Juno News - Elon Musk ENDORSES Alberta independence movement？!

00:00:00.000 It's only a single word, but Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has endorsed Alberta

00:00:10.180 independence. He began by posting this on his social media site, Canada is cooked. Now,

00:00:18.020 David Parker, a supporter of Alberta independence, responded to that by saying, yeah, Alberta

00:00:24.320 independence is the only way we save what is left of it musk replied with a single word in the

00:00:31.360 affirmative yeah musk was also responding to a video of new democrat leah ghazan ripping the

00:00:39.440 liberal budget let's listen when the budget was released i was shocked to find out that

00:00:44.960 prime minister carney is cutting seven billion dollars between indigenous services canada

00:00:50.880 and Crown-Indigenous relations. They provided zero dollars to deal with the ongoing genocide

00:00:58.000 of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. This is abhorrent. Well, Texas Senator Ted Cruz responded to that long

00:01:08.000 acronym by saying the mental institutions were closed far too quickly. Now, one of the four

00:01:15.440 conservative MPs to join the Liberals, says his former party has no one to blame for the

00:01:20.600 departures, but itself. Chris Dantremont says conservatives need to reflect on their own

00:01:26.900 shortcomings, including those of the party leader. Let's listen. In your resignation,

00:01:32.100 you also did speak specifically about Mr. Poliev's leadership. How do you see how that is continuing

00:01:39.500 to play out? Do you think he can remain in place for much longer? I mean, I'm not going to comment

00:01:43.700 I haven't been a part of that caucus for a while now.

00:01:46.060 But, you know, ultimately, they're going to have to be asking questions of themselves and looking inward.

00:01:50.160 I mean, if we look through time as, you know, a different member has crossed over

00:01:54.380 and see what the response has been directly from them,

00:01:57.800 they seem to be blaming others for this challenge and not looking inwardly.

00:02:02.380 They need to look inwardly.

00:02:03.800 Meantime, the latest Conservative to bolt for the Liberals is facing backlash from voters in her home riding.

00:02:09.520 MP Marilyn Gladue of Sarnia-Lambton had her office vandalized this week. She was called a

00:02:17.020 traitor who betrayed voters. Gladue joined the government whose policies she'd publicly

00:02:23.800 attacked as recently as a few weeks ago. Now, CTV political pundit Lisa Raitt described

00:02:30.040 Prime Minister Carney's move to attract opposition MPs this way.

00:02:34.100 I have this vision in my head of Mark Carney as the Pied Piper, right?

00:02:38.760 He's got the flute and he's whistling all these people across. 0.85

00:02:41.580 But in reality, don't forget the Pied Piper, he attracted rats.

00:02:45.800 Our guest today is Georgianne Burke, who is a communications expert and political strategist with Pathway Group.

00:02:52.520 Welcome once again.

00:02:53.640 Thank you, Georgianne.

00:02:54.580 Good to be here.

00:02:56.440 Well, good to have you. You're coming all the way from Israel still.

00:02:59.540 Yes, indeed, Jerusalem.

00:03:00.340 Let's talk a little bit about Elon Musk, the world's richest man weighing in on Alberta

00:03:07.920 independence, appearing to endorse it. I mean, that's something significant, I would think. If

00:03:12.500 you're a booster of that cause, I think you'll probably be encouraged by the fact that somebody

00:03:17.720 of his clout would weigh in on this. Let's have a look at some of the things that were posted online.

00:03:24.920 you have musk boasting that canada is cooked in response to a video we'll be talking about a

00:03:30.440 little later now david parker uh responded by saying yeah alberta independence is the only way

00:03:38.520 we save what's left of it and musk responded with a single word yeah what should we make of this

00:03:45.640 well that i mean like elon musk said yeah okay whatever i don't think that he's exactly endorsing

00:03:53.160 it. I don't think he actually cares that much about it. But I think he was responding initially

00:03:58.940 probably to the lunacy that is coming from some of the members of other parties in our government

00:04:06.920 who apparently, you know, figure that they can say crazy stuff and get away with it.

00:04:13.640 That being said, I understand Albertans do feel that way. They feel that they're

00:04:18.920 the only sane people in um in canada they want to they want to change they want to get out from

00:04:26.260 under ottawa um life has been very hard for them you know they've had a long history of contention

00:04:33.720 with ottawa as you know going back to the 80s um for sure and maybe before that i don't know but i

00:04:40.100 certainly remember their issues over the national energy policy and it hasn't been easy for them

00:04:44.560 They've been fighting the whole time because they were a big producer of revenue for the country, and they were constantly, what word shall I use?

00:04:55.800 They were dumped on regularly by the liberal and the left and many, many people in Canada as being somewhat less than, even though they were providing the lion's share of income and revenue to the country.

00:05:10.520 So they're kind of tired of being treated like that. I understand their feelings. I think it would be sad. It would be sad for Canada to lose Alberta. But I can tell you, oddly and funnily enough, since I now live most of the time in the United States, I've had a lot of people say to me, so Alberta wants to separate, huh? We take them, we would take them.

00:05:33.320 And I'm like, well, don't say that too loud. You might just get them. Who knows? So, yeah, I mean, I totally get what their viewpoint is. I understand. And I empathize with them. I do. I know that it's been not pleasant for them to live in a country that seems to have no respect for what they do for them and what they produce.

00:05:56.040 But I don't know that Elon Musk's opinion really matters all that much in this.

00:06:02.800 I'm sure David Parker was thrilled, however, knowing David Parker.

00:06:07.020 It's not every day that Elon Musk, who owns the platform, responds to somebody's tweet.

00:06:13.020 Yes, true.

00:06:14.440 That doesn't happen all the time.

00:06:16.040 So I would suggest that there is a level of support there.

00:06:19.920 And he probably is aware of what's going on in terms of a possible referendum.

00:06:24.760 and at least peripherally aware that there's a movement in Alberta.

00:06:28.520 I know he's aware there's a movement.

00:06:30.820 Everybody knows that.

00:06:31.900 Like anybody who's in government or connected to the government,

00:06:34.880 I've heard them speak about it.

00:06:36.280 They're very aware that there's an independence movement, a separation movement.

00:06:41.260 It's not that it's an unknown.

00:06:43.140 It's just that he said, yeah, it's not like a, yeah, go get them kind of thing.

00:06:48.500 It was like, I don't think he's actually throwing his hat in the ring,

00:06:54.180 saying call me for a donation um i didn't see that there so okay well we might have to disagree

00:07:01.100 on that to me i think it's wishful thinking on your part mark it would be a better story

00:07:05.300 if he said he's answering in the affirmative yeah and i don't think he wastes he doesn't

00:07:10.780 waste any words but let's shift a little bit to what just happened with uh marilyn glad you of

00:07:17.060 course who cost the well you knew marilyn very well i assume i want to say that you're still

00:07:23.040 friends i don't i'm not 100 sure about that but not right now um i i don't know that that damage

00:07:29.440 can be repaired i actually very rarely take things personally in politics because uh if i did that i

00:07:36.080 would probably be dead from disastrous whatever over the years but in this particular case i put

00:07:42.960 a lot of my own political capital on the line for her i considered her a friend treated her as a

00:07:48.400 a friend always. And having this happen was shocking to me. First of all, I don't even

00:07:57.360 understand how she can sit in a caucus with the people who reviled her and called her names

00:08:02.840 because of her position on COVID, because of her position. She's extremely socially conservative.

00:08:09.440 Like maybe people don't know this, but she's one of the most socially conservative people in that

00:08:13.760 caucus um and i don't see how she fits in there i just don't um i don't know what she the only

00:08:20.900 thing i can assume is that i do know that she did not get along well with pierre never did

00:08:26.300 okay um and maybe she figured look he didn't win government if he would have won government

00:08:32.480 all would have been fine he didn't win so she says now she's looking she says i don't she wasn't

00:08:39.320 going to run the last time i don't think and then got talked into it so i don't think she actually

00:08:44.580 plans to run again so all these people that are saying you're going to lose the next time

00:08:47.320 she don't care she's not running again okay um she's going to take her time that she has left

00:08:52.960 which is you know three or whatever number of years until the next election is mandated and then

00:08:58.480 maybe he's offered her some kind of a junior ministry or a senior ministry or something that

00:09:04.480 she wanted for her riding or whatever made some kind of deal which is by the way illegal to do

00:09:08.800 but maybe he did. And we'll see, I guess, when they shuffle over the summer, what happens

00:09:14.200 or what comes out of their Montreal conference this week. But I am, I just don't understand

00:09:23.180 what she could be thinking, why she thought this was a good idea. I saw a letter today from her

00:09:27.940 writing association, the members that the president has been there forever. He's a wonderful guy.

00:09:32.640 And he wrote a letter that actually hurt me to read because I know how painful it was for him

00:09:38.780 to write a letter that said basically you've betrayed us you have we feel that you have

00:09:45.460 abandoned us um you know we were there for you from day one they worked their butts off to get

00:09:51.620 her elected the first time and subsequent elections so taking that for granted is shocking

00:09:56.460 to me and it isn't really in character for her um i've never seen her as that kind of person 0.98

00:10:01.540 i will tell you this people that are calling her stupid and and all these this woman is not a 1.00

00:10:07.460 stupid woman. This woman worked for 32 years in the chemical engineering field. She's one of the 1.00

00:10:13.580 first female chemical engineers. She's the first female chemical engineer ever to serve in the 1.00

00:10:19.800 House of Commons. And she is one of very few women at that time who are in that field. She's super

00:10:26.400 smart. She's worked all over the world. She's managed hundreds of people at a time. You know,

00:10:32.720 600 people was not unusual for her to be managing. She's a very capable, competent person.

00:10:39.620 But I think that this is somehow maybe personal for her. That's all I can figure, because I don't

00:10:44.460 see how it's in it for her to sit in a caucus with people who clearly hate her. And what's

00:10:49.840 interesting is the left, the left of his party and the left activists are enraged that he's taken her

00:10:56.800 in so maybe this is good for avi lewis maybe we conservatives should just be quiet let them

00:11:02.640 rebuild their party pull all the far left people out of the liberal party back into the ndp and

00:11:07.460 then back to three-party system again games on you know i don't know yeah i made that case as well

00:11:14.200 earlier i think this is going to end up hurting the liberals in the long term because all those

00:11:19.880 new democrats that parked their vote with the liberals in the last election there were a lot

00:11:25.040 of them that's right they go home you know they don't want to be associated they want nothing to

00:11:28.860 do with maryland gladius so they're they're going home right yep back to their party that's what i

00:11:34.060 see as a distinct possibility um and it was i i was actually looking today online and seeing

00:11:41.160 all of the left-wing people like like freaking out how could you you know uh she's this she's 0.93

00:11:48.500 that she's you know she's neanderthal she's whatever all kinds of names and that was to

00:11:53.680 expected did they not expect that that was going to be the reaction from the left if not then they

00:11:58.800 were dreaming in technicolor for sure right yeah well this is the problem when you try to be all

00:12:04.000 things to all people which is i guess what mark carney is putting out there you know i can give

00:12:09.840 every i can make everybody happy regardless of which side of the political spectrum you happen

00:12:14.560 to be you end up trying to please everybody and you please nobody you let you end up losing

00:12:19.200 the lefties. And you're going to probably lose some conservatives as well who realize that you're

00:12:25.600 just speaking from all sides of your mouth. Right. And don't mean anything and don't stand for

00:12:30.800 anything. Yeah. And I think that's exactly what this this kind of points to with with regard to

00:12:36.460 him. I just don't know. I can't imagine how she's feeling today because she has been attacked

00:12:43.600 pretty vehemently by a lot of people that she I know she likes and respects including myself

00:12:50.040 I very rarely attack a person like I get mad at somebody that I know and like and I don't say

00:12:57.100 anything publicly but this was beyond the pale for me this actually was enough to make me react

00:13:03.020 publicly and to send her an email which literally burned the wires she'll never I said if you have

00:13:09.260 the guts to answer me i'll be surprised and does she did she have the guts she will not have the

00:13:14.640 guts to answer me she will not no no she knows she knows that she can't make any argument that

00:13:20.080 i will believe i'm she's going to tell me that her constituents wanted that i'm going to call bs

00:13:24.980 times 10 on that okay she's going to tell me that this party is going to accept her and her beliefs

00:13:30.980 i'm definitely calling bs on that there's no way so there's nothing she could say to me that is

00:13:36.220 going to convince me that there was a good reason for her to do it other than malice or personal

00:13:41.540 gain. And neither one of those are good reason to be doing this. Yeah, I mean, even intelligent

00:13:49.440 people can grossly miscalculate on the reaction. And she may have, she might be shocked right now

00:13:57.960 by the reaction. And she's going to have to look her neighbors in the eye. You know, she's going

00:14:02.700 have to go to the grocery store correct people know who he is it's not that big a town sarnia

00:14:08.300 nope and she's gonna have to face those people and face those who feel totally betrayed she's

00:14:15.340 gonna have to face them as a as a member of parliament too she can't escape them when it

00:14:20.020 comes to actual her actual job that she has to do people are going to be able to come to her office 1.00

00:14:26.920 and yell in her face i mean like she's going to have to put up with that she's going to have to 1.00

00:14:30.960 go to town halls and other kinds of meetings. She's going to have to do them. She can't avoid 1.00

00:14:35.480 them. What is she going to do? Only go to the liberals that live there, all 12 of them? I mean,

00:14:39.860 you know, like it's a very heavily blue riding, very, very conservative riding. It's socially

00:14:44.960 conservative and all the other ways conservative. That's why she got 53% of the vote in an election 0.82

00:14:50.960 that we lost. So I'll figure she won in 2015 in an election that we lost. So if she thinks it's

00:14:59.240 about her she's wrong it's about conservatism these people vote blue they don't vote red

00:15:06.120 so if she thinks she can win which i don't believe i think she's not intending to run again

00:15:11.400 so she figures okay well she'll screw them over too by not running again so they won't be able

00:15:16.920 to blame her for the loss somebody else will run and get hammered hopefully well i i think she was

00:15:23.480 sick of sitting in the opposition benches and she mentioned that in her statement she is for

00:15:29.400 losing elections which she had won personally but sitting in the opposition benches can get

00:15:36.820 tiresome after a while and this was an opportunity to sit on the other side for a change and maybe

00:15:42.360 that's the way she saw it but I want to ask you as well at your farewell party in December Marilyn

00:15:48.460 glad you made an appearance. And according to another friend of yours, Lisa McLeod, she basically

00:15:55.660 made some very mean statements about Pierre Paglia, which speaks to the fact that there may have been

00:16:02.700 a personal level of animosity between the two. But I would have to ask, I mean, would Pierre

00:16:09.180 have not sensed that and tried to deal with it, you know, rather than for it to end up the way it

00:16:17.820 did? So, um, I can tell you that Marilyn, like I've known her a long time and I don't think she

00:16:24.500 ever really cared for him very much. Um, and Pierre has a lot of skills. Maybe one of them is

00:16:33.200 not, you know, smoothing over relationships with MPPs who are upset with him. I don't, you know,

00:16:41.620 and I, I actually had a phone call today in which I said that I think one of the big problems that

00:16:46.100 our OLO has is an inadequate caucus management team. Otherwise, this would not be happening.

00:16:54.140 You would know if somebody was unhappy. If you have a good caucus management team

00:16:58.080 that talks to their caucus members regularly with respect and the caucus members feel they

00:17:03.080 can confide in them, they can tell them, they can learn things that will be clues to how they're

00:17:09.580 thinking and what they're wanting to do. And first of all, can try to allay their concerns. And

00:17:14.100 secondly, can say to the leader or whoever's appropriate, listen, we've got a problem here

00:17:18.720 and we need to fix it. And this is how I recommend fixing it. You get good people to do that

00:17:23.080 and you can manage it. The liberals are fabulous at this. I don't know why we are not. We are just

00:17:28.540 not. We're not good at it. And I think that probably is how this continued to fester. And

00:17:35.500 I mean, the leader is a busy guy. He's not paying attention to everybody's complaints and whatever.

00:17:39.540 and she probably didn't complain in his face she probably did what she did with lisa which was

00:17:44.180 talk behind his back um and i mean she she said things to me i won't say they were horrible but

00:17:50.740 i just knew that she wasn't overly fond of him i can say that and i mean she didn't she didn't

00:17:57.700 say to me when he became leader oh i'm so miserable about it she didn't say that at all

00:18:01.860 but i think she believed that we were going to win the election

00:18:04.180 okay so she was willing to keep her mouth shut there

00:18:08.800 i guess she would have liked him more if he was prime minister i guess that's what i'm saying

00:18:14.980 yes it's very which is explaining why she likes mark carney today because he's prime minister

00:18:20.560 this is why i'm so disappointed in her because this is not who i believe she was it's it's very

00:18:26.280 disappointing to me well chris stentermont i know you're no huge fan of his he said the

00:18:32.900 Conservatives need to reflect on their own shortcomings, you know, look inside yourself.

00:18:37.800 Yeah, okay.

00:18:38.380 Is what he is.

00:18:39.520 Don't blame the people who left because obviously there's a problem at the core of the party

00:18:44.900 that you need to address.

00:18:46.120 That was his take.

00:18:47.280 Was it?

00:18:47.720 Oh, well, okay.

00:18:48.400 I'm going to definitely listen to what Chris Dantremont says because he's my go-to guy.

00:18:53.420 I always wondered how he ran for us.

00:18:55.760 I've said over and over again that I never thought he was a conservative.

00:18:58.560 I think he's right where he belongs with a bunch of liberals.

00:19:01.100 and somebody said oh he was a PC minister from Nova Scotia I said well that says it all to me

00:19:07.460 that doesn't mean that you're a conservative so so I'm not surprised plus this is what they want

00:19:13.040 to do they want to sow discord in the conservative party against Pierre because they do see him as a

00:19:18.220 threat if the party ever gets its act together they're they're mincemeat they're dead the question

00:19:24.060 of course is will the party ever get its act together I think they would like to I think

00:19:27.280 there's actually an effort to do so. Um, but this is unfortunate. Pierre was said very little about

00:19:33.940 this. I mean, probably wisely. Um, he did say something, I guess I haven't actually seen it.

00:19:39.280 Someone read it to me today. Um, but I'm, you know, I, I just, I feel like she's a person that

00:19:48.320 everybody was stunned was leaving, not because she was so happy there, but because she's so

00:19:55.720 conservative and how did she think she was going to fit in there there someone pointed out i think 0.99

00:20:00.760 in one of the twitter feeds i saw there'll be a bunch of clapping seals at the convention this

00:20:05.380 weekend and then her life will really begin next week on monday she'll see what it's like to be a

00:20:11.380 liberal a conservative who crosses to the liberals a conservative who doesn't share their values at

00:20:16.700 all so i mean how do you vote for these policies that you know criminalize religious texts you

00:20:26.700 know especially how do you she is a devout christian devout devout devout this is the thing

00:20:31.820 i just don't i i'm telling you i was gobsmacked i've never i've never responded to any floor

00:20:37.760 crossing like i like chris dontermont whatever michael ma whatever matt jenneru i was a little

00:20:42.820 like oh that's disappointing you know because i knew him pretty well i know michael ma very well

00:20:47.620 wasn't surprised at all okay but she i was literally and i used the word when i wrote to

00:20:54.500 her i was gobsmacked i i i literally couldn't pick my jaw up off the floor and of course my phone

00:21:02.500 blew up i was at my daughter's yesterday and it's going ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding and

00:21:07.700 she said what the heck is going on i said i don't know i wasn't looking at it we were still

00:21:11.380 celebrating the holiday and at the end i went to go get a a cab to go back to our place and i opened

00:21:18.340 it up and went oh my god i had probably 30 people easily contact me to tell me this plus all the

00:21:26.660 posts all over the place so yeah and now there's talk of as many as 10 well i guess that she would

00:21:35.780 have been included amongst the 10 but you had that la presse correspondent say that there were 10 in

00:21:42.580 talks for this um i mean can pierre survive an outflow of you know even another five which is

00:21:52.500 if that happened he would be in a lot of trouble i don't tend to think that's actually true i think

00:21:57.300 that's the story that the liberals are putting out and the media is carrying because that's their job

00:22:01.780 they carry water for the liberals that is what they do um when i'll see it i'll believe it um and

00:22:08.180 you know if i were advising him i would probably say yeah this doesn't look good for you but i

00:22:13.140 don't think that's actually the case i i know they are talking to people i know they've been

00:22:16.420 talking to people incessantly for the past several months but most of them with the exception of

00:22:22.500 these four have turned them or three i should don't four have turned them down people have

00:22:27.700 have turned them down. I know they have. Okay. And they've said, no, we're not interested in

00:22:32.340 being with you. No, like I got like, what's his name? Amarjeet Gill from Brampton. I've known him

00:22:39.600 for probably 20 years. Very, very sweet man. He said that they approached him. Somebody said,

00:22:45.620 oh, nobody ever approached you. No, he's exactly the guy they would approach. He seems like a

00:22:49.400 quieted, easygoing guy, not particularly connected, you know, one way or the other to

00:22:55.340 it Pierre particularly personally he said absolutely not they did not they completely

00:23:00.540 misjudged him because he's very conservative and it's not he's not interested in being in that

00:23:05.820 party at all okay um so he said they approached me and I said no and I'm sticking with my party

00:23:12.800 and he said it very clearly Dean Allison also uh who I know knows Marilyn very well is very

00:23:18.040 disappointed in her um was obvious from what he said today he's one of my favorite people on the

00:23:23.480 by that. If you're listening, Dean, I'm just saying what you already know. Anyway.

00:23:30.260 George Ann, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

00:23:32.900 My pleasure. Great to see you, Mark.

00:23:35.000 George Ann Burke. If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting independent journalism

00:23:39.220 by becoming a premier member of Juno News. Go to junonews.com backslash straight up.

00:23:46.220 You can find the link below. It helps us to do what we do.

00:23:50.180 Thank you so much, my friends. We'll see you next time.

00:23:53.480 You

Juno News - April 10, 2026

Elon Musk ENDORSES Alberta independence movement？!

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript