In this episode, we take a look at the history of Direct Democracy in Alberta and how the recall legislation passed by the Alberta voters has changed the landscape of politics in the province. We also hear from a return guest, Mitch Sylvester from the petition for a referendum.
00:03:08.160Political scientists speculated Alberta would be heading to a spring election so Smith could avoid being brought down by all these recall initiatives.
00:03:16.440Oh boy, yeah, they were really worked up.
00:03:17.720And then when UCP Minister Rebecca Schultz resigned from cabinet, headlines ensured to note that Schultz was one of the MLAs facing a recall initiative.
00:03:25.640Was she fleeing before the recall could happen?
00:03:27.900The deadline for the first recall is now less than a week away, and reality's come home to roost.
00:03:33.620The prime activist organizing a recall against Demetrius Nicolaitis was forced to admit that
00:03:38.820with months to work at it, she's only garnered 6,000 signatures on her petition.
00:03:43.180That leaves her 10,000 short of the number required to trigger a recall.
00:03:47.840With this kind of petition, there's usually about a 10% error rate in the signatures too.
00:03:52.720So her initiative is more likely closer to 11,600 signatures short of the mark.
00:03:57.680It didn't even come close to making it.
00:03:59.940Nicolaitis' political career may face many challenges,
00:04:02.260but being recalled isn't one of them right now. So why though was it impossible for the petitioner
00:04:07.060to get 16,000 signatures in one constituency when Lukasik managed to get 400,000 of them
00:04:12.040across the province? Well, it's because recall legislation is written to ensure the initiative
00:04:16.060must remain local. Petitioners have to be registered and they got to live within the
00:04:20.120constituency. Outside money and workers can't be used on a recall initiative. Lukasik was able to
00:04:26.420utilize union and activist groups and concentrate his petitioning efforts in an area of strong
00:04:31.780support. The activists targeting Nicolaitis have to use local resources and they have to get only
00:04:36.940local people signing and she clearly couldn't gather enough of them. Real petitioning is tough
00:04:41.080work. Anybody can make an online petition that can garner thousands of signatures in a short time
00:04:45.000but to get real physical signatures in person with a name, address, phone number gathered by a
00:04:50.060registered petitioner is a whole different story. A hard-working petitioner working on an eight-hour
00:04:54.280day might get a hundred signatures. To get 16,000 or more takes a large organization with a motivated
00:05:00.480electorate, and neither of those existed in Calgary Bow, and it doesn't exist in any other
00:05:04.340constituencies. Look, all it takes to start an initiative is 500 bucks in an application formed
00:05:09.460to Elections Alberta, and that's the easiest part. That's why 26 of them were set off. The
00:05:14.200petitioning part, though, has stopped the initiatives in their tracks. The rest of the
00:05:18.140initiatives are in areas with even stronger support for the UCP than Calgary Bow. One of
00:05:22.180them is against Daniel Smith in Brooks Medicine Hat, where she won with 66% of the vote. Another
00:05:26.760is in Highwood where the UCP candidate won with 69% of the vote. These initiatives are dead in
00:05:31.040the water. In a way, it's good that Alberta's unions put the recall legislation to the test
00:05:35.260like this. They prove that the bar is set high enough to stop frivolous recall efforts and the
00:05:40.400abuses of the system, but it's not set so high that it's impossible to initiate one, but it'll
00:05:45.400only have success in the most exceptional circumstances, and that's what it was supposed
00:05:48.760to be there for. A local MLA will have had to have breached public trust so badly that a large
00:05:54.200majority of local electors feel they can't wait until the next election to fire their representative
00:05:58.620and a lot of MLA's have ticked people off but they haven't reached that bar yet and the electoral
00:06:03.620cycle will take care of it I guess in a year and a half from now. Union temper tantrums aren't
00:06:08.580going to cut it. The upcoming year is going to be a historic one. We got petitioning to invoke an
00:06:12.360independence referendum. It's almost sure to be successful and not necessarily the referendum
00:06:16.580but the petitioning for the recall or referendum anyways. So it's time to turn the page on the
00:06:22.220recall stunt pay close attention to real direct democracy in action though and it's sweeping the
00:06:26.500province right now all right that's what's got me going right now how's it going dave corey my
00:06:31.440friend you have my deepest sympathies i figured you were going to want to go on about this let's
00:06:37.520get it out um well you guys lost your seventh straight playoff game yes seven straights oh
00:06:43.880and seven not a good record and for those who don't watch regular yes i'm a steelers fan still
00:06:48.920a steelers fan disappointed steelers fan and you had to stay up till 2 a.m to watch the game yes
00:06:55.400because i had been at a speaking event up in bentley and uh the game while the game was on
00:07:00.600so i for a change people might have noticed a gap of you know five hours of me no more on twitter
00:07:05.560or anywhere on social media because i didn't want to find out the score so i sat up that late to
00:07:09.720replay the game and uh see them mutilated at 32 6. ouch ouch well i have offered you a chance to
00:07:17.640jump on the uh seahawks bandwagon and you you turned me down i'm afraid so i that was a family
00:07:23.000commitment thing i would lean that way but my daughter's a 49ers fan so i i got to cheer for
00:07:27.720the 40 okay well maybe next week after we thrash the 49ers i'll see at that point then i'll stay
00:07:32.440to the west i'll promise that um what are we going to do about jackson's mustache i mean that is
00:07:37.480cheesy right yeah it's it's that youthful porn stash we're seeing more of those going around
00:07:41.960that look you know it's kind of in i guess maybe i'll have a chat with him after after we're done
00:07:46.680little caterpillar on there lots going on in the news this morning cory we've got more details on
00:07:52.760that horrible horrible attack on that woman in edgemont in calgary she was showing her house off
00:07:59.720for possible to a possible tenant and he attacked her and and tried to strangle her to death and
00:08:07.160it's a miracle this woman is alive and she fought back and and was able to to kill her attacker
00:08:13.640and calgary police say it's the most blatant care the most obvious case of self-defense that
00:08:19.960that they've ever seen uh we're all on tenterhooks for iran uh waiting for uh donald trump to uh
00:08:27.000press the button uh u.s bases in qatar are evacuating personnel so it looks like something
00:08:35.000will happen and uh it's also a race to save the life of that uh the guy who's become the face of
00:08:42.040the uh the rebels uh who's due to be due to be hung uh at some point today uh francois legault
00:08:49.720resigned as um premier of quebec today uh his party is doing terribly in the polls and would
00:08:57.400have been wiped out uh and they're gonna get a new leader in before the fall election uh interesting
00:09:05.080you'll find this one interesting corey the uh the government has been ordered to release all the
00:09:09.880files into the kamloops residential school uh alleged graves you remember when the uh the first
00:09:17.480nation made that allegation they got 12 million dollars but one of the things they had to do was
00:09:22.920report on the progress that they were making and the uh the government has so far refused to hold
00:09:30.600it they refused to release it and the information commissioner came out today and uh ordered it
00:09:38.280to be released. And Canada's former, this is not a good portion of Canada's history when we fled
00:09:48.140from Afghanistan and left people behind. The former ambassador there is admitted for the first time
00:09:54.700it was a bit of a mess up. And David Duckworth, Calgary's top civil servant, is keeping his job.
00:10:01.620There were some media columnists who were demanding that he be fired and thought that it would happen
00:10:06.840and it didn't happen. He has survived. So he gets to stay on and lead us through our water woes.
00:10:13.320Well, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Mike Thomas there is watching everything City Hall
00:10:17.760and covering it excellently as usual. I mean, we thought this would be the first time finally
00:10:21.720somebody senior in City Hall and the administration is, boy, they've got a stranglehold on the
00:10:27.700elected. I don't know what it'll take. There's just no accountability at all. If this doesn't
00:10:32.320get someone fired nothing will no no again i took the wrong career path you know i know should have
00:10:38.680been a federal level 400 and some grand a year and probably more pensions than he can count
00:10:44.460well what was it duckworth said that uh he had to get mental health counseling for his staff
00:10:49.680little uh ducklings under him uh when the report was released because you know it was saying naughty
00:10:55.220things about yeah it was a scathing report by an independent group and uh you know before he sent
00:11:00.620out to his staff. Duckworth had crisis counselors on hold. It's ridiculous. I mean, these people
00:11:09.100have tried to work a day in the real world and where you get real ramifications and they just
00:11:14.580wouldn't last. Well, I mean, I still hold optimism with Jeremy Farkas. He's an interesting one in
00:11:20.780there. To be fair, he's not really hard to the right or left. He just kind of goes with what
00:11:24.620he is. He's a smart guy and we'll see what happens in Calgary City Hall. It sure needs
00:11:29.380a change. Something needs to happen, yeah. Right on. Well, I'll let you get back to your newsroom
00:11:35.460covering all that, growing your playoff beard, I guess. Yes, playoff beard, not shaving until
00:11:39.880Seattle wins the Super Bowl. Hopefully it's this year. I hope so. You'll be rubbing it in for our
00:11:47.400gentleman who has difficulty with facial hair. Yeah, so I'm going to go talk to him about his
00:11:50.700mustache right now. All right, thanks, Dave. You bet, Corey. All right. That is our news editor,
00:11:55.680dave naylor and uh yes i mean look stories all over the place i mean from international you know
00:12:01.040things in iran going on to locally in calgary where yeah the water lines are falling apart
00:12:06.000yet again and everything else in between and new reporters as you can see in the background the
00:12:10.960reason we can do that is because you guys subscribe so i gotta remind you get on there
00:12:14.640guys westernstandard.news subscription take one out it's ten dollars a month hundred dollars for
00:12:21.520a year and uh you get past that paint wall you can get to everything get these stories as we're
00:12:27.360writing them and it helps support us so we can keep getting uh those reporters spreading out
00:12:31.760we've got uh jeremy borg out in toronto we've got uh jared out on the west coast we got people all
00:12:37.520across this country so again thank you if you've subscribed already if you haven't yet
00:12:44.400it's about time uh let's see what we got some of the things in comments either way um
00:12:50.240Um, plenty going on out there. Hopefully we're going to have Mitch in pretty soon in a couple
00:12:55.140of minutes here. Uh, so yeah, I mean, he's going to be talking about the, the independence movement.
00:13:00.100So the, the referendum campaign in Alberta, well, the referendum itself isn't going yet.
00:13:06.560So what's going on is there's so much confusion and that's, I'm looking forward to,
00:13:09.700to Mitch clarifying a bunch of stuff on. So what's got to happen. I'll kind of give those
00:13:14.260steps. They need over 177,000 signatures on a petition, real signatures. Like I was talking
00:13:19.100about earlier with direct democracy has to be physical has to be with an accredited petitioner
00:13:24.340there who registers with elections alberta not just somebody picking up a clipboard and going
00:13:27.920to the door and they got four months to do it and as i said about 10 of those will get thrown out
00:13:33.620now this group the independence bunch app which now is it's a stay free alberta is the group
00:13:40.180doing it mitch will explain why that had change uh they're just going great i mean they've been
00:13:44.880organizing for years. They've been getting people ready to sign. So I attended a couple
00:13:48.880meetings, one last weekend in Calgary, in South Calgary, and another one up in Bentley.
00:13:55.400And we've been seeing the reports from Fort McMurray, Innisfail, Biceker, Lincoln Hall,
00:14:00.840just everywhere, all these different ones, Millet. The same thing is happening at each and every one
00:14:06.440of them. They are just overwhelmed with supporters. They're just coming out in droves.
00:14:13.720people lined up literally in Queensland down the road for blocks, wanting to sign the petition.
00:14:20.980And there was never a seat to be held for the speaking part. A lot of people at both events I
00:14:25.720went to, likewise in Bentley, I was speaking. There was maybe a couple hundred people in the
00:14:30.300hall I was speaking to, but in the back, there was just an endless line of people coming and going,
00:14:34.160signing these petitions. And this is just the first couple of weeks these guys have got months
00:14:38.760going on. Um, so, I mean, there's really something happening and, you know, is the best way to put
00:14:46.260it. Something special, something unusual. Uh, I just want to put a note out to, uh, it looks like
00:14:51.040a commenter, uh, James Tower, you know, uh, threw a seven bucks at us. Yeah. Thank you. You know,
00:14:55.620one of those things on, on YouTube, you can kind of toss a few dollars into, to help and, uh, get
00:14:59.800some comments up there and things like that. So thank you very much, James. Every bit helps us
00:15:04.420with independent media. I mean, contrary to what some people might think, uh, we aren't all actually
00:15:08.960all that rich and everything. So, uh, I appreciate that super chat going on there. So will we reach
00:15:18.140the, you know, the, that, that timeline for this petitioning and the rest? I mean, I'll just carry
00:15:23.900on with that. Four months of that, it's going to finish sometime in early May. Probably would take
00:15:29.580elections, Alberta, a month perhaps to process that stuff and get it up there so that it can be
00:15:37.040approved, presumably. And then the referendum would be held, I'm guessing October. That'd be
00:15:44.980my thought. So nine months of solid independence talk going on in Alberta of re-evaluating
00:15:51.040what our place is in the Federation. You know, polls have been coming out, different ones. It's
00:15:59.480been interesting to see that. And there's one group saying that this polling group saying
00:16:04.400there's 17% support for independence. That's what they're claiming it at. And another one,
00:16:08.520and these are both large pollsters and the other one is saying 31%. So that's a rather big
00:16:15.000discrepancy. You know, there's always going to be a little difference between pollsters and polls
00:16:18.700and things like that. But a spread by that much is pretty outstanding. So what's going on out
00:16:26.400there. I mean, this makes it hard to trust the polls. It really does. But most of them have
00:16:31.620stayed around 30% for the most part in the last year and some, especially since the last federal
00:16:38.220election really brought people into realizing the futility of trying to change things within
00:16:43.800the federation. So I figure it's probably still around 30. That's a long way from the 60, I think,
00:16:55.260that really needs to happen. And my guess would be that there's 30% that never are going to go
00:17:00.560for independence. There's never, I mean, that's fine. It's a big leap. It would have to get
00:17:05.900incredibly bad before we're looking at 80 or 90% support. But 60, I think is very possible,
00:17:11.400but it really depends on two things. One is how are the campaigners doing over the course of this
00:17:17.280next six, seven months? And of course, what the federal government does to inflame people further
00:17:24.880within the province and, you know, you know, bring about that support. So some's beyond our
00:17:31.360control, some's within it. Let's see. What's this from James, a commenter? What's this about
00:17:36.760sanctioned venues for signatures? I thought as long as you have an Elections Alberta badge,
00:17:39.960you could be a canvasser and collect signatures pretty much anywhere. Yes, there's some of the
00:17:43.840things I was really hoping Mitch would show up for, and hopefully we'll get him very soon
00:17:47.520to clarify on. So let me tell you about how it works with official petitioning. I've signed up
00:17:55.460to be one just as an Albertan. I'm not a member of any group or anything else, but still as an
00:17:58.680Albertan, it all has to run through State Free Alberta. That's the proponent. That's the one
00:18:02.580who filed to get a referendum going. So when you get involved in this, if you want to petition,
00:18:13.440you have to sign an NDA. Some people were, that's a non-disclosure agreement. They were all upset
00:18:18.000about that. What's this about? I won't have to sign it. Look, what'll happen is you're going to
00:18:21.020get a bunch of people's personal information. You're asking them to sign a petition to give
00:18:24.060their name, address, phone number, and all that. They don't want to suddenly find out that they're
00:18:28.200on a bunch of mailing lists or that their employer found out that they signed something if their
00:18:32.200employer not. That's all that's about. It's just saying when you take those signatures, they will
00:18:36.340only be used for the point of the referendum, nothing else. And then you go through, and I'm
00:18:44.480going to be going through one, a Zoom meeting with a training session. So they're going to go over
00:18:50.220some things with me and every other person who signs, just to be sure you know exactly what you
00:18:54.800got to do. I mean, there's a mistake that gets made a lot. People get post office boxes on the
00:18:59.040signatures, for example, rather than a residential address. You can't use that. You must have it. So
00:19:05.460I'm just, I'm going a long way here to explain what's going on. So Jeffrey Rath, I really didn't
00:19:13.380want to get into him much. He's one of the larger, in a number of ways, proponents of
00:19:18.880the independence movement. And he's been very involved for a long time. He's done a lot of
00:19:22.620really good work for it. He really has. He's brought it a long ways to where it is, but he's
00:19:26.560very outspoken on social media. And he put out a tweet about events that Jason Levine, who's
00:19:36.740another independent media person, and he pulls people together and does things. He's holding
00:19:41.260traveling meetings in bars just to talk about independence. And Raph got very upset with it
00:19:46.940because he likes to keep everything around Raph. So he put out a large tweet this morning saying
00:19:51.180this is unsanctioned meetings and you can't sign at these things essentially or things like
00:19:56.520that and caused a lot of confusion with people. Can I sign there? Can I not sign there? What's
00:20:00.120going on? Okay. Anybody can hold a meeting. I mean, you can't hold a meeting claiming you're
00:20:06.160with State Free Alberta if you're not, and they weren't. Nobody has been, aside from State Free
00:20:10.700Alberta, claiming to be State Free Alberta. Anybody with, as James is asking, with their badge can be
00:20:17.660a canvasser and collect signatures when you've been properly registered. You can go door to door.
00:20:23.000You can have a little coffee meeting in your area.
00:20:38.240We saw some online people talking, saying that they're going to sabotage this by registering as canvassers and then falsely garnering signatures and then just throwing them away and things like that.
00:20:52.740but how many, how much, I mean, look at the trouble. And I know there's a lot of nuts.
00:20:57.060So it'll get a lot of trouble out there. Look at the trouble they would have to go through. You'd
00:21:00.300have to sign up, put your personal information in your ID, pretend to get all the way through
00:21:06.440the process, uh, become accredited, get your badge. Then you're going to have to take your
00:21:12.540own time going around door to door or whatever you're doing, getting all these signatures to
00:21:16.240throw away. How many are you going to get a couple hundred? We're talking about a movement that's
00:21:21.360dealing in the hundreds of thousands of signatures. So any nutcase who's really going to go to that
00:21:27.420much difficulty to sabotage it, the impact is going to be negligible, to say the least.
00:21:36.200So either way, this is how it works. And if you're signing a petition, I guess I'll get that
00:21:40.160out there. If somebody's bringing one to you, you will have, they will have a badge. It's,
00:21:47.140you know, it's embossed, it's stamped, it's got, it's an Elections Alberta badge. It's not something
00:21:51.780you can make easily at home or something like that. They've been accredited to be able to
00:21:57.380garner these things and speak on behalf of that. So it's kind of a little incumbent on you. If
00:22:01.440you're worried about somebody disingenuously petitioning, well, make sure, ask for it. If
00:22:06.700they aren't showing it, then certainly they should have those credentials with them while they're at
00:22:11.480it. So, okay, great. I think I see Mitch in the lobby there. He's adjusting. I know he did say
00:22:15.460he has to come in from his truck because he is running all over the place. This man is tireless
00:22:20.040hitting meetings and speaking and doing all this stuff. So I want to bring him in because I've been
00:22:24.880turning your ear for long enough. There we go. I mean, you hear me all right there, Mitch?
00:22:32.640So I, well, we see Mitch anyways. Hopefully he can hear me.
00:22:38.900Maybe not. All right. Well, we might come back to Mitch in a couple of moments. Maybe the coverage
00:22:44.260is a little bit limited there um so i mean getting further with uh i'll talk about what i've been
00:22:49.520seeing and and uh what mitch is doing as you can see he's dressed he's in the truck i'm only
00:22:53.540guessing he's going to another uh meeting uh when he's dressed up like that and uh this is what
00:23:00.660people are really enjoying this is something that's been unique this is something how they've
00:23:04.940really built this base that now is exploding today because the meetings they're holding now
00:23:09.380are just built upon from from dozens and dozens now i think cumulatively hundreds of meetings
00:23:13.760they've held over the last uh few years and it's come to a head and now they're pulling it together
00:23:19.360and of course with that organization they are just overflowing the halls people are coming out in
00:23:23.600droves and the thing that was also astounding and going out to those meetings wasn't just people
00:23:27.840wanting to come to sign the petitions but people coming wanting to volunteer they wanted to sign
00:23:34.560up they wanted to get out there and do the petitioning themselves this this is really
00:23:40.800outstanding i i have never seen anything like this i mean i've been uh messing around you know
00:23:44.720pushing for the independence movement for a long time and something really unique is happening uh
00:23:49.680maybe we'll see if we can get mitch one more time on audio and see if perhaps he's in a spot where
00:23:53.760we can pull it in uh hello mitch have you got us at all hey cory can you hear me oh there i got
00:24:04.400you i heard your voice there mitch finally yes can you hear me yeah i i'm hearing you now
00:24:10.800Shit. Okay, we'll put Mitch back. Okay, can you hear me now? I'm hearing you, Mitch. Perfect. How are you? Good, good. Sounds like there's a little bit of a delay. So I've been rambling away. I know you're on the move, so it's hard to get to a spot to get good coverage.
00:24:29.200i guess i'll start with the first question though i just wanted to ask because that's
00:24:33.440where a lot of people are wondering what's going on what's stay free alberta what why
00:24:38.600is this a new organization rather than what they've been accustomed to all this time and
00:24:42.800getting ready for the uh independence uh referendum uh i'm afraid we've lost mitch
00:24:47.700okay well i'll go into that one of these days we'll get mitch in to get it working right
00:24:53.240technical issues. These guys work on the ground rather than digitally, which is, again, part of
00:25:00.960their strength in a lot of ways where they can do face-to-face meetings, but not so much on the tech
00:25:05.880end of things. So Stay Free Alberta. If you're looking to get involved with this, I'll get that
00:25:09.780out there. StayFreeAlberta.com or as others, yes, sometimes jokingly or whatnot talk about it. It's
00:25:16.480a feminine product. People are making fun of it. So what happened with the Alberta Prosperity
00:25:21.600project it's still there it's still got its databasing uh it's it's where all of this began
00:25:28.640i guess with the election the referendum legislation it has to be an individual
00:25:35.760initiating it not a group something of that sort i was hoping that you could expand on that
00:25:41.280and uh so they couldn't use the app to actually initiate this thing
00:25:46.720so the proponent himself if you look it up on the paperwork is mitch sylvester
00:25:51.600and the group is stayfreealberta.com. So it's, it's, it's the same thing. It's just different
00:25:56.680branding. They're working to get this sort of thing all registered properly. It looks a little
00:26:06.060more clear there. I see Mitch in the lobby. We'll give it one more try and see if we can get them.
00:26:11.480And okay. Are you hearing me now there, Mitch? All right. No, that's not going to work. Okay.
00:26:19.280So, I mean, as you know, guys, yes, the show really is live and it comes with most challenges.
00:26:24.660It will come with a live show and everything.
00:26:26.600So all I can say is I suggest strongly, guys, go to freealberta.com, check it out.
00:26:33.560And, you know, you can get more details, straight up stuff on how to support this.
00:26:38.500And hopefully, you know, we'll see how the petitioning comes about.