Western Standard - October 20, 2020


UCP MLA Drew Barnes calls for the creation of an Alberta constitution

Topics
property rights constitution constitutional convention police force in Alberta
Mentioned
Corey Drew Barnes Medicine Hat UCP MLA Wildrose
Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on ＂eyepopping＂ AHS management compensation Groups release spending cut recommendations to Calgary City Hall

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

174.68

Word count

2,210

Sentence count

127

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sit down with United Conservative Party (UCP) MLA Drew Barnes from Cypress, Alberta, to discuss the need for a province-wide constitution and why it would be a good idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So I'm talking today with UCP MLA Drew Barnes from Cypress Medicine Hat. Drew is one of the,
00:00:15.840 well he is the last I believe loyalist from the Wildrose party who refused to cross the floor and
00:00:21.120 stood on principle and he's still sitting in the legislature now on the government side and doing
00:00:26.940 his best for his constituents out there. And Drew's very outspoken and doesn't hesitate to speak what
00:00:34.140 he feels is best for his constituents at any given time and it's something I like as well as Drew
00:00:38.700 clearly runs his own Twitter account which so few politicians do. I know I can get them now and then,
00:00:44.620 but it's just nice to get candid and direct thoughts from public officials at times.
00:00:49.500 So Drew something, thanks again for coming on by the way.
00:00:52.940 Corey, thanks for having me. Nice to see you again.
00:00:55.580 Yeah, thanks. And something that caught my eye was a tweet you put out with a link to a site talking
00:01:01.820 about constitutions in times of crisis and speaking on how Alberta could use its own provincial
00:01:08.220 constitution and Alberta constitution. It's been an idea that's been around for a while but not many
00:01:11.900 people speak openly about it and some of the benefits of such a thing they have. Can you expand a bit on
00:01:16.780 that? Yeah, I sure can, Corey. Thank you. First of all, it not only caught your eye, it caught the eye of
00:01:22.460 hundreds of Albertans. Hundreds of Albertans are interested in more solidifying individual,
00:01:31.260 family, community position in Alberta and Alberta's position with Canada. So I've had lots of good
00:01:39.020 interest, lots of good response, lots of good ideas. To me, Corey, I think it's a necessity.
00:01:45.340 You know, the belief is that we have an Alberta constitution now, although it's not written. And
00:01:51.980 that's the history of all the laws and the jurisprudence and the decisions. And my goodness,
00:01:58.060 how hard would it be to pull all that together? So I think the opportunity for 4.2 million Albertans who
00:02:05.900 want to be engaged to get together and absolutely, you know, outline the values, the family beliefs,
00:02:15.020 the community needs, the desire for risk taking and resource movement. There's so many good things
00:02:20.940 that would come of this. And the fact that hundreds of Albertans have reached out to me, I believe I'm in
00:02:26.220 the right. Well, I'm glad you got such a good response. Again, that's how social media is such a
00:02:32.220 a valuable tool, especially since you can't really go out door knocking or having large town hall
00:02:36.060 meetings to interact with constituents, being able to reach out that way and get some feedback. I mean,
00:02:40.620 if you had hundreds of people telling you to get stuffed, well, you know, it was an idea balloon
00:02:43.500 that perhaps is not right for the time. One of the things that stands out, for example,
00:02:49.260 I'd like to see in an Alberta constitution is something we've dearly been lacking in Canada
00:02:53.180 is entrenched property rights. You know, a good strong protection of our property rights and more of a core
00:02:59.500 value being such. But of course, we know that would run afoul of the federal version of things,
00:03:06.220 which really looks at it like tell us we have the enjoyment of property, not the right to possess
00:03:11.180 it and so on or sell it necessarily. So how do you think that would work, though, with the inevitable
00:03:16.700 clashes that will come with our central government if we start moving along with protecting our own
00:03:20.780 rights provincially? Well, thanks for that. Well, absolutely. You know, nothing moves unless it's pushed
00:03:26.460 and Alberta has to push its position in confederation with Ottawa. Alberta families,
00:03:33.660 Alberta free enterprise people, Alberta wealth and job creators need protection and pushback as well.
00:03:39.740 So I absolutely believe something like the entrenchment of property rights and the entrenchment
00:03:45.900 of property rights could guarantee full and fair compensation when we have to expropriate for the
00:03:50.860 public good. It could guarantee complete access to courts when the government may be overstepping
00:03:58.940 its bounds. You know, we a system, our democratic system is built on checks and balances and checks
00:04:05.260 and balances for the individual and families are crucial. Corey, a constitution could go much further
00:04:11.500 to to limit the growth in the size of government and protect individuals, communities and families
00:04:19.020 and free enterprise and the opportunity to create wealth. You know, we could talk about our our need
00:04:25.340 and our ability to take take risk to move resources to to, you know, use free trade to to create wealth
00:04:33.260 and create jobs. We could do things as an example, like limit the size of the growth of government.
00:04:38.140 You know, a constitution could say government spending could only increase by the amount of population
00:04:44.220 growth and inflation unless there's an emergency. You know, Corey, we're in a situation now where
00:04:50.140 Alberta has 100 billion in debt. Our GDP is falling from some side of 350 billion to 300 billion. And,
00:04:58.220 you know, a third, you know, 33 percent debt to GDP is is a ratio that I never thought I'd see in Alberta.
00:05:06.860 Those are the kind of things that a constitution could protect. But I don't want to focus on the numbers
00:05:12.380 because it can be so much more than that. We can talk about our ability to share our ability to help
00:05:18.060 each other. You know, I I see it every day when medicine hatters, Albertans and Cyprus medicine 0.99
00:05:24.620 hatters give their time, their money, their efforts. We could part of this constitution could could outline
00:05:31.900 our desire to protect and promote that. It could also go go into defining and outlining the levels
00:05:39.740 of responsibility for all the levels of government. My goodness, I mean, reading the other day,
00:05:43.900 the government might be 44 or 45 percent of our economy. The report I was reading said economies
00:05:50.380 grow the most when government's only 32 or 33 percent of the economy. So that's something that
00:05:55.340 needs to be looked at. But every wealth creator, job creator, small business person I talk to,
00:06:01.020 by the time they get through municipal, provincial, federal, sometimes school board and hospital board
00:06:07.420 bylaws. My goodness, it's it's a it's an exercise in in waste and nightmare. And those are the kind
00:06:14.620 of things that a constitution we could clearly outline the responsibilities of every level of
00:06:19.580 government and keep them in their box and allow free enterprise and families and communities to be bigger.
00:06:28.540 Well, yeah, well, I understand how, you know, a constitution can entrench some things
00:06:32.620 so that they aren't changed at the whim of the government. One of the things that comes to mind,
00:06:36.460 say fixed election dates. Yeah, that's great. But until a majority government finds it's
00:06:40.620 inconvenient for them and then they just set it aside and move on. If it was actually constitutionally
00:06:44.700 entrenched, it doesn't mean it's immutable and impossible to change something, but they'd sure
00:06:49.580 have to work a heck of a lot harder before breaking their own laws in that sort of sense,
00:06:53.820 and perhaps go to Albertans before they change something so radical as that. Or balanced budget act,
00:06:58.620 again, same thing. As long as you got a majority, you can just vote and throw it out. So it doesn't really
00:07:02.460 matter. Constitution gives another level of protection. You've spoken a bit about discussions
00:07:08.140 and constitution would happen around the province and talk to a lot of citizens and so on and design
00:07:13.980 something that would work best for them. What kind of process would you envision?
00:07:18.060 Well, I'd envision a constitutional convention. There's 87 provincial constituencies for the
00:07:25.900 Alberta legislature. So what if we had elections in all 87 constituencies to elect one representative to
00:07:33.980 be the constitutional representative for that constituency? What if we gave that group of people
00:07:41.500 a year, two years to engage, consult, research? We need a lot of time to meet and discuss this with
00:07:49.260 experts. And that's one of the other things, Corey, that's happened is a lot of experts have come
00:07:53.100 forward since I've put out my tweet and my social media offering help. And let's give these people
00:07:59.020 a year or two to pull it all together. And then let's have a constitutional convention. Let's have
00:08:06.300 a discussion. Let's start to write this out. And let's start to make Alberta the freest, 0.86
00:08:13.980 most prosperous place in North America as we should be.
00:08:16.940 Well, in consultation and a process are essential. I mean, if you're doing something as big and as
00:08:23.820 entrenched as that, you want to make sure you get it right, of course. But at the same time,
00:08:27.820 you don't want something to die a death by consultation. I'll just move on to something.
00:08:31.340 You were on the fair deal panel and you guys put in a lot of work, made a lot of whistle stops and
00:08:35.660 talked to a lot of people and came to some conclusions, which were finally released.
00:08:41.180 Yet now we've seen, okay, great. On the provincial police force, for example,
00:08:44.780 it seems pretty clear Albertans want to move in that direction. We don't need to rush in that
00:08:48.140 direction. We want to do it right. But it's been kicked down the road to another expert group to,
00:08:54.780 it sounds like, discuss further whether or not we even want one, much less. I mean,
00:08:58.540 I think at this point we should be at the designing and figure out how we're going to do it,
00:09:01.740 not whether or not we're going to do it. But sometimes the consultation turns into the end of
00:09:05.900 things. You've said we should move on to the police force sooner rather than later.
00:09:09.820 Yeah, absolutely, Corey. So sooner rather than later. First of all, it's important to keep in
00:09:15.660 mind three or four things. A provincial police force in no way means that Medicine Hat, Calgary,
00:09:23.260 Edmonton, Lethbridge wouldn't have their own city police forces. Secondly, with the support that the
00:09:29.980 federal government currently gives the RCMP, let's talk about that for a second. In most cases,
00:09:35.100 the municipality owns the office, sometimes the cars, owns the infrastructure now anyway, the RCMP
00:09:41.100 doesn't. With the money that is provided from the federal government, there's strong signals that
00:09:46.060 that is going to be reduced or discontinued because of rising costs in the RCMP and because of some
00:09:53.740 troubles they're having attracting man and woman power to fill those positions. So that's important to
00:10:01.820 know. But the provincial police force would give us better service. It would allow rural Alberta where
00:10:09.660 crime has skyrocketed because of the economy and the times that we're in right now. It would allow
00:10:17.500 police that are accountable to the provincial legislature or the provincial premier to give
00:10:21.820 Albertans better service. And then secondly, Ontario has their own police force, Quebec has their own
00:10:30.380 police force. The one area that the Fair Deal panel in all of its 70 some pages had trouble getting out
00:10:37.980 was the leverage, the signals that Albertans can gain from Ottawa by showing that we are self-reliant,
00:10:45.980 by showing that we are free and strong. And a police force is part of that. And, you know,
00:10:52.860 we continually bang heads with Ottawa. The most visible parts of course are over the lack of resource
00:10:59.420 movement, the lack of free trade and the $670 billion of transfer and, you know, payments that
00:11:07.100 have gone to Ottawa. And I just think that the leverage that could be gained and the better service
00:11:13.980 to me, it's a no brainer. Let's do it. Yeah, well, it could certainly be an opportunity. There's been a lot
00:11:18.860 of discussion this year about issues with police cultures, perhaps, and mandates and training and
00:11:23.580 things like that. What an opportunity then to take a force and start it from scratch.
00:11:28.220 Let's look at what's gone wrong with the older force that served us well, but perhaps has some
00:11:32.620 internal issues that are obsolete and aren't serving the public as they should. At this point,
00:11:37.580 you know, I just say, let's get our foot off the brake and get on with it. I'm glad to hear that some
00:11:41.500 MLAs are willing to come out and say that as well. So thank you very much for coming on today,
00:11:46.540 Drew, to expand on all of that. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing more out of you as you keep
00:11:51.100 examining ways to make Alberta a better place down the road. Where can people get in touch with you
00:11:57.020 or find out more information on what you're up to? Yeah, thank you, Corey. The best way is through my
00:12:02.060 email at drew.barnes at assembly.ab.ca or please call my constituency office anytime 403-528-2191.
00:12:16.140 I appreciate the opportunity, Corey, first of all, to be on your show. And thanks for all the work
00:12:23.580 you've done. When I showed up 10 years ago interested in politics, you were already there
00:12:27.420 and concerned about Alberta's future. So thank you. And I really appreciate the chance to talk
00:12:32.380 to all Albertans anytime. Great. Thanks, Drew. I'm sure we'll be talking again.
00:12:37.020 You betcha, Corey. Bye for now.