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00:21:52.320So we we came together with some conservatives, libertarians and Alberta patriots.
00:21:57.560And we founded the Freedom Conservative Party of Alberta.
00:22:00.440We used the registration and legal foundation of the Alberta First Party so that we didn't spend nine months going out collecting signatures.
00:22:08.320And we're able to start work right away.
00:22:11.380And so we've we've got a great team together from across the province.
00:22:14.860We've been building up, signing up members, raising money.
00:22:18.000And we are having our founding convention in on October 20th in Chestermere.
00:22:24.140And folks can find out more information at freedomconservativeparty.ca.
00:22:29.520And we flashed briefly your website on the screen there.
00:22:32.700I have a couple of questions about it.
00:22:35.560Jason Kenney's success, whatever other criticisms you have of him, was he came in, took over the progressive conservative party itself and forced it, really.
00:22:49.040I mean, or let it, encouraged it, cajoled it, poked it into a merger with Wildrose.
00:22:55.520And I don't know if that would have happened without him.
00:22:57.980So the whole theme was Unite the Right, a replica of what Stephen Harper had done federally.
00:23:03.100Now, I was always in the position that that wasn't even necessary because the NDP vote in 2015 was such an anomaly.
00:23:11.120And every by-election we've seen federally and provincially shows that they're going to be wiped out.
00:23:16.240So I never really believed in the necessity to it, but Albertans seemed to like it, and so it is done.
00:23:24.040Aren't what, isn't what you're doing the exact opposite?
00:23:30.380Instead of uniting the right, you're dividing the right.
00:23:33.140And isn't that exactly what most conservatives in Alberta, in both the Wildrose and the former PC party, wanted to do against?
00:23:42.500And, I mean, again, I believe Rachel Nolte's going to be crushed like a bowl of eggs, but isn't splittism against what conservatives want in Alberta?
00:23:54.040Well, I'd pose the question a different way.
00:23:57.080I'd say who is actually dividing conservatives, federally and provincially?
00:24:00.820You know, my party has left me, federally and provincially.
00:24:06.640The parties have been undemocratic, not letting the members make the decisions that they have a right, a legal right and a moral right to make, both on policies and selecting candidates and their leaders.
00:24:18.680If the leadership and elites of those parties abandon what they're supposed to be standing for and their duty to their members, it is them who is dividing conservatives.
00:24:26.940Now, I was perhaps one of the very first people in Alberta to be pushing to merge the Wildrose and PC parties like yourself.
00:24:37.960I didn't believe that was actually necessary to defeat the NDP.
00:24:40.880It was an anomaly for a number of reasons, but I nonetheless felt it was probably the right thing to do.
00:24:48.300But under the right circumstances, and I believe that, you know, there's a lot of backroom politics people have no idea about.
00:24:55.920But during the negotiation process, there were some real problems, particularly coming from on the Wildrose side.
00:25:04.540To be fair to Jason, these problems were probably primarily coming from our side, which was really putting the cart before the horse and having the leadership race done too quickly before we even had a constitution for the party.
00:25:16.920And this meant that the way things were done is the members didn't even get the right to the constitution of their own party.
00:25:35.660Now, everyone's looking towards 2019, the next election.
00:25:39.800So what I'm saying, though, is that it's not good enough just to get rid of the NDP.
00:25:43.800The Tories are not the party I believed we were founded.
00:25:48.160They are proposing a 40-degree change from the NDP.
00:25:52.640I believe we need a 180-degree change.
00:25:55.400I don't want to keep one major item that the NDP has done.
00:26:00.200I want to completely destroy the legacy of both Rachel Notley, Jim Prentice, Alison Redford, and Ed Stelmack.
00:26:07.620We can't simply turn the clock back to 2015.
00:26:09.920You've got to remember that we had eight years of relatively bad government in Alberta with massive deficits, overspending, and an unaccountable government for three premiers before Rachel Notley.
00:26:25.540Well, just turning back the clock to 2015, I don't think, is going to be the answer, which is why I believe we need a bolder and more aggressive conservative party, a more grassroots conservative party that isn't captive to special interests.
00:26:37.180All right, there's some ridings where I think the NDP vote in 2019 is going to be single digits, and your own riding is probably one of them, and many Calgary ridings.
00:26:48.440But there are some ridings, maybe in Lethbridge, probably not, in Edmonton for sure, where the NDP might still be able to re-elect some MLAs.
00:27:00.880And you never know what can happen between now and then in politics.
00:27:06.740Are you not risking re-electing NDP MLAs in Edmonton or other less right-wing ridings than your own by fielding Freedom Conservative Party candidates to split the right-wing vote?
00:27:21.100No, we're not, because we're not fielding candidates in any of those constituencies.
00:27:26.600So we made a very conscious decision when we founded the Freedom Conservative Party that, as bad as the Tories are, they are admittedly better than the NDP.
00:27:36.320Now, better than the NDP is a pretty low bar to meet, and we think in most of the province that is naturally conservative, people shouldn't have to just settle for better than the NDP.
00:27:46.400But in constituencies where the NDP have any real chance of winning, we have decided we will not be fielding candidates there.
00:28:00.800How many ridings are you willing to stay away from to not risk splitting the vote?
00:28:06.540So it's going to be based on a case-by-case basis from the last combination of results in the last election, more recent polling, and circumstances on the ground, such as who our candidates are and who the other candidates are.
00:28:21.580And so, you know, as a broad generalization, I can tell you that in most of rural and small-town Alberta, places like my constituency, the NDP have absolutely 0% chance of winning, and we will be fielding candidates.
00:28:34.280In parts of some of the outer parts of Calgary, in the south and in the west, we will be fielding candidates.
00:28:44.040But in the more downtown areas of Calgary, in Lethbridge, and in parts of the far north, and probably the vast majority of Edmonton, we will not be fielding candidates because we feel that our position on the ballot there could actually potentially help to elect the NDP.
00:29:01.120Now, I don't think, even if we ran candidates everywhere, I think the NDP are going to get absolutely crotched in the next election, no matter what.
00:29:08.880But we also don't want to help contribute to the election of any NDPs, period, even if they're not in a position to be in government.
00:29:18.420We want us to be the second biggest party in the legislature.
00:29:35.540What would you say to people who said, well, this is just a one-man band, this is a vanity project, instead of running as an independent, independents have a very poor track record in Canada, this is really a party of one.
00:29:49.960Would you acknowledge that or would you say it's more than that?
00:29:53.120Are there any other personalities involved?
00:29:55.840Are there any other prospective candidates?
00:29:57.940At your convention next month, will there be other talent that is showcased?
00:30:03.360Well, the people saying that are generally the people who are afraid of what we can do.
00:30:09.740They know that we've got significant support across Calgary, rural and small-town Alberta, even building up in Edmonton, even though we don't intend to run candidates there.
00:30:23.600We've got a board of governors from across the province.
00:30:25.780We're attracting some really great candidates who will be announcing that they'll be seeking nominations in the next few months.
00:30:32.400We're going to, some of those people will be at our convention in October.
00:30:37.620We've got, no, we've got a really great team here.
00:30:39.840And one of the problems really in all Canadian politics, Alberta federally and in most provinces, is that political parties are almost all one-man bands, where the leader is not just the main face of the party, which is inevitable, but they control everything.
00:30:55.400And they don't even let their MLAs vote freely or their MPs vote freely.
00:31:31.800You mentioned there's, you're going to have some great candidates, and I'm sure you'll want to time that strategically, probably, at your October conference.
00:31:39.200But is there anyone else you can name at this point that the public would recognize and say, oh, there seems to be a crystallization of other people?
00:31:49.680Like you mentioned, I think you said dozens of ridings where the United Conservative Party has been heavy-handed.
00:31:57.060Have, can you name someone else who has joined your movement?
00:32:01.800I would be breaking confidence if I were to mention any of the folks who might be more household names in Alberta.
00:32:09.440But we certainly have had, you know, especially some of the ridings where there's been a very corrupted nomination process,
00:32:17.880where Conservatives have not been allowed to select their candidate in a fair and free race.
00:32:22.940And in others, we've had a lot of good candidates come forward.
00:32:26.660We have not opened our MLA nominations yet because we're going through our leadership process at this very moment.
00:32:34.300And we're going towards our founding policy convention and leadership vote in October, as I said.
00:32:39.580But when that's done, we're going to be opening up the nomination process in constituencies for candidates to come forward.
00:32:44.980But, yeah, no, I can't, I'd be breaking confidence if I mentioned those names right now because they're not public.
00:32:51.880But they will be coming forward as we open up the nominations.
00:33:16.820But let me end with a more positive note.
00:33:21.460I think that Alberta traditionally has had a conservative-ish government and the opposition parties were usually on the left.
00:33:30.580It might be something that is more reflective of the province's true character and might be better governance if the dominant party, let's say the government, next year were the United Conservative Party.
00:33:43.440But there was a principled right-wing opposition that helped keep it honest because the alternative is for the media party to pull Jason Kenney and the UCP to the left, which is, I believe, what has happened.
00:33:57.820Everything, every misstep that Jason Kenney has made, every watering down of policy, even your description of the nomination stakes in Chestermere, it's all driven by his concern about the perception that the media party will have of him.
00:34:15.740Having a counterweight to Jason Kenney on the right to balance the media party on the left could be a salutary thing.
00:34:22.880I just don't know how serious a movement the Freedom Conservative Party is.
00:34:27.440I guess maybe you'll show us at your October convention.
00:34:34.840There's a potential not just to be an opposition party on the right, but potentially to hold the balance of power.
00:34:40.540If the NDP were to hold most of Edmonton, which is a possibility, and the Tories were to knock the NDP out of much of the rural far north and Calgary,
00:34:52.580and the FCP were to form a strong caucus, you could see the potential where the FCP would hold the balance of power after the next election.
00:35:01.180So, kind of on the opposite side of how the Greens hold the balance of power in British Columbia and work with the NDP,
00:35:09.480you know, the Freedom Conservative Party would be willing to work with the Tories after the next election in some kind of agreement or coalition,
00:35:17.020if we were able to, you know, if we're able to agree on some key governing priorities.
00:35:21.820And that would be a much more conservative government than just the Tories governing alone.
00:35:27.300It would be a significantly more conservative government.
00:35:29.500It would be a more accountable government.
00:35:31.020And without the ability of a single-party leader to whip everything,
00:35:35.740it would be a government that would actually have to listen to people and let MLAs vote and speak freely,
00:35:42.480rather than just be told to shut up and follow the party line every time.
00:35:47.440Well, it would be very interesting, and I think a lot of the proof will be in your founding convention,
00:35:52.220if it's more than just the Derek Fildebrand party, if these other personalities do come,
00:36:54.300Welcome back on my monologue Friday about Brazil's leading presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro,
00:37:11.600getting stabbed and the normalized violence against the political right.
00:37:15.400Peter writes, the worst part is that the mainstream media either ignores the violence against
00:37:20.100conservatives, cheers it on, or at the very least implies that the victim deserves it.
00:37:24.580All that attitude does is encourage it.
00:37:26.600It is becoming, by the day, increasingly dangerous to hold conservative values.
00:37:30.280Yeah, and the labeling, far-right, all-right, neo-Nazi, we all know, even those of us who are young and have no family connection to the Second World War,
00:37:44.060we all know that the word Nazi is the purest evil of our age.
00:37:48.360So if you call someone a Nazi, and we know that we sacrificed millions of lives to fight the Nazis,
00:37:55.380and the Nazis killed millions of people, if you call someone a Nazi, you're basically saying they're killable.
00:38:01.380That's the ultimate extension of that.
00:38:03.100So it starts with, de-platform someone, get someone fired, punch them in the face.
00:38:09.640Then it goes to stabbing, like Bolsonaro, and then it goes to murder.