John Bolton - May 03, 2026


Independence Calendar Episode #22 - May 3rd, 2026

Topics
Elections Alberta event independence campaign optimism independence movement
Hosted by
John Bolton
Mentioned
Mitch Sylvester Bonneville Kicking Stay Free Alberta Elections Alberta Sylvester Sports Rick Bell Roadside Hearts Truck John
Off To The Whistle Stop To Support Let's Talk Alberta - With Mr. & Mrs. Al The number has been released... thank you canvassers

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

166.21

Word count

2,070

Sentence count

146


Summary

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

On this episode of the Independence Calendar for May 3rd, I interview Mitch Sylvester and talk about the events of the past 4 months and the event on May 4th. Also, I go back 11 months to the very first interview I did with Mitch on this channel back on June 14th, 2025.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the Independence Calendar for Sunday, May the 3rd.
00:00:08.420 Great to have you here today. This is episode number 22 today.
00:00:13.500 So 22 weeks in a row. I've been doing this on Sundays.
00:00:17.100 I appreciate you being here today.
00:00:18.740 And this one might be a little bit different than normal.
00:00:22.080 As you know, the petition signing ended last weekend.
00:00:25.640 So I received a lot of email from you this week, but not a lot of pictures.
00:00:29.760 A lot of you sending well wishes. I did a video the other day just about calling it quits. I
00:00:35.760 appreciate all your kind thoughts on that. But what I really want to focus on today is the good
00:00:41.400 times we've had over the last four months and the event that is happening tomorrow. And here it is
00:00:46.120 right here. Tomorrow is May 4th, Monday, May 4th, and Elections Alberta is the place where we will
00:00:52.420 be gathering as Mitch Sylvester and Stay Free Alberta drop off the signatures at Unit 100-11510
00:01:01.960 Kingsway Northwest in Edmonton. Now, there are a group of people leaving from different places.
00:01:07.660 They're leaving Bonneville, where Mitch is from. Sylvester Sports at 930 if you're in the Calgary
00:01:12.740 area. 730 at the iFly. Now, this is at Deerfoot City, 64th Avenue Deerfoot Trail in the Northeast.
00:01:20.740 They're leaving the Sports Hall of Fame in Red Deer at 9 o'clock and from Gibbons gathering at 50th Avenue, Highway 28 at 11 o'clock to usher in the people from Bonneville to Cruz to Elections Canada.
00:01:32.840 I am going to be there. I'm excited about being there.
00:01:36.060 So I hope to see you there tomorrow.
00:01:37.280 I think it'll be a pretty short ceremony, but it will certainly be significant when it comes to this movement.
00:01:45.020 Today, I'm going to have a bit of an interview.
00:01:47.380 And as I do normally on the Independence Calendar, I have an interview.
00:01:50.600 But I'm going to go back with this one.
00:01:52.200 Generally, I have an interview from the week before.
00:01:54.780 Here's my cat, Red.
00:01:56.340 If you watched my video this morning, you met Blue.
00:01:58.920 This is Red.
00:01:59.640 He's visiting me today.
00:02:00.940 The cat's all visiting me today.
00:02:03.000 But if you've watched the Independence Calendar over the last 21 weeks,
00:02:06.460 you've noticed I've had an interview at the end with somebody I spoke to the week before.
00:02:10.620 I'm going to go back 11 months for this one
00:02:12.700 to the very first time I spoke with Mitch Sylvester on this channel back on June 14th,
00:02:17.760 2025. It's interesting what we talked about. And, you know, it's the same message that we
00:02:23.980 have today that we had back then. So I'm going to have a little bit of that interview for you.
00:02:28.360 More than 18,000, I think, have watched it so far. I'll put a card at the end so you can watch that.
00:02:33.620 And on the calendar, one of the highlights over the last 21 weeks has been the pictures that you
00:02:38.620 have sent me about the independence movement. You've been sending me information at johnboltonab
00:02:43.600 at gmail.com for the last 21 weeks. And naturally this last week, I haven't received a lot of
00:02:50.400 pictures because the signature campaign is over. So what I did was I went into my files. I kept
00:02:56.960 them all folks. And I received videos and pictures and pictures of flags and pictures of cars with
00:03:02.980 flags. But I went back to try to find every picture I received with somebody at a petition
00:03:09.100 signing with a flag standing there with an elections, you know, sign here, sign. I've got
00:03:14.280 all those. I'm going to go through all of them. I think I found 71 or 72 of them. I'm going to
00:03:19.660 feature them today. Now, unlike other weeks, I would do a narration over them. I'm not going to
00:03:25.420 do that this time because it would be too hard to find out all the names for 71 different pictures
00:03:30.480 and where they are. So I'm going to show you those today as well. So that's coming up on the
00:03:34.940 independence calendar today. You know what? Why don't we do that right now? Thank you so much for
00:03:40.600 sending me all these great pictures of canvassers over the last 21 weeks. And I'm just going to tell
00:03:46.680 you this, keep this in mind, keep it in the back of your head. These pictures are going to be seen
00:03:52.400 somewhere else over the next 24 to 48 hours. Keep that in mind.
00:03:57.420 You stood on those stone cold govern steps, faith and freedom, loud and clear, folding chairs and town hall stages, spoke the truth they came to hear.
00:04:18.740 They stood in line for hours, braved the cold and wind
00:04:24.100 You talked about their children and the mess we're living in
00:04:29.420 From the back row of the hall to the front row of the fight
00:04:34.680 You said if they're gonna hear us, it's gonna be tonight
00:04:39.920 Let's go!
00:04:42.840 You came to sign on the freedom line
00:04:47.140 Ink on paper, hearts on fire
00:04:52.520 Every name like gasoline
00:04:56.220 Kicking up that rebel choir
00:04:58.940 Let me shake your hand
00:05:01.080 Thank you for your time
00:05:03.380 Fire the voices, strong and true
00:05:08.520 You stand up for Alberta
00:05:12.560 This one's for you
00:05:16.560 This one is for you
00:05:19.260 You stare down that lens in your studio light
00:05:26.140 Coffee gone cold, face pale from the night
00:05:31.180 From the dark hours to the evening show
00:05:36.520 You hit go live and refuse to let go
00:05:41.860 Slow roll down from Edmonton high beams
00:05:46.260 Cutting through
00:05:47.320 Northbound up from Calgary
00:05:50.540 Every small town waiting on you
00:05:53.120 Truck stop, coffee cooling
00:05:55.620 Between petitions in the rain
00:05:58.360 Car tables and gravel
00:06:01.040 Out shopping every name
00:06:03.720 You came to sign
00:06:05.280 On the freedom line
00:06:08.200 Ink on paper
00:06:11.060 Hearts on fire
00:06:13.500 Every name like gasoline
00:06:17.100 Kicking up that rebel choir
00:06:19.820 Let me shake your hand
00:06:21.980 Thank you for your time
00:06:24.300 Fire up voices
00:06:27.140 Strong and true
00:06:29.440 You stepped up for Alberta
00:06:33.440 This one's for you
00:06:37.460 This one's for you
00:06:40.140 You filled up clipboards
00:06:43.720 And sleet and rain
00:06:44.740 Roadside lots by the highway chain
00:06:47.480 And echoing halls where the floors
00:06:49.600 Were bare
00:06:50.200 You passed that pen like a whispered prayer
00:06:53.240 You came to sight
00:06:56.600 On the frozen ground
00:06:59.220 Heard your own
00:07:01.400 Heartbeat
00:07:02.420 Like a drum's low sound
00:07:04.640 Looked around
00:07:07.340 Saw you're not alone
00:07:09.900 Countless souls fighting for a home
00:07:15.260 You came to sign on the freedom line
00:07:20.940 You stepped up for Alberta
00:07:24.240 And I raised this one to you
00:07:28.300 This one's for you
00:07:30.960 Thanks again for all the terrific pictures over the last 21 weeks.
00:07:36.300 And as we move forward with the independence calendar,
00:07:38.500 it might change a little bit. I might take a week off to kind of rework it. Maybe I'll do that next
00:07:44.740 week, but we're going to do some different things as we move along in the next part of the campaign
00:07:49.640 to get Alberta independence. But thanks again for all the pictures. And if you've got anything
00:07:53.380 you want to send me, love to see it. Just send it to me at johnboltonab at gmail.com. Now let's go
00:08:02.000 back almost a year. In fact, it's about 11 months when I first spoke with Mitch Sylvester. Most of
00:08:08.560 us didn't know Mitch's name at this time last year. We certainly got to know it over the last
00:08:13.300 11 months. I talked to Mitch about the independence campaign. A lot has changed, but a lot of it is
00:08:19.620 the same. So here's a short segment of that interview with Mitch at this time, or in June
00:08:24.540 last year. Are you optimistic? How are you feeling about it right now? Well, I am very optimistic.
00:08:29.760 Actually, I'm surprised by the continuing response we're getting.
00:08:34.780 And the other thing that I'm very surprised about that makes me feel optimism as well is that the fact that 50 to 60 percent of the people in the room have never been to a political meeting before.
00:08:45.360 And the other thing I'm seeing is young moms with babies and young people.
00:08:50.120 You know, traditionally, our political meetings were people over 45, even over 55.
00:08:55.640 And now we're seeing a lot of 20 to 40-year-olds attending these meetings and very much in support.
00:09:01.580 So that all by itself makes me optimistic about this.
00:09:05.500 The message is very strong.
00:09:07.200 I mean, the message is very good.
00:09:08.580 And we don't believe for one second that it's even partisan.
00:09:11.600 We think that once people understand the numbers that, you know, both sides of the aisle are going to be very happy with the results of a yes vote and an Alberta referendum for independence.
00:09:21.400 You know, I've watched a few videos of you.
00:09:23.520 you describe Alberta as the richest real estate in the world. Financially, what would independence
00:09:29.260 mean to a typical Albertan, an average Albertan out there? Well, it's funny that you should
00:09:35.180 mention that. We're just publishing a business plan and we're going to probably have a press
00:09:38.280 conference next week about it. And it's very clear. What does it mean to the average Albertan?
00:09:42.980 It will probably be, I would suggest that the average Albertan can look for an immediate 20
00:09:48.400 to 25% increase in pay based on not having to pay federal tax. So say you're earning $70,000
00:09:55.600 a year, you know, you can be looking for $17,000 more disposable income based on the fact that we
00:10:02.380 don't have to pay all of these ridiculous taxes that we're being charged. You don't have to
00:10:07.680 convince me, Mitch. You know, I'm ready to sign. I'm ready to go. I really am. But what do you say
00:10:13.140 to people who are sort of sitting on the fence? I saw an article, Rick Bell wrote about it today
00:10:17.380 in the Calgary Sun. 58% of UCP voters in the province would vote to leave right now. 11% of
00:10:23.660 them are unsure. So, I mean, they had almost a million people vote for the UCP. That means,
00:10:28.440 you know, upwards of 500 to 600,000 people would vote right now to go. What do you say to people
00:10:32.680 who are kind of sitting on the fence? Maybe that 11% I mentioned. I think that once they understand
00:10:37.860 the numbers, I don't think they'll be sitting on the fence anymore. And the other thing that
00:10:40.560 they have to understand is this. We have a dysfunctional relationship with the federal
00:10:44.440 Government of Canada. And I mean, it's become clearer and clearer and clearer the further down
00:10:49.960 the road we go. Like they're literally sabotaging our industry. They're literally attacking our
00:10:55.300 people. They're literally overtaxing us. This is all conscious. And we make it very clear in each
00:11:00.520 of our presentations that this is actually what happens. This is not my words. These are the words
00:11:04.600 that we see coming from the Premier of Alberta all the time. She literally said that they're
00:11:08.340 sabotaging our industry. And we see it every day living where I live. I live in Bonneville, Alberta.
00:11:13.820 So Bonneville produces 35% of Alberta's oil.
00:11:17.700 And so we understand that every time that there's an attack on the oil patch, that we feel it directly.
00:11:24.420 And, you know, I mean, the stats are showing that they continue to go down the road of the carbon cap.
00:11:30.600 And, you know, there's stats that are saying that we'll lose 54,000 jobs as a consequence to that.
00:11:36.280 Now, nowhere else in Canada is any of this happening.
00:11:39.320 Like nowhere else in Canada, they're attacking industry.
00:11:41.520 Nowhere else in Canada would even dream of a talking industry, but it seems to be something that's been going on here for literally 120 years.
00:11:49.220 Thanks a lot to Mitch for being on the channel so many times over the last 11 months.
00:11:53.980 And we'll be sure to have him on again real soon to talk about the next process when it comes to getting to Alberta independence.
00:12:00.700 Tomorrow, actually, is the end of the first part of the independence movement, which was the signature campaign.
00:12:07.900 And we're going to be in Edmonton tomorrow.
00:12:09.960 Looking forward to seeing you there.
00:12:11.860 Drive safely and cheer a whole lot.
00:12:14.780 It's a day to celebrate.
00:12:16.760 Thanks a lot for being here.
00:12:18.140 I do appreciate it.
00:12:19.720 If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up.
00:12:22.220 Subscribe to the channel.
00:12:23.380 Ring the bell for notifications.
00:12:24.840 I'll see you on the next Independence Calendar.