The Western Standard's Monetization of Separatism

Including fundraising on an event that was never going to happen...

Did Derek Fildebrandt and The Western Standard just mislead their audience and Albertans in an attempt to fundraise for a debate that they already knew was never going to happen?

But first, some background…

Derek Fildebrandt is unquestionably one of the more colourful characters in the last two decades of Alberta politics.

Something of a Laurentian Elite himself, Derek was born in Ottawa in 1985 and only moved to Alberta in 2012 with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation at the age of 27.

After his tenure with the CTF ended, Derek quickly pivoted to provincial politics and in 2015 was elected under Brian Jean’s Wildrose Party.

But his political career was marred with scandal.

2016 was a busy year for that.

In 2016, Fildebrandt was briefly suspended from the Wildrose caucus for a social media comment where he replied to a comment that appeared to have deliberately misgendered the then Premier of Ontario by saying “Proud to have constituents like you” to the original poster.

Only a few months later, Fildebrandt was accused by a neighbour of backed into his vehicle and leaving without telling anyone, effectively hitting and running.

Fildebrandt was was brought up on a charges for leaving the scene of an accident and failing to notify the owner and in 2017 was found guilty.

Also in 2017, Fildebrandt was accused of renting out his taxpayer paid for apartment (MLA’s get accommodations in Edmonton paid for) via Air BNB, with some of the spicier allegations (though unproven) being that the taxpayer covered apartment was being used as an adult film set.

2017 also saw allegations of double dipping for MLA meal expenses and another set of charges around trespassing on private land and poaching a deer. He ended up pleading guilty to unlawful possession of wildlife with the Crown dropping the trespassing charge.

That final charge and his guilty plea resulted in him being permanently barred from the UCP caucus after the UCP and Wildrose merged by Jason Kenney.

(Of note, Fildebrandt’s legal issues continued well after his departure from politics. He was also charged with uttering threats in 2024, a charge of which he was eventually acquitted, but the facts that the judge found are somewhat telling…)

(Of additional note, the “lawn ornaments” were also described as lawn signs in the official court record)

Fildebrandt then rebranded the former Separation Party of Alberta/Alberta First Party into the Freedom Conservative Party in an attempt to retain his seat in the legislature.

That plan failed.

Fildebrandt recieved just 7.38% of the vote in 2019.

But Mr Fildebrandt is, if nothing else, resilient.

Which brings us to his purchase of The Western Standard.

A failed effort initially launched by none other than Ezra Levant, Fildebrandt purchased the name and rights in October of 2019, only months after his crushing defeat in the 2019 provincial election.

And the Western Standard has, in many way, maintained Fildebrandts tradition of high profile, sensationalist scandals.

Whether it’s having to issue a retraction for a story alleging that Jason Kenney was attending restaurant gatherings, the Calgary Police Service having to issue a statement to correct Western Standard reporting, consistently transphobic reporting or, as we spent an entire episode of our show examining, the fact that while the Western Standard historically claimed to not take any government money in any form, they were actually taking in massive amounts of advertising revenues from the Government of Alberta, the Western Standard has a long history of representing things in ways that are open to some interpretation.

To say nothing of the fact that the website of a “news” organization is openly selling Alberta independence merchandise through an openly Pro-Independence storefront…

(Ok, we said it)

Which brings us to the latest debacle involving an apparent attempt to fundraise off of the success and momentum of the Forever Canadian campaign…

The “Invitation”

In order to try and make sense of this extremely bizarre turn, we’re going to approach this chronologically…

On June 8th, at 8:54 AM the Western Standard posted a video “inviting” Forever Canadian leader Thomas Lukaszuk to appear at an event. In that video, Fildebrandt openly stated that “the Western Standard will pay to host it”.

This invitation was followed up 5 hours later with an email blast sent out to The Western Standard’s email mailing list…

There are arguably two things particularly striking about that email…

The first is that Fildebrandt clearly states that The Western Standard will pay for the full cost of the event because “We must ensure Mr. Lukaszuk has NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER to pull out of the debate.”

One might think that a publisher would be careful about the choosing of the words for the email blast that his name is attached to…

Fildebrandt didn’t say “We must ensure that Mr Lukaszuk has no reason not to agree to the debate.

He said “We must ensure Mr. Lukaszuk has NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER to pull out of the debate.”

At this point, it’s probably helpful to turn to the Cambridge dictionary definition of “pull out”…

pull (someone/something) out

phrasal verb with pull verb

to stop being involved in an activity or agreement

So the email that Fildebrandt sent out used phrasing that explicitly stated that the fundraising was crucial to ensure that Mr. Lukaszuk didn’t back out of the debate.

And then the email set the goal, Fildebrandt made the ask. He claimed The Western Standard needed donations of $15,000 to raise the funds to cover the costs.

So not so much the Western Standard paying to host it, but rather the Western Standard fundraising to get the money to cover the costs of the event.

To some, a distinction without a difference, but very clearly to others, an important distinction.

The Missing Information

We reached out to Thomas Lukaszuk to get his comment.

His first comment?

“No, I will not be debating them under any circumstances. I never agreed to it.”

We shared that comment on our various social media channels.

Lukaszuk also took to social media to issue a a statement of his own.

Mr Fildebrandt appears to have been very unhappy with that.

In a post on twitter, Fildebrandt provided a screenshot of a series of emails from the Western Standard to Brent Rathgeber, a former Member of Parliament and a lawyer with the Forever Canadian campaign.

Of note, those screenshots did not have any replies from Rathgeber until one stating “We have decided that we will not be committing to any debates at this time”.

While the screenshot seems to suggest that offline conversations may have taken place, there’s no evidence of that publicly available at the time of this writing.

But curiously, what is cropped from that photo is the date the reply was sent.

The Breakdown has obtained the time and date that the reply from Mr. Rathgeber was sent.

June 5th at 1:38 PM.

So to be clear…

Derek Fildebrandt and the Western Standard had been given a clear answer that Lukaszuk would not be participating in any debates a full 3 days before they issued their public “invitation”.

They knew abut the refusal of their invitation a full 3 days before they sent out the fundraising email that many could interpret presented recipients with the clear impression that the money was they key to making the debate would happen.

The Western Standard chose to do both of these things, even though the Western Standard had already been given a hard no by Lukaszuk and a lawyer associated with Forever Canadian.

It’s difficult to imagine a legitimate news outlet attempting to promote an event that they had already been told was absolutely not going to happen.

It might seem even more difficult to imagine what kind of news outlet would attempt to promote and then fundraise an event using their own subscribers when they have clearly been told that the event would not happen.

But in Alberta, in 2026, not that much imagination is required.

This article was updated to reflect corrections offered by Mr. Fildebrandt. His charges in regards to the illegal possession of wildlife were not criminal in nature and his expulsion from caucus was made permanent following his guilty plea.