Mitch Sylvestre： Petitions - Signatures and the other sides DIRTY tactics
Episode Stats
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Summary
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
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Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel 10 minutes after 10 Wednesday, January the 7th.
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I hope you're having a great day today here with the big blue mug of coffee.
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Of course, I wanted to touch base with Mitch Sylvester of the Alberta Prosperity Project,
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the CEO and Mitch, you know, I did a video earlier this morning with a grin on my face
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because I saw Jeff Rath signing a petition last night.
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I'll put the video underneath and post so people can see that.
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You sent me a video as well, which I'll show in just a moment, of a group of people out last night
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as things move along with the petition process.
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You know what, we've got lines that we have to be careful not to cross here.
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So I'm actually here on behalf of Stay Free Alberta this morning and not APP because, you know, I mean, this is...
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So in actual fact, we had twice the population of the town in a hall in rural Alberta.
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And everybody was excited about Alberta independence.
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Everybody, we signed hundreds, well over 100 people.
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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.
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We're going to have thousands of canvassers in the queue.
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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.
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An interactive map is going to show you where we're going to be on every day.
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But in the meantime, we're going to be in Didsbury tonight and bicycle tomorrow night.
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And so those are the next two events that we're going to be doing under Stay Free.
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You know, we're seeing a lot of fear-mongering online, which we expect.
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But, you know what, that's what we expect in the campaign.
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We understand that the corruption coming out of Ottawa is killing Alberta, basically.
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There were, I think, three events happening yesterday around the province.
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And he asked people if they were new to coming out to one of the meetings.
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And about half the people in the room raised their hands.
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I think all of a sudden we're finding that people realize this thing is, it's happening now.
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Because they're actually getting to sign a piece of paper.
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Water Valley, by the way, just a little bit north of Calgary.
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If they're watching on the rest of the planet, which is amazing.
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We're talking to people around the world right now.
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I actually signed up to volunteer to collect signatures.
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And I'm hoping I can set up here in Mackenzie Town so people can drop by and sign up.
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I'm going to go around my neighborhood as well, as I'm pretty excited about that.
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So as far as getting people to get these petitions, you have to go to stayfreealberta.com, sign
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up, and then it's going to take a little bit of time for them to get you badges and really
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So we have submitted a whole bunch of names to them.
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And actually, they've been very good with the ones we've done.
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So what we're trying to do is get as many canvassers as we can get out there and get
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If everybody signs up four or five people, we're going to be golden.
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Do I have to have identification with me to sign up?
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You have to be, first of all, an Alberta resident, Canadian citizen.
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And you have to absolutely have a physical address.
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So you have to have a physical address and ID to prove that you're a citizen.
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And something I wanted to bring up, and I remember quite clearly, was you asked people
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back in October, 25th of October, Alberta legislature, for a little bit of their time.
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And it wasn't a lot of time, Mitch, when it came to this process.
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Can you kind of tell us what you said back then again?
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That all started at the Prairie Rising Conference.
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That all started at the Prairie Rising Conference in Regina, where I met a gentleman by the name
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And actually, we're going to have him in Calgary on the 26th of January.
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And he was explaining that the currency of freedom is blood.
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And that's the way I actually live my life, is protecting freedom with blood from people
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And in order to protect our freedoms, that's the level to which we had to go.
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So what I suggested to people is we're in a position to do this legally.
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You know, the Constitution has allowed us a legal path to do this.
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If we want to leave Confederation, there's a path.
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We're going to say that the currency that we need for freedom is your time.
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So in actual fact, if we need to call you to come to the legislature to stand there and
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take up a spot and, you know, get the attention of the politicians, however, you know, for whatever
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cause that might be, or take a couple of days here and there and go sign your friends up
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and, you know, do that kind of work, that is going to be the currency that we're actually
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But it's not going to happen unless everybody participates.
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Like, you know, that's the beauty of a grassroots movement.
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The beauty of a grassroots movement is we can get a lot of boots on the ground, a lot
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We can take care of our own stuff if we actually commit some time.
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And I'm really excited to hear that you're, you know, become a canvasser, John, because
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We have a list of 240,000 plus people that have pledged to sign.
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If every one of those guys signs two or three people, that's going to be a big deal.
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Well, we used to, when I worked in radio, I had a boss of mine, he called it the drop
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If we reach one person, they know people and those people know people and it just goes
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You get one person and they spread the message and then it just goes out from there.
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I'm looking forward to doing this again, getting some signatures on this.
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And you mentioned this, alluded to this at the beginning of this interview, Mitch, talking
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about, you know, kind of misinformation and it's getting rather dark.
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And I want to just bring these things up to you.
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Earlier this week, there was the article in Global News saying that the Cree Nation was
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I've seen online how there are people involved with this Forever Canadian group saying that
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they want to sign up canvassers and not collect signatures or get signatures and not hand
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And then there's the article I talked about earlier this morning.
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It's almost the liberal playbook from the election last year, Mitch.
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And I know you don't want to get too political here.
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Thomas Lukasik basically saying or retweeting the Globe and Mail saying that there's gray money
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coming into Alberta to feed this movement, that Donald Trump will eventually, when we
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don't win the independence vote, will declare that we got more than 50 percent, move the
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military to the border and make us the 51st state.
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And I know you saw this stuff coming, but this even gone farther than I thought it would.
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Well, not me, actually, to tell you the honest to God truth.
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But in actual fact, you know what, based on their actions, they should be concerned on
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I really believe that they're responsible for what's happening here in Alberta.
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As little as six or eight months ago, there's a lot more people in Alberta that had a hope
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that, you know what, there was going to be a chance for a conservative government.
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I mean, we're basically, we're not basically, we are a conservative province for now.
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The whole thing is, is that they have a lot to lose here, somewhere in the neighborhood
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of, you know, I mean, being conservative, let's go from 14 to $40 billion a year, depending
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But, you know, even $14 billion a year, you know, over multiple years can build and add
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a lot of lifestyle to, for a lot of Albertans, you know, because it's money that's totally
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So, and not only that, I mean, they're doing a lot of really, what I consider to be really
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questionable, passing really questionable bills.
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C9, you know, making the Bible a hate symbol, you know, making association with a Christian
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Obviously, the Muslim churches of Canada unanimously are saying BLC9 should be scrapped in its entirety.
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So I'm just saying that there's so much stuff going on out there.
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And I want everybody to understand that they have a lot to lose.
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We talked to a thousand people at face-to-face last night, like really, between everybody
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And we really believe that that's going to be a formula for us to succeed because you
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All that nonsense that goes on online, what's true, what's not true.
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We talk about sort of the 30, 30, 30, or 33% all the way through, the people who won't
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The people in the middle who are sitting kind of one way or the other, focus on those people,
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Well, we do, and we're going to, and absolutely.
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But you know who we're going to focus on right away?
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So we're going to go out there and we're going to get as many of our people as we can
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get while talking to everybody while we're doing it.
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But we're going to go out there and get our people, our people that are signed a pledge
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And then we're going to see how that goes and, you know, how, where that's going to get
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There's going to be, we're going to make adjustments as we go.
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You know, we're going to counter that narrative.
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You know, CBC radio talked to me the other day and asked me, you know, about the Venezuela
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thing, and he said, oh my God, the Americans went in there and they took Venezuela.
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Are you afraid that that's going to happen in Alberta?
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Well, I said, what's stopping Trump from doing that right now?
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Like, why does he have to wait for a referendum?
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Why doesn't he just pop in and do what he did in Venezuela?
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If he absolutely wanted to do it, it'd be done.
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It seems to me that our, I mean, I live right by Coal Lake.
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You know, they still haven't changed that stuff.
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Our military shrunk to non-existence from what I understand.
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But I talk to soldiers on a regular basis because the CFP Coal Lake is like 30 minutes
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And, you know what, they're concerned with the state of the military.
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So what I'm getting from them, and this is secondhand information,
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is that we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves from anything like that.
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That's not going to change, you know, in case if and when we win a referendum.
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So people understand that if Trump wants to come into Canada with the American military,
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there's not very much that we're going to be able to do about it, I don't think.
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We're a direct, one of their largest trading partners.
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Although the one thing that I have seen come out of the State Department recently was their
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concern with the stuff that's going on with organized crime in Canada.
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And that's, you know, that's one of their big concerns.
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I don't know much about that or how to handle that, but that's one of their biggest concerns.
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And so, you know what, maybe moving forward, you know, our premier's building a police force
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And you know what, she's, you know, through this last part and through the negotiations
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with the tariffs has put more people on the border.
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So, you know what, maybe there's action actually happening and moving in that direction already.
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I want to go back to that Globe and Mail story and dispel another thing they put in there.
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Are you receiving a huge infusion of gray MAGA money into the independence movement here?
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Well, we're depending on every single person listening on this call to help us get through.
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Actually, with Stay Free Alberta, we have to actually start at zero.
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All the money that we've raised before for APP, we may be able to transfer some of that funding,
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But right now, you know, we're starting at zero and we're having to build infrastructure.
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So, if people would like to go donate whatever they can on stayfreealberta.com,
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Do you expect petitions at all of the meetings that are around the province right now?
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Well, we had one at our meeting last night here.
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But by next week, we'll have petitions at all the meetings.
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We'll have a whole bunch of canvassers there to sign them.
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So, I would say we've kind of been, you know, really, Elections Alberta has only been working
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for two days, you know, since we got our petition approved during the Christmas break, basically.
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So, they were only open for one day after that, and then two days since then.
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I believe we're going to have a lot of canvassers on the road by the end of the week.
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Spread the facts about what's going on here and don't listen to the misinformation because
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You know, John, that's what we've been doing for over a year.
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It's not hard to remember, and it's really not that hard to prove in actual facts.
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So, if people want to come out and listen, you know, have an open mind.
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We had more than half of the people at our meeting last night were new people as well.
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If you can go over there, stayfreealberta.com, you can volunteer your time.
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I'm sure that they'll need people for other things that are coming up.
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We've got that big event coming up January 26th at the BMO Centre here in Calgary,
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And, of course, you can always donate some money, and that really will come in handy
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because we're going to need some campaigns and things going on.