he, and he, and I think he realized that having a constitution was able, would be able to bring more power to the central government and to him personally.
00:27:50.600 And that's what they did.
00:27:52.060 And then there are systems of governance where there's no checks and balances on the power of the prime minister.
00:27:59.680 I think it was all a big power grab.
00:28:01.580 It's the only way I can explain it.
00:28:03.280 So it was a power grab for the federal government at the same time as he was trying to resolve an issue that had been ongoing in Quebec where they wanted to separate.
00:28:10.980 And in order for them not to go, he promised them more control, really.
00:28:15.620 Okay, so he was in a bad position, but he ended up with himself and the federal government being in quite a powerful position.
00:28:25.360 I don't think he was in a bad position.
00:28:27.180 Keith Davies, his principal secretary, famously said,
00:28:31.700 never let a big crisis go unrewarded.
00:28:36.020 Never let a good crisis go to waste.
00:28:38.440 No, that's right. So he understood exactly. I think that this was a moment that Trudeau had
00:28:45.240 always been looking for. And what he did was he took the power to engineer English Canada
00:28:52.840 and to socially engineer. And frankly, his son, when it was his turn to reign over the country,
00:29:00.360 he did exactly the same thing. He saw that he had the right to socially engineers,
00:29:05.640 and I think you did it and I think a lot of people are on set I'm happy about that.
00:29:09.320 I want to talk about something now that is a little bit of an extension of or a complete
00:29:14.040 extension of the 1982 constitution and that's currently happening right now it's very unresolved
00:29:19.000 in BC we are facing a situation or the people of BC are facing a situation where about 180 people
00:29:25.240 have lost title to their fee simple land which means they no longer have their land rights on
00:29:32.600 their houses. So they've been living in these houses, some of them 30 plus years, and they go
00:29:38.040 to the bank to remortgage their house. And the bank says, we can't give you a mortgage because
00:29:42.360 you don't have title, and we can't mortgage something you don't have title for. And if
00:29:46.040 you've gotten a mortgage before, you know you need to show proof of ownership of your land.
00:29:49.640 So this is something now that is troubling people across BC, and it's a result of some legislation
00:29:55.400 that the BC government has put into place indicating that there is a need to give land
00:30:00.360 rights and lent title back to the Indigenous, and it's a piece of legislation called DRIPA,
00:30:05.560 and it's led to a ton of uncertainty, economic unrest and unraveling, I would say. People are
00:30:13.640 questioning if that's going to come to them in their houses, or there's 180 really upset people
00:30:18.600 that feel they were not properly informed that they didn't have property rights. But we don't
00:30:23.720 of property rights in the 1982 constitution so how did that happen how did that happen
00:30:30.520 how did we get here well take a step back um in 1982 if you recall there was in alberta there's
00:30:40.200 a national energy policy so under common law people that owned oil and gas assets had the
00:30:47.560 right to own those oil and gas assets when the constitution came in without the right of land
00:30:52.760 ownership, which means the ownership of any asset is no longer protected. So if you ask me why,
00:31:01.400 one of the reasons why land ownership was not included in the constitution,
00:31:05.960 it was because Trudeau at the time was trying to promote NEP and he couldn't do it under common
00:31:12.200 law. So he had to create a situation where there was no ownership of these land rights
00:31:18.520 and the oil and gas ministry. And so NEP and the constitution are lockstep.
00:31:25.400 They're one in the same as far as I'm concerned. And so he specifically did the 25% back in interest
00:31:32.520 that if you had $100 worth of assets, $25 of it was now owned by the government.
00:31:39.960 And so that was the first thing. I don't understand why the country didn't go ballistic at that time,
00:31:47.160 but they didn't. Fast forward, in British Columbia, there's a bunch of things here.
00:31:55.800 First of all, this does not affect treaty lands. So this is just non-treaty lands. There are some
00:32:03.080 treaty lands in British Columbia, but most of it is not treaty lands. And my understanding is that
00:32:08.680 the various Indigenous nations are claiming more than 100% of that residual land. So this is an 0.88
00:32:16.760 issue for all of british columbia so the supreme court uh dealt with this issue and it was the uh
00:32:24.360 the name of the tribe was um um forgotten it starts with a c and a ch but uh um uh
00:32:33.320 couch and couch yeah it doesn't start with a ch it starts with a c might be spelled that way yeah
00:32:38.200 yeah no i don't think there's no way okay so um anyway the couch and tribe had a
00:32:43.160 out of town on Lulu Island and my reading of it and looking at the decision that DRIPA was,
00:32:53.400 that's the BC legislation you talked about. It weighed in a little bit, but what really weighed
00:33:01.240 in the decision of the judge was the words and the intentions of the 82 Constitution.
00:33:07.320 Specifically, Section 35 of the Constitution, which deals with the Indigenous rights, says that it talks about the Indigenous land.
00:33:20.520 And in 1984, it was amended to include Sections 3 and 4.
00:33:28.340 And in Section 3, it says specifically that the nation will recognize all claims that have been settled with the Indigenous and all future claims.
00:33:45.160 So it effectively is saying that the nation is obliged to recognize any land that is claimed by the Indigenous.
00:33:56.460 The way I read it.
00:33:58.080 And so this weighed heavily in the Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court British Columbia decision.
00:34:03.260 Plus the fact that the 180 landowners don't actually have any protection of their rights.
00:34:10.300 And so the Indigenous have this right in Section 35.3 that says that they are to be, their claims
00:34:16.620 are to be protected. And so what the problem is, is that I cannot, now this is going up to the
00:34:26.940 Supreme Court of Canada, but I can't see how the Supreme Court of Canada could make a different
00:34:31.340 decision because they are bound by the words and the intentions. It was very clear in the
00:34:36.220 the intentions of the author of the Canadian constitution, Pierre Trudeau, that he didn't
00:34:41.400 want to have everyone having land rights. So I think this is a mess for British Columbia.
00:34:46.960 And in talking to people there that are trying to figure out how to sleep at night, they
00:34:51.760 said, well, can we do an amendment? And I kind of mentioned the 2021 attempt in Alberta
00:34:58.960 to do an amendment. And then I kind of say, well, if British Columbia puts forward an
00:35:03.400 amendment. What is going to Quebec? What will Quebec want? Because Quebec has a veto on anything
00:35:09.380 that will change. So I'm sorry about your sleep, but I would not assume that there's going to be
00:35:16.480 an amendment to the constitution on this. Well, that brings up a really good point for me because
00:35:21.220 I'd like to know what point there is in talking about the 1982 constitution since it seems very
00:35:28.780 difficult to amend it. And I'm wondering, how does the thing change? How do we get some control back
00:35:36.420 over our situation? Well, the only thing you can, I mean, the fundamental thing that you can do
00:35:42.100 with the, inside the amending formula, is amend the amending formula. And why would the powers
00:35:47.900 that have control ever accept that? And the powers are the political elite in Ottawa, because it
00:35:52.760 requires parliamentary approval, which means you have to have partisan approval. And it also
00:35:57.640 it gives Quebec and Ontario a veto. And so why would they give up that power? So literally the
00:36:04.940 only thing that British Columbia can do in my view is to have the vote that they should have had in
00:36:10.200 1982 on accepting or rejecting the 82 constitution. Reject it and start over again is the only thing
00:36:18.460 that I can see that they can do. As somebody recently said, we want to be at the table and
00:36:25.200 not on the menu. That's the message. We just don't know what that table is yet, but history is being
00:36:32.020 made and being involved and informed is the best way to assure the best result for all of us.
00:36:38.640 Albertans have always been open to compromise, but we want our issues addressed. Many in the East
00:36:46.320 and the elite will say no to change. Now's not the time. These two different perspectives are
00:36:53.160 topic of our next episode. We'll explore the different characters of the East and the West
00:36:59.400 and how the two approach politics completely differently. It will explain a lot. Join us.