Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Alberta's federalists may vote 'yes' to independence referendum

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, the weekly politics

00:00:20.320 show of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, June the 18th. Joining us today is David Knight-Legg,

00:00:26.640 a strategic advisor to the alberta government energy and financial services firms and he is

00:00:32.320 no stranger to the western standard good to have you back david great to be back david i think

00:00:38.640 you're coming in to us from abu dhabi today i won't ask you what you're doing there but did 0.68

00:00:42.560 you manage to stay safe during all the recent nastiness it's one of the they threw more missiles

00:00:48.720 and shahad drones at at the uae than any other country including israel this country is phenomenal

00:00:55.840 and very resilient so you're pretty safe in abby dowdy or dubai okay good glad you're in one piece

00:01:02.560 david poll suggests more than half of canadians would like to join the european union do you buy

00:01:08.240 that no okay so uh what do you think what do you think makes canadians say yes to a question like

00:01:18.320 that i think because it's a very low risk question i think it's a sentimental question i think that

00:01:25.840 I think that Canadians are getting more tired of the anti-Americanism, of the elbows up concept.

00:01:32.820 And I think that the idea of being positive about being united with countries through trade makes a lot of sense.

00:01:41.440 And I think if you ask a lot of people, what do you mean when you say you like the idea of being joined to the European Union?

00:01:47.040 They probably think about an economic community, very similar to the EEC.

00:01:51.020 i don't think anybody wants brussels making any decisions about anything happening anywhere in

00:01:55.900 canada ever so i think it's it's a classic kind of polling question it's an informed question i

00:02:02.300 think if you ask people you know do you want canada to be on the first manned flight to mars

00:02:07.820 they'd probably say yes too but there's cost to that there's preparation to that like there's a

00:02:12.700 series of things that i think we aspire to as a nation which are good things and what i sense is

00:02:18.300 that the the nation wants to move out of the malaise and the decline of the last decade

00:02:23.660 that they feel and see every day and i think they they are also frustrated by feeling like we're

00:02:28.700 under the thumb of the united states as it goes through a more assertive positioning on defense

00:02:35.020 uh energy security and trade security and i think that the government has has sort of fueled uh uh

00:02:41.820 uh you know sadly i think a sense of insecurity in people that is now being tapped when you're

00:02:48.520 asked do you want to be part of the european do you want to be part of look if you ask people do

00:02:52.780 you want to be part of the largest free trade corridor in the planet with the lowest taxes i

00:02:57.200 think the vast majority would say yes all of these things have costs and i i prefer and i i think

00:03:02.840 our natural geography, history, legal system, economy, politics, structure, culture, educational

00:03:12.960 backgrounds, integration of military and logistical assets. There's only one country we have to be

00:03:19.340 integrated with. There's only one country we can be integrated with in any functional way. It's the

00:03:23.200 United States. The problem is you need a philosophy of governance and you need a philosophy of

00:03:28.040 personal and cultural identity as a nation and as citizens that will lead to a sense that that can

00:03:34.320 be done on positive, healthy, you know, peer-to-peer terms. And I think that the dialogue

00:03:40.960 needs to be raised on that front. And I think, you know, President Trump has thrown down the

00:03:47.580 gauntlet in ways that have turned off Canadians. And I think the reaction has been one that I

00:03:52.000 have disagreed with. And frankly, one that I see changing now. I thought Mark Carney's speech to

00:03:56.780 the Economic Club of New York, and his interview with Nader Moussavizadeh there was a smart change.

00:04:06.300 I thought Mark Carney's recent comments on the Iran war just today out of the G7 meeting in France

00:04:12.760 were a welcome change. I think that the prime minister's office is getting a smarter team

00:04:19.260 together, and I think they're doing a better job of defending Canadian interests and bringing us

00:04:24.160 a place where hopefully we can achieve a much better economic and energy security and military

00:04:28.800 deal with the Americans. Well, let's hope that's the case. He certainly has paid a tremendous 0.91

00:04:33.840 amount of attention to Europe. In the 15 months he's been in office, he's been there nine times.

00:04:40.720 He's been to Great Britain a couple of times, and as you mentioned, he was just there in France

00:04:45.600 earlier this week at the G7. Now, this is just Dr. Grock speaking, but it looks to me like he spends

00:04:52.640 as much time in europe as toronto or western canada now we understand he's doing this to spite

00:04:58.560 president trump i think but europe's a mess their combined debt in u.s dollars is like 15 trillion

00:05:07.520 u.s dollars and they have three times that in unfunded liabilities because they all

00:05:12.960 retire at 50 and then there's the pension liabilities to fund a 30-year holiday at the

00:05:18.880 end of a 25-year working life so a lot of them their national debt is more than their gdp

00:05:26.400 greece is 146 so i don't want to sort of go into a long list of numbers nice glaze over but really 0.60

00:05:34.080 europe is a mess is this actually a smart place for canada to be anyway 0.55

00:05:40.080 look i think i think there are places in ways that we do deals with everyone in the world i 1.00

00:05:44.640 think there are places in ways we do deals with china uh without wanting to be like china i think 0.59

00:05:49.680 we do deals with europe where it benefits canadians i think that the the problem with with

00:05:57.120 uh the prime minister's trips to europe is not that europe isn't an important partner or set

00:06:02.880 of partners it's that it's disproportionate to the biggest economic opportunity which is

00:06:09.680 If you look at the numbers, depending on how you count them, between sort of 77% and 80% of, and sometimes it's up and down a little bit, but marginally 80% of all of our trade is with the United States.

00:06:25.560 The next largest trading partner we have is China, and that's 4.5%.

00:06:30.460 After that, everything is fractional.

00:06:32.980 And so the point of the last sort of year and a half has been, if you know that you have to do the best deal of your lifetime with the United States, and the United States has released three or four very key documents in the last year and a half, the National Security Strategy, they've talked about their trade strategy.

00:06:56.280 you have the uh the you know the the hudson's bay capital um strategy paper margalago back in

00:07:05.340 back in november of 2020 for the you know it's very clear what their agenda is and it's very

00:07:13.440 clear where canada can fit into that agenda and there are a dozen things that we can do positively

00:07:18.220 and constructively to prepare for a a game-changing generational opportunity for a freer trade

00:07:25.520 relationship with the united states so i don't begrudge the prime minister making the choices

00:07:30.240 that he and his team make of where he spends his time i think the most important thing is

00:07:34.240 what is the strategy for building the best generational opportunity for economic progress

00:07:39.820 in canada's history with the americans and you know i as you know i live in dc part of the time

00:07:46.020 the reputation of the canadians there is very poor i think it will improve under ambassador

00:07:51.200 wiseman and under the person they brought in now to do the uh to do the um you know some of the 0.82

00:07:57.120 negotiation strategy but we're late to the game very late to the game the mexicans have been at it

00:08:02.080 uh they have big teams in multiple places they're working very hard the canadians have been known

00:08:07.680 for being missing in action and that sort of gossip in dc is is also reflected in conversations that

00:08:14.360 you see you know in editorial pages as well so i think the biggest thing nigel is not whether or

00:08:20.560 not that the prime minister loves and wants to be in Europe and have good conversation with the

00:08:25.120 Europeans about a variety of things. I just think that it represents the potential for there to be

00:08:30.020 a disproportionate focus on a place that happens to have, most of the countries are poorer than

00:08:35.640 the poorest state, Mississippi. Canada is as poor as the poorest state, Mississippi, if you take

00:08:40.620 Alberta out of the equation, right? Like we have a fundamental problem of a welfare state society

00:08:48.040 that's built itself up for 20 years on deep deeper and deeper debt commitments uh and you know just 0.97

00:08:57.260 unparalleled immigration levels offering people uh benefits that have become so attractive that

00:09:05.080 there's deep amounts of fraud connected to the benefits process you see this in canada you see

00:09:09.100 it in the uk you see in italy you see in france germany holland sweden sweden is now starting to

00:09:13.920 reverse it. But I think that the prime minister and his team have got to focus on the most

00:09:19.380 important game. And the most important game is what is going to happen to the world's largest

00:09:23.400 integrated economy of Canada and the United States, and how will that be prosecuted over

00:09:28.200 the next sort of several months. And nothing that we do in Europe is going to make a difference

00:09:34.260 to this economy of any substance at all, nothing.

00:09:37.160 so we had a during the harbor era we've signed a free trade agreement with the european union

00:09:44.840 and you know the terms were good and i don't see that it is that in itself has made much difference

00:09:49.800 either no it's okay these things are all good there's nothing wrong with them and i you know

00:09:54.920 you don't want to get snarky about good accomplishments by people that are trying to

00:09:58.760 make the country work and i think when you get a win you take a win you know if there are there

00:10:03.560 are plausible ways for canada to be integrated in a variety of ways with europeans i think the

00:10:09.080 most important integration you know there are five or six things that i think are obvious

00:10:13.240 one of them obviously would be canada should become a member of aquis the australian uk us

00:10:20.120 submarine warfare integrated strategy uh we have the largest coastline we have the one that's most

00:10:25.560 exposed to both china and russia um we have said that we're going to make an increasing commitment

00:10:31.720 into a defense strategy and funding of it and yet we sit on the outside of something that's got the

00:10:39.240 three most important members of the five eyes and we're missing an action with the largest coastline

00:10:43.400 it makes no sense at all we are having conversations about you know gripping jets which is fine those 1.00

00:10:49.800 are good patrol jets but they are easily taken out of the sky by the fifth generation chinese

00:10:55.160 and russian fighters that would be the ones that our pilots would be facing uh in in an air-to-air 0.98

00:11:00.520 combat scenario so the question is why are these conversations happening uh about moving away from

00:11:08.680 an already existing f-35 commit instead of saying in addition to our f-35 commitment we may have

00:11:14.520 a series of patrol jets in the uae they have a few different sets of military equipment suppliers

00:11:22.520 that are interoperable with the states that they have to have aligned interests with that makes a

00:11:29.000 lot of sense canada can do these things but somehow the the temptation to have an anti-american

00:11:35.240 rapper or veneer on some of these conversations has become really problematic because it's

00:11:40.040 conveyed a deep sort of cultural political and economic insecurity that i think it dominates on

00:11:45.480 the left in canada and it's created an antagonism that that generates votes uh because uh you know

00:11:52.520 president trump is a very divisive figure so it works quote unquote politically but when you're

00:11:59.160 creating a strategy a generational strategy for a country you can't reduce that strategy

00:12:04.680 to the optics or pr elements of an anti-trump dynamic in your base well let's just let's just

00:12:11.720 say david that uh like i think i agree with you 100 here but clearly there is a sentiment in

00:12:18.440 canada especially in eastern canada you don't find it out west so much which they they don't

00:12:24.600 us they don't understand the big picture all they know is that uh they don't like trump very much in

00:12:29.240 fact they really despise him in many cases and mr carney can hold on to his base by simply echoing 0.99

00:12:38.120 that point of view so it could be a cynical stupid little exercise in canadian politics 0.99

00:12:44.360 That's one possibility. The other is, and I think you may have an observation on this, that Mr. 0.98

00:12:51.240 Carney actually feels intellectually more at home among European leaders, and so he's got this

00:12:59.240 default to lean in that direction. The problem is, between the pulling of the Eastern base that

00:13:07.160 doesn't like Trump and the pushing of Mr. Carney's own intellectual preferences,

00:13:11.720 or ending up going down a wrong path and ignoring the main game,

00:13:17.100 which I think is what you're saying.

00:13:18.920 But do you want to just sort of go into,

00:13:20.480 does Mr. Carney actually feel happier talking to macro?

00:13:26.360 Look, I think I draw a distinction.

00:13:28.960 First of all, you know, you have to be careful, I think,

00:13:32.660 especially when you're, I'm a conservative,

00:13:34.440 and obviously Prime Minister Carney is a liberal,

00:13:36.440 and so it's easy to sort of, for me to sit back

00:13:40.380 and have a perspective that is obviously politically oppositional to his perspective.

00:13:46.940 But I think the more important question would be if Prime Minister Carney said,

00:13:51.800 David, I want you on the team helping do a trade deal for Canada because, you know,

00:13:56.880 I'm going to be in office for another few years until you guys get better at your own messaging and PR

00:14:04.140 in the conservative side and the president trump is only going to be in office for a short period

00:14:10.760 of time and um you know we are we are going to be um negotiating a trade guild that has the

00:14:19.380 potential to completely change the dynamics of a generation uh uh in terms of a more open free

00:14:27.580 trade integrated energy integrated military integrated data system more closely aligned

00:14:35.020 legal cultural dynamics uh greater agreement on creating the largest free trade zone in the planet

00:14:41.660 that to me is the most exciting single opportunity and anywhere and to waste that opportunity uh for

00:14:48.860 small vol political gains or to waste it by being focused on deeply secondary economies that create

00:14:55.100 that are involved with less than a single percent of our trade is is such a lost opportunity for a

00:15:01.900 generational moment and it's a generational moment that has to be above the specific politics you

00:15:08.460 have to be a political realist when you're in office of course you have to maintain the support

00:15:12.300 of your base you have to maintain the integration of your caucus you have to maintain a tight smart

00:15:17.100 cabinet he's got a lot of work to do i think in in sort of holding his his red jersey team together

00:15:23.580 but at the end of the day the opportunity that he will look back on in his life and i think the

00:15:28.220 country will look back on in the moment is what did you do with the opportunity we had in front

00:15:32.540 of us to negotiate something that could have been generational for canada and canadians

00:15:37.100 and the only place that you could focus on that matters in that respect is the united states

00:15:42.940 nothing else is even close nothing is close and so so you know it's it's it's sort of making an

00:15:49.900 argument from proportionality nigel is saying if you know if you have a business and 80 of your

00:15:57.740 client base is in one place in dealing with one set of issues you want to address that uh the four

00:16:05.180 percent in china is another crew but after that it's very very fractional so to to answer your

00:16:10.860 question from the outside you know i think probably uh prime minister carney does have a better

00:16:17.740 natural affinity, both ideologically and politically, with people that are part of the

00:16:23.780 center-left crowd that he knows very well. Keir Starmer probably fits that group. Some of the

00:16:31.180 Scandinavian leaders fit that mold. Macron obviously fits that mold. But I think that that's

00:16:38.800 neither here nor there. They don't matter. France is almost irrelevant to Canada, apart from very

00:16:43.640 specific trading issues if you look at how you're going to spend the next uh several months

00:16:49.360 negotiating a trade deal for the future so what are you expecting to see out of the prime minister's

00:16:55.340 office in terms of messaging during the next six months now to christmas

00:16:59.400 i i think there's been an important shift in the prime minister's office i think that

00:17:08.220 there was a there was a i don't know if you saw this but there was a moment i i reacted and posted

00:17:14.140 something on it taking the post down in order to sort of be more focused on what's helpful but

00:17:19.540 i just really don't like the elbows up theme at all i don't i didn't like the war of 1812 theme

00:17:25.620 with the little figurine that that mike myers had given the the prime minister i thought it make us

00:17:30.900 made us look feckless and weak i thought it it conveyed deep deep cultural and political insecurity

00:17:36.260 I thought it played to the worst instincts of the center left and leftist base in Canada

00:17:42.520 at the expense of getting things done with a party that is dominant in the House, the

00:17:48.560 Senate, the White House in the United States.

00:17:52.020 And so when you look at those things, you want to say tactically, what does the moment

00:17:56.080 require?

00:17:57.480 And I think that the speech at the Economic Club of New York showed that the prime minister

00:18:02.160 and his office, and by the way, I thought it was exceptional speech, has taken seriously the need

00:18:09.140 to focus very directly on the generational opportunity of a great treaty agreement with

00:18:14.920 the United States. I think that's happening. The prime minister is very good at speaking to

00:18:18.980 the audience. He was in New York. He was the economic club. His interlocutor was a great guy

00:18:24.400 named Nader Musavizadeh, who I know, who's a friend, and he's a very close friend of the

00:18:30.820 prime ministers. And I thought he asked exceptionally good questions. And I thought

00:18:34.560 the themes and the messages were very strong. The thing is, you've got to translate that from

00:18:40.500 sentiment to terms of a deal. And I think Canada is an incredible opportunity right now to do

00:18:46.440 really good deal, a really good deal with the United States. But it's going to involve energy

00:18:50.920 security, which will obviously involve Alberta. It's going to involve military security, which I

00:18:55.920 think is going to require us to stop revisiting already signed contracts and actually expand some

00:19:02.880 contracts. I think it's going to involve AUKUS at some point and should. I think it's going to

00:19:07.220 involve data. I think it's going to involve quantum systems. I think it's going to involve

00:19:10.740 a lot more integration, operational integration. And through all of that sort of core functional

00:19:17.820 focused military integration, which you don't want to play around with,

00:19:23.080 having an elbows up mentality is the last thing we need there's not a chance that we can defend

00:19:28.860 this country without the full support of the united states our our armed forces are probably

00:19:32.960 in the worst state they've ever been in the history of the country um we currently have less

00:19:37.600 than less than uh you know 50 force readiness our air force is down to 40 force readiness

00:19:43.940 we're missing absolutely critical parts of our core supply chain you cannot have any of these

00:19:49.920 conversations with the United States of an integrated trade, military, and energy security

00:19:55.180 strategy without addressing the massive, deep structural problem of a military that's completely

00:20:01.340 falling apart. Same problem that the UK is facing in terms of their contribution right now.

00:20:06.860 So Nigel, I think it's a question of priorities. I think this prime minister is very smart.

00:20:11.480 I understand his affinity for Europe. I think that there's a reason why Canadians like the idea of

00:20:17.060 doing a deal with Europe. But I don't think it's an either or deal. I think if you ask most

00:20:21.300 Canadians, would you like to do a deal, a great open deal with Mexico? Probably a majority would

00:20:26.060 say yes, absolutely. But I think the focus right now has got to be on what we do with the United

00:20:31.620 States. And it's tricky. How does a center left government and someone who is part of sort of the

00:20:40.120 Dallas community do a deal with Donald Trump credibly when there's the deep antithesis around

00:20:49.080 the operating assumptions and some of the governance assumptions of those two political

00:20:54.400 philosophies. Yeah, well, I think, David, actually, the thing that concerns us here in Alberta is how

00:21:00.160 does he do a deal with our own government? There's a lot riding on the relationship between

00:21:07.640 ottawa and uh and uh danielle smith's government here in alberta to

00:21:15.960 to do the very thing that you're talking about with the united states

00:21:19.640 is this good is this good for alberta i i think there's five or six very obvious quick wins i i

00:21:25.640 posted an op-ed on the national post recently saying you know china lost over 500 000 barrels

00:21:31.320 of heavy venezuelan crude it just so happens that alberta's heavy crude is the chemically identical

00:21:36.920 cousin of that venezuelan crude we have already blueprinted and know the exam of a 565 000 barrel

00:21:44.600 pipeline that was called northern gateway we know exactly where it would go we can expedite that

00:21:49.220 and do a hard power soft power deal with the chinese it makes a lot of sense for canada 0.97

00:21:53.300 makes a lot of sense for the chinese they're desperate for it especially because their other

00:21:57.460 alternative is iranian cruise which is in a totally different category now and it's closest

00:22:03.520 its lowest cost landed. And it puts Canada in a position of having, you know, an important part

00:22:09.940 in the Chinese energy security story, which the Americans can appreciate. And that's what

00:22:14.980 sovereign countries do. We do a deal that we can do with the Chinese for a specific thing 0.98

00:22:19.400 that the Americans have taken away from them with what they did by renditioning Maduro and taking 0.50

00:22:24.480 over the assets in Venezuela. And I think that, you know, so that's one positive thing that we

00:22:30.440 can move on right away. But what I don't see is I still see the federal liberal party being

00:22:36.100 addicted to the PR sentimentalism of an environmental movement that has done absolutely

00:22:41.880 nothing for global emissions or the planet, but continues to insist on economy devastating moves

00:22:49.600 like C48, C69, and a whole host of sort of consultative ideas that are effectively blank

00:22:57.900 checks to very very small minorities that are easily led or bought off by people that are

00:23:02.940 oppositional to the building of global energy uh infrastructure and so as a nation i think we have

00:23:09.980 to get serious about the fact that we are one of the world's largest most important energy

00:23:14.780 superpowers alberta is under the constitution of canada alberta owns the oil and the gas it does

00:23:21.340 it is the largest single and and wealthiest democracy in the planet four and a half million

00:23:27.500 people 12 to 15 trillion dollars worth of these assets it is wealthier than qatar it has as much

00:23:33.980 gas starts got more oil than the united states and russia combined it is the single most in

00:23:40.140 it's six times the size of great britain it has it has a massive massive deposit every every

00:23:48.300 everything that you can give a country alberta has and it's right next door to the world's

00:23:52.860 largest consuming economy in the united states it's literally it's a place that instantly would

00:23:58.380 become ireland with 10 times the cash so david we're out of time uh last last question just a

00:24:07.340 short shot here will you be surprised if albertans vote in october to have a referendum on independence

00:24:19.900 i think the most interesting thing will be what happens to the first nine questions i think that's

00:24:27.300 something people are overlooking and they should look at a lot more closely because i think those

00:24:31.760 first nine questions are questions that most other canadians and most other provinces wish

00:24:36.680 their premiers would allow them also to vote on i think the direct democracy is a process it's an

00:24:42.400 important consideration and commitment and i think alberta's doing a great job of doing it i think

00:24:47.040 the vote to have a referendum is going to be very close to a 50 50 uh i i think that um events will

00:24:55.500 determine whether it becomes a 60 40 in one direction or the other but i think you've

00:24:59.880 definitely got a third that will say no no matter what you've got a third that will say yes no matter

00:25:03.700 what and you've got a third in the middle that are are going to be very sort of considerate i i

00:25:09.840 think this there are a lot of people that are federalists that are certainly going to vote to

00:25:14.220 have the referendum and i think that's the wild card and i think the prime minister's office is

00:25:19.040 aware of that and i think they're trying to figure out who the right voices are to have that

00:25:24.440 conversation and and talk about it without creating the sort of dynamics that you've seen in some of

00:25:30.020 the other independence movements recently well david i know it's hot in abu dubai it's going to

00:25:35.720 be a long hot summer here in alberta as well i want to thank you for taking the time joining us

00:25:40.500 your insights are always incredibly valuable thank you very much great to see it and for

00:25:46.860 not for the western standard i'm nigel hannaford

Western Standard - June 22, 2026

HANNAFORD： Alberta's federalists may vote 'yes' to independence referendum

Episode Stats

People

Summary

Transcript