The Critical Compass Podcast - April 24, 2026


Michael Wagner ｜ The Spark That Ignited Alberta Independence

Mentioned
Pierre Trudeau Ruth Gorman Albert
How Chris Scott Became an Alberta Independence Advocate What a Failed Referendum Means for Alberta Independence ｜ Michael Wagner

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

193.36

Word count

1,665

Sentence count

62

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss the history of Alberta s breakaway from Canada and the push for Alberta to become independent from the rest of the country. We talk about the early days of the breakaway movement, how it began, and how it evolved over the years.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 If we're just looking back at the 120-year journey of Alberta itself, it feels like that
00:00:08.060 was born out of a will for wanting, the West was wanting in to confederation.
00:00:14.740 So that's a thread that's consistent over this period.
00:00:18.760 There are some people that will mention separation even in 1905, but it doesn't seem like that
00:00:26.480 was the case because there was a will to want to make it work and Albertans wanted the same kind
00:00:32.840 of deal. They wanted a province that had the same kind of resource rights, control over like taxation
00:00:41.840 and everything as the existing provinces in confederation, which didn't happen until the
00:00:48.240 1930s anyways. So there was already a lag period on the West wanted in and they're like, okay,
00:00:55.080 well maybe you will get what you want and if you kick the can down the road that kind of produces
00:01:02.260 some of the momentum that could boil up if not for for something that is able to fizzle it out
00:01:09.260 so that that's a cycle that we're seeing over time and so you're describing that the it was it wasn't
00:01:17.320 until like the 80s that this kicking the can down the road seemed to lose a little bit of its
00:01:25.060 effect. And now that we're into further down the road, people are starting to realize like we're
00:01:34.020 running out of road. Is that an accurate kind of a description of this? Yeah, like that's one way
00:01:40.100 of putting it. Like the separatist movement as such kind of had its first organization about
00:01:43.720 1970. Like there were organizations in the 1970s, but they just, they didn't get the traction that
00:01:48.760 they would get after the national energy program came in. But you do make a good point. Like there
00:01:52.700 was actually the first book on separation actually came out about 1911. I can't remember the guy's
00:01:57.980 name, but he was a liberal MLA in Alberta's legislature, but he didn't want really Alberta
00:02:01.440 to become independent. He wanted Alberta to pull out of Canada so that it could renegotiate its
00:02:05.320 way back in. So like his goal wasn't an actual country on itself, but he was really angry that
00:02:10.460 we didn't have control of our resources you know that's like a point like Alberta Saskatchewan I
00:02:14.920 think Manitoba didn't get the resources till 1930 or so so he just wanted to he wrote a book
00:02:19.940 advocating Alberta would pull out of Canada you know celebrate our independence and then renegotiate
00:02:24.220 our way back in and get our resources that way so but yeah that's that's like in 1911 or something
00:02:28.620 like that so that there was that those kind of ideas floated but there was no movement per se
00:02:31.900 and then you know like say about 1970 I think that was the first uh organization that started
00:02:36.900 and the first real credible organization started in 1974 was called the Independent Alberta
00:02:41.040 Association. And that had some prominent oil men and lawyers and stuff involved. Like they didn't
00:02:44.840 say they didn't have a mass membership, but they produced some, you know, academic reports in
00:02:49.760 support of Alberta independence. And so that's going back quite a ways, but it was, you know,
00:02:54.960 the National Agent Program that really gave it traction for the 1980s.
00:02:58.220 And that kind of coincided with the constitution is like the change as well.
00:03:06.360 So you have two major changes that kind of now have changed the fabric of Canada as well as Alberta within Confederation.
00:03:16.720 That's actually a really, really important point because I mentioned the Western Canada concept party of Alberta.
00:03:22.020 One of the founders of that party was a lady named Dr. Ruth Gorman.
00:03:25.000 and she was one of Alberta's most famous female lawyers up until that time and she was involved
00:03:30.100 in that party because of the constitutional change like that was her main issue she was
00:03:33.440 very strongly opposed to what was then proposed charter of rights and freedoms from Pierre Trudeau
00:03:38.260 because you know Pierre Trudeau deliberately left out property rights from the charter
00:03:42.120 and she saw that as a huge threat to to you know our ownership of our resources and so she actually
00:03:47.760 traveled around Alberta and wrote you know columns for uh you know they mentioned journal
00:03:51.780 and the Calgary Herald saying we've got to stop this charter thing from happening because the
00:03:55.600 West is going to lose big with this charter. Anyway, it does tie in like in the eyes of many
00:04:00.320 Albertans, you know, Trudeau was attacking us with the National Energy Program and he was bringing
00:04:04.860 in this charter without the property rights and they saw those things as related. And so both of
00:04:09.220 those things, like the National Energy Program was the main fuel for the fire of an Albert
00:04:14.200 independence at the time, but definitely the Charter of Rights, the constitutional changes
00:04:17.180 was also part of it because we thought we were under, like Albertans realized that the charter
00:04:21.420 wasn't necessarily going to be a good thing for Canada.
00:04:23.920 And so the general picture I'm trying to paint is that it was Trudeau's desire
00:04:29.500 to centralize Canada more that is part of the root of the problems
00:04:33.360 that we have with the different regions.
00:04:34.760 Because we're too big of a country to try and tie together centrally.
00:04:39.060 We need to have provincial responsibilities.
00:04:41.600 We need a decentralized federation where the provinces are powerful. 0.94
00:04:45.560 And then local communities can run their own.
00:04:47.940 you know
00:04:48.760 if Quebec wants to have
00:04:50.680 everything primarily in French
00:04:51.640 they can do that
00:04:52.240 you know what I mean 1.00
00:04:52.660 and if we don't want French 1.00
00:04:53.860 we don't have to have that
00:04:54.620 it's up to our local communities
00:04:55.960 to decide
00:04:56.520 and not for
00:04:57.600 a centralized government
00:04:58.780 and of course
00:04:59.120 one of Pierre Trudeau's
00:04:59.920 first major programs
00:05:01.880 was to bring in
00:05:02.580 you know
00:05:02.820 compulsory bilingualism
00:05:04.340 for all of Canada
00:05:05.000 you know
00:05:05.600 it was the Official Languages Act
00:05:06.700 and that was actually
00:05:07.520 the spark
00:05:08.160 that first sparked
00:05:09.160 the first talk
00:05:09.760 of Alberta independence
00:05:10.600 like even before
00:05:11.540 the oil thing
00:05:12.160 there's people out here
00:05:13.180 who just felt
00:05:13.800 they were having French
00:05:14.420 shoved down their throats 0.51
00:05:15.300 you know what I mean
00:05:15.760 and again
00:05:16.920 it was trying to make
00:05:17.940 Rather than having French and Quebec and English out here, let's have both languages right across the country.
00:05:22.340 It was kind of like homogenize the country, right?
00:05:24.380 Tie it together that way rather than let the regions have their own specialties, their own ways of doing things and stuff.
00:05:30.600 So in my view, it was Trudeau's desire to centralize the country that's at the root of a lot of the problems that we've had since then.
00:05:38.260 And of course, the Charter was part of that.
00:05:39.600 And there's different reasons why the Charter won.
00:05:42.480 I think it's too centralizing like that.
00:05:43.880 and also, you know, the provinces had to give up some of their powers
00:05:47.700 in order for the charter to be accepted in the Constitution.
00:05:51.000 Before the charter, we had the Bill of Rights from 1960.
00:05:54.240 The Bill of Rights was just a federal piece of legislation
00:05:56.320 that only applied to the federal government
00:05:58.120 because the federal government couldn't, you know,
00:05:59.860 pass legislation of that kind that would apply to all the provinces.
00:06:04.120 But Trudeau wanted it in the Constitution,
00:06:05.620 so all the provinces would have to be under the charter
00:06:08.300 if it was introduced into the Constitution,
00:06:09.780 and the provinces actually resisted that.
00:06:12.080 Like, the charter was not popular at first.
00:06:13.880 Trudeau first proposed that in 1968 when he was Justice Minister.
00:06:17.880 And so with several years, you know, of him advocating for the Charter before it actually came into effect,
00:06:22.640 because there were various, you know, many premiers were opposed to the Charter.
00:06:26.780 And there were other scholars who would, you know, produce papers or give talks about why the Charter should not be adopted.
00:06:32.100 And part of it was, you know, it does, I mean, this was part of Trudeau's agenda too,
00:06:36.620 was to transfer more powers to the judges.
00:06:38.840 That's actually mentioned in his original proposal.
00:06:41.140 Because the Charter gives power to the judges they never had before.
00:06:43.880 And of course we have, you know, so many policies and laws that have been struck down since the charter came into effect, you know, in 1985 or so.
00:06:51.500 So there's just, the charter does so many things that I think are harmful to Canada.
00:06:55.600 And I think that's part of, you know, the root, part of the root of the problems that we have.
00:07:00.680 Pierre Trudeau did not like the Canada he became prime minister of.
00:07:04.560 He was trying to bring in fundamental changes.
00:07:06.660 Like when you change the constitution, you change the country because the constitution is the foundational document.
00:07:12.760 So when a guy comes in and says, I want to completely redo the Constitution,
00:07:16.460 he's changing the country.
00:07:17.560 That was his goal, and he achieved that.
00:07:19.340 I considered Pierre Trudeau to be like an evil genius
00:07:22.320 because he was as intelligent and as determined a prime minister
00:07:28.900 as we ever had in all of our history.
00:07:31.560 So he was brilliant, and he was hardworking.
00:07:34.100 He had all the personal virtues.
00:07:35.400 If only he'd been on the good side, he could have made this into a better country,
00:07:39.460 but instead he was going in the wrong direction.
00:07:41.380 you know because you have you know you think of johnny mcdonald as the founder of canada johnny
00:07:45.080 mcdonald brought in his constitution that created the original version of canada and then you have
00:07:48.980 trudeau bringing in a new constitution and you know creating a different country in 1982 so it's
00:07:54.900 like our 1982 was like a seminal year for canada like it we changed as a country from being one
00:08:00.440 kind of a country to be another kind of country and that was because of the way trudeau was able
00:08:04.000 to change our constitution and bring in the charter of rights and freedoms
00:08:06.680 Transcription by CastingWords