Alberta Independence Gets Reinforcements - Renew Alberta's Matthew Rowley
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Summary
In this episode, I speak to the President of Renew Alberta, Dr. Matthew Rowley, about his concerns about the current state of the campaign for Alberta's independence from Canada. We talk about what he thinks about the lack of support for the campaign so far, and why he fears that the message may be fractured.
Transcript
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Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. I am recording this on Monday, April the 27th.
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You're likely seeing it on Tuesday, April the 28th. That means as of right now where I sit,
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yesterday was the final day signing people up on the independence petition. Other than some work
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this week that needs to be done collecting all of the signatures and handing them in in Edmonton
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next Monday. It is over, and a lot of people would say thankfully so. What I've noticed over
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the last week, and something you may have noticed as well, is that more groups are coming forward
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to fight for independence. You've seen Let's Talk Alberta, Chris Scott, and a number of speakers out
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talking about independence around the province, talking about hundreds of meetings. You may have
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heard of the Centurion Project. That's another one that has popped up. David Parker involved in that
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one. And today we're going to talk about another group that I heard about called Renew Alberta.
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And on the channel today, I've got the president, Matthew Raleigh, with me. I have some concerns
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about what is going on right now. Of course, we put our trust in Mitch Sylvester and Stay Free
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Alberta over the last four months of this petition signing campaign and over the last year or so,
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going back to the Alberta Prosperity Project. I do have concerns. I'm worried that the message
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may get fractured, that we may not be on the same page. So let's talk to Matthew Raleigh
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from Renew Alberta. Matthew Raleigh, pleasure to meet you. Good to meet you as well, John. And you
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know what? This is a first for me. I've never actually had somebody here in the studio. So
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thanks for coming in and welcome to my home. It's great to have you here. I'm glad to be here. It's
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a lovely home. Great place down here. Well, we've got the big blue flag up here. We've seen a lot
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of the flying of the flag over the last four months in particular. The petition campaign kind
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have ended yesterday. All that has to happen now is to turn those signatures in. We're going to
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talk about Renew Alberta in just a moment, your new organization. I just really spoke to you the
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other day, but I wanted to get your thoughts. First off, explain who you are. I think that's
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the first place we should start. A little, in a nutshell, who is Matthew Rowley and what are you
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about? For sure. Well, I'm Dr. Matthew Rowley. I'm by day a missionary, actually. I'm a professor
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of theology and historical theology and i did my specialty in political theology which means that
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i'm interested in all things the canadian constitution the founding of canada the church
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state settlement in canada and for me uh an important thing is the thriving of alberta
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and that's why i'm involved in renew alberta i want to see alberta thrive and be successful
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and to me that means independence that means that we have to actually build something
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even looking back to the traditional values of Canada that seem to have been lost and to build
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something new. I want to touch on that some more because it kind of plays into something I've been
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saying here on the channel for some time. It's something that kind of dawned on me, I think,
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since I spoke to you the other day. But what have you thought of the campaign so far? We
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certainly talked a lot about independence last year. January 2nd, the petition campaign started.
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I think it's been hard to not drive around and see people signing people up.
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We have this ability to stand up and to say something that's special and to stand for our beliefs.
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And I've loved being able to stop and say hi to people who are sitting at a table, normal, regular Albertans,
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sitting at a table with a flag in the freezing cold or the sun, whatever the weather, and say, hey, how's it going?
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And they can say, we're doing great. We've had so many people who love what we're saying.
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We've had a couple of fingers and we've had a whole lot of people who are honking their horn
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and saying, yes, this is what we're doing. So I'm excited about what I see out there.
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So over the last week or so, it's become evident to me that there are other groups getting involved.
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We've been Stay Free Alberta. It was the Alberta Prosperity Project before that.
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We've heard of Let's Talk Alberta. Chris Scott has had people out over the last
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A little while at events across the province, we're hearing about 200 to 300 meetings they're going to have.
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The Centurion product, David Parker is involved in that.
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So our primary focus is to say that everything about Canada was not broken, but has been broken, especially since Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
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So we want to help people to say there's not a whole lot that we have to do in independence to fix the problems that we see in Canada or in Alberta.
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We don't have to change every aspect of life and our laws and our government and all these different things.
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I don't want to make that sound more drastic than it is, but it's the only way.
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Okay. So at the top of your, by the way, if you want to find out more about this, renewalberta.ca is the website you can go to. At the top of your webpage, it says, we exist to preserve the history and ideals of old Canada through the independence and renewal of Alberta. Is that just basically what you explained to me?
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John A. Macdonald, they're knocking down statues of him.
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The background of Canada, the history of Canada is now, oh, colonialism, genocide, a bunch of settlers who brutalized and terrorized people.
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And so if we want to preserve the truth of our history, the greatness of people like Macdonald and Laurier, the people who fought at Vimy Ridge and at Juneau Beach,
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We have to keep Alberta out of this whirlpool that the rest of the country is going down.
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We've heard a lot about sort of the 30-30-30 or 33-33-33.
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There's the 33% who really want Alberta independence.
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There's the people in the middle who are kind of sitting on the fence.
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from reading your website, it seems to me that maybe Renew Alberta is about trying to convince
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some of those people who are absolute no's right now to vote for independence. Is that what you're
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looking for? 100%. Not only the no's, but the guys that are on the fence. Because it is scary. If we
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say, you know, oh, everything about Canada is terrible. Well, that's not actually true. Most
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of us are old enough to remember a time when Canada worked. So to say, let's go back to that.
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unfortunately, it does require independence. I would love to say that, you know what, Canada can
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be preserved, that we can all turn and shift. But what we've seen is that Canada as a whole
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seems to like the direction it's going, but Alberta is taking a different stand.
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You know, I said, I think I may have learned something from reading your website because
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over the last year, the first time I spoke with Mitch Sylvester was middle of June last year.
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And I think at the time, or at least at least sometime around there, I said to him,
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What do you do about the people who wrap themselves in the flag and they say they're patriotic and that's the only reason they want to stay?
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And this is a question I've asked of many people.
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I asked it a few weeks ago when I was in Delburn at a Let's Talk Alberta event.
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It's a hard one to get around, but I think perhaps by reading your website, I'm getting the feeling that you're trying to convince people that the Canada that they once knew no longer exists.
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and that we can have that Canada that you remember, but in an independent Alberta.
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When we think about it, during the Freedom Convoy, people flew the Canadian flag
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They were told that freedom is an extremist word.
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The values of Canada were actually denigrated and attacked.
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So just because now the elbows-up crowd are wrapping themselves in the flag
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and saying that we're the real Canada, it's not true.
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They hate everything that Canada is supposed to stand for and what our forefathers and our founders actually stood for themselves.
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So just because they take the flag and they take Ottawa doesn't mean they get to be Canada.
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Do you think the Canada that used to be exists in Alberta right now?
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I believe so. I think we still have those values.
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To be an Albertan is something you can still define.
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We have a wonderful tradition of immigration, of people coming from elsewhere and then becoming Albertan.
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But it's something that does have a standard, a set of values.
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That's something more than just maple syrup and hockey.
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We actually know how to be an Albertan and how to welcome others into that and have a society that works together.
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We've been talking about this 33, 33, 33, and the idea was don't even worry about the 33 who say no.
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How would you try to convince somebody like that?
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For the one who says I'm loyal to Canada, I say I am too.
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And let's talk about what loyalty to Canada means.
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Anyone who happens to be sitting in the prime minister's office is now demanding my complete loyalty.
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You know what? That flag came into being in 1965 with much problems around it. The anthem,
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O Canada, only became the official anthem in 1980. This constitution that everybody waves around,
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the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982, that's not Canada. Canada is deeper and older and greater
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than that. And so we want to be loyal to that and not just accept anything they say.
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I don't want to get too deep into it because we can, you know, BS baffles brains is what they
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used to write on the board. BSBB used to go on the board when I went to school. But you look back
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on the first Trudeau for a lot of the problems Canada's dealing with now. Completely. He took
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something that we had a defined national unity, a way that people could talk about Canada as
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something greater than maple syrup and hockey. And he said, I don't like that. And he made a
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systematic effort to break it down. And the culmination of that was the charter and the
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constitution he promulgated. It wasn't about freedoms. We had the freedoms as Canadians.
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Yeah. It's interesting. You can almost say that the Trudeaus have bookended the destruction of
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Canada. Yes. That's kind of, I never thought of it until this very moment. Now, here's what I,
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now, so are you, are you a large group of people? Are you a growing group of people?
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Have you got a network of people? Tell us about Renew Alberta and what you're doing right now.
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We're very small right now, but we've just launched. So we're hoping to grow and definitely
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go to RenewAlberta.ca and sign up. I did today. Yeah. And we want to grow, but we are a small
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group. Basically, I've never wanted to be on the front side of the camera as far as things go,
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but I believe there's a message that's not being said and I want to say it.
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Now, I have some concerns with what's going on right now. I mentioned off the top, we've seen
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the Centurion Group, Let's Talk Alberta. I think all of them are leading towards
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the independents and all want Alberta independence. But I remember when I first
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got involved and was interested in this, it was 2017, 2018, I attended my first meeting in 2019.
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It was called Wexit at that point. It's where I got this out. I've said it on my channel before.
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But after that, there were different groups who were sort of beating heads against each other.
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And the movement never moved forward because there were conflicting messages out there. And it
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wasn't until last year when Alberta Prosperity Project and then Stay Free Alberta kind of brought
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everybody together. Are you concerned that your message is going to conflict with what's been
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accomplished so far? And I think the important thing is that we're all swimming in the same
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direction. We all want independence. And part of what we're all talking about for the future of
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Alberta is we need to actually figure out what that future looks like. For me, a big thing is
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I think there's a lot of people who are afraid of the future and what it might look like.
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Better the devil I know than the devil I don't.
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The devil that we don't see over the hill, there's no way it could be worse than what we have now.
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But let's change as little as we have to and then slowly adjust.
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Do you hope to coordinate with the different groups that are involved?
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Maybe stand shoulder to shoulder, a little solidarity here.
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Yeah, we're all on the same team, and it's one of the things also that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with is fighting among conservatives or among people who have different values.
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Well, I've heard a lot of that over the last couple of weeks, a lot of it, yeah.
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I'm a Christian, and I believe that we have to love each other and try to understand each other and not attack each other.
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Jesus himself said, if you're not against me, you're for me, and that's the way that I live, is, you know what?
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if we're walking in the same direction, we can present our visions of what the future looks like.
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And then Albertans are big enough and strong enough to decide what that looks like. But if
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we attack each other, if I go to you and I say, well, I don't like the way, exactly the cut of
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your jib, or you're not saying exactly the right message, and I throw you off the bus, we're doing
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harm. If we all want the same objective, in Alberta, there's actually room to be different.
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We're not the federal government trying to make everybody believe and act and look exactly the
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same way. Let's model that in the movement. Do you hope to be doing events and activities like
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we've seen around the province with these other groups? And with Stay for Alberta, they've been
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out there doing dozens, if not hundreds of events at this point. Is that what you're expecting to do?
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They're doing really good on that. We probably are doing more in trying to help people think
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through issues and shape ideas. There may be time when we need to do events, but the primary thing
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is to think it through and present ideas to people that they can take on and think through.
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We're trying to connect with as many people as we can.
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Because I've really appreciated what Stay Free Alberta, APP, many of the other groups, Chris Scott, like you're saying, are doing in having meetings.
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I think all of us need to just think through what we're saying a little bit more.
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Do you hope to maybe sit down with some of these people to discuss? Maybe you're focusing on those people who are in the mushy middle and the ones who are complete no's right now. Do you plan on trying to coordinate in order that you can get your message out and they can be talking about something else?
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A hundred percent. We want to try to connect with people. I'm not opposed to meeting with people. In fact, I say, you know, if I can talk to one person or a hundred people about Alberta and independence, I'm happy to do it. And so we want to be effective as we can and try to move people from no to yes or from maybe to for sure. And however that's the best able to be done, we're willing to do it.
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Now you have all of the different organizations. They've got a donate page. What will money go towards if they want to donate to your organization?
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So if you want to donate to us, the primary thing is we're trying to build the reach of
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Things like paying for gas is actually important these days, courtesy of Kearney and the economy,
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So there will be some practical administrative sides, but the majority is going towards message
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amplification because that is what we really need is to counteract the Canadian or the
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Forever Canada type message and also get the word out to everybody that it's not scary to think of
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independence. It's not traitorous to think of independence. We are the real Canada.
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You, what do you think of our chances here? I always ask people, you know, we're looking,
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well, first off, we've got to get the question. We'll get the, we'll get those signatures in and
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hopefully we get the question. Are you assured that we're going to get a question? It'll be in
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October. What do you think our chances are right now? Thankfully, we have a provincial government
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that does listen to Albertans. That's something that we should be really thankful for. They may
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not always be swimming our direction. Premier Danielle Smith has said she wants a united Canada,
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but she's big enough to recognize that she's not the authoritarian dictator of Alberta.
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So I'm confident we'll have a question. Yeah. How do you feel that Danielle Smith has done?
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obviously she's saying that she wants, you know, Alberta to stay in Canada, but she has been very
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helpful all along. Do you think it does any good to, to go after her in a big way when she made
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it easier for us to get the signatures and she created bill 14 so that we could get the signatures?
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What do you think of that? I think it's unproductive. I think we have to, she may not
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be the perfect image of an independence leader that we want, but she has allowed Albertans to
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have their say. And when the courts tried to get in the way once already, she stopped them. I believe
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that even if the court, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of confidence in the court. Even if
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the court does try to stop it, I do believe that she will allow Albertans to have their say. Not
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because she's pro-independence, despite what Nenshi says, but because she actually does value
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the principle that Albertans are in charge of Alberta, and she's not. So I'm confident that
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we will have the question. RenewAlberta.ca, just in closing, obviously you want people to sign up.
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There's a place you put your name and your email address in there so you can get probably
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correspondence through you. That's why I signed up for it. What else can people do to participate?
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Do connect with us. If you have questions, I want to talk to you. If you want to participate,
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we do need volunteers. We do need people who say, hey, I'm willing to help in whatever way. We had
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a guy sign up and say, hey, I'm good with web stuff. What can I do? People who are willing to
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say, hey, I want to grab five people and get them in a room and talk about this issue.
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Any way that you feel like you can be involved, I want to do it. And especially we want to work
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with everyone else. This is not us going a different direction.
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Right. And that when I first thought about, and I was, you were brought to my attention,
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that was what I was concerned about. I'm concerned about these groups going their own way. We can end
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up with a lot of egos involved, you know, and I don't want to see that happen. Matthew Raleigh,
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President Renew Alberta. First person to share the big blue mug with me, by the way. So let's
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do that. I appreciate you being here. I hope to talk to you again in the future. Best of luck.
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We're all working towards the same goal, folks. We want independence. And if you can help out with
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what Matthew's doing, with what State Free Alberta is doing, or any of the other groups,
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be sure to do that. So many people have said to me, Matthew, over the time that we've been
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talking about independence, John, thank you for all you do. I always turn it back on them and
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saying you're the person sitting out here in the cold.
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