00:01:47.900Alberta independence would go terribly badly, according to an economist.
00:01:52.900Separate Alberta would be a poor Alberta, Trevor Toome in the hub.
00:01:57.000This from the CBC, business and academic leaders in Alberta are warning that continued debate over provincial separation could damage the province's economy, even if separation never occurs.
00:02:09.300So this is what we're hearing from economists, and we're also hearing from the leaders of the pro-Canada side here in Alberta.
00:02:15.660They're talking doom and gloom on how bad Alberta independence,
00:02:20.280just talking about Alberta independence, would be for investments.
00:02:24.500Here's just a little sample of what they're saying.
00:02:27.360Unless the courts stop her, or unless she calls a snap election and we win,0.65
00:02:32.700we will have a referendum on separation next summer.
00:02:36.920That means nobody is investing one dollar in Alberta
00:02:40.320if they don't know what country Alberta is going to be in.
00:02:42.800The very discussion of separation really puts a cooling effect on investment and on business in this province.
00:02:49.880There's nothing good that can come from this. It will just create the debate itself, will create massive investor uncertainty.
00:02:58.180Calgary is a globally connected city. We compete for investment, talent, major employers and jobs with cities across North America and all around the world.
00:03:06.840And markets pay attention to political instability.
00:03:11.800During Quebec separation fights, major companies moved head offices,
00:03:15.780and billions in investments left the province because of the prolonged uncertainty.
00:03:20.400What Calgary Mayor Jeremy Farkas says there is pretty typical of the other leaders of the pro-Canada side,
00:03:27.400including Jason Kenney, Nahed Nenshi, and Thomas Lukasik.
00:03:30.520they generally talk about the Bank of Montreal head office not being in Montreal anymore. It's
00:03:37.200in Toronto because talk of separation in Quebec drove them away. The reason for that is they
00:03:44.120would have had to go full French. That's why they left. You see, Alberta is doing quite well0.95
00:03:48.800despite Ottawa. When we don't have to ask the permission of Ottawa and Mark Carney and the
00:03:55.440Liberal Party, we do quite well here. It's when Ottawa gets involved when things go awry. Let's
00:04:02.280take a look at a couple of stories. Dow Canada, May 25th, 2026, $10 billion investment in Alberta.
00:04:10.540Here's one right here, $10 billion investment in Olds, Alberta, a data center. A little
00:04:16.860controversial, but $10 billion in investment. And then Daniel Smith, just 12 hours ago,
00:04:23.340One of the largest private sector investments in Canadian history is coming home to Alberta.
00:04:29.040Meta has chosen Alberta for its first Canadian AI data center, a historic $13 billion investment that will create thousands of jobs.
00:04:38.080You can see it says private sector investments.
00:04:41.340You know, the pipelines that were announced over the last couple of days, how much private sector money is in that, folks?
00:04:46.880You, as a taxpayer in Canada, on the hook for tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, because we can't get pipelines built, because Ottawa gets in the way.
00:05:00.540We do fine when we don't have to deal with Ottawa.