Juno News - Alberta Votes 2023

00:00:00.000 All right. Can you guys hear us on the YouTube stream?

00:00:02.420 If you can hear us, we're just going to get this rolling.

00:00:04.180 All right. Welcome, everyone.

00:00:05.860 That is like the weirdest start to one of these things I've ever done.

00:00:09.460 Welcome to True North's live election night special.

00:00:12.520 My name is Andrew Lawton, and I hope you weren't here.

00:00:20.020 ...sizes I was doing before the show and the clean pants of underwear.

00:00:23.400 The hot mic moments you get are never as exciting for me.

00:00:25.600 But it is an absolute pleasure to have you tuned in to this very special night, the 2023 Alberta election.

00:00:33.380 I have two of our panelists with me here, William Macbeth, who is True North's chief operating officer, a longtime Alberta politico, and also Lindsay Wilson, who's the president of Alberta Proud.

00:00:44.140 We have a great show planned for you tonight.

00:00:46.480 We're going to have updates from our correspondent, Rachel Emanuel, very shortly.

00:00:51.220 And we are also going to have lots of the characters who have been much involved in the election coming in to share their thoughts on what's happening.

00:00:59.440 Just to put the thing into context here, 30 minutes until the polls close, 30 minutes until polls close.

00:01:06.140 We're expected to have results pretty soon after that.

00:01:09.900 And we'll have them really as they come.

00:01:12.500 and I should just say for context here, there's going to be no minority government

00:01:16.380 short of some really, really weird, unforeseen event.

00:01:20.100 It's going to be an NDP majority or a UCP majority.

00:01:23.500 But with that out of the way, I'm going to ask both of you a question here.

00:01:26.640 What's the riding you're watching tonight?

00:01:29.040 Well, the riding I'm most interested in watching is California.

00:01:34.980 I think that that's one of the ridings that if the NDP are ahead and leading in it,

00:01:40.880 that's a bad sign for the UCP if it's trending back to the UCP I think that

00:01:46.640 indicates Calgary as a whole isn't going to go enough NDP in order for them to

00:01:51.260 win the election and what's yours well I'm your rural girl so I I live out in

00:01:55.880 Cochrane but the one the writing that I'm keeping my eye on the most would be

00:01:59.500 Miranda Rosen on the Banff Kananaskis ticket that is traditionally a very

00:02:05.140 difficult riding they've that's been switched up a bit and lost over the last

00:02:08.720 couple of elections and so I mean you've got Banff and Canmore and that's typically quite

00:02:13.580 favorable toward the NDP of course and then you go all the way uh you know into through Bragg Creek

00:02:18.860 and then out to uh Pritis and Elbow and and and so it's it's really like kind of uniting two totally

00:02:24.440 different worlds right so you get more of that rural kind of hardcore UCP support you see the

00:02:29.120 big signs on the big farmer fields and and so it's really interesting I she's been fighting

00:02:34.220 tooth and nail for that it's that's that's going to be a really interesting

00:02:38.820 interesting riding yeah and just to ask myself the question as well and answer

00:02:44.060 it the riding that I'm watching is Edmonton Southwest now this is relevant

00:02:48.360 for a couple of reasons number one it's one of the only UCP ridings in Edmonton

00:02:52.280 right now and it's been touch and go the NDP very popular in Edmonton which

00:02:56.400 won't surprise anyone who's spent much time in Edmonton but it's also the

00:02:59.780 riding held by Casey Maddu, who's the deputy premier and right now has the only UCB seat in

00:03:05.620 Edmonton. So that's the one I'm watching. We will get an update on what you have to expect in the

00:03:10.340 evening ahead from Alberta correspondent for True North, Rachel Emanuel.

00:03:21.900 Hey, Andrew. Thank you for that. Welcome to the show, everybody. We're very excited to be here

00:03:26.280 at the UCP headquarters as Andrew mentioned I think it's going to be exciting night I heard

00:03:31.280 some of the ridings that everyone mentioned they were watching definitely Calgary Acadia that's

00:03:35.760 Tyler Shandro's riding is going to be one to watch tonight I was there earlier today doing some

00:03:40.640 streeters getting a sense of the voters as they were heading out of the polls and we're excited

00:03:44.340 to show you what people had to say on their way out of the exit polls later it seemed pretty mixed

00:03:48.560 feelings so it's going to be interesting to watch the one I also have a close eye on Calgary Glenmore

00:03:53.680 that is whitney is six riding so i think depending what those do will be a good sense of whether the

00:03:59.840 ucp is going to do well or not tonight it's been a very close campaign it's going to be very close

00:04:05.840 tonight we know that the ucp is going to lose seats in calgary however we are still expecting

00:04:10.960 them to eke out a majority government at the end of the night at least that's what recent polls have

00:04:15.440 shown us but certainly it's been a campaign full of lots of personal attacks other things that

00:04:20.480 we've discussed have been health care and education and tax cuts i know ucp insiders i've spoken to

00:04:27.360 are hoping that the ballot box question is going to be jobs and the economy but i'm not sure that

00:04:32.640 it is typically in these types of elections it really comes down to who voters trust do they

00:04:38.480 want another alberta ndp government or do they trust danielle smith that's something i heard

00:04:42.800 today at the polls and we're excited to play that for you later on and we're also interested to see

00:04:47.760 whether or not the ucp's negative campaigning tactics actually worked we are going to find

00:04:53.760 about that later tonight as results come as andrew mentioned polls close at 8 pm mountain time so we

00:04:58.560 are going to have some results for you very shortly and we're excited to bring that to you back to you

00:05:17.760 Thank you for that, Rachel. We will check in with Rachel as the evening progresses. She's going to have some interviews with folks that are tied into what's happening. And we will, of course, have the results as they come in 26 minutes, 25 and a half minutes to be precise until the polls close. Hopefully start getting some results here.

00:05:36.520 But let's start talking about the bigger picture of the campaign, though.

00:05:39.900 And I think let's just start with where we are.

00:05:42.380 This is the Big Four building on the Stampede grounds in Calgary, where if you were to follow around this campaign, you wouldn't really go that much outside of Calgary.

00:05:52.980 This has been very much the battleground here.

00:05:55.240 So is that typical of elections where, you know, it's won or lost here, William?

00:06:00.060 Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to reflect the changing nature of elections in Alberta,

00:06:05.380 which even just a couple of elections ago were multi-party elections,

00:06:08.940 and now they've transitioned to a two-party election.

00:06:12.540 So you've got New Democrats, you've got the United Conservative Party.

00:06:16.100 If you look at the distribution of seats in Alberta, it can be roughly grouped into three.

00:06:21.400 There's Edmonton, there's Calgary, and there's the whole rest of the province.

00:06:25.580 And apologies to anyone who lives in the rest of the province.

00:06:27.820 I think you get short-shafted a little bit in this analysis, but as you mentioned earlier on,

00:06:33.600 the New Democrats expect to perform very well in Edmonton, winning most, if not all, of the seats.

00:06:39.360 The United Conservative Party is expecting to do very well in the rest of Alberta,

00:06:43.000 in the rural zones and the smaller cities in the north, central, and south regions,

00:06:47.660 which means they've both got one zone in their column, Calgary's the battleground.

00:06:52.240 So this city very much will decide who is going to be the next government of Alberta.

00:06:57.160 Yeah, now you are the rural girl at heart, but you're not really the battleground.

00:07:00.720 Rachel Notley's not even bothering with your neck in the woods.

00:07:03.140 Oh, no, certainly not.

00:07:04.060 I mean, Peter Guthrie is my MLA.

00:07:06.140 Cochran, he's got Airdrie West and Cochran.

00:07:07.940 And that's always been, I think we have the highest UCP voter turnout per capita in the province.

00:07:14.400 So, but, you know, I'll tell you, there's more orange signs out there than there were a few years ago.

00:07:18.540 So that's interesting.

00:07:20.140 It's the NDP now, the public perception of the NDP now compared to four years ago.

00:07:25.720 you got to give it to them on marketing it's really the way that their their persona uh and

00:07:32.160 building that around rachel notley herself i i mean you're seeing things now that you wouldn't

00:07:38.020 have seen a few years ago so it's interesting yeah and i mean people forget though or maybe

00:07:42.100 they don't actually when the ndp was in power in alberta they actually did do very well in some of

00:07:46.420 these rural areas and it was actually uh i think part of why it was so shocking to people that that

00:07:52.080 victory came when it did so let's talk about what the NDP was really campaigning on because they

00:07:57.320 weren't trying to be I know a lot of people watching this are not from Alberta you know

00:08:01.220 Jagmeet Singh was not here campaigning for Rachel Notley they're trying to pretend they're an NDP

00:08:04.920 that has nothing to do with what NDP people think anywhere else but is that a credible proposal to

00:08:10.920 Albert yeah no there's it isn't a mistake that you didn't see Jagmeet Singh coming to Alberta

00:08:16.500 during this election I think what Rachel Notley tried to present herself with in a lot of different

00:08:21.880 ways is i'm not like those other new democrats i'm not like the toronto new democrats we're a

00:08:27.720 unique brand of alberta new democrat harkening back to that populist prairie side of the party

00:08:33.660 did it work that's the real question and i think uh you know it's so interesting people have made

00:08:38.620 comments that rachel notley wore a blue outfit to the debate a conservative blue outfit if you look

00:08:45.180 at the lit pieces or the brochures that have been put together where they want to talk about

00:08:48.960 something good they're doing, it's on a blue panel background, and they put Daniel Smith

00:08:53.620 on a red background, because in this province, red is liberal, and liberal is bad.

00:08:58.620 And so all of that's really interesting.

00:09:01.240 I don't think it worked as well as they would have hoped.

00:09:03.980 I think there was a belief early in the campaign that maybe people were going to lend or hold

00:09:09.300 their nose and vote New Democrat because they didn't like Daniel Smith, but a lot of people

00:09:13.920 remembered they didn't really love Rachel Notley either when she had her four years

00:09:17.720 in government it was tough times for alberta but were you seeing that in people you spoke to where

00:09:21.800 you know the ucp was more popular than danielle smith was or maybe rachel notley

00:09:26.120 was more popular than danielle smith but the ucp was more popular than the nvp you know certainly

00:09:31.160 certainly uh daniel smith struggled a little bit you know we can talk about that later but

00:09:35.960 uh and the ndp it's not about the ndp it's about rachel notley right you look at even all their

00:09:40.280 signs it's team rachel notley so that's always been really interesting to me uh yeah i don't

00:09:45.960 know i don't know um i think i think where i think rachel was leading and beating danielle

00:09:53.880 i think there was a couple of turning points in the last couple of weeks i think that the ucp has

00:09:58.760 done a pretty good job at disputing the biggest lie that the ndp has unfortunately ran their

00:10:03.160 campaign on and which is the sound bite that danielle's going to make you pay for a doctor

00:10:06.920 so they came out with their health care guarantee and and and we can hold premier smith

00:10:10.520 she has gone on record to say no alberton will ever pay out of pocket for a doctor and we have

00:10:17.900 to hold them to their word they've made their health care guarantee on that so um i think

00:10:22.280 they've done a pretty good job of pushing back on that and i whereas i think that rachel notley was

00:10:26.420 and the ndp was quite successful on that on that before and i think the debate a couple of weeks

00:10:31.080 ago i think that was also a turning point i think that the premier smith um won that debate handily

00:10:35.860 personally yeah and we we have some debate highlights that we'll get to later on but the

00:10:40.920 one i will say is that everyone on the left side of things was hoping it would be some colossal

00:10:47.660 crash and burn for danielle's bed so i would argue she had a lower bar she needed to clear going in

00:10:51.900 anyway but uh she certainly cleared it and she didn't just hold i think she actually gained a

00:10:57.300 little bit out of that and i think you gotta also keep in mind like rachel notley is no slouch at

00:11:01.180 debate i mean she won that election in 2015 because of that debate and and but i feel that

00:11:07.380 the tone has changed i feel there's too much of an anger machine that i was seeing when i was

00:11:10.840 watching that debate and i think premier came across as a little more polished a little bit

00:11:14.540 more premier like and i think that that really shone and i think we've seen a big shift since

00:11:18.260 then i really think that that was more pivotal some people say it was a bit of a draw i don't

00:11:22.800 think so i think it was more pivotal than people realize in favor of the ucp leading us into

00:11:26.960 tonight now we were talking earlier about the ridings that we're watching here are there any

00:11:31.360 ridings will that really test more about the province-wide picture than just the local story

00:11:38.860 are there really reliable bellwethers here to watch yeah i mean um as we discussed this is the battle

00:11:44.220 for calgary the battle for hearts and minds of calgarians so looking at how calgary goes is going

00:11:49.180 to be the outcome of this election and i think you're going to see it uh not so much in the

00:11:54.780 downtown and their ridings that surround that, I think those are pretty safe going to go NDP

00:12:00.060 tonight. But the next rung of ridings out, that they're not really in the suburbs, the full

00:12:05.860 suburbs yet, they're closer to the core, but that's where the battleground is. And if early

00:12:09.940 on you start to see those trending up towards the NDP, that's a bad sign for the United Conservative

00:12:16.100 Party. But if they're holding on to those ridings, even if they have smaller margins,

00:12:21.200 then I think the UCB is in pretty good shape

00:12:23.360 and is going to come out of this for the second term under Daniels.

00:12:26.760 If you are just tuning in here,

00:12:28.560 this is the True North Alberta election results show.

00:12:31.840 If you see me plugging away at my computer, I'm not playing solitary.

00:12:35.500 We are trying to keep tabs on all the things that are happening on social media,

00:12:39.280 which is a bit easier right now because the polls have not yet closed.

00:12:42.260 That's going to come in, I think, just over 18 minutes.

00:12:46.300 So we'll be getting results to you as quickly as we can get them.

00:12:49.160 And the fun part is sometimes you hear people cheer or start groaning because they got a result that we are just about to get to.

00:12:57.100 Like I remember in 2019 at the federal election, I was covering from Andrew Scheer's headquarters.

00:13:02.120 And when Ralph Goodale lost his seat, I don't think anyone could hear me broadcasting because there was such a celebration in the room.

00:13:09.100 But we are going to get to that.

00:13:10.860 But just before we get over to Rachel Emanuel, who has an interview lined up, let's talk a little bit about the health care aspect.

00:13:18.460 Because you brought this up, and it was probably the number one thing.

00:13:21.540 When I talked to some people that were working on campaigns that were going, they were hearing that at the door.

00:13:26.700 So the NDP message did seem like it was getting through, that she's going to privatize your health care.

00:13:31.620 Yeah, but I think what's unfortunate about it is that it's not truthful.

00:13:35.080 It's not truthful campaigning.

00:13:36.820 And certainly, you know, in her time as a radio talk show host, Premier Smith, then Daniel Smith,

00:13:41.800 she pontificated about that's what you do in these shows, and you talk, and you bounce ideas.

00:13:46.740 and you're a completely different person when you're in that space

00:13:50.520 as opposed to when you're an elected official, let alone the Premier of Alberta.

00:13:53.880 So those were sound bites.

00:13:55.620 They were taken a lot out of context, and there was a lot.

00:13:59.360 I know people who work in spaces that are union folks,

00:14:03.120 and their unions were coming to them and really hammering this message home

00:14:09.220 that you're going to have to pay for a doctor.

00:14:11.400 And it's dishonest campaigning.

00:14:13.980 I know we see it.

00:14:14.700 We see it from both sides, certainly.

00:14:15.800 but that really that really irked me i had a lot of um a lot of women particularly who i know

00:14:24.120 engaged in politics not like people like us and you know they're busy they they've got kids they've

00:14:28.760 got jobs they've got businesses to run and they asked me well is that true i'm gonna have to pay

00:14:32.600 for a doctor it's it's really amazing how much that that message stuck and and canadians don't

00:14:37.720 like that concept it doesn't matter if you if you explain that well we've always had a two-tiered

00:14:42.440 health care system this is looking at it it doesn't really matter it's canadians just don't

00:14:47.680 like that concept they see it as an all or nothing thing and they're worried that we're going to

00:14:50.840 become some u.s version of health care and they're terrified of that so let me ask you william because

00:14:55.620 our viewers may know you did work for danielle smith in 2012 which unfortunately you could not

00:15:00.780 clinch the win for her but i i know it was looking very good for a lot of the campaign

00:15:05.100 danielle smith has done a lot on health care policy as a business advocate as a radio host

00:15:11.300 as accommodator, and she has advocated for solutions that would involve some private

00:15:15.840 element to healthcare delivery, and I don't think that should be controversial, but I

00:15:19.360 realize in Canada it is.

00:15:21.020 So if you were advising her, how would you have walked that line of saying, yes, I've

00:15:25.080 talked about these things, but we're keeping this core universal healthcare intact?

00:15:30.200 Yeah, I mean, it's such an interesting question because the debate tends to descend very quickly

00:15:35.940 into, well, we either do health care the way we've been doing it

00:15:40.260 for the last 60 years, or we immediately become the United States

00:15:45.020 and nobody has public health insurance anymore.

00:15:47.440 Forgetting these are like two of the least efficient systems in the world.

00:15:51.240 It's just hilarious that you could think there's 200 countries in the world,

00:15:56.260 but there's only two ways of doing health care.

00:15:58.520 So I think what I would have told Danielle, first of all,

00:16:00.660 I would have told her to be bold and to carry on with her health spending account promise.

00:16:05.940 I think that would have been a very tangible thing that parents particularly would have

00:16:09.880 appreciated, helping to cover things like dental visits, glasses, therapy appointments,

00:16:16.280 whatever the case.

00:16:17.940 In terms of the private delivery of health care, I think as long as you always remind

00:16:22.800 people that even if health care is being delivered by a non-government provider, you are not

00:16:28.120 being asked to take out your credit card to pay for health care in Alberta.

00:16:32.000 It is simply the method of delivery that is changing.

00:16:35.100 And what that has meant, though, that since Alberta has started to move in this direction is we're seeing fewer waiting lists for key procedures.

00:16:42.260 We're seeing surgeries happening faster.

00:16:44.200 We're seeing people get hip and knee replacements faster.

00:16:46.840 They're getting cataract surgeries faster.

00:16:48.840 And at the end of the day, that's a better quality of life for people waiting for those procedures.

00:16:52.900 Yeah, and I think that it's actually good that health care policy was discussed,

00:16:56.740 because oftentimes I think people were fearing that this election would just be about, you know,

00:17:00.640 whatever Danielle Smith said on the radio five years ago and one of those every day.

00:17:04.220 there were a lot of character attacks in this campaign i don't think it was as bad as i

00:17:09.180 expected it to be but did that dominate on the ground that just personality conflict oh i think

00:17:15.640 so and i think i think that that that tonage came out as well in the debate i know i keep going back

00:17:19.880 to that but i i certainly think yeah i think so i think it was this was this was i think to me it

00:17:25.980 was it's been less about the ndp versus the ucp and more about danielle smith versus rachel notley

00:17:32.400 So here's the big question I have to ask you.

00:17:34.240 Thirteen years since the last Wild Rose campaign,

00:17:37.520 how do you rank Danielle Smith to candidate now against Danielle Smith to candidate then?

00:17:42.360 Well, I mean, for people with long memories who may remember the 2012 election,

00:17:47.600 one of the things that was cited as a reason Danielle lost was she had a candidate

00:17:51.960 who said something controversial and that that candidate wasn't dismissed

00:17:57.700 or wasn't taken off the ballot for the United Conservative Party.

00:18:00.480 And Daniel said, I can't tell a candidate what to say or think.

00:18:05.180 Similarly, this time, we did have a candidate who, you know,

00:18:08.680 talked about a really unpleasant metaphor of a poop cookie,

00:18:13.580 which I don't think, regardless of the issue, is an unpleasant metaphor.

00:18:16.340 For those of you playing the drinking game at home, he said poop cookie,

00:18:19.320 so you have to take a shot now.

00:18:20.600 Everybody drink.

00:18:21.800 And quite quickly, Daniel came around and said,

00:18:24.620 this does not represent our views, and if this person does win,

00:18:27.600 they will not be allowed to sit in an United Conservative caucus.

00:18:30.220 So that is at least one sign that Danielle has taken some of the hard lessons of that loss in 2012 and decided, I really don't want to lose another election in Alberta.

00:18:40.000 Now, are you seeing, I mean, there's a theoretical scenario in which that ends up costing the UCP a very necessary seat tonight.

00:18:47.120 No, you're right.

00:18:47.820 If it's a very strange world where somehow we've ended up with 43 United Conservative seats,

00:18:53.940 43 New Democrat seats, and this one independent,

00:18:56.960 then that's going to be awkward for everybody having to figure out what level of comfort they have

00:19:01.820 with working with this individual in the legislature.

00:19:04.460 But that being said, I actually don't think it's going to be quite that close.

00:19:08.320 I think the United Conservative Party has the advantage going into tonight.

00:19:12.060 One thing that I will talk about this a little bit later on,

00:19:14.540 But obviously, the UCP leadership race that elected Danielle Smith as leader and ultimately premier was overwhelmingly a reaction to,

00:19:23.420 I think, a lot of COVID frustrations with Jason Kenney from the more independence-oriented wing of the party that were very concerned about the past.

00:19:33.180 A lot of that didn't import into the general election, which I actually found quite refreshing.

00:19:37.140 I mean, Danielle Smith really didn't have a difficulty, it seemed like, pivoting to premier mode.

00:19:41.600 Well, I think she stopped talking about COVID early enough on because she came out a little bit when she was first, when she won the leadership race and she came out talking about COVID and that didn't sit well with people. So I think we just, we just, we need to move forward. It was a terrible chapter. Politicians made mistakes, world mistakes.

00:19:58.040 Kenny did he make mistakes sure but do people not think Rachel Notley would have made mistakes

00:20:03.280 or anybody else in that position would have made mistakes it was changing all the time so

00:20:06.960 it's it's easy for us to say oh I would have or we should have or anything like that but it was

00:20:11.380 a really difficult time globally so I think we just need to dust ourselves off and we need

00:20:15.940 his best position to answer this but but what happened to the Kenny loyalists on this election

00:20:25.920 Did they tend to fall in line or had we seen a kind of a little resistance group?

00:20:31.400 I mean, my brief answer to that would be I think there was some hard days for a few of them.

00:20:38.240 I think they didn't particularly warm right away to to Daniel Smith, who they probably in some ways blamed a bit for some of their candidates downfall.

00:20:49.120 However, the cold hard reality of re-electing an NDP government in Alberta, I suspect has been kind of motivating to many skinny people to say, well, maybe she isn't my choice, maybe she isn't perfect, but gosh, do we really want four years of lefty government back in Alberta? Remember how it went the first time.

00:21:08.900 I do think it also speaks volumes that there were seven leadership candidates.

00:21:14.520 Danielle Smith was successful.

00:21:16.780 Lilo Ahir is no longer.

00:21:18.800 And the other five got big positions within her government.

00:21:22.420 I think that was her setting the tone for unity.

00:21:24.660 Because most importantly, this actually has to start acting like the united Conservative Party

00:21:29.180 if we want to be prosperous, if the party wants to be prosperous for the next four years and beyond.

00:21:34.740 For sure.

00:21:35.400 We are 10 minutes away from polls closing.

00:21:38.360 This is True North Alberta Election Night Results Show.

00:21:41.820 For those of you with us from the get-go, thank you very much.

00:21:44.100 We've improved since that very strange, like, Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque opening.

00:21:48.600 But you know we are here, and the night is just beginning.

00:21:52.080 We are going to have, just to give you a little sampling of what's going to come,

00:21:54.860 we're going to have results as they arrive, starting probably in about 15, 16, 17 minutes.

00:22:00.840 I think there may be some unsurprising results,

00:22:03.580 but it will all look very exciting when the numbers start changing

00:22:06.000 and the map starts going red.

00:22:07.720 And then some of the battlegrounds.

00:22:09.320 And just, by the way, I know that format stuff isn't always the most interesting,

00:22:12.900 but it is relevant.

00:22:14.480 Ballots were cast by paper, but they're counted electronically,

00:22:17.520 which generally means we're in for a shorter turnaround on results, ideally, right?

00:22:21.380 I believe it was the advanced ballots that were counted electronically.

00:22:26.160 I think it's hand-counting for today.

00:22:28.320 But that means we should get a large dump of results quite quickly

00:22:32.920 when they push the magic button,

00:22:34.460 and it spits out the results for 87 advanced polls in every ridings.

00:22:39.060 Yeah, and the strange thing whenever you're watching results

00:22:41.300 is that you never know if the advanced polls are in or not.

00:22:43.320 But this time we will know if the advanced polls are in or not.

00:22:46.200 So hopefully we'll get a bit of a better sense of what's happening.

00:22:49.580 We are going to go to Rachel Emanuel now,

00:22:51.820 who has with her UCP campaign strategist and senator-elect,

00:22:55.980 Erika Baroudis. Take it away, Rachel.

00:22:59.000 Hey, guys. So I'm here with Erika Baroudis.

00:23:01.340 You might remember her from the Alberta Roundup.

00:23:03.140 She was one of our very famous analysts.

00:23:05.920 When we last spoke, you mentioned that you were pegging in about 48 seats for the UCP, maybe 48 to 51.

00:23:11.520 Have you changed your mind, or are you still keeping your estimate?

00:23:14.100 No, I've had that number for three months, so I'm just going to lock it in.

00:23:16.960 If I'm right or wrong, we'll see you in a couple hours.

00:23:19.660 And what riding are you really watching tonight to know if we lose this riding, we're not going to be in good footing?

00:23:25.460 Yeah, I think a good indicator is if we see good numbers in Calgary Glenmore, Calgary Boat.

00:23:31.460 So, Katie, I think we'll see a good, strong night.

00:23:34.960 But, yeah, so I'll be watching those,

00:23:36.520 and then we'll see how some of the rest of the province goes.

00:23:39.200 I think we'll be successful in a lot of the donut outside of Edmonton as well.

00:23:42.940 One of the other things that you mentioned on the show was that after the debate,

00:23:46.480 you felt that the door is really warm for United Conservative Party volunteers

00:23:50.320 who are out door-knocking with their candidates.

00:23:52.440 Did you notice that there was maybe a policy that people were interested in

00:23:55.340 that they hadn't really cared about before,

00:23:56.740 or just generally that people had a better impression of leader Danielle Smith?

00:24:00.800 Meanwhile, you know, we know the NDP tried so much negative campaigning and certainly some of that did work.

00:24:05.920 Yeah, it definitely, I think, did early on in the campaign.

00:24:09.020 I mean, outright lying about public health care.

00:24:11.260 Unfortunately, Albertans believed Rachel Notley for quite some time.

00:24:14.760 But I do think two things.

00:24:16.540 Yes, on the debate, I think that's because Premier Danielle Smith looked like Premier Danielle Smith

00:24:21.580 and Rachel Notley looked like she was auditioning to be the leader of the official opposition again.

00:24:26.680 So I think that was a clear shift during the campaign.

00:24:28.980 I also think it was a very close timing to when they released their costing for their platform.

00:24:35.920 And in that was an increase on the business tax from 8% to 11%, which is a 38% increase.

00:24:41.920 And I definitely think that's when Albertans started paying attention to the math of the NDP wasn't really making sense.

00:24:47.920 How are they going to get this revenue in?

00:24:50.420 How are we going to attract investment?

00:24:52.400 Businesses coming out left, right, and center, including the Alberta Chamber of Commerce, against this policy.

00:24:57.640 So, you know, I think ours were consistent policies from the beginning, focused on what Albertans were talking about, the economy, affordability and public safety.

00:25:06.300 But that was one where it was like, whoa, I can't believe that they're actually going to run on this.

00:25:10.800 Yeah, I think that was a typical policy that most of us expected to see from the NDP, whereas they've kind of been running as moderates in the election.

00:25:17.020 But when we talk about really that campaign defining moment and maybe the debate being that moment that really changed the momentum of the UCP campaign,

00:25:23.640 I felt like she seemed a lot more confident in her appearances after that.

00:25:28.120 She had that campaign rally in Edmonton.

00:25:29.900 She seemed really excited.

00:25:30.780 Her public speaking was on point.

00:25:32.400 And then again, at another media appearance on Friday, that was her last appearance.

00:25:36.020 We haven't seen her since then.

00:25:36.900 And she just seems confident.

00:25:37.740 She looks like someone who thinks she's going to win the election.

00:25:40.320 She knows she's going to win the election.

00:25:41.920 Have you on the campaign felt that momentum since the debate?

00:25:44.940 Absolutely.

00:25:45.500 I mean, like I said, she showed she is premier worthy and that she came out.

00:25:50.000 That is her wheelhouse, right?

00:25:51.180 but Rachel Notley is a strong communicator too

00:25:53.880 and I don't think Rachel showed up that night.

00:25:55.900 So I think that was that step up

00:25:57.920 that Danielle Smith needed for that momentum

00:25:59.800 and she kept nailing everything else since then

00:26:03.160 and it was a strong finish and a positive campaign.

00:26:07.400 Great, well thank you so much again.

00:26:08.600 That was Erica Baroudis,

00:26:09.800 a senior advisor with the UCP campaign.

00:26:12.500 Oh, we're just gonna have a little bit more time here left.

00:26:14.740 One thing that I am very curious about

00:26:16.380 is we know that the compassion intervention

00:26:18.360 was such a huge policy for the party.

00:26:20.520 I was surprised to see you guys introduce it.

00:26:22.820 Basically, that would force somebody who is a danger to themselves or others, a drug addict, into treatment.

00:26:28.400 What type of reception?

00:26:29.280 Did people ask about that at the doors or was it something that they weren't really aware of?

00:26:32.860 You know what?

00:26:33.200 I think people that maybe have a direct relationship with something like that, they did react to that.

00:26:39.580 I think that obviously the NDP tried to fear and smear it.

00:26:43.200 But it is something that we do see across the U.S., across Europe.

00:26:47.620 It has been shown to work, but it's about trying it in Alberta and seeing if it's applicable

00:26:53.680 because I think we can all agree at the end of the day public safety is a huge concern

00:26:57.960 and not just removing those folks from the streets, but also giving them the help that they need

00:27:03.200 is definitely showing the compassionate conservative side that the UCP has.

00:27:07.660 Absolutely, and we're hoping to hear from Mike Ellis a little bit later.

00:27:10.240 He is the public safety minister, so I'm sure that he'll have more to share on that.

00:27:13.600 Again, thank you so much, Erica, for your time.

00:27:15.000 Once again, that was Erica Baroudis, a senior advisor with the UCP campaign.

00:27:19.100 Back to you, Andrew.

00:27:26.720 Welcome back.

00:27:27.700 We are, and thank you for that, Rachel.

00:27:29.640 I believe we have to talk a little bit just because we had Erica Baroudis on there.

00:27:33.900 The winner of the Senate election is the UCP candidate, which I don't want to take it away from her.

00:27:39.260 And a Trudeau government federally doesn't mean all that much because the federal government isn't appointing Alberta senators who were elected.

00:27:46.640 But I do think it brings us around to what, again, was a very interesting theme in the UCP leadership race,

00:27:53.300 but I don't believe was talked about at all in the general election, which was Alberta sovereignty.

00:27:58.680 And I'm not talking about secession or separation, but rather just this idea of Alberta asserting itself.

00:28:04.140 The Sovereignty Act was Bill 1 of the Smith government.

00:28:07.540 Where did that issue go?

00:28:09.260 Well, at Alberta Proud, we're really focused on standing up for Alberta and more Alberta and less Ottawa.

00:28:17.180 And really, the media got really hyped up about this one.

00:28:20.320 When she first came out with the Sovereignty Act, it was all over the place.

00:28:23.040 During the leadership race, it was all over the place.

00:28:25.160 But really, at the end of the day, why is it such a bad thing?

00:28:28.480 I think a lot of people just honed in on little details of it too much.

00:28:31.940 I mean, if we look next door, Premier Scott Moe in Saskatchewan is doing wonders with the Saskatchewan First Act.

00:28:38.060 People love him for it, but why do they hate Danielle for it?

00:28:41.360 It's the same thing, essentially.

00:28:43.540 It's just putting us first.

00:28:45.760 We want to be the determiners of our own resources and our own tax dollars

00:28:51.560 and all these sorts of things moving in that direction.

00:28:53.680 That's just removing the Trudeau middleman.

00:28:55.540 And it was always puzzling to me how mainstream legacy media kind of ran with that

00:29:02.460 and put such a negative spin on that.

00:29:04.780 I don't know.

00:29:05.060 I mean, if you recall back to the leadership race, you would have thought, remember the claims that were being made.

00:29:12.360 If this act becomes law, you're going to see companies fleeing.

00:29:16.740 You know, the federal government is going to, you know, send in their own people to run services.

00:29:24.200 It was a level of hyperbole, not only from opposition politicians, who you expect that sort of thing from,

00:29:31.180 But every political scientist, every media supporter, they saw it as an opportunity to take a swing at a party and a leader they didn't like.

00:29:43.220 The reality on the ground, of course, is she introduced it, it became law, and to my knowledge, we barely talked about it afterwards, and certainly not during this election.

00:29:51.920 Of all of the press comments I watched, I can't recall a single question being asked about the Sovereignty Act and its impact on Alberta.

00:29:59.800 So, interesting development.

00:30:02.260 Yeah, and I will say as well, and we'll talk about this a little bit later on,

00:30:06.440 all of the parties that would pop up that were kind of vying for the same share of votes on the right

00:30:12.480 really vanished this election.

00:30:14.340 And we'll talk about that, especially when we see some results.

00:30:16.920 But right now, I am stretching out my answer because in 25 seconds, polls are closing,

00:30:23.980 which means nothing in terms of results because we aren't going to get results right at like eight minutes on the dot.

00:30:28.960 But it's exciting. We announced it. We bring attention to it.

00:30:32.440 And it means that the end is near, at least for finding out what's happening tonight.

00:30:36.840 So have I have I sufficiently bought us to? Yes, we can do the five, four, three, two, one.

00:30:43.980 Holes are closed. Yay. We can pop the champagne.

00:30:46.500 But before we do that, we'll head over to Rachel Emanuel, who is joined by UCP candidate for Calgary West, Mike Ellis.

00:30:53.980 Take it away, Rachel.

00:30:54.660 thanks andrew i am joined by mike ellis as andrew mentioned he is the candidate for calgary

00:31:01.640 the ucp is going to hold that seat tonight unless something crazy happens

00:31:06.500 mike ellis is also the minister for public safety and they've been doing a ton of work on that file

00:31:11.380 something that i was just talking to erica about that caught our attention on the campaign was the

00:31:15.220 compassion intervention which as i just mentioned to our viewers would essentially force drug addicts

00:31:19.820 who are a danger to themselves or to others into treatment wondering if you can tell me a little

00:31:23.460 about what the reception has been to this policy yeah i mean think as you know i did 12 years as a

00:31:28.100 police officer on the streets of calgary um you know i think that uh you know our our friends on

00:31:33.300 the uh the left were were uh for sure opposed to this but uh you know look this is something that

00:31:39.540 we we already do under the mental health act if somebody's posing a danger to themselves or others

00:31:43.860 we make sure that that person gets the help that they need we also have something what is known as

00:31:48.020 peach ad and p chip where children might be involved in in alcohol or drugs or children

00:31:52.500 might be involved in prostitution and it's a piece of legislation that allows families to get

00:31:58.020 intervention through the courts to get these kids the help that they need so this is something that

00:32:02.500 is been long-standing in this province and to answer your question we've actually had a really

00:32:08.020 good reception from people because they it's it is about compassion because when somebody is

00:32:12.980 overdosing five to ten times a day you know what's the alternative to give them more drugs and allow

00:32:18.900 them to continue the cycle of abuse or to actually get them help so that they

00:32:23.900 can get treatment and live happy and healthy lives again. I think Albertans

00:32:27.480 are very clear they would like the latter. So when you mention that this is

00:32:30.960 something that's already being done I'm wondering why we need a piece of

00:32:34.440 legislation to continue doing it. Well remember it. Mental health is different

00:32:39.020 than addictions so obviously when somebody is posing a danger to

00:32:42.240 themselves under the Mental Health Act because they might be suicidal or they

00:32:46.560 again, might be, you know, another mental health condition, then that's different than somebody who

00:32:51.780 is in the throes of their addiction and causing harm to themselves. So it actually is two different

00:32:57.440 things. So I actually had the chance to ask NDP leader Rachel Notley about this policy. She said

00:33:03.400 that she's spoken to frontline workers, healthcare workers who don't agree with this policy. And I

00:33:08.200 did mention that at your announcement, you had a bunch of recovered addicts and those in recovery

00:33:12.020 saying this is really helpful for me. My family was able to find recovery for me because of

00:33:17.220 programs like this and they were very supportive of it and I mentioned that to her and she said

00:33:20.900 well we've heard from other people, other addicts, other frontline workers and said that the premier

00:33:25.220 hadn't actually consulted on this policy. What would be your response to that? Well I think as

00:33:30.320 you were there I mean we had a young girl who was 16 years old and she said she was in the throes of

00:33:34.780 her addiction at the age of 12. I am very certain that Albertans, in fact Canadians, would not

00:33:40.340 believe that giving that little girl drugs and a safe place to use those drugs is the correct

00:33:46.820 answer so getting her compassionate intervention as she indicated saved her life and she can now

00:33:52.820 go on to live a happy and healthy life again right um we have we have talked to uh you know

00:33:58.660 i i held the safe supply uh committee when i was the minister of mental health and addictions right

00:34:03.700 and we we had a lot of experts and when i mean experts and we're talking about experts from

00:34:09.300 from Stanford, from Yale, from Harvard,

00:34:11.680 experts all throughout Canada,

00:34:13.440 that we're very supportive of our policies,

00:34:15.520 and especially when it comes to compassion intervention.

00:34:18.860 Before I let you go, one final question.

00:34:21.240 I have to ask everyone, what's your prediction for tonight?

00:34:23.400 We know the polls are now closed.

00:34:25.040 What are you expecting the seat count to end up at?

00:34:27.240 Well, I thank you for the question.

00:34:28.540 I'm just gonna be cautiously optimistic.

00:34:30.420 Again, this is my fourth campaign.

00:34:33.060 You know, look, we don't know, we don't know,

00:34:36.500 but I will just say this,

00:34:37.640 I'm very proud of the campaign that the United Conservative Party ran.

00:34:41.240 I'm proud of our candidates.

00:34:42.600 I'm proud of the diverse team that we brought together.

00:34:46.180 And again, I'll be cautiously optimistic.

00:34:47.920 That was a good political answer.

00:34:49.380 I'll give you that.

00:34:50.340 That, once again, was Mike, the Minister for Public Safety and the UCP candidate for Calgary West.

00:34:57.280 Thank you so much.

00:34:57.940 Thank you.

00:34:58.240 Yeah, have a great night.

00:34:59.460 All right, we're going to head back over to Andrew in just a moment here.

00:35:02.980 We're hoping to get some results and super quickly to discuss those with you.

00:35:06.140 and I'm sure Andrew will have more to say about that.

00:35:13.460 Thank you for that.

00:35:14.900 Rachel, that was Mike Ellis, the UCP candidate for Calgary West

00:35:19.900 and I suspect when we look at the pretty surefire ones

00:35:22.600 he's probably going to be in MLA before long.

00:35:26.280 They were talking about the opioid drug file

00:35:29.100 which I think is a very important one

00:35:31.180 because this was an issue that Danielle

00:35:32.920 it's not usually the domain of conservative candidates

00:35:35.860 But Danielle Smith really ran full steam ahead into this.

00:35:38.820 She introduced this policy called the Compassionate Intervention Act,

00:35:42.540 which essentially allows mandatory treatment and enforces mandatory treatment on people.

00:35:48.480 This is something that I think is actually good policy,

00:35:52.820 according to a lot of people that were affected by drug addiction that we're talking about.

00:35:56.760 Is it good politics? Does this actually move votes?

00:36:00.300 I think so.

00:36:01.080 I think there's been a there's been a lot of work done on on not only on the mental health and opiate

00:36:06.040 crisis that's happening uh but as well in conjunction with the you know uh right supporting

00:36:11.800 our front lines getting more police officers on the ground so I think it's a it's a broader a

00:36:15.880 broader scope uh but you know Daniel Smith is sitting pretty good with that I think there's

00:36:21.000 been a lot of great work doing that's being done there by the UCP on that file of course her chief

00:36:26.280 of staff is a recovering addict and that is kind of like taking the ndp narrative and kind of like

00:36:32.440 what are you going to do with that right how do you counter that this is a guy who has lived

00:36:35.240 experience and um doing this alberta first uh program here and uh i i just think he's i think

00:36:44.120 i think she's got some really good guidance on that and and i think when you have addicts uh

00:36:48.280 developing the program i think i think we're on the right track with that and so i would agree i

00:36:53.160 I think that it's a tough one to campaign on, but I think we've reached a turning point in our city, certainly in Edmonton.

00:36:58.480 I'm seeing it in Calgary as somebody who lives outside of Calgary, not coming here every day.

00:37:02.660 But we have a serious problem on our streets, and it's getting dangerous to ride sea trains.

00:37:07.620 Something needs to be done.

00:37:08.640 I think we're at a bit of a breaking point with it, and people don't want to see.

00:37:12.240 I think people are starting to understand.

00:37:14.160 We want our children to be safe to walk down the streets.

00:37:16.340 We want seniors to be safe to ride on a sea train, and something has to be done.

00:37:20.000 And I think, I don't think it did any losses on that, on bringing that forward.

00:37:25.700 We had polls closed just six minutes ago.

00:37:28.400 This is the True North Alberta election night show,

00:37:31.040 joined by William Macbeth and from Alberta Proud, Lindsay Wilson,

00:37:35.060 and we have Rachel Emanuel in the wings here.

00:37:37.600 Just one update that came in.

00:37:39.460 This is from Elections Alberta.

00:37:41.600 There's a polling station in Rimby, Rocky Mountain House

00:37:46.080 that is open until 9.46 p.m.

00:37:50.000 And that riding, which is a fairly safe UCP riding, they say is not going to release results until that polling place is closed.

00:37:56.740 We're still trying to figure out why, but does this ring any bells?

00:38:00.240 I saw the notice earlier in the day.

00:38:01.960 If there was an issue with electricity or if something had happened that made the polling station difficult to access,

00:38:10.080 then they tend to add time at the end so that people aren't disenfranchised from the right to vote.

00:38:14.640 You know, we just talked about the interesting issue of the opioid crisis, and I actually think it's an issue where the UCB encircled the New Democrats, took over an issue that would typically be associated with on the left.

00:38:29.360 And they simply said, look, the evidence shows, and it's clear, that the approach that has been taken is just not working.

00:38:36.220 We are seeing escalating opioid deaths.

00:38:38.420 We are seeing escalating random acts of violence on our streets, people being stabbed, people being shot, people being attacked.

00:38:46.080 And so what we have done is not working.

00:38:48.360 It's time to try something new.

00:38:49.960 And the New Democrat response has been, no, we just have to do more of what we've been doing that hasn't worked,

00:38:56.140 and then it will start working for some reason.

00:38:58.540 Which I think, you know, rational Albertans said, no, it's the definition of humanity to keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome.

00:39:05.980 We're going to do something different.

00:39:07.240 So I actually think it's going to come out really well for Danielle when she appears to be trying something new and not letting the situation in our big cities really continue to deteriorate like we've seen in other parts of North America.

00:39:19.960 Go ahead.

00:39:20.680 I was just going to say, I was just going to add to that.

00:39:22.240 I think further to what you're saying, William, is that the NDP has been pretty quiet.

00:39:27.200 They've been pretty quiet on a file that normally they'd be loud and proud about.

00:39:30.220 So I think that speaks volumes in itself that this new wave might be the right wave.

00:39:36.460 Just to keep people up to speed on this, we have 87 ridings in the province, 44 seats for a majority.

00:39:44.120 I've had a few questions from people I suspect are some of our non-Alberta viewers, which is fine.

00:39:48.620 We welcome you.

00:39:49.420 I'm a non-Alberta anchor, although my heart lies here and I keep wanting to stay here.

00:39:53.380 But the thing that I would point out is that people have asked why it's guaranteed to be a majority government.

00:39:58.120 So let's talk about why there are no other political parties in this province that are viable, which is a relatively new phenomenon.

00:40:04.040 I mean, I remember even last election, the Liberals, the Alberta Party, had a little bit of a thought that maybe they could be something.

00:40:10.900 Before then, they had a hefty amount of seats. Where have those parties gone?

00:40:14.960 I mean, I think that's such an interesting change in how elections happen in Alberta.

00:40:19.060 You go all the way back to 1993, that was Ralph Klein's first election when he became

00:40:23.760 premier of the PC party, and he was in a hotly contested election with the then-Alberta

00:40:29.060 Liberals.

00:40:30.020 And, well, you'll notice tonight that not only are the Alberta Liberals not going to

00:40:33.840 win any seats, they're not even running candidates in most ridings.

00:40:37.600 So they've gone from putting a scare into the PC government of 1993 to being no longer

00:40:43.960 a competitor.

00:40:44.820 Well, and they do, I mean, they're not competitive in Alberta generally, but the Liberals federally

00:40:48.340 have had seats here i mean it's but that has never translated in the last two cycles to any

00:40:53.480 provincial liberal anything well and if you you can even you only have to go back to 2015 and even

00:40:59.220 2014 where the democrats were still routinely only getting five or six percent of the vote in a lot

00:41:04.700 of parts of this this province if the change really happened in 2015 that was when the sea

00:41:10.800 changed and then from then you've seen the gradual consolidation both on the right and on the left

00:41:16.560 behind two large parties.

00:41:19.180 And, you know, Alberta, we're different than other parts of the country.

00:41:23.360 Our approach to problem-solving is often,

00:41:25.200 let's start a new political party.

00:41:26.720 That seems like the way we're ready to go.

00:41:28.420 But I think a lot of people have now said

00:41:30.120 it's just too difficult, too expensive, and too hard

00:41:33.500 to try and get a new party up and off the ground.

00:41:37.080 So in this case, you're going to see a lot of people just parking their votes,

00:41:40.160 even if they don't love the two main parties,

00:41:42.300 but we want those two main parties.

00:41:43.340 And the Alberta party, I mean, why is that not a thing anymore?

00:41:46.560 I mean in so much as it ever was

00:41:48.800 Well I think the Liberal Party is going to become

00:41:51.080 more of a thing actually if the NDP

00:41:53.000 do lose tonight I think we're going to see some interesting

00:41:55.060 movement on that front over the

00:41:57.140 next four years but I think

00:41:58.600 what it comes down to is what you're seeing

00:42:01.180 is a lot of these little uprising

00:42:02.800 candidates from other parties

00:42:04.680 there's a lot of negative campaigning

00:42:06.920 they're very much focused on the pandemic

00:42:08.680 they're very much focused on mandates and lockdowns

00:42:11.420 they're focused on vaccines

00:42:12.760 and honestly I think Albertans and Canadians

00:42:15.080 in general are just tired of it they don't want to talk about these things so i don't think the

00:42:18.520 content of what those candidates are talking about are resonating you see you even see how the ucp

00:42:23.800 you know they're talking about moving forward and rachel notley and the ndp they talk about moving

00:42:28.040 forward right we all need to move forward i think that's that's that's the bus that albertans are on

00:42:33.480 right now we don't want to go back to two years ago it was an awful time for everybody and yeah

00:42:38.280 yeah and i think we have to talk about the alternatives that have come up in the last

00:42:42.840 little few years, the Wild Rose Independence Party, the Alberta, the Pulaski Party, whatever

00:42:48.880 it's called. There was also the other Wild Rose Independence Party that, you know, started up by

00:42:53.780 Paul Hinman after he was ejected by the Wild Rose Independence. You've got three parties, which,

00:42:59.180 I mean, in Ontario, you had the same sort of dynamic in 2022. You had two parties that were

00:43:04.200 set up as protest parties that were not, they didn't make a dent electorally, but they had a

00:43:09.380 bit more staying power right now largely a lot of those spin-off right-wing parties seem to have

00:43:14.140 most of their people seem to be fine with danielle smith no i absolutely think you're right i mean

00:43:19.400 i have to make an alberta party joke i think it's obligatory which i have a very good new

00:43:23.800 new democrat friend and uh we were out someplace and we were talking about whatever the issue of

00:43:29.260 the day was and someone joked oh there's nothing that conservatives and new democrats agree on

00:43:33.640 and my friend said of course there is we both hate the alberta party so that's uh i think that

00:43:38.280 sums up a lot of people's feelings about about that but you're absolutely right that uh there

00:43:42.680 are a lot of other options i'm not sure how they're markedly different than a daniel smith-led

00:43:47.880 united conservative party uh and i think that's why they had such trouble trying to differentiate

00:43:53.320 themselves and get themselves up and going so uh and on the right what makes the liberal party

00:43:58.520 different than the green party different than the new democrat party under rachel montley i think

00:44:03.000 you have a hard time articulating those differences too yeah i think that's a fair point and i mean

00:44:07.720 I mean, a lot of the people that I met that were in the Alberta independence movement were big fans of Danielle Smith before she became the UCP leader.

00:44:14.120 And I think some of them might say, yeah, you know, we want to hold her to account.

00:44:16.980 But I think when push comes to shove and they're staring down Danielle Smith or Rachel Notley,

00:44:21.400 they're not going to do the Ken Boson cool thing of just staying home and not voting.

00:44:26.440 But there were even after the last leadership, I think some people that feared Danielle Smith would have a hard time mobilizing the UCP apparatus.

00:44:35.580 And she really didn't.

00:44:36.980 I mean, you know, even Rajan Sani, who was, I think, very much on a different wing of the field from Danielle Smith, you know, ended up running.

00:44:45.460 No, you make a really good point.

00:44:47.200 I do think, as Lindsay pointed out, appointing her opponents to high-profile cabinet positions was definitely a message that all types of Conservative are welcome in the united Conservative Party.

00:44:59.940 It's putting the word united back into that party name.

00:45:02.320 I think the real challenge for Daniel Smith is actually what happens after the election because holding on to the leadership of a conservative party in Alberta has become an increasingly challenging task.

00:45:15.560 As Jason Kenney could tell you.

00:45:17.020 As Jason Kenney can tell you, as Alison Redford can tell you, as Ed Stelmack can tell you, as Daniel Smith herself could tell you, this is not an easy job to keep this party together and going forward.

00:45:29.060 So I think she's going to have a lot of work ahead of her after this.

00:45:31.540 Even if she wins with a healthy margin, a healthy seat majority,

00:45:36.320 she will still have challenges in keeping this party united together behind her.

00:45:40.140 Do you see that? Do you see there as being a unity challenge?

00:45:42.440 Because usually victory is the antidote to disunity.

00:45:45.760 But do you see William Theory as holding?

00:45:48.400 Yeah, I see that. I think she does have a heck of a challenge on her hands.

00:45:51.660 I really do. I still see it.

00:45:53.500 I still see some of the more political operatives,

00:45:55.720 more of the behind-the-scenes people.

00:45:56.880 They just can't accept Daniel Smith.

00:45:59.480 and I don't know what that's about

00:46:02.480 I don't know, I mean we know this is politics

00:46:04.840 there's a lot of ego involved

00:46:06.220 there's a lot of history that people have

00:46:08.160 let's not forget Danielle Smith has been around

00:46:10.180 for a really long time right

00:46:11.720 she's been on the Alberta scene her whole life

00:46:13.460 so you know there's going to be

00:46:15.840 things that come up from your past

00:46:17.400 things from when she was a radio talk show host

00:46:19.400 you know different things like that

00:46:20.600 and there still is that kind of

00:46:22.740 I mean is it a united conservative party

00:46:24.580 some people still wonder that right

00:46:25.800 there are still the Wild Rosers

00:46:26.980 there's still the Peace Seers

00:46:28.000 I don't know. Let's hope everybody can just work together because I know this from talking to Alberta Proud people.

00:46:33.480 People are done with everybody being disenfranchised and with the infighting, it's really messy.

00:46:38.440 It's really ugly. It's not a good look for Conservatives.

00:46:42.080 And so we really actually do need to get united moving forward.

00:46:45.440 I don't want you to get too excited. We do have some results for you.

00:46:49.320 I'm going to be very careful about how I read this to you.

00:46:51.800 The UCP is leading in two ridings with 67% of the vote overall, with 67 votes cast.

00:47:00.300 So not the decisive majority territory necessarily, but we do have the Alberta Advantage.

00:47:06.080 The Advantage Party of Alberta has gotten one vote of those 67, so they can be on track.

00:47:10.720 Oh wait, something's happening here. I hear the cheering.

00:47:14.180 All right, Dan Williams is winning his riding with 12 votes, so good for Dan Williams.

00:47:19.160 It's all uphill for here.

00:47:20.880 But obviously, at this point in the night, we're not expecting to have anything too decisive.

00:47:24.760 You know, a lot of the map is already done.

00:47:26.540 Do we know really how many ridings are really in play here?

00:47:31.500 Well, from my understanding...

00:47:32.260 You don't need to give an exact number, just a ballpark.

00:47:34.620 Are we talking about...

00:47:35.380 Fifteen.

00:47:35.680 Fifteen, okay.

00:47:36.120 And about 14 of those, I think, would have to totally flip, which statistically, I don't know if it's really possible.

00:47:42.300 Anything can happen, and goodness knows that holsters have been very wrong in Alberta in the last eight years.

00:47:47.800 but that's my understanding yeah I mean you're looking at a pretty sizable chunk of Calgary

00:47:54.160 where the war is happening over who's going to control and a handful of ridings in different

00:47:59.420 parts of the province maybe one of the two Lethbridge seats maybe Banff Kananaskis maybe

00:48:05.520 Strathcona Short Park but really you're really looking at Calgary I have to be all due respect

00:48:11.460 to Dan Williams, if the UCP were not leading

00:48:14.940 in Peace River, this would be a very bad night for them.

00:48:17.980 Dan Williams is, I believe, the one who chugged the beer

00:48:20.600 in the legislature. I don't even know what he was celebrating, but he was

00:48:23.700 celebrating something. What was he celebrating, actually? I'm just going to go

00:48:26.720 and say, generically, freedom. Okay. What a way to win

00:48:29.840 rural Alberta. Well, Dan, you know what? The beer stunt won him Peace River,

00:48:33.100 so good for you, Dan. If you had teetotalers

00:48:35.940 in your riding, they didn't revolt against you, at least with the first 20 votes in.

00:48:38.760 And so let's talk a little bit of, you know, the dynamic here,

00:48:43.660 because obviously the UCP is coming in strong on this.

00:48:47.480 They have only one way to go, and that's essentially down.

00:48:49.760 There's not a single NDP-held riding I'm seeing that the UCP is on track to even maybe pick up.

00:48:55.920 But at the same point, to what you were saying, Lindsay,

00:48:58.280 a lot has to really go right for the NDP tonight to win.

00:49:02.560 They have to, they can't miss.

00:49:04.780 Yeah, and if you looked at some of Daniel Smith's social media feed over the last couple weeks,

00:49:08.300 she's filling rooms in areas that maybe didn't think she would be filling rooms like she's

00:49:12.420 filling rooms in calgary so i don't think i don't see how it's possible at this point but

00:49:17.580 it's an election anything can happen no i mean i i would say although we've had a lot of fun

00:49:24.260 on social media about how many people can fit in a room uh you got claims that that a thousand

00:49:30.580 people in a room that has a published seat count or room count that's only old 400 so you have to

00:49:37.240 take all of it with a grain of salt. That being said, Daniel Smith does have an uphill battle to

00:49:40.960 try and take new seats. The USDP did really well in the last election. They won a huge number of

00:49:47.680 seats. It was always going to be very hard for them to pick up new ones. I think they're kind

00:49:52.260 of at their high watermark right now. Yeah, and I think that we should talk a little bit about,

00:49:58.600 and we'll probably get to this later on in the evening, we should talk a little bit about

00:50:01.660 the Calgary campaign dynamic. Because I know for a lot of candidates, like Daniel Smith was there

00:50:06.700 standing side by side with them at all of these campaign stops because as we were talking about

00:50:10.560 she really didn't leave the city of Calgary as much as you might in a normal campaign and I

00:50:15.200 think to compare it to the last federal election you know a lot of people were frustrated there

00:50:18.840 and Erin O'Toole was just camped out in Ottawa in this case it wasn't for you know any reasons

00:50:23.060 except for this was the battleground this is where Danielle Smith needed to win so the UCP

00:50:29.060 is leading in Calgary Buffalo now again I don't know how many votes are in but explain this is

00:50:34.680 tougher riding for the ucp that's a very tough writing for the ucp i'm just passing on what

00:50:39.240 one of my colleagues said maybe it's like three votes to two or something i should say i live in

00:50:42.840 calgary buffalo and uh well i would love nothing more than to see it go conservative blue in this

00:50:49.480 election hey hold up hold up they're leaning one to zero so our colleague let us astray on this one

00:50:55.720 i was about to say i have a hard time seeing the ndp's joe cc being defeated all right buffalo

00:51:02.200 I think he's probably safe there.

00:51:03.920 Well, you know what?

00:51:04.600 If that one vote was the one.

00:51:06.260 We're going to go over to Rachel Emanuel, who's standing by with Jason Leder here on the Alberta Election Night Results Show for True North.

00:51:13.560 Here's Rachel.

00:51:16.620 I'm here with Jason Leder, a Conservative strategist with Enterprise Canada.

00:51:20.800 Jason, you were just telling me that you were heavily involved in the debate prep.

00:51:24.240 We were just talking about how well that went over.

00:51:26.280 What did you do to make Danielle so well prepped?

00:51:28.180 we know she's already a really well-spoken and well-rehearsed because she spent so much time on

00:51:32.100 the radio but she really did exactly what she needed to do during that debate by not getting

00:51:36.360 off message and staying really positive so maybe you can explain a little bit to our audience what

00:51:40.140 that debate prep looks like yeah it's it's it's fun you know like it's um it's it's a weird process

00:51:44.620 you go through two or three days of this where you sort of bat around ideas on what's the best

00:51:48.280 way but the big thing is to get the big question right and we wanted to do three things in the

00:51:52.100 debate we want to talk about the economy we want to talk about rachel um not least sort of threatened

00:51:56.100 38 tax hike and we want to talk about a record and we wanted to do it in a way that was like

00:52:00.340 really friendly right we expected rachel notley to be quite frankly not be able to hide her to

00:52:05.220 sustain her for for me and we try to use that against her so we try to be the friendliest

00:52:09.220 candidate the most prepared candidate and quite frankly the most optimistic and positive candidate

00:52:13.140 as well and when we talk about you know your work to discuss jobs in the economy ucp insiders i've

00:52:18.260 spoken to have said they were really hoping that that would be the ballot box question of the

00:52:22.100 election do you agree was jobs in the economy the ballot box question of this election or was

00:52:26.020 it more about trust in a leader I think it was first of all it was both there

00:52:29.960 was two things that the NDP really wanted to do the trust and leader I

00:52:32.260 think that was a bit of a mistake by the way they didn't count on us being able

00:52:34.840 to claw that back to sort of a 50-50 proposition on the two women and on the

00:52:39.220 economy I mean that we were sort of one that that side of the campaign for sure

00:52:43.480 and the NDP gas increase that they promised in the middle of the campaign

00:52:47.440 I think was a big mistake I think it allowed us to focus right back on the

00:52:51.220 economy where we wanted to be and it provided a real-world risk to people you

00:52:54.640 You know, if you're going to voting and you're thinking, well, you know, is the oil sands going to be okay?

00:52:57.980 Is the economy in Calgary going to be okay?

00:52:59.240 Is the economy in Edmonton going to be okay?

00:53:00.600 It gave you something to focus on, which was this threatened tax hike, which has real impacts on real people.

00:53:05.140 Yeah, that tax hike was surprising.

00:53:06.960 The NDP really ran as moderates during that, during this campaign.

00:53:10.120 Except for that tax hike, I think everyone was like, oh, yes, this is what an NDP government means.

00:53:14.020 So certainly it was a good opportunity for people to sort of hone in.

00:53:17.760 When we talk about a defying moment of the election campaign, one thing I heard from a lot of conservatives is,

00:53:22.820 isn't like he's doing very much people i spoke to said they were trying not to over promise

00:53:28.140 do you think that this was actually a benefit for the campaign that they didn't have too many

00:53:32.260 announcements or do you think that maybe they could have done a little bit more i don't think

00:53:35.500 it needed more announcements election campaigns have really changed they're about values and

00:53:39.340 they're about big picture directional stuff and the question is like you know if we would have

00:53:43.000 done another announcement on you know skills training or whatever it is like you know all

00:53:46.340 the various things that you can do the baubles that you can promise to people i don't think it

00:53:49.900 really punches through anymore and i think people only hear the biggest possible things and what we

00:53:53.880 wanted them to hear over the last couple remember what it was like to have rachel notley as premier

00:53:57.840 that wasn't so hot and if you want to keep this economy going you should probably vote ucp and

00:54:02.400 danielle smith that's all we really wanted them to hear over the last few weeks and i think we

00:54:05.940 felt we feel pretty good about getting that message out okay just my last question for you here we

00:54:09.960 have a few polls reporting what is your election prediction for tonight what do you think the seat

00:54:15.320 count is going to be you have to give me an exact answer none of this copping out about how the

00:54:19.140 campaign was strong plus or minus 50 i think is probably a reasonable uh you know that's what

00:54:23.660 we're hoping for obviously i mean it's gonna be a close election we're hoping we're hoping to sort

00:54:28.180 of get somewhere near that 50 mark for sure that would be a real nice night for us absolutely well

00:54:32.640 some polls are now reporting so we're gonna go to them now and get a little bit of tape again that

00:54:36.480 was jason leader a conservative strategist with enterprise canada thanks so much for your time

00:54:40.600 today yeah all right back to you guys over

00:54:42.760 well thank you for that rachel as you can hear a little bit of excitement now i don't want to be

00:54:52.320 the wet blanket but it's important to put in context here we have very very small numbers

00:54:57.300 of votes in right now 178 votes cast province wide now of those the ucp is leading in riding

00:55:05.760 is leading in zero riding so uh still i get why everyone early in the night wants to uh

00:55:12.560 have a bit of a celebration here uh the one thing i will say i love about provincial elections is

00:55:16.640 you don't play the time zone game like you do in federal elections where you just like you know

00:55:20.400 just this wave of red and then a wave of blue so uh at this point though i mean the rural we know

00:55:26.400 it's going to go where it's going to go edmonton a couple of question marks um are you from even the

00:55:32.080 early sort of feedback you're seeing here re-evaluating your predictions at all because

00:55:37.240 i haven't gotten you guys to get the numbers yet you're going to lock in your numbers now how many

00:55:41.000 seats you think the ucp and the ndp are going to get okay i've switched okay i think 51 for ucp okay

00:55:48.900 uh i said 50 to 37 okay for the ucp okay does that math add up 50 to 37 yeah okay there you go

00:55:59.620 I thought you said 51.

00:56:00.880 No, that was 51.

00:56:01.900 No, 51 to 21.

00:56:03.360 So I was the pessimist because I said 48, and you did, or you went up.

00:56:07.340 I did, no, I've gone up.

00:56:09.000 So Dan Williams getting Peace River has, like, just given you a bout of confidence.

00:56:12.820 I heard a little bit of booing.

00:56:18.080 I couldn't tell who was booing,

00:56:19.420 but I noticed that Astrid in Calgary Buffalo is still holding her 1-0 lead,

00:56:23.900 so we'll see how things go there.

00:56:26.960 We are live here.

00:56:28.380 This is True North.

00:56:28.980 I'm Andrew Lawton, joined by Alberta proud Lindsay Wilson and True North's very own William Macbeth.

00:56:33.880 We also have Rachel Emanuel standing by, talking to all sorts of very important and influential people in the wings,

00:56:39.620 and we're going to throw to that as the evening progresses.

00:56:42.520 But let's first go to a discussion that Rachel had with a number of people outside the polling stations in Alberta earlier today.

00:56:51.840 She was around Calgary, getting a sense of how people are voting, what they're thinking.

00:56:55.840 Let's roll that clip now.

00:56:58.980 Hey guys, it's Rachel Emanuel with True North. I'm here in Calgary, Acadia. That's Tyler Shandro's

00:57:06.120 rioting. He was the Justice Minister under former Premier Jason Kenney and under Danielle Smith.

00:57:11.280 This is a toss-up rioting. We're not sure which way it's going to go tonight. So I'm out here

00:57:15.520 talking to some voters to see which way they voted today and what they think is going to happen

00:57:20.140 later this evening. Stay tuned. So I'm here with Al. What did you think of the election campaign?

00:57:25.940 This is the 10th one I've seen. It's pretty much like all the previous ones.

00:57:31.060 Are you comfortable sharing with us who you decided to vote for today?

00:57:34.660 Yeah, I went with the NDP.

00:57:36.820 Was there a deciding issue that caused you to vote for the NDP or are you just more left-leaning typically?

00:57:42.820 Not left-leaning typically. It's just the UCP candidate. I really dislike him, this Chandra guy.

00:57:50.420 So you dislike Tyler Chandra. What do you think about Danielle Smith?

00:57:54.340 Do you think that she's crazy, sort of as the media and maybe the NDP had portrayed her,

00:57:59.140 or you're just indifferent to her?

00:58:01.660 No, I think she's a very controversial figure.

00:58:05.160 You know, all the past things that she said and she's denying now,

00:58:08.580 saying I'm a different person.

00:58:10.820 I don't quite believe that.

00:58:12.100 So what did you think of the election campaign?

00:58:14.460 Did you think that the parties had a strong showing?

00:58:18.300 Yes, you know, the main two, right?

00:58:20.500 You don't hear much of the others, so it's going to be close.

00:58:24.340 Are you comfortable telling us who you voted for today?

00:58:27.040 It was United Conservative Party.

00:58:30.080 You voted for Tyler Shandro. And what sold your vote on him?

00:58:32.880 My parents have always been, you know, Conservative Party, so I'm holding that line.

00:58:39.660 So this is a toss-up riding. It's going to be super close in this riding especially.

00:58:43.780 How likely do you think it is that Shandro's going to pull out a win today?

00:58:46.440 It's going to be really close, but I think they'll barely make it.

00:58:51.380 So I'm here with Janice. Janice, what did you think of the election campaign?

00:58:56.640 Well, it was kind of depressing.

00:58:59.280 What made it depressing?

00:59:01.800 It was just sort of all about personalities and not about issues.

00:59:07.580 And sort of a popularity contest.

00:59:11.500 So, yeah, just that's about all I have to say about it.

00:59:16.880 Are you comfortable sharing with us who you decided to cast your ballot for today?

00:59:20.900 Not really.

00:59:22.220 Do you have any predictions about who's going to win the election tonight?

00:59:25.340 No, I think it's very close.

00:59:27.840 So I'm here with Casey's. Casey's, what did you think of the election campaign?

00:59:31.920 Was there one party that you were sold on?

00:59:34.920 Nope. The election campaign this year was, I felt, very targeted towards who's saying what and who's not doing what they said.

00:59:43.120 And I honestly would prefer to hear a lot more about the other parties and what they're doing and how everyone can work collectively in order to support the humans that are outside of the government, because that's important.

00:59:59.780 Casey, are you comfortable sharing with us who you decided to cast your vote for today?

01:00:03.400 Definitely not NDP.

01:00:05.520 Okay, so I'm here with Trish. Trish, what did you think about the election campaign?

01:00:09.780 Did you think that it was interesting, exciting? Did it catch your attention?

01:00:14.300 It did catch my attention. It did have some interesting issues and yeah, but I knew I was

01:00:22.680 going to vote for right from the get-go, so I wasn't swayed either way. And what were some of

01:00:27.700 the important issues that you think were discussed during the election campaign?

01:00:31.920 Definitely health care and sovereignty and education. Now those are definitely big ones

01:00:38.900 during the campaign. Are you comfortable sharing with us who you decided to cast your ballot for

01:00:42.540 today? Sure, NDP. And what did you think about Danielle Smith as a leader of the United

01:00:48.120 Conservative Party? Obviously, there was a lot of attacks against her character. Did you think

01:00:51.720 that those attacks were credible? Were you concerned about, you know, another tenure with

01:00:55.820 Smith as the Premier? Well, they appeared. They appeared to lead me to think that she's

01:01:02.660 untrustworthy, but I don't know. I don't know. We'll see what, if she becomes Premier, we'll see

01:01:06.940 what happens. So I'm here with Grant. Grant, what did you think of the election campaign?

01:01:12.480 Well, dirty was the beginning to the end. We'll see what happens now that we voted. But overall,

01:01:21.300 I wasn't impressed with how the mudslinging started because basically if we can't talk

01:01:26.960 two sides and just talk cleanly and plainly, then what's the use?

01:01:31.800 Do you mind sharing with us who you voted for today?

01:01:34.280 Sure. UPCs.

01:01:35.440 so this is a really close riding you've obviously cast your vote for Tyler

01:01:39.380 Shandro as I mentioned it's it's still toss up we're not sure which way it's

01:01:42.880 gonna go tonight what are your inclinations Oh not Lee wins I'm moving

01:01:47.260 back to Saskatchewan but this one well Tyler Shandro I think he's done well in

01:01:55.120 his post so far so it's one of those things where now when you take a look at

01:02:02.800 politics and how you can't really trust the information you're getting anymore because we

01:02:07.220 don't have a media source anymore other than maybe you guys but with the mainstream media the way

01:02:14.500 that they cover up things and they give only the message they want to give for us to get the

01:02:19.280 information unless you want to go and do a whole horde of public information requests and try to

01:02:25.900 go through that and figure things out none of us are really qualified so I'm just hoping that

01:02:31.860 the next four years whoever gets in power doesn't kill us hey guys it's rachel emmanuel with true

01:02:37.220 north i'm here in calgary acadia in calgary acadia which is tyler shandro's riding now

01:02:47.140 this was your one to watch so uh you are the coo so i don't know if you were the one that made

01:02:50.740 rachel do her exit polls there and that's why you're watching it so closely but why is that

01:02:55.460 riding a relevant one for people just tuning in now uh i mean i think it was absolutely one that

01:03:00.020 the new democrats thought they would be competitive in uh their incumbent mla uh has had a bit of a

01:03:06.500 bumpy time on some issues uh you know he was obviously minister of health uh for the beginning

01:03:10.980 part of the covet 19 pandemic and so i i would say that was definitely one where the new democrats

01:03:18.100 thought he would be vulnerable and it's also in the part of that belt of riding where the

01:03:23.620 new democrats have to start winning if they're going to win this election in in the all the

01:03:27.940 the things that need to go right for them, that's right in that wheelhouse, Lindsay.

01:03:31.300 Yeah, I would agree with that. So, interesting to see that, for sure.

01:03:35.660 Yeah, and Tyler Chandro, I mean, he was like a very prominent cabinet minister in the Kenney government.

01:03:41.300 He was ultimately the fall guy on the health file, but then was given a boost back up by Danielle.

01:03:47.080 So, quite an endorsement for someone that she probably doesn't see eye to eye on, on some of the key issues, at least.

01:03:52.240 Well, and of course, Tyler Shandro, as Minister of Justice, is the purported recipient of

01:03:58.740 the unfair influence that the Premier may or may not have exerted over deferring or

01:04:06.180 rejecting COVID-related prosecutions.

01:04:08.840 All of that being said, I feel that the relationship between the Premier and Tyler, I think, is

01:04:15.480 quite good.

01:04:16.480 saw Stephen Harper endorse Tyler Sandro in the final days of this campaign, which I think

01:04:23.600 is a powerful message of support for both Tyler and the United Conservative Party as

01:04:30.380 a whole.

01:04:31.020 Yeah, let's talk a little bit about Stephen Harper's endorsement, because he gave one

01:04:34.580 earlier on that seemed a little bit lukewarm and generic, and then he gave a much stronger

01:04:39.460 one this week.

01:04:40.440 And then I was scrolling through Instagram yesterday, and I saw him out there doing personalized

01:04:44.660 endorsements of individual candidates.

01:04:46.840 I saw him with Rebecca Schultz

01:04:48.620 and other Calgary candidates. And Stephen Harper

01:04:50.460 is a guy who has not really

01:04:52.460 waded into a lot of

01:04:54.720 political fights since he left

01:04:56.620 office. So what do you take from that?

01:04:58.280 I think how people

01:05:00.780 should read into that, as well,

01:05:02.420 Pierre Polyeva came out this week with his official endorsement

01:05:04.840 of Premier Smith as well, but I think

01:05:06.460 the best way for people to read into that is that

01:05:08.920 Stephen Harper

01:05:10.280 is trying to send a message

01:05:12.800 to Albertans that this is a really important election you've got two very very different

01:05:16.960 governments and I think the message that comes with Stephen Harper's endorsement is if you care

01:05:21.620 about Alberta and you care about standing up for Alberta I believe that we need to give the UCP

01:05:26.320 four more years this is the only way that we can really take down Justin Trudeau and

01:05:31.600 and we need to move in this direction so I think that's that's the powerful message with that

01:05:36.240 we have a few more results for you here we've got more than the 67 votes we had earlier

01:05:41.540 right now the total vote count that we have courtesy of elections alberta is 2500 votes

01:05:49.800 cast that's province wide of those five people declined their ballot which is like a very wonky

01:05:54.980 political thing that if we really get bored later we'll explain to you and of these we have the

01:05:59.980 ucp leading in 17 and ndp leading in four when we come back in a couple of moments we'll do the

01:06:05.100 breakdown of which of those are which but right now rachel emmanuel is staying with brad

01:06:10.560 i'm here with brad tenet he is a senior campaign strategist with wellington advocacy brad you have

01:06:21.040 been poking fun at the mainstream media online because they seem so eager to report that all

01:06:25.920 these lifetime conservatives are quote unquote lending their vote to the ndp for the first time

01:06:31.760 when we know in fact that's not the case tell me a little bit about what's going on here yeah i guess

01:06:36.720 more than anything you were seeing that the the there were these activists and former mlas that

01:06:41.600 were repeating the exact same thing they did four years ago when the ndp lost that election by trying

01:06:46.240 to pretend to be conservative switching to the ndp when really they were against the ucp ever

01:06:50.960 since it started sometimes satire can be fun in the hectic bit of a campaign so sort of poked fun

01:06:57.280 at that and uh said i would be a lifetime new democrat uh looking to vote for ucp the first

01:07:02.960 time so had some fun and and tell me did anyone actually decide to write about your your story

01:07:08.720 your transition now lending the vote to the ucp for the first time i think a couple caught the uh

01:07:13.840 joke of it and kind of saw the meltdown funny but no no i wasn't i wasn't reached out for any

01:07:18.960 exclusive stories so that's disappointing a missed opportunity to be sure and there once again we see

01:07:24.240 the incredible bias of the legacy media so one of the other really interesting things that you've

01:07:29.360 been working on during this campaign is the get out the boat in calgary acadia we've discussed

01:07:34.560 tonight how that is a riding to watch that is tyler chandro's riding tell me a little bit about

01:07:39.120 what you're expecting to see in that riding tonight yeah riding to watch uh really important

01:07:43.120 riding i think one that's going to be close and one with the great incumbents so uh we were

01:07:47.840 giving her all their knocking doors would like to apologize to anybody in calgary acadia we

01:07:51.840 annoyed a little bit too much but trying to get out of the boat we can i think it's going to be

01:07:56.160 close but i think uh it's looking good for us you know we saw improvement over the last few weeks

01:08:01.600 we saw danielle's debate performance really reflect well and we saw the candidate meeting

01:08:05.520 a lot of people which which worked out really well for us so it's exciting we're to see where

01:08:09.840 it goes but pretty excited with where we're at as of tonight sure and when we talk about danielle's

01:08:14.400 debate performance that's something we've talked about a lot on this show tonight a lot on my

01:08:17.920 podcast throughout the weeks and a lot of people have said that was really a turning point in the

01:08:22.000 the campaign did you notice that at the doors after the debate maybe the doors warmed a little

01:08:25.960 bit when people you know heard her name they had a more positive impression of her following her

01:08:29.980 quite excellent debate performance yeah absolutely i think i think at the start of this the ndp

01:08:34.540 really doubled and tripled down on negative attack ads they were running and special interest groups

01:08:39.180 were running millions of dollars worth of attack ads attacking danielle um and it was really all

01:08:43.640 the ndp had out of the gate was launch volleys of attacks against danielle that led to the debate

01:08:48.460 where Rachel Notley had to make her case, and I think she failed at that,

01:08:51.300 and I think Danielle made hers just fine.

01:08:53.420 So after that, I think the NDP negativity kind of waned off,

01:08:58.020 and at the same time, people had an open eye to conservative ideas

01:09:02.360 and saw policy and saw a platform they liked.

01:09:05.040 So, you know, I think that was a bit of the catalyst for the turning point,

01:09:08.080 but I think a lot built into it.

01:09:11.900 Sure, and just my last question for you here before we head back to the panel,

01:09:14.820 I have to ask everyone this.

01:09:16.240 What is your estimated C count?

01:09:18.020 Where do you think we're going to end up tonight?

01:09:19.640 Oh, man.

01:09:20.720 87 UCP, zero NDP.

01:09:22.680 Oh, wow.

01:09:23.060 Very positive.

01:09:23.800 And I absolutely believe that to be the case.

01:09:25.680 All right.

01:09:25.980 Thank you so much, Brad.

01:09:27.100 Yeah.

01:09:27.540 All right.

01:09:27.940 Back to you, Andrew.

01:09:32.420 This party needs to start appealing to younger voters.

01:09:34.640 Sorry.

01:09:35.060 We just about had a lasagna tray cameo there walking in front of Rachel Emanuel and Brad

01:09:40.160 Tennant.

01:09:40.420 So if you were tuning in for the lasagna tray guy, we successfully chased him away.

01:09:44.380 So he'll be in for our next update in a little while.

01:09:47.960 Thank you very much for that, Rachel, and thank you, Brad Tennant.

01:09:51.660 We are just giving you the latest numbers here on the True North Alberta Election Night Show.

01:09:56.560 7,646 votes cast.

01:09:59.320 Of those, we have the UCP leading in 34 and the NDP leading in 12.

01:10:05.320 Now, I've just basically on my maps have zoomed in on Calgary

01:10:09.080 because that's really the only area that really matters

01:10:12.880 with the exception of a couple of outlying seats that we're looking at.

01:10:15.500 But of the seats in Calgary from which there are numbers available,

01:10:19.620 we're talking about small numbers,

01:10:21.160 but the UCP is in the lead in every single one of them.

01:10:23.400 And again, I cannot stress enough,

01:10:24.960 do not go to bed now saying like Andrew Lawton told you Calgary was winning,

01:10:28.120 like the people that were against Brexit that went to bed thinking they had won.

01:10:31.560 It's not that, I'm just saying that of the ones that are in,

01:10:34.200 the NDP are not faring as well so far.

01:10:36.600 And even up in Edmonton, the UCP are in the lead in a couple here.

01:10:40.720 But let's discuss why Calgary is the battleground,

01:10:46.020 because this is a city that has been through a lot in the last few years.

01:10:49.940 We know, I mean, True North did a documentary about Calgary and crisis.

01:10:53.300 And even when you walk around now, downtown come back a little bit,

01:10:56.720 but it's still not like the Calgary of its glory days.

01:10:59.900 So what is the profile of Calgary now, electorally and just demographically?

01:11:05.460 Well, I think that what you're seeing is if the UCP is starting to show early success tonight,

01:11:09.940 in some of these Calgary battlegrounds.

01:11:12.180 I think what you're seeing is that you've seen a switch in voters

01:11:14.660 where they're starting to care more about the opiate crisis,

01:11:18.620 about crime and public safety.

01:11:20.160 I think that has become, I was talking about that about a month ago,

01:11:22.940 I said that's going to become really pertinent these last couple weeks

01:11:25.740 as we head into election day.

01:11:28.860 And I think you're starting to see that people,

01:11:31.020 they don't like the direction that Calgary's moving in,

01:11:33.160 they don't like all the violent crime,

01:11:34.280 and same with Edmonton, of course.

01:11:36.420 We have homeless encampments, our streets aren't safe,

01:11:39.640 our public transit isn't safe our offices are getting shot and killed that's not okay

01:11:44.120 and i think i think we're starting to see a bit of a momentum and if we're seeing these

01:11:49.000 some of these swing riding shift that way i think that that has that is winning over

01:11:53.960 any of the ndp's messaging on health care because it fact is you guys at the end of the day daniel

01:11:59.960 smith made some really big changes with ahs and the ahs's own data is showing that red alerts are

01:12:07.480 are pretty much no longer. EMS wait times are less, surgery backlog is getting alleviated.

01:12:14.440 That's a lot of positive change in six short months and maybe people are thinking well maybe

01:12:19.080 maybe the UCP is the party to do more on the health care file. Maybe there's, I think that's

01:12:25.640 enough for grabs. Yeah we have a few more numbers in here. The NDP leading in a couple of the downtown

01:12:31.800 calgary ridings uh downtown ish you know calgary climb calgary mountain view uh calgary buffalo

01:12:37.960 as well and just heading up to edmonton here uh we have in this riding a lead i don't believe

01:12:44.200 is real so i'm not even going to read that one uh but we do have in strathcona sherwood park the ndp

01:12:49.720 are uh leading right now uh we have in a lot of the edmonton ridings no surprise there

01:12:54.920 um in edmonton southwest nothing in yet and that was the one i picked on my list

01:12:59.320 watch, which was Casey Maddew. So right now the total standing is 42 to 22, and the race is to 44.

01:13:08.920 So we're getting close if these things hold.

01:13:11.580 No, you're absolutely right. I mean, well, obviously, results can and will change as more polls start reporting.

01:13:18.560 And particularly, you know, if one party is doing better, say, in the advanced polls than another,

01:13:25.000 then that could really make a big difference when those polls report.

01:13:28.740 So, all of that being said, you definitely want to be the party that's leading in more seats than fewer.

01:13:35.600 And the fact that they're doing that well in Calgary, I'm sure, is very encouraging to the United Conservative Party.

01:13:41.360 I'm sure, you know, wherever the Premier and her core team are, hold up in some secure room watching these just as we are.

01:13:49.220 They will be cheering to see the fact that they're leading in so many Calgary ridings.

01:13:52.880 because, you know, not to rain on the parade of my dear Edmonton family and friends

01:13:58.240 or even the rest of the province, this was an election above Calgary,

01:14:01.740 and therefore that's why we're watching this city so closely.

01:14:05.000 Yeah. Do you see there as being a popular vote issue this election

01:14:08.680 where the popular vote could go one way and the election could go another way?

01:14:12.220 Because this is, at the federal level, this has become the story of the last two.

01:14:16.680 I don't think so. I can't imagine a case where that would happen here in Alberta.

01:14:22.020 I mean, technically, there are rural ridings of smaller numbers of voters in them than some of the city ones.

01:14:30.280 That being said, I don't think the discrepancy is so huge that it would ever result in a case where you would see the popular vote going to a party that didn't win the most seats.

01:14:39.180 I only ask because right now, of the votes that are in, which is, again, 9,900, not huge numbers here,

01:14:44.620 The NDP is leading in the popular vote, 5,000 to 4,500, but the UCP leading in seats, 42 to 22.

01:14:52.360 So I was just geeking out on scenarios there.

01:14:55.620 Let's go in a different direction with this, Lindsay, because obviously Alberta Proud has been connecting with people, I mean, for many years, not just for this campaign.

01:15:04.740 Have the issues changed in the last few years beyond COVID?

01:15:09.100 Have they changed or has it always really been about getting Ottawa off our backs, getting the oil out of the ground and these core Alberta issues?

01:15:17.460 Well, we're into, what, year eight of Justin Trudeau's government.

01:15:23.580 Albertans are frustrated.

01:15:24.720 I think they're feeling more and more isolated.

01:15:26.420 They feel like they don't have a voice.

01:15:28.060 They feel like, how does this guy keep getting in?

01:15:31.020 How does this keep happening?

01:15:32.480 So, unfortunately, through the pandemic, through more of this creation of, I don't know, I'd say U.S.-style politics,

01:15:37.600 more of an us versus them and more of the focus on the two parties right and less of

01:15:41.920 these other fledgling parties uh i think i think yeah i think i i i definitely think so yeah some

01:15:49.920 of our uh some of the people around here i think are seeing the 47 on the screen now and thinking

01:15:54.160 they've already won it's not that simple is it william no no exactly you know if you think about

01:15:58.720 the problems with two million people even more possibly voting in this election you you can't

01:16:03.840 really get that excited when you've only got 10 000 votes in that's you know and i'm the optimist

01:16:08.720 of the bunch but even i wouldn't be popping champagne parts quite yet i need a few more

01:16:13.200 results so let's talk a little bit about the theater of this all because we know that again

01:16:18.560 we're talking about two leaders that are within uh the likelihood of potentially winning tonight

01:16:23.280 one more likely than others danielle smith and and rachel notley danielle smith is of course

01:16:28.320 going to be speaking here one way or another tonight uh not going to make an appearance

01:16:32.160 until we know what's happening so how were you feeling in 2012 you and the leader and all the

01:16:39.000 other people on the team I mean I will definitely say that we had probably been lulled into a false

01:16:45.560 sense of security by how many positive polls we had in the first three weeks of the campaign

01:16:50.580 you know I think we felt that we were really on top of a sea change in Alberta and that we were

01:16:58.040 going to put an end to a dynastic government. And it was very exciting. Of course, as we

01:17:02.540 all know, the wheels started to come off the bus in the final week. And anybody who knows

01:17:08.180 the bus will get the reference. But, you know, when we were sitting in private, it was a

01:17:16.660 painful reality to realize that we weren't winning and we were going to form an opposition.

01:17:21.100 We were going to form a smaller opposition than we would have hoped for, 17 seats. And

01:17:26.520 And it is very difficult because, you know, you go in and you give it your best

01:17:31.480 and you really want the best to happen and you really are optimistic.

01:17:34.760 You think, you know, even if not every poll says it, in your heart you think,

01:17:38.900 oh, I think we've got this.

01:17:40.460 So it's a rude and harsh awakening when it turns out, no, you don't have it

01:17:44.480 and that Albertans have made a different choice.

01:17:46.600 Do you think, Lindsay, that the UCP has been running a fairly confident campaign this time?

01:17:50.800 Do you think they've taken an eventual win for granted?

01:17:53.960 I don't know if they've taken it for granted.

01:17:55.240 I think that they simplified their campaign.

01:17:57.460 So I think in this last month, since the rip was dropped,

01:17:59.800 they stopped talking about some of the more contentious things

01:18:02.000 like the Sovereignty Act, and they really focused on cutting taxes,

01:18:05.740 making life more affordable for Albertans,

01:18:08.880 and they just really went gung-ho with that.

01:18:11.540 And I think that that's probably what's working for them,

01:18:14.320 is not appealing so much to some of the more outlying issues

01:18:19.280 that are a little bit more divisive among Conservatives.

01:18:22.420 They just focused on making life more in Florida, standing up to just transition,

01:18:27.060 standing up for our energy sector, keeping taxes low,

01:18:31.040 putting more money back in the pockets of Alberta families.

01:18:33.480 And I think that that's the messaging that's worked for them.

01:18:36.000 You bring up the oil and gas sector.

01:18:37.480 We haven't talked about it a huge amount tonight.

01:18:39.260 I think it's a good opportunity now because the NDP has to masquerade

01:18:43.800 as this very pro-energy, pro-oil party.

01:18:47.040 But as we saw from, you know, Rachel Notley 1.0,

01:18:49.660 even if there are some people in that party that are a bit more sympathetic to the sector

01:18:54.020 you also have the you know radical environmentalist anti-oil kooks that you'd expect

01:18:58.840 in an NDP have they done a good job at sidelining those people this election I don't know there's

01:19:04.240 there's a lot of what I would define as very eco-radical candidates that are running on some

01:19:10.260 of these NDP tickets and you know they've come out on Twitter and I think the UCB war rooms

01:19:15.940 definitely put a lot of highlight around that a lot of like the defund the police rhetoric

01:19:19.700 and a lot of um you know we just had one of the candidates NDP candidates from Livingston

01:19:24.140 Kevin Van Tegam coming out you know quotes from his own book a couple of years ago saying oil

01:19:29.040 sucks and we're the suckers and comparing uh oil uh oil production to slavery I mean these are

01:19:35.160 really ludicrous claims these are very dangerous claims and when you have silence from the Notley

01:19:40.700 camp on uh just transition and for people just tuning in now if you're aware the just transition

01:19:45.840 is the plan under the Trudeau Liberals to essentially get rid of our oil and gas jobs

01:19:50.820 in favor of green energy jobs.

01:19:52.600 And when you're hearing silence on that, I think people realize that we need a thriving

01:19:56.160 energy sector.

01:19:57.440 We need to do it here.

01:19:58.520 We have the opportunity to provide the best, some of the cleanest oil and gas, and the

01:20:03.000 world's going to need more of what we have, not less.

01:20:05.040 So I think that that's starting to hit home with people.

01:20:07.880 You know, the oil and gas question is very interesting.

01:20:11.180 When Premier Notley became premier in 2015, it coincided with a very difficult time in the energy sector.

01:20:19.060 Energy prices were absolutely at some of their lowest levels.

01:20:25.540 Alberta faced really tough economic times.

01:20:29.260 I don't think you can hold Rachel Notley 100% responsible for all of that thing.

01:20:34.920 I do think her government made some serious mistakes.

01:20:38.080 I think they meddled in the electricity sector, and as a result, Albertans pay higher prices for power bills.

01:20:46.740 I think they scared away some investment.

01:20:49.400 People thought, I'm not sure Alberta is going to be a friendly place to do business,

01:20:53.400 and we don't know if we want to commit to a project that could take 15 or 20 years to see profitability

01:20:59.200 if we're going to end up with uncertainty.

01:21:01.900 So those are things that I think Premier Notley did have to take responsibility for.

01:21:05.720 And there's also a reason, as Lindsay pointed out, why you're seeing so much of Rachel, so little of every other New Democrat in this province.

01:21:16.040 And it's because Rachel Notley is the polished, professional, reasonable face of New Democrats.

01:21:22.320 You know, she's the one who can say, I supported getting a pipeline built to tidewater, the first pipeline in X number of years.

01:21:29.460 And she said, look, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Alberta's energy sector.

01:21:33.420 But you don't have to scratch the surface very far to find a lot of people who are not at all supportive of Alberta's energy sector.

01:21:40.220 Yeah, because those people don't really have another political home.

01:21:42.900 I mean, the only place they're going to find any potential welcoming home is the NDP.

01:21:48.360 So it's a party that has to keep the radicals very happy.

01:21:52.820 Yeah, absolutely.

01:21:54.200 I don't know.

01:21:54.680 It's very dangerous when you're seeing such extremism within a party.

01:21:57.900 It makes you wonder, do these people even like Alberta?

01:22:01.240 Do they even like us?

01:22:02.180 if you hate our energy sector so much and do you even like us yeah you may have to buy your own

01:22:08.360 health care if Alberta doesn't have the oil and gas revenue coming in if you're just tuning in

01:22:13.520 this is the true north live election night results show for Alberta the election has been a very I'd

01:22:19.960 say in some ways uneventful campaign but the polls closed 51 minutes ago we are slowly but surely

01:22:25.400 bringing you the results as they come in right now the ucp is leading 43 to 23 although the

01:22:33.000 caveat there that i have to keep telling you is that's with about 15 000 votes cast across a

01:22:38.120 province with 2.8 million registered voters so a drop in the bucket but still uh you hear the

01:22:43.880 cheers going up periodically behind us and interestingly enough i i'm going back again

01:22:49.480 to the Calgary breakdown specifically and in Calgary we have the NDP gaining in a lot of those

01:23:00.120 poor territories very narrow margins I mean one of them is the NDP leading in Calgary West with

01:23:05.340 one poll in which again I don't think we had the candidate there I think it's looking pretty good

01:23:11.280 for him Calgary Varsity we have the NDP leading Calgary Mountain View Calgary Acadia but these

01:23:16.400 again with one two polls reporting so uh the nail biting continues on this i we're sort of

01:23:22.540 joking about it but if you're a candidate or a campaign staffer this must be just anxiety

01:23:26.900 inducing it's a truly lousy time in your life i uh i mean i've worked on quite a number of campaigns

01:23:34.260 and uh you know well you are quite busy on election day itself there's a lot of work to do

01:23:39.140 we we do something called getting out the vote which is where we do everything we possibly can

01:23:43.560 get identified supporters up and out but once that's done once they you know the polls are

01:23:48.600 closed there is nothing else you can do except sit and wait for your scrutineers to start reporting

01:23:54.040 results and it's agony because you don't know if you're going to end the night as the new mla or

01:23:59.720 the re-elected mla for this riding or if you're now unemployed and have to go figure out what it

01:24:05.320 is you're going to do yeah starting next week i don't i'm going to try to improv here uh phil

01:24:10.040 there's a woman over there with a cut taxes sign if we can borrow that sign I

01:24:14.580 want to talk about this a little bit over there so there's a this was a

01:24:18.440 campaign that the UCP did as kind of a bit of a guerrilla campaign in response

01:24:23.360 to an attack that the NDP were doing where they were putting up all these

01:24:26.900 really weird billboards if you know like what is Danielle Smith going to do next

01:24:31.640 what is Danielle Smith going to do next and they were running this and it was

01:24:36.620 not even clear looking at the posters what exactly the point that they were trying to make was and

01:24:42.380 some very smart ucp stafford i don't know came from in the org chart here i decided to go around

01:24:50.060 and answer the questions and i saw someone holding up one of these signs uh the answer is danielle

01:24:56.300 smith will cut taxes uh that was one of them and this is like the exact same branding and fun that

01:25:03.900 was on the original attack side and it was the baby sign next to their big sign yeah hilarious

01:25:09.100 i thought this was just brilliant because it was a way to like turn an ad that was otherwise very

01:25:13.340 odd uh into a utp win oh i've stolen this for a long time i think i love the stormy moody background

01:25:22.620 that's my favorite part about anything in a campaign that is clever or funny or makes you

01:25:28.620 think and it proves one of the rules of politics by the way you never ask an open-ended question

01:25:33.660 because you don't want an answer like that to be answered.

01:25:36.700 What will she do next?

01:25:37.880 She'll cut taxes.

01:25:39.300 She'll fix health care.

01:25:40.960 She'll get our streets saved.

01:25:42.860 Those were not what I'm assuming the NDP were hoping people would answer that question with,

01:25:47.220 but I thought it was a great little tactic.

01:25:48.740 It definitely made me smile when I saw them on the reds.

01:25:50.860 I saw a very strange ad.

01:25:53.600 I've been in Calgary for the last few days, kind of just seeing the lay of the land here,

01:25:57.620 and there was this one sign.

01:25:59.400 I can't even remember what was on it, which is always good for an ad,

01:26:01.500 But I remember being so utterly confused at who it was an ad for and it ended up being an NDP ad

01:26:06.260 But I but it was just not clear. So the NDP have not really been

01:26:11.260 Certainly on the ad game. I think they've been losing. I think so too

01:26:14.840 I think I think that you know, they built any piece and really brilliant about building their marketing around

01:26:19.560 Rachel even their sides team Rachel Notley not team NDP not NDP candidate, but you know, that's in smaller writing, right? Team Rachel Notley

01:26:27.280 But yeah, I think the UCP, and really I usually give it up to the left when it comes to more of their marketing campaigns because I think they're telling stories from the heart.

01:26:37.520 I think conservatives, historically, we bore people by talking about taxes instead of talking about it in a real way to people like, hey, mum with the minivan.

01:26:45.980 Actually, what this means is it's going to cost you $15 more to fill up your minivan every time.

01:26:49.980 That's what a carbon tax means.

01:26:51.640 But instead, we tell it in such a boring way as conservatives, like, well, it's going to cost an average blah, blah, blah.

01:26:56.700 and people's eyes glaze over.

01:26:58.260 And so I usually give it to the left.

01:26:59.660 But the UCP, you know, they kind of took the gloves off a bit

01:27:02.620 and they were pretty funny and punchy with a lot of their marketing

01:27:05.540 and a lot of their ones showing the extremism of the NDB candidates.

01:27:08.580 That really stuck with me and a lot of people I know.

01:27:11.380 And I think we have to remember that the UCP campaign got off to a bumpy

01:27:15.200 and then almost high-tech start because, of course,

01:27:18.620 Alberta was facing a massive natural disaster in the first week of an election.

01:27:23.100 And, you know, most people or some people may not know that despite there being an election, the premier is still the premier until a new premier is appointed.

01:27:32.560 So Daniel Smith still had to crisis manage.

01:27:34.940 And I'm sure that threw a wrench into campaign planning for the United Conservative Party.

01:27:40.260 In my opinion, it was the debate where things started to pivot.

01:27:44.480 And I think the UCP really got their mojo back after that debate.

01:27:48.960 Yeah, this probably shouldn't come as a shock to people.

01:27:51.640 Well, Danielle Smith is leading in Brooks Medicine Hat, which is the riding that she decided to run in after Michaela Pry, who was formerly Michaela Glasgow, stepped down and I believe is now working for the UCB.

01:28:04.760 I ran into her a couple of weeks ago.

01:28:07.980 There was some criticism of Danielle Smith for not running in a Calgary riding.

01:28:11.840 People sort of thought she should have been bold and gone for one of these ridings that, you know, the UCB may or may not have won.

01:28:17.060 What's your view on that?

01:28:18.060 Because she wasn't from Brooks or Medicine Hat.

01:28:20.380 She was from High River.

01:28:21.640 i would say uh the people who make those suggestions clearly haven't really done a lot

01:28:26.280 of campaigning because the last thing you want to do is have your leader running in a tough to win

01:28:30.840 scene you don't want to be worried about what's happening in the leaders riding because you want

01:28:35.160 the leader out you want her in target parts of the winning over you don't want her having a

01:28:40.520 pound doors in her home riding in a desperate bid we'll just ask john tory in ontario who lost

01:28:45.400 his own right so uh i absolutely you know that's why she didn't run in calgary elbow which was

01:28:50.920 always going to be a really hard fight for her to win she made the sensible choice of running and

01:28:55.720 arriving that the ucp were almost guaranteed to keep in their call yeah and i think that i mean

01:29:01.000 almost guaranteed i think it's also a bit liberal with it but you know strange things have happened

01:29:04.600 but to her credit she still did campaign in that riding i someone told me and i didn't see these

01:29:08.760 but she did two of the local candidates debates there she did launch her campaign there so she

01:29:13.880 has maintained the connection to that and i think danielle said it was pretty clear earlier on

01:29:18.200 when she ran in that writing but she wanted to tell rural albertans that she was still going to

01:29:22.600 represent it wouldn't it it's not an altogether unwelcome message for rural albertans it certainly

01:29:27.960 isn't as a rural albertan as you guys know i live in cochrane it's uh we would we need to know if

01:29:33.320 there is a definitely an urban rural divide in this province i think that's probably the same

01:29:37.960 is probably true in ontario or in other provinces as well but we definitely want to be a premier

01:29:42.840 that's going to represent our voices in rural alberta absolutely well we are going to have

01:29:47.000 lots more results in just a couple of moments time the latest update just before we throw away

01:29:52.840 is that the uh ucp is now using 43 to 31 so it's gone down which is why again you can't be

01:29:59.240 uh too cocky about this stuff but let's go to rachel emmanuel who is the

01:30:03.320 longtime conservative strategist vitor marziano take it away rachel

01:30:06.520 he is a senior advisor on the ucp campaign you have a couple polls reporting now anything

01:30:18.140 catching your eyes so far or is it still too early oh it's still too early but i i don't

01:30:21.700 mind the trends at all i like the percentages um you know it's still too early to really

01:30:26.040 measure this you're going to watch it carefully all night long it's going to be a long night

01:30:29.600 there's going to be a lot of cool states i'm more than cautiously optimistic that things

01:30:33.260 will go okay. Absolutely. So we were talking a little bit about how we're not seeing a huge

01:30:38.080 turnout right now compared to the advanced poll. Maybe you can explain a little more in terms of

01:30:41.960 what we're seeing of voter trends for election day voting versus advanced voting polls.

01:30:46.520 Well, one of the interesting things that happened recently is that there have been

01:30:49.220 elections where fewer and fewer people have gone to vote on election day. The last election in

01:30:55.160 Ontario was particularly like that. You had a small number of people vote on election day,

01:30:59.400 lots of people vote in the advance polls. As of about 5 or 6 p.m. tonight, it looked like that

01:31:04.660 was happening in Alberta. Now, it's still a little too early to tell. Maybe there was a last-minute

01:31:07.780 surge. There are lineups in some voting stations, but I wouldn't be surprised if the voter turnout

01:31:13.880 for election day was only a bit bigger than the advance polls. You mentioned there's going to be

01:31:19.040 a couple of really close seats tonight. What are some of the ridings that you're watching?

01:31:22.600 I think just about everything in Calgary is going to be close. I think everything in the

01:31:26.280 donut around edmonton is going to be close but i'm feeling pretty confident that we're going to

01:31:31.000 do well enough in enough of those seats to win the election but uh we're going to watch it and

01:31:35.840 it's uh it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a crapshoot you gotta you gotta wait and see

01:31:41.580 there's a lot of coin toss seats i'm pretty comfortable that we're going to win a good

01:31:46.120 chunk of the 2021 seats that are up for play but uh we won't really know for probably another hour

01:31:51.760 and a half. Well, it sounds like you are optimistic. Let me ask you, in terms of Danielle

01:31:56.700 Smith actually, you know, if they win the election, what if she only wins by a really

01:32:00.940 small majority? Is it going to be hard for her to hold on to that leadership? No, I actually

01:32:04.920 think that Danielle has done a very good job of listening and accommodating her caucus

01:32:10.240 and her cabinet. She's got a very different style of leader. I think she'll adjust to

01:32:16.620 the size of it and we'll be fine. It sounds like you think she has the support of caucus

01:32:21.060 behind or depend no matter what that size is she has the support of caucus caucus is going to give

01:32:24.900 her a chance to put a stamp on government to give her let her run her government earn the trust of

01:32:29.860 albertans i'm very confident that uh that over the next four years albertans will be very impressed

01:32:34.100 with the type of government she runs something i've been asking some of our other guests tonight

01:32:38.340 is the ucp ran a pretty quiet campaign insiders i spoke just said that was actually intentional

01:32:43.140 we didn't want to over promise we didn't want to have too many announcements do you think that was

01:32:48.180 the right move? Or do you think they could have had a little bit more face time, big announcements

01:32:52.020 with the voters? I think any insider says is intentional as forgetting about the fires.

01:32:57.300 For about 12 days during this campaign, we couldn't do what we planned to do. So the campaign

01:33:02.440 we ran was not the campaign we planned, largely because big parts of northern Alberta were on

01:33:07.640 fire. And during the campaign, the premier was spending half of her days being the premier

01:33:12.960 rather than being the leader of a party campaigning. So in many ways, we didn't get to run the

01:33:17.820 election we wanted to run but at the same time Albertans got to see Danielle being who Danielle

01:33:22.080 is attention to detail focus on leadership and ability to bring people together an ability to

01:33:26.840 focus on the things that matter I'm actually glad you mentioned that because we spent a lot

01:33:30.520 time talking about the fires at the beginning of the campaign but we haven't really talked about

01:33:34.380 it too much since do you think that the fires were a detriment because Daniel Smith wasn't

01:33:38.400 able to get on the campaign or do you think it was an opportunity to prove herself as a trustworthy

01:33:42.620 leader to voters who maybe weren't sold on her it's a little bit of both but ultimately I think

01:33:47.140 You know, as a campaigner, I would have rather had 12 more days of Daniel Smith campaigning.

01:33:51.840 We didn't get to do that because of the fires.

01:33:54.260 So, you know, there's a sense, to me, there's a sense that it was a net negative.

01:33:58.300 But at the same time, it kind of cancelled out the NDP's narrative that Daniel Smith wasn't up to the job

01:34:04.620 or wasn't the sort of person you could trust because people got to see or be trustworthy every day.

01:34:09.400 Just my last question for you here.

01:34:11.440 Do you think that there was a defining moment of the campaign?

01:34:14.260 a lot of people have talked they think it was agree disagree the debates were important but it

01:34:20.160 wasn't because of what happened at the debate it was because of what didn't happen at the debate

01:34:23.780 um the ndp gambled their entire campaign on daniel smith being unreasonable unalbertan um

01:34:32.480 off-putting on the debate and daniel smith showed up at the debate and was daniel smith

01:34:36.620 she had careful attention to detail she was positive and upbeat she was more upbeat than

01:34:41.880 the NDP was, and that became a good debate. But it wasn't because of anything we did. It was

01:34:47.280 because of things the NDP didn't do. All right. Well, thank you so much. Once again,

01:34:51.040 that was Vitor Marciano, a senior campaign advisor on the UCP campaign. We appreciate

01:34:55.460 your insight today. Back to you, Andrew. All right. If you're just tuning in, I am Andrew

01:35:02.680 Watton. This is the live True North Alberta election results show for the 2023 election.

01:35:08.800 if you're really not actually convinced, you know what's happening. This is not the 2019 election,

01:35:13.600 that one already happened. The UCB won a big majority then. It's going to be probably...

01:35:30.800 ...from the North and Wilson. I'm sorry, I laughed when I said your name. That was very rude of me.

01:35:36.960 I've been sitting here for many hours, and I'm from Alberta Proud.

01:35:55.040 End of sentence, end of thought.

01:35:57.280 I was still in time waiting for results.

01:35:58.620 Make sure you read my book when it comes out.

01:36:00.180 It's short.

01:36:00.940 Yeah, the polls are basically an hour and five minutes now.

01:36:06.380 One poll is staying open until 9.46 p.m., which is a very precise time.

01:36:11.280 22,545 votes cast, and of those, 245 are leading UCP, 29 are leading NDP.

01:36:20.000 One thing we haven't talked about, which is actually a bit of a, you were saying, contentious issue for even some Conservatives,

01:36:26.100 is the arena, which, Danielle, really went all in on this campaign.

01:36:30.380 what's happened there so i can take this back five years ago and conservatives have always been

01:36:35.340 really divided on the arena thing but i think at the end of the day i think strategically it was

01:36:40.700 smart it had a lot of criticism and i know my friends at the canadian taxpayers federation are

01:36:45.180 gonna like me for something they came out very strongly saying this is a bad deal for taxpayers

01:36:49.260 well you know what it kind of is if you look at it from from that one perspective what's the worst

01:36:54.780 steal is if calgary loses its nhl team and not to mention that just the nhl team but we need to

01:37:01.580 rebuild this downtown core we need to create some more vibrancy in the downtown there's just a lot

01:37:06.860 of potential for revenue in there the whole sales pitch for the for the arena strategically i think

01:37:13.260 that thought danielle did some favor i think he created some favor for our game in these tighter

01:37:17.900 battlegrounds in calgary that's what we're seeing i know generally the olympic big when that came up

01:37:23.260 however many years ago i was guest hosting um i mean i i wasn't even a calgarian so i didn't even

01:37:29.340 care about uh you know at all that much on the positive side i just took the standard taxpayer

01:37:33.820 position that i would take if it were in my city i know conservatives were fairly united against that

01:37:41.660 or is it different campaigns as you see on oh you know full disclosure i was part of the

01:37:47.660 organizing committee for the nose guy i recall the photo on the front page of what was the

01:37:51.420 with the Calgary Herald of you celebrating your referendum.

01:37:56.420 But, I will say, one notable conservative who supported the Olympics a bit was Danielle

01:38:00.860 Smith.

01:38:01.860 And, in fact, she spoke about it, a few friends on her show, in favor of it.

01:38:05.860 Now, I think it's sort of in the same camp as the new arena in that there is the upside

01:38:14.380 for a lot of good things.

01:38:16.380 What I like about the arena versus the Olympics is there's far less risk associated with building a new arena than there is what's called a state at Olympic Games.

01:38:25.380 You only have to look at the dismal track record of the city through a most good Olympic Games to see how expensive and long it looks exactly.

01:38:32.520 But for Danielle, I think she looks at it and says, we definitely want to keep our flames here in the city.

01:38:38.020 We definitely want to get some of those great concerts that skip Calgary and go to Edmonton.

01:38:42.700 I know that, as a Calgarian, that really wrinkles most evidence that gets a better concert than we do.

01:38:48.360 And if you bring thousands of people into that part of the city on a regular basis,

01:38:53.040 you're going to see restaurants and bars and other stores benefiting from the spillover of that economic activity.

01:39:00.000 There's a lot of upside.

01:39:01.360 Now, this arena deal only happened because, of course, the last arena deal got blown up by Calgary Mayor Jody Gondek,

01:39:08.380 who insisted they build solar panels on the roof of that arena because you know calgary is facing

01:39:15.680 a climate emergency so i think daniel also said i think we can all agree that was a ridiculous

01:39:21.860 thing that the city did they blew up a pretty good deal in order because they wanted solar

01:39:26.900 panels on the roof of it we're not going to make that saving take again and i think jody gondek

01:39:31.400 had to wear that and this is why daniel said i support arena just to bring up jody gondek

01:39:37.100 There hasn't been the hostility between the two that I think a lot of people have seen.

01:39:43.760 I mean, one example that came up where a Calgary municipal issue was getting fairly broad coverage,

01:39:49.240 including by True North, was this ban on protesting drag performances,

01:39:53.440 which Danielle Smith took a more lukewarm position on before eventually kind of taking the free speech side on this.

01:40:00.040 Even the climate emergency, I mean, this was declared before Danielle Smith came in.

01:40:03.380 But the two have appeared together.

01:40:04.600 how do you think that do you think it's a working relationship that isn't working

01:40:08.300 maybe i see i see there's like uh jody gondek and amirjeet sohi in edmonton of course uh

01:40:17.660 polar opposite from somebody like danielle smith but at the end and at the end of the day you know

01:40:23.060 we have very left-leaning governments that are running our two major cities in alberta we have

01:40:27.960 a very left-leaning uh federal government so for us at alberta proud we've been kind of going with

01:40:33.160 this slogan like can we really afford to pull our goalie from the net by having a left-leaning

01:40:36.740 government in in in at the province provincial level too right so we need some balance when

01:40:42.800 we talk about checks and balances uh i think we need to keep in mind like we have very left-leaning

01:40:49.180 um some might say eco-radical mayors running these two cities and i think danielle's just

01:40:55.900 gonna have her work cut out for her to to find that balance with them um i i think it's interesting

01:41:02.080 I think definitely, I think she's made a really good start in green lighting, the provincial contribution, which is to the infrastructure side of things for the Calgary Arena, which is a $1.5 million project.

01:41:16.960 But hey, you know what, on the upside for Calgarians, maybe this magical, mythical unicorn, this green line, you know, the biggest infrastructure project, or as some like to call it critics, the train to nowhere, maybe the train can actually take people down to the new event center.

01:41:31.300 and we all win.

01:41:32.520 I'd like to think it had that amount of floor planning.

01:41:34.960 I remain questionable.

01:41:37.420 Lindsay, your Banff Kananaskis is so far UCP leading

01:41:40.860 with three polls reporting.

01:41:43.040 So 23 polls left, but still Miranda Rosen

01:41:45.600 has a very, very narrow lead in that one over the NDP.

01:41:50.740 Just for people tuning in now,

01:41:52.320 why is Banff an interesting one?

01:41:53.780 Because I know Banff is a fun place for people.

01:41:56.380 It's beautiful.

01:41:57.580 It's scenic.

01:41:58.400 There are great restaurants, but politically wacky.

01:42:01.300 Well, I think that people in Banff and Camoron, I love Banff and Camoron, I live in Cochrane, it's an hour away, I've spent a ton of time there, of course, and I love going out there, and I think you get people, they're really focused on things like healthcare, on environment, and on tourism, and you definitely get a lot of loud voices on the left that tend to migrate toward those issues.

01:42:23.060 So you've got that, and then you've got the ranching country,

01:42:26.360 and you've got Bragg Creek, kind of that middle ground,

01:42:28.060 and then you've got down to Prittis and Elbow.

01:42:31.640 And so you've got, like, it's like a real schmozzle.

01:42:34.780 It's a really big, like geographically, not population-wise,

01:42:38.240 but geographically it's a really big riding,

01:42:40.740 but it's like complete polar opposite sides of the spectrum.

01:42:44.200 But you do have that population base in Canmore and BAM.

01:42:47.380 Do you think that is a riding that's going to eventually get split up,

01:42:51.200 or is it just not there yet population-wise?

01:42:53.060 So Cochrane was there, so they've already split that up.

01:42:58.460 So I don't know if they're going to look to that riding again.

01:43:01.000 I'd say that's eight years out for that one.

01:43:02.640 On that note, William, I'll add to what you were going to say in asking how much is redistricting up there, the dynamics in Calgary?

01:43:10.560 Because it seems like quite a bit.

01:43:12.620 Oh, absolutely.

01:43:13.540 And not all redistrictings are created equal.

01:43:16.040 Sometimes you are just tweaking.

01:43:17.920 And sometimes you get an independent commission that really takes a knife to the existing map,

01:43:24.540 chops it up, and builds a whole new thing.

01:43:27.340 So I think what you're seeing right now, this is quite a different layout for the city

01:43:31.200 than it was back in the early 2000s.

01:43:34.420 I think that's had a real impact on how some of the vote's going.

01:43:38.460 But, you know, all cities tend to be comprised of sort of three chunks, if you like.

01:43:45.140 You've got the urban core, you've got, you know, more of the suburban, and then you've got what we call ex-urban or bedroom community type things, some of which eventually get eaten up as the city keeps growing.

01:43:58.600 So, you know, I'm thinking of places like Airdrie, which really abuts up to the city of Calgary right now.

01:44:04.300 There's not a lot of empty space between those two.

01:44:06.940 The further out of the core you get, the more conservative these places tend to become.

01:44:11.480 So if you construct ridings that hybrid, to some degree core and suburban, depending on how you draw that line quite finely, you're either giving it to a left wing or making it more open to left wing election, or you're keeping it in more conservative territory.

01:44:27.600 So that's part of the fight that happens every time we redraw all of Alberta's ridings.

01:44:32.400 Does it always benefit the left? Is that generally what happens?

01:44:35.300 No, not always. I would say this is for all of you geek nerds out there who study redistricting.

01:44:42.960 I know you're all out there. There might only be two of you, but you are walking.

01:44:47.020 Back in the mists of time in 2004, Edmonton went from having sort of six wholly inside Edmonton ridings

01:44:55.260 to eight ridings that were a combination of a chunk of Edmonton and a bedroom community around Edmonton.

01:45:01.340 Edmonton Sherwood Park, Edmonton Beaumont, Edmonton Spruce Grove.

01:45:05.560 And that meant that almost all those ridings voted conservative

01:45:08.200 because they had a healthy dose of small-town Alberta

01:45:10.960 tacked on to a city riding.

01:45:13.140 Yeah.

01:45:13.780 Yeah, and that's interesting because in the context,

01:45:17.160 the suburban votes are always where elections are won or lost.

01:45:20.780 And even in Alberta, it sounds like that's generally pretty true as well.

01:45:24.900 Oh, absolutely.

01:45:25.960 I mean, if you look at the famous

01:45:28.260 why can't conservatives win a national election always comes down to those suburban ridings in

01:45:34.160 and around Toronto. I think the same thing is being said to a degree about Calgary. It's all

01:45:39.040 about how those suburban families, and we are typically talking about families with children

01:45:44.020 where one or both parents works, and their concerns are, you know, they're concerned about

01:45:51.500 health care, sure, but they're also concerned about how safe are their kids walking to soccer

01:45:55.640 practice, or walking home from soccer practice, or gosh, isn't feeding a family of five becoming

01:46:01.620 so much more expensive because of inflation and the rising cost of living?

01:46:06.300 So the updates from Elections Alberta have not come in in 14 minutes, so they're still

01:46:13.400 holding at 45 UCP and 29 NDP.

01:46:18.300 Now, I've seen some of the other media outlets have some updates since then.

01:46:22.500 I'm not entirely sure where they're getting their numbers from if the Alberta Elections Bureau's numbers are not coming in.

01:46:28.980 But we are going to keep you apprised of all these developments.

01:46:32.360 And again, 45 UCP and 29 NDP according to Elections Alberta.

01:46:37.800 That's with 22,545 votes cast.

01:46:42.240 And a couple of people have been asking about Artur Pawlowski's party.

01:46:47.320 He is currently, I forget his name, is his the Solidarity?

01:46:50.620 Solidarity, yeah.

01:46:51.240 They're at 84 votes right now, so we're not seeing the Pulaski momentum

01:46:54.900 that a couple of you might have won.

01:46:59.360 Now, this has actually been interesting.

01:47:01.740 The Wild Rose Loyalty Coalition is at 52.

01:47:05.040 Small numbers here, but the Splinter Wild Rose Party

01:47:08.260 is doing better than the original Wild Rose Party.

01:47:10.800 Oh, goodness, they're just frustrated.

01:47:12.260 They're just confusing people.

01:47:13.580 I like to consider myself reasonably well-informed in Alberta provincial politics,

01:47:17.020 and even I've lost track of who's where and what team and on what party yeah

01:47:22.180 fair enough and there are also a bunch of other parties I've never heard the

01:47:25.460 Buffalo Party of Alberta not with any votes in Calgary Buffalo though so it's

01:47:30.340 like a missed out for yeah they I don't have the home field advantage they're

01:47:33.040 the Communist Party the Communist Party is at 51 thank you Lindsay and then

01:47:37.480 since we're just going through I think they go by NDP there we go there we go

01:47:42.580 the Reform Party of Alberta has four. Let's see, the Independent Party of Alberta has 78,

01:47:48.560 which is different from the Wild Rose Independence Party. And the Wild Rose, we already did that,

01:47:53.380 the Pro-Life Alberta Political Association has zero so far. But the Green Party has 125. So these

01:47:59.080 parties do exist, but they're not particularly politically relevant. The Alberta Party, which

01:48:03.700 we were talking about earlier, has 1% of the vote. Now, we talked about this a little bit on the

01:48:08.420 debate show the alberta part has kind of been like this rorschach test for people where you know some

01:48:14.320 conservatives think it's like a moderate conservative party some liberals think it's a

01:48:18.160 moderate liberal party like what are they confused okay yeah they're confused i think so i think like

01:48:24.120 i said what we were talking earlier i think we're going to continue to see them go down we're going

01:48:30.500 to see more of a rise of probably the liberal party which will maybe make things very interesting

01:48:34.360 for the NDP in the next election and four years from now.

01:48:36.920 The Alberta Party, as we've talked about again on our debate show,

01:48:39.600 has had such an interesting journey.

01:48:41.760 When it was first established, it was quite right-wing.

01:48:44.640 It was sort of a provincial reform party

01:48:47.340 started by a lot of ex-reform types.

01:48:50.940 And when I say that, it's not that they stopped believing in reform.

01:48:53.440 They actually opposed the creation of the Canadian Alliance

01:48:56.180 because they felt it was a watering-down reform principle.

01:48:59.320 They were too ripe for the alliance in Stockwell.

01:49:01.180 They took it over.

01:49:02.140 But then, because this was such a small and, frankly, badly organized political party,

01:49:07.560 one AGM, a bunch of ex-PCers upset that their party had apparently drifted too far to the conservative side,

01:49:15.180 took it over, and it became this mushy, centrist party.

01:49:19.340 But they did have a leader called Greg Clark, and he actually did quite well for them.

01:49:23.940 He had won a seat for himself.

01:49:26.180 They had gotten another seat.

01:49:27.680 I can't remember if it was a floor crossing or if they had won some other way.

01:49:31.460 But they actually got up to having several MLAs in the legislature, well, quite.

01:49:35.760 So, of course, the natural thing to do was to get rid of the guy leading it who had had success

01:49:41.640 and replace him with former Edmonton Mayor Steve Mandel,

01:49:45.360 who had just lost his own riding in a provincial election.

01:49:49.680 Critical missteps.

01:49:50.560 Why they did that is a mystery to me.

01:49:52.900 So the UCP lead has gone up to 52.

01:49:55.520 I think the cheering behind there is that Tyler Shandro has a slight edge in Calgary Acadia over the NDP.

01:50:03.480 Some more pulls in.

01:50:04.380 We've got a little bit more.

01:50:05.600 We've got to take a very quick break here.

01:50:07.660 We're going to do a quick reset and break things down with Rachel Emanuel.

01:50:11.440 Stand by.

01:50:12.080 We're not going anywhere.

01:50:12.920 We will be right back in 30 seconds.

01:50:25.520 .

01:50:55.520 .

01:51:25.520 .

01:51:55.520 We are back, thought we'd give you a little look at the crowd.

01:52:12.840 You look different William, it's good to have you here.

01:52:15.020 We have tagged out William McBeth, not for anything he said, but just because we wanted

01:52:19.120 to get the lay of the land with Rachel Emanuel here, a True North Alberta correspondent who

01:52:23.520 who has been doing a tremendous job chasing around all the movers and shakers of Alberta politics on the floor here.

01:52:31.320 You've been out there. I've been hearing it every now and then. How are people feeling?

01:52:34.920 Yeah, so, you know, it's pretty early still.

01:52:37.360 It sounds like everyone's pretty convinced it's going to be a really, really late night.

01:52:40.900 But Vitor Marciano, a senior campaign strategist with the UCP, he just came up and he gave a little bit of insight.

01:52:47.740 And he said it's still quite early, but the polls are trending in the right direction.

01:52:51.220 He likes the numbers that we're seeing, but certainly it's going to be a long night.

01:52:54.720 I saw some complaints online, people were saying, it should always take this long.

01:52:58.380 I feel like we should be a little bit faster, and especially with some of the advanced votes being counted by tabulators.

01:53:03.420 So hopefully we will start to get some more seat counts in soon enough,

01:53:07.880 and people don't have to stay up all night waiting for the results of the election.

01:53:11.460 By that you mean hopefully we don't have to stay up all night waiting for the election.

01:53:14.400 Yeah, I don't want to stay up all night.

01:53:15.420 Enlightened self-interest, I believe the saying goes.

01:53:18.480 Yeah, I mean, obviously we're hearing the tears from behind.

01:53:20.920 And the last numbers I'm seeing here are 51 UCP, 33 NDP.

01:53:25.720 Now, this is leading, not declared.

01:53:27.480 But have we seen any pretty meaningful results yet in Calgary or even anywhere else?

01:53:32.360 I believe I saw Calgary Acadia came up a little while ago,

01:53:35.520 and we heard a pretty big cheer from the audience at that point.

01:53:38.200 It's like Tyler Shandro was leading in the polls that hadn't been reported.

01:53:41.620 We know that the party has dumped a lot of resources there.

01:53:44.000 A lot of people that I talked to that went door knocking went in.

01:53:47.120 Tyler Shandro is riding, and that's going to be one to watch tonight.

01:53:49.720 I think every single person pretty much brought it up at some point or another.

01:53:53.220 So people were pretty excited to see that.

01:53:55.200 And I think overall, like, the polls are reporting pretty well for us.

01:53:58.060 I mean, it's still so early, but you kind of get your hopes up, I guess,

01:54:00.960 and you think, oh, well, cleaning, hopefully it stays that way.

01:54:04.560 Yeah, I mean, Lindsay, I know you've been up here with us,

01:54:07.140 so you haven't had the chance to walk the floor yet.

01:54:09.260 But generally speaking, people seem to be in a pretty celebratory mood.

01:54:12.520 I'm not seeing the nervousness that you sometimes see on election nights

01:54:15.740 when you aren't sure or you know it's probably not going to go away.

01:54:18.620 Well, again, I think we go back to that debate a couple of weeks ago.

01:54:21.580 I think that was a bit of a turning point.

01:54:22.960 And I think we're just seeing such a slew of pollsters that have been so definitively declaring a UCP majority over the last five to seven days that I think that that tone, there hasn't been any major blunders.

01:54:35.420 You know, I think we were all thinking with this Gloves Off campaign and, you know, the Rachel versus Danielle, what else is going to come out?

01:54:42.020 There's been some things that have come out on the premier over the last few things she said in the past in her radio show days.

01:54:47.620 And I think we were all waiting for, like, another shoe to drop last few days,

01:54:50.220 and there was nothing, and I was kind of surprised by that.

01:54:53.520 And I think they've just kind of carved out this path toward victory.

01:54:56.640 I think things, I think, you know, the wildfire situation,

01:55:00.320 that was definitely disruptive, but certainly the province acted very quickly

01:55:04.500 on getting out-of-province help for that and stopped campaigning for those few days.

01:55:09.520 And the weather also turned, and we got some rain, and that helped.

01:55:13.180 So the timing of all, it's all these little tiny things that kind of came together.

01:55:17.140 And I think the stars have sort of aligned for them that, you know,

01:55:20.440 I don't think we can say we're going to go into this with the UCP necessarily having 51 or 52 seats.

01:55:26.720 But I think they're, I'd be hard-pressed to see if they're not going to make 44 at least.

01:55:30.680 Rachel, the last few days of the campaign, I mean, I'm used to seeing leaders go morning to night,

01:55:36.660 photo op, photo op, rally, rally, rally.

01:55:40.140 Danielle Smith, she had a press conference, I think it was on Friday,

01:55:43.540 and that was the last time she had a publicly announced event I know she

01:55:48.040 popped up to the few little events with local candidates she was running in a

01:55:52.180 race in Calgary where she was in the Calgary Marathon yeah my hotel room so

01:55:56.540 I was like cheering on the runners but was definitely not joining them but I

01:56:00.520 mean what do you make of that if anything that that relatively low-laying

01:56:03.580 last few days

01:56:05.380 a lot of people for different takes on it one of the takes that I've heard a

01:56:11.260 A couple of UCP insiders say is, oh, well, we tried to keep it pretty low-key.

01:56:15.540 We didn't want to over-promise.

01:56:17.380 You know, we wanted a few important things that we did promise to really stand out

01:56:20.820 since the tax cuts, things on jobs, the economy, public safety.

01:56:23.980 So basically we want to be like the NDP over-promising everything.

01:56:26.840 So that was one take.

01:56:28.220 You know, another take was that they had to quickly change their campaign at the last minute

01:56:32.340 when the wildfires crisis really erupted in northern Alberta at the beginning of the campaign.

01:56:37.500 That wouldn't exactly seem to extend to the end of the campaign, but Pietro Marciano was just saying to me, you know, we really had to adjust the campaign for those wildfires, and that wasn't something that we had entirely anticipated, so we did change our campaign.

01:56:50.600 And then another perspective that Sensible shared as well, you know, we've had a little bit of gasp with the media, and maybe it's just better if we don't give Daniel's just too much airtime.

01:56:59.720 more skeptical view that some people have had is just try to keep it away from the media as much

01:57:04.040 as possible things are going smoothly things are going in our direction let's not ruin that after

01:57:08.380 stronger base performance let's just keep things simple and you know the media hasn't been too

01:57:12.540 friendly to daniel's fans that's no surprise so you know the less air time they can they can give

01:57:16.780 them maybe it seems a bit of a benefit for the campaign yeah and just on that note i mean i that

01:57:21.440 press conference that she had uh was marketed as an announcement but there really wasn't anything

01:57:26.240 to announce at that point, you know, that LeCampagne,

01:57:28.780 the announcement was NDB bad, UCB good.

01:57:31.100 So when you have that little to announce,

01:57:32.320 why just throw yourself to the wolves

01:57:34.140 and give them an opportunity to get a pound of flesh from you, right?

01:57:37.260 I think you saw a little less Danielle as well the last couple of weeks,

01:57:39.940 and you saw a lot more of the team.

01:57:41.600 So you saw a lot of Rebecca Schultz.

01:57:43.340 You saw a lot of Brian Jean.

01:57:45.200 And perhaps maybe this has really worked out for the UCB.

01:57:48.560 You're seeing those voices showing, you know,

01:57:50.880 a really effective cabinet and showing a more united front

01:57:54.060 and showing really capable, experienced MLAs.

01:57:57.860 Yeah. What were you going to say, Rachel?

01:57:59.640 Yeah, I was just going to say they had a couple announcements like that.

01:58:02.440 It didn't even just wait until the end.

01:58:03.860 They had a couple announcements that were non-announcements.

01:58:06.160 I drove all the way there, and I was like, all right, we'll see what's happening.

01:58:08.500 And it was like, NDP sucks, vote for the UCP.

01:58:11.580 And everyone was like, it's okay.

01:58:13.040 I don't know if this really qualifies as an announcement.

01:58:14.580 They did that a couple times, actually.

01:58:16.680 Yeah, but I mean, again, you expose yourself to the media.

01:58:19.620 You let them ask about whatever they want.

01:58:21.280 I mean, if you don't give them an announcement to cover,

01:58:22.720 They don't have an announcement to cover here.

01:58:25.560 Just because I asked the other panelists here, Rachel, and now you're swapping in,

01:58:29.680 what is the riding, if any, that you're paying attention to, that you're kind of interested in?

01:58:33.100 Yeah, so I did mention this to the audience a little earlier in the night.

01:58:36.380 I know Calgary Acadia has come up so much, but I've been told that along with Calgary Glenmore,

01:58:42.400 which is Whitney and Six Riding, are really true to watching Calgary, as well as Calgary Cross.

01:58:46.700 I know that there's been a lot of efforts being dumped there.

01:58:49.180 I know a lot of people working on that campaign.

01:58:50.920 I think they sort of saw it as we're losing Calgary Cross, that's Mickey Amory's riding,

01:58:55.080 and they were sort of a late effort to really get some speed on the ground

01:58:59.140 and go out door-knocking, improve that campaign.

01:59:01.520 So I actually think we might pull off a win in Calgary Cross tonight.

01:59:05.480 It is a toss-up. It was slightly leading UCP, the last numbers that were reported on 3-3-8 Canada.

01:59:11.820 So I think those are some to look at across Calgary.

01:59:13.940 Of course, Calgary Edgemont is going to be another really interesting to look at.

01:59:16.800 I don't know if we're going to be able to hold that one tonight and then outside of Calgary or rather outside of Edmonton we're sort of looking at the one outside the donut a couple ones there to see if we can pull off a win and those ridings or hold on to seats that currently existed so a couple of those I think we're going to be paying close attention to Moreville and St. Albert see if we can hold that riding as well as Strathcola at Sherwood Park is another one that's Nate Blubish's riding are we going to be able to hold those riding

01:59:46.800 or are we going to really lose that dome outside of Edmonton?

01:59:49.580 And, of course, Casey Maddow, I think I heard you mentioned that on the show earlier.

01:59:53.040 I think everyone's kind of accepted we're probably not going to win that riding.

01:59:56.420 That's not going to be a UCP win tonight.

01:59:58.140 And, you know, me as the deputy premier, so certainly a big loss to the party.

02:00:01.080 There will be big shifts to fill there.

02:00:02.240 But I think people have generally accepted they're losing the ridings within Edmonton.

02:00:06.100 And by that, I mean all the ridings that have Edmonton.

02:00:08.100 It's just a question of can we hold on to some of those ridings inside the dome?

02:00:12.220 Yeah, and just to look at Edmonton right now on my trusty map here,

02:00:15.700 Not a lot of poles in Edmonton.

02:00:18.700 I mean, most of the ridings here have one, two, three reporting.

02:00:22.120 Like in Edmonton Southwest, it's still going NDP, but that's only with one pole in.

02:00:27.320 Calgary, we've got a little bit more in the way of results.

02:00:30.720 Just to go around here, you mentioned Calgary Glenmore.

02:00:33.500 UCP currently leading in Glenmore with five poles reporting.

02:00:37.660 In Acadia, three poles in.

02:00:39.400 Sandro's up by six.

02:00:40.620 Yeah, very tight.

02:00:41.720 We have in Calgary Klein, that is Jeremy Nixon.

02:00:45.500 he's leading with four polls and so again it depends on which of those polls we're talking

02:00:50.620 with here like if it's the you know the the conservative neighborhood then it's not all

02:00:54.060 that important if it's a neighborhood that's a bit more uh down the road this could tell us

02:00:57.980 something so we'll see as the night goes on but i guess the question that i would ask would be

02:01:03.580 did you feel it was an eventful campaign if you were covering it on the ground i know you didn't

02:01:07.420 really have to go that far uh you know it's like you weren't going up to fort mac and down to

02:01:11.180 medicine had because so much of it was in calgary but it seemed pretty linear to me like i don't

02:01:16.620 recall any real bumps yeah i didn't really find that it was super busy kind of really sure to

02:01:22.700 expect and i've this is my first time covering a provincial election campaign i've covered many

02:01:27.260 federal leadership campaigns so i was kind of excited because when you cover a federal leadership

02:01:31.180 campaign if your outlet doesn't have the budget which mine never did they're not actually sending

02:01:35.260 you out on the campaign because that would be spinning all over canada and most outlets don't

02:01:39.100 have money for that nowadays or they're only sending their you know one or two reporters

02:01:43.340 so i was excited to be covering a provincial campaign because it meant that i would be able

02:01:46.300 to attend all the events in person because you know it's alberta you can pretty much drive from

02:01:50.540 place to place it's a bit of travel so i was excited to cover this campaign and i did really

02:01:55.020 enjoy being able to go to the events and being able to get my questions in but it wasn't terribly

02:01:59.420 busy it wasn't terribly eventful and then of course we had a fair amount of difficulty getting

02:02:03.500 into those Alberta NDP events so you know maybe they were hosting a lot more

02:02:08.060 events than they used to be I think two with up to two a day at some point but

02:02:11.780 we would be lucky to get access to two of their events a week because it's not

02:02:15.880 only did they not really want us there but they also made it very difficult for

02:02:18.680 us to actually know the location of those events so on the rare chance we

02:02:22.880 found out where they were happening we could get there and get inside and get

02:02:25.820 asked for questions it was great but we didn't miss out on a fair amount of

02:02:30.000 their announcements and so really we missed out on that and then the UCP

02:02:34.440 didn't do too much so it wasn't super busy it wasn't super eventful there was a

02:02:37.620 couple of moments of the campaign that I really noticed you know Danielle Smith

02:02:40.680 started the campaign with a big announcement on tax cuts and another

02:02:45.180 really big announcement that she made during the campaign was the Compassion

02:02:48.180 Intervention Act which we talked about extensively with some of our guests on

02:02:51.600 tonight those were pretty big announcements but it wasn't super big

02:02:55.320 and I felt like the NDP spent so much time lobbying insults at the premier and

02:02:59.820 And I really felt like they stuck, you know, I think maybe some of her comments on the COVID vaccine got a little bit of attention.

02:03:06.600 But I never really felt like there was a moment where I'm like, wow, we're still talking about this attack that they launched a couple of days ago.

02:03:13.200 It pretty much seemed like it was something.

02:03:15.180 And, you know, as a party, you never want to be on the defense.

02:03:17.840 You never want to be responding because that's the day you lost message.

02:03:21.200 And so certainly that was a bit of an issue at the beginning of the campaign.

02:03:24.220 But they were still sort of able to address it and move on, which is something that you really never know how that's going to go.

02:03:29.200 So if there's another campaign, an attack is completely derail your campaign.

02:03:32.780 It keeps coming up and you'll grow the campaign.

02:03:35.000 And so, you know, it wasn't terribly eventful on either side, I would say.

02:03:39.560 What was your take on it?

02:03:40.740 I mean, from an Alberta Proud perspective, were you finding, like, there was a lot of engagement or was it relatively low or just kind of moderate?

02:03:48.100 Well, Alberta Proud, you know, there's a good little red meat base there, certainly.

02:03:52.740 And there is just kind of a consensus from the people that I talk to every day through Alberta Proud

02:03:58.440 is that a vote for Notley is a vote for Trudeau.

02:04:02.200 It's a vote for the NDP Liberal Coalition.

02:04:05.500 And no matter how much issue people may take with Daniel Smith or some of her MLAs

02:04:11.120 or some decisions, some of the policies that the UCBs come forward,

02:04:14.900 what people seem to be really resonating with people is that they're taking a really hard stance on crime,

02:04:21.620 the opiate crisis, public safety, and trying to do some real change within health care,

02:04:29.560 which is always such a contentious file for conservatives, certainly.

02:04:35.040 So you mentioned the addiction issue, which we were talking about a little bit earlier on the panel

02:04:39.440 after you and the now MLA-elect, I believe, in that riding we're discussing.

02:04:45.060 And do you think it actually resonated?

02:04:47.040 Do you think it was something that actually got them votes?

02:04:49.560 or do you think it was just a policy that they believed in that they thought was important?

02:04:53.460 Yeah, that's a great question.

02:04:54.560 That's something that I was wondering as well.

02:04:56.260 I was actually really surprised to see them announce this policy during the election.

02:05:01.840 I knew that the government was considering this

02:05:04.420 because the Globe and Mail had actually filed a freedom and access to information request

02:05:08.780 to basically learn that this had been something that had been discussed within the Addictions Office.

02:05:15.040 I suspect that they must have had a source that leaked it to them

02:05:17.180 because I was a pretty specific agent for them to get that revelation.

02:05:20.000 I was like, all right, someone leaked this.

02:05:21.400 So we knew a couple of weeks before the campaign dropped

02:05:23.080 that this was something that they discussed,

02:05:24.500 but the UCP government at the time sort of just played it off

02:05:27.420 and said, well, you know, we put forward lots of different policy proposals

02:05:30.540 and the Premier likes to look over these things.

02:05:32.960 I had no idea how serious it was being considered at the time.

02:05:36.540 And then, you know, sure enough, midway through the campaign,

02:05:38.820 they dropped this huge policy announcement.

02:05:41.480 And it was one of the better announcements from the UCP.

02:05:44.680 they had lots of people in recovery speak about how their family was able to get treatment

02:05:51.780 for them because they got a court order from a judge that forced them into treatment and

02:05:54.960 they spoke about how addicts don't really want treatment when you're addicted to something

02:05:59.420 because all you can think about is that drug and when you can have that drug for another

02:06:03.840 time. And so it was a really powerful announcement and I think the fact that they had so many

02:06:07.920 individuals in recovery speak at it made it that much more effective. So of course that

02:06:12.980 announcement drops it played really well online among my readers obviously a more conservative

02:06:18.260 base people seemed pretty excited about it of course you had a lot of people that were also

02:06:22.220 concerned and said okay well this could just as easily be abused so something i've been asking

02:06:27.120 some of our interviews tonight is hopefully the restrictions about the doors because that was my

02:06:31.440 question you know it's so specific this is something that the average person is paying

02:06:35.120 attention to and what i heard was if your life has been touched by addiction you found that the

02:06:41.460 policy resonated with you. So I sense it probably didn't have a broader appeal to the General

02:06:46.960 Electric just for maybe these families that are touched by addiction and to be honest

02:06:50.620 that is a large number of people nowadays. I think most of us even sitting at this table

02:06:54.300 think about someone we know whose life has been touched by addiction or something that

02:06:57.340 they're struggling with. So it's hard to say. I would say probably it didn't resonate too

02:07:01.560 much. I think probably some of the policies that did resonate more are some of the other

02:07:05.240 work the government is doing on the public safety file and some of their other promises

02:07:08.820 like the ankle monitor for violent criminals and more sheriffs to really watch those people.

02:07:13.300 I think those are the types of policies when we talk about public safety

02:07:16.300 that resonated with the average Calgarian voter.

02:07:19.900 Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that a little bit,

02:07:21.800 because I know nationally that's been a huge issue as of late.

02:07:24.620 We've heard of just all of these stories from all over the country

02:07:27.420 of people that are out on bail that commit some horrendous act of violence.

02:07:31.080 Did we see that seep into the Alberta campaign, that justice crime angle?

02:07:36.040 Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

02:07:38.120 I think so. I think unfortunately we've had a number of officers that have lost their lives this year and I think that that's factored in. I mean driving around Calgary now compared to when I was a university student here 20 years ago, dating myself, but it really is like night and day. We have a massive problem on the streets and it's going to spread outwards and it's going to spread into our suburban communities and oftentimes when people move from the downtown and pass the university days and they get families and they get bigger houses,

02:08:07.740 if they live in the suburbs, there's a bit of a nimbyism.

02:08:11.300 Not in my backyard, I don't care, it doesn't affect me,

02:08:13.580 I go to work all day, I'm with my kids all night,

02:08:15.660 I'm not seeing this, but you're starting to see it.

02:08:17.980 And I think when we're looking at our officers,

02:08:20.500 it's not safe for them to be on the streets, we need more of them,

02:08:24.260 I think that that's starting to resonate with people.

02:08:26.740 I think they're starting to take it more seriously.

02:08:28.460 And I think a month ago, a month and a half ago,

02:08:30.700 crime and public safety wasn't as much of a part of this campaign,

02:08:34.220 and I think it's really become part of this campaign.

02:08:36.160 And when they came out with, you know, the beds and the Intervention Act and all this stuff on the opiate crisis file,

02:08:43.920 when you're standing up there and you're united with all the First Nations leaders

02:08:48.080 and they're telling their own personal stories that, you know, our First Nations communities are dying.

02:08:54.040 They're being ripped apart by the opiate crisis, which is, you know, we need to really,

02:08:59.240 We need their lived experience, combined with the fact that the UCP,

02:09:05.260 that this whole file is being led by Chief of Staff to Premier Smith,

02:09:08.900 by Marsha Smith, who's a recovering addict

02:09:12.560 who was on the streets of East Vancouver for four and a half years.

02:09:15.640 What do you say to that?

02:09:16.560 That's lived experience that's informing this.

02:09:18.740 And to me, that's always the best way to achieve it.

02:09:20.840 These aren't people, just policymakers in the back rooms.

02:09:23.340 These are people who've been through the gamut,

02:09:25.180 and they're doing the proper Indigenous consultation on this.

02:09:27.780 I think they've approached it the right way.

02:09:29.920 I see some people that you're supposed to be interviewing walking around.

02:09:33.000 One of them is the minister and MLA, well, probably MLA-elect Rebecca Schultz.

02:09:39.160 So we'll let you loose in just a second, but I want to give a quick update here on numbers.

02:09:43.720 The most recent figures we have from Elections Alberta are that the UCP are leading with 50 and Alberta NDP with 35.

02:09:52.920 Now we're up to 124,000 votes cast right now, so a pretty significant increase,

02:10:00.840 and they're coming in more quickly now.

02:10:02.220 So I think we'll start to get a little bit more in the way of numbers.

02:10:05.500 And just to some of the key ridings we've been watching,

02:10:07.340 your beloved BAMP Kananaskis is leading NDP right now.

02:10:11.280 Calgary Acadia, which William McBeth has been watching, is currently NDP leading,

02:10:15.840 but again, that's still only with three polls in.

02:10:19.400 And the one that I was watching, Edmonton Southwest, is not looking good for Casey Maddew.

02:10:24.740 NDP's still leading there, but again, pretty small margin, just 79 votes.

02:10:29.260 And that is one that we'll be watching.

02:10:31.680 Still 15 polls left there, so we could still see that go a different direction here.

02:10:36.520 So as we watch this and the night goes on, let me just ask about Steve Outhouse.

02:10:42.700 I know we're hoping to grab him later on.

02:10:44.380 He's the campaign manager for the UCP.

02:10:46.900 Have they kind of kept him hidden, or have you had the chance to talk to him tonight?

02:10:51.280 I haven't actually seen him anywhere.

02:10:52.600 They've kept him hidden. He wasn't actually on the media list.

02:10:55.560 So we'll see if he's coming out later and doing some interviews with people.

02:10:58.820 He has been available. The UCP has been doing their nightly broadcasts

02:11:02.620 where they kind of speak to voters directly about what they talked about that day,

02:11:05.460 and they have different candidates on showcasing their work and the policy of the day.

02:11:09.720 He has been behind the scenes a little bit.

02:11:13.720 And I think a lot of people were really interested to see that he was chosen as the campaign manager.

02:11:17.600 Obviously, he ran Leslie Lewis's Federal Conservative Leadership Campaign, the last two of them.

02:11:22.820 She performed very well in her first time as a leadership.

02:11:25.200 I think people had less expectations for her because she was so new and she was considered that underdog.

02:11:30.380 And then her fundraising numbers just blew people out of the water.

02:11:33.460 And, you know, we saw she didn't perform as well the second time around.

02:11:36.560 But here, Polly Ev did so well.

02:11:38.880 Yeah, no one blames Steve for that.

02:11:40.180 No.

02:11:40.500 All right, well, we'll let you get back to the floor.

02:11:44.180 We're going to do a brief reset here and get back to our regular panel.

02:11:48.860 The night is still young, so if you're tuning in, I thank you for it.

02:11:52.800 Keep tuning in.

02:11:53.640 We're going to have more results for you in just a couple of moments.

02:11:55.940 I'm Andrew Law.

02:11:56.560 This is the True North election night show for Alberta's 2023 election.

02:12:01.060 Stand by.

02:12:10.500 .

02:12:40.500 .

02:13:10.500 .

02:13:40.500 .

02:14:10.500 all right rachel has been completed here this is what we're stuck with now that was rude to

02:14:25.540 rachel william good to see you welcome back william mcbeth is here we have lindsey wilson

02:14:29.540 from alberta proud and yours truly andrew lawton from true north as we break down the results which

02:14:36.260 are kind of it's feast or famine you'll get a whole bunch in a few minutes and then nothing

02:14:40.660 for quite a while we just had one update 30 seconds ago from elections alberta uh currently

02:14:45.940 at 52 for the united conservative party and 33 for the alberta ndp this is with 155

02:14:53.140 thousand votes cast again 2.9 million registered voters uh so that is something you have to keep

02:14:58.260 in mind and of the ridings we've been watching uh there haven't been any declared flips yet so

02:15:04.260 So we're still pretty early.

02:15:05.780 So you said the last time this was wrapped up

02:15:08.640 like 15 minutes ago.

02:15:10.320 Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a very different election

02:15:13.260 to 2019.

02:15:14.680 I think the scale of the victory in 2019 just meant

02:15:19.120 it was going to be pretty clear that it was a United

02:15:21.140 Conservative majority government,

02:15:22.600 and they were able to declare it faster.

02:15:23.880 This one is obviously going to be a tire race,

02:15:26.460 and we're seeing that by the fact that you're seeing

02:15:29.180 that seat count bounce up and down a little bit.

02:15:31.380 There's a handful of votes.

02:15:32.400 changing who's leading yeah and I mean obviously the mood has changed in the

02:15:37.980 conservative movement I think a lot in the last four years there's a very

02:15:41.340 different party a very different leader very different just political dynamic

02:15:45.420 with the last few years but to go back to a discussion we had earlier you think

02:15:50.040 the unity issue has really been largely dealt with at least for now like we

02:15:54.800 didn't see a lot of specific disunity in the race no I think I think everybody

02:15:59.320 was really professional and above board through through through the race it is interesting to see

02:16:05.640 what danielle smith's journey is if she is successful tonight as premier and what happens

02:16:10.120 uh you know that is really who knows right we can't predict the future certainly but

02:16:14.840 yeah it's definitely a different tone and i can speak to you know i live in what's determined like

02:16:18.600 a ucp safe zone out in cochran right with uh peter guthrie who is our also our energy minister

02:16:24.120 but it's interesting how many orange signs you see out now as opposed to four years ago you

02:16:29.560 wouldn't have you barely saw an orange sign in in a town like Cochrane I mean far far less so

02:16:35.060 it's it's interesting there's definitely it's definitely if this isn't 2019 I think that's

02:16:39.940 fair to say this is not 2019 and there's a lot of people who are pretty loud and in support of

02:16:46.040 of the NDP and you know we've noticed a lot in the news in the last couple of weeks we're seeing

02:16:51.900 long-time Conservatives flipping and coming out and saying that they're supporting the NDP.

02:16:57.900 What's that all about? I don't really know how much we can read into that,

02:17:01.140 or can we say were those people ever really Conservatives to begin with? I don't know.

02:17:05.840 How much, I don't know how unpopular Rachel Notley was personally when she left office.

02:17:11.580 I think there were a lot of voters that had a sense of buyer's remorse,

02:17:15.540 but do you think there are people that have kind of forgotten how bad it was now,

02:17:19.060 or people that sort of, because it was so long ago,

02:17:21.820 they don't remember how much they didn't like the NDP?

02:17:24.560 I mean, I think that's entirely possible.

02:17:28.300 Rachel Notley won in 2015 against a divided conservative movement.

02:17:32.360 There were two conservative parties on the ballot, both taking a share.

02:17:36.380 And, you know, the New Democrats I talked to in 2019 said,

02:17:39.780 we knew it was always going to be a really hard fight

02:17:41.960 for us against a united conservative movement without that vote splitting.

02:17:45.960 But now we get to hear where we are.

02:17:47.400 And I do think, because it had been a few years, the whole memory of Rachel Notley maybe had softened a bit.

02:17:55.500 Where I think it changed back was when she proposed that 38% increase to corporate taxes.

02:18:02.040 That's the Rachel we knew.

02:18:03.180 And I think everybody went, oh, right, they're not good for business in Alberta.

02:18:08.060 I'd forgotten that.

02:18:09.440 And I think that actually was a major turning point for her campaign.

02:18:12.540 Oh, I think also buying into getting to this net zero by 2035, I think people are scared

02:18:21.520 to see what their electricity bills are going to look like, and I think that is perceived

02:18:25.140 as too much in line with Prime Minister Trudeau.

02:18:27.920 So I think that works in step with that.

02:18:31.400 Yeah, and I'm just looking at some of the numbers here.

02:18:33.060 By the way, your home riding is doing very well for the UCB right now of Cochrane Air

02:18:37.680 Dree.

02:18:37.840 It looks like Peter Guthrie has a fairly unsurprising lead there.

02:18:42.260 And just looking around the Calgary ridings here, not a huge amount of movement.

02:18:46.660 NDP still leading in Calgary Acadia with one more poll reporting.

02:18:51.500 In Calgary Curry, which is the one we are watching, the NDP are leading.

02:18:56.220 In Calgary Glenmore, the UCP have a, I wouldn't say a healthy lead, but they have a lead there.

02:19:02.280 So we're certainly not seeing a blowout in the early numbers of like some NDP surge,

02:19:08.440 like Kito Maggi of Main Street was sort of suggesting,

02:19:11.920 even in spite of what Main Street's own polls and models were saying.

02:19:16.800 Let's geek out a little bit here.

02:19:19.120 The history of polling in Alberta elections.

02:19:21.580 I'll start with you, William.

02:19:23.380 I mean, yeah, look, the problem with polling is well known

02:19:28.520 in that we've seen so many examples of where pollsters have confidently declared

02:19:33.320 that an election was going one way or the other

02:19:35.860 and then turned out to be nowhere even remotely close to it.

02:19:39.600 The one I painfully remember, of course, is 2012.

02:19:43.560 The poll said we would be thundering to a Wild Rose victory,

02:19:46.740 and of course that didn't happen.

02:19:49.480 Now you're schlepping it up here with us.

02:19:51.660 But, you know, the question is, well, then why is polling becoming less accurate?

02:19:54.980 And I think it's because getting to actual voters is increasingly difficult.

02:19:59.600 You know, people, a lot of people no longer have home phones.

02:20:02.420 They only have cell phones.

02:20:03.440 If they have cell phones, they don't answer phone calls from numbers they don't recognize.

02:20:08.400 So you're having to phone vast numbers in order to try and get even a tiny sample size.

02:20:15.580 And, you know, my other gut feeling is that, by the way, not an Alberta problem.

02:20:19.900 You can look at the United States.

02:20:21.720 Donald Trump couldn't possibly become president, except he did, based on polling.

02:20:26.040 So I think it's the fact that people are now just not telling pollsters.

02:20:30.740 I won't say they're lying, but they're either actively not providing information

02:20:34.980 or they're not providing information that is statistically useful enough

02:20:39.580 in order to give an accurate agreement.

02:20:41.380 No, when I ran in Ontario many years ago and I was going door knocking,

02:20:47.200 I was finding, you know, one-third said they were voting for me,

02:20:49.860 one-third said they were voting for the NDP, and one-third said they were undecided.

02:20:53.780 And I thought, oh, great, I didn't realize the undecidists were just lying to me

02:20:56.600 because they didn't want to tell me they weren't voting for me.

02:20:58.820 So there is a little bit of that in polling.

02:21:01.600 It is true.

02:21:02.180 It is sadly something we have to tell candidates that if a voter tells the candidate yes, it's a maybe.

02:21:09.920 But if a voter does tell a candidate no, you can take that to the bank.

02:21:13.920 Well, yeah, that is good advice.

02:21:15.460 But even that clip that we played earlier, the montage of Rachel Emanuel doing her own sort of impromptu exit polling out there,

02:21:22.540 a lot of people are very cagey at first.

02:21:25.280 And I think some people, there's still a little bit of vote stigma.

02:21:27.500 And I think that's probably more a thing with conservative votes,

02:21:31.320 that people are very nervous to admit in some context,

02:21:34.340 even in Alberta, that they're conservative.

02:21:36.380 Well, I think that there's just been a lot.

02:21:38.440 There's been voter exhaustion has been a big part of the problem,

02:21:41.320 and which ties in with voter apathy, unfortunately.

02:21:44.480 And I think we're seeing that.

02:21:46.180 Definitely the last Calgary mayoral race, we definitely saw that.

02:21:49.640 I mean, there was also COVID, of course,

02:21:51.700 but there was a snap federal election that was just three weeks before.

02:21:55.200 So it was kind of a perfect storm for a low turnout, certainly.

02:22:00.000 I just want to, by the way, interrupt our programming here, more than that was interrupting our programming here,

02:22:06.480 to just let you know we're here because we believe that it's important to have an independent media counterbalance to the legacy media's coverage on this.

02:22:15.380 And if you look at this row that we have down here, Global has this giant studio and CBC has a giant studio.

02:22:22.580 and then we've got this little section on the end here but we're here we have members of our team

02:22:26.580 from all over Canada and certainly all our Alberta crew here. This is not cheap so if you can support

02:22:32.100 the work that True North is doing and take a stand in general for independent media please do head on

02:22:37.060 to donate.tnc.news donate.tnc.news and also if you are watching on YouTube you can leave a super chat

02:22:46.260 in the comments and if you have any questions that you want us to answer live on air do super chat us

02:22:53.140 and ask your question in there and we'll certainly read those out they have to actually be a question

02:22:57.380 sometimes people will super chat something that is not a question and sometimes we're less inclined

02:23:01.540 to read those out but we may as the night goes on but truly i just want to say thank you to all the

02:23:06.100 donors out there who do support true north on the regular and this is a particularly special

02:23:10.740 location uh so i'll ask you again that website is donate.tnc.news and since we are talking with

02:23:17.120 independent media i think that was a bit of a theme of this campaign that was one that we have

02:23:23.640 to actually talk about because rachel notley had a very definitive position on i am only going to

02:23:29.220 talk to the alberta legislative press gallery reporters so much so of having security remove

02:23:34.660 key and bexty who we saw earlier and rebel news uh rachel emmanuel got questions into rachel

02:23:39.400 Notley because she's very loud, and at that point she didn't need the microphone for Rachel

02:23:43.820 to have heard her question. I don't think it costs them votes, but I do think it is

02:23:48.700 a very telling example of what a Rachel Notley government would look like.

02:23:53.200 Well, I think it's terrifying, actually, because when you have somebody who's vying to be the

02:23:58.560 next Premier of Alberta, not answering, you know, Western Standard, right, the Western

02:24:03.360 Standard press conference and one of their editors, Nigel Hannaford, and she was just

02:24:09.220 directly saying we're not going to answer any of your questions well Western Standard is an

02:24:14.220 accredited news media outlet they're alternative media certainly but they're accredited and they're

02:24:19.240 in these press galleries and they're they have you know people in the parliament building as well so

02:24:24.060 this isn't just some fly-by-night blogger and so it was quite I think that that didn't resonate

02:24:29.880 well with people at all and I think when you combine that with you know bill c11 and c18

02:24:36.200 coming down the pipeline, people are afraid that we're going to start losing access to the truth,

02:24:40.820 to information, and I can't, I mean, at Alberta Proud, I advocate all the time for all our partners

02:24:45.380 in independent media. I think it's so critical, and I think that was a really good glimpse. That

02:24:50.380 press conference was a really good glimpse at what a Rachel Notley government would look like, and

02:24:54.280 you know, in talking to alternative media, I know that a lot of reporters are completely cut off from

02:24:58.620 NDP email lists

02:25:00.780 and press releases and

02:25:02.700 we'll have a look at that.

02:25:05.440 So I would definitely say

02:25:06.640 one of the weird things about

02:25:08.500 the NDP's decision

02:25:10.620 is one of their big end of campaign

02:25:12.740 messages was

02:25:13.920 lend us your vote conservative.

02:25:16.900 Maybe you've never voted NDP

02:25:18.760 in your life but lend me a vote conservative.

02:25:20.880 Well then wouldn't you think talking to

02:25:22.640 media outlets whose

02:25:24.140 primary audience

02:25:25.840 were conservative

02:25:27.280 or people who are at least on the more conservative side of the spectrum,

02:25:31.460 you would think you would want to preference those media outlets

02:25:34.220 to try and get your message of lend us through.

02:25:37.340 Whereas, you know, you go on CBC to try and talk to conservatives.

02:25:40.260 Okay, you can talk to the more conservatives still watching CBC,

02:25:44.060 or you can talk to True North and talk to a huge chunk of the conservatives in this problem.

02:25:49.760 To me, that told me a really, really quick contrast to Rachel Watley on that.

02:25:53.540 You can lend me your vote. I won't let you down.

02:25:56.080 Yeah, and I think there's actually an interesting angle there,

02:26:00.840 and I think Rachel was talking about it a little bit earlier too,

02:26:03.220 and we'll discuss it later.

02:26:04.840 This idea that the NDP thinks it's entirely natural

02:26:07.580 for them to be the new home for conservative voters.

02:26:11.300 It was odd to see that pitch with a straight face.

02:26:14.080 I'm just trying to figure out what's conservative about them.

02:26:17.060 I'm still trying to figure that out.

02:26:18.980 You've got to do more than put on a blue blazer in a debate

02:26:21.220 to convince me that you're conservative. I'm sorry.

02:26:23.000 No, I agree, but I think it goes to the...

02:26:25.380 I mean, there's some hubris there, certainly, but if the NDP's position was that Danielle

02:26:29.820 Smith is so outside the mainstream of acceptable political discourse, and it was actually among

02:26:36.400 the most cynical approaches to politics, that this woman is like, how can even a conservative

02:26:41.160 vote for this woman, was basically their approach.

02:26:43.960 Absolutely.

02:26:44.720 I really think that made it hard for conservatives, even ones who maybe weren't thrilled with

02:26:50.560 a Danielle Smith like UCP.

02:26:52.500 I think they didn't like seeing the anger that's welled up from the NDP campaign.

02:26:59.520 I mean, I think Rachel Notley, one of her biggest assets when she won the first time

02:27:03.660 was the fact that she was seen as sunny and optimistic, positive,

02:27:08.140 and a change between the bickering between the Wild Rose and the PC parties.

02:27:12.960 She was offered some more hopeful policy.

02:27:17.100 And I think she really did herself in by going so negative, so relentlessly,

02:27:21.520 against conservative party but i think she even galvanized wavering conservatives back behind

02:27:27.980 the united conservative party yeah i think you may be right about that just to give you the

02:27:33.180 latest updates here we have 52 ridings leaning ucp and 35 ridings leading ndp now uh 50 what was

02:27:41.120 your prediction earlier i was 50 37 okay and you were 51 right i was 51 okay and i was right now

02:27:47.560 I'm the loser if the current numbers hold but again I have to be the damp blanket and say you

02:27:51.880 know early days early days but but every time I say that it's less so because right now 244,851

02:27:59.160 votes are in and as we see this we're also actually seeing 25 percent of polling stations have

02:28:06.520 reported right now so overall we actually have a bit more clarity certainly in some ridings here

02:28:12.860 To go back into the ones we're watching in Calgary,

02:28:15.620 no change yet in Calgary Acadia.

02:28:18.360 That is still the NDP leading.

02:28:20.920 Calgary Glenmore, a little bit of a lead increase for the UCP.

02:28:25.700 We have going around, what was the other one in Calgary we wanted?

02:28:28.860 Well, actually this one here.

02:28:30.380 Calgary Bow, yeah, Calgary Bow is UCP leading.

02:28:33.780 And to pop up to Edmonton, I'm not too, too optimistic yet.

02:28:37.440 That is a big orange box there, isn't it?

02:28:39.500 Edmonton is right now looking like an NDP sweep, if current trends hold.

02:28:45.000 And if you look at Strathcona, Sherwood Park, that is very decisively UCP right now.

02:28:50.860 Sherwood Park, though, leaning NDP.

02:28:52.880 So that's that suburban ex-urban cutoff you were talking about.

02:28:55.900 Yeah, no, absolutely.

02:28:59.040 The fact is that Edmonton has always felt kind of left out from most conservative governments.

02:29:05.040 It's a fact that most conservative leaders tend to come from the self-help of the province.

02:29:10.940 They tend to come from Calgary or are better connected to Calgary.

02:29:15.140 The one exception I could think of, of course, was when Ed Sjomek won,

02:29:19.060 but then he immediately adopted some very controversial policies on the energy sector and a few other things.

02:29:26.680 It's hard for Edmontonians to look and see themselves fully embodied by a party that is so kind of based in Calgary.

02:29:35.040 We got a super chat here from RetiredRigger38, perhaps not his legal name, who says, keep up the great work.

02:29:42.740 I said I wouldn't read the non-questions, but it was so nice, RetiredRigger, I had to read it.

02:29:46.720 Joe Uber says, down with the NDP and the Liberal Coalition, which is a very generous contribution.

02:29:54.800 Thank you for that, Joe Uber.

02:29:56.980 Obviously, I mean, the Liberals are not a political force here, but Danielle Smith did make as a pretty early commitment,

02:30:02.980 this idea that a vote for the NDP was a vote for Justin Trudeau,

02:30:06.580 which I thought was interesting and all altogether uncompelling

02:30:09.480 because the argument is who's going to stand up against federal intrusion, not the NDP, right?

02:30:14.060 Absolutely. I think that Rachel Notley just continues to show that time and again.

02:30:17.660 And I go back to this at Alberta Proud.

02:30:19.720 We've really focused on a lot of that messaging around, you know,

02:30:22.340 putting Notley in charge is like kicking your goalie out of the net

02:30:24.680 because we do have left-leaning mayors running Calgary and Edmonton.

02:30:27.760 We do have a left-leaning federal government.

02:30:29.680 so in order to get those checks and balances to get that balance representation can we afford to

02:30:35.660 do this also at the provincial level it truly is the NDP liberal coalition and you look at a lot of

02:30:40.380 I mean you look at something like just transition right getting rid of our good paying oil and gas

02:30:45.720 jobs in favor for quote green energy jobs whatever that means I think that means installing solar

02:30:49.860 panels or something like that but that was a page right out of the Alberta NDP playbook circa 2015

02:30:57.700 They actually used the term just transition.

02:31:00.020 So it's not a coincidence when you start kind of peeling back the layers

02:31:03.740 and looking at how much that Rachel Nolte really is in step

02:31:07.100 with the federal Liberals, unfortunately.

02:31:11.480 Yeah, we have a question from David here.

02:31:13.340 He says, if the UCP wins, is this indicative of a message for Canadians across the country

02:31:17.800 to knock it into bad policies of left-leaning government?

02:31:21.240 Can Alberta politics be extrapolated here, I guess, is the question.

02:31:24.580 Thank you, David, by the way.

02:31:25.440 I think that's actually really interesting.

02:31:27.640 You have different schools of thoughts on how a federal conservative party can win an election.

02:31:33.620 I think we saw one of them put into action last election, the Erin O'Toole School,

02:31:37.840 which was to go to the center, hug the center, be slightly more...

02:31:42.120 Center is a little generous there.

02:31:44.200 To be slightly, ever so slightly more conservative on some issues,

02:31:48.940 but otherwise become nearly indistinguishable in many ways.

02:31:52.360 And I think that failed overwhelmingly because my view has always been, why would people vote for liberal light when they can vote for real liberal and get, you know, it's like, new code was never as good as classic code.

02:32:03.480 Now, you know, I think one interesting thing that happened in this campaign that I think reflects the fact that the tide has turned someone against the woke, progressive nature of the activist politics of Justice Trudeau was when Calgary bureaucrats tried to cancel Canada Day fireworks.

02:32:22.040 They, one afternoon, said fireworks are culturally insensitive to the Chinese somehow because they invented them.

02:32:30.280 I'm still not 100% clear how that is culturally insensitive.

02:32:32.820 And to First Nations people.

02:32:34.040 It is insulting to First Nations people who don't feel they're part of Canada and therefore

02:32:39.640 they were just going to get rid of them.

02:32:41.140 Well, you know, the outcry from that was tremendous, you know, even though a handful of lefty city

02:32:49.220 councillors tried to justify it, a vote was coming of 10 city councillors out of 15 to

02:32:54.280 get rid of it.

02:32:55.280 Eventually the administration said, we do, we back them.

02:32:57.440 And I think that to me is reflective of the fact that you have to be, some people have

02:33:02.620 really taken this book missing way too far.

02:33:05.600 And they're trying to say things like you can't enjoy Canada Day and have fireworks because

02:33:09.740 that makes you racist and bigoted and typical people, average people said, no, it doesn't.

02:33:16.320 We just like fireworks and we aren't ashamed of a great country like Canada, which even

02:33:21.320 with its problems is still a remarkable place for us to live.

02:33:25.160 you even have indigenous leaders community leaders and people like melissa mambarkey coming out and

02:33:29.560 saying uh first nations people don't want to cancel canada day what are you talking about

02:33:34.520 so that that uh that didn't really do bode well for calgary city hall that they're making a lot

02:33:40.040 of kind of silly decisions right now so um and i gotta throw my hats off to my friends in common

02:33:44.760 sense calgary they put out a petition immediately they were all over that saying help us talk sense

02:33:50.600 common sense into calgary council to reverse this crazy rope woke decision to cancel canada day

02:33:56.680 fireworks and call it a visually spectacular display of lights and sounds visually stunning

02:34:05.640 you could ever think of a better government term for something

02:34:08.520 yukon strong who i've had on the andrew lawton show is a great advocate for firearms owners and

02:34:13.000 for the north uh has given a super chat he said if we chase the woke out of alberta we'll chase

02:34:17.480 I'm out of Ottawa, too.

02:34:18.880 Cheers from the north.

02:34:20.420 And Jen sent a super chat and said nothing at all with it.

02:34:24.080 So a woman of a few words, but we thank you for your generosity, Jen.

02:34:27.920 Let me just say on that, a question earlier from David that you were discussing about,

02:34:32.920 you know, is this something we can export if the UCP wins?

02:34:36.260 I think the inverse is a very important question here,

02:34:39.420 which is if conservatism can't take hold and win in Alberta, where can it?

02:34:44.000 And I mean, yes, we've got Saskatchewan and we've got, you know, nominally Ontario.

02:34:48.340 That's another discussion here.

02:34:50.560 So I think that's hugely important is that if Conservatives cannot hold the line in Alberta, it becomes very difficult to make the case anywhere else.

02:34:58.300 And I think it would make it very difficult for this, when I call it the Pierre Pauly of revolution, that's kind of taking over the nation and he's filling.

02:35:04.740 I mean, we've all been there. We've seen the rallies. We've seen the response.

02:35:07.840 I don't know the last time we've ever seen a federal Canadian Conservative politician resonate with people that way.

02:35:12.740 The rallies in Edmonton were like something like 5,000, 6,000 people.

02:35:16.320 And his rallies in the east, he's filling rooms.

02:35:19.420 That's the big thing.

02:35:20.100 My city, London, Ontario, I was chatting with his campaign manager

02:35:24.640 who used to work with Stephen Harper, and she was looking around

02:35:27.580 and saying even when Stephen Harper was here,

02:35:29.480 we weren't getting these numbers at the same menu.

02:35:31.980 You know, Stephen Harper, they were like, you know,

02:35:33.260 put the wall across, you know, so everyone thought the room was more full,

02:35:36.760 whereas with Pierre, they're like people in the hallway

02:35:38.320 because there's no room.

02:35:39.280 This is a level of energy that isn't quite comparable to what Danielle Smith commands.

02:35:44.700 But Danielle Smith is very much tapping into, I think, some of that momentum, certainly.

02:35:48.720 And I think having Pierre pitch in, well, I don't think it was all that surprising.

02:35:52.960 I do think it was very important to see.

02:35:56.340 Oh, yeah, his endorsement, you know, coming into that with the last week of the campaign, wasn't surprising?

02:36:01.500 No, of course not.

02:36:02.480 But it was really important because if there are those people out there who maybe are still on the fence about Danielle Smith

02:36:08.420 because of all the MSN blow-up about things,

02:36:10.800 things that she said, some missteps earlier in the campaign,

02:36:14.340 everything that's happened, the infighting with the UCP over the last two years,

02:36:18.040 all the COVID stuff.

02:36:19.300 But there's a lot of those people, they are all poly-ev all the time.

02:36:23.500 And to see that endorsement, maybe that's what she said,

02:36:25.700 you know what, I'm going to mark that ballot.

02:36:28.080 I mean, I think it was tremendously important as a counter-narrative to the,

02:36:32.180 oh, Conservatives for the first time are lending their vote to the Democrats.

02:36:36.060 What a way to put a bullet in that concept by saying, actually, the man who routinely gets thousands of people out is firmly in the Daniel Smith camp and urging his supporters to vote Conservative in this election.

02:36:48.760 Well, and I think it's also important to note as well, you may look at this map and see, oh, wow, you know, the NDP are doing really well in key pockets.

02:36:55.220 The riding boundaries are very different provincially from federally.

02:36:58.180 You know, provincially, 87 ridings in Alberta.

02:37:00.440 The federal Alberta ridings are, what, like in the early days?

02:37:04.760 No, I think it's in the 30s.

02:37:06.900 30s, it's that low.

02:37:07.840 So, yeah, there we go.

02:37:09.360 Ontario took all of our seats.

02:37:10.660 Yeah, fair enough.

02:37:11.760 Even more maddening.

02:37:13.700 A question from Andrew R., not me, I'm Andrew L.,

02:37:16.960 but he has a super chat.

02:37:18.260 Thanks for the great work.

02:37:19.580 Very much needed perspective.

02:37:21.340 It's not a question, but thank you nonetheless.

02:37:23.300 And Herbert Hildebrandt has a question.

02:37:25.520 Andrew, do you think that a Smith win

02:37:27.200 could embolden Conservatives across Canada

02:37:29.800 to be more DeSantis-Trumpian for the long term

02:37:33.520 and shift the map.

02:37:35.060 It's not often you get Trumpian as a compliment

02:37:36.880 from an internet commenter.

02:37:38.840 So thank you for that, Herbert.

02:37:40.720 I will say, Danielle did very good at,

02:37:43.220 not quite the poly-ev level of aggression,

02:37:45.560 but flipping the script on the journalists.

02:37:47.820 And even that one event she had a couple of weeks ago

02:37:49.900 where NDP protesters came,

02:37:52.360 she didn't apologize for anything.

02:37:54.200 She came and said,

02:37:54.900 see, this is what we're dealing with here.

02:37:56.440 So I do think she has done that,

02:37:58.540 kind of had that little bite that conservatives need.

02:38:01.100 Well, I think conservatives,

02:38:02.000 they need that bite for sure.

02:38:03.200 but conservatives have to get off the defense we have to stop apologizing for having conservative

02:38:07.760 values and we have to bite back when when the the woke left want to say terrible things that

02:38:13.760 were you know racist or homophobic or all these things well i certainly know you guys would feel

02:38:20.160 the same way as i do that i know tons of people who identify as you know uh gay or part of the

02:38:28.000 the LGBTQ community and who are you know of all creed and ethnicities and everything that are on

02:38:34.300 the conservative spectrum especially you see that a lot at the federal level you know when you go

02:38:37.860 out to Ottawa and places like that and it's just such a so ludicrous and we've got to actually

02:38:42.740 take we've got to be more aggressive say no you're not going to ever call me those things I'm none of

02:38:46.740 those things this stops now and I think Danielle has is taking the reins with that and I appreciate

02:38:52.440 that she's doing that I think it's smart yeah and we're we're going to cut away in just a moment to

02:38:57.120 head back over to the floor with Rachel Emanuel.

02:38:59.320 But just to give a little results

02:39:01.120 update here, if you're just tuning in,

02:39:03.080 True North Live. You're just as excited as the audience

02:39:05.280 is. You're like leaning over to the computer every time.

02:39:07.700 We have

02:39:08.320 380,000 votes in.

02:39:11.040 Quite a significant increase over

02:39:13.000 last update. And of those,

02:39:15.080 49 UCP

02:39:16.800 leading and 38

02:39:18.960 NDP leading. Now these are just

02:39:21.100 leading. These are not

02:39:23.080 necessarily elected. So when

02:39:25.100 we get further in the night where we have more polls

02:39:27.000 reporting we're going to be able to call races more definitively and that's when the cheering

02:39:30.980 behind us will get really really loud which will prompt us to report what it is that exactly was

02:39:36.460 causing all the cheering but 49 right now for the UCP to 39 NDP so we're still in that territory

02:39:43.760 that a lot of people thought so we're going to head back to the floor now Rachel Emanuel is there

02:39:48.720 with Rebecca Schultz a UCP cabinet minister who it looks like has won or is on the track to win

02:39:55.660 re-election in Calgary Shaw but take it away Rachel and Rebecca I am here with UCP candidate

02:40:05.040 Rebecca Schultz she is the candidate for Calgary Shaw Rebecca I just dared to check Twitter and

02:40:10.280 I'm seeing a lot of complaints from people about how long it is taking for elections Alberta to

02:40:14.860 tally the results what do you make of this do you think that it's taking longer than usual or you

02:40:18.720 think people just need to be patient and it'll get here soon enough yeah it's tough to say I've

02:40:22.560 been hearing that from a lot of people here tonight and some of our volunteers and supporters

02:40:26.700 checking in to see when they're going to get the results I don't know when that's going to be but

02:40:31.140 I think everybody's very excited to see what's happening tonight certainly very excited and I

02:40:35.720 think everyone's also hoping they're not going to be here till 2 3 a.m. as sometimes we'll see

02:40:40.480 so Calgary Shaw we know is a conservative safe seat everyone's expecting you to win your seat

02:40:44.860 again tonight some of your colleagues in Calgary I think are feeling a little bit more nervous

02:40:48.520 What are some ridings that you have your eye on tonight that you're saying if we lose these, you know, it could be bad for the party?

02:40:55.420 You know, that's a tough one for me to answer.

02:40:57.200 I don't trust the polls.

02:40:58.440 And certainly, I mean, we were out there door knocking until after 7 o'clock tonight.

02:41:02.220 So we're not taking anything for granted.

02:41:04.120 We're just working hard to the very end.

02:41:05.580 And I know my colleagues right across Calgary and across the province have been doing the same.

02:41:09.720 So when you talk about not trusting the polls, we know that they've had a couple pretty big misses in recent elections.

02:41:15.800 2019 they way underestimated the conservative vote 2012 you know they completely got it wrong

02:41:21.500 on what was expected for government so I think a lot of conservatives are saying you know I've

02:41:25.720 seen a lot of elections I've seen a lot of provincial elections and the polls don't really

02:41:29.240 go the way that they say they're going to go and so here again they're showing a very close race

02:41:34.700 between the NDP and the UCP with the polls that have been reported so far are you agreeing with

02:41:40.760 that are you saying yes it is going to be a very close race tonight or do you think the polls

02:41:44.340 potentially got it wrong again. You know again it's tough to say and the polls

02:41:48.020 obviously in the last couple of weeks have kind of been all over the place and

02:41:52.080 so all I all I can say is you know we know what we were seeing Calgary Shaw I

02:41:56.160 know what I was hearing on the doorsteps it was people saying look we cannot

02:41:59.460 afford to go back to the NDP we want to continue to see jobs and opportunity and

02:42:03.720 economic growth and a government that can balance a budget and wants to get

02:42:08.080 tough on crime and so you know that's what we were hearing and I sure hope

02:42:12.480 that we see that in the results tonight. Sure. When we talk about what you were hearing at the

02:42:16.460 doors, one of the things that I heard from UCP insiders is they were saying, we're really hoping

02:42:21.400 that jobs and the economy is going to be the ballot box question. Do you think that it wasn't

02:42:26.100 the ballot box question that voters were looking towards something else, maybe looking towards

02:42:30.980 which leader they trusted more? You know, I heard a lot about jobs, economy and affordability. And

02:42:36.740 so whether that was cost of living or we can't afford to go back to the NDP, those were things

02:42:41.500 that I often heard. I mean, you know, some also say that this was a divisive campaign. I definitely

02:42:46.480 heard that on the doors. I heard people say, look, I heard the NDP ads. I heard them over and over

02:42:50.820 and over, but I don't know what they're going to offer Albertans. We tried to run a campaign where

02:42:55.020 we not only highlighted our record, what we've done over the last four years, what we rolled out

02:42:59.040 in this spring's budget, and that we had a plan to continue to move Alberta forward, whether it

02:43:04.580 and affordability and lowering taxes these are things that resonated with everyday Albertans

02:43:12.940 who these issues were top of mind for so you represent a Calgary riding when we talk about

02:43:18.880 top of mind issues something that I have been covering a lot is the public safety crisis that

02:43:24.720 we are seeing certainly all across of Canada right now and Calgary is absolutely no exception to that

02:43:30.720 would you say that you have noticed a difference with people saying I used to take public

02:43:34.340 transit into work. I don't feel safe doing that anymore. Is that something that actually came up

02:43:38.340 frequently in your conversations at the door? It is and especially my riding of Calgary Shaw

02:43:43.620 my riding is it straddles McLeod Trail so we do have a number of C train stations especially at

02:43:49.460 the end of the line down in South Calgary and so this is something that did come up especially in

02:43:54.680 communities like Shaughnessy and Somerset where people said look I do take the train. I'm afraid

02:44:00.000 for my kids to take the train to school I take it every day to work here's what

02:44:04.080 I'm seeing and so very much people cared that we had made those additional

02:44:08.580 investments the pilot with the sheriffs helping out to make sure that the LRT is

02:44:12.840 safe the additional police officers that we invested in as well just a couple of

02:44:17.880 months ago but then also saying look we're gonna make sure that people feel

02:44:22.140 safe in their communities but we're also gonna make sure that we're investing in

02:44:25.800 treatment for those who are really struggling with addictions and so

02:44:28.880 So people saw that that was reasonable versus a party whose candidates wanted to defund the police.

02:44:34.360 At a time when this is a top-of-mind issue, I think that the NDP spent more time negatively affecting part of the issues that matter for people.

02:44:42.980 Yeah, and just because Rebecca mentioned that, I'm going to let my viewers who aren't aware just give them a little bit of information.

02:44:47.620 There was a lot of Alberta NDP candidates who had a history of defund the police rhetoric,

02:44:53.500 and Rachel Notley, of course, did not want to talk about that in the election campaign.

02:44:56.300 she actually said that her government would hire more police officers similar to what the UCP have

02:45:00.900 already done and what they're promising to do. Now when we talk about that two-part of focusing

02:45:04.820 on public safety but also focusing on addictions and mental health one of the interesting policies

02:45:10.300 that you guys put forward was the Compassion Intervention Act. I've asked a lot of guests

02:45:14.060 about it tonight but something that we're wondering over at True North our readers are really

02:45:17.220 interested in this is is this something that average voters are asking about at the doors

02:45:21.340 or is this a type of policy that really only resonates with people who have been touched by

02:45:25.060 addiction you know I think generally speaking what people care about is that

02:45:29.240 they feel safe in their communities they feel like they can walk around their

02:45:32.260 communities that their kids can walk around the communities they can take the

02:45:34.960 train downtown to work go see a concert or a show and feel safe right and and so

02:45:41.000 what that means is tackling the crime piece they want to see an additional

02:45:46.120 police presence and that does help with community safety but they also do see

02:45:50.420 people struggling with mental health and addictions and they want to know that

02:45:53.320 that the government cares and has a plan to address that and I think in a compassionate way

02:45:58.600 that really is at the heart of it about getting people the help that they need.

02:46:03.160 So I have to ask you again a little bit about the Alberta NDP's plan.

02:46:07.300 Rachel Notley was asked about safe injection sites and she said no no that's not really

02:46:11.680 something that our party is interested in doing. We're taking more of a hardcore public safety

02:46:17.020 approach similar to the UCP. What do you make of that? Do you believe her?

02:46:19.860 I mean, here's the thing. They have a record. And so in this election, we do have two parties running that each have a record. Our record is those investments in crime and policing, keeping community and detox spaces and mental health supports. What we saw under the NDP was kind of a sole focus on injection sites. And that was their record. That's what they focused on for four years. And so I don't think Albertans believe them.

02:46:45.060 We're just going to wrap up here shortly, but I have at least one or two other things

02:46:48.820 I want to ask you super quickly.

02:46:50.100 So for those of you who don't remember, Rebecca Schultz actually ran in the UCP leadership

02:46:53.760 race.

02:46:54.760 And I've gotten a couple of compliments on your ability to handle the media in the time

02:46:58.640 since then.

02:46:59.640 People said, you know, she's really worked her way up in her public speaking and made

02:47:03.300 a lot of gains in her abilities to talk to media and talk to your crowd since the UCP

02:47:07.520 leadership race.

02:47:08.520 And I'm wondering if you felt that that has given you more confidence as a campaigner

02:47:12.060 And if you felt that has been, you know, an advantage at the doors, having that experience as running for the leader of the party.

02:47:18.340 Well, thank you. I've never really thought about it that way when I'm out there on the doors.

02:47:22.060 And this was when I first ran in 2018. And you're running in a nomination against other conservative supporters.

02:47:28.020 So you have to think about what makes you different. And my approach is just to be genuine to I don't have the answers all the time.

02:47:34.560 and to be able to say that and to make people know and feel that I am really there to serve them,

02:47:40.980 that I want to hear their frustrations or their aspirations and their hopes for what Alberta is to be

02:47:46.220 and then take that and try to do something about it and just to remember who I'm there to serve and to work for.

02:47:52.520 And I think that makes a difference as well.

02:47:55.160 Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the party has recognized that because you have been front and center

02:47:58.600 in many of the announcements that have been made over the last few weeks.

02:48:01.600 just the last thing that I want to ask you here is we have a couple polls reporting now you know

02:48:06.920 it is taking a little bit of time but are you feeling confident in what we're seeing so far

02:48:11.700 tonight are the numbers trending in the direction that you want to see I haven't seen any of the

02:48:17.000 results because largely I've been uh sitting here chatting uh with you and some of the other folks

02:48:21.580 in the media um but I think you know longer than people would like but I'm still optimistic and I

02:48:27.960 think people here are feeling the same way yeah absolutely well thank you so much for your time

02:48:31.700 we really appreciate that again that was rebecca schultz the ucp candidate for calgary shaw she is

02:48:37.480 expected to hold her seat tonight and we're of course really looking forward to getting some of

02:48:41.880 those solid results and sharing with them done with you a little bit later and we're going to

02:48:46.180 head back to andrew now thank you rebecca thank you

02:48:57.960 If you are just tuning in, this is shaping up to be a bit of a nail-biter as a lot of

02:49:10.140 ridings, despite being relatively small, are very slow to report their numbers.

02:49:15.720 I'm here with William McBeth from True North, Lindsay Wilson from Alberta Proud, and let's

02:49:20.680 just talk about some of the latest numbers here.

02:49:22.740 We are currently at 51 UCP leading, 36 NDP leading.

02:49:28.760 This is with 514,000 votes cast.

02:49:32.660 We zoom in on the numbers here.

02:49:34.460 We haven't been given a lot of love to Lethbridge.

02:49:36.680 Both of the Lethbridge seats are leading NDP.

02:49:39.520 I think one of them, there was some thinking that maybe the UCP might be able to pull it off.

02:49:44.380 They still could, but right now that's not where things are headed.

02:49:48.140 In Calgary, the NDP have kept the lead in Acadia.

02:49:52.740 which is Tyler Shandro's riding.

02:49:55.420 Narrow lead, 93 votes, with only 7 of 18 polls reporting.

02:50:00.040 So just under halfway through there.

02:50:02.120 In Calgary, Glenmore, UCP are holding.

02:50:04.900 And Banff, your girl Miranda Rosen, has extended her lead to 978 votes.

02:50:12.200 That is a huge switch.

02:50:13.420 With 8 of 26 polls reporting.

02:50:15.420 So, again, if the Banff and Canmore ones are the ones they haven't put in yet,

02:50:19.040 that could change yet.

02:50:21.440 We look in the other ridings here.

02:50:24.260 We've got Calgary Elbow, which is an NDP lead.

02:50:28.300 Calgary Curry, a pretty decisive NDP lead.

02:50:31.980 What were the other good ones in Calgary you were watching, William?

02:50:34.960 I'm interested in Calgary Edgemont.

02:50:37.000 That's another riding that the UCB are hoping to hold on to.

02:50:39.600 All right. In Calgary, Edgemont. Right now, the NDP leading with 12 of 18 polls reporting by about 300 votes.

02:50:52.020 Yeah, it's, you know, some of these ridings, I think, are just tough.

02:50:56.040 They were always going to be a little bit closer this election than they were.

02:50:59.320 That was pegged to be a difficult one from the go.

02:51:01.300 That was going to be. But, you know, overall, I think that number sitting around 50, 51 seats

02:51:08.400 for the United Conservative Party is where I think most of us were expecting it to land.

02:51:13.120 So, I mean, it's not over till it's over.

02:51:15.720 We don't have to count every single vote to know the outcome,

02:51:18.620 but you do have to count a decent chunk.

02:51:20.920 Well, Calgary Klein was one you mentioned earlier that was looking like an NDP gain.

02:51:26.600 Right now, that is actually not looking to be the case in the numbers.

02:51:31.320 We have 7 of 18 polls reporting.

02:51:33.800 So, again, still a bit of room.

02:51:34.880 but right now Jeremy Nixon holding a 130 or so vote lead.

02:51:40.620 So at what point is a lead too big to really escape with polls coming in?

02:51:48.020 That's such an interesting question because my candidates always ask me,

02:51:51.700 when do I know if I've won or lost?

02:51:54.060 One of the challenges is riding groups of people, different communities.

02:52:02.120 One part of your writing might be very, very pro-United Conservative Party, and another part of it might be more NDP.

02:52:09.860 Unless you know where the polls are in that writing, it's hard to be able to say, oh, we're safe in this one or we're not.

02:52:18.540 I'll give you a personal and sad example.

02:52:22.160 When we were doing Joan Crockett's campaign back in the 2015 federal election, we were still waiting on something like 10 polls.

02:52:28.920 Joan was leading by a small amount.

02:52:31.360 But when I plotted on a map where all the outstanding polls were,

02:52:35.060 realized it was all from downtown and from the Beltline for the East Village,

02:52:38.960 I said, Joan, even though it shows us we're ahead,

02:52:41.700 I don't think we're going to hold on to it.

02:52:43.400 And sadly, of course, we didn't.

02:52:45.900 Yeah, and I think that's the tough chance.

02:52:48.180 I mean, there's a whole bunch of political wisdom that is circulated

02:52:51.920 that is very difficult when you're the candidate on the ground

02:52:54.340 and you just want to make sure you can clinch a victory here.

02:52:56.840 I mean, ultimately, the old line is, you know, you need how many votes to win, one more than the other candidate.

02:53:02.560 When you're in functionally a two-party race, it's a little bit more direct than that to see it.

02:53:08.500 But even then, a lot of these Calgary riotings are very, very close.

02:53:12.460 We're seeing, you know, back and forth when one poll goes in by, you know, 50 vote, 100 vote margins.

02:53:17.440 So, again, this idea of some NDP insurgency is not happening, at least it's safe to say.

02:53:24.620 I don't think so.

02:53:25.500 You know, going back to what you're saying, it really depends where these poles are located.

02:53:29.220 And my horse there, Miss Miranda Rosen out in Banff Kananaskis, that might be indicative of that.

02:53:34.460 She's got a very strong lead right now.

02:53:36.580 An hour ago, we were seeing a much more smaller lead, a little bit playing around in there.

02:53:41.240 Or the NDP.

02:53:42.840 Exactly.

02:53:43.900 But then again, if those poles are coming in from Prittis and they're coming in from Elbow

02:53:48.160 and they're coming in from Bragg Creek versus then we might see a complete swing.

02:53:53.840 But, I mean, there's really no shockers here.

02:53:56.720 Certainly, you know, we were talking before, well, what does the Eusepi need to lose, right?

02:54:01.860 And they need to lose 14 out of 15 of their swing ridings.

02:54:05.000 I don't see that happening at this point.

02:54:07.060 I think we're going to land at a very minimum on 47, at the minimum.

02:54:11.760 Yeah, and I'll just add another one of the Calgary ridings that Rachel Emanuel was talking about earlier, Calgary Cross.

02:54:16.860 This is Mickey Amory's riding.

02:54:18.900 He is leading right now, but only by 62 votes and only three polls in.

02:54:24.800 So that one, I think, is still a bit of a toss-up and could go in a different direction there.

02:54:30.900 So one thing I'll point up here is that we are going to go back to the floor.

02:54:35.340 Rachel Emanuel is talking to a guy who's a very fascinating figure in Alberta politics.

02:54:40.700 I've had him on my show, and with even riding his horse, which in retrospect is very cruel to the horse,

02:54:45.780 but the horse seemed to do all right with it and that is Tarek Elnega and Tarek Elnega

02:54:51.660 formerly ran for leader of the Maverick Party but now he's been pretty enthusiastic with

02:54:58.120 Danielle Smith so in just a moment actually right now we will go to Rachel Emanuel with

02:55:04.020 Tarek Elnega. I'm here with Tariq Angala he is a conservative commentator so first thing I want

02:55:12.680 to ask you about is results are taking a really long time tonight people are getting frustrated

02:55:16.600 twitter is going crazy what's your take why do you think it's taking so long tonight

02:55:20.780 i think the usual technical delays or you know additional scrutineering or so on i'm not going

02:55:26.860 to say that anything bad is happening so it's just you know what i say the longer it takes the the

02:55:31.460 more fun the after party will be so yeah that's fair enough i think that's a good perspective

02:55:35.240 so we do have some polls reporting are you happy with what you're seeing so far do you think that

02:55:40.980 things are trending, you know, in the direction of the

02:55:43.360 or do you think it could go either way at this point?

02:55:46.200 No, I think it's bang on.

02:55:47.540 My personal prediction, Rachel, is it's going to be in the early 50s

02:55:50.800 in terms of seats, 51, 52, 53 in that range for the UCP.

02:55:55.640 That's my guess and I think that's where it's going to go.

02:55:57.980 So pretty much on trend there.

02:56:00.100 And when we talk about, you know, seat projection,

02:56:02.820 what are ridings that you're keeping a close eye on tonight?

02:56:05.340 So the closer you get to downtown Calgary,

02:56:07.760 physically the closer you're going to have to look at riding.

02:56:10.180 So whether that's Acadia, Varsity, I look at, for example, Elbow and Bow, those are all ridings that are really close.

02:56:18.120 And what's dangerous about those is even if the UCP win, the NDP candidates running on those ridings are relatively activist candidates.

02:56:25.300 They're anti-oil. They're very pro-big government, pro-big AHS.

02:56:29.220 It would be disappointing to see them in the legislature.

02:56:31.660 So those are the ones to watch because, again, even if the NDP lose and those candidates are in the ledge,

02:56:36.600 they're going to have a voice that I think goes against Alberta's values.

02:56:41.260 And when we talk about some of those candidates having more, you know, radical views, anti-oil views,

02:56:46.580 something that we observed during the election was that the NDP actually ran as a fairly moderate campaign.

02:56:55.180 Is that something that you noticed as well?

02:56:56.600 And do you think that voters sort of fell for it?

02:56:58.740 Or do you think that they remembered what it was like under an NDP government?

02:57:02.060 I think the thing is, within the urban ridings, you're seeing a very different demographic to 2019.

02:57:08.620 So there's a lot of folks that moved either out of country or out of province into Alberta over the last four years.

02:57:15.300 And there's also a new generation of voters in the urban area.

02:57:19.080 The thing is, in terms of whether memories are long or short, I think if you go to rural Alberta,

02:57:24.120 they know very, very firsthand what the disaster the NDP was from 2015 to 2019.

02:57:30.140 Within the urban area, I think a lot more of a mixed vote.

02:57:33.580 And that's why, you know, up until last night, it's close.

02:57:36.880 And that's why I think it's going to be tight.

02:57:38.880 That being said, those candidates haven't been called out.

02:57:41.920 They've been kind of doing it on their own.

02:57:43.600 But if you look into their backgrounds, and this is no conspiracy, they didn't hide this.

02:57:47.500 A lot of them are anti-oil or pro-big government.

02:57:51.840 Okay, great.

02:57:52.280 And, Tarek, just my last question for you here.

02:57:54.060 What do you think really was the ballot box question of the 2023 Alberta Provincial Election Campaign?

02:58:01.760 I think it's always common sense policy, economics, jobs, affordability, and a prosperous Alberta.

02:58:08.400 If there's really one ballot box question, it's definitely do we have a prosperous Alberta or not.

02:58:13.680 Great. Thank you so much. Once again, that was Tarek Ngala. We're going to head back over to you now, Andrew.

02:58:21.260 What are you looking for?

02:58:24.060 All right, we are back. Sorry, I got very excited looking up Robby Picard's magazine, Oil and Gas World magazine.

02:58:31.260 We swapped in a good friend of Independent Media who does Independent Media himself promoting the oil and gas sector.

02:58:38.300 You've come down from Fort McMurray to be with us here.

02:58:41.360 And just while we're talking about results, you've got to explain to me what's going on in Fort McMurray-Wood, Buffalo,

02:58:46.640 where there's this giant orange splotch on the map right now. What's happening, Robby? What did you do?

02:58:52.260 So this is a very interesting situation. So what happened was is you've got

02:58:57.420 Tani Yao and I'm it's really hard for me because I'm literally friends with all of them. I know all of them

02:59:02.780 So this is a very unique situation. I know them all personally, but here's basically what happened is that

02:59:08.880 Zol Keefe beat Tani in the nomination, then he was disqualified which puts which put

02:59:14.520 Tani back in because Tani wasn't running Funky Benjoko decided she was gonna run our city councillor and then you got

02:59:21.080 But the Alberta party, so he's, for the first time, you have a little bit of vote splitting happening in our riding.

02:59:28.240 So I'll be interesting to see.

02:59:30.200 I'm not, I have to admit that I was a little surprised the NDP are doing, considering how lazy they were.

02:59:35.680 They didn't even show up to the debates.

02:59:37.780 There's barely any signs.

02:59:39.020 But it also goes to show you that even if you're an incumbent, you can't be cocky or arrogant or assume that your seat is safe.

02:59:46.560 So I think, if anything, this is an eye-opener that all the UCP members need to do with some humanization and not just assume that it's in the bag.

02:59:56.300 Yeah, and let's talk about the Fort McMurray voter here because I know oftentimes we see in the U.S. you have all these Democrats that move to red states and they bring all of their Democrat voting habits with them.

03:00:08.120 And Fort McMurray draws people from all around the country, notably Atlantic Canada.

03:00:12.800 Do they bring their political persuasions with them?

03:00:15.280 Or are the ones that go to Fort Mac to work in the oil patch,

03:00:18.140 are they pretty reliable conservative voters?

03:00:20.400 I would say, at the end of the day, as a rule, yeah.

03:00:23.660 Fort McMurray very rarely, if it goes conservative, it goes like Wild Rose conservative.

03:00:28.320 Or it doesn't...

03:00:29.420 So all the Newfoundlanders in Fort Mac, when they start voting in Alberta, they're voting UCB.

03:00:33.260 They want jobs.

03:00:34.140 They want their jobs to be protected.

03:00:36.160 And the union doesn't necessarily...

03:00:37.340 think that even though the union supports ndp there's some uncertainty of what can happen but

03:00:43.260 we are probably the most multicultural city in canada i would even argue that we're more

03:00:47.420 multicultural than even montreal but when they're there and they understand the importance of the

03:00:51.740 oil sands they understand the importance of what fort mcmurray brings the rest of this country

03:00:57.420 i i think they kind of they they will go with the party that will protect that the most but i mean

03:01:02.220 I mean, it wasn't that long ago that the NDP beat the PCs when Brian Jean was the Wild Rose.

03:01:06.860 So, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that there is a little bit of pushback against the UCP a little bit.

03:01:13.100 Well, let's talk about Brian Jean.

03:01:14.780 We haven't really spoken about him tonight.

03:01:16.720 He's a guy that vied for the UCP leadership himself, formerly was the UCP leader.

03:01:21.840 I know there has been some hostility between him and Daniel Smith,

03:01:25.840 that they've been very good teammates since Daniel Smith won by all accounts.

03:01:29.540 Do you think that's been...

03:01:31.540 Oh, I mean, you know, Brian's had such a complex history with one or more of our conservative parties at the provincial level.

03:01:40.840 Yeah, well, he was a federal MP, too, though.

03:01:42.460 He was a federal MP. He was representing a very important riding in the parliament.

03:01:47.980 But, of course, he was the one riding against Jason Kenney, ostensibly to lead the new United Conservative Party.

03:01:53.860 When that didn't go his way, he decided to move on and do something else with his time.

03:01:59.860 But then, I think he never really left.

03:02:02.860 I think he decided he was still the right choice to lead the party, and you saw him come back in that leadership race.

03:02:08.860 Where I think his plan kind of went a little off the rails was when Daniel Smith campaigned on essentially the same policy platform, but took it one step further than he did.

03:02:19.860 And, you know, we had a conversation with his longtime political associate, Vitor Marciano earlier, and Vitor once did say, you know, we wouldn't have expected that that was her strategy, and it really did kind of leave us in the lurch.

03:02:33.200 Yeah, that was the leadership in which there was this, like, weird semantical haggling over sovereignty versus autonomy.

03:02:39.320 No, I didn't want sovereignty, I wanted autonomy.

03:02:41.400 It's like, well, you know, to the average voter, that was a very difficult thing to distinguish here.

03:02:46.360 We were talking earlier on the panel before you joined, Robbie, about the NDP's relationship with the oil and gas sector.

03:02:52.740 Now, you actually, to your credit, have tried very hard to make inroads with the NDP.

03:02:58.300 And I think in some cases, you've succeeded.

03:03:00.600 Where do you rank that party generally on the issues that you care about?

03:03:04.580 So, back when Rachel Notley became premier, I met with her.

03:03:09.360 And I got her actually to wear the I Love Oil Sands hoodie, which was kind of a legendary...

03:03:12.860 And it didn't disintegrate when she put it on.

03:03:14.380 No, she did. And for her credit, I think she fought hard on the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

03:03:20.120 She was likable. The problem, though, is it's not so much her. It's the federal NDP.

03:03:26.480 It's what are they? What is the end game for Fort McMurray? What is the end game for oil and gas industry?

03:03:32.080 And I don't trust that they will protect our industry in an offensive way, like not so much like she accepted the carbon tax.

03:03:43.700 There's all these decisions that hurt us.

03:03:45.480 The only thing that really scares me is I, not to go kind of sideways from oil and gas,

03:03:50.160 but I was talking to some people from a region where they got rid of the coal industry

03:03:54.920 and they were devastated.

03:03:57.160 Like when you shut down these industries for so-called woke values

03:04:02.640 without an understanding of the direct economic effects,

03:04:06.000 I think that's scary and that happened a lot in the Parkland district

03:04:09.440 and it took them a long time to get over that.

03:04:11.460 so i don't think that there are strong enough defenders of the oil and gas industry i think

03:04:16.820 that what we will what we will see more and more of is that saudi arabia and nigeria and russia

03:04:22.500 will take a lot of our market share if we don't get aggressive there is no such thing as green

03:04:28.420 energy um their oil industry isn't going anywhere but what happens to our oil industry i think we

03:04:36.020 need to wake up and be more aware of how easily it could be cut if we don't protect it yeah and

03:04:41.140 And it's interesting when you mention, you know, the coal industry, because the old sort of model NDP voter was this, you know, union blue-collar worker.

03:04:50.200 Many of them in Alberta would have worked in coal, would have worked in mining, would have worked in oil and gas.

03:04:54.380 And it is a strange little dilemma that the NDP has, where it's like, we're going to stand up for, you know, the old blue-collar unionized worker.

03:05:02.000 But no, no, no, not you guys.

03:05:03.580 Not the ones in this sector, because you are right.

03:05:05.920 They've just decided this, you know, woke virtue signaling takes precedence over that.

03:05:10.560 Well, you know, and what's really funny is such a facade, like if you look at Jack McZine, I mean, you want to talk about, he drives a BMW, he's super rich, you know what I mean?

03:05:18.580 He has a $10,000 Rolex and he's going to be the beacon of social values and speak out for people.

03:05:23.880 I mean, it's ridiculous, you know, and that's the thing that I, I grew up NDP in Saskatchewan.

03:05:28.840 Like it was, I had like the worker versus the business and I was comfortable with that.

03:05:35.380 But now you've got kind of the NDP, like, especially with the guy that, the head of the union, the 955 union, that, not 955, Unifor.

03:05:44.420 Oh, yeah.

03:05:44.760 Jerry G.S., right?

03:05:45.560 Yeah.

03:05:45.760 He gets basically kicked out for some crazy allegations of fraud and all that type of stuff.

03:05:50.840 And those are the guys that are pulling millions of dollars in support away from the Conservatives,

03:05:57.440 even though in the weird world, I would argue that the Conservatives are more pro-union than the NDP

03:06:02.520 because the Conservatives are protecting the jobs

03:06:04.640 that pays those union dues so they can be so political.

03:06:07.480 You kind of have to laugh at the political history.

03:06:09.960 If you had told a British Conservative

03:06:12.500 that the left had lost the support of the coal miners

03:06:17.280 and the people who work in coal,

03:06:19.560 they would think you were a lunatic

03:06:21.120 because that is literally the heart and soul of the left in Britain

03:06:25.340 was the coal mining and coal mining union.

03:06:27.920 Here, I do think, though, talking of coal,

03:06:30.300 which is a very interesting thing,

03:06:31.780 I think it was a misstep from how Premier Kenney tried to talk about reintroducing or reinvigorating coal production in Alberta.

03:06:41.840 I don't think it was particularly well explained.

03:06:44.540 And it provided an opening, I think, to the New Democrats to say,

03:06:48.200 oh, we're the guardians of our precious natural landscapes and our pristine...

03:06:52.720 I mean, the joke, of course, being that none of them ever go into the nature.

03:06:56.000 They all live in cities.

03:06:57.980 But I think that was something where, if you look at a writing like Banff, Canada, and Askes,

03:07:01.780 where the threat of, say, large-scale coal mining would have been a problem for Miranda

03:07:07.520 Rosa to explain.

03:07:08.940 So I think that's why you've seen some movement now, trying to walk back and modify positioning

03:07:14.100 and messaging.

03:07:15.180 If you are just tuning in, welcome.

03:07:17.480 This is the North Alberta Allowed Results Show.

03:07:20.820 Just to give another plug here, we only get to do this because of the support of our supporters.

03:07:26.460 So please do head on over to donate.tnc.news.

03:07:29.300 And if you're watching on YouTube and you want to make a super chat contribution, you can ask a question and we will put it to our panel, which include yours truly, Andrew Lawton, Robbie Picard of the Fantastic Oil Sands Campaign.

03:07:42.760 Show off the shirt. I've got one of those hoodies. I didn't wear it today because I knew it would be a little warm in here.

03:07:48.320 and William Macbeth from True North.

03:07:51.480 Just to give you the lay of the numbers here,

03:07:53.480 753,821 votes cast, 52% of polls reporting now,

03:08:01.120 which I think is very important.

03:08:02.840 So we're starting to see a little bit more formation

03:08:05.820 in the numbers that we're coming to you with.

03:08:08.220 We've had a couple of races declared, most not all that surprising.

03:08:12.320 We're still monitoring some of the Calgary ridings as they come in.

03:08:16.460 Just to check in with Edmonton here.

03:08:18.620 Well, no, we'll do a little old Lethbridge.

03:08:20.400 Lethbridge still both are going NDP, and that's looking fairly certain.

03:08:25.340 We have in NDP territory in Edmonton still a big box around Edmonton that is orange.

03:08:32.560 We've still got Strathcona-Sherwood Park.

03:08:36.360 Then you go to the neighboring riding of Sherwood Park,

03:08:40.700 and it is leading NDP pretty decisively right now, that one, 1,700 votes.

03:08:45.020 and Edmonton Southwest, KC Magu, we were watching that one.

03:08:49.240 Still only three polls reporting there, which is a little odd.

03:08:52.440 Is this common in elections, in your experience, this delay?

03:08:56.120 I mean, everyone here seems to be getting pretty restless now.

03:08:58.620 No, I would say this is unusual.

03:09:00.660 I really can't understand why after an hour and a half of counting,

03:09:04.520 they've been unable to get beyond three polling stations reporting.

03:09:07.980 That's unusual.

03:09:08.660 Yeah, they've now had two hours and 38 minutes.

03:09:12.980 So, and we're long past that one polling station somewhere that was open until like 9.46.

03:09:18.520 So now we can genuinely say all are closed.

03:09:21.360 Of course, Andrew, we all know that sometimes math is hard.

03:09:23.960 Yeah.

03:09:24.760 You know, maybe that's the explanation.

03:09:26.160 Yeah.

03:09:26.880 And then to jump back into Calgary.

03:09:29.520 So this is a bit of an interesting one.

03:09:31.840 Calgary Klein, now 10 polls reporting.

03:09:35.380 Jeremy Nixon of the UCP Live.

03:09:37.960 So this could end up being a bit more of a horse race than even, I think, some of the more pessimistic people thought.

03:09:45.480 No, absolutely.

03:09:46.660 Calvary Klein, I think, was going to be a target for the New Democrats.

03:09:49.740 They believe that that's close enough to the center of the city, the core of the city, that it would be vulnerable.

03:09:55.700 Jeremy Nixon, of course, one of two Nixons we have in the Alberta legislature.

03:10:01.120 And, you know, I think that he was always going to be in a tough fight, along with people like Nick Millican and Calvary Curry, and some of them, and Varsity, like Jason Copping. Those are some challenging riding things for the UCB to all go on.

03:10:16.120 just like right before my eyes it flipped from an NDP lead back to uh Tyler Chandro UCP lead

03:10:26.000 again nine of 18 polls reporting so we're halfway there uh he's got a an 11 point lead right now

03:10:32.560 uh so this one I think we're probably going to see flip back and forth before the the night is up

03:10:36.960 right no absolutely I I think that uh you know Calgary Katie was my belt by the riding that I

03:10:43.740 I thought it was riding that for various reasons, the New Democrats are going to try and target.

03:10:51.200 And it's kind of riding that isn't natural New Democrat territory, but they have to win if they were to win this election.

03:10:58.760 I think that, I think after this, when they analyze, UCB analyzes,

03:11:04.420 they're going to have to really dig into Calgary and understand that Calgary's demographic is changing

03:11:09.380 and how they target people in calgary they're gonna have to target a little different you know

03:11:14.740 and i also think that like i think we need to like as a gay guy one of my themes is is that i think

03:11:20.420 that they need to find a way to stay out of people's bedrooms including in calgary and just

03:11:26.020 say look i want fiscal responsibility i want a strong oil and gas industry and then i want the

03:11:30.340 freedom which i think we all agree on to live my life as i choose and i think that that i think

03:11:36.740 the fear not that most of the ucp candidates i know and all the people in the party they're

03:11:40.820 pretty cool tell them they're gay anyway like i mean it's there's more gays in the ucp than

03:11:44.500 they ever admit but i think the perception to a lot of people in calgary is that they're not

03:11:49.700 as open like even in edmonton i was surprised like i had some meetings with some top business

03:11:54.340 people in calgary and they were all pro danielle smith and the top people in edmonton these are

03:11:58.740 people worth hundreds of millions of dollars in edmonton well they thought she was completely

03:12:02.660 different than the person i know she is so i think that that is something if i was as i'm going like

03:12:09.540 humanize your candidates and show a more personal side because most people want to own a home save

03:12:17.460 money have low taxes and cheap and affordable energy yeah very well said uh just reading a

03:12:23.460 couple of the super chats here brayden maz uh didn't offer a question or comment with his just

03:12:27.860 gave a nice contribution i actually know brayden so thank you brayden i mean i think everyone that

03:12:32.420 that I don't know also, but I just happen to know, Brayden.

03:12:34.900 And to your point from earlier, this one's interesting.

03:12:37.080 This is from a woman identified as the Dandelion Way.

03:12:40.780 Danielle acknowledged vaccine mandates were human rights violations,

03:12:43.640 not as the official opposition offered no resistance and still promotes them.

03:12:47.840 Was this a factor for rebuilding trust for UCP?

03:12:50.720 I think the interesting thing here, this woman says, I was an NDP voter once.

03:12:55.020 So we are seeing NDP-UCP shifts.

03:12:58.160 And I think, again, I mean, the COVID situation, Danielle Smith did have a very strong position on that,

03:13:03.840 that certainly does set her apart from the NBG.

03:13:06.140 Well, you know, I'm fully vaccinated, but here's what I found very interesting.

03:13:11.480 A guy in Fort McMurray that's a successful manager has one of the smartest people I know and I work with.

03:13:19.660 He's not vaccinated. And he explained to me why he's not vaccinated.

03:13:24.020 And I was shocked at the amount of people that I would have thought would have been the first to get vaccinated, not get vaccinated.

03:13:31.500 So I think that this hardcore attack on people who chose not to get vaccinated was a mistake.

03:13:39.420 You know, like one of my family members is a teacher, and she was told that if she didn't get vaccinated, she'd lose her job.

03:13:48.100 That she got vaccinated, and now her menstrual cycle is not the same ever since.

03:13:54.020 And when I bring that up, people don't care.

03:13:55.800 They're like, well, you know, that's as it could be.

03:13:57.240 I'm like, to take that kind of non-caring approach to people who made a medical choice for them,

03:14:04.040 I can totally understand how she probably gained a lot of quiet support

03:14:07.420 because a lot of the NDP supporters did not want to get vaccinated.

03:14:11.040 This was beyond parties.

03:14:12.900 This was a very personal issue.

03:14:14.860 And I think it's a huge mistake to attack the unvaccinated.

03:14:17.860 And I think the premier was very true when she kind of stood up for them a bit.

03:14:23.520 Well, and I think to the discussion we were having earlier, to broaden it out a bit, you know, the NDP trying to say that it should stand as the beneficiary of, you know, UCP to NDP swings.

03:14:32.320 Well, there can be swings going the other way as well.

03:14:34.700 And I think in this election, for whatever reason, there have to be at least a few voters out there that are saying, you know, I've always been an NDP, but this Danielle Smith woman isn't as scary.

03:14:43.340 You know, the interesting thing about vaccination, I agree with Robbie, it wasn't a left-right issue.

03:14:48.020 It didn't fall exactly on partisan lines, even if large chunks of it maybe did.

03:14:53.520 But definitely there were cohorts that didn't, and I think if you look at the federal election,

03:14:57.520 you saw a lot of Green voters who didn't have a candidate because the Green Party collapsed heading into the election.

03:15:04.520 And they went from the Green Party to the People's Party, which would not have been a natural assumption you might have made about other issues.

03:15:12.520 But they identify themselves as non-conforming or outside of the consensus on this issue.

03:15:20.520 issue and they saw the Green Party being that way and they saw the People's Party

03:15:24.080 being that way. Absolutely voters shifted on this issue. Yeah and I mean we were

03:15:28.700 obviously talking earlier about some of the fringe right-of-center parties in

03:15:32.320 this election which as we're seeing in the numbers are you know not even

03:15:35.420 flipping. I mean I'm not even seeing them and federally there's the backdrop

03:15:39.120 right now of the by-elections specifically Portage-Lisker where you

03:15:42.360 have a conservative stronghold and Maxime Bernier running for the PPC in it.

03:15:46.200 But I do think that Danielle Smith is a fairly crossover candidate,

03:15:50.800 certainly on different factions of the conservative movement.

03:15:53.540 Because, you know, even though the hard line of the party on the right side obviously liked her,

03:16:00.920 she herself is not easy to put into a box like that.

03:16:03.560 I mean, she's very moderate on social issues.

03:16:06.620 She's very policy-oriented.

03:16:08.900 So even if you don't agree with her, she's always been able to kind of explain why she approaches a certain issue.

03:16:14.340 And I think your point about humanizing is especially important with Danielle Smith because she will never be the caricature that they make her out to be.

03:16:21.260 My biggest hope is that the conservatives, both federally and provincially, seem to be a bit cannibalistic and they want to eat their own.

03:16:30.420 I really hope that when she wins tonight that they give her time for the public to get to know her because when you get to know her, she's great.

03:16:38.520 Like, I mean, I did a video where, you know, I just challenged people to give her a chance.

03:16:44.100 And I mean, I've hung out with Rachel Notley, Jason Kenney, Pierre Polyev, Jean Charest.

03:16:49.020 I've hung out with them all.

03:16:50.320 And out of all the politicians, I've never seen anyone listen better in my life than she's in a room of people and she listens to me.

03:17:01.100 She doesn't even have to agree.

03:17:02.260 But it's not that you're a typical, you know, BS politician that just kind of, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:17:06.940 she's well why do you feel that way she challenges it and she and she's challenging it so she

03:17:11.680 understands so i really hope that they the party unites and and and kind of loses this sort of

03:17:18.480 self-promoting narcissism which exists in there yeah and actually gets behind her because you

03:17:24.120 know she's what they need right now i i think she's the female ralph klein she's not perfect

03:17:30.080 she's gonna make a misstep you know she's gonna say something like shoot shovel and shut up you

03:17:34.160 you know she's going to do all these things but at the end of the day it's for the betterment of

03:17:38.640 alberta and it makes alberta a better place to have a fighter and just transition you know that

03:17:44.720 comes from greenpeace and naomi klein and sappora bermin and now that's moderate it's not a moderate

03:17:51.040 energy policy no quality by any stretch so you can't take their wording you can't do it like

03:17:56.480 rachel would do and be like okay well we're gonna have our own carbon tax and we're gonna have that

03:17:59.840 no you're not going to give us the carbon tax we're not accepting to shut down our main industry

03:18:04.560 which also provides a great deal of the gdp for this entire country in ottawa like it's we need

03:18:11.360 someone to kind of say whoa trudeau no and that that's not an easy find so let me go to you on

03:18:17.680 this william and the bigger picture building off that is the comeback narrative and certainly when

03:18:22.400 she won the leadership was a big part of it and i made a point in a column i wrote that you know

03:18:28.000 It was difficult for me to say Danielle Stitt was back because in so many ways she never left.

03:18:32.540 I mean, she went pretty heavily into a different career other than politics.

03:18:37.700 She went back into media and really did spend time putting in the legwork, building up her relationships.

03:18:43.160 And the story that I've told you, she and I were alternating on hosting on 770 CHQR in Calgary.

03:18:51.800 What was fascinating is I would see the text messages that listeners would send in.

03:18:56.740 And when I would log in after her, if I were doing the show after her or whatever,

03:19:01.580 I'd see just the vicious, vicious things that people said about her.

03:19:05.580 And I would not wish that on anyone.

03:19:07.000 And you could hear in her voice when she was on air that every now and then she would get rattled by this.

03:19:11.720 But she kept plugging away, and she won those people back.

03:19:16.200 And ironically, some of her closest friends, I think when she ran for the leadership,

03:19:19.880 were the people that were her most vicious enemies back in 2015.

03:19:23.380 Yeah, I mean, I wrongly believe that Daniel Smith was done in politics after the border crossing.

03:19:31.380 I think it's because I just couldn't figure out how someone could come back from that much anger,

03:19:38.380 or even who would want to, who would want to willingly subject themselves to month after month of the outpouring of anger that she did.

03:19:49.380 But to her credit, I think she emerged from it and impressed a lot of people in the process.

03:19:56.640 They were impressed in her grit and her determination to weather all of that.

03:20:02.740 And then, you know, she enters this round of this election far more of experience than when she entered the 2012 election, for example.

03:20:13.480 People forget, of course, Daniel Smith wasn't a politician.

03:20:16.340 She was working as an advocacy person in a big tank or in an advocacy group, and then went from being the Walrose, the leader of this tiny little new party to serious contender of an election in, you know, less than three years.

03:20:31.380 It was a remarkably short period of time.

03:20:33.920 And, you know, I just don't think she knew she had experience in politics that she knew was seasoned enough to handle the difficulties because this was her first election.

03:20:45.640 She had never run for anything before trying to become premier of Alberta.

03:20:49.420 That's a really big step to say.

03:20:51.100 So obviously she doesn't have to do that this time.

03:20:53.040 She can say, I know this job better.

03:20:54.820 I've been doing it for six months.

03:20:56.620 So let me finish the job I've started.

03:20:58.740 Yeah, and also, I mean, this is the first time she's done it as UCP leader.

03:21:02.200 I mean, that's, I think, a part of the dynamic that it's easy to miss.

03:21:04.980 This is a different party entirely than the Wild Rose of 2012 and 2015 was.

03:21:10.640 I think the biggest thing conservatives across this country have to do is

03:21:13.840 The time they spend infighting hurts, like between even Maxime Bernier and he didn't win, so he goes his own way, gets his own party.

03:21:23.800 The energy in infighting is destroying the movement across this entire country.

03:21:30.140 So I think that's the first wake-up call.

03:21:32.620 When it comes to Premier Smith, look, I know so many here.

03:21:36.580 I was broke-ass when I came to Fort McMurray, okay?

03:21:39.200 I came from Montreal. I lived in a tent. I had no money. I made some bad decisions.

03:21:43.840 before and i rebuilt myself i know so many people who come to fort mcmurray who turn their lives

03:21:49.200 around she's an alberta story massive high total low back on top and that's that belief in yourself

03:21:57.600 that you're not going to give up that's why i respect her i really really like her i i think

03:22:01.760 that that i mean my god to go from that to being the premier you got to give her credit the essence

03:22:07.920 of the alberta's calling yeah that alberta is the the land of opportunity here uh we have one

03:22:12.560 question from snow canadian no snow canadian i apologize if i'm not pronouncing that right uh

03:22:18.640 do you think voters that work or make their living from government money plays into voting for the

03:22:22.880 ndp in edmonton uh does throwing votes worry you on the future government where the government

03:22:28.080 money to control uh the vote is ndp uh is edmonton ndp territory because edmonton's the capital is

03:22:34.480 basically the question i mean look i i don't think it's coincidence that the ndp is doing

03:22:39.440 better in a city that has 60,000 government employees, a huge swath of which belong to

03:22:45.740 public sector unions, who have benefited from very good salaries, very good pensions and

03:22:50.720 benefits, and have absolute job security.

03:22:54.080 So, sure, yes, I do think that's the case.

03:22:56.880 I don't think that reflects Edmonton as a whole.

03:22:59.160 I think there are an awful lot of Edmontonians who are just like Calgarians, who believe

03:23:02.620 in hard work, opportunity, pursuing success.

03:23:06.720 It's just, it's maybe not quite so obvious or on the surface as it is here.

03:23:12.720 But, you know, I think it would be a real mistake though for the UCP to simply give up on Edmonton as a whole.

03:23:19.720 I think maybe it will take more than one election cycle.

03:23:23.720 But there's definitely a chance for the UCP to begin building back support.

03:23:27.720 And I look at Ralph Klein, who when he won was never really well liked at Edmonton.

03:23:33.720 In fairness, Edmonton, you know, he did say he wasn't a big fan of Edmonton, which probably didn't endear him.

03:23:40.180 But through hard work, he did eventually build up support and could win, you know, a substantial number of seats.

03:23:47.680 Now, I think it's important for Edmonton to have representation in a united conservative government.

03:23:51.900 I really hope that this city doesn't only vote New Democrat and then have no voice at the government table when important decisions are being made.

03:24:00.320 tonight is should be Acadia watch because one more poll came in and it flipped once again

03:24:07.700 back to an NDP lead so Calgary Acadia has 11 polls reporting NDP now leading by 140 votes so

03:24:16.100 we are getting in there we have to take a quick break in just a moment here but you are tuned in

03:24:21.180 to the True North Alberta election night results show I'm Andrew Lawton joined of course by Robbie

03:24:28.340 Picard right now and William Macbeth and just before we take a little break to do

03:24:32.300 a reset here I'll let you know we've got in the Banff-Canadascos is pretty

03:24:37.880 firmly a UCB hold now 11 pulls in out of 26 but a 2,100 vote lead that seems

03:24:44.000 like a really difficult one to to flip at this time a lot of the other Calgary

03:24:49.040 ridings that we were keeping an eye on Calgary Glenmore 400 vote lead with 13

03:24:54.500 22 polls reporting and Banff Kananaskis we talked about so again I think even

03:25:00.800 some of these ridings that a lot of people thought might have been done are

03:25:03.740 pretty much holding here so when we come back we're gonna talk about this in a

03:25:08.600 little bit more detail we're gonna get Lindsay Wilson from Alberta Proud back

03:25:12.680 into the mix but just some some closing thoughts here Robbie what's your big

03:25:16.340 message for tonight I think the mess my message is real simple to the UCP don't

03:25:22.580 turf your leader give her a time to build the party she needs albertans need to get to know her

03:25:28.580 um how many ucp leaders or conservative leaders have we been through we've been through quite

03:25:33.140 a few in the past 10 years and i think it's time to unite behind your leader uh

03:25:40.420 full time with covet and recovering give your leader a chance all right well thank you for

03:25:45.700 that robbie william we're going to be talking to you in like 30 seconds but give a give us a thought

03:25:49.300 I mean, I just had to laugh because I think Robbie is bang on with that one, which is if you keep getting rid of your leader, you're always going to be in a state of flux, and it's going to be hard for you to tell voters what you believe, why you believe in all that.

03:26:06.900 But, you know, the joke is, I don't know if any of our viewers have ever watched the great John Clase performing in a first show called Faulty Towers.

03:26:13.820 He, you know, gets away with some crazy little culpable over his sides.

03:26:18.800 He gets through the skin of his teeth and he goes, right, now for the hard part.

03:26:22.140 And that's what I worry about this UCB government.

03:26:24.640 We win the election, everybody takes a day off, and now you have to govern and keep the caucus and the party together.

03:26:30.340 Now for the hard part.

03:26:31.860 All right, well, thank you very much for that.

03:26:34.320 We're going to take a quick break.

03:26:35.480 We'll be back after a reset in just a moment.

03:26:37.820 Hang tight.

03:27:05.480 .

03:27:35.480 .

03:28:05.480 .

03:28:35.480 .

03:29:05.480 you're back on

03:29:09.320 yeah you have

03:29:20.240 congratulations

03:29:22.960 it's ready

03:29:35.480 Yes, sorry, one sec.

03:30:05.480 End.

03:30:35.480 I got interviewed by the CDC.

03:30:57.480 UCP having the results they have now, but let's talk about this.

03:31:01.480 talk about this now right now we are at uh just 52 leading 52 is uh just one above where you were

03:31:08.920 called no two above you where you were predicting and one above where you were uh and then i have

03:31:14.680 of course uh i'm the loser right now because i was at 48 uh but uh better to be modest here so

03:31:20.440 uh what are you thinking of this so far i mean i think it's a tremendous victory for the united

03:31:24.680 conservative party if you look at public opinion polling over the past six months eight months

03:31:29.960 a year i think there's a lot of people who thought it was simply impossible

03:31:38.680 all right well if i may the legacy media has just reached the conclusion that we reach

03:31:46.440 and they've now declared a majority for danielle's within the ucp things are getting a little

03:31:51.800 hectic behind us now. I'll let you just soak in this for a moment.

03:32:08.760 All right well that is the call coming from CTV about a minute behind True North. We were looking

03:32:15.000 at some of the raw data and we were fairly confident in that. They're finding the same

03:32:19.880 numbers that we are right now 52 leading and elected for the ucp so still lost right now

03:32:24.600 about 11 seats for the ucp uh and a gain for the ndp um but all aside a win is a win uh we're not

03:32:32.440 only in majority territory uh but a healthy enough majority you take out the independent you take out

03:32:38.680 uh the speaker of the house and this is a it's fairly decisive certainly as we were going to get

03:32:43.480 at this cycle.

03:32:44.480 I mean, as I was finishing up saying, I think there was a point in time where a UCP

03:32:50.480 majority win was seen as impossible, that the New Democrats were polling quite far ahead.

03:32:55.480 So the fact that Danielle Smith was able to bring it back in six months and lead her party

03:33:00.480 to a majority government, I think is a remarkable achievement and one she should be rightly proud

03:33:05.480 of.

03:33:06.480 I also think she is going to win by enough seats that her majority in the legislature

03:33:10.480 will be functional.

03:33:11.480 function she will be able to govern in an effective majority government without being beholden to

03:33:18.440 every single vote and having to scrape them a hundred percent of them together every time she

03:33:22.840 wants to move her agenda forward what are your preliminary thoughts on this lindsay they just

03:33:27.160 weren't able to turn some of those post calgary ridings they thought that they would be able to

03:33:31.800 turn those and they thought they would but they weren't able to uh it's interesting to see that

03:33:37.000 my horse miranda rosa and i thought she would have you know i thought it was a bit of a challenge

03:33:47.720 so it's just interesting i i i want to know what's going to happen in the

03:33:51.640 in the months and the years to come with this strong gold of orange in and around greater

03:33:56.760 edmonton like it is really orange up there and what's that going to mean is that going to further

03:34:01.800 the world open divide i think it's really interesting how can the ucp give you more support

03:34:09.000 i think we if we can get you to move your mic up a little bit you're now being drowned out by uh the

03:34:13.480 adoring uh ucp fans there so we'll make sure that your analysis is not missed by those tuning in

03:34:18.840 online welcome by the way uh if you're just joining us now this is the true north alberta

03:34:23.400 election night results show i'm having to shout everything now i'm joined by lindsey wilson from

03:34:28.200 Alberta Proud and William McBeth from True North. We just called a moment to go the election for

03:34:34.760 Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party. A pretty healthy majority here, 52 seats in which

03:34:40.920 the UCP is leading or elected right now. So not the numbers they had going into the election but

03:34:47.400 still very healthy. The legacy media behind us has just reached the conclusion so that's what

03:34:53.560 they have up on the feed there. We would have hoped the UCP would have put us on there but we

03:34:57.480 We won't hold that against them.

03:34:58.600 We'll let them have their moment on this.

03:35:00.920 Just a pitch, if I can, for supporting independent media.

03:35:04.360 We're only able to do this because we do not get the government bailout money.

03:35:08.060 So if you value what we're doing, head on over to donate.tmc.news.

03:35:12.480 Or if you're watching on YouTube, you can pop us a super chat

03:35:16.040 and we'll read your question or comment, assuming it's not naughty.

03:35:20.020 We haven't had any of those so far live on air.

03:35:22.700 Do let us know about these as they're coming in.

03:35:26.100 So now, I think the evening is getting a little bit more predictable in nature.

03:35:29.620 There are still some ridings that we're wondering about, one of which is Tyler Chandros.

03:35:34.520 I know it's a little early, but it's also not at the same time.

03:35:37.860 Do you see any obvious cabinet changes now with the new makeup we're likely to see?

03:35:42.800 I mean, I think we are going to see the health minister probably lose his riding.

03:35:49.800 The minister of advanced education, I think, is in either a close race or a difficult race.

03:35:55.280 Minister Nick Milliken and Calgary Curry, I think, sadly, won't be returned either.

03:36:01.340 So there are going to be, by necessity, changes to the Cabinet.

03:36:06.320 She's also possibly going to lose her only Edmonton MLA and Deputy Premier Casey Madden from Cabinet as well.

03:36:15.860 Sadly, it looks like he might not be elected.

03:36:18.020 So I would say there's changes coming.

03:36:20.660 I think she's going to have to try and balance representation with fit for job, all of those things.

03:36:27.660 But I think, you know, those are good problems to have.

03:36:31.660 Trying to build a cabinet means you won an election.

03:36:33.660 And of course, if there's a winner, then there's a loser.

03:36:36.660 And unquestionably, that will have to be Rachel Lottley and the Democrats.

03:36:40.660 What does future now hold for her?

03:36:42.660 Can she hold on to the job of opposition leader?

03:36:45.660 Or will the party say that's two consecutive losses in a row?

03:36:49.660 giving you the boot and going with someone else.

03:36:51.580 So I'll be interested to see what Rachel Notley announces tonight.

03:36:56.280 Yeah, there was a Freudian slip there that never was.

03:36:58.660 But just in on Southwest, which mentioned, that's Casey Matthews, former riding now.

03:37:05.620 We can call that one for the NDP safely at this point.

03:37:08.460 12 of 18 polls reporting, NDP up by 1,400.

03:37:12.240 No way you're closing that gap in six polls.

03:37:15.400 So, obviously, Casey Maddew, yeah, the lone Edmonton MP or MLA and a pretty senior member of Danielle Smith's government going into this, no longer there.

03:37:26.720 Do you think at this point the UCP strategy is just to ignore Edmonton?

03:37:31.040 Or do you think that there is something they need to do to regain that ground?

03:37:34.700 I think they've got to start with the fringe of, you know, they have to start with greater Edmonton and work their way in.

03:37:41.300 And I know this is a little closer in places like Strathcun, Sugar Park.

03:37:45.920 I'm surprised with so long to the Duke and Pharrell there.

03:37:48.860 And I think they need to just start doing some really good work in there.

03:37:51.820 And trying to move neighbor back.

03:37:54.540 Because a lot of them are going to be very problematic for the party.

03:37:57.820 It's seeing that blanket of orange that's completely dominating around Everton.

03:38:02.200 And it's getting bigger every time.

03:38:03.520 Let's not forget where we're at right now.

03:38:06.220 It looks like...

03:38:08.520 So CBC has just woken up to the fact that there is an election going on and CBC has now called

03:38:16.680 Danielle Smith as having a majority which they were reluctantly doing so it took them until

03:38:21.840 practically Tuesday. I'm not even joking it's you know 53 minutes to midnight to do what everyone

03:38:27.660 else had done before so when CBC has acknowledged the Danielle Smith win you know that the win is

03:38:33.460 in. Yeah I mean Calgary Acadia you were right to pick that one as your one to watch that's ending

03:38:38.420 up being the most interesting uh raise the evening one of the closest in the evening

03:38:42.660 uh no more polls than a few minutes ago when we checked in which if you're just joining us

03:38:46.820 uh 104 for the ndp uh with 11 of 18 polls reporting but every time a new poll has been

03:38:53.700 coming in it's been paying back forth so i mean who knows i mean there are six and polls left

03:38:59.940 means it'll likely current trajectory holds but that is not scientific so don't take my

03:39:06.260 My word for that there.

03:39:07.980 You go around the ring at Calgary here.

03:39:10.300 One that is kind of interesting, Rajan Sani has, and I just want to pull up the exact number here.

03:39:18.600 It looks like she is winning with a 500-vote lead, two polls remaining.

03:39:24.820 Let's talk about that because she wasn't originally going to be running.

03:39:27.820 No.

03:39:28.500 She had announced that she would not be seeking re-election.

03:39:32.100 And then she decided that she wanted back in.

03:39:35.860 I would say that it's possibly a reflection of the riding she had represented was going to be a difficult challenge.

03:39:44.560 She was then offered a safer seat for the United Conservative Party.

03:39:49.560 I think that may have motivated her to rethink her exit from public life.

03:39:54.500 All right. We have Rachel Emanuel standing by with pollster and former federal Conservative campaign manager Hamish Marshall.

03:40:01.420 We'll check in with him on what's been happening. Take it away, Rachel.

03:40:05.860 So I am here with Hamish Marshall.

03:40:11.100 He was in charge of the internal polling for the UCP during the campaign.

03:40:15.060 Hamish, UCP insiders that I spoke to during the campaign were very confident, and now we know why.

03:40:20.420 The numbers that we're seeing so far tonight, do they align with what you saw during the campaign?

03:40:25.140 We certainly had a lot of very good numbers over the course of the campaign,

03:40:27.840 especially after Premier Smith's fantastic performance at the debate.

03:40:31.340 But these numbers exceed even some of our more optimistic projections.

03:40:35.860 So what we're seeing tonight is actually a better turnout than what you predicted during the campaign.

03:40:40.240 Well, we've been moving towards the UCP in the last few days,

03:40:44.620 and they've kept doing that over the weekend and into election day, and we've got a very strong result.

03:40:49.240 So I heard from some perhaps overly optimistic UCPers that we were going to pick up seats in Edmonton.

03:40:55.360 Not actually the case. Looks like we're losing Casey Maddow.

03:40:58.080 He was the only seat that we held in Edmonton.

03:41:00.060 Did you at any point during the campaign think it was a possibility to pick up some seats inside that dome?

03:41:04.420 Edmonton was always going to be very, very, very tricky.

03:41:07.420 The NDP's got an amazing machine there, and the numbers were very, very tough.

03:41:10.880 The big focus was on those seats around Edmonton, where the NDP put a lot of effort.

03:41:15.940 But they ran into a blue wall and a group of ridings that really reacted very well to Danielle Smith's message.

03:41:21.520 So when we talk about polling, it seems that a lot of the pollsters get things wrong in Alberta so often,

03:41:28.500 certainly in the 2012 election.

03:41:30.400 Again, in the 2019, they really underestimated support for the UCP.

03:41:34.420 you know even you said yourself tonight my polls didn't estimate as high as support as we are

03:41:39.300 seeing tonight why do you think it is why is it so hard to peg down conservative voters in alberta

03:41:44.020 i think there's a couple of different things i think number one we saw a trend moving towards

03:41:48.260 the ucp so polls taken a few days ago were probably not as positive for the ucp as ones

03:41:53.540 as including the votes that people made up their mind today and more people broke to the ucp today

03:41:57.860 than would have even through two or three days ago so i think that's the first thing

03:42:01.140 I think it's also, there's a, the media is so omnipresent pushing a pro-NDP message

03:42:07.820 that there's a little bit of a shy conservative factor that people don't want to tell a pollster

03:42:11.480 that they're voting UCP, that they might, because they've made you feel bad about it

03:42:15.700 by the mainstream media, but in the end, they come out and vote.

03:42:19.500 Yeah, I think those are some really good points.

03:42:21.080 You know, when we talk about being a candidate in Alberta, you get kind of panicked, people

03:42:25.660 see the votes, and then you always have those conservatives that say, well, I don't trust

03:42:28.880 the polls because they've gone it wrong so many times.

03:42:31.140 At what point as Conservatives do we say we're just going to ignore polls from, you know, sort of legacy media outlets and these legacy pollsters who've gotten it wrong so many times?

03:42:41.580 Is there a point where we just decide to say it's not worth it for us to really give these credibility because they've gotten it wrong so many times?

03:42:47.360 Well, I think what everybody has to do is look closely at which pollsters got it right.

03:42:50.940 Some of the public pollsters did a very good job.

03:42:53.620 Others weren't as close.

03:42:55.020 I'm not going to say you shouldn't listen to polls.

03:42:56.800 I'm a pollster myself, and I believe it can be done right if it's done in a smart way.

03:43:00.580 and that's what I think people need to do is be a little more literate about which ones are good

03:43:06.260 and which ones have a more dodgy record.

03:43:09.460 Yeah, so I mean Danielle Smith was pretty tight-lipped about the internal polling as she would be

03:43:13.480 so I guess the question is when are you going to start doing public polling

03:43:16.180 that will be available for us Conservatives in Alberta?

03:43:19.140 Well, I've done public polling for True North in the past and maybe I will again.

03:43:22.360 Just my last question for you here.

03:43:23.800 We know that Janet Brown has a really good reputation in the province.

03:43:27.880 she gets it right so often and she typically counts the conservative vote much higher than her

03:43:32.840 competitors would you say that tonight further solidifies her reputation as the best pollster

03:43:37.800 in alberta well i think she's she obviously did a great job in this election and that counts for a

03:43:41.720 lot thank you so much marshall all right we are back andrew lawton here at the true north live

03:43:54.600 Alberta election results show now just one little bit of context here I can't show you but

03:44:00.840 all through the night there has been a lingering area over here where people have been having their

03:44:06.640 drinks sitting down at tables when the majority was everyone just run from that over to the big

03:44:13.820 floor where all the excitement and action are happening behind us here obviously we know for

03:44:19.480 Danielle Smith is going to continue to be Premier of Alberta right now UCP

03:44:24.160 leading or elected in 52 seats compared to 35 for the NDP what we don't know

03:44:29.500 though is the outcome of a couple of key seats and we also don't know the fate of

03:44:34.060 Rachel Notley and we were just chatting when Rachel Emanuel was speaking with

03:44:39.160 Hamish Marshall about this a little bit do you see a path to hold on for Rachel

03:44:43.300 The thing is, the problem for the NDP now is who do they have to replace her?

03:44:47.300 We were discussing earlier that they've really done so strongly in this province based on the brand of Rachel Notley.

03:44:55.300 We go back to that Team Rachel Notley rather than NDP.

03:44:59.300 But this is two straight losses in a row.

03:45:03.300 If we look at history and leaders, it now would be her time to step down to move on from the party.

03:45:09.300 party, but who do they have to replace her? They have some serious extremists in this

03:45:13.740 party. And I just don't know what that looks like for them. So this might mean a whole

03:45:18.660 shuffle and rebrand for them. It will be really interesting to see what they have to do.

03:45:22.660 We have seen losing leaders not really want to go away. And I mean, one example was Andrew

03:45:29.720 Scheer, who, you know, held on for a little bit. Aaron O'Toole held on for a little bit,

03:45:34.300 a little bit longer in his case. But the difference between those two and Rachel Notley is that

03:45:38.580 rachel notley has had now uh this is well this is her third her she won one and two so uh this

03:45:45.700 isn't just an example of you know kick someone out before they've had a chance to try like

03:45:49.140 i don't see how unless she just outlasts everyone how she turns around this party's fortunes

03:45:55.460 it's a little bit tricky um just you know the point that i think lindsey made is very good

03:46:00.100 that there is not a lot of heir appearance to uh post rachel notley new democrats i think they

03:46:06.660 would really struggle uh once and of course the notley name uh in alberta is is a little bit

03:46:13.060 storied of course her her father was a was a pretty pretty well liked pretty and almost beloved

03:46:18.980 politician isn't there a notley riding name is that named after him yeah after grant notley

03:46:23.940 and you know he died in a plane crash very very sadly and so i think she gets a more open hearing

03:46:32.900 than a typical new democrat would uh so it's possible they may say even after two losses

03:46:40.180 we still think this is the best we can we can do and they're they may they may stick it up she may

03:46:46.180 decide she doesn't want to do it anymore though she may say look i've been campaigning for for

03:46:52.900 you know coming on by the next election will have been like 10 years i really don't want to do this

03:46:57.300 anymore somebody else should have a chance i want to spend more time with my my family and pursue

03:47:02.660 other projects so uh does she have the fire in her belly to be leader of the opposition for another

03:47:08.260 four-year term and contest another provincial election i don't know so uh just to give you an

03:47:13.940 update on the numbers here not seeing any movement so far 52 uh 235 for the ucp a couple of super

03:47:20.580 chats i wanted to read if you're watching on youtube and want to give us some words of

03:47:24.420 encouragement and some financial support to keep this show going uh please do that for it says god

03:47:31.300 Congratulations.

03:47:33.420 Tyler Durden says, Andrew and team, thank you for the excellent coverage and analysis.

03:47:37.920 You have made provincial politics interesting and informative,

03:47:40.740 which is a very difficult thing to do, but we've done it.

03:47:44.580 Tyler says, keep up the great work.

03:47:46.780 Congratulations to Alberta and Danielle Smith.

03:47:50.060 Well, thank you, Tyler, and thank you, Sarah, for that.

03:47:53.200 We're going to have some more updates, and one in particular I see is Steve Outhouse,

03:47:58.240 who is the campaign manager for Danielle Smith and the UCP.

03:48:02.620 I see Steve Outhouse is currently being lassoed by Rachel Emanuel into doing an interview.

03:48:08.400 So we'll get Steve up very shortly to talk about this.

03:48:11.360 Obviously, now that the win has happened for the UCP,

03:48:14.240 Steve has emerged from where he was probably quite anxiously watching the results.

03:48:20.300 Fingernails shorter than when the evening began.

03:48:22.840 Yeah, another call for the UCP in Calgary there.

03:48:26.500 So what's going to happen, we're going to have a speech from Rachel Notley,

03:48:29.720 which will certainly be a concession speech.

03:48:31.920 Now, she will, as is the protocol, phone Danielle Smith if she hasn't already to formally concede.

03:48:39.240 And then she'll speak.

03:48:40.360 And then after that, we'll have, of course, Danielle Smith deliver a speech.

03:48:45.320 And we were talking, I think, a little while ago on another show, William,

03:48:49.300 about how you want to have different speeches for this.

03:48:52.020 You know, if you win, but it's not a blowout.

03:48:53.620 But if you win, but, you know, not necessarily narrowly, I mean, which speech do you bring out for this occasion?

03:48:58.560 I mean, I would say Danielle gets to be maybe a little more triumphant than if she had won in the 40s.

03:49:05.060 I think it is a bit of a reflection on the fact she was able to bring the United Conservative Party back into a position to win a pretty strong majority government.

03:49:16.280 Certainly stronger than what some of the polls would have suggested even a week ago.

03:49:21.180 So, I mean, I don't think she should take the opportunity to say she has phenomenal cosmic power and should be allowed to do as she pleases.

03:49:30.360 I think it's an opportunity for her to talk to the province, reassure them that despite having a majority government,

03:49:37.720 she's going to continue to govern in the best interests of all Albertans,

03:49:40.840 and she's going to talk maybe about some of her priorities going into a new four-year mandate.

03:49:47.280 Rachel Emanuel has successfully lassoed Steve Outhouse, the UCP campaign manager.

03:49:53.080 Rachel, Steve, take it away.

03:49:57.620 All right, I am joined by Steve Outhouse.

03:50:00.160 He is the campaign manager for the UCP.

03:50:02.460 Well, Steve, to start off, congratulations.

03:50:04.080 How are you feeling right now?

03:50:05.140 Well, a lot of relief.

03:50:06.220 It's been a long campaign.

03:50:07.480 It was a lot of hard work, but we're obviously very thrilled with the results.

03:50:10.860 So I just spoke to Hamish Marshall, who did the internal polling for the UCP,

03:50:15.680 and he said that tonight's results are even better than he had polled.

03:50:19.960 Is that your response as well?

03:50:21.660 Yes, it absolutely was. Hamish is a tough marker, so he had us a little bit lower than that,

03:50:26.900 so we were watching the results carefully and looking for signals along the way.

03:50:30.220 But yeah, these results are even better than what I was hoping for tonight.

03:50:33.900 UCP insiders that I spoke to throughout the campaign seemed very confident.

03:50:38.420 They seemed pretty sure that they were going to eke out a win tonight,

03:50:40.600 and certainly they have more than eke out a win from the looks of things.

03:50:43.180 Was there ever a point when you thought we might really be in trouble here?

03:50:47.300 Oh, definitely.

03:50:48.180 I mean, campaigns for those long campaigns, there's a lot of roller coasters of emotion.

03:50:52.880 So you have days where you're feeling like you're winning everything and days where you feel like the world is ending.

03:50:56.760 And we did have a rough second week, I think it's fair to say.

03:50:59.460 It was pretty obvious to a lot of people.

03:51:01.560 We were able to pivot back, have a great third week.

03:51:03.420 The debate was a turning point.

03:51:04.860 Obviously, the Premier's performance, I think, put a lot of people's minds at ease with sort of the caricature that's been made of her.

03:51:10.640 and she was able to connect with more people and they saw her that night as the leader she is

03:51:15.220 and I think that was a big part of the turnaround.

03:51:17.240 That's definitely something I heard from pretty much everyone I've spoken to here tonight

03:51:20.460 as well as voters that were unsure.

03:51:22.560 They saw Danielle Smith perform at that debate

03:51:24.440 and I think they realized maybe the media's depiction of her wasn't quite accurate or fair.

03:51:30.000 Would you say that was reflected in your polling as well?

03:51:32.800 Yeah, absolutely.

03:51:33.620 There were definitely concerns sort of earlier on in the campaign

03:51:36.220 because of the way she was being portrayed

03:51:37.800 and if she was able to connect with more people during the campaign,

03:51:40.280 We were able to see that improve and then definitely the debate was a pivotal moment people got to watch her on the stage

03:51:45.140 See her as a leader see her offer clear policy

03:51:48.740 You know sort of plans and objectives for the province

03:51:51.260 And I think that brought a lot of people over and we did see a turnaround and also we heard from candidates at the doors

03:51:55.900 That things got a lot smoother at that point in time

03:51:58.580 Something else that was really pivotal in this campaign was of course the Alberta wildfires that crisis broke out in the very first week of the campaign

03:52:05.420 really drew Danielson's attention from campaigning in Calgary,

03:52:09.060 where everyone sort of knew the election was going to be decided,

03:52:11.900 to responding to that crisis up north.

03:52:14.340 Did you have to sort of reconfigure what your campaign strategy

03:52:17.420 was going to look like to address the fires?

03:52:19.500 Yeah, so having the Premier, well, our leader, transition back into Premier mode,

03:52:24.380 obviously the calendar gets into the weeds,

03:52:27.440 but there was a lot of events and announcements and things

03:52:29.700 that had to be totally scrapped or postponed and changed.

03:52:32.560 We had to roll with it.

03:52:33.760 She did a great job being the Premier, but obviously for us on the campaign side there was a lot of things going on behind the scenes to try to change and adapt to that.

03:52:42.300 So that was part of the reason I think our second week was a little bit, she was looking great out there and connecting with, you know, and dealing with the crisis.

03:52:48.980 But internally, yes, there was a lot of shuffling that had to go around.

03:52:52.420 Something else I have to ask you, Bo, is some Conservatives said to me, you know, it feels like it's been a quiet campaign side, the wildfire crisis to deal with.

03:53:00.900 Some other UCP insiders said to me, you know, we didn't want to over-promise, we didn't want to over-announce, over-spend perhaps.

03:53:07.220 Would you say that this was really an intentional strategy, or do you think that some of the distractions caused you to maybe not have as many announcements as the NDP, who were doing quite a few events?

03:53:17.060 So, kind of, there's multiple answers to that.

03:53:20.120 I mean, we are conservative, so we weren't going to be breaking the bank and starting to put the province back into a deficit type of situation.

03:53:26.920 So, yes, we have a more modest spending package, but I think it's still very effective what we put forward.

03:53:32.620 You know, but there were the wildfires were again, you know, kind of knocked us off, you know, some of our platform plan.

03:53:38.080 They all got announced over time, but it did slow some things down.

03:53:41.040 And then ultimately, because it was boring, I think it's just sort of a testament that, you know, when she when the premier was on her game and able to kind of present herself, she she gave solid answers.

03:53:50.260 and everyone, again, had set her up to be this caricature

03:53:54.140 of someone who would just go out and say crazy things at any given time

03:53:57.900 and she didn't.

03:53:58.580 She went out and she delivered her message every day

03:54:00.860 and so then it was boring because it wasn't, you know, funny for the pundits and so on

03:54:06.560 who wanted to make fun of her the whole campaign

03:54:08.940 and I think those folks are sort of eating a lot of crow tonight.

03:54:12.080 Yeah, absolutely.

03:54:12.960 One last question for you here.

03:54:14.480 This is a bit of a controversial one.

03:54:16.380 I know you've done what you needed to do tonight.

03:54:18.080 you pulled off a win for the united conservative party but something that i've been hearing not

03:54:21.840 only from legacy media but also from other conservatives is that you know if danielle

03:54:26.160 doesn't have a strong showing a strong victory tonight there could be a challenge to her

03:54:30.400 leadership in the days and months ahead is that something that you were cognizant of during the

03:54:34.400 leadership campaign well my primary job is as you say to come in and manage the campaign that's there

03:54:39.760 i mean so i'm not going to be able to give advice to kind of a you know the ucp overall

03:54:44.000 All of the results, it is a strong mandate.

03:54:49.300 And we have, as a party, almost the same amount of popular vote as we had in the last campaign.

03:54:55.900 You will obviously see our vote totals once elections in Alberta finishes counting.

03:54:59.680 Then we'll be able to get a better state of that.

03:55:02.000 But I think she has gotten a strong mandate tonight.

03:55:04.460 I'm very proud of the Premier, and I think she's going to do a great job.

03:55:07.140 Thank you so much for your insight, Steve.

03:55:08.660 Once again, that was Steve Outhouse, the UCP campaign manager.

03:55:12.740 We really appreciate your insight.

03:55:17.640 All right, welcome back.

03:55:19.160 This is the True North Live election night show here.

03:55:22.100 William Macbeth joins me, as does Lindsay Wilson from Alberta Proud,

03:55:25.380 and I am Andrew Lawton on what's been a bit of a longer night

03:55:28.760 than we initially anticipated.

03:55:31.320 Right now, Lethbridge has been called for the UCD.

03:55:35.420 Lethbridge East, which is the one that we were watching,

03:55:38.000 that up until this point has been a fairly NDP-dominant riding in the polls.

03:55:43.300 What are the Lethbridge dynamics?

03:55:45.000 Because that's often like the B-side city that we don't talk about

03:55:48.300 because we're so focused on Calgary and Edmonton here.

03:55:50.300 Why is Lethbridge one that tends to straddle these two parties?

03:55:54.640 It's challenging because I think they're a little bit rural or a little bit urban.

03:55:57.720 I was just down on Lethbridge recently, and I was talking to people there

03:56:01.200 because they were getting a lot of really good responses for the UCP.

03:56:05.540 But you drive around that city, and there's a lot of orange signs.

03:56:08.320 There's a lot of blue signs.

03:56:10.080 I don't know what the problem is that's happening.

03:56:11.500 It does have a very large university, which I think does tend to make it skew a bit more New Democrat than you might expect from a small town in Alberta.

03:56:21.480 But it was also home to, for example, the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party for many years represented one of the two Lethbridge ridings.

03:56:28.640 So this is a city that has also devoted non-conservative money.

03:56:33.480 Yeah, and we will check in on some of the Calgary ridings in a moment.

03:56:37.360 But Rachel Emanuel has been doing tremendous work wrangling everyone.

03:56:41.200 They're all coming out now that they know they've won.

03:56:43.560 Rachel Emanuel right now is with Danielle Smith's Chief of Staff, Marshall Smith.

03:56:47.680 Go ahead, Rachel.

03:56:50.800 So we are back.

03:56:52.300 I am now joined by Marshall Smith, Chief of Staff, Chief of Staff to the Premier.

03:56:57.180 How are you feeling about tonight's results?

03:56:59.240 Is it what you expected, better than what you expected?

03:57:01.500 It's actually what I expected, Rachel.

03:57:04.420 I'm predicting one more seat than we've got right now.

03:57:08.740 But, you know, the numbers are looking really good.

03:57:11.120 We are really thrilled and couldn't be happier tonight.

03:57:14.440 So I have to ask you this because I've been asking this to,

03:57:17.500 well, I just asked this to Steve Outhouse.

03:57:19.580 Was there a point in the campaign where you actually felt like

03:57:21.940 you were pretty worried about what might happen?

03:57:24.660 I think early on in the campaign, I think before the numbers tightened up,

03:57:28.640 you know, we're always nervous about going into these contests.

03:57:32.940 So early on in the campaign is really difficult.

03:57:35.300 But as the campaign moved on, and in particular at key points in the campaign,

03:57:40.340 it started to become clear to me the way that this was going to go.

03:57:43.800 So many of my viewers know, because I cover this quite a bit,

03:57:47.160 but all of you probably aren't aware of this,

03:57:49.100 Marshall Smith has really been heading up the province's addiction and recovery file.

03:57:53.760 And we know that that was such a key topic during this election campaign.

03:57:57.780 Albertans, Calgarians, Edmontonians were not feeling safe on the streets anymore.

03:58:01.600 And the government really wanted to tackle that with a comprehensive plan,

03:58:04.560 both on public safety and on addictions can you speak to a little bit about how important the

03:58:09.460 addictions file was in this election I think that it was it was very important in the into

03:58:15.220 our electoral success I think in particular with you know a lot of people in particularly women and

03:58:24.020 young people don't feel safe on the streets of their own cities and they want something done

03:58:29.260 about that but they also want people helped in the way that that makes sense and that's going

03:58:34.300 to be effective so I think that the addiction platform the public safety

03:58:38.920 platform was very effective at moving women back to the party in the final two

03:58:44.440 weeks so just my last question for you here I see that Rachel Notley is giving

03:58:48.760 her concession speech and I know that my audience is gonna want to hear that so

03:58:51.880 we're gonna get to that right away but on the topic of the Compassionate

03:58:54.860 Intervention Act that's something we've talked a lot about tonight do you think

03:58:58.000 it actually changed anyone's minds we're gonna vote for the UCP or do you

03:59:01.920 think that it really impacted a specific subset of voters? I do. I mean, we certainly knew what

03:59:06.540 we were doing when we when we put that together. This is an important piece of legislation. And I

03:59:12.780 do think that it was effective at bringing a certain population over. Well, thank you so much,

03:59:17.840 Marshall. Once again, that was Marshall Smith, Chief of Staff to now reelected Premier.

03:59:22.460 all right we now go to rachel notley conceding in edmonton take it away

03:59:39.100 opportunity for our future and for the values that we all share however tonight i also know

03:59:45.260 that we are all very deeply pointed in the old result we had all hoped for a different one

03:59:52.860 moments ago i called premier danielle smith to concede the race and i congratulated her party on

03:59:59.340 their victory to all those of you to those who offered their unwavering support their dedication

04:00:12.460 and their belief in our vision for Alberta in this election.

04:00:16.080 You are the reason that we fight for what we believe in.

04:00:27.060 And to our candidates all across this province,

04:00:30.480 congratulations on your campaigns, successful or not.

04:00:34.500 You have all demonstrated tremendous leadership.

04:00:38.060 I have spent the last few months being so inspired by your dedication, by your heartfelt commitment to standing up for Albertans without a voice, your own belief that we can and will come together to be better.

04:00:55.100 I commend your integrity and your perseverance and your unparalleled work ethic and I will never

04:01:02.420 ever ever stop being deeply grateful for your decision to join our team so thank you to all of

04:01:09.960 you and to those new MLAs I say to you welcome congratulations

04:01:25.100 Get some rest tonight, and then get ready to get right back down to work.

04:01:38.200 To my amazing, amazing campaign team, I can't say enough.

04:01:45.600 They are unparalleled in the achievement that they have and that they have done, you know, across the country.

04:01:55.620 They are just unparalleled in their skill.

04:01:57.520 I cannot thank that team enough and I cannot thank as well our incredible volunteers enough.

04:02:05.320 Your commitment, your hard work, your countless hours of effort have been the absolute backbone of our campaign.

04:02:15.600 you've all shown incredible dedication and passion and I am forever grateful for your support

04:02:28.140 and I need to say this as well where we fell short the responsibility rests entirely with me

04:02:35.680 that's that's that's fine that's that's the joys of being the leader you know it's it's fine

04:02:44.300 it's just it's a thing uh you know it's part of responsibility and accountability those are

04:02:48.460 things we we care about here but i do know that at the same time we ran a strong

04:02:55.980 it was based on our beliefs

04:03:02.300 and it was based on our desire to create a better future for all albertans

04:03:14.300 NTT, NTT, NTT, NTT, NTT.

04:03:38.320 To my family.

04:03:40.780 These guys.

04:03:41.840 Thank you to the four of you for standing by me in this often very crazy journey.

04:03:48.520 Thank you to Ethan and to Sophie for accepting the difference that it has been meaning in their lives for all this time

04:03:55.600 and ultimately turning it into their own pride and their own set of beautiful values that make me very proud.

04:04:11.840 And thank you again seem like I'm doing this every four years. Thank you again to Lou my lifelong sounding board

04:04:41.840 Anywho, lifelong sounding board, sparring partner, and apparently personal cheerleader,

04:04:55.140 but also occasionally for me, all wrapped up into one.

04:04:59.260 And also, Lou, thank you very much for mopping the kitchen floor today.

04:05:02.660 That was awesome.

04:05:08.240 I love you all so much.

04:05:10.460 now although we did not achieve the outcome that we wanted we did take a

04:05:16.240 major step towards the unprecedented growth of our party through this

04:05:21.200 campaign is a warm light one that gives me a lot of optimism for the work to

04:05:27.800 come my friends let me be clear now is not the time to let up now is the time

04:05:34.420 Now is the time for us to do the work that has been asked of us.

04:06:03.140 It is my honor to serve as your leader, and it is my privilege to continue to serve as leader of the official opposition.

04:06:16.000 Our values will be represented in the legislature.

04:06:20.780 We will have a say in the future of this great.

04:06:23.880 We will continue to speak up on behalf of Albertans who struggle to have their voice heard.

04:06:32.000 We will fight for better health care, better education, better jobs.

04:06:39.180 And, my friends, we will be unequivocal in our demand for respect for the rule of law

04:06:45.480 and an unqualified belief in the human rights and basic dignity of all Albertans.

04:07:02.000 The challenges we face, the challenges facing Alberta, economic, environmental, social,

04:07:10.460 they all require dedication and determination and we will bring that to Alberta's legislature

04:07:17.640 tirelessly.

04:07:19.360 We will never stop working to rebuild our public health care, to support the well-being

04:07:28.660 of our communities to protect our mountains, our pensions, and our kids' education, all

04:07:34.940 while ensuring we have an economy that works for absolutely all Albertans.

04:07:43.700 So to all Albertans, we will be your voice when this government refuses to listen.

04:07:53.760 And one small message to Danielle Smith and to the members of her new caucus, I say this.

04:08:00.580 If we had won, because, you know, inside piece of information here, I actually had two speeches

04:08:06.920 for tonight.

04:08:09.760 If we had won, our commitment was to have been to do everything that we could to move

04:08:15.940 past division and to govern for the vast majority of Albertans, to be practical and pragmatic

04:08:22.880 and to listen to all voices so I am asking you to remember the majority of

04:08:32.480 Albertans tonight and to commit to a government that prioritizes the need and

04:08:36.980 aspirations of all Albertans

04:08:45.500 so in conclusion tonight my friends I just want to say I am so proud of the

04:08:51.880 work that every single solitary member of our movement of this NDP has done over the last four

04:08:59.660 weeks. Together we fought passionately for a better future and I am so very very proud to be

04:09:08.080 the leader of this party. Thank you all very much. Thank you all. Thank you.

04:09:14.860 Thank you.

04:09:15.860 It's from Notley, Alberta's official opposition leader, staking her claim, making her intentions

04:09:22.600 clear.

04:09:23.600 She intends to stay on as the official opposition leader.

04:09:27.000 She was very...

04:09:44.860 .

04:10:14.860 .

04:10:44.860 .

04:11:14.860 .

04:11:44.860 Thank you.

04:12:14.860 we're down at UCP headquarters and that's what you're seeing on the screen and soon we'll see

04:12:20.220 Daniel Smith now elected premier not just inhering it as the leader of the UCP well David if you had

04:12:26.060 to give the NDP you know campaign a grade what would you say I mean they did as they never sit

04:12:31.420 right now gain 11 seats obviously it wasn't enough to to form government but you know how would you

04:12:36.460 grade the performance uh I don't know I guess probably I mean a B at least um I think you've

04:12:42.780 heard our panel talk about this um the negative ads work to a point and then you need to put

04:12:47.340 something in um and i think you know maybe they have to go back and take a look at campaign

04:12:53.020 strategy did we need to raise corporate taxes um as the ndp has said it was still raising to

04:12:58.940 the lowest rate in the country i get that but that was something the ucp really seized on

04:13:04.940 to talk about their strength with just taxes maybe if the ndp had put their tax policy in

04:13:09.820 the window or something right away in the campaign you know i i'm just guessing what some of the uh

04:13:16.300 the thinking will be as they go through that particular thing so so it'd be it was a better

04:13:19.980 campaign in this sense too i'll be very interested in looking at the advanced poll numbers historically

04:13:24.380 conservative parties it doesn't matter the province do better on advanced poll on ground game

04:13:29.580 and i know both campaign managers who both come out of the harper layton area on on each side

04:13:35.660 and they both stress finding votes databases uh they both stress very similar methods to success

04:13:42.060 one steve outhouse is the ucp campaign manager newfoundlander uh and he came into the province

04:13:48.220 and was hired by daniel smith to do just what he did tonight so congrats to him nate rotman is the

04:13:53.180 uh campaign manager on the ndp side and uh he probably just probably won another week this is

04:13:59.260 a live shot of the calgary ucp headquarters and we're just waiting for danielle smith to arrive

04:14:04.960 We know it will be momentarily.

04:14:07.580 I can tell you, Tyler Shandro, I'm getting it in my ear.

04:14:09.880 Back in the lead in Acadia.

04:14:11.280 Things are popping in.

04:14:12.120 Casey Maddu, we have projected defeated now in Southwest.

04:14:15.620 Nathan Neudorf ahead in Lethbridge.

04:14:17.640 So some of these close races.

04:14:19.940 Maybe that's what Daniel Smith is doing.

04:14:21.400 She's checking out to see what's going on in Acadia.

04:14:23.220 Well, yeah, we should remind viewers.

04:14:24.980 Does she still have a justice minister?

04:14:26.300 We should remind viewers.

04:14:27.760 We were just talking about concession speech.

04:14:30.260 We'll have a victory speech here in a moment.

04:14:31.580 There are still a number of these ridings that are too close to call, and we may not have called by the time we go off the air.

04:14:37.780 This speech is obviously, I think, is the more interesting one because, as Rachel Notley said at the end of her speech,

04:14:44.840 in her victory speech, she would have been talking about reaching out to those who did not vote NDP.

04:14:51.780 Daniel Smith, I think, same thing, needs to reach out to people who did not vote for her.

04:14:57.260 You know, you can't heal a division unless both parties are ready to sort of do something about that.

04:15:01.400 She did lose. She has a smaller caucus than she did when the night started.

04:15:05.580 I think she has to acknowledge that.

04:15:07.620 But then, yes, I think this is where she's, I'm certain this is where she says,

04:15:11.540 I need to govern for all Albertans.

04:15:13.660 Some of those losses that you were talking about were cabinet ministers.

04:15:16.780 So do you see some people who could have the potential to step into those roles?

04:15:21.380 I'm trying to think. They have a couple of new MLA.

04:15:24.960 for example i don't know the background as well as all of them typically you want someone you know

04:15:32.560 when you're forming a cabinet uh daniel smith first of all is from the south of the province

04:15:36.720 and typically the way premiers in this province do it uh you'll want the finance minister from

04:15:41.760 the north end of the province usually it's a calgary and edmonton or vice versa um that's

04:15:46.000 why i mentioned brian gene uh as a potential finance minister he obviously is from one of

04:15:50.720 of the more northern ridings um but that is some bench strength that might be missing i mean to run

04:15:56.400 through it millican uh copying jeremy nixon is on the bubble uh shandro is about six votes up

04:16:03.840 uh newdorf is up a bit maddu is defeated and that's the other point nobody in edmonton there's

04:16:09.520 from the provincial capital there is going to be no cabinet representation you know that is

04:16:14.080 something that daniel smith's gonna have to think about as well we'll talk about this david i mean

04:16:17.440 mean agree or disagree with her policies no matter how you feel about danielle smith this is

04:16:21.980 remarkable given where she was just a few years ago in her own political career right we're talking

04:16:27.320 about a woman who built the wild rose party uh essentially from scratch became leader uh was at

04:16:33.420 a very tight election at that point in time ended up losing to allison redford crosses the floor in

04:16:38.580 an absolutely dramatic stunning turn of events right then loses her own riding nomination for

04:16:45.700 the progressive conservatives who'd have thought that she was the mayor of alberta now i mean it

04:16:51.980 is it's remarkable what she's been able to accomplish we started this show tonight with

04:16:56.560 your video presentation your retrospective a i remember gosh daniel smith she hasn't aged that

04:17:02.100 much she still looks pretty youthful 10 years ago but uh when she said in 2012 we played that little

04:17:07.520 clip in your piece where she said well i guess we have a you got to wait a little longer yeah

04:17:11.940 took a decade and a bit uh there you go but it remarkable that that that sort of uh circumference

04:17:18.100 or sort of uh journey uh can happen uh so congratulations to danielle smith on that front

04:17:23.540 but as i said uh she she did lose some key cabin ministers but yep i'd be all smiles too and she's

04:17:30.180 entering the room could have been a lot worse you know absolutely all smiles she is not driving in

04:17:37.060 in a big blue truck we joke we reference that but of course that is how uh jason kenny entered the

04:17:42.580 room speaking of jason kenny jason kenny turns 55 years old tomorrow oh yes i don't know where

04:17:48.260 he is is that a birthday present yes i'm not sure if it's a gift or not i'm not sure about that but

04:17:53.700 i'm sure he's still supportive of the party no matter who's i mean she did take over what he

04:17:58.260 built that's kenny did unite that conservative party she's inherited it hasn't blown up yet

04:18:03.780 that's saying something it may yet blow up again but she's in charge for now all right big cheers

04:18:09.060 certainly at ucb headquarters let's listen in to what danielle snick has to say

04:18:15.700 oh boy thank you

04:18:22.100 oh thank you my dear friends thank you so much well to paraphrase our dear friend ralph

04:18:30.820 Welcome to another Miracle on the Prairies.

04:18:38.560 My friends, this was the very definition of a hard-fought election.

04:18:44.900 We face the most expensive, fierce, and coordinated opposition in third-party political campaigns in history.

04:18:54.540 Now, many folks wrote us off, even just as recently as last month.

04:19:00.220 But you know what happened? Despite it all, today Albertans chose to move our province forward by re-electing a strong, stable, united, conservative, majority government.

04:19:14.480 Now this victory would not have been possible without the incredible work of so many.

04:19:18.800 And thank you to our amazing campaign team, to our party and campaign volunteers, and to every single one of you that donated your time and your resources to this campaign.

04:19:28.480 you all made the difference and thank you thank you

04:19:34.880 a special thanks to all of our ucp candidates and their spouses families and campaign teams for

04:19:40.800 your tremendous work and sacrifice regardless of whether you won or lost individually tonight you

04:19:46.720 made a difference for alberta and we will always be you will always be part of our ucp team so thank

04:19:54.560 you i'd also like to thank the great people of brooks medicine hat once again yes

04:20:05.600 you've entrusted me with the responsibility of representing and advocating for your interests

04:20:10.400 and i am honored and humbled i'm indebted to you and to all the volunteers and i will continue

04:20:15.760 fighting for you as your mla thank you brooks medicine hat

04:20:19.120 and of course thank you to my dear husband David thank you so much honey for supporting me for

04:20:33.160 sacrificing so much of our time together so I can serve our province in this special way

04:20:38.140 thank you so much for all that you do well my friends the election is now over it is

04:20:48.120 to put partisan division and personal and political attacks in the rearview mirror.

04:20:54.520 It's time to move forward together as all Albertans, no matter who we voted for.

04:21:05.800 And on that note, Rachel Notley called me earlier to concede the election with honour and with dignity.

04:21:13.040 We all know about our differences of opinion, but I believe that Rachel Notley is a loyal Albertan

04:21:17.780 who loves this province as much as I or anyone else.

04:21:24.740 And she is deserving of respect and kindness and gratitude

04:21:28.280 for the thousands of hours she has sacrificed to serve our democracy.

04:21:32.080 And I hope you'll join me in genuinely thanking her for her public service.

04:21:38.900 And just as I would like to thank the hundreds of thousands of Albertans

04:21:42.700 who voted for the UCP today,

04:21:44.660 I want to speak for a moment to every Albertan who did not.

04:21:48.880 I want you to know that my oath is to serve all Albertans, no matter how you voted.

04:21:59.440 And though I didn't do enough in your judgment to win your support in this election,

04:22:03.880 I will work every day to listen, to improve, and to demonstrate to you

04:22:08.140 that I can be trusted to improve on the issues that you care so deeply about.

04:22:12.600 Now, I won't be perfect, of course, we all know that, but when I make a mistake, I will listen, correct course, and learn from it so that I can improve and become a better leader.

04:22:22.740 And so I invite all Albertans, regardless of who you supported in this election, to reach out to me with your ideas and your concerns and your questions.

04:22:30.660 That feedback that you give me, positive and negative, helps make our UCP caucus and I to make better decisions.

04:22:37.160 And that is what a healthy democracy is all about.

04:22:42.600 Now, before I go further, I think it's important tonight to recognize the courageous sacrifice of our firefighters and other first responders who are fighting and winning the battle against forest fires across our province.

04:22:58.440 I'd ask all of us to stand here and applaud our heroes of Alberta.

04:23:06.280 That is what Alberta is all about.

04:23:09.360 we look after each other we take care of each other and we must remember that there is much more

04:23:15.680 much more that unites us than divides us and we will need to be unified in the days and years

04:23:20.880 ahead because there's so much work to do together for example we need to make sure that you and your

04:23:26.160 family keep more of your money for the things that you need especially during this time of high

04:23:30.720 inflation. We have to make sure that our communities and streets are safe again

04:23:40.960 for our families and our businesses. And we have to keep powering and

04:23:49.460 diversifying our amazing economy. And I want to tell every business owner and

04:23:53.900 investor listening tonight, whether doing business inside or outside of Alberta, we

04:23:58.020 are throwing our doors wide open for businesses, large and small, to make this province a home

04:24:09.840 for your business and its employees. Enjoy the benefits of the Alberta tax advantage and bring

04:24:14.580 your jobs and investments here, because you are both welcomed and valued. And to demonstrate that,

04:24:21.400 the first bill of our government in the legislative session in the fall will be to guarantee that

04:24:25.920 Unless Albertans say otherwise by referendum, the only direction business and personal taxes are headed in this province is down.

04:24:41.440 Because we know that when businesses thrive, people thrive.

04:24:44.980 And when we grow our economy, we attract the best and brightest from all over the world, and we want that.

04:24:49.840 we have built the most powerful economy in the country on the principles of free enterprise

04:24:56.720 entrepreneurship and economic growth let's not ever forget that and let's not ever change that

04:25:06.320 we also need to ensure that our health care and education systems are the best

04:25:10.320 in the world not simply adequate not middle of the pack the very best in the world

04:25:15.520 and that means we need to study the best systems and practices around the world and improve upon

04:25:23.920 the strong foundation that we've built here but it also means empowering our doctors and nurses

04:25:28.960 teachers and other frontline professionals along with feedback from patients and parents

04:25:34.080 to innovate and improve in these areas every single day so i'm asking healthcare and education

04:25:40.160 professionals tonight, I'm also asking parents and

04:25:43.520 patients to work with me and the UCP caucus to build a

04:25:47.100 health care system and an education system that are

04:25:49.740 models for the entire world.

04:25:55.500 I know we can do this together and I am here to

04:25:58.580 listen and to work alongside of you.

04:26:01.380 And finally, my fellow Albertans, we need to come

04:26:03.600 together no matter how we have voted to stand shoulder

04:26:06.400 to shoulder against soon-to-be announced Ottawa

04:26:09.200 policies that would significantly harm our provincial economy now we have been

04:26:18.260 made aware that in the coming weeks Justin Trudeau is planning on bringing

04:26:22.520 forward new restrictions on electricity generation from natural gas that will

04:26:26.860 not only massively increase your power bills but will also endanger the

04:26:30.960 integrity and reliability of our entire power grid which we rely on during our

04:26:35.720 cold and dark alberta winters in addition the prime minister is already ready to introduce a

04:26:41.800 de facto production cap on our oil and gas sector that if implemented

04:26:49.480 if implemented built in tens of thousands of jobs lost tens of billions in lost investment damage

04:26:56.440 our province's fiscal position and bring economic hardship to albertans now i've made myself clear

04:27:02.120 on this matter to the prime minister in person and in public but i feel we need to do it again

04:27:25.080 well hopefully the prime minister and his caucus are watching tonight

04:27:32.120 But let me be clear, this is not a road we can afford to go down.

04:27:38.800 If he persists, he will be hurting Canadians from coast to coast,

04:27:42.040 and he will strain the patience and goodwill of Albertans in an unprecedented fashion.

04:27:50.560 And as Premier, I cannot, under any circumstances,

04:27:53.980 allow these contemplated federal policies to be inflicted upon Albertans.

04:27:58.340 I simply can't, and I won't.

04:28:02.120 And so I invite the Prime Minister to instead halt the introduction of these harmful policies

04:28:22.620 and come to the table in good faith to work collaboratively with Alberta on an energy

04:28:27.120 and emissions strategy that will both grow the Alberta and Canadian economies while using

04:28:32.100 export of alberta lng and emerging technologies to achieve meaningful reductions in emissions

04:28:37.700 because when canadians work together there is no challenge that we can't overcome i believe that

04:28:42.820 but it takes two parties acting in good faith to build that meaningful partnership now alberta

04:28:48.260 is willing to be that partner and we need our federal government to show

04:28:52.020 So in closing, my friends, tonight is a time for celebration.

04:29:07.020 We celebrate the candidates that won their election races and the efforts of those who did not.

04:29:19.360 We celebrate the commitment to democracy of all volunteers and supporters, regardless of party affiliation.

04:29:25.780 And we celebrate those who have sacrificed to secure and protect our right to vote and be a free and prosperous people.

04:29:32.580 And we celebrate this beautiful province and all who live here.

04:29:36.680 this uniquely special place where the best and brightest come from every corner of the world

04:29:48.240 to join us in building one of the greatest to live and work and raise our families and where

04:29:54.200 the only things that are larger than our mountains is the compassion and irrepressible spirit of our

04:30:00.400 people from the bottom of my heart thank you Alberta and may our province remain

04:30:06.680 Thank you.

Juno News - May 30, 2023

Alberta Votes 2023

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