The Critical Compass Podcast - October 19, 2026


Chris Scott： The Blessing of Self-Determination ｜ Let Alberta Decide Rally Oct 17

Mentioned
Thomas Lukasik Chris Corey
Independence Debate： Keith Wilson vs Bill Jones ｜ Does Alberta Need Canada？

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

129.65

Word count

1,035

Sentence count

34


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Well, thank you very much. I think everyone's convinced, so I'll see you next time.
00:00:15.440 Just kidding. I've been told that I'm way too serious, so I figured I'd open with a joke.
00:00:20.840 But before I do that, I want to share with you something that happened when I arrived here.
00:00:25.780 Someone said to me, you know, Chris, we really admire that you can take this, you know, all of these issues and you can take these negative things and you can discuss them in a way and you can present them as positives.
00:00:38.080 You can take these negatives and turn them into positives.
00:00:41.100 Thank you very much.
00:00:42.140 And I said, nobody's ever called me a PCR test before.
00:00:49.840 I just came up with that.
00:00:51.400 So, Alberta is doing something really interesting.
00:00:59.480 We're talking about our self-determination, and as interesting as it is, this isn't anything
00:01:06.000 new.
00:01:07.000 Do you know that people have been having these conversations in their nations and regions
00:01:11.960 and provinces for thousands of years?
00:01:15.860 Even since 1990, we see 38 new nations emerge across the globe, 80% of those new nations
00:01:25.900 did so with a pen and paper.
00:01:28.800 There was no fighting, there was probably some angry words, maybe some families fighting,
00:01:34.620 but not like in the previous 500 or 1000 years.
00:01:39.300 What we're being offered through this period, this referendum, albeit a fruit salad of questions
00:01:45.860 referendum as my friend Ben says what we're being offered is a tremendous
00:01:51.020 blessing and I want to make sure that each and every Albertan understands
00:01:56.060 that to be offered the opportunity to self-determined in history has has more
00:02:05.600 often than not required huge sacrifices hundreds of thousands millions of lives
00:02:13.340 lost pursuing the opportunity to answer a question of self-determination and here
00:02:21.180 we are with the opportunity to walk into a building heated with our wonderful
00:02:27.800 natural gas and we stand in a little booth and we just mark a paper and the
00:02:34.920 result of that is going to change the world one way or another and I believe
00:02:40.600 that Alberta as as Corey has said the sentiment for self-determination and for
00:02:47.200 sovereignty is not going anywhere it hasn't gone anywhere really since 1905
00:02:52.760 like this isn't a new conversation it's just different now because people are
00:02:58.960 finally starting to talk about it now when the question was asked earlier how
00:03:05.320 many people have voted I didn't put up my hand I haven't voted do you know why
00:03:10.000 because I put out a challenge for those that tell me that the status quo is
00:03:15.680 better for me and my family and my children to make the case to me and
00:03:21.880 change my mind because it's not necessarily independence that I'm after
00:03:28.500 I want a better future for Alberta and
00:03:35.220 and if somebody can make the case to me how the status quo can give us that
00:03:42.680 maybe I would vote a different way on Monday than I would vote today the
00:03:52.660 problem is nobody very few people are willing to actually have the
00:04:00.020 conversation. We took the trouble of attending a Forever Canadian event. We
00:04:07.160 brought our bus, we registered, we got our Forever Canadian lawn signs so that
00:04:13.360 Thomas LeCasic had our contact information for when he starts his new
00:04:17.720 political party. And I went to meet Thomas and I shook his hand, I thanked him
00:04:24.220 for his activism, and then I said, Thomas there's some things that we need to talk
00:04:29.800 about because you're you're giving people the wrong information on these particular things one
00:04:34.760 of them was citizenship one of them was pensions and he argued with me for a while finally conceded
00:04:40.440 that i was right that once a canadian always a canadian forever canadian and then proceeded to
00:04:46.680 tell me that he would make sure that he stripped every albertan of their citizenship should we
00:04:52.360 self-determined he said to me there is no debate there's no conversation there's no discussion
00:05:01.000 and i said are you kidding me we're talking about sovereignty of self-determination
00:05:06.600 seceding from confederation becoming an independent state and you're telling me that you won't debate
00:05:12.680 your position in public what a shame that is what a shame so we've done with let's talk alberta
00:05:23.000 we've done something like 140 town halls since february 140.
00:05:31.160 and in those town halls we specifically ask people if you disagree with our personal opinions on
00:05:39.000 Alberta sovereignty please join us and tell us why have the conversation with
00:05:44.820 us and the last few days I had the honor of debating a professor of political
00:05:50.280 sciences from the University or Mount Royal University in Calgary and we
00:05:55.040 debated a couple of lawyers from Red Deer on these things in public and guess
00:05:59.880 what after those debates even people on their team came up to me and said wow we
00:06:07.800 We didn't know those things before.
00:06:10.280 I think we're more aligned than I thought before.
00:06:14.000 So what I'm finding, when we have the conversation, people's minds are changing.
00:06:24.500 The facts support my statement that Alberta independence is necessary and inevitable.
00:06:37.120 And so I'll put this challenge out again.
00:06:39.420 If you disagree with me, talk to me about it.
00:06:43.860 Try and change my mind, advocate your position in the public square instead of calling us
00:06:50.440 dirty seppies or a small fringe minority or whatever.
00:06:56.060 The opinions are valid.
00:06:57.380 The conversation is worth having, especially if you consider what it costs to be in a place
00:07:04.780 where we can have those type of conversations and then vote on it after.
00:07:09.600 Does everybody understand what that means?
00:07:13.040 Do you understand what we have to be offered the question?
00:07:20.360 So when you leave here and you're talking to people about this who are undecided, I
00:07:25.120 would lead with that.
00:07:27.140 I would make sure that they also know the significance of where we're at in Alberta,
00:07:32.200 it costs and why it gives us a moral obligation to talk about these things to make sure that we
00:07:38.680 have the best outcome. And in the meantime I guess I would just say even apart from the referendum
00:07:49.700 or Alberta sovereignty I think we need to start talking to each other a lot more. So let's talk
00:07:57.000 Alberta.