John Bolton - May 02, 2025


Jason Kenney is WRONG about Alberta Independence - Let me count the ways


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

182.39423

Word count

1,871

Sentence count

165

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former cabinet minister Jason Kenney calls separatists a "fringe movement" and says he has a chance to "write wrongs" in Alberta. I think Kenney is deluding himself.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John, and welcome to the channel. Great to have you along today. It is 6 a.m., May the 2nd.
00:00:05.400 I've got my big blue mug of coffee Friday. Looking forward to the weekend, and I apologize if this
00:00:12.200 becomes a little bit of a rant today. It may. I don't know. But I'm going to go off on Jason
00:00:19.440 Kenney today, former Premier of Alberta, former Cabinet Minister under Stephen Harper, a number
00:00:24.380 of different portfolios. Very well-accomplished man, but he ain't reading the room. Calls himself
00:00:29.380 in Alberta and drives around in a pickup truck. He ain't getting it. He's not understanding
00:00:33.020 what's going on here. He's been hanging out in Ottawa too long. You need to talk to the
00:00:36.320 people out here. I did when I went out to Poliev's rally just before the election. Everybody
00:00:41.840 I talked to, and I spoke to dozens of people, said, if the Liberals get in, it's over for
00:00:47.440 Alberta. We need to get the hell out. And now, Kenney's wading into the separatist movement, 0.99
00:00:52.900 calling us a fringe movement. Do you remember, I think it was Trudeau called us an unacceptable
00:00:57.440 fringe a few years ago. Remember that? I didn't forget that. Why am I talking about this? Well,
00:01:01.560 there's been a lot of articles right now. The elites out in Ottawa are starting to think maybe
00:01:06.240 something's happening out here in Alberta because we're organizing, folks. Tomorrow there is an
00:01:10.060 independence rally in Edmonton. I'm driving three hours from Calgary. If you live in the Edmonton
00:01:15.180 area, anywhere within an hour, you need to be at the legislature from one to three. I'm emceeing the
00:01:20.300 event. There'll be a number of speakers. I understand there'll be some agitators showing up as well,
00:01:24.620 so we need to yell those nuts down too. They're all on the left. But let's just look at this
00:01:29.600 article. You're seeing lots of this right now. Carney must prioritize quelling Western discontent.
00:01:34.800 Lots of stories right now about the separatist movement and Alberta leaving, particularly after
00:01:41.700 the other day, the new rules that Daniel Smith laid out saying how many signatures we need to get
00:01:47.820 a referendum. So this article's here, but I want to bring this to your attention.
00:01:51.540 Braid, former UCP Premier Jason Kenney refutes separatists, says Carney has a chance to write
00:01:56.380 wrongs. He won't. He's not Trudeau 2.0. He's worse. I'm not going to read this whole article
00:02:02.560 to you. I want to actually get to his ex-post because it's delusional because he didn't really
00:02:07.860 go off right here like he did on his ex-post, which is just absolutely insane.
00:02:13.140 So just quickly here, resentment and anxiety in Alberta, a very real thing. Kenney said in an
00:02:17.460 interview, Alberta and the resource-producing parts of Western Canada have totally legitimate
00:02:21.680 grievances about the direction of policy under the Trudeau government and totally legitimate
00:02:26.020 anxieties about where it will go under Carney. But when it comes to separation, I think the so-called
00:02:31.600 separatist movement in Alberta has never been a serious enterprise. It's always been a fringe
00:02:35.740 movement that I think is counterproductive. Fringe. Fringe movement.
00:02:40.120 Just keep thinking this, Mr. Kenney. I remember somebody else who didn't understand, didn't
00:02:48.240 get it, didn't read the room when it came to the separatist movement. I remember 1995. Remember
00:02:53.780 Mr. Kenney? Just keep thinking that way because John Chrétien thought it was a fringe movement
00:02:58.160 in 95 when Quebec had a referendum. And I believe it was Jean Charest who came in at the last moment,
00:03:04.120 made his name by saving the day. They came that close because people didn't understand
00:03:10.120 the feelings of the people who lived in Quebec at the time. You, Mr. Kenney, are not understanding
00:03:14.540 what's going on out here in Alberta and you call yourself a Westerner.
00:03:19.360 Today's separatist movement nowhere near as organized as it was in those days, talking about
00:03:23.260 the National Energy Program, 1980s. Albertans were even angrier then to a point that a rally
00:03:28.260 packed 2,500 people in Edmonton's Jubilee Auditorium. I've mentioned it here many times.
00:03:32.840 Back in 2019, I spoke to James Albers who was there as well. 1,100 people packed an auditorium
00:03:39.160 in North Calgary. We're pissed off back then. How pissed off are they now? They want it out
00:03:43.780 then. We want out now. Kearney's got an amazing opportunity to start with a clean slate, but
00:03:48.660 he won't. Kearney has said he wants Canada to be an energy superpower. Well, he's kind
00:03:53.420 of waffled on that. I think green energy superpower. He thinks he can put up windmills and solar
00:03:59.900 panels across the country, put wires in between them, and power a country, the second largest
00:04:04.400 country in the world. Not going to happen. A line borrowed from Stephen Harper. He said
00:04:08.880 he wants to get oil and gas to global markets and advance major projects. Build, build, build.
00:04:13.480 Those things are all music to my ears. Do you know who Mark Kearney is, Mr. Kenney? Do you
00:04:17.740 have any idea who he is? Millions of people the other night voted for the Liberal Party because
00:04:22.740 of 51st State. They don't know who Mark Kearney is either. He's one of the biggest climate
00:04:27.600 zealots on the planet. He's one of the leaders of the net zero movement in the world. Let me
00:04:35.360 refresh your memory, Mr. Kenney. We can't meet our ultimate objectives, which is to get to
00:04:41.660 net zero emissions. We can't get there unless we do not just have a cap on emissions, but
00:04:47.460 those emissions are brought effectively to zero. Now, so far, carbon prices have been applied
00:04:53.360 sparingly. They've been set far too low. And Mr. Kenney, Daniel Smith has been very clear
00:04:58.820 what Ottawa has to do to make nice with Alberta. Laying out all of the rules and all the things
00:05:04.600 that have to be done in order for Alberta to be satisfied. And from what I understand,
00:05:09.740 and from what I've heard from Mr. Kearney, he's committed to none of them.
00:05:13.880 And so I, at the very beginning of the campaign, said whoever got elected, I would expect them
00:05:18.420 to address the nine offensive pieces of legislation and policy that prevent us from being able
00:05:23.780 to exercise our constitutional jurisdiction to develop our resources. We want to see a
00:05:28.600 guaranteed access to economic corridors that include pipelines to get to new markets. We
00:05:34.160 want the repealing of Bill C-69 so that we do not have an unending process for approvals
00:05:40.220 that essentially means no more pipelines can be built. We need to lift the tanker ban off the
00:05:44.420 B.C. coast. We need to eliminate the oil and gas emissions cap that has been proposed,
00:05:49.480 which is a production cap. We need to scrap the so-called clean electricity regulations.
00:05:54.380 We need to end the treatment of plastics as toxic. We need to abandon the net zero car mandate. We need
00:06:01.500 to return oversight of the industrial carbon tax fully to provincial jurisdiction. And we need to
00:06:06.680 halt the federal censorship of energy companies. So let's go to Kenny's ex-post. Albertans have good
00:06:12.800 reason to be deeply frustrated with Ottawa. He talks about the $20 billion we pay to the rest of the
00:06:17.900 country each and every year. We're running deficits here in Alberta. If we could keep the $20 billion
00:06:24.140 we'd be rich, but we can't. And there's other grievances, by the way, to the Easterners who think 0.66
00:06:29.320 we're just having a temper tantrum out here. Let's go down to here. In these and other fights, Alberta wins 1.00
00:06:35.280 when we make alliances with other provinces and patiently make the case to our fellow Canadians. Well,
00:06:40.520 how long do we have to be patient? 40 years? Takes us back to the National Energy Programme.
00:06:45.620 Just look at the recent polling showing that supermajorities support both oil and gas pipelines
00:06:50.560 in every province. Yeah, and Carney is going to hitch his wagon to the Bloc Québécois. And just the other
00:06:56.420 day, the leader of the Bloc Québécois said this. And the fact that there's no future for oil and gas,
00:07:06.120 at least in Quebec and probably everywhere. Let's go back to Kenny's ex-post. He then goes into his
00:07:12.480 resume for some reason. I don't know what he's trying to accomplish here by doing this. Perhaps
00:07:17.480 he wants to be the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada or something, like Doug Ford in Ontario
00:07:22.280 and Tim Houston out in Nova Scotia. That'll be the day. Because I want to say this, while I join most
00:07:29.060 Albertans in being disappointed with Monday's election results, let's hold PM Carney to his words
00:07:33.980 about making Canada a global energy superpower, deregulating to build big projects, including
00:07:39.580 pipelines, which we can't do. But if we turn inward into a pointless debate on the charade of
00:07:44.820 separation, we'll reverse that momentum, never make a threat you can't keep. Well, we're not making a
00:07:49.260 threat, Mr. Kenny. It's a promise. There's going to be a vote on separation out here. Despite our
00:07:54.540 frustrations, the vast majority of Albertans are and always will be proud Canadians. We know that
00:08:00.460 Canada isn't perfect, but it's our home and native land. So there's your faux Canadian patriotism.
00:08:05.100 Elbows up, Mr. Kenny. Elbows up. And then we go down here and he goes to a place which
00:08:09.760 I wish people would not go here. Okay. We can't make any changes now because of something that
00:08:18.580 happened decades ago. We honor those who went before us, including thousands of Albertans who
00:08:24.340 died in the defense of Canada and who lie below gravestones marked forever by the maple leaf.
00:08:29.640 Well, I honor those people. I go to Remembrance Day ceremonies, Mr. Kenny. But we can't make a
00:08:34.960 change in Alberta because people died decades ago for their country. Is that what you're telling me?
00:08:41.040 People always do this. And then he goes on to say, we're Alberta proud. We'll always be part of the
00:08:46.780 true North, strong and free. No, we're going to leave.
00:08:49.460 Back in the Second World War, Canadian soldiers fought against tyranny. Thomas Jefferson said,
00:09:03.740 when the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government,
00:09:11.740 there is tyranny. Alberta fears the federal government. It's tyrannical and we want it to
00:09:19.720 stop. You make a military reference. Let me make another military reference for you.
00:09:25.880 Mr. Kenny, Admiral Yamamoto, after the attack on Pearl Harbor said, I will quote it exactly.
00:09:32.640 I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
00:09:37.840 Well, Ottawa has awoken a sleeping giant and Alberta now has a terrible resolve and we're going
00:09:45.340 to be successful. It won't be very long. Alberta is going to have a vote on separation, on its
00:09:53.420 independence. Thanks very much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please
00:09:59.320 give me a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications, close to 30,000
00:10:04.140 subscribers here right now. A B at the Alberta legislature tomorrow, one to three. I will see you
00:10:11.120 there for an independence rally and I'll see you in the next one.