John Bolton - Can Alberta Afford Independence？ Yes, We Can! with Dennis Kalma

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. Great to have you here today. A little different

00:00:07.620 setup, although we've done this on occasion here down in my basement. I don't have a lot

00:00:12.460 of people visiting me, but my friend Dennis Kalma from the Alberta Transition Council

00:00:17.680 doesn't live very far from me. He lived down here sort of in the southeast, not too far

00:00:21.320 from me here in South Calgary. So I thought, why don't we get together as opposed to doing

00:00:25.700 a Zoom call? It's always better when we're together. It's always good to see Dennis.

00:00:28.960 and let's tip the big blue mugs. Good to see you here. Thank you very much for being here today

00:00:34.260 to talk about this, which was just released last night. Might be a little hard for you to see. I

00:00:39.740 might put it up in post, but forward to freedom. Can Alberta afford independence? And this is a

00:00:45.240 question that has been asked for very many months. We've heard lots of numbers on how much it will

00:00:50.420 cost us for our independence. I think Premier Smith threw out a number of something like $400

00:00:56.060 billion dollars, if I remember correctly. The most recent one we heard from, I think it was

00:01:00.180 Jack Mintz, University of Calgary, 50 to 170 billion dollars. And of course, this got play

00:01:07.040 across the country that it was going to cost too much for Alberta to do this. You've got some

00:01:11.740 numbers here. I haven't really had a chance to go through the complete document, which you've got

00:01:15.620 here today. What are we talking about here? Let me ask the question. Can Alberta afford

00:01:22.360 independent status this is the question short answer yes right but i want to take it back to

00:01:27.400 why there are two documents okay because there are two when we were getting ready to release the

00:01:34.040 um transition plan uh we were working on the budget in parallel so that that didn't change

00:01:40.200 but we realized fairly early on that the transition budget covers that period of transition

00:01:45.800 from the time we become independent until the time the future legislature sits

00:01:50.280 and how much that's going to cost. And that document was published yesterday as well.

00:01:54.760 This document answers the question, okay, so you've transitioned, your legislature's sitting,

00:02:01.640 are we still viable? We made it there, but it's a lot of temporary scaffolding as it were.

00:02:07.160 And now what do we do? So this answers the same question that the value of freedom answered

00:02:12.760 from APP back in 2025, but it now answers much more thoroughly.

00:02:18.840 and it updates some of those numbers i'm sure i know i've spoken to you many times since that

00:02:23.560 document the value of freedom was released i've got it right over here but i know you've been

00:02:27.560 wanting to update those numbers over time so it does update some of that well it updates the

00:02:31.880 numbers and makes them much more thorough the main thing so there's several differences between

00:02:36.360 uh the old document and this document um in the in the original document we put a lot of policy

00:02:44.360 elements a lot of a lot of commentary about how immigration would be done and what do we do for

00:02:51.480 indigenous people and how do we do this and how do we do that and in the discussions and meetings

00:02:57.240 i attended after that a lot of people were bothered by those policies because they were not perfect

00:03:02.280 they were guesses by a few people who said hey i think this sounds good and realized that it was

00:03:07.480 not necessary to do the fiscal planning so this document is far far lighter on the policy aspect

00:03:14.360 It really talks about only policy elements that are essential to the costing process.

00:03:20.800 So that's what we did.

00:03:22.360 So that's one major difference.

00:03:24.000 The second thing, and we got this as feedback as well, the numbers need to be cited.

00:03:28.480 We just put the numbers in value of freedom.

00:03:30.400 It's all real nice and read okay.

00:03:32.380 So where did this number come from?

00:03:33.880 Where did that number come from?

00:03:34.740 Now every number we quote is cited right back to its source.

00:03:40.020 Okay.

00:03:40.080 The other thing that's changed is we no longer explore essentially a single scenario.

00:03:46.140 We say, well, what happens if oil price falls?

00:03:49.700 What happens if we have to take the full share of the national debt?

00:03:53.920 What happens if this occurs?

00:03:56.400 We have seven different scenarios.

00:03:58.560 We cost out and say, okay, at what point do we exhaust our surplus?

00:04:03.000 So we can say, well, all these bad things have to happen and they have to remain before we're in trouble.

00:04:08.520 What are the chances of oil prices going in the toilet and staying there for 20 years? Zero.

00:04:14.360 Right.

00:04:15.000 So we put all that in to structure the document, be much more durable, much more readable,

00:04:20.500 and much more focused on the actual question of can Alberta survive? Is it fiscally viable

00:04:26.680 on its own as a separate nation?

00:04:29.040 You know, you hear quite often people saying, well, what would Alberta's share of the federal

00:04:34.840 debt be things like that it's obviously something you've had to look at so do you look at a scale

00:04:40.280 of where we may be so and you kind of cost it out so so people are going to struggle with why we did

00:04:45.160 this but we put it in there as zero we haven't estimated what it would be worst case but we said

00:04:52.760 this is an unsettled discussion we need to actually have the conversation with Canada

00:04:59.240 we have to have the debate about wait a minute here how much of that incurred debt was actually

00:05:04.200 beneficial to Alberta. Point at those assets, please. We have to discuss essentially our

00:05:09.960 grossly overpayments, gross overpayments to Canada. Well, does that not buy us some room in

00:05:16.600 that debt? And ultimately we'll end up at a settlement that I think is quite a bit lower

00:05:20.780 than the per capita, or as the University of Calgary report said, is we'll do it on the basis

00:05:28.200 of GDP, which is truly a worst case that makes no sense in my mind. I'm wondering, for instance,

00:05:33.880 when it comes to the national debt, I can't remember, is it, I've heard the word, maybe

00:05:38.340 16% or something we might have to pick up or something like that. So basically that's an

00:05:44.220 estimate. That's a guess. It's a guess. And the real number will come later once we get into the

00:05:49.880 discussion. And we made a reserve for it and forward to freedom. We said, okay, if we have

00:05:54.580 to take the full share, here's what it costs. It is survivable. It's not like we're going to

00:05:58.300 bankrupt the company, country rather. You know, so it works. In the transition plan, though, he said,

00:06:04.000 no, we're not going to try and make an estimate of what that negotiation will result in. We'll

00:06:08.400 hold it as a contingency to be dealt with. But right now, it costed at zero.

00:06:13.340 Right. So the number from the premier, which was way up there, $400 billion.

00:06:18.520 Mintz was $50 to $170 billion. If you look at this document here, an estimate, how much?

00:06:24.680 So right now we're saying it's about $5 billion or so, and maybe I'm going to back up for a moment.

00:06:31.920 Let me discuss the mistake in my mind that's made by people like Danielle and the University of Calgary Report.

00:06:39.580 They conflate three different kinds of spending.

00:06:43.740 When you do something, when you do an activity, you have one-time cost that you spend to send something up, to stand it up, to make it run.

00:06:52.640 In our case, we say that's around $5 billion.

00:06:55.380 That's to buy the computers and whatever small equipment we need

00:06:58.800 and so on and so forth, temporary help.

00:07:00.840 That's a one-time cost.

00:07:02.840 The second thing is what increased administrative costs do we incur?

00:07:07.700 In other words, how many more people do we have to add

00:07:09.860 on an ongoing basis to run the thing, to administer the thing?

00:07:13.940 That's a second cost.

00:07:15.660 And then the third category is what is the money

00:07:18.120 that's actually paid out to individuals?

00:07:20.640 So, for example, pensions.

00:07:22.220 for example, age payments, for example, any other payment that goes to a business or to a person,

00:07:28.560 they tend to mix those three together and say, oh, look at this huge number.

00:07:32.920 You know, they conflate stand-up cost, running cost, and payments to taxpayers.

00:07:40.820 What the Alberta Transition Council document talks about is a lot of the things that

00:07:47.740 we're doing right now are just going to be a continuation of things that are going to happen

00:07:53.280 if we gain our independence, right? So there's not going to be additional costs here. It's the

00:07:59.200 same thing that we're going to be doing, that we're doing right now. Yes, well, that gets said

00:08:04.660 over and over again. There is absolutely nothing that we are doing that we need to do that is new

00:08:10.460 to the world. It's all being done now. We issue passports. Government of Canada does that. We have

00:08:15.640 a military government. Canada does that. There's a lot of this stuff that's within Alberta. We have

00:08:20.500 a banking system and a banking regulator. It needs to be expanded. We have a police force. It needs

00:08:26.580 to be expanded. So we have all those functions already. There's none that are new to world or

00:08:31.700 unknown unknowns. We just have to stand them up and make the run. There was a lot of, you know,

00:08:37.760 apocalyptic talk in the recent document that was released. Albertans are going to lose on average

00:08:44.600 something like $12,000 a year and things like that? What did you make of that? And what does

00:08:49.520 it say regarding things like that in this document that you released yesterday?

00:08:53.620 Well, so they were discussing the whole idea that people wouldn't want to trade with us.

00:08:59.860 We wouldn't be able to sell product. No investment would come in. People would leave,

00:09:03.560 whatever the case might be. And I happen to disagree with that. I would take, for example,

00:09:07.660 our shipments to the United States, primarily oil. They're going to want that oil. It's going

00:09:11.900 to continue be desired. They'll continue to pay and we will continue to get revenue and work from

00:09:18.060 that. The rest of Canada, I wrote an article about that a while ago that discusses the nature of the

00:09:24.880 trade between Alberta and the rest of Canada. It's primarily energy and agricultural products.

00:09:31.400 Well, they need our energy. Burnaby runs out of gas in something like a week.

00:09:36.360 That's right.

00:09:36.620 If oil stops flowing to eastern Canada through line five,

00:09:40.960 southern Ontario and Quebec are in trouble.

00:09:43.220 So that's not going to stop.

00:09:44.960 Agricultural products, people got to eat.

00:09:47.380 And the stuff that comes back to us is financial services, banking,

00:09:52.600 it's consulting services and so forth.

00:09:54.520 Why on earth would Canada want to stop providing those services? 0.95

00:09:58.700 Because it makes them money,

00:09:59.680 because their economy will be struggling as much as ours in some respects.

00:10:03.980 So they're going to want to sell stuff to us.

00:10:06.340 We're going to want to buy it to keep our economy going.

00:10:08.820 We're going to keep on selling oil to the United States.

00:10:11.980 I don't see any material impact to our economy.

00:10:15.560 Now, we did postulate in the plan, one of the scenarios,

00:10:19.380 is what would happen if we suffered the worst downturn in Alberta history,

00:10:24.360 which is roughly what that would be.

00:10:26.920 And how long did it last?

00:10:28.680 And still under that scenario, it's not as dark as the University of Calgary,

00:10:33.420 But yeah, it gives us a hit, but it's survivable. It works. We're not bankrupt as a country because

00:10:39.720 we have a downturn or several downturns at once.

00:10:43.980 When it comes to this document and when it comes to people and living their lives,

00:10:48.240 they talked about a $12,000 drop in income. It's been thrown around since we've been talking about

00:10:55.120 the independence movement, the rise of the independence movement, probably early last

00:10:58.780 year, 2025, the words like, we'd be to buy with snow, things like, and you've said that before,

00:11:07.280 I think I've quoted you on that before. You're obviously looking at all the different

00:11:14.100 contingencies, and I think that's very important, and you're saying, listen, this could happen,

00:11:19.140 but is there a good opportunity for people to be better off, as we've said, we've talked about

00:11:24.360 eliminating income tax and things like that, maybe after a number of years.

00:11:27.580 Yeah. So if you go to one of the sections of the document where we look to the future,

00:11:32.060 we walk through essentially six price production scenarios that say, okay, the base case is what

00:11:38.540 we're stating. No change in income, no change in revenue, flat as can be. Then we said, okay,

00:11:44.220 there's three choices. You say, well, what happens if Alberta sort of just continues more or less as

00:11:49.500 it is? Small amount of growth, nothing major. And we said, okay, what happens if it's more

00:11:53.500 aggressive growth and what happens at the high end if it goes all out you know many pipelines many

00:11:59.580 plants and so on and so forth which is the upper bound right in all those scenarios under two

00:12:04.860 different oil price scenarios we are substantially better off to the tune tune in some case of

00:12:12.940 hundreds of billions of dollars a year so what will we do with that money is the question i

00:12:18.140 will leave open for the legislature do they want to save it like norway do they want to reduce taxes

00:12:23.500 some combination of the two. An option is to in fact reduce our tax load in this country

00:12:30.460 to be so small as to be insignificant or perhaps zero. How do you get to hundreds of billions of

00:12:36.140 dollars? Well, because you increase the revenue. You do a reasonable price prediction on oil and

00:12:42.960 gas price in the future. You increase your production, let's say from the current

00:12:46.380 foreign change million barrels a day to maybe seven million barrels a day. That's a lot of

00:12:52.340 revenue coming into the country. That's a lot of government revenue. And that extra money is what

00:12:57.200 allows the government to offset taxes or whatever they want to do with it.

00:13:01.880 Right. So it covers a little bit of everything. You've tried to look, and again, you talked about

00:13:08.320 the University of Calgary thing. A lot of the things they put in there are, if this happens,

00:13:15.160 there's a lot of that in there. They're guessing that investment will flee from the province.

00:13:19.900 they're guessing that businesses will flee from the province. And that's how they came up with

00:13:23.340 their numbers. Yeah. And those guesses are fair. I'm not going to pretend I have a magic crystal

00:13:28.380 ball that can say, oh, none of that will happen. It could, but we stress tested it. If all those

00:13:35.100 bad things happen, where does it leave us? Right. So there's you sitting here talking about this.

00:13:40.620 Who looked at this? So the team of 45 souls that put together the transition plan,

00:13:48.940 As part of that work, we developed a lot of material, did a lot of research.

00:13:54.220 I know there were like thousands of pages that got put into the Alberta

00:13:57.740 transition plan was a couple of hundred, I think at the end, right?

00:14:02.300 But that research and those base materials and certainly the clear definition and cost of the

00:14:07.580 transition plan were definitely input into this. But the other material, we said, okay,

00:14:12.700 we can extract that. When someone went through and said, okay, Canada's cost revenue, whatever

00:14:18.220 the case might be in this area was this much well that's a wonderful figure to use in forward freedom

00:14:24.620 in the actual creation of the document there's a group of about four reviewers that went through

00:14:30.380 it and they would feedback and say okay this isn't right what about this let's explore that

00:14:35.500 we we discussed with other people i'm going to say somewhere within four and six people actually

00:14:40.220 contributed materially to the document and is it perfect no but we are asking for people to give

00:14:46.620 feedback. Right. I think it's pretty solid, but Hey, if we made a mistake, let us know.

00:14:50.880 Well, yeah. I'm wondering if people will be looking at this. I just received information

00:14:55.220 about this last night. So this could be in people's hands right now. There was a lot of

00:15:00.000 coverage of that UFC thing. A lot of it. Are you expecting to get a lot of people asking about,

00:15:05.660 I mean, there should be. I mean, I agree there should be. I mean, we certainly are willing to

00:15:10.920 talk to any media people. I've been responding online on X already. Uh, one fellow raised a

00:15:17.620 question about, well, you got the military all wrong. Well, read the document. You'll find out

00:15:21.320 that your questions are answered there. So I hope people read it and give it a chance

00:15:25.360 and understand it. We made it more readable. We think. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so how long did it take to

00:15:31.600 put this together? I know the transition plan was, it took a long time. There's a lot of work into

00:15:35.540 that, but this was kind of work, a work in progress at the same time. So you were able to get this

00:15:40.260 within a couple of weeks of the transition yeah i mean i had been working on it prior to um the

00:15:46.660 the transition plan being released for uh in my copious free time uh i was sitting down saying

00:15:53.540 okay we gotta update this document keith and i discussed it and i said look this is an essential

00:15:58.980 companion to the transition plan he agreed so when i had time i pulled things together did some

00:16:05.700 some reviews with the other people and so forth. So I'm going to say it probably was about a six

00:16:10.700 or seven week effort, but not full time. Right. So, you know, bottom line, what do you have to

00:16:16.020 say to people who are skeptical about Alberta independence and our finances? So I would say,

00:16:21.960 first of all, the transition from province to country is doable. It can be done by mere humans

00:16:29.680 and at an affordable price. You're going to send this over to Jack Mintz?

00:16:34.640 He has already been sent to him.

00:16:37.940 I'm wondering if he'd be interested in talking about that in some type of a forum or something, to go over the numbers.

00:16:45.580 I'm wondering if he would do something like that, or would you be willing to do that?

00:16:48.600 Well, I'd be willing to talk to Mr. Mintz, who I've never met and have great respect for.

00:16:52.460 Sure.

00:16:52.640 I think two guys debating numbers online is pretty well the definition of boring.

00:16:58.420 Yeah.

00:16:58.600 What I would like to discuss with him are the assumptions.

00:17:01.680 Yeah, that would be very, very interesting.

00:17:03.400 I think watching paint dry would be a good description of that.

00:17:07.840 So thank you.

00:17:08.440 I'm not going to host that event because nobody would want to watch it.

00:17:11.480 You're absolutely right.

00:17:12.540 It would be really boring, I'm sure.

00:17:15.060 But how can people get this if they want to read it?

00:17:18.220 So go to albertatransitioncouncil.com.

00:17:22.360 You'll see right in the headlines there will be transition plan,

00:17:25.580 there will be budget and costing, and then forward to freedom.

00:17:29.120 You can download those.

00:17:30.240 You can read them online.

00:17:31.180 and there are summaries for the two documents so you can read them.

00:17:35.020 And you're looking for feedback.

00:17:36.300 We're looking for feedback and debate.

00:17:37.980 And if the numbers have to change a little bit, you're open to that.

00:17:41.260 Totally.

00:17:42.240 Yeah.

00:17:42.380 If someone says, hey, your scenarios aren't strong enough, okay, well, let's fiddle them.

00:17:46.460 Right.

00:17:46.720 Good stuff.

00:17:47.220 Well, thanks very much.

00:17:48.060 I mean, this is, maybe the word superficial isn't the best way to discuss how we're talking

00:17:52.720 about it, but this has just been released yesterday and there's a lot to dig into here

00:17:56.560 and there's a lot of information.

00:17:57.880 I mean, and we're talking about numbers.

00:17:59.220 they may be boring to talk about, but they're really important. So people a lot smarter than

00:18:03.820 me have to look into this, like Dennis and the people that put this document together. So if

00:18:07.980 you're interested in getting it, check it out, albertatransitioncouncil.com. Dennis,

00:18:12.120 always good to see you. Thanks a lot for being here. Let's shake hands. Let's shake hands in

00:18:16.140 this one. Thank you very much for being here. And if you like this video, please give it a

00:18:19.540 thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications. I'll see you in the next one.

00:18:25.260 It's morning again in the West and Alberta is waking from a long, dark night.

00:18:31.000 Today, Albertans go to work knowing their democratic vote for independence allows them to take home more of what they earn.

00:18:38.100 Young people and married couples feel comfortable and secure in knowing they now can afford a home,

00:18:44.340 something they thought unthinkable just a short while ago.

00:18:47.540 Today, senior citizens feel more secure, with an independent Alberta providing more for them than ever before.

00:18:55.540 And with Alberta keeping more of its wealth, and unfettered by the unfair government in Ottawa,

00:19:01.540 Albertans are building hospitals, schools and pipelines, and look forward with optimism for the future.

00:19:08.540 It's morning again in the West, a single mark on a ballot for independence,

00:19:13.540 and Albertans are more confident, prosperous, and free.

John Bolton - September 24, 2026

Can Alberta Afford Independence？ Yes, We Can! with Dennis Kalma

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