SPEECH
Link Byfield, Senator-elect Candidate
Senate CampaignFundraiser
Wednesday, November 3, 2004

A lot of people have asked me in the last month why I’m doing this.

They say, “Why waste your time, you won’t get appointed.” And some have pointed out, “You won’t get paid to be a senator-in-waiting, you know.”

Well, as for the pay, I’m actually pretty busy with the Citizens Centre. To cover my out-of-pocket Senate election costs while I wait to be summoned, I think I’ll just write Paul Martin and ask him to give me Andre Ouellet’s Canada Post expense account, now that Andre doesn’t need it any more. A thousand dollars a day ought to cover it.

But what about this appointment business? The last two guys we elected -- Bert Brown and Ted Morton -- weren’t appointed. Chretien left them waiting six years, until their mandates lapsed under the Alberta Senate Election Act. So why go through it again? Some people ask this, even quite a few Albertans.

People outside Alberta never did get it. When you explain our Senate elections, you get “the look.” If you ever go to Ontario , you know the “look.” It’s the “I’m too timid to actually roll my eyes but I’d sure like to” expression they reserve for all things Albertan -- like cowboy hats and how we keep rats and Liberals out of our province -- things like that.

But when even Albertans start reacting to Senate elections the same way as Ontarians, it should tell us something.

It tells us that hope of reform -- federal reform -- is at a low ebb. This includes Senate reform. A properly functioning Senate has always been the missing keystone in Canadian federalism. We in the West have known it for a generation or more. And the fact that we have almost abandoned Senate reform shows how low our hopes have sunk in the last ten years -- in the decade since Dave Chatters and John Williams and over fifty other Reformers blasted into Ottawa on a wave of western populism in 1993.

The reason to choose new senators-elect is pretty simple. We want an elected Senate, and this is the only way we’re going to get one.

It’s worth remembering that the U.S. Senate was an appointed one too until states started electing them. For the first 125 years of its existence, the U.S. Senate was appointed by state legislatures. Scandals and cronyism caused some states to substitute direct election by the people, starting in Oregon in 1907. The idea caught on, and in 1913 the 17 th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution required all senators to be elected by the people.

If we in Alberta keep electing our own senate candidates, the day will come -- the political moment will arrive -- when it pays some Quebec or Ontario prime minister to swallow his pride and start appointing them. But if that time comes and there are no elected senators on hand to appoint, the moment will be lost, and a great opportunity will be lost with it.

No, I’m not holding my breath. The reality is -- the record is -- that Mulroney did appoint our first elected senator -- Stan Waters.

Then Chretien took over and he refused to appoint the next two.

Of course, Mulroney appointed General Waters not out of zeal for the reformation of Canadian governance. I never got the sense that Brian was any more interested in that than any other prime minister ever is. Prime Ministers are practical men who appreciate power. Mulroney needed a favour from Don Getty, and Getty’s price was the Waters appointment.

Bert and Ted never got appointed by Jean Chretien, because Chretien didn’t care whether he got anything from Alberta or not. He didn’t need our votes and he didn’t care a hoot about western alienation. His policy was to deny that any such thing existed. And he didn’t care about restoring Parliamentary democracy -- either the Senate or the Commons. He didn’t believe in democracy. The less democratic the better.

As for Martin, he may or may not appoint the winners of this election, but I wouldn’t rule it out. He’s in a minority situation, and I’d guess he’s more like Mulroney than he is like Chretien.

If he does appoint the winners, good. If he doesn’t, we can at least get him to stop pretending to be worried about western alienation and the democratic deficit.

If you really want to democratize Parliament, Mr. Martin, and if you really want to end western alienation, then here’s your chance -- on a silver platter! Three of Alberta ’s Senate seats have been vacant for up to two years. Fill them with our elected Alberta senators.

Tonight I will lay out clearly what my goals are for this campaign. There’s no point doing something if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve. So here are my specific goals. There are two.

The goal first is very simple. I want to get more votes than anyone else.

It looks like there will be between six and ten candidates in the race. The top four will be declared the winners. My goal is not just to be among the four winners whose names Premier Klein sends to Paul Martin after the election. My first goal is to head that list.

When Paul Martin scans that list of Senate results, the first name he sees should be Link Byfield -- Independent. If I’m ahead by a wide margin -- a hundred thousand votes -- and I’m not a Tory -- he’s got no valid excuse not to appoint me.

There are over a hundred staff in the PMO. One of them will be assigned to scan the Net and check out this guy Link Byfield , and they’ll find that he -- along with the Citizens Centre -- is an outspoken advocate for provincial rights and “refederation.” Refederation means confining the national government to issues of national sovereignty, and leaving social and economic development to the provinces. Until then, Canada will remain in the uncompetitive, unconstitutional mud-hole into which four decades of Liberal centralism have driven it.

To Paul Martin, the idea of weakening, reducing, or restricting the powers and activities of the central government is an absolute heresy. What about medicare -- day care -- cities -- the Canada Pension Plan -- job creation? Like all federal Liberals, Martin thinks this is where the action is today. Ottawa must be involved.

The first goal of my campaign is to make sure that his first choice for an elected Alberta senator is a dyed-in-the-wool decentralist heretic.

The second goal takes a bit more explaining.

You know, twenty years ago, Senate reformer Bert Brown drove one of those big 60-foot cultivators out into his field and plowed into his field so it could be seen from above by passengers landing at and leaving the Calgary Airport “Triple E -- or else.”

It was clever. It got attention. But it soon proved to be an empty threat.

Or else what? We won’t vote for you? We’ll complain?

If we are to get Senate reform -- or any other federal reform -- we have to answer this question.

I think we need to look at disturbing trends in Canada today.

In the past decade or so, Canada has fallen from about sixth in economic productivity to about 12 th. When I was a kid we were second in the world, a close second to the United States . Today we’re no longer even in the top ten. Of course, productivity is important. If you don’t produce, you can’t consume.

In competitiveness -- another essential measure -- we have fallen in the last four years from eighth to 15 th. Most of Europe and half of Asia have pulled ahead of us.

Now why is this?

Mainly it’s because we have too much government getting in the way. It wastes money. It wastes opportunity. And to put it bluntly, it is changing us from the nation of winners into a nation of whiners and losers. We lose our democracy and call it Charter rights. We lose our competitive edge and call it compassion. We lose our military strength and call it “soft power.” We lose our history and call it “national unity.”

Well, the real world has a way of intruding upon fantasy, and it is intruding upon ours. Most of the federal attitudes and institutions that have developed over the past half century have been a mistake.

So-called sacred trusts like the Canada Pension Plan, Unemployment Insurance, the Canada Health Act and the Equalization Program have become millstones around the nation’s neck. Far from needing more of them, as Liberal Ottawa and so many provinces think, we need far less of them.

The Canada Pension Plan, for example, is grotesquely unjust to young people. Other countries, like Chile , have come up with much better regulated private alternatives. Ottawa refuses, because it would lose possession and control of that money. The people would own their own retirement funds. Ottawa wants to stay in control, even if it has to steal from our children.

The Employment Insurance program kills the regions it has been specially enhanced to help. Equalization robs them of the incentive to solve their own social problems by their own means. The Canada Health Act, by penalizing private fee for service medicine in healthcare, has left us with the most rigid and unadaptable system in the world, along with Cuba and North Korea . It’s worth remembering that before Ottawa first intruded into medicare with offers of “free” funding in 1966, every province in Canada had set up its own public health insurance system.

All this happened because in the 1950s and ‘60s, everyone forgot the original deal of Confederation: that provinces -- not Ottawa , provinces -- would look after social and economic development. To justify itself, Ottawa has made “universal social programs” the be-all and end-all of Canadian citizenship. So Canadians focus increasingly on what they can get the government to give them, and our national morale and economic output are starting to reflect this.

Now I ask you to think about something else. Who will fix this? Who will set a new direction? Ottawa ? Hardly. Ontario ? No. Quebec , and the six other “have-not, want-more” provinces, whose political leaders have come to rely on federal transfers? No.

Only Alberta -- alone in Canada -- has the economic means and the political motive to break up the present federal structure and replace it with something that works. Something that works better for everyone, not just us.

But this demands a provincial government that actually has a positive federal vision of what Canada could and should be, and one with the guts to force it into existence. An Alberta government wit the courage to invoke constitutional powers which none but Quebec has ever dared to use.

And I don’t mean separatism. I mean finding provincial solutions to federal problems.

Provinces have strengths they have never used outside Quebec . This is especially true in social policy, the area that Ottawa covets most of all, yet lacks any constitutional mandate to enter without permission.

Here at home, the Alberta government should begin openly re-examining all forms of federal co-operation, one by one. Policing. Tax collection. Public pensions. Health care. Environment. Wheat marketing.

These jurisdictions are shared or are exclusively the responsibility of provinces.

We must start taking them back and running them ourselves. This is the “or else.”

Examination of these responsibilities should take place openly, and involve public evidence by qualified experts.

The best evidence to date is that we would get better service at less cost if we did these things for ourselves.

And the mere sight of Alberta seriously pursuing this course would send shock waves through Confederation.

“Good heavens,” easterners would say, “what’s going on in Alberta ? Are they preparing to separate?”

Well, perhaps you do open your options if the province takes control of the public pension fund, the police and the taxation apparatus. But that isn’t the reason to do it. You do it to get better services at less cost.

This the OR ELSE.

We should avoid talk of separatism. It’s a trap. We should reply, “It is not separatist to invoke the constitution. These are provincial responsibilities, and we are fulfilling them, just like Quebec . We think the federal government is doing a lousy job.”

You can imagine the reaction in the central Canadian media if Alberta gives Ottawa three years’ notice we’re getting out of the Canada Pension Plan. It will upset people, but what’s our choice? We found out with the Reform Party, we won’t get far by just asking nicely.

It’s time to use a carrot and a stick. Senate reform is the carrot. Provincial autonomy -- taking back our constitutional social and economic jurisdictions from the federal government -- is the stick.

Senate reform and provincial autonomy are both central to the solution Alberta proposes. The Senate is the untapped resource of the Canadian federal structure, the missing keystone in the Confederal arch. Provincial social and economic autonomy is how this country was designed to operate.

But what we need before anything else is an Alberta whose people and government will not take no for an answer. We must know what we want and go get it.

That is the second objective of the Link Byfield Senate campaign. The first, as I said, is to come first in the vote. The second is to help start a national discussion in Alberta -- and new direction in Alberta -- that keeps moving forward until once again we have a nation we can pass to our children with pride and satisfaction.

In pursuit of that goal I will not be a senator in waiting. I do not intend to wait. I’ll be a senator-elect pushing for federal reform.

Obviously, this second ambition must involve more than me. But there is already a political network growing all through Alberta to push this forward. It includes MLAs, municipal councilors, and prominent academics. We will have elected MLAs -- committed reformers like Ted Morton -- pushing from within the provincial government, while groups like the Citizens Centre and the Alberta Residents League -- and Senators-elect--push from without.

Together we must take that massive force of political energy Albertans poured into the Reform Party in the 1990s, and rechannel it into the Alberta Legislature.

The vote on November 22 is not the end. It is just the beginning of something much larger. It is a huge challenge -- the same huge challenge that Preston Manning and the Reform Party tackled almost twenty years ago, and wrestled with for a generation.

Well, if there’s one thing Albertans aren’t, it’s quitters. We have a job to do. It will be harder than we thought. So what! It still has to be done. I ask you, therefore, to help me win a democratic mandate to do it.