John Bolton - From Canadian to Albertan - The Evolution of Independence

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. It is Sunday, April 19th, 3.48 a.m. I hope you're

00:00:08.440 having a wonderful weekend, a fantastic Sunday. I hope the weather is good where you are. We got

00:00:14.520 a major winter storm in spring here in southern Alberta, Wednesday, Thursday. Most of the snow

00:00:19.780 is gone. It's melted away and I think we're expected up to 20 degrees here. So we tip the

00:00:24.480 big blue mug this morning to Mother Nature. Thanks for actually bringing us spring and

00:00:29.060 hopefully that's the end of the white stuff. I got up this morning thinking perhaps I might not 0.83

00:00:35.500 do a video. I've got a lot of work to do. Sundays are very busy in the morning. I have to do my

00:00:41.520 independence calendar and I have not been good at getting to my email this week. So I probably have

00:00:46.780 more than 200 email to go through and it takes hours to do that. But this week has been very

00:00:53.040 interesting for me. There was a story in the National Post that I talked about earlier this

00:00:56.920 week. I was in Delburn on Wednesday night talking about the independence movement. And people have

00:01:02.660 been asking me, when did you become an independent Albertan? And I've asked a number of people that

00:01:07.220 as well, including Chris Scott and Zane Novak the other night when I was in Delburn. When did you

00:01:12.860 become an independent Albertan? The other side likes to call us separatists. We're not. We're

00:01:18.060 not separating from Canada. We believe Canada has separated from us. As a matter of fact, when I was

00:01:24.060 in Delburn the other night. I talked to my friend Wade. I asked him about that. And here's what he

00:01:28.960 had to say. When people say Canada left us, we didn't leave them. Do you believe in that too?

00:01:33.460 Is that something to kind of ring? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You'll hear that a lot

00:01:38.660 if you come out here and you talk to somebody who wants an independent Alberta. It's very strange.

00:01:43.900 You know, I moved out here. It's hard. It's hard to remember because it seems like just yesterday,

00:01:49.340 the years do go by faster as you get older. And I think it was 15 years ago. So around 2011,

00:01:55.140 2012, I've been out here. And I moved here from Ontario and I had heard of the National Energy

00:02:01.680 Program, but wasn't really sure what it was all about because people in Ontario don't understand

00:02:06.440 what people in the West go through. It's a completely different mindset out here. It's a

00:02:10.700 it's a distinct society, if I might say that, which harkens back to the 1995 referendum in

00:02:19.360 Quebec. But it is a distinct society. But people here will talk about the national energy program.

00:02:26.000 Now, you have to remember, this happened more than 40 years ago when Pierre Trudeau was the

00:02:30.760 prime minister. And for those people who don't know about it, if you live in Ontario, do a little

00:02:34.940 research. But basically what it did was nationalize the oil and gas industry, which sucked wealth out

00:02:40.140 out of Alberta and sent it to Ottawa. So many people lost their jobs. I hear of people who

00:02:44.900 lost their houses and had to move away because the oil and gas industry was decimated. And it's

00:02:50.400 like history repeating itself here. It really is. The way things have happened over the last

00:02:55.980 10 years. And people who remember the National Energy Program are twice as pissed as people like

00:03:01.380 me. Let me tell you what I was about when I moved out here back in 2011, 2012, whatever year it was.

00:03:09.240 Now, I'm going to just show you something. This is indicative of the way I thought.

00:03:12.840 These are cycling jerseys. I'm a cyclist. These are cycling jerseys I purchased

00:03:16.700 prior to becoming an independent Albertan. So, here are shirts and jerseys I will never wear again.

00:03:23.840 All right. There's another one. And there's another one. I will never wear these jerseys

00:03:30.240 again. I am an Albertan. As a matter of fact, in Delburn the other night, I got up to ask a

00:03:35.580 question. Now, you don't see my face here, but I asked a question about how do we get around the

00:03:42.140 patriotism idea when it comes to people who don't want Alberta independence? What they do is they

00:03:47.720 wave the flag and say, I like Canada, and they wave the flag, but we've got all these reasons

00:03:52.200 why we want to leave. They really don't have any why Alberta should stay in Canada. But at the end

00:03:58.380 And of the answers from the panelists you see on this video, I said this.

00:04:05.920 If I might, the flag behind me became Canada's flag on February 15th, 1965, and that's the day I was born.

00:04:15.440 But I am Albertan. Thank you very much.

00:04:19.400 I used to be very proud that I was born on the exact day the maple leaf became Canada's official

00:04:30.200 flag. Very proud, a very proud Canadian, but that changed. I am Albertan. I do not consider myself

00:04:36.880 Canadian anymore. And if you were to ask the people in Delburn the other night or any one of

00:04:41.920 the dozens of events that are happening regularly around Alberta for the independence movement,

00:04:46.560 most of the people at those events would say the exact same thing. You need to wrap your head

00:04:52.200 around this, folks, if you don't live in Alberta, if you live in Ontario, or you live in Nova Scotia,

00:04:57.920 or you live in the United States, or you live somewhere around the world. More than a million

00:05:02.500 people in the province of Alberta, which has about five million people, don't consider themselves

00:05:07.920 Canadian at all, and they never will again. The bond between Canada and Alberta has been broken

00:05:14.360 forever for these people. And regardless of what happens in the fall with an independence vote,

00:05:21.860 which I think we will win, the relationship between Alberta and Canada will never be the

00:05:27.960 same. So how did I get to where I am right now? There's a saying, you know, that history repeats

00:05:34.800 itself. There's also a saying, those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it

00:05:39.820 because we're going through another process here that has happened many times before. I talked

00:05:45.060 about the National Energy Program, which drove a wedge between Albertans and the elites who live

00:05:51.200 in Ottawa, and generally the Liberal Party of Canada. But this story popped up, and I talked

00:05:57.180 about this earlier this week. I did a video on this earlier this week, where I called for jail

00:06:03.720 for Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Caucus, and Trudeau's former economic advisor, Mark Carney.

00:06:08.940 This is theft.

00:06:10.460 This is generational theft.

00:06:12.400 Much of this trillion dollars you're seeing on the screen here is because of lost investment here in Alberta.

00:06:18.020 And this RBC report this story is based on said that for every dollar that came into the country, two left.

00:06:23.960 I mean, it's absolutely criminal.

00:06:25.660 And that's really where my journey began and the metamorphosis of an independent Albertan.

00:06:31.660 I go back to this story right here.

00:06:33.180 I looked this up this morning because I was trying to pinpoint the time when I started to think differently.

00:06:38.460 And here it is right here. Oil industry to lose 100,000 jobs by the end of 2015

00:06:44.640 as policy uncertainties and low price decimate the sector. So you remember in 2015 that Justin

00:06:52.880 Trudeau was elected and Rachel Notley had been elected as the premier of the province and she

00:06:59.540 was from the NDP. So not good times for Alberta at this point. Now, a personal note here. I don't

00:07:05.900 think my wife would be upset for me saying this, but my wife worked for an engineering firm at the

00:07:11.260 time. And most of it was in the oil and gas sector. And she worked in a place called Quarry Park,

00:07:18.160 which is a few communities north of where I live now here in Southeast Calgary. And they had a

00:07:22.980 huge building where they had thousands of people working there. And my wife would come home every

00:07:29.040 day during this period. And she'd have this sad look on her face. And I say, what's wrong? And 1.00

00:07:35.300 she would say, 50 more people lost their jobs today. And this happened day after day after day

00:07:42.620 after day until it cleared out entire floors in the building she was in.

00:07:49.240 And of course, she worried about her friends who had lost their jobs,

00:07:52.880 but she was worried about losing her job as well. And this had a significant effect on her mental

00:08:00.280 health, and my mental health as well. We ended up talking to our doctor about this, and he said,

00:08:06.260 John, lots of people are coming to see me because they're having issues when it comes to their

00:08:12.100 mental health, because they're worried about losing their jobs, or they already have. So in

00:08:16.580 this story, it talks about the 100,000 jobs that are going to be lost. Now, oil prices were very

00:08:24.200 low at this point, but regulation came in, and that's what drove away the investment. I'll read

00:08:31.000 a little bit of the story. The oil and gas sector will see 100,000 job losses by the end of this

00:08:36.140 year, including 40,000 direct jobs as a combination of policy uncertainties and low crude oil prices

00:08:43.100 decimates the sector, the head of the country's oil and gas industry group says. Canadians should

00:08:50.220 be concerned in times like these, Tim McMillan, president and chief executive of the Canadian

00:08:56.000 Association of Petroleum Producers, said in an interview, we have a lot of big policy pieces

00:09:01.800 moving around. We need to ensure we can compete in a slower price environment, and if prices do

00:09:07.780 bounce back, that we are the preferred investment jurisdiction and that we are picking up more than

00:09:14.180 our fair share. Apart from the protracted price declines, Alberta's oil and gas sector has also

00:09:20.280 had to contend with a 20% hike in corporate taxes, a carbon tax, and new regulatory policies to limit

00:09:27.800 rain in. Mess up there from their story. Let me read that again. Apart from the protracted price

00:09:36.140 declines, Alberta's oil and gas sector has also had to contend with a 20% hike in corporate taxes,

00:09:41.880 a carbon tax and new regulatory policies to rein in carbon emissions. Meanwhile, a new provincial

00:09:48.920 royalty regime is to be announced in January, leaving Alberta oil and gas producers under a

00:09:54.260 cloud of uncertainty. The new federal government also plans to unveil new policies, including a

00:09:59.680 review of the regulatory process, which the sector sees as more burden in an already difficult

00:10:05.820 environment for the industry. I'll just read a little bit more of this.

00:10:11.880 I may be more passionate about Canada controlling its own destiny as opposed to relying on our

00:10:17.220 neighbors to the south to pass laws to have more freedom. That we are piggybacking on their freedoms

00:10:23.320 as opposed to developing our own infrastructure where we can control our own destiny, Macmillan

00:10:29.420 said. If only somebody had listened to Mr. Macmillan back in 2015, because that's what

00:10:36.760 we're saying today. Just think where we would be in Alberta if we could have developed our oil and

00:10:42.920 gas industry and we could provide oil to the world at a time where oil isn't very easy to get

00:10:48.560 because of what's happening in Iran, which is driving up prices for you, particularly at the

00:10:53.900 pump. But did anybody heed this advice back in 2015? No. So now all of these job losses are

00:11:00.180 happening across Alberta. It's like history repeating itself. And those that don't learn

00:11:05.860 from the past are destined to repeat it, which we did over the last 10 years. So now I'm thinking,

00:11:11.240 I think I've had enough. I know what Alberta is about. I see what's happening to my wife. I see 0.87

00:11:16.440 what's happening to people that we got to know who worked with my wife, many of whom had children

00:11:21.040 here in Canada, came here from the States. We're going to stay here for the rest of their lives. 1.00

00:11:25.240 And now we're moving back south of the border. So I ended up going out to a Wexit rally.

00:11:32.260 and this is a picture and i've shown this on my channel before of a rally in 2019 in north calgary

00:11:40.560 here's another picture for you right here all these people came together in this auditory i'm

00:11:46.100 in north calgary because they wanted wexit western exit and that's where i bought this hat and i

00:11:53.160 talked to people that night and they all had different reasons why they wanted to be out of

00:11:58.320 Canada. They wanted independence. I wasn't quite convinced at that point, but I became a believer

00:12:03.980 that night. People talked about the national energy program and the troubles that had happened

00:12:08.440 over the previous years of the Trudeau government that was decimating our oil and gas industry here

00:12:14.360 and things have only gotten worse. The funny thing about it back then was there were all these people

00:12:20.120 who wanted independence, but the different groups that wanted it, that were leading the way, weren't

00:12:24.620 working together. But that all changed about a year or so ago. Mitch Sylvester with the Alberta

00:12:30.020 Prosperity Project and now Stay Free Alberta. And we're one step away from getting a referendum

00:12:35.860 in the fall. That's kind of the way I became an independent Albertan. And if you don't live in

00:12:41.980 Alberta, you don't get it. But there's millions of us here now that don't consider ourselves

00:12:47.440 Canadians anymore. We are Albertans. I know it was kind of a personal story today. I appreciate

00:12:54.860 your time. If you watch till the end, thank you very much. I'll have the independence calendar

00:12:59.440 coming up later today around 11 o'clock. I appreciate you watching. If you like the video,

00:13:03.780 give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications. I will see you

00:13:08.400 in the next one.

John Bolton - April 19, 2026

From Canadian to Albertan - The Evolution of Independence

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