Western Standard - June 19, 2026


Keith Wilson and Tanya Clemens launch ＂Let Alberta Decide＂ campaign

Topics
Alberta leverage and independence relationship with BC
Mentioned
Keith Ellison Elections Alberta Alberta Decide Corey Morgan David Eby Burnaby Rupert
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Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

158.18

Word count

1,208

Sentence count

55


Summary

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

Let Alberta Decide has launched a new campaign called "Alberta's Done Waiting" in support of Alberta's independence from Canada. In this episode, we talk to two co-founders of the campaign, Keith Wilson and Tamara Clemens, about their vision for the new campaign.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.320 Albertans have been extraordinarily patient, but at some point we have to evaluate outcomes
00:00:06.960 rather than promises and Alberta is done waiting. There's another question we have to be willing to
00:00:13.200 ask. What if we do nothing? Because doing nothing often feels like the safer option, but doing
00:00:21.520 nothing also is a choice and one that comes with consequences. Alberta's future is going to be
00:00:28.160 shaped and changed whether we actively participate in that process or not. The real question is
00:00:33.920 whether Albertans will have enough influence over that future or whether we'll continue
00:00:38.480 adapting to decisions made elsewhere and far away.
00:00:53.600 Hello this morning we're at a press conference for Let Alberta Decide which features
00:00:58.080 keith wilson and tamara clemens now they're going to be launching a new campaign called
00:01:04.400 alberta's done waiting and we're gonna listen in we're gonna ask some questions and yeah so i'd like
00:01:10.480 to start off by introducing a man that a lot of you know already he's becoming one or become one
00:01:15.600 of the the main voices in the alberta independence movement he's really stepped up over the last
00:01:21.360 little while and we appreciate that very much you've probably seen him on media across canada
00:01:26.480 and the United States as well. So I'd like to introduce one of the co-leads of Let Alberta
00:01:31.500 Decide, lawyer Keith Wilson. Again, it's my view and Tanya's view and I think a view of an increasing
00:01:40.380 number of Albertans that Canada no longer works for Alberta. We've outgrown the relationship
00:01:46.260 and we have the ability to venture forth and achieve greater things by being unconstrained
00:01:54.240 by Ottawa. Of course, our relationship with the rest of Canada would not end. We would
00:02:00.060 just be in a position of leverage to negotiate a new relationship with Ottawa and the rest
00:02:06.780 of Canada instead of the situation we have today where we're told what we can and can't
00:02:11.460 do. I have worked with the Alberta Crossbody Project a lot in the past too, and they are
00:02:15.260 remaining as an educational society through it. So some of it has to do with Elections
00:02:19.200 Alberta referendum campaign laws that if you're going to advocate for an outcome in a referendum
00:02:26.320 and spend more than a thousand dollars advertising for it, you need to designate yourself as a third
00:02:30.880 party advertiser. So we could technically all come together, sorry, we could all come together
00:02:35.420 underneath one banner and all fight as one unit going forward for independence and advocate for
00:02:41.640 that. But then that limits us at a $607,000 spending limit for that organization by having
00:02:48.340 multiple third party organizations we each have that ability to have that spending limit and when
00:02:54.100 we're up against uh federal governments our provincial government is campaigning against us
00:02:59.300 and a lot of people with a lot of money behind them the more that we have advocating for this
00:03:04.740 the better okay okay so we just listened to the press conference on the alberta's done waiting
00:03:12.180 campaign so do you think this campaign is very promising and yeah what did you think
00:03:17.380 Very much so.
00:03:18.320 I mean, that's kind of what we've needed for a while is to see a planned and polished sort of approach to this and getting out there with a formal campaign.
00:03:25.360 So it's pretty exciting to see that forming finally, because it's been kind of a disparate bunch of activists working from all different directions, including even myself up until now.
00:03:33.300 So I think it's a turning point.
00:03:34.580 Hi, everyone.
00:03:35.600 We have Keith Wilson here with us.
00:03:37.760 He's a part of the Alberta Dunn Waiting campaign.
00:03:40.800 So, Keith, tell us how you think this campaign is going to go in the future, like the coming months.
00:03:46.180 What do you guys have planned for it?
00:03:48.440 Well, one of the things that we're doing in addition to utilizing social media and digital media
00:03:53.700 is we're going to actually be reaching out to the more traditional legacy media
00:03:57.400 and trying to get our message out to those people who use legacy media as their information source.
00:04:06.740 We've developed a very sophisticated website, and I encourage people to go to it.
00:04:10.780 It's letalbertadecide.com.
00:04:13.380 There's also an opportunity there to donate to help us with our advertising and our campaign costs.
00:04:19.960 But we're taking a more modern, traditional approach to a political campaign,
00:04:26.500 preparing campaign materials, fact sheets, information,
00:04:30.300 and making tools available to those who support independence
00:04:33.940 to help them reach out to their friends and neighbours who either haven't decided yet
00:04:39.700 or leaning towards staying in Canada, voting to stay in Canada,
00:04:42.800 so they can help them look at the situation differently
00:04:46.600 and hopefully change their vote to in support of independence
00:04:49.920 and option two in the vote on October 19th.
00:04:53.940 Okay, so our own Corey Morgan, he had a billboard up,
00:04:57.820 I forget what town it was in in Alberta.
00:05:00.240 Tabor.
00:05:00.660 Tabor, yes, sorry.
00:05:02.040 Okay, so in Tabor and the town people, some town people said
00:05:05.460 they wanted to take it down and they took it down.
00:05:07.240 So do you anticipate lots of kind of people like this kind of saying, oh, if they see a poster, they're going to be like, oh, take it down, stuff like that?
00:05:15.120 Well, as many things that are occurring in society, it's a divisive issue.
00:05:22.540 And there's people with strong views on either side.
00:05:26.980 The independence movement, I believe, will continue to be respectful and measured.
00:05:32.480 and what others, the other side chooses to do, I can't really control.
00:05:37.600 Okay, one last question about BC's relation with an independent Alberta.
00:05:42.660 So, given David Eby's previous comments on an independent Alberta,
00:05:47.920 do you think that Alberta would have a good relationship with BC?
00:05:51.940 Well, Premier Eby needs to deal with reality,
00:05:55.920 and that's something that he's demonstrated he's not very good at.
00:05:58.540 Look at their economy, look at their relations with the First Nations people.
00:06:02.480 The reality is Alberta has tremendous leverage.
00:06:06.900 We have tremendous leverage because a significant portion of the British Columbia economy
00:06:13.820 is reliant on free passage by rail and truck through our rail lines and our highways to move goods east.
00:06:22.620 80% of the containers that are unloaded from Asia and Prince Rupert and the Port of Vancouver travel through Alberta.
00:06:36.860 Their agricultural products, their wines and fruits, their forestry, their pulp and paper products, their mining products, all move through Alberta.
00:06:44.700 And we also supply them with the bulk of their energy products for the lower mainland.
00:06:51.200 The TMX pipeline that starts in Edmonton, ends in Burnaby, supplies the Burnaby refinery.
00:06:57.800 If there was a significant dispute and British Columbia was becoming unfair and harming Alberta, Alberta would have the option of closing the valve.
00:07:09.400 And the fact of the matter is that Vancouver and the Lower Mainland would be out of diesel fuel, gasoline and jet fuel in 11 days.
00:07:17.420 Now, we'd never want that to happen because we want to be fair with our neighbors.
00:07:22.640 We want to be respectful.
00:07:23.900 We want to be mutually beneficial.
00:07:26.660 So if British Columbia were to be completely unreasonable with Alberta, Alberta would have
00:07:31.540 some very significant options and leverage.
00:07:34.660 Leverage we can't exercise today because Ottawa prevents us from doing so.