Juno News - November 22, 2019


First step towards Alberta independence is a referendum

Topics
separation mentality equalization referendum
Mentioned
Derek Fildebrandt Jason Kenney Trudeau
Canadians have no time for the outrage mob Will Justin Trudeau continue to be silent on China？

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

183.09

Word count

948

Sentence count

59

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

If Alberta chooses to separate, what is the process going to look like to get from where we are today to an independent, seceded Alberta? That s one of the questions that was explored at Freedom Talk, a conference devoted to exploring the idea of Western alienation and Western independence.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 If Alberta chooses to separate, what is the process going to look like to get from where 0.91
00:00:09.520 we are today to an independent, seceded Alberta? That's one of the questions that was explored at
00:00:16.120 Freedom Talk, a conference devoted to exploring the idea of Western alienation and Western
00:00:21.660 independence from both sides, the side of federalism and the side of separation. It was
00:00:27.220 a fantastic conference, one at which I was a speaker and also one that provided a number
00:00:31.500 of opportunities for me to produce a series of videos that we've rolled out this week.
00:00:36.760 We've spoken about the political response to the independence push. We've spoken about the
00:00:41.880 dialogue itself. I wanted to take a moment and focus on the separation mentality and more
00:00:48.500 specifically what would have to happen to go through that process. I spoke about that with
00:00:54.140 Derek Fildebrandt, a former member of the Legislative Assembly in Alberta and also the
00:00:59.660 publisher of the now refounded Western Standard. Now, Derek Fildebrandt and I had a little chat
00:01:06.460 to speak about what he would like to see happen. And he says what a lot of others have put forward,
00:01:12.420 that there needs to be a referendum now. The starting of this will be what can the Canadian
00:01:17.920 government do and what will the Canadian government do about equalization payments? And more importantly,
00:01:23.480 will the federal government listen when Alberta goes with a mandate? This is what Derek Fildebrandt
00:01:29.500 said needs to happen first and where he thinks that process may lead.
00:01:33.940 All right. So what is separation or the move towards separation and independence look like
00:01:39.260 in your view? Or what should it look like?
00:01:41.400 It shouldn't look just like some people who are angry. That's a part of it. But it needs to look like
00:01:46.920 something like I think we're starting to see out of a conference here where it's a bit more thoughtful
00:01:51.060 and intellectual where we're having an honest conversation. It's not just merely saying,
00:01:57.140 I think there should be a vote and we hold a vote and then we're a country. It's not like that.
00:02:02.520 It's a lot more complicated. And I think those who want independence need to acknowledge that. So
00:02:06.740 a conference like we're having for the last two days here is a big step in that direction. So something
00:02:13.080 that's more thoughtful and incredible than just simply anger.
00:02:17.220 How should anger, of which there is a great deal, be channeled? And similarly, how should all the
00:02:22.980 ideas that we're seeing being put forward at this conference be put into something that would
00:02:26.300 actually move Albertans that are not happy with the status quo towards a solution?
00:02:32.980 Well, I'm not against there being anger. There's a very good reason for the anger. I just think it
00:02:37.220 needs to be channeled in a positive direction. I think the discussion, you've got a small, roughly
00:02:46.820 people are in thirds here. There's roughly a third who are status quo federalists, as would be
00:02:52.020 represented by the NDP or federal liberals here. You've got roughly a third who I think are now in
00:02:57.020 support of independence, one third of their sovereigntists, and a third who are reformers,
00:03:01.040 who want to see a radical reformation of federal structures and powers and intrusions within
00:03:07.860 Alberta. But I honestly think that there's almost no hope of reform. We spent 20 years on the West
00:03:13.580 wants in. And we spent 10 years in government, and we barely got anything out of it. We just had a
00:03:19.140 federal government that was just not as hostile as previous federal governments to us. And then those
00:03:23.980 marginal gains that we had were rolled back in six months of Trudeau anyway. So the question is,
00:03:28.740 is either reformers represented by Jason Kenney going to be successful in trying to dampen some
00:03:34.120 of the anger and make people feel that enough can be done on the reform side? Or is he going to run
00:03:39.920 up against the wall here, which I fear he will, which I think would result in a more binary decision
00:03:47.200 between accepting the status quo as virtually a colonial outpost of Ottawa or independence. And I think
00:03:55.180 it'll eventually come to a choice of that as we realize that there is not going to be
00:03:58.660 any reform of the federal system.
00:04:00.620 What do you think would be the straw that breaks the camel's back that tells you for sure
00:04:05.240 reform is not going to happen, Alberta needs out?
00:04:08.740 I think we would find out very soon. If we have a referendum on equalization, it'll feel good.
00:04:15.440 Albertans will vote to change it or get rid of it in overwhelming margins. But we're going to send
00:04:22.760 that to Ottawa. And what's going to happen? They're going to tell us to pound sand. And then we're going
00:04:26.560 to have two choices here. We can accept a humiliating yoke of the status quo, or we can move towards
00:04:34.120 independence. It's one reason I actually don't think there's going to be a referendum on equalization.
00:04:38.280 It's being talked about. But all of the conditions that Ottawa must meet to avoid it have been
00:04:44.320 quietly dropped by Premier Kenney one by one by one until it's just now TMX that's left.
00:04:50.000 TMX is probably going to get built. And so he'll declare victory on that. I think the Premier
00:04:55.360 here is very afraid of what happens if he holds that equalization referendum. Because the result
00:05:01.540 will be very clear for everyone to see. We're going to vote on something to reform the federal
00:05:07.840 system. We're going to send it to Ottawa. And Ottawa is going to tell us to get lost.