00:13:37.300it's got its own character you could work to erase the current character you could damage the current
00:13:42.700character but you're not going to replace it with something else because there's it's not there this
00:13:48.060is who the city is this is what it's about and you guys as i said it's incremental look what they did
00:13:55.200with the branding as i said in my monologue it went from heart of the new west you know nice
00:14:01.160positive but it mentions west they didn't like that oh west cowboy hats don't like that okay
00:14:07.080let's change it to be part of the energy and literally when they changed that to blue sky city
00:14:11.240and they spent millions to change that some genius in city hall got five million dollars to come up
00:14:15.900with blue sky city man i'm in the wrong job why did they do that because energy was too controversial
00:14:22.220they're moving us away from who we are don't let them push back guys i know some people think who
00:14:28.700cares about a party tent where a bunch of young people drink too much and barf and so on that's
00:14:33.300just part of the whole guys they're not they're picking at the low-hanging fruit and every year
00:14:37.480they're going to try and go after something else don't let them do it all right let's move on get
00:14:43.320to our guest i've been looking forward to this tanya clemens of the new third-party advertiser
00:14:48.340let alberta decide uh is on board here and uh well i imagine hitting the ground running how's it going
00:14:54.400tanya uh it's been going really great actually like really positive support and lots of engagement
00:15:00.320with people. Donations are coming in, which is going to help us with being able to do all the
00:15:05.480priorities that we have set out to do. And yeah, so far it's been really positive. So I think people
00:15:10.100were looking for, you know, a little bit of space to have some civil discourse and ask questions and
00:15:15.900to get some answers to their questions. So that part has been really great. Great. So the third
00:15:22.220party advertising group has let Alberta decide what is the mandate of that group? There's many,
00:15:27.540many third-party groups out there now, sort of where is the focus of this one going to be?
00:15:33.220Yeah, so the focus of this one is to be able to reach that group of undecided people,
00:15:37.960or maybe even folks that are a little bit in opposition to the independence movement at that
00:15:41.980moment, and engage them in conversation, deliver some education to them. Lots of that group of
00:15:47.600people are, they share the commonality with us, with most Albertans that were frustrated with our
00:15:52.700place within confederation and i think it's just a matter of being able to explain what has happened
00:16:00.060historically why we're frustrated and that there is a path out of this frustration that leads away
00:16:05.660from that so it's engaging that group in some civil discourse and conversation yeah one thing
00:16:12.220i found it was uh striking on the site when i went on to it you've got a live counter the second you
00:16:16.940enter the site it shows how many dollars have left alberta to go into the federation without return
00:16:21.900on that investment. And boy, it ticks up pretty quickly there. It's nice to see a visual to kind
00:16:26.860of remind people of just how poorly we get a fiscal return on things. Yeah, the website's
00:16:33.620pretty awesome. We have a great team that's using some of the coolest technology to implement things
00:16:39.580in our campaign. But that website is pretty awesome. And when you're seeing that number
00:16:43.320scroll up so, so, so, so fast, you really get a good visual for how much money is bleeding out
00:16:48.480of this province and just continues to all the time so as your group you know you plan to reach
00:16:54.800out to the people who are undecided or considering you know uh independence curious whatever way you
00:16:59.140want to put it uh what is the plan to reach them though they're going to be public events is are
00:17:03.700you coordinating uh volunteers door knocking literature what sort of aspects of a campaign
00:17:09.160have you guys got planned well a lot of that undecided population lives in the world of
00:17:16.040mainstream and legacy media. So one of our big plans is to make sure that we're out there and
00:17:20.560available for engaging with the media. That hasn't always been the case in the past, and it's been
00:17:25.500met with a little bit of opposition, a little bit controversial. So we want to make sure that we're
00:17:30.360willing to engage with that part of our world. And then also there will be a kind of a hybrid of
00:17:36.240traditional marketing campaigns. There will be some door knocking and educational brochures and
00:17:41.720information that goes out that way with our website and different avenues but then also we'll
00:17:46.620be doing some really high-end digital marketing and social media marketing and campaign that way
00:17:52.660we have a really great team that's very specialized in that part so that will be exciting to see that
00:17:57.840shift a bit too great and then so this is i mean how do you distinguish i guess you know i mean
00:18:03.720people work with more than one group they work with more than one thing uh mr wilson is is working
00:18:08.700with creating a white paper and and items such as that but he's still a part of this group that's
00:18:14.220formed as well like like what's the how's that whole relationship kind of work oh we declared
00:18:20.240ourselves a third-party advertiser group as as you're kind of aware with how those groups work
00:18:24.280as well because we have uh huge intentions of spending well over a thousand dollars advocating
00:18:29.560for a certain outcome with the referendum questions so we've been working on that but
00:18:35.780then also if you're not advertising for a specific outcome and the Alberta Transition Council is just
00:18:42.460doing some education and research and putting together information for the general public of
00:18:46.740how a transition could happen for Alberta going from a province to a nation that's just educational
00:18:53.120material it's not not advocating either way and yeah so they're well inclined to be able to do
00:18:58.760a little bit of all those things I love that there's so many third-party advertisers out there
00:19:03.440that are all advocating for it and people often ask why we don't just have one and stick under
00:19:07.740one big umbrella and I don't know if like the public's quite aware that if you do that you're
00:19:12.400limiting yourself to a maximum limit that you can spend on your campaign which is six hundred and
00:19:19.060seven thousand dollars by having multiple third-party advertisers and each kind of taking
00:19:23.540their own routes to advocate for that same outcome then we have each group has that maximum amount to
00:19:29.680be able to spend. And when we're fighting against some of the huge opposition we are with the big
00:19:33.900bank accounts that we are, it's more important, I think, to have multiple people with multiple
00:19:38.280voices and bigger campaign to be able to work with. Yeah. So that press conference on Friday
00:19:44.860was very professional and well-planned and organized. And there was a great deal of legacy
00:19:51.940media in attendance, wanting to see what's up and asking questions and such. What is your reaction
00:19:57.820a response been since the conference now as people have heard of you guys and uh you know are having
00:20:03.820a second look at you and considering getting involved well i think it's actually opened up
00:20:10.620the door for conversation with uh mainstream media which is great that was kind of the intent
00:20:14.860to it we wanted to engage them in conversation and make sure that you know we're available to
00:20:18.780be able to discuss with them there was a great article just yesterday in the edmonton journal
00:20:23.180um about our tpa launching about let alberta decide coming on the scene so i think that it's
00:20:29.100been positive so far there's definitely a couple things that they've they've said in the media like
00:20:33.100when they first um ran the stories right after that launch was that you know they tried to make
00:20:38.700it seem like it was a rally a rally of 35 people showed up to support this launch knowing full well
00:20:44.940that it was kept small intentionally because it was a media event targeted specifically
00:20:49.900an invitation only to the mainstream media so there was a little bit of
00:20:53.980a skewing of words there but overall it's been really positive so far
00:20:58.220yeah that's that frustration and we see that in in general and and that's what leads i guess
00:21:03.900some of the groups and individuals to sometimes refuse to speak to legacy media outlets but at
00:21:09.660the same time as you said you got to reach the people who watch those so even i mean most of
00:21:14.140the outlets can be pretty fair when you talk to them but once in a while they'll pull stunts as
00:21:17.580as you mentioned. Hopefully they remain somewhat fair until the end of the campaign. We've got to
00:21:23.680get to everybody. A question from Stuart, just saying, are you going to have signs or flags from
00:21:29.060your organization? I think that we will have some of those right now. We're not, there is quite a
00:21:36.220few organizations that are doing some excellent signage and we're happy that they're doing that
00:21:41.480and kind of want to stay in our own lanes so we're not overlapping and taking, you know, funding away
00:21:47.080from where it's best used by the people who know how to do it the best but yeah there's been some
00:21:51.520requests for for signs and flags so we'll get those um available i'm sure in the coming days
00:21:58.140there as well that's something that has been kind of unique and i mean i i guess it remains to be
00:22:02.860seen whether this turns into a really good campaign with a bunch of different groups biting
00:22:05.960off chunks or or if it turns into a a gong show i guess by october hopefully the former
00:22:11.020uh because yes it allows i guess some groups to say well we could take that part off our plate
00:22:16.340and focus on this over here and we can deal with this rather because when you're a political party
00:22:21.500you have to do everything and with a tpa you can actually focus a little more yeah and also with a
00:22:28.960political party your campaign timeline is usually about a month if that we have a very very long
00:22:35.100campaign period with this so i think it's kind of important to try to allocate our resources
00:22:40.040accordingly and to not wear people out and then our big focus again is just like to really
00:22:46.640normalize the conversation around Albert independence that that's not a traitorous
00:22:51.940conversation it's not evil it's not coming out of hatred or disgust it's coming out of frustration
00:22:57.580and it's we're going to be asked this gigantic question on referendum day Albert should be able
00:23:02.860to have some conversation and discussion around it yeah so some of the there's constraints with
00:23:08.500third-party advertising and what can be raised what can be spent an interesting question from
00:23:12.420carl peterson saying how do you know when a group has reached their maximum contributions uh you
00:23:16.480know and then you would have to go somewhere else but i i believe the groups would report it
00:23:19.760themselves if they've hit the top they're just gonna have to say well we got to work with what
00:23:22.900we got yeah i would think that's how it would have to go because you have to report every week
00:23:27.760i don't do the reporting part for our tpa but the really smart people in that area of it they're
00:23:33.380doing that for us which is awesome but you would know quite a bit about that as well too
00:23:36.520so I'm yeah we're not anywhere close to hitting that and then I guess yeah once
00:23:43.500yeah and once the TPA does hit that and you make that announcement then there's lots of other great
00:23:50.560TPAs that would happily take those donations yeah and I don't know the state of every TPA but I
00:23:56.900suspect most of them aren't pushing on the brink of 600,000 yet but it's still a very good question
00:24:02.260because people want to support and it's different you know there's no maximums giving to well there's
00:24:05.880maximum individuals but there's no maximum a political party can collect for example
00:24:09.540like some of those distinguishments between political parties and third party advertisements
00:24:13.880and people are going to have a bit of confusion in the next few months figuring that out
00:24:16.680yeah even for personally donating like lots of people don't realize that you can donate 5 000
00:24:24.080but that's the maximum you can donate for all the tpas combined your maximum donations right
00:24:29.460and you can also donate as your corporation so people are are wanting to cut some big checks
00:24:35.460and they're being very generous but you are limited by that amount so have your corporation
00:24:40.820write one have your your spouse write one have all of your adult children there's ways that you
00:24:46.060can donate more if you need to you just have to be aware that it is for all the tpa donations
00:24:50.360combined that you're writing yeah so uh you know i'll kind of leave off because it's you're going
00:24:55.720to be the the person speaking for this group what drew you to uh jump out and get active on this and
00:25:01.400become the face of this new movement here? I don't know if I'm the face of it just one of
00:25:07.060yeah one of the faces and one of the people willing to stick their neck out of it but I have
00:25:11.300been involved with this for quite a few years now I've worked with the Alberta Prosperity Project
00:25:15.440and worked with a bunch of different groups and then just on my own trying to engage Albertans
00:25:20.880in the conversation so Keith actually approached me and asked if I would be interested in doing
00:25:24.820this with him and for someone of his status that I respect so much and has spoken so calmly
00:25:30.820and respectfully to people about this topic I jumped at the chance to work with him and the
00:25:36.560team that we've got compiled is fantastic but yeah just working with everybody in this whole
00:25:41.920movement has been really great yourself for Scott there's a lot of awesome people I've enjoyed
00:25:46.760working with yeah people are coming from all sorts of fronts that's for sure it's it's whatever
00:25:52.940happens it's going to be a first we've never quite seen something like this and we just want to make
00:25:57.060sure it's a positive first. So before I let you go then, where can, you know, remind people where
00:26:03.500they can find your organization, how they can support it, and what might you have in the works
00:26:08.220in the near future? Yeah, so if you go on to LetAlbertaDecide.com, LetAlbertaDecide on any
00:26:16.820of the social media platforms, there is donation links on our website, so we would really appreciate
00:26:22.180uh the donations to help get us rolling get us going we've got our team started on the social
00:26:28.180media and the the digital advertising so that's kind of our our first steps is to really get that
00:26:34.180going so it can kind of start to compound and and grow exponentially over the coming months
00:26:38.660yeah so we'd appreciate you check that out great well i thank you very much for getting that rolling
00:26:45.240tanya and for taking some time to come in today to talk to uh us about it and uh looking forward
00:26:50.620to seeing how that tpa develops in the next few weeks and months yeah well thank you very much
00:26:56.540for having me and thanks for all you do as well pleasure all right thank you so that was guys
00:27:02.120tanya clemens of the new third-party advertising group let alberta decide and i i think a lot of
00:27:07.840people have been looking forward to seeing something i mean there's there's stuff going on
00:27:11.780it's that mixed blessing i guess of having different groups all coming from different
00:27:15.940directions. There's advantages, but there's disadvantages. The primary groups that were
00:27:20.820out there, Alberta Prosperity Project and Stay Free Alberta, it sounds like they might be getting
00:27:24.980some stuff rolling now. I'm not too sure. I'm not a member of them, but they were stalled for
00:27:30.060whatever reasons. I leave that to them to explain whatever happened. But this referendum campaign
00:27:35.540was getting rolling and those groups weren't budging. And now it sounds like there's things
00:27:41.520happening. I think Mitch Sylvester's speaking at an event in Red Deer tonight or something like
00:27:45.740that. So good. The more, the better. But having all these groups coming forward now, we need them
00:27:52.260focused on their own areas, perhaps. So this one looks really, really good. And as Tanya said,
00:27:57.400we need a rational approach. And we've got to remember something I think that's happened in
00:28:02.060the independence movement a bit is some echo chambering. You know, the petitioning period
00:28:06.000pulled a lot of people together, and it was really interesting and striking to watch. And all those
00:28:10.680people, you know, getting moving towards a common goal like that. But at the same time, they weren't
00:28:15.920reaching, I think, too many of the new people or the people on the brink. And that's who really
00:28:21.220must be reached now, the people who aren't sure, the undecideds. There's always going to be 30%
00:28:26.280that never support a cause like this in a million years. Fair enough. But there's a big piece that
00:28:31.640could consider it. And we got to figure out how to reach out to them. And being in echo chambers
00:28:36.100won't do that. That's why, as Tanya mentioned, there can be some real unfair crap out of legacy
00:28:41.720media with that one example, for example. But at the same time, a lot of the outlets covered things
00:28:47.180fairly as well. Or sometimes people will see an unfair coverage from legacy media, but they know
00:28:51.500it's unfair and it still helps your group. So don't antagonize legacy media. Don't completely ignore
00:28:59.080them because you've got to reach everybody by every means you can. Whether we like it or not,
00:29:03.860There's a whole lot of people still get the bulk of their news from CBC or CTV and things like that.
00:29:09.340I'll just offer one of the tricks that, you know, happened in a sense with the issue I had going on with my work with a billboard down in Tabor and the battles going on there.
00:29:18.780But one of the outlets, Global, went down and managed to find in Tabor, Alberta, one of the most conservative towns in the whole province.
00:29:28.040Apparently, every person they approached did not like my billboard and felt the town was well justified in trying to have it removed.
00:29:35.080I was quite astounded. Wow. Boy, that town really hates it.
00:29:38.860CTV went out, on the other hand, spoke to a few people and found more mixed views.
00:29:43.060A few people saying, I don't agree with the guy's message, but it's OK to have a billboard.
00:29:46.500And they found a couple of people who said, yeah, I fully agree with that messaging and that billboard.
00:29:50.940That's called doing streeters and media does it all the time.
00:29:54.600It's one of the best ways you can take what looks to be a newscast and spin it to look like, well, to whatever aspect you want.
00:30:03.040I got to wonder with the other coverage, how many people did they have to ask before they could find a few who really hated that sign
00:30:08.620to make sure that those were the only ones that made the coverage?
00:30:10.720You can never tell when you're watching the show, unfortunately.
00:30:17.520We just got to cut through the BS to a degree for ourselves.
00:30:19.940but we've got now it's just a bit less than four months to reach a lot of people and try and swing
00:30:28.680their minds if you want to get an independence vote out of things. CB fixes all says, let everyone
00:30:33.620know that each person can spend up to a thousand dollars on their own for this. That's an interesting
00:30:37.160point. Cause I mean, I spoke to a person who reached out and said, you know, look, I got a
00:30:41.900big spot on my land and I want to put a big wrap on this, this old building or whatever.
00:30:46.200uh and and you know can you have that made uh with your organization and send it out to me i said
00:30:51.360well it's kind of outside i don't do custom things and everything we we're already kind of scrambling
00:30:55.000to keep up with what we do he said well i talked to a printer out here and he could do it for 700
00:30:58.920dollars so well you know what if it's just your own barn you can put your own flag up and whatever
00:31:03.440you like if you're spending under a thousand as cb fixes all you don't have to be a third party
00:31:09.140advertiser that that that's you can spend your own money on that bit of promotion just be careful
00:31:13.280you know don't press the limits that's something we've everybody's going to have to watch as well
00:31:19.280some of the discussions uh i saw somebody else in the comments reminding as well or maybe 10
00:31:25.840you mentioned it but it's cumulative when you donate to these organizations and they do track
00:31:31.320it that's why they make these organ all of these organizations input their financials every week
00:31:38.600So if you've donated $500 here, $1,000 there, $2,000 here, $600 there to a bunch of different groups, Elections Alberta will compile all that.
00:31:49.740And if you cross the $5,000 limit, you will go over.
00:31:54.400So it's kind of on you because the organization you donate to doesn't know who else you donated to.
00:32:01.340So you could just end up in a little bit of soup that way and having to get money collected or something like that.
00:32:08.040So watch for some of the rules because it's not like a political party where it's a little more nuanced and easier to figure out, you know, what you're allowed to spend on and what you're not allowed to spend on.
00:32:18.440But it's something like we've never seen before.
00:32:20.320And for people spending $5,000, you know, I mean, yeah, for most of us, I don't have to worry about it.
00:32:24.720I'm not going to forget how much I ever spent.
00:32:26.860And I'm not in a position to make contributions to anything that high.
00:32:34.220We've seen some of the issues with the campaign because of some groups already that got caught just having very serious issues with elections, Alberta rules and lists and things such as that.
00:32:59.180You know, I had a discussion with one of the folks in the newsroom about that case with a 12-year-old child getting medical assistance and dying in the Netherlands, and it's awful.
00:33:13.480And, you know, that individual I spoke to doesn't support medical assistance and dying in any circumstance, no matter what, for anybody.
00:33:19.500You know, there's people who have misgivings about it, whether it's religious or personal or whatnot.
00:33:25.200But it's just such a tough, tough issue.
00:33:28.820It really is. We don't know in the case of that 12-year-old, for example, and I get worried because we're hearing about some cases where MAID has been applied to people where it really does not belong. People with, you know, mental health issues, depression, diabetes, these are not things that make sense to have somebody be killed for.
00:33:49.960But we don't know the condition of this child. You know, was it, you know, confident that there was a few weeks of agony and misery to live through, or they'd have to be just drugged into a coma to survive it out? Or was there something more?
00:34:06.320But we need, this is really turning into a worldwide issue0.99
00:34:09.980because MAID is being used more and more.
00:34:35.080But I don't know. These things are tough. These are just really, really tough. Actually, here's a good question. I might as well crab that before I go to the next subject too. Listening Albert says, please explain if people from outside of Alberta can donate. If you have, I apologize, but please repeat. That's okay.
00:34:49.600So yeah, I will remind you, nobody from outside of Alberta can donate to third-party advertisers for the sake of Tanya's group and every other one of them and the grief that mine found, by the way, to start with.
00:35:01.260If you donate more than $50, we must have your personal information.
00:38:35.580And some of the early discussions with people saying, you know, well, we'd have to determine if it was, you know, this person had mental health issues or not.
00:38:43.520I know when it comes to a plea to try and get out of criminal responsibility, you can do that.