2 years ago

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On August 25th, 2022, the Alberta Prosperity Project and Rebel News hosted a UCP Leadership Debate. At this debate, Danielle Smith was asked the following question.

Ezra Levant:
Alberta can only successfully negotiate with Ottawa from a position of strength. But I don't know how that’s possible given, I mean Alberta’s strong, but its population and it’s economy will never likely be dominant.

Quebec for centuries has been a minority, linguistic minority, cultural, economic minority, but they did something different, they had an “or else” added to the end of it. How far are you willing to go, are you willing to say: “We want these things or else”. At what stage would you, for example, invoke the Clarity Act, as clarified by the Supreme Court, for example calling a referendum on the Clarity Act question of succession? Do you have an or else in mind? What is it and what would make you use it? And if not, how are you serious?

Danielle Smith:
The “or else” is Dennis Modry and the Alberta Prosperity Project. It’s true. We proclaimed into law on April the 7th the citizen initiative act which gives the people the power to collect signatures for petition campaigns to propose an amendment. If it's a simple matter of policy, it's a 10% threshold, if it's a constitutional change it's a 20% threshold. That would be 600,000 signatures and as I understand it Dr. Modry has a million people on his database. So, part of when I decided I wanted to run I knew how important it was to address the issues of autonomy and I talked to Dr. Modry as one of my first steps. I said “Let’s try this together. Let’s get as much autonomy as we can.” Full well knowing that he’s got the power, you’ve got the power, if we’re not successful, and this is why I take your movement very very seriously and why Justin Trudeau should take it very very seriously too, because you have the power to be the “or else”.