Western Standard - May 12, 2026


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

Mentioned
Pierre Poilievre Nahid Nenshi Mark Carney Don Braid MacDonald John
Motorcycle left hanging from stoplight after Surrey crash Smith says Alberta will appeal independence petition ruling

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 .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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