United Farmers of Alberta

So you would actually kind of think that, oh, the Great Depression, this distant government in Ottawa, maybe there's going to be all this outrage directed towards Ottawa.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence for that, actually, a bit contradictorily, but it is a huge problem for the provincial government in Alberta, which at that time is the United Farmers of Alberta.

And they get swept aside by the Social Credit Party.

And the Social Credit Party is this sort of Vaguely conspiratorial slightly crackpot party that has based its its central idea is giving money $25 a month to people for to buy necessities basically and and so social credit storms to power But they also have this idea about regulating the banks and they want to regulate the banks in Alberta and the federal government says absolutely not Regulating the banks is a federal power.

So I could kind of see that coming in 1935.

It was the United Farmers of Alberta who were in government and got swept out by social credit, William Aberhart's party.

And they got beat so bad that not only did they lose all their seats in the 1935 election, By 1939, they just said, we're out of the political game altogether, and we're just going to be a farmer's advocacy organization, which they are to this day, by the way.

Yeah, UFA.

I brought in such a law.

Alberta had a law brought in in the progressive period in the 1920s under the United Farmers of Alberta to allow citizens to force votes on important issues.

That law was repealed by Ernst Manning, social credit premier in 1958.

In a nod to our grassroots populist political tradition in the West, I restored a citizen's initiative law in 2020, I think, with fairly high thresholds, the same thresholds they've had in D.C. since the early 90s.

That's correct.

Right.

So and I'm glad you mentioned both the United Farmers of Alberta or the progressives and the Socrats, because this is supposed to be a history podcast, not not so much a politics one.

But but often history helps us understand the politics.

the old farmers parties that formed governments.

Government of Alberta, United Farmers of Alberta, United Farmers of Ontario formed a government, United Farmers of Manitoba, the depression parties of the CCF which ultimately became the NDP and social credit.

They were bottom-up populist movements and both of those got into running governments and reform in a sense was one of these populist movements with some transformation into the alliance and the conservative party got into into government.

And what have been the democratic planks of all those populist parties? This is Western Canadian history.

So we'll talk wheat.

canola pulses with john drager of left field commodity research we're also going to have a conversation with tyler fulton later in the show he's the president of the canadian cattle association and we're going to talk about what the true cost of mandatory country of origin labeling for beef could mean not just here in canada but for u.s producers as well Plus, we're going to hear about UFA has got some exciting news.

Following their takeover of Agri-City, they're relaunching 1909.

So stick around for that as well.

It's also available as an audio podcast wherever you download or stream your favorite podcast.

Check us out on YouTube or visit realagriculture.com, The Pulse School, brought to you by BSF Canada.

The following is a paid-for spot by UFA.

Welcome back to Real Ag on the Weekend.

The PEI Conservatives in 1935 went from power to zero against the Liberals.

The United Farmers of Alberta, again in 1935, went from power to zero against the Social Credit.

And 1987 New Brunswick, the, uh, New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives, after a long term in power and also a few scandals including drugs and sex, uh, lost all of their seats to the Liberals in 1987.

So that's the three times it happened.