In this week’s episode of On The Line, Jen Gerson is joined by former Alberta deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk for a wide-ranging conversation about Alberta politics, national unity, and his latest political campaign.
Lukaszuk is now spearheading Forever Canadian — Keep Alberta in Canada, a petition designed to get ahead of Alberta separatists by putting the issue on the table before they can. He explains why he believes forcing the question early is the best way to blunt momentum for separation and why he’s confident Albertans will choose to stay in Confederation when given the chance.
The discussion also turns to his years in government, the lessons he took from his time as deputy premier, and the challenges of working inside the always-turbulent world of Alberta politics. Lukaszuk doesn’t shy away from reflecting on his sometimes combative relationship with Premier Danielle Smith, offering candid assessments of her leadership style and the choices she’s making as Alberta’s political climate grows more polarized.
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YouTube:
Video goes live in 30 minutes, at 6:30 Eastern and 4:30 Mountain.
(Note for video viewers: Lucaszuk’s video feed dropped out near the end of the chat, so our apologies for that technical glitch. Jen’s video is fine and audio is fine for both throughout.)
Spotify:
Apple:
We hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t miss us next week. We’ll be back with more On The Line.
A brief programming note: It’s been six months since we launched our On The Line podcast. It has been a huge success, and we wanted to thank our audience here for helping make that so. While the podcast was just getting off the ground, we made a point of promoting it twice every Tuesday — we had a post announcing the audio release in the morning, and a second post in the evening, when the video went live. Now that the podcast has its feet under it, we’ll be consolidating On The Line’s releases into a single evening post — like this one. The audio will still release in the mornings, so follow us on your favourite podcasting app, but the main post will now be Tuesday evenings. Tuesday mornings will be again devoted to the publication of written articles.
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