The Critical Compass Podcast - August 07, 2025


"We Need to Get the Hell Out of Canada" - A Vision for a Free and Prosperous Alberta w⧸Jeff Rath


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 28 minutes

Words per Minute

195.90652

Word Count

17,296

Sentence Count

809

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary

The CEO of the Alberta Prosperity Project, Jeff Rath, joins the show to talk about why he thinks Alberta should leave Canada and become an independent country. We discuss the benefits of leaving Canada and why you should vote for it.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I take the position that our confederation is functioning exactly the way it was intended to do.
00:00:04.900 And that is that Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, basically the West, you know, were always intended to be the colonial serfs and the colonial servants of Ontario and Quebec.
00:00:16.840 And that all of our wealth was, you know, not our wealth.
00:00:20.260 It was, you know, basically we were to work to generate the wealth for all the plutocrats in eastern Canada, which is still the way that Canada functions to our detriment to it.
00:00:29.060 And that's one of the one of the big reasons that, you know, those of us that are involved in the independence movement say that we have to get the hell out of Canada.
00:00:36.280 I mean, one of the big things we need is a constitution that actually puts limits on government and government corruption.
00:00:43.680 You know, we don't want attorneys general and solicitors general and public safety officers that are sit in cabinet with the prime minister or the premier.
00:00:52.920 Those people need to be individually elected people that have the mandate to arrest and jail crooked politicians.
00:01:00.600 Hi, everyone.
00:01:18.420 Welcome back to the Critical Compass.
00:01:20.120 Today, we are pleased to be joined by Mr. Jeff Rath.
00:01:22.880 He is the I know he's been called the CEO before and he corrects everyone.
00:01:27.440 He's the counsel for the for the Alberta Prosperity Project.
00:01:31.120 I would say probably he's the most prominent voice in the Alberta Prosperity Project right now.
00:01:36.220 He's a longtime indigenous rights lawyer in Alberta.
00:01:41.320 One case is all over the country.
00:01:43.940 And he's a very important voice right now, traveling all over the province for Alberta independence.
00:01:49.860 So, Jeff, thank you for joining us.
00:01:52.240 Welcome to the show.
00:01:53.580 Thank you very much for having me on.
00:01:55.740 Pleasure.
00:01:56.460 James, I know you had you had a litany of questions that we're going to throw Jeff's way.
00:02:01.140 So why don't you get us started?
00:02:03.240 Yeah, I guess if we were just going to sell our left-leaning friends, I know we've got a lot of people on the right that are already sold on this idea, seeing the harms that are are kind of bestowed upon Alberta from Ottawa.
00:02:20.900 If we were going to like widen that, what's what's just an elevator pitch to somebody who's like who hasn't really given this any thought and and maybe more a little bit left, more left-leaning or public sector worker?
00:02:34.800 Well, I mean, I think for everybody, it's like if it doesn't matter whether it's not a left or right issue, you know, do you want your, you know, yourself, your children and your grandchildren to be wealthy and prosperous, right?
00:02:47.040 And we think that the easiest way for everybody in Alberta to become much more wealthy and much more prosperous is to do away with all levels of all federal taxes in Alberta, get rid of all of them.
00:02:58.020 So federal income tax, capital games tax, carbon tax, whatever they're now calling the carbon tax on gasoline that they're bringing back under some sort of alleged road user fee from the federal government that they're going to bring back in, you know, being a carbon tax, any other under any other name, estate taxes.
00:03:14.640 I mean, keep in mind, the federal government wants to tax people's home equity, right?
00:03:19.020 So, you know, if you don't want to have your the value of your home taxed away from underneath you by Mark Carney, Marxist Carney and the and and the net jobs that he's got in his cabinet, you know, you should vote for Alberta independence.
00:03:32.220 You know, the big thing that we're all about, and again, it's not a left or right issue.
00:03:36.580 You know what the Alberta prosperity is all about is exactly this, the value of freedom, right?
00:03:41.960 Right. And that is that by leaving Canada and becoming an independent country, Alberta immediately in year one is going to have a 30 to 50 billion dollar a year fiscal capacity surplus.
00:03:55.740 And again, that's those are very conservative numbers, because when we did the value of freedom, we did it on the basis of a six and a half billion dollar deficit.
00:04:05.080 You know, this year we have an eight and a half billion dollar surplus.
00:04:08.180 So those numbers are actually light by 15 billion dollars a year right now, which means that, you know, the real number, you know, the fiscal capacity surplus for Alberta would be between 45 billion a year and 65 billion dollars a year.
00:04:22.480 I mean, that's significantly more, you know, that's significantly more for hospitals, for schools, for education, for families, you know, and massive tax cuts for everybody in this province.
00:04:35.120 So I can't for the life of me can't imagine why anybody wouldn't vote for independence and why all of our internal, you know, all of our leaders, when they read the value of freedom document, you know, talking about how much stronger economic and how much better off all Albertans are going to be economically.
00:04:51.860 Once we leave Canada, you know, how it's not a violation of their fiduciary obligations to every citizen in this province by not pursuing this path.
00:05:01.120 Right. I mean, at law, the standard of a fiduciary is a reasonably prudent person, a business managing their own affairs.
00:05:07.500 And, you know, if somebody were to tell, you know, a fiduciary, hey, there's a simple legal mechanism to make sure that you don't have to pay, you know, you can cut your tax bill in half.
00:05:18.160 But, you know, if that fiduciary didn't do that, they'd be guilty of they'd be guilty of a violation of their fiduciary obligation.
00:05:25.100 Right. So, you know, that's where we come from, you know, on this stuff.
00:05:29.160 We think that, you know, people really do need to go to Alberta Prosperity Project dot com and download, you know, this document and read it and internalize it because this document makes it clear.
00:05:40.680 The value of freedom makes it clear that Alberta will be significantly better off outside of Confederation than in it.
00:05:46.860 I mean, let's face it. I mean, right now, when you look at, you know, the national debt, the levels of inflation, I mean, Trudeau basically and Carney basically doubled the Canadian money supply in the last five years.
00:05:58.760 So if you wonder why everything at a grocery store costs twice as much as it did five years ago, it's because your money is worth half as much.
00:06:05.800 Right. You know, Canada is a rotting corpse and Albertans are tired of being chained to it.
00:06:11.280 We need to cut those chains and we need to get away from that stinking putrid mass that is Canada because they're going to kill us.
00:06:18.260 Canada is a sinking ship, you know, and we don't know.
00:06:21.080 We can't continue to support, you know, this country that hates us, doesn't understand our culture, doesn't doesn't respect us.
00:06:29.280 You know, things are our industries are filthy and dirty and that we have there's no business case, you know, for our existence.
00:06:35.440 I mean, think about how stupid that is. I mean, Trudeau and Carney basically told Japan and Germany, you know, to, you know, to go, you know, pee up a rope when they came here and say, hey, we want to buy Alberta natural gas and have LNG ship from Canada to our countries.
00:06:52.260 Oh, no, there's no business case for that. There's no business case for Alberta LNG.
00:06:56.040 Well, what just happened? Trump just did two massive trade deals with Japan and Europe and Trump's bragging on TV about how part of those trade deals are that the United States is now going to supply seven hundred billion dollars worth of LNG to Europe and Japan.
00:07:12.880 So in effect, Carney and Trudeau cost Trudeau cost Alberta seven hundred billion dollars in LNG sales by telling those people that there's no business case for Alberta LNG.
00:07:23.300 I mean, yeah, you know, these are the idiots that are governing us and we need to get out from underneath it, you know, pure and simple.
00:07:30.360 Yeah, that's I mean, I remember when you said that the first time and I was like, I mean, that's it's only business case from top to bottom.
00:07:38.480 The whole thing is business case, especially when what was happening in Russia and Ukraine just starting off at the time.
00:07:42.920 But I think I think primarily, Jeff, I mean, at least in our circles, I mean, we don't.
00:07:48.980 Me and James are kind of we're reformed former leftists and we we still have a lot of family and friends who who hear kind of, you know, they hear things like Alberta independence and they hear, you know, separatists and they hear these kind of terms.
00:08:01.920 And they hear terms like Canada is a rotting corpse and they get kind of.
00:08:04.460 Yeah, yeah. And they and their and their their default assumption, I don't think, is about, hey, what's the business case about this?
00:08:12.380 Like, maybe it should be. But what they think is, you know, am I going to be able to travel to see my family in Saskatchewan or is this going to affect my pension or my, you know, whatever?
00:08:21.600 Like, what do you say to people like that?
00:08:23.800 Sure. Let's talk about all of those things, because it was actually a really interesting piece of misinformation.
00:08:29.380 There's some there's some senator up in Edmonton. I can't remember his name now.
00:08:34.780 He was the guy that was involved in getting rainbow hockey tape put on hockey sticks anywhere.
00:08:38.820 It doesn't matter that that individual. Right.
00:08:40.940 So, you know, we're we're telling people in the around the province that various APP town halls, don't worry about your Canadian citizenship.
00:08:47.520 Don't worry about your pension because, you know, pensions are a contractual obligation between you and CPP.
00:08:52.760 It makes no difference if you're in Costa Rica, Portugal, Southern California, Florida, Arizona, whatever, you know, whatever CPP you're owed, you're owed doesn't matter if you're in Alberta.
00:09:04.960 You know, you're still going to get your CPP, you know, and then on top of it, you know, Canada does not recognize the renunciation of citizenship.
00:09:13.560 So, you know, I mean, Mark Carney has like four citizenships, like, you know, Mike Myers, Mr. Elbows Up, right.
00:09:19.200 You know, he has like three citizenships, U.K., U.S., and Canadian. Right.
00:09:24.740 You know, just because Mike Myers swore an oath to the United States government, I actually think they should deport Mike Myers, frankly, but I'll get into that in a minute, because like the very first sentence of the U.S. citizenship oath is that you renounce all other foreign citizenships and allegiances.
00:09:41.220 So Mike Myers swore that oath to become an American, and then he comes up to Canada and says, oh, I'm still a Canadian and Elbows Up, Canada, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:49.120 Well, he obviously swore a false oath. He fraudulently obtained American citizenship, you know, if he still claims to be a Canadian citizenship citizen and still has a Canadian passport.
00:09:59.440 So, you know, Myers, you know, basically is an illegal alien as far as I'm concerned, and he should be deported from the United States.
00:10:06.480 But, you know, I mean, that's, you know, that's where, you know, that's where that goes.
00:10:09.580 So, no, nobody loses their citizenship. Nobody loses their pension.
00:10:12.280 And if you read the value of freedom document, which is really interesting, we're going to have so much excess fiscal capacity in Alberta.
00:10:21.120 Like, think about the fact that we're not going to be having to pay refugees $80,000 a year anymore, because that's not going to happen under the immigration and deportation plan that's laid out in this document, right?
00:10:32.480 So, you know, we're easily going to have enough money left over to, you know, double the pensions of every pensioner in Alberta, double the GIS, you know, the guaranteed income supplement, double the old age security, you know, in a free and independent Alberta, because we'll have the money to do it.
00:10:49.080 Because we're no longer, you know, contributing to the billion and a half dollars that goes to CBC every year, we're no longer going to be contributing the $15 billion that goes to Quebec every year, because they cook their books and claim to be a have not province.
00:11:02.820 All of that money is going to stay in Alberta.
00:11:04.760 So everything, you know, I mean, you know, this value of freedom document makes it clear that in a free and independent Alberta, and it's actually costed into that document, in terms of the fiscal capacity surplus that we're citing, it's factored into that document, that university tuitions in Alberta would be capped at $7,500 a year.
00:11:25.700 So, you know, we could easily cut university tuitions in half and still have lots of money left over to lower taxes.
00:11:31.260 So, I mean, you know, so this document, everybody goes, oh, well, you know, it's like, all of you people that are involved in the independence movement are far right extremists.
00:11:40.180 My politics haven't changed in 40 years, right?
00:11:44.160 I have basically, you know, what used to be an old, you know, centrist Canadian, right?
00:11:49.000 I was just as, you know, I mean, I personally think that Paul Martin was one of the best conservative finance ministers that we ever had.
00:11:55.800 And as far as I'm concerned, you know, Harper, who's this alleged economist, was, you know, was a socialist when he lowered the GST to 5% from 7% that Paul Martin put in, right?
00:12:07.880 So, you know, so that's basically where I'm at.
00:12:11.100 I've always been a believer in, you know, you know, the every, you know, every civilized country has to take care of our poor, our elderly, our weak, our sick, you know, whatever.
00:12:19.800 But you have to have a functioning economy in order to be able to do that, right?
00:12:25.400 And, you know, we're now at a point in Canada where our economy is dysfunctional and the liberals have made it that way on purpose, right?
00:12:33.980 So that's why we need to get the hell out of Canada.
00:12:36.200 We need to get out of the mismanagement.
00:12:37.980 We need to get rid of all the gross overspending, you know, all this foolish, the world is going to end nonsense in and around climate change, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:12:48.400 And chart our own course, you know, forward to the future.
00:12:52.440 Yeah.
00:12:52.900 And it seems like part of the, like part of that conversation would be even just pointing out the massive amount of waste.
00:13:01.940 So you would look at Canada, like, well, we're a large country, we've got a wide range of subcultures and this vast distance.
00:13:11.580 And right now our confederation is not functioning in the way that it was designed to, and we don't have the proper respect for the sovereignty of the, what is under the jurisdiction of each province.
00:13:26.700 Well, I, you know, I would beg to differ on that point.
00:13:29.560 Like, I take the position that our confederation is functioning exactly the way it was intended to do.
00:13:35.060 And that is that Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, basically the West, you know, were always intended to be the colonial serfs and the colonial servants of Ontario and Quebec.
00:13:46.600 And that all of our wealth was, you know, not our wealth.
00:13:50.020 It was, you know, basically we were to work to generate the wealth for all the plutocrats in Eastern Canada, which is still the way that Canada functions to our detriment.
00:13:58.440 I mean, you know, when Trudeau stands up and says, oh, I want to, you know, what's SNC-Lavalin called now?
00:14:06.080 Actus Borealis or some sort of weird name that sounds like a venereal disease, right?
00:14:10.820 Like, you know, which I guess is fitting given that they're hiring prostitutes to get business contracts under SNC-Lavalin.
00:14:16.680 They may as well change their name to something that sounds like a venereal disease, right?
00:14:20.160 But, but anyway, you know, you've got, you know, the SNC-Lavalin company under whatever new name it's under, you know, they're in there like a dirty shirt wanting to build Trudeau's 40, you know, billion dollar choo-choo, electric choo-choo train from, you know, Montreal to Toronto.
00:14:37.940 Well, who the hell is going to pay for that?
00:14:39.420 We were.
00:14:40.300 You know, that's the way the system's supposed to work, right?
00:14:42.680 You know, that stupid Pathways project, you know, the giant carbon sucking machine that's supposed to decarbonize Alberta oil, right?
00:14:51.620 Well, all of those Eastern companies like, you know, SNC-Lavalin, you know, PCL Construction, like all, you know, all of the, you know, all of these massive liberal associated Brookfield associated companies are lined up with their knives and forks waiting to dig into the trough of 50 billion taxpayer dollars to build a project.
00:15:12.680 That has no economic reason or rationale for existing, you know, like, you know, all of this stuff is just ridiculous.
00:15:20.340 I mean, all the, everybody watching this, and especially, you know, if you have relatives that still believe in climate change, right?
00:15:27.700 They need to go on, they need to go to something called Google and Google Professor Halper or Happer from Princeton.
00:15:34.860 And he does a 45-minute talk on, and he's an actual climate scientist, on how we could double CO2 in the atmosphere to 880 parts per, you know, per million.
00:15:46.820 And it would get this, it would have a 1%, not one degree, but would only have a 1% change in the temperature of the Earth, right?
00:15:55.860 I mean, you know, but nobody wants to talk about that, right?
00:15:58.960 So this whole climate change thing, you know, is a massive fraud.
00:16:01.820 We all know that, you know, surprise, surprise, the one thing that, you know, that regulates the temperature of the Earth the most is something called the sun.
00:16:10.180 You know, that big yellow ball in the sky that gives us, you know, sunburns from time to time, that thing, right?
00:16:15.460 You know, so all the rest of this stuff has just been a fraud that's been designed by the World Economic Forum and people like Al Gore to basically create all these phony projects like Pathways Alliance,
00:16:27.560 where they can literally not just suck carbon out of the air, but suck tax dollars like a vacuum out of all of our pockets into their offshore bank accounts that we're not allowed to ask about, right?
00:16:41.020 You know, and look at all the foolishness that's gone on in Canada over the last number of years, right?
00:16:45.480 Remember, you know, Trudeau saying that, oh, yes, the government's going to subsidize heat pumps across Canada.
00:16:51.320 What a wonderful thing that will be.
00:16:53.080 Well, you know, not considering at all how much electricity those suckers use and how they potentially could collapse entire provincial power grids, right?
00:17:01.240 No thought whatsoever to the fact that these so-called heat pumps don't work at temperatures below minus five.
00:17:07.660 So, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:17:09.200 And, of course, the one thing they didn't want us to know, that the owner, you know, the company that owns the largest heat pump manufacturing company in North America is Brookfield, right?
00:17:20.500 So every heat pump that gets sold effectively would be sucking money out of our tax pocket, you know, take your care's pockets,
00:17:28.320 and then pumping that money into Carney's secret offshore bank accounts that we're not allowed to ask about, right?
00:17:35.700 So that's what this is all about.
00:17:37.200 I mean, we live in a kleptocracy now, you know, it's just bizarre that people aren't awake to that and paying attention to it.
00:17:44.260 And that's one of the big reasons that, you know, those of us that are involved in the independence movement say that we have to get the hell out of Canada.
00:17:51.380 I mean, one of the big things we need is a constitution that actually puts limits on government and government corruption.
00:17:58.100 You know, we don't want attorneys general and solicitors general and public safety officers that sit in cabinet with the prime minister or the premier.
00:18:08.120 Those people need to be individually elected people that have the mandate to arrest and jail crooked politicians, right?
00:18:16.640 You know, we need to have limits on government spending.
00:18:19.500 We need to have limits on, you know, the size of the civil service.
00:18:23.360 Like, you know, when I talk about, you know, like, you know, being a, you know, somebody who studied economics in a classical sense,
00:18:30.200 your economy becomes completely dysfunctional when a third of your population is either too young or too old to work.
00:18:37.240 A third of your population is employed by government in some form of government service.
00:18:41.340 And only one third of your population is productive and they have to pay for everybody else.
00:18:47.700 You know, I mean, you know, at what point are we not in the, you know, the Anne Rand Atlas shrug type scenario
00:18:52.840 where all the people that are actually productive members of society and have capital and whatever
00:18:58.400 are just going to say, you know, screw it, I'm out of here.
00:19:01.800 And I think that's what, you know, that's what's happening now.
00:19:04.820 I mean, we're seeing, you know, capital flight from Canada at a very high level.
00:19:08.400 People that are productive, that have money that can leave or actually leaving, right?
00:19:12.700 And they're taking their money with them and who can blame them?
00:19:15.700 You know, sell your, you know, if you don't want to have the equity in your house sold out for money or taxed out from underneath you,
00:19:21.220 you know, you better, you're, you're better off to sell your house and go, you know, put your money into Bitcoin and move to Costa Rica.
00:19:27.540 That's what lots of people were doing, you know, just to protect themselves from the Canadian government.
00:19:32.800 So Jeff, if, if it's, as you say, and, and you, you believe that in, in Confederation essentially has set up the Western have provinces,
00:19:43.100 the productive provinces to kind of always be this, you know, never ending bank for the East to draw from.
00:19:50.340 Um, why do you think it's taken so long for a movement like this to materialize how it sort of has over the last few months?
00:19:56.700 Uh, well, I think there's a lot of factors that have coalesced at one time.
00:20:00.000 I mean, you know, and I think you have to look at, you know, what used to be the, you know, the, the separation movement or the independence movement in Alberta.
00:20:06.460 You know, it was highly disorganized.
00:20:08.420 We still see the same thing today.
00:20:10.040 I mean, you still, I call it the sort of the yurtle, yurtle, the turtle complex, right?
00:20:14.660 You've got all of these little yurtles wanting to be the talk turtle and, um, you know, fighting with one another over who's going to be in charge once we become independent without stopping to consider that the first thing we have to do is become independent.
00:20:27.760 Right.
00:20:28.200 So, you know, I think one of the reasons that we're being so successful is because, you know, we set, you know, we looked at that.
00:20:34.820 We knew that that was a problem and we set the Alberta prosperity project up as a nonpartisan educational society rather than a political party or political organization.
00:20:45.620 And, you know, as far as we're concerned, you know, we want, you know, we want, um, trade unionists to vote for independence.
00:20:52.240 We want members of the NDP to vote for independence.
00:20:54.800 We want everybody to focus on what's going to be the best for your children and, you know, yourself, your children and your grandchildren and to vote for that.
00:21:02.780 Right.
00:21:03.340 You know, we're not going to get all of them.
00:21:04.720 I mean, there's no doubt that there's a lot of dyed in the wool, um, you know, Nahid Nenshi types that have been living in their mother's basement for decades and, you know, don't really understand how the functional economy works.
00:21:15.060 And, you know, those types of things, you know, we're never going to get those people on board.
00:21:18.580 Right.
00:21:19.440 But, you know, you know, look at Trump's, you know, President Trump's last election in the United States, you know, 60% of the Teamsters voted for him.
00:21:27.860 You know, so, you know, that, you know, I think that's, you know, what, what's really worrying the trade union bosses and the left wing in Alberta is that a lot of union members are voting for independence.
00:21:39.400 I mean, nurses, doctors, policemen, firemen, uh, uh, you know, especially a trade unionist, like guys that are working in the trades, like plumbers, pipe fitters, welders, you know, those guys, I mean, they belong to a union, but it's like, God damn right.
00:21:53.500 We want to get out of our, you know, we need to get out of Canada.
00:21:55.740 We need to get out right now.
00:21:57.120 Right.
00:21:57.560 And they're adamant about it, you know?
00:21:59.200 So, and I think that all the trade union bosses and the union bosses are, are really worried about the fact that a lot of their membership is actually going to vote for independence.
00:22:07.040 They might not say so now, but I know the support's there because everywhere we go, we're talking to them.
00:22:12.580 You know, we're, I'm overhearing conversations about independence.
00:22:15.360 I mean, I was in, you know, in a line with my daughter at Canadian Tire the other weekend, and there are a couple of people ahead of me in line that were talking about how much better off Alberta is going to be once that gets the hell out of Canada.
00:22:24.260 I mean, it's everywhere now, you know, whereas back in the, you know, the days of Gordie Kessler and, you know, sort of the early independence movement, you know, there was also that, you know, unfortunate connotation that a lot of them were, you know, had some very interesting views with regard to, and we'll get into indigenous rights in a minute, you know, indigenous rights, the rights of people other than Christians, you know, all that kind of stuff.
00:22:47.460 And I mean, you know, we want to get, you know, that's, APP was designed to get away from all of that, right?
00:22:52.680 And to be a, you know, sort of a clean break, you know, from, you know, from that connotation.
00:22:57.560 So I always laugh when people say, oh, you're a bunch of right-wing extremists.
00:23:00.780 I said, really?
00:23:01.520 Have you read, have you read the value of freedom?
00:23:04.100 Like we're talking about, all what we're talking about is just having more money for social services and more money for every Albertan.
00:23:10.220 We're talking about, you know, tripling the amount of money spent on indigenous people in the province of Alberta to lift them out of the crushing poverty that Canada has put them in and kept them in for the last 150 years, right?
00:23:23.740 So, you know, from our perspective, this is anything but, you know, a right-way exercise.
00:23:30.600 I mean, this is just common sense as far as we're concerned for everybody.
00:23:34.780 You know, and my question for the chiefs that are all upset about, you know, oh, you're going to take away our treaty rights.
00:23:40.900 I mean, it's right in the notes to reader in the value to freedom document.
00:23:44.180 It says it's important to note that the section dealing with the plan for Alberta's indigenous nations is drafted with the utmost respect for the sovereign and indigenous people of Alberta.
00:23:53.680 It's in no way intended to replace or diminish treaty rights, which will be a required subject for discussion and negotiation in the context of the development of the constitution of the Commonwealth of Alberta,
00:24:03.420 which could include a continued role for the crown of Alberta in the context of any future constitutional arrangement.
00:24:10.360 You know, it's not the purpose of this document to in any way prejudge or predetermine the outcome of any constitutional negotiations,
00:24:15.780 which will proceed with all due respect to the constitutionally protected treaty and aboriginal rights of Alberta's indigenous people and their ongoing relationship with the crown.
00:24:25.620 Right.
00:24:26.300 So all these left-wing lawyers and consultants that have been running around, you know, getting the chiefs upset.
00:24:31.280 Oh, they're going to take away your rights.
00:24:33.220 And, oh, my goodness, your relationship is with the crown.
00:24:36.220 I'm completely ambivalent on the issue of whether, you know, an independent Alberta, you know,
00:24:42.440 simply promotes the lieutenant governor to governor general.
00:24:45.840 And, you know, that we, you know, that we're a constitutional republic that still nominally, you know,
00:24:52.740 pays lip service to the British monarchy from time to time.
00:24:55.320 I don't care.
00:24:55.900 I mean, the monarchy is basically a figure, you know, it's just a figurehead in Canada now under the Canadian constitution anyway.
00:25:02.120 Right.
00:25:02.760 So, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, everybody needs to understand that there's a process going forward.
00:25:09.220 I mean, obviously, we're going to have to have a transition, you know, to a transitional government and independence.
00:25:14.100 We're going to have to have a constitutional convention.
00:25:16.160 There's going to have to be a new constitution for Alberta.
00:25:18.260 And what, you know, what we're looking to do is we want to completely get rid of the Westminster system of governance
00:25:24.260 and replace it with a system, you know, much more akin, you know, to, you know, to a mixture of the U.S. model and the Swiss model.
00:25:33.160 Right.
00:25:33.800 So, you know, we have an elected legislature.
00:25:36.000 We have an elected or not an elected.
00:25:37.600 We have.
00:25:38.280 Yeah, we have an elected Senate.
00:25:39.520 Sorry.
00:25:40.120 But based on the regions rather than population.
00:25:42.320 So the populations of the city cannot destroy the lives of people that live in rural Alberta.
00:25:47.220 Right.
00:25:48.100 You know, we'd have an elected executive, like an executive chief executive, and we'd have very key positions like the auditor general, the, you know, the attorney general, solicitor general, you know, et cetera.
00:25:58.020 You know, all being elected positions with a mandate to police government and to police politicians.
00:26:04.320 Right.
00:26:05.240 You know, and so on.
00:26:06.660 So and then on top of it, we would want citizens.
00:26:09.200 And I mean, you know, in this electronic age, there's no reason with blockchain and everything else that every citizen couldn't have, you know, have, you know, a unique blockchain identifier to vote.
00:26:21.560 And, you know, and why, why shouldn't they, why shouldn't every citizen vote on every budget?
00:26:28.640 Right.
00:26:29.620 You know, you know, to make sure that money is being allocated the way that citizens think they should be allocated.
00:26:35.000 You know, this isn't the 19th century anymore.
00:26:38.080 You know what I mean?
00:26:38.880 And then on top of it, you know, we look at some of the problems that they have in the U.S., you know, with all the pork barrel politics that comes out of their system.
00:26:46.140 You know, why wouldn't we give a line item veto on spending to the chief executive?
00:26:51.160 Right.
00:26:51.800 You know, to keep government spending from getting out of control.
00:26:54.180 Why wouldn't we have a constitutionalized limit on government borrowing?
00:26:58.600 Right.
00:26:59.400 You know, so the governments can't run up massive debts to where we're at the point that they are in Canada right now.
00:27:05.540 We're fully 50 percent of every tax dollar they take out of your pocket, you know, goes to service the interest on the national debt.
00:27:12.660 Right.
00:27:12.940 Right. You know, so a lot of us that are in the independence movement see this as a real opportunity for creating, you know, real freedom and, you know, and creating a much better, healthier way to be governed.
00:27:27.000 I mean, we also want, you know, constitutional limits, you know, on the size of the bureaucracy.
00:27:31.260 Like, at no point should public employees in Alberta, you know, exceed, you know, exceed 10 percent of the total provincial workforce.
00:27:39.680 You know, on what planet should we have a third of the people that are working within the province be employed by the government?
00:27:45.940 You know, I mean, all of the all of those things, you know, we think could be constitutionalized and, you know, and should be baked into, you know, a constitution of a free and independent Alberta.
00:27:56.940 You know, on top of it, you know, given the wealth of this province and the fiscal capacity surplus that we have in this province, why wouldn't we get, you know, enshrine property rights in our constitution and eliminate property tax?
00:28:08.600 You know, have reasonable, you know, municipal user fees and find some way, you know, some way to do it.
00:28:14.240 I think we want to think with the authors of the value of freedom suggested that we do it on frontage and a lot of farmers and ranchers were freaking out when they were calculating the amount of road that their property's fronted on.
00:28:26.680 So there'd have to be a way to do it that's equitable, you know, to our farmers and ranchers.
00:28:31.040 But, you know, but at the same time, I mean, there are costs associated with plowing roads, paving roads, fixing potholes on roads.
00:28:38.600 And why shouldn't everybody pay, you know, some sort of user fee, you know, as opposed to a progressive income tax or property tax?
00:28:46.240 You know, if you use something, you should pay for it.
00:28:48.340 Why shouldn't you?
00:28:49.300 Right.
00:28:50.060 And, you know, and if you're, you know, and if you're really wealthy and you've got lots of money to do, you know, to do those kinds of things, why wouldn't you want to?
00:28:56.460 Right.
00:28:56.660 So, you know, that's kind of the direction where we're, you know, we're going, you know, with all of these things.
00:29:01.020 And does that, I don't, you know, does that sound like that's right wing extremism?
00:29:04.900 It certainly doesn't to me.
00:29:07.200 Right.
00:29:07.560 No, and one of the, one of the like safeguards is a limited government is limited in its ability to become corrupt.
00:29:17.080 Or if somebody who gets in power, who does not share your views, then there's safeguards preventing them from abusing.
00:29:24.640 Yeah.
00:29:25.220 Yeah.
00:29:25.500 Or imposing their views on you.
00:29:27.020 It's like, oh, I decided today that because I think children should be exposed to pornography, but I'm going to put pornographic magazines in all of the schools because I like the idea of grooming children.
00:29:36.580 Like, on what planet should that be allowed?
00:29:40.560 You know, I mean, you know, I'm sorry that, you know, just because those are your personal beliefs and you got elected to, you know, an elected office doesn't mean that you should be able to do it.
00:29:49.680 You know, maybe it means you should be in jail.
00:29:51.520 I'm not sure.
00:29:53.080 I think closer to the second one than the first one.
00:29:55.980 I don't know whether you saw that.
00:29:58.560 I created a bit of controversy the other week.
00:30:00.380 I was actually suggesting that, you know, if everybody in Canada thinks MAID is such a great idea, why doesn't every prisoner that goes into a maximum security in prison not find a MAID brochure on their bunk?
00:30:12.340 And every pedophile that gets sent, you know, sent off to protective custody, why don't they find a MAID brochure on their bunk?
00:30:18.600 And why isn't it readily available to them?
00:30:20.560 You know, like, why do we make it available to veterans that can't make ends meet?
00:30:24.440 But, you know, we won't, you know, we won't provide that same service to prisoners.
00:30:27.900 I think we should.
00:30:28.780 You know, I mean, that's, you know, but that's, that has nothing to do with independence.
00:30:33.000 And that's an issue for another day, I suppose.
00:30:35.020 No, it's a good point.
00:30:36.100 You know, there's, there've been other guys in this space who have talked about, you know, like to your, your previous point about climate change, you know, if you think the, you think the climate, you think that the, the earth is overheating and it's overpopulated and too many people overproducing.
00:30:49.500 Well, you're, you're one of those too many people, aren't you?
00:30:52.280 Why don't you be the first to check out?
00:30:54.080 No, it's never seems to be those people, right?
00:30:56.600 Well, you know, you know, that's, I think that's it in a nutshell, right?
00:31:00.880 Um, so I've kind of lost the thread here of what we were talking about.
00:31:05.080 Yeah.
00:31:05.240 Well, James, James, I think, I think you were leading into something.
00:31:08.560 Yeah.
00:31:09.140 So part of that is, um, that, that would kind of circle back to like, how would you phrase some of this to some of the leftists?
00:31:17.540 And that's, that's one thing I hear often is right now, even if the APP is not, it's nonpartisan, it still gets lumped in with the right.
00:31:29.740 And there are still many on the left who they look at the UCP and they can point to like, okay, some money was mismanaged there.
00:31:38.000 And they've got kind of this little scandal or things are happening and they, it gets tricky to even push some of these ideas forward.
00:31:48.020 But aren't those the same, aren't those the same elbows up people that just reelected Carney for another, for five years of more government mis, you know, liberal government mismanagement?
00:31:56.620 I mean, I don't think people like that you're ever going to convince.
00:32:01.260 I actually saw something really funny the other day and it was a correlation between people that had multiple, um, vaccine boosters and their tendency to vote liberal.
00:32:10.540 Right.
00:32:11.080 Yeah.
00:32:11.480 So, you know, those people, you're never going to convince them, right.
00:32:15.280 That, you know, that, that the, those five or six or seven or eight booster shots that they took were bad for them.
00:32:20.880 Right.
00:32:21.120 But if you ask any of those people, you know, whether they've had the full 15, right.
00:32:26.360 I don't think there's anybody out there that's had more than five.
00:32:29.220 So for all those people that were so super pro vaccine, you know, so, so, you know, super pro COVID vaccine, you know, they've all become unvaccinated anti-vaxxers, right?
00:32:39.980 If you're under 15, then you're an anti-vaxxer.
00:32:41.800 Yeah, none of them have had 15 shots.
00:32:43.440 And if you want to shut some on that subject, if you ever want to shut somebody up online that's bleeding on about it, it's like, well, wait a minute.
00:32:49.780 If you haven't had your 15 shots, doctor, you know, then you're an unvaccinated anti-vaxxer.
00:32:56.700 And I don't think I should be talking to you anymore because you have no credibility on this subject.
00:33:01.260 Right.
00:33:01.460 And that's the problem is that there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, you know, in and around those people.
00:33:08.540 Right.
00:33:09.420 And, you know, they tend to believe what the government says.
00:33:12.200 A lot of them work for the government.
00:33:13.720 I mean, a lot of them are academics.
00:33:15.360 And let's face it, you know, academics are, you know, by and large, all on the government tit.
00:33:21.060 Like if you guys saw, you know, if you guys saw that silly critique that Trevor Toome put out last week of our value of freedom document, it was evident that he didn't even read the document.
00:33:34.540 You know, this guy, and for people that don't know, Trevor Toome is a University of Calgary economist who somehow or other managed to get himself onto Daniel Smith's What's Next Pal, right?
00:33:43.320 And so, but if the Google Trevor Toome's conflict of interest, he actually has a published conflicts of interest statement that shows that he's still in the employee of the government of Canada and an advisory and consulting capacity as an economist.
00:33:59.240 So you've got to know that anything that he says is for the benefit of the government of Canada.
00:34:03.620 And if he came out in favor of what we were doing, you know, he'd be cut off of his little government of Canada gravy train faster than it would make your head spin.
00:34:11.480 You know, look at little Timmy Caulfield, you know, who was pretending to be a doctor.
00:34:16.600 I mean, the guy's a lawyer, taught at the law faculty, and now, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars later, you know, he's now, you know, with some sort of, you know, anti-misinformation group that still runs around telling people that COVID shots are good for them.
00:34:31.860 You know, you know, notwithstanding all of the evidence to the contrary, right?
00:34:36.180 Yeah.
00:34:36.340 So, you know, and you look at all the academics in and around Timmy, you know, little Timmy Caulfield and, you know, all of the people of that ilk.
00:34:43.320 I mean, they're all paid for their opinions by the government.
00:34:46.740 And we can't believe a damn word that they say, you know, for that review, right?
00:34:51.280 And this Trevor Toon character was, you know, you know, was basically the same thing, you know, the same thing.
00:34:56.800 And, of course, we pointed out, you know, recently that everything that he said was wrong.
00:35:01.360 It was based on a misreading of our document.
00:35:03.360 And ever since then, he's shut up and hasn't said anything more about it.
00:35:06.560 One of the things I found was really funny was that somebody actually challenged him on the idea that he said, oh, well, Alberta, you know, if they separate from Canada and they're their own entity.
00:35:16.320 So it's like an economist.
00:35:17.460 Let's assume that Alberta will exist in a vacuum without access to any markets, right?
00:35:23.020 So somebody responded to him online and said, well, wait a minute.
00:35:25.640 What if, you know, if even if you could assume that Alberta would have zero economic ties to Canada, which is a silly suggestion, right?
00:35:34.400 If they entered into a free market with the United States where there are zero tariffs on both sides of the Alberta U.S. border and had a strong economic union with the United States,
00:35:43.460 wouldn't they be far better off than they would be within the relationship with Canada?
00:35:47.760 And Trevor Toome had to admit that that would be the case.
00:35:51.080 Right.
00:35:51.680 And everybody needs to understand that, you know, again, it's just like this value of freedom document, you know, that I've been talking about so much tonight.
00:35:57.560 That was produced by, you know, CEOs of financial institutions, actuaries, accountants, economists, auditors.
00:36:06.500 You know, there's a tremendous amount of input from, you know, right across the, you know, the spectrum of, you know, Alberta industry, academia, economics, et cetera, that, you know, that checked and cross-checked and rechecked all of the numbers in that document with a view towards, you know, creating projections that were very, very, very conservative.
00:36:28.180 Right.
00:36:29.120 On the theory that, hey, you know, like under promise and over deliver.
00:36:32.200 Right.
00:36:32.720 So, and we also didn't want to be attacked for, you know, inflating numbers or being unduly optimistic and the rest of it.
00:36:39.740 Right.
00:36:40.440 And, you know, and the only way that, you know, that Trevor Toome could suggest that we were unduly optimistic or, you know, or overstating things was he was double counting things.
00:36:48.700 And he wasn't understanding that certain scenarios in that document were either or, and they weren't cumulative.
00:36:54.820 Right.
00:36:54.940 So, you know, you know, so that's, you know, what we've been dealing with.
00:36:59.720 So people really need to internalize, you know, how much better off we're going to be as an independent country and get away from, you know, all of these, you know, all this thought that somehow or other, you know, that we should have any emotional attachment to Canada or that there's some real value in staying in Canada.
00:37:17.120 I mean, I was at that Red Deer What's Next panel meeting with Premier Smith like three weeks ago.
00:37:24.940 And one of the things that was really interesting at that panel, the only reason that Premier Smith could come up with for why Alberta should stay in Canada was she felt it would be easier to get a pipeline at the tables that she was at.
00:37:39.660 If we were in Canada rather than outside of Canada, right.
00:37:43.820 And I mean, you know, from our perspective, I mean, it's a, that's a pretty silly statement.
00:37:47.520 I mean, Keystone XL is back on the books.
00:37:50.560 TCPL is working on it.
00:37:51.720 Donald Trump's going to approve it.
00:37:53.660 So there's going to be one new pipeline.
00:37:55.780 So that'll add, you know, according to Premier Smith, another $20 billion a year to the provincial economy.
00:38:01.280 If BC doesn't want to give us a pipeline to Tidewater, I know because I've been down to Washington, it would be very easy for us to get a pipeline through Montana, Idaho and Washington State to Seattle.
00:38:12.600 So there's a pipeline to Tidewater and if BC really doesn't want to give us one, then we can have a discussion with BC as to what tariffs we're going to put on the throughput of goods from British Columbia to Ontario as they transit Alberta by train.
00:38:26.880 You know, nobody's going to be cutting off their nose to spite their face after independence.
00:38:30.740 So, you know, guys like Trevor Toome theorizing that Canada is going to be so mad at Alberta after independence, it's not going to trade with us at all.
00:38:39.020 They're already mad.
00:38:39.420 You know, or just stupid, right?
00:38:40.960 I mean, it's the stupidest thing ever, right?
00:38:42.880 Yeah.
00:38:43.260 And, you know, and people need to internalize that.
00:38:46.080 There's no good argument left for Alberta remaining in Canada other than, oh, I have this attachment to the Canadian flag.
00:38:53.320 Well, you know, you're still going to be a Canadian citizen.
00:38:55.340 So nobody, you know, we're going to, you know, continue to have more free speech in Alberta than we will if we stay in Canada because they're planning on shutting down the internet and preventing guys like you and I from having these conversations soon, right?
00:39:07.780 You know, if, you know, if a culture minister Zeebo has his way, right?
00:39:13.140 So, you know, we'll have more free speech in Alberta than in the rest of Canada.
00:39:16.020 People can still fly their Canadian flags if they're so attached to it.
00:39:19.140 They can wander around waving their Canadian passports in the air going, oh, I'm so Canadian and they can go, good for you, we're happy for you.
00:39:25.940 But don't you feel better that you're so much richer now that you don't have to pay tax, right?
00:39:29.820 Yeah, you're welcome.
00:39:30.880 I remember when flying the Canadian flag was a, that was something that only right-wing extremists did in 2022.
00:39:37.120 I know, I know, and I'm telling all of, I'm telling all of these people, you know, for all of you that were flying the flag during the, because you're still driving around rural Alberta, you still see all these faded Canadian flags flying that are left over from the convoy.
00:39:49.640 And I'm telling everybody, like, please stop flying that stupid worn out Canadian flag and go get by yourself a nice brand new shiny Alberta flag and fly that instead, right?
00:39:59.580 And more and more as I'm driving through the province, I just, I literally just came back from Grand Prairie on the weekend.
00:40:05.480 I'm seeing more and more shiny Alberta flags flying from one end of the province to the other, and I'm really happy to see it, you know?
00:40:12.940 You know, Jeff, at the risk of souring the mood, and I know it will slightly, I want to ask you something that we talked with Bruce Party about.
00:40:21.780 I know you're best buddies with Bruce Party, and we'll get to more about him later.
00:40:26.180 But something that we asked him that I'm curious about your response to is, what do you think, just sort of picking up on this thread, what do you think the response would be from the Canadian government with respect to the military bases that are in the province?
00:40:42.260 Because I know that that's sort of a, when you're talking about a nation and an independent state, you have to, you know, consider what a military looks like.
00:40:49.580 You know, is there, what do you anticipate?
00:40:51.300 Well, that's all fully costed in the value of freedom.
00:40:54.400 First of all, you know, from, you know, from an APP perspective, and from a, you know, I think a negotiating perspective, you know, Albertans need to remember that, you know, over the last 40 years, we put over $850 billion in equalization into the rest of Canada, right?
00:41:11.060 So any suggested, oh, well, when Alberta leaves Canada, one-tenth of the national debt will be $140 billion.
00:41:17.680 Like, why would we take a tenth of the national debt?
00:41:20.760 Like, we've already more than paid our share of the national debt through equalization, right?
00:41:25.780 And then on top of it, just because I've done this type of work in the context of large claims that I've done, you know, if you were to get the actuaries to work and apply even Bank of Canada interest, you know, to the $840 billion that we provided to Canada over time,
00:41:38.740 the real numbers are that Canada owes us something like $4 or $5 trillion, right?
00:41:43.640 Like, I'm not exaggerating at all.
00:41:45.460 I mean, that's, you know, the, you know, compound interest applied to numbers, you know, of that size over that length of time turn into those sorts of numbers, right?
00:41:55.300 So, you know, our position is, you know, A, you know, what's, you know, what's the dirt under those military bases worth, you know, minus the, you know, all of the environmental cleanup that's going to have to be done, et cetera, et cetera.
00:42:10.260 You know, that's a real estate issue.
00:42:12.160 And, you know, we won't charge you anything to take those bases over, one, right?
00:42:17.180 You know, cleanup of unexploded ordnance.
00:42:19.640 I mean, I used to, I was a combat engineer when I was a kid.
00:42:22.840 I was in the Canadian military and we used to blow shit up or blow things up all over Wainwright, you know?
00:42:28.300 And I mean, I can't even imagine how much unexploded ordnance there was, is on Wainwright.
00:42:34.420 Like when we were on exercise, my last major exercise at Wainwright was RV83.
00:42:39.500 And we used to bivouac at night on exercise to the sound of the whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop of 105 millimeter artillery shells flying over your head
00:42:49.740 and then impacting another five miles or 10 miles down range at Wainwright, right?
00:42:55.200 So there's unexploded ordnance all over that base.
00:42:58.760 Well, we won't charge Canada to clean it up.
00:43:00.500 We'll just take it over, right?
00:43:02.660 You know, same like Suffield.
00:43:04.060 I mean, Suffield is a big biological chemical warfare training area.
00:43:07.620 I mean, I don't even want to think about, you know, some of the horror shows that are buried on Suffield.
00:43:12.020 But again, we'll just take it over and not charge Canada to clean it up, right?
00:43:15.580 You know, I mean, that's, you know, same thing with the national parks.
00:43:19.260 I mean, they're Alberta.
00:43:20.060 They're within the borders of Alberta.
00:43:22.320 You know, we'll put a real estate value on them and we'll chalk it up to the four, five, six trillion dollars you owe us and move on, right?
00:43:28.920 That's all subject to negotiations.
00:43:31.340 And so, yeah, of course, you know, unknown until they're figured out.
00:43:34.840 Yeah, $365 billion in pension, right?
00:43:38.060 Like, you know, you know, but what everybody needs to internalize.
00:43:41.620 I mean, even if we just walked away from Canada tomorrow and we didn't get a nickel back, you know, and I know people hate that bad.
00:43:48.880 But anyway, if we didn't get a nickel back in Alberta band or it does to the bad bill, but anyway, we'll keep them.
00:43:58.900 They have heritage.
00:43:59.680 No, I personally like nickel back.
00:44:01.560 Anyway, I think Chad Kruger is a great guy.
00:44:04.120 But anyway, getting back to what I was saying, Alberta can easily afford to fund pensions at double or triple the current pension rate, you know, indefinitely out of our fiscal capacity surplus, whether CPP gave, you know, gave us our share of the money back or not.
00:44:22.880 You know, so those are, you know, those are things like, you know, nobody needs to worry about their pension, right?
00:44:28.880 You know, just because of the amount of money we're going to have left over when we no longer have to send money to Ottawa, right?
00:44:35.440 And all, you know, all the tax revenue that's generated in Alberta stays in Alberta.
00:44:39.760 You know, the other thing that Trevor Toome didn't look, you know, didn't even consider or talk about when he was talking about how much poorer Alberta is going to be if it leaves Canada is, you know, the economic boom that's going to happen in this province.
00:44:52.060 Once 100% of all of our money stays in Alberta to be spent in Alberta, right?
00:44:59.580 You know, like the APP value of freedom plan, when we talk about tripling the spend on Indigenous communities in Alberta, right?
00:45:06.840 All of that money gets spent in Alberta.
00:45:08.940 Like, wouldn't we rather have, you know, $5 billion going to Indigenous communities in Alberta with 100% of that money being spent in Alberta than have $15 billion a year going to Quebec to have 100% of that money being spent in Quebec?
00:45:21.060 You know, from an economic perspective, I mean, Alberta is going to be booming once all of the money that we currently send to Quebec, Ontario, the Maritimes, all the rest of it, all that money stays here, whether it's in people's pockets because they're not spending, they're not, it's not being taxed away from them.
00:45:37.580 And the money being taken, you know, to fund the East, all that money stays here.
00:45:42.780 So we're going to have a booming economy with a massive tax base, you know, where we could pay for everything that we need to do, both out of oil and gas royalties and corporate taxes.
00:45:52.260 Like, we could have a really low corporate tax rate of 10%, our province would be flooded with corporations wanting to come and locate here, you know, to take advantage of, you know, low taxes, the elimination of all Canadian federal regulation, right?
00:46:07.860 You know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:46:10.180 I mean, you know, for the life of me, I can't understand anybody that thinks that we're better off if we stay in Canada.
00:46:16.040 And nobody, and to be clear, nobody on that side of the argument, any of your left-wing argument, relatives, Danielle Smith, anybody in the NDP, nobody could make an economic case as to why Albertans would be better off economically if they stayed in Canada.
00:46:31.940 You know, because again, oh, we're going to get one more pipeline.
00:46:34.500 Well, we're going to get more pipelines anyway.
00:46:36.800 Like, you know, one of the main reasons I've been to Washington, D.C., I've met with senior, you know, senior members of the current U.S. administration.
00:46:45.380 The main reason that they support Alberta independence is for the U.S. national security and U.S. energy security, right?
00:46:53.500 You know, so, you know, they want our oil and gas.
00:46:56.960 We could easily have three new pipelines through Montana tomorrow if we didn't have the federal government blocking, you know, that from happening.
00:47:05.320 The Canadian federal government, not the U.S. federal government.
00:47:08.320 You know, we're not landlocked, we're policy-locked, and the policies that are shutting in our industries come out of Ottawa, not Edmonton, or Washington, for that matter.
00:47:19.320 So, we'll make sure we link, we'll link the document and everything in the description.
00:47:25.760 Yeah, please do, please do.
00:47:27.060 It's on the EPP website, and all of your viewers should read it.
00:47:31.800 It's amazing.
00:47:32.940 And like every, you know, and it's really a lot of fun because now this document, you know, the value of freedom document is really, you know, is being circulated far and wide in all of the C-suites across Alberta, right?
00:47:42.540 And I'm getting texts all the time, hey, I just gave this buddy with that document of mine to, you know, to a CEO that runs a major, you know, oil and gas company.
00:47:51.680 Or I just gave your document to, you know, CEO of a, you know, major engineering firm.
00:47:56.100 I just gave your document to, you know, the CEO of, you know, XYZ, right?
00:47:59.920 And it's like, you know, and the one comment that we keep getting back from everybody is, well, it's obvious that you guys are sandbagging.
00:48:06.220 You're understating the amount of revenue and the amount of wealth that we're going to have after independence, you know, by, you know, by a huge factor.
00:48:14.260 And it's like, yeah, we did that.
00:48:15.740 And we did that intentionally.
00:48:16.820 Like, we want everybody to understand that the numbers in this document are extremely conservative, you know, and, you know, so, and that's the reaction we're getting from everybody that understands business and everybody that understands economics and everybody that understands the revenue picture of this province.
00:48:34.260 And it's when they read that document, they're going like, yeah, that's really, really conservative.
00:48:38.360 And why wouldn't we be doing this?
00:48:40.200 And why shouldn't we be doing this?
00:48:42.620 So just to kind of reiterate, it seems like you're painting like a positive vision for the future.
00:48:48.840 And a lot of that comes down to the kind of financial side of things.
00:48:53.700 But there's also...
00:48:54.480 What else is there?
00:48:55.400 Well, no, there's the freedom aspect.
00:48:59.020 There's the constitution.
00:49:00.800 There's the putting limits on the government.
00:49:02.640 There's that side of things as well.
00:49:04.940 And some of these issues will resonate more than others.
00:49:08.280 And some people really value the, like, a robust constitution.
00:49:12.120 Some people see the economic as kind of the primary.
00:49:18.220 So, and I do like how the document outlines the fiscal side of things really well.
00:49:25.400 I was curious on what some of this looks.
00:49:31.360 And one question on kind of the, with the increased funding for indigenous services to set up, to, like, help reinforce them with what they need to become sovereign entities in Alberta.
00:49:44.800 What does that look like?
00:49:47.080 And what's that relationship within the Crown or the Alberta government at the point?
00:49:52.660 What happens with that, like, $4 to $5 billion if one band is not doing as well as another?
00:50:00.360 Like, do we evaluate?
00:50:01.360 At that point, it's pretty hard to figure out how they wouldn't be doing as well, right?
00:50:06.820 You know, because the funding would be based on a, you know, on a per capita basis, right?
00:50:11.160 And the funding, you know, the funding model that we're talking about is for all of these funds to go into, you know, in essence, community endowment funds.
00:50:19.340 You know, like an educational endowment fund, an economic endowment fund, you know, economic development endowment fund, a housing, you know, endowment fund, you know, all those types of things where the money just continues to grow and grow and grow and grow, right?
00:50:32.280 You know, we're also talking about respecting, you know, indigenous sovereignty by letting them take over, you know, like, why is it the province of Alberta needs to license a casino on reserve, right?
00:50:42.740 You know, there's no reason that if, you know, that if a First Nations government, as long as, you know, as long as, you know, basic regulations are followed, the casinos aren't engaged in fraud, you know, that, you know, the people aren't being cheated out of their money, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:50:57.680 Why shouldn't the First Nations be able to, you know, license and operate casinos, you know, on their own lands without permission of the Alberta government?
00:51:06.260 You know, why shouldn't they be able to, you know, collect excise tax, you know, on tobacco, you know, or whatever other goods that they want to collect taxes on, you know, on their land?
00:51:17.520 You know, all of those types of things, they shouldn't need the permission of a government to do those things, right?
00:51:22.180 So permission's one side of things.
00:51:24.580 Let's say on a reservation, if there was the same kind of corruption that we're seeing with some of the municipalities of, like, monies being misallocated or it goes missing, like, with the Alberta, like, would you step in to apply the same kind of framework or laws that we have to prevent?
00:51:44.360 I think the criminal law is still going to be the criminal law, right?
00:51:49.400 You know, we're going to have one unified criminal code for Alberta and, you know, you're not going to be allowed to, you know, to murder somebody with impunity on a, you know, on a First Nation, on First Nations land, you know, as opposed to elsewhere, right?
00:52:01.580 And, you know, and again, when I talk about electing, you know, when we're talking about having an elected Senate, you know, based on regions, that would include two senators from each treaty area, you know, in the province, and it would include, you know, having First Nations be able to vote for and elect, you know, whoever it is that's going to be, you know, enforcing the law against crooked politicians.
00:52:22.620 And I don't think that, you know, that First Nations politicians should be exempt from prosecution any more than non-First Nations politicians should be exempt from prosecution, right?
00:52:32.740 You know, so we're going to have one unified criminal law that's going to apply equally across the province, you know, be it on reserve or off reserve.
00:52:39.340 And nobody, you know, nobody, I think, in their right mind would suggest that anything else would make sense.
00:52:43.960 The problem we have now is that the RCMP, you know, the RCMP and the federal government, you know, are loathe to step in and are loathe to, you know, enforce the law or investigate cases, you know, you know, allegations of corruption, you know, on reserve.
00:52:59.020 And they certainly, you know, they certainly should.
00:53:01.240 And I think that's a, you know, that's an area where, you know, simply the law hasn't, you know, hasn't been enforced to the degree that it should, you know, and I would hope that that would change in an independent Alberta.
00:53:10.040 So when we were interviewing Bruce about this and we talked about this issue, it was sort of fresh off you guys having your debate on, on the Sean Newman show and great episode.
00:53:23.400 I thought you both did excellent.
00:53:25.560 And, and, and, and we, we liked talking to Bruce, but we, we, we wanted to see what, I don't think either of you in that debate really got the chance to flesh out a significant point of contention where you were mentioning to Bruce that it was your, it was your contention that his argument was to remove the rights of 300,000 indigenous Albertans.
00:53:48.440 And Bruce was countering though, was saying, no, he said this on our show anyway.
00:53:53.320 No, he, it's not so much in, in the aspect of removing rights of individuals, but rather equalizing rights so that everybody starts on the same playing field in an independent Alberta.
00:54:03.800 That's just, that's just bullshit.
00:54:05.000 I mean, that's pure bullshit, right?
00:54:06.700 Um, you know, he's just trying to dress it up a lot more nicely and he's trying to get back to the old reform party.
00:54:12.520 Everybody should be equal thing.
00:54:14.580 Right.
00:54:14.920 And, um, you know, I think he got a lot of criticism after that episode, because he said a lot of things, frankly, that were really offensive, including, you know, we were going to tear up the treaties into little pieces.
00:54:24.400 We're going to chop the reserves up into little bits.
00:54:26.940 You know, he said a lot of things that were really inflammatory and for quite frankly, really stupid.
00:54:31.800 And, uh, um, you know, that he's trying to backpedal from and hide it behind this semantic, the semantic game that everybody should be equal.
00:54:40.400 And my point to that is nobody's equal.
00:54:42.580 Right.
00:54:42.980 Um, everybody has, you know, different rights and different economic interests across our society.
00:54:48.840 First Nations people's rights, whether people like it or not, find their basis in property law and property rights.
00:54:55.960 Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, their grandparents and great grandparents owned all, as a matter of law, owned all of the land in Alberta, all of it.
00:55:04.960 Right.
00:55:05.440 And by treaty and agreement with the crown, they relinquished their ownership interests in the land subject to, um, you know, you know, trust agreements that are called treaties.
00:55:18.380 Right.
00:55:18.820 So what Bruce is effectively proposing is that, well, white people can have their property rights and white people can pass down, you know, their property from generation to generation.
00:55:28.000 And the Westons and the Broncmans and the Woodwards and all those people can have their transgenerational trusts.
00:55:33.860 But Indian, the first nations people cap.
00:55:36.800 So, you know, and I, you know, one of the things that, you know, that I, I don't know if I said it in that debate or not, but, you know, I noticed that when Bruce talks about how much he hates this idea of, you know, communal ownership of land, he's not picking on the Hutterites.
00:55:50.100 You know what I mean?
00:55:51.840 Like, you know, so, you know, what I, you know, and, and, and don't, you know, don't ever, you know, and everybody thinks that Bruce and I don't like one another.
00:55:58.920 I really like him.
00:55:59.800 I think he has a marvelous intellect.
00:56:01.320 He, he and I have had some wonderful conversations.
00:56:03.440 We, you know, we, you know, we agree on probably 90% of things because we're both trained as lawyers.
00:56:09.220 We have a similar background.
00:56:10.720 We have similar education.
00:56:12.100 You know, we're capable of having, you know, is, you know, as I guess as heated as that episode was on, uh, you know, on the Sean Newman podcast.
00:56:19.520 Passionate, maybe passionate.
00:56:21.180 Yeah.
00:56:21.400 I mean, we disagree vehemently on that point.
00:56:23.320 And I think with the greatest respect to Bruce is that he doesn't, you know, he doesn't really understand treaty and Aboriginal rights law.
00:56:31.340 It doesn't understand the depth of the history behind it, uh, and why it is in an independent Alberta.
00:56:37.220 You know, we're best, you know, we're, you know, we're best to respect those rights, um, on a going forward basis as to trying to reopen them and relitigate them.
00:56:45.560 Like, as an example, most Canadians and most Albertans don't know that the entire mineral title to Northern Alberta was obtained by fraud, right?
00:56:55.000 By the federal government under treaty number eight.
00:56:57.340 I have correspondence in my office, uh, you know, and it's archival material.
00:57:01.380 So I don't think he burned down my office and the documents go away.
00:57:03.840 These aren't secret documents.
00:57:04.980 Right.
00:57:05.560 But there was, you know, there's an RCMP.
00:57:07.900 There's an RCMP colonel by the name of Walker who, you know, was trying to prove his worth to the federal government.
00:57:14.440 He wanted to be a treaty commissioner.
00:57:16.140 And the reason was that if you were a treaty commissioner, there was lots of room for crap and corruption and bribes and, you know, and cheating Indian people out of land and telling people that were entitled to land and several T that they should get made a script.
00:57:26.780 And then that cheap people are there made a script and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
00:57:30.020 Right.
00:57:30.220 So there was lots of money to be made if you're a treaty commissioner.
00:57:33.340 So Walker writes this letter to the minister of the interior, Clifford Sifton at the time and says, dear sir, um, we need to get it, you know, because they had a failed treaty commission to treaty eight in 1891.
00:57:43.740 It just didn't come together.
00:57:45.120 And Walker was trying to get this treaty commission back up and running and he wanted to be the commissioner.
00:57:50.240 So he says, we've got to get a deal done with the Indians before they find out the value of their minerals in their territory.
00:57:56.960 Because once they find out the value of the minerals, they're going to want far more for their rights than they do at present.
00:58:02.800 Right.
00:58:03.080 That's documented.
00:58:04.660 Right.
00:58:05.140 And what most Albertans don't understand, like the Bruce party, everybody should be equal people, you know, don't understand, don't acknowledge, don't know is that.
00:58:13.140 I mean, the geologic survey of Canada was in Alberta, you know, in the 1880s and 1890s.
00:58:19.700 Right.
00:58:19.940 So they were, you know, they knew how big the oil and gas resource of Northern Alberta was even in the 1890s.
00:58:26.420 They're writing letter.
00:58:27.300 Oh my goodness.
00:58:27.940 This is the biggest oil field in, you know, in North America, if not the world, this will put the oil fields of Pennsylvania to shame.
00:58:34.920 And, you know, if you want to hear something really funny, there's a place called Athabasca Landing where in the 1880s, prior to treaty eight, a geologic survey of Canada went in with an old wooden drill rig.
00:58:45.500 So no blowout preventers.
00:58:47.300 No, you know, you can see where this is going and they just think it's a good idea to go up in Northern Alberta and start punching holes in the ground that are a thousand feet or more deep.
00:58:54.800 Right. So anyway, they set one of these rigs up on a sandbar in the Athabasca River near a place called Pelican Narrows, and they hit a gas pocket that blew Wildcat out of control for 60 years.
00:59:06.480 And it literally created a microclimate in the middle of the Athabasca River.
00:59:11.080 It's burned itself out, but burns were growing and it was all very Jurassic Park because we had all this heat and CO2 and all these wonderful gases being released that are actually good for plants.
00:59:21.440 Right. Being released in the middle of the Athabasca River Valley that created a microclimate in that area.
00:59:27.560 Right. That's all part of Alberta's history. Right. And guys like Bruce are ignorant of that and they don't understand that we don't want to keep litigating these issues with, you know, Alberta First Nations because one day, you know, somebody else, you know, a judge could end up saying, well, you know, Mr. Party, you're right.
00:59:42.840 I guess we don't have a treaty anymore. All of that land in Treaty 8 is now unceded aboriginal type of land and we better get ready to write them a check for $40 trillion for all the natural resources we've taken out of their land under a fraudulent treaty.
00:59:57.800 Right. So, you know, there's a lot of reasons, you know, as to why, you know, First Nations people in this province need to be respected.
01:00:04.840 They need to be treated, you know, equitably and respectfully. And, you know, and then on top of it, you know, what I was telling Bruce was, you know, from a practical perspective,
01:00:12.180 that we are, you know, we are not going to win a referendum, you know, where we convince, you know, Albertans that we're responsible enough to, you know, to be independent, you know,
01:00:22.180 while we're going to war with 300,000 Aboriginal people in this province because we refuse to respect their rights.
01:00:27.340 To me, it's just a non-starter. And, you know, it might be, you know, a nice little academic thing for Bruce to do,
01:00:33.380 or it might be a good way for him to get clicks on whatever he's doing or that, you know, he can get attention by, you know, saying this stuff.
01:00:40.320 But, you know, as I told him on the Sean Newman debate, and as I've told him privately in a very, you know, collegial fashion, it doesn't help.
01:00:49.780 And, you know, if you want to go, you know, you know, insult and annoy Indigenous people, go back to Ontario and do it there,
01:00:56.400 because doing it in Alberta isn't helping us one little bit. And you got to decide what you want to be.
01:01:01.080 You know, do you want to, you know, do you want to see a free and independent Alberta or do you want to continue to nurture your antipathy or antipathy for Indigenous people having rights that you don't have?
01:01:11.420 You know, so for me, that's the, you know, that's the issue. Right.
01:01:14.220 So, Jeff, with your passion and your obvious, you know, respect and care for the Indigenous communities, First Nation groups,
01:01:24.340 I mean, you have it in your plan. Every time you get asked about it, you know, you say very similar, you know, very similar intentions.
01:01:33.300 Why do you think then there is such sort of an immediate, visceral kind of negative reaction that we've seen publicized by the Indigenous groups?
01:01:43.160 Like we, James and I were at the, that rally for Alberta independence that was held soon after the last federal election.
01:01:49.160 And there were, there were a number of Indigenous groups there that we, that we were walking around,
01:01:53.220 documenting and hearing, talking, and they immediately had such a negative reaction to it.
01:01:59.340 Why do you think that is?
01:02:00.400 Well, you know, unfortunately, I think a lot of them, you know, have been, you know, over, have been propagandized. Right.
01:02:08.560 I mean, look at, you know, look at the, you know, they, they were told that every one of them was told to get vaccinated.
01:02:14.240 I think the highest vaccine take-up rates in Canada were probably on reserve. Right.
01:02:19.120 So, you know, they're constantly being told, you know, that the government is here to help them and you got to believe the government and, you know, that, you know, the government is good for you.
01:02:27.440 You know, so, you know, that's something that they, you know, that has to be overcome for sure.
01:02:32.720 But that being said, I mean, my question for every Indigenous person in Alberta and every chief and council,
01:02:37.860 why do you think that, or why is it that you support, you know, $15 billion a year going to Quebec, you know,
01:02:45.760 to the benefit of, you know, the citizens of Quebec, Montreal, Quebec City, you know, et cetera,
01:02:50.400 when a good portion of that money can stay in Alberta and go directly to your communities for the benefit of your communities in an independent Alberta.
01:02:57.440 And I think, you know, the word is getting out.
01:02:59.320 We're slowly making, you know, making inroads in, you know, into the broader Indigenous community, you know,
01:03:05.260 and saying, look, you know, this is, don't look at this as a threat.
01:03:08.700 Look at this as an opportunity.
01:03:10.580 Right.
01:03:10.980 Because at the end of the day, I mean, the intention of everybody that I'm working with,
01:03:15.340 and even all the rooms that I'm speaking to where there's 800, 1,000 people,
01:03:19.880 when I talk about our plan for, you know, our plan to triple the spend for Indigenous people in this province,
01:03:26.340 to lift them out of the poverty that the government of Canada has left them in, I get nothing but a plus.
01:03:31.720 I mean, sure, you know, there's the odd person that's been listening to Bruce Party and one wanders around muttering,
01:03:36.560 well, why shouldn't everybody be equal?
01:03:37.940 We want everybody to be equal and why are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:03:41.920 But they're the vast minority in our movement.
01:03:44.720 You know, the majority of Albertans respect treaty and Aboriginal rights, you know,
01:03:50.300 find and think it's a national embarrassment that we still have communities in Alberta that don't have safe and clean drinking water.
01:03:56.780 You know, that where they're, you know, forced to live three generations deep in a crappy 1,250 square foot CMHC house
01:04:04.740 that's chock full of black mold and it's falling or falling down around their ears.
01:04:09.500 I mean, I think if the average Albertan, you know, saw the level of poverty that, you know,
01:04:14.340 that Indigenous people in this province have been forced to live in by the government of Canada, you know, they would weep.
01:04:21.340 I mean, I know I have.
01:04:22.520 I mean, I've been door to door in these communities and I've seen the level of poverty in these communities.
01:04:27.080 It's heartbreaking.
01:04:28.260 It really is.
01:04:29.040 And there's no excuse for it.
01:04:30.960 So you have almost two trains of thought.
01:04:32.880 And I hear this and the counter protester, they were talking about Canada being a corrupt, genocidal state.
01:04:41.440 And then at the same time, they're waving like a Canadian flag.
01:04:47.780 Still wanting to stay in Canada.
01:04:50.020 I'm like, what is it?
01:04:51.120 Like, wouldn't it be a good opportunity to rethink and or like work with a new government in a new structure that is not corrupt in the same way?
01:05:01.960 Like, oh, absolutely.
01:05:03.780 I mean, I hope I hope the first president or prime minister of Alberta is an Indigenous person.
01:05:08.520 You know, I mean, you know, I mean, certainly we're going to have Indigenous senators.
01:05:11.580 We're going to have, you know, that, you know, we're going to have, you know, the respect for Indigenous rights is going to be baked into a constitution of a free and independent Alberta.
01:05:21.720 I mean, you know, they need to look at this as an opportunity, you know, not as a, you know, not as a challenge or not as a threat.
01:05:28.060 And again, you know, having guys like Bruce Party running around saying, we're going to tear up the treaties and chop the reserves up in a little bit and making asinine comments like that don't help because it's not, that's not what's going to happen.
01:05:39.780 It'll literally be over my dead body.
01:05:41.940 You know, like it's, you know, I didn't wake up one day and this is actually one of the reasons that I was involved in founding the Alberta Prosperity Project along with Lawrence Corderay.
01:05:50.720 He's a former vice chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
01:05:53.880 I was really uncomfortable with all of the independence groups in Alberta, you know, and the degree of antipathy a lot of those groups exhibited towards, you know, Indigenous rights, you know, as well as other minority rights.
01:06:07.400 So, you know, we wanted to create an organization where thinking people who are well-educated, that were uncomfortable, you know, with less informed opinions on certain issues, you know, we're, you know, we're not, you know, we're not going to be holding sway in the context of some sort of political organization.
01:06:27.640 Right. So, you know, really that's to me why I was involved in founding APP was I, I believe that, you know, Alberta independence is our only way forward, but I wasn't comfortable with, you know, some of the positions that a lot of the independence groups take on certain, on certain issues. Right.
01:06:44.900 What do you think right now, um, is the primary impediment to a successful referendum vote?
01:06:54.460 Daniel Smith.
01:06:56.420 Okay.
01:06:56.860 Really? I mean, we'll see. I mean, she's still, you know, she still has about three months left to go in her courtship with Mark Carney. Um, you know, she gave him six months. I mean, none of us actually think that there's any hope whatsoever that, um, uh, that Mark Carney is going to give her anything she wants. And then Danielle is going to have a very, very difficult decision to make. And that is, does she go with 70% of the people of her base, which are the people that elected her or, you know, is she going to continue to sell us out to the federal?
01:07:26.840 Right. And, you know, in my heart of hearts, I think Danielle, you know, we'll come over to our side at the end of the day when Carney, you know, proves himself to be the liar. We all know that he is right. There won't be a pipeline deal in six months. I mean, so what? She gets these memorandums of understanding with, you know, Doug Ford and, uh, you know, whoever else, you know, Wob Canoe, you know, refused to sign, you know, an MOU.
01:07:48.840 Um, an MOU. So any hope of a pipeline through Manitoba is toast. Right. Um, uh, you know, Doug Ford, I mean, you know, when's Danielle going to wake up to the fact that of course, Doug Ford wants a new pipeline to Ontario. He wants all the refining jobs in Ontario. So why are we building pipelines instead of building refineries in Alberta?
01:08:07.520 You know, in independent Alberta, we don't even need pipelines. We'll just build more refineries. We'll have so much excess fiscal capacity that we could enter into private public partnerships and build, you know, massive refineries.
01:08:19.200 And then we'll just ship all of our gas and diesel by train and we won't ship crude oil anymore, or we'll convert our existing crude pipelines into gasoline or diesel pipelines. And instead of that, you know, those, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the endpoint of those pipelines being, uh, a U S refinery, it'll just be a distribution hub where all the gas and diesel can be distributed out to the broader U S market.
01:08:41.240 We have lots of options, right. In an independent Alberta, once we're free of all this carbon, all the, you know, all this stupid carbon nonsense. Right. I mean, hell, I mean, the Montany gas field, as an example, has now been estimated at 4 trillion cubic feet of gas. Right. We could, you know, um, that would be, we could set up a massive AI, um, data center hub in and around Grand Prairie. Right. The cooling costs would be next to nothing for six or seven months of the year.
01:09:10.240 No kidding. Right. No. Um, yeah. And then on top of it, you just set up a giant co-generation plant. We don't even need nuclear power. Like why is anybody even talking about nuclear power? I'll tell you why, because Brookfield is heavily invested in small modular nuclear reactors. Right. You know, so, you know, we can build massive co-gen plants in and around Grand Prairie, plug them into the Montany gas field. And we'd have enough gas in that field to power those plants and those AI hubs for a thousand years, you know, without, you know,
01:09:40.080 without having to worry about how we're going to dispose of, you know, you know, uh, you know, leftover nuclear fuel, um, nuclear waste, you know, or alternative, you know, and alternatively the corruption inherent of, you know, putting all of these nuclear, you know, modular nuclear plants into the Alberta power grid.
01:09:57.080 So that we could all be forced to buy electric cars. So that every time we go to plug in our electric car, the money goes straight to Brookfield, then from Brookfield into Carney's offshore bank account.
01:10:07.220 You know, that's his plan. I mean, that's his so-called energy corridor. You know, his energy corridor is really a money corridor to continue sucking money out of Alberta into the coffers of Brookfield and into all of his offshore bank account.
01:10:21.440 You know, why do we want to stay in a country that does this to us? I mean, I was talking to people that, you know, uh, you know, I think it was, uh, you know, recently at that, uh, Calgary law, he encouraged to listen event, you know, and I was talking about stakeholder capitalism and, you know,
01:10:35.720 Carney's bill C5 that's now passed with the unanimous support of the conservatives and with Daniel Smith getting out her little cheerleader pom-poms for, yay, bill C5 and bill C5, right. Um, really is just, you know, the, you know, is just your stakeholder capitalism on steroids, right?
01:10:53.420 Carney gets to pick who wins and who loses. He gets to pick which companies, um, uh, are exempt from federal law. He gets to pick which companies get sole source federal contracts, um, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
01:11:04.380 And, you know, what I was saying is that it reminds me of Mussolini's program in the thirties, you know, that they called fascist, you know, everybody working together. It was just basically stakeholder capitalism. And of course, you know, those people that don't remember what fascist means it's fascism. Right. So, I mean, you know, why do we want to stay in a fascist country where Mark Carney is our fascist dictator that, you know, and I mean that in an economic sense, because fascism was an economic program, right? This isn't, oh, you're a fascist. Donald Trump is a fascist.
01:11:33.440 No, the real fascist is Mark Carney because he's enacted a fascist piece of legislation that completely follows what Mussolini did in Italy. You know, so it's classical fascism, but nobody wants to wake up or pay attention to that, you know, and all, you know, all your, for all, so for all of your left leaning, um, you know, cousins and friends that are so concerned about Canada, such a great place, you know, go pick up a history book.
01:11:59.100 Look at what, you know, what Mussolini's form of fascism was, and then tell us, you know, how that differs from what Mark Carney is doing, you know, and everybody, you know, and everybody forgets that the, you know, the, the Z part in Nazi comes from socialism, you know, as national socialism, right?
01:12:15.480 Which is effectively, you know, without the concentration camps. Well, I guess yet, because I mean, Shivo hasn't started locking us all up for internet crime yet, but I'm sure that'll come.
01:12:24.480 But yeah, don't speak too soon. But I mean, you know, but I mean, basically, I mean, Carney is enacting, you know, the same program that, you know, that Hitler and Mussolini had in place where the, you know, the great leader, you know, the Fuhrer got to pick who got what government contracts, what laws, you know, what federal laws they're going to be exempt from, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
01:12:43.660 I mean, it's like everything old is new again. And it's called Bill C.
01:12:46.980 Five, you know, the Canadian, you know, Mark Carney is the boss of all of this act, right? It's just ludicrous.
01:12:53.260 Yeah. So we're seeing this, I guess if you wanted to label it, it'd be tetocratic, oligarchical collectivism. And this, it's a new flavor. Like it's, as things evolve, like meet the new boss.
01:13:06.960 Yeah.
01:13:07.580 You know, is that an actual thing? Is that what they call it?
01:13:11.060 I think, I can't remember who, who's coining that, but they're trying to define what this new flavor of.
01:13:17.940 My actual words for what's going on in Canada right now is where, you know, we've become an oligarchic, an oligarchic kleptocracy.
01:13:25.020 You know, but, you know, basically we have Carney and all of his buddies that define themselves as the stakeholders and stakeholder capitalism.
01:13:32.180 Because just know that you and I are not the stakeholders, right?
01:13:36.280 Right. Stakeholder capital. The stakeholders are the boards of directors and the people that have the offshore bank accounts.
01:13:42.480 Those are the stakeholders, right?
01:13:43.800 So, you know, it was pointing to more of the like WF and that side of things is their, their, their goals.
01:13:53.500 Yeah. They're pushing it towards the technocratic piece is a very important.
01:13:57.640 Yeah. Well, but again, well, exactly. Right. So it's, you know, the fifth industrial revolution, you know, you know, it's really the fourth, right.
01:14:05.140 But, you know, when it comes right down to it, I mean, we're, you know, like we're the useless eaters, you know, we're the ordinary people as Mark Carney would call us that, you know, that are going to experience pain and suffering and, you know, frozen assets and stranded assets and, you know, all the rest of it, because they get to define on an ongoing basis, which assets get stranded and which assets do not get stranded.
01:14:28.620 Which RBC accounts to, to close.
01:14:30.600 Yeah. Yeah. Which RBC, you know, which bank accounts to freeze and which one's not to freeze and who's allowed to have, you know, who has enough social credit score to continue to be allowed to have a bank account, you know, you know, all of, you know, all of those things we're watching it play out in real time, you know, and, you know, before our eyes.
01:14:46.720 Unfortunately, Mike and I are hiding dangerous memes under the floorboards right now. So.
01:14:53.740 Oh, good for you.
01:14:56.120 Jeff, you know, this is, this has been awesome.
01:14:58.940 Uh, I don't know. I think we could probably carry this on for another two hours, but, uh, just to respect your time, is there, is there anything that we didn't touch on so far that you think that we should anything that, um, actually there was one point that we talked about before we hit record that you wanted to touch on about, uh, uh, uh, a regulation that was proposed.
01:15:18.460 Oh, no, no, no. Well, a, a, a, a regulation, or are we talking about that, uh, that's silly application to the court brought by the electoral constitutionality of the, yeah.
01:15:29.000 Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, just, I'll give everybody the quick answer on that. So, um, you know, proving the fact that he's completely biased, Gordon McClure, uh, the chief electoral officer of Alberta referred, um, Mitch Sylvester's question, um, specifically, do you agree that Alberta should become a sovereign country and cease to be a province of Canada, uh, to the court to determine whether that question is unconstitutional?
01:15:58.980 And whether it offends various provisions of the charter and section 35, one of the constitution act, right? It's a pretty silly application. Interestingly, the lawyer that afforded it as a lawyer by the name of Joseph Redmond, um, at the shores Jardine firm in Edmonton, which is, I understand is a pretty left-wing labor law firm in Edmonton. So you see who's getting paid here, right? Um, so, um, they put forward this argument without actually saying how, you know,
01:16:28.680 gathering signatures on a petition could in any way threaten anyone's democratic rights, their mobility rights. You know, we're talking about getting signatures on a petition. How does that threaten anybody's rights? How does that offend the treaty rights? You know, getting signatures on a petition, because that's all we're talking about doing, right? Um, so the whole application is silly, but, you know, obviously they're trying to delay.
01:16:58.680 They're trying to delay this application because he's objective and unbiased. We think there should be two amicus curia appointed. We've selected a lawyer from the Reynolds Murph firm and a university professor from the University of Alberta.
01:17:08.680 And we should have a two week period of advertising so that we can have interveners from all over the province join into this dogfight over nothing. Right. So that's what they're trying to do is they're just basically trying to tie us up in red tape and, you know, uh, uh, and prevent us from moving forward. I was actually pleased to see that premier Smith and, um, Mickey Emery came out today and announced that they think that the electoral officer should withdraw his question to the court because it's anti-democratic.
01:17:37.680 And flies in the face of the intention of the legislature to allow Albertans to have a say on issues like this. But again, for, for us, I liked it. You know, I mean, I'm a litigator, so it's like, Oh, don't throw me in that prior patch. Oh, I hate being in a courtroom. You know, like, Oh, don't make me argue constitutional law. I'm really no good at it after 35 years and winning cases all the way to the Supreme Court and back. Don't send me to a courtroom. Right. So, you know, so we, you know, we find that aspect of it kind of amusing, but.
01:18:07.680 Um, uh, you know, but for us, it, it just demonstrates how biased the electoral officer is because why didn't, why didn't he send little, little Tommy Lukasik's question, uh, to the court to determine whether or not it was constitutional.
01:18:22.460 I mean, Tommy Lukasik wants to effectively enjoin his fellow Albertans from leaving Canada. You know, so Tommy Lukasik, you know, wants to, uh, impact the democratic rights of his fellow citizens. He wants to impact, um, uh, you know, our freedom of association or freedom of expression, you know, all of those types of things. Why wasn't his question referred to the court?
01:18:45.320 You know, and I'll, and I'll tell you why it's because, you know, he's supported by the NDP and Gordon McClure, you know, obviously prefers, you know, um, you know, uh, left-wing positions and left-wing lawyers over positions that are being put forward by people that are serious about independence.
01:19:02.440 Right. So that's what we're dealing with. And I mean, obviously, you know, we have, you know, a hundred good arguments as to why this is all really, really silly. We're in the process of, of writing a legal brief that we'll be, uh, uh, that we'll be filing with the court either late this week or early next week, um, that'll address, you know, all of these issues. And when we do that, you guys can either have us back on or reach out to me and I'll, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll give you a link to it or send you a copy of it so that your viewers can, you know, can understand, you know, how silly this entire process, you know, is.
01:19:31.440 You know, is that the electoral officer is trying to turn this into, right? Cause I mean, you know, think about how dumb that is, right? Like, oh, well, does asking a question or asking your fellow citizens to sign a petition to have a question on a referendum ballot, offend the constitutionally protected rights of another citizen. How the hell could that offend anybody else's constitutionally protected rights? How does that offend the treaty rights? Right.
01:19:56.580 It sounds like something a leftist would say like the cause.
01:19:58.920 Yeah. I mean, it has nothing to do with treaty rights. I mean, we don't even, treaty rights aren't even engaged until, you know, we actually get all of the signatures that we need. We have a referendum and the majority of citizens vote. Yes.
01:20:12.400 And the government of Alberta decides to do something about it because after the equalization referendum, we saw how good the government of Alberta is at ignoring the clear wishes of the majority of its citizens in and around, you know, a matter like equalization. They've done nothing about it.
01:20:28.680 So, you know, it wouldn't be until the government of Alberta decided to start negotiating with Canada over independence. And then in the context of that, decided to ignore Aboriginal people and say, screw you. We don't need to consult with you. We don't need to talk to you. We're going to treat you like, you know, we're going to treat you like it's 1990 all over again and not talk to you anymore.
01:20:50.580 Just like we did before Jeff Rast started beating us up and winning all those cases against us in court. You know, we'll just roll the clock back 50 years and that's what we're going to do. I mean, at that point, people could say, yeah, that's unconstitutional and there should be a remedy.
01:21:03.580 But to tell people that simply, you know, wanting to get signatures on a petition to ask a question offends the Constitution. I mean, the very fact that they're doing this offends our constitutional rights, the freedom of expression, democratic rights, freedom of assembly and so on. Right. It's it's pretty offensive.
01:21:22.400 And I think Daniel Smith and I credit to her and credit to Vicki Amory for calling out Gordon McClure on that. And I'm going to call, you know, and, you know, and I would also mention the lawyer, Joseph Redmond, you know, who's involved in this.
01:21:35.080 You know, they really need to, you know, they really need to come out and explain why what they're doing, you know, isn't just privileged and vexations, because really, that's what it seems to be to me.
01:21:45.040 So our democratic right to have a citizen-led petition just happens to be on a question that may interact with the Constitution once it's fully fleshed out.
01:21:56.980 Well, and what's so stupid, if you look at the act and if you look at the form, right, that you fill out, is this a constitutional question or a non-constitutional question, right?
01:22:08.420 You know, clearly, this is a constitutional question, right? And, you know, and we're moving forward accordingly. But how can asking a constitutional question be unconstitutional?
01:22:19.180 You know, it's, you know, I'm still trying to get my head around it. I mean, Ava Chipyuk and I have been working on it all afternoon. And we've actually, to be quite honest, we've been having a lot of fun with it, because we actually think that it's, it's pretty, it's a pretty silly position for them to take, put forward.
01:22:33.980 And I really appreciate, actually, the opportunity that they've now given us to be able to talk about this for the next month, you know, as to why it is that we need to be independent, so that we can have a constitution that will prevent left-wing bureaucrats like Gordon McClure, you know, playing these silly games, you know, in a manner that completely disrespects the democratic rights of citizens of Alberta.
01:22:58.080 Yeah, that's, that sounds just like, you know, maybe they had an idea in the back of their head, like, hey, let's, let's tie Rath up in court with this bullshit for a little while. So he's not out on the road talking about Alberta independence.
01:23:09.080 Yeah, I don't even know what they were thinking. I mean, I don't think they were thinking very much. They made themselves look really bad, right? I mean, you know, I, you know, I don't know where the government continues to find people that are this competent, you know, to work for them. I mean, it's like, you know, it was, it was, you know, like Daniel Smith appointing Mark Jaffe to be the chief medical officer of Alberta. I mean, you know, Jaffe's big claim to fame during the pandemic was, he wrote a letter to one of my clients, Eric Payne, and told Eric that if he didn't want to get the Pfizer
01:23:39.060 and Moderna vaccine, he should go out and get either the Johnson and Johnson or AstraZeneca vaccine, both of which then were pulled from the market as being unsafe for human consumption, right?
01:23:48.200 Yeah, it's like milk, okay?
01:23:49.980 Oh, yeah. So, you know, it's just, it's shocking the degree, you know, the degree to which the government has the capacity to hire people that are completely incompetent. I mean, Dina Hinshaw, I mean, there's another one, right? She's telling people to mix and match the vaccines. Every single manufacturer, vaccine manufacturer had right in their monograph that we do not recommend,
01:24:09.060 you mix our vaccine product with anybody else's because it's not been tested, it's not safe. And there's Danielle telling everybody to mix and match the vaccines. And they're not Danielle, I'm sorry, Dina Hinshaw, telling everybody to mix and match the vaccines.
01:24:21.900 And then Danielle has Gary Davidson and a whole team of doctors put together a massive report. And this report identified a study out of the Nordic countries that showed that if you mixed and match the vaccines, you're at 3,600% more risk of contracting myocarditis.
01:24:40.320 Wow.
01:24:40.720 Right? So, you know, I mean, you know, the one thing you say about government is they sure have a knack for hiring the most incompetent people that they can find.
01:24:52.140 And I guess, you know, I mean, going back to it, I mean, Dina Hinshaw now has the, you know, has the distinction of having been fired twice in a 12-month period by the Alberta government, right?
01:25:00.660 So, you know, I mean, you know, at least they did something right. But, you know, there's a lot more people buried in that bureaucracy that need to be hauled up from underneath their desks and fired. There's no doubt about that.
01:25:11.200 Yeah. So it seems like we're going to, we're going to see some increased pushback and each is an opportunity to show the corruption in real time by throwing up a mirror and highlighting it.
01:25:22.940 So we feel about it. And, you know, and quite frankly, you know, as far as we're concerned, we're happy about this. I mean, I was talking to Mitch Sylvester about it this afternoon.
01:25:30.660 You know, once he finally stopped bragging about all the massive salmon that he was catching and sending me pictures of the 38-pound salmon his daughter caught, it was amazing.
01:25:39.480 But anyway, once we got through all of that, you know, Mitch and I were talking about how happy we are that they're pulling all of this, you know, all of this nonsense because it just demonstrates the fact that they're getting desperate.
01:25:51.720 I mean, think about where we started, right? Jason Kenney. Oh, Jeff Roth is a, you know, there's a traitorous kook and this is the tail wagging the dog and we don't have to pay attention to these.
01:26:00.660 You know, we don't have to pay attention to these people because it's just a few loudmouth malcontents, right? You know, now it's like, oh, okay, well, a few loudmouth malcontents has now turned into about 39 or 40, you know, between 39 and 40, you know, 39 and 49% of the province, right?
01:26:15.200 I've seen some polling that indicates we're now over 50%, right?
01:26:19.780 You know, so we're obviously making massive progress.
01:26:24.100 You know, more and more Albertans are focusing on the benefits of independence and, you know, and I keep telling everybody, hey, this is a, you know, it's a marathon.
01:26:31.040 It's not a sprint.
01:26:31.760 And, you know, we have 12 months to convince our fellow Albertans that this is, you know, this is the best thing for everybody.
01:26:38.440 You know, if you care about your kids, if you care about, you know, your own prosperity, if you care about freedom, if you care about your grandchildren having a future, vote yes.
01:26:48.880 You know, to Alberta becoming an independent country.
01:26:50.880 I mean, it's that simple.
01:26:51.780 I think that's a perfect place to end it.
01:26:54.920 Awesome.
01:26:55.920 Jeff, hey, thank you so much.
01:26:58.160 You know, we're, we've interviewed, you know, we've talked a lot about on this, on this show and we've interviewed a few people and, and I got to say, man, like it's, it feels so cool to have somebody so passionate, somebody so knowledgeable, somebody with such, you know, such passion behind them that, you know, this, this movement really needs.
01:27:17.120 And, and I think honestly, you're like, you're just the guy for it.
01:27:19.640 So the, the, the miles you're putting on the road, the town halls you're doing, all the speaking engagement, all the podcasts, all the interviews, super appreciated, man.
01:27:28.080 We're, we're behind you.
01:27:29.040 And, uh, and we think that, uh, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna lead this movement to success.
01:27:33.420 So thanks.
01:27:34.220 Thanks for everything you're doing.
01:27:35.300 Thank you both very much for having me on.
01:27:36.960 It was really an honor and a pleasure to be here.
01:27:38.520 So thank you.
01:27:39.400 Thank you very much.
01:27:40.660 All right.
01:27:41.780 Cheers.
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