The reality is that our very own Liberal governments have done far more harm to Canada than Donald Trump has. The Liberals have also betrayed the Canadian people with mass immigration. They no longer get to demand silent obedience. If the Liberals can't keep the country united, that is a measure of their incompetence, not of Smith's (or other Canadians') misbehaviour.
Your use of the word "betrayed" implies that there was a special kind of cynicism with the mass immigration policy and/or that the policy was divisive for a lengthy period of time before it was reversed. What is the evidence for either being the case?
Are you saying it took 10 years for the Liberals to realize it was a mistake? They still haven't fixed it, either: we are still bringing in a large number without criminal background or economic checks. We also don't check if those ordered to leave actually leave. The problem is far from solved.
Perhaps the best people to talk to are recent immigrants who jumped through all the legal hoops, only to see others jump the queue. It is not about immigrants, it is about a system that is constantly changing the goal posts to appease certain groups. Identity politics 1.0.
The question is not whether the problem is "solved"; the question is what the Conservatives who are supported by Alberta would, or would not, have done differently. There's no "betrayal" when the policies apparently had the support of a virtual consensus of the political class.
A quick bit of reading reminds me Sheer was in favour of selective immigration, especially the victims of Islam, O'Toole wanted to go back to rules-based immigration and Poilievre wanted a drastic reduction in immigration. All three criticized Trudeau's policies.
Wild immigration only had the support of the WEF class, which you seem to conflate with the political class.
"Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has consistently urged a reduction in immigration and population growth throughout 2024 and 2025, arguing that the Liberal government’s policies broke the system and outpaced housing, health care, and infrastructure."
2024 is rather recent and late in the game; the government swiftly obeying Poilievre would not have made much difference to whatever negative outcomes are currently associated with immigration policies.
"During the 2019 federal election, former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer proposed an immigration policy focused on merit-based immigration, economic needs, and border integrity, pledging to close the Roxham Road irregular crossing "loophole". **He prioritized high economic immigration levels**, increased private refugee sponsorship, and opposed the UN Global Compact on Migration."
Scheer supported mass-immigration in general and did not to my knowledge raise concerns about high quantities of international students or about temporary foreign workers.
"During the 2021 federal election, Erin O'Toole’s immigration policy focused on accelerating application processing for families and skilled workers while **supporting increased overall immigration** to aid pandemic recovery, though he did not commit to specific immigration number targets. His platform promised tougher border measures and improved system integrity."
Elements of the problem (the one most agree is the problem - not just partisans) were building from 2015 but it didn’t really become a problem until 2020 to 2023 and most specifically during and after Covid. 2022 was the year we really lost control. Among other things, the feds were trying to clear a backlog and ramped up processing at the same time that the infrastructure was showing signs of serious stress.
"Betrayed the Canadian people". Under Justin, the Liberals denied that there is such a thing as a Canadian people. They weren't misguidedly thinking that mass immigration would be best for the nation - they flatly denied the existence of the nation. That's what makes it a betrayal.
To be clear Trudeau 2.0 described Canada as the "first post nation state". That there was no real Canadian identity. He then proceeded to swing open the doors to all comers in response to Trump's decision to shut out muslim immigrants to the US. Trudeau channelled the statue of Liberty's famous poem specifically targeting groups he deemed oppressed. Add in the Syrian refugee crisis, the Ukraine refugee crisis, Covid and the recognition of foreign temporary workers, and international students looking for a path to citizenship. It became a perfect storm of immigration chaos. Something Canadians and aspiring Canadians never signed up for.
Trudeau is a moron. That's stipulated. It's also why he lost the popular vote in 2 of 3 elections, left under a cloud of unpopularity, and nobody wants to talk about him anymore. He's also gone now, and there's been a rapid shift away from his positions within his former government. The problems you're complaining about are being fixed, and I suspect you know it. Like any revolutionary movement, Alberta separatists need to convince people of their own belief that the existing system is unjust. The window presented by an epically bad Trudeau government and the Peak Woke era is closing.
No shovels in the ground. No remigration. New trade deal with India to include temporary workers and students. Tanker ban, industrial carbon tax, and environmental regs not repealed.
We'll see. It took a decade or more to screw this up, it's going to take some time to sort out. Meanwhile, the fixation on rejecting anything that doesn't solve every problem immediately is a pan-Canadian problem, especially in Alberta politics.
So far, it has been a year of talk (and huge spending) but ZERO action.
It doesn't take Nostradamus to predict that if they were given yet another decade to "sort this out", the Liberals would deliver a decade of talk (and even HUGER spending) but ZERO action.
You are engaging in a non-sequitor. You have not demonstrated that the nationhood comments are linked to the mass-immigration policies, nor that the mass-immigration policies were long controversial with the Alberta-supported Conservatives, nor that any of this was contrary to either implied or explicit expectations that the government had set for itself.
Correct. Horrible policy, incompetence, fools errand, feckless, etc, is certainly fitting, but to use the words like "betrayal" or "disloyal" etc, is just someone having a temper tantrum or wanting to foment all kinds of divisiveness, usually in support of some ulterior motive.
The fact that the Trudeau Liberals destroyed an intergenerational consensus on immigration in this country through reckless and/or negligent policy (to put the best spin on it possible) is absolutely a betrayal of the Canadian people. Our immigration system was a model for the world, and a pillar of identify and pride for the country. Now it is a debacle and a point of internal strife and devision. Betrayal indeed.
The Trudeau Liberals may have been the government when the consensus on immigration changed, but the Conservatives themselves supported mass-immigration until 2024. I see no evidence that any other parties in parliament were identifying the "reckless and/or negligent" policies prior to the occurrence of whatever harms were associated with them.
I don’t have the game notes of what the Conservatives real time position on any of this was but there are 2 salient points to this
1. The idea someone “should have” identified or opposed, doesn’t absolve the action or decision in any way.
2. The period of mass uncontrolled immigration also coincided with the peak power of modern leftist social ideology. Lest we forget it was “racist” in 2019 to suggest closing the border’s due to the emerging pandemic. On top of social pressure, It also was not a natural or desirable position to oppose immigration for any party in this country (which reinforces my previous point).
The consensus didn’t change - the immigration policy did to empirically poorer social and economic results. And that’s what destroyed the consensus. The Trudeau government bears complete responsibility for this.
You write, "The idea someone “should have” identified or opposed, doesn’t absolve the action or decision in any way."
Actually it does. Imagine someone insisting that John A. MacDonald was a genocidal monster because he implemented policies affecting Indigenous peoples that were more or less in line with the prevailing moral sentiments of the 19th century. The correct response would be that MacDonald should be judged more fairly by the knowledge and attitudes of his time, not based purely on our retrospective knowledge/awareness.
You're basically arguing that government is responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in society, when you are trying to blame the government for cultural attitudes, i.e. "the peak power of modern leftist social ideology". That's not how government works.
John A. MacDonald is being judged on his actions now. (Genocidal monster is an overstatement by any objective assessment) Culture and moral sediments are context which are mitigating factors and which may explain motive. The fact he thought what he was doing was right (and maybe others) doesn’t make it so. The road to hell is paved in good intentions..
I don’t argue at all that government is responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in society. At all. I’m at a loss as to how this can be deducted at all to be honest. I’m saying the social context of the time made it difficult to speak out against. Same way it was difficult to speak up for accused communists during McCarthyism. Any statement against immigration immediately got you labeled a far right bigot (in some combination).
Trudeau took something that was working wonderfully, and formed a core part of our national identity and smashed it. Social and economic consequences of mass uncontrolled immigration are easily foreseeable. Any defense of that is a defense of sheer ideological and myopic incompetence which I have no sympathy to entertain.
This only holds if your a hard-partisan Conservative. No one outside of that group believes it. Some of those folks would be closer to living in the real world if they acknowledged this rather than pretending everyone agrees with them or that these are strong evidenced based conclusions.
Which part? Trudeau's denial that there is such a thing as a Canadian people? That that denial was causally connected to a disastrous mass immigration policy? Or that those two together amount to betrayal?
That is, of course, a partisan framing that the facts don’t support.
I was never a member of the Trudeau fan club, but the “post-nationalist” label they hung on him was bogus. That one offhand comment in a 2015 interview wasn’t a radical departure, it was a (perhaps) clumsy articulation of something Canada has always been. We are not a nationalistic nation. We have never been organized around a single dominant race, religion, or overly simplistic mythology the way the United States has. Our founding premise, as imperfect and contested as its execution has been, is that diverse races, cultures, and beliefs can not just coexist but that the resulting pluralism produces a more resilient, just, and prosperous society. That idea didn’t originate with Trudeau. Versions of it were held by the Fathers of Confederation.
So who actually felt slighted by that comment? Patriarchal white Christian nationalists. People whose vision of Canada was always a minority position, not the mainstream tradition. And even “slighted” is too strong. The comment was, at most, a potential affront to a worldview that was never the dominant one.
More to the point: betrayal implies a broken alliance. That alliance never existed. You cannot betray people whose foundational vision of Canada was rejected at Confederation. The only thing Trudeau’s comment disrupted was the comfortable fiction that their Canada was THE Canada. It was not.
It's unclear to me whether you, like Trudeau, deny that there is such a thing as a Canadian people ("nation" in the old sense), or take it as so obviously true that anyone denying it has been denied merely has a chip on their shoulder.
Neither Trudeau nor I, to my knowledge, ever said there is no such thing as a Canadian people. That's a claim you should examine carefully before building an argument on it. If you're reading something he said as meaning that, the interpretation likely says more about the lens you're applying than about what was actually said.
The whole edifice rests on that one 2015 interview comment. What Trudeau actually described was something most Canadians understand intuitively: there is no singular Canadian ethnicity, religion, or political creed that defines membership in the nation. That's not a denial that Canadians exist - it's a description of what kind of people Canadians are.
Yes, the men who negotiated Confederation shared certain characteristics. They were largely Anglo or French, Christian, male, and propertied. Some of that is reflected in the founding documents. But the country they created was never that monolithic thing, not even at the moment of its creation. Indigenous nations and the Métis existed. Germans, Irish, many African nations, Jewish - all there. Chinese and Eastern Europeans shortly thereafter. The diversity was baked in from the start, however imperfectly acknowledged.
The "Canadian people" exist. They're just not who you seem to want them to be.
I am very carefully referring to Canadian people singular noun. Obviously many people live in Canada and we have a legal citizenship, so it would be absurd to defy that Canadian people exist. But "a" Canadian people? That's more controversial.
I take the author's overall point. But I feel I have to point out the fact that for the most part oil is already "off the table" as a bargaining chip because the Americans already know that they have us over a barrel on that count. We need pipelines ... plural ... and to every coast. This is the only practical way to give us real options in terms of selling our oil to customers other than the US. Canada's failure to do this when we had the chance has done more damage to our bargaining position than any Alberta separatist drama will.
Years ago some of us were pointing out to anyone that would listen that pipelines are not just about making money, but are in our national interest. Canada didn't "need" a transcontinental railroad in 1881 either. There was already one transcontinental railroad (and something like 3 more on the way) that we could have hooked up to by simply building some lines south into the US. Canada built railroads largely because it served our national interest to do so. The fact that so many Canadians failed to see the importance of doing this in regards to pipelines is not on Alberta. And the subsequent weak bargaining position we now hold in terms of energy policy is also mostly on the feds, BC, Quebec, environmental activists, and all others who railed against pipelines and other energy infrastructure to tidewater.
I am not a separatist. But I certainly understand why so many of them find this so absolutely galling. As much as I wish we were not having this referendum, to pin Canada's poor bargaining position in terms of energy on Alberta is simply not fair or accurate.
To the rest of Canada: We. Warned. You. And you sneered, laughed, and said there was no business case. And so here we are. Bent over the very barrel that some of us tried to warn the rest of Canada about. The rest of Canada needs to own their part in this awful position in which we find ourselves.
I must say I can only sit back in awe & chuckle at the reaction from the ROC towards a possible Alberta separation movement.
For decades you have pretty much done everything you can to suppress our opportunity to help ourselves & Canada as a whole flourish & prosper. Rules, regulations & bad policies aimed directly at impeding our prosperity.
And now you express disdain and surprise that a large portion of Albertans have said enough is enough. To lecture us by stating what fools we'd be by even considering such a thought shows a clear misunderstanding of how many Albertans feel about how we have been treated.
As we get closer to Canada Day maybe we can honestly assess whether the current structure of this country may be part of the problem. Central Canada has & will continue to drive the bus and the current structure ensures that. I personally think there is still hope & would prefer Alberta be part of Canada, put a restructured Canada. Canada is too large & too different to be governed as one entity. Canada would be better suited to accept this diversity & create a more regional approach & establish three blocks; the West, Central Canada & the Maritimes under a streamlined federal body.
If we want the Canada project to work we must honestly assess its shortcomings and modernize by being inclusive to ALL of Canada not just Ontario & Quebec.
Kidding, right? No one can provide a graph showing Alberta's prosperity had NEP not happened, a bunch of pipeline projects had happened and the transfers payments were applied fairly.
You have implicitly conceded the obvious point that any look at a long-term graph of Albertan GDP would find *no* signs whatsoever of an economy that is systematically being stifled - that's precisely why you felt the need to reach for a policy that was implemented a full 40 years ago.
The NEP would have damaged Alberta's economic growth at one instance in time - it would not have perpetually reduced Alberta's growth forever. And if it had, then it would be too late for separation to do anything about it!
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Oil is a finite resource that cannot in principle have growth that is both exponential and sustained, therefore any suggestion that oil development could be much higher than it is, is based on fantasy more than any objective evidence.
There is no universe in which Alberta needs equalization payments to achieve the same quality of public services as other provinces. You can argue that the equalization program should not in principle exist, but not that it has been unfair against Alberta in particular.
I made the point that nobody can draw a credible long term graph based on what might have been. Then I gave you 3 instances of Ottawa imposed set-backs that can never be undone. The policy may reverse, but you aren't getting the income back.
You are right that the income is never coming back, lost opportunities are still lost opportunities. But there is not a government on earth that is perfect in never inflicting economic damage, so the comparison is not against some perfect abstract scenario but against what another plausible government might have done instead.
So what would actually be illuminating is if Alberta were shown to be performing poorly compared to another oil-producing jurisdiction that lacks the kind of government that Alberta separatists are aggrieved about, I doubt that there are any such jurisdictions.
"You can argue that the equalization program should not in principle exist, but not that it has been unfair against Alberta in particular."
The point doesn't need to be that it has been unfair again Alberta in particular, it's that it has inhibited Alberta's (and every other "have" province's) growth.
Equalization was a carrot to convince the Maritimes to join a nascent Canada in 1867 and continued in 1982. Keeping what should be a fiscal policy in a constitution was beyond foolish. By 1982 we already had the Croll Report on poverty (1971) and the Dauphin Mincome experiment in basic income (1974-1979). Could no one think that an individual equalization would be more efficient than a governmental one?
Oil prices crashed everywhere in the early '80s. The Alberta boom was coming to an end. The high interest rates that came in to deal with rampant inflation was going to hurt a lot of overextended Albertans who thought the boom would never end. The NEP just added insult to injury for its brief life.
More oil and gas pipelines should've been built. Canada's regulatory sclerosis is lamentable, and pipelines were a target of a coordinated campaign by environmental activists during a moment of acute panic over climate change. There's no quick fix for that, and it takes a long term focus and consensus. It's possible, though: the US legal conservative movement invested 30 years in changing the composition of the US Supreme Court...
Transfer payments tend to obscure the issue that Alberta is having trouble making ends meet due to political mismanagement. Get rid of the transfer payments, and it'd just give Alberta politicians a bit more runway before they again screwed it up and ran out of money.
We are one of the richest countries in the world for natural resources. The world cannot exist without these elements. BUT the powers that be in what we are calling the ROC have had the attitude that was summed up best by the Liberal government headed by Justin Trudeau "that there is no market for these goods".
Albertan & the rest of Canada should have jumped on this strength but because of your (ROC) fantasy that stifling any resource development we could single handedly save the planet. I can only dream of the prosperity we could have had.
The "stifling any resource development" is simply a separatist fantasy, if not an outright lie. The ROC isn't obsessed with persecuting you, just interested in not giving the absolute middle finger to the international community. Your province's oil production is increasing, period.
Yeah, that's still a total fantasy. Here's what I pulled up from Google AI:
"Based on the analysis of Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist at the University of Alberta, new, large-scale oil pipelines in Canada face significant hurdles not solely due to legislation, but because of market dynamics, economic viability, and political risks. Leach has argued that environmental and regulatory hurdles are not "remotely comparable" to the long-run impact of declining price projections for bitumen, which makes new pipeline investments risky."
Not a fantasy at all - what does AI tell you about the scenario in which TMX was built on time and on budget by Kinder Morgan...?
What does it tell you would have happened if huge proponents such as TECK had been allowed to open new oilfields?
What does it tell you would have happened had Northern Gateway been built a decade ago?
What would Canada look like today, had Energy East gone through? (how much shorter would the Ukraine/Russia war have been, if Europe had been provided access to Canadian LNG this past five years or so....?)
To say 'mistakes were made" would be a massive understatement.
You are trying to focus solely on the hurdles building out this much needed infrastructure would face today - rather than simply admitting what the past decade plus of Liberal virtue signalling has objectively cost us.
This analysis underlies the issues that have forced us into this problematic referendum. For people like Jacks, Alberta's economy is understood to be a bargaining chip needed to obtain concessions to protect the Parliamentarily guaranteed dairy cartel and the Liberal government's regulatory and subsidy damaged auto industry. They don't ask what type of trade deal would best benefit Alberta's economy. They ask how Alberta's resources can be leveraged to support uncompetitive industries. And for at least a few of those industries, the problem is government interference in business planning. I can't think of a bigger economic disaster for this country than the federal government's obsession with batteries.
Secondly, we have never had a unified economy acting together. You can't sell BC wine in Ontario. We can't sell Alberta energy in Quebec because we lack national transportation corridors. Provincial labour regulations and professional licensing often prevents cross-border economic projects.
Danielle Smith is as much a federalist as any of the federal Liberal politicians. They think Canada extends only to the suburbs of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Reading all these comments, we are light years apart. This does not bode well for the country. If we are to move forward together, we have to address what has been done and how it will be repaired.
If Ottawa offered Alberta the exact same asymmetric federalist model it gave Quebec, for me, the grievances driving the current October 2026 referendum would vanish overnight.
A "Same Deal as Quebec" would dismantle Western alienation because it directly addresses all of their very legitimate complaints, IMHO.
For me, this is not going away and it will crystalize at the speed of social media and smart phones. This fight will continue and continue and continue, I suspect, now at the speed of AI.
We need to fix this country before we screw ourselves forever. It will not be accomplished unless there are constitutional talks - which come with risks of a national unity crisis and Quebec separatism catching fire once more. A terrible fear for certain, but there is a hell of a blaze currently burning out of control in Alberta, so we are in one right now.
Doing nothing to repair Ottawa's relationship with Alberta and the west is the only way forward and, yup, it's going to tick off Quebec. Quebec gets riled up when Ottawa makes the smallest move that weakens their control over Ottawa.
Canada has two separatist movements, fueled by cultural differences, language, economic matters and so much more. Is Quebec a nation? Stephen Harper was the PM at the time, remember?
You know, because they truly believe they are and they have pretty much all the administrative and legislative tools to be one.
Is Alberta a nation?
Again, federalists are going to have to address past wrongs. Like the National Energy Program. That terrible policy is the firmament upon which today's separatism movement has grown over the past four decades. It is living memory I suspect for most Albertans and Albertans in other provinces. It will be living memory for many more years to come.
If this can't be done, then confederation will fail. Not today, maybe not tomorrow. But it will fail. Canada needs to change or Canada will be changed.
Both sides need to be asked, I think, what would have to exist for Alberta to remain in Canada?
Complaining about the NEP at this point makes no sense. The man who put it in has been dead for a quarter century. Given all the new people who have come into AB since the early 1980s I doubt most still remember it. Anyone born the year it happened is well into middle age now and would have no direct memory of it. Much less anyone born after it.
You're saying Albertans should just forget the NEP...because it is the past - and the past sins of the Liberals don't matter, because "that was then, this is now"...
....should Quebec forget all about the Plains of Abraham? Oops, their provincial motto is literally "we remember".
...should our First Nations forget all about the residential school tragedies? The people involved are long dead... just as you said.
THIS is the double standard Albertans are complaining about, writ large.
1981 to Current (Ages 0 to ~45): This group comprises roughly 60% to 62% of the population. It encompasses Generation Z, Millennials, Generation Alpha, and younger Gen Xers.
1980 and Prior (Ages 46 and Older): This group comprises roughly 38% to 40% of the population. It includes older Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation.
I imagine that with40% of the population composed of people born prior to 1980, they might possibly remember the NEP quite well, don't you think?
We need to fix this by ROC asking itself: 'what would have to exist to keep Alberta in confederation?'
Unfortunately, the rest of Canada, or at least its leadership, thinks the answer is "a solid voting bloc of recent immigrants". Every incentive for Eastern Canada is to simply stall and dilute. Look at the leadership of Alberta federalists - mostly people from Ontario.
For a country's population to stay stable without immigration, the average woman needs to have about 2.1 children according to the google machine.
Statistics Canada data shows that Canada's fertility rate dropped to a historic low of 1.25 children per woman. This puts Canada in the same category as countries like Japan and Italy, which are facing severe aging-population crises.
Being replaced by strangers (or even, perhaps, cousins from Ontario) is a much more severe population crisis, and at the heart of the secession question. If Albertans aren't a "we", why bother to secede?
Well that much is obvious. I think the realization that they played into the hands of their most hated villain would be the harder hitting one for these voters, if they ever arrive there.
Tone and character. I didn't like him when Harper was in. I don't like him now. That matters. I also just flat out don't think any of his housing ideas will work. It's more playing at the margins when we need the whole thing shaken up.
Nobody can fix housing by getting government involved in supply, which is the Liberal plan. It's not going well. The CPC plan is to remove regulations, which will help a bit, but the bigger issues are ending mass immigration and stopping foreign money from being parked in Canada. Conservatives are stronger on both.
Much of Poilievres "tone" issues are due to hostile media presenting him in a negative light. But he could grow tentacles and start speaking exclusively in the Language of Mordor and I would still only care about policy.
There is some irony that the thing that supposedly 10% of Albertan strongly want would be then subject to US government control. It wasn’t a specific state that stopped keystone XL, it was Biden.
I think many of the keratosis are ill informed or just uneducated on what life in the US is actually like. They ought to go spend a month living in an area that they could afford if their Canadian dollars were converted to USD.
The whole grass is greener argument is easy to apply when you haven’t spent time down there. But the US has elections too. Democrats win there too. And I can just imagine the bellyaching involved with Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom is the next US president
I feel like the separatists can’t see the first for the trees and make impulsive decisions because of that.
Keystone failed earlier than that due to mass protests under the Obama administration., Trump tried to bring it back repeatedly during his first term, but TC Energy didn't see a business case and didn't see a path to resolve the regulatory and environmental concerns. A lot of pipelines get built in the US in places like Texas, but then a lot of pipelines get built in Canada in the province of Alberta. The US has got its own problems with suffocating regulatory approval processes that a lot of people are wringing their hands over.
Carney is trying to compare Albertan seperatism with "Brexit", which he describes as a dangerous bluff. As with most things, he is completely wrong. The UK was part of a large common market (the EU) but chose to leave and "go it alone", because it hated the Brussels bureaucracy so much. Alberta, on the other hand, is only part of a disfunctional confederation (Provincial trade barriers anyone?) and will not have to go it alone if it leaves. As this article describes, from the viewpoint that it is bad for the ROC, across Alberta's southern border is the largest common market in the world and the US would welcome Alberta with open arms - either as a new State or as a special free trade partner. What maybe bad for the ROC is a huge opportunity for Alberta. While the UK may have screwed up the perceived economic benefits of Brexit, Albertans will be hard pressed not to score big once they escape from Ottawa and the Liberal's death grip and are free to negotiate their future directly with the US.
Why would any sane person trust this US administration on anything? Hate Ottawa all you want, there is still no comparison. The grass definitely isn't greener......it's spray-painted.
And yet, he won after SNC. He won after WE. It's not his fault he won. It's the CPC's for not presenting an alternative. Don't bother with the "Liberal friendly" media excuse. Scheer was an idiot. The CPC turned on O'Toole. Pierre is still an idiot. And the CPC kept him. It's almost like the CPC doesn't actually want to form government.
The media is Liberal friendly. Poilievre is more compassionate than, and had a far more extensive platform than either Trudeau or Carney, but all we heard was "Poilievre is mean and has no policy."
I would imagine that all most people know about his March 31, 2025 speech is that he used the term "biological clock," which got the CBC's knickers in a tight twist despite them having used it repeatedly themselves.
Here's some of the speech:
Some people have said that I should stop talking about the doubling housing costs that have denied an entire generation the chance to own a home after the lost Liberal decade.
They say that we shouldn't be debating why single moms are lined up at food banks in record numbers after the lost Liberal decade.
They suggest that we shouldn't debate why 50,000 of our citizens have lost their lives to drug overdoses under the radical liberal drug policies.
That we should just forget that after the lost Liberal decade of rising costs and crime and falling economy under America's thumb that we should just ignore all of those things.
I disagree.
My purpose in politics is to restore Canada's promise so that anyone from anywhere can achieve anything; that hard work gets you a great life and a beautiful affordable home on a safe street protected by brave troops under a proud flag.
All the things that we need to do to respond to the economic aggression of the Americans are things I've been talking about for 10 years.
I was standing up for pipelines 10 years ago when Mark Carney was opposing them.
I've been saying that we need to approve resource projects quickly for the last 10 years while Mark carney was supporting C-69 and the energy cap and other policies.
I stood up for tax cuts that will unleash growth in our economy over the last years, in fact over my entire career.
The threats, the unjustified threats by President Trump further strengthen the argument in favour of the Canada first agenda that I've been fighting for my whole life.
And while we propose those solutions, we will not forget the single mom who can't afford food.
We will not forget the seniors choosing between eating and heating.
We will not forget that young 36 year old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home and have kids.
We will not forget the families terrorized by crime and drugs.
And so we will continue, despite uh calls to the contrary, to talk about those things even if I am the only leader in the country that offers any change.
"Mean" is an understatement. He's an ignorant ass with judgment as poor as Trudeau's. And he still says Canada should have a tariff-free relationship with the US. That's as absurd, with this administration, as his support of the Convoy was. The notion that he can just cut taxes and everything will be fine....without saying what will no longer be funded is disingenuous....and why he isn't trustworthy. The PM doesn't get to wave a magic wand and fix everything. Conservatives have complained nonstop that Carney has implemented some CPC ideas. Carney is wrong on guns. He should walk away from the entire buyback nonsense. He is significantly wrong on the environment. No one pleases everyone.
It's quite clear we aren't going to agree on Pierre. I will not vote for him, for the same reasons I didn't vote for Trudeau after 2015. Perhaps the CPC will come to understand when they lose again in 2029. My opinions on Pierre come from his interviews and his behaviour in the House. I read the full CPC platform......that he couldn't get out before the advanced polls closed. I don't regret my vote for Carney, frustrating as the pace is. Again, to be clear, Trudeau should not have won after 2015. It's not his fault he did.
I am guessing you didn’t read the speech. It is far more compassionate than anything by Trudeau or Carney, with their smarmy, hypocritical “thanks for your donation” and “I can outlast her” comments to protesters from Grassy Narrows.
Can you come up with an example of Poilievre being mean?
And the PM can wave a wand and make things better. It is called legislation. It could be funded by not wasting money. Did we need STDC? Did we need to spend $80B to not build houses? Did we need to give 10 of billions to selected companies to enhance productivity without enhancing productivity? Now we’ve committed another $110B to the same sinkhole. Did we have give $22B to selected companies to improve productivity without improving productivity?
"Holds a knife to Canada's throat" with the threat of separation is an attempt to simplify a complex issue. Quebec was granted political and economic favours as an incentive to enter the Canadian confederation and Quebec has a guaranteed proportion of votes that forces all political parties to pander to Quebec if they seek power in Ottawa. The reality is that Quebec will continue to be the tail that wags the dog in Canadian politics. Alberta will never enjoy Quebec's advantages in Canada's confederation but a modicum of respect for its economic contributions to Canada would be welcome.
I thought the favors Quebec got were to induce it to stay in Confederation not enter it. Quebec’s place in confederation was the result of an 1867 shotgun marriage arranged by the Brits in the hopes that the pesky French would be assimilated by the Anglos. But as soon as Canada got a French PM after Quebec took away the power of the Catholic priests it promptly brought in multiculturalism and eliminated the need for immigrants to join the Anglo culture. This dilution of Anglo political power was sealed by the massive immigration floodgate opening. under Trudeau Junior.
I find it so strange that some of the biggest boosters for the total annihilation of traditional Anglo Canadian culture are white haired rich WASPs whose ancestors were all here pre-confederation. You'd think they would be the most rock ribbed conservative faction but they are all froth at the mouth Liberals.
The white hair gives it away - boomers with an après moi le déluge attitude. It's about their self-image and their cruises, not their nation or their descendants.
Well we can't have them all setting up their kids for multi generational wealth in a society where they can succeed, that would compete with existing elite interests.
You're talking just like somebody from Quebec constantly clutching their pearls about the decline of Quebecois culture. I'm not worried about Canadian culture because it's resilient and adaptable. That's been the real strength of Canada's British heritage: it assimilates what it sees as useful and good and changes rather than trying to be an unchanging but brittle monolith.
The same trends aren't working out so well in the UK and Australia either. It's almost like wealthy and well connected people who benefit from mass immigration, and who are so mobile as to have no permanent ties to the countries in question, are spinning a line to justify ramming that policy down our throats.
That’s the way it should be and indeed that’s the path that the Anglo culture in the US has followed. The patriots who won the war of independence were desirous of change and embrace it. But the Anglo culture in Canada was that of the Loyalists who did not want change and have resisted it ever since.
By default any cultural change adopted by the Canadian Anglos has either originated in the US (By penis envy in some cases) or Quebec ( particularly since the government was de facto taken over by Quebec carpetbaggers following Trudeau Senior whose Official Languages Act guaranteed that virtually all Civil service management positions would go to French speakers). Quebec innovations in my lifetime have been:
the morphing of an Montreal attack by an Islamic Jihadist into soon to be total disarmament of the Canadian population;
The killing of unborn babies on demand-with proposals to extend the practice to babies after birth being considered;
The killing of the sick elderly (MAID) and veterans with PTSD with an extension of the practice to the mentally ill to start next year (2027)
Some may consider this to be progress. Adolf might. I certainly don’t. I don’t believe most Canadian Anglos would.
Not anything like the panicked scare tactics and verbiage now being unleashed. Could it have anything to do with the tax dollars generated by Alberta to the federal government being the real reason behind the noise. We’ve yet to see a truly cogent expression of positive reasons why Alberta should continue as a part of Canada. If Alberta should leave, which is debatable, how long before other parts of Western Canada would consider bailing?
I’m not sure that export taxes or even export caps were ever really on the table for oil from Alberta to the United States. A lot of that oil gets refined in the United States and then exported again to Laurentian Canada.
If there's anything that could provoke aggressive US action, it's threats of sudden shut-offs in energy supply. Alberta's bolshiness may just be protecting us from our own hubris.
Well thank you Mr. Jack for penning one of the scariest articles on the upcoming negotiations and referendum. It's scary because its backed by facts and knowledge, sometimes difficult elements to find in such an emotionally hot topic.
There is one entity and only one responsible for the decay, diminishment, and destruction of Canada’s sovereignty, and that is the Liberal Party of Canada.
Is Danielle Smith responsible for foreign interference, for destroying our immigration system, the rot and impairment of the RCMP and the Canadian Armed Forces, our values and traditions and national ethos?
This is kind of like arguing that Ford's ad featuring Ronald Reagan blew up the trade talks. Maybe it DID act as the proximate cause, but the real story was the Trump administration looking for an excuse to break things off.
And likewise in this case, if the Trump administration wants an excuse to scuttle the negotiations, they will find one.
Separatism is a bad idea for all kinds of reasons, but “it gives ammunition to bad faith actors” is a weak argument when those actors can, and will, turn literally anything into ammunition.
Trump is negotiating with Mexico, just not with us. Maybe we are hoping for a repeat of last time, where the US and Mexico made the deal and gracefully allowed us to join.
The reality is that our very own Liberal governments have done far more harm to Canada than Donald Trump has. The Liberals have also betrayed the Canadian people with mass immigration. They no longer get to demand silent obedience. If the Liberals can't keep the country united, that is a measure of their incompetence, not of Smith's (or other Canadians') misbehaviour.
Your use of the word "betrayed" implies that there was a special kind of cynicism with the mass immigration policy and/or that the policy was divisive for a lengthy period of time before it was reversed. What is the evidence for either being the case?
Are you saying it took 10 years for the Liberals to realize it was a mistake? They still haven't fixed it, either: we are still bringing in a large number without criminal background or economic checks. We also don't check if those ordered to leave actually leave. The problem is far from solved.
Perhaps the best people to talk to are recent immigrants who jumped through all the legal hoops, only to see others jump the queue. It is not about immigrants, it is about a system that is constantly changing the goal posts to appease certain groups. Identity politics 1.0.
Great point.
The question is not whether the problem is "solved"; the question is what the Conservatives who are supported by Alberta would, or would not, have done differently. There's no "betrayal" when the policies apparently had the support of a virtual consensus of the political class.
A quick bit of reading reminds me Sheer was in favour of selective immigration, especially the victims of Islam, O'Toole wanted to go back to rules-based immigration and Poilievre wanted a drastic reduction in immigration. All three criticized Trudeau's policies.
Wild immigration only had the support of the WEF class, which you seem to conflate with the political class.
Bernier was out in front on this issue. Slammed as a "racist", but we all now know that he was right. Or perhaps even be didn't go far enough?
I found this on Google AI:
"Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has consistently urged a reduction in immigration and population growth throughout 2024 and 2025, arguing that the Liberal government’s policies broke the system and outpaced housing, health care, and infrastructure."
2024 is rather recent and late in the game; the government swiftly obeying Poilievre would not have made much difference to whatever negative outcomes are currently associated with immigration policies.
"During the 2019 federal election, former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer proposed an immigration policy focused on merit-based immigration, economic needs, and border integrity, pledging to close the Roxham Road irregular crossing "loophole". **He prioritized high economic immigration levels**, increased private refugee sponsorship, and opposed the UN Global Compact on Migration."
Scheer supported mass-immigration in general and did not to my knowledge raise concerns about high quantities of international students or about temporary foreign workers.
"During the 2021 federal election, Erin O'Toole’s immigration policy focused on accelerating application processing for families and skilled workers while **supporting increased overall immigration** to aid pandemic recovery, though he did not commit to specific immigration number targets. His platform promised tougher border measures and improved system integrity."
They all wanted a return to the points system.
Actually, it's still a betrayal. In fact, it's worse.
Partly, sort of right… in a way.
Elements of the problem (the one most agree is the problem - not just partisans) were building from 2015 but it didn’t really become a problem until 2020 to 2023 and most specifically during and after Covid. 2022 was the year we really lost control. Among other things, the feds were trying to clear a backlog and ramped up processing at the same time that the infrastructure was showing signs of serious stress.
"Betrayed the Canadian people". Under Justin, the Liberals denied that there is such a thing as a Canadian people. They weren't misguidedly thinking that mass immigration would be best for the nation - they flatly denied the existence of the nation. That's what makes it a betrayal.
To be clear Trudeau 2.0 described Canada as the "first post nation state". That there was no real Canadian identity. He then proceeded to swing open the doors to all comers in response to Trump's decision to shut out muslim immigrants to the US. Trudeau channelled the statue of Liberty's famous poem specifically targeting groups he deemed oppressed. Add in the Syrian refugee crisis, the Ukraine refugee crisis, Covid and the recognition of foreign temporary workers, and international students looking for a path to citizenship. It became a perfect storm of immigration chaos. Something Canadians and aspiring Canadians never signed up for.
Trudeau is a moron. That's stipulated. It's also why he lost the popular vote in 2 of 3 elections, left under a cloud of unpopularity, and nobody wants to talk about him anymore. He's also gone now, and there's been a rapid shift away from his positions within his former government. The problems you're complaining about are being fixed, and I suspect you know it. Like any revolutionary movement, Alberta separatists need to convince people of their own belief that the existing system is unjust. The window presented by an epically bad Trudeau government and the Peak Woke era is closing.
No shovels in the ground. No remigration. New trade deal with India to include temporary workers and students. Tanker ban, industrial carbon tax, and environmental regs not repealed.
Lots of talk, zero action.
We'll see. It took a decade or more to screw this up, it's going to take some time to sort out. Meanwhile, the fixation on rejecting anything that doesn't solve every problem immediately is a pan-Canadian problem, especially in Alberta politics.
So far, it has been a year of talk (and huge spending) but ZERO action.
It doesn't take Nostradamus to predict that if they were given yet another decade to "sort this out", the Liberals would deliver a decade of talk (and even HUGER spending) but ZERO action.
You are engaging in a non-sequitor. You have not demonstrated that the nationhood comments are linked to the mass-immigration policies, nor that the mass-immigration policies were long controversial with the Alberta-supported Conservatives, nor that any of this was contrary to either implied or explicit expectations that the government had set for itself.
Correct. Horrible policy, incompetence, fools errand, feckless, etc, is certainly fitting, but to use the words like "betrayal" or "disloyal" etc, is just someone having a temper tantrum or wanting to foment all kinds of divisiveness, usually in support of some ulterior motive.
The fact that the Trudeau Liberals destroyed an intergenerational consensus on immigration in this country through reckless and/or negligent policy (to put the best spin on it possible) is absolutely a betrayal of the Canadian people. Our immigration system was a model for the world, and a pillar of identify and pride for the country. Now it is a debacle and a point of internal strife and devision. Betrayal indeed.
The Trudeau Liberals may have been the government when the consensus on immigration changed, but the Conservatives themselves supported mass-immigration until 2024. I see no evidence that any other parties in parliament were identifying the "reckless and/or negligent" policies prior to the occurrence of whatever harms were associated with them.
I don’t have the game notes of what the Conservatives real time position on any of this was but there are 2 salient points to this
1. The idea someone “should have” identified or opposed, doesn’t absolve the action or decision in any way.
2. The period of mass uncontrolled immigration also coincided with the peak power of modern leftist social ideology. Lest we forget it was “racist” in 2019 to suggest closing the border’s due to the emerging pandemic. On top of social pressure, It also was not a natural or desirable position to oppose immigration for any party in this country (which reinforces my previous point).
The consensus didn’t change - the immigration policy did to empirically poorer social and economic results. And that’s what destroyed the consensus. The Trudeau government bears complete responsibility for this.
You write, "The idea someone “should have” identified or opposed, doesn’t absolve the action or decision in any way."
Actually it does. Imagine someone insisting that John A. MacDonald was a genocidal monster because he implemented policies affecting Indigenous peoples that were more or less in line with the prevailing moral sentiments of the 19th century. The correct response would be that MacDonald should be judged more fairly by the knowledge and attitudes of his time, not based purely on our retrospective knowledge/awareness.
You're basically arguing that government is responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in society, when you are trying to blame the government for cultural attitudes, i.e. "the peak power of modern leftist social ideology". That's not how government works.
John A. MacDonald is being judged on his actions now. (Genocidal monster is an overstatement by any objective assessment) Culture and moral sediments are context which are mitigating factors and which may explain motive. The fact he thought what he was doing was right (and maybe others) doesn’t make it so. The road to hell is paved in good intentions..
I don’t argue at all that government is responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in society. At all. I’m at a loss as to how this can be deducted at all to be honest. I’m saying the social context of the time made it difficult to speak out against. Same way it was difficult to speak up for accused communists during McCarthyism. Any statement against immigration immediately got you labeled a far right bigot (in some combination).
Trudeau took something that was working wonderfully, and formed a core part of our national identity and smashed it. Social and economic consequences of mass uncontrolled immigration are easily foreseeable. Any defense of that is a defense of sheer ideological and myopic incompetence which I have no sympathy to entertain.
This only holds if your a hard-partisan Conservative. No one outside of that group believes it. Some of those folks would be closer to living in the real world if they acknowledged this rather than pretending everyone agrees with them or that these are strong evidenced based conclusions.
Which part? Trudeau's denial that there is such a thing as a Canadian people? That that denial was causally connected to a disastrous mass immigration policy? Or that those two together amount to betrayal?
That is, of course, a partisan framing that the facts don’t support.
I was never a member of the Trudeau fan club, but the “post-nationalist” label they hung on him was bogus. That one offhand comment in a 2015 interview wasn’t a radical departure, it was a (perhaps) clumsy articulation of something Canada has always been. We are not a nationalistic nation. We have never been organized around a single dominant race, religion, or overly simplistic mythology the way the United States has. Our founding premise, as imperfect and contested as its execution has been, is that diverse races, cultures, and beliefs can not just coexist but that the resulting pluralism produces a more resilient, just, and prosperous society. That idea didn’t originate with Trudeau. Versions of it were held by the Fathers of Confederation.
So who actually felt slighted by that comment? Patriarchal white Christian nationalists. People whose vision of Canada was always a minority position, not the mainstream tradition. And even “slighted” is too strong. The comment was, at most, a potential affront to a worldview that was never the dominant one.
More to the point: betrayal implies a broken alliance. That alliance never existed. You cannot betray people whose foundational vision of Canada was rejected at Confederation. The only thing Trudeau’s comment disrupted was the comfortable fiction that their Canada was THE Canada. It was not.
It's unclear to me whether you, like Trudeau, deny that there is such a thing as a Canadian people ("nation" in the old sense), or take it as so obviously true that anyone denying it has been denied merely has a chip on their shoulder.
Neither Trudeau nor I, to my knowledge, ever said there is no such thing as a Canadian people. That's a claim you should examine carefully before building an argument on it. If you're reading something he said as meaning that, the interpretation likely says more about the lens you're applying than about what was actually said.
The whole edifice rests on that one 2015 interview comment. What Trudeau actually described was something most Canadians understand intuitively: there is no singular Canadian ethnicity, religion, or political creed that defines membership in the nation. That's not a denial that Canadians exist - it's a description of what kind of people Canadians are.
Yes, the men who negotiated Confederation shared certain characteristics. They were largely Anglo or French, Christian, male, and propertied. Some of that is reflected in the founding documents. But the country they created was never that monolithic thing, not even at the moment of its creation. Indigenous nations and the Métis existed. Germans, Irish, many African nations, Jewish - all there. Chinese and Eastern Europeans shortly thereafter. The diversity was baked in from the start, however imperfectly acknowledged.
The "Canadian people" exist. They're just not who you seem to want them to be.
I am very carefully referring to Canadian people singular noun. Obviously many people live in Canada and we have a legal citizenship, so it would be absurd to defy that Canadian people exist. But "a" Canadian people? That's more controversial.
I take the author's overall point. But I feel I have to point out the fact that for the most part oil is already "off the table" as a bargaining chip because the Americans already know that they have us over a barrel on that count. We need pipelines ... plural ... and to every coast. This is the only practical way to give us real options in terms of selling our oil to customers other than the US. Canada's failure to do this when we had the chance has done more damage to our bargaining position than any Alberta separatist drama will.
Years ago some of us were pointing out to anyone that would listen that pipelines are not just about making money, but are in our national interest. Canada didn't "need" a transcontinental railroad in 1881 either. There was already one transcontinental railroad (and something like 3 more on the way) that we could have hooked up to by simply building some lines south into the US. Canada built railroads largely because it served our national interest to do so. The fact that so many Canadians failed to see the importance of doing this in regards to pipelines is not on Alberta. And the subsequent weak bargaining position we now hold in terms of energy policy is also mostly on the feds, BC, Quebec, environmental activists, and all others who railed against pipelines and other energy infrastructure to tidewater.
I am not a separatist. But I certainly understand why so many of them find this so absolutely galling. As much as I wish we were not having this referendum, to pin Canada's poor bargaining position in terms of energy on Alberta is simply not fair or accurate.
To the rest of Canada: We. Warned. You. And you sneered, laughed, and said there was no business case. And so here we are. Bent over the very barrel that some of us tried to warn the rest of Canada about. The rest of Canada needs to own their part in this awful position in which we find ourselves.
I must say I can only sit back in awe & chuckle at the reaction from the ROC towards a possible Alberta separation movement.
For decades you have pretty much done everything you can to suppress our opportunity to help ourselves & Canada as a whole flourish & prosper. Rules, regulations & bad policies aimed directly at impeding our prosperity.
And now you express disdain and surprise that a large portion of Albertans have said enough is enough. To lecture us by stating what fools we'd be by even considering such a thought shows a clear misunderstanding of how many Albertans feel about how we have been treated.
As we get closer to Canada Day maybe we can honestly assess whether the current structure of this country may be part of the problem. Central Canada has & will continue to drive the bus and the current structure ensures that. I personally think there is still hope & would prefer Alberta be part of Canada, put a restructured Canada. Canada is too large & too different to be governed as one entity. Canada would be better suited to accept this diversity & create a more regional approach & establish three blocks; the West, Central Canada & the Maritimes under a streamlined federal body.
If we want the Canada project to work we must honestly assess its shortcomings and modernize by being inclusive to ALL of Canada not just Ontario & Quebec.
By what objective economic or quality-of-life measure has the ROC tangible reduced Alberta's prosperity?
Kidding, right? No one can provide a graph showing Alberta's prosperity had NEP not happened, a bunch of pipeline projects had happened and the transfers payments were applied fairly.
You have implicitly conceded the obvious point that any look at a long-term graph of Albertan GDP would find *no* signs whatsoever of an economy that is systematically being stifled - that's precisely why you felt the need to reach for a policy that was implemented a full 40 years ago.
The NEP would have damaged Alberta's economic growth at one instance in time - it would not have perpetually reduced Alberta's growth forever. And if it had, then it would be too late for separation to do anything about it!
'
Oil is a finite resource that cannot in principle have growth that is both exponential and sustained, therefore any suggestion that oil development could be much higher than it is, is based on fantasy more than any objective evidence.
There is no universe in which Alberta needs equalization payments to achieve the same quality of public services as other provinces. You can argue that the equalization program should not in principle exist, but not that it has been unfair against Alberta in particular.
I made the point that nobody can draw a credible long term graph based on what might have been. Then I gave you 3 instances of Ottawa imposed set-backs that can never be undone. The policy may reverse, but you aren't getting the income back.
You are right that the income is never coming back, lost opportunities are still lost opportunities. But there is not a government on earth that is perfect in never inflicting economic damage, so the comparison is not against some perfect abstract scenario but against what another plausible government might have done instead.
So what would actually be illuminating is if Alberta were shown to be performing poorly compared to another oil-producing jurisdiction that lacks the kind of government that Alberta separatists are aggrieved about, I doubt that there are any such jurisdictions.
"You can argue that the equalization program should not in principle exist, but not that it has been unfair against Alberta in particular."
The point doesn't need to be that it has been unfair again Alberta in particular, it's that it has inhibited Alberta's (and every other "have" province's) growth.
Equalization was a carrot to convince the Maritimes to join a nascent Canada in 1867 and continued in 1982. Keeping what should be a fiscal policy in a constitution was beyond foolish. By 1982 we already had the Croll Report on poverty (1971) and the Dauphin Mincome experiment in basic income (1974-1979). Could no one think that an individual equalization would be more efficient than a governmental one?
Oil prices crashed everywhere in the early '80s. The Alberta boom was coming to an end. The high interest rates that came in to deal with rampant inflation was going to hurt a lot of overextended Albertans who thought the boom would never end. The NEP just added insult to injury for its brief life.
More oil and gas pipelines should've been built. Canada's regulatory sclerosis is lamentable, and pipelines were a target of a coordinated campaign by environmental activists during a moment of acute panic over climate change. There's no quick fix for that, and it takes a long term focus and consensus. It's possible, though: the US legal conservative movement invested 30 years in changing the composition of the US Supreme Court...
Transfer payments tend to obscure the issue that Alberta is having trouble making ends meet due to political mismanagement. Get rid of the transfer payments, and it'd just give Alberta politicians a bit more runway before they again screwed it up and ran out of money.
We are one of the richest countries in the world for natural resources. The world cannot exist without these elements. BUT the powers that be in what we are calling the ROC have had the attitude that was summed up best by the Liberal government headed by Justin Trudeau "that there is no market for these goods".
Albertan & the rest of Canada should have jumped on this strength but because of your (ROC) fantasy that stifling any resource development we could single handedly save the planet. I can only dream of the prosperity we could have had.
The "stifling any resource development" is simply a separatist fantasy, if not an outright lie. The ROC isn't obsessed with persecuting you, just interested in not giving the absolute middle finger to the international community. Your province's oil production is increasing, period.
By a rate far slower than it would if we did NOT have an interventionist, activist government doing their best to stifle that growth.
Liberals insist on missing this point.
Yeah, that's still a total fantasy. Here's what I pulled up from Google AI:
"Based on the analysis of Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist at the University of Alberta, new, large-scale oil pipelines in Canada face significant hurdles not solely due to legislation, but because of market dynamics, economic viability, and political risks. Leach has argued that environmental and regulatory hurdles are not "remotely comparable" to the long-run impact of declining price projections for bitumen, which makes new pipeline investments risky."
Not a fantasy at all - what does AI tell you about the scenario in which TMX was built on time and on budget by Kinder Morgan...?
What does it tell you would have happened if huge proponents such as TECK had been allowed to open new oilfields?
What does it tell you would have happened had Northern Gateway been built a decade ago?
What would Canada look like today, had Energy East gone through? (how much shorter would the Ukraine/Russia war have been, if Europe had been provided access to Canadian LNG this past five years or so....?)
To say 'mistakes were made" would be a massive understatement.
You are trying to focus solely on the hurdles building out this much needed infrastructure would face today - rather than simply admitting what the past decade plus of Liberal virtue signalling has objectively cost us.
This analysis underlies the issues that have forced us into this problematic referendum. For people like Jacks, Alberta's economy is understood to be a bargaining chip needed to obtain concessions to protect the Parliamentarily guaranteed dairy cartel and the Liberal government's regulatory and subsidy damaged auto industry. They don't ask what type of trade deal would best benefit Alberta's economy. They ask how Alberta's resources can be leveraged to support uncompetitive industries. And for at least a few of those industries, the problem is government interference in business planning. I can't think of a bigger economic disaster for this country than the federal government's obsession with batteries.
Secondly, we have never had a unified economy acting together. You can't sell BC wine in Ontario. We can't sell Alberta energy in Quebec because we lack national transportation corridors. Provincial labour regulations and professional licensing often prevents cross-border economic projects.
Danielle Smith is as much a federalist as any of the federal Liberal politicians. They think Canada extends only to the suburbs of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Reading all these comments, we are light years apart. This does not bode well for the country. If we are to move forward together, we have to address what has been done and how it will be repaired.
If Ottawa offered Alberta the exact same asymmetric federalist model it gave Quebec, for me, the grievances driving the current October 2026 referendum would vanish overnight.
A "Same Deal as Quebec" would dismantle Western alienation because it directly addresses all of their very legitimate complaints, IMHO.
For me, this is not going away and it will crystalize at the speed of social media and smart phones. This fight will continue and continue and continue, I suspect, now at the speed of AI.
We need to fix this country before we screw ourselves forever. It will not be accomplished unless there are constitutional talks - which come with risks of a national unity crisis and Quebec separatism catching fire once more. A terrible fear for certain, but there is a hell of a blaze currently burning out of control in Alberta, so we are in one right now.
Doing nothing to repair Ottawa's relationship with Alberta and the west is the only way forward and, yup, it's going to tick off Quebec. Quebec gets riled up when Ottawa makes the smallest move that weakens their control over Ottawa.
Canada has two separatist movements, fueled by cultural differences, language, economic matters and so much more. Is Quebec a nation? Stephen Harper was the PM at the time, remember?
You know, because they truly believe they are and they have pretty much all the administrative and legislative tools to be one.
Is Alberta a nation?
Again, federalists are going to have to address past wrongs. Like the National Energy Program. That terrible policy is the firmament upon which today's separatism movement has grown over the past four decades. It is living memory I suspect for most Albertans and Albertans in other provinces. It will be living memory for many more years to come.
If this can't be done, then confederation will fail. Not today, maybe not tomorrow. But it will fail. Canada needs to change or Canada will be changed.
Both sides need to be asked, I think, what would have to exist for Alberta to remain in Canada?
Complaining about the NEP at this point makes no sense. The man who put it in has been dead for a quarter century. Given all the new people who have come into AB since the early 1980s I doubt most still remember it. Anyone born the year it happened is well into middle age now and would have no direct memory of it. Much less anyone born after it.
You're saying Albertans should just forget the NEP...because it is the past - and the past sins of the Liberals don't matter, because "that was then, this is now"...
....should Quebec forget all about the Plains of Abraham? Oops, their provincial motto is literally "we remember".
...should our First Nations forget all about the residential school tragedies? The people involved are long dead... just as you said.
THIS is the double standard Albertans are complaining about, writ large.
And imagine if, instead of decades of apologies, favours, and payoffs, those groups were sneered at and ridiculed.
You doubt most still remember it? Okay then.
1981 to Current (Ages 0 to ~45): This group comprises roughly 60% to 62% of the population. It encompasses Generation Z, Millennials, Generation Alpha, and younger Gen Xers.
1980 and Prior (Ages 46 and Older): This group comprises roughly 38% to 40% of the population. It includes older Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation.
I imagine that with40% of the population composed of people born prior to 1980, they might possibly remember the NEP quite well, don't you think?
We need to fix this by ROC asking itself: 'what would have to exist to keep Alberta in confederation?'
The NEP is far more recent than the War of 1812, the Amaeican Revolution or the Plains of Abraham, yet those events still shape Laurentian politics.
They also shape national politics, I think.
Unfortunately, the rest of Canada, or at least its leadership, thinks the answer is "a solid voting bloc of recent immigrants". Every incentive for Eastern Canada is to simply stall and dilute. Look at the leadership of Alberta federalists - mostly people from Ontario.
For a country's population to stay stable without immigration, the average woman needs to have about 2.1 children according to the google machine.
Statistics Canada data shows that Canada's fertility rate dropped to a historic low of 1.25 children per woman. This puts Canada in the same category as countries like Japan and Italy, which are facing severe aging-population crises.
Being replaced by strangers (or even, perhaps, cousins from Ontario) is a much more severe population crisis, and at the heart of the secession question. If Albertans aren't a "we", why bother to secede?
Voting has consequences, fellow Eastern Canadians. Trump played you all like morons.
Carney did too
Well that much is obvious. I think the realization that they played into the hands of their most hated villain would be the harder hitting one for these voters, if they ever arrive there.
Beat me to it! 👏👏👏
Even without Trump I'd never vote for a party headed by Poilievre. I did vote for them when O Toole was leading.
What Poilievre-specific policies are you afraid of? Or is it more of a tone thing?
Tone and character. I didn't like him when Harper was in. I don't like him now. That matters. I also just flat out don't think any of his housing ideas will work. It's more playing at the margins when we need the whole thing shaken up.
Nobody can fix housing by getting government involved in supply, which is the Liberal plan. It's not going well. The CPC plan is to remove regulations, which will help a bit, but the bigger issues are ending mass immigration and stopping foreign money from being parked in Canada. Conservatives are stronger on both.
Much of Poilievres "tone" issues are due to hostile media presenting him in a negative light. But he could grow tentacles and start speaking exclusively in the Language of Mordor and I would still only care about policy.
Why won't Canada address our grievances gregory?
They won't even drop the absurd gun buy-back, which would be easy and cheap. Nothing else is getting fixed.
Or better yet even acknowledge them.
There is some irony that the thing that supposedly 10% of Albertan strongly want would be then subject to US government control. It wasn’t a specific state that stopped keystone XL, it was Biden.
I think many of the keratosis are ill informed or just uneducated on what life in the US is actually like. They ought to go spend a month living in an area that they could afford if their Canadian dollars were converted to USD.
The whole grass is greener argument is easy to apply when you haven’t spent time down there. But the US has elections too. Democrats win there too. And I can just imagine the bellyaching involved with Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom is the next US president
I feel like the separatists can’t see the first for the trees and make impulsive decisions because of that.
Keystone failed earlier than that due to mass protests under the Obama administration., Trump tried to bring it back repeatedly during his first term, but TC Energy didn't see a business case and didn't see a path to resolve the regulatory and environmental concerns. A lot of pipelines get built in the US in places like Texas, but then a lot of pipelines get built in Canada in the province of Alberta. The US has got its own problems with suffocating regulatory approval processes that a lot of people are wringing their hands over.
The vast majority of strong & soft support for the referendum folks want NO PART of becoming a US state.
Carney is trying to compare Albertan seperatism with "Brexit", which he describes as a dangerous bluff. As with most things, he is completely wrong. The UK was part of a large common market (the EU) but chose to leave and "go it alone", because it hated the Brussels bureaucracy so much. Alberta, on the other hand, is only part of a disfunctional confederation (Provincial trade barriers anyone?) and will not have to go it alone if it leaves. As this article describes, from the viewpoint that it is bad for the ROC, across Alberta's southern border is the largest common market in the world and the US would welcome Alberta with open arms - either as a new State or as a special free trade partner. What maybe bad for the ROC is a huge opportunity for Alberta. While the UK may have screwed up the perceived economic benefits of Brexit, Albertans will be hard pressed not to score big once they escape from Ottawa and the Liberal's death grip and are free to negotiate their future directly with the US.
Why would any sane person trust this US administration on anything? Hate Ottawa all you want, there is still no comparison. The grass definitely isn't greener......it's spray-painted.
Your assumption is that the separation vote is strictly about becoming the 51st state.
It is whether you want it to be or not. The US will rape and pillage you in a way that will make the NEP look deamy.
There can be comparison: SNC, WE, STDC and $80B in housing programs that don't seem to have built any houses.
And yet, he won after SNC. He won after WE. It's not his fault he won. It's the CPC's for not presenting an alternative. Don't bother with the "Liberal friendly" media excuse. Scheer was an idiot. The CPC turned on O'Toole. Pierre is still an idiot. And the CPC kept him. It's almost like the CPC doesn't actually want to form government.
The media is Liberal friendly. Poilievre is more compassionate than, and had a far more extensive platform than either Trudeau or Carney, but all we heard was "Poilievre is mean and has no policy."
I would imagine that all most people know about his March 31, 2025 speech is that he used the term "biological clock," which got the CBC's knickers in a tight twist despite them having used it repeatedly themselves.
Here's some of the speech:
Some people have said that I should stop talking about the doubling housing costs that have denied an entire generation the chance to own a home after the lost Liberal decade.
They say that we shouldn't be debating why single moms are lined up at food banks in record numbers after the lost Liberal decade.
They suggest that we shouldn't debate why 50,000 of our citizens have lost their lives to drug overdoses under the radical liberal drug policies.
That we should just forget that after the lost Liberal decade of rising costs and crime and falling economy under America's thumb that we should just ignore all of those things.
I disagree.
My purpose in politics is to restore Canada's promise so that anyone from anywhere can achieve anything; that hard work gets you a great life and a beautiful affordable home on a safe street protected by brave troops under a proud flag.
All the things that we need to do to respond to the economic aggression of the Americans are things I've been talking about for 10 years.
I was standing up for pipelines 10 years ago when Mark Carney was opposing them.
I've been saying that we need to approve resource projects quickly for the last 10 years while Mark carney was supporting C-69 and the energy cap and other policies.
I stood up for tax cuts that will unleash growth in our economy over the last years, in fact over my entire career.
The threats, the unjustified threats by President Trump further strengthen the argument in favour of the Canada first agenda that I've been fighting for my whole life.
And while we propose those solutions, we will not forget the single mom who can't afford food.
We will not forget the seniors choosing between eating and heating.
We will not forget that young 36 year old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home and have kids.
We will not forget the families terrorized by crime and drugs.
And so we will continue, despite uh calls to the contrary, to talk about those things even if I am the only leader in the country that offers any change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRhV50MMwog&t=2556s
"Mean" is an understatement. He's an ignorant ass with judgment as poor as Trudeau's. And he still says Canada should have a tariff-free relationship with the US. That's as absurd, with this administration, as his support of the Convoy was. The notion that he can just cut taxes and everything will be fine....without saying what will no longer be funded is disingenuous....and why he isn't trustworthy. The PM doesn't get to wave a magic wand and fix everything. Conservatives have complained nonstop that Carney has implemented some CPC ideas. Carney is wrong on guns. He should walk away from the entire buyback nonsense. He is significantly wrong on the environment. No one pleases everyone.
It's quite clear we aren't going to agree on Pierre. I will not vote for him, for the same reasons I didn't vote for Trudeau after 2015. Perhaps the CPC will come to understand when they lose again in 2029. My opinions on Pierre come from his interviews and his behaviour in the House. I read the full CPC platform......that he couldn't get out before the advanced polls closed. I don't regret my vote for Carney, frustrating as the pace is. Again, to be clear, Trudeau should not have won after 2015. It's not his fault he did.
Have a nice night.
I am guessing you didn’t read the speech. It is far more compassionate than anything by Trudeau or Carney, with their smarmy, hypocritical “thanks for your donation” and “I can outlast her” comments to protesters from Grassy Narrows.
Can you come up with an example of Poilievre being mean?
And the PM can wave a wand and make things better. It is called legislation. It could be funded by not wasting money. Did we need STDC? Did we need to spend $80B to not build houses? Did we need to give 10 of billions to selected companies to enhance productivity without enhancing productivity? Now we’ve committed another $110B to the same sinkhole. Did we have give $22B to selected companies to improve productivity without improving productivity?
Central planning has never worked.
The CPC has obviously been co-opted by people who can't see that. The reasons for their blindness is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Holds a knife to Canada's throat" with the threat of separation is an attempt to simplify a complex issue. Quebec was granted political and economic favours as an incentive to enter the Canadian confederation and Quebec has a guaranteed proportion of votes that forces all political parties to pander to Quebec if they seek power in Ottawa. The reality is that Quebec will continue to be the tail that wags the dog in Canadian politics. Alberta will never enjoy Quebec's advantages in Canada's confederation but a modicum of respect for its economic contributions to Canada would be welcome.
I thought the favors Quebec got were to induce it to stay in Confederation not enter it. Quebec’s place in confederation was the result of an 1867 shotgun marriage arranged by the Brits in the hopes that the pesky French would be assimilated by the Anglos. But as soon as Canada got a French PM after Quebec took away the power of the Catholic priests it promptly brought in multiculturalism and eliminated the need for immigrants to join the Anglo culture. This dilution of Anglo political power was sealed by the massive immigration floodgate opening. under Trudeau Junior.
I find it so strange that some of the biggest boosters for the total annihilation of traditional Anglo Canadian culture are white haired rich WASPs whose ancestors were all here pre-confederation. You'd think they would be the most rock ribbed conservative faction but they are all froth at the mouth Liberals.
The white hair gives it away - boomers with an après moi le déluge attitude. It's about their self-image and their cruises, not their nation or their descendants.
Well we can't have them all setting up their kids for multi generational wealth in a society where they can succeed, that would compete with existing elite interests.
You're talking just like somebody from Quebec constantly clutching their pearls about the decline of Quebecois culture. I'm not worried about Canadian culture because it's resilient and adaptable. That's been the real strength of Canada's British heritage: it assimilates what it sees as useful and good and changes rather than trying to be an unchanging but brittle monolith.
The same trends aren't working out so well in the UK and Australia either. It's almost like wealthy and well connected people who benefit from mass immigration, and who are so mobile as to have no permanent ties to the countries in question, are spinning a line to justify ramming that policy down our throats.
That’s the way it should be and indeed that’s the path that the Anglo culture in the US has followed. The patriots who won the war of independence were desirous of change and embrace it. But the Anglo culture in Canada was that of the Loyalists who did not want change and have resisted it ever since.
By default any cultural change adopted by the Canadian Anglos has either originated in the US (By penis envy in some cases) or Quebec ( particularly since the government was de facto taken over by Quebec carpetbaggers following Trudeau Senior whose Official Languages Act guaranteed that virtually all Civil service management positions would go to French speakers). Quebec innovations in my lifetime have been:
the morphing of an Montreal attack by an Islamic Jihadist into soon to be total disarmament of the Canadian population;
The killing of unborn babies on demand-with proposals to extend the practice to babies after birth being considered;
The killing of the sick elderly (MAID) and veterans with PTSD with an extension of the practice to the mentally ill to start next year (2027)
Some may consider this to be progress. Adolf might. I certainly don’t. I don’t believe most Canadian Anglos would.
How come this is never an issue when Quebec threatens to separate?
Not anything like the panicked scare tactics and verbiage now being unleashed. Could it have anything to do with the tax dollars generated by Alberta to the federal government being the real reason behind the noise. We’ve yet to see a truly cogent expression of positive reasons why Alberta should continue as a part of Canada. If Alberta should leave, which is debatable, how long before other parts of Western Canada would consider bailing?
This is the latest talking point among separatists. It'd be an interesting discussion, but I don't think they're actually open to persuasion.
I’m not sure that export taxes or even export caps were ever really on the table for oil from Alberta to the United States. A lot of that oil gets refined in the United States and then exported again to Laurentian Canada.
If there's anything that could provoke aggressive US action, it's threats of sudden shut-offs in energy supply. Alberta's bolshiness may just be protecting us from our own hubris.
Well thank you Mr. Jack for penning one of the scariest articles on the upcoming negotiations and referendum. It's scary because its backed by facts and knowledge, sometimes difficult elements to find in such an emotionally hot topic.
Thank you Michelle. Far better to deal with scary truth than emotional lies.
There is one entity and only one responsible for the decay, diminishment, and destruction of Canada’s sovereignty, and that is the Liberal Party of Canada.
Is Danielle Smith responsible for foreign interference, for destroying our immigration system, the rot and impairment of the RCMP and the Canadian Armed Forces, our values and traditions and national ethos?
This is kind of like arguing that Ford's ad featuring Ronald Reagan blew up the trade talks. Maybe it DID act as the proximate cause, but the real story was the Trump administration looking for an excuse to break things off.
And likewise in this case, if the Trump administration wants an excuse to scuttle the negotiations, they will find one.
Separatism is a bad idea for all kinds of reasons, but “it gives ammunition to bad faith actors” is a weak argument when those actors can, and will, turn literally anything into ammunition.
Trump is negotiating with Mexico, just not with us. Maybe we are hoping for a repeat of last time, where the US and Mexico made the deal and gracefully allowed us to join.
Or maybe not. It seems a huge gamble.