Western Canadian Separatism examines Alberta’s push for independence under Danielle Smith, whose demands—tidewater port access, repealing C69 and net-zero laws, and equalizing federal transfers—expose deep anti-federal and anti-Quebec tensions. With 41.3% of the vote (a majority without Trump’s polarizing effect), Smith’s movement risks economic U.S. dependence and Indigenous treaty opposition, like Chief Bilijo Tucker’s rejection of her plans. Legal hurdles and federal unity programs, including $10B+ in annual equalization, further complicate separatism’s viability, revealing a clash between regional grievances and national stability. [Automatically generated summary]
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if you'd like to be interviewed whether to share your experiences or promote your own content please get in touch and we're back with truth unrestricted the podcast that is interpreting and creating the language of the disinformation age and And at long last, we tracked him down.
He was on the run, but he's looped in now.
Back broadcasting from an undisclosed location with us today is Jeff.
Hey, buddy.
Yeah, Jeff.
Just Jeff.
That's it.
Like, like one word name, like share or Madonna or Sting.
Yeah, so special.
Not special, just like trying to hang on to a few random scraps of anonymity left in this post-truth information age.
Right.
One of the reasons why I don't have a camera on my computer.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, good luck with that.
An ounce of effort, we'll be able to find out.
But like, come on.
Yeah, well, you know, lots of people we both know listen to this and they'll know exactly who you are.
So.
Anyways, let's get to it.
We're not here.
We're not here to talk about us.
No one cares about us.
I just have a little bit of housekeeping before we get into the episode today.
First, a reminder that if anyone has any feedback, questions, comments, complaints, concerns, I expect that I'll upset at least one person with this episode.
You can send that to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
And the housekeeping today is that when I started this podcast more than three years ago, I laid out a bunch of rules by which I would conduct myself and have the guests conduct themselves on this podcast.
And one of those was that we're going to try to not swear, at least not swear very much.
You know, I thought that maybe people might want to listen to this while they, I don't know, drive their kids to work or something.
But more and more, I just think that rule is unnecessary.
We're not going to swear like sailors, but we are going to swear from now on.
So if you skip this episode and listen to a future episode and wondering why, you should have listened to all the episodes.
Sorry.
But yeah, we're going to get into it right into it today.
There was an election in Canada and we have a new prime minister.
was already prime minister with a couple months under his belt but he has a new mandate and so first first takes what what what is your first takes on the the election and how it turned out Jeff well I think it ended up about where I expected it and I was kind of relieved at that
Everybody who knows me knows my politics.
I'm firmly ABC.
But I was actually kind of relieved to see that the Liberals only won a minority government because historically the bulk of our really good legislation and the majority of Canadians being taken care of by a government that's in charge, that usually happens when there's a minority government because they've got to work across the aisle.
So I like on strictly a headcount and results status, I was quite satisfied.
Just thoroughly depressed about everything else to do with it.
I mean, like it's everybody's blaming Trump for Polivier's fall from grace.
And at face value, yes, 100%.
Like Trump has soured the conservative brand for not just Canada.
Like exactly the same thing happened in Australia.
Yep.
Like they just had weeks later.
And I heard some stat, like it's been like Australians are very fickle, much more fickle than Canadians with their governments.
Like they change them very frequently.
Very few parties get a second term.
And like something like since the 50s or 60s, they hadn't had a party win two terms in a row.
And the left-leaning Labour Party was the incumbent party.
And everybody was expecting them to lose by the landslide to a Conservative Party.
And they ended up winning a majority government.
And also there, the leader of the Conservative Party, like Polivier, didn't even win his own seat.
Yeah.
That's true.
I'll double-check your no two in a row thing, but definitely the leader of their Conservative Party failed to win in his riding.
And yeah.
So my take, my take on the election was that I ordinarily want to have minority governments, and I got that.
So that's great, I guess.
In this special case, I almost would have wished to have a majority.
I mean, what I want is a, right, right now in this exact moment, with Trump saying repeatedly words like, Canada should be the 51st state, which, you know, he's said repeatedly for months now.
I want a prime minister that is empowered with a great big hammer, as big and powerful as possible.
You know, a minority government isn't quite as powerful a hammer.
There is a possibility then that wily U.S. politicians, and by wily, I mean not exactly Trump, but like advisors of his or other people in the State Department that really carefully analyzes stuff, could attempt to put a wedge there of some kind that makes, you know,
in the negotiations that are undoubtedly going to have to happen about tariffs could cause some thing there that, you know, some division of some kind.
So, you know, with that small caveat, you know, I didn't get everything quite the way I wanted, but it's fine.
It's totally fine.
It's a minority.
If everything goes right with these trade negotiations, then I'll be perfectly happy.
Overall, I think I want to make a comment about Pierre Polyev.
Pierre Polyev was 20 points up and lost the election and lost his riding.
But he didn't, that isn't the real story here.
I mean, yes, they failed to win the election.
Let me pull this up.
See if I can make this happen the way it's supposed to be.
Yeah, no, no, no.
There.
That's better.
So zoom in on this.
So it's, no, that's equalization.
We need election night's results.
So this is the ridings as they're going to be.
169 for the liberals.
There's 172 needed for a majority.
But the conservatives, 144.
And overall percentage of the vote, liberal, 43.7.
Conservative, 41.3.
This leaves very, very little for anything outside of those two parties.
And it moves us a lurching step closer to a two-party system.
That sure does.
Yeah.
Honestly, though, honestly, though, I think you're kind of taking those stats out of context or not putting them in all of their context.
Because like we said, what drove us here was Trump.
Like it wasn't about Polivier.
It was about Trump.
It wasn't about whoever the leader of the Australian Conservative Party was.
It was about Trump.
I was one of millions of Canadian voters who decided I can't vote orange this year.
I have to vote strategically and vote liberal to keep the Conservatives out.
A good chunk of that liberal vote belongs to the NDP.
Right.
There is still a very strong left-leaning population in Canada in spite of, and it is small.
And this is a point of like drawing a big circle around.
It's a small group.
Like there are not a number of voters in Canada hard to the left that would vote NDP, I think, to see an NDP majority government in our generation.
No, probably not.
Politically, we're just not there.
Yet we're apparently at the, you know, beck and call of the woke left, even though the majority of Canadians aren't there.
Right.
So I don't know how that worked out.
But the number that concerns me is the 41.3.
This is a fair amount more votes than the Conservatives got the last time around.
It's actually more votes than the Liberals under Trudeau got the last time around.
Ordinarily, this would have been a majority government for Conservatives that made it to 41.3% of the vote.
So you're right, it's about Trump, but it being about Trump still increased the number of votes for the Conservatives.
That's where we're at as a country.
I don't necessarily agree with you extrapolating.
You just said it was about Trump.
No, I'm saying it was about Trump, but it wasn't about Trump was not the reason the Conservative numbers were at an all-time high.
Trump was the reason the Liberals won because a whole bunch of people who normally would have voted to other left-wing parties or the bloc or someone else voted liberal tactically to keep the Conservatives out.
And also hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Canadians who don't normally vote went to the polls.
Because what's our total, like, do you have the stats on what total number of votes this election versus last?
Voter turnout.
Got it right here.
19.6 million voted of 28.5 million registered.
That's 68.7% turnout.
That's pretty good for Canadian elections.
Last election.
Do you want me to know everything?
I think it was around 62%, 60% to 62%.
Okay.
So, like, total population of Canada is what now?
Just shy of 40 million, I think.
Okay.
So, 2 million Canadian voters that don't normally vote went out and voted liberal.
Yeah.
Right?
Pretty close.
Conservative-leaning liberals fled to the Conservative Party in droves.
The fuck Trudeau movement got everything it wanted.
And all the right-leaners got everybody out to vote for the Conservatives, and they took in record votes.
That was largely the usual Canadian deal of the party at the helm has been at the helm long enough, and the people on the other side are sick and tired of them and rally the cry of F whoever's in charge and it's time for a change.
Right?
Same old tune, just sung a little bit louder this time because of the trucker bond boy and COVID and everything else that happened.
But all of those voters voted this way, 41.3 knowing about the Trump factor.
There's just no way that they didn't know about the Trump factor.
Well, the unfortunate reality is a lot of the voters that voted that way don't mind that factor.
Yeah, I know.
That's what I mean.
That's what I'm talking about.
It's really terrifying me, honestly.
That, yeah, that's like if this, if this number had stayed at what it previously was or went down, I would have felt a lot better about this election.
But it went up.
Like the Trump factor, you know, it polarized, it swarmed people into the liberal pocket, but it also swarmed people into the conservative pocket.
Yeah.
And he's not the only factor.
You're right.
But he's got to be the biggest factor.
The most overwhelming.
Like it's.
So anyway, my take about like right now, they're going to hold a, the Conservative Party is going to have to hold a review of their leadership.
Andrew Scheer, who was previously the Conservative leader, is now the interim leader for the official opposition because you have to have a seat in Parliament to be the official opposition.
And they're probably going to, you know, they've already had talks.
They're going to get Polyev another seat in Alberta back to his home province.
But he lost in Carlton, which is a suburb of Ottawa, because of his support for the trucker convoy.
That's a major factor.
I've been online.
I've been on message boards.
I've talked to people from there in that region.
And that's a big reason why.
There were a couple other factors, but there was a group that apparently doesn't like Polyev who wants there to be ranked choice voting or as I think the Australians call it preferential voting.
And they listed, I don't know, something like 200 extra people to be on the ballot or something.
I think they call themselves the longest ballot group or something.
And apparently they're going to do the same thing in the by-election that he's going to have to run in.
Crazies are going to do crazy stuff, whatever.
But that didn't stop anyone from finding Pierre Polyev's name on the ticket.
It's not like they swarmed it with other names that were very, very like Pierre Polyev, and they were confused about who to vote for.
I met with several friends just the other night.
Those gestures are usually just gestures of protest rather than actual, you know, successful counterattacks against your opposition.
I think they chose his riding because at the time when they were planning it, they thought he was likely to win.
Three months ago, it looked like he was going to win.
So that's probably why they did it, because they thought that was the riding where they would get the most attention.
And now the only by-election is the one he's running in.
So they're doing it again there, apparently.
Whatever.
But that didn't stop anyone from voting from anyone from voting for Pierre Polyev in that riding.
It was just that there was a strong sentiment against him because of his support for the trucker convoy in Ottawa, where his riding is.
Yeah.
But overall, he's likely going to become the conservative leader again or still.
And he's just not a strong leader.
He's just not.
Here's how I know.
If he was a strong leader, he would be able to get all his ducks in a row.
But like almost half the party is just not involved in any of the things he's planning.
And he's not even running a government and he's not including them and they're not happy about it.
Half the premiers who are conservative and ostensibly a part of his party don't associate with him at all.
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, won an election strong majority not that long ago.
I think it was six months ago, just a couple months before this election occurred.
And when Doug Ford won, he got, you know, all politicians do this.
They give a congratulations online and in a public space.
Got zero congratulation from Pierre Polyev in any public space that anyone could record.
Weird.
Super weird.
What's going on?
No one knows.
No one talks about what's going on with these two guys.
Must be something personal, some personal slight they don't want to talk about.
Okay, but whatever.
But then this election comes by.
Doug Ford does nothing to help Pierre Polyev.
And Pierre Polyev could have used a lot of help in Ontario, right?
That's the province you want to win.
It's got the most seats by far.
And he, you know, didn't lift a finger.
In fact, said a couple things that were not complimentary.
And then you have Danielle Smith, who's going to come up tonight in strong form.
Danielle Smith doing all she can to remind everyone that Donald Trump exists and Donald Trump wants Canada and wants Alberta and wants all the things and that she is on board with that.
All of that was not helpful for Pierre Polyev to remind everyone yet again all the time in the news that Donald Trump is there and he's rubbing his hands together, waiting, waiting for his chance to get that famous guy famous meme of the guy hiding behind the tree, licking his lips, rubbing his hands together, just waiting.
And she didn't have to do that stuff during the election.
It only lasted 35 days.
She could have waited until afterward to make those trips down to Mar-a-Lago.
But she didn't.
She went right in the middle of it and was on news programs talking about all the things related to it.
It was not helpful for Polyev.
And, you know, he's just not good at keeping all these ducks in a row.
He's not a leader to even the other conservatives.
Why would anyone think he'd be a good leader for the country?
And if he takes whatever he took personal with Doug Ford, I don't even care who started it.
You're politicians.
You should be making, you know, saving face for the people.
Not able to do that.
What if Trump insults him?
What?
Then he's got to turn the other cheek then.
What makes us think he's going to do that?
I might need the next prime minister to eat a little shit from Donald Trump.
Like, really, you know, if it means getting the deal done that works for us, yeah, because it's not about the personal feelings of the next prime minister.
Like, if Mark Carney has to grind his teeth through a couple of interviews with Donald Trump to make this deal, yeah, I want him to do that.
I want him to absolutely do that.
If Donald Trump says something really petty and childish and stupid, I want Mark Carney, just like he did like two days ago when he met with Donald Trump, to bite his tongue like he just did, and to keep doing it, to not get drawn in.
Like, and I don't think Polyev is that guy.
No, God, no, he's not that guy.
Right.
So, yeah.
Be disgustingly deferential or like you say, get his back.
Yeah.
He'd either sell us out because he's the guy that wants to ingratiate himself to Trump or he would take everything personal and it would get really, really difficult from that point on.
And I don't want either of those.
So, yeah, that's what I have to say about the whole thing, about that.
So we're here to talk about Western Canadian separatism.
So why are we here right now talking about this?
Because it's going to be big.
It's going to be real big for a lot longer than I'd like it to be.
Here's why.
So the Liberals, as we discussed, won a minority government.
It's right here on the screen.
They got only 49.3% of the seats.
They need 50% or more to pass any bills, to have any budgets, all that stuff.
And we have, you can see it here, we have the Bloc Quebecois, 22 seats, Green Party with only one, NDP with seven seats.
So two of these smaller parties will be useful for that either one could provide enough seats to create a majority for the liberals to get all the work they need done.
Except Kearney's already stated he's not going to work with the NDP.
Already stated.
Yeah, that's right.
The bloc said first thing, jumped up.
They called Dibs.
They said, yeah, we will agree to work with the Prime Minister at least for the next year to get this current situation out of control and we support him in this.
Because during the campaign, the block also told their voters, because they were slipping down to lower seat numbers too.
They told their voters, look, you can vote for us.
You're fine.
You don't need to go all liberal.
You can vote for us.
We will work with them to do this.
And right away, they jumped on it.
Said, yeah, we will work with the Liberals.
So why is this important?
Why is this so important?
This plays directly into Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's play.
She's always wanted to be anti-federal, anti-Ottawa.
And this situation with the liberals working with the bloc to get things done is going to give it gives Danielle Smith everything she wants as far as fodder, red meat for her audience.
She gets to say, Oh, it's those liberals in Ottawa plus all the people in Quebec that you hate that are making all the bad things that you don't want to have happen happen to you.
Well, to be fair, not to take anything away from your point on that spin, which I utterly agree with, but like I think she's both canny and lacking enough in ethics to just come up with an if it had been the NDP that the liberals tied in with, we'd still be in the same boat.
Right.
It'd just be, oh, the liberals have partnered up with the NDP.
The woke liberal elite is coming for you.
That was already the message, right?
Because the NDP had been working.
Yeah, that was tandem with fuck Trudeau, and we were already seeing fuck Kearney flags.
Like, it's a booming business in Alberta to print those out.
Yeah, that whole thing would have continued just fine if we had an NDP government.
The bloc being who the liberals are working with is not the only reason why you can cry for separatism.
But it's worse because the heart of separatism is anti-Quebec.
It's intertwined in a way that can never come loose.
So here's what I'm proposing.
I'm saying this to the audience: is that we're going to, you and I, Jeff, you, and me, Spencer, are going to have a series of episodes dedicated solely to the details of this.
So we're going to hit it tonight as to all the general things and why this is happening right now.
And actually, some clips, some really nice clips of some of the things that go over this that have been really recent happening right away.
But we're going to go into the history of why it is that Western Canadian separatism is inherently an anti-Quebec movement.
It's mirrored almost entirely.
We're also going to go over in great detail.
We're going to hit it tonight.
We're going to mention it, but we're going to go over in great detail equalization payments because they're also strong fodder for all the people that want to separate.
It comes up all the time.
There's a lot of misinformation about it.
So I want to inform people about the actual details of what is happening and support that with, of course, with the appropriate links and sources.
But also arm people with appropriate arguments for things because everyone increasingly with this, this is going to be, you know, Daniel Smith has the next couple years to take her cracks at that.
And she is going to take all the swings she can.
This is, you know, the table is set.
She's going to eat.
And everyone's going to have these uncomfortable conversations at work, at family dinners, etc., with someone who's going to claim something, some crazy thing, this or that or whatever.
They're going to claim that, you know, Quebec got $800 billion in equalization payments last year or whatever the hell they're going to do.
And he's coming for your tinted windows and lift kits.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's going to come.
And obviously all the other ones, he's going to come for your guns and he's going to, he's going to tax you harder.
He's going to do, you know, all that stuff.
Like, it's that's going to come.
But, you know, what I say, what I've said in other contexts is also perfectly true here.
A lot of people don't really like politics.
It makes them uncomfortable.
Having to argue like that makes them uncomfortable.
And I get it.
It actually kind of makes me sort of uncomfortable too.
I don't, I don't really like it.
I would much rather have a podcast about, you know, the exact differences between like succinct and exact, right?
Like, sure, I would love to just, you know, like I'm a nerd that way.
I would love to go over those exact things.
Like, I would love to have a podcast just about that.
Like, what, you know, that would be a beautiful world where I could afford to do that.
Or like video games or whatever.
But, you know, that's not the world I'm living in.
I'm living in a world where people around me are legitimately saying, you know, joining joining the U.S. would be better than this.
Ludicrous things.
Yes.
And so I feel people need to be able to, you know, arm themselves with appropriate information and arguments for this sort of thing.
So that's what we're going to go over.
We're also going to do a deep dive on the trucker convoy because it's also a milestone along the path for Canadian separatism, Western Canadian separatism.
There's a whole Quebec separatism, which is mirrored in Western separatism that we'll have to go over when we go over the history of that.
But tonight, we're just going to go over why it's happening in general detail.
So, anything to add that I missed there?
No, no, you laid it out pretty clean and tidy.
Yeah.
Let's get into what we're talking about tonight.
So, as I just said, Western separatism as a movement centers on Alberta more than anything else.
No, like, like, to be clear, it's more like Alberta separatism and they are a stone that's lashed to other provinces near them.
Speaking of residents of British Columbia, very few people here have ever talked seriously about separating or even in jest about separating.
This is not how BC feels.
I personally am very chipped into the concept of Western Canadian separatism, specifically in stopping it, because it's going to turn my home into an island.
I don't want to have to drive through the United States to get to my neighbors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, really.
Alberta would not be feasible as a single nation.
No, they wouldn't be landlocked by Canada and the U.S., they would be, and just leaving Canada, they would be forced to be entirely dependent, almost entirely dependent on the U.S.
And they would become the next state, is what it would be.
That's what it would exactly be.
It would be a slow carving up of Canada because then BC would be separated from the rest of Canada, except for a circuitous route through the Yukon over to Northwest Territories and then south again through Saskatchewan.
It would add four days to a trip to Ottawa for any goods that would have to go there, or you'd have to go through the U.S., the new 51st state of Alberta.
And that would weaken everything to the point where we would get slowly carved up and become all the new states of the U.S. That's exactly what it would be.
BC and Saskatchewan would be nests.
They'd be talking about a contiguous corridor.
If Saskatchewan didn't just go with Alberta in the first place, right?
Exactly.
But like, they would want BC next to be able to have a contiguous route to Alaska.
Yeah.
And like, if we were geographically cut off from the rest of the country and the United States continued playing hard on, you know, not nice trade and travel rules to make it as inconvenient as possible, we would suffer to the point where enough people would change their minds or we'd at least roll over.
That's how it works.
Polish corridor.
Like, take your pick, man.
Well, we're not going to make any Nazi references here.
Come on.
No more World War II talk.
Come on.
We don't need to go that deep.
But yeah, it centers on Alberta.
And for that reason, Alberta's grievances become the loudest.
Yep.
And so in that, Saskatchewan.
And Albertans have never had a problem with being loud, to be fair.
Well, true.
True.
I lived there for 17 years.
Yeah, absolutely true.
Saskatchewan, right next to Alberta.
Their economy in Saskatchewan, very similar to the economy in Alberta, including many of the industries that they're involved in.
They feel very strongly that they would want to, you know, whatever Alberta's doing, they get to do too.
It's, you know, not to speak of the people in Saskatchewan as though they're lesser, but it's sort of a big brother, little brother sort of relationship.
And, you know, where Alberta goes, Saskatchewan also tends to go.
That's generally the decision.
We tend to disagree with you on that front.
Okay.
But, I mean, Alberta is strongly conservative.
Saskatchewan, I mean, when you look at the numbers, I went through a lot of the numbers because I'm preparing some data for a future episode.
And the conservative seats in Saskatchewan are even safer in general than the conservative seats in Alberta.
Like, they are more strongly conservative in that way.
And yeah, when you talk to them about this stuff, it's difficult to say that they're that much different in aspect to a lot of this stuff.
I mean, they don't like that they're following Alberta.
But, you know, I call the plays as I see them.
If Alberta wasn't centered on a separatist movement, it's hard to believe that there would be one in Saskatchewan all by itself.
I feel like that's true.
So, you know, we'll never go to the parallel universe where we see if that's really true.
So carrying on.
But it centers on Alberta and its grievances.
And then Saskatchewan, because of the way the industries are very similar in Saskatchewan, those grievances find easy purchase in the ground in Saskatchewan.
But BC, less so.
Some parts of BC, very similar to Alberta, but a lot of other parts, not as much.
So these, a lot of the arguments that would lead to lead people to think, yes, we should join, we should separate or we should join with the U.S., they find they're less persuasive in BC.
But generally, all the plans for separation, they include BC.
The only way that a separation becomes plausible is with access to the coastline that leads to other markets.
Exactly.
And I mean, BC would have to go along if it were to function on its own.
If not, as we mentioned before, it's a quick slide to becoming part of the U.S.
Well, we're conflating two different things here, right?
Like if Alberta were to become part of the United States and say Saskatchewan too, they would function just fine without access to BC's coastline.
Right, right, right, right.
But that's what I mean.
Eastern separation as a concept is to be successful to create a new independent and successful nation.
Right, you're right.
I wasn't succinct about that.
You're right.
But again, that's not what this is about.
It's not about separating from Canada.
It's about joining the fucking U.S.
So the politicians are saying one thing and we believe really have a different design.
Right.
I think personally.
And I intend to prove it in a future episode, really, that Danielle Smith is not being completely honest when she talks about separation or rattles the chain.
She's even not, she's even trying to say that she's not really talking about separation.
But we're going to get into that very, very quickly here.
So often in the conversations about Western separatism, Manitoba gets brought up.
It's BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and then there's a little pause and they say, oh, and also Manitoba.
They might as well come along too.
I don't know anyone in Manitoba.
I don't know how to find where, you know, how they feel about this sort of thing.
Manitoba is the home of the NDP party.
And so, I mean, their politics, their feelings, and a lot of stuff are a fair amount different than a lot of the areas around them.
I think in conversations about this, very often the East and the West both tend to feel like Manitoba and oh, we love Manitoba.
They'll come with us.
Oh, for sure.
They'll side with us.
Oh, yeah, we don't need to ask them or anything.
They'll just side with us, right?
Of course, because we're awesome and they're right next to us.
And so they're awesome too, right?
I mean, obviously, Manitoba will come with us.
I don't know that that's true.
I don't know that Manitoba is necessarily...
Manitoba might think that both sides are crazy.
I don't really know.
It's possible that they do think both sides are crazy because it's possible that both sides are crazy, actually.
But yeah, I don't really know.
But that's the feeling I get when I listen to talking heads on the internet and on news shows talk about this is everyone kind of thinks that Manitoba would just, you know, sidle in with them.
No one puts them as a question mark.
Everyone who draws their own map about this draws Manitoba in.
They're like the most popular province in this, probably because they just haven't picked a side yet.
What's your thoughts on Manitoba?
Do you know anyone there?
My wife's family comes from there originally, actually.
And yeah, there's a lot of very deep orange blood in Manitoba.
Yeah.
And a voting history that shows a populace that's pretty hard split between left and right wing voters.
Like, I don't think the liberals have ever held power there.
It's either been NDP or conservative.
Yeah.
And NDP more frequently than conservative.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely.
And generally speaking, left-wing voters tend to be more federalist.
So the voting records itself would point to, no, Manitoba would be rather disinterested in coming along for the ride.
But again, when the ride is into the back seat of the United States broke down pickup truck at the barrel of a gun, Manitoba might not necessarily have a voice in the matter any more than British Columbia will.
Yeah.
Yeah, once the economic strength of the nation is damaged sufficiently, it will be very difficult, especially for a province like Manitoba whose own economy is on the lower end of the separate provinces in BC.
That would be difficult to uphold and maintain, especially when you have the bright, shiny neon distraction to the south of you saying, come on, all your neighbors joined us.
Come on, yeah.
So we keep talking about different economies, so I think it's time to bring up equalization payments.
Okay.
The equalization program.
What we have in Canada is we have, actually, you know what?
I have a little video, a little video that does a quick explainer, just a couple minutes, explaining the equalization program.
So I think we should play that.
I've talked enough here.
Okay, let's make it big and start it from the beginning.
And we'll play.
Calculating who gets what is complex.
One report called it the black box of equalization arithmetic.
First things first, this is a federal program.
Ottawa collects tax revenues from across the country and uses that for any number of things, including transfers to the provinces.
We often talk about equalization, but that is just one of three programs sending federal money to the provinces.
Canada health transfers, Canada social transfers, and equalization.
At the heart of equalization is what's known as fiscal capacity.
That's the revenue each province could raise if they all used a standard tax rate.
Provinces with stronger economies raise more revenue than provinces with lower incomes.
The feds use equalization to bring those with a weaker fiscal capacity up to a national standard.
The formula actually started quite simply.
Equalization equals the national standard minus each province's fiscal capacity.
It's grown more complex over the years.
Now it looks more like this.
It's eye-glazing for sure, but the main point remains the same, to use federal funds to top up provinces below the national average.
Critics say the have-provinces like Alberta send money to the have-not provinces like Quebec to subsidize programs like cheap daycare.
It's clear, it's simple, and it's wrong.
Alberta doesn't send money to any province.
Ottawa collects federal taxes at an equal rate across the country.
It's not so much that Alberta pays more, high-income individuals do.
And a lot of them happen to live in Alberta.
Okay, so all.
Well, as you well know, Rosia changes every year.
So let's get a look at the current formula for this fiscal year.
Every province, including Alberta and Saskatchewan, get at least $1,400 about per person.
This year, Ontario did not qualify for equalization, so it received that basic amount.
As you see, the other remaining provinces, they're the ones that receive the most.
And that makes a certain amount of sense.
I mean, those provinces have more elderly Canadians, for example, whose needs make them eligible, frankly, for more funding.
Okay, that graphic helped me a lot.
Hopefully everyone else, too.
Thanks, Peter.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
So for people just listening, they can't see that graphic, but I'll describe it briefly.
This graph was from the 2019-2020 year.
And in that year, we had a pretty good year.
This was just before the pandemic.
Only five provinces needed an equalization.
And the way the calculation works is that every province gets the base amount per person.
So you get $1,464 per person.
And if you have more people, then you get more overall money.
So in that calculation, BC would get more money than Alberta, for example.
Has more people.
But then some provinces get more than that per person.
So, and I won't go over the individual numbers, but that's essentially how it works: is that the way that it's said, and I know this because I lived there for 17 years, the way that it's put in Alberta often is that Alberta is putting money in and then other provinces are taking out, which isn't really the case.
We all pay federal tax, and then some of that tax from the federal thing, as he mentioned, gets paid out, and some provinces just get more of it, and that's all.
But the special case of Quebec tends to stand out.
So let me find, okay, I've got a good graph here.
So this is equalization chart from the 2025 to 2026.
This is for the current year.
So we can see on this graph that Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC will not receive any equalization, any additional amounts from equalization.
But all the other provinces will receive at least a little bit.
Ontario, very, very small amount.
Newfoundland, very, very small amount, but more so for the other provinces.
So it looks like, you know, based on how much per person is going to be received, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Manitoba will get a fair amount per person.
Quebec, about half of that amount per person.
Okay.
But when we look at the amount that each province gets per year, because the populations of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba are much smaller than Quebec, they get less overall total money.
And Quebec gets quite a bit more.
In fact, Quebec will tend to get more than half of all equalization money that's given in any one year.
That's been true.
I mean, look at the numbers here.
That's been true every year for at least 10 years.
The last year when that wasn't true was 2013 to 2014, it looks like they were a little less than that, but still far more than any other province because their population is higher.
And so when people look at this, when people look at the equalization situation, they look at this and say, why does Quebec get so much and none comes to us?
This is a classic situation of, I mean, this is essentially why people complain about a welfare program.
Why should anyone else get for free what I had to work for?
And, you know, I don't want to have to go in through a whole situation on a welfare program.
I think we should have it, whatever the criteria is.
Maybe we want to argue about exactly who should and shouldn't get it.
I don't know.
But, you know, I think when someone is having a bad year, we shouldn't just let them drown.
That's really what I feel, like, as a general rule.
And if some provinces, you know, they just, by the nature of their economies, they can't quite produce as much to support everything they need to do.
Well then, yeah, we should help them out.
That's part of having a system where, you know, I mean, that's part of a team.
You're never going to have a team where everyone scores the same number of points.
But at the end of the day, the team that won the Stanley Cup, you know, they all get their name written on the cup.
Every member of the team.
They don't say, yeah, yeah, but this one gets more of the cup because they scored more goals or whatever.
That's just not how it works.
We're all on the same team.
And that's, you know.
And the other metric with it, too, that I think gets missed is like all those zeros, right?
Like we're talking about equalization payments being like the top up.
And again, as it was outlined in that video, equalization payments as a concept are only a portion of the federal tax money that gets distributed to the provinces.
And a lot of times, like the money that's set aside for healthcare transfer payments and stuff gets conflated into these numbers to further inflate the numbers and make it look more scarily like Quebec is stealing.
But again, like healthcare spending, those transfer payments are just based on population and nothing more.
Right.
So of course, populist provinces are going to draw more money.
That's the way it's supposed to work.
The money that we spend on taxes goes to serve people.
Where there are more people, we need more money.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
So as we said, equalization payments are a big part of a lot of the angst and discontent that's present here.
And as we can see on this chart, Alberta has not received any additional equalization.
There is a note here.
In 2020, it was reported that for the first time in 55 years, Alberta would be a net receiver, getting more federal spending than federal taxes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The province took a major hit, specifically in its main resource export, oil and gas.
The department that runs this does not list Alberta as receiving payments.
So, you know, we see other provinces here as well, right?
Alberta, actually, Newfoundland.
I thought Newfoundland was not doing quite as well, but they've turned around since I was in high school anyway.
And they've not received any payments at all since at least 2010, 2011 on this chart.
Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland are all kind of better off economically.
So you see why some people look at the situation, they look at a map and they look at the numbers and they say, oh, look, hmm, Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan.
Wow, we're doing so much better.
And all those other provinces, they're just like sucking on the government teat, right?
Like we would be even better off than that if we just separated and became our own nation.
Think of all that money that we're helping Quebec with that we don't need to help them with anymore.
And we could use that for whatever else.
Okay.
Kind of.
But of course, you would need to duplicate all the things that are already being done at the federal level, including national security.
If you want to keep healthcare, you're going to have to, I mean, the equalization payments help with that.
Yeah, like that's the other thing.
We're going to have to keep that up.
All this extra money out to other provinces for equalization payments, but they're still taking their share of the transfer payments on healthcare.
That's a big bill to pay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the federal government helps out with that.
That's an additional thing that's separate from equalization.
The other point that was brought up the last time Quebec separatism got really serious was if you're going to separate, well, you're also like in a divorce, we settle up on our debts.
So if you're separating, you own a portion of that national debt.
Yeah.
The argument usually is formed in the minds of Albertans that they already owe less of that national debt because of the strong contributions to the economy that they've made.
I don't know if that argument is something that should be persuasive, but that's the argument that people are going to hear over the dinner table among the people who are at least a little savvy about this and want to separate.
So prepare yourself for that one.
But another thing I'd like to say, just because we're kind of wrapping up here on this, is that you're right when you mentioned earlier that there's sort of two tracks and one is being disguised as a bait and switch for the other.
I think the end goal here for Danielle Smith is becoming the next governor of a state.
Because she sees, honestly, because I believe she's a grotesquely corrupt and opportunistic person and she sees a great opportunity to get much wealthier as a politician if she's a politician of an American state.
Yeah, that's about right.
There's more graphic in U.S. politics, quicker path to becoming a multimillionaire.
So, and I've heard even in BC, people who have said out loud, you know, throw their hands in the air after the election, it's all garbage, and we'd be better off, you know, as part of the U.S.
Well, I told you before we got on the podcast, like one of my own co-workers was railing today about how he and his wife are thinking of just moving to Alberta.
Yeah.
Because those guys got it right.
Because Carney's coming for our tinted windows and our lifted trucks.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, that's the idea that you need to be worried about your tinted windows and lifted trucks is an extreme amount of privilege when you have the situation where you have, you know, transgender people who might lose recognition that they exist, right?
I mean, yeah.
So one thing that needs to be mentioned in this is that joining the U.S. seems like an economic fix.
But first of all, first thing to think of is all the U.S. rules that you will now have instead of the Canadian rules.
A lot of the people in Alberta who would want to switch are already totally on board with getting the Second Amendment, man.
They love it.
They want it.
They want more.
They want more guns.
They want all the guns.
Okay.
Whatever.
But you're definitely going to lose abortion.
100%.
And what about all those other rules?
I mean, care.
Healthcare.
That's gone.
That on its own is an endgame.
Yeah.
I don't understand why any Canadian would seriously consider separation as a concept, knowing what we know about Canada's public health care system versus the American privatized health care system.
For God's sake, they have to shoot CEOs down there.
My child is a type 1 diabetic.
If I lived in the United States, my family would be bankrupt or she would be dead.
Yeah.
So I just want to hit real quick the Danielle Smith just a few days ago held a press conference where she made a series of demands of the federal government.
So first, she says Alberta requires guaranteed corridor and port access to tide water off the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic coasts for the international export of Alberta oil and gas, critical minerals, and other resources.
So, okay, interesting.
She already has port access to the Pacific.
Yeah.
A point of contention with a lot of Albertans is that they wanted to get a pipeline built to the East Coast to sell product to Europe.
Quebec put a kibosh on that, which only exacerbated this current situation.
We're going to have to have a separate episode of this series about pipelines because that situation.
Yeah.
Add that to the list.
It's worth noting the propaganda in this thing, right?
Because this is supposed to be a dignified and impartial statement of what we need.
And scroll up, please.
No, you're sure.
Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.
Because you skipped over the second part of that.
And other resources and amounts supported by the free market rather than by the dictates and whims of Ottawa.
Oh, yeah, right.
Yeah, right.
Like Ottawa is turning the tap off.
Just because they fucking feel like it.
Yeah.
You know, like Trudeau woke up one morning and thought, hmm, don't feel right today.
I think I'll piss off Alberta.
Let's tell them they can't ship oil.
Right?
Like, yeah.
So second demand, the federal government must end all federal interference in the development of provincial resources by repealing the no new pipelines law, C69.
So we're going to get into that with a pipeline episode in the future.
She adds, get rid of the oil tanker ban, which there isn't an oil tanker ban.
That's not a thing.
Anybody who goes in Vancouver can tell you there is not an oil tanker ban.
Yeah.
The net zero electricity regulations.
There's going to have to be, I'm going to have to do an episode about climate change that I've been putting off for a long time, but it's long overdue.
The oil and gas emissions cap, the net zero vehicle mandate, and any federal law or regulation that purports to regulate industrial carbon emissions, plastics, or the commercial free speech of energy companies.
The commercial free speech of energy companies.
Ah, yeah, I know.
Yeah, that's a pretty open statement.
Yeah, wow.
It's yeah, these laws are destroying investment confidence and costing Canada and Alberta hundreds of billions in investments each year.
This is like hardcore, scary, right-wing shit, right?
Like this is oligarchical shit.
Like we want the government, we want there to be absolutely no fettered capitalism is the name of the game.
Fettered capitalism, exactly.
Right.
So third demand, the federal government must refrain from imposing export taxes or restrictions on the export of Alberta resources without the consent of the government of Alberta.
Frankly, all provinces should be given that same respect for their resources.
No, but you can see that this came out of at least one trip to Mar-a-Lago.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I intend to go over the many trips to Mar-a-Lago that Danielle Smith has personally made in attempting to create for herself her own personal conversations with the U.S. federal government, which is not really appropriate, but she's sought to do it anyway and is part of what leads me to think that this isn't really about separatism at all.
But so fourth demand, the federal government must provide to Alberta the same per capita federal transfers and equalization as is received by the other three largest provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia.
We have no issue with Alberta continuing to subsidize smaller provinces with their needs.
But there's no excuse for such large and powerful economies like Ontario, Quebec, BC or Alberta to be subsidizing one another.
This was never the intent of equalization and it needs to end.
So again, we're going to dive deep into equalization.
BC hasn't received equalization payments in a decade and a half.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's unclear.
But we've all left me sometimes, so we're part of the Pinkos that are stealing Alberta tax dollars, I guess?
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, even Alberta has, in the past, elected NDP government.
You know, that's as pinko as Canada gets if you're going to use that nomenclature.
Yeah, I don't.
It's unclear.
I don't pretend to know her exact motivations there.
But these and other things she said have led me to believe that many of the things that come from this sort of the pool of ideas that are in conservatism as a set of ideas right now,
they are, they try to walk a line that's a very fine line between reality-denying ideologies, like really hardcore ones, and what they consider to be like socially acceptable ideas.
So like an argument I will make in a future episode is that many of the platform pieces and pieces of these things here are meant to be palatable to a larger audience, but are really just conspiracy theory shit in disguise.
They're completely compatible with a denial that climate change, for example, is happening at all.
They're completely compatible.
A lot of the ideas, not the ones mentioned here, but other ideas are completely compatible with the idea that COVID was fake somehow, that the pandemic was not real somehow.
I mean, this is at the heart of a lot of the conservative notions that are in the world now.
And look for that in a future episode.
That'll be a separate thing.
But in response to this, the very next day after she did this, we're going to go over, we're going to show this video too because I think it was awesome.
This was a gathering of a group of indigenous chiefs from Alberta who got together to make Their own statements in directly in response to what Daniel Smith has said.
There was five or six there.
I think in this, if you're watching the video of this, there's five that are here in the video.
They all spoke, but we're only going to show the one and he'll introduce himself.
And this was on May 6th of this year.
Here he is.
Good afternoon.
My name is Chief Bilijo Tucker with the Mixu Cree First Nation.
I too can echo the sentiments of the chief here before me.
That we thank you for bringing us together as treaty people to stand and oppose this.
Yesterday you made four demands to the Prime Minister of Canada.
That was a no-no because you gave him a time limit until the 2026 to get their things in order.
You will not go do what you want without the approval of the treaty people.
You talk about a reset with Canada.
You must reset with the indigenous peoples from Turtle Island.
Bill 44 will think of you.
You're garbage like that.
This is treaty land.
Hand on it today.
Thank you.
Right.
So, yeah, he picked up the bill that she had and he just tossed it on the floor.
Called it garbage.
As political theater, I quite liked it.
What do you?
What do you think, Jeff?
Yeah, I dug it too.
And I've seen.
Yeah, he was plain spoken.
He wasn't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
Sorry, what?
I just, I've seen a couple other references to this statement and some other stuff floating across social media.
And I do love the counterpoint.
You know, what right do you have to bargain for separation and independence when you as an entity, a political entity, did not exist when these treaties were written between the federal government and the nations?
Yeah.
I mean, in actuality, I mean, this is part of the mix here that would make this very, very complicated is that those treaties were actually signed with the British.
And, you know, the British are, you know, the king now is still the, you know, actual sovereign of all of this.
And at some point, you know, an offer that Trump has made to have Canada join as the 51st state, you know, one imagines that, you know, some royalty or whatever would have something to say about that.
It's not a thing that would impress me very much.
I'm not very much of a royalist of any kind.
But, you know, his picture is going to be on the coins coming up this year, next year, whatever.
I don't get coins that much anymore, but I'm sure, you know, I've seen the queen on my coin for many, many years.
So, you know, I'm sure the king will have his chance to have his head on there until he leaves us.
And, you know, all of the indigenous peoples who signed treaties, and not all of them did, some of them make a point of pointing out that this is unceded territory, right?
Not bound by a treaty.
And most of the land across the prairies was treaty land.
And, you know, why would any of the people, why would any of the indigenous peoples want to, you know, go to the?
U.s.
Indigenous people get treated far worse historically by the?
U.s.
Would have any interest at all in dealing across the table with the?
U.s government?
Yeah um, I have yeah yeah, what good friend who's, who's a chief of one of the local Indian bands uh, here in Bc um, and he's shared lots of stories of frustration in dealing with the government.
But at least they'll talk to him.
Yeah, ask any native in the states how the federal government dealt with first nations yeah, or how they still deal with them.
Yeah yeah, um.
One other thing point I wanted to make really quick.
I couldn't find any other spot to really sort of dovetail it into your other points, but there were several points during the election cycle in Canada where Trump, I think, made an effort to tone down the rhetoric for a little while uh, but just couldn't hold his water with it, of course, no.
But he also said several times, um on camera uh, that he was actually quite happy to deal with a liberal Canadian prime minister and he kind of hoped that Mark Carney won, because you know he, he wanted to deal with that guy.
He never really gave an adequate explanation as to why.
He gave sort of, you know, half-assed comments about how Polivier wasn't his kind of conservative and that kind of thing.
But I think really what it was was this was the game that he saw he wanted to see.
It's, it's.
It's like, uh yeah um, what he wants is the vision almost, almost like a staged assassination um, where you set Canada up to put the people in charge that are going to piss off a small portion of the population, enough that you can make a crimea play and say oh, we're going to go in and liberate the Albertans from Canada because they don't want to live within Canada anymore.
If quizzed on it, I feel certain that Trump's answer to that question you know the, the question of of why would you prefer to deal with the liberal uh, prime minister, would undoubtedly be because they'd be a pushover and weak and I would be able to take advantage of them more.
That's undoubtedly his answer.
That that's, that's right, the answer he has in his front pocket all the time when that question is asked.
That's no one asked him, probably because they're tired of that answer, but that would be his answer.
I can pretty much guarantee it.
So uh, with that, I think we're going to uh wrap this up.
All right, man?
So uh, you're anonymous.
You don't have any social media presence of any kind.
No one knows, Knows who you are.
You're actually just a figment of my imagination and I mimic your voice.
Yes.
So no one can find you ever.
Don't look.
But people can find me still on Twitter at Spencer G Watson and on Blue Sky at Spencer Watson.
And that's pretty much the places you can find me.
I'm also on Facebook, but if you can find me on Facebook, you're already finding me there and you don't need to be told how to find me.