Ezra Levant critiques Donald Trump’s erratic tariffs on Canadian energy, including a 10% oil tax raising U.S. gasoline prices by 30 cents/gallon despite Keystone XL pipeline plans for 800,000 barrels daily. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s lobbying in D.C. secured partial relief, but Fildebrand warns Trump’s moves may stem from anti-Trudeau bias. If Justin Trudeau’s Liberals re-elect and impose an oil export tax, Alberta separatism could spike to majority support, with legal precedent allowing it—even speculating a U.S. merger if Carney leads. Meanwhile, Global Affairs Canada’s briefing notes on Ya'ara Sachs’ Hamas meeting omit terrorist labels for Hamas but call Jewish individuals terrorists, exposing radicalized staff while barring independent media like Western Standard and Rebel News. [Automatically generated summary]
And we have a great conversation with my friend Derek Fildebrand about would Alberta ever take Trump up on his invitation to join the U.S. as the 51st state?
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Tonight, I'm getting a bit of whiplash with these tariffs on and off and on and off, aren't you?
It's March 6th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, the tariffs were put on yesterday and taken off again today, at least for items covered by the USMCA trade deal.
In order to protect American car manufacturers and American farmers, we have two modifications to the IEPA tariffs that have already been announced against Canada and Mexico.
This first order relates to Canada.
Essentially, what it will allow for is the flow of parts and sub-assembly products into America to allow American car manufacturers to continue building cars.
It basically excludes U.S. MCA eligible goods from existing tariffs.
And also, in order to help our farmers at this crucial time of year, we're going to be reducing the tariff imposed on Canadian potash from 25% to 10%.
So this is a modification to our tariff regime to protect American car manufacturers and American farmers.
It basically makes it more fair for our car manufacturers during the short-term period before April 2nd.
April 2nd is a little bit different.
That will be much more significant.
But this during this interim period between now and April 2nd, this makes it much more favorable for our American car manufacturers.
Okay.
Can you see that, Peter?
Look.
It has to be tall, Peter, right?
I see right over here.
You can see it.
That's why he sent you a gentleman.
He doesn't have to rush.
Okay.
And this is the same just for Mexico, sir, the previous one.
Same thing for Mexico.
One for Canada, one for Mexico.
Yes, sir.
They've been in the news lately, haven't they?
And I spoke to the president of Mexico, wonderful woman, today, and we helped them out with a problem they were having, having to do with the tariffs, short-term tariffs.
And we had a very good conversation.
Also, we discussed drugs, and they've been working much harder lately, do you notice that?
on people coming in and drugs.
And we've made tremendous progress on both.
Apparently, they're remaining on other products like steel and aluminum.
Just a reminder, a tariff is an import tax that a country puts on a good that arrives on its shores.
So when Trump briefly imposed, say, a 10% tariff on Canadian oil imports to the U.S., that would be paid on the U.S. side.
That's one of the things Trump has talked about.
He says he'd like to replace the IRS, the internal revenue service, with an external revenue service.
He has plans, he says, to shrink the IRS greatly.
He sometimes points out that back in the day, tariffs played a large role in U.S. tax collecting.
And remember, the U.S. didn't even have an income tax until the First World War.
So for most of its existence, there was no U.S. income tax.
Here's a clip of him saying that.
She said, no tax.
How about just no tax?
You can do that.
You know, if the tariffs work out like I think, a thing like that could happen if you want to know the truth.
You know, years ago, 1870 to 1913, we didn't have an income tax.
We had what we had is tariffs where foreign countries came in and they stole our jobs.
They stole our companies.
They stole our product.
They ripped us off.
And, you know, they used to do numbers.
And then we went to tariff, a tariff system.
And the tariff system made so much money.
It was when we were the richest from 1870 to 1913.
Then we came in with the, brilliantly came in with an income tax.
No, we don't want others to pay.
Let's have our people pay.
And then you had the depression in 1928, 1929.
I call it 1929.
That was a bad time.
But, you know, you didn't have tariffs and you had tariffs that ended in 1913.
But it was the richest our country ever was.
So I think Trump has ambitions of doing that.
And he always says it'll move factories and jobs to America.
He certainly has been announcing a lot of factories and jobs coming to America.
I mean, here's the latest just from today.
Mr. President, yes, indeed, we are CMACGM, one of the leaders in shipping and logistics around the world.
We are very enthusiastic about this big announcement of today.
We are investing $20 billion in shipping and logistics.
This means the creation of 10,000 new American jobs.
We're also looking at investing in shipbuilding of container vessels.
And we most probably will be making also announcement in the next coming weeks.
And we would like also, Mr. President, to go for more U.S. flag vessels.
And we will go from 10 that we operate today to 30 U.S. flag ships and hopefully doing more in the months to come.
What a difference between Canada and the U.S.
I can't think of any major global company that would invest $10 billion or $20 billion or $500 billion into the Canadian economy as has happened in the past month in the U.S. or even cut those numbers down by 90% for Canada's size.
No one's made those announcements.
And by the way, they could be $100 billion sized announcements if we were to open up our oil and gas sector.
Even Mark Carney agrees that America is a job-creating, wealth-creating magnet.
I mean, in his final weeks as chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, Carney voted along with the rest of the board to move their huge company from Toronto to New York to make money, of course.
He's not stupid.
Even as he suspended the tariffs, though, Donald Trump talked about how the U.S. did not need Canadian imports.
I'll tell you what's a high-tariff nation is Canada.
Canada charges us 250% for our milk product and other product and a tremendous tariff on lumber and things as such.
And yet we don't need their lumber.
We have more lumber than they do.
We don't need Canada's lumber.
So what I'm doing is I'll be signing an executive order freeing up our forests so that we're allowed to take down trees and make a lot of money and then re-harvest trees.
We don't need trees from Canada.
We don't need cars from Canada.
We don't need energy from Canada.
We don't need anything from Canada.
So when we can be self-sustaining, which is in most things, look, we have more oil and gas than anybody.
Our forests are massive, massive forests.
We're just not allowed to use them because of the environmental lunatics that stopped us.
So I'm going to be freeing that up very shortly so that we don't have to go to other countries to buy lumber.
You know, why should we be buying lumber from other countries, paying tariffs, paying big prices, extraordinary prices, and we have lumber.
We have the best lumber.
Now, as you know, the biggest source of Canadian imports to the U.S. by far is oil.
And the thing is the U.S. is a huge producer of oil, ahead even of Russia and the Saudis, but they don't have the same reserves Canada has.
Our oil sands, that's the key to U.S. long-term energy independence, they don't move.
You can't move them across the border like a factory.
I think maybe Trump already considers those American oil sands since they're covered in the U.S.-MCA trade agreement.
And oil is produced by many companies that are either American outright or Canadian companies with American investors.
So maybe Trump already thinks of them as American.
Because right now, despite all the American industrial might, they rely on us for millions of barrels a day without which they would have to buy from Russia or OPEC.
That's the whole thesis of my new book, that tariffs don't work on the oil sands.
And as the United States, you don't want them.
You don't want tariffs on your oil.
You want free trade with oil because it's going to your consumers.
If you're not buying it from Canada, you're buying it from Saudi Arabia.
But I think a lot of this has just broken down to personal squabbles between Trump and Trudeau.
I mean, look at some of this from Trudeau crying again to reports of swearing back and forth at each other on the phone.
Take a look at this.
On a personal level, I've made sure that every single day in this office, I put Canadians first, that I have people's backs.
And that's why I'm here to tell you all that we got you.
Even in the very last days of this government, we will not let Canadians down today and long into the future.
Because in the past few weeks, we've been working with our provincial and territorial partners to make sure that families can rely on this system, not just for years to come, but we'll allow this system to lock in, to become something that no government, a year from now, five years from now, 20 years from now, could ever go back on.
I just don't think Trump and Trudeau like each other.
Trump has more tweets tweaking Trudeau about when he's going to go.
And fair enough, who can Trump negotiate with right now?
I mean, he can't do a deal with Trudeau.
And do they even have the authority to make a deal?
I mean, they dissolve Parliament.
If Trudeau is gone in a few days and Parliament is not in session, what is the point for Trump to negotiate with Trudeau?
And what's he going to do?
Negotiate with Mark Carney, who does not have the democratic mandate for anything.
He's never won an election in Canadian history.
Trump needs a counterpart with a moral authority and the democratic legitimacy and a mandate of an election behind them.
Obviously, I want that to be Perry Polyov, but it has to be someone.
And right now, it is no one.
What's Trump's supposed to do?
Maybe that's why the new Mexican president, Claudia Scheinbaum, has managed to have a more respectful, productive relationship with Trump.
She actually won an election, and she doesn't seem as disposed to cheap shots at Trump.
Oh, yeah, speaking of which.
We're so much stronger together.
I've spoken to governors, senators, congressmen, and women from every region, both Democrats and Republicans.
They know, they tell me, these tariffs are a massive mistake.
We could have stayed focused.
We could have poured our effort into making Canada, the U.S., the two richest, most successful, safest, most secure two countries on the planet.
Unfortunately, one man, President Trump, has chosen chaos instead.
Now, we have no choice.
We have to respond.
Earlier this morning, Prime Minister Trudeau and his team announced retaliatory tariffs.
They have my full support for a strong and forceful response: tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar.
Oh, so Doug Ford is going to keep tariffs on U.S. goods entering into Ontario, even though U.S. tariffs are taken off.
So it really is just a tax crab, isn't it?
Like I said, the taxes are paid on the Ontario side.
Doug Ford just wants the money.
Today, I'm writing to every senator, every congressman and woman, and the governors from New York State, Michigan, and Minnesota, telling them that these tariffs persist.
If the Trump administration falls through on any more tariffs, we will immediately apply a 25% surcharge on the electricity we export.
We will not hesitate to shut off their power as well.
I'm encouraging my fellow premiers to follow suit.
You know, Trudeau is going to be gone soon, and with it, hopefully, some of the pettiness and vendettas.
I'm not sure why Doug Ford thinks that that empty role is for him to fill, the taunter of Americans.
I'm not sure if that's something that Trump and his team responds well to.
The fight won't be over for months.
No, will it?
stay with us for more.
Well, all sorts of news out of Alberta, a threatened tariff on Canadian products, including energy, has proceeded, as was foreshadowed some weeks ago.
Strategic Tariffs and Diplomatic Tensions00:15:20
It's 25% on many products, 10% on oil, which is chiefly from Alberta.
That's obviously lower than 25%, but it still will work out to about 30 cents a gallon for U.S. customers.
That's why I argue in my new book that it's not an America-first move to tax Canadian oil imports.
It doesn't really make sense.
Taxes on imported automotives could make economic sense if you got the factory to relocate to America.
I don't advocate that.
Obviously, I don't want Ontarians to lose their jobs, but you can't move the oil sands to America.
And given that the oil sands are really an American-destined product, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
And I think there's a better America-first way.
But what happens now?
I think that Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, has led the diplomatic charge while other premiers tried to out tough guy Donald Trump.
Danielle Smith was actually doing the hard work of diplomacy in Washington, D.C.
She refrained from insulting or raising the temperature of some insane threats like Doug Ford threatening to turn off electricity to U.S. states.
Just completely counterproductive.
And I don't think you're going to outbully Donald Trump.
That said, some of the tariffs were put on a kind of reset, that they will be suspended for a period of time.
I find it a little bit confusing, to be frank.
And I'm wondering what the reaction is in Alberta.
And who better to know than our next guest?
His name is Derek Fildebrand.
He's the publisher of the Western Standard, and he follows these events and others very closely.
Derek, great to see you again.
Thanks for taking the time.
I was happy to be on the program, Ezra.
Well, thank you for that.
I'd like to play a couple of clips from Danielle Smith's press conference yesterday.
And then I want to talk about the very grassroots movement by some folks who are saying, you know what?
Let's join the states.
Let's take Donald Trump at his word when he says he wants to annex us.
Let's go.
So I'll come back to that afterwards, but let's look at a couple of clips from Danielle Smith's press conference yesterday.
I'd like your thoughts on it.
Here's the first one where she refers to the fact that the oil sands were given a lower tariff than other sectors of the Canadian economy.
Let's take a quick look and I'd love your thoughts for this one.
No, I mean, it's been successful.
The fact that we saw a 10% tariff rate instead of 25% is a recognition, I think, that energy resources, whether it's oil and gas or critical minerals or electricity, are vital components of U.S. success.
That's what we were arguing is that if you want to be able to exert American influence internationally, geopolitically, through oil exports, you need Canadian oil to be able to backfill so that American consumers are protected.
We very successfully made the case that there were a multitude of refineries that would shut down potentially with 25% tariffs, and it would certainly cause an increase in the cost of fuel.
I just saw a story today that even 10% tariffs are going to increase the cost of gasoline by 30 cents a gallon in some jurisdictions.
I think that that message was heard loud and clear.
It could have potentially been almost three times higher than that.
So I would say that we've been able to be successful on making some of those arguments.
I think we can make them for food.
I think we can make them for intermediate products.
But it does take us working with our American counterparts in business as well as in various levels of elected office to press the point for us.
I have confidence that we can be successful on that.
Just look at what happened today with a reprieve on auto tariffs.
I think the more the stock market responds in a negative fashion, the more consumers demonstrate that they're going to be hurt, the more industry voices that speak up.
I think that that's going to get us to a place where we can get to where I think we really need to be, which is renegotiating the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and dealing with some of these irritants so that both countries can get onto other issues.
I think I'm a little bit confused there because just the other day, President Trump said he wants to revive the Keystone XL pipeline, which is dead and buried.
That grave is cold.
But I mean, Trump knows that's going to bring in 800,000 barrels a day.
That's a lot.
That's what, about $20 billion, just roughly off the top of my head.
That's so much dough.
So on the one hand, he's saying, I want more oil sands oil.
But on the other hand, he's saying he wants to put a 10% tariff on it.
I'm getting a little bit of whiplash.
And I'm a super fan of Trump, by the way.
I find it hard to understand.
I'm not sure there is understanding it.
I mean, there's mad dog theory of Trump, you know, that he's just throwing us off and softening us up.
But I'm not seeing any strategy in this.
I'd like to think he, you know, this is some art of the deal thing where he's trying to throw us through a loop and soft us and soften on and stuff.
But I'm not seeing how this works here.
And so it's not good for American consumers.
It's not good for American refineries.
It's not good for American energy independence, if you're defining that as North American energy independence, at least.
It doesn't square with Keystone XL.
I'm just not seeing any strategy here.
And, you know, I'm sympathetic to Trump on some issues.
But I'm having a hard time squaring it with those who just think this is a part of some brilliant strategy.
I'm not convinced this is a part of a brilliant strategy at this point.
You have to wonder if it's just kind of going off half-cocked on a bunch of different fronts as he's trying to reorder global and North American trade.
I'm not convinced that there's any sound strategy in what he's trying to achieve with at least with Alberta oil.
I can see what he might be trying to achieve with the auto sector.
And that's obviously a bad thing for Windsor and Ontario auto manufacturers.
You could at least see where he might be trying to go.
But I can't see where he's trying to go, at least with the Alberta oil sands.
You know, one thing that is very clear is his disdain for Justin Trudeau.
I mean, again, he's yanking his chain, calling him governor instead of prime minister.
He's done a couple of tweets or other social media posts where he has suggested that Trudeau loves this fight because it'll give him a chance to not retire and, in fact, to run again.
I think there's a possibility of that.
I think Mark Carney and the Liberal Party have in some ways moved on from that.
I think Trump is enjoying fighting with Trudeau.
And Trump's sort of a scrappy guy.
He gives people mean nicknames and he roughs them up a bit.
And then afterwards, he makes up with them.
If you think about everyone from Ron DeSantis to Marco Rubio to even JD Vance, they were all people who used to be his foes.
Now they're his buddies.
But they all went through sort of a bruising middle step.
I don't quite understand what's going on, but my thesis is if Trump wants to get back at Trudeau, there are other ways to do it without pushing away Canadian oil, which is, as Danielle Smith just put there, so essential for America's success.
Yeah, you know, and I don't think this is going to be Trudeau.
I mean, there was a window where Trudeau may have used this to call a snap election and circumvent the liberal leadership race.
We are so close to the liberal leadership race at this point that, no, that's not in the cards.
Although it might be a fair accusation that Trudeau was using this to help improve the political chances of the Liberal Party.
I think there's been evidence of that in the polls, although the polls are drunk.
They just did.
They're so all over the place.
But there's at least a substantial body of polling evidence that the Liberals have had a recovery riding this kind of postmodern nationalist wave.
I mean, if Trump wanted to really agitate Trudeau, he would exempt Alberta oil and maybe even other very heavy Alberta products, because then it would create even more cleavages between Alberta and the West on the one hand and the federal government in Ottawa and Trudeau on the other, tempting Trudeau to put on an export tax or embargo the United States or something like that.
If it looked like Ontario and Quebec were the ones getting hit and Alberta was getting an easy ride.
So I think if Trump was playing more strategic, he's doing that a little bit by putting a, you know, I should say, you know, only 10% tariff on Canadian oil, primarily from Alberta.
That is creating tension that, you know, the Trudeau government's going to be like, well, why are they only getting 10 when we're getting stuffed with 25 on most Central Canadian products?
But again, it's just not making a ton of sense what's coming from Trump on this one.
You know, Western Canada has some really valuable things.
Danielle Smith listed some of them there.
Saskatchewan has a lot of potash, which is important for agriculture and other things.
Of course, Alberta has a lot of oil.
One of the things that gets me is that liberals from Eastern Canada who disparage resource industries, who say we have to stop them, we have to transition away from them, who hate the oil sands and frankly hate mining, suddenly want to conscript the mining industry and the oil industry to be the battering ram in this fight.
I see Catherine McKenna, the disgraced former environment minister who never saw an oil barrel that she didn't hate, now calling on Alberta to take one for the team.
Let me play a quick clip of Danielle Smith talking about this threat of export taxes where Canada would either tax or stop exports.
I'd love your thoughts on this.
Take a look at this from yesterday where Danielle Smith sort of had a dukes up, not towards Trump, but towards Trudeau.
Take a look.
What is Alberta willing to do if the federal government does put in some type of export tax or decide to cut off energy to the U.S.?
Well, an export tax would be a violation of the 1977 pipeline treaty.
We've committed to not tax the content of energy products going down to the United States.
And I would hope that the federal government would abide by Alberta's wishes not to unfairly tax our jurisdiction.
I know what an export tax would mean.
$150 billion worth of product tax at 25% would generate $40 billion for Ottawa that would then be spent on Ottawa's priorities.
And I have absolutely no interest.
You will notice that when Doug talked about adding a surtax, he wasn't talking about Ottawa adding an export tax that then would be collected by Ottawa to be decided where it was going to be spent by Ottawa.
He's adding that tax so that he has the ability to keep those dollars in his own province to be able to defray any of the damage on his own people.
So I would say it is not on.
It's not been on from the beginning.
And you do not demonstrate that you are a reliable supplier of energy products or our most important trading partner by acting in that kind of erratic way.
So there's no circumstance under which I would support an export tax.
I'm glad to hear her say that.
I don't know if she has the political, legal, constitutional, legislative horses to stop Trudeau if he wanted to do that.
What do you make of it?
Do you think that's an idle threat by Trudeau?
I mean, cutting off oil to America would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
Putting an export tax on them, I don't know.
I think that would inflame things.
It would do a lot more destruction than reconstruction.
What do you think?
Well, embargoing oil exports to the United States is just simply not possible.
I think a lot of people have seen the map by now, a map that 99% of Canadians had never seen until a few weeks ago, showing that the oil sands, you know, these pipelines from Alberta, they don't just go straight into America.
Sorry, our pipelines going to Eastern Canada, they don't actually go to Eastern Canada.
They go through Saskatchewan, they go to the United States, and they come around, and they eventually come up back up through the Great Lakes.
So if Ottawa was to, Ottawa was to turn off the taps to America, the Eastern bastards would be making the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.
They simply couldn't do it.
So I'm actually in a very weird way.
I'm kind of glad we didn't build Energy East because it means Ottawa has no leverage to actually turn off oil exports to the United States, which is why they're not really talking about that.
They're talking about export tax.
If they did, it's tatramount.
An oil embargo against the United States is tatrament to a declaration of war against America.
An export tax is tatramount to a declaration of war against Alberta.
And there really is no length to which Alberta should not go to resist it.
I've been resistant against the whole faux Team Canada idea because it's not really Ben Team Canada.
It's Team Ontario, Quebec.
What's about protecting them?
I think Smith was right to take a pretty diplomatic approach to this.
There's been partial successes to that, which I think it's at least in part why we have a 10% tariff on oil, not a 25%.
But the nice diplomatic approach has unfortunately failed.
I've been supportive of her softer, more diplomatic approach here.
And it's had partial success, but it's obviously not gone far enough here.
But if Ottawa was to go this route, I'd be willing to take some pretty extreme measures to resist it.
It would be, as I said, a tatramount to a declaration of economic war against Alberta.
And there is absolutely nothing and no length to which we should go to resist it.
At that point, Ottawa becomes the much greater threat to Alberta than the United States is if they went that route.
You know, it's interesting you say that because Donald Trump, when he talks about the 51st state, and I don't know if you saw Marco Rubio explaining where that whole 51st state thing came from, it was Justin Trudeau who flew down to Mar-a-Lago.
And he said to Trump, if we were to equalize, get rid of our trade surplus, that would mean the end of Canada.
So he's the one who used the phrase, it would be the end of Canada, to which Trump said, oh, you should become a state then.
So it was sort of Trudeau blurting out that that would be an existential threat to Canada that put it in Trump's mind.
And it's like when Trump gets a nickname for someone, he just doesn't stop calling her Pocahontas or, you know, it's his shtick.
But whenever Trump talks about the 51st state, he says you'd be cherished.
He says, you'd be loved.
It's really odd.
It's sort of like approaching someone who's married and proposing to them while they're already married.
Like it's infuriating and it's insulting on a certain level.
But on another level, if someone was thinking of getting divorced, they might say, wow, I'm getting a heck of an offer here.
And this is my last question for you, Derek.
This whole thing is rather unsettling.
And I'm in a pickle because I like Canada.
I like Trump.
Alberta's 51st State Dilemma00:10:17
I like Alberta.
How can I square all three of these things?
I'm a loyal citizen, but it's a real, it's a tussle.
It's a three-way tussle.
I see that Jeffrey Rath, who is a lawyer who was a bit of a dissonant lawyer.
He was active during the pandemic fighting against some things.
He says he's going to be leading a contingent down to Washington to talk up the 51st state.
See, there was a billboard in Alberta that got a lot of attention calling for the 51st state.
I think that there is a certain sizable number.
I don't know if it's a majority, but I'd say it's in the 30s or 40s percent.
That if you said to them right now, if you could snap your fingers and Alberta would become a U.S. state, not all of Canada, just Alberta, would you take it?
I think a number of people in Alberta would say, you know what?
To get rid of all the problems that Eastern Canada has brought to us, to get rid of this pipeline embargo, to have a stronger economy, I think a good chunk of Albertans would actually take that deal.
I mean, there's a kind of inception going on, planting an idea that was once unthinkable, the Overton window.
What's your feeling for that?
Has Trump angered Albertans or has he wooed them?
It's a bit of both.
Look, you know, the height of the Wexit movement, you know, the Alberta independence movement came right after the 2019 federal election.
I mean, you had the blackface and the guy, and the East still puts this guy back in office.
You just had a, you know, the conservatives elected the biggest marshmallow, liberal light pink conservative you could find.
And the East still voted for the liberals.
There was outrage here, and it grew into a pretty significant independence movement on an organized level.
It had trouble getting going, but, you know, at the same time, you also had the Kenny government, which was seen as very weak in dealing with Ottawa.
And so you had things like the Wild Rose Independence Party, which came out of nowhere and got into the, you know, into the low 20 percentile.
Support for independence, depending on how you ask the question.
The highest we had seen it in polls we commissioned got into the mid-40s.
If you ask the question, is should Alberta become independent if it was with the other Western provinces, so not alone?
That got pretty high.
Never got into majority territory, but it got damn close to it at its height.
That collapsed really as soon as Danielle Smith became premier.
And it kind of took the road of the Sovereignty Act of fighting for more independence within Canada, but not very in a very friendly way.
We liked that.
There's never been a particularly large movement for Alberta to join the United States and Canada.
I mean, independence is often seen as a crank idea, but it grew into the relative mainstream for a time.
But as usual, it receded back down as things change.
And people have a hope that a conservative government in Ottawa will fix everything.
It doesn't.
It just, you know, kind of pads over some issues.
Look, if there was a vote tomorrow, I don't think that, no, it would absolutely not.
Alberta would not vote to join the United States.
But I can see a set of circumstances under which it is conceivable.
One is the most important is that the liberals are re-elected.
If the liberals are re-elected yet again for whatever reason, I think there'd just be a sense of desperation in Alberta that no matter what, the East is not going to vote for someone friendly to the West.
If Pier Polyev gets in, I think a lot of the root problems, like he said, he won't even fix equalization.
He's not going to touch it.
You know, he's going to, he'd be an improvement on things like energy and pipelines, but some of the big core unfairness issues for Alberta in Canada are not going to really get fixed with a conservative government.
But it would be a relief valve.
So if the liberals were to get re-elected, and we had a period of prolonged, very significant economic pain from the trade war, and then Trump made a big, made a deal, like one-for-one currency exchange.
You know, when West Germany absorbed East Germany, they allowed one-for-one currency exchange, even though the Deutschmark was worth several times whatever the junk currency of East Germany was.
And so, you know, it wouldn't be a big deal for the Americans to give one-for-one.
You know, if the US states federal government absorbs the entire Alberta debt, things like that.
I think it's conceivable in a very specific set of circumstances.
Also, at the same time, you have the liberals re-elected and they put in place an export tax on Alberta's oil, which would just completely melt our economy down even further than the trade war by itself would.
So there is a set of circumstances.
I think it's a very narrow path to get there, but it's a path that, you know, even thinking out loud, I'd have put you in a big onesie wrapped up in a bubble-wrapped room just six months ago.
I'd commit you if you even thought the idea out loud.
And if you're writing science fiction, I'd say you're just totally nuts.
They wouldn't even believe it in a sci-fi book.
But yeah, with a very specific set of circumstances, I think it is possible now.
Not likely, but possible.
Yeah.
Well, the last three months in Canadian politics have been crazy.
And Donald Trump has added oil to the fire, kerosene to the fire.
You know what?
I was listening to you different scenarios there, and I think you're right.
I remember when Stephen Harper was elected, that took a lot of the energy out of the separatist movement because he attended to some of the things were bothering the West.
If Mark Carney becomes the Mark Carney will become the prime minister of Canada, most likely in about a week.
If, God forbid, he wins the next election, I put it to you that separatism will hit the 50% mark.
And remember, the Supreme Court of Canada has said separatism is legal as long as you have a clear question with a clear majority.
Unlike the United States, which fought a civil war over secession, excuse me, secession.
It is completely legal in Canada, according to nothing less than the Supreme Court.
Mark Carney winning a general election, I'll predict it to you, Alberta would join America.
Let me add to that.
So if one of the biggest reasons, like, so when we had, when we commissioned polls around independence for Alberta, independence always was at least 10% lower in support if it was just Alberta, because there's a fear, well, we're landlocked.
That was always the big knock against it.
You're landlocked, you're by yourself.
You're a small country.
You're just redneck Switzerland.
And that sounds pretty cool, by the way.
I think rednecks sounds like a pretty cool country.
But, you know, but if you ask the question of like, well, you know, if it was like BC and Saskatchewan and maybe Yukon, Northwest Territories together, support was significantly higher.
I don't think there's any sense of American patriotism in Alberta, but there's a sense of Alberta identity.
And if people think Alberta identity is actually maybe potentially stronger in the United States, that gets dangerous real quick.
But the big thing, you were talking about independence and secession of provinces from Canada being illegal.
No one's ever really talked about it in the context of joining the United States because the Clarity Act says, okay, okay, if there's a clear majority on a clear question, then there's a duty of the federal government to negotiate the divorce at that point.
Who gets the kids?
Who gets the dog and the house and the car?
Division of assets and liabilities.
And that could potentially get bogged down for a long time and in technicalities and maybe doesn't actually end up happening because Ottawa holds a lot of cards in that negotiation.
No one ever considered it in the context of potentially a province joining the United States.
If you had a clear majority on a clear question, you don't even need to negotiate with Ottawa at that point.
The United States simply the next day declares Alberta a protectorate of the United States and then and a candidate for statehood.
The U.S. Army rolls up the 49th.
What's Ogden going to do?
Send some tampon dispensers from the local Canadian Army base.
There's utterly nothing Ottawa could do if that was the case.
If Alberta had, hypothetically, in this circumstance, votes to join the United States, there is no negotiation with Ottawa at that time.
It's just the United States declares itself, okay, we're in charge the next day.
Hey, you know, you made me think of something I had forgotten about maybe 10 or 20 years ago.
Way back in the day when I was a young pup like you, Derek, I worked in Parliament Hill for Prestomani.
I was his assistant, and I got to know my counterpart who was the assistant for the Block Québécois.
He was the friendliest guy.
I still keep in touch with him now.
And through him, I learned that when the Parti Québécois, the provincial party for separatism, became the government provincially, they used the mighty resources of the taxpayer to commission, I'm going to call it an encyclopedia of separatism.
They basically got leading scholars, economists, historians, military experts, trade experts to answer questions like, what happens to the debt?
What happens to the army bases?
What happens to the passport?
What currency should we use?
Like, just because immediately, as you said, well, would it be just Alberta or other provinces?
Would it be, you know, independent or would it be a U.S. protectorate?
Commissioning Expert Answers00:03:07
There's a lot of questions that suddenly splinter support.
So, what the Parti Québécois did when they formed government is they commissioned the smartest guys and gals in Quebec to answer some of these obvious questions, not only to provide a path should sovereignty happen, but to let people know they were thinking seriously.
This wasn't just a joke or a, you know, back then we didn't use the word meme or anything.
It was steps to create a proto-state.
I got a copy of that insight.
It was about this big.
Like there was a bunch of volumes.
It was in French, so I barely understood it.
I don't know where my copy is because I've moved several times.
And my guess is along the way, my wife probably said, get rid of those.
You're never going to read those.
But that's an amazing thing that Quebec did because they were serious about it.
At least some people in the Parti Québécois were serious about it.
I think if you had the biggest thinkers in the UFC, U of A, other scholarly places, think tanks, answering these questions in a quarterly journal.
And by the way, you could have debates.
There would be different opinions.
I think you would show a seriousness that is currently not there.
Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself because I don't think Mark Carney is going to win the next election.
And I think the current frothing of what's happening between Canada and the U.S. will settle down.
But God forbid, if it doesn't, if Mark Carney, God forbid, may it not happen if he wins.
I think Alberta's going to separate.
Last word to you.
I think you're right.
I think the most likely circumstance is the Conservatives are going to win and things are going to settle down.
Trump, Drum's got a sensitive ego.
He's going to be able to deal with Polyev.
And if Polyev, you know, a lot of Canadians, I don't think, want Polyev to be buddy-buddy with Trump, but I think they might now because they're like, be nice to the guy.
Take him away.
Or at least don't provoke him.
Don't raise the temperature.
Don't be a jerk to him.
You know, some Canadians want to see that because it feels good, but I think a lot of Canadians are also realizing how dangerous that is with this man.
This man, he is an unpredictable and dangerous fellow.
I think that's the most likely circumstance.
But as we laid out, I think there is a, if certain planets line up, I don't think the 10 provinces and three territories of Canada remain intact forever.
Very interesting.
Well, we're living in times that are not boring.
I'll give you that.
Derek Felderbrand, publisher of the Western Standard.
Great to see him.
The way, congratulations to your journalists who are really working hard to keep the liberal candidates to account.
I know you've been trying to scrum Mark Carney and he's being abusive to your staff.
Keep at it, keep at it.
I think even if you don't get in there and we, we get pushed out too.
You know people are both uh, standing side by side outside the outside the doors of the Carney events, not allowed in.
Yeah well, we keep you.
Keep it up, we'll keep it up.
We got to hold him to account.
Keep At It, Keep At It00:01:32
I mean, he's not at Davos anymore, he's uh, he's actually got to answer some questions.
Take care, my friend.
Great to see you.
Thanks so much, Ezra.
All right, there you have it, Darrell Filibrand.
He's the publisher of the Western Standard, a great Western source of news.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me on The Sax Files.
I'm referring to Yaara Sachs meeting with that terrorist.
Darlene Ramsey says it's unbelievable that Ya'ara would do something like this.
What would a child think of a mother who would have her picture taken with someone that thinks nothing of killing a person just because they're Jewish?
Yeah, but that was atrocious and we knew it was atrocious.
But now what we know is that in all their briefing notes 86 pages worth never once do they call Hamas terrorists.
The only time they talk about terrorists is they're calling the Jews terrorists.
That crazy Fiona Waban says.
Well, I guess then it makes sense why nothing has been done about the protests in our streets.
What hypocrites.
Yeah, I tell you, I'm not even kidding when I say the entire Global Affairs Canada staff working on Israel stuff is as radical as those Hamas protesters in the street.
Alan Allen says, considering who Mark Carney lets into his rallies, this isn't shocking.
That's a great point.
Independent journalists like from Western Standard and from Rebel News are kept out of Mark Carney's events, but he lets in radicals with Kafias.