Juno News - February 22, 2026


Danielle Smith puts immigration back in Alberta’s hands


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

183.86842

Word Count

3,022

Sentence Count

191

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Joining me now is Michelle Ferreri, former Conservative MP for Peterborough and political
00:00:09.780 commentator. Always great having Michelle on the show. Welcome.
00:00:13.360 Thanks so much, Mark.
00:00:15.320 Let's talk a little bit about Danielle Smith. I imagine you're probably a big fan of hers.
00:00:21.240 She has introduced plans to hold a referendum. In other words, to give Albertans an opportunity
00:00:26.360 to decide the future of what immigration is going to look like in the province. I think
00:00:30.920 it's a great idea. What do you think?
00:00:33.180 Yeah, you're right. I am a big fan because she's a leader. I think Danielle Smith approaches
00:00:38.320 hard issues with thought and with leadership. She's not afraid. And I think if we are going
00:00:46.980 to stay neutral, nothing happens. There's a very real threat of Alberta separation. And
00:00:52.260 a good leader listens to their constituents, a good leader listens to their citizens. And
00:00:57.780 so she's obviously taken those threats very seriously. She's come up with a plan. And now
00:01:02.960 she's saying, we're going to do everything we can to ensure we're listening to you so that
00:01:07.420 we can then take action. I think what you've seen, you know, bad leadership creates chaos
00:01:13.040 and anxiety. And the fact that you have this Alberta separatist threat, as serious as it
00:01:18.820 is, is a direct reflection of poor federal leadership, right? Like you've never seen
00:01:24.200 separatist threats at the rate that we have, uh, until Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau were
00:01:29.940 in power. Like this never happened at this magnitude before because they're not, it's
00:01:34.060 not a unified country. So I think Danielle Smith is doing exactly what she needs to do to protect
00:01:39.360 Albertans and to listen to them and to do the things that need to be done.
00:01:42.900 I always thought of immigration being a federal jurisdiction and that the provinces are kind
00:01:49.420 of stuck with whatever the feds wanted to do. Unless, of course, you're Quebec, which
00:01:53.700 seems to have powers that the rest of the provinces do not. I mean, how is she able to pull this
00:01:59.260 off, do you think?
00:02:01.120 Well, I think that the prime minister, Mark Carney, and before him, Justin Trudeau put the provinces
00:02:05.920 into a corner and they've had no choice but to do what they need to do to protect their
00:02:11.760 province. Like, I mean, this is why you seen Doug Ford and Danielle Smith have to go deal
00:02:16.700 with the tariff threats because we had no, uh, federal leadership. And so now she's saying
00:02:21.820 you let way too many people in without having any resources in place to employ, house, uh,
00:02:29.560 healthcare for these people. You've left us high and dry and it, it was insane immigration
00:02:35.900 policies. And now I'm going to take the bull by the horns and do what I need to do to protect
00:02:39.920 Albertans because they've had enough and it's leadership.
00:02:44.860 Yeah. I mean, Albertans will get a chance to vote on seizing control of their own borders,
00:02:50.520 prioritizing economic migrants and restricting social programs to citizens and permanent residents.
00:02:56.980 I mean, these sound like common sense measures. I mean, we should all have the right to do that.
00:03:02.860 I mean, don't we want the best possible people we can get into our country? People are going to come
00:03:07.100 in with initiative, people who are, who want to work, you know, not people who just want to,
00:03:12.440 I don't know, stay in hotels, get free phones and collect as much cash as they can from the
00:03:19.020 taxpayers. What do you think? Well, it's even worse than that, Mark, because what you have is you have
00:03:24.300 loopholes for people claiming refugee status who are violent criminals that are allowed to stay,
00:03:30.500 right? Like there was a judge that just granted a Lebanese, he's not a citizen, he's immigrant or
00:03:37.340 illegal immigrant, who is head of a drug ring to stay. So he's going to access the health care.
00:03:44.000 Like there was, there was stats that just came out in the federal health committee saying that we've
00:03:48.460 spent a billion dollars to provide health care for illegal immigrants and refugees. Like when,
00:03:55.880 when regular Canadians who pay their taxes can't get seen. Like there was another woman who just
00:04:00.600 passed away in Winnipeg who waited for, I believe it was eight or nine hours at the ER who couldn't
00:04:05.940 get in. So no wonder people are upset. Like it's, it's dangerous, right? This, the extortion.
00:04:12.360 Um, there was another story out in BC, this guy's like, anyway, they go on and on and on. It's like
00:04:19.380 every time you open the, the news or on online, another illegal immigrant is here either terrorizing
00:04:27.960 this country, taking resources, not contributing, and it's creating a divide, right? Like people are
00:04:33.840 like, Oh, we've never been so divided. We've never been so racist. Well, it's because you've created
00:04:38.420 scarcity under bad leadership, right? And you've pitted people against each other because they're
00:04:43.140 now trying to, you know, get their own job. Their kids can't get a job. It's just, it's terrible
00:04:47.360 immigration policy. That's what it comes down to. And the, and the reason for it, if you want to get
00:04:52.420 really dark is it, it gives you votes. Like, I think I just saw before I logged on here that the
00:04:59.180 liberal Ontario leadership race is going to allow temporary residents to vote. Like that for you,
00:05:06.380 that's what this is all about. It's again, they always want to buy the votes. It's, it's brutal.
00:05:12.140 It's brutal. And it's a major strain on the school system, for instance. I think you said there's 80,000
00:05:19.920 new students that have gone into the school system. I mean, teachers are pulling their hair out trying
00:05:24.460 to deal with it. I mean, in a way this takes me back to when there was a slew of people who came into
00:05:30.860 the country back with the sixties and seventies, the country was growing. And my parents came in,
00:05:38.540 in the 1950s and raised a family. They, they didn't come here with a handout. They expected to work.
00:05:44.860 All they wanted was a peaceful place to raise their family. And at the time, well, the, the country was
00:05:50.060 booming. I mean, we needed to build homes and my dad was more than happy to build work construction.
00:05:55.180 And, you know, at that time going way back, maybe you remember this as well, Michelle, you know,
00:06:01.580 you could have one person working and have mom stay home and raise four kids or, or whatever. And
00:06:09.580 you could still afford to buy a house. All that has changed. And now she's saying, look, we're teetering
00:06:14.780 under, under the brink. You've allowed 600,000 people into our province in short order. That's like
00:06:20.460 half the size of Calgary. And it's adding to our debt burden and it's adding to the strain of dealing
00:06:28.540 with education and healthcare. I mean, to me, these are things that every province should be pushing
00:06:34.380 for, but I don't hear a whole lot of that talk from say, Doug Ford or any other premier. Could,
00:06:41.260 could Daniel Smith's views spread to other provinces? Somehow I doubt it. What do you think?
00:06:45.500 Well, I think you're going to have to deal with this. Like the other thing you've just left out
00:06:50.700 again is the crime aspect, right? Like you have the CBSA officers testifying committee saying, oh yeah,
00:06:56.540 well, we don't have the ability. We just have to use an app to, uh, to do criminal checks. Like,
00:07:01.260 hopefully they're, hopefully they're not criminals, hopefully. And like, to your point earlier,
00:07:05.500 you know, having the opportunity to go and knock on thousands of doors and talk to people constantly,
00:07:10.300 the number one group of people who complain about immigration are immigrants. To your point, Mark,
00:07:16.780 of your parents who came over and did everything right and followed all of the rules. And we had a
00:07:21.180 great immigration system. Our country was built on immigrants. That's who we all are. Like whether
00:07:26.780 it's first generation, second generation, third generation, we are all from an immigrant family,
00:07:31.580 but the system was proper. You know, like in Peterborough, we had the Peter Robinson immigration.
00:07:36.540 This was, you came over from Ireland, the Irish famine, they came, they were given a plot of land,
00:07:40.860 like I think a shovel, a shanty, a cow. And if you didn't prove, uh, what you were able to contribute
00:07:46.860 back to the community with a, within a year, you were gone. Like there was a, there was like,
00:07:51.820 it seems so simple, like it's not complicated, but now you have literally violent criminals who are
00:07:57.900 running human trafficking rings, running drug rings, who are not contributing in the way that they were,
00:08:03.820 or they're taking resources and claiming refugee status as a loophole to stay in the country and
00:08:09.340 commit crime all while taking away healthcare, education, and the social resort housing that
00:08:15.420 Canadians and taxpayers deserve. So it's insane. And net, and then let's throw on the other thing
00:08:21.660 that just happened with the federal immigration minister, Leanne, uh, Lena Diab, like, has anybody
00:08:26.860 seen this? So she has just announced, like, I can't even believe what I'm about to tell you, Mark.
00:08:32.300 She just announced she's going to allow foreign military officials into the Canadian army.
00:08:38.860 Like in what world did anybody say, that's great. Like the last thing, the best comment I saw on my
00:08:44.380 online was, aren't we developing our Canadian forces to fight foreign folks? Like, isn't that the point
00:08:52.380 of the Canadian forces? And now you're inviting them in and giving them weapons. What is actually happening?
00:08:58.140 Yeah. I mean, it's like they're trying to weaken our country on purpose. That's what it looks like to me.
00:09:05.900 I mean, if you're bringing in a whole lot of people who are working...
00:09:10.140 Yeah.
00:09:10.540 I mean, if you're bringing in economic dependence, it hurts the rest of us because we've got to support
00:09:16.700 those economic dependence at a time where our debt has already doubled under the liberals. What are we,
00:09:22.140 like a 1.4 trillion now? I mean, so our debt continues to climb. We've brought all these people
00:09:28.300 who are not, are basically not contributing. Most of them are not contributing. They're just kind of waiting
00:09:33.260 to go through their asylum process or whatever, and basically costing us money, costing us money.
00:09:40.940 But I think to your point earlier about voting, I think the liberals need dependence. More dependence
00:09:46.620 means more votes for them. That's why they love civil servants who are on the government payroll.
00:09:53.980 And you know what? They also love people who are dependent on them in other ways.
00:09:57.580 And you know, they can then go to the election, to the electorate and say, you know, those mean
00:10:03.500 old conservatives are going to take stuff away. And you know, you're going to suffer if those cuts
00:10:10.300 happen. You know what I'm saying? They get to scare voters into voting for them by pointing fingers
00:10:16.940 and saying those mean old conservatives are going to take everything away. I mean, did you find that
00:10:21.180 during the election campaign last year?
00:10:23.020 That, that that was the threat, like that we would cut public service or what? Is that what you mean?
00:10:29.500 Yes. Yeah. So I mean, look at Bruce Fanjoy. So this is the guy that took Pierre Polyev's riding
00:10:35.340 and told everyone, Pierre Polyev is going to cut the public service. Pierre Polyev is going to cut
00:10:40.780 the public service. What did Mark Kearney just announced for that riding where this is like the most
00:10:45.020 concentrated place of public service workers, government workers? 10,000. That's what Mark Kearney's doing.
00:10:52.140 So all the things like I, one of the great things I heard someone say is liberal talking points are
00:10:58.540 confessions. And I was like, oh, that's good. That's really good. Right? Because they're telling
00:11:03.580 you what they're going to do, but they're blaming and projecting it onto the other people, whether it
00:11:07.500 be conservatives or whatever. It's never their fault, Mark. It's never their fault. There's never
00:11:12.140 any accountability. Oh, grocery prices are the highest in the G7. We have the highest food inflation in the
00:11:17.740 G7. Mark Kearney said, judge me on grocery prices, judge me on whether you can afford a home or whether
00:11:22.300 your kids can afford a home. I have a, I have a solution for the very problem that I created.
00:11:26.700 I'm going to give you $10 in a grocery rebate. That's actually going to cost $13 billion that we
00:11:31.180 don't have. That's going to drive up food inflation even more. I'm going to contribute to the problem
00:11:35.180 even more, but hopefully you're not going to notice and I'm going to buy your vote. Like once you see it,
00:11:40.140 you can't unsee what they do. And I guess, you know, the biggest thing I have to say to people
00:11:45.820 is a, you deserve better. You absolutely deserve better. Stop accepting this, this low bar. And to,
00:11:52.860 to loop it back to Danielle Smith, she's showing leadership by allowing the people to actually
00:11:57.820 have a voice and to critically think like, are you happy with this? Are you happy with this
00:12:02.620 immigration system that has absolutely taken away our resources and your ability to provide for your
00:12:07.180 family or opportunity for you to work? Absolutely not. But guess what? The federal government has
00:12:12.140 failed you. So I'm going to have to step up and do their job for them because they don't know what
00:12:16.140 they're doing. Or they do know what they're doing to your point, Mark, where it's pretty hard at this
00:12:20.860 point to say, this pretty feels, this feels pretty intentional. And you know, I have this saying that
00:12:28.140 I would say in committee all the time, once you start to go down the road of following the money,
00:12:32.300 when you have a guy of a CEO of Brookfield who has, you know, hidden assets, like it, it's just,
00:12:39.260 uh, it's more of the same once you start to see it and you start, start to follow the trail.
00:12:44.140 Yeah. I think there's a plan for them. They're not telling us what it is. I mean,
00:12:47.980 they added 80% to the federal, uh, roles, the, uh, worker, right. The public servants, 80%.
00:12:57.980 Well, if you hire a whole bunch of people from say, Polly Ove's old riding and, you know,
00:13:03.580 put them on the payroll and then scare the hell out of them come election time, that
00:13:08.220 Pierre is going to take their jobs away. Well, you know what, you have a chance to knock off the
00:13:12.780 leader. And so I think that's probably what happened there. At least that's what I think.
00:13:19.420 No. And I think you're right. And I think anybody who owns a small business, so small business owners
00:13:23.820 make up like 99% of the economy. And every day, a small business owner phones me and tells me they're
00:13:30.460 leaving Canada. They can't compete. Like there was a hair salon in Montreal charged a $500 fine
00:13:37.580 yesterday because they didn't have non-binary haircuts on their, on their price list. This is why,
00:13:44.940 like that's, that's a radical example, but it, this is why you have businesses leaving at exponential
00:13:50.540 rates because the liberal belief system is to invest in socialism and bureaucrats and not allow
00:13:56.700 a private, uh, independent entrepreneur or business to thrive. They make it impossible for them to
00:14:02.460 thrive. And so they just give up and they're making everybody weak and dependent. And they're also
00:14:08.620 normalizing this, uh, low bar for customer service, right? Like I just talked about this the other day,
00:14:14.540 like phoning CRA. So never before have you paid so much tax and received what in return? How's your
00:14:20.700 health care? How's your roads? How's like, I know those are municipal things, but like, how are all of
00:14:25.260 these services that you pay all this tax for when you phone the CRA? What's that service like? Can you
00:14:30.620 get through to a person? Will they give you the right information? It's just more of decay of, of what
00:14:37.020 we've come to expect. And then we just kind of become desensitized to it and accept it. And it's like,
00:14:42.140 well, everybody's doing the best they can. Like everything Mark Carney promised you,
00:14:47.340 he has not delivered on nothing, nothing. Like he said, judge me by the grocery prices,
00:14:54.540 judge me on housing, judge me on electricity prices, then judge him, judge him because it's
00:14:59.980 not getting better. It's getting worse. How do people consume your content? And by the way,
00:15:04.380 I also know about your hope tour. You want to plug that while we got a minute? Oh yeah. Thank you so much,
00:15:09.820 Mark. So hope tour was born out of the, basically the rallies that I took part in during the election
00:15:15.340 period where everybody got to come together, feel like they were part of something and give them
00:15:19.580 concrete tools, um, and advice on how to stay politically involved. Because I feel like a lot
00:15:24.620 of people do feel hopeless right now. What's the point? Why even vote when the guy I voted for crosses
00:15:29.260 the floor, all of these crazy things happening in our world. So the hope tour is kicking off in Vaughan,
00:15:34.620 Ontario, February 26th is our first one. It's our pilot one. It's a 7 PM start point. Uh, you can get
00:15:41.100 tickets on Eventbrite, just search the hope tour. And it's myself along with some amazing guests,
00:15:45.340 Jonathan Harvey, Jasmine Lane, Brad Smith from AM 640 and many others. It's going to be a lot of fun.
00:15:50.700 Jeffery. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Great to speak with you.
00:15:54.700 Thanks. Thanks Mark. If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting great independent journalism
00:16:01.100 where breaking news stories are told by going to junonews.com backslash straight up. That's the
00:16:07.340 name of this show, straight up, junonews.com backslash straight up. It helps us a great deal.
00:16:13.420 Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.