Juno News - Early voting EXPLODES in Alberta’s separation referendum

00:00:00.000 Day one was huge in terms of turnout in the Alberta referendum.

00:00:09.760 It drew almost 175,000 ballots in the advanced polls.

00:00:14.920 Elections Alberta says 174,532 people voted on the first of five advanced polling days

00:00:22.460 ahead of the October 19th vote.

00:00:25.320 That's a bigger number than those who voted in the advanced poll ahead of the provincial

00:00:29.400 election in 2023. The most important of the questions is around whether Albertans want to

00:00:37.220 move forward with a second binding referendum on independence. And both the Remain side and

00:00:44.280 the pro-independence forces are busy working hard to get their vote out. Here's what Premier

00:00:50.760 Danielle Smith had to say about it. Hi Alberta, advanced polls are now open and I wanted to take

00:00:56.320 a few minutes to explain why I voted option one to remain in Canada and why I'm voting yes to the

00:01:01.620 rest. I believe we're at a turning point. In my view, now is not the time to give up hope in our

00:01:06.460 country. Not when we have fought so long and come so far. I know for many years, Albertans have felt

00:01:12.120 ignored, dismissed and taken for granted by decision makers in Ottawa. Those frustrations

00:01:17.060 are real and they're the reason so many people are demanding change. But right now, we're seeing

00:01:21.760 barriers come down, projects move forward, and greater recognition of Alberta's role

00:01:26.480 as an economic engine and nation builder. Also, many Albertans I speak with tell me they want to

00:01:31.920 send Ottawa a message. And I would suggest the best way to do that is to give us a strong mandate

00:01:37.680 on the other nine questions. Our guest today is lawyer and advocate for the pro-independence side,

00:01:43.840 Jeff Rath. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Thanks for having me on, Mark.

00:01:48.640 you heard the premier i mean what's wrong with sending a message to ottawa

00:01:53.120 saying yes through questions one through nine while voting no on a binding independence referendum

00:01:59.520 well the question is do you trust danielle smith as a negotiator none of us do i mean the mou she

00:02:04.160 agreed to a 600 increase in carbon tax she has not once pushed back on mark carney effectively

00:02:10.240 asserting that he has a veto over alberia export pipeline construction and that he uses that veto

00:02:15.760 to impose no end to so-called preconditions on pipeline construction, including royalties to be

00:02:21.940 paid to British Columbia, massive billions and billions of dollars wasted on decarbonization,

00:02:27.760 600% increase in carbon tax, et cetera, et cetera. We don't trust Danielle to negotiate on behalf of

00:02:33.760 Alberta. And you can understand what a poor negotiator she is when she says, I'm going to 1.00

00:02:39.120 stand up for Alberta. I'm voting against option one. Her best leverage is option two.

00:02:44.920 you know like to continue to maintain pressure against ottawa but she's voting against her own

00:02:51.020 leverage effectively she's saying please just let me continue with my knee pads on my knees

00:02:55.820 groveling to mark carney crawling over broken glass begging him to be nice to us because look

00:03:02.460 at what i'm achieving and then she lies and she says that you know that she's somehow ended bill

00:03:06.920 c69 she hasn't they won in the alberta court of appeal we had to litigate that mark carney has not

00:03:13.000 promised that they're not going to appeal the decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal. He has

00:03:16.740 not promised to repeal Bill C-69. He's not, you know, he's actually said outright that he's not

00:03:23.200 going to repeal the West Coast tanker ban, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So what's all of her

00:03:29.460 grovelling without leverage doing for Alberta other than making us look weak? Well, it has

00:03:35.240 occurred to me that even if you were on the pro-Remain in Canada side, voting for option two

00:03:41.400 at least leaves you one bargaining chip with which to play well of course you know if it doesn't

00:03:47.200 matter what side you're on if you're in albertan and you care about the future of alberta you need

00:03:51.340 to vote question 10 option 2 because that's the only way to maintain leverage over ottawa and it's

00:03:57.300 the only way to bring ottawa to the table to negotiate mark harney you know i'm coming to

00:04:01.920 alberta to speak against independence you know it's a dangerous and divided world oh but by the

00:04:07.400 way anybody wants to talk about equalization I'm not prepared to talk about that until 2029 right

00:04:13.600 so he comes here and he's engaged in a democratic sticking his nose in a democratic process of

00:04:18.980 Albertans he's not an Alberta resident right and he's literally telling Albertans that he doesn't

00:04:24.420 care that 61% of them voted um in favor of ending equalization and that we can almost screw

00:04:30.240 ourselves until 2029 I love the in fact I was talking to a I call him the Toronto Red Star

00:04:35.600 but a red star reporter the other day and you know they said oh what do you think about mark

00:04:39.920 carney come to alberta aren't you worried and i laughed and i said are you kidding mark carney is

00:04:44.240 the best salesman that we have for alberta independence you know after jason kenny mark

00:04:49.120 carney is the most reviled politician in alberta and you know but the great thing is he believes

00:04:54.880 his own polls all the phony polls from leger and ecos and all the rest of it that say that he's

00:04:59.200 you know uh you know christ's second coming come to earth and that everybody loves him and he's a

00:05:04.000 a wonderful man. People in Alberta don't feel that way. Like we think he's corrupt. We know

00:05:09.320 he's corrupt. You know, he goes up to Fort McMurray for this fake pipeline announcement. 0.89

00:05:14.380 Daniel Smith is going, oh, we got to do pipeline. And Mark Carney's big announcement is I get to

00:05:19.000 spend 12 months coming up with even more conditions to impose on Alberta pipeline construction

00:05:24.680 prior to approving a West Coast pipeline. Right. So, you know, we see Mark Carney for the phony

00:05:30.640 that he is. You know, again, you know, he's trying to terrify people. It's a dangerous and

00:05:35.560 divided world. Dangerous and divided world. Oh, dangerous and divided. Don't vote for

00:05:43.940 independence. Oh, my goodness. You know, what are you going to do with all those extra billions of

00:05:48.400 dollars? Heaven forbid. You know, it's like Jason Kenney the other day, right? Oh, well,

00:05:52.520 Balboa votes for independence. We're going to become a have not province, right? So we're no

00:05:57.520 longer going to be sending $90 billion a year to Ottawa to get $20 billion back. We'll keep all of

00:06:04.700 that money in Alberta for Albertans, whether it's in tax cuts to stimulate our economy, new services, 0.77

00:06:11.600 new jobs for Albertans that are currently being filled by overweight federal bureaucrats from

00:06:16.860 Quebec and Ottawa. All those jobs will come to Alberta. How's that going to make Alberta have

00:06:22.740 my province i mean these people that's all they have to sell is fear you know yesterday the

00:06:27.760 america the alberta medical association came out and said 55 percent of doctors in alberta are

00:06:33.900 going to leave alberta um if we become independent and of course my response is wow it's like really

00:06:40.000 well-educated people are going to leave so that they can pay double the income tax somewhere else

00:06:45.900 like we cut people's taxes in half you think doctors are going to leave alberta so that they

00:06:50.880 to pay twice the income tax somewhere else, it's ludicrous. And then the other suggestion of the

00:06:55.560 Alberta Medical Association, which is equally as asinine, is they said, oh, if Alberta votes 0.79

00:07:03.240 for independence, how's Alberta going to live without federal health transfers? Oh, wait a 0.95

00:07:08.860 minute. You mean we're no longer spending $90 billion a year in Ottawa so that they can give

00:07:14.400 the money to Quebec for subsidized daycare, the Maritimes, the Manitoba, Ontario, you know, when

00:07:18.780 we're no longer doing that and we have all the money in alberta what do we we don't need federal

00:07:25.680 health transfers like why are we sending money to ottawa to get less money back but all the money

00:07:29.960 can just stay here and we'll have even more money to pay our doctors pay our nurses pay our teachers

00:07:35.120 build our hospitals build our roads so you know again daniel smith doesn't have to get out her

00:07:40.140 knee pads and crawl on broken glass begging for more of our money back i mean i do you know these

00:07:46.100 arguments against independence to me are just silly i've heard the argument as well about the

00:07:51.000 170 billion dollars in debt that albertans are going to be saddled with if they leave but i mean

00:07:55.300 that's just your share of the debt anyway well no no but there is no share of the debt i mean

00:08:00.360 canada is a separate entity legally from the government of alberta right so there's no legal

00:08:06.180 mechanism there's no constitutional mechanism there's no way that canada can impose money that

00:08:12.120 corrupt federal politicians borrowed on Albertans. We've already prepaid our share of the debt. We've

00:08:17.560 set hundreds of billions of dollars out of Alberta to the rest of Canada, right? Why would we have

00:08:23.620 any share of the debt? You know, on a per capita basis, you know, we own far more of, you know,

00:08:29.100 the national parks and the rest of the country than Canada owns, you know, owns in Alberta,

00:08:35.180 you know, as an example, you know, all of those things offset one another. They owe us like $369

00:08:40.460 billion dollars from overpayments to the canada pension plan right so this notion that we're

00:08:45.740 gonna have a you know 300 billion dollar debt is fiction first of all but then what i say to that

00:08:51.340 is even if the phony numbers that are being generated by daniel smith's peck fake economists

00:08:57.260 like trevor toome or true and we did have to assume you know 100 billion dollars of cannabis

00:09:02.620 debt oh my god a hundred billion dollars of canada's debt against 15 to 25 trillion dollars

00:09:10.620 in oil and natural gas resources in the province of albara you know i would do that deal all day

00:09:16.300 long like why would that you know why why would that deter anybody right you know we're literally

00:09:22.620 talking $400 billion against $25,000 billion being $25 trillion, right? So the math doesn't

00:09:38.000 even make sense. Like, oh my goodness, $400 billion. Oh my goodness, what are we going to

00:09:42.380 do? We only have 15. Our worst case scenario is we only have $15 trillion to pay that down,

00:09:48.060 right? All right. Let's be real. Crime is up. Repeat offenders are released on bail. Police

00:09:55.340 responses are slower than ever. And in many places, law abiding citizens are expected to just

00:10:01.520 hope nothing bad happens. That's not good enough. And that's why I'm very pleased today to be

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00:10:10.320 actually own one myself. I bought one before we ever had this deal with Berna. So what is Berna?

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00:10:42.180 There's no waiting period. There's no permanent life-altering consequences if you're forced into

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00:10:52.400 junomarketplace.com slash Berna for special offers. Make sure that you're prepared. It's

00:10:57.800 better to be safe than sorry. Let me ask you about the turnout. It's very strong.

00:11:03.940 Do you think it's an indicator that's positive for your side or what?

00:11:09.400 Well, I think a lot of the, you know, look at all the fake polls and all the fake news.

00:11:12.840 The new story is, oh, like high turnout favors the remaining Canada vote.

00:11:18.060 I mean, I don't know about that.

00:11:19.280 I run into Albertans every day that say every single member of my family, all 30 of us are

00:11:23.620 going out to vote for independence.

00:11:25.420 You know, the Alberta Prosperity Project has 250,000 members.

00:11:30.280 We have their email.

00:11:31.060 So email blasts have been going out every day for the last couple of weeks, urging people

00:11:35.600 to take you know get 10 of their family members 10 of their friends and family and take them out

00:11:39.960 to vote drive them to the polling stations right so you know again the early turnout in the vote

00:11:45.340 i went to vote um uh on tuesday at harmony golf club um uh first time i was ever there was

00:11:51.720 interesting um all the people there they looked to me like they were our people you know i was

00:11:56.520 laughing there's one guy in line i was wearing a t-shirt that actually said night force on it

00:12:00.020 which is a brand of rifle scope and this one guy says oh he says night force says i love night

00:12:04.640 force scopes and i said oh i said if you know i said i said if you know what night force means

00:12:08.140 i take it you're one of us oh yeah i'm here to vote for independence right so and again i went

00:12:13.820 to another advanced poll wasn't open yet in brad creek i'd mistakenly read the uh uh you know the

00:12:19.080 online uh information from uh uh elections alberta i went to brad creek everybody that was showing up

00:12:25.600 at brad creek to then you know move on to harmony that i saw you know were all people that were

00:12:29.960 there to vote for independence we're all laughing about it it's like boy they sure make it hard for

00:12:33.460 people that want to vote for independence. And we're all laughing about it as we're driving

00:12:37.120 another, you know, 40 kilometer round trip from Bradcrete to Harmony and back. Right. So, you know,

00:12:43.400 I don't know, you know, what the, the turnout means. I know we're working really hard to turn

00:12:47.740 out our vote. I'm still hoping that there's a massive, you know, Albertans are intelligent

00:12:51.920 people. They're smart. They're well-educated. I think most of them know that, you know,

00:12:56.860 when you have people like Nenshi, Carney, Notley, Kenny, Smith, Harper, Manning, all holding hands,

00:13:05.640 right? Just absolutely terrified that Alberta could vote itself out of Canada because it ends

00:13:10.820 all of their collective gravy trains as former failed politicians that got us into this mess

00:13:15.660 in the first place. When everybody sees all of those clowns working together, they realize how 0.97

00:13:21.020 badly the system is stacked against the people. And I think this is an opportunity for the people 0.90

00:13:25.440 to rise up and send a really strong message to the politicians in the political class in this

00:13:31.240 country that we're sick and tired of the way that they misgovern us the way that they literally toy 1.00

00:13:36.980 with our lives with their stupid rules and regulations it's like you know like oh you 1.00

00:13:41.120 can't have a plastic straw because a sea turtle and in measure got one stuck in his nose right 0.99

00:13:45.640 like come on enough is enough and this is an opportunity for you know for albertans to say

00:13:51.680 Like, you know, we've had it with all of the foolishness because I think about this, right?

00:13:55.760 And this is what I've been talking to people about.

00:13:57.240 A vote for Alberta independence, you know, is a vote to completely eliminate an entire level of crooked politicians.

00:14:07.140 Like, think about it.

00:14:07.760 The entire federal level of politicians gone, right, through Alberta independence.

00:14:13.500 You know, no more, you know, Pierre Polyev holding hands with Mark Carney.

00:14:17.740 No more, you know, Justin Trudeau, you know, doing the things that Trudeau did to us, you know, telling people that were unvaccinated that they weren't allowed to fly on airplanes anymore.

00:14:27.880 You know, no more, you know, arbitrarily waking up in the middle of the night after getting a message from communist China telling them that, you know, to seize all of our firearms.

00:14:37.180 Right. No more of that nonsense. No more of Canada being governed by, you know, Hillary Clinton associates who are now who's, you know, who are now the chief operating officer of Carney's cabinet.

00:14:48.940 Right. No more of that. That's what this is a vote. That's what this vote is about, is Albertans having the opportunity to get together, call up 10 of your friends, everybody get on the phone.

00:14:58.580 make sure you get at least 10 15 20 people that you know um out to vote for independence and it's

00:15:04.220 an opportunity to take our you know to take our country back to take Alberta back there has been

00:15:09.680 online backlash Jeff against the Alberta Prosperity Project your group telling people how to vote

00:15:16.660 there's this post by Berta Proud Dad on X Alberta Prosperity Project WTF are you thinking I support

00:15:25.920 Alberta independence. I don't support your God complex. Who the hell are you to tell Albertans

00:15:31.580 which questions to leave blank? Make your case. Respect voters. This is blanking unprofessional. 0.79

00:15:39.000 Okay. Well, and now that I see where that's coming from, it makes perfect sense. I don't

00:15:43.620 call him Berta Proud Dad. I call him Berta Pride Dude. Okay. He's a Daniel Smith toady who's

00:15:51.980 documented as being good pals with matt all time who's supporting him to become a member of the

00:15:58.060 legislature legislature of alberta so he's basically a bought and paid for daniel smith

00:16:03.900 toady who is infiltrated the independence movement so that he can sell crappy merchandise

00:16:09.660 you know made thousands of dollars a week as a so-called influencer and if anybody's been following

00:16:15.180 online uh you know he and i have been beaking back and forth at each other for you know for over a 0.86

00:16:21.020 year because i think he's a miserable little toady that has no place in the albert independence 0.72

00:16:26.460 movement because he's just a filthy little grifter right and that post that post i'm sorry i should 0.94

00:16:31.740 be a little bit more subtle from now on that's all right no but but anyway that post makes it 0.87

00:16:36.780 clear i mean he's clearly a daniel smith toady right and doing what you know doing what he always

00:16:42.060 does he's basically a danny boy supporting daniel smith when the rest of us know that we'll never

00:16:46.780 become independent as long as daniel smith is the leader right that being said we're not telling

00:16:52.060 anybody how to vote okay i personally when i went to vote i only took question 10 ballot i didn't

00:16:58.460 want to answer all the other ones because i think they're stupid right let's vote to abolish the

00:17:03.020 canadian senate like we will get alberta out of canada quicker than we will you know amend the 0.95

00:17:08.700 canadian constitution to remove the senate from the architecture of the canadian constitution that

00:17:14.700 that was laid down, you know, in bedrock in the BNA Act 1867, right? If we're going to go to the

00:17:21.020 trouble of removing the Senate, why wouldn't we just vote for independence and, and be done with

00:17:26.280 it, right? Have all of our governance be done by Albertans in Alberta, right? So again, you know,

00:17:32.600 prime dude doesn't have much of an education. He's not a very bright little fellow. He's about

00:17:36.580 that tall and he runs around with a stupid ball cap and glasses on, you know, pretendingly he 1.00

00:17:41.020 knows things he does it he's ill-educated doesn't know what he's talking about doesn't understand 1.00

00:17:45.420 what he's talking about you know it just is what it is that said people should vote the way they

00:17:50.620 want if they want to cast a vote to send the message to danielle that we're fed up with the

00:17:55.180 province being flooded by temporary foreign workers uh international mobility program visa workers

00:18:01.180 you know if you want to send that message send that message vote for the questions you want to

00:18:05.180 to vote for I personally declined the nine and I voted only on option 10 but I mean the very fact 0.94

00:18:11.960 that I now see that it's Berta pride dude that's behind these attacks on on Mitch and I for telling 0.65

00:18:17.140 people how we're voting and what we're doing makes perfect sense he's just a Daniel Smith toady

00:18:21.820 and Daniel Smith set up those nine questions with Rob Anderson I've been arguing with them for over

00:18:27.680 a year and a half about this how we should have a clean question on independence not one that's

00:18:32.580 confused with all these stupid confusing questions that they came up with right but people should

00:18:37.680 vote how they want to vote just get out and vote and make sure you vote you know question 10 option 0.97

00:18:42.560 two because it's the even if you want even if you don't want independence it's the only way to

00:18:47.700 maintain our leverage against ottawa it's our only way to make carny behave himself because we know

00:18:52.780 that that snake cannot be trusted like if anybody thinks that you know the carny is trustworthy

00:18:57.200 or smith is trustworthy you haven't been paying attention for the last year okay and certainly 0.75

00:19:02.300 you don't listen to some little goof by the name of Berta Pride Dude who doesn't know what he's 0.81

00:19:07.040 talking about. All right, Jeff. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We appreciate 0.97

00:19:12.300 it. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you very much. If you enjoyed this show and appreciate independent

00:19:17.380 journalism, please consider becoming a premier member of Juno News by going to junonews.com

00:19:22.420 backslash straight up. It helps us do what we do here. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see

00:19:26.880 you next time.

00:19:32.300 You

Juno News - October 16, 2026

Early voting EXPLODES in Alberta’s separation referendum

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