Alberta Politics: Party Divisions and Boundary Changes

Brian welcomes back Jim Groom as they explore Alberta's complex political landscape, including recent referendum controversies, party dynamics, and municipal issues. Jim provides expert insights into the province's push for independence, electoral boundary changes, and the impact of judicial decisions.

Chapters

00:00 Alberta's Political Landscape: A Shift in Trust
10:08 Referendum on Independence: The Complexities of Choice
19:46 The Role of Leadership: Navigating Party Dynamics
30:02 Judicial Influence and Political Accountability
38:36 Local Governance: The Impact on Communities


As Alberta continues to navigate a tumultuous political landscape, many residents are left questioning the future of their province. With increasing division within the United Conservative Party (UCP) and rising separatist sentiments, it’s crucial to understand the underlying issues driving these changes. Today on Bring Back The Porch, we’ll explore the current state of Alberta politics, the challenges faced by the UCP, and what these developments mean for both Albertans and the wider Canadian context.

The UCP has been facing significant internal challenges, leading to a fragmentation of its base. Many former supporters are feeling disillusioned, prompting the emergence of new political factions, such as the Republican Party of Alberta. This balkanization stems from a sense of betrayal felt by ex-UCP members who once believed the party would facilitate meaningful political changes but now view it as ineffective.

The leadership of the UCP has been accused of a bait-and-switch strategy, where promises made during campaigns were not fulfilled post-election. This has eroded trust among supporters who feel that their needs and expectations are being ignored. The UCP's failure to deliver on key issues like equalization payments has further alienated its base, leading to calls for a referendum on Alberta's separation from Canada.

The conversation around a potential referendum is multifaceted and controversial. The proposed questions regarding Alberta's independence are complex, often leading to confusion among voters. The challenge lies in formulating clear and concise questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no, especially when the issues at stake are layered and multifaceted.

Previous elections have highlighted significant issues with voter engagement, including long wait times and complicated ballot questions. If turnout remains low, the credibility of any referendum could be called into question, raising concerns about the legitimacy of the outcomes. Moreover, the potential for public frustration could lead to further disengagement from the political process, exacerbating the challenges faced by the UCP.

Distrust in political leadership is a significant factor affecting Alberta's political climate. Premier Smith's attempts to appease various factions within the UCP often backfire, leading to further dissension and frustration among the electorate. The perception that leadership is more focused on internal party dynamics rather than addressing the concerns of everyday Albertans undermines the effectiveness of the government.

One of the critical issues facing the Alberta government is the lack of clear communication from leaders regarding policy changes and their implications. This lack of transparency can lead to misunderstandings and mistrust, making it essential for political figures to communicate openly and honestly with constituents. By fostering a better understanding of the political processes at play, leaders can work towards rebuilding trust and engagement among voters.

Lastly, Alberta's political landscape is at a crossroads, with the potential for significant changes on the horizon. As the UCP grapples with its internal challenges and the prospect of a referendum, it is crucial for leaders to prioritize clear communication and engagement with the electorate.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey, this is Brian again, and I'd like to ask you to do a favor. We can't do this work without people like you. So if you can, please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends about bring back the porch. And I think what we're seeing now is another position where the base has just said this is enough. We we no longer think that the UCP is our home where we can actually make political changes. So we see all these other groups being created and they're all created from X, UCP members. And we, you know, we have the Republican Party of Alberta in the you know, it just goes on and on because this balkanization of the separatists is because they once felt that they could trust the UCP and the leadership, and the leadership was a bait and switch, get their support, and then change changed the rules. This episode will bring back the porch. Brought to you by Bernie Leahy, River Street Realty. Let's get you home. We keep saying this that Alberta's politics are getting stranger and stranger. And yet here we are, on the cusp of June with Jim Groom. We're talking about even more strange things happening in Alberta politics. Welcome to the porch again, Jim, Thanks. Thanks. nice to be here. And here's the question. Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada? What? Yes, it's a convoluted that question. Well, you know, everybody is saying that it's a two part question, and you either answer the top or the bottom and you part A or part B, and that's certainly the only way. I went to first initially said that on Thursday night it was like, well, it's a compound question. How do you answer a compound question with a yes or no answer? You can't. So there's got to be some infrastructure for that. But nobody seems to be making any be aware of that. And you know what a debacle the municipal elections were with hand counting and the delays. And I talked to people that were two hours in line waiting to vote. And some people just said, well, that's I'm not going to wait anymore. I can't, can't, can't stay here. So this is ten questions that each one is if it's all like a paragraph and, you know, if you look at the the ones about the court system and the ones about immigration, they're not short either. And unless you prepared and gone in and said, okay, this is what my answers are going to be, it's going to take everybody like five minutes to go through them and make a decent choice, and that's going to tie it up. You know, they talk about $50 million being spent on this one. But time wise it's it's going to be difficult. And of course if the turnout is really low then what credibility does that have when people walk away because they're frustrated, because they don't want to wait three hours to get into to a document to sign a vote? Yeah. She I think was trying to make everybody happy, but she made everybody angry. Yeah. Of course, this is this is the creation of her own doing. So it's really difficult for her to do what she normally does is blame whoever else she even wanted to blame Nenshi for, for the release of the, the, the other documents that were, were, were found out there. And so she has to live with some of these things. And what I think she tends to do is she goes from the frying pan into the fire a lot because she gets into a difficult situation and the solution is, well, let's distract by making it even worse. And this is what she's done in this case, she's made it worse. And of course, her her existential threat for her is to party. If the electorate can't do anything about it until 2027, we're stuck. We can't we can't change anything. It's a majority government. It's going to dictate to us for that last year or so, but the party can make a change. And that's where her her real fear is if if the party simply wants to pull a Jason Kenney on her, then she ‘s done like dinner. If they if they can get enough support in that. Now, I did hear the president of the Rob Smith, the president of the ECB this morning, a matter of fact talking, and he said, no, people have sort of looked at the question again and kind of feel that it's not quite as bad as what they thought originally. But it's not a divide. It's not a united party. It's a it's a very divided party. And they have still some old Progressive Conservatives that are still in there, but it is dominated by the separatist groups and the they take back Alberta types. And, you know, the 1905 committee and, you know, you name it and they're they're still involved and all that. So this is the threat for her. And that's where her immediate attention has to be. And of course she tried to appease them. And every time she tries to appease them, it just gets them in more trouble because she knows the electorate isn't going to support her on that. And yet she got to appease the party because that's where the immediate threat comes from. Yeah. David Parker with the group Take Back Alberta, the one who I think was instrumental in getting Jason Kenney elected and then un elected Yes. Very sad. Right after the announcement about the referendum question that she has lost her base. Yes, yes. And I think that's probably fairly accurate. Can she salvage it with, you know, by distraction, which is very common in political politics? You change the focus by changing making a distraction. And the current distraction this morning was that she's going to reopen the 1982 Constitution and address indigenous rights and remove section 35, because it wasn’t meant to be in place for all this time. It was supposed to be a short term thing according to her position. And that's the argument she's going to take to the the Western Premiers Conference today and tomorrow in Canada in order to distract from what she's already done for damages. Yeah. How did we get to this point? Because there was no mention of this during the last provincial election campaign, wasn't part of any platforms. And yet, here we are. Bait and switch, in my opinion, is what happened. So Jason Kenney comes in and he vilified Ottawa, a part that he had been a member of for many, many years, even though many mainly in opposition, but not totally. He was a member of the Harper cabinet, of course, and he comes in and he needs to vilify Ottawa, and then he needs to unite his base. So he put the referendum forward on equalization payments. And 65% of the population say, yes. We don't agree with the way the equalization formula is structured, which was structured under his boss, Stephen Harper. And of course, it was very generous to Quebec because he was trying to get a majority government and he needed to get more than the 10 or 11 seats that he had and go back. And he was trying to appease him a little bit. And it it backfired on him basically, because they didn't go back has never bought into Stephen Harper's Conservatives for whatever reason. So can can he come? Sorry. And then he simply get 65% support against equalization. But it's a constitutional entrenched right. He can't do anything about it unilaterally for Albertans. So he says, well, that's done. And the people who thought he was really serious about independence or getting rid of equalization, which is at the core of the separatist movement in many cases, simply said, well, he's he's not doing the job. He promised us something unequal. He couldn't do it. So Daniel Smith reads the tea leaves and she looks and she says, what we need is the Sovereignty Act. And she runs for the leadership with the Sovereignty Act, for the other five members who ran for the position of leadership in the UK, actually held a press conference saying, this is this is a threat to Canada. This is going to be unconstitutional. It's the worst thing in the world. And then when she won after the sixth round, they all supported the act when it went to the legislature, but it was changed from just Sovereignty Act to the Sovereignty Act, sovereignty within a united Canada Act. So the separatists in the base once again looked and said, bait and switch. We've been supported her. We were behind her, we elected her as leader. And then she decides to say a united Canada or a sovereign Alberta in a united Canada. That's she crossed us and then she crossed them again when it came to the Bill of rights. Remember the Bill of rights and the black hats and in Medicine Hat all get together. And they came up with this very Americanized Bill of rights, and they put it forward to the to the government, and the government cut it all out. And all they put in was a little bit for the medical rates with regard to Covid and not being vaccines and things like that. So once again, this base that was mainly sovereigntist were crossed. And they, they felt, you know, that they had been turned on. And I think what we're seeing now is another position where the base has just said this is enough. We we no longer think that the UCP is our home where we can actually make political changes. So we see all these other groups being created and they're all created from X, UCP members. And we, you know, we have the Republican Party of Alberta in the you know, it just goes on and on because this balkanization of the separatists is because they once felt that they could trust the UCP and the leadership, and the leadership was a bait and switch, get their support, and then change changed the rules. And to a certain extent, it's happened to the entire province as well, where it was like, as you say, the 2023 election was about the economy, education, health care, maybe a little bit about security. And what do we have now? If you look at the last legislature, the things that they're putting in place, nobody talked about it. Nobody wanted this, nobody wanted a referendum on independence. None of these things were or was it? But the base. She tried to play both sides towards them, and she ride into her and she's about to fall off and the tigers going to eat her, which is her base. And and it's hard way to learn. But it's not the first time she's been kicked out of politics. And we'll see how that goes. How do you see Thomas Lukaszuk playing into this? Well, Lukaszuk is very articulate and very patriotic, and he talks a good show, you might say, and he's been able to galvanize people behind him. He was a deputy premier before under the Redford regime. I never really cared for him, to tell you the truth, under the Redford regime, I always thought he was a little bit arrogant and a little bit unconnected to the to the people, and I don't think that anymore. I think he's kind of persuaded me that he's kind of a good representation of that. We see that the Nenshi numbers are very low. They're not he's not doing very well. And Alberta is a conservative province no matter what. And it's a bridge too far for some people to vote NDP. They just see it is just not no matter what the NDP says, a pro business approach or whatever they want to do, it's not going to win some people over. They just aren't. So maybe some competition from from the the right side of the spectrum or the slightly right to the spectrum might be something that would be helpful. It's not going to well, for the progressive, whatever they are, that new group, right. In fact, they were two members and now they're down to just the one, you know, the former former cabinet minister. And that doesn't happen. Sparked for some reason. Other but the Lukaszuk may may although he says he has no aspirations for for more politics. But he may be recruited by people to say, you know, you are representing us and we need somebody that we can can believe in. And the trouble is to to create a new party a year before an election is really difficult because, you know, the we're going to have 90 constituencies at the next election and to get riding associations in each of those and represent we saw the Alberta Party last election, they could only get 26 candidates. Right. And it's it's really hard to to start a new party and find a niche that everybody is going to accept as well. Do you think people will look over at Jason Kenney and go, you know, that wasn't such a bad leader after all? Well, the interesting thing is, Kenny, he united the left and the right against him because by the time they they threw him out of his own party, that was done by the people on the extreme left. But the people on being read, I should say, but the people who were more progressive and were still saying, yeah, Jason Kenney, he's he's not the guy, you know, and the legitimacy of his elections were questioned at both stages. And then, of course, the provincial election wasn't, but his leadership races were, you know, the kamikaze candidate thing came in and yeah, just there was just bad, bad blood there for sure. And of course, he did get 51% of the vote. He could have stayed, but he chose not to. Probably. Well, as you say, you look back and you think maybe it would have been better with with a Jason Kenney. He would have been more pragmatic. But I think his his caucus was done with him as well. So he united everybody against him and it just went downhill. One person that I was thinking this morning has been very noticeably quiet, at least in my mind, is Brian Jean. Yeah. Well, I think Brian's, you know, the old Peter Principle. You raised your own level of incompetence, I think. I think Brian was probably at, at his peak as a as a cabinet minister and following the orders of, of, of Premier Smith, it's. Yeah. He, you know, he had his personal issues with health for his family and things like that, which probably distracted him somewhat, especially during the, the runoff for, for the leadership of the UCP. But I, I, I've seen him in various debates and I just it's hard to kind of come away impressed with with his position on things in my opinion. Anyway, we also saw the leak of voters lists through this process, which has never happened before, at least to my knowledge. No, I've never heard of it either, and I don't know what the fallout from that is going to be. Well, you know. Ironically, of course, the premier stood up in the House or in the legislature and said, we're not going to proceed with anything until the investigations are done. Elections Canada, even the ethics commissioner was doing an investigation. And then Thursday night she announces, no, we're going to actually have a referendum, which is kind of related, because the question was the 300,000 signatures that the Free Alberta Group got strong and free group were always in question, because how legitimate were is it? And they've never elections. Alberta was never able to go through and check the names because the court ruling got in there. So the premier in her Thursday night address said there's 700 people who 100,000 people who want a referendum, which is not the case at all. And we don't know about the 300,000, those 300,000. It's because the the voters list was out. And I did see texts from Roth who said, you know, if you want to be a hero for the movement, here's the here's the list, maybe go and get a whole bunch of signatures or or perhaps not get signatures, but perhaps you do, you know, and I mean, they they always claim that they were going to have large numbers and they did have lots of people lined up, but they only had few actual sessions. So it made it look like it was a lot of people. So it becomes an issue of, well, did they get that support, or is that 300,000 just being bandied about without any really substantiation of it? Yeah, a lot of people might be thinking, well, let's have the vote and put this to bed, but it doesn't happen that way. We've seen two votes in Quebec and there might be a third coming. Yeah. The lot of folks in the media quoting Rene Lavesque where he said, well, we didn't win this time, was only 4060 back in 1980, but we'll get them next time. And yeah, 95. There was only 1% difference between the two. And Paris stood up and said it was the the Anglos and the immigrants to the problem. It sounded a little bit familiar that blaming immigrants is is kind of an escape clause for some politicians, because it's it's an easy target. They can't really defend themselves all that well even though they're paying taxes at that. So it does does become an issue. The other thing, of course, is that the courts struck down the appeal from the strong and free Alberta, but it still has to be appealed. And it's even being appealed by the government as well as by the strong and free Alberta. So if the Superior Court, the Supreme Court, the Alberta Court of Appeal decides that it is as constitutional that they could do it, or the Supreme Court of Canada decides that, well, what does that mean? Do they do they then present it and now go through the process that they had before, because they were still promised under the legislation that if it had enough signatures, they would bring it forward to a referendum. So they didn't bring that one forward to the referendum. They brought a whole different referendum question for it, as we've talked about. So all of a sudden that group could then say, well, now the courts are a favor. Let's go back to the drawing board and have this with our question, which was drawn from the Clarity Act, which given credit for that. And let's ask that question because it's not the same question that you asked. So we may be doing referendums every year for the next perceivable future. And I guess that's what direct democracy in some people's opinion, is all about. I don't particularly see that as a good idea. But another sidebar to all of this too, is a long held complaint from conservatives about judge made law. You know, people who are not elected making the law. Yeah. You know, this goes back to parliamentary supremacist, which was sort of overthrown in 1982 when Canada finally came to realize that we needed three branches of government for checks and balances. And although the legislative branch and the the executive branch are fuzed in the parliamentary system, it still needs a third branch to be independent. And that's the judiciary. And every a poll that they've done on the value of the judiciary always says that people have more faith in the judiciary than they do in a, in a politician. And so it's held us in good stead. And, you know, I think being able to have the Constitution 1982 and, and the, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the interpretation has to be done by the judiciary. And it's been pretty solid. You know, when the teachers were sent back to, to cancel their strike, it contradicted the rules of the Supreme Court who said everybody has a right to certain job actions in the country. And, you know, they invoked the notwithstanding clause and fit when thousand teachers had their rights removed. Just as simple as that, you know, and this government might like to say that the notwithstanding clause is constitution because it's in the Constitution, but it's an override of the Constitution. It violates the Constitution. And you can't pretend that it doesn't violate the Constitution. That's that's how it's written. And it has to be section two or 7 to 15. And that's what it was that apply. And of course, we have the premier in the legislature again saying, well, we're going to invoke the notwithstanding clause to make sure that we can have this referendum. And it had to be pointed out to her that 35, with his indigenous rights, does not fall under section 2 or 1 or 7 to 15, nor is it part of the Chart of Rights and Freedoms. It's the part of the Constitution Act of 1982, but it's not part of the rights and freedoms it ends at 30 for the for the rights of freedom. So things that she should kind of be aware of. But then, you know, early on, she thought she was like a governor in a state and she could, could, you know, declare certain convicted criminals free to go, you know. Yeah, yeah. The other strange thing that happened last week before the referendum question was put on the ballot, was a committee was meeting to look at the strong and free petition. Yes. And the press release came out that they had made an had agreed to put it on the ballot before the committee had even met, which was like a oh, well, that was the the free stay with Canada petition. Yes, the six one. And it was interesting because we wanted to testify or at least present before that committee, and they said, no, we don't need you. The committee had been formed in December. They didn't have their first meeting till April, and it was a meeting. And they said, well, we don't need any anybody to testify at this point and we'll have another. And all of a sudden they become, you know, engaged with this and they call it. And exactly they, they put out a press release before the actual vote, which, you know, I guess in a way, when you have a committee that's four UCP members to two NDP members, you kind of know how the votes going to go, and it's all predetermined. But it is really unfortunate to see that kind of an error go forward, because it gives us even less faith in our politics when we look and we say, well, so these people who sit and listen to people and have hearings, really it's all predetermined. And the answer is yes, it is. Basically, there was another committee, the Electoral Boundaries Committee, chaired by Dallas Miller here in Medicine Hat, and they came up with a recommendation, and there was a minority report on that. They were not united, you know, but in section nine of the Alberta Boundaries Elections Act says that the majority report will be taken as gospel sort of thing and it will be acted upon. Now, what the government has done is they said, but there is a section where only the commissioner decided that there should be 90 instead of 87, 89 should be 91. I guess it is, right. Two more, two more. Yeah. And it was only him that said that. And they jumped on that and said, well, see, we just can't, we can't act on this because the commissioner is against it. But the minority, the majority report had the three members, the two from the, you know, NDP support kind of members. And the commissioner all said that the boundaries should look like this. And they gave the maps and it was the urban boundaries, etc.. They had a united report that they presented in October. So they present that report to the speaker of the House, right, Rick McIver. And he reads and it's unanimous. And they are going by the basically urban writings versus rural writings to large extent. And that report, there is three hybrid ridings that were recommended around Calgary. The next report comes out and there's 11 hybrid writings around Calgary and in the interim. So they do the interim report. They're sent back to do more inquiries. They do another, I don't know, 20 interviews. Members of the UCP MLAs went to address each of those the sessions about their own writings. So these are the people running in those ridings that are currently representing those ridings and they're now determining, or at least suggesting that they should have input as to how their ridings should be structured. And Nikolaidis is is one of the ones in this regard. Calgary Bow if not mistaken. And his riding had been an urban Calgary riding and he won by a little over 600 votes. He looks at that and he goes and represents, and he says he needs rural representation in his riding, and he has this big swoop that goes out towards Kananaskis and Canmore. And he says, that's where I should have, which gives him more rural voters. And we know that traditionally, rural voters tend to vote more conservatively than than the urban voters. So that 600 votes that he won by 630, I think it really was suddenly could be expanded for him. He could get anywhere because he's got more voters out there. Lethbridge is a terrible situation. Of course. Lethbridge West is an NDP riding and it has been for quite, quite a time. Yeah, and it's never been an overwhelming riding any means, but it has been good representation. So the the UCP member from Calgary East goes and he says what we should do is have it spread into four ridings. And Calgary Lethbridge will be the epicenter and then they'll spread out like like like. Quadrants around the city. And then we'll have big rail ridings and just a little bit of the city and it so who's that going to benefit. It's going to benefit the CP. And in fact in the by election they had in Lethbridge West that was won by the NDP. The loser apparently went and said to the the winner of and he says well that's okay because then the next one we're going to have four ridings in less bridge and I'll win because it's going to be greater urban, sorry, rural representation. And that was only two. That was three years ago. I think the bylaw the by election. And so that was long before the, the structure of the the Boundaries Commission had even been set up. And so they were already plotting that way. I went to the Birks Medicine hat writing hearing for that. And we had a representative here from Medicine Hat went because they had some input and they were talking about hybrid, the value of hybrid writings. And I thought, well, that was kind of a strange thing. Why would he be doing that? Because we already are a hybrid writing in both cases. But this was the design of the UCP to say, no more rural versus urban. We're going to blend them all as hybrids as much as we can, because it's going to benefit us as a as a party. And there's been some stats done that it's going to cut down the NDP MPs by anywhere from 10 to 15 as far as numbers are concerned. So they'll never be government if if that goes through. This to me is one of the biggest existential threats to to democracy in Alberta is when the people who are being elected determine how the structure of the system is. And at one point when I went to this, this meeting in Brooks, I thought, there's five members of respected members of the Alberta community. They're independent. They're led by a judge. And I thought, this is really democracy in action. And then we see that between the interim report where, no, it's all unanimous to the final report, where there's a minority and a majority, and the government selectively says we're going to explore section nine, we're simply going to say that the commissioner couldn't decide, and we're going to create our own committee, which is the most undemocratic thing that that that's happened in Alberta in in a while, I think. Well, all this has been going on. It has been quiet in Ottawa. Either Mark Carney now has a majority government. Yes. Why hook or by crook? By hook or by crook? A lot of squeals from the opposition about floor crossing. And and yet they had the opportunity once upon a time to settle that would have maybe prevented that from happening. And they didn't they didn't support it. Yeah. The parliamentary system, that's how that's how it works. And it always worked this way, probably always will because the the party that's trying to get that majority is the government. And so they, they have the majority after they get that and they're not going to going to change it at all, you know. And it's gone on for, for years and back and forth. There's, there's, you know, side both sides have benefited from it. And what is typical though of course it's the person that floor crosses almost always never gets reelected. It's it's the price. Yes. It's it's just the way it is. Yeah. We have seen no Alberta and Ottawa get together on a possible pipeline deal. And now we hear that Mr. Carney has letters from 14 of his MPs worrying about whether or not he's giving away too much on the environment. You have to be really cautious here because Bill, the was the Quebec lieutenant when he was still in cabinet, really does represent a part of Quebec that is very conscious about the environment. There is a portion in Quebec that are strong environmentalists, and they support the liberals because there's the bloc, you know, that has its challenges as well. But they support the liberals, and Carney doesn't want to put that in jeopardy. I think he's got about 48 Liberal MPs from Quebec right now. And the bloc has a fair number as well. But he can't. There are 78 seats in Quebec. He needs to still be maintain that. And when you think of it, there's 38 seats in Alberta, but only what three of them right now are liberals. If he's changing, if he's throwing away a chance to get 78 seats and Quebec as opposed to increasing his numbers, they're never going to have popularity in Alberta. There's just no doubt that they're never going to have a majority of of the electorates here. So from a political standpoint, uniting the country. Yeah, I think I think it's answering some of the questions that that Alberta has, but is it at his own deficit and that he's not really a politician per se. And I'm not sure how much his advisers are helping him on this. In some cases, he says some things that you think they should have preempted some of the things that he said. But anyway, it's it is it is a challenge here. And to much to Daniel Smith's chagrin, of course. You remember when at the AGM for the UCP AGM, he stood up and said, well, Canada is working and as proof we have the MOU. And she was booed. And so there, there is that group that are very proactive in the UK. They attend the AGM, their religious about that. They vote. Legislators, etc. and they they have a predetermined aspect that they are never going to be pro Ottawa. They just just no way. And so no matter what, you can't appease that group, I don't think. And on the left coast, the West coast, you have another premier who's going. Wait a minute. You can't do this. Absolutely. And, you know, you have to kind of think that Eby has some points in some regard because he wasn't even consulted before the MOU. And it's going to go across B.C. now. Anytime there's inter-provincial trade or inter-provincial crossings. The federal government literally has the right to do that from the Constitution. But you have to remember that you don't want to tick off all your premiers because they get together and they gang up on you. And we saw this with with Mr. Harper. He didn't have any constitutional conferences or maybe one during his tenure in power because the provinces were at that point NDP and liberals and also didn't care for his. His approach is a little bit heavy handed approach. So you have to keep peace within those premiers because if if you don't, they will come back to haunt you as well. Well, from political theater in Edmonton and Ottawa, Medicine hat has been relatively quiet. It's so nice, isn't it? It is relatively quiet, and they are doing the nuts and bolts that they have to do the hands on on things. One of the things that's changed, though, in this legislature is they changed the relationship between the province and the municipal governments even more than they've already done. I want to say Bill 28, but I'm not sure if that's the number. And it is taking even more power away from this valley. They're not aiming at Medicine Hat. Of course, they're aiming at Calgary and Edmonton, but they are aiming at the municipalities generally, and they're not giving us any more money, but they're giving us more, more duties and minutes, things that have to be done under the province, provincial control, though, they want to direct everything. And so I'm not sure that will impact too badly on Medicine Hat, but it will certainly have some impact. But I think it's been relatively quiet. Like you say, there's probably some behind the scenes machinations going on that we don't know about, but we still have yet to find a lot of new industry or something that's going to our our economy up to much. And there's got to be stuff out there that we should be beating the bushes to find. But but you know, we're that going to be right. Yeah. I did pay attention to councilor Bill Cox when he was taking administration to Tusk for what he perceived was foot dragging over the 800% increase in liquor store business fees. Yeah, yeah, they were kind of a niche issue, but it's good that that's what he's about. Its supposed to represent the population. There's been a few things with utility bills downtown in particular that have hit. Yeah, they've struck some companies really badly. And I'm hoping I think we all hope that there's another hands on at a municipal level where somebody from the administration can simply go out and say, oh, what's, what's what's the problem? We didn't realize we were creating such an issue for you. Let's repair that. But but yeah, it had to go to Bill in order to do that. And good for him. Yeah, that's that's what they're for is to, to help the small businesses. And it seems like when you put the numbers together, like seems sort of small, but it's not to those companies because that's their lifeline and that's, that can make the difference between solvency or bankruptcy and jobs or no jobs for something and jobs and those options. Yeah. And that's they say it's the lifeblood of, of the it's the small businesses. And it doesn't take you long to drive around medicine and see empty buildings where those small businesses didn't make it. So anything we could do to make it better for them, I applaud. And there is a group to that are getting themselves organized, at least on social media. They are very vocal in opposition to any changes to Third Street Northwest in Riverside. Yeah, I've been reading a little bit about some of those reports and the to the credit of the administration, the, the municipal administration, they have taken to target the first and second public meetings. They said, we don't want a whole bunch of bubble bubble. Yeah. And so they did cut it down to significant numbers. You know, when you're sitting at a at a drafting table and you're doing the planning, it looks so nice to have these and just a couple of pedestrians and oh there's a car park there. But there's no you know, there's no. But when it gets the reality that street is lined with parked cars all day, every day. And those businesses depend on that. And if you start to put a bunch of restrictions in there so that you can have bike lanes or walking or walking paths that are, you know, like, and we learned that from the Northwest Hill and the issues that went on up, up, up through there. And it's I think they're learning from that. But, you know, the perception among those people who are opposed to it, is it city Hall isn't listening. The administration is telling City Council what to do, that the tail is wagging the dog. Yes, yes, there's always that that conflict. And of course, in the last administration, there was this idea that the administration really was telling council what to do and how to do it and etc. and I think, I don't think that's a legitimate complaint anymore. There's going to be times when it is. But I think in a general sense that council has got a grip and they've been able to ameliorate some of the conflict a little bit because they recognize that people are watching and seeing what they're doing, and they don't want to have a situation like they did in the past. And they're trying to I think they're trying to best to play that that diplomatic role that they have to do a little bit. Always a pleasure to speak with Jim Groom about political matters, and I'm sure we'll be visiting again soon. Thanks very much. Nice to be here.