Jeffrey Rath, constitutional lawyer and Alberta Prosperity Project co-founder, unveils a draft fiscal plan claiming independence could net Albertans $68–75B annually from Ottawa while eliminating GST and income taxes, slashing personal tax bills by up to $17,560. The plan projects $8.2T economic growth over 20 years via doubled oil/gas output (340B proven barrels) and reduced regulations, with a $1.4T Heritage Savings Trust Fund generating $50B+ yearly returns. Rath criticizes federal overreach—from Quebec’s May 27 monarchy break to emergency powers against protesters—and accuses Ottawa of prioritizing other provinces while stifling Alberta’s energy sector. With U.S. officials, including Trump allies, backing sovereignty for security and economic gains, Rath argues independence would end bureaucratic "privileges" and unlock prosperity, contrasting it with federal policies he calls oppressive. [Automatically generated summary]
Keep our money, control our future, maybe even leave Canada.
Jeffrey Rath from the Alberta Prosperity Project joins me tonight to talk about sovereignty, separation, and his bold plan to make it happen.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
What if Alberta could afford to ditch Ottawa, slash your taxes, boost pensions, and still run a massive surplus?
That's exactly what a new draft fiscal plan from the Alberta Prosperity Project lays out.
The report shows that if Alberta kept the $68 to $75 billion it sends to Ottawa every year, the province could fully fund every federal service from defense to pensions to border control and still pocket a surplus of $48 billion a year.
How big is that surplus?
Big enough to eliminate the GST and provincial income taxes.
In fact, the plan modeled a 29% to 46% personal tax cut, dropping the average Albertans' total tax bill by up to $17,560 per year.
This isn't just short-term fiscal fantasy.
If Alberta went all in on growth, doubling oil and gas output and cutting red tape, the province's total economic activity could balloon by 8.2 trillion over 20 years, and the Heritage Savings Trust Fund could swell to $1.4 trillion, generating more than $50 billion more per year in returns alone.
Joining me now to break down the numbers, the risks and the opportunity of a sovereign Alberta is Constitutional Lawyer and APP co-founder Jeffrey Rath in an interview we recorded yesterday morning.
Suing Governments for Independence00:02:57
Take a listen.
So joining me now is constitutional lawyer and co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, Jeffrey Rath.
Jeff, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Big news from our friends at the APP over the last week or so.
But before I get into what you're up to these days, give us a little bit about who and what you are.
If people are just meeting you for the first time, I know you've had some great accomplishments over the last little bit.
So tell us about those.
Yeah, sure.
I'm a constitutional lawyer, which is just a fancy way for saying that I sue governments for a living.
So I spent 34 years suing the government of Canada, suing the government of Alberta, government of Manitoba, government of the Northwest Territories, government of British Columbia, you know, on behalf of citizens in those jurisdictions, Ontario, you know, citizens in those jurisdictions whose rights have been violated by those governments.
So, you know, it was unsurprising then, given my skill set, that I would be involved during the pandemic, suing the Alberta government and the communists in Jason Kenney's cabinet, who thought it was appropriate to tell Albertans how many friends They were allowed to have to shut down our high schools while leaving the bars, casinos, and strip clubs open so our 18-year-old kids couldn't go to school, but they could go to the bars, casinos, and strip clubs.
I guess this is Jason Kenney's idea of higher education or grooming, I'm not sure which, but you know, something along those lines.
But anyway, that's kind of who I am and what I am.
I succeeded actually in having every single order issued by Dana Hinshaw and Jason Kenney through the currency of the pandemic in Alberta declared ultra-virus or illegal.
So now we're undertaking two massive class action lawsuits on the basis of all the illegal orders that were issued by the Kenny government on behalf of all the Alberta business owners that were illegally shut down during COVID, and then on behalf of all of the poor people that were horribly vaccine injured because all choices were taken away from them with regard to vaccines.
Dina Hinshaw, Teresa Tam, Bonnie Henry, and others, you know, and their committee of public safety basically getting together weekly to figure out how they were going to lie to Canadians, you know, about this quote-unquote, how safe and effective the vaccines were, you know, while hiding and lying about any real scientific evidence that demonstrated that the vaccines were neither safe or effective and should not have been rolled out in the way they were, especially to pregnant women and children, you know, etc., etc.
So anyway, that's kind of, you know, in a nutshell who I am, what I've been doing for the last 34 years of my life.
And now I'm involved with the Alberta Prosperity Project, and we just finalized something we're very, very proud of.
Indigenous Rights and Resource Sharing00:14:37
This is a fully costed fiscal plan for an independent Alberta called the Value of Freedom, right?
This is, I guess, I think the one I'm holding up is an earlier draft.
This is probably a Mark 2.0 version now that I look at the title.
But it's still the value of freedom.
And what the fully costed plan demonstrates on the basis of public source documents, Statistics Canada, Fraser Institute, Government of Alberta, Government of Canada, etc., is that after independence, after fully costing and paying for Alberta military at 3% of GDP with a billion and a half dollars in startup costs, Department of External Affairs, Department of Immigration, and most importantly, deportation,
a Department of Customs and Border Patrol, all those types of things, airports, navigation, tripling the spend on Indigenous people in the province of Alberta through constitutionalized resource revenue sharing to lift the Indigenous people of Alberta out of the poverty that Canada has left them in for 150 years.
After paying for all of that, the fiscal plan that we published demonstrates that we're going to have between approximately a $30 to $50 billion a year annual fiscal capacity surplus, which could be applied to 30 to 50% tax cuts in year one.
So we're very excited about it.
The other thing that I wanted to note for people to go, oh, this is all pie in the sky, and these numbers are ridiculous and things can't be that good.
This is too good to be true, you know, all that nonsense.
The funniest thing about this document, when we published it, we published it on the basis of last year's Alberta budget numbers, which showed a $6.5 billion deficit.
So this year, they posted an $8.5 billion surplus.
So if we'd waited a week before publishing the document, the fiscal capacity surplus of Alberta would have actually been $15 billion higher than is indicated in the plan that we published.
So obviously, you know, we're very excited about this document.
I'm urging everybody that's interested in Alberta freedom and the value of freedom to go to albertaprosperity.project.com and download the document.
We have a copy of it available free online.
And then we're actually also selling hard copies of these documents at APP events to help defray the printing costs and for fundraising purposes.
And copies will be available for sale at APP events around the project of the province very soon.
We just have to, we sold out the last time.
I took several boxes of them into a 600-person APP event in Airdrie and we sold out in about five minutes.
So anyway, we're very excited about this.
Everybody that reads it is very excited about this.
I gave a presentation on this to a United Conservative Party of Alberta town hall called The Courage to Listen.
And the president of the party was there.
The chief financial officer of the party was there.
Several MLAs were there.
You know, constituency association presidents, members of the party had packed this haul out in Calgary.
And one of the things that I said was that after reading this document and understanding how much better off Alberta is going to be after independence, I declare on the basis of the standard of a fiduciary of Canadian law, which is that of a reasonably prudent person of business managing their own affairs.
That's the test of Canadian law.
That any elected MLA, MLA, or cabinet minister or premier that does not embrace this plan and start pursuing Alberta independence on the basis of an almost immediate $30 to $50 billion a year fiscal capacity surplus is violating their fiduciary obligations to the Alberta voters.
And I want all of them to listen to that.
And I want Danielle Smith to internalize the fact that the day for all of the Teen Canada pom-pom cheering stuff is over.
And that unless she embraces Alberta independence on the basis of a fully costed, fully costed fiscal plan for a sovereign and independent Alberta, that she's violating her fiduciary obligations to the voters that elected her.
You know, it's funny to see the people on the other side say, well, you could never do this.
You haven't thought of everything.
But I feel like that's APP's role in all of this, is to actually think of everything and then think of the answers.
You know, Corey Morgan has been great on this issue too, where, you know, he says, for people who misunderstand, Indigenous people don't have a veto over whether or not this province can stay or go.
They have a vote just like the rest of us.
And we will need to think about what to do with Indigenous reserves.
And APP has said, we'll increase your funding threefold.
Now tell us why you should stay in Canada, which doesn't provide you clean drinking water.
Yeah, well, and that's my message for the chiefs of Alberta is I don't understand other than, you know, all of the lawyers and consultants around them.
And believe me, I mean, I still work for First Nations, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, et cetera, and First Nations people.
I mean, I understand who some of these consultants or lawyers are in and around them that are horrified by this plan.
And by and large, these lawyers are all left-wing NDP adjacent or NDP-affiliated lawyers, you know, like Orlo, Kelly, and who's another one?
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
I don't need to start naming them all.
But I mean, these lawyers, you know, like some of them were involved in actually bringing applications on behalf of the Alberta unions to remask our children, right?
Can imagine that when Jason Kenney said, Okay, we're done with all of this foolishness, pandemic's over, everybody's free to go, whatever.
Some of these lawyers that are representing indigenous communities and screaming and yelling about how horrible Alberta independence will be, literally, we're bringing applications in court to remask our children, right?
So, you know, this is the type of people that we're talking about that are giving advice to the chiefs about how horrible independence is going to be.
So, of course, you know, my question for the chiefs is: what part of you know, continuing to send 15 billion dollars a year to Quebec, as opposed to keeping that money in Alberta to help lift your people out of poverty is such a horrible thing.
I mean, we're literally talking about constitutionalized resource revenue sharing, which is something that I know that the chiefs and councils of Alberta have been demanding for years.
That can be fully costed, fully constitutionalized, built into a plan for a you know, for a fiscal for a free Alberta where communities, you know, are take part in the wealth of this province, where they are literally being provided a share of the wealth that comes from their lands on a going-forward basis.
I mean, I'm looking forward to having a debate with Mr. Nenshi.
It's like, Mr. Nenshi, why are you so against Alberta independence?
Do you hate Indigenous people?
Are you a racist?
You know, I mean, seriously, that's what it comes down to.
I mean, the people that oppose Alberta independence and the fiscal capacity that this creates, you know, as far as I'm concerned, must hate Indigenous people in Alberta because they don't want them to succeed and they don't want them to be financially independent.
Yeah, they're this.
It's a really interesting dichotomy if you think about it.
For sure.
They'd rather give that money to Quebec.
They want $15 billion a year to go to Quebec and they don't want any of that money coming back to Alberta for Alberta's Indigenous people.
What does that tell you about them?
Right.
And these are the exact same people who will agree with the statements of our prior prime minister, who accused Canada of being some sort of genocidal state, now still insisting that our Indigenous people stay within the framework of the Laurentian genocidal state.
It's incongruous.
Oh, it's completely incongruous.
I mean, I've been fighting the government of Canada on behalf of Indigenous people my entire career as a lawyer.
I mean, I've won decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada, you know, including the McCasuke Cree decision, which was one of the most far-reaching treaty rights decisions in the history of Canada.
In fact, Nigel Banks, a law professor at the University of Calgary, has described the Miccasoo case that I won 9-0 as lead counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada as being one of the most important treaty and Aboriginal rights cases since the St. Catharines Millings decision in the 19th century.
So I didn't wake up one morning and go, oh, wow, I'm going to, you know, all of a sudden decide that I'm going to undo my life's work, right?
The reason that I am doing this is that I firmly believe that an independent Alberta that recognizes the sovereignty and independence of Alberta's Indigenous nations and getting them out from underneath the paternalism of the entire Indian Act, Indian affairs structure, they can change its name, but they haven't changed its function.
I mean, basically, the federal government exists to A, you know, limit the number of First Nations people in this country to control the Indian Register, which is a form of legislative genocide.
And B, you know, basically wants to manage them to death by not fulfilling all of the promises that they made in the treaties as treaty promises.
So, you know, I don't understand why there should be any great love between the Indigenous people of Alberta and the federal government who's been screwing them over and over and over and over again, you know, for over a century.
Yeah, it wouldn't be.
So, I mean, that's probably all we need to say on that subject this morning, but there's a lot of other things to talk about.
But I just, I'm glad that you gave me the opportunity to talk about that.
For sure.
It's such a huge issue.
And it's the one thing that the other side loves to hammer on is Indigenous people, Indigenous people.
And, you know, when I speak to my friend Robbie Picard from Oil Sand Strong, who does so much work with Indigenous oil and gas, the $500 billion worth of blocked and canceled projects, many of them, many of them, are right in Indigenous communities where Indigenous people would have employment in their own community.
And those are being blocked by the paternalist gatekeepers, to use a polyev word.
Well, or by terrorists or by terrorists funded by left-wing organizations out of the United States or wherever.
I mean, that's what, you know, that attack on that pipeline camp right in and around the time of the Freedom Convoy.
I mean, they declared the Emergencies Act over a bunch of peaceful protesters.
But everybody needs to know.
JTF2 was in part established to provide, that Joint Task Force 2, our counterterrorism unit, was established to provide rapid response to acts of industrial sabotage against national projects.
That pipeline was a national project.
You think Trudeau deployed JTF2 to track down the 80 or so people that were involved in destroying that pipeline camp?
Of course not.
He's more interested in trampling little old ladies, you know, little old Indigenous ladies with horses in the streets because they dared to come to Ottawa to embarrass him over his foolish policies.
Yeah.
You know, and again, I think that's, you know, when you talk about Alberta independence, I mean, that's what's fueling this for a lot of us, right?
I mean, you know, everybody says, oh, we have to be nostalgic for Canada.
Don't you love Canada?
Oh, Canada, you know, blah, blah, blah.
It's like Canada ceased being Canada the day that Trudeau declared war on us by invoking the Emergencies Act, you know, simply because he didn't want to hear the voices of people that disagreed with him.
After discussing with cabinet and caucus, after consultation with premiers from all provinces and territories, after speaking with opposition leaders, the federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations.
Right?
So, you know, there's nothing for me to be nostalgic about Canada for.
And, you know, and as far as I'm concerned, the only way forward and the only way to save Canada and the only way to actually reopen the Canadian Constitution, and keep in mind, I've been a constitutional lawyer for 34 years, you know, is effectively to pull out one of the Jenga blocks, you know, that is, you know, the Jenga Tower of Canada, in this case, Alberta, to reopen the Canadian Constitution.
We'll be doing the rest of the country a huge favor by taking Alberta out of Canada.
There's no doubt about it.
Because then they're going to have to, you know, they're going to have to, you know, they're going to have to look at the whole Constitution again.
The other thing, too, that some of your viewers may not know, on May 27th, coincidentally, it was my birthday, Quebec gave the rest of the country a huge gift.
And that was that Quebec actually took itself out of the Constitution of Canada.
I don't know whether you followed this or not, but the Legislative Assembly of Quebec unilaterally, unanimously declared that it had abolished all ties with the British monarchy, right?
And they actually hand-delivered this resolution to King Charles when he was in town giving Kearney's little theatrical throne speech in Ottawa.
So what that means is Quebec is no longer part of the constitutional order of Canada.
They have abolished their ties with the monarchy.
It fundamentally takes them outside of the British North America Act or the Constitution Act 1867, as it's now called, which says that Canada is to have a government similar in principle to the government of the United Kingdom, which includes the monarchy, right?
So Quebec's no longer part of the constitutional order of Canada.
So why are we continuing to send them transfer payments?
Why are we continuing to worry about what their views are within the amending formula to the Constitution?
They're not part of the Constitution anymore.
Phony Referendum Question00:15:28
So, you know, again, you know, this is for down the road.
And once Alberta votes itself out of Canada, you know, we're really not voting ourselves out of a Canada, out of a country that even exists anymore, which is something that, you know, something else that I'd like people to internalize.
So.
Yeah, I mean, moreover, to your point about maybe saving Canada from itself by forcing them to do something, maybe Quebec could actually develop their Utica Shale gas resources instead of just relying on transfer payments from Alberta.
Maybe they'll do something with the resources that they have when they don't have to siphon money out of Alberta.
Now, I want to ask you about the referendum question, because you guys were first out of the gate with the referendum question, and now the rules for referendum have been changed.
Tell us about your question.
Tell us what comes next.
Okay, well, our question, quite simply, is: do you agree that Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province of Canada, right?
Couldn't be any clearer than that.
The reason the question is framed that way is that it's a constitutional question that complies strictly with section one, sub three of the Clarity Act, okay?
Which says that in order for a referendum question on secession to be clear, it has to both state that the province wishes to cease being a province of Canada and wishes to become an independent country.
So our province, you know, covered our province, our question covers off both of those points as required by the Clarity Act.
And, you know, we'll be submitting that question in fairly short order to our member of parliament to be tabled, you know, to a member of parliament to be tabled in Parliament in Ottawa.
So our question is a constitutional question, complies with the requirements of the Clarity Act.
As some people may know, there's a kind of a weird political actor running around Alberta by the name of Thomas Lukasak, Lukasic, something like that, whatever.
Thomas Mukasic, just won't go.
There we go.
So it's not Lukasak.
That's what I thought.
How I thought of it.
Do you know what?
Say his name wrong.
I don't care.
I'm sure you're taking it.
But anyway, Little Tommy, let's just call him Little Tommy.
Yeah.
Has filed a phony petition that says, do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?
And of course, you know, I was laughing with my good friend Keith Wilson recently because Keith said, yeah, I want to submit a referendum question.
And he says, my question is going to be, do you agree that Alberta should still be called Alberta?
Right?
It basically has the same legal effect as Little Tommy's question.
And as far as it goes, that's the problem with Little Tommy's program, right?
It's a phony question that basically seeks to maintain the status quo.
Obviously, Elections Alberta has not recognized it as a constitutional question.
My understanding is that they've recognized it as a non-binding policy question, right?
Which has little or no effect from a legal perspective.
And in fact, because it's a non-binding policy question, various legislative committees in the government of Alberta could actually refuse to put it on a ballot because it's completely meaningless in the broader scheme of things.
But what I think little Tommy and his little pals that I think they call themselves Forever Canada, so are trying to do is their interpretation of the, and I think it's the old act that they were looking at, not the new act, but their interpretation is if they bring a fail a question and they fail on the question to get the signatures that they require, they think that that will then prevent any question on that subject from ever being asked again for the next five years.
So that's his whole plan is to have this phony referendum question.
They're going to send around phony canvassers.
They're going to make an attempt to get the 300,000 signatures they require.
And then when they fail, they're going to say that a real question on whether or not Alberta should be an independent country and cease to be a province of Canada will not be able to proceed for another five years.
So it's just a game that they're playing.
It's a silly game.
It's a distraction.
It's exactly what you'd expect from Little Tommy.
I mean, he doesn't like being out of the public eye.
When he's not doing that now, apparently he's very busy trying to bring Sharia law to Alberta.
I don't know if you're aware of that, but he's started a company to provide quote-unquote halal mortgages and has been lobbying the Alberta government to bring, you know, to bring Sharia law into Alberta by statute so that they can have these so-called halal mortgages that comply with Sharia law.
I mean, that's what he does in his spare time.
So who knows?
I mean, maybe the reason little Tommy thinks that we need to keep Alberta in Canada is that they're more likely to be able to invoke Sharia law in Alberta if we're part of Canada as opposed to not.
I don't know what his motivations are, but quite frankly, I think it's pretty silly.
I mean, the guy grew up in a communist country, comes to Canada and basically loves the fact that Canada has become a communist country and he wants to make sure that his fellow Albertans continue to live under communist rule in Alberta, just like he grew up when he was a little boy.
I mean, the whole, you know, the whole thing, quite frankly, is, you know, I think is disgusting.
And, you know, we don't see it as being a real issue or problem for us going forward other than it's a nuisance and it's generated, you know, it's generated discussion, you know, in and around in and around the issue, right?
I guess we had a press conference recently and the CBC reporter, that's all she wanted to do was aggressively ask questions about little Tommy's petition.
And of course, when we pointed out to her.
Yeah, when we pointed out to her as well, that the Elections Alberta Act, a new act, specifically contemplates, you know, being able to have more than one citizens initiative petition question going at a time and pointed out that our question was substantially different than little Tommy's, even though he's tried to make it so that it's ostensibly on the same subject when it's not.
Our petition is for Alberta to become a country.
So remain in Canada has nothing to do with whether we become a country or not.
So anyway, we're dealing with it.
It's just, you know, it's more of an irritant than anything else.
And obviously there's a lot of, a lot of people just wish that little Tommy would move back to Poland or some other communist country where he feels more comfortable as opposed to staying in Alberta.
But that's where we're at.
Honestly, I hope Thomas Lukazic never shuts up because he is a reminder of the old progressive conservatives that drifted so far left that they delivered us to the NDP for four years and destroyed a generation of investment in Alberta.
He was one of the architects of that.
And I'm glad that he's reminding people to think about whether or not under the current deal, a 2025 Alberta would actually join Canadian Confederation.
That's the flip side of his little nuisance question.
And I think it's just going to blow up in his face.
Well, who in their right mind, like if, you know, if Alberta was completely independent, you know, we had the lowest taxes and lowest regulatory burden of any jurisdiction in North America, you know, our economy was thriving.
You know, everybody here was, you know, lived in a world where we didn't have to pay any income tax anymore.
You know, and along came Canada and said, hey, we'd like you to join our country.
You know, and the conditions are over half of your income is now going to go towards all kinds of taxes that we impose.
We're going to arbitrarily impose regulations on you whenever we want, including shutting down your industry, shutting down your businesses, taking away property that you own, including your firearms, taxing the equity in your houses, destroying your children by legalizing drugs that shouldn't be legalized on any planet, et cetera, et cetera, right?
What would the answer be?
It would be no.
It would be hell no.
Like, are you silly?
Just run away.
Like, go away.
We want nothing to do with you.
You're stupid.
Right.
But I mean, so why do people want to stay in this country?
Like, it's, you know, quite frankly, you know, the upside, and that's the other thing with little Tommy is that, you know, you notice that he never talks about the benefits of staying in Canada, right?
It's just, oh, well, I'm loyal.
I'm loyal.
Well, you know what?
I have a standard poodle and my standard poodle is really loyal too, but I don't want her running the freaking, I don't want my dog running the country.
You know, what's loyalty?
You know, like that's so what?
You know, loyal to what?
Loyal to, you know, people that declare the War Measures Act.
It's just loyal to people that foolishly think that taxing us to death is going to change the weather?
You know, loyal to people that, you know, start phony trade wars with our largest trading partner.
And then when that doesn't go well for them, they're going to threaten to shut down Alberta oil, you know, like et cetera, et cetera.
Like, what loyalty do we owe, you know, this entity called Canada?
I mean, it's effectively become Canada Stan.
You know, it's not the country that was when we grew up or when I grew up.
And that's what we want to take Alberta back to.
We want to take Alberta back to those original Canadian values.
You know, we want to live in a country where we have low taxes, where we have low regulations, where the government stays the hell out of your life.
You know, not every time you turn around, some bureaucrat telling you how to live, when you could leave your home, you know, how much, you know, how much fuel you're allowed to burn, what kind of car you can drive.
I mean, what kind of, you know, like who wants to live in that country?
I don't want to live in that country.
You know, I do a lot of American media on this topic because, well, a lot of the journalists covering this are on the other side, giving a lot of time to Thomas Lukazic and not to, you know, the people who are serious thinkers on this issue.
And they always start by saying, Canada's Texas wants to leave Canada.
And I always have to stop and correct them because I want to put it into context.
Just on the oil issue, Texas has about 20 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Canada, or sorry, Alberta, between oil sands and conventional, we've got 340 billion barrels of proven reserves and about 1.6 trillion barrels if we can ever figure out how to get the rest of it out of the ground.
Our natural gas and that's not even including carbon and bitumen, you know, which I understand if technology is being developed to release.
Almost triple our proven oil reserves once they can release carbon and bitumen.
And then let's not forget.
And let's not forget, and let's not forget about the Montany field that has just been reassessed at 400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
I mean, hell, we don't even have to export natural gas.
We can build a giant cogen plant up near Grand Prairie that could power one of the largest AI and data hubs in the world for a thousand years or more on the you know on the amount of gas that's uh that's in that's going to be released from the Montenefield.
So, I mean, Alberta doesn't need anybody to prosper and to go forward.
Um, you know, we just need to keep doing our, you know, keep doing what we're doing.
Well, and then we have 800 years of clean burning coal under our feet that the feds won't let us use.
So when you explain that to Americans in that context, where you say, look, we're so much bigger.
We are so much wealthier.
We're not even taking into account food and lumber and beef and the coal we're not allowed to use, just on the oil issue.
We are not paid the respect we deserve within Confederation.
You look at this respect that is paid to Texas within the United States.
I mean, nothing's bigger than Texas, right?
But yet in Canada, Albertans were talked down and were so much bigger when it comes to export.
Well, land mass, we're almost as big as Texas.
Texas is, I think, very comparable.
Yeah, 200 and 265,000 square miles.
Alberta's like 255,000 square miles.
So I think we're only off by about 10,000 square miles.
We're twice the size of California.
We're not advocating joining the U.S., but if we were a U.S. state, we would be the third largest state after Alaska and Texas, and only by a small margin behind Texas.
And like you say, our oil reserves dwarf the oil reserves of Texas, and our gas reserves dwarf the gas reserves of the entire continental United States, just in Alberta.
So, you know, we're obviously, you know, obviously a very viable independent country, as you know, and I think a lot of other people know, you know, members of our group have gone down to Washington and we've met with American officials in the Trump administration at a very high level.
They're excited about Alberta independence.
They support Alberta independence.
And, you know, of course, you know, both from a national security perspective and a national energy security perspective.
I mean, the Americans, it's not in their national interest to have a Communist Party of China adjacent government in Ottawa arbitrarily capping Alberta oil and gas production, but you know, through either directly or through emissions caps, which are ridiculous.
And then, you know, I don't know if you saw it the other day.
Danielle Smith signed some stupid MOU with Doug Ford.
And it's like, you know, oh, yeah, we're going to, you know, Doug Ford supports pipelines.
Doug Ford would like more Alberta oil coming to Ontario refineries.
Ontario refineries?
Why the hell aren't we building Alberta refineries?
Why are we shipping oil by pipeline to Ontario to benefit the Ontario economy?
We need to be harnessing the wealth of Alberta and building refineries in Alberta instead of subsidizing battery plants, bug plant, battery plants and bug plants in Ontario, paying $40 billion for Trudeau's little electric chi-chu twain that he wanted to run between Montreal and Toronto or hydrogen plants in Newfoundland.
Why are we as Alberta taxpayers subsidizing those projects when we should be doubling or tripling our refinery capacity in this province through private public partnerships so that we don't have to ship oil by pipeline?
We can ship finished products like diesel and gasoline out of Alberta.
That's what Alberta needs to focus on.
You know, I think somebody might have showed Doug Ford where line five and line nine go.
Why Alberta Should Focus On Exports00:09:45
Because I remember at the beginning of the trade dispute with the Americans, Doug Ford was like, we've got to turn off oil to the United States.
We've got to really fight them.
We've got to really screw them.
And it's like, we will go to the full extent, depending how far this goes.
We will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State and over to Wisconsin.
I don't want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontarians and Canadians as a whole, since we're the largest province.
First of all, it's our oil.
We'll sell it.
Why?
Apparently, because the East needs all of our money.
But he didn't even think that turning off oil to the United States meant turning it off through line 9 and 5, which flow through the United States and backup issues.
Oh, I know.
It was just in favor of pipelines.
I've been making so much fun of them ever since, right?
And what I always say is there's little, you know, there's little Doug Ford jumping up and down and getting red in the face.
We're going to shut off American oil.
Hey, Doug, like line five, line nine.
You're shutting off Alberta oil.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's like Doug Ford was literally advocating what Ralph Klein was talking to me about years ago, which is letting the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.
And Doug Ford's.
Except he didn't know he was the Eastern bastard.
Doug Ford didn't realize he was the guy.
No, and even that idiot, Stéphane Gibot, didn't know that there were no east-to-west pipelines across Canada supplying Alberta oil directly to Ontario and Quebec.
He didn't know it went through the states either.
So he looked pretty foolish.
And then did you notice after little Dougie Ford jumped up and down, he's going to shut off Alberto oil, but when he's told he can't do that, he goes, okay, we're going to shut off Saskatchewan.
Potash.
Their crops will be withering in the fields.
American crops will be withering in the fields.
At no point did he say, hey, I'm going to teach the Americans a lesson on the integration of the U.S. automobile industry.
I'm going to shut down our parts plants for two weeks and bring all vehicle production in North America to a shuddering halt.
Never once did Doug Ford say anything that would threaten the interests of Ontarians.
But that's the whole problem with Confederation.
The entire country is run by the East for the benefit of the East, to the detriment of everybody in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.
They treat us like we're a colonized people, and we are colonies that are just meant to send money to them while they tell us what to do.
That's been the relationship since the start of Confederation.
The Maritimes, right?
Senate seats.
Nova Scotia, 10 Senate seats.
New Brunswick, 10 Senate seats.
PEI, four Senate seats.
Newfoundland, six Senate seats.
So you take all of the Maritimes combined.
They have half of the population of Alberta, but they have 30 Senate seats.
So five times the Senate seats of Alberta, who only has six Senate seats.
Think about that, right?
Supreme Court of Canada.
Ontario has three.
Quebec has three.
Maritimes has one.
The whole West, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have two seats on the Supreme Court.
So is it any wonder when we go to the Supreme Court on a division of powers issue, we get kicked in the teeth, right?
This entire country is run on behalf of Central Canada for their benefit and our detriment.
And, you know, people really need to internalize the value of freedom and understand how wealthy and how much better off we are going to be when we don't have to pay any more federal income tax.
We have no more federal regulations imposed on us at whim, you know, by some prime minister who wakes up in the middle of the night, you know, dreaming about how scared he is of firearms and he's going to take everybody's guns away or whatever the stupid idea is that comes out of Ottawa next, right?
You know, it's just time for everybody to internalize the fact that there is nothing that Danielle Smith can do by memorandum of understanding or agreement or that Mark Carney can promise Alberta that is more valuable to Albertans than just getting the hell out of Canada and no longer being subject to federal regulation or federal taxation.
You know, one fact that you said there really sort of jarred me, and it's the Senate seats for PEI.
To put that into context, PEI has the population of roughly Sherwood Park and Red Deer combined.
No, no, no, I think I just don't have Sherwood Park.
I think they have the population of Red Deer.
So it's like the equivalent of Red Deer having four Senate seats.
Well, I have just as of April 1st, 2025, the population of Prince Edward Island is 180,000.
I think Sherwood Park is at 80,000 plus the county.
And then Red Deer is at 100,000.
So I'll defer it.
I'll defer it.
I just was Googling it out of the corner of my mind.
I guess PEI's population has jumped in the last year or two because last time I looked at PEI, they were less than 150,000 people, but they still have four Senate seats.
Right.
Yeah, they have four Senate seats and they're this mid-sized Alberta cities, and you can't count Sherwood Park as a city, but and they get four Senate seats, which should just outrage people about the unfairness of Confederation.
Now, Jeff, I could talk to you and complain about Confederation all day long, but I know you have another interview and I also have another video to get to.
Tell people how they can learn more about the work the APP is doing because not only are you publishing these documents, but you're also holding town hall information sessions that are sold out all over the place.
Yeah, sure.
Go to AlbertaprosperityProject.com.
I'm going to be appearing, or I'll be speaking in Spruce Grove on the 10th and Fort Saskatchewan on the 11th.
It's all up on the website, albertaprosperity.com.
And there is a copy of the value of freedom there for everybody to download at no cost to yourselves.
And please read it because it shows that there is a very, very strong and beautiful future for all of us outside of Canada.
And just hear from me that the numbers are extremely conservative.
And on the basis of Alberta's last budget, our fiscal capacity surplus numbers are low by $15 billion.
So I'd like everybody to internalize that.
And thank you very much for having me on, Sheila.
It's always such a pleasure to talk to you.
And thank you very much.
Jeff, thanks so much for thinking about these things because, you know, a lot of people are dissatisfied with the state of Confederation, but you're actually providing some answers.
And at least then, however, the vote falls down, at least then people are well informed when they make their decision.
And I think that is an invaluable service that you folks at the Alberta Prosperity Project are providing.
Jeff, I will have you back on again very soon because I think that there's going to be a lot of news.
Yeah, no, we're moving forward.
Hey, no, and the other thing is in three weeks, we're going to be releasing An interim constitution for the province of Alberta.
So people can see that in an independent Alberta, we're actually going to have rights and not privileges that can be taken away by government bureaucrats at whim.
So, anyway, we're very excited about that as well.
We're working on that.
That'll be the next rollout.
And I'll look forward to talking to you about that as well.
So, thank you.
Perfect.
Put it on the calendar, Jeff.
We'll talk then.
Thank you.
You bet.
Thanks, Sheila.
All right, over and out.
Well, we've come to the portion of the show wherein I invite your viewer feedback because without you, not only is there no gun show, but there's no rebel news.
And I say that now more than ever because for the last few weeks, I've been relying on your emails and your letters and questions to me to help me put a show together because I've been so busy and my schedule has been so tight that I just haven't been able to book a guest.
And it is also the duldrums of summer where a lot of people are out doing summer holidays things and my usual guests.
And so they're not always available to me.
But this week I was able to bring in Jeffrey Rath on a very timely issue on his new fiscal plan for a free and independent Alberta.
So I'm grateful for that.
I'm grateful for his time.
And I'm glad, as much as I am grateful to read your viewer feedback, I'm sort of glad to get back into the swing of things.
So thank you, all of you, for bearing with me.
But that also means that we go back to your viewer feedback being in the last segment of the show.
And there are a few different ways where you can get your viewer feedback to me.
You can send it directly to me via email.
It's sheila at rebelnews.com.
Super easy.
Put gun show letters in the subject line.
I'll know why you're writing me.
And who knows, you might just see it read on air.
But also, if you are watching free clips of the show or even better, sharing the free clips of the show, because you folks are premium subscribers to your friends because they need to see it, encourage them to leave comments there because I want to know what people are thinking about what lives behind the paywall, right?
So do that.
Encourage them to leave comments, leave comments yourself.
It helps us get around the algorithm, but I also go and I read those comments.
I appreciate your feedback.
RCMP Forced Vaccinations00:07:05
We'll never take a penny from Mark Carney.
And so I need to evaluate what you think about the work that we're doing and the stories that we're covering and the people that we talk about.
So please do that for me.
And leaving those comments is totally free.
So in one of my, I think it was last week's letters segment, I received a letter from a former, sadly, RCMP officer.
And he had been forced out of the RCMP because of the vaccine mandate.
In fact, he had been placed on leave without pay.
So he went and got another job to support his family.
And then the RCMP brought him back and then basically strong-armed him into a resignation or he quit.
So I find this stuff horribly distressing because those are the kind of people we want in our public institutions.
They're people who with a strong moral code, who are above coercion.
Those are the people we want to put into positions of leadership in the military and the RCMP who have a strong sense of right and wrong and human rights.
And yet all those people were sort of forced out of the military and the RCMP because of the vaccine mandate.
And It makes me very sad and makes me very worried about our public institutions going forward.
You know, I know a lot of people took the vaccine against unemployment.
And I don't begrudge them that at all.
But I think people should have been given a choice, and many weren't.
And so, anyways, I read that letter on air.
It's like four or five minutes and responded to it.
And it was just sort of crushing what they put him through after what appears to be many, many years of loyal service to the RCMP and to Canadians.
And so I thought I would see what you guys were saying about that story because that story really bothered me.
It still bothers me.
I still think about it.
Judith Grimes, 174, writes, God bless you, Andrew.
Thank you for your years of service.
Sorry, you were treated like a criminal completely.
Willem Feather2655 says, We want people in leadership with a strong moral code.
Bingo.
Yes.
Yeah.
And we have people now who unquestioningly imposed on other people something which, at the end of the day, at the very least, was ineffective.
And at worst, for some, ended up being quite harmful.
Bonnie Peters, 8576, says, sounds like what happened to me when working in a long-term care facility was escorted out for non-compliance to a vaccine.
And Sharoon Line 532 says this happened to a lot of long-serving Canadian Forces members forced into becoming vets, all because they refused to get the jobs.
Some of those stories about what happened to those members of the Canadian forces are atrocious.
Pregnant members being coerced at their homes into getting the vaccine.
Like women who said, I'll get it.
Just let me deliver my baby.
And that wasn't good enough for the chain of command.
I know that Valor Legal is still pursuing a lawsuit against the federal government for what happened there.
You on UIOND, I guess, says unions are just as complicit in this.
We're not sticking up for the workers.
Never forget how they treated us in our very own country.
That is true.
A lot of people thought workers stood for workers, that thought unions stood for workers' rights, and they would take the side of the worker in a workplace dispute, but that is not what happened.
Many unions took the side of the government and the employer in contrary to their obligations to act on behalf of the worker.
And it just is proof positive to my point that many of these unions are just forced NDP clubs that you have to pay union dues into against your will.
They don't actually care about the worker.
They care about the politics of the NDP and the NDP.
We're very pro-vaccination, pro-control.
And if the rights of the worker ended up on the wrong side of the NDP union viewpoint, well, then they didn't help you at all.
at all.
Maple Hornet 416, and this will be the last one, says, it's bizarre that federally regulated government departments were not all consistent with regard to COVID mandate requirements, even though they all share the same overall policies.
This was true.
I work in a large federally regulated company in Canada, and through a carefully composed letter with scientific proof to my HR department, I was able to forego vaccination as long as I was tested once a week at the company.
Oddly, some friends of mine were also able to forego vaccination and were able to remain in the armed forces.
It probably had more to do with tyrannical bosses than overall policies.
For some people, a simple no was all they needed and they could remain in their jobs.
And others, the mere threat of refusing a vaccine could ensure a dismissal.
I remain unvaccinated to this day.
Yeah.
A lot of it was arbitrary.
I mean, all of it was arbitrary, hindsight being 2020, although people could thinking people could clearly see how crazy it was at the time.
Like if you went counterclockwise in the grocery store, you would catch the deadly black death and die.
Arbitrary Orders and Monsters00:01:48
But if you went clockwise with the arrows, you were safe.
If you sat down in the bar, you didn't need your mask.
If you stood up, the plague would get you.
So stupid.
Privacy didn't exist.
You had to tell your bartender your medical status before he poured you a Coors Light.
Like, it's just the stupidest thing.
And a lot of people saw it for what it was at the time.
A lot of people saw, well, vitamin D is one of the key drivers of human immunity, but they wanted to keep us all inside.
They locked up the National Park next door.
Just madness.
Anyways, yeah, it came down to whatever crazy person was your boss, basically.
And if you had a crazy person who was your boss, they would take this opportunity to seize the power they so thirsted for over your life.
And if you had a normal, reasonable person as your boss, they looked at you and said, okay, fine.
You have a vaccine exemption.
Perf.
None of my business.
We checked that box.
Let's carry on.
Those were the good people in the machinery, and we should appreciate them because they probably were working in very difficult conditions, those bosses.
But those other ones, you're monsters.
I hope you know it.
Maybe they will someday.
Anyways, I'm going to take every opportunity I can to remind them what monsters they were.
And I hope you do too.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
Actually, I don't know where I'll be, but I promise, as always, you'll have a show.