Western Standard - Derek Fildebrandt： Canada is worth saving, but can it be saved？

00:00:00.000 For the Leave side, your closing statement, Mr. Filderant.

00:00:03.820 Canada is a country worth saving. We all here agree with this.

00:00:08.820 The pertinent question is, can Canada be saved?

00:00:12.540 On that, I am decidedly more pessimistic. 1.00

00:00:15.840 One in four people in Canada is foreign-born, a proportion that we cannot possibly assimilate. 1.00

00:00:22.580 Canada's total government debt is $3.4 trillion and growing daily. 1.00

00:00:28.560 That is 109% of GDP.

00:00:31.960 Canadians now earn 62 cents for every dollar that Americans make.

00:00:36.380 Alberta has six times Nova Scotia's population,

00:00:38.840 but only three and a half times as many MPs and half as many senators.

00:00:44.800 We have proven incapable of building great things for more than a decade,

00:00:49.060 and I count myself skeptical that the former UN Special Envoy for Climate Change and Finance is going to change that.

00:00:55.680 have we all been so browbeaten that our only benchmark for greatness is building another

00:01:03.100 pipeline this is the measure of our success as a people alberta sends 19 billion dollars

00:01:10.980 more to ottawa than ever sees back every year what happened to demanding fairness and equalization

00:01:16.460 62 percent of albertans voted for a constitutional amendment to remove it from the constitution in

00:01:22.900 2021. And what was the response from Ottawa and the other provinces? Silence. At best.

00:01:31.240 Even our federal conservative representatives in Alberta promise the status quo. From many

00:01:38.520 quarters, the response was disdainful derision. And so what do we expect the response to be

00:01:44.680 if Albertans vote for the four constitutional amendments in Monday's referendum? Do we

00:01:49.480 seriously expect ottawa and the provinces to take us up in good faith to reform the constitution

00:01:56.520 no because the status quo works too well for too many of them no because too many people

00:02:05.880 see canada not as a nation of people but as a multicultural fiscal transfer zone where the job

00:02:12.920 of the federal government is merely to move money from one kind of voter to another

00:02:16.920 The difficulty of Alberta achieving independence is admittedly great, but the chances of Canada

00:02:24.120 significantly reforming itself are even smaller. Left-wing Federalists are clear, Alberta should

00:02:30.720 stay and Alberta should shut up. Conservative Federalists tell us that Alberta should stay

00:02:35.940 and get to work fixing Canada. But haven't we been doing that the whole time? Haven't we been

00:02:42.660 doing that since every election since the 1950s? Conservative Federalists need to answer one simple

00:02:50.600 but important question. How realistic is it that we can reform the Canadian Constitution and restore

00:02:56.860 Canadian nationhood? Albertans must honestly ask themselves, does there exist enough genuinely

00:03:04.840 nationalist Canadians in other parts of Canada that would take up the call? I wish it were so.

00:03:12.020 The reality is, we are on our own.

00:03:16.000 Strong people do not grovel for crumbs for the master's paper.

00:03:18.260 Have you wrapped up there, Mr. Fulbright?

00:03:19.740 They take what's theirs.

00:03:21.360 I choose not to be a colony of Ottawa, not of Washington, or of Brampton.

00:03:24.960 I choose the remainder of people that will be here for another 300 years.

Western Standard - October 19, 2026