This episode is a little different. It's an interview with an A.I. of Sir John A. Macdonald.

So what does that mean? Well, it means that I gathered up the transcripts for all the House of Commons Debates for every year that Macdonald was Prime Minister, and threw in a few other historical resources as well. I processed those and made them available to a large language model, similar to the one that powers ChatGPT. Then I instructed that large language model to answer all of my questions as though it were Sir John A. Macdonald, using those historical resources I provided for reference.

The result is this interview you're about to hear. 

If you want to ask John A. Macdonald some questions of your own, you can do so here: sirjohnai.longformnorth.com

All the historical resources I used are listed there as well.

(Note: The idea for this episode was partly inspired by Tyler Cowen who used ChatGPT to record an interview with Jonathan Swift. You can check out that interview here.)

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

Here in Canada, you can get clean drinking water simply by turning on a tap. Unless you live in one of the many First Nations communities that are subject to long-term drinking water advisories. In which case, you have to boil the water first before you can use it. Or you have to use bottled water for everything, including brushing your teeth or cooking with.

How is it that in a first-world country like Canada, we still have communities of people who don't have access to clean drinking water?

Joining me to help better understand what's going on here, is Ken Coates. He is a man with many titles, but one of them is that he is a distinguished fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute where he co-authored a paper called The Water Conundrum and Indigenous Communities in Canada.

Links:

• The Water Conundrum and Indigenous Communities in Canada
• Ken Coates

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

A little over 25 years ago, a book by the historian Jack Granatstein came out, called Who Killed Canadian History? It sparked some controversy back then about how ignorant most Canadians are about Canadian history, and how riddled it is with politics and bureaucracy. And, Granatstein said, if you don't have any memory of your history, then you don't really know who you are, other than maybe 'not being American.'

But that was 25 years ago. What about today?

Joining me for a discussion about Who Killed Canadian History? is J.D.M. Stewart. He was a high school history teacher for 30 years. Now he's a writer, historian and author, most recently of a book called Being Prime Minister, and he has another one coming out later this year.

Links:

• J.D.M. Stewart at the Hub
• Christopher Dummitt at the Hub: We Are Telling the Wrong Story About Canada
• Who Killed Canadian History? by Jack Granatstein

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

Welcome to Longform North -- a longform interview podcast featuring Canadian voices and stories about Canada.

Canada is a federal country, which means power is divided between two levels of government - the federal government and the provinces.

And even though it's all one country, the provinces are very different from each other. They have different economies, different cultures, different politics, different languages, and different interests.

And sure, diversity is our strength and all that, but trying to balance all those interests isn't always easy. At least one province has tried to separate a couple times, while similar threats from other provinces have bubbled up, too.

So how do all these governments work together? And what, if anything, keeps the country from falling apart?

Joining me again to help out with these questions is Dr. Tom Bateman. He is a professor of political science at St Thomas University, and he is one of the co-authors of a book called The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why did Canada choose to have a federal system back in 1867?
• How John A. MacDonald was originally against federalism and aimed to create a strong central government.
• How are the different powers divided up between the federal government and the provinces?
• How the impact of health and education gave the provinces much more influence and power than what was originally planned.
• How the lines get blurred as to who has jurisdiction over what. For example the environment, where natural resources is provincial, but climate change and environmental sustainability is federal.
• Equalization payments and how they work.
• The separatist movements in both Alberta and Quebec, and what is behind them?
• Could Canada fall apart? What is it that's keeping it together?

Links:

• The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy
• Dr. Tom MJ Bateman

*Note: This episode was recorded on March 15th, 2025.

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

Welcome to Longform North -- a longform interview podcast featuring Canadian voices and stories about Canada.

In Canada, we pick our leaders through elections, where the person who gets the most votes wins.

But it's actually a little bit more complicated than that. And some people think that the way we do elections should actually be changed.

So what are the rules for how someone wins an election?

What does it mean to represent, or act on behalf of, the people that voted you in?

And what do you do when the voter participation rate gets as low as 45%? Less than half of the total amount of people who are eligible to vote.

Dr. Tom Bateman is back to help us out with these questions and more. He is a professor of political science at St Thomas University, and he is one of the co-authors of a book called The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• How we think about the role of a political representative in Canada
• Representation and diversity - the idea that the government should be representative of certain identity groups, as well as some of the problems that can arise from that
• How the country gets divided up into different voting districts
• How and when elections are called (and why fixed election dates don’t work in our system)
• Campaign spending limits and limits on 3rd party advertising during elections
• Should we lower the voting age?
• The reasons why the voter turnout rate among younger people is low
• What does the low voter turnout rate indicate more broadly about the voting public?
• Should we bring in online voting?
• How do we pick the “right” electoral system?
• How the First-Past-the-Post system works, and how it impacts the way our elections work?
• How would a Proportional Representation system work? What are its advantages and disadvantages compared with our current system?
• What happened with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to bring in electoral reform back in 2015?
• Is there any hope of changing our electoral system, or are we stuck with what we have?

Links:

• The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy
• Dr. Tom MJ Bateman

*Note: This episode was recorded on January 25th, 2025, a day after Premier Doug Ford called a snap election in Ontario, and a few weeks before Mark Carney won the leadership race for the Liberal Party of Canada.

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

Welcome to Longform North -- a longform interview podcast featuring Canadian voices and stories about Canada.

The word parliament comes from a French word that means to talk or have a conversation. Though I think the impression a lot of people have about Canadian parliament is that there isn't much conversation going on there beyond prepared talking points.

But you might be surprised to hear that the parliamentary system, as far as systems of government go, is actually a pretty good one, and it organizes things in a way that kind of makes sense. Though that's not to say there aren't any ways it couldn't be improved.

So on this episode we're talking about the important things you should know about how Canadian parliament works, and some ideas about how it could be made better.

Joining me again to help out with this is Dr. Tom Bateman. He is a professor of political science at St Thomas University, and he is one of the co-authors of a book called _The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy,_ which is the main source and inspiration for this series of podcasts on Canadian democracy.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• What 'responsible government' means in a parliamentary democracy and how it's different from the idea of the separation of powers
• How party discipline and whipped voting helps contribute to stability and predictability in government
• What happens when the government falls, or loses the confidence of the house
• Prorogation — looking at both Justin Trudeau's prorogation of the government in 2025, and the time Stephen Harper prorogued in 2008 when the opposition parties tried forming a coalition to defeat him
• The role of the opposition and how parliament is designed to be adversarial
• Why the decision to put video cameras in the House of Commons to record Question Period was a really stupid one
• How the office of the Prime Minister has accumulated too much power, and one simple way that could be reformed without having to pass any legislation

Links:

• Parliament: a definition
• The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy
• Dr. Tom MJ Bateman

*Note: This episode was recorded on January 6th, 2025, which happened to be the same day that Justin Trudeau announced his resignation and prorogued parliament.

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

Welcome to Longform North -- a longform interview podcast featuring Canadian voices and stories about Canada.

There's a set of freedoms we have in this country. There's the freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and lots of other freedoms. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives us protection for all these freedoms -- except when it doesn't.

How far does the Charter go in protecting these rights and freedoms? What are the exceptions? Why are there exceptions? And how does that all get figured out?

Joining me again to talk about all this is Dr. Tom MJ Bateman. He is a professor of political science at St Thomas University, and he is one of the co-authors of a book called The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy, which is the main source and inspiration for this series of podcasts on Canadian democracy.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• How we got our Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• Pierre Trudeau's vision for the country via the Charter
• Who wrote the Charter? How was it written?
• What rights are included in the Charter?
• What has the impact been on our legal system?
• Section 1 - ie, the wiggle clause - how our rights are subject to reasonable limits
• The notwithstanding clause
• The new powers and influence the Charter gives to judges and the courts
• How a Charter case forced the government to create legislation for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)
• How Charter cases are decided
• Balancing individual rights with the interests of the majority

Links:

• The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Webpage
• The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy
• Dr. Tom MJ Bateman

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten

Welcome to Longform North -- a longform interview podcast featuring Canadian voices and stories about Canada.

On this inaugural episode, we're talking about the origins and foundation of Canada's political system.

Canada is a parliamentary democracy, and this system inherits from traditions and ideas that are much older than Canada itself.

But what are those ideas, where did they come from, and how are they influencing the way our political system works?

Joining me to talk about all this is Dr. Tom MJ Bateman. He is a professor of political science at St Thomas University, and he is one of the co-authors of a book called The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why it's important to have a politically educated public in a democracy
• The historical cycle of democracies leading to demagoguery and tyranny
• The influence of the United States civil war on Confederation and the Canadian founders' caution around having "too much democracy"
• The importance of economic well-being and education in order to sustain democracy
• Tensions between (enforced) economic equality and personal liberty
• John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and its influence in shaping Canada's principle of liberty
• The Canadian Constitution, both the written and unwritten rules that make it up
• The fact that the Prime Minister is not mentioned in the Canadian Constitution
• How constitutional conventions (unwritten rules and traditions) work
• A brief history of the patriation of Canada's constitution

Links:

• The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Canada's Parliamentary Democracy
• Dr. Tom MJ Bateman

*Note: This episode was recorded on December 30th, 2024 (a few weeks before Justin Trudeau prorogued parliament).

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten