432. The End of the Tent Cities | Minister Jason Nixon
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Hi everyone. I had the opportunity today to speak with Mr. Jason Nixon. He's Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services in Alberta. Why did I want to talk to him? Well, the Albertans under Danielle Smith have taken a very forthright stance recently, for example, against the trans butchery and deceit that increasingly characterizes the Western world.

But more, they've also taken forthright action in relationship to the springing up of all these so-called tent cities that now blight the landscape throughout North America and elsewhere. And they haven't done that in decades.

a heavy-handed and punitive way. They've done that in a very intelligent and thoughtful way. They've removed 200 of approximately 300 cities already in Alberta and really began the enterprise only in December. And I think what's happening in Alberta, I'm hoping what's happening in Alberta

could be a model for what could happen in jurisdictions like North America-wide. And so that's why I decided to do this podcast. And with Mr. Nixon, he has very interesting history. His father had lived on the street as an addict and alcoholic and was rehabilitated relatively young in his life and then spent the rest of his life helping

homeless and addicted people. And Jason grew up in that environment. He grew up surrounded by homeless people, even in his own house. And so this is a man who's actually walked the walk and he knows what he's doing by all appearances. That's what we're all praying. And so we walked through his personal experience and also the details, all of the details or as many as we could manage with regards to what's happening in Alberta, cleaning up the tent cities, so to speak, and rehabilitating the people who

for one reason or another, were unfortunate enough or badly aimed enough to end up there. So it's a hopeful dialogue. And I'm hoping that what's happening in Alberta could be a model for the Western world. So join us. Well, thank you for sitting down with me and with all my guests today. I'm very interested, as you know, in what...

What's going on in Alberta broadly, but the initial focus for our conversation is going to be what steps you are taking within the confines of Premier Daniel Smith's government to deal with the so-called tent city epidemic, problem, social phenomenon that's evident all over North America and is new and surprising. So,

Tell me what the situation is in Alberta and also maybe how we got there. Well, I think I'll start with how we got there, you know, particularly our capital city in our province, which is Edmonton. And we started to see a real significant situation when it came to tent cities. Some people in our communities will call them encampments, but where we were seeing hundreds of encampments across the city of Edmonton with hundreds of structures within those tent cities and

really a desire, frankly, by the city of Edmonton to embrace those encampments in some way. And when I say the city, I'm referring to the municipality, to some members of the government.

who ultimately have bylaw control and have the responsibility to keep the city clean. We certainly have some overlap responsibility about caring for the poor and dealing with some of the health issues that are involved, of course. But in general, usually the city is who deals with it. And over time, we just saw these encampments get bigger and bigger and more and more problems come as a result of that. And so the chief of police from Edmonton,

came and saw our government and our premier, for your international viewer and American viewers, that's like a governor, and came in and laid out for us what they were seeing in those encampments. And I have to tell you, it was pretty alarming. It was shocking. We were hearing stories about underage girls, for example, being sexually exploited inside those encampments. They showed significant evidence of the gangs operating inside these encampments and charging people to even use the tents,

and to be able to access resources like water fountains or other things that would be in the area. The police were pulling out of those encampments weapons that were quite alarming. Obviously, they were seeing lots of stolen goods, finding dead bodies, and most horrifyingly,

because of course our country's very cold. They were seeing people that lost their lives as a result of burning to death in these tents because they were trying to heat them with propane and different type of mechanisms to try to stay warm and survive in the elements here. And so in some of those pictures, we could not even release to the media. It was just that shocking what was taking place

And so we got clear instructions from our premier to get to work and to come up with a new plan when it came to those encampments, which we got to work on right away. And this happened just before Christmas this year, so just a few weeks ago. And as a result of that, we launched immediately a task force led by my ministerial department on social services side, but with support of a variety of departments.

We put together what we've called the Navigation Center. So that's a structure within the city of Edmonton where we were able to bring all of the services together, everything from health to housing supports, income supports, prescriptions, even things as simple as giving people ID so that they could be able to move forward with their lives. And then we supported the police and we went in and we started tearing down all those encampments.

And we started to have some pretty amazing results I look forward to talking with you about. But we made a pretty clear statement that our province is no longer going to tolerate this. One, because it's not safe for the people in the encampments. But also, it's just not right for a place like Edmonton. And Edmontonians deserve to have a clean city where they can live happily and enjoy their lives.

Okay, so let's take this apart. So you said, first of all, how long ago did this problem start to mount, do you think? Because there weren't 10 cities in Edmonton when I lived there back in the 1980s, that's for sure. And I visited many times. I mean, there are 10 cities now in Toronto too, and that's a completely new thing. So when did you guys really start to become aware of this as a mounting problem?

You know, we started to see tent cities pop up in Edmonton probably over the last two or three years. But in particularly over the last year, year and a half, where it would really become basically every corner that you turned, particularly within the downtown core of the city of Edmonton. The other thing that was new, though, was we were also seeing those tent cities well outside of the downtown areas. And so they were starting to pop up all across the city. But that was probably the timeline around Edmonton. I think we...

We really saw that a lot in our country in places like Hastings and Vancouver, which have a real bad tent city culture and drug culture inside that city. But it was kind of more new to our area over the last couple of years. Okay, so it's about two or three years now. You said that there were, in Edmonton alone, how many people live in Edmonton now? Just so everyone has a sense of its size.

We're getting up towards a million. I believe Edmonton's somewhere north of 800,000. I don't have the number around, but that'd be the right area. Yeah, okay. And you said there were literally hundreds of encampments and that some of them had hundreds of tents. Is that right?

That is 100% correct. Hundreds of encampments. And inside some of those encampments, you know, I think the biggest encampment I'm aware of was 400 plus structures. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. So that's starting to approach village size, essentially. Well, you know, as a member of the Legislative Assembly here in Alberta, I represent villages that are smaller than some of these encampments. Okay. Okay. So now, why in the world do you think this happened?

so rapidly in the last two or three years what's changed is that housing costs i mean housing costs have gone out of control in canada everyone knows that and interest rates have gone up a lot and so but that that alone seems to me to be unlikely as a causal explanation so we know how why is this happening who are these people in the main and where did they come from

Yeah, you know, housing is a real issue in our country, particularly given some of the bizarre federal policies that we've seen from our federal government in Canada and the inflationary problems that we see in North America. But I want to be clear, the challenge when it comes to tent cities is not a housing challenge.

Housing is one of the consequences of somebody who ends up in these situations. They don't have housing. But it's not a root cause of why somebody ends up inside a tent city. The reality is that lots of this has to do with drugs. Lots of this has to do with mental health and other circumstances. And I think there are some people who want to frame this discussion, like mom and dad who lost their job in the oil industry and somehow are struggling to pay their mortgage. That's a very real issue.

inside our country and our province that we need to address and we are working on as a society. But that's not what this is. These individuals that find themselves in these encampments, lots of it's drug related. And we are seeing that without a doubt when we go into these encampments.

And, you know, I really, it drives me nuts personally as a minister responsible for this in our province that certain elements on the left continue to want to discuss this issue in the context of housing. It's not. The root causes of homelessness and why people are in tent cities are something very, very different. And he asked why, what has changed that we would see that more.

There has been much more a culture, certainly in our country, of accepting abusive behavior to oneself, including using drugs. And a concept that we need to embrace that and accept that putting poison into people's bodies is how we help them deal with things like addiction. And that's something our province has rejected underneath the leadership of multiple premiers, but particularly Premier Smith, where our province has been really dedicated on focusing on addiction recovery and helping individuals in this circumstance.

But there's certainly elements of our province that just want to let it continue. And so some of that is what's undertone of all of this issue when it comes to encampments and tent cities inside our province. Okay, so let me push on that because I want to make sure that I understand this completely. All right, so you make the somewhat surprising claim, I would say, that in your opinion, the

a small percentage of the variance in this problem is accounted for by economics specifically related to housing. Now, it's interesting to me to have you say that because if you were inclined to make political points, you could do that just as effectively on the housing and inflation side as you could on the drug use tolerance side, let's say, right? So,

So I can't see any a priori reason why you would come down as a political agent on one side of that argument or another. But what is it that's made you so convinced that it is, in fact, a drug problem? To what degree is it an alcohol problem as well? And what drugs are primarily...

The cause at the moment and is that like is that part and parcel of the new wave of drugs that has entered the North American economy? So like, are you certain that it's drugs and alcohol? How much alcohol? How much drugs? Which drugs?

So, again, I want to be very clear. I don't dispute that we have housing challenges. And you're right, I can make political statements on that alone that I think could be very clear. But that's a different issue. And why I'm so certain about that is because of what we're seeing from the individuals that we've now been able to successfully get out of these encampments.

into our social services process with supports around them. And the vast majority, I would say all, have some sort of mental health issue. And the vast majority are also facing addiction issues as a result. And so we're seeing things like fentanyl, which is a major

drug that is impacting all of our societies across North America and the world. We're seeing much more of that in our communities now. Methamphetamine is a real big issue inside our communities. There certainly is alcohol. But, you know, and some of these drugs are changing. You know, fentanyl is a major drug that has been evolving on the streets. It has real serious fatal consequences to individuals involved.

But that is what is taking place inside these 10 cities. Often it's a place where individuals seem to be going to be doing drugs. One other thing that we found out, I actually should point out,

is that the vast majority of individuals that we're interacting with in these encampments afterwards are also using our emergency shelter system and other services in our province to be able to stay warm, to get food, to get other resources, to be able to survive on the streets. But they're using those tent cities as a place to be able to score drugs, as a place to be able to use drugs. And that is the culture that is taking place in most of these tent cities. I'm not saying every person, but certainly the vast majority of who we interact with in these tent cities

has got some sort of drug and or alcohol addiction. Oh, okay. So let's take that apart a little bit. I mean, so back in the...

early 70s, that's really when it started, there was a leftist anti-psychiatry and anti-institutionalization movement. It was driven in part by the kinds of concerns that were brought to light by movies such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which really was quite a genius movie and a great novel, and written by a psychiatric orderly who had seen plenty of abusive situations within institutions. To be clear, they were hardly places you would go for a picnic, but

But the leftist solution to that was to demonize the psychiatric profession and to deinstitutionalize. And the solution was to produce community alternatives that would help integrate these oppressed people who had been falsely diagnosed with mental illness by evil psychiatrists back into the community. Well, suffice it to say, those additional resources were never made available, not in any fundamental way. And many of those so-called

Many of the so-called mental illnesses those people had were actual illnesses and not figments of totalitarian psychiatrists' imagination. And so deinstitutionalization, what deinstitutionalization really meant was that many mentally ill people ended up in prison.

That was the fundamental, yeah, or on the streets. And so this homeless epidemic is a late stage consequence of the fact that we don't have, we abandon our attempts to provide proper institutional care. So we'll get back to that. Now, you said that the vast majority of the people who are in these tent cities have a drug addiction.

or multiple drug and alcohol problem, and that they are utilizing all sorts of other resources, but that they're using the tent cities in particular as a place to gather and get easy access to their illicit drugs. Now, obviously, if you're not naive out of your skull, that's an amazing opportunity for

gangs, for drug peddling gangs, especially the ones that are peddling the hard and addictive drugs. And so, you know, the problem with this hyper-compassionate approach, these poor people, they need a place to live. They might as well move into the parks. Who are we to stop them from having a place to live? They're all economically challenged. Is that it

belies the reality of the drug addiction problem that you described and the criminality that goes along with it, but there's something even worse. There's something even more nefarious about it. It completely eliminates the possibility that even if you brought a group of people who were suffering together,

in this unstructured manner, all you would do is invite the psychopathic gangs to come in and take control. Now you said that's what's happened, that not only are these tent cities, so-called, places of massive drugs distribution, they're sources of ongoing revenue for not only for gangs, but for organized gangs, and so for hardcore, multiple offense, dead set against the public order criminals.

to prey on people who are vulnerable, the addicted population, let's say, and to prey on them in a multitude of ways. You know, you skipped over some very interesting details, like they're being charged to stay in the tents. Well, by who? It's not like anybody owns those tents or the land, okay? They're being charged to get access to water. And they're

And then there's what, prostitution gangs? And if not prostitution gangs, what, open rape? Like exactly what did you guys see when you started delving into this subculture produced by the toxically compassionate?

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So you're 100% right. And when I say gangs, I'm talking about very organized gangs, definitely organized crime. The police brought the government very clear evidence, which they have presented to the media, including photographic evidence of what is taking place inside these 10 cities that show that the gangs have control within them and are certainly abusing vulnerable people as a result of that. It's obviously a place where they're selling drugs.

It's obviously a place where people are getting access to things that they should not. But we also have received clear evidence that people are being charged even to get to water fountains is a common thing that the police have brought to us.

We have, and this for me personally was one of the things that I was just shocked that the media in my province did not cover as much as they should. Some of the early tent cities that they went into, the police came out with evidence of minor children being sexually exploited within these tent cities. That alone for me was enough that we needed to tear them all down. Full stop, completely unacceptable. So

So, you know, and then the other thing that I should point out that the chief of the Edmonton police service really has, has done a good job of articulating for the media is how much stolen property in and of itself is being stored within these tent cities. I mean, they went to this, this one area where there was a mound of bicycles that were clearly stolen that were bigger than me and,

Jordan, I'm a real big guy. I'm about six foot eight. This is a big pile of stolen property. And so there's been clear evidence time and time again that documents what is taking place with the gangs inside these areas. And you're right. They are exploiting the most vulnerable amongst us.

And so it's not safe. And I think the key point to this is it's not safe for the people in the tent cities and it's not safe for Edmontonians. And I think this is the same circumstance you would see in any other major city in North America where these tent cities are taking place.

Yeah, well, it's also, it's not safe for a variety of reasons. I mean, here's a compelling reason. So imagine you set up a set of essentially lawless domains and in consequence you produce a specialized breed of psychopathic criminal who is then highly organized. It's like if you think that

That highly organized criminal gang is going to limit its criminal activity to the tent city once it's established. You're an absolute bloody fool. And so we know, for example, as criminologists, and I did a lot of work as a researcher in the area of antisocial personality and criminology, 1% of the criminals are responsible for 65% of the crimes.

You let those long-term life course psychopathic repeat offenders get away with what they're doing, you're going to reap the whirlwind, right? It's a very, very bad idea. And so now why do you think

Okay, so let's ask two questions. Who are these gangs and where do they come from? Right. And who's running in the drugs? How much of that's coming from China? Who's controlling the distribution? Do you guys have a sense of that? And well, let's start with that.

- You know, in Alberta, the way I've been briefed with our law enforcement support is that we're seeing a variety of gangs, particularly indigenous gangs when you're in the Edmonton area that are operating on the street. But we also have clear evidence of actually cartels, including Mexican cartels.

and some of this coming from the Asian market, to your point, all operating here within the province of Alberta. So there are, these are pretty seriously organized gangs. A lot of that is to bring in the drugs, obviously, to our street, and then they're using our street gangs, which are often indigenous on the streets, to be able to move that product through places like tent cities.

Okay, so you made reference to the Mexican cartels. Let's start with the Mexican cartels and the Asian supply. So do you have any more details on either of those fronts? It's a lovely thing to imagine now that the Mexican cartels are operating not only in the southern U.S., but in Alberta itself. That's a real accomplishment on our part, I must say. And so Mexican cartels and Asian supply, I presume the Asian supply is mostly associated with fentanyl?

Yes, that is correct. And, you know, the best person in our government to talk to about this is obviously our public safety minister who's managing this closely and be the one giving us this information. But we certainly have clear evidence of cartels bringing drugs, particularly across our southern border. And frankly, we're now starting to see inside our province where we're becoming an exporter of things like fentanyl. So some of the products are being brought up here to be made.

on our side of the line and then now brought back even down to the south, which is quite a new thing for the province of Alberta. But certainly, you know, it explains some of the circumstances that we're seeing in our province. And I would say, Jordan, that Edmonton for us, which our capital city, is probably one of our smaller drug problems. You know, one of the bigger areas we're seeing some of our largest drug problems on the street is actually in Lethbridge.

which interestingly enough is the closest city to the American border, a large city in our province to the American border. And really, I think is a proof point that some of that drugs are starting there because of what's taking place on the border, which is why we're seeing some of the most potent and deadly drugs inside the Lethbridge area as it works its way into the street culture.

Right. So maybe I should also at some point talk to the public safety minister. So, okay. And then you mentioned indigenous gangs. Okay. So now, again, when I lived in Alberta in the 1980s, now that's getting to be quite a long time ago, 40 years ago, there weren't organized indigenous street gangs. Or if there were, there were very few of them. I mean, Edmonton was a stunningly safe place with the exception of a few blocks downtown, which by, say, American standards were still relatively safe.

American downtown dangerous standards was still pretty civilized. There was just not a problem. So what shifted in Alberta and what is the makeup and origin of these indigenous gangs?

Well, I think what's shifted is the money in the drug markets, for sure, would provide more ability for gangs to become more and more organized. And, you know, the police have been out in our province very clearly establishing who these gangs are, and they're the ones who are giving me as a cabinet minister that information of what is taking place there. I mean, obviously, my job is to provide that social services support to individuals within these tent cities, but we're working closely with the police who are the ones coming and briefing us about the dangers of gangs.

And there is no doubt in the city of Edmonton, but also across our province, that we continue to see that organized gang element increasing. My personal view is, and I think the police would agree with me, that a lot of that is being driven, obviously, by drugs. And, you know, I, as I think you know, I used to work in a homeless shelter. I grew up in a homeless shelter. My father is the founder of one of the largest homeless shelters and organizations that work with the poor in Western Canada here in Calgary called the Mustard Seeds.

And we did not see anything like this type of drug activity even 15 years ago. You know, we would never have imagined a spot where we would see individuals working within shelters seeing multiple overdoses a day and sometimes multiple fatalities in a week inside their facilities.

And that just shows you what's changed as far as the drug market, which is logical, what is driving this organized crime element because of the money that would be involved in that. Okay, so let's delve a little bit into the contribution of federal policy into producing this situation. So I know that...

the situation that you're describing in Alberta is even more out of hand, let's say, in British Columbia, especially in Vancouver. And Vancouver is a much bigger city with a much darker center. I mean, Vancouver had some downtown places that were like seriously bad 40 years ago. And so, and that's certainly spreading on the Western coast. Now, my understanding is that

Canada, at the federal level, in some ways took a page from some of the European countries that were experimenting with decriminalizing drug use. Now, I have some sympathy for that viewpoint because it isn't obvious to me that the so-called war on drugs was a success. And I think that its attempt to crack down too brutally on users of drugs

at least in the past, somewhat more benign substances like cannabis, and I mean benign in comparison to alcohol, say, which is legal, I think a fair bit of that was misguided. But I do know that countries like Portugal, for example, that spearheaded this, they didn't just reduce the penalties for drug use and distribution, let's say sales and distribution. They did that in concert with

what seemed to be the kind of things that you guys are trying to pull off in Alberta, right? It wasn't like the Portuguese allowed people to be stoned out of their mind derelicts on the streets just because they stopped criminalizing use of even the harder drugs. And my understanding is that in Canada, we did the first part, which was the easy part,

the decriminalization that allowed the moralists to hand wave about how compassionate and wonderful they were. But we didn't do the second part, which was the conscientious part that involved the identification, treatment, cleanup, and even sometimes criminal prosecution of people who had gone a little too far down the drug-taking hedonistic road, let's say. So how do you see the problem that's developed in Alberta evolving?

as a manifestation of a broader change in legislation at the federal level with regards to drug policy. Yeah, let me just first start by saying we're very proud our province has not become what's happening in BC yet, and we're not going to let that happen. That's why we're taking this action to make sure that we don't end up in circumstances like that here in Alberta. And you're exactly right. There is, there's been an effort and a drive, particularly by politicians on the left in our country,

to approach this issue of addiction in a way that essentially just accepts it as a disease and continues to give the poison that is causing the consequences to these individuals to them and not work on and giving tools to be able to help an individual recover in those circumstances. We don't want to, I want to be very clear on this, we don't want to go arrest and put somebody in jail because they have a drug addiction. That's not happening in my province.

The opposite is happening. We are reaching out to those individuals. We're getting them into circumstances where they can be safe, and we're providing them with the resources that they need to be able to recover. What the other side of this argument believes is that you need to just put them in a place like a tent or an apartment paid for by the taxpayer and continue to allow them to have poison put into their body and that somehow they will either magically get better. Well, the reality is they won't. I call that palliative care for drug addicts.

And that is where really the big difference is in our philosophy. It's a death sentence, particularly when you're dealing with things like fentanyl and these type of drugs now. I mean, it's just going to get you at some point. I mean, alcoholism, which can be a real tough circumstance, and we're dealing with that too on the streets. But that is many decades to get to what we're seeing some of these new drugs do to people in weeks on our streets. The reality is that there's no safe supply when it comes to fentanyl.

You cannot take fentanyl safely. Eventually you're going to OD. This is why inside medical facilities, even where people are taking fentanyl, often paid for by the government or other types of chemicals like that,

you'll see you have to have nurses there to be able to interact with overdoses. Our government really believes we need to go the other way, which is that we need to reach out to individuals in this circumstance. We need to invest in resources that they will need to deal with, deal with root causes that have caused their circumstances and give them a way to be able to recover. And that's where it comes. But I think the 10 cities prove that we're right.

Because the reality is, if anybody thinks putting an individual in tents in minus 50 degrees Celsius in Canada is a safe way to live, with propane tanks exploding and people burning to death and all the things that I have just described today, that is more safer than what Alberta is saying, which is,

Come on into the shelters. Let's get resources around you and let's help you get better. And you know what's interesting, Jordan, is the individuals that are coming out of the encampments, most of them actually want what we're bringing forward. And that's why in the last three weeks as we've done encampments, over 200 of those individuals coming out have gone to what we call our navigation centers so they can navigate support.

They've received over 500 referrals to different services. Many of them now are in permanent housing type of circumstances, actively working on their recovery, dealing with the medical circumstances that may be around them. And ultimately, many of them will go on to have productive lives. That's what we want. That's humane. What the other side is selling is just accepting that somebody is going to die and giving them a death sentence. I like that you use those words because I think it's true. That's the result of what they're doing. No doubt about it, yeah.

Well, there's always made if that fails, you know, so. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Okay. So let's now, I was interested in you in talking to you in part so that we could walk through a description of the tent cities and then even more importantly, shed some light on the fact that such cities are almost immediately taken over by the most psychopathic gangs you can possibly imagine.

That's an important thing to establish because it eradicates the notion that this is some kind of compassionate approach to these poor unhoused people who are just trying to live, you know, in a happy community. No, wrong. Okay, but...

Mostly why I wanted to talk to you was on the remediation and treatment side. So the first thing I want to ask you is about your sociological goal. Now, you implied at the beginning of this conversation that there aren't going to be any more tent cities in Alberta. Now, is that the goal? Like to return to Alberta?

30 years ago, say, where there weren't 10 cities. That just didn't happen. You know, there's the odd person under a bridge. There's the odd homeless person. It was very, very rare. There certainly weren't communities of homeless people. So is your government's goal to attain that end? And if so, how far along are you and what's your timeline?

So yes, our goal is to make sure that we are not seeing dangerous tent cities inside our cities. You know, I can't outright say that we would ever be able to fully eliminate, you know, tent cities could pop up at any time, but that we would stop in the future this being the management tool to help with this population. And instead that we would invest in proper resources. And most importantly, what our government's doing that I think is courageous is that we're actually stepping in as a subnational government to support a municipal police force to take down those encampments.

And we're gonna do that for two different reasons. One is to help the individuals in, which I'll get to in a minute, the individuals that are in those encampments. But second, to help our citizens who live in places like Edmonton. Edmontonians don't deserve to have this in their community no more. They deserve to be able to walk down the streets and feel safe.

You know, the last three weeks as we tore down encampments, Jordan, our team with the city of Edmonton collected 129 tons of garbage out of these tent cities alone, including 3,000 needles. So it just shows you what is taking place inside those tent cities and how dangerous it is to the rest of the community. But we want to go one step further. We want to then make sure these individuals receive full wraparound supports and the best opportunities that they can to overcome the situation that they find themselves in. We're not delusional.

We do realize there's still going to be homeless people, but we don't believe it should be this many. Ever heard of a data broker? They're the middlemen collecting and selling all those digital footprints you leave online. They can stitch together detailed profiles which include your browsing history, online searches, and location data.

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Okay, so we'll go to the treatment of individuals in a moment. So I want to flesh out the sociological element a bit more first. So first of all, I'd like to ask you, you know, one of the things that's happening in Toronto is that the tent cities increasingly occupy public spaces. And I think that's utterly inexcusable because I don't believe that the municipality, for example, has a right to

to either take away parks from people, including children who use those parks more than any other than any other people and need them, especially in the cities. They certainly don't have the right to take those away. They don't have the right to take them away and award them to other people who don't own them and haven't purchased them and have no contractual right to them whatsoever.

And they also don't have the right to fail to protect those parks. And so tell me where you saw the tent cities emerging and what that meant just in terms of occupation of land for the people, say, in the surrounding neighborhoods.

So I've seen tent cities emerge in many different type of locations within the city, but you're right. Most often it ends up inside the green spaces in the city. And I know you know Edmonton, so the beautiful river valley of the North Saskatchewan River that flows right through that city, you would see tent cities all through that area. And well, that's the areas where people go and jog and they ride their bikes on the weekend. They take their dogs for a walk and it's

Part of wanting to live in the city and being able to get outside within that area that you call home. You see the same thing in Calgary along their beautiful Bow River that flows through that city. That's often where you would see tent cities pop up. I've also heard horror stories, particularly in the city of Lethbridge, which I mentioned has a really tough drug problem right now, of families trying to take their children out inside playgrounds and local community parks.

and them ended up being sometimes punctured by needles or other things that are happening because the tent cities that have occupied that little park, it may not be as big of a tent city as we sometimes see in Edmonton. It may only be four or five instead of hundreds.

But it's inside that area where children are playing. So you're right. It takes away from people being able to enjoy the city and that green space that they have. And Banff National Park inside our province, for some of your American viewers, very similar to Yellowstone, a pretty beautiful place. I like it.

I can't just take my tent and set it up anywhere I want and start living and causing trouble for everybody else who wants to be able to come and enjoy the park. It's a silly argument for anybody in municipal politics to say that this is the right thing to do for their constituents is to allow something like this beautiful green spaces to be wrecked for the people that they represent. Okay. So now you touched on a couple of other things there too, that are interesting. So

I know that, surprisingly enough, Alberta is a relatively conservative province until relatively recently. It was mostly a rural province. It has the reputation, and I would say it's deserved to some degree, of being something approximating the Texas of Canada. And yet...

What I see happening from the outside, and please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, is that increasingly there is a standoff in Alberta of sorts between radical leftist municipal governments and the more conservative provincial government. And I think that that's

particularly manifest in Calgary, secondarily manifest in Edmonton, and then I don't know enough about Lethbridge's comments. So tell me to what degree this...

has been set up not only as a consequence of idiotic federal policies that are virtue signaling and spineless, and also not in the least compassionate nor productive. None of that. Not accomplishing the ends that the policies themselves were designed in principle to accomplish. There's a federal component to this, but then there's also a municipal component. And

One of the things I've observed happening in Canada and in the United States, but really in Canada, is that the radical leftist, faux-compassionate, narcissistic types have seized control of the smaller elements of the governmental institutions, including municipal governments. So I know that you have to step somewhat carefully, given your position in Alberta, in relationship to such a discussion. But, you know, we did...

allow for some criticism of the federal government and its relationship with the province. Well, there's no reason not to do the same thing on the other side. What's the situation with the municipalities? And then, well, there's a segue in there because you also mentioned that there's a strange cooperation between the provincial government and the municipal police on this front, which is quite strange, right? Because it means that the province is going around

The municipal governments directly to the police. That's a strange. So can you flesh that out for me so I can understand it more thoroughly? Yeah. Well, let me start with the police. So, you know, in our structure, something like the Edmonton police would answer to a police commission. So while they are a municipal funded organization, also funded by the province to a certain amount, the chief of police answers to a police commission, not to city council. And that puts the chief in an interesting spot because

And when we have somebody like the chief of police of Edmonton come to us and say, "I'm dealing with a crisis.

I think I need you guys to support this emergency situation. The cool part about my province is our government's prepared to jump in, even if it's a little bit unorthodox, because we know we need to support that important law enforcement agency. And you're right, there is some interesting dynamics there that would be the Edmonton Police Service. And I think some of those dynamics are probably more that the municipal council has to navigate more than us, because we just want to get to work and be able to help people.

I will say this, that obviously we're happy to work with every municipal government. We recognize that they're elected. That is our job as a province, and we will do so. But you are correct. I'm happy to say that our large cities over time seem to have more left-leaning

wing mayors and often city councillors, though not all of them, than certainly my Conservative Party here in the province of Alberta. I don't think I'm saying anything that would shock anybody, given that the current mayor of Edmonton is a former Trudeau cabinet minister. I'm not saying anything about him personally. He's certainly not on the same side of the political spectrum as me.

And I think what's happened over time is if they're on that side of, and that's their ideology on that side of the political spectrum, certainly they're going to start to believe in some of these ideas, which is that, you know, somehow you can magically help somebody get better by giving them the poison that's killing them over and over. But I want to also, though, be clear that I think often that it's coming maybe even from a good spot.

I actually think lots of these individuals truly believe that this will help these individuals get better sometimes. But the reality is that they're not looking at it. I don't believe that. Well, the reason I don't believe it is because there is a tremendous danger in using a false compassion to elevate your own moral virtue publicly. And there are ancient prescriptions against doing such things. So the third commandment, depending...

depends on how you count them, is to not use God's name in vain. And what that really means is do not attribute to yourself moral virtue for pursuing something that merely furthers your own agenda. And I see plenty of that on the compassionate left. And it's also a variant of praying in public along with all the protests. It's like, look how good I am. Look how much I care. It's like, yeah, did you do any of the goddamn work?

Like, have you ever worked? Yeah, exactly. Let me say that a different way. So then you have a politician like that who is a true believer in it. And I believe that, you know, you got to be blind, right?

Not to realize what I presented today is actually hurting people and that your ideology is wrong and that you're willing to allow people to be hurt to continue down presenting your ideological beliefs. But what happens, I think, is then you have politicians in that circumstance that are confusing everyday people who don't fully understand this issue. And they may be looking at things like on the news and they're going, hey, that's probably the better compassionate way to do it because they don't have all the details that I have.

But then when you hear the details that I just present, you got to be going, well, actually, that conservative government's right. I mean, do you want my approach, which is to reach in, send a warm bus, load everybody up, bring them to a nice warm facility, give them shower, foods, and access to medical resources, treatment, including rehabilitation treatment for their addiction, or to be left inside a tent freezing to death taking poison, right? And that's what I mean by that. I think...

that ends up creating a spot where very good people then end up supporting this approach because they're everyday people. They're working. They just watch this on the news and they go, hey, well, that maybe makes sense. And they don't understand that in the end, they ended up supporting an ideology that's actually killing people. Yeah, no, look, I agree. I think that, well, that's exactly why I wanted to do this podcast. And now I think we should get to the nitty gritty, which is not that all of this was irrelevant. But the real relevant issue here is, you know,

What the hell are you doing that's going to work? So let me give a preamble to this. So for everyone watching and listening, there's two major, there's a concatenation of two major problems here. The first problem is that antisocial behavior and drug use overlap. And so what, why is that a problem? Well, the first problem is

There is nothing in the psychological literature that's more intractable to treatment once it's established than antisocial slash criminal behavior. And there's absolutely no indication in the clinical literature that it can be ameliorated. So, for example, the standard penological doctrine of well-versed criminologists is that if you have a treatment

truly repeat offender who has an antisocial history stemming back into like early teenagehood or even before in the form of bullying and violent behavior as a child, the best thing to do with them since no treatment works is basically to incarcerate them until they burn out in their late 20s. And people can shrug their shoulders and get

squawky about that and bitch about it all they want, but I would have been thrilled if I would have gone through the research literature and found any exceptions to that absolutely dismal prognostication in the 30 years I've analyzed the literature and have been unable to do so. It's very, very, very, very difficult to treat antisocial behavior. Okay, then you add the next layer of complication, which is

Difficult as it is to treat antisocial behavior, it's perhaps equally difficult to treat drug and alcohol addiction, alcohol often being primary among the problems that are difficult to treat. There's no evidence whatsoever, generally speaking, that residential treatment centers, for example, have any beneficial long-term effect.

They do function to get people off alcohol while they're in the centers, but almost invariably what happens is that when you put the people treated back into their old environment, they instantly relapse. Now, this is not to say that no one ever recovers because most people do, in fact, straighten back up. But it isn't obvious at all how treatment can do that. So that puts...

policy people like you in a really tough bind because you're dealing with a population that's very, very, very hard to serve. And so the first thing I would like to know, you talked about these uni service centers. So I would like to know just what does it mean to offer people treatment? How do you tear down these tent cities exactly? Like what are the nuts and bolts involved in that, the process? You're like, what do you do? Do you go in there and just like

Tell me how you clean up the cities and then tell me how it is that people are directed into treatment. And then we'll get into the worst problem of like, does it actually work?

So I'll start with how we're dealing with it. Now, Edmonton is where we're piloting this approach, and I think we're going to mimic it elsewhere in our province because we are pretty excited about the results. But let me tell you what we do first. So obviously, my social services team at the Ministry of Social Services is in contact with the police. The police inform us that the encampment is coming down, and they deal with the law enforcement side of that. So deal with any elements that they may encounter in there that obviously need to be arrested, warrant issues that are taking place. They handle law enforcement.

but we're there. - So they move in? Like, okay, so they make a decision. - They come in, yeah. - And what are the laws under which they're, under what legal pretext do they move in? Why do they have the right to do this? - So two issues that we primarily use, one is around just straight up bylaw enforcement. And you know, there's obviously rules about being able to just go build structures in different municipalities. And the second and more common one of late from my understanding is around fire safety issues. I mean, we have had some pretty serious fires

and propane tank explosions, the numbers are quite staggering. And so it is a legitimate fire issue. And so the police have to come in. They're not the firefighters, obviously, but the police have to come in because of the safety issues that are involved. Now, do you warn the people beforehand? And how many policemen do you need per number of tent city occupants? What are the logistics here?

Yeah. So the city of Edmonton has an encampment policy where they were trying to put upon the police, I believe, to provide 72 hours notice that they were going to go into those tent cities. This is something we actually disagreed with because the reality was that just caused people either to move. It certainly gave a heads up to that organized crime element that there was about to be law enforcement activity.

And so, you know, since we, and there was a court case taking place in our province from some activist groups who were trying to stop the police from being able to do this or enforce this.

notice requirements. The city of Edmonton and the police actually won that case and that has allowed us to be able to go in and be able to address this without notice. And so what happens is obviously we're notified, we arrive with the police. And when I say we, I mean social workers and our team that are designed to support the police, they work closely with them.

The police secure the area, they deal with their end of it. But at that point, we have a warm bus right there, ready to go. Everybody is offered an opportunity to be able to go to what we call our navigation center. Okay, that's everybody. So that you offer that to everybody in the camp. And what's the biggest camp that you guys have managed to take on at a time?

Well, I think the biggest camp that I've heard of would be 300, 350 structures since we started this process. Interestingly enough, though, you would only find probably a few dozen people actually within that tent city when we arrived. Oh, I see. I see. Okay. So you're looking at numbers under 100 when you're moving in and you're... Okay. Okay. And so that's what, five or six buses, four or five buses, something like that?

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Yeah, it would depend on the circumstance. Obviously there's been, there'll be police intelligence and our, you know, our, our team would be given a rough idea of what they think is going to be coming while we're arriving on scene, their radio and back to that navigation center. They're saying, here's how many people we think we have coming in. You know, one of the big things we have, there's the ability for them to be able to load and totes their personal belongings. We don't want anybody to lose their stuff.

We even take pets, Jordan. We can load the pets up on that bus. Couples can go together and we get them from there to the warm navigation center. And they arrive at that navigation center. There's showers available right away. There's food, coffee, things that people may need. Obviously, it's a warm location. We also have shelter beds there for, you know, sometimes people need to dry out or something that may take place. Obviously, there could be medical circumstances that need to be addressed immediately.

Obviously, anybody who would need a hospital, of course, we would use paramedics. We would get them immediately to emergency. But beyond that, everything else can be handled in that navigation center. And so when you get there, you interact with our staff, and then there's multiple different stations throughout it, which I'll talk about. And the genius, I think, of what we've done here is we've brought, instead of trying to take this person from these 10 cities all over the city to all these different services, we've

We brought all the nonprofits, all the government services together in one spot to come around that individual. And so they'll arrive and they can get full medicals. There's our medical teams for the street that can deal with that, access to prescriptions. One of the most interesting things that you find that a lot of individuals in this circumstance need is ID. They don't have ID no more.

So we have our ministerial colleagues over in Service Alberta who handle ID in our province. They're there right on site. They can give temporary ID immediately to these individuals, and then we can get their permanent ID ordered, all the pictures. They obviously have access then to income supports,

be able to register for things that they may be entitled to that they did not know. And then ultimately towards things like temporary housing, emergency housing, and eventually permanent housing resources so they can interact with those individuals. And of course, access to drug recovery programs, which we can talk about in a moment. But that is all happening in that one location. And so we've been at this for about three weeks now.

We've seen well over 200 individuals come out of those 10 cities and actively participate in this process. We referred to over 500 different services, and we've been pretty impressed with the results of that. Now, that may seem like a small number,

But given what we've been working on, this is kind of a real micro area that we're working on, but we think it's been so successful that we're getting ready to bring this right into our actual emergency homeless shelters, which are thousands of individuals, and into other areas where our social services system interacts

with the same type of clientele. And again, with the goal of saying, how do we help you stop the circumstances that you're in and move forward? I also wanna stress that we talked a lot about drugs today, but there's a lot of mental health issues that are taking place, including schizophrenia and some real challenges, right? These are very serious mental health issues.

And by being able to come in and we have our other health services right around us, again, pharmacist support, we can really get some really needed things around those individuals to start to have a good conversation about what a more successful, healthy life might look like.

Okay, so I got a couple of questions there and some procedural. I want to discuss some procedural issues too. Okay, so the first issue is I'm trying to imagine what it's like for someone in a tent encampment

to be let's say uh displaced in that manner and you can imagine two stories one is that people are pretty damn pissed off that the cops have showed up and are now you know tearing down their their structures but a counter story might be they're actually kind of relieved to be on a warm bus going somewhere that's actually warm where they can have a shower and get something to eat etc and so

What's your sense of how the tent city inhabitants themselves are responding to this intervention by government authorities and police? - So the vast majority of the individuals that we've interacted with that are actually in the tent cities

that would then come into our services. Obviously, so obviously if the police have had to arrest a gang member or something like that, they're probably not that thrilled that we're here. But the individuals that were trying to get there to help, they react very positively. You know, the biggest protesters that we've seen or others who are trying to interfere with this process are not people staying inside the tent cities. They're often members of the official opposition in our province, which is the NDP, which is

a socialist party within our province, or other activist groups who certainly have never spent one night on the street and are there trying to bang on a drum that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. And they're just trying to use these vulnerable people to be able to accelerate their agenda, which is very disappointing. I've seen some

police body camera footage of these individuals throwing snowballs at the police while they're trying to go and interact and deal with the situation in the encampments. But the vulnerable people in general have been pretty excited once they realized what opportunities they have. And I've been there to interact at this navigation center with them and I've also heard from my staff

And the most common reaction is I had no idea that this resources were available and they are quite interested in it. Now, obviously everybody's at a different stage that may be taking place there, but certainly I think, uh, we, you know, you get to a nice warm bed, you can have a warm shower. You probably start to ask questions about whether or not you want to continue to sleep inside that tent in minus 50 degrees Celsius, or if this is a better option. Okay. Okay. So now I want to ask you, um, about, um,

how you regulate the interactions between people in these centers. Because we already discussed the fact that in the Tent Cities, the fact of the Tent Cities is an invitation to criminality and gangs. And so then the first question I have is like, how the hell do you ensure that that problem isn't duplicated inside your centers themselves?

So it's a very important question and I will answer it, but I also want to emphasize that what we see on that, for lack of a better words, on that left side of the spectrum when they argue about us taking down these tent cities is they often say, well, your shelters are just as dangerous.

Now, again, if you go back through this entire conversation we just had, you realize how ludicrous that is real quick. That said, of course, we start putting thousands of individuals in the same type of demographics, a lot of the same circumstances happening inside our emergency shelter system. You're going to see some of the same elements show up. And we for sure have seen gangs operating within our emergency shelter systems. We are obviously managing overdoses and drug issues in those type of circumstances.

But we've invested in security. We are working closely with our local police services who really support us and are often nonprofit emergency shelter providers to be able to navigate through those issues. We've also upped security to be able to make sure that people's stuff is safe. We've had to put a lot of money into dealing with overdoses and other medical issues within our emergency facilities. And while anywhere, as you know, Jordan, in society where we start to gather that many people together, there's going to be...

elements of trouble. It is certainly significantly less than what we're seeing inside tent cities, and we're definitely using tools to be able to mitigate those circumstances. Okay, okay. So now I'm going to ask you some questions more on the psychological and treatment front. As I said, I spent a lot of time looking into the viability of treatment processes

that are widely distributable and effective and on the psychological front and with regard to addiction counseling and the treatment of various forms of mental disorder. And they're few and far between effective treatments. So I want to ask you a couple of questions. The first is...

Have you guys given some consideration to the maximum size of your facilities? Because my suspicions are that the smaller you keep those centralized centers, the less trouble you're going to have with their spiraling into criminal activity and gangs, and the more welcoming you'll be able to make them for people who are being taken off the streets. So

So that's the first question. Have you seen and are you tracking the data pertaining to the size of the initial treatment facilities?

So we are definitely tracking data. And one of the things that we're trying to do on my end of policy and the process that my ministry runs is to try to bring in other types of the ways that we do emergency shelter for the homeless population. So you have your much more traditional shelters that many people would just think about that they'd see on TV, often run by a faith-based organization. I want to say thank God for our faith-based organizations because they really do good work with us.

But we have recognized a need for smaller shelters, shelters that are focused on women only, for example. In our society, in our province, shelters that are Indigenous-focused, with Indigenous leadership right on site to be able to

to work on that. We've opened up Indigenous-only shelters, women-only shelters inside our province, supported by the government, and we're seeing success by getting that smaller and being able to work with different demographics more focused. At the end of the day, what we have in our province and what Premier Smith has done in our province is actually bring in a mental health and addictions cabinet minister, my colleague Dan Williams, who is part of the health system who is fully focused on mental health and addictions.

And so he's the best one to talk to about specifically how they handle long-term drug treatment. But my job now is to rejig the entire social services system in our province to end up connecting to that. And that's where there's a real difference in viewpoints between us and the left, right? I mean, they want us to build shelter systems where everybody can keep doing drugs and just accept that behavior and ignore the negative consequences of that.

We are building shelter systems and processes that connect into the work that Dan Williams and his team are trying to do. And it is a whole different way of thinking. I don't know anywhere else in the province where you've got an entire social services system working on focused on actual recovery care long-term for individuals, right? So we're not in the business of trying to warehouse people. Our job is to find individuals, support them with their immediate medical needs, and then try to connect them to long-term opportunities

to get them better. Okay, so that brings me to the second clinical issue I wanted to bring up. So you can treat people's present distress, but much of people's present distress is rooted in a kind of nihilistic and anxiety-ridden hopelessness. And they say it's been said forever that the people perish without a vision.

And one of the things you do see with people who adopt a very short-term strategy towards life, which can have a criminal element or an addictive element, is that they don't have anything resembling a vision for their life or a plan.

And so we experimented, my colleagues and I experimented with the provision of planning software. And so we have a program online called self-authoring, which is very inexpensive, requires no supervision whatsoever to administer. That's completely private.

And that's actually accessible to everyone to some degree, assuming a basic level of both literacy and ability to use a computer. But virtually everyone can use a phone now. So, you know, that's less and less of a problem. Okay, so it's called self-authoring this program. Okay, so now the first thing it does, it's got three stages and you can do just one or three stages.

let's say one or two or all three. The first stage has people write out what's essentially an autobiography. And it's a good treatment for trauma. So it asks people to go through their life, to write their life story essentially, but it provides them with a lot of different prompts. Break your life into six epochs. Describe the major positive and negative events. Then it walks you through an analysis of those events. And so what that tries to do is to situate people

in relationship to their past and bring them up to the present. Okay, so this is where I came from. These are the events that shaped me. And this is where I am now. Okay, so that's the past authoring. Now, the present authoring helps people assess their faults and their virtues.

So it presents them with a variety of descriptive statements that they can check off, and then it aggregates the ones that they're most convinced about. And it says, well, it helps them walk through an analysis, which is what stupid things are you doing that hurt you as far as you're concerned? And what are your strengths that you could capitalize on if you decided to move into the future? Okay, so that's the second stage. The third stage, this might be most relevant to your endeavor,

is the future authoring program. So here's the program. So people who are writing the essay, let's say, are enjoying to imagine that they were treating themselves like they were someone they wanted to help. Okay, now project yourself five years in the future. Okay, so here's the deal. Within the bounds of reason, you can have what you want,

and need, but you have to specify what it is. You have to aim at it. Now, we're always moving towards an end. And so if you don't have an aim, you don't have any hope because hope is experienced in relationship to an aim and you're anxious because there are too many places to go. So you bind yourself with a vision and you give yourself hope. All right. So five years down the road, what would your life look like if you were educating yourself properly? If you were

in a career that was the one you wanted, or at least a job that was the one you wanted, if your family was put together in some reasonable manner, if you had the friends that you needed, if you were regulating your drug and alcohol use, which needs a plan and not merely cessation of addiction, if you were contributing to your community, if you were taking care of yourself, if you were occupying yourself properly with your time outside of work.

If you could have what you wanted, what would it look like? Okay, the reason I'm telling you this, there's two reasons. Number one is it's dirt cheap. It's easily accessible. And we have produced solid empirical data. And this has been replicated in other ways in other labs using writing exercises. The worst... So if you take young men who have a bad academic history...

And they do this future authoring exercise for 90 minutes when they're orienting themselves at college. They are half as likely to drop out. Half. Right. It produces an increment of 35% in grade point average.

Right. Three separate studies, one at Mohawk College in Ontario, so basically a trade school, one at McGill University, and four studies. Two studies that were aggregated at a business school in the Netherlands. And the most potent effects were for the worst performing minority young men.

Right. So one of the things that might be worth considering is, see, people who are lost need a plan. They need to figure out who they are and they need a plan. Now, that's an expensive proposition, but this process circumvents the expense. And then there's another upside, which is, apart from it not costing anything, it

It has no negative consequences, right? So even if it fails, it isn't going to hurt people. Right. So I'm curious. So, so far, you see, we've kind of approached the addiction and the homeless problem as something akin to an addiction, you know, which is, let's say it's a consequence of craving in the present. But that's not all an addiction is. An addiction is something that destroys the future.

And so people often, look, the addiction literature is crystal clear.

People will not stop taking their drug of delight until they have something better to do. So young men, for example, are very much likely to abuse alcohol with some regularity. Most of them quit around 24, 25, something like that, when they take on like a full-time job and adopt some adult responsibilities. But until then, they think, well, you know, it's entertaining to drink myself into the ground three nights a week and

And many of them do. But as soon as there's something better to do, they quit. Now, if you don't have anything, we even saw this with rats. So, for example, you cannot get rats that are integrated into a social environment addicted to cocaine.

Yeah, I know this study well. Yeah, right. If you isolate them, put them alone in a box, they'll take cocaine in preference to everything else. Okay, so I'm wondering, have you guys integrated anything like a, what would you say, a process that helps people generate a concrete plan into the treatments that you're offering? Imagine earning a degree that prepares you with real skills for the real world.

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they're bringing forward, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what they're doing, recovery programs. And so, and you're right, I mean, I used to do this for a living before I was in politics. So I follow a lot what you're saying here, Jordan, and about having to get that community together. Obviously you gotta deal with the immediate issues that somebody's dealing with, maybe immediate trauma. There could be some pretty significant mental health issues. You start going down the road of schizophrenia, as you know, we're going down a different type of path.

But in general, you've got to get community around people. You've got to deal with their immediate issues. Show them a path forward, your right goal setting, and off you go. I would say another one that I've learned over time was also showing people there's other ways to be able to have fun appropriately. Yes, definitely, definitely. There's other ways to do, to be able to go forward like that. And so when you get into Minister Williams' department after you leave our services, and if you're focused on recovery, they do something called recovery capital. It's one of the first things they do. They start a process with an individual to understand

what their recovery capital is. And so that talks about the assets they have, where they're at, what they have access to. And obviously, the drug side of things that I'm dealing with right there in the homeless population would be some of the toughest addiction issues that Minister Williams' department will have to deal with. I mean, this is

This is not a functioning alcoholic. This is your individuals who are living in a tent, right? And they're in very different circumstances. They'll have lower recovery capital, but that means there's going to be more that needs to be done to get them to recovery. But certainly they put together that process. What's different though in Alberta,

is we're committed to that process. And so if you see other provinces or other jurisdictions in the world, they want to go to a different process. They want to go to the, put them in an apartment paid for by a taxpayer, let them do drugs till they pass away. That's essentially what it comes down to. Go in there and say, you know what? You've got this disease called addiction. There's basically nothing that can be done. We just want to support you and make you comfortable. Alberta, we don't believe that. We believe that individuals can recover. We believe the science is there. It's hard work. You're correct.

But our job now in our social services sector under the leadership of Premier Smith is to build a system that bridges into these recovery programs that are being built by our colleagues in mental health and addiction. And then the next part is really important.

that we have a system on the other end of those recovery programs. Because you're correct, they go into something like an addiction treatment, they get the tools to deal with their addiction, set long-term goals, get through that process, and then you come out. And what happens too often is you come out and you just end up relapsing because there's nothing that's built around it. You bet. Virtually certain. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're really focused on both ends of it. We want to build a social services system that brings people into active recovery,

support obviously our colleagues who are doing the recovery, and then be there on the other end as you come out of recovery. Post-housing, post-support, and that's gonna look very different for different people, particularly if you're dealing with different trauma, different circumstances. But in our province, we don't want to accept that you're gonna be in palliative care for drug addicts. We want to get you to where you can get the help, we want to get you the help, and then we want to support you as you go on with the rest of your life. And when we've done that, we're seeing people have very successful lives.

Jordan, you can beat addiction. And there's some more complications now with the different drugs we're seeing and what it's doing to brain chemistry. It makes some of this more challenging. But reality is we do not accept in Alberta that if you're addicted to a drug, that this is a fatal disease. And our job is we are rejigging our social services system to make sure that we are all focused on that when it comes to drug addiction. Okay, so I'm going to double down on this again because...

It's such a crucial problem, and it's so difficult to solve. So I knew this woman named Joan McCord, Dr. Joan McCord, and she was one of the first female PhD criminologists. And I know her when she was quite an elderly woman, and she had taught at Temple University for years, and she was a pioneer in the field. And she did this study in a place called Summersville in Massachusetts, and

And back in the late 30s. And it was the first large-scale social intervention program to address, what would you say, to ameliorate the circumstances of children in neighborhoods where antisocial personality and criminality and addiction were a likely consequence of the disarray in that environment. Okay, so they set up

On paper, the intervention looked wonderful. There were literacy programs for the children. There were parenting programs for the parents. There were social skills programs for the children. They tried to offer them the resources they needed to be successful in a way that you would expect intelligent people to offer those resources. And they went above and beyond the call of duty, you might say. They took all the kids out of Somerville

and took them to summer camps out of the city for two weeks a year, you know, to give them some immersion in nature and a chance to get away. And everyone loved the program. The kids loved it. The parents loved it. The teachers who were involved loved it. The social services types and the psychologists, et cetera, who were involved, they thought this was a bang up. But they did one fatal thing, which is they actually built evaluation into the program.

And so they assigned the people randomly to treatment and non-treatment group. And then after the program had run for a couple of years, they revealed the results of the study to themselves. And the kids in the treatment group did worse on almost every measure. Right. And so they were absolutely shocked. And it turned out, it took a couple of years to figure out exactly what had happened. But what had happened was that

Taking all the kids who were most prone to criminality and putting them together for two weeks in a camp was a school for criminality. Right. And that effect was so detrimental that it obliterated, not only obliterated the effects of all the interventions, but reduced them. And so, or reversed them. So Joan McCord, Dr. McCord, spent a lot of the rest of her life traveling around, talking to politicians, for example, in positions like yours, saying, look,

Whenever you introduce any intervention whatsoever, make sure you budget for evaluation because it's

Just because your intervention makes sense doesn't mean it's going to work. Now, you alluded to the fact earlier that you... And this is part of what makes me so skeptical. I worked with a group of criminologists centered in Montreal for seven years looking at the genesis of antisocial behavior, the treatment of addiction, all these sorts of things with really well-qualified people. And one of the things I really learned was...

Don't be so sure your stupid intervention is going to do what you hope it does and nothing else. Typical conservative attitude in some ways, right? Law of unintended consequence. So I'm wondering what systems of evaluation you guys have built in, um,

Really on the scientific side, are you in a position where you can track the results of what it is that you're doing? And is there a team that's involved in helping you do that? And if so, what have you done and what are the results of your evaluation so far? And how do you know they're credible even?

No, it's a great question. It's the right question, too. You know, speaking as a longtime cabinet minister, you're right. I mean, often we're investing in programs with the best of intentions, but you could end up making things worse, particularly in files like we're talking about. You know, if you're really interested in this, I hope eventually you get an opportunity to sit down with Minister Williams, who's leading it specifically on the work we're doing on addictions. But I will tell you on the other side of the file, the reality is we have not done a good job as a province on the statistics side. This, to me, is what's actually most alarming.

And so we are right now diligently putting in statistical systems all across our housing and homeless shelter spectrum so we can understand the numbers. And we're starting this with obviously this tent city process because we've been able to build the new navigation centers where we got good ability to be able to do statistics on site and understand what's going on. And we are going to evaluate that program based on its results.

But one step further we've done underneath Premier Smith is we are putting in evaluation programs across our entire social services system on results, particularly on results when it comes to actually recovery. And that could be beyond just addictions. That could be, you know, in the case we're working on individuals who are obviously on our welfare programs, what that would look like is, well, how many people within these programs are ending up back at work? You're asking us for an investment of billions of dollars for work placements,

Well, the proof is how many people are coming off the rolls every year. And so if you're coming back up to me as the minister and saying, I need this many more million dollars a year above population growth, well, clearly why am I investing in your employment programs, right? And so there's been a lot of good programs like that in my big ministry that I think are worth looking at, but we are not going to allow it to continue without clear assessments based on results.

And, you know, we're about at six, seven months into that process as a department since I took over this ministry. And I really believe over the next few years, we'll see much more ability to answer that question. But you're 100% correct. I would say one of the things I've learned in my time in this file is that we actually can't answer that question with credibility. Now, of course, we have to keep helping people. We can't stop, you know, we're not going to let people freeze to death and we're not going to let children live on the streets and we have to deal with these issues.

But if we want results, we got to lay out the target. We got to set the goals and we got to hold the people that we're funding accountable as a taxpayer based on results. And so that's not just people in beds. It's how you're getting them out of the beds. It's how you're ending up making sure that they don't end up having to be in the system no more, because I think that's what everybody wants.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a very, very tricky problem. So, you know, I worked for your department in 1984. Well, let me tell you that story because it's germane to what we're discussing. So I was just, I had just graduated from the University of Alberta with my undergraduate psychology degree. And I worked for social services in the summer, helping them design an evaluation program for daycare.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And so I was an intern there for four months and I got to know the assistant deputy minister. We got along quite nicely and she liked me and I worked hard. And then they hired me for a whole year as an independent consultant. And so then I worked on developing the evaluation system for the daycare programs in Alberta for a year.

But there was something else I did at the same time because she gave me a side job, which was a very comical job, I'll tell you. Because the year before, Deloitte had been commissioned by the province to do a comprehensive evaluation of the social services provision. And so Deloitte charged the provincial government some rate that you can well imagine would be commensurate with what consulting services like Deloitte charge.

And they produced a bunch of numbers about what was spent and what the effects were and so forth that were hypothetically measurements. And then my boss at the time said, could you update these numbers? And I thought, well, that's a pretty funny request because I'm not Deloitte, but I could give it a shot. And so I did that over a few months. And the first thing I found out was that none of those numbers were real.

So for example, social services couldn't answer a basic question. This is one of the questions she wanted answered. I think her name was Melanie Hotz, if I remember correctly. Yeah, and she was a very sharp lady, this woman. And one question she wanted answered was, what percentage of what the Department of Social Services spends ends up in the hands of the beneficiaries? And so the basic question was, well,

does social services spend 95% of its money supporting social service bureaucrats and 5% on the delivery of direct services? And the answer was, well, here's the number, but no one has any idea whatsoever if that number is accurate. So I updated this report at

believe me, a fraction of the cost that Deloitte had charged and with a hell of a lot more accuracy in number. But it was a shock to me. I was only about 20 at the time, something like that, 84, 22. And I was shocked about two things. I was shocked first that I was hired to do that, second, that I could do it better than Deloitte, and third, that the whole bloody department was

was blind. It had no notion whatsoever of the relationship between its inputs and its outputs. Now, that's the problem. In some ways, that's the problem with a government intervention system that's unmoored from the discipline of

of private enterprise, right? Because there's no customer to give you feedback. But the reason I'm bringing that up is because, well, just to... My suspicions are that not much has changed since. And that...

Now, you made allusion to the fact that you are putting these evaluation systems into... Okay, that's the question. To what degree do you think that the Department of Social Services knows, the Ministry of Social Services knows, what it's spending and what it's getting for its dollar? Does it know at all?

So I think it would depend on the area of the department. I think that in some areas, particularly where we're focusing on things like children with disabilities, people with development disabilities, and some of the contracts that we do around that where it's easier to measure that, the direct results. We could definitely show you clear statistics of the investment that we put into affordable housing and how many people are living as a result of those investments.

But as you get more into these complicated areas, I'm very comfortable saying that I think we need to do more. I will also say though, I think Alberta is one of the best in our country at it. And part of that is because after 1984, as you get in the 90s, along comes a fiscal revolution inside our province led by former Premier Ralph Klein, which really made our social services system operate a little bit more different than many other provinces. We became much more comfortable working with outside agencies.

I think I probably run one of the biggest social services departments that relies on nonprofits, including even faith-based organizations. We're comfortable working with those organizations. And that started in the Ralph era where they would go, hey, let's not hire union people to run our emergency shelters. Let's go work with the Salvation Army. Let's go work with these other organizations.

inside the province to do so. And so there became a little bit of a culture to be able to actually go out and work a little bit more outside of that scope of that union bureaucracy type of thing that you would see in most departments. I am in no way claiming that we've done that all the way, but I think it's a different culture that we see in Alberta. Yeah, well, that's a culture of distributed responsibility, which is a good conservative principle, right? Is that all of this that doesn't have to be centralized shouldn't. And that's part of, that's part of,

providing people with, what would you say, the responsibilities that actually give them meaningful lives, right? You don't want the centralized agencies to be giving handouts and offering, what would you call, what would you call security and stability to people

So that they don't have to provide it for themselves. It's not going to work and it's not good for them. Okay, okay. Now, let's turn, if you would, let's turn to a bit of a broader issue. Now, you guys in the last couple of weeks, last week even, have started somewhat of a fire in Canadian politics because your leader, Danielle Smith, has come out

with policies that have upset the compassionate left. Let's put it that way. Now, my understanding is that she has tightened up the restrictions on offering so-called, this is like one of the biggest verbal lies I've ever heard, so-called gender-affirming care, which means exactly the opposite, by the way, by any reasonable standard, by tightening up the ability to

By restricting the ability of those who had offered the opportunity to transform themselves physically by tightening up the provision of that service to children, to minors. Now, that's caused quite the outcry, not least among Justin Trudeau's minions and faux-compassionate butchers, to put it bluntly.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the nature of that policy? How you guys organized yourself so that you had enough gall and courage to manage this? Because it's a very rare thing that's being done. And what you think the response is going to be?

Well, first let me say we got a very rare Premier and she's pretty brave. I think she's shown that several times in her last year or so. But this issue would probably be the biggest where she's being able to do that. I also want to be clear, I believe my Premier is standing where the vast majority of certainly Albertans are and where the vast majority of I think Canadians are and probably beyond that. But certainly the people that we work for, which is Albertans, the vast majority agree, particularly my constituents.

I think that where she's headed is in the right direction, which is to recognize that children are children. We restrict children from making other decisions that have significant impact on their lives until they're at a spot where they can. From maturity level, brain development level, all those things that you understand better than me, frankly.

But, you know, we tell our kids when they could drink, for example, in our provinces. I mean, we determine when those things could take place. And I don't think that anybody that is thinking about this in a reasonable way finds it at all that bizarre that we would do the same for something as drastic as changing one's body permanently when they are below the age of 18. I mean, this is a thing that a 12 or 13-year-old should not be put in a spot to do yet. It doesn't make any sense.

The other thing she's done is she's blocked or she will be bringing forward our government not using hormone treatment for transgender purposes. There could be other reasons below 18 where hormone treatment may be prescribed, right? But that obviously for medical reasons would continue. But to say the same thing, these decisions can take place after 18. And, you know, at its core, this is about putting parents back into their children's lives.

And that for me as a father inside this province is where this is at. This should be about compassion. At the end of the day, we are talking about children and we need to be able to make sure that we recognize that. But we also know, I mean, look at the issues we just talked about today. Lots of those individuals, I don't think would ever come into counseling or any other process and say, geez, I wish my parents spent less time with

I wish my parents were less involved. That's just not true. You know it's going to be the opposite way. And so making sure that we connect children with parents and let parents lead this process with their children is the right thing to do. Now, I will recognize, because what you're going to hear from people who are upset is say, well, some children will get hurt. There are bad parents. Sadly, there is. We've seen parents kill their children at times.

But the reality is that you don't disconnect all the children from the good parents to deal with that minority situation where there's bad parents. We need to work through our children's services system. We need to protect children for sure. And we need to interact in circumstances where children may not be being cared for properly. But you don't do that by taking away children from their good parents, from the good parents. It doesn't make any sense at all. Of course there's bad parents.

Well, of course there's bad parents. There's going to be a minority of psychopaths, but there's going to be just as many psychopaths among the social workers. So, you know, that's just not a good argument. That's why that argument makes me so mad. Well, it's an absolutely idiotic argument, and it's driven by an underlying notion that the state has the right to

to reconstruct humanity itself in the name of some utopian vision, right? There's no excuse for it. It's appalling. What are the exactly, in detail, to the degree that you can provide them,

What changed with Premier Smith's new legislation in terms of restrictions? Like, what exactly did she restrict and how are those restrictions on these mutilating and sterilizing procedures, to be quite frank? What are the restrictions that are now in place on those procedures?

So I think probably comes down to three main areas. Well, four, if you, we can talk about sport in a minute, but three main areas. First is that parents in our province will have to be informed if their child is trying to talk about things like changing pronouns or these types of circumstances. Informed by schools?

Correct. That can't be held back from parents. Parents need to know what is taking place with their children. So that's one. Second is to ban any underage surgeries that would change either top or bottom is often how we've expressed that surgeries that would change somebody's body. And then lastly was stopping hormonal treatments for the purpose of

of transition below for minor children. Okay, okay, great. Okay, so is that already instantiated in legislation? That's already happened? No.

It has not happened. It's been announced that that's what we're going to do. So that's what the premier did. She went out. She made very clear where we're going. This is our intention. And that we will be coming forward shortly with legislation to make that happen. Okay, so one of the things I would recommend, by the way, and I know this is gratuitous advice, but it might be useful. Don't use top and bottom. That's a euphemism put forward by the psychopathic predators who are pushing this agenda. It's castration and mastectomy.

Right. Got it. And use the blunt terms because it's not cutesy top and bottom, you know, not in bit. There's nothing about what is being done on the surgical front that's the least bit cutesy.

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Yeah, and that, you're right, to make clear, that is taking a child's body and permanently changing it, removing parts or adding parts for individuals that we actually at this moment would not even allow to make a decision to drink in a bar. Right, exactly, exactly. Yes, adding pseudo parts, malfunctioning experimental pseudo parts.

Right, right. Well, at the moment, at the same time, pretending that they're the same as the real thing, which they're not at all in any way. Right. And I want to add the fourth thing that she's doing, that we're doing, it's our government, under our premier's leadership, which is to make sure that women can participate in their sports and not be in a circumstance where an intact biological male and or a former biological male

biological male can come along and participate in their sports. And so in our province, we don't want to be a spot where a hardworking female athlete is all of a sudden in an M&A fight with a guy my size. I mean, it's... Yeah, yeah, it's insane. It's insane. Exactly. 84%, I believe, is the last poll I saw

of my provincial neighbors who agree with these points. And so I actually don't believe this is that controversial. I think people want to make it controversial, but anytime that we're standing up for minor children and parents working in their children's lives, I think we're in the right spot. - So I can share a little bit of my experience on that front with you guys. So here's, so you're gonna, you, and you're already in this, you're gonna get a lot of angry

narcissistic psychopaths screeching at you. And they're going to make a lot of noise and they're going to attempt to damage your moral reputations. If you apologize or back off, you'll lose, they'll win. If you hold your course,

It'll be real intense for about a month, and then everything will shift radically in your favor, and you'll be seen as pioneers. If you can just tolerate that intermediary period of boiling oil, you know, the sorts of epithets that Trudeau and his demented dimwits are hurling your way, you're going to come out of this

you're going to come out of this as the most forward-looking, amongst the most forward-looking political leaders, not only in Canada, but in North America. And you could make a big, bloody difference all across the continent and maybe in the West more broadly. So I would say all the noise you're generating, that's a sign that you've hit the target very squarely. I agree with you. And I can assure you,

that the Premier and her cabinet are 100% dedicated to protect. This is about protecting kids in our mind. And if we can't do that as leaders, we have no business being in these jobs. And so we're very comfortable. We're going to stay the course. We're going to protect the children of Alberta. And we're going to continue to make sure this is the best province in our country to live in.

Okay, so one final question. What proportion of the tent cities do you think you've dealt with already, and how fast do you think this process is going to roll out?

So we've got a little over 200 of these 10 cities down already. I think the last report I saw is we've got about another 78 to go. Now, what's going to happen now? We're going to start to see them try to pop back up again. So there's going to be another round where we're going to go in there. And this is one of the reasons why we're not playing around with notice. This is not acceptable in our cities.

and we will move quickly to support the police to take down the next round. And eventually people will learn that's what's going to take place. And then I think you'll see two things happen. You'll probably see some of this pressure move into our underground transit systems, and we're going to move the same way there. We're going to say that's not going to be acceptable here. We're going to use the same process. We're going to support the police to get people to supports. And then I suspect what will happen is we'll probably start to see some pop-ups just for nights, and then they move.

And at that point, we've had success with permanent tent cities, and then we'll re-evaluate where we go next. And so we're very dedicated to this. My boss, Premier Smith, has told me this must be done. And when she tells me something's going to be done, it's going to be done. All right. All right. Well, it sounds like the next person from your government that I could talk to and should, perhaps, if he'd be willing, is Minister Williams. Yes.

Yeah, so we could set that up. And I know he's a big fan and would be excited to do it. In fact, he's probably a little irritated with me that I got to go first. So if you get him up, he'll be excited. All right. All right. Well, I think we should definitely set that up. And then we should probably also do another podcast with the minister responsible for higher education because we could have a very fun conversation about that too.

I would like to watch that one. So any way I can help get that connected, I'm happy to do it. Let's do both of those. Let's do both of those. I thought this went very well. And so thank you very much for your time today and for answering all my impertinent questions and for walking through all of this in detail. I'm hoping that Alberta can provide a model

for the rehabilitation of these tent cities across North America because people really don't know what to do, you know? And you guys have a pretty comprehensive plan. Now, you know, it's reasonable to be skeptical about it because you're dealing with a hard problem. But the fact that you've already removed 200 of 300 tent cities, you know, that shows some real will here. And it doesn't look to me like you've taken a particularly severe beating on the public front for doing this, right? It's caused a lot less...

for example, than Premier Smith's move on the transgender affirming front.

It's, it certainly has been quieter. I will tell you, it's exactly what you said. We, we got hit real hard the first couple of days as we announced it was really loud and we just stayed the course because we knew we were doing the right thing. And, and, you know, both the chief of police in Edmonton and myself have received more positive correspondence on this than any other issue I've done in my 10 years. Oh, that well, there you go. That's so, well, that's the advantage of doing the long-term right thing. Like

People will swing around behind you if you can withstand that initial trial by fire. All of these things, they're great opportunities, right? Because if you can see a serious problem and you can offer a solution, then you've actually done your job. And wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Yep, exactly. More of us should probably do it. Yeah, well, we should also set up a talk with the Minister of Energy.

I can help with all that. Let's do that, because Danielle also announced when I was in Alberta with Carlson and with Lord Conrad Black that Alberta is planning to double its gas and oil production. And that's a real slap in the face to Stephen Guilbeau, and he's certainly an individual who richly deserves at least one. And so I

I think we could have a very productive conversation about the true benefits of the fossil fuel industry in Alberta and what

and how Canada could thrive and truly thrive and offer its resources to the world if Canadians could get their head screwed on straight about just exactly what was what. And so let's do all of those. That would be good. My guys are in the room with me here right now, so we'll note them all. We'll connect them with your people. I spent three years as Minister of Environment in Alberta, so Gabo was one of my counterparts.

We won't get into that today, but I've got a few stories, and this is not a friend of this province. Oh, that's for sure. He's not a friend of Canadians. Where they're headed is to a very dark place. Dark and cold. A dark and cold place. I was about to say, a very cold place. That's for sure. Well said. We'll get you connected with everybody, though. Okay, okay. So for everybody watching and listening, you'll know if you've attended other podcasts that

I'm going to take another half an hour with my guest on the Daily Wire Plus side, and we're going to talk about the genesis of his political career, and I would say also his hopes for the future, because I'd like to know about that, and the conservative vision in Alberta for the future. And so if you'd be inclined to join us for the additional half an hour behind the Daily Wire paywall, you'd be more than welcome to do that, and you could throw a little support the Daily Wire Plus way, which I would also recommend because they are...

at minimum, a bastion of the free speech that is becoming increasingly difficult to come by in our society and that is threatened more and more on platforms like YouTube, which still has the good graces to offer the sorts of things that we're discussing today. So join us there. And thank you very much, sir. I'm looking forward to talking to your colleagues. You bet. Yeah. Thanks for the forthright discussion. Bye-bye.

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