Big Announcer (00:00):

You found the Okotoks podcast sponsored by Carlin Lutzer Real Estate No refunds. If you laugh too hard,

Carlin Lutzer (00:18):

Welcome back to the Okotoks podcast. Before we get into today's conversation, I want to take a moment to thank counselor Rachel Swendseid who announced this week that she will not be seeking reelection in the Falls Municipal elections. Rachel, thank you for your service and commitment to the community over the years. Now, as you know, this podcast is about engagement and that sometimes means discussing difficult or even uncomfortable topics. Many of you have already received a copy of the Okotoks Observer on your doorstep. It raises questions about where our tax dollars are going and provides a breakdown of the increasing tax rates over the past three years. I did reach out to the Okotoks Observer to invite them onto the podcast to share their perspective, but they declined. That brings us to today's guest, Dick Nichols. Dick is a freelance writer for the Western Wheel and someone with a longstanding interest in community affairs, politics and Alberta's evolving identity. In today's episode, we talk about the role of local journalism, the evolution of Okotoks, and dive into a complex and often polarizing topic, Alberta's potential separation from Canada. This conversation is all about ideas, civil discourse, and understanding different viewpoints. Let's get into it.

(01:40):

Well, Dick, thank you so much for joining me for a conversation today.

Dick Nichols (01:44):

I'm glad to be here, Carlin, as you know, we go back a long way.

Carlin Lutzer (01:47):

We really do. We were just reminiscing before we hit record, and it could have been in the year 2000 somewhere right around there that I would've met you. Time certainly does fly. Now, Dick, how long have you and Sharon lived in Okotoks for?

Dick Nichols (02:03):

We're coming up on 19 years, next month,

Carlin Lutzer (02:05):

19 years.

Dick Nichols (02:06):

We've been here since 2006.

Carlin Lutzer (02:08):

Okay, so you've seen one or two changes in this town?

Dick Nichols (02:10):

Oh yeah. It's probably twice as big, huge new developments all over. Different parts of the community changed in terms of what's available, the types of stores and the places to shop. It's become a real regional center and from our point of view, it's retained enough of the small town feel that for people like Sharon and me who don't want to live in the middle of a big city, it's a perfect place. We have all the amenities of Calgary with all of the conveniences and joys of living in a small community.

Carlin Lutzer (02:47):

Absolutely, yeah. When we were selecting where to live, a big piece of the puzzle for me was to helping us decide to live in Okotoks. This may sound to some, but it was Costco. It was the fact that there was a Costco here. Now, if there wasn't a Costco here, I'd probably have a lot more money in my bank right now, but it is one of those things that yes, it kind of marks you as a, it's a solid town that, oh my gosh, they have a Costco. But yeah, we do still have that small town feel and we're going to do our best to kind of keep it that way. That's right. I think of you and Sharon as a Power couple in this town as you are a freelancer for the Western Wheel. Also do a few other things and Sharon is, hopefully Sharon will agree to come on the podcast here. I haven't reached out to her quite yet, but would love to have her as a guest as she is the Foothills School Board trustee and no doubt has a lot of fascinating stories and a lot of things that we can discuss with her once we do agree to. Well, it's probably her rate. She's probably really expensive to get her on for

Dick Nichols (03:52):

Recording. Oh, she's terribly. I shouldn't say that. People will believe

Carlin Lutzer (03:57):

That. Yeah, no, no, absolutely.

Dick Nichols (03:59):

She's not going to charge you card. Yeah,

Carlin Lutzer (04:01):

Ok. Lemme tell you, the Oke podcast has no budget to pay any of their guests, but no Dick, thank you for being on here today, and as we mentioned, you do freelance for the Western Wheel. How long have you been freelancing for

Dick Nichols (04:18):

This July? The last call was eight years. Eight years. 2017 was when I started.

Carlin Lutzer (04:23):

Good for you, and what are your thoughts when it comes to the Western Wheel? No doubt there's a lot of struggles for newspapers these days with all the competition of social media and reading, getting their news from other places. How do you value and what kind of importance do you put on the Western Wheel in a community such as ours?

Dick Nichols (04:43):

I think the most important thing for me is that it is something that's exclusive to Okotoks and district

(04:51):

And the newspaper historically has always been one of the binds that holds communities together. It's a source of information. The Western Wheel is as much a part of the tradition of Okotoks as the Clock Tower downtown or some of the Stockton block or any of the old buildings. It's part of what Okotoks is and it provides information that in many ways you can't get a lot of technical information. A lot of the columns you're not going to get anywhere else, and obviously like your podcast, they provide a perspective on Okotoks that sometimes you agree with, sometimes you don't, but that's the purpose. It buys the community together, keeps people interested in what's going on, and just helps everybody live life in Okotoks. They know what Okotoks life is supposed to be like because they listen to podcasts like yours and they read the Western Wheel. So I think it's a very part of the community

Carlin Lutzer (05:58):

And we certainly will be reaching out to the right people to see if we can get them on the podcast and talk to them about the Western wheel because yeah, there's certainly a few avenues we could go with that, but so we'll maybe wait for them. Now, the reason why I reached out to you last week, Dick, was just in regards to an article that you wrote. The title of the article was Alberta Separation would be Complex and Risky. Now, it's a hot topic here in Alberta right now. There's a lot of different things popping up on social media. In fact, the reason why I wore my, I don't know if you can see it, I wore my Montreal Expos t-shirt today just as we're talking about separation, and no doubt we all know that Quebec walked through something like this years ago. It didn't pass. It was narrowly, I think was the vote like 51 to It was,

Dick Nichols (06:50):

Yeah, it was 51 49, something like that was really, really close.

Carlin Lutzer (06:54):

So your article is an opinion piece, but you are of the mindset and you lay out the facts very, very nicely that separation could potentially be impossible for Alberta.

Dick Nichols (07:09):

I think what I said was it is hypothetically possible, but extremely risky and would require a considerable amount of luck. I didn't want to get into the argument about whether or not Alberta should separate. That's a completely different

Carlin Lutzer (07:22):

Story. Yes,

Dick Nichols (07:23):

But Alberta, the Alberta situation is not the same as the Quebec situation. The Quebec situation was based on the fact that there was a French language culture. Now in Alberta, we have numbers of cultures, we'd have the oil culture, we have the ranching culture, we have the business, the small business culture, we have the developers culture, all kinds of them, but they're not cultures. In the same sense that Quebec is a culture, Quebec is the French language and traditions, well, it's not the same thing. Second thing that maybe a lot of people don't realize, and I didn't put it in the article because it's really hard to explain. If you go back to the beginnings of what is now Canada, the Canadian government acquired, or let's go back even further. Let's go back to 1670. 1670. The Hudsons Bay Company was granted a charter to have commercial trading rights into the area draining into Hudsons Bay.

(08:19):

Fast forward to 1867, the Canadian government acquired those rights from the Hudsons Bay Company. Now, the Hudsons Bay Company didn't own Western Canada, didn't own the land, they owned the commercial rights, they owned the rights to trade into that land, and that's what the Canadian government acquired from the Hudson's Bay Company. At the same time, the Canadian government entered into treaties with the indigenous peoples whom they at the time recognized were the owners of the land, and those treaties set out responsibilities and rights for both parties to the treaties. Fortunately, the Canadian government hasn't lived up to all of those rights, and I think a lot of people on the indigenous side would say they haven't lived up to any of them. But that's another argument.

(09:07):

But fact of the matter is there would be an initial question of if Alberta wanted to separate whether Canada could authorize Alberta's separation at all, there would have to be, because Canada only owns by the treaty, they only own the commercial rights. I'm not technically versed on all of it, but the real essence of what I'm trying to say is that in order to separate, one of the first things that would have to happen was that there would have to be an agreement between the first nations, the signatories to treaties number six, seven, and eight, that this could happen. Then of course, assume you get that. Well, that's a big assumption that that would really start the whole negotiation process that culminated in the signing of those treaties. It would start it all over again and you'd have to go through all that process, and it would be with an indigenous community that is well represented by the latest in legal representation and everything else.

(10:05):

So those would be complicated and long negotiations. But say that you got through that, then you go through completely another legal process, you would have to have the 177,000 people sign the request for referendum in, I said 120 days. Somebody has told me it's 90 days. I'm not sure which it is, but in a relic relatively short period of time, you'd have to hold the referendum. You would have to pass the referendum. Then you would have to go to the federal government and say, this is what we have done, and the federal government would then have to determine whether the question was clear and unequivocal, and B, whether the vote favored separation reflected the clear will of the people of Alberta. Well, that debate could go on forever for sure. Why is that important? You're going to have people say, well, yeah, but who cares if we decide to separate? Who cares what the government of Canada then if they don't like the vote, then we'll separate anyway. Well, it isn't quite that simple because until the federal government accepts that vote, they are not obligated to negotiate the terms of a separation.

(11:20):

So basically, theoretically, hypothetically, they could say, you want to walk away, fine, you can walk away clean, but oh, your share of the pension money, your share of the taxation money, all those dollars you've put to Equalizations payments, those aren't under negotiation. We're going to keep those and you can walk away. You can have your freedom, but that's the consequence of doing it without adhering to the clarity law and the Quebec referendum law. So it's really, I guess what I'm saying is without saying whether I favor it or I don't, and I'm not going to say whether I do or I don't. It's really a difficult, difficult process and anybody who votes in favor of it is going to have to be prepared to take a decade or perhaps even much longer to have that process fulfilled.

Carlin Lutzer (12:15):

You certainly said a lot in there, is it required, it's not required that Alberta tries to get their designation as a distinct society. The reason why Quebec was wanting to separate is because they felt that they were distinct, and I don't think anybody's debating that fact that Quebec has a unique culture. They're French, right. It's very different, and I think they then were granted the distinct society status right now because I've heard Danielle Smith talking about that as well, and she is basically trying to argue with the French premier. I'm not even going to, his name's not at the top of my head here right now,

Dick Nichols (13:04):

Press wall ago.

Carlin Lutzer (13:05):

Thank you that they're kind of debating back and forth that she's saying that, well, Alberta is a distinct society and here's all the rationales. Why. I think that's a little bit of a mute thing to get into and start debating how distinct Alberta is to rationalize our separation. I think there's certainly a whole lot of other things that we could focus our attention on if we need to be debating something, there's other issues that need to be debated. Right now it seems like the sediment from the Alberta government, and I think the catchphrase now is a sovereign Alberta and a United Canada. I think that's the line that Danielle Smith is saying numerous times a day, but what does that mean? We're now getting the same rights as Quebec. Obviously the rest of the provinces aren't going to stick up for that. So then everybody else is kind of going down that path too, that everybody then wants to become sovereign. I dunno, I guess if we look at the word sovereign, I don't know how you have every province and every territory as being sovereign.

Dick Nichols (14:16):

Well, yeah. Technically a federation is a group of sovereign individual political entities coming together to form a union. So in that sense, if you look at the constitution, their powers are distributed among the federal government and the provincial government, the provincial government. Each provincial government uses the powers that it has in its own particular way that could be considered a form of sovereignty, sovereign within any United Canada. I mean, it's a nice phrase, but it can mean anything you want it to mean.

Carlin Lutzer (14:50):

Sure,

Dick Nichols (14:51):

And my question is, is that meant to be a constitutional statement or a political statement? And I quite frankly think it's a political statement, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but that's what it is. It doesn't mean that the constitution that there's something wrong with the constitution of Canada or that the Constitution has to be amended in order for that to become the

Carlin Lutzer (15:14):

Fact. So with, give me a little esoteric. Oh yeah. With the separation movement, we look at the by-election that just happened, there was a separatist and I believe that was an old bury and three hills riding. There was a separatist running there and they didn't do very well in the election, and some people are chalking that up as a win for the government, the party that basically wants to stay in place staying United Canada. When they say that the stats that there's 30% of Canadians that would like to separate and then that's in the cities and then you go rural, I guess it's a little bit higher of people that would like to separate that 30% doesn't seem that high to me, but it seems like people are sitting up and taking notice with the movement at 30% right now.

Dick Nichols (16:11):

Yeah, I would be interested to know, it'd be nice to have be clairvoyant and to know what percentage that would be after 10 years of hard negotiations and often bitter negotiations about the terms of separation and what the cost would be to Albertans to separate whether that percentage would remain that high over that long period. My whole point of writing the column was before you make that decision in your own mind, here's what the implications are. It's not just a matter of saying, yeah, let's go and form our own country. Forming your own country is not as easy as just saying we are a country. Forming your own country means setting up your own taxation system, setting up your own legislative system, setting up your own executive system, setting up all the rules and regulations regarding various aspects of your society, setting up armed forces to defend your society, joining organizations like the United Nations getting recognized on the community of nations.

(17:16):

I mean, if you declare your independence, that doesn't necessarily mean you become a country that is recognized by every other country in the world. You have to earn that recognition and that would be a significant step for the province or for the New Republic, or I dunno whether it would, let's say it's called the Republic of Alberta. It would be a significant achievement to have to go out and do that, and that would take a long time, would be costly, and then what happens? What do you do in the meantime while you're waiting for that? Where do you raise the money to run your country? How much would your taxation regime have to be when you have a population of 5 million people? How much would your personal and corporate taxation rates have to be? What would the investment community, how would the investment community view you both before you achieved recognition among the community of nations and after? Would the investment community view Alberta the same as a separate country, as they do as a province of Canada? That's a big important question that you have to consider and you have to consider all these things before you take that decision to separate. It's not just a gee, we'll have a chance to do what we want and make our own decisions. It's not quite that simple.

Carlin Lutzer (18:41):

No, and I think another question is who comes with us if Alberta chooses to separate? If Alberta separates on their own, they're basically, in my opinion, they're signing a deal with the United States, whether it's on paper or not right at the start, it's eventually going to become that way because you get a leader like the United States has in there right now, they would snuff Alberta out until Alberta bowed in defeat to the US and say, yes, we will sign on with you because if Alberta doesn't have access to tide water, I just think you sign a deal, you get everything moving forward. The US will snuff us out until we beg for them to take us on.

Dick Nichols (19:32):

But if they took us on, what will we be?

Carlin Lutzer (19:36):

No, and Dick, I'm not saying that that

Dick Nichols (19:40):

State of Alberta has 5 million people. Let's look at the United States. What would happen? The state of Alberta would have 5 million people. That's roughly the size of Kentucky. Kentucky has six representatives in the US House of Representatives out of 435 representatives

(19:59):

In Canada, Alberta has 37 representatives in a house of commons of 343. In Kentucky in the state of Alberta would have two senators out of 102. In Canada, the province of Alberta has, what's it, 24 senators out of six senators I think it is out of 105 or something. That's roughly the number. I can't remember the exact. There would be in the United States, the residual powers in the government. In other words, after you say the states have this and the government, the states have these powers and the federal government has those powers, the residual powers reside with the federal government in the states

Carlin Lutzer (20:45):

In

Dick Nichols (20:45):

Canada, the residual powers reside with the provinces and one other thing, if Alberta were taken over as a state by the United States, what process would you use to convert the assets from Canadian dollars into US dollars? I doubt that you would be able to negotiate a dollar for dollar conversion. So if the province of Alberta became a state of the United States, basically everything that all of us own would be devalued by about 40% to go into US dollars. I'm not saying one or the other is correct, do it or don't do it. I'm just saying this is what happens if you do do it, absolutely. You make the decision.

Carlin Lutzer (21:25):

No, I think that the path of least resistance is no doubt, not always the best path to go. I think Canada is just, well, Alberta is just a little bit tired of the hand being there to receive the money, but when it comes to using Alberta oil, they look elsewhere. I think Danielle Smith did have it a little bit correct when she said there was so many different things that happened. There's the tanker band and she listed a lot of different things that Albertans had experienced. That could have been the thing that the straw that broke the camel's back, but it wasn't until Quebec decided to make and rightly made that decision themselves, they should be in control of what they can allow through their province or not. But it was that pipeline where I think the feelings towards the rest of Canada really changed here in Alberta, and it's just a little bit of, it's a tough pill to swallow when there's a lot of people that are receiving, and I'm stating stuff that everybody knows and we've talked about over and over again, but that still remains a very sore spot amongst Albertans and I would think that a new leader, it would be amazing if a new leader took it on as to let's unify this country.

(22:48):

What's it going to take? What's it going to take to bring us together as a nation? Let's get rid of the trade barriers. I'm surprised with the trade barriers amongst the provinces even. Let's open up the borders. Let's trade, let's get proud of that Canadian flag right across the board again, where we're all working towards a common goal, but it just feels like, it feels like it's never going to happen because we don't have enough of the voting power out here.

Dick Nichols (23:16):

Yeah, it sure isn't going to happen if we keep voting in the opposition every time and of the Canadian system, the opposition doesn't have a lot of power in legislating at the federal level. I think about stuff like this just idly just that's what I do, and it shows. I thought the pipeline issue, for instance, what would happen if the federal government built up an energy corridor designated a two kilometer five kilometer energy corridor immediately north of the 60th parallel just north of the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and BC border using private enterprise indigenous First Nations people to help staff it and federal government legislative legislation. You built two pipelines.

(24:06):

One going to a new port of Churchill on Hudsons Bay, one going to Prince Rupert, and each province then built its own pipeline connecting to those pipelines on the pipeline corridor at the top. So Alberta, if they wanted to access to Tidewater, they plug into the pipeline just north of 60, and it goes either way. If they want to send it to Asia, it goes to Prince Rupert. If they want to send it to Eastern Canada or to Europe, it goes to Churchill and the other provinces on the prairies have the same opportunity. I think that that would solve one of the real difficult issues that Alberta has always had, and that is enough pipeline capacity. The only pipeline that has been built in Alberta, I think for about the past 25 years was the Transmountain expansion, which was built by Justin Trudeau of all people.

(25:02):

So I think Alberta has to stop thinking of grievance and start thinking about solutions. We need innovative suggestions. We need open minds both at the federal and the provincial level. Has Alberta been given a tough time over the past 25 years? Yeah, sure they have. Is complaining about it and keeping the resentment about it going to change that? No, it's not going to change that. The only thing that's going to change that is adopting new approaches and opening your minds to try to point out the other guy's point of view and reach a mutually agreeable solution, and I think that's what we have to do both at the federal and at the provincial level, and I'm not just talking Alberta, I'm talking Quebec, I'm talking Ontario, Manitoba, and all of the provinces. The mindset has to change before any real progress can be made,

Carlin Lutzer (25:51):

And I think that's

Dick Nichols (25:51):

What's happening now. I think they're finally starting to talk that way in their provincial meetings. I hope they are.

Carlin Lutzer (25:57):

I hope you're right. I feel that Alberta certainly will be viewed that they're throwing all their toys out of the crib and they're having a hissy fit, and

Dick Nichols (26:08):

It could be football going

Carlin Lutzer (26:09):

Home, and I think that's the way the rest of the provinces view Alberta. I honestly working in oil and gas for quite a few years of my life. I feel that all Albertans want to do is work. They just want to have a good life. They want to support their families. They want to have a little bit of money that they can put away for retirement, and if you do that, Albertans are going to be quiet. We really didn't care that Quebec was receiving all the transfer payments when we were working, but again, I'm coming back to that point when they blocked prosperity for not just Albertans and individual Albertans and Alberta as a whole, but as for all of Canada, I feel that that vision needs to be laid out for anybody that's blocking any kind of prosper, the prosperity movement, and yes, we could get into so many different rabbit trails.

(27:04):

We could then start talking while there's the green people that believe that pipelines really shouldn't happen, but then we can argue the fact that we have the strictest environmental rules. I can't imagine there being another nation that has the same environmental issues, regulations when we're building a pipeline. If we just laid it out to Quebec and say, Hey, look, we want to work with you, but you are now withholding. Some people might look at this as blackmail or whatever. You're blackmailing 'em into this, but you are withholding us as a country, not as a province, as a country, you are withholding prosperity, so because you're doing that, we have to take that money back from you that we're giving to you as to balance things off because we are now losing money as a nation. We want you to succeed. We want there to be a balance. We want to support other provinces when we can, but don't stop. Don't stop us from working, right? That's the issue. I think if we were able to clear that issue up, I believe the separation issue would be gone. If Albertans are out there, they got boots on the ground, they're working, nobody's going to be hearing from 'em,

Dick Nichols (28:18):

So what are the solutions? One is to continue the pushing against Quebec, but once again, pipeline corridor north of 60, you build that pipeline corridor to Churchill, which last I heard wasn't in Quebec, it was in Manitoba. Tankers can come in to Hudsons Bay almost year round now within a few years it will be year round. You fill up the tanker at Churchill, the tanker doesn't go to England or it doesn't go to Spain or it goes to New Brunswick unloads at the refineries in New Brunswick, and all of a sudden the Quebec problem isn't the issue isn't there anymore because you're going around it. I mean, this is the kind of thinking I think we need thinking that doesn't just butt up against a problem and say, well, it's got to be this way or that way. It's got to be okay. What other things can we do?

Carlin Lutzer (29:12):

Do you think that, well, obviously building the pipeline to Churchill would certainly be cheaper. I would imagine that it would have to come up out of the ground for the last parts as we go through the Canadian shield of Rock. Americans

Dick Nichols (29:24):

Did that Americans build a pipeline across across Alaska in the 1980s and nineties. That technology has been available for a long time. I'm sure it's been upgraded since then. The key to it is not the technical part of it, the key to it is getting all of the various stakeholders on the land to allow it to cross their territory, and that's where at the political level, at the administrative level leadership comes into place. We need people who are willing to undertake those negotiations and provide the leadership and the flexibility to come up with solutions that may not satisfy everything that everybody wants, but are compromises that everybody can accept.

Carlin Lutzer (30:09):

Well, Dick, I appreciate your work in the Western Wheel. It's well thought out. I think anybody just listening to this conversation here this afternoon knows that you're in Canadian history and your stuff, and I certainly do appreciate your articles and even taking a step back and looking things from a different viewpoint in regards to Alberta separation, because I do think that sometimes people do get the mindset that this is going to be easy and well, let's just plug ahead and why not? Let's just leave and go make some money. But yeah, it's years down the road and chances are it's probably easier to figure out things with our current nation as opposed to becoming our own nation.

Dick Nichols (30:52):

I hope so, Carlin, this has been a great experience for me, and I can't emphasize enough how important your podcast is to this community. It was a wonderful idea and it's only going to get better as years go by, so congratulations and thank you very much for asking me to come on your podcast.

Carlin Lutzer (31:13):

Yeah, I'm sure we'll have you on again. Maybe there's going to be something you write where we completely disagree and where the sparks will fly, Dick. Well, and that's kind of the heart behind this. I want to have people on my podcast that I disagree with. I want to figure not to get into a fight with them, but to figure out their perspective, and I think that's a big problem with our society today is that we just choose not to figure out which angle, what value does this person have in what they do and the reason they think this, but truly trying to figure it out and to engage, not just sit behind a computer and type away and let your feelings fly, but actually we're not face-to-face. We're screen to screen, but it's a way of engaging and talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of this town and this community,

Dick Nichols (32:11):

And ending it with respect. Yeah. Every great parliamentarian will tell you that at the end of the day, when you walk out of that chamber, the issue stays in the chamber. You walk out and you respect one another for the intelligence and the abilities that they have, and that's I think, very important.

Carlin Lutzer (32:32):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and you're right, that's a whole nother topic. We are going to have some political figures. We're trying to line up a few, but again, it doesn't matter if I'm on the same side as them or opposite side. Such great respect for the civil servants and people signing up for this because I don't know if you could pay me enough money to do that. So thank you so much, my friend. I appreciate your time. I certainly appreciate your insights and look forward to chatting with you again very soon.

Dick Nichols (33:04):

Terrific. Okay, nice to be

Carlin Lutzer (33:06):

Here. Thanks, Dick.

Dick Nichols (33:07):

Bye-Bye.

Carlin Lutzer (33:18):

That was Dick Nichols, freelance writer, community observer, and longtime contributor to public dialogue here in Okotoks. As always, the goal of this podcast is to encourage thought, curiosity, and conversation. Alberta's future is a topic that sparks strong opinions and no matter where you land on the issue, it's important that we listen to each other with respect and a willingness to learn. That same goes for the conversation we have about how our town is governed and how our taxes are spent, and what kind of okotoks we want to build moving forward. If you have ideas for future guests or topics, feel free to reach out, and if you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or neighbor. Thanks for listening, and until next time, take care. Stay curious and stay engaged.

Big Announcer (34:06):

That's all from the Okotoks Podcast where we keep it grounded just like the big rock. Thanks to Carlin Luzer real estate for the support.