Special Referendum Series Part 1: Crosscurrents - The Gospel According to Alberta

Ten referendum questions can look like a checklist, but we think Alberta is being asked to do something bigger: accept a story about who we are, what went wrong, who belongs, and who should pay the price when life gets tight. We start by naming what we love about Alberta, then challenge the “self-made” myth that so often shows up in Alberta politics. If prosperity can create amnesia, what gets erased from our memory when we say “we built this” and stop there?

From affordability and housing to crowded classrooms and strained emergency rooms, we take the pressures seriously without letting pressure become an all-purpose explanation. With MLA Diana Batten and co-host Ricardo De Menezes, we turn the lens back on provincial choices, including the move toward dual practice in healthcare and the broader drift toward two-tier access. Rapid growth and the “Alberta Is Calling” moment raise a blunt question: if we invite people in without building capacity, do we eventually start sorting which people get full access to the common good?

We also dig into the referendum’s immigration language, “Albertans First,” and the difference between formally race-neutral categories and how they operate in a society where immigrants are often racialized. Then we tackle equalization payments with clear facts, separating legitimate grievances from viral myths, and we use faith as a moral test of our instincts about fairness, resentment, and responsibility.

If you care about Alberta’s future, listen, share this with a neighbor, and subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the referendum series. What kind of Alberta do you want us to build together?

Check us out at www.preparedtodrown.com

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Transcript

Why A Church Talks Politics

Bill 0:08

Hello and thanks for listening. This is the first of a special four-part series on Alberta's October referendum. And yes, we know there are people who think a church podcast getting this political is somehow crossing a line. We disagree. Faith has something to say about power and wealth, neighbors, truth, belonging, and even our grievances. And more importantly, faith has something to say about what happens when governments ask us to fear one another. So we are not going to pretend neutrality we don't have. We're going to tell you where we stand, we'll do our homework, and we will take the argument seriously. We're also going to ask whether the story Alberta is being sold can actually bear the weight that is being placed on it. I'm Bill Weaver, and this is Prepared to Drown. Let's dive in. It's a rainy evening here in August in the basement of Digital United Church, and we are doing something a little different here on Prepared to Drown this evening. We are starting a four-part conversation on the upcoming referendum that Albertans will Albertans will vote on on October 19th. There are 10 questions. The first nine are yes or no questions touching on immigration, access to provincially funded services, voting, courts, the Senate, federal programs, and constitutional authority. The tenth asks whether Alberta should remain a province of Canada or begin the legal process that would lead toward a future binding referendum on separation. Elections Alberta will actually give us question 10 first, and then questions one through nine afterward. And before we go any further on this podcast tonight, I want to be transparent about where I'm coming from, because even in announcing this series, I had to put on my church minister flak jacket. I don't want to pretend that Alberta has no real problems, that the federal government has never made bad decisions, or that the people who find parts of this referendum attractive are stupid or malicious. I want us to understand that the strongest truths underneath the argument, I want us to understand the strongest truths underneath the argument, and then ask whether those truths actually get us to the answers we're being offered. Most important of all, though, I want us to muster the courage to be honest with ourselves and each other that our faith has something to say about these issues as they relate to our collective responsibilities to each other. Because before we are being asked to vote on ten questions, I think we're being asked to believe a story. A story about who Alberta is, about what happened to us, about who's responsible, about who really belongs here, and ultimately ultimately about what might save us. And before we get into all of that, I should introduce who's around the table with me tonight. Ricardo Di Menezes is here with me as always, bringing his particular attention to uh labor and systems and power and the people who actually live with the consequences of our politics, including being a member of the 2S LGBTQIA plus community. And joining us tonight is Diana Batten, who is the MLA for Calgary Acadia. She brings both the perspective of an opposition legislator and the experience of hearing directly from Albertans about the pressures we're going to be talking about tonight and in the weeks ahead. Now, people in the room will notice, and eventually you listening online will notice that Joanne isn't with us tonight. She is away on leave, so I am going to be trying to pull double duty for this conversation this evening, hosting as usual, but also carrying a little more of the theological side of the table in her absence as well. And so to start this conversation off, I want to start somewhere deliberately easy and uncomplicated to get us into

What We Love About Alberta

Bill 3:53

it.

Ricardo 3:53

Thank you.

Bill 3:54

You're welcome, Ricardo. In fact, I'll even answer first, partly because I'm the one springing the question on you. So this will give you both a minute to think. The question is this before we talk about politics, before we talk about the federal government or Ottawa, before we talk about the referendum, I want to ask you simply, what do you love about Alberta? And I will start to give you time to think because I also had the luxury of writing down my answer. I love the sheer beauty of this province. The prairie sky, the foothills, the mountains. I love that a Chinook rolls in exactly when we desperately need one. I love that Alberta has been a place where people have come from all over the world and built lives together. I love the communities and the relationships that have become home for me and my family. I love the opportunities that I have had here. But I also love the things that made those opportunities possible, such as good schools and hospitals, universities, libraries, parks, roads, public institutions. Things that generations of people built before I ever arrived to benefit from them. And I love something about the spirit of Alberta too. There can be a generosity here and a willingness to pitch in to help a neighbor to believe that we can make something better than what it is. There are certainly things about this province that frustrate me deeply. But none of that makes me love it any less. If anything, I think loving a place, much like loving a person, gives you a reason to care deeply about what it becomes. That is my answer to the question. What do you love about Alberta? And now I open it up to our two other panelists.

Ricardo 5:50

I'm I'm one of those um up-and-comings, uh first generation born in Calgary. Um I was born and raised in Calgary to immigrant parents. And you know, I was raised with a a general fear and um almost yeah, almost anxiety around anyone that wasn't like my direct family or my direct community of the of the going community. And what I found in Alberta was that you can walk down a pathway and someone will still say hi, how are you? If you're riding your bike or if you're walking your dog. I find that the youth in this province um not only springs forward uh the possibility of identifying itself differently from the rest of the country, but also allows this province to um make decisions on trending issues at its own pace. What do I mean by that? Um I can remember the just the this is a very vivid thing, the distracted driving legislation. We were the last province to implement like banning phones while texting while driving. The last one, right? Like everyone else is like, no brainer, let's do it. And Ralph Klein was like, I'm not doing that at all. No thanks. I'm not stopping people from eating sandwiches while they're driving. And we're and everyone's like, well, no one's asking that. We're just asking you to stop. And then we come up with legislation where it's like, not only can you not text and drive, but you can't apply makeup, change your CD, change a cassette tape, because you know there are so many cassette tapes and CD players and vehicles these days. But we we just sort of do things at our own pace, and we do things in a very unpredictable sort of fashion. Um, which the most stark example that I can think of in recent history was the toppling of the 44-year conservative regime in in Alberta, where the NDP came into power for one term, and nobody expected that whatsoever. Um, nobody expected the the people of the province to air their frustration in that in that way, shape, or form. I mean, I was a ballot, I was a candidate on the ballot in 2007, and I think I got like 1% of the vote for the NDP. I had Foothills Rocky View, and like the one debate I went to was at a church, and the topic was who would Jesus vote for? And my answer was he fed like 500 people with two loaves of bread and a fish. He's totally a socialist, and that did not go very well. So um, but we we inch we inch in one direction or the other um very carefully and um and very slowly, but also in many ways very collectively. And um when we see other um provincial governments change hands um on the political spectrum, you often see it in many ways where uh it is a huge majority for one way or the other. Take Ontario, for example. The liberals were in power for God knows how long until Kathleen win. And then I don't think they've seen a small majority of conservatives ever since, right? And they're scrambling the other parties to try and find a footing. Where um in the first time in my history, you're seeing a very slim or I wouldn't say a slim majority in Alberta, but you see like these epicenters of orange and these epicenters of of blue, and you just you just don't know where things are gonna go in certain areas. And what I love about that province is our province is it has we have our own mind in that way. And the the very um intriguing thing for me um is that we're right next to a province where I don't think they've seen very much government um right of center in my entire life. Even if they call the BC Liberals the Conservative Party in in British Columbia, it's I mean, you know, they're basically leftist revolutionaries. Um but um just to cross a border and have that different political dynamic. But this province has rugged beauty, and sometimes I think that we make decisions that affect um our people and our environment and our and our um our um I guess our future um in ways that make no sense for the rest of the country, but uh sometimes it works out and it surprises me.

Diana 10:42

I love that. So I I love that I get to go last because both of your answers um were very like inspiring, were very reminded me of things that I hadn't uh jotted down. The first thing that came to mind when I think about what do I love about Alberta, it's people. Straight up, I love Albertans. And when I think about uh your answer, Ricardo, and you're talking about the unpredictability of Albertans, yeah. Because Albertans don't they're not cheap, right? They we don't um we don't fall in line for no reason. We are uh considerate about what we're doing. We try to be intentional. Um when I think about Albertans and the love of the land, and be it, you know, our our amazing prairie land, I am um, I chose Alberta as my home. Uh I moved here um 12, 14, I don't know, back in 2012, whenever that was. Um I have a life here with my husband. It's where we have chosen uh to plant our roots. And and part of that is that Alberta shares, I'm from Saskatchewan, so Alberta shares the prairie. So that is home. But we have these beautiful mountains, and yes, they separate us from a very different um different direction of government uh traditionally, but but like you had mentioned, Ricardo, we have seen Albertans choose different paths when provided different, uh, and and totally said this biasly, um better options. I love how welcoming Albertans are. I love our mosaic of people. We are not um simply one culture or or even even well, I'd mentioned sheep before, but we're not even necessarily uh all at the same farm, right? We we bring such beautiful things to the table, and Alberta has always been a welcoming space for others, and that is one of the many reasons um that I love Alberta. What a great question. Thank you, Bill.

Bill 13:08

Don't thank me yet. Um I guess for the Because what we've just done is actually name things like people and uh communities and landscapes and even like some institutions and uh essentially everything I think that uh was here long before any of us, and some things that generations before us built for us.

The Myth Of Being Self-Made

Bill 13:30

So I want to turn the question now slightly and say how much of what we love about Alberta did any one of us actually create by ourselves.

Ricardo 13:43

By ourselves? Yeah. Oh my God.

Diana 13:49

So by ourselves as individuals, none. By ourselves as a province, as part of Canada, if we're speaking as Canadians, we have done a lot of things. As a province, I would argue that we've done a lot of things. Yes, we have benefited from those who've come before us, and hopefully we will play that forward so that those who come after us benefit even more. But we go back to the the culture of Albertans, who we are, um what we value. I think it's the decisions made by Albertans that have that has formed our province. Um did we do it as individuals? No. We did it obviously as a community, as a province. Uh, did Alberta do it without the rest of Canada? I would argue no, because it is a privilege to be able to do new things, to try new things. And in order to be in that position, you you need to have you need to have to be able to fail. And so I would argue that Alberta has been able to take chances because we are part of Canada. And so in answer, uh no, we did it all as a community, the way that Canadians function.

Bill 15:12

One of Alberta's most powerful stories about itself is that we are builders, that we are creators. Uh we're entrepreneurial, we work hard, we pull our own weight. There is, because I have to do the theological carrying tonight as well, uh, there is a warning in Deuteronomy chapter 8, verses 12 to 14. Uh that feels particularly relevant to this entire conversation. Uh the Israelites have fled slavery in Egypt, and Moses is imagining the people in the promised land uh looking around at everything that they have built and everything that they have accumulated, their homes, their herds, their silver, their gold, their wealth, and are beginning to say to themselves, My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. And the warning is about the amnesia that prosperity can produce. The temptation to mistake benefiting from abundance for having authored it ourselves. And I want to be careful here, because I don't think the answer is to turn around and say that God somehow especially blessed Alberta with oil and wealth and prosperity. Uh because that's just replacing one kind of Alberta exceptionalism for another. The point is that none of us is self-made, and neither is a province in my mind. Whatever Alberta's built, we built with things we first received. Land that we didn't create, uh, resources we didn't place beneath it, indigenous lands and treaty relationships that predate the province itself, generations of workers, including immigrant labor, schools, universities, and hospitals, roads and public infrastructure, Canadian and international investment in markets, institutions handed to us by people who came before us. So when Alberta tells the story simply as we worked for this, we built this, we earned this, I think Deuteronomy asks us to notice what that story has to erase to make that happen. So my question is who disappears when we tell the story of our prosperity as though it was the work of our hands alone?

Ricardo 17:46

I think the rest of Canada does. Um to um and that that's the point of this podcast, I guess. Is that what we're is that what we're hoping to accomplish? Is that history that we have? And to forge a new history for the country of Alberta or whatever we choose to become. I to reflect on the last question that you asked, um, you know, I think that what Alberta did on our own um much before there was sort of um um an allegiance of Western provinces was to create and shape a Western identity um that um crafted itself in um almost an opposition to what the political and economic culture of the East was of Ontario and Quebec and all of them. And so when we when we develop an identity like that, in my opinion, um we also tend to lose the identity of an of a nation. Um uh when we're pitting one province against another in terms of, well, I do this and you do that, and you don't do enough with me and you don't do enough for that, then then we start to lose an identity of a nation that needs to be united together at a time, I would argue right now, where our neighbors to the south are very much um hell-bent on um on ruining our nation. Uh so to have this sort of internal trife um erases the possibility of us uniting as a nation to to try and do good for everybody. And I think, I mean, I don't want to get into the whole debate of equalization and all that kind of stuff, but I think the concept of that would be to help one another and to to focus on those priorities. So, for example, when we're talking about, I don't know, something as complicated and simple through the media as tariffs, um, to have everybody say that, oh, you know, it's it's it's a horrible thing for us, and like, you know, the Premier of Manitoba has yanked all the liquor off the shelves, and you know, Doug Ford poured out a bottle of Crown Royal, even though it's made in Manitoba. And um and then for Alberta, for the Premier to go up and say, well, it's not affecting us at all, is disingenuous to the national message and the collective message that we should be having as a nation that at some point in time we're gonna get screwed, and we can't really do things differently in order to help fight the almost irrational power that is underneath us, right? So that's what we lose, I think. We lose a collective voice and we we lose a unified voice. And it's very disheartening for me to see when the premiers get together that we fight about these small, not even small, these internal stripes rather than the collective things that are happening across the board. Now, do I say that Mark Carney is doing everything right? I I don't think so. I mean um but he's got a message that says, like, we've got to do something to help um to help uh pad us from the inevitable like he wanted to charge us 10% tariffs because there was smoke traveling down to the US. Like, you know? And so we we can deal with that. But then to all of a sudden say, okay, well, you know, we also have to deal with the fact that one of the provinces, and arguably, and probably statistically, uh, a very um privileged province for our resources and our and our and our identity wants to just leave. That's a big problem. And it's a it shows uh a fracture in our in our community.

Bill 21:16

So I wanna I want to ask you to say a bit more about this identity uh that you were talking about, because you went back afterwards. But you were talking about uh Alberta forming an identity, um largely before the West had started to be developed. Um what does that identity in your mind celebrate? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

Ricardo 21:33

So I I said a Western identity. So I think I think the the uh the the concept of a Western identity in Alberta was to um bring more power and recognition to what we provide the rest of the nation, right? And I think part of the arguments for w why people are are pursuing a referendum of separation is that they want more recognition for the contributions that we make. I'm not sure that we're we're Not being recognized for those contributions that we make as a country or to the or towards the total country. But I think Western identity was it was something that was developed in order to recognize what we're doing. And the hard work piece of it is that working up north is a crappy frickin' job, right? In the oil sands. Let's just be real, right? And we send people up there all the time to dig up the tar sands and and get it refined and provide revenue for basically us and the whole country. And so I think that they wanted during a time when um manufacturing was declining very, very quickly in Ontario and uh and stuff like that. I think they wanted, we wanted as a province, more recognition for the contribution that we were making. But I see now the pendulum swinging to say that we want more control over the contribution that we're making and less a national identity, which is the the concern that I have, right? Like we're contributing, we are doing very well in order to help the rest of the country, but I don't I don't understand what the end goal really is, right?

Bill 23:11

Fair enough.

Ricardo 23:12

Does that make sense?

Bill 23:13

Yeah.

The Real Pressures Hitting Albertans

Bill 23:16

So as beneficiaries of the abundance around us, nothing is easy right now. Uh Stats Canada says that Alberta's population was estimated just over 5.05 million people on April 1st of this year. 5.05 million people is an extraordinary amount of growth for a province whose public infrastructure has to then keep pace. Right? The government, the premier, actually got up and gave a really great, you know, pointed, direct, clear address uh that pointed to rapid growth as a major source of pressure uh on classrooms and emergency rooms and social programs. And in February, she directly connected that pressure unequivocally to federal immigration policy and then to the referendum. And here is where I think we are called to be more disciplined. Um because even my grade six student at home can do the math that uh understands that more people obviously means uh more need for classrooms, and more need for teachers, and more need for doctors, and more need for housing, and more need for infrastructure. Um that is what pressure is, right? And and and pressure uh is a real thing in our province. Uh growth definitely creates pressure. But pressure doesn't automatically tell us anything about cause or responsibility or how it is that you fix it. So before we get into all of that, because I do eventually want to get to the referendum questions. I'm coming to you first, Diana. Um what are the pressures, just the pressures, that Albertans are actually experiencing right now?

Diana 25:10

That is a um yeah, that is a loaded question. I would say uh generally Albertans, so a big pressure is affordability. Um be it the skyrocketing utility uh bills, um, be it the Alberta's trial at the no-fault private insurance, where folks are seeing increases up to 15% of their insurance. Um anywho, uh there are there are a number of uh affordability concerns that Albertans are facing. Further, as you mentioned, so yes, there are five million people who have chosen to live in Alberta. And I do hope that we get to um back to the whole why did this occur? How are we here? I promise we'll get there. Perfect. Thank you, thank you. Um the reality is there is a housing crisis full stop across the country. This is not um, this is not only Alberta. Um and the housing that we're building um like is quite high-end, meaning we don't have a lot of affordable housing. Um, so we have folks who struggle for housing generally, we have folks who um don't know whether or not their uh their paycheck is going to make it to the end of the day or sorry, the end of the month, or if they're able to renew their car insurance. Um so we have huge affordability pressures on folks. We have huge pressures inside our education system, our public education, um, the funding has changed. So our public schools are not receiving what they once did. Uh they are bursting at the seams. We have uh a population of incredibly brave educators who stood up for what they believed, which was that our public classrooms were inappropriate to teach Albert children, and they were forced back by the government. That causes pressure. That makes Albertans question their rights versus what the government can do. That causes pressure. We are facing a hundred and thirty million dollar referendum, non-binding referendum this fall. It is technically within an election year. These are pressures that Albertans are facing in that they are now having to somehow navigate ten different questions that I would argue for the most part, Albertans have either clearly indicated their intent on before, or that there is actually no um next step. Even if Albertans wanted to abolish the Senate, we cannot. Sorry, that's the way that things are. Does it mean that we can't work collectively with collaborating with the other levels of government? Of course we can, or we should be able to. Those are pressures. To the south of us, we've got Trump. I could go on forever on the different pressures Albertans are facing. Uh, and and again, I'm hoping that we get we get we circle back to how did we get here and how do we move forward? Um, because I think there's been some very clear decisions made inside Alberta in the past handful of years that has led us to exactly where it was anticipated to lead us. And Albertans are the ones feeling the pressure. And um yeah, I guess that's why we're here chatting today, um, among other reasons. But yeah, those are some of the pressures Albertans are facing.

Ricardo 29:32

If there's one thing that Trump did in his election campaign which resonated with me, I mean he didn't fix the issue, was he used a carton of eggs as the sort of example of the affordability crisis that's rocking North America right now. And if we look inside the province of Alberta, I mean, we have um, as Diana said, some of the highest electrical rates, insurance rates. Um even just calorie transit is almost as expensive as New York, apparently now, right? And these pressures um these pressures juxtapose a um a wage parity that has to match the the the the um the cost of living. So we had a a ref uh a question to the premier about raising the minimum wage from $15 an hour. And she said it was not beneficial for employers or workers to have the minimum wage increased. What perplexes me about a bunch of things, especially in the media and society, is why they don't continue asking questions as to what she means by that. But anyway, that's fine. Um and so and so let's look at the um the demographic of people that are earning minimum wage, which are mainly fast food restaurants, retail stores, all those kind of things. It's the common misconception is it's like young kids getting their summer jobs and hoping to pay for some college tuition.

Diana 31:00

The government likes to say that 52% of those on minimum wage are first-time jobs. They are kids. What they don't answer is okay, what about the other 48% of people who are on minimum wage?

Ricardo 31:13

Yeah, yeah. It's true. 52% of those things are first-time jobs, but it's not actually young kids that are working there. It's new Canadians, it's single mothers, it's additional jobs that people have to work in order to pay for things that happen. And one of the big um, one of the big examples that I can think of when um which is sometimes how out of touch sometimes the government is with the cost of living, was when they scrapped the $25 a day daycare that the NDP government had put in without any rationale or explanation. When it was a private project that went across the country. Uh, and the the federal government was trying to implement these daycare programs across the country, and Alberta was like, no, no, let's take it away, right? Or or universal dental care, right? For seniors and for low-income families. You know, let's get them. Albert, no, no, we're good, we're good. But meanwhile, Alberta has the highest dental fees with the most outdated fee guides in the country. I sit on a multi-employee benefit trust and I see all the comparisons across the country, and we are single-handedly the least coverage and the most expensive, right? Um, same thing with the prescription coverage. Like routinely, when I say that, when I said earlier that Alberta had fought for a Western identity, our it's like our Western identity now is to just automatically fight anything that comes from the East. Good or bad. Right? And and we these decisions out of principle by people who have never had to worry about the food in their fridge is negatively affecting so many of our of our um our workers. I can give you an example of um one of our union members who um was disciplined at his job for refusing mandatory overtime. Um, and anyone would say, well, if I'm poor and if I'm struggling, mandatory overtime would be a great thing. But he had to skip it because he had a food bank appointment. And the employer still disciplined him for that, right? For going to and so what does that tell you? Working full-time in this province is now not even enough to be able to afford to live and raise a family, right? And we need policy. Forget what the rest of the country is doing. Let's do an analysis of what we're doing in this province and what needs to happen in this province, right? And the pressures people are feeling are not trans people in sports, they're not um which flag is flying in the school, they're not books and libraries, okay? These are all just bloody distractions. They are, as I said in the beginning, how do I afford a carton of eggs? Because right now, at six bucks a carton, somebody's working half an hour at their minimum wage job to afford eggs, let alone rent.

Bill 34:19

Yeah, we uh it's it's not a it's not a big secret even in my own life when I was uh when I was a student, when I was training for ministry and I was in seminary uh and my son was born. Uh I was not actually in the province when my son was born, and I will uh be reminded of that until the day that I die. Um I was at seminary and uh we gambled and lost, and he came early, and uh and such is what happens when you gamble. Um But uh while I was away, uh I was talking with my wife one day on the phone, and she had just come home with uh with my son, and uh the doorbell rang while I was on the phone with her, and uh and she said, Oh, just a minute, I gotta go grab that. And I waited, and then she came back and said, Yeah, it was just the food bank. And I went, what the hell is the food bank doing at our house? And uh she said, well, yeah, like I felt in all the paperwork when we were in the hospital, and apparently, like we're at the threshold that requires food bank. And I remember being really embarrassed, really angry. Um it's not that it was wrong by any stretch of the imagination. We were struggling. Um and uh and like at no point in time in the conversation afterwards was there anything around like when do we talk about the fact that it's actually not okay that somebody who's working full-time in a in a job that's not minimum wage even uh can't afford uh to put food on their table. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Ricardo 35:44

Or the fact that food banks exist. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Bill 35:45

Right?

Diana 35:46

So the fact that the government gloats that Alberta is Of all the provinces, we fund our food bank at the high level. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Bill 35:55

Absolutely, right? Um, nowhere was that part of the conversation at all, right? Um and uh and like still to this day, um I look back at that time and go like like nobody, nobody um was asking the right questions at the time. It was just an accepted part of the narrative, right? Um So um I think we're establishing something really important at the outset. And if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm hopefully I'm hoping that we're modeling a way to actually look at some of this stuff, right? Um so there are pressures, and they are real. They are real pressures in our province. Um they're pressures that so far right now don't have an explanation. We've intentionally done that. Um but uh somebody does eventually have to tell us why there isn't enough in this case, and that is in some cases where politics comes in.

Legit Grievances With Ottawa

Bill 36:49

Um so I don't want to look at the Alberta story and uh and in doing that pretend that, uh, or depend on at least pretending that Ottawa has always treated Alberta well. I don't want to do that. Um because it hasn't, and there are legitimate legitimate concerns and grievances. Um, there are a number of them. They are very easily searchable to somebody who actually wants to take the time to do the work of uh looking it up and finding it out. Um, the ones that I follow uh purely out of kind of morbid curiosity more than anything else, um I'll give you three. Uh the Supreme Court has actually ruled that uh the designated project portion of the Federal Impact Assessment Act went far beyond its constitutional authority. Um and there are circumstances in which Alberta has said Ottawa is intruding into provincial jurisdiction, and the highest court in the country has essentially said, yeah, in this case you're right. Um so it does happen, right? We can trust in the higher courts to at least be able to point to yay or nay as to whether or not there is an overreach. Um there's also a history in Alberta uh around resource revenue shocks, especially when uh especially when there are uh downturns in uh oil prices uh that that genuinely do impact our province substantially. Uh the federal fiscal stabilization program had uh an outdated cap on it. That was from 1987. I was in elementary school uh at the time that they had evaluated it. Um and when Alberta was taking the hit for low oil prices in 2015 through 2017, that cap genuinely constrained Alberta's ability to adjust. Um but the piece that never gets talked about is that Ottawa modernized the cap as a result, and I think tripled it or even more than that as a result of what it had done to Alberta in that time. And immigration, because it is a hot topic on this referendum, um genuinely does require federal and provincial coordination. Um Ottawa controls major parts of immigration policy, and provinces are required to deliver much of the healthcare, education, and infrastructure that's needed when populations grow, right? Um there are legitimate places where uh the federal government needs to be attentive to and responsive to the needs of provinces and own when there are errors or gaps or omissions or just outright bad policy. Um but we need to be able to work together. I think even you've already said that, um, Diana. So I'm gonna put it out to the two of you as well. Where do you think the relationship with the federal government has genuinely been difficult for Alberta? Um I've given my three examples that I look at, but genuinely be difficult. I'm not asking you to slag your colleagues or anything, Diana. Um I think we can acknowledge that there are some some genuine, just like difficult relationships uh that have happened and moments.

Diana 40:12

I so well, what I really want to share, which I realize is going up a little bit from your question, but I I I want to speak to um uh something that this government did a while ago, um, a handful of years ago, uh, to increase the population in Alberta.

Bill 40:30

Aaron Powell We'll get there.

Diana 40:32

Okay. Okay. Um so specific examples were potentially uh you know there could have been better collegial behavior. Province fed collegiality. I mean I would argue that I well, goodness. All the way like we could pick any set. Trudeau is obviously a recent one, and for many, many moons there. Um yes, relationships were not awesome between Alberta and and the feds. Does that mean that uh things weren't that things didn't get done? No. Because you might remember between 2015 and 2019, lots of things got done. And that wasn't because suddenly you know the federal government was more cooperative. That was a different approach to how to work with that government.

Bill 41:28

So for those who may not be following at home, you are talking about the time period when who was Oh, Rachel Notley was Premier Players.

Diana 41:36

Okay, yeah.

Bill 41:36

I think we need to just, you know, clarify that. Yeah, yeah.

Diana 41:39

Um I specifically will point out during that time, one of the um, I would say one of the most amazing things that happened during the Knotley government was that that government halved child poverty. Now, if we think about this, this was during a, as you'd mentioned, an oil crash. This is when that government was negotiating. I was a registered nurse at the time. They were trying to negotiate with us, say, hey, take zero guys. I recognize you haven't had an increase in uh however many years, but trust us, we're investing in your public services. And they did. And yes, we took zero because that is what well, I'm a registered nurse, that's what nurses do. So there are ways, and I recognize that the negotiation with with the registered nurses uh and the province is not exactly what we're discussing, but those were hard stinking times. And yet and then one last plug for that. Well, one last plug during this answer, to be totally honest. Um, for the amazingness of that particular government, the only pipeline that Alberta has ever built was because of the negotiations between Rachel Knottley and Justin Trudeau.

Bill 43:08

And so again, we're talking about trans is a trans mountain. And the federal government bought it. Eventually, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is it running?

Ricardo 43:19

Like is it built? Oh. Sorry, I just think that's a good one.

Diana 43:25

Not at capacity, but yes, it's running. What? But you're in Alberta. Come on.

Ricardo 43:32

I I don't I I can't really give you many examples because the lexicon we're fed here in this province is that we're really hard done by unless you do a deep dive in research. And sometimes it's like, you know, boy who cries a wolf sometimes, right? But I can think of one example. Um when Rachel Dotley put in the the provincial carbon tax. Which was a full circle program where, you know, we pay and then it just goes into, I mean, I thanks for my Knotley light bulbs and my notly my Knotley power bar and all those things that we got as a result of the light bulb program. Um and then of course Jason Kenny won and and removed the carbon tax entirely. And then it was this whole carbon tax federally that Justin Trudeau said if you don't put one, we'll just shove one down your throats. Right? Um and while I may not disagree that some sort of carbon capture and store and pricing is necessary in order to reinvest back into a greener economy and all those kind of things, the shove it down your throat mentality is what really pisses a lot of Albertans off, I think. Right? Um and it could have been and I I I like your example how you said, you know, because of raciality doesn't judge, it was almost like when Jason Kenny won. There was like Justin was like, okay, it's time to time to go asshole on on Alberta again, right? The tone really changed. And you know, this could have been a prior relationship between the two people when Jason was in federal politics. I mean, I can easily say now that I miss Jason Kenny a little bit, but um funny how that works.

Diana 45:14

I know, I know.

Ricardo 45:15

But the the um that's what I noticed when the UCP came back into power um after after the NDP. The tone from Ottawa was very much let's battle again, right? When it didn't need to do that, and I think that was probably um not helpful. Not helpful and probably his successive minority governments that he got because the West was completely still like F you, right? That attitude started again. Um whether or not I believe it's necessary, there just was this uncooperative magic that that didn't take you, that that uncooperative power that that that took place again in the province. Like when Stephen Harper was in power and we had a conservative provincial government, I think we were cooperating perfectly fine in many ways, shapes, and forms. And then like I just that's all I noticed. As soon as the as soon as the UCPK it was automatically their butting heads again, right? And um, but once again, in this province, it it they took it to the ninth degree, okay? Affordable child care. Okay, forget it, we're not doing it anymore if the government's doing it, right? And now they're doing with uh disability supplements for the severely handicapped, right? They took away the indexing for inflation, and now they reduce them by 200 bucks for the government's giving 200 bucks. How do you keep people in it? It's not even just poverty, it's abject poverty. Okay? When they can't afford anything and they can't work and they can't walk and they can't exist, and you tell them, well, because the government's giving you some more money, we're not gonna give you that that the same amount of money. Like that's the kind of stuff that really irks me. And that's the kind of uh very evident animosity between us and the federal government that doesn't need to happen. But to to uh to um your point and to your question, um it's like a it's like I don't I can't think of a a time or a place when the federal government is run, and I I trust me, I I know there are examples of it that exist. I just this relationship is like two neighbors over like where the fence line is in the property, right? So that's all I can say, right?

Bill 47:32

So there are, I think legitimately some relationship issues between the province and the federal government. And I think every province would say that there are always, you know, relationship issues between the federal government and the provinces. Um what I don't want to encourage is uh Ottawa or the federal government becoming the explanation for everything that isn't working. So I am going to suggest, based on time, that we take an intermission right here because I even wrote it down.

Intermission And A Reset

Bill 48:06

How did we get here? Decisions inside Alberta that uh Diana Batten wants to make sure that we circle back to. And I'm gonna suggest that uh after our intermission, maybe we turn the lens away from the federal provincial relationship and look at Alberta and then dive into uh questions one to nine, um, at least at a broad kind of overview uh for the referendum. So we are going to take an intermission and then we will be right back.

Turning The Lens On Alberta

Bill 48:43

And we are back. And before the intermission, we ended uh talking about the provincial-federal relationship. And I promised that we would come back after the intermission and talk about uh a more insider inside Alberta perspective to things because uh we have talked enough probably for now at least about uh what the federal government has done and is doing, and we probably need to spend a bit more time uh, especially in light of the referendum, asking ourselves what has Alberta done? Uh rapid population growth, for instance, which seems to be one of the uh larger talking points in this referendum, uh, can absolutely increase demand for health care, but the government of Alberta still has enormous responsibility for what the healthcare system looks like when that demand arrives. Uh same thing with education, same thing with infrastructure, same thing with all of it. And those choices have definitely been consequential. For example, purely because once I turn it over to Diana, I know I'm gonna uh open the floodgates. She's been waiting for the entirety of this uh this podcast for this opportunity. Um Alberta is now implementing a dual practice model in healthcare, which uh in which eligible physicians can work in the public system and also provide privately paid surgeries. The government's argument is that this will increase options and reduce pressure on public waiting lists. Patients who don't want to wait may pay for eligible private surgeries, while physicians participating in dual practice will have minimum public system work requirements. And so, uh, Diana, what provincial decisions have contributed to the healthcare capacity problem that we are experiencing now?

Healthcare And The Dual Practice Shift

Diana 50:22

And go. Goodness. Okay.

Bill 50:24

I thought you were answering that first.

Diana 50:27

Well, um, so uh for those of you who don't know, so as a registered nurse, I am a registered nurse. Um that is what I practiced prior to becoming elected. And when folks ask me why um why politics, why now, um, et cetera, my answer is always the same, which is that in 2019 I was working in the neonatal intensive care unit at Foothills Hospital. Uh it at many times is the busiest uh NICU in the country. Uh and we saw a change in government in 2019, and I almost immediately saw a difference in the supplies that I was able to procure for the little tiny humans I was taking care of. Uh I got really frustrated with it because it wasn't just about um the nurses. And I say that with the most love for my colleagues, but it was about the patients. It was uh detrimental to our most, most vulnerable. And uh it really upset me. And uh my husband's here tonight, and I like to both give him uh credit and blame uh for where I am today because it was him encouraging me to go spend that energy elsewhere, go find something, you like to do things, go do something. Uh, I don't think he quite meant to become an MLA, but here we are. Um there have been intentional choices on how we use uh the healthcare dollars. Um the if the goal was to uh fulfill the promise of the Canadian Health Act and provide Albertans the services they need where and when they need it, uh we would not see a shift to a dual practice system. Uh the very uh well, the short answer to why the dual practice system is problematic is that uh we are not creating new humans to do the work. We're taking professionals from the public system and creating a space that is not open to all Albertans. That is two-tier healthcare. Um and it is it is uh uh creating a lot of problems already. Um this the dual practice uh has come with a few uh incentives, we'll say, for different professionals to move into the private sector, which is also problematic, pulling from our public system. Um I would love Alberta to have access to everything that Albertans need, but we don't do that by limiting access to most, to give access to others. Um so these are this was a choice and continues to be a choice. The dual practice around the world has shown to not work. And when I say not work, I mean for the people who access the services. Um a lot of private uh healthcare providers will um be financially compensated for this. It is a lucrative business. Uh healthcare, in my world, should not be a business. That is why it is a public service. It is not supposed to turn a profit. It is supposed to care for Albertans. Um and I think with the steps we've seen from this government, um in particular the dual practice model, we are seeing intentional starvation of the public system. And of course the question is why.

Ricardo 54:30

The problems we have in the province? Sorry?

Bill 54:32

The problems we have in the province. Well, so I I I want to just make sure I'm gonna ask this question another way. I think you've kind of answered it. I just want to really lean into it because I think it's important. It's certainly the idea of um the the pressure of just population growth in this province um has been repeatedly hammered at as one of the primary reasons that so many of these questions um around everything from immigration to sort of where it is constitutionally that we find ourselves in a relationship with the rest of the country are sitting on this referendum. So what happens to the idea of a uh public system, whether it's whether it's healthcare or education, because again, we're seeing similar moves in uh in sort of the the relationship with with private education and that stuff as well in our province? What happens to the idea of a public system when one person's ability to effectively jump the queue or um you know remove themselves from the process that everyone around them has to adhere to begins depending on their ability to pay for Nobody listening can see you shaking your head.

Diana 55:45

So Yeah, shaking my head and just mildly um uh yeah, we're gonna angry about it. In Alberta, in any healthcare system, speaking as a registered nurse who whose full job was take care of your patients. Your patients are number one, that is who you care, that is that is literally your job. Um the literal job of the government of Alberta is to take care of, and we can define that however we want here, uh, of Albertans. And um by focusing on a few and ignoring the rest, and ignoring would be one thing, um removing access to services or making cruel um changes like the transition from ASH to ADAP, for instance. Um I really hope Albertans are asking themselves who benefits from these changes.

Alberta Is Calling And Capacity

Diana 56:50

Um the population growth piece I do want to speak to very quickly, just a little uh reminder to everyone on how we ended up here. Uh in 2023, so the last election, it might have been the fall following, so it might have been, sorry, the spring following, so it might have been 2024. Uh, somewhere in there, uh I recall very clearly the Premier standing in the House and saying that the population of Alberta by 2030 will be 10 million people. At the time, we kind of just laughed a little bit because that was crazy talk. We were, I don't know, four million people at the time, four, four and a half, whatever it was. Um and the question then, as is the question now, which was okay, so what does that look like for Alberta? Um, what are we doing to make space inside our province for these millions of people we anticipate in order to facilitate uh this uh goal of 10 million people in our province? The government of Alberta spent, I believe it was about four million dollars, although that feels cheap, honestly, um millions of our taxpayer dollars to drive vans around Ontario with billboards on the side saying Alberta is calling. Alberta is calling. There was an entire like the amount of taxpayer dollars that were used to encourage people from everywhere else to move to Alberta is is a lot. That could have been used for almost anything else. Now, did it achieve the goal that the premier at the time at stage she was doing? Of course it did, because now we're at our five million, not 10, oh goodness, but we're at five million people. It's like the premier invited everyone to a party and then forgot to buy the plates or find the food or get the water, whatever. And now Alberta's stuck on the hook for this. And the story has changed. Now it's the oh, it's all the immigrants who've come to Alberta. And and not all immigrants, as well, when we get through the the questions a little bit, it is very specific people that are being targeted by this government. And it is it is incredibly frustrating uh for all of us, uh, that piece and the hypocrisy. How can you some politicians have amazing skills to talk out of both sides of their mouths? I would say that politicians that can do that should probably not still be politicians.

Bill 59:38

Um as I said early on in the podcast, um and I'm actually gonna forget it now that I was just thinking about it. You triggered my memory and I should have written it down when it happened. Um yes, we are we are none of us are self-made, and neither is the province of Alberta. I believe that uh as with humanity, so with governments, so with provinces, so with virtually everything. And if you spend any time with me in any church office or anything ever for any length of time, you will hear me say, more often than not, we create our own stress. Um and so through so much of you know following the trajectories of both you know um government action and rhetoric over the the past number of years, um, the question always comes back to um how much capacity for the decisions we were making did we actually build around these decisions at the time when we could have, right? Um so I want to be clear because it will come up, I'm sure, at some point in time in in discussion somewhere. Like we are looking at a 2026 budget uh in Alberta that now says here's extra dollars for healthcare, here's extra dollars for education. And the nuances, don't worry, I can already see Diana making faces over in the corner. Um, but uh the the nuance to it really is why are we at a point in in uh the life of Alberta that we are needing to play catch-up on this stuff in a lot of ways, right? So um the the the the trouble with so much of the rhetoric around, especially the immigration questions, especially um those pieces tied in the referendum to um to population growth, is that uh they do a fantastic job of actually uh directly erasing the questions around what steps were being taken since 2019 um to actually um build the infrastructure and the support and the capacity to actually move towards these lofty goals. So um yeah, so I I mean I don't want to belabor it too much because I do really want to get into the questions, but um when we get to a place where there is not enough capacity due to growth, for instance, eventually, for some reason, in our government rhetoric, in our social community rhetoric, um one of the conversations that starts to take hold, and one of the conversations that we are seeing take hold in the referendum is well, if we have too many people here, then which people should have less claim upon the capacity that we do have? Um and that is not the same question as what should we be doing about population growth? Right? I want to be clear, that is not the same question.

Immigration Control And Albertans First

Bill 1:02:23

So, question one on the referendum, not the first question you'll be asked, because remember, as I said, the tenth question will be the first question asked, but question one uh asks whether Alberta should take increased control over immigration in order to decrease immigration to what the ballot calls more sustainable levels, prioritize economic migration, and give Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities. No, sure. Thanks, Ricardo. If you want to just copy Ricardo's answer, yep, that works.

Ricardo 1:03:02

What I would like to say is if you want a job, Tim Hortons is hiring. But the problem is that if you want to say, give Albertans first priority for the jobs that are in employment opportunities in this province, the reason we have a temporary foreign worker program that was abused so heavily by hotels and restaurants is because nobody was applying for them. Okay? Nobody was applying for them. Yet we still insist on a Tim Hortons on every corner of this city. At the co-op just down the street here, they put a new Tim Hortons at the cross in the in the parking lot, across the street from one uh in in the Savon parking lot. Right? I go, I drive up to I drove to Edmonton on on Sunday, and there just past Airdrie, there's a gas station with a Petro uh an SO and it's 7-Eleven in it, and next door is a Petro Canada with a 7-Eleven in it.

Diana 1:03:52

Yeah, yeah.

Ricardo 1:03:53

And I'm telling you, it's like here in the school, that's it's it's ridiculous. So we want all these things, um, but no one's applying for the work. Why? Well, um I don't know if people think they're too good for that work or not, that's fine. Also, they're paying minimum wage, and you're not gonna drive out to the ass end of nowhere to work for minimum wage when you can't afford to get there.

Bill 1:04:15

Your vocabulary tonight has been fantastic.

Diana 1:04:17

Um, then yes, that's going asshole.

Bill 1:04:19

You made it a verb in the first half. There are certain and now we're at the ass end of nowhere, yeah.

Diana 1:04:25

I love it.

Ricardo 1:04:26

There are certain pragmatic factors that need to be taken into account if we're gonna start controlling immigration to a reasonable level. Because the important part of this question is not whether or not we control the number of immigrants that are coming into this province, it's whether or not we control and prioritize economic migration. So, what does that mean? Does it mean skilled labor, like doctors, nurses, and teachers, like the government promised 3,000 teachers when they first told the teachers back to work? I haven't seen them. And we haven't prioritized economic migration of teachers from across the country and around the world. Economic migration in this context is how do we get our coffee served on every and every in every corner, right? Um, I and I know this, I know this as a personal and professional um uh challenge, just representing the workers and meatpacking plants, where they say we are trying to get Albertans to apply for these jobs at Cargill and JBS and Brooks and the chicken plants, but no born and raised Calgarian or Albertan wants to come and cut open a cow for eight hours a day.

Bill 1:05:28

Like Ricardo, I just want to ask you a really direct question right now because I feel like you're skirting around the ends of it. When they talk about uh Albertans first, who's an Albertan in that?

Diana 1:05:36

That's yes.

Ricardo 1:05:37

They're talking about white people. Okay, right? I mean, or they're talking about the people that were uh that were born here in this country or in this in this province, right? Because I can't I can I can I can't call myself anything else other than Albertan. I was born at the Foothills Hospital, right? But I can tell you that my entire life has been a tr differential treatment than the rest of the province, of provincial people. I can't tell you how many. Hundreds upon thousands of times I've been asked where I'm from, right? And a sense of disbelief when I say I was born here in Calgary, right? And they're like, oh, you're so rare. I'm like, actually, I'm not. I'm not that rare.

Diana 1:06:14

The native Calgarian who stays in Calgary is is is kind of a dying breed. So in in that case, potentially. However, obviously that's not what they were meaning.

Bill 1:06:23

I think that would be his experience of how the question was being asked.

Diana 1:06:27

I agreed.

Ricardo 1:06:31

No, the majority of these questions are based in race.

Bill 1:06:34

So when does an immigrant worker become an Albertan worker? It's a good question. I know it's a good question. I'm due to have one.

Ricardo 1:06:44

Yeah, in my opinion, is it a year? No. Five years? Oh my gosh. It's the first bi-weekly paycheck when income tax comes off their bloody pay stop.

Bill 1:06:52

I don't think it's even then, in all honesty, from some of the people who sit in my office looking for pastoral care. Yeah. Permanent residence doesn't even count.

Ricardo 1:07:01

No. Open work permits don't even count, right?

Bill 1:07:04

Right? Citizenship? Because Lord knows we have to have that on our driver's licenses now.

Diana 1:07:09

Yep.

Ricardo 1:07:10

It's it's the sad reality is we we want everything, we want the best. High sur we want quality, quality products at low, low prices. And there's only so much of a push and pull that we can take. And people who are born and raised here in this province understand working that system and understanding how to build yourself up or go to university or or rely upon the goodwill of others to find you a job in a place that will pay you well or the connections you have in this country. People who come to this country fleeing violence and percussion in most instances just know how to work because it's six bucks for a carton of X, right? And when you say control my immigration or explode economic, the the actually the only thing that I that I saw, and it was Francis who was on our podcast episode before, was praising in the in the red tape reduction act they wanted to remove some of the qualifiers to um have your credentials um approved approved faster in the province. That's a good thing. Is it gonna result in more teachers? I don't know. Are they looking into that population to try and find more teachers and stuff to to teach our kids? Right? And yeah, it's it's it's it's a tough thing for me to say um that this ballot is racist. Um because racism is such a broad and and hurtful term for many people, but when it's only specifically targeting one group of people, um because I can guarantee you if the influx of people coming into this province were from Europe, the questions would be a lot

Race Neutral Language And Belonging

Ricardo 1:09:00

different.

Bill 1:09:00

Aaron Powell So I want to be careful with language here.

Ricardo 1:09:02

Okay.

Bill 1:09:03

Um because the referendum questions distinguish people by immigration and by citizenship status. They don't say anything explicitly about race, but let me finish. Um those categories, when we talk about things like citizenship and immigration status, those categories don't operate in a society where everybody is equally likely to be perceived as an immigrant. Right? Um Stats Canada found that 69.3% of Canada's immigrant population was racialized in 2021. Among immigrants admitted since 2016, that figure was 83%. So when we c create a political category called the newcomer consuming jobs or resources that should belong to Albertans, that category isn't socially invisible to us with numbers like that on racialized people. So when somebody says newcomers are taking resources from Albertans, ask yourself honestly. I'm gonna make this a rhetorical question. Who do you picture? Newcomers are taking resources from Albertans.

Ricardo 1:10:21

All those Ontarians.

Bill 1:10:23

Way to break the silence.

Diana 1:10:25

The newfies.

Bill 1:10:27

But I will ask, not as a rhetorical question, to this panel can political language be formally race neutral while still operating inside a racialized story about who naturally belongs I feel like even the who naturally belongs, like what what does that even mean?

Diana 1:10:43

I yeah, I keep coming back to the what is the world that we want to live in? What is like what is the Alberta we want to live in? I I mean I even when I was describing Alberta, I used the word mosaic, and that was on purpose because Canada is described as a mosaic. We as opposed to the melting pot that is the United States, right? That assimilation piece, that that similar issues but very different politics. Well, it used to be very different politics. I we are stronger because we have different opinions and experiences at the table. I truly believe that Alberta is a better province when we uh when we become informed. And when we when we uh are open to like when we talk about that unpredictability and like the the the amazingness of Albertans, we are amazing because we're a mosaic. We didn't get here on our own, as we were saying, and the reality is Albertans, however, like so our population is not increasing because people who are living in Alberta are having more babies. The opposite is happening. The number of like babies being born in Alberta have decreased. So our population increase are from folks coming from other places. So that lofty goal of heading hitting 10 million people or whatever the case might be, what is the plan? Are we gonna start hearing things like, uh oh, actually, I don't even know who who's yeah, I know, I know. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not, sorry, I'll not, I'll leave, I'll I'll leave of the American politics out a little bit here, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill 1:12:40

When we talk about the Alberta that we are trying to build and the Alberta that we want to live in, um the a lot of these questions actually point to the possibility that one day we may need to decide whether or not we want to live in an Alberta where some people are presumed Albert and other people have to prove it.

Ricardo 1:13:04

I'd like to tell you a story. Okay. I want to hear. My parents immigrated to uh Canada in 1969 or 70, during that first wave of Trudomania. My mom got a job as a uh secretary at a uh company called Horn and Pitfield at the time. Uh some of you may remember that. They became Sobey's warehouse. They had a Christmas party, and it was my mom who is an Indian immigrant, my there was another lady who immigrated from Africa, and they said, Wouldn't it be cool if you and the other person wore your cultural outfits for the Christmas party? So my mom said, Okay, and she put on a sari, and the lady put on her big African outfit, and they walked into the room and they put trays of drinks and snacks in my mom and the lady's hands. And and my mom has this picture when she moved houses, and it's her holding a tray of drinks, and the lady beside her holding a tray of sandwiches. And I said, What is that all about? They're like, Oh, yeah, we wore our cultural outfits. I'm like, but you're serving. And while everybody else who was white and dressed in Western attire was sitting around, standing around, enjoying drinks and snacks, my mom and the one black lady were serving, serving. And my mom thought nothing of it when I pointed that out to her. She's like, I didn't even realize it was racist. And I was like, because at the time, you were just trying to get ahead and earn yourself into the country. And that's the trial and tribulation they put you through to earn your place in that workplace. And so when I think about questions like this and attitudes like that, I have to say, like, when they're contributing to the same level, they might be earning the same amount of money, they may not be paying the same amount of taxes as somebody who earns a lot more. When they are contributing as much as any other Albertan percentage-wise, like, when do they get to be considered Albertan and and stay? Um, and that I still remember that till today. And mom was like, I never thought that was racist. I'm like, that they literally made you serve them. And then she was all proud of herself. She's like, when I quit that job, they hired two people to replace me. And I was like, that is also a problem. Right? So um to answer your question, uh I don't know. Like, it's what it what would it take to for an Albertan to be considered an Albertan? Um decades. Decades as opposed to the privilege that many receive uh in the hospital when they're born.

Bill 1:15:46

So I do want to be clear that uh if you are somebody who wonders about immigration uh reform or uh uh control or restrictions or that kind of stuff, that is I am not saying that you are automatically a racist for that. Um I don't think that is the I don't think that's the correlation by any stretch of the imagination. Um I think we can acknowledge, I think even the federal government has acknowledged, like, hey, we we were kind of running a little free and unfettered uh with our expectations, right? And uh and we need to we need to readjust and realign as much because we want to make sure that people who are coming here are cared for when they get here, right? The job is not to bring people fleeing violence or or poverty in other places and have them come here and be exposed to violence and poverty. Um and so um, but I think I think we need to honestly be able to look at whether things like suspicion and uh language around deservingness. I don't even know if that's a word, but uh we're making it one. Uh belonging, certainly. Uh whether or not these are these are conversations we are having uh distributed through categories that are in practice very differently experienced by different people. Um because if that is the case, then there is at least a racialized underpinning to the conversation. And it is my uh dual job tonight to throw some theology into this as well. So um I know that there are going to be some people who are gonna go, well, Deuteronomy's Old Testament, and he used, you know, like the Hebrew Bible, and who really cares? Because uh, like if it's not written in red letters and Jesus didn't say it, then I don't actually care. So don't worry, I got you now.

Matthew 20 And The Fear Of Equality

Bill 1:17:35

Um because in Matthew chapter 20, and it will be written in red, uh, Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who hires workers throughout the day. Some of them have been there from the very beginning, they show up before the day has started. Others come at different points throughout the day, and some actually show up with very little workday left and are still hired as well by the landowner. And at the end of the day, he pays them all the exact same wage. And the people who started at the beginning of the day are very angry that this has happened. Uh, but what's important is that they haven't been cheated in any way because they receive exactly what was agreed for them to receive at the beginning of the day, as was the same that everybody else received, regardless of when they started. And their complaint is about what somebody else receives, not what they received at all. Um they are fine that their contract was honored uh as agreed to. They are angry about everybody else getting the same. And in fact, the language of the parable is striking. They are upset that the landowner has, and I say this directly, made them equal to us. And there is a warning in that, in the parable that Jesus is telling, because the argument is essentially we were here longer, we contributed more, we carried more of the burden, therefore, someone who arrived later should receive less than we do. And Jesus, in telling the parable, doesn't deny that they worked longer. Doesn't pretend their contributions were identical. But what he challenges is their assumption that generosity towards somebody else constitutes an injustice towards them. And that is why I want to be careful here, because I don't think Jesus is giving us an immigration policy or equalization policy. But I do think that many of the parables that Jesus tells, if we allow them to, uh interrogate the moral instincts underneath some of our conversations that we have, especially in this referendum. Why can somebody else receiving enough feel like something has been taken from me even when I have received what I was promised and more? Right? So I want to put that beside the language of Albertans first. Does arriving earlier give me a morally superior claim upon the common good?

Ricardo 1:20:08

Does arriving earlier let's talk about arrivals and the fact that there are indigenous people were here for the case. Absolutely. Let's not treat them like they belong here.

Bill 1:20:20

Don't make me spoon-feed it.

Ricardo 1:20:23

Arriving, hi. Original, indigenous, and arriving, right? It's oh god, Bill. That is actually the best, that was actually the best example, biblical example you could put, because um people are earning their wages, they're earning their salaries. Uh in many cases, they've paid into their benefits and pension plans, and they're receiving the full allotment of the money they're supposed to receive. Somebody comes here and works three jobs or whatever it is, uh, in in in in in whatever economic circumstance they have to find themselves in to survive, and all of a sudden there's a problem. Um I I am not sure that I am not sure if the answer to immigration, or sorry, the answer to unemployment is immigration. That seems to have been the go-to for a lot of organizations and governments and businesses over the past two decades. If there's a higher unemployment rate in the world, obviously people, and it's well known that birth rates are declining and death rates are increasing, and retirement rates are increasing as well. I'm not sure that immigration is the answer to fill in the unemployment. What I do think there is a problem is that we have an entire pool of Canadians who work for a long period of time in their jobs. And during this affordability crisis now, they are not retiring anytime soon. We have a constant pool of people at the low end of the employment payment scale where it's like a revolving door and they'll cross the street for 50 cents an hour, right? So retention and um dedication to one's employment has not become something where we're proud of our careers, but it's a means to survive. And that change in attitude over um our employment not contributing to our general uh quality of life is what's what has happened here. So we've we've essentially allowed, in many ways, capitalism to degrade the value of work from a generation in time where the value of work contributed to your quality of life, where you could have a single income or maybe a dual income. You know, you you were able to buy a house, a couple of cars, have Christmas presents, take a vacation, go get drunk every second weekend, whatever you wanted to do. Uh, and now jobs don't provide for that anymore. And um you sorry.

Bill 1:23:00

I was like, why only every second, Ricardo? Yeah, well, like what happens on the other weekend?

Ricardo 1:23:06

The the answer, and and you know what um the answer is a union, but um the um you know the the economic theory is that as the downward pressure comes on wages and and and benefits and all those kind of things, then people naturally uh increase and they've bought into this concept of trickle-down economics where the better businesses do, they trickle it down. It's just not happening, none of it's happening. And unless there is some sort of way for us to change um the quality of life that people have when they come here, then there's always gonna be us against them, and almost like us looking down on somebody that has to work multiple jobs and and look a bit tired and disheveled and their appearance because they're working 90 hours a week to survive, right? And it's we're we're forgetting that that that part of history is um didn't exist 40, 50 years ago, and it's existing in in I was just having a conversation with somebody at the at the break, and um somebody, my friend visited from Ontario, he's a realtor, and he, you know, I was telling him how much a house was worth according to the city. And um he said, Well, in Ontario your house would be like $1.4 million, and I was like, What? Like, let's transplant that there. But I think to myself, the rules to get a mortgage now in Canada is 10% down. Like, I could not imagine trying to save $140,000 in time to buy the house and pay the mortgage off by the time I retire. And my nieces, who are 21 and 17, they'll never be able to buy a house.

Bill 1:24:49

Yep.

Ricardo 1:24:50

Um, and so I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. But um I feel like that fellow who was talking about Star Wars. Yes. Yeah, it's just basically we have to our jobs and our careers, and everybody in this room who maybe retired or in the the later stages of their careers, consider the love of the job that they do as their quality of life, and that doesn't exist anymore, right?

Diana 1:25:13

I think that's a really important part. And you'd brought up so the value of work, and be it how society is okay with a minimum wage of $15 or whatever that might be. But we have a generation, and so you talk about your nieces, you're 17 and 20. So Generation Z are known to be incredibly apathetic about everything. And when we think about it, the value of work or the um the concerns, like things that would naturally trigger um response. So uh learning somebody has to work three jobs in order to literally just put food on a table, that hurts when I hear that. We have a generation of folks who may not actually have a response to that the same way. And it and part of it is is I mean, society has changed and whatever, and we could, you know, have a whole other podcast or series on on Gen Z here. But when you're bringing up that that apathy piece, um, or sorry, that like the value of work and the apathy piece to it, um, you know, I I challenge, and this is a challenge I challenge for myself as well, which is the why is my full day of work worth more than the amazing people who serve me coffee. Right? What why? I work a full day, they work a full day. Now I'm not saying that like this, you know, that all that that all jobs are even, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I am saying that if you work a full day, you should be able to live. That's what I believe. And I I I do believe that Albertans believe that too. I've got some headshaken, so maybe not, but they'll come back to some questions.

Bill 1:27:03

Yeah, I mean, I wonder, so like I wonder whether so let let's assume for a moment, um, and I'm and I'm gonna be very clear, I'm gonna I'm gonna play out the argument that I don't actually think is true. Um, but let's assume for a moment that there are some jobs that are more important than others. There is some work that is more important than other work. Um then uh but that but that we still acknowledge that all the work still needs to happen, um, whether it be the good person who serves us coffee or the the folks who enact policy, hopefully for the greater good, or the minister who apparently only works one hour a week on Sunday and and uh and fritters away the rest of his week. And podcast. And podcast Well, no, that's not on my time. That's not. Um But uh but so let's assume that there is a hierarchy of value to work in general. Um I've had to research a lot of politics and a lot of economics to be ready for this series. And so, Diana, I am gonna ask you a theme. Theological and moral question. Why then, even in that model, in that structure of some work being more important than others, why does generosity towards somebody who works a lesser job feel like injustice to somebody else?

Diana 1:28:20

So I think it goes back to the whole I had to go through this, so you should. Instead of um I would say like a more positive, optimistic uh version of it, which is that to strive to make things easier for folks who come after you is my preferred direction. However, there is certainly a um a belief that that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. When you challenge that and you know uh ask, so say folks don't have bootstraps, like that is the level that they're at. It's not that they're not hardworking. It's not like the I worry that the assumption is that people aren't working hard enough. They're not doing the right thing for it to be seen as valuable inside the society we're talking about here.

Bill 1:29:28

So um the bootstraps conversation is an interesting one because again, as I said at the beginning, as I uh as I will always maintain, anyone who says that they got where they got purely on the merit of their own hard work has forgotten the first person who took a chance on them working a job that they weren't qualified for, or the first person who was willing to sell them, you know, right write off a portion of a cost on a crappy car so they could get to and from work. We none of us, none of us uh pick ourselves up by our bootstraps on our own in this world or in this society or in this time and place, right? So um that's a convenient that is the that is the amnesia of prosperity that I believe Deuteronomy actually cautions us towards, right? If you look around at your life and go, man, I got it good. And the reason I got it good is because of my own hands alone. Uh you have forgotten just how many people helped you get where you are at. And that is what twists your ability to see anyone else who is struggling, anyone else who is needing the chance to be taken on them, anyone else who has potential that uh is not being um realized because of the obstacles that are sitting in front of them.

Ricardo 1:30:48

Aaron Ross Powell And that's that's the the the illusion of privilege where people who are giving uh a new Canadian uh a chance at a career get hurt is that they um they fail to remember that these people that come to our country from other places have no connections or possibilities of finding that lucky break, or at least a very much lesser one. And so when it happens um some from someone who's established in the society, the chance is really, really, really big for that person that they've taken on. But they've also pissed off a lot of people along the way who perhaps also wanted that chance as well. And so it becomes the the Book of Matthew problem, right? Yeah. Um I've stood by your side all this time, and um, you know, I I I asked um I interviewed somebody um for a job once, and I and he he had said something really weird around around um racism that that really perplexed me. And he said that the the concept of seniority in uh a collective agreement for a union was a racist concept. And um and he said why? He's like because well when the concepts of seniority were created in collective agreements, they were mostly driven towards tenure, like completely, not merit, fitness, and ability. And it was always a white person that got the best jobs and stuff like that. And when immigrants came in, they just never had the seniority to get ahead, even though perhaps they might have had the right merit, fitness, and ability. And I said to him, if um there were two people that graduated from university, a black person and a white person, the black person got 82%, and the white person got 92%, who would you hire? And he said, Well, you'd uh as a business professional, you'd hire the person with the higher grades because they obviously achieved more. And I said, What if I told you that the right answer or the best answer might have been the black person? And they said, Why? I said, Because the story of that person coming to this country and struggling through university while having to exist in a society that not necessarily didn't treat them well, but they had no connections and they had no ability to find that opportunity, giving them that opportunity might be the best way for us to advance and and um and sort of normalize differences in our society and and unique opportunities in our society. So um it's it's important for us to remember those chances that people take, right? On others, and that it's important for us to take those chances on somebody who comes uh into our country with um with skills that we we need, right?

Bill 1:33:36

And by the way, with potential that we can help to cultivate.

Ricardo 1:33:43

There's even there's even this like myth that like overseas universities aren't as good as ours. And I can tell you, like, I was keenly interested three weeks ago in the the happenings of the leaked tests in India. If anybody knows about this story, uh there was a big student protest in India where tens of thousands of students protested against the Modi government because the tests got leaked only to certain university students, which seemingly made it look like there were certain universities that wanted to get ahead in the scores and others that were not. And they demanded the resignation of the education minister and everybody, blah blah blah, to the point where people committed suicide, they were so upset about these leaked marks and that the Modi government was not acting fast enough to correct it. Which says to me how much of a value other countries place on education. Yeah. Uh I had also to talk about India. I there was this there was this quiz on Instagram that had um everyone had to take in order to become a conductor or an employee in the rail service in India. And 88% of people fail the exam because they require you to know so much about sociology, economics, and everything in order to be a person. So education is so vitally important, and sometimes it's something we take for granted here, which is like, I mean, when I tell my my um my friends in Europe about the fact that the teachers just want more teachers, they're like, What? Right? It's just perplexing to them. Uh so when they come here and we just say to them, well, you know, you don't have the skills needed in in Canada or the credentials, it's and we don't take a chance on them, it's it's actually a disservice to us in a lot of ways.

Bill 1:35:29

Aaron Powell It is. And it's a disservice to the society that we're trying to build, I think, honestly. Right? Yeah. Um the the idea that uh that somebody should receive less help, less opportunity, less support, um purely because of the length of time they've been here. Um and uh and and if that's gonna be the measure that we're going to start to use, which is the measure that some of these referendum questions are asking, uh in all honesty, uh then it's going to it's gonna invite us to extend the question in so many ways. We can we can ask like how long have you been here, as some kind of a lit litmus test as to your deservedness uh in all of this, right? Or how much have you paid in um you know through your work? Uh how uh how productive have you been, honestly, as though we are simply means of production and nothing more, right? Uh your citizenship status. There's a lot to be concerned about about citizenship status on um ID for sure. Where were you born, right? Where where'd you come from? Um it all kind of it all kind of underlies this idea of like until you have contributed enough by some arbitr arbited arbitrated standard that we may or may not know, um, you don't deserve the same claim to things like health care or education or employment or security or belonging or any of those things.

Ricardo 1:36:50

But they're going even further in the ballot questions to say if you do not have permanent status in this country, is it reasonable for you to have to pay a fee for you and your families to access public health care and education and services in Alberta? So not only are you asking the most lowest paid people among us uh to uh be treated like second-class citizens, you're asking them to pay for that on top of the taxes that they already pay. Yeah. And somebody just wrote me a piece of paper who said that um most small businesses are started by new Canadians and and minorities, right? So they're contributing to the fabric, but now we're asking them just because they don't have a permanent status, the only difference between what they're doing and what we're doing in terms of the world of work and contribution is that they can't vote.

Diana 1:37:39

Yes.

Ricardo 1:37:40

They don't get the opportunity to have a say in the policies that are actually created against them, right? Absolutely.

Bill 1:37:47

So I want to be clear that questions one to four, especially, there are some underlying things that, again, I want to invite people to consider very, very clearly and very intentionally, right? Uh if you believe that the person who came later does not become less human as a result, does not become less of your neighbor as a result, or automatically less deserving of what sustains life and allows you to live and thrive and achieve your full potential simply because somebody else got here first, then you need to very clearly look at those questions. Um I am aware of time and I do want to cover a couple more things before we end this podcast. So I'm going to move on from the immigration questions a little bit.

Equalization Myths And Real Numbers

Bill 1:38:33

I do want to talk very briefly, I'm sorry, Ricardo, about equalization. Um but only for a minute, because there is a real fact underneath Alberta's grievance about equalization that I think we need to separate from some of the rhetoric. Uh 2026 Library of Parliament analysis found that Alberta recorded the largest net contribution to federal finances in 2024. All right? Reflecting relatively high income, strong economic performance, and the resource economy. Oil prices were great. Alberta thrived. That is real. Albertans collectively contribute a lot. But we've changed that, we've changed that into we contribute more, therefore we're being exploited. Right? And that second piece, therefore we're being exploited, is a moral judgment. And the equalization system itself is frequently described misleadingly to support that moral judgment. So I want to clear up the mythology for anybody who still, because I still hear it. Um I wanted to clear it up. At no point in time does Alberta write an equalization check to Quebec. Okay? If that is what you think happens, you need to stop thinking that. And I will happily try to, I'm gonna try to generalize it. I'm probably gonna get it wrong, and someone's gonna write me a hate mail about it later. That is fine. Um, provincial governments make no direct contribution to the equalization program. Um equalization is financed by the federal government from general revenues. Okay, there is no write a check from Alberta to Quebec. Um, Alberta receives no equalization payment because our our fiscal capacity uh is above the threshold. Um we're we're outside the need for it. We are a wealthy province. Um and at the same time, in 26-27, this budgetary year that we're in, um, Alberta is expected to receive about $9.235 billion in major federal transfers. About $7 billion through the Canada Health Transfer and about $2.2 billion through the Canada Social Transfer. We are not purely funneling money to Ottawa with nothing coming back. Okay. So why does contributing more automatically mean that we are being treated unfairly? Somebody explain it, Jimmy, on this panel.

Diana 1:41:22

I love so I this kind of so this um adjacent would be um the Canadian pension plan. There there is a misunderstanding um amongst folks and and definitely misinformation that is that is being encouraged, um indicating that Alberta owns your Canadian pension plan, that your dollars are owned by the province. That is a complete inaccuracy, right? Our Canadian pension plan is tied to you and wherever you go. So if you leave Alberta, yeah, that money goes with you. And the reason why it looks like Alberta might be exploited here is because exactly what you just said. We have a strong economy, we have a young population of high earners. And yes, we have discussed uh several times tonight about how why is that why why are Albertans struggling so much if we're this we are a have province. Why are Albertans feeling like have nots? So going back to the whole why does equalization payments make us feel like we're being exploited? One is that is the misinformation just generally. The other, and I I do I do love this little piece of history here. Um does anyone know who originally negotiated the equalization payments in Ontario and with the feds? Anybody? Anybody? His last name is Kenny. Um and then when he became premier of Alberta, suddenly those equalization payments didn't work for him or for us. So the misinformation, the idea that we're being taken advantage of, the idea that, yeah, that somehow Quebec is stealing all our whatever it is, the misinformation and making someone feel like they are well being exploited, which is what has been encouraged here. Um I think that's your answer. It's it it is there it's not based in truth at all. It's based in in feeling.

Bill 1:43:48

Well, so what I would want to suggest is there is there is truth underlying the misinformation, right? And this is the nutrition. This is the this is the challenge, right? It is true, right? As as I've said, it is true that uh Alberta contributes a substantial amount to equalization. It is a wealthy province, right? Um so uh the the trouble always is, again, where's the best place to hide a lie, right? Between two truths, right? It makes it a lot easier for it to be uh palatable because you you have to do the work of trying to separate it out. Um but again, carrying two loads tonight, uh Luke chapter three. Um because if uh the Old Testament didn't do it for you, if Moses wasn't good enough, but hey, if Jesus isn't good enough for you either, uh I'll give you John the Baptist this time. Uh little gentle look. Little well, yeah. Um the crowds are coming to John the Baptist and they're asking what repentance actually looks like and uh what they're supposed to do to live faithfully, especially in preparing for the coming of the one who is to come after him. Spoiler alert, it's Jesus. Um John's first answer to the question is the person with two coats should share with the person who has none. And then because they need a little bit more, he says, okay, the person with food should do the same. Share with the person who has none. And the moral logic of it all is actually really simple, right? If you are a have, it is your responsibility to share with those who are a have not. Right? Doesn't ask whether the person with two coats worked harder or worked longer hours than the second one. Doesn't ask whether they made good choices, doesn't ask where they came from. He starts with two realities. One person has more than they need, and another person does not have enough. Plain and simple. Abundance creates responsibility. Abundance morally creates responsibility. And again, I don't want to say that Luke is giving us a biblical tax rate or an equalization formula or anything like that about immigration. But it does challenge the moral imagination that we bring to these questions.

Ricardo 1:46:11

Perhaps the federal government shouldn't have called it equalization with the disbursement of Luke. And then the Western provinces would have just I think I'm gonna play a little bit. I I honestly equalization is just rhetoric that I've that I've only focused on in the media and I haven't looked into it. But I think what in my mind the province of Alberta is saying, and I think this is the reason why we don't have a provincial sales tax and why we have a flat tax rate uh in the province, is that if what we're providing in equalization to the federal government and what we're getting back in transfer payments is not equal, then why are we giving that money away? Right? That's what I think people are saying. So if we're giving $100 billion to the federal government and we're only getting $9.5 billion back, why don't we just keep to be clear, that is just a theoretical number you're throwing out of nowhere and not just. For legal purposes, I am not saying that we're giving $100 billion to the federal government. Why don't we just keep the 91? Yeah, right? Um, then we can, once again, in Reaganomics, trickle that down into our own education and and and healthcare systems and stuff like that.

Bill 1:47:25

So although we've already established that's not happening anyway.

Ricardo 1:47:29

That's what I was gonna say next, right? Like so there have been instances, very much so, um, where we've given our equalization payment to the federal government and had more than enough money in the coffers to be able to sustain a better healthcare and education system, and it just never happened, right? A prime example of that would be um, well, it was a hundred bucks that were given last month, but the Ralph Bucks back in the day when everybody got two payments of $400. And everybody liked that. So did my one-year-old niece, apparently, who as long as you were a registered citizen in the province of Alberta, you got a check. Uh, and so the cost of that meant that instead of going that money going into the healthcare and education system or into services or into even like can we please build our high-speed railway? Um, please, can we build the rail Calgary Damage in? People injected it into multi-billion dollar corporations like grocery stores, clothing stores, car dealership, whatever it is, right? So it did not find its way back into uh an economic circumstance in which Albertans benefited. That was the problem with cutting people free checks. Um, and so my concern with with the the questions and the whole equalization thing is yes, I understand the argument. If we're giving away way more than we're receiving back in transfer payments, the book of Luke is explaining as to why that should be the way it is. But I understand their argument. But at the same time, if you're not committed to saying, okay, we're gonna keep this money and we're gonna put it in Alberta and we will hire your 5,000 teachers, we will build two hospitals, support us, and we will do this. That's not that's not what I'm hearing. It's like Brexit. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Bill 1:49:10

No, again, we're we're dealing with uh uh sort of an understanding that uh it actually has nothing to do with what we would plan on doing with that. We just don't want them to have it, right? Um it it falls back into a conversation around um it is just purely unjust that somebody else should benefit, right? Um so um to be clear, in the lens of Luke chapter three, Alberta is a province that has two coats, all right? Very clearly. Um Christian values require us to ask something different than how much of ours are they taking? Right? We actually need to start talking about what responsibilities follow for having more. Um what responsibilities do we have to other people? What responsibilities do we have to the common good? What responsibilities do we Do we have to minimize suffering and poverty and people having to work three jobs in order to put food on their tables? That is the challenge. It's not just a financial question either. Because some of us do have the security of citizenship. Some of us have established employment. And some of us know that we'll be treated as belonging here as truly Albertan without ever having to prove it. Nobody's ever asked me how long I've lived here in my lifetime. Nobody has ever asked me how long I've lived here, where I came from, where I was born. And up until this year, nobody's asked me what my immigration status is. But apparently the provincial government needs me to prove it so that it can go on my driver's license, right? So the second quote can also be our security and our access and our opportunity and our belonging. So if I already possess those things, if you, as voters, already possess those things, what responsibility do you have toward your neighbor who doesn't? Is part of the question you need to answer as it relates to these referendum questions. Not once they've proved that they're productive. Right? Their need has encountered our abundance. And John the Baptist is pretty clear. That's a very different starting point for thinking about what we actually owe one another and our responsibility to one another. One last theological insert, and then I promise we will wrap this

The Golden Calf Of Alberta’s Story

Bill 1:51:43

up. But I want to go back to the Old Testament again. There's a story I always I always marvel, actually, because uh we've we've seen a rise in the the talking points around what gets taught in schools, um, just in general, certainly uh not limited to Alberta, but I'm hearing it even here in Calgary. Uh, you know, back to the glory days of the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer being you know taught in schools and how uh we've gone to hell since we stopped doing that. And I I always kind of chuckle, unfortunately. And if you told me that story, I apologize. I have laughed at you when you aren't in the room afterwards. Um because there's actually a story about while those Ten Commandments are being obtained by Moses going up the mountain, everybody down below at the base of the mountain is very, very anxious and stressed out. Um and so they create a golden calf to worship in the absence of Moses pointing them to God. Uh and it actually is the the origin of the first commandment, you know, not to have any other gods besides God, right? This idea of what we call the sin of idolatry, right? Um and the thing to know about idolatry, especially as it relates to uh practicing faithful, uh like living faith, is that the golden calf was made from real gold. It's not uh, it's not always an intangible. It's not always something uh that is, you know, just purely uh a spiritual kind of thing. Political idolatry uh sometimes exactly works like that. Uh and in this case, I think really works like that. Take something real, a real injury, a real nugget of truth, a real uh moment of federal overreach or of fiscal imbalance or a crowded classroom or any of this kind of stuff. Take any of that and melt all of those things together and create a shape out of it that tells a story and points to something. And eventually that shape starts to explain everything. And everything starts to actually fit in there in a way that you know says that Ottawa is doing this to us, and newcomers are taking what should be ours, and we contribute so that others can receive uh without having to work. And uh we are being restrained by institutions, and we would flourish if we only had more power and control uh over things. And um I guess my last question for the evening is have we built an idol out of the Alberta story that we are telling?

Diana 1:54:24

Yes.

Ricardo 1:54:26

That's quite the preface to your question.

Bill 1:54:30

This is why I don't normally do the theological thing as well. Um yeah.

Ricardo 1:54:36

Yeah.

Bill 1:54:36

Have we built an idol out of the Alberta story that we are telling?

Ricardo 1:54:40

I think I think uh my comments uh earlier about Western identity have uh spiral a bit out of control into a uh ideology instead of an identity. And it's scary. You know, I remember when at some point in time when uh when the separation talk had first started, um Alberta had reached out to Quebec to talk about their separation story, and the premier of Quebec had said, I don't think you have uh understand what we were separating for. It was um Quebec culture. Uh you know, uh you know, oil and gas is not a culture, was what his words exactly were. Um and then the guy who's like at the forefront of this whole movement has said, Well, you know, our conservative culture in Alberta's identity, I was like, what is a conservative? What is a conservative drink? Language, cuisine, you know, what is it? It's it's a pol it's it's it's not, and so um that's what the idol is. We've we've crafted this ideology around, and I don't think people understand like anything else sometimes, right? Um it's scary in many ways how the ideology has just stemmed from, and it's not even about voting, it's about how we treat others and how we exist in this province. Um there was many people that used to say that you know you could run a stuffed moose in every riding in this province and they would still vote conservative, but that didn't happen. It didn't, right? You you there was that ideology, you know. The upset happened in 2015, and I think the upset actually happened in this previous election with Danielle Smith, um you know, where she saw almost a complete shutout in the major cities, right? And so the ideology is changing, but I think this whole referendum is um an attempt and uh a uh uh a reach at keeping that idol elevated above our heads.

Diana 1:56:46

And I would go further than that, though, and I'd say that this Well, you know, um Well, because it's not if it were simply the you know, the Western spirit or whatever, if it was just that, that would be something that would that that's not just us, right? We've we've got two other provinces, at least three. Technically, sorry, Manitoba. Um that you know our prairie provinces, our Western values, all the rest. Like I'm not saying that that all the provinces in the West have the same identity, but the I would say that we have leaned, we have a situation where decisions are being made to secure a future that is not necessarily for Albertans. The playing with the separatists, um, be it that you know, every um well the highest I've ever seen, the estimate of the number of people who live in Alberta who truly would like to pursue separation is always less than 30 percent. So if it were in fact if if the idol or the golden calf was in fact our Western identity, would that not encompass more than 30% of the province? So I I I would say this is even a worse situation. And I think the um I I love the like I love the tie-in with the theology there because we are impatient creatures. And so yeah, we're going to look for something to some something to blame, something. So Ottawa, right? Something to to circle ourselves around so that we feel better about whatever's going on. Um yeah, because I I think we've got worse than just an idol going on here in Alberta. And the risks are really high for for our future um as a province, as part of Canada. I because I don't know if I'm necessarily gonna get the mic again to freely speak, I do.

Voting Tips And Mail-In Ballots

Diana 1:59:02

Well, okay. Um, a couple of things because we brought up voting and um and you know, the the apathy or whatever, and does my vote count and all the rest. Uh, and I'll remind everyone that I won by 22 votes. Right? Three recounts, 22 votes. The number of people I meet still, which is phenomenal, who were like, I'm one of the 22. Yeah, darn straight you are. Right? You decided to go vote that day, or maybe you did advance voting, or maybe you did mail-in, but whatever you did. But you voted, and I have the privilege of representing Calgary Acadia because of that. Because 22 people decided to vote for me versus voting for someone else. So please, please, please know that your vote matters. Further, the mail-in ballots. I want so for the referendum, we are encouraging everyone to do the mail-in ballot. The biggest reason for that being you have 10 ballots to look at. 10. If you do the mail-in ballot, it is completely secure, it gets mailed to your house. You then have all the time in the world, well, until October 8th, I believe, uh, to answer those. You put them back into a pre like a pre-addressed envelope. It goes back to Elections Alberta, you are done. You don't have to worry about the many-hour lineups that we expect on referendum day. So please, please, please, mail-in ballot.

Bill 2:00:24

And to be clear, anyone can get a mail-in ballot.

Diana 2:00:27

Absolutely anyone.

Bill 2:00:28

Eligibility requirements who can vote in Alberta, yes.

Diana 2:00:31

Anyone who can vote in Alberta. So you don't need to be out of town, you don't need any of those normal normally there's there's conditions there. Uh I will quickly plug that on September 26th, um, I am hosting in my office an open house about the referendum. It's a drop-in. Please come if you have more questions, talk with folks, um, become you know, a little bit uh more informed about a piece that you're that you're not informed about yet.

Ricardo 2:00:59

Where's your office?

Diana 2:01:00

Uh the office is Southland and McLeod. Oh. Um and then uh my last little plug. That's totally not true. Another plug is that if you would like more Canadian things, you maybe you want to sign. Forever can Forever Canada is still giving out signs for free. They are located, they have little pop-ups all over the place. Uh you simply register, they give you a sign, and then you can proudly put that on your lawn. And yeah.

Bill 2:01:28

I'm gonna bring it back to the conversation as it was.

The Bigger Question Behind The Ballot

Bill 2:01:31

Okay. Um we were talking about the idea that uh the the idol actually serves a purpose. Um and and it's probably a bit more of a purpose than even just a simple impatience kind of a thing. I had written down as I was thinking about the questions in general, um, knowing that we are in the first episode of what promises to be um an interesting month. Um if Ottawa is constantly the reason we explain for the healthcare crisis, then uh we never actually have to talk about provincial choices. Um if immigrants explain clouded crowded classrooms, then we never have to talk about education decisions. Um if federal taxation explains our sense of deprivation, uh what obligate obligations created by our abundance do we never have to talk about? Our obligations to each other. And if Alberta is always acted upon as a victim, when do we actually have to talk about anything we have done or not done? So I think the challenge to counseling 101, I too had a vocation prior to this one, um if the explanation for what has gone wrong in your life, whether you are a person or a province, always comes from beyond you, then you never have to ask any questions about yourself. And that's where idolatry and scapegoating meet in the Christian tradition. Once the story of Alberta is we are being deprived, we eventually need an answer to the question, by whom? And then the story begins sorting producers and recipients, taxpayers and burdens, established Albertans and newcomers, us and them. So the reason we are doing this series, the reason why we are encouraging you to pay attention and to engage your faith in the conversation, is because we believe the story of Alberta is bigger and better than the one we are being asked to believe.

Diana 2:04:06

100%.

Bill 2:04:09

So thank you for listening tonight. Thank you for being a part of this podcast, whether you are in the room tonight or listening online. This is week one. We will be here every week through the summer. And thank you for taking the time to truly consider the Alberta story. This is Prepared to Drown, and we are signing off. Hopefully, something in this conversation challenged you, not just politically but personally. Because underneath these referendum questions is a much bigger question about what kind of Alberta we're trying to build, who gets to belong in it, and what responsibilities come with everything we've inherited and received. Next week, we're going to keep going into the immigration questions scarcity, belonging, and that phrase Albertans first. I'm Bill Weaver. This is Prepare to Drown. Thanks for listening.