Western Standard - September 08, 2026


Why Ottawa’s political system is so hard to change


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Length

35 minutes

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164.03

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5,819

Sentence count

228

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1

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Today's episode will set out the final component of the framework for our analysis of Alberta's
00:00:05.920 political future. We will look at Canada's notorious democratic deficiency. We will compare
00:00:12.560 our structure with that of other countries and get some hints as to why we underperform.
00:00:18.800 The issues range from unparalleled centralization of power, extreme party discipline, and an array
00:00:26.000 of mismatched structural choices that stoke needless internal battles and inefficiency.
00:00:32.920 What appears to be the hastily assembled 1982 constitution had little public consideration,
00:00:39.200 debate, and no public consent. But the structurally incoherent combination of choices imposed upon us
00:00:46.700 became politically immutable thereafter. Only we, the people, can fix it now. Welcome to a nation of people.
00:00:56.000 Hi, I'm Natalie Saint-Hilaire. With me is Randy Royer.
00:01:15.740 There are four aspects to today's discussion. A quick primer on political structures,
00:01:21.840 Canada's strange combination of structural choices,
00:01:25.100 how it compares to other democracies,
00:01:27.760 and finally, what we can do to make our political structure work for us, the people.
00:01:35.000 Okay, Randy, so last time we were talking a lot about the financial structure
00:01:39.100 or some of the financial structure in Canada, but there's also a political structure.
00:01:43.000 And before we get to what's going on in Canada,
00:01:45.400 can you give me like a really quick overview of just different political structures?
00:01:49.540 So, Poli Sci 101. First one to think about is nation-state versus empire, multi-ethnic empires, and that was around in the 1900s, versus a constitutional monarchy, which was Great Britain. That's the first thing, you can look that up.
00:02:05.320 Second thing is organic versus mechanical states. We've talked about that in the past. Organic is an entity that has its own life in existence, separate from the people. The mechanical state recognizes the sovereignty of the individual, and we just come together in a mechanical process of figuring out our governance.
00:02:25.320 the other one is Republican system versus the parliamentary system the latter is
00:02:31.920 Great Britain parliamentary and the former is the United States they're two
00:02:37.280 very different systems and then the other one is a unitary state versus a
00:02:42.320 federal state a unitary state is as Great Britain it's only the one
00:02:48.080 Parliament it's supreme that it's starting to devolve power to Ireland to
00:02:53.940 Scotland and Wales but it was originally just a unitary state and a federal state is where there
00:03:01.120 are sub-national entities like states or provinces that have some degree of power
00:03:07.740 when they have a lot of power they're called autonomous regions and then the last issue is
00:03:15.340 in internal economic and trade barriers so we'll talk about that a little bit so that's a quick
00:03:22.940 pricey of some of the terms you need to know. Okay. And so what has Canada chosen? Where are
00:03:29.460 we in all that? Well, again, we've got a pre-1982 circumstance and then a post-1982.
00:03:35.540 Pre-1982, we were a constitutional monarchy. It was a mechanical system. Parliament was supreme.
00:03:43.580 It was a federal state, but we had a unitary central government. So there was no regional
00:03:51.620 input into the central government. It's a bit of an odd thing, but that's what we chose.
00:03:56.580 And then post-1982, we became a nation state versus a constitutional monarchy. We still
00:04:07.320 called ourselves a constitutional monarchy because of the confusing words in the 82
00:04:13.680 constitution uh we had but the monarchy is more symbolic than real we became an organic state
00:04:21.600 versus mechanical and we became this weird combination of republican system with a
00:04:27.360 constitution but our outward appearances of our electoral system was still a parliamentary system
00:04:35.360 And again, we're a federal state, but again, the central government is still a unitary state, a unitary government, and because of the two-nation policy, that unitary government in Ottawa is trying to take all the powers away from the federal entities, which are the sovereign rights of the provinces.
00:05:03.160 Well, it sounds to me like what you're saying is there were a lot of aspects of our political structure that got changed in the 1982 Constitution.
00:05:10.940 Yes.
00:05:11.440 Okay, so my question for you is, how did that happen without people noticing?
00:05:17.620 Good marketing. Good marketing overcomes everything.
00:05:21.060 And the federal government just said this was a simple repatriation of a constitution that we have.
00:05:26.780 Of course, we didn't have a constitution. We were a parliamentary system.
00:05:30.940 Britain doesn't have a constitution to this day.
00:05:34.300 You know, and as per our conversations with Brian Peckford,
00:05:38.740 it's an indication that it looked to me like the people that were involved
00:05:42.540 didn't really understand what they were doing.
00:05:44.180 And I think that it was all driven by the Trudeau government
00:05:48.560 thinking that they needed to respond to Quebec referendum,
00:05:52.300 and that meant they needed more power.
00:05:54.200 But with this level of change, wouldn't the Canadian people have noticed?
00:05:58.760 Well, they have now.
00:06:00.200 40 years later it's taken that much time for us to realize the impact of what we're doing and what
00:06:05.880 what we do is we tend to hate the impact and not look at the underlying causes of what made that
00:06:12.360 happen and so that's what we're trying to talk about is is to look past you know the the the
00:06:18.520 superficial issues and dive down into why is it this way and it is that way because trudeau changed
00:06:24.680 the country immensely in 1982 and nobody paid any attention to it so what am i what i'm hearing is
00:06:30.840 that some of these structural changes are sort of like behind a curtain they're not the first
00:06:36.280 thing that like we still go to vote in an election i still have an mp i everything on the surface is
00:06:43.240 sort of the same but you are saying there are some serious structural changes that happen
00:06:49.860 Some of them are more obvious.
00:06:51.580 Judicial supremacy, judicial advocacy,
00:06:54.820 where now the courts are telling us, the people,
00:06:57.660 what to do and what we can and cannot do.
00:06:59.900 That's all the changes that have occurred
00:07:01.900 that we are now starting.
00:07:04.100 I mean, how many times have you heard,
00:07:05.420 who put the judges in charge?
00:07:07.080 Well, the answer to that is Pierre Trudeau did that in 1982.
00:07:11.420 But people didn't realize it.
00:07:13.000 They didn't realize it was happening.
00:07:14.040 And that's what happens when you don't have any discussion
00:07:16.140 about a significant change like that.
00:07:18.220 Yeah.
00:07:18.580 Okay, so there's structurally how everything is, which is like, you know, it could be a lot of research and education for a person to get into.
00:07:27.920 But what are some of the realities, like the political realities?
00:07:31.720 You mentioned one, judicial supremacy.
00:07:33.200 What are the other political realities that we deal with now?
00:07:36.760 A big one is the notwithstanding clause.
00:07:38.260 So people on, particularly on the left, are outraged when provincial government uses the notwithstanding clause.
00:07:46.820 And where that came from was that the provinces, when they signed on to the 1982 Constitution, did not want to relinquish their powers to the courts.
00:07:58.960 And so they put in the Notwithstanding Clause to maintain the powers that they had.
00:08:04.660 And the people that believe in the two-nation policy that wanted to drive central control and central power, they are still in a campaign to reverse that compromise.
00:08:19.500 And so every time somebody uses, other than Quebec, Quebec is fine, but if anybody else uses a notwithstanding clause, the centralists are outraged.
00:08:28.820 And so that's an example of what changed in 1982.
00:08:31.920 They went from the provincial powers, provincial governments had their own sovereignty, they could decide what they thought was right for their people.
00:08:42.140 Then suddenly there was implemented that what Trudeau intended in the Constitution was adjudicated by the judiciary, and that was what was determined right.
00:08:52.140 But we had this notwithstanding clause, which gave us an exit strategy.
00:08:56.040 and now with the the central government that believe in Trudeau's vision they're trying to
00:09:01.860 extinguish that and and that and of course they don't go back to what happened in 1982
00:09:06.740 so that's another example yeah so there's sort of the the structural change then the impact of the
00:09:13.980 structural change but then there's also this like the cultural norms of how we do things
00:09:17.500 that are sometimes even different than the structural change and so I'm wondering about
00:09:22.560 that even at like a political level like what are what's the the structure of our real politics in
00:09:28.760 canada versus you know what was set up what actually what are we dealing with yeah so um
00:09:34.480 the the 82 constitution didn't change our ostensible structure the head of state is the
00:09:41.680 king the king has a representative in canada that's the governor general the prime minister
00:09:47.040 appoints the governor general and the king accepts it um that's actually the head that's the seat of
00:09:53.520 of power um and and that didn't change in the 82 constitution um and uh and the ostensible powers
00:10:02.640 of the provinces did not change but what has happened was that everything underneath that the
00:10:08.080 real politics uh it changed significantly and so now what we have is is uh we had centralized
00:10:15.840 government that started you know centralizing power into the hands of the prime minister that
00:10:20.640 started back in mackenzie king days but the 1982 constitution institutionalized it and basically
00:10:27.360 put it on a rapid charge ahead and so you got to the point where i remember in in uh in the
00:10:34.480 the reign of of trudeau one uh if i could put it that way uh the pierre trudeau uh he had 116
00:10:42.080 members and it was scandalous that he had 115 members in the PMO and the Privy Council and as
00:10:48.240 opposed to his predecessors that would have you know 20 or 30. Now under Justin Trudeau, Trudeau
00:10:56.100 II, they had there's 1,500 people and the power was so concentrated in the PMO and the PCO that
00:11:04.800 anybody in the bureaucracy in Ottawa they refused to move unless they get approval from the Prime
00:11:10.980 minister's office. And so it is so centralized now. And needless to say, it's gone way out of
00:11:17.760 hand. Yeah. So you say the PMO, that's the prime minister's office. Yeah. Went from like
00:11:23.420 115 people to 1,500. The two, Privy Council, the PMO, Privy Council, and the PMO was 115 people
00:11:33.000 under Trudeau I. And under Trudeau II, it was 1,500 people. Well, either way, that's a huge
00:11:39.000 bureaucratic increase? $120 million to pay salaries for the prime minister. And then people
00:11:46.380 don't realize how concentrated the power of the prime minister is. He appoints the governor
00:11:52.560 general, he appoints the Supreme Court, he appoints all of the judiciary, he appoints the
00:11:56.840 Senate, he appoints the cabinet, he can get rid of them. They all serve at his pleasure.
00:12:00.840 He appoints the head of the RCMP, CSIS, all crown corporations, the ethics commissioner,
00:12:08.520 the Integrity Commissioner.
00:12:09.820 I mean, when Justin Trudeau had these ethics reviews,
00:12:14.300 remember it went to the Ethics Commission,
00:12:17.700 and then the Ethics Commissioner found him guilty
00:12:20.960 and reported to Justin Trudeau.
00:12:23.600 So he was sort of the villain,
00:12:26.080 and he was the one that handed out the judgment.
00:12:28.720 So he, what a surprise, said,
00:12:30.500 well, we're not going to do any punishment on this one.
00:12:33.980 And so this concentration of power is incredible.
00:12:36.480 So just to get that straight, that's just the Prime Minister? He doesn't need the approval of caucus? And that's under the 1982 Constitution. He just has all of those appointments. And there's no opposition. There's no check and balance there.
00:12:54.400 Well, a good example of that is the Jody Wilson-Raybould scandal, I'm going to call it a scandal, that SNC-Lavalin was, they got caught giving hookers and blow to Gaddafi's son.
00:13:10.640 So they were giving away grafts, bribes, and they got caught, and under Canadian law, you're not supposed to do work with the federal government.
00:13:21.320 But Trudeau wanted them to have an agreement in kind.
00:13:28.240 I can't remember what it was called.
00:13:29.900 But Jody Wilson-Raybould wouldn't do it. 1.00
00:13:32.140 She wouldn't interfere with the judiciary process.
00:13:35.480 So he basically just got rid of her, put in someone that would do it,
00:13:39.040 and SNC-Lavalin got off the hook, paid a penalty, and that was it.
00:13:43.160 So in this case, judicial supremacy didn't reign because the PMO did, the Prime Minister.
00:13:47.520 It didn't even get to the judiciary because Jody Wilson-Raybould was the Minister of Justice, and that's where they stopped us from even going to the judiciary.
00:13:57.060 I see. Yeah, okay, that's the trick. Just stop it from going to the judges.
00:14:01.180 That's exactly right.
00:14:01.780 Then you can avoid judicial supremacy.
00:14:03.440 Well, and the point is that Trudeau was able to basically fire the cabinet minister. He ultimately pushed her even out of the Liberals, Liberal Caucus, pushed her out of Parliament, but it was because she would not do what he wanted her to do.
00:14:16.760 and so that shows you the amount of power that he has well i always had it differently that you know
00:14:22.720 if i got elected i get a say you know like that's the whole point is we're in a democracy people
00:14:28.300 voted for me and just because i'm not the head of the party doesn't mean i don't get to um speak and
00:14:34.620 and you know maybe hold somebody accountable even if they happen to be the leader of the party and
00:14:39.220 the prime minister so the prime minister's office tells you what you think and what you say and if
00:14:44.120 you step out of line, they put you in the back bench at the House of Commons. If you do it again,
00:14:53.260 they take away your secretary. If you do it again, they take away your office. If you do it again,
00:14:58.020 they take away your flight home. And so there's a very strict, very, very strict party discipline
00:15:05.320 that is enacted. In fact, in Canada, 99% of votes are follow party lines. And I'll give you an
00:15:13.860 example of it, is that I had an opportunity to ask, this is back in the 80s, ask a backbencher
00:15:21.000 how he could vote for NEP. This is a liberal backbencher. And I said that. I was talking to
00:15:27.040 him, I said, you know, NEP was a heinous piece of legislature. You know, forget Alberta,
00:15:33.180 forget all that stuff. Just, it was heinous. It had back-end interests and it was attacking a
00:15:38.320 single province. And I said to the MP who's from Ontario, how on earth could you vote for that?
00:15:45.520 And he said, well, you need to understand how things work in Ottawa. He said, Friday afternoon,
00:15:50.800 I get a 25-year-old from the Prime Minister's office, shows up, he's got a document that's
00:15:56.060 nine inches thick, and he says, read this tonight, send your questions in Saturday morning,
00:16:02.740 we will answer them by Sunday, and Monday you're going to vote in favor of that legislation.
00:16:07.220 it's a 25 year old kid he said i read like the first it was nine inches thick i read the first
00:16:13.400 five six inches and it was all about you know insulation in ontario and quebec and it was
00:16:18.680 pretty innocuous so i just kind of put it aside and didn't worry about it because it looked like
00:16:22.640 it was nothing and uh he said i didn't realize all the bad stuff the back end interest the attacks
00:16:28.080 on alberta he said that was all in the back we i never knew it was there he said he said but
00:16:33.140 what happens in ottawa is you're told what to do how to how to act what to think i mean another
00:16:39.940 example is uh there was a uh mp from toronto who was against uh it was actually from burlington i
00:16:46.740 believe and he was against um the uh some sort of uh transportation network and the pmo actually
00:16:53.880 had had him a document that they sent a press release that they sent to the press and they
00:17:00.280 quoted him as saying something that was absolutely against what he had always campaigned for when he
00:17:04.980 was on city council and it was and they didn't even tell him they just did it and they used his
00:17:09.500 name and they and they quoted him and he never said it and and he was directly opposed to that
00:17:14.200 position in his in his previous life okay so are there that seems like huge overstep and overreach
00:17:22.760 not at all what i imagine if i was going to run here as a politician and become an mp in ottawa
00:17:28.960 not all how I'd imagine it goes.
00:17:32.220 However, I certainly believe what you're saying.
00:17:35.080 So is there any checks and balances on this behavior?
00:17:38.420 Or is there anyone that can hold the prime minister to account?
00:17:43.460 The only check and balance that we have in Confederation
00:17:45.980 are the sovereign powers of the provinces
00:17:48.320 that are vested in the premiers of the provinces.
00:17:52.900 And those are very clearly defined in the Constitution.
00:17:57.100 they are accepted in the 82 constitution but they continuously under the two-nation policy
00:18:05.740 which we've talked about they're continuously trying to erode those and so under the Trudeau
00:18:10.560 era you know the impact assessment act is is a blatant example of that it was an intrusion
00:18:16.340 the Alberta court of appeals agreed that with Alberta that it was an inappropriate intrusion
00:18:22.240 into provincial sovereign rights and the supreme court ultimately did too and i see now that i mean
00:18:29.120 oddly uh carvey uh carney and uh daniel smith uh did a car vote instead of getting rid of the
00:18:37.760 documents they did a car vote for alberta like this is insane yeah that disturbed me as well
00:18:42.960 i'd like to see the legislation removed not just an agreement that overrides it for whatever amount
00:18:47.360 of time they decide that you know it's kind of like giving up the court it's like okay yeah you're
00:18:53.360 doing the wrong thing the courts say you're doing the wrong thing we're gonna ignore all that and
00:18:57.040 just make a side deal so that we don't have to deal with it it's but but you know it the concept
00:19:02.320 is that the this is a check this is the only check and balance on the power of the prime minister
00:19:07.600 and what they've done here is they've carved out alberta and said well alberta's complaining so
00:19:11.280 we're going to give them a break but we still have those same rights in bc saskatchewan everywhere
00:19:16.800 else. And it's just, it's just bizarre. And it's putting a bandaid over a bad policy, a bad
00:19:23.060 structure. Bad legislation. Yeah. And, and it seems like it could be, they could change their
00:19:27.660 mind about that side deal anytime. That's what makes me nervous about it. Well, yeah. Another
00:19:31.660 prime minister who has ultimate power can go back and start doing what Trudeau did. And
00:19:36.180 unconstitutional legislation, whether we keep the constitution or not, is still unconstitutional. It
00:19:40.620 just shouldn't stand it at all. Well, and then when you sit in front of a judge, it's going to
00:19:44.180 be 50-50. It's always 50-50. And, you know, we've been lucky so far. And, you know, I think
00:19:50.340 Premier Smith has some good lawyers working for them. So that, but in terms of what we can say
00:19:58.760 about it, there's some very good sources of information. One is the Samara Centre for
00:20:03.140 Democracy. And they, they interview all of, not all, but most of the MPs. And they interview
00:20:10.500 backbenchers opposition government members and uh and um and cabinet ministers on their sort of an
00:20:18.180 exit exit interview you know how you do that in corporations and so there's excellent documents
00:20:24.580 in there excellent information but the mps themselves talk about how they're treated by
00:20:30.740 both the parties and the prime minister's office and uh and they they they say specifically the one
00:20:36.740 that sticks out in my mind was uh one mp said that we're treated like trained monkeys that
00:20:42.020 we're told when to stand up when to sit down we actually accomplish something in in in camera when
00:20:48.100 we're working in committees but as soon as it's public the party takes out the uh the people that
00:20:55.300 are doing good work and they throw in the party hacks that are going to scream and yell and he
00:20:59.620 he said it's a mess. So that's a good one. And the other one is a book, a recent book by Andrew
00:21:05.640 Coyne. It's called The Crisis of Canadian Democracy. He doesn't talk about the sovereign
00:21:11.700 powers of the provinces, but he talks about the central government in Ottawa and talks about the
00:21:19.120 problems. And it's actually very good. So I recommend that to everybody. Okay. So I mean,
00:21:26.120 none of that sounds ideal at all. And it almost, it makes me feel like we're watching a show,
00:21:30.640 not a democracy. Like it just makes me feel like what's, what I'm assuming is going on and what
00:21:34.720 I'm being shown is totally different than what's actually happening. I mean, I guess I'm not
00:21:39.460 terribly surprised, obviously, but what's the, what's the impact of all, of all of this and
00:21:46.020 functioning this way? Well, the impact, there's a bunch of them. First is that because the central,
00:21:53.820 our central government, and I don't even want to call it a federal government, it's a central
00:21:57.620 government, because it acts like a unitary state, it sort of has
00:22:01.780 results that parallel a unitary state. So if you look at
00:22:05.540 federal states versus unitary states worldwide, federal
00:22:09.780 states like the United States, the big cities represent
00:22:13.680 each one will represent sort of a maximum of 5% of the gross population
00:22:17.900 of the country. Same thing in Germany. Berlin is like 5 or 6%
00:22:21.840 of the total population, as opposed to unitary states like Great Britain and France, where the
00:22:28.560 major centers, London and Paris, they represent about 15 to 18 percent of the total population.
00:22:35.700 So what the unitary state does is it tends to focus in the population and the power into one
00:22:42.480 center. So that's because of democracy. It's just a population thing. It's one vote, one person
00:22:49.360 kind of a situation. And the government can only think of so many things. So it thinks of
00:22:53.680 what's the economy in Paris, for example. So it supports the economy in Paris, that draws more
00:22:58.900 people in, that increases the votes in Paris, and it increases the power of Paris. So it gets
00:23:04.920 very centralized. I think the worst one is Japan at about 22%. So in Canada, if you add Toronto and 0.99
00:23:13.140 all together, that represents 28.5% of our population. So the act of having a unitary
00:23:23.420 central government that just supports the center has concentrated our population. And of course,
00:23:28.900 what happens is that gives them more political power, which focuses the concentration, etc.,
00:23:33.300 etc. So it's sort of a spiraling thing. Yeah, it seems especially problematic with such a large
00:23:38.960 landmass. Absolutely. And then what has happened, you know, particularly through the Trudeau II,
00:23:45.760 his years, you know, they got rid of the idea that the cabinet would have representation from
00:23:52.280 all of the regions of the country. So he just, he decided it was more important to have linguistic
00:23:57.680 and, you know, equal number of men and women. So they lost the idea of input in the cabinet level.
00:24:06.100 but Trudeau also doesn't sound like he's getting much input from anybody anyways no I don't think
00:24:11.520 he did I don't think well that was just yeah he didn't give anybody his phone number to get
00:24:16.580 have a meeting with Trudeau you had to go through the prime minister's office
00:24:20.440 and if you had a meeting this is one interesting interesting innovation on his part
00:24:25.000 if two cabinet ministers had a meeting together they had to have a representative from the PMO
00:24:31.120 at that meeting. So that's how controlled things were. But what they did that I think is most
00:24:40.140 damning is that they refused to listen to Alberta. And Alberta, if you look back on it, Alberta said
00:24:47.320 we need to diversify our markets. We had to go to places other than the United States.
00:24:53.320 Alberta also said we need to lean into resource development to maintain our wealth. If the
00:24:59.060 country had actually followed what Alberta was talking about, we would be in a very different
00:25:03.460 situation right now. So disregarding regional input is a terrible mistake. And I actually go
00:25:10.160 back to 1935. Alberta elected the Social Credit Party. And the depression in Alberta was worse
00:25:19.480 than it was down east. We had 70% unemployment. They had 20% unemployment in Ontario and Quebec
00:25:26.200 because of the national economic policy.
00:25:29.940 And we elected the Social Credit Party
00:25:32.360 with the idea that we were going to print money,
00:25:35.380 give everybody some cash, and kickstart the economy.
00:25:38.440 The federal government actually stopped the Socrates
00:25:40.380 from doing that, and it turned out in the fullness of time
00:25:43.480 that that was basically just Keynesian economics,
00:25:46.480 and that has now become a mainstay of all Western economies,
00:25:50.300 that when there's a downturn in the economy,
00:25:52.880 they increase the money supply,
00:25:54.680 and that's how we get out of the downturns so listening to alberta it was one of the things
00:25:59.720 that the nation lost well it seems like it's losing it more and more and more well we're
00:26:05.480 trying to reverse that yeah trying to reverse that okay um so there were economic internal
00:26:12.840 economic barriers right we as albertans we wanted to to increase the amount of cash in the economy
00:26:21.640 which is a mainstay of all economies worldwide, whether you agree with the impact on inflation
00:26:27.100 or not, that's another conversation. But at the time it seemed reasonable and we were in a worse
00:26:31.840 financial crisis. So what, what other kind of, you know, what did the other people, what did
00:26:38.300 the other areas of the country do? How did the, you know? Well, I think, you know, it's sort of
00:26:45.640 the um the issue is is the barriers to trade between provinces and how did that how did that
00:26:51.800 really get started and and and um you know and and the um you know the disregard of alberta is
00:26:58.600 one thing and it's gotten worse but uh we also have these barriers and and the previous episode
00:27:04.280 we talked about these different bathtubs and so how did we get the you know how do we get to
00:27:09.080 having these different bathtubs and um and that was sort of it all started you know in in 1867
00:27:15.800 when the four colonies came together and and uh and they all particularly when there was the
00:27:21.160 de-industrialization of the maritime provinces they start trying to start setting up barriers
00:27:27.080 to each other so it it became a whole raft of things including you know professionals can't
00:27:31.880 move from province to province you know in ontario you you you can use one set of tires to transport
00:27:38.200 goods but if you go into quebec you got to change your tires because that's a that's a totally
00:27:42.280 different jurisdiction so they use the jurist the sovereign rights of the provinces to create these
00:27:48.520 incompatibilities and there was actually and it's worthwhile to look up but the the senate did a
00:27:53.960 study on it in 2016 it's called um tear down those walls and they said that the internal
00:28:01.240 trade barriers represented a six percent reduction of gdp that's 160 billion dollars per year
00:28:10.120 and uh and the the governments have tried to get rid of it but it's so deeply implanted and
00:28:17.880 then the courts have actually addressed this issue too and there was a 2018 decision by the supreme
00:28:25.320 court in uh it was r versus como where he a guy had taken some beer across the lines the
00:28:33.000 provincial line between quebec and new brunswick he got caught got had to pay 219 dollars in fines
00:28:40.040 because taking liquor across provincial boundaries and once it ended up going to the supreme court
00:28:45.560 the supreme and the position was that the constitution says the original constitution 1867
00:28:52.840 says that there will be no impediments on free trade and so they were trying to get the court to
00:28:59.240 to accept that and the sec the court actually laughed at him and said we just made this decision
00:29:04.920 in 1920 and we're good with that decision 1920 and if you want to change it you need to go up
00:29:11.160 the hill to see parliament go talk to them and so this where that all started from was during the
00:29:17.880 prohibition years that the attitude was that alcohol was a health issue and the alberta
00:29:25.960 province of alberta had a case against uh it was called gold seal limited versus alberta
00:29:31.880 and they were stopping people from taking uh distributing liquor out of alberta into british
00:29:36.680 columbia and the court said well because it's about health you could do it and you can have
00:29:44.200 these impediments even despite what the 1867 uh bna said and so that's where it all started from
00:29:51.080 that's where it all all got entrenched and of course 1982 constitution just carried it on and
00:29:55.960 didn't address it okay that seems though like provinces it's not the federal government in
00:30:00.280 this case it's provinces doing it to each other um and so this seems like a really big
00:30:06.680 mess of a situation i mean there's so many reasons it seems like a massive situation to
00:30:11.480 to be at this point. So what's your say, Randy? Like what can be done? Again, I ask you.
00:30:19.780 What can we do? Yeah. So it is a big mess. The federal government is complacent. It's not
00:30:26.740 a non-participant. It actually enjoined in the lawsuit with Quebec and I think, sorry, with
00:30:34.060 New Brunswick in the Free My Beer case. And so it wants to stop free trade between provinces,
00:30:41.280 also. There is a free trade agreement in Western Canada, which is actually the gold standard for
00:30:46.840 free trade in Canada. And that has substantially opened up trade between British Columbia,
00:30:52.840 Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. So that's the only place where we have any semblance of
00:30:57.800 free trade whatsoever. So that's a good start. But the problem is, is that, you know, all the
00:31:04.300 politicians have vested interests. And so they can't really address the issues. And the same
00:31:10.300 thing as we talked about on the on the political structure they all have vested interests they're
00:31:15.220 busy being the sycophant for the prime minister so that they can be the next one in line or they're
00:31:21.120 busy getting whatever they get out of being in that position you know whether it's you know high
00:31:27.840 opinion of yourself or the perks of having a driver and and getting a pretty big salary for some
00:31:33.780 people so they don't want to change the system and they're afraid of it and even you know the
00:31:38.600 reform act uh the steven um i think it's uh the mp from guelph i believe his name is steven
00:31:45.560 michael chung um he tried to reform parliament and it got watered down and watered down and watered
00:31:51.860 down until it was basically the reform act of 2014 which basically means that the uh the
00:31:59.440 caucuses have the ability at the beginning of the after an election at the beginning of the term
00:32:05.080 to give themselves power to get rid of the leader and the conservatives are the only ones that have
00:32:10.280 done it and so change is really difficult when the only party that can make the change
00:32:17.580 as the politicians themselves and actually Andrew Coyne at the end of his book actually says that
00:32:24.180 he goes through all the things that are wrong with our central government and and there's many
00:32:29.120 and then at the end he says but we can't change any of them because the only ones that can change
00:32:34.260 it are the people that live in the system and benefit from it. So the answer is, this is what
00:32:39.880 the people can do. And the people are the only ones that can change it. And the only way you can
00:32:45.640 do that is break the egg of our constitutional system, the yoke that has stopped us from fixing
00:32:53.060 these problems, and draft a new constitution by the people that will address all these things.
00:32:59.600 And like we've said a couple of times,
00:33:01.500 India has 470 clauses in their constitution.
00:33:05.480 We can address the political structure.
00:33:07.800 We can address how people sit in the House of Commons.
00:33:11.420 We can do it by province rather than by party, for example.
00:33:15.460 So it's a whole lot harder to stand up and bang your shoe on the table
00:33:18.680 like Kustav did when the NDP guy is right beside you
00:33:22.380 or the liberal that's on the other side.
00:33:24.760 So we can address those problems where the politicians can't.
00:33:27.680 and uh and you know someone asked the question about has have we tried to make changes in the
00:33:33.240 constitution since 82 we've done it twice uh but those were really to me they were ego trips by
00:33:39.220 Mulroney that was trying to put his stamp on on the country rather than Trudeau's stamp so we had
00:33:44.120 the Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord the Charlottetown Accord went to referendum and was
00:33:49.100 turned down the Meech Lake Court got high centered in uh in the legislature in Manitoba but those
00:33:55.180 were all just, they didn't address the fundamental issues. They weren't a people-driven
00:33:59.560 constitution. It was a constitution by the elite, for the elite, to be prospered from by the elite.
00:34:08.880 So the only conclusion that I can reach is that this is where the people need to take a stand.
00:34:15.720 And as we said a couple of times, democracy is not a spectator sport. We need to do this
00:34:21.580 ourselves and but we can't so you're telling me there's hope there is hope yes absolutely well
00:34:28.180 I'm happy to hear that but we first we got to break the egg okay yeah well I'll break a couple
00:34:34.040 eggs okay sounds good okay this ends the first phase of the 20 episode series we have set out
00:34:41.940 a framework for the analysis of the question of what Alberta should do we have shown that there
00:34:47.880 is in fact a third option. That third option is to do what Albertans have always done when fixing
00:34:53.620 a problem. Throw out the old, understand what was good about it, but build something new. Better,
00:35:00.760 stronger, more enduring. Build something that would be good for everyone. Something to greater
00:35:06.860 self-sovereignty, equality, prosperity, and security. Perhaps we can work in conjunction
00:35:13.360 with our neighbors in the West, and then deliver it to Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada.
00:35:19.360 If they choose to join in, we can create an incredible nation together.
00:35:24.240 This is how we in Alberta can propose a nation of people.