Forty years since he last lost his federal seat, Ralph Goodale is once again on the outside of an incoming parliament.

Goodale, who had served as a do-it-all cabinet minister under the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau, lost his Regina-Wascana seat last month amid a Conservative wave in Western Canada that saw no Liberals elected in Alberta or Saskatchewan.

He was first elected to represent his hometown as a backbencher between 1974 and 1979, and had been sitting for the last 26 years straight — before his loss, he was the longest-serving Liberal in Ottawa.

As the outgoing minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Goodale was responsible for one of the largest and most complex portfolios in Trudeau’s cabinet, covering everything from the prison system to Canada’s spy agency, CSIS.

The Star spoke with Goodale by phone from Regina about Western alienation and Wexit, his political future and the unfinished business he’s handing the next Public Safety minister (see to-do list below) — from First Nations policing to the rise of far-right extremism, from battling gun crime to what to do with Canadian terrorists detained in Syria .

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Your portfolio was rarely in the news for good reasons. In your time as minister, you had to deal with issues like the influx of migrants at the Quebec border, a series of sexual harassment lawsuits in the RCMP, and on and on. What kind of job are you passing on here, Mr. Goodale?

It is a huge portfolio. The RCMP, CSIS, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Correctional Service of Canada and the Parole Board and a couple of review bodies and so forth. And you add that all together and it’s about 65,000 people and an annual operating budget that ranges between $9 billion and $10 billion. And I can literally say that every day there would be something happening that I could not have anticipated when the day began.

It is an excellent job, but it’s a very challenging job. We had a very large legislative agenda, 12 significant pieces of legislation, a number of budget accomplishments and policy changes, the vast majority of it delivered successfully over the course of that four-year period.

Obviously, the issues in public safety are ones that go directly to the peace and security and wellbeing of the country. The new minister will be inheriting a strong department, a great group of public servants, very dedicated agencies, but their plate will be full.

As co-chair of the Liberal party’s platform committee, you helped make gun control a key election pledge. Gun violence is clearly a big issue in Toronto, but perhaps less so in rural Canada. Why make it part of a national campaign?

Well, it’s an important issue to a lot of Canadians. There was a deep concern in many places across the country that people did not feel safe. The corollary of that is the issue around rural crime sometimes involving firearms, sometimes not.

It will be equally important to address those concerns around rural crime as much as the issues that affect the big cities. Every Canadian has the right to feel safe and it manifests itself in different ways in different communities depending on local circumstances.

The plan met mixed reactions. Some Canadians called for a national handgun ban and quite a few reacted badly to the idea of restricting firearms at all. How can Prime Minister Trudeau satisfy both sides?

For all the controversy that surrounded Bill C-71, (an earlier bill that amended the Firearms Act to strengthen background checks and transport regulations), when it was passed it enjoyed very high levels of support right across the country. There was a relatively small group of people who were totally resistant for very strong personal and ideological reasons but the vast majority of Canadians saw the merit in the bill.

So as the government goes forward, it needs to work hard to convince people of the merit to these steps.

You have overseen some big changes to Canada’s correctional system. Still, many of the larger cuts the previous government imposed remain in place. How is corrections different now than when you found it?

We’ve taken on major reforms, the most significant being the abolition of administrative segregation replacing that with a brand new system (with Bill C-83, which became law this spring).

The system is going to continue to require a great deal of focus and attention. When the public looks at various things governments could invest their money in — economic development, pensions, building up the military, improving circumstances for families and so forth — it’s hard to get reform in the correctional system high on the public’s agenda.

The bottom line here is that if you do not have an effective correctional system that is achieving the objectives of rehabilitation and reintegration, you will ultimately not have a safe society.

Ultimately, the people who are in the correctional system are at some point going to be released. The question is, are they being released in circumstances where they are better able to function as law-abiding people so that they don’t re-offend?

You have been monitoring Canadians who are being detained by our allies in northern Syria after travelling to join terrorist groups there. As the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is unfolding, that area is even more unstable. What needs to be done?

Canada is not the only country dealing with this issue. Most countries in Europe have the issue, the United States and other countries in the Five Eyes (intelligence partnership) are all confronted by the same challenge. We need to work very closely to make sure that we are keeping our respective countries as safe and secure as they can possibly be. It has to be a relentless effort.

Obviously, in the last couple of months, circumstances on the ground have changed dramatically. That will make the challenge even more compelling.

What about Western alienation, even the idea of a “Wexit”? Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has called for a “new deal” for the West, which would kill the carbon tax and renegotiate equalization payments — clearly non-starters federally. What do you say to the people of your native province who support these ideas?

The government is going to have to take the time and make the effort and investments that are necessary to come to grips with the feelings of alienation held by significant numbers of people across parts of Western Canada. This is serious stuff and it needs to be treated seriously.

I think the Western premier who has commented most directly on this business of Wexit and Western separatism is (Manitoba Premier Brian) Pallister, who has indicated that he has absolutely no time or sympathy for it whatsoever.

I noticed a number of journalists, in Saskatchewan at least, calling on the provincial government here to make that point emphatically, too — that this conversation about Western separatism actually is counterproductive and it doesn’t lead to the solutions that we in Western Canada need and want.

It takes people down a rabbit hole that leads to nowhere. Rather than having that rather pointless and self-defeating conversation about separatism, we need to focus on the substance of the issues that need fixing.

The prime minister has taken an important step in making it absolutely clear that the (Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project) is in the national interest, it has been approved and has passed all of the regulatory reviews. We’ve spent $4.5 billion dollars to acquire ownership of it in order for it to be completed in the proper way, so that project needs to go forward to demonstrate that we are going to do what we said we would do, and that is to get that pipeline done.

A couple of commentators made the point on election night that a strong majority of Canadians voted for more vigorous action on climate change, including on the issue of pollution pricing. The same election produced a strong majority of Canadians in favour of building the (pipeline expansion). So we’ve got to do both.

That will not be easy. That is not an easy circle to square.

How important is it for the prime minister to find a way to get representation for Alberta and the prairies and his cabinet? With no MPs, that’s going to be an incredible challenge.

The prime minister will have to be very creative to make sure that Westerners are not just being consulted and heard, but also listened to. So that he will be able to demonstrate that we took this seriously, we made the effort that was required, we did listen, and we understood, and here are the changes that have resulted from that understanding.

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Is there any chance that you will play a role in those creative solutions?

I am always willing to help in any way I can, but I’m not seeking any official role.

I think all Canadians need to be concerned about an election that yielded such a fractured outcome. It was not a very pleasant election, viewed from any perspective.

In a pre-election op-ed for the Star, you wrote about the rise of J.T.M. Anderson, who won the 1929 election in Saskatchewan after being backed by the KKK. You used that as a warning over the rise of far-right extremism. Do you still see that warning applying after the election?

Intolerance is one of the great threats and risks to democracy. I think you always need to be vigilant about it. The remarkable thing about the election of 1929 was it all happened through completely democratic means, people actually voted for candidates who were supported by the Klu Klux Klan — that’s a pretty nasty blemish on our history.

The good news about that situation is that in the following election, 1934, the same democratic process defeated every single one of them and a combination of (opposing candidate) Jimmy Gardiner, the election and the depression drove them out of Saskatchewan.

It’s really important always to be alert to voices of extremism. And we all need to be vigorous about defending our democracy and defending those values that bind us together.

This isn’t the first time you’ve lost your seat in Parliament, but it’s been a while. How is this feeling different than your first loss in 1979?

Neither experience is particularly happy. In ’79, that was my second election and my first defeat. Now this is, I think, my 15th or 16th election and there had been other defeats along the way.

I suppose the difference is just a length of experience and perspective. The first loss in ’79, I would have been 29 and now I’m just past 70. I’ve had an amazing opportunity to be involved in the democratic process from every side and every perspective you could imagine: in government and in opposition; front-bencher and back-bencher; young and old — older; provincially and federally. I’ve had the chance to not just look at it at all, but to experience it all and it’s a messy, painful process.

We are one of the few countries to be able to actually practice meaningful democracy. That’s a very precious thing and we need to treat it as a precious thing, with all the respect that it deserves, its messiness notwithstanding.

Ralph Goodale’s to-dos for Public Safety:

1. Battle gun crime. Goodale emphasizes his successor must implement Bill C-71, do more to support law enforcement guns-and-gangs initiatives, fight gun trafficking at the border, and work with NGOs and community groups on gang prevention. That’s in addition to the Liberals’ campaign promises to ban “assault-style” weapons and give cities the right to ban handguns within their borders.

2. Strengthen national security. This includes implementing Bill C-59, which Goodale calls the “most important reform to national security law since CSIS was developed back in 1984,” and following through on campaign pledges to, among other things, create a dedicated unit to charge and prosecute Canadians who join terror groups. He also calls for further effort on countering neo-Nazi and white supremacist material online — “we can’t let up at all” on far-right extremism, he says.

3. Implement Bill C-83, which aims to end solitary confinement in federal prisons.

4. Solidify the modernization of the RCMP.

5. Create an independent agency for complaints about officer conduct in the Canada Border Services Agency. Legislation to create such an agency has passed the House, but not the Senate.

6. Continue to reform the pardon system. Goodale says he has been working on a package of changes to eligibility and wait times, which was not ready before the election.

7. Improve Victim Services, which helps victims of crime navigate the justice system. Supports exist to help people through that trauma, but they are “a bit ad hoc,” Goodale says.

8. Extend the memorial grant program for first responders who die in the line of duty to include correctional workers.

9. Enhance cybersecurity with a new law to set standards for digital security for the telecom, finance, energy and transportation sectors. “The money’s there. The sectors had been identified. The legislation is in the process of being drafted,” Goodale says.

10. Put First Nations Policing on secure footing with legislation to make it a permanent essential service. “You can’t have a police service that expires every now and then,” he says.