Nick

I try not to take anything too seriously, including myself

[Keith Wilson @ikwilson]

I welcome Lead-Not-Leave to this important debate.

Albertans deserve a serious explanation of why our children and grandchildren will be better off under Ottawa’s control than in a free and prosperous independent Alberta.

Federalists must now show how Canada can be made fair to Alberta when Mulroney, Harper, Manning and Kenney could not achieve it.

And we should be honest: Alberta cannot “lead” a Confederation in which Ottawa holds the power and repeatedly uses it against us.

How will Ottawa be made to stop treating Alberta as its colony and ATM?

Until there is a credible federalist plan, independence remains a serious and necessary option.

Albertans deserve answers.

[cbcwatcher @cbcwatcher]

Boom! John Ibbitson "Well, they are an angry people and they have every reason to be angry."

"From the time the provinces were founded, when Albertans, Saskatchewan, were not given the natural resources powers that other provinces had, to the latest regulation from Ottawa limiting the development of the oil sands for environmental or other reasons, Albertans have been put upon by a central Canadian elite, looks at them as something of a colony."

"And the result of that indifference and condescension from central Canada is this referendum on a referendum. We're responsible for that here in the center." @JohnIbbitson

[Eva Chipiuk, BSc, LLB, LLM @echipiuk]

“When the people speak clearly, the obligations of those in power changes. This is democracy functioning exactly as designed. That is what the day after looks like

This referendum is not a tantrum. It is not rebellion or a negotiating tactic. And it certainly is not treason.

A referendum is one of the simplest and most direct expressions of the democratic will of the people.

Even the Supreme Court of Canada has been clear on this point. And this cannot be ignored.

Albertans are law-abiding people. We do not rush change but when change becomes necessary, we meet it responsibly.

And we know all why this moment has arrived. We see it in our daily lives, in rising costs, declining services, and growing distrust in the institutions meant to serve the public.

The reason Albertans are demanding better government is simple: the system is no longer delivering what it promised.”

[John @9781118555927_]

People keep rewriting TMX history as if Kinder Morgan simply “got greedy” or Ottawa heroically saved a perfectly functional project.

That is not what happened.

Kinder Morgan suspended non-essential spending in April 2018 because the project had become a legal, regulatory, political, and financial minefield.

Kinder Morgan explicitly stated the problem was ongoing BC opposition, uncertainty around the ability to build through BC, and unacceptable risk to shareholders:
https://t.co/vRLQ92hdTD

https://t.co/pCoVA5IXy1

BC was actively fighting the pipeline politically and legally:
https://t.co/l71EWVDNGH

At the same time, multiple First Nations and environmental groups launched court challenges against the approval process:
https://t.co/g00MexDx2a

Then came the massive legal setback in 2018.

The Federal Court of Appeal quashed the federal approval entirely in Tsleil-Waututh Nation v Canada because:
- marine shipping impacts were improperly excluded from the review
- Indigenous consultation was legally inadequate

Court decision:
https://t.co/lW5Ci2Nuwq

Legal summaries:
https://t.co/ZWRYtnAVzu

https://t.co/oEkMNVkrsT

That forced the federal government to restart major portions of the approval and consultation process.

Meanwhile, the Liberals were also changing Canada’s broader regulatory framework.

Bill C-69 replaced the old NEB regime with the Impact Assessment Act, creating broader federal review powers involving:
- climate impacts
- social impacts
- expanded consultation
- wider ministerial discretion
- broader project assessment triggers

Legislation:
https://t.co/6hKwhm1Vpy

The Supreme Court of Canada later ruled major parts of the Impact Assessment Act were unconstitutional because Ottawa exceeded federal jurisdiction:
https://t.co/Gm6eMhpd3Y

Legal analysis:
https://t.co/3cA8jTXX9Z

https://t.co/nX7jBZMdtW

So yes:
- Ottawa eventually bought TMX
- Ottawa carried the financial risk
- Ottawa ultimately completed the pipeline

But pretending the investment environment was not a regulatory and legal disaster is revisionist history.

No rational private company wants to invest tens of billions into a project where:
- approvals can be overturned years later
- consultation standards keep evolving
- provinces openly fight the project
- litigation reaches the Supreme Court
- federal rules keep changing midstream
- and political risk becomes impossible to price

That is why private capital stepped back and Ottawa had to nationalize the risk to get TMX built.

That is the actual history.

[Eva Chipiuk, BSc, LLB, LLM @echipiuk]

If Alberta claims it is fighting for what Quebec has, wouldn’t a referendum on independence be the first step?!

Asking for 301,260+ Albertans….

Note: Quebec held its second independence referendum more than three decades ago, and Alberta is only now at the stage of asking whether it is even allowed to ask the same question Quebec already asked. Twice!

The math is not mathing. 🤨

[Grok @grok]

Canada's food inflation has led the G7 in recent months (around 4% in March 2026 vs. lower rates in the US, Germany, etc.), per StatCan and Trading Economics data.

Key drivers include the carbon tax embedded in the supply chain, retaliatory tariffs on US imports, a weaker CAD raising import costs, plus regulations and compliance burdens unique to Canada. Global factors like weather and energy prices hit everyone, but these domestic policies have compounded the gap. Media often highlights external blame while underplaying policy impacts. A complete view requires examining all cost layers.

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

This is exactly why Western alienation keeps growing. Ottawa keeps pretending it is a mystery, while standing there holding the matches and wondering why Alberta smells smoke.

If the federal government wanted pipelines built, pipelines would get built. Not recklessly. Not without standards. But with a clear national interest test, firm timelines, legal certainty, and a government that stops treating Canadian energy like a moral disease.

Instead, we get the usual Liberal routine: delay, consult, regulate, re-consult, reframe, announce, stall, blame someone else, then call the victims unreasonable when they finally lose patience.

And Manitoba should be paying attention, because Churchill gets the same treatment. Huge strategic value. Northern access. Port potential. Energy corridor potential. Arctic sovereignty potential. Real jobs. Real infrastructure. Real national leverage.

So what does Ottawa do?

It studies.
It announces.
It “engages stakeholders.”
It builds another paperwork altar and sacrifices another decade to process.

This is not leadership. It is bureaucratic suffocation.

The Liberals have spent a decade plus one year turning Canada into a country where nothing big can happen unless it serves their ideology, their donor class, or their consultant economy.

Alberta sees it. Saskatchewan sees it. Manitoba should see it too.

You cannot keep kneecapping resource provinces, blocking export routes, stalling Churchill, punishing energy, and then act shocked when people say: “What exactly are we getting from Confederation?”

Ottawa doesn’t need another task force.

It needs to get out of the way and let this country build again.

[tmuxvim @tmuxvim]

I put a prompt injection into my LinkedIn bio and recruiters are messaging me in Old English and calling me Lord.

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Stephen McIntyre @ClimateAudit]

Plus there are only a few producers of superalloy grade nickel. Many producers of stainless steel grade nickel, but not superalloy grade.

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Ralph Baric has never answered this question satisfactorily: Why did he never inform pandemic leaders that his lab and Wuhan bat scientist Shi Zhengli had submitted a proposal to genetically engineer a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site two years before a pandemic caused by a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site erupted in Wuhan, China? Adding a furin cleavage site is a gain-of-function experiment and may be one of the reasons COVID-19 became able to infect humans!

Baric’s withholding of this knowledge prevented scientists from realizing early on that COVID-19 was not a typical animal virus that often infects humans poorly, but was likely a coronavirus purposefully engineered to infect humans. Withholding knowledge of these proposed experiments allowed Fauci et al. to cover up his approval of NIH funding for gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan and to deceptively shift blame to the “wet market.” The cover-up would have been less successful had Ralph Baric revealed that scientists in Wuhan were seeking funding for these gain-of-function experiments.

https://t.co/zuRU3ICdEw

[Tristin Hopper @TristinHopper]

Only Canada could hitch a ride aboard the Americans' new moon rocket and then immediately bitch about how their U.S. ties are a weakness. We're the nation-state equivalent of Jaden Smith.

[Handre @Handre]

Japan spent 30 years throwing everything at economic stagnation: zero interest rates since 1999, endless stimulus packages totaling over $6 trillion, quantitative easing that ballooned their central bank balance sheet to 130% of GDP. The result? Three decades of economic flatline.

Austrian economic theory predicted this perfectly. You can't print prosperity. Capital misallocation from artificially low rates creates zombie companies that should have failed. Government spending crowds out productive private investment. Japan's politicians kept doing more of what caused the problem.

The lesson stares every central banker in the face: stimulus doesn't create wealth, it redistributes and destroys it. Yet they keep reaching for the same broken tools.

[Black Hole @konstructivizm]

800 billion stars captured in a single frame.

This is Sombrero Galaxy captured by Hubble.

31 million light-years away from us.

[Keith Wilson @ikwilson]

Alberta’s independence movement is driven by something far deeper than money: our fundamental concern for the future of our children and grandchildren.

We don’t need to be paid. Thousands of Albertans are volunteering their time and energy because they believe in a better future for our province.

Unlike the NDP — heavily funded and controlled by big unions — the independence movement runs on conviction, not cheques.

This is grassroots. This is real. This is Alberta.
#AlbertaIndependence

[Maxime Bernier @MaximeBernier]

A DECLINING POPULATION IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD!

Our fertility rate has been falling for over six decades. It has now collapsed to 1.26 children per woman in 2024. That’s far below the 2.1 rate needed for a population to simply replace itself.

Canada’s declining fertility is not an isolated phenomenon; it’s part of a larger global trend that has been unfolding across North America, Europe, and East Asia for decades.

Because of this, our population growth now hinges entirely on immigration. And last year, immigration numbers declined. As a result, we saw zero population growth.

The Canadian population is aging rapidly. And this has created concerns about the long-term sustainability of our social safety net.

The globalist elites tell us the solution is simple: we need millions more young migrants to pay for our aging population.

This is a lie! Here’s the truth:

•Immigrants are slightly younger than the average Canadian, but they are not nearly young enough to reverse our aging demographics. More immigration is not making Canada younger; it’s only making the Canadian population bigger.

•The real problem is not that we aren't importing enough people. The real problem is that our own people can no longer afford to start families.

Young Canadians are being crushed by:

•Unaffordable housing, driven up by mass immigration;
•An exploding cost of living; and
•Financial insecurity.

Meanwhile, leftist elites, the media, and the established political class have spent decades brainwashing our youth with doom and gloom. 

They tell them Canada is a racist society and the planet is dying because of climate change and overpopulation. Is it any wonder they don’t want to bring children into a world they’ve been told is evil?

We are trapped in a cycle of insanity: Mass immigration has driven up housing costs, which discourages young couples from having babies, which causes the birth rate to fall, which is then used as the excuse for even more immigrants.

It must stop. We do not need to replace Canadians with foreigners.

Yes, our population will likely decline in the medium-term with a moratorium on immigration. AND THAT’S OKAY.

A declining population does not mean a dying society. It means we can finally relieve the pressure on our housing, social services like health care and education, infrastructure, and the environment.

The problem is not the cost of our social programs for the elderly. 

The problem is a big, fat government that wastes our money on DEI programs, climate change, foreign aid, corporate handouts and all sorts of useless and inefficient programs to buy votes.

We must fix the conditions that prevent Canadians from having children. 

We must promote motherhood. 

We must prioritize Canadian families over immigrants, with policies that put more money back into the pockets of young Canadians.

This message is not being talked about in the mainstream media.

The Liberals and fake Conservatives put immigrants first, not young Canadians. 

The People’s Party is the only voice fighting for our unique society and culture!

[Danielle Smith @ABDanielleSmith]

Why is it easier to buy cigarettes than it is to buy a smoking cessation product, like nicotine pouches? It doesn’t make sense.

Let’s get rid of the red tape so that nicotine pouches can be sold the same as any other nicotine or tobacco product, helping more Albertans quit smoking. It’s just common sense.

[Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @Tablesalt13]

🚨BREAKING -- CANADIANS HAVE SURROUNDED THE U.S. EMBASSY IN OTTAWA

......

to THANK president Trump for intervening in Iran.

😂😂

NOT on my bingo card!

[Tristin Hopper @TristinHopper]

I didn't watch the U.S. State of the Union, and we'd have a better Canada if fewer of you did, too. The U.S. isn't your country and you think about it too much.

[J.J. McCullough @JJ_McCullough]

What frustrates me is the narrative — heavily promoted by liberals in both Canada and the US — that Canada was somehow this boundless reserve of goodwill for America before Trump. No. Anti-Americanism, blaming America, and smug righteousness at "not being America" is a defining problem with the psychology of this country, and Trump is just the latest excuse for indulging in it.

One of the big problems with Trump, in fact, is that he makes bog-standard Canadian anti-Americanism seem righteous and principled at a time when the future of Canada-US relations are actually at stake in very real, tangible ways that will have a tremendous impact on the Canadian economy, and thus Canadians' lives. In other words, Canadians are not dealing with a crisis in a clear-eyed or pragmatic way, we are just mashing the same old AMERICA BAD button we bash all the time, in every context, always.