The Critical Compass Podcast - September 03, 2026


Leighton Grey: An Indigenous Lawyer's Case FOR Alberta Independence


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

130.66

Word count

2,354

Sentence count

80


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. It's a bit surreal to be here as a kid who grew up in Edmonton and drove by
00:00:13.000 these buildings with my father and my parents probably hundreds of times. So to be here and
00:00:19.480 speaking to a group like this in front of these incredible buildings that were gifted to us by
00:00:26.440 our forefathers is truly humbling. And so I'm so excited to be here. Thank all of you for being
00:00:34.260 here. Some of you might know me as a lawyer, others as a podcaster. Maybe some of you have
00:00:41.820 read my books, or you might know me personally. But to my government, I'm something else.
00:00:49.500 I'm talking about the federal government now.
00:00:52.680 I'm the other.
00:00:54.880 I'm an Indian.
00:00:56.900 I have a card here that says,
00:01:00.500 I'm Indian number 3780270401.
00:01:11.440 It was just to say that I live in apartheid state.
00:01:16.240 That's what Canada is.
00:01:17.840 because the oldest statute on the books in the federal government
00:01:23.360 is the Indian Act of 1876,
00:01:26.180 which creates another class of human being called the Indian.
00:01:31.920 And it's because we have that definition
00:01:36.100 that we have a whole series of decisions,
00:01:40.180 historical, legal, cultural, economic, and spiritual,
00:01:46.320 that have treated Indigenous peoples as the other, as the alien.
00:01:52.720 And you should understand if you're here and you're an Indigenous person, that's on their heart.
00:01:59.880 And if you're not Indigenous, you should understand hearts.
00:02:04.180 That's an important thing for us to understand.
00:02:06.840 Because if we're going to create the greatest society, a new Alberta that's free and prosperous,
00:02:15.360 is that society has to be one that unifies indigenous peoples and as albertans invites
00:02:26.880 them into the community that ends the otherness and that's what i'm here to talk about today
00:02:38.640 so a little bit about me just to understand who i am i i'm told and and i believe
00:02:45.360 that at least one of my ancestors was at Little Bighorn,
00:02:49.860 and no, he wasn't fighting for cussing.
00:02:53.860 His grandson was my great-grandfather.
00:02:57.360 His name was Burl Gray.
00:02:59.360 Very remarkable Indian man, Nakota,
00:03:02.860 part of Treaty Number 4 now,
00:03:05.860 and we're part of the Carry of the Kettle Nation
00:03:10.360 at Sintelutra, Saskatchewan.
00:03:14.360 Anyway, my great-granddad, he's one of the first Indians in Canada to earn a Bachelor of Arts University degree.
00:03:23.960 He was also a World War I hero.
00:03:26.060 In fact, there's a legendary story about him that he was court-martialed
00:03:30.680 because when they were walking back from the front in Belgium somewhere in France,
00:03:37.080 he and another guy who was from his reserve stopped to help a woman who was having a baby in a ditch.
00:03:44.360 well fortunately he was exonerated and ultimately he was decorated for that service
00:03:51.040 that gives you an idea of the quality human being that he was
00:03:54.380 he was ultimately he was the chief of carry the kettle
00:04:00.560 one of his sons served as chief
00:04:02.600 and my grandmother was his daughter
00:04:06.640 she and her sister and two of their brothers spent most of their childhood
00:04:11.740 at Brandon Indian Residential School.
00:04:14.840 If you know anything about IRS,
00:04:16.860 that was one of the ones most notorious for abuses.
00:04:20.860 But that wasn't my grandmother's story, by the way.
00:04:24.160 She was grateful for her time at Indian Residential School.
00:04:27.760 She once told me, she said,
00:04:29.720 Leighton, if I had not gone to Indian Residential School,
00:04:33.540 she said, you would not be a lawyer.
00:04:36.700 I said, Grandma, what?
00:04:38.560 She says, well, listen, if I hadn't gone to the white man's school
00:04:43.820 and learned to read and write, I never would have been able to become a nurse.
00:04:49.140 And your father would have grown up on reserve.
00:04:52.620 And she said, Layton, illiterate boys on reserve
00:04:57.240 don't have sons who grow up to be lawyers.
00:04:59.920 so let's talk about let's talk about the situation of the Indian in Canada this is important because
00:05:11.920 you know they call us the first nation but I find we're first in all the wrong things and
00:05:18.640 we're last in all the good things here's a bit of a shopping list first of all we're last in
00:05:25.760 life expectancy, last in household income, last in educational outcomes, last in
00:05:32.900 government transparency including the ones on reserve, first in alcohol and
00:05:38.540 drug abuse, first in prison population, first in homelessness, first in domestic
00:05:45.260 abuse, first in abortion, first in suicide, first in fatherless homes,
00:05:51.200 highest in violent crime, first in youth crime, first in child trafficking, first
00:05:58.280 in gang membership, first in unemployment and most of all first in government
00:06:04.100 dependency. Now I ask you is it any wonder that the situation of the Indian
00:06:12.020 indigenous peoples in this country is so terrible? Of course it's a rhetorical
00:06:18.200 question but you know let's let's talk about let's talk about specific cases some of you might have
00:06:25.240 heard an ndp uh mp recently i won't say her name but she was complaining to uh mr carney that he
00:06:34.600 was sending money to africa or ukraine or somewhere else and he wasn't spending enough money helping
00:06:43.080 the cause of missing and endured indigenous indian women now i expect all you good people can agree
00:06:50.680 the situation of missing and uh and murdered indigenous women in our country is a serious
00:06:57.960 thing and that we should address it and if we can we should change it right can we agree on that
00:07:03.560 but the NDP solution is let's throw more money at the problem well some of you may know this
00:07:14.300 maybe you don't but did you know the government of Canada now spends more money trying to solve
00:07:21.080 indigenous problems than it does on national defense okay and and listen have you been who's
00:07:30.800 been to a first nations community recently okay so you know the once you get past the casino in
00:07:36.960 the hotel what do you see you see poverty you don't see schools you don't see hospitals you
00:07:45.520 don't see youth centers or swimming pools or all the other things that need to be there
00:07:51.440 for a happy functioning community you see a blight a blight on the face of our country
00:07:57.840 and and by the way this is true in alberta too and my message here today is that in a new free
00:08:04.000 and independent alberta we can do this all better so talking about missing and murdered
00:08:18.080 indigenous women let me explain to you how mr carney's government is addressing this problem
00:08:24.000 Well, he says to judges in our country who are sentencing indigenous offenders, and if you are a violent indigenous offender, I hope that what I say right now offends you.
00:08:39.720 Ninety-four percent of all violence committed against indigenous women is committed by indigenous men.
00:08:46.980 okay so we've we've agreed missing and murdered indigenous women is a serious
00:08:53.880 problem now we know who's doing almost all of that crime but what is the
00:09:00.180 government of Canada telling our judges to do they say when you have a violent
00:09:06.960 indigenous offender you have to give him a softer sentence based upon his race
00:09:13.980 and his background circumstances so what's the result folks I'm sure you can
00:09:19.980 do the math so that this is the cycle of abuse and this is just one example of
00:09:26.460 the cycle of abuse in the dysfunctional relationship between that government in
00:09:31.620 Ottawa and indigenous peoples in this country and what I would say to these
00:09:37.560 chiefs who are pleading and going to court and trying to stop upper
00:09:41.680 independence. Explain to me how this relationship is good for our people. Because I'm just a dumb
00:09:50.340 country lawyer, but it goes way over my head. So here's what we do for missing and murdered
00:10:01.120 indigenous women. We take the very people who are victimizing them. We not only make it easier and
00:10:09.080 simpler for them to commit these crimes but we legalize drugs we turn a blind eye to things like
00:10:16.120 human trafficking we do nothing to solve any of the problems that are causing indigenous men to
00:10:23.560 harm indigenous women and so what do we have we have people locked in a cycle of violence and abuse
00:10:29.720 and all the money goes God knows where.
00:10:37.600 You know, it's not like we don't know better.
00:10:41.160 I mean, the federal government spent money in 1996
00:10:44.380 on a royal commission on Aboriginal peoples.
00:10:48.240 And it talked about the problems of missing and murdering Indigenous women.
00:10:52.700 It talked about the situation of Indigenous peoples in Indian residential schools.
00:10:59.720 But let me finish off with this point so you understand the character of the man who's running our country.
00:11:07.320 Mark Carney's father, Robert Carney, he actually penned a sharp critique of the conclusions of the Royal Commissioner of Aboriginal Peoples.
00:11:17.080 He has actually spent a lifetime working within the residential school system in Canada,
00:11:21.720 and so he understood the details of it intimately, perhaps better than anyone who was working in the government during that period.
00:11:29.720 and he pointed out that the schools actually were not jails despite frequent claims that students
00:11:35.080 there were against their will in fact parents like my great-grandfather had to sign an application
00:11:42.680 form to enroll their children as in a residential school robert carney he bristled at the lack of
00:11:49.880 context in the report noting that the schools performed a key social welfare function and
00:11:55.720 caring for sick and dying abandoned and orphaned children so there's another side to the story
00:12:01.560 but in the midst of the 2025 federal election campaign our mr carney mark carney was asked
00:12:07.480 about this and he said hey do you agree with your father's take on this he says
00:12:13.960 i love my father but i don't share those views
00:12:19.560 so this is the quality of the human being we have running our country right now
00:12:24.200 okay now I want to finish off on a brighter note so I'm going to tell you
00:12:31.820 about a very important man from Saskatchewan whose name was Watini and
00:12:38.300 William Watini he was an indigenous man born in 1928 and those single room log
00:12:44.360 cabin on reserve in Saskatchewan just like my great-grandfather and like many
00:12:49.460 kids growing up during the great depression he endured a childhood of poverty and hardship
00:12:55.940 education was his release and he went on to become the first
00:12:59.140 indigenous lawyer in western canada isn't that amazing
00:13:05.220 he also served as the inaugural president of the national indian council in 1961
00:13:10.580 he rose to prominence with his controversial book in 1971 entitled ruffled feathers if you haven't
00:13:17.700 read that i highly recommend it what did his book call for an end to the canadian indian reserve
00:13:24.500 system this is 55 years ago folks mr whatnot he knew what he was talking about he believed
00:13:33.220 that the indian reserve system trapped his people in a never-ending cycle of poverty and despair
00:13:39.940 He dreamed and fought for a nation where Indigenous people live alongside all other peoples,
00:13:48.860 enjoying the same rights and privileges as everyone else in the country.
00:13:55.200 What an inspiring vision for a new Alberta that is.
00:13:58.660 sadly mr whatney he was actually ostracized for his views by his people in his own community
00:14:11.320 even his own daughter who is a professor at a university in manitoba has disavowed him
00:14:18.220 and he died in poverty in 2015 he should be he should be a national hero
00:14:24.580 So what did William Watney want?
00:14:28.340 He wanted what all Canadians, what all Albertans, non-Native and Native alike, should want, in my opinion.
00:14:36.320 That is to be free from political constraints.
00:14:40.080 He rejected racial segregation.
00:14:42.760 He rejected discrimination and identity politics and all its perverse forms.
00:14:47.080 And yet, in dishonoring his life's work, his own daughter, now misrepresents his legacy by distorting the core truths of her father's central beliefs and conviction to truth.
00:15:00.600 I want to close off by sharing with you, I think, a wonderful vision for Alberta independence, which applies to all Albertans, indigenous, non-indigenous, regardless of race, creed, color.
00:15:17.080 It's from a man named Roger Scruton, who's a brilliant political philosopher and lawyer from Great Britain.
00:15:23.260 Sadly, we lost him to cancer in 2017, but he left behind just an incredible legacy of books.
00:15:30.020 You'll also find many of his talks and his speeches on YouTube, and I urge you to go and look at them.
00:15:34.760 But he said this, and I want you to take this with you as a vision for a new Alberta.
00:15:42.260 He says, we all have a capacity for love and a deep-down knowledge that a life without love is futile.
00:15:51.240 We all have to work to find that love and to create the context in which it can flourish.
00:15:57.860 Likewise with oikophilia, which is a Greek word, it means love of home.
00:16:03.920 And this is where the political difficulties arise.
00:16:07.040 oikophiles or Albertans are in search of a home and it is to the beauty and
00:16:15.800 heritage of this home that they devote their efforts of conservation they are
00:16:24.260 not globalists happy to be anywhere on the planet but the localists who look
00:16:29.720 after the place that is theirs, that is ours. And it's this local focus that
00:16:40.160 leads us to make the first and most necessary step towards sustainability
00:16:47.040 which is to make out a territory and an identity that is our own, to be protected
00:16:55.100 from predation
00:16:56.700 and embellished and looked
00:16:59.100 after for the benefit of their
00:17:01.100 descendants. If that isn't
00:17:03.300 the, if that is, is
00:17:05.080 not the vision of
00:17:06.200 Albertian independence, if that
00:17:09.080 isn't what Mr. Rath
00:17:10.740 and Mitch Sylvester
00:17:12.820 and others have been working
00:17:14.820 towards all these years,
00:17:17.140 then I don't know what is.
00:17:19.120 If you have a better vision expressing
00:17:20.980 this than I do, that Mr. Scruton
00:17:23.260 has, then please share it with me, because I think this is precisely what we're trying
00:17:28.900 to do.
00:17:29.900 We love our home.
00:17:31.520 This is not a separatist movement.
00:17:33.540 This is a conservation movement.
00:17:35.960 We want to preserve our home because it's beautiful and it's ours.
00:17:42.020 In closing, I want to thank you all for being here today.
00:17:53.180 It's been my honor and pleasure to speak to you in this way.
00:17:58.060 And God bless all of you.
00:17:59.640 And God bless Alberta.