The Critical Compass Podcast - January 21, 2026


How to Talk to Your Liberal Friends About Alberta Independence - ＂ASK QUESTIONS!＂ ｜ Nadine Wellwood

Edmonton Alberta Independence Petition Signing Turnout FACT CHECK - Responding to the Naysayers A Holistic Approach to Achieving YES on an Alberta Independence Referendum ｜ Nadine Wellwood

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

199.46

Word count

1,006

Sentence count

1

People

Also mentioned:
Danielle Smith

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I sit down with my good friend and fellow separatist activist, James Mcleod, to talk about the current state of the separatist movement in Canada and what we need to do about it. We talk about how to deal with the current infighting in the movement and how we can deal with it in order to get to a Yes on a referendum.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 the most pressing issue for people involved in this movement and you can tell me if you agree
00:00:05.980 with this no more infighting we cannot be like arguing with each other publicly on twitter like
00:00:11.440 some of us are doing you know people already in in this movement nit picking over the exact right
00:00:18.120 wording or the exact right policy for things that haven't happened yet in a country that doesn't
00:00:23.100 exist yet uh that's that's really disheartening to see and we need to be very unified because if
00:00:27.920 the left is anything it's unified and the other side of that same coin i think is you know james
00:00:32.280 has particularly been concerned about this with a couple videos that he he uh recorded on the
00:00:37.500 channel leading up to christmas how to talk to your family how to talk to your leftist your liberal
00:00:42.300 family members your friends about this in a way that doesn't start arguments because we cannot be
00:00:47.860 turning people off at the idea and needs to be we need to be a positive like we're fun positive people
00:00:54.520 we're likable god damn it we have friends yeah so like people need to see this side of it and not
00:00:59.700 just think of it as like the most cartoonish caricature of a rural alberta farmer that you 0.86
00:01:06.420 know you might think is the only guy in favor of this you know what i mean yeah so i mean the thing for
00:01:11.680 me is ask questions ask the questions you know what what what what is your hang up like what is it that
00:01:17.940 you that you're really concerned about with alberta independence like oh well you know i love these
00:01:23.000 people daniel smith is going to take away my pensions daniel smith is going to take away this
00:01:27.200 and well dan i'm you know glad you think that she has that kind of power she doesn't but 0.87
00:01:30.820 you know and and people you know what was really funny for me i had when i did the alberta pension
00:01:35.100 plan presentations i did i had people go you know nadine by the end of my presentation they were coming
00:01:40.340 up to me and these were people who trust me i knew were on the left um and they would come up and
00:01:45.560 they go okay so i agree with you i agree with you the best thing we could do is get an alberta pension
00:01:50.100 plan let's get out from under the canada pension plan but i don't trust daniel smith you know what
00:01:55.700 my response to them was i don't trust her either yeah right right it's like let's find some common
00:02:02.500 ground like some some commonality right it's like i agree with you i don't trust daniel smith i don't
00:02:07.800 trust anybody in the government yeah nor should any of you right and it's generally rule of thumb yeah
00:02:14.140 talk doesn't match up with the outcome right because i hear a lot of talk and it sounds really
00:02:20.780 great and a lot of promises but they don't get kept and then i don't see the results right so i call
00:02:26.780 that out and i call it out on either side i don't care which side of the fence you you're on left right
00:02:31.900 center doesn't matter to me i'm in this because i want a principled approach here's my principles
00:02:38.140 here's the outcome i'm looking for and if you promise me that outcome i'm going to hold you
00:02:42.300 to that outcome and if you don't deliver i'm going to call you out for it so that's what we have to
00:02:46.800 get back to and on this side you know you you put a good thing there because we do have a lot of people
00:02:52.840 that are fighting you know i and you know people let's say like oh no credible separatist agrees with
00:03:00.660 this and it's like i wait a minute i'm the one who said that and i think i'm a very credible separatist
00:03:05.880 you know i i don't we don't all have to agree on everything this is the thing right the the whole
00:03:11.540 point is to have the conversation to have the debate so we can get to the truth right to get
00:03:16.000 the best result um and if we're going to attack each other though and make statements like that
00:03:20.660 then no we can't even get there so but the other thing too is is focus on the next task at hand
00:03:26.960 the next task is to get to yes on a referendum right why we got the petition but the point is to get
00:03:32.820 to yes on a referendum there's talks about indigenous and how we're going to deal with
00:03:36.500 treaties or talks about you know how we're going to deal with this or how we're going to deal with
00:03:39.740 that well one step at a time like let's not put the cart before the horse let's focus on the task
00:03:46.340 at hand and right now that is let's get to yes on a referendum there are people out there who are
00:03:50.940 saying a whole bunch of things that i completely disagree with but you know what we all agree that we
00:03:55.880 need to get to yes on a referendum so am i helping them heck yes how do i get those signatures
00:04:01.600 on that piece of paper and how do i help right and and it like again it doesn't matter if you are
00:04:07.760 l burton and you want the best possible future for not only you but your children and your
00:04:14.800 grandchildren you have to take this seriously because you are not the trajectory again um finance
00:04:21.280 everything is patterns cycles everything runs cycles things getting better are we getting worse
00:04:28.060 right shifts have to happen so let's create the positive shift that is in our favor that puts us
00:04:37.500 back in the driver's seat us in control of our destiny our futures not in the hands of ottawa
00:04:43.100 our francisco
00:04:59.080 um
00:05:00.240 you