00:00:00.000it's all over but the signature counting what happens next for alberta's independence
00:00:21.480referendum movement i'm sheila gun reid and you're watching the gun show
00:00:30.000if you're on alberta x right now we're on alberta facebook right now you are seeing
00:00:38.720independence canvassers hanging up their badges after a 120 day long haul through some oppressive
00:00:47.020winter weather after they spent those months collecting signatures they need to collect about
00:00:55.140roughly 177,000 of them to trigger a referendum on independence October 19th and once those
00:01:07.280signatures are verified then the campaign shifts into the yes no campaigning side and I think
00:01:14.720that's going to get a little bit rough but to bring us the nitty-gritty on what's happening
00:01:19.800now and what's happening next is someone you already know. It's Keith Wilson, Freedom Convoy
00:01:26.280lawyer and independence advocate. Take a listen. So joining me now is Keith Wilson, independence
00:01:38.100advocate. And of course, you know him as one of the key lawyers from the Freedom Convoy. And I
00:01:43.040wanted to get an update on the independence efforts now as we approach the end of the
00:01:51.040signature collection period. So, Keith, before we get going on everything, what happens next,
00:01:59.060you know, what the federal government is doing to exacerbate independence-minded people into,
00:02:04.940you know, casting a vote on October 19th, but where are we right now in the independence efforts?
00:02:13.040Sure. Well, there's the specific step that's occurring over the coming days is the final counting internally by Stay Free Alberta and Mitch Sylvester's group on the petition calling on the Smith government to hold an independence referendum in October.
00:02:32.760and um that that counting's occurring boxes of signature seats are being delivered to their
00:02:41.860headquarters uh being gathered up so it's the final hustle of gather and deliver and count
00:02:48.680um you know we've had remarkable weather throughout the entirety of this thing like these
00:02:56.120these everybody thought the last couple weeks the weather would be nice and we had two blizzards
00:03:01.600across the province people stranded on highways for 20 hours um so i i don't i my view is the
00:03:10.880numbers are probably not gonna like blow everybody's socks off that's just my sense i don't know what
00:03:16.060the numbers are but i think that that weather's been a huge factor but there's another really
00:03:21.460important factor that i've run into so many times which is fear yeah you know the the move that the
00:03:28.760federal government did in 2022 in freezing Tamara Leach's and Chris Barber and the other
00:03:35.200Freedom Convoy leaders' bank accounts. And I was there, you know, witnessing that firsthand and
00:03:40.300have lawsuits outstanding against the federal government for those unlawful bank freezes.
00:03:45.360That has created such a chilling effect, a lasting chilling effect that so many people have said and
00:03:52.200so many canvassers have reported that people are afraid. They want, they support independence.
00:03:56.960They're going to vote yes, but they're afraid to sign and put their name on that list for the petition out of fear that the government tyrants will use their powers to freeze bank accounts.
00:04:10.700And what an indictment of the state that Canada has become.
00:04:16.000If you cannot exercise your democratic rights for fear that the state will drop the hammer on you and ruin you financially, that's a state you don't want to be a part of.
00:04:27.600And I also have noted that some of the locations where independence events are booked are being canceled last minute.
00:04:38.400And I'm not saying in the small towns, but in the big cities, the progressive held hellscapes of Edmonton and to some extent Calgary.
00:04:46.220They're canceling these independence events where they booked in advance.
00:04:51.880Everybody knows why they're going to be there.
00:04:53.340Everybody knows why Chris Scott's going to be there.
00:08:10.860So the Citizens Initiative Act provides a mechanism
00:08:13.640to flag to the government, the provincial government saying,
00:08:16.740hey, this is an issue, this issue that's important to us,
00:08:21.220we want you to put it on a referendum,
00:08:23.320and here's how we, the citizens, would frame the question.
00:08:26.700But there's a different legal obligation on the cabinet
00:08:29.800under the Referendum Act to consider constitutional principles and other things when selecting the
00:08:36.080wording of the question. So the ultimate party who determines the wording of the question is
00:08:40.820the cabinet, and they're not directly bound by the wording of the question from the petitioners.
00:08:47.020So the Smith government will have to review what question they put on the ballot for
00:08:54.900independence. And I think they should pick a form of question that's as compliant as possible with
00:09:01.000the Supreme Court of Canada's decision and the Clarity Act, which is a question very similar to
00:09:06.860which Stay Free Alberta's question is. So I'm not losing any sleep over these things.
00:09:14.300I think the important task is for us to continue to talk as Albertans about the dangers of staying
00:09:20.520in Canada for our kids and our grandkids and the advantages of becoming independent and the
00:09:25.780viability of that path. Right. And for people who are on the fence, maybe you don't believe in a
00:09:33.960Alberta utopia. This is your chance to stick it to Mark Carney and tell him to go F himself. Like
00:09:40.500this is your one chance to do this for a generation, to send a message to the Laurentian elites that
00:09:48.080that we don't agree with what they've done to what was left of this beautiful country
00:09:56.040in the last 11 years. And man, I'm just so excited to cheer for Thomas Lukasik's
00:10:02.860hapless buffoonery. It's just wonderful. Just moving on to what happens next. So we've got
00:10:13.700the petition signatures let's say uh they they clear the bar for entry to the referendum what
00:10:21.300happens next so it instead of signatures shipped into active campaigning what are we going to see
00:10:28.700what is that going to look like well the official campaign period won't begin uh until um the
00:10:36.620cabinet issues an order under the referendum act setting the question and that's obviously going to
00:10:41.040take some time and in the meantime it's just a normal democracy political free expression and
00:10:46.720advocacy and anybody with a view on any topic is free to express it uh is free to open up a website
00:10:53.540to talk about it is free to put up a billboard uh to advocate their view or or do whatever they do
00:10:59.800hold town hall meetings and so on so i think you're going to continue to see lots of different
00:11:03.900groups because there's several out there um um and there's new ones popping up all the time
00:11:09.660that will continue to try and inform people about the advantages of independence and its viability
00:11:16.180uh and the dangers of staying in canada um and i think that you're going to see see that ramp up
00:11:23.140and we're going to see the voices of no the project fear get louder and louder and louder
00:11:32.060the people who say that this can't be done it will ruin everything uh excuse me what's the
00:11:37.200difference for people who say like oh the interest rates are going to go out of control and you're
00:11:42.740going to have out of control inflation and you won't be able to get a pipeline built yeah thanks
00:11:47.160that's now so we're gonna have a lot of people on the federalist side trying to scare people
00:11:52.500away from their own future yeah and i mean uh they're going to do project fear um and it's
00:11:59.560ironic because anytime they try this project fear, it doesn't stand even a superficial level
00:12:07.160of analysis. And let me just give you a couple of quick examples. One is the federalists have
00:12:15.600argued and Ottawa has said, if Alberta were to become independent, you'd be so vulnerable in
00:12:19.940your trade relationship with the United States, you wouldn't have any leverage. Meanwhile,
00:12:25.700Well, Carney's absolutely blowing his negotiations with the largest economy in the world, our largest trading partner as a country, a country in a market that allows Canada, has allowed Canada to have the standard living that Canadians have had.
00:12:44.140And now that things are on the rocks, because Carney's such a poor negotiator, and the ideological extremists in Ottawa have let ideology prevail over practical reality, Minister Hodgson, federal minister, announced last week that they have a plan.
00:13:04.180They have a plan for Canada to get leverage in their negotiations with the United States under Kuzma.
00:13:12.020And that plan is to leverage Alberta's oil industry, our energy industry.
00:17:46.200there will be a small little statue of Mark Carney.
00:17:50.040and the reason there'll be a little statue is we're just going to have to acknowledge the
00:17:57.120critical role that he's providing in advancing the cause of independence you know they talk about
00:18:03.020investment will leave if alberta becomes independent while at the same time trudeau
00:18:08.460liberals and carney liberals and carney was briefing and advising the trudeau liberals on
00:18:13.940their economic policy the rbc confirmed over a trillion dollars worth of investment left
00:18:19.640right and half a trillion was from alberta right and but every other week there's announcement
00:18:27.900like there was this past week where shell just did a 20 or 60 whatever it was a huge deal in
00:18:35.220acquiring arc a big investment in alberta so so they're sucking and blowing uh they're they're
00:18:43.480demonstrating, you know, announced the Sovereign Wealth Fund. I was on a team meeting with some
00:18:50.360clients this morning and I joked that I just got back from the bank and they said, why? And I said,
00:18:55.480well, I borrowed $5,000 to invest it in this Sovereign Wealth Fund. It's just like, what?
00:19:03.360Yeah, I saw somebody joke that they're going to start calling their credit card bill their
00:19:10.520sovereign wealth fund because that's literally what the federal government is doing just
00:19:14.560allocating debt and then calling it a sovereign wealth fund and what's troubling is um so many
00:19:23.040people in other parts of the country seem to fall for this stuff yeah and and and you know people
00:19:28.400say oh well quebec was a distinct society had a distinct culture um and i've advocated consistently
00:19:36.480as you know and i think you have as well yeah descriptively that alberta has its own culture
00:19:41.260absolutely aspects of our culture is uh we can smell bullshit we can smell it from far away
00:19:48.260yeah and uh so carney continues to advance policies his his spring economic update now confirms
00:19:57.180the incredible number over 60 billion dollars a year just in debt servicing payments that goes
00:20:05.920to nothing of value so um the reality is canada's future continues to get darker there's no
00:20:15.540fundamental change in trajectory um carney is still obsessed with net zero um policies
00:20:24.520one of their press release on the sovereign fund said they're doing all these things
00:20:29.180to unlock our vast resources and what leaped out at me in those words was well who has them
00:20:35.580locked up yeah world wants them investors want to pay for them there's one party that has them
00:20:42.320locked up and that's the liberal government in ottawa yeah tomorrow he could repeal bill c69
00:20:50.120he could repeal the no alberta oil tanker ban on the west coast he could repeal the net zero
00:20:58.200he could repeal the carbon taxes no buyer in the world is prepared to pay for carbon taxes
00:21:05.380Could you imagine the increased revenue to the economy and investment if they lifted the industrial carbon taxes alone, got rid of the Pathways Project and the methane rules?
00:21:18.340All of these things make our oil less competitive.
00:21:22.320Third largest reserve in the world, the world wants it.
00:21:25.920So these guys are not changing course.
00:21:30.080And what they are doing is they're creating this idea of a king.
00:21:34.520like an old school king where you come before the king on bent knee and it's king carney if you want
00:21:41.120to get your project approved you now have to go to him um and get his permission to put it on the
00:21:49.100major projects list sheila we you and i have were raised in an alberta and in a canada where if you
00:21:56.340had an entrepreneurial idea and you could meet basic regulatory reasonable thresholds you went
00:22:01.840ahead and did it you created jobs you created wealth you donated back to your community
00:22:06.000and they're shifting to a different type of system where one man king carny little man
00:22:14.100sitting on a big throne controls all and can direct it to his ideological pursuits more and
00:22:21.420more Albertans are waking up to that and I think they're going to vote for independence
00:22:24.820in october of this year now keith i hope you're right um but you do you do a lot of educational
00:22:35.400videos to help people navigate a lot of the misinformation you see on the project fear side
00:22:45.080and i'll put the media squarely on the project fear side so how do people find out what the truth
00:22:52.300is and reality is where do they find your uh social media well i have i have a i have a youtube
00:22:58.500channel it's called just search keith wilson casey or keith wilson alberta and you'll
00:23:03.560and put the word independence in there and you'll find my youtube channel i try and do
00:23:07.760a video a week or two a week depending on what's going on some what i feel is misinformation or
00:23:14.280significant development so people can get their bearings um and i'm also very active on x and