Former Alberta deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his “Forever Canadian” petition. This interview has been edited for clarity and length MH: How much of an actual organization are you ready to hit the ground with? What’s backing you? TL: We have over 8,000 signed-up volunteers, so that’s a lot. That’s a good number for a campaign that is officially launching. What’s backing us up is the actual process. You can’t just have a petition and go out there and collect signatures. You actually have to be credentialed by Elections Alberta. So you just don’t hit the ground running. You have to put all those processes in place. So for the next week or week and a half, we will be focusing on signing up as many of these canvassers as possible, everywhere in Alberta, and then we will be focusing on collecting the actual signatures. MH: You’re a former politician. How much of an election campaign mindset do you bring to this? TL: A lot. And you know what? A lot of the people who are actually in the core group, volunteering and organizing everything, are also formerly affiliated with politics from all political parties. Believe it or not, we have some of the originating fathers of the Reform Party. We have Conservatives, we have NDPers, we have Liberals, we have Alberta Party members. This straddles all political beliefs and it’s actually quite refreshing working with a group of people that have very different political views, but all agree on one thing: We love Canada and we don’t want to see or even hear about separatism. All these politicians and all these volunteers, campaign managers, are bringing their respective experience from their past campaigns, from different political parties. We also have people from the not-for-profit sector who are great organizers, labour unions, ethno-cultural associations. It’s a real mixed bag of volunteers and everybody brings a different perspective. As I said earlier, all we have in common is we’re proud Canadians. MH: Along with green lighting your petition, the Chief Electoral Officer also referred a different question to the courts for opinion on whether or not it violates the Constitution. The premier, the justice minister as well, then urged Elections Alberta to withdraw the reference and sign off on the pro-separatist petition. How do you see that dialogue impacting your road forward? TL: I think it actually encourages our volunteers and those who want to sign the petition. It’s almost unprecedented for a premier and particularly justice minister, to be interfering with an independent officer of the legislature, the elections commissioner, and then actually influencing courts on what they should be doing. The only thing that really came out of it is that now we actually openly know she came out of the closet, and we know that she backed separatists, not proud Canadians, and that’s for her to deal with. I think Albertans will deal with that accordingly. It motivates us to work even harder. The premier also made the rules much easier for separatists than she made for us Canadians. We almost have to run twice around the field. They only have to run once. We have fewer days to collect the signatures and have to collect twice the number of signatures. Our fundraising is much more governed than theirs, but that’s fine. Sometimes you have to work harder to achieve good things in life, and we are simply working harder. And I think the Elections Alberta commissioner is simply following the rules, and he’s following the rules that they put in place. The Citizens Initiative Act was put together by the UCP just a few years ago. He’s following that act, and now they’re telling him that it’s red tape and he shouldn’t be following their legislation. It’s a strange way to govern a province, but we are laser focused on getting virtually 300,000 signatures. We actually hope to raise many more, and that’s what we’re focusing on. MH: Do you actually want your question to go to a referendum? Is that the ultimate goal? TL: It doesn’t have to. If the premier does the right thing, it doesn’t have to. We don’t need a referendum. We just need a government to adopt a policy that does not include separatism. We need a government in this province that works hand in hand with other premiers and other provinces across the country and resolves any and all issues that arise from time to time through the processes that have been put in place. They have worked quite well for over 150 years, that’s what makes us the great country that we are, but separatism is not one of those tools. So if the premier chooses to adopt this policy and brings it to legislature and has MLAs vote on it, that that would be actually the best case scenario. I think the only reason she is pushing for a referendum herself is because she has separatists in her caucus, some of them cabinet ministers, and in order for her to stay in power and be a premier, she can’t afford to lose them. She’s playing this dangerous game, she’s putting Canada’s economy and Canada’s future and unity on the line just to keep her job. MH: You still have a massive task ahead of you, nearly 300,000 signatures in 90 days. What gives you the confidence to say you will be successful? TL: I love campaigning and I only campaign when I truly 100 per cent believe in something. There are hills worth dying on, and Canada is definitely one of them. We have an amazing country that rarely ever asks anything of us. Right now, those of us who are proud Canadians, who travel with Canadian passports and wear maple leaves and even tattoo them on ourselves, we have to put our name on a dotted line and support Canada and show the rest of Canada, and the rest of the world, that we are a united country that we can’t be torn apart by a small group of very aggressive individuals. Canada is not up for breaking up.
