The Critical Compass Podcast - September 03, 2025


Exploring an Independent Alberta's Currency Options w⧸Brett Oland, CEO Bow Valley Credit Union

＂Universal Basic Income is a very, very, VERY bad idea.＂ - Brett Oland, Bow Valley Credit Union CEO 'Based Banker' Brett Oland on how Government Money Printing is Stealing Humanity's Productive Value

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

149.09

Word count

800

Sentence count

—


Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss the possibility of Canada becoming independent from the United States, and what it would look like if that happened. We discuss the benefits and challenges of becoming an independent country, as well as some of the potential challenges that would come with such a change.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 let's say alberta does become independent do we switch right away to
00:00:05.040 to an american dollar do we develop our own currency like just maybe take us through some
00:00:10.060 of the the major points that you would see from a from a banking economic perspective
00:00:14.740 uh you know in the in the conversation of alberta becoming an independent state okay first first off
00:00:21.680 i'll say as the ceo of bow valley credit union i do not have a position on this but if if i was
00:00:28.700 going to become a separate country uh i think yeah you touched on a few few points there i would
00:00:35.760 definitely transition to a u.s dollar first and basically be able to flip a switch and move
00:00:42.880 everybody's canadian dollar account and and convert it into u.s or the equivalent effectively
00:00:50.280 overnight because i i think it's important for people to to understand that alberta is effectively
00:00:57.660 underpinning the canadian dollar because we are a resource-based country it might get wild
00:01:04.300 in the canadian effects exchange foreign exchange if if alberta decided to depart so i think
00:01:11.240 plans need to be sort of in place before a vote even happens around something like that so now
00:01:18.560 my recommendation would be go to u.s dollar first uh because it's the most liquid and stable uh currency
00:01:26.100 in the world it's it's still a dirty shirt but it's the least dirty shirt i would also recommend
00:01:31.980 getting a line of credit with one of the bigger banks uh in the united states for say 500 billion
00:01:38.100 dollars to give confidence to the people of alberta that we can pay our bills even though sort of day
00:01:44.780 one under the value of freedom uh document that jeff rath and and the app produced we would be able
00:01:51.800 to be solvent and and sustainable uh effectively day one uh with with our finances but a line of credit
00:01:58.780 would go a long way for assurance as well as i think we would need a u.s swap line uh with with uh
00:02:06.080 the u.s government the state department um to basically continue with trade with with our major trade
00:02:13.560 partner the u.s and it makes a lot of sense because um a u.s swap line would allow you to trade oil and
00:02:21.940 gas in in u.s dollars it's it's uh convertibility and again you'd probably need about a 500 billion
00:02:28.460 dollar swap line minimum with something like that um if you eventually did want to transition to
00:02:35.700 an alberta dollar uh what i would recommend is at first moving to the u.s dollar and then uh setting
00:02:44.220 up the structure behind it uh with basically a reserve behind the dollar uh you you wouldn't need
00:02:52.960 100 backing for the reserve but say 30 backing for the reserve and and that reserve would consist of
00:03:00.560 about 50 percent gold uh 30 percent or 40 percent oil reserves and then maybe another 10 percent for
00:03:08.600 bitcoin um to basically underpin and give confidence that the alberta dollar does have something besides
00:03:15.800 government promises behind it part of the challenge is to to set up some kind of reserve structure like
00:03:22.720 that you likely would need something like a central bank i'm not a huge proponent of central bank so
00:03:29.860 you'd have to really scale back what their powers are and and their abilities to do behind that and
00:03:35.480 maybe their only function is to make sure that credit doesn't grow too fast within the commercial
00:03:42.860 banking sector uh meaning that commercial banks can't create loans to get to a place where there's a
00:03:49.700 bubble um and and uh asset prices get goosed and basically ensure that the stabilization factor of the
00:03:59.360 reserve of gold bitcoin and oil is is intact and that effectively the dollars uh produced are not
00:04:07.340 outstripping the need for for production in in in alberta so anyway that's uh a few ideas that
00:04:16.660 what i would recommend yeah yeah and it seems like that would be in line with um there are many who
00:04:24.520 seek the they they see alberta independence as a good opportunity to set up more maybe checks and
00:04:32.200 balances on a government side in addition to like a central bank that again was there to enforce
00:04:39.960 to provide that confidence and level playing field on the financial side it's playing a slightly
00:04:46.120 different focused role than central banks would be currently in a fiat system so yeah it would just
00:04:52.600 need to be by design some really good focused direction when it comes to to some of these
00:04:58.260 things yeah no and absolutely that that and that'll take time to set up as well and so that's that's
00:05:04.120 maybe what you do during the transition period from from the u.s dollar
00:05:08.280 you