Ezra Levant argues Alberta’s separatist surge stems from decades of federal exploitation—pipeline bans, tanker restrictions, and Bill C-69’s "100% tariff" on energy—while Quebec’s separatism earns concessions like cash incentives. A 2023 Angus Reid poll reveals 50% support referendums, with 36% in Alberta willing to leave Confederation immediately unless Ottawa repeals anti-oil policies. Levant warns Eastern Canada’s rhetoric against Western separatists risks backfiring, mirroring past demonization of the trucker convoy, as federal neglect fuels a radical shift toward independence. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm born and raised in Alberta, and I'm sort of an Albertan at heart, even though I've been out in Toronto for more than a decade.
I'm going to do my best to try and, I don't know, explain what's going on in Alberta through the lens of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.
I'm going to try and help Central Canadians understand maybe what Albertans feel these days.
And I have an analogy that might work.
So that's our up next.
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Tonight, what should Torontonians and Montrealers think of what's going on in Alberta?
It's May 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Ontario's Hate for Alberta00:08:04
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Hi, everybody.
You know, I've been in Toronto for a while now.
I'm still Albertan at heart, and I think I'm Albertan enough to understand what's going on out there.
I still visit Alberta all the time.
My folks are there.
Let me translate for my fellow Easterners what I think is happening.
Remember how Eastern Canadians, Central Canadians felt when Donald Trump put tariffs on the prestige industries in Quebec and Ontario in a manner that seemed unfair and irrational and just out of the blue?
And rational or not, it hurt the Ontario economy and cost jobs.
And how do people in Ontario and Quebec feel knowing that Trump is still vowing to move Canada's car and steel industries to the U.S.?
He said that when Mark Carney was right there.
Well, we'll be talking about different things.
You know, we want to protect our automobile business, and so does Mark.
But we want to protect, we want to make the automobiles, and we want to, you know, we have a tremendous abundance of energy more than any country.
We have just in Alaska alone.
Anwar has been reopened now.
Anwar is probably the largest find anywhere in the world.
They say it's larger than Saudi Arabia.
I don't know, but it's a lot.
But we have tremendous amounts of energy.
Other countries don't.
We're both lucky that way.
They have energy.
We have energy.
We have more than we can ever use and more than we could ever sell, actually.
And you have the same thing.
So we're two countries that are very lucky.
If you look at China, they don't have that.
You know, it's a big disadvantage.
Other countries, most countries don't have, you know, most countries don't have that.
So Canada and us, we have a lot of advantages over other places.
I'd like Ontarians and Quebecers to remember how they felt that their own political autonomy and sovereignty was being challenged and insulted by Trump's proposal to become a 51st state, that it felt like an indecent proposal, if you remember that old movie.
And even if it was just an empty taunt, it showed disrespect, like if a stranger made a marriage proposal to someone who was already married.
Well, Alberta has been doing all of that.
That exact same thing.
Ontario's been doing that.
Ottawa's been doing that to Alberta for generations.
And it's been rewarded election after election by voters in Ontario and Quebec.
If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on the support of Paul.
Now, Donald Trump has an excuse.
His job is America first.
Nothing else matters to him.
What's Mark Carney's excuse?
What's Justin Trudeau's excuse before him?
What's Canada's excuse, frankly?
Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, typically 10% or 25%.
Ottawa blocked Alberta and Saskatchewan pipelines altogether, banned tankers altogether, requires a gender analysis on new industrial projects, if you can believe it.
They're talking about a production cap on the oil sands.
They've threatened to transition the industry.
That means shut it down.
That's like a 100% tariff.
It's an outright veto.
Stopping a pipeline is worse than a tariff.
Alberta and Saskatchewan voted for a grand total of three liberal MPs out of all those districts in the last election.
But Alberta and Saskatchewan, they are not the deciders in Canada, are they?
They're just the people who keep paying the bills for the rest of the country, equalization and all that.
You're about to see something very interesting, though.
In the last Quebec referendum, the entire Canadian establishment sent a message to Quebec.
We love you.
Please come back.
Don't leave.
We'll work it out within Canada.
Quebec received countless political, economic, and constitutional favors, plus a lot of good old-fashioned cash.
You might even say that Quebec separatism has been a bit of a sham for decades.
It's just a good cop, bad cop routine of fleecing Alberta.
It's not really serious.
I don't think they actually want to go.
It's a permanent revolution.
It's sort of theatrical.
I mean, what's more revealing than the fact that Block Québécois MPs collect their parliamentary pensions?
That's how long they've been around.
But watch for the opposite response to Alberta separatism.
There is a genuine hatred against Alberta in parts of Ontario and Quebec.
Towards Alberta and what I call Alberta-ness being Alberta-ish.
The only Albertans respected by the CBC or Mark Carney are the underminers, like Nahid Nenshi and Rachel Notley, people who promised to destroy the Alberta oil and gas industry and the Alberta freedom spirit from the inside.
Albertans who are Alberta-ish, they're shunned, they're demonized, they're mocked, they're attacked.
Look at how the CBC has tried to destroy Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta.
She was the only female premier in the entire country for years, actually.
Normally, that would make her a CBC favorite on DEI grounds alone, but she's the wrong kind of woman.
She's too Albertan, so they hate her and they lie about her daily.
But buckle up now.
Every national media company, every national corporation, every bank, every NGO, every community activist will now be deployed to denigrate and smear Albertans who are just tired of Ottawa's war on the West.
Again, if you're from Toronto or Montreal and need help imagining things, picture Trump-style taxes, tariffs, and other economic warfare.
But for 40 years, I mean, going back before the national energy program in the 1980s even, all from your own country, not a foreign leader.
Albertans aren't even angry anymore, I don't think.
I think they're just sort of done.
A friendly tip to my friends in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.
If you're a politician or a pundit using the same language you used with the trucker convoy, you're racist.
You're a fringe minority with unacceptable views.
You're a crackpot.
You're MAGA.
You're January 6th.
If you're saying things like that, think about it.
You're not actually trying to persuade anyone, are you?
You're demonstrating that you hate Alberta, or at least the Alberta-ness of it.
It's an interesting Venn diagram, I think.
The people who called for a Teen Canada approach and who promised to end internal trade barriers as a response to Trump, they're the same ones denigrating Albertans who were asking for an end to Ottawa's sanctions.
And what is a pipeline ban other than a non-tariff barrier?
The Canadian establishment demonized Donald Trump as a bully, an economic illiterate, and an unreliable friend and ally.
But they, the Ontario-Quebec establishment, the Ottawa establishment, they are all of those things and worse towards Albertans.
At least Trump kept telling Canada he cherished us as he shook us down.
Carney, Trudeau, Gilbeau, they genuinely hate Alberta.
And it shows.
We're going to have a couple town hall meetings next week.
One in Edmonton on Monday, one in Calgary on Wednesday.
I think they're pretty much sold out.
You can find details on our website, RebelNews.com.
If you're asking me how we're going to cover this journalistically, the answer is respectfully, we're not going to call anyone crackbots.
We're not going to call anyone MAGA North.
And if anyone does, ask them, are you really trying to keep Canada together or are you just showing how much you hate Albertans?
Because that's not persuasiveness.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Chinese Bounty Allegations00:14:43
You know, something completely astonishing happened during the election.
It was truly shocking.
It was like it was out of a Hollywood movie and then everyone just sort of forgot about it.
I'm talking about the astonishing case of a liberal candidate who was actually an incumbent MP, Paul Cheng, who said multiple times to journalists that there was a million-dollar Hong Kong dollar bounty on one of his political arrivals, a bounty offered by the Chinese government.
And he encouraged any people, Chinese, Canadians, or others, to physically kidnap this political rival of his, Joe Tae is his name, and deliver him to the Chinese consulate to collect the reward.
I know it sounds too crazy to believe, but it was all captured on video.
Take a look at this.
The other person that's running most probably is, you know, the Chinese community knows Joe Tae, Zhang Jing Sukhi.
He is looking for the nomination.
The Chinese media knows him.
He was in the media business in Hong Kong and here in Canada is a radio host or, I don't know, for Singhao Media or Fair Child.
He was a media person.
So that's all he did, all his life.
But also right now, he is wanted by the Chinese government.
And there's a $1 million reward on his head.
If you guys want to pick him up and take him to the Chinese consulate, you make a million dollars.
There is a rest warrant out for him from the government of China, and there is a reward for him.
But apart from that, I can't say more than that.
That reverberated not just within the Chinese-Canadian community, which is very dense in the neighborhoods of Markham, but in the general meeting too.
And Mark Carney was pressed on the subject, and he stood by his man, not the Canadian democracy activist Joe Tae, who was threatened.
He stood by the threatener.
Take a look at this.
The comments were deeply offensive.
This is a terrible lapse of judgment by Mr. Chang.
He has apologized for those comments.
He has apologized directly now to the person that he mentioned.
I apologize directly to him yesterday.
I've spoken to Mr. Chang as well over the course of the weekend to understand his position.
He is a veteran policeman.
Mr. Chang is a veteran policeman with more than a quarter century of service to his community, 28 years of defending rights in his community.
And he will continue with his candidacy going forward, having made those apologies very clearly to the individual, to the community, and moving forward to serve.
And he stood by him, and he stood by him.
And a week went by.
And only then did Paul Chang resign, but not with Mark Carney ever criticizing him.
It was just absolutely shocking.
And Chang's successor was the same again, not issuing threats to kidnap anybody, but he was a Chinese-Canadian police officer, which is outstanding.
I think it's important that Chinese communities have a police officer who understands them, speaks the language, as long as he's meeting the standards of being a good cop.
But incredibly, he acted as if he was representing the Chinese state, not the Canadian state.
Here's video of him singing Chinese nationalist songs at a Chinese political event.
Absolutely astonishing.
All of this just happened.
The election came.
Mark Carney won, including a dominating majority in the greater Toronto area.
But would you look at this?
Absolutely shocking.
The headlines I'm going to read now from our friend Sam Cooper at the Bureau.news.
Let me read this headline and then I'll call on Sam.
Breaking.
Hong Kong police detain relatives of Canadian candidate targeted by Beijing election interference.
Move follows aggressive People's Republic of China disinformation against Joe Tae, RCMP security warnings, and raises pressure on Prime Minister Mark Carney after a White House meeting.
And Sam Cooper joins us now.
Sam, this feels like a five-alarm fire.
Although Joe Tae's relatives, I understand, are not Canadian nationals.
They are so obviously being arrested as a way to put pressure on him.
You have this story.
It's outstanding in the Bureau.news.
Let me ask you: has there been a response from the Canadian government?
If not from Mark Carney, from the Foreign Affairs Department at all, from Global Affairs Canada.
It's a day after the story, and I reached out to the Prime Minister's office with the full story and asking for a response.
There's been absolutely no response from Mr. Carney's office yet.
CSIS, Canada's intelligence agency, also received my questions, including: were they looking into complaints that Joe Tay's campaign potentially was stalked during the election campaign?
That's something that I also reported, Ezra.
And CSIS has informed me that they're working on a response.
So, certainly, any new information that I get on this story that I've been chasing, I will update.
But deafening silence from Mr. Carney, who, as you rightly point out, has said nothing essentially in nothing to tell China that it's absolutely unacceptable what's happened to Mr. Tay.
And as you say, he stood by his candidate right to the end and hasn't acted.
You know, I left out the worst part of the story, Sam, and that's that the RCMP, and you correct me if I'm getting this even one word wrong, that the RCMP cautioned Joe Tay against campaigning in public, that they implied there was some threat against him.
And instead of rallying around him, supporting him, protecting him, helping him, they said, don't go out there.
It would be like telling, and this has happened in some jurisdictions, telling Jewish people not to go out wearing a yarmuca because you'll be attacked by Andy Simmons.
Just stay home.
Well, no, your job is to protect me.
It felt the same, telling Joe Tay, don't go out on the streets of Canada to campaign.
You're under threat.
Did that actually happen?
Am I misremembering?
Because that sounds too crazy to be true.
No, Ezra, I reported this based on certain sources close to the campaign.
Remember, this is a very sensitive, ongoing story, so certain people can't be identified.
But I confirmed with 100% confidence that the day that the site task force came out with that public disclosure saying that cyber broad cyber operations against Joe Tay had been rolled out, on that same day, I was informed that Mr. Tay was advised by RCMP for safety reasons.
It would be better for him not to campaign in person on that day at least.
And the New York Times followed my reporting with similar reporting within days.
So that is the fact.
And you're right.
I mean, certainly the RCMP have a job to do to keep Mr. Tay safe.
But as Canadians, we should be asking, well, would a way to do that to be to give Mr. Tay officers around him so that he could campaign and run a fair campaign in person.
And as the New York Times reported, supporting and corroborating my reports, he ran a quiet campaign and he did very well at that.
Yeah.
Wow.
You know, this story reminds me.
I had the pleasure of meeting a man named Joe Huang, who is with Falun Gong, which is a religious sect that the Chinese Communist Party wants to destroy.
And he's a journalist in Canada here.
And he said that his family member, I forget if it was his brother, was back in China in the hospital.
And his brother called on the phone and said that there was secret police there and handed the phone to the secret police who threatened him to stop criticizing China.
Joe Huang continued doing it.
Imagine how terrifying that is.
Your own blood, your brother, calls you from the hospital and says the secret police are here.
They have something to say.
You would feel violated.
You would feel terrified.
Well, let me, I'm going to quote from your story again, Sam.
The move to detain and question Tay's cousin and the man's wife in Hong Kong, reported by multiple sources, including the Hong Kong Free Press, appears aimed at ramping up pressure on Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney.
So they're doing the same.
They're going after the family, and that's got to terrify.
It's going to terrify the Chinese-Canadian community.
And I think that's what a lot of this is.
When you have these Chinese-Canadian police officers and it's revealed that they're taking orders as much from China as they are from the police boss, that's terrifying because all these people who've come to Canada hoping to be free, they're still got to look over their shoulder.
My heart goes out to these folks, Sam.
I agree, Ezra.
As Joe Tae himself said, when Paul Chien issued an apology saying that he was just joking when he suggested Mr. Tay could be turned over to Chinese officials in Toronto, Joe Tae rightly said, apology not accepted.
That message was CCP statecraft from the Liberal MP, and it was not only aimed at Joe Tae, it was aimed broadly at the Chinese-Canadian community saying, do not support democracy.
Do not vote for Joe Tae.
And look, he was right.
Now his relatives under questioning in Hong Kong, again, that message being sent out to the Chinese-Canadian community, do not vote for conservatives because they're harder on China than the liberals.
And look, who benefited from those very same cyber operations as site disclosed and the Bureau reported?
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who remains silent on this issue.
So the damage continues, Ezra.
You know, that's right.
There's this committee called CITE, S-I-T-E.
This is a site task force.
And I forget exactly who's on it.
It's a combination of political and national security and foreign affairs.
It's sort of a different multidisciplinary committee.
And their job during the election is to sort of warn the public if there is some evidence of foreign interference.
And I remember when they announced the formation of this committee, I thought, oh, brother, here we go.
Because politically, people say, oh, Donald Trump is interfering.
Or I remember when the CBC had a reporter who said that Vladimir Putin was organizing the truckers.
And I thought, oh, brother, this site task force is just going to call conservatives bad names.
It didn't.
It warned about China supporting Mark Carney.
I was actually surprised they were doing their job.
And again, I'm not saying the story was ignored.
It was covered, but it's almost like it was gone down the memory hole.
And your thesis here, Sam, that this is a test of Mark Carney, I think is completely right.
And I think so far, Mark Carney has not risen to the challenge.
I agree.
It has to be a test.
Look, the man met with Donald Trump, and it was supposed to be elbows up Mark Carney.
Very clearly, it wasn't.
China knows in the private closed-door meeting, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Mark Carney were having some very serious discussions about how China fits into that tariff battle.
And we don't know what was discussed, but surely we can assess that China is watching Mark Carney very closely.
And I do believe they're testing him.
Will he come out?
Will he tell Canadians?
Global Affairs Canada has confirmed Mr. Tay's relatives have been detained, and that's unacceptable.
I'm waiting to hear that message, but certainly that's what a Canadian leader should be saying.
And he has failed that test so far, Ezra.
That is as true as the morning shine.
Yeah.
I think Canada did not rise to the occasion when the two Michaels were, I think, kidnapped is the right term and held for years.
Well, Sam, it's great to catch up with you.
And I'm grateful for your generous time.
You're so busy.
I see you being interviewed as a subject matter expert on other media.
So we're really grateful to you to make time for us.
The best way to follow you, if I'm not mistaken, is at theburea.news.
Is that right?
You got it right, Ezra.
And it's almost two years.
I've been up and running 30,000 subscribers.
So it's growing and it's getting traction globally.
Yeah.
So if you're a viewer who likes getting things faster than the mainstream media, Sam is often the guy breaking these stories.
So you may get your news one, two, three days faster, sometimes weeks faster, by going to Sam's thebureau.news than waiting to hear from it from other sources.
So once again, Sam, thanks for giving the inside scoop to our people.
Good luck out there and we'll keep following what you're doing.
Thanks, Ezra.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me about my quick trip to Bermuda.
Have you ever seen such a quick trip in your life?
Jojo Pickett says, this is what I expect from journalism, not what I see from CBC, CGB, Global, et cetera.
Well, I mean, I didn't do a lot when you think about it.
I just read what was published already.
I reviewed some videos.
I went to some of the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, filings of these Brookfield companies.
There are literally thousands of documents.
Why Westerners Refuse to Pay00:06:58
Obviously, I only read a small sample.
And I started to think about what could be happening in Bermuda.
And then I just went there to see with my own eyes.
It wasn't a particularly complex action.
And we managed to do it in one day because I thought, you know, we're just really going to see what's there.
We can do that in a few hours.
So that managed to save us probably two grand in hotel rooms.
The reason I tell you that is it wasn't particularly onerous.
But I thought it was interesting.
And I thought it was interesting to engage with Brookfield's PR team, who really said absolutely nothing.
But I felt very journalistic-y.
And when I was down there, remember, I asked the bike guy, the bike store guy, has anyone else from Canada even bothered to inquire?
And he said, no.
I promise you, if it was Pierre Polyev or Stephen Harper or some other conservative who had an interest from Bermuda, oh, it would be a regular stop for all the other journalists.
Rosemary Brown says, I had an uncle who used to be a banker.
He said, never trust a banker.
Well, you know, I don't, I'm not thrilled with Canada's banks myself, but this isn't even about banking, I think.
This is about tax tricks.
It's about pretending that your business operations are in a place where they're clearly not, so you can take advantage of a tax dodge.
And, you know, I'm told that that's legal, although the CRA is in court fighting against Brookfield.
But I'm not even here to say, is it legal or not?
I'm not a judge.
I'm not a tax law expert.
But how can you be a prime minister extracting maximum money from the little people when you hide your own profits?
It's just not, it's not ethical.
Geek at heart says, if Carney isn't a permanent resident of Canada, if Carney doesn't pay his taxes in Canada, how is he running Canada?
He shouldn't be allowed in Canadian politics.
Well, I don't think we know some basic facts about him.
When did he move back to Canada?
Does he even have a Canadian driver's license or a health care card?
Where does he actually live?
I know his wife lives in New York.
We don't know anything about this guy.
We know he's an international man of mystery, three passports, former director of the World Economic Forum.
So the world's his.
And he just sort of picked up a little bauble called Canada along the way.
didn't feel very democratic.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.
tonight and keep fighting for freedom.
Ottawa is breaking this country and 50% of Westerners are saying maybe it's time we let them.
Now let's cut through the political spin and get right to the truth.
Alberta and Saskatchewan didn't break Canada.
Ottawa and successive liberal governments did.
And if this country comes apart at the seams, it won't be because the West walked away.
It will be because the Laurentian elite shoved us right out the door.
This week, the Angus Reed Institute dropped a bombshell poll.
50% of Albertans and Saskatchewanians now say they support holding a referendum on independence.
In Alberta, 36% say they'd vote to leave.
In Saskatchewan, it's 34%.
And while the hardcore definitely leave no matter what crowd sits at 19% in Alberta and 15% in Saskatchewan, that still represents hundreds of thousands of people ready to exit Confederation today, no matter what the liberals in Ottawa do to try to keep us here.
Now, let that sink in.
That's not fringe.
That's a movement, one that Ottawa and the Liberals built with their own arrogance.
Now, why is this happening?
Well, because Ottawa and the Liberals just refuse to listen.
They refuse to change.
They refuse to respect us.
Instead, we get Bill C-69, the No More Pipelines Law, still on the books and will remain on the books, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Bill C-69, with your plans to build infrastructure in Canada, do you plan to repeal Bill C-69?
We do not plan to repeal Bill C-69, to answer your question directly.
A suffocating emissions cap that targets Alberta and Saskatchewan while letting global polluters off the hook.
No national vision whatsoever for a West-East pipeline, leaving our energy landlocked and our people unemployed.
And what else does this poll show?
Well, that we're not unmovable separatists.
We're desperate realists.
We're actually quite reluctant.
According to the Angus Reed data, 69% of Alberta leave voters and 61% in Saskatchewan say they'd vote to stay if the liberals let us build a pipeline across the country.
62% in Alberta and 56% in Saskatchewan would stay if Bill C-69 was repealed.
61% of Alberta separatists and 54% of Saskatchewan ones say ending the emissions cap would convince them to vote stay.
So the liberals could put out this fire tomorrow.
Oh, but they won't.
Why?
Because they don't see the West as a partner.
They see us as a piggy bank.
We supply the resources, we pay the bills, and then they punish us for it.
And let's talk about how this could backfire fast.
Angus Reed polling also found that if British Columbia blocked access to tidewater, or if Quebec vetoed future pipelines, support for separation would increase across the board by as much as 20 percentage points among the soft leave voters.
It would radicalize them.
Even Indigenous protests won't hold back the separatist tide.
Among the definitely leave group, a full majority said that major Indigenous resistance would actually make them more likely to support separation.
Here's one number that you won't hear on the CBC.
71% of Alberta separatists and 74% of Saskatchewan separatists would vote to stay if the federal conservatives formed government.
Translation, this isn't so much a separatist revolution as it is a desperate cry for fairness.
But if Ottawa keeps treating Alberta and Saskatchewan-like provinces to be punished, taxed, and controlled, then maybe we've got no choice but to take our future into our own hands, whatever that may look like.
Because how long can you stay in a relationship where you're the one always paying, always blamed, and then never heard?
So, here's one question no one in the Laurentian bubble is asking: Why are Westerners being asked to save a country that won't take its foot off our heads while we drown?