Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta secession is no longer just a rural movement

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00:00:30.000 Tonight, a visit to the Western Standard offices in Calgary

00:00:45.820 to talk about Alberta independence. It's May 14th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:53.540 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:00.000 Well, we're very interested in Alberta. I was born and raised in Alberta, although,

00:01:09.360 you know, I've been in Toronto for more than a decade. I can no longer call myself an Alberta

00:01:13.200 in exile, although my heart feels pretty Albertan. But in Alberta, I think the carriers of the torch,

00:01:20.300 the keepers of the flame of what it means to be Albertan and what Albertaness is. If you're

00:01:26.440 Alberta-ish, I'm making up words, are our friends at Western Standard. And I have a little bit of

00:01:31.220 history with that name because 15, 20 years ago, there was the Western Standard print magazine.

00:01:36.200 Derek Fildebrandt and his team have revived that old name and have built something big.

00:01:40.960 I think most of our viewers know you, Derek, but give us one minute on the Western Standard

00:01:46.280 new media corporation. Just give us a lay of the land.

00:01:49.000 Well, the remnants of Western Standard old media corporation are actually hanging on the wall.

00:01:53.540 We've got the magazine covers right behind us down the hall there. But in 2019, we brought the

00:01:58.800 Western Standard back as an online publication, really to fill the vacuum in independent media

00:02:06.320 in the West, particularly Alberta and Saskatchewan. But we've branched out in large measure of BC now.

00:02:12.720 And we, you know, we've got our headquarters here in downtown Calgary with full-time offices in

00:02:18.040 Edmonton, Regina, Vancouver, and we've got dozens of freelancers hither and yon between Victoria and

00:02:25.040 Ottawa.

00:02:26.000 Oh, all the way out in Ottawa. 1.00

00:02:27.260 And we've got a few Eastern bastards on the payroll. 1.00

00:02:29.880 Well, you got to keep an eye on Ottawa because that's where, unfortunately, a lot of the decisions 0.99

00:02:33.000 in Canada are made. Even though our constitution would grant a lot of powers to the provinces

00:02:37.680 through the power of the purse, as in just buying their way in or bullying their way in,

00:02:42.140 Ottawa runs a lot of things that the framers of our constitution never intended.

00:02:46.740 Well, you know, that's one reason we're going to get a reporter back on Parliament Hill,

00:02:50.040 I think, in fairly short order. But, you know, today's Western Standard, the Western Standard

00:02:55.780 that you ran in your day, and the Alberta report that predated that, really had the mission

00:03:01.100 of carrying the torch of the Western cause. Our style guide has West capitalized for good

00:03:09.240 reason, because we see it as a very clear political and social and economic identity.

00:03:15.900 And it's, you know, it's taken many forms over the years. And it's evolved, you've been

00:03:21.040 able to see it evolve through the pages of the Alberta report, the old Western Standard

00:03:24.440 and the new Western Standard. And I think where we're coming to today is the culmination

00:03:29.000 of all of that.

00:03:29.940 You know, I engaged in some self-harm on the way over, I read a column in the Globe and

00:03:34.680 Mail by Andrew Coyne, basically saying, basically saying, hey, Albertans, you have no right to

00:03:40.320 complain, we shouldn't indulge you. You know, I could sum it up with, shut up, comma, he explained. 0.97

00:03:47.560 And I knew this would happen when Quebec says, we're hard done by our rights aren't being

00:03:53.020 respected, we're not the masters of our own house. The rest of the country, or at least

00:03:57.760 as represented in Ottawa, bends over backwards. Hey, you want three seats out of nine on the

00:04:02.860 Supreme Court, even though that's disproportionate? You got it. You want bilingualism across the

00:04:08.060 whole country? You got it.

00:04:09.340 Even though they don't have it at home?

00:04:10.560 Yeah. And, I mean, forget about it, talking about just plain old cash. I think we're about

00:04:20.800 to see the most astonishing demonization of Alberta ever, of any province ever. And I even

00:04:28.300 saw with Mark Carney in one of his campaign stops, he sort of ridiculed Danielle, Danielle Smith,

00:04:34.020 the premier, in a way he would never do with any other premier of any stripe. I think there's a,

00:04:40.020 there's a casual, easy default, hate the West. It's, it's the dog you can kick. It's, 1.00

00:04:46.860 it's the group you can mock in Canada and not worry about it. I feel like a storm is coming.

00:04:52.900 Yeah. I mean, going to the, uh, globe column you're talking about from coin, uh, it's East planning,

00:04:58.280 you know, it's, they're explaining to the West how the West should feel. Um, although the main

00:05:05.880 audience is actually in the East, you know, the, you know, most globe readers are going to be in the

00:05:09.480 East, uh, explaining, uh, it's meant to be telling the West how it is, but it's really meant to be

00:05:15.620 consumed by Easterners and it's, uh, it's obviously patronizing. Um, uh, you know, uh, what was 0.99

00:05:25.260 astonishing to me, uh, there was also saying first, you have no, uh, really big, maybe you've got some

00:05:31.100 little gripes and, you know, we could talk about that. Uh, you know, I'm sure one election could fix

00:05:34.820 it all. And, uh, but more astonishing was you don't actually have a right to leave. Uh, in fact,

00:05:41.560 why does anyone have a right to break up a country to which I thought, well, you know, people in

00:05:45.860 Yugoslavia, the Soviet union, the British empire, the Ottoman empire, the Habsburg empire, um, might

00:05:51.380 beg to differ. Uh, I mean, we have, uh, a pretty universally recognized, at least on paper, right, uh, in the

00:06:00.020 world to self-determination of a geographically concentrated people. Um, that's how we get, uh, nation

00:06:07.020 states out of the old empires and things like that. Um, and many Albertans, uh, are, uh, now want

00:06:16.260 to exercise that right. Just as I do believe Quebecers have that right. I guess the question

00:06:21.640 is, and maybe fairly in both cases is, is this a negotiating tactic or is this for real? And many

00:06:27.940 in Quebec genuinely are on the independent side. Others use that as so-called profitable.

00:06:34.560 Like a good cop, bad cop. Yeah. Yeah. Use it as leverage. Um, some in Alberta want to use it as

00:06:40.140 leverage. I think that's a failing strategy. If we're going to do, if we're going to play the

00:06:44.120 independence game, we play it to win because we want to be an independent country.

00:06:48.260 You know, uh, to separate sounds like something would move, like you would sort of cut out a chunk

00:06:56.160 of geography and move it. Everything would remain the same. The buildings, the roads, the people,

00:07:01.000 it would just be the final deciders on certain constitutional matters. Instead of living in

00:07:07.320 Ottawa and coming from Quebec and Ontario, they would live in Alberta. I mean, um, all matters 0.55

00:07:13.660 of provincial jurisdiction would remain within Alberta, of course. And what else is there? There's,

00:07:18.120 there's foreign affairs, there's coins and stamps and passports. And like the, the change on the

00:07:24.160 ground, you would wake up the next morning in Alberta, it would still look the same.

00:07:27.780 Um, the, the courts would be there. Maybe, maybe the laws would be slightly amended. They would

00:07:32.680 only take Ontario rulings as, um, persuasive, not binding, let's say. Like I, like I just think

00:07:39.180 everyone would get up the next day if there was a separate, and other than the apoplexy in the media

00:07:44.340 political class, actually not a ton would change in an everyday way. Other than suddenly the province

00:07:51.160 would find itself a lot richer and perhaps in control of certain out of control policies. I don't

00:07:56.220 think it would be as terrifying as the boogeyman scare tactics suggest.

00:08:01.120 Yeah. I think, you know, trying to find, there's no exact apples to apples comparison, but, uh,

00:08:07.220 it would be perhaps similar to the partition of Czechoslovakia and to Cheshia and Slovakia,

00:08:12.940 uh, which was actually fairly amicable.

00:08:15.120 Oh yes. And, and they're still where they were, you know, they can still go back and forth.

00:08:18.780 Yeah. Yeah. Actually, uh, it, it, but the EU actually, perhaps there's even less border

00:08:23.680 than there was. Um, perhaps it's semi analogous without, uh, red coats and blue coats firing

00:08:30.480 at each other to the, you know, what happened with the American revolution where it was an

00:08:35.300 inherently conservative revolution in the sense that, you know, they weren't trying to

00:08:39.260 build some brave new utopia. They were trying to reassert ancient rights that they had seen

00:08:43.600 as taken away from them. So when the Americans achieved independence from the British crown,

00:08:47.580 uh, they largely, you know, they designed a new form of government, but largely kept most

00:08:54.300 of their social and legal institutions intact because it was inherently conservative revolution.

00:08:59.880 It wasn't, uh, you know, a liberal revolution like 1848. It wasn't a socialist revolution like,

00:09:05.280 you know, 1917. Uh, it was about trying to reassert something that they believed they had always

00:09:10.460 had. And I think that's, uh, you know, I, I think that's at the heart of, of the independence

00:09:17.000 movement in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I have started to wrestle with the question of, are

00:09:21.140 we in a technically revolutionary period? Um, I mean, the term revolution is, uh, hard

00:09:30.440 to pin down. Uh, have you ever listened to the revolutions podcast? No. It's a really good

00:09:34.740 one. Yeah. Uh, it's a very good one. And you know, what we consider to be a revolution

00:09:38.100 is, uh, it's difficult to pin down. Um, I think if we do achieve independence, then retroactively

00:09:47.820 we get to call this a revolutionary period. Uh, if we don't, then perhaps not. But, uh,

00:09:53.020 in Alberta and Saskatchewan, uh, there, there is something very different happening right

00:09:57.360 now. Um, and, and it's, you know, no, no one's talking about a radically new form of government.

00:10:03.840 It's just, uh, largely in large measure, keeping our form of government, keeping most of our

00:10:09.620 institutions, uh, but decentralizing them from a distant imperial government in Ottawa and,

00:10:15.520 and repatriating them if, uh, to borrow a term from the first Trudeau, repatriating, uh, the

00:10:21.560 constitution to a local level. Yeah. You know, I, I'm not as familiar with American constitutional

00:10:26.620 texts as I am with our own, but in the Declaration of Independence, I think that they talk about a

00:10:30.940 distant and partisan king or something, someone far away across the ocean, ruling things in the

00:10:35.920 colonies. And that in itself was a quarrel. I mean, well, Ottawa is not much further from Calgary

00:10:41.120 than, uh, Boston was from London. So let's, we should, we should keep that in mind. Hey,

00:10:46.740 I want to talk to you about something that I'm still like a lot of Canadians, I think,

00:10:50.160 turning it over in my mind. Six months ago, I thought we were going to have a majority government

00:10:54.140 with Pierre Polyev and some of the things he, he proposed, I think would have lowered the temperature

00:10:59.940 in Alberta, the same way Stephen Harper's victory did, uh, over a decade ago. Um, that didn't happen.

00:11:06.100 And I think it's, it's pretty universally acknowledged. It didn't happen because of

00:11:10.300 the United States and in particular, Donald Trump, you could say it was over the tariffs or the 51st state

00:11:15.960 narrative, but I really think that he caused a shift that, that led to Mark Carney being prime

00:11:24.520 minister. And I don't understand why he did that. I don't even know if he understands why I don't know

00:11:29.240 if he even meant to do it. He seems to be taking credit for it. Here's my point. Um, if there's an

00:11:37.620 independence referendum next year, I think there will be, I think Donald Trump could kill it in a word 0.89

00:11:43.720 if he said, Oh good, we're going to devour you. Cause I think Albertans, um, would want to be the masters

00:11:50.140 of their own house to borrow the Quebec language. Sovereignty association might be an outcome to borrow

00:11:55.460 another Quebec term. But I think in a, in, with the flick of his tail, mighty President Trump, the same way

00:12:02.040 he effectively chose our prime minister could, I think, sink the independence movement. I don't think he could

00:12:08.380 make it because if he endorsed it, people would oppose it. If he, like I, I, almost anything he

00:12:15.500 does, I think could sink it. Am I too worried about that? Yes and no. Um, yeah, you know, I mean,

00:12:21.780 he's tried to take credit for putting Carney in after I, I, I get the impression that's more, uh,

00:12:26.940 ex post facto where, where he's just, that happened. And it's Trump smack talking as Trump does.

00:12:33.900 Um, I mean, look, if, if Trump said, uh, yeah, we want Alberta as our 51st state, I think that would,

00:12:41.400 uh, harm the cause of, uh, any constitutional change, uh, significantly. Uh, independence always

00:12:48.700 pulls significantly higher than joining the United States. Um, but there are other options that could

00:12:54.980 be realistically considered. One is, um, you know, economic union, um, you know, and, and kind of

00:13:02.900 incentives that might come with that. Uh, you know, if, if Trump, uh, you know, I'll, I don't

00:13:09.200 think Albertans want to be a part of the United States at this time. It's just not a mainstream

00:13:13.580 opinion. And much as the legacy media and Eastern media claim this is a fringe movement, uh, it's

00:13:20.080 the lowest in polls at 33%. Some polls have it in the low forties. Uh, that's significantly higher

00:13:26.120 than the NDP and liberals get in Alberta combined. So, you know, if that's a fringe movement, then

00:13:29.760 the being a leftist is a fringe movement in Alberta. Uh, I, it's a large minority movement

00:13:34.940 that I think has the potential to win. Not, uh, it's not standing to win yet, but, you know,

00:13:40.460 if Trump were to say, well, you know, if Albertans decide they want to be their own country, I'm

00:13:47.500 willing to offer economic union with current, if you want, if you wanted to kind of maybe make

00:13:53.340 that happen, offer currency exchange, you know, um, you know, when West Germany absorbed East

00:13:59.360 Germany, they did a one for one Deutschmark to whatever East German commie mark was called.

00:14:03.380 And, and that was very expensive because they were absorbing a much larger entity relative

00:14:07.040 themselves. And it was like, uh, you know, one to four in currency, uh, Canadian dollar

00:14:11.180 as bad as it is. It isn't as bad, you know, you'd have a lot of Torontonians sneaking in

00:14:16.180 and saying, I'm an Albertan. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so I think, you know, if he was being subtle

00:14:21.600 and, and I, one thing Trump is not known for is being subtle. Uh, but if, you know, if he wanted

00:14:27.220 to see something like this, he would put some reasonable measures towards economic union,

00:14:35.120 uh, not political union, but economic union in the window. Uh, I mean, our, our main commodity oil

00:14:40.820 and gas are already sold in American dollars. Our, our, our economy runs North, South, not East, West.

00:14:46.800 So, so that kind of thing could make sense. If Trump wanted to hasten something like that,

00:14:51.600 he could make some moderate measures like that, uh, that, that, that could incentivize it. If he

00:14:57.420 wants to kill it, uh, he could either say he's against it or he could say he's for it. But both 0.96

00:15:03.100 of those, any intervention from him, uh, that is that plain, which tends to be his style, I think

00:15:08.520 would hurt him. Yeah. I think you're right. Huh. You know, um, well, I would say just in terms of,

00:15:14.220 uh, Trump involvement, uh, he does present a unique opportunity, uh, for this to succeed

00:15:22.500 after the fact. Um, you know, I, I, I think ideally this goes through a clarity act process

00:15:29.700 that is legal, constitutional. Um, the first two parts of the clarity act are that it has to be a

00:15:35.320 clear question and a clear majority. And I'm in agreement on that. Uh, after that, it gets murkier.

00:15:40.860 Uh, you have a conflict between clarity act and then the universal right to self-determination

00:15:47.980 of a geographically concentrated people. And, you know, so we would need to negotiate with

00:15:53.680 Ottawa and the other nine provinces and have a virtual unanimity of them. And in the meantime,

00:15:59.060 they can put a hundred poison pills in it, making it impossible to leave. Uh, as Cohen was saying in

00:16:03.800 his globe column just this morning, uh, meaning Alberta will never get to leave because no one

00:16:07.820 will ever agree to let them go. What matters then is not, uh, you know, some Kumbaya agreement

00:16:14.600 that we'll never get with Ottawa and the other provinces. What matters is international recognition.

00:16:19.280 And if we obtain recognition from the United States, well, that is independence on that day.

00:16:24.600 Yeah. You know, there's about 30 odd, I forget the exact number of, uh, conservative MPs from Alberta

00:16:30.200 every time. And Saskatchewan goes largely conservative too. Um, if Alberta were to leave to become

00:16:39.040 independent or some other arrangement, it's, it's quite sure that the conservative party of Canada

00:16:44.260 would never win again in terms of like, if you took away 30 seats from them and if Saskatchewan left

00:16:49.920 too, the conservative party of Canada is expressly a federalist party. So I think it's going to be very

00:16:58.460 interesting in the next 18 months to see what the federal conservatives, including the Alberta

00:17:03.840 members of the federal conservatives say about all this, because some of them will be sympathetic in

00:17:08.260 their hearts. But, uh, if the, if the federal party gets tagged as being separatist or separatist

00:17:16.060 friendly, that could harm the federal conservatives in the, in Eastern, Central, Atlanta, Canada.

00:17:22.520 Well, first, I, I actually don't think it would mean that, uh, you know, the conservatives never win a,

00:17:28.460 you know, post Alberta or post Alberta, Saskatchewan independence federal election

00:17:33.840 again. Uh, the political landscape simply reorients itself. It'll orient, uh, to be like the old

00:17:41.220 progressive conservative party, pre-reformed party, uh, that is more Eastern based. It would be

00:17:45.860 further left. Doug Ford. I was just going to say, I mean, you could, you, it would be just more of a

00:17:50.260 Doug Ford style federal conservative party, uh, that I, you know, it, like look at an Eastern 1.00

00:17:56.320 Canada, the, uh, Atlantic Canada, the, uh, you know, there's so-called conservative parties that

00:18:01.880 went out there. They're scarcely conservative in most cases, a few exceptions. Uh, so I, I, I do

00:18:07.720 think the landscape just, uh, adopts and shifts itself. Um, uh, I mean, you know, if Quebec left,

00:18:15.000 that doesn't mean the liberals would never form government again. The liberals would just have

00:18:17.660 to adapt to it. Um, but you know, to your point about, uh, you know, the conservatives here,

00:18:22.340 um, yeah, a lot of them are going to be torn their careers. Tell them, shut up at least. 0.97

00:18:29.780 Yeah. Just, just avoid the topic because in a lot of their hearts, a lot, a lot of these guys are

00:18:35.280 Alberta patriots, uh, and Saskatchewan patriots. So it was like the trucker convoy in that it was

00:18:41.320 in their hearts, but the former leader, Aaron O'Toole said, you can't express that. You can't meet

00:18:45.580 with them. Remember? And, and the party was so adamant, they defenestrated O'Toole. It was quite

00:18:50.660 something. I, I think there's going to be some of that same tension here. You're going to have

00:18:54.600 some, especially on the rural side, there's going to be rural parts of Alberta where separatism is

00:18:59.160 60%. I, I, I, I think this is different. Um, that was differences of opinion on a policy and social

00:19:05.800 issue. Uh, this is a fundamentally constitutional national identity issue. The conservative party

00:19:12.940 of Canada, by definition, has to be a Canadian, pan-Canadian federalist party by definition. Um,

00:19:19.280 the Alberta UCP is different. It is a Alberta party. Smith is trying to walk a fine line,

00:19:25.260 allowing both it to be home for conservative federalists and the independence movement,

00:19:30.180 which is difficult. Federally, I don't see the same room. I think conservative MPs who

00:19:37.620 want to speak their mind, stay true to themselves on this, who, and many of them are genuine federalists.

00:19:43.940 It's not a problem for that, but, uh, the Alberta MPs federally, uh, they have to sit outside the

00:19:50.540 conservative party and, and, and that, that is unfortunate, but you can't leave, you can't form

00:19:56.140 a new country without forming new parties. Yeah. I think that there's going to be that stress within

00:20:01.740 the federal conservatives, but also like, I'm just looking out the window of your boardroom here,

00:20:08.200 and I see the towers of downtown Calgary. There are many corporations that are national in scope.

00:20:15.740 Uh, Calgary is a large interconnected city. It's connected with the world financially, et cetera.

00:20:21.460 And I think that there'll be similar pressure on the business community that anyone who has a

00:20:27.220 position of leadership will be told don't endorse such a radical extremist anti-Canadian movement.

00:20:34.580 And I think there's going to be some real pressure on people not to express their feelings,

00:20:40.000 their political views, or be canceled by, I mean, I understand in politics, ideas are what the party's

00:20:47.580 about. So they have to have, you know, these are the four corners of what we believe in. If you don't

00:20:51.480 believe them, you're in the wrong party. But what about leaders of national or international companies?

00:20:56.980 What about people who have a, like if there was a sports star from the Calgary Flames or the Edmonton

00:21:02.440 Oilers who, who came out for separatism, I think that the league would smash them. I think that anyone

00:21:07.660 who has a vulnerability to central Canadian group think narrative control would be smashed.

00:21:15.480 Um, well, there's going to be a lot of pressure for that, but I mean, the independence movement,

00:21:20.840 you know, it's like a wave coming into the beach and goes out, but it comes a little bit closer every

00:21:25.480 time. Others compare it more to a well flare, uh, whatever, whatever your metaphor, uh, this one is

00:21:31.600 different. This one is radically different than everyone before, uh, you know, without meaning to,

00:21:36.880 uh, you know, denigrate previous waves of it, of which I've been a part. So I'd have to denigrate

00:21:42.320 myself if that's the case. Uh, this is not just a couple of cranks on the prairies, uh, ranting about

00:21:50.220 the Eastern bastards. Um, you know, the one square kilometer around where we're sitting here in 1.00

00:21:56.080 downtown Calgary, you would not believe what the words I've heard come out of the mouths of senior

00:22:01.060 business leaders. This is not a, uh, crank on the ranch movement anymore. But they're saying that to

00:22:10.220 you privately. When I look around, I mean, there, there, there is some fear yet of speaking. I'll put

00:22:17.200 it this way. Some of them, uh, a lot of them are, are, are, are there now ready to vote yes in the

00:22:23.780 of the ballot box. Uh, many of them are now at the point where they will openly say, and it's not just

00:22:30.800 in private to me, they'll openly say where they are on, on independence, but they're not yet prepared

00:22:35.900 to go stand at a podium or write a column about it, uh, you know, in, on a public setting, but, uh,

00:22:42.280 they're there. And, and this is bringing credibility. Uh, I expect it'll probably be

00:22:47.520 bring, uh, funding the, the federalist side will be infinitely funded by, by governments and, and just.

00:22:53.300 And how do you stop that? I mean, you can have a law, you can have elections, Alberta, try and enforce

00:22:58.700 it, but try stopping the internet. I think you're going to have every political activist in Canada.

00:23:05.080 You're going to have international activists. You're going to have, um, anti-oil activists. You might have,

00:23:10.480 uh, foreign countries with some stake in it. I don't know. I mean, OPEC would probably want

00:23:16.620 Alberta to stay shackled within Canada. I don't know what China would say. I don't know what,

00:23:21.420 uh, I, I, and of course we don't know what America's deep state would say. They probably

00:23:25.660 wouldn't mind getting their hands on the oil. And maybe they think that independence is a

00:23:29.640 halfway step. I, I think it would be a free for all and, and everyone in the world would,

00:23:36.360 would pay their attention to it for a month.

00:23:38.120 Yeah. I, I, I'm concerned about foreign actors on both sides and by foreign actors, 1.00

00:23:43.000 I'm also including Ottawa. I'm including Ottawa as a foreign power in this, um, really anyone,

00:23:48.760 um, uh, you know, Pacific coast to Winnipeg or Flan Flan. It's a debate for everyone within there.

00:24:01.720 Right. Uh, if you're outside of that, you know, I, I, I, uh, uh, north, south, uh, sorry, no,

00:24:07.240 if you're south of it, uh, uh, west of that or east of that, I, I'd like it to stay out. I'm not

00:24:13.740 sure. I'm quite sure actually it's not possible to, to do that. Uh, there's going to be, there,

00:24:20.100 there are so many agendas involved on both sides.

00:24:22.680 And in the age of social media, how do you even know?

00:24:24.920 It's impossible to regulate. I mean, you, you can do your best to not make it so blatant. Uh,

00:24:30.880 but do we really think that the people's Republic of China doesn't have its ways or that the CIA

00:24:36.280 doesn't have its ways or CSIS? I mean, if you and I aren't on a list already, we're not doing

00:24:40.780 with something right. Well, listen, I've, I've really enjoyed this good chat and you've put

00:24:45.340 some things in my mind that I, that I'm going to think about some more. Um, I, let me throw you

00:24:51.320 one last question. It's about Brexit about a decade ago, the United Kingdom, they had a conservative

00:24:56.720 prime minister who said, all right, you separatists, I'm going to throw you a bone. Let's, let's give

00:25:02.800 you a chance, blow off some steam. We're going to have a referendum and I'll show you no one supports

00:25:07.860 you. Look at me. I'm so democratic. I'm going to, and what do you know? The people shocked

00:25:14.040 the establishment. Everyone was against Brexit, all the banks, all the media, all the political

00:25:18.640 parties, except for Nigel Farage's UKIP. And it happened. And I think there's a chance of

00:25:25.540 it happening here. What, and Danielle Smith is sort of in that interesting place where she's

00:25:30.560 going to host the referendum, if not necessarily champion the exit. What, what, what hasn't

00:25:38.400 happened yet that you think might happen? Will, will a leader emerge? Will, will, will something

00:25:43.880 happen preemptively? Will Mark Carney surprise us all and, and be more attentive to the West? I don't

00:25:49.000 think his cabinet suggested. Help me, help me see into the future a little bit, because I don't know

00:25:53.220 what to look for. Well, it's Brexit's not the only great example. We have one much closer to home,

00:25:57.600 the Charlottetown Accord. The Charlottetown Accord, just like Brexit, had unanimous support on one

00:26:03.200 side, and that was to ratify the constitutional changes of the Charlottetown Accord. The Conservatives

00:26:08.760 supported it. The Liberals supported it. The NDP supported it. Labor unions supported it. The banks,

00:26:13.280 industry, everybody. CEOs would take out ads. Everybody who was invited to a cocktail party

00:26:19.240 anywhere in this country supported it. The only opponents were the Bloc Québécois and the Parti

00:26:25.540 and the Reform Party, a complete opposite. And they opposed it for radically different reasons,

00:26:30.540 but they opposed it from different sides. And it was defeated nearly everywhere outside of Ontario.

00:26:35.840 Yeah. Of course, Ontario, Ontario loyal, she remains, will do what she's told. But, you know,

00:26:43.060 so like Brexit, it, you had all the institutions and civil society and business, all the different

00:26:49.780 parties lined up on one side. It's not necessarily going to work out, you know, that kind of Cinderella

00:26:56.760 story here. But I, today predicting, I think we have a one in three chance. And that's not bad. I mean,

00:27:05.440 it's better than the zero chance we've had for the last hundred odd years in Alberta.

00:27:09.300 Um, it, the movement's going to take new leadership to step up. Uh, people have been stepping up so far

00:27:18.320 and, uh, much of it's been positive. Um, but we're going to need, uh, our Nigel Farage. We're going to

00:27:26.560 need our Preston Manning, our George Washington, pick your historical figure. Uh, no, hopefully not a

00:27:32.720 George Washington because that means we're shooting. So, uh, hopefully we don't need Washington, but,

00:27:37.140 um, you know, uh, I, I'm, I'm pretty cautiously optimistic that because this is not purely just

00:27:46.460 the rural heartland of Alberta anymore, it's got people with some real financial and industrial

00:27:53.000 skin in the game who now want to see this happen. I, I, I'm cautiously optimistic. We're going to see,

00:27:59.800 uh, new leadership emerge, uh, to, to lead this in a way that is credible, that is not going to scare

00:28:06.340 people living in the, the two big cities of Alberta. Uh, and I, I don't discount Saskatchewan

00:28:13.460 being a part of this. Uh, uh, British Columbia, I want it to be a part of it, but I don't think

00:28:18.580 they're going to be the, they're not going to be the first man on the beach. They're coming in the

00:28:21.480 second wave. Uh, they, I don't think they're, I mean, the interior of BC is, is, is a different

00:28:25.980 creature from the lower mainland and the lower Island. Um, it could come someday, but they're not

00:28:30.600 going to be on the beach first. Uh, but I, I think our, our brothers in Saskatchewan, uh, feel what

00:28:37.760 we have. Uh, and, uh, who knows, maybe the leader, maybe the leader will be Alberta, one Saskatchewan.

00:28:46.480 Maybe there's someone who can lead both at the same time. Great to catch up with you.

00:28:50.240 Congratulations on the Western standard. Thank you very much. There he is, Derek.

00:28:53.200 Well, that's our show for today. I'll be back in Toronto tomorrow and I'll try not to East

00:28:59.600 explain things too much. I'll be a half of all of us at Rebel News, you at home. Good night

00:29:04.980 and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - May 14, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta secession is no longer just a rural movement

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