In this episode, I sit down with my good friend and long-term supporter, Doug Ford, to talk about the upcoming referendum on Alberta's independence from the rest of Canada. We talk about what the referendum means for the future of Alberta, what it means for Canada, and what could happen if the referendum fails.
00:00:00.000I'd say even if the referendum is not successful, like you say, we got 40% and we lose,
00:00:06.480the political culture of Alberta has already been changed. In a sense, we've never had this
00:00:11.000level of support before. So we have people for the very first time in their lives are committed
00:00:15.140to Alberta independence. Now, even if the referendum fails, these people have thought
00:00:21.080about it seriously before and committed to it. They might backtrack from it, but it's still part
00:00:24.880of who they are and who they've been. You know what I mean? So this part of Alberta, this idea
00:00:29.320Alberta will be a bigger part of our political culture, even if we lose the referendum. Like I
00:00:33.940mentioned earlier, you know, with the National Energy Program, that changed the support level
00:00:37.920of Alberta independence, you know, from single digit to double digit, and it never went back
00:00:41.080to single digit. It just stayed a double digit and grew a bit. So that was a change in our
00:00:45.080political culture in 1980 or 81. We're having the same thing now, so that even if we lose the
00:00:50.840referendum, our political culture has changed to such a degree that the independence option is
00:00:55.160going to be like something that's more credible than before. I guess it's kind of like Quebec,
00:00:59.040You know what I mean? Like, even though they lost the referendums, there's always a segment, a large segment of the population that supports independence. And Alberta would be more like that than it was before, because we can't get away from the political change that's happening right now in our culture because of this issue right now. So much would depend then on what the liberal, how the liberal government responded.
00:01:17.720Like if they respond with, you know, a peace offering and say, look, you know, now we realize you guys have, you know, are discontent even though, you know, the referendum went down.
00:02:36.920on the national and international stage.
00:02:39.920Although I do wonder as well if, you know, I've often joked with people that like, you know, this is not true, but I joke that like, you know, I'd be happy if Alberta got, you know, 10% of the consideration that Quebec gets in federal politics, you know.
00:02:53.080But I wonder though, if, if a say, say the independence referendum gets a 40% vote or 45%, something like this, like just shy of a, of a, of a majority. I do wonder if the, if the federal conservative party at least would respond with at least making a show of, you know, running candidates in Alberta that are sympathetic to Alberta interests rather than running, you know, floor crossers in, in, in Edmonton South.0.81
00:03:20.040One of the things I want to throw in here in terms of what could happen with the referendum is one of the things Alberta independence movement has always lacked is a real credible leader.
00:03:30.380Like this is one of the things that was a real turning point for Quebec is, you know, by the 60s, they had all kinds of separatist groups going, but they were divided and they didn't have a leader.
00:03:38.640But when René Levesque, you know, he had been a Liberal Party cabinet minister in the Quebec government.
00:03:43.020When he came out of the Liberal Party and said, I'm going to lead the separatist movement in Quebec, that tied them all together.
00:03:48.320like the Parti Québécois became the one organization for people to join and he won
00:03:54.480you know he won elections as and became as premier but it was his leadership that really
00:03:59.620pulled it together and made that possible and if we had someone like that in Alberta that would be
00:04:04.540a game changer for the whole thing you know because they're people look to leaders you know
00:04:08.840to inspire them and to you know give them ideas and direction and stuff like that and if we had
00:04:13.500a guy like a René Levesque type figure here in Alberta for independence,
00:04:17.720that would definitely change things and it would definitely increase support for the movement
00:04:21.160and it would increase the possibility of the referendum succeeding.
00:04:25.420So hoping that a guy like that will come forward.
00:04:30.500Yeah, I think it's great that we're making these comparisons to Quebec because we can learn a lot
00:04:35.980by just taking a temperature check of Alberta and the rhetoric around Alberta versus the rhetoric
00:04:43.580around Quebec. And there's a couple things to unpack. And one of them is that you get the
00:04:49.960fear mongering saying that any talks of independence or separation will result in economic
00:04:57.300decline like it has in Quebec. And Quebec's kind of a paradox because you're describing that Quebec
00:05:04.480gained political power, gained leverage, and essentially now they have greater equalization
00:05:12.080payments and all these perks from their separation parties and movement. But they've seen a decline
00:05:20.820in some sectors, but people aren't talking about the self-restricted policies or the fact that
00:05:26.340they've hamstrung themselves in developing their own resources or their language laws that are
00:05:31.700making investment a little bit more difficult, or if a company had to choose between setting up
00:05:38.560headquarters in Quebec versus headquarters in Ontario, they're going to choose Ontario
00:05:43.380just because of ease of deployment. So these things are not talked about
00:05:48.040in the layers that, in the kind of nuance that it deserves.
00:05:53.360I just have an important point to make about that. Like I know people say, well,
00:05:55.680it was after René Levesque was elected as premier in 1976, and all of a sudden all these people in
00:06:01.620businesses started pulling out of Quebec. Now stated that way, it's true as far as it goes,
00:06:06.200but that's not the whole truth. The policy that drove people out was Bill 101. Like right after
00:06:12.120René Villette came in, he brought in Bill 101, which was the, you know, the charter of the French
00:06:16.700language for Quebec. And because they were going to make businesses and other in various parts of
00:06:22.180Quebec society, people were going to have to use French and, you know, for the first time. And so
00:06:26.680the reason that Quebec declined so quickly in the late 70s was primarily because of English-speaking
00:06:32.600people pulling out. The English community was in control of a lot of the businesses and the
00:06:38.920financial side of things and stuff, so they pulled out. Montreal, I think, might have been the biggest
00:06:44.520city in Canada in 1970, but by 1980, Toronto was the biggest city because Montreal lost so much,
00:06:49.420because that's where the English-speaking people were largely concentrated in Montreal.
00:06:52.540all. And so the primary reason for the decline of Quebec was not the fact that the party Quebec was
00:06:59.840a separatist party, but was because the policies they brought in were forcing people to speak
00:07:03.660French and people didn't want to be forced to speak French. It was easier to move out. So I
00:07:08.780guess I want to bring that up because we hear that, you know, even someone like Jason Kenney
00:07:12.600will say, oh, the separatist movement is going to chase out businesses and our economies to decline
00:07:16.500just because we're talking about it. And, you know, if we become independent, we're going to
00:07:20.320lose everything just look what happened to Quebec yeah Quebec did lose that stuff but it was because
00:07:25.100they were forcing people to speak French that was the primary reason by far you know what I mean
00:07:29.260and we're not proposing anything like that and so the the analogy is not correct because we're not0.68
00:07:35.100going to do something to chase people away the way they did and another point like that you made that
00:07:39.180was quite important is that like our policies are more pro-business out here than they are out there
00:07:43.360too so we don't have to worry about that there might be people who leave for whatever reason
00:07:48.040I mean, some people might do that, but it's not the same as Quebec.