According to social media posts last night by two prominent figures in the Alberta separation movement, the board of the Alberta Prosperity Project terminated Mitch Sylvestre as CEO and Jeffrey Rath as the group’s legal counsel last month.
However, Mr. Sylvestre, speaking last night at an online video meeting of APP supporters to discuss the next steps for their separation movement and how to get supporters to attend the United Conservative Party annual general meeting next month dismissed the claims as completely false. Mr. Rath was not at the meeting.
The social media comments have been posted in public. AlbertaPolitics.ca has been sent a transcript and recording of the meeting Mr. Sylvestre attended, first reported on social media by journalist and researcher Trevor Scott Howell.
A note on X published at 5:27 p.m. by Chris Scott, owner of the Whistlestop Café in Mirror, which became a centre of opposition to COVID vaccinations during the pandemic, showed an image stating: “Notice of board decisions” beneath labels reading “Alberta Prosperity Project,” “formal public notice,” and “from the board of directors.” The image was produced in the same style as the APP website.
The image states that Mr. Sylvestre, who is still president of the UCP’s Bonnyville–Cold Lake–St. Paul constituency association, and Mr. Rath, a well-known lawyer who served as APP counsel, were “terminated, for cause,” on Sept. 14, and removed as directors at a separate meeting on Sept. 24. “Neither Jeffrey Rath nor Mitch Sylvestre has authority to act for or represent the Alberta Prosperity Project (Alberta Prosperity Society),” it says.
“I had sincerely hoped this matter could be resolved privately,” Mr. Scott said in a post accompanying the image. “In the interest of protecting the integrity and unity of Alberta’s independence and sovereignty movements, every effort was made to reach a resolution behind closed doors. It is therefore with profound disappointment and reluctance that I find it necessary to issue this public notice to the members of the Alberta Prosperity Project.”
A post with the same image published about 20 minutes earlier by Tanya Clemens at her FarmGeek account on X said “I am an APP board member and wanted folks to know that these changes had been made by our board. Please read the notice.”
“We made the decision to wait until after the referendum to share this,” she said in part in another post on X. “We had all worked so hard to get to that point, and the last thing we wanted was to create a distraction when everyone needed to be focused on winning the vote.”
In 2023, Ms. Clemens was an unsuccessful nomination candidate for the United Conservative Party in the Livingstone-Macleod Riding. In the past year, she has become well known as a proponent of the APP.
At the APP’s way-forward meeting, according to the transcript, Mr. Sylvestre said, “Chris and Tanya have never ever been members of the APS board. Okay? So just understand this: the fact that they’re saying that they dismissed anybody from the APS board, they had no authority to do it. They cannot do it, and I’m really concerned with the timing of that.”
“This is all internal stuff,” he continued. “I said I would never, you know, have a fight in public about any of our internal stuff, and I’m going to hold that line. I’m not going to disparage anybody, and not going to do that because that I believe is the whole point here.”
“It’s going to literally make us all look like we’re freaking crazy,” Mr. Sylvestre adds in the recording. “You know, we’re having a fight right after a big success. What I thought is a big success. So as a consequence to that, you know what? I’m just going to move forward.”
The UCP AGM is scheduled to take place at the BMO Centre in Calgary from Nov. 27 to 29.
Meanwhile, last night Elections Alberta was still counting the final 1 per cent of the ballots cast in Monday’s separation referendum.
These people have found a recipe of flake s and nuts that is utterly unique. Politically sustaining, not so sure.
Integrity?
“It’s going to literally make us all look like we’re freaking crazy.” I think the King Charles thing already did that.
Oh wow. I was just going to comment on that. Like wow.
Seriously Mitch? You are a small town, conspiracy laden, egotistical former hockey player who drank some Covid kool aid. Unfortunately, Bonnyville is full of kooks with a whole bunch of money. Go away.
Totally agree. The crazy train left the station a long ago.
I thought that the telling part was Ms. Clemens assertion that they winning was the reason for waiting to fire the two men.
Then, I read the Mr. Sylvestre’s “freaking crazy” line.
The wheels are falling off that bandwagon.
It seems to me that the true nature of an organization (political, or otherwise) isn’t communicated to the general public during times of success. It is defeat or hardship that let’s slip bare the mask. The APS/APP is not pretty.
The chaotic world of Alberta separatist groups and their leaders feels a bit like a carnival game of whack a mole. Various groups seem to pop up with confusing names and different leaders. APP sounds like some sort of academic group or think tank. Let Alberta Decide sounded sort of non partisan. Interestingly, the recent prominent ones seem to have had names with no mention of separatism.
Some of their recent leaders seem to be very colourful characters with their own significant legal issues or controversies, perhaps personalities looking for a MAGA like cult to build and lead. Interestingly many also seem to have some sort of significant or long term connection to the UCP, as well as the groups they claim to lead. It kind of feels like a fun house mirror where they are a reflection, but somewhat stretched from reality.
I suspect the ephemeral feeling of these groups did not help them get support in the referendum and the perhaps the result has also now led others to challenge the supposed leaders or spokesmen we were just getting used to hearing from over the last few weeks or months.
To add to all this, while the result seems clear, of course the ballot counting continues. It was not realistic or possible to complete it in the mandated 48 hours. Lastly, it will be interesting to see what happens when they bring all their chaotic energy and conflict to town at the UCP AGM. Smith may now be wishing she did not release all these various genies from their bottles and seems to be desperately trying to put them back in. We’ll see how well that goes.
It was once upon a time said that Smith had no idiot filters. Should we therefore be surprised at any of this, dear readers?
“The chaotic world of Alberta separatist groups and their leaders feels a bit like a carnival game of whack a mole.”. Indeed. For example, in the realm of separatist political parties, there are at least three such entities registered with Elections Alberta. These are:
– The Republican Party of Alberta, lately of voters list privacy breach fame
– The Independence Party of Alberta
– Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta
How these three separatist parties differ, and why there are three of them, is beyond me. I hesitate to delve into that lest I find myself on some odious mailing list.
https://www.elections.ab.ca/political-participants/parties/
Leaders of conservative parties in BC and Manitoba in the last month are out. PP is teetering. UCP infighting here is ongoing, threatening the Premier and the party staying in power.
Conservatives seemingly cannot help but fight like little children. They cannot make both their base, and the electorate, happy.
Their policies offer nothing but pain, mismanagement, blatant incompetence, gaslighting, and at times, outright corruption.
I’m not a huge fan of Nenshi, but he’s looking like a sane competent alternative to Dani, and Carney’s gravitas and adult demeanour make him the most popular PM in a long time.
When will conservatives wake up to their bumbling, petty image and become adults again?
“It’s going to literally make us all look like we’re freaking crazy,” Mr. Sylvestre adds in the recording. Don’t worry. You already do.
They want to run their own country? These nimrods couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
Treasonous, grifting buffoons turning on each other is fun to watch, but it would be even better to see some of them behind bars.
Rather reminiscent of the old TV show F troop. Rath could be a character from the show. It is a pity that things aren’t that funny. These people from Melaniac on down have caused serious trouble that will continue to plague Alberta for years to come.
The UCP, APP and all the other separatists groups always seem to turn on themselves when losing. How can anybody take them seriously when they’re constantly tossing their leadership. it’s like watching children play in a sandbox.
“It’s going to literally make us all look like we’re freaking crazy,”
Oh Mitch, that ship sailed a very long time ago.
Lol, thanks for the coffee spit take! It was a great morning chuckle.
Noticed that several of the most prominent and vocal independence supporters have now switched to backing Danielle Smith in her battle to get the separatists within the UCP to sit down and shut up. After all, an independent Alberta is so last week. Which begs the question, were they being paid by a provincial entity to promote separatism using their social media platforms? Are they still being paid? Allegedly. There have been rumours. One thing is certain – once the NDP win the election next year, there needs to be a full judicial inquiry called to determine what the hell has been going on.
Can you name one thing to which the bottom of was got by the NDP in 2015-19? Still waiting to hear the juicy deets on the dozen years of SLAPP suits filed against CBC, Gillian Findlay and the sources from the 2009 Fifth Estate program on Alberta’s finest privately-run coerced addictions treatment facility. Any day now!
Indeed, follow the money.
Strategy of Tension keeps Derpbertistanis chasing their tails. The World’s Richest Third-World country cedes more economic agency to international capital every day, as the U.S. Empire ramps up its Watch on the Rhine 2.0 campaign against China while the Canadian population frets about the antics of a handful of con-artists and cult members. If the Grifter-yokel cult were real and posed a threat to the imperialist, colonialist capitalist order represented by the Carny Banker, these clowns would be living with the all-encompassing fear and alienation experienced by people who are bona fide opponents to the system. Prior to the Vancouver Olympics, Johnny Law was physically tailing and surveilling activists who posed some perceived threat to the Quadrennial bread and circuses festival of jingoism, cheating and meaningless emotional distraction. They put hundreds in jail during the Toronto G20 Klownfest the same year. The Truckers had their bank accounts seized during the Covidmania fiasco. The secession of Alberta would constitute a collapse in national security unprecedented in Canadian history, and yet the separatist Klown Skwad is free to do what they like. Seems reasonable.
You’re so eloquent that you should be writing your own blog. Maybe you do. Question: how do you find comfort, knowing what you ‘know.’? Give us your projection of the next 5 years for Alberta [within Canada].
The Alberta style Skinner Box functions as it was meant to, the purposefully designed and implemented distractions notwithstanding.
It is assumed that the Calgary School disciples of Hayek and Schmitt approve of the situation. How could they not? They certainly facilitated and collaborated in its creation and growth. See for example,
“Which brings us to the contents of Moment of Truth, a book trying to make the case that because the West produces oil wealth, it deserves a bigger voice in Ottawa. And if it doesn’t get that bigger voice, then it ought to threaten separation. Or it needs to actually separate. Or join the US. Or something.”
https://albertaviews.ca/moment-truth/
The current premier of Alberta was one of their groomed favorite star pupils, carefully selected for conformity and obedience to the dominant power structure and its doctrinal framework, i.e., someone that does not think the wrong kinds of thoughts, i.e., anything that might interfere with the neoliberal ideas of unrestrained growth and development and its corollary of unrestricted capital accumulation along with the authoritarian liberalism that tends to accompany those same neoliberal ideals.
Schism is in their genes.
These people should just exile to the United States. They would fit in there.