Juno News - The Alberta Leaders’ Debate 2023

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Hello, everyone, and welcome to you all.

00:01:19.300 This is a True North special broadcast.

00:01:22.520 I'm Andrew Lawton.

00:01:23.160 We are here for the first and only leaders debate of the Alberta election.

00:01:28.260 It would not be an Alberta panel without some tremendous Alberta correspondents.

00:01:33.360 We have our True North colleagues, William Macbeth and Rachel Emanuel here.

00:01:38.400 It is going to be an exciting night and it's good to have both of you here with us.

00:01:41.220 Welcome.

00:01:42.480 Yeah, thanks, Andrew.

00:01:43.180 Looking forward to it.

00:01:44.500 It's been a busy week, so I'm sure we'll have lots to discuss.

00:01:48.960 We have obviously had some coverage of the Alberta election on my show, on True North, on Rachel's show.

00:01:55.480 So, William, you've been slacking. You haven't done any original coverage, but I know you're going to make up for it with your contributions to the discussion this evening.

00:02:02.760 But let's just talk about the lay of the land here, because the debate is going to be in exactly one hour.

00:02:08.780 And this will be, as I mentioned, the first and only time that the leaders of the major parties are squaring off.

00:02:14.640 But the one thing I should say, and this is, I think, especially noteworthy if you have been familiarized with federal leaders debates,

00:02:21.860 There are just going to be the two leaders here of Rachel Notley and Danielle Smith.

00:02:27.400 There's not going to be an Alberta Liberal leader, an Alberta Green leader, an Alberta Party leader.

00:02:32.740 It's just going to be the two.

00:02:34.600 And I think that will actually change the dynamic a fair bit.

00:02:37.800 So let's start with that, Rachel.

00:02:39.560 I mean, these two women have not really squared off outside of the legislature in this forum.

00:02:45.460 No, I think this is probably the most effective format for people watching

00:02:49.240 because this is really an election where people especially moderates in calgary which we've seen

00:02:54.380 both parties seeking to appeal to they're trying to decide do we think that a ndp not ndp government

00:03:00.320 under rachel notley would be worse for the province or are we more concerned about danielle

00:03:05.680 smith's record obviously the mainstream media and the alberta ndp have done their best to paint

00:03:10.900 danielle smith as crazy you know pulling her old podcast clips taking a lot of stuff out of context

00:03:16.320 And so that's really what the election has turned into for a lot of people.

00:03:19.700 It's a pretty simple ballot box question.

00:03:21.720 So we're definitely going to see Danielle Smith attempting to just stay on track, get

00:03:25.480 her message, not say anything to rile anyone up.

00:03:28.080 She's the better debater of the two of them.

00:03:30.740 She's really strong on public policy.

00:03:33.240 Rachel Notley hasn't been strong on policy during this issue.

00:03:36.920 She's throwing a lot of slander around, a lot of lies.

00:03:39.580 Danielle Smith is going to be right there, able to call her out on that.

00:03:42.240 So I'm really interested to see how this plays out.

00:03:43.980 I think a lot of it will depend on the questions that they're asked.

00:03:47.720 Sometimes these debates can be so tedious when the questions are irrelevant and the format,

00:03:52.660 how much time they're actually given to debate.

00:03:54.620 So those are some of the things I'm going to be looking at.

00:03:56.440 But the fact that it's only the two leaders, I think, is probably the best for Albertans

00:04:00.640 to decide right now.

00:04:02.120 Yeah.

00:04:02.600 And in the 2019 election, which was the previous election, you had four leaders there.

00:04:07.300 But now, I mean, if you look at the polling, there's basically a near 100% chance that

00:04:12.380 it's only going to be MLAs from the NDP and the UCP that are elected, and not to get too bogged

00:04:18.100 down by Alberta political history, but William, how did Alberta become a two-party system in this way?

00:04:24.760 Yeah, I mean, it is quite interesting. If you look back to 1993, and not to spend too much time on

00:04:31.740 this, but that was an election where it was the PCs under Ralph Klein versus the Liberal Party

00:04:37.460 under Lawrence Decor. And Ralph and the PCs won by just a couple percent in that election. It was a

00:04:43.980 very close election. So to go from that in 1993 to where the Liberals will not win a single seat

00:04:51.240 in this election, what a sea change in how it's worked in Alberta. And I think the truth is,

00:04:56.720 is you've seen a consolidation of parties behind the two that are now really contesting the

00:05:01.540 election. You know, there are some parties on the right, some smaller parties on the right,

00:05:05.320 but they have seen their support collapse to the UCP.

00:05:08.720 There are some parties on the left,

00:05:10.340 but they've been unable to earn any sort of material support.

00:05:14.860 All of their support's gone to the NDP.

00:05:16.840 So unlike back in the 90s and 2000s,

00:05:21.460 where there were three-way elections,

00:05:22.800 or at least two-and-a-half-way elections,

00:05:24.900 this is now very much a Republicans versus Democrats type scenario.

00:05:29.740 You've only got two.

00:05:31.380 Yeah, and as a result of that,

00:05:32.780 the NDP in Alberta is not exactly, I mean, this may be a contentious point. It's not exactly like

00:05:38.700 the NDP you'd see elsewhere. And even on this campaign, Rachel, I mean, Rachel Notley has run

00:05:44.380 a fairly moderate campaign. I mean, some of the policies she's put forward have really

00:05:48.900 been things that you wouldn't find uncharacteristic in a conservative platform even.

00:05:54.000 Well, absolutely. And that's, I think from what I've been hearing, it's caught the United

00:05:57.160 Conservative Party government a little bit off guard with some of the comments I've heard from

00:06:00.740 people they're like oh why is Rachel Notley running so to the middle and I think it's because

00:06:04.400 she doesn't want to scare voters off the economy is just finally back on track after years of the

00:06:09.700 COVID-19 pandemic we're still in record high inflation but jobs are strong here the economy

00:06:13.520 is growing and so people don't want to be reminded of what it was like under a Rachel Notley government

00:06:18.380 when her policies chased investment and chased jobs out of the province so we've been seeing her

00:06:22.880 appeal to those moderates just as much as Danielle has there's been a lot of parallels between their

00:06:27.420 campaigns. And so voters are really going to have to look at the policies closely, which often most

00:06:32.080 voters don't do. There is some people who pay really close attention. Most people just kind of

00:06:35.900 want a snapshot, a bigger picture. The one policy that we've really seen from Rachel Notley, which

00:06:41.140 is more in line of what you would think of when you think of the Alberta NDP, is their one promise

00:06:46.140 that they were going to hike corporate taxes. And we know from assessments that that would chase

00:06:50.960 jobs out of the province as well. So that's really the one policy we've seen that's very indicative

00:06:55.440 of an ndp government but on other things she's even been saying that she no longer supports safe

00:07:00.080 supply things like that thinking that we might have lost our other colleagues here for a minute

00:07:10.000 i'm not seeing anybody else the ndp federally and i think you know for example we haven't seen

00:07:15.120 jagmeet singh really pitching in to support rachel notley here have we no we haven't seen jagmeet

00:07:22.400 Singh come on at all I think someone might have cut it out for a second so sorry if I'm jumping

00:07:26.240 in and cutting someone off but I'm going to go ahead and jump and answer this question anyways

00:07:29.860 yeah we haven't seen Jagmeet Singh you know we saw Stephen Harper release sort of a endorsement

00:07:35.260 for the Conservative Party but even in that endorsement he didn't really talk about Danielle

00:07:39.680 Smith he kind of just kept it general and said look Alberta's back on track they're what's best

00:07:44.460 for the province right now the vote for the United Conservative wasn't really an endorsement of

00:07:48.340 danielle smith and we know that her brand of conservatism isn't for everybody and that has

00:07:53.380 certainly turned off some more establishment conservatives so it's interesting that harper

00:07:57.380 didn't acknowledge her in that video but still you know generally a good thing for the party to

00:08:01.560 get that kind of endorsement now i mean obviously the big story when danielle smith became the ucp

00:08:07.640 leader was it was one of the greatest political comebacks we've seen in canada danielle smith

00:08:13.300 went from losing a very winnable election more than 10 years ago to losing the support of her

00:08:19.820 own party, losing a nomination. I remember when she started her radio gig, she was just reviled

00:08:24.380 by Alberta Conservatives, but now has become, I mean, probably one of the most popular figures

00:08:30.620 in the Conservative movement. So let me talk to you about this, William, for two reasons. Number

00:08:35.520 one, I think your analysis of Alberta politics is on point, but you were also on that campaign

00:08:40.360 back in 2012 so how do you or what would you say about the danielle smith of 2023

00:08:46.680 compared to the danielle smith you worked with yeah and i mean just to harken back to your other

00:08:52.580 point i'm absolutely certain rachel notley and the new democrats told jagmeet saying

00:08:56.460 do not come to alberta do not try and help me at all during this election in fact if you could

00:09:02.520 forget we even know each other that would be the best possible thing for my chances of becoming

00:09:08.680 premier. Because of course, Rachel Notley, the last time she won, there were two conservative

00:09:12.800 parties on the ballot. This will be the first time it's ever just been a united conservative

00:09:17.140 party versus the New Democrats, and we'll see what the outcome is. But talking about Daniel

00:09:21.400 Smith, you're right. Arguably the most spectacular fall from grace that a conservative politician

00:09:26.560 has had since possibly the divine government in Saskatchewan, when a lot of them ended up in jail.

00:09:33.780 but if you would ask me at the time

00:09:36.160 would she come back to Alberta politics

00:09:38.060 my answer would have been absolutely not

00:09:39.640 in fact I recall writing a column or an op-ed

00:09:42.720 that said the Daniel Smith era of Alberta politics has ended

00:09:47.260 because I simply did not see a way for her

00:09:49.840 to overcome the huge amount of anger and betrayal

00:09:53.640 that people felt about it

00:09:55.380 so the fact that she not only did

00:09:58.100 that she took her lumps

00:09:59.860 she got yelled at for months

00:10:02.060 She had a radio show where for the first, you know, six months, a year, everybody was piling on about how upset they were about what she did.

00:10:10.160 And to then go on and win a leadership race, I think, is a testament to her tenacity and the fact that she was willing to suffer through all of those sins and that punishment in order to do something which she believed.

00:10:22.420 And, you know, I think a lot of Conservatives really appreciate that, that she was willing to take the tough love or the anger and outrage and channel it into something else.

00:10:33.680 But you, of course, do see, as Rachel said, some division on the Conservative side about whether or not they support Danielle Smith.

00:10:40.340 You've got Kem Bozenkul and a few others writing op-eds saying that she's not a Conservative, she shouldn't be elected.

00:10:46.140 You've got endorsements, though, from Stephen Harper and others who say, you know, the only path forward in Alberta is a conservative government.

00:10:53.420 And I think that's the real ballot question people are facing this time, is what are they more afraid of?

00:10:58.960 Are they more afraid of crazy Danielle Smith, or that's what her opponents and the mainstream media would have you believe?

00:11:06.000 Are they more afraid of crazy Danielle Smith or, Rachel Notley's terrible economic policies?

00:11:11.720 Which one of those two unpleasant choices are they least supportive of?

00:11:16.620 I don't think anybody's voting, apart from vocal minorities on either side, out of love for these candidates.

00:11:23.320 It's more about which do you dislike the most.

00:11:26.120 We are, if you're just tuning in, about 49 minutes away from the start of the one and only leaders debate in this year's Alberta election.

00:11:34.300 We're going to carry that live here at True North.

00:11:37.120 But we will talk about the campaign, the race, the themes, the debate, and all of that between now and then.

00:11:43.280 I'm Andrew Lawton, joined by Rachel Emanuel and William Macbeth from True North.

00:11:48.120 Let's talk about the overarching campaign theme for a minute, Rachel,

00:11:51.720 because I know that earlier on, months ago, there was this thought that I had and some others advanced

00:11:56.780 that this might really be Danielle Smith versus Justin Trudeau in a way,

00:12:01.820 more than Danielle Smith versus Rachel Notley.

00:12:04.000 And I think we saw in the leadership race, the Sovereignty Act, which then became the first legislation of this government.

00:12:11.420 And I think that there is something to that, that the UCP was really looking at Ottawa as being its main nemesis.

00:12:17.780 But I mean, maybe I've been missing it. I haven't actually really seen that dynamic in the election.

00:12:22.420 I haven't really seen federal issues become the ones that Danielle Smith has really tried to stake out a place on.

00:12:28.340 Have I missed something or is that your read too?

00:12:30.460 No, and one of the reasons you haven't seen that dichotomy play out is because Danielle Smith is campaigning to an entirely different group of voters than she was campaigning to during the UCP leadership race in which she was really appealing to those voters who felt left behind by Ottawa, who felt hurt by their federal government, who felt frustrated by government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:12:50.900 she came out the strongest against the pandemic policy that we saw you know she was really

00:12:55.780 outspoken in that and she kind of stood alone in the field a lot of those other candidates

00:12:59.040 couldn't run against the government's record because they had been a part of the government

00:13:03.560 during the COVID-19 pandemic and they had sort of stood by while those policies were passed

00:13:07.980 and then were forced to kind of come out and say well you know I didn't agree with it and I can't

00:13:12.420 really acknowledge what I said because that would be breaching cabinet confidences but I can tell

00:13:16.840 you that I wasn't in favor of it but it certainly wasn't a strong argument and I think they know

00:13:20.640 they didn't have a leg to stand on so we didn't see that same pitch from them that was danielle

00:13:25.700 smith's campaign during the leadership race it was effective we know she won it was close i think

00:13:30.140 she won on the last ballot and i think that speaks to the fact that the conservative party still

00:13:34.760 wasn't sure about her you know not 100 we didn't see her wasn't a peer poly a victory where he went

00:13:39.900 on the first ballot with about 70 support from the base so we are still seeing a bit of that split

00:13:44.820 within the party right now people not sure how to feel about her and as a result we've seen danielle

00:13:49.520 now appealing to the moderates which everyone expected her to do now to her credit she hasn't

00:13:54.200 turned on her base i think some people are really upset about the decision to remove jennifer johnson

00:13:58.900 from the ucp caucus if she wins her election which she's 100 likely to do because that is a

00:14:03.800 conservative safe seat you know some people are upset about that other people understand and say

00:14:07.640 this is the right decision for people that haven't followed that just because that happened today can

00:14:11.440 you just give some context on that sure so the other day it came out that jennifer johnson had

00:14:16.880 made some comments basically referring to trans ideology as as crap and saying that by teaching

00:14:24.100 trans ideology in schools you're you're mixing crap in with the baked goods and so these comments

00:14:29.660 were widely condemned people were like this is extremely transphobic this is extremely homophobic

00:14:33.700 you know maybe it was about two days ago it just blew up the news cycle it was dominating headlines

00:14:38.020 for days people across the board were really really upset and saying danielle smith you need

00:14:42.160 get rid of this candidate earlier this morning the decision came down that if jennifer johnson

00:14:46.880 wins her election in lacombe pinocca she will not sit with the usb caucus at this point it is too

00:14:52.320 late to remove jennifer johnson from the ballot she will be on the ballot this is something similar

00:14:57.280 that happened with the liberal government when close to the election it came out a candidate had

00:15:01.200 some done some untoward things and the liberals didn't really want to be associated with them so

00:15:05.360 they said you know what he's still going to run but if he wins his election he will sit as an

00:15:09.360 independent candidate so this is sometimes done as a practice when it's too late for a party to

00:15:13.440 get rid of a candidate that they no longer want to associate with their party so that was a decision

00:15:18.160 that came down this morning you know some conservatives that really supported danielle

00:15:22.480 during the leadership race were really upset by this decision i think other people understood

00:15:26.880 but again this is danielle winning to the general alberta population she's winning to appeal to a

00:15:32.160 broader group of people she knows that she is to keep some of those mlas in calgary happy some of

00:15:36.560 of them feel like they can't win under her we've been hearing reports that they haven't really been

00:15:41.040 campaigning under daniel smith they've more been campaigning as their own independent mla

00:15:44.800 that's not similar to what we saw in jace under jason kenney so she is running a different campaign

00:15:49.660 and i think she's really trying to position herself against rachel notley's record as premier

00:15:53.440 because a lot of people in alberta are really unhappy during that time period they saw jobs

00:15:57.600 and investment leave the province and so the ucb has been you know trying really hard to remind

00:16:02.820 people of Rachel Notley's record as premier. Let's do a little bit of 2012-2023 comparison

00:16:09.040 again, which I know is your favorite pastime, William. Lake of fire, political history, everyone

00:16:14.640 knows the incident in 2012 that, I mean, largely people argued cost Danielle Smith the election.

00:16:19.820 Do you see shades of that in the Jennifer Johnson debacle? Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean,

00:16:26.420 I cannot overstate the impact that had on our 2012 Wild Rose election. And I'll tell you something

00:16:34.380 that I found interesting was we did some polling or some focus grouping after that election to try

00:16:40.960 and determine like where Wild Rose stood in the minds of typical voters when it came to issues

00:16:48.100 like, do you think we're extreme? Do you think we're intolerant? And when we talked to people

00:16:52.660 afterwards they said look no we don't think your party by and large is a party that is extreme we

00:16:58.800 don't think Daniel Smith is an extremist or is intolerant but what this made us think was she

00:17:05.240 wasn't up to making the tough choices you have to make when you're a premier they said her decision

00:17:10.620 to not fire Alan Hunsberger who was the candidate who had made those comments showed a failure of

00:17:17.220 leadership and therefore they didn't think she was ready for the job of being premier now I would say

00:17:22.640 I think if she had fired him or had said that he would not sit in a Walrose caucus,

00:17:27.900 she would have become premier at the end of that election. And to her credit, I think she learned

00:17:34.480 that very painful lesson and wasn't about to let it happen again in this time. There is simply no

00:17:39.460 way you can message around the fact that the very unpleasant analogy used by that candidate was,

00:17:46.140 you know it's like mixing pooping with the cookie dough and uh i don't think uh there was no amount

00:17:52.440 of explanation that was going to make that particular analogy come across as anything

00:17:56.140 other than unreasonable or extreme and so i i think she decided not to make the same mistake twice

00:18:01.860 let's shift gears here a little bit and talk about the format that we can expect tonight

00:18:08.080 and i i know that uh we did talk about how it's going to be one-on-one which will certainly be

00:18:13.040 interesting here but let's also talk about why not that we don't love having you here rachel but

00:18:17.500 let's talk about why you're here with us and not at the debate yeah absolutely so the parties you

00:18:25.480 know they plan this debate they gave the rights over to organize the debate to the debate consortium

00:18:29.520 who handed it over to ctv to organize so we know that the debate is going to be happening at a

00:18:34.540 location maybe ctv's edmonton office it was sort of an undisclosed location they kept bringing up

00:18:39.640 the fact that there was major privacy concerns so when i emailed ctv the other day to get

00:18:44.760 accreditation to attend to attend the event they said to me oh you know sorry this is for alberta

00:18:50.440 press gallery members only my application with the press gallery has been ongoing for months

00:18:56.680 the alberta press gallery has no jurisdiction over anything other than journalists in the alberta

00:19:02.360 legislature yeah absolutely so this is just a very hand-picked small group of people that are now

00:19:08.760 being invited to attend the debate they said the reason for that was that it was safety and security

00:19:13.560 issues and I said well you know I've been a member of the press gallery in the past I can assure you

00:19:17.480 I'm no security threat and they said oh no no we don't think that you're a security threat but

00:19:21.560 we only have a limited number of security and it's a small space so we're gonna have to limit it and

00:19:25.720 I sort of explained to them that this would result in most of independent media being barred from the

00:19:30.040 debate which is probably of course what they were sort of hoping for and they said yes a lot of

00:19:34.200 people won't be able to attend but this was just a decision to make so I was not able to attend the

00:19:38.520 debate in person which is less of an issue except that there will be a scrum with both of the leaders

00:19:43.560 afterwards that i will not be able to participate in which is frustrating it'll be largely mainstream

00:19:48.440 media reporters at that scrum the western standard might be able to send someone so they might have

00:19:52.680 a presence there but very frustrating and the one thing that i'm kind of caught up on as well

00:19:57.560 you know the ucp often champions independent media danielle smith especially has been a big

00:20:02.520 champion of independent media she talks about how great it is that all these new outlets are now

00:20:07.080 working and growing in this space and i think it was an oversight on their part not to ensure that

00:20:12.520 we wouldn't be given fair access and fair treatment to attend this debate i think that's

00:20:17.080 something that needed they need to look at in the future and say we'll go to this debate but

00:20:20.680 this debate but we're going to have some terms of our own that you have to meet

00:20:24.760 yeah and obviously i mean my my personal desire might be for the ucp to take this principled stand

00:20:30.840 but i realize in all the issues that they are contending with this isn't necessarily the one

00:20:35.720 they want to die on, but there are ways around it. Like Danielle Smith could say, you know what,

00:20:40.100 we're going to have a scrum outside the debate hall and we're going to take questions from all

00:20:43.900 journalists who show up. And generally the UCP, as you mentioned, has been very good about allowing

00:20:48.540 all journalists to go there. The NDP has not, and this has actually become independent media,

00:20:53.620 a bit of a running theme in this election campaign. Now you've just like been elbows up

00:20:58.220 and you've been getting in there and Rachel Notley has been taking your questions because you

00:21:01.300 shout them loud enough that she can hear them even without you getting the microphone, but

00:21:05.220 she's not been as conducive to answering other independent journalist questions this has been

00:21:11.600 one of the strangest parts of the campaign it has been really weird to see how the NDP have responded

00:21:17.120 to independent media I have to say that I don't think their tactics have been very successful

00:21:21.980 and have definitely not been a good look for them so yeah basically they've made a decision to

00:21:26.360 largely ban independent media reporters from their events altogether the first event I showed up

00:21:32.240 They just decided they were going to take questions from legacy media journalists in the room.

00:21:37.260 And the way that that worked was the communication staffer that was running the event would hold the microphone.

00:21:42.500 He would pass it to a journalist and he would take it back in between.

00:21:46.080 That's a pretty standard practice, but it also means that reporters can't just sort of casually pass the mic to each other.

00:21:51.520 It also is a very formal way of doing an event, whereas typically on Parliament Hill, there'll be like a scrum and reporters will just kind of yell their question.

00:21:58.900 The person who yells aloud gets their question answered.

00:22:02.240 And so at this specific event, the first one I went to from the Alberta NDP, they just decided

00:22:07.320 not to hand me the mic. And as soon as they were done taking questions from all the legacy media

00:22:11.540 journalists, they went to the phones. I knew that was a tactic because they didn't want to take my

00:22:16.000 question. And so I just decided to yell my question out. It was a pretty small room. They were still

00:22:20.620 live streaming the event. It would have been impossible to ignore me. Of course, Rachel

00:22:24.380 Notley could have made the decision just not to answer me. But to her credit, she did answer me.

00:22:28.720 we have seen other cases where, for example, Calgary Mayor Jody Gondik just decided not to

00:22:33.540 answer a question from the countersignal editor-in-chief, Kian Bextie, and actually walked

00:22:37.600 away from the podium when he asked her a question. So to her credit, Rachel Notley did answer my

00:22:42.400 question and I got a follow-up in. And then at future press conferences, they've simply just

00:22:46.120 decided to give me the mic. So I've been able to get my questions in on those rare occasions when

00:22:51.740 I actually am able to find out where the NDP press conferences are happening. They've made it very

00:22:56.180 difficult and they've kept their location very secret from independent media so we often don't

00:22:59.920 know what's going on or where to find them but I've been the only independent media reporter

00:23:04.600 that's had success at getting my questions in. Western Standard is barred from asking questions

00:23:09.300 until they apologize for a column that they published which they're not going to do let's be

00:23:13.780 honest. The NDP said that the the column in question was homophobic and hateful and all that

00:23:20.420 types of things so they're waiting for an apology. Rebel News hasn't been able to get their questions

00:23:24.320 And on the chance that Keenan Bextie shows up to something like happened on Monday, the NDP actually tried to get him to leave.

00:23:31.340 And when he wouldn't leave, they called the police on him and had him sort of escorted from the premises.

00:23:35.920 So it's been sort of all over the place on how they're dealing with independent media.

00:23:39.580 But it's kind of just created more drama than is necessary.

00:23:43.000 We actually on the Bextie issue, we actually have a clip, I believe, that we can show.

00:23:48.400 Let's roll that now.

00:23:54.320 Thank you.

00:24:24.320 to that. He was not actually handcuffed. I'll take it up with Kian about why his hands happen

00:24:29.420 to be in the position they would be if he were handcuffed. But a mainstream media reporter,

00:24:33.580 to their credit, did actually ask Rachel Notley about this incident, which had ended up delaying

00:24:38.960 the start of the press conference by a considerable amount. And she wouldn't take

00:24:42.620 Kian's question, but she took this question about Kian.

00:24:54.320 Well, you know, it really depends. So I'm happy to present myself to everybody in the media, even those that have a very conservative background and have a very pointed perspective in terms of the questions that they ask.

00:25:12.320 There is one media outlet that fits that description that I am very clear.

00:25:18.320 We will not take questions from until they retract the hate speech that they published with respect to one of our caucus members.

00:25:27.320 The protester today does not fit that description.

00:25:30.320 The protester today is a protester, has a record of acting like a protester,

00:25:35.320 regardless of what they may have called themselves, and has a clear association with white supremacist groups.

00:25:41.320 And so the answer is no. No.

00:25:49.800 Yeah, that was a pretty pointed comment there,

00:25:53.480 calling Kian a protester repeatedly,

00:25:56.420 likening him with white supremacy without offering support for that.

00:26:00.640 But, I mean, the NDP have dug their line in the sand here.

00:26:03.440 And I think, generally speaking, the mainstream media, in my experience,

00:26:06.160 are happy enough to keep their access group small

00:26:10.540 so they don't actually make us think about this.

00:26:13.460 I mean, this is something you and I have talked about, William.

00:26:15.460 It's why independent media is so important

00:26:16.940 because a lot of the times there are, to borrow Pierre Paulyev's words,

00:26:20.980 these gatekeepers in the mainstream media

00:26:22.780 that really like being the only ones that have access.

00:26:26.360 No, you're completely right.

00:26:27.680 It's a very clubby environment within the legacy media,

00:26:31.160 and they really don't like it when outsiders try and rock the boat.

00:26:35.840 And, you know, but the need for independent media has never been more clear if you simply look at their coverage of politics this week.

00:26:44.840 They have written endlessly about the fact that this one UCP candidate made an inappropriate and unpleasant analogy about transgenderism policy in schools.

00:26:56.980 They've talked incessantly about an ethics report that came out today that partly cleared Danielle Smith in the issue related to judicial interference.

00:27:06.820 But what they've barely talked about at all is the NDP's platform, which is calling for a nearly 40% increase in business taxes.

00:27:13.560 And that is an issue that actually will impact the lives of thousands of Albertans, not least of which the nearly 35,000 Albertans who, according to economist Jack Mintz, will likely lose their jobs.

00:27:26.040 if the NDP tax policy is adopted after the election.

00:27:30.540 So I think the legacy media tend to focus on their little pet issues.

00:27:35.560 They like to play the inside politics game.

00:27:38.040 They like to be in the little bubble of analyzing poll results

00:27:41.220 or talking about, you know, oh, this little pet issue that happened here or there.

00:27:45.600 And they've really failed at talking about the issues which matter to Albertans,

00:27:50.340 and that's jobs, taxes, cost of living, housing, all of those issues.

00:27:55.160 And it's during an election, of course, which is when we should be having important conversations about things like that, not which candidate for which party once said something crazy on their social media, either a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago.

00:28:10.800 Yeah. No, you're very right. And by the way, are you a bit thirsty, William? You look thirsty.

00:28:15.140 Oh, well, that's a really interesting thing you say. I am kind of thirsty. I'm just going to take a little sip here from my True North mug.

00:28:25.160 I happen to have one, too.

00:28:27.480 A True North mug.

00:28:29.240 Rachel doesn't.

00:28:29.920 But we'll get her one.

00:28:31.060 You guys, that's a really nice mug.

00:28:33.080 How come I don't have one, and how can I get one?

00:28:36.440 Well, Rachel, it's funny you mentioned that.

00:28:38.880 You actually do have one.

00:28:40.000 You just forgot to pack it, I think,

00:28:41.180 because you went out of the camp.

00:28:48.600 There we go.

00:28:49.300 They took me off while I was doing the pitch.

00:28:51.500 Darn it, Sean, I was trying to sell mugs here.

00:28:53.320 No, we aren't actually selling them, but we do have a few of them in stock, and the first five people to donate $150 will get their very own True North mug, and if you donate $500, you get the one that William is sipping from right now, but he won't even wash it.

00:29:11.040 No, first five to donate $150, get a True North mug.

00:29:17.060 These are very, very limited inventory, and they are, I mean, they're very hefty.

00:29:22.220 Like, you could fit, like, two whole cups of coffee in here, which is how I am getting through the show.

00:29:26.520 And by the way, we did actually give Rachel a mug.

00:29:28.480 You have one, right, Rachel?

00:29:30.560 I do have one.

00:29:31.340 I just didn't pack it.

00:29:32.360 It didn't seem essential for the campaign trail, and I regret that now.

00:29:35.940 Also, I believe you can fit, like, half a glass of wine in them.

00:29:39.400 Someone told me that.

00:29:40.400 so yeah people think it's me because i did the whole like drinking wine bit on my show despite

00:29:46.560 the world health organization the other day but i have not uh emptied half a bottle of wine into

00:29:50.720 my mug i am drinking pure coffee right now i did actually see that bit i know that you accused me

00:29:56.800 of not watching your show but i did see the wine bit so well no i accuse you because you like saw

00:30:02.160 the intro and you're like oh wow this is great i've never seen this before i like well we use it

00:30:06.240 in front of every single Andrew Lawton show so uh but if you watch the archive version you might not

00:30:11.840 see the the live countdown so I will uh let you slide on that one uh but I do just before we get

00:30:17.360 back into the the really important stuff not that William drinking from a giant true north mug isn't

00:30:21.760 important uh we do not get to do the stuff we do without the support of true north nation out there

00:30:27.920 uh and whether it's the people that give you know two dollars a month or ten dollars a month or

00:30:32.160 one-time donations of uh in some cases thousands of dollars we we so appreciate it and i mean the

00:30:38.520 i remember when when true north started and i was one of a very small team that we did a lot of work

00:30:44.940 we punched above our weight but having rachel in alberta able to cover this election full-time has

00:30:50.040 been uh fantastic and i think you know having a team that's spread across the country that lets

00:30:55.080 us cover these stories and like you were just saying william that lets us uh cover the issues

00:31:00.000 that matter like I remember when I was on the 2021 uh federal campaign trail and I'm at these

00:31:05.780 press conferences with with Aaron O'Toole uh which whatever you think about him was the conservative

00:31:10.420 leader running in an election with a conservative-ish platform uh and you know you'd line up

00:31:16.360 behind media that are asking about you know things that have nothing to do with the election nothing

00:31:21.860 to do with the platform uh and and sometimes you'd go there and you'd say hi I'm I don't know if I'm

00:31:26.780 allowed to ask it but I actually have a question about policy and it was like you were doing this

00:31:30.360 this radical thing so I mean yeah that the the trivia the anomalies they matter in elections

00:31:35.660 but there's a dearth of people covering conservative politicians in a way that

00:31:42.040 matters to a lot of Canadians I think no I couldn't agree with you more I mean

00:31:56.780 public safety, you are seeing a very wide split between where these two candidates can.

00:32:05.500 And voters really have to know that who they vote for in an election will determine what

00:32:10.620 happens in their everyday lives.

00:32:12.420 You know, if you elect a party, for example, that's going to hike your business taxes,

00:32:17.020 that could lead to widespread layoffs and a loss of investment.

00:32:20.460 You could lose your job.

00:32:21.700 Or if you vote for a party that's going to cut your taxes, you're going to have more

00:32:24.980 money in your pocket when it comes to tax time. So the fact that the legacy media want to obsess

00:32:30.460 about their little cadre of pet issues, I mean, fine. But I think it shows more than ever why we

00:32:35.700 need groups like True North, why we need independent media, talking about the issues

00:32:39.140 which actually matter to everyday people. Let's talk about the healthcare aspect here,

00:32:44.900 which was obviously a big part of Danielle's leadership campaign and has, I think, become

00:32:48.260 pretty central to the general election campaign as well uh what's been the main health court

00:32:55.100 health care debate rachel well the main health care debate is of course basically what we're

00:33:00.480 seeing across the country and that is just the immense wait times people are experiencing when

00:33:06.240 they're at the emergency room if they need a surgery or if they need an ambulance now of course

00:33:11.200 as a canadian you pay a ton of money to taxes we have a publicly funded health care system

00:33:16.920 and so I think it's reasonable to expect that if you need an ambulance you're going to be able to

00:33:20.800 get one in a reasonable amount of time just a couple of minutes if you live in the city

00:33:24.720 maybe you're going to wait a little longer if you live a little farther away from the city

00:33:28.440 these wait times have been just immense they've been growing over the past couple of years and

00:33:32.660 they've really hit a breaking point and people all across the board are feeling the effects of this

00:33:36.800 and the other main problem is that there's a huge shortage of family doctors right now which is

00:33:41.620 further impacting our hospital systems because people that don't have family doctors are going

00:33:46.020 to the ER to get access to see a doctor because they really don't have a lot of options and so

00:33:50.680 that's been one of the main issues that Danielle Smith approached during the United Conservative

00:33:54.400 Party leadership race she said we need to over overhaul our health care system and she immediately

00:33:59.980 got started on that once she was elected premier she wiped the Alberta Health Services Board whom

00:34:05.180 she was very critical of during the COVID-19 pandemic she said they you know there was a lot

00:34:10.040 of government overreach responsible and she didn't like their decisions she replaced them with one

00:34:14.560 administrator and immediately got work to laying out a plan to essentially reduce some of those

00:34:19.040 wait times interestingly just a couple of weeks ago a some new alberta health services data was

00:34:24.560 released showing that wait times for ambulances are way down from what they were back in november

00:34:30.640 and the six months since danielle smith has been premiered looks like her plan is working

00:34:34.880 even people in the mainstream media you know were forced to kind of admit oh maybe danielle smith is

00:34:39.680 right that her plan is working and it's going to take a bit more time so we're seeing her promising

00:34:43.680 to continue those actions and continue to increase health care capacity the government has also

00:34:49.200 taking use of surgical charter centers to basically pay them to get rid of some of the surgical

00:34:55.360 backlog and then what we're seeing from the ndp is just a lot of complaints you know concerns about

00:35:00.400 privatizing health care they don't like the surgical system they say it's taking jobs away

00:35:04.560 from the hospitals they're saying that danielle smith is planning to sell the hospitals things

00:35:08.400 like that you know very inflammatory language they've also pulled some of her old clips

00:35:12.720 and they're basically saying oh she's going to make you pay to see a family doctor because you

00:35:15.920 know danielle smith was a podcast host for years she's discussed a lot of ideas and they're

00:35:20.320 basically trying to make her run against her record of being basically a talk show host who

00:35:25.280 was open to discussion and debate which has been very difficult for her to sort of surpass that

00:35:29.840 and she's kind of said repeatedly i will not charge you to see a family doctor but that's

00:35:33.840 just an ndp talking point so you know they've also come out and promised to increase capacity

00:35:38.400 for doctors. They said they're going to undertake the largest hiring spree in Alberta history to

00:35:43.580 really increase that capacity of doctors and to fix some of these wait times. So everyone is kind

00:35:48.120 of admitting what the problem is. There's just slightly different solutions as to how they're

00:35:51.680 going to approach it. And then of course, the NDP not really being genuine or honest about what

00:35:56.780 Danielle Smith's plan actually is, is another big problem that we're seeing. You just had like the

00:36:01.760 perfect setup on the clip there, but I can set up your clip for you because you actually asked

00:36:05.700 Rachel Notley about that about her claim that Danielle Smith was going to make people pay to

00:36:11.800 see their doctor. Later at the press conference Danielle Smith said she thinks the protests

00:36:19.080 emerge not from UCP mixed messaging but rather NDP lies. She said repeatedly she's not going to

00:36:25.120 charge for a visit to the doctor or she's not going to privatize health care. I'm wondering

00:36:30.100 what your response to that obviously the NDP have been reiterating claims that you will have to pay

00:36:34.180 for a family doctor, even while the premier is saying, no, that's not the case.

00:36:39.300 Here's the thing.

00:36:41.800 Danielle Smith has been seen on film, not once, not twice,

00:36:46.600 not sort of in response to some unexpected question,

00:36:49.860 but she has done radio shows, she's done speaking tours,

00:36:53.820 she's written papers, she has recorded herself over and over and over

00:36:58.100 saying these things, advocating to get people to pay more out of pocket

00:37:03.800 for their healthcare and talking in great detail about how she saw the sale of hospitals

00:37:09.440 as a completely legitimate way to get around the Canada Health Act.

00:37:13.920 So she's actually been defending her claim that she won't move forward on these things

00:37:19.800 that she's advocated for so much of her life until very, very recently by saying that she's

00:37:25.540 barred by the Canada Health Act.

00:37:27.000 But when it comes to the sales of hospitals in the recording, she's actually describing

00:37:32.880 that as something that can be done within the canada health act so it is a very troubling uh

00:37:38.480 revelation and and uh honestly because she's flip-flopped on so many other things

00:37:44.080 uh albertans don't have a high level of trust that they can count on her uh to protect your health

00:37:50.720 care our health care

00:37:51.680 rachel what did we just see there yeah so basically this was at an ndp rally up in

00:38:04.640 northwest calgary i went to it and i asked rachel notley why are you repeating these claims that

00:38:09.840 danielle smith is going to charge people to visit their family doctors because danielle smith has

00:38:15.040 said repeatedly i think every single media appearance she's given on the campaign trail

00:38:19.940 she said i will not charge you to visit your family doctor and of course you heard rachel

00:38:24.260 notley's answers there she said well you know she's discussed it so many times and we just

00:38:28.580 can't trust her and we don't know what she's going to do so i i'm going to take her out

00:38:32.340 her word when she discussed these ideas and basically just trying to sow doubt

00:38:36.180 into danielle smith and into her promises not to charge albertons for a visit to the family doctor

00:38:41.060 this may be bad political advice but there's a part of me that wonders if danielle smith would

00:38:51.240 be better off leaning into it because she is an ideas person and i mean when you host a radio show

00:38:56.580 and you have the mind that danielle smith has i mean she's always liked thinking about different

00:39:00.980 solutions to problems and she's never shied away from complex solutions and i know in health care

00:39:05.220 she's put forward some very novel ideas on on health care and it was actually disappointing

00:39:10.360 to not see her lean more into that because she has talked about the need for a fundamental

00:39:15.100 restructuring in health care. And she's talked about it in a very sensible way. She's talked

00:39:19.580 to experts about it. And that's been the one thing that I think has felt a little inauthentic

00:39:24.940 is that she's running away because of the political climate on health care, which I

00:39:29.200 understand, but she's running away from what I think she's made pretty clear in the past

00:39:32.920 that she believes. What do you think, William? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's no secret that

00:39:38.800 in her heart, Danielle Smith thinks we need major structural reform to our health care system. And

00:39:45.040 I don't think she's wrong. I think if you read any of the reports that have come out about publicly

00:39:50.320 funded health care, the fact that with people living longer lives, the fact that medical

00:39:55.600 procedures are becoming increasingly expensive, the equipment costs, the medication costs,

00:40:00.640 all of this is leading to a point where we're going to get to where there's just simply too

00:40:04.800 much demand on the system in order to be able to deliver it and at that point we will hit a crisis

00:40:09.760 we will be in an actual crisis where we cannot deliver health care to the people who need it

00:40:13.760 so you know for all that rachel notley pretends to be the guardian of the working people she

00:40:20.320 doesn't seem to care at all that a huge number of them could find themselves without an effective

00:40:24.160 health care system if we don't try and change it now and the time to change is before we reach that

00:40:30.000 that crisis point there's lots of things out there having a public system partnered with a

00:40:35.440 private system looking at examples of how they do it in the united kingdom japan western europe

00:40:41.760 uh the biggest fallacy in health care of course is that there's only two ways to deliver it

00:40:46.800 how we do it in canada right now or how they do it in the united states and you know the fear

00:40:52.240 mongering is well we don't want that u.s uh style health care but the fact is that people have you

00:40:57.440 you know, Western rich countries have grappled with this for years and they've come up with

00:41:02.520 different solutions. And I would say if anyone is prepared to bite the bullet on changing it,

00:41:07.940 it would be Danielle Smith. And I hope, I hope she runs with it after if and when she wins the

00:41:12.480 election and actually does implement a fairly aggressive reform agenda when it comes to

00:41:17.380 healthcare. Yeah. Like one of the ones that I remember from the leadership race was healthcare

00:41:22.200 spending accounts. And her argument was quite sound. She said, you know, Alberta health services

00:41:26.440 employees have this flexibility in their health care spending why do alberta residents not have

00:41:32.840 that but that never really made it into the general election platform did it rachel it didn't

00:41:38.360 make it into the general election platform they ucb has been hosting these evening broadcasts to

00:41:43.400 kind of do a campaign rundown they have different ucp candidates on the show every evening i'm sure

00:41:48.120 a lot of our viewers have watched maybe a bit of it here and there i myself have tried to catch it

00:41:51.880 it when I can. She was asked about her plans for health spending account at one point. And Danielle

00:41:56.780 said it was something that she was still open to something that she would revisit after the

00:42:00.120 election. It was surprisingly considered as like pretty controversial when she first talked about

00:42:04.720 it during the United Conservative Party leadership race. You know, for anyone that has insurance,

00:42:08.700 a lot of times you'll have maybe 300 or $400 on your health spending account. It's quite wonderful.

00:42:14.040 You can use it for a lot of different things. You can use it to go to the naturopath or to go

00:42:17.900 for a massage therapist and most benefits have a limit as to how much you can spend per year

00:42:22.800 so once you use of those benefits you could use your health spending account to apply to something

00:42:26.580 like that or usually for like a dentist you know your dentist might cover your insurance might

00:42:30.800 cover 75 percent of your appointment you pay for the rest out of pocket you could use your health

00:42:34.840 spending account to cover that remaining bit to have it fully covered so they're usually quite

00:42:38.480 flexible with what you can do for them very useful you can try different things i don't know why it

00:42:42.420 was considered so controversial it's actually a really great idea i would love to have a health

00:42:46.820 spending account again. So she did say she was still open to it. I think once it's introduced

00:42:51.380 and people understand what it is a little bit better, people will find it very useful. And

00:42:54.980 sure, you know, $300, which was the amount I think she was initially discussing, isn't a lot of

00:43:00.300 money. You're not going to get a lot of appointments out of that, maybe three and a half

00:43:03.340 appointments, maybe four, depending on what you're going to use it for. But it's still just something

00:43:07.760 to try it out. You know, she kind of introduced it as something that the government would try and

00:43:11.660 see people like it, which I suspect they would when they see how flexible it is and all the

00:43:15.700 different things that you can use it for. If you are just tuning in, or if you've been tuning in

00:43:20.840 for a while and have forgotten what we're doing here, it is the night of the first and only

00:43:25.340 leaders debate of the Alberta election. I'm Andrew Lawton, joined by Rachel Emanuel and

00:43:30.900 William McBeth. True North is going to be carrying the debate live when it starts in just over 15

00:43:36.460 minutes time. Now, it might not be starting right at six o'clock mountain time. There might be a bit

00:43:41.800 a delay. Will they, you know, to explain the rules and all that, but we'll be throwing to it as soon

00:43:47.000 as it commences, and we'll have a bit of a post-show analysis. We'll have some highlights, and low

00:43:53.000 lights, and mid lights, and headlights, and all of these other things, but I do want to just say,

00:43:58.380 if you have not yet donated, the first five people to donate more than $150 tonight will get

00:44:04.420 a True North mug hot off the presses. William is modeling it, and if you include a request,

00:44:11.240 the first donor might actually get William included with the mug.

00:44:14.240 We're still working out the shipping arrangements.

00:44:16.820 I think he's local to Alberta,

00:44:18.140 so it might be easier if you're an Alberta donor.

00:44:20.640 Actually, we haven't gotten five yet.

00:44:22.900 I just checked with our website guy.

00:44:24.100 We still have at least a couple left,

00:44:25.620 so you can get in on that by going to donate.tnc.news,

00:44:30.520 donate.tnc.news.

00:44:32.520 And we also have had some super chats,

00:44:35.100 so if you're watching on YouTube,

00:44:36.380 you can chip in a donation in the comments section.

00:44:39.240 And if you have a question, we will even answer it on air.

00:44:43.860 And let me just go to one question that I got.

00:44:46.260 This wasn't a super chat, but I thought it was an interesting question.

00:44:49.520 So interesting that I've now lost it on my screen.

00:44:52.320 So I don't have the name of the person who asked it, Andy.

00:44:55.420 But they were asking, oh, here it is.

00:44:57.000 They were asking Bit Baldy on Twitter has asked about the Alberta party.

00:45:01.800 And I know you were talking, William, about the consolidation of the left in Alberta into the NDP.

00:45:07.880 but this is someone who's saying they are a conservative who is disappointed with the cons

00:45:14.880 and what they're calling Danielle's coup and this person says I miss the Alberta party so

00:45:19.540 so was the Alberta party when it was a thing in so much as it ever was pulling conservative votes

00:45:25.240 because I always saw it as kind of like a big al liberal alternative gosh there there has been no

00:45:31.320 political party in Alberta political history that has been more things to more people than the

00:45:36.840 Alberta party. Now, when it first started, it was actually to the right of where Wild Rose was.

00:45:44.140 It was organized by a lot of old school reform party people, and they wanted it to be this

00:45:51.460 really quite a right wing populist party. But of course, eventually what happened, there was an AGM

00:45:59.640 and suddenly it was taken over by a bunch of people who wanted the name, that Alberta party

00:46:06.040 party name, and it became a centrist party. It became a party that actually was home to disaffected

00:46:13.740 ex-PC Alberta people who didn't like going with Jason Kenney and the new United Conservative Party.

00:46:21.340 So it ended up there. And then it sort of languished. They had a leader who did quite

00:46:28.360 well for them. He was based out of Calgary. He was an entrepreneur, worked in the tech sector.

00:46:32.780 and then one afternoon they just decided to get rid of him.

00:46:36.000 They got rid of him.

00:46:38.140 They replaced him with former Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel

00:46:42.320 and the party went from having a couple seats in the legislature

00:46:45.260 to losing all of their seats in the next election.

00:46:48.520 And since then I think they've just really struggled to figure out who it is and what they are.

00:46:53.320 So don't know what they stand for.

00:46:56.360 They have a great name.

00:46:57.520 Who wouldn't want to vote for the Alberta party?

00:46:59.100 You know, right next door, there's a Saskatchewan party that is very popular, but they seem to really have had identity crises.

00:47:06.160 Couldn't figure out who they are, what they stand for.

00:47:08.360 And if you ask me now, I couldn't tell you what they believe in.

00:47:11.020 Yeah, I couldn't even tell you the leader.

00:47:12.800 I remember one of my old radio colleagues in Alberta stepped down and ended up running for the Alberta party, Angela Cocot.

00:47:20.000 And at the time, I was like, well, now I'm even more confused about what you believe, because I couldn't quite figure out what the Alberta party believed at that particular moment.

00:47:27.480 But I think there's an interesting dynamic in Alberta politics, and I've often looked at Alberta through the COVID era, and I know that we've moved beyond that largely.

00:47:39.120 But one of the interesting things is that when Alberta, under Jason Kenney, went down the road of COVID restrictions, lockdowns, vaccine passports, there was a really significant wave of concern, I think, in the conservative libertarian movement in Canada.

00:47:57.120 that if Alberta can't be the holdout, there's really no hope.

00:48:01.340 And Danielle Smith was a correction.

00:48:03.140 I mean, some people who don't like her might say an overcorrection to that.

00:48:07.400 And I know that the NDP's narrative has been to try to paint her as crazy Danielle

00:48:11.540 who believes these crazy things.

00:48:13.080 But to be honest, I don't know if that lands with people.

00:48:16.720 I think there are a lot of people when they see her and talk to her

00:48:19.620 that seemed, even if they don't like what she argues with,

00:48:22.960 don't actually see the evil caricature.

00:48:25.420 And I'm wondering, Rachel, you've seen Danielle Smith in action on the campaign trail.

00:48:30.720 What's been the reception she gets when you move beyond the attack ads and the headlines?

00:48:36.760 I have to say that I think the Alberta NDP's bid to paint Danielle Smith as someone you can't trust,

00:48:42.580 to be unsure about, has been pretty effective, especially with those moderates and swing ridings.

00:48:48.200 I think people are really deciding how they feel about her.

00:48:50.260 I think that is really going to be the ballot box question.

00:48:52.340 however when it comes to what we were talking about a little bit of the digging up old comments

00:48:57.280 from candidates and trying to just throw everything out there that you can and see what sticks

00:49:01.240 i don't think that has been super effective i think the ndp has spent far too much time on

00:49:06.580 negative campaigning and just sort of these attack ads not really focused on their own plans on

00:49:11.640 their vision that they're going to put forward for alberta so i would say that some of that hasn't

00:49:16.180 really landed and i think we've seen the ucp has been able to still get their message out about

00:49:20.040 jobs and the economy about health care and especially about public safety so i do think

00:49:25.040 that is something danielle smith is going to have to face going to the election people still think

00:49:28.320 of her back in the wild rose days as being fairly crazy they really were unhappy about the floor

00:49:32.960 crossing most albertans have forgiven her for that but it's still something kind of there in

00:49:36.860 the back of your mind so i think that campaigning on the part of the ndp has been fairly effective

00:49:41.400 i just don't know if it's enough to outweigh what really should be a positive vision they have for

00:49:46.680 province that's how people should campaign is showing a vision for how they're going to make

00:49:50.440 things better and what the province would look like under their government so we are just about

00:49:55.720 10 minutes away from the scheduled start time of the debate let's turn a little bit to uh debate

00:50:01.160 predictions debate strategy uh well first off do we know much about this specific format

00:50:08.360 uh well i i no i don't think we do we we do know of course there'll be a leader-to-leader matchup

00:50:14.840 and therefore you won't have what you have in a lot of other elections which is going to leaders

00:50:19.240 who who either will elect very few or no people in an election i'm assuming that means almost

00:50:25.880 every question will be answered by both leaders and possibly with an opportunity to respond

00:50:31.480 there are some things i do think though that you can look for which is which leader is doing the

00:50:35.720 better job of connecting with people through the medium of television and there's a few tactics

00:50:42.440 to this? Are they looking right into the camera? When they answer their question, are they looking

00:50:46.340 into the camera and making sure they're talking to people? Are they distracted by their opponent

00:50:50.780 and addressing their comments to them? And I think the winner is whoever comes across

00:50:57.280 as the most reasonable, calm, measured, sensible, ready to govern person. I think if anybody

00:51:07.360 flies off the handle, they're the ones who are going to lose. And my money is that Rachel

00:51:12.980 Notley is more likely to become upset and animated over the course of the debate than Danielle Smith.

00:51:19.360 Do you, well, I'll put this to either view. I mean, do either of you anticipate either one

00:51:25.240 really going for the jugular and going to engage with the opponent? Or do you think they're going

00:51:31.640 to mostly talk to the audience and talk to the moderators instead of talking to the other?

00:51:37.360 Yeah, that's a really good question, Andrew. I'm not super sure what to anticipate there. I don't really see Danielle Smith going for the jugular. She's just not really that type of person. And I think during the leadership race, we saw that even when people made very personal attacks against her, as did happen with a couple of candidates, interestingly, some of who were cabinet ministers in her government, she kept it pretty professional. She kept it pretty straight down the line and she was really able to maintain her calm.

00:52:00.400 You know, while Rachel Nolley and Danielle Smith have both been public figures for such a long time,

00:52:05.140 Danielle Smith had years of practice on the radio.

00:52:07.160 That is really good, concrete experience to be going into politics with, to be facing crowds.

00:52:11.980 She did it for years.

00:52:12.820 She talked to all sorts of different people, was able to continue all sorts of discussions and debates with people

00:52:17.920 and keep the conversations flowing in a way that was effective for the viewers and the listeners.

00:52:22.260 So she has a lot of really good experience under her belt working in that medium.

00:52:26.940 Rachel Nolley obviously has a lot of experience as a politician.

00:52:29.440 I saw her recently at a rally. She was able to excite the crowd and, you know, draw on a good

00:52:34.200 energy and really excite people. But, you know, she also really likes to lie about Danielle Smith

00:52:39.220 and throw attacks against her. So I think it'll be hard for her to all of a sudden pull back from

00:52:43.340 that method, especially when so much of the Alberta NDP's campaigning has been about these

00:52:48.560 slurs against Danielle Smith and about manipulating the UCP's campaign messaging into something that

00:52:55.320 it was never really meant to be and honestly just lying about it. So I don't really see how

00:52:59.920 Rachel Notley could avoid going for the jugular when the whole NDP campaign has kind of been about

00:53:05.180 going for Danielle Smith's jugular. Go ahead, William. Sorry. I would say too that I think

00:53:13.680 it's going to be interesting because Danielle Smith does have a couple weaknesses. One of her

00:53:17.840 weaknesses that I have noticed is she has a very big focus on wanting to answer the question she's

00:53:25.240 specifically being asked. You can tell you're a former political staffer if you think that's a

00:53:30.280 weakness. Well, this is true. It's my old life shining through into, because I'm sure journalists

00:53:35.620 of course would prefer their elected officials to answer the specific question that is being put to

00:53:40.620 them. But one of the keys for success is moving off the specific question you're being asked and

00:53:46.140 talking about the issues you want to talk about during a campaign. And I think for Danielle

00:53:50.280 Smith, it's about the New Democrat economic record, tying Rachel Notley to the federal

00:53:56.040 Singh-Trudeau coalition on the left, and basically saying we are going to stall Alberta's economic

00:54:03.340 growth and recovery if we give these people another term in office. But if she's pushed

00:54:07.980 into the weeds by the journalists asking her the questions or always responding to Rachel

00:54:13.220 Notley, she might end up not being able to do that over the course of the night. And

00:54:17.440 if they're successful in keeping her from talking about her message, then I think that's how Rachel

00:54:22.560 Notley will come out ahead in the debate. I may have miscalculated when I said that we would read

00:54:28.260 questions that people share in super chats on YouTube, because the first is someone who wants

00:54:33.560 Rachel to marry him. So take from that what you will. But thank you for your contribution, JR.

00:54:38.720 He's taken. She's taken. The first guy that you missed, this guy who got her asked a question

00:54:44.880 earlier tonight in the super chat um uh then we have a question from jim ross here uh who says

00:54:50.300 rachel notley is sort of like justin trudeau she's basically just uh grant's daughter who has

00:54:55.280 a legacy name dad never challenged any government and if it hadn't been for the pc self-destructing

00:55:00.760 the ndp uh wouldn't have been elected uh obviously as our alberta political historian i'm going to

00:55:06.900 go to you on on this william but i think i would say i mean sure does has she just been trading

00:55:12.100 off of the family. And I would say beyond that, has Rachel Notley actually carved out a pretty

00:55:17.860 positive name for herself in Alberta politics? I would say she's absolutely built a bigger base

00:55:24.500 of support than her party has ever enjoyed in Alberta before. I mean, if you look back in the

00:55:31.300 2012 election, for example, the NDP were nowhere. They would elect the same four or five seats in

00:55:39.480 Edmonton in an election, and that was it. So the fact that they've gone from that to being a

00:55:44.260 serious contender is probably a credit to the work Rachel Notley has done, ditching some of

00:55:51.280 the more extreme or un-Albertan elements of her party's platform, taking a much softer approach

00:55:58.860 on oil and gas, for example, being much more pro-business. But all of that being said, I do

00:56:05.360 think especially in calgary which is where this election will be won and lost there is a real

00:56:10.960 concern that the four years that had rachel notley as premier were terrible years for calgary there

00:56:17.520 were there were high job losses there were a lot of people out of work it was tough times and not

00:56:23.840 all of that was rachel notley's fault of course you know energy prices were very low alberta at

00:56:29.520 you know in the first part of 2015 was tipping into really tough economic times but certainly

00:56:35.440 i would say rachel notley's policies did not help uh during that time she she did do several things

00:56:41.360 that made people concerned to invest here now the question is are calgarians going to overlook that

00:56:46.720 are calgarians going to forgive her or say oh she was just a victim of circumstance are they going

00:56:51.680 to say no the last time we had a dp premier it was bad in this city we're not going back down

00:56:56.640 that road, even if I don't love Danielle Smith, even if I don't think she aligns with me on every

00:57:02.140 one of my issues or values, do I believe that a Danielle Smith conservative government will be

00:57:06.760 better for me and my family than a Notley government? Yeah, and I think that this is where

00:57:13.180 the contrast that I hope comes out tonight really resonates with people. Because oftentimes, I mean,

00:57:19.200 when you look at federal debates, for example, that have the Bloc Québécois, which is literally

00:57:23.620 only winning in one province and the liberals and the conservatives and the NDPs, which are

00:57:29.020 politically relevant, but, but only in a marginal third party sense. And then you get the green

00:57:34.440 party. And in 2019, you had the PPC, which didn't win a seat. Like it's, everyone is scrambling to

00:57:40.080 just get screen time and to be known. And you get these like weird pairings where, you know,

00:57:45.240 Elizabeth May is, you know, getting to go one-on-one with Justin Trudeau when, you know,

00:57:50.200 whatever you think of either, they're really not equivalent and relevant. So the idea of two people

00:57:55.060 that are of equal stature in politics, both of them have a conceivable shot at victory here,

00:58:01.380 there is really no excuse to not challenge each other on the records and on the policies and to

00:58:08.420 really force, if the format allows, some accountability for positions and records.

00:58:14.440 Yeah, and I mean, I'd be interested to know Rachel's thoughts on this too, but I would say

00:58:18.800 in the case of Danielle Smith, she really has to try and put forward the most optimistic

00:58:25.420 vision of Alberta she can. I think if it becomes all gloom and doom, that's worse for Danielle than

00:58:33.860 it is for Rachel. And I think because, you know, Danielle's in government and Rachel's in

00:58:38.100 opposition. Opposition always has to paint a more dire gloom and doom scenario than government.

00:58:44.480 And, you know, I once told Danielle that if there was a premier I thought she should emulate in temperament and in behaviour, I said Christy Clark, who, while what you would think of her policies notwithstanding, she was a formidable campaigner.

00:59:00.420 She bounded off her campaign bus, smiling, waving, shaking hands, looking like this was the happiest she's ever been in her whole life that day.

00:59:09.260 So I would say, look, you know, you want to see a happy, happy warrior, Danielle, who's excited about the future of Alberta.

00:59:17.960 And I think if she does that, it's going to paint a great contrast to Rachel Notley, who's going to try and say everything's terrible, when the reality on the ground is everything isn't terrible.

00:59:26.460 Alberta is doing quite well right now.

00:59:28.380 Ontarians, my good, you know, people like you, Andrew, are moving here in unprecedented numbers for our cheap housing and job opportunities.

00:59:35.860 So anybody who thinks that times are bad in Alberta hasn't walked out their front door lately.

00:59:40.980 I will say last time, so people in Ontario have seen by now the advertisements for Alberta is Calling,

00:59:48.200 where they are basically running ads on the Toronto subways and radio stations in London, Ontario, and Hamilton,

00:59:54.420 trying to get people to move to Alberta.

00:59:56.200 And the last time I saw Danielle Smith was actually at a fundraising dinner in Toronto,

01:00:01.220 and she gave me the Alberta is Calling pitch personally.

01:00:04.460 And I was with my wife, and I said, she's the one you've got to convince.

01:00:08.300 But it's actually been quite brilliant.

01:00:10.460 And Alberta is seeing a resurgence that really looked like it was lost for many years.

01:00:15.920 Like, I remember when we produced our documentary years ago with Calgary in crisis, and we looked

01:00:22.160 at the drug and homelessness issue, downtown vacancy, and it hasn't entirely rebounded

01:00:28.160 to the glory days.

01:00:29.040 But Rachel, there is, you know, basically my sense there is that it's all upside for

01:00:33.600 people.

01:00:34.460 A close to all upside. I'm going to have to push back on you just a little bit, William,

01:00:38.800 as someone who just finally found a place in Calgary. The Alberta is Calling campaign is

01:00:43.780 working far too effectively. Please stop moving here. There's no housing for you. Those of us

01:00:48.940 who do live here can't find affordable housing. Sorry, we're going to have to cut you off there,

01:00:51.540 Rachel, not because we're fact-checking you, but because the leaders debate is commencing.

01:00:55.640 We can go to it live right now.

01:01:00.380 And Judy Eldis from CBC Alberta.

01:01:03.300 Now, we have three main topics to cover tonight, affordability, health care and the economy, which, according to our polling, are the top issues for Albertans.

01:01:11.980 We also have a fourth wildcard round. In addition, both CTV and Global News have been solicited questions from you, the voters.

01:01:18.820 We've gotten hundreds of submissions and pared them down to two. Aaron and I will put those questions to the leaders.

01:01:25.880 And there are some rules tonight, and here they are. Both parties have agreed to all of these rules for tonight's debate.

01:01:32.140 Each leader will have one minute to make their opening remarks.

01:01:36.100 Over the course of the hour, 10 questions are expected.

01:01:39.600 Each will be directed at a specific leader who then has 45 seconds to respond.

01:01:45.220 The other leader will have time for a rebuttal followed by free debate.

01:01:49.680 And there will be an all-important countdown clock that the leaders can see here in studio

01:01:53.840 with 30 seconds left in their answer so they know when it is time to wrap up.

01:01:58.140 And as we near the end of the debate, each leader will have time to make their closing remarks to Albertans.

01:02:04.520 Well, the speaking order tonight was determined by a random draw and a reminder to Ms. Smith and Ms.

01:02:10.160 not to talk over one another.

01:02:12.100 We want to ensure that the discussion can be heard clearly for our audience at home.

01:02:17.580 And we're not going to hesitate to step in to ensure that that is the case.

01:02:21.280 All right. It is time to get started.

01:02:22.820 First up tonight, Danielle Smith from the UCP with her opening remarks.

01:02:26.220 Ms. Smith, you have one minute.

01:02:28.140 Good evening. Elections are about making important choices for you and your family.

01:02:33.440 This election, Albertans have a choice between a UCP government that has lowered taxes,

01:02:38.440 balanced the budget, and returned Alberta to its place as the economic powerhouse of Canada.

01:02:44.400 Or we can choose to go backward with the same failed NDP policies that hiked taxes,

01:02:49.840 drove out jobs and investment, and almost bankrupted our province.

01:02:54.400 We can't afford to go back. We need to go forward.

01:02:57.600 If elected, the UCP will continue to make life more affordable

01:03:01.100 by cutting your personal income taxes and extending the fuel tax holiday.

01:03:05.320 We'll crack down on criminals with more officers on the ground

01:03:09.640 and ankle bracelet monitoring of violent offenders out on bail.

01:03:13.640 And we will continue to invest in health care and mental health addiction treatment

01:03:17.560 while ensuring no Albertan ever has to pay out of pocket to see a family doctor.

01:03:23.700 Alberta's opportunities are endless, and I know our best days are still ahead.

01:03:28.500 Thank you, and I look forward to the debate.

01:03:30.480 Ms. Smith, thank you so much.

01:03:31.740 The floor is now yours, Ms. Notley, for your opening remarks.

01:03:35.820 To begin, I want to thank our firefighters and say that my thoughts are with those Albertans who are out of their homes right now.

01:03:42.660 Tonight, I want to talk about a better future for Alberta, where we fix health care, lower household costs, and create jobs.

01:03:50.560 This election is about trust and it's about leadership.

01:03:55.140 You know you can't trust Danielle Smith, so my offer to you is this.

01:04:00.060 I will work every day to be the premier you deserve, creating jobs and diversifying for the future.

01:04:07.980 I won't raise your taxes. I will cap your bills.

01:04:13.500 I won't fund a war room. I will fund an emergency room.

01:04:19.100 and I won't ever make you pay to see a doctor.

01:04:22.820 I'll protect our health care, protect our mountains,

01:04:25.540 and protect your pension.

01:04:27.920 And having learned today that Danielle Smith broke the law,

01:04:30.540 I will also protect our law and I will never break it.

01:04:33.800 When I say something, I mean it.

01:04:35.420 And that's the difference between Danielle and me.

01:04:38.340 Ms. Nutley, thank you for your opening remarks.

01:04:41.260 Well, affordability, rising interest rates,

01:04:43.000 and inflation have been top of mind.

01:04:44.700 Big issue for a lot of Alberta families

01:04:46.380 struggling to make ends meet.

01:04:47.900 The first series of questions tonight are based on that issue.

01:04:51.520 And question number one goes to Lisa Johnson from Post Media.

01:04:55.100 Thank you.

01:04:56.040 This first question is for UCP leader Danielle Smith.

01:04:59.860 We've been dealing with an affordability crisis for over a year.

01:05:02.920 We have seen temporary measures put in place, including rebates and affordability payments,

01:05:07.800 which are only applied to some Albertans.

01:05:11.000 What will you do to support all Albertans with the rising cost of living as inflation continues to have a real impact?

01:05:17.680 One of the first things that we knew we needed to do

01:05:20.340 was address the inflation crisis created, let's be fair,

01:05:23.540 by the Liberal NDP coalition in Ottawa,

01:05:25.660 spending too much money, driving up the cost of everything.

01:05:28.500 And there's only so much we can do here.

01:05:30.180 So we gave $600 affordability payments.

01:05:32.440 We gave a rebate on fuel taxes to offset the federal carbon tax.

01:05:36.800 And we also made sure that we were going to put on electricity rebates

01:05:42.500 so that people paid less on their power bills.

01:05:44.340 What we have to do going forward is more than that.

01:05:46.040 We know we're going to continue to see an increase in the federal carbon tax.

01:05:49.880 That's why we're going to offer an 8% personal income tax rate.

01:05:53.440 It brings us pretty much in alignment with Ontario and British Columbia.

01:05:57.060 It'll give $1,500 per family, and we'll also extend that fuel tax rebate until the end of the year.

01:06:03.240 Okay, Ms. Smith, thank you.

01:06:04.220 The same question to you, Ms. Notley.

01:06:05.920 Well, thank you.

01:06:07.040 You know, under the UCP, the fact is that most Albertans' utility bills look more like a mortgage payment.

01:06:13.680 and your insurance costs for your car well that looks more like what you save

01:06:17.680 up for your whole summer vacation now those costs were under the control under

01:06:22.560 control when we were in government because we had put caps in place to

01:06:26.060 protect Alberta families unfortunately the UCP chose to remove

01:06:30.240 them and now costs are spiraling so we're going to help we're going to put a

01:06:34.100 cap back on car insurance not a pretend one like Danielle Smith did a couple

01:06:38.440 months ago but a real one and we're going to help families produce their

01:06:42.200 utilities and most importantly we will never ever ever make them pay to see a family doctor

01:06:48.320 all right Ms. Notley thank you we're going to open it up to the first free debate on this issue

01:06:52.820 tonight starting with Ms. Smith and a UCB government will never ever make you pay for a family doctor

01:06:57.640 either what we also won't do is cause an increase in your power bills Ms. Notley is not taking

01:07:03.440 responsibility for the fact that she created the power bill crisis at the time Alberta party leader

01:07:08.620 said it was the biggest mistake of the NDP government because of their ideological changes.

01:07:13.440 By phasing out coal early, they added $2 billion to the cost of your power bill.

01:07:17.600 And as a result, we're seeing the consequences of that today.

01:07:20.200 And she's not stopped.

01:07:21.120 She wants to achieve the 2035 net zero target put forward by Justin Trudeau.

01:07:27.360 That'll cost $52 billion and increase your power bill another 40%.

01:07:31.200 We can't afford to do that.

01:07:33.200 Well, you know, here's the thing.

01:07:34.540 We actually put a cap in place.

01:07:36.740 And we did that so that people's utilities and their electricity wouldn't get out of control.

01:07:41.240 And it got out of control when the UCP removed the cap.

01:07:44.760 But let's talk about something else, though.

01:07:46.300 Let's talk about health care costs as they impact affordability.

01:07:49.940 You claim that you won't raise costs.

01:07:52.540 But, Danielle, you know, I've known you for at least a decade, perhaps more,

01:07:57.100 and I've watched your career, and you have argued passionately in multiple, multiple settings

01:08:02.160 for your belief that you care about passionately, those were your words,

01:08:06.000 making people pay more for their health care so my question to you is why are you not running on

01:08:12.720 the thing that you believe why are you not being honest with Albertans why aren't you making the

01:08:18.620 argument that you think having them pay more is what you want because you've said it in video

01:08:23.800 in papers in speaking tours in the legislature for over a decade. Ms. Smith we're going to let

01:08:29.860 you jump in here. I know Ms. Notley likes to show grainy videos of things I said while I was on

01:08:34.340 radio and the reason she does that is she doesn't want to run on her record and the reason she

01:08:38.700 doesn't want to run on her record is it was an absolute disaster she racked up 70 billion dollars

01:08:43.640 in debt more debt than any premier all actually all premiers combined in alberta's provincial

01:08:48.600 history she talked about deception did you remember running on a carbon tax in the last

01:08:53.320 election i sure didn't and that increased the cross the cost of everything we eliminated it

01:08:57.100 but justin trudeau wouldn't let us keep it off and now ms notley has not stood up to her boss

01:09:02.740 dougmeet singh in ottawa and worked with us to say don't increase that that carbon tax any further

01:09:08.960 and in fact certainly don't increase it 300 no one has any credibility talking about affordability

01:09:14.080 as long as they support a carbon tax which is going to increase the cost of everything

01:09:17.520 miss smith i'm sorry you talk about grainy videos but actually we had high definition 18 months ago

01:09:23.140 when those videos of you arguing for people to pay for their health care came out and you know

01:09:27.820 what? We had high definition when you said you wanted to sell our hospitals across Calgary. And

01:09:32.900 you know what? We had high definition a week ago when your deputy premier said that he thought

01:09:37.720 people should pay to use the emergency room. We're going to have to leave this right here. We've got

01:09:42.020 a lot to get to tonight. We've got to move on. And our next question comes from Courtney Terrio

01:09:45.940 from City News. Thank you. This question is for NDP leader Rachel Notley. Now, no matter the

01:09:52.440 provider or contract situation, utility costs remain high here in Alberta. Now, I know you

01:09:57.500 both touched on previous policies but my question is what can government do to bring down the actual

01:10:02.680 cost of utilities going forward? Well that's a very good question and what we absolutely have to do

01:10:11.040 is find a way to reduce those costs. A lot of Albertans aren't aware that in the pre-election

01:10:16.760 period the UCP put a cap on what folks are paying for their electricity just for the last four

01:10:23.020 months what they don't know is that in fact come june they're going to have to pay that back and

01:10:28.640 that's going to cost about half of alberta families about 200 million dollars so the first thing that

01:10:34.900 we will do is we will actually have those families backs and we won't force them to pay back the

01:10:41.140 of danielle smith's pre-election attempt at distracting people from what ucp policy has done

01:10:48.000 to their utilities. But then going forward, we have to find a way to keep those costs lower.

01:10:52.780 All right, Ms. Notley, that's your 45 seconds. A rebuttal to you, Ms. Smith. 45 seconds.

01:10:57.040 Well, the first thing is that we have to build a power grid based on it being reliable and

01:11:02.020 affordable as opposed to based on ideology. We have a federal government that is propped up by

01:11:07.560 the NDP that has put on more natural gas. Our power grid here is almost 90% natural gas,

01:11:14.900 and yet we have a federal government that wants us to be able to be completely abated on natural

01:11:20.000 gas by 2035. That is the commitment that Ms. Notley has signed on to. She wants to achieve

01:11:24.440 that. That's going to cost $52 billion and increase our power bills 40%. The other thing

01:11:29.380 that's going to happen is they also want us to phase off completely in their new green building

01:11:33.440 strategy, phase completely off natural gas, which one of the presidents of our large companies has

01:11:39.340 said would cost another $75 billion. That is not the way to get affordable energy for Albertans.

01:11:44.120 Okay, Ms. Notley, you now have the floor for your rebuttal.

01:11:47.220 Well, thank you very much.

01:11:48.320 Well, let me just say, first of all, that the numbers that Ms. Smith are throwing around are numbers that have been fully discredited.

01:11:54.620 And they've actually been discredited by the people that the UCP hired to come up with the numbers.

01:12:00.920 Almost the day after they came up with those numbers, the firm came out and said, nope, those weren't right.

01:12:05.720 And in fact, the other report that they were relying on were also deeply flawed.

01:12:11.320 What we know is that there is roughly $16 trillion of international investment floating around out there looking to invest in renewable energy.

01:12:21.020 And if we are going to be forward-looking, if we are going to create jobs, if we are going to position our economy for the future, we need to go out there and get that investment.

01:12:31.020 We can't look backwards.

01:12:32.620 We have to plan forwards.

01:12:34.720 That's who Albertans are.

01:12:36.280 Now, when we did the phase-out of coal, and we increased renewable energy in Alberta so successfully when we were in government,

01:12:45.620 we controlled utility costs for the sole purpose of making sure consumers didn't pay the cost.

01:12:51.340 And that's exactly what we would do again.

01:12:53.520 All right, Ms. Smith, shaking your head during much of that, you have the floor.

01:12:56.980 Well, I know Ms. Notley says she believes in science and she believes in experts,

01:13:00.280 but somehow the experts at the Alberta's electric system operators, she wants to discredit.

01:13:03.980 But you notice that she didn't disavow the 2035 target for net zero, even though the Saskatchewan NDP did.

01:13:11.040 Saskatchewan NDP voted with Premier Scott Moe, saying it is unachievable.

01:13:14.660 If we want to have a realistic plan, a practical plan, we have to fight back against Ottawa.

01:13:19.480 This candidate will not.

01:13:21.620 We have to fight back against Ottawa and make sure that we put a target that's reasonable, realistic and achievable.

01:13:26.400 And that's carbon neutrality by 2050.

01:13:28.400 That's the policy of our party, and that is the way that we're going to make sure

01:13:31.720 that we maintain reliability, affordability, and that we actually achieve our targets.

01:13:36.040 We'll get you back in here, Ms. Notley.

01:13:37.140 Well, you know, Ms. Smith, I know you're keen on fighting.

01:13:39.880 You want to fight with Ottawa.

01:13:41.400 You want to fight with the media.

01:13:43.220 You want to fight, frankly, with your former self.

01:13:46.320 It's actually quite exhausting.

01:13:48.560 Here's what I need Albertans to know.

01:13:50.600 I will always stand up for Alberta.

01:13:53.160 I will always stand up for the interests of Albertans.

01:13:56.360 I did that when I was premier I made sure we got a pipeline to Tidewater the first one in 50 years

01:14:02.900 I did that standing up against the BC government I did it standing up with a with a federal

01:14:08.620 government and that's my record and that will also be my blueprint so uh Ms Smith's um uh you

01:14:16.160 know I just I just have to say I disagree with so much of what you had to say there one last word

01:14:20.520 to Smith on this topic well Ms Notley didn't stand up when Justin Trudeau cancelled Northern

01:14:24.620 gateway she didn't stand up when energy east pulled the plug she didn't stand up when they

01:14:28.520 brought in a tanker van off the west coast for our product and she didn't stand up when the no more

01:14:33.420 pipelines bill was passed she will not send up in fact in fact you know we know that's not true

01:14:38.120 you commented on the fact that the admissions to the senate you know that that's what i did on both

01:14:43.400 of those issues it was too late and i must tell you where do you think justin trudeau got the

01:14:47.340 idea for just transition and for an emissions cap and for a carbon tax he got it from miss

01:14:52.100 not late when she was premier and she's going to continue to implement these same kind of policies

01:14:55.880 and she's going to walk in lockstep with Justin Trudeau on making sure that they get implemented

01:15:00.260 and that's only going to harm our economy. All right that is all the time we have for this topic

01:15:04.320 in fact for this portion of the debates. And when we come back we'll be talking more about

01:15:09.160 health care and the economy. Please stay with us.

01:15:22.100 you Charles R, The Making of a Monarch. An intimate look at the life of Charles over his years as the

01:15:29.580 heir to the throne. Through narration by Charles himself, we learn about his childhood, military

01:15:36.120 service, public life, and family life. Shitting light on the real personality of the man behind

01:15:44.060 the crown. Charles R, The Making of a Monarch. See it on CPAC.

01:15:52.100 A long way from Nashville and Mama, I tell you that.

01:15:55.540 Perform from Montreal to Boston to Los Angeles.

01:15:59.440 But Toronto, that's my chosen home.

01:16:01.840 So when I'm walking down Yonge Street, I see some funny people.

01:16:05.580 But the nerds want to find a grin and smile and whisper.

01:16:10.180 Thank you very much for that.

01:16:11.940 Sorry, we looked at the format and weren't aware they were going to be throwing to commercial break in this.

01:16:18.000 We will return to this once the debate resumes.

01:16:21.320 But let's just check in and get some early reaction there.

01:16:24.680 We get a sense of, I think, what we're probably going to see more of over the rest of the evening.

01:16:30.060 William, any surprises?

01:16:32.560 No, no surprises, except that I think earlier I said whoever becomes the most agitated,

01:16:38.760 whoever really loses their cool is going to lose.

01:16:41.540 And so far, Rachel Notley coming across far more agitated than Danielle Smith.

01:16:46.700 I think if you look at that last segment in particular, she almost got choked up on her unhappiness about the facts that Danielle was putting forward.

01:16:55.040 To her credit, I think Danielle's debate performance so far has been very solid.

01:16:59.560 And I think in particular, something she hasn't done, but I think she should have, and I'm glad she's now doing if you are on the conservative side, is linking Rachel Notley to Justin Trudeau and making that connection clear.

01:17:13.940 She did it during the leadership race.

01:17:15.420 She's avoided it in the first part of the campaign.

01:17:20.520 But this debate, she's decided to really make that linkage very clear.

01:17:24.140 So first few minutes of this debate, I think so far, advantage, Danielle Smith.

01:17:28.640 All right.

01:17:29.280 Well, let's get back to it right now in Edmonton.

01:17:45.420 .

01:18:16.220 When I first got elected, I was being told that the AHS system was on the brink of collapse.

01:18:22.880 You had unions saying that we needed to go back to mandates and start masking kids in school.

01:18:28.020 And I said, absolutely not. We are not going back to that.

01:18:31.000 If the problem is AHS, then let's fix AHS.

01:18:34.300 So we talked to doctors and nurses and paramedics on the front line.

01:18:37.140 We listened to them and we implemented their ideas.

01:18:39.680 And guess what? It's working.

01:18:41.580 Hospital wait times are down. EMS response times are down.

01:18:44.740 We have effectively ended red alerts for EMS in both of our major cities.

01:18:49.680 Ambulances in rural are staying in rural, and we're reducing surgical wait times.

01:18:53.720 We're going to be able to keep this going.

01:18:55.800 And if we continue at this rate, we will have completely eliminated our surgical backlog by this time next year

01:19:00.780 and be the first province in the country to do so.

01:19:02.840 And your rebuttal now, Ms. Notley?

01:19:04.640 Well, I will say Albertans have had enough of driving hundreds of kilometres to get the emergency care,

01:19:10.380 obstetric care, cardiac care, any kind of care that they need.

01:19:13.060 They're tired of looking for doctors.

01:19:15.060 They're tired of 15-hour waits in the emergencies rooms.

01:19:17.860 And they're particularly tired of having the UCP tell them,

01:19:21.340 oh, the problem's fixed.

01:19:22.540 There is no problem.

01:19:23.740 There is a problem.

01:19:25.120 We've put forward a reasonable, practical solution.

01:19:28.180 The answer is to get more Albertans access to a family doctor.

01:19:32.560 By doing that with our costed plan,

01:19:34.940 we can take the pressure off of our emergency rooms,

01:19:38.140 off of our surgical wait times, off of our ambulances.

01:19:40.880 And we can also make sure that nobody ever, ever, ever has to pay to see a family doctor.

01:19:48.040 All right. Thank you very much, Ms. Notley.

01:19:49.700 Once again, let's dive back into the free debate portion where you're free to challenge each other's policies, beginning with Ms. Smith.

01:19:55.760 You know, I heard of all of the things that Ms. Notley mentioned when I was in politics last time in 2012, and she had four years to fix it, and she didn't.

01:20:03.080 She didn't listen to the front line.

01:20:04.640 All she did was continue to build the bureaucracy, and she didn't get to local decision making.

01:20:08.860 She didn't get to local control.

01:20:10.320 we did we heard from paramedics what they wanted us to do and it was very it was actually very

01:20:14.860 straightforward we had to make sure that they had the ability to drop patients off when they arrived

01:20:19.940 on the site so that they can get back out and be there for you when you needed them and that was a

01:20:24.740 very straightforward idea that came from the front lines and Ms. Notley had an opportunity to fix

01:20:30.060 health care she didn't we're beginning on this pathway we're making great progress and we need

01:20:34.900 to have another mandate to continue it Ms. Notley will get you in on this yes no well quite honestly

01:20:39.400 as I said before Albertans are so frustrated when they're told that there isn't a problem and

01:20:43.300 everything has been fixed the reality is is things have gotten considerably worse over the last four

01:20:48.240 years the UCP cut funding dramatically they ripped up the deal with the doctors they told

01:20:54.360 nurses that they that they needed to be laid off they threatened to lay off 10,000 frontline

01:20:59.940 health care workers and then and then COVID hit so and then and the result unfortunately is is

01:21:07.200 we've got whole cities without access to family doctors we've got just just last

01:21:12.420 week we had 15 hour waits in emergency rooms all across Calgary and we've

01:21:19.180 recently just this year half as many doctors are accepting new patients so

01:21:25.020 there is a problem it's very real and selling our hospitals and forcing people

01:21:29.460 to pay for private care is not the solution look we signed a deal with the

01:21:35.820 Alberta Medical Association our health minister negotiated that we're going to

01:21:39.780 have 25% of our doctors on an alternative payment system within the

01:21:43.740 next five years and that allows for team practice it allows for nurse

01:21:46.920 practitioners and LPNs psychologists and other health practitioners to work

01:21:51.360 together in a team practice so that more access will be given on primary care

01:21:55.800 we put two billion dollars towards this and we're making great progress we have

01:21:59.640 more health professionals today than we did when Miss Notley left office 8500

01:22:03.900 more, in fact, including 700 more doctors. And in April, our plan to recognize credentials is

01:22:09.480 working. We had 1,400 nurses who are now licensed and able to practice in Alberta more than any time

01:22:15.640 in the previous three years. The system is working. We've got much more work to do. We know that,

01:22:20.160 but we've got to continue on the work that we have because I've got the courage. I've got the

01:22:23.820 courage to talk to the front line, and I've got the courage to be able to implement some of the

01:22:27.400 suggestions that they make. Ms. Notley has demonstrated. We're just going to leave it

01:22:30.640 that question because we have another one on health right now. You bet. Our next question is

01:22:34.080 from Lisa Johnson from Post Media. There is already a lot of private delivery in our public

01:22:39.360 health care system which has existed under the NDP and UCP governments. What criteria would you

01:22:45.560 apply to determine when expanded private delivery is appropriate? And we'll go to Ms. Notley first

01:22:51.420 please. Well honestly I mean at this point what we would always look at is to get the best care

01:22:57.200 for the greatest number of people in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

01:23:02.620 Now, as you may know, there was a study that came out today,

01:23:05.320 just today, on the success of the Alberta government's surgical care initiative.

01:23:10.780 And what they concluded was that the number of surgeries went down

01:23:15.040 and the cost went up.

01:23:16.760 Now, that's not entirely surprising because most often,

01:23:19.640 when you engage in experimentation with privatization, that's what happens.

01:23:23.440 It's the same thing that's going on with the lab situation in Calgary right now.

01:23:28.200 With the UCP's intention to increase private lab services,

01:23:32.280 we now see Calgarians waiting up to a month to get a simple blood test.

01:23:36.380 It doesn't work. We need to focus on public health care.

01:23:40.300 All right, Ms. Notley, that is your 45 seconds. Ms. Smith, over to you.

01:23:43.680 We need to have publicly funded health care for both doctors and doctor-run surgical centres.

01:23:49.460 We have 300,000 surgeries being done per year.

01:23:53.020 60,000 of them are in doctor-run surgical centres that Ms. Notley apparently wants to shut down.

01:23:58.580 She hasn't answered the question about how we would be able to replace those surgeries.

01:24:02.320 And I can tell you what is actually happening because a lot has changed since November when we started making these changes in health care.

01:24:08.880 What has happened, in fact, is that we identified that there were 39,000 people waiting longer than medically recommended.

01:24:15.520 We've been cutting that list down by 3,000 surgeries per month.

01:24:18.960 We're now down to 30,000 people waiting.

01:24:21.060 And as I said, if we continue at this pace,

01:24:23.360 those waits will be completely over by this time next year.

01:24:25.740 And I think that's something to celebrate and continue.

01:24:27.860 Okay, let's open up the floor now to some free debate.

01:24:30.520 Let's start with you, Ms. Motley.

01:24:31.740 Well, thank you.

01:24:32.560 I mean, again, I think that we need to understand

01:24:35.820 that there is a very, very serious problem.

01:24:37.480 And we are not a year away from fixing all these problems.

01:24:40.520 Ms. Smith, unfortunately, is playing a bit with the statistics.

01:24:44.120 Last November, we had a COVID wave and a flu wave.

01:24:48.100 and she's now comparing statistics to that period of time.

01:24:51.760 It's a seasonal change that she's trying to convince

01:24:54.200 is turning into a long-term trend, but it's not real.

01:24:57.420 What is real is that this year, or this spring,

01:25:00.720 B.C., Saskatchewan, and Manitoba

01:25:02.980 filled all of their residency spots for family doctors.

01:25:06.940 Alberta, for the first time, had 45 vacancies.

01:25:10.660 And then they offered them up again, and there were still vacancies.

01:25:13.620 And we don't have family doctors coming to work here in Alberta.

01:25:17.080 And the reason is because Ms. Smith is doing things like referring to them as tyrants

01:25:22.580 and suggesting that people who follow public health orders are Nazi sympathizers.

01:25:27.380 And these things undermine the ability to attract frontline health care professionals.

01:25:32.260 They don't feel respected and they don't feel that this government is at all focused on science and having their back.

01:25:38.080 Go ahead.

01:25:38.600 Our doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health professionals are the heroes of our health care system.

01:25:44.200 Everybody knows that.

01:25:45.160 What I find so interesting is that Ms. Notley isn't running at all on her record from when she was premier

01:25:50.360 because she would have to admit that surgical wait times actually went up for nine key surgeries.

01:25:55.740 She'd have to admit that she didn't actually have the courage to take on the challenge of reforming health care.

01:26:01.840 I do. I have. We're already making progress. Of course, there's much more to do.

01:26:05.300 But I am confident that with a new mandate, we'll be able to continue making this progress.

01:26:10.000 The next step, of course, is building out our primary care system,

01:26:13.300 building out continuing care and adding more home care

01:26:15.500 so that people can age in place

01:26:17.040 and making sure that we've got that team practice

01:26:19.700 so that anybody has access to health care when they need it.

01:26:22.860 Ms. Natalie, get her to respond.

01:26:24.300 Yes, well, I mean, I think the fundamental problem here

01:26:26.760 is that Albertans are deeply concerned at the notion

01:26:29.220 of a Danielle Smith-led government reforming health care

01:26:32.440 in any way, shape or form.

01:26:34.440 She claims she's guaranteed that nobody will ever pay for a doctor,

01:26:37.800 But, you know, Ms. Smith, I was with you in the legislature in 2014.

01:26:42.700 You stood up and you guaranteed you would never cross the floor.

01:26:45.760 Three weeks later, you crossed the floor.

01:26:48.360 Your understanding of the word guarantee is very different than that of most Albertans.

01:26:53.840 And most people are deeply, deeply troubled at the prospect of you reforming health care

01:26:59.180 based on your 15-year record of advocating to make people pay out of pocket.

01:27:04.940 Okay, we are there out of time for this one issue, but we're going to move on.

01:27:09.860 And economy, definitely something that many Albertans are concerned about as we head forward,

01:27:16.360 given the historic reliance on the oil and gas sector for jobs and government revenue,

01:27:21.720 the world beginning to shift away from petroleum products.

01:27:24.840 Economy and jobs are the key issue in this portion of the debate.

01:27:27.200 With the first question, here is Courtney Theriault from City News.

01:27:30.520 Now, both of you have made many promises in this election,

01:27:34.180 committing to billions in new spending with the price of oil sitting below budget projections at

01:27:40.020 various times this year and given that volatility how will you pay for these commitments and stay on

01:27:45.620 budget without steep cuts that first question going to miss smith well i must say i know aaron

01:27:51.780 in the in the intro talked about shifting away from petroleum products and i would say that that

01:27:57.300 is the the notly view of the world that is certainly not my government's view of the world

01:28:01.140 We believe that we are going to reduce emissions, not that we are going to reduce oil and natural gas.

01:28:06.280 We know that with all of the exciting things that are happening with carbon capture, utilization and storage and all the green technology,

01:28:12.720 we can continue to have a robust, vibrant oil and natural gas sector for years to come.

01:28:18.140 What we want to do is make sure that we are finding more opportunities for our products.

01:28:22.460 Having bitumen be used more for asphalt so it reduces the amount of emissions.

01:28:26.720 Having LNG export, which creates a brand new stream of income for us.

01:28:30.300 We know that as long as we keep our energy industry strong, we're going to keep Alberta's economy strong.

01:28:35.800 Ms. Notley won't do that. I will.

01:28:37.380 Okay, we'll leave it there. Ms. Notley, your rebuttal.

01:28:39.680 Well, you know, there was actually some elements of what Ms. Smith said that I actually agree with.

01:28:44.480 You know, I want to create jobs producing energy.

01:28:47.640 I want to create jobs upgrading our energy.

01:28:51.060 And I want to create jobs reducing emissions.

01:28:54.080 And reducing emissions is absolutely the focus.

01:28:56.360 It's not about reducing or production.

01:28:59.140 It is about emissions.

01:29:00.300 The difference is that Ms. Smith and her caucus have spent much of their career pitting emissions reduction efforts against economic growth.

01:29:10.180 And when we do that, we fail on both.

01:29:13.640 What we want to do is understand the economic opportunity that comes from investing in emissions reductions,

01:29:20.060 attracting investment from other parts of the world, and growing jobs while ensuring greater markets for our oil and gas.

01:29:26.260 All right. Thank you, Ms. Notley. Let's go back to our free debate format right now on this

01:29:30.120 economic question. Ms. Smith, to you. Ms. Notley has so many anti-oil and gas candidates. I have

01:29:35.540 lost count, including one who compared it to slavery. And I know that he hasn't apologized

01:29:39.140 yet, nor have you, or condemned his comments. What I would say is that when you take a position

01:29:44.460 of increasing business taxes, you're creating a lot of uncertainty in our sector. We took the 12%

01:29:51.660 tax that ms notley had imposed brought it down to eight percent look what happened year over year

01:29:56.640 we ended up diversifying our economy attracting more investment creating more jobs more people

01:30:02.020 are coming into this province than ever before and what a bonus we now have more corporate income

01:30:07.040 revenue than we have in our history 6.4 billion dollars when you reduce taxes you end up attracting

01:30:13.600 jobs and investment and people when you increase taxes you chase it away she wants to increase

01:30:18.860 taxes again? We can't let her do that. Ms. Notley. Well, two points there. First of all, I find it

01:30:23.420 deeply ironic that Ms. Smith is talking about uncertainty and its impact on attracting

01:30:29.120 investment. This is a person who, well, started by bringing in the Sovereignty Act, an act that

01:30:34.280 her former finance minister very clearly said was going to chase away investment because it

01:30:40.180 undermined the rule of law. That, of course, was before she was found today to have broken the law

01:30:46.300 in an effort to support the private interests of someone accused of wanting to promote violence against the police.

01:30:54.940 All of that chases away investment because it is such a profound compromise to the rule of law.

01:31:01.080 But also, let me talk for just a moment about the issue of corporate taxes.

01:31:04.900 Here's what we're going to do.

01:31:05.880 We are going to take the lowest corporate taxes in the country and move them to be the lowest corporate taxes in the country.

01:31:15.060 lower than Scott Moe's, lower than Doug Ford's.

01:31:19.400 And at the same time, we will have the income necessary

01:31:22.700 to rebuild our education, rebuild our post-secondary,

01:31:25.880 and invest appropriately in a stable system of health care.

01:31:28.640 And all of that creates and attracts investment.

01:31:31.700 Back to Ms. Smith.

01:31:32.500 Ms. Notley, it's you and the CBC who need to apologize for Albertans.

01:31:35.920 You flat out lied for several months saying that I and my office had contact Crown prosecutors.

01:31:40.280 She said that is absolutely not true.

01:31:41.940 And she also confirmed that I did not direct or interfere in any COVID-related cases.

01:31:47.620 I would say that we have increased the amount of investment that has happened in our province.

01:31:52.380 We have a $760 million renewable diesel project announced by Imperial.

01:31:57.500 We have $600 million that came in from McCain's.

01:32:00.460 Our Pathways Oil Sands Group is investing.

01:32:03.460 We have an increase in the amount of drilling rigs.

01:32:05.800 That is not a sign that people have lost confidence in our economy.

01:32:09.140 you know what it is a sign of that when you stand up to ottawa and you tell the industry that you're

01:32:12.900 gonna you're gonna stand up for them they actually increase their amount of confidence and they

01:32:17.380 increase their except that we have fewer corporate headquarters in calgary in alberta now than we did

01:32:22.740 before in 2019 before you announced your incredibly uh uh spendthrift uh corporate handle all right

01:32:30.260 that's gonna do it for this question we have another economic question coming right now and

01:32:33.620 And that's coming from Judy Aldis of CBC.

01:32:36.460 Thank you.

01:32:37.400 You both mentioned the desire to reduce emissions.

01:32:42.420 Both of your parties have signaled the desire, in fact, to move towards a net zero future.

01:32:48.480 So, Ms. Notley, we'll start with you.

01:32:50.020 Can you outline for us specific actions that you will take to make sure that that happens?

01:32:56.400 Well, that's a very good question.

01:32:58.340 So let me first point out, in contrast to what Ms. Smith had said previously,

01:33:02.480 is that I was actually the first political leader in Alberta over a year ago to speak out on behalf of Albertans

01:33:11.200 and point out that the draft emissions targets coming from the federal government were unrealistic.

01:33:17.740 I do, however, believe that we need to come up with a Made in Alberta plan

01:33:21.460 that includes practical, achievable emissions limits,

01:33:25.980 and then we need to find and incent the investment.

01:33:29.680 We have to compete with the U.S. and the Inflation Reduction Act to get that investment,

01:33:33.660 but there's a lot out there, and we have some of that set out in our platform, but there's more to do.

01:33:41.400 Okay, Ms. Smith, you're up next.

01:33:42.840 Actually, what Ms. Notley has said is that she believes we need an emissions cap,

01:33:46.740 and it needs to be very close to what the federal government is proposing.

01:33:50.160 The federal government is proposing a 42% emissions cap reduction by 2030,

01:33:55.720 which we know is a de facto production cap.

01:33:58.580 And if we have a production cap, it means that we're going to reduce the overall amount of revenues.

01:34:03.240 She has also confirmed, and not denied it this evening, that she agrees with the federal proposal for a net zero power grid by 2035,

01:34:10.260 which we know will cost $52 billion, and increase your electricity bills by 40%.

01:34:14.620 We have seen this newsreel before. It's why she doesn't want to talk about her record.

01:34:19.640 When she came in, increased the corporate tax, brought through a surprise carbon tax, increased personal income taxes,

01:34:24.740 183,000 jobs were lost in the first couple of years.

01:34:27.760 well let me just say first of all when we talk about my record in oil and gas I

01:34:31.720 think it's kind of hard to forget the big thing which is the first pipeline to

01:34:37.120 Tidewater in 50 years that's my record so so that's the first thing secondly

01:34:42.940 your numbers around job losses I think we need to kind of talk a little bit

01:34:47.260 about that Danielle many many experts have reviewed that and they've said

01:34:50.620 they're absolutely ridiculous in fact at the end of our term we had after a very

01:34:56.740 difficult recession we came out about 45 000 jobs ahead and if we were to use your means of coming

01:35:03.140 up with that 180 000 number the number of jobs lost under the ucp would be over 250 000 so i

01:35:11.380 think albertans really deserve leadership that will not try to mislead them but will actually

01:35:16.180 have conversations based on applicable and relevant facts all right sure i'm happy to use the the same

01:35:22.500 measure because if you look at our measure we have increased our net jobs 136 000 since uh the

01:35:30.500 ucp got elected so that's uh by my count i guess uh three times what ms notley was able to do and

01:35:37.780 there's a reason for that is because investor confidence has returned people know that if you

01:35:42.260 elect a ucp government you're going to get lower corporate taxes we're not going to come through

01:35:45.940 with surprise taxes in fact we're going to have a tax hike guarantee so that if there is uh ever

01:35:52.100 a proposal for an increase in carbon tax or personal taxes or sales taxes it has to be put

01:35:57.220 to the people because these kinds of policies end up chasing away investment and it costs average

01:36:02.540 taxpayers and costs average citizens the most. Ms. Notley won't agree to that and the reason for

01:36:07.440 that is she wants to increase corporate taxes which are going to once again chase out investment

01:36:11.940 just like it did last time. Don't want to cut you off but I want to get Ms. Notley in here.

01:36:15.460 When the UCP announced their multi-billion dollar corporate handout to corporations here's what

01:36:21.320 happened we lost 50,000 jobs we doubled the deficit and the economy slowed down

01:36:27.140 four years later we have fewer corporate headquarters than we started out with so

01:36:32.540 the fact of the matter is is we have lower we will still under our plan have

01:36:37.560 lower corporate taxes than Scott Moe than Doug Ford but what we'll also have is the

01:36:42.740 money to invest in our education system something that's been horrifically

01:36:46.880 starved under the ucp restore funding to our post-secondary a critical partner in economic

01:36:52.820 growth is not we're going to have to end this portion of of the debate all right up next our

01:36:57.240 viewer and wildcard questions we're going to shift gears a little bit you're watching the

01:37:01.180 alberta provincial leaders debate back in just two minutes

01:37:04.120 we are back another little break here in the alberta leaders debate you're tuned into true

01:37:27.840 north's live coverage featuring uh you by featuring it might be a bit of a stretch i'm

01:37:32.640 here andrew lawton and featuring rachel emmanuel and william mcbeth another little check-in on

01:37:38.560 what's been happening in the course of the debate let's go to you on this one rachel what's your

01:37:44.580 read i mean what's been standing out so far yeah things are moving pretty quickly as you would

01:37:49.240 expect but i have to say that i've noticed that danielle smith seems to be taking william's advice

01:37:54.160 she has kept things very positive we see her bringing up the positive parts of her government's

01:37:59.740 record their investment bringing in jobs people flooding to the province as well as the work

01:38:04.460 they've done to bring down health care wait times as we talked a little bit about in the pre-show

01:38:08.400 so she's coming across as someone who's very excited about the work that our government has

01:38:12.480 done and that she hopes to continue doing she's smiling a lot she's keeping it very positive and

01:38:16.840 rachel notley is really on the attack she's bringing up things about the ucp government

01:38:20.680 that she didn't like you know things like danielle smith is going to privatize health care you can't

01:38:24.840 trust the premier so i think we're seeing kind of what william said in the pre-show we're seeing

01:38:28.480 danielle smith keeping it really light keeping it really positive looking excited looking enthusiastic

01:38:33.260 and rachel notley is kind of going for the jugular she's attacking danielle smith and she's attacking

01:38:38.460 the ucp's record that's what really has stood out to me at this point and i just haven't i don't

01:38:42.920 know that i've ever really seen danielle smith so positive so smiley so upbeat in a public

01:38:47.440 appearance before and we can see that she's putting a strong emphasis on that in tonight's

01:38:51.520 showing all right let's go to you william have there been any double take moments or any surprising

01:38:57.300 moments so far for you uh no i mean you know everybody goes into a debate looking for the

01:39:04.360 knockout punch the the you sir had a choice for a moment with brian mo rooney but that almost never

01:39:10.520 happens in a debate i do believe danielle brought her a game to the debate tonight though she is

01:39:16.720 landing a lot of her points all right great point william let's get back to the debate

01:39:27.300 that's the increased enrollment teacher burnout increased class sizes and complexity in alberta

01:39:46.740 school classrooms miss smith we're going to begin with you we have had so much disruption in our

01:39:52.580 education system in the last three years one of the first things i wanted to do is restore

01:39:57.700 stability to the learning environment for our kids we know one of the most difficult things that our

01:40:02.820 young people are facing is social anxiety and mental health and so part of that's part of the

01:40:08.500 reason why we now spend more money than we ever have in our history on education we have invested

01:40:14.180 in complexity funding for classrooms so that school boards can decide what the best use of

01:40:18.820 that is whether hiring more teachers or having education assistants or other psychologists

01:40:24.180 and we're going to to make sure that we continue to build more schools we've built or modernized 106

01:40:29.940 new schools and we're going to keep on on doing that the uh under the uh the the notley government

01:40:34.820 they only built 47 schools okay miss notley so much of that's not true but let me start with this

01:40:41.940 i have watched for four years with great alarm what the ucp has been doing to our school system

01:40:47.300 I imagine a six-year-old child in grade one in a class that unfortunately has 28, 29, 31,

01:40:55.220 32 children in it and she puts her hand up to get help and she waits for a minute, two minutes,

01:41:02.260 three minutes and nobody comes. So she puts it down and it happens a few more times and she

01:41:07.380 stops trying. Over the last four years we've had 35,000 net new children enter our schools and the

01:41:14.420 the UCP have not hired a single new teacher in fact they fired some and they also fired about

01:41:20.440 10,000 educational assistants by tweet we have a plan to fix this and I look forward to talking

01:41:25.220 more about it all right Ms. Notley that is your 45 seconds let's go to free debate now Ms. Smith

01:41:29.260 well I think that what people might be forgetting is we did have a lot of disruption over the last

01:41:34.640 few years and that's part of the reason we need to have stability back in our system I don't think

01:41:39.060 teachers forget though that under Ms. Notley they got no wage increases zero percent year after year

01:41:44.900 under UCP government we gave them a much deserved 3.75 percent wage increase and I think that that's

01:41:51.440 what we're hearing from from the front line they want to be respected they want to be supported

01:41:55.220 with educational assistance and they also want to have a little bit of stability so that they

01:42:00.520 have time to deal with the very severe mental health crisis of our kids. There have been profound

01:42:05.980 funding cuts to our education system under the UCP. We now have the most

01:42:11.720 crowded classrooms in the country. That was not the case when we left office

01:42:16.340 but it is the case now. They, as I said, fired 10,000 educational assistants by

01:42:21.380 tweet on a weekend. They also, in order to cut their budget, they did it on the

01:42:26.420 backs of vulnerable children with disabilities ages three to six by

01:42:31.540 cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from PUF funding. What that meant is

01:42:37.120 that kids all across our province are falling through the cracks. I've been to

01:42:40.840 schools where teachers and EAs are crying about what they can't get a handle on. So

01:42:45.880 the stress wasn't COVID, the stress is this government. We have a plan to hire

01:42:50.140 4,000 teachers to try to catch up over the next four years, 3,000 more EAs and

01:42:56.080 to restore PUF funding. All right let's get Smith back in there. Well I would say

01:42:59.920 that ms notley had the opportunity to address class size and indeed she put forward a proposal

01:43:05.040 to do exactly that a proposal that the auditor general said was so badly implemented they

01:43:10.080 couldn't actually track whether it was successful or not and didn't actually know where the where

01:43:14.640 the funding went we know that the very best people to make the decision about what ought to happen in

01:43:20.160 the classroom are our locally elected school trustees that's why we're giving more funding

01:43:24.800 for mental health more funding for complexity more funding for transportation making sure

01:43:29.440 that every school district has the funding it needs to make its own decisions about what the

01:43:34.160 best mix in the classroom is so that they can meet the local needs all right that is our time

01:43:38.560 for that unfortunately we have to get to our next viewer question and here it is and this question

01:43:42.480 comes from alex hamilton from edmonton alex says please tell us one specific policy your opponent

01:43:49.760 has put forward that you agree with and why miss notley well you know that's a really good question

01:43:55.840 and I will say this and I've said it before it's actually two I'm gonna go

01:43:59.200 with two so you know very early on in the UCP mandate it was under the former

01:44:05.080 premier Jason Kenney they introduced the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities

01:44:09.600 Corporation as a means to expand indigenous participation in our economy

01:44:14.660 we like it we're going to expand it and we're going to expand the number of

01:44:19.180 opportunities that that would qualify for that kind of support with indigenous

01:44:24.280 communities across the province another one was they expanded funding of the

01:44:30.460 film and TV tax credit and that was a good idea it's it's it's brought more

01:44:35.560 excitement into our industry we will absolutely maintain that and we look

01:44:39.760 forward to it all right thanks very much Ms. Notley and Ms. Smith once again

01:44:42.940 specific policies that you agree with for the NDP I'm very proud of both of the

01:44:48.200 the initiatives that Ms. Notley mentioned the Indigenous Opportunities

01:44:52.480 corporation has been so successful I think in addressing true economic

01:44:56.620 reconciliation and the film and TV tax credit brought the last of us here which

01:45:00.580 I think all of us feel pretty excited when we watch that on the big screen

01:45:04.960 what I think Ms. Nutley and I would agree with is that we know that there

01:45:09.100 are a number of doctors who are now wanting to specialize and I completely

01:45:12.640 understand a lot of time goes into becoming a doctor and so we're seeing

01:45:16.720 fewer doctors go into family medicine and so we I think we would both agree

01:45:20.680 that we need to move towards team practice that we need to make sure that we've got team practices

01:45:25.240 for family doctors to work with nurse practitioners lpns and other health professionals to ensure

01:45:30.120 everybody gets the health care they need without having to pay for it okay thank you both it

01:45:33.960 doesn't really lend itself to much free debate that question but we're glad that we got that

01:45:38.440 one in that because uh we really like that one so let's head to our next question and this is

01:45:42.680 a wild card question on a theme that's outside of our main topics here's lisa johnson from post media

01:45:47.640 Thank you. This election may be decided by who Albertans trust more.

01:45:54.380 Ms. Notley, based on the NDP's fiscal record in government, there are some people who don't trust you to manage Alberta's finances.

01:46:02.860 And Ms. Smith, you were found today to have broken conflict of interest rules.

01:46:07.740 Why should Albertans trust you? Ms. Smith, this question goes to you first.

01:46:12.460 Well, first what I would say is that when Ms. Notley campaigned last time around,

01:46:16.660 she didn't tell anybody she was going to increase the carbon tax.

01:46:19.520 She brought in a business tax, and she also ended up running up more debt

01:46:24.460 than we've seen of any premier in our province's history.

01:46:28.100 And the results speak for themselves.

01:46:29.760 We saw 183,000 jobs lost in the first couple of years.

01:46:33.960 We had a number of people moving out.

01:46:35.820 We had 13 quarters of people leaving this province.

01:46:39.220 In fact, the energy minister at the time said,

01:46:41.000 well, if you can't find a job in Alberta, go work in B.C. for a while.

01:46:45.120 That kind of defeatist attitude is not what Alberta is all about.

01:46:48.780 Alberta is back on track.

01:46:50.800 We have more people coming in here than ever before.

01:46:53.480 Our Alberta is calling campaign is working.

01:46:56.000 We've got more diversification and business investment.

01:46:58.680 We've got to keep that going.

01:46:59.720 All right. Thank you, Ms. Smith.

01:47:00.880 Ms. Notley, the floor is yours.

01:47:03.520 First of all, let me say, I guess there's two things.

01:47:06.220 First of all, I was very pleased to roll out a pretty well thought out costing document for

01:47:12.460 our platform and that document ensures that over three years we would maintain a cumulative

01:47:20.220 surplus of 3.6 billion dollars. That is on in contrast to what the UCP hurriedly rushed out

01:47:28.220 today which would actually very possibly go into deficit in the third year and is considerably

01:47:33.580 smaller surplus than what we're proposing and so that calls into question many of the items that

01:47:39.180 they're proposing to Albertans the other thing I would say I've been in office since 2008 I have

01:47:44.300 never actually breached the conflict of interest legislation Ms. Smith cannot say the same well I

01:47:49.740 guess I guess you're you did have an MLA who hacked our health care system I can I can tell

01:47:53.980 you do you really want to talk about our candidates and our MLAs like seriously I do not think you're

01:47:59.500 you're going to win that one. That is not one you want to do. I have to tell you, when I'm putting

01:48:03.300 together our affordability payments, to have to ask whether it was going to be hack-proof from

01:48:07.920 the NDP, that's not something that Ms. Notley should be very proud of. What I will also say

01:48:12.560 is that when she came out with her costing document, it was almost immediately discredited

01:48:16.720 because Todd Hirsch said he hadn't done the analysis on what kind of impact it would have

01:48:22.520 on chasing away investment. Others did. Trevor Toome did. Jack Mintz did. There are several

01:48:27.900 business reporters who did the alberta chamber of commerce did and what they have said is that

01:48:32.300 would create instability and the instability would chase additional this uh investment out it would

01:48:37.980 chase jobs out and we would go back and have a rerun of what we did in the period of time that

01:48:41.900 ms nutley doesn't want to talk about which was when she was premier all right ms nutley obviously

01:48:45.500 has thoughts on this back to you um i do yes i mean obviously uh the fact of the matter is is

01:48:50.380 that many of those people uh back uh peddled on some of that the credit union has actually said

01:48:55.180 there's not a problem uh with the increase of the corporate income tax to being the lowest corporate

01:49:01.260 income tax in the country and indeed it seems to work okay in in ontario because heaven knows they

01:49:06.780 are attracting far more venture capital and business than we are in alberta under the ucp

01:49:12.300 but i do want to go back to this issue of the conflict of interest legislation this is a

01:49:18.220 fundamentally important issue miss smith you were found to have broken the law in order to interfere

01:49:27.260 with the system of justice to assist with somebody who had been charged with attempting to get people

01:49:34.140 to commit violence against police officers we're going to let you know we're talking about instability

01:49:39.420 that does not engender trust that more than that it engenders fear on the part of albertans miss

01:49:46.140 Ms. Notley, the NDP and the CBC lied for months saying that I was calling Crown prosecutors

01:49:51.760 and my staff are calling Crown prosecutors and it wasn't true.

01:49:55.020 And that is what the ethics commissioner found.

01:49:57.340 Look, I'm a non-lawyer and I know that I need to be able to talk to my justice minister.

01:50:02.140 I'm looking forward to advice on how to be able to do that more constructively in the future.

01:50:06.080 I think that's important for us to be able to get those kind of rules set out.

01:50:10.560 But I will say we continue to have this issue.

01:50:13.420 I am running on my record.

01:50:14.700 Miss Notley is running away from hers and there is a reason for that. The Global Petroleum Survey

01:50:20.600 is one of the surveys that looks at what our business environment looks like. When she got

01:50:25.060 elected in 2015 we were number three in the world. By 2018 we were number 43 in the world. This is

01:50:31.300 the reason she doesn't want to talk about her record. Forgive us we are running out of time.

01:50:34.500 We're almost at the end of the debate so we do have to move on. We do. We have one final wild

01:50:37.720 card question and here is City TV's Courtney Theriault. Well thanks again. Both parties have

01:50:42.620 insisted they would increase the number of police officers in major centers, but on the surface

01:50:47.340 that would only allow them to better respond to crimes as they're committed. So in terms of

01:50:52.220 creating safer communities beyond boots on the ground, what distinguishes your approach from

01:50:57.880 your opponents? And we'll go to Ms. Notley first. Well that's a really very good question. So you

01:51:03.800 know I was pleased to see that Ms. Smith made the announcement to restore the funding to police

01:51:10.800 officers that the ucp cut at the beginning of their term by hiring 150 officers we matched that

01:51:17.840 and then we also went further and said we would also hire 150 more social workers mental health

01:51:22.880 therapists those kinds of folks we would to help with with social disorder on our streets because

01:51:29.200 we know that's worrisome to people very worrisome we also however have committed to restoring

01:51:35.360 funding for affordable housing under the ucp we've lost 8 000 affordable housing units

01:51:40.800 and a further 4 000 people were cut off of shelter allowances and that level of homelessness

01:51:46.880 has created a real crisis contributing to the concerns around community safety all right miss

01:51:52.000 smith your time well first off we wouldn't defund the police again ms notley has so many defund the

01:51:57.840 police candidates on her platform on her candidate roster i've lost count of them as well the the

01:52:03.120 The frontline services are demoralized, and we are giving courage and confidence back to our frontline officers.

01:52:09.300 We've embedded sheriffs in both Calgary and Edmonton.

01:52:11.760 We're adding 100 police officers in both Calgary and Edmonton

01:52:14.940 because we believe that people have a right to take public transit and feel safe.

01:52:19.820 They have a right to go downtown and be able to have a nice dinner or see a game

01:52:23.240 and not worry that they're going to be randomly attacked.

01:52:26.380 And they certainly have a right to walk past an open doorway without having to inhale secondhand crystal meth smoke.

01:52:32.980 We have an approach that is going to make sure that we crack down on public safety and crime

01:52:37.800 and make sure that people feel safe again.

01:52:39.620 All right, thank you, Ms. Smith.

01:52:41.020 We've got about 90 seconds for this free debate.

01:52:43.080 Ms. Notley.

01:52:43.640 Well, I need to start by saying when it comes to defunding the police,

01:52:47.100 the UCP actually defunded the police.

01:52:50.440 The money that they used to hire the $150 is a restoration of the money they cut in 2019.

01:52:57.400 And that's on top of additional police grants that they cut from municipal governments

01:53:02.440 right when they first got elected so the actual defunding of the police is

01:53:06.220 something that I think they should take a responsibility for. You know one thing

01:53:10.120 I'm so proud about with our UCP record is it's the what's being known as the

01:53:14.700 Alberta model for a recovery oriented system of care because we know policing

01:53:20.020 is only one side of the story the other is getting people the help that they

01:53:23.800 need and my chief of staff is one of the foremost experts on the recovery

01:53:27.700 oriented system of care we got rid of the forty dollar per day user fee that

01:53:31.480 Ms. Notley-Charge. We've added 10,000 treatment beds. We're building recovery communities,

01:53:35.820 some in conjunction with First Nations partners, and we are going to make sure that every single

01:53:40.840 person who wants addiction treatment has access to a treatment bed. Those two things have to go

01:53:45.780 together. Quickly, Ms. Notley, you've got 20 seconds to rebut. Well, listen, I think more

01:53:50.700 recovery beds is a great thing. Absolutely. And I actually agree with the fact that the

01:53:55.880 accommodation charge associated with those beds that's been in place for two decades is now gone.

01:54:00.960 That's great news, but there's more to it.

01:54:03.380 There's more about wraparound services, transitional housing,

01:54:07.080 those kinds of supports, and those remain unfunded right now.

01:54:10.360 Okay, thank you.

01:54:11.300 Some spirited debate.

01:54:12.260 Absolutely.

01:54:12.820 Love it. I love it.

01:54:13.780 Okay, we are now going to head to our closing remarks.

01:54:17.300 Each leader will have 90 seconds.

01:54:19.740 And this is one final chance for those leaders to make their pitch to Albertans.

01:54:23.220 We start with Daniel Smith.

01:54:25.440 I first want to say how much of an honor it's been

01:54:27.840 to be your premier for these last seven months.

01:54:30.960 I've been overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of Albertans that I meet every single day.

01:54:36.420 These last three years have been difficult for all of us.

01:54:40.340 And now the wildfires are testing our resolve as a people once more.

01:54:44.500 But I know that together we will overcome every challenge we face,

01:54:48.320 whether it's a pandemic, a flood, a fire, or economic headwinds.

01:54:52.040 We will take care of one another and we will move our province forward to a better future.

01:54:57.400 my commitment to each of you if re-elected is to serve you with everything i have and to the best

01:55:03.400 of my ability however imperfect that may be at times i will continue to focus on growing

01:55:10.200 and diversifying our amazing economy making life more affordable and our communities safer and

01:55:16.440 improving health care for all albertans and i will carefully listen to you and my ucp caucus

01:55:23.240 because whatever i may have said or thought in the past while i was on talk radio

01:55:27.480 albertans are my bosses now and my oath is to serve you and no one else i love this province

01:55:35.480 and everything it stands for we are a land of entrepreneurs and innovators of pioneers and

01:55:41.400 farmers of families and communities a place where the best and brightest come from every

01:55:47.400 corner of the world to join us in building one of the greatest places on earth to live

01:55:52.360 and work and raise a family from a bottom of my heart thank you and good night okay 90 seconds

01:55:57.640 over to you ms notley well thank you so much tonight ask yourself who do you trust to build

01:56:04.600 a better future who will focus on the things that actually matter to you now ms smith has spent her

01:56:11.800 entire career campaigning for albertans to pay out of pocket for basic health care she's also

01:56:19.080 campaigned to pull Alberta out of the Canada Pension Plan, something that would create huge

01:56:24.460 instability in your retirement. Today, she was found to have broken the law by interfering

01:56:31.700 with our justice system. This is just not how our province should be run. Every day is

01:56:38.560 a new drama. You just don't need to put up with this. Enough is enough. So my offer to

01:56:44.680 you is stable, predictable, thoughtful leadership that you can count on. It's time to get back to

01:56:50.760 the things that matter to people. I will make life more affordable, capping car insurance and

01:56:56.440 lowering your utilities. I will support our entrepreneurial spirit by cutting to zero

01:57:02.040 small business taxes and creating more jobs. And because I'm passionate about making sure

01:57:07.400 your family has health care that you always need without paying for it, I have a balanced

01:57:13.080 costed plan to make sure you get a family doctor so that is a better future for alberta now you

01:57:19.720 may not always agree with me and i may not have always gotten it right but i say what i mean and

01:57:24.520 i mean what i say if i am premier again i will work daily to earn your trust and to focus on your

01:57:33.000 priorities thank you thank you miss notley unfortunately we are out of time that does

01:57:37.160 wrap up the 2023 alberta provincial leaders debate our thanks once again to ndp leader

01:57:42.280 rachel notley and ucp leader danielle smith for taking part tonight also a big thank you to our

01:57:47.160 panelists for participating and here's this a reminder election date just 11 days away may 29th

01:57:54.520 it is your chance to exercise your democratic right to vote thank you for watching and good night

01:58:00.120 from edmonton epac brings you

01:58:03.880 welcome back everyone this is true north's live election night well not election i know that's

01:58:17.220 in 11 days they just said it but our live debate night show for the alberta election the one and

01:58:22.440 only chance for us to see the leaders in action william i'm gonna need you to take another sip

01:58:27.660 and turn that around. You did it all wrong. There you go. There you go. That is our True North mug.

01:58:34.740 And by the way, we just have one left. So anyone who donate the first, well, actually the next

01:58:39.840 person who donates $150 gets one of those True North mugs, a very limited run. We only had five

01:58:46.460 and there is just one remaining. And I mean, we thank all of you for your generous support of

01:58:51.680 independent media. In this case, we're bribing you with a mug, but it's actually a very good mug. I

01:58:56.120 was drinking my evening coffee out of mine and there was enough room in it for enough coffee to

01:59:00.800 get through what were at some point a bit of a slog. But let's just talk about format here for

01:59:06.040 a moment. I'm Andrew Lawton, joined by Rachel Emanuel and William Macbeth. This was the one

01:59:10.980 chance for these two leaders to go head to head. And it was one hour with commercial breaks. I mean,

01:59:17.320 did we even scratch the surface, Rachel? Yeah, I definitely felt like it could have been a little

01:59:22.920 bit longer it didn't feel like we heard from them too much and it was kind of over before i knew it

01:59:27.760 often by the time we get to the end of these things i'm like oh thank goodness it's over but

01:59:31.880 in this case i was like oh it's over already so definitely could have gone on for a bit longer

01:59:35.620 they could have been given a little bit more time for debate i would have been a little bit more

01:59:39.120 interested to really dig into some of the public safety stuff the ucp is announcing really novel

01:59:45.720 ideas on how to deal with a mental health and addictions crisis and i know that danielle smith

01:59:50.340 did get an opportunity to bring up some of those policies but we hardly heard about that we

01:59:55.220 certainly didn't hear what not least plan on mental health and addictions was and the two

01:59:58.900 didn't really have an opportunity to go toe to toe on that specific topic which is a very big

02:00:03.780 topic in the province right now and as i mentioned the ucp is doing really novel things on it and

02:00:08.180 they have announced some pretty big policies on that so i definitely could have heard from them

02:00:11.940 a bit more also on format just a personal pet peeve of mine i hate when they have multiple

02:00:16.660 moderators I hate when they include a million different journalists to ask questions I know

02:00:20.660 it's because they just can't agree the debate consortium of the journalists who are actually

02:00:24.760 organizing it they just simply can't agree who's going to be put in charge of it because all of

02:00:28.840 the outlets want their reporters having face time and to get sort of that credibility but I think

02:00:34.040 it's better when they just pick one moderator one person's asking the questions and keeping the

02:00:38.200 debate running smoothly just a personal preference of mine I think it's silly especially when you

02:00:41.820 know the reasons behind the scenes as to why they felt the need to include everyone but I did feel

02:00:46.640 like the moderators did a fairly good job of keeping them moving things along and you know

02:00:50.860 both of the leaders were pretty respectful and didn't interrupt each other too much which

02:00:53.860 sometimes can be a huge headache when you're watching debates so that part of it i thought

02:00:57.420 was pretty effective yeah the the questions i i thought were generally fair i thought they could

02:01:02.360 have been more of them i thought there could have been a little bit more opportunity for i don't

02:01:06.980 want to say confrontation but certainly for exchange uh between the two candidates i also

02:01:12.100 realize that I said the next donor to True North who donated more than $150 would get the mug,

02:01:17.300 but I didn't give you the link again. So that is donate.tnc.news. And even if you're not

02:01:21.560 chipping in because you want the last mug, you might want to chip in because you value the work

02:01:25.680 we're doing. And I'll go back to what I said earlier, which is that Rachel Emanuel, who's

02:01:29.620 been doing a great job covering the campaign, was banned from going to the debate to talk to the

02:01:35.260 leaders in the post-debate scrum because the mainstream media want to keep their little

02:01:40.740 protectionist bubble, or I don't even know if you can call it a racket going, which is what the

02:01:45.640 Alberta Legislative Gallery has basically done to exclude independent media. So we're still

02:01:51.000 covering it. We're still going to ask questions to Rachel Notley and Danielle Smith on the campaign

02:01:56.080 trail. But let's focus on the debate in particular here, because healthcare obviously came up. And

02:02:02.140 I mean, we weren't even like two minutes in before Rachel Notley once again starts talking about

02:02:08.300 Danielle Smith wanting to privatize health care. And I fear Rachel Notley might have been watching

02:02:12.820 the pre-show because she made the exact same criticism of Danielle Smith that I made just a

02:02:18.860 few moments before the program started. Let's talk about this clip here for a moment of Rachel

02:02:24.380 Notley attacking Danielle Smith on past support for changing the health care system.

02:02:32.300 Let's talk about something else. So let's talk about health care costs as they impact

02:02:36.600 affordability you claim that you won't raise costs but danielle you know you've i've known you

02:02:42.120 for at least a decade perhaps more and i've watched your career and you have argued passionately in

02:02:47.960 multiple multiple settings for your belief that you care about passionately those were your words

02:02:53.700 making people pay more for their health care so my question to you is why are you not running on

02:03:00.380 the thing that you believe why are you not being honest with albertans why aren't you making the

02:03:06.320 argument that you think having them pay more is what you want because you've said it in video in

02:03:12.080 papers in speaking tours in the legislature for over a decade miss smith we're gonna let you jump

02:03:17.900 in here i know miss notley likes to show grainy videos of things i said while i was on radio and

02:03:22.840 the reason she does that is she doesn't want to run on her record and the reason she doesn't want

02:03:26.820 to run on her record is it was an absolute disaster she racked up 70 billion dollars in

02:03:31.560 debt more debt than any premier or actually all premiers combined in

02:03:35.480 Alberta's provincial history she talked about deception did you remember her

02:03:39.420 running on a carbon tax in the last election I sure didn't not increase the

02:03:42.900 cross the cost of everything we eliminated it but Justin Trudeau

02:03:45.800 wouldn't let us keep it off and now Miss Notley has not stood up to her boss

02:03:50.400 Jagmeet Singh in Ottawa and worked with us to say don't increase that that carbon

02:03:56.020 tax any further and in fact certainly don't increase it 300% no one has any

02:03:59.940 credibility talking about affordability as long as they support a carbon tax which is going to

02:04:04.240 increase the cost of everything. I've got to say William I think Danielle Smith might have been

02:04:14.040 taking your advice because you mentioned earlier that you know the one thing you didn't like was

02:04:17.660 that she wanted to answer the questions and there she's asked you know how do you account for 10

02:04:21.640 years of pushing for privatizing or in some way privatizing health care and she says that the NDP

02:04:27.460 doesn't want to talk about their record. So I thought she answered the question well, but it

02:04:31.520 was interesting that really the premise that Rachel Notley went to is, listen, we know you

02:04:36.640 believe this. Why aren't you talking about it now? Yeah, I mean, I think if you are a fair and

02:04:43.720 objective observer, which we all are in our own mind, there is no doubt that Danielle Smith

02:04:48.360 came out ahead in tonight's debate. I think she did a better job of landing on the points she

02:04:54.640 wanted to talk about, including the progress that she's made on health care, hiring more nurses,

02:05:00.540 reducing wait times for ambulances, key metrics that she could point to. The trouble Rachel

02:05:07.340 Notley had, I think, was trying to be critical of Danielle Smith while also not wanting to talk

02:05:13.040 about her own time in office. And I don't think she was well enough prepared by her team in order

02:05:20.040 to take the hit from Danielle talking about, well, when you were premier, because that is,

02:05:26.140 by the way, something she's never had to face in a debate before. Of course, you know, the last

02:05:29.780 debate she had was in 2015. She'd been an opposition politician. It's the first debate

02:05:33.580 where she's ever had a record, and she seemed unable to effectively pivot. So when it comes

02:05:38.660 to health care, I'm sure Danielle Smith would prefer not to talk about it to the degree possible.

02:05:42.940 It's what we in politics called a shield issue. The more you talk about it, the more you might

02:05:48.240 lose votes. But she did what she had to do. And I think ultimately, people are going to look at

02:05:53.920 that debate and think it was Danielle Smith who came out on top. Yeah, one thing that is

02:05:58.460 interesting, normally in Canadian politics, if you lose an election after you've been in power,

02:06:03.760 you're kind of done. You just take that as your cue to retire. Stephen Harper in 2015,

02:06:09.060 Kathleen Wynne in 2018 in Ontario, and so on. So the idea of running again, of trying to do the

02:06:15.640 grover cleveland thing it's not without precedent in canadian politics certainly a lot of uh previous

02:06:21.320 prime ministers were in and out and in and out and whatnot but but it is rare that you get two

02:06:26.920 people that have both been premier that are that are running and two people that both have a record

02:06:31.720 and i was wondering what you uh kind of thought of of that dynamic because we didn't hear all that

02:06:36.360 much of rachel notley wanting to defend rachel notley's record in fact even in her closing

02:06:41.160 statement she tried to do a bit of cleanup by saying yeah i didn't always get it right

02:06:45.640 No, you're absolutely right. And I mean, the fact is, the reason Rachel Notley led this party into the election is because she is by far the biggest asset that the Alberta New Democrats have.

02:06:59.000 And I mean, even if you're not on her side, you only have to look at who the other senior MLAs are in that New Democrat caucus to know that Rachel Notley is as good as it gets.

02:07:09.520 And anybody else was going to come across as being incredibly left wing and out of touch with with everyday Albertans. That being said, Daniel only had to defend the last nine months, give or take. It was a period of economic recovery. She came in after the last premier was suffering a pretty low ebb in his popularity. And a lot of things went well over the last nine months.

02:07:33.620 Rachel Notley had to govern during a time of economic distress, low energy prices, and higher unemployment.

02:07:39.460 That was always going to be a more difficult period of time to govern.

02:07:44.020 That being said, she did a lot of things that made the situation worse.

02:07:47.060 And I think Danielle did highlight some of those in the debate tonight and remind people when she was in premier, when Rachel Notley was premier, things were really not good here in Alberta.

02:07:57.380 And if you think about the fact that this election is primarily targeting Calgary, that's about oil and gas.

02:08:03.080 That's about jobs and private sector business.

02:08:06.580 And this is the part of the province that's going to be most impacted by that large tax increase that Rachel Notley and the Democrats are proposing for Alberta businesses.

02:08:15.840 What stood out tonight for you, Rachel?

02:08:18.620 I'm just still caught on the fact that Rachel Notley wore the conservative blue to the debate.

02:08:23.880 Don't leaders generally wear the color of their party?

02:08:26.700 i mean i understand like orange is a super ugly color i wouldn't want to wear it either but i

02:08:31.180 just thought that was very notable especially as we're talking about how rachel notley doesn't

02:08:35.240 really want to run on her record as premier and she's not really bringing it up and she's not

02:08:39.360 really advocating for her advertising it and then she fact that we've talked so much about how she's

02:08:44.240 been appealing to moderates and then she shows up tonight in a conservative blue i just thought that

02:08:49.080 was a little bit funny but it was again a very strong performance from danielle tonight i just

02:08:53.580 don't think I've ever seen her. So enthusiastic, so lighthearted, really positive to be there

02:08:58.540 looking forward. I think she did exactly what she needed to do during tonight's debate to appeal to

02:09:03.920 people who, you know, aren't sure how they feel, aren't sure how they're going to vote for her.

02:09:07.600 We reported on a poll that showed about half of Albertans said they were going to watch tonight's

02:09:12.080 debate and decide how to cast their ballot based on what they heard. I sort of doubt the number is

02:09:16.380 that high. Usually not that many people watch a political debate. I think maybe it helped that it

02:09:20.360 only an hour in that case but i think i think daniel smith did exactly what she needed to do

02:09:25.560 if she's looking to appeal to those people and you know rachel not only just seemed a little bit

02:09:29.240 rattled her opening statement wasn't very strong she seemed a bit caught off guard public public

02:09:33.160 speaking can absolutely be tricky i just don't feel like she ever really caught up to where she

02:09:37.400 was at and she's had a little bit of a break from doing these types of speeches so maybe she was

02:09:41.720 just caught off guard but daniel smith was really on her game tonight you know maybe the fact that

02:09:45.960 that she took time away from the campaign to do those two debates in her local riding which a lot

02:09:50.940 of people said is a terrible idea maybe that actually benefited her tonight because she just

02:09:54.700 had experience doing two back-to-back debates along with all the debate prep that we know goes

02:09:59.160 into an event like tonight. Yeah I mean although I hope for Rachel Notley's sake that she's you know

02:10:04.480 doing better than an NDP candidate in rural Alberta who's never going to win I hope that

02:10:10.140 but you never know sometimes the local candidates do surprisingly well in in debates I had kind of

02:10:15.600 But when I ran for office years ago, I had a bit of a home field advantage in the radio debate.

02:10:19.460 So I kind of went in just completely fine with anything that was going to happen there.

02:10:24.300 Let's talk about, I mean, when you bring up Rachel Notley trying to kind of be everything to everyone right now,

02:10:30.180 I have to share this clip.

02:10:32.000 This is a critique that really goes to be a bit of a blast from the past in Alberta politics,

02:10:37.760 the way that Rachel Notley takes aim at Danielle Smith here.

02:10:40.100 uh yes well i mean i think the fundamental problem here is that albertans are deeply

02:10:47.220 concerned at the notion of a danielle smith-led government reforming health care in any way

02:10:52.420 shape or form she claims she's guaranteed that nobody will ever pay for a doctor but

02:10:57.260 you know miss smith uh i was with you in the legislature in 2014 you stood up and you

02:11:02.660 guaranteed you would never cross the floor three weeks later you crossed the floor your

02:11:07.760 understanding of the word guarantee is very different than that of most Albertans and most

02:11:13.520 people are deeply deeply troubled at the prospect of you reforming health care based on your 15

02:11:20.240 year record of advocating to make people pay out of pocket okay we are

02:11:25.000 I mean look it's a legitimate criticism Danielle Smith herself would acknowledge that has

02:11:35.620 acknowledge that it's a weird one to kind of have Rachel Notley hold up as being so significant

02:11:42.680 here. It's like, you know, you're a woman of your word, but you crossed the floor eight years ago.

02:11:47.780 Rachel, do you think anyone will care about that watching? I mean, the people that were the most

02:11:51.480 angry about that are not Rachel Notley fans. No, I don't think that Albertans really care

02:11:57.880 about that anymore. I think the conversation has changed. I think that Rachel Notley is stuck

02:12:02.580 living in the past a little bit on this the people that were upset at daniel smith for crossing the

02:12:07.580 floor are the same people that decided whether or not they wanted to vote for her in the united

02:12:12.140 conservative party leadership race that happened just last summer and guess what she won that race

02:12:17.040 so we know that albertans by and large have moved on from that and passed it the people that are

02:12:21.520 looking to decide whether to vote for daniel smith or not that is not the question at the top of their

02:12:25.680 mind right now maybe a small part of it factors into whether or not they feel they can trust her

02:12:30.100 but I suspect people have a much more prominent and present concerns when we look at the state

02:12:34.300 of our economy around us. And I doubt that is something that's influencing their decision

02:12:38.300 as to whether or not to vote for Smith or Notley on May 29th.

02:12:42.320 The one thing when you have a one-on-one debate that you always want to look out for is that real

02:12:48.120 sort of tension, that sparks fly moment. Tonight, that was a pretty clear cut one. There was one

02:12:55.220 real candidate for that. Let's roll that clip when the NDP's penchant for hacking apparently

02:13:01.220 was put front and center. The other thing I would say, I've been in office since 2008.

02:13:08.660 I have never actually breached the conflict of interest legislation. Ms. Smith cannot say the

02:13:14.320 same. Well, I guess you did have an MLA who hacked our health care system. I can tell you.

02:13:19.280 Do you really want to talk about our candidates and our MLAs?

02:13:23.180 Seriously, I do not think you're going to win that one.

02:13:25.480 That is not one you want to do.

02:13:27.260 I have to tell you, when I'm putting together our affordability payments,

02:13:29.980 to have to ask whether it was going to be hack-proof from the NDP,

02:13:33.860 that's not something that Ms. Notley should be very proud of.

02:13:36.440 What I will also say is that when she came out with her costing document,

02:13:39.900 it was almost immediately discredited because Todd Hirsch said

02:13:43.640 he hadn't done the analysis on what kind of impact it would have

02:13:47.580 on chasing away investment.

02:13:49.280 others did trevor toome did jack mince did there are several business reporters who did

02:13:54.340 the alberta chamber of commerce did and what they have said is that would create instability

02:13:58.820 and the instability would chase additional investment out it would chase jobs out and

02:14:03.980 we would go back and have a rerun of what we did in the period of time that ms not like

02:14:07.500 doesn't want to talk about which was when she was premier

02:14:09.420 okay i mean it wasn't like a total brawl i mean we didn't have you know like microphones and

02:14:20.980 lecterns being knocked over and anything like that there wasn't a lot of shouting but

02:14:24.740 it was one of the feistier moments here you've got rachel notley going to the you broke the law

02:14:29.460 and then danielle smith saying hey and mla was hacking and then rachel notley i mean you just

02:14:33.940 heard the clip i don't need to give i don't need to do the dramatic reenactment of it although if

02:14:37.160 we could if you want us to do that. That could be part of the post show here. But William, I mean,

02:14:44.000 let me just get your take on this here, because a lot of the things that consume media coverage,

02:14:48.340 we were talking about this earlier, certainly legacy media coverage are not the things that

02:14:52.980 matter. And in fact, I don't even know if elections are won and lost on the things that matter to

02:14:57.480 people. I think they're won and lost on what you'd call, if you were putting this debate together,

02:15:01.420 or the wild cards, you know, this ethics commissioner report, this candidate said this, and so on.

02:15:07.840 So the stuff that was there, MLA hacking, which I had kind of forgotten about,

02:15:12.260 the, you know, you broke the law, which is not a particularly accurate interpretation of what happened today.

02:15:19.440 But does this stuff land?

02:15:21.740 In my opinion, no.

02:15:22.960 In fact, I think very few people had any idea what either of them were talking about during this segment.

02:15:29.220 If you could remember former NDP MLA Thomas Dang breaking somehow into the COVID vaccine proof system, good for you.

02:15:40.780 Congratulations.

02:15:41.840 But at the same measure, I don't think a lot of people really understood what the whole Daniel Smith interfered in something problem was either.

02:15:50.320 I mean, look, how many months did we spend and did media spend talking about Justin Trudeau and SNC-Lavalin?

02:15:56.500 I mean, it went on forever, and I don't think in the next election anybody's going to have any recollection of what it went about, or if they do, they really don't care.

02:16:05.700 What do people care about, in my opinion, things like cost of living, how much it costs people to fill up their gas tank, how much it costs people to pay their electricity bill, how much they pay in taxes, and they care about are we safe in our communities.

02:16:17.300 You know, I'm sick of trying to get on to an LRT or a bus and being hassled by someone who's high as a kite, or I feel unsafe when I take my kids to the park.

02:16:29.060 And where Daniel, I think, benefited from this debate in particular is the very first question was on cost of living.

02:16:35.580 And the very last question was on law and order and safe communities.

02:16:39.380 And that was a perfect lineup, in my opinion, for her because she got to start and end on her very best points.

02:16:45.400 But you're right. I mean, so much trivia on this MLA did this and that MLA did that. You know what I care about? Who's going to cut my taxes? Who's going to make my electricity bill cheaper? Who's going to make sure I don't get stabbed on the way to work in the morning? That's what everyday people care about.

02:17:02.740 Let's get your take on that, Rachel.

02:17:04.180 yeah i think that what william said is exactly what i was thinking in that if those types of

02:17:10.760 things really landed then justin trudeau would no longer be prime minister in ottawa

02:17:15.280 but these types of discussions are very complicated you know there's a lot of things to

02:17:20.480 follow even the report that came down today there were some parts of it that absolved danielle smith

02:17:24.600 other parts that said you contravene you know the ethics act by having this discussion with

02:17:28.660 your justice minister very convoluted each side sort of picks the bits that they want to take

02:17:33.280 from it and they run with that and ignores the rest that's inconvenient to their points and then

02:17:37.520 everyone in the middle just doesn't pay attention because they're like this side saying it's blue

02:17:41.520 and this side saying it's yellow so i'm just going to focus on the things that really matter to me

02:17:45.480 which is exactly what william just said most people are focused on public safety and making

02:17:50.300 sure that they can pay for their rent every month and that they can afford gas and hoping that their

02:17:54.920 taxes get cut so they have a little extra money to finally go on that family vacation that they

02:17:58.780 put on hold for three years because they just simply can't afford it or because they haven't

02:18:02.460 been allowed to travel so you know these are things that most people are focused on right now

02:18:06.700 if you're really into politics if you're political you're going to know the history of some of these

02:18:10.720 zingers that were passed back and forth makes it a little bit funny makes it entertaining but

02:18:14.520 at the end of the day it's not really going to stick it's just something for the base to kind

02:18:17.500 of rally around and chuckle around and earlier in in the pre-show i said i wasn't sure who was

02:18:22.100 going to be lobbing insults one or the other i said i expected rachel notley would certainly

02:18:26.440 be lobbing insults at danielle smith because that's what the entire ndp campaign has been

02:18:30.480 about but you know that was admittedly a pretty good comeback from smith on her part about dang

02:18:35.420 there and it was also just totally unexpected from her because you don't really see her engaged

02:18:39.620 in that type of politics too much and she did keep things pretty positive today during the debate so

02:18:44.040 again i just think that whole exchange probably blew over most people's heads because they aren't

02:18:48.060 really familiar with the history there yeah that's fair and it's one of these things that makes you

02:18:53.200 know us freaks who live and breathe this stuff like oh and then but everyone else was like what

02:18:57.280 are they even talking about get back to like what are we'll get happen get back to the tax thing

02:19:00.880 that you guys were talking about i mean among people that are watching debates and and that

02:19:04.740 in and of itself is a bit of a challenge because these things uh you know we want to believe that

02:19:09.260 everyone in the province is just on tenterhooks and that undecided voters are you know just eager

02:19:14.280 to to make their decision but but in a lot of cases the people that probably could benefit the

02:19:19.100 most from it are just living their lives and i and i think that's why there's a great opportunity

02:19:23.020 for a leader who's going to come in and say,

02:19:25.900 even not with an unabashedly libertarian stance,

02:19:29.340 but a leader that's going to say,

02:19:30.520 I'm the premier that's going to make it

02:19:32.400 so you can go back to not caring about government

02:19:34.560 and not caring about politics.

02:19:36.180 And I'm the leader that's going to make it

02:19:37.820 so you don't need to wonder

02:19:38.660 if I'm going to write off your job and your industry.

02:19:42.140 And to go back to what we were talking about earlier,

02:19:44.820 about the divide between the Alberta NDP

02:19:47.380 and the federal NDP,

02:19:49.500 You do not get to, even as a socialist in Alberta, say the quiet part out loud, which is that you don't like the oil and gas sector.

02:19:57.200 I mean, Rachel Notley has come out against, in a very, very tacit way, the just transition, which I've covered on my show.

02:20:05.640 I know you've covered, Rachel, which is basically the federal government's desire to transition employment from people in the oil and gas sector to green energy.

02:20:14.520 Rachel Notley kind of issued like one sort of comment on this.

02:20:18.360 I think it was back in January.

02:20:20.140 Yeah, it's not constructive, but has not campaigned against it.

02:20:23.040 She's not rallied against it.

02:20:24.340 It's kind of just paying lip service to it.

02:20:27.240 And Danielle Smith did bring that up with her.

02:20:29.560 This was the criticism that I thought was a very fair one on Rachel Notley and the just transition.

02:20:35.340 Ms. Notley didn't stand up when Justin Trudeau cancelled Northern Gateway.

02:20:45.940 She didn't stand up when Energy East pulled the plug.

02:20:48.180 She didn't stand up when they brought in a tanker ban off the West Coast for our product.

02:20:52.600 And she didn't stand up when the No More Pipelines bill was passed.

02:20:55.780 Well, you know that's not true, Danielle.

02:20:57.180 You actually know that's not true.

02:20:59.140 You commented on the fact that I made submissions to the Senate.

02:21:02.420 You know that that's what I did on both of those issues.

02:21:05.080 It was too late. And I must tell you, where do you think Justin Trudeau got the idea for just transition and for an emissions cap and for a carbon tax?

02:21:11.860 He got it from Ms. Notley when she was premier.

02:21:14.200 And she's going to continue to implement these same kind of policies.

02:21:16.740 And she's going to walk in lockstep with Justin Trudeau on making sure that they get implemented.

02:21:21.280 And that's only going to harm our economy.

02:21:22.680 and basically that is danielle smith trying to link the ndp to people and ideas and parties that

02:21:38.380 are not at all popular in alberta right now and i think something like that is probably

02:21:43.920 not only valid as far as a critique but i think it's genuinely true

02:21:49.000 well yeah i mean in politics we always say fight your least popular opponent you know you you have

02:21:56.080 the choice of fighting your local candidate your your opposing political party or your political

02:22:01.860 party leader but in alberta of course we have a ready-made opponent who is deeply unpopular in

02:22:06.540 this province that's justin trudeau and his liberal government and so i think you saw it

02:22:12.080 tonight danielspeth very consciously making that effort to link justin trudeau to rachel notley

02:22:17.560 saying how much they agree, how often they cooperated, how much she supported him.

02:22:23.680 And to be honest, I think they probably would have been better off starting that initiative well before the election.

02:22:29.260 I think they should have been doing it from the moment that Danielle had become premier.

02:22:33.100 But as we say, better late than never.

02:22:34.640 And I think it was an effective strategy in this debate to try and say, look,

02:22:39.000 Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau, her best friend in Ottawa, don't like Alberta.

02:22:43.060 They don't like oil and gas.

02:22:44.480 They don't want us to be succeed, and they want to shut down our most important industry.

02:22:49.780 Yeah, Rachel, I know they haven't been getting police to remove you from Rachel Notley's press conferences,

02:22:55.900 so you've been able to hear what she said and hear what reporters have asked her about.

02:23:00.420 Does she give a coherent position on where she stands on oil and gas, or is she kind of equivocal about it?

02:23:09.080 She's been pretty ambiguous.

02:23:10.420 as she's presenting herself during this election as very pro-energy during the debate she says

02:23:15.040 she's for energy jobs and she's also saying that she's for you know reducing emissions and the jobs

02:23:19.840 that would come along with that which ironically is something that danielle smith says all the

02:23:23.760 time danielle smith isn't against reducing emissions she often touts different ways that

02:23:28.280 we could do it in the province while also supporting our energy sector so they would

02:23:32.320 actually be quite aligned with that during this leadership race or sorry rather during this

02:23:36.700 election as well but again this is just another instance of Rachel Notley not running on her

02:23:42.060 actual record as premier and us not even being sure if she's meaning what she's saying or if

02:23:46.600 she's just saying stuff to appeal to moderates and not to come across as a radical someone who

02:23:51.620 would be likely much more aligned with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and her federal counterpart

02:23:55.660 Jagmeet Singh and even at one point during the debate I thought this was particularly funny

02:23:59.860 Daniel Smith actually said to Rachel Notley oh well Justin Trudeau got his idea for just

02:24:04.280 transition from you so certainly she was doing her best to sort of stick that to not me we'll

02:24:09.580 see if it works i'm very curious to see what happens on may 29th both of these leaders are

02:24:14.000 trying so hard to present themselves as rational trustworthy reasonable minded moderate leaders

02:24:19.600 and i'm just very interested to see what's going to happen i don't think anyone can genuinely say

02:24:24.260 they know at this point with the polls being as close as they are but it's definitely a nail

02:24:28.240 biter of an election. Yeah, let's be a bit more forward looking here. The election is on Monday,

02:24:34.640 May 29th. And I should tell you right now that we are going to have a very special live election

02:24:41.540 night show for you on Monday, May 29th. I'll be hosting that from Alberta. We'll have Rachel

02:24:47.560 playing a very key role. I don't know what we decided for William yet. So let us know in the

02:24:51.320 comments what we should do with him. I think he's invited on account of he's our COO. But we also

02:24:58.220 have some other guests and panelists and of course the results and I always get very nervous about

02:25:04.180 this because you may remember the infamous uh what was it 2021 uh or 2020 no 2021 conservative

02:25:11.160 leadership race what year was that was that no it was 2020 because the election was in 2021

02:25:15.420 and it was the like conservative leadership race that was supposed to be an hour and ended up going

02:25:20.080 until like three in the morning uh before they determined that Aaron O'Toole was the leader for

02:25:24.880 18 months or whatever. So in any event, we are hoping that the elections will not be as long

02:25:29.640 because I will need to fill my True North coffee mug with a lot of coffee to get through it. But

02:25:34.360 that's going to be coming up on May 29th. Let me just ask both of you here, what do you think will

02:25:40.440 happen in the next little while? Because obviously elections can sometimes be derailed in the week

02:25:48.260 and a half, two weeks before election day. That's when I think a lot of the times if there's a really

02:25:52.820 terrible story that's going to drop it tends to come out we also know that leaders will really

02:25:58.620 focus on those key battlegrounds and I would be surprised at this point and you may have different

02:26:03.480 thoughts on this Rachel if either Rachel Notley or Danielle Smith really leaves Alberta for the

02:26:07.640 next 11 days yeah so just before I get into that I just wanted to mention to the viewers that one

02:26:12.940 of my friends who is a Liberal Party staffer he works for one of the Liberal MPs in Alberta

02:26:17.340 texted me and said huge win for Danielle tonight so I think across the board people are generally

02:26:22.800 accepting that she was the victor of tonight's debate for the reasons that we've just discussed

02:26:27.220 in length. As for what I expect to see over the next week I think that we can expect some

02:26:31.780 opposition research from the NDP dropping on Danielle Smith and some of her other candidates

02:26:36.580 they're going to be trying to make them look crazy and untrustworthy and hypocritical in their

02:26:40.740 comments. I think that Danielle Smith is going to have to focus very heavily on pushing the UCP's

02:26:46.640 messaging and not getting off topic. Of course any day as a party that you spend responding to

02:26:52.060 opposition research and attacks it's pretty much a day wasted on the campaign trials because then

02:26:56.900 simply that disagreement will dominate headlines also daniel smith hasn't really spent that much

02:27:01.960 time in battleground calgary largely due to the fires that happened up north she had to at the

02:27:07.820 beginning of the campaign head up north to attend to those fires and that was the appropriate thing

02:27:12.440 for her to do but she has been removed from calgary for much of the campaign so far and then

02:27:17.500 she spent two days in her riding as i mentioned which i know many people in the party thought

02:27:21.560 wasn't a good idea and we're not too happy about. So now there's a week left I think we're going to

02:27:26.200 see here coming out and doing some campaigning. I think the party's been a little bit quiet on

02:27:30.380 some of their campaigns. They've held a couple announcements which were non-announcements just

02:27:34.220 sort of attacking the NDP's record and their policies. So I think we need to see just a

02:27:38.520 consistent straightforward campaign. I expect we'll see some basic policies being announced

02:27:43.580 and maybe one more big one between now and then. But I think really the important thing for

02:27:47.840 daniela just to come out here and to get some face time with the voters rachel notley has been

02:27:52.460 campaigning very hard they're doing about two events a day right now they've pretty much just

02:27:56.600 been in calgary as well a little bit up in edmonton a little bit down in lethbridge but

02:28:00.300 you're 100 right they the campaign is totally focused on calgary and i think that's where we

02:28:05.840 can expect to see things dominate in the next week what are you looking out for expecting hoping for

02:28:11.280 fearing in the next 11 days uh william so this is the period of the campaign that's the worst

02:28:18.140 it's because you've almost announced everything you've got if you've had to put out your costed

02:28:23.440 platform you don't really have any more magic things to pull out of the bag and talk about

02:28:29.400 so now you have wait what's this look under your chairs everyone that's right you get a tax cut

02:28:36.200 and you get a tax cut but so the problem is you have to be very disciplined at this point you

02:28:42.360 have to stay on message you have to avoid distraction and i will say this is where

02:28:48.060 danielle smith traditionally has had some challenges she likes she does get drawn off

02:28:53.940 her message sometimes we say she wins the debate tonight she didn't she did very good but that was

02:28:58.580 an hour now she has 11 days that she has to try and stay on message and the democrats are going

02:29:03.920 to continue to drop examples of her or her candidates saying things that are going to

02:29:11.440 rub Alberta voters possibly the wrong way. So if I were her, I would be trying to do

02:29:17.860 every positive photo op I could think about between now and election day, serving coffee

02:29:23.140 at a Tim Hortons, planting a tree with a Boy Scout or a Girl Guide troop, whatever she

02:29:29.460 can come up with and whenever she's asked she has to be disciplined enough to say this election

02:29:34.420 is about four terrible years of rachel notley just as she was when she was premier last time

02:29:40.120 or four more years of opportunity and economic growth under under a ucp government and she has

02:29:46.520 to be disciplined enough not to get pulled off that message so these 11 days are going to feel

02:29:51.040 like a long time for those two parties well said rachel and william it's great to have you both

02:29:58.140 tuned in this evening i'll just make one final plug here uh the work we do at true north having

02:30:02.800 rachel out there covering the campaign having uh william and i here tonight uh doing our election

02:30:08.380 night show all of the coverage we do at true north is only made possible because of people

02:30:12.180 who support the work that we're doing and tonight we had our a little bit of fun with donors over

02:30:17.320 150 getting the true north coffee mug i don't know if we got rid of the last i think we still have

02:30:22.660 the one more left. So there's a chance to snag that by heading over to donate.tnc.news. Donate.tnc.news.

02:30:31.220 Well supplies last, William not included. But we do thank you so much, all of you, for your generous

02:30:36.960 support of independent media and of True North. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. So

02:30:40.960 that does it for us. I know we'll have Alberta Roundup on Saturday. We'll have the Andrew Lawton

02:30:45.760 show tomorrow and we'll have True North's live election night show on May 29th. So whether you

02:30:52.020 are an albertan or a hopeful albertan or someone in another province for whom alberta might be

02:30:56.700 calling we invite you to tune in on that for the results the commentary the analysis the jokes the

02:31:01.920 fundraising plugs and all that a big thanks to sean and harrison and steve and phil for all their

02:31:08.440 help behind the scenes tonight and for candace malcolm giving us this great platform here at

02:31:13.680 true north i know she is watching and i know we'll be back soon enough at true north and she

02:31:18.360 appreciates all your well wishes and kind words. So that does it for us. Thanks again, everyone.

02:31:23.660 God bless you and have a wonderful night.

02:31:48.360 Thank you.

02:32:18.360 Outro Music

Juno News - May 19, 2023

The Alberta Leaders’ Debate 2023

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