John Bolton - May 26, 2026


Keith Wilson post debate interview


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

187.46

Word count

966

Sentence count

46


Summary

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

Jason Kenney is the United Conservative Party's candidate for Prime Minister of Canada in the upcoming leadership debate. On the heels of his victory in the first debate, Keith Wilson and John Tory challenger Jason Kenney are here to give their thoughts on the debate.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I'm here with Keith Wilson just moments after the debate here at the Grand Theatre in downtown
00:00:06.800 Calgary. And Keith, just overall, your thoughts on the debate, how you did tonight and how Jason
00:00:11.260 Kenney did, perhaps? Well, others will decide how I did, but my view is, John, that I was surprised
00:00:17.360 that former Premier Kenney because he didn't bring anything. And what I mean by that, he didn't bring
00:00:22.800 a plan. He acknowledged the unfairness of equalization. He acknowledged how Ottawa holds
00:00:28.740 alberta back and holds our economy back how it's increasing the cost of living for our children
00:00:33.420 and creating an affordability crisis acknowledged all of those things but he had no plan for how
00:00:40.280 those concerns could be resolved and addressed by staying in canada and the only thing he did have
00:00:46.060 was fear he he kept bringing up fear fear of this fear of that and he was appealing to emotion
00:00:52.720 and i was disappointed that he didn't offer any alternative it's clear to me given the
00:01:00.480 information i provided to the audience that the logical and legal pathway for alberta having
00:01:06.420 control of our future and building a prosperous future for our children is to support independence
00:01:10.920 the thing that i noticed and i think it was early on in the debate is he was trying to get people
00:01:16.480 to remember i think the candidate that was going over accomplishments accomplishments rather of
00:01:22.080 the past while right now we're living in the future we're living in the right now that's the
00:01:27.860 thing i saw he seemed to think that he could pull on people's heartstrings by talking about things
00:01:34.460 in the past and that's what we're dealing with right now i agree and uh it was again all emotion
00:01:39.900 um a simultaneous recognition that the concerns are real that the challenges for the future of
00:01:47.360 alberta are real that we are being held back but then no plan to address it independence is a legal
00:01:54.480 pathway supreme court of canada's laid it out what uh i hope albertans do is they look carefully at
00:02:01.640 the options we have and we have serious uh constructive respectful discussions among our
00:02:08.500 friends and neighbors who don't yet support independence and convince them to vote in favor
00:02:14.000 of a referendum on independence in October of this year?
00:02:18.380 He brought up a couple of things.
00:02:19.960 He brought up the Indigenous quite a bit tonight.
00:02:21.840 He kept going back around to that.
00:02:23.620 And he brought up the fact that if we leave,
00:02:26.060 why not have more referendums
00:02:27.820 so Calgary and Edmonton can leave Alberta?
00:02:30.080 I found that rather interesting.
00:02:31.880 I think the constraints of the debate
00:02:33.300 made it hard to rebut some of these things.
00:02:35.100 And it's very hard in an hour to do that.
00:02:37.240 But he did come around to these things,
00:02:38.600 which I found rather odd at times.
00:02:40.180 I hadn't heard a lot of those arguments before.
00:02:42.740 Well, first on the First Nations issue, we need to understand that the polling that's been done, if there is a referendum tomorrow, First Nations support independence. That's the data.
00:02:53.480 That's true.
00:02:53.880 There are a few select chiefs who appear to be doing Ottawa's bidding, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of their community's money on lawyers to do Ottawa's bidding.
00:03:05.440 And there is nothing in law or in fact that in any way threatens treaty or traditional rights if Alberta becomes independent.
00:03:14.020 I gave examples in the debate of the 1850 Robinson Treaties in Ontario, where they were made with the government of Britain, and then the government of Canada was created, and their treaty rights were preserved.
00:03:27.920 I gave the example of the 1930 Natural Resources Transfer Agreement in Alberta.
00:03:31.760 This is a complete red herring.
00:03:33.440 It's fear-mongering.
00:03:35.200 And with respect to this idea that, oh, well, if Alberta can vote to separate, then a city can vote to separate.
00:03:41.380 Sorry, that's not what the Supreme Court of Canada said.
00:03:44.180 There's no basis in law for that.
00:03:46.100 It's just pure nonsense.
00:03:47.600 I was waiting for the answer I've been looking for from people on the other side.
00:03:52.180 Give me a good reason Alberta should stay in Canada.
00:03:55.480 I don't think I heard that in this hour.
00:03:57.240 We didn't hear one in the first debate and we certainly didn't hear it tonight.
00:04:01.800 Comparing the two debates, was this similar to the first one?
00:04:04.100 We don't know a lot about that one.
00:04:06.100 It was very similar.
00:04:07.880 the difference was he didn't engage in personal attacks like he did the first time okay and is
00:04:12.160 there anything you would wish you could have done better tonight anything i don't know i mean i just
00:04:16.500 do uh the best i can there's always so much information to convey yeah um you're you know
00:04:21.800 you've got two minutes and one minute yeah there's only so much you can get in but i felt i was able
00:04:26.900 to drive home some of the concepts that were important such as albertans have a choice alberton
00:04:32.660 is a, Alberta is a credibly blessed place with tremendous resources. And that I don't think
00:04:38.720 Canada works not only for Alberta anymore. I don't think it functions as a country very well.
00:04:43.160 Just one more question. Do you think you can change people's minds with the messaging you
00:04:47.220 had here tonight? I do. I think it was, it was a logical approach. It's based in fact and law and
00:04:53.780 data. And there is no reason why Alberta should not be one of the most prosperous countries in
00:05:00.700 the world. That's just the facts. It was a Keith Wilson crowd here tonight. A lot of people here
00:05:04.460 supporting you. Yeah, it was a pretty engaged crowd. Thank you very much, Keith. Well done
00:05:08.420 tonight. Thank you.