The Critical Compass Podcast - August 21, 2026


Will Independence DESTROY Investment in Alberta？ w⧸ 222 Minutes


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

153.96

Word count

1,321

Sentence count

54


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 We hear a lot about how, if Alberta separates, not from reasonable, well-thought-out people,
00:00:08.340 but we hear it a lot from people like Jason Kenney, saying that if Alberta separates,
00:00:12.840 it's going to crater the economy. Jeremy Farkas, citing a very poorly done, hand-picked study
00:00:19.160 done by a pre-selected group, saying even then that there's like 58% think that it's
00:00:24.900 going to negatively affect the economy. The thing about it is, is there's a narrow sliver
00:00:28.840 of the economy that it absolutely will negatively affect. Well, it'll have two negative effects.
00:00:33.020 One of them is that you're going to have a spiteful ex-wife that is the rest of Canada,
00:00:37.560 and they're going to do everything they can to screw us over. And two, and this is the one I
00:00:41.400 was going to go with first, was that the big multinational organization like BlackRock and
00:00:48.280 Brookfield, they're going to automatically add a modifier of a couple percentage points to any
00:00:57.600 prospective project and uh and what kind of an ir they need to justify moving forward with it
00:01:03.620 because some bureaucrat is going to say okay political unrest okay add two add 200 points
00:01:09.920 for that right and so for that the big multi-billion dollar companies who do not have
00:01:17.560 anybody's best interest at heart except for themselves are going to be more reticent to
00:01:23.580 invest in Alberta. I wouldn't say that's a bad thing to begin with, but that you could fairly
00:01:28.680 say. But the problem is, is that that creates an arbitrage where anybody who's a small to medium
00:01:33.260 sized investor is going to look at this and they're going to say, what are the potential
00:01:37.040 downsides? Because you're going to, no one's going to look at it and say, Alberta is going to
00:01:42.440 be regulating itself more than the rest of Canada. They're not going to say they're going to create
00:01:47.980 more stupid rules they're not going to say more stupid things you're going to say worst case
00:01:54.060 scenario it stays exactly the same just the logo on the door changes that's it that's the worst
00:02:01.040 case scenario so they're going to look at it and say in fact though it's probably going to be a
00:02:04.740 little bit better so one some random project doesn't matter what that would already pass this
00:02:10.520 the, um, the stress test before you start talking about separation has now it's going to be good
00:02:18.020 either way, but you've also got a big potential upside and any savvy investors are going to look
00:02:23.680 at that and say, yes, that's absolutely something I would invest in. But to be very clear, that's
00:02:29.720 not what they're trying to say. They're trying to say that, Oh, investment's going to dry up.
00:02:34.320 And when in actuality, it's just going to be a narrow sliver of it because quite often with
00:02:39.020 these claims, you've got a bunch of people making shitty arguments based on shaky logic to try and
00:02:47.640 scare you rather than convince you intellectually. Like when they say Quebec, oh, well, Quebec's a
00:02:53.100 perfect example because look at the way that, uh, look at what the referendum did to them in the
00:02:58.460 nineties. You know, they dealt with all kinds of recession issues after that. Well, of course they
00:03:03.220 did. What are their major industries? Places that get bailed out, places that have protectionist
00:03:08.740 cartels and fucking equalization. If you're going to separate from the rest of the place that gives
00:03:14.660 you all of those things, of course, investment is going to go away. Okay. If, if there's a boat
00:03:22.120 dragging an anchor and the anchor says, I'm going to cut the chain, no one's going to bet on the
00:03:28.040 anchor. But if the boat says, I'm going to cut the chain, people are going to bet on the boat.
00:03:34.300 and it also ignores the main point too that actually what started driving business away
00:03:40.500 uh was not was it was not related to the referendum but it was related to the draconian
00:03:46.400 dual language laws that the province imposed in all their businesses and businesses went screw
00:03:51.320 that quebec-based businesses went screw that and that's why the bank of montreal is no longer based
00:03:56.340 in montreal well i mean you're absolutely right you know they they like to say that they have a
00:04:02.880 better culture and then you know whenever somebody from fucking quebec talks about alberta separation
00:04:07.880 they say well they don't have a culture let's say we absolutely have a culture and it's been
00:04:12.140 self-selecting for over a century it's people who want to make something of themselves if you go work
00:04:17.240 out here you don't care if somebody's from manitoba or ontario or uganda are you going to
00:04:25.020 show up here work hard have a good attitude and try and try and make this place better than it
00:04:30.720 was before you got here. That's all anybody looks for. That's all anybody wants. And the ironic
00:04:35.220 thing is that in this country, that weeds out a lot of people. Okay. And I would say that that
00:04:41.300 is by far a more distinct and notable culture than one where you literally have to have riboflavin
00:04:47.840 in two languages in the middle of rural Manitoba, just to maintain a language that is going to
00:04:54.880 fucking die without its legal and and financial support because it kind of just sucks and you
00:05:02.400 sound like you're chewing on a mouthful of gravel and peanut butter
00:05:10.480 the my my favorite anecdote of language on both sides you had french side on cereal and
00:05:16.000 english side there's many weights that said yummy in english and then the french side would say
00:05:20.800 like we're spending all this effort in all these things like it's no no wonder this is a bloated
00:05:31.120 mess like this is this is pretty messed up sure you can talk about you know the theoretical risks
00:05:38.120 of of forming an independent nation like this this is very uh well known throughout history
00:05:44.320 Of course, it's a risky endeavor to secede from a large country.
00:05:50.680 Who's talking about the risks there are of remaining in Canada
00:05:54.080 on the sinking ship of the poorest performing G7 and G20 nation
00:06:03.140 and pick a category and we're dog-shaped.
00:06:05.160 We're not going to be able to call ourselves G7 for much longer.
00:06:08.200 No, no kidding.
00:06:10.240 What about that risk?
00:06:11.220 okay i i just want to point something out here you said secede and i would argue that if we pay
00:06:18.360 the mortgage it's our fucking house and we keep the name of canada and tell them they've got to
00:06:22.920 pick a new one east alberta yeah yes but uh like also you know it just that that whole argument
00:06:35.800 about it's going to be difficult.
00:06:38.280 This isn't going to be easy for you.
00:06:40.640 Literally everything that everybody in Western Canada
00:06:44.100 has ever built has been against huge headwinds.
00:06:49.440 None of it has been easy.
00:06:50.620 It's all been difficult.
00:06:52.000 And I get the fact that that argument works
00:06:54.120 for people in Eastern Canada.
00:06:56.320 Oh, this is going to be a lot of work.
00:06:58.060 Oh, for short air, never mind, and bye.
00:07:00.860 Okay, but that doesn't work out here.
00:07:04.820 In fact, it has the opposite effect.
00:07:06.340 You're like, oh, it's going to be hard.
00:07:08.020 Sweet.
00:07:08.980 Perfect.
00:07:09.500 Sweet.
00:07:09.840 I don't want to be bored while I'm doing this.
00:07:12.640 And again, it speaks to the fact that the people making that argument don't fundamentally
00:07:17.600 understand Albertans.
00:07:19.560 Like we're on divergent evolutionary paths here.
00:07:24.360 And at some point, we're going to have to recognize that we're just not, we're not the
00:07:33.340 same anymore.
00:07:33.940 Yeah.
00:07:34.820 You might say that you're proud of being in Canada, but that's your lizard brain talking. That's the fight or flight part. That's not your heart. It's not even anywhere close to it. And if you ruminate on that for a little while, you'll probably come to the same conclusion.
00:08:04.820 Thank you.