Juno News - May 13, 2023


Smith fights fires while Notley goes negative


Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

186.50131

Word count

3,910

Sentence count

199

Harmful content

Misogyny

14

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Evan Menzies and Chris Sims join me to discuss the devastating wildfires that have ravaged Alberta over the past week, and the impact on the campaign. We discuss how the wildfires are affecting the campaign and how it affects the two main parties.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host, Rachel Emanuel.
00:00:18.040 We are back for week two of Election Watch. That's a special edition of the Alberta Roundup
00:00:23.400 in which we focus solely on the Alberta election campaign. This week, I am once again joined by
00:00:28.860 Evan Menzies. He's a political campaign strategist at Crestview Strategies, and he's also the former
00:00:35.260 director of communications for the United Conservative Party. We're also again joined by
00:00:39.400 Chris Sims, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And this week, a new addition
00:00:43.940 to the show, we're joined by Erica Brutis, a senior advisor on the UCP campaign. We'll head to them now.
00:00:50.320 Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. So last week when we started, the wildfire crisis was
00:00:55.280 really just emerging and that kind of broke out on Saturday to the point where Danielle Smith
00:00:59.920 essentially took a step back from her campaign for about three days really to deal with the crisis. 1.00
00:01:05.260 We didn't get a chance to discuss it last week, but I think it's important that we discuss it now
00:01:08.780 because it is really shaping this campaign and it's changing the face of it. Evan, I'm going to go to
00:01:13.580 you first. Do you think the wildfire crisis is helping Danielle Smith as she has a chance to present
00:01:18.600 herself as a really stable and comfortable and consistent leader? Or do you think it's hurting
00:01:23.280 her because it is removing her from the campaign trail so much? 0.98
00:01:28.200 Yeah, I think whenever a political leader has a chance to show that they can be, you know,
00:01:34.560 statesman-like, stateswoman-like, I should say, it gives a certain glow to the politician. In this
00:01:42.380 case, I think, you know, obviously it's a huge tragedy, the amount of Albertans who are suffering
00:01:46.840 and dealing with this right now. I think Premier Danielle Smith has shown what she's shown since
00:01:52.220 she's become Premier, that she's a pragmatist, that she listens, that she's responsive, and she's
00:01:56.980 ready to be put into action when the moment calls upon her. So I think she's handled it
00:02:00.960 certainly well. It's, yeah, you know, Eric is on the call and she can attest to this, but
00:02:07.020 both the UCP and NDP certainly didn't have in their election scripts losing an entire week of
00:02:14.300 announcements practically and being able to control that media narrative. So I'm interested to see how the
00:02:20.500 campaign set it up here over the final two weeks because, yeah, now there's a full week of messaging
00:02:27.460 days that were lost. And, you know, we'll see how Albertans respond ultimately.
00:02:32.620 Evan, you're bang on. Now the leaders have lost a week of the campaign, or at least Danielle Smith did. 0.73
00:02:37.400 And I expect we're going to see that continuation. It is heating up here in the province. Danielle
00:02:41.800 Smith described it this week actually as a heat dome. So I suspect we're going to see an increase in
00:02:46.480 the wildfires yet again. Erica, you're in the war room. Can you describe some of the thinking that
00:02:51.260 went into how should Danielle Smith respond to the wildfires and how much time should she spend on the
00:02:56.080 on the fires as opposed to actually campaigning? Yeah. So to Evan's point, you know, there is
00:03:02.240 an opportunity to show the state's woman that she is. But from a campaign perspective, you never want
00:03:08.720 to politicize the horrific events of something like a wildfire. So from the campaign side, obviously had to
00:03:15.760 pivot and remove her from campaign centric events and let her be premier. I think that's the biggest 0.82
00:03:22.120 priority for anyone that's in government. And, you know, she she put down the partisanship sides 0.99
00:03:27.400 and, you know, briefed the NDP and kept them in the loop. And many of the NDP or many of our
00:03:33.700 candidates in those affected areas paused their campaigns. So, you know, I think she did the right
00:03:38.800 thing. You need to focus on, you know, for your first title, which is premier over being the leader of a
00:03:44.640 party. But now, you know, you saw the rest of this week where once the fires were starting to get,
00:03:50.000 you know, more under control and evacuees could go back home for the most part, focusing a little
00:03:55.100 bit more on the campaign trail. But as we all know, it's supposed to be a hot weekend again,
00:03:59.420 and that could shift the campaign. But I think, you know, to Evan's point, they've done a good job
00:04:04.420 so far. But, you know, there's there's a period where in the next two weeks, it's going to be
00:04:10.720 critical to do that balance of what are you going to do for your vision of Alberta and how are you
00:04:15.280 going to be premier at the same time? So while Daniel Smith might not have politicized the fire,
00:04:21.520 we all know Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley did in a press conference on Monday in Calgary.
00:04:27.120 Rachel Notley said Daniel Smith was insensitive. That was an exact quote because the premier announced
00:04:32.420 her state of emergency on Saturday to some UCP supporters at a fundraiser event before announcing
00:04:37.640 it to the general public in a general press conference immediately following that fundraiser.
00:04:42.560 I had the opportunity to ask her why she thought it was fair to call the premier insensitive
00:04:46.440 while she herself was out campaigning in Calgary. Here's what that sounded like.
00:04:51.740 Rachel Manuel, True Morph, Miss Notley, how is the premier showing insensitivity
00:04:55.560 when you're here in Calgary today hosting a campaign event and she's up at Edmonton dealing
00:04:59.360 with the wildfires?
00:05:00.260 I believe that we are both continuing to work on the campaign. Indeed, we've seen both of us do that
00:05:09.100 and so that's what we're doing. But in the meantime, when it comes to making announcements
00:05:17.760 that impact the victims of the wildfires, then that should be done in an apolitical way.
00:05:23.980 So is the criticism the premier is receiving for the campaign event she attended over the weekend
00:05:28.520 or other campaign events she might choose to hold inappropriate? Is it right for her to continue
00:05:32.960 campaigning considering, as you said, we are in an election period?
00:05:37.020 My concern is only that she chose to announce the provincial state of emergency to her campaign
00:05:44.180 workers before she announced it to the victims, the tens of thousands of victims of the wildfire.
00:05:50.620 And that's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much.
00:05:52.800 Chris, I'm going to go to you first. What do you think of Rachel Notley's decision to continue
00:05:56.200 campaigning? And do you think it was right for her to politicize the wildfires and try to make 1.00
00:06:00.780 the premier look bad?
00:06:02.400 This is always a tough call, right? You're in the middle of a provincial campaign for all of the
00:06:06.440 marbles to be able to come premier and you have to behave as a premier should be expected to.
00:06:13.360 What's interesting is that I got a couple of calls from media outside of Alberta who kind of have
00:06:18.320 more of an overview impression and the images that they actually saw were those images of
00:06:24.060 premier Smith, Daniel Smith with Rachel Notley. Some of those kind of pictures that look like they're
00:06:29.640 almost at like a cabinet, you know, emergency meeting. Those made a big impression on a lot of media
00:06:35.700 from outside of Alberta. And so those looked more stateswoman liked on both of their parts. 0.58
00:06:41.440 Communications wise, it's always really tricky. How closely do you provide emergency care and
00:06:49.220 encouragement to people being a leader? And how hard do you actually fight to win? So I guess we'll
00:06:55.160 have to see over the next couple of days, how that plays out between these two women. But I must say,
00:07:00.360 I got calls from individual people outside of Alberta, both of whom were remarking on, whoa,
00:07:05.220 both of those women put down the gauntlet tools down for a little while, and at least did this picture 1.00
00:07:11.240 consultation. So it made a big impression. That's absolutely fair. And you know, it might be true
00:07:16.300 that Notley's comments didn't really get that much media attention. Erica, I'm going to go to you next
00:07:21.020 for the partisan response. What was the reaction in the war room when Rachel Notley called Danielle
00:07:26.000 Smith insensitive after, you know, the premier had sort of reached out an olive branch and sought to
00:07:30.780 include Notley in some of those discussions around the wildfire? Yeah, I mean, it was just like, this
00:07:35.640 is not the time this is not appropriate. You want to be premier, and this is not premier ask. So,
00:07:42.580 you know, you never want to, we didn't opportun, you know, use this opportunity to showcase that
00:07:48.580 the campaign decided to stay above it that we are, you know, kind of creating a divide between
00:07:53.220 government business, and and the politics that are happening. But I can say, you know, I don't always
00:07:59.540 love the the left media. But when a media individual, I think it was Safe Kaiser, came out and asked
00:08:06.580 Rachel Notley, she couldn't even defend it, right? Like she held a press conference where she essentially
00:08:12.920 was going up talking about nothing, and she was called out for it. So I think that that was their
00:08:17.520 misstep. I'm always happy when the NDP make significant errors that show who they truly are.
00:08:22.820 And it was, I think, exposing Talbertans that it's just distasteful. 1.00
00:08:29.540 So Danielle Smith was finally able to return to the campaign trail in Calgary on Thursday. Otherwise, 1.00
00:08:34.640 she's pretty much been up in Edmonton dealing with the wildfire and hosting a couple events up there.
00:08:39.580 In that very first campaign event of her back in Calgary, we had some protesters disrupt the event. 0.97
00:08:44.300 Now, for my viewers who haven't seen that, we're going to play that clip for you now.
00:08:47.020 Certainly a little bit of a goofy protest there. We know that the NDP actually advertised the UCP's
00:09:16.500 location of that event. So it's quite likely the protesters were able to learn of Premier Smith's
00:09:20.960 location because of that tweet. I also asked Rachel Notley about that. She said, you know,
00:09:25.260 the UCP tweeted out their location first, but the war room has told me that is in fact
00:09:29.000 not the case. At that announcement, Danielle Smith took the opportunity to announce some 0.97
00:09:33.900 cost-saving measures for seniors. She announced a 25% reduction in medical exam for licenses and
00:09:39.420 camping fees. Interestingly, on Monday, Rachel Notley also took the opportunity to announce cost-saving
00:09:44.480 measures for seniors, including investments in home care. Chris, we're seeing a lot of
00:09:49.460 similarities in the campaign here. A lot of focuses on cost-saving measures, tax cuts, as
00:09:54.600 well as public safety. We know both Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley have promised to increase
00:09:58.980 officers on the streets to deal with the public safety crisis that we're seeing. Do you think
00:10:03.500 that this is something that's resonating with voters or is it kind of maybe turning into a little
00:10:07.620 bit of a boring campaign?
00:10:08.920 We here at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation like boring campaigns because that usually means that
00:10:14.740 they're not trotting out multi-billion dollar pie-in-the-sky moonbeam ideas. And when they're
00:10:19.460 actually focusing on things like reducing fees for seniors and cutting income taxes and making sure that
00:10:25.940 we still don't have an Alberta fuel tax, we have the lowest fuel taxes in all of Canada here,
00:10:31.640 and it's because we don't have a provincial fuel tax. Our folks, our supporters, want to see
00:10:36.600 lower taxes, less waste, and accountable government. And if the parties are promising
00:10:40.940 those things and it's making for more of a boring campaign, our folks are really happy with that.
00:10:47.360 Evan, I'm going to go to you next. Are you surprised to see how much similarities there's
00:10:51.160 been in the campaign so far?
00:10:53.780 I'm not too surprised. The NDP's goal of this campaign is pretty simple. They want to win Calgary
00:10:59.660 and they're going to drift closer to the center, center-right, and they've been pretty clear about
00:11:05.420 making that appeal. They've been mimicking and copycatting a lot of UCP policies from the budget.
00:11:13.580 They've been trying to shield message against claims that they will raise taxes. And they say they won't.
00:11:23.020 I remember last election and before they became government in 2015 when the carbon tax came after
00:11:28.700 the election despite having no mandate to do so. Nevertheless, I'm not surprised to see it.
00:11:33.660 You know, I think for Daniel Smith and the UCP team to have a more boring day-to-day election
00:11:41.260 process is to their advantage. And if the NDP can't get extra steam, extra controversy, whatever else,
00:11:49.180 they quite frankly, in my view, have a bit of a ceiling on their vote count in Calgary right now.
00:11:53.900 So they have to scratch and claw for everything. For the UCP, their challenge over the next couple
00:11:58.300 weeks needs to be, while it's boring, they also have to figure out a way to get their voters excited
00:12:03.500 to get out and vote at advanced polls on election day. So they, you know, can go both ways when you're
00:12:09.900 running a boring campaign process. But yeah, they need to figure out a way to remind their voters that
00:12:15.900 a NDP term is something that they will not enjoy if Rachel Notley is premier on May 20.
00:12:23.420 Another big story that broke this week that I actually don't think got very much attention in
00:12:27.900 the mainstream media whatsoever was the UCP released two letters they sent to Elections Alberta
00:12:33.900 requesting investigations into NDP affiliated unions. They are concerned that these unions are
00:12:39.740 breaking elections law. Erica's here. You can break down the story for us. What exactly is going on
00:12:44.940 here? And have you received a response from Elections Alberta yet?
00:12:48.620 Yeah, so there hasn't been a response that I'm aware of, I think will be very public in confirming
00:12:55.340 that an investigation because we think it's quite and quite needed during this election campaign is
00:13:01.340 some of the major big unions lot that Rachel Notley, you know, directly reports to have been
00:13:07.980 violating not releasing their donor list. So there's no transparency. So we're calling on Elections Alberta
00:13:13.100 to make sure that the voters are aware of exactly who's backing the NDP and, you know, that they're
00:13:19.500 following the rules. So, you know, it started AFL is a big one. You know, the the QP Alberta chapter,
00:13:29.100 we've now seen in the second letter to your point was about the Alberta Teachers Association. So the ATA.
00:13:34.620 These are people that and our leader Danielle Smith has talked about it a lot is they're on the provincial
00:13:40.220 executive. So, you know, you say, well, the NDP always has unions on their side. Well, this is
00:13:45.580 actually like in their decision making process as a party. So it's it's completely unfair that
00:13:52.780 they're not being looked into. And so we've that's exactly the purpose of the letter is to ask
00:13:58.540 ask Elections Alberta to promptly look into this and properly investigate.
00:14:03.900 We still have a couple of minutes left here. So one last thing I wanted to ask you guys something
00:14:09.260 about is something I'm hearing a lot about from voters right now is the amount of mud slinging 1.00
00:14:14.300 going on in this campaign. To be specific, a lot of voters are finding that the Alberta NDP are
00:14:19.100 throwing anything they can at Danielle Smith and hoping something will stick. We've all seen the
00:14:23.420 videos. They are combing through all of the premier's old podcast appearances, trying to, you know,
00:14:29.020 get her out of context, saying something a little bit weird, removing context of her discussions to
00:14:33.980 make her look silly or weird or to try and argue that she is going to say privatize healthcare or
00:14:38.940 make you pay for your family doctor. I don't believe we've seen this really coming from the UCP towards 0.90
00:14:44.300 the NDP. Certainly a lot of us in independent media have been pointing out some of these stories
00:14:48.860 of the Alberta NDP and some of their candidates also having a bit of a questionable history, but we're not
00:14:54.380 seeing that same level of mudslinging from the premier towards Rachel Notley.
00:14:58.220 Erica, is this something that's intentional? Are you guys purposely focusing on positive campaigning?
00:15:03.180 Yeah, I mean, call it boring, but this is about being government and about running the province
00:15:08.780 and talking about things that matter to people, which is the economy, affordability, you know,
00:15:14.220 creating opportunities for, you know, for access to healthcare as well as feeling safe. Those are the
00:15:20.540 things that we're going to talk about as a United Conservative Party about creating the best lives and
00:15:24.620 livelihood environment that we can in our province. And if they want to get dirty because they don't have a
00:15:29.580 plan, let them, right? I think that media has done a good job of exposing some of their extreme views.
00:15:37.180 And we'll continue to take, you know, the high road to show people that we are the best to manage the
00:15:42.700 economy, create opportunity, and also just make sure our fiscal house is in order.
00:15:47.580 Evan, you're our campaign expert. What do you think about this? Do you think it's a missed opportunity
00:15:51.420 for the UCP to not throw back some of that questionable history that we're seeing in some
00:15:55.260 of the Alberta candidates? Or do you think that this is the better route for them?
00:15:58.060 Yeah, I think for the UCP, their job over the next two weeks, again, I referenced it earlier, but I do
00:16:06.380 think there is a requirement to remind their voters and folks who are on the fence either way, that the
00:16:15.180 Alberta simply can't afford to go back to an NDP government. There's obviously lots of candidate 0.94
00:16:20.940 stories that we can go back and forth with. But on those macro issues on economy and affordability,
00:16:26.060 the NDP mandate in 2015 to 2019 was not a good period for Alberta. We saw billions have lost
00:16:33.260 economic investment, increased red tape, the healthcare system performed quite poorly.
00:16:38.460 Albertans given a bit of an edge on the healthcare file, but quite frankly, the UCP term has been much
00:16:43.180 stronger on healthcare. And so I think it's, it's important for the UCP to remind people about that
00:16:49.500 bad record. I wouldn't call that mudslinging. That's just basic political communication. So I think
00:16:54.380 they have to really lean into that over the next couple of weeks. There will be some shine. I don't
00:16:59.100 think the premier has to weigh in. She is the leader and she creating a nice sort of glow around 0.72
00:17:05.660 her of not getting into the mud. Rachel Notley and the NDP have not hesitated to jump in the mud. I
00:17:11.020 think a lot of Albertans recognize and see that they haven't hesitated in spending a significant amount
00:17:16.620 of ad revenue or ad spending attacking UCP. And that can be effective, but it also can leave a
00:17:25.420 bit of a bad taste in voters mouth. So that's, that's what I'll be watching over the next couple
00:17:29.820 of weeks. Okay, guys, that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining the show
00:17:35.100 today and we'll see you all next week. Okay, guys. And before I ended the show,
00:17:39.100 I just wanted to take a minute to do my weekly comment roundup. I know we missed it last week,
00:17:43.740 but I really enjoy doing this. You guys know that I read through all your comments underneath my show
00:17:48.300 and I love to hear what you think about it. And since we're doing something new, I am especially
00:17:51.740 curious to hear what the input is. So I'm going to do that right now. YouTube user Bitty Diddab said,
00:17:57.020 great clarification from a couple of great guests. I can't imagine that a thinking population
00:18:01.580 would ever consider Notley for premier anymore than any Canadian would vote for Trudeau.
00:18:07.500 Glad to know that you're enjoying the guests. User Robert Carlyle said, why are they not talking
00:18:12.700 about the NDP taking free speech away from Albertans like Bell C11? Robert, that's a really
00:18:18.380 great question. And something that I also want to note to you guys is that I'm having a really hard
00:18:21.820 time getting access to Alberta NDP events. They won't send their campaign events to True North.
00:18:27.340 We have to get them from somebody else. And sometimes they don't even let me ask a question at the
00:18:30.940 event. In fact, in that very first clip at the beginning of the show, if you're wondering why
00:18:35.340 I'm yelling, it's because the NDP communication staffer would not hand me the mic to ask a question.
00:18:40.940 After they got through all the legacy media journalists, they decided to turn to the phones
00:18:45.100 and not take any more questions from the room, even though it was just me and a Western standard
00:18:49.980 reporter left. Huh? Very interesting. So anyways, I just decided to yell out my question and luckily the
00:18:56.220 NDP heard it and Rachel Notley actually answered it. And another campaign event later in the week,
00:19:01.420 they did hand me the mic to ask a question. So hopefully moving forward, they'll have a bit of
00:19:05.740 a better policy. But at that other second campaign event, they didn't allow Western standard or rebel
00:19:10.380 news to ask their questions. So I'm not entirely sure what the policy is. And it does leave me concerned
00:19:16.380 that what would happen under an Alberta NDP government would conservative media outlets and independent
00:19:21.260 media outlets be able to get any questions in. It certainly doesn't seem that way. However,
00:19:26.140 I think the reason the UCP aren't campaigning on this is because they're really looking to appeal
00:19:30.300 to moderates within the Calgary and Edmonton area and some swing ridings there. And I don't know if
00:19:35.420 the topic of free speech is something that really resonates with moderate voters. That's just my take.
00:19:40.060 And finally, one last comment here. Canadian Starman said, Rachel Emanuel,
00:19:43.820 you've got what it takes to be a great journalist. Keep up the good work. I genuinely appreciated
00:19:48.620 this compliment so much. It was such a nice thing to say. I take a lot of heat online for being a
00:19:53.660 conservative woman in politics, as I'm sure you guys can easily believe people are very disgusting 1.00
00:19:58.380 on the internet, especially when they're hidden behind an anonymous account. So I really appreciated
00:20:02.780 this generous compliment. Thank you so much. Okay, guys, that's all I have time for today. Before
00:20:07.180 I let you go, I just wanted to let you know that if you're interested in seeing more of my coverage
00:20:11.660 of the Alberta election campaign, I would recommend that you follow me on Twitter. I am hot on the
00:20:16.220 campaign trail right now. And I am posting so many videos and articles of what I am hearing and
00:20:21.500 seeing. So you can head over to Emanuel underscore Rach to find me and to see all my content as well.
00:20:28.060 If you're interested, you can also listen to the Daily Brief. That's True Norse morning podcast,
00:20:32.380 of which I am currently the host. And we certainly spend a lot of time discussing the Alberta election
00:20:37.500 campaign. As always, if you're able, please consider supporting my work. You can do that over at
00:20:41.580 donate.tnc.news. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend, and God bless.