Rebel News - EZRA LEVANT | What would Alberta’s constitution look like after independence?
Aired: 2026-03-09
Duration: 50:41


=== Rebel News Plus Exclusive (03:31) ===

[00:00:00]  Before I was a Rebel News reporter, I was a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
[00:00:04]  Are you?
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[00:00:20]  So why not join Rebel News Plus today?
[00:00:42]  Shame on you, you censorious bug.
[00:00:55]  You know, maybe some of them are subterranean.
[00:00:58]  They like to keep a low profile, but I think I can count the number of freedom-oriented professors at established universities on one hand's fingers.
[00:01:09]  It's so few and it breaks my heart.
[00:01:11]  And I think it gets us away from the idea of the university as a place of rollicking debate where young people can go and be exposed to all sorts of ideas and sort of sort things out themselves through critical thinking.
[00:01:22]  I really think the sameness of thinking is one of the worst problems of modern academia.
[00:01:28]  But one of the bright lights in the firmament is our guest today.
[00:01:32]  His name is Professor Bruce Party.
[00:01:34]  And incredibly, he's a professor at law at one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, namely Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, a wonderful university town.
[00:01:44]  And I don't want to jinx anything, but I always find it miraculous to know he is still gainfully employed there and hasn't been told to walk the plank.
[00:01:53]  What's interesting is although he's based in the heart of Ontario, he has a keen interest in Alberta, which I find curious.
[00:02:02]  And I know he has dedicated himself to thinking through some of the issues of Alberta independence, including what might an ideal constitution for a newly independent Alberta look like.
[00:02:15]  It's not just an academic exercise.
[00:02:17]  It's a preemption of a legitimate question, and it could be part of a blueprint should that referendum on October 19th pass.
[00:02:25]  Without further ado, let me bring on our friend Dr. Bruce Party.
[00:02:29]  Proud, great to see you again.
[00:02:31]  Great to see you too, Ezra.
[00:02:33]  Thank you very much.
[00:02:33]  It's very kind of you.
[00:02:34]  Well, I don't want to jinx things when I say I find it miraculous that you're still gainfully employed, but there are some places where freedom of speech still would protect a man like you.
[00:02:44]  And I'm delighted to hear that Queen's is one of them.
[00:02:47]  It is one of them.
[00:02:48]  It is one of them.
[00:02:49]  And, you know, it's important to acknowledge that when you are not told to toe a line, that's important.
[00:02:58]  And so, top marks.
[00:02:59]  Well, you and I got to know each other a little bit during the COVID times because you were one of the professors brave enough to speak out against some of the infringements on our civil liberties.
[00:03:09]  And that was really an important moment for Rebel News.
[00:03:12]  And I think we were ahead of the curve on that story, partly because we weren't government-funded.
[00:03:16]  So I think we could think a little more rebelliously, as our name would suggest.
[00:03:22]  Especially when the truckers started rolling, I knew something was afoot.
[00:03:25]  Well, here we are four years later, and I feel like some other convoy is afoot, but it's not a trail of truckers.

=== Doug Ford's Alberta Independence (14:57) ===

[00:03:31]  I think the people of Alberta, astonishingly, incredibly, unpredictably, perhaps, are going to have a vote on independence.
[00:03:41]  It looks like the vote's going to be on October 19th.
[00:03:43]  And there seems to be a lot of energy out there.
[00:03:45]  Give me your thoughts on what you think is coming in Alberta.
[00:03:50]  And then I'm going to ask you some more specific questions about your thoughts on what its laws should look like.
[00:03:55]  But first, really, I guess I want to know is why does a professor in Kingston, Ontario, have such a keen interest in the future of Alberta?
[00:04:07]  Great question.
[00:04:08]  Fair question.
[00:04:10]  And the answer, I think, goes like this.
[00:04:14]  Canada is broken.
[00:04:17]  It became apparent through the COVID period, but not limited to COVID, that there is something seriously wrong in this country in all different kinds of ways.
[00:04:26]  We can go through a very long list of the very basic foundational problems with this country.
[00:04:34]  And second, it can't be fixed.
[00:04:38]  It seems like we've arrived at a place in this country, both in terms of our constitutional order and the way we are governed and the way that people think even, that contemplating any serious reform of the way the country works is not on the table.
[00:04:57]  So if the country is broken and it cannot be fixed, then what else have you got?
[00:05:03]  And what appears to be the case is that in Alberta, there is some kind of critical mass of people who understand both those two things, that Canada is broken and two, it cannot be fixed.
[00:05:14]  And therefore, they are looking for a different solution.
[00:05:17]  And that solution is to leave.
[00:05:19]  And I agree with them about the necessity for doing that.
[00:05:22]  I think to save itself, and for that matter, to save the country, potentially, I mean, it's not their job to save the country, but they could inadvertently save the country also.
[00:05:32]  Alberta has to go.
[00:05:35]  And but I should add, though, to achieve the real aims of getting themselves out from under the thumb of what Canada has become, they can't just leave the country.
[00:05:49]  They also have to get the Canada out of Alberta.
[00:05:52]  So I've been putting it this way.
[00:05:53]  Alberta should escape the Canada that is outside Alberta, but it also needs to purge the Canada that is inside Alberta.
[00:06:02]  And there's an awful lot of Canada inside Alberta.
[00:06:04]  So it's a thing.
[00:06:06]  And I've put it this way.
[00:06:09]  People have asked me, well, you know, what are the chances?
[00:06:11]  What are the chances of Alberta actually separating?
[00:06:13]  And my answer to them, honestly, is: I really don't know.
[00:06:16]  I mean, I can't say I'm not on the ground most of the time in Alberta.
[00:06:20]  Other people would have a much better call on that than me.
[00:06:24]  But I do know this: the chances are not zero.
[00:06:31]  And that makes it a better chance than any other thing I've heard, any other idea I've heard for seriously reforming this country.
[00:06:39]  You know, I'm an Alberta boy originally, grew up there, went to business school and then law school.
[00:06:44]  I came out east about 15 years ago for a media opportunity at the Sun News Network, and Rebel has caused me to stay out here.
[00:06:50]  I do go back fairly often, and I do regard myself as an Albertan at heart.
[00:06:54]  But listen, if you're in Ontario for more than a decade, you can't say I'm in exile.
[00:06:59]  I mean, you become a bit of an Ontarian, which I am.
[00:07:02]  And so I'm trying to reconcile this within me because here's something I believe is true about Alberta independence supporters.
[00:07:10]  Paradoxically, they're the most pro-Canadian people.
[00:07:14]  They're the ones who are appalled when Sir John A. McDonald is stripped off the $10 bill.
[00:07:19]  They're the ones who are disgusted when the national anthem is changed to make it more woke.
[00:07:26]  They're the ones who are irritated when statues are torn down or defaced.
[00:07:33]  So the people who are for Alberta independence are actually the most Canadian of people.
[00:07:40]  They're the military veterans.
[00:07:42]  They're people who have served at risk to themselves.
[00:07:44]  And I don't think that's a paradox because I think Alberta independence is, like you say, perhaps the most likely way to solve the corrosion of Canada and deal with some structural problems that good Canada still had.
[00:08:02]  I don't think it's a contradiction.
[00:08:04]  Super quickly, and then I'll throw it back to you.
[00:08:06]  When I was in Medicine Hat last week on an independent speaking tour with Sheila Gunread, Tamara Leach, our friend Corey Morgan, there was a counter protest for the first time ever, Bruce.
[00:08:18]  I'd never seen it.
[00:08:19]  And the counter protests didn't really know what to do.
[00:08:22]  These were people who normally carry Palestine flags and trans flags.
[00:08:27]  And they didn't know how to be Canadian.
[00:08:30]  They had mainly Canadian flags, which I think was the first time they ever held those because normally they're against Canada as a colonizer, as a genocider.
[00:08:40]  So they were saying, rah-rah, Canada.
[00:08:43]  And these are sort of Palestinian trans activists who have never said those words.
[00:08:48]  They were trying to sort of hurt our feelings by saying, ha ha, you actually do like can't.
[00:08:52]  Like, they didn't know what to say.
[00:08:55]  Some of them were just sort of swearing.
[00:08:57]  But I guess my point is, and please react to this, to be an Alberta independence-minded person, you don't hate the rest of the country.
[00:09:05]  You're just saying it's not working and it's getting worse for everybody.
[00:09:08]  And we think that we can make a go of it alone, certainly economically.
[00:09:12]  Sorry for that long ramble, but there is a duality there.
[00:09:17]  Well, there's also a historical parallel, perhaps, which is that the American revolutionaries, their original complaint was that they were Englishmen and they were not being treated as Englishmen by the king.
[00:09:32]  In other words, they wanted to be English.
[00:09:35]  They wanted to be fully English.
[00:09:36]  They wanted to have the rights of Englishmen.
[00:09:38]  They wanted to be within the structure of English government.
[00:09:42]  And their complaint was, you are not treating us like Englishmen.
[00:09:47]  And so, of course, that morphed and they became something else.
[00:09:51]  But it's a similar pattern as the one that you're alluding to.
[00:09:56]  I think in many ways you're right that Albertans who now want to be independent lament the loss of a nation most acutely.
[00:10:05]  And in many ways, they have been among the most loyal Canadians, and Canada, in return, has not been loyal to them.
[00:10:13]  And they had a whole series of complaints, and I think they're quite valid in terms of representation in the way the government is structured, in terms of the way the policies have obstructed their primary industries and the way that their wealth is siphoned off and spread around the country.
[00:10:29]  All of those things are valid, but there's something more concrete, which is that Canada as a nation has morphed into a strange thing.
[00:10:39]  And they and I, and I agree with them about an awful lot of things, they don't want to live in a country, this country, anymore, because of what it's become and how the people in the country, not all of them, but many of them and probably most of them, now think about things.
[00:11:00]  And so to me and to them, I think there are no real alternatives now but to figure out a way to get out.
[00:11:09]  You know, there are historic grievances that Alberta has, feeling underrepresented in institutions of power, doesn't have the right seat count in parliament, the Senate, is it useless?
[00:11:20]  The Supreme Court is tilted.
[00:11:22]  All institutions of importance require you to be French fluent and no one in the prairies is, etc.
[00:11:28]  So I could give you 100 grievances, some of which go back a century.
[00:11:31]  But there's something new afoot.
[00:11:34]  If Pierre Polyev had won the last federal election, I think that the independence movement would be on ice right now because Polyev would not be making any of the conditions you've just described worse.
[00:11:46]  He wouldn't be antagonizing Alberta, first of all, and he would maybe actually be solving some problems.
[00:11:51]  But with Mark Carney and his plans to transform Canada unrecognizably, to say he wants to be part of a China-centric new world order and actually use those words to absolutely play to deep anti-Americanism.
[00:12:09]  Not only are Albertans, in my view, saying we're not comfortable where Canada is right now.
[00:12:14]  Like you say, it's not what we recognize.
[00:12:16]  But holy smokes, if Mark Carney is serious and successful, and Ontario and Quebec certainly want to see him succeed, Canada is going to be changed even more.
[00:12:28]  It'll become even more unrecognizable.
[00:12:31]  We don't want to be a China-centric anti-American country.
[00:12:34]  By the way, 90% of Alberta's trade is with the U.S., probably more.
[00:12:39]  So I think Carney's antics are making it worse.
[00:12:43]  And especially, I know I'm talking too much here, Bruce, but I want to share with you my thoughts and get your reaction to them.
[00:12:50]  When Matt Gennaroo, the Conservative MP, crossed the floor for some secret deal that we don't know the details of, to me that sent a particularly sharp message to Albertans, which is, even when you win by the rules, we're going to flip over the chessboard and not let you win.
[00:13:07]  We're going to pull some trick, some scheme, some backroom deals.
[00:13:11]  So you can't win.
[00:13:12]  Even when you win, you can't win.
[00:13:14]  So why, I mean, so the message I think Albertans would say was, why even trying?
[00:13:18]  Because it's so rigged.
[00:13:19]  And the whole regime media are praising Mark Carney for this move of bribing backbenchers to come over.
[00:13:26]  And they're actually saying, ha ha, it's a sign that Pierre Polyev has poor leadership because he can't stop our bribing of his people.
[00:13:33]  I just think all of these things bundle together, people say, you know what?
[00:13:37]  I'm out.
[00:13:40]  I agreed.
[00:13:42]  It's validity to everything you've mentioned.
[00:13:45]  I do think that the country has become politically corrupted.
[00:13:50]  Institutions are captured.
[00:13:52]  The economy is basically a collection of cartels supported and protected by governments.
[00:14:00]  I think this is deeper than sort of short-term partisan politics.
[00:14:05]  And I know you're not saying that it is, it's that, but I think we need to take the broad view in mind.
[00:14:13]  But nevertheless, there is something to it.
[00:14:16]  So I think a lot of people in Alberta, and of course, not all Albertans, because Albertans are very split on this as well.
[00:14:22]  But there's a critical mass of people in Alberta, I think, that were incredulous after the last election, having suffered through a decade of Justin Trudeau and seeing the rest of the country, maybe not all the rest of the country, but the voters in the eastern parts of the country elect the same government again.
[00:14:44]  And at the time that Justin Trudeau was elected, the per capita wealth of the country was comparable to the U.S.
[00:14:54]  And now, on a per capita basis, Canada is poorer than Alabama and almost as poor as Mississippi, the poorest state in America.
[00:15:03]  And that's no accident.
[00:15:05]  This is something that we've done to ourselves.
[00:15:07]  And yet it seems to be the determination.
[00:15:11]  especially as a reflection of the way the country is structured in terms of its seats and so on, that the country is determined to keep that particular ideology in power.
[00:15:24]  After the last election, I had opportunity to listen to a Conservative Party strategist talk about what had happened.
[00:15:33]  And of course, they were unhappy to lose, but they were very happy, he said, with the numbers.
[00:15:38]  He said, we achieved 41% of the vote.
[00:15:42]  And that, he said, is a high watermark for the Conservative Party in the modern era.
[00:15:49]  And I sat there and I thought to myself, well, hold on.
[00:15:54]  The high watermark.
[00:15:56]  What you're telling us is that you cannot realistically expect to get more than 41% of the vote ever, because that's the best you've ever done.
[00:16:04]  That means that we all live in a leftist, progressive, socialist country.
[00:16:11]  But even in the best scenario, best case scenario, you are not going to win unless the left splits the vote.
[00:16:18]  Yeah.
[00:16:19]  And it would have to be a big split because I think Jai Mean Singh, if I'm going from memory here, got 9% last time.
[00:16:24]  Well, you could see very quickly that's not going to do it.
[00:16:27]  And if the bloc takes a few percent and the NDP takes a few percent, but the liberals get, what was it, 43%?
[00:16:32]  Like you're just not going to get enough of a split, I don't think.
[00:16:36]  And even if you do, it's a temporary lucky coalition.
[00:16:41]  Like Doug Ford likes to think that he's this master of Ontario.
[00:16:46]  It's just because he is blessed to have a perfectly split opposition that he comes up the middle.
[00:16:51]  It's true what Pierre Paul just said.
[00:16:53]  He did better in Ontario federally than Doug Ford did provincially.
[00:16:56]  Doug Ford's just lucky.
[00:16:58]  He's got this perfect balance of opposition destroying each other.
[00:17:04]  But Doug Ford is a good illustration of the fact that this problem is not partisan.
[00:17:09]  Right.
[00:17:09]  Right.
[00:17:09]  Because, you know, conservative governments and the Ontario government is a good example.
[00:17:15]  They are not able to fix anything.
[00:17:16]  They're not interested in fixing anything.
[00:17:19]  They're on the same kind of bandwagon as all the other kinds of governments.
[00:17:23]  And so I think it's a mistake to think that if we could only change governments or change the color of the government, that we'd all be all right.
[00:17:29]  And that is just not true.
[00:17:31]  You know, I have a friend.
[00:17:32]  Conservative governments have contributed lots to the problems that we now have.
[00:17:36]  Yeah, I think Doug Ford's closest political relative was actually Justin Trudeau.
[00:17:41]  Well, listen, let you and me stop talking about politics for a bit, although I really enjoy it, because I have four questions here suitable for a law professor, which you are.
[00:17:50]  And I'm going to put these to you, and I know that you're going to have good answers for them, because I think you've been thinking about these more than almost anybody else.
[00:18:01]  Can you tell our viewers a little bit of what the Quebec precedent in the last separatist referendum in that province and the Clarity Act and the Supreme Court reference on secession.
[00:18:15]  Tell me where that leaves Alberta.
[00:18:17]  My American friends are surprised that secession is legal in Canada because that, of course, was the rationale behind the Civil War because the South was seceding.

=== Quebec Precedent and Provincial Independence (08:22) ===

[00:18:29]  Is it legal?
[00:18:30]  I think I know it is, but I'd like to hear you say, what's the legal process for Alberta to leave, should they want to?
[00:18:36]  Yes, great question.
[00:18:38]  It's a fascinating case, the 1998 Supreme Court reference case about Quebec.
[00:18:45]  It is legal.
[00:18:47]  And essentially, the requirements are a referendum with a clear question supported by a clear majority.
[00:18:56]  If you get that, then the province in question, and they were talking about Quebec, of course, but the province in question has a mandate then to negotiate its departure.
[00:19:08]  It does not obtain a unilateral right to leave on its own terms, but nor does the rest of the country, including the federal government, have a right to stop it.
[00:19:17]  What happens at that point is a mandate to negotiate.
[00:19:21]  Supreme Court was very explicit about this.
[00:19:24]  It said that once you get to that point, the negotiation that transpires is a political negotiation and not a legal one.
[00:19:33]  And it said at that point, no conclusion is predetermined by law on any issue.
[00:19:44]  In other words, everything is now on the table.
[00:19:48]  There are certain kinds of things you must take into account.
[00:19:50]  That's the phrase they use, take into account.
[00:19:53]  But take into account means that you put it on the table and you talk about it.
[00:19:58]  No outcome is predetermined.
[00:20:00]  And so, yes, go ahead.
[00:20:02]  No, I was going to say, so it's like hitting the hard reset button, like everything, like it's actually how a country could be born.
[00:20:10]  Exactly so, which is why this is worth pursuing.
[00:20:13]  Independence is a repudiation of the existing constitutional order of the country that you're leaving.
[00:20:23]  And that means you can start with a clean slate if you're determined to do so.
[00:20:27]  And that's what Alberta needs.
[00:20:29]  That's what this country needs.
[00:20:31]  We need a moment to try to rethink how the country is governed and an opportunity To create a new and different kind of constitution, because a lot of our problems derive not solely, not entirely, but to a significant extent from the way our constitution is built.
[00:20:53]  And that has become impossible to change in any sort of fundamental controversial way.
[00:21:02]  A few weeks ago, I went through an Indian treaty, Treaty 6.
[00:21:08]  which I could have chosen other ones, but that was just one of them that covers parts of Alberta.
[00:21:13]  And it's a fascinating historical read how they did it.
[00:21:17]  They went out trying to get groups of Indians together and find elders, and they kept finding new Indians that they added to the treaty as they went.
[00:21:26]  And they used fairly plain language, and they had incredible specificity.
[00:21:29]  We'll give you this many shovels.
[00:21:31]  We'll give you this many axes.
[00:21:33]  Like it was done to give a meaningful understanding to the Indians who were signing it.
[00:21:40]  Here's what you'll get.
[00:21:41]  You'll get this much money, this much seeds, this many things to plant.
[00:21:47]  It was actually, it really felt like a history read as much as a legal read.
[00:21:52]  But the words that you just cannot deny that are in there are surrender.
[00:21:58]  These Indian bands surrendered.
[00:22:00]  They happily surrendered.
[00:22:02]  They were Her Majesty's loyal subjects, but it surrendered their claim to the land.
[00:22:10]  Now, they were given certain Indian reserves, etc.
[00:22:13]  I won't go through the whole thing now, but I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read an Indian treaty.
[00:22:18]  They're not that long, and they're a wonderful read, and they'll strengthen your understanding that where those treaties are in effect, Indian title is extinguished other than what's reserved for them.
[00:22:28]  Bruce, take it away.
[00:22:31]  In the case of a yes referendum vote, what happens to these treaties and what happens to the Indians who are protected, governed, regulated by these treaties?
[00:22:45]  Right.
[00:22:46]  So some of my colleagues who are also in favor of Alberta independence think that the treaties must be honored the way they are for various kinds of reasons, like they, you know, they predate Alberta's entry into Confederation.
[00:23:06]  I don't agree.
[00:23:08]  I think if Alberta becomes independent, then it can set its own course.
[00:23:13]  And that means that you can incorporate the treaties or not.
[00:23:18]  The reason that you don't need to incorporate the treaties is, first and foremost, that those treaties are part of the Canadian constitutional order.
[00:23:27]  And they are.
[00:23:28]  I mean, they're guaranteed in Section 35 of the Constitution.
[00:23:32]  But the point of independence is to repudiate the existing constitutional order, all of it.
[00:23:39]  And I'm going to go back to the words of the court.
[00:23:42]  The Supreme Court says in these negotiations, there are no conclusions, no conclusions predetermined by law on any issue, any issue, that any issue includes treaties.
[00:23:56]  Now, the reason that I think treaties should be placed aside is that at the time the treaties were made, you could have made the case quite appropriately in this historical context that you were dealing with two different peoples.
[00:24:11]  You had the peoples who were there and the peoples who came.
[00:24:16]  And those cultures were distinct.
[00:24:19]  Those days are long gone.
[00:24:22]  The mistake that we make in our law today is to insist that people belong to different groups and we identify them that way.
[00:24:31]  And by virtue of doing that, we establish different status, different tiers, different sets of rights and entitlements.
[00:24:38]  And it is a fiction.
[00:24:40]  If we are to overcome this problem and go back to, well, I'm not sure we ever had it in Canada, but if we go back to or at least establish that idea, which is at the center of Western legal systems, which is the same rules and standards apply to everybody without regard to your parents, your lineage, your group, your race, your color, your sex, your orientation.
[00:25:07]  It doesn't matter.
[00:25:08]  Justice is supposed to be blind.
[00:25:11]  And if you don't have that idea, then your legal system is not truly Western in the way it's working.
[00:25:21]  It means you are not subject to a neutral rule of law.
[00:25:24]  It means that people are being picked out as being special or not special.
[00:25:30]  And that system that we've had under the treaties or under Aboriginal law more broadly in Canada has acted exactly to the detriment of the people that everybody thinks it's designed to protect.
[00:25:46]  What's actually happened is that this system allows people that we call indigenous to be oppressed by their own leadership as well as by government officials and bureaucrats and lawyers and so on.
[00:26:04]  So for my money, and this is one of the many ways in which Alberta needs to start again and establish a new constitutional order with a different set of principles.
[00:26:18]  And it will not do to take the Canadian order of things, the Canadian Constitution, and just sort of fiddle with it in the margins.
[00:26:28]  That won't do.
[00:26:29]  You have to get rid of it and start again.
[00:26:31]  Now, I don't mean you might not keep some elements.
[00:26:34]  For example, the Americans invented a new constitution, but they kept the English system of common law and so on.
[00:26:41]  So it's not a black and white thing, as in everything goes, because that's not what you want to do.
[00:26:46]  But you do want to think about things fresh.

=== Flipping the Canadian Constitutional Default (15:15) ===

[00:26:51]  You know, you made me think of when the British Empire banned slavery for years, indeed several centuries, slavery had been permitted.
[00:27:03]  It was lawful.
[00:27:06]  In the UK, in England itself, it was de facto not upheld.
[00:27:14]  The judges basically said, we're not going to.
[00:27:16]  I mean, it was interesting where slavery was stronger and weaker in the British Empire.
[00:27:20]  But if I'm not mistaken, in the final disposition of the matter, the United Kingdom, the British Empire, borrowed a staggering sum of money.
[00:27:30]  As a percentage of their GDP, it would be equivalent to a quarter of a trillion dollars by today's GDP in terms of purchasing power.
[00:27:39]  They borrowed a quarter of a trillion dollars in that long ago money, and they bought the freedom of the slaves.
[00:27:47]  Now, some people would say, why didn't you give the money to the slaves?
[00:27:50]  Well, the answer is because you had hundreds of thousands of businesses and business people who had thought that they were following the law and they maybe would have had a legal case.
[00:28:02]  So they just bought the, they redeemed the slaves.
[00:28:04]  And by the way, that enormous loan was not paid off until the 21st century, I should tell you.
[00:28:10]  What about, and I'm just brainstorming here, you just made me think of that.
[00:28:13]  That was a way to end slavery without having people say, hey, you stole my slaves.
[00:28:18]  I invested.
[00:28:21]  At the time, I'm sure it was considered quite progressive.
[00:28:24]  What if you said to everyone who is governed by the Indian Act, we're going to, the land in your reserve will apportion to the people there that you can deal with.
[00:28:35]  But the ongoing obligations for the, you know, if you read the treaties for seeds and tools and things like that, 50,000 bucks each of final liquidation of your rights and now go to school paid for by the government like the rest of us, go to hospitals paid for by the government like the rest of us.
[00:28:55]  You are free and equal now.
[00:28:56]  We've made a one-time redemption of whatever rights you had emanating from this treaty signed almost 200 years ago.
[00:29:05]  It's just an idea.
[00:29:06]  I'm just brainstorming because I think that, frankly, if you said to a lot of people under the Indian Act, would you take 50 grand?
[00:29:16]  By the way, family of four, that's 200 grand.
[00:29:20]  I think you could extinguish an issue that's going to blow up British Columbia.
[00:29:24]  And I think you could have a great fresh start.
[00:29:25]  I don't know.
[00:29:26]  I don't know.
[00:29:27]  Just an idea.
[00:29:27]  I haven't thought of this before until just right now.
[00:29:29]  What do you think?
[00:29:31]  Well, the first idea that you mentioned is an idea that I've suggested myself, which is that people who belong to bands who have reserves, you know, in the event of Alberta independence, one of the ways to approach that is to take those reserve lands and split them up into lots and to assign a lot to each member of that band so that they have their own properties.
[00:29:56]  This is the thing about the way Aboriginal law, about the way reserves work, the way Aboriginal title works.
[00:30:03]  None of the individual members of those groups have property.
[00:30:07]  It is a group right and controlled by the leadership of the group.
[00:30:12]  And so it looks like, you know, they're getting all these benefits and they are getting benefits of a sort, but they don't have control.
[00:30:19]  They don't have agency over their own property.
[00:30:22]  And so this is one of the ways to fix that.
[00:30:24]  In the other respects, though, we should just acknowledge this.
[00:30:30]  It is the case already today that members of Aboriginal groups, whether they are treaty groups or not, have full Canadian rights.
[00:30:43]  If you choose not to live on a reserve, if you choose to live in a city or anywhere for that matter, an Aboriginal person has the same rights and privileges as any other Canadian citizen.
[00:30:55]  The right to own property, to vote, to hold a job, to marry, to divorce, and so on and so forth.
[00:31:01]  So it is not that today, even that Aboriginal people are being denied those rights and have another set of alternative rights.
[00:31:10]  It is that everybody has the same basic rights.
[00:31:13]  And then there is this other thing going on.
[00:31:18]  And what I'm suggesting is that the other thing should stop because it is creating dependency, it is creating oppression, it is creating grift.
[00:31:28]  And all those things are to the detriment of the people that it's designed to protect.
[00:31:34]  But if we have time, there's a problem lurking with respect to the independence quest.
[00:31:43]  And that is that the referendum that Danielle Smith has announced for October looks to be one thing and is actually threatening to be quite something else.
[00:31:54]  On October 19th, Alberta will hold a referendum that will ask the people of Alberta a whole series of questions, a series of policy questions and a series of constitutional questions.
[00:32:06]  Those questions look to be very important to the way the track that Alberta chooses to be on.
[00:32:14]  Here's the problem.
[00:32:17]  That referendum, as it has been framed, in my opinion, is the way to defeat Alberta independence.
[00:32:26]  And why is that?
[00:32:26]  Here's why.
[00:32:27]  Here's why.
[00:32:28]  So, think of the Alberta population right now basically as in thirds.
[00:32:34]  And I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but just let's just do it this way.
[00:32:38]  Let's say roughly a third are strongly in favor of independence.
[00:32:42]  A third is strongly against.
[00:32:45]  And the outcome of a referendum on independence will depend upon that middle third.
[00:32:50]  There are an awful lot of Albertans who are not happy with the status quo in this country, but they're not quite convinced that Alberta, that independence is the way yet.
[00:33:00]  They're not quite ready to ditch the country.
[00:33:03]  So, here's how the referendum will work: they are going to be given a whole series of questions that look like Alberta has a third choice.
[00:33:14]  And the third choice is, well, we'll fix these policy areas, and then we'll vote on these four or five constitutional amendments, like one of them, for example.
[00:33:25]  How about we abolish the unelected Senate?
[00:33:29]  And this middle third of Albertans may well think that there is a third choice.
[00:33:39]  We can fix things, but not have to leave the country.
[00:33:43]  So, let's do that.
[00:33:45]  Problem is this: those choices don't really exist.
[00:33:52]  If you vote in favor of constitutional amendments like this, nothing is going to happen.
[00:33:58]  Alberta held a referendum in, I think it was 2021 on equalization.
[00:34:06]  And 62% of Albertans voted in favor of removing equalization from the Canadian Constitution.
[00:34:14]  What happened?
[00:34:16]  Nothing.
[00:34:18]  Alberta has been talking for decades about a Triple E Senate.
[00:34:21]  What has happened?
[00:34:23]  Nothing.
[00:34:24]  It is essentially impossible to amend the Canadian Constitution in any way that is remotely controversial.
[00:34:33]  The appearance of these questions on the ballot may well make it look as though this is actually a choice.
[00:34:41]  And it's a choice I'm sure that a lot of Albertans would prefer.
[00:34:44]  They don't actually want to leave the country.
[00:34:46]  They want the thing to be fixed.
[00:34:48]  But my message to Federalists has been: if you think you can fix the country, then fix it.
[00:34:57]  Stop talking about it.
[00:34:58]  Fix it.
[00:34:59]  You can't.
[00:35:00]  You can't do it.
[00:35:01]  You can't fix it in the way that Albertans are talking about.
[00:35:04]  So this is just a lot of noise.
[00:35:07]  There's one other aspect of this as well.
[00:35:09]  Danielle Smith, when just after announcing this referendum, confirmed that the independence question, for which right now signatures are being collected for the petition, she said if enough signatures are collected, that independence question will be added to the ballot in October.
[00:35:30]  Here's the problem with that: the Supreme Court said that one of the requirements is a clear question, and that's what the Federal Clarity Act is about: requiring a clear question in a referendum.
[00:35:46]  Now, the fact that the question is going to be put into the ballot in October doesn't change the question.
[00:35:51]  The question itself is still as clear as it was.
[00:35:54]  But when you combine it with the other questions, well, now you've got a mess because some of those other questions are questions that imply that the voter wants Alberta to stay in Canada.
[00:36:07]  So, for example, here's one of the constitutional questions: Do you agree that provinces, including Alberta, should be able to decline to participate in federal programs within provincial jurisdiction, that is, for example, healthcare, while maintaining their access to the federal funding?
[00:36:30]  You might well want to vote yes on that question to give Alberta control over health care with the federal dollars.
[00:36:36]  But if that question is approved and somehow the independence question is also approved, now you got an interpretation problem.
[00:36:45]  All right, now, do those voters want to stay in Canada to get the federal funding for health care, or do they want to leave?
[00:36:51]  You know, which of those is first priority?
[00:36:54]  Which of those is last resort?
[00:36:56]  Here's the thing: if the result of a referendum requires interpretation, then the questions are not clear.
[00:37:10]  And so, this is a way to muddy the waters about whether or not Albertans are choosing to leave or not.
[00:37:22]  I want to, those are very interesting points, and I didn't consider that before.
[00:37:29]  I don't want to take up all your time, but I do want to ask two more questions.
[00:37:33]  One is, and I know you've done a lot of work on this: if Alberta were to be independent, what do you think the main differences would be in the Canadian from the existing Canadian Constitution?
[00:37:52]  I suppose you could say what is the same, but I'm more interested in what would be different.
[00:37:57]  Yeah, I think you have to start thinking about it fresh.
[00:38:04]  I don't think you can take the Canadian Constitution and tweak it.
[00:38:09]  You want to get rid of the Westminster system of government.
[00:38:12]  You want to get rid of the Crown.
[00:38:13]  You even want to.
[00:38:16]  One of the most fundamental changes for me is this.
[00:38:19]  The Canadian Constitution, as well as the American and others that we know of, establishes a default position, which goes like this.
[00:38:29]  The state, and by the state, I mean all its bits, the provinces and the federal government together, the legislature, the executive branch and bureaucracy, the courts, all the bits of the state together.
[00:38:42]  The state as an entity has jurisdiction over everything.
[00:38:50]  It has unlimited power.
[00:38:51]  It is the power to provide for the general welfare, the public good, peace, order, and good government.
[00:39:01]  And so we think, well, that's not a good idea.
[00:39:04]  So what do we do instead?
[00:39:05]  In the Canadian Constitution, we establish exceptions.
[00:39:08]  And what are those exceptions?
[00:39:09]  Well, there are several, but one of them, for example, are the rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
[00:39:16]  So the state can do anything except it can't infringe your freedom of speech.
[00:39:22]  Of course, it can, but that's what it says.
[00:39:27]  My suggestion has been: in order to fix the way we are governed, in order to establish an actually free country, in order to defeat the managerial state, you have to flip that default.
[00:39:39]  And by that, I mean this.
[00:39:41]  You establish a constitution that says, first and foremost, instead of the state being all-powerful, the state is powerless.
[00:39:51]  The state can do nothing.
[00:39:56]  Except.
[00:39:58]  We're going to have some exceptions, but those exceptions now are the ones that are going to be listed.
[00:40:04]  You can do nothing except you can keep the peace.
[00:40:07]  You can keep the peace.
[00:40:10]  You can have police.
[00:40:11]  It flips the presumption.
[00:40:12]  So now the presumption is the government can't do it, as opposed to that.
[00:40:18]  The presumption is the government can do it.
[00:40:20]  And there are some things you want the state to do, but if you want the state to do those things, it's got to be in the list.
[00:40:24]  And if it's not in the list, it can't be done.
[00:40:26]  Very interesting.
[00:40:27]  By the way, I think, just speaking as a politically-minded person, I think having the continuity of being part of the British Commonwealth, the king, the queen, the trappings of a governor general, I think that would give people a security and it would be enough to deal with the sentimentality and the nostalgia and the history, which is, I think, the most valuable part of Canada.
[00:40:58]  I think you have to make a break.
[00:41:00]  I think you have to make a break.
[00:41:01]  I think that that kind of security blanket is the thing that will turn on you in the end.
[00:41:07]  So I think you have to reject the way things have gone until now, because the way things have gone right now, they've gone very badly, very, very badly.
[00:41:16]  And all of those protections, so our Constitution and the American one is a better example, a much better model, but these constitutions are based upon a checks and balances model.
[00:41:28]  Right.
[00:41:29]  You know, we'll keep, we'll keep, we'll protect ourselves by creating, you know, different powers within the state to check and balance each other.
[00:41:37]  You know, courts against executive, executive against legislature and so on.
[00:41:41]  Okay.
[00:41:42]  That worked pretty well for a while, especially in the States.
[00:41:46]  You know, when I was not working well now.
[00:41:48]  When I was tracking down some of Mark Carney's holdings for Brookfield, like I went to these tax havens of the Isle of Man, which is this little island between Ireland and the UK.
[00:42:00]  And I went to Bermuda, which is this little speck in the North Atlantic, actually.

=== Judicial Power and Reform (06:49) ===

[00:42:06]  And both had their own currencies and both had a bit of a vibe of the Commonwealth, but they were pretty free and they were small and very independent-minded places.
[00:42:16]  They were very expensive to live.
[00:42:18]  And they're small.
[00:42:18]  I don't know if I would ever want to live in the Isle of Man or Bermuda, but they had a peppiness because they were small and free.
[00:42:26]  But they also, I think, felt like they were part of a longer history.
[00:42:29]  I don't know.
[00:42:30]  I just, in my very brief visits to those two places, I saw, wouldn't that be fun if Alberta had a currency with the king on it and other things that told us we were part of a longer tradition, but like the Isle of Man or Bermuda, we had our own freer rules.
[00:42:49]  Like the one thing about both those places is they have more freedom, at least economically, which is why Mark Carney stashes his dough there.
[00:42:57]  Anyways, that was just a personal anecdote.
[00:42:59]  Let me ask you one last question.
[00:43:01]  Sure.
[00:43:03]  It's my view that most of the things in anyone's lives, daily lives, would be unaffected by independence.
[00:43:10]  When you think about it, what's your interaction with government?
[00:43:13]  Well, government services like garbage pickup or paving or police forces or hospitals or schools.
[00:43:20]  Like, I think that just encapsulates so much of an ordinary person's life.
[00:43:24]  And all of those things are subject to provincial jurisdiction.
[00:43:27]  There really wouldn't be a lot of changes.
[00:43:29]  A lot of the stuff the feds do is just irritants, like their foreign policy.
[00:43:34]  We don't actually have any horses that can do anything, which is, so we would be free of a lot of the crap of the feds.
[00:43:43]  But one of the things is our legal system.
[00:43:46]  Some of our courts in Alberta are appointed by the federal government.
[00:43:51]  The judges, I was just reading a stat the other day how all but A great proportion of our judges on the Court of King's Bench and the Court of Appeal are liberal appointees.
[00:44:03]  It's sort of crazy that a foreign, foreign, a faraway place like Ottawa, ruled by the United States.
[00:44:12]  And that is hearkening back to the American independence, a distant and partisan king, etc.
[00:44:19]  What would you do?
[00:44:20]  You've got these buildings called courts.
[00:44:23]  You've got these people called judges.
[00:44:25]  For years they ruled the roost.
[00:44:27]  They were appointed by a proper legal process, but now they're disconnected to that.
[00:44:33]  What do you do with all those federal judges?
[00:44:37]  Well, one of my proposals in this proposed Constitution that I've drafted is that everybody who works for the state in any capacity, whether they're judges or politicians or bureaucrats or consultants, employees, ambassadors, only work for the state for a very limited amount of time.
[00:44:59]  You can pick a random number, six years, eight years.
[00:45:03]  But when you've done that time, you're finished.
[00:45:07]  You know, you come in, you serve, you get out.
[00:45:09]  So if you've been a judge for eight years, let's use eight.
[00:45:13]  If you've been a judge for eight years, then your term is finished.
[00:45:17]  And then you do not be a judge anymore.
[00:45:21]  You're not now a politician.
[00:45:22]  You can't be a bureaucrat.
[00:45:23]  You can't be a consultant.
[00:45:24]  What we're trying to do there, what I'm trying to do there, is to create or to prevent the creation of a professional ruling class.
[00:45:35]  Our judges who are appointed until age 75 to the Supreme Court of Canada, those nine people on Supreme Court can dictate the meaning of the Constitution and sit on that bench for years in some cases.
[00:45:52]  You've established an authority that is untouchable by voting, by dismissal, by review.
[00:46:00]  Whatever they say goes.
[00:46:01]  That's the nature of Canadian law.
[00:46:03]  And so, in order to prevent the creation of a professional ruling class, you create instead a revolving door where people come in, they serve, they get out.
[00:46:13]  There is nobody entrenched inside the state, whether it's in the courts or the bureaucracy, the deep state, or the legislative chambers.
[00:46:21]  There are no interests to go and appeal to that have their claws into the machine because they're there and then they have to leave.
[00:46:30]  And so, in this way, in so many other ways, what you're trying to do is dilute, dilute the power of people who act on behalf of the state to prevent them from dictating to the rest of us, you know, what the story is going to do.
[00:46:48]  Well, that'll be interesting because one of the things a judge might argue is the longer they're on the bench, the more like being a judge, the older and the wiser, perhaps.
[00:46:57]  I mean, it could also be while they're immune from democratic accountability.
[00:47:02]  But sometimes, I mean, I can't.
[00:47:05]  So, one of our difficulties, one of our, if I might, if I can just insert this, one of our difficulties that has arisen in the modern era, in this era of the managerial estate, one of the problems that we have embraced is a belief in expertise.
[00:47:24]  In other words, those people who know best should be the ones deciding for the rest of us what to do.
[00:47:32]  And that's not just in the courts.
[00:47:34]  It's also very much in the bureaucracy.
[00:47:36]  We think that people who know best should be making the rules and the policies and the decisions about how people should behave.
[00:47:43]  That is one of the sources of our problem.
[00:47:48]  There's an original idea about judges, and that is that one of the reasons a judge is well placed to make decisions about all kinds of things is that they know nothing about them.
[00:48:04]  Nothing about them.
[00:48:05]  You can make a decision in a case about a contract for seeds because you know nothing about seeds.
[00:48:12]  And everything that you know about seeds by the end of the case, you've learned from the witnesses on the stand in the room and nothing else.
[00:48:19]  And so, one of the good things about judges is it's supposed to be blank slates.
[00:48:26]  But more and more, we look to expertise to man our courts, to man our tribunals, to man our bureaucracies, and so on.
[00:48:34]  And for my money, that's the wrong track.
[00:48:38]  Well, it was William F. Buckley Jr. who said he'd rather be ruled by the first hundred names in the Boston Phone Directory than the faculty lounge at Harvard, which was an interesting thing for him to say a generation ago.
[00:48:50]  Last question: it's not a legal question.
[00:48:53]  It's sort of a hunch.

=== Judges as Blank Slates (01:45) ===

[00:48:55]  If you had to predict the future, do you think Albertans will vote to secede in October?
[00:49:02]  Oh, my.
[00:49:04]  I'm not sure I can give you a call on that.
[00:49:06]  I think my concern is that with the referendum as it is presently conceived, the way that Danielle Smith has announced, my concern is that the answer to that question will be no.
[00:49:19]  Because there will be enough Albertans persuaded that there is a third way so that they can fix Alberta's problems but not have to leave the country.
[00:49:31]  I'm afraid that they will be taken in by that possibility and they will avoid providing Alberta with the leverage that is required to actually get serious reform to the country.
[00:49:46]  The powers that be in this country, and there are a lot of them, and they're very deeply embedded, will not allow any kind of serious, fundamental, basic reform to the way this country works.
[00:50:00]  And to believe that that's possible, I think, is a bit naive.
[00:50:05]  Is there a website where people can see your stuff?
[00:50:08]  Oh, indeed, there is.
[00:50:09]  Rightsprobe.org.
[00:50:15]  And they can follow me on Twitter at Party Bruce.
[00:50:18]  And I also have a substack.
[00:50:20]  Great to see you.
[00:50:21]  Thanks for spending so much time with us.
[00:50:23]  It's always good to talk to an Ontario law professor about Alberta independence, but I'm delighted that you're bringing your intellectual firepower to the matter.
[00:50:31]  Thanks for taking so much time with us.
[00:50:33]  Thanks so much, Ezra.
[00:50:34]  Always great to talk to you.
[00:50:35]  There he is, Professor Bruce Party of Queen's Law School.
[00:50:40]  That's our show for today.