Western Standard - May 12, 2026


FILDEBRANDT： Only in Alberta would those who hate Canada drape themselves in the Canadian flag


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

151.36

Word count

940

Sentence count

52

Harmful content

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Elbows Up crowd wants you to know that Alberta nationalists really hate Canada. The would-be redneck Switzerland of North America hates the Maple Leaf and its people. Don Braid of the American-owned Calgary Herald wrote in a column that Alberta s key separatist leaders often seem propelled by pure hatred of Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 The Elbows Up crowd wants you to know that Alberta nationalists really hate Canada.
00:00:06.060 The would-be redneck Switzerland of North America hates the Maple Leaf and its people.
00:00:11.700 Don Braid of the American-owned Calgary Herald wrote in his column,
00:00:15.480 Alberta's key separatist leaders often seem propelled by pure hatred of Canada.
00:00:21.400 He goes on to quote a few people affiliated with the independence movement
00:00:24.800 who say that Mark Carney is not a real Albertan
00:00:27.200 and that there is potential for American recognition post-referendum.
00:00:32.800 He says, quote,
00:00:33.460 The leaders think a good secessionist soldier must first prove absolute loyalty to Alberta.
00:00:39.240 Increasingly, to do that, they must demonstrate contempt, even hatred, of Canada itself.
00:00:45.280 End quote.
00:00:46.740 It's a curious argument to be made, for when I think of a real Canada hater,
00:00:51.940 I think of those who would topple statues of Sir John and MacDonald,
00:00:55.180 Those who would change the lyrics of O Canada to make it politically correct and gender neutral.
00:01:00.640 Perhaps those who accuse Canada of being an illegitimate genocidal state founded on stolen native land.
00:01:07.160 Those who demand ritualistic shaming with land acknowledgements,
00:01:11.540 lowering the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill for five months,
00:01:15.320 and kneeling for Black Lives Matter in atonement.
00:01:19.500 These people cheered or stood by as more than 112 churches were burned to the ground or seriously vandalized.
00:01:26.660 They insist that Canada is a racist slave state, despite being one of the first places in the history of the world to abolish it in 1834, and massively curtailing it before that.
00:01:39.220 They believe that Canada is so irredeemably racist that it must be demographically altered through unlimited mass migration.
00:01:46.360 these are the real canada haters they tear down its monuments they erase its leaders and its
00:01:53.440 founders they drag its struggles through the mud they curse its achievements they have no respect
00:01:59.340 or appreciation for the inheritance passed to us by those who built canada from nothing but a vast
00:02:05.520 untamed and hostile wilderness they have no sense of our responsibility to pass on a country stronger
00:02:11.740 than we found it to our posterity. These people are uniformly on the Federalist side in Alberta's
00:02:18.380 independence question. That's not to say that every Federalist in Alberta is a Canada hater.
00:02:23.100 Far from it. There are many good-faith Federalists who oppose independence for their own reasons,
00:02:28.020 and they genuinely love Canada. They're Canada first and not Alberta first, and that's perfectly
00:02:32.900 legitimate. But they must be awkwardly sharing the Federalist camp with those who genuinely do
00:02:39.200 hate Canada. Alberta NDP leader Nahid Nenshi tried to fashion himself as a leader of the
00:02:45.380 Federalist camp, and it should make for an awkward fit. As Calgary mayor in 2021, he tried to change
00:02:51.820 Canada Day from a celebration of Canada into a truth and reconciliation event, complete with
00:02:57.200 self-flagellating ritual guilt. Earlier that year, he pushed to erase the names of two of Canada's
00:03:02.980 founders from public schools in Calgary. The motivation of Alberta nationalists is hardly
00:03:09.180 homogenous. For many, there is a deep misunderstanding of the structural and
00:03:13.420 historical injustices of Confederation, and a belief that major reform is not possible after
00:03:18.560 many decades of trying. There's also a different ethos in our social and civic foundation from
00:03:24.120 those of the United Empire Loyalists of Ontario and the French Canadians of Quebec. These
00:03:29.600 nationalists never hated Canada. They tried fruitlessly to work within and reform Canada,
00:03:35.460 and have just given up trying. But more recently, there's a whole new group of Alberta nationalists.
00:03:40.400 They see Canada as crumbling under the weight of national self-doubt and shame, unlimited mass
00:03:46.800 migration, runaway debt, and economic stagnation. They want to save a slice of Canada that was by
00:03:55.380 falling back to Fortress Alberta. I call these people readout Canadians. I would need some 0.97
00:04:01.700 serious empirical polling data to back my thesis up, but I'd chance to say that this group is made
00:04:06.800 up disproportionately of Albertans who came here from other Canadian provinces. They came here from
00:04:11.880 failing eastern provinces for opportunity and for what Alberta stands for, at least in our own 0.96
00:04:16.720 mythology. They don't hate Canada. They passionately love it, but they see it going to hell, and that
00:04:24.280 Canada is very possibly past the point of no return.
00:04:28.480 Canada's combined national debt is $4 trillion,
00:04:32.680 or 127% of GDP.
00:04:35.560 We would never pay this back, and neither will our children.
00:04:39.800 And our children will inherit a country
00:04:42.240 unrecognizable from our own. 1.00
00:04:45.220 Ottawa imported nearly 2 million migrants
00:04:48.040 between just 2021 and 2024. 1.00
00:04:51.820 As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was born on foreign soil, a figure which is surely higher now. 1.00
00:05:00.760 No society in mankind's long history has ever assimilated that kind of influx, 1.00
00:05:06.280 even from similar neighbouring countries, without radical alteration. 0.89
00:05:11.780 The Federalists say that they want to save Canada.
00:05:15.360 But what Canada are they trying to save?
00:05:17.660 The Canada that we inherited, which was prosperous, safe, and had at least some sense of shared national identity, is gone.
00:05:26.200 Pierre Polyev's Conservatives represented at least an impulse to address Canada's terminal decline.
00:05:31.580 But even what they offered was relatively thin gruel.
00:05:35.300 Even that timid proposal for change, though, was rejected by most voters outside of the West.
00:05:41.580 Alberta nationalists may be upset with eastern voters, resent structural and constitutional
00:05:46.160 unfairness, and maybe they're angry at Ottawa's barriers to resource development while siphoning
00:05:51.320 off Alberta's wealth to buy votes elsewhere. But they do not hate Canada. They do not hate
00:05:57.460 her proud history and achievements. They hate what Canada has become and where Canada is going,
00:06:04.080 and they do not want to go down with a ship.
00:06:10.620 You