Juno News - June 21, 2022


Former cabinet minister Rebecca Schulz seeks UCP leadership

Topics
UCP leadership race
Mentioned
Rebecca Schultz Jason Kenney
CBC stands by their false reporting of the convoy Cathay Wagantall returns to Parliament following end of vaccine mandate

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

189.27

Word count

1,630

Sentence count

—


Summary

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

Rebecca Schultz joins me on the show to talk about her campaign to become the next premier of Alberta and lead the party into the next election. She talks about why she's running for the leadership of the UnitedCP, her vision for the future of the party and the province, and why she believes she's the best choice to replace former premier Jason Kenney.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show
00:00:05.920 the ucp leadership race is in full force we know that the party is going towards a contest to who
00:00:15.920 for who's going to become the premier of alberta and then lead the party into the next election
00:00:20.160 now that jason kenney has announced he's stepping down and one of the candidates is the former alberta
00:00:26.320 cabinet minister rebecca schultz who joins me on the line now rebecca good to talk to you thanks for
00:00:31.280 coming on today hi andrew it's my pleasure good to see you again yes we caught up at the canada
00:00:37.440 strong and free networking conference in ottawa and at the time we didn't even know there was going to
00:00:42.400 be a leadership race and here we are and you've announced your candidacy why is it that you want
00:00:48.400 to be the leader of your party and the premier of alberta you know i would say that first and
00:00:54.240 foremost i believe in the future of our party but also in the province of alberta we have so much
00:01:01.120 to offer and we need somebody who can stand up and defend the constitutional rights of albertans
00:01:07.680 make sure that we continue to drive economic growth and keep our party united so that we can defeat the
00:01:13.040 ndp in uh 2023 our provincial election next year uh is in the spring and so i think you know it's been a
00:01:20.880 really difficult time um you know i think obviously everybody knows that and i think instead of
00:01:26.400 vilifying each other and as conservatives you know um you know focusing on some of the things that
00:01:31.680 divide us we really need a leader who can bring us together remember who our true opponent is which is
00:01:36.960 the ndp uh and take them on here in alberta next year you know we had a leadership review for premier
00:01:44.000 kenny that was very close virtually 50 50 so no matter which way someone goes the party is divided
00:01:50.560 the party is split down the middle how do you not just build a winning coalition from that in the
00:01:55.840 leadership race but beyond that when you have that division in your party you know and it's tough and
00:02:02.160 i think you know everybody largely whether i'm talking to party members or albertans i think people
00:02:08.400 agree that they fully expect governments are going to make decisions that they disagree with um you
00:02:14.800 know i i don't think it's that what we've heard is that you know we've we've gotten off track our
00:02:19.760 government has done a lot of really great things our economy here in alberta um is kind of on fire
00:02:26.400 we're taking off coming out of you know like i said an economic recession a tough two years our
00:02:31.360 unemployment is at the lowest rate since 2015 more jobs created every day things are looking up but we did
00:02:38.080 get off track oftentimes people say it was our tone we felt like how you were communicating decisions
00:02:44.320 um didn't show that you heard what we were saying we didn't feel heard we didn't feel listened to um
00:02:51.520 and so i think a we have to switch the tone b i am so dedicated to the conservative movement um that is
00:02:58.320 not something that's new for me i think we need somebody who understands that the grassroots party members
00:03:03.680 engaging with people uh door knocking getting out there listening and taking action that's important
00:03:09.760 that's just as important as governing is keeping our coalition together and so i think you know it
00:03:15.440 takes somebody that's highly motivated very committed um the first thing i committed to do
00:03:20.160 is door knock in every single constituency across this province meet with our uh local ucp community
00:03:26.720 boards and those presidents make sure that they know that they have a seat at the decision making
00:03:31.440 table and that they're heard um i'm willing to do that you know our opposition here they are
00:03:37.200 highly motivated they are working very hard they are very disciplined um and we need a disciplined
00:03:43.120 team we have an awesome team we have amazing talented mlas um and they want their talents and
00:03:50.000 strengths to be used as well looking at the field itself two of the early candidates to get in brian
00:03:57.360 gene and danielle smith were coming into the race as outsiders from the the caucus well i guess brian
00:04:03.840 gene not as much of an outsider from the caucus now but but outsiders of the caucus over the last two
00:04:08.080 years and certainly from the cabinet you were a member of premier kenny's cabinet and obviously
00:04:13.920 there's been a lot of controversy about the handling of the covet file and i know you weren't the health
00:04:18.800 minister you weren't responsible for for that file specifically but how have you felt the the reception in
00:04:25.440 the last day since you've announced from the members towards you being a part of a government
00:04:29.200 that wasn't popular by the last by the end of it with the last with a large chunk of the members
00:04:35.280 you know and i think it the reception has actually been really positive like we kicked off the campaign
00:04:41.840 yesterday and we've seen a lot of support i think part of it is because um largely what i've heard is
00:04:48.240 people it's not just the decisions that were made and even on covet even at my announcement yesterday in
00:04:52.880 my constituency there were people on all sides of the covet issue uh in one room united around
00:04:59.200 our conservative movement on my around my candidacy and largely i think again it's people had an issue
00:05:05.680 with how some of those decisions were made how they were communicated the tone um they want to see
00:05:11.440 people's differing views respected right and that people aren't being vilified for for holding different
00:05:17.040 views um me being able to say that out loud and say look we didn't do everything right and my
00:05:22.880 colleagues i i know many of them sitting at that table would say the same thing we didn't get it all
00:05:27.360 right but i'm willing to tell you now here's what i'm hearing from you i want you to hear it from me so
00:05:33.040 that you know i'm listening and that i'm going to show you the humility that you want to see in your
00:05:38.480 government and your elected officials because we're it's true we're not going to do everything right all the
00:05:42.800 time but i think people want somebody who is committed to them who wants to hear them and
00:05:47.360 who shows some humility and not just talks about it were vaccine passports in your view a policy
00:05:54.880 itself that was wrong or were they a victim of that poor communication that you just mentioned
00:06:00.400 so i would say you know we in alberta did do things a little bit differently we tried to make
00:06:05.120 sure that there were exemptions uh to that program the restriction exemption program recognizing that
00:06:10.160 there were people um making different choices for for various reasons we also had major issues
00:06:15.760 with hospital capacity we did uh we knew that was an issue even before the election even before covid
00:06:21.840 um but you know it's really i i think it's hard to say it's easier to sit on the sidelines and look at
00:06:29.120 some of those issues but when we were really truly making some decisions around full icus hospital
00:06:35.840 capacities essentially crisis in the health care system and i think that's the issue we need to
00:06:41.680 focus on is fixing that because we don't want to be in that position ever again i know we'll do we'll
00:06:46.960 have you back on for a more formal interview later on in the race as with the other candidates this is
00:06:51.280 more of an introduction so i'll give you a question that you can take any way you'd like here
00:06:57.200 what is it that your campaign is about
00:06:59.680 so for me our campaign is really focusing on getting back on track saying that look as conservatives
00:07:08.080 we do well when we come together when we do not compromise on our conservative roots um but i also
00:07:14.080 think that we need to show some compassion and common sense when we're making decisions that is you
00:07:19.040 know largely i think what albertans want to see um and i think that that's going to help us unify and stay
00:07:24.960 um motivated and focused on like i said who our opponent really is um you know i do bring a unique
00:07:32.240 perspective in terms of i am you know just as excited about grassroots campaigning uh as every other
00:07:38.960 aspect of the job i firmly believe that albertans want to see a competent conservative government i know
00:07:44.640 they do especially with what we're seeing in the economy right now um but also making sure that people
00:07:50.000 are communicating people like me communicating um you know what i'm listening to the concerns of
00:07:56.720 everyday albertans right we want a strong economy we want jobs but we also want to make sure that you
00:08:01.040 got a family doctor when you need it i have two young kids i want to make sure that they have a great
00:08:04.880 education that matters to me um and so we got to talk about that stuff as well uh and that's what i'm
00:08:10.800 committing to do all right well rebecca schultz the calgary jaw mla and former uh children and youth
00:08:16.960 services minister in alberta congratulations on the campaign launch we'll talk to you soon
00:08:21.040 and thanks very much for joining thanks andrew anytime thanks for listening to the andrew lawton
00:08:25.840 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news