Juno News - May 19, 2025


Keean Bexte： When Donald Trump says he wants Canada – he’s talking about Alberta

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Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

197.26

Word count

1,032

Sentence count

57

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I sit down with Alberta Prosperity Project's President, AOC, to discuss the proposed separation of Alberta from Canada and the United States. We discuss the pros and cons of the two options, and AOC's thoughts on which one is more popular with the people of Alberta.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So this group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, unveiled its separation referendum question.
00:00:07.640 I want to talk to you a bit about the strategy of this, because this is something that I'm
00:00:12.200 personally curious. So just as a follow-up. So the question that they unveiled is,
00:00:16.060 do you agree that the province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a
00:00:21.520 province of Canada? Very clear question. They said that as of Monday, 240,000 pledges as of today
00:00:29.820 and so just remember that you only need 177 signatures to force a referendum question and
00:00:36.340 then they write that the big goal is to hit 1 million. So I guess you're trying to share a
00:00:40.240 clear message. This is something that I am very interested in. The idea of which one would be a
00:00:44.800 more popular ask to the people of Alberta, and I want to get your response on this, is for Alberta
00:00:50.240 to become a separate country or Alberta to become part of the United States? Now, I know that many
00:00:55.420 people, especially in the political world, will have a knee-jerk reaction saying, if you say American,
00:00:59.180 they'll say no. Canadians don't want to be American, period. But I think that might be wrong. I think
00:01:04.000 that for political people like us who eat and sleep and breathe politics, yes, you know, the
00:01:09.520 United States is sort of like the counter-Canadian, and so you can't be Canadian. But to the severely
00:01:14.080 normal average person who is not very political and maybe just doesn't even feel a strong connection
00:01:18.860 to Canada anymore, maybe they're a first or second generation immigrant, maybe they're just a 1.00
00:01:22.780 newcomer who probably their first choice, honestly, was America. They didn't get that visa, so they
00:01:27.720 decided to come to Canada and said, the idea of an American passport is incredibly valuable.
00:01:32.540 The idea of USD is incredibly appealing. And so I almost wonder, like, which one would lure
00:01:39.720 more people? The idea that you would be an independent country that's not beholden to anyone, not attached
00:01:44.540 to anything, no federal government, just you? Or being part of the biggest empire, the greatest
00:01:50.400 country in the world, and having the opportunity to just go up and move to Arizona or Florida or, you know, somewhere
00:01:56.540 with a lower cost of living and better weather, more job opportunities. Like, in some ways, I think
00:02:00.900 that the American question might be a bit more appealing. But as an Albertan, what do you think?
00:02:05.760 So it's a good question. I've spoken to some lawyers about this who sort of think that even if,
00:02:11.440 you know, you had this pie in the sky idea that we could join the United States, to do that is a long
00:02:17.080 legal process to become the 51st state. I mean, Donald Trump might be interested in expediting that,
00:02:23.180 and you might be able to negotiate in certain ways. But you can't do that as a province of Canada.
00:02:28.180 We don't have the ability to negotiate right now. It's like you can't get married to someone else
00:02:33.080 when you're married to someone else. You know, you have to get the divorce first. So you have to become
00:02:37.940 an independent sovereign country before you can decide to be the 51st state. And I think that that
00:02:42.760 idea has appeal to some. You know, obviously, Cam Davies, the leader of the upper Republicans,
00:02:48.460 he is an American. So, you know, it kind of makes sense for him that he's trying to drag us 0.91
00:02:52.840 to tie us and handcuff us to Washington. But I think you can tell from my language that I think
00:02:58.800 that that's a bad idea. I think that Alberta, Albertans who value freedom, who are descended
00:03:05.040 from those who tamed the West, and built this province, viewing the Rocky Mountains,
00:03:13.020 in the prairies, taming them in a way that nobody else across the world has really done,
00:03:21.460 building this beautiful province, I don't think that they want to tie themselves and shackle
00:03:26.540 themselves to another abusive partner. I think that they want to go on their own and build something
00:03:32.120 beautiful, because we already have something beautiful here. And we just want to make it better.
00:03:36.520 Um, shackling ourselves to New York Democrats, uh, and Democrats in Chicago, uh, and San Francisco.
00:03:44.900 Future president AOC?
00:03:46.300 Yeah. Do you want the future president of Alberta to be AOC? No, I think the answer is quite obvious
00:03:51.580 there. Um, I think that, I think that we have plenty of talent here to lead ourselves. Uh, we have
00:03:57.660 everything, you know, Donald Trump wants, when he says he wants Canada, he doesn't want Canada. He wants
00:04:02.220 Alberta, he wants Saskatchewan, and he wants our people. We are a desired, uh, entity right now.
00:04:08.500 And when, when someone wants to, to buy you, when someone wants to consume you, you know,
00:04:14.060 you have to start thinking, well, what, you know, would that, is that a really good thing for me?
00:04:17.960 Um, if they want us so bad, why couldn't we do this on our own? It's a common question that
00:04:22.400 startups get, um, you know, when they, when they're about to be bought out, Snapchat had this with,
00:04:26.520 with Facebook and meta back, uh, with Mark Zuckerberg. And they said, yeah, no, we don't,
00:04:30.660 we, they, they, they gave them this offer to buy them. And they said, no, we don't actually,
00:04:35.700 uh, we, we think that we have the tools we need to grow into something great. Uh, and Alberta is
00:04:41.880 faced with that exact same question right now. And I think that most Albertans would say in the spirit
00:04:46.420 of freedom that they believe in so strongly that they don't need to tie themselves or shock themselves
00:04:51.800 to, to another Eastern capital that is out of touch. You know, Washington is out of touch with
00:04:58.340 Montana all the time. Um, they, they get two senators, they hardly get any representation
00:05:03.820 in the house of representatives. Uh, and as a result, uh, Washington doesn't govern in the
00:05:10.380 interests of Montana. And you think that's going to be any different for Alberta? No, the answer is no.