Western Standard - May 11, 2026


CORY MORGAN： ＂Bad actors must be ejected＂, The Alberta independence campaign must clean itself up

Mentioned
Mitch Sylvester David Parker Elections Alberta
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Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

183.52

Word count

1,040

Sentence count

53

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we take a look back at the past week in the independence movement in Alberta, and what we need to do to move forward in the coming weeks and months to ensure a successful referendum in the fall.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Yeah, lots to discuss, lots to talk about and lots breaking, but we'll get into the area
00:00:12.660 what I wanted to speak of. As I said, it's been a really good week for the independence movement
00:00:18.240 and it's really been bad and we've got to do better, but I'll explain a little of that.
00:00:24.640 So, Alberta, I mean, we're at a turning point in history.
00:00:28.520 Mitch Sylvester, and I get nothing but good things to say about Mitch,
00:00:31.680 with State Free Alberta, presented over 301,000 signatures to the Elections Alberta office,
00:00:38.060 demanding a referendum be held on Liberta Independence.
00:00:41.220 The signature collection process, it was meticulous.
00:00:44.460 There's over 7,000 volunteers registered, they took training,
00:00:48.200 and then demanded the identification for every signature offered to the petition.
00:00:52.140 The bar to trigger a petition for a referendum or to trigger a referendum with a petition was set at 178,000, comfortably surpassed.
00:01:00.760 It was a remarkable accomplishment achieved during the darkest, coldest months of winter.
00:01:04.840 And anybody claiming it was an easy thing to achieve is either lying or they've never actually petitioned before.
00:01:10.920 And that petition presentation the other day was celebratory, as it should be.
00:01:15.880 Hundreds of supporters gathered for the event and the energy was palpable.
00:01:18.940 I wish I could have made it up.
00:01:21.120 Alas, I was stuck down here.
00:01:22.760 Unfortunately, though, a dark cloud of controversy also hung in the background during that event
00:01:27.740 due to the alleged leak of voter information by David Parker's Centurion Project.
00:01:32.680 A news cycle that should have been overwhelmed with positive imagery of the independence movement
00:01:37.260 passing an important milestone was disrupted with constant chatter about laws being broken
00:01:43.020 and privacy being violated.
00:01:44.380 It doesn't crush the movement by any means, but it was a self-inflicted setback that never
00:01:50.360 should have happened. With the petitioning finished, the independence movement must now
00:01:54.800 evolve into a campaigning phase in anticipation of a fall referendum. And this is going to be
00:02:00.000 different than the petitioning campaign. In petitioning, people who already supported
00:02:04.220 independence engaged themselves, and they sought out the signatures of hundreds of thousands of
00:02:08.800 Albertans who wanted to see a referendum question on the issue. And while the process in itself
00:02:14.300 surely led to converting many to the independent side of the fence. It still left a large and mushy
00:02:19.600 undecided middle of the population who must be won over by October 19th, and it's not going to be
00:02:24.360 easy. To begin with, this independence movement must be squeaky clean. There could be no whiffs
00:02:31.100 of corruption or misdoing, or it will sink any chance of winning the trust and support of citizens
00:02:36.220 by voting time. Perhaps the mess caused by the Centurion Project debacle is something of a
00:02:41.660 blessing is it offered this hard lesson while there's still nearly six months to recover from
00:02:46.280 it and to campaign. A mistake made by many independent supporters when the news broke
00:02:51.060 of the apparent misuse and public sharing of information from the electors list though was
00:02:55.240 to circle the wagons and try to defend it. Some tried to liken the information to that contained
00:03:00.060 in a phone book and others tried to claim the leak was all part of a conspiracy orchestrated
00:03:04.780 by Elections Alberta. Both approaches only created mistrust within the general population
00:03:10.740 which now must be countered. The breach of information should have been immediately
00:03:15.480 condemned and quarantined. When the referendum on independence is held in Alberta this fall
00:03:20.740 it's going to be a yes or no question on the ballot but the voters are going to have to answer
00:03:24.260 two questions to themselves before making their mark. They're going to of course have to determine
00:03:28.800 if they want Alberta to be independent but they're also going to be asking themselves if they trust
00:03:34.240 the independence movement to lead the province after that into a better place. A person committed
00:03:39.580 that independents could still end up voting no if it appears the movement is dominated by corrupt 0.97
00:03:43.480 or inept players within it. Mitch Sylvester responded excellently when asked about the 0.61
00:03:49.380 Centurion Project mess. He said that David Parker had approached him with the concept,
00:03:53.760 but that he felt there could be issues with the legality and chose not to be associated with it.
00:03:57.640 That apparently led to friction between Sylvester and Parker, which is a good thing.
00:04:01.880 Mitch directly addressed the issue and stated clearly how it has nothing to do with the group
00:04:06.160 petitioning. It also exposed actually a glimmer of David Parker's nature. The independence
00:04:11.960 movement is made up by a number of groups, and that's been an advantage and a disadvantage. It's
00:04:15.800 allowed people to move forward together towards a shared goal, but it also leads to some mixed
00:04:19.920 messaging. There will be no political party or singular organization speaking for the independence
00:04:24.800 movement in the next few months. The movement still, though, it must try to centralize some
00:04:29.440 of the messaging to a degree and ensure only credible people like Mitch speak for it. Characters
00:04:34.640 like David Parker and Cam Davies, who already have well-established checkered histories, must
00:04:38.980 be kept as far out of the movement as possible. People like Mitch Sylvester must step up and take
00:04:44.740 a more active role in speaking for the movement. He should be the one speaking to the press guys,
00:04:48.200 nobody else. The middle must be one, and Sylvester's rational, positive, and calm approach
00:04:53.860 wins people over. If the movement is represented by a loud, corpulent caricature of a cowboy
00:05:00.100 screaming about commies, it will be lost. It'll take some strength and potential conflict to move
00:05:06.240 the damaging elements within the movement into the background or out of it altogether. But this
00:05:11.420 must be done if the trust of voters is going to be gained. They don't see a bunch of different
00:05:15.680 groups, guys. They just see one independence movement. And if Mavericks are continued to be
00:05:19.920 embraced, it's only going to give the opponents ammunition. The independence movement has flourished
00:05:25.140 almost despite itself. To get over this largest hurdle that's coming now, though, it must begin
00:05:29.620 acting strategically and prove it's trustworthy. It can't sustain scandals and to prevent those,
00:05:35.860 the known bad actors must be ejected sooner rather than later.