The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How to Pursue National Unity Amidst Resurgent Regionalism

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

At a time of serious conflict with our neighbours to the south, perhaps a more concerning conflict might be coming from within. As calls for separation in places like Alberta grow louder, it brings up the question of how a nation can operate with respective regional interests? And, can Canada keep itself from coming apart? Joining to discuss these regional tensions are former premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney; Martha Hall Findlay, a former MP and director of the School of Public Policy and Palmer Chair at the University of Calgary; Felix Mathieu, Professor in the Department of Law at the Université du Quebec en Outaouais and co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science; and John Ibbitson, journalist, writer and co-author with Darrell Bricker for their forthcoming book, "Breaking Point: The Big Shifts That Put Canada at Risk." They join Steve Paikin to discuss. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At a time of serious conflict with our neighbours to the south, perhaps a more concerning conflict might be coming from within. As calls for separation in places such as Alberta grow, it brings up the question of how a nation can operate with respective regional interests. Can Canada keep itself from coming apart? Joining us to discuss these regional tensions, we welcome in Calgary, Alberta, Jason Kenney. He is, of course, the former Premier of that province. Former MP Martha Hall-Finley, now Director of the School of Public Policy and Palmer Chair at the University of Calgary.

In Montreal, Quebec, Félix Mathieu, Professor in the Department of Law at the Université du Québec on Haute-Huée and co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science. And with us here in studio, our good pal John Ibbotson, journalist and co-author of the forthcoming book, Breaking Point, The New Big Shifts Putting Canada at Risk. And it is great to have John, you back at our program. I don't know how many times this is for you, but it's a lot and it's good. And it's great to be here. I really am honored that you invited me down. Not at all. And to our friends in Points Beyond, thank you for joining us as well. Okay, Jason Kenney, let's start with you.

King Charles in the throne speech spoke about our country becoming an energy superpower through nation-building projects. And I guess I want to know whether you believe that's the ticket to bringing this country closer together. What do you think? Well, it's certainly a very big ticket. And I think Mr. Carney, being originally from Alberta, understands this. You know, Alberta has played an oversized role in the modern history of the Federation.

We contribute net about $20 billion more to the fiscal federalism than we get back in terms of transfers and benefits. And I always say Albertans are proud to play that role. We've also been a huge accelerator, or I should say escalator of social mobility. When people have faced underemployment or unemployment in other parts of the country, they have very often come to Alberta, which is why we are, I say, the most Canadian province, because of the huge history of inter-provincial migration to this province. Half of Albertans born outside the province, either Canadians from elsewhere or

international migrants. So we played that big country building role, but we have felt really hampered and constrained in our ability to develop our largest industry. Now that we face the Trump threat, the imperative, the exigency of developing, of increasing our exports, increasing our productivity, our national wealth, our per capita GDP, diversifying our export markets. The single biggest ticket way we can do that without huge government expenditure, by the way, is to unleash the energy sector. Please help us do so. That's really Alberta's message to Prime Minister Carney. Martha Huff-Inley, so nice to see a former Ontario MP

doing well in Western Canada. And welcome back to our program again. Let me ask you the same question, which is essentially to the extent we have these massive regional cleavages in the country, is a nation coast to coast mega project of some kind the ticket to making us closer? Well, you have to distinguish coast-to-coast and what Jason was just talking about.

The real opportunities for Canadian oil and gas is westward. There's lots and we can talk about Quebec and there's lots of gas in Quebec, but they can't get at it because of a ban on drilling and fracking for now. But there have been lots of studies at the School of Public Policy, a team of people who have worked for quite a few years since 2015 on the whole concept of corridors. And one of the first conclusions is one, shortcuts make for long delays, and two, cross Canada east-west is less of an opportunity and fraught with some other difficulties than frankly some of the earlier projects that were already on the books

like the Northern Gateway Pipeline. We certainly see LNG Canada now with natural gas going off the west coast. Hopefully that will get expanded. There are a couple of others. So I think for the for the Western oil and gas opportunities which are have been really frustrated over the last 10 years and I would say even more it's really a westward opportunity that is is probably the most important now. Felix let me just change the question somewhat to say we know that whatever happens going forward we'll have to incorporate indigenous consultation into whatever the big plan is. How do, what's the right way to achieve that so that whatever the bigger projects are coming down the road can be accomplished? Well I think the best way forward would be to have open

ended negotiations to have indigenous communities presented as real partners to this economic plan of development and not only as potential barriers to achieving this. So if you introduce Indigenous communities and leaders and have them at the decision table, at the negotiation table, I think this is the only way forward to have them feel that they are treated with respect and seen as partners, not as barriers. I think this is crucial. John, how are you seeing it?

I think, first of all, that's very important. But also I think indigenous Canadians, like Western Canadians, like Quebecers, and like those of us in Ontario, recognize we are at an existential point in this country's history. The reason that Darryl Bricker and I decided to do Breaking Point was it seemed to us that Donald Trump arrived at a time when we realized we had failed for generations, really, to deal with big problems, the problems of federation,

provincial powers, problems in defense, problems in immigration, big problems in immigration, and big generational problems in which, frankly, you and I and our cohorts, the boomers and the millennials, have failed the younger generation, condemning them to probably the first generation that will not live as well as their parents did. And all of this is coming at us all at the same time, all of it with Donald Trump threatening annexation and it's a real, as we say, a breaking point. It's certainly a decision point. We have some big things that we have to get done and we have to get them done now.

The notion that this country would be suffering through some regional tensions, I don't have to tell the four of you, is hardly anything new. Let's play a little clip here. This is a guy I think Jason Kenney knows pretty well. His name is Stephen Harper. You served in his cabinet. We were discussing his notion of open federalism on this program 13 years ago with the former clerk of the purvey council, Mel Cap. So, Sheldon, if you would, let's roll that clip. Everyone has talked about how Prime Minister Harper, in particular, has said he wants to respect the provincial jurisdiction. And so he is a 9192 prime minister.

Explain that reference. Well, as Jeff points out in his article in Policy Options, Section 91 is federal responsibility. Section 92 is provincial responsibilities. And the Constitution. And the Constitution. And there's a sense, in Prime Minister Harper's view, and Matthew points this out, that they're

watertight compartments. That if you're responsible for defense, it's a federal responsibility. Leave us alone, provinces. If you're responsible for international trade, it's a federal responsibility, not the provinces. Well, guess what? We can't close military bases in some provinces without consulting with provincial premiers.

You can't engage in an international trade negotiation without involving the premiers. Nothing is watertight. Okay, Jason Kenney, Prime Minister Harper, obviously was very much a stay in your lane, stick to your netting kind of a guy, 91 and 92 lanes. Do you see similarities or differences with the current prime minister in that regard? Too soon to say. What we do know is for the last 10 years, a liberal government under Mr. Trudeau

has driven way outside of its lane. And that's just not my opinion or the opinion of most Albertans, but the Supreme Court of Canada, as premier, I launched a constitutional challenge of the Impact Assessment Act, which launched a constitutional challenge of the Impact Assessment Act, which I branded the No More Pipelines Law, C-69. And we won at the Alberta Peel Court, the Supreme Court of Canada, saying that it was a constitutional Trojan horse,

the Peel Court, a massive overreach of the federal government's authority. And this wasn't just a fight over jurisdiction or power. It was because we were concerned that the uncertainty and the endless delays and Byzantine process in that bill would stall even further an already hampered energy and resource sector in making those big multi-billion dollar development, investments rather, that have been the mainstay of Canadian prosperity in post-war history. So, and it's proven right. Since that came into law in 2019, only one major project has been approved. So, the Supreme Court has said you have to scrap it effectively. They still haven't, I think,

done that nearly adequately. That's going to be one of the issues the premiers are discussing. So I would say to Prime Minister Carney, yeah, stay in your lane, let the provinces regulate these major projects. Where there is an appropriate federal role, we can negotiate that. But this has been the loss of tens of billions of dollars of job creating investment as a result of legislation like that. John, how do you see it? Exactly the same way. I mean, Justin Trudeau did some fine things as Prime Minister, especially during COVID and as a result of legislation like that. John, how do you see it? Exactly the same way. I mean, Justin Trudeau did some fine things as Prime Minister, especially during COVID and trade agreements. But boy, he left the Federation in a mess.

And he left it in a mess because he interfered in areas of provincial jurisdiction, leaving us with a PQ in Quebec that looks as though it's going to form the next government, unheard of levels of alienation and anger in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And in general sense that the entire system is not working and indeed it's starting to show signs of breaking down. So Mr. Carney absolutely must recognize the rights of the provinces

to operate in their sphere of jurisdiction. He needs to operate with some humility as a Prime Minister. And indeed, Dale and I would go so far in breaking point to say we need some kind of new agreement in which it is forbidden for the federal government to operate in areas of provincial jurisdiction without the express consent of the provinces. Martha Huffinley, are you seeing, if I can use John's word, a humility here

in the new prime minister that would allow him to follow the advice he seems to be getting here. I'm with Jason. It's a bit too soon to tell, but we're certainly getting the right signs. I would elaborate a little bit on what Jason and John have just said. I agree. And as a former liberal, I think the last 10 years, absolutely the federal government went way beyond its own lane. But I would also say that what we've seen in terms of infrastructure,

big infrastructure builds, I'll use Northern Gateway as an example, or even the Trans Mountain expansion, there is a role for the federal government to play. There is a role for both governments in working with Indigenous communities. And I'd like to say, you know, in the West, the energy companies have understood for a long time the importance of partnering with Indigenous communities. Some of those lessons were hard learned,

but for the last couple of decades, that's pretty much all you're seeing is, in fact, partnerships. But if you looked at Trans Mountain and Northern Gateway, the British Columbia government of the day said, you can't build your pipeline across my province. Well, they didn't have the right under section 90, detections 91 and 92. That was a federal jurisdiction. The federal government could, and I think probably should have, stood up and said, wait a minute, you don't have the jurisdiction to prevent an inter-provincial pipeline. You don't

have the jurisdiction to prevent a pipeline going to the sea from Alberta across British Columbia. So if you didn't have the federal government have any involvement, then Alberta would have another problem in the sense of not being able to work with British Columbia. So I think there has to be a lot of humility all around. We need way more collaboration among the provinces, we need way more collaboration between the provinces and the federal government, and of course with the Indigenous community. So I don't think black and white is going to be very helpful. I mean we didn't build anything of significance under the Harper government. It's not a criticism of Stephen Harper. It's for decades we haven't been able to figure this out and

it's high time we did. Felix, do you see evidence that we are on the verge of figuring this out? Not so much. I'm quite concerned about all this as well. So this metaphor of the watertight compartments is the courts that introduced that concept late 1800s. Today everyone acknowledged that public policy issues are hard to pinpoint. That's the jurisdiction of the province or competence of the federal government. But the idea is that we seem to have leaders that don't necessarily believe in federalism, in a federal spirit.

And yes, we need to think about shared rule, about autonomy, but we also need to think about shared rules, shared governance. And when we think about that, intergovernmental relations in Canada clearly are the weakest link of our federal system, of our federal regime. And it's a problem that we have a federal prime minister that mandates the provincial premiers to come together, but the PM dictates the agenda. I think we should see more collaboration, more enthusiasm as well, to work with the provincial partners and to really thrive on that federal spirit.

Sometimes I wonder if our leaders believe in federalism. Well, I can't have two people from Calgary on this program without asking about the latest efforts by Premier Smith to make it easier to lower the bar, if you like, for you know a bill to come forward and have some discussion about separatism in the province of Alberta. And I guess Jason Kenney, I'd start with you by asking, do you believe it's constitutionally kosher for any province to do what Premier Smith in Alberta is undertaking?

Yeah, just a small point. It's not to bring forward a bill, but it's a citizen-initiated referendum process. People in Canada will be familiar with this sort of thing in California. We had it in the Western provinces in the progressive era, the 1920s. I brought back Citizens Initiative in Alberta to allow for a certain degree of direct democracy

and issues that the political elites weren't addressing, but with a high threshold, 20% in three quarters of the constituencies in 30 days. So you really had to demonstrate a very substantial number of people were frustrated on an issue. And my successor has lowered those thresholds dramatically to 10%, no geographic threshold and in 90 days. So there is a consensus that the very small separatist movement here may well be able to achieve that threshold. Now, I would say this, that the last time we had a separatist party on the ballot in Alberta was the 2021

federal election and the Maverick Party, and they got 32,000 votes across all of Western Canada. That reflects how marginal the movement really is, but it becomes an avatar, an opportunity for people to express frustration. And what concerns me in some of the polls we've seen is a large number, apparently north of 30, some say close to 40 percent are willing to entertain separation. I don't think those people are actually separatists. They are alienated and frustrated federalists who are looking for a way to express that

which is a dangerous thing to play with. It's playing with fire. I'm an unconditional federalist. I don't think you play with fire but my goodness Ottawa could help to take the air out of the tire of that incipient movement with just a couple of substantial policy changes like an effective effectively raising the emissions are we call a production cap on the oil sands and address guaranteeing a pipeline project or addressing the industrial carbon tax. A couple of things that would demonstrate good faith and a change of course from the Trudeau government's anti-resource posture would really relieve the pressure here.

Martha Hull-Finley, what would you add to that? I would say that the big issue, and I agree with Jason on almost all of that, I would say that the big issue is how to address the alienation and anger. That's way more important than the number of signatures that you're going to need to actually bring this forward. I think, you know, I agree with Jason, most of the people who have expressed that kind of anger are not ultimately separatists. I don't think the anger is with Canada. You know, my sense is Albertans are

very angry. Albertans and Saskatchewanians are pretty angry, but they're not angry at Canada. They're angry at the government that we've had in the last 10 years without question and policies that were either hidden or not very well hidden of desire to just shut the entire oil and gas sector down. We've had prior ministers, Catherine McKenna,

we had Stephen Gilbo make no bones about the fact that they thought we should just shut it down, not just cap it, but just shut it down. And so there's a serious level of distrust and anger and frustration. What I think is happening, and I will go that one step further from what Jason is saying, is that you could, the federal government could take the air out of the tire. I think Mark Carney already is. Tim Hodgson is the new Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. He was out here last week, gave a speech in Calgary that was terrific.

Do you know how many Calgarians talk about a speech from a Liberal Minister that was terrific? That's been a long, long time. So I think we're already well on our way. We've heard the rhetoric from Mark Carney. We've heard the rhetoric, the commentary from the new minister Hodgson. Now they just have to show it. They have to show it by dealing with the emissions cap. They have to show it by dealing with significant amendments to the Impact Assessment Act so that we can actually move to building something as I said it hasn't just been 10 years we haven't built anything of

significance in at least 20 years so there are other underlying challenges but my sense absolutely is that the new Prime Minister and some of his team are are aware of this and are actually very keen to make the changes necessary. John when Danielle Smith made the announcement, and Kenny is quite right, thanks for the correction on this, for the Citizens Initiative, lowering the threshold, lowering the bar, that landed like a lead balloon, certainly here in central Canada. A lot of unhappiness at hearing that. Were we right to be unhappy at hearing that, or does she have a point?

She has a very good point, and all of the people in Alberta and Saskatchewan who are upset have a very good point. They're not just upset with the former Liberal government. They're upset with, if you'll forgive me because I first uttered the term on this show many moons ago, they're angry with the large elite. They are. They are. They are. They're angry with the learned elite. They are angry with the business and political and media and academic class in central Canada who believe that the rest of Canada and they don't they wouldn't even express it this way but believe that that certainly the western Canada is in some straight way

a bit of a colony, a bit of an offshoot. Certainly not where the action is. Certainly not where things are really happening. And the real anger in the rest of Canada towards the Laurentian elites is palpable. And it's growing worse. We warned about it in the Big Shift. Dale and I are warning about it now because the situation is worse now than it was then.

And of course, no one is more Laurentian than Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada, for crying out loud. So in some way, he's going to have to betray his class. He's going to have to get himself disinvited from some dinner parties at the Glebe and the Annex by encouraging carbon exports, by encouraging pipelines, and by showing a real respect not for this quote unquote national interest which sort of ends within the site of the CN tower but that actually expresses the

national interest from coast to coast. Felix let me get your... It's funny though because if I can just say that I'm smiling because over 200,000 people came to Alberta just last year alone. An awful lot of those people are actually coming from central Canada. And so I look around Calgary and have been here for well over a decade. I think, John, there's hope in the fact that an awful lot of people who might have fit that mold are actually now in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

But certainly the numbers are huge in terms of Alberta. So maybe there's a glimmer there. They have voted with their feet there's no doubt about that. Fetis let me ask you about this because I never thought I'd live long enough to see this. The numbers in favor of sovereignty and Jason Kenny is quite right. We can't assume that people who are expressing concern about the situation are necessarily separatists. But let's just say the polling numbers in Alberta are actually larger in terms of consideration of sovereignty than they are in the province of Quebec right now.

And I wonder what you make of all of that. Yeah, the parallel situations between Quebec and Alberta or the West right now is very interesting. So I also did spend four years at the University of Winnipeg and I did study the feeling of Western alienation. I think it needs to be taken very seriously. And I think many people in this Laurentian elite, to take John's concept, are wrong not taking this as seriously as it should should because there's a real feeling that

Albertans, that Saskatchewans are not treated with the respect they deserve both from a power decision-making perspective but also in terms of economic development how the federal system economically speaking developed and how it developed on the shoulders of Albertans without them receiving the fruits of their labor, if you may. And now if you look at both Quebec and Alberta, what's very interesting right now is that we see upsurge in terms of polls, in terms of people saying that they would be in favor of an independentist movement that they believe their province would be better off without being in the Canadian federal system. Now what's also very interesting is that at the same time, people are expressing

highly positive sentiments towards the Canadian federal system or Canada at large. And so there's this mixed feelings here. And I think we should try our best to address these issues and try to make up for federal system or federal arrangements where people would be able to see them as winners, not losers in that power situations. And to achieve this, building the idea of a one Canada, one economy, I think we're going in the wrong directions here. Because if we have a liberal government in Ottawa pursuing in one economy, one nation building enterprise, I believe it won't be at the advantage of either Alberta, maybe not Quebec too, and it might even fuel this feeling of being not treated with the respect they deserve. I think we should actually allow for more flexibility, even asymmetrical

institutional design to be able to bring people together and feel a sentiment of conditional loyalty towards the federal system because we believe it works at our advantage. So I think this is the one issue, the one theme that we need to work on as a country. You've given me a nice segue to the next area I want to explore and that is by using the word asymmetrical. That is always the word we have used about Quebec in the past, that the provinces can be treated equally, but you know, not identically. And we're going to go back into the archives here to pull another clip. This one's from former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna, who 16 years ago on this program was talking about the fact that, well, here we are now, 43 years after the repatriation of our Constitution, Quebec technically has still not signed the Constitution Despite the efforts of Prime Minister Mulrooney through the Meach Lake and Charlottetown accord processes

Here's what Frank McKenna said about all of this 16 years ago on this show. Roll the please, Sheldon Do I think the country is falling apart because we don't have Meach? No, that's the other that's the other thing that should be noted. I don't feel like I can't sleep at night because the country has gone to hell. But we might have avoided a referendum in 1995 where the country almost did go to hell. That's correct.

That's correct. But my feeling is this, that Meach would have solved things, a lot of things, but not in perpetuity. That the tensions that are within the bosom of Canada would probably always be there, but they may have been put off a long time and they may manifest themselves in different ways. John, there is nothing new in this country about being unable to come to a consensus on the really big things that we deal with. Where does that leave you?

Well, I think it leaves us with something I never thought I would ever say. I think it leaves us needing to consider a new constitutional conference. Those of us who endure the agonies of Meach and Charlottetown, I think all decided, never again as long as we live. How are we going to go through that again? But we have Donald Trump.

We have an American ally that we've been far too complacently relying on, turning into something resembling an adversary in some respects, with the tariffs. I'm not even sure whether he would defend this in the event that the Chinese or the Russians began to express incursions in the North. And I think there is a fear that the future of the country is at risk not only from our internal stresses,

but from the threat of what the United States is becoming. And maybe in that spirit of shared enthusiasm of humility, let that be the word that's at the top of the communique, in that spirit of humility, maybe we can find common cause to get a new constitutional conference. One that again Darryl and I think would be founded on the notion of preserving cooperation, absolutely, but deference especially to the interests of the provinces. Jason Kenney, what do you think of that idea? Well I would proceed with caution. I mean look look, there's a... The Western alienation has deep historic roots based on the fact that Alberta and Saskatchewan in particular

were created as almost an afterthought in Confederation with second tier status. And the way the early Canadian economy worked, the national policy, tariffs that meant we had to buy overpriced Ontario goods and sell our commodities at discount, fighting with the railways, not owning our natural resources. All of that created generations of resentment and a sense that like we're the powerhouse of the economy in many respects, but we aren't the powerhouse in terms of public policy in Ottawa. So there would be a strong desire here to open that up to talk about like Senate reform or regional

representation, keeping the feds out of our areas of provincial jurisdiction. But my goodness, how about we try to do a couple big things first to prove that we can actually work together properly as a federation like internal trade before opening that Pandora's box. And I must confess, I'm a little concerned with the advent of identity politics and all of that, that this would turn into kind of the worst aspects of the Charlottetown debate, which was an effort to sprinkle identity politics

all through the Constitution. I think that would be very dangerous. Martha Huffinley, how is, admittedly, a new prime minister with certainly deep Lorentzian elite roots, but also roots in Western Canada John, I think we can say that as well. How does, what is the secret sauce to get him to be able to deal with all of the competing interests in this country and get us to a finish line where most people are happy?

Secret sauce. Well first I would agree with with Jason to proceed with caution about opening up the Constitution. I've long been a huge fan of the Constitution. I think it's, it's it's incredibly good as a document, you know, you look at sections 91 and 92, they make a lot of sense. This is the division of powers between the federal and the provincial governments. It's actually, every time I look at it, I go, man, those people had some really good ideas and

really put things together. Part of the challenge is that we've interpreted it over the years in ways that have become more complicated and less collaborative rather than, I think, the way it might have been intended when it was drafted. So I would, short of opening it up, I think we could do a lot of work to really clarify the interpretation and how do we do that with some of the Supreme Court decisions that have happened on the inter-primitual trade have been really frustrating, but I would agree. Let's try and get a couple of big things done in collaboration, right, and then see where that takes us in terms of interpreting the, I think, pretty terrific document we already have. I do also agree there's some issues like the Senate representation, the fact that we have two

MPs from Alberta, only one in cabinet. It just doesn't reflect the economic strength of the West. It doesn't, you know, so as Jason said, we have the economic strength, but we don't have the political strength. And I think that there are ways we could do that. There are ways we could address that as a country. I think two things with the new prime minister. I think he gets it, right? This is that we have a prime minister who I think is smart enough and is aware enough

to understand that there's some really tough things that need to be done in this country. But I also see a prime minister who already has shown a willingness to acknowledge that there are things that need to be done differently. Even for him personally, he has spent the last couple of decades doing almost all of his work related to climate change. All of his work in dealing with how do we get the financial community globally to work with countries globally to address climate change. But he's also smart enough to realize Canada is not going to solve climate change on its own.

So it's going to be China and India and the United States and a whole lot of others. It can't be Canada doing it on its own. And so the past policies of the last ten years have been as though Canada was going to solve climate change all on its own, you know, damn our economy. But I actually give Prime Minister Carney a tremendous amount of credit for already not just hanging on to those, to that one theme that has been so important to him. He's already recognizing that there are much bigger forces at play, including

Donald Trump, that Canada needs to do. So it's a bit early to tell Stephen how, you know early to tell Stephen, how well he's going to do this, but I'm very optimistic given what I've seen so far. Felix, I cannot have you on this program without asking you, how much do you believe in the province of Quebec today, it is still an irritant that this constitutional question has not technically been resolved,

and how much appetite do you think there is in the province to resolve it? I think there is. I think there are many, many political forces in Quebec that are actually wanting to achieve this, to have in Quebec within the Canadian Constitution, and that would mean to find said secret sauce. Actually, I don't think we need to find a recipe for the sauce, but at least to find a will with the partners in Canada to get together and to try something out. And maybe we don't get it right the first time and maybe it needs more salt, maybe it needs some maple syrup here. And I cannot just, I need to agree with John here. I think first we need

constitutional realm and I would put this plural. We need to see this constitutional rounds over the long haul. We need not to look at constitutional rounds as zero sum up game where if someone wins something it's because someone else is going to lose something. If we know for instance every five, every six year we would have constitutional rounds of negotiations, I think it would ease up tensions. And I don't have, I think I speak for my generation, we don't have this political trauma that we couldn't figure it out. And I think we need to put in best trust in the new generation, in the new political actors getting on to the political stage and say, look, we need to work something out here. And we need to look at the long term. We don't need a perpetual constitution.

We need a constitution that can evolve not only through its informal norms, but also through the text itself. We do have, as Marta said, a really interesting, wonderful constitutional order in Canada, but we can make this architecture much more beautiful, much more functional for the communities it deserves. And so I think both Quebec, but also political forces in the West, right now they're actively fighting to have a better place

in the Canadian federal system. And we need to take these perspectives into consideration while also acknowledging the perspectives put forward by Ontarians, but also in the Maritimes from Manitoba, and so on and so forth. And to achieve this, we need to talk, we need to come together, and we need to be imaginative and to be optimistic somehow. And if you look at this optimism precisely, 251 years ago we adopted the Quebec Act, precisely in the aftermath of the American War of Independence. A century after, this is when we achieved a confederation because there were turbulence out of our borders.

Right now, with everything that's going on, I think we cannot simply be pessimistic. We need to be hopeful and I think we should try to seize this situation and seize this opportunity and build something even more strong as a constitutional architecture in Canada that would suit differentiated interests. We're down to our last minute here and Jason Kenney, I'll give it to you. It's been 32 years since anybody tried a national grand constitutional conference, the likes of which John Ibbitson was referring to, the Charlottetown Accord. It's not a coincidence that people of successive prime ministers have not wanted to touch this stove for three-plus decades.

What do you think about what you're hearing here? Yeah, well I'm hearing that, look, everybody would be open to a constitutional convention if they got what they wanted and if they didn't get what they didn't. I mean the problem is the countervailing pressures. Now let me, when I was premier we had six or seven center-right governments in Canada. So we might have had, we had a kind of political alignment that could have supported constitutional amendments. I went to Francois Legault and pitched him on a series of amendments that would strengthen provincial jurisdiction where Alberta and Quebec are totally aligned

and he said it's basically it's not worth the candle. Let's not go down that road. So if Quebec's not even willing to open the Pandora's box I'm not sure that the rest of us will what I'd like to see as a concrete deliverable is an economic union provinces can do that through fiat let's just get it done to use a good Albert expression get her done stop that stop the talk, start the walk. It's get it done in Alberta, and of course, Premier Ford's favorite expression is get it done in Ontario.

That's Jason Kenney, the former Premier of Alberta, Martha Hall Finley, the former member of Parliament, now the director of the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, Félix Mathieu, professor of the Department of Law at Université du Québec on Outaway, and John Ibbotson, journalist, senior fellow at the Munk School. He's also writing columns for the Globe and Mail.

He's absolutely like City TV everywhere. Thanks so much, you four. It's been great having you on TVO tonight. Thank you. Thank you.