A province has decided to allow citizens to call for a referendum to separate, and they ve made it much easier than before! We ve got all the details. The Ezra LeVant Show is a show about Canadian politics, politics, and everything else going on in it. Hosted by Ezra Levant, host of The Ezra Levant Show and host of the Rebel News Plus podcast.
00:00:00.100Hello, my friends. Incredible news out of Alberta. That province has decided to allow citizens to call for a referendum to separate, and they've made it much easier than before.
00:00:11.600Boy, we've got all the details. It's fascinating.
00:00:14.380But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast.
00:00:19.420Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month.
00:00:24.080I know that's, you know, you're thinking that's not a lot of money.
00:00:26.680Well, it may not be a lot of money to you, but boy, it sure adds up for us.
00:00:30.480Because that's how we pay our bills. Because as you know, we don't take a dime from government, and it shows.
00:01:40.640I'm going to spend most of the show today talking to you about Alberta and what Danielle Smith, the Premier, is doing to fight back in a deeply serious and fundamental way to the war being declared on Alberta by the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.
00:02:02.980But first, I want to talk for maybe five or ten minutes about the results of the election.
00:02:07.100And again, I'm going to let it go, but there was something I noticed today that I thought you might find interesting.
00:02:12.920Now, some people say I've been too positive about the election results.
00:02:15.960I mean, a close second place is just a fancy way of saying loser, I guess.
00:02:21.120And when measured against the benchmark of, what, six months ago, we all thought would happen, of course, it was a disaster on Monday.
00:02:29.000I'm not thrilled that Pierre Pauly have lost his own seat either, but that's what a combination of redrawing a riding to change its demographics, oh, and mass migration will do to a country or a district.
00:02:42.780Now, I have not heard a single Conservative, other than the Conservatives in name only in Ontario's provincial PC party, and they ran a demoralization campaign against their federal counterparts.
00:02:54.920I haven't seen or heard a single real Conservative Party member call for Pierre Pauly have to step down.
00:03:20.060You always have to check the sources and the links.
00:03:22.640But Wikipedia is good at compiling things.
00:03:25.340For example, they have every single poll done in the 2025 election campaign.
00:03:30.660So scroll down here and look at the dates.
00:03:32.960This is every poll by every single company.
00:03:35.500As you can see, sometimes there are several polls every day during the campaign.
00:03:39.800So Pauly have wound up with 41.3% on election day.
00:03:43.000But scroll, and other than one smaller pollster called Main Street, which had the Conservatives at that level in a couple of polls, there wasn't a single poll that put the Conservatives that high in the entire campaign.
00:03:55.540So the campaign exceeded every single pollster's prediction, except for those few from Main Street.
00:04:00.560But actually, my real point is this, keep scrolling, keep scrolling down to last summer and spring.
00:04:06.040So I'm talking about 2024, when Justin Trudeau was still in power, when Mark Carney was frolicking in Europe, and the Conservatives were looking great.
00:06:10.200Thanks for letting me get that out of my system.
00:06:12.480But seriously, don't you think it's interesting that the Conservative number on Election Day really didn't change from their numbers last year?
00:06:43.520I believe in Alberta's sovereignty within a united Canada.
00:06:46.780However, there is a citizen-initiated referendum process that if citizens want to put a question on a ballot and get enough of their fellow citizens to sign that petition, then those questions will be put forward.
00:06:59.280Again, I don't want to prejudge what a question might be, but not by our government.
00:07:02.520After the break, we'll talk about that with Keith Wilson, the lawyer for the trucker convoy, who has now directed his mind to the prospect of Alberta just leaving.
00:08:54.440Preston Manning talked about giving people democratic tools like recall, which is when you don't like a politician, you can call them back.
00:09:02.720You don't have to wait till the end of an election.
00:09:05.800That means when you put a bill or a law forward, again, not from the legislature, but from the people.
00:09:12.000But I think of those things, they're very important and that's part of the Alberta spirit.
00:09:15.920But of course, the constitutional referendum and the lowering of the threshold of it is by far the most important thing, I think, that the premier said.
00:09:28.560And you may say, well, this sounds out of the blue, what's this got to do with anything?
00:09:32.700Well, it has to do with everything, including the re-election of globalist, socialist, environmentalist, anti-oilist Mark Carney.
00:09:42.580Because as you may know, because we've talked about it before, in Canada, secession, that is leaving Canada, it's not banned, it's not illegal, it's not an act of war as it was in the United States during their civil war.
00:09:59.520In fact, the law prescribes precisely how to do it.
00:10:02.500And by lowering the threshold to 10% of people who voted in the previous election, as opposed to 20% of every possible voter, Premier Smith has just made it tremendously more accessible for people to trigger a secession vote.
00:10:40.820Did I properly understand the import of what Premier Smith did?
00:10:47.120Yeah, and what's important to understand for your viewers is that while the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that any province can vote to leave Canada, to become independent, to secede,
00:11:01.240the triggering event for that is a referendum, and it's the provincial legislatures that control the details of what that referendum looks like.
00:11:12.720In Alberta, we have the referendum statute that's been on the books for quite some time, and in that statute, the cabinet itself can call for a referendum on separation.
00:11:23.200But we have this new law called the Citizens Initiative legislation, initially brought in by Jason Kenney under the UCP, that provided a process for citizens themselves to get together and compel the government of Alberta to hold a referendum on separation.
00:11:45.140The problem, of course, and you've commented on this in other broadcasts, is it was a very complex piece of legislation and very difficult to meet the threshold.
00:11:54.600The threshold was 600,000 signatures over the period of 90 days.
00:12:00.720Well, what the Premier announced yesterday is that legislation is being amended, so the threshold for citizens to force the government to hold a referendum on separation is now lowered from 600,000 voters to 177,000, and there's 120 days to secure those signatures instead of just 90.
00:12:26.680So it's a big change that will make Alberta more democratic and give greater say to the citizens.
00:12:38.680I mean, I have said before that I thought that the way Jason Kenney, when he was Premier, put these laws on the books is I found it, frankly, I'm not going to say deceptive, but it was a placebo.
00:12:51.140It was fake that the levels were so high and it was so impossible to do that it would be only the most extreme, like once a century cases that would rise to those levels.
00:13:02.860To me, it felt like a fake bone thrown to Democrats and populists, because frankly, Jason Kenney, and I've known him for a while, he's never really been a populist.
00:13:14.880But I think what Danielle Smith has done is she hasn't created this law.
00:13:18.960She's just adjusted it to turn it from a fake thing that you hang on the wall to point to when someone says, how come you don't have more democracy?
00:13:26.340Oh, we have the bill to turn it from a fake thing to a real thing that may actually be used.
00:13:31.920I think it is absolutely doable to have 177,000 signatures in 120 days.
00:13:39.440Obviously, you would want to get far more to make sure that there was no disqualification of some.
00:14:41.560And there's even a mechanism, Ezra, for in real time each week, for example, you can submit the signatures you have so they get vetted in real time.
00:14:54.060So let's say you submit a batch of 50,000 signatures.
00:14:58.080You can find out the next week that they're going to accept 48,000 of them.
00:15:02.500So you know you're now 2,000 short, as opposed to submitting it all at the end.
00:15:06.460And they invalidate a certain number of them and you end up being short by 1,000.
00:15:10.660So there's even that fairness in the process, that transparency that I think is going to ensure that when a group comes forward to make the move to actually circulate the specific petition, that we will get, you know, 200,000 plus.
00:15:26.540So there'll be no doubt that we've met the threshold.
00:15:29.620And even if, let's say you got 176,000 out of the 177,000, it remains, as you mentioned, within the power of the cabinet to hold a referendum.
00:15:39.920So if it was effectively there, but through some, the equivalent of a clerical error or a typo, it didn't quite cross the threshold, the premier could call the referendum nonetheless.
00:15:50.960But here's the thing, and I've been thinking a lot about this in recent weeks.
00:15:54.540Most of the media in Alberta is run out of Toronto.
00:16:00.560And I suppose Rebel News is the same way.
00:16:02.740I live in Toronto, even though my heart is very Western.
00:17:09.260They were just offered a $150 million bribe by Mark Carney to do his bidding.
00:17:14.360Of course, they're going to smash the radio stations as well.
00:17:19.640My point is, whoever pops their head up to do this is going to be subject to the most vicious cancel culture smear machine we have ever seen in this country.
00:17:33.280If you think what they did to Pierre Polyev was bad, if you think what they did to Preston Manning and Stockwell Day was bad, all those guys wanted to do is be a part of the system.
00:17:44.600But imagine if Albertans say, we're done being part of the system.
00:17:56.580I think we're talking deep state involvement.
00:18:00.760We all worried about the assassination of Donald Trump, and it came within an inch of it.
00:18:06.520When you're talking about 170 billion barrels of oil, when you're talking about changing entire country boundaries, there will be nothing that isn't thrown at this.
00:18:15.880I just fear the greatest battle, the greatest hatchet job, the greatest assassination, the greatest fear campaign ever seen in Canada.
00:18:35.100I just have a terrible premonition that if Albertans dare to take their destiny in their own hands, the same way Quebec has now done twice, that those Albertans will be ground into powder.
00:18:51.100I was speaking with a litigator, another lawyer yesterday, who's never been involved in fights like this.
00:18:56.000And as you know, Ezra, I've been on the front line of some very difficult situations, both in Alberta, where I fought the Stelmac government and brought them down, the old PCs under property rights issues.
00:19:06.440And then being on the front lines in Ottawa during COVID mandates and Freedom Convoy.
00:19:13.340So I know I've got the bruises and the scars from those fights, and I know what they take.
00:19:20.240And what I cautioned this other lawyer about is I said, right now, it's being like in a lawsuit where on the other side, it's a self-represented party.
00:19:29.320And we're just mopping the floor, right, as experienced litigators.
00:19:32.500I said, there's Wolf Pax and Dream Teams about to show up on the other side.
00:19:37.540The Laurentian elite are not going to let this cash cow go.
00:19:41.420They're not going to want us to get out of this relationship where they can milk us and they can have all these huge amounts of money go to them and us be their play toy for their extremist policy implementations.
00:19:57.080So, yeah, we're going to have a fight on our hands.
00:19:59.260There's going to be dirty tricks played.
00:20:01.020There's going to be attempts to, you know, they're probably going to put so much pressure on me that I may lose some clients.
00:21:10.160So we're going to potentially have the State Department and other agencies within the U.S. government advancing positions to help one side or the other.
00:21:22.800So this is going to be a very wild time in Canadian history, without a doubt.
00:21:27.680Well, and that's the thing, is Donald Trump is such a polarizing figure, and he had such a – he knocked the Canadian election off its balance.
00:21:39.940Even today, his comments were odd, saying Pierre Polyev hated Trump more, which is clearly not true.
00:21:47.940No, well, I think we're going to have a great relationship.
00:23:11.500Who even – in fact, it would – it might even turn the family members against – and that's the thing.
00:23:19.580Trump could scupper it because Trump has expressed his interest in the 51st state.
00:23:26.520Trump has not been skillful or precise or articulate over the last few months, and I think he helped install Mark Carney.
00:23:36.940I don't actually think he meant to do it.
00:23:39.140I don't actually think he was deeply briefed.
00:23:41.060I think his mind is on Ukraine, Russia, Iran, China, Mexico, Abraham Accords Round 2, you know, deporting illegals, getting cabinet members approved by the Senate, which isn't even completely done.
00:23:57.180So, he's got so many things that are obviously a higher priority for him.
00:24:01.280I think Canada was like a punchline to a joke that he used Governor Trudeau that was a – he got a laugh.
00:24:07.560So, you know, it's when you tell a joke and you get laughs, you keep telling that joke wherever you go.
00:24:14.160And I think Trump's banter, which I normally love, is what gave us Mark Carney as PM.
00:24:21.200And I think Trump, if he said, I really like this referendum, would probably sink it.
00:24:28.420But if he said, oh, I don't like this referendum, no one would believe it.
00:24:32.220I think the answer is for him to say it's a Canadian affair and we'll stay out of it.
00:24:37.240But I don't even know if that's the case, because if I was the CIA, I would very much want 170 billion barrels of oil.
00:24:44.480Although, as I keep telling my American friends, you've already got unfettered access to the USMCA trade deal.
00:24:51.080Like, you literally can take all the oil you want.
00:24:53.760There's a side letter to the USMCA, which gives America a preference.
00:24:57.780I mean, that is the wild card, what Trump might do or might not do.
00:25:06.200Do you think Albertans would proceed ahead, would barge on no matter what?
00:25:10.720Well, first of all, I'm very much alive to that.
00:25:16.200And that's why I brought it up, is that we've got to get out in front of this to the extent that Trump is just absolutely that, a wild card.
00:25:25.020Any kind of scenarios in gaming out, I'm doing strategically.
00:25:29.300And then as soon as I do the Trump overlay, I just swish all the papers away.
00:25:34.460Because the strategy, you can't plan for it.
00:25:37.440But what we can do, and those like myself who have reached the decision personally that the best thing for my kids and grandkids is for Alberta to be independent and leave Canada, the confederation,
00:25:51.320is make clear that the decision that will be in the referendum when I think it comes, and I think it's going to come soon given the announcement from yesterday, the actual independence referendum,
00:26:04.200is that the question they're considering is not whether to leave Alberta or leave Canada and join the United States.
00:26:11.360The question that's being asked on the referendum is whether or not Alberta is going to become independent, a sovereign country.
00:26:19.760And then only after that should we enter into consideration of whether we want to change our relationship with our main trading partner, the United States,
00:26:29.020that this is not a referendum on joining the United States.
00:26:32.440This is a referendum on Alberta's independence, its freedom, and its sovereignty.
00:26:38.360You know, a week ago I was in the Isle of Man.
00:26:42.120I was looking into Brookfield Asset Management's tax avoidance strategies.
00:26:47.360And it's this little island between Ireland and the UK.
00:27:44.560And I remember very clearly the response from the entire establishment in Ottawa.
00:27:53.360The Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, all the media, all of it.
00:27:58.340It was when Quebec sovereignists or separatists, they use different language, when they would make a demand, it wasn't met with anger or rage or threats.
00:28:12.960The establishment said, we'll give you that.
00:28:19.160And it was within half a percent, the last referendum.
00:28:25.240And even after that, the payoffs, the bribes, some would say, the compromises, that's where the Liberal government engaged in the so-called sponsorship scandal.
00:28:38.780The federal government decided they were going to sponsor everything, every building, every carnival, every concert, and have the word Canada and the Canadian flag there.
00:28:50.360They spent a quarter of a billion dollars.
00:28:54.260And so much of that was stolen and kicked back to the Liberal Party.
00:28:57.040So there was a lot of criminal elements, as you get with the Liberals.
00:28:59.820But putting aside the crime, my point is, their response to Quebec separatists in the moment was, please don't go.
00:29:39.700You know, it's remarkable the attitude.
00:29:44.780You even saw it when Carney, halfway through the election campaign, mocked Premier Smith.
00:29:50.700There's this arrogance that I find with the Federal Liberals, where they just think they know better.
00:30:00.760They think all of us out here in the prairies are hicks and unsophisticated, you know, blue-collar workers.
00:30:07.300And that's partly what's driving this wave of separatism is Albertans are tired of being treated poorly.
00:30:19.640Albertans recognize the value of their work and what we contribute to Canada.
00:30:23.620And if we're not going to be appreciated, well, we'll keep that wealth here and we'll do better things with it and spend the money more wisely than the federal government will.
00:30:33.160So, you know, it'll be interesting to see if Carney changes tack.
00:30:37.800I think he's concealed his true ambition, which is he wants Canada to be an experiment.
00:30:44.380He wants to show the world that we can get to net zero, that we can get to strictly electric vehicles, that we can, you know, magically, as he said in one of his scrums,
00:30:53.540he said, we're going to put a carbon tax or, you know, tax emissions from heavy emitters so that Canadians can get less expensive heat pumps.
00:31:16.600This guy, I mean, I'm seeing no indication that anything he said on the campaign trail is true.
00:31:22.260He was caught, you know, saying in Alberta that he supports pipelines and then in Quebec that he'll block them.
00:31:29.720He said that he's going to make Canada into an energy superpower and then he qualified it in a media scrum close to the election day where he, what he said, what he meant was a renewable energy superpower.
00:31:42.460You can't export renewables on scale outside of hydro.
00:31:45.840So it's going to be interesting times to see who the real Mark Carney is and whether there's going to be any attempt at reconciliation from the federal government to the prairies or whether they're going to continue to pursue their extremist failed policies and keep their economic, their knee on our economic neck.
00:32:08.060You know, I've, I've often wondered who could be a leader of this movement.
00:32:12.200I know there are people who are doing certain parts of the work, but typically a leader is someone who has some authority, some gravitas, maybe a household name.
00:32:25.080The trucker convoy started in a way leaderless.
00:32:29.540It was, it was, it was sort of an organic, authentic, spontaneous movement.
00:32:35.800Now leaders emerged, including Tamara Leach, who you and I know well, but it didn't start that way.
00:32:43.420It was almost like, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was kind of a group consciousness, like we got to do something and oh yeah, I'm going to join in.
00:32:51.960And I guess what I'm saying is, now that I think about it, if the referendum can be called with just 177,000 people saying yes, and if the question is, as you described, clear and, you know, it's going to be a brutal campaign.
00:33:10.960But maybe, maybe it could, maybe it would be leaderless and maybe it can be leaderless, because I'm just thinking anyone who had the province-wide name recognition would either be destroyed immediately by the establishment or, or undermined in some way.
00:33:32.160Like, I'm just trying to think, like Preston Manning, he's, if I recall, he's around 80, he might be even actually a little bit older, I'd have to, I think he's 82, actually.
00:33:47.660But the thing is, if, if it's a citizen's vote, it can be leaderless.
00:33:51.820It can have a hundred leaders or it can be a, it can be a decentralized leadership.
00:33:57.680It can and only in one circumstance, in my view.
00:34:00.760You know, I witnessed firsthand, I was on the ground for 22 days during the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa and, and was in all the key places throughout that historic protest.
00:34:13.520So I got to witness firsthand what was happening, particularly behind the scenes.
00:34:17.900And what was always remarkable to me was how everybody was there for the exact same reason.
00:34:25.980They had, they had, they all had the same notional mission statement.
00:34:30.420They all had the same outcome in mind.
00:34:34.320And I'm really starting to notice parallels with the various Albertans that I'm meeting who I've never met before.
00:34:40.240So not people I know and old friends, I'm paying attention to that too, but people I've never met before.
00:34:46.060And I'm noticing that they all have the same sense that, that the future prosperity of our children and grandchildren is being compromised by these extremist failed policies, the reckless spending,
00:35:00.460and the holding back of our province in terms of its economic potential, you can grab anybody at random, they'll give you all those three things.
00:35:34.060I think the real difficult challenge now is not going to be to get the citizen initiative petition to the threshold to compel the Alberta government to hold a referendum.
00:35:46.680The real fight is going to be convincing enough Albertans to vote yes in the referendum on separation so that the, the results are super clear in terms of it being a very clear majority, not a close majority.
00:36:03.820So that will strengthen our hand in the negotiations that will follow with the other provinces, the federal government and the first nations.
00:36:11.060Yeah. Well, I've said it before, if Alberta goes, I think it's quite likely that Saskatchewan will go within a year or two.
00:36:20.000And at that point, Canada's internal balance, the remainder of Canada falls apart.
00:36:27.040It's basically Ontario plus, and it wouldn't surprise me if British Columbia or part of British Columbia would be another domino.
00:36:35.660And then where would the North go? Where would the Northwest territories and the Yukon go?
00:36:40.600A lot of things would be afoot. And I don't know how that would end, but it could be that Mark Carney's election, as Preston Manning prophesied in the Globe and Mail, would be the last election of a prime minister of a united Canada.
00:36:57.740Um, Mark Carney lacks a sense of Canada because he's been away for so long.
00:37:04.560You can tell it in, in little things. He says, cultural references that are a decade or two old.
00:37:10.780He doesn't understand things. He doesn't, he doesn't, hasn't followed things.
00:37:15.880He mixes up Keystone XL pipeline with a Trans Mountain pipeline. You know, listen, a regular person, of course, he's not going to know the difference, but you're, he's clearly a guy, a politician who doesn't, those are huge things.
00:37:28.320He doesn't know. He hasn't been following. He's been busy saving the world from global warming. And then he saw this opportunity.
00:37:35.140So I, I think that he lacks an empathy and an understanding and he's tone deaf in his own way. And he really is a VVIP. He really is at home at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
00:37:49.440Um, he really is at home hanging out with Ghislaine Maxwell. Um, that's his tribe. When Prince Andrew threw a lavish party for Mark Carney at Buckingham Palace, that's his happy place.
00:38:03.480That kind of guy in Alberta, I don't know how he'll work. I mean, he's the kind of guy who has police arrest independent journalists.
00:38:11.420Um, I think it's going to be independent journalists leading the way on this because any corporate journalist is going to be cut off at the knees.
00:38:18.700Keith, we're going to talk about this many times in the months ahead, I'm sure, because it's, it's so fascinating and, uh, I'm trying to get my head around it.
00:38:27.340My friend and colleague, Sheila Gunn-Reed has announced a new website and I haven't visited it yet. It's called donegettingscrewed.com.
00:38:38.140And Sheila loved that and she chose it. I'm not about to tell her no. I think we got some fun stuff there and, and I actually haven't watched that yet.
00:38:47.240So, uh, maybe, maybe I'm a little nervous about what's at that website, donegettingscrewed.com, but that's Sheila's response, uh, to Mark Carney.
00:38:56.260So we'll see. And Keith, you and I, let's stay in touch on this. And, uh, uh, I think this is going to be the story of the year.
00:39:02.100We, elections are about vision and aspirations. After elections, true leaders have to deal with real serious problems affecting real people in their daily lives.
00:39:13.860I don't think Carney's got it. So yeah, it's going to be a very, very interesting time. And then we have the complete wild card of Donald Trump and, uh, we're in interesting times, my friend, for sure.
00:39:26.100Great talking with you, Keith Wilson, King's counsel, a lawyer for the freedom convoy, and a man deeply involved in the thinking and strategy behind Alberta, Alberta's, uh, possible referendum. Keep in touch.
00:39:40.640Stay with us. Your letters to me are next.
00:39:43.860Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me, Dean writes,
00:39:54.780If Canadians didn't learn their lesson with Trudeau, it's likely they'll never learn.
00:39:59.620Well, here comes more pain. I mean, higher taxes, more debt, continued war on fossil fuels, which means more unemployment, massive immigration and censorship.
00:40:09.720It really is going to be as bad as Trudeau or worse.
00:40:12.200Laura says, Can we be assured there was zero political interference?
00:40:17.460I don't know who you mean. We had several, uh, indications when the National Security, um, committee that's in charge of monitoring for foreign interference said China was interfering.
00:40:29.540That happened two or three times during the campaign. And everyone just shrugged.
00:40:33.160In fact, Mark Carney didn't fire anyone. He waited for one of his candidates to resign.
00:40:38.180But the successor, who was also deeply in bed with the Chinese Communist Party, continued through to Election Day.
00:40:46.440Valerie Hawk says, From Ontario, I would like to apologize to Alberta.
00:40:50.640Please remember, not all of Ontario voted for this.
00:40:53.200As for Doug Ford, he just lost six votes for my family.