Western Standard - May 26, 2026


EXCLUSIVE： Keith Wilson on Alberta Independence


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

209.56

Word count

1,312

Sentence count

38

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The Western Standard's David Wendi Wendick was at the Grand Theatre in Calgary for the Jason Kenney-Keith Willsson debate on Monday night. He caught up with the former premier and his son Eric to talk about the debate and what they thought of it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 It provides us an opportunity to convince Albertans why they should either vote in support of independence or even if they're not fully there yet but they're very concerned about how Ottawa is treating Alberta, they can send a message by in the referendum in October saying vote to require the Alberta government to hold a formal referendum on separate.
00:00:20.200 And it's not all First Nations, and it's not all First Nations members.
00:00:24.300 It's a few chiefs, and they didn't pull their communities.
00:00:28.700 They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of their people's money
00:00:31.480 and giving it to lawyers, and I've heard from a lot of First Nations
00:00:35.400 who are very upset about what's happening.
00:00:37.060 They don't support it.
00:00:37.840 They actually support independence.
00:00:44.660 Hi, I'm David Wendick with the Western Standard.
00:00:46.540 I'm here at the Grand Theatre in Calgary for the Jason Kenney,
00:00:49.620 keith wilson debate here on monday night um we got an exclusive interview with keith wilson and
00:00:54.660 his son eric wilson so stay tuned for more of that do you think basically they're kind of clutching
00:00:58.980 straws basically um people like mark carney and all the pro-canada people because they have real
00:01:03.460 no arguments per se yeah yeah i mean i i obviously they have an interest in trying to portray the
00:01:11.140 premier and having the views that she does yeah um but it just it goes back to what i mentioned
00:01:16.180 you earlier is they don't have a plan nobody's come forward here at the plan here you had jason
00:01:20.340 kenny just come out here and talk for an hour and preach a lot of fear a lot of like pulling
00:01:25.220 on the heartstrings of nostalgia yeah but what's the biggest thing that's you know reoccurring
00:01:31.460 here is there's no plan to fix canada there's no plan to amend the situation that alberta's
00:01:36.500 currently in and it just leaves me thinking the only path forward is independence i'm just gonna
00:01:40.260 say where do you guys go from here per se because you still have until october 4th referendum so
00:01:44.980 Are you guys going to be campaigning the whole time and just kind of maybe doing more town halls or is there any sort of debates?
00:01:49.700 I'm not doing anything. I'm just Keith's son.
00:01:51.740 Yeah, no, I know. I just want to know what your thoughts were.
00:01:53.680 Yeah, he's, I don't know. Keith's got stuff that he's planning to do and all that.
00:01:56.900 Obviously, his goal is to, I'm sure you've heard of his recent launch of the Alberta Transition Council.
00:02:02.000 Yeah.
00:02:02.360 And he wants to, you know, in the same way that I'm criticizing the Federalists for having no plan,
00:02:07.920 we want to, you know, Keith intends to have a plan and come forward and mention that there is a plan
00:02:12.280 and have that so people can see that there is a smooth transition
00:02:15.280 to nationhood for Alberta.
00:02:17.320 And obviously the goal is to get to 50% plus one
00:02:21.320 for that referendum on October 19th.
00:02:23.460 And we think coming to the table with a detailed plan
00:02:25.700 will, you know, push us in that direction.
00:02:28.020 What do you actually think of Premier Smith's referendum question
00:02:30.940 that she put forward?
00:02:31.780 Because she took basically the Thomas and Kazik one
00:02:33.540 and then slapped on a whole second part too.
00:02:34.940 What do you guys think of that?
00:02:36.540 Obviously nobody in the independence movement was happy
00:02:39.140 when they heard that.
00:02:39.980 Yeah. Obviously, the premier was in a tough situation just with the courts, all that working against her and obviously divisions in her own party. 1.00
00:02:49.280 With that being said, you know, we also as advocates for independence have to take an honest look at where independence is at.
00:02:56.740 We got a ways to go where, you know, anywhere, depending on the polls, you look at 35, the most ambitious ones, maybe 40 percent.
00:03:04.360 in order for us to get to 50% plus one on an actual binding referendum on independence.
00:03:10.660 There's a lot of work that needs to go in.
00:03:12.100 I think there's a lot of organizations that are yet to come forward
00:03:14.500 that will put that campaign together to get people there.
00:03:17.420 How do you think the first two debates have gone this last month against Jason Kenney?
00:03:21.480 Is this kind of what you expected in terms of the reception it's gotten in the crowds and what have you?
00:03:25.280 Well, what surprised me is that the former premier has not brought forward any kind of plan
00:03:30.860 to address the legitimate grievances, the harm that Ottawa continues to cause to Alberta,
00:03:36.720 to our economy, to the opportunities for our children, for the cost of living.
00:03:41.560 At no time has he offered any kind of plan, nor have any of the other federalists.
00:03:45.700 And it's quite surprising to me, and maybe it's not,
00:03:48.080 because the fact of the matter is you can't amend the Constitution.
00:03:51.380 You've got to convince the rest of the country to change their ways,
00:03:53.960 and they don't want to change their race.
00:03:55.140 They kind of like all the money we send to Ottawa.
00:03:57.140 so that surprised me and all he's had to support a stay in canada argument has been fear and and
00:04:06.820 uncertainty i was going to say as well what do you think of premier smith's question that they've
00:04:10.340 decided to put on the referendum in october she basically took the forever canada one then slapped
00:04:13.960 a second part onto that what do you guys think about that well i'm not you guys i'm me i was
00:04:18.540 in the pro-independence camp yeah so my view is that um she had no choice because of the court
00:04:25.180 ruling and if the cabinet would have used its power and its discretion and its authority under
00:04:30.020 the referendum act and set the question that way and if it was an up down question a yes or no it
00:04:35.460 would have been subject to a court challenge and the whole process would have been put on ice
00:04:39.180 and the independence movement would have lost critical time and lost momentum so it's not an
00:04:44.760 ideal outcome it's not my preferred outcome but it's a reality and I can work with it I think
00:04:51.860 other people in the independence movement can work with it provides us an opportunity to convince
00:04:55.740 Albertans why they should either vote in support of independence or even if they're not fully there
00:05:01.860 yet but they're very concerned about how Ottawa's treating Alberta they can send a message by in the
00:05:06.980 referendum in October saying vote to require the Alberta government to hold a formal referendum
00:05:13.280 on separation. Okay this is of personal interest to me the core blunt petition the whole Indigenous
00:05:18.160 this consultation would that apply to his like i don't know how the legal would work for that one
00:05:22.160 like it's obviously a citizen initiative would that also apply the way it's applied to the
00:05:25.720 independence how does that work exactly or do you am i asking the right person on that well what
00:05:29.740 you're seeing is the the selective nature of the first nations and what they're and it's not all
00:05:36.200 first nations and it's not all first nations members it's a few chiefs and they didn't pull
00:05:41.960 their communities uh they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of their people's money
00:05:45.840 and giving it to lawyers and I've heard from a lot of First Nations who are very upset about
00:05:50.840 what's happening they don't support it they actually support independence so it's politics
00:05:56.140 I really think they're doing the bidding for Ottawa and trying to help Ottawa's aspiration
00:06:04.240 of thwarting the independence movement. Thank you sir I appreciate it it's free time. If you're
00:06:08.360 looking for more exclusive content like this you can subscribe to the Western Standard for $8 a
00:06:12.620 month using code Alberta first. Thank you again. I'll see you again soon.