Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Alberta independence in 2026, and the difference between Eastern and Western Canada

00:00:00.000 Good evening, everyone, and Happy New Year's Western Standard viewers. Today, we welcome

00:00:22.560 you to The Hannaford Show. I am Leah Maschid. I am filling in for Nigel Hannaford today.

00:00:27.480 And to help us to welcome the new year, we have Barry Cooper, a professor of political

00:00:33.160 science at the University of Calgary. He will help us discuss and understand more about

00:00:38.680 Alberta independence today, which we'll definitely be seeing more of in the new year. So I thought

00:00:43.240 it would be a great topic to talk about, as well as his most recent book called The Paleolithic

00:00:48.880 Politics, The Human Community in Early Art. So thank you very much for joining us, Mr.

00:00:55.680 Cooper. Yeah, so I guess my first question for you today would definitely have to be with

00:01:03.400 how plausible do you think Alberta independence really is? And if you think it is very plausible

00:01:10.120 in the near future, when do you think it might occur?

00:01:15.800 Well, political scientists almost never predict anything, because politics is about humans taking

00:01:27.260 initiatives that can't be predicted. It's not a question of behavior. It's a question of,

00:01:33.700 I would say, leadership. And much of that will depend on how Laurentian Canada responds to the inevitable,

00:01:45.300 I would say inevitable, or nearly inevitable, likely rejection of the Memorandum of Understanding,

00:01:52.420 which Premier Smith and the Prime Minister signed, what, a month ago now. A lot will depend on how the

00:02:04.020 Laurentians respond to that, because it's not going to work. Anyone who's taken a look at the text,

00:02:10.420 or has performed an analysis of it, realizes that there's so many escape clauses for the Government of

00:02:17.300 Canada, that they have absolutely no reason to push either British Columbia or the Indigenous

00:02:27.780 partners, potential partners, particularly for pipelines. So it's going to go nowhere. You know,

00:02:35.220 then what happens? I think that probably Premier Smith will be put under a lot of pressure,

00:02:42.260 because it will be coming time for the various referenda to take place sometime in 2026.

00:02:53.620 And then if that happens, and she takes an active role in the pro-independence side of that,

00:03:04.740 then suddenly independence becomes both respectable and, in the short term, more likely.

00:03:12.660 Okay. Well, I guess relating to that, since you're saying, you know, political science just can't

00:03:20.340 really predict that stuff, and it's all about human behavior. How do you think if the, because there's a

00:03:26.900 petition that just got approved for signatures for Alberta independence, sorry if I'm not speaking loud

00:03:32.660 enough, there's been a petition that was approved for Alberta independence, that was approved, I think,

00:03:40.100 late December, right before Christmas. And if they get enough signatures, it's going to go for a

00:03:46.340 referendum vote, and say that the referendum vote gets voted as well for Alberta independence. How do you

00:03:54.260 think Daniel Smith would react to something like that occurring?

00:03:58.500 Daniel Smith This is the big unknowns about politics. I would hope that she takes the bull by the

00:04:06.500 horn, so to speak, and leads the pro-independence, what, faction, party, group, set of Albertans. Whether she

00:04:20.020 will or not is obviously up to her and how she reads the political landscape. But if that happened, then I think,

00:04:27.940 I think it would certainly strengthen the hand of Alberta vis-a-vis, it's basically about Ontario and

00:04:36.020 Quebec. We don't care much about what New Brunswick thinks about anything. And neither do Ontario and

00:04:43.140 Quebec. They haven't thought much about the Maritimes since about two decades after Confederation. So it's not

00:04:50.260 really about them. It's about Alberta and Saskatchewan, vis-a-vis the central provinces, the big central

00:04:57.700 provinces, Quebec and Ontario. And because of the question of Quebec, I mean, they've been talking

00:05:05.220 about independence now as well. And if the Bloc Quebecois wins, or the Parti Quebecois wins the next

00:05:15.940 election there, then the government of Canada will have, let's say, it'll have its business cut out for

00:05:22.980 it. And, and, and, you know, that, that nothing could, but good would come of that for, for this

00:05:28.980 province. Like, so when you're talking about Alberta and Saskatchewan being the central provinces,

00:05:34.820 and so it would be dependent on them as well. Like, so do you mean when Alberta, if Alberta were to get

00:05:41.460 its independence, would Saskatchewan be a part of that? Or it would be more likely that Saskatchewan would be a

00:05:47.620 part of that? Yeah, well, that's obviously up to the citizens of Saskatchewan. But Premier Moe has made

00:05:56.020 comments very similar to those of Daniel Smith, and to some of the, what they call the Alberta

00:06:03.540 prosperity people regarding independence, that it becomes a viable option. Why? Because Laurentian

00:06:11.060 Canadians don't want to change what benefits them so enormously, which is, you know, it's perfectly

00:06:19.620 understandable. But they have to understand that we get a vote in this too. It's not just up to them.

00:06:26.100 What, so would it be more beneficial if Alberta was, sorry, if Saskatchewan joined Alberta in

00:06:35.380 independence? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, it's, it's hard to tell how these things will play

00:06:41.780 out. But that is certainly a, let's say, live possibility, say sometime late next spring, early

00:06:52.580 summer, when the intransigence of Laurentian Canada becomes obvious, even to them, one would think. But,

00:07:02.260 you know, the barriers to understanding in that part of the country are enormously high. But let's say

00:07:08.180 they even understood that there's a crisis from which they will not emerge triumphant. That will be

00:07:17.060 because the economic engines of the country, namely Alberta and Saskatchewan, are united on taking a

00:07:24.580 different path. And we'll have to see what happens. But that's certainly a live possibility.

00:07:33.220 Okay, well, I would also love to know your thoughts on the recent MOU that was signed by

00:07:39.300 Daniel Smith and Mark Carney. And do you, do you think this will actually go anywhere? Yeah, what are

00:07:45.860 your thoughts on this? I, it was a, I would say it was a triumph of obfuscation on the part of the

00:07:52.900 government of Canada. They've left just so many loopholes that everything has to line up like the

00:07:59.860 government of BC is going to have to change 180 degrees. They're not going to do that. There are

00:08:06.580 well funded spokespeople for Aboriginal communities that are opposed to any pipelines. They're not going

00:08:16.260 to change because they're on the payroll. So what Alberta should do if they want to play this game as 1.00

00:08:22.340 well is start funding Aboriginal communities that want the pipeline. And let's hear from them. That

00:08:29.860 would make a, you know, an interesting conversation because both sides then would be in the back

00:08:36.260 pocket of, of third parties, either the government of Alberta and the government of BC or, or all of

00:08:41.620 these, you know, anti-pipeline foundations, mostly, most of which are funded out of San Francisco. So it,

00:08:50.500 you know, there's, there's a lot of really, uh, let's say interesting possibilities for a serious debate,

00:08:56.820 uh, sometime in the, in the new year. Oh, okay. That's interesting. Um, I guess also you wrote quite a

00:09:05.060 few articles about, uh, Alberta independence in the Western standard and one of them you were talking about

00:09:11.300 how Carney's basically anti-Alberta policies was pushing more Alberta separatists. Um, yeah, they're,

00:09:20.500 for it basically morale burdens are for it. So I remember you wrote about how, this is just because

00:09:28.420 I found it funny, about how Carney, um, plagiarized his PhD thesis. And I just wanted to know more

00:09:36.660 about that because I thought it would be wild. Yeah, these are press reports, um, that came out when,

00:09:43.860 when, uh, he was elected leader of the Liberal Party. Uh, and, uh, he wrote his PhD, uh,

00:09:50.500 at Oxford, uh, you know, which is a quite a respectable university. Um, but somebody did a,

00:09:58.900 uh, comparison. I mean, you can do this now by computer and it takes about, you know, four seconds,

00:10:04.020 uh, that, uh, indicated that a lot of the, the, uh, quotations without attribution were taken from

00:10:11.300 other sources. This was brought to the attention of his PhD supervisor at Oxford, uh, and the guy denied it.

00:10:18.260 Um, but you know, I, I didn't, I haven't checked it myself. I mean, God, it's, you know, it's,

00:10:25.220 it's, uh, unintelligible economics. Um, I, you know, I don't know this. Uh, I'm just,

00:10:30.500 I was just reporting what was said. Uh, I think it was in the Manchester Guardian. I'm not sure,

00:10:35.220 but it was fairly, it was widely circulated. Put it that way.

00:10:38.980 Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember reading that the, uh, uh, professor or whatever that was

00:10:45.700 supervising him. Um, yeah, I said it wasn't plagiarized, but I was just wondering if he

00:10:51.540 knew more about it because I thought it was, uh, okay. Anyways, what else? And do you, okay.

00:10:59.380 When did you start, um, talking about Alberta independence and what got you interested in the subject?

00:11:05.940 Well, that's a good question. Um, I suppose the, the sort of deep roots of this, uh, were from my

00:11:16.820 childhood. Um, I remember going on a fishing trip, uh, in the, uh, Chilkootin in, in, uh, BC when I was

00:11:24.820 about, I don't know, eight maybe. And my, my two grandfathers were along. My dad was, uh, sort of

00:11:31.940 organized the thing. And he, he took, uh, my two grandfathers along. And I remember listening to them

00:11:37.780 talk, um, about, uh, social credit, which was the government of, uh, WAC Bennett, you know, way back,

00:11:45.380 uh, way back then. Uh, and, um, I had one grandfather from Newfoundland and the other was, uh, from, uh, from

00:11:54.100 Nanton, from Alberta. Uh, and, uh, they both agreed that this, uh, BC social credit was not the same as

00:12:01.460 social credit in Alberta. Um, and they talked about why. And, uh, the argument from my Alberta

00:12:10.340 grandfather basically was that it was a way of, uh, Albertans taking, um, an initiative because the

00:12:18.340 government of Canada would not, this was during the depression when, uh, when Premier Everhart was

00:12:23.460 first, uh, was first elected. Um, and my, uh, Newfoundland, uh, Grant grandfather said that he

00:12:29.940 was always slightly mystified by, by what he called Canadian politics. Uh, and he, uh, the main thing that

00:12:36.900 I remember from, uh, from him is that he spoke of Canada as a kind of foreign country. Um, as you know,

00:12:44.100 many Newfoundlanders did because of the, uh, uh, let's say, uh, questionable election results in 1949

00:12:51.620 about the accession of Newfoundland, uh, to Canada. Um, so then, you know, I always started

00:12:58.500 thinking about, you know, what did these odd political parties mean? Uh, and when I was an

00:13:04.180 undergraduate at UBC, I had a very, very good, uh, uh, professor of, of, uh, Canadian federalism,

00:13:10.820 a guy named Alan Cairns. Um, and he mentioned in a class one night, um, on Canadian federalism,

00:13:18.660 it took part, it took place in the evening. He thought it was rather odd that, uh, social credit

00:13:26.100 and, uh, the NDP were called third parties by, uh, Canadian, uh, political scientists, when in fact,

00:13:34.260 um, social credit and the NDP were the major parties, uh, in British Columbia.

00:13:41.060 And the, uh, third parties were the liberals and the conservatives. And he just sort of left it

00:13:46.740 there and, and, uh, left us to try and, you know, figure out this, what this meant. Um, you know,

00:13:52.580 needless to say, you know, none of us, uh, undergraduates, uh, we sort of said, yeah,

00:13:57.300 that's kind of weird and left it at that. Well, then, you know, five forward another, say,

00:14:02.420 I don't know, 20 years and I was teaching at York. Uh, and I, I couldn't quite understand the

00:14:07.540 attitudes of my students there because they were so different than, uh, than the ones that I had

00:14:12.740 thought of as being normal. Um, and so I, uh, taught, uh, a course, uh, on Canadian political

00:14:19.060 thought. Um, and then a lot of things became a lot clearer to me, uh, partly in response to the, uh,

00:14:27.060 the East Toronto students, uh, and what they, what they made of the stuff that I, I made them read.

00:14:32.740 Uh, and, and basically the bottom line was that the myths of Laurentian Canada, uh, are not those

00:14:40.580 of the Prairie West, uh, and they're not, those of British Columbia or Newfoundland for that matter

00:14:45.300 either. Uh, so I started thinking of Canada, not so much the way it was for my dad's generation. I mean,

00:14:53.700 he was, you know, he was in the, what was then the RCA F course it is again. Uh, but, uh, and he thought

00:15:00.340 of this as a Canadian war effort and so on. Um, but it, I was struck by how, uh, the self-understanding of,

00:15:10.340 of Albertans Westerners generally is not that of, um, of central Canada. Uh, so, you know, that was

00:15:19.140 the kind of, um, uh, what intellectual roots of this, this view of Canada as, uh, as a very tenuous, uh,

00:15:27.940 coalition that was established initially in the 19th century, uh, by the imperial ambitions of, uh,

00:15:35.460 John A. MacDonald, uh, which he inherited from the Brits, uh, and never really was based on any

00:15:42.980 self-understanding of people who actually lived here. Uh, so, so then, uh, you can see where, uh,

00:15:49.220 if the Laurentians are not willing to change, uh, the legal structure, uh, and everyone has said since

00:15:55.780 1982, uh, that it's impossible to open the constitution again. We can't have any more amendments,

00:16:01.860 which is complete nonsense. Uh, of course you can. The question is, do you have the will to do it?

00:16:07.700 Um, so then that became, uh, the way that I, I looked at the relationship between, uh, Albertan,

00:16:14.820 Saskatchewan, um, and, uh, and Ottawa, I'd say. Uh, and it's not a, it's not a, uh, it's not a structure

00:16:24.180 that is viable over the longterm because of the enormous wealth, uh, that has come to the, uh,

00:16:30.660 to Prairie provinces. Um, so what we do about it as, you know, as, uh, as Canadians, uh, you know,

00:16:37.700 we all hold the same citizenship, uh, is going to be very interesting. I don't think that the 1.00

00:16:42.500 Laurentians are going to do anything. Uh, so, you know, it's up to us. We'll do it by ourselves. 0.98

00:16:47.140 And that's where the independence question comes from. I guess I have a question. And when we compare,

00:16:54.820 I guess, Canada to the U S so if he, it feels like the U S doesn't really have the same issue that

00:17:00.900 Canada does, where some States are wanting independence from like the whole of the U S.

00:17:08.340 So you said that Ottawa and like Eastern and you called it Laurentian, those people don't think the

00:17:16.980 same, obviously as like Western Canada does. So how come there's like this stark difference between

00:17:23.380 the U S and Canada if they were both like from the British empire originally?

00:17:30.100 Well, there are two things that are different, uh, in, in the American case, the, the first is

00:17:34.340 that they actually established a new regime, uh, from the British empire, uh, after the declaration and

00:17:40.900 the war against the, uh, the war for independence. The second is, uh, they also had a civil war.

00:17:46.660 Uh, and we have had none of those things. Uh, we have never had any serious rebellion against, uh, against

00:17:55.460 Britain, uh, you know, despite the rebellions in upper and lower Canada, uh, in the, in 1850s,

00:18:01.540 those were not really serious rebellions. Um, and we certainly have not have had a civil war, uh,

00:18:09.380 for obvious reasons, partly because of the slavery question, but also, but we've been able to make,

00:18:15.380 uh, deals with the only, um, let's say potentially here to four anyway, potentially secessionist

00:18:22.900 part of the country, namely Quebec. And that's what the 1982, uh, constitution, um, uh, basically

00:18:30.420 responded to. It responded to the, uh, growing sentiments, uh, in Quebec towards independence.

00:18:37.060 So we had this, uh, one of the most Machiavellian of our prime ministers, namely Pierre Trudeau,

00:18:42.340 uh, who put together this, the, uh, constitution act, um, and put it together in such a way that it,

00:18:49.860 that it became difficult, uh, to amend. Uh, and that's why all of these, uh, uh, esteemed

00:18:58.180 Canadian political scientists say it can't be amended. We can't open the constitution again.

00:19:02.340 Uh, and as I said, that's not, that's, uh, not true. Uh, they don't want to open the constitution

00:19:08.580 again and, uh, reconsider the position of Quebec, uh, in the country because they actually believe

00:19:15.140 that Canada is a, uh, bilingual country. Uh, they think that, that somehow bilingualism and, uh,

00:19:23.300 and then they, you know, multiculturalism after that, uh, becomes, became defining characteristics

00:19:28.580 of the country, um, which is, you know, which is also nonsense. Parts of Canada are bilingual, 0.95

00:19:35.220 parts of the Ottawa Valley, parts of Northern, uh, Ontario, parts even of Northern, uh, or central, uh,

00:19:41.460 Alberta, uh, and parts of Quebec are bilingual, but, you know, that's not the country, uh, that's,

00:19:47.220 those are parts, uh, and the, the myth of Canadian bilingualism then becomes, um, a kind of moral

00:19:54.980 equivalent to something that we cannot talk about, um, and just as, as, uh, in the, let's say in the 1830s

00:20:03.620 and 40s in the United States, nobody wanted to talk about the, uh, consequences of slavery in the

00:20:08.900 South. Um, but, you know, it's, it's still part of the reality. Wow. That's, that's very interesting.

00:20:17.380 And I would ask you more about also your book, but unfortunately we're running out of time

00:20:22.100 since it has to be 22 minutes and my producer just reminded me. So, um, thank you very much,

00:20:27.300 Barry, for coming in today. Really appreciate you being able to join us.

00:20:32.180 And yeah, so if you guys enjoyed this, then you should definitely subscribe to our YouTube channel

00:20:37.380 if you're watching this on YouTube. You can also, um, check out our actual website where we have a

00:20:43.540 bunch of news. So, it's westernstandard.news where you can subscribe for $10 a month or $100 a year.

00:20:51.060 Yeah, that's all I got. So, thank you everyone for joining The Hannaford Show and goodbye.

00:21:01.300 Music

00:21:02.980 Music

00:21:05.700 Music

00:21:11.260 .

Western Standard - January 09, 2026

HANNAFORD： Alberta independence in 2026, and the difference between Eastern and Western Canada

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