An Extraordinary Day in Edmonton - Alberta Is Leaving
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Toxicity
7
sentences flagged
Hate speech
1
sentences flagged
Summary
John sits down with CEO of Stay Free Alberta, Mitch Sylvester, to talk about the events of yesterday in Edmonton, Alberta and the Easter egg on the front of the boxes that represents all of you! Thanks to everyone for all your support, stay free Alberta!
Transcript
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One year ago, most of us did not know the name of this man right here.
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And in less than a year, he's brought us one step away from Alberta independence.
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Might I introduce CEO, Stay Free Alberta, Mitch Sylvester.
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Well, John, actually, I don't like those things.
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Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
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Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
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Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
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Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch already.
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you guys brought us here without you guys none of this happens so just understand
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how important you are and how important you're going to be moving forward
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you stood in the cold you got abused people yelled at you people yelled at us on the way here
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we had this one guy with a mask on yelling at us on our way here so what we did with all of our
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boxes is we took a picture of canvassers and we put a different picture in front of every one of
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our boxes because this represents all of you hi it's john and welcome to the channel 326 a.m
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Tuesday, May the 5th. I hope you're having a great Tuesday morning. I have the big blue
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mug of coffee. I appreciate you being here very much. My voice is a little bit shot today
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because I spoke so much yesterday, but it was worth every word from Edmonton at Elections
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Alberta. I need to apologize to you to start off because I had every intention yesterday
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of doing a story on what happened in Edmonton, but that never panned out. Here's some video
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footage of me just before 5 o'clock yesterday morning before I drove up to Edmonton for the
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petition submission by Mitch Sylvester and Stay Free Alberta. And I planned on going there and
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doing interviews and doing a story, but that never transpired simply because I met so many of you.
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So I guess it's your fault, but don't take that the wrong way. It was my pleasure to meet you
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yesterday. Now, what I want to do is off the top there, you saw Mitch talking about the pictures
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on the boxes. I've got some inside information on that that's pretty interesting, kind of an
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Easter egg I want to tell you about in just a moment. And I can guarantee you that I have some
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video footage that nobody else has from yesterday. I guarantee you, nobody has this video footage.
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Very short, but historic coming up. Now, this is generally going to be a positive video.
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There may be some negativity at the end. Who knows? That might be the best part.
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But I did get up yesterday and I went to Edmonton early to try to help out.
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I want to tell you about the boxes of petitions that Mitch talked about in that short bit of video.
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There were pictures on all the boxes of canvassers.
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Last week, I was talking with somebody who's pretty well known in the independence movement.
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and he commented on how when Thomas Lukasik delivered his petitions to Elections Alberta,
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he had put a label from where the different petitions came from in Alberta.
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And I said to him, you know what would be great?
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What if we took pictures of canvassers and blew them up and put them on the sides of the boxes?
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Because after all, this is about the canvassers and those people who sat out in the cold for four months.
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and he said, that's a great idea. So I pitched the idea to Mitch Sylvester and that's what they
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ended up doing. But here's the Easter egg. Those of you who watch this channel and follow here,
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many of you submitted pictures to my independence calendar on the weekend
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and you sent pictures of petition signing places over the last four months.
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Those were the pictures that were on the boxes. Now here's what was supposed to happen. I made
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a thumb drive with the pictures, and they were supposed to be printed in Calgary to get to
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Bonneville, but that never happened. So Sunday night, I called my friends, and you know them.
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They had a tough week, Mr. and Mrs. Albertan. They were cruising to Bonneville because they
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escorted Mitch to Edmonton yesterday. I said, is there any way you can print them out and put them
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on the boxes before they go to Edmonton? You bet. So I sent them to Mr. and Mrs. Albertan
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through Facebook. And here are the pictures of them with other people putting them on the boxes
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yesterday morning. But those were your pictures. It's funny. I met people yesterday who said,
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I sent you pictures of us canvassing. I said, well, there's a good chance your picture is on
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one of the boxes. So your picture may be on a box sitting at Elections Alberta right now.
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Isn't that cool? And I think it was a great touch. I was really happy to be part of that. So
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thanks to Mitch for doing that and bringing attention to that. Now, this didn't turn out
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the way I expected yesterday. We were supposed to line the boxes up on the ground, but too many of
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you showed up. They were afraid to get trampled and we'd have petitions all over the place.
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So for the most part, other than the video you're seeing right now, the boxes stayed in a van,
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but here's Mitch and everybody piling up those boxes with all those beautiful pictures, including
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the picture of Mike Schnell signing the petition in Egypt. So that's the story behind that.
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Now, Jason Levine, he tweeted out this right here. Let's say we got 301, 302,000 signatures on this.
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It is official. And this is great. By the way, I'm on Jason's show Tuesday morning. So today,
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as you're seeing this, if you're seeing it on Tuesday, I'm on his show at 730 this morning.
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Now, the narrative on this is going to be that we didn't get as many as Forever Canada.
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It's not people making excuses when they say those people were out on bad weather.
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It's not making excuses when saying these people had to get identification.
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They had to make sure that was verified before they signed the petition.
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And it's not making excuses when people say people are scared to sign things these days.
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They're worried about getting on a list for many different reasons.
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As a matter of fact, I went and sat down with three guys.
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We went and had a coffee across the street at a coffee shop right across from Elections Alberta yesterday.
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And I was talking with them and they were all canvassers and did a lot of canvassing.
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And I said, I've heard from other people that some people didn't want to sign the petition because they were scared.
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And I didn't even get the word scared out of my mouth.
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And they all went, oh, yeah, we heard that a lot.
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They didn't want to have their name there for numerous reasons.
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They may have been scared about their employment.
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There are a lot of people out there who didn't sign because they were scared.
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So this number could have been higher for sure.
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Now, the other thing that you'll hear is that people will not sign the petition,
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As we were walking to that coffee shop yesterday,
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a guy pulled up in a big pickup truck going into Superstore across the street again
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He stopped right at the entrance, opened the door.
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We're handing in the petitions to Elections Alberta.
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Will you sign or you say yes on the referendum in October?
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So a lot of people are out there who didn't sign the petition
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that will say yes on the referendum in the fall.
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We heard a lot of that, but there's a lot of work to do.
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Now, here's some video of Mitch and Jeff Rath showing up yesterday.
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This is just some video I took of them going through, people hugging Mitch.
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A lot of people said that before he even showed up.
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They wanted to meet Jeff and shake their hands, and it was great.
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I don't know whether you can see it in this video.
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I haven't really gone over it too much, but it looked like he had a bit of a tear in his eye.
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And I went up to Jeff afterward and shook his hand and congratulated him.
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And I said, Jeff, he towers over me and I'm 6'2".
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He blocks out the sun when you're standing beside the guy.
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So anyway, I said, Jeff, it looked like you had a tear in your eye when you were walking through the crowd there.
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and he looked at me with a big grin on his face.
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Mitch and Jeff and Dennis standing up talking about this as things really started rolling about
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a year ago with the independence movement. I called up Dennis and I said, your shadow hangs
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over this, Dennis. Thank you so much for everything you've done. And I think you're
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going to see Dennis a lot more. So thanks a lot to Dennis Modry for being there. He hasn't been
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as involved lately, but he says he's getting back in the game and that's a good thing. We'll have
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him back on the channel real soon. And I was so happy to talk to him and he's got some great
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insight about what's coming up as well. Now, this is something that nobody else has.
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I was lucky enough to introduce Mitch yesterday, and I was honored to do that.
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He actually, if you saw off the top, he corrected me, as you would expect him to do. I said he was
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the guy who brought us within one step of a referendum. He said, no, it's all of us that did
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that. But I happened to be standing behind him when he signed off on the petition yesterday.
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And that's the video you're watching right now, which nobody else has. Jeff Rath was standing
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beside me when I did that. I said, is this okay to do Jeff? Oh yeah, yeah, you can do this. There's
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nothing illegal about getting the signing of this. But it was absolutely amazing what happened
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yesterday. I want to tell you this, and I said this to people yesterday, and I say this all the
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time. I didn't get much video yesterday because people kept bothering me. Now, don't take that
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the wrong way. I like being bothered when I go to these things. Don't take it the wrong way. People
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kept coming up to me and they wanted to meet me and they wanted to shake my hand. I got so many
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hugs yesterday. I was supposed to carry a box into Elections Alberta yesterday, but I was busy
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talking to people. Now you need to understand this and I mean this wholeheartedly. I said to
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people yesterday, I took a cue from my brother-in-law Dave a long time ago. He passed away a number of
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years ago. When my brother-in-law Dave met you, you were the most important person in the room
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to him. And I always remembered that. And when I meet you, I am genuinely interested in meeting
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you. And trust me, I'm as interested in meeting you as you are in meeting me. I often take time
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to talk to people, you know, at length about things when I meet them. And I talked a lot at
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length yesterday with people. Everybody was so damn happy. I mean, look at the video footage
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you're seeing on the screen right now. This is insane. I love it. Wow.
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Wow! This is remarkable. What happened yesterday did not happen the way it was supposed to. I went
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out early to help out. We were supposed to line those boxes up on the ground. It was supposed to
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be regimented, but too many of you showed up, and that was great. It was organic the way this
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happened. It was fun. It was all about the people who did this work yesterday. It was so terrific,
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It was windy through the day, but you know what?
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who are in charge here, they would say the same thing,
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to Elections Alberta. They actually cleaned the roads before we got there yesterday.
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They swept them, they watered them down, and everything was spick and span. They never
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did a damn thing other than come out and say, you might want to move a car here and there.
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And I'd like to thank the Edmonton police. There were a lot of people blocking the street. People
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kept saying, get off the street. But the police came along eventually and just blocked the street
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off so that we could have our spot. And they didn't say a thing from what I heard. Everything
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was peaceful and fun. Music was blaring there all day. Well done. Well done to the city of
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Edmonton. They were great hosts of this event yesterday. Now let's talk a little bit about
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some negativity here. The Centurion Project was not brought up at all yesterday. This has nothing
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to do with the independence movement that was in Edmonton yesterday. Nothing. But people are
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trying to make a thing of it here's Nahed Nenshi and if you don't know who this
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I'm gonna be nice here who this man is he heads up the NDP here in Alberta the
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separatist leaders had access to this data and they were using it to skew the
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results in the proposed separatist referendum they also had all the
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information they would need or anyone would need to forge signatures on their
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petition. Mr. Nenshi, you should never be allowed to sit in the seat as premier in this province.
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You do not respect the people who were there yesterday. This infuriated me when I heard about
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this yesterday. I was talking with Jeff Rath driving back from Edmonton, and this infuriated
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me when he said this. When I actually watched the video of you saying this this morning,
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it infuriated me. We ran you out of Calgary because we don't like you,
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and you should never be premier of this promise of province you do not respect the democratic
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process and jason kenney we ran you out of the province same thing to you this made me sick
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the people who sat out for the last four months deserve respect for what they did
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they never heard of the centurion project until about five or six days ago and they quit canvassing
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more than a week ago. There were no names off this so-called list on that petition. See,
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here's how it works, Mr. Nenshi, what you're not telling people, what you're trying to scare
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people about. And I don't like the fact that people's information was released to the public.
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I can agree with you on that. But the people who were out there signing people up had to
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apply to do that, provide their information, identification, had to get a badge with a number
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on it, had to be responsible for that badge, had to sign off on the people who signed on it
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when it came to their signatures on the petition, had to hand that back in. Those people did not
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get names off a list and put them on sheets of paper. I would assure you that vast majority,
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if not all of these signatures are legit. These people deserve respect. I respect them. They
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worked hard. Damn you for saying that about this. This is nothing but fear-mongering. You should
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never be in office or at least be in the Premier's office in this province, and you never will.
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Now, I don't want to talk much about the Centurion Project. I'm just going to end on this.
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If the allegations are true and this happened, it's quite obvious that people who did this were
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not thinking about you, if you're part of the independence movement and us, because we're a
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team in this. They were thinking about this and trying to advance their own interests and damn
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you for doing that. Shame on you for doing that. I don't think anybody said that, but if this is
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true, shame on you. We should not have to be dealing this right now. And again, this has got
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nothing to do with Stay Free Alberta, Mitch Sylvester, Jeff Rath, or any of us that worked
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for this together. This was a great day yesterday. This was a triumph yesterday. This has never been
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done before. And if you're part of this, congratulations. And I was talking to my friend
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Heather. You know, I was at, we were talking about the event we did at the Queensland Community
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Center. You remember when that happened? It was after that night, we had like 2,000 people show
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up. After that night, everybody started showing up to sign the petition. I was talking to her
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yesterday, and she was a coordinator of volunteers and canvassers. And she said she was proud that
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she was part of a couple of those boxes that went to Elections Alberta yesterday. Here's me signing
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the petition. I was so proud that night, January 10th, 2026, to sign the petition. Here's me,
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Heather, signing me up. That's when I signed the petition. I feel so proud of that.
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I was talking with Mitch Sylvester's wife yesterday.
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Leanne, if I get it wrong, I'm really sorry, but Leanne.
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I met so many people, got so many names yesterday.
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But she was sitting in Mitch's truck as they were about to leave yesterday.
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I said, you know, Leanne, everybody has a talent.
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Everybody has something that they can do that's special, I think.
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If you look inside yourself, you probably feel that way as well.
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And I said, Mitch Sylvester has a talent for rallying people.
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People wanted to do this for Mitch because Mitch,
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he's just got a special talent for rallying volunteers,
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That's why they wanted to meet him, and they trust him
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Mitch turned down this Centurion Project app or whatever it is
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because he had the instinct to realize it didn't smell right.
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But Mitch has a talent for volunteers and getting people to work hard.
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And they all did it for four months sitting on the side of the road.
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I was proud to be there yesterday, proud to be a part of it,
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A lot of hard work is coming up, a lot of hard work.
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May the 5th. I've got an interview with Keith Wilson coming up. I'm looking forward to talking
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to Keith. He's going to be a big part of this movement moving forward. So make sure you watch
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for that. That should be great. I'm sorry for not doing a story on this and not getting a lot of
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interviews, but I'm going to have those coming up on this channel over the next couple of days.
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I hope I didn't miss anything. I hope I didn't miss anything. But overall, an incredibly positive
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day yesterday that it didn't turn out the way I thought it was, but it was even better because
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like this movement, it was grassroots. It was organic. It was built from the ground up by the
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people who are part of Alberta independence. So proud to be part of it. So nice to meet you.
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Thank you for coming up and shaking my hand. I enjoyed every shake. I enjoyed every hug.
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And thank you to Mitch and Jeff and the people who put all this together. As I said off the top
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of this video. You know, a year ago, we didn't know who Mitch was. A year ago, we didn't know
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who Jeff was. A year ago, we didn't know Dennis Mowdry. And a lot of the characters you've got
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to know over the last 12 months, 11 months, we know them now. They've made history. And so have
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you. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope it wasn't too chatty. But it was a hell
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of a day yesterday. Well done. And I will see you in the next one.