Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1260. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Carter
0:10
Good evening. This is great having you do two shows in a row. Two in a row. Two in a row.
Carter
0:16
back. Subbing in Corey and Zain. This
Annalise
0:18
This is nice. Yeah. Yeah.
Annalise
0:20
We've reunited. How are you guys?
Carter
0:24
I didn't get to go bike riding because I broke my bike last weekend. We
Carter
0:28
haven't even talked about it.
Annalise
0:28
How did you break it, Carter?
Annalise
0:32
strength not crashing again no
Carter
0:35
no i i was pedaling too hard and i ripped the hub so
Carter
0:40
okay got it so power cory
Annalise
0:44
cory understands what all those words mean
Corey
0:47
can't hurt all those words independently i just you know i don't need
Carter
0:50
need a need a new drivetrain it's
Carter
0:52
it's going to cost a lot of money so i think we have to increase the patreon rates oh
Corey
0:55
oh good yeah okay do
Corey
0:57
you even know how to do that nope
Annalise
0:59
did post an episode though cory did you have to help
Corey
1:02
help you know i was floored i was floored it's there was no faults it actually went up with no errors whatsoever that
Carter
1:10
it's a new year like
Annalise
1:11
fifth try and you did it steven carter
Corey
1:14
carter you did it buddy i did
Carter
1:15
did there were no more mistakes to be made at
Corey
1:17
at least i had i
Carter
1:18
i had made them all and i was like i don't have any more mistakes and you know what the best part is every time i did it cory got more and more more angry so
Corey
1:27
so i was pretty sure it was a bit by the end of the last one it seemed like you were doing
Annalise
1:31
doing it on purpose it
Carter
1:33
it might and i'm not sure you just found a
Corey
1:36
fuck it up you found a new way to fuck it up every time no
Corey
1:38
i did and then you didn't and i don't
Carter
1:40
repeats you know you gotta go with a new way now
Annalise
1:43
now now he knows those very good so this watch out carter can post episodes all the time i'm
Corey
1:51
pretty replaceable now i mean i noticed he still didn't figure out how to use the twitter account no
Carter
1:55
no because the twitter account none of us have the password now because
Carter
1:58
because you have none of
Carter
2:00
us have been on
Corey
2:00
on it for ages yeah yeah
Carter
2:02
yeah i mean i i'm not on twitter and uh i mean it's just going to patreons anyways so who the fuck cares if yeah
Annalise
2:10
okay remember when we used to insist on
Carter
2:12
on it being called patrons instead of patreons and now we're over
Corey
2:15
over there we give up yeah
Corey
2:17
speaking of giving up are we gonna do this podcast or
Annalise
2:20
what speaking of of giving up welcome back annalise i thought you're gonna put like a patreon plug there well you went on and on about it but no okay
Annalise
2:28
okay guys let's uh let's jump into it let's start with our first segment our first segment a 5-2 decision big news on friday across the country the supreme court of canada ruled that much of the impact assessment act better known as bill 69 is unconstitutional. This is being framed as a big win for the provinces and a loss for the federal government's environmental goals. I want to kind of dive into it. I think Friday was an interesting day. I'm curious, I guess, to start off, if
Annalise
3:02
if you guys were surprised by the decision and surprised by the fact it was 5-2. Let's start there. And then there's lots of different threads we can pull apart. Corey?
Corey
3:10
So was I surprised? I wasn't after Stephen Carter Carter predicted this wouldn't happen, which basically assured that it would with 100% certainty.
Corey
3:19
But yeah, beyond that, I mean, it's interesting. I didn't really know what to expect. This is not, I'm not a lawyer. I know that the Alberta Court of Appeal had said this should happen and they use some very strong language. But frankly, they do that a lot on things that the Supreme Court then turns around and says, yeah, I don't think so. I mean, fundamentally, Fundamentally, as you go through the decision, it is rooted in a view of Canadian federalism that exists. It just seems to have been going out of style as it pertains to the environment, right? It's this idea that you've got these watertight
Corey
3:51
watertight compartments. These are areas of provincial jurisdiction or federal jurisdiction or areas of overlap. And in areas of overlap, a certain amount of cooperation is required and you can't just unilaterally make these sorts of decisions. So, you know, maybe we shouldn't have been surprised by it. I think that there were a lot of people saying they suspected that the federal government would be successful in court on net. They obviously were not. And I think we'll wait and we'll see how all the lawyers write this up and assess it and look at the various pieces and say, oh, this makes sense. Or, you know, I wouldn't have necessarily called that, but that work is still to be done. You know, we've
Corey
4:29
we've got the instant analysis, but not the deep analysis. And yeah, I mean, we'll see where it is from there. But the bottom line, and the most important part here is it is a very big win for provinces who are standing up against it. And it is a black eye for the federal government who, you know, largely treated the province, at least in a political sense, as though these arguments were ridiculous. Clearly not ridiculous as the Supreme Court has now weighed in.
Annalise
4:56
do you want to jump in on that? Like, is it, and we can get into kind of the response and the strategy, but absolutely big win, like huge win, historic win is how the provinces are framing it. There are others, there's legal experts and federal officials, obviously, that are saying premiers are exaggerating the impact of the ruling. Is this like as big of a deal as the provinces are saying it is, Carter?
Carter
5:19
Well, there's two ways to think of this, I suppose. One is in the legal context, and I'm going to defer to Corey's legal expertise in terms of the actual legal piece. Lawyer Corey. But
Carter
5:30
But in terms of the political impact, this is significant because there's been a lot of things that provinces have been fighting with the federal government about. And this just gives them a win. And in this win, they get the opportunity to kind of say, you know, this is a significant problem. problem and uh this you know this victory just shows us the overreach that the federal government has been pushing
Carter
5:55
pushing on us from the beginning right so they will if you're federal or you're a provincial politician you don't need to stop here and say well these are the these are the boundaries around this ruling instead you can you can push it all the way through and you can say well you know this is the same problem we've got with equalization or this is the same problem we've got with the pension plan this is the same problem we've got with other environmental regulations you know it's all overreach you know the carbon tax overreach overreach overreach overreach and this ruling gives them the the ability to say that now is
Carter
6:29
is it rooted in in legal reality no politics isn't rooted in legal reality so this is just another weapon that provincial premiers get to use against an increasingly unpopular federal government um that's
Carter
6:43
that's good politics so you know as much as it bothered me to see daniel smith you know running around and scott moe all so excited about this victory um because
Carter
6:55
because i i don't know i guess i'm turning into an environmentalist i'm scared shitless about where we are with the environment i think that more environmental protection is probably good, not less, but you know, whatever. Scott Moe and Danielle Smith seem to think that this is the future, continuing to rely on our resources. But I digress. This is going to be an excellent political opportunity for them. And I would imagine they will use it to the
Carter
7:25
the fullness, you know, as far as they can.
Corey
7:28
Well, this, I mean, this is one of those interesting realities that you've sort of stumbled into here steven which is yeah you might you might feel very strongly about the environment it
Corey
7:40
it might be the most pressing issue of the of the day um yeah the constitution doesn't give a fuck the constitution was written by a bunch of old white guys in 1867 it's been modified and it's been interpreted since then largely by other varying groups of old white guys but that's changing over the past several And it doesn't necessarily mean it's up to the task. I mean, we tend to venerate these documents and say, well, this is the proper reading of the Constitution, therefore this is proper. And maybe that's wrong, because maybe it doesn't afford us the tools to deal with today's challenges. challenges our constitution does offer an option for that and that's amendment and you know maybe that's something that in a in a kind of a a
Corey
8:22
a different country people would look at but obviously modifying the canadian constitution for a lot of reasons is very very challenging but
Corey
8:29
look i mean this is in some ways this is uh the canadian replay it's the canadian remake of an american tale right just
Corey
8:37
because the american courts determined that you have the right to own guns doesn't mean that it's not kind of societal
Corey
8:43
societal suicide to allow what's going on here
Corey
8:47
right just because the american courts say this is what the state's rights are doesn't mean that the state's rights are in any way serving the people of the united states these documents are just documents at the end of the day and i'm not sitting here saying oh my god the court was wrong tear it all down i'm just saying you know legal right and moral right are not always the same And that was
Corey
9:08
before this ruling, and that's true after this ruling. And now we just sort of have to pick up the pieces. And within the frameworks we have, we have to decide, do we change the frameworks, or do we attack moral right in different ways within these frameworks?
Carter
9:25
yeah i mean the problem with that is that the framework that's available for us to attack this is challenging right the primary framework that we have is the elections is elections right and we we continue to elect a lot of bad governments and they can be bad governments on a number of fronts but until such time as the economy is trumped by the environment um in terms of a primary election issue uh it's going to be near to impossible to imagine provincial politicians not using some sort of attack on federal politicians as a means to gain popularity. This is what they've done. It makes electoral sense. But just because it makes electoral sense doesn't mean that it's the most sensible thing to be doing in the long run. But totally understandable. Totally get why the provinces were ecstatic and the feds
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