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

150.71

Word count

785

Sentence count

33


Summary

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

In this episode, Fergus and Keith talk about their transition plan for Alberta if we win the referendum and become independent from Canada. They talk about the challenges they are facing and what they are doing to prepare for the transition.

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.