Shaun Newman Podcast - #435 - Peter McCaffrey

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Peter is the Founder and President of the Alberta Institute, an independent public policy think tank that aims to advance personal freedom and choice in Alberta. We discuss the history of Alberta politics that has led us to the current election. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 SNP Presents: Luongo & Krainer https://www.showpass.com/snp-presents-luongo-krainer/ Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast

This is Vance Crow. I'm Alex Kraner. My name is David John Parker. This is Alex Epstein. This is Leighton Gray, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday, hump day. Hope everybody's week is moving along. You know, the election is getting closer and closer. Of course, the Tuesday mashup election coverage is going to start 7 p.m. Monday night. So if you're looking to tune in to some Alberta election coverage, why not look?

Well, don't look any further than the podcast. It'll be on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble. So it won't be, it's not like you can just tune into the Spotify app or the Apple Podcast app. This will be live streamed. So if you're looking for that, that's where we're going to be hiding out. Hope you will join us there. We've got an exciting lineup coming, and I'll share a little bit more about that here in a few seconds. Let's get to today's episode sponsors, Blaine and Joey Steffing, Cardium Plumbing and Heating.

They're looking for guys, and what makes them different is a whole lot of things. their words, they say, what makes us different is their service team work seven days on, seven days on, seven days off, schedule 12-hour shifts, no night shift, no on-call, so basically you work half the time and get paid for the whole thing. We also offer traditional five and two schedule for our installers, benefits, great benefits, awesome wages, great team, and they're looking for plumbers, HVAC, techs, installers, and apprentices, just go to guardianplumbing.combing.com, where you can schedule your next appointment at any time. The deer and steer butchery, uh, I was actually just sitting with Brian this morning talking about it and some of the different things.

They do custom cutting and wrapping. And if you're looking to get an animal butchered here in the Lloydminster area, look no further than the deer and steer and they can get you hooked up. If you're looking for, you know, a little bit of an experience, you can also get in there, get your hands on your own meat and help cut it up. And I think that's a pretty unique, cool little thing they offer. Just give them a call. 780870-800.

Erickson Agro Incorporated, Irma, Alberta. That's Kent and Tasha Erickson. Erickson family farm raising for kids growing food for our community in this great country. They've teamed up with the SMP and I would encourage, you know, if you're, you know, so inclined to do like the Erickson's pretty cool to be partnering up with a family farm and I'd love to see more of it here on the SMP. It's because of listeners and people such as Kent and Tasha that the SMP is what it is and is possible, you know, it's people stepping up. That's pretty cool, teaming up with me. And look forward.

to being in Irma, Alberta for a golf tournament here in July. So that should be an interesting, interesting day, I would think. And finally, Jim Spinner at the team over at Three Trees Tap and Kitchen. They, well, as Tews would say, they got the best food in town. Is that what people think? I don't know. I'm kind of curious if that's what everybody thinks. Tews certainly speaks awfully highly of them, and he always gives me a right.

rough time because I never bring it up enough. Well, now I'm bringing it up probably all the time. I always think if you're going to go there, go there on the nights they have live music. Just take a look at their social media. You can figure out when the next time they're going to have live music. And I also say call them book a reservation, 780-874-7625 and take a look for what they got on tap because they got a fantastic selection on tap. Next, next, the next, SMP presents June 10th, Thomas Luongo, Alex, Alex. trainer, going to be in Lloyd Minster. I think that's going to be a fun night at the casino. Certainly, those two men when it comes to seeing what's going on in the bigger world and how

that's going to impact Canada, how that's going to impact your business and life as we move forward. These two guys have a real insight. I think that's going to be a ton of fun that night and you can get tickets to that in the show notes. Click on it and away you go. You get the point and would love to see you there. Finally, going back to here mashup election coverage, it is coming fast. Monday, May 29th, we're going to have election coverage starting streaming 7 o'clock to roughly 10 o'clock is my guess. We'll probably go for about three hours. We've got an interesting lineup teeing up for you guys. Chris Sims, Juno Birchwater, Terrick Alnaga, Nick von Dubbs, Todd Lowen, Chuck Prodnick, Marty Up North, Tim Mowen, Dustin Newman,

David Parker, Rachel Emanuel, Tamara Leach, Sheila Gunn Reed, Drew Weatherhead, Dairy Cartel, Crow making special appearances. So it should be an interesting night. And like I say, we're going to be live streaming that. So if you're so inclined on election night, you want to pay attention what's going on, we're going to have everything there for you. And I hope to see some of you folks there tuning in on the live stream. Once again, Facebook, Rumble, Twitter, and YouTube. So we'll see how that goes and look forward to that night. And I hope to see all you guys there. Now, how about, you know, how about as I ramble on here? How about we get to the tale of the tape

brought to you by Hancock, Petroleum for the past 80 years, have been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricant, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm, commercial or oilfield locations. For more information, visit them at Hancock, patrollium.com.com. He's the founder and president of the Alberta Institute, an independent public policy think tank that aims to advance personal freedom and choice in Alberta.

I'm talking about Peter McCaffrey. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Peter McCaffrey and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Peter McCaffrey. So sir, thanks for hopping on. Welcome. Great to be with you. You know, we're going to get into a whole bunch of Alberta politics here. Obviously, you know, we're closing in on the big election day. But before we get there, you know, you haven't been on the podcast yet. This is the first time. So for my listeners, obviously,

audience. Could you just give a little bit about yourself and, you know, if we go down a couple rabbit holes there, no biggie, we're not in a race against time or anything. So we'll get to our topics when we need to. But just for the audience, so they can kind of get a feel for who Peter is. Sure. My name's Peter McCaffrey. I run the Alberta Institute, which is a public policy research and advocacy organization based in Calgary and I've been running for about four or five years now. You can probably tell from the accent I'm not originally from Alberta. I was born in the UK, mostly grew up in New Zealand, but I've been in Canada about 11 years now. Before working in the think tank space, I had some experience working in politics and the more political side of things. But now I try to stay out of the partisan side of things too much and focus much more on the policies and the ideas and the advocacy and how we explain those ideas to the public and get them interested in any of these public policy ideas. and solutions to some of the problems we have. So did you say you try and figure out how to get the public interested in it?

Yeah, it's obviously a lot easier to do that at election time when people are paying attention. But we try and do it the other three and three and a half, three and three quarters, three and nine tenths of the time as well. And have you found what's worked? Because it's a big question of how do you get the public to engage? So we do, if you look at a question, if you look at, across Canada, there's a whole bunch of very academic think tank public policy focused organizations. And there's also a whole bunch of activist advocacy organizations. And we try and

do a little bit of both, a little bit in the middle. So we don't do necessarily hardcore academic style, you know, 100 page policy reports, although we've done a couple of those in areas we thought it was important. And we're also not out there waving signs and necessarily organizing protests. What we try to do is marry the two and bring the ideas and the thoughts and the policies and that to the people and explain them in a way that is understandable and digestible and digestible and relatable for people to be able to understand what's actually going on in politics and how it affects them. And then just, I was curious, you know, you mentioned growing up originally from the UK and New Zealand. Like, leave me through that.

born in new obviously the united kingdom did you move to new zealand moved with family to new zealand as a kid uh went mostly to school and university in new zealand uh kind of got a little bit involved in politics in new zealand and then moved out to canada and and did the more think tank policy stuff uh why oh why peter would you move from new zealand to alberta well i actually moved from new zealand to regina uh so it's even crazy better uh no i moved after university got a job off and I was really interested in the idea of doing some of those policy side of things and enjoyed it so much. I stayed there for a couple of years and then I moved to Calgary for the weather compared to Regina. Are your parents still in New Zealand? They are, yes. Yeah, yeah.

Man, you know, like, I can't say I've been there. I haven't. It's on the bucket list of places to go. But like, I mean, it's got like the best of every part of the, doesn't it? Like, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on that. No, it does. But also Alberta's, very beautiful as well with the Rockies and all that. Listen, I'm not crapping on Alberta. Eight months of the year it wants to kill you, big fella. And I'm just saying, you know, like maybe New Zealand does too. I don't know. I just think of, you know, the weather there, the beach is everything else, you know? It's more temperate, shall we say. But actually, it's a lot sunnier and drier here in Calgary, right? Like, it rains a lot less here. And, you know,

sometimes, you know, minus 10 and sunny can be better than plus five and rainy and windy. And they both have their pros and cons, shall we say. Fair, fair. Well, let's get into it. I want to talk some Alberta election history with you. I was saying to you before we started, like, one of the, one of the problems I have is I don't know if I really paid attention. Well, I know I didn't. I was gone for close to a decade. And then when I came back, I was living in Saskatchewan. And then, you know, in 2016, after Notley had been elected, I moved into Alberta. And then I started paying attention somewhat. And certainly as COVID years, started to ramp up, then I really started to pay attention, and now I find myself on a podcast

dedicated to, you know, sports and different things like that, talking less and less sports, if any, anymore, you know, obviously. Well, they do say politics is a sport, right? Fair. And I would just love to talk or hear a little bit about, you know, the different terms and how we get to, you know, Rachel Knottley having a shot at, you know, Daniel Smith and the ride she's been on and that's the two that are going toe to toe here in this upcoming election on May 29th. Yeah, well, I think the best place to start would be that 44 year reign of the progressive conservatives. We don't want to go through the whole of it, but suffice to say that, you know, it gave Alberta very much this reputation as being a very conservative province. But, you know,

if you actually dig into what those governments were doing over those periods of time, there was a range of different policies that were implemented. And what really was reflected there was that the PCs became so dominant that if you wanted to be involved in politics, you had to be basically in the PC party. Because if you wanted to join a different party, you didn't have a realistic prospect of getting elected. And so from a political science perspective, we were still having really the same debates, the left-right arguments, the back and forth and all that kind of stuff. it was just happening inside the PC party rather than between two different parties. And that's why you see that different PC parties over that long period of governing were very different, right?

If you were a progressive conservative voter for 40 years, you voted for higher taxes, you voted for higher taxes, you voted for higher spending, you voted for lower spending. You voted for a whole bunch of range of different policies. Maybe you agreed with some more than others. But the reality was that that party was very different depending on who was running it and who the Premier was. And, and, you know, if we fast forward to, you know, kind of the rise of the Wild Rose Party, what eventually happened was that the PCs picked a series of leaders, culminating in Alison Redford, who I would argue was much more centre-left than centre-right. And effectively, that fight inside the PC party went too far one way and the party fractured.

you know there have been signs that that was kind of a potential for a while but you know if you're having that internal fight within a party you can't stray too far one way you still have to kind of be within the realms of possibility and the PC party really went too far one way and the other side of the party just said no that that's too much for us we're gone and suddenly we had a two party system with the PCs in the wild rows now you fast forward to 2015 and you know tons of tons of people have talked about what happened in the 2015 election. We don't necessarily need to go into a massive amount of detail. It's not necessarily the thing we want to spend all of the time on this podcast talking about. But essentially, the PC party and the Wild Rose fractured so perfectly that the NDP was able to come up from third place into first and essentially win government with much less than 50% of support, right? The PCs and the Wild Rose just, happened to perfectly split the vote in a way that meant that Edmonton was entirely NDP and Calgary was almost entirely NDP. Peter, if Rachel, or Rachel, if Daniel Smith doesn't

walk the floor, does that still same scenario play out? Or because she walked the floor, a bunch of people were really P-O'd and went a different way? Or would have played out the same way in your mind? I mean, it's a cliche, but it's really hard to know. I think there were a couple of other moments that really were tricky. I'm going to get myself in trouble with some of my more wild Rosa friends with this, but I don't think the floor crossing was as unpopular in the first week, which might sound like a weird thing to say, but when it first happened, there was certainly some people who were angry, but the first week, I don't think there was this groundswell of this is a terrible idea. Maybe let's say it was more mixed opinions. But after about a week, I hope I'm

getting the timeline right, after about a week Jim Prentice and the PCs having promised to run a fiscally conservative government and keep spending under control and get taxes down and using those policies to appeal to wild roses and ultimately creating a floor crossing. Once the floor crossing had happened, they almost did a 180 and went back to center-left policies and promised tax increases, promised to get rid of the flat tax, promised health care premiums, a bunch of really quite center-left, big spending, big taxing policies. And suddenly a lot of wild roses that there were some that were opposed to the floor crossing the whole time. Don't get me wrong.

But a whole bunch who'd kind of been okay with it was suddenly like, whoa, hang on, we just got played, right? Like they pretended to be conservative to get us on board. And the moment we were on board, they suddenly tacked back to the center left. And from a political science perspective, you can kind of understand why the PCs did that. Once you've dealt with the threat on one side, you've now got to pivot and start dealing with the threat on the other side. But it happens so quickly and so unexpectedly that I think a lot of people were really shaken by that.

And that caused a lot of distrust in the Wild Rose Party, in the PC party. and just generally a lot of people were very annoyed and ready to like throw everything away and start fresh. Now going into the debate in 2015, Wild Rose was actually leading. The PCs were probably in second and the NDP were a little bit behind the PCs and third, but not far behind. My read on it, well, other people disagree, but my read on it is actually a lot of moderate Albertans and especially Calgarians were just looking to get rid of the PCs.

They were sick of it. They were done. They didn't want the PCs anymore. They were happy with anything else. And a lot of them pre the debate were thinking, well, we'll vote wildrose. And after the debate, Rachel Notley had a bit of a stronger performance of the three in the debate.

And of the three, you're talking, Prentice, Gene, and Notley, yes? Exactly. And then just kind of there was almost a stampede if you like towards the NDP as the party most likely to beat the PCs

and I my read on that election is actually very very few people were voting on policy it was much more principles and and gut and just really just being sick of it and wanting a change if I recall my

if I recall my the emotion that I can remember from different people is they were given the middle finger to the PCs. That's what I recall. Now, folks, I already said at the start of this, I wasn't really paying attention. But I do remember hearing people say they were not voting PC anymore. It was anyways. But, you know, in saying that, after I had Daniel Smith on here, well before she was ever Premier, well before she was ever even announced, a lot of people around this part of the country, Wild Rose, bleed wild. Wild Rose, I should say.

And there was a lot, I don't know, I went three or four interviews in a row asking her about the floor crossing because people wanted to hear it, wanted to hear it, wanted to hear it. So regardless. I'll add one more thing as well is that I think even right up until probably the last week, the Wild Rose had a chance to be the government, that election under Brian Jean. That last week, there was a really heavy messaging, both through massive. massive spending on advertising, but also a ton of media and commentators and establishment PCsers and business people, all throwing the same message out, which was that the PC party

is the only party that can beat the NDP. Once it became clear that the NDP was in the lead, the PCs in the Wild Rose were arguing over who was in the best position to beat the NDP. And so it was almost as if by that last week. Most PC and Wild Rose supporters realized, well, hang on, we might have gone a bit too far here and given the NDP a bit too much support. And we don't actually want the NDP to win. We just wanted to kind of send a message. But then there was a coordination problem because both the PCs and the Wild Rose were arguing amongst themselves.

Well, hang on, if you don't want the NDP, you've got to support us. And there was actually a bit of a shift from Wild Rose to PC in that last week. And I remember thinking at the time, no, no, that the, the, wild roses most of them are much too angry with the PCs to shift their vote over the PCs and give the PCs another term in order to stop the NDP and if the PCs are willing to vote Wild Rose then maybe there's an avenue to do that but that was never going to happen either and so it's almost as if people realized what had happened before the election even happened like you know we went a little bit too far there but it was too late to fix it right had the election

election been another month or two away, the PCs and the Wild Rose could have battled it out, made the case that, you know, okay, we know you're angry, but the NDP isn't the solution. You guys need to figure this out and we need to fight this out between the pieces and the wild rows and figure out which of the two should win. But it all happened so quickly that by the time people realized, oh, the NDP might actually win this. It was too late. They couldn't coordinate a response to that, if that makes sense. So tell me about the, The notly years. Like, you know, whether it's, I don't know, is it policy?

Is it, is it dead? Is it things they did? Walk me through the, you know, because one of the big things Daniel Smith kept saying at the debate, you know, basically is, you know, she won't talk about her time as premier. She can't run on that. And instead of notly, like, you know, when I'm watching, instead of notly, like basically saying, that's a lie.

I'll talk about the time I was premier. She wouldn't say that. And so I found that very, very interesting, right? Walk me through it. What are the things that stick out about Notley's time as Premier? So I think the first thing is to realize is that most of the NDP candidates who ran in that election were not expecting to get elected. The vast majority of them were not expecting to get elected. and the NDP party itself was not expecting most of its candidates to get elected.

And so there had not been either the scrutiny, but also the opportunity for more talented candidates to put their name forward because they hadn't expected to work. To the NDP's credit, you look at this election right now because everybody's now adjusted to the idea that, you know, at least in some seats, the NDP have a good shop, they've been able to attract more talented candidates. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the candidate's policy positions, but more talented candidates, you know, former counsellors and people with more political experience and business experience and things like that. The 2015 NDB caucus was incredibly inexperienced and honestly nobody really knew who any of

them were. People were voting for the party. They were voting for Rachel Notley based on her performance in the debate and they woke up after the election going, okay, so who's my MLA? I have no idea who they are or what they did before the election or what they're planning to do now they're elected and things like that. So that's the first thing to realize is that, you know, day after the election we woke up and we had a new government and basically nobody knew who any of them were. Now, the other thing to realize is that all of this was happening in conjunction with a massive downturn in oil and gas industry based on world prices. And, you know, this debate has gone back and forth between the political parties. Usually what happens is the one side says,

oh, well, you know, the NDP were a disaster economically, killed jobs, economy collapse, revenue collapse, people lost incomes and houses and businesses moved away. And the NDP respond by saying, oh yeah, but that wasn't us. That was because of oil prices collapsed, and you can't blame us for that. I think that's a little, a little too simplified to be credible. And we have to dig a little bit deeper to go back to what was happening at the time, what the government did. And I would argue that, yes, the NDP can't be blamed for the price of oil.

But also, nobody really ever did blame the NDP for the price of oil. Everybody on Twitter saying you can't blame the NDP for the price of oil can never really point to an example of when somebody did, blame the NDP for the price of oil because the complaint wasn't, oh, the NDP should have controlled global oil prices and made them go back up. The complaint was that the NDP's response to this collapse in the price of oil was poor and created much more problems than would have happened had the response been different. So give you a couple of examples to that. One of the first things that the NDP did when they became government was to announce that they were going to

do a royalty review. They were going to review the system that we have in Alberta that determines whether, how much the oil and gas industry pay in royalties to the government, you know, effectively that the taxes they pay for the resources. And almost overnight investment dried up because Alberta had a pretty stable investment environment. Alberta had a pretty stable resource royalty system where businesses could come, invest in Alberta and plan what that investment will look like in the future based on that royalty system. And prior to the NDP getting elected announcing this royalty review, basically everybody agreed

that the royalty system was actually really fair. Without getting into the minutiae of the details, when oil prices are quite low, the oil companies pay a pretty low royalty. But as all prices go up, it increases exponential. to the point where they're paying massive amounts of royalty when prices are high. And a similar thing happens as the investment has been in Alberta for longer. So when you first invest in Alberta, you're paying less. But over time, as you get a return on your capital, the amount of royalty that you're paying

massively increases. So there's an incentive for the first few years to come to Alberta to construct things to create jobs and then that really ramps up over time. we can argue whether that's a perfect policy or not. Like maybe, you know, there's little things we could improve. But basically everybody agreed that it was pretty good and it was pretty fair. So the NDP come along and do this royalty review and suddenly everybody's sitting around going, okay, well, why would we invest when we don't even know what the system's going to be?

And the royalty review went for a really long time and it really dragged out. And then at the end, when they finally announced the results of the review, the results were, oh, yeah, well, we looked at it and we decided it's actually. actually pretty fair. We're basically going to keep it how it is. And so you had this really long period of uncertainty at the absolute worst time when all prices were low, where nobody wanted to bring any money into Alberta because they didn't know what the system was going to be. And then at the end of it, the NDP basically said, oh, you guys were right. Yeah, it is, it is fair. Sorry, we didn't realize it was fair. And the timing on that was just terrible.

Now, on top of that, raising business taxes and the introduction of carbon tax, all sorts of other unfriendly business policies that really made it tough to invest in work in Alberta. And I think it's fair to say that a lot of the challenges Alberta faced in that period were caused by the response that the NDP brought to the low oil prices and the difficult economic challenges, not by the challenges. not by the challenge themselves. And there's been studies that have looked at this as well, right? Like, Alberta isn't the only resource place in the world. There are plenty of other places that are, you know, have large oil and gas industries as part of their economies. And to be frank, yes, those places struggled compared to when oil prices were high, but they didn't do nearly as poorly as Alberta did over that period of time.

They didn't struggle as badly. They didn't lose as much investment. They didn't see as many job losses proportionally. And that's because while they were struggling through lower oil prices, they didn't have all these additional challenges that the NDP had laid on through all of these other policies. And I really think that's what happens. So maybe it's not always articulated quite as well as that when people say, oh, well, the NDP screwed up the economy.

Like it's really easy for the NDP to say, well, no, that wasn't us. That's all prices. But if you actually take the time to dig into it in a little bit more detail, I think that's where a lot of the challenges came from. So inopportune timing on a review, increasing taxes and a carbon tax, or what stick out to you of Rachel Notley's time as Premier? Well, and the results of that as well, right? Like we saw a massive accumulation of debt. What's a massive accumulation of debt?

Well, they added more to the province's debt than every single government. government before them combined had added to the province's debt. And what were they? Period. What were they investing in? What were they putting all this, all this debt that they were bringing on? What were they doing? Well, in large part, it was the business uncertainty just created the revenue that was coming in.

So most, for the most part, they were just spending the money on the same things that the Alberta government had always spent the money on. But they dried up their revenue. Right. And they were unwilling to adjust those. plans and and you know this this as well can't only be blamed on the NDP you know if we go back to the PC era i mentioned the start of the interview the PC party went through many different iterations right Ralph Klein got the debt uh that he'd inherited paid off and and that was a massive achievement

although the debt that Ralph Klein paid off was was actually quite small compared to the debt that we find ourselves in now right like the the debt now is make makes that look like not necessarily a massive deal. But he got that debt paid off, he got spending under control. But then different PC premiers that came after him really ramped up spending. And we can go maybe a little bit of a tangent here into the resource roller coaster, right? Which you may have heard of and we hear a lot of talk about. This is the idea that, okay, all prices go up and down.

And the problem we've had as Alberta is when the oil prices go up, we spend all that money. but then when the oil prices go back down again, we keep spending it as if the oil prices are still high. Now, politicians from all sides say, we need to get off this resource roller coaster. But there's two different ways of getting off it. We could get off it at the top and keep spending at that high level that it's at at the top,

or we could get off at the bottom and keep spending at the low level and not be dependent on it, right? Like if you get off the roller coaster at the top and keep spending at the high level and then goes back down again, you're just going to have constant deficits. So if you want to get off the resource roller coaster, in the end, there's only one way to do that. And that is to control government spending so that the government spends the money that comes in, excluding the money that comes in from royalties.

So take all of the revenue that comes in from personal income taxes, business taxes, fees, all these other taxes, add them all up, ignore the royalty revenues, and only spend the amount that comes in from every other source. And then you have the royalty revenues when they're good, you can save them and when they're low, you're not dependent on them. Like you can't have it both ways. You can't keep spending the resource royalties and get off the resource royalty roller coaster, right? Like, that's not compatible. So to go back to where we were before, the PCs had kept increasing spending while times were good. And then when oil prices dropped, the NDP just kept spending as if the resources were still coming in at a really high rate,

ran massive deficits, and accumulated debt. So it was kind of the worst of both worlds, right? Like either you increase spending when royalties go up and then you have to cut spending when royalties go down, or you have to keep it flat at the lower rate the whole time. The one thing you can't do is increase when they go up and then just stay high even when they go down and yet that's that's what we've ended up doing in Alberta Do you do you think it could be inexperienced and she's learned something and you know as we walk into the next election? I'm jumping a bit of the timeline But is there any party that goes? Well, she's learned her lesson and like I mean obviously she's seen what she can and can't do and and maybe if elected she could be different this time around you've already talked about there's a there's a better class if you would yeah yeah

people i try i try to be generous about these sort of things because you know that that's what they've claimed and you know you don't want to automatically assume that that's wrong um you know it is possible to learn things having been government and had that experience of being government um but but then you actually look at what they're campaigning on doing this election and And it's essentially the same as what the campaign on doing in 2015. So we're jumping a little bit ahead here. We can come back to this later, but I'll give you the preview. And that is that earlier this week, the NDP announced their fully-costed platform.

And it's not fully costed because you look down the list and they're promising not to raise income taxes. They're promising to not raise small business taxes. They're not going to do a sales tax. They're not going to do this. They're not going to do this. the only thing they are promising to do is to raise business taxes, right, which is one of the things they raised last time. And so they've got this cost of plan that includes an increase in business taxes, and that's how they're going to pay for all of their additional spending. But in the press conference where they announced this plan, their policy expert who designed the plan was asked, well, did you do any analysis on what the effect to businesses would be?

of raising taxes on businesses. And he says, oh, no, I didn't analyze that. And Trevor Toome, who's a pretty well-respected neutral economist, pretty much immediately on Twitter, points out that what they've done is just assumed that raising business taxes will raise the revenue that's generated linearly. And I don't want to get too nerdy on here, right? But like, imagine if each one percent of-

Nerd-o, Peter, nerdo. Yeah, I'll make up numbers to keep. but simpler, but imagine if each 1% of business tax brought in a billion dollars, right? So we have an 8% business tax and that generates $8 billion. It's not the right number, but assume that it was, right? So 8% business tax generates $8 billion. What the NDP basically did is said, well, we're going to change the 8% business tax to 11%.

So now we're going to raise $11 billion instead of $8. But that's not how it works. Economists from across the spectrum recognize that when you raise taxes, you affect the economy, you make, you affect the businesses that are paying the taxes. The businesses make different choices based on the fact that the tax rates are different. And so economists have ways of calculating, hey, if you raise taxes by this amount, if there were no impacts, this is how much extra you generate. But also we have a rough idea what the impacts are. So here's how much you have to adjust it back down to to have a reasonable calculation of how much extra you will actually

generate. And then that's what you should be putting in your budget. plan. So Trevor Toom says, well, hang on, these guys haven't done that. They've just assumed this perfect increase in revenue that if they raise taxes, they'll just generate all this extra revenue. And then they promise to spend it all. And nobody thinks that they're actually going to get this amount of money in, which means they've got all these promises that aren't paid for. And the kicker is, if you go back to when the NDP were in government and they raised the business tax rates, when they were actually in government actually did this, and they'd past budgets, those budgets didn't make this mistake because they actually had government officials

advising them saying, well, no, you can't just do that. You have to actually take into account this and this and this. And so the NDP's actual budgets, when they made this promise last time, adjusted and lowered the revenue projections. And yet now here we are in 2023. They're promising to raise the business taxes again. And they've made this basic error. And it's not a small amount. Like, forget the made-up numbers I was using before for ease of debate. The actual numbers, the difference between their made-up promise of what we're going to generate this much extra versus what Trevor Toome estimates the real amount that actually generate is, is more than a billion dollars on this one thing. So that's more than a billion-dollar hole in their budget on this one little mistake that is really basic.

All economists from left and right agree, the NDP's own budget. budgets from last time they were in government agree with this. And that's a hole in this plan that they're claiming is fully costed. So to go back to your original question, it would be nice to think that having been in government, you would learn some of these lessons. But if we actually look at the evidence based on the budget that they're proposing, no, they haven't learned anything. They've already got a billion dollar hole in the budget and we haven't even had the election yet.

Does the political nerd in you just go like, what the heck is going on? No, because the political murder me expect to. Fair, fair. Did you think it would be that obvious though? Like, I mean, like, you know, it hadn't been even released for 30 minutes and all of a sudden it's being picked apart. I mean, no matter what side releases anything, there's always going to be somebody to try and pick it apart. Yeah, you wouldn't think it would be something that based. you know the the bigger concern if you like that a lot of people had with the

NDP going into the selection and and this goes back to what we're talking about with 2015 to 2019 would be well what are they not campaigning on right so this is the plan that they're campaigning on but what will they do that isn't in here right and if you look back at the 2015 to 2019 period the big obvious one is the carbon tax yeah now they've since tried to rewrite the story and say, oh, well, you know, it wasn't our fault. The federal government introduced a carbon tax and we had to do it. No, no, no. The NDP introduced, planned, and implemented their carbon tax.

And they were campaigning on this before the federal liberals even won the federal election in 2015, right? So they had... Tell me about that, Peter, if you don't mind. About just carbon tax, NDP, the idea. Walk me through that. Well, I mean, honestly, if we've got time, we could go on another little bit of a tangent here because this is another real... Welcome to a podcast here. You're bringing things up and you're teasing my mind.

I want to hear it. So the federal government requires provinces to have a carbon tax. And if they don't, the federal government will impose their own carbon tax on those provinces. And there's been court cases and, you know, the federal government will impose. The Supreme Court has ruled that the way that it's done currently is fine, but a lot of people still disagree with that, and I suspect we're going to see more fights about that in the coming years, and especially if we end up with a changing government federally, I think we'll see quite a few changes there. But the NDP introduced their carbon tax before the federal

liberals were even elected. So they got elected early in 2015, announced their plans for carbon tax, started designing it, started writing the legislation, the rules and the regulations. And then only in late 2015 did the federal liberals get elected on this platform having carbon tax. And the federal carbon tax didn't even get implemented for a couple years after that as well. So you're saying the NDP of Alberta. So I'm hearing this correct. Yeah. Had their carbon tax rolling along well before Justin Trudeau and the liberals were talking about it?

100%. Yeah. So the federal government was campaigning on one, but the election wasn't even over before the NDP started implementing this. And the big controversy around this is that that's not something that the NPP campaigned on in 2015. So they didn't talk about it and then they slammed it once in the had a little line in their platform saying, you know, we'll help save the environment and will help reduce emissions. But nothing about a massive, province-wide, really expensive carbon tax that everybody's going to have to pay. Right. And if, you know,

know, so the reason why that was so controversial then, and it's still controversial now, is because now you've suddenly got a lot of people going, well, okay, here's their platform that they're promising the campaign on this time. It's already got a billion dollar hole on it, but what isn't in there? And there's been a lot of discussion over the last few weeks about what some of those policies that might be implemented by the NDP if they were to winning in this time would be, and how much would they cost? And frankly, they make the carbon tax from 2015. Dean look cheap. So what are some of the political nerds debating about, you know, to me, this just, I just feel like I'm getting a peek inside the room, Peter. Yeah. Me and my brothers

when we're arguing the Emmington Oilers or, you know, soon to be, you know, Toronto just, Kyle Dubus is no longer the GM there, you know, and I can just hear the little bantering. When you say that, I'm like, oh, bring me in the room. Let's see, let's hear. What is, what is going on behind scenes? What are they saying? What are they talking about? Well, so the, the reason we can predict this is because we can look at what other the provinces are talking about. We can look at what the federal government is talking about. We can look about what various organizations are advocating for and pushing and things like that. So there's a couple.

The first big one is the federal government a little while ago, we're pushing the idea of transitioning Canada's electricity grid to net zero, right? Not zero emissions. You can still do some offsets and some key. capture and things like that, but net zero electricity generation for the whole of Canada's electricity grid by 2050. And that's not legally required yet, but everybody basically recognizes it's coming and they've started planning for them and been working on it.

Even industry is starting to talk about it. And so you've got Alberta and Saskatchewan starting to talk about things like small modular reactors and various other technologies that will really help us get to that net. zero position by 2050. It's important to note as well, a small little point here, it's important to note that this is a much bigger challenge for Western Canada than it is for Eastern Canada, because most of Eastern Canada relies quite heavily on hydro,

which counts as a renewable electricity source, whereas most of Western Canada's resources are coming from non-rearable energy, like oil and natural gas and things like that, right? So in some of the problems, provinces in the east, this isn't actually much of a change and they're going to be able to do it by 2050, easy, no problem whatsoever. For Alberta, Saskatchewan, some of the rest of the West, this is actually a massive challenge that's going to require a lot of work, a lot of investment, a lot of spending by businesses, a lot of technological innovation. And we're relying on certain technologies like small modular nuclear and things like that that are going to come online in like the mid-2030s and become like the technology is there yet. but they're not viable and they're too expensive and things like that.

It's going to take a bit of time for them to become viable. And then it's going to take time to implement them and roll them out and actually start getting us towards some of these targets. So the big thing that's happened recently is the federal government started talking about, well, you know what? We said 2050, but like, how about 2035 instead? And Eastern Canada's like, yeah, we could probably do that, right? We're already mostly on hydro, just means accelerating.

few things, no problem. And Alberta in Saskatchew, we're like, hang on, the technology for us to do it isn't even going to be available until after 2035. Like, this is impossible. We can't do this. And then Ottawa says, well, you can. You can just pay the credits. Right. So just keep using your natural gas to generate electricity and just pay us the credits for the difference. So suddenly you're now talking about a policy that goes from, well, we need to invest some money in new technologies to get off emissions and get to a net zero grid by 2050 to, oh, we're going to force you to do this before it's even technologically possible, but that's okay because you can just give us massive amounts of money

to make up for the fact that you haven't done it yet. And that's effectively what Ottawa is now looking at proposing for the net zero grid. And so we're talking about just ludicrous amounts of money, 50 plus billion dollars of investment needed for the technologies, another $30-plus billion worth of economic harm and reduced economic output because of having to spend the money on those technologies and because of having to spend for these credits and all this kind of stuff. And like, you know, the carbon tax is only a few billion dollars a year, right?

We're talking about $80, $90, $100 billion on this one policy. And this is a policy that's being implemented by the federal liberals and the federal NDP. and when the United Conservatives in Alberta asked Rachel Notley, well, are you going to oppose this or are you going to support it? She won't even say it. And so this is like another thing where people are looking at, well, look what happened with the carbon tax last time. Okay, they didn't explicitly say they were going to do a carbon tax, but they also didn't explicitly say they're not going to. And we've got another example here, which is going to be much more expensive where it's like, okay, well, you know, she hasn't explicitly said she won't. do it, but also it's not in the platform. It's not costed. They're not including this in any of the

expenses. So is this going to be another thing that if the NDP win the provincial election, they're going to sign our voter up to and it's going to cost us billions and billions and billions of dollars? And nobody really knew it was happening because, you know, it wasn't talked about by the NDP during the election campaign. That's just one. We could spend a whole bunch more time talking about some of the other stuff, which is the some of the other federal mandates that are coming down the pipeline as well that will, you know, cause a lot of the same problems. And we also haven't had any feedback from the NDP as to which. Well, just, just, just rapid fire.

What is some of the federal things you're looking at that, you know, like I think, I certainly get, and I have to assume my listeners get the coalition between the liberals and the NDP and the fact that Rachel, you know, like the Alberta NDP isn't this separate entity and all this jazz. So what are some of the things rapid fire that stick out to you from a federal point of you that you're like this one this one this one this one well so so the the other one and it was actually in the debate last night and and so it got mentioned again no answer from the nDP as to whether they would support it or would oppose it but the other big one is this idea of an emissions cap and whether

it's a production cap um so the the federal government have announced as part of this transition they want an emissions cap on oil and gas production. So there will be a limit on the amount of emissions that are produced by the oil and gas that Alberta extracts and sells. And this is another one of those situations where in the long run, the industry and Alberta is pretty confident

that we can meet emissions caps through new technology and that an emissions cap won't affect the economy too significantly because we can continue producing oil and gas and as technology improves, emissions will come down and it will get cleaner. And that's been happening for a long time already, right? Like the production that Alberta does of oil and gas has become more and more environmentally friendly as new technologies come online and that will continue to be the case.

But the emissions cap being proposed by the federal government and the timelines that it requires are so severe that the technology required to meet those requirements won't be available. And so the only way to meet that kind of emissions cap would be to de facto cut production and implement a production cut. So it's a way they can say, oh, it is in a production cup. Right. We see meet these targets.

We don't have that in there. The federal NDP, the Alberta NDP are saying nobody supports a production cap. Nobody is proposing production cap. we're not proposing to reduce the amount of oil and gas that Alberta produces. This is what people... The emissions cap that they're proposing is so severe that the only way to meet it would be a production cap. This is what people dislikeable politics. It's shady. Right. Like it's shady. Right. And so what, you know, the think tank today had an email actually about this, talking about some of the challenges.

And there's actually a report that came out that analyzed the impact to Alberta of a production cap for oil and gas, right? And it's a big long report. People can look it up from public policy forum if they, if they're as nerdy as I am and actually want to go through the details. But the high level is by 2050, if we do a production cap, Alberta's GDP is $120 billion lower than it would have otherwise bit. And to put that in context, that's like $26,000 per Albertan. And that's not the total cost. That's the reduction. That's the reduction. and GDP every year, like every year the Alberta economy is $26,000 per Albert and poorer because of the submissions cap. Effectively what it means is if you look at a graph, I'm mirrored here, so I'll try to get it right.

If you look at a graph, Alberta's economy is currently going like this, and if we implement a production cap, it immediately goes flat for 30 years. So you look at the economic downtrend that we had in 2015 to 2019, where the economy really struggled and we didn't have economic growth and do that for 30 years of basically no economic growth. And that's the effect on the Alberta economy that a production cap would have, which makes sense, right? Like, oil and gas isn't the only industry that Alberta has. In fact, it's been a declining share of Alberta's industry every year. We always talk about diversification. We need to get off oil and gas. Actually, the Alberta economy has been growing and improving diversifying naturally by itself over time.

and the oil and gas industry has become a smaller and smaller share of the Alberta economy. But it's still a very big share, and it's still the main reason why we're a rich province that does so well. And if you start capping production of oil and gas, we're going to stop growing and we're going to become poorer. And that's what that report shows. And it's not by a small amount. So to your point, you've got a federal liberal and a federal NDP party and a provincial Alberta NDP party saying, we don't support a cap because that's economic harmful. We only, sorry, we don't support a production cap.

We only support an emissions cap. But then you look at the details of the policy and guess what? Their emissions cap would actually be a production cap. And that production cap would be incredibly harmful for the other economy. So that's what some of these discussions have been happening in, you know, some of these areas have been over the election. And, you know, it's hard for me as somebody who follows this day to day to know how much of these different policy discussions are actually filtering through and that

people are hearing and understanding and and you know incorporating into their decision at the election you know like when the Alberta NDP says they're going to say they're going to raise business taxes but it won't cost any jobs and then the UCP say well no it will cost jobs just like it did last time I don't know which piece of that people are hearing and and agreeing with right so it's sometimes hard for me to judge how much each of these debates and discussions are a fact into the election and in some ways that's why I like doing the policy stuff instead of doing the political stuff. Well it's it's like it's not like we're talking about the Stanley Cup finals, you know, let's just assume the Oilers and the flames were meeting in the conference finals,

you know, maybe someday folks and the winner goes to the Stanley Cup. You can just imagine the excitement and the emotion and everything else. We're talking about things that, you know, A, I can't even grasp the amount of number, you know, you're rattling off billions and all these different things and my brain just can't, just factor that amount of money first. Right. And you know, and you're just talking about some abstract thoughts, right, that most people don't spend their day looking at. And so it's, you know, it's, I love hearing it from a...

I'll give an example. The $80-odd billion that the net zero electricity grid policy would cost over that that period of time, that's enough money to buy every household in Alberta, a Tesla. Wow. Like, we're not talking a couple of hundred dollars. This is a gigantic amount of money for that one policy. And it's not being campaigned on. And it's not being campaigned on. Yeah, isn't that a wild thought? And I just think, you know, like, so you start, you talk about flattening, you know, the economy and businesses,

One of the things that I've heard from businesses, through COVID, there was enough people leave in general, right? Got out of Alberta, got out of Canada, for that matter. But I've heard lots of businesses say, you know, if the NDP are voted back in, we're gone. We're not going through this again. And when I hear that, I'm like, well, that's, that's, do they factor any of that in? You know, because I certainly don't hear if the UCP get elected that all of a sudden businesses are out of here. We're out of here. We're getting it's like I don't hear any of that. Yeah. It's it's funny. I'll give one little anecdote. It's funny because obviously people

in mobile, people can move around, right? And so people, businesses can move to different provinces of tax rates change and things like that. You know, you do sometimes hear some NDP is saying, oh, well, if the UCP is re-elected, I'm going to move to British Columbia or something. You know, that does happen as well. We'll have fun with that. Yeah. But also they tend to be the same people that claim that businesses won't go anywhere if we raise business taxes. Like they accept that they might want to move if they don't agree with the policies

that will be in place in Alberta. But there's no way any businesses will move somewhere else if the businesses don't like the policies that will be in place in Alberta, right? So there's a bit of a dichotomy there. But no, I think it's pretty obvious that we live in a pretty global world. It's becoming more and more easier for people to move around,

with talent to move around. And it's becoming incredibly easy for businesses to move. The other thing to remember is you don't need existing businesses leaving Alberta for our economy to struggle. Just not having as much new business and new investment coming in would be a massive harm, right? Like the economy isn't some stagnant thing that stays still. It relies on constant new investment to grow the economy and make our lives better. And just staying flat for a few years is bad enough, right? Like you don't even need a downturn.

Just flat. What would, I mean, you know, I, you know, 30 years is, you know, I have to assume in the first four that somebody would walk in and be like, no more of this. But let's just say we had a, let's say we stayed stagnant for two election cycles, eight years. In your mind, what do you see? Like, what is it? Well, we don't actually need to imagine. Look at Saskatchewan. There's no, there's no inherent real differences between.

the province of Alberta and the province of Saskatchewan, except that the province of Saskatchewan for decades had an NDP government that discouraged investment. And Alberta for decades had a more conservative government than encouraged investment. And for decades and decades, that was the case. And the investment and the people and the talent and the businesses and the development and the corporate headquarters came to Alberta. And, and, you know, like economists and,

and public policy people recognize that this is the case, right? Singapore used to be very poor, and it's now richer than most Western countries. Singapore doesn't have inherent natural resources. It's a small, tiny island. What they did have was a government that was willing to implement good public policies that encouraged business and encouraged investment.

And they attracted business and they attracted investment, and the country became rich, right? The choices we make as people and the choices that our governments make about which policies get implemented determine whether we succeed or not. And that's why elections matter, right? Elections determine the people who will determine the policies that will determine how our economy goes. Yeah, you make a very good point. Well, let's rewind the clock.

We're sitting in 2019. You know, we were talking about Rachel Notling. I don't know if, and the NDP, just in their first, you know, they get in. They make some oopses, maybe blunders, maybe whatever word you want to tack on to it. I don't know if there's anything else you want to say on the NDP or if you, you know, you can certainly talk about the United Conservative Party getting in. Yeah, I mean, we could spend ages on what else happened in 2015, 2019. I think a lot of people are familiar with it.

There were a whole bunch of policies that alienated a wide range of people. You know, stuff that affected rural Alberta like Bill 6, stuff that affected the business community, just a whole pile of really challenging policies that created a whole pile of different problems. And I think the other problem was that people felt like the NDP wasn't listening to the feedback, right? Like they had their plan for what they wanted to implement, they were going to implement it, and it didn't really matter whether Albertans pushed back and said, said, well, no, we don't want that or we don't want this, so we want to do this differently. Like, it just went ahead.

And, you know, I think it's fair to say that the result of the 2019 election was pretty well set pretty early on, right? Often campaigns make a difference, but once we had a united Conservative Party and people saw what the NDP government had done for the first couple of years of their term, people were pretty set that they didn't want another four years of that and that they wanted to change. And, you know, the election campaign this time is going to matter. People are making a decision as to who to vote for. But I think the 2019 election campaign, it didn't really matter what happened in the campaign.

People had made their mind up. They knew they wanted to change. They knew they wanted to vote the NDP out. And they were just waiting until they got the opportunity to do so. So I think that that basically describes the 2019 election. And then we move into 2019. with the UCP government. And, you know, it's really interesting because, you know, I look at it from outside,

and there was a lot of promises to what people were hoping would happen. And in some ways, Jason Kenning and the UCP got elected in 2019 with a massive mandate for pretty big structural changes to how Alberta operates, right? Like if you think back to that 2019 election, they weren't just running on, well, we need to undo what the NDP did. They were actually talking about undoing what a lot of Alison Redford and Stelmac and some of those PC governments had got wrong as well. And, you know, that kind of goes back to what I was talking about before where the Progressive Conservative Party really moved around a lot. And a lot of people, including progressive conservatives, felt like the Progressive Conservative Party that was in power for a while before the IndyP. wasn't really a very conservative party either.

And so a lot of people are expecting the UCP to come in, fix up a lot of the challenges that have been introduced with the NDP, but also go back and clean up a lot of problems from before that time. And a lot of people really wanted that because they disagreed with what a lot of that previous PC government had done too. And so there was a lot of optimism there. In reality, you know, we can talk about you know, when the history is written, that the 2019 to 2023 period and that government for that four years is going to be dominated by the two, two and a half years of COVID and COVID policies and COVID restrictions and reactions to that and the implications of those.

But there was a window before COVID for a good 10, 11 months where the government had a really big window to get a lot of really good structural reforms done and they didn't. And a lot of people were disappointed by that. And funnily enough, if you look at the polling and the popularity of the UCP and Jason Kinney throughout the four-year term, there was a pretty straight downward trend right from when they got elected. You can't really attribute a lot of the decline to COVID, maybe half of it. But half of the drop in popularity of the UCP government happened before COVID even started. And so that tells you it wasn't just the COVID policies that run popular. It was some of the approach to some of the economic policies and some of those structural reforms that weren't getting done. So the UCP had a lot of challenges before COVID.

COVID was obviously a massive problem and a massive distraction from the initial platform that they promised on. I think the UCP did some good reforms as well. I'm not saying it was entirely negative. But, you know, it was dominated by COVID. And then ultimately, you know, Jason Kenney was removed as leader, and then we had a leadership race, and then Daniel Smith won the leadership race, and now we're into the 2023.

So elections. So there was a small window for some structural reforms before COVID, and then there was COVID. and then there was a leadership race and election campaign. So there's a lot of things that needed fixing from the NDP time and a lot of things that needed fixing from the PC time before it that still haven't really been addressed and we haven't seen those big structural reforms

that would really correct a lot of those mistakes. And hopefully that's something we see in the coming years. So when you look at the two, you know, you got, I mean, there's different parties certainly running, but as everyone knows at this point, it's the two parties, you know, the NDP or the UCP. What is the biggest separators that you see? Well, first I'll note that in other elections, I try to be really fair to other parties running, because I actually agree.

I don't like it when people focus too much on the big two parties, because depending on election system, depending on election, depending on election campaign strategy and how a campaign plays out, other parties can play a pretty significant role. And, you know, we see in Alberta, even though the trend line has been down, they can win seats in elections. Having said that, 2023, I've seen people complaining that all the attention's been on the UCP and the NDP. But this time, it's absolutely correct that all the attention should be on the NDP and UCP. No other party has a serious campaign structure.

there's not there's not even any other party that is running enough candidates that they could be government like no other party is running candidates in more than half the seats so even if something crazy happened and everybody's side well we don't want the UCP we don't want the NDP we want some other party they don't have enough candidates running that they could even form government so you know it's not going to happen anyway but you get my point right like the other parties are so much less organized and less structured and less serious this time than in previous elections, that it is correct to focus just on the UCP and the NDP in this election, because realistically, that's the only realistic choice. And in some cases, when people go to the ballot,

those will be the only choices on the ballot for them, because those are the only parties that have candidates running in their writing. So that's why the focus has been on the two parties. As to the differences, you know, it's interesting. It's fair to say that the UCP have tacked a little bit more towards the centre, and the NDPO have obviously tacked a lot more towards the centre. And so on the face of it on the platforms, you know, they're both, there's differences, but, you know, there's some overlap as well. But it really goes back to what we talked about before,

which is, do you trust that that's actually how a prospective NDP? government would govern, right? They, they claim to be all moderate and they wouldn't do this and they wouldn't do that and they wouldn't just come tax last time. And now they're campaigning on this moderate policy and we're not going to raise this tax and we're not going to raise that tax. I'm not going to raise this tax. But as we've talked about, if you look at the goals that they're trying to achieve, they can't achieve their goals if they keep their election promises. So something has to give there and they're not willing to say that they're not going for those goals anymore. So, you know, the question isn't, is there a big difference between the platforms?

The question is, is there a big difference between how they would govern once they're elected? And I think the answer to that is yes. Yeah, fool me once, Peter, you know? Like, you're... Famous politician got that quote very wrong, so I'm not even going to try and say it. I don't know if you get the reference there. Well, I appreciate you coming on and doing this. I don't know, you know, like there's just, you know,

when you roll back through, basically what's damning on the NDP is how they handled certain situations and the fact they ran an election and then introduced something different when they were governing. And the biggest fear that I'm getting out of all of this is you can see the trend of where the federal government wants to go and it's certainly lockstep with where the NDP would like to go because if you look at their track record and you go, we're already seeing mistakes in what they're proposing,

what else are they hiding? And that rate there should make every Albertan shudder a little bit at least. Well, and it's important to recognize that the way that Canada is structured and the way that the federal government works and the rulings we've seen from the Supreme Court, even if we have a provincial government in Alberta that opposes these ideas and is willing to stand up and push back against them and try and stop them, even if we have a provincial government fighting these policies, it's going to be tough, right? If we have a provincial government that wants those policies, it's going to be impossible. Even if we have a provincial government that pretends to not to want them and pretends to push back, but in the end says, oh, well, you know, we tried to convince Justin Trudeau.

to not do this, but he wanted to do it. And so there's nothing we can do. Well, then we've got no hope of stopping some of these crazy ideas. So this isn't, you know, the election al-Burter isn't going to decide whether these policies get implemented or not. The election al-Burter is going to decide whether anybody is going to oppose these policies when the federal government tries to implement them. And, you know, that's another fight to come.

But to be frank, if the NDP. win in Alberta, there won't even be anyone opposing these ideas in the Alberta government. So that's a pretty big stark difference between the two. Yeah, I would agree. Well, let's slide into the final question. The Kruidmaster final question, I actually just did it with a, we've changed it just a smidge for the Alberta election. So what riding are you voting in and who are the people running for it, if you know, off the

top of your head, I assume a political nerd such as yourself probably does. I live in Calgary Buffalo, downtown Calgary, and the incumbent is Joe Cici NDP, and the main opponent is Astrid Coon for the UCP, and while Astrid seems like a lovely person, that's going to be a safe win for Joe Cici for the NDP because of the nature of it being a downtown Calgary riding. Have you ever talk to like door knockers or anyone of that sort for I'm going to assume the UCP and seen what they hear when they want like did they I I actually live in a apartment building so we don't really get to lockers because they can't get in the building so honestly if I if I didn't go outside you wouldn't even know there was an election going on because it's not like there's there's lawn

signs in the in the foyer of the building and the door knockers can't get in so I'm curious so You know, like you're in a NDP hotbed then. Is this is the same to what you're saying? Do you have any conversations with different people to see what their thoughts are and why? I think the dominant theme of this election has, and it was always going to be those swing voters in Calgary suburbs, right? You probably heard all the commentators talking about this. Most of Edmonton's going to go NDP, most are all is going to go UCP. Calgary is the decider, right?

And there's like a locked in bunch of seats in the very extremes of Calgary that will also be guaranteed UCP, and a locked in bunch of seats in the center of Calgary that will basically be locked in NDP. And there's like 15 to 20 marginal seats in the suburbs of Calgary, with a couple of exceptions. There's a few seats around the edge of Edmonton, maybe a Lethbridge seat, that are a little bit marginal as well. But effectively, this election is going to be decided in the suburbs of Calgary. And that's just the nature of where the polls are at at the moment, right? If the polls were a bit different, it would be being determined in a slightly different place.

But that's where the polls are at. That's where the election will be. And I think for a lot of those voters, the issue is deciding the direction they want the province of Alberta to go in, right? Like there's been a lot of noise about Rachel Notley versus Daniel Smith. It's been a lot of noise about health care, about COVID, about candidates, about specific policies and things like that. In the end, I think that people have to decide based on where they see the province in the future. And, you know, we talked before the platform.

are pretty similar, but I think it's fair to say that the visions of what Alberta should be are quite different between the two parties. I'm a policy nerd, so maybe I'm completely wrong and that's not how people are deciding their vote, but that's kind of how I see it. And well then I'll just follow it up with when you listen to Rachel Notley and when you listen to Daniel Smith and their parties take of where they want Alberta to be, what do you see is the big difference not two days from now, not 15 days from now, not a month, two months, but in the next four years and onwards, where do you see their visions taking us?

I think, you're sure you don't want to ask me a nudie political question about policy and state? It's a pretty big topic. Well, you're the one, Peter, sorry, Peter, you're the one who said you think people are voting when on another positioning Alberta for the future. So I'm just, you know. No, no, I understand. I just painted myself into a corner and got you asked me a really difficult question. I should have pretended it was something really simple.

No, look, I think for me that Alberta is a pretty special, unique place and that Alberta represents an idea that we don't really have anywhere else in Canada. And with the NDP, I worry that they see what other provinces do. They're like, well, we just want to be like that. You know, we want to have a bigger government. We want to sales tax. We want to do this. We want to do this.

And they kind of want to fall in line. And it's a bigger philosophical question as well. Maybe this is the way to kind of address this, right? Like one of the things we do at the think tank, if we talk a lot about confederation and the structure of Canada and what that Confederation might look like in the future. And one of the beauties of the Canadian Confederation is that it was designed in a way that the 10 provinces of Canada can all be different. They can all have their own visions of what life in that province should be like and they can pursue their own goals and implement policies

and ideas in different ways. And, you know, Alberta cannot have a sales tax, whereas other provinces can have a sales tax if that's what they really want, right? And the diversity that the Constitution is supposed to allow, where it delegates a lot of the power and a lot of the responsibility to the provinces, is actually what holds the country together. So a limited federal government that has a limited role in a few policy areas to help keep the country together and then allowing the provinces to go their own ways. on a variety of different policies, ensures that all those different provinces with all their different value systems and all their different people can coexist in a single country.

And I worry that a lot of what is coming out of Ottawa and a lot of what the NDP and Alberta support is the idea that there should be one rule across the whole country, that all the provinces should have to comply with the carbon tax and all the provinces should have to comply with net zero. They should all have to do this and they should all have to do this and they should all have to do this, And it's giving more and more and more power to the federal government to require the provinces to fall in line. And the people in Ottawa know what's best. They know how everything should be done. They know the optimal solution to all these different challenges.

And they're going to require the provinces to do it. And if the provinces disagree or if the provinces want to do it in a different way, it doesn't matter. You're not allowed to. We'll go to court. We'll force you to do it. And I think the NDP way of seeing the world is actually okay with that. I think they are okay with a much more powerful federal government that requires a lot more conformity and standardization across the country, whereas the UCP and fiscal conservatives and individualists are much more comfortable with a Canada and a confederation

where different provinces are allowed to be different and do things differently. And, you know, this is probably an entirely different podcast that we'll have to do it another time. But the whole debate about the relationship between Alberta and Ottawa and the strain that's been put on that relationship and whether Alberta, you know, pushes back against all of these things things. And what changes Alberta might want in Confederation to make things fairer, whether that be equalization or carbon tax and all that kind of stuff. that is all actually about preserving the unity of Canada. If you have a federal government that imposes everything and gets into controlling much more about what the provinces do, that's going to create more and more tension and more and more pushback from the provinces. And if we don't allow for that kind of variety, that's when you get more alienation and more separatist tendencies.

This isn't just an Alberta thing. This is Quebec, right? One of the reasons why Quebec separatism really died down has become less of an issue isn't because people in Quebec just suddenly decided, well, we don't want to be our own country anymore. It's actually because the federal government in Ottawa gave a lot more flexibility and power to Quebec to do things differently in Quebec, to do things how Quebec wanted to do. So I think long term on the vision stuff, that is a major difference between the parties. And if people want to maintain a United Canada where all of the provinces are working together, but are allowed to do so in different ways, that's a pretty significant difference between the vision of how the different parties are looking at what Alberta's role in that

confederation should be. Well, I appreciate you doing this. I think you did, you know, it's funny. You said, can you ask me a different question? I think you did a grand job of answering it at the end there. And I appreciate you giving me some time today. And talking about this, it's funny. I always love seeing somebody or getting to sit across from somebody who's like super passionate about, well, in this case, politics, right?

It's like, you know, to me it's like, you know, once again, I come back to the brothers and we start talking hockey. All the listeners know that we, it's so, it just comes so easy, I guess. Like it's just sitting on the back of your brain or the tip of your tongue, I guess, is probably, better and you just rattle it off but either way I appreciate you giving me giving me some time today and uh you know the next time hopefully uh you know when when we do eventually uh go again it's in person because it's it's always better sitting across from somebody instead of looking at the screen either way peter thanks for giving me some time today no great to be with you and yeah maybe after the election we can get together and do it again in person and figure out i was right about everything

or i was wrong about everything a political nerd round table hey folks i'm telling you that that could You guys could speak in a different language for me, and I can get you to bring it down to my terms so I can understand again. All right. Thanks, Peter. Thanks so much for having me. You bet. That was Peter McCaffrey, folks. I hope you enjoyed it. This episode brought to you by Calrock Industries.

When you're looking for new used and refurbished oil and gas equipment in stock, you've got to go to Calrock. That's based at in Lloydminster here. just go to calrock.ca of course they service the oil field so you know across provinces all that good stuff and they got a ton of stuff there all you got to do is go to calrock.ca. They say Calrock is your best bet when it comes to finding equipment that fits your needs is within your budget and is ready as soon as you need it. So Calrock Industries calrock.cahoc.ca for more information. Lwango and Craneer June 10th tickets in the show notes those two are going to be fantastic you know when it comes to business folk you know I was just talking to

one of my brothers with this I'm like how would you break down the Longgo and Craneer because it's like you know I get it you know all the S&P presents that have come before have been you know legacy media or rural urban divide very there's the there's the problem we're going to try and decide with Tom and Alex or Longo and Craneer You know, the thing that I want to just use their names because they've become kind of staples on the show and if you've listened to them, you get it. And if you haven't, you know, I was like, okay, well, let's talk about it. And Dustin said, well, as a business owner, I want to know what's coming.

And these two guys, when it comes to the geopolitic politics of the world, you know, like what's going on and how these things interact and what are we going to face? He's like, I want to know what's coming. And these two have a wonderful way of talking about world events and how it's going to impact different things. And he's like, if you're a business owner, it just behooves you. Buy a couple tickets. Come, sit, listen, and hear what they're going to have to say because it will not be a dull night for you. And I agree with us. The two of them are just electric.

They've been on the podcast now five times together, once separate for each of them. So they've got a single episode each and then five times together. So, you know, you can certainly go back and listen to those. Either way, June 10th, S&P Presents, Luongo and Craneer. I hope to see you there. And I'm looking forward to the next Brothers Roundtable. So we'll catch up to you then, folks.