SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Progressive take over Alberta's big cities
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Summary
William MacBeth from True North joins me to discuss the catastrophe if you're a conservative, but the victory and good news if you re a progressive in Alberta's municipal elections that unfolded across the province on Monday night.
Transcript
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Oh hey Rebels, it's me, Sheila Gunn-Reed, probably your favorite Rebel.
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Anyways, you're listening to a free audio recording of my weekly Wednesday night show,
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The Gunn Show, but you know what, I say it every week, this is the internet, and the
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beauty of the internet is that you can listen or watch whenever is convenient for you.
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Tonight my guest is William Macbeth from True North, and we are discussing the catastrophe
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if you're a conservative, but the victory and good news if you're progressive that unfolded
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across the province in the municipal elections that took place Monday night.
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Edmonton and Calgary voted for more bike lanes, more expensive recycling programs,
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We are unpacking the municipal election results from Monday night here in Alberta.
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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Calgary has a new progressive mayor after 11 years of a progressive mayor named Naheed Nenshi.
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The new mayor in Calgary is named Jodi Gondek, and just one day after she became the mayor-elect,
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she says she's going to address the real problem in Calgary, the so-called climate emergency,
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And Edmonton just voted for a failed former cabinet minister under Justin Trudeau named Amarjeet Sohi.
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The new mayor was Justin Trudeau's minister of natural resources who oversaw the construction of
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How did this all happen, and what does the conservative movement do next?
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Well, I thought I'd call in an expert on municipal politics.
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It's been a while, frankly too long since he's been on the show,
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However, I wish it were under much happier circumstances for the residents of Alberta's
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So, joining me now from True North is my friend William Macbeth
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in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
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So, joining me now is my friend William Macbeth from True North,
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and it has been far too long since William was on the show.
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You are the perfect guy to digest what happened in Monday night's municipal elections in Alberta.
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My first question to you is, why is everything so awful,
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and what is going to happen to us going forward?
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You know, as conservatives, we're often pretty good at finding the silver lining to things
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because we don't tend to win elections as often as we would like.
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But I have to say, in last night's municipal elections, there were very few pieces of good news.
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I would say the outcome for conservatives was pretty catastrophic,
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and I think we're actually in some real trouble now in both of our major cities
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based on who we've elected to lead us for the next four years.
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Okay, let's start with where you're at in Calgary.
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Tell us a little bit about the new mayor and the outcome of the elections there.
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So, all the way through the election, we had seen it being a pretty close race
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between Councillor Jeremy Farkas and Councillor Jody Gondek.
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Jeremy Farkas, as I think a lot of people know, was running as a pretty hardcore conservative.
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He had a record on council, one of the few on Calgary's council with a record of voting for lower taxes,
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spending cuts, fiscal responsibility, and of standing up against the bullies in the establishment
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who, frankly, never wanted the gravy train to end.
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They were having a pretty good time on the taxpayers' dime.
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But when the votes were finally counted last night, the election itself wasn't even close.
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Jody Gondek won with 45% of the vote to Jeremy Farkas' 30%,
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a much, much wider gap than any of the polling had predicted.
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But part of it is going to be that Jeremy was pulled down, I think,
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by the current unpopularity of the Alberta United Conservative government.
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Yeah, you know, the polling data that I saw had Jeremy ahead by one percentage point.
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But when all was said and done and it was all over but the crying,
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And explain to me, why do you think this was a reflection of the unpopularity of the UCP?
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I actually think it was more than just the mayor's race.
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If you look at who was elected last night in Calgary,
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people who were either endorsed by the public sector unions
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or who are publicly affiliated with being leftists, or as they would say, progressives,
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And that number may grow because, of course, Councillor Sean Chu,
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you know, with all the votes counted, only ended up winning by 52 votes.
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He's facing a lot of challenges right now based on some late-breaking news
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If he resigns or is recalled, I think the unions have a decent chance of picking up that seat, too,
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which means we're down to only four even remotely Conservative votes on Council.
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And I think it's just because anybody who had aligned themselves
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in either the last provincial election with the United Conservative government
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or who tried to not just lambaste the United Conservative government
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over the last few months took a hit from the current unpopularity of that government
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You know, and I think the same thing unfolded in Edmonton with Mike Nichol.
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Now, Mike Nichol has been out there for the better part of the last year campaigning
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And yet, Edmonton on Monday night, because it'll be Wednesday before this goes to air,
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Edmonton elected a former Liberal cabinet minister named Amarjeet Sohi,
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who lost his seat to Tim Uppel a couple of years ago.
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And then as Liberals tend to do, they fail upwards and downwards.
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And he decided that he was going to run for mayor and he won.
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So Edmonton has elected a former Trudeau cabinet minister,
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anti-oil, anti-pipeline, anti-small business guy,
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who, you know, he does have some experience before federal politics on city council.
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But, I mean, that's a Trudeau proxy mayor in Edmonton now.
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To the outside, I think there's some confusion as to how a province which votes
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so overwhelmingly conservative, particularly at the federal level,
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could end up electing two, quote-unquote, progressive,
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But the fact is, though, there's a few factors.
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First of all, I think that Conservatives have really ignored municipal politics in Alberta.
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We don't have the same policy generation that the left does.
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You know, too often, Conservatives on city council think their job is saying no.
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And I think a lot of the time, by the way, their job is to say no.
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If they're saying no, then they have to be able to say what the alternative is.
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So if you don't like what's being proposed by the progressives, by the leftists, by the unions,
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So what's your alternative for downtown revitalization?
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What's your, you know, here in Calgary, a major issue?
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What's your alternative for growing the economy if it isn't big government?
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And I don't know where those ideas are or where they're going to come from, but it was
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a pretty, it was pretty clear during the campaign that Conservatives didn't have the same level
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And I think money is going to become a big story coming out of this election.
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As I'm sure you know, the rules governing funding for candidates changed between the last election
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Unions and corporations were no longer allowed to give money directly to candidates, but they
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could give it to third party advertisers or as they're more commonly called PACs.
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And in the case of the unions in Calgary, those PACs raised millions of dollars.
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And while we won't know for a few months and how much they ended up spending, I wouldn't
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be surprised if they spent in excess of $3 million electing leftist candidates.
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And, you know, in particular with Calgary, one of the things that you have been banging
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the drum on for so long is the pension catastrophe and public sector compensation problems in Calgary.
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I think it's just going to get worse and I fear for everybody's tax bills in Calgary.
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I think Edmonton is going to be in the same situation where we've elected a majority council
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You know, as we said, in Calgary, it's 10 votes for the left and five on the right.
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But they're going to be voting for higher salaries.
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They're going to be voting for better benefits.
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They're going to be voting for more generous pensions.
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So they're going to add people to the ranks of the civil service, to the bureaucracy.
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And that puts us on the hook for even more pensions and benefits and high salaries.
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So I think both of these cities are headed in a very dangerous direction.
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And we don't have elected officials who recognize that it's become unsustainable for the tax base
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And so since they're not going to cut costs, that means they're going to have to hike taxes.
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You know, as long as you've been coming on my show, you and I have said that conservatives
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walked off the field basically of municipal politics a long time ago.
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And really, it's the one, you know, system of government that affects you first and often
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It's that one big tax bill that you actually have to physically write out and give it to
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somebody when you're paying your municipal taxes.
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And then for, you know, for cultural conservatives, even SOCONS, you know, for people who are worried
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about fighting the culture war, they get involved in fighting the culture war after the battle
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When they get that critical race theory piece of paper home from the school and you're like,
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what the heck are they teaching my kids at school?
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Well, you should have been involved at the school board trustee level.
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And this is a criticism of big conservatism, too, is that they are not helping to organize.
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But there's no real organization infrastructure and money going to develop those conservative
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And the fact that this isn't a bigger news story for conservatives is really appalling.
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And, you know, when I went to vote, I always vote.
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You're not allowed to complain if you don't vote.
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I walked into my ballot booth and having done my research, there wasn't a candidate I could
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vote for for school board where I live because out of the five people running, none of them
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represented the policies and values that I had when it came to public education.
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It was a very depressing moment when I was like, there isn't someone I can support.
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Surely in a city of 1.5 million, we could have found a person to put their name on the
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ballot to stand up for getting rid of, you know, discovery learning for supporting the
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great new curriculum that the government has put together, really focusing on educating
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children as opposed to the woke trends that seem to be affecting education.
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And there's going to be real consequences for businesses and for others.
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Jody Gondek, our mayor-elect, she's been mayor-elect for 16 hours, something like that at this
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And she just did an interview where we asked, what is your first priority as mayor?
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And she said, it's going to be to declare a climate emergency for Calgary.
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Not the fact that too many people can't find affordable housing.
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Third of our downtown office towers are remaining vacant.
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The first priority for her as mayor is to declare a climate emergency.
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Bike lanes and expensive recycling programs that don't actually work.
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That's what that means to me at the municipal level.
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Yeah, bike lanes, maybe further speed limit reductions.
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Calgary already dropped their speed limits from 50 to 40.
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But climate people have urged for 30, getting rid of more parking through downtown, limiting
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how many single family houses can be built in favor of high rises because they're less
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There are so many policies that just get passed in the name of things like, say, climate change,
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which will truly affect the quality of life for everyday Calgarians.
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But they didn't get talked about because there were so few people on the right, the conservative
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side, making the argument about how this election was going to have an impact on how you led your
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And, you know, even the few people we had making that case were outgunned at every opportunity
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by the unions and by the progressives who spent an astronomical amount of money and poured
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an unbelievable amount of labor into this election.
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You know, when I hear the Calgary mayor-elect say something like that, and I know it's just
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a matter of time before Emergeet, so he says the same thing, it tells me the real winners
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in all of this are the Parkland Institute and the Pembina Institute and all those places
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that take municipal grants to tell us just how low flow your showerhead needs to be.
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Those people are going to get right back on the gravy train with biscuit wheels and leave
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We saw just how much money the Pembina Institute was getting from the city of Calgary through
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And, you know, for the people on that side of the spectrum, when they get success at the
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municipal level, they use it as a platform to then jump to other levels of government where
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provincial New Democrats and federal New Democrats and liberals recruit candidates from to then
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And, you know, the next question is, based on the results we've had in our two major cities,
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what does this mean for our next provincial election, particularly if there continues to
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be issues surrounding the United Conservative Party, if Premier Kenney is unable to figure out
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how to rebuild support, or if there continues to be underlying unpopularity as a result of COVID
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I don't know what it means, but the last poll I saw had Rachel Notley in the lead by a considerable
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I can only imagine what that means for Alberta businesses, for Alberta families, if we have
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a new Democrat provincial government and two big cities led by hardcore lefties as well.
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And it just begins that same rural-urban divide that we lived through with the wild rose and
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the PCs of old, where, you know, you had a lot of people with the same values, but in
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two different parties because there was this rural-urban divide and a lot was done to mend
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And I think going forward, people are going to go back to their respective corners.
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And a lot of that has to do with just the dislike of Jason Kenney that's sort of bleeding
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I don't know what, you know, his plan is or what his approach will be to try and address
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I think the worst possible outcome for Alberta would be another vote split that leads to a
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I really hope that we can find a way around that.
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But more broadly, I also think this election has to be a wake-up call for conservatives,
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particularly in Edmonton and Calgary at the municipal level, that they have to take this
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That businesses who, for 44 years, had a really easy ride of it compared to other jurisdictions
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because they had a small C conservative government in power in Alberta, all they had to do was
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work with that government and things were fine.
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So they're going to have to get used to the idea that they're going to have to write checks.
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They're going to have to, you know, send their people to go out and knock on doors and distribute
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The business community cannot take for granted that they're going to have governments on their
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side because it's entirely possible that they won't if they don't.
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And the unions, because they could force their own members through union dues to fund their
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operations and their political activities at an incredibly high level, businesses are going
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to have to step up and meet that same commitment.
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Or I really fear for the economic future of our major cities.
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Well, I think you're exactly right, in particular with the, you know, revolving merry-go-round of
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Edmonton has just gone with the full lockdown mayor and likewise with Calgary.
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And as a conservative resident in Alberta, this is why municipal politics is so important.
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The lockdowns, those infringements on our civil liberties, they came from the municipalities
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And that's why it's so important to have somebody who cares about civil liberties and small business
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It was the mayors who were asking Jason Kenney for the vaccine passport, not the other way
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And, you know, if you think about it, looking at who's on council now, one of the reasons
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we were able to get rid of some of the more, some of the more offensive measures or, or at
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least annoying measures that came from the lockdown was because city councils were pressured.
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They said, we've heard from our voters, we don't want to have the mask anymore, we're going to
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But this council, based on its composition, would never make that ask.
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They would only be urging for more and more restrictions.
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And Jody Gondek is arguably the fiercest opponent of Jason Kenney in this province, more so,
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And so if Premier Kenney thought he had it bad before with Nehen Nengshi and Don Iveson,
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I can only imagine what it's going to be like now when he's got someone who explicitly ran for
00:21:32.720
And in Edmonton, someone from Justin Trudeau's cabinet.
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I think they're just going to do some things just because they oppose Jason Kenney, not
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because they're the best things that they think need to be done for those cities.
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Now, other things happened other than just bad, bad stuff.
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Let's talk about the referendum questions that were on the ballot at the very same time.
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Sounds like the equalization question one passed.
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We're not going to know for sure, though, I guess, until about another week.
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I think a lot of people expected that we would get the results of everything they voted on
00:22:15.100
last night. But as it turns out, because the province is more or less relying on municipal
00:22:21.840
authorities to conduct these elections and ballot counts, that they're not officially
00:22:28.460
But some areas did release their unofficial numbers early last night, including Calgary,
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where I think the final tally ended up being 58 percent saying yes to the equalization
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I don't think it's likely to be overturned when the rest of the votes are counted.
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I did see down south in both Medicine Hat and Lethbridge, there were majorities in favor
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It's probably the one spot of good news that came out of the vote that Albertans did express
00:23:04.700
clearly that they're unhappy with the status quo of sending billions of dollars every year
00:23:10.880
to the rest of the country, particularly to parts of the country which are hostile to our
00:23:14.660
energy sector. What Premier Kenney is able to do with that or chooses to do with that remains
00:23:20.580
to be seen. But at least it was an expression of voters that the status quo to them is unacceptable.
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You know, I was talking to your colleagues, Andrew and Candace, on Monday night and, you
00:23:33.140
know, we were sort of looking at those numbers and I noticed that the UCP didn't do any sort
00:23:42.620
of advocacy by and large on the referendum question and they sort of pointed out, well,
00:23:48.600
maybe that would have been bad for the referendum question considering so widely unliked Justin
00:23:54.900
Trudeau, or Justin Trudeau, oh my goodness, Jason Kenney is, whoa, what a slip, oopsie doodle.
00:24:03.560
No, I think that's a well-made point. Looking at the results of who was elected to our city
00:24:09.240
councils, I don't think the UCP wrapping itself in this referendum would have particularly improved
00:24:16.160
the outcome they were hoping for. I do think it was actually not quite what everybody was
00:24:22.400
expecting when this referendum was first announced. I think a lot of people thought it was going to be
00:24:26.680
a galvanizing issue that was going to drive up voter turnout, particularly from conservatives who
00:24:32.920
were angry about how they're being treated by the rest of Canada. As it was, I saw barely any campaign
00:24:39.900
either for or against. Certainly here in Calgary, very few signs, very few advertisements or anything
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like that. But, you know, thankfully, I think the right side of that referendum won, which is really
00:24:57.400
good news. But it wasn't a blow up. It certainly wasn't an overwhelming vote that I think a lot of
00:25:04.620
Albertans originally had hoped for. But hopefully it's enough to be able to give Premier Kenney some
00:25:10.540
leverage when he does start to talk to Ottawa about maybe making changes to how equalization is
00:25:16.200
calculated. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was weird that not even like a third party group got involved
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really to advocate for the yes side. I thought it was really strange. But thankfully, as you rightly
00:25:30.920
point out, the right side of that debate won. What about the daylight savings question? That's a question
00:25:36.880
that even fewer people were energized about. I don't think anybody really cares. I mean, we complain
00:25:41.960
about it when it happens, but nobody cares. Like nobody really cares in real life. I think there's
00:25:47.940
like a small group of people for whom this is hugely, hugely important. I mean, to me, I don't mind
00:25:55.940
daylight savings time that much. I don't particularly love losing that hour in the spring. My solution has
00:26:02.640
always been don't have it happen early in the morning on a Sunday when you're losing an hour
00:26:07.180
of sleep. You move it to 330 on a Friday afternoon so that everybody gets out of work an hour earlier.
00:26:13.600
I bet you'd have universal support for it. But my answer wasn't on the ballot. But it turned out to
00:26:19.540
be quite contentious, at least in the Calgary vote. When I last checked, it's only a couple percent
00:26:24.760
separating knowing yes, something like 52-48 or 51-49. And so we're really going to have to wait
00:26:31.680
until October 26th to find out what happens with that. It's also unclear if even if it goes one way
00:26:39.240
or another, particularly if it goes with the yes, that anything will actually happen. Other jurisdictions
00:26:43.680
have voted to get rid of daylight savings time through referenda, but they haven't followed
00:26:50.140
through with it yet. So I guess we'll have to see how that happens. That's one vote that I could not
00:26:56.020
possibly care less about. Like, I just don't care. It is, like I said, sort of annoying when it happens,
00:27:03.260
but then you're over it two days later. And I just, I don't know if it's worth, like, resetting the
00:27:07.600
system for. William, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show today. Again, I want to
00:27:13.620
apologize because it's been far too long. Where can people support the work that you are doing with
00:27:19.260
True North? Well, and I would say this is a great chance for any independent media organization to
00:27:25.340
talk about why we're so important, because I don't know if you followed municipal election coverage
00:27:30.420
in your local media. I did a bit, and it was the worst. It was really quite dismal. But thank goodness
00:27:36.840
there's groups like yours and groups like True North, who I work for, to talk about real issues that
00:27:42.420
everyday people care about, not just the fads and the wokeness that seem to be the obsession of
00:27:48.980
other people. True North, you can check us out, tnc.news, our website. Check out our social media.
00:27:55.100
And I would encourage Canadians and Albertans to consume as much independent media as they can
00:28:00.000
from all sources. Great. Thanks so much. And we'll have you back on the show very, very soon.
00:28:05.620
Well, thanks, Sheila. It's nice chatting with you again. Thanks.
00:28:12.420
Well, the conservative movement in Alberta should be pretty darn worried because, as you know,
00:28:23.620
we're approaching a provincial election in about a year and a half, and conservative Premier Jason
00:28:29.740
Kennedy could not be more unpopular with the right and the left. The results at the municipal ballot box
00:28:36.280
should send the United Conservatives a message. I'm just not so sure they're going to listen to it.
00:28:42.860
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody
00:28:47.260
back here in the same time, in the same place next weekend. Remember, don't let the government