00:03:21.320But it's also a very rural movement, a lot of ranchers.
00:03:25.600The strong support was in places like Sundry, for instance,
00:03:30.200where in some places you had a little over 50% of the people
00:03:34.640uh, rooting for, uh, departure of some kind, separation, independence. It's the people in
00:03:42.020the cities that you've got to convince. Um, how do you do that? I think we need more depth.
00:03:49.140Uh, some of it's still just been reactionary. People upset over longstanding grievances.
00:03:53.960They understand that, but having the longer conversation, we had to, it was difficult as
00:03:59.580a campaigner. You know, there's a lot of questions. Well, how will you deal with this? How will you
00:04:03.200deal with that? How do you deal with border crossings? How do you deal with treaties? And
00:04:05.860they're valid questions. And we had answers for them. But these are the things that it's actually,
00:04:10.960I think, going to take a growing campaign over time to answer those, have them fully filled out.
00:04:15.300You know, Quebec, they built a lot of things and documents and did a lot of studies to show
00:04:19.840this is how we'll replace judges in a new system. This is how the penitentiary system would work in
00:04:25.500a new nation. We don't have that depth yet. And I think also we don't have central leadership.
00:04:31.660You know, we had a number of different voices speaking, and when you get mixed messaging, it makes it difficult for people to feel they want to trust their vote on something that important towards it.
00:04:40.860So I think the movement has established itself well, but it needs to refine itself now and build a more comprehensive package that's going to take some years.
00:04:50.040It's a long game, but I believe in planning to present to Albertans again some years down the road and having more depth.
00:04:56.800And that's how you reach some of those urban voters who I think are still supportive, but they're not ready to make that leap quite yet.
00:05:03.240Well, what about what people like Jason Kenney are saying, which is you lost and give up.
00:05:09.920They want you to forget, drop the whole idea and move forward with the liberal government in Ottawa, with the provincial government and, you know, just leave behind this whole notion of an independent Alberta.
00:05:27.560Well, I could offer the same, you know, Mr. Kenny, you lost, you're not a leader anymore. Maybe you should drop those notions of being one in the future and give it up. You know, it's done deal, right? You don't make a second campaign. You don't try again. You don't bring a new message. It's just one and done. That's not the way things work. You know, the NDP lost the last provincial election in Alberta. They didn't fold up tent and leave. They stayed as a party and they're working on their messaging to try and win the next one.
00:05:56.040Likewise with us. I mean, I think it would be unreasonable. Some people are even pushing for
00:05:59.960that saying, well, we still got to push for the petitioned question to get on a ballot
00:06:03.960and hold another referendum. I don't think that would be wise. I think that would be
00:06:08.680disrespecting the voters. They did kind of make it clear. They weren't even ready to embrace
00:06:12.780in a majority sense, the soft question. Diving right into the hard question, a binding one would
00:06:18.200be, I think, ridiculous at this point, but it doesn't mean we stopped pushing forward. It just
00:06:23.580means we evaluate how we've been doing it and we plan to win later on down the road well what about
00:06:29.120the idea that you can't win as long as daniel smith an avowed federalist is your premier and
00:06:35.180leader of the ucp i mean if you listen to people like jeff rath uh there's no point moving forward
00:06:42.900unless you get rid of her is that your next move is essentially to try and elect a leader because
00:06:49.800of course the majority of people in the ucp as i understand it support independence or at least
00:06:56.360option two and so presumably they've got the numbers members of that party have the numbers
00:07:04.200to make a replacement at the top with somebody who is uh on their side of the independence
00:07:13.320debate what do you think well i i think it's not being very politically wise
00:07:17.240If we bring in a party civil war in an election year, which is what this is coming into now, that's going to take a lot of energy and time and so on.
00:11:51.400Well, yeah, and I think it went a bit partisan, but I think if it was just that question alone with people, that would be one of those 80-20 issues.
00:11:59.580I think most people, even the most on the left, understand it's not unreasonable to ask for proper documentation for somebody to cast a ballot.
00:12:07.680Somebody needs to prove they're legally able to do so.
00:12:10.820That's a no-brainer issue she can take on and throw as a win in her pocket.
00:12:15.120You can get that through the legislature in a couple of weeks, move on with that.
00:13:09.640And then it didn't happen again until the 90s where you had Parisel.
00:13:12.920But in each case, you had at least somebody up front making the case for independence who was a politician and who was able to reach crowds and speak through the media and just be a leader and a representative for the PQ.
00:13:31.480And of course, they've recently won an election, so presumably it's going to happen again.
00:13:36.140But in the case of Alberta, you don't have that.
00:13:40.560you don't have the one person who, like a Ralph Klein type, who, as far as I know,
00:13:46.840was a Federalist, I don't know any more than that in terms of his views about
00:13:51.540independence, but is there somebody out there in the wings who could be that
00:13:58.020person, be that guy or gal who is obviously in favor of independence and yet
00:14:03.980has the charismatic appeal to make a case forcefully and dynamically so that
00:14:10.560people across the province, even in Edmonton and, you know, other cities would say, yeah,
00:14:16.900I could follow this guy. I really believe this, this gal, you know, is that person there somewhere
00:14:22.960and maybe just hasn't been discovered yet? It could be. I think that also that Keith
00:14:28.240Wilson made a very good showing of himself in this. And you got to remember, he's relatively
00:14:32.520new to the public scene. So over a bit more time, if that's the path he wants to go as a sole
00:14:38.900representative, he might evolve into that person where you can just get consistent, smart, level
00:14:44.000headed messaging, which I think is what people want to see. And, you know, it's different when
00:14:48.180you get five different voices giving five opinions and so on. We need something that's a little
00:14:52.540centralized. And if it's not Keith, then perhaps somebody is in the wings we haven't identified yet
00:14:56.940who's going to come forward. But we do need that. That's another area that has been lacking. We
00:15:00.480haven't had that, that Rene Levesque or Jacques Perizot or Lucien Bouchard. And it doesn't mean