John Bolton - May 25, 2026


At The Wilson⧸Kenney Debate in Calgary


Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

191.84

Word count

483

Sentence count

29


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tonight's debate between former premier Keith Wilson and former premier Jason Kenney is one of the most anticipated debates in recent memory. It's going to be a fascinating night, and I can't wait to report live from the Grand Theatre in downtown Calgary.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.080 Hi, it's John, and welcome to the Grand Hotel, downtown Calgary, very loud in here.
00:00:05.920 I hope you can hear what I'm saying here.
00:00:08.080 You can see all the people getting ready for the big debate tonight between Keith Wilson
00:00:12.860 and former Premier Jason Kenney.
00:00:15.280 It's going to be one of the most anticipated things when it comes to the independence movement,
00:00:19.520 which is up and running, folks.
00:00:21.220 It's going hard, and it's going to come fast October 19th when we have our question.
00:00:26.340 I found it interesting when I came in and they handed me this book.
00:00:30.000 And it says, Why Canada Should Be Cherished, Not Cancelled, written by Mark Mielke, who happens to be the moderator here tonight.
00:00:37.560 So I hope he's neutral. I hope he's not biased when he's asking questions tonight.
00:00:42.000 I had a chance to talk with Keith Wilson earlier today. He said he was prepared for tonight.
00:00:47.380 A lot of people have been waiting for this event because the previous one was kind of a blackout.
00:00:52.240 We didn't hear very much about it, and everybody was sworn to secrecy.
00:00:55.860 So it's going to be an interesting night tonight.
00:00:57.340 Now, the interesting thing about this debate, it's only about an hour long. It's not a very long debate. It starts up about 5, 10, ends an hour later. We'll have opening statements. There's a number of questions as well, which we'll be hearing. And it's going to be fascinating to find out what happens. There won't be any reporting during the debate.
00:01:16.800 Now, what's interesting about debates is people are always looking for a knockout blow, like somebody makes a really good point and you get some applause from one side or the other.
00:01:26.940 That very rarely happens, unfortunately, when it comes to debates.
00:01:30.140 In fact, I can only think of one time way back. I think it was probably 1988. Some of you might remember, those of you who are more seasoned, if you get my drift, might remember the vice presidential campaign debate between Lloyd Benson and Dan Quayle.
00:01:47.960 you might remember that quail was comparing himself to john f kennedy at that point lloyd
00:01:53.560 benson leaned into the microphone and said mr quail i knew john kennedy john kennedy was my friend
00:02:00.360 sir you are no john kennedy i was just thinking about that so we'll have to see if there are any
00:02:05.460 narco blows tonight it looks like people are heading into the theater it's going to be a
00:02:09.680 fascinating evening i'm looking forward to it a lot of people have been waiting for this the uh
00:02:14.520 The debate between Keith Wilson, who is arguing on behalf of the independence movement, and Jason Kenney, who wants to keep Alberta as part of Canada.
00:02:23.000 Reporting from the Grand Hotel in downtown Calgary, or the Grand Theatre, rather, downtown Calgary, John Bolton.
00:02:30.440 Thanks for watching.