Keith Wilson critiques Alberta’s MOU with Mark Carney, calling it a hollow "grand bargain" that ignores equalization, federal spending, and carbon taxes while pushing 2040 pipeline deadlines—far too late for Albertans. At the UCP conference, boos greeted Premier Danielle Smith’s deal, with Jeffrey Rath demanding real solutions to debt, housing, and gun restrictions. Wilson warns Alberta’s oil sector may lose U.S. market share to Venezuela under Trump’s potential Maduro collapse, while federal overreach, like $30B Transmountain pipeline tolls, mirrors Soviet-style economic control. Bill 14’s retroactive Charter fix after Justice Feesby’s narrow ruling on independence petitions exposes judicial power grabs, with October 2026 referendums now the only path forward—if Albertans can overcome legal hurdles and gather 177,000 signatures by July. The episode suggests Canada’s courts may weaponize technicalities to block sovereignty, forcing a reckoning between democratic will and institutional resistance. [Automatically generated summary]
You may know him as the lawyer for the Freedom Convoy of Truckers, but he's also deeply involved in the Alberta independence movement.
We'll talk to him about the latest, including a dramatic court case and new legislation touching on an independence referendum.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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So please help us out tonight is Alberta independence going to be thwarted by judges.
It's December 5th, and this is the Ezra Levance Show.
shame on you you sensorious bug so much is happening in alberta Now, sometimes I think I oversample Alberta news because I'm from Alberta myself.
I feel like I'm sort of in exile here in Toronto.
But no, I think Alberta genuinely, objectively, is one of the newsiest provinces out there.
I mean, I know Ontario is larger, both in terms of population and economy, but proportionately, would you object to me saying that Alberta is the idea champion of the country economically, pound for pound, person per person?
It has a very high GDP because of the oil and gas industry.
It's the most free market of places, and it has something in the air.
I mean, think of all the political movements that have started in Alberta and all the political champions, whether it's Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, or going back to social credit, or even the NDP could accurately be said to have emerged from Alberta soil.
It is a laboratory for ideas.
And so we have to treat it seriously.
I think disproportionately.
I mean, yes, things are happening in British Columbia, and yes, they're happening in Quebec, but Alberta, I think, is the most interesting of provinces.
What do you think of that?
Well, as you know, last week I went to Alberta.
I went for two reasons.
First, I went to see the Memorandum of Understanding unveiled between Mark Carney and Danielle Smith.
Here's a quick clip of how that looked.
And that was so just over a week ago.
Gotta get this sign in and look up.
Okay, if you want to sign it, look up.
They will be able to tell if it's just a photo of him.
I think you've got a little thumbs up.
He reads his signatures.
Do you want to stand and do that?
Well, I was immediately skeptical.
As you know, Sheila Gonread and I put some questions to Premier Smith.
We're sympathetic to the Premier.
I've known her for quite a while, and I really think she's doing the right thing.
She's fighting for freedom.
She says it's a grand bargain to be done with Mark Carney.
Oh, that may be.
And in a bargain, in a compromise, you always have to put some water in your wine.
But in my questions, I was worried that Mark Carney gets all the goodies up front.
The increasing of the carbon tax and the proposed pipeline, well, if it comes at all, comes as late as 2040.
Here's my question to the Premier.
The first deadline in the MOU, if I'm reading it right, is April, where the duty is on Alberta to jack up carbon taxes.
And the last date in the MOU, if I'm reading it right, correct me if I'm not, is 2040.
That's when this pipeline, you know, that's sort of the end date.
It can't be any later than that.
In terms of building trust with the anti-oil liberals, they're asking Alberta to raise carbon taxes now for a promise of an oil pipeline years or even more than a decade in the future.
Does that really build trust?
Well, you have to start somewhere.
And one thing I would say is that we did have the Supreme Court of Canada rule on the federal government's ability to set a price on emissions.
So the Supreme Court has ruled on that.
It's part of the reason why we negotiated a stringency agreement that would have seen the carbon tax price go up to $170 a barrel by 2030.
We've demonstrated, and I think the Prime Minister agrees, that's too high too fast.
So that's why we understand that there was always going to be a negotiation around that.
We froze the carbon tax at $95 pending consultation with the industry and greater work with the Prime Minister.
But remember, Alberta was the first to have an industrial carbon price.
We implemented that in 2007.
It's generated revenues that allowed us to invest billions of dollars in new technologies, including carbon capture.
So there is a commitment on the part of the industry to have a carbon price, and we did do some consultation on that.
We're just glad that we have the means to manage it our way in Alberta under our tier program.
And you'll see, as of April 1st, and no, that wasn't a joke.
April 1st is going to be the date that we have an agreement on that front.
When it comes to the building of a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets to the BC Coast, if you read the MOU, those two things have to happen in tandem.
We have to see the Pathways project proceeding at the same time as an agreement to build that.
One is dependent on the other.
I don't know that the Prime Minister would have agreed to a new bitumen pipeline without Pathways, and we wouldn't have agreed to Pathways without a new bitumen pipeline.
So they are going to be staged.
They are going to go on together.
We've already had a meeting with Pathways about how we're going to do that.
That will require a trilateral negotiation as well.
But I'm very hopeful.
Since we have used carbon capture technology before for enhanced oil recovery, that's another part of this announcement is that CO2 will be able to be used for enhanced oil recovery, which should allow us to generate more revenue.
So I would say that you don't always get 100% of what you want, but we addressed seven out of the nine bad laws that I put on the table to, I think, what will be the satisfaction of Albertans.
And I think that this will allow us to see some substantial investments.
Well, a couple days later, the Alberta government had the convention of its party, the UCP, the United Conservative Party.
You might recall that for a while there, the Wild Rose Party broke off from the PCs, and the New Democrats shockingly came up the middle.
It was a huge conference, about 4,000 people.
Rebel News was there in force.
Shele Gunn Reed, Sid Fizard, Angelique Katoy.
We were there.
Lise Merle came in from Saskatchewan.
I want to show you a couple of clips from the Premier's speech.
She didn't just talk about things like oil and gas.
She talked also, I thought, interestingly, about immigration.
Take a look.
Alberta has had a history of healthy levels of primarily economic immigrants able to easily integrate into Alberta's economy and culture.
But that was upended by the last 10 years of what was effectively an open borders policy by Ottawa.
And Albertans of all ages, ethnicities, and immigration history have had quite enough.
We need an immigration policy that puts Albertans first.
And that is why our government will be taking primary control over our immigration system in the coming months and years ahead.
Using our constitutionally protected provincial rights, Alberta will return to a more stable number of primarily economic migrants so that newcomers come here to work and contribute as they have historically done, while Canadian citizens living in Alberta are given first priority to the jobs and the opportunities our economy creates.
Of course, one of her strongest points, I think supported by ordinary people, is to fight for women's places in bathrooms, in changing rooms, in sports, in prisons, things where transgender extremism is out of control.
That got some applause too.
He's taking a hands-on approach to ensuring the new teachers and EAs we are hiring are placed where they are needed most, whether that be in regular classrooms or special classrooms suited for children with complex needs.
Consent and Veto Rights00:12:45
And because I see the NDP and their union allies are now organizing against parental choice in education, let me be very clear.
Our government will continue to support and protect all options parents enjoy in the education system.
That includes public and Catholic and charter and independent and homeschooling.
Because unlike the NDP and their allies, we in the UCP know and believe that parental choice in education is a paramount importance.
And that is not going to change so long as the UCP is in government.
So there's a lot cooking there, but there's also trouble in Paradise.
The chief opponent to Danielle Smith and the UCP is the opposition NDP, but more to the point, the public sector unions, which are basically surrogates from the NDP.
There's a lot of legal shenanigans.
And remember, all of this is with the fact that next year there will most likely be a referendum on Alberta independence.
So there's a lot cooking, and I'm out here in Toronto, so I'm not there every day.
So I rely on our Alberta eyes and ears, Sheila Gunn Reed and the Calgary team.
But there is someone who I go to who I know is going to have a deep understanding of what's going on because he's focused not just on the politics and the journalism, but on the underlying law, which is so important when you're dealing with things like referendums and recalls and what can the province do and what does the MOU really mean.
You'll know our next guest.
He's our guest for the course of today's show.
His name is Keith Wilson, King's Counsel.
We really got to know him well during the Trucker Convoy when he was the lead lawyer for the Freedom Convoy and the Truckers and for Tamara Leach.
He is also very interested in the independence movement.
Keith Wilson joins us now via Zoom.
Keith, wait to see you again.
Good to see you, Ezra.
I rattled off about 10 things there because I'm just trying to make the point that Alberta is cooking.
There is a lot going on and I wouldn't mind having you take us through a few of these things.
I know you're focused like a laser on a new court ruling and a new bill in the legislature.
I promise we'll get to that.
But just really quickly, I'd like your thoughts on that MOU, that memorandum of understanding, or as both Kearney and Smith call it, the grand bargain.
Do you think there will be a pipeline built to the West Coast?
No.
Okay, message received.
Tell me why you think there will not be one.
Well, I mean, under our Constitution, starting in 1867, you know, what's one of the great accomplishments of Canada when you look back at our early history?
It's the railway, interprovincial works.
Well, how did that happen?
It happened because under the Constitution, exclusive jurisdiction, authority, exclusive approval-making power vests in the federal government for interprovincial works, which include highways, pipelines, and so on, as well as ports and matters of coastal waters, exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government.
Well, the prime minister's made clear, as has his new minister of environment, as has other ministers, that this pipeline will only go ahead if British Columbia consents and First Nations consent.
Well, under the Constitution, they do not have those individuals, those entities rather, those entities, BC and the First Nations, do not have a veto.
And the Prime Minister's given them one.
And that's the word veto does not appear in the MOU, but that doesn't matter because the Prime Minister has to approve the pipeline.
And he said he'll only basically do it if BC and the First Nations are on side.
So I just think it's, and the timelines are too long.
We have an urgent need to grow our economy, to build prosperity, to undo the harmful ways of the federal government.
So I just, I don't think, and from what I've been told by oil industry people, there's just not a business case for it.
I think the MOU is a very important advancement in some respects, though, in that the government, the Kearney government has committed to not move ahead with its emissions cap, which was really an unconstitutional production cap designed to keep Alberta's oil and gas in the ground, which is the greatest generator of wealth in our country.
And the net zero electricity regulation, which is making our grids less stable and preventing us from all provinces from capitalizing on the growth of the new market for AI data centers.
But I think the premier, it's an important accomplishment.
It is nowhere close to a grand bargain because it doesn't deal with the other core issues of equalization, out-of-control immigration.
It doesn't deal with the reckless spending and the deficits.
It doesn't deal with the failure to have a criminal law system or criminal justice system to keep us safe and the other things that are driving the independence movement.
So it's a step in the right direction.
It has some positive features, but it's not, you know, it's a good thing.
I don't dispute that.
But I think the error that was made, unfortunately, by the government here was they oversold it.
Now, let me do something I don't think I've ever done.
I'm going to play devil's advocate for the Liberal Party.
Awesome.
This is new territory for me, I should tell you.
Let me throw a couple of things at you and you deal with them.
The first is Stephen Gilbo, the former environment minister, the author of So Many Bad Ideas, quit and quit and made a fuss and quit and did the interview circuit.
And other liberals sort of chimed in.
I saw Talib Noor Mohammed from BC, former liberals, too, Jody Wilson-Raybold, Catherine McKenna, the former environment minister.
I don't, at first I thought, oh, that's just orchestrated to make Westerners think that this was a big deal.
I thought that Stephen Gilbeau, because we knew he was thinking of stepping down anyways.
But I've heard that this is actually causing a schism in the Liberal Party, that it is turning the liberals more towards the center than the far left, under which they cruised that way for 10 years.
What do you say to the fact that maybe Mark Carney is pulling back from the craziness and all these ultra-left, like Elizabeth May said, oh, I regret voting for this government.
You can never take a politician at face value, but maybe this is some real reality here that maybe they are open to an oil pipeline.
And again, this is me pretending to be a liberal.
Agreed.
I was wondering the same thing, that this was some kind of showmanship.
But I talked to a number of people that persuaded me that that's not the right assessment.
I think Gabot and others are livid.
And the reason they're livid and the reason they had their temper tantrum and stomped out of the room, you know, notionally, is because they're eco-evangelists.
And to move away from anything that's not climate alarmism, that's not net zero 100%, is blasphemy.
And so the eco-evangelists of Gabot must protest.
So, but this is where I come to a disturbing conclusion.
I believe Carney is well and his wife are eco-evangelists too.
But I think Carney sees himself in a different class where he wants to get to the same goals that Gabot had.
He just sees a more sophisticated, more nefarious way of getting there, which is through carbon taxes and other tools, things that aren't as obvious.
He said openly when he suspended the consumer carbon tax, he said something to the fact that it was too visible, that we need to do these things where the voter can't see them.
Yeah, he just said it was too divisive.
We don't know why.
So the reaction is my answer to that one.
I remember when he nixed it, it's not that he said he was against it inherently.
It just was dividing people.
So it was the reaction to it he didn't like.
He's still fine with carbon taxes.
Let me ask you about the new energy minister, Tim Hodgson.
I think he's a bit of a newbie.
I can see him making some messaging mistakes.
And so let me, again, let me play devil's advocate for the liberals.
This is not my safe place, Keith.
But when he said veto or you need the consent of the BC, you need the consent of the First Nations.
Maybe he was speaking imprecisely because I saw yesterday he was moving back to the, we need to consult with them.
We don't need their consent, which would be a veto.
We need to consult, which would be to have, you know, some conversations.
So what if we said, well, maybe Tim Hodgson, he's fairly new to politics.
Maybe he misspoke a little bit there.
The MOU doesn't say consent.
And I didn't know much about Tim Hodgson.
I don't think anyone in politics did because you know what he came from.
He came from Goldman Sachs.
I think he was the CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada, which is where back in the day Mark Carney came from.
These are all banks.
You know, Goldman Sachs is known as the Darth Vader of bankers.
You know, they got their tentacles everywhere.
They're the most nefarious.
They're the richest.
They're the most powerful.
So it's no surprise that that's where Carney reached.
But you know, this guy is tight with Carney.
No one else in caucus has heard of him, but maybe he actually has some power.
And I don't see that he's an eco-radical.
I don't know.
I mean, in fact, he sort of comes from an energy background.
Again, this is me outside of my safe place trying to make the case for the liberals that maybe this is how liberals go about making pipelines.
I can't believe I'm saying these things, but I want to see your answers to them.
Well, you know, watch.
He's often on camera in question period because of the camera angle.
Watch it.
You will see he always looks like the guy who just, you know, was pulled out of off the street off of Wellington and said, hey, come sit here for a minute.
He's always doing this.
Like, what's going on here?
He has this dumbfounded look.
I don't think he's going to last in politics.
He's trying to be a politician.
He's a hardcore hedge fund type business guy.
And so I just, you know, is he a sign of hope that the eco-evangelists are losing their grip?
No, I think Carney's using him as a device, as a tool, to achieve these eco-evangelist goals through a different means, through a more sophisticated sleight of hand technique, you know, through all of this gobbledygook that we hear from Carney.
So Hodgson does not give me hope.
I see him more symptomatic and as evidence of a more sinister way in which Carney's conducting himself.
All right, got one last question about this.
And again, I'm just, I mean, I think you and I overlap almost completely on issues like this.
Like the Venn diagram of what you think and what I think, it's like a perfect circle.
But I do want to keep open the possibility that I've missed something, that I'm in my own echo chamber.
And so I want to test my own beliefs.
And I know you do also.
I mean, you're always testing your own beliefs, improving your understanding of the world, checking your hypothesis.
Prospect Of Simplified Solutions00:09:17
When you think back about the great nation-building projects of this country, and I think the CPR, the Canadian Pacific Railway, is probably the biggest and most important.
It really did keep the country together.
It dealt with whether it's a military.
The migration, the settling of the prairies, resource development, protection from the spread of the United States into Canada.
Absolutely.
Probably the single most important thing that this country has achieved.
That was done by great men, adventurous entrepreneurs and capitalists, yes.
But at the end of the day, it had the political muscle behind it of being a government project that was facilitated, legislated, funded, financed, and any problems were like the CPR blasted through the rock, but the government blasted through 19th century red tape as much as there was.
And the reason I say that is when the government owns the project, the government gives itself the permits.
The government, like the government can make something happen for itself, perhaps in a way it wouldn't do for a private sector project.
So let me throw this at you.
I hate to say it, but the only oil pipeline built in the last 15 years was the Transmountain pipeline, which was done atrociously, poorly, awful by the Trudeau government, which botched the private sector pipeline, bought it, completed it at like five times the price, but they actually did complete that Transmountain pipeline.
It's actually operating.
What if a government or even the federal government were a part of a project that was proposed?
I don't know if that could happen, but if that happened, I think that that would de-risk the political risk here.
Because I think when you have oil companies say, I'd rather operate in Kazakhstan, I'd rather operate in dictatorships than Alberta, that's what they mean.
It's the political risk.
Do you think there's any prospect of having a government partnership, as much as I hate that, in a new proposed northern pipeline?
Let me say a few things.
First of all, if Carney was truly interested in helping reset and redirect the country from the lowest GDP growth, from, you know, you've seen the different charts that show Canada is just in such terrible shape in terms of our economy.
We're poor than Alabama.
We're poorer than Mississippi.
Many of our connections and provinces are poorer.
And there are problems, Ezra, that you can appreciate and your list also appreciates that are actually hard to fix.
And then there's problems that are easy to fix.
Some of the stuff that Kearney can fix is actually very easy.
And let me illustrate that.
Prior, we have had for very many decades, we have had a federal statute called the Impact Assessment Act.
Okay.
And but in under Trudeau, they brought in Bill C-69, which added all kinds of provisions to that statute.
He could simply remove them, right?
Because then it will just operate like it did before they screwed it up.
Right.
Right?
It's not like he has to, this has to be complicated.
And in fact, the courts have struck down many of the provisions of C-69 as unconstitutional, quite properly.
So he has a very simple remedy.
He could instruct the justice drafters to go back to the version that existed before, which facilitated growth in projects of all kinds across this country: investment, job creation, economic development.
It's that easy.
Just restore it to the act that was before.
It would literally take five minutes.
Just bring up the version that existed before BC 69.
He hasn't done it.
He hasn't moved a wheel on that.
But what he did do is he created this special office that he controls, where if you get yourself on a special list, five or six projects can go ahead.
We need 5,000 projects to go ahead of all sizes to create jobs.
We need the people who are fleeing with their investment dollars to come back.
And he hasn't done that.
He's chosen not to.
I could give other examples.
So I don't think he is any different than Trudeau, other than he's much more sophisticated and maniacal.
I think he sees himself as an eco-evangelist, but he's going to do it in a more discreet way and cause the masses to see the greatness.
And I think he wants to demonstrate to the rest of the world, other countries in Europe, that he's going to show them how you can implement green policies and save the planet.
And unfortunately, we're all going to be the victims of that failure.
But you use the example of the TMX pipeline when it was originally proposed as a private sector project.
And I was involved in representing some of the landowners along the route and involved in some of the hearing processes.
So I'm very familiar with it, right down to a technical level.
And I still remember the day when it got, they announced, the company announced they were pulling out.
They were at about $7 billion for their budget and estimate at that time.
And then the government had to step in and say face and took it over.
Well, what did they end up spending?
Was it $30 billion?
Yeah, crazy.
So the problem is now, well, it's not full.
And Hodgson and others say, well, it's not full.
Well, the reason it's not full, imagine what the toll would be, the charge for you and I to run a barrel of oil through that pipeline if it costs $7 billion to build, versus how much the company running the pipeline is going to charge us to run a barrel of oil through it when it costs $30 billion.
The tolls are so high, it's like they're off the scale.
So the estimates are that if the government were to build the new Northern Gateway pipeline, a new pipeline from Alberta to the coast, that it would cost $50 billion.
Well, no oil company is going to be able to afford to put the dillbit in it, especially when they got to transport the diluent back after it's stripped out in the Asian markets.
So the economics aren't there.
Yeah, they could build it, but they're going to build a pipeline that no one oil company can afford to put oil through, especially when on top of that, they're going to have to spend $5 or $10 a barrel on carbon taxes.
Yeah.
I find this very depressing.
And, you know, I did my show yesterday on what I think is a very real prospect that Donald Trump will topple Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro.
I mean, you can see him wobbling back and forth right now.
The country's in a crisis.
They used to produce 3 million barrels of oil a day.
They're down to 1 million barrels.
They are so poor, the average Venezuelan has lost 24 pounds from just lack of food.
It's actually a human crisis.
I think Trump's going to topple them.
I think I don't think that's going to be a problem.
And if that happens, you know what's going to happen.
So Venezuela was supplying all this oil, and then here was Alberta.
And then Venezuela went down.
It went like this, right?
Yeah.
So now Trump, you know, Chevron will go in there the day after Trump topples.
Get their old refinery back.
They were expropriated along with that.
They'll start those refineries up.
They'll do shutdowns and get everything working.
They'll get the pipelines fixed up.
They'll get the wells pumping again.
And then those tankers will be flowing through the Gulf of America to Houston and they'll be displacing.
So then the American buyers will say, yeah, to Alberta, like, oh, do you want some of our oil from Fort McMurray?
Yeah, we're actually good right now.
We got a whole bunch.
And then it'll be like, well, how about $30 a barrel?
Will you buy it from us then?
Yeah, okay.
You know, so we're, I'm very concerned about that prospect.
It shows why we shouldn't have been messing around.
We should have right away developed access to other markets.
You know, the rest of Canada, in my view, with all due respect, lives in this fantasy world that the wealth will always be there.
And we can just, you know, send hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign conflicts and hundreds of millions of dollars to climate agencies and programs in Africa.
I'm sorry, we just don't have that wealth.
And we need to change course.
Carney has the ability to fix these laws.
They're not complex problems to solve.
Many problems he faces are complex and difficult, but some of them are not.
Why We Can't Plan Bread00:02:48
It's just a simple matter of repealing the bad laws.
If he repealed the bad laws, he wouldn't even need his Bill C5 major projects office.
The major projects office, its very existence is a glaring admission of failure.
That you have to get the King Carney's personal blessing to build anything.
It doesn't matter whether an entrepreneur, an investor, wants to start a business, a mine that's going to employ 1,000 people, or someone's going to do a project that's going to employ 100 people or 500 people or 10 people.
We need every one of those people to stay in Canada with their investment dollars and create jobs for our friends, our neighbors, and our kids.
And Kearney's blown it.
Trudeau blew it.
And the MOU doesn't solve it.
Yeah, I mean, it's an added, it reminds me of Gauss Plan, which was the name of the Soviet planning office, the economic planning office.
It added no value to anything.
It had no technical knowledge.
It was simply politicians trying to choose winners and losers, trying to orchestrate the economy.
I've talked before about, I think it was Frederick Bastiat and his wonderful essay, which is, oh my God, how do we know where all the bread should go every day in Paris?
Who's in charge?
There's no minister of bread.
How is it that we're not all starving?
Who knows how to get the right amount of bread to every bakery, to every restaurant?
Oh my God, no one's in charge.
The answer is spontaneous order.
People can figure it out on their own.
In fact, if you had a minister of bread, that's when you would have shortages, starvation, famine, because no one person, no one king or commissar is smart enough to know where the million loaves of bread go every day.
And the idea that Mark, I'm sure he's a smart man, and I'm sure he has a good education, but there is no one person who can be the king of the economy and run things better than the experts in the industry.
And I don't know, I just find it very Soviet that we have to meet the commissar's approval.
And we don't even know what the rules are in there.
It's just if he likes you.
It's more like a Roman emperor than even a communist planner.
There's an arrogance with this government, and there is an arrogance with the previous government, liberal government, that they know better what I need for me and my family than I do, and they're better at providing it.
And history has shown that that doesn't result in my family being better off.
Remarkable Legislative Arrogance00:15:48
It's just remarkable.
There's such narcissism in that line of thinking.
And that's what we see on display out of Ottawa continually.
But at the same time, we see their glaring incompetence.
They couldn't even plant trees in Canada.
One useful thing.
No, you're not.
Carney appeared this week before the Assembly of First Nations.
And I watched, I tortured myself.
I punished myself by watching the whole thing.
And he said, and just, you know, think of the tragedy on the reserves throughout Canada, if you've traveled through any yourself and seen the despicable, terrible housing conditions.
And Kearney announced that the federal government's going to partner with First Nations to build houses for Canadians.
I'm like, could you start with the reserves, please?
You know, so these guys are completely delusional.
They're drunk on power.
They're drunk on their own sense of brilliance, and we're suffering for it.
Yeah.
Well, the timing of the MOU is interesting.
Like I say, it was just a day before the UCP conference in Alberta started.
And I think the most dramatic moment in the conference was when an activist, a grassroots activist, and we've had him on the show before, Jeffrey Rath is his name, got to the microphone and expressed his views.
He was not pleased with the MOU, was not pleased with Ottawa, and he very much believed in independence.
And it showed that I believe my sense of the conference was that members of the party very much like Danielle Smith and are happy with her.
Remember, just a year ago, she got more than 90% of the vote in a ratification, but they do not like the MOU, and they're very much in the back of their mind thinking that independence may still be an option.
Here, let me show you a couple of moments from the conference showing the booing of the Premier's MOU and the cheers for Jeffrey Rath.
Take a look.
Hello, my name is Jeffrey Rath.
I'm from 2017.
After that so-called MOU was signed yesterday, the ink wasn't dropped in the paper, and Mark Carney went out and gleefully announced a 600% increase to the industrial carbon tax in Alberta.
I support an independent Alberta within a United Canada.
That is not my question.
And I guess I just asked everybody to be mindful that this party is a merger of two parties with different cultural traditions.
And sometimes the way we solve disputes is by solving them through referenda.
I think that a lot of Albertans are hopeful that this might work, but I don't think they would bet on it.
I don't think, I mean, they would like it to work, but all the things you've described are reasons it won't happen.
And I keep thinking, if you like, you mentioned ConocoPhillips or Chevron, Exxon, these were all companies who were kicked out of Venezuela.
If they had $10 billion to kick around, which is the likelier path to a quick, you know, rate of return, throwing in a Mark Carney's Gauss plan or going to Venezuela.
So I'm worried that a proponent won't come forward if that happens.
And my very first question to you was: will a pipeline be built?
And you just said no.
At what point in time does Alberta declare defeat?
Do people who propose a pipe want a pipeline say this didn't work?
It was just a PR exercise.
In fact, the only thing we have now is a higher carbon tax.
When do people stop believing?
Is there a drop-dead date in this thing?
I think maybe it is in July or something.
Is that right?
Yeah, well, let me just comment on why I thought there was booze because you and I were both in the room.
Is I don't think that it's people were disappointed in the MOU per se.
I mean, it's obviously I've criticized elements of it.
What I think they were disappointed in, it was almost presented to the UCP members, particularly those who are strong supporters of independence, sort of like, here, see, I fixed Canada.
Alberta doesn't have to separate now.
Right.
Right.
And of course, it doesn't, and that's where I think the booze came from.
Right, right, right.
That's type of a sentiment, that there's so much more that needs to be done.
This MOU does not resolve the fact that the Trudeau Liberals, now with the Kearney Liberals, have created more debt than all of the previous governments of Canada combined, that they have condemned my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren to this burden of debt, that they have continually increasing the cost of living.
They're making life unaffordable.
They're depriving our children of a prosperous future.
They are not keeping us safe with their crazy two-tier justice system.
You know, Tamara Leach is under house arrest for mischief, and then they're letting rapists out and not giving them a sentence because they're worried they'll get deported and not be able to stay in Canada.
I could go on.
The gun grab, what a misplaced priority.
The immigration out of control.
All of these different things.
The MOU does not address that.
Something that addresses those things would be a grand bargain.
Right, right.
Good point.
I mean, even I think back to the two issues that I thought were interesting in her speech were transgenderism and immigration.
Those are not obviously even touched by the MOU.
There are many things on 100 different issues, firearms being one of them.
Well, let me talk about independence with you because I know that's on your mind.
There's been battles going on.
There have been other people in Alberta who said, well, we're going to get a referendum too, and it'll be a we love Canada referendum.
And there's dueling referendums and then there's recall initiatives where the NDP are going to try and get MLAs recalled, which is a great thing.
I wish every politician lived in some fear that they could be recalled before the end of their term.
I don't want us to be in perpetual elections, but the threat should be real.
Give me an update.
What's going on?
Because I know there was a new bill in the legislature in a court case today.
And I know these are all slightly different things, but tell me the state of direct democracy in Alberta.
Sure.
So in Alberta, we have what's called the Citizens Initiative Act.
And there was a clause in it.
It's paragraph 2D, I believe.
In any event, or 2 sub 4.
It's a clause in the statute that evolved over time.
It had a big, whole bunch of words in it.
And it was brought in for a specific purpose many, many years ago.
And then in some recent versions of the legislation, they amended it out and they just left the last bit in.
And the last bit basically says that you can't have a citizens' initiative petition, a petition to compel the government to hold a referendum on independence, for example, if the nature of your petition question is going to contravene the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in certain parts of the Constitution.
And it gives authority to the chief electoral officer to submit to the court a reference case to decide whether or not a proposed question, petition question, or referendum, will offend that provision.
So, first of all, that clause should have never been there to begin with.
It's really strange that it is.
But secondly, the Alberta Prosperity Project proposed a charter question or a referendum question about Alberta independence, bothered with the chief electoral office, and then he decided to send it to the court for a review.
Justice Feesby was tasked with hearing submissions on it.
That process has been ongoing.
And on its face, this is all nonsensical because if the Supreme Court of Canada said in the Quebec case, the 1998 reference case, that if a province votes to secede, to become independent on a clear question and a clear majority say yes, we want to become independent, then that triggers a mandatory obligation for all parties to enter into good faith negotiations as to the details and the terms upon which the divorce will occur.
Okay?
So, and that's First Nations, all the other provinces, and the federal government.
So, a successful referendum doesn't mean you're out, doesn't mean, doesn't define the rights that First Nations will have in Alberta, doesn't define the rights and privileges of Albertans.
All that has to be negotiated in the future and agreed to.
So, it just really makes no sense to even have this provision in there in any event.
All it does is creates an opportunity for judicial intervention and the judiciary to go out of its lane and potentially override the legislature.
So, as this case has been evolving before the courts, before Justice Feesby, on whether or not the question posed by the Alberta Prosperity Project for an independence referendum in Alberta contravenes the Constitution and the Charter, the Alberta government stepped in yesterday and said this was never the legislative intent.
The legislative intent of our legislation, the Citizens Initiative Act, was that citizens would come together and they would decide if there was an important question.
And if enough citizens sign, 177,000, that then triggers an obligation for the provincial government to hold a referendum.
This is as democratic as you can get.
This is democracy on steroids, right?
So now the legislature goes, what?
Now a court's controlling this?
That was never the intent.
The intent was for the people to control it.
So yesterday afternoon, the Alberta government, so on Thursday afternoon, December 4th, the Smith government introduced Bill 14.
And Bill 14 clarifies the legislative intention, which is absolutely open for a legislature to do.
In fact, they have an obligation to do that under the principles of parliamentary supremacy.
And they have clarified through Bill 14, they've removed that section.
So the judges are not supposed to step in.
This is a democratic process.
And they have made it retroactive, which they're legally allowed to do.
It happens quite frequently where legislation is retroactive, particularly if it's correcting a problem, and said this case must now come to an end.
It should have never happened.
It's not consistent with the legislative intention.
So I think that's very good.
And someone, you know, the lefties quickly, oh, this is authoritative, this is fascism.
No, it's not.
It's the opposite of that.
In our Westminster model of government, the Parliament is supreme in lawmaking.
They make the policies, they make the laws.
If we don't like what they do, we unelect them.
We don't elect them again, right?
And here we have recall.
So when the legislature discovers that its legislative intention is not being achieved, it's incumbent upon them, and they have the full legal authority and obligation to amend their legislation to clarify their legislative intention.
That's what the government's done through Bill 14.
However, today, mere hours ago, Justice Feesby, despite the legislature bringing in a law that says this case is to end now, because it should have never begun in the first place, which is perfectly proper and permissible under our system and the Constitution, Justice Feesby thumbed his nose at the rule of law and issued a decision anyway.
Remarkable, absolutely remarkable.
Well, I'm worried about.
Go ahead, sorry.
No, that's fine.
And what he ruled was that the Alberta Prosperity Project can't have a petition and can't trigger a referendum on independence.
Now, what's interesting is, you know, that sounds pretty dramatic on its face, but actually, his decision is actually, with all due respect to the judge, a nothing burger.
And the reason it's a nothing burger is he only decided on the effect of that one section two sub four about whether or not the petition question could potentially contravene the charter.
His decision clearly in no way restricts or limits the authority as set by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1998 reference case or the federal government through the Clarity Act for the Alberta government to call a referendum.
So his decision is exceptionally narrow and only applies to the functioning of that one oddball section that the legislature and the premier have said from the get-go, that was never the intention of the law.
This is bad drafting if it's being interpreted that way.
We're going to fix it.
So yesterday they fixed it.
Justice Feebee should have just closed his file and said, in view of the statute, the direction from the legislature, they are supreme.
The judge is to interpret the law.
The legislature is to make the law.
And that obviously upset Justice Feesby.
Justice Feesby's Narrow Decision00:02:18
So he decided today that he was going to try and make some law.
It's of no force and effect.
It's a very narrow scope because it only deals with that subsection.
The new reality in Alberta with the passage of Bill 14 will be that the Alberta Prosperity Project will have 30 days to resubmit their petition question.
The chief electoral officer will have 30 days to review and approve it.
And then the Alberta Prosperity Project will have 120 days to mobilize their 20,000 volunteers to get the 200,000 Albertans who have already pledged to sign to secure the 177,000 signatures.
That will then obligate the Alberta government to hold a referendum on independence in 2026.
And I expect that that referendum would occur in the fall, probably October of 2026.
That's the most logical timing, given all the steps that have to occur.
And then Albertans will get to decide whether or not they feel that they will have a better future for themselves and their children by being independent or whether things will be better converting to the eco-evangelism and the despair that that will bring.
I think I understand your description of the legal events.
And what I'm left with is a premonition that this is the first of many attempts by judges.
It reminds me a little bit of what Donald Trump is going through, whether it's tariffs or appointments or foreign policy.
There's almost nothing that Trump does where a judge, often a Democrat activist appointee, at least temporarily derails it.
And I'm not that familiar with the U.S. system, but like it seems like any judge from any state can paralyze a national project.
It's like whack-a-mole.
And I fear that what you've just described, which I think I understand, but what I do understand for sure, is that it's a legal, it's a judge throwing a spanner in the works.
Judge's Spanner In The Works00:00:51
And I fear that's the first of a dozen before.
I mean, why wouldn't they?
I mean, they would do anything they could to stop this from happening.
But it's very interesting to get the update.
Listen, Keith, stay in touch with us on this and so many other things.
And we haven't even talked about Tamara Leach today, really.
And of course, she is appealing her conviction.
So that battle continues, and you're at the heart of that.
It's great to catch up with you.
We love Alberta.
And, you know, we talked a lot about legal trickery today and technicalities.
That's how it is in modern political fights.
Great to catch up with you, my friend.
Good to see you.
Thanks for having me on.
All right.
There he is, Keith Wilson, KC, the lawyer for the Freedom Convoy and someone who is deeply following the independence movement.