In this episode, I break down an interview that was aired on CTV with Jeff Erick, the leader of the Alberta Prosperity Project and the Alberta Independence Movement. Jeff has been a long time member of the pro-Independence movement in Alberta and has been fighting for the province to become independent from Canada for years. In this interview, Jeff challenges the mainstream media narrative that the U.S. government is trying to keep Alberta from becoming independent.
00:00:00.760Ladies and gentlemen, over this past weekend, I kept hearing from literally everyone about this apparently explosive interview that Jeff Erick did with the mainstream media.
00:00:11.400Of course, Jeff is one of the leaders of the Alberta independence movement and the Alberta Prosperity Project.
00:00:17.320And I heard about this interview while I was down in the good old USA for some work.
00:00:21.800I listened to some parts of it, bits and pieces here and there on my Twitter account.
00:00:26.980People kept saying that it's a classic beatdown.
00:00:30.960You know, you have this Alberta patriot just absolutely schooling a government paid journalist and shredding the media narrative, laying out the facts about exactly how far Alberta independence has come.
00:00:43.180We're going to be watching and analyzing the entire thing and then I'll give my opinion as we go.
00:00:49.060So sit down, buckle up and let's break this thing apart.
00:00:52.540So this interview was aired on CTV, one of the two main mainstream media, government paid media organizations here in Canada.
00:01:00.640Hi, Mr. Roth. It's great to meet you. I appreciate you making the time today.
00:01:03.080Well, I really appreciate you having me on today. Thank you.
00:01:04.700I listened to some of the interviews you've given to other media this weekend and you were disputing the reporting that garnered all that reaction from the premiers.
00:01:11.700And I wanted to actually just get you on the record.
00:01:13.960Oh, sure. The Financial Times piece, I'll stay for the record. It was fake news.
00:01:17.480I was very, I'm very careful with anybody to say that we haven't been offered any money by the United States.
00:01:22.320We're not seeking money from the United States.
00:01:23.960We're conducting a feasibility study on the availability of a sufficient credit facility to get Alberta over the hump in the hypothetical eventuality that Ottawa is going to play hardball and try to cut off our money once Alberta declares itself independent from Canada.
00:01:38.540So, you know, that FT article, you know, starts out covert meetings between U.S. officials and fringe separatists.
00:01:45.500It was ridiculous. It was just a hit piece, you know, by the globalist media.
00:01:48.960I'm really disappointed in the FT. Actually, I used to read it when I was going to law school in London and the paper is really going downhill if that's going to trash the publishing.
00:01:55.060I'm glad that he immediately clarified everything. People are saying that the United States is giving Alberta money, giving Alberta patriots money to betray Canada, betray Canada, right?
00:02:09.200That's not at all what's happening. What we have is the Alberta Prosperity Project had a delegation go to the United States and like he explains, they're doing a feasibility study for a potential loan once Albertans vote themselves out of Canada and the negotiations begin.
00:02:27.020Canada is already acting hostile and making it incredibly difficult for Albertans to seek their independence.
00:02:32.960So what do you think is going to continue to happen once we vote to become independent from Canada?
00:02:37.100They're probably going to continue to be difficult.
00:02:39.900So what's happening is a feasibility study for a potential loan to help Alberta get on its own two feet once we vote for independence.
00:02:47.840What I had noticed when I read it was that I had read other reporting previously that you had made trips to the United States.
00:02:52.660Well, there's no doubt we're making trips to the United States.
00:02:55.820Can you just explain what you are doing?
00:02:56.140We don't leave health press conferences to tell people that we're going to the United States.
00:03:01.860The Alberta Prosperity Project has been telling the media that they've been meeting with Trump officials for a long time.
00:03:08.520These people are acting like they revealed some news or some dark information or something that was hidden.
00:03:15.540This is all they've always said they've been very public about this.
00:03:19.660We're exchanging information with senior officials in the U.S. State Department over the aspirations of Alberta for Albertans for independence
00:03:28.100and talking to them about the types of things that would help Alberta move forward as a free and independent country.
00:03:35.680I mean, we had Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besson, the second most powerful man in the world, repeating what we told the State Department officials back in December
00:03:43.560that aspirationally Alberta would love to have a pipeline through the U.S. Pacific Northwest to the West Coast
00:03:49.600because we're sick and tired of David Eby threatening us with a veto and saying we're only getting a pipeline over his dead body
00:03:55.740and all of the foolishness that comes out of his mouth.
00:03:57.720And, of course, the reaction to that from David Eby when he saw that his power was being taken away
00:04:02.880and that he was no longer going to have power to constrain oil and gas development in Alberta
00:04:10.000on behalf of his communist masters in China, right, was to jump up and down and have a hysterical little hissy fit
00:04:16.100and say that, you know, we're engaged in treason and that real Albertans don't support independence.
00:04:21.600I mean, it was the most ridiculous display on behalf of a premier that I've ever seen.
00:04:44.800We'll take their money, but we won't build a pipeline.
00:04:47.300So now you have Scott Besant, U.S. Treasury Secretary, saying, yeah, we support Albertans
00:04:52.640in their pursuit of sovereignty and independence.
00:04:55.340And we should build a pipeline to the West Coast of the United States if they won't let them build it in Canada.
00:05:01.820So already these meetings of Alberta patriots with Trump officials are paying dividends, which is what Jeff is referring to here.
00:05:07.880We take David Eby out of the equation for a second.
00:05:10.100Can you understand how on the face of it Canadians would view some Canadians outside of the ones that support your cause who are not necessarily unempathetic to the frustrations expressed by people in this province, but who would view the idea of, you know, people here meeting with a government that has, you know, spoken the way it has about this country as a whole as problematic and seeking money to make this happen?
00:05:33.880I understand that there's a lot of Ontarians and people in Quebec that suffer deeply from Trump derangement syndrome, but we're not doing anything untoward.
00:05:41.720It's absolutely, you know, from our perspective, we're just conducting due diligence on behalf of our fellow Albertans.
00:05:47.740I mean, I'm, you know, I've argued cases at the Supreme Court of Canada, for goodness sake.
00:05:50.960I mean, you know, we take what we're doing very seriously, and obviously the attitude of the United States towards Alberta independence, which incidentally is overwhelmingly enthusiastic, is something that informs our movement going forward.
00:06:03.060If the United States said, oh, God, we can't tolerate that, flies in the face of, you know, the communist new world order, we'll slap a 300% tariff on Albertans if they leave because we want you to remain resource slaves of the communist government in Ottawa, you know, it would be a totally different conversation.
00:06:17.940If that's not the case, we're gratified that it's the case, and quite frankly, the Trump administration shows Albertans far more respect than is shown to Albertans by the government in Ottawa.
00:06:27.500Do you think three of us could get a meeting with Tim Hodgson to talk about the need for a pipeline to the Pacific Northwest so that David Eby can't continue to hold us hostage?
00:06:35.560Of course not, because they want us to be held hostage.
00:06:37.720So, you know, so I understand that there are Canadians that are upset, especially in Ontario, that when Alberta leaves, that Ontarians for the first time in their lives are going to have to pay their own bills and pay the bills of the Maritimes that we've been paying for years.
00:06:49.980I understand that's upsetting to people, but they need to understand that Albertans are done, we're leaving, and there's no more conversation to be had.
00:07:20.740They're worried that Ontarians are going to have to cover the bills for Quebec and the Maritimes once Alberta's out, which is what Alberta has been doing for decades and decades.
00:07:32.580We've been paying the bills for the Maritimes and Quebec, billions of dollars every year in equalization payments.
00:07:39.740And in the event of Alberta separating from Canada, guess who's going to be stuck with that bill?
00:08:22.500We're actually more like a, you know, a rook or a queen on a chessboard moving forward in the direction that we want to move freely on the board.
00:08:30.420You know, the pawns are the provincial premiers like Danielle Smith that are being manipulated by Carney and Eby and communist China to do their globalist bidding.
00:09:03.320We have an agreement with the people that we're meeting with that we're not disclosing the identities of the people that we're meeting with.
00:09:33.660These meetings, especially high level meetings, normally come with agreements that disclosure of what was talked about or who was involved or who was in the meeting, who was present or not, normally isn't supposed to be divulged.
00:09:48.020It's not abnormal for diplomatic meetings to sometimes be kept secret.
00:09:53.380The details of said meeting to sometimes be kept secret.
00:10:04.000I mean, we know that we know already that our meetings are paying dividends when the U.S. Secretary of Treasury is announcing the fact that the U.S. would be open to a pipeline through the Pacific Northwest to take David Eby and Communist China out of control of the Alberta oil field.
00:10:18.480May I ask then, in a different way, have there been conversations, you know, among yourself or people in the movement with, for example, as high as President Trump?
00:10:31.620He's not really part of our movement and part of what we're doing.
00:10:33.920He's the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta.
00:10:36.200He claims to have been to Mar-a-Lago and, you know, whatever.
00:10:39.760You know, we don't need to meet with President Trump.
00:10:41.640We're really technicians when it comes right down to it, right?
00:10:43.940At the end of the day, you know, our next delegation to Washington, you know, we're going to have bankers, economists, corporate lawyers, et cetera, to help with this feasibility study that we're conducting, right?
00:10:54.360And we're going to be putting together, you know, what a potential deal memo could look like and put together a complete dossier so that we can just hand it over to whoever the government of Alberta is in power and say, hey, if Ottawa is giving you a hard time, here's an easy way out.
00:11:06.480There's, you know, there's a large credit facility that's available through Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan or whoever in the event that Ottawa tries to cut off your money.
00:11:14.340This kind of work that the Alberta Prosperity Project is doing with their delegations that go to the USA is basically letting Canada know, look, we're moving.
00:11:22.560We're moving here in the event of, right, just in case a contingency plan, Canada decides to continue to grow more and more hostile towards an independent Alberta, especially after a successful referendum.
00:11:35.760You know what? We have the backing, not only of an independent country, but the most powerful country on earth, which happens to be our neighbor.
00:11:44.880They support us. Not only do we have access to funds through credit, but we also have diplomatic support, international recognition.
00:11:54.120And that's what makes the federal government in Canada very worried about this.
00:11:58.300And you're going to see more and more mainstream media coverage of this story because it's getting real.
00:12:03.280It's like I told you guys multiple times, it's going to get a lot more attention, local, national and international.
00:12:09.740People are already paying a lot more attention than they were just three months ago.
00:12:14.200On the question of feasibility and the situation that you just lay out, what does it say that if you are preparing for Ottawa, as you as you would characterize it to play hardball,
00:12:23.180that you would then lean on credit or whatever it ends up being from the United States?
00:12:27.360It's like to the people who support your movement. Are you not kind of moving from one master to another?
00:12:31.780The entire world runs on credit. How much does Canada rely on the United States?
00:12:38.940So what? If Secretary Besant wanted to end Canada tomorrow, it would take one memo to all of the bond rating agencies, Moody's, Standard & Fitch & Poor's,
00:12:49.680to say that Canada is the poor risk because of all the various things the United States is going to do with Canadian credit, and Canada would be over.
00:12:56.940So Canada is being supported by the United States.
00:12:59.420So just stop with the silliness and try to create this conflation somehow or other between the Alberta independence movement and being beholden to the United States.
00:13:08.660I know it's a fear-mongering talking point of the mainstream media with regard to Alberta independence, but we're not buying into it. It's ridiculous.
00:13:23.500So an independent Alberta getting a loan from the United States doesn't make it any less independent than any other country that takes loans from the United States.
00:13:32.540Well, let me respectfully, if you don't mind, challenge you and just ask.
00:13:34.920Look at what happened based on the scenario you just have outlined because of our dependence on the United States.
00:13:40.640Look at what they're able to exact right now.
00:13:42.560What you are telling your supporters, with great respect, is that you will be independent.
00:14:29.480Even after Alberta votes yes on a referendum, it'll need trading partners.
00:14:33.580And the fact that we already have the support of the most powerful country in the world in pursuit of that independence is a very encouraging thing.
00:15:08.860So you want to talk about treasonous, swearing allegiance to communist China in Beijing while invoking the new world order and then coming back to Canada, threatening war with the United States of America under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, certainly smacks as being a lot more treasonous than anything that we're doing.
00:15:24.900And I have to say, I have interviewed at least five ministers from the government in the last two weeks since that China trip and press them very hard on exactly what you're laying out.
00:15:32.360Is this really the kind of partnership that we want to align ourselves with?
00:15:36.960My point is you have convinced people and lots of them who have stopped me here that, you know, what is what awaits a separate and free and independent Alberta is true independence.
00:15:46.200No, there's no such thing as true independence.
00:15:48.540Do you think your supporters understand that?
00:17:29.180So the argument Jeff is making here, there's no country that is 100% independent from other countries.
00:17:35.740All countries, even the most independent ones, take Switzerland, need other countries to trade with, need other countries to deal with, need other countries to have diplomatic relationships with.
00:17:57.540He doesn't mean an impossibility of not having relations with other countries.
00:18:02.280You don't, so you basically don't envision, for example, ever being like truly free of the United States, even if the administration switches.
00:18:11.340I mean, a Democrat could be elected after President Trump.
00:18:13.160The premise of your question is completely silly.
00:18:15.280Nobody ever envisions a day where the Alberta economy is completely decoupled from the economy of the United States of America.
00:18:22.52090%, 9-0% of our trade is north and south.
00:18:25.960So that's not going to change if a Democrat gets elected.
00:18:28.580All of our relationships, business relationships, familial relationships, et cetera, will remain.
00:18:34.460That doesn't make us less independent.
00:18:36.400I mean, the premise of your question, again, with respect, is quite silly.
00:18:39.160And the perfect example is the fact that Biden governed for four years and the relationship between Alberta and the United States continued to be the same.
00:18:47.360The exact same thing happened during the Obama years.
00:19:28.260The leadership of the Alberta independence movement is full of hard workers, people who know what they're talking about, people who have real confidence and real belief in the future of an independent Alberta.
00:19:41.640If you want to continue to get updates on this story and not media spin, make sure to hit subscribe and hit the like button because this story is moving fast and we're going to keep you informed all the way.