Shiftheads - How to Accidentally Kill Your Own Movement: Alberta Separation Fail

Alberta separatism debate has a foreign interference problem. Your movement needs legitimacy. Some supporters are meeting with White House officials. Steve Bannon's show is talking about taking over Alberta. Trump's treasury pick is commenting on Alberta referendums. David Eby called it treasonous. Now imagine if Jesse Ventura was meeting with Ottawa about Minnesota joining Canada. That's how Americans would react to this.

Danielle Smith won't demonize the 20% of Albertans sympathetic to separation, but she punted on denouncing those seeking American help. Rob Breakenridge draws the line there: going to any foreign capital asking them to help break up Canada is easy enough to denounce. The problem for the separatist movement? If you get linked to an incredibly unpopular US president, your support craters. Thirty percent open to the idea becomes much less when Donald Trump's name attaches to it. And if people start associating it with joining the US instead of becoming a separate country, that's not the association you want.

BC and Alberta premiers are playing nice under the Trump threat, trying to rebuild Team Canada. Pipeline tensions remain. Eby's firm on tanker bans, though Trans Mountain expansion might be possible. But the squeaky wheel might be getting the wrong kind of grease. The attention separatists crave could backfire when it comes from Washington instead of Ottawa.

Topics: Alberta separatism, Western independence movement, US interference Canada, provincial politics, Trump Canada

GUEST: Rob Breakenridge | robbreakenridge.ca, @robbreakenridge

Originally aired on 2026-01-29

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(2285)

Ryan's Perm Decision Gets the Full Interrogation

The hosts spend Good News Tuesday picking apart Ryan's plan to get a perm just before he turns thirty, weighing whether light waves count as a genuine style risk or a full quarter life crisis. It is t...

29 Jul 9min

NEW - Good News Tuesday: The Dog Survived a Sixty-Foot Fall.

Good News Tuesday leads with the story of Willow, a three-year-old Labrador who fell down a sixty-foot cliff and is now recovering, a moment that will hit hard for anyone who has ever hiked a steep tr...

29 Jul 9min

Shiftheads: Mercury Retrograde Talked Him Into Getting Organized

A workplace seminar on Mercury retrograde turns into a real debate about belief systems, astrology, and whether star charts hold up to basic math. Anyone who has ever rolled their eyes at a horoscope ...

29 Jul 9min

NEW - Why Simple Questions Are the Hardest Ones to Answer

Graham Richardson explains why the toughest questions he asks politicians are almost always the plainest ones, and what that says about spotting a dodge in real time. For anyone tired of watching inte...

29 Jul 9min

ICYMI - The Fitness Test That May Predict How Long You Live

Dr. Mitch Schulman breaks down the VO2 max test, the gruelling treadmill and mask assessment that measures how well your heart, lungs, and muscles work together, and explains why researchers see it as...

29 Jul 9min

ICYMI - 30 Years of Gold: What Donovan Bailey Learned From Men Talking to Men

Donovan Bailey opens up about a side of his life that rarely makes headlines, the friend group that checks in on each other the way he says more men need to. It is a candid look at what changes when v...

29 Jul 19min

NEW - They Want to Clone You Into a Robot, Heartbeat Included

A haptic suit fitted with forty sensors can record a living person's heartbeat, sweat patterns, and the exact way they walk. The Digital DNA project wants to feed all of that into a humanoid robot wit...

29 Jul 9min

Date Night: The Way They Talk About Their Ex Says Everything

Dating coach Tony Tedesco flips the usual red flag conversation on its head, explaining why the way someone describes a past relationship tells you almost everything you need to know. Anyone tired of ...

29 Jul 9min