The Ben Mulroney Show - Premier Danielle Smith has Supercharged the discussion around Western Sovereignty

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Premier Danielle Smith has Supercharged the discussion around Western Sovereignty with Guest: Max Fawcett, Lead Columnist for Canada's National Observer 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. And look, one of the conversations that has been bubbling up for quite some time is the concerning rise and possible mobilization of a sovereignist, separatist movement in places like Saskatchewan and Alberta. But the difference that I'm seeing between Saskatchewan and Alberta is the language being used

by their respective leaders. And well, let's listen to what Danielle Smith had to say about Albertans feeling frustrated. We are well aware that there is a large and growing number of Albertans that have lost hope in Alberta having a free and prosperous future as a part of Canada. Many of these Albertans are organizing petitions

to trigger a citizen-initiated referendum, as I mentioned earlier. The vast majority of these individuals are not fringe voices to be marginalized or vilified. They are loyal Albertans. They are quite literally our friends and neighbours who have just had enough of having their livelihoods and prosperity attacked by a hostile federal government. They're frustrated and they have every reason to be. I want to talk directly to those Albertans. I know how frustrated so many of you have become

with our country and the feeling of having politicians living thousands of miles away, passing laws and rules that have cost you your loved ones, jobs, careers, dreams and opportunities for a brighter future. All right. Well, I'm joined now by an Albertan himself, who is a frequent critic of the woman you just heard, Premier Danielle Smith. Please welcome the show again, Max Fawcett, lead columnist for Canada's National Observer. Max, this is a I suspect that you and I, where we don't agree on much, are going to probably agree

that Danielle Smith, it feels like she's playing with fire here. It feels like she's, she's saying that you don't support separatism and then laying the groundwork to make it easier for those separatists to do what they want to do are two different things. Absolutely. And I think we are going to agree. So let's enjoy that for the moment. I have never had any love in my heart for separatists. One of the foundational moments of my life was the 1995 Quebec referendum that sort of got me into politics in a lot of ways.

But at least the leaders of that movement had the courage of their convictions and were willing to say what they believed in. Danielle Smith does not have that. She pretends that she's not a separatist. She pretends that she isn't moving this train down the tracks. While as you note, she's made it far easier

to get a petition to put this question to Albertans in the future. She talks about separatists in glowing, loving terms. She feeds their misconceptions about the country. She feeds their anger, their frustration, and she's doing it for her own political purposes. This is about distracting from the scandal that is quietly consuming her government. She's already lost

two MLAs over it, over the management of the healthcare system here. This is entirely about keeping Danielle Smith in power. It is not about helping frustrated Albertans. I wish she would at least have the courage of her convictions to come out and say what she believes. You know, the separatist movement in Quebec, obviously, I was linked to it as well. And I was, I always believe that like, you should make the job of a separatist harder, right? Not easier, because once you have a separatist movement, and it's institutionalized, it's entrenched, then a no they get today is just a no for today until they get their yes, right?

So they're there forever. Once they take root, they are there forever. And I like it. If you don't want your car stolen, then you don't leave the car running with a sign over the car that says, come take me. And it feels like Danielle Smith, who's saying these things,

who's saying that she doesn't support separatism. And you're right in the language that she just used, it was very warm and empathetic and almost, God, I don't wanna say it because I got a lot of time for Danielle Smith, but it almost felt like a call to arms. Yes, without actually saying it, of course. Yeah, yeah. It's all couched in the language of,

well, we have to respect the will of the people and people, we have a democratic process here and fair enough, but when you're clearly gerrymandering that process to make it easier for these people to be heard, you are picking a side. And I just want to ground this conversation quickly in some facts. She talked about how there's a growing number of people who are interested in Alberta separatism. Nano did a poll right after the election asking people about this. 22% identified as primarily Albertan,

78% identified as Canadian or Canadian from Alberta. And that's the number of people who are primarily Albertan is lower than it was in 2020 when it was 28%. So this is not a growing movement. And if it is growing in any meaningful sense, it's because the premier of Alberta keeps giving life to it.

That's the problem. Yeah, well, I had former premier Jason Kenney on the show last week when Daniel Smith's government lowered the threshold that would be required to trigger one of these citizen led referenda. And he said that, you know, that law was the brainchild of his government. And he said, you know, it was instituted

because if citizens ever felt like the government wasn't prioritizing what was important to them, they could take steps to have that issue dealt with. And, but he said, you know, we kept the threshold for those, that trigger high because we didn't want, as he said, the tail wagging the dog. And so implied in that is this thing could go sideways very quickly. With such a low threshold, you could end up with some crackpots

making some crackpot ideas a ballot issue. Absolutely. And we've seen this movie before too. The argument coming out of Daniel Smith's universe is that by giving a voice to these people, by validating their concerns, it takes the heat off. It gives them an outlet to express their frustration. But we saw this in Great Britain with Brexit, right?

That David Cameron thought he could sort of lance the boil of growing anti-Europeanism in his own party and his own country by having a referendum on leaving the EU and lo and behold, they left. He didn't want them to, he didn't think they would vote that way. But like you said, once the car is running, it's really hard to predict where it's going to go.

And, you know, to folks in Alberta who just want access to markets for their resources, for their products, look, I share that concern. I think that concern has been addressed by two new pipelines to Tidewater. But, you know, we saw over the course of the election, over the course of the last few months,

a growing consensus in Quebec, in Ontario, in BC, that we should do this together. And Danielle Smith is destroying that consensus with this behavior. Do you think people, I mean, her speech might have played well in High River in Chestermere here in Alberta, but do you think it played well in Montreal or in... It didn't play well at Queens Park. Doug Ford slammed Danielle Smith over this language and this rhetoric and said that it's actually detrimental to the prime minister who's down in Washington. I mean, it really, it undercuts him.

What do you think of what Doug Ford said? I find myself in a strange position of agreeing with both Doug Ford and Ben Mulroney on the same day. But no, look, he's right. There's never a good time to open the door to separatism, but there couldn't be a worse time than right now when the prime minister is going into one of the probably the most difficult meetings of his life today with Donald Trump and Daniel Smith, you know, less than 24 hours before

he does that, tries to cut his legs out from underneath him. It just defies any sense of sort of rational politics. And I've seen people suggest that she's trying to help Trump, that she's trying to set up some sort of relationship. And look, I don't think that's the case, but it does beg, it does open the question to that because her speech was just so unhelpful to the cause of Canada. Well, let's look at one more thing. Yeah, let's look at one more thing that she said. In that same speech, she talked about equalization payments. Let's listen.

The federal government must provide to Alberta the same per capita federal transfers and equalization as is received by the other three largest provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. We have no issue with Alberta continuing to subsidize smaller provinces with their needs. But there is no excuse for such large and powerful economies like Ontario, Quebec, BC, or Alberta to be subsidizing one another. That was never the intent of equalization, and it needs to end. Max, I want you to give me the

counterpoint to what she just said in about 20 seconds. I don't necessarily disagree on with her here. I think that there are ways to reform the equalization program that makes sense. And I do think that that is a place that Mark Carney can do some work. It is worth noting really quickly that the TMX and its impact on provincial royalties here has given Alberta or is giving Alberta now two to three billion dollars a year extra in royalty. So that demand has effectively already been met. So you can cross that one off. All right, Max, we're gonna leave it there. But thank you so much for joining us today. Look at that.

We got, we agreed. Let's not make a habit of it though. Don't worry. Next time we'll be back to where we normally are. All right. Want to transform your space and your Sundays? Well, Home Network is giving you the chance to love your home with $15,000.

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