Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Jason Kenney owes us $2000
64 Plays4 years ago
The UCP government tried to stop us from reporting on their no-good, very bad 2020 budget. They called us an advocacy organization and tried to keep us out of the media lockup. But we didn't back down, we took the government to court and won and now Jason Kenney owes us $2000. We talk with Heidi Besuijen, Progress Alberta's lawyer, about the case and Jim and Duncan break down the worst parts of the 2020 budget.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Legal Background
00:00:15
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to the Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskuchiwa, Skigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, here in Treaty 6 territory. Today, Jim and I are going to dissect this awful, no-good, very bad budget from the UCP.
00:00:31
Speaker
And we also have a very special guest, lawyer Heidi Besian. This was our lawyer who helped us crush the government in court and win access to the budget lockup so that we could actually be having this very robust conversation that we're gonna be having about the budget today. Heidi is an amazing lawyer. We were very lucky to have her, but it really is a fun story, how we were able to win this injunction against the government in order to attend the 2020 budget media lockup.
00:00:59
Speaker
after the government initially tried to stop us from being there. Stay tuned for that. I also just have to say over the top that sorry for taking so much time to get out a progress report after the last one. Jim has had a bad case of bronchitis and has gone the whole week that I was dealing with this lawyer bullshit. Jim was essentially on bed rest. The first wealth is health, man.
00:01:22
Speaker
No, I don't begrudge you. I mean, not that I was forcing you to come in, but you do not have coronavirus. You are, in fact, 100% healthy. I kind of wish it was corona. We're all just going to get corona in a couple of weeks. I mean, for you to have bronchitis and then like three weeks later to get coronavirus would be extremely inconvenient for you, I think.
00:01:39
Speaker
Well, so it goes. So it goes. But Jim is on the mend and back today in studio to not only be our sound engineer and editor, but also to give some budget analysis.
Legal Challenge Against Media Lockup Denial
00:01:51
Speaker
He had a really incredible version or episode. What do we want to call it? Report of the progress report, which kind of dealt in, which got into the details of the budget as well. So I'm very lucky to have him here to talk to it about us with us. And, uh, but yeah, before we get to that, let's get to our interview with Heidi Visayan.
00:02:09
Speaker
Heidi Bassayan, welcome to the Progress Report. It's so nice to have you on. Thank you. So I just want to thank you off the top for helping us crush the government in court and getting us access to the media lockup. I'm very appreciative. You're most welcome. I was extremely impressed by how you handled yourself in the courtroom. And I think it's worthwhile to give a bit of context up until the point that kind of you got involved so that our audience kind of knows what the hell it is I'm talking about.
00:02:38
Speaker
I had applied to be in the media lockup for the 2019 budget and went through no problems, whatever. I get the same email from the same kind of media list that I'm a part of saying, hey, if you want to be in the media budget lockup, you've got to apply by this date. So I go, okay, well, I had such a fun time at the last one. I mean, I didn't, but I think it's important to do this work. I apply for the 2020 media budget lockup.
00:03:03
Speaker
And on the Monday of the budget, the budget drops on Thursday, on the Monday of the budget, in the afternoon I learn that Progress Alberta will not be allowed to attend. And the reason is a very short and curt email, and you can kind of read it. We'll attach all the affidavits in the show notes.
00:03:20
Speaker
But it just says, nope, you will not be able to attend. We've looked into your organization. Your organization is considered an advocacy organization. The media budget lockup is for media only. Go away. And I freaked out. I saw this. I was like, no, man. This is a question. The government doesn't get to decide who is and isn't media, who does get to cover them, and who doesn't. And at that point, I called up David Sutherland, who is a friend. He works out of BC. He's a media lawyer who works in BC.
00:03:49
Speaker
He ended up drawing up a demand letter. That demand letter was ignored by the government, and then he ended up connecting me to you, Heidi. Yes. And Dave Sutherland, I mean, I think you had a bit of a conversation with him over the course of this. He's quite a character. Yes, he is, yeah. I feel very privileged to know him. He's like, from what I understand, he's the like libel and defamation guy for Black Press, for like the entire media organization of the Black Press. And he does almost all, any defamation case that happens in BC, he's usually there.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I don't personally have a relationship with Dave, but I know that the firm has a long-standing relationship because of the media work that we do, so I enjoy chatting with him, but I can't say that I know much else about him. Yeah, he's awesome. So this is the line in the email is this. It says, your organization has been reviewed and determined to be an advocacy organization. As such, your request for media accreditation has been denied. The media embargo is for members of the media only.
00:04:43
Speaker
So then you get drawn into this case
Procedural Fairness and Media Criteria
00:04:47
Speaker
hiding. Why is this case important? I think there's two aspects of the case that are important. The first aspect is the issue of freedom of speech. And freedom of speech isn't a usable right if there's no free access to information. And so that's sort of the focus when you're relating to media.
00:05:07
Speaker
Uh, and the second aspect of it is the issue of procedural fairness. And, um, I can tell you that many law school students fall asleep during their administrative law courses, but, um, administrative law is a very, very big area of law and administrative law really deals with, uh, decision makers that are not judges, but they're making really important decisions about people. So if you think of any of those tribunals or boards or things like that, this in this case was an administrative decision.
00:05:35
Speaker
This was a government agency passing judgment on something. On something. So denying access to a privilege or providing a benefit, any of these sorts of things. And the way that area of law has developed is to give guarantees of procedural fairness. They sort of reflect
00:05:52
Speaker
procedural rights that you see in the criminal process, they're not, they're not saying, but I think that you can draw an analogy there, that for example, you should have an ability to know who's making the decision, that they're unbiased, the decision is based on what information, what are they taking in? What are they considering?
00:06:07
Speaker
you should have the opportunity to be able to have input on how that is done. So these are all aspects of procedural fairness and that sort of ultimately where this decision was made.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, so you're in the courtroom, you're leading off the proceedings. I mean, I was next to you while this was happening, I was kind of furiously scribbling notes. And you led off, and yeah, the two arguments you led with were the constitutional free speech, free expression argument. And I just got to say, all the lawyers just say free speech instead of free expression, even though free expression is the language in the charter, it's just free speech.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know where we get that from but just sort of the default American I believe probably Okay, so and you're you're making your arguments you lead off with the constitutional argument the free speech the high-minded ideals of access to information freedom of the press freedom of expression
00:07:02
Speaker
And the judge is like, I don't know. I kind of got a bit of a skeptical eye from him on that stuff. I think he was bored. Could have been bored. But then you turn to the procedural fairness argument and it seemed to hinge on the fact that there was no actual criteria that was publicly available or publicly known or posted about what the hell a media organization is versus what an advocacy organization is, right?
00:07:25
Speaker
That's right. I don't know if you want me to talk about the
Court's Consideration of Media vs Advocacy
00:07:29
Speaker
issue of procedural fairness. Well, not necessarily the issue of procedural fairness, but the idea that this body, this Treasury Board and Finance Communications Department gets to decide who is media and who isn't based on no
00:07:42
Speaker
actual criteria that are known to me. I mean, that was that was a very important part of it, right? That was I think the issue is the opacity of the process. So you're someone that's making an application, the application submissions, correct me if I'm wrong, Duncan, that all that you really provided was the media outlets name, as well as the representative, which would have been you, not much else. And then you come back and you have a decision that says, well, we reviewed and made a determination.
00:08:10
Speaker
that you're an advocacy organization, there's difficulty with that because you didn't present them with anything. So we don't know what they reviewed. We didn't have the ability or you didn't have the ability to address concerns that they had with regard to that. Perhaps they may not even have been looking at the right part of your website. They weren't. And like when you look at the affidavits, they were looking at the Progress Alberta website. And the website for the Progress Report, which is the podcast in the newsletter, is theprogressreport.ca. That URL was not in their affidavits.
00:08:37
Speaker
Right. So the issue with procedural fairness there is that you didn't have an opportunity to be engaged in the decision that's going to be affecting you. And that is is quite problematic. And the question of like, what is a media org? What is an advocacy org? I mean, the judge seemed to get hung up on the fact that like, it's very possible for an organization to do both at one time, and it's not necessarily mutually exclusive. And when you I think the thing the argument you made in this case was that, you know, we brought up
00:09:05
Speaker
Grand in Media, the media organization that the Catholic Archdiocese runs, you brought up the Toronto Star, which is an organization that at its core has the Atkinson Principles, which are kind of fundamentally associated with social justice and kind of standing up for the poor and oppressed. When you look at our affidavit, you can see that the line between media and advocacy is not one that is written in stone that isn't clear necessarily in law.
00:09:33
Speaker
No, and I think that something to recognize is that all media and all politics, so media involving in politics, I think it's necessarily along the spectrum, the political spectrum, and that doesn't necessarily make you less media or more media based on where your position is on that spectrum.
00:09:51
Speaker
I thought that the Justice himself, Justice Belzell referred to the New York Times. He said he was an avid Times reader. And he said, you know, even reading the Times, we know that the New York Times has its place on the spectrum. And it certainly isn't with Donald Trump. And that was sort of the example that he gave as, I think, the high watermark of media. And even in that publication, there's a clear element of advocacy in its broadest sense.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, when Justice Belzel brought up the fact that he read the New York Times every day and was a big media buff, I definitely was like, yes. That was, I think, a very good sign early on that this is someone who pays attention to media and cares about media and would view our arguments in a way that wasn't just necessarily
00:10:36
Speaker
I don't know how he would have approached it otherwise if he was a different type of person, but I definitely think that it helped. The other thing that we brought up in our affidavit is the federal court's decision to allow the rebel into the federal leaders debate just for the last federal election. Why did we include that in our affidavit as part of our arguments?
00:10:53
Speaker
I don't think we included in the affidavit but as we we did refer to it and had provided it in advance to both the court and council. That decision related to the federal debates which occurred in October I probably should have brought it with me but in the broad strokes True North which is another media organization and the rebel were
00:11:14
Speaker
of I think 80 some media organizations that had applied to be in a special access prior or during the debate had been of all of those organizations excluded. And that case I think was very, very helpful for us because it did follow the same sort of analysis that we wanted to follow, which makes life easier. We can talk about the element of the fact that it was an injunction in a minute and the timeliness there.
00:11:41
Speaker
having a decision that showed the roadmap of consideration of both the issue of freedom of expression and procedural fairness made it a really nice case to be able to rely on. Yeah, it was I don't think it came up a ton in chambers like during our argument. But I mean, it was useful to like buttress the underlying argument, right?
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the reason it didn't become a point of discussion per se in the actual argument was because everyone was aware, everyone had read it, everyone was aware of it. We knew that Justice Belzel had read it ahead of time because it had been submitted to him ahead of time.
Court's Ruling and Legal Costs
00:12:21
Speaker
We knew that counsel had been aware of it. So I think just laying the groundwork there, reference was made to it, but we didn't need to belabor the point.
00:12:30
Speaker
Fair enough and and it was funny that the rebel that we that we put this rebel are this argument in favor of the rebel and in our arguments because Funnily enough you were provided a list kind of prior to the the media lockup from the other government That's not necessarily a full list, but did not have the rebel on it. And then when I Was at the lockup that someone from the rebel was in attendance which struck me as
00:12:59
Speaker
uh kind of interesting and would have been perhaps relevant to our case uh i don't have any issue with the rebel being in the media lockup um you know i don't think i think if you want to spend if you want to burn a whole day going through budget documents as a media organization like fill your boots but uh but i thought that uh the rebel not being on the list but then being there was an interesting wrinkle so heidi what do you think the uh
00:13:27
Speaker
How would you summarize the arguments made by the government lawyers in this case? I think they did the best they could with what they had. They certainly did a good job of trying to distinguish freedom of expression from a right of the media. But the point that we were trying to make, I think, was a little bit different than the way they were attacking it. That's neither here nor there. In terms of the procedural fairness, they had very little that they were able to say about that.
00:13:56
Speaker
um and you know as a lawyer you get the facts that you get and you work with with what you have uh so i think what they were trying to say is is just downplay or minimize the issue of procedural fairness and really place the focus back on the fact that there was no right or interest that hadn't breached so maybe it wasn't such a big deal
00:14:15
Speaker
I think that they definitely had, going in, it wasn't positive that we would have the easier case to make, but it seemed to be that way as we went along. They were confronted early on by the justice with the issue of, with the justification that they had given, which is that media organizations have a vested interest in returning to budget embargoes in the future.
00:14:40
Speaker
or media lockup. The lockup. And that their assessment was that advocacy organizations didn't have a similar interest and therefore the sensitive material that media had access to might somehow be leaked or otherwise compromised. And for that reason, that was really what it came down to. And we were able to point out that you had participated in the 2019 lockup without instant, frankly,
00:15:09
Speaker
And we did make the point to believe in our affidavit that it was part of our interests or the interest of progress report to be able to attend future lockups because it did consider itself a media organization and that was a very important element of its ability to go in and provide its readership with its take on that.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, like, their argument, I mean, to kind of summarize their argument, they were like, don't let them in because they'll break the embargo because they're bad or because they're not media. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I think the judge saw through that argument pretty fast.
00:15:44
Speaker
Well, and I think that he had a pretty nice compromise, which was, you know, he said, you know, if, and he hadn't made his decision yet. So it was sort of just, we're playing with ideas here. If the injunction is given, then I, he has a justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, a justice of inherent jurisdiction in this country, has the ability to find someone in contempt of a court order. And so what he just asked is that any, ultimately when the order was made,
00:16:13
Speaker
Uh, there was a specific, uh, provision within that order, which required the progress Alberta and its representative, which was you, uh, comply with all rules of the media embargo. And that was the way he dealt with it because of course, um, there are significant powers, um, behind a finding of contempt, uh, anywhere from finding all the way to imprisonment.
00:16:36
Speaker
his way of addressing that and his comments to in the courtroom were that he felt that progress report did have an interest and had expressed an interest it was that was on country digit in being in future media lockups and that it would be silly of you frankly I can't remember the exact word he used to temper each thought
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, he had never heard of us. He had never heard of the progress report. I hope he's on the list now. Like, Justice Belzel, go to theprogressreport.ca and sign up today. But one of the arguments he did make is that he didn't want the government to discriminate against smaller media orgs, right? The government lawyers were making the argument that because we weren't a breaking news outfit, that we should be excluded from the budget lockup.
00:17:26
Speaker
And the Justice replied, Justice Belzer replied, well, I mean, how they cover the news is up to them, right?
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that was an important point because that was in the context. He was pushing a little bit to say, well, if they're not media, what is media? What is your definition of media? Um, they weren't able to articulate that. They, um, suggested that one element of it, and I don't think they committed to it being a complete definition, but that one element of it would be that there was breaking news because they really had picked up on the fact that when progress report, uh,
00:18:00
Speaker
participated in the prior media lockups that they had not reported on it for three or four days or something like this and I think his point was an astute one and that's that progress report he says I don't know anything about the organization I assume they're relatively small
00:18:16
Speaker
They're not a CNN. They're not necessarily going to be providing breaking news at all times. But that's sort of beside the point. The point is that the readership of Progress Report have the right to be able to access that information through that media.
00:18:34
Speaker
So you made your arguments, the government lawyers made their arguments, there was a bit of back and forth. We're under a very tight time crunch. Like the hearing for this is literally the day before lockup. The judge kind of has to just make a decision on the fly. What did the judge end up deciding?
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah. So just as by way of background, what we were seeking was an injunction and an injunction is a fairly extraordinary remedy. And the injunction we were seeking was requiring the government to do something. So in that case, what we were looking for is called a mandatory injunction.
00:19:07
Speaker
because it mandates something be done and normally the test for an injunction is that you have to show that you have an arguable position essentially or an arguable case that there would be irreparable harm if there was no relief granted and that's irreparable harm is harm which can't be addressed by money
00:19:26
Speaker
and that the balance of convenience favours the granting of the injunction. But in this case, we had to be able to show that we had a strong prima facie case, that's the modified RJR McDonald test for an injunction. And the reason that's important is because ultimately, Justice Belzel made the determination that there was a strong prima facie case, that there was a misstep in terms of procedural fairness, that procedural fairness had not been afforded to progress report,
00:19:53
Speaker
that the process I mean it's my word but it was opaque that you hadn't had the participatory rights that I think you would normally expect in this sort of context and that we also relied a little bit on legitimate expectations which is a branch of the Baker test which is what we apply when we're talking about procedural fairness and
00:20:16
Speaker
We argued that there were other media outlets which had identifiable advocacy objectives and so progress report had a legitimate expectation that it would be treated the same as everybody else who had been put to consideration and that we felt that on the evidence presented that that had not been done.
00:20:33
Speaker
and so ultimately that's where he went and he said he thought that there were compelling arguments to be made with regard to the free expression but where you have that higher test you're always going to find that a justice will go I think the way that they can be most sure that the decision they can hang their hat on it and feel confident in that and the procedural fairness was the one where he made that decision on that day.
00:20:57
Speaker
See, this is why Heidi gets paid the big bucks, folks. If you need a lawyer, hire Heidi. So yeah, so we won. The judge decided to grant this mandatory injunction. We were allowed access to the budget lockup, and we were also awarded costs, which I was incredibly happy about. $2,000. That's relatively uncommon, isn't it?
00:21:16
Speaker
Um yeah so I think I was I felt ballsy asking for that much frankly um normally in an application I'd say a thousand would be sort of the top end but in the consideration of the time frame that we had to prepare the materials come to court do that I think that that's where Justice Belzeal thought that that was reasonable the government had suggested that perhaps parties should bear their own costs
00:21:42
Speaker
Um, but he disagreed with that. And I was pleased that he disagreed with that because they think that, um, in that type of situation where you have somebody dealing with a government actor, um, that it shouldn't always be that, uh, private parties have to bear the cost of, you know, the government has a team has, has 30 lawyers on staff that they can assign to this as, as needed. Right. Whereas I am a two person, tiny nonprofit organization fighting to get into a media lockup of all things.
00:22:10
Speaker
Well, in the normal course, costs follow
Progress Report's Role and Budget Impact
00:22:13
Speaker
the cause. So if you win, you are entitled to costs, absent, special reasons. So that's what they were trying to do. I mean, that's fair enough. I would make the same pitch if I was them. Of course, of course. And I always was struck by how collegial the environment was. I haven't spent a lot of time in court. And you're just referring to each other as my friend on the other side. It was very, very, very gentle and almost loving. It was very fun.
00:22:35
Speaker
It is, but if you're insulting another lawyer, you say, my learned friend. Unless they actually are a QC, because they are a learned friend. It's this subtle code. Good to know. Lawyer insults. I like it. So when the judgment, or when the payment comes in, that $2,000, whatever it is, if it's an email, if it's a check, I do want to copy that. I am going to frame it and put it on my wall, just so you know. Yeah, I think it will be a check. There we go.
00:22:59
Speaker
Well, Heidi, thank you so much for coming in and explaining what we did. I mean, the media wasn't there to cover it. So it is kind of incumbent upon us to cover ourselves, which is not always ideal. But I think in this case, there's really no other option. So I think this is an important case for press freedom in Alberta and across Canada. I'm very grateful that we had you as our lawyer. And thanks so much for coming in today. Yeah, you're most welcome. So, Jim, what's it like to officially be media now?
00:23:26
Speaker
I mean, I feel less dignified. I feel like a bit of a... Is it too edgy if I say subhuman? Yeah, journalists as subhuman. I mean, whatever. It's your podcast. I mean, it's our podcast. You could say what you want. I feel like a bit of a lib. Journalists are... I mean, I get where you're coming from. Like we make fun of journalists all the time and kind of justifiably so.
00:23:51
Speaker
But I think it was an important decision. I know you were laying low for the whole week with bronchitis, but personally speaking, it was a thrill to go up against the government and win and get costs and to have that official imprimatur from a judge saying, yeah, you guys might be an advocacy organization, but you're also a media organization.
00:24:12
Speaker
I think that's worth something. I mean, everybody contributes their own specific competency to the movement. And if this is what we're good at, then this is what we're good at. Exactly, right. And I think this is a bit of a moment for us. It is an opportunity to consider whether we want to do more media work. And not that I want this episode to be a navel gazing reflection on what progress the progress report should become or what progress should become.
00:24:37
Speaker
But I'd want to know what you think, folks. Do you think we should do more media and journalism work? I definitely think that there are legislative concerns that are definitely forcing our hand on this. The Kennedy government might make it illegal or impossible for unions to donate to us to do of a, quote unquote, political work. And we're already a media organization, as a judge.
00:25:00
Speaker
So it might make sense for us to do this transition. And if that's something that you think we should follow up on, I do want to hear from you. And I think Alberta does need independent media sources. I think they does need a media watchdog, which is some of the work that we do. What do you think, Jim? I mean, we got to have a little more going on in this province than just Alberta Advantage Pod and a couple of op-ed writers down in Medicine Hat.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Okay, so let's get on to this budget. I mean, it was incredible to crush the government in court and to get costs.
00:25:38
Speaker
and to get access to the media locker. But then that meant that I actually had to go and spend the day locked in a room full of journalists and a 300-page budget document full of conservative ideology. And it is enough to make you sad, like a whole day of doing that. Well, sad is one word for it. But I think angry is another word for it. I'm pretty angry, and I wasn't even in the room. Drive back to just a few months ago when you had
00:26:07
Speaker
A lot of labor reps and civil society groups pointing to the McKinnon report and pointing to things that the government or the UCP were saying about how they want our spending levels to be in line with BCs and so on and so on, which is like a 20% cut across the board. You had a lot of people who were paying attention, warning everyone that deep, deep cuts were on the way. Kenny and his surrogates
00:26:34
Speaker
get up in response and are like, no, no, hey, hey there, bud. Kind, gentle, compassionate conservatism. Yeah, that's a little alarmist of you. I think we're just gonna do surgical cuts, surgical cuts. We're gonna surgically cut your arm off. Like, yeah, lobotomize the province. They said 2.8% was the number that they were heading towards.
00:26:56
Speaker
And I think the evidence has borne out, we're into their second budget now, that the cuts that are coming are a lot more than 2.8%. A lot more, like about five times more. Even Rick Bell was reporting, sorry, folks, I just did scare quotes around reporting there. You can't see it, but I did it. Rick Bell was saying that this budget cuts per capita
00:27:21
Speaker
Public spending by 14.8%. Let's just round that up to 15. Yeah, let's call it 15. 15 is fucking unreal. In a budget of $50, $60 billion or whatever, right? This is a lot of money. This is a bootlicker bell we're talking about here, too, right? You can be sure that 15% is the UCP's most charitable estimate. It's got to be pretty bad. By the way, you're obligated to call Rick Bell a bootlicker bell from now on, just so you know a little bit to your audience.
00:27:48
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mean, it was pretty hilarious to see this prosecuted in the pages of the fucking Calgary son by Rick Bell and Kenny calling him out on Twitter saying, Oh, it's not a 15% cut. It's a 3% cut or whatever. And it's like, you know, when you've lost Rick Bell, like, um, you know, you know, you've lost, but.
00:28:06
Speaker
The specifics of this budget are painful and in shitty, and I think it's incumbent upon us to go into a bit of the details of this austerity. That's part of the value that I think we provide, is doing this roundup and getting into the details. The first sector of the Alberta economy, civil society that I think we need to talk about because they're getting it the worst and the first and the fastest
00:28:28
Speaker
is post-secondary education. They really ate it this week and like immediately to Nate and Sate both announced massive layoffs immediately the moment the budget dropped. It's like over 200 staff at each institution. Yeah the total is like more than 450 in total layoffs combined at Sate and Nate and the universities of Alberta and Calgary were
00:28:50
Speaker
were following, they were mentioning those stories as well, but they just didn't have specific numbers. Yeah, worth noting, too, that they just appointed McKinnon herself to the Board of Governors at the U of A, like, she will be wielding the cleaver. Yeah, they didn't ever thought of that. That's a good image. But yes, pretty hilarious to have
00:29:09
Speaker
or her kind of give this whole government the cover it needed to cut everything and then go to the U of A and do more damage. Doesn't she live in Saskatchewan? I imagine. Like you have somebody who doesn't even live in the province making decisions about what goes on at the U of A. At any rate, good gig if you can get it. But for all of this, I mean, the reason why I want to come back to Satan and Nate though is that those are our two biggest trade schools in this province, right? Journeymen and tradespeople go there to get certified.
00:29:33
Speaker
and to get more education, to advance in their career. And Jason Kenney has spent so much time in his time as Premier, like virtue signaling about how the trades are great and how we need to build up the trades. And what does he do? He goes out and cuts the legs out from underneath the trades by cutting the colleges that actually certify tradespeople. Like when Jason Kenney says something, I mean, clearly don't believe him, but when he says anything about trades, make sure to bring up the fact that seed and nade are getting cut to the bone.
00:30:02
Speaker
Um, the other thing that I think is worth bringing up is, uh, this is an old conservative classic here. This is a cutting the maintenance budget for affordable housing. I mean, conservatives hate a lot of, a lot of people, a lot of things, but they really fucking hate buildings, old buildings. I mean, this, this was, uh, the same thing that happened to the maintenance budget of Alberta's universities and colleges. Again, to like the U of A and the U of C both have
00:30:30
Speaker
old buildings, big old buildings that need to be taken care of or else they fall down. But the details on this cut to the repairs for affordable housing was this. They slashed $53 million over the next three years for affordable housing maintenance. That means that these affordable housing developments are just going to be crumbling around to the people that live in them.
00:30:53
Speaker
You've got city councilors in Calgary right now warning that a bunch of their affordable housing stock is just going to, they're going to have to close it. They're going to have to demolish it, which is pretty, pretty wild. Well, this is the thing. This is what happens when conservatives, for the sake of making the money happy,
00:31:12
Speaker
uh you know cut maintenance budgets right like under Klein we had this infrastructure deficit under Kenny we're getting the same thing now when you don't invest in keeping your infrastructure operable you just end up having to knock it down and build a new in the future it gets more more and more expensive it's a cost that just compounds
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, what's the stupid phrase? Pennywise pound foolish or whatever, right? It is the definition of mismanagement to not invest in your existing capital stock, your existing infrastructure, and instead save $53 million in this fucking provincial budget is how much, right?
00:31:45
Speaker
It's a top in the bucket. It's a what it was a one 1.5 war rooms It is one and a half war rooms now that you mention it one of the paste pieces that I think we have to highlight is this Calgary Herald headline on this matter that says province says cutting funds for repairs to affordable housing was Difficult clover was so hard just don't fucking do it
00:32:06
Speaker
Exactly. It wasn't very difficult for you to pass a giant corporate tax cut or to give $120 million to the war roof. The other thing that I think is worthwhile since we are talking, we kind of missed it on the post-secondary thing, but I just want to bring it up now, but student loan interest. Also, if you're a student- Yeah, I'm really enjoying that one personally. If you're a student in Alberta with a student loan, your interest rate jumps from prime to prime plus one for no other reason, again, to make the money happy.
00:32:34
Speaker
And Jim has a student loan. That's why he's salty about this, by the way. I think another big thing to bring up is education funding. Specifically, one of the things off the top that we want to talk about is program unit funding. And that is kind of the extremely anodyne, boring acronym. But what is program unit funding and why does it matter that it's being cut, Jim?
00:32:55
Speaker
Okay, so program unit funding is additional funding that school boards are supposed to get per student that they have there with special needs of some sort. And so they apply for it per student.
Budget Cuts and Public Services
00:33:11
Speaker
And one of the main things that it's supposed to accomplish is making sure that these kids don't have to be like segregated out into special classrooms that they can stay on track with the other students.
00:33:24
Speaker
Really, really, really bad outcomes for kids who get streamed away from the rest of the population and isolated. It's not great for the other kids either who don't get to encounter folks with different needs. They have basically chopped an entire year off of it, so the school boards no longer get it for kindergarten students. Which is when the intervention
00:33:48
Speaker
Investing in those kid matters the most when they're the youngest, right? Like if they don't get into grade one with the other students They may get stuck in a different stream for their entire K to 12 Experience experience. Yeah, which is not good. It's not good. I gotta say I
00:34:08
Speaker
a little cavalier of this government to cut this funding. It didn't work out too well for Ford in Ontario when he went after funding for Kids with Autism. These are families who are usually pretty stressed out dealing with this stuff, who don't have a lot of patience for bureaucrats coming in and fucking around with their kids' education. They're definitely very motivated activists. Yeah, no shit. And I think you're right in that making an enemy of them
00:34:38
Speaker
is uh... as a bad decision from this from this government but i mean they're making enemies all over the place um... i mean further to the education budget to uh... one of the things that keeps getting brought up is uh... that they're not cutting you know they're this is a kinder gentler more compassionate conservatism and while the budget may be flat we're not cutting things skin is just a flat-out fucking lie they're massaging the numbers and they're spinning their fucking spinning really fucking hard
00:35:04
Speaker
and obfuscating how they're doing it. But one of the ways that funding is being cut to education is they've said, oh, we're raising money for funding and education. It's being raised by $100 million. Yeah, spending. Education spending is up by $100 million. But guess where the money is coming from? It's not coming from the fucking government. It's not coming from the fucking government.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's coming from own generated revenue, which is revenue from reserve funds, but it's also from things like vending machines, gym rentals, bake sales. I mean, they have increased spending by $100 million by going to the school boards and saying, spend $100 million more.
00:35:45
Speaker
but not giving them $100 million more to spend, which is like it's effectively a cut of $100 million. You're demanding $100 million out of a school board that they have to come up with somehow. Very impressive, very impressive that they have been able to spin an actual cut as an investment.
00:36:04
Speaker
It's also worth pointing out that the budget for private school funding is remaining unchanged and going up. Even the POF funding, they get to keep the POF funding for three years. Oh, really? They got renewed for three years for private schools only. Oh, fuck. That's really depressing. It is indicative of this government that is
00:36:26
Speaker
views our education system as an ideological tool to wield against their enemies and to inculcate our youth with their ideas and ideology.
00:36:40
Speaker
One of the other things that was in this budget that I haven't seen a ton of media coverage on, but is the thing that the government did with AISH, so the government moved the dates around for when people who are on AISH, assured income for the severely handicapped, that is the people who need money to live and they get that money from the government, the kind of definition of welfare.
00:37:02
Speaker
Uh, the dates that they received their money were moved around and there was no real good explanation at the time of why that was done. But we've, we found out why in the budget. It's in the budget. It's in the budget docs. Uh, this is really fucked up. Like some people are having absolute nightmare weeks right now. Uh, not only.
00:37:22
Speaker
Is there some lag time if you're dealing with services or case workers who need to get that check and then get it to the various people that you need to pay money to? But the first fell on a weekend this month, so things were delayed by a couple days there too. I don't know if you, Duncan, have ever been
00:37:47
Speaker
in the miserable position of having some like pre-scheduled payments bounce around in your empty bank account and you rack up a bunch of NSF fees. But when you're trying to make do with like three or four hundred dollars in a month because you are actually like poor and living in poverty, it is fucking hell. I've been in that spot before. It's bad. I feel really terrible for the folks that they're doing this.
00:38:16
Speaker
who are now like eating late fees and NSF's and service fees. And these are the poorest folks among us. Yeah, these are people who do not have like extra money hidden under the mattress. They're unable to work. That's why they're receiving this money. Yes. And this is all done to save 63 whole fucking million dollars. Well, okay, I got two things to say about that. First of all, when you are saving, I did scare quotes again, folks, when you are saving money on people's age benefits,
00:38:46
Speaker
You are you are paying fewer benefits to people who are severely handicapped like that's not Saving money you are screwing over the poor, but I think the more important thing here is that There was actually no like material change in how much was being spent They just by delaying the checks for a week. They push next month's April's age over the like the
00:39:24
Speaker
one year's budget and into the next year's budget. So all it does is it makes the deficit for one year look $63 million smaller by pushing it into the next year. No functional change to the system. And the cost for this was to just absolutely fuck hundreds and hundreds of Alberta's most vulnerable, financially precarious people.
00:39:36
Speaker
the deadline for the next fiscal year.
00:39:47
Speaker
All to make the money just a tiny little bit happier, right?
Healthcare Changes and Public Reaction
00:39:52
Speaker
Okay, that one that one sucks too, but don't worry. There's more there's more that sucks This Jason Kenny and the UCP are getting a lot of heat over this right now from kind of you know I would say kind of middle-class folks who like to use a parks and are outdoorsy But the government is talking about privatizing closing or selling off
00:40:10
Speaker
A whole whack of parks. People are really angry. Here we go. Here's the line, closing or partially closing 20 provincial park spaces and selling off 164 others to be managed by third parties, be they private corporations, municipalities, or First Nations.
00:40:27
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, this, this is all being done for a grand total of $5 million in savings or, I don't know, like a sixth of a war room. Uh, worth pointing out too, that because Alberta is all treaty territory, um, crown land in Alberta that has been set aside for parks, it does not belong to the government to sell off.
00:40:55
Speaker
Or to be given a way to be managed by someone else either, right? I mean parks are a bit of the like, you know, the original sin of colonialism, right? Like we set aside, you know, white people and then the colonial governments set aside places that indigenous people couldn't practice their traditional lives and livelihoods on so that, you know, white people could go and like ski or hike or fish or whatever, right?
00:41:18
Speaker
The whole situation is messed up. And for $5 million, it's nothing. It's one-sixth of a war room.
00:41:30
Speaker
people who would otherwise not be activated by politics getting extremely angry about this. Again, just this government making enemies and not seeming to give a shit. The next thing I think is worth bringing up is it's related to the budget. I mean, there wasn't necessarily an item in the budget specifically, but we would be remiss not to talk about it. And that is the doctor drama.
00:41:54
Speaker
kind of prior to the budget being passed, the government terminated the contract with doctors and instead are just proceeding ahead by writing up the contract and giving it to them. They're legislating instead of negotiating. And I can understand why government would be concerned about doctor compensation. It is a massive chunk of money. It is a 5.4 billion dollars a year of government
00:42:20
Speaker
money goes to pay doctors. But the way that they have gone about it has seemed to piss off every doctor in the province. Well there's a lot of really misleading comms coming out of the government about this. A lot of statements about how Alberta doctors make tons and tons more than doctors in other provinces. We have in Alberta an interesting kind of like
00:42:49
Speaker
hybridized, pseudo-privatized kind of model that a lot of doctors are working under, where the government gives them a sum of money to operate their clinic. Per thing that they do, per fee, per checkup that you get or whatever. This money is not all directly going to doctor's salaries, first of all.
00:43:13
Speaker
It is not like every doctor in the province is making $250,000 a year or something. They have to take that money and parcel it out to pay for the operations of their clinic. Pay for their staff and pay for the rent and pay for their capital equipment, blah, blah, blah. I mean, if you want to break it down and get into kind of the details of the system, a lot of it, a lot of the disagreement has come down to how they handle these things called complex modifiers. So when you go in and you see your doctor after your visit is done,
00:43:43
Speaker
The doctor or their admin person fills out a little form that says, I saw this patient and they would get a parcel of money for that. But if they had to see you for a longer period of time, or if they had to spend more resources on you for some reason, like say you came in there with coronavirus and they had to really suss it out and it took them a while, then they would tick off some boxes on the form and they would get some additional money for that.
00:44:11
Speaker
And part of the part of this deal that's being forced on them now is to remove their ability to charge for a lot of those or to build a government for a lot of those complex modifiers, which really just like it incentivizes them to push you out the door to spend only 15 minutes on you and then get you the hell out of there. Uh, which I don't think is a great situation for us to be in when there is like a worldwide, uh, epidemic on the way.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yes, coronavirus. I've heard of it. Yeah. And I also don't think it's a good idea to be actively pushing doctors out of the fucking province when coronavirus looms over. You know, it's just a question of not if, but when it arrives here and what it does to the province of Alberta. I was already talking about replacing them with temporary foreign workers. Like, how did that work out when we ran or sorry, when Klein ran all of the nurses out of the province and then they all had to be replaced? Did that save any fucking money?
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, there's a whole cohort, a whole generation of nurses and doctors who did leave when it was bad under Klein. And this government seems hell-bent on giving us, doing the same thing and repeating history. But it is encouraging to see doctors push back. I mean, under the Tories, the Alberta Medical Association and the doctors were kind of reliable Tory supporters. And when you look at the kind of class interests, it kind of made sense. But doctors are pissed.
00:45:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I think they learned under the NDP administration that the conservative political machine did not have to be their only friends in the province.
00:45:56
Speaker
I wouldn't say excessively generous, but like a nice deal with the Alberta Medical Association. When they were in office, doctors seemed pretty pleased with it. And now they know that they don't have to just lick the health minister's boots, that there are other potential benefactors out there and other potential political forces who will stand up for them.
00:46:17
Speaker
Yeah, and rural clinics are closing, you know, doctors are leaving, you know, even Alicia Corbella and Don Braid, like two of the most like establishment like UCP friendly voices in post media are calling for the government to reverse course on this. There was one other pleasant incident in this conflict too, which was Health Minister Tyler Shandrow
00:46:38
Speaker
falling for a Twitter troll account named Doctor Here For You. Doctor Here For You, baby. Which, my impression is that Doctor Here For You is the Twitter account of a doctor somewhere in the province who does not want to identify themselves by their actual name. But he did report him to the College of Physicians and
Economic Assumptions and Risks
00:46:57
Speaker
Surgeons. Yeah, Tyler thought this was a real guy.
00:47:00
Speaker
Does he, does he think that there is a Dr. Edward Nigma there somewhere? He literally wanted to talk to the manager of doctors about this, this, this doctor account on Twitter. It was, it was, I mean, Tyler Chandra is as dumb as a bag of hair, but it is nice to get confirmation every once in a while that these people are incompetent. Um, finally, I think it's worth getting into the kind of like revenue assumptions that this government is making, like the kind of the real meat of the budget, right? Like how much money is coming in? How much money is going out?
00:47:31
Speaker
And again, our government in the province of Alberta is going to be extremely dependent on the price of oil being high or pain is coming.
00:47:41
Speaker
Even before you get into the possibility of the corona epidemic depressing world energy prices, which I don't know- It's already happening. I guess it might. I don't know oil stuff that much, but Tom, your favorite- Trevor Tom, yeah. Your favorite Twitter economist, Trevor Tom, was talking last week about the oil price assumptions.
00:48:07
Speaker
The budget is overestimating the price of oil by like $12, $15 a barrel. It's a big, big gap. That money is not coming in. There are very, very rosy projections on what the price of oil will do that just don't bear to reality, even if coronavirus wasn't happening, which it is.
00:48:25
Speaker
I don't want to spare too much breath on deficits. Deficits are made up and bullshit. And if you care about deficits, stop. But the deficit is going to be much, much larger than estimated in this budget. Much, much larger than any of the NDP deficits.
00:48:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm with you about not talking about deficits. I mean, we could get rid of the deficit tomorrow. We just have to tax people appropriately, tax the rich, tax corporations. But if you do care about deficits, yes, don't, but the deficit is going up and it's going to go up by much more than what's in this budget.
00:48:55
Speaker
There's also very, very rosy projections on corporate and personal income tax. I think this is really just a case of either the high level admin, high level kind of like civil servants huffing their own farts or whether they really do believe this, whether they really do believe in trickle down economics, but like, they really do believe that their corporate income tax will magically make economic activity in Alberta increase. And it is, it's still incredible to me that like people with degrees and giant staffs and
00:49:26
Speaker
Presumably, who would presumably know better are just like, yes, this is corporate income tax, we'll stimulate the economy and all of these things will happen and corporate income tax and personal income tax will grow by this much over the next few years. It's like, God. You showed me one page right at the end of the budget that I thought was really bizarre.
00:49:43
Speaker
Just like a one page report on how awesome the wealthy are and how much of our taxes they pay. Yes, and it's entire page. It's page 179 of the budget. Who pays Alberta's personal taxes? Here, I'm just going to flop this on the table for you to read, but it's a pretty incredible thing that the government spent time crunching the data.
00:50:08
Speaker
Figure out just how grateful the pores should be for how much the rich pay in taxes. Honestly, it's not an incredible fact that people who make more money pay more in taxes. That's how progressive income taxes work. Alberta also has incredible levels of inequality. We just have a high density of rich people here, which again is bad.
00:50:28
Speaker
But you've seen anything on that page that jumps out at you? I mean, I'm seeing numbers that are still too fucking low is what I'm seeing. If you have millions and millions of dollars sitting around, pay more taxes. Just fucking soak these guys, man.
00:50:43
Speaker
Yeah. In the budget lockup, reporter Jason Marksoff with McLean's asked Minister Taves about this and he's like, this seems rather strange. I've never seen this in a budget before. And Minister Taves was just like, oh yeah, it's just there for information.
00:50:59
Speaker
Well, you know what it's getting ahead of is the obvious rejoinder from anyone who looks at this budget and the giant hole in it and all of the service cuts and asks, well, I mean, if we're so short of money, why don't we raise taxes a little bit?
00:51:16
Speaker
And if we're going to raise taxes a little bit, why don't we raise it on the people who actually have money to pay taxes? And so they've put this kind of like pre-cooked counter argument in here, like, oh, well, I don't know, the rich really, they shoulder the burden quite a bit already. The poorest should really be already extremely grateful for how much the rich pay in taxes and increasing the tax burden even more would be untenable, right? That's my UCP assumption anyways.
00:51:43
Speaker
The other thing coming out of this is assumptions about bitumen royalty revenue. And bitumen royalty revenue is like the money that the province gets from all of the oil sands developments that are in this province. And the government is making an assumption that revenue will be low next year, but in the final two years of the government, boy howdy, in 2021 and 2022, there will be a lot of bitumen royalty revenue coming in. And that's because pipelines,
00:52:11
Speaker
All of the pipelines will be up line three, Transmount and Keystone XL. And when all those pipelines are up, the mana will rain from heaven and all of our fiscal problems will be solved. And the one, I mean, I just don't think all of those pipelines are gonna get built on time or on schedule or even some of them might not ever open. And despite, you know, conservatives and people wishing them to be constructed,
00:52:36
Speaker
But like those assumptions that all those pipelines are going to come online at the time that they say is built into these bitumen royalty assumptions. And like it's it's there's there again, extremely rosy, extremely hopeful, extremely optimistic projections on
00:52:54
Speaker
just how much money is going to be coming in? Well, for those of us living in the real world, extremely nightmarish when you think about what's going to happen in those last two years, right? Kenny is going to want to go into the next election with as close to a balanced budget as he can cobble together. You know, that's a very important part of his brand. And so if all of this money is not actually going to be there,
00:53:19
Speaker
like think of the severity of the cuts that are going to have to happen in year three, year four of this government to get that budget to balance.
Activism and Civic Engagement
00:53:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's a terrible thing to contemplate. The bad news hasn't really hit us yet.
00:53:36
Speaker
Yeah, things could get a lot worse before they get better There's another hilarious section in this budget called the fair deal for Alberta section. It's a whole like 12 13 14 pages. There's a we exit chapter It's the we exit chapter. It's it's a laundering like proto separatist Talking points through the budget and I know the budgets are a political and ideological documents But it's it is still incredible to me how willing Jason Kenney is to
00:54:06
Speaker
to entertain separatism. I think he's playing with dangerous, dangerous forces there that he cannot necessarily control. And the kind of final thing I want to close on is just how much Jason Kenney is fucking over the civil service. And if you are a worker with the Alberta government, you should be concerned. The UCP plans to reduce total compensation for Alberta's public sector.
00:54:29
Speaker
by 3% in 2019. And when you kind of adjust for inflation over the next three years, you're looking at a 9% cut based on what the government is saying in this document. And remember, that could get worse. And it most likely is going to get worse because their assumptions are wrong.
00:54:49
Speaker
And, you know, the full-time equivalents that they're planning to get rid of, like just people who directly work for government, are more than 1,400. But again, we're already up to 460 just from SAIT and NAIT. And I don't really trust the government to report these numbers accurately, considering just how much work they've gone into framing themselves as the jobs government, the jobs party. It's not a good look when you're just firing government workers left, right, and center, even though you hate them and you want to crush public sector unions.
00:55:17
Speaker
I do want to point out that if you are a member of the civil service or the public service and you are not pleased with Jason Kenny's plan to strap you to the wheel from Conan where you walk in circles while he whips you to death over 10 to 20 years, please send us your leaks about shitty things the UCP is doing to our secure inbox at progressalberta at protonmail.com. Your identity will be protected and we will get them for you.
00:55:47
Speaker
I think that leads us to the end of our budget talk. In conclusion, this budget sucks ass. It's built on two foundational assumptions, both of which are incorrect. The UCP is betting that corporate income tax cuts will magically stimulate the economy.
00:56:06
Speaker
And they also think that oil prices are going to magically increase somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And those two assumptions are baked into this budget, and it's already a shitty budget. So things, again, are only going to get worse before they get better. And it's incumbent upon us to organize and to fight for the things that we believe in and fight for the values that we share.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:56:29
Speaker
And when I got out of the budget, and I had written a story, and it's good, you should go read it. It's called the trash can of conservative ideology in the Alberta 2020 budget. When I got out of the budget, I saw the very beginnings of people starting to show up just to participate in a rally at the legislature.
00:56:51
Speaker
And I walked all the way from the federal building all the way to our office here in downtown Edmonton, and I walked by thousands of people. And the final count on that rally was 13,000 people. And I think that if it's going to get worse before it's getting better, it's incumbent upon us to do things like that, that the politics of the street are just as important as electoral politics, if not more important than electoral politics.
00:57:14
Speaker
And that the politics of the street are how we're actually going to force this government to react to us and to go and to change course and to be and to deal with us in a way where we win. And that's kind of my like final kind of closing hopeful remarks. I hope, I don't know if you have something as inspirational as that, Jim.
00:57:32
Speaker
Yes. Bullying, online bullying in my name, I would appreciate. Tag me in if you need help too. I'll do it. All right. All right. So, okay. Thanks so much. We did it. We did a podcast after a couple of weeks off. Jim, how can people follow you online? You can follow me on the Twitter at Jim Story. I look for the ketchup bottle. Ketchup man, Jim Story. And yeah, I am also on Twitter. You can reach me at Duncan Kinney and you can follow
00:58:02
Speaker
Progress Alberta at at progress Alberta If you like this podcast if you want to keep hearing more of these podcasts, there's a few simple things that you can do Sharing it is very helpful either sharing them to your social media channels or just sharing them directly to people being like hey I know you're worried about the budget or this this or maybe that that episode about how reconciliation is dead This is a really good episode on how Jason Kinney's
00:58:27
Speaker
Killing the killing reconciliation it we produce a lot of content and and one of we don't really have a marketing budget And so it does depend on people like you to not only read it and listen to it, but to also share it with the world One of the things you can do that really helps us us out is review this podcast on iTunes Leave a five-star review leave a short message about why this why you like this podcast we haven't had a review in a while and
00:58:50
Speaker
And it does really matter to the Apple Podcasts algorithm, both the frequency and the amount of good reviews you get. And also just letting people know that this is a good podcast that you like it. And the other way that you can really support this podcast is join the 250 other some folks.
00:59:09
Speaker
who keep this independent media project going. These are the people who donate every month. And if you want to donate every month, $5, $15, $25, whatever you can afford, we would be very, very grateful. And the easiest way to do that is go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card and contribute. We would really appreciate it.
00:59:29
Speaker
Also, if you need to get ahold of me via email, if you have anything that you think I need to hear about, you can reach me at dunkingk at progressalberta.ca. Don't email Jim. I have volunteered to take all that incoming email fire. And I think that's it for the podcast. Thank you so much to Cosmic Family Communists for the amazing theme. Thanks so much to Jim for being here. Thank you for listening and goodbye.
00:59:51
Speaker
Did you know that Progress Alberta is part of a national community of leftist podcasts on the Ricochet Podcast Network? You can find the Alberta Advantage, 49th Parahel, Kino Lefter, Well Reds, The Progress Report, Lefi Sales, Out of Left Field, and Unpacking the News, as well as a bunch of other awesome podcasts at Ricochet Media or wherever you download your podcasts.