PJ The Belt - February 04, 2026


Alberta Patriots Just Scored a HUGE WIN Against Government Media

Topics
equalization payments and Alberta Separatism modern world independence
Mentioned
Jeff Erick David Eby Mark Carney Trump Scott Besson Danielle Smith Stephen Miller David Cameron Jeffrey Rott Tim Hodgson Maritimes Alberta Biden Roth
Canada Just LOST Alberta — Patriots DOUBLED DOWN!! Alberta Patriots Just Scored a MASSIVE Win in The Courts!!

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

199.38

Word count

3,965

Sentence count

258

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.760 Ladies 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.
00:00:11.400 Of course, Jeff is one of the leaders of the Alberta independence movement and the Alberta Prosperity Project.
00:00:17.320 And I heard about this interview while I was down in the good old USA for some work.
00:00:21.800 I listened to some parts of it, bits and pieces here and there on my Twitter account.
00:00:26.980 People kept saying that it's a classic beatdown.
00:00:30.960 You 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.
00:00:43.180 We're going to be watching and analyzing the entire thing and then I'll give my opinion as we go.
00:00:49.060 So sit down, buckle up and let's break this thing apart.
00:00:52.540 So this interview was aired on CTV, one of the two main mainstream media, government paid media organizations here in Canada.
00:01:00.640 Hi, Mr. Roth. It's great to meet you. I appreciate you making the time today.
00:01:03.080 Well, I really appreciate you having me on today. Thank you.
00:01:04.700 I 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.
00:01:11.700 And I wanted to actually just get you on the record.
00:01:13.960 Oh, sure. The Financial Times piece, I'll stay for the record. It was fake news.
00:01:17.480 I was very, I'm very careful with anybody to say that we haven't been offered any money by the United States.
00:01:22.320 We're not seeking money from the United States.
00:01:23.960 We'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.
00:01:38.540 So, you know, that FT article, you know, starts out covert meetings between U.S. officials and fringe separatists.
00:01:45.500 It was ridiculous. It was just a hit piece, you know, by the globalist media.
00:01:48.960 I'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.
00:01:55.060 I'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?
00:02:09.200 That'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.
00:02:27.020 Canada is already acting hostile and making it incredibly difficult for Albertans to seek their independence.
00:02:32.960 So what do you think is going to continue to happen once we vote to become independent from Canada?
00:02:37.100 They're probably going to continue to be difficult.
00:02:39.900 So 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.
00:02:47.840 What I had noticed when I read it was that I had read other reporting previously that you had made trips to the United States.
00:02:52.660 Well, there's no doubt we're making trips to the United States.
00:02:55.820 Can you just explain what you are doing?
00:02:56.140 We don't leave health press conferences to tell people that we're going to the United States.
00:03:00.000 It's not covert at all.
00:03:01.860 The Alberta Prosperity Project has been telling the media that they've been meeting with Trump officials for a long time.
00:03:08.520 These people are acting like they revealed some news or some dark information or something that was hidden.
00:03:15.540 This is all they've always said they've been very public about this.
00:03:19.660 We're exchanging information with senior officials in the U.S. State Department over the aspirations of Alberta for Albertans for independence
00:03:28.100 and talking to them about the types of things that would help Alberta move forward as a free and independent country.
00:03:34.340 And it's already paying dividends.
00:03:35.680 I 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
00:03:43.560 that aspirationally Alberta would love to have a pipeline through the U.S. Pacific Northwest to the West Coast
00:03:49.600 because 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 0.97
00:03:55.740 and all of the foolishness that comes out of his mouth.
00:03:57.720 And, of course, the reaction to that from David Eby when he saw that his power was being taken away 0.90
00:04:02.880 and that he was no longer going to have power to constrain oil and gas development in Alberta
00:04:10.000 on behalf of his communist masters in China, right, was to jump up and down and have a hysterical little hissy fit
00:04:16.100 and say that, you know, we're engaged in treason and that real Albertans don't support independence. 0.88
00:04:21.600 I mean, it was the most ridiculous display on behalf of a premier that I've ever seen. 0.93
00:04:25.400 He should be embarrassed, really. 0.97
00:04:26.600 I mean, Jeffrey Rott just went off on David Eby, man, and it's deserved.
00:04:31.140 I mean, you have this guy saying, no, Alberta's not going to get a pipeline to the coast.
00:04:35.080 This is our coast.
00:04:36.680 Alberta doesn't get to get their dirty oil to our West Coast. 1.00
00:04:40.560 We're definitely open to taking Alberta money.
00:04:43.400 Doesn't matter where it comes from.
00:04:44.800 We'll take their money, but we won't build a pipeline.
00:04:47.300 So now you have Scott Besant, U.S. Treasury Secretary, saying, yeah, we support Albertans
00:04:52.640 in their pursuit of sovereignty and independence.
00:04:55.340 And we should build a pipeline to the West Coast of the United States if they won't let them build it in Canada. 0.89
00:05:01.820 So already these meetings of Alberta patriots with Trump officials are paying dividends, which is what Jeff is referring to here.
00:05:07.880 We take David Eby out of the equation for a second.
00:05:10.100 Can 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?
00:05:33.880 I 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.
00:05:41.720 It's absolutely, you know, from our perspective, we're just conducting due diligence on behalf of our fellow Albertans.
00:05:46.440 We're serious professionals.
00:05:47.740 I mean, I'm, you know, I've argued cases at the Supreme Court of Canada, for goodness sake.
00:05:50.960 I 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.
00:06:03.060 If 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.
00:06:17.940 If 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.
00:06:27.500 Do 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?
00:06:35.560 Of course not, because they want us to be held hostage.
00:06:37.720 So, 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.
00:06:49.980 I 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.
00:06:56.280 I know that's upsetting to people.
00:06:57.280 I love how he framed it the way it needs to be framed.
00:07:00.360 You see all these people that are arguing online? 0.90
00:07:03.520 Albertans are traitors. 0.96
00:07:05.120 They're never going to separate. 1.00
00:07:06.860 They should just leave already, but they're never going to separate.
00:07:09.860 Contradictory, emotional, attacking.
00:07:12.540 They don't have an argument.
00:07:14.120 It's not up to you.
00:07:15.340 For one, you don't get a vote.
00:07:16.920 This is up to Albertans.
00:07:18.160 For two, they're worried.
00:07:19.680 That's what's happening here.
00:07:20.740 They'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.
00:07:32.580 We've been paying the bills for the Maritimes and Quebec, billions of dollars every year in equalization payments.
00:07:39.740 And in the event of Alberta separating from Canada, guess who's going to be stuck with that bill?
00:07:44.940 Ontario.
00:07:45.340 Do you believe that the motivations of the people you're meeting with or in the Trump administration are altruistic?
00:07:51.520 Like, do you think they want what's good for you and people who support your cause?
00:07:54.580 Or do you think that they're trying to leverage this to get the upper hand against the country of Canada as a whole?
00:07:59.260 I've studied foreign policy at the university level.
00:08:02.080 I have an honors degree in political science and I have an honors degree in law from the London School of Economics.
00:08:06.520 Don't you think that communist Ottawa is leveraging communist China against Alberta?
00:08:11.360 I mean, come on.
00:08:12.180 I mean, you know, we live in the world of realpolitik.
00:08:14.820 But you don't mind being a pawn in that fight?
00:08:16.580 We're not a pawn.
00:08:17.320 I mean, we're talking to them about our aspirations and we have our goals and objectives.
00:08:21.180 So, you know, we're not a pawn.
00:08:22.500 We'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.
00:08:30.420 You 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. 0.91
00:08:39.240 You know, as far as I'm concerned.
00:08:40.340 When you mentioned that you've met with people in the State Department, you feel as though that message has been conveyed to Scott.
00:08:45.100 That's why he made the comments he did.
00:08:46.900 How high up are the meetings that you're taking?
00:08:49.180 Are there names, for example, of people that you're meeting with that we would recognize offhand?
00:08:54.020 I'm not sure about that, probably.
00:08:55.740 I mean, we're meeting at a very high level.
00:08:57.220 People in our meetings are going, you know, directly.
00:08:58.840 Stephen Miller?
00:08:59.440 I'm not going to say.
00:09:00.400 I mean, we're not.
00:09:01.180 Well, we're not because we're not.
00:09:03.320 We 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.
00:09:08.240 So why not?
00:09:09.000 May I ask?
00:09:09.400 Because it's an agreement.
00:09:10.800 So that's all.
00:09:11.720 But again, like, would it be reasonable to question the motivations of making that agreement?
00:09:16.220 Well, that's probably why we're not talking about it.
00:09:17.940 We don't want them being bothered by people from the press in Canada asking them silly questions.
00:09:22.980 Canadians still don't know the 13 sittings, 13 sitting members of parliament who met with China and colluded with China.
00:09:30.820 Why?
00:09:31.400 Because they're not going to tell.
00:09:32.920 They're not.
00:09:33.660 These 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.
00:09:48.020 It's not abnormal for diplomatic meetings to sometimes be kept secret.
00:09:53.380 The details of said meeting to sometimes be kept secret.
00:09:57.060 Who was there?
00:09:57.900 Who was not?
00:09:58.860 They don't want to be wasting their time answering questions from the press, right?
00:10:02.280 And we're fine with that.
00:10:03.440 We don't care.
00:10:04.000 I 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. 0.92
00:10:18.480 May 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?
00:10:27.220 No.
00:10:27.780 Well, I mean, I haven't.
00:10:29.100 I'm not sure about David Cameron.
00:10:31.620 He's not really part of our movement and part of what we're doing.
00:10:33.920 He's the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta.
00:10:36.200 He claims to have been to Mar-a-Lago and, you know, whatever.
00:10:39.760 You know, we don't need to meet with President Trump.
00:10:41.640 We're really technicians when it comes right down to it, right?
00:10:43.940 At 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?
00:10:54.360 And 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.
00:11:06.480 There'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.
00:11:14.340 This 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.
00:11:22.560 We'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.
00:11:35.760 You 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.
00:11:44.880 They support us. Not only do we have access to funds through credit, but we also have diplomatic support, international recognition.
00:11:54.120 And that's what makes the federal government in Canada very worried about this.
00:11:58.300 And you're going to see more and more mainstream media coverage of this story because it's getting real.
00:12:03.280 It's like I told you guys multiple times, it's going to get a lot more attention, local, national and international.
00:12:09.740 People are already paying a lot more attention than they were just three months ago.
00:12:14.200 On 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,
00:12:23.180 that you would then lean on credit or whatever it ends up being from the United States?
00:12:27.360 It's like to the people who support your movement. Are you not kind of moving from one master to another?
00:12:31.780 The entire world runs on credit. How much does Canada rely on the United States?
00:12:36.360 If Secretary of Treasury...
00:12:38.080 You're pitching independence.
00:12:38.940 So 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,
00:12:49.680 to 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.
00:12:56.940 So Canada is being supported by the United States.
00:12:59.420 So 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.
00:13:08.660 I 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. 0.92
00:13:14.760 And all countries run on credit. 0.95
00:13:17.820 Jeff hit the nail right on the head on that one.
00:13:20.520 All countries run on credit.
00:13:22.200 All countries run on debt.
00:13:23.500 So 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.
00:13:32.540 Well, let me respectfully, if you don't mind, challenge you and just ask.
00:13:34.920 Look at what happened based on the scenario you just have outlined because of our dependence on the United States.
00:13:40.640 Look at what they're able to exact right now.
00:13:42.560 What you are telling your supporters, with great respect, is that you will be independent.
00:13:47.140 You will be free of the depression.
00:13:49.180 Nobody's independent in the modern world.
00:13:51.140 But do you think that we would be running to communist China the way that Mark Carney is?
00:13:55.780 And I know that the left is already using that portion of the interview where he says that nobody's independent.
00:14:00.480 No country is independent in the modern world.
00:14:03.280 He's referring to, financially speaking, every country is interconnected financially.
00:14:09.800 Countries borrow money from each other.
00:14:11.940 Countries trade with each other.
00:14:13.980 That is what he's referring to.
00:14:15.700 There's no total independence.
00:14:17.420 No country can exist in a vacuum.
00:14:20.240 Even North Korea needs China and Russia to trade and to borrow money.
00:14:26.860 No country is 100% independent.
00:14:29.480 Even after Alberta votes yes on a referendum, it'll need trading partners.
00:14:33.580 And 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.
00:14:40.320 You will be independent.
00:14:41.740 You will be free of the depression.
00:14:43.960 Nobody's independent in the modern world.
00:14:46.300 But do you think that we would be running to communist China the way that Mark Carney is?
00:14:50.540 Mark Carney's making Canada dependent on communist China.
00:14:53.920 You know, and to quote a good friend of mine, David Redmond, who's one of the best, you know, North American defense analysts going.
00:15:00.520 You know, David Redmond stated clearly on a policy panel, you know, just two weeks ago, communist China is not a trading partner.
00:15:07.800 They are an enemy.
00:15:08.860 So 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.
00:15:24.900 And 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.
00:15:32.360 Is this really the kind of partnership that we want to align ourselves with?
00:15:35.400 I understand the point you're making.
00:15:36.960 My 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.
00:15:46.200 No, there's no such thing as true independence.
00:15:48.540 Do you think your supporters understand that?
00:15:50.080 Stop interrupting for a second.
00:15:51.560 90% of our trade is North and South with the United States of America.
00:15:55.100 So all of this phony, we hate the Americans, Canadians should be afraid of Americans. 0.89
00:15:59.260 Alberta must be completely independent from the United States of America.
00:16:02.680 We don't live in a vacuum. 0.94
00:16:03.920 So even the premise of your question, quite frankly, and with respect, is quite silly.
00:16:07.680 There is no country that is 100% independent.
00:16:11.240 Even North Korea needs China and Russia in order to trade for monetary policy, for defense agreements.
00:16:19.420 There isn't a single country that is 100% independent from other countries.
00:16:23.400 All countries need trading partners.
00:16:25.220 All countries need partners that help them with defense, monetary policy, etc.
00:16:29.260 It doesn't make countries any less independent when it comes to sovereignty, generally speaking.
00:16:34.780 A country can still be a nation, an independent nation, and depend on another country for trade.
00:16:41.060 Canada is the perfect example of that.
00:16:43.000 Canada already heavily depends on the United States.
00:16:46.760 But then they're arguing with Alberta patriots.
00:16:49.600 You guys are going to depend on the United States and they're going to absorb you. 0.96
00:16:53.360 Canada already heavily depends on the United States.
00:16:55.500 And the U.S. hasn't absorbed Canada because they don't want to.
00:16:59.200 Canada couldn't defend itself against the United States.
00:17:02.700 Canada couldn't defend itself against China.
00:17:05.020 Not effectively anyway.
00:17:06.760 Eventually, China would win. 0.78
00:17:08.480 They have a much larger army.
00:17:10.580 They have nuclear weapons.
00:17:11.920 They have a lot more equipment.
00:17:13.600 They have a lot more people.
00:17:15.060 Eventually, Canada would lose.
00:17:16.560 Let alone the largest, most powerful military just south of the border who know our infrastructure, who know what our weaknesses are.
00:17:24.020 Come on.
00:17:24.880 The only reason the United States hasn't taken over Canada is because they don't want to.
00:17:28.820 Okay.
00:17:29.180 So the argument Jeff is making here, there's no country that is 100% independent from other countries.
00:17:35.740 All 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.
00:17:47.680 That's just the way of the world.
00:17:49.540 And that's what he's referring to.
00:17:51.000 But I know that the leftists are going to take it and spin it and go like, oh, he doesn't mean independence.
00:17:56.380 He means independence.
00:17:57.540 He doesn't mean an impossibility of not having relations with other countries.
00:18:02.280 You don't, so you basically don't envision, for example, ever being like truly free of the United States, even if the administration switches.
00:18:10.680 The premise of your question.
00:18:11.340 I mean, a Democrat could be elected after President Trump. 0.99
00:18:13.160 The premise of your question is completely silly.
00:18:15.280 Nobody ever envisions a day where the Alberta economy is completely decoupled from the economy of the United States of America.
00:18:22.520 90%, 9-0% of our trade is north and south.
00:18:25.960 So that's not going to change if a Democrat gets elected.
00:18:28.580 All of our relationships, business relationships, familial relationships, et cetera, will remain.
00:18:34.460 That doesn't make us less independent. 0.78
00:18:36.400 I mean, the premise of your question, again, with respect, is quite silly.
00:18:39.160 And 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.
00:18:47.360 The exact same thing happened during the Obama years.
00:18:49.980 It was still 90% north-south.
00:18:52.480 Alberta trades a lot more with the United States than it trades with the rest of Canada.
00:18:57.520 Alberta is also a lot more similar to American states than it is to the rest of Canada.
00:19:02.860 And that doesn't change when there's a Democrat president.
00:19:05.740 How do I know?
00:19:06.340 Because it didn't change.
00:19:08.000 It has never changed, no matter who's in power in the United States.
00:19:11.600 This was a great interview.
00:19:13.020 Jeff definitely represented the Alberta independence movement well.
00:19:17.260 No nonsense.
00:19:18.400 He put the journalist in her place.
00:19:20.340 He let her know he's not going to be manipulated.
00:19:23.340 He's not going to be gaslit.
00:19:25.420 And, yeah, we're in good hands.
00:19:28.260 The 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.
00:19:39.980 Well, thank you for watching.
00:19:41.640 If 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.