Juno News - February 18, 2026


Conservative MP CROSSES FLOOR to join Liberals


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

183.67453

Word Count

3,547

Sentence Count

8

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 another former conservative mp has crossed over to the liberals he is the third to make the move
00:00:10.760 read the story at junonews.com ex-conservative mp matt jenneru crosses the floor to join carney's
00:00:18.320 liberals let's listen to jenneru mp for edmonton riverbend explaining why he made the jump so i i
00:00:25.420 had announced my my resignation back in november largely due to family reasons but quite simply
00:00:33.620 couldn't sit on the sidelines after seeing what the the prime minister was vicious agenda he was
00:00:40.520 undertaking across the across the country and across the world and quite honestly it was the
00:00:47.040 the speech in davos where you you took everything head on and i think for me that's where a lot of
00:00:54.120 the the world changed i think it opened a lot of eyes for canadians albertans edmontonians just
00:01:00.140 how serious this national media crisis uh truly is and it's uh for me it felt disingenuine and
00:01:06.660 quite simply wrong to be sitting on the sidelines uh anymore so i reached out to the prime minister's
00:01:12.720 office and uh he'll be joining his uh his caucus and i couldn't be more
00:01:16.820 excellent now jenneru has been rewarded with a new title special advisor on economic
00:01:23.280 and security partnerships conservative leader pierre paulia posted this reaction on x mark carney is
00:01:31.360 trying to seize a costly liberal majority government that canadians voted against in the last election
00:01:38.480 through dirty backroom deals matt jenneru has betrayed the people of edmonton riverbend who voted
00:01:45.400 for affordable food and homes safe streets and a strong resource sector paulia was also asked to
00:01:53.900 respond to what another of his conservative mps said jamil giovanni described canadians reaction to
00:02:00.540 u.s president trump as a hissy fit let's listen have you spoken to mr giovanni about his comments
00:02:06.520 yes i have and what you do what was your message to him well my message is that canadians are
00:02:10.820 understandably upset about the tariffs and the uh the uh comments that president trump has made
00:02:18.500 and that we need to focus on what we can do here at home we can control in our own realm
00:02:24.080 in order to be capable of having the leverage to negotiate act tariff free access to the u.s
00:02:30.920 that potentially this is like muddling the message here the fact that you're the leader
00:02:34.680 and he seems to be talking out of tone a turn on this issue well he speaks for himself and i speak
00:02:39.640 for the party do you think his um trip to uh washington was helpful to canada well my view
00:02:45.440 is that he represents a riding that has been disproportionately impacted by the dispute he's
00:02:51.540 from just outside of oshawa 1200 auto oshawa residents have lost their jobs in part due to the tariffs
00:03:00.020 and i think that it's necessary for all mps to use all the connections and work that they can
00:03:06.040 in order to overturn the tariffs and protect canadian jobs so i encourage all mps to fight
00:03:12.160 the tariffs and stand up for canada canada's worsening relations with the united states may
00:03:18.200 help the cause of alberta independence a group spearheading the separatist referendum in the
00:03:23.640 province says president trump is quietly cheering for alberta to become a country
00:03:28.280 jeff rath has held talks with officials close to the trump administration he says support for
00:03:33.900 independence in alberta is nearing 50 and growing he says the carny government's antagonistic approach
00:03:40.840 to the united states is pushing trump a little closer to backing a sovereign alberta conservative
00:03:46.320 leader pierre polyev was asked if any members of his caucus support alberta independence
00:03:52.040 if any of your mps were in favor of alberta separatism would they be allowed to remain in your
00:03:56.660 caucus we we are entirely a federalist caucus i have not had a single mp express that view
00:04:02.160 and as for myself i'm a very proud federalist born and raised born and bred alberton and we will be
00:04:08.520 fighting for a united canada and we hope that quebecers albertans and all canadians will unify
00:04:14.420 around our beautiful flag and our love of country our guest today is jeff rath who was helping to
00:04:19.500 spearhead the independence referendum in alberta welcome jeff thanks for having me on mark
00:04:24.720 any reaction to matt jenner's decision to cross the floor and join the liberals well it's just
00:04:31.380 more of the same it just goes to show that you know there's no difference between pierre polyev's
00:04:35.860 so-called conservatives and mark carney's liberals they're you know they're all the uniparty as far
00:04:40.400 as we're concerned so you know a federalist is a federalist we don't care you know it's um you know
00:04:46.440 good for you you've just shown us once again that uh uh you know the pierre polyev's conservatives are
00:04:51.540 working hand in glove with the liberals and that's one of the many reasons that alberta needs to leave
00:04:55.920 canada now you've told me that it seems that the trump administration is getting closer to the idea
00:05:05.320 of supporting the alberta independence movement more so every time things are sour on the trade
00:05:12.960 relation front between canada and the united states is that fair yeah i think that's really fair
00:05:18.280 i mean every time that mark carney goes out of his way to to stick his thumb in the eye of president
00:05:24.800 trump to garner votes amongst the trump deranged base you know of the liberal party in quebec and
00:05:31.540 ontario um you know a it drives alberta further away from canada and b you know it just makes it more
00:05:37.640 and more likely that the united states will recognize alberta as an independent country immediately upon a
00:05:43.140 successful referendum result and have you got that sense from speaking with the members of the trump
00:05:51.080 administration i don't want to put words in their mouth but i mean what i would say is that we have
00:05:56.180 that sense from everything that's going on i mean everybody in canada everybody in the united states
00:06:02.420 administration is fed up with mark carney and the way that he's behaving i mean he goes and pledges
00:06:07.540 allegiance to communist china and the so-called new world order then he comes back two days later to
00:06:13.460 canada and literally threatens war with the united states over greenland you know saying oh if the
00:06:18.140 united states behaves inappropriately towards greenland you know we'll be all it will be invoking article
00:06:23.080 five of the nato treaty like it's you know the only time in my lifetime that a canadian prime minister
00:06:28.460 has openly threatened war with the united states of america i mean people in the united states think
00:06:34.100 that uh carney is just a deranged lunatic when it comes right down to it so you know in that regard
00:06:40.200 do you think that the united states would spurn a free and independent alberta with the third largest
00:06:45.900 oil reserves in the world because they like mark carney or they feel that they owe mark carney anything
00:06:52.120 right i mean mark carney is literally giving the entire world a lesson in diplomacy and how not to
00:07:00.080 behave towards your largest most important ally and trading partner you know every day even this
00:07:05.820 silly idea of his that they're going to bring together this 40 middle powers and we're going to
00:07:10.420 create this trading block you know against the united states and leverage middle power against the united
00:07:16.460 states it's almost like carney can't look at a map and understand geography right and understand you
00:07:23.660 know the the natural geographic ties between canada and the united states i mean it's literally the most
00:07:29.600 ridiculous idea that anybody's ever heard like we're going to we're somehow going to replace
00:07:34.960 um you know our um trade with the united states by being part of a trading block that involves latvia
00:07:41.100 lithuania and burma you know like you know it's ludicrous right it's absolutely ludicrous
00:07:47.400 i honestly think that mark carney is a communist chinese agent and is deliberately trying to destroy
00:07:54.060 canada's relationship with the united states so that china can buy up canadian resources at pennies
00:07:59.400 on the dollar i mean that's you know i mean it's it seems everything that he does everything that
00:08:04.460 trudeau did was designed to weaken canada in favor of communist china you know and you know we still
00:08:11.780 can't find out from csis in the rcmp who the 11 chinese agents are that have been elected to parliament
00:08:17.440 who might actually be sitting in carney's cabinet you know oh no we can't know who it is that communist
00:08:23.040 china elected as members of parliament i suspect most of them are in the you know most of them are out in
00:08:28.440 carney's cabinet and if if they weren't i guess they're all crossing the floor as we speak
00:08:33.580 right like it's it's it's i've i've studied canadian politics almost my entire life i've never seen
00:08:40.940 anything as ludicrous as what's going on right now and if the usmca slash kuzma talks fail do you think
00:08:49.180 alberta i mean prior to say uh some kind of a referendum should negotiate some kind of a free trade
00:08:55.900 agreement separately from the rest of canada with the united states sure i mean i i personally believe
00:09:01.120 that the problem is that you know we have danielle smith who's our premier and you know danielle is
00:09:06.600 working hand in glove with ford ev carney you know polyev i mean they're all part of the uniparty
00:09:13.040 right they're all you know they're all basically working to you know to maintain canadian federalism
00:09:18.700 can keep alberta you know you know subjugated by you know by ottawa um you know certainly i i haven't
00:09:26.180 had the sense for a long time that danielle smith is working in alberta's best interest i certainly
00:09:31.400 don't think that pierre polyev is i certainly don't think that mark carney is so you know i think the
00:09:36.660 only thing that alberta can do is as quickly as possible vote itself out of canada and then we'll
00:09:41.920 move forward from there and and you think that support for alberta independence is growing i think
00:09:49.760 last time we spoke you said it was up to 50 not sure if you've done some internal polling yeah i mean
00:09:55.460 i think where we're at last time i think you and i spoke on air i said i think we were 40 40 percent
00:10:00.780 overall with as much as 60 in rural areas of the province i would say now that we're getting much
00:10:06.400 closer to 50 province wide um people in alberta are capable of figuring out how much better off
00:10:13.200 they're going to be when they don't have to pay federal income tax anymore uh certainly alberta
00:10:17.600 will have the wealth when we're no longer sending 15 billion dollars a year to quebec 500 million
00:10:23.500 dollars a year to ontario another seven and a half billion a year to the maritimes you know without
00:10:28.500 the burden of all those equalization payments that alberta taxpayers fund um for the benefit of the rest
00:10:35.200 of the country we keep all that money at home you know we can easily eliminate federal income tax
00:10:40.240 we can double our cpp we can double our oas right you know the other thing is too major irritant i mean
00:10:46.800 albertans have over 365 billion dollars in the canadian pension plan fund that that they won't even
00:10:54.120 they won't even confirm to us how much of that money how much money in the cpp is ours danielle wrote
00:10:59.720 a letter demanding to know how you know for an accounting they refuse to give it to her
00:11:03.900 so you know again every time alberta turns around we're just there's just some new way in which
00:11:09.980 we're being cheated by central canada and we're all done with it now the leader of the conservatives
00:11:16.400 pierre paulia was asked if any mps in alberta any of his conservative mps support independence
00:11:23.900 he said that nobody's ever supported expressed any anything but support for federalism
00:11:30.060 do you think that that's accurate based on your interaction with some of the say rural mps
00:11:36.280 on the conservative side well in in fairness i mean i'm not aware of any sitting mps uh that have
00:11:42.720 expressed uh you know that are you know that have come out and signed the petition or who are openly
00:11:47.760 on our side i think a lot of them know that if they speak out against alberta independence
00:11:53.380 um they're going to be speaking out against 70 percent seven zero percent of their constituents
00:11:58.560 i mean there was a leger poll after the last election where you know when carney won that said
00:12:04.200 that fully 70 percent of alberta conservative federal conservatives now supported alberta independence
00:12:10.140 right and i can tell you for a fact um that we have a number of former conservative mps
00:12:16.540 including rob anders including um lavar payne eric lowther i'm aware our hangers very involved with
00:12:23.780 the um uh you know with the republican party of alberta so there's lots of retired members of
00:12:28.860 parliament who are openly working for alberta independence i mean rob anders actually has
00:12:33.380 this canvassing badge and had a canvassing table uh out in my little local town of brag creek two weeks
00:12:38.460 ago getting signatures on the petition right um you know i talked to lavar payne every day or two down
00:12:44.540 in medicine had you know retired member of parliament so you know there's a lot of i'm a
00:12:48.840 member of the conservative party in canada i mean there's lots of uh you know alberta conservatives
00:12:53.900 that know that the only way forward for alberta is as is as an independent country and that quite
00:13:01.060 frankly you know pierre polyev is whistling in the dark when he thinks that uh that albertans are
00:13:07.100 gonna you know that are gonna listen to him and support canada just because pierre polyev says so i
00:13:12.320 mean you know oh pierre polyev is a good guy versus zero federal income tax being taken off
00:13:17.820 my paycheck it's not much of a contest okay um so you you haven't seen any evidence that any of his
00:13:27.080 mps are secretly on your side or well i mean i don't i don't want to get any the ones that i know
00:13:33.660 i don't want to get any any of them into trouble i mean it's you know i think it's tough enough to be
00:13:38.860 a federal conservative right now without having the the party whip and pierre polyev breathing down
00:13:43.560 your back i mean i have spoken to a couple of them and they said come on jeff we can't openly sign
00:13:48.620 that petition and they would laugh i mean i know quietly that there's you know that there's probably
00:13:53.820 a number of them that support us but they can't you know they can't come out and say otherwise
00:13:57.740 uh because of party discipline you know and it's the same way provincially right danielle can run
00:14:02.960 all over the country saying you know strong alberta within a united canada and i'm a federalist
00:14:07.960 and i support keeping alberta in canada but she's muzzled all of her mlas i mean she's told all of
00:14:13.040 her mlas that they can't come out and openly campaign for independence right so danielle gets
00:14:18.720 this freedom of speech for her she gets to run around saying whatever she wants about being a
00:14:23.480 federalist and how much she loves mark carney and whatever else she does but none of her uh none of
00:14:29.320 her mlas are allowed to come out and say that they support independence even though they know
00:14:35.100 they would not get elected in their constituencies if um they were openly opposed to independence
00:14:41.720 because all their constituents are in favor of especially the rural mps or mlas right i mean
00:14:47.120 rural alberta is overwhelmingly now in favor of independence so they're quietly in support of
00:14:53.320 what you're doing yeah i think that's probably the better way to put it and of course you know
00:14:56.840 peer and peer polyam has to say what he's saying because his entire life's ambition is to be prime
00:15:03.740 minister of canada he told his mommy that one day he's going to be prime minister and all of a sudden
00:15:08.580 he realizes that's being taken away from him because without alberta um there's no conservative
00:15:14.280 leader that's ever going to be elected prime minister of canada so of course peer polyam has got
00:15:19.860 to come and campaign against uh independence in alberta i think you know and given that all of us
00:15:25.640 now believe that peer polyam isn't even really an alberta anymore and that he's really an easterner i
00:15:31.160 mean he lived he's lived probably in ottawa carlton now longer than he's lived in alberta
00:15:35.420 right so you know as far as as far as that goes you know we see peer polyam coming to alberta to speak
00:15:42.640 out against independence is a form of that that so-called foreign interference that everybody's so
00:15:48.160 annoyed with you know we see peer polyam as a foreigner and anything that he says in alberta is just a
00:15:54.760 form of foreign interference right i mean that's literally how all those of us on my side of the
00:16:00.140 fence take a look at this now i think you're headed to washington again next month if i'm not mistaken
00:16:05.980 for more talks what are these talks all about i mean what are you hoping to accomplish well i mean
00:16:12.160 you know it's we're just down there expressing you know our aspirations for free and independent
00:16:16.860 alberta what we think that a free and independent alberta is going to look like you know what um uh you
00:16:22.580 know we think um you know how we see that that relationship between a free and independent
00:16:28.180 alberta and the united states unrolling and you know on developing on a going forward basis
00:16:33.160 but you know keep in mind i mean we're going now there's private individuals we don't have the
00:16:38.000 authority to enter into any agreements on behalf of the province of alberta you know we don't hold
00:16:42.660 ourselves out as having any official mandate from the province of alberta you know we're you know
00:16:47.260 basically a delegation of albertans that are actually being paid a lot more respect in washington
00:16:52.240 than we would be paid if we went to ottawa so what does that tell you right we couldn't get a meeting
00:16:57.500 with tim hodgson to talk about the aspirations of alberta for an alberta pipeline going to the
00:17:03.060 pacific northwest of the united states so that we're not going to be held hostage by uh david eby
00:17:08.900 because tim hodgson mark carney pierre paulia and the whole federal establishment in canada
00:17:15.460 want alberta to be held hostage by british columbia that's how the game is played they
00:17:20.920 don't want us just to say oh screw you canada we're just gonna we'll just go around you and
00:17:24.900 we'll go through the united states because we have a better relationship with the u.s administration
00:17:29.100 than you do right that's not how the game is supposed to be played so they're upset with us
00:17:34.080 i mean they you know david eby saw that we were taking his power away so that's when he started
00:17:38.660 jumping up and down and calling us treasonous and you know all of the other childish things he was
00:17:43.440 doing right they you know they don't like it when we take their power away and that's exactly what
00:17:48.160 we're doing right now and the political establishment in canada does not like it one little bit
00:17:52.720 when is the referendum going to happen well we're on track for a referendum in october of this year
00:17:59.340 so it's going to happen this fall 2026 we're still you know gathering signatures all over the
00:18:04.520 province to get to uh to get past our uh you know statutory requirement of 178 000 signatures
00:18:11.160 we're not i think we're on track to crush that metric we're really what we're really trying
00:18:15.720 for is to get a million signatures because we want um we want to demonstrate to the government
00:18:21.660 of alberta that we have more people committed to support a free and independent alberta
00:18:27.000 than voted conservative in the last election but if we have a million signatures think about it we had
00:18:32.520 1.77 million people vote in the last election if we get a million signatures that means we have
00:18:38.760 56 of the people who voted in the last election uh committing um to alberta independence or to a
00:18:46.420 referendum on independence i mean that will shape the political establishment of the country if we
00:18:50.960 can if we can meet if we can meet that goal yeah thank you so much for coming on the show we
00:18:56.000 appreciate it yeah it's always a pleasure mark thanks for having me on and if you enjoyed this show
00:19:01.000 consider supporting great independent journalism where breaking news stories are told by going to
00:19:07.440 junonews.com backslash straight up straight up is the name of this show junonews.com backslash
00:19:15.200 straight up it helps us a great deal thank you we'll see you next time