The Alberta independence campaign must clean itself up
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Summary
In this episode of The Corey Morgan Show, host Corey Morgan talks with Conservative Party of Quebec Leader Eric Duhaime about the independence movement, the Centurion Project, and the leak of voter information by David Parker's Centurion project.
Transcript
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A whole bunch of good and a whole bunch of bad if you're an independent supporter.
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I'm kind of going to cover a little bit of both of that in my monologue that I'm going to read in a moment.
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My interview is going to be a little unusual today in the sense that it had to be pre-recorded,
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but it is Eric Duham of the Conservative Party of Quebec, the leader of it.
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People forget there is a Conservative Party over there, and it's been making gains.
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I mean, they're not looking to be winning this fall's election probably,
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but they could certainly be impacting it in a big way.
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So it was an interesting conversation with him,
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Good to see you, John and Wayne and NB Lakes and Paradoxy.
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Yeah, lots to discuss, lots to talk about and lots breaking.
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But we'll get into the area, what I wanted to speak of.
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As I said, it's been a really good week for the independence movement
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and it's really been bad and we've got to do better but I'll explain a little of that. So
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Alberta, I mean we're at a turning point in history. Mitch Sylvester and I get nothing but
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good things to say about Mitch with Stay Free Alberta presented over 301,000 signatures to the
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Elections Alberta office demanding a referendum be held on the word independence. The signature
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collection process, it was meticulous. There's over 7,000 volunteers registered, they took training
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and then demanded the identification for every signature offered to the petition.
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The bar to trigger a petition for a referendum or to trigger a referendum with a petition
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It was a remarkable accomplishment achieved during the darkest, coldest months of winter.
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And anybody claiming it was an easy thing to achieve is either lying
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And that petition presentation the other day was celebratory, as it should be.
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Hundreds of supporters gathered for the event and the energy was palpable.
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Unfortunately, though, a dark cloud of controversy also hung in the background during that event
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due to the alleged leak of voter information by David Parker's Centurion Project.
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A news cycle that should have been overwhelmed with positive imagery of the independence movement
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passing an important milestone was disrupted with constant chatter about laws being broken
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it hasn't crushed the movement by any means, but it was a self-inflicted setback that never should
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have happened. With the petitioning finished, the independence movement must now evolve into
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a campaigning phase in anticipation of a fall referendum. And this is going to be different
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than the petitioning campaign. In petitioning, people who already supported independence
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engaged themselves and they sought out the signatures of hundreds of thousands of Albertans
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who wanted to see a referendum question on the issue. And while the process in itself surely
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led to converting many to the independent side of the fence, it still left a large and mushy,
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undecided middle of the population who must be won over by October 19th, and it's not going to
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be easy. To begin with, this independence movement must be squeaky clean. There could be no whiffs
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of corruption or misdoing, or it will sink any chance of winning the trust and support of
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citizens by voting time. Perhaps the mess caused by the Centurion Project debacle is something of
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a blessing as it offered this hard lesson while there's still nearly six months to recover from
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it and to campaign. A mistake made by many independent supporters when the news broke
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of the apparent misuse and public sharing of information from the electors list though was
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to circle the wagons and try to defend it. Some tried to liken the information to that contained
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in a phone book and others tried to claim the leak was all part of a conspiracy orchestrated
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by Elections Alberta. Both approaches only created mistrust within the general population which now
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must be countered. The breach of information should have been immediately condemned and
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quarantined. When the referendum on independence is held in Alberta this fall it's going to be a
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yes or no question on the ballot but the voters are going to have to answer two questions to
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themselves before making their mark. They're going to of course have to determine if they want
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Alberta to be independent but they're also going to be asking themselves if they trust the
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independence movement to lead the province after that into a better place. A person committed to
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independence could still end up voting no if it appears the movement is dominated by corrupt
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or inept players within it. Mitch Sylvester responded excellently when asked about the
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Centurion Project mess. He said that David Parker had approached him with the concept but that he
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felt there could be issues with the legality and chose not to be associated with it. That apparently
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led to friction between Sylvester and Parker which is a good thing. Mitch directly addressed the issue
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and stated clearly how it has nothing to do with the group petitioning.
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It also exposed actually a glimmer of David Parker's nature.
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The independence movement is made up by a number of groups,
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and that's been an advantage and a disadvantage.
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It's allowed people to move forward together towards a shared goal,
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There will be no political party or singular organization
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speaking for the independence movement in the next few months.
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The movement still, though, it must try to centralize some of the messaging to a degree
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and ensure only credible people like Mitch speak for it.
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who already have well-established, checkered histories,
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must be kept as far out of the movement as possible.
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and take a more active role in speaking for the movement.
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He should be the one speaking to the press guys, nobody else.
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and Sylvester's rational, positive, and calm approach wins people over.
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If the movement is represented by a loud, corpulent caricature
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of a cowboy screaming about commies, it will be lost. It'll take some strength and potential
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conflict to move the damaging elements within the movement into the background or out of it
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altogether. But this must be done if the trust of voters is going to be gained. They don't see a
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bunch of different groups, guys. They just see one independence movement. And if Mavericks are
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continued to be embraced, it's only going to give the opponents ammunition. The independence
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movement has flourished almost despite itself. To get over this largest hurdle that's coming now,
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though, it must begin acting strategically and prove it's trustworthy. It can't sustain scandals
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and to prevent those, the known bad actors must be ejected sooner rather than later.
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That's my thoughts on this week so far. All right, Dave, what else have we got going on in our news
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editor? I've had lots to cover. Corpulent. I wanted to make a certain person look up a dictionary.
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I wonder who that could be. I don't know. There's lots of people that could be. It could be the
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the Michelin tire man. There you go. You've had a busy week on Twitter, haven't you? Holy cow.
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Wearing out the fingertips. You've been fighting with everybody. Yeah, yeah.
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But you're own people, right? I would say you've been fighting with other independents.
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Well, you know, I won't fault. I mean, a lot of the people who are pro-independence folks,
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and they aren't communicators, they aren't campaigners. That's been the great thing of
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this movement. You know, all these new people getting involved, but they better understand,
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and I don't think they do, the dangers of what just happened. And they're doubling down on it.
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and it's making it worse. And I just, I'm going to try and counter it as much as I can. Guys,
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if you go out there, you know, Jason Kenney had his information exposed. And for people saying,
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well, Kenney did this, Kenney did that, Kenney, fine. But you're not addressing the problem that
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a former premier's personal information was exposed. You've got to call that out. And I'm
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going to call these guys out. Guys, you're making this worse. Yeah. There's a couple of groups here
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And here's, I think, another one of your problems
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They're likely to have people arrested or people charged
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in the weeks coming up in October, leading up to the election.
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People say, well, we've got to wait for the legal investigation.
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because you're going to be waiting a long time for this to be resolved.
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I think one of the problems is the group does not have a singular leader.
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No, and it's hard, and there's not a mechanism for it now
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There isn't time, even if there was something like that,
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to hold an election and so on and all that distraction.
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But I think they could still just consciously start putting more of those other voices.
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You know, when Mitch did his press scrum the other day, it was really good.
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Why isn't Mitch more often the one speaking to the media?
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They've got to kind of choose who their official spokespeople are and keep that message controlled, at least to the people who tend to speak a little better on those things.
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So the whole mess here is sort of leading off our website with Jason Kenney saying he's going to get a lawyer and going to go sue David Parker in the Centurion Project.
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For those who don't know what happened, they were having a seminar for people, and they put up his personal information that they got from the elections, Alberta people.
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You know, his home address and stuff like that, it's, in this day and age, very dangerous, right?
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I mean, there's lots of kooks out there, as we know.
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So, you know, if I'm Jason Kenney, I'm pissed, too.
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So I'd be suing David Parker for whatever money he's got.
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Well, I mean, it might be just whatever he can get a chip for the institution commissary.
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It might be the only asset that he has pretty soon, but we'll see.
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My favorite story of the week, and it's a morbid one, is the rat-infested Hantavirus death ship.
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It turns out today we find out that it was brought onto the ship by an Argentinian couple who had been birdwatching in Argentina.
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And then they started rare cases of human-to-human transmission.
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Now they're finding that people who have left the boat or, you know, left the cruise, they're coming down with it now.
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There's a man and his wife in Switzerland who have been tested positive.
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So that ship was supposed to dock in the Canary Islands to get some people medical help.
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So they're like this ship wandering the ocean blue with nowhere to go.
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I mean, imagine it's got to be, you know, this is serious.
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Like this isn't even just talking COVID level things.
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I mean, most of the people presumably still stuck on it are healthy, but you want to get off this thing.
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He was previously charged with harassment, harassing a Calgary city police officer.
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he's now being done with multiple counts of child luring and weapons offenses. So I guess the
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question is, is he going to represent himself? And lawyers are a special breed. I mean,
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them and realtors, I always find that just kind of people who are, there's good and bad, but the
00:11:56.860
unusual folks. Parks Canada says they're redoing the way they manage forests. Jasper fire 2024
00:12:07.580
caused by a lot of deadwood uh they're now trying to clean that up uh be more proactive and instead
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of waiting till the town burns down and honda has put a uh hold on a 15 billion dollar electrical
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vehicle plant in uh in ontario so i just wonder what the total is that canadian taxpayers are out
00:12:27.420
because of what governments what was it the stellantis one a bunch of others and ends we
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just toss something like tens of billions of dollars somebody kindly on my behalf pulled up a
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Tweet I threw at Justin Trudeau a couple of years ago talking about this is what's going to happen with it.
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I thank them for watching my stuff to give me that I told you so moment.
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And we're nearing the end of the BC Conservative Leadership Race.
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So our Alex Zoltan out there in Lotus Land has got an update on what the latest promises are.
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Well, yeah, Alex has been covering it excellently out there in BC.
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So this is a very good chance whoever wins this race could be BC's next move here.
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they're uh i think we had to pull up by 10 points now and they don't even have a leader huh it shows
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how bad he is yeah yeah he's dead man walking right on well i'll let you get back and catch uh
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caught up i know this morning's been uh it's been a bit of a hectic morning yeah i appreciate you
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taking the time to share the headlines with us and uh i'll see you at the show you bet see you
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on pipeline right you bet thanks so that is our news editor dave naylor yes laying on all of this
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stuff breaking and going on so i gotta remind everybody the reason we can do that the reason
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and Dave can have that pack of reporters to manage and get those stories out is because
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you've subscribed. And if you haven't yet, westernstandard.news slash subscription,
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10 bucks a month, guys, a hundred dollars for a year. And you get past that paywall and it
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supports all of this stuff and keep us putting those news out there rather than relying on the
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legacy media folks. So let's see some of these. You see, here's some of the commenting.
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you're the only one who is inept ukraine baffoon see this is the commentary from the independence
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movement and i know you can't control that these are individuals at the bottom there's the nature
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of social media now though some individuals can throw stuff out and it gets thrown at the whole
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movement we need to be a little more careful with uh who's speaking for things in general this
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person of course clearly isn't another person saying we need a leader to move this forward
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yeah i'm not sure like how do we do that um red tide making a good point you know self-inflicted
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how do you stop people from doing this crap? Okay, Red Tide, so something I will explain quickly
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before I get to my guest is the characters behind this were well known to those of us who have
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already been in politics for some years. We always knew that Parker and Davies were toxic. We really
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did. Then most of us wisely stayed the heck away from either of those two. Others, some of the
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senior levels within this movement should have known that. Thankfully, they didn't fully jump
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into bed with the Centurion Project, but they already should have been putting up walls between
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the two of them right off the bat and the second this broke they should have said whoa whoa we got
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nothing to do with that that's crazy dave not us either way we'll talk more about that after my
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guest as i said it's a rare one it was pre-recorded uh eric duham he is the leader of the conservative
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party of quebec he came out here to alberta and had a chat in studio the other day so have a listen
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to this and we'll talk some more thank you very much for taking the time to to join us today uh
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Mr. Dehem. I guess the first question I got to ask, though, is a provincial politician in an election year from Quebec.
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What brings me to Alberta and everywhere all across Canada, because we're touring Canada.
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I was in Saskatchewan earlier last week and B.C. leading to Ontario tonight.
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So what brings us here is that I just launched a book, Destination Autonomy, where, you know,
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we're talking in favor of decentralization, giving more powers to provinces, respecting the
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constitution of this country, because there's a huge, you know, sentiment right now of unfairness
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all across Canada. And we have a liberal government in Ottawa that is centralizing more and more and
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more, that is running huge deficit, historic deficits year after year. It's worse than Trudeau
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right now. And people get frustrated in regions. The separatist movements are growing out west and
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in Quebec, because of that. And we need to make sure that, you know, it's not because they call
00:16:28.320
themselves Captain Canada in Ottawa that the Liberals are. They're actually the ones feeding
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the separatist movement right now and the frustration in all of our regions. And we need
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to push back. We need to create alliance with autonomous, just like me, just like here, Premier
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Smith, or Premier Mo, or the BC Conservatives. We need to make an alliance together to give
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ourselves a bargaining power so we defend provincial rights and jurisdictions great mr
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rey so you're running the conservative party of quebec and there is a conservative base of support
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out there but it's been uh difficult i mean you've got a very much of a mixed legislature of the
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national assembly there look we started at one percent five years ago and when i took over as a
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as leader um we did 13 in the last election we're at 15 right now we had our first member crossing
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the floor three, four weeks ago, the former natural resource minister Maïté Blanchet-Vizna
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came over and joined us. So we're present now in the National Assembly. If there were an election
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today, according to the latest polls, we would have somewhere between 10 and 14 members in the
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National Assembly. We'd actually have the balance of power in a minority government. So it's not
00:17:37.480
too bad for a start. After only four or five years, I can tell you that conservatives are back in
00:17:43.220
Quebec and they're going to be back in the National Assembly in significant
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numbers on October 5th. So that balancing as you pointed out with Scott Moe,
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Premier Smith, particularly in Alberta right now, I mean there's a very lively
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independence movement going on in Alberta right now. Premier Smith isn't overly
00:18:00.800
supportive of the independence movement but she understands that Ottawa is a
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problem, the Liberal government is a problem or possibly the system is a
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for Conservative leaders right now is very difficult
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maintain, I guess, the support for Conservatism
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we want to tell people, you know, don't give up
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The separatists right now, the Parti Québécois, is leading in the polls right now in Quebec.
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So if there were an election today, we would have a separatist government in Quebec City,
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which is not a good news for national unity, obviously,
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but which is not a good news for Alberta neither,
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because I think both our provinces are allies in many ways, forms and shapes when it comes to Ottawa.
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And we have to realize that we need to build bridges between us.
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And that's why I think we should even have the leaders of the conservative parties in each province to meet together at least once a year to talk about autonomy and give ourselves a bargaining power.
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I mean, we have a constitution where the fathers of confederation decided that there's going to be two sovereign governments in their own jurisdictions, the provinces and the federal government.
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But unfortunately, when the liberals are in power in Ottawa, they think they have a government that's dominating the provinces and they don't even seem to understand the basis of the of the constitution of this country.
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So that's why we, you know, we need to fight back. And there has been successful things happening in Alberta.
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If you look at Danielle Smith, you know, she adopted a law on the sovereignty of Alberta within the United Canada Act in Saskatchewan.
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they adopted Saskatchewan first. They're doing things that are giving them more power. They won
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over the environmental evaluation for their natural resources programs with a new pipeline.
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There's issues that they were able to move. And it's not because of Ottawa. It's because of the
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pressure that Alberta's putting on the federal government and the bargaining power that they
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gave themselves. They even had their minister resign in Ottawa. A guy from Quebec, Stephen
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Gilbo resigned because he disagreed with Mark Carney having to sign a deal with Daniel Smith
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and that's the kind of thing we like to do and we want to do and we want to imitate Alberta you know
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Quebecers have inspired Alberta in terms of autonomy for a long time and now it's kind of
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the reverse a bit I mean Alberta is inspiring us I have the book here that I want to show you
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this nation autonomy is it people see it it's in French also it's a of course it's a bilingual
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but um and and can i tell you an anecdote about this book by all means i launched it a little
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bit more than two weeks ago in quebec city at a bookstore and the radical left decided that they
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don't like me launching a book so they started the boycott of the bookstore it's a small bookstore
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independent bookstore and it's a tough business these days uh and they attacked you know the
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owners of the bookstore are not political activists they're just they're doing that
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with any author that wants to launch a book at their bookstore and you know the cancel culture
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today is so crazy that they wanted to you know attack the them professors at a college came out
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saying that asking their students to also boycott the bookstore where they normally buy their books
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and so on so it's it became kind of a controversy by itself even if the issue is not that controversial
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You're just coming from a good classical liberal
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saying, you know, we should be learning from Quebec
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There is a lot of ability within the Constitution
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We just haven't been effectively doing it as much, whereas Quebec has more of an attitude of, well, we're going to do it anyway and move ahead.
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But is there ever going to be a chance for constitutional reform?
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Because there are some issues we have in Alberta where the system has some problematic things within it, but nothing shy of constitutional reform will help us with that.
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It was a huge fiasco, and I don't think there's a lot of appetite to reopen the Constitution and start a new round of negotiations and trying to find seven provinces out of ten with 50% of the population or all sorts of rules that are needed to change any kind of thing.
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But the problem is not necessarily the Constitution per se.
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The problem is the interpretation that the liberals did and the spending power that they gave themselves.
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When you have a federal government that is having a $60 billion deficit,
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it's because they're not mining their own business.
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And that's not because the constitution is not proper.
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It's because the government in Ottawa is not well intended.
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And, you know, anyway, the model, the federal liberals model,
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They can't implement their federalism vision for the long run because we can't afford it.
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So I think that we can work within the current framework and at least push forward to that and see where it leads.
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But for a new round of constitutional negotiations, I don't know in Alberta, but in Quebec, I can tell you that the appetite is not quite there.
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And the appetite isn't here either, but that's part of what's leading to the independence movement, because there's issues such as the Senate and equalization that people would like to see changes with, but can't change without constitutional reform.
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Well, when we talk about autonomy, the autonomy is also about money.
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And that's why, as you know, I'm someone who supports the exploitation of natural resources in Quebec, particularly natural gas.
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We have to stop depending on transfer payments and depend more on our own people and our own natural resources.
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Autonomy, yes, it's power and it's constitution, but it's also financial.
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And it's also, you know, we're talking about sovereignty and independence, but the first sovereignty and independence, especially nowadays, it starts with our energy.
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I mean, if you can't, if you're dependent on your energy from other people coming from elsewhere, you have a huge problem.
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At least some people are realizing that when these bills are coming in right now.
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In Quebec, we thought we had energy forever, you know, because we have hydroelectricity and we thought that Quebec was very wealthy.
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Well, now we realize we have a shortage, even in Quebec, you know.
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And there are some very large gas deposits that could be developed if the will was there.
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So, I guess, moving on, though, you're in a campaign year.
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I imagine most of your time is going to be in Quebec pretty soon.
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What is your platform into Quebecers, which you're reaching out to them with?
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Well, we're a small-c conservative party, so obviously we want, you know, to stop the deficits.
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We had the highest deficit in our history last year.
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The agencies even lowered our ratings last year.
00:25:48.680
We also want to make sure we downsize the bureaucracy.
00:25:52.680
The bureaucracy has been booming over the last few years.
00:25:56.900
Something that could be a little bit more controversial in English Canada, but is more accepted in Quebec.
00:26:01.300
We also want to give greater access to health care by adding the contribution of the private sector.
00:26:09.560
We do believe that it's time to have an open debate about private health care in Canada and in Quebec
00:26:18.480
We think it's important to, you know, the current model is not sustainable neither.
00:26:24.960
I mean, we're putting more and more money every year and the results are not there
00:26:28.440
and the winning lists keep going higher and higher.
00:26:31.300
Other than that, we also want to exploit our natural gas, as I said earlier on, that's for us, it's very important. We need to create wealth, stop depending on Alberta's transfer payments money. So it's the kind of policies, and of course, and that's why we came up with the book lately, and of course, increase Quebec's power within the Canadian constitution, the Confederation.
00:26:55.860
And for us, that's that center because the other parties, the Liberals, you know, they're the Liberals, provincial or federal. They love centralization. They love abusing provincial powers. The separatists, they just want to break up the country. They don't want to do a good deal, a better deal for Quebecers. And we're positioning ourselves in between.
00:27:16.380
Great. So, I mean, those cooperative efforts, if it was a minority government and perhaps you're in the balance of power, you know, I know you're campaigning to win. I imagine that'd be the sort of thing. Could we have some sort of summit with premiers, things to put that pressure on from multiple provinces? Rather, because we come in as 10 individuals rather than five or six together.
00:27:36.500
I think it could make a difference. And that's why I'm meeting Premier Smith this afternoon, just to talk about that. It's very, very important that we understand that we're stronger when we're together. And conservatives in Canada, we all work in each of our provinces or at the federal level. But unfortunately, we don't connect as well. And in Quebec, we've been absent. We've been out of the National Assembly for close to nine decades.
00:28:06.820
Now they're back in force, but they were out of it.
00:28:10.120
So I think the conservative movement in Canada,
00:28:12.600
especially at the provincial level, is gaining momentum.
00:28:15.080
And we need to build on that and to put even more pressure on Ottawa.
00:28:18.860
Are you seeing one of the trends that we're seeing
00:28:20.980
with conservative support, actually, in BC and some others,
00:28:23.200
is more of a younger demographic and leaning there now than traditionally,
00:28:29.420
they're realizing they're not seeing a good future for themselves right now under these current
00:28:34.060
governments. You're absolutely right. Even in Quebec, it's the same thing. We're at 3% among
00:28:39.080
seniors. We're at 15% in general population, over 25% for the 25, 35, 40. So yeah, it's a
00:28:48.680
generational shift. And it could be explained also by the media, the traditional media. And
00:28:57.260
But like for us in Quebec, I'm going to give you a real example.
00:29:01.680
We have 1% to 2% of the coverage in the traditional media.
00:29:09.900
They're on the left of the NDP, the provincial level in Quebec.
00:29:12.880
They're getting, for example, on CBC, 17% of the coverage.
00:29:18.020
So it gives you an idea that the older people, they watch more,
00:29:33.480
and we're much more popular among those crowds.
00:29:36.700
And also because we're talking about their issues.
00:29:39.560
the fact that they can't afford a house anymore,
00:29:41.480
the fact that they can't even pay their grocery these days,
00:29:44.540
the fact that the education system has huge problems.
00:29:50.460
And, you know, I'm old enough to recall that it used to be the opposite.
00:29:57.880
It's been interesting to watch across the country.
00:29:59.840
Well, the time went quickly, but before I let you go then, I mean, one more time, where can people find a copy of your book and information about your party and such to, you know, watch or participate or support if they're interested?
00:30:13.860
So Destination Autonomy or Destination Autonomy, if you're looking for the French version.
00:30:20.520
Well, it's the election in October, so we're already on a campaign move.
00:30:31.700
There's five parties that are going to be competitive.
00:30:35.080
Our system normally is two, maybe three, but not much more.
00:30:40.220
So I think it's going to be a very, very interesting thing.
00:30:45.300
And, you know, we could make history because I think that the Conservatives getting back in Quebec City with a strong, you know, caucus could change things constitutionally and politically in Canada.
00:31:01.700
And I know you're taking this seriously when you're taking time away from Quebec during the Montreal playoff run that's going.
00:31:07.660
So I wish you the best and hope we get to talk again soon.
00:31:14.280
conservatives do exist in the province of quebec and do have a you know some degree of support and
00:31:20.820
mr de hem i think speaks with good common sense and things and you know i'll have those interviews
00:31:24.960
i mean i would like to see say for example an independent uh alberta an independent quebec
00:31:31.320
kind of as raw road send one of the commenters just said you know uh canada's too large to
00:31:36.460
govern and we need independence in all the provinces i i fully agree with that uh but i
00:31:57.820
and what's going on with the independence movement,
00:32:08.300
what my issue is don't give them bullets though don't make it easier for them than it has to be
00:32:15.900
and that's kind of what happened here and it's going to be hard to prevent all of that because
00:32:21.520
again there's that that difficulty with it being a decentralized movement uh but at the same time
00:32:29.540
you know you got other individuals are considered to be speaking for it so van fashions you know
00:32:33.140
puts a good point saying anybody proposing it needs to be a party or have a single leader
00:32:36.340
likely working with Nenshi. I don't know about that, but I mean, it's probably just not the
00:32:42.220
way to go with this, but way too late anyways. If they wanted to find a singular person to speak
00:32:46.280
for the whole movement, that would have had to been done prior to all of this. I mean, there's
00:32:50.380
five and some months left. That's the point I keep making to people. The campaign is on now. We don't
00:32:55.680
have time. I talked about that on a video I put up on my own channel a little while ago too,
00:33:01.140
because there's some people pushing, saying that we got to get involved with the UCP. Okay,
00:33:04.440
not necessarily a bad thing, but then to push the UCP into having a special general meeting in
00:33:08.600
August on independence, like guys, you only got so much energy and so much campaign time.
00:33:14.140
You don't have time to do that sort of activity. We're going to get the referendum. That's a given.
00:33:19.120
It's just whether or not we're going to win it. That's a big, big F and a huge one. And how we,
00:33:27.420
we, we can't get one voice is going to speak for the whole movement. That's just not the nature of
00:33:32.840
it now, and it would just be too difficult to establish that. Most of what I'm making as a
00:33:39.340
point is that we do have to make clear, though, who doesn't speak for the movement, particularly
00:33:45.660
when they step in it, as Parker and Davies appear to have done. Again, by the way, Google those
00:33:54.920
guys. I'm not just shooting at them because of a, you know, a dislike, though I've got some.
00:34:03.600
It's a long history with those two. Those don't speak for it. And other people who are getting
00:34:08.740
larger profile things, but say controversial or crazy stuff, and they are some crazy stuff out
00:34:13.640
there. It should at least be pushed back on. Who? I don't know. Michael saying, what, you think one
00:34:19.580
voice doesn't matter. No, every voice matters. Every voice matters. And that's, that's the
00:34:25.440
interesting thing with social media. This is all uncharted waters. This is new. This is not like
00:34:30.500
30 years ago where only those who would get into legacy media would speak to a large amount of
00:34:34.960
people. Now anybody with a phone can get out there on a social media platform and put a message out
00:34:40.680
that might go to four people or might go to a hundred thousand people. And that comes again
00:34:46.600
with good and bad is true grassroots, but it also leads to, you know, a lot of disinformation
00:34:53.960
getting around or people who are just making things worse. Yeah, who knows? This is from
00:35:02.200
Feisty Fry, a commenter saying, Carney says he has plans to meet with the Alberta Premier when
00:35:05.820
she's in Ottawa. I wonder if it's true. I don't know, probably. The Premier will meet with the
00:35:09.800
Prime Minister if that happens. You know, I'm not that concerned about it. I'm not going to get
00:35:15.500
anywhere, just wasting more time, get more mealy-mouthed stuff out of Kearney. But people
00:35:19.780
talk about, you know, where Smith's going with things. I don't mind when she goes up and fails
00:35:26.380
with the Kearney government, because it just keeps, that helps build the independence movement.
00:35:31.600
It shows the futility of trying to play nice. It shows the waste of time of playing within the
00:35:37.820
system. But Premier Smith's role right now is to try, but we know it's going to fail. It's been
00:35:45.160
laughable. The Western Standard reported on that recently. The big, you know, project office that
00:35:52.500
was supposed to fast track all these major projects. It's been almost a year and it hasn't
00:35:58.480
approved one. Do they even understand their own stinking mandate? You don't navel gaze for a year
00:36:05.660
as a group that's tasked with fast tracking things. All it is is kicking the can down the road.
00:36:13.500
and uh it's it's harming us well it's not harming us actually it's helping the independence movement
00:36:20.240
but things that aren't helping the independence movement are just having people blasting off
00:36:24.820
all over the place the vote is going to be based for a lot of people much more on trust
00:36:32.780
rather than the nuts and the bolts and the economics and the stats this is a gut feeling
00:36:41.220
vote for a lot of people. And that is a lot of that mushy middle. Look at it as three big circles.
00:36:47.160
You know, you see those things with that overlap in the middle. You got the far end that's definitely
00:36:51.700
never going to vote for independence. You got this end that's definitely going to vote for it,
00:36:54.540
but the huge part in the middle, because that's where that line is going to matter.
00:36:59.780
Those need to be won. And a lot of them are going to vote based on how they feel
00:37:04.980
about one side or another. And if the independent side appears not to be trustworthy, not to be
00:37:14.260
principled, people will vote the other way. And that will lose the referendum. How do we stop it?
00:37:22.780
I don't know. Somebody else pointed out that CBC was reporting as if Parker was the leader
00:37:27.380
of the independence movement. Of course, those of us within it know he is not. But legacy media and
00:37:33.480
our opponents are going to lump everything together. As I said, we can't prevent all of
00:37:38.060
that. They're going to keep doing it, but we can mitigate and reduce it as much as humanly possible.
00:37:45.020
They were thrown a gift. That's part of why I am so upset. Monday should have been such a great
00:37:51.360
day. As I said at the start of my monologue, history was made. We've never had anything like
00:37:56.380
that. I did go out to see those people on the highway working their butts off in city areas,
00:38:02.060
getting people, giving them the finger, all of that on their own time as volunteers, following
00:38:08.380
the rules, only to have opponents now questioning the legitimacy of their work, their petitioning
00:38:17.540
because of what Parker's group and the Centurion Clowns did. They undercut so much trust. And yes,
00:38:26.500
it's being unfair to lump that on it. I've seen no evidence, and I don't believe for a second
00:38:30.820
that Parker's access to the list had anything to do with the petition signatures going in.
00:38:37.560
It's a clean petition. All the volunteers, the others, it's fine. And you know, it'll be verified.
00:38:43.900
So people wondering about that, you know, how does that work with elections in Alberta and so on?
00:38:47.840
With other petitions, whether it was your petitioning to run for office or petitioning
00:38:52.340
for a referendum or things like that, they will bring in, they don't check every single one of
00:38:58.740
them. First thing though, they will check a whole pile of them against the electors list. That's
00:39:02.080
just their way to make sure these people exist. You can't just make up an address. You need to
00:39:05.760
kind of cross-reference. And they won't do it with all of them, but they'll do it with a lot.
00:39:09.980
On top of that, they will actually phone a bunch of them. They'll follow up. They'll say,
00:39:17.280
pardon me, sir, this is Elections Alberta. We're just calling. We'd like to just confirm that you
00:39:21.240
did sign a petition. And if, say, they checked on 10,000 signatures, let's just say, I'm just
00:39:29.860
throwing a number out there, and they found that 90% of the signatures were validated, they were
00:39:35.920
good, everything else, they will reduce 10% from the petitioning number and put the petition in
00:39:42.920
as it is. See, that's what happened with Lukasik's 400 and some thousand. If people remember when he
00:39:51.000
put it in, it was 440,000 or something like that. Elections Alberta, when they did follow up on that,
00:39:55.520
found about a 13% error rate. And those errors can be all sorts of things. It doesn't mean corruption
00:39:59.180
or bad things, but it does mean that, you know, maybe there were names that couldn't be read
00:40:04.600
or addresses that were wrong or people, again, that just weren't on the list. So they kind of
00:40:09.520
did that. And then they sucked about 40,000 signatures off of their total. That's how
00:40:14.100
Elections Alberta works with those things. And that's what'll happen with this one. But with
00:40:19.300
301,000 signatures, and I've seen how meticulous and careful people were with getting them.
00:40:24.560
I'd be surprised if more than 5% even, it turns out to be the number they take off at. There's
00:40:29.300
no way it's going to be knocked down below 178,000. The only thing that could be bad,
00:40:34.660
you know, overall with this and problematic is if they found one of the salted names
00:40:41.840
in a petition. And I'll explain that a bit because not everybody necessarily understands
00:40:47.000
these electoral lists work, okay? And I don't see why they'd find one of those salted names.
00:40:50.680
Again, the State Free Alberta has been on the up and up all the way through, so it shouldn't
00:40:54.920
be a problem. When Elections Alberta gives out the information to political parties,
00:41:03.160
they give out the voter list to every political party, they salt the list, they will have some
00:41:08.440
fake names in there, they'll have some other identifiers in there that are unique only to that
00:41:13.320
list. And if that name pops up anywhere else, you know where the list came from. So what has
00:41:22.120
happened, and I will say that not allegedly, what has happened is that salted names appeared in the
00:41:29.300
database that the Centurion Project put out for, and again, for people to publicly access that
00:41:36.740
information. That's another level of the problem with this. They found those unique salted names.
00:41:42.400
the only possible way those names could show up in the Centurion database is that it had an
00:41:48.340
electors list in it. That's confirmed. Now, Mr. Parker, I guess, can make his defense as to how
00:41:53.760
that ended up in his database. We'll see, I guess, what happens with that. But it was in there. That's
00:41:59.760
why the injunction was served so quickly, because they could show the evidence for the elections
00:42:04.300
Alberta and say, look, we logged into this site, we typed in a few of these names, and bang, we got
00:42:08.860
hits. The other thing it proves is where it came from. So they know there's no denying that this
00:42:16.780
list came from the Republican party of Alberta. Cam Davies has some questions to answer. Was it
00:42:23.080
stolen from them? Did they sell it? Was it hacked? Was it given away? I don't know, but it did come
00:42:31.460
from there. That's confirmed too. And it's problematic. It really is. What I think it's
00:42:38.160
going to lead to? I think the government's going to change the legislation. This happened in Calgary
00:42:42.260
with the municipal elections as well. They used to give the electors list to all the candidates until
00:42:45.540
some crackpot candidates started making bad use of the list. There was a guy who was talking about
00:42:51.000
sharing information about people who worked in health services from the list and giving their
00:42:55.760
addresses out in public. So then because of that nut, they just took away those lists from politicians
00:43:00.780
altogether. I won't be surprised if these lists get pulled out of the political realm provincially
00:43:06.320
altogether too eventually just nobody will have it anymore whatever but for the immediate term
00:43:13.280
those lists were leaked wrongly and i just can't say it enough guys to try and compare to a phone
0.51
00:43:22.640
book is dismissive it's stupid it's not like that and for others say well you can just find that
0.61
00:43:28.960
information anywhere no you can't actually there's some public people who keep their locations very
0.98
00:43:34.080
discreet they try very hard because they do have nutcases out there coming after them now include
00:43:41.200
myself in that you should see some of the emails i get i don't want people easily finding my house
00:43:45.920
and i understand they have other ways they could find it and whatever there's ways to get people's
00:43:49.920
addresses but when you're entrusted with a list like that it doesn't matter if that information
00:43:54.320
is available somewhere else you were responsible for that bloody list so how are we supposed to
00:43:59.680
trust a movement when there's a whole bunch of people who say well i don't care if somebody's
00:44:03.120
personal information got leaked out and they may come to harm from it an analogy i used on x not
00:44:08.080
long ago would you guys be okay if again so let's say mitch sylvester became the president of an
00:44:12.560
independent republic of alberta and then people shared what his address was it's the same thing
00:44:20.560
and it's wrong because there will be crazy people going after mitch when you see these violations
00:44:27.280
happen don't try to dismiss them try to look at how it might apply to you and your side that's
00:44:32.240
That's what it comes to when people are talking about allowing the government to violate free speech or things like that.
00:44:38.160
When it's an authoritarian sort of law, even if it's your side, always imagine a government that's not on your side having that power.
00:45:05.980
But for starters, you got to clear out the problems
00:45:09.960
and you got to show that you won't accept any of that.
00:45:22.460
By the way, they're legally allowed to send you texts.
00:45:27.760
Whataboutism and saying the other guy did it too,
00:45:32.240
doesn't work. It just makes you look untrustworthy. All right, guys, that's it for today. Thank you
00:45:36.940
very much for tuning in. Hopefully it'll be more positive next week. We'll see. I am optimistic
00:45:40.160
about the whole thing. I honestly am. Tune into the pipeline tonight. We're going to talk a bit
00:45:44.460
more about that on a panel with a bunch of us and make sure to like, subscribe, share, do all that
00:45:49.440
good stuff so all our shows can get out there and let's keep at it. Thanks a lot. And we will see