The Critical Compass Podcast - January 13, 2026


Responding to Alberta Independence Fearmongers feat. Leighton Grey, John Carpay, Shawn Buckley

Parental Rights or State Might？ Mia Hughes & Bruce Pardy Gender Debate Bruce Pardy on Why FREEDOM Doesn't Care About Your Truth

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

154.14

Word count

1,096

Sentence count

61

People

Also mentioned:
Sean Buckley Leighton Jason Levine Newfoundland Bruce

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we talk with Jason Levine, the man, the myth, the legend, and the man in charge of the petition to have Alberta vote yes or no to independence from Canada. We also hear from Leighton Pritchard and Sean Buckley, two people who have long-time ties to the province and have been involved in the independence movement since the beginning.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 All right, we're here with the man, the myth, the legend, Jason Levine.
00:00:05.040 Hey, talk about an event, hey, that was pretty cool for early January in Red Deer.
00:00:11.380 That's a great way to start off, 2026, I do believe, and I like some of the speakers who
00:00:15.860 are talking about the optimism for 2026. We're at a turning point, and we had a lot of people
00:00:20.680 talking about hope, like Sean Buckley. He actually highlighted how he's actually optimistic
00:00:24.540 because of the audience that showed up, the energy in that room. We had over 3,000 people
00:00:29.280 online as well.
00:00:30.660 Now, there wasn't only the event going on here today. Behind us, we actually have people
00:00:34.840 still lined up from this morning around the block, around the entire building here, the
00:00:38.880 church, to sign the petition for the Alberta referendum on independence. You have some
00:00:44.760 thoughts on that?
00:00:45.700 A hundred percent. At first, we had one lady reach out, and she's like, hey, do you mind
00:00:49.300 if I collect some signatures? And we're like, well, we'll set you up in the lobby because
00:00:52.680 then nobody needs a ticket to come in. Just come in and do your business. And it grew to,
00:00:56.520 I think, like seven or eight people taking signatures, and they still can't keep up with
00:01:00.740 that line. Something magical is happening here in Red Deer, right in the center of Alberta.
00:01:05.440 And all it took was a couple of posts online to let people know where they can go today.
00:01:09.400 And I think we're going to have to keep the doors open a little bit longer.
00:01:11.900 I think the big important part with the referendum question is it is, for lack of a better word,
00:01:24.340 democratic. You have the right to say yes, you have the right to say no, as you pointed
00:01:29.680 out. So, Leighton, you wanted to chime in?
00:01:33.000 Yeah, it's just a bit of history. There's a piece of land out there in the Atlantic
00:01:39.720 that we now call Newfoundland. It was called Newfoundland back then. They were very cozy
00:01:45.380 with the Americans during the World War II because this was a launching point for naval and air force
00:01:52.100 ships. It was the closest to the U.S. And around the end of the Second World War, the guys in Ottawa
00:01:58.860 were very worried that Newfoundland was going to join the United States. And so it turns out
00:02:03.920 Newfoundland just had a referendum. It was very close. They decided to join Canada. And the guys in
00:02:11.980 Ottawa basically signed a deal with Newfoundland. And I asked around and I don't know anybody in Alberta
00:02:18.520 that got a vote in that. So it seems to me, if that's part of our history of Canada, not so distant
00:02:25.680 history, why should the rest of Canada have a say in whether or not Alberta stays in it? I mean,
00:02:32.480 as a lawyer, it seems to me there's, precedent's been set.
00:02:39.500 What Leighton said aligns also with the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 1998, the Quebec
00:02:47.020 secession reference. If the majority of the voters of a province vote to leave, and if it's a clear
00:02:57.260 question, then the federal government and the rest of the provinces really have no choice but to
00:03:02.960 negotiate the details of what is going to happen. Sean? Well, I view this as just really politically
00:03:12.140 conflating the issue. Because the reality is, is if, you know, a clear majority of Albertans vote
00:03:20.440 to leave Canada, that any way you slice that, that's viewed as a mandate in Alberta to leave Canada.
00:03:28.340 And if it, you know, Czechoslovakia, you know, Yugoslavia, any other ethnic or political group
00:03:36.520 making such a vote, the rest of the world says, no, you have the right. So I think this is really just
00:03:42.000 politics. The, you know, so it's just kind of conflating, and it's theatre, and it's distracting.
00:03:48.820 And, you know, the goal from, you know, those that oppose Alberta separation will be to conflate,
00:03:55.880 will be to fear monger, will be to, you know, kind of point the other direction. So I just view this
00:04:03.060 as political maneuvering that really has no weight. Because the reality is, again, if there was a
00:04:08.600 clear mandate within Alberta, this province is going to view that as a mandate to leave. And that
00:04:14.340 is a problem for the rest of Canada, regardless how they want to frame it.
00:04:19.180 Absolutely.
00:04:22.100 We've talked, CNN, we're on the topic of Alberta independence. Indigenous comes up quite a bit,
00:04:29.700 latent. And CNN, you know, you get that title. Share with us your views on treaties. And, you know,
00:04:40.060 this concept that somehow that the Indigenous population have the right to veto other people's
00:04:46.660 right to vote.
00:04:48.440 Well, for those who weren't here, and I was talking earlier, the numbers don't support this.
00:04:52.540 It's a fraction of 1% of people living on reserve. So if this were all the richest people in Alberta
00:05:00.620 saying this, we would all be up in arms, right? That's one thing. Secondly, the treaties are not part of
00:05:09.980 the body of constitutional law. The judiciary, and Bruce can talk better than I can about this,
00:05:16.820 but the judiciary has really pumped up the relevance of the treaties. It used to be that,
00:05:23.460 you know, they were somewhere between a contract between two voluntary parties and an international
00:05:30.940 treaty. But what's happened now with decisions like this Cowichan decision in BC, which is basically
00:05:40.020 wiping out individual property rights, I think what we have to be concerned about is really
00:05:47.680 certain Indigenous leaders who have been corrupted, they're operating essentially as NGOs, they're being 0.62
00:05:55.480 paid to send a certain message. And they don't, this is the biggest key, they don't accurately
00:06:02.220 represent what everyday Indigenous people, Indian people in Alberta want, okay? They're just like you 0.95
00:06:11.440 and me, okay? And that's important to remember. And I'll just say one final thing. No First Nation, 0.88
00:06:21.060 if you want to call it that, or Indian Reserve, as we used to call them in Canada, has as good a deal
00:06:27.120 anywhere in Canada, as the Métis have right here in Alberta. If Indian people want to see a useful 1.00
00:06:34.620 partnership between a government and an Indigenous group, what's happened in Alberta with our Métis
00:06:41.640 people should be the model for the rest of the country. So I would say to them, I do say to them,
00:06:45.740 you'll get a lot better deal in Alberta than you'll get from Canada.
00:06:57.120 you'll get a lot better deal in Alberta.
00:07:04.620 you