John Bolton - January 07, 2026


Mitch Sylvestre： Petitions - Signatures and the other sides DIRTY tactics


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

194.58498

Word count

3,282

Sentence count

277

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I chat with Mitch Sylvester of the Alberta Prosperity Project, the CEO and founder of the Stay Free Alberta campaign. We talk about how the campaign is moving along and what you can do to get involved.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel 10 minutes after 10 Wednesday, January the 7th.
00:00:08.580 I hope you're having a great day today here with the big blue mug of coffee.
00:00:11.500 Of course, I wanted to touch base with Mitch Sylvester of the Alberta Prosperity Project,
00:00:17.200 the CEO and Mitch, you know, I did a video earlier this morning with a grin on my face
00:00:22.920 because I saw Jeff Rath signing a petition last night.
00:00:27.260 I'll put the video underneath and post so people can see that.
00:00:30.220 You sent me a video as well, which I'll show in just a moment, of a group of people out last night
00:00:35.140 as things move along with the petition process.
00:00:37.880 How are you feeling this morning?
00:00:39.960 Well, good.
00:00:40.540 You know what, we've got lines that we have to be careful not to cross here.
00:00:46.120 So I'm actually here on behalf of Stay Free Alberta this morning and not APP because, you know, I mean, this is...
00:00:55.260 So just saying.
00:00:57.300 And so, yeah, so it was a good event.
00:00:59.800 It was a Stay Free event last night.
00:01:02.380 We had 225 chairs and 350 people in the room.
00:01:07.060 And the community is...
00:01:08.940 I think there's 150 people that live here.
00:01:12.180 So in actual fact, we had twice the population of the town in a hall in rural Alberta.
00:01:19.420 And everybody was excited about Alberta independence.
00:01:22.780 Everybody, we signed hundreds, well over 100 people.
00:01:27.440 We only had one canvasser.
00:01:28.960 So she was very, very busy signing.
00:01:32.340 That's something that we're going to have.
00:01:35.920 We have canvasser badges being sent out now.
00:01:38.800 So we're actually, I think, in real truth, it's going to take us about a week to get this machine really, really rolling now.
00:01:47.940 We're going to have thousands of canvassers in the queue.
00:01:51.160 And, you know, to get them, just to get to places where you can sign, you'll have to go to the stayfreealberta.com website.
00:02:00.520 That's all going to be up with maps.
00:02:02.300 An interactive map is going to show you where we're going to be on every day.
00:02:06.220 But in the meantime, we're going to be in Didsbury tonight and bicycle tomorrow night.
00:02:12.800 And so those are the next two events that we're going to be doing under Stay Free.
00:02:17.520 And so, you know, I'm excited about it.
00:02:20.020 People are excited about it.
00:02:22.260 You know, we're seeing a lot of fear-mongering online, which we expect.
00:02:27.060 You know, a lot of it's nonsense.
00:02:28.560 But, you know what, that's what we expect in the campaign.
00:02:32.040 We're going to counter with the truth.
00:02:34.560 We believe that our message is clear.
00:02:36.800 Our message is strong.
00:02:38.140 We understand that the corruption coming out of Ottawa is killing Alberta, basically.
00:02:43.380 And we want to get away from that.
00:02:45.300 Yeah, I was talking to somebody else.
00:02:46.580 There were, I think, three events happening yesterday around the province.
00:02:50.700 And I think Chris Scott was at one of them.
00:02:52.880 And he asked people if they were new to coming out to one of the meetings.
00:02:56.400 And about half the people in the room raised their hands.
00:02:58.960 I think all of a sudden we're finding that people realize this thing is, it's happening now.
00:03:03.840 Because they're actually getting to sign a piece of paper.
00:03:06.780 Yeah.
00:03:07.020 And the same thing in Water Valley.
00:03:09.340 Yeah.
00:03:10.160 Water Valley, by the way.
00:03:11.060 We had half new people.
00:03:12.300 Yeah.
00:03:12.620 Water Valley, by the way, just a little bit north of Calgary.
00:03:14.920 People don't know where that is.
00:03:16.860 If they're watching on the rest of the planet, which is amazing.
00:03:20.380 We're talking to people around the world right now.
00:03:22.480 So you had a great crowd last night.
00:03:24.240 I actually signed up to volunteer to collect signatures.
00:03:26.980 So I'm excited about that.
00:03:28.080 I'll probably find out about that soon enough.
00:03:30.240 And I'm hoping I can set up here in Mackenzie Town so people can drop by and sign up.
00:03:35.420 I'm going to go around my neighborhood as well, as I'm pretty excited about that.
00:03:39.600 It's looking really good right now.
00:03:41.140 So as far as getting people to get these petitions, you have to go to stayfreealberta.com, sign
00:03:49.460 up, and then it's going to take a little bit of time for them to get you badges and really
00:03:53.240 the credentials you need.
00:03:54.200 Is that correct?
00:03:55.420 So Elections Alberta has to approve you.
00:03:57.380 Okay.
00:03:58.080 So that's one of the holdups that we've had.
00:04:00.700 So we have submitted a whole bunch of names to them.
00:04:03.480 And actually, they've been very good with the ones we've done.
00:04:05.860 So they've been sending them out quickly.
00:04:07.280 So what we're trying to do is get as many canvassers as we can get out there and get
00:04:12.800 them to sign the people that they know.
00:04:15.200 If everybody signs up four or five people, we're going to be golden.
00:04:19.060 Do I have to have identification with me to sign up?
00:04:21.780 Like if I were, you know, voting?
00:04:24.800 You have to be, first of all, an Alberta resident, Canadian citizen.
00:04:30.220 And you have to absolutely have a physical address.
00:04:34.620 And that's what you need to have.
00:04:38.340 So you've got to have a physical address.
00:04:41.700 A box number doesn't work.
00:04:43.260 So you have to have a physical address and ID to prove that you're a citizen.
00:04:49.160 Stayfreealberta.com.
00:04:49.720 You have to be over 18. 0.96
00:04:50.900 Yeah.
00:04:51.220 Yeah.
00:04:51.460 And you go there if you want to volunteer.
00:04:53.740 You can make a donation as well.
00:04:55.260 And something I wanted to bring up, and I remember quite clearly, was you asked people
00:05:01.200 back in October, 25th of October, Alberta legislature, for a little bit of their time.
00:05:07.500 And it wasn't a lot of time, Mitch, when it came to this process.
00:05:11.180 Can you kind of tell us what you said back then again?
00:05:16.280 Did you lose me?
00:05:17.160 Well, you know what?
00:05:18.500 That all started at the Prairie Rising Conference.
00:05:21.100 That all started at the Prairie Rising Conference in Regina, where I met a gentleman by the name
00:05:25.520 of Jim Sinclair.
00:05:26.520 And Jim was actually a soldier.
00:05:29.380 He fought in wars for Canada.
00:05:31.440 And actually, we're going to have him in Calgary on the 26th of January.
00:05:34.800 And he was explaining that the currency of freedom is blood.
00:05:40.320 And he said, I saw that live.
00:05:42.660 I saw that in person.
00:05:43.500 And that's the way I actually live my life, is protecting freedom with blood from people
00:05:48.800 that people were getting shot and shot at.
00:05:51.800 And in order to protect our freedoms, that's the level to which we had to go.
00:05:57.200 So what I suggested to people is we're in a position to do this legally.
00:06:00.560 You know, the Constitution has allowed us a legal path to do this.
00:06:05.820 If we want to leave Confederation, there's a path.
00:06:08.960 So what I need from everybody is time.
00:06:11.680 We're going to say that the currency that we need for freedom is your time.
00:06:16.340 So in actual fact, if we need to call you to come to the legislature to stand there and
00:06:21.860 take up a spot and, you know, get the attention of the politicians, however, you know, for whatever
00:06:26.560 cause that might be, or take a couple of days here and there and go sign your friends up
00:06:30.960 and, you know, do that kind of work, that is going to be the currency that we're actually
00:06:35.940 going to need to succeed.
00:06:37.540 And I really believe we can succeed here.
00:06:39.620 But it's not going to happen unless everybody participates.
00:06:43.500 Right.
00:06:43.900 Like, you know, that's the beauty of a grassroots movement.
00:06:46.920 The beauty of a grassroots movement is we can get a lot of boots on the ground, a lot
00:06:50.040 of people moving.
00:06:50.940 And that's our strength.
00:06:52.060 Our strength is in numbers.
00:06:53.660 Our strength is in numbers.
00:06:54.500 We can take care of our own backyard.
00:06:56.520 We can take care of our own stuff if we actually commit some time.
00:07:00.120 And I'm really excited to hear that you're, you know, become a canvasser, John, because
00:07:03.400 you get the people that you know.
00:07:05.340 Yeah.
00:07:05.940 And you know what?
00:07:06.800 Let's just, let's just go by extension here.
00:07:09.300 We have a list of 240,000 plus people that have pledged to sign.
00:07:15.680 If every one of those guys signs two or three people, that's going to be a big deal.
00:07:21.700 Well, we used to, when I worked in radio, I had a boss of mine, he called it the drop
00:07:25.940 in the bucket sort of theory.
00:07:28.140 If we reach one person, they know people and those people know people and it just goes
00:07:33.680 out from there.
00:07:34.580 So that's the thing.
00:07:35.320 You get one person and they spread the message and then it just goes out from there.
00:07:38.520 So that's what you've got to think about.
00:07:39.700 I'm looking forward to doing this again, getting some signatures on this.
00:07:44.260 So it's really exciting right now.
00:07:45.660 I did want to bring this up.
00:07:46.740 And you mentioned this, alluded to this at the beginning of this interview, Mitch, talking
00:07:49.860 about, you know, kind of misinformation and it's getting rather dark.
00:07:54.920 And I want to just bring these things up to you.
00:07:57.200 Earlier this week, there was the article in Global News saying that the Cree Nation was
00:08:04.060 blocking Alberta separatists.
00:08:06.960 That has been refuted.
00:08:08.200 They've changed their headline.
00:08:09.400 Now they're moving to block.
00:08:10.960 I've seen online how there are people involved with this Forever Canadian group saying that
00:08:15.940 they want to sign up canvassers and not collect signatures or get signatures and not hand
00:08:20.480 them in.
00:08:21.500 And then there's the article I talked about earlier this morning.
00:08:24.000 It's almost a campaign of fear.
00:08:25.560 It's almost the liberal playbook from the election last year, Mitch.
00:08:28.360 And I know you don't want to get too political here.
00:08:30.380 I know you don't.
00:08:31.540 Thomas Lukasik basically saying or retweeting the Globe and Mail saying that there's gray money
00:08:38.580 coming into Alberta to feed this movement, that Donald Trump will eventually, when we
00:08:43.340 don't win the independence vote, will declare that we got more than 50 percent, move the
00:08:49.360 military to the border and make us the 51st state.
00:08:51.880 I mean, this is getting crazy, Mitch.
00:08:53.640 And I know you saw this stuff coming, but this even gone farther than I thought it would.
00:08:58.620 Well, not me, actually, to tell you the honest to God truth.
00:09:02.020 I'm actually waiting for the rest of it.
00:09:04.620 But in actual fact, you know what, based on their actions, they should be concerned on
00:09:10.460 what's going to happen here in Alberta.
00:09:12.580 I really believe that they're responsible for what's happening here in Alberta.
00:09:17.040 As little as six or eight months ago, there's a lot more people in Alberta that had a hope
00:09:21.020 that, you know what, there was going to be a chance for a conservative government.
00:09:24.580 I mean, we're basically, we're not basically, we are a conservative province for now.
00:09:29.220 They're actively working to change that.
00:09:31.180 And we're aware of that as well.
00:09:32.160 The whole thing is, is that they have a lot to lose here, somewhere in the neighborhood
00:09:37.780 of, you know, I mean, being conservative, let's go from 14 to $40 billion a year, depending
00:09:43.900 on who's talking about it.
00:09:45.020 But, you know, even $14 billion a year, you know, over multiple years can build and add
00:09:51.660 a lot of lifestyle to, for a lot of Albertans, you know, because it's money that's totally
00:09:57.000 lost.
00:09:57.740 So, and not only that, I mean, they're doing a lot of really, what I consider to be really
00:10:04.600 questionable, passing really questionable bills.
00:10:07.100 C9, you know, making the Bible a hate symbol, you know, making association with a Christian 1.00
00:10:12.460 group of crime, possibly.
00:10:14.040 Obviously, the Muslim churches of Canada unanimously are saying BLC9 should be scrapped in its entirety.
00:10:21.660 So I'm just saying that there's so much stuff going on out there.
00:10:25.080 And I want everybody to understand that they have a lot to lose.
00:10:27.900 They're going to fight back.
00:10:29.040 We totally understand that.
00:10:30.600 But you know what?
00:10:31.620 That's on mainstream media.
00:10:33.560 We're a grassroots organization.
00:10:35.320 We go to town halls.
00:10:36.160 We talk to people every night.
00:10:37.260 We talked to a thousand people at face-to-face last night, like really, between everybody
00:10:42.440 that we had out on the road.
00:10:43.820 We're talking to people face-to-face.
00:10:46.700 We're talking to people where they live.
00:10:48.260 We're going to them.
00:10:49.560 And we really believe that that's going to be a formula for us to succeed because you
00:10:54.240 know what?
00:10:54.520 All that nonsense that goes on online, what's true, what's not true.
00:10:58.160 Well, we don't have to worry about that.
00:10:59.380 People can ask questions.
00:11:01.080 We'll answer the questions.
00:11:01.980 Don't let them make up their minds.
00:11:03.660 That's what we're doing.
00:11:04.300 And focus on that, those people in the middle.
00:11:07.740 We talk about sort of the 30, 30, 30, or 33% all the way through, the people who won't 0.77
00:11:12.960 ever sign or ever vote yes.
00:11:15.520 There's the people who will vote yes for sure.
00:11:17.740 The people in the middle who are sitting kind of one way or the other, focus on those people,
00:11:22.260 I suggest, right?
00:11:23.820 Well, we do, and we're going to, and absolutely.
00:11:26.400 But you know who we're going to focus on right away?
00:11:28.520 Yeah.
00:11:29.020 Our people.
00:11:30.120 The people that we know are our people.
00:11:33.520 So we're going to go out there and we're going to get as many of our people as we can
00:11:37.140 get while talking to everybody while we're doing it.
00:11:39.860 But we're going to go out there and get our people, our people that are signed a pledge
00:11:43.100 or people that, and the people that they know.
00:11:46.060 And then we're going to see how that goes and, you know, how, where that's going to get
00:11:49.920 us.
00:11:50.200 And, you know, I mean, we're in a campaign.
00:11:52.260 There's going to be, we're going to make adjustments as we go.
00:11:55.760 You know, we're going to counter that narrative.
00:11:57.800 You know, CBC radio talked to me the other day and asked me, you know, about the Venezuela
00:12:01.840 thing, and he said, oh my God, the Americans went in there and they took Venezuela.
00:12:05.900 Are you afraid that that's going to happen in Alberta?
00:12:08.620 Well, I said, what's stopping Trump from doing that right now?
00:12:12.800 Like, why does he have to wait for a referendum?
00:12:14.860 Why doesn't he just pop in and do what he did in Venezuela?
00:12:18.660 What's going to stop him from doing it?
00:12:20.680 If he absolutely wanted to do it, it'd be done.
00:12:22.840 Like, really?
00:12:25.340 I mean, I don't know.
00:12:27.200 It seems to me that our, I mean, I live right by Coal Lake.
00:12:30.020 Our jets are like 40 years old.
00:12:32.300 You know, they still haven't changed that stuff.
00:12:34.780 They're not spending any money on military.
00:12:36.800 Our military shrunk to non-existence from what I understand.
00:12:40.460 And I don't know that.
00:12:41.780 But I talk to soldiers on a regular basis because the CFP Coal Lake is like 30 minutes
00:12:47.120 from where I live.
00:12:48.260 And, you know what, they're concerned with the state of the military.
00:12:53.120 So what I'm getting from them, and this is secondhand information,
00:12:56.440 is that we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves from anything like that.
00:13:01.160 So right now we're in that position.
00:13:02.620 That's not going to change, you know, in case if and when we win a referendum.
00:13:08.180 Yeah.
00:13:08.540 That's always been the case.
00:13:10.760 That's not changing anything.
00:13:12.520 So people understand that if Trump wants to come into Canada with the American military,
00:13:17.520 there's not very much that we're going to be able to do about it, I don't think.
00:13:21.480 Yeah.
00:13:21.740 And I have my doubts.
00:13:24.340 That's going to happen.
00:13:26.560 I do.
00:13:27.200 I have my doubts.
00:13:27.720 I absolutely don't think that would happen.
00:13:29.360 Yeah.
00:13:29.860 Yeah.
00:13:30.460 And that's the thing.
00:13:31.720 We're a direct, one of their largest trading partners.
00:13:34.540 Yeah.
00:13:34.940 And, you know, we're right here.
00:13:37.280 We're accessible.
00:13:38.280 We're willing to do business with them.
00:13:40.340 And, you know what, I don't see any problems.
00:13:42.080 Although the one thing that I have seen come out of the State Department recently was their
00:13:48.080 concern with the stuff that's going on with organized crime in Canada.
00:13:51.940 And that's, you know, that's one of their big concerns.
00:13:55.060 And, you know what, that's out of my purview.
00:13:57.560 I don't know much about that or how to handle that, but that's one of their biggest concerns.
00:14:01.580 And so, you know what, maybe moving forward, you know, our premier's building a police force
00:14:07.220 in Alberta, a police force.
00:14:08.640 And you know what, she's, you know, through this last part and through the negotiations
00:14:12.640 with the tariffs has put more people on the border.
00:14:14.840 So, you know what, maybe there's action actually happening and moving in that direction already.
00:14:18.720 Let me ask you this.
00:14:20.040 I want to go back to that Globe and Mail story and dispel another thing they put in there.
00:14:25.280 Are you receiving a huge infusion of gray MAGA money into the independence movement here?
00:14:30.120 Well, we're depending on every single person listening on this call to help us get through.
00:14:36.260 Actually, with Stay Free Alberta, we have to actually start at zero.
00:14:41.240 All the money that we've raised before for APP, we may be able to transfer some of that funding,
00:14:47.700 you know, through a third party.
00:14:49.940 But right now, you know, we're starting at zero and we're having to build infrastructure.
00:14:54.100 We need help.
00:14:54.920 So, if people would like to go donate whatever they can on stayfreealberta.com,
00:15:01.020 that would be greatly appreciated.
00:15:02.560 Okay.
00:15:02.880 Do you expect petitions at all of the meetings that are around the province right now?
00:15:07.820 Well, we had one at our meeting last night here.
00:15:11.940 Yeah.
00:15:12.040 And hopefully, we'll have petitioners there.
00:15:14.360 But by next week, we'll have petitions at all the meetings.
00:15:17.800 We'll have a whole bunch of canvassers there to sign them. 0.89
00:15:20.960 So, I would say we've kind of been, you know, really, Elections Alberta has only been working
00:15:25.200 for two days, you know, since we got our petition approved during the Christmas break, basically.
00:15:30.560 Right.
00:15:30.720 So, they were only open for one day after that, and then two days since then.
00:15:35.040 So, we'll catch up.
00:15:36.320 I believe we're going to have a lot of canvassers on the road by the end of the week.
00:15:39.360 Okay.
00:15:39.840 And Mitch, thanks very much.
00:15:41.140 Exciting times indeed.
00:15:43.460 Spread the facts about what's going on here and don't listen to the misinformation because
00:15:48.980 a lot of it's out there right now.
00:15:50.120 And stay positive, I guess, right?
00:15:51.960 You know, John, that's what we've been doing for over a year.
00:15:55.160 Yeah.
00:15:55.680 Our message is very simple.
00:15:57.060 Our message is the truth.
00:15:58.040 It's not hard to remember, and it's really not that hard to prove in actual facts.
00:16:04.060 So, if people want to come out and listen, you know, have an open mind.
00:16:07.640 We had more than half of the people at our meeting last night were new people as well.
00:16:11.400 Good stuff.
00:16:12.180 Mitch, Sylvester from Stay Free Alberta.
00:16:15.320 I love it.
00:16:16.520 If you can go over there, stayfreealberta.com, you can volunteer your time.
00:16:21.200 I'm sure that they'll need people for other things that are coming up.
00:16:24.020 We've got that big event coming up January 26th at the BMO Centre here in Calgary,
00:16:27.480 expecting 6,000, 6,500 people, Mitch.
00:16:30.200 That's going to be exciting.
00:16:31.740 And, of course, you can always donate some money, and that really will come in handy
00:16:34.660 because we're going to need some campaigns and things going on.
00:16:37.420 And as Mitch said, we're starting at zero.
00:16:39.220 Thank you so much.
00:16:39.980 I appreciate it.
00:16:41.700 Thank you, John.
00:16:42.460 Take care.
00:16:43.180 Mitch Sylvester from Stay Free Alberta.
00:16:45.440 Thanks for watching.
00:16:46.360 If you like the video, give it a thumbs up.
00:16:48.100 Subscribe to the channel.
00:16:49.220 Ring the bell for notifications.
00:16:50.260 I'll see you in the next one.