Juno News - November 29, 2021


The legacy media was completely wrong about Jason Kenney


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

186.57864

Word Count

3,721

Sentence Count

191


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The legacy media in Alberta were completely wrong about Premier Jason Kenney.
00:00:03.920 They told us that he was finished. They told us that his base hated him.
00:00:07.360 But the recent convention, the recent United Conservative Convention,
00:00:10.800 proved them completely wrong. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:18.740 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program. Thank you for your ongoing support
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00:00:49.700 It really helps us in the ratings and in the discoverability of the podcast. Okay, so The
00:00:55.060 Legacy Media has spent months telling us that Premier Jason Kenney's days were numbered. They
00:01:00.140 told us that he was the most hated politician in the country. They told us that his own party,
00:01:04.820 the United Conservatives, were furious and that his days were numbered. They drummed up stories about
00:01:09.680 caucus revolts. They told us that his polling numbers were dismal. But then something kind of
00:01:14.840 remarkable happened. There was a convention. And at the UCP convention, Jason Kenney got a hero's
00:01:20.600 welcome. He got multiple standing ovations. And it was pretty clear to anyone watching that he did
00:01:25.740 have the support of his base. And what we saw was a pretty united party. So why did the media tell us
00:01:31.020 otherwise? What else aren't they telling the truth about? Well, I want to bring in a political insider
00:01:37.180 in Alberta to help us sort of understand the landscape in Alberta and why there is this divide
00:01:42.380 between what the media, what the fancy people are telling us, and what seems to be the reality on the
00:01:47.120 ground. So I'm pleased to be joined today by Vitor Marciano. Vitor is a longtime conservative
00:01:52.060 strategist. He was a senior advisor to former Wildrose leaders, Danielle Smith and Brian Jean.
00:01:57.180 Vitor was also in Alberta, national councillor for the Conservative Party of Canada, the federal party.
00:02:01.620 And he is now an energy advocacy consultant based in Edmonton. So Vitor, thank you so much for joining
00:02:07.120 us today. Thank you for having me on, Candice. It's an interesting topic.
00:02:11.500 Yes. So tell us about it. I mean, I presume you were at the convention. What was it like?
00:02:16.080 I actually wasn't this time. And I had intended to be and then a couple of things got in the way
00:02:21.000 and I didn't intend it. I think the convention showed that the media gets parts of it wrong
00:02:26.780 in the context that they've looked in the wrong places for what they expect to be the drama.
00:02:35.060 To use your words, the fancy people inside the United Conservative Party are still very much with
00:02:40.120 Jason Kenney. So of the remaining members, of the ones that are, you know, keen enough,
00:02:50.040 participatory enough that they attend events, certainly at $350 a pop, Jason Kenney has roughly
00:02:57.220 65% of those people. And he did decently well enough. The other thing that Jason Kenney benefited
00:03:03.320 from, benefited from is that grassroots conservatives are actually generally quite polite. They're rude
00:03:10.460 to socialists, but they're quite polite to people in their own party. So when Jason talked about parts
00:03:16.420 of the economy doing well, he did get a standing ovation. When he invited people to salute farmers,
00:03:21.560 he got a standing ovation. When he invited people to salute healthcare workers, he got a standing
00:03:25.620 ovation. He won one of the votes that really mattered to him in that room, not by very much,
00:03:34.160 only by 57%. I'm going to remind everybody that when Ralph Klein got 56% in 2006, he resigned from
00:03:40.680 politics. So there's a mix of things. He won the party elections, the board elections,
00:03:47.720 where the people are going to set the rules for a leadership review that's going to come one way or
00:03:52.080 another in the next four or five months, maybe as little as three months. He won that election.
00:03:59.380 He had more people at the convention who were there supporting him than not. But that convention
00:04:05.140 had an awful lot of lobbyists, party insiders, government staffers, a lot of people who make
00:04:11.460 their money from government decisions, and he did okay on it. He didn't do as well, and it was pretty
00:04:16.020 obvious from the discussions I've had with people who were there and people who were running,
00:04:19.800 you know, people whose daily incomes aren't attached to the government. You know, they were
00:04:26.060 quite grumpy, and the votes went against him in some ways. Jason Kenney's a resilient fighter,
00:04:33.020 and he's going to fight this thing. I mean, I think, you know, for anybody who thought he was just going
00:04:37.660 to quit, and that he was going to surrender to the fact that his polling numbers are bad,
00:04:42.540 and that his party's not raising any money, and that party membership is down dramatically.
00:04:49.000 You know, Jason Kenney's going to fight. It's still a hell of a fight, because the polling numbers are
00:04:54.540 bad. The fundraising is horrible relative to the, you know, when the NDP is raising more money from
00:05:00.660 big donors and small donors than the UCP in Alberta, that's a problem. But Jason Kenney's going to fight,
00:05:06.340 because that's what Jason Kenney does, and, you know, there's a possibility he'll survive a leadership
00:05:12.320 review in the spring. He survived an AGM that really wasn't necessarily geared up to take him
00:05:19.380 out. When Jason Kenney admitted about a month and a half ago that he would allow for a leadership review
00:05:24.120 at some point in the spring, the anti-Jason Kenney side of the UCP pretty much stopped organizing for
00:05:30.720 this AGM, because if you're going to tell people to save $350 to attend an AGM to do something,
00:05:37.520 tell them to save it for the one that matters, rather than the one that was relatively minor.
00:05:41.420 Having said that, you know, Team Kenney's feeling pretty buoyant.
00:05:45.180 They certainly are, and I think that part of the thing that I took away from it was that the media
00:05:50.740 were there kind of drumming up that Kenney was going to get booed, and that he was going to,
00:05:54.260 something, you know, dramatic was going to happen. There was like some anticipated
00:05:58.760 Schadenfreude, like they wanted it. They wanted Kenney to fail miserably, and what we saw was
00:06:03.180 seemingly a pretty united group, and I think a lot of that, like you said, maybe the politeness of
00:06:08.700 the base, but also just that, you know, in the context of a party, there can be infighting,
00:06:14.820 but when you're facing the public, you know, there is sort of an instinct to have a united front,
00:06:19.980 and, you know, when it comes to the potential of an NDP government, you know, even people who don't
00:06:26.760 really like Jason Kenney, aren't really happy about it, the idea of that could lead to sort of,
00:06:32.300 you know, doubling down in support of your own guy.
00:06:36.080 The potential, like, in some ways, the fact that Rachel's doing well in the polls is one of the
00:06:42.560 things that helps Jason, because people are like, oh my God, we'll have to fight them off,
00:06:46.720 and we have to think about that. The problem becomes, you know, what happens if the base decides
00:06:53.660 that Jason Kenney can't beat Rachel, and he isn't getting out of the way, and that's where things
00:06:58.200 can get really complicated. I think you're right on. The sort of person who pays $350 to go to a
00:07:04.180 party convention, by and large, doesn't want to create a stink that the media will use to damage
00:07:09.740 the party.
00:07:10.200 Right. Exactly. Okay, well, let's go on then. So some people might say that Jason's brand is
00:07:16.260 too damaged, and that he can't successfully take on Rachel Notley, and so you do sort of have these
00:07:21.800 other players in the wing. We saw that Brian Jean is running to be an MLA up in Fort McMurray. He
00:07:26.600 was, of course, a former leader of the Wild Rose Party, and we had Danielle Smith, the sort of
00:07:30.600 founding leader of the party, hinting on a podcast that she might be interested in running as well.
00:07:36.340 So what do you think of this sort of idea that there are some Wild Rose contenders in the wings
00:07:41.160 of the party?
00:07:42.340 Oh, I think not only are there Wild Rose contenders, I think there's possibly one or two contenders
00:07:45.860 from cabinet. Casey Maddu, who has been out campaigning against Brian Jean, has been whispering
00:07:51.780 to people that, well, you know, I'll be the next leader. So it serves my purposes to campaign
00:07:56.660 against Brian Jean. You know, Casey is the Alberta's Minister of Justice. There's talk about Alberta's
00:08:03.920 Finance Minister considering a run. Doug Schweitzer, the Economic Development Minister, is considering
00:08:08.900 a run. People are starting to build their teams and put pieces together. And, you know, I'm going to,
00:08:13.700 you know, put it on the line in that I've worked for Danielle, I've worked for Brian, I still talk
00:08:18.380 to Brian very regularly. I've done some volunteer work for him on things related to his current
00:08:23.740 nomination up in Fort McMurray. People are positioning and they're getting ready because they look at
00:08:29.780 those polling numbers and they look at the fundamentals and they see a government that's in trouble.
00:08:37.680 And you would, governments in trouble usually start changing what they're doing to try to get a better
00:08:46.120 result. And we haven't seen that from Jason Kenney. Jason's at risk of falling into Einstein's
00:08:53.560 definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different
00:08:58.280 result. There's been very little innovation or change in approach on the part of the Kennedy
00:09:04.780 government. I, they're very much banking on the economy bouncing back and that's solving all
00:09:11.080 problems. And I think their problems run a little deeper than COVID and the economy. I think their
00:09:18.980 problems kind of have a little bit to do with style and approach and presentation to Albertans with
00:09:24.180 the Albertans feeling like they maybe didn't get the government they were expecting. And so normally
00:09:31.920 you'd want to change a few things. You want to show signs that you're getting stuff. So far, that's
00:09:39.920 been hard to see. Interesting. So what do you think, Vitor, then about this idea that, you know, we had
00:09:44.480 this great merger, right? Jason Kenney came to, came from federal politics to provincial politics in
00:09:50.500 Alberta. He had this really ambitious goal of uniting these two fractious parties and, and, and, and he
00:09:56.940 sort of did the impossible, which was that he not only managed to win the progressive conservative
00:10:01.760 nomination, nomination in a party that was really kind of closed and not interested in, in what he,
00:10:06.420 what he was doing. Then having these two parties vote to merge and then running for the leader of that
00:10:12.560 merged party. I mean, he, he, it was a tremendous accomplishment at the time. It seemed like Kenny was
00:10:17.160 unstoppable. But, you know, now with his, his, his sort of poor governance record and some major
00:10:22.360 issues that he's had, do you think these two parties are bound to stick together even after,
00:10:28.380 say, if, if hypothetically Jason and Kenny didn't survive or, or even with him, do you see those,
00:10:33.360 those fault lines coming, coming apart? If Jason leaves, if Jason is removed by the membership and
00:10:39.600 leadership review, I think the party holds together. Because I think the members want it to hold
00:10:47.460 together. I think there's actually a strong demand for unity and a strong willingness on the part of,
00:10:52.420 of lots of the volunteers and lots of the grassroots to find ways to hold the party together.
00:10:58.740 But there's a risk that if Jason holds on and holds on the way he's been holding on so far,
00:11:05.860 which is lots of effort with the lobbyists, outsider money, you know, people who make their
00:11:13.380 living from government propping him up. A lot of this sort of anti grassroots stuff that's bubbling up
00:11:20.160 through, through the, the channels, then you're going to see an awful lot of sort of the wild rosers
00:11:25.640 that reform side of wild rose that we need to do politics differently. The old part of the PCs that
00:11:35.720 didn't like all of the insiders and the lobbying and what, you know, Rick Bell calls Tory land also
00:11:41.420 will get upset. And, and then the party could fracture that there's a possibility that it's
00:11:47.720 there's an awful lot of people. And I, you know, I consider myself in this category that wanted this
00:11:54.100 party to be the non crazy side of wild rose and the non crooked side of the PCs.
00:12:00.220 And right now, Jason Kenney is being propped up by the crooked side of the PCs and the crazy side
00:12:07.140 of wild rose. And the funny part is the crazy side of wild rose was always this tiny minority in wild
00:12:11.880 rose that all got all the media attention. You know, the coup d'etat people and, and, and, and sort of
00:12:17.400 weird, but they're all in for Jason. The lobbyists are all in for Jason. And Jason's losing his connection
00:12:25.020 with sort of, you know, the guy who gives $40 and the guy who puts up the lawn signs and the guy who
00:12:31.180 volunteers to be a writing association treasurer, you know, all of which are jobs that have like, there's no glory
00:12:36.700 attached to it. You do it because you do it out of a commitment to the cause. Those are the people that
00:12:42.620 are mad at Jason and you know, they won't spend $350 on a convention until it really matters, but then they
00:12:50.540 might show up and spend $350 on a convention. He needs to get ahead of that.
00:12:55.860 Okay. Well, I want to, I want to switch gears just a little Vitor, because one of the things
00:13:00.120 that I noticed about the UCP convention was, um, the absence of someone rather important to
00:13:06.680 conservative politics in the country. And that is Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the conservative
00:13:10.360 party. Typically a, uh, provincial conservative convention is great stomping grounds for a leader,
00:13:17.400 especially a leader like Aaron O'Toole, who sort of struggled to connect with the base. And he's
00:13:20.840 dealing with something like a little mini revolt in his own caucus about whether or not he has
00:13:25.860 legitimacy after losing that election. So were you surprised at all that Aaron O'Toole didn't bother to
00:13:31.000 show up or do you know anything about why he wasn't there? I don't know anything in particular,
00:13:35.780 but I can only speculate that he looked at the news stories and said, Oh, I don't want to be in the
00:13:39.860 room if a bun fight's going to start. And he should have probably been aware that it's rare to have
00:13:44.440 bun fights in Alberta. You know, even, even when the party dumped Ralph that 56% vote date, it was a
00:13:50.380 complete surprise to people. There, there was no sense that Ralph was going to get 56 until the room
00:13:54.780 quietly gave him 56. Um, I think Aaron was missing that. I think Aaron's been missing an awful lot of
00:14:00.280 opportunities to, uh, to connect with people and he needs to fix that pretty quickly. Um, I think he's
00:14:08.300 getting a little bit of a break from his caucus. The, the, the organized revolt against him is pretty
00:14:12.840 minor and relatively gentle, but I also think that there's an awful lot of members of, of his caucus
00:14:20.340 and all awful lot of members of the party that are looking to see a change in approach from him.
00:14:27.400 And so far they haven't seen it. And that that's a risk for him going forward. He's if, if he doesn't
00:14:33.720 sort of change how he does things, change how his inner circle works, change how he reaches out,
00:14:39.480 there's a risk. He's going to end up in sort of Jason Kenney territory with lots of caucus
00:14:44.200 revolts and with lots of grassroots revolts happening at the same time. What did you think
00:14:48.280 of a statement that he made on election night where he said that conservatives have to have
00:14:51.960 the courage to change? I know that, uh, Alberta MP Shannon Stubbs was particularly irritated because
00:14:57.480 she talked about to the media, how she didn't know what that meant and she didn't like it. What do you
00:15:02.600 think of this idea that, that Aaron O'Toole sort of taking the party in a more sort of progressive,
00:15:07.000 um, Toronto friendly direction and, and, and, and, you know, he's happy to sacrifice the more
00:15:11.880 libertarian and, um, sort of Western Canadian elements that, that, that make up the base of the
00:15:16.600 party. Well, listen, he, he undertook that strategy. It was a dangerous strategy. It did not seem to work
00:15:24.520 because pretty much there were very few writings where we picked up votes in an awful lot of places.
00:15:32.040 We lost votes. And if we'd held onto the same number of votes we'd had with Andrew Scheer in
00:15:36.360 every writing, we would have won more seats. So the, the strategy that the, the addition by
00:15:42.680 subtraction thing that wasn't working. Um, if you're going to invite conservatives to embrace
00:15:49.800 change, you've got to frame that change in a positive, interesting way that has a long run
00:15:55.720 positivity, optimism to it. Uh, Aaron O'Toole has failed to do that. Um, you know, his poet,
00:16:05.160 his political poetry isn't very good. Um, his adjustments to policy matters that might've been
00:16:13.960 things, you know, that would have been reminiscent, say, of some of the clever things that Trump did,
00:16:19.000 some of the very clever things that Boris Johnson did when Aaron O'Toole did them, they came across
00:16:25.160 as lacking sincerity. They looked like a caricature of what Boris did. Um, you've got to go out and
00:16:33.880 do these things and then talk about them in a way that's convincing. And I could see how some of the
00:16:42.360 elements of the strategy that he's trying to do have the potential to work, but it's not,
00:16:48.600 you have to commit to them. You have to do them in a careful way. You have to speak to them in a way
00:16:53.400 that connects with voters. It's not happening so far. Can you give an example of that? Like some of
00:16:57.320 the things that he tried that didn't come off very authentic? Well, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump
00:17:04.440 did a very good job of appealing to blue collar unionized private sector workers.
00:17:09.240 They talked to the workers. Somehow Aaron O'Toole went in that direction, but it looked like,
00:17:17.800 sounded like, and the way the policy was written, he was talking to the union bosses.
00:17:23.880 That's, that's the, the missing of it. It's like, talk to the workers. Um, I could go, I have a,
00:17:29.880 I have a lengthy lecture that I could give on this. It's about connecting to people and their sense of
00:17:34.920 community and the place where they live and work. And Trump figured it out. Boris figured it out
00:17:41.560 when he breached the, you know, the, the red wall in the north. Uh, Aaron O'Toole did a caricature of
00:17:48.760 it rather than thinking about what are the things you need to say and how do you need to say it to win
00:17:52.760 over key voters in, in different parts of the country. I, I completely agree. It was like, he,
00:17:59.320 he, he didn't so much do it as he just talked about how he was doing it. He told the media that his
00:18:03.320 strategy was to go after blue collar working class voters. So the media wrote about it in like an,
00:18:08.120 in like an intellectual academic way. But then when it came to the actual
00:18:11.800 policies that would appeal to them, it was like O'Toole was afraid of that because he didn't want
00:18:16.600 the negative press that, that would come from the elites in Toronto and how they would interpret
00:18:20.600 him doing that kind of thing. So I, yeah, I totally get what you're saying. I agree.
00:18:24.280 And Candace, it's not just the policies. It's the way you talk to people and it's the language that you use.
00:18:31.560 And it's the intentional divisions that you create. And you actually have to go out and create
00:18:37.720 divisions. You have, you have to talk about the fact that, you know, a unionized worker in Sudbury
00:18:45.160 is not the same thing as a public sector worker in downtown Toronto. They're both unionized, but it's
00:18:50.920 a very different thing. And you can appeal to them and you can, you know, you can speak against anything.
00:18:56.040 I think if, if you're going to practice the politics of addition by subtraction,
00:19:00.120 then I think the subtraction needs to be that you give up on Toronto proper, Vancouver proper,
00:19:06.280 Montreal proper, you give up on Edmonton center and Calgary center. And you start talking in ways
00:19:11.880 that say, yeah, we'll never win there, but we can win every seat that's in the north and we can win
00:19:17.880 every seat that's rural and we can win every seat that's resource-based. And there's an awful lot of
00:19:22.520 those seats that are available to be picked up. And then as you pick up those seats, the nature of
00:19:27.160 the fight in the suburbs, which is where the majorities are won and lost, they change.
00:19:32.360 So there's, there's, there's space for that. Super, super interesting stuff, Vitor. We'll have to pick
00:19:36.520 up on this conversation another day. I really appreciate your time. Vitor Marciano, thank you
00:19:39.960 so much for joining us. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.