Western Standard - Carney pulls Canada closer to Europe

00:00:00.000 G'day, today is September 16th, 2026.

00:00:28.100 I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:00:32.440 I'm coming from home today.

00:00:34.460 My own office had a little bit of temperature troubles, so I'm coming out of remote.

00:00:40.200 But everyone else is in the studio, which is nice and cool.

00:00:44.140 We've got our usual lineup, our Western Standard news editor, Dave Naylor.

00:00:48.960 Hello.

00:00:49.920 Senior columnist, Nigel Hannaford.

00:00:53.540 Here again.

00:00:54.560 And senior columnist, Corey Morgan.

00:00:56.740 Good evening.

00:00:57.280 all right well uh there's a new report out uh released just this morning uh from the university

00:01:06.000 of calgary on the cost of independence uh that was commissioned by the government of alberta

00:01:12.080 we'll talk we'll be talking about that we'll be also talking about uh the news from just the

00:01:18.260 other day uh by election uh in alberta and the constituency of calgary shaw a ucp writing that

00:01:25.820 was lost to the NDP. We're going to read the tea leaves, or read the entrails, I should

00:01:32.120 say, about what happened, why it happened, and what it could mean in Alberta politics

00:01:38.700 going forward. But first, we are going to talk about Canada sort of, kind of, maybe

00:01:46.820 joining the European Union. Nigel, just the other day, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced

00:01:54.580 that Canada would be seeking some kind of associate membership

00:01:59.940 in the European Union.

00:02:01.540 And then Ursula, I don't recall her last name.

00:02:05.500 Von Linn.

00:02:06.500 Pardon?

00:02:07.800 Ursula von Linn.

00:02:09.280 Von Linn, yeah.

00:02:10.280 She announced today, early this morning, our time,

00:02:15.140 and that Canada, the European Commission,

00:02:20.200 was offering Canada associate membership.

00:02:24.580 in the european union nigel as a man born in europe why don't you tell us what associate

00:02:31.040 membership in the european union means born in great britain so i don't really know but

00:02:35.980 fog in the channel europe cut off look um this is a this there's really no details to comment on

00:02:48.920 at the moment. But in the larger picture, very obviously, Mr. Carney has been trying to present

00:02:54.840 himself as an alternative point of view to the American-dominated world economy,

00:03:02.740 and he is trying to get Europe, which is a considerable player, is like a fifth of the

00:03:07.860 world GDP, to cooperate with him in presenting the possibility of an alternative poll of

00:03:15.580 influence to that dominated by the United States.

00:03:19.600 Whether this would ever lead to a formal signed relationship with the European Union

00:03:28.220 and what that might look like is a little early to tell.

00:03:32.620 One thing we do know is that when Mr. Harper, in the last Conservative ministry,

00:03:43.020 negotiated the Canadian-European trade deal,

00:03:47.480 exports did indeed increase.

00:03:50.800 Canadian exports to Europe, European exports to Canada,

00:03:55.420 and right now it's in the order of 130 billion euros,

00:03:59.460 which depending upon what the exchange rate is,

00:04:01.240 around $200 billion a year maybe.

00:04:03.800 If you're a banker, don't persecute me if I've got that off by a digit.

00:04:07.920 But it's a significant amount of money

00:04:10.580 as a consequence of a free trade deal that was done 15 years ago, 16, 17 years ago.

00:04:18.720 Now, what kind of an increase in trade could come from basically extending that free trade agreement?

00:04:31.360 It's hard to know.

00:04:32.540 And Mr. Carney himself, I notice, has not made exaggerated promises about what that's going to mean

00:04:38.900 because he knows very well that compared to the $800 billion Canadian-U.S. trade per year,

00:04:46.360 the Europeans are still going to look like not much of a solution or an answer.

00:04:51.040 But the value of this to Mr. Carney is that it pulls Europe into what you might call a united front against the U.S.

00:05:00.200 The Europeans are not very pleased with the Americans anyway

00:05:04.600 because of the difficulties they now have

00:05:07.200 getting oil through the Straits of Hormuz,

00:05:09.840 not to mention some insulting remarks

00:05:12.340 that he has made to them and about them,

00:05:15.880 in my view, not without some justification,

00:05:18.180 but at any case, if they take offence,

00:05:20.000 there's a reason why they've taken offence,

00:05:21.600 and there was something to take offence too. 0.98

00:05:23.460 So the idea of the Europeans and the Canadians

00:05:25.700 standing together and offering their collective forefingers

00:05:29.620 to the United States is all you really need

00:05:32.900 to understand what's going on here dave i want to go to you next uh we as nigel said we already

00:05:40.380 have the canada we have cita the canada europe trade agreement uh the overwhelming bulk of

00:05:48.580 the european union's members are a part of nato of which we're already a part i'm trying to figure

00:05:55.200 out what this is so-called associate membership would be there's never been this is a new thing

00:06:00.740 that's just been invented seemingly overnight,

00:06:03.900 although I imagine behind the scenes

00:06:05.220 there's probably been some kind of discussion.

00:06:08.380 I'm trying to figure out what it would mean

00:06:10.020 because the European Union came originally

00:06:12.360 from the European community,

00:06:13.780 and then before that,

00:06:14.840 the European coal and steel community,

00:06:18.660 and it's grown from there.

00:06:20.260 And every time the European Union

00:06:21.640 and its different iterations has grown,

00:06:24.420 it's had a membership process,

00:06:26.640 but it's never had this associate membership before.

00:06:30.740 has there been any details announced from the european commission or mark carney so far uh

00:06:38.540 since this announcement about what this means this is about labor mobility moving people back

00:06:43.820 and forth between the eu and canada is it uh making canada compliant in regulations i don't

00:06:52.080 know is it canada taking on the euro uh currency any information that we've gotten so far since

00:06:57.400 this announcement about what this associate membership might mean no not a single thing as

00:07:02.420 as nigel was saying the details are are scarce it looks to me like it's just part of

00:07:09.800 mark carney's move to move canada further and further away from the states he's got a big speech

00:07:18.380 to the european union set for tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m calgary time so when you

00:07:26.300 wake up the story should be already on the western standard but the the americans aren't happy with

00:07:32.840 this there's already been several uh top american officials coming out and saying look all this is

00:07:39.600 going to do is make it harder for for a candidate to get a trade deal with uh with the united states

00:07:44.960 so uh yeah there's there's been absolutely no information other than the uh the eu is uh going

00:07:52.780 to go open and set up an office in ottawa other than that uh the sergeant uh schultz was fond of

00:07:59.820 saying on hogan's hero i know nothing nothing uh cory i'm gonna i'm not maybe i'm playing devil's

00:08:09.220 advocate here but i'm gonna put you a weird i'm gonna try and put a based spin on this um

00:08:15.320 you know you got to imagine that the turks right now are stewing in anger they've been trying to

00:08:22.240 get into the European Union as long as it's existed. And, you know, at least some of their 0.97

00:08:28.000 territory is unfortunately in Europe. They currently occupy Constantinople. But the Turks

00:08:34.540 have been trying to get into the EU for a long time, and they've never been shown the courtesy

00:08:39.240 of an associate membership. And, you know, Canada rolls out of bed one day and says, hey, we'd like

00:08:44.340 that. And, you know, the European Commission jumps up and says, absolutely.

00:08:52.240 There is a sense to which Turkey, which is at least a little bit geographically European, but it's excluded from capital E, Europe.

00:09:02.940 Canada is obviously not geographically anything to do with Europe, but in some senses we are European, we're of European civilization.

00:09:12.200 um is there a way to kind of put almost like a right-wing nationalist you know european

00:09:22.860 civilization kind of based outlook on this if you will that you know canada is not a post-national

00:09:30.060 uh economic zone it is it is clearly of european civilization we put that out there as a as a kind

00:09:40.880 a defense of this uh announcement to you well if it's that clear a lot of european cities are

00:09:47.320 looking more like turkey than constantinople is so that's been a consequence of the eu and open

00:09:54.420 borders and a whole lot of things that actually i think canadians should have been consulted on

00:09:58.400 before we even consider tightening our relationship at least in that sense opening more trade deals

00:10:03.580 sure but this bizarre associate membership which yeah we don't know what it means it might be just

00:10:09.040 window dressing in a corner seat behind

00:10:11.060 Christina Anderson in Brussels or something

00:10:12.960 or, you know,

00:10:14.660 the kiddie table at the scene

00:10:16.860 or it might be a step

00:10:19.080 into getting in. What do other European 1.00

00:10:20.920 nations think of this as well? Yeah, Turkey

00:10:22.840 would be annoyed. I mean, they have a more, 1.00

00:10:25.120 as you said, a more geographic claim

00:10:27.100 though generally culturally I guess

00:10:29.040 they'd be more separated than

00:10:30.880 Canada is.

00:10:33.460 It's a sign of desperation on

00:10:35.000 Carney's part though. He's got to show it out

00:10:36.660 because he's had an impasse with the United States.

00:10:38.880 He's got to show something.

00:10:40.680 But it shows the arrogance of the man.

00:10:42.720 Not a word of this was mentioned during the election campaign.

00:10:46.240 Not a word of selling off airports was mentioned in the election campaign.

00:10:52.380 Parliament hasn't sat, it seems like, in years.

00:10:56.160 And he's just doing all this without, you know, like he's some sort of king.

00:11:00.240 Well, he's some sort of extreme business executive.

00:11:02.840 I think that mindset that he must have picked up at the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, and Brookfield is that you're the top guy and you make decisions and then you activate them is probably what's driving him on this.

00:11:16.060 The little bit of information we do have about this deal is that, in Carney's words, the points of interest are defense cooperation, which is understandable, critical minerals, and you did mention labor mobility.

00:11:32.740 I just, you know, out of that little three-part package, he is now constructing a whole grander vision that is intended to irritate, embarrass, and maybe change things with the United States.

00:11:49.220 It'll change things, but not in a good way for Canada.

00:11:51.520 Well, you bet labor mobility thing is concerning, actually.

00:11:55.240 Mobility has been part of the problem.

00:11:57.000 How much labor mobility do you want?

00:11:59.420 i don't think we care if you know englishmen or oh i guess you know england's not in the eu anymore 0.77

00:12:05.060 but oh we don't really care if like frenchmen and italians germans and poles come and work here the

00:12:09.820 problem is who else has the eu let into the continent who have they let into uh the eurozone

00:12:15.860 i think that'd be the concern with liberal mobility we don't really care about actual

00:12:19.420 year i don't know if you need more frenchmen either no just like 500 000 migrants given

00:12:26.840 spanish citizenship you know they could get some free passage to canada and then finland and some

00:12:32.980 of the others in the eu they've got some internal issues they've got to deal with too and i don't

00:12:36.500 know if fire note associate memberships is going to calm some of their internal uh strife going

00:12:41.940 well something dave something dave said was that you know that mark carney has no mandate for this

00:12:47.700 Of course he has no mandate for this, but that could be an interesting trap that he is setting.

00:12:53.340 The Liberals are riding sky high in the polls right now, the Conservatives are down in the dumps.

00:12:58.760 If Pierre Polyev speaks up and says, you have no mandate for this, you didn't get one in the last election,

00:13:06.780 that could be all the excuse that Mark Carney needs to dissolve Parliament and call an election.

00:13:13.080 He does have a bare working majority right now, but he essentially can't afford a single Liberal MP to defect and vote the opposition or to be sick that day.

00:13:22.420 He would get himself a stonking majority government if he called an election right now.

00:13:27.280 And frankly, it's bizarre, but Canadians have always had, at least huge numbers of Canadians, more so in the East than in the West, but still in the West, have had an anti-American streak about them.

00:13:41.020 It's been one of the unfortunate defining characteristics of Canadian nationhood is we're Americans that aren't in America.

00:13:50.200 You know, we're not American, but we're so damn close to being American.

00:13:53.820 And Canadians have always liked to identify themselves more with Europe.

00:13:58.160 And, you know, that go back to Robert Borden or John Diefenbaker trying to identify more with the British Empire and Commonwealth.

00:14:06.600 That's always been a romantic notion for a lot of Canadians.

00:14:09.800 And while Canadians say they want no truck or trade with the Yankee, we've now, can you imagine if, you know, a prime minister, conservative or liberal had said, we're going to get associate statehood with America?

00:14:24.780 Like, we're still Canada, we're our own thing, but we're going to be an associate state? Even if it meant nothing, like this associate member of the EU might mean absolutely nothing, people would absolutely lose their shit if we were to be an associate state. 0.96

00:14:39.800 of America. I think this would be an interesting election item for Mark Carney to go on. He might 0.95

00:14:47.040 say, I need a mandate to do this. So he negotiates what this looks like. And I now need a mandate

00:14:53.680 to do it. Even Pierre Polyev says, I need a mandate to do this. And I have a feeling that

00:14:58.880 a majority of Canadian voters, rightly or wrongly, if this is portrayed as a choice between being

00:15:06.120 pulled more into the american imperial orbit or being choosing a more european path i think most

00:15:13.720 canadian voters would probably choose the european path exactly that's what the polls are

00:15:20.020 are showing that uh you know they they approve of carney getting the closer relationship they are

00:15:27.140 completely ignoring the fact that if you look at the numbers the trade numbers if trade with europe

00:15:32.000 was going to grow significantly, it would have already grown because there's effectively free

00:15:37.140 trade now. So this is a smokescreen. Well, and again, it gets back to Carney's

00:15:43.260 cowardice when it comes to actually doing something then to open up other markets.

00:15:49.860 Why don't we have a pipeline built halfway to the West Coast by now? Why is he still talking? He's

00:15:54.840 still spinning his wheels. He's still got an MOU gathering dust on a desktop in an empty Calgary

00:15:59.960 office somewhere. He's virtue

00:16:02.040 signaling. I mean, if there's anything Europe wants

00:16:04.220 from Canada, it's our energy.

00:16:06.400 Oh, there's no business case. They don't give a crap 0.99

00:16:08.100 if we're an associate 0.98

00:16:09.860 member, but they would certainly very much

00:16:12.080 like another source of oil and gas

00:16:14.320 coming in from us, but Carney's still

00:16:16.200 not acting on that. He's not.

00:16:17.860 I mean, he's listening to the last prime minister, isn't he,

00:16:20.180 who said there was no business case here.

00:16:22.120 Apparently so. As long as the government's

00:16:24.380 in the way there isn't one.

00:16:27.560 Well,

00:16:27.960 Speaking of associate members, the UCP candidate in Calgary, Shaw, we'll have to call an associate member of the legislature because the NDP won in that by-election just the other day.

00:16:40.760 How do you like that for a segue?

00:16:43.140 It was a pretty narrow race, but the NDP did win.

00:16:49.120 The newly christened and, I think, curiously named Progressive Tory Party got less than a thousand votes, not much.

00:16:56.900 But it was enough to make up the margin.

00:17:00.720 I want to come to you, Dave.

00:17:02.400 You can maybe sum up what's happened here.

00:17:05.040 And then we'll get into trying to parse out the analysis of why and what.

00:17:10.440 Yeah, I'm terrible at math.

00:17:13.180 I failed it.

00:17:13.760 A lot of numbers here, so I wrote them down.

00:17:16.760 Kyle Campbell, NDP, got 46.6% of the vote.

00:17:21.100 Mike Derry, UCP, 43%.

00:17:22.900 percent uh campbell wins by 1400 uh votes uh derrick's mentioned the progressive conservatives

00:17:30.820 no no no no no they're not they're the progressive tories progressive tories uh peter guthrie's boys

00:17:39.000 taking about a thousand uh votes away uh our chris old corn though did some did some digging

00:17:46.480 into it. And he discovered that the writing, while everybody says is strongly UCP, has grown

00:17:55.140 the number of immigrants in there. It used to be 35% of the writing was immigrants. Now it's up to

00:18:01.080 40% of the writing is immigrants. And who do immigrants vote for? They don't vote for

00:18:07.720 conservative parties. They vote liberal or NDP. Our friend Nahid Nanshi was jumping around and

00:18:15.520 said this is an earthquake and there's no safe seats in Calgary anymore for the UCP over exaggerating

00:18:23.440 as always and you know a lot of I think a lot of the reasons the NDP one is is the UCP handling of

00:18:31.660 the referendum 58 percent of Albertans say they do not like the way Premier Smith has handled

00:18:37.620 the referendum so there may be some fallback on that but I don't I personally don't see any

00:18:44.260 panic stations happening at

00:18:46.400 UCP headquarters?

00:18:49.360 This is...

00:18:50.480 Canada, for some reason,

00:18:52.840 does not do exit polls.

00:18:54.480 The United States does it. Big European 0.99

00:18:56.400 countries do it. And I love it because

00:18:58.420 it can give us a really

00:18:59.980 accurate idea of

00:19:02.820 who is going to win, even when

00:19:04.760 there's only a little bit of the results in.

00:19:06.880 And it allows us to figure out why someone

00:19:08.780 won.

00:19:10.680 And there's a few theories. One is, yes,

00:19:12.860 people are

00:19:13.720 you know, particularly in an urban center like Calgary, are upset about the the independence

00:19:20.820 referendum that that's rubbing off on the Smith government. I don't think there's actually been

00:19:24.980 a ton of evidence to support that. I think maybe there's a little bit from, you know, people who

00:19:32.860 are on the left side of the UCP voter coalition. There might be some of that. I know Jason Kenney's

00:19:37.480 blamed that. But even Nenshi himself said he doesn't think that's what it is, that it was

00:19:42.140 actually more general kitchen table and pocketbook issues that the NDP went on. But

00:19:48.680 we can take that as it is. He has motives to try and paint it one way or another.

00:19:54.100 I think the changing demographics of the constituency are very important. Overwhelmingly,

00:20:00.460 migrants in Alberta, in Canada, in North America, across the entire Western world,

00:20:06.300 they vote overwhelmingly for leftist parties. They don't vote uniformly that way, obviously,

00:20:10.400 And there's diversity within different migrant communities. Some vote a bit more like the general host population than others. But overall, they tend to vote for leftist parties that want to keep a more open door to further migration and are seen as more friendly towards migration for good reason.

00:20:26.700 um that might have a lot to do with it uh i know stockwell day and peter grothery argue the same

00:20:34.380 thing that the progressive tories cost them the seat because the number of votes they had uh made

00:20:40.320 up the margin between the uh the difference between the ucp and the ndp i'm always hesitant

00:20:46.580 of that answer i i don't believe any political party owns votes and is owed those votes um

00:20:53.200 And, you know, maybe some of those votes were people who wouldn't have voted for the UCP anyway.

00:20:58.480 Difficult to say without exit polling.

00:21:01.360 Or it could have been people on the more populous right of the UCP voter coalition, enough of them at least, staying home.

00:21:08.720 Because, you know, there's a fair number who were not entirely pleased with Daniel Smith and the UCP government right now.

00:21:14.980 So, Corey, I know we don't have exit poll information to make any qualitative or quantitative analysis of this right now.

00:21:28.100 But what's your take? What made up for this? This was not a bedrock UCP rutting.

00:21:34.000 It had gone NDP in 2015 when the NDP had won government, but it's been UCP in the two elections since then.

00:21:42.040 So what's your best take on why the NDP won this one?

00:21:47.380 Yeah, I think it's mostly people taking advantage of by-elections.

00:21:52.200 I mean, they're a good opportunity to express discontent with the government

00:21:55.740 without the risk of overthrowing the government.

00:21:57.920 I think a lot of conservatives stayed home on both.

00:22:01.300 The funny thing is on both sides, I think, in the issue.

00:22:03.360 I think the referendum has been impacting it.

00:22:06.460 The UCP base is divided among it, and it's not a soft divide when it comes to that.

00:22:12.040 you're kind of really very much either for it or against it. And the independent side is livid

00:22:18.340 right now because they're seeing $4 million of tax dollars being spent to campaign against them

00:22:22.700 in the referendum. The Federalist side is furious because there's a referendum even being held in

00:22:28.220 the first place. And when you get both facets of your party upset with the direction of things,

00:22:34.960 I don't know if it's a revolution that they're going to get up and try and unseat the UCP,

00:22:38.980 But when they're sitting at this by-election and they're seeing this going on all over the place, I think there's a lot of conscious decisions from people saying, you know what, I'm just not going to get up and go out there this time.

00:22:49.380 And they didn't.

00:22:50.520 They will when the election comes.

00:22:52.160 I think when the general election comes, that's when, again, more pragmatism in a broader picture.

00:22:56.940 Plus the referendum will be behind us, whatever that may be.

00:23:00.100 As for Peter Guthrie's thing, yeah, you can't assume those votes came from the Conservatives.

00:23:05.020 that's a left-leaning party and actually you know it's it's liberals under a coat of paint is what

00:23:09.380 they are and they could be pulling actually some of the bluer NDP members who you know they only

00:23:15.820 voted NDP before because they didn't like the UCP but they were happy with a more moderate option

00:23:22.140 we can't assume that what he peeled off was exclusively from the UCP he got more votes than

00:23:28.420 I would have anticipated out of that but again it's it's it's a by-election going way back to

00:23:33.160 the Wild Rose days, we won Calgary Glenmore in an upset and then still got wiped out by the PCs in

00:23:38.680 the general election. Same sort of reason the public was ready to vote for an alternative to

00:23:44.640 send a message during a by-election, but when it's a general election, the decision is much

00:23:48.420 different. So I wouldn't read too much into this yet. Nigel, again, we don't have hard data because

00:23:55.040 for some reason we don't do exit polling in Canada, but what do you think the impact at least

00:24:02.080 will be uh is this gonna spook uh you know urban and you know calgary ucp mlas uh to to want to

00:24:13.000 course you know maybe challenge the leadership of danielle smith or uh or course correct and say

00:24:19.840 hey we've been you know you can go in either direction sorry i've got a dog here trying to

00:24:24.780 intrude on us uh you know it could be interpreted either way it could be interpreted again in the

00:24:31.400 absence of data. One side of the party can interpret this and say, hey, we've been too

00:24:34.840 hardcore on this independence thing. We've got to really moderate and go into the middle. We've got

00:24:39.080 to take a westward turn. The other side might say, hey, no, well, we've been pissing off our

00:24:43.540 independent supporters. They stayed home. That's why we lost. We've got to double down and take a

00:24:48.240 more nationalistic turn. What lesson do you think the UCP takes away from this by-election?

00:24:55.140 Well, the first thing I agree with, Corey, that this is well behind them by the time the election

00:25:00.900 comes out, but as to the lesson they learn about it, one thing we have not discussed

00:25:11.300 is the impact of this relentless left-wing NDP slash union slash ATA advertising that

00:25:20.260 is constantly undermining or criticizing and putting the worst spin on every single thing

00:25:28.100 that this government has done.

00:25:31.720 So whereas there is certainly some division of opinion within the voters about the referendum,

00:25:40.920 that's not going to be the issue for the next little while, but this relentless advertising

00:25:49.180 on radio and on signs and ads saying things like, you know, people before profits in health

00:25:59.280 care, teachers good, government bad.

00:26:02.820 It's been going on for so long, and it's going to go on for longer.

00:26:06.420 It can't help have a drip, drip, drip effect upon people.

00:26:10.720 And just to reflexively think there's something wrong with the conservative, the UCP, when

00:26:17.440 in actual fact, if you look at what they have done, the money they have put into education,

00:26:24.700 the money they have put into health, the reforms that they are attempting, they actually deserve

00:26:32.820 a gold star for what they've accomplished here. But you would never know that from what

00:26:40.100 you hear on the radio as you drive into work, or as you're in the kitchen, or you're doing

00:26:45.060 whatever, you will not hear that. So I think there's been a very effective campaign against

00:26:50.620 the UCP by the left wing. And I'm tempted to see at least some of what's happened here

00:26:58.220 attributing to that. The percentage vote that the NDP got was 46%. The last time it was 43%.

00:27:08.280 That's significant. That's measurable. That's several hundred people and enough to make a

00:27:13.760 difference in an election propaganda works all right well we're going to turn and keep it close

00:27:27.480 to home here in alberta today uh cory the university of calgary i think their school

00:27:33.760 of public policy had been commissioned by the government of alberta to do an analysis a report

00:27:40.420 on the cost, kind of a cost-benefit analysis of independents that's been released today.

00:27:49.640 Why don't you tell me, what are some of the big highlights from the report?

00:27:54.600 And, you know, do you think this was a fair and honest, even-handed attempt to give Albertans

00:28:01.320 information before they vote, or was this, you know, was the thumb on the scale one way or another?

00:28:07.500 Yeah, well, it only dropped this morning.

00:28:09.180 So admittedly, I've only read the executive summary and gone through some of the basics.

00:28:12.540 I haven't done a deep dive.

00:28:14.220 The numbers, though, on the surface already look a little more fair, I think, than past things we've heard.

00:28:19.160 Like, for example, Premier Smith's strange uttering of saying it was going to cost $400 billion for Alberta to become independent.

00:28:25.780 This report's talking along the lines of $170 billion over five years of potential assumed new costs.

00:28:33.620 uh and and i believe you know when you look at the authors of uh jack mints and and uh ted morton

00:28:39.840 you know they're going to be a little more on the alberta-centric side but it was clearly still a

00:28:44.560 federalist bent one of the things i noted though what was striking was they've got projections

00:28:48.880 going out as far as 20 years in this and i mean come on you know you're really kind of stretching

00:28:53.720 and what you think things might look like 20 years from now we could you know we can get five

00:28:57.320 economists that can't give the same answer for a one-year projection much less 20 some of it too

00:29:03.440 it was a bit of give and take. The report admitted that the regulatory regime for oil and gas and

00:29:10.840 pipelines is hurting Alberta and getting out of Ottawa would benefit the energy industry here.

00:29:16.040 But at the same time, they felt that it would make it harder for us to get it to market because

00:29:20.240 an independent Alberta would have a harder time getting pipelines, which I don't know,

00:29:24.260 zero from zero is still zero. So I don't know how it can get a harder. But that was, I guess,

00:29:29.480 the caveat they wanted to make sure not to show that they were encouraging a picture with it the

00:29:33.940 other thing to note was their their speculation was very wide i mean they were talking again from

00:29:38.460 those startup costs going from i believe 200 or 20 billion to 170 billion i mean you're really

00:29:43.920 ballparking pretty big uh with variables and things when you start putting out numbers like

00:29:48.960 that it's it's something when i get a chance to drill down in more detail i'll have more

00:29:53.860 specific thoughts on it, but it sounds like one of the more optimistic

00:29:58.700 as far as it goes, but still a negative slant in general on what people might

00:30:02.700 feel independence would bring. Well, what do you think, actually, Corey, that would they

00:30:06.600 have wanted to put out a report showing that there was an immediate profit

00:30:10.760 from independence? I mean, that would kind of make the case

00:30:14.440 in a way that a lot of people would cause to look at it again and say, well, maybe

00:30:18.680 this isn't such a bad idea. There's a strong political incentive, I think,

00:30:22.560 to keep expectations down here.

00:30:24.780 Certainly that.

00:30:25.540 I think realists, even in the independence movement,

00:30:28.300 maybe there's not enough of them,

00:30:29.280 but they would realize too,

00:30:30.740 in the transitional period, it's going to be expensive.

00:30:32.960 There are some institutions that have to be recreated.

00:30:35.280 It's going to come with an expense.

00:30:36.540 There's going to be some instability

00:30:38.300 if the province voted to go,

00:30:40.120 and it would cause some investment chill for a few years.

00:30:42.240 These are undeniable things.

00:30:44.460 I think independent supporters like myself

00:30:46.180 believe in the longer term things would look better.

00:30:48.640 But this group was not commissioned to put something out,

00:30:50.580 to put a rosy flavor on this by any means.

00:30:54.180 And I think they put a less exaggerated one.

00:30:58.660 The one that is still a sticking point that bugs me,

00:31:01.000 they did it in this, Premier Smith did it,

00:31:03.040 the Canada West Foundation did it,

00:31:04.860 is they treat Alberta's assumption of a share of the national debt

00:31:08.400 as if this is a new debt.

00:31:10.880 Look, we already have it.

00:31:12.440 You know, we have it whether we stay in Canada

00:31:14.540 and we have it whether we leave.

00:31:16.800 So, I mean, fine, you know, it's a debt that we'd be sitting on,

00:31:20.440 But we're sitting on it regardless, looking at it as if it's a new expense we would incur, I do believe is being disingenuous.

00:31:27.240 At the worst, it would mean we assume it and don't pay it down, just like we have with the federal situation.

00:31:31.480 So we'd be in the same boat.

00:31:33.780 And it did mention a drop in GDP, and it did mention salaries would drop.

00:31:41.680 So it's not just pie in the sky, $170 billion numbers.

00:31:46.320 It's actual figures on individual.

00:31:48.240 Those figures, it puts speculation on GDB dropping between like 5% and 18%, like these massive spreads, which make it a little difficult to...

00:31:57.500 Still a drop, though.

00:31:58.740 Well, maybe. Maybe they were off by the 18 on the origin of error on the other direction.

00:32:03.760 It just still felt like a dart on the board to me.

00:32:05.700 But I mean, I got my own bias on this, of course.

00:32:07.920 Yeah, and a lot of this would depend very much on the negotiations that take place and how those negotiations take place.

00:32:15.660 you know how how is uh the debt apportioned how how are assets apportioned you know alberta's

00:32:23.420 argued that it's entitled to a lot more than simply a per capita share of the canada pension

00:32:28.340 plan assets because albertans have contributed hugely disproportionately more to the uh the

00:32:36.040 the uh the cpp so alberta would be in a position to demand more uh and on the other side you know

00:32:42.340 when you've got liabilities, you know, like, like the debt, you know, Alberta, Alberta would have

00:32:51.380 some cards to play in these kinds of things. If, if the federal government decided to try and hold

00:32:56.840 back too much of Albertans fair share of the Canada pension plan assets, Alberta could then

00:33:02.880 say, well, fine, we're simply not taking the debt, there'd be some give and take. So I understand

00:33:09.940 the report has a difficult time in trying to predict what this would be like because so much

00:33:14.960 would be decided in negotiations other things there might be some assets we simply don't want

00:33:20.280 like we might simply not want much of the Canadian military hardware because first there's not much

00:33:25.540 second it's extremely antiquated so in Alberta negotiating independence might well say fine

00:33:33.300 you know keep the military hardware we're going to go out and buy our own here but as a result

00:33:38.380 you know, we're not going to take as much of the debt because you're going to keep certain

00:33:41.400 of these kinds of assets. Another interesting part of the report that actually I don't think

00:33:45.600 anybody else had gone into is they did put reports on how this would impact the rest of Canada

00:33:49.700 if Alberta left. And they had their projections and guesses there too. And that didn't look very

00:33:53.540 rosy as well. It said actually would knock Canada's status down from being what's considered a middle

00:33:59.160 power and be somewhere closer to Mexico or Australia in comparison as far as punching

00:34:05.520 economically, though I think we're going in that direction already, but nobody else has really

00:34:10.560 addressed that aspect. We keep talking about where Alberta would be if it became independent.

00:34:14.700 Not many have said, well, what would happen to the rest of the country in such a circumstance?

00:34:18.340 And the report did delve into that a little bit, which again, might make some Canadians concerned.

00:34:25.480 Derek's always wanted an aircraft carrier on the Bull River, hasn't he?

00:34:29.240 So do I.

00:34:30.020 the question is whether we would seek associate status with europe just to pick things up a

00:34:38.980 little bit yeah sure thing alberta eu associate state yeah i have to i have to say that there's

00:34:52.060 been a number of reports i mean the canada west foundation put out one the alberta prosperity

00:34:57.540 project has its own estimates. Now we have this government, which I actually do wonder whether

00:35:05.560 these are what they really think, these numbers, or whether the real picture is perhaps a little

00:35:12.180 more attractive, hard to say, just putting myself in the place of a minister who actually has to

00:35:18.680 bring this thing out and say, well, here it is. It would be great. You know, that's a hard position

00:35:24.900 to take.

00:35:26.220 The APP one is over-optimistic

00:35:29.160 actually. It's an advocacy group

00:35:30.840 that really wanted to punish things as much

00:35:32.940 as it could.

00:35:33.720 I guess my takeaway from it,

00:35:37.400 Corey, would be

00:35:38.240 this is actually a fairly believable

00:35:41.060 report. It could

00:35:42.760 actually be better.

00:35:44.820 More attractive

00:35:46.840 to leave than they're admitting.

00:35:49.420 But if this

00:35:50.840 is a good basis to discuss

00:35:52.940 the matter going forward.

00:35:53.880 And it did, in one of its projections, say, again, if the stars aligned the right way, Alberta could be seeing GDP increases and growth in a 20-year timeline.

00:36:02.960 But again, that's really thrown the dart a long, long way at that point.

00:36:06.340 But we've never seen anything coming out to say that there would be anything other than dystopia if Alberta became independent. 0.61

00:36:12.860 Come on, Corey, we can write a treaty with Ukraine for 100 years.

00:36:16.160 Why can't we look 20 years down the road in Alberta?

00:36:19.400 True enough.

00:36:19.880 So, I mean, as you said, as far as these reports go, though, it's been, it's not favorable to independence, but it's been the least unfavorable for many institutions.

00:36:28.660 I think Derek's muted.

00:36:31.620 I was thinking, you know, maybe we can split the difference here.

00:36:34.380 Rather than full independence, Alberta just declares itself to be an associate province of Canada.

00:36:39.300 Hey, there we go.

00:36:41.660 Everything solved?

00:36:42.560 I think we already kind of are.

00:36:49.880 But I'm imagining, I mean, this was the other thing that's striking.

00:36:53.600 This was funded by the provincial government.

00:36:55.220 It was done by U of C, but it was the government that paid for this.

00:36:58.920 So presumably this is the line that's going to come from our MLAs, from the premier.

00:37:05.200 They're going to reference this for this next six weeks.

00:37:07.880 This is where they're going to come from.

00:37:09.100 Sure.

00:37:09.220 Which, just looking at things, if this was spun strategically from a federalist side, I think it was a smart way to go about it.

00:37:16.240 You're not promising a crushing misery.

00:37:20.440 As I said, I think they overreacted when they claimed that $400 billion cost,

00:37:24.500 but they still want to make sure it doesn't look positive as well.

00:37:26.860 So they can keep referencing this just to show there's a negativity,

00:37:30.820 but it's not exaggerated, or at least they don't feel it is.

00:37:33.840 It's more of a, I still see a bit of a campaign piece than necessarily a...

00:37:38.240 Yeah, I think you're right.

00:37:39.500 If they had presented a very, very rosy picture, maybe we'd like that,

00:37:43.880 He'd be accused of pushing the referendum, so they couldn't win all that.

00:37:48.480 Put them in trouble one way or another.

00:37:50.240 Totally.

00:37:52.360 All right.

00:37:53.340 All right, we're going to put a pin in that there.

00:37:55.180 We'll go to our parting shots, starting with Dave.

00:37:59.660 All right.

00:38:00.240 It's been hard work this week going over the New Sydney Sweeney ads over and over and over.

00:38:08.960 That's why you've been working late.

00:38:10.860 And over and over again.

00:38:12.200 Oh, sorry. 0.99

00:38:12.620 uh yes very nice ads and the best part about it is watching uh liberal women meltdown uh on social 0.78

00:38:21.920 media you know calling her every name in the book so you go girl well i don't know what happened to

00:38:30.920 this body positivity thing uh you know you've had uh the feminist movement for uh quite some time

00:38:37.000 trying to say uh you know everyone is beautiful no matter your size etc etc and uh it's a positive

00:38:44.460 thing to forgive my language here but you know you can't slut shame someone you know for you know 0.70

00:38:50.600 displaying their sexuality and as soon as this woman comes along they seem to have forgotten all 0.93

00:38:56.640 of that real real quick all right nigel yes so i'm thinking about the investment summit 0.95

00:39:03.320 and Mr. Carney rolls out with $500 billion 0.55

00:39:08.400 and it's all government money that he wants to spend.

00:39:11.600 Apparently there are people who are interested in investing

00:39:13.720 sitting on the sidelines and they may do something.

00:39:17.100 But you know, this is loudly touted as the first investment summit.

00:39:22.020 The reason it's the first is because we never used to need

00:39:26.180 to get people with money together

00:39:28.420 and try and sell them on the idea of investing in Canada

00:39:32.340 because we have the rules and the procedures

00:39:34.420 that made it an attractive thing to do,

00:39:36.860 yet didn't have to have an investment summit.

00:39:39.380 More grandstanding, more showcasing.

00:39:43.400 Shame on them.

00:39:45.140 I don't know.

00:39:46.200 You had Kevin O'Leary, you know, put on, said on X

00:39:50.900 that it was kind of like Dragon's Den

00:39:53.100 and everyone would go to the different premiers

00:39:55.100 and the premiers would make a pitch

00:39:56.560 for why you should invest in their province.

00:39:58.660 And he said that it was a failure for everyone

00:40:00.500 except for Alberta and Saskatchewan,

00:40:03.020 you know, that they had tangible,

00:40:05.200 you know, everyone was talking about,

00:40:06.260 you know, how do I get permits for developments?

00:40:07.980 And all the premiers had pretty bad answers

00:40:09.760 except for Alberta and Saskatchewan.

00:40:11.900 He said, I don't know.

00:40:14.500 I'm trying to keep an open mind.

00:40:15.560 Yeah, it's theater.

00:40:16.460 Everything in politics is going to have some theater. 0.94

00:40:18.880 That's just baked into it.

00:40:21.360 But I don't know.

00:40:22.160 Some of the feedback coming from it,

00:40:23.760 I think is, I want to be cautiously optimistic about that.

00:40:27.500 But at the very least, it is a different message than Justin Trudeau, who was sending a message that we do not want investment.

00:40:35.520 You could buy our government bonds, but we don't actually want to invest in doing anything here.

00:40:40.280 So at a minimum, they're broadcasting a different message.

00:40:45.200 How do you think Pierre Polyev is feeling about Mr. Harper saying that Marnie had no choice but to walk away from the deal?

00:40:55.740 be feeling a little rejected yeah yeah not a good day for paul you have all right go ahead gory

00:41:01.600 all right well just speaking of performative grandstanding we saw in the western standard

00:41:05.620 story uh with the passive aggressive battle happening in our classrooms with our kids as

00:41:09.900 the pawns in it so since the political flags and such were banned in classrooms uh we have a teacher

00:41:15.740 proudly prancing around the classroom in his rainbow shirt uh dress codes have existed i think 1.00

00:41:22.460 for teachers uh for time immemorial isn't it time maybe then to crack down there these stupid games 0.99

00:41:29.160 i'm getting sick to death of and it's union-based let's get a voucher system and right to work 0.98

00:41:34.900 legislation you guys want to have your little rainbow place to have the children by all means

00:41:39.360 advertise and try and draw parents in let the rest of us choose sane places to have children educated

00:41:44.840 amen amen you know what no i i used to be with cory on this uh we all we all our side it seems

00:41:52.740 to ask for is choice the other side doesn't want to even allow us to have choice so i actually i

00:41:58.920 think it's time we start taking away theirs because they are never going to be happy with just

00:42:03.460 letting us raise our children as we see fit you got this creepy let's make sure we get the the

00:42:08.860 image of this uh this creepy teacher up up here he feels the need to broadcast his personal

00:42:15.960 sexuality to children that he has been entrusted by the state and by parents to teach this guy

00:42:23.200 is sick he should be nowhere near a classroom our side just keeps saying you know we want charter

00:42:28.580 schools we want private schools we want to have the right uh to have choice here but the other

00:42:33.180 side, that's

00:42:35.260 something that only works when both sides

00:42:37.060 can finally agree to some kind of

00:42:38.760 say fine, I'll have my schools

00:42:40.900 you have your schools, the other side 1.00

00:42:43.180 don't agree to let

00:42:44.740 us have our schools, so

00:42:46.680 I think we need to take a much more heavy hand here

00:42:49.140 these guys want to stick it 1.00

00:42:51.120 down our kids throats, they can find a new

00:42:53.000 job in

00:42:53.960 Ontario or something

00:42:56.160 Amen to that too

00:42:58.720 Nice way to put it

00:43:00.920 Derek 0.99

00:43:01.280 cory and i are in a bidding war for biggest jerk okay uh mine here uh this is uh so former uh wild 0.97

00:43:11.300 rose and ucp mla drew barnes uh he's a guy i served in the legislature with for a term 0.95

00:43:16.100 from uh he's from medicine hat uh he is launching a new federal political party called alberta now

00:43:23.180 it promises to be sort of the bloc quebecois of alberta i know when this has been discussed

00:43:30.060 Previously, some people called it the bloc redneck qua. 0.96

00:43:32.620 I think they meant that as an insult, but I think it's pretty funny. 0.99

00:43:36.660 But the idea of a federally elect, electing federal MPs whose job is just to represent Alberta.

00:43:45.620 A few quick thoughts on it.

00:43:47.540 One, I don't yet think the Alberta voters are ready for it yet, but I do think they might well be ready for it very soon.

00:43:56.360 Um, Pierre Paldiev's leadership is looking increasingly fraught. He might not last until

00:44:03.340 the next election. Uh, if that's the case, his, I've said before, I think his two most likely

00:44:08.500 successors are either to be, uh, Jason Kenney or Doug Ford. Both of those people are entirely

00:44:14.360 unacceptable to a very large number of people on the populist right in Alberta. There would be

00:44:20.320 no way for many of us to vote federal conservative with either of those men there.

00:44:26.900 The argument, I think, has been made extremely well over a long time, that the conservatives,

00:44:32.440 while Albertans elect conservatives overwhelmingly at the federal level,

00:44:36.260 the conservatives take us for granted simply because they have to to win in other parts of

00:44:40.320 the country. And so it's time for Albertans to vote a bit more strategically and create

00:44:44.060 competition on the right for the conservatives with this that being said it's another stupid 0.99

00:44:50.340 name for a political party you remember when we tried this with the maverick party and that 0.97

00:44:54.620 terribly named entity because there was going to be a sequel to a movie coming out uh this was uh

00:45:00.620 this was terrible uh this is less terribly named but if you're going to vote for alberta now when

00:45:06.280 we're talking about the party in the last election are we going to call it alberta then

00:45:09.300 uh it's it's it just come up you know the alberta party or the wild rose party the alberta alliance

00:45:18.520 there's a lot of different things i really don't like how a lot of these new political parties try

00:45:23.020 to be cute with their names i don't think voters want cute i think they want serious uh i think

00:45:30.400 they want they want an agenda uh like the progressive tory party provincially in alberta

00:45:35.900 It's trying to be cute.

00:45:37.160 It's playing on something. 1.00

00:45:38.580 It's dumb. 0.98

00:45:39.420 So, look, I want to give my hats off to Drew here. 0.98

00:45:42.240 I think this is a worthy initiative.

00:45:45.740 It's going to take a ton of effort to do it.

00:45:47.780 I hope he's got it in him.

00:45:49.500 But I think they should give the name another look here.

00:45:56.940 It's a bit too cute.

00:45:59.400 Think of something else.

00:46:00.460 Maybe just bring, if we're going to have an Alberta party at the federal level,

00:46:03.400 bring back the Wild Rose.

00:46:04.720 There we go.

00:46:05.520 okay any uh any chance of you running for the leadership of it i got a job i'm good

00:46:12.020 all right i i i and i i i hate travel so i i don't think going to edmonton was bad enough

00:46:18.760 flying to ottawa no i don't think so all right uh dave nagel cory thank you very much

00:46:26.500 and thank you john run in production and all of you who have shared your time with us today

00:46:31.920 Thank you very much.

00:46:33.000 If you're not yet a subscriber to the Western Standard,

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00:47:01.920 Outro Music

Western Standard - September 16, 2026

Carney pulls Canada closer to Europe

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