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Alberta Politics

Alberta’s “Fair Deal” Panel hosts first Separatist Open Mic Night in Edmonton

Dozens of speakers stepped up to to the mic to share their two-minutes worth of opinions at the first “Fair Deal” Panel town hall meeting in Edmonton last night. The event in the large meeting room at the St. Michael’s Heritage Hall was well-attended, but not overflowing with crowds of angry Albertans demanding separation from Canada.

The panel was appointed last month to decide whether Alberta is receiving a fair deal from Ottawa.

Fair Deal Panel Edmonton Alberta Politics 1
Fair Deal Panelists: Oryssia Lennie, Preston Manning, Stephen Lougheed, Jason Goodstriker, Donna Kennedy-Glans, Drew Barnes, Moin Yahya, Miranda Rosin, and Tany Yao.

The first speaker up to the mic told the panel that he was a separatist from Quebec when he moved to Alberta in the 1980s and feels Alberta is not getting a fair deal from Ottawa. The second speaker used his two-minutes at the mic to boisterously declare that Canada was broken and that his personal Christmas wish was for Premier Jason Kenney to hold a referendum on separation.

A few speakers criticized the government for stirring up separatist sentiment, expressed hope that Alberta could collaborate with other provinces, and said they wouldn’t trust the United Conservative Party government to manage a provincial pension plan (a statement which got some enthusiastic cheers from sections of the room). But many of the speakers tended to share separatist, or at least anti-federal Liberal sentiments, venting frustrations about federal environmental laws, delivering detailed plot summaries of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and offering their expertise on constitutional issues.

Chris Chang-Yen Phillips
Chris Chang-Yen Phillips

In what was probably the most thoughtful two-minutes of the evening, Chris Chang-Yen Phillips, Edmonton’s former historian laureate and host of the Let’s Find Out Podcast, urged the panel to focus less on what we believe we are owed and more on taking care of each other.

Chang-Yen Phillips went on to explain that a fair deal in Confederation for him would be where every province does its part to lower carbon emissions, or transition away from fossil fuels. His comments might fall on deaf ears on the panel but it was a refreshing break from the separatist rhetoric that dominated the evening.

Who stood up at the mic was also telling. While not all of the speakers were white men who appeared to be older than 60 years old, it certainly skewed toward that demographic from my view in the room.

The panel was created following the Liberal Party‘s victory in the October 21, 2019 federal election, despite the Conservative Party earning 70 percent of the vote in Alberta, and was prescribed nine policy proposals that would ostensibly make Alberta more autonomous from the federal government in Ottawa. The proposals, ranging from creating a provincial police force to withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan to barring municipal governments from making agreements with the federal government, are inspired by the Firewall Manifesto penned by a group of conservative luminaries in 2001.

Separatist Open Mic Night Edmonton Alberta
The panel hears from a speaker at the town hall

Politically, the panel and its town hall meetings are both a relief valve and a steering wheel meant to allow Albertans to vent separatist sentiments while allowing Kenney to attempt to keep ahead of the crowd. Or at least that’s the plan.

The first town hall took place on the same day as the international credit rating agency Moody’s once again downgraded the provincial government’s credit rating.

During their time in opposition, the UCP was very eager to blame the credit downgrades on the New Democratic Party government’s “reckless” and “ideological” agenda, but it turns out that the credit rating downgrades have more to do with structural problems facing Alberta’s finances – like our unwavering over-dependence on oil and gas royalties to fund the day to day operations of the public service. That might have been a topic at a town hall interested in a fair deal for Albertans in Alberta, but this panel has a narrow political scope – and Kenney has Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is square in its sights.

There are plenty of articulate arguments to be made in favour and against pursuing the nine autonomy policies presented by the panel but they weren’t heard last night. The two-minute open mic format is a good way to let people vent and a poor way to collect meaningful information. If this is the format that is going to be used for the rest of the panel’s town hall meetings, it is difficult to believe they will gather much substantial feedback for their report to the government.


Independence Party of Alberta fires its President

Overshadowed by the media-darling Wexit group, the Independence Party of Alberta appears to be in a bit of internal turmoil.

The IPA, which recently changed its name from the Alberta Independence Party to the Independence Party of Alberta, released a statement on Nov. 1, 2019 announcing that interim president S. Todd Beasley had been removed from the position and his membership had been rescinded. The party then released another statement accusing Beasley and a group of former candidates of breaking internal party rules and being in possession of books of party membership forms.

Beasley is a controversial conservative activist who was believed to be the frontrunner for the UCP nomination in Brooks-Medicine Hat before he withdrew from the contest after making derogatory remarks about Muslims.

The Alberta Independence Party fielded 63 candidates in the April 2019 provincial election and earned a total of 0.71 per cent of the province-wide vote. Party leader Dave Bjorkman resigned shortly after the election and Wexit leader Peter Downing had announced plans to seek the leadership but his supporters appear to be continuing to collect signatures to form a separate Wexit Party.

Meanwhile, another group of separatists led by former Wildrose Party candidate Sharon Maclise, appears to be continuing its effort to collect signatures to register the Alberta Freedom Alliance as an official party in Alberta.

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Alberta Politics

Live Taping of the Let’s Find Out Podcast

I’ll be joining Edmonton’s historian-laureate Chris Chang-Yen Phillips and guests for a live recording of the Let’s Find Out podcast at the Needle Vinyl Tavern on Saturday, March 11, 2017.

Also joining the discussion are Dr. Kisha Supernant (Métis Anthropology Professor & Archaeologist) Sarah Hoyles (Producer behind the ECAMP podcast on Edmonton history). We will be discussing how we approach truth when doing historical research. I plan to talk a lot about the research I have done into the crazy Social Credit  era of Alberta politics in the 1930s.

Doors will open at 2:00 p.m. and tickets are $15 in advance, available on yeglive.ca.

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Alberta Politics

Podcast recommendations to start off 2017

Back in October 2015, I shared a list of podcasts that were on my regular listening feed. Each year I purposely look for new podcasts to listen to. This means removing some of my older regular listens and keeping some of my favourites.

The Expats, Radiolab, Hardcore HistorySlate’s Political Gabfest and Whistestop remain at the top of my list, but I intentionally branched out from politics-themed podcasts in 2017 in response to the saturation of coverage of the American Presidential election and Donald Trump‘s election victory.

Here are some of the podcasts new to my feed that get my stamp of approval:

Let’s Find Out: Edmonton’s Historian Laureate Chris Chang-Yen Phillips answers questions about our city’s history in this semi-regular podcast, which released its sixth episode last week.

SpyCast: An interesting podcast from the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. The two most recent episodes about a Canadian diplomat in Havana working for the CIA and the lead up to the attack on Pearl Harbour are particularity fascinating.

Don’t Call me a Guru: A podcast about social media strategy hosted by Edmontonians Linda Hoang and Tyler Butler. (I’m a guest on episode three).

Escape Plan and Horizon Line: Atlas Obscura is the definitive online guidebook and friendly tour-guide to the world’s most wondrous, weird, and obscure places and it is one of my favourite websites. They are now producing two podcasts.

The World Next Week: The Council on Foreign Relations produces a weekly podcast that provides previews, analysis and information about upcoming international events.

The Axe Files and the Ezra Klein Show: Both of these podcasts include interesting and thought-provoking interviews with some of America’s key cultural, academic and political players. David Axelrod’s final podcast of 2016 included an interview with outgoing President Barack Obama.

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Alberta Politics

New History Podcast launched by Edmonton’s Historian-Laureate

A new Edmonton-based history podcast was launched today. Let’s Find Out is hosted by our city’s Historian-Laureate Chris Chang-Yen Phillips and the first two episodes of the podcast can be found on the podcast website or on iTunes.

Chris Chang-Yen Phillips
Chris Chang-Yen Phillips

The first episode delves into the history of Edmonton’s Snow Goose Chase (which I had never heard of until I listened to this episode) and the second tries to answer the question has Edmonton ever had a black public school trustee?

Chris is encouraging curious Edmontonians to email him with historical questions they want answered that could turn out to be inspirations for future podcast themes. Email him at chris@letsfindoutpodcast.com with your questions.

As an avid fan of history and podcasts, I am looking forward to listening to more podcasts from Edmonton’s official historian and chief story teller.

Two other history podcasts, Stuff You Missed in History Class and Hardcore History with Dan Carlin, are also on my subscription list and are worth listening to. I would also recommend that history and journalism buffs take some time to listen to the BBCs War and Words podcast series.