The Critical Compass Podcast - May 09, 2026


Albertans Will Be Kicking Themselves for Not Separating Sooner ｜ Fergus Hodgson on Economic Boons


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

155.61

Word count

1,252

Sentence count

48

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I sit down with economist and author Alberto Bernardo to discuss the potential break-up of the United Kingdom and Canada. We talk about the economic and political impacts of a Canada without Alberta and the potential benefits to the Canadian economy.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 what will be the immediate effects financially that you you predict uh if alberta separates now
00:00:08.360 of course i know this is a process and it won't happen overnight but um what do you suspect will
00:00:13.160 be the greatest economic impacts and maybe the response of of an alberta-less canada well many
00:00:21.400 things my my personal sense is that once this is achieved the gains will be so enormous people
00:00:29.620 wonder why were we ever, why was this even a question to begin with, right? And the big
00:00:35.600 difference right now between even just being in the United States versus being in Canada is the
00:00:39.980 tax burden. So the most notable change will be a massive reduction in taxation, which is, I mean,
00:00:47.620 huge for many of us. I mean, it's a real weight off your back. So we typically have some relatively
00:00:53.080 fixed expenses, right? Our utilities, accommodation, basic foods, maybe some vocational training,
00:01:00.440 what have you, things we just have, we need to get by. And we also have our tax burden. And then
00:01:05.780 whatever's left after these things is more our discretionary income. And the big challenge is
00:01:10.700 that in Canada, much like back in New Zealand, there's just very little of that left. Canadians 0.99
00:01:15.500 have very little room to breathe. And one of the first chapters, I think it's the second chapter,
00:01:20.160 I'm not remember, I don't remember right now in the book is bankruptcies or insolvencies tell the
00:01:26.460 tale. This predates the COVID era. There's just a really unsavory or unhealthy trend in Canada
00:01:36.180 towards financial insolvency. So the biggest turnaround I would hope to see would be a
00:01:42.480 reversal of that, that people have some room to breathe, discretionary income to start rebuilding
00:01:48.240 their lives and they would have to go into debt or or declare bankruptcy so frequently
00:01:54.160 so yeah like the first thing would be a lower tax burden and then a higher level of discretionary
00:02:00.640 income leading to fewer bankruptcies and again i just i just think that once this happens it'll be
00:02:09.120 such a no-brainer that everyone just said well this is so much better you know we can see why
00:02:13.360 you you might have all seen this this post on x from an american economist about how
00:02:18.240 For every Canadian living in the United States, there's something like 59 of them for every one American living in Canada.
00:02:25.220 And even where I live in Fort Collins, I know a handful of Canadians just in my local running club.
00:02:29.980 One's from Medicine Hat.
00:02:31.660 And they're not necessarily ideological migrants.
00:02:35.340 They've just moved for better job prospects, a better quality of life.
00:02:38.520 And they don't think about it in terms of ideology.
00:02:40.880 They just think, where can I live better?
00:02:42.440 And it happens to be here in Colorado, which is not even a low-tax or low-cost state in the United States.
00:02:47.040 Years ago, Mark Mielke, who wrote the book Tax Me, I'm Canadian, he noted that even the high-tax states in the United States, like Massachusetts, are basically a breath of fresh air versus Atlanta, Canada, versus their peer provinces across the border.
00:03:03.200 So that's, to me, that's the big problem that the Canadian, for many reasons, Canada has
00:03:10.300 developed an enormous tax burden.
00:03:13.280 And it's not quite 10% more out of the GDP, but so let's say, I think in the US, it's
00:03:20.260 maybe 35, 36% of the economy is government spending, but in Canada, 44%.
00:03:24.580 So about 8% more.
00:03:27.040 And that's a huge portion of the economy that is just going to waste and bureaucracy, basically.
00:03:32.540 I think also there would be key changes.
00:03:37.480 So there would be a decline in inflation because right now, structurally, Canada is basically deliberately creating inflation with supply management.
00:03:45.340 If you can somehow break that, just these common necessities will be more affordable.
00:03:50.480 Also, you'll be able to have a more favorable trade agreement with the United States, which would just flush the or flood the country with more affordable products.
00:03:58.960 So, I mean, I'm trying to think.
00:04:01.340 the the challenge is like you say there is some uncertainty over the transition period but
00:04:05.980 i quieten that by by saying that both the united kingdom and new zealand do not have a written
00:04:12.540 constitution what makes them successful or what it what would mean what has given them success
00:04:19.420 has been their traditions and the people there the constituents and that is what will continue
00:04:23.980 with alberto whatever the words are on the constitution that the constituents there are
00:04:28.060 are the ones who will make Alberta a success.
00:04:31.760 Yeah, and there's a part of that is unpacking with people
00:04:36.880 through metrics, like how Canada is doing right now.
00:04:41.360 And there's some weird games people play
00:04:44.420 with some of the numbers.
00:04:46.780 And it depends if you're measuring like GDP per capita
00:04:50.920 versus household debt per GDP
00:04:54.740 versus they'll look at like the loss of investment,
00:04:58.460 let it be on the personal side,
00:04:59.860 then others will say that,
00:05:01.420 well, foreign investment increased
00:05:03.860 and they're all proud of this number.
00:05:05.960 And then you look at the actual numbers
00:05:07.640 and most of the foreign investment
00:05:09.440 went up to buy failing Canadian companies
00:05:12.700 and they're buying them for cheap.
00:05:15.100 So they are bragging about something
00:05:17.160 which is describing the like slow,
00:05:20.800 like collapse of Canada.
00:05:22.860 um so there are a lot of ways that people will spin this to argue that canada is a they're like
00:05:31.940 well we have the financial institutions we've got like confidence in our legal system and
00:05:37.260 we have this long standing history and we're respected on the international stage and
00:05:42.980 all of those are debatable right now um yeah so it's it's depends who you're arguing with
00:05:51.040 Yeah, so my personal view is that the persecution of the trucker convoy, especially the freezing of the bank accounts, did just incalculable damage to Canada's reputation.
00:06:07.560 The veneer of Canada as this place of law and order and decorum was just crushed forever.
00:06:16.000 because we all know anyone can see, 0.95
00:06:21.300 especially foreigners who just get social media or whatever,
00:06:24.920 can see that these are just harmless people protesting.
00:06:30.660 They were not organized criminals.
00:06:33.200 And so when you freeze their bank accounts and persecute them,
00:06:36.500 it really was a terrible look.
00:06:38.680 So I don't think Canada or Ottawa will ever recover from that,
00:06:42.480 that Americans have such a lower view or dim view of Canada since that time because that really
00:06:49.960 captured the attention down here. Now, just there is, I mean, not everything is bad in Canada,
00:06:57.400 of course. The mining sector of Canada is one of the leading lights that, I don't know if you guys
00:07:03.280 know this, but in Vancouver, there's basically the hub of, or the headquarters capital of mining
00:07:10.860 from around the world, that most of the mining companies have their headquarters in Vancouver.
00:07:16.500 However, that is precarious. It is not guaranteed forever. And mining companies are very,
00:07:22.540 let's say, savvy and make calculated decisions. And that particular success story for Canada
00:07:29.720 could soon be lost. That places like Nevada are challenging, let's say, the jurisdictional
00:07:38.140 competitiveness of Canadian provinces. So I think if Alberta were to leave, that would really do,
00:07:45.140 it would undermine even further Canada's reputation as a mining safe haven, at least for
00:07:50.500 setting up a headquarters and getting regulatory approval, because still the Toronto Stock Exchange
00:07:55.740 and the venture, the Toronto Venture Exchange, are where the junior and senior, many junior and
00:08:01.340 and money companies list themselves.