Western Standard - June 19, 2026


Keith Wilson and Tanya Clemens launch ļ¼‚Let Alberta Decideļ¼‚ campaign


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

158.18

Word count

1,208

Sentence count

52


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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.