The Critical Compass Podcast - May 29, 2026


Alberta Transition Plan - Establishing the Minimum Viable Alberta ｜ Dennis Kalma


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

150.71036

Word count

785

Sentence count

33


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 As has already been said earlier, this is important, it's something we have to do,
00:00:09.740 and it's just normal people doing a job that has to be done.
00:00:13.640 So as Fergus said, I was the principal author of The Value of Freedom.
00:00:18.520 I've also been editing the draft constitution with the Alberta Prosperity Project,
00:00:24.340 which has been ready for a number of months, but we're waiting for the right time to release it.
00:00:28.660 The latest endeavor is that Keith and I are co-leading the Alberta Transition Council.
00:00:35.240 And the purpose of that council and that team is to make a workable, real transition plan
00:00:41.920 to take us from the day we win the referendum until the first day we are separated from Canada.
00:00:48.020 We are not trying to write long-term policy.
00:00:51.260 We're not trying to change the world.
00:00:53.380 We just want to make sure everybody gets paid.
00:00:56.200 Everything works the way it always has.
00:00:58.260 Cars drive, oil pumps, electricity flows.
00:01:01.680 All those good things happen with the least amount of fuss and hassle.
00:01:06.320 So we are calling that minimum viable Alberta.
00:01:10.840 That's the least we have to do to run as an independent nation.
00:01:14.540 Once we get our constitution in place and our permanent government in place,
00:01:19.160 those guys chosen by the people of the new Alberta
00:01:22.500 will be the ones that actually make the new laws
00:01:25.200 and new regulations and new rules
00:01:27.540 that we want for our long term.
00:01:29.540 That will be subject, of course, to the citizens of Alberta.
00:01:32.520 So we're not trying to do that.
00:01:33.940 We're just trying to get us started
00:01:35.120 so everything works and nothing changes.
00:01:37.960 So part of my job is doing, I call it the sausage making.
00:01:42.600 No one wants to see sausages being made.
00:01:46.080 We like eating them, but we don't like seeing them, what happens.
00:01:49.100 So what we're doing, it's fairly simple, actually.
00:01:52.000 we've got about 15 things we call domains they're subject areas things like immigration
00:01:58.480 banking and finance indigenous affairs aviation and so forth we're setting up a team small teams
00:02:07.040 of subject matter experts these are people who are skilled in those areas we have an immigration
00:02:11.920 lawyer we have a fellow who has been a recognized expert in aviation and aviation policy those
00:02:18.880 people will be drafting white papers in each subject area going through and
00:02:24.940 describing exactly how we get from being part of Canada to being independent. Now
00:02:31.180 again we're not silly we're not doing crazy things but we have to be aware of
00:02:36.400 the fact that Canada will not treat us well. We have three scenarios we're
00:02:41.680 studying and we need a solution for each one. First one is what I call happy path
00:02:45.840 and that is where Canada says oh yeah we're delighted you're leaving let us help you you
00:02:51.340 know and we'll be very cooperative the chances of that happening are slim to none the likeliest
00:02:57.420 scenario is the middle one which is we call uncooperative Canada but with international
00:03:02.280 recognition so that means countries recognize us as independent but Canada is still pretty grumpy
00:03:08.100 so that's what that's the scenario we think is most likely the third scenario is a tough one
00:03:14.640 which is other countries don't recognize us and canada is still grumpy so that's the case you
00:03:21.620 have to work through as well so we'll build those papers we'll examine them and have them reviewed
00:03:27.840 we'll go through them looking for integration points as i call them that effectively is how do
00:03:33.920 we make sure the pieces fit together set up an organization to do immigration and indigenous
00:03:38.620 affairs and who knows what but how do you make those organizations work together we can't have
00:03:42.940 everything done in its own independent way once you have that done the white papers will be
00:03:47.980 published made available to interested parties and that's where we go from there so we expect
00:03:54.180 the time frame for this will be to have it complete by roughly the middle of july
00:03:59.440 so we need it that fast because we got to make those arguments and i'm sure we're going to hear
00:04:05.200 from keith and eva about how people are hungry for real data and real information about how things
00:04:12.540 will actually operate.
00:04:14.200 So that's what we're doing.
00:04:16.220 I do tell people,
00:04:17.940 if you know of experts in a particular area
00:04:19.820 you think is relevant,
00:04:21.240 please let me know.
00:04:22.300 Happy to talk to them
00:04:23.260 and see if they fit on the teams.
00:04:25.000 It'll be a team of about 50, by the way,
00:04:26.760 just to give you the numbers.
00:04:28.180 So that's all I have for tonight.
00:04:29.780 Have a good evening
00:04:30.420 and I'll hand it over to Fergus.
00:04:31.780 Thank you.
00:04:42.540 Thank you.