The Critical Compass Podcast - “What Happens If We Do Nothing？” ｜ Independence： 5 Key Questions w⧸ Tanya Clemens

00:00:00.000 So I come here tonight, as Jason said, not as a politician or a constitutional lawyer

00:00:07.040 or an economist. I'm a farmer, a teacher, and a mum. And I love this land with everything I've

00:00:14.620 got. This is actually my Alberta flag here. I don't know if you've seen it on my Instagram,

00:00:19.600 but it's the same one that I fly on my combine. I look at that flag and I think of the thousands

00:00:26.000 and thousands of people and the decades and decades of effort that have brought us here today.

00:00:32.080 All the work, all the courage, all the conversations that led to this moment, signing a petition

00:00:38.940 to force a referendum on independence in Alberta and delivering us this hope.

00:00:45.080 This is the same flag I fly on my combine, and every harvest as I would walk out in the morning,

00:00:50.920 I would see that flag waving above my cab of my combine.

00:00:54.620 I saw my family working together. One would be running the grain carts, another one on the

00:01:00.740 combine, another one hauling the load of grain in the semi. And in those quiet moments, I felt peace.

00:01:07.280 I wasn't thinking about Ottawa. I wasn't thinking about politics. I was thinking about the land,

00:01:13.100 the sky, the work before us, and the people I love. And that's what freedom feels like to me

00:01:18.440 in my little corner of Alberta. And maybe that's why this matters so much to me. Because when I

00:01:24.300 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

00:01:31.500 the candidate that i believed existed a place where if you worked hard you could build something

00:01:37.340 a place where your effort meant something a place where decisions were made close to home

00:01:43.020 and not handed down from far away and i still believe in that i don't believe we've totally

00:01:49.740 left that behind i believe we can still protect it right here in this little part of canada called

00:01:55.020 alberta where work working hard is respected where family matters and where life is built and not

00:02:00.780 governed but over the past decade that freedom has felt more fragile than ever every year decisions

00:02:07.580 are made further and further away that reach deeper into our homes our businesses our farms

00:02:13.500 and even our bank accounts so tonight i'm not here to tell you what to think or even necessarily to

00:02:19.420 convince you but i am going to ask you a few honest questions that i've had to sit with myself

00:02:24.860 because an independence referendum is coming and when you walk into that voting poll in october

00:02:32.540 and you check that box on your ballot i want you to fully understand the significance of that x

00:02:38.140 I hope we all walk into that voting poll on referendum day and actually pause

00:02:42.580 for a moment. An opportunity like that may not present itself ever again so I

00:02:48.940 hope you spend a moment in the reverence of answering the most important

00:02:53.200 question that Albertans will likely ever answer. So I have five questions that I

00:02:59.580 believe every Albertan should ask themselves in anticipation of a

00:03:03.700 referendum on Alberta independence. The first one is when you look honestly at

00:03:08.140 At Alberta today, are we better off than we were a generation ago?

00:03:12.840 Not just in how we feel, but in opportunity, affordability, and confidence in the future.

00:03:19.160 Because housing costs have exploded.

00:03:22.140 Gasoline prices are crazy.

00:03:23.860 Energy bills are higher.

00:03:25.660 Young families are stretched thin.

00:03:28.220 You feel it every time you fill your tank and every time you walk into the grocery store.

00:03:31.920 And for the first time in Alberta's history, many of our kids don't automatically believe

00:03:36.440 their future will be better than their parents from the very beginning alberta was never meant

00:03:41.960 to be equal this is how we were brought into confederation it was in 1904 clifford sifton

00:03:47.960 the federal minister responsible for bringing alberta into confederation said openly we desire

00:03:53.320 that the great trade and wealth of the prairies shall go to enrich our people in the east to build

00:03:58.760 up our factories and our places of work and in every legitimate way contribute to our prosperity

00:04:04.360 That wasn't about Alberta's prosperity. That was about using Alberta as a colony to fund Ontario and Quebec.

00:04:13.360 At the end of the day, who should decide Alberta's future? Ottawa or the people who live here?

00:04:19.520 Who controls our resources? Who sets our priorities? And then who bears the consequences of the decisions being made?

00:04:26.560 Because right now, policies written thousands of kilometres away are shaping how we heat our homes,

00:04:31.580 fuel our vehicles, run our farms, and operate our businesses. Albertans elect provincial

00:04:37.960 governments, but Ottawa overrides them. Part of the problem is that Canada spans six time zones

00:04:43.980 and very, very different ways of life. And governing from that one center means decisions

00:04:48.860 are made far from those who actually live there. And history shows this tension is not new. Decade

00:04:56.080 after decade, this tension has grown. Probably one of the clearest examples came in 1980 with

00:05:01.740 the National Energy Program, where Mark Lalonde, who was Pierre Trudeau's energy minister, said

00:05:07.380 their plan was to stop Alberta from becoming the economic powerhouse of this country.

00:05:13.380 They just couldn't let that happen. So imagine they've seen Alberta rising and deliberately

00:05:18.560 cut us down. And they've kept cutting. And I think sometimes we make this conversation more

00:05:24.260 complicated than it needs to be, because at its core, it comes down to something pretty simple.

00:05:29.020 Who gets to make decisions about Alberta? Is it the people who live here, or the people that don't?

00:05:37.180 Third question. If Alberta consistently gives more than it receives, how long is that sustainable?

00:05:45.160 And that's not just resentment, that's actual math. And the scale of that financial impact

00:05:50.160 is larger than most people realize. Since 1961, Alberta has sent over $800 billion more to Ottawa

00:05:58.640 than we've ever received back anything for. And two out of every three of those dollars went

00:06:04.340 straight to Quebec. Every single year, we lose $20 to $28 billion. And some of the newer numbers

00:06:11.040 suggest it's over $40 billion. And that's about $6,000 per Albertan. Or for the average family

00:06:17.620 of four 24 000 that gets sent to ottawa that you don't get any services back for

00:06:24.980 that's money that's gone with nothing in return

00:06:31.540 and then there's ottawa's refusal to let us sell our oil and gas to international markets which

00:06:35.460 costs us another 26 and a half billion dollars per year and when you start looking at what those

00:06:40.580 numbers could mean if they stayed here the numbers become really hard to ignore independent

00:06:46.180 projections show Alberta could retain roughly $70 billion per year in federal taxes. And even

00:06:51.660 after replacing federal programs and services, the projections are showing Alberta could still

00:06:56.240 run a significant annual surplus in the range of $20 to $40 billion. That's not just a small

00:07:03.920 adjustment. That's a completely different financial position. That would allow us to quickly pay off

00:07:08.780 our provincial debt and to grow a sovereign fund that would one day largely fund all of Alberta,

00:07:14.920 providing that stability and that certainty that we crave fourth question and this is the one that

00:07:22.780 probably weighs on me the most what happens if we just do nothing if we just coast along like we are

00:07:29.280 right now what if we mistake in action for stability because standing still is still a

00:07:36.720 decision and every decision has consequences doing nothing does not preserve the alberta that we love

00:07:43.480 it actually allows it to be slowly replaced.

00:07:47.660 Now some people will ask, can't we just fix this from within Canada?

00:07:51.300 Can't we negotiate a fairer deal?

00:07:53.400 Let's give our provincial government a little bit more of a chance.

00:07:57.200 But we've actually been trying as Albertans for over a century

00:08:00.600 and every time Ottawa has slammed the door in our faces.

00:08:04.980 We mentioned the 1980s when we had the National Energy Program

00:08:08.680 and how billions were lost and Alberta's future was deliberately stifled.

00:08:13.480 In 1987 and 1992, that was the Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accords,

00:08:19.280 both constitutional reform attempts failed.

00:08:22.800 And this is important to know and understand why.

00:08:25.640 Because to amend Canada's constitution,

00:08:28.480 you need to clear four impossible for Alberta barriers.

00:08:32.900 The first hurdle is you need 7 out of 10 provinces to agree,

00:08:37.820 representing 50% of the population.

00:08:40.040 So unless you get Quebec and Ontario, who have 60% of the population, that's a pretty insurmountable hurdle.

00:08:47.420 The second hurdle is you need a majority in the House of Commons.

00:08:51.240 The third hurdle is you need a majority in the Senate.

00:08:54.740 And even if somehow miraculously you got past those first three hurdles, the fourth one is quite the killer.

00:08:59.960 Because Quebec has basically a de facto veto vote.

00:09:03.980 So let's be honest.

00:09:05.080 the chance of forcing a constitutional change, such as removing the equalization program, is zero.

00:09:12.160 In the 1990s, we had the Reform Party, which was born out of Western frustration,

00:09:17.660 and it called for Senate reform and decentralization, and Ottawa ignored it.

00:09:23.540 In 2001, we had the Firewall Letter, and some of Alberta's intellectuals demanded that

00:09:29.180 we should have control of our pensions our policing our taxation does that sound kind of

00:09:35.600 familiar because 25 years later we're still asking for the very same things

00:09:40.800 in 2019 we had the fair deal panel and once again Albertans asked for fairness and once again

00:09:48.260 Ottawa's answer was more centralization and in 2021 we had the equalization referendum where 62

00:09:55.540 percent of albertans voted to abolish equalization but knowing what it takes to open the constitution

00:10:02.420 to do that ottawa just laughed at us and totally ignored us every single time alberta has tried to

00:10:08.500 reform this federation we've been blocked mocked or punished so let's be clear it's not that we

00:10:14.660 haven't tried we have tried for 120 years every time alberta tries the answer is no and that's

00:10:22.740 That's why this moment matters more than any we've faced before.

00:10:26.240 Because this isn't just another conversation.

00:10:27.980 It's not just another panel, a report, or an election promise.

00:10:33.560 This is the first real opportunity in our lifetime to force the question, to put it

00:10:38.440 directly in the hands of Albertans.

00:10:42.080 This phase right now matters, signing the petition, having those conversations, and

00:10:48.500 showing up.

00:10:49.500 And my fifth question is this.

00:10:53.000 What kind of Alberta do you want to leave behind for our children, for our grandchildren,

00:10:59.200 for the people who will farm this land after us, who will raise grandchildren after us,

00:11:05.160 for their businesses long, long after we're gone?

00:11:08.760 What do you want that to look like?

00:11:11.100 Because we don't wake up one day and just lose freedom.

00:11:14.620 We wake up one day and we realize we stopped protecting it and sometimes it's a little

00:11:18.660 bit too late so do we want to leave behind an Alberta that's more dependent or more self-determined

00:11:26.180 it brings us face to face with courage I think and that's where this conversation really lives

00:11:33.540 and if there's one thing Albertans understand it's courage this province wasn't built by people

00:11:39.060 who waited until everything felt certain it was built by people who looked out at open land

00:11:45.540 long winters and a lot of unknowns and decided anyway i think i can make a life here not because

00:11:51.700 it was guaranteed to work but because it was worth trying we're seeing more questions around freedom

00:11:57.620 of expression and who gets to decide what gets said what when we're seeing decisions made at a

00:12:03.940 level far removed from the people they affect we're seeing the facts that we really don't have

00:12:08.660 very much property rights in this country all of those things gradually keep happening and adding

00:12:14.420 up until one day you look around and realize things don't feel the same anymore.

00:12:21.540 So before we leave tonight, let me return just once to all five questions.

00:12:26.380 Are we actually better off than we were a generation ago?

00:12:30.440 Who should decide Alberta's future?

00:12:33.480 How long can an unsustainable system last?

00:12:37.180 What happens if we do nothing?

00:12:39.440 And finally, what kind of Alberta do we want to pass on?

00:12:43.320 have to answer all those questions tonight but one day soon probably by october 19th you will

00:12:49.160 and when that day comes i hope that you choose courage over complacency self-determination over

00:12:55.560 surrender because this province was built by people who believed they could and we still can

00:13:01.400 again. Thank you very much.

The Critical Compass Podcast - April 07, 2026

“What Happens If We Do Nothing？” ｜ Independence： 5 Key Questions w⧸ Tanya Clemens

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