Alberta Prosperity Project CEO Mitch Sylvestre joins Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins to discuss progress on his petition for a referendum question on Alberta independence. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: How mobilized are you to begin collecting signatures? What should Albertans expect of your canvassing campaign? Mitch Sylvestre: The canvassing campaign is going to be province wide. What we’re going to do is probably hit every community in the province, and we’re mobilizing a large group of volunteers to actually accomplish that and get that done. We’re getting our canvassers approved. We’re asking for more canvassers. We’ve started collecting signatures already. MH: The Forever Canadian petition was straightforward in its message: stay in Canada. Your petition calls for considerable change. How prepared are canvassers to answer the myriad of questions many Albertans will have about independence? MS: They’re very prepared. We’re prepared to take them to town halls and have a two-hour discussion with them. We have town halls all over the province running every night, we’re running three a day right no. So people will have the opportunity to have a real lengthy discussion, listen to the facts as we present them, and give them the opportunity to make up their mind on how they feel the future of Alberta should go. MH: What’s funding your campaign? MS: We’re a grassroots organization, we have no major donors or no major people funding it. We’re funding our campaign based on donations from grassroots people. Elections Alberta tracks every penny. We understand the funding is going to come from a specific place, it’s going to be marked down and we’re going to have to account for every penny when we spend it. Right now we’re starting at zero and we’re looking forward to raising enough money to take this to the end. MH: It’s been reported that in the build up to the campaign, your organization visited Washington, D.C., and met with U.S. government officials. How did the referendum factor into those discussions? MS: Everybody’s talking. I mean, we’re not government. We’re just going there as individual citizens. They’re curious who is leading this petition. They’re curious to see how it’s going to work, if it’s going to affect them, how it’s going to affect them, and potential conversations on what could happen moving forward. But that’s all going to be for another day. They just want to understand the process. They basically didn’t understand the process until we cleared it up, we explained it to them. We’re just making liaisons for something that could help the new Alberta government, if that becomes the case, move forward with our largest trading partner. MH: Did you ask for any level of support from U.S. authorities, or did they offer any? MS: I don’t think we’re there yet. There’s been conversation about that. But no, it’s definitely not signed and sealed. We’ve had discussions on a myriad of other things, and the biggest thing they’re concerned about is border security. That was something we touched on. We touched on free trade, we’re talking about all manner of stuff that we have no purview to do anything about. But maybe get some kind of idea on what their thoughts moving forward would be in case that we become an independent country and we’re their northern border. MH: If you’re successful in collecting the required number of signatures, what are your expectations of the Smith government in moving this referendum process forward and taking Alberta to independence? MS: The government is giving us basically the opportunity to collect these signatures, same as they gave Mr. Lukaszuk. The premier’s stance on this is fairly clear. She’s an “independent Alberta within Canada” person. We feel after the last federal election it doesn’t seem like Alberta’s needs are going to be served by the federal government in Ottawa, very much the opposite. It’s become very clear to us that not only do they not want us to prosper, they actually want to sabotage the industry. If that’s the case, that the federal government wants to sabotage the biggest industry that we have in the country by far, how are we expected to pay back all the money they keep borrowing? MH: How do you address concerns that a separation referendum could drive away business and scare off investment? MS: I can’t see that we could do any worse than Ottawa is doing right now. Mr. Carney has had $85 billion leave in investment - leave the country - since he became prime minister. I think they’re consciously trying to sabotage industry here. I think actually creating an independent Alberta would probably create a boom. MH: What would a political landscape look like in an independent Alberta? How do you envision governance? MS: We have a discussion paper, a draft constitution done and prepared. It’s going to be released here this week. The idea is if we win the referendum, within two months we’ll have a constitutional conference, and the people will get to decide how they want the government to look. Based on the constitution that will be prepared then, at that point we’ll move forward to an actual election within a year. That’s the plan. The government that’s in place is going to have to make that transition smooth, and going to be in charge of making that happen. MH: Should there be a provincial election before a referendum so Albertans know where their political representatives stand on the issue of independence? MS: I’m not in charge of that either. I would prefer to get the referendum question done, and then after that we’ll see if Albertans actually have the will to take this another step. MH: The Forever Canadian petition took up a lot of oxygen. There are also no fewer than 26 recall petitions underway. Are you worried about Albertans might be getting petitioned-out? MS: We’re certainly not seeing it in our town halls. As a matter of fact, we’ve got people lining up across the street to get in every town hall. We’ve had five town halls since Tuesday night and they’ve all been full to capacity. If we had more people there to collect signatures, we’d have collected probably everybody that came in the door. We just didn’t have the capacity because we don’t have enough canvassers approved to handle the volume. That’s a really good problem because we’ll come back and have another event. MS: Do you have a target number of petition signatures overall? MS: I think it would be a disappointment to have less than what Mr. Lukaszuk had. I think that’s a legitimate target. The ultimate target is to get everybody in Alberta to sign it.
