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Welcome to Craft Politics, everyone. I'm Joseph Lavoie, joined by Andrew Percy. And we have our guest for this week. Our guest is Dave Conway. I'm gonna get into a little bit of an introduction on Dave in just a second. We are doing a bit of a deep dive on Alberta. So a couple episodes ago, we did a deep dive on Quebec and there are some interesting and overlapping themes, but there's a lot happening in Alberta and we thought it'd be interesting to spend some time on that.
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Just for our international listeners, our UK listeners, I'm going to, and our Canadian listeners, please bear with me. I'm just going to give a bit of a primer on why we're interested in Alberta and what Alberta means in Canada. So it is effectively Canada's energy engine. It produces roughly three quarters of the country's oil and gas, home to about 4.8, 4.9 million people.
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And it's a province that's been growing fast. It's attracting a lot of workers, attracting a lot of investment from around the country and around the world. And right now, it may be heading towards a referendum on whether to leave Canada entirely. Alberta, however, is not Quebec. It's certainly not like Scotland. But the mechanics of how these things could unfold should definitely feel uncomfortably familiar for those of you who listened to our Quebec episode a couple of weeks past. Yeah.
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A couple other things to keep in mind, what's going on in Alberta, it has had a complicated relationship with the rest of Canada for decades. We'll spare you the history lesson, but in short, Albertans often feel, and Dave is going to keep us honest, keep me honest on any of this stuff, but Albertans feel they send a lot more to Ottawa than they get back. That federal government, particularly recently under Justin Trudeau, have treated the province's oil and gas sector as a problem to be managed rather than an industry that underpins the national government.
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And I would say in all the time I've spent in Alberta, oil and gas isn't just an economic issue. It's cultural, it's identity. And so when the federal government comes after that, when it comes after your identity and what you stand for, the reaction is obviously incredibly personal. And that grievance has created some space. And into that space has walked a group called the Alberta Prosperity Project. It has spent years building a grassroots network in rural Alberta, holding meetings, collecting information.
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supporters laying the groundwork for exactly what's happening now, which is a citizen initiated referendum on independence. They need, I think it's 178,000 signatures by May. Some people believe they're going to blow past that number. But if they do get that number, then we're heading into an actual referendum. And so
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Things are about to get complicated. And you layer in on top of that, the Premier of the province, Danielle Smith, has positioned herself as supporting a quote-unquote sovereign Alberta within the United Canada. And there's been a lot of developments recently with MOUs being signed with Canada. We talked about that in a previous episode. And in the middle of all this, it's unclear if there is a referendum, who's going to be leading the Stay in Canada campaign. And that's why we wanted to have Dave on the show. Dave penned last week on his Substack a piece called...
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Who's going to stand up for Canada and Alberta's separation referendum? We'll include a link to it in the show notes. After my long blab, I can finally say, Dave, welcome to the show. We're very delighted to get into this with you.
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Thank you so much for having me on. And that's a great introduction of Alberta. I mean, politics everywhere can be described as wild in 2026, but Alberta politics and provincial federal relations in Alberta and Canada is something that's particularly interesting. And I mean, as you said, being the energy province, oil and gas plays a huge political and cultural role.
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and economic factor here in the province and the tension between the federal government and the provincial government and everything that comes out of this history. I mean, the other point about Alberta is that Alberta has a long history of being one of the most conservative voting provinces in Canada.
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So a lot of other provinces, you know, British Columbia to our west, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, you know, there's a lot of swing voters that go between Liberal, Conservative, NDP in Quebec. It's the Bloc Québécois. But in Alberta, pretty much since the 19th, the, the, the,
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Well, even from before then, but the dominant conservative party in the country has done very well in Alberta and Albertans have sent most MPs to Ottawa from the conservative, whatever the dominant conservative party at the time was. Now it's the Conservative Party of Canada. I think they have all but three seats in the province of Alberta. I think there's 30, I don't remember the last redistribution happened, 37, 39 seats in the province.
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So there's a large contingent. The federal government is a liberal government. And the liberals, the conservatives have been in power. At times, Stephen Harper was prime minister for, I think, 11 years or nine years.
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But the Liberals are the natural governing party of Canada and have spent most of the 20th century in power and a good chunk of the 21st century in governments. There's some natural partisan tension and electoral tension that goes along. But there's a lot of historical grievances that run really deep in Alberta politics between the relationship between Alberta and Ottawa. And that kind of frames a lot of what politics in Alberta is about right now.
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Yeah, well, I wanted to have you on because, I mean, you've been covering this for some 20 some odd years. I've been following your blog, not quite since day one, but close to day one. It's funny, in the time that you've been very consistent in blogging about Alberta, I've had like three political blogs, two food blogs, and now we're doing this. So impressive that you've been at it for two plus decades. Yeah.
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You've been looking at this for so long now. And as you talked about, we had Harper in government for nine years. Then we had Trudeau in government for a decade thereafter. So pretty much captures almost the entire time you've been...
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I would say it's probably worth explaining a bit why the Trudeau name is so toxic in Alberta as well, right? For people in the UK who might not know that, because there was another Trudeau, wasn't there? Yeah, that's a great point, Andrew, and something that's kind of really important for the more historical grievances that a lot of conservatives in Alberta hold against the federal government and the federal liberals in particular. Pierre Trudeau, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 until 1989.
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84 with kind of a brief break in the late 1970s when the Conservatives won a minority government. The Liberal government in the late 70s, early 1980s introduced something that was called the National Energy Program. And it was the National Energy Program. It has a notorious reputation among a lot of people in Alberta who have long memories about the impact that it had on the oil and gas industry. And essentially it was...
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the federal government
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regulating prices, becoming a lot more involved in the price of oil and gas. And, you know, Alberta, which relies heavily on oil and gas, revenues from oil and gas to fund the day-to-day operations of government, the royalties from oil and gas. And a lot of people in the province rely heavily on oil and gas for their day-to-day jobs and to pay their bills. So that was seen as an unfortunately, you know, I mean, timing in politics is everything. And the NEP was introduced right around the same time as the international price of oil collapsed in the early 1980s.
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So it became kind of notoriously tied to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And then Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015. While I think the younger Trudeau initially had more success in Alberta than his father did,
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you know, what the federal government, the liberal government, their agenda around climate change, around regulation of the oil and gas industry, around carbon emissions. You know, there was a real, there was a, what it seemed like is there was a natural objection to it among a lot of people in the oil and gas industry anyway. But
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In Ottawa, it felt like, as a political observer here in Alberta, it felt like there were some senior people, some pretty important people in Ottawa making big decisions around climate change, around oil and gas. And, you know, you can have arguments about whether the actual policy was good or not, but the tone of...
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I think it demonstrated a real lack of understanding among some senior federal liberals in Ottawa during Trudeau's time that they didn't really understand the role that oil and gas plays in Alberta. And I'm not just talking about the economics of it. I'm not talking about the CEOs sitting in their glass and steel towers in downtown Calgary. I'm talking about the normal working class people who, you know, they work on up at the oil refineries up in Fort McMurray. They work on the rigs around the province.
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some normal people who have really benefited from jobs in the oil and gas industry, who have had opportunities given to them because of what they've been able to earn and what they've been able to do in the oil and gas industry. And the role, and Joseph mentioned it in the introduction, the kind of cultural role that plays in Alberta. It's bigger than just economics. And if you don't really understand that, you really missed
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miss the boat on it. And you can really be really tone deaf in terms of how you talk about the oil and gas industry in Alberta. And, you know, there's, I'm a lifelong Albertan, and there are a lot of problematic things about the way the oil and gas industry works in Alberta. Orphan wells and abandoned wells is a huge issue that's going to cost Alberta, at some point, billions of dollars to clean up that the oil industries, oil companies have just walked away from. That's a big deal. So there's a lot of
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problematic things that even Albertans really haven't come to terms with around the oil and gas industry. But when you're talking about, you know, implementing new policies and implementing laws to, you know, whether it's regulating carbon emissions or regulating new approvals for pipelines, it can be boiled down to something that becomes really personal for a lot of Albertans. And the tone deafness from some of the politicians we heard in Ottawa, I think in particular, Stephen Guibault, who was kind of the lead on climate issues in the Trudeau government,
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I think that it really turned a lot of Albertans off.
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I mean, there are just some industries where the industry saves a lot more than just the job you do, right? It's about your culture. You know, you get it with steel workers a bit. You get it with towns that define as steel towns like Texas oil and gas. You know, Alberta seen as very much the Texas of Canada. So it's much more cultural role. So you have all that going on. Then you layer in the fact that Alberta's kind of stuck not quite in the middle of the country, but it's not on either coast.
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And you layer into the fact that the rest of Canada, provincially and federally, then seems to be preventing, frustrating Alberta actually getting its oil out through pipelines. And you layer all that on. And then if you're an average Albertan, you just have this perception that the rest of Canada doesn't really understand you, right? That's how a lot of Albertans think then. All of that history going back decades, layered into everything we see today, the environmental lobby, which is very strong in BC, which is obviously next door where you want to get the oil.
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oil out to, that all feeds this thing that we're now seeing in this sentiment by a lot of people in Alberta that, you know what, the rest of the country doesn't really understand us or get us or care about us, right? That's kind of where we end up today with this whole talk of an Alberta exit.
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Yeah, I think that, you know, that's a big part of it. But I think it's when talking about Alberta separatism, and I don't want to jump too far ahead. I think there's a number of factors at play. I think I've heard pollsters, and one pollster in particular, Janet Brown, who has a sterling reputation in Alberta of separatism.
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understanding how to poll Albertans on public opinion issues and on voting intentions. And I was on a podcast late last year with Janet, and she described kind of Albertans being in kind of three different groups when it comes to separatism. And you have this group of, you know, about a quarter to a third of people who,
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you know, depending on what kind of question you ask and how they're pressed on the issue and the costs of it, who would say, yes, they want to separate from Canada. Then you have about a third of people who in Alberta, who they're not happy. They don't feel happy about the way the province has been treated. They might not be happy with the relationship that Alberta has with Ottawa, but they're not interested in separating. They're Canadians and they want to stay in the country, even if they're not happy with the political situation. And then you have about a quarter to a third of people who are
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absolutely pro-Canada and they want to stay in Canada. When you're talking about the separatist group, um,
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the, a lot of the, now Alberta separatism isn't something that's brand new. It's kind of been around since the 1980s. We had a brief kind of, um, uh, uh, spike of separatist interests in the early 1980s, the 1980, 1982, a separatist candidate from a party that no longer exists. It was called the Western Canada concept party won a by-election in a law in a long held, uh, conservative rural voting riding, um, um,
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was then wiped out in the next provincial election, but there was a real interest in Alberta separatism. So we've had this kind of cottage industry of kind of fringe right-wing pseudo or just blatantly separatist political parties in Alberta. At any given time, there's about...
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you know, three or four different political parties that would get a very small percentage of the vote. But the current version, iteration of Alberta separatism really has its roots right now. It started and a lot of the key players who are involved in the Alberta, in leading the Alberta Prosperity Project and a number of other separatist groups that are collecting signatures right now, they really started to organize around opposition to COVID-19
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public health measures. And that's really where this version started. There was unhappiness and there was activities going around opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals before the COVID pandemic, but it really started to take off and gel around opposition to COVID-19 public health measures. And of course, that all included vaccine skepticism, conspiracy theories around the cause of the pandemic.
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And this group called the Alberta Prosperity Project and a number of other organizations popped up around this time, started holding town hall meetings and traveling around rural Alberta, mostly rural Alberta, traveling around in rural communities where opposition to public health measures was its highest and started building lists and started organizing.
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And then eventually they started transitioning into kind of adjacent issues that people within that anti-COVID sphere also glommed onto. So you had conspiracy theories about the World Health Organization, about the United Nations. And then it became a talk. They spent a lot of time talking about another hot button issue, which they're proposing, which is removing Alberta workers from the Canada pension plan and creating our own Alberta pension plan. So then that started expanding.
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And then eventually it was kind of all leading into, you know, a discussion about Alberta separatism. But by the time they actually started openly advocating Alberta separatism as their top issue, because it was always kind of there, they had spent two or three years already traveling around the province, organizing lists, putting in the groundwork, really, and actually getting out and talking to people about Alberta separatism. And they found a willing audience in a lot of these communities who felt really disconnected from Alberta.
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what was happening in the mainstream of politics, what was happening in the big cities, for example, where they get a much cooler reception to the idea of Velberto separatism. And like a lot of things that I'm sure it's, I know it's the same in the United States. I'm not sure if it's the same in the United Kingdom, but there is a real urban rural divide when it comes to politics in terms of conservative politics and progressive politics.
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not so much on the federal level in Alberta, or not as much, but provincially in Alberta, we have a situation where the provincial legislature is much more competitive than the federal MP's elections here in Alberta. A united Conservative Party government that has been in power since 2019. But before that, for four years, we had a new Democratic Party government, which is a
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you know, social democratic slash liberal type government that won in 2015 that defeated a progressive conservative party that had been in power for 44 years since then. And since then, elections have been quite competitive. And we saw in the last provincial election in 2023 that
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The New Democrats did very well in the urban centres. They won all the seats in the city of Edmonton, which is the capital city. They won a majority of the seats and a majority of the votes in Calgary, which is our largest urban centre. And it was very surprising. I mean, very surprising that they did so well in Calgary. And now we have a United Conservative Party government that is largely rural based. They won in the small and medium sized cities, too, but it's a largely rural heavy government. And you're seeing a lot of...
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pressure being put on those MLAs, those UCP MLAs who represent these rural ridings. They know that, you know, these separatist groups have been organizing in their ridings and in some cases are now constituency presidents or in control of local constituency associations. So long story short, I'm drawing this way out, this explanation way out, but the separatist movement in Alberta used to be something that is, that was almost exclusively
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popular among fringe political parties. Now we have a situation where the separatist movement in Alberta is ingrained and part of the United Conservative Party. It's not the whole of the United Conservative Party. Not all UCP voters agree with Alberta separation. I talked about those kind of three groups, the separatists, the maybe separatist curious, but not really, but they're unhappy with Ottawa. And then the non-Colid.
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you know, the pro-Canada group. The pro-Canada group is, you know, a huge chunk of that group are New Democrats and they live in the big cities or they're spread across the province. The other two groups largely find themselves within the United Conservative Party. So a lot of what Danielle Smith has done is she's trying to walk this very delicate, very challenging, very politically fraught and dangerous line of trying to keep these two groups happy because she knows if she upsets the separatists who are now part of her voting coalition.
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part of her, some of her most active and engaged party activists that they could turn on her. So she has to kind of keep, so she's talking about this sovereign Alberta within a United Canada, which is kind of, you know, it seems to have worked so far. It's kind of having your cake and eating it too, right? Because eventually if there is a separation referendum, there's going to be a lot of pressure and it's going to be very difficult for the premier not to choose a side, not to say yes or no. And, you know, that could either make or break her political future.
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You know, the point you made earlier on, like how I was going to ask you how we got here. So how the separatist movement has been able to capture some steam. And I, to be honest with you, I completely forgot about the whole post-COVID reaction to all the lockdowns as a massive contributing factor. I just kept always chalking this all up to oil, gas sector and the identity around that.
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The piece that makes this all interesting for me is it does not feel like this is a fringe movement anymore. You just walked our listeners through a very helpful, thank you, Dave, on the degree to which they now have access inside of the governing party, the UCP, getting elected on sort of local boards and having massive influence at the most recent convention that the party held in the fall.
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Even going so far as to outright booing the premier when she talked about the recent MOU with Mark Carney on getting a pipeline, to Andrew's earlier point, Alberta needs to get its oil out of the province, and that includes getting a pipeline built. It seems like this is no longer fringe movement, that they have increasingly access to power of some kind. Do you think, like, from where you sit...
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How can Danielle Smith manage that if they are successful in getting the petitions? And this goes to a referendum. To your point, like, is she in any position to fight for the stay in Canada side? Or is she going to have to sort of let the steam valve out of this thing and sort of cross her fingers and hope that it's a robust debate, but that doesn't necessarily transact? Well, I mean, it's going to be challenging. And the other piece, because there's so many moving pieces here, there's another petition that...
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that was signed, that was conducted, another citizen initiative that was conducted last year that was conducted by a group called Forever Canadian. And this was a group that was launched by former Progressive Conservative Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszek to ask a ballot question of, do you want to stay in Canada? So trying to create, you know...
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create a positive spin because they knew that the separatist groups were organizing. So Lukaszek organized what was ended up being a wildly successful grassroots campaign. You had thousands of volunteers out collecting signatures. You couldn't walk, you know, two blocks in any city or town without bumping into a volunteer wearing a maple leaf shirt or maple leaf hat collecting these signatures. They ended up collecting.
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456,000 signatures from across the province of Alberta in support of this pro-Canada question. So you have this referendum question, which will go to, might be a referendum, might be a vote of the legislature. It's something that MLAs are going to have to deal with when they return to the spring session of the legislature at the end of February.
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um because there's the way the legislation works it has the citizen initiative petitions if successful are then sent to an mla committee to review study and decide whether they want to hold a referendum or whether they want to have a vote in the legislature as kind of a policy affirmation of binding resolution in in favor endorsing the petition so and really what you know from what i've heard with luca what lukhasik's been talking about he really wants to force mlas to take a position on this issue
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is that, you know, if a referendum is going to happen, it's going to happen. But what he, you know, a lot of United Conservative Party MLAs have been, you know, really low key or very quiet on where they stand on this, because they don't want to alienate this group of supporters. I'm not saying that all, you know, I wouldn't insinuate that all UCP MLAs are separatists. I think there's definitely some separatist sentiment in that caucus, but I would be surprised if the majority of them are.
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But I think that they're, you know, they're trying to not upset this core group of their voting coalition that, you know, could cost them nominations or could cause them a lot of difficulties at their constituency associations. And this is one. This is all happening because of legislation introduced by the UCP government there, right? Yes. Yes. And that strikes me as just it's a very dangerous thing, right? If you, you know, if you're going to pass legislation at least.
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understand the consequences and plan for the consequences. Whereas it seems like they kind of let the genie out the bottle without any real plan on how you... Because at some point, you have to either vote in the legislature or it goes out to a referendum. You have to... At some point, you're going to have to jump. Half of your supporter base is splitting, you know, is one direction. I mean, it just seems like this...
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It's going to potentially take none of the heat out of this issue in the post-COVID, you know, unease with government and let's give power back to the people and all the rest of it. It's going to reduce none of that sentiment and just has the potential of ending up shooting themselves in the foot potentially. But, you know, obviously that must have been played out.
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Yeah, the Citizen Initiative Act was passed as a... There's a suite of direct democracy legislation that was passed in 2020-2021. It was also paired with another piece of legislation called the Recall Act. It allows a...
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This UCP passed the recall act, which allowed for the citizens to launch petitions to recall MLAs. Now, unlike, and I've looked into this a bit because I've written a lot about recall in Alberta, because we currently have 20, we had 26 recall petitions launched against 26 different MLAs. So Albertans really took this and ran with this.
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The two petitions that have been submitted were both unsuccessful. They weren't able to collect the threshold. It's a fairly high threshold of you need the equivalent of 60% of the voters who voted in the previous provincial election in a riding. That's a high threshold. I mean, as it should be, if you're going to overturn a,
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free and fair democratic election it should be something that's easy to do but unlike the uh the recall legislation that they have in the united kingdom where there are limits uh you know reason you know limits on why like when a recall a petition can be initiated whether you know an mp has broken the law or whatnot there's no limits at all in alberta so anybody for any reason can launch a recall petition against their mla but
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Which, I mean, this is the way the legislation was written. And this is, I mean, essentially what, I mean, this is what MLAs passed. And UCP MLAs were very surprised and some of them were shocked and some of them reacted very poorly. Most of them reacted okay and kind of ignored it or put a kind of a generic statement. There were a few MLAs who clearly...
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lost their temper when they heard that one of their constituents was launching a recall campaign, and that didn't look very good on the end. Probably, you know, convinced a few people to sign the recall petition who might not have otherwise. Careful what you wish for. Yeah, careful what you wish for. No, exactly. I mean, these have consequences to this. I don't think any of these recall petitions will actually be successful, but it has helped in some ridings to galvanize opposition to the UCP and get people organized.
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is not what the United Conservative Party intended. Now, I just wanted to just get back to a point that was made earlier about kind of having a relief valve or a steam valve, relieving the pressure. Or a genie in a bottle, as Andrew Percy put it, but I don't understand what Christina Aguilera has to do with this. So you're not cultured enough, that's why.
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There's also this other initiative that Premier Smith launched last year as kind of a relief valve on the Alberta separatism debate called the Alberta Next panel. And Premier Smith chaired this panel, which included a number of UCPMLAs, a number of distinguished respected voices in Alberta. Trevor Toome, for example, who's an economist at the university, very well respected economist at the University of Calgary. And this group...
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traveled the province, they had town hall meetings to talk about a number of issues that were, I mean, a number of issues that were already on the government's agenda or stuff that the government wanted to push forward. Stuff like talking about an Alberta pension plan, talking about the creation of an Alberta police force, talking about
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an Alberta revenue agency to replace the Canada revenue agent, the federal revenue agency. And some of this kind of Alberta autonomy initiatives that Premier Smith had talked about when she ran for the UCP leadership, and it kind of didn't campaign on in the 2023 election, but were always there and something that were popular among a lot of her supporters. Now, the committee came back and no one was really surprised about the results, the report that the committee put forward. They did some polling and some issues that are
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pretty deeply unpopular with Albertans, like messing with tensions. I mean, people don't like it when there's a possibility of your retirement security being insecure. It's kind of a third rail toxic issue. There was a recommendation of looking into creating an Alberta pension plan about holding referendums on a number of issues. So there's potential that Albertans, you know, the government could
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figure out a way to dodge actually having a referendum question on separation and instead have a referendum on this kind of suite of policy issues that that the premier has been trying to promote i mean that it's possible that that that could be held at the same time as a referendum on separation or that the mlas and the legislature could just decide to put the lead put the referendum on hold and have these uh have these uh referendum on these questions instead that's that's always possible
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We're really uncharted territory here.
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I'm intrigued by the idea of this, you know, referenda as a release valve, right? Because, you know, we keep seeing example after example, and I speak to somebody who was very pro as having the referendum in the UK on Brexit, right? But, you know, this idea that it's a release valve, I mean, you know, there's a reason that, you know, referenda are not part of the Westminster system, right? Because it doesn't fit with the tradition of Westminster. I always remember Margaret Thatcher, I think, saying that, you know, referenda are the tools of despots and dictators and, you know, all the rest of it. Yeah.
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But, you know, there are so many examples of them being anything but a release valve. So if you think about the Scottish referendum, which everyone said, you know, okay, we'll have the Scottish referendum. We'll settle the question, yada, yada, yada.
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And, you know, that will be it. And of course it isn't right, because if you get 30, 35, 40, 45% of people vote for something and they don't get it, they tend to be quite angry. That then galvanizes them into potentially, you know, in an Alberta context, a separatist party then can say, look, 25, 30% of Albertans voted. No one's representing you. Look what happened in Scotland. You know, the unionists won our side, one, you know, the anti-independent side won, and then we had a general election.
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Two years later, a year later, where every parliamentary seat in Scotland bar, I think three, was won by the separatist Scottish nationalists. So far from being a release, it was a galvaniser for those people who really, really, really want it and didn't end up getting it. So I just I think this is this got to be the danger for Daniel Smith, who's the Premier of Alberta and the UCP there, that if they avoid a referendum on it,
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or if they have a referendum on it, and then, you know, which presumably is lost on independence. There's an opening there then for all those people who you now have the number, they're quantified, right? You know how many of them there are, and they don't have a voice.
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Yeah, I think that's a real danger that really hasn't been talked about. I think that the challenge that, I mean, the pro-Canada voices have in Alberta is that the debate around separatism has really, is increasingly becoming normalized in the media, increasingly normalized.
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And we haven't had those discussions about how the long-term impacts of this, and not only just in terms of the economics of it, the economic dangers and the investment challenges of even having a referendum, but the long-term impact it has on communities and families and the complete divisiveness of this issue. Yeah, this is what happened in Scotland.
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Yeah, and so this could have, you're right, this could have a very long-term dramatic effect on Alberta right now. It also moves the issue from being fringed to being legitimate.
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Because if you've been asked to vote on the choice, all of a sudden that choice is no longer a fringe, dangerous, you know, ridiculous, stupid option. It is now a credible option because it was put on a ballot and put out to the people to vote for. So, you know, you end up, you know, post the referendum, you have a legitimized choice.
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issue, and the issue has been the digitalised, and you have a quantifiable number of people who you now know are in favour of that, and who are presumably not actually represented by anybody in the main political parties because
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both of the main political parties in the legislature will say, well, of course, we accept the results of the referendum, which is to stay in Canada, presuming that's the way it goes. And all of a sudden, there's this huge space then, and the issue is legitimate. I think it's such a massive risk, and we keep seeing these examples from, you know, all around the world where, and I'm being a hypocrite here because I have very definitely argued for referendums, but then, but
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There are examples everywhere where what the lesson we should take from it is probably, maybe don't go near that because what it unleashes can never be put back in the box. But yet, people can't resist temptation to do it. This is where I have significant concern because I do think a referendum is risky for all the reasons you described, Andrew, which is you then get into a binary. It's a binary choice. So it's a binary choice. People are going to go one way or the other. So it's going to naturally lift up the vote.
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for separation in some way. I'd be shocked where you don't get... Usually referendums end up closer to a 50-50 result, not a 70 or an 80-20 result. And so I think the mistake a lot of people do now is they look at the polling numbers, and the polling numbers have...
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You know, latest numbers I've seen, and Dave, you'll keep me honest, is like in that 28, 30 percent range support as sort of as it's high currently for separation. That is scary. And then what you've just talked about, Dave, which is that they are or the separatist movement is increasingly well coordinated. It's very grassroots.
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It's organized. It's doing the hard work that, as far as I can tell, the pro-Canada side isn't doing, like going out to rural Alberta, holding these meetings, building a list, building a grassroots movement. And so now I worry if it does get to an actual referendum,
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That the separatist side is extremely well organized. And if they are well organized in a campaign environment, that can change everything, which is a long-winded way, a long-winded preamble, Dave, for me to get to sort of the question I want to explore, which was the crux of your piece, which is who's going to lead the pro-Canada side? And what does that look like? Do they even have the infrastructure in place to be effective?
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Well, I think that is the outstanding question. And I know there are, you know, there's a lot of talk about this right now. I think Thomas Lukaszek, who ran the, was kind of the spokesperson for the Forever Canadian campaign. He did a lot of going out into, across the province. He had a camper van that he had wrapped with Canadian flags that he called the Unity Bus, that he went and traveled around the province in collecting signatures and having events last summer. And that might have been the closest thing that there's been to a real concerted pro-Canada campaign.
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campaign in the province, actually going out and meeting people and talking to people where they are, rather than trying to do it through the media or through digital advertising or online platforms or whatnot. So I mean, you know, Lukaszek is definitely someone that comes to mind because he's done a lot of legwork.
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on the issue already. He's a very divisive character in Alberta politics. He's kind of a keyboard warrior. He was very critical of Premier Jason Kenney, who was the first United Conservative Premier, who was really driven out of politics by a lot of the people who are launching this separatist referendum right now. So Jason Kenney has come out as a very strong pro-Canada voice in Alberta.
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You know, I listened to him. He was on David Frum's podcast last week or the week before on The Atlantic talking very passionately about this. And I think he's really put himself out there. I don't know what kind of constituency Jason Kenney has among conservatives now.
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You know, he was kind of unceremoniously, I mean, not kind of, he was unceremoniously pushed out of this political party, leadership of this political party that he created or played a key role creating in 2021, 2022, he was pushed out. But, you know, he does have a platform and, you know, he knows politics in Alberta.
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So I can see Kenny playing a big role. He's involved with some very influential groups. He's on the ATCO board. He's very connected through the kind of traditional establishment conservative circles in the province, which still are influential. They're a lot more marginalized than they used to be in Alberta politics, but they're still influential, especially through different business groups and business communities. And then there's the leader of the official opposition, Nahid Nenshi.
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who's now, who's the former mayor, three-term mayor of Calgary, who's leading the largest official opposition in Alberta's history, the NDP of 38 MLAs in the Alberta legislature. And he's really trying to position himself as Captain Canada, the Captain Pro Canada. Now, Nenshi has, doesn't have the same problem that Danielle Smith has on this issue, where, because if you look at the polling,
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about 98 to 99% of New Democrat voters in the province of Alberta, which is usually somewhere between 35 to 45% of voters, they're pro-Canada. They want nothing to do with this separatism. So Nenshi is free to be as absolutely pro-Canada as he wants without having the same kind of political cleavage or political landmines that Daniel Smith is trying to navigate right now.
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So, you know, these three are kind of the main characters that I've identified. Now, politically, their relationships are very fraught. There's a lot of tension between the three of them. They've all been very critical of each other. But I think it's going to be really important. And the point I try to make in the piece is that, you know, we need to have some kind of united voice. And it doesn't necessarily need to be one person. But we need a broad pro-Canada coalition in this province. Because this referendum is probably going to happen.
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you know, if there's not a pro-Canada campaign starting now, you know, we're going to, you know, there's potential trouble because as you said, Joseph, campaigns can take a life of their own and you never really know what the ballot question is going to be. And you can already see in some of the messaging that the Alberta Prosperity Project, they're calling it themselves the Stay Free Alberta campaign. A lot of their messaging is around economics, around, you know, leaving Canada is going to save you money. It's going to make it easier to build pipelines, to, you know,
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So you can already see where they're targeting. And there's a possibility that there's a lot of messages that might resonate or it might end up being framed as a Send Ottawa message campaign. And, you know, even though it has serious, serious consequences. Yes.
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Yeah, so I mean, this is, you know, plenty of examples where people vote for something that they think is sending a message and then a lot of other people also think they're sending a message, then all of a sudden it's the majority. And the risk is for any pro-Canada campaign is it inevitably run the risk of turning into a negative campaign, right? Here we highlight all of the terrible things that will happen if you leave, which then can be flipped very easily into a project fear type thing, which is exactly what happened, of course, in the Scottish referendum, the Brexit referendum.
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Well, you know, the Remain side just ended up looking negative as if they were talking down Scotland or talking down the UK. But it's so much easier for the pro side to emphasize all of the potential positives because the message sounds positive. And I think this is also aspirational. It's aspirational. Yeah.
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Yeah. And it's so much easier if you'd say, oh, well, they're just talking down. They don't believe in Alberta. You know, it's just, you know, it's such a hard thing to counter, even if you have, you know, I think that will inevitably, the risk that will be run. And then, sorry, Joseph.
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Well, I was going to add, because I want Percy, your perspective on this as well. But Dave, you walked us through potential sort of faces of the pro-Canada side. And when I hear that, I get slightly concerned because we may have been a scenario where the pro-Canada side, frankly, has a lot of different faces. Does it become a three-headed monster where everyone's kind of like assuming the other guy's sort of in charge? And so no one really takes accountability and runs with it. So I do worry about the impact that may have on the pro-Canada campaign and it being a fairly ineffective campaign.
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I get the sense that when you look at the Brexit example, you did have a couple voices, right? You had Boris Johnson, you had Michael Goh, you had a couple others that sort of shared the burden of, but it still, it was an official campaign. There was an official campaign infrastructure. And I worry that if we don't have a clear pro-Canada campaign team in infrastructure...
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that it's going to be like this group doing that thing, this group doing that thing, conflicting messages. It's going to be a bunch of eagles sort of like fighting it out. And the consequences that could be pretty serious. There's another lesson from that one there as well, Joseph, from the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum. What they actually also did quite smartly is remove the fringe voices who had done the most to argue for the referendum. So people forget Nigel Farage.
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and UKIP were not part of the official Leave campaign. The official Leave campaign was from moderate conservative voices and some Labour voices and had actually silenced the more fringe elements, which was a really smart move because it made it look more credible. Again, those guys were kept out of the way. So if the
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had any... But then who was actually leading on the other side? It was confused, right? Same in the Scottish referendum. It was just confused. And then sending people from outside of Scotland to tell people in Scotland that it's terribly silly of them to vote for independence, which doubtless would happen because the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, would not be able to get away with not going to Alberta to campaign
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for Canada, right, to stay in Canada, which again, it comes with such risk as well of, you know, these guys, the folks are coming in to tell you, you know, it's just, it is, I just think this is, these are, that's why when I look at these polls, I don't believe the numbers they're at at the moment because we've lived through this twice in the UK in the last 15 years. And, you know, and it took on a life of its own. And the same mistakes that were made in the Scottish referendum were made in the Brexit referendum in terms of the not wanting to leave things. And although I was quite happy to stay in one and leave the other, but the same errors were made because I think they're unavoidable.
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Well, and here's another important factor. So let me touch this and I'll throw as a question to you, Dave, to pick this up. The other factor is foreign interference. There's been documented meetings between these groups and the Americans. And we know that Donald Trump would love nothing more than to be an epic shit disturber on this. And I worry about potential dollar flows coming into the world.
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this campaign and supporting the separatist side, if nothing else, just to, again, participate in the most epic level of shithead that this president could inflict on us. And so that is also another massive consideration that we have to deal with, which is why this whole referendum thing is incredibly risky. But walk us through this sort of foreign interference angle for us. Sure. Yeah. Just before I touch on that, I just want to touch on a point that Andrew made about Mark Carney. Now, Mark Carney is actually, he grew up in Edmonton.
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So Mark Carney is, I mean, he hasn't lived in Alberta since high school, but he grew up in Edmonton, went to high school here. He launched his lead campaign for the leadership of the federal liberal party at the Laurier Heights Community Hall, which was his neighborhood and where he learned how to play hockey. I'm interested. I am. You know, he's not.
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Hasn't been lived here for a while, but I think he understands Albertans in a better way than previous liberal leaders have. He's certainly not Justin Trudeau. He's certainly not Justin Trudeau. You take the exact same scenario and you throw Justin Trudeau in the mix, oof, that's kindling. Stay far away.
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But he is also the, you know, archetypal example of everything a lot of the separatists hate, right? Bay Street, Sharpsu, you know, business, you know, the other. Davos speaking. Davos, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think he'll have to tread carefully, but he does have some connection to Alberta.
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Just put his Oilers jersey on. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I mean, they had the last federal election, he had a great video on Instagram with him and the elbows up and with him doing practice with the Oilers and Connor McDavid and stuff. It was actually quite fun.
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It's on foreign interference much more seriously. I mean, I think that that is something that I don't know that we're really prepared for. I mean, the United States, there is already a lot of talk coming out of the U.S. about Alberta, 51st state, supporting Alberta separatism. We know that.
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Some of the separatist leaders, Mitch Sylvester and Jeff Rath, have gone down to Washington, D.C. and claimed to have met with people in the State Department. We don't know who they met with, but they've claimed to go down, I think, two or three times. And they've posted videos of themselves and or photos of themselves in Washington, D.C.
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We know that there are conversations. We know that they've at times these groups have claimed that the United States has talked about giving Alberta a $500 million, billion dollar loan to get started as a province. I don't know whether that's actually true or that that actually happened, but there has been talk about that. And then recently we had Scott Bessett, who I believe is the Treasury Secretary in the United States, openly talk about Alberta separatism and Alberta holding a referendum.
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So, you know, it's a great distraction for something and something for, for Donald Trump to get involved. It's right up his alley to, if he wants to, you know, for really for anybody who any, any foreign country or foreign actors who want to destabilize Canada or interfere with what's going on in Canada, it's a great place for them to start because it's so easy for them to just slide in. You know, I mean, all it takes is Donald Trump to post something on Truth Social and all of a sudden it's frontline news, front page news here in Alberta and in Canada and
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He could do that every single day of the campaign. And I fully expect that there would be interference like that. However, if Joe Biden were president and Joe Biden were to say some wonderfully lovely things about how great is Canada as a united and strong country that's just to the north of America and a great ally, everybody who is so offended by the idea of American interference from Donald Trump...
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first in the pro-independence, would be saying how powerful of an intervention and how important it was and how great it was. They wouldn't be describing it as foreign interference, just as when Barack Obama turned up in the EU referendum in the UK and said, of course, the UK would be back of the queue if we left the European Union for a US trade deal.
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The same people who are so offended by foreign interference were falling over themselves to retweet this non-foreign interference from a foreign leader telling us what we should do. Just put that out there as a bit of therapy to get me over. How long has it been, Percy? It's been a while. That is quite angry about it. Yeah, the chip's still there. It's true, though, isn't it? Right.
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David, let's close this out. One last question for you. We digest everything we've just gone through and we only really scratched the surface. You've been paying attention to this. You've been running about it for the last two decades. When you step back now and you look and zoom out a little bit, how worried are you about this whole referenda and the growing, it seems, the growing traction that the separatist movement in Alberta has?
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I'm concerned. I think if a referendum were held today, it would be absolutely defeated. It would, you know, the leave side or whatever they'd like, whatever they frame themselves as, separatist side, you know, they'd get 20, 30% of the vote and it would be defeated. If a referendum is held 10 months from now, I don't know what the defining ballot issue is going to be. We might be talking about something totally different in the context.
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of a referendum on separation. And I think that's very dangerous for, I mean, for Alberta and for Canada. And it's something that pro-federalist, pro-Canada voices in Alberta really need to get their act together and figure out how to combat right now. It's not something you cannot wait until the referendum begins in September.
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the fall or next spring, you have to be talking about this and getting it, getting organized and getting your act together right now, because this will have dramatic, a dramatic impact on Alberta politics going forward. And I mean, our communities and our society here, here in Alberta. So I think that, you know, they need to get their act together right now. Yeah. Alberta and Canada are worth fighting for.
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There you go. I think that is a great note to end this episode on. Dave, this has been awesome. Really appreciate you coming on. I've learned a lot. I'm hoping our listeners have as well. We'll have to have you back on a more regular basis. This was great. That'd be great. Thanks so much for having me on. It was great to talk with you, Joseph and Andrew. I'm sorry I just ended up writing about Brexit. Just like any other show. It's all good. It's all good. Thanks a lot.
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Welcome to Craft Politics, everyone. I'm Joseph Lavoie, joined by Andrew Percy. And we have our guest for this week. Our guest is Dave Conway. I'm gonna get into a little bit of an introduction on Dave in just a second. We are doing a bit of a deep dive on Alberta. So a couple episodes ago, we did a deep dive on Quebec and there are some interesting and overlapping themes, but there's a lot happening in Alberta and we thought it'd be interesting to spend some time on that.
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Just for our international listeners, our UK listeners, I'm going to, and our Canadian listeners, please bear with me. I'm just going to give a bit of a primer on why we're interested in Alberta and what Alberta means in Canada. So it is effectively Canada's energy engine. It produces roughly three quarters of the country's oil and gas, home to about 4.8, 4.9 million people.
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And it's a province that's been growing fast. It's attracting a lot of workers, attracting a lot of investment from around the country and around the world. And right now, it may be heading towards a referendum on whether to leave Canada entirely. Alberta, however, is not Quebec. It's certainly not like Scotland. But the mechanics of how these things could unfold should definitely feel uncomfortably familiar for those of you who listened to our Quebec episode a couple of weeks past. Yeah.
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A couple other things to keep in mind, what's going on in Alberta, it has had a complicated relationship with the rest of Canada for decades. We'll spare you the history lesson, but in short, Albertans often feel, and Dave is going to keep us honest, keep me honest on any of this stuff, but Albertans feel they send a lot more to Ottawa than they get back. That federal government, particularly recently under Justin Trudeau, have treated the province's oil and gas sector as a problem to be managed rather than an industry that underpins the national government.
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And I would say in all the time I've spent in Alberta, oil and gas isn't just an economic issue. It's cultural, it's identity. And so when the federal government comes after that, when it comes after your identity and what you stand for, the reaction is obviously incredibly personal. And that grievance has created some space. And into that space has walked a group called the Alberta Prosperity Project. It has spent years building a grassroots network in rural Alberta, holding meetings, collecting information.
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supporters laying the groundwork for exactly what's happening now, which is a citizen initiated referendum on independence. They need, I think it's 178,000 signatures by May. Some people believe they're going to blow past that number. But if they do get that number, then we're heading into an actual referendum. And so
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Things are about to get complicated. And you layer in on top of that, the Premier of the province, Danielle Smith, has positioned herself as supporting a quote-unquote sovereign Alberta within the United Canada. And there's been a lot of developments recently with MOUs being signed with Canada. We talked about that in a previous episode. And in the middle of all this, it's unclear if there is a referendum, who's going to be leading the Stay in Canada campaign. And that's why we wanted to have Dave on the show. Dave penned last week on his Substack a piece called...
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Who's going to stand up for Canada and Alberta's separation referendum? We'll include a link to it in the show notes. After my long blab, I can finally say, Dave, welcome to the show. We're very delighted to get into this with you.
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Thank you so much for having me on. And that's a great introduction of Alberta. I mean, politics everywhere can be described as wild in 2026, but Alberta politics and provincial federal relations in Alberta and Canada is something that's particularly interesting. And I mean, as you said, being the energy province, oil and gas plays a huge political and cultural role.
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and economic factor here in the province and the tension between the federal government and the provincial government and everything that comes out of this history. I mean, the other point about Alberta is that Alberta has a long history of being one of the most conservative voting provinces in Canada.
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So a lot of other provinces, you know, British Columbia to our west, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, you know, there's a lot of swing voters that go between Liberal, Conservative, NDP in Quebec. It's the Bloc Québécois. But in Alberta, pretty much since the 19th, the, the, the,
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Well, even from before then, but the dominant conservative party in the country has done very well in Alberta and Albertans have sent most MPs to Ottawa from the conservative, whatever the dominant conservative party at the time was. Now it's the Conservative Party of Canada. I think they have all but three seats in the province of Alberta. I think there's 30, I don't remember the last redistribution happened, 37, 39 seats in the province.
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So there's a large contingent. The federal government is a liberal government. And the liberals, the conservatives have been in power. At times, Stephen Harper was prime minister for, I think, 11 years or nine years.
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But the Liberals are the natural governing party of Canada and have spent most of the 20th century in power and a good chunk of the 21st century in governments. There's some natural partisan tension and electoral tension that goes along. But there's a lot of historical grievances that run really deep in Alberta politics between the relationship between Alberta and Ottawa. And that kind of frames a lot of what politics in Alberta is about right now.
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Yeah, well, I wanted to have you on because, I mean, you've been covering this for some 20 some odd years. I've been following your blog, not quite since day one, but close to day one. It's funny, in the time that you've been very consistent in blogging about Alberta, I've had like three political blogs, two food blogs, and now we're doing this. So impressive that you've been at it for two plus decades. Yeah.
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You've been looking at this for so long now. And as you talked about, we had Harper in government for nine years. Then we had Trudeau in government for a decade thereafter. So pretty much captures almost the entire time you've been...
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I would say it's probably worth explaining a bit why the Trudeau name is so toxic in Alberta as well, right? For people in the UK who might not know that, because there was another Trudeau, wasn't there? Yeah, that's a great point, Andrew, and something that's kind of really important for the more historical grievances that a lot of conservatives in Alberta hold against the federal government and the federal liberals in particular. Pierre Trudeau, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 until 1989.
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84 with kind of a brief break in the late 1970s when the Conservatives won a minority government. The Liberal government in the late 70s, early 1980s introduced something that was called the National Energy Program. And it was the National Energy Program. It has a notorious reputation among a lot of people in Alberta who have long memories about the impact that it had on the oil and gas industry. And essentially it was...
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the federal government
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regulating prices, becoming a lot more involved in the price of oil and gas. And, you know, Alberta, which relies heavily on oil and gas, revenues from oil and gas to fund the day-to-day operations of government, the royalties from oil and gas. And a lot of people in the province rely heavily on oil and gas for their day-to-day jobs and to pay their bills. So that was seen as an unfortunately, you know, I mean, timing in politics is everything. And the NEP was introduced right around the same time as the international price of oil collapsed in the early 1980s.
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So it became kind of notoriously tied to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And then Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015. While I think the younger Trudeau initially had more success in Alberta than his father did,
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you know, what the federal government, the liberal government, their agenda around climate change, around regulation of the oil and gas industry, around carbon emissions. You know, there was a real, there was a, what it seemed like is there was a natural objection to it among a lot of people in the oil and gas industry anyway. But
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In Ottawa, it felt like, as a political observer here in Alberta, it felt like there were some senior people, some pretty important people in Ottawa making big decisions around climate change, around oil and gas. And, you know, you can have arguments about whether the actual policy was good or not, but the tone of...
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I think it demonstrated a real lack of understanding among some senior federal liberals in Ottawa during Trudeau's time that they didn't really understand the role that oil and gas plays in Alberta. And I'm not just talking about the economics of it. I'm not talking about the CEOs sitting in their glass and steel towers in downtown Calgary. I'm talking about the normal working class people who, you know, they work on up at the oil refineries up in Fort McMurray. They work on the rigs around the province.
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some normal people who have really benefited from jobs in the oil and gas industry, who have had opportunities given to them because of what they've been able to earn and what they've been able to do in the oil and gas industry. And the role, and Joseph mentioned it in the introduction, the kind of cultural role that plays in Alberta. It's bigger than just economics. And if you don't really understand that, you really missed
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miss the boat on it. And you can really be really tone deaf in terms of how you talk about the oil and gas industry in Alberta. And, you know, there's, I'm a lifelong Albertan, and there are a lot of problematic things about the way the oil and gas industry works in Alberta. Orphan wells and abandoned wells is a huge issue that's going to cost Alberta, at some point, billions of dollars to clean up that the oil industries, oil companies have just walked away from. That's a big deal. So there's a lot of
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problematic things that even Albertans really haven't come to terms with around the oil and gas industry. But when you're talking about, you know, implementing new policies and implementing laws to, you know, whether it's regulating carbon emissions or regulating new approvals for pipelines, it can be boiled down to something that becomes really personal for a lot of Albertans. And the tone deafness from some of the politicians we heard in Ottawa, I think in particular, Stephen Guibault, who was kind of the lead on climate issues in the Trudeau government,
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I think that it really turned a lot of Albertans off.
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I mean, there are just some industries where the industry saves a lot more than just the job you do, right? It's about your culture. You know, you get it with steel workers a bit. You get it with towns that define as steel towns like Texas oil and gas. You know, Alberta seen as very much the Texas of Canada. So it's much more cultural role. So you have all that going on. Then you layer in the fact that Alberta's kind of stuck not quite in the middle of the country, but it's not on either coast.
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And you layer into the fact that the rest of Canada, provincially and federally, then seems to be preventing, frustrating Alberta actually getting its oil out through pipelines. And you layer all that on. And then if you're an average Albertan, you just have this perception that the rest of Canada doesn't really understand you, right? That's how a lot of Albertans think then. All of that history going back decades, layered into everything we see today, the environmental lobby, which is very strong in BC, which is obviously next door where you want to get the oil.
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oil out to, that all feeds this thing that we're now seeing in this sentiment by a lot of people in Alberta that, you know what, the rest of the country doesn't really understand us or get us or care about us, right? That's kind of where we end up today with this whole talk of an Alberta exit.
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Yeah, I think that, you know, that's a big part of it. But I think it's when talking about Alberta separatism, and I don't want to jump too far ahead. I think there's a number of factors at play. I think I've heard pollsters, and one pollster in particular, Janet Brown, who has a sterling reputation in Alberta of separatism.
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understanding how to poll Albertans on public opinion issues and on voting intentions. And I was on a podcast late last year with Janet, and she described kind of Albertans being in kind of three different groups when it comes to separatism. And you have this group of, you know, about a quarter to a third of people who,
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you know, depending on what kind of question you ask and how they're pressed on the issue and the costs of it, who would say, yes, they want to separate from Canada. Then you have about a third of people who in Alberta, who they're not happy. They don't feel happy about the way the province has been treated. They might not be happy with the relationship that Alberta has with Ottawa, but they're not interested in separating. They're Canadians and they want to stay in the country, even if they're not happy with the political situation. And then you have about a quarter to a third of people who are
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absolutely pro-Canada and they want to stay in Canada. When you're talking about the separatist group, um,
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the, a lot of the, now Alberta separatism isn't something that's brand new. It's kind of been around since the 1980s. We had a brief kind of, um, uh, uh, spike of separatist interests in the early 1980s, the 1980, 1982, a separatist candidate from a party that no longer exists. It was called the Western Canada concept party won a by-election in a law in a long held, uh, conservative rural voting riding, um, um,
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was then wiped out in the next provincial election, but there was a real interest in Alberta separatism. So we've had this kind of cottage industry of kind of fringe right-wing pseudo or just blatantly separatist political parties in Alberta. At any given time, there's about...
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you know, three or four different political parties that would get a very small percentage of the vote. But the current version, iteration of Alberta separatism really has its roots right now. It started and a lot of the key players who are involved in the Alberta, in leading the Alberta Prosperity Project and a number of other separatist groups that are collecting signatures right now, they really started to organize around opposition to COVID-19
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public health measures. And that's really where this version started. There was unhappiness and there was activities going around opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals before the COVID pandemic, but it really started to take off and gel around opposition to COVID-19 public health measures. And of course, that all included vaccine skepticism, conspiracy theories around the cause of the pandemic.
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And this group called the Alberta Prosperity Project and a number of other organizations popped up around this time, started holding town hall meetings and traveling around rural Alberta, mostly rural Alberta, traveling around in rural communities where opposition to public health measures was its highest and started building lists and started organizing.
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And then eventually they started transitioning into kind of adjacent issues that people within that anti-COVID sphere also glommed onto. So you had conspiracy theories about the World Health Organization, about the United Nations. And then it became a talk. They spent a lot of time talking about another hot button issue, which they're proposing, which is removing Alberta workers from the Canada pension plan and creating our own Alberta pension plan. So then that started expanding.
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And then eventually it was kind of all leading into, you know, a discussion about Alberta separatism. But by the time they actually started openly advocating Alberta separatism as their top issue, because it was always kind of there, they had spent two or three years already traveling around the province, organizing lists, putting in the groundwork, really, and actually getting out and talking to people about Alberta separatism. And they found a willing audience in a lot of these communities who felt really disconnected from Alberta.
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what was happening in the mainstream of politics, what was happening in the big cities, for example, where they get a much cooler reception to the idea of Velberto separatism. And like a lot of things that I'm sure it's, I know it's the same in the United States. I'm not sure if it's the same in the United Kingdom, but there is a real urban rural divide when it comes to politics in terms of conservative politics and progressive politics.
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not so much on the federal level in Alberta, or not as much, but provincially in Alberta, we have a situation where the provincial legislature is much more competitive than the federal MP's elections here in Alberta. A united Conservative Party government that has been in power since 2019. But before that, for four years, we had a new Democratic Party government, which is a
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you know, social democratic slash liberal type government that won in 2015 that defeated a progressive conservative party that had been in power for 44 years since then. And since then, elections have been quite competitive. And we saw in the last provincial election in 2023 that
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The New Democrats did very well in the urban centres. They won all the seats in the city of Edmonton, which is the capital city. They won a majority of the seats and a majority of the votes in Calgary, which is our largest urban centre. And it was very surprising. I mean, very surprising that they did so well in Calgary. And now we have a United Conservative Party government that is largely rural based. They won in the small and medium sized cities, too, but it's a largely rural heavy government. And you're seeing a lot of...
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pressure being put on those MLAs, those UCP MLAs who represent these rural ridings. They know that, you know, these separatist groups have been organizing in their ridings and in some cases are now constituency presidents or in control of local constituency associations. So long story short, I'm drawing this way out, this explanation way out, but the separatist movement in Alberta used to be something that is, that was almost exclusively
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popular among fringe political parties. Now we have a situation where the separatist movement in Alberta is ingrained and part of the United Conservative Party. It's not the whole of the United Conservative Party. Not all UCP voters agree with Alberta separation. I talked about those kind of three groups, the separatists, the maybe separatist curious, but not really, but they're unhappy with Ottawa. And then the non-Colid.
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you know, the pro-Canada group. The pro-Canada group is, you know, a huge chunk of that group are New Democrats and they live in the big cities or they're spread across the province. The other two groups largely find themselves within the United Conservative Party. So a lot of what Danielle Smith has done is she's trying to walk this very delicate, very challenging, very politically fraught and dangerous line of trying to keep these two groups happy because she knows if she upsets the separatists who are now part of her voting coalition.
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part of her, some of her most active and engaged party activists that they could turn on her. So she has to kind of keep, so she's talking about this sovereign Alberta within a United Canada, which is kind of, you know, it seems to have worked so far. It's kind of having your cake and eating it too, right? Because eventually if there is a separation referendum, there's going to be a lot of pressure and it's going to be very difficult for the premier not to choose a side, not to say yes or no. And, you know, that could either make or break her political future.
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You know, the point you made earlier on, like how I was going to ask you how we got here. So how the separatist movement has been able to capture some steam. And I, to be honest with you, I completely forgot about the whole post-COVID reaction to all the lockdowns as a massive contributing factor. I just kept always chalking this all up to oil, gas sector and the identity around that.
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The piece that makes this all interesting for me is it does not feel like this is a fringe movement anymore. You just walked our listeners through a very helpful, thank you, Dave, on the degree to which they now have access inside of the governing party, the UCP, getting elected on sort of local boards and having massive influence at the most recent convention that the party held in the fall.
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Even going so far as to outright booing the premier when she talked about the recent MOU with Mark Carney on getting a pipeline, to Andrew's earlier point, Alberta needs to get its oil out of the province, and that includes getting a pipeline built. It seems like this is no longer fringe movement, that they have increasingly access to power of some kind. Do you think, like, from where you sit...
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How can Danielle Smith manage that if they are successful in getting the petitions? And this goes to a referendum. To your point, like, is she in any position to fight for the stay in Canada side? Or is she going to have to sort of let the steam valve out of this thing and sort of cross her fingers and hope that it's a robust debate, but that doesn't necessarily transact? Well, I mean, it's going to be challenging. And the other piece, because there's so many moving pieces here, there's another petition that...
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that was signed, that was conducted, another citizen initiative that was conducted last year that was conducted by a group called Forever Canadian. And this was a group that was launched by former Progressive Conservative Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszek to ask a ballot question of, do you want to stay in Canada? So trying to create, you know...
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create a positive spin because they knew that the separatist groups were organizing. So Lukaszek organized what was ended up being a wildly successful grassroots campaign. You had thousands of volunteers out collecting signatures. You couldn't walk, you know, two blocks in any city or town without bumping into a volunteer wearing a maple leaf shirt or maple leaf hat collecting these signatures. They ended up collecting.
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456,000 signatures from across the province of Alberta in support of this pro-Canada question. So you have this referendum question, which will go to, might be a referendum, might be a vote of the legislature. It's something that MLAs are going to have to deal with when they return to the spring session of the legislature at the end of February.
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um because there's the way the legislation works it has the citizen initiative petitions if successful are then sent to an mla committee to review study and decide whether they want to hold a referendum or whether they want to have a vote in the legislature as kind of a policy affirmation of binding resolution in in favor endorsing the petition so and really what you know from what i've heard with luca what lukhasik's been talking about he really wants to force mlas to take a position on this issue
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is that, you know, if a referendum is going to happen, it's going to happen. But what he, you know, a lot of United Conservative Party MLAs have been, you know, really low key or very quiet on where they stand on this, because they don't want to alienate this group of supporters. I'm not saying that all, you know, I wouldn't insinuate that all UCP MLAs are separatists. I think there's definitely some separatist sentiment in that caucus, but I would be surprised if the majority of them are.
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But I think that they're, you know, they're trying to not upset this core group of their voting coalition that, you know, could cost them nominations or could cause them a lot of difficulties at their constituency associations. And this is one. This is all happening because of legislation introduced by the UCP government there, right? Yes. Yes. And that strikes me as just it's a very dangerous thing, right? If you, you know, if you're going to pass legislation at least.
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understand the consequences and plan for the consequences. Whereas it seems like they kind of let the genie out the bottle without any real plan on how you... Because at some point, you have to either vote in the legislature or it goes out to a referendum. You have to... At some point, you're going to have to jump. Half of your supporter base is splitting, you know, is one direction. I mean, it just seems like this...
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It's going to potentially take none of the heat out of this issue in the post-COVID, you know, unease with government and let's give power back to the people and all the rest of it. It's going to reduce none of that sentiment and just has the potential of ending up shooting themselves in the foot potentially. But, you know, obviously that must have been played out.
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Yeah, the Citizen Initiative Act was passed as a... There's a suite of direct democracy legislation that was passed in 2020-2021. It was also paired with another piece of legislation called the Recall Act. It allows a...
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This UCP passed the recall act, which allowed for the citizens to launch petitions to recall MLAs. Now, unlike, and I've looked into this a bit because I've written a lot about recall in Alberta, because we currently have 20, we had 26 recall petitions launched against 26 different MLAs. So Albertans really took this and ran with this.
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The two petitions that have been submitted were both unsuccessful. They weren't able to collect the threshold. It's a fairly high threshold of you need the equivalent of 60% of the voters who voted in the previous provincial election in a riding. That's a high threshold. I mean, as it should be, if you're going to overturn a,
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free and fair democratic election it should be something that's easy to do but unlike the uh the recall legislation that they have in the united kingdom where there are limits uh you know reason you know limits on why like when a recall a petition can be initiated whether you know an mp has broken the law or whatnot there's no limits at all in alberta so anybody for any reason can launch a recall petition against their mla but
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Which, I mean, this is the way the legislation was written. And this is, I mean, essentially what, I mean, this is what MLAs passed. And UCP MLAs were very surprised and some of them were shocked and some of them reacted very poorly. Most of them reacted okay and kind of ignored it or put a kind of a generic statement. There were a few MLAs who clearly...
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lost their temper when they heard that one of their constituents was launching a recall campaign, and that didn't look very good on the end. Probably, you know, convinced a few people to sign the recall petition who might not have otherwise. Careful what you wish for. Yeah, careful what you wish for. No, exactly. I mean, these have consequences to this. I don't think any of these recall petitions will actually be successful, but it has helped in some ridings to galvanize opposition to the UCP and get people organized.
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is not what the United Conservative Party intended. Now, I just wanted to just get back to a point that was made earlier about kind of having a relief valve or a steam valve, relieving the pressure. Or a genie in a bottle, as Andrew Percy put it, but I don't understand what Christina Aguilera has to do with this. So you're not cultured enough, that's why.
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There's also this other initiative that Premier Smith launched last year as kind of a relief valve on the Alberta separatism debate called the Alberta Next panel. And Premier Smith chaired this panel, which included a number of UCPMLAs, a number of distinguished respected voices in Alberta. Trevor Toome, for example, who's an economist at the university, very well respected economist at the University of Calgary. And this group...
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traveled the province, they had town hall meetings to talk about a number of issues that were, I mean, a number of issues that were already on the government's agenda or stuff that the government wanted to push forward. Stuff like talking about an Alberta pension plan, talking about the creation of an Alberta police force, talking about
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an Alberta revenue agency to replace the Canada revenue agent, the federal revenue agency. And some of this kind of Alberta autonomy initiatives that Premier Smith had talked about when she ran for the UCP leadership, and it kind of didn't campaign on in the 2023 election, but were always there and something that were popular among a lot of her supporters. Now, the committee came back and no one was really surprised about the results, the report that the committee put forward. They did some polling and some issues that are
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pretty deeply unpopular with Albertans, like messing with tensions. I mean, people don't like it when there's a possibility of your retirement security being insecure. It's kind of a third rail toxic issue. There was a recommendation of looking into creating an Alberta pension plan about holding referendums on a number of issues. So there's potential that Albertans, you know, the government could
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figure out a way to dodge actually having a referendum question on separation and instead have a referendum on this kind of suite of policy issues that that the premier has been trying to promote i mean that it's possible that that that could be held at the same time as a referendum on separation or that the mlas and the legislature could just decide to put the lead put the referendum on hold and have these uh have these uh referendum on these questions instead that's that's always possible
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We're really uncharted territory here.
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I'm intrigued by the idea of this, you know, referenda as a release valve, right? Because, you know, we keep seeing example after example, and I speak to somebody who was very pro as having the referendum in the UK on Brexit, right? But, you know, this idea that it's a release valve, I mean, you know, there's a reason that, you know, referenda are not part of the Westminster system, right? Because it doesn't fit with the tradition of Westminster. I always remember Margaret Thatcher, I think, saying that, you know, referenda are the tools of despots and dictators and, you know, all the rest of it. Yeah.
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But, you know, there are so many examples of them being anything but a release valve. So if you think about the Scottish referendum, which everyone said, you know, okay, we'll have the Scottish referendum. We'll settle the question, yada, yada, yada.
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And, you know, that will be it. And of course it isn't right, because if you get 30, 35, 40, 45% of people vote for something and they don't get it, they tend to be quite angry. That then galvanizes them into potentially, you know, in an Alberta context, a separatist party then can say, look, 25, 30% of Albertans voted. No one's representing you. Look what happened in Scotland. You know, the unionists won our side, one, you know, the anti-independent side won, and then we had a general election.
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Two years later, a year later, where every parliamentary seat in Scotland bar, I think three, was won by the separatist Scottish nationalists. So far from being a release, it was a galvaniser for those people who really, really, really want it and didn't end up getting it. So I just I think this is this got to be the danger for Daniel Smith, who's the Premier of Alberta and the UCP there, that if they avoid a referendum on it,
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or if they have a referendum on it, and then, you know, which presumably is lost on independence. There's an opening there then for all those people who you now have the number, they're quantified, right? You know how many of them there are, and they don't have a voice.
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Yeah, I think that's a real danger that really hasn't been talked about. I think that the challenge that, I mean, the pro-Canada voices have in Alberta is that the debate around separatism has really, is increasingly becoming normalized in the media, increasingly normalized.
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And we haven't had those discussions about how the long-term impacts of this, and not only just in terms of the economics of it, the economic dangers and the investment challenges of even having a referendum, but the long-term impact it has on communities and families and the complete divisiveness of this issue. Yeah, this is what happened in Scotland.
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Yeah, and so this could have, you're right, this could have a very long-term dramatic effect on Alberta right now. It also moves the issue from being fringed to being legitimate.
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Because if you've been asked to vote on the choice, all of a sudden that choice is no longer a fringe, dangerous, you know, ridiculous, stupid option. It is now a credible option because it was put on a ballot and put out to the people to vote for. So, you know, you end up, you know, post the referendum, you have a legitimized choice.
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issue, and the issue has been the digitalised, and you have a quantifiable number of people who you now know are in favour of that, and who are presumably not actually represented by anybody in the main political parties because
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both of the main political parties in the legislature will say, well, of course, we accept the results of the referendum, which is to stay in Canada, presuming that's the way it goes. And all of a sudden, there's this huge space then, and the issue is legitimate. I think it's such a massive risk, and we keep seeing these examples from, you know, all around the world where, and I'm being a hypocrite here because I have very definitely argued for referendums, but then, but
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There are examples everywhere where what the lesson we should take from it is probably, maybe don't go near that because what it unleashes can never be put back in the box. But yet, people can't resist temptation to do it. This is where I have significant concern because I do think a referendum is risky for all the reasons you described, Andrew, which is you then get into a binary. It's a binary choice. So it's a binary choice. People are going to go one way or the other. So it's going to naturally lift up the vote.
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for separation in some way. I'd be shocked where you don't get... Usually referendums end up closer to a 50-50 result, not a 70 or an 80-20 result. And so I think the mistake a lot of people do now is they look at the polling numbers, and the polling numbers have...
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You know, latest numbers I've seen, and Dave, you'll keep me honest, is like in that 28, 30 percent range support as sort of as it's high currently for separation. That is scary. And then what you've just talked about, Dave, which is that they are or the separatist movement is increasingly well coordinated. It's very grassroots.
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It's organized. It's doing the hard work that, as far as I can tell, the pro-Canada side isn't doing, like going out to rural Alberta, holding these meetings, building a list, building a grassroots movement. And so now I worry if it does get to an actual referendum,
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That the separatist side is extremely well organized. And if they are well organized in a campaign environment, that can change everything, which is a long-winded way, a long-winded preamble, Dave, for me to get to sort of the question I want to explore, which was the crux of your piece, which is who's going to lead the pro-Canada side? And what does that look like? Do they even have the infrastructure in place to be effective?
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Well, I think that is the outstanding question. And I know there are, you know, there's a lot of talk about this right now. I think Thomas Lukaszek, who ran the, was kind of the spokesperson for the Forever Canadian campaign. He did a lot of going out into, across the province. He had a camper van that he had wrapped with Canadian flags that he called the Unity Bus, that he went and traveled around the province in collecting signatures and having events last summer. And that might have been the closest thing that there's been to a real concerted pro-Canada campaign.
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campaign in the province, actually going out and meeting people and talking to people where they are, rather than trying to do it through the media or through digital advertising or online platforms or whatnot. So I mean, you know, Lukaszek is definitely someone that comes to mind because he's done a lot of legwork.
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on the issue already. He's a very divisive character in Alberta politics. He's kind of a keyboard warrior. He was very critical of Premier Jason Kenney, who was the first United Conservative Premier, who was really driven out of politics by a lot of the people who are launching this separatist referendum right now. So Jason Kenney has come out as a very strong pro-Canada voice in Alberta.
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You know, I listened to him. He was on David Frum's podcast last week or the week before on The Atlantic talking very passionately about this. And I think he's really put himself out there. I don't know what kind of constituency Jason Kenney has among conservatives now.
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You know, he was kind of unceremoniously, I mean, not kind of, he was unceremoniously pushed out of this political party, leadership of this political party that he created or played a key role creating in 2021, 2022, he was pushed out. But, you know, he does have a platform and, you know, he knows politics in Alberta.
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So I can see Kenny playing a big role. He's involved with some very influential groups. He's on the ATCO board. He's very connected through the kind of traditional establishment conservative circles in the province, which still are influential. They're a lot more marginalized than they used to be in Alberta politics, but they're still influential, especially through different business groups and business communities. And then there's the leader of the official opposition, Nahid Nenshi.
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who's now, who's the former mayor, three-term mayor of Calgary, who's leading the largest official opposition in Alberta's history, the NDP of 38 MLAs in the Alberta legislature. And he's really trying to position himself as Captain Canada, the Captain Pro Canada. Now, Nenshi has, doesn't have the same problem that Danielle Smith has on this issue, where, because if you look at the polling,
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about 98 to 99% of New Democrat voters in the province of Alberta, which is usually somewhere between 35 to 45% of voters, they're pro-Canada. They want nothing to do with this separatism. So Nenshi is free to be as absolutely pro-Canada as he wants without having the same kind of political cleavage or political landmines that Daniel Smith is trying to navigate right now.
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So, you know, these three are kind of the main characters that I've identified. Now, politically, their relationships are very fraught. There's a lot of tension between the three of them. They've all been very critical of each other. But I think it's going to be really important. And the point I try to make in the piece is that, you know, we need to have some kind of united voice. And it doesn't necessarily need to be one person. But we need a broad pro-Canada coalition in this province. Because this referendum is probably going to happen.
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you know, if there's not a pro-Canada campaign starting now, you know, we're going to, you know, there's potential trouble because as you said, Joseph, campaigns can take a life of their own and you never really know what the ballot question is going to be. And you can already see in some of the messaging that the Alberta Prosperity Project, they're calling it themselves the Stay Free Alberta campaign. A lot of their messaging is around economics, around, you know, leaving Canada is going to save you money. It's going to make it easier to build pipelines, to, you know,
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So you can already see where they're targeting. And there's a possibility that there's a lot of messages that might resonate or it might end up being framed as a Send Ottawa message campaign. And, you know, even though it has serious, serious consequences. Yes.
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Yeah, so I mean, this is, you know, plenty of examples where people vote for something that they think is sending a message and then a lot of other people also think they're sending a message, then all of a sudden it's the majority. And the risk is for any pro-Canada campaign is it inevitably run the risk of turning into a negative campaign, right? Here we highlight all of the terrible things that will happen if you leave, which then can be flipped very easily into a project fear type thing, which is exactly what happened, of course, in the Scottish referendum, the Brexit referendum.
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Well, you know, the Remain side just ended up looking negative as if they were talking down Scotland or talking down the UK. But it's so much easier for the pro side to emphasize all of the potential positives because the message sounds positive. And I think this is also aspirational. It's aspirational. Yeah.
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Yeah. And it's so much easier if you'd say, oh, well, they're just talking down. They don't believe in Alberta. You know, it's just, you know, it's such a hard thing to counter, even if you have, you know, I think that will inevitably, the risk that will be run. And then, sorry, Joseph.
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Well, I was going to add, because I want Percy, your perspective on this as well. But Dave, you walked us through potential sort of faces of the pro-Canada side. And when I hear that, I get slightly concerned because we may have been a scenario where the pro-Canada side, frankly, has a lot of different faces. Does it become a three-headed monster where everyone's kind of like assuming the other guy's sort of in charge? And so no one really takes accountability and runs with it. So I do worry about the impact that may have on the pro-Canada campaign and it being a fairly ineffective campaign.
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I get the sense that when you look at the Brexit example, you did have a couple voices, right? You had Boris Johnson, you had Michael Goh, you had a couple others that sort of shared the burden of, but it still, it was an official campaign. There was an official campaign infrastructure. And I worry that if we don't have a clear pro-Canada campaign team in infrastructure...
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that it's going to be like this group doing that thing, this group doing that thing, conflicting messages. It's going to be a bunch of eagles sort of like fighting it out. And the consequences that could be pretty serious. There's another lesson from that one there as well, Joseph, from the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum. What they actually also did quite smartly is remove the fringe voices who had done the most to argue for the referendum. So people forget Nigel Farage.
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and UKIP were not part of the official Leave campaign. The official Leave campaign was from moderate conservative voices and some Labour voices and had actually silenced the more fringe elements, which was a really smart move because it made it look more credible. Again, those guys were kept out of the way. So if the
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had any... But then who was actually leading on the other side? It was confused, right? Same in the Scottish referendum. It was just confused. And then sending people from outside of Scotland to tell people in Scotland that it's terribly silly of them to vote for independence, which doubtless would happen because the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, would not be able to get away with not going to Alberta to campaign
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for Canada, right, to stay in Canada, which again, it comes with such risk as well of, you know, these guys, the folks are coming in to tell you, you know, it's just, it is, I just think this is, these are, that's why when I look at these polls, I don't believe the numbers they're at at the moment because we've lived through this twice in the UK in the last 15 years. And, you know, and it took on a life of its own. And the same mistakes that were made in the Scottish referendum were made in the Brexit referendum in terms of the not wanting to leave things. And although I was quite happy to stay in one and leave the other, but the same errors were made because I think they're unavoidable.
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Well, and here's another important factor. So let me touch this and I'll throw as a question to you, Dave, to pick this up. The other factor is foreign interference. There's been documented meetings between these groups and the Americans. And we know that Donald Trump would love nothing more than to be an epic shit disturber on this. And I worry about potential dollar flows coming into the world.
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this campaign and supporting the separatist side, if nothing else, just to, again, participate in the most epic level of shithead that this president could inflict on us. And so that is also another massive consideration that we have to deal with, which is why this whole referendum thing is incredibly risky. But walk us through this sort of foreign interference angle for us. Sure. Yeah. Just before I touch on that, I just want to touch on a point that Andrew made about Mark Carney. Now, Mark Carney is actually, he grew up in Edmonton.
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So Mark Carney is, I mean, he hasn't lived in Alberta since high school, but he grew up in Edmonton, went to high school here. He launched his lead campaign for the leadership of the federal liberal party at the Laurier Heights Community Hall, which was his neighborhood and where he learned how to play hockey. I'm interested. I am. You know, he's not.
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Hasn't been lived here for a while, but I think he understands Albertans in a better way than previous liberal leaders have. He's certainly not Justin Trudeau. He's certainly not Justin Trudeau. You take the exact same scenario and you throw Justin Trudeau in the mix, oof, that's kindling. Stay far away.
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But he is also the, you know, archetypal example of everything a lot of the separatists hate, right? Bay Street, Sharpsu, you know, business, you know, the other. Davos speaking. Davos, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think he'll have to tread carefully, but he does have some connection to Alberta.
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Just put his Oilers jersey on. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I mean, they had the last federal election, he had a great video on Instagram with him and the elbows up and with him doing practice with the Oilers and Connor McDavid and stuff. It was actually quite fun.
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It's on foreign interference much more seriously. I mean, I think that that is something that I don't know that we're really prepared for. I mean, the United States, there is already a lot of talk coming out of the U.S. about Alberta, 51st state, supporting Alberta separatism. We know that.
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Some of the separatist leaders, Mitch Sylvester and Jeff Rath, have gone down to Washington, D.C. and claimed to have met with people in the State Department. We don't know who they met with, but they've claimed to go down, I think, two or three times. And they've posted videos of themselves and or photos of themselves in Washington, D.C.
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We know that there are conversations. We know that they've at times these groups have claimed that the United States has talked about giving Alberta a $500 million, billion dollar loan to get started as a province. I don't know whether that's actually true or that that actually happened, but there has been talk about that. And then recently we had Scott Bessett, who I believe is the Treasury Secretary in the United States, openly talk about Alberta separatism and Alberta holding a referendum.
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So, you know, it's a great distraction for something and something for, for Donald Trump to get involved. It's right up his alley to, if he wants to, you know, for really for anybody who any, any foreign country or foreign actors who want to destabilize Canada or interfere with what's going on in Canada, it's a great place for them to start because it's so easy for them to just slide in. You know, I mean, all it takes is Donald Trump to post something on Truth Social and all of a sudden it's frontline news, front page news here in Alberta and in Canada and
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He could do that every single day of the campaign. And I fully expect that there would be interference like that. However, if Joe Biden were president and Joe Biden were to say some wonderfully lovely things about how great is Canada as a united and strong country that's just to the north of America and a great ally, everybody who is so offended by the idea of American interference from Donald Trump...
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first in the pro-independence, would be saying how powerful of an intervention and how important it was and how great it was. They wouldn't be describing it as foreign interference, just as when Barack Obama turned up in the EU referendum in the UK and said, of course, the UK would be back of the queue if we left the European Union for a US trade deal.
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The same people who are so offended by foreign interference were falling over themselves to retweet this non-foreign interference from a foreign leader telling us what we should do. Just put that out there as a bit of therapy to get me over. How long has it been, Percy? It's been a while. That is quite angry about it. Yeah, the chip's still there. It's true, though, isn't it? Right.
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David, let's close this out. One last question for you. We digest everything we've just gone through and we only really scratched the surface. You've been paying attention to this. You've been running about it for the last two decades. When you step back now and you look and zoom out a little bit, how worried are you about this whole referenda and the growing, it seems, the growing traction that the separatist movement in Alberta has?
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I'm concerned. I think if a referendum were held today, it would be absolutely defeated. It would, you know, the leave side or whatever they'd like, whatever they frame themselves as, separatist side, you know, they'd get 20, 30% of the vote and it would be defeated. If a referendum is held 10 months from now, I don't know what the defining ballot issue is going to be. We might be talking about something totally different in the context.
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of a referendum on separation. And I think that's very dangerous for, I mean, for Alberta and for Canada. And it's something that pro-federalist, pro-Canada voices in Alberta really need to get their act together and figure out how to combat right now. It's not something you cannot wait until the referendum begins in September.
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the fall or next spring, you have to be talking about this and getting it, getting organized and getting your act together right now, because this will have dramatic, a dramatic impact on Alberta politics going forward. And I mean, our communities and our society here, here in Alberta. So I think that, you know, they need to get their act together right now. Yeah. Alberta and Canada are worth fighting for.
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There you go. I think that is a great note to end this episode on. Dave, this has been awesome. Really appreciate you coming on. I've learned a lot. I'm hoping our listeners have as well. We'll have to have you back on a more regular basis. This was great. That'd be great. Thanks so much for having me on. It was great to talk with you, Joseph and Andrew. I'm sorry I just ended up writing about Brexit. Just like any other show. It's all good. It's all good. Thanks a lot.
