A new day in Alberta： Election analysis with guest Keean Bexte, plus William McBeath of Save Calgary
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Summary
Sheila Gunn-Reed, Kian Bexty, and Willie McBeth discuss the results of the Alberta election, including Jason Kenney's victory, and why the mainstream media failed to do its job.
Transcript
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We're here live in Calgary at UCB headquarters on Tuesday night.
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gun Show.
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We're here at UCB headquarters on Tuesday night.
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Jason Kenney has just announced, he just did his big speech, part of which was in French,
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which I actually thought was a pretty nice touch.
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Um, you at home, you're going to be watching this on Wednesday night, um, because I have
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to make my way back to Edmonton and Kian is going to put in a bit of a long night here,
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Anyway, with me tonight, of course, my Rebel colleague, Kian Bexty, resident muckraker,
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commie hunter extraordinaire, and our friend, Willie McBeth from Save Calgary, a man with
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the best hair in all of politics, and also a man I like to call the Olympics killer.
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She just might have lost her seat tonight, and I think you might have done it.
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I, so throughout this whole broadcast here, I'm going to keep saying the advance poll
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votes will be counted later, so we're not sure that she's lost yet, but right now it
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looks like the people who voted on election day decisively, well, maybe not so decisively,
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that's my rhetoric kicking in, 400 votes kept Anne McGrath from a seat in Edmonton.
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She lost the election today, and unless advanced polls say otherwise, she will not be going
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to Edmonton, and I think that the truck that we ran through her riding did its job.
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We educated voters, and that's the job of the media, and it's the job that the mainstream
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media has neglected for the past five or six years, I think, is when the mainstream media
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Every voter I talked to that wasn't an obvious NDP partisan hack said, once they realized Anne
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There's at least three or four folks that we have on camera saying, oh my God, I can't
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Once people know that Anne McGrath is a communist, they don't want to vote for her.
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But it was a successful campaign, probably the most successful campaign I've mounted at
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The CBC declined to report on Anne McGrath's red record.
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They explicitly neglected to mention her past candidacy with the Communist Party of Canada,
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Canada, and they did a disservice to the residents of Calgary Varsity and to Greater Albertans
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I'm glad we had the opportunity to educate voters in this respect.
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Yeah, I think it was a complete and total abdication of their journalistic responsibility.
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And I think that, I mean, as long as they keep doing that, you and I are going to have all
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the job security that we can handle, because we exist in this vacuum because they fail to
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I mean, I wrote a book, The Destroyers, because the media failed to properly vet the NDP candidates
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so that we ended up with people like Deb Drever and Thomas Dang and, you know, a whole host
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of others who are severely unqualified for their job.
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William, let's talk about some of the other surprise or maybe not so surprising elections
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Um, I was checking just before we came on air, it looks like, um, Derek Fildebrandt finished
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Uh, I think what's so interesting is the NDP have been spinning this narrative that this
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was going to be a nail-biter campaign, particularly in Calgary.
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And the reality is they were obliterated across the province and everywhere except their core,
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and not even everywhere in Edmonton, but in the downtown urban core of Edmonton.
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And I think it's, I think anybody with any sense knows why that was.
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It was about jobs, it was about the economy, it was about getting pipelines built.
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And for Rachel Notley, it is a 0 for 3 record in her four years in office.
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Alberta has 170,000 unemployed people and no prospect of job creation under the NDP.
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People don't want to put their money here because Alberta is closed for business under
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And when it comes to pipelines, we were told, we were promised, we were assured that if
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we had a carbon tax, other provinces would fall all over themselves to let us build pipelines
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And the reality was we didn't get a single pipeline built.
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And when people looked at Rachel Notley's record and said, do we really want four more
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They said, no, we're going to vote for someone new.
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And they didn't just vote for someone new in drips and drabs.
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They threw the NDP out and ushered in a blue wave of conservatism under Jason Kenney.
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I wanted to ask you, now, nearly 700,000, is that accurate?
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I mean, we've now probably got roughly two thirds of those people counted.
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And those people, well, I can tell you I know one riding, Calgary West quite well.
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And it was a three to one margin for the United Conservative Party there with the advance polls.
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And I cannot imagine a scenario where those out-of-riding polls are going to break substantially
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differently than the rest of the advance polls.
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I think Albertans were chomping at the bit for change.
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Chomping at the bit for a new government, clamoring to throw the bums out.
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They got a solid United Conservative government and they sent the NDP packing.
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A lot of the NDP MLAs and ministers who are now looking for work are about to discover
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just how tough the job situation really is in Alberta.
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Yeah, I've been tweeting them Arby's applications because...
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You know, and let's talk about the failure of press progress.
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We were on air with Ezra for quite some time today because, as you know, Ezra can sure
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So we were like three and a half hours we were on air for.
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But it seems to me that every candidate that press progress attacked that remained, it was
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If you were targeted by press progress, you, you know, you slid home with 60 to 80 percent
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And I guess, you know, Rachel Notley's foreign funded proxies weren't as successful as the
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But every candidate that press progress attacked won, except for Kaylin Ford and Eva, who resigned.
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And Kaylin Ford, I think she was such a stellar candidate.
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If she stayed, maybe she would have edged out in Mountain View.
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But every other candidate they attacked, Grant Hunter, Jason Nixon, Casey Maddow, Devin Driesen.
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They won by margin, seven to one, some of these.
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It's, I mean, I can't think of, I wouldn't want to be in their position to know that the
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I mean, they're having a bit of a rough night, I would say.
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They worked extremely hard to re-elect Rachel Notley, and Albertans just frankly disagree.
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But I think there's some interesting things we have to ask ourselves about third-party
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You know, we've looked at Press Progress, who has run an unrelenting campaign against
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We look at the big unions, who have run an unrelenting campaign against Alberta's energy
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And yet, somehow, they supported the NDP, which makes me think, did they really believe
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the NDP was going to stand up for Alberta's energy sector, or did they say, what we're
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seeing from the NDP is the dog and pony show, the smoke and mirrors of, well, we're not going
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to win Alberta if we don't pretend to support Alberta's energy sector.
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But then, you know, I don't think third-party groups who are so opposed to our energy sector
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would campaign for politicians who are actually in favor of it.
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I think what we saw was that foreign-funded anti-alberta oil campaign and the NDP being
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called to task by saying, look, we don't really believe you.
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I don't think Albertans believe them either, which is why so many of them have been sent
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Well, I don't believe them when they appoint people like Ed Whittingham to the AER and
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Sipporah Berman to the OSAG and Karen Mahone to the OSAG and Tim Gray to the OSAG, all foreign-funded
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radicals deciding the fate and future of our oil and gas development.
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And, you know, I mean, there's a whole other level in this, though, and it's the oil field
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CEOs who are cutting deals with Rachel Notley's government to support the carbon tax that I
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And working with people like Sipporah Berman, you know, Suncor worked with Sipporah Berman
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to get in that emissions cap, and then guess who gets in under the emissions cap?
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Yeah, I bet you their tone is going to be changing.
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Throughout his whole time being Minister of Immigration with Stephen Harper, he was known as
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a pretty hard-ass minister, and he's not going to put up with these hobnobbing CEOs who are
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rich in their own right, just kind of coming up to him to brown-nose.
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We know that's what they were doing with Rachel Notley this whole time.
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William, what are your first hundred days fantasy football, Jason Kenney, things that
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I want him to send Stephen Harper as a special envoy to Donald Trump to get Keystone XL approved.
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I do believe the U.S. president is in favor of Keystone XL.
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Jason Kenney has promised what is being called the summer of repeal.
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So, the line-by-line review of the bad legislation that this NDP government brought in over its
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I mean, I don't think the NDP sent a clearer message to the world than if you want to invest,
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It was a key reason, I think, why so many Albertans decided we needed change.
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Alberta used to be the place where if you had an idea, if you had a product, if you had
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a business, you brought it to Alberta, because we were the province saying yes to entrepreneurship,
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So, I'm hoping that we start cutting the red tape, that we proceed aggressively with
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the corporate, with the business tax cut, that we have Jason on a plane, something, by
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the way, you know, Jason Kenney is uniquely suited to, flying around and talking with groups
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He did it for five years as immigration minister.
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I want Jason on a plane visiting New York and London and all of the financial capital
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saying, forget the last four years of government in Alberta.
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Please, come here and help us kickstart our economy.
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I really think that is why Jason needs to send that message, not just to Canada, but globally.
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Well, and I'm also eager to see him circumvent the federal government.
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You know, deploy somebody, deploy somebody like Stephen Harper.
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Again, I mean, I would just send Stephen Harper everywhere to solve the world.
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You are setting a very high bar for who you're going to send.
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I want him to go everywhere and solve all the world's problems.
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I understand she has a lot of free time right now.
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I would like to see him circumvent the federal government and deal with issues like canola
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Let's send our own people, our own experienced people, former agriculture ministers from Saskatchewan
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Him and his mustache could talk me into just about anything.
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So I think we should deploy him to China to solve the canola problems.
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He is a naive wife when it comes to foreign policy.
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He showed up in China with incredible lack of understanding about Canada's priorities
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when it came to foreign relations and international trade.
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He lectured, you know, the second largest economy in the world and said,
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Standards, by the way, which I have no idea what they are anymore,
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since apparently rule of law is no longer what our government believes in.
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But we export billions of dollars of canola to China.
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And yet, you know, Prime Minister Trudeau seems to think that 9,000 theoretical Bombardier,
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sorry, I used to say Bombardier because we've propped them up so much.
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SNC laveling jobs are worth more than a multi-billion dollar trade contract
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I would hope, you know, it's interesting, Jason Kenney talks about this.
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Justin Trudeau was his critic when he was a federal cabinet minister.
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And he's noted he's had a lot of critics over the years.
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He's had NDP critics and block critics and whatnot.
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And he's always found them to be, you know, well-read, up on the files, focused on the interests,
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And that one was Justin Trudeau, who he, frankly, just didn't think was smart enough
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to understand the issues that were being taught.
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It becomes a shock to many people that Justin Trudeau just wasn't ready when he came to be a critic.
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You know, I remember somebody trying to tell me something about that.
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Kian, what's your first 100 days fantasy football?
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Well, voluntary student unionism is by far my most, what I'm most interested in.
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But I hate student unions with a burning passion.
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I sincerely hope that students are freed from their, from a system that violates their human
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rights guaranteed to them by the United Nations, of all people.
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It is, it is a violation of students' human rights to be forced to be a member of student
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unions that tried desperately to keep the NDP in office, by the way.
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I hope that that is put on the table, just like Doug Ford did Ontario.
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William, you know more than anything about that.
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I hope that Rachel Notley's government throughout her term toyed with the idea of giving municipal
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And I hope that that is just totally taken off the table with Jason Kenney.
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The canola is a good point, what you were saying earlier.
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I think Jason Kenney, he's obsessed with federal ministries.
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He's been talking about immigration in almost every speech that he's given, which frustrates
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And he can actually have a minister for trade, who's not Darren Billis, doing real work.
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It was a trade mission that the opposition hosted.
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No, he did more work in that trip, I'm sure, than Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau did
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So, in one of Asia's, in Asia's, most emerging markets.
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So, that's what I'm hoping for in the first 100 days.
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Um, let's talk about some of the more fun stuff.
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Um, I see the Alberta party finished with about 9.3% of the vote.
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Do you think that their, um, Jesse Smollett-style, uh, hoax with the robocall complaint to the
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The only people who care about the Alberta party are out-of-touch academics and elites.
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It's, and, and red Tories who left the PC party hoping that they could find a home in
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a party, uh, that would, that would welcome them.
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And, and the Alberta party was the perfect candidate for that because they were desperate
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Because, turns out, you can't elect a government with academic elites.
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So, uh, red Tories fled the old PC party after he joined with the Wild Rose, uh, you know,
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He was in that press conference where they talked about the auto phone call.
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I enjoyed, I enjoyed that visual of Dave Quest standing behind Steven Mandela as he nuked
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I think of a city hall as he's like, oh no, they press conferences of this.
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I did have to laugh because I thought, how, how bad does it have to be for your party
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when, when people think, you know, they say I'm being impersonated and the answer is
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That is not an endorsement for a major political party.
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You know, if you're going to snatch votes from someone, don't pretend to be Steven Mandela.
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Well, that's actually higher than I thought it would be.
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But 0.0% of seats though, I think if we, if we, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, no, and it was
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so funny because I mean, then they're not even participating in the investigation because
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I saw that Matt Solberg offered to check to see if the phone number for this fake robocall
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pretending to be Steven Mandela endorsing, um, Jason Kenney matched the robocall that they
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used for the Steven Harper one and they've not taken them up on the offer.
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So I think they know, especially when the lady came out and said, oh yeah, I checked my voicemail
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and it was actually, you know, I actually suspect the Alberta party has larger problems now that
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they're now concerned about, including the fact that after they, they stabbed their first
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leader in the back, you know, the leader who had actually won a seat and started to build
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They put Steven Mandela in and he led them to losing their only seat.
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I think the Alberta party has to have a serious sit down about, should we still be a thing?
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They should have a joint conference with the liberal party about, should we still be a
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Well, no, but like, can they get, well, because the other option is you join the NDP or you
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Thomas Lukasik, he endorsed, um, the NDP too much success, but I want to know what shampoo
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I'm very envious of the people watching this tomorrow because I want to know what you know right
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now, which is what is happened in Calgary varsity, what's happened in all those really
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Uh, those advanced poll votes are really, it's crazy.
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Uh, if, uh, and I don't know how many are within like a couple dozen, because if you remember
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in 2015, uh, there were about five ridings that were within 200 votes.
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That was Cardston Siksika's old riding, uh, little bow when Ian Donovan ran against Doug,
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I read a hundred articles written by people who had never visited Drayton Valley, Devon
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or had spoken to somebody who had ever been to Drayton Valley, Devon about Mark Smith and
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things that he said in his church that are really inconsequential to a town that's burning,
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that's turning into a ghost town because of Rachel Notley's, um, policies.
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Let's have a peek at Drayton Valley, Devon, um, Drayton Valley, Devon with nine, as we're
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recording this 99 of 107 polls returning, we've got, uh, 3,621 votes for the NDP candidate
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That's the press progress touch right there, isn't it?
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I, you know, I mean, I think, I think if you looked at, uh, when this issue first came
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out, Mark had, uh, Smith had posted on his Facebook page and, uh, if you, a simple sampling
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of the comments in there was that the voters of Drayton Valley, Devon, we're still, we're
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scanning very solidly behind, uh, behind Mark Smith.
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I think, you know, uh, conservative candidates are obviously held to a significantly higher
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We've pointed out how, why wasn't the fact that Amagrath, uh, who ran for the
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Why wasn't that as covered nearly as much as some of these other, as some of these
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And I think it's a legitimate point to say that there is a double standard for, for
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conservatives, but despite the hysteria from various quarters of, of, of, of the
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NDP and of press progress and others of that regard, uh, Mark Smith easily reelected
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because I think people saw that that wasn't why the UCP were running a foreign government.
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And that was the message that Jason Kenney delivered.
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Goodness knows how many times over the last two years, they did not believe that the
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UCP was running to implement some sort of agenda that was against, uh, what a majority
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So for the NDP and others to suggest, you know, I actually think it was to their real
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detriment in the end, because as you attack your opponent, you may be able to scare a
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handful of voters into moving into another camp, but you harden the basis of support for
00:23:26.640
And I think as a result, their ability to move the undecideds or the, the leanings decreased
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And at the end, I think they're going to, the NDP are going to have to have a serious
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conversation about, you know, was this really the best strategy for winning reelection?
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And now they've got an energized, you know, base of conservatives who said, we're sick
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and tired of all being painted as homophobes and as bigots and as racist.
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And there's every other label that they'd be thrown against us.
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So, uh, I hope, I hope there's a lot of soul searching on the part of the left and their
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allies and supporters about whether or not this really was a good strategy or if it is
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now alienated a majority of Albertans for a generation against them.
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Yeah, they took, uh, an election campaign that should have been about jobs in the economy
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and each party's different plan for jobs in the economy and made it personal about the
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It wasn't even just personal about the politicians, but it was really personal about the voters.
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I think for Drayton Valley Devon, they had already elected Mark Smith once.
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And so when, you know, NDP proxies are attacking Mark, I think your point holds true that they
00:24:40.700
And the suggestion that what one of 87 candidates must reflect what an entire diverse candidate
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team, I think that section, you know, people complain that, that they don't hear real answers
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in politics, that all they get are focus group tests and talking points.
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Well, one of the reasons that is, is because if you ascribe to an entire candidate team
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and their leader, the views and comments of a single candidate in a single writing, that's
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all you're going to get then is bromides and platitudes because it's an unfair standard
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Conservatives are held to that standard far more than people in life.
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I don't think anybody asked Rachel Notley about her abiding love of communism just because,
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you know, Anne McGrath happened to run for the communist party.
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I hope to God that the polls tomorrow show Anne McGrath losing.
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There's no way in hell I think that she should be representing Albertans.
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But I do think there's someone standing right there, right off camera, waiting to kick us
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So I think outside of that, I'm pleased with the results.
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I think that a new day is dawning in Alberta, as Doug Ford would put it if he was here.
00:26:04.440
I think we have to wrap it up because I think this guy's literally going to unplug my camera.
00:26:12.280
Anyway, you know, my prediction for NDPC counts was 23.
00:26:29.780
I think that's enough NDP left to prosecute when we open up the books and see all the
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You know, you can hang a lot of bad things around the yoke of 24, 25 or whatever it is,
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So that's enough people left to answer some very ugly, very hard questions once they crack
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out the things, like whatever's been going on in the environment ministry and in energy.
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So I think that's going to be very interesting.
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I want to thank both of you guys for staying late.
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It is 10 minutes to 12 here at UCB headquarters.
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I'll see everybody back, well, not here at home, probably in my home studio in the same
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And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.