(0:00 - 1:45) In 1995, Quebec came within 55,000 votes of leaving Canada. If you're over 50, you likely remember the Quebec referendum. All of us, across Canada, waited to see if our nation was about to split apart. While Canada in its current form has only existed since 1949, when Newfoundland became the 10th province, or if you want to be very sticky with your history, only since 1999, when none of it split off from the Northwest Territories, Quebec was one of the original four provinces that formed the Confederation in 1867. And so all of Canada watched with bated breath to see if a 130-year-old country was about to fall apart. And now, 30 years later, Alberta is talking independence. Polls show that 52% of Canadians take this talk seriously. And the most recent poll in Alberta itself has 36% of Albertans ready to go it alone. And while 36% is not the required 50% plus one, a little more history puts that figure in perspective. A month before the 1995 Quebec referendum, polls showed 39% of Quebecers favoring independence. But over the following month, that figure grew to 47%. And then, on the day of the referendum itself, 49.4% of Quebecers voted in favor. It was that close. Alberta stands at 36%. But a referendum there could be as much as a year away. (1:46 - 4:01) Plenty of time to sway the undecided. Time for Mark Carney's globalist green energy policies to continue to cost the Alberta oil and gas sector. To continue to anger a province which, since the inception of Pierre Trudeau's national energy policy, has seen tens of billions of dollars every year flow eastward, while Western concerns have been ignored by Ottawa. Jeffrey Rath, a constitutional lawyer, is a central figure in Alberta's independence movement. He joins me today to explain what Albertans are so angry about and to express his opinion that not only will there be a referendum, but this time it will mean the end of Canada as we know it. Jeff, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's going to be a real interesting discussion. For our viewers who don't know your past, you have been a lawyer for 30 years. You've been involved in some of the biggest cases pushing back against the government overreach, especially in the last few years, most famously the Ingram case here in Alberta, which resulted in the courts deciding that the lockdowns in Alberta were illegal. To my knowledge, the only province where that has happened so far. And now, in recent years, you've also been heavily involved with the Alberta Prosperity Project, which is pushing for greater sovereignty for Alberta and quite possibly secession. Well, no, right. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Will. If I made a mistake there, correct me, Jeff. Sure. No, we're not seeking greater sovereignty and possibly secession. We are seeking the full and complete independence of Alberta from Canada. We've come to the realization that there's no amending the Canadian constitution. There's absolutely no percentage whatsoever in trying to work with literally completely insane Marxists within the Liberal Party who wanted to destroy the Alberta economy. Canada is completely dysfunctional. There's absolutely no way forward for Alberta other than complete independence from Canada. (4:03 - 11:04) All right. We literally now see Canada as an existential threat to Alberta and Albertans. Right. And you've got a lot of support for this. I think the most recent poll said 36% of Albertans would vote in favor of leaving Canada. And to put that in historical perspective for you viewers, back in 1995, during the Quebec referendum, a month before the referendum, Quebecers were polled, said 39%. And that number crept up and up and up as they got closer to the referendum until the day before it hit 47. And of course, if you remember your history on this, they got 49.4%. They were only 55,000 votes shy of Quebec leaving Canada. Now we've got 36% and we're a long way, a lot more than a month away. So, you know, who knows what's going to happen here. But before we move on, because my show is, I've never made a mistake, any secret of the fact that I am Albertan myself, you're Albertan, but for our viewers who across the country, because my show is national, would you please explain what it is that Albertans are so upset about that we've got a large number ready to leave? Oh my God, where do we start? I mean, first of all, I mean, as people know, I mean, going back over 40 years, you know, Preston Manning, the Reform Party movement, Western Canada concept, all of those people. I mean, the big issue were the complete inequities of Confederation. I mean, all you have to do to understand why Albertans feel like they're a colony of the East and why we feel that we are completely oppressed by Eastern Canada, just look at the number of Senate seats that are a lot of across this country, right? PEI has four Senate seats. So like with 110,000 people, so I mean, they have like they have one senator for every 25,000 people, right? We have six Senate seats, people almost got 5 million people in Alberta. So they have one Senate seat for 25,000 people. We have one Senate seat for every, you know, almost million Albertans, you know, it'd be like 800,000 roughly. You know what I'm saying? It's too early in the morning to do math completely accurately off my head. PEI has four Senate seats. New Brunswick has 10. Its population is 900,000. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia has 10. Its population 2.1 million. Newfoundland has six. It has the same number of Senate seats as of Alberta with a fraction of the population. So if you add up all of the maritime provinces combined, so they have 30 Senate seats for less than 2.5 million people. So they have 30 Senate seats to Alberta's six when they're not even half of Alberta's population. If we had Senate seats on the same ratio as the maritimes, we'd have 60 Senate seats. You know, that's one example. We only have one seat on the Supreme Court in Canada currently. Sheilah Martin on the Supreme Court's from Alberta. But three from Ontario, three from Quebec, you know, they're going to outvote Alberta every time on questions to do with the division of powers. And we saw that with that, you know, that absolutely crazy carbon tax decision reference that came out of the Supreme Court. The case went up to the Supreme Court as a constitutional reference, right? Dealing with the division of powers. So there was never a trial in the lower courts as to whether man-made CO2 is actually a threat to human life. And in fact, I've got scientific data from NASA right now that literally is, you know, space satellite photos of the greening, you know, greening or browning of particular areas on the basis of how much CO2 is being emitted, right? So as an example, you know, when the Genesee coal power plants were operating at full capacity in 2015, you know, there's a huge swath of Alberta that was getting lots of extra CO2, which is great for plants. Farmers' crops were doing great. All the forests were doing great. All the animals had lots of forage, et cetera, et cetera. And not that, you know, not that natural gas doesn't emit CO2, but it emits less than coal. But in 10 years, you can see from satellite imagery that those areas have been browning slightly because not as much CO2 is being emitted, right? And you see that all over the world. I mean, CO2 is good for plants. If you look at it, you know, on, you know, like, you know, a proper geologic time and span, right, the planet is on the verge of carbon dioxide starvation, which means an end to all life on Earth. CO2 is a building block of life on Earth, right? And, you know, we have lunatics that want to destroy our economy over people, they call them emissions. These are emissions that we need to control. No, we don't need to control CO2. There's no evidence whatsoever that man-made CO2 is harmful for the planet, is causing the planet's temperature to increase. The only thing that there is evidence of is that man-made CO2 is allowing people to grow more crops in places like India, Africa, China, et cetera, so that the starving people of this world will have more food. That's all CO2 is doing. But of course, we have people in the World Economic Forum that have, you know, including, you know, like complete lunatics like Al Gore, who are literally sucking trillions of dollars out of national economies through all of these stupid carbon tax subsidies, carbon taxes, et cetera, where the money goes out of the pockets of hardworking men and women into the pockets of World Economic Forum investment club billionaires, you know, for all these stupid, you know, battery plant projects, bug plant, you know, eat bug projects, you know, all these other things, right? So, that really rankles Albertans. I mean, you know, Albertans are uneducated people. So, you know, it's, you know, it's this level of magical thinking that Albertans are really upset about. So, and I liken it to, you know, comparing it to the ancient Mayans. So, we have people like Guilbeault and Trudeau and Carney and whatever that literally want to take a knife and cut the heart out of working men and women through excessive taxation, right, on, you know, engaging in magical thinking that you can just tax them more, if we could just make their lives more miserable, it's, you know, that's going to change the weather. Well, how's that different from the ancient Mayans magically thinking that if they took a flint knife and literally cut somebody's heart out of their chest and held it up to the gods, that it was going to make it rain? You know, it's the same level of stupidity that, you know, that the ancient, that destroyed the ancient Mayan civilization that's being imposed on Alberta. (11:04 - 12:37) That's why we say that these people are an existential threat. I was watching a recording the other day where Danielle Smith was talking about how much better it's going to be for Alberta industry because she's going to hold the carbon tax in Alberta of the federal government at $100 a ton. It should be zero. You know, it's, and by voting Alberta out of Canada, that's what the carbon tax would be. There wouldn't be any carbon taxes. Alberta wouldn't be part of, you know, this stupid Paris climate accord that literally just enriches billionaire oligarchs at the expense of working men and women. And let's, and let's say for a second, you know, like it's too long to get into the science of what I'm talking about and to show all of the, you know, all of the, you know, all of the slides and all the satellite imagery. So let's ignore that for a minute and presume for a second that climate change in fact is real, which I think is the silliest notion ever. Canada's total CO2 input globally is 2%, right? China and India's complete total carbon output, because they know it's bullshit. They know that when they build coal fired power plants, the CO2 generated by those plants allows them to grow more crops in the regions where they build those plants. They're effectively fertilizer plants at the end of the day, where they're putting healthy, clean, you know, CO2 fertilizer into the air, the crops grow better so they can feed more people. They like it, right? So they're going to keep building coal fired power plants. (12:37 - 15:10) They're going to keep building, you know, they're going to keep emitting CO2 because they know that fossil fuels, you know, are the way that developed countries become first world countries and become wealthy countries. Why would they not want to be wealthy? But anyway, but let's just presume for one second, just getting back to where we were, that everything that the climate crazies have been saying is true. Canada only emits 2% of global CO2, while India and China increase their CO2 output by 10% of global CO2 annually, right? So even if Canada became completely net zero, at great cost and expense to our economy, you know, the continued stagnation of our economy, the continued rendering of the lives of average Albertans and, you know, and Alberta businesses and the other oil and gas industry, completely miserable, make all of our businesses, you know, like less than profitable, et cetera, et cetera, even if all of that stopped and Alberta and Canada magically became net zero tomorrow, it's not going to do anything whatsoever with regard to global CO2 levels, because India and China don't buy into this foolishness and this stupidity, right? So everything that we're doing in Canada is nonsense. All of the stuff that, you know, Carney is talking about in his book Values, which is just shocking when you read it, you know, that we're in this climate emergency, and basically, we have to get rid of, you know, individual rights of people, because we're going to need autocratic governments to, you know, basically lock people in their homes to protect the climate, because capitalism has become this evil, you know, CO2 breathing monster that has to be stopped. I mean, literally, this is a banker saying that we have to stop capitalism. I mean, the man's a lunatic Marxist, right? So, you know, we've elected this guy that thinks that capitalism has to be stopped in his tracks, and the only solution is to elect technocratic World Economic Forum bureaucrats like himself to become the virtual dictators of us in every aspect of our life. That's why they want to control our free speech. That's why they want to take our firearms away. That's why, you know, they want digital bank currency, right? And Carney was a big proponent of going in and freezing and seizing people's bank accounts without, you know, without a warrant, without judges involved, you know, simply, oh, I'm a banker, I can just press a button and your account is frozen. (15:10 - 20:27) I think that's a great idea. Did you just say something mean about me? Did you just say that I'm an idiot? Did you just say that I'm a Marxist? Well, I'll show you, I'll just freeze all your money. And then you won't be able to say anything anymore, because you'll be too busy, you know, at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy, you're being scrambling around for, you know, a place that, you know, for shelter over your head and food to eat and all the rest of it, you know, to be able to get on your silly internet machines and talk to people, right? I mean, that's what we're dealing with. I mean, these people are pure evil. So when I say that they are an existential threat to Alberta and Albertans, and this existential threat is real and immediate, I'm, you know, I'm not exaggerating. So interestingly, you know, I was talking to some people the other day. And as you can imagine, you know, with what we're working on now, in terms of the Alberta referendum, referendum question, I'm talking to a lot of people. So I was talking to somebody that was absolutely adamant that Canada not leave or Alberta not leave Canada. And, you know, one of the reasons that this person cited was that Donald Trump is crazy. Like a lot of what you're talking about is this improved relationship with the United States and strengthening Alberta's relationship with the US. Donald Trump is crazy. And he's an existential threat. And I said, have you ever read Mark Carney's book, Values? If you want to see somebody who's crazy and who's an existential threat, you know, read Mark Carney's own words, right? In terms of what his worldview is. And I understand I've never met the woman and I've never read anything that she's written. I understand that Carney's wife is even nuttier than he is, you know, on the, you know, on, you know, all the climate things, you know, that they want to do. Right. But I mean, I, you know, anybody that isn't up on this, I mean, all you have to do is read Mark Carney's book, Values, or go to the World Economic Forum website and read their book, The Great Reset, you know, where they talk about how nobody will ever own any, well, nobody will own anything more, but everybody will be happy. Well, we know that's bullshit, because people will continue to own things. But it's the billionaires, you know, like, and it's not even the billionaires. It's the, you know, it's the trillionaires now. It's the trillionaire class that are literally amassing all of the world's wealth by looting our national treasuries under the guise of the stupid climate emergency that they've created, the so-called climate emergency that they've been touting, you know, to harm us. And again, like, so getting back to the Supreme Court, sorry, that was just a long rip into how much Albertans think about all this climate nonsense. But the Supreme Court, so we have this case, the climate reference, right, goes to the Supreme Court on a division of powers issue. It's clearly, you know, does the federal government have the jurisdiction under the Constitution of Canada 1867 to interfere with provincial resources and provincial resource extractions, you know, under the guise of a phony climate emergency, right? Well, the Supreme Court, because they are nothing if not deferential to government, as opposed to, you know, concerned about the rights of the citizens, said, oh, the government said that, you know, that CO2 is an existential threat. And because it's an existential threat to the world, it's an existential threat to Canada. And because it's an existential threat to Canada, we can't get hung up on the strict reading and wording of the Constitution of Canada and be worried about the fact that the federal government are, in fact, entrenching on provincial jurisdiction. This existential threat means that we have to rule in favour of the government, because if they tell us that something is a threat, we have to take judicial notice of that threat and, you know, make our rulings accordingly. Sorry, Alberta, even though the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in your favour on division of powers in a proper, judicially considered decision, we're overturning that because this is an emergency. It's an existential threat. So, you know, that's the foolishness that Albertans need to get out from under, you know, like the benefits. And you have to understand that the Alberta independence movement, there's a real undercurrent in the independence movement. And this may be why we're seeing, you know, some push back from, you know, Danielle Smith and her cabinet, why, even though Bill 54 passed this morning, lowering the threshold of votes that we're going to need to have a referendum in Alberta, there's a lot of them, a lot of MLAs, and I think Danielle Smith herself, that are really nervous about what's going to happen next when Alberta is voted out of Canada. Because obviously, there's a lot of people in the independence movement in Alberta that are looking forward to a constitutional convention and changing the constitution of Alberta to put actual protections into an Alberta constitution that can't be tampered with by the legislature, by, you know, the legislature at whim, right? So, and, you know, and that's, you know, so we're talking loosely, you know, in terms of a new constitutional structure in Alberta, of having following a US model where we have an elected legislature on population. (20:28 - 23:45) We have an elected Senate, where Senate seats are accorded by regions of the province, counterbalancing the legislature, so that, you know, rural areas in Alberta will be able to counterbalance the population of the cities. So urbanites, you know, can't make silly, you know, or, you know, make dumb laws that affect the lives of rural Albertans. You know, like, you know, things with like, with regard to firearms as an example, right? So, and then we would have an elected executive over and above, you know, the Senate, you know, elected presidency, which would mean effectively that every, you know, prior to every provincial election, you would have to have what amounted to a leadership contest, right? Where anybody, you know, anybody in a party could run, you know, for the leadership of the party. And if, you know, whoever garnered the most support amongst their fellow Albertans could lead for, you know, could lead for four years, right? And then the only open question for us, we'd be calling our project Commonwealth of Alberta project, right? There's lots of people, obviously, that want to be a Republic of Alberta that want to sever ties with the monarchy or even any reference to our past. But there are obviously a lot of, you know, I would call them, you know, soft sovereignists. I don't like the word separatist, but, you know, soft sovereignists that still have, you know, that attachment to the monarchy, to our real history as a Commonwealth country. And, you know, we would leave it to Albertans to decide in a constitutional convention, you know, whether we wanted to be, you know, an independent republic without the monarch as the head of state, you know, within the context of a constitutional convention, an independent republic with the monarch remaining as a head of state, effectively having a governor general for Alberta, you know, that would be appointed by this, you know, by the, you know, the legislature, the Senate and the executive. Or alternatively, you know, would we want to be, you know, completely, or would we want to remain in the present Westminster system that, you know, has literally seen, you know, Danielle Smith go from libertarian princess, you know, to the dark queen of Alberta, where she has literally unlimited power, you know, of the executive deposited in the hands of her chief of staff, Rob Smith, who now is the head of the Alberta bureaucracy and controls all the deputy ministers, you know, the minister's departments, et cetera, like very few people know in Alberta. And again, this is one of the things that me in the, you know, in the independence movement, and that we're fighting the evils of government overreach through COVID are really concerned about. Most people in Alberta don't know that a minister, you know, like, you know, let's say the, you know, the minister of, let's just pick one social services or whatever, can't fire his own deputy minister, right? If there's a deputy minister in that department that he's not getting along with, or is obstructing policies, or, you know, is behaving, you know, in, you know, in ways that are more supportive of whoever the former party of power was, you know, those people are the, you know, form the permanent bureaucracy, and a minister can't fire them, only the premier's chief of staff can fire them. And those people are damn near impossible to get out. They're like, you know, they're literally like bedbugs, right? You can't get rid of them. (23:45 - 25:42) They're all, you know, just burrowed into government. And, and they're the ones that I mean, like, I kind of laughed, actually, when Rachel was an example, when Rachel Notley got elected, oh, my God, though, the province is going to die. Rachel Notley, you know, Rachel Notley's interest. I said, Oh, don't worry about it. I said, she can't really do that much damage. The bureaucracy actually runs this place, right? And they won't let her do anything that's particularly, you know, particularly bad. Well, the NDP, though, they learned their lesson. So I mean, they were slowly weeding out, you know, people that they thought were obstructionists and replacing them with the wrong socialists and botnets within the within the bureaucracy. And they've been doing it, you know, and all the regulatory boards and panel surgeons literally tell, you know, none of whom have practiced law for years, you know, telling doctors, you know, who are on the front lines of medicine, what they can and can't prescribe and how they're supposed to practice medicine. And if they don't follow, you know, the, you know, the dictates of the authoritarian College of Physicians and Surgeons, that they're going to lose their medical licenses, etc, etc. I mean, that's, that's what happened. You know, that's, that's sort of the dangers of this when a party like the NDP gets into power, and they infiltrate, you know, all of their own little bedbugs into the, you know, into the democracy, right? So we'd obviously want a constitution that would greatly restrain, you know, the rights or not the rights, but the greatly restrain the powers and privileges of the bureaucracy, you know, flip the pyramid upside down and put the people in charge by having this, you know, like adopting some elements of the Swiss Constitution, where you can recall legislators, you could recall, or have your recall votes for senators, you have recall votes for, you know, even the prime minister or president of, you know, of a new Alberta, with only 50,000 signatures, you know, so it wouldn't be that they're out of office on 50,000 signatures, but then they would have to go back to the people. (25:43 - 29:11) And then the people could say, Okay, well, do I agree with my fellow 50,000 citizens, yes or no, that you behave in excess of your power, you're behaving like an autocrat, you're making our lives miserable with, you know, by, you know, through excessive taxation, you know, etc. So we see that, you know, that, you know, that what we want to do is, we were on our design, and we're working on it right now, we want to, we want an Alberta Constitution, where the people, right, are the ultimate safeguard to the rights of the people, you know, not some elected monarch, not some elected, you know, politician, you know, that the people themselves are going to be able to protect themselves, you know, from the abuses of government and government bureaucrats, you know, in their, you know, in their day to day lives. So, you know, that's what we're, you know, that's, you know, that's, you know, one of the reasons that, you know, the whole independence movement, you know, isn't getting as much buy in, you know, as we would like from our elected officials, because a lot of them see this as being a fundamental change as to how it is that they're the boss of us. And they don't like it. So, yeah, and while we get in a few minutes, we want to get into some of the challenges that Alberta would be facing if they did separate. But first, I think we need to paint the picture that the referendum, at least, at this point in time seems to be a virtual certainty, you referred earlier to Bill 54, which was passed just last night, which lowered the number of signatures that would be required from Albertans to, I believe, 10% of voters, which is something like 177,000. But you already have more than that. Oh, I'm really glad you brought that up. I'm actually, even though I've been running at both ends, and I've been, you know, just on the road, not getting a lot of sleep and just working, you know, working my tail off this week, you know, trying to get the word out about independence and getting people to join APP and sign up. Wonderful morning today. You know, Oilers won in overtime last night. I'm Bill 54, passed third reading in the Alberta legislature. I can't stress how huge that is, because as of Monday, the Alberta Prosperity Project was at 240,000 signatures. I haven't touched base with my colleague, Mitch Sylvester, yet this morning. But I would imagine by now, we're over a quarter of a million verified names, addresses, and pledges to provide signatures for Alberta pension. So, you know, we're literally, you know, almost 72,000 signatures over what we need, or 73,000 signatures over what we need to affect a referendum on the basis of the pledges we've got. And, you know, and everybody, you know, like Jason Kenney, you know, is calling us, you know, like a bunch of ragtag blowhards that are, you know, that represent nobody but themselves and blah, blah, blah. I mean, all these people don't understand that we're extremely well organized, we have over 250,000 Albertans that are now pledged to a referendum. Since Carney was elected, I mean, the biggest challenge that Alberta Prosperity Project has had is onboarding, we're now up to over 20,000 volunteers. So of all, you know, of all those people with sign, it's like, hey, would you like to volunteer? And we've got now over 20,000 volunteers. So think about that, you know, we have more, we have now probably double the number of volunteers in APP, then we have infantry in the Canadian infantry and combat arms soldiers in the Canadian Army. (29:12 - 38:37) Like, you know, this is growing, you know, this is growing exponentially every week. And, you know, for a simple reason, there's a very, very, very strong economic message, you know, in and around and, you know, the drives what we're doing. Okay. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about grievance and we've talked about how much Albertans hate being governed by people in the east that don't like this and don't understand our lifestyle and are completely ludicrous. You know, like Doug Ford threatening to cut off Alberta oil to punish Donald Trump without, you know, without actually understanding that Ontario oil goes through line five down to line nine into the States and then comes up from the US into Sarnia, right? So, I mean, there's Doug Ford red in the face, like the boon that he is, threatening to cut off Ontario's oil to punish Donald Trump, right? And then my favorite was that moron, right? The moronic, you know, Greenpeace climate change minister that we had, he didn't even know that there wasn't a straight east to west pipeline from Alberta to Ontario and Quebec. And he was horrified. And then now, of course, he changed his tune. He came out yesterday and said, oh, we don't need any more pipelines. There's enough pipelines, you know, because the phony tariff war is over and any sense of urgency in and around nation building and all the rest of it is now gone, that the liberals are two seats away from a majority and their judges in Quebec are flipping seats for them, right? So, but I mean, these are the things that drive Albertans nuts, right? But on the flip side, and I do want to focus on the positive, we have an unbeatable economic message, right? Our economic message is quite simply, think about how much better off your life is going to be, right? When you are not subject to any more federal regulations, right? No more federal regulations. So that means no more federal gun grabs, no more climate change bullshit, right? On and on and on and on. All federal regulation of Alberta is going to be gone. Obviously, we'll have transitional provisions in the new constitution to carry on, you know, the criminal code and all those necessary federal statutes, right? As we finalize, you know, the Alberta constitution. But there won't be any more, there won't be a carny gun grab. There won't be any more greenhouse gas regulation in Alberta. There won't be $100, you know, a metric ton charge on, you know, on people that are flaring gas so they can get oil out of the ground, you know, all of those types of things, right? But on top of that, for the individual Albertan, no more federal income tax, right? No more GST, no more even a threat of individual carbon taxes on, you know, fuel at the pump, home heating, you know, home heating, electricity or gas, you know, et cetera. I mean, can you think of anything more despicable? Like, and let's just stop on that for a minute, right? Taxing home heating fuel, right? We live in one of the coldest, most challenging climates in the world, and the Canadian government has said, okay, working men and women, we're going to slap a tax on your home heating fuel. So your choices are either pay the tax or not have a place to live because all your pipes are going to freeze and your family will freeze to death. So those are your choices, you know, like we're going to double your, double, triple your home heating and electrical bills, and you have no choice but to pay it because if you don't, you're going to die. I mean, it's like taxing, I mean, it's literally the equivalent of taxing air and water. I mean, it's one of the most despicable taxes that has ever, ever, ever been levied on working men and women in the history of the world. And that's, you know, what the federal government has done. That tax is going to be gone. So no more carbon tax, no more fuel taxes, no more home heating taxes, no more surcharges on your electricity bill. You know, if the power plant that your electricity comes out of, you know, is fired by coal or natural gas instead of wind or solar, which doesn't work at minus 50 anyway, right? So no more carbon tax, no more federal corporate tax. So the new independent government of Alberta will be able to set its own corporate tax rate and can literally set a flat 10% corporate tax rate across the board, which would see corporate headquarters and businesses fly to Alberta to completely invigorate the Alberta economy, right? No more corporate tax, no more capital gains tax, right? No more excise tax on fuel beyond carbon tax, no threatened estate taxes. Don't forget that the communists in the party government, David Lametti being one of them, once said that Canadians have no right to property. Well, we see that because they want to take all of our guns away. But the liberals, and it's still on the books and part of their plan, keep in mind, you'll own nothing and be happy is the mantra of Mark Carney. He's one of the basically founding members of the World Economic Forum, right? You'll own nothing and be happy. So there won't be any threatened federal home equity tax, wealth tax, luxury tax. It's like, heaven forbid, you've lived in your home your entire life and your house is now worth a million and a half or $2 million. They're not going to be able to tax away your equity by claiming that you now live in a luxurious home, notwithstanding the fact it's the same house you've been in for 40 years, that now happens to be worth more than a million and a half bucks or whatever the arbitrary number is that they set on what amounts to luxury or what level of equity should be taxed away from right? And all of these taxes literally are designed, again, getting back to my earlier discussion, is to remove the wealth and the prosperity of every individual person in us, human beings, and move it through these bloated bureaucracies that they create, and then into the hands of the corporate overlords who run the World Economic Forum. Right? So that's what this whole thing is about. It's just the corrupt criminal scheme that Albertans will be able to vote themselves out of. So no capital gains tax, no luxury tax, all those taxes, all those federal taxes will be gone. And then on top of it, $70 billion a year will no longer be leaving Alberta to go to Quebec, Ontario, the rest of those places, filtered through this massive federal bureaucracy, have it all spread around between all the people that vote the right way, liberal, and then to give only out of $70 billion to only give Alberta $30 billion back extensively in federal services, some of which include the Coast Guard. Alberta doesn't have a coast. Some of these services that count into that $30 billion include Canadian Navy. Well, we're not going to need a Navy. We'll just need an army and an air force. Right? Et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, that's what we're selling to Albertans. The day you vote for independence is the day that you no longer have to file a federal income tax return. The government of Alberta obviously is going to have to speed up what it's doing and expand its own revenue department. It has one. It collects corporate taxes in Alberta. To collect all corporate taxes in Alberta, and then to assess a flat 10% income tax on all Albertan citizens, where everybody pays a flat 10% of their income above a certain threshold, let's say it's $20,000 or whatever, 10% on everything above that for everybody all the way up the ladder, and everybody is going to live better than they've ever lived. In fact, I'll tell you a funny little anecdote, if you want to hear it. Yesterday, I was coming back from a breakfast meeting where I was meeting with a group of very influential Calgarians with regard to this particular topic. So I got pulled over on the way home because, and I've been worried about this for years, the day they put them up, I was pissed off. So we have one set of traffic lights on Highway 22 going into Calgary from the country. Those traffic lights have no real reason to be there, other than they all have these big cameras on top of them to read license plates going in and out of Calgary. I'm sure with the eventual idea for all these little World Economic Forum monkeys that want to control every aspect of our lives, that down the line, the World Economic Forum would then be reading our license plates and then telling us that we're going into town too often for groceries, we're driving too much, we're doing this, we're doing that, and then start assessing the surcharges for every time we want to go into Calgary without providing them a good reason. This has already happened in places in Europe. Oh, no, no, no, but let me tell you what's now happening in Alberta. I live in the country, we have four vehicles. I'll be the first to admit, I'm not always the best at paying attention to whether the registrations are up on every vehicle. (38:37 - 38:53) We could look at a sticker on the back of our vehicle to see they don't even give us stickers anymore. It's even harder for somebody like me to keep track. All of my vehicles were insured, we have one insurance contract for everything, so I'm not going to get the $3,500 fine, whatever. (38:54 - 44:23) The Calgary City Police set up an enforcement operation where these cameras were reading people's license plates in real time, and then they were pulling over anybody that had forgotten to register their vehicle in the appropriate amount of time. To me, it's almost just like a dry run for complete totalitarian control. Combined with facial recognition so that when you drive your car into town and you get out, now the cameras are tracking you so they know where you're going too. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Anyway, I get pulled over, and I have to say, the young constable that came up to the window of my farm truck was a really nice young gentleman, and very fresh-faced, and oh my God, they're making them young now. But a really nice guy. It's a funny thing, Jeff, that they get younger as we get older. I know, isn't that odd? It's just so strange. But anyway, he comes up to the window, he's a really, I don't want to call him a kid, but a very nice young police officer, and comes up to the window of my truck, and he says, oh, this is what's going on. We're doing a license plate enforcement operation. Your truck hasn't been registered. And I said, oh, well, it doesn't surprise me. Here's my license, insurance, whatever, blah, blah, blah. I said, yeah, there's no doubt my registration's out of whack. I'll get it sorted out tomorrow, whatever, thank you. And he said, well, you seem to be in a really good mood today. He said, what's going on? I said, I am in a really good mood today. I said, the Oilers are in the playoffs, they're doing really well. And I just came from a really fun meeting where I was talking to this young constable. He goes, I know, he says, we're talking about it too. We're really excited about it. He's talking about this fellow police officer. And I said, well, I bet you're really excited about it, because that's going to mean like a 20. I said, I've seen some model police, firemen, nurse pay subs. I said, that's going to mean like at least a $20,000 a year pay raise for you. He says, I know, he says, we're all talking about it. We think it's great. So I mean, like if rank and file police officers are talking about how much better their pay packets are going to look in an independent Alberta, I suspect that the powers that be are going to have a much harder time tapping down this movement than they're expecting. I read an article this morning where that despicable Trudeau liberal, Jason Kenney, who locked us all in our homes and destroyed Alberta businesses and literally drove suicides across the province with all of his horrible lockdown orders and all the businesses and families that he destroyed. So Jason Kenney, oh, yeah, this is horrible. Just talk to Nancy Southern at ATCO. And we're really concerned that we're losing business because people from Korea think that Alberta is going to be landlocked and aren't going to be, they're not going to be able to get the products out of Alberta and whatever else. And of course, Jason Kenney, being a federalist who has ambitions to replace Pierre Paulieff, he doesn't want to see Alberta leave. I mean, how is he going to buy boats in Quebec unless he has our money? So him and Nancy Southern, oh, yeah, this is really bad. I'd like to look at how many federal subsidies Nancy Southern and ATCO get, incidentally. But oh, yeah, our Korean and Japanese clients are really worried about how they're going to get the product. So apparently neither one of them are smart enough to be able to tell their clients, oh, God, don't worry about that. The rail lines run both ways. They're not going to be shutting, they can't shut down the rail lines. Once Alberta becomes independent, because 75% of Ontario's container goods roll through Alberta, they would really be cutting off your nose to spite your face. So don't worry about that. The only thing that you have to worry about is no longer being subject to crazy tariffs being applied by lunatics in Ottawa because they think that your product generates too many greenhouse gases or it has too much plastic in it or whatever it is, right? So just pay everybody, just realize that for whatever business you're doing in Alberta, your profits are probably getting increased by 20% or 30%. And this is going to be the best thing ever for you. I mean, if you're selling a product or service, which is what ATCO is doing, you'd think that they would be capable of doing that. But they're like, oh, doom and gloom. We can't talk to our Korean and Japanese clients. They don't want to invest here because they're not sure what the rules are going to be. Well, I got news for you. The rules are going to be way less than they are now. So the best thing about an independent Alberta is we're probably going to have about three quarters as many rules, which from a business person's perspective, again, does nothing but boost profitability, not harm profitability. And certainly somebody with Nancy Southern's would be something that you would think that she would be able to articulate in English when she's talking to a client. But apparently Jason Kenney and Nancy Southern, who one would think are both being paid like Nancy Southern, I think she was on a list of top paid CEOs a year or two ago and her salary was well over a million dollars a year. You'd think that somebody is being paid well over a million dollars a year in salary. Forget about her family trusts and all the money your dad just swirled away for elsewhere and all the family money that's offshore. (44:24 - 47:33) That somebody who's making a million bucks a year is capable of communicating to their clients how much better off their clients are going to be in a free and independent Alberta. But oh no, not Jason Kenney. Because of course, pops out of his little gopher hole a month or two ago to smell the air to see whether it's time is right for him to become the conservative leader when Poilievre loses. And there's Kenney and Southern sowing fear and telling people that Alberta is going to be landlocked and all of the stupidity. It's not going to happen. And let's just think about that for a minute. The big issue is, oh, Alberta's going to be landlocked and you're not going to get any more pipelines. Well, we're not going to get any more pipelines now. Mark Carney yesterday, his big epiphany was, I might let Alberta have a pipeline, one, a single pipeline. And that probably would be one that goes straight across Canada to the refinery in Sarnia to cut out line nine. So it would be a pipeline that we don't need, that's not going to create a new market. But at least then, the liberals would feel the next time they want to threaten the US of cutting off Alberta oil or whatever foolishness they want to do, that then they can make good on the threat. I suspect that would be the only pipeline Carney would approve. But his condition is, I would approve a pipeline, so a single pipeline, so don't think Northeast, West, South, Churchill, two more to Vancouver through Vancouver, one all the way through Quebec to the Americas. No, none of that's happening. There'll be a pipeline and it will be the pipeline, I am certain, that will interfere with Mark Carney's Brookfield assets and investments as little as possible. So it'll be the pipeline that ruffles the feathers of his partners in Qatar as little as possible, right? But even then, he says a pipeline, but only when and if we can reach a national consensus on a new pipeline. So we already know that Quebec has said they would sooner sign on to the 82 Constitution than to allow filthy Alberta oil to flow encased in steel through Quebec to the Maritimes. So Quebec's never going to agree to a new pipeline. So how are they going to agree and how are they going to reach a national consensus when the only two provinces that count as far as Carney's concerned from a consensus building perspective, Ontario and Quebec, where Quebec is vehemently opposed to a new pipeline, and Ontario is at best ambivalent, right? So it's like, I've been laughing, I've been calling it Danielle Smith's courtship of Mark Carney, like that old program, the courtship of Eddie's father, right? So Danielle Smith is giving six months to have this courtship with Mark Carney, whereas you can see whether she can use her feminine wiles to convince Mark Carney that he should be nicer to Alberta and stop punching us in the face like an abusive spouse. And she's hoping that Mark Carney is going to show up in Alberta and bend the knee with a big box of chocolates and offer her candy in the form of pipeline corridors and all the rest of it. (47:33 - 49:22) But I mean, he's not even ready to come to Alberta with a box of chocolates. He's coming to Alberta to say, well, maybe in three or four years, if you're really good and provided I can come up a national consensus, I might let you have one chocolate, right? It's ridiculous. And they think that anything that Carney has to say or do, whatever little gifts that Danielle can negotiate from Carney in their six-month courtship is going to exceed the value of ending all federal income tax, GST, carbon tax, excise tax on fuel, capital gains tax, corporate tax, et cetera. It's ludicrous, right? There is no way from a value perspective that the value to Albertans, the monetary value, and each individual Alberta family, regardless of race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, I guess we have to worry about the gender of families now because there might be five or six of them, I don't know. But whatever it is, everybody understands one thing, which is how much money do you have in your bank account at the end of the year? And let's imagine, so I was talking to one young police officer who was probably, I'm just surmising, they're probably single. He looked pretty too young demographically to be married at this stage in life. But imagine that he's a young police officer, he's saving $20,000 on his taxes, and he's married to another lovely young police officer of whatever gender he chooses. And she or he saves another $20,000 a year on their taxes. So for that family unit, their savings is going to be $40,000 a year. (49:23 - 50:30) I mean, that's real money. And maybe you're a bit older, or maybe that's the demographic he's in as well. If you're trying to take care of aging parents who are struggling, that's $40,000 a year extra that you can use to help take care of your mom and dad. That's $40,000 a year that you can put into your kid's education. Maybe you think, hey, it's like $40,000 a year, maybe I will take my kid down to that tennis camp, basketball camp, hockey camp, whatever in Arizona or Florida or whatever, because our family can now afford it. And we can make those types of choices for ourselves because we have an extra $40,000 a year in our bank account, as opposed to what most Alberta families are doing now, which is, oh my god, we can't afford that, kids. We're barely making it ourselves. After all the taxes were taken away and the cost of living, every time we turn around, we're getting hit with another tax. Inflation is through the roof because every good or service that goes into our grocery stores, that makes it to a gas pump, even if they've taken off the consumer carbon tax, there's still the industrial carbon tax that applies to fuel at the pump. (50:30 - 55:52) That's the hidden tax that we're still paying. So you get rid of all the carbon taxes in Alberta, not only is a two-person family of, let's say a police officer and a nurse, going to save $40,000 or $50,000 a year, but their spending power is going to increase by another 10 or 15% because all of their costs, whether it's home heating fuel, electricity, fuel at the pump, groceries in the grocery store, because of course, everybody knows the biggest cost of produce is fuel, really, when it comes to it, growing it, transporting it, putting it in the store, keeping the store warm, all of that stuff, all of those costs are going to be gone. So we're going to see all of our food prices go down. Then while we're at it, and again, this is a bit controversial, because I know we have dairy farmers with dairy licenses in Alberta, but they are by far the minority of Albertans, and I hate to say are a very small portion of the Alberta overall economy, there won't be any federal supply management anymore. So we're not going to be seeing this illegal scheme that would be illegal, but for the Dairy Supply Management Act or whatever they call it, that allows or that assists dairy farmers in charging 400% or 500% more than the cost of milk or eggs or whatever it is, because of these supply management quotas, where we literally have farmers pouring milk down the drain, because they're not allowed to sell it, and the hell with the fact that we have Aboriginal families on reserve, we have single moms in Calgary, whatever, whatever, that shouldn't have to pay 400% or 500% more for milk and cheese and healthy food for the kids, but for a bunch of federal politicians being bought off by dairy cartel operators out of Quebec, that have been running this scam against the Canadian public for decades. So that'll be gone. So food prices go down, everything goes down. A free and independent Alberta is going to be a wonderful place to live. The biggest problem we're going to have to have is we're going to have that really strict immigration controls, because none of us buy into Danielle Smith's vision of Alberta reaching 10 million in population. For a lot of us, it's time to hang a vacancy sign out now, there's too many people here, and we need to find a way to control any more influx of people and making sure that we're getting the maximum amount of employment and services out of the people that are already here. And if it means taking a bunch of the extra money that we're no longer sending to Quebec, as an example, the 15 billion a year that goes to Quebec, so that Alberta can have paid apprenticeship programs so that every kid, indigenous children on reserve, kids off reserve, whatever, anybody that could do math well enough to be an electrician or whatever it is, all of them could have paid apprenticeships, just like they have in Quebec. They could be paid a salary while they're going to the interstate, they could have their apprenticeship fully paid for by the government, which is what I understand they do in Quebec, using our money. And we could make sure that we make the most of everybody that's here, instead of this bizarre circumstance where we've got to continually flood the people into this country, willing to work for minimum wage in box stores controlled by multinationals, whose real business model is, well, we're going to keep flooding our stores with people that are willing from overseas that are willing to work for 15 bucks an hour until they get to uppity and understand that there's a better way of life than working for $15 an hour and they improve themselves. I think in an independent Alberta, we're going to be telling businesses that that is not a sustainable business model. You're going to find a way to pay your employees a living wage, or you're not going to be in business. It's that simple. Why is it that we think that businesses should operate with this unwitting supply of third world labor being brought into Canada from overseas that otherwise aren't fit for work anywhere else in the economy? We're going to have to go back to a sane immigration system like Canada used to have, where people are brought in on a point system and we preference given places, areas where we have real skilled labor shortages, doctors, nurses, plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. At the same time, we're going to have ample money left over once we're no longer subsidizing the rest of the country's apprenticeship programs to develop and enhance the labor force in Alberta, so that we literally develop with our own money, the most highly skilled, well-educated, most capable labor force in the world. Think about what our economy is going to do. Think about the idea of, and I think Kevin O'Reary was talking nuclear, but think about, and all this technology has existed forever. I'm talking about cogeneration plants specifically. (55:52 - 1:04:58) We have a giant energy source that will power Alberta for the next several hundred years in one place, specifically the Montney natural gas field that straddles the BC-Alberta border. The Montney field has currently been estimated at holding over 400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. We can literally locate co-gen plants right next to the Montney field that will take clean natural gas, run it through generators, generate electricity with it, and then build giant data centers and AI centers and whatever it is right next to these co-gen plants in Northern Alberta. We can turn Northern Alberta into the AI hub of the entire world right? Using skilled Alberta labor, and if we have no carbon taxes being applied, and no interference by the federal government in that development by continuing to trying to tax every single input at every point along the way, the economic costs of being able to do that and the cost of electricity, who wouldn't want to locate their business there? Then on top of it, you look at these data centers and AI hubs and whatever else it is. The one thing that Grand Prairie has in great supply, really cold weather. One of the biggest costs of all of these facilities is cooling. Well, there's at least six months of the year that you're not going to have to worry about that. That'll be another savings. Big difference between building a big data center and AI hub in Northern Alberta and building one in Arizona. The possibilities for a future in Alberta are endless. The only thing we have to do is get rid of all of these idiots in Ontario that only govern us for their benefit, not our benefit, for their benefit. It's a toxic relationship. It's an abusive relationship. I say clearly, and Carney says, oh, I put a new face on my cabinet. He put in this woman, Julie Dabrusin, who's a very left-wing Toronto environmental lawyer, who is a protege of the person I referred to as the gibbering Guilbeault, who's on record of 2035, 2050, not good enough. She wants the Alberta oil sands shut down by 2030. Because we're an existential threat to the planet. No, we're not. We're actually growing plants. We're making, we're feeding the world with CO2 by making the world a better place to live. But oh, no, no, no, no. They've either bought into it or they're complicit in this massive climate change fraud that's literally seen trillions of dollars of national wealth being put into the hands of these plutocrats that sit around the table every year at the World Economic Forum to decide what the next scheme is that they're going to run to suck money out of the pockets of hardworking 14 men and women and have it on their corporate balance sheets that they then squirrel away at locations like Bermuda and Dubai and elsewhere like Mark Carney has. That's our project. We literally think the case for Alberta independence is so strong that we will be able to sell this to Albertans within seven months. Not only do we have enough signatures to have a referendum petition fully signed up and ready to go within a few months of signature gathering, but we are confident that we could sell this entire program to Alberta and Albertans within this calendar year. We're very excited about it. Obviously, within the movement, there's lots of people going on now. They don't like the fact that APP has been leading the charge. People like Ezra Levant and Cam Davies and others are now, oh, we better get to the front of this parade and pretend that we're leading it. We've had a lot of that crap going on. We're confident. We're all working towards independence. Our only issue is that we're sick and tired of politicians in Alberta. We don't trust politicians. We don't trust political people. Cam Davies, as an example, was convicted of running phony campaigns for Jason Kenney to siphon votes away from Jason Kenney's leadership opponents. He was literally convicted of that by Elections Alberta. Now, he's running a political party. There's a real question is, has he really split with Jason Kenney? Is he running another stalking horse campaign for Jason Kenney? We don't know. They're gathering signatures for themselves. We have no idea where these signatures are going. Having Cam Davies involved in a political party and running a political party, it's kind of like having a bank robber being put in charge of bank security, probably not the best idea. That's for another day, I guess. We would like everybody that is supporting APP to please keep doing that and understand that we're the ones that are leading the charge on this. We are the way forward. Then once we have an interim constitution in place, then everybody can fight about who's going to be the boss of us. Let's not let a whole bunch of wannabe politicians run to the front of the line and hijack a movement that we've been working diligently on for the last four years to get Alberta safety out of Canada and moving forward on a decent path that respects the rights and freedoms of everybody in this province. Right. Now, you've laid out a very good case. I know that there's a lot of support, especially among younger Albertans. As an Albertan myself, I see a real challenge and I'm curious as to how you're planning to address it. If we look back at this recent federal election, only three ridings in all of Alberta did not go conservative. If you go back to the provincial election when we elected Danielle Smith, she was elected by the rural areas. The urban centers, if you looked at Calgary, looked at Edmonton, it was almost all orange. It was all NDP. And the statistics, when you look at them for who elected Carney, well that shows that was the baby boomers. They were the only demographic that voted majority liberal. Why? Because they're wealthy, they're comfortable, they've got their pensions, they've got their homes, they own their homes, and none of the crap that's been going on in the last 10 years has really touched them. And I think you've got another challenge there in Alberta because you still have a lot of those people around who are going to say, well, I don't want to give up my Canadian identity, and none of this has really affected them. So what's your plan to get through to get to those people? Well, I'd like to speak to that. First of all, everybody needs to understand that when you vote for Alberta independence, you're not losing your Canadian citizenship or your Canadian passport. Everybody that's a Canadian citizen in Alberta remains a Canadian citizen. The Canadian government doesn't recognize the renunciation of citizenship. And let's look at Marxist Carney and his little buddy Mike Myers, which are the elbows up. Mark Carney has four or five passports, EU, Ireland, UK, probably UN, Canadian, whatever. All these globalists, they're like the pick a passport crowd because they should be able to travel wherever they want, but it's us that they want to control, and we should be limited to one passport. Mike Myers is the same thing. He's not a dual citizen. He's got triple citizenship. He's got UK, so he's got a UK passport, US passport, and a Canadian passport. And he's, oh, elbows up, Canada. I can go anywhere I want because I got my three passports. And when Carney turns Canada into a Marxist hell, you only have one, but that's not my problem. Elbows up, right? So I don't have a lot of, I think we can counter that argument. The other thing is, boomers, not boomers, whatever, urban, rural, whatever, everybody understands their basic household map. So if you're a boomer, and you're worried about capital gains tax, if you're a boomer on your investments and on your property, that's going to go away. If you're a boomer, like you're still paying income tax, federal income tax on your investments and money coming in, you're not going to be doing that anymore. If you're collecting a Canadian pension, or if you're collecting a pension from somewhere, your pension rights don't change. It doesn't matter whether you're living in independent Alberta, or you're living in Costa Rica, or Florida, or Portugal, or wherever the hell you decided to retire to, your pension is your pension. It's portable. Nobody can take that away from you, right? So there's that. But again, it was kind of funny. I did an interview with Dawna Friesen out of Toronto with Global National several weeks ago now. It's all been such a blur. (1:04:58 - 1:14:37) But when we were off camera, she turns to me and she goes, well, Jeff, I have a question for you. I said, yeah. And she goes, are your supporters mainly rural people? I love the way they say rural. It's like we're dirt under shoes, right? Are they rural people? We said, no, Dawna. I said, we have lots of supporters in the cities, and we have APP chapters in the cities. And look at that event in Calgary the other night. It was standing room only. We turned away 300 people. We had over 1,000 people in Calgary last night. During an Oilers game in Edmonton last night, Ezra Lamant had over Cam Davies had over 1,000 people out in Edmonton. That's how excited people are about this. I just don't think people realize when they're signing up stuff with Cam Davies and when they're signing up stuff with Ezra Levant, it's not necessarily going into our petition drive, and they're not necessarily part of the process that we're managing. But that's a different issue, right? But that's the level of enthusiasm there is, right? So when you talk about this Boomer divide, rural divide, whatever, I really think that where we're at now with APP, we're kind of like Donald Trump in the last election, where working class people rallied to his banner, and the rank and file members of the Teamsters supported Donald Trump in the face of their union bosses. Think about that. And again, it's anecdotal, but that story that I told you that happened to me yesterday with that young police constable, rank and file working people get what we are doing and are going to flock to the independence banner, whether their union bosses and the rest of it want them to or not. So what does that really leave the NDP and the Federalist forces? It leaves them the crazy people with the purple hair that are running around screaming about how we all need to be locked down harder and that we're fascist pigs and all the names that they call us for wanting to be free Albertans with reasonable tax rates, and that we can make our contribution to society in a reasonable way that allows our families to thrive along with society rather than this socialist hellscape that they're trying to turn our country into, right? So I think at the end of the day, all of that, oh, yeah, and to finish the story with Dawna Friesen, she goes, oh, are they mainly rural people? I said, no, we have city people too. And I said, you have to understand that our supporters are mainly people that know how to do math, right? And that's what it amounts to. Even boomers do math, right? Everybody can do math. They can lift up their paces and go, holy crap, it's going to be another 20 grand a year in my pocket if we get, you know, if we end federal income tax. And what about all the other federal taxes? Oh, my God, I'm not going to pay those anymore. You know, my household is going to be so much better off. Our kids are going to be better off. We're going to be able to take better care of our parents. You know, grocery prices are going to be lower for seniors that are struggling month to month, you know, all those types of things, right? So, you know, we only see, you know, we see nothing but, you know, but, you know, blue sky for, you know, Alberta, obviously. You know, and I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to minimize this. I mean, things are going to get bumpy if you're invested in the TSX, right? So you might want to look at your portfolio mix and, you know, maybe look at some US Treasuries, you know, something in the short term, because I'm sure that, you know, with 26% of Canada's GDP leaving, you know, leaving Canada, you know, the TSX is going to be your freefall. You know, the Canadian dollar, you might want to look, you know, people are going to have to start getting their heads around, you know, alternative investments and, you know, parking their money in US dollars or, you know, gold or whatever they want to do. Because obviously, the Canadian dollar will start trading on par with the Polish złoty, right? You know, when, you know, people see, you know, Canada, Alberta, Canada's currency is a petro currency. When all the petro leaves, you know, there's obviously going to be some pressures on the Canadian dollar. I mean, that's one of the reasons we've been, you know, speaking to, you know, members of the Trump administration and working with the US administration with regard to support for Alberta independence. You know, we're, you know, we're going to be wanting to put in, have in place, you know, half a trillion to a trillion dollars in, you know, credit swaps, effectively, you know, line of credit for the, you know, for the, you know, for the Commonwealth of Alberta, you know, secured against, you know, Alberta resources, just to get us over that transitional hump. And, you know, and, you know, to look at converting, you know, Alberta savings and assets into US dollars that are, you know, all of those types of things. Those are, you know, those are discussions that are ongoing right now with the US administration, because they fully support what we're doing, right? And of course, why wouldn't they, right? It's a national security issue for them, right? We have a communist party adjacent government in Ottawa, right, that has completely screwed North American energy security and energy supply, right, with all of the silly carbon stuff, right? So if you weaken the North American economy, you weaken North American energy supply, have Joe Biden blow down, you know, the entire US strategic petroleum reserve without having, you know, neat pipelines from Alberta and other places to rapidly replace that oil, right? Who does that serve? Obviously, it serves Chinese global, you know, hegemony and their, you know, and their desire for global dominance. You know, so, you know, there's no doubt that, you know, that the US sees a free and independent Alberta, you know, with a government that is, you know, freed from, you know, all of the, you know, all of the influence of the communist Chinese in Ottawa, in the Liberal Party, and in the Conservative Party, Canada as well, right? Those two federal parties. So, you know, the US sees from a national security perspective that a free and independent Alberta is actually, you know, strongly in the US interest, right? So, you know, I think all of these things, you know, mitigate very well for, you know, a successful referendum this year. Right. And that brings me to my last question, Jeff, that there will be a referendum at this point in time, as we've already covered, seems a virtual- Yeah, the only question is, is it going to be in November of 2025, which is what I've been pushing for, I've been advocating for. But keep in mind, I'm a trial lawyer, so we always want to set aggressive trial dates and try to meet them, right? Because it makes you work harder, right? And it forces you to focus your energy and, you know, on the rest of it. There's, you know, there's also something to be said for momentum, and we have a lot of it right now. So we want to, you know, continue to carry that momentum forward. Or, you know, is the referendum going to be in the spring of, you know, 2026? You know, we have a lot of people that are pushing for a, you know, a spring referendum on the basis they want to be sure that we're going to win. But at the same time, you know, lots of other things are happening, because Danielle Smith and people around her, you know, are kind of messing with us a little bit, because they want to have a whole bunch of other referenda, you know, in around our single referendum question. We want to have a clean boat on a clean question. They want to have a referendum, they want to have a referenda on Alberta policing, you know, Alberta pensions, you know, a whole bunch of other nonsense, right? And when I say nonsense, these things all have to happen, but they follow independence the same way that, you know, the night follows day, right? An independent Alberta will have an Alberta pension plan. An independent Alberta will have its own police force. It's also going to have its own army and air force. I mean, think about an independent Alberta with its own fleet of, you know, its own fleet of aerial water bombers, you know, you know, those, you know, super tankers that we can use to, you know, to fight forest fires here and elsewhere if they intervene or help. You know, that's something that a lot of Albertans would see, you know, see value in, that we currently don't have the money for, because we're sending $70 billion a year to Canada to only get $30 billion in so-called services back, with $15 billion a year going to Quebec, so that Quebec can balance its budgets or have surpluses budgets, while Alberta's borrowing money to pay its doctors, lawyers, teachers, build roads, etc., right? So, you know, we, you know, we really see, you know, nothing but a bright future for an independent Alberta. You know, we're looking forward to making that happen. We're all committed to working our asses off for, you know, until we get it done, and we're having a lot of fun doing it. I mean, the energy in the rooms that we're meeting with are wonderful. I love meeting my fellow Albertans, salt-of-the-earth Albertans. It's really funny because it depends on the communities. I mean, we're, you know, we are going into, you know, we have a schedule of 60 town halls that we're going to be doing over the course of the summer. So, you know, we're going to be going into, you know, North, you know, I mean, the last reality was in Northeast, and there were people, you know, other than, you know, Caucasian Europeans there, but, you know, we were getting a lot of flack that when, you know, when at our last meeting in Ponoka, 300 people showed up, and they, you know, and people were commenting on the complexion of the people that showed up, right? And I was laughing. I said, what do you mean? This is a diverse crowd. We have farmers and ranchers. We have them both, right? This is Alberta diversity, right? Like, we have farmers and ranchers in the same damn room, and look, they're talking to one another. This is great, right? Like, you know, it's real diversity, but, you know, I mean, so, no, but we will, you know, obviously, we're going into ethnic communities. I have been contacted, actually, by a number of ethnic radio stations across Alberta that want to get our message out into those communities, and they have the same interest that we do. Like, you know, do you want an extra $40,000 a year for your family, for your kids, you know, to send back to India, to send home to your parents, wherever they are, or whatever it is? We're not going to tell people how to spend their damn money. We just want them to have more of it, right? And I think that's a message that resonates with everybody. Right. (1:14:38 - 1:14:59) You know, stop sending money to Ottawa and keep the money for your family. Right. So, the question then, the referendum is going to happen. The question is whether or not we'll get the votes necessary to separate. But if it happens, people I've spoken to who are in favour of separating, sovereignty, if you want to use that term. Independence is a term I prefer. (1:14:59 - 1:17:58) Independence is another word for it. Come in two camps. There's those that feel that Alberta should be forming its own country, essentially a republic, whatever, and those who feel that it should become the 51st state and simply join the US. What would you say would be the pros and cons to those two outcomes? Well, let's be really clear. So, when we're talking to the US and we're meeting with US officials, they are really clear that what we're talking about is Alberta independence, not Alberta 51st statehood. We are really clear on what we're talking about is Alberta independence, not 51st statehood. And for those in our movement that are in favour of immediately becoming 51st state, they need to understand that we can't do that as a referendum question because it adds a level of conditionality to what we're doing that's out of our control. Like Alberta can control becoming an independent country and can control not being a province of Canada anymore. That's within our purview. But whether we become a US state, that's up to the US Congress or the US Senate. And it's not a done deal that the US Senate is going to vote us in because it needs a two-thirds vote. And all the Democrats in the US Senate don't want another right-leaning constituency that's going to elect Republican senators and shift the balance of power in the US Senate being admitted to the US. So as an example, when Alaska was brought in, they brought in Hawaii at the same time because he had like hang loose, Democrat Hawaii, offsetting hard-driving, hunting, fishing Alaska, generally Republican. So there was a trade-off. The other thing is, from my perspective, we're fighting to get Alberta from underneath the federal taxes. Why do we want to jump into another federal system where we don't control the taxation and we're going to be paying US income taxes and US capital gains taxes and whatever other taxes they have instead of paying them auto? So there's different types of relationships you can have with the US. You can be a clearly associated state like Micronesia. You can be a territory like Puerto Rico, Guam, or the US Virgin Islands, none of which pay federal income tax, by the way, or you could be a US state. So I think what we're telling everybody, first step, let's get Alberta out of Canada and form the independent Commonwealth of Alberta under our own constitution. And then once we're done, we're up and running as a independent country, I'm going to retire. I'm going to go back to my ranch and play with my horses and play with my kid and have a wonderful life, watching my genius child get an engineering degree from Cambridge or whatever she's going to do, light the world on fire, right? And somebody else can fight the fight of whether we're going to join the United States or be a US state. My goal is simply to get Alberta out of Canada and then I'm going to go back to doing what I do and living my life and having a good time. So that's kind of where I'm at. Now, I have to confess, I think I lied because I said that was my last question, but one more has occurred to me that I think is very important. (1:17:58 - 1:19:18) Earlier on in the interview, when you were talking about all the complaints that Albertans have with this federal government that's allowing rampant immigration, that's taxing us to death, that's trampling on our constitutional rights, it occurred to me that, well, it's not just Albertans who feel that way, Jeff. There's a lot of people in Canada who feel that way. So if Alberta was to become independent, what do you think the political fallout would be for the rest of the country? Well, I mean, you know, Mark Carney, you know, ends up being the last Prime Minister of Canada as we know it. I mean, if we're gone, Saskatchewan's going to go, right? And if Alberta's gone and Saskatchewan's gone, and we're no longer there for Quebec to suck dry like a vampire, you know, like and feed on, you know, on the, you know, the husk of our corpse by sucking the lifeblood out of our, you know, of Saskatchewan and Alberta anymore, why the hell would Quebec want to stay? Like the only reason they stay is so that they can suck Alberta dry, right? So Quebec would probably go. You know, we were laughing actually when we were in the U.S. and we were talking to U.S. officials, because they were telling us that the whole thing about 51st State had always, always just been a troll by Donald Trump. And I said, oh, well, we know that in Canada, right, that it's a troll. I said, who in their right mind would want Quebec, right? Like you don't need that problem. We've been living with it for decades. It's horrible. (1:19:18 - 1:21:11) I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Like who the hell would want Quebec to their country, right? And, you know, and that's the reality of it. So Quebec's going to be off on its own, this isolated French end playing, you know, in, you know, in the, you know, in the northeast border of North America, you know, thinking that they could operate unilingually while all the rest of us are to say, well, good, we don't have to speak French anymore. We don't need French labels. You know, by the way, our, you know, our official language is English. So, you know, you better make sure you have English on your labels if you want to export the, you know, from Quebec into anywhere else, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's going to be a different world. You know, Carney's, you know, Carney's literally going to be the last prime minister of Canada and it serves him right. You know, he, you know, I know what serves Ontario and Quebec right. I mean, they elected, you know, they are, you know, they, you know, they got, you know, the Trump derangement syndrome in Quebec and Ontario was so strong that they got head faked by Donald Trump into voting Carney into office because Trump knew that Carney would be like a lot, would be the last prime minister of Canada. So, you know, it's, you know, it's a pretty sad commentary on, you know, how gullible, you know, the Quebec and Ontario electorates are, but, you know, that's where we're at. And again, I thank them, you know, thank you very much for voting Albert out of Canada and, you know, we'll, you know, see, I wouldn't want to be, right. It's something I'd say, I didn't say that. And there's lots of people in Ontario I love. There's great people in Ontario, Quebec, you know, and we bear no ill will or animosity towards anyone. But the simple fact of the matter is, you know, they, you know, foolish choices have consequences. In this case, it's going to be a massive concert. Yes. All right, Jeff, thank you so much for your time today. I'm I think it's safe to say that not only will all of Canada be watching to see what's going to happen in the next year, but I think the entire world. Well, thank you very much. Well, it was a real pleasure coming on today. Thanks for thanks for talking to me. Anything you need in the future, just reach out. We're here. Happy to talk to you.