The Critical Compass Podcast - November 19, 2025


Alberta's Constitutional Path to Independence w⧸John Carpay of the JCCF

＂Canada Will Be a POLICE STATE By Christmas＂ - John Carpay on the Risks of Bill C-2, C-8, & C-9 ＂Freedom is Always One Generation Away From Dying Out＂ - John Carpay on Canada's Free Speech Crisis

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

151.97

Word count

447

Sentence count

20

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling in the case of Quebec s separation from Canada in 1998, and how that ruling applies to Alberta. We also discuss the possibility of Alberta seceding from Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 We hear often from people saying that Alberta cannot separate because they will not get enough
00:00:08.080 votes to change the constitution. Does this apply differently? How does that work?
00:00:15.880 Well, the Supreme Court of Canada released its reference re-Quebec secession in 1998. As you
00:00:22.040 mentioned, at that time, the Supreme Court justices were fully aware of the fact that
00:00:27.400 generally changing Canada's constitution requires the consent of the federal parliament and seven
00:00:35.340 provincial legislatures of seven provinces, which together represent more than 50% of Canada. So
00:00:42.220 that's our amending formula, seven provinces plus the federal government. And I believe it has to be
00:00:47.880 done within a time period of five years. And so if you wanted to remove section 33, the notwithstanding
00:00:55.700 clause from the charter, for example, that could be done. Majority vote of federal parliament and
00:01:02.300 majority votes in seven provincial legislatures. And you could say, okay, we're going to get rid
00:01:08.740 of the notwithstanding clause. That's the general approach. The Supreme Court of Canada was fully
00:01:13.300 aware of that when they issued their ruling in which they said a province, if the majority of the
00:01:19.700 people that vote in a referendum in a province vote to leave Canada, neither the federal government nor
00:01:27.900 the other nine provinces can force that province to stay. Now they did say that about Quebec, but
00:01:34.860 there's nothing, there's nothing in that ruling that does not apply to Alberta. So if there's a
00:01:41.440 referendum, it has to be a clear question. Like, do you want to leave Canada? Do you want Alberta to
00:01:47.100 cease to be a province of Canada and become an independent country? I mean, there's probably a
00:01:51.620 half dozen ways that are clear, okay? If it's a clear question and the majority of voters in a
00:01:57.820 referendum vote yes to leave, then the rest of Canada, primarily the federal government, but I'm
00:02:04.720 sure they would consult with the other nine premiers, the rest of Canada has to negotiate. And yeah, the
00:02:11.940 negotiations would be a lot of hard work, but you know, Slovakia separated from Czechoslovakia, and I'm
00:02:18.660 sure there's, you know, lots of hard work involved to negotiate all these various details. You know, the
00:02:25.320 Czechs probably had military bases in Slovakia, this and that, they had to negotiate that. You know, when
00:02:30.440 Norway separated from Sweden, they used to be one country together. There's just so many examples. So it is 0.92
00:02:38.420 definitely a lot of hard work, but where there's a will, there's a way. And the moment that more than
00:02:45.720 half of Alberta voters vote to leave, then those negotiations are going to get started. And
00:02:52.880 Alberta can become an independent country.