Today we have a heart-to-heart chat with our friend Lauren Gunter with the Edmonton Sun to talk about the Alberta Leadership Contest, the United Conservative Party leadership race, and anything else that comes across our radar screen. It s a special Holiday Monday edition of the Ezra Levant Show.
00:02:51.940So you have to look at this and say, well, who will be the most acceptable to the greatest number of voters in the shortest period of time?
00:03:00.100Now, I read your latest column on this subject where you referred to Danielle Smith as her idea of a sovereignty act,
00:03:11.920to stand up for Alberta sovereignty, really replicating some of the stances taken by Quebec over the last 50 years.
00:03:19.100You said that sort of took up all the oxygen in the debate.
00:03:22.660Let's run a clip of that just to show what you mean.
00:03:24.760And here, she was proposing the idea, and it seemed to be something that a lot of her opponents said,
00:03:31.020oh, that's too wild, that's too risky.
00:03:33.460Here's a clip of that from the debate.
00:03:38.880Ottawa has caused Energy East and Tech Frontier Mine and tens of billions of other projects to be cancelled.
00:03:44.700The reason these are linked is because part of our strategy in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is exporting our clean LNG to displace coal in India and China.
00:03:55.640We cannot do that because Ottawa keeps standing in our way.
00:04:02.480We need to work with our First Nations.
00:04:04.080We need to take the lead on solving the environmental issues so that we can get our product to Churchill, to Thunder Bay, to Tuktoyaktuk, to Port-au-Prince-Rupert.
00:04:11.340And we have to exert our sovereignty to do that because Ottawa is not going to do it for us.
00:04:16.720Part of me thinks, well, even if it is going to be struck down by courts, even if it is politically risky, it makes the point Alberta's here to fight.
00:04:24.560Even if not all the punches are landed, Quebec has never landed a true punch.
00:04:29.360But look what it's managed to get from Ottawa because it was belligerent.
00:04:32.940It got its three seats on the Supreme Court.
00:04:35.620It's got so many little perks along the way.
00:05:53.380I think what we're seeing from the UCP leadership race so far is that Jason Kenney's big falling out with his own party was maybe not the pandemic response.
00:06:06.600It was his refusal to hammer Justin Trudeau.
00:06:10.360And, you know, because you see, Danielle Smith has become the frontrunner or at least a person who has generated the most heat and light with her Alberta Sovereignty Act.
00:07:14.620I mean, Jason might have been the smartest person we've ever had as the premier of Alberta, but he just didn't have the common touch the way Ralph did.
00:07:23.540I mean, I remember following Ralph one time into a shopping center in Fort Saskatchewan, and his government was terribly unpopular.
00:07:34.280They were scaling back on school funding.
00:07:37.420And he walked from one of that mall to the other, and he got smiles and handshakes all the way along from people who, when he initially got there, were going to lay into him.
00:08:10.140You could say he had deep roots in Ontario as much as he had in Alberta.
00:08:16.060He worked with the new ethnic communities.
00:08:18.300He was really Harper's liaison to the multicultural community.
00:08:22.940He was immigration minister for a while.
00:08:25.060So he had all these assets that are obviously useful in a federal campaign, but he wanted – he didn't want to run against Trudeau right away.
00:08:33.240He didn't want to – he could see what we could all see, which is that it was going to take a while for the conservative party to get back.
00:08:41.500So I believe he looked at Alberta as a safe place to be a conservative guy, always with an eye at moving back to Ottawa, that he would come back, show he could govern, unite the two center-right parties in Alberta, and then go back triumphantly, letting someone else take the heavy blows.
00:09:01.980And the problem with that is he always, in the back of his mind, was second-guessing anything that would sound too Alberta-ish.
00:09:09.840He was always thinking, well, how would this sound when I am running in the greater Toronto area?
00:09:13.760How will this sound in five years if I'm trying to woo Quebec, if I'm trying to woo the area code 905 in Ontario?
00:09:21.700And so he would never fully commit to being totally loyal to Alberta, which often means pit yourself against the feds.
00:09:29.780I think he pulled back every time because he was keeping his eye on the main prize.
00:10:12.620I remember one time, Lougheed got this ballroom full of oil executives and professionals, professors, all sorts of people who aren't normally really excited in politics.
00:10:25.100He got them whipped into a frenzy by saying, you know, yesterday we stopped the feds at the door, and tomorrow we're going to kick them off the porch.
00:10:35.420Now, the man then went and signed an abbreviated national energy program.
00:10:40.520And there's a very famous picture of Lougheed tinking champagne glasses with Pierre Trudeau after they'd signed a new NEP.
00:10:50.180So Lougheed didn't always play the tough guy Alberta rogue.
00:10:55.580He was a lawyer, and he did make these compromises, but he knew the rhetoric that would get people going.
00:11:02.540And that just never – Jason just never seemed to clue into that.
00:11:06.000I think he could have survived the mask mandate and the vax passports and the lockdown.
00:11:14.080He might have had to come out and say, sorry, we found out these are wrong.
00:11:46.260And the real shame of that one was that there were 14 indigenous communities around that project, all of whom had signed on to it, because they could see the economic development that would lead to a better tomorrow for their people.
00:12:00.740And we still didn't hammer the feds on that.
00:12:03.420And so ultimately, whether that is something the voters of the UCP would admit to or even be able to coalesce in their heads, I don't know.
00:12:13.000But it seems to me that ultimately, what we're seeing in this race to replace Kenny is that the number one issue is we haven't been hard enough with the hotel.
00:12:25.320I do believe that it's related to his heavy hand on the lockdowns, because Jason Kenny would be a fancy VIP guy in Ottawa.
00:12:36.360But then he would go back and meet with real people in Southeast Calgary, where he represented.
00:12:42.520And he would meet in rooms around the country, and he would get de-autowashed.
00:12:47.880But when there's a lockdown and there's no gatherings allowed, and the only people he consorts with are other insiders, many of whom weren't even from Alberta, actually, many of whom he borrowed from Ottawa.
00:12:57.920When he's not getting detoxed from, you know, he's sitting there under the legislature only hearing from official people, he forgets that Arthur Pawlowski, while a bit of a handful and a bit voluble, that's his kind of people.
00:13:15.660Or at least his kind of people wants Arthur Pawlowski to be treated with a little bit of respect, not a SWAT team style, you know, 15 police arrest on a highway.
00:13:28.300And in the end on the pandemic, when he started to use Trudeau type language to talk about the extreme yahoos taking over the party, I think they're related.
00:13:46.760And it is a common problem for all politicians that they don't get out enough.
00:13:53.220And the longer you are in office, and this doesn't really apply to Kenny because he's only in his first term, but say you're in office for two terms, three terms, you tend to gravitate around you, those people who will tell you what you want to hear, those people who are...
00:14:07.700Loyalty becomes more important than honesty.
00:14:09.840And, you know, and that is a huge danger for any person.
00:14:16.460It's a huge danger for a CEO, much less a premier or prime minister.
00:14:22.960Now, you said that Danielle Smith is generating the most heat and light, and I agree with you.
00:14:29.800But there's a risk there in assuming that what you can detect in the media, in headlines, on Twitter, for those who are on there, is the same as who buys a membership and votes.
00:14:39.960And I remember a few years ago in Ontario, Patrick Brown surprised people by winning the Ontario PC Party leadership because while everyone was having a TV debate, he was selling thousands of memberships, in his case, to new Canadians.
00:14:54.360So I don't know what kind of ground game Danielle Smith has.
00:14:59.520I don't know what kind of support she has in the caucus of MLAs.
00:15:04.000And so if the only information I have is what I can see on Twitter, I agree with you.
00:15:08.660She's got this thing, you know, we could count the number of followers, count the number of retweets.
00:15:16.560Do you know, have you been able to detect, do you have friends on the inside who can give you any measurement of what really counts, which is on the ground,
00:15:27.040are party members either buying memberships to support her or are existing memberships casting themselves for her?
00:15:34.500Or is she just a distraction on the media while something else happens on subterranean?
00:15:39.860I'm having real trouble getting a good handle on that.
00:15:47.040It is, I think, in part because you're talking about the seven dwarfs.
00:15:51.860None of these people has the kind of organizational chops that Kenny had.
00:15:55.740One of the things that really bothered the old wild rose element that became part of UCP was that Kenny used very professional, very federal techniques to organize things.
00:16:09.720And he could out-organize and out-hammer anybody who came up against him.
00:16:15.420And that's not necessarily how provincial politics is done.
00:16:19.260And provincial politics in a province of 4.5 million people is kind of collegial.
00:16:23.940You know, you're just expected to sort of slough off, you know, Jim's unvarnished opinion about X, Y, and Z and not media manage the way that Kenny's people did and be as forceful.
00:16:42.120They could tell you within a few hundred people how many phone calls MLA's offices had had on different issues.
00:16:52.620And they just had spreadsheets on stuff.
00:16:56.720They didn't actually use spreadsheets, but you know what I'm talking about.
00:16:59.000They had reams of information that also gets you away from your gut feeling, right?
00:17:05.520You have to have a gut feeling, I think, to run provincially.
00:17:08.500So I don't have a good gut feeling yet.
00:17:10.780I'm trying to get back into these campaigns and see who's doing what.
00:17:16.580I mean, one of the people I think who's been having a surprising response is Rebecca Schultz, who is the youngest person in the race,
00:17:25.540who seems to appeal not just to urbanize.
00:17:30.960I mean, her problem is she's a Calgarian, and I think there's going to be an anti-Calgary movement in this race
00:17:38.300because Kenny, of his 29 cabinet ministers, 20 of them were from Calgary.
00:17:42.980And, you know, you can't ignore rural Alberta like that and think that you're going to survive.
00:17:48.360But she does play well with the Rural Caucus, apparently.
00:17:52.480The Rural Caucus members I've talked to said, yeah, she's good.
00:18:54.820I got one more question for you because you mentioned how Kenny's team was very confident in the leadership race, which, again, you're right.
00:19:04.340They were also confident that when Brian Jean, the former leadership rival of Jason Kenney, ran in Fort McMurray, that they could beat him in the nomination.
00:19:14.160And they – it really was a proxy battle, and Brian Jean beat them.
00:19:19.400And he beat them on an explicitly anti-Kenney campaign.
00:19:23.840So maybe Brian Jean has some subterranean – I keep using that word – action.
00:19:29.100And it's hard to – it's hard to measure, but it'll be very –
00:19:32.280It's hard to gauge him because he has – he has – you know, Danielle has all the heat and light.
00:19:38.200Jean has had almost no heat and light.
00:20:28.800I was not very familiar with all of the candidates.
00:20:31.740I really enjoyed watching the leadership debate the other night, even though I found it very depressing.
00:20:36.840I want to shift gears a little bit, but only a little,
00:20:39.240because one of the issues that did come up in that, Albert, a UCP leadership race was the new kind of great reset that Trudeau is talking about.
00:20:47.940He's always talked about transitioning oil and gas workers out of the oil sands.
00:20:52.660And Gerald Butts and David Suzuki, they all talk about transitioning a wage.
00:20:58.680Now they've added transitioning farmers off of farming.
00:21:04.760And instead of demonizing element number, I think it's six on the periodic table, carbon,
00:21:11.060now they're demonizing element number one on the periodic table, hydrogen, sorry, not hydrogen, they're demonizing nitrogen.
00:21:18.620I don't have my periodical table with the elements in front of me.
00:22:13.500And then the World Economic Forum and the globalist president of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, I'm sorry, I can't remember if he's the prime minister or president, said, okay, hey, Dutch farmers, you're the number one exporters of certain agricultural products in Europe.
00:22:29.060You're like, for centuries, you've been a gem of our country.
00:22:56.980It has become a cult to which CEOs, politicians, senior bureaucrats all belong.
00:23:05.440And, you know, you get all these QAnon types who talk about the secret cults.
00:23:10.340There's no secret about the cult that's the most dangerous, and that is the green cult that all of them have bought into.
00:23:16.700It's fascinating to me to see Justin Trudeau come out and say, well, we will simply decree that there will be 42% fewer emissions from the oil and gas industry by 2030.
00:23:30.900We will simply decree that we will use 30% less fertilizer.
00:23:34.700We will simply decree that, you know, you won't build any more pipelines.
00:23:38.280And then we'll decree that the economy is going to be great anyway, and we'll decree that everybody who's put out of work in the ag sector and the energy sector, they'll get great jobs in other sectors.
00:23:50.560And the disconnect there, like we're talking about the disconnect between Kenny and Albertan.
00:23:56.500The disconnect between the green cult and reality is enormous.
00:24:03.760George Mambia, who's a famous British environmental reporter, was being interviewed on the BBC this week, and he said, we have to get over our dependence on agriculture.
00:24:27.520You know, I remember one time that my mother said that it was going to be very, very dangerous when the majority of people no longer had a connection to the farm.
00:24:38.660And her generation, at least a lot of them, had parents who'd farm, or they had cousins who were still on the farm.
00:24:45.300But as soon as everybody became urbanized and they think food comes from the store, she said that's going to be very dangerous because people will not understand what goes into farming.
00:24:56.480And she was absolutely right because now we think, well, we could shut off fertilizer and the yields will still be the same.
00:25:05.740And because there are people in think tanks, lefty think tanks, environmental think tanks, who've got elaborate charts and put into expensive reports who will say, yes, we could do with X less nitrogen and that'll save the planet and we'll still be able to feed ourselves.
00:25:23.140And somebody says, oh, look, look, it has a nice shiny cover on it.
00:25:45.180Well, I can't help but notice that at the same time they're demonizing normal agriculture, they're promoting with government funds and government messaging, eating bugs.
00:25:56.900And I know that sounds like madness and eating synthetic meat.
00:26:00.920And I really do think it's related to their decarbonization.
00:27:54.700You know, it feels related when Justin Trudeau says he wants to be Ukraine's greatest ally.
00:28:01.020And he met with, I mean, he went over there and he certainly had a lot of photo ops.
00:28:08.100And the one thing that I think powers Vladimir Putin, his greatest weapon is not a tank or a missile system.
00:28:17.500And, I mean, thank God he hasn't used nuclear weapons.
00:28:20.580But his greatest weapon and the one that pays for all the others is the oil weapon.
00:28:24.260And in more particularity, the natural gas weapon.
00:28:27.520It's astonishing to me that Europe, the Baltics, get about 90% of their gas from Gazprom.
00:28:35.180Even Germany, it's about 40% of their natural gas.
00:28:38.280Germany, this mighty industrial economy.
00:28:40.540Donald Trump went out there to Germany and said, don't.
00:28:43.900Let me show you this clip of Donald Trump warning them, don't buy gas from Russia.
00:28:49.200And they smirked, they laughed at that dumb Yankee who didn't, here's a clip of that.
00:28:55.200I think it's very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where you're supposed to be guarding against Russia.
00:29:06.060And Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.
00:29:10.500So we're protecting Germany, we're protecting France, we're protecting all of these countries.
00:29:16.220And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where they're paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.
00:29:25.440So we're supposed to protect you against Russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia.
00:29:30.500And I think that's very inappropriate.
00:29:32.320And the former chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas.
00:29:37.520Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas.
00:29:49.580I mean, I've been complaining about this from the time I got in.
00:29:53.120It should have never been allowed to have happened.
00:29:55.400But Germany is totally controlled by Russia, because they will be getting from 60 to 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline.
00:30:04.020And you tell me if that's appropriate, because I think it's not.
00:30:07.620And I think it's a very bad thing for NATO, and I don't think it should have happened.
00:30:11.920And I think we have to talk to Germany about it.
00:30:14.020On top of that, Germany is just paying a little bit over 1 percent, whereas the United States, in actual numbers, is paying 4.2 percent of a much larger GDP.
00:30:27.100You know, we're protecting Germany, we're protecting France, we're protecting everybody, and yet we're paying a lot of money to protect.
00:30:34.000Now, this has been going on for decades.
00:30:36.420This has been brought up by other presidents, but other presidents never did anything about it, because I don't think they understood it, or they just didn't want to get involved.
00:30:45.020But I have to bring it up, because I think it's very unfair to our country.
00:30:52.820And all these so-called sanctions on Russia exempted oil and gas, because if you're going to truly put a sanction on Russia, you're really sanctioning it.
00:31:01.820Is Germany going to just stop using 40 percent of its energy?
00:31:04.880So my point is, the one thing that Canada could actually do for Ukraine and Poland and the Baltics is actually sell them what I called ethical oil and ethical gas, and we can do it.
00:31:17.660If we only had some pipelines, if we were allowed to frack, that's where you get shale gas.
00:31:24.460The one thing Canada – we're not a military superpower.
00:31:52.680And I think the only way we're going to do that is for people to start pitching to ordinary Canadians that you need to vote for people who are going to be behind ethical oil development to understand how you can develop oil and still be conscious of the environment.
00:32:11.720And if you really are worried about climate change, you can still be concerned about that.
00:32:16.360The Norwegians are very good at that, right?
00:32:18.100The Norwegians have this enormous reserve of oil money from the past that they built up by selling this idea that Norwegian oil is cleaner oil.
00:32:30.980It's more ethical oil than oil from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and a lot of –
00:32:50.560And our federal government, current federal government, will even side with an awful lot of environmentalists who say that our oil sands oil is the dirtiest oil in the world, that it's the worst environmental threat in the world.
00:33:08.220I don't know how – I really don't understand.
00:33:10.260Again, it's that disconnect between reality and our government, and it's a deepening divide.
00:33:16.300You know, when I used to talk about – I mean, I wrote that book, Ethical Law, I used to do speeches, and I was often invited to talk in the oil patch in Calgary.
00:33:24.860And some people said, why are you speaking to the converted?
00:33:52.160Haven't we just learned in the last six months that no matter what Putin does, no matter what Saudi Arabia does, Europe will still buy their – I mean, Biden literally sent an emissary to meet with Venezuela saying, please pump more oil.
00:34:08.100Biden personally went to Saudi Arabia saying, please pump more oil.
00:34:10.960And Russia, their ruble has never been stronger, and it's oil money.
00:34:16.580Like, haven't we just learned that this whole, oh, you need social license.
00:34:29.340You know, if we're talking about Ukraine and dealing a blow to Russia and things too, I mean, why did we give the turbines for Nord Stream 1 back to Russia?
00:34:42.140Yeah, but Germany has gone quite soft on Putin in the last couple of months because they started to see it pinching their economy and their lifestyle.
00:34:49.860So, you know, and how many times have you had an environmentalist throw in your face German environmental policy as a way Canada should point?
00:35:01.220But as soon as they weren't going to be able to drive their Audis and Mercedes 225 kilometers an hour on the Autobahn, they asked us to send the equipment back so they could get oil and gas again from Russia.
00:35:23.660And I know we're very Alberta-centric here, but I think that's okay.
00:35:27.120I think Alberta is a leader within Canada.
00:35:30.780And a lot of these issues we're talking about in Alberta, they apply elsewhere, whether it's nitrogen farming or, you know, Eastern Canada still imports oil from conflict countries, by the way.
00:35:40.980I want to talk just for a minute about the federal CPC, Conservative Party of Canada leadership.
00:35:47.920My read of things, because there was some measurement, the candidates sort of said how many memberships they sold.
00:35:54.880My read of things is that Pierre Polyev is the Twitter winner of that contest, but he is actually, he seems to be the membership sales winner too.
00:36:03.980I think he's going to win that leadership, and I think he's actually a surprisingly robust ideological candidate against both the liberals, but also against liberal media.
00:36:16.860And he will not, as Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole both did, he will not crumble when liberal media start to attack him on his ideology, because he is so solid on the things that he knows and understands and believes, that he doesn't have to apologize for them.
00:36:40.700I think he has sold so many more memberships than anyone else that it's going to be difficult to stop him.
00:36:46.600But the Conservative Party of Canada uses this really wonky points system for electing its leaders, where every riding gets 100 points, whether it has 20,000 members or 200 members.
00:36:58.880The only time you don't get 100 points is if you don't have 100 members.
00:37:05.080It's divvied up by what percentage of the vote each candidate gets in that riding.
00:37:11.600But it's still – it's deliberately done to take the power of the West away and the power of rural Ontario away and give it back to downtown Toronto, Montreal, and Atlantic Canada.
00:37:28.520And unfortunately, one of the reasons the CPC will not give you the numbers, the actual vote totals for each candidate, is they don't want you to know if, by some chance, Polyev were to get 300,000 votes, but they're all in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and rural Ontario.
00:37:49.700And that's overcome by Charest's votes in Quebec and in urban Ontario.
00:37:57.720So Charest could finish with the second and the highest number of votes and still win on this ridiculous points system.
00:38:16.860And I hope you're right about him standing firm against the media.
00:38:19.320I saw he had a sort of a Twitter flame war with Global News.
00:38:23.120I loved that, not for the substance of it, but I loved seeing him fight, and I loved seeing all the other media pile on and him digging in, because I want him to hate the media, because otherwise it creeps into their mind.
00:38:41.340I really can feel like I'm getting through to them.
00:38:46.060And that's the source of more corruption than anything else, thinking you can please the media.
00:38:51.340Well, it's great to catch up with you, and I really appreciate your take on the Alberta UCP race.
00:38:56.700I think it's two things that undid Jason Kenney.
00:39:00.500He's not standing up for Alberta versus Ottawa, and I do believe his heavy-handed approach, especially on the churches.
00:39:07.700And I know you don't share my views on that, and that's fine.
00:39:10.220But I think that those visual images of pastors, you know, of almost riot police, I think that felt unalbertant, and there were echoes of Trudeau there.