Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Derek Fildebrandt on Alberta politics： Dragons, mavericks and political rodeos

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today, a feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the CEO of Western

00:00:05.440 Standard. But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast by going to

00:00:10.240 rebelnewsplus.com. Clicking subscribe, it's eight bucks a month. You get the video version five

00:00:16.080 days a week of my show. Sheila does a show every week. And more than that, you get to support

00:00:22.120 Rebel News because we don't take a dime from Trudeau and it shows. All right, here's today's

00:00:27.960 podcast. Tonight, a feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the boss of the Western Standard.

00:00:50.080 It's May 20th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:53.380 You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:08.640 Well, I was just saying to our next guest that although I was born and raised in Alberta,

00:01:13.020 and I actually still have my Calgary phone number, even though I haven't lived there in many years,

00:01:17.800 after a certain point in time, you can no longer have a chuckle and say, well, I'm an Albertan in

00:01:22.280 exile in Toronto. I mean, I have been out here. And of course, I put roots down here. This is the

00:01:28.120 head office of Rebel News. We have offices around the country, including our chief reporter, Sheila

00:01:33.020 Gunn-Reed, is in northern Alberta. We have reporters in Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, too.

00:01:38.360 But I sort of miss Alberta, and I'm out of touch with it simply because I'm not there physically all

00:01:44.240 the time. I go back as often as I can. As you know, I've gone to Coots, or at least the Lethbridge

00:01:49.760 Courthouse, probably a dozen times over the last couple of years, because that was the closest place

00:01:55.600 to the Coots border crossing. And there's still echoes of the lockdown prosecutions there. But to

00:02:02.160 rely on me for the latest news in Alberta is probably not the best. Who lives and breathes Alberta and all

00:02:12.160 things Western 24-7? Who actually has the word Western in their name? Well, it's our friend Derek

00:02:21.840 Fildebrandt. He's the boss and founder of WesternStandard.news. And he joins us now via Skype.

00:02:29.840 Derek, thanks very much for joining us. I really do rely on you for the no BS take of what's going on

00:02:34.880 in Alberta, because I've been out here in Toronto for long enough that maybe I miss things from afar.

00:02:40.100 So it's great to have you on the show again. Well, thank you, guys. I always love being on the

00:02:44.180 show. And I should maybe correct you. I'm the re-founder of the Western Standard. You were the

00:02:49.800 first founder of the Western Standard. I mean, it was a completely new company started from scratch.

00:02:55.860 But I go with the term re-founder. Well, I appreciate your kindness in saying that. I mean,

00:03:02.280 you do keep that Western spirit. I remember when we had the print magazine Western Standard,

00:03:06.760 pro-Alberta, pro-Western, pro-beef was one of our missions. And I know you keep that alive.

00:03:13.460 I mean, look, from out here, Danielle Smith is regarded, you know, in those medieval maps,

00:03:19.180 they wouldn't know what was in a certain area. And they would write,

00:03:23.000 there be dragons, you know, when they didn't know, when the whole world hadn't yet been explored.

00:03:27.920 And I think in Toronto, when they look at Danielle Smith and Alberta, a lot of media said,

00:03:32.400 there be dragons. They don't quite understand it. They know it's dangerous and not like

00:03:36.960 Toronto or Ottawa. Danielle Smith has been premiered for a little while now. I think she's found her

00:03:42.900 sea legs. I think she's grown into the job. That's how it looks from out here. How does it look to you?

00:03:48.280 Well, I think the cartographers in Toronto are right when they say,

00:03:53.820 here be dragons in Alberta. We are fire breathing very often. It's an old,

00:03:59.980 it's a longstanding Alberta tradition that is probably stronger now than it possibly ever has

00:04:05.100 been. I mean, without getting too far into it, Danielle Smith had probably the most,

00:04:12.140 she had the quickest transference of power likely in Canadian history at any level of government. 0.56

00:04:21.860 Normally when someone wins the leadership of a party,

00:04:24.560 there's a transition period with the outgoing leader, or if they defeat another party in

00:04:31.000 election, you know, there's two or three weeks, sometimes four weeks transition between the

00:04:36.880 parties in power. That didn't happen in Alberta because the city premier, despite being in the

00:04:43.640 same party, was hostile to Smith.

00:04:45.980 So we're Jason Kenney, of course.

00:04:47.420 Yes. Like, he was making spending announcements literally the day of the leadership vote.

00:04:55.480 Totally unprecedented. And so she had herself sworn in. I think she was elected about Thursday or

00:05:01.400 Friday. She was sworn in on a Monday. So there was no transition, and therefore no premier's office

00:05:06.200 even to come into. And so it was a chaotic way to hit the ground running. But I think there were good

00:05:12.480 reasons for doing so. But you know, she's never been in government before, except for, I mean,

00:05:19.240 technically a backbencher in the PCs for a few months. But I wouldn't really count that as government

00:05:25.000 experience. You know, she's been in media, she's been in advocacy, she's been in opposition politics.

00:05:31.600 But I think she's come now to learn to govern and built a team around her that is a lot more solid 0.99

00:05:43.400 than it seemed to be when she took power.

00:05:46.320 You know, I'm thinking back, and I think that, you know, sometimes you see a resume, I'm sure you

00:05:52.040 get a lot of young people looking to work at Western Standard, and you like to see someone climbing a

00:05:57.780 ladder. But if someone changes jobs every six months, you say, well, what's that about? Is there

00:06:02.520 some issue there, some stick-to-itivity issue? Who knows? And I say that because if you look at the

00:06:09.000 position of premier of Alberta, so I'm not talking about the person now, I'm talking about the office.

00:06:16.000 Jason Kenney, the previous premier, didn't even serve out his full term. Rachel Notley, the previous

00:06:22.600 premier, one term only. If I'm not mistaken, it was Jim Prentice before her. Tell me if I'm getting

00:06:29.920 my memory correct. You have to go back quite far before you get...

00:06:34.780 You have to go to Ralph Klein.

00:06:36.240 Well, that's...

00:06:37.060 This is one of my favorite topics.

00:06:38.160 Decades, decades ago.

00:06:39.980 Go ahead.

00:06:40.680 Yeah. Well, this is one of my favorite topics. I think I know where you're going with this,

00:06:44.960 is the least stable political job in Canada is premier of Alberta. I was in high school the last

00:06:52.420 time an Alberta premier completed, I should say, an Alberta conservative premier completed a term

00:06:59.080 in office or was re-elected. 2004 was Ralph Klein's last election, and he was more or less

00:07:09.320 pushed out of the leadership after that. And you had Ed Stelmack. He won 2008, pushed out

00:07:14.140 of the party, gone. Alison Redford takes over, wins in 2012, pushed out of the party, gone.

00:07:21.020 Jim Prentice, Hancock in there for a couple of months, but Jim Prentice takes over, loses

00:07:26.900 the election to Notley, gone. So we have had only one term or less premiers since Ralph

00:07:35.640 Klein's retirement. And I mean, it's still early days, but I'm going to take a wild gamble

00:07:43.220 here and say that Danielle Smith will be at least the first conservative to make it to 0.99

00:07:49.020 a second election. Even if she loses that election, but if she makes it to that election, she will 0.97

00:07:55.200 have been the longest serving conservative premier in Alberta since Klein. And how that next election

00:08:03.140 goes, we can get into a bit. But Smith, in ways that Stelmack, Redford, and Kenny never had, seems to

00:08:13.760 have the party behind her, at least for the time being. But events have a way of getting in the way

00:08:19.100 of things. Yeah. Now, would you say that's a bug or a feature that Albertans are like, you know,

00:08:25.780 a rodeo bull that does not like to be ridden and does everything to buck a politician off? I mean,

00:08:32.540 you could look at it as a plus. On the other hand, you're running off in all directions. You're voting

00:08:38.500 for the socialists and you're voting for a conservative. Well, not that kind of conservative.

00:08:42.100 I mean, is it a plus or a minus that no one seems to be able to stay on that bucking bronco?

00:08:48.700 Well, it depends if you like the cowboy riding the bronco. I have not liked any of the premiers

00:08:55.780 really since Klein. And even Klein in his last years was passed his best before Dayton,

00:09:03.800 probably needed to be bucked. So, yeah, because I've generally not been a fan of

00:09:10.100 Alberta premiers for, I guess, since I was in high school before I was in Albertan,

00:09:15.620 I'd say it's a positive bug. If you happen to like the premier, it's negative. But I think it's

00:09:23.180 largely been a consequence of the conservative, for lack of a better term, and it's not a very

00:09:29.260 accurate term, but the conservative civil war, which, you know, broke out sort of between

00:09:35.320 some prominent conservatives in the succession of Klein. And the succession of Klein alienated

00:09:44.980 people on the right. That led to the breakaway of Wildrose coming back together with the United

00:09:49.460 Conservative Party. Then, you know, and Jason Kenney's very skillful bringing that together,

00:09:54.640 but then disastrous ability to keep it together. So conservatives in Alberta are,

00:10:00.320 you know, you know, you know, the bumper sticker, be ungovernable. Well, we live by it for better or

00:10:07.140 worse. We made a documentary by that name, ungovernable. I know what you mean. I remember

00:10:12.460 that. Well, let me ask you, one of the reasons why I think Toronto folks are nervous about Danielle

00:10:19.400 Smith is that she uses language that only Quebecers are allowed to use, talking about provincial

00:10:25.920 jurisdiction. And the federal government should butt out and saying no to Ottawa. And really, I mean,

00:10:33.440 listen, every provincial premier in their own time loves to fight against Ottawa, even Premier Fury of

00:10:40.560 Newfoundland. I mean, even, even frankly, some liberal premiers are poking at Trudeau because it

00:10:48.400 serves them. But no one's allowed to go full, you know, not nationalist, but provincialist like the

00:10:57.680 Quebecers are. Danielle Smith explicitly uses language like Quebec premiers does. And I think

00:11:04.980 that bugs fancy Toronto folks who they can tolerate it from Quebec, but they hate it from the Cowboys.

00:11:12.460 What do you think? Yeah, I think it goes back to the very old two nations, two founding nations theory of

00:11:19.320 Canada. You know, it's a very upper and lower Canadian view of what is Canada. You know, the prairie

00:11:30.660 province, the prairie provinces, Alberta Saskatchewan in particular, to a lesser extent Manitoba, we were the

00:11:36.420 only provinces not to have already been colonies and negotiate with the federal government and other

00:11:43.300 provinces to join Confederation. We are created by fiat. You know, we're getting too deep into the

00:11:50.400 weeds here. You know, Alberta Saskatchewan came out of the Northwest Territories. We weren't

00:11:55.340 entities before we wanted to come in together as Buffalo. And that was vetoed by Sir Wilfrid Laurier,

00:12:00.540 and otherwise generally pretty good prime minister, but certainly a Laurentian. His name is Laurier for

00:12:05.340 God's sake. And, you know, so Alberta and Saskatchewan and Quebec, I think, were the only provinces with

00:12:17.620 institutional problems with Canada itself. Most other provinces, their issues could be resolved with

00:12:25.360 elections. I don't think our issues can be resolved with elections. The ball can be moved a bit. I mean, things

00:12:31.660 were better for the West under Harper, but, you know, he was incapable of making constitutional

00:12:37.260 change. And our issues like Quebec are constitutional. And we both seek decentralization.

00:12:43.880 The problem is we seek very different kinds of decentralization. They seek decentralization of

00:12:48.800 social policy for things like culture, the ability to spend money, but they certainly don't want to

00:12:55.940 decentralize the collection of money in Canada, whereas that's our primary concern. So we have

00:13:03.320 constitutional issues. And Smith is much more radical on this than any premier, I think, in any of our

00:13:15.740 lifetimes. And I think the big word was sovereignty. And, you know, we use, a lot of Anglo-Canadians

00:13:24.400 don't understand the use of the word sovereignty in Quebec. There's independistes, people who believe

00:13:31.100 in independence. There's federalists. And then there's sovereigntists. And sovereigntists can

00:13:35.020 be federalists or independistes. It's a spectrum of things. And in Alberta, support for independence

00:13:43.920 goes up and down. It's currently a low ebb because we have, I think, a provincial government that

00:13:49.960 people feel is fighting for them within Confederation, and people have a large degree of faith that this

00:13:56.560 federal government will be gone. But we have a sovereigntist government here in Alberta for,

00:14:03.320 I believe, the first time ever outside of Quebec. Oh, no, early Confederation, I think it was

00:14:09.700 Nova Scotia had a full-on separatist legislature.

00:14:13.600 Hmm. Well, let me talk about, I want to get into some of the particular policies and issues in

00:14:20.640 Alberta right now. But before we do, I want to talk about what I think is the greatest threat to

00:14:26.540 Danielle Smith's re-election. Anytime Justin Trudeau wags his finger at her, or worse, Stephen

00:14:33.060 Gilbeau, she's got to be going up in the polls. So anytime the Globe and Mail criticizes her, that's

00:14:39.340 going to look great on her in Alberta. I mean, Stephen Gilbeau is just so detested everywhere,

00:14:46.220 but in Alberta, he's an object of ridicule and mockery, and well, for good reason. But I think

00:14:52.560 the threat to Danielle Smith being re-elected is the prospect of Naheed Nenshi, the former mayor of

00:15:00.240 Calgary, now running for the leadership of the NDP, media darling, of course. The NDP does well in

00:15:08.480 Edmonton regardless. Nenshi has huge name recognition in Calgary. He's got a team, he's got

00:15:16.360 some organizers, he's got some demographic constituents. If he becomes the leader of the

00:15:21.140 NDP, which he may well, do you think that that will give, do you think he's got a real chance

00:15:27.740 of winning for that party again in Alberta?

00:15:33.620 I think he's their best chance at government. I mean, it's too far out to say Alberta politics

00:15:42.260 is the most chaotic in Canada by far, and it has been largely since Ralph Klein's departure as

00:15:50.180 premier. But I mean, if you're playing the long game, I mean, it's Alberta. The safe bet is always

00:15:56.820 conservative. If the conservative is of a popular leader, they toss the leader. And as long as the

00:16:02.160 conservatives are united, they tend to win. But, you know, things have changed. There's been

00:16:07.380 new people coming to Alberta, some coming from the east, carry values closely aligned with Alberta.

00:16:15.480 Some people come here and they don't really understand what makes it special. People also

00:16:20.120 coming from other parts of the world, new Canadians on the whole tend to vote for leftist parties,

00:16:26.480 and then as they get to second and third generation, become more conservative. But the NDP has built

00:16:32.480 itself into a serious political contender here. Alberta is not the one party state that it was

00:16:38.680 growing up for me and growing up for you. He'd be their best bet. That being said, he

00:16:47.960 couldn't even lead his own council as mayor of Calgary, effectively. And leading a caucus is a different

00:16:59.320 thing. It's a team sport. He's not traditionally been a team player. That being said, people can learn,

00:17:04.740 people can evolve. And people around him seem to know that's his weakness. But I actually,

00:17:09.980 I think the greatest threat to Danielle Smith is pure polio. If pure polio wins, which it seems very

00:17:18.580 likely that he will at this point, she and the conservative movement in Alberta are going to lose

00:17:25.080 their avatar of evil, their foil. You know, Justin Trudeau is rightfully to blame for a lot of Alberta's

00:17:35.780 problems. But, you know, if anything goes wrong in Alberta, we can point to there. And with a

00:17:41.760 conservative government in Ottawa, the aggressiveness of the Alberta conservative government to fight

00:17:49.080 Ottawa is likely to be tampered somewhat. So I'd say pure polio is her biggest challenge.

00:17:57.460 Isn't that interesting? And I remember that's true. I mean, when Preston Manning came about,

00:18:02.880 he diverted a lot of the separatist anger. His motto was the West wants in. When Stephen Harper

00:18:09.060 became prime minister, he took a lot of the energy out of the Western rights movement. They said,

00:18:13.860 okay, Harper will do no harm, at least. And I think you're right, polio would be the same.

00:18:18.460 I wonder if there's any thinking on behalf of Danielle Smith's team to have a cause for an election 0.98

00:18:24.820 before the scheduled federal vote. I mean, as you know,

00:18:30.340 Justin Trudeau is going to raise the carbon tax next April. Every April Fool's Day, it goes up.

00:18:37.380 God forbid the government tries to bring in this insane plastics registry. 1.00

00:18:41.320 Who knows? There could be a reason, a legitimate reason that's built up into a cause,

00:18:47.920 like almost a referendum on a certain issue. I'm just brainstorming.

00:18:51.580 I would bet strongly against that for two reasons. One, only one government in Alberta has ever broken

00:18:59.820 its fixed election date law. And that was Jim Prentice's. And it ended in tears.

00:19:06.560 And, you know, Danielle Smith remembers that very chaotic era. And the second reason,

00:19:10.620 very tangible right now, is there's a bill before the legislature at this very moment

00:19:15.520 to move the fixed election date to the fall, I think in October or November. Yeah, in October.

00:19:23.160 I hate these October fixed election dates because they often fall on my birthday.

00:19:27.800 It's very inconvenient for me. So, and they're moving that fixed election date back six months

00:19:33.940 rather than four or six months. So, uh, it, it, it'd be quite something for them to set a new fixed

00:19:40.980 election date and then pull the trigger that early. I, I, I think they're, they're going to stick

00:19:46.180 with it for both. Well, you and I've been bantering about big issues, sort of macro issues, but what are

00:19:51.820 the day-to-day issues? One of the things I've been following is how Danielle Smith is sort of being the 1.00

00:19:57.380 grownup when you've got these crazy left-wing city councils. You'd think Calgary and Edmonton are

00:20:02.760 amongst the two most conservative cities in the country. I mean, Edmonton has a bit of a, more of

00:20:07.800 a blue collar flavor, but it's still a small government right-wing place, I think. But their

00:20:13.920 city councils are atrocious. The mayor of Edmonton is a former Trudeau cabinet minister. Calgary, you

00:20:19.660 have the most despised mayor in Calgary history, Jody Gondek. And one of the things I love to see

00:20:27.940 is Danielle Smith basically saying, you guys are not going to be able to do insane little projects.

00:20:35.240 Cities are a creature of the province under our constitution. Come back to normalcy or I'll

00:20:42.800 basically overturn your craziness. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that Danielle Smith has basically said 0.99

00:20:48.760 to the cities, we're going to stop the craziest of your ideas. Is that right?

00:20:53.100 Yeah, there's a bill before the legislature right now, I think Bill 20. It's controversial. It's got

00:21:01.440 some pretty broadly accepted points in it. Some other points are a bit more contentious.

00:21:09.140 Right now, the province, any province can overturn bylaws or decisions of any municipality because

00:21:15.260 municipalities do not exist constitutionally. They are corporations of the province. The province can

00:21:22.160 your Ontario viewers will know that in the 90s, one of the bad decisions of Mike Harris was the

00:21:31.000 forceful amalgamation of municipalities in Ontario. And they had no say in it. They were forcefully

00:21:37.900 amalgamated. And that's why I've got some family in the Ottawa Valley who are on farms and have nothing

00:21:45.140 to do with Ottawa. But they're part of the city of Ottawa. It's bizarre stuff. So the province, you know,

00:21:53.920 we generally want to support local autonomy. Decisions are best made as close as possible to the people.

00:22:01.180 But jurisdiction matters. And just as the federal government is constantly trying to reach into

00:22:06.720 provincial jurisdiction, municipalities, for one reason or another, are always trying to reach

00:22:12.600 into higher jurisdictions. Naid Menci, for example, was trying to reach into federal jurisdiction

00:22:16.620 pronouncing on international issues. You know, he felt the need to talk about geopolitical issues

00:22:22.660 as the mayor of Calgary, when my concern with my mayor of council is, do you plow the roads,

00:22:30.700 fix the potholes, and pick up the dog poop?

00:22:32.480 Yeah.

00:22:33.060 So, you know, we've got this. Thankfully, the Calgary City Council overturned it because it was

00:22:39.740 grossly unpopular. But we had this single use products ban. They tried it. They took Guilbeau and

00:22:47.520 they said, hold my beer. And nobody even knew about this. I went to McDonald's to get an egg McMuffin

00:22:53.740 one day. And they asked me, would you like a bag? And I was like, are you stupid or something? Like,

00:22:59.920 yeah, yeah, of course I want to beg. They're like, well, that'll be 15 cents.

00:23:04.780 That's nuts. And then they have to ask you, do you want a fork? Do you want napkins?

00:23:09.140 It was ridiculous.

00:23:10.100 You can tell that they'd never worked a day in their life in an actual business,

00:23:13.140 but they were so happy to impose these bizarre and stupid rules on, oh, that's just the worst.

00:23:19.900 You know, and one of the things I understand that Premier Smith is doing is she's bringing in

00:23:24.440 political parties at the municipal level. And I think that will solve a lot of this because people

00:23:29.320 know when they see the blue team federally or provincially, that means conservative. But if

00:23:35.880 you don't have parties in the municipal level, you don't know who to vote for. And I think simply

00:23:41.160 bringing in parties will wipe out a lot of the crazier aldermen who get elected. Is that correct

00:23:47.720 that she's bringing in that rule?

00:23:48.860 Yeah, mostly. Political parties will be established in Calgary and Edmonton. I don't believe they'll be

00:23:58.260 established anywhere else. Although I can't see why not. Why, you know, like Wheatland County shouldn't

00:24:04.880 be allowed to have like, you know, the Wheatland Wheatman or something, you know, whatever you want

00:24:11.320 to call your political parties.

00:24:12.460 Well, with a common platform, you know, it helps people. I mean, anything you can do to help people

00:24:17.680 understand, like it's shorthand. When you say conservative, it's shorthand for about five

00:24:22.720 things. You don't have that at a municipal level.

00:24:25.820 Well, look, I generally don't like political parties, but they're a necessary evil of politics.

00:24:32.000 And what's happened in Alberta and in many other provinces, I can't speak in detail about Ontario,

00:24:36.920 but certainly in the two big cities of Alberta, and to a lesser extent in the smaller cities,

00:24:42.460 is we have unofficial parties, but mostly on the left already. And so the way that works is

00:24:50.000 money on the left in municipal elections comes dominantly from unions. And there's a very small

00:24:55.260 number of big unions, and they control the purse strings. Those unions sit down. There's Calgary's

00:25:03.280 future. It's essentially a political act committee funded by the unions. And they can say, okay, in

00:25:07.600 this ward, or for the mayor's chair, this is the candidate who's got money, and these other

00:25:12.380 candidates don't. So there'll only be one financially viable candidate from the left on the ballot in

00:25:17.360 every ward, and then for mayor. On the conservative side, well, money comes dominantly from businesses,

00:25:24.920 big businesses, medium businesses, small businesses. And that's not centralized. There's thousands and

00:25:31.320 thousands of them. So last time you had two, or maybe one and a half viable conservative candidates

00:25:37.620 on the ballot in Calgary. And so the left effectively, the main, one of the main functions of political

00:25:43.620 parties is to sort the wheat from the chaff in the nomination process to make sure you've got a single

00:25:49.620 unified candidate. The left has that in the two big cities, and the right does not. So this is just

00:25:55.840 making official what we're already doing in many cases. And yeah, I think having political parties,

00:26:02.940 you know, candidates identified with parties is an easy shorthand for some people. Often, if I don't

00:26:09.800 know any good candidate for alderman or for a school board, I just look up who the unions have endorsed,

00:26:17.740 and then I vote for the next guy on the ballot. Well, that's probably more effort than a lot of people

00:26:21.180 do. And that's the thing. Having that shorthand would help people. And I'm grateful for your time.

00:26:26.680 It's great to catch up. And folks, just a reminder, we're talking with Derek Filder, who calls himself

00:26:31.200 the re-founder. He's the founder of westernstandard.news. And you've got to go to them if you

00:26:37.640 want to know what's really going on in the West. I'm proud of our rebel news reporters in the West,

00:26:41.240 of course, but Western Standard focuses on the West. Let me ask you this last question.

00:26:46.960 I always had a dream when I was growing up in Alberta that we would find allies. I tried to

00:26:53.500 look for commonality. Alberta had an entrepreneurial spirit. Well, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in

00:26:58.220 Ontario. Albertans felt left out from confederation. Well, Quebec says they feel that way, and Newfoundland

00:27:05.220 too. Looking around the country at different provincial premiers and the spirit in other places,

00:27:11.800 does Alberta have allies? I think it's got a really good ally in Saskatchewan, not just the

00:27:17.860 Premier Scott Moe, but the people. It really, as you said, Alberta and Saskatchewan used to be one

00:27:22.760 place called Buffalo, or at least it was supposed to be. Does Alberta have allies around the country,

00:27:28.640 or is it still the favorite whipping boy of the other provinces?

00:27:33.000 Well, I forget who coined the phrase, but it said, countries have no permanent allies,

00:27:44.840 just permanent interests. I forget who coined that, but I think our only truly natural ally in 2024 is

00:27:57.720 Saskatchewan. Demographically similar, even organized similarly. One big city in the north,

00:28:04.100 one big city in the south, and reliably conservative. But I feel at this point,

00:28:10.900 even the Saskatchewan NDP, if they were to somehow ever come to power,

00:28:15.680 I think they would understand the permanent interests of Saskatchewan to an extent, maybe not

00:28:21.000 as well as the Saskatchewan party or the Saskatchewan United party. But BC, we have a lot of commonality

00:28:29.980 with, but our commonality with BC, and to an even greater extent, Ontario is highly reliant on

00:28:39.040 what political party is in power at that time. They have less of a permanent interest in alliance

00:28:46.040 with Alberta. Doug Ford, I don't think is hostile to Alberta, but I don't think he's a particularly

00:28:55.640 natural ally of Alberta. He is happy to be the biggest beneficiary of a federal largesse. I mean,

00:29:02.620 the guy is a walking EV plant. And as I said with Quebec, there have been times historically where

00:29:10.740 Alberta's found common cause with Quebec against federal centralization. The issue generally is

00:29:16.820 that we seek different kinds of centralization. Where we do have common cause with Quebec is

00:29:24.980 generally in protecting existing provincial jurisdictions. So, and frankly, that'd be even

00:29:32.460 stronger if the PQ came back to power. But the CAQ, the PQ, they're both strong defenders of

00:29:38.900 provincial jurisdiction. So, outside of Saskatchewan, I'd say our allies for Alberta are

00:29:46.120 highly reliant on their partisan stripes at the time and how generous Ottawa's feeling at

00:29:55.040 our cost. I think you're probably right. Well, listen, great to spend some time with you. Good

00:30:00.080 luck out there with westernstandard.news and keep in touch. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ezra.

00:30:05.740 Right on. Our pleasure. That's Derek Fildebrandt, the boss of westernstandard.news. That's our show

00:30:11.280 for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:30:16.180 goodnight, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - May 20, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Derek Fildebrandt on Alberta politics： Dragons, mavericks and political rodeos

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