Filmmaker Aaron Gunn’s Fractured Nation exposes Western Canada’s systemic exploitation, from Pierre Trudeau’s 1980 National Energy Program—crushing Alberta’s economy with unemployment soaring to 12.4% and bankruptcies up 150%—to Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax mandates and Bill C-11, seen as federal attacks on free speech. Premier Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act and Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan legislation mark a shift from Quebec’s defensive constitutionalism to Western provinces wielding legal tools against Ottawa’s centralization. Gunn critiques Harper’s missed chance to curb federal overreach via Supreme Court appointments and warns of rulings expanding federal power, linking his film to The End of Free Speech in Canada. Levant applauds Gunn’s rare pro-West stance in media, contrasting it with a field often hostile to the region’s interests. [Automatically generated summary]
Great show today with Aaron Gunn, the documentary filmmaker.
It's shows like this that make me want to make sure that you've got access to the video version of the podcast because it's a movie we're talking about.
We're going to have four or five clips we want to show you.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, filmmaker Aaron Gunn has a new movie out.
We'll have five clips to go through with you.
You don't want to miss this.
It's July 17th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
shame on you you censorious bug who is your favorite canadian filmmaker who's still in canada There's a lot of amazing Canadian artists, especially in comedy and drama and Hollywood, but they don't stick around in Canada.
There's reasons for that.
I think that the Canadian cultural industries suffocate more than they breathe life into.
I think if you want evidence of that, look no further than Pablo Rodriguez and his ham-fisted attempt to help, I put in quotes, the news industry.
In fact, he's desperately hurt them with his Bill C-18 and the reaction from Google and Facebook.
But put that aside, what I'm really interested in is who is telling the stories, the current political stories of our country.
And if you're having trouble coming up with a name, it's because so many of our best storytellers have left, and I wish they would stay and fight.
And today's special guest could make it in the big time if he went to Hollywood.
If he went to New York or LA or London, our next guest would be a huge success.
But like you and me, he feels a deep commitment to Canada and he wants to stay and fight.
At least that's my assessment of him.
You know who I'm talking about.
When I say documentary filmmaker, I'm talking about our friend Aaron Gunn, and he's got a doozy out.
Please welcome Aaron Gunn, the documentary filmmaker behind Fractured Nation, the pillaging of Western Canada.
Aaron, great to see you again.
Thank you so much for having me, Ezra.
It's always a pleasure to come on to chat with you.
Well, your documentary films have been beautifully presented, and you tackle difficult issues that I don't think the regime media likes to talk about.
I mean, you did Vancouver, you have a great feature on Vancouver, which really, I mean, that went super viral, showing the state of that city.
You did a national version.
Pushing Back Against Centralization00:16:21
Facebook limited you.
And YouTube, too.
Your story is so powerful that you know when the corporate censors get involved that you hit a nerve.
Tell us about your new documentary, Fractured Nation.
Why don't we start off by playing the cold open to it?
Let's play a clip just to give people a taste of it.
And then I'd love you to talk a bit more about it.
Here, let's take a look.
The other Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau, he just wanted to steal our wealth.
He didn't want to extinguish it.
Away from the entrance into Canada, there was this dynamic of Ottawa versus the West.
From the West, it looks like they're stealing our oil again.
But from the East, it looks like the wise, civilized people are keeping the barbarians under control.
The logic of it is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
But that's done on purpose.
Welcome to Alberta, the epicenter of the growing political and economic influence of Western Canada, and also increasingly much frustration, angst, and Western alienation.
From the imposition of carbon taxes to the tens of billions of dollars plundered through equalization, this is a province and region fed up with a federal government and prime minister that they view as antagonistic, exploitive, and directly undermining their legitimate aspirations.
So what does this mean for Canada and its future?
Do more powers need to be devolved to the provincial level?
Do the West's contributions need to be better recognized by the country as a whole?
Or is the dream that was Confederation already so far gone that it's best if we all just go our separate ways?
The problem you have in Canada, I think, is a structural one.
Most provinces pay, and Quebec, as one entity, receives.
There's just nothing equitable about that.
It's kind of a welfare of the Confederation.
That's how I see it.
I don't see anything being proud of that.
My name is Aaron Gunn, and this is Politics Explained.
Wow.
You talked to some very important thought leaders, not just Premier Danielle Smith, but I saw John Robson, great historian and scholar, Barry Cooper, longtime professor in Calgary, Brett Wilson, Dragon's Den entrepreneur, Alberta booster.
Eric Duem, the leader of the new Conservative Party of Quebec, did a great job.
You really talked to a wide spot of people.
I mean, you're based in the West yourself.
This looks like it's got a bit of an Alberta vibe to it.
What made you make this movie?
What was your goal?
I think my goal was, as it is with all my documentaries, to tell stories and reveal truths that Canadians aren't hearing from anywhere else or from very few places.
And with me, as someone who's grown up in BC, I've noticed there's a disconnect in Western Canada.
You see that in everything from kind of the way the country is structurally set up in our Constitution to the corporate welfare you always see going out east.
And then most prominently, when I really dug into it, the billions of dollars plundered through equalization that go from Western provinces that actually develop their resources to Eastern provinces that either don't develop their resources or in some cases actually block attempts at the West to get our most precious commodities to oversee markets.
So I thought it was an important story, but it also stems, as you alluded to kind of in the intro, Ezra, with a really deep passion that I actually have for Canada.
We chat with people who think it's over, who think it's Alberta would be better off, or Alberta and Saskatchewan and BC would be better off separating.
I believe that this confederation is in crisis, but I believe that with documentaries like this and with coming together, we can still kind of turn this country around.
So that's really the thesis behind the documentary.
And the other individual that we interviewed that wasn't featured in the cold open there was the premier of New Brunswick, who's obviously been in the news a lot lately and who I think had a lot of powerful things to say on this topic.
Wow.
Well, you certainly had access to a lot of leading thinkers.
And let me ask you a question.
I'm an Alberta boy, born and raised.
I moved out to Ontario when the Sun News Network started over 10 years ago, and I've stayed.
So I can't really call myself an Albertan anymore.
I mean, I've been out here for too long, although I think I'm a Westerner at heart.
How do you talk about legitimate Western grievances, feeling left out, feeling marginalized, feeling like power is not properly shared?
How do you talk about that when in some ways power is a zero-sum game?
If you have more power for Alberta within Confederation, that pretty much certainly means less power for Ontario and Quebec.
And if you have grievances against Central Canada, how are Ontarians and Quebecers responding?
And I say this as someone whose heart is in the West, but I'm here in Ontario.
And frankly, I think a lot of Ontarians and even more Quebecers, they don't even think about the West.
And if they do, you know, maybe there's a condescension and maybe there's a look down your nosishness.
But how do you get Ontario and Quebec to help rather than push them away?
Big thing for me is I think the uniting factor has to be provinces coming together and people in those provinces coming together to push back against the federal government's creeping desire to centralize power.
With Quebec, who you just mentioned, I think that's where the greatest opportunity lies.
It goes back to 1982 in the Constitution negotiations.
I'm not a constitutional expert, but Rennie Levesque coming together with the Premier of Alberta at the time to demand Section 92A in the Constitution to stand up for provincial rights and provincial autonomy.
We're going to talk, I'm sure, later about what Danielle Smith's doing in Alberta with the Sovereignty Act, but in a lot of cases, these are things that Quebec has already done for years.
So I think there's actually a precedent set for different provinces coming together to stand up for provincial autonomy and a common framework that we can all work within within Canada.
But importantly, and this is something I keep coming back to, in my opinion, for this country to work in the long term, we all need to play by the same rules.
And right now, I think in some cases, with Quebec specifically, we're not all playing by the same rules, and that creates issues.
Yeah.
You know, 25 years ago, I worked for Preston Manning, and one of the phrases he used, he said, our problem isn't with Ontario, it's with Ottawa.
And I thought, you know what, that's actually right.
And by the way, not all Ontario is Toronto, and not all Toronto is downtown CBC Toronto in the annex, by the way.
I mean, there are a lot of sensible people everywhere, even in Quebec.
You know, Montreal and the liberal heartland is very much different from Quebec City or the rural parts.
And that's part of the lifelong adventure of discovering your own country, especially if it's a place as big as this.
But there is one thing that you take on head on.
And that is, and it varies by different poll and what's going on, but, you know, a third of Albertans, and sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, seriously want to separate.
Now, if that was the number in Quebec, I think that's higher than it is in Quebec.
I mean, Quebec got the entire country's attention and care for a generation.
They never voted to separate.
Twice they failed.
But they had the entire country and all of Ottawa catering to them for years.
The reaction wasn't go to hell.
It was please stay.
What can we do?
Here, let me play the clip from your film, Fractured Nation, about separatism.
And I'd love your thoughts on it and how Western separatism is mocked or ignored, but Quebec separatism was used as the reason for shoveling wealth, power, and privilege to that province.
Here, let's take a look.
But a series of decisions by Ottawa, specifically targeting resource industries, has angered Western provinces and increasingly the people who live there.
Projects shut down, taxes imposed, job killing made in Ottawa regulations that have reduced investment, collapsed production, and put the very existence of Western Canada's most important industries into doubt.
These perceived attacks have led an increasing number of Western Canadians to question whether being a part of Canada is worth it at all.
According to a poll conducted in 2022 by Research Co., a third of Albertans now say that Alberta would be better off as a separate country, a higher percentage than even Quebec.
So what exactly is causing this?
And how long has the problem been going on?
To find out, I flew to our nation's capital to meet John Robson, a journalist and historian well-versed in the origins of Western alienation.
What do you think are kind of the origin story of Western alienation in Canada?
I think there's always been some element of feeling looked down on by the East.
But, you know, in the days of Sir John and MacDonald or even into the 20th century, the West kind of was the poor cousin.
I think the core of the problem is that when the West grew up, it wasn't treated as an adult or a partner by Eastern Canada.
They continued to be exploited in terms of resources.
And I think that their viewpoints tended to be regarded not just that, didn't just disagree with Western views, it regarded them with contempt.
The line actually is, and it's an old one, is that it's 3,000 miles from Vancouver to Ottawa, but 30,000 miles from Ottawa to Vancouver.
And I think the National Energy Program was an enormous example of how the East would treat the West not merely as something to be ripped off, but also something to be despised.
The National Energy Program was a policy brought in by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1980, following an election where the Liberals didn't win a single seat in BC, Alberta, or Saskatchewan.
The purpose of the NEP was to give Ottawa control over Western Canada's energy industry and to force the West to sell its resources to the East at below market rates.
Due to the NEP, unemployment in Alberta increased from 3.7 to 12.4%.
The bankruptcy rate increased by 150%, and numerous families were left destitute and facing financial ruin.
Well, it's an incredible excerpt.
We're watching excerpts from the film Fractured Nation, a new documentary by Aaron Gunn.
There's a lot in there, and I'd love you to expand on it a bit.
But one thing that I just want to say, and I think of this every time I'm reminded of Trudeau's national energy program, which was an absolute disaster, outright theft.
But Trudeau didn't want to shut down the oil industry.
In fact, he invested, so to speak, in it.
He nationalized Petro-Canada.
He just wanted the industry to funnel the money to Quebec and the federal government.
The difference between Pierre Trudeau and Justin Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau wanted to steal the money.
Justin Trudeau wanted to turn it off.
Pierre Trudeau wanted the workers to own it, the country to own it, but he wanted it working.
Justin Trudeau literally wants to shut down the oil patch.
Pierre Trudeau was a crook, but at least he was smart.
Justin Trudeau, I don't even know what to make of it.
Give me your thoughts on that and the other things we just saw there.
Yeah, well, I think the common denominator, though, when it comes to Justin and his father was that they don't care about the interests of Western Canada.
They know there's no votes here for them.
As you can saw in 1980, before Pierre Trudeau brought in the national energy program, they didn't win a single seat in all of BC, Alberta, or Saskatchewan, and the fortunes haven't improved that much since then.
And yet they bring in the national energy program that cripples Alberta's economy.
That is a, you know, completely put the interests of Alberta basically at the back of the bus, as you pointed out, to feed the special interests of central Canada and the East.
And I think that started the resentment.
It grew before then.
You know, you can go back.
We didn't go back in the documentary, but you can, there's the whole manufacturers all being based in central Canada and the free trade debates and agriculture, if you go back, the rise of the Progressive Party, all this kind of stuff.
But I think the national energy program in recent history was the big event.
And then there was the F-18 contract.
And one thing that I'm interested in, if I'm allowed to throw a question back at you, Ezra, is, I mean, you lived through a lot of this.
You mentioned that you were in the Reform Party with Preston Manning.
Was there a moment for you?
Was that just your first political party?
Or was there something that happened that galvanized you to move from the progressive conservatives to the reform party?
I heard the F-18 contract did that for a lot of people.
Well, I was pretty young at the time.
I mean, I was a teenager, so I wasn't even old enough to join parties.
And I just sort of saw that the local MPs, I grew up in Calgary, the local MPs talked a good line, but they were not the ones making the decisions.
Brian Mulroney was voted in enormously in the West as an antidote to Pierre Trudeau.
And he did relieve the West of most of the national energy program.
He didn't shut down all of it, by the way.
But, you know, there were so many things that reminded us that in an analogy of what you said about Vancouver being 3,000 miles away from Ottawa, but Ottawa 30,000, that was a great line.
Preston Manning, who I worked for for a couple of years, talked about MPs representing Ottawa to the riding rather than representing the riding to Ottawa.
And I could see with my eyes that longtime conservative MPs who had in their day been great were reduced to just being messengers for Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.
And then along came Preston Manning, who felt like he was clean and unsullied and had Alberta roots and spoke philosophically and didn't seem motivated by money or power.
And it just felt like the right antidote.
And his motto, remember his motto, the West Wants In?
It was an answer to separatism because, you know, and we don't have time to show all of your film.
Obviously, we wouldn't do that.
We want people to watch it online.
You can see it on Facebook.
You can see it on YouTube.
It's called Fractured Nation.
But there was a sense of frustration.
Liberal Tory, same old story was something we heard in West.
And so separatists started getting elected.
There was a by-election in Alberta.
A full-blown separatist was elected.
And there was a feeling that, well, we tried the Liberals, they hate us.
We tried the Tories, they hate us.
Let's go.
And Preston Manning, in a way, saved the country because he took all that energy and he said, no, no, no, please, trust me, we can reform the system.
We can fix it.
Please don't leave.
So he did an enormous favor to Ontario and Quebec, even though they'll never know it and they'll never say so.
He stopped the West from separating.
By his own terms, Preston Manning was a failure.
He never formed government.
In fact, he gave Jean-Kui-Chen three back-to-back majorities.
But the favors for which he'll never be thanked is he stopped the West from separating.
And frankly, some Westerners probably regret that now.
Anyhow, thank you for letting me rant a little bit and answer your question.
Preston Manning's Legacy00:10:57
Hey, can we play another clip?
I want to play your clip about the Reform Party.
And I want to take a look at it because I sort of lived it.
I'm a lot older than you.
I got a lot more gray hair than you.
But it was a thrilling time.
I was 18.
I was 17 when the Reform Party, I started university.
I was 17.
I wasn't old enough to buy a membership yet.
When I turned 18, I bought a membership.
I was a young guy doing politics.
The party was new.
It was just a very exciting time.
Here, let's watch your treatment of the old Reform Party.
In 1987, the Reform Party of Canada started out as a Western protest movement, but quickly involved into the largest federal Conservative Party in the country.
This new party, born out of Western frustration, included a young MP named Stephen Harper, who would go on to co-author the infamous firewall letter to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein that detailed how he believed the province could operate more autonomously within Confederation.
Among the letters, five other signatories was Andy Crooks.
We didn't call it the firewall letter.
The media called it the firewall.
We don't want to create a barrier to the rest of Canada.
That's not the point.
It's as if you have a computer and you have a firewall to keep out the bad stuff.
They were looking for a conservative response to the perceived leaning against and oppression of the West.
Five years after penning the firewall letter, Stephen Harper would lead a reunited Conservative Party to their first electoral victory in 18 years.
Let me just say one thing and let me be clear: the West is wanted in.
The West is in now.
Canada will work for us.
But in 2015, Harper was defeated.
And a new prime minister with an all-too-familiar last name has seen the familiar themes of Western alienation and economic grievance resurrected all over again.
Yeah.
You know, Stephen Harper did reunite the parties, and that was enough to re-enter power.
I think he governed very cautiously, very incrementally.
When he said the West is in, he was right.
But he didn't make systemic changes to make permanent the improvements.
I think of the Senate.
He simply didn't appoint anyone.
He appointed the few Albertans who were elected.
Otherwise, he left the place open.
He didn't put patronage appointments.
So when Justin Trudeau took over in 2015, he appointed dozens of liberal senators that I suppose ought to have been appointed by Harper.
He didn't privatize the CBC.
He didn't remove official bilingualism that has been a pain in the neck to anyone west of Quebec.
He didn't deal with many of the systemic problems that Preston Manning said he wanted to deal with in the Reform Party.
Stephen Harper ran a good government.
In some ways, it was even a great government.
But my main criticism, both as a conservative and as a Westerner at heart, is he didn't make any permanent changes that couldn't be undone by Justin Trudeau in a matter of years.
What do you think of that?
Yeah, unfortunately, I think that's a pretty accurate assessment, as right.
I think he got stuck in the trap of always governing to win the next election, as opposed to governing like you've got four years to make the changes that you want to make to the country and that you think are needed.
I'll also point out, I'm not sure if I'm getting ahead of you here, but the biggest mistake, and I think talking to some of Harper's people, they would probably agree with this, is another thing where he didn't make big moves, and that's Supreme Court appointments.
Oh, that was his worst legacy.
Trump's best legacy, Harper's worst legacy.
Yeah, and I think we're seeing that.
And the one thing, I know you do, I'm sure, a great job of it on Rebel, but a lot of Canadians don't understand the importance of the Supreme Court here.
And I know people attack the U.S. court for being more politicized, but in a way, that's a good thing because at least people are awake to the fact of how important the Supreme Court is and how it can impact their lives.
Where in Canada, we seem ignorant to that fact.
And so part of this documentary also lays that out.
And unfortunately, a lot of Harper's Supreme Court picks are not a lot better, if any better, than Justin Trudeau's.
And that's something that we saw in the carbon tax decision.
Hopefully, that's not something we see in the Bill C-69 decision, which is still yet to come.
And of course, a subpart of that is also how Quebec is constitutionally guaranteed a third of the Supreme Court seats, having just over 8 million people.
And then the West, with about 13 million people, only has two currently.
So I think that's another big issue.
And it points to one of the structural imbalances in our Confederation.
Yeah.
There's a new premier in Alberta.
I guess she's been premier for she was chosen by the party and that was validated by the voters just a month ago.
I'm talking about Danielle Smith.
I had a sit-down with her about a week or two ago and I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful.
She has an unusual blend of libertarian ideas and conservative ideas and Western ideas.
And I think she brainstorms sort of out loud and that has gotten her in some trouble before, but no trouble that the voters didn't forgive.
One of her ways she secured the leadership was through her innovation of the Sovereignty Act, which is like Harper's firewall.
Quebec really talked about the sovereignty.
It talks about the Sovereignty Act in their own way all the time.
You treat that in the documentary as well.
Let's play one last clip from your film, Fractured Nation.
This is how you address Danielle Smith's Sovereignty Act.
Let's take a look.
Now, we have been made aware that in the coming weeks, Justin Trudeau is planning on bringing forward new restrictions on electricity generation from natural gas that will not only massively increase your power bills, but will also endanger the integrity and reliability of our entire power grid.
And as Premier, I cannot, under any circumstances, allow these contemplated federal policies to be inflicted upon Albertans.
I simply can't and I won't.
This is not a road we can afford to go down.
If he persists, he will be hurting Canadians from coast to coast and he will strain the patience and goodwill of Albertans in an unprecedented fashion.
Newly elected Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, has introduced legislation in the spirit of Stephen Harper's original firewall letter.
Smith's law will put in place protections to shield Alberta from federal policies that violate provincial jurisdiction and infringe on Alberta's constitutional rights while looking to expand Alberta's power and autonomy by potentially taking actions in the footsteps of those already taken by the province of Quebec.
Something that Justin Trudeau isn't too happy about.
Obviously, we're going to look at this very, very closely and think about the implications.
But our focus remains on making sure the Albertans are part of a growing cleaner economy and protect our environment for years to come.
The Sovereignty Act was meant to send a message to Albertans that we're going to defend ourselves.
Danielle's legislation, the UCP legislation, is taking together all of the rights that Quebec already has.
And Quebec uses them as a shield.
And Danielle has tried to hammer those same materials into a sword.
Certainly, it was a signal to the rest of the country that Albertans are still not happy with the equalization program and things need to change.
Inspired by Alberta's Sovereignty Act, Saskatchewan has now passed sovereignty legislation of their own.
Something that could maybe be the start of a trend of provinces finally standing up to the federal government.
I see you made reference to the Saskatchewan First Act.
You know, Scott Moe, the Premier of Saskatchewan, is pretty solid on these issues, too.
He doesn't act as a lightning rod in the same way.
I think the media hate Danielle Smith, and they've sort of given up trying to dislodge Scott Moe.
I think the Sovereignty Act was attacked by all sorts of people who are completely fine with it from Quebec.
They just don't like to see Alberta getting uppity.
I mean, I think it's hard to argue against that point because Alberta, or sorry, Quebec has been using these different levers.
Basically, all the Sovereignty Act is Daniel Smith coming out and saying we're going to use every tool in our toolbox to oppose federal overreach and federal intervention in areas of provincial responsibility.
And I mean, that's something that Quebec has already been doing quite overtly for decades, quite frankly.
So I think that everything in the Sovereignty Act is not only above board, but is something that other provinces should take note of.
It's something that obviously Saskatchewan is now following suit with.
And because quite frankly, Justin Trudeau, I think, has two things that's going on with this government right now.
Number one, he has a proclivity to centralize power, to control power in Ottawa, whether that's by infringing on provincial jurisdiction with Bill C-69 or the carbon tax mandate, or whether that's Bill C-11 and trying to clamp down on free speech.
It's that proclivity to try to exercise control over the population.
And on top of that, the other thing is he clearly has an inherent dislike for the West and Alberta specifically that he inherited from his father.
And those two things combined have led to a series of policies that are impossible to interpret as anything other than anti-Western or anti-Albertan.
And the provincial government needs to use all of its power to stand up to that.
And I think good on Danielle for doing that.
I know there's some, you know, these attempts to regulate natural gas production or natural gas, electricity generation is the next thing in the pipeline.
And Danielle's been talking about that.
And hopefully she's able to stand up to that.
The only thing that concerns me is what we just chatted about, which is that Harper did not use his opportunity to appoint principled Supreme Court judges that would interpret the Constitution the way that it was written.
And that worries me.
It worries me in a whole series of judgments that have been made over the last half decade.
Congratulations on Fractured Nation00:01:36
And so we'll see where that goes.
Yeah.
And the one conservative judge he did appoint was just run out of the court.
Well, listen, Aaron, it's great to see you again.
Congratulations on your new film.
It's called Fractured Nation, The Pillaging of Western Canada.
Very bold, very interesting.
And you can find that on Facebook and YouTube.
Before we say goodbye, how can people learn more about what you're doing?
I know you've got other films in the past.
Vancouver's dying.
Canada's dying.
You've worked on free speech issues.
Is there like an Aaron Gunn central place where we can get all the good stuff?
Yeah, AaronGunn.ca has got all the information about me, but the best way to keep track of what I'm doing is to go on Twitter to follow me and go onto my YouTube and subscribe.
The next documentary I have coming out will actually be The End of Free Speech in Canada.
I expect that you will probably be making a cameo in that one.
Hopefully I won't be in jail.
Hopefully it won't be a jailhouse interview.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So we're always pumping out content.
And as always, really appreciate the opportunity to come in and chat with your viewers and listeners about it.
Well, as I said at the beginning, you are a rare person in the entertainment arts, news, documentary business.
That is a field that is dominated by people who either have no love for Western Canada or frankly downright despise it.
So we're so grateful for your work, Aaron Gunn.
Good luck, and we can hardly wait till your next film.