Juno News - May 25, 2026


Constitutional lawyer Keith Wilson breaks down Smith's referendum plan


Episode Stats


Length

1 minute

Words per minute

170.96

Word count

294

Sentence count

7


Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss Premier Rachel Notley's announcement that Alberta will hold a referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada. Is this the right way to proceed? Is this a good or bad thing?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Let's listen again to part of Premier Smith's announcement.
00:00:03.340 The question will be, should Alberta remain a province of Canada?
00:00:08.180 Or should the government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution
00:00:13.140 to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?
00:00:19.300 So Keith, what do you think of this? Is this the right way to proceed as far as Premier Smith goes?
00:00:27.320 Well, I think those of us who support Alberta independence would have preferred a simple up-down vote, you know, leave-stay.
00:00:36.240 Unfortunately, I think she's right that if she explained, the Premier did, that if she had done that,
00:00:43.760 it would have probably been a matter of weeks or a couple of months before the courts would have stopped it,
00:00:48.140 just like they stopped the two previous attempts.
00:00:50.880 So I think she was kind of boxed in.
00:00:53.040 And so one approach she had, and this is just me looking at things from the outside, is to have put the whole thing on hold and waited for the courts.
00:01:02.180 And I think that would have been very bad for the independence movement and what I'm hoping to achieve, which is Alberta becoming Achieving Nationhood.
00:01:08.820 um so i think she she uh came up with a reasonable compromise as much as it's not ideal because it
00:01:18.260 allows um those people who are convinced alberta should stay in canada to vote accordingly
00:01:25.280 and it allows those who think alberta should either leave to vote that way and also for those
00:01:33.240 who currently would vote to stay but are very concerned and unhappy with ottawa so it allows
00:01:37.820 them to say, you know what, let's actually hold a referendum on this so I can live with it.