John Bolton - May 05, 2026


An Extraordinary Day in Edmonton - Alberta Is Leaving

Hosted by
John Bolton
Mentioned
Mitch Sylvester Jeff Rath Dennis Modry Elections Alberta Stay Free Alberta Nahid Nenshi John Jason Levine Keith Ellison Bonneville Edmonton Albertan Heather Dave Thomas Lukasik Mike Schnell Jason Kenney Leanne Scott Gary
The number has been released... thank you canvassers This Is Canada On Carney - Sizzle Sizzle Sizzle

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

183.17

Word count

3,990

Sentence count

314

Harmful content

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 One year ago, most of us did not know the name of this man right here.
00:00:05.680 And in less than a year, he's brought us one step away from Alberta independence.
00:00:14.080 Might I introduce CEO, Stay Free Alberta, Mitch Sylvester.
00:00:25.100 Well, John, actually, I don't like those things.
00:00:30.000 Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
00:00:38.980 Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
00:00:39.440 Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
00:00:40.460 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.
00:00:43.540 you guys brought us here without you guys none of this happens so just understand
00:00:52.420 how important you are and how important you're going to be moving forward
00:00:57.540 you stood in the cold you got abused people yelled at you people yelled at us on the way here
00:01:05.940 we had this one guy with a mask on yelling at us on our way here so what we did with all of our
00:01:14.440 boxes is we took a picture of canvassers and we put a different picture in front of every one of
00:01:22.060 our boxes because this represents all of you hi it's john and welcome to the channel 326 a.m
00:01:34.200 Tuesday, May the 5th. I hope you're having a great Tuesday morning. I have the big blue
00:01:37.920 mug of coffee. I appreciate you being here very much. My voice is a little bit shot today
00:01:43.080 because I spoke so much yesterday, but it was worth every word from Edmonton at Elections
00:01:50.160 Alberta. I need to apologize to you to start off because I had every intention yesterday
00:01:57.480 of doing a story on what happened in Edmonton, but that never panned out. Here's some video
00:02:03.420 footage of me just before 5 o'clock yesterday morning before I drove up to Edmonton for the
00:02:09.220 petition submission by Mitch Sylvester and Stay Free Alberta. And I planned on going there and
00:02:15.080 doing interviews and doing a story, but that never transpired simply because I met so many of you.
00:02:21.160 So I guess it's your fault, but don't take that the wrong way. It was my pleasure to meet you
00:02:26.840 yesterday. Now, what I want to do is off the top there, you saw Mitch talking about the pictures
00:02:32.700 on the boxes. I've got some inside information on that that's pretty interesting, kind of an
00:02:37.020 Easter egg I want to tell you about in just a moment. And I can guarantee you that I have some
00:02:42.040 video footage that nobody else has from yesterday. I guarantee you, nobody has this video footage.
00:02:48.460 Very short, but historic coming up. Now, this is generally going to be a positive video.
00:02:54.620 There may be some negativity at the end. Who knows? That might be the best part.
00:02:59.000 So hold on for that.
00:03:01.700 But I did get up yesterday and I went to Edmonton early to try to help out.
00:03:05.840 I want to tell you about the boxes of petitions that Mitch talked about in that short bit of video.
00:03:12.220 There were pictures on all the boxes of canvassers.
00:03:17.600 All of them.
00:03:19.420 Last week, I was talking with somebody who's pretty well known in the independence movement.
00:03:24.000 His name will go unmentioned here.
00:03:25.640 and he commented on how when Thomas Lukasik delivered his petitions to Elections Alberta,
00:03:32.280 he had put a label from where the different petitions came from in Alberta.
00:03:37.640 He said it looked real professional.
00:03:38.940 And I said to him, you know what would be great?
00:03:42.640 What if we took pictures of canvassers and blew them up and put them on the sides of the boxes?
00:03:48.900 Because after all, this is about the canvassers and those people who sat out in the cold for four months.
00:03:54.580 and he said, that's a great idea. So I pitched the idea to Mitch Sylvester and that's what they
00:04:01.500 ended up doing. But here's the Easter egg. Those of you who watch this channel and follow here,
00:04:08.060 many of you submitted pictures to my independence calendar on the weekend
00:04:12.060 and you sent pictures of petition signing places over the last four months.
00:04:18.400 Those were the pictures that were on the boxes. Now here's what was supposed to happen. I made
00:04:24.260 a thumb drive with the pictures, and they were supposed to be printed in Calgary to get to
00:04:28.460 Bonneville, but that never happened. So Sunday night, I called my friends, and you know them.
00:04:33.120 They had a tough week, Mr. and Mrs. Albertan. They were cruising to Bonneville because they
00:04:38.040 escorted Mitch to Edmonton yesterday. I said, is there any way you can print them out and put them
00:04:43.720 on the boxes before they go to Edmonton? You bet. So I sent them to Mr. and Mrs. Albertan
00:04:49.880 through Facebook. And here are the pictures of them with other people putting them on the boxes
00:04:55.720 yesterday morning. But those were your pictures. It's funny. I met people yesterday who said,
00:05:01.580 I sent you pictures of us canvassing. I said, well, there's a good chance your picture is on
00:05:07.140 one of the boxes. So your picture may be on a box sitting at Elections Alberta right now.
00:05:11.920 Isn't that cool? And I think it was a great touch. I was really happy to be part of that. So
00:05:17.140 thanks to Mitch for doing that and bringing attention to that. Now, this didn't turn out
00:05:22.040 the way I expected yesterday. We were supposed to line the boxes up on the ground, but too many of
00:05:27.140 you showed up. They were afraid to get trampled and we'd have petitions all over the place.
00:05:32.300 So for the most part, other than the video you're seeing right now, the boxes stayed in a van,
00:05:38.280 but here's Mitch and everybody piling up those boxes with all those beautiful pictures, including
00:05:43.280 the picture of Mike Schnell signing the petition in Egypt. So that's the story behind that.
00:05:51.100 Now, Jason Levine, he tweeted out this right here. Let's say we got 301, 302,000 signatures on this.
00:06:01.240 It is official. And this is great. By the way, I'm on Jason's show Tuesday morning. So today,
00:06:07.300 as you're seeing this, if you're seeing it on Tuesday, I'm on his show at 730 this morning.
00:06:12.300 So you might want to watch that as well.
00:06:16.160 Now, the narrative on this is going to be that we didn't get as many as Forever Canada.
00:06:21.580 And I understand that.
00:06:22.620 But this is quite an accomplishment.
00:06:25.580 It's not people making excuses when they say those people were out on bad weather.
00:06:32.200 It's not making excuses when saying these people had to get identification.
00:06:36.880 They had to make sure that was verified before they signed the petition.
00:06:40.360 It's not making excuses for that.
00:06:42.700 And it's not making excuses when people say people are scared to sign things these days.
00:06:48.640 They're worried about getting on a list for many different reasons.
00:06:51.620 As a matter of fact, I went and sat down with three guys.
00:06:56.820 Hopefully I get their names right.
00:06:58.640 Leo, Scott, and Gary.
00:07:00.540 We went and had a coffee across the street at a coffee shop right across from Elections Alberta yesterday.
00:07:05.620 And I was talking with them and they were all canvassers and did a lot of canvassing.
00:07:08.980 And I said, I've heard from other people that some people didn't want to sign the petition because they were scared.
00:07:16.880 And I didn't even get the word scared out of my mouth.
00:07:19.340 And they all went, oh, yeah, we heard that a lot.
00:07:23.000 People were scared to sign the petition.
00:07:26.020 They didn't want to have their name there for numerous reasons.
00:07:30.020 They may have been scared about their employment.
00:07:32.560 Perhaps they were in a union.
00:07:33.940 They wanted to sign, but they did not. 0.93
00:07:36.460 So that is true.
00:07:38.160 There are a lot of people out there who didn't sign because they were scared.
00:07:41.860 So this number could have been higher for sure.
00:07:44.420 Now, the other thing that you'll hear is that people will not sign the petition,
00:07:49.220 but they will say yes on the referendum.
00:07:50.760 I believe that's true as well.
00:07:52.720 As we were walking to that coffee shop yesterday,
00:07:55.240 a guy pulled up in a big pickup truck going into Superstore across the street again
00:07:59.100 from Elections, Alberta.
00:08:01.000 He stopped right at the entrance, opened the door.
00:08:03.600 What are you guys doing here?
00:08:05.400 We're handing in the petitions to Elections Alberta.
00:08:08.340 Can I sign?
00:08:09.600 Sorry, too late. 0.98
00:08:11.180 Damn, but he didn't say damn. 0.98
00:08:15.340 Will you sign or you say yes on the referendum in October? 0.99
00:08:19.300 You're damn right I will, he said.
00:08:21.040 So a lot of people are out there who didn't sign the petition
00:08:23.460 that will say yes on the referendum in the fall.
00:08:28.520 And that's a good thing.
00:08:30.580 We heard a lot of that, but there's a lot of work to do.
00:08:32.560 Don't get me wrong.
00:08:33.240 There is a lot of work to do.
00:08:35.000 Now, here's some video of Mitch and Jeff Rath showing up yesterday.
00:08:39.700 Jeff initially wasn't going to be there.
00:08:41.320 I was glad he was there.
00:08:42.400 He's got a big part in this, of course.
00:08:45.220 And Mitch going through the crowd.
00:08:46.840 I just took some video.
00:08:48.000 This is just some video I took of them going through, people hugging Mitch.
00:08:51.400 They wanted to shake his hand.
00:08:52.640 A lot of people said that before he even showed up.
00:08:54.880 They wanted to meet Mitch.
00:08:56.180 They wanted to meet Jeff and shake their hands, and it was great.
00:08:58.520 So anyway, I'm looking at Mitch.
00:09:00.660 I don't know whether you can see it in this video.
00:09:02.120 I haven't really gone over it too much, but it looked like he had a bit of a tear in his eye.
00:09:06.040 And so did the big guy, Jeff Rath.
00:09:10.060 And I went up to Jeff afterward and shook his hand and congratulated him.
00:09:15.480 And I said, Jeff, he towers over me and I'm 6'2".
00:09:19.740 It's like the eclipse.
00:09:22.480 He blocks out the sun when you're standing beside the guy.
00:09:27.040 So anyway, I said, Jeff, it looked like you had a tear in your eye when you were walking through the crowd there.
00:09:30.880 and he looked at me with a big grin on his face.
00:09:33.460 He said, that was just the wind, John.
00:09:35.640 That was just the wind.
00:09:38.020 I think he had a tear in his eye.
00:09:40.120 So it was pretty exciting.
00:09:41.220 Now, I know I'm talking a lot here,
00:09:44.440 but I thought of somebody else yesterday
00:09:46.660 and I called him.
00:09:47.440 It was Dennis Modry.
00:09:48.440 Now, some of you may know Dennis.
00:09:49.940 He's been on my channel a number of times.
00:09:51.500 Dennis has been in this game for a long time.
00:09:54.500 I actually spoke to him in the car yesterday
00:09:56.440 because I left him a message yesterday.
00:09:58.240 I thought of him.
00:09:58.800 You might remember about a year ago,
00:10:00.700 Mitch and Jeff and Dennis standing up talking about this as things really started rolling about
00:10:05.820 a year ago with the independence movement. I called up Dennis and I said, your shadow hangs
00:10:10.120 over this, Dennis. Thank you so much for everything you've done. And I think you're
00:10:13.720 going to see Dennis a lot more. So thanks a lot to Dennis Modry for being there. He hasn't been
00:10:20.140 as involved lately, but he says he's getting back in the game and that's a good thing. We'll have
00:10:23.920 him back on the channel real soon. And I was so happy to talk to him and he's got some great
00:10:28.180 insight about what's coming up as well. Now, this is something that nobody else has.
00:10:37.960 I was lucky enough to introduce Mitch yesterday, and I was honored to do that.
00:10:42.780 He actually, if you saw off the top, he corrected me, as you would expect him to do. I said he was
00:10:48.920 the guy who brought us within one step of a referendum. He said, no, it's all of us that did
00:10:53.860 that. But I happened to be standing behind him when he signed off on the petition yesterday.
00:11:00.560 And that's the video you're watching right now, which nobody else has. Jeff Rath was standing
00:11:05.460 beside me when I did that. I said, is this okay to do Jeff? Oh yeah, yeah, you can do this. There's
00:11:10.040 nothing illegal about getting the signing of this. But it was absolutely amazing what happened
00:11:17.380 yesterday. I want to tell you this, and I said this to people yesterday, and I say this all the
00:11:23.060 time. I didn't get much video yesterday because people kept bothering me. Now, don't take that
00:11:29.880 the wrong way. I like being bothered when I go to these things. Don't take it the wrong way. People
00:11:34.640 kept coming up to me and they wanted to meet me and they wanted to shake my hand. I got so many
00:11:40.720 hugs yesterday. I was supposed to carry a box into Elections Alberta yesterday, but I was busy
00:11:46.540 talking to people. Now you need to understand this and I mean this wholeheartedly. I said to
00:11:54.100 people yesterday, I took a cue from my brother-in-law Dave a long time ago. He passed away a number of
00:12:00.700 years ago. When my brother-in-law Dave met you, you were the most important person in the room
00:12:07.120 to him. And I always remembered that. And when I meet you, I am genuinely interested in meeting
00:12:13.940 you. And trust me, I'm as interested in meeting you as you are in meeting me. I often take time
00:12:21.060 to talk to people, you know, at length about things when I meet them. And I talked a lot at
00:12:26.380 length yesterday with people. Everybody was so damn happy. I mean, look at the video footage
00:12:31.280 you're seeing on the screen right now. This is insane. I love it. Wow.
00:12:43.940 Wow! This is remarkable. What happened yesterday did not happen the way it was supposed to. I went
00:12:52.100 out early to help out. We were supposed to line those boxes up on the ground. It was supposed to
00:12:57.180 be regimented, but too many of you showed up, and that was great. It was organic the way this
00:13:04.140 happened. It was fun. It was all about the people who did this work yesterday. It was so terrific,
00:13:11.020 and I was so happy to be there.
00:13:13.220 A lot of driving yesterday, a lot of talking.
00:13:15.620 It started off cold and windy.
00:13:17.640 It was windy through the day, but you know what?
00:13:19.720 Those flags look great with that wind
00:13:22.160 just blasting through Elections Alberta
00:13:24.300 in Northwest Edmonton.
00:13:26.440 Now, there's been a lot of beating up
00:13:28.480 on Elections Alberta.
00:13:29.780 They haven't been fair in a number of ways
00:13:32.080 and I think if you talked to the people
00:13:34.380 who are in charge here, they would say the same thing,
00:13:36.520 but they never bothered us at all yesterday.
00:13:38.520 So, thank you.
00:13:41.020 to Elections Alberta. They actually cleaned the roads before we got there yesterday.
00:13:45.580 They swept them, they watered them down, and everything was spick and span. They never
00:13:50.060 did a damn thing other than come out and say, you might want to move a car here and there.
00:13:54.860 And I'd like to thank the Edmonton police. There were a lot of people blocking the street. People 0.97
00:14:00.180 kept saying, get off the street. But the police came along eventually and just blocked the street
00:14:05.080 off so that we could have our spot. And they didn't say a thing from what I heard. Everything
00:14:10.580 was peaceful and fun. Music was blaring there all day. Well done. Well done to the city of
00:14:17.140 Edmonton. They were great hosts of this event yesterday. Now let's talk a little bit about
00:14:22.520 some negativity here. The Centurion Project was not brought up at all yesterday. This has nothing
00:14:30.220 to do with the independence movement that was in Edmonton yesterday. Nothing. But people are
00:14:34.520 trying to make a thing of it here's Nahed Nenshi and if you don't know who this
00:14:40.180 I'm gonna be nice here who this man is he heads up the NDP here in Alberta the
00:14:46.380 separatist leaders had access to this data and they were using it to skew the
00:14:51.060 results in the proposed separatist referendum they also had all the
00:14:54.980 information they would need or anyone would need to forge signatures on their
00:14:59.420 petition. Mr. Nenshi, you should never be allowed to sit in the seat as premier in this province.
00:15:07.980 You do not respect the people who were there yesterday. This infuriated me when I heard about
00:15:13.300 this yesterday. I was talking with Jeff Rath driving back from Edmonton, and this infuriated
00:15:18.900 me when he said this. When I actually watched the video of you saying this this morning,
00:15:22.580 it infuriated me. We ran you out of Calgary because we don't like you,
00:15:27.860 and you should never be premier of this promise of province you do not respect the democratic
00:15:33.780 process and jason kenney we ran you out of the province same thing to you this made me sick
00:15:40.000 the people who sat out for the last four months deserve respect for what they did
00:15:47.780 they never heard of the centurion project until about five or six days ago and they quit canvassing
00:15:55.640 more than a week ago. There were no names off this so-called list on that petition. See,
00:16:02.380 here's how it works, Mr. Nenshi, what you're not telling people, what you're trying to scare
00:16:06.800 people about. And I don't like the fact that people's information was released to the public.
00:16:11.220 I can agree with you on that. But the people who were out there signing people up had to
00:16:17.760 apply to do that, provide their information, identification, had to get a badge with a number
00:16:23.040 on it, had to be responsible for that badge, had to sign off on the people who signed on it
00:16:28.540 when it came to their signatures on the petition, had to hand that back in. Those people did not
00:16:34.860 get names off a list and put them on sheets of paper. I would assure you that vast majority,
00:16:42.660 if not all of these signatures are legit. These people deserve respect. I respect them. They
00:16:48.080 worked hard. Damn you for saying that about this. This is nothing but fear-mongering. You should 1.00
00:16:53.400 never be in office or at least be in the Premier's office in this province, and you never will.
00:17:00.160 Now, I don't want to talk much about the Centurion Project. I'm just going to end on this.
00:17:09.060 If the allegations are true and this happened, it's quite obvious that people who did this were
00:17:13.600 not thinking about you, if you're part of the independence movement and us, because we're a
00:17:18.940 team in this. They were thinking about this and trying to advance their own interests and damn 0.99
00:17:23.940 you for doing that. Shame on you for doing that. I don't think anybody said that, but if this is 0.99
00:17:29.520 true, shame on you. We should not have to be dealing this right now. And again, this has got
00:17:38.400 nothing to do with Stay Free Alberta, Mitch Sylvester, Jeff Rath, or any of us that worked
00:17:43.260 for this together. This was a great day yesterday. This was a triumph yesterday. This has never been
00:17:51.760 done before. And if you're part of this, congratulations. And I was talking to my friend
00:17:55.620 Heather. You know, I was at, we were talking about the event we did at the Queensland Community
00:18:01.100 Center. You remember when that happened? It was after that night, we had like 2,000 people show
00:18:05.900 up. After that night, everybody started showing up to sign the petition. I was talking to her
00:18:10.740 yesterday, and she was a coordinator of volunteers and canvassers. And she said she was proud that
00:18:16.960 she was part of a couple of those boxes that went to Elections Alberta yesterday. Here's me signing
00:18:21.380 the petition. I was so proud that night, January 10th, 2026, to sign the petition. Here's me,
00:18:28.120 Heather, signing me up. That's when I signed the petition. I feel so proud of that.
00:18:32.980 I was talking with Mitch Sylvester's wife yesterday.
00:18:36.940 Leanne, if I get it wrong, I'm really sorry, but Leanne.
00:18:40.580 I believe it's Leanne.
00:18:41.640 Just met her for the first time.
00:18:43.080 I met so many people, got so many names yesterday.
00:18:45.260 If I got it wrong, my deepest apologies.
00:18:48.060 But she was sitting in Mitch's truck as they were about to leave yesterday.
00:18:52.100 And I had a nice discussion with her.
00:18:55.460 I said, you know, Leanne, everybody has a talent.
00:19:01.060 Everybody has something that they can do that's special, I think.
00:19:04.780 If you look inside yourself, you probably feel that way as well.
00:19:08.540 And I said, Mitch Sylvester has a talent for rallying people.
00:19:12.540 People wanted to do this for Mitch because Mitch,
00:19:15.540 he's just got a special talent for rallying volunteers,
00:19:19.080 and people really love him.
00:19:20.320 That's why they wanted to meet him, and they trust him
00:19:23.040 because Mitch is very trustworthy.
00:19:25.680 Mitch turned down this Centurion Project app or whatever it is
00:19:29.860 because he had the instinct to realize it didn't smell right.
00:19:33.260 But Mitch has a talent for volunteers and getting people to work hard.
00:19:37.920 And they all did it for four months sitting on the side of the road.
00:19:44.380 I was proud to be there yesterday, proud to be a part of it,
00:19:47.760 so happy to meet so many of you.
00:19:49.760 A lot of hard work is coming up, a lot of hard work.
00:19:52.640 It's going to be harder going on.
00:19:54.720 You're going to see attacks.
00:19:55.980 I had a bit of a moment on the weekend
00:20:01.460 a lot of people came up and said
00:20:02.960 John thanks for sticking in there
00:20:04.560 but I'm in it for the long run
00:20:06.380 I think we can win this thing
00:20:07.620 we need to be focused
00:20:08.840 we need to be strategic
00:20:12.000 we need to work hard
00:20:13.840 and the people that were there yesterday
00:20:15.580 after sitting in the snow for four months
00:20:17.420 are ready to work even harder
00:20:19.320 and I am as well
00:20:20.760 later on today at 11 o'clock this morning
00:20:23.960 if you're watching this on Tuesday
00:20:25.540 May the 5th. I've got an interview with Keith Wilson coming up. I'm looking forward to talking
00:20:29.780 to Keith. He's going to be a big part of this movement moving forward. So make sure you watch
00:20:36.000 for that. That should be great. I'm sorry for not doing a story on this and not getting a lot of
00:20:41.760 interviews, but I'm going to have those coming up on this channel over the next couple of days.
00:20:45.800 I hope I didn't miss anything. I hope I didn't miss anything. But overall, an incredibly positive
00:20:53.480 day yesterday that it didn't turn out the way I thought it was, but it was even better because
00:20:58.300 like this movement, it was grassroots. It was organic. It was built from the ground up by the
00:21:04.440 people who are part of Alberta independence. So proud to be part of it. So nice to meet you.
00:21:10.780 Thank you for coming up and shaking my hand. I enjoyed every shake. I enjoyed every hug.
00:21:16.820 And thank you to Mitch and Jeff and the people who put all this together. As I said off the top
00:21:21.340 of this video. You know, a year ago, we didn't know who Mitch was. A year ago, we didn't know
00:21:26.420 who Jeff was. A year ago, we didn't know Dennis Mowdry. And a lot of the characters you've got
00:21:30.900 to know over the last 12 months, 11 months, we know them now. They've made history. And so have
00:21:37.040 you. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope it wasn't too chatty. But it was a hell
00:21:42.680 of a day yesterday. Well done. And I will see you in the next one.