Conservative partisans and other skeptics have ridiculed Liberal leader Mark Carney’s professions about cherishing his roots in Alberta, caring about and understanding Albertans, and intending to treat Alberta well once he wins the impending federal election. “I can still hear the blades of the skates tapping on the floor,” Carney wistfully reminisced during his Liberal leadership campaign launch in mid-January, staged “back home in Edmonton” where he had been raised. The newly installed Liberal leader returned to this theme during the subsequent election campaign. “Hey, I’m from Alberta. You don’t need to tell me what Alberta is like. I’m from Alberta. I know this province. I’ve got tons of friends here. I’ve got family here. I’m known here. I grew up here,” was among the lengthier of his assertions in this vein.
But how believable is any of it? For a man who left the province decades ago and has spent so much time abroad he seems more Transatlantian than Canadian, let alone Albertan, the critics’ knocks seem justified. Carney’s attempted demonstrations of authenticity – like his gliding tremulously around the ice during an Edmonton Oilers practice, or talking “elbows up” patriotism with fading funnyman and longtime U.S. resident Mike Myers – strain at the outer limits of believability. As something recognizably Albertan, then, Carney appears fake; when combined with his globalist/climate cultist/wokist/big government beliefs and plans, a most dangerous one.
So it was rather unfortunate that attempts by some Western voices to warn that Carney’s ideology and policies risk enflaming separatism in Alberta were sneered at in Central Canada. Two recent polls indicating that 30 percent to 37 percent of Albertans would vote for independence even before the election was decided were waved off. In a restrained and articulate column, Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party of Canada and former Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, attempted to awaken Easterners to the threat. While this recent poll suggested quite a few regular folk appear willing to open at least one eye, it also indicated most of them still don’t want to talk about it. Canada’s Laurentian elite remained willfully oblivious to the potentially nation-cleaving risks, denouncing Manning and others with contempt and venom. Thus were the incipient warning signals easily steamrolled under the convoy of Liberal media sympathizers, and the Carney campaign rolled on.
“Hey, I’m from Alberta”: Newly installed Liberal leader Mark Carney’s attempted demonstrations of his Albertan identity – like skating shakily during an Edmonton Oilers practice (top) or appearing in an “elbows up” ad – just did not ring true in his “home province”. So what might Carney have really been up to? (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Jason Franson; (bottom) YouTube/Mark Carney)
But what if Carney was telling the truth? What if he does genuinely love and understand Alberta and Albertans? What if his globalist/international banker/Harvard-PhD/eco-activist/adoptive Laurentian persona is a carefully created shroud of disinformation, the critical element of an elaborate political ruse? What if Carney is in fact a deep cover agent working for a secret committee of Alberta separatists, dispatched all the way into the enemy’s camp, the very heart of darkness – Ottawa – on the ultimate deep fake: to gain the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada and then to win electoral office with the mission of so misgoverning Canada as to bring about its dissolution and trigger the separation of Alberta. A Manchurian Candidate, if you will, planted years ago, his previous roles as shadowy adviser to Justin Trudeau and manager of a vast investment fund providing perfect positioning as sleeper agent, to be activated at the opportune time.
And in January 2025, that time arrived.
A slightly far-fetched scenario, to be sure – but one that would explain a lot. Like the sheer, wanton, shameless destructiveness of Carney’s policies. Think of the $225 billion federal deficit Carney intends to run over the next four years. Or the hapless responses to U.S. President Donald Trump. The unwavering advancement of the net-zero madness, capable of wrecking Canada’s economy from coast to coast. The equanimity towards Communist China and its baleful influences. Or the bewildering willingness to sit down with the coarse buffoon Doug Ford and indulge his ludicrous fantasy of turning Canada’s manufacturing heartland into an electric vehicle powerhouse at a time when the Trump Administration is jettisoning everything to do with EVs as fast as Orange Man Bad can sign executive orders – and as debt-bloated EV and battery manufacturers topple like bowling pins.
Creating a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ named Mark Carney would be nefarious, devious, conspiratorial and downright evil. Of course the way the CBC, Globe and Mail and various Liberal/NDP/Bloc politicians tell it, there’s no shortage of such people in Alberta.
Or the contemptuous dismissals of Danielle Smith, premier of Canada’s last truly productive province, essential to the nation’s financial health. Someone whom logic and self-interest as well as courtesy and elementary statesmanship would suggest Carney should keep on his side. There’s also the man’s personal behaviour: the odd lack of affect, the strange mannerisms, the absence of self-awareness (have you seen the skating video?), the fidgety body language (check out the recent leaders’ debate). To essayist Elizabeth Nickson, Carney comes across as “half-dead”.
Being forced to live such a false role – globally engaged yet, at heart, utterly isolated – could well do that to a deep-cover agent. While such is mere speculation, probably the stuff of satire, one can seriously state that if Carney was trying to bring about Canada’s destruction, he could hardly fashion a more effective policy platform, nor a more toxic mode of practising federalism – one sure to perpetuate worsening federal-provincial conflict. He refuses, for example, to commit to even one new east-west energy pipeline or lift the oil and natural gas emissions cap. If he doesn’t alter course dramatically as Prime Minister, he’ll be practically goading Alberta to launch a bid for independence, while making Canada ever-less capable of resisting or offering a compelling alternative vision.
Creating a Manchurian Candidate named Mark Carney would be nefarious, devious, conspiratorial and downright evil. Of course the way the CBC, Globe and Mail and various Liberal/NDP/Bloc politicians tell it, there’s no shortage of such people in Alberta. So is it truly impossible? Or perhaps simply moot, Carney’s stated policies being so destructive as to render them indistinguishable from those of a Manchurian Candidate. Either way, the Laurentians’ decision to entrust their own and Canada’s fortunes to this strange man – whoever he might really be – could prove the worst blunder in Canada’s history.
Carney’s most recent positions as Justin Trudeau’s shadowy adviser and manager of a vast investment fund, the author notes satirically, positioned him perfectly to carry out the Alberta separatists’ assigned role of deep-cover agent – akin to Sergeant Raymond Shaw in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. Shown at bottom, Sgt. Shaw (played by Laurence Harvey) with Major Marco (Frank Sinatra) after jumping into a lake in New York’s Central Park when his programming was accidentally triggered. (Source of top photo: The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)
Let’s take a quick look at what is likely to happen should Carney win the federal election in three days’ time and begin to govern as his record suggests he will. What would signal a looming crisis of national disunity, a gathering momentum for the breakaway of Alberta?
It’ll begin with the predictable political noise: soaring poll results for Alberta separatism, calls from previously unexpected quarters that the province get out from under Ottawa, perhaps a burgeoning new independence party challenging Smith’s governing UCP. Even more intense courtroom efforts by Alberta to resist federal over-reach and unconstitutional laws and policies. Increasingly pointed warnings from Smith that the political situation could spiral out of control. Frequent invocation of Alberta’s Sovereignty Act to deflect abusive federal actions; perhaps even open defiance of the most illegitimate of these.
Alongside all that, increasingly concerted measures to prepare the province of Alberta to become the self-governing nation of Alberta. The until now incremental steps to decouple Alberta law enforcement from the RCMP in favour of strengthened municipal police forces and an expanded Sheriff’s Branch (recently complemented by a provincial border patrol) will be sharply accelerated. The so-far somnolent plod to unshackle Albertans from the bloated, under-performing and increasingly woke-driven Canada Pension Plan will be rattled into a sprint. Alberta’s Department of Finance will be tasked with setting up a branch to start collecting – and keeping – federal taxes. Reports might trickle out of Alberta mapping the outlines of an intelligence service and armed defence force. Emissaries will be quietly sent to pitch First Nations that they’d be better off as Albertans, others venturing to Saskatchewan and eastern B.C. to sound out the locals’ appetite for joining a greater Alberta.
For readers still clouded by condescension, inclined to cackle or scoff, who see Alberta as somehow “too small” to function as an independent country, a few statistics to consider. Among the world’s currently 195 recognized states, an independent Alberta would have:
- The 52nd largest global economy as measured by its 2024 GDP of $351.4 billion (US$256.2 billion);
- A population (4.96 million as of January 2025) larger than those of 70 other sovereign nations;
- A land area greater than those of 155 other nations;
- Per-capita GDP (US$53,834 in 2024) among the world’s 20 most prosperous nations; and
- A GDP sufficient to finance a military approximately as large and effective as Norway’s (which by several measures is more powerful than Canada’s and is already flying the F-35 stealth fighter).
There are further intriguing statistics and characteristics pointing to Alberta’s viability as an independent country. Alberta would clearly be as politically and economically credible as Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand and other small but advanced countries.
Plus, the already-favourable statistics listed above assume “all other things remain equal.” In fact, all of those numbers (possibly even including Alberta’s physical size) would improve once the great financial anvil of Ottawa was removed from around Alberta’s neck. Equalization, income taxes, debt servicing, the CPP – tens of billions of dollars in money currently flowing East would stay where it was produced and where it belongs.
This in turn would enable large cuts to income taxes, pension and EI premiums, and other fiscal burdens, sending Alberta soaring far beyond any Canadian province and making it competitive with the best-run U.S. states. Projects of all sorts would be built unimpeded. All of this would spur further economic growth and attract in-migration of the most productive, eager-to-work Canadians; to avoid being swamped, Alberta would likely need to implement an immigration lottery.
It would take a man of almost preternatural internal fortitude, unquenchable zeal and unwavering focus to bring about such an evident calamity, throwing the fortunes of tens of millions of mostly innocent Canadians onto the flaming pyre for the good of a few million Albertans.
Meanwhile, the under-performing remnants of Canada would be cast adrift to sink further towards Third World status. Upon Alberta’s independence, “Canada” would drop several rungs on the ladder of global economies and world population. The more appropriately renamed “Laurentia” might be sent scuttling out of the G7. This patchwork would hardly be capable of fulfilling any meaningful NATO commitments. An impoverished Quebec might depart as well, having at least its language, culture and cuisine with which to dilute the bile of its terminal decline.
It would take a man of almost preternatural internal fortitude, unquenchable zeal and unwavering focus to bring about such an evident calamity, throwing the fortunes of tens of millions of mostly innocent Canadians onto the flaming pyre for the good of a few million Albertans. Immensely cynical, even cruel, yet driven by the greater good – at least as viewed through the lens of the unrepentant Alberta separatist. A Canadian George Patton or Ulysses S. Grant, one might say.
Carney’s electoral victory – if it comes on Monday – will thus surpass even his heretofore greatest achievement: his covert contribution to the UK’s Brexit vote in the spring of 2016. To do so, he cast aside the political neutrality expected of every previous Governor of the Bank of England, issuing dire economic modelling purporting to show that the UK would plunge into “recession” should the “Leave” forces win. Carney dived into the “Remain” campaign with such gusto that for a time it appeared he might help the EU/WEF/Quisling forces keep Great Britain shackled to the careering European train wreck.
That one did throw his Alberta handlers into a tizzy; Carney had been dispatched to London to help Brexit happen. Frantic software upgrades were thus undertaken in mid-campaign (using the then-new and still secret techniques of artificial intelligence and remote wireless programming) aimed at torquing the polished globalist into a caricature of insufferable, grotesquely overpaid transnational snob. It worked! His haughty public dressing-down of a Conservative MP who, backed by a Parliamentary legal opinion, had urged Carney to remain neutral further sullied the Remainers’ image as overheated and heavy-handed. This helped turn off enough ordinary British voters for the Brexit vote to be won by the patriot side, as planned.
Whose side was he on? Then-Bank of England Governor Carney’s arrogant and over-heated interventions on behalf of the “Remain” campaign during the UK’s Brexit referendum in June 2016 strengthened the “Leave” campaign, which ended up winning 52 percent of the vote. This political feat, the author notes satirically, convinced Carney’s Alberta handlers he was the ideal man to wreck the nation of his birth as well. (Sources: (top left photo) Bank of England, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0; (bottom left image) BBC; (right photo) M. W. Hunt/Shutterstock)Now, re-activated in Canada to play his most critical role, Carney’s unpredictable regurgitations of seemingly delusional assertions that he knows, understands, loves and will help out Albertans became, I’m told, of some concern to the Secret Separation Committee, who sensed echoes of the Brexit hiccup. Delivered in a flat, passionless tone, his professions of devotion seem unmistakeably insincere and cynical – unconvincing even to cleverer Ontarians, limited in number though they may be.
This was potentially dangerous: what if someone pondering the strangeness of it all put the pieces together and began asking real questions? A similar sort of programming glitch as the Brexit near-calamity would explain such lapses. Deftly repaired, I’m told, through a similar digital intervention, made easier by the latest Chinese AI model, DeepSeek-R1, the candidate’s excursions off the metaphorical reservation appear not to have thrown the Liberal campaign off-track – nor awakened the somnolent Ontario or Atlantic Canadian voter to the mortal threat. (But they provided just enough of a glimpse into the machine to be revelatory to the writer.)
Losing one’s soul: Operating undercover in the enemy’s camp for an extended period can impose devastating personal costs, as portrayed in the 1996 film Mother Night; Nick Nolte plays a deep-cover American spy who produces pro-Nazi propaganda in wartime Berlin, a fake persona that becomes so convincing it ends up consuming him. Others have commented on the potentially severe personal costs of operating undercover for extended periods, of living amidst the criminal class or one’s wartime enemy, of mouthing continuous lies for year upon year. It eats away at a person’s soul. A number of films have explored that wrenching phenomenon. Among the most affecting to me was Mother Night (after a 1961 novel of the same name by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.). Starring Nick Nolte, Mother Night tells of an American expatriate living in Berlin who adopts the persona and views of a fascist and worms his way deep into Hitler’s regime, where he produces a stream of pro-Nazi radio propaganda aimed at undermining Allied morale.
All the while, however, he is relaying critical coded intelligence to his American handler – the sole person on Earth who knows the truth. After the war, the spy is hunted down, exposed and, eventually, tried as a war criminal. At the last instant, his former handler springs forth proclaiming the “truth”. But what is the truth? The protagonist hardly knows any longer. Having lived and worked as a Nazi for so long, having done so much dastardly work on their behalf, how much innocent blood is now on his hands? In the end, although his corporeal self was about to be saved (I won’t give away the ending), his soul may have been lost forever.
Our hero is likely to suffer a sad denouement, one placing him in a long line of such tragic figures as Odysseus, Pyrrhus, Flavius Aetius and Belisarius. All won great battles and willingly endured immense personal sacrifice; all were cruelly robbed by fate or human enemies of the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their triumphs.
What might come next for Canada? With his widely predicted electoral majority in hand, Prime Minister Mark Carney will have free rein to impose his devastating array of policies, systematically undermining the economy, Canadians’ remaining sense of nationhood, individual hope and social stability. A recession will quickly ensue, crime will skyrocket and Toronto’s subway will come to resemble a Mad Max sequel. In the coming trade negotiations with the U.S., Donald Trump and his representatives will wipe the floor with the husk of the man who understands “how the world works.” (Like his claims to loving Alberta, this statement too should be taken at face value, for the Carney policy book is how the globalist worldview works in practice – and he most clearly understands it.)
Canada, in short, will disintegrate. And Alberta will be freed.
Our hero, on the other hand, is likely to suffer a sad denouement, one placing him in a long line of such tragic figures from myth and history as Odysseus, Pyrrhus, Flavius Aetius and Belisarius (you’ll have to look them up). All won great battles and willingly endured immense personal sacrifice on behalf of their motherland or the people entrusted to them; all were cruelly robbed by fate or human enemies of the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their triumphs.
I doubt that any free-thinking citizen of Alberta will believe the outlandish tale of how Mark Carney wrecked Canada in order to bring about the glory of independence for his beloved province. And so in a final and bitter irony, ostracized and alone, he will not only be unable to run in the first Presidential Election of the Republic of Alberta, he will almost certainly be denied a ceremonial role in its government – even that of Ambassador to the impoverished, embittered remnants of Canada, Laurentia.
George Koch is Editor-in-Chief of C2C Journal.
Main image is generated by AI.
