Canada Must Offer Alberta More Than Trump Could

hello everybody so I wrote an article recently for the National Post and it was motivated by Trump's invitation let's say provocative invitation to Canadians to become the 51st state now I'm living in Scottdale my daughter is down in Arizona and I have extensive contacts in the United States and part of what I had planned to do in moving here was to do what I could to further Canada's interest in relationship to the United States and I'm still very interested in that um and writing this article was one move on that part and so what I'm

going to do today is I'm going to read you the article and I'm going to comment on it it'll be a hybrid performance you might say partly reading and partly spontaneous commentary and I want to walk through the Perils of opportunities that now present themselves to Canadians broadly on the economic side and the political side because Trump is pointing to a structural problem in the west and in Canada and then also the opportunities that Trump's provocative offer and trolling has put on the plate for Canadians so I'll start by reading a couple of paragraphs and

then comment as I see fit [Music] there's little doubt that one Donald J Trump has truly and effectively rattled his Northern neighbors chains aren't the Americans our friends and vice versa is the president serious in his desire to make Canada the 51st state he certainly seems serious enough when discussing his takeover of Greenland well we need Greenland for national security purposes I've been told that for a long time long before I even ran such intensity and unpredictability of purpose has sent the leaders of that country reminiscent of the Canadian liberals in their political orientation into

a tizzy one that is extended to their socialist and globalist European compatriots who is this horrible orange-haired man they wonder and what does he want we're all about to find out and not least in Canada why is all this happening we ask ringing our hands and to us the self-proclaimed greatest best friend and staunch Ally of the elephant who parades so theatrically on the far side of our Southern border we might begin to answer that suddenly so relevant question by scrupulously questioning the nature of that friendship and on our side perhaps we're not the partners

and collaborators ERS we think we are for starters it could well be argued for example that our much vaunted conect niess that second rate virtue in relation to the superpower who overshadows Us in every manner is and has been a matter of blunt necessity rather than a consequence of our genuine reliability as well-wisher and supporter it's true that Canada has made sacrifices alongside the Americans when freedom and democracy were truly threatened that was real but it was a long time ago since then we have played and continued to play a crooked game with regard to

our hypothetical us allies in many important and consequential regards a telling personal example might serve to introduce this reevaluation yeah this was really striking to me you know I spent a number of years in the United States uh ' 92 to 98 when that country was booming in consequence of the internet Revolution I and then I came back to Canada to the university of Toronto and as you'll see I brought some students with me and this is really their story I lived in the US from 1992 to '98 during the last time that remarkable country

truly boomed when I returned from America's Finest University to Canada I brought with me three brilliant students two of whom a married couple were both thoroughly sensible and somewhat on the conservative side it proved somewhat unexpectedly difficult to take my junior colleagues anywhere in Toronto particularly at the University without continual embarrassment on my part for merely being a Canadian as a casual anti-americanism would reliably be directed toward them whenever the inevitable topic of their place of origin arose my fellow countrymen continually said things that would have been regarded as clearly racist sexist or ethnocentric had

they been uttered to anyone other than American citizen assuming rightly given the Civilized nature of the people in question that they would take them politely and without evident offense such comments were much more likely to emanate as well from precisely the sort of leftists prone to Proclaim that such behavior is utterly unacceptable and second that such conduct would of course never show its face among people as good in their thoughts as them such behavior is sadly a Canadian Norm particularly wherever the country is left leaning particularly where everyone believes axiomatically that we have all the

virtues of our Democratic compatriots to the South and then some particularly wherever everyone is inclined to point self-righteously to the wonders of our now Dreadful and oft murderous free health care system and its Associated highly dysfunctional expensive and increasingly unsustainable social safety net and compare it to the free-for-all in the US they inevitably resort to if death threatens and they have the money that combined attitude of essentially socialist sentiment and moral superiority was exemplified above all perhaps by former prime minister Trudeau and I speaking now not of the feasts who resigned in disgrace after sacrificing

our economy to the gods of his self-serving utopian globalist delusion I'm referring instead to the pair who deled so self-aggrandizing with the Chinese Reds and the dictatorial Communist Fidel Castro and rubbed the Americans noses in it moralizing intellectually and Oho fashionably all the while we Canadians also pride ourselves on our peaceful and peacekeeping nature take that Yanks contrasting that with the warmongering attitude of the Gunslingers we secretly admire but so publicly disdain forgetting conveniently that is nothing but our positioning under the Fearsome nuclear umbrella of the USA and our knowledge of the certainty of their

military protection if push comes to shove that allows us to be the Sheep of Peace who bleat their undeserved self-regard with so little shame let's add to that our absolute and disgraceful refusal to pull our fair share of the weight with regard to our own woke broke and demoralized Military Trump recently informed his NATO allies that the US would like to see them spend 5% of their GDP on defense he'd be happy in truth with three and would settle and is said so for two Canada Miss spends 1.3% a figure so low that we have

reduced our own soldiers of whom there are frighteningly few to a state where they find it necessary to purchase even their own helmets we camouflage this failure by trumpeting our commitment to peace and as we love to do when our politicians take the international stage or when we slap a Canadian flag on our backpacks when hostling through Europe and Asia to differentiate ourselves from the evil imperialists to the South this is hardly the way to signal to the US either that we are capable of Defending ourselves thank you very much or that we are grateful

for their existence of Big Brother captain of the high school wrestling team much disdained protector of our Junior hippie student radical selves such things matter more than we think and a lot more now that Middle America is in charge given the well-deserved contempt that lot have for the niceties of hypocritical socialist smartest kid in the class peace Nicks remember Canucks the US is now run by exactly the kind of Americans that we tempt ourselves so unforgivably to treat as our moral inferiors this is not how friends behave it is also no way to keep friends

once they have been hypothetically made and we've been put on serious notice in that regard and we're only scratching the surface in our analysis of the problems with Canada US relations and with Canada itself with that nothing but preliminary analysis for the last n years Canada has been run by exactly the type of contemptible elitists who are if anything even more an anti- capitalist anti-nationalist and anti-industrial state than the typical Canadian this has set us up against our putative American Allies in a manner much deeper than we want to think and don't be thinking that

any of this is lost on Trump he clearly despises the recently departed Justin and has as much respect for those who elected him as he does for the Democrats so much like them who tortured tormented and despised him and the flyover country Mega middle brows who were so much wiser in their political instincts than their ivy league want to be Masters Canadians are Democrats in Trump's view except more so we think that's a virtue it's not it's a liability in all General manners more specifically it's a liability in relation to the US particularly now it

has also and more seriously as if irritating our Mighty na neighbors is not enough threaten both Canada's economic viability and even the likelihood that it will survive as a nation we might also note in that regard that the newly ordained and inevitable Grand Puba of the currently wretched but still dangerously powerful liberals one Mark Carney is one of the world's Prime Advocates of the insane inanities of Net Zero he is a man who has planned in writing not Le in his bestselling book values the complete destruction of the fossil fuel industry bye-bye Alberta if that's

not bad enough and it is he's also simultaneously an advocate of the same postnational view of Canada defined by Trudeau Jr and his moralistic minions what are we according to such good thinkers nothing but if anything the oppressive patriarchal white supremacist identity less Colonial settler State defined by the progressive ideologues in the think tanks and Elite dining rooms in Eastern Canada and the protest encampments on the campuses of Canadian universities none of this fills the magga crowd with admiration in case it needs to be said none of it bodess well either for the economy of

Canada doomed to replacement according to Carney by the hydrogen solar and wind power that either does not exist that would be hydrogen or that would Doom Canadians to starve and freeze in the dark if it ever came to replace the reliable grid and transportation we also desperately depend on when it's 40 bloody below we may when arguing so expensively and incompetently with the Americans continue to congratulate ourselves on our comparative righteousness that diet will become even thinner GRL however in a future characterized by their explosive economic grow and our rapid descent toward comparative poverty and

irrelevance green though that pathway may be argued however falsely to be Carney to put it bluntly is not a man like Justin Trudeau a second Raider under the mere influence of the world economic Forum that malthusian fear-mongering cabal of authorit and elitists drunk on the fumes of their own self-righteous delusions he is by contrast a veritable leader of that movement and organizer par excellance of ESG stakeholder capitalism diversity equity and inclusiveness and degrowth out with the old the Liberals claim and in with the new but the new will be everything Trudeau so terribly was but

a lot more efficiently and with much more sophisticated rationalization none of this is lost on the magga mob in so far as they Dain to notice and they notice enough it might be reiterated to shake our foundation consider therefore with regard to this something more pointed and illustrative that would be the current plight of Alberta and with it Saskatchewan and even BC although the latter is still too blind and holier than thou socialist to note the true danger that confronts it the most American of all Canadian provinces by widespread reputation and self-regard Alberta is also

the polity that Eastern Canada particularly Quebec relies on to survive while it pursues its disdainful socialist green agenda this is the Quebec that has whed and manipulated so effectively for so many decades that its minority bilingual citizenry utterly dominates not only the perennially ruling Liberal Party but the Federal bureaucracy that constitutes only two such unjust and unproductive advantages among many by the way and all that despite the frankophone strong and Lasting separatist leanings this is the same Eastern Canada and Quebec that regards itself as entitled not only to the so-called transfer payments characterizing the Canadian

social contract much to the disadvantage of the resourcer West but that simultaneously assumes and trumpets a moral superiority to the people who earn that transferred money in a manner deeply reminiscent of that more generally assumed by Canadians with respect to Americans the consequence no business case for the trade deals or infrastructure projects necessary to supply a self admittedly desperate Europe and Japan with cheap and reliable Alberta energy known new plentiful and gratefully received pipelines running west to east in Canada abject economic dependence in consequence for albertans and Canada itself as we're now finding out on

the purchasing decisions of the Mad Mega Yanks to the South and now that same Alberta is being called upon to sacrifice its artificially and morally limited economy to fight off the looming tariffs of Donald J Trump the imposition of which should come as no surprise to anyone the least bit awake we walked right into this folks and boy we deserved it but we felt good about ourselves all the way and what is likely to result Trump has offered Canada status as the 51st state if we had a well-constituted country this would have never happened or

the suggestion would have been laughable I see damn few people laughing however and more is the pity a strong case can be made that such subordinate status would not at all be a good deal for the great white North as a whole for Alberta however and perhaps for the West as such the situation is not so clear here's what I might do given that if I were in Premier Daniel Smith's Shoes or at least what I might threaten to do taking a page from Trump's art of the deal book because it's high time for the

albertans to play hard ball I might travel say to marlago where I did in fact recently encounter that premere I might have well there a forthright even blunt chat with Donald Jay where I might say to him something like the following Mr President my fellow Canadians have for decades compelled us to climb into bed with an 800lb gorilla that would be you Mr Trump now you've decided to consummate the deal so to speak and we've given you the upper hand on a silver platter to mix metaphors terribly well you're doing so Canada is unlikely to

become the 51st state however not even Alberta as you may well know sir after all you'd have to offer us something better than what has been put forward by our fellow Canadians that would be the continued privilege and expense of subsidizing Quebec how half of whose citizens consistently clamor to secede from the country while we impoverish ourselves for their benefit the constant imposition of serious practical impediments from the federal and other provincial governments hint hint British Columbia to the international business deals and pipelines that would help Alberta bring its resources to Market continual insult on

top of such injury in the form of unbearable and naive moral I izing about their superiority in conviction with regard to the sustainability of the planet and to top it all off the accusation that I Daniel Smith am not patriotic enough to start a trade war with my strange bed fellow in the name of a country whose very leaders Proclaim both identityless and a multiculturalism that none of my citizens want and Trump might well say or perhaps is even saying right now I think I could top that offer M Premier fine as it is I

could offer albertans the American dollar full access to our markets for their resources at full International price lower costs on almost all manufactured goods and on food lower taxes both corporate and personal membership in a country that Prides itself on being a country country and that does not plan to dissolve itself into an unstable Multicultural mishmash genuine admiration for your economic and Industrial Endeavors along with a can do Visionary and deeply entrepreneurial culture immediate reliable and guaranteed access to Ports and pipelines and full military defense and if that's not enough dear lady no transfer payments

and the additional psychological advantage for albertans in foregoing the perpetual and bullying Eastern Canadian attitude of grievance and moral superiority emanating in particular from the Quebec give us what we want forever or we'll leave who also shamelessly disdains your dirty fossil fuel such that they made the fracking Alberta's economy depends on literally illegal in their jurisdiction just to make a point while simultaneously accepting it not with good grace the filthy money so generated what do you think would happen Oh Canada if those were the two choices put forth on a ballot before the citizens of

Alberta and why should Smith not take full advantage of this opportunity to tell her fellow Canadians in no uncertain terms a few things that would both make Canada an attractive place for Alberta and the rest of the West perhaps to stay and much saner and richer to boot and what would that be enough pathetic celebrity wannabe pandering to the international Elites of Davos and for good measure the utterly degenerate un enough overt and covert attempt to destroy the basis of the economy of my fair and hardworking Province enough delaying critical infrastructure development and reject of

international trade offers for natural gas oil and coal enough treatment of the resource economy upon which Quebec in particular so unacceptably depends as a moral Pariah enough idiot green moralizing enough carbon tax enough bloody Net Zero and how about this enough multiculturalism and destruction of the Canadian identity why belong so expensive defensively to a country that despises its own history economy and people make us a better offer and quickly my Canadian friends or Trump's tariffs will be the least of your problems and all of this would not only be good for Alberta and by extension

for the working people of Canada it is also absolutely necessary for Canada perhaps to even survive both economically and politically there's a reason we like the Europeans now make a measly 60 cents for every dollar made by our American friends the reason has much to do with the attitudes we have adopted ever since the bited 1960s that have made us not such good friends at all Trump is threatening the Integrity of Canada very effectively the fact of that threat and of its Effectiveness might make us think twice in such thinking there could be the opportunity

to shed the idiocy that is making us poor weak irrelevant on the international stage and contemptible to our neighbors we could make his saber rattling into an opportunity increase our interprovincial crossborder trade get out of our own way on the energy front rekindle our national pride at least to the point where we regard our country as both viable and valuable seek the international markets that would make us more truly independent as a nation strengthen our commitment to the military that would be increasingly and truly necessary if such independence were pursued and make of the next

hundred years Canada's Triumph instead of the story of its contemptible self-aggrandizing moralistic falsely green and socialist demise [Music]