Holding Our Government Accountable: Preston Manning

There has been a great deal of attention paid recently to the completion of the National Citizens Inquiry. A panel of four commissioners who heard testimony from 305 witnesses, 94 of them expert witnesses. Their 5,000 page plus report made thousands of recommendations that could prevent the violations of Canadians' rights from happening again.

But there is a problem with the NCI. It is a public inquiry, conducted by members of the public and as such carries no weight with the government. As testimony to this, 63 government witnesses were invited to testify. None of them did.

Meanwhile, in Alberta, where the Court of King’s Bench earlier this year ruled the Covid mandates to be illegal, Premier Danielle Smith commissioned an expert panel to review the actions of the previous government. Actions which, as in all provinces in Canada, resulted in devastating harms to the people and to the economy.

Premier Smith commissioned this panel in January, shortly after replacing former premier Jason Kenney, whose government was responsible for these actions.

Preston Manning, the founder of the Reform Party, former leader of the federal opposition, and of course an experienced legislator, served as Chairman.

In this interview, Preston reveals what was found by the panel, and gives us details on some of the more significant of the 20 areas of recommendations which they have made to the Alberta government for amendments to Alberta law which would prevent the government from trampling on the rights of Albertans, should another health emergency, real or not, occur.

The panel’s recommendations are significant, in that they would take away from appointed officials, such as the Public Health Officer, the right to mandate actions for the people. Appointed officials are not accountable to the public, and as has been seen across Canada, this allows them to violate our rights with relative impunity. The panels recommendations would place that power with elected officials, who are subject to accountability to the people who elected them.

LINK: Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel final report (https://open.alberta.ca/publications/public-health-emergencies-governance-review-panel-final-report)