Shaun Newman Podcast - #546 - Preston Manning

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Retired Canadian politician who was the founder and the only leader of the Reform Party of Canada, He served as leader of the Official Opposition federally from 1997 to 2000.He led Alberta Fair Deal Panel in 2019 and the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel in 2023.  Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

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For more information, visit them at Hancockpetroleum.com.com. He's a retired Canadian politician who was the founder and only leader of the Reform Party of Canada. He served as the leader of the official opposition from 1997 to 2000, and he led Alberta's Fair Deal panel in 2019 and the president. Public Health Emergency's Governance Review Panel in 2023. I'm talking about Preston Manning. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Today, I'm joined by Preston Manning. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Well, thank you for having me. You know, your name has come up an awful lot in the conservative side of things. When it comes to politics and everything else, I'm going to be honest. As a young man, I had no idea about half the things you've done. And reading back through some of your history, I've been rather impressed. I was like, okay, there's a lot to cover here in today's chat.

And we'll see where we get to. But I was hoping you could just start with a little bit of your background, Preston, and letting the audience know, whether it's where you grew up or some of your thoughts from your early years. I'll let you take it wherever we want. Well, I come from a political family. My father was involved in the provincial politics. He was in the Alberta legislature for 33 years, 25 years as premier. So I kind of grew up with politics. I studied physics at university and then went into economics and operated a management consulting firm for 20 years. And then I'm conscious of Western political history that ever so often the world, the West kicks up a new political movement. And in the late 1980s, I was involved in creating a reform party of Canada, which was a new party, and eventually got some members in the House of Commons in 1993.

I was elected in 1993. And then we expanded the reform party to include, become what was called the Canadian Alliance, which roped in a large number of provincial conservatives that supported. at what we were doing federally. And I lost the leadership in the process of trying to make all these changes. But then Stephen Harper and Peter McKay took that one more step and created the Conservative Party of Canada, which formed a minority government and then a majority government.

So that's kind of the short version of political history. And then when I was out of parliament, I kept working away on various ideas for democratic reform, Constitution reform, fiscal reform, mainly on the conservative side of the House. I'm going to draw you back to your younger years. And, you know, because I've been talking off the air a little bit about second generation, whether it's farmers or business owners, et cetera. And you having a father who served a long time in politics would have an interesting insight

into some of the knowledge that he had learned from. from his career and I assume passed on to you. And I was, you know, it's funny, when I used to ask the question, you know, when was the last time, because the Maverick party had started in the last federal election, and I kept asking all these like political nerds,

you know, like, when was the last time an upstart political party won in its first election? And nobody could tell me, and somehow I stumbled upon the social credit party. And I was like, well, here's one, in Alberta of all places. And then, you know, in preparation for today, I realized your father served under William Aberhart, and I was like, oh, my, this is interesting.

You know, I was hoping I could pick your brain a little bit about what your father learned from William Aberhart or just that time of the Social Credit Party in Alberta. Well, the West produced two new parties in the Depression. Like the Depression was a terrible time. Alberta's economy was virtually all agriculture. and the combination of drought and the depression, the net income of Alberta dropped by almost 50%. The same was Saskatchewan, an enormous amount of unrest. Aberhardt was a high school principal in Calgary,

who pioneered, you'd find this interesting. He pioneered political and religious radio broadcasting in Canada. He got into that in the 20s when radio was a novel thing. And he had this. religious radio program. My father was on a homestead in Saskatchewan with a crystal radio set and picked up this and decided to come to Calgary to study under. Aberhart operated a sort of a theological school. And my father came to study there, actually intending to get into the ministry. But in the Depression, Abraham Hart started to, he had this institute on 8th Avenue in Calgary. And they

operated a soup kitchen. In those days, there was very little welfare or anything by the government that the churches did whatever there was. And he started to see young people jumping off the CPR trains to avoid the CPR police. They were riding the rails trying to find work anywhere. And he started to see in those lineups at his soup kitchen, young people that he sent off to be lawyers and doctors and teachers and that. And this absolutely infuriated him. So he He got studying the causes of depression. He hit on this social credit idea, which actually came from England, where the idea was that when your economy was depressed, if you expanded the money supply, not so much that you

created inflation, but you could kickstart the economy. It was called social credit. So he started talking about this on his radio broadcast. Abrahart was considered himself an educator, not a politician. He just wanted people to know this idea. I didn't want to start a political party, but there started to be little groups around the province decided that they wanted to push this idea politically. And so the social credit party was formed. And in the 1935 election, the government at that time was the United Farmers of Alberta, a very good government actually.

But, of course, they just got hammered because it was in the Depression. And the social credit bunch ended up electing, the first election they ever contested, they ended up forming a government. My father said in those days to get elected to the legislature, all you had to be able to assure the voters was that you had never been anywhere near the legislature before. That was your main qualification. So that's how this new government got in. And then Abrahart died and my father succeeded him as premier. And they won nine general elections before eventually being replaced by the Lahi Conservatives. For the audience, Preston, that were first elected.

they won 52 of 62 seats, right? Like just to form government. And the public threw every last member of the UFA government out, the premier, every cabinet minister, every MLA. I mean, it was a time of just turmoil. People didn't know what to do. So why don't we try this new bunch? Doesn't it certainly, I don't know where we're at in the cycle of time.

But doesn't it feel like in politics these days we're getting close to that? I mean, whether we're talking the federal government or close to home, just, you know, your city government or wherever, doesn't it feel like that turmoil is here? Well, yes, and of course, things are all speeded up now. In federal politics, there's what's starting to be called the nine-year rule. Moroni lasted nine years. The Cretchen government lasted 10 years. The Harper government lasted nine years. And the current federal government, 2024 will be nine years.

So I think there's knocking on the door of time for change. Yeah, well, it's interesting. I keep coming back to Aberhart. And am I saying that? Aberhart, Aberhart. Aberhart, I apologize. That's right. William Aberhart.

Because, you know, it's interesting because I believe his nickname was Bible Bill. If I'm correct. Oh, yeah, because he was more religious. Well, he was an educator. He ran the biggest high school in Calgary. and then he had this Bible Institute on the theological side. Well, it's interesting to me because I see a bit of a return to that, if you would. There's a lot of people wondering where traditional values have gone in our society.

And I see that starting to be quite the conversation of topic or topic of conversation lately. And I just, you know, I look back and I go, the last government to walk in and form government, last party to form government where they just walked in, had a new party, and times were tough. And, you know, and you say, well, as long as you said, you weren't a part of the former government, that was almost a requirement for getting elected. I'm like, we're getting close to that because, like, tons of people are talking about traditional values because it's lost right now. Like, it just seems like we don't talk about it at all.

And yet I see on here and in conversations with people across probably the Western provinces, it's becoming a big conversation of topic. And I find that very fascinating because it's been lost or not talked about or slowly just faded away. I'm not sure you'd have an interesting view on that. I mean, coming from being your father's son and one, and then two, just your entire time in politics. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think a legitimate question for people to ask candidates these days are what are you, what are you? fundamental values that you bring to bear on public policy and on politics. It's a legitimate

question. And for years, a lot of candidates have shied away from answering that. You know, and say, well, I, you know, I believe in honesty and democracy and give these vague, generalized answers. But I think the public have a legitimate right to ask, what are your fundamental values. And from my standpoint, I have a Christian commitment, more on the evangelical side. One interesting story about Abraham, if you dropped Abraham's Bible on the table, it would open up to the third chapter of John's Gospel, where Jesus talked about the need for a personal, vertical relationship between yourself and God. In Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas was starting the CCF party, about the same time, the Depression produced two parties in the West.

If you drop Tommy's Bible, he was a minister too, he dropped his Bible on the table. It opened to the 10th chapter of Luke's Gospel, which is the story of the Good Samaritan, the guy that helped his neighbor when he was in trouble. And this is sort of the horizontal dimension of the. Abraham had the vertical dimension, the Christian face. Tommy Douglas had the horizontal. If you put them together, you actually have the cross, kind of the overall symbol. But these were very fundamental values that motivated these people to get involved in the political arena.

And I think there's merit in rediscovering some of those routes today. Yeah, well, just to me, from where I sit in all the conversations I've been having, I just see it starting to become part of the conversation. And for, I'm only 37. For the first 35 years of my life now, in fairness, a couple of those years, I wouldn't have been thinking about much anyways, but I've never heard it coming into the conversation at all. And now it seems like, okay, this is a part of the conversation and we got to talk about this because the further we get from what are our fundamental values, we get into this la-law land of a whole bunch of

stuff that no longer makes sense to a growing portion of the population. Yeah, no, I think that's a very legitimate subject. And the place I say for voters to start is to start asking those questions And so the candidates have to think through what are my fundamental values and can I communicate them to people? That's a good place to start. Let's talk about, well, actually, before I get to the Reform Party, I just want you being the son of a premier, your father was premier from, what, 1944 to 1968 of Alberta. Yeah, yeah. What lessons did he pass along to you? Because you were young when you first ran for your first election.

I think you're 23 when you were actually defeated in the federal election. But what lessons was your fault? You know, I look at it. I don't know where I started to realize this, whether it was just a couple of days ago or a couple of years. I have no idea. But like farmers pass along, you know, I come from a farming family. So if you grew up on the farm, you passed along generational kind of like thoughts and why do you do whatever at a certain time of year. why do you do that? And you kind of get these like tricks of the trade or almost like,

you know, to steal maybe a term from gaming these days, like a cheat code. It's like, oh, you do that because you bypass all this stuff. I was kind of curious. What did your father pass along to you when you were first starting into politics? Like, listen, Preston. He didn't make a conscious effort to encourage me to get into politics. Politics is a rough game. And this is a challenge you have when you have children yourself and you're in politics. It's a rough game and it is not conducive to personal happiness if that's what your objective is. Particularly today, particularly today, when the biggest single reason people, if you try to recruit candidates today, the biggest reason people give you for not getting into the arena is I will not subject myself and my family to the abuse that you're going to get,

particularly through the social media. So my father never tried to encourage me, but of course I learned a lot from him. And one of the things, in the office of every elected official, there's a bunch of statute books. In Alberta, in every MLA's office, every county minister's office, there's a bunch of books called the revised statutes of Alberta. It's all the laws of Alberta. And then after that year of the revision, there's another volume on the statutes for that year and that year and that year. So one day I'm in my father's office, and he says, you ought to, I'm about to say, I said, he says, you want to read the revised statutes of Alberta.

This is five. You're telling a 17-year-old kid to read. And I said, you know, I said, you know, you're crazy. Why on earth would I do that? No, he says, you think these statute books are just dull, dry, legal stuff on paper. He says, behind every one of these acts and the bill that got it through the legislature, there's a story. and there's a story of real people with real aspirations and real concern and real this and real that.

And this bill, this act is an attempt to address those concerns. There's a story. So we used to play this little game where I pick out a statute book. In the beginning, there's a table of contents, and I pick one and say, what's the story behind this? and he did invariably have the story. So that's something I learned about law. And if you're a legislator, this is not just about legal words on papers. You are dealing with real people's lives.

They're civil servants that get up every morning. Years after that act was passed, and they have to do stuff or not do stuff because of what the law says. And so that was one of my early exposures to, kind of to lawmaking, which is what a legislature ends up doing. You grew up in the political life, the political eye, son of a premier. You got to experience that firsthand. That didn't steer you away from politics?

Well, of course, in those days, the political people, maybe right up until the 60s or the early 70s, if you kept your family life and your personal life separate. it from your politics. People and the media even would leave it alone. But if you started to use your family for political purposes, here's my lovely wife, here's my wonderful children, here's our beautiful dog, you know, if you start doing that, you're trying to use your family for political games. Then you make your family fair game for your opponents and everybody else. But back in those days, if you kept your family separate from the political arena, the family was left alone. So there wasn't a lot of strain the way there is today on the family.

I went to a country school. My father, because he came from a farming background and felt you always had to have land. So even when he was premier, we had a dairy farm about a half an hour out of Edmonton. And I went to a country school, Horse Hill High School. Horse Hill was halfway between Fort Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan way back in the old days where they kept the horses and this was the school. And the fact that I was related to the Premier made very little different. I mean, the teachers never picked on me or made me stand out or feel awkward in any way, shape, or form.

The only occasion in which being related to the Premier came about was when they opened the legislature in those days, they always had this big reception and had a big reception and served these sandwiches. But these sandwiches were very special sandwiches that were chopped up into little tiny pieces. And the day after the legislature opened, my mother used to be in charge of this reception. I would bring a pile of these sandwiches to Horse Hill High School. And the only question was, why do those legislature guys chop up the sandwich in such small? So that was about as political as Horse Hill High School got. I can just imagine, kids.

Even as I'm sitting here, I'm like, so why do they take them? chop it up a little, you know? I think it's fancier that way. I never could answer that question. I never could answer that question. The time commitment back when you were, your father was premier to when you're racing across the country talking to the Canadian populace. Was the time commitment as a kid, like was your dad always gone? Or was that never a thing back then to worry about? I'm just, I guess, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, trying to understand because a lot one of the things that politicians always say or people who don't go into politics i don't want to subject my family to it but in one way or another we're all

subjecting our family to if you got terrible rulers you know like right now i'm not a big fan of the liberal government i know a huge chunk of the population ain't so by not getting involved we're subject to it anyways so has the time commitment like was when you when your dad was premier to when you're the leader of the official opposition. Now, in fairness, we're talking federal versus provincial. But was it different back then? Well, he was a work, I wouldn't say a workaholic, but he would always work.

So he'd run the government from Monday to Friday. We had this dairy farm, and he would work on the farm on Saturday. And then he had this religious radio broadcast. He carried on this broadcast that Abraham had for years, which today you couldn't even think of doing, but in those days you could. So he was always doing something. And he didn't have a lot of time for myself and my brother. But we understood that.

I understood that and respected it. It didn't cause any particular resentment on my part. Now federal politics is another ball of whack. I mean, this is the second largest country on the face of the earth. Like we started a new political party with nothing. You know, you got three, in those days, 300 federal writings all the way from the west end of Vancouver Island to East Cape in Newfoundland. You try to get around to all those writings. It's an enormously time consuming process.

When you say you're talking about your dad and you're saying, which A, I think is super cool that he'd go back on the weekends and work on the farm and continue his radio program. I find that fascinating. When you say you couldn't do that anymore, you mean the religious part of it? Yes. Or you mean the radio part of it? Well, the religious part of it. Today, you know, what's an elected official doing, you know, preaching on Sunday kind of thing? One story I remember on that, I used to go around to, I used to keep my ears open, even when I was quite young.

I'd go to events, go to rodeos, go to things, and listen to what people were saying, what they're saying politically, what they're saying about this. government. And I remember one time going to some rodeo in a small town. I can't remember how old I was. And there was a bunch of cowboys sitting around the fire. The thing hadn't started. It was going to start at noon. And there was a pickup truck that had the radio blaring. And it was my father's radio broadcast. And this young cowboy says to the older guys that were around the fire, I don't like the idea of a politician talking about religion and faith and stuff like that. And one of the older cowboys said, I don't agree with that either, but it was religious faith that got my old man and my old lady through a depression and a war. And so I kind of respect that even if I don't believe it, which was kind of an interesting comment.

That was at about the point where people were starting saying, you shouldn't mix your faith in your politics. but there's one old fellow kind of cautioned that, well, better remember Faye had a lot to do with our parents getting through a depression in the war until you've got through a depression and a war and understand what it takes to do that. Maybe you shouldn't be quite as critical of them, which was not a bad point. I think it's a great point. And actually, I'm at the, you know, we say that politicians don't mix politics and religion. but I mean, whether it's climate, whether it's the gender fluidity of all things, they're preaching different religions in my mind. And at this point, I go, you know, you say you're Christian, you say, it's like, I don't,

I don't mind it. I actually like a little bit of transparency. It doesn't mean I have to tune in. It doesn't mean I got to go, you know. But to now we try and act like everything is so, you know, I'm this truthful guy. I do everything, but you don't say anything. And I think it's what really a lot of Albertans admired about Daniel Smith when she was coming around to shows like this and trying to get elected for leadership of the UCP is she spoke to everything. And that was very admirable because it's been so long it feels like.

And maybe I'm wrong on this press and that we've had a politician here in Alberta do such a thing. It just doesn't feel like that's happened at least, you know, and I say that, but it's been a short. maybe decade that I've been paying attention and maybe less than that, because I'm going to be honest, when I got back from playing hockey, then it was like, okay, let's get a fan,

you know, I've got to get married, then I'm going to have kids, and then when you're having young kids, you don't pay attention to anything because you're just trying to keep yourself awake because you know, you're going to be up all night and on and on it goes.

But certainly she was a breath, fresh air when she came in and was talking about everything. And just seeing how the media reacts, you know, I don't know, I get what the old cowboys saying, guess sitting here, you know, years and upon years later.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's encouraging to hear that. I hope that's the truth. I think one thing, caution that when you talk about communicating your faith and relating it to politics, you're not talking about linking the institutional church to politics. That can be a problem. It can hurt the church or the religious organization, whatever it is, and it can hurt

politics. But you can keep the institutions separate, but you don't keep faith separate from the political. Faith is a big part of it. life. And that's where asking people, what are their most deeply held values and being open to them sharing their faith values, ought to be a good thing. It ought to be something that's tolerated in a country that professes to believe in freedom of religion. You know, one of the things that I found interesting about the Reform Party was that you allowed people to vote and express themselves quite, I think the term was freely. You know, instead of

everybody having to vote the same way, the same way, the same way. Do you think that can work in today's world where everything gets scrutinized? Well, I think it can. One of the planks in the reform party's platform, because it wanted to strengthen the democratic side of the political arena, it was called free votes, particularly a vote in the assembly, or in our case, the House of Commons. You were free to vote the position of your constituents, even if it was different than the party role or even the government role if you were in government. And what I tried to get John Cratchan to do, I even wrote it out for him. I said, get up and say this.

It'll take 20 seconds. You just say that in the view of the government, if the government, if a motion in this house is defeated or if one of our motions is defeated, one of our bills is defeated, the government will not resign. What the government will do is then ask the house to pass a non-confidence motion. Did you mean to actually just throw out this section of a bill or throw out the bill, or did you actually mean to defeat the government and throw up the government? And if you did that, 99 times out of 100, the members that voted against a particular measure

and wanted to defeat it would go back and support the government if the government has a majority of the seats. But it would free up the average member to express their constituents' views, particularly if it was different than the party line or the government line. That one measure would make the assembly or make the House of Commons a more representative chamber where people actually felt their member could represent what they believed in. And of course, Kretchen said, but no, no, that would be relaxing party discipline. I used to give a speech in the House of Commons to the backbenchers, in our case, the liberal back benches.

I'd say, can you guys count? We sometimes doubt that you can because we see how you handle the budget, but can you count. If you can count, will you notice that there are more of you than there are on the front benches? There are actually more of you backbenchers than there are in the cabinet. So if you exercised your power that comes from numbers in that chamber, you could have a lot more influence than you do. But the party discipline is so strong that those kind of reforms were never accepted. Do you think party discipline like that ruins democracy? Well, even if you abolish the parties today, within five years, there would be political parties.

Because what happens if a group of people vote together once, and now they vote together three times because they've been. find that they agree. Now they vote together 10 times. You've now got the essence of a party. So it's not, I don't think you can democratize the system by doing away with the parties, but you could free up this voting system so that the average member had more capacity to represent the constituents. That's an interesting thought. One of the things we'd, you know, I'm sure you've thought about this an awful lot when it comes to democracy and trying to make it run efficiently, if you would, in that what if nobody had a party? What if everybody was independent and was actually held accountable to their voter recall of their constituency? Do you see it, like, does that idea even

Well, you could start out like that, but as I say, you'd end up having a party because those independent members would find on a particular issue, there's a bunch of them that would think the same. You can't pass a law in the parliament of legislature unless a majority of voters of members vote for it. So they'd find they voted together with this group once, twice, but by the time you've done it 20 times, whether you call it a party or not, you are a party. So I don't think you can do away with the party system,

but I think you can do a lot to make it more democratic and representative. Well, one of the things I was looking forward to this conversation press, And as I go, like, you know, there's probably nothing new under the sun. I think, you know, for the most part, we can probably agree on that. And yet I'm, you know, 40 plus years younger than you. And I'm just new at paying attention to all this. So I look at you as like a wealth of knowledge because you've done things that, and experienced things that I think most people would be, well, I mean, most people,

if they're going to jump into the political sphere of things, would want to be a part of. I mean, you've had a mentor in your father, whether he wanted you to get into it or not, hand down some very good knowledge, I would assume, from a guy who ran a new political party and won a majority government in Alberta. And I look at the Reform Party, and I just, I hear the stories of the Reform Party. You know, I was born in 86. So by the time things are going, I haven't paid anything attention to politics. And before I could even do that, there are already gone, right? And so when I look at the history of that, like, this is fascinating because, you know, the Maverick Party was basically ran on the reform idea, except we're never going to

try and go further than Western Ontario or northwestern Ontario and run candidates. That's what we're going to do. When you first started the Reform Party, or at least the Reform Party conversation in the early or late 80s, I guess, what was the idea? What set this off in motion? Well, at that time, the West felt neglected and there was anger, the national energy program almost crippled the oil and gas industry. During the Moroni years, there was a contract that, an aerospace contract that was supposed to go to a company in Winnipeg and it was taken, even though they were the lowest bidder, it was taken away from them and given to Quebec.

so there was this Western alienation that reform undertook to address. But reform's objective from the very beginning was to form government, not just to be a protest party. The aim is to, if you get into politics, is to get enough support eventually to actually form a government. And in the Constitution of the Reform Party, I had the lawyer put in a sunset clause. It actually would come to an end in 10 years,

unless the members decided to continue it or to revise it in some way from based on what they learned. And by golly, by 1997, we formed the official opposition, but we still weren't big enough to form a government. So we formed an alliance with the Klein Conservatives provincially in Alberta, the Philman Conservatives in Manitoba, and the Harris Conservatives in Ontario. Now we got this even bigger thing. We got all this reform federally, but we got these provincial allies. was called the Canadian Alliance.

And then, as I say, I lost the leadership in trying to do all of this, but the alliance continued. And then Stephen Harper and Peter McKay, Stephen was elected as a reformer in the very beginning. They put it together with what was left of the old progressive conservative party and actually got a governing party that its roots were in that reform party. And it formed a minority government and then a majority government, which is the objective. If you don't have the objective of being a governing party,

it's very easy to be just a protest group. And you can complain and yell and you'll win a few seats. But the object, if you want to change the law, if you want to change the Constitution, if you want to change how the federal money is spent, you've got to get a majority of seats in that 338 seat parliament. Oh, man, so much there. How about this?

I find it very, like, you put in a sunset clause. So you're already looking 10 years out and going, if we haven't accomplished this, this and this, do we just roll this up and carry on with something new? Essentially? Or you to force people to change what the Sunset Clause did is force, you know, the members could have voted to let's just keep doing what we're doing. Sure. It raised the issue. It is just doing what we're doing good enough. Or have we got to form bigger alliances, if we got to do something to make this a governing party?

forced that question. And we had big conferences, 2,000, 25, 3,000 people. These are members get together. What are we going to do? And they eventually endorsed this, okay, let's do this alliance thing. And then Harper and McKay took up one more step. But I think you've got to have the object of actually governing, because if you don't think you're ever going to govern, you'll say things and you'll do things that you would never do or say if you actually sort of, thought you had to deliver the person. Hmm, that's, that's really interesting. So from day one, you're like, we are going to be government.

That is the goal. It isn't just enough to be the official opposition and hold their feet to the fire. And, you know, like you look at what, so many people stare at drag meat sing right now with the NDP and how they're able to prop up a liberal government so a vote of confidence can't be made. When you look at that, you go, that's not a, that's not a recipe for success at all. No, and they're going to pay a price for that because in the election, a lot of their voters are going to say, what's the point of voting for you if you're just going to support the liberals? Might as well vote for the liberals. I think federal NDP is going to pay a price for that tactic.

But, yeah, our aim was to form a governing party one way or another. Let me, for a man who's spent his life in politics, I've been trying to figure out why. politicians now and maybe there's nobody that's that's graceful enough to do it but you know like they stick away from some of the hot topic subjects you know COVID-19 hot topic the the you know the one million marks for children hot topic right and on and on these hot topics go and they they really try and dance it and some of that you know like the what is a woman thing you know I've sat in a back room with a a guy who's in Saskatchewan politics. And he said, well, the cities think different than the provinces, or the rural parts. And I'm like, on what a woman is? I don't know about that.

I feel like you're kind of like basically propping up a lie. That's what I think. Now, in fairness, I've never been in politics. And I look at you, sir, and you have spent a long time. And I'm sure you're sitting there going, well, we've got to a strange part of the time where I'm glad I'm not, you know, uh, suiting up and going to, uh, the ledge. But, uh, Is the day gone where a politician can just say, I just don't think that's factual, you know, like, or was it always approached the city and the rural are going to think differently, and we have to approach two different populations in two different aspects? Well, no, no, I think you want to try to unite people rather than divide them or,

and or even permit divisions like the rural urban division. It's not good for a country or for a province for that division to get, to broad. I think there's various reasons why political people don't address the hard issues. Sometimes it's because they don't know what to do. They honestly don't know what to do. I've seen, like in the House of Commons,

there are free votes on, freer votes on private members bills. If a private member's bills passed, even if it came from the opposition, doesn't defeat the government. And the clerk goes up and down the roads and he's did in our day and you have to stand yes or no on this

motion. And I've seen guys sit Then they're seeing, trying bouncing up and down, try to decide, what do I do on this? Like, if you don't know, but by the time you get there, like you,

sometimes this indecision is because they don't know. And then the second is because some of these issues are so divisive that the politicians are afraid to take a position on it because it's just going to divide. It's going to divide its constituents. It's going to divide the party. So it avoids the issue because of the division.

But I actually don't think those are legitimate excuses. You get elected. You ought to have a position on the important issues of the day. If you don't know anything about it, go and find out something about it and take a position. And you can find, like a lot of politics at the end of the day is conflict resolution. At the highest level, you're trying to find a reconciled position between people that are divided. But your job ultimately is to resolve a conflict. And I think you can work on how do you bridge the gap between the rural and the urban.

One way that I think is very relevant, and I think Premier Mo is getting close to this, is when you talk about agriculture, for example, and you say, I want to support agriculture to an urban voter, Immediately what comes into their head is cows and grain, that's agriculture. You know, what are you talking to me about cows and grain? I don't see any cows and grain out here in this district. But you can point out to them, no, that's the producing end of agriculture. On top of that producing sector is an agriculture manufacturing sector, which is huge. On top of that is an agricultural servicing sector, which is huge.

On top of that is an agricultural knowledge sector, which is huge. And those jobs and those incomes for the agriculture manufacturing, servicing, and knowledge sector are mainly in urban areas. So you, Mr. Urban voter, when you think of agriculture as only cows and grain, no, no, no. It's got a whole bunch of other stuff on top of that, which creates jobs and incomes for people in the cities. Agriculture is a fundamental building block of the economy on which there's all this other

stuff. And you see what I'm getting at. That message starts to, okay, so me, I live in this city, but I better have an interest in this agriculture thing because there's so much of what's here is built on top of it. And you can say the same for the energy sector, the mining sector, the forestry sector, and the fishery sector. And from Canada's standpoint, like you ask on the world stage, where is Canada have the potential for being a global player? We don't have the biggest population. We don't have the most financial resources. We don't have the cleverest federal government.

What are we got? We are from it. Yes, one thing we got. We are the second largest country by landmass on the face of the planet, which means we have either the largest or the second largest stock of natural resources. We are a global player when it comes to that. So let's build on that. And that's ground for uniting the rural and the urban.

But you've got to work at that. This is conflict resolution at a fairly high level. And when you're talking conflict resolution, that's talking to people face-to-face, I assume, right? And finding out their concerns and everything else and trying to get them at least to hear their issues and try and address them. And that usually comes face-to-face, correct? Yeah, well, we, of course, reform didn't have a lot of, didn't have much money at all. when it started. So the only way we could grow was to have public meetings, hundreds of them, you know, 200, 300 meetings a year that I would attend. And though these are face-to-face,

these are not virtual Zoom. Well, that wouldn't have been, yeah, that wouldn't have been no, that wasn't even feasible. And, and, and, and, and we always had open question periods at the, at the end, and often, you know, there'd be embarrassing questions and it'd be, freedom for somebody that was a way off in left field or right field to say things. But that's part of the risk you take by having public meetings. But this is meeting real people where they live. When you hit the peak of 1997 to 2000 with 60 seats, you're the official opposition of the country.

I mean, by a lot of standards, that's job well done. like we have really done something here. And you look at that and you go, I can imagine inside a party like that. It's like, well, I mean, here in Alberta, Daniel Smith was the victim of walking the floor across. And a lot of people, I mean, now I think I've forgiven her. I mean, geez, they've voted Iraq in.

But at the time, when she walked across the floor for the Wild Rose and let off a whole nuclear bomb of things, that was not seen as a, well, I mean, that got the NDP put in in government and has created their own monster, if you would. When you're at the height of it, to be at the height and go, we need to bridge a gap with the other set of the conservatives. How hard of a conversation was that with your group, specifically? Because I assume that was not an easy, yeah, this makes sense, and let's just go on her merry way and everything else. Well, I would put to the members, do you, do you actually want to have enough seats in this parliament to be able to pass a law that achieves

what you want to achieve. We wanted to balance the federal budget at a time when the liberals and the NDP were not in favor of that at all. But if you want to get in a position to do that, you have to have a majority of seats in this. So what do you want to do? Do you want to just give speeches and talk about what should be done? Or do you want to take the steps that are necessary to actually become a governing party? And eventually we carried the, we, we, we, we, we, we had a big referendum on this, ultimately the decision. What Danielle did, and I don't blame her for what she, she was ahead of her time by saying that the Wild Rose and the PCs got to get together some way. They can't keep splitting the vote. So she was ahead of her time when she did that

the first time, but eventually that's exactly what had to happen. And we used that argument federally, and we had a big referendum process, and eventually the members voted. All of the, all of the debate and us people, some people disagreed that then the members voted, oh, let's create this bigger, broader alliance. And then when Harper and McKay took it the one that stepped further, this wasn't just decided by a few people in the back room. It was decided through a big process and a big convention and a vote that was taken to carry their judgment. I'm a sports guy. I just, I look at this from a sports mentality. And this is the one thing I I have a hard time understanding.

Wild Rose and the reform had the same thing going for them. They were both the official opposition. They were in the position, the seat of power, if you would, and the conservatives should join us. We should just be the Wild Rose. We should just be the Reform Party. And then everybody knows all conservatives are under our banner. Why was it that instead of that being the case,

you had to dismantle the reform in order to create something new? Well, we wouldn't say dismantle it. just grew it to create something new. There was no surrendering of the reform's basic positions in the Canadian Alliance. In fact, if you look at the Constitution of the Canadian Alliance and its initial platform, there's very little difference between it and reform. But the object was, you know, if you're content, and today there are groups that are content, there are groups that are content with just saying what their position is. And with apparently no desire to actually get it implemented, then end game is to be able to say it and say, this is what our

position is, this is what the other guy should do, and just to do that. And if people want to, are satisfied with that, there's, it's a free country, they can do that. But our object was to actually get the thing done that is being talked about, not just give more speeches about. So am I inferring then, you're like, well, actually, we kept all of our, the only thing we didn't keep was the name or form. We kept all of what we wanted. And together, you know, and all of branched the Conservative Party at the time, created something new with a lot of the structure. You had to broaden out.

One, like we've talked a little bit earlier about Western alienation. And reform was a party to try to address that. One way to deal with that, and you can still do it today, is just hammer away on Western positions. Just hammer away on them. You can't carry the judgment of the rest of the country, but you get the satisfaction of saying, this is what the West want,

this is what the West believe, to heck with the rest of you. Or you can take an approach, that this country is a country of regions. Canada is a country of regions. Atlantic Canada is a specific region. The Laurentian region is a special region. Ontario is a region.

The West is the region. The Pacific coast is a region. Each of these regions has unique aspirations, distinctive. You can use the word distinctive, which fits in well with Quebec. And we want our distinctive aspirations and concerns dealt with. But maybe the price of that is being willing to recognize

that somebody else. also has distinctive aspirations and concerns. And the price of us getting ours dealt with is us being supportive of somebody else's distinctive aspirations and concerns being dealt with. This is a way to harness the regional character of the country, but keep the country together. A federal party that said,

we recognize the regional character of Canada, and we recognize that each of you regions has distinctive aspirations and concerns, and we're going to address them all. The only condition is the price of us, dealing with your distinctives is your willingness to go along when we deal with somebody else. I think that approach would get a lot of the West's distinctives dealt with, but it's by broadening it out in that kind of a way. Now, that doesn't abandon what reform or the desire

of people that want to deal with the West's aspirations. That's not abandoning that in any way, shape, or form, but it's taking a different strategy to actually get it done, to get action on it, rather than just sit back and here's our position. We don't care if it's ever achieved or not. Do you think that in a federal, you know, you look at Pierre, and it looks like, you know, from all intents to purse, but you call election tomorrow, he's going to win in the landslide. That's my eyes on it.

Maybe I'm a little off, but certainly, you know, where Trudeau and the liberals sit in the polls, it's it's they're tanking and uh you know there's no other real options of being here's where they're going to be and they could challenge the conservatives do you think under a pierre in in that group because you probably have more insight into it than i ever well do you think that's that's possible to get the west to to buy back in because right now the west seems very well upset well you know i i think it is if that if that's what it takes it takes broadening this out to get these Western aspirations dealt with. I mean, that's what your aim is to get your aspirations dealt with.

But if the price of that is recognizing Atlantic Canada's distinctiveness, what would be wrong with that as long as we get our aspirations and distinctives dealt with? And if you're in national politics in this country, you cannot take national unity for granted. You talk about waking up in the day in the morning and figuring out how do we reconcile conflicting interest in this country. A federal politician, particularly a governing politician, has to be thinking about how to maintain the unity of the country because it's very easily fractured. It's such a huge country with people with different views and different parts of it. And if that strategy is one way of getting the West's aspirations dealt with by recognizing

the aspirations of others, I think it's worth that taking that approach. you can't know I don't know I got to think about how I'm going to word this but um in I'm sure in provincial too I I can't sit here and act like I know either of this but in federal politics it seems like more and more um you hear more of how lobbyist groups work and we can be certain they were there before they're not just new these days although uh you know you got different things like um the world economic foreign different topics like that influence You got people like Christia Fringland who are visibly on that board and on it goes. How much of a concern when you sit there do you stare at that and go, well, this is concerning?

And it's possible to create unity in a country while being influenced by things that are of not our country. Well, I think it is a concern, the role of special interests in that. One way of mitigating that, again, in a free country, you can't. abolish them. You can't say you start doing that, you're interfering with people's freedom. But one thing you can do is keep applying the democratic test. Is what this interest group saying, would that carry the majority of the people that I'm accountable to? This is the democratic test. It allows you to attach a weight. How much weight should I attach to the position that this interest group is taking? I'll attach as much weight to it as the rank and file of people in the country would attach to it if they understood what they were

it. Using the democratic process, the democratic ethic to attach, how much important should I pay to this special interest group? And I think that's, again, you have to be committed to the democratic process to even ask that and answer that question. But I think that's one way of mitigating the influence, the excessive influence of interest groups. Okay. You like stories, Sean. This is going back. I certainly do. The role of people with a faith commitment or a value commitment, the role that they can play and how absolutely crucial it can be. During my father's time, of course, La Duke, the oil, Alberta was flat on its back in the Depression. In 1938, Alberta's budget was $17 million, $9 million. It was debt service who ran the province of Alberta on $8 million.

There wasn't enough to pay the salaries of civil servants. The province defaulted on its interest on its debt, so then it couldn't borrow either. It was just flat. But in 1947, lo and behold, imperial oil hit oil at Leduc. You know, the oil, this was just a godsend to Albert. It pulled it out of the muck. And the next day, the oil guys from all over the place, but particularly in the U.S. showed up in Edmonton,

and they had two questions. Where is Ladook? And who do you pay to get drilling rates? Because there's virtually no other, there's very few jurisdictions in North America where the people that were in charge at the time of an oil boom weren't corrupted, but by guys trying to buy drilling rights

by going around Texas, Oklahoma, California, Alaska. There was even a federal administration of Warren G. Harving, the Secretary of the Interior went to jail because he took bribes to grant drilling rights in Teapot. So in the same thing, they came to Alberta and said, where's the, where's the Duke? South of Edmonton and who do we pay? There were two guys that they went to with that pitch. One was a civil servant.

He was a lowly civil servant. Alberta didn't have an energy oil and gas department. He had the mines department. And gas and that was way down in the ladder in the mines department. a guy who I've been named a Hubert Somerville. He was a professional civil servant. And he had a professional civil servant's ethic. And when they came to him and said, do we pay you?

Can you give a sterling right? He said, no, we don't do it that way here. And he said, no. The other guy they went to was the head of the social credit political party. Orvis Kennedy was his name. He was a committed Christian. He was head of that Gideon organization that put Bibles in hotels. And they go to Kennedy and say, are you the guy?

You're the political guy. You got all these connections with the MLA. Do we pay you or we pay them or who do we pay? And Kennedy said, I hear you offering to pay anybody that's an elected official or anybody in the party, I will make sure one thing, that you and your company never get drilling rights in the province of Alberta. Just these two guys saying that spared Alberta with a tragedy

that happened in most of the other jurisdictions where there was an oil boom, Just two guys. And in Kennedy's case, it was because he thought he was accountable to God, not just to the legislature. Well, aren't we all, press? Yeah, yeah. And that, just those two people. And of course, the oil guy, this was fine with the company.

So it's cheaper than doing business in Louisiana. Like, this is good. It's a good story. I appreciate the story because it does show you don't, you don't have to, just a few people in the right places making an ethical. decision can spare a province or a government or a people, an enormous amount of pain. You get corruption into the oil patch, and it's a dickens of a thing to get out, you know, go to Venezuela or Nigeria and study. You know, everyone, what can one man do or one woman do, right?

And your story is, well, it's quite beautiful. It's right there. It's like, that's what one or two people can do, you know, it can. And I think it's, you know, for where we sit in today's world, it'd be shocked with what one person can do, especially with the ability of social media and technology and everything else. It's actually quite impressive what one person can do these days. You know, here in Alberta, you were hired, brought on by Daniel Smith to do the panel,

the public health emergency governance review. If I've ever heard of a political name, there it is for the 10,000th time. I read it. I don't know what I took into my brain because you guys in your political jargon. I'm sorry, Preston. This guy on this side, I'm just like, can you just put it into nice, easy bullets that just say, this is what we learned, this is what we're changing.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't say, you know, when I first heard about it, I was really, I don't know, and I want you to talk about the experience. When I first heard about it, I was like, holy man, this is going to blow the top off of COVID-19, because there's a lot of things that I really, truly believe, not only Alberta, but the world got extremely, irrevocably wrong on COVID-19.

And, you know, I think it's stated in the document more and over and over again about what the panel's objective was and that a lot of people didn't realize, including myself, that's what it was going to be. I don't know. Because I think this is, correct me if I'm wrong, I'll read it here. The panel's objective is to review the legislation and government's practices typically used by the government of Alberta during management of a public health emergency and other. other emergencies to recommend change, which in the view of the panel, are necessary to improve the governments of Alberta's response to future emergencies. I think that's, if that summarizes

it? Yeah, that's pretty good. First of all, I think credit has to be given to Daniel Smith. Alberta government's the only government that attempted any kind of an investigation as to what lessons can be learned from this thing. No other government, certainly not the federal government, no other provincial governments do it. But the terms of reference were relatively narrow and had to be narrow because she wasn't premier when the whole COVID thing happened, but a whole bunch of other MLAs and cabinet ministers were. So how are you going to get those folks to agree to any kind of investigation? It was narrowed down to the, this is a legislative inquiry.

Look at the legislation that authorized the orders and regulations whereby Alberta respond to the COVID crisis and suggest improvements to that legislation to better equipped to handle future emergencies. That's the one sentencing. So this was a legislative panel. And what it came up with was a whole bunch of recommendations to some of the key statutes that governed Alberta's response, particularly the Public Health Act, the Emergency Management Act, and the Alberta Bill of Rights. And that was sort of the narrow focus of it, and that was the product that came out of the end. There's about 60 proposed amendments. If you have trouble sleeping at night, I recommend nothing better than reading lists of amendments to statute put you under.

But that was our mandate. So this report is not going to win the Nobel Prize for literature, but it does address here's a bunch of things that Alberta could do to be better prepared to next go around. Well, a few of the things I was happy to see in there, I guess, was there was a lot focused on kids, education. There were some in there about the college. and dealing and I don't, you know, you can do the terminology.

This is where I'm like, some days I just can't, you know, this is, when you talk about putting you to bed, I'm like, oh man, this is, this is a lot to read. Well, there's three main categories of these recommendations. The first one is, how can you, how can you change the administration and the regulatory system so it can better respond to these emergencies? And the main recommendation there is that we say that Alberta Emergency Management Agency, is supposed to have a broad view, these are experts in managing emergency, regardless of what

it is, health, fires, floods, whatever, that they ought to be the main agency coordinating the response, not the subject matter agency. Like if it's a health emergency, of course the health department is going to be involved, but this other agency ought to have the overall responsibility for coordination because the measures adopted while they address, start with health, they have economic, social, legal, consequences that need a broader picture. That's the main recommendation there. And if the government accepts it, and at this stage, it's government's got this. They haven't decided what they're going to do. If they accept that, there'll be major amendments to, and beefing up of that agency to handle

future emergencies. Then the second category is recognizing that when the government responds to these emergencies, you're trying to do two things. You're trying to protect the public from the harm that the emergency might do, but you're also got to protect the rights and freedoms of people because the COVID response measures that you adopt will circumstrive and limit those rights and freedoms. So the next big category in our recommendations are about 20 amendments to the Alberta Bill of Rights to beef up the protection of rights and freedom, everything, right, freedom of expression, freedom of belief, freedom of action, to beef up the protection of that in a public emergency.

And you can mainly do that through amendments to the Alberta bill of rights. We can't change the charter. That's a federal thing. And it's a constitutional thing. But we can change the Alberta Bill of Rights, which gives direction to the courts. And it actually gives direction to the courts if our amendments were accepted. We want you guys to attach more weight than you did the last time to protection of rights and freedoms.

And then the third category is to look at the health system itself. These experts say to cope with a, this is just common sense, to cope with an emergency, you need surge capacity in your system because there's a surge in demand for health services. Our system does not have surge capacity. So we've got a whole list of, these are all incremental changes. They don't require a fundamental change in the system. They're all consistent with the Canada Health Act, preserving universal coverage, but there's about 10 recommendations expanding the use of, of nurses, of licensed nurse practitioners, a bigger role for the pharmaceutical people, et cetera, et cetera. So the main recommendations are coming in those three categories. Can you

improve the administrative regulatory system? Can you improve the protection of rights and freedoms? And can you provide surge capacity in the case of health to handle the health emergency? Well, the rights and freedoms, certainly, I think we all witness that, whether people want to admit it or not. I think it was pretty evident that a whole group of people's everything. Businesses right down to the individual person just got stomped on, which was a wild experience to be a part of, to be honest, Preston. The thing I was wondering in your investigation of this, and I don't know exactly how to

make the, how to flesh out this thought, if you would. But was there anything in there that suggested, like when you put together your panel of experts, and I put that in quotes because I thought the experts got an awful lot wrong. How do you get it so that you have a diverse, not just a diversity of people, like in the sense of occupation, but a diversity in opinion, because one of the things that happened was a certain section of the population was just silenced and removed from the conversation. And is there a way to have it so that you have even if you disagree adamantly with some point, you still have them a part of the experts so that you can get it right. And you can always have the contradiction of, well, let's hear out the other side. Because even today, there's a portion of the population that is deemed as wild and off the charts and everything else. And yet, when I look at how the mandates all came to an end, it became a good chunk of those wild people who went to Ottawa and demanded. their rights back. So how do we put those people at the table from the beginning so that it never

gets to that point again? And I mean, that's a large question. No, there's three things that you can do that are dealt with in that report. There's no doubt more. One of it on the science side, if you're going to have science advice, it should be multidisciplinary. Sure, the thing may start in this case, it's a health emergency year. So you're going to have infectious disease people. But because the response measures have economic consequences, school consequences, social consequences, you've got to have a much broader range of science brought to bear on it. One of the recommendations is that a senior science officer be attached to this emergency management agency and be made responsible for developing an inventory of science advice, multidisciplinary science advice and science advisors that the government can draw upon the next go-round. So that's one way of coming out on the science side. The second is these amendments we propose to the Bill of Rights

include strengthening freedom of expression, protection for freedom of expression. So people who do have different narratives and different views can't be shut down in the course of trying to figure out what to do. You may disagree with them and they may have to adjudicate, well, whose expertise do we accept? but you don't deal with it by shutting people down, by censorship. And the way to provide that protection is to strengthen the freedom of expression as communicated in the Alberta Bill of Rights. And then the third area, government's regulations come into four categories.

You can have orders in council where the cabinet has to approve what's going on. These are elected people you can, of course. There's ministerial orders where at least one elected official has to sign off that you can hold accountable. Then in a lot of the statutes, the way down in the middle of the statutes, there's a thing that says, and the lieutenant governor and counsel

are authorized to make regulations. This is Magna Carta to the Civil Service to generate all kinds of regulations. But then the fourth category is where the government has delegated regulatory powers to third parties, like the College of Physicians and Surgeons,

or like the College of Psychologists in Ontario and whatever. And these, And these bodies can censor their members, you know, if they don't like what they're saying, we can pull. And we saw that. We saw that all through COVID. So we proposed a few amendments to the, it's called the Health Professions Act, which is the act that delegates this regulatory power to those colleges to provide greater freedom of expression

in their operation. And you can direct this by statute, which is how we can. come at it. So those are three ways of trying to address the problem that you rate. With the amendments that you bring up, specifically, let's just stick with the colleges. They can just laugh at it and carry on. Can they not? No, no, no, they'd be in violation of their act. And so someone could go to court and the court could order them to stop doing what they're doing. But they don't have to take on your recommendations is all I mean. No, no, the government has to. If the government has to, if the government agrees with this, they amend the Health Professions Act.

And then these colleges happen. And then it would have interesting. Oh, yeah. Well, that's how the law work. The law says you can do this or you can't do that. And you have to change the law if you want to get that. And we say it's in chapter, what is it, chapter eight? I can't remember.

It's in one of those chapters there. There's a list of four amendments to the. health professions act to try to address that. Forgive me then. Where do we sit with the Alberta government on your report? Well, as often happens with this report, they receive it. They say, thank you for this, and we're going to take a look at it, and then we're going to announce which of these recommendations we can endorse. But the fact that the Premier commissioned this thing means that they're generally wanted to get some advice on what can be done.

Well, I'll mention this. When I have the premiere here on later this month, I'm going to bring it up because I'm like, it's really fascinating that you, you know, like I know a ton of doctors who've been on this show who have been harassed, et cetera, et cetera, even lost license because of their views during COVID. And there's a whole host of people that held on for dear life because of some of the thoughts from those doctors. And here we sit years later. And, you know, there's just been no recourse on the colleges specifically on what they did and continued to do with the censoring and silencing of doctors who spoke out against the narrative or the direction of what the college was setting, of what certain experts were setting, certainly what the government was pushing, you know, for a series of what felt like a lifetime. but it was only, you know, what, two years roughly? I mean, even where we sit today, there's still, and this isn't part of the scope of your work,

but I mean, in Alberta or across Canada, they're still recommending the boosters for, you know, COVID, which, you know, there's so much evidence now out with a host of experts that say that they should just be abolished yesterday, you know, let alone today. And it's guaranteeing this freedom of expression, particularly when you get into these technical issues, is this safe or is this not? The way to get at that is not through arguing through the social media or something like that. There ought to be a formal hearing somewhere with people that are knowledgeable on the subject

where all the views on this can be freely expressed and debated and cross-examined and everything else. The idea that there's only a single narrative on, say, the causes of COVID, or there's only a single narrative on how best to respond. A, it's undemocratic, and it can, as you say, very well, lead to errors because you don't. And we had a big even internal discussion on the panel. One of the things that the civil service will argue is if you acknowledge uncertainty, then people won't comply with the regulation. Like you're trying to protect people.

So if you say, we think this is the best thing to do. But because a lot of those people will tell you privately, we think this is the best thing. We're not sure that it may change. We don't have all the information at the beginning. But there's this argument if you acknowledge uncertainty, if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who will prepare themselves for battle, that kind of an argument. And we had this debate internally, and we ended up concluding that transparency is better than insisting on a single narrative.

If you're uncertain, tell the public you're uncertain. Just like your doctor would. You go to your doctor with some novel. condition that and the guy says look I'm not a hundred percent sure on what's what's wrong with you or what we should do but this is my best judgment is this what we should do but he acknowledges a certain degree of uncertainty so if it turns out there's more information later on or something changes you're not surprised the guy was honest with you he didn't say he was 100% sure and how to get to that that sort of mentality and that approach in an emergency is kind of what

our recommendations are aiming at. And you hear this from, again, politician always has to remember this. What you say to people and what they hear is something quite different sometimes. I used to send guys to other people's political meetings. They send six people to the other guys' political meetings. They come back with six reports. These people all go to the same meeting because different things struck people differently.

But on the COVID thing, what the public. heard at the beginning. This is mainly from the federal government to start with, was if you get vaccinated, you won't get COVID-19. That's what they heard. Start with. Then a little while later, it was if you get vaccinated twice, you won't get COVID. Then, much later, if you get vaccinated twice and get a booster, you won't get COVID. And then a little while later, if you get vaccinated twice and get a booster, you may get COVID, but the symptoms will be less. Like these are, I don't, I don't have to speak, sorry, Preston, I don't have to speak for politicians. Certainly, media, that's exactly what they said. Yeah. Oh yeah. The media amplified that. The media amplified that.

And then they said 94%. And then it's 88% and then it's this percent. Like, we watched it play out. I mean, uh, in Alberta alone, we were offered, uh, just about everything under the sun to go get vaccinated. I mean, the, the premier came out and said, it's a pandemic of the end vaccinated. So did Scott Moe. So did a whole host of people across. the world. And it's just, you know, whether that was something nefarious in the back scenes or just a bedlam of hysteria all at the same time, we have to ensure that it never happens again. If you would acknowledge the uncertainty, that would be a step in the right direction. Sure. If you would acknowledge that there wasn't one, like one absolute way we get

out of this, right? Because that's what they were trying to do. There's one option. And like you say, the media, there was misinformation was amplified by the media, by the mainstream media in particular. Well, because our hope is that this report, it's said it's got about 60 amendments to these key statutes. And if the government were to accept the majority of them, it would better prepare the province for dealing with a future emergency, not just a health emergency. because one of the things the historians tell you is don't assume that the next emergency will be like the last one because it rarely is. It's always, you know, after 9-11 for 10 years, everybody assumed the next big emergency is going to be a terrorist thing. Well, no, the next big emergency was a health thing, which is quite different. Well, I appreciate you hopping on, Preston.

I've enjoyed our chat. If you'll give me a few extra minutes, I want to pause, I want to invite everybody to go over to Substack. We're going to talk a couple more things, but we're going to take a brief pause here. We're going to slide over to Substack. So if you want to hear the last portion of Mine and Preston's conversation, please hop on over to Substack. And I got a couple more questions for him. So we'll see you over there.