“What Happens If We Do Nothing？” ｜ Independence： 5 Key Questions w⧸ Tanya Clemens
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Summary
Learn English with Jason Kenney. In this speech, Alberta s Prime Minister, Rachel Notley, calls for a referendum on Alberta's independence from Canada, and sets out five questions that every Albertan should ask themselves in anticipation of the vote.
Transcript
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So I come here tonight, as Jason said, not as a politician or a constitutional lawyer
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or an economist. I'm a farmer, a teacher, and a mum. And I love this land with everything I've
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got. This is actually my Alberta flag here. I don't know if you've seen it on my Instagram,
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but it's the same one that I fly on my combine. I look at that flag and I think of the thousands
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and thousands of people and the decades and decades of effort that have brought us here today.
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All the work, all the courage, all the conversations that led to this moment, signing a petition
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to force a referendum on independence in Alberta and delivering us this hope.
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This is the same flag I fly on my combine, and every harvest as I would walk out in the morning,
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I would see that flag waving above my cab of my combine.
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I saw my family working together. One would be running the grain carts, another one on the
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combine, another one hauling the load of grain in the semi. And in those quiet moments, I felt peace.
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I wasn't thinking about Ottawa. I wasn't thinking about politics. I was thinking about the land,
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the sky, the work before us, and the people I love. And that's what freedom feels like to me
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in my little corner of Alberta. And maybe that's why this matters so much to me. Because when I
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look out at the field and i see that flag i don't just see my farm i see the canada i was raised in
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the candidate that i believed existed a place where if you worked hard you could build something
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a place where your effort meant something a place where decisions were made close to home
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and not handed down from far away and i still believe in that i don't believe we've totally
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left that behind i believe we can still protect it right here in this little part of canada called
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alberta where work working hard is respected where family matters and where life is built and not
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governed but over the past decade that freedom has felt more fragile than ever every year decisions
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are made further and further away that reach deeper into our homes our businesses our farms
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and even our bank accounts so tonight i'm not here to tell you what to think or even necessarily to
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convince you but i am going to ask you a few honest questions that i've had to sit with myself
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because an independence referendum is coming and when you walk into that voting poll in october
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and you check that box on your ballot i want you to fully understand the significance of that x
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I hope we all walk into that voting poll on referendum day and actually pause
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for a moment. An opportunity like that may not present itself ever again so I
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hope you spend a moment in the reverence of answering the most important
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question that Albertans will likely ever answer. So I have five questions that I
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believe every Albertan should ask themselves in anticipation of a
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referendum on Alberta independence. The first one is when you look honestly at
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At Alberta today, are we better off than we were a generation ago?
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Not just in how we feel, but in opportunity, affordability, and confidence in the future.
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You feel it every time you fill your tank and every time you walk into the grocery store.
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And for the first time in Alberta's history, many of our kids don't automatically believe
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their future will be better than their parents from the very beginning alberta was never meant
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to be equal this is how we were brought into confederation it was in 1904 clifford sifton
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the federal minister responsible for bringing alberta into confederation said openly we desire
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that the great trade and wealth of the prairies shall go to enrich our people in the east to build
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up our factories and our places of work and in every legitimate way contribute to our prosperity
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That wasn't about Alberta's prosperity. That was about using Alberta as a colony to fund Ontario and Quebec.
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At the end of the day, who should decide Alberta's future? Ottawa or the people who live here?
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Who controls our resources? Who sets our priorities? And then who bears the consequences of the decisions being made?
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Because right now, policies written thousands of kilometres away are shaping how we heat our homes,
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fuel our vehicles, run our farms, and operate our businesses. Albertans elect provincial
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governments, but Ottawa overrides them. Part of the problem is that Canada spans six time zones
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and very, very different ways of life. And governing from that one center means decisions
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are made far from those who actually live there. And history shows this tension is not new. Decade
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after decade, this tension has grown. Probably one of the clearest examples came in 1980 with
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the National Energy Program, where Mark Lalonde, who was Pierre Trudeau's energy minister, said
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their plan was to stop Alberta from becoming the economic powerhouse of this country.
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They just couldn't let that happen. So imagine they've seen Alberta rising and deliberately
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cut us down. And they've kept cutting. And I think sometimes we make this conversation more
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complicated than it needs to be, because at its core, it comes down to something pretty simple.
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Who gets to make decisions about Alberta? Is it the people who live here, or the people that don't?
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Third question. If Alberta consistently gives more than it receives, how long is that sustainable?
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And that's not just resentment, that's actual math. And the scale of that financial impact
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is larger than most people realize. Since 1961, Alberta has sent over $800 billion more to Ottawa
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than we've ever received back anything for. And two out of every three of those dollars went
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straight to Quebec. Every single year, we lose $20 to $28 billion. And some of the newer numbers
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suggest it's over $40 billion. And that's about $6,000 per Albertan. Or for the average family
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of four 24 000 that gets sent to ottawa that you don't get any services back for
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that's money that's gone with nothing in return
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and then there's ottawa's refusal to let us sell our oil and gas to international markets which
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costs us another 26 and a half billion dollars per year and when you start looking at what those
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numbers could mean if they stayed here the numbers become really hard to ignore independent
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projections show Alberta could retain roughly $70 billion per year in federal taxes. And even
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after replacing federal programs and services, the projections are showing Alberta could still
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run a significant annual surplus in the range of $20 to $40 billion. That's not just a small
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adjustment. That's a completely different financial position. That would allow us to quickly pay off
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our provincial debt and to grow a sovereign fund that would one day largely fund all of Alberta,
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providing that stability and that certainty that we crave fourth question and this is the one that
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probably weighs on me the most what happens if we just do nothing if we just coast along like we are
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right now what if we mistake in action for stability because standing still is still a
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decision and every decision has consequences doing nothing does not preserve the alberta that we love
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Now some people will ask, can't we just fix this from within Canada?
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Let's give our provincial government a little bit more of a chance.
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But we've actually been trying as Albertans for over a century
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and every time Ottawa has slammed the door in our faces.
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We mentioned the 1980s when we had the National Energy Program
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and how billions were lost and Alberta's future was deliberately stifled.
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In 1987 and 1992, that was the Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accords,
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And this is important to know and understand why.
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you need to clear four impossible for Alberta barriers.
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The first hurdle is you need 7 out of 10 provinces to agree,
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So unless you get Quebec and Ontario, who have 60% of the population, that's a pretty insurmountable hurdle.
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The second hurdle is you need a majority in the House of Commons.
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The third hurdle is you need a majority in the Senate.
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And even if somehow miraculously you got past those first three hurdles, the fourth one is quite the killer.
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Because Quebec has basically a de facto veto vote.
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the chance of forcing a constitutional change, such as removing the equalization program, is zero.
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In the 1990s, we had the Reform Party, which was born out of Western frustration,
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and it called for Senate reform and decentralization, and Ottawa ignored it.
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In 2001, we had the Firewall Letter, and some of Alberta's intellectuals demanded that
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we should have control of our pensions our policing our taxation does that sound kind of
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familiar because 25 years later we're still asking for the very same things
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in 2019 we had the fair deal panel and once again Albertans asked for fairness and once again
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Ottawa's answer was more centralization and in 2021 we had the equalization referendum where 62
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percent of albertans voted to abolish equalization but knowing what it takes to open the constitution
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to do that ottawa just laughed at us and totally ignored us every single time alberta has tried to
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reform this federation we've been blocked mocked or punished so let's be clear it's not that we
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haven't tried we have tried for 120 years every time alberta tries the answer is no and that's
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That's why this moment matters more than any we've faced before.
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It's not just another panel, a report, or an election promise.
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This is the first real opportunity in our lifetime to force the question, to put it
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This phase right now matters, signing the petition, having those conversations, and
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What kind of Alberta do you want to leave behind for our children, for our grandchildren,
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for the people who will farm this land after us, who will raise grandchildren after us,
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for their businesses long, long after we're gone?
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Because we don't wake up one day and just lose freedom.
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We wake up one day and we realize we stopped protecting it and sometimes it's a little
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bit too late so do we want to leave behind an Alberta that's more dependent or more self-determined
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it brings us face to face with courage I think and that's where this conversation really lives
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and if there's one thing Albertans understand it's courage this province wasn't built by people
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who waited until everything felt certain it was built by people who looked out at open land
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long winters and a lot of unknowns and decided anyway i think i can make a life here not because
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it was guaranteed to work but because it was worth trying we're seeing more questions around freedom
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of expression and who gets to decide what gets said what when we're seeing decisions made at a
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level far removed from the people they affect we're seeing the facts that we really don't have
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very much property rights in this country all of those things gradually keep happening and adding
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up until one day you look around and realize things don't feel the same anymore.
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So before we leave tonight, let me return just once to all five questions.
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Are we actually better off than we were a generation ago?
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And finally, what kind of Alberta do we want to pass on?
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have to answer all those questions tonight but one day soon probably by october 19th you will
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and when that day comes i hope that you choose courage over complacency self-determination over
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surrender because this province was built by people who believed they could and we still can