The Ben Mulroney Show - Is Alberta's unhappiness crystallizing into a real independence movement?

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Is Alberta's unhappiness crystallizing into a real independence movement? with Guest: Rachel Parker, Independent Journalist based in Alberta -What do we value more? The safety of female prisoners? Or the rights of violent trans convicts? with Guest: Brad Hunter, National Crime Columnist for the Toronto Sun If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and in anticipation of a looming federal election, our federal leaders are everywhere. And Mark Carney, the Prime Minister, found himself in Alberta. He played a little bit of hockey with the Oilers. But probably more importantly, he had a sit-down with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, where she made her demands very clear on oil policy changes that she says her province needs to see. And she warned that national unity was at stake. Here's Danielle Smith

giving her assessment of her first meeting with Mark Carney. I think there's a real danger that the new prime minister is worse than the old prime minister. But if one of his values is keeping oil and gas in the ground and he thinks Alberta can operate on wind and solar and battery power, he's got another thing coming. So I will be able to make our case very clearly, especially in the changing environment we find ourselves in, that our world needs more energy. They need more energy from a reliable democratic source and ally.

And the world is very interested in what Alberta has to offer. And I would hope that they would work in partnership with us to be able to get that to market. So I haven't had that conversation with the new prime minister yet, I intend to, and I'll have to vet it at that time. that to market. So I haven't had that conversation with the new prime minister yet, I intend to, and I'll have to vet it at that time.

But everything I've seen so far suggest to me that ending the retail carbon tax just so consumers can't see it when they go and fill up their gas or when they look at their home heating bill, but then walloping our industry with potentially higher taxes, that's just not gonna fly.

All right, so to discuss this a little deeper, let's talk to a journalist who is in the trenches in Alberta each and every day, Rachel Parker. Welcome back to the show, Rachel. Happy to be here. Now, before we talk about the Premier, let's talk about Mark Carney. He's got roots in the province

and he's just spent some time there. What is the perception of Mark Carney in Alberta from what you're hearing? Yeah, I think Daniel Smith pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one. Obviously, you know, he's been doing a bit of campaigning in Edmonton. Edmonton typically goes to the Alberta NDP in our provincial elections. So I think the Liberals might have a possibility to, you know, pick up a seat or two there under Mark Carney but generally the liberals are pretty hated in Alberta and That is not going to be changing with Mark Carney

If anything from what I'm hearing people dislike him even more than Justin Trudeau people distrust him even more than Justin Trudeau You know, you've been hearing that talking point that people are repeating that, oh, he's unelected. And I mean, in fairness, that is how our system works. We have the same thing happen with Danielle Smith. But those are sort of the talking points. That's the rhetoric that you're hearing among people in the province who are just generally very uncomfortable

with Mark Carney and feel that he is a globalist that feel like he is going to increase immigration and make things worse for the energy industry in our province. But Rachel, when you see polling that shows the liberals really close to the conservatives in Alberta and in some cases, in some cases, winning as many as 11 seats in the province, what do you make of that then? I don't buy that too much. I think that that is probably a pretty big miss from the polling industry.

If you remember, even when we had our provincial election here back in 2023, there was a lot of polling coming out that was saying that the NDP was going to win. And of course they didn't. We have a United Conservative Party government. But Alberta is typically a very hard province to poll. Janet Brown is known as the best pollster in the province. She usually hits the nail on the head. She gets quite close to the mark in our provincial

elections. She just has a different bit of a method which is that she calls landlines repeatedly because in the rural parts of the province there are still people who use landlines. There are still elderly people that can't be reached. I think her methods are just a bit more focused here. But when I see polls coming out that the Liberals are neck and neck with the Conservatives, they're going to win 11 seats, yeah, I don't buy that. – Part of the Premier's messaging to the new Prime Minister was that there is a deep

resentment in the province, and it's been there for a very long time, but it does seem to be metastasizing or crystallizing about, you know, the country's dependence on the natural resources of Alberta, but an unwillingness to respect the province enough to allow them to extract it and profit from it to the benefit of the entire country. And so there was a talk of a potential national unity crisis. Is she making a mountain out of a molehill or is she is she telling him there is an iceberg that I can see and if you don't see it, you're blind? No, I think that she recognizes what's going on, especially among her base. And you know, I was the person to break the story that there is a delegation organizing

in Alberta right now that plans to go down to Washington, DC to pitch Donald Trump on Alberta statehood. Now, I've done some polling on this because I was interested in the numbers, and the numbers for statehood aren't very high. Only about 20% of the province is interested in that idea. That being said, that's 20% of Albertans who are interested in joining the U.S. without any sustained campaign to that effect. Now, when we look at Albertans who are thinking that maybe independence is the route to go, where we would separate from Canada, but not necessarily join the United States, those numbers are quite higher at almost 40% of Albertans being very supportive or somewhat supportive. So those are really high numbers when you you think about the fact that, as I've said,

there hasn't been a sustained campaign pushing for succession from Canada. And I know that there's efforts undergoing right now to create some campaigns. I think some people are kind of sitting on the sidelines waiting to see the outcome of the federal election. But if we have a Mark Carney liberal government up in Ottawa, again, these campaigns are going

to be full-fledged and I suspect it will be a big problem for the premier and it will be a big problem for Ottawa. Well, that's what I was going to ask you. Because there are a lot of people outside of Alberta who sort of they pooh-pooh the nationalism of Alberta. They'll say, it's just a bunch of crackpots. It's not that. It's something else.

Well, my question to those people is how much time have you spent in the province? Yeah. Do you have any idea what the actual grievances here are? It's the fact that Alberta is giving, according to estimates from the Canadian taxpayers federation, $3 billion annually in equalization payments. And we haven't received a payment in six decades because we are a wealthy province. So the federal government steals our wealth to do wealth redistribution and give it to the other provinces and at the same time they're hamstrung our energy industry as you said. Mark Carney said that he plans to keep the 2030 emissions cap which

is a target on Alberta oil and gas. Dan Helfsme The announcement has said that will act as a production cap. And so people here are simply fed up. And with the policies that Mark Carney has announced, including that he's added the co-founder of this controversial lobbying group that has proposed to increase the Canadian population to 100 million, people are just fed up here. People are looking at the federal government with a lot of distrust and Mark Carney, you know, he's not well known, but what people know about him, they don't like. And here's why this should be concerning to people is that, look, if you have a, a small

cohort of people clamoring for independence or clamoring for statehood, it really doesn't have anywhere to go, right? They're going to talk to each other. It's not, they don't have the money, they don't have the manpower, they don't have the infrastructure to do anything with, with that movement. But if it starts getting up to 20, 30, 40 percent, and then you have a government that is elected across the country that is viewed as hostile to Alberta's, Alberta's interest, and you have a president adding increased pressure to that dynamic. Well then all of a sudden, that 30-40%, they can mobilize, they are funded,

they can communicate, they can organize, and they can take that 40% much higher. Well, and you know, that's exactly right. And what I've said repeatedly is, you know, to your conversation about the rest of Canada, not really understanding what's going on here is the talking point that you'll often hear coming from Eastern Canada to sentiments of separation out here is, oh, well, they're traders. And, you know, the sentiment out here is I didn't leave Canada. Canada left me a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, we're already seeing numbers at 40%.

And what I can tell you is that Alberta is known for its Brown Gate. We have some of the best organizers in the country here, some of the best conservative organizers in the country here. People decide that they want to do this. You are going to see a very strong and sustained campaign effort with a lot of money behind it to get it done. Yeah. And you're absolutely right.

There's people on one side of the political spectrum who are so eager to shut down any sort of conversation. You're either on Carney's Team Canada or you're a traitor. And it is so friggin' insulting that we can't have an adult conversation about different paths and different ideas and different values and different ways to get what we want. But it's the Canada we live in. Isn't that right, Rachel? Absolutely, it is. Well, I want to thank you so much. That was Rachel Parker, a journalist based in Alberta. Really hope to talk to you again soon.

Thanks for having me. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show, and we're going to wade into some really tricky waters right now. I'm of the opinion that if you are serving your time in a federal penitentiary, And we're going to wade into some really tricky waters right now. I'm of the opinion that if you are serving your time in a federal penitentiary, you deserve to do so in the most humane and secure way possible. You should feel, even if you perpetrated a crime, you deserve to feel safe. And we are currently dealing with a story that is highlighted in the Toronto Sun of a very violent killer of children who was a man and has transitioned to become a woman who has been placed in a women's prison.

And that brings up all sorts of very delicate questions that I want to approach respectfully in this conversation with the author of the piece, Brad Hunter. So Brad, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing today, Ben? I'm well. Tell us the story of Michael Williams.

Well, in 2005, Michael Williams, who was 17 years old at the time, and a group of other people lured a 13-year-old girl named Nina Cortipati to a golf course in Edmonton. And there they tortured and beat her and raped her and killed her and you know this guy Michael Williams whose friend called him psycho also tried to set her ablaze. Now I won't go into all the grim details but but that's the long and short of it. Now he was so horrendous that you know he was sentenced as an adult. Right. And, and, you know, the, the judge

was up there and judge rubbed her hand and said, you know, this guy's hopeless. Yeah. And so he was, so where, where was he sentenced to serve his time? Well, he was initially sentenced to a maximum men's prison. I mean, he's been in Mill Haven, but the Correctional Service is very, you know, pagey about moving people, about where people are and that sort of thing. Yeah. And so at what point did Michael become Bunny? I think 2014, something like that.

Okay, so he had spent some, he'd spent some time in a maximum security men's prison. That's right. Okay, so I don't know a lot about incarceration, but one thing that I've been told is sort of a universal truth is there is a code amongst prisoners that they do not take kindly to other prisoners

who have been convicted and are serving time for offenses against children. Yeah, that's quite right. No matter how you identify, your name is mud on the range if you've harmed a child. And your life is pretty much constantly in danger if you're in general pop. Right.

But yeah. So, and that's why I'm just trying to extrapolate if it were me, if I'm already in one of the most dangerous places, a federal maximum security federal penitentiary, and I have a target on my back because of the crime I committed, if there is an out that is allowed to me, I am going to take it. And if it means telling the world that I am a woman,

I'm absolutely going to do And if it means telling the world that I am a woman, I'm absolutely going to do that if it means I can get transferred to a place where I have less threats against me. Well, right. I mean, that would be my approach as well, right? Yeah. But the thing is, and there's certainly, you know, trans offenders in this country who, you know,

female inmates or former inmates that I've spoken to don't have a problem going there. But when you're dealing with a violent sex killer of children, and remember, women's prisons, children are more likely to be around to keep the bond with their mother. And almost all the women in the women's prisons are in for nonviolent offenses, usually drugs or prostitution or something like that. And so they're very vulnerable. They come from very vulnerable backgrounds. So the last thing they need is a grenade thrown in there.

Yeah, and so what are you hearing from the women in that prison? Because if I, again, I go back to what I said off the top, everybody deserves to carry out their sentence with as much dignity as the system will permit and as much security as we can ensure. And to put a hyperviolent criminal from a men's prison into a women's prison,

and again, I don't think it's unfair to doubt this person's transition when his very life was at stake, but that doesn't change the fact he's a hyperviolent male presenting now as a woman amongst an entirely female population. Well, it's very much the box in the henhouse, right? And, and that's, that's the concern. And most recently, of course, you know, he was, you know, acting up against flex flexing and threatening the female inmates

at Grand Valley Institution outside of Kitchener. So as a result, you know, he can't be there. They throw him in not solitary confinement anymore. I'm not, I can't remember quite what it's called, but that sort of thing. He had a freakout with the negotiation teams and the tactical units and he had a weapon allegedly and was threatening to use it against the Cratchitl officer. It's just a bad idea. Obviously, I think, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, if, you know, a trans offender or whoever gets picked up shoplifting or whatever for something like that, yeah, okay, we'll put them in the women's prison because they're, you know, they've shown that they're not violent.

You know, the torture murder of a 13 year old girl, well, that's on a whole different plane. Yeah. And are any of these concerns being brought to people who could do something about it? I mean, what are the options here? What are the options here for the women who are in this prison, are genuinely more fearful today

than they might have been before this person was transferred? Well, that's it. I mean, the options are essential. I mean, and I don't know why. I mean, I think it's because of a lack of prison space, why there hasn't been a range put in some prison and say, okay, transgender, whoever identifies as a woman, guess what? You go into this range and, you know, that sort of thing. But the system, which, you know,

we've got an election coming up and whatnot, the system has been so, and the liberals have been so obsessed with equality, equality, equality. It trumps all other considerations, including past victims, their families, and future victims. Yeah. And, or and future victims. Yeah. And are potential future victims.

So they have blinders on about this sort of thing. And I mean, my sources told me that the correctional services people don't want this guy in with women. They don't want violent criminals No. in these sorts of places. It's a completely different sort of thing than from a man's prison. Automatically, if you get transferred

to a women's prison, automatically, even if you're coming from Mill Haven, which is the maximum prison and one of the most violent prisons in the country. If you're coming from there to a women's federal prison, you're automatically going to medium security, automatically. Wow, yeah, of course. And unfortunately, stories like this absolutely do need to be highlighted because they put women at risk and the dignity and the safety of those women at risk. But they also do a disservice to those who are

in a very real situation, the transgender community that is not doing anything to anybody else, that is not putting anybody at risk, that is not taking medals away from girls at track meets and the like. And it's, it's, it's, it muddies the water for those who are just trying to live their lives any way that they want. And, and so I don't know what we do with a situation that we've created. It's a situation of our own making. But it's, yeah. Yeah. Well, I do want to thank you for

highlighting it. It's a hard story to wrap our heads around. You know, as I said off the top, I want to be respectful. I want to be delicate. But at some point, safety trumps a lot of other things. So I want to thank you so much for being here. And I hope you have a great weekend. You too, Ben. You take care of yourself. Thanks for having me.

There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks. But investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom, and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases, and some you've likely never heard of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.