Separatists have raised the most money, but the polling consistently shows – it will be based on the turnout obviously, but the polling suggests – They're going to lose and they're going to lose big.

Two very different sides that have two different levels of motivation.

The separatist side, as we know, is incredibly motivated.

We've heard time and time again that they would crawl over glass to vote to separate and probably in this referendum as well.

Whereas especially because of the way the question has been framed, this is not a vote to separate.

It's a vote to start the legal process to have a second vote.

The motivation for the pro-candidate side might be a little bit different.

How persuasive is this going to be in this campaign do you think?

So, Matt, can you give us a sense of who the major players are on the Remain side, like the people gunning to remain in Canada?

I guess in no particular order of importance or prominence.

The one I would start with is Daniel Smith and her government and United Conservative Party.

And that's an important distinction we can get to later.

But the premier has said that she is going to campaign to remain in Canada, that she'll vote.

for the remain option in the referendum.

How the government and church party will campaign is a different story, and we can get to that.

Matt, let's talk about like what's going on in terms of fundraising, right? So, Matt, how do the campaign rules work in Alberta and how does that fit into this story?

What is Alberta or Elections Alberta anticipating in terms of their staffing needs in order to get through that date? What are they looking for?

It's going to be a lot.

The number they've put out for us is 60,000 people.

I know I'm talking to an Alberta audience right now, but that's larger than most municipalities in the province, I think, with the exception of, I don't know, seven or eight maybe.

So they need about 60,000 people, and they also need quite a few other skilled staff that can help run the particulars of elections, and these are people who have a background in elections.

Because the 60,000, or a lot of them are poll workers, or people are going to be working for a handful of days.

They're obviously still paid, but the number we've circled really is 60,000, which is a lot.

Now, and again, this is just because of, well, frankly, the number of ballots, right? And we're talking about millions and millions of ballots.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, there's really two sides to an argument here.

One is that, uh, contingency fees allow for, uh, a party to, uh, not pay legal costs as they come in, and then the lawyer, uh, bears the risk of not getting a settlement at the end.

However, because of that risk, the eventual fee that they are paid out is significantly higher than would normally, uh, occur because of the risk they take on in those cases.

So there's, there's a side to that where it's an, an access to justice, uh, issue, where if, if the First Nation doesn't have the money to pay for upfront legal costs, they can't secure counsel and can't pay for it.

Uh, the flip side is that, uh, some argue that those contingency fees can be, uh, extremely high.

I, I, to be honest, I have not been through the whole judgment on-

Mm-hmm

Why do it this way?

It feels like the province is trying to get out of a, sort of a weird quagmire they've entered into.

We have a legal component that they're trying to tackle by not violating the judge's decision last week.

The idea that there's going to be a separation referendum has been on the table for a couple months now, and we're about five months away from this.

So the, I think the pressure is on to call a question, because at a certain point, we need to know where we're gonna be going in October.

And with unable to resolve that legal problem, this seems sort of like the, the last possible option without calling a referendum that would probably get challenged by First Nations.

This might still get challenged in court, too.

Yeah, it's a tricky business, Matt.

How did it come about?

Yeah.

So this case came about in early January when a First Nation called Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation filed a lawsuit against the chief electoral officer, the provincial government, and the federal government, arguing that a separation referendum in Alberta would violate their constitutionally protected treaty rights, and they lay out a list of arguments as to why that would be the case.

They raise the specter of foreign interference.

They raise concerns about their treaty rights if Alberta did vote to separate, and, uh, that's what kickstarted this process.

And then a couple other First Nations got on board and filed their own challenges, and it was all lumped together in this hearing that happened in early April.

Um, and they're effectively asking the judge to reinsert a very tricky clause into the, the law that governs this whole process that the United Conservative Party took out last December that says a question that goes to a referendum under the Citizen Initiative Action should be constitutional.

Uh, just to end, what do you think will happen to the separatist movement if it is stopped via one of these legal actions?

And then what about this minority report? What did that say?

So the minority report had a different view on how to manage all these demographic and population changes.

So that was the core issue here.

They had a quite different view on how to do that, which ma- was mainly grounded in this thing called hybrid divisions, which takes rural populations and urban populations and puts them together in the same riding.

They, they advocate for more hybrid ridings.

There are a lot of mixtures.

Uh, for example, in Red Deer right now, you have two ridings in Red Deer.

Tell me about that, Matt.