EZRA LEVANT ｜ Derek Fildebrandt on Alberta politics： Dragons, mavericks and political rodeos
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Summary
A feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the CEO of the Western Standard, a company that covers all things Alberta and all things Western 24/7. Derek talks about his life in exile from his home province, why he loves being in Toronto, and what it's like to be an Albertan in exile.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. Today, a feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the CEO of Western
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Standard. But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast by going to
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rebelnewsplus.com. Clicking subscribe, it's eight bucks a month. You get the video version five
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days a week of my show. Sheila does a show every week. And more than that, you get to support
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Rebel News because we don't take a dime from Trudeau and it shows. All right, here's today's
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podcast. Tonight, a feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the boss of the Western Standard.
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It's May 20th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.
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Well, I was just saying to our next guest that although I was born and raised in Alberta,
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and I actually still have my Calgary phone number, even though I haven't lived there in many years,
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after a certain point in time, you can no longer have a chuckle and say, well, I'm an Albertan in
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exile in Toronto. I mean, I have been out here. And of course, I put roots down here. This is the
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head office of Rebel News. We have offices around the country, including our chief reporter, Sheila
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Gunn-Reed, is in northern Alberta. We have reporters in Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, too.
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But I sort of miss Alberta, and I'm out of touch with it simply because I'm not there physically all
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the time. I go back as often as I can. As you know, I've gone to Coots, or at least the Lethbridge
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Courthouse, probably a dozen times over the last couple of years, because that was the closest place
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to the Coots border crossing. And there's still echoes of the lockdown prosecutions there. But to
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rely on me for the latest news in Alberta is probably not the best. Who lives and breathes Alberta and all
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things Western 24-7? Who actually has the word Western in their name? Well, it's our friend Derek
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Fildebrandt. He's the boss and founder of WesternStandard.news. And he joins us now via Skype.
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Derek, thanks very much for joining us. I really do rely on you for the no BS take of what's going on
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in Alberta, because I've been out here in Toronto for long enough that maybe I miss things from afar.
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So it's great to have you on the show again. Well, thank you, guys. I always love being on the
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show. And I should maybe correct you. I'm the re-founder of the Western Standard. You were the
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first founder of the Western Standard. I mean, it was a completely new company started from scratch.
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But I go with the term re-founder. Well, I appreciate your kindness in saying that. I mean,
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you do keep that Western spirit. I remember when we had the print magazine Western Standard,
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pro-Alberta, pro-Western, pro-beef was one of our missions. And I know you keep that alive.
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I mean, look, from out here, Danielle Smith is regarded, you know, in those medieval maps,
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they wouldn't know what was in a certain area. And they would write,
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there be dragons, you know, when they didn't know, when the whole world hadn't yet been explored.
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And I think in Toronto, when they look at Danielle Smith and Alberta, a lot of media said,
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there be dragons. They don't quite understand it. They know it's dangerous and not like
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Toronto or Ottawa. Danielle Smith has been premiered for a little while now. I think she's found her
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sea legs. I think she's grown into the job. That's how it looks from out here. How does it look to you?
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Well, I think the cartographers in Toronto are right when they say,
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here be dragons in Alberta. We are fire breathing very often. It's an old,
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it's a longstanding Alberta tradition that is probably stronger now than it possibly ever has
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been. I mean, without getting too far into it, Danielle Smith had probably the most,
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she had the quickest transference of power likely in Canadian history at any level of government.
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Normally when someone wins the leadership of a party,
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there's a transition period with the outgoing leader, or if they defeat another party in
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election, you know, there's two or three weeks, sometimes four weeks transition between the
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parties in power. That didn't happen in Alberta because the city premier, despite being in the
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Yes. Like, he was making spending announcements literally the day of the leadership vote.
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Totally unprecedented. And so she had herself sworn in. I think she was elected about Thursday or
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Friday. She was sworn in on a Monday. So there was no transition, and therefore no premier's office
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even to come into. And so it was a chaotic way to hit the ground running. But I think there were good
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reasons for doing so. But you know, she's never been in government before, except for, I mean,
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technically a backbencher in the PCs for a few months. But I wouldn't really count that as government
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experience. You know, she's been in media, she's been in advocacy, she's been in opposition politics.
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But I think she's come now to learn to govern and built a team around her that is a lot more solid
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You know, I'm thinking back, and I think that, you know, sometimes you see a resume, I'm sure you
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get a lot of young people looking to work at Western Standard, and you like to see someone climbing a
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ladder. But if someone changes jobs every six months, you say, well, what's that about? Is there
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some issue there, some stick-to-itivity issue? Who knows? And I say that because if you look at the
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position of premier of Alberta, so I'm not talking about the person now, I'm talking about the office.
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Jason Kenney, the previous premier, didn't even serve out his full term. Rachel Notley, the previous
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premier, one term only. If I'm not mistaken, it was Jim Prentice before her. Tell me if I'm getting
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my memory correct. You have to go back quite far before you get...
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Yeah. Well, this is one of my favorite topics. I think I know where you're going with this,
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is the least stable political job in Canada is premier of Alberta. I was in high school the last
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time an Alberta premier completed, I should say, an Alberta conservative premier completed a term
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in office or was re-elected. 2004 was Ralph Klein's last election, and he was more or less
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pushed out of the leadership after that. And you had Ed Stelmack. He won 2008, pushed out
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of the party, gone. Alison Redford takes over, wins in 2012, pushed out of the party, gone.
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Jim Prentice, Hancock in there for a couple of months, but Jim Prentice takes over, loses
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the election to Notley, gone. So we have had only one term or less premiers since Ralph
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Klein's retirement. And I mean, it's still early days, but I'm going to take a wild gamble
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here and say that Danielle Smith will be at least the first conservative to make it to
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a second election. Even if she loses that election, but if she makes it to that election, she will
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have been the longest serving conservative premier in Alberta since Klein. And how that next election
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goes, we can get into a bit. But Smith, in ways that Stelmack, Redford, and Kenny never had, seems to
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have the party behind her, at least for the time being. But events have a way of getting in the way
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of things. Yeah. Now, would you say that's a bug or a feature that Albertans are like, you know,
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a rodeo bull that does not like to be ridden and does everything to buck a politician off? I mean,
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you could look at it as a plus. On the other hand, you're running off in all directions. You're voting
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for the socialists and you're voting for a conservative. Well, not that kind of conservative.
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I mean, is it a plus or a minus that no one seems to be able to stay on that bucking bronco?
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Well, it depends if you like the cowboy riding the bronco. I have not liked any of the premiers
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really since Klein. And even Klein in his last years was passed his best before Dayton,
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probably needed to be bucked. So, yeah, because I've generally not been a fan of
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Alberta premiers for, I guess, since I was in high school before I was in Albertan,
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I'd say it's a positive bug. If you happen to like the premier, it's negative. But I think it's
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largely been a consequence of the conservative, for lack of a better term, and it's not a very
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accurate term, but the conservative civil war, which, you know, broke out sort of between
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some prominent conservatives in the succession of Klein. And the succession of Klein alienated
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people on the right. That led to the breakaway of Wildrose coming back together with the United
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Conservative Party. Then, you know, and Jason Kenney's very skillful bringing that together,
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but then disastrous ability to keep it together. So conservatives in Alberta are,
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you know, you know, you know, the bumper sticker, be ungovernable. Well, we live by it for better or
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worse. We made a documentary by that name, ungovernable. I know what you mean. I remember
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that. Well, let me ask you, one of the reasons why I think Toronto folks are nervous about Danielle
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Smith is that she uses language that only Quebecers are allowed to use, talking about provincial
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jurisdiction. And the federal government should butt out and saying no to Ottawa. And really, I mean,
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listen, every provincial premier in their own time loves to fight against Ottawa, even Premier Fury of
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Newfoundland. I mean, even, even frankly, some liberal premiers are poking at Trudeau because it
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serves them. But no one's allowed to go full, you know, not nationalist, but provincialist like the
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Quebecers are. Danielle Smith explicitly uses language like Quebec premiers does. And I think
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that bugs fancy Toronto folks who they can tolerate it from Quebec, but they hate it from the Cowboys.
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What do you think? Yeah, I think it goes back to the very old two nations, two founding nations theory of
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Canada. You know, it's a very upper and lower Canadian view of what is Canada. You know, the prairie
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province, the prairie provinces, Alberta Saskatchewan in particular, to a lesser extent Manitoba, we were the
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only provinces not to have already been colonies and negotiate with the federal government and other
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provinces to join Confederation. We are created by fiat. You know, we're getting too deep into the
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weeds here. You know, Alberta Saskatchewan came out of the Northwest Territories. We weren't
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entities before we wanted to come in together as Buffalo. And that was vetoed by Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
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and otherwise generally pretty good prime minister, but certainly a Laurentian. His name is Laurier for
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God's sake. And, you know, so Alberta and Saskatchewan and Quebec, I think, were the only provinces with
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institutional problems with Canada itself. Most other provinces, their issues could be resolved with
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elections. I don't think our issues can be resolved with elections. The ball can be moved a bit. I mean, things
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were better for the West under Harper, but, you know, he was incapable of making constitutional
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change. And our issues like Quebec are constitutional. And we both seek decentralization.
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The problem is we seek very different kinds of decentralization. They seek decentralization of
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social policy for things like culture, the ability to spend money, but they certainly don't want to
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decentralize the collection of money in Canada, whereas that's our primary concern. So we have
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constitutional issues. And Smith is much more radical on this than any premier, I think, in any of our
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lifetimes. And I think the big word was sovereignty. And, you know, we use, a lot of Anglo-Canadians
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don't understand the use of the word sovereignty in Quebec. There's independistes, people who believe
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in independence. There's federalists. And then there's sovereigntists. And sovereigntists can
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be federalists or independistes. It's a spectrum of things. And in Alberta, support for independence
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goes up and down. It's currently a low ebb because we have, I think, a provincial government that
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people feel is fighting for them within Confederation, and people have a large degree of faith that this
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federal government will be gone. But we have a sovereigntist government here in Alberta for,
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I believe, the first time ever outside of Quebec. Oh, no, early Confederation, I think it was
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Nova Scotia had a full-on separatist legislature.
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Hmm. Well, let me talk about, I want to get into some of the particular policies and issues in
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Alberta right now. But before we do, I want to talk about what I think is the greatest threat to
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Danielle Smith's re-election. Anytime Justin Trudeau wags his finger at her, or worse, Stephen
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Gilbeau, she's got to be going up in the polls. So anytime the Globe and Mail criticizes her, that's
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going to look great on her in Alberta. I mean, Stephen Gilbeau is just so detested everywhere,
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but in Alberta, he's an object of ridicule and mockery, and well, for good reason. But I think
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the threat to Danielle Smith being re-elected is the prospect of Naheed Nenshi, the former mayor of
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Calgary, now running for the leadership of the NDP, media darling, of course. The NDP does well in
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Edmonton regardless. Nenshi has huge name recognition in Calgary. He's got a team, he's got
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some organizers, he's got some demographic constituents. If he becomes the leader of the
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NDP, which he may well, do you think that that will give, do you think he's got a real chance
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I think he's their best chance at government. I mean, it's too far out to say Alberta politics
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is the most chaotic in Canada by far, and it has been largely since Ralph Klein's departure as
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premier. But I mean, if you're playing the long game, I mean, it's Alberta. The safe bet is always
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conservative. If the conservative is of a popular leader, they toss the leader. And as long as the
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conservatives are united, they tend to win. But, you know, things have changed. There's been
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new people coming to Alberta, some coming from the east, carry values closely aligned with Alberta.
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Some people come here and they don't really understand what makes it special. People also
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coming from other parts of the world, new Canadians on the whole tend to vote for leftist parties,
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and then as they get to second and third generation, become more conservative. But the NDP has built
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itself into a serious political contender here. Alberta is not the one party state that it was
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growing up for me and growing up for you. He'd be their best bet. That being said, he
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couldn't even lead his own council as mayor of Calgary, effectively. And leading a caucus is a different
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thing. It's a team sport. He's not traditionally been a team player. That being said, people can learn,
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people can evolve. And people around him seem to know that's his weakness. But I actually,
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I think the greatest threat to Danielle Smith is pure polio. If pure polio wins, which it seems very
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likely that he will at this point, she and the conservative movement in Alberta are going to lose
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their avatar of evil, their foil. You know, Justin Trudeau is rightfully to blame for a lot of Alberta's
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problems. But, you know, if anything goes wrong in Alberta, we can point to there. And with a
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conservative government in Ottawa, the aggressiveness of the Alberta conservative government to fight
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Ottawa is likely to be tampered somewhat. So I'd say pure polio is her biggest challenge.
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Isn't that interesting? And I remember that's true. I mean, when Preston Manning came about,
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he diverted a lot of the separatist anger. His motto was the West wants in. When Stephen Harper
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became prime minister, he took a lot of the energy out of the Western rights movement. They said,
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okay, Harper will do no harm, at least. And I think you're right, polio would be the same.
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I wonder if there's any thinking on behalf of Danielle Smith's team to have a cause for an election
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before the scheduled federal vote. I mean, as you know,
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Justin Trudeau is going to raise the carbon tax next April. Every April Fool's Day, it goes up.
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God forbid the government tries to bring in this insane plastics registry.
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Who knows? There could be a reason, a legitimate reason that's built up into a cause,
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like almost a referendum on a certain issue. I'm just brainstorming.
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I would bet strongly against that for two reasons. One, only one government in Alberta has ever broken
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its fixed election date law. And that was Jim Prentice's. And it ended in tears.
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And, you know, Danielle Smith remembers that very chaotic era. And the second reason,
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very tangible right now, is there's a bill before the legislature at this very moment
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to move the fixed election date to the fall, I think in October or November. Yeah, in October.
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I hate these October fixed election dates because they often fall on my birthday.
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It's very inconvenient for me. So, and they're moving that fixed election date back six months
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rather than four or six months. So, uh, it, it, it'd be quite something for them to set a new fixed
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election date and then pull the trigger that early. I, I, I think they're, they're going to stick
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with it for both. Well, you and I've been bantering about big issues, sort of macro issues, but what are
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the day-to-day issues? One of the things I've been following is how Danielle Smith is sort of being the
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grownup when you've got these crazy left-wing city councils. You'd think Calgary and Edmonton are
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amongst the two most conservative cities in the country. I mean, Edmonton has a bit of a, more of
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a blue collar flavor, but it's still a small government right-wing place, I think. But their
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city councils are atrocious. The mayor of Edmonton is a former Trudeau cabinet minister. Calgary, you
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have the most despised mayor in Calgary history, Jody Gondek. And one of the things I love to see
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is Danielle Smith basically saying, you guys are not going to be able to do insane little projects.
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Cities are a creature of the province under our constitution. Come back to normalcy or I'll
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basically overturn your craziness. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that Danielle Smith has basically said
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to the cities, we're going to stop the craziest of your ideas. Is that right?
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Yeah, there's a bill before the legislature right now, I think Bill 20. It's controversial. It's got
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some pretty broadly accepted points in it. Some other points are a bit more contentious.
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Right now, the province, any province can overturn bylaws or decisions of any municipality because
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municipalities do not exist constitutionally. They are corporations of the province. The province can
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your Ontario viewers will know that in the 90s, one of the bad decisions of Mike Harris was the
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forceful amalgamation of municipalities in Ontario. And they had no say in it. They were forcefully
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amalgamated. And that's why I've got some family in the Ottawa Valley who are on farms and have nothing
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to do with Ottawa. But they're part of the city of Ottawa. It's bizarre stuff. So the province, you know,
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we generally want to support local autonomy. Decisions are best made as close as possible to the people.
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But jurisdiction matters. And just as the federal government is constantly trying to reach into
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provincial jurisdiction, municipalities, for one reason or another, are always trying to reach
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into higher jurisdictions. Naid Menci, for example, was trying to reach into federal jurisdiction
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pronouncing on international issues. You know, he felt the need to talk about geopolitical issues
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as the mayor of Calgary, when my concern with my mayor of council is, do you plow the roads,
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So, you know, we've got this. Thankfully, the Calgary City Council overturned it because it was
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grossly unpopular. But we had this single use products ban. They tried it. They took Guilbeau and
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they said, hold my beer. And nobody even knew about this. I went to McDonald's to get an egg McMuffin
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one day. And they asked me, would you like a bag? And I was like, are you stupid or something? Like,
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yeah, yeah, of course I want to beg. They're like, well, that'll be 15 cents.
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That's nuts. And then they have to ask you, do you want a fork? Do you want napkins?
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You can tell that they'd never worked a day in their life in an actual business,
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but they were so happy to impose these bizarre and stupid rules on, oh, that's just the worst.
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You know, and one of the things I understand that Premier Smith is doing is she's bringing in
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political parties at the municipal level. And I think that will solve a lot of this because people
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know when they see the blue team federally or provincially, that means conservative. But if
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you don't have parties in the municipal level, you don't know who to vote for. And I think simply
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bringing in parties will wipe out a lot of the crazier aldermen who get elected. Is that correct
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Yeah, mostly. Political parties will be established in Calgary and Edmonton. I don't believe they'll be
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established anywhere else. Although I can't see why not. Why, you know, like Wheatland County shouldn't
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be allowed to have like, you know, the Wheatland Wheatman or something, you know, whatever you want
00:24:12.460
Well, with a common platform, you know, it helps people. I mean, anything you can do to help people
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understand, like it's shorthand. When you say conservative, it's shorthand for about five
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things. You don't have that at a municipal level.
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Well, look, I generally don't like political parties, but they're a necessary evil of politics.
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And what's happened in Alberta and in many other provinces, I can't speak in detail about Ontario,
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but certainly in the two big cities of Alberta, and to a lesser extent in the smaller cities,
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is we have unofficial parties, but mostly on the left already. And so the way that works is
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money on the left in municipal elections comes dominantly from unions. And there's a very small
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number of big unions, and they control the purse strings. Those unions sit down. There's Calgary's
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future. It's essentially a political act committee funded by the unions. And they can say, okay, in
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this ward, or for the mayor's chair, this is the candidate who's got money, and these other
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candidates don't. So there'll only be one financially viable candidate from the left on the ballot in
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every ward, and then for mayor. On the conservative side, well, money comes dominantly from businesses,
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big businesses, medium businesses, small businesses. And that's not centralized. There's thousands and
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thousands of them. So last time you had two, or maybe one and a half viable conservative candidates
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on the ballot in Calgary. And so the left effectively, the main, one of the main functions of political
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parties is to sort the wheat from the chaff in the nomination process to make sure you've got a single
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unified candidate. The left has that in the two big cities, and the right does not. So this is just
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making official what we're already doing in many cases. And yeah, I think having political parties,
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you know, candidates identified with parties is an easy shorthand for some people. Often, if I don't
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know any good candidate for alderman or for a school board, I just look up who the unions have endorsed,
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and then I vote for the next guy on the ballot. Well, that's probably more effort than a lot of people
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do. And that's the thing. Having that shorthand would help people. And I'm grateful for your time.
00:26:26.680
It's great to catch up. And folks, just a reminder, we're talking with Derek Filder, who calls himself
00:26:31.200
the re-founder. He's the founder of westernstandard.news. And you've got to go to them if you
00:26:37.640
want to know what's really going on in the West. I'm proud of our rebel news reporters in the West,
00:26:41.240
of course, but Western Standard focuses on the West. Let me ask you this last question.
00:26:46.960
I always had a dream when I was growing up in Alberta that we would find allies. I tried to
00:26:53.500
look for commonality. Alberta had an entrepreneurial spirit. Well, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in
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Ontario. Albertans felt left out from confederation. Well, Quebec says they feel that way, and Newfoundland
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too. Looking around the country at different provincial premiers and the spirit in other places,
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does Alberta have allies? I think it's got a really good ally in Saskatchewan, not just the
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Premier Scott Moe, but the people. It really, as you said, Alberta and Saskatchewan used to be one
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place called Buffalo, or at least it was supposed to be. Does Alberta have allies around the country,
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or is it still the favorite whipping boy of the other provinces?
00:27:33.000
Well, I forget who coined the phrase, but it said, countries have no permanent allies,
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just permanent interests. I forget who coined that, but I think our only truly natural ally in 2024 is
00:27:57.720
Saskatchewan. Demographically similar, even organized similarly. One big city in the north,
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one big city in the south, and reliably conservative. But I feel at this point,
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even the Saskatchewan NDP, if they were to somehow ever come to power,
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I think they would understand the permanent interests of Saskatchewan to an extent, maybe not
00:28:21.000
as well as the Saskatchewan party or the Saskatchewan United party. But BC, we have a lot of commonality
00:28:29.980
with, but our commonality with BC, and to an even greater extent, Ontario is highly reliant on
00:28:39.040
what political party is in power at that time. They have less of a permanent interest in alliance
00:28:46.040
with Alberta. Doug Ford, I don't think is hostile to Alberta, but I don't think he's a particularly
00:28:55.640
natural ally of Alberta. He is happy to be the biggest beneficiary of a federal largesse. I mean,
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the guy is a walking EV plant. And as I said with Quebec, there have been times historically where
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Alberta's found common cause with Quebec against federal centralization. The issue generally is
00:29:16.820
that we seek different kinds of centralization. Where we do have common cause with Quebec is
00:29:24.980
generally in protecting existing provincial jurisdictions. So, and frankly, that'd be even
00:29:32.460
stronger if the PQ came back to power. But the CAQ, the PQ, they're both strong defenders of
00:29:38.900
provincial jurisdiction. So, outside of Saskatchewan, I'd say our allies for Alberta are
00:29:46.120
highly reliant on their partisan stripes at the time and how generous Ottawa's feeling at
00:29:55.040
our cost. I think you're probably right. Well, listen, great to spend some time with you. Good
00:30:00.080
luck out there with westernstandard.news and keep in touch. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ezra.
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Right on. Our pleasure. That's Derek Fildebrandt, the boss of westernstandard.news. That's our show
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for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,