Mm-hmm.

And, and I think that, you know, economics is not necessarily, uh, the easiest thing to understand, certainly not for average people.

And if you look at the history of Canada, like, the level of foreign direct investment exploded during neoliberalism, and that's on purpose.

That's, that's the deregulation of global markets.

That's the deregulation of our own market.

You know, there was a move in the 1970s, the late 1970s, to repatriate a lot of Canadian corporations that were branch plants.

At least the branch plants of the American companies still had Canadian offices and Canadian leadership and this kind of thing, and still Canadians were like, "This isn't good enough.

Obviously, we don't think that's true, but, like, how does that work?

Right

... because that's, that's the level of their politics.

It's, it's like the dump is so important that it is a special economic zone.

It's, it's nuts.

Um, but we've seen already, like, they're appointing regional, uh, regional chairs to, to, to chair the, the, the various regions that bring together municipalities across the province of Ontario, and these attacks on local democracy are being done just so they can push through their own pet project issues.

Like, "We don't like speed cameras.

We don't like bike lanes.

Right.

So in some ways, like Carney's own behavior is like itself already encouraging Alberta separatism.

Yeah, so I have been doing nothing but reading about Canadian federalism for the last six weeks.

And so I feel like my mind is like, okay, Okay, I am down a rabbit hole on this question.

And it isn't that obvious, as you say, it is peculiar the way that these things have evolved.

You know, Canadians, the Canadian leadership, the British colonial leadership, right from the start, tried to set up a system in Canada that would not function like the United States.

They were very concerned about the power that the states had, and they tried to give the most important powers to the federal government.

Of course, the most important powers in 1867 were not necessarily what became most important powers in 1967 and then, of course, 2026.

So he gets to, you know, like have his cake and eat it too, right? Like for Carney, how does all this fit into sort of like Carney's political stance? Oh,

What, um, uh, is exactly happening in Alberta?

[laughs] Well, the headline story, you kind of just, uh, you just talked about it, that the province has greenlit a referendum question, which will come on the ballot in the fall, asking Albertans if they would like to hold another referendum, and in that referendum, to discuss whether or not Alberta should be a sovereign state.

Now, this is coming from a government that is headed by someone who, I mean, just three or four years ago, we would probably have called her a, a, a, a talk radio hydrochloroquine queen.

And somehow she became the premier of the province of Alberta at the head of a conservative party called the United Conservative Party.

But inside that party has always, uh, well, since they united, has been elements, uh, that she comes from that are crazy, and that, that craziness, uh, right now has decided to orient itself around the idea of a free and independent Alberta.

And so they've been trying to get petition signatures collected to put a question on the ballot about whether or not Albertans would like to cede from Canada.

Now, this has been, like, very scandalous in a whole bunch of different ways.

Yeah.