Fact Check: Dean Blundell falsely tells Americans Alberta separatists received millions of voters’ data

In seeking out a Canadian to explain the Alberta independence movement, American journalist Scott MacFarlane somehow landed on disgraced former Ontario radio host Dean Blundell as a guest. In under two minutes, Blundell expelled a remarkable collection of untruths to an unwitting American audience.

Blundell begins by saying over the past 25 years there has been a “concerted effort from conservative Americans, big oil money to change the hearts and minds of people in Alberta because, you know, that’s exactly how, uh, America operates.”

American viewers were surely surprised to hear from Mr. Blundell that this is exactly how they operate. Even under numerous government administrations over the last 25 years, this concerted effort has apparently been going on. The foreign interference theory has been debunked by us and by the RCMP, but that doesn’t stop Blundell from perpetuating it and expanding on it.

Blundell said “they pump misinformation into Western provinces, telling them to hate Ottawa.”

Again, no evidence of this misinformation was presented. Western alienation has been an issue in Canada for over a century, and American influence has had nothing to do with it.

Blundell: “So now we’re at this inflection point, where a very small group of people in Alberta, who are very much MAGA, very much QAnon, very much evangelical Christian nationalists, who have been force-fed a firehose of pro-Trump MAGA misinformation for the past two decades are chomping at the bit. About 14 percent of the province, chomping at the bit to leave Canada and become the 51st state.”

How Trump orchestrated this over 20 years ago while he was a reality TV show host remains to be seen. Support for independence in Alberta has been sitting at well over one in three people, which is not a small group by any measure. The movement has diverse supporters and certainly isn’t a Christian nationalist one. There is no significant push for Alberta to become the 51st state.

Blundell then blurts out that the movement has been getting help from American amb***ador Pete Hoekstra, who Blundell said, “helped steal voter information for 3 million people and give it to the separatists.”

That was a complete fabrication on Blundell’s part, and if he wasn’t already broke and being sued by others, he could be at risk of further legal action. Hoekstra likely has never heard of Blundell nor cares what he thinks, however.

Canadians know better than to take anything that comes out of Blundell’s mouth seriously. Unfortunately, American audiences may not realize who he is, and, unfortunately, he was given a platform to utter such a package of misinformation in such a short amount of time.