The 'creeping authoritarianism' of Danielle Smith, UCP

Markham interviews Professor Jared Wesley, University of Alberta, about his The Tyee article, "Why the UCP Is a Threat to Democracy."

What is Energi Talks?

Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.

Markham: 00:04

Welcome to episode 313 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. Political scientist, Jared Wesley, isn't afraid to call a spade a shovel. Listen to these sentences from his recent article in the tie e. Quote, the United Conservative Party is an authoritarian force in Alberta.

Markham: 00:26

Full stop, end quote. These are not the words you typically hear from a respected academic, but Danielle Smith and her government are also not typical. Shortly after taking office in 2022, she appeared on Real Talk with Ryan Jesperson steamed that I had called her an authoritarian populist. I was wrong, she claimed. She's actually a libertarian populist.

Markham: 00:52

Perhaps a difference without a distinction. Anyway, lately, I've been reading retired University of Texas professor Trish Roberts Miller's writing about authoritarian libertarians. Somewhere in that mix of labels is the truth, and I've invited professor Wesley to discuss what it might be and what the what he calls the UCP's creeping authoritarianism means for Alberta and for Canada, so welcome to the interview, Jerry.

Jared: 01:21

Thanks for having me.

Markham: 01:23

I don't know where to go with this because on the one hand, we you call it creeping authoritarianism. That's not something that we've had in Canada for a long time, and it's very scary. We only have to look to the our southern neighbors in the US to see just how scary. And yet at the same time, I keep hearing particularly from those in the conservative camp, you know, why are we worried? Don't stick those labels on them.

Markham: 01:56

This is just another form of conservatism. Is I I would take it from your article in the tie, in which you argue very clearly that that Smith and her crew are authoritarian, that you don't agree with that. This is not a the run of the mill or another iteration of modern conservatism.

Jared: 02:17

You you and I are talking to different conservatives. I have yet to meet a conservative. Honestly, I'm being I'm being dead serious. I have yet to meet a conservative either that being an academic or or political operatives that would label, you know, the the Smith United Conservative Party to be conservative. I I wrote a piece, in on my substack, where I I've said, effectively, they they've jumped the shark when it comes to their most recent pieces of legislation in in terms of becoming even less conservative than they were before.

Jared: 02:51

Ken Mosenkull and I wrote a piece in the lead up to the last election a year ago and said, whatever you do, don't call them conservative. You can call put a bunch of different labels on them, but they're not they're not conservative. Conservatives are preservative. They respect institutions. They respect local democracy.

Jared: 03:07

They respect respect checks and balances. They if they are pushing for change, it's incremental change. It's cautious change. The UCP is is anything but that under under under, under Daniel Smith.

Markham: 03:22

Yeah. I would agree with that. I interviewed, professor Duane Brock from Mount Royal University last year. Might might have been about a year ago. And he called Danielle Smith radical, and we talked about how she had been radicalized because I remember Danielle Smith.

Markham: 03:39

You know, we covered her in the 2012 election, Alberta election, when she was leader of the Wild Rose party. And the closest thing I recall being, you know, radical was you'll remember the Lake of Fire controversy and then there was another related controversy where, one of her candidates who was a pastor, a evangelical Christian pastor, had made some fairly, inflammatory remarks in in a blog post, and it, you know, became quite a huge scandal, and she refused to censure him for it. And it'd be, you know, citing her freedom, you know, free speech proclivities and and and, libertarianism. This is miles away from that.

Jared: 04:26

Yeah. Well and and so using the term radical, I I did too. The opposite of radical is either conservative or mainstream. It's another way to think about it. Right?

Jared: 04:35

I mean, ideas and people are radical to the extent that most people don't see them as being in keeping with what I call political culture. Political culture are the things that we all accept are are reasonable to say, do, or think in politics. Right? Now one, I would argue a lazy measure, but one measure of political culture is public opinion. Public opinion is is to is to, weather as political culture is declined.

Jared: 05:01

Okay? Now does the u c is the UCP doing things, that are popular in in terms of public opinion? They're not. Right? So, you know, are are they are they, are they looking to change things?

Jared: 05:14

Does that make them radical? Yes. Are they looking to change them radically? Yes. Very, very deep changes to things like, Alberta's pension system, Alberta's policing system.

Jared: 05:25

Right? Those measures and others are massively unpopular. And those 2, in particular, only 1 in 5 Albertans support those measures, and yet they continue to plow forward with them. Though so that makes it neither conservative nor mainstream in their approach, and what I try to do in our most recent work is to ask why. Why are they pursuing these issues when they're neither conservative nor mainstream?

Markham: 05:50

The reason I brought up Trish Roberts Miller's work, is because she really, delves into the dangerous part of authoritarianism. And she started, of course, talking about Trump and, and, the MAGA movement in, in the United States, But doing unpopular things, having a a radical, agenda, all of those things, you know, those don't seem too dangerous. But then we get to David Parker and take back Alberta, who is arguably as I've joked about, maybe, you know, only half joking on on, Twitter, I I've called him Alberta's Rasput because, you know, his organization, which is deeply religious, evangelical Christian, and, deposed, premier Jason Kenney in 2022 by controlling half of the UCP's, board seats, but now holds a his group holds a 100% of those those board seats. And he is he doesn't hide his authoritarianism. He is not shy, and I'll, for my listeners who may not especially those who are not familiar with this guy, let me read a recent tweet of his from 2 days ago where he talks about how his group is organizing to take over school board elections.

Markham: 07:17

And I'm quoting from him from his tweet. Just wait till we control the school boards, then you won't be at war with the government. You will be at war with the citizens of Alberta. They are not the kind of people you want to go to war with. And, of course, you know, he also pope post tweeted about, how many gun owners there were compared to people in the, you know, soldiers in the military and and and, police officers in Canada implying that the gun owners would overwhelm the, forces of authority.

Markham: 07:49

This is stuff that I that's the stuff I worry about and and his influence on her.

Jared: 07:56

Yeah. And and, you know, I I I was really slow to come to the to the term authoritarian to refer to, folks in in take back Alberta and and, and especially the UCP government. But they don't throw terms around this like this around lightly. And a lot of people push back and go, but this is this is politics as usual. People use war like metaphors all the time.

Jared: 08:20

Well, first of all, they don't, and they definitely don't use specifics the way that David Parker does. But secondly, people say, well, you know, all parties and all politicians and political activists look to consolidate power. Again, I don't disagree with that. Where it becomes really troublesome is on two fronts. 1st, this is no longer about consolidating power within the premier's office.

Jared: 08:41

This is about quelching all dissent. This is about doing away with institutions that are arms length from government making making either decisions that are supposed to be removed from political implications. These are, watchdog positions like ethics commissioners and elections commissioners. They're supposed to be above the partisan phrase so that the legislature can hold the government to account through those independent officers. Right?

Jared: 09:08

And that to me is where we start to cross that line, move further down the spectrum towards authoritarianism as opposed to, you know, politics as usual. But but getting back to the rhetoric, I mean, people say, oh, he just he's just spouting off. He doesn't have that many followers on Twitter. He does actually. It's surprisingly how few people actually follow him there.

Jared: 09:27

He has a broader following on other channels that people don't tune into. Right? We do know that he does have power. He does have the ear of of the premium. The rhetoric starts to really, make a difference when people see it as being part of normal politics.

Jared: 09:40

Right? And our our Viewpoint Alberta surveys are starting to show that people are looking, a lot less positively about people that they disagree with politically. So we asked this one question on a survey, a couple of rounds ago. I think it was last year. How comfortable would you be if somebody from the opposite political party moved in next door to you?

Jared: 10:05

Right? How comfortable would you be if somebody from the other political party, you know, was friends with your kids' friends. Right? What about if they married into your family? Right?

Jared: 10:19

And this is based on it's called the social distance scale. Right? It's borrowed from from sociology in United States. It was used to measure how comfortable white folks were with black folks moving into their neighborhoods and intermingling and assimilating, so on. Right?

Jared: 10:30

Integrate integrating, not assimilating. And for the first time, you know, in in in in history in the in the United States in around 2010, people started to be more distrustful of the other political party than they did of the other race. And this was, you know, the the the beginning, you know, the rise of the Tea Party, the beginning of what we've labeled factionalism or tribalism in in American politics. According to our surveys, Alberta is about where they were in 2010 to 2014. Because at present, only 14% 14% of new Democrats in Alberta would be comfortable having united conservative as a friend.

Jared: 11:10

As a friend. I'm talking married into a family. I'm talking as a friend. And United Conservatives are only slightly more more accepting of having a new Democrat as a friend about 17%. So, you know, we can dismiss David Parker and and people like David as being, outlandish and their rhetoric doesn't have an impact.

Jared: 11:33

It starts to add up. As soon as we start to see it become part of normal politics, we start to divide ourselves into these different political traps, and we lock ourselves into, into these these warring factions. Right? And I'm even using the term warring factions. But what that does, and this relates back to the point of authoritarianism, it means that you overlook all types of sins that are committed by your side.

Jared: 11:57

Because you will say, well, what about that? They would be far worse. Or when they were in office, they did the same thing. Right? Or I much rather have this even though I I know that, if the shoe were on the other foot, I would disagree, but I need to defeat the other side.

Jared: 12:11

I need to own the other side. And that's why we have excuses for authoritarianism, and that's why the United Conservative Party has been taken.

Markham: 12:22

The the this is why I'm really interested in Robert Miller's work, and that is there is a tendency for the the authoritarians to eventually advocate. Let me get the the title of her, because I think this is get really gets at what she says. So the the blog post that I've been reading lately is titled authoritarian libertarianism and the freedom to do what I say. And this is the the thing that the the freedom movement, which is very supportive of the UCP in in in Alberta and the CPC generally in in Canada, talks about freedom a lot. Freedom from vaccines, freedom from mask mandates, freedom from the carbon tax, freedom from this, freedom from that, but they're very, very happy to use the power of the state to impose their views on the rest of us.

Markham: 13:22

And it's that ability that willingness to use that power, that authority, to to impose their cockeyed view of the world, that's one of the things I worry about, And I see it on the rise in Alberta.

Jared: 13:40

Yeah. And the the question is, is it just Alberta or is it elsewhere? It I mean, I've I've been focusing solely on Alberta for the last 4 years. So I I can't tell you whether this is more widespread, but it certainly seems to be the epicenter here. And there may be two reasons why.

Jared: 13:53

There may be two reasons why. 1st, we have to remember that a 2 party system is really something new for Albert. They're not used to it. Right? It wasn't till 2015 that we had anybody that wasn't a nominal conservative, in power, and that was a shocking moment, for the province.

Jared: 14:10

And since then, we've settled into pretty even 2 party competition. That's something new. And for a lot of people that have been around politics in this province, you're you're used to running things as if you would never be in opposition again. And I think that part of what the UCP is doing is saying that we're establishing these rules, removing the power of, you know, quote, unquote progressive city councils in Edmonton and Calgary because we we don't think that the shoe's ever gonna be on the other foot. Right?

Jared: 14:37

So they often dismiss that. You're like, would you really want Rachel Motley or Naveen Nenshi or whoever wins the NDP race? Would you really want them to have the power to toss out, you know, town council and Hannah? They'll they'll just dismiss and go, that'll never happen. Because they're still in locked in this mindset that they will be in power forever.

Jared: 14:54

Right? But other provinces, BC, Manitoba, we don't see this much that that much kind of polarization and authoritarianism because they've settled into this realization that every 8 to 10 years, the shoe's gonna be on the other foot. And we're actually gonna have to be in opposition. So we should probably treat our opponents, you know, as adversaries to be defeated at the election, at election time and not, you know, enemies to be vanquished entirely because eventually, the shoe will be on another foot. The other thing too though is that, that long period of conservative rule in Alberta has has made everybody think that there is a majority of Albertans that are represented by the take back Alberta folks.

Jared: 15:34

Right? That, you know, that the UCP represents a rural majority, and this is actually a myth that Albertans have bought into. We have an exercise in our focus groups where we ask people a simple question. Your listeners can do it. Clear your mind.

Jared: 15:47

K. Now I want you to picture an Albertan. If you're like 80% of our participants, you're drawing somebody that is a cowboy, a farmer, a rig worker, a middle aged, white, blue collar man. That that does not exist in in in reality, in statistics, in census, in polling. The conservatism is is part of this ethos, and I think people are still used to thinking that's the way we do things here.

Jared: 16:13

Right? And so there's a this disjunction between who Albertans actually are and who they think they are, and that's driving this this this drive towards authoritarianism too.

Markham: 16:23

But but that that may be conservatives, and but there is a strong and I don't know what percentage it would be. You do, your polling probably gives you a much better idea than I would have. But, here on Vancouver Island, we live on the sort of in the central part of the island, and north of us is Port Alberni, which is a forestry community, so it'd be more rural and and blue collar. And they had an axe the tax group there that was right on the edge of violence, in fact, through an axe through the plate glass window of the MP's office, and, I heard him talk one time, and he he was saying that the that axe attacks group was absolutely dominating politics. It it for weeks on end, they were bombarding his office with emails, and and they would show up at places that he would go, and they would have, you know, these angry yelling kind of events.

Markham: 17:19

You'll you'll protest again, all in the guise of of of acts the carbon tax. And we see right now, if I I I as if I remember correctly, the the same group in Alberta is camped out in a in a ditch somewhere and has been for a month on one of the big highways. It was on highway 1 south of Calgary, for 3 weeks.

Jared: 17:41

And Well, 3 spots. 3 spots. There's just 3 camps. Yeah.

Markham: 17:45

And let's not forget, you know, the the group, the the convoy movement occupied Ottawa for 3 weeks, and we had to use the emergency powers act to get the rid of them. And and there were I mean, on and on and on. There was the the group in, the the 4, defendants from Coutts who blockade it were part of the blockade at the border there, but had rifles and and were planning to do something violent. This is not politics as usual, Jerry. Okay.

Markham: 18:11

Jared. This is not and and we're drifting further and further, and it's becoming more and more common. That's my perception. What does the data say?

Jared: 18:20

Well, it it it becomes part of the normal to the extent that we accept it, and we don't speak up and say it's wrong. Right? So you and I are having this conversation. Your listeners are probably and then maybe some contrarians that tune in to listen to you. I hate listening.

Jared: 18:34

Is that what they say? But but but most of us recognize this is a problem. But it's not it's not until everybody stands up and and says that it is that we start to push it out of our out of our normal political discourse. So, you know, I've got I did a paper that was commissioned by the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa following the the the protests in, in occupation of downtown Ottawa. People can go to my website and read that that paper.

Jared: 18:59

But what I think would surprise, a lot of people is just how un, unsupported and unpopular the convoy movement was in Alberta. Right? So we ask people on a scale of 0 to 10, how much do you support the, convoy or the sorry. The protesters who shut down the border at Coos. So this was the most most extreme part of that.

Jared: 19:22

The average response on a scale of 0 to 10 in Alberta was 2.4. Right? Black lives matter protesters were 5.5 on that same scale. But to the extent that you're smiling and to the extent that some of your listeners are going, that doesn't make sense. That's the political mentality.

Jared: 19:42

Right? That's the political culture that's conditioned us to think that, you know what? Maybe it is okay that there are a bunch of folks on the QE 2 here in in between Edmonton and and Red Deer that are flying the Canadian flag upside down. You know, I'm acceptable of that. I'm not gonna stop and tell them to to put the flag up the right way because I think that most Albertans think that's acceptable.

Jared: 20:04

And to the extent that they continue to do this and get away with it, the more it becomes part of our political norm. The more we start to see on the campaign trail people throwing gravel at politicians. Right? The more we see in the House of Commons people using outlandish language to describe their opponents. Again, the the line for me and our our team is working on a toolkit that will help citizens walk through this.

Jared: 20:26

The line for me is when you start to feel like you're treating your opponents as enemies that have no place and they're not legitimate actors in the political system, and not treating them as somebody that you can defeat or even compromise with on political policy. You're falling into that trap yourself. Right? And I think, we're caught in a polarized environment that is forgiving of a lot of these sins, and it's as a result, we're getting a normalized sense this is okay.

Markham: 20:52

I I I resemble that remark. Mhmm. And I say that because I came to that conclusion, during the occupation 2 years ago, where I am I I am quite prepared to say that the extremists in the convoy movement, the freedom movement, the acts the tax movement are not legitimate. And and now not conservatives. You know, I'm I'm of an age where I've voted for for some conservatives, on economic policy issues.

Markham: 21:27

I have, almost hesitant to say, I've had conservatives as friends. You know, but the that's not the problem. It's these it's the extremists who see appear to be getting louder, more, there's more of them. They're getting bolder, and they're being, harnessed by some of the, you know, folks in government, like, I would argue Smith and the UCP, and then take that back. Alberta is part of that.

Markham: 21:59

That's what worries me.

Jared: 22:01

The line the the the line though, Marco, for me is, are they squelching dissent? Are they making it harder for people to disagree with them? Right? So I'll give you one example that's flown completely under the radar with all the hullabaloo around bill 20 here in Alberta. Bill 20, which gives the provincial government the ability to call, referendums to replace, counselors and even overturn bylaws that are passed by democratically elected local officials.

Jared: 22:24

People are are upset about those two issues. But something that flew under the radar here is the introduction of voter ID. Right? They're trying to do away with vouching, at at at at local election, stations before everybody come in with with voter ID, right, with, with some form of identification that our estimates suggest anywhere between 1050,000 Albertans don't have. And those folks are gonna be disenfranchised by this law.

Jared: 22:49

Why why are they doing that? Well, they're doing that because they don't they want, the government, to pick voters as opposed to allowing voters to pick governments. Right? And they don't care if the issue is ever on the other foot. They they they're giving themselves these kinds of power and and getting rid of these pluralistic institutions that are not just consolidating power in in their hands, but doing away with people that disagree with them entirely.

Jared: 23:12

They're gonna step in and try to, you know, infringe on academic freedom. Premier has made it clear that she wants to vet my grant applications to the federal government for crying out loud and tell me what I can and can't study. Right? We can disagree with somebody on a policy, on a policy level, but the second that they try to, you know, do away with people that, and try to marginalize people that disagree with them, that's the problem that we need to call out, and that's when we start to need need to start labeling it for what it is. It's author it's authoritarity.

Jared: 23:42

Right?

Markham: 23:43

I wanna I wanna, raise an issue which I of which I have some personal, experience even though it's it was early in my life. During my twenties, my ill ill, begotten twenties, in the 19 eighties, I attended evangelical churches in in Saskatchewan, and the seeds were being sown then. There was focus on the family moral majority. There were a variety of American media personalities and and, you know, these TV preachers and so on that were they were radicalizing my peers, folks in their twenties who were starting families, coming out of university, getting their careers going, and, and they responded very positively to that. And many of the messages, the authoritarian messages I hear today are echoes of the messages I heard 30, 40 years ago.

Markham: 24:41

And I and, of course, David Parker is, as he often says, is the son of a a preacher, was homeschooled and is part of that whole southern Alberta, central Alberta, evangelical culture. And I did I have spent enough time since 2000 in Alberta, lived in Calgary for 10 or 11 years, and I met enough of those people. The social conservatives in Alberta have been organizing for a long long time. They're ripe for this. They've been they've been in the process of being radicalized, not for years, but for decades.

Markham: 25:18

What role has that as religion and least my perception of evangelical Christian radicalism, dominionism, and so on? What role does that play in this?

Jared: 25:31

A a a pretty big role. I would say though in in discussing with people that that dine with, members of the Smith cabinet on a regular basis, Even the most, staunchly socially conservative religious conservative cabinet ministers have had enough. They're using words like dangerous and crazy to describe the premier, and her inner circle. So let's not paint all all of evangelicals and and and social and some of them are Catholic. Right?

Jared: 25:57

Religious folks with the same with the same brush. But here's the thing. Historically, in this province, Alberta Conservatives have been held together, by a hatred of Ottawa. Right? And it's very easy to do that when the Liberals are in office in Ottawa, particularly if they if they're led by the poster boy for the Laurentian elite, Justin Trudeau.

Jared: 26:22

It's very easy. And as a result, a lot of people within the conservative fact the conservative, movement here in Alberta, some of them are who aren't conservative, who aren't socially conservative, but they're libertarian, fiscal conservative, and so on. They're held together by that common enemy. The question becomes, what happens when when Polya wins the next election, fact that he probably will. So within a year, that movement's now gotta gotta find another common enemy, or they're gonna turn on each other just like they did during the Stellmack, Redford, Prentice period.

Jared: 26:54

A lot of people forget the Stellmack, Redford, Prentice period, turmoil, splintering of the movement into 2 parties happened when the Harper Conservatives were in government in Ottawa. And it's because nobody could blame the ills of the province on Ottawa because it's one of our guys there. Right? But they also were not held together anymore by animosity, and they started to turn on each other. So to the extent that this movement encounters similar problem once Polyed is in office, we could start to see people challenging that religious conservative dominance that exists on the UC people work.

Markham: 27:28

What about at the federal level? Because, the conservative party of Canada, is led by, Pierre Polievre. And, as you say, the if the polls hold, he'll be prime minister sometime next year. And he is very fond of he courts these authoritarian folks, when they they were occupying Ottawa 2 years ago. He was down there giving them coffee and donuts and saying nice things about them, and he, regularly invokes them.

Markham: 28:00

And, frankly, he's got a bunch of them in his caucus, Many of them from of those from from Alberta. So I've heard people, you know, fellow journalists say, oh, well, he's just tacking that direction because he needs their vote, but he'll tack back towards the middle, you know, once he he's, he once he wins and and becomes, prime minister, he you know, just like they all do. I don't see it that way. I I think he's a different duck, and he is more in the Smith mold, and apparently, they're great friends. But what's your take on that?

Jared: 28:37

Haven't haven't heard that, and they certainly haven't, done so publicly. Just your your listeners and you after can go and look for for photos of the 2 of them on stage together. Last time I checked, there were 2 or 3. 1 was a stampede. 1 was an annex attacks rally a few months ago.

Jared: 28:55

I know that their people don't talk very often.

Markham: 28:57

Ah, okay.

Jared: 28:59

And I and I also think that, you know, the the litmus test for me was was how he reacted to the the announcement that Alberta was trying to withdraw from the Alberta or from the Canada Pension Plan. And it did take the Polyov camp long to respond and say no. We we support Alberta staying in the Canada Pension Plan. And within a couple of days, all of a sudden, all of the momentum went out of that push for for an Alberta pension plan, and the premier Sheldon. Right?

Jared: 29:26

And they they stop their consultations and so on. So, I'm I'm not sold on on the fact that he's gonna attack in in the direction of Alberta conservatism. I I don't think he feels all necessarily comfortable in the same circles that she does. I think he does court, the the freedom convoy and acts the tax folks, in a similar way, but I don't think he travels in the same circles as David Parker, for example. I don't think David Parker and the folks that are, TBA adjacent are necessarily enamored with him either.

Jared: 29:58

So I think we we tend to think of the conservative movement as one giant, family. It's not. And as I said before, once the Polyol government is in power in in Ottawa, which seems likely at this point, we're gonna see just, how how well that family holds together.

Markham: 30:15

I read your Tyee piece as a you have you're very concerned about this, the creeping authoritarianism in Alberta. But in the course of this conversation, I get the feeling that while this is concerning, it probably will blow over. That this is a phase of Alberta politics, maybe a phase of Canadian politics, that will get through somehow, will muddle through. It's a Canadian way. And am I am I reading that correctly?

Markham: 30:51

So which which which Jared Wesley, should I be He's not. On the one the one that's maybe not so worried or the one that's that is very worried.

Jared: 31:01

Yeah. So I'm more optimistic than I was when I wrote the piece, and that's only because the reaction to the piece has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm I'm getting emails from folks from across the political spectrum. I had a person who was a lead organizer at the Coots blockade email me, and 2 seconds later, an email from a lead official within the Nenshi campaign, both of them saying, thank you for saying what you're saying. We're scared about the authoritarianism too.

Jared: 31:24

So to know that we're opening up space to have these conversations to say this is not normal and we need to do something about it is really encouraging. I am still worried because we're not talking about voter ID, for example. We're not talking about how issues on our campuses here in Alberta with this with the squelching of of a peaceful protest, how that fits into the broader narratives that we're talking about here. We're not connecting those dots. And and my concern is that people don't really tune into this stuff until election time.

Jared: 31:53

And by then, a bunch of laws have already been passed, which make it harder for us to dissent at that point. That's the thing about authoritarianism. It it it'll go in in you won't you won't wake up overnight in a totalitarian regime, and we don't live in a totalitarian Putin esque regime in Alberta. That's not what I'm saying at all. But the more we accept these the the squelching of dissent and the destruction of pluralistic institutions, the harder it is for us to reverse it.

Jared: 32:22

And that's what that's what keeps me up at night.

Markham: 32:25

I I have a a a hypothesis. Let me run it past you and see what you think. Buddy was in grad school, and the listeners can now go go and get a coffee because I I tell this story all the time on this podcast, and they've heard it god knows how many times. But 4 years ago, I was in grad school, and I was working on, the my title of my thesis was the transition from horses and steam to power farming in Saskatchewan 1900 to 1911. The the point here is the 19 twenties, Incredibly disruptive period.

Markham: 33:00

You began to see tractors and farm you know, cars and trucks displace horses, and there was this really intense debate amongst in the rural population about what mechanization would mean for rural Saskatchewan 10 years down the road, 25 years down the road, 50. They essentially, they anticipated a rural depopulation. They understood that the bigger and more the bigger the tractor and the combine got, the fewer families you needed around and workers you needed around to to run the farm. And and so the dis the that disruption, that intense disruption on an economic level, on a technological level, bubbled up into the politics. I think I don't know.

Markham: 33:47

I couldn't tell you. I'm not the political scientist you are, so I couldn't tell you exactly how and to what degree it was responsible for, you know, Alberta some of the the CCF movement in Saskatchewan and social credit in Alberta, but it certainly played a role. And now here we are in, the next big energy transition a century later, and we're now, I would argue, in the 20 twenties, is the it we're again facing disruption. Alberta is likely to be, in my opinion, because it's it's so, focused on oil and gas, the most disrupted of all Canadian provinces as we electrify, as we shift over to to clean energy sources. Well, in your opinion, what role might that kind of economic and technological disruption play in the drift towards authoritarianism?

Jared: 34:43

Well, it it it creates a scenario not unlike what we saw in Quebec during the quiet revolution, in the 19 sixties, not unlike what we saw in in Newfoundland with the with the, you know, the failure of the cod fishery. It creates, a a scenario where that that symbolic person that I talked to you about before, that who do you picture when you picture an Albert? You tend to picture somebody who is a farmer, a cowboy, or an oil worker. All of whom have fallen upon hard times for a variety of different reasons, economic, environmental, political, and so on. They feel, as individuals, like they're falling behind.

Jared: 35:21

And because they're emblematic of the, of the the entire population, everyone has a collective sense of malaise and unease and anxiety. Right? And what we see during those periods is, 2 groups, and they're very small groups in society, 2 groups that that emerge. 1 are are ones that wanna preserve the role of that traditional image, of that traditional person in society, and make Alberta great again the way that we see make Albert make America great again, resonate in coal country and the Rust Belt. And in the UK, the, you know, the exit Exeter's.

Jared: 35:58

Right? The the Brexit folks would seize on the industrial heartland and and what that represented. They wanna make their their their their communities great again based on that image. Small group of people just happen to be in government. Right?

Jared: 36:11

Then there's another group of people, again, a small group that want to erase or cancel that view of ourselves as a collect collectivity. Right? They wanna tear down statues. They want to, talk about remaking the the world in a new image. Right?

Jared: 36:26

But the vast majority of Albert's, just like the vast majority of Americans and people in the UK, fall in the middle. They respect what Joe Alberton has brought, to our to us historically, contemporaneously, and into the future. They recognize a future for oil and gas, but they also wanna see themselves reflected and new ways of thinking reflected. And that's where we sit right now. It's very uneasy.

Jared: 36:48

So we have a group of people that wanna make Alberta great again. They're willing to use any authority that they can get to consolidate and and and squelch descent in order to remake Alberta in that image. I'd like to talk about the arc of history that that is probably a losing fight, but we're in it right now. Right? And I think it's time for that radical middle to stand up and say, we don't like either of these options.

Jared: 37:11

We just wanna move forward.

Markham: 37:13

The I I I I'm gonna take Godwin's caution about, you know, bringing the Nazis and Hitler into the conversation. So with that huge caveat, nevertheless, it kind of feels a little bit like 19 thirties Germany, where the rest you know, the middle class Germans are sitting around watching these crazy brown shirts run around and cause chaos, and they're watching the big rallies and so on, not knowing what to do. And it doesn't take 50% of the population to affect, you know, egregious change. And it at the risk at the risk again of of violating that Godwin's law, Is that of an an apt comparison?

Jared: 38:03

So let let let's we can remove the the Nazi word from the equation, but we can talk about what what Chomsky's talked about, what Carl Schmidt talked about, at the time. And and this this notion that, in times of heightened inequality and and social anxiety, there are 2 paths we can follow. We can either address in a real and meaningful way that inequality and that anxiety through policy change that will result in social leveling, or we can, clamp down on democracy.

Markham: 38:38

Gotcha.

Jared: 38:39

UCP has chosen its lane.

Markham: 38:42

Okay.

Jared: 38:43

And Albertans have gotta choose whether they wanna stay in that lane or not.

Markham: 38:47

So the, the UCP has chosen its lane, and the and I have to say, as a former Albertan, and somebody goes back there all the time, I'm I'm in I'm in the, in fact, I'm claiming dual citizenship these days, BC and Alberta, because I'm in Alberta so often, doing reporting and so on. But Alberta is a very progressive place. Calgary is a very progressive place. It's a very cosmopolitan place is what it is, And, and and much of it is like that. I've been all over the province, and, it's one of my favorite places.

Markham: 39:23

So if the UCP has chosen its, its path with creeping authoritarianism, and the bulk of Albertans need to stand up and say, that's unacceptable and we wanna go in a different direction, and they don't have an election for another 3, three and a half years. Is there somebody are is the groups on the other side who are standing up and well, I guess you'd be one of them, but people who are articulating another vision, who are articulating dissent and are saying, look. This is not consistent with our political values. And there, you know, there's another future out here where we have a different kind of political culture and we that rejects authoritarian and embraces all of the traditional Canadian and Alberta political values that we that we value. Is where is that movement?

Jared: 40:18

They're out there. They're they're emailing me. As I told you before, never had any kind of reaction to a piece like that piece that I had in in the, in terms of volume and in terms of sentiment. So they're out there. People are calling their MLAs again.

Jared: 40:31

Like, I I I'm a I'm a Tory in in that sense. I'm a conservative, and I and I say that our representative democracy is based on the notion that governments only stand as long as MLAs let them. And MLAs had pushed back to a descent on bill 20. We saw some backtracking on bill 20 as a result of that. But Jason Kenny fell because MLA's, threatened him and and and ultimately ended up ended up, with the membership toppling him.

Jared: 40:56

So, I mean, Albertans do have have a voice. They don't have to wait until the next provincial election. The the the the UCP has made it clear that they view the municipal elections as a referendum on on their own government. So Albertans should show up and and either say they endorse it or they don't like this path. So So there there are there are many options between now and then.

Markham: 41:15

Let's wrap it up this way, Jared. I don't I don't know if this is an appropriate way to do it or a useful way to do it. But on a scale of 1 to 10, how worried should Albertans be about this creeping authoritarianism, and how worried should Canadians be? I mean, after all, Alberta is part of Canada and has an outsized effect on Canadian politics, I would argue. But so what do you say?

Jared: 41:44

Area 1 to 10? 6. And I say 6, because, I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet. And and that that's where a lot of us are are in the spot. Like, when when do you speak up?

Jared: 41:57

It do you wait until the next election when you all people are tuned in or not, I say, 6? Rest of Canada, you should be worried too. Because if, if politicians in Alberta get away with this, it becomes part of the normal here. It will become part of the normal out elsewhere. And and quite frankly, what we're seeing in Alberta is anything new than what we've seen in red states in the United States.

Jared: 42:16

Right? The the premiers on record is saying that she idolizes Kristi Noem and and Ron DeSantis, and just about every piece in the UCP playbook is drawn from there. It's not drawn from anywhere.

Markham: 42:28

Well, okay. So I'm gonna be optimistic about this and say, well, it's only a 6. There's still there's still hope. We're not we're not at 10 yet.

Jared: 42:37

I'm leaving room I'm leaving room for more pessimism later. I don't think this is going in the right direction, and Albertans have gotta stand up and say something.

Markham: 42:46

Okay. Well, that's the end of my optimism then. Jared, thank you very much. You've been very insightful. I really appreciate your, opinions on this, and, I'll give you the last word.

Jared: 42:58

Yeah. For Albertans that are listening in, talk to your neighbors, because what what what's going on now is is a a false sense of social reality. This is politics is normal. Conservatives have a sense that, that they they should remain silent because their team happens to be in, but progressives are remaining silent because they don't think their views are in the mainstream. Moderates, who are by far the biggest group in Alberta, are caught in the middle.

Jared: 43:23

But we don't have to be caught in the middle on this issue. You either like democracy or you don't. And this government is clearly pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable to them.

Markham: 43:33

Jared Wesley, thank you very much. We'll have you back in the very near future because this is an issue that I think we need to keep our our finger on the pulse.

Jared: 43:41

Hopefully, I'll have, better news next time.