EZRA LEVANT | What can Albertans learn from the UK's Brexit referendum?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Rebel News Podcast – What can Albertans learn from the UK's Brexit referendum?

Host: Ezra Levant
Guest: David Legg, former senior advisor to Alberta’s Premier
Date: February 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between Ezra Levant and David Legg, with a focus on what lessons Alberta can draw from the UK's Brexit referendum. The pair explore themes of autonomy, economic and cultural divides within Canada, parallels between Alberta’s independence debate and Brexit, and the challenges facing federalism. Legg brings perspective from his advisory role in Alberta’s post-NDP recovery and from his current time in London, offering both Alberta and international insights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Alberta’s Standing and Autonomy (01:04–08:20)

• David Legg recounts how post-NDP Alberta worked to rebuild relationships with global financial markets, positioning the province as an ethical, attractive destination for investment.
• Alberta’s economic strength is emphasized: job growth, innovation, and attracting capital, especially compared to other Canadian provinces.
• The "east-west" divide in Canada is highlighted, with Alberta’s conservative, resource-driven economy often clashing with the politics of central and eastern Canada.
• Legg argues for increased autonomy rather than outright separatism, supporting a Quebec-like federal framework for Alberta.
• Quote:
  David Legg [07:43]:
  “Alberta creates the most wealth in the country. It leads the nation by a long shot on job creation... Alberta, by instinct, is a conservative province. It has cut taxes, reduced regulation, and as a result, it has grown jobs 3.8% in the last year. The rest of the country is 0.6%.”

2. Brexit as a Model: Hidden Sentiments and the Power of Referendums (10:08–16:34)

• Levant draws an analogy between the “populist surprise” of Brexit and Alberta’s growing independence movement.
• Legg discusses the underestimated “hidden swing vote” that helped Brexit succeed—many felt it was impolite to voice support publicly but voted decisively for Leave.
• Both agree economic arguments often miss deeper issues of identity, security, and dissatisfaction with unresponsive elites, present in both the UK and Alberta.
• Legg predicts similar dynamics in upcoming Alberta referendums, with a latent desire for significant structural change.
• Quote:
  David Legg [10:53]:
  “The polling never picked up on the fact that there was a huge swing vote…deep down they were more concerned about the status of England and what it had become under a Brussels bureaucracy…”

3. The East-West Divide & Economic Grievances (16:34–23:47)

• Levant and Legg discuss the quality and substance of federal policies and how eastern Canadian attitudes create further Alberta resentment.
• Legg calls for a new “architecture” for Canadian federalism, suggesting Alberta could become “the Monaco of North America.”
• Critique of central Canadian politicians, especially Mark Carney, for policies that block Alberta’s prosperity.
• Legg lists mismanaged asylum, immigration policies, and regulatory barriers as major issues fueling separatist sentiment.
• Quote:
  David Legg [17:46]:
  “This is the only country in the world with this level of natural resource wealth that is so deeply self-defeating.”

4. Economic Decline, Cultural Frustrations, and Political Incompetence (23:47–31:21)

• Discussion on Canada’s overall economic stagnation, debt, and the way Alberta wealth subsidizes less productive provinces.
• Legg points out that if Alberta were independent, it would be among the world’s wealthiest democracies.
• Rising crime, asylum fraud, bureaucratic mismanagement, and culture-war policies are identified as reasons for eroding trust in the national project.
• Quote:
  David Legg [26:45]:
  “Alberta creates all this wealth that gets transferred into provinces that don’t feel the natural economic pressure of having chosen a left wing government or left wing governments…”

5. Project Fear vs. “Project Sneer” & Media Bias (31:21–44:03)

• Levant introduces the concepts “Project Fear” (scare tactics about pensions, etc., if Alberta pursues autonomy) and “Project Sneer” (Eastern pundits belittling Alberta’s aspirations, but treating Quebec separatists with respect).
• Legg explains that those who most vehemently oppose Alberta’s autonomy actually fear Alberta’s immense potential.
• Legg uses the Alberta Provincial Pension Plan as an example: Alberta could claim 45–50% of assets if it left the federal plan, mirroring Quebec’s arrangement.
• Notable moment:
  David Legg [36:45]:
  “If Alberta does… unlock fundamentally, we will within 20 years become the single most wealthy democracy on the planet. No holds barred.”

6. Democratic System Undermined: The Matt Jeneroux Incident (44:03–55:09)

• Levant recalls MP Matt Jeneroux's party switch as exemplifying federal disregard for Alberta’s democratic will and intensifying separatist sentiment.
• Legg critiques the practice of “backroom deals” and political opportunism, arguing this breeds cynicism and the sense of a “broken” country.
• Both note how such incidents alienate average Albertans and reinforce demands for autonomy.

7. The Conservative Movement and Preventing Fragmentation (55:09–56:27)

• The hosts urge unity among conservatives—referencing reform’s history of healthy internal debate but ultimate success.
• Levant and Legg agree that federal leaders like Pierre Poilievre and Premier Danielle Smith do more to keep Alberta in Canada than their critics realize.
• Legg sees robust conservative discourse as the “superpower” that could restore Canada’s economy and culture if allowed to flourish.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Alberta’s Economic Might:
  “We have 5 million people and we have $5 trillion worth of assets. Qatar is…incredibly wealthy... [but] this is the wealthiest democracy on planet Earth. Nothing is even close.”
  —David Legg [37:37]

• On the Subtext of Alberta Dissatisfaction:
  “If you're telling me I can't get that change federally, but I can get that changed provincially, you're tempting me now.”
  —David Legg [30:35]

• On Federal Neglect:
  “You could scare people a little bit about their pension maybe. …everyone in Alberta instinctively knows they're going to be better financially.”
  —Ezra Levant [32:00]

• On the Role of Conservative Leaders:
  “Pierre Poliev and Danielle Smith are the two people perhaps paradoxically doing the most to keep Alberta in the country.”
  —Ezra Levant [55:09]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [03:36–08:20] – Legg's role in rebuilding Alberta's global financial reputation and his perspective on the province's economic leadership.
• [10:08–14:49] – Lessons from Brexit, the hidden “Leave” vote, cultural and identity undercurrents.
• [16:34–23:47] – Critique of federal policies, the east-west divide, calls for a “Monaco” model.
• [31:21–35:18] – Discussion of “Project Fear” and “Project Sneer,” and Alberta’s potential if freed from federal constraints.
• [44:03–50:32] – Examination of the Matt Jeneroux “floor crossing” saga and its impacts on Albertan trust.
• [55:09–56:27] – The importance of unity in the conservative movement and why current Alberta and federal leaders are key to national cohesion.

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Tone & Style

The episode’s tone is passionate, direct, and often combative regarding eastern Canadian politics. Both Levant and Legg speak in plain, forceful language, harnessing argument, anecdote, and comparison to advocate Alberta’s interests. The conversation is rich in references and realpolitik, avoiding technocratic jargon in favor of clear calls for self-determination and fairness.

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Transcript

[A]

Wow, what a smart guy. David Legg. He joins us for the entirety of today's show. If you don't know who he is, well, he was operating behind the scenes as the man brought in to normalize Alberta after Rachel Notley, the NDP premier, was finally thrown out. Here's an example. He was dispatched to the world's financial capitals to let them know Alberta was safe again. The NDP was gone. He really helped rebuild the place. I'm going to talk to him now about the future of of Alberta. Will it go independent? Can Canada be saved? Very interesting conversation if I do say so myself. I'd like you to get the video version of this podcast. It's called Rebel News plus, just go to rebelnewsplus.com click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month and we rely on that to pay our bills because as you know, we take no money from the government. And it shows.

[B]

You're listening to.

[A]

Tonight, what can Albertans learn from the Brexit referendum of a decade ago? A feature conversation with David Lagg. It's February 25th and this is the Ezra Levant Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug. Every voice has a moral authority in our democracy and it's the day where it's a great leveling. A billionaire and a peasant each have one vote and that's what's so exciting about the looming referendums and citizen initiatives in Alberta. But I think there's some voices that have risen to the top in terms of the quality of their thinking, being philosophical, being well informed. And I'm looking for voices like that in the debate over Alberta's future. And definitely one of those people is Keith Wilson, the senior lawyer who actually was the lawyer for the Freedom convoy of truckers in Ottawa. He's now become sort of the go to legal mind on the pro independence side of the debate. I'm delighted to say that we put Keith Wilson and today's special guest together for an amazing debate a few months ago in Alberta. Our guest today is someone I met when I was a student at University of Calgary. He was at of Lethbridge and we met each other in a battle against a communist students union, which was a really great way to meet. And he went on to high heights in international business and investment coming back to Alberta after Jason Kenney defeated Rachel Notley's ndp. And he had the heavy duty of telling the world that no, Alberta hadn't gone mad, or at least it was returning to sanity, and that the world's investors should return also without further Ado, let me introduce to you someone who's thoughts I really listen carefully to because there's so many deep thoughts there in our world of shallow sound bites. It's a pleasure to spend some time with David Legg. David, great to see you again.

[B]

Hey, great to see you here.

[A]

Now you're in London today, you're always flying around. And that's one of the things you did for Canada, for Alberta, is you would fly to these investment capitals of London and Germany and New York and you would say, guys, Alberta's back. Give us a minute on that. Because I think that that's an untold story of what you did. Not very flashy, was behind the scenes trying to tell the world not to give up on Alberta.

[B]

Yeah, you have to be behind the scenes if you want to get things done sometimes, you know, which is not typical in politics, as you know. I think sometimes political perspective benefits from being, you know, dramatic public and framed. But what we were trying to do at the time was ensure that the world knew that in spite of these ESG rules that were coming through the large insurance firms and banks, that Alberta not only was the best, most ethical source of energy in the world, but it was incredibly smart investment for people to be making for long term for a lot of reasons. But we had to battle two things, Ezra. One, we had to battle a green fringe politics that had somehow taken hold largely through Davos and had kind of become part of the Liberal Party and NDP consensus that fossil fuels were bad. And we also had to deal with the fact that we were replacing an NDP government that had let Alberta's brand slip. And it actually worked against Alberta's standing in global financial markets. And so one of the things, I had some good friends from hsbc, which had redlined Alberta oil sands, and we restructured that relationship through a negotiation process through CEO Neil Quinn at the time and the CFO Ewan Stevenson. And we did the same thing with Barclays. And so we started to unlock better value capital for Alberta industry by taking the actual Alberta story, not the caricature that had been created by the left and that the Liberal and NDP parties that adopted about Alberta. And this is one of the things that I think is at stake in the conversation right now. Alberta creates the most wealth in the country. It leads the nation by a long shot on job creation. Alberta, by instinct, is a conservative province. It has cut taxes, reduced regulation, and as a result, it has grown jobs 3.8% in the last year. The rest of the country is 0.6%. And what's funny is you see a liberal party that has antagonistic policies to all of that growth. Citing that growth is a sign that Canada is healthy right now. And what I want to keep pointing out is ideas have consequences and so do policies. And we created a policy environment that I think Premier Daniel Smith has picked up on and taken to the next level in terms of making Alberta a great place for global investment attraction. Something we started with the Invest Alberta structure. Something we, you know, I worked very hard on the blueprint for the Indigenous Opportunities Corporation to take Indigenous equity participation in major projects out of the category of sort of corrupt chiefs and corrupt middlemen into a category where money could be lent to take stakes in projects that would benefit all Albertans and share the wealth with communities that tend to be poor but are land rich. And so, you know, we. We got a lot done during that time. I think Premier Smith is building on that. And I think right now, a lot of the themes of that, economic autonomy and independence and the ability to move past the, you know, the disruptive and often antagonistic style of politics that's happened in Canada's federation because the east is resentful of Alberta's momentum is now starting to play out. I think, as you know, I have a different view than Keith, who have an enormous amount of respect for, for what he's done to defend the civil rights and the, you know, the representation of the truckers. And, and I shared that with him. But I think that there's ways that Alberta can achieve autonomy without going the route of full separatism. And that's something I think, obviously we're debating. And actually, I'm in London right now, and a good friend of mine who was part of the Brexit conversation at the time and is currently quite prominent in the conservative movement here and is going through the same thing we went through back in the day of, you know, will it be conservative or will it be reformed conservative and then conservative again with that reform DNA? And I think the latter is what's going to happen. But there's a lot happening, not just in Alberta, but around the world as people look at what are the policies that actually lead to prosperity for everybody and the most broadly shared prosperity. And I think that, you know, what we're seeing in the UK right now with reform and conservative post Brexit, what you're seeing in Alberta right now is reflecting a much broader international movement that's happening all over the world towards a more conservative framework, because it just leads to more individual freedom and Prosperity.

[A]

Boris Johnson, who's a larger than life character. He was the Mayor of London, he became the Prime Minister under the Conservative banner. He's a journalist, he's one of a kind. He's got that shocking hair and a great sense of humor, great vocabulary, great style. But if you look at him on the issues, he was for what they call net zero. He was a bicycling environmentalist that he would boast about. He also was a mass immigration guy. So on two key issues, I think he was on the wrong side. And if you look at the reform UK now under Nigel Farage, he's taking the opposite point of view on both those issues and he's attracting some defectors from the shrinking Conservative party. I think you're right to draw an analogy with how reform and Conservative split in Canada and then recombined a little bit stronger. Can I ask a question about the uk because you're there now. You spent there. You know, of course I think about the Brexit referendum, which sneaked up on people because it was regarded as a, almost a joke. It was the government's way of saying, fine, we'll give you your referendum, you'll lose. And then can we please stop talking about it like that's, that's how it felt. No fancy people supported it, all the institutions were against it and what do you know, it won. I mean, Nigel Farage was leading it, but he didn't have a very big army other than ordinary people. Everyone was against it except the people. Can you give me some thoughts on Brexit, what it meant for the uk? And then I want to spend a little bit of time, if you don't mind, asking you, what lessons Alberta and the rest of Canada can learn about Brexit, including how the campaign went down. So that's a lot there, but take it away.

[B]

Well, so three things come to mind. First, one is immigration and asylum fraud is a very important part of what's happening in Canada right now, that I think that the sort of status anxious, you know, consensus in Ottawa has simply not picked up on and they think that people that are trying to address that issue are being closet racists or whatever the language is. And as a result, they're misunderstanding the way that people think about their security, their safety, common sense, etc. And I think you're going to see that come up in some of the referendum questions that the Premier is going to put on the ballot. But I also think it's part of what people felt in, in the UK at the Time, which is we have a nation that used to stand for something, it used to represent something great, something that we all believed in, something that we hoped for for our kids especially. And what we've done is we've let that not only slip away from us, but it's become cynical. And I think that what happened with Brexit, that's very interesting for Alberta is that the polling never picked up on the fact that there was a huge swing vote of people that actually felt very strongly that it was impolite to say you supported Brexit. It was uncool. But deep down they were more concerned about the status of England and what it had become under a Brussels bureaucracy that refused to respond to hook handed terrorists that were then treated like asylum seekers that could not possibly be deported from the uk. And they'd overridden the UK on that when they ran polls on that stuff. It was those things by families who had had sons that had gone to war and sort of tried to defend the country. And you had these European human rights courts. You're seeing this happen in Canada right now. They were working against every form of human rights in inside the UK by insisting that known terrorists were allowed, you know, operate, even though they were connected with complete atrocities. And I think that, that, you know, life is larger than economic logic. And I think for a lot of people what's happening in Alberta is very similar to what happened in the, in the UK under Brexit, which is this sense that it's not simply about whether or not we can, you know, the UK can do fine economically if we disentangle from Brussels in certain ways. It was this much deeper sense, which was like when we had the European Economic Union under those conventions, everybody loved free trade. It was working really well. But why did it have to become a center left bureaucracy that suddenly started to have to overrule normal British rule of law and a bunch of things inside their community. And I think you see some elements of that right now at play in what's happening in Alberta. And I've said this in a couple podcasts, Ezra, I think that the east and some of the polling numbers are completely misunderstanding that if you ask people certain kinds of questions on this in polite society, they'll say, yeah, absolutely, I'm against separatism, I'm against separatism. Right. And I, you know, made the mistake of debating the great, much smarter than me, Keith Wilson, on a stage in front of, you know, a couple thousand people that are feeling the pain of being in an economy in an environment that's. That's in decline. And knowing that Alberta, without having to fight its own government in Ottawa, would be on an upswing and not facing some of these challenges. And so I understand. I completely empathize. And Keith and I, as you know, had a debate very much around tactics for autonomy and decision making that would lead to prosperity, rather than simply, you know, having this sort of binary disagreement. But I think that Alberta has an enormous population of people that, if asked the question, you know, do you think that Alberta should try autonomy in a formal way, in the way that we restructure a lot, there's going to be a very strong hidden vote that says, yeah, I want to try this, partly because I think a lot of people want to see how Ottawa is going to react to a sentiment that says, now you've got to actually get serious about solving some of these federalist problems you've created. I think the answer is for all provinces in Canada to have full federal structure very similar to what Quebec's got. I think that's the direction that this is going to go and probably end up. But I think along the way, when you look at what happened in Brexit, and I expect that the team that wants more autonomy is going to start using some of the same framing that was used in Brexit in order to achieve popular support for that. We're going to be talking a lot more to our British cousins about what happened, how it worked, and what to do about it.

[A]

You know, in the uk, I faulted a little bit because I didn't think it had a chance. I remember first hearing about it, I thought, boy, this sounds like an obscure project. And it was sort of the same time as Donald Trump. It was a little bit before him, if I'm not mistaken. And it was just sailing through under the radar, like Trump was. At first, everyone thought Trump was a joke. They thought it was a PR stunt to build his brand. They didn't realize that he was connecting with people. And I think Brexit was the same way. In the uk, Though, I think it was more of a class dividend. Working class Brits, ordinary folks, white folks, to be candid, felt they were being left out and were being ignored. Whereas the fancy cosmopolitans in London loved the idea of dashing over to the continent for a weekend in Canada. The divide, it's a little bit classist, but I think it's more geographical. So I don't know how you. I don't know how you resolve it, because there's an antipathy in Ontario and Quebec towards the West. Not everyone, of course. There's wonderful people in Ontario and Quebec who actually love Alberta and they love it for its characteristics. But I just saw in the Globe and Mail today some headline about Mark Carney made all these concessions to Alberta. And I thought, what concessions? He put a bunch of barriers. Allowing Alberta to produce its oil is a concession. That's a gift, that's a hardship. And I thought they would never say that about a car factory or, or the dairy sector. And I don't know how you solve that divide, because just the economics and the geography, how do you overcome that? How do you get the prime minister of the country to stop kicking Alberta when it's down?

[B]

Well, look, it's the last decade under the Liberal Party of Canada, and they were informed and advised directly by Mark Carney for years. I think one of the things that I would love to see, I think Mark Carney could do three things that would not just be a matter of placating the sentiment that wants autonomy, but actually addressing some really fundamental issues economically and culturally. The first thing I think he needs to do is apologize for that op ed he wrote calling the truckers seditious. That was a horrific op ed. It was wrong in every way. It was illegal, it was unconstitutional. And, you know, Christian Freeland and the cabinet members that went with his idea that you need to follow the money and use terrorist financing, something they had failed to use for years, suddenly they're using it against Canadian citizens instead of known terrorists. It was a horrible time. He was the architect of it. And if you're going to give speeches at Davos about, you know, the lies that need to be confronted by stopping the, you know, by insisting that there's power to the powerless. If you're gonna give speeches quoting the great Vaclav Havel, you better live by it. And if you wrote an op ed attacking people that were trying to make ends meet because they're truckers and they were tired of these, what turned out to be completely unscientific and very quickly dropped mandates after the Freedom convoy had the, you know, the courage to go and challenge this government directly in the only way they knew how right for them to be mocked by the Eastern establishment. For someone in Mark Carney's power to write a note that is completely wrong and unconstitutional, calling him seditious, he needs to come up with an apology saying, I said the wrong thing about my fellow citizens who are hurting, who were trying hard, who were the ones that delivered everybody's packages. For two years there in Muskoka when everyone was working from home. And they were the first ones to say that our long dated failed Covid mandates that everybody else was dropping around the world except us were overdue to be dropped. And we refused to listen to them. They did the right thing and came here and protested. And I was wrong and they were right. If he offered that kind of leadership, that kind of humility, that kind of power to the powerless voice for those who had to courage to confront the lie at the time, you know, then I think that would go a long way. I think the other thing he's got to do is drop the C69 and C48, the the tanker ban and the no new pipelines bill and make sure that Alberta can start to create opportunity society again for all of Canada. Right now, Alberta is funding Canada. Alberta is the one economy, the one economic engine that makes this country actually work. And the insistence on not recognizing that and not unlocking these I think, you know, obviously self defeating policies is going to perpetuate the idea that Alberta can do better on its own. And I think there's a huge number of people that do not want separatism and sort of observe the obvious thing that you can't separate from geography. I think what we need to do, and this is a personal thing, but I would like to see us change the language of some of what we're talking about. I think we need a new architecture in Canada to allow Alberta to be prosperous, to allow it to pursue its autonomy. I think Alberta can be the Monaco of what Monaco is to France. I think Alberta can be the Monaco of North America. And Canada left to be able to create a much more progressive and inclusive economic opportunity society. And I think if Mark Carney would unlock that, all of Canada would benefit. But there's a very strong cultural dynamic that you're referring to that took place in Brexit that is just seems like it's very tempting in the east. And you see it in these bizarre headlines like the one you're referring to that this is some kind of beneficent thing that he's agreed to do in MoU. This is the only country in the world with this level of natural resource wealth that is so deeply self defeating. This is the only country, it's the bottom of the G7 right now. And if Alberta wasn't involved, we'd be developing nation status in terms of gdp. They've completely created a massive economic and deep security crisis by their complete mismanagement of asylum and Immigration fraud at a scale that is now devastating, you know, the economy. They're. They're working on these bizarre, like free speech, hate speech, misinformation rules that are basically politicizing and criminalizing natural political dissent and mainstream views that disagree with their leftist perspective on a variety of issues. This is not a government with the mandate that Mark Carney has. And I think a lot of Canadians of goodwill were hopeful. This is a guy that will replace Justin Trudeau, be able to bring some economic logic back to the country so we can quit losing so badly. And instead we see a year of what I think has been some positives, but there's nothing of substance so far that's addressing the issues that I think are really animating. The reason why a lot of Albertans say, I think we can do better, and if we have to do better on our own, we'll do it on our own. And I think that doesn't necessarily mean separatism, but it certainly means a lot more autonomy to build an opportunity society that's not deeply indebted and running under some bureaucratic sclerosis that is preventing us from actually building a society that our kids will want to be part of.

[A]

I remember the moment in, I think it was 2014, 2015, when the new York Times itself acknowledged that Canada's middle class had exceeded America's middle class in terms of health. And I almost couldn't believe it, because my entire life, Canada was a little bit of a poorer cousin. But there was this moment where, no, we were actually ahead of things. And now the Globe and Mail. I just criticized him a moment ago, so I'll praise him now, did a fairly deep dive into how Alabama, which, when you just say it, it's got this cultural connotation of being poor and, you know, undeveloped, that Alabama is now wealthier than most of Canada. And if you. If you were on an individual basis, and that's just in terms of per capita gdp, there's also purchasing power. You can buy a house in Alabama.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

If you're 25. You can't buy a house in Toronto or vancouver if you're 25. And I don't know. I mean, that's why I think the boomers love Mark Carney's. Because they already have a house. They already had their work. They're sort of coasting now. And I don't know. I just. I'm worried about where Canada's heading. And I think a lot of Albertans are looking at the mess that Mark Carney is creating and saying, we don't just want to separate from the long standing problems in Canada. We want to get away from that guy who thinks our future lies with China and anti Americanism. I think everything that Mark Carney does that's irritating, to quote conservatives, it pushes more people towards upward independence.

[B]

Yeah, look, I think that there is a deep cultural divide in the country that stems a little bit from the fact that Alberta is doing so well economically. And this sounds ironic to people, I think, because people feel like Alberta is restive because it's got some economic frustrations. If you look at Canada over the last decade, the degree of impoverishment of the country, one of the things that's hidden, just how bad it is, is that this government, very much like the NDP in Alberta, has borrowed more money than all previous governments combined. The debt, the whole of government debt. Because a lot of our people forget, a lot of our debt in Canada isn't just federal debt because we have policies on like our health care and our education is actually run provincially. So we have 110% of our GDP is debt in any given year. People don't understand how serious that is, how bad that is. You look at what's happening in places like BC, you look at what's happening in Ottawa with the $1.5 trillion in debt, the largest deficit, aside from extreme sort of deficit issues this year under a guy that has no plan, that's actually changing the fundamentals of the economic growth strategy. And in the midst of all that, Alberta is growing, doing exceptionally well. And I think that as people look at that, there's a cultural divide. It's not just about economics. It's also about what are we as a nation, you know, why are we so insecure out east that we have to pretend that the 10 years of decline are Donald Trump's fault? We know they're not Donald Trump's fault. He wasn't around for most of it. We know that the Americans aren't the ones that are responsible for 300,000 people defrauding our asylum system. They're not responsible for the complete loss of control over where Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRGC agents are in the country right now. 30,000 deportees lost track of, I mean, the level of incompetence is so unbelievable that some people, I, when I post some of this stuff, people say, well, it's got to be intentional. How could anybody possibly be doing this was not intentional? I don't think it's intentional. I think that it is just careless. It's a deeply careless approach to things because the country has been lucky. And one of the ways the country is lucky is we're right next door to the United States and most of us live within, you know, with proximity to the U.S. and so our economy is, you know, almost 80% down to the United States. Their economy is only 12 or 13% trade up to us. So there's, there's, you know, that's, that's one area in which we've become sort of a trust fund nation. The other area which we become a trust fund nation is Alberta creates all this wealth that gets transferred into provinces that don't feel the natural economic pressure of having chosen a left wing government or left wing governments. And so you've got places that are completely economically untenable, like Quebec, and that aren't forced to deal with that problem because Alberta is transferring $2122 billion to them to help, you know, move them past the need to ever be realists about energy security. And so I think what's happening in Alberta is people reaching a point where they're saying, I want to call time on all of this. I don't believe that we should be in bed with the Chinese and acting antagonistic, elbows up to the Americans. I think the Americans need to know that we're strong and we're going to argue our, our own incentives and our own interest from a position of strength. But I don't believe that being in bed with the Chinese helps us. I don't believe that we have to be recklessly incompetent on immigration. I don't believe that terrorists should be marching in the streets and creating an uncomfortable environment for the Jewish community of Montreal, Toronto. A lot of people have had it with that cultural decline. They've had it with the US having the lowest crime rate, lowest murder rate in 125 years under a guy, that's removing people that shouldn't be there in the first place and having Canada's violent crime spiking to the highest point ever, right? Like these are the things that start to make people say, I don't know how it's all broken exactly, but if you're putting in front of me a referendum question that says, do you want change? Do you want to take back control? Then I'll do that. And that's what Dominic Cummins did with the Leave campaign that took people by surprise in Whitehall and across the elites in the country is he just basically realized people had had it with the cultural decline of the uk they'd had it with an elite that never had to live with the consequences of their decisions in terms of tax the grooming and rape gangs. This is the life that people were having to live with. And every time they tried to protest something, they were called a racist. Or the fathers that were trying to deal with their young daughters being groomed and kidnapped were being the ones that were put in jail. That was what was happening in the community at large. And that was the conversation people were having in Canada right now. People are having conversations about this B.C. human rights fascist, right? This woman that had this. This guy arrested. They've had it with this. They've had it with people that are kids that are being put on SSRIs and losing their minds and shooting people and then. And police RCMP that never arrested the guy because they worried about being called transphobic. And then when the damage happens, they want to blame OpenAI for not alerting them earlier to his bad post. As if they would have done anything about that. People see through this stuff. And what they see is a corrupted, sad, defensive status, anxious elite that doesn't know how to actually build something. Instead of actually making the hard steps to build consensus and build something in the country, they'd rather run against a caricature of a US President that's unlikable. And I don't think people find that satisfactory. That's just so hollow as a philosophy of what we can be as a nation. And I think when people look at the debt, they look at what's happening with the immigration and asylum fraud, they look at some of the dynamics around what's happening in their schools. They look at this bizarre abuse of the idea of human rights to go after people that have mainstream opinions on sexual identity and what kids should be told in schools. And they just say, you know what? I don't like the direction the country's taking right now, and I want change. And if you're telling me I can't get that change federally, but I can get that changed provincially, you're tempting me now. And I might not believe in separatism. I might believe there's a way to have autonomy without breaking out of the country. I don't believe that you can separate geography. I need. We need. We need a new architecture. But whatever that thing is, that sentiment will be expressed and felt in the fall in a very specific way. And I think the premier is doing some good things putting some of these issues on the table at the same time as the referendum. I know there's debate about that. Right now. But I think that Albertans are not easily scared by elite consensus. I know, I know that. As you know, I know that being, you know, Jason's principal advisor and you know, he and I had different views on some of the COVID stuff, but our base doesn't tolerate, you know, those differences for long before they act to shift them. And I think that Alberta will be the one province that continues to save Canada from itself by growing the economy, by dreaming, by building, by creating. And if, and if Ottawa continues to choose to stand in the way of that, then there will be fundamental change. It's either this fall or it'll come in a different form later on. But I think that move towards economic and cultural autonomy is gaining steam.

[A]

I mentioned you're in the UK and that got me thinking about Brexit a bit. And then you mentioned the name Dominique Cummings, who is a, I would call him a kind of amateur philosopher as well as a political strategist. He was an advisor. He was involved in the Brexit campaign. He was with Boris, trying to fight Boris Johnson, trying to fight the bureaucracy. He was on the Leave side, the Remain side, which was the, you know, the no vote. They actually called their campaign Project Fear. That was actually an internal phrase they used and it was let's make people so afraid of a future outside of the European Union. And they, and they tried their best. I don't know if Project Fear would work super well in Alberta because Alberta knows that it's so wealthy. You know, you could scare people a little bit about your, their pension maybe. I can't really think of other things because everyone in Alberta instinctively knows they're going to be better financially. But there's a second part that they sort of had in the uk but I see a big time in Canada. I'm calling it Project Sneer. So there's Project Fear, which is I'm going to make you afraid you're going to lose your pension. Project Sneer is the entire Laurentian punditocracy. And I shouldn't pick on Andrew Coyne, but he's the most rabid of them, is just constantly denigrating the word traitor and treason. I don't know if you saw this, David. Two days ago, the Parti Quebecois separatist politician won a provincial by election. That's the fourth Partique Becqua separatist in a row. Four in a row. And I searched the entire CBC website. I found one tiny story written completely straight, just a little. Oh, by the way, the PQ1 why is it that the sneering is directed at Albertans who are saying, hey, stop, stop picking on us, stop stealing our stuff, stop blocking our oil. But you have a separatist in Quebec, if you mention them at all, just report it straight, the Project Sneer. Tell me a little bit about that. And what would Dominic Cummings do to fight Project Fear and Project Sneer?

[B]

Well, I'll tell you what he did do with Project Fear is he decimated the elite opinion by realizing he's relentlessly focused on data. And he's relentless. He's a believer. Actually. There's a similarity between Peter Thiel's philosophy of mimetic thinking by the philosopher Rene Girard and some of what you read in Dominic Cummings, actually. And so for, you know, for the nerds in the crowd, they listen. Interesting to look at that. But I think that one of the things that the elite was shocked at was they knew when they saw the results of, of Brexit that there were a lot of smart traders, bankers, lawyers that had voted leave and they were stunned by it. And what I think happened was people started to realize life is bigger than economic logic. Life is about the kind of society you want your kids to inherit and what that society looks and feels like. And I think that the problem that Andrew I have respect for, I used to read his stuff all the time. I think he and I come at things from a very different perspective. But I think that the issue that Andrew has and the issue that a lot of people that would reflect Andrew's opinion have is actually they are fearful. They know if they have any grasp of the economics of this country at all, that if Alberta does. And I'll tell you this because I worked on app at the time when I ran the numbers in App, I went into Travis Taves off and I

[A]

said, Travis just explained by that you mean the Alberta Provincial Pension.

[B]

Yeah, Alberta. Alberta taking back and controlling the way Quebec has a pension plan. So I'll give some background. So one of my thoughts when I came back, I came back from running strategy for a global bank and Jason had said come back, be the, be the finance minister. And I came back before I would be resident for long enough to have been elected. And so I focused on just working to try and achieve our economic strategy from within the government. And we had six or seven pillars we, that we looked at. We had a segment specific strategy around what we would do with our airports and airlines to create the kind of autonomy that Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai had created. And we knew that Alberta had some of the same landlocked characteristics, or in their case, you know, you know, they had a large country around them that was antagonistic, like Hong Kong has with China or Singapore had with Indonesia, Malaysia and Dubai had by being landlocked. And we looked at all those strategies, how we could deploy them in Alberta. And as we were building that economic superstructure up, one of the things that became increasingly apparent to me is Alberta actually runs the economy of Canada in a really fundamental way. And if you look at something like the Alberta pension plan, if we simply said the following, the thought experiment, what if Alberta just said, we don't want much, we just want exactly what Quebec has and it's a federation that's constitutionally managed and so we're just going to take all of their power. So we will have, instead of having a federally run bureaucracy on the law enforcement side like the rcmp, which used to be very proud but now is very kind of DEI focused and politically correct, what if we had just had an Alberta based, much more accountable law enforcement system that actually took rural crime seriously? What if we funded that ourselves? What if we had our Alberta pension plan here instead of just the way the Quebec pension plan happens? So what if we took the assets that Alberta contributed to CPP iob and we took those out? Now when I started to do that thought experiment, I looked at some numbers and the thing that became evident immediately, Ezra, is that Alberta clearly owns at least 45% of the Canada pension plan easily. I think it's actually up now over 50. And when I first floated this, I ended up talking about this at CD Howe Institute. And somebody quite prominent in the pension world said, look, you're going to unravel the entire hockey sweater of Canada. And there was a chairman of a bank there who came up to me afterwards and gave me his card and said, we have to sit down, have lunch and talk. That's when it started to dawn on me, Ezra, Project Fear is interesting because I think it's a form of projection. I think in Alberta, I think in Canada, Project senior and Project Fear is a smart guy like Andrew Coyne senses deep down in his very agile, economically informed, you know, deeply federalist mind, he knows Alberta has the wherewithal to actually do this, get away with it and print it. And if that happens, if you unlock Alberta and Alberta is in a position where it creates a direct sort of trading relationship in the United States and it's unlocked, fundamentally, we will within 20 years become the single most wealthy democracy in the planet, no holds barred. It's impossible. We have. We have 5 million people and we have $5 trillion worth of assets. Qatar is, you know, this incredibly wealthy place. We have as much oil, we have as much gas as Qatar. We have more oil than the entire United States and Russia and China combined. We haven't even mapped a geological, full geological survey of our mineral wealth. This is the wealthiest democracy on planet Earth. Nothing is even close. And I think guys like Andrew and others, instinctively, even though they won't ever admit it, understand this is a place where you could actually build. We've got the same. When I set up Invest Alberta, I set it up on the pattern of Ireland, partly because if you look at Israel and you look at Ireland, two of the best sort of most capital intensive places that did a great job of attracting international capital. I looked at those two models and we built Invest Alberta on those models. And when you look at Alberta, Alberta can be five times wealthier than Ireland easily. We have far more natural wealth in Ireland. We've got a very similar sort of population structure. We have all this potential. And if you were to say, what are the three or four things keeping you from reaching your potential? The top three of the top three would be federal government interventions that prevent us from just doing the things that we want to do naturally, which they would ultimately benefit from. So at a certain point, you have to ask yourself, so what is the motive of Andrew in being so resentful over Alberta separatism, but so accommodating of Quebec separatism? What is this cultural sentiment in the east that is so antagonistic? And it's been, you know, there's something in that DNA. When you look at these old posters that you see of, you know, back in the middle of the centuries, political posters of Alberta being resentful over federal control, I think the big difference now is Alberta is reaching escape velocity. And anybody close to the Canadian economy knows just how bad it's gotten. And that if you take Canadian economic numbers and you strip out Alberta, Canada falls. It's already at the bottom of the oecd. If you, if you take Alberta and you say Alberta without Canada, it is a. It is an extraordinary, fast growing, highly competitive middle power globally. If you take Alberta out of Canada, and Canada no longer has Alberta, and Canada continues to pursue this heavy red tape, extreme bureaucracy, extreme debt. And again, people have to calc the debt on both the provincial and the federal level because of the way we're structured federally. You know, you have a country that can't work mathematically without Alberta funding things. And so I think that what you're seeing in Project Fear and Project Sneer is the Project Fear is actually the fear of people that get close to the numbers or just their intuition about this. They start to realize these people could actually pull it off, they could actually do it. They could separate, and if they did, the Canadian experiment would be over. And so I think the stakes are much higher than people are willing to admit. And they're going through the five phases of grief or whatever that framing is. And I think denial is the first one. And I think they're starting to realize we mockery kind of helps them feel better because it's a form of denial. But as you get closer and closer to what this is. And again, I don't want separatism. I want a restructuring of the architecture of Alberta in Canada. But my restructuring the architecture of Alberta and Canada pivots off of Ottawa being willing to make Alberta as autonomous as Quebec, plus some other things. And right now, the signal that they're sending even under this new prime minister, is they're totally unwilling to do even the most rational middle steps. And so they are in a position where you're going to start to see this get hotter and hotter. You're going to see people like Andrew get angrier and angrier because the closer you get to that moment and what they don't realize they're doing like that Globe and Mail and some of the things Andrew writes is they're just lighting a fire under the middle of the middle of the road people. And I really believe you're going to see something very similar happen to Brexit if Andrew and the Globe and Mail keep it up, which is they're trying to play to their Toronto cocktail club crowd and they're not doing a job. They're not doing the right thing by they're not fairly interrogating what the issues actually are that are splitting the country right now, because they don't want to offend their friends in Ottawa. And by not doing that, they're missing the point. And by missing the point, they're going to continue to create a scenario where more and more people that are in that large range in the middle like they were in Brexit are going to say, you know what? If you're giving me the choice between continuing with this failed status quo of another lost decade, culturally and economically in this country, or trying something new, even if it's not perfect, or even if I don't like the way it's framed, I'm willing to try something new. And I think they don't understand just how deep that middle vote is. I can tell you right now, as I've said this on a few things recently, I'm talking to people that no one would ever guess would say, if you ask me to vote, I'm going to vote, that we just try something totally new here. And no one's saying, I want separatism. What they're saying is nothing in this federal structure is working. The whole thing is broken and I want to reset. And that's what a lot of people are going to vote for. And they're going to see the way this question is framed is a little too much for them, but they're going to be willing to try it as a way of forcing the entire country to have a real debate about its future.

[A]

You know, Matt Genre was the name of a longtime conservative MP from Edmonton who apparently had some family issues announced last year. He was going to take some time away and then suddenly announces he's a liberal and suddenly he's sitting next to the prime minister in parliament. Suddenly he's on a junket with the prime minister, someone who doesn't even live in Alberta anymore. I understand he's moved to B.C.

[B]

yeah.

[A]

And it's an outrageous story of floor crossing for no principled reason. Someone who should have resigned and had a by election just because he. And maybe there's some personal things we don't know about him. And I'm just saying, fine, go resolve them, but don't take a seat. But here's the independence angle. That riding was Alberta playing by the rules. Okay? You don't like what's happening, so elect your alternative. Elect someone who will advocate for you. And Matt Jenner won. And then in some backroom deal that we don't know anything about, we don't know what the inducements were. There obviously were some. There's a do over. There's a. There's a form of cheating. And so if you're saying to Albertans, suck it up, stop complaining, know your place. You have no legitimate grounds for complaint. And then when Albertans do that and say, okay, fine, we'll be good boys and we'll vote the way we're supposed to do. Good boys and girls. And then we win under those rules. And then they just, it's like the other team says, oh, you actually won under our rules. We. We're going to. There's other rules we didn't tell you about till now, which is we get to have private meetings with your MPs and bribe them to refute your clearly demonstrated democratic will. That I should tell you, Rebel News, we track a lot of our stories and our polls and things like that. That Matt Genre thing was the white hot issue. And because it's not just a floor crossing, it's proof that there is no winning in this system. Because if you do win, surprise. There's this special move we have that we didn't tell you about till now. And I don't know, I just found that deeply depressing because I've always believed in the democratic system and I've always believed in the legal system and apparently Mark Carney does not. And the jubilation here's what gets me is the entire Eastern commentariat, their takeaway is ha. Pierre Poliev certainly has a lack of leadership abilities if we're able to bribe his MPs away. This shows that Pierre Poliev is a poor leader. But Mark Carney is a brilliant leader because you see, he's as. What did he say? I know how the world works. I think that Matt Genre thing is a deeper explosion than I. Than perhaps Mark Carney realizes he's dead.

[B]

Yeah. Look, I think that if you, you know, you and I have been close to politics for a while and I think that you've seen moments where the tension between some of the differential interests in matters of conscience, matters of your constituency and matters of country, that's kind of been the classic political philosophical debate for a long time. You know, there are times where you have to say to your constituents, I know that a majority of you may disagree with me on this call on abortion, but this is who I am and I'm going to take this vote and you can throw me out in the next election. That's a conscience issue over against your constituents. And you are making that argument because of the moral code of the country or what you're hoping that the moral fabric of the country will be and constituents often will say, okay, I understand there's a certain limited number of issues that you just have to, to vote your conscience on as an individual. And I'll go with that. Then there are issues where you say, look, my constituents might be full of a lot of freedom loving hippies here in Nelson, bc, but I am going to vote that we go to war and we defend our interests in the following way. And I think the country needs this and I'm willing to make the call and I'm willing to deal with the upshot of that. And I think there are other issues where you say to your constituents, you know, the rest of the world is against us, but we're farmers. And you know what? I'm going to vote that we move on this and that we tariff that and that we do this because that's who we are. And you might be the only guy standing up in parliament. Your constituents love you for it because they know you have their voice, you represent their interests in a unique way. And I think you see this in Locke and Burke and all the political philosophers used to write about what it means to actually represent people's interests and your conscience and your country in different ways. And your job as an elected official is to constantly be navigating those trade offs in a way that's ethical and rooted in a principled philosophy. What you see happening right now with this idea that we can just nab the extra vote when we want it and whip it is a complete violation of all three. And party structures exist to kind of decode the decoder ring of those things. So a party structure exists to say, look on the margins. If you vote for this person, the reason they're flying the conservative flag is they're going to tend to be more conscientious about these issues, a little stronger on the fiscal issues, a little more libertarian on these things. They're going to want to vote, you know, and that's going to be different from the liberal candidate. Imagine you're the liberal candidate that ran against Matt General. You know, you're sitting there saying, I stood by this stuff on a principled basis because I'm the guy that stands up in a mostly conservative riding and year over year people hate me for it, but I stand for what I think and I want to society more focused on equality than liberty. Okay? That's my view. I'm a liberal, right? I stand strong for these things. You know, I believe one day people will see it my way. And this clown basically hijacks your party's platform when it's convenient for him for personal purposes and uses it to advance himself for the moment and denies the people that voted for the Conservative Party, which by the way, people aren't voting for Madchen or others voting as much for Pierre Polly have as Matt General. So the narrative around this, the kind of winner take all cynicism about being able to take the system after the, you know, take on the system after the fact by getting some. It's literally like you're playing this game, it's a hockey game and halfway through the game some guy drops a bag of Cash next to your defenseman, he skates over chains jerseys, goes back on the ice and takes your guy out in the corner.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The whole team is like, what is this? What is this? Right. The fans are disgusted by it. I think the problem the Liberal Party has is there's an expectation at a hockey game by the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party that makes moments like this feel uncomfortable because we're supposed to be somehow better than this. There's something about the game itself and the way the game itself is supposed to be played. And I think a lot of people instinctively feel that there's something fundamentally not right about this horse trading resulting in you just coming on side for the sake of that extra vote. And if this is the way they want to play it, this is the way they want to trade it. Trading on, you know, the human weakness of somebody as weak as this Matt General guy, his lack of loyalty, his lack of integrity, his lack of an understanding of what a political philosophy and being a conservative is supposed to mean, then I think people are going to increasingly say, going back to our previous thing, the country itself is broken. A prime minister that thinks that this is some kind of, like, card trick way of getting ahead does not make me feel like I live in a nation that's got the right kind of democratic ethos. And you might be ndp, liberal, Conservative, doesn't matter. People will feel like this isn't the way we want this country to actually operate. And Ezra, I think the issue that a lot of people are going to run into is I talk to family members, others that don't necessarily have the conservative political perspective that I have. Right. Because they have lives. They're not political nerds. But, but, but they don't feel like they can walk downtown and feel safe right now. Right. They don't feel like, yeah, they are disgusted when, you know, the Jewish guy they went to college with is like, I feel more comfortable moving down to the states right now. I'm really, really worried. Right. You know, you've got so many conversations happening underneath the scenes. And again, I don't think a lot of people are calculating this through politics. I think there's a lot of people that will vote liberal next time again, but they're not happy with what they're seeing in downtown Toronto and who's marching around. And they don't love it when they find out that the immigration crew has lost control of 30,000 people that are supposed to be deported, especially including 3,000 people with terrorist affiliations. And they know that there are these Violent acts being directed in the Jewish community. People start thinking this is wrong and I want it fixed. And I think it's above politics. It's beyond politics. This is about creating a society where our political differences can be managed through a framework of, you know, a just good society where people are competent, they're doing the right thing. And I think Liberal party sort of desire to maintain power, including the card tricks with guys like Matt Gennaro or the use of language that kind of tries to wrong foot the premier. At the same time, they're doing an MOU with her to try and keep her on side. You know, this stuff is getting old for people. I'll say this one thing, Ezra. I hope that conservatives don't get divided amongst themselves by allowing these liberal card tricks to start to force people to get antagonistic towards Pierre or antagonistic towards Premier Smith or antagonistic towards each other for having a difference of opinion. On do I want to vote for separatism or do I want to vote for a restructuring within the Confederate Confederacy, the structure of the Federation. Right. Like I think the great thing about the conservative movement is we know how to have hard hockey fights and still go out for the beer afterwards and have the conversation. And that is the strength of the movement. That's what keeps it vibrant. We were involved back in the day when reform was challenging the conservative consensus nationally and we were on the outs. Everybody thought we were buck tooth idiots with our plaid shirts and our guns out in the prairies and we were racist and all that stuff. And then pretty soon we are the decade long governing party of the country. I think that, I think that the ability of the conservative movement to continue to renew Alberta and to continue to renew Canada as a country is its most powerful, is its superpower. And we do it by not being politically correct and we do it by having the debates in good faith. And one thing I really hope, as we're having this very intense debate about Alberta, is that we don't allow the left and we don't allow the Liberal Party to let these card tricks and this shallowness, especially in light of their complete mismanagement of the country, divide a conservative movement, the policies of which would help regenerate Canada and bring it back to its glory. And certainly we have to do that in Alberta, which is the place that I think we have the most natural governing party status.

[A]

Yeah, I would say that Pierre Poliev and Daniel Smith are the two people perhaps paradoxically doing the most to keep

[B]

Alberta in the country 100% and 100%.

[A]

It's like what I used to say in the UK about my friend Tommy Robinson and about even Nigel Farage when they tried to there was this move afoot. I hope they've abandoned it now to use lawfare against him to try and, you know, remove him from the public sphere like they tried to do to Donald Trump after 2020.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And my view about Tommy, Nigel Farage and others like that is these are the last hope to keep demoralized people in the system, hoping they can use the system to win. And if you were to martyr, God forbid, Tommy Robinson or Nigel Farage, those people would be gone and the system would fall apart. They are the last connection to this rotting system of millions of people. And I think that it's crazy that they are being attacked when they're the ones holding it together. David, we've had a great conversation. I realize an hour has gone by and we've taken so much of your time. I hope we can continue this conversation another day. This certainly is no point way. October 19th is closer than we think. Thank you so much for being with us today.

[B]

Thanks again. See you soon.

[A]

Great to see you and look forward to having you back in our shores soon. There he is, David Legg, former senior advisor to the premier of Alberta, now working in the private sector, but still very much caring about our country and our province. That's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

[B]

Sam.