Baffinland Iron Mines Corp laid off 586 workers—96 Inuit and 490 non-Inuit—at Nunavut’s Mary River mine after halting expansion due to permit delays, risking $5B in lost tax revenue and 5,000 jobs. Critics like environmental advisor Amanda Hanson-Main argue for stricter assessments, while opponents blame Bill C-69’s excessive regulations. Meanwhile, scholars Jared and Gerard Lucitian propose redrawing Canada’s provincial borders to address landlocked regions’ economic isolation, comparing them to historical fluidity. The episode ties mining job losses to broader debates on development vs. bureaucracy and regional equity, questioning whether outdated frameworks stifle progress. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey Rebels, you know, I discovered something huge that I was oblivious to until today, and that's always a little bit humbling.
You think you follow the world, you follow your own country, you know what's going on.
I did not know until today about an enormous iron mine in Nunavut called Baffinland.
It's obviously on Baffin Island.
I learned so much about it.
It's so amazing.
It's so huge.
And there's some terrifying news today.
They laid off 600 people.
And by the way, Nunavut only has 20,000 people in their entire labor force.
This is staggeringly bad news.
And I look into why and what and what is Baffin Land and who shut it down.
And I'm very troubled.
I'm thrilled to have discovered Baffin Land, but I'm terrified to have discovered it in a moment of stress.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed today's monologue.
This one is one where you really have to see it to believe it, though.
And I know you're probably listening to this podcast in a place where you can't also watch a video.
Maybe you're driving.
That shouldn't stop you from watching a video if you're careful.
Maybe you're on the subway, whatever.
I want to show you what Baffinland looks like.
And in the video version of the podcast, you see it, and it's unbelievable.
It is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
To see the video version of this podcast, please become a premium subscriber.
Go to premium.rebelnews.com.
It's eight bucks a month.
And even if you, you know, I just want you to see Baffin Land.
It sounds like a made-up place, Baffinland, or like a very Arctic Disney or something.
No, it's even cooler.
All right.
Without further ado, here's the podcast.
Tonight, environmentalists just killed 600 mining jobs in Nunavut.
That's 3% of the workforce up there, and not a peep.
It's November 15th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Look at this story from the Nunatsiak News.
Baffinland lays off 586 contract employees, HALTS planned work.
And underneath it says, there is no date for remobilization at this time.
I checked, and this story isn't anywhere else in the media, at least at the moment when I wrote the script about an hour ago.
Let me read from the story.
Baffinland Iron Mines Corp says it has laid off 586 contracted employees working at its Mary River mine.
Of those contractors, 96 are Inuit and 490 are non-Inuit, the company said in an email to Nunatsiak News.
586 Laid Off at Mary River Mine00:12:18
Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen a comment even from Nunavut's newly elected MP, this young lady, Mamulak Kakak, if I'm saying her name right.
I hope I am.
If she speaks up, I will let you know, but so far, silence.
Now, she's obviously an Inuk woman herself.
She's just 25, but that's old enough to know how devastating these layoffs will be for her community.
Here's Nunavut's official labor force statistics from their provincial or their territorial website.
Very up to date, as you can see.
The labor force is just 20,000 people in the whole territory.
That's how small Nunavut is.
Smaller than the university I went to.
Can you imagine?
people-wise, obviously it's geographically huge.
So you've got 20,000 people working in the entire economy and nearly 600 were just laid off in one fell swoop.
That just jumped the unemployment rate by 3%, like just in one move, in one day at one company, because it's such a huge and important company, Baffin Land.
They have a huge iron mine.
This is a video produced by Baffin Land about their operations up in Nunavut.
And I'm going to let this play for as much as I can because it's so informative.
It's so interesting.
It's so well done.
I learned so much from it.
I think it's the most amazing thing I've seen recently since the oil sands, except for everything up there seems harder to do, harder to build, harder to get there, because it's so far north, at least in the oil sands.
You can bring in a lot of things by truck on the highway up from Edmonton.
I know a lot of the oil sands are out in the bush, in the swampy lands still.
This is a whole new thing.
It's almost like they're in Mars.
They're so far north.
Everything has to be brought in.
Their iron mine, as you can guess, it's called Baffin Land.
It's on Baffin Island.
Most things are flown in.
Look at this.
Look at this state-of-the-art emergency room.
They built that.
Look at that equipment.
They brought that in.
Some things have to wait for the sea ice to thaw and they brought in on a ship.
Look at that.
That's how they do it.
They blast the iron.
It's just unbelievable.
Look at all that heavy equipment up there.
I'm in love.
What can I say?
It's just absolutely amazing.
Men and machines and ingenuity.
And they say it's got the finest iron in the world in terms of purity.
So that heavy stuff, they've got to wait till the thaw and then they ship them in during the summer season.
And look what they built up there.
In addition to mining the world's purest iron, they've built everything from scratch.
They built the roads.
They built the heavy-duty ports.
They built that little mini hospital.
Everything.
This company's building Nunavut.
I admit, I just very recently tuned into this place.
I didn't know about it before.
I'm just learning.
But let me read how important the company is and their plans are.
Now, this is an article from a few years back in the Globe and Mail.
So it's not up to date.
Baffin Land has grown.
Maybe they've done this and more.
Here's from the Globe a few years ago.
It's a little dated.
They say, the impact on Nunavut will be profound.
The mine is expected to triple the territory's annual gross domestic product growth rate and provide nearly $5 billion in tax revenue and royalties to the territory over the life of the project.
It will create more than 5,000 direct jobs, many more indirect positions, and offer training opportunities in an area of the country where four out of every six people live in social housing and life expectancy is 10 years lower than the rest of Canada.
That's amazing.
Will you agree with me that this mine is the best thing ever to have happened to Nunavut?
I really don't have a connection to the Arctic.
I've been to the Arctic Sea, Arctic Ocean once, the Beaufort Sea.
But I'm immediately as proud of this mine as I am of the oil sands, even though I have no connection to it.
I'm just proud that they're doing this.
I'm proud that this actually happened.
And frankly, I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't know about the scope of the scale.
Look at this.
Look at what they're doing.
Iron.
Look at the red.
Look at that red iron.
That's what it looks like in the spring and summer.
Doesn't that look nice?
I can tell you that two feet underground, it's still frozen thick.
That's what permafrost means.
It looks gorgeous on the surface, but that thing is so, it's still so cold up there.
You dig a couple feet and it's just frozen.
Look at that.
I'm still researching it, but if it really does employ as many people as the Globe and Mail projected, it is irreplaceable in terms of not just economic life, obviously, but what that Globe and Mail article talked about, all the things that come from it, jobs, training, and the moral and spiritual benefits of people working for a living rather than being on some form of government welfare.
The skills training, the infrastructure.
I watched some Baffinland videos today, and even these roads.
You see this road?
That's a road that Baffinland built.
They're building the roads in Nunavut.
Their own money.
They're very proud of their roads.
Of course, it's hard to get roads that far north, keep them clear.
They're building Nunavut.
Yeah, they're mining iron, but as a byproduct, they're producing a new territory, aren't they?
And now, 600 people have just been laid off.
Why?
And other than the Nunatsiak news, why haven't we heard about this?
I mean, if 600 people were laid off anywhere in Canada, that would be big news.
It's big news in Alberta, unfortunately, not rare news, to have 600 people laid off in Alberta's oil patch.
600 people laid off, but still news.
The day after the election, Husky laid off a few hundred.
In a province of 4.5 million people, 600 layoffs.
That's 600 families.
That's big news.
But in Nunavut, it's bigger proportionately than if the entire oil patch in Alberta were shut down, or the entire auto industry in Ontario was shut down, or the entire dairy industry in Quebec was shut down.
I can't even imagine how important this is.
I told you there's only 20,000 people working in Nunavut, and 600 of them just got a pink slip.
And this company just got hit with a sledgehammer.
Why?
Why?
Well, let's read some more from the Nunatsiak News.
The layoffs come shortly after the Nunavut Impact Review Board decision on November 6th to abruptly adjourn its public hearing on the company's expansion plans.
Due to the uncertainty of phase two permit approvals, work associated with the 2019 work plan has been demobilized, Salima Vireni, a communications specialist for Baffinland, said in the email.
On November 6th, Nunavut Tungavik, Inc., President Aluki Kotierk, brought forward a motion to immediately suspend the final public hearing and defer its continuation for eight months to one year.
He's got a job.
Throughout the hearing, Baffinland representatives went back and forth with interveners on their planned construction of a 110-kilometer rail line north from the Mary River site to its Milne Inlet port.
The railway and additional port infrastructure would make it possible for the company to ramp up its production from the current 6 million tons of iron ore per year to 12 million tons.
They want to build the north.
And they were just told, no, thanks.
No, thanks.
We're going to take a year.
Why do you guys take a year?
Imagine if these people had been around when the CPR CP Rail was built.
So what exactly is happening here?
Well, let me show you this.
That's the price of iron ore.
They look very strong to me.
I don't know a lot about iron.
I'll be honest with you.
But that graph is generally going in the right direction, ain't it?
And imagine doubling the capacity of the finest ore in the world.
Imagine all the construction jobs.
Imagine all the permanent operating jobs.
Imagine all the tax revenue.
Imagine all the Inuit kids getting skills training, job training.
They don't have to leave the north to get work.
They can get a great job, literally building their own homeland.
And it was stopped.
Why?
What were the objections?
I'll get to that in a minute, but let me quote just a little bit more.
In an email to Nunatsiak News, the Kicketini Inuit Association said it is very concerned about Inuit job losses at the mine.
You don't say.
QIA is very concerned about Inuit employment and contract to the Mary River Project.
We know that every single job matters.
Our team has reached out to Baffinland to get more information about possible layoffs or termination of contracts with Inuit firms.
We are awaiting the company's response, QIA said.
Terry Dobbin, general manager of the Northwest Territory's Nunavut Chamber of Mines, told Nunatsiak News he hopes the project can continue to move forward.
Our members are watching this unfold with concern and hoping there is a resolution of the issue as the project is very important to Nunavut.
Baffinland is working hard with all parties to find an agreeable resolution to any outstanding issues, Dobbin said.
The company said there is currently no plan for when construction might resume.
It's almost like Trudeau's running the thing up there.
There is no date for re-mobilization at this time.
The demobilizing effort is due to the uncertainty of phase two, Virani said.
So what was the problem there?
They had the plan.
They were given her.
You saw the folks representing the Inuit industries.
Come on, guys, we need those contracts.
So why was this all stopped?
I mean, look at these jobs.
I think this is the repair shop.
They got power plants.
They're building their own power plants.
Look at this.
Their own maintenance.
Imagine you're in high school in Nunavut.
You could get any job in the world here.
Anything you want to do.
And I bet there's, look at that.
Imagine driving that rig.
That's a six-figure job.
I bet you're making $150,000.
You're driving that truck.
Look at that.
Being an engineer operating that heavy equipment.
Those are six-figure jobs, skilled and semi-skilled jobs, plus professional jobs, obviously.
You're an accountant, you're a lawyer, you're an engineer, plus unskilled jobs.
Sure.
There is something for everyone here.
Look at that red earth.
Isn't that gorgeous?
This company, Baffinland, will do more to lift up the people of Nunavut than any government will, especially the Inuit.
Look at that.
Look at that gorgeous blue sky, eh?
That's what it's like in the summer.
I bet it's dark about 23 hours.
Oh, and this is the port.
Look at them loading the iron ore into those ships.
I love this video.
You should find it.
Type in Baffinland on YouTube.
It's an incredible video.
They have to fill up the ships with ore very quickly because, of course, it freezes over in the winter.
So they've got to get all those ships with the ore out in the summer.
Three megatons, three million tons of ore.
I love it.
And I've never even seen it with my own eyes other than through video.
Iron Ore Exports00:07:42
So who's stopping this miracle?
This oil sands of the Arctic.
It's not oil, of course.
It's just iron.
So you can't really complain that, oh, it's going to leak.
We're going to have a spill.
What about the dolphins?
I mean, there's no excuse here.
So who's responsible for the delay?
A number of people.
The Nunatsiak News quotes one of them last week in this story.
Further information and assessment is needed, said Amanda Hanson, Maine, advisor to the Mittimetelek Hunters and Trappers Organization.
She said the project has a serious potential to impact the resources we depend on and maintain our sense of purpose and belonging in the world.
Pardon?
Your sense of purpose and belonging.
Why say what?
Now, it says she's with the hunters and trappers there.
I have not been to Baffin Island.
Like I say, I've just been to Inuvik and Tukti-Yuktuk.
And it's ice up there almost all the time.
And in the summer, it looks nice, but you dig this deep is frozen solid.
It's called the permafrost, right?
You can't really live in the north except at a subsistence level if all you're doing is hunting and trapping and maybe getting whales whaling.
They do some whaling up there.
Now, I'm sure that some Inuits still hunt and trap as a custom, as a cultural expression, as a link to the past, as grandpas teaching their grandkids, as exercise, as fun, for food and fur, and just like any hunters in the South would go hunting.
But that does not pay for a modern lifestyle with big old pickup trucks and skidoos and electricity and satellite internet and first world health care.
Hunting and trapping, it's a nice bonus and it's culturally, you know, keeps the culture, but it is not 1% of 1% of 1% of the economic impact of this mine.
But hey, Amanda Hanson-Main says we better stop the mine because it's damaging our feelings of belonging.
We've got to shut down the expansion for a year, maybe more.
Let's lay off 600 people because we've got to think about the belongingness here.
Who's Amanda Hanson-Main?
She doesn't sound Inuit to me.
Here's her LinkedIn page.
She's an environmentalist and a bureaucrat, originally from the South, Alberta and B.C.
She calls herself an, let me quote her own biography that she wrote for herself, environmental professional.
Oh good.
Oh good, good.
Environmental professional with over 12 years experience working within Nunavut's regulatory regime on major project developments across the territory, skilled in environmental and socioeconomic assessment, community engagement and consultation, and developing and executing broad-based communication strategies.
So in other words, you don't have a real job and maybe you've never held one.
Just come out and say it.
She's a bureaucrat.
I saw in her biography, she actually even served on the Nunavut's Human Rights Commission.
I hope she's focusing on trans rights, because that's really more important than getting this iron mine going, don't you think?
Now, I'm not really picking on her other than she was one of the people cheering the layoffs.
But she's the old Nunavut, and by that I mean the Nunavut that was 90% government.
And if you're government, and that's all her biography is, really, you never get laid off, do you?
You have a job for life, really, and it's unionized, and you have a ton of time off and lots of benefits.
You work for the government like Amanda does.
You got jobs no matter what, if you call them jobs.
I mean, good jobs for a white girl being in environmental communications.
Yeah, how about real jobs for real Inuit families, like digging iron?
Well, Amanda says they'll have to wait because she's got some belongingness issues or something.
It's not just white southerners, of course.
Let's be honest, there are plenty of Inuit politicians and bureaucrats who are against this mine too.
Usually they're just trying to extract a few more million dollars from the mine for this or that pet project.
We've seen this even in Attawapiscat.
They shake down the mine for a million here, a hundred grand there.
I don't want you to think it's only white liberals from the South at work attacking Baffin Land mine.
But about that, I mean, if Justin Trudeau's Bill C69, which applies to mega projects, if it were to be applied to this mega project, of course, it would kill it.
That's the new law, remember, passed by Trudeau, that adds layer upon layer of new environmental regulations to any large project.
It adds transgender reviews.
The intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors, I swear to God, I'm not kidding, it adds so many airy fairy things to real life.
I mean, real life in Baffin Island.
Let's build a road, let's build a rail, let's dig stuff.
No, no, no.
Whoa.
Hey, Iron Miner, you sit down.
Have you done your transgender analysis yet?
It would kill this project dead if it were ever implemented as written.
Remember this craziness?
Project decisions will be based on science, evidence, and indigenous traditional knowledge.
We're also taking a bigger picture look at the potential impacts of a proposed project.
Instead of just looking at the environmental impacts, we'll look at how a project could affect our communities and health, jobs and the economy over the long term, and we'll also do a gender-based analysis.
A gender-based analysis.
You saw the video that I ran at the beginning here.
I mean, it's the greatest, biggest, most industrial project ever done in the Canadian Arctic.
I mean, I bet you in Russian Siberia, they got stuff like that, but I've never seen anything like that in the Canadian Arctic before.
Have you?
Of course it would be shut down by McKenna.
I mean, duh, they haven't done their transgender analysis.
She would probably shut it down because it hires too many men.
Gender impact?
How does that fit into a pipeline approval process?
So I'm really glad you asked that because I think people are like, well, what is this gender thing?
Well, imagine that you have a huge number of people going to a remote community, many men.
What is the impact on the community?
What is the impact on women in the community?
And actually, once again, smart proponents understand this.
So they're going to put measures in place.
That's all it is.
It's just taking a smart approach to thinking about, okay, what's going to be the impact of a major development in a particular area?
Yeah, smart business people, smart operators know you have to do gender analysis.
I love that whenever I hear it, as if Catherine McKenna has ever run anything other than her mouth.
Well, Baffinland, they look like a hell of an operator.
They're doing a lot of stuff and it looks like they're doing it well.
I mean, I don't know.
I've just learned about them today, I'll be honest.
But I think they're the best thing to happen to Canada's North in a long time.
And they just realized that because of politics, environmental politics, not even politics of C69, that even hasn't been added yet.
Landlocked Challenges00:14:28
They have to lay off 600 people, including almost 100 Inuit.
Oh, well, maybe they'll all just learn to code or whatever Trudeau and McKenna want us to do.
That, or, you know, maybe they can go work with that white girl Amanda, you know, talking about trapping and hunting and stuff.
Stay with us for more.
The number one reason that Cuba is so poor as a country is because it's a socialist regime.
The number two reason is because of the economic embargo placed on that island nation by the United States.
It's economic warfare, and it's been going on for more than 50 years.
Well, that same tactic is being applied to Western Canada, Alberta in particular, and the oil patch, to get very specific, it is being blockaded.
The phrase used by environmental extremists is demarketed.
You can see it in the official campaign plans of the anti-oil sands extremists.
In this campaign document from 2008, you can see the actual maps of pipelines and proposed pipelines they plan to cut off.
Well, it's barely a decade later and they have succeeded with Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts in Ottawa and the NDP in British Columbia and until recently in Alberta, Energy East has been killed, the largest of all the pipeline proposals.
The Trans Mountain Pipeline is being strangled to death.
The Northern Gateway Pipeline has been outright vetoed by Trudeau and of course the Trans-Canada Pipeline extension called Keystone Excel, that has been tied up by activists in the court.
In short, Alberta has been hit with a Cuba embargo style attack.
Well now a scholar has proposed one way to solve the problem and that is to give Alberta and Saskatchewan their own access to the sea.
Those two landlocked countries being able to have their own fate in their own hands.
And joining us now via Skype from Alberta is the scholar who wrote the essay.
His name is Jared Lucitian and he's with Mount Royal University and he has written this paper for the Frontier Center for Public Policy.
It's great to meet you.
Thanks for taking the time to come on the show.
Well thank you very much for having me Ezra.
What do you think about my analogy of the actual embargo or blockade of Cuba?
I mean that's an extreme and dramatic analogy, but do you think that it fits?
Do you think it fits?
Well I guess the embargo part I would agree with in terms of landlock Alberta and landlock Saskatchewan.
And what we've seen over the last several years obviously is this economic infringement maybe where we're being prevented from getting our most produced commodity, let's say, to market, in particular in Alberta, and that's getting the pipelines through.
So in terms of an embargo, I think we would have to be careful with the term embargo, but certainly the ramifications of what has been happening to Alberta and Saskatchewan for a number of years, I think, have the same result.
You know, I just read through your essay and you talk about the right of a people or a country to have access to the sea.
And there are entire countries that are landlocked.
When you think about it, Switzerland being an obvious example.
There's also countries in Africa and Asia with either no access to the sea or extremely limited access to the sea.
I find that a compelling argument, but the obvious counterpoint is, well, these aren't independent countries.
They have access to the sea right now.
And under the Constitution, things like pipelines should give them, you know, there is a constitutional power that the feds have to put the pipelines through.
I think that I think that Canada should be working.
It's not.
Do you see any legal way to play that?
We demand access to the sea card, or is that just an analogy you're making?
Well, essentially, when I started the research for the paper, one of the key elements was trying to figure out how and if you had the access to tide water, if you had the actual right to tide water.
And one of the things that the research started out as is to let's, you know, instead of talking about arguing internally, let's look at some countries that are actually in this sort of predicament where they are landlocked.
And that landlocked geographical boundary was due to cultural changes, political changes, war, et cetera, which is why a lot of these countries around the world become landlocked.
And so, what we discovered when we were doing the research is that part of the UN is that countries around the world have agreed that it is essential for every country to have access to the sea.
And as all countries agree to that, there's two fundamental principles that hold that premise up.
And that was freedom of transit and the concept of servitude.
Now, what we looked at it was not necessarily looking at a separate country in terms of Alberta and Saskatchewan, but rather it was a lens to see: are the problems that we face in Alberta and Saskatchewan mirror the ones of a normal landlocked country?
And loan and behold, they're identical.
They're the same problems and issues that we're facing here in Alberta and Saskatchewan is also facing.
And so I think when we look at the UN, it's not necessarily, and some people have categorized it as saying if we're separate, then we get access.
I think really what it spells out for us is that as Canada is concerned and Canadians are concerned, we hold up that principle of the UN and those principles externally and internationally, and we defend those principles.
But we find it highly ironic or in some cases hypocritical where the government does not stand up for those exact same rights internally.
And so in terms of Alberta and Saskatchewan, when they were first formed, they were not given access to the sea like every other province and territory.
Right.
Isn't that interesting?
You know, you just made me think for a second about certain rights that other countries have with us as independent countries that Canadian provinces don't have, and it made me think of free trade.
Can a U.S. free trade under the NAFTA or the revised NAFTA, U.S. companies actually have the power to sue to remove blockades on their trade in Canada, whereas provinces and businesses in Canada don't have that same right within our own country.
Very interesting.
One of the things that was well covered by the mainstream media about your report were two maps that you sort of, I'm going to call them daydreaming maps, sort of blue skying or scenario maps.
Scenario, yeah.
Yeah, get the juices flowing, start talking it out about what Alberta and Saskatchewan could look like if they did have access to the sea.
And we'll put those up on the screen.
They're similar looking.
One of them is more angular than the other.
And these were widely derided by Toronto know-it-alls.
And at first, it's sort of startling to look at those.
And then the next instinct is: well, maybe that part of BC doesn't want to join Alberta.
Maybe that part of Manitoba doesn't want to join Saskatchewan, although immediately anyone who knows those areas knows they would be culturally pretty good fit.
I think more parts of the BC interior would probably want to join BC.
I tell you, you go just a little bit over the Rocky Mountains there, like Albertans there.
But you also show a map of what the provinces were like before.
I mean, the delineation, the borders of Canadian provinces have not always been what they are.
Provincial boundaries, territorial boundaries, they changed.
We even created a whole new territory about 20 years ago.
So this is actually not as radical as the naysayers would suggest.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, of course, when you look at the two scenarios which I proposed in the paper, one was based on a parallel-based boundary, new boundary, which follows the 54th and the 58th parallels, which would be in line with what we see the border is between Alberta and Saskatchewan.
And then the other one, which I would think is more economical, is an infrastructure-based boundary.
And so, you know, these are two options, obviously.
And depending on how you wanted to redraw the borders, if you will, they would follow the suit.
Now, the reason why, I think if you look at it along the geometrical lines, which is really how Alberta and Saskatchewan came to be back in the day in 1905 when they sat down in Ottawa and literally sat down and drew them, there was no consideration back then about where these provinces were going to be in 150 years later or 115 years later.
And in fact, when you read the transcripts out of the House back then, the politicians and the leaders of the day, they were more concerned about making Alberta and Saskatchewan equiproportionate in terms of land mass out of the districts that you see from the 1895 map than they were worried about economic rights or future economic rights of these two economic powers.
And over the last 115 years, it's very clear that Alberta and Saskatchewan are now economic powers and they're being held in place by their coastal neighbors.
And so I think if we examine the maps, and again, as you quote the people that are naysayers, our boundaries have always been in flux.
Part of the paper was to re-examine how easy it is to move a boundary.
And in fact, when you go through the history of the boundaries of Canada, the internal boundaries, most of them are quite easily moved.
In fact, they're moved by orders and council.
They get together, they'll negotiate the boundary.
And if that's not acceptable, then it was turned over, let's say, to a tribunal.
It was decided, order and council, and the new boundary was drawn.
So I think, you know, unfortunately, in our day and age, you can't really do much justice in a 280-character tweet when half of its emojis.
But I think if people take the time to actually read through the paper and the scenarios, they'll see that it's quite doable.
It's extremely possible.
And as you said before, if you're sitting in downtown Victoria, the people that need to make the decision are the people in northern BC, not the people sitting in downtown Victoria.
Same thing.
The people in northern Manitoba need to make the decision rather than the people sitting in downtown Toronto.
And so I think what we need to take away from this paper is, as you said, start the conversation around perhaps the borders as they were drawn 115 years ago dealt with the issue of 1905, which are not the issues of 2020.
Right.
Well, I want to refer to one more map.
I talked about the two scenarios you outlined, but you show an old map dated, I think, 1895, and it's just gorgeous.
It's just a reminder of how interesting Western Canada was when the population was smaller and it wasn't formal provinces yet.
Of course, Alberta, Saskatchewan didn't join Confederation until 1905.
You'll see that there were things we don't even name today, Kewatin, Assiniboine, Athabasca.
These are all absorbed into other provinces now.
I remember when I was the publisher of the Western Standard magazine, we had a semi-humorous colonist named Rick Dolphin who reminded us that it used to all be called Buffalo.
That there was a proposal for a mighty province, Alberta and Saskatchewan together called Buffalo, which is a great name.
And he dreamed of a place called Albumbia.
I think he was sort of joking about the name, but that would include internal BC.
It's funny, but when you look at the map from 1895, what's so funny about it?
There's nothing funny about it.
I think a lot of the world's problems, frankly, have been guys sitting down a million miles from the place and drawing artificial lines on a map.
I think that's half the problems in the Middle East, frankly.
Just artificial countries created that make no sense.
In that case, often ethnically, religiously, culturally.
Here, it's definitely an economic thing.
I don't know.
I saw, I came across your essay through the mockery of it by the CBC Toronto star types.
They were mocking your maps.
The McLean's types were mocking them.
I thought, well, that looks sort of cool.
And I saw the paper.
So I don't know.
I hope people read it.
And I hope it does get the juices flowing.
Why should only Nunavut get to be created out of nothing?
I think that this is something to talk about.
Wexit Debates in Alberta00:04:32
Last word to you, Professor.
Yeah, no, I certainly agree with your analysis of the 1895 map.
Again, I think a lot of people over time have forgotten the history of Canada.
And again, I think when you look back over the boundary exchanges, where we've come from to where we are today, you know, it's obvious.
We're not in the 1905 framework anymore.
We are now in the 2020 framework.
And what we need to do is throw off these lines that were drawn back in the days when there was no GPS and nobody knew exactly, believe it or not, they didn't even know exactly how much land there was that they were talking about.
So again, I think if people are really interested in having the conversation, this is one option.
You mentioned the Buffalo option.
That's another option where they actually form a new province out of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
But I think if people sit down and start to look at these, redrawing the boundaries based on the economic potential of the provinces that we have and consider the people within those geographical areas, obviously the current arrangement, as you look into northern BC and northern Manitoba, the current arrangement doesn't seem to be working very well.
So I hope people take the time to read the paper fully, not just the tweet that somebody in downtown Toronto is weighing in on.
Yeah.
Well, we'll have a link to your study underneath this video for people who want to see it from the south.
A very interesting read.
It's a little bit of history in there that I really appreciated getting a little bit of a refresher on.
Really nice to meet you.
The paper is called Tide Water Access, Redefining Canada's Internal Boundaries.
And we've been talking with Professor Gerard Lucitian, who joins us via Skype from Red Deer, and he's based at Calgary's Battle Royal University.
Thanks for your time today.
Great.
Thank you very much for having me.
All right.
Wow, that was very interesting.
Make sure to click the link below to read this study for yourself.
Stick with us.
It's more Heaven on the Rumble.
Hey, welcome back.
Got some letters for you today.
On my monologue yesterday, Jan writes, I think there was a classy ad that Jeff Sessions produced.
It speaks volumes.
Let's hope people get it.
Yeah, oh boy, I agree with you exactly.
Now, I know Trump doesn't really like Sessions, and there are a number of other senators wanting that, people who want to be the senator.
I think he, I was a bit, look, I'm not even an American, let alone an Alabamian, but I was impressed by his dignity and that he's still loyal to Trump, even though Trump has really been mean.
Like, mean is the only word you can use to describe Trump on Sessions.
Francois writes, to protest and to not let Sessions speak shows a lack of intellectual curiosity, which is not a good omen for journalism.
It is McCarthyism in reverse.
Well, that's what was so interesting is that the president of Northwestern, I think his name is Morton Shapiro, he sounded, I mean, I don't, again, I just know what I read, Jeff, from the newspaper, he sounded pretty free speechy.
He said he supports protesters' right to protest, but not to shut the event down.
And when they stormed the hall through the windows and the doors, the cops stopped him.
I think that university president has a good balance.
He said he personally disagrees with Jeff Sessions as if anyone cared, but I think he's probably a Democrat, probably opposed to Sessions, but he's making the point, I don't have to like someone.
I think it was important for him to say that actually, to show, look, I don't like this guy, but I let anyone speak whether or not I like them.
That's the right approach.
It's interesting that a university president cares more about free speech than student journalists.
You turn the clock back 50 years to the 1960s, Berkeley, probably Northwestern University too.
It was all the students saying, give us free speech, and the administrator cracking down on things.
RJ writes, I feel like I owe Sessions an apology.
His track record shows a man of integrity.
Well, RJ, I don't know what you have to apologize to Jeff Sessions for.
Wexit Debates Upcoming00:01:30
I'll leave that to the two of you.
Who knows what intrigues there were between Trump and Sessions?
I'm sure a lot of it had to do with the Mueller investigation.
I don't know that Arcana.
But I think Jeff Sessions is probably a good fit for Alabama in the Senate.
I have no idea.
Look, I'm just not an expert, but I did think his ad was so unusual that I wanted to show with you.
And I'm glad so many people found it interesting.
Well, that's our show for today.
I don't know if I mentioned this to you guys, but we're having a couple of Wexit debates in Alberta next week.
And I hate that word, Wexit.
I wish that hadn't stuck, but it stuck.
It's the Brexit for the West.
So we're having a panel discussion in Calgary and Edmonton.
Edmonton on Tuesday night, Calgary on Wednesday night.
I'll be there.
Kian Becksty, Sheila Gunread, Lauren Gunter, and in Edmonton, Barry Cooper, a professor, will be joining us too.
So four or five people in each city.
Tickets, $15 each, unless you're with the CBC, in which case it's $40.
You can see that at WexitDebate.com, the different pricing.
$15 for severely normal people.
And if you're a CBCer, pony up.
That's our money.
Just give it back.
$40.
It's nothing to you.
Anyways, that really is the case.
You'll see the multi-tiered ticketing prices there.
Hope to see you Tuesday night in Edmonton, Wednesday night in Calgary.