Alberta Premier Danielle Smith defends her push for independence, citing 37% separatist support fueled by federal pipeline blocks like the stalled 1M-barrel-per-day bitumen project to BC’s Port of Prince Rupert. She negotiates with PM Mark Carney—once tied to anti-oil groups—to repeal nine laws while advancing Alberta’s Pathways Alliance decarbonization plan, contrasting Canada’s 1.5% emissions with China’s. Smith warns Bill C-2’s $10K cash ban risks CBDC surveillance, enabling restrictions on firearms or carbon-intensive goods, calling it a "total spy state" threat. She also criticizes recent migrants’ alleged disloyalty, contrasting it with Jewish-Canadian assimilation like Irving Berlin’s patriotic anthems, while Levant urges resistance via don’tkillcash.com. Alberta’s future hinges on balancing energy independence and ideological clashes. [Automatically generated summary]
Big show today, including a feature one-on-one interview with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
How is she getting along with Mark Carney?
I ask her a question.
How would you rate him on a scale of one to ten?
I'll let you hear the answer.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month.
Not only do you get all that great content, but you support Rebel News because we depend on you and it shows.
Hey, one more thing.
Feel like Ottawa's got its boot on Alberta's neck?
Well, it's time to push back.
Join us for Rebel News Live, Saturday, June 14th at the Red Deer Curling Center.
Spend the day with Ezra Levant, me, Sheila Gunnread, and a powerhouse lineup of freedom fighters, political thinkers, and grassroots leaders.
We're talking energy, free speech, and especially independence, and how the West can finally stop getting screwed.
This isn't just a conference.
It's a rallying cry.
Tickets are going fast.
Get yours now at donegettingscrewed.com.
Stand up, speak out, be there.
Tonight, a feature interview with Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta.
What does she really think about Mark Carney?
It's June 6th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Oh, hi, everybody.
June 6th means D-Day, June 6th, 1944, the day of the largest invasion in history when the combined Allied forces went across the English Channel to the beaches of Normandy and began the final phase of the Second World War, liberating France and closing in on Germany while the Red Armies came from the East.
It was an amazing day for Canada where we were in the first rank, Juneau Beach, along with Utah and Omaha and Sword and our allies in the UK and the United States.
I think too many people have forgotten about that.
That was Canada at its finest hour, not the Canada that we see today.
A Canada embarrassed of itself, a Canada that denounces itself as genocidal, a Canada that waters down itself by bringing in people who hate our own country.
I was not around in 1944, though I was born closer to 1944 than I was born to today.
That's how old I am.
But in some ways, I prefer that Canada to the one we have today.
Our feature interview today is a sit-down with Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta.
Very interesting things are cooking.
She has had several meetings with Mark Carney, and I don't trust Carney as far as I can throw him.
For the last decade, he's been the head of something called G-Fans, a global financial alliance for net zero.
Let me translate into plain English.
He wants to shut down the oil sands.
I shouldn't say he wants to shut down all oil, because of course, when he led Brookfield, he invested trillions of dollars.
They have a trillion dollars under management, including in competitors to Canada's oil sands.
I don't know if he's able to make the switch to someone who's supposed to work for Canadians now, not just his shareholders.
We'll have that.
And then after that, I have some news from Bill C2.
I made a focus video today.
You saw my long video yesterday about the perils of C2.
I have a new one to show you where I really focus on cash.
So without further ado, here's my interview earlier today with Premier Smith.
Well, we love to check in with the Premier of Alberta, the most consequential province in so many ways, my former homeland.
And I say homeland with a little bit of tongue-in-cheek, but joining us now to talk about the possibility of a different future for Alberta is Premier Danielle Smither.
So, Premier, welcome back to the show.
Great to see you.
Good to see you, Ezra.
Well, I tell you, the whole country, if they're not focused on it now, they certainly will be soon.
You have announced that Alberta will permit a referendum on independence.
Tell me how that's going.
Is that still on?
When will the legislation and regulations be in place?
Well, as you know, I mean, part of the United Conservative culture has been to support direct democracy mechanisms.
And so, my predecessor brought in a policy around citizen initiative and recall.
And what we learned with a few years of testing it out is that the bars were very high, actually, so high as to be unachievable in the request, in the number of signatures you had to get.
So, we had over the last year done a consultation.
We're aligned a little bit more now with the way they do it in California.
You know, California has five to ten propositions almost every vote.
And so, we'll be allowing for 10% of the previous voter turnout.
If people can get, which turns out to be 177,000 signatures on an issue, they can put that to the people in a referendum.
So, I noticed that when it came out, there were a couple of questions that have already been filed with Elections Alberta.
One, let's be a strong Alberta within a United Canada, put forward by the former Deputy Premier Thomas Lukasic.
And the other one, looking at independence.
So, I'm going to watch that process, see how it plays out, see how many signatures get gathered.
And then, if the bar was reached, we'll put it to the people for a vote.
Wow.
You know, Canada has had occasional referendums in the past, whether it's the Charlottetown Accord or Quebec independence.
It is a Canadian thing.
It's just not that often used.
To me, the value of it, whether someone wants separation or to stay in Canada, is it's an or else when the Premier of Alberta talks to the Prime Minister of Canada.
It's a way of getting the attention of the Laurentian elites who normally don't care.
How has this issue animated or informed your discussions with the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney?
Has he raised the subject?
Does it look like he's worried about Western independence?
Even if you're a staunch nationalist Canadian, having that in your pocket may help a negotiation.
Well, I look at the numbers as very concerning, and I take them seriously.
Some of the polls have shown the sentiments as high as 37%, and that's the highest I've ever seen it.
I've been watching it for some time.
The sentiment has ebbed and flowed over the years.
I mean, you'll recall there was a separatist who was elected in 1982, Gordon Kessler.
I think Western Standard, when you were leading it, did some polling on this, and the sentiment was high again during the final years of Jean-Cartien.
And so we see it now at a very high ebb once again.
And we should take it seriously because it goes to a deep frustration that Albertans have.
The past 10 years of liberal government standing in the way of their aspirations, their wealth creation, their ability to get products to market, and a whole variety of interventions in provincial jurisdictions.
So I'm hopeful that this new prime minister realizes they have to change course.
I mean, I think he does.
He got rid of the carbon tax within minutes of becoming prime minister.
So I think that he realized that that was just deadly to his political fortunes.
And so I think that it's our job to let him understand that there are nine other bad laws that need to be repealed or substantially revised in order to address the foundational problems that Alberta has in getting its resources developed into market.
So that's the conversation I'm starting on with the Prime Minister.
And we'll see in a matter of weeks and months if we're successful.
How was his first one-to-one with you with these demands in the background?
Did he move at all or did he use that foggy, opaque language?
I observe that he is the master of saying very little.
And I guess that's a talent as a politician.
But if you're in a hurry, like Alberta is, it's not satisfying.
Did you get anything from the prime minister that you could regard as tangible?
He wants to have a particular project list, a national project list.
And I think it's up to us now to get the proponent and the project, get it on the list and try the process out.
He wants to have a two-year timeline to approval, which is a fast-track over the existing laws.
And then my understanding is he wants to have a parallel conversation about how to modify the laws that are preventing big projects from getting built.
So if that's the intention that he has going in, I'm prepared to walk the path with him.
But we'll know pretty soon because we'll put a project together, very likely with a terminus point of a bitumen pipeline somewhere on the northwest BC coast, very likely Port of Prince Rupert.
And we'll see what kind of reception that gets and whether it's going to be on the list and be fast-tracked.
Because it clearly would be a project in the national interest.
In fact, I don't think that there would be any project that would generate as substantial amount of revenue for not only our province, but also for the country as a million barrel per day pipeline that would take our product to new markets in Asia, particularly Japan and Korea and others.
It just seems to me to be such a no-brainer.
But we've got a little bit of work to do on our end, and then we'll see how the federal government responds.
I want to be good faith in my approach to the new prime minister.
Obviously, I'm a partisan opponent of him and I'm a skeptic.
But if he actually is taking steps toward Alberta, I don't want to ignore that.
What's on my mind, though, Premier, is that so many of the people around Mark Carney are the Trudeau crew and not just any of them.
Gerald Butts, for example, who was the architect of, in fact, before he worked for Trudeau, he worked for anti-oil lobby groups.
He's at the Eurasia group, which was where Mark Carney's wife works, where Evan Solomon, the new cabinet minister, works.
So I feel like you've got a new front man, but a lot of the people behind him are the same.
Stephen Gilbo is still in cabinet, etc.
Are the men, the men behind the man, the people behind Mark Carney, what are they like to deal with?
Can you trust that there is movement or is it the same old crew?
The thing about liberals, which I think we on the conservative side of the spectrum find frustrating, is how they can pivot 180 degrees on every issue.
I think the one thing that they feel is the existential threat of defeat.
And they felt that.
We were talking six months ago about the potential for a complete wipeout of the liberals.
And that's probably, this may go down as one of the biggest pivots in political history.
But I think that there's a recognition that the pathway of the Stephen Guibots and the Gerald Butzes of the world not only led to an affordability crisis, but also led to an electoral crisis.
And so the question that they have to ask themselves is: can they tinker around the edges and get away with it?
I don't think so.
I think the election results were the way they were because they stole all of the conservatives' platform.
And the conservatives' platform was very much energy superpower, being an economic superpower in the world on all fronts, getting new markets.
Like this was the conservative talking point.
And I think that the liberals should be mindful.
That's what they got elected on.
And now they have to deliver.
And if they don't, Canadians gave them a mandate that's got a little asterisk on it, right?
They didn't give them a full mandate of a majority government.
So if they don't deliver, I suspect we'll be in an election very soon.
And then we might end up with a different outcome.
So I still think it's existential for them.
If they want to win, they've got to do what the people want.
And what the people want right now is they want us to trade more with each other, trade more with the world, and develop resources that have been kept in the ground for far too long because of bad policy.
That's a very interesting observation.
I think you're right.
Liberals above all else want to win.
It would be interesting if oil was the path.
I want to play a very short clip.
It's just eight seconds.
This is Prime Minister Carney using a term I actually had not heard before.
Here, let's just play the clip and I'd like your reaction to it.
Take a look.
Now, within the broader context of national interest, the interest is in, as mentioned in the press release, decarbonized barrels.
So working alongside forms of decarbonized oil.
On the one hand, that sounds like dehydrated water.
There's no such thing.
But maybe he means ethical oil.
Maybe he means oil that somehow politically finesses things.
What on earth does he mean by decarbonized oil?
There's a couple of ways that you can have a lower emissions barrel when you're doing the production.
So on the production end of oil, they use a lot of natural gas to do the steam-assisted gravity drainage.
And there's also a lot of traditional fossil fuels that are used in the production.
Our oil sands operations produce about 67 megatons of emissions.
And the Pathways Group, that includes CNRL, Is Novus, and Suncor, Meg, Imperial, they have come up with a proposal for how they would reduce those emissions pretty well to zero through, first of all, a carbon capture utilization and storage pipeline.
Second of all, through technologies that bring in low-emissions electricity, whether it's small modular nuclear or having interties with our friends in BC and Manitoba to bring in hydroelectric or direct air capture to get the last mile.
So that's what the Pathways project has proposed.
Now, of course, the Prime Minister means what you're saying is best practices, but you're still getting the oil sands out.
Is that what the Prime Minister means, or is he using some tricky word that actually means no oil will be pumped?
No, I think he means that it's all I called it the grand bargain, but it is let's do them in parallel.
Let's get a new million barrel a day bitumen pipeline to the coast so we can get new markets.
And then let's also work on the Pathways project to be able to decarbonize that oil.
And so that's one pathway.
I can also tell you one of the other things that I've been talking about since I got elected, and this is allowed under the Paris Agreement, is we should be able to use our technology to reduce emissions in other jurisdictions.
So for instance, if we displace 20% of China's coal plants, that would be the equivalent of offsetting 100% of Canada's emissions.
So those are the kind of things that we need to do more of as well, because if it truly is a global market and a global problem, and we care about global emissions, then we should be worried about the guys who are responsible for 50 and 60 and 80% of the emissions and not just the country that's responsible for 1.5% of the emissions.
We actually have a lot of technology that can be applied to the development of coal and wood and dung and using natural gas instead that can have a big impact on all types of emissions, not just CO2, but particulate matter as well.
And that should be something the world would embrace and it should be something this prime minister should embrace.
Displacing China's Coal Plants00:04:18
Well, maybe I'll stop making fun of the phrase decarbonized oil then.
I thought it was a carney trick.
I have one last question for you.
I know you've got to run really quickly.
I see that British Columbia Premier David Eby is talking about blocking a pipeline to the coast.
And I fear that Kearney will defer to him just like he defers to Quebec politicians who are anti-oil.
That's not very break down the barriers-ish of EB.
And God forbid, Alberta were to retaliate in kind by stopping BC shipping things by rail or highway across Alberta.
I mean, it's bizarre even to contemplate.
What is the prospect of that unpopular, discredited, desperate, ideological premier stopping an entire national project because he's having a bit of a fit?
What's the latest there?
Am I too skeptical, or is that guy trying to blow up the whole country?
Well, we're either going to be Team Canada or we aren't.
And Team Canada doesn't mean everybody gets their product to market except Alberta.
Team Canada doesn't mean that we support mining and development of all proposals except bitumen.
That's not Team Canada.
Team Canada is that we support our neighbors in being able to build out the Port of Prince Rupert so that we can get doubling of the rail line, so that we can get pipelines of bitumen, natural gas, and liquids to the coast, so that we can get an export of all of our products.
We're an all of the above kind of province.
And there are obviously issues that have to be addressed.
We need a proponent.
We need to address some of the root environmental issues that come up because there always are when you're doing large linear projects.
And we need to ensure that there is Indigenous ownership.
But I feel like if we do all of those things, demonstrate the national interest, then we'll be able to get approval.
I will say that previous BC premiers didn't approve coastal gasoline.
Previous BC premiers didn't approve Trans Mountain, and they happened anyway.
And so I would say that if we can make this strong case, that I'm pretty confident that we'll have the people on our side and we'll be able to get those projects built.
I only have 60 more seconds with you, so let me make it a really short one.
And maybe it's too early to say, but so far, based on your dealings with the federal liberals, how would you rate them on a scale of one to 10 for listening and working constructively with Alberta?
Give them a report card.
Hard for me to put it.
I mean, the words are nice.
The phone calls are nice.
The fact that I can text the prime minister and he responds is nice.
The fact that he has had a number of meetings, not only with me one-on-one, but also as a group with first ministers already this early in his tenure, that is a sea change from the previous prime minister.
And I do feel like he is genuinely interested in trying to find those projects of national interest.
I think we'll know once the project list is assembled.
I've seen some of the wish lists of the different premiers.
There's about 90 different projects all of the premiers would like to see go ahead.
And I think we'll be able to gauge that based on what he chooses.
Because remember, we want to choose projects that are going to result in GDP growth, in economic growth, in growth in tax revenue.
So if all it contains is a bunch of projects that, you know, public sector transit or highway projects, those may be important, but that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about mines, we're talking about minerals, and we're talking about new markets.
And so that's what I'm going to wait and see.
Then I'll give you a firm number when I see that list.
Sure.
I don't know why the prime minister would have a say or the government would have a say on any of those things, frankly, if they're in the private sector.
I don't think we need the prime minister to be the picker and chooser.
He's not running BlackRock, but to Brookfield anymore.
He's not running an investment firm anymore.
He should get out of the way and let all the above go.
But that's a topic for another day.
Premier Smith, thanks for spending so much time with us.
Keep up the fight.
It's great to see you again.
Yeah, you bet.
Talk to you again.
All right, there it is.
Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta.
Stay with us.
Cashing In On Control00:07:28
more ahead yesterday i showed you bill c2 It's 140 pages long, but the craziest part is the banning, the criminalization of accepting cash, even if you're a church, even if you're a charity.
Here's my little campaign video that we launched today.
Buried deep within Mark Carney's 140-page bill about border security is a provision that's got nothing to do with border security at all.
It's a plan to make it illegal to use cash to conduct business over $10,000.
Here is the exact text from section 136 of Bill C2.
Let me read it to you.
Every person or entity that is engaged in a business, a profession, or the solicitation of charitable financial donations from the public commits an offense if the person or entity accepts a cash payment, donation, or deposit of $10,000 or more in a single transaction or in a prescribed series of related transactions that total $10,000 or more.
I think that's pretty plain English.
They just sneaked this into the border bill.
You can see it's got nothing to do with borders at all.
It's got nothing to do with criminals at all.
In fact, it specifically says that this applies to businesses and doctors and lawyers and other professions.
It even applies to charities.
What on earth is going on?
Why are those groups banned from accepting cash more than $10,000?
Like it's an offense now.
What's going on here?
Well, you got to remember that Mark Carney is the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
And for years, those central banks have been looking jealously at Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency because they can't control those.
So central bankers have invented something called CBDCs, central bank digital currencies.
The idea would be a government cryptocurrency that the government would issue.
It would let the government track how you spend and receive money.
But the real power is what smart money, as they call it, can do.
It can literally be turned off with a kind of kill switch.
For example, CBDCs could be programmed not to let you buy things the government disapproves of, whether it's lawful firearms or political donations to groups the government doesn't like, like the truckers, or even things the government says have too much carbon in them, like a tank of gas or eating a steak.
The Bank of Canada proudly says on their own website, and I quote, we've been exploring a digital form of the Canadian dollar, also known as a central bank digital currency, CBDC, to be ready in case it is needed in the future.
C2, the new bill by Carney, is obviously paving the way for this.
Carney is making it illegal for even churches and even doctors and other upstanding citizens to accept cash.
This is clearly not about cracking down on bad guys.
It's about cracking down on cash itself and the privacy and freedom that cash gives to citizens.
We got to stop this.
We're already tracked enough by our use of credit cards, but that's a choice we can each make by banning cash and pushing us towards a trackable CBDC currency.
Mark Carney's liberals seek to make every aspect of our lives their business.
It's not.
Just think of what they would have done to the trucker convoy: turning off their ability to buy fuel, tracking everyone who gave the truckers even $10.
It is a total spy state they're bringing in.
Let's stop this madness.
Sign our petition at don'tkillcash.com.
That's don'tkillcash.com.
I tell you, once it's gone, we will never get it back.
Look, do me a favor, I don't think most people have heard about this because the bill was only introduced in parliament a few days ago.
Please share this petition with your friends and family and make sure you sign it yourself at don'tkillcash.com and we'll give you updates on it.
Stop and think of all the times you pay for things during the day, whether it's, I don't know, a drive-through restaurant or a video on the internet.
Now imagine if the government could see all of that or worse, stop any of that, any of those transactions in your life.
That's why they want to kill cash.
Go to don'tkillcash.com.
A subscriber wrote about my monologue, Anthony Salati said, sounds like a page out of George Orwell's 1984.
You know, George Orwell was so pressing.
And by the way, Rebel News has republished George Orwell.
Not a word added, not a word taken away.
I have a little foreword in the book, but the manuscript itself is the original.
It's a beautiful, illustrated book.
I really recommend you look at it.
If you don't have a copy yet, go to buy1984.com.
Orwell foresaw so many things.
Telescreens that you don't watch.
Well, you watch them, but they also watch you.
But the total panopticon, the total surveillance state, I don't think that even Orwell could imagine how deep it's gone.
Maybe he would.
I wish he or someone like him were around to give us advice.
On my monologue, a comment from Rumble keep telling the truth says, This is not the candid I grew up in.
I personally never had a problem with Jewish people and to have people who bring businesses, Sam, the record man Sneiderman, and supply jobs and give away turkeys at Christmas, Honest Ed Mervish.
I think most people would say these people are a blessing to society, wouldn't you?
Well, I think, I mean, Jews, I'm a Jew myself.
I think there's a movie by Woody Allen called Zelig, and I think it was Woody Allen's way of trying to show that Jews go to great lengths to try and fit in where they are because Jews were exiled from Israel and have been guests in other nations.
And I think that you can see a kind of Jew who loves to be a part of the nation they're in.
I mean, who wrote God Bless America?
Do you know?
Do you know who wrote White Christmas?
It was a Jew named Irving Berlin, who loved America so much because he was kicked out of Russia, really.
That's the kind of Jew I want to be.
I want to be deeply Canadian.
My family came here in 1903 from Djnet Propetrovsk, now called Dnipro, in Ukraine.
I have no strong ties there.
My strong ties are here.
And what worries me is this new style of migrant brought here by the liberals in particular not just don't want to fit in, but they actually despise or hate the country that is so kind to them.
Jewish Love for Nation00:00:33
That is a diabolical thing.
Next letter from Mark.
It's about my interview with Mark Morano.
R1759 says Trudeau's post-nationalism in the next decade of decay will be Carney's net zeroism.
Well, we're going to find out.
Danielle Smith is keeping an open mind about her discussions with Mark Carney.
And so far, she says she has some hope.
We'll see how that goes in the months and years ahead.