In this episode, PJ talks with Jason Levine from the Alberta Prosperity Project about the growing number of Albertans who are calling for the province to separate from Canada, and what that means for the future of the country as a whole.
00:00:00.000They do understand it's not fringe anymore, and they do understand the consequences.
00:00:04.220If this does end up with Alberta leaving Canada, that will likely leave Canada in a third world state because the Canadian dollar will tank.
00:00:30.000In today's video, we're going to be looking at a recent conversation from the YouTube channel Real Citizen with Jason Levine from the Alberta Prosperity Project.
00:00:40.000The leader of the Alberta government, Danielle Smith, dropped the list of demands on the desk of the new Canadian Prime Minister.
00:00:48.080She previously stated that this would be the requirements to bring about a positive reset in Alberta-Canada relations, in light of the growing support for Alberta independence within that province.
00:00:58.480A rapidly increasing number of Albertans have given up on the idea of trying to fix Canada from within, and believe Alberta would be better off becoming an independent country, or possibly joining the United States in some capacity.
00:01:11.120The Premier has mentioned that our main goal is to try to fix things from within.
00:01:15.760In her own words, she expressed that this was the mandate she was elected for.
00:01:20.760She's also stated, however, that she will not interfere if citizens of Alberta decide to vote for separation in an upcoming referendum.
00:01:28.400Furthermore, her government put forward the law that makes the referendum more attainable, by lowering the signatures required to trigger one, from around 600,000 to just 177,000.
00:01:40.880As I've mentioned in this channel before, the Alberta Prosperity Project has well over 230,000 people already who have registered on their website with the intent to sign yes on the petition.
00:01:53.160They've also already filed an official application for a referendum vote with Elections Alberta.
00:01:58.800In this application, the referendum question was submitted, and it's now being processed.
00:02:03.520Talk about Danielle Smith for a second, because she's a major part of this, and she's outlined in the last, I believe, within the last three weeks, it was her kind of two weeks, maybe, her list of demands, you could call it, to Ottawa and Mark Carney about coming to the table.
00:02:18.180She made four main points, and she said, we, as the UCP, are not going to be leading this, but we will respect if citizens, essentially, come together, enters enough signatures past the threshold, which she lowered, to trigger a referendum.
00:02:34.720The way that I interpreted that was she's okay with the process happening.
00:02:41.440She just is not going to be the one that's going to be spearheading as a kind of a revolt, in a sense.
00:02:47.120Yeah, she can't become the leader of that parade.
00:02:51.120She can't be the one that says we need to separate, because pragmatically, and this is something I think she's doing very well, is she has to make sure that we do everything we can to make this work.
00:03:02.460Think about it like a bad marriage, that you really don't want to end, because you fell in love at the beginning, and you had a lot of history, and children, and assets, and other things that have to be considered.
00:03:13.840You should try everything you can to keep that marriage together.
00:03:17.420And that's her current position right now.
00:03:19.700And that's why she gave those four items to Carney, and a six-month window, to go ahead and address that.
00:03:25.880If you want to look at it like the analogy of a marriage, stop going to the bar, stop spending all the money, come home, take care of the kids.
00:03:31.840Like, here's the list of things that will make it work better.
00:03:36.500But I'm not hopeful that he's going to do that.
00:03:39.040If you read his book, Values, he's pretty clear that he believes that oil and capitalism are some targets that he thinks need to be eliminated for climate purposes.
00:03:48.380And I don't see him changing his tune on that, unless lots of provinces step up to the plate and say, we need to change this deal.
00:03:55.740Then maybe he would have to, because I don't think he wants to be the prime minister of the collapse of Canada.
00:03:59.620But he may be pushed into a constitutional convention, with Alberta leading that.
00:04:05.380I'm highly skeptical that Carney, the liberal prime minister, is going to comply with any of her demands.
00:04:12.380I think he's unlikely to even try to find a compromise where Alberta can benefit.
00:04:17.140Unless, Albertans continue to show that they're very serious about going it alone, and carry on taking the necessary steps towards it.