Juno News - True North's coverage of the Alberta Referendum and Local Elections.

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00:04:30.000 Hello and welcome to True North's live election night show.

00:04:49.860 It is our great pleasure to have you tuned in as we break down a really exciting night for the province of Alberta.

00:04:56.480 We have municipal elections across the province from Calgary and Edmonton to Red Deer to Grand

00:05:01.980 Prairie, right down to Bentley and Duchess. And if you have to point those out on a map,

00:05:06.460 we can get to that as the night goes on. We also have Senate nominee elections. We have

00:05:10.800 referenda at the provincial level and also at the municipal level. Then we have more importantly,

00:05:15.700 a great cast of characters to help get us through this evening. My friend, colleague and boss,

00:05:20.500 Candace Malcolm, True North's founder and senior fellow is here, as well as William

00:05:25.140 McBath, who normally works behind the scenes as True North's Managing Director, but has decided to emerge from the shadows and join us as our Chief Alberta Correspondent this evening.

00:05:34.300 William, Candice, thanks for joining us on this great adventure through Alberta's elections. It's good to have you both here.

00:05:40.000 Great. Well, thank you for that wonderful introduction, Andrew. I particularly enjoyed your description of William, who is our resident Albertan.

00:05:48.700 It's funny because we have a lot of people on the True North team, some people like myself. I lived in Alberta for many years.

00:05:54.200 I went to the University of Alberta and I lived in Calgary after I graduated, but I don't live

00:05:58.260 in Alberta. So William is our sort of token Albertan on staff, and he's here to help us

00:06:03.400 make sense of everything going on in that wonderful province you live in, William. So it's

00:06:07.420 great to have you here. Excited for the night. So let's start, William, with the lay of the land

00:06:13.900 here of what's actually being voted on. I tried to give the top line description here, but we have

00:06:18.880 a lot of things happening today. You're absolutely right. So across the province and every

00:06:24.900 municipality, we are having municipal elections. So people voting for mayors and reeves and county

00:06:30.880 councillors and city councillors. But on top of that, Albertans are also voting in several

00:06:36.660 referenda. There's a referenda to remove equalization from the constitution. Many Albertans

00:06:43.280 feel that this is an unfair program that penalizes Alberta and transfers a lot of money to the rest

00:06:50.140 of the Federation, sometimes inappropriately so. Albertans are being asked to vote on that.

00:06:55.500 They're being asked whether or not they want to move permanently to daylight savings time.

00:07:00.400 And I actually think it will confuse a lot of people when they discover that they'll never

00:07:04.980 really know what time it is in Alberta anymore. But a lot of people feel very strongly on that.

00:07:10.120 they really don't like that spring ahead. And Calgarians are voting whether or not to put

00:07:14.880 fluoride back in their water. And so a lot of people don't know fluoride was taken out of

00:07:19.140 Calgary water about 10 years ago. They're being asked to put it in. Now, on top of that, they're

00:07:23.080 also being asked to choose Senate nominees. Alberta traditionally has elected its Senate

00:07:28.640 representatives and has done so for the last 30 years. But the prime minister of the day doesn't

00:07:33.640 always choose to appoint those people. And it has been not a coincidence that conservative prime

00:07:39.040 ministers, much more likely to respect the democratic wishes of Albertans than liberal

00:07:43.500 prime ministers. Well, that's a great rundown of what's happening, William. Thanks for that.

00:07:49.580 Let me turn to you on this, Candace, from a True North perspective. You mentioned earlier that

00:07:53.500 we're not all from Alberta here. I know we love the province. We've all done a lot of work in

00:07:57.780 Alberta, covering Alberta. Why are we doing this show? Why is it important that we have all the

00:08:02.680 people together that we're going to have tonight? Well, I think there's a couple of reasons. The

00:08:06.660 First is that we have fun doing these live shows.

00:08:09.220 We did a couple during the election, and they're just a great way to connect with our audience,

00:08:13.400 to connect with the country, really, to try to have our finger on the pulse of what's going on out there.

00:08:20.620 And, you know, during the election, every time we spoke to people from Alberta,

00:08:24.400 they sort of emphasized that these elections were coming.

00:08:27.200 And in some ways they were, I will say, more consequential,

00:08:30.180 because obviously whoever the prime minister and whoever is running the country has a huge impact on everyone in the country.

00:08:36.120 However, Albertans didn't really feel like they were going to have their voice heard in the federal election.

00:08:41.000 And they didn't. They by and large voted conservative and we still got a liberal prime minister.

00:08:46.360 So to many of the people that we were talking to in Alberta, they sort of said, you know, these are the ones that we feel like we'll have we will have our voice heard.

00:08:55.180 And it's sort of interesting, William, to hear you say, talk a little bit about how Alberta elects its own senators, because you're right.

00:09:02.600 That's not something that's respected. We don't we don't see Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, appointing the democratically elected senators in Alberta.

00:09:10.680 He instead chooses to vote to appoint his own independent senators who are really just liberals.

00:09:18.080 And so it's interesting that there's another element here with the equalization.

00:09:22.120 I'll say that is another big reason why we want to cover this, because it's so interesting.

00:09:25.540 I've been writing about equalization for a very, very long time and the system doesn't feel fair.

00:09:30.420 It never has. It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially in this environment where everyone is suffering from a strained health care system.

00:09:38.200 Everyone needs more resources, every province. And so the idea that we're still pulling money out of a province like Alberta and putting it into provinces that, you know, have in some ways higher standards of living,

00:09:50.420 or at least they can deliver their services a lot cheaper. It just doesn't make sense.

00:09:54.380 So I think there are a lot of really important questions here that do matter to the entire country.

00:09:59.920 And I think, of course, it is that equalization question that makes us the most interested.

00:10:06.340 You know, everyone around the country is tuning in to watch.

00:10:09.340 And we know there won't be a direct impact.

00:10:11.240 They're not voting to remove the equalization.

00:10:13.960 They don't have that power.

00:10:14.980 However, I think it will send such a big signal and it will be such an important dialogue

00:10:19.900 that we will begin having if Albertans choose to vote yes on that question and yes to eliminate

00:10:26.640 equalization.

00:10:28.200 Yeah, that's a great point.

00:10:29.680 And I will say at the risk of thumping our own chest here, we've been covering Western alienation and the Western independence movement of those two are not synonymous for reasons I'm sure we'll get into this evening.

00:10:40.640 But we've been covering the Western alienation issue extensively.

00:10:44.560 And I'd say we're probably one of the only, if not the only non-Western media outlet that has been devoting that attention because we realize for all the reasons that you just mentioned, Candace, Alberta is very important in confederation.

00:10:58.120 And it's important to have this harmony across the country in the federal system.

00:11:02.860 And the equalization referendum has always been held up by a lot of people as being that

00:11:07.820 first step towards a more serious discussion of, let's say we do this, we vote on this

00:11:13.260 and see how the federal government responds.

00:11:15.360 And then we can sort of decide from there.

00:11:17.280 But I wanted to ask you, William, as someone who's actually in Alberta, you live there,

00:11:21.020 you've obviously had your finger on the pulse more directly than other people have here.

00:11:25.360 Is the equalization referendum a symbol of something bigger? Or do you think by and large, people are voting based on that very specific question of should we seek to change the Constitution to get equalization out of there?

00:11:39.000 You know, that's a really interesting question. I think when we see the results start to come in,

00:11:46.020 I think it may give us some idea of what was in the forefront of Albertans' minds when they voted

00:11:51.240 on equalization. For some, it is a rallying cry that says, you know, we are tired of being taken

00:11:58.360 for granted. We're tired of the federal government, particularly under liberal prime ministers,

00:12:02.360 ignoring the concerns of Albertans. We're sick of policies which seem targeted to harm our economy,

00:12:09.400 thinking about pipeline bans, the forcing of a carbon tax onto Alberta when it explicitly

00:12:15.020 rejected that idea. For others, they think it is a legal method that they can use. If the

00:12:21.980 Supreme Court will have a duty to enforce a negotiation, the federal government will have

00:12:26.960 to negotiate in good faith. That being said, that's never been tested before. We're not 100%

00:12:31.640 sure what happens when a non-cessation referendum question comes up for a vote. For others, though,

00:12:39.180 it's a referendum more on Jason Kenney's leadership. And I think because this was his

00:12:44.080 initiative, championed by him and his government, for people who are mad at Jason Kenney or who are

00:12:49.560 disappointed in him, who think that the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't been as good as

00:12:54.820 it should have been, some people may choose to vote no just because they don't like the premier.

00:12:59.680 So it'll be interesting to see how the vote goes as we start to get those results in.

00:13:03.720 Well, and also we heard from Nahid Nenshi, the outgoing mayor of Calgary, sort of going on a little Twitter rampage, saying to vote against the initiative to vote no.

00:13:14.540 William, do you think that that will have an impact?

00:13:16.720 I mean, to me, in my mind, it's like people liked Jason Kenney to begin with.

00:13:21.760 The reason that Jason Kenney won in such a landslide was because he had this solid sort of fiscal conservative underpinnings and he had that experience in the Harper government and he sort of talked the talk.

00:13:31.920 And so in my mind, people who even people who have been disappointed with the way that he's governed, you know, they still have that underlying fiscal conservative mindset and worldview.

00:13:42.400 And so it wouldn't so much be about Jason Kenney. It would more be about what's fair in Canada.

00:13:48.580 And if Jason Kenney can't communicate that, then what better way to do it directly?

00:13:52.220 That's my opinion.

00:13:53.220 But what do you think about that?

00:13:55.940 Well, you're absolutely right that our soon-to-be former mayor did take a couple parting shots on his way out the door.

00:14:02.140 Sometimes politicians, when they retire, do so gracefully.

00:14:05.720 But that wasn't Nengshi's style.

00:14:07.960 He basically used his last message to Calgarians to attack Jeremy Farkas, one of the leading mayoral candidates,

00:14:15.080 and to tell people they should vote no on the equalization referendum to quote unquote spite

00:14:19.780 Jason Kenney. I don't actually think you should make policy decisions just to spite someone but

00:14:26.100 I guess maybe the argument could be made that we're doing this to spite Justin Trudeau. I'm

00:14:30.620 not sure. That being said I think for a lot of undecided voters who may have been on the fence

00:14:37.000 about whether or not they should vote in the equalization referendum I would vote against

00:14:43.140 what Nenshi wanted because I'm kind of a conservative so Nenshi tells me to vote no I'm

00:14:47.320 going to vote yes that was my approach and as mentioned there Nenshi is up to be replaced

00:14:52.880 tonight in the Calgary elections we've got elections all over the province and one interesting

00:14:58.120 point I would raise here about the equalization referendum is that we might not know well we

00:15:03.820 won't know the total results until I believe the 26th what will we know tonight keeping in mind

00:15:09.500 polls are going to be closing in, I think, 19 minutes, 18 and a half, 19 minutes, as we come up

00:15:14.980 to 8 p.m. Alberta time. But what's the issue with the count here for the referendum, William?

00:15:20.320 It's a little bit tricky. It actually took a few days to try and get an answer to that question.

00:15:25.020 So while municipal elections are very clearly being run by municipal election authorities,

00:15:30.080 the Senate elections and the province-wide referenda are both provincial issues. Elections

00:15:35.340 Alberta has said they're not releasing official results until October 26th, but at least the

00:15:40.860 municipality of Calgary has said they're going to release the unofficial results to both the

00:15:45.220 Senate elections and the province-wide referendum tonight. Edmonton said they won't. Other

00:15:50.400 jurisdictions across the province, we don't know. We're going to try and keep an eye on it to see

00:15:53.980 how it goes. But I think as Calgary goes, it'll be a pretty good indication of where Alberta as a

00:15:59.900 whole is going to head on those issues yeah there is a divide though is there not between the cities

00:16:07.180 and the rural parts of the province like how much can you extrapolate from calgary and edmonton

00:16:12.140 results so i'm sort of thinking if edmonton is voting more one way and the rurals are voting

00:16:18.980 more of another way calgary is sort of in the middle halfway between big city halfway between

00:16:24.480 rural south. Its voting behavior tends to be in between Edmonton and southern constituencies when

00:16:32.020 you look at provincial and federal elections. So I think if Calgary is moving clearly in one

00:16:36.540 direction, that's going to be very helpful for us to know what the official results are going to be

00:16:41.020 on October 26th. If it's very, very close, if it's 51-49, then it's anybody's guess what the outcome

00:16:47.580 of those referendums will be a week later. Candace, we're moments away from our first

00:16:51.880 guests, but what are you going to be looking out for tonight? Well, it's kind of too bad that the

00:16:56.560 province couldn't get themselves organized enough to deliver, you know, results on what people are

00:17:02.580 voting on, not just because we're trying to do a live show here. It'll make it a bit more

00:17:06.200 interesting for us if we could walk away with that. But no, I think certainly the mayoral

00:17:11.860 race in Calgary is really interesting. You know, we got a free market sort of small government

00:17:17.960 guy in Jeremy Farkas, who looked like he had a big lead at the beginning of the campaign. I know

00:17:23.560 it's hard to keep track of polling in municipal elections because you really don't know until

00:17:28.960 the polls come in. But I think certainly after, I guess we've had Nenshi for what, 10 years,

00:17:34.480 William? It's definitely time for a change, I think. And I would welcome someone sort of

00:17:40.180 young and ambitious and, you know, committed to protecting the taxpayers like Jeremy Farkas.

00:17:48.900 Yeah, I know everyone tends to focus on the mayoral stuff.

00:17:52.880 And I think for good reason, obviously, the mayor, especially of a larger city, has the

00:17:56.720 ability to really set the agenda.

00:17:58.180 We saw Nenshi, for example, with trying to push an Olympic bid.

00:18:01.520 One notable example that has probably traumatized William by just mentioning it.

00:18:05.120 Sorry to bring you back there, William.

00:18:06.660 But there's also, interestingly enough, in Calgary, a huge number of just general vacancies

00:18:12.020 right now.

00:18:12.600 Like there's going to be a significant turnover on this council, isn't there?

00:18:16.820 You're absolutely right.

00:18:17.960 In fact, I went back 30 years and couldn't find a municipal election with more open seats.

00:18:23.200 Out of Calgary's 15 city council and mayor seats, 10 of them are open.

00:18:29.220 And one of them, Ward 2, there is an incumbent running again, but he's currently the subject of an RCMP fraud investigation.

00:18:36.520 So I think you can probably treat that seat as an open seat as well.

00:18:40.560 So 10 or 11 open seats.

00:18:42.420 It's an unprecedented number of open seats in a municipal election.

00:18:45.560 yeah i mean it's super interesting but i think that most the thing that most people look at is

00:18:51.440 the mayor you know that's the sort of bankable figure and again i think that nenshi was really

00:18:57.000 an outsized character for his role i mean he you know i i don't think that many people in the

00:19:02.640 country can name uh you know the mayor of of a smaller city i mean calgary's a big city but

00:19:08.140 even so i don't think most canadians could name the mayor of vancouver the mayor montreal

00:19:12.460 all. But, you know, everyone knew Naheed Nenshi. And I think that was part because of, you know,

00:19:17.820 the role that he played during the floods. And, you know, just being sort of an outspoken type

00:19:23.800 for all the consternation that we hear about, you know, conservatives and Canadians being

00:19:29.960 what racist, sexist, bigoted, whatever, whatever. You know, here we have Nenshi who comes from,

00:19:36.760 I believe he's Muslim man. And, you know, there is no problem with that. There was no problem.

00:19:44.320 Calgarians voted for him and he was, you know, a very public mayor. So I think that it will be

00:19:51.400 interesting, you know, just just to fill those big shoes. Right. As such a public figure out

00:19:56.080 in Edmonton. And then, yeah, I don't know what's next for Nenshi. William, have you have you heard

00:20:00.920 anything? Is he going to run federally? Is he going to run provincially? What do you think he's

00:20:03.800 going to do next? Yeah, there's lots of rumors. Rumors that he's going to be a federal liberal

00:20:08.580 candidate and that conversations have already had about him being a cabinet minister if he wins an

00:20:14.740 election. Rumors that he might go to the United Nations, that he's always had a bit of a flair

00:20:20.260 for international travel and affairs. I will say, having observed the mayor for quite a long time,

00:20:27.060 I find it hard to believe he's going to go into party politics because he doesn't particularly

00:20:31.560 play well with others. He holds himself in very high regard. And to be a minister means to be

00:20:37.700 kind of under the thumb of the prime minister. And I'm not sure he could ever be in that position

00:20:42.820 where he didn't get to be the boss. So don't know what his next job will involve, but lots of

00:20:47.520 rumors. What about the mayor of Edmonton, the former mayor, Don Iverson? What do you think

00:20:53.720 he's going to do next? Yeah, you know, he was first elected in 2013. So he's been there just

00:21:00.900 about eight years now. He's got a young family. I'm not sure what his plan is. Certainly, I would

00:21:07.500 think he's leaving his office in slightly less anger than Mayor Nengshi is. I think there was

00:21:15.420 a lot of people who were quite fed up with head Nengshi here in his final term. So I don't really

00:21:20.940 know. He hasn't sort of mused about it, but I would think for any former mayor, there's going

00:21:25.680 to be a lot of opportunity. I would say more opportunity than for a former MLA or MP, simply

00:21:30.680 because mayors do have profile in their own cities. This is True North's live election night

00:21:36.500 show. We've got Candace Malcolm, William Macbeth, and yours truly, Andrew Lawton. Candace, why don't

00:21:41.600 we go to our first guest here? Yeah, that sounds great. Well, we're very excited to have our friend

00:21:46.700 conservative strategist Vitor Marciano on the line. Hi, Vitor. How are you doing? I'm doing well.

00:21:52.680 It's going to be an interesting evening. All right. Well, let's unpack that a little bit.

00:21:57.580 What do you find interesting?

00:21:58.980 What's going to happen?

00:22:00.480 Well, you have literally Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, and Fort McMurray all getting new

00:22:06.900 mayors on the same night.

00:22:09.040 You've got, you know, one province-wide referendum that's going to set the tone for a bunch of

00:22:15.320 the politics that will happen in the next little while with the equalization referendum.

00:22:18.900 You've got this other referendum that will actually kind of change everybody's life on

00:22:23.260 a day-to-day basis, we think, if they actually implement it on the daylight savings

00:22:27.460 case. And then you've got a whole bunch of council elections and other items sort of happening all

00:22:35.340 across the province. So it's actually, you know, it's actually a day that's going to change an

00:22:39.780 awful lot of things that makes it kind of interesting. No, certainly. And that's why

00:22:44.260 we're doing the show, right? Because we think that it's interesting, not just to Albertans,

00:22:48.040 but to all Canadians. So Peter, let's go through, you know, what you said was interesting. Let's

00:22:53.500 are with the mayoral races so uh can you give us some overview tell us what you think is going to

00:22:58.440 happen in those in those big cities that you mentioned i can give you three of them i have

00:23:02.700 to admit that i have not paid as much attention to red dare as i should have so i'm going to leave

00:23:06.180 that one for for someone else to comment on it uh but yeah in edmonton you've got a longtime mayor

00:23:12.000 in don ivison who's retiring and you're either going to get um my prediction is that it'll either

00:23:18.400 be Amarjeet Sohi or Mike Nichols. So you're either going to get a move a little bit to the right,

00:23:24.340 maybe a move a little bit to the left. Well, I want to stop you right there,

00:23:28.120 Vitor, because I was a little surprised to hear that Amarjeet Sohi was the front runner,

00:23:31.800 because my understanding was that he, you know, we remember him from his time as a cabinet minister

00:23:37.380 in the Trudeau government. And, you know, my recollection was that he left office not being

00:23:43.520 the most popular guy up in Edmonton? I think that's completely fair. I think something very

00:23:50.480 odd happened in the Edmonton election, and that is that the Edmonton media decided to completely

00:23:55.640 ignore it. So I actually pointed this out on social media last weekend. You had the

00:24:01.200 holiday long weekend just before an election. I went to the Edmonton Journal main page,

00:24:07.700 the Edmonton Sun main page and the CBC Edmonton main page and none of them had anything about the

00:24:15.820 Merrill T race so you had a wide open Merrill T race and very very few news stories about it

00:24:22.040 and the net effect of that is that it massively benefits the people with the highest level of

00:24:29.200 name recognition and then because Mike Nickel was in the race it became a name recognition on the

00:24:35.240 right versus a name recognition on the left and my prediction is that tonight the left's going to

00:24:42.680 win this is Edmonton um it's a complicated mix Mike's probably a little bit more conservative

00:24:50.360 and a little bit more abrasive in his style than is traditional for Edmonton um and we're going to

00:24:58.320 get that it was a weird election in the sense that there were some newcomers to politics who brought

00:25:03.920 up some interesting ideas, but they got no attention. There were past councillors who

00:25:09.920 were in the race to win the election. Michael Oshry, Kim Crischel, they really didn't get

00:25:18.380 any attention until the last week of the election. So it really became a nickel-so-he

00:25:25.860 drag race. And I really expect that that's what we'll see tonight. And the question is,

00:25:31.880 Has Mike Nichol assembled enough of a coalition, stolen enough voters from Ashri, Khrushchev, Cheryl Watson, who was the newcomer, to beat Amarjeet Sohi?

00:25:44.540 Or has the fact that the left just didn't show up for this race other than Amarjeet Sohi,

00:25:52.380 mean that he gets to consolidate all of the liberal voters and all of the new democratic voters?

00:25:56.920 and, you know, strong support in the new Canadian community

00:26:03.220 and take it to a win.

00:26:04.500 So that's what I expect we will see come 8.45, 9 o'clock

00:26:09.240 when we start to see the votes coming in.

00:26:10.720 It'll be this drag race between Mike's right-center-right point of view

00:26:15.980 and Emergeet's left-center-left point of view.

00:26:21.840 But I say that with some amount of caution because in many ways,

00:26:25.320 Amarjit didn't talk about the issues very much. He really ran a personality campaign. He really

00:26:32.340 ran a name recognition campaign. You know, an awful lot of his media availabilities or

00:26:37.980 appearances at forums and that were kind of word salad-y rather than about anything specific.

00:26:46.560 So he is in many ways campaigning on not being Mike Nichol, which in some ways,

00:26:54.240 you know kind of takes us back to what's happening in calgary all right well let's jump to calgary

00:26:59.320 then what uh walk us through what you think is going to happen up down there calgary had more

00:27:03.920 media attention in the race than than edmonton so um you know the calgary herald the calgary sun

00:27:11.280 both covered the race more carefully and more intensely um cbc calgary spent money on doing

00:27:17.020 polling covered lots of the things in this race calgary to be fair has i think it's nine vacant

00:27:24.180 council seats whereas Edmonton only had four vacant council seats um but there was a deliberate

00:27:29.320 effort to um to lift up the race but in Calgary it's also evolved into a uh sort of left center

00:27:38.700 left race between uh uh Gondek and a right center right race with on the Farkas side

00:27:48.980 Bradfield, Jan Gomery, Bradfield and Davison were the two candidates that could have been sort of the centrist candidates in it.

00:27:58.820 They never picked up the steam that would have been necessary to vault them into the race.

00:28:04.460 Jan Damery, who's the left, the clear left of center candidate in the race, also never picked up the steam that would have hurt the joddy conduct.

00:28:14.980 so we're going to see a force race today I think between Farkas and Gondek it's going to be close

00:28:23.580 from the perspective of your experience as a campaigner because a lot of people if they were

00:28:31.080 to look at Calgary on a federal or provincial map they'd see the sea of blue with a couple of specks

00:28:35.560 of red yet on a municipal you have had a left of center mayor for quite some time you have a very

00:28:42.140 real shot of electing another left of center mayor. How does that square a city that's so

00:28:46.840 solidly conservative in federal and provincial elections, but not at all municipally?

00:28:51.620 It actually squares, if you think about it from some of the truths and the truisms that

00:28:57.020 conservatives talk about all the time, which is that people want more government from the level

00:29:03.200 of government closest to the people. If you actually think about that concept of subsidiarity,

00:29:06.620 um people want services and expenses and things paid for and done at the city level the problem

00:29:14.960 is that when conservatives run municipally they run as if they don't want anything to be spent

00:29:22.000 or or any money spent and they're anti-building things they they oppose things at the municipal

00:29:27.740 level and the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the citizenry says well if you're

00:29:33.280 going to waste any money wasted on my street wasted on the road that i used to commute wasted

00:29:39.260 on transit that i might access to commute or to go to a concert or to go to a you know to a

00:29:44.920 downtown arena and so an awful lot of this is that uh is that folks in the conservative movement are

00:29:51.800 a little bit more ideological than the voters and the same voter who pretty comfortably votes

00:29:57.420 conservative at the provincial level very comfortably votes conservative at the federal

00:30:01.140 level wants a more activist government at the city level. You know, if the city wastes some

00:30:08.320 money, odds are I can see where they wasted it. It's not money that sort of disappears into the

00:30:13.820 ether. It's usually spent on things where I can say, well, I wouldn't have built that, but, you

00:30:19.440 know, we have it now. And an awful lot of conservatives who get involved in politics and

00:30:25.380 even in municipal politics end up working really hard on their ability to say no. And the truth of

00:30:30.860 the matter is at the municipal level the voters want people who are going to say yes or you know

00:30:36.980 your best case is probably a yes but and um you know uh if if jeremy farkas wins tonight he'll

00:30:47.460 be because in many ways the last month or two of his campaign have refocused and and try to be more

00:30:53.200 positive and more yes on things and the word no which would be the top word that folks would

00:30:59.280 associate with Jeremy over the years hasn't really been present in the campaign. If he doesn't win

00:31:05.700 tonight, it might be because he wasn't sufficiently yes enough to captivate that next

00:31:11.100 tranche or layer of voters who would swing in his direction because they actually do want to see

00:31:18.920 money spent on roads and transit and the sort of local services that they think makes a difference

00:31:25.980 in their community oftentimes as conservatives we you know we just want to say no to big things

00:31:32.320 at the national level and then we want to say no to dumb things at the provincial level

00:31:35.540 and then we translate that into saying no to things at the municipal level

00:31:39.260 and there's a bunch of voters who are prepared to you know to accept those things and and i think

00:31:46.740 you know good municipal politicians need to learn conservative municipal politicians need to learn

00:31:52.460 to say yes but or to say i really do care about building things that will make your life better

00:31:58.540 i'm going to try to do a better job of building them i'm going to try to avoid waste i'm going to

00:32:02.920 try to um you know look at these important projects that need to be built with a hard

00:32:09.200 keen eye to making sure that they're done well too often you know the the top conservatives at

00:32:16.580 city council their specialty is saying no to things and they're very proud of their record

00:32:20.900 of voting no all the time. One of the lines I always use is in municipal politics, in Alberta

00:32:28.980 at least, it's extremely rare for the leader of the opposition to be elected mayor. And if you're

00:32:34.940 always the person saying no, it's hard to get the top job because the voters usually want somebody

00:32:40.900 who's going to say yes a fair amount. Both Edmonton and Calgary, we have the leaders of

00:32:46.240 the opposition running today um they both try to do positive campaigns um if they succeed today

00:32:52.680 it's because they'll have convinced the voters that they are that they're that they're strike

00:32:56.580 the right balance between being tight with money and delivering the sort of services that they want

00:33:01.980 well that sort of reminds me of back in the day in toronto with rob ford you know he he was the

00:33:07.880 guy that was there to respect the taxpayers he had a very simple message but he was also

00:33:11.580 he was a subway guy he said yes to subways yeah exactly he so he was seen as someone who could

00:33:18.220 get stuff done but that at the end of the day he was really there for the taxpayer and he wanted

00:33:22.360 to get rid of the waste which sounds exactly like what you're prescribing there vitor and

00:33:26.700 before you jump in vitor i want to tell people polls are now closed it is 8 p.m so uh congratulations

00:33:33.160 you made it through a municipal and provincial election day we'll have results with william

00:33:38.760 mcbeth of true north in just a few moments but i wanted to let you know we are on top of it

00:33:43.080 uh polls have closed and i'm sorry for that interjection but it was a momentous occasion

00:33:46.900 carry on no problem i'm going to say that in big parts of calgary and in big parts of edmonton

00:33:51.700 the polls are closed and there's now a poll worker at the back of the lineup which is probably

00:33:56.680 halfway down the block so there's gonna people are going to be voting in a lot of places for

00:34:01.420 another 40 45 minutes uh i live in a part of edmonton that's got a high voter turnout and

00:34:06.120 And when I went to vote at like 145, it still took me almost an hour to get through there.

00:34:10.940 It's that bad today.

00:34:12.160 There were that many people lined up outside.

00:34:14.140 You get COVID, you get the six foot distancing, you get extra cleanup procedures inside the room.

00:34:20.780 It takes longer to vote.

00:34:22.320 It's a long ballot in Edmonton.

00:34:24.260 It's a longer ballot in Calgary.

00:34:28.080 You know, I don't expect that we're going to get very many results coming in very quickly.

00:34:33.860 So when you say a long ballot, do you mean because there's so many different candidates or because of all the different municipal councillors that are being reelected?

00:34:42.700 So both in Edmonton and Calgary, you get two ballots.

00:34:45.940 So there's a municipal ballot and then the provincial ballot with the Senate election and the two referendums.

00:34:52.100 In, you know, that provincial ballot is fairly long.

00:34:56.460 There's, I think, nine or ten people running for the Senate race.

00:34:59.340 You've got to pick three.

00:35:00.680 And then you've got the two referendums.

00:35:01.980 But then when you go to the municipal ballots, you've got in Calgary, you've got 20 some people running for mayor.

00:35:09.700 Now, there's only four or five serious candidates, but we've never built a mechanism for weeding that out.

00:35:15.660 So the list of people running is really quite long.

00:35:19.800 Depending on your ward at the council level, you can have as many as eight or nine people running.

00:35:24.680 then you've got school board and then Calgary on top of that has the non-binding recurring

00:35:30.780 plebiscite on fluoridation. I'm an Edmontonian so I get to laugh about this you know the rest of the

00:35:36.100 world has moved past the fluoridation debates of the 1970s Calgary enjoys revisiting them

00:35:42.580 at least once every 10 to 12 years. Yeah no there's definitely some interesting ones out there

00:35:48.580 I want to talk to you Vitor though about the equalization referendum because really that's

00:35:52.740 the big question in the night. That's the reason, part of the reason, probably the main reason why

00:35:56.680 Trenorth is covering this election, because we don't usually cover municipal elections, but

00:36:01.140 because this question was on there, it's so consequential to everyone in the country, because

00:36:05.260 we all, you know, at its core, Canada is a fiscal federation, right? We're here because we want to

00:36:11.000 be able to trade with each other. We want to be able to have this stable system in our economy.

00:36:16.420 And so, you know, this question of equalization was in the Constitution in 1982.

00:36:22.920 You know, I wrote my son column the other day that this is the first time in my lifetime someone in Canada will have to get to have a say on equalization other than politicians.

00:36:33.100 But I'm not even sure that in 1982 Canadians really had a say or if it was something that was just put in there.

00:36:38.820 So maybe you can walk us through the rationale, the thinking behind this question, and maybe the deeper question of whether we need equalization in this day and age in Canada.

00:36:49.740 well i mean that second question is a complicated one and there's lots of canadians who believe

00:36:56.760 that equalization is really important um you could have questions on the principle of equalization

00:37:02.120 ultimately the the point is separate entirely from the principle is the fact that equalization

00:37:08.600 as it is done in canada right now is fundamentally unfair and i and i i lay that out to you by saying

00:37:16.440 that from 2014 to just before COVID, Quebec ran five consecutive surpluses and set aside

00:37:22.800 $20 billion while collecting between $11 and $13 billion a year in equalization money.

00:37:30.540 So they are taking the equalization money and putting it in the bank, and they now have

00:37:36.600 a rainy day fund that exceeds the Alberta Heritage Fund, which was put aside through

00:37:43.060 oil and gas money, which is what ends up generating the extra money that the federal government has

00:37:48.820 for equalization. Equalization is an unfair deal where it takes federal taxes from Alberta that

00:37:56.100 never come back to Alberta and channels them to the poorer provinces and Quebec. And I say the

00:38:01.320 poorer provinces and Quebec because the formula is written in such a way that Quebec will get money

00:38:05.680 regardless. And at some point, something needs to be done about it. This equalization referendum

00:38:11.840 is in some ways a symbolic vote, but it's a symbolic vote to kick open the door to have

00:38:18.900 constitutional negotiations. And what will happen if the vote passes with a good number,

00:38:25.720 and I'm hoping that it will, is that the Alberta legislature will then pass a motion of the

00:38:32.660 legislature demanding constitutional negotiations premised upon the vote. That gets sent to the

00:38:37.640 other provinces and to the federal government who have a constitutional conventional obligation

00:38:44.260 to sit down and talk to alberta about this question um the only people who have opposed

00:38:50.980 the uh the equalization referendum are political science professors you know other than marin

00:38:56.220 and she uh everybody who said vote no are poli sci professors rachel notley has not gone on record

00:39:03.020 saying vote no. She's tried to talk it down in some ways, but she won't actually say that

00:39:08.820 Albertans should vote against it because she knows that a no vote actually diminishes the

00:39:12.820 negotiating position of any Alberta premier, of any political stripe for the long term.

00:39:19.040 What's probably going to happen is that for a little bit, you know, Albertans, I think tonight

00:39:24.060 are going to vote 58, 60%, maybe 62% in favor of the question, which is to remove equalization

00:39:32.680 from the constitution that will start the process of constitutional negotiations the federal

00:39:37.500 government will for a little while try to ignore it the big provinces will try to ignore it but my

00:39:43.280 prediction for you right now i'm going to get this on the record my my old boss actually wrote a

00:39:47.480 column about it this weekend is that over the next 18 to 24 months all of the small provinces

00:39:54.780 in confederation will say covid is bankrupting us we can't afford health care we can't afford

00:40:01.420 the changes we need to make to seniors care. Nobody wants to buy our debt. We don't have

00:40:06.320 the ability to print money. The federal government is going to have to change the formula on how it

00:40:11.320 transfers money for health care. And the net consequence of that is that all of the small

00:40:18.180 provinces are going to view the opportunity to have constitutional discussions as a net positive.

00:40:23.360 And they're going to, you know, the Council of the Federation will be demanding these discussions

00:40:26.900 in 18 to 24 months.

00:40:29.900 And if Alberta gets a good number today,

00:40:32.800 that is a good thing for Alberta.

00:40:34.420 It makes sure that when we discuss

00:40:37.060 how the heck this country is going to be able

00:40:39.120 to afford healthcare and improved seniors care

00:40:42.320 in a post-COVID world,

00:40:44.600 that at the same time we're discussing

00:40:46.020 having an equalization system

00:40:47.860 that has some level of fairness

00:40:49.680 where Alberta can't go through five years

00:40:52.280 of brutal economic impact

00:40:54.420 and still be paying into the rest of the country

00:40:56.080 While Quebec is having five years of tremendous economic growth and bringing in 11 to 13 billion extra dollars a year and setting aside essentially four billion a year of that into a little piggy bank of profit that they will use to fund themselves through even more largesse and even more bad spending over time.

00:41:16.720 It's such an interesting way of framing it, Vitor. And, you know, you mentioned that the big provinces will probably ignore it. Interesting, because I've been talking to Bill Buick, who's one of the people who was sort of the spokespeople for the Yes campaign. And his mindset was that the people who are worse off under equalization are Alberta first, then British Columbia, then Ontario.

00:41:39.260 And so, you know, you have two of the other big provinces right there that are also bleeding through the nose.

00:41:44.480 You had a great piece in the National Post, I think it was last week, Vitor, about how Canada's health care is just, you know, COVID is fundamentally broken.

00:41:52.000 When you compare it to even the poorest of the U.S. states, their ICU capacity is leaps and bounds ahead of ours.

00:42:00.320 And so it's hard for Canadians to wrap their head around the idea because we're so used to having this concept that we have this great health care system that's, you know, the envy of the of the world.

00:42:10.800 And it's really it's really shown that that's not true. And so, you know, we are going to at some some point, you know, we're going to be met with this issue of how are we going to pay for this?

00:42:21.460 How are we going to continue on this path? And I thought you had a great way of sort of summing that up.

00:42:28.080 So maybe just you can let the listeners know what what it was that you wrote in the National Post and what you think that the future of our health care system will be.

00:42:36.480 Well, I wrote the column because I'd seen a bunch of conservatives in Canada asking, why aren't we doing what Texas is doing? Why aren't we doing what Florida is doing? Why aren't we doing what a whole bunch of American states are doing?

00:42:50.400 Which is essentially pushing through the pandemic and saying that, recognizing that, man, you know, COVID zero is not a potential solution for a country that's open and trading with the world, which Canada has to be.

00:43:03.540 Frankly, we need our borders to be open, if only to bring in the number of immigrants we need to sustain our economic growth because we don't have population replacement to do it ourselves.

00:43:11.160 um and the but the reason we couldn't do that is we cannot absorb the punch that comes from

00:43:19.480 opening up uh society and going full on covid we do not have the hospital capacity in the richest

00:43:27.040 provinces in canada to get well in alberta we couldn't deal with 18 per hundred thousand people

00:43:34.820 sick at once. Now, there is no American state, not even the poorest state in the United States,

00:43:41.880 that couldn't handle 30 or 40 per 100,000 sick at once. And when you can handle that many more

00:43:49.500 people sick at once, when you've got that many more hospital beds, that many more doctors,

00:43:53.580 that many more nurses, you can absorb the punch that COVID is going to get you.

00:43:57.940 But when 18 people per 100,000, that's not 18 per 1,000, that's 18 per 100,000, is more than your hospital system can handle, you've got to do a whole series of policies designed around keeping COVID extremely low, which, by the way, means that you're going to have COVID for a much, much longer time.

00:44:20.200 and it's going to become a significant impact on society

00:44:25.060 and on your government finances

00:44:27.080 for a longer and longer period of time.

00:44:29.180 And then-

00:44:29.780 Very well said, Vitor Marciano,

00:44:31.480 conservative strategist,

00:44:32.600 always a pleasure as we break down things

00:44:34.960 that are happening in Alberta

00:44:35.920 that are tied into much larger themes

00:44:38.040 in Canadian politics.

00:44:39.800 Vitor, thanks so much for coming on.

00:44:41.400 Thank you for having me, Andrew.

00:44:42.360 Thank you, Candice.

00:44:43.500 All right, bye, Vitor.

00:44:44.900 You are tuned into True North's live election night

00:44:47.900 special for Alberta, municipal elections, Senate nominee elections, referenda galore at the

00:44:53.440 provincial and municipal level. We've got lots planned for the remainder of the evening. We'll

00:44:57.260 be joined later on by Danielle Smith. We'll break down the results we have coming in with William

00:45:03.400 Macbeth very shortly. And if you've watched any of our previous election night shows, you know that

00:45:08.020 we are here as long as it takes. We aren't going to be here live continuously until the 26th when

00:45:14.000 results come in we did plan for this so we are going to wrap things up at some point tonight

00:45:18.040 although that's not something we can take for granted as you may remember our conservative

00:45:22.600 leadership show uh infamously went i think like eight hours to 3 30 in the morning or so uh but

00:45:28.100 we are doing these and you know what these are not inexpensive to produce we've got a great team

00:45:32.500 helping us behind the scenes that makes this happen and more importantly the coverage we do

00:45:37.600 of these elections between these shows is not inexpensive we have people on the ground where

00:45:42.680 the stories are and we don't get any of the government money we don't get any of the bailout

00:45:47.000 funds we're not in that 600 million dollar club that justin trudeau created for mainstream media

00:45:52.020 journalists we are supported by people who value the work we do so if you're watching this show

00:45:57.760 if you're a regular viewer listener reader or even if you just pop in from time to time

00:46:02.600 if you value the perspective and angle that we bring and the coverage plans that we put forward

00:46:07.280 on all of these things please do support the work we're doing financially if you can by going to

00:46:12.120 donate.tnc.news. As I said, I mean, this is something that for us is a passion, but we've

00:46:18.000 got people to pay. It costs money to do this. And literally we're only able to do this because of

00:46:22.500 the people that value the work that we are doing. So I wanted to, if you are watching, put that plug

00:46:27.160 in. Candace, you know, the donors we have are always so supportive of the work. And I notice

00:46:31.540 a lot of them are from Alberta too. Absolutely. I think that it really, you know, the heart and

00:46:37.640 soul of the conservative movement in Canada exists in Alberta, even, and, you know, even though it

00:46:44.020 must be disheartening for people in Alberta, vote conservative, and you don't see, you know, a

00:46:48.980 government that reflects you in any way out in Ottawa, you know, the machinery behind the political

00:46:54.560 party, behind the conservative party exists in Alberta, that's where the donors are, that's where,

00:46:59.060 you know, the political sort of, you know, everyone goes and spends time in Alberta in the

00:47:03.360 conservative movement. Andrew, you go out there and speak all the time. And it's just because

00:47:07.620 connecting with people in Alberta, you really understand the way of life that they have out

00:47:12.640 there, the way that sort of freedom and family come first. And, you know, I wish that the rest

00:47:17.380 of the country thought a little bit more like Alberta and that the values of Alberta had more

00:47:22.680 of an influence on central Canada instead of vice versa, or in addition to vice versa, I should say.

00:47:28.180 But really, you know, we are all very interested in what's going on in Alberta. It deeply impacts the rest of the country. And I think it's just been a great opportunity for us to cover this election tonight and to find out what's going to happen, especially with the referendum on equalization.

00:47:46.820 Like Vitor was just really hitting the nail on the head when he was talking about the whole reworking of our system post-COVID because, you know, everybody's been struggling.

00:47:58.500 Everyone's health care system is at capacity, every province.

00:48:02.220 So, you know, some Canadians might be smug looking at Alberta and saying, oh, look at the way that they're handling this fourth wave.

00:48:08.520 And, you know, after they loosen restrictions over the summer, they're really getting hit hard.

00:48:11.940 But the reality is that, you know, we can see the writing on the wall.

00:48:15.960 it's going to happen across the country. As soon as the weather gets colder, we're going to get

00:48:20.020 that fourth wave is going to hit harder. And, you know, everyone talks about how the Delta variant

00:48:24.240 is more contagious than previous waves. I mean, you know, it's going to be a big issue for everyone

00:48:30.480 in Canada. So no one should be smug looking at another province when it comes to their capacity.

00:48:36.400 But anyway, you know, we think it's an important issue, which is why we're covering it here on

00:48:42.420 true north and also i should mention that the way that we're streaming this um show tonight i'm

00:48:47.940 actually able to see all of the comments uh on both facebook and youtube which is really cool

00:48:53.340 because usually when you're uh doing a live show you know you you've got a lot of things going on

00:48:57.800 on your screen in front of you but it's it's very cool so i i can actually you know when when people

00:49:02.420 are commenting we're we're reading it we're seeing it so you know keep us um keep us posted let us

00:49:07.040 know what you think of the show uh let us know if there's anything you think we should be talking

00:49:10.740 about. I'm interested in people in Alberta. Tell us what you think about the provincial

00:49:17.640 government and Jason Kenney. It's sort of the elephant in the room. We haven't discussed it

00:49:20.780 at all yet, Andrew, but Jason Kenney is the most unpopular premier in Canada. And he's had a

00:49:27.560 tremendous fall from grace just in terms of his support. You know, he can't really seem to please

00:49:33.840 anybody at this point. And, you know, seeing his popularity plummet has been disheartening as a

00:49:40.460 conservative, but also, you know, sort of a cautionary tale of, you know, what happens when

00:49:46.120 you sort of abandon some of your core principles and, you know, looking at the way that Alberta has

00:49:53.060 sort of particularly treated pastors, Christian pastors who have carried on with their services

00:50:00.960 despite really heavy handed COVID restrictions and restrictions that don't apply evenly, like

00:50:07.140 you have situations where, you know, you can go to a football game, but you can't go to church.

00:50:11.600 I mean, it's pretty ridiculous. And to see a conservative government, you know, over being

00:50:20.240 the one that's running it is just been incredibly sad and unfortunate, I think. So, you know,

00:50:27.500 some of us have mentioned that, you know, Kenny's unpopularity may, in fact, hurt this equalization

00:50:33.220 referendum, Vitor, who's much more connected on these things than I am, seem pretty confident that

00:50:38.340 the equalization vote would go yes, which a yes vote, the wording of the question is something

00:50:43.640 like, should equalization be removed from the Constitution? So you're voting yes, if you are

00:50:49.460 against equalization, which is a little confusing, if you don't read the question carefully. But

00:50:54.920 anyway, yeah, that's certainly something that I will be watching closely.

00:51:00.560 yeah and i mean obviously i don't knock vtor's knowledge and wisdom on this and i generally

00:51:08.180 don't make predictions so that i can't be wrong it's actually a great plan you should try it to

00:51:11.860 everyone tuning in but i will say if the referendum doesn't succeed or is very very close i do think

00:51:18.940 that those things you just talked about candace jason kenny's unpopularity will have been a huge

00:51:23.680 huge contributing factor for a couple of reasons i think a lot of people view this as kenny's pet

00:51:28.820 project. And in some ways that's fair because this was a campaign promise. It's something that

00:51:33.340 he has personally championed. At the same time, it also is something that he hasn't been able to

00:51:38.640 promote because for the longest time I was watching, knowing this was coming and sort of

00:51:43.540 waiting for the campaigns to get going. And there have been a couple. You've had Kevin Lacey of the

00:51:49.060 Canadian Taxpayers Federation with his fight equalization campaign. Bill Buick, who's going

00:51:53.980 to be on the show later on. And Fairness Alberta has had their fight equalization campaign.

00:51:58.820 Certainly, you've had a lot of discussions and interviews and op-eds and all of that.

00:52:03.060 But Jason Kenney really hasn't been selling this.

00:52:05.720 He hasn't been out there talking day in, day out about why Albertans should vote yes.

00:52:10.840 Some MLAs have spoken out about it, but there really hasn't been, I'd say, a lot of attention

00:52:14.920 given to it.

00:52:16.140 And even if you look at some of the money that the campaigns are spending, we're not

00:52:19.400 talking about huge province-wide campaigns here that are spending millions and millions

00:52:23.920 of dollars.

00:52:24.500 Like, you know, it's not like it's as hyped as the Quebec secession referendums, just to give it a referenda rather, just to give a comparison to a very large and much vaunted one.

00:52:35.100 So that isn't to say it won't succeed, but because of all these challenges in Alberta, and I think because Jason Kenney has been having to play defense, there hasn't really been a vocal standard bearer and flag bearer for this movement.

00:52:49.060 Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think that was probably very intentional on behalf of Jason Kenney.

00:52:54.240 he knows that he's not popular and that he doesn't want to put his name all over this twofold, right?

00:53:00.080 He doesn't want to bring down the referendum just because of his own personal unpopularity.

00:53:04.260 But he also doesn't want to hitch himself to it. If it gets defeated, then it looks even worse

00:53:09.340 for him. But yeah, I mean, it's been pretty low profile given how much was sort of drummed up at

00:53:18.620 the beginning. And also remember, Andrew, this was sort of Jason Kenney's alternative to the big

00:53:24.540 loud Wexit movement that came out of the 2019 election. I know you covered that you were out

00:53:29.240 in Alberta several times. And, you know, after that election, it was like this huge groundswell

00:53:34.620 of sort of anger and frustration and this very, very public movement. Wexit, I think it morphed

00:53:40.540 into the Maverick Party and its profile sort of fell. But, but, you know, the idea was that there

00:53:45.480 There's a lot of Albertans out there that were angry, that wanted out, including some pretty high profile business people and people in the business community.

00:53:53.960 And so the referenda was sort of like a, you know, an alternative as a way to keep Albertans sort of focused on the Canadian picture and keeping them focused on,

00:54:03.660 OK, we can still negotiate a better deal within Canada as opposed to this other movement that was really pushing in in a different direction.

00:54:10.880 So, you know, I think that that kind of anger, that big burst, that moment has passed.

00:54:16.360 And now we're sort of in this period where, you know, no one, like you said, no one's really, really heavily campaigning for it other than, you know, the sort of activist people that really understand the issue and that are pushing for it like Bill Buick, who we'll have later on the show.

00:54:33.340 It is 8.21 Alberta time.

00:54:36.080 Want to bring back into this True North's own William Macbeth.

00:54:39.060 I know polls have only been closed for about 21 minutes or so.

00:54:43.080 And as Vitor was saying, in some of the bigger cities, a lot of lines.

00:54:46.740 So people may still be voting even past the official closure.

00:54:50.320 Any early results here, William?

00:54:53.220 This will be a really quick analysis because there have been no posted results.

00:54:57.820 So it's a tie. It's neck and neck, you'd say.

00:55:00.780 It is the closest election I can recall.

00:55:02.940 we were just talking before you came on about the what seems like and again this may be my

00:55:10.660 my easterner perspective shining through but it seems like a lack of oxygen to the equalization

00:55:15.680 referendum outside of the circles that really pay close attention to this has that been your

00:55:20.440 experience in calgary in alberta that this hasn't been like one of these campaigns that you can't

00:55:26.160 walk down a street without seeing a sign for no i i absolutely think you're right it has been

00:55:31.740 very, very low key. You know, there's a few things that I think contribute to that.

00:55:36.280 Up until, you know, sort of mid-September, we were having a federal election. And I think for

00:55:42.700 a lot of people, this municipal campaign didn't even really get onto people's radar until after

00:55:48.260 that federal election wrapped. So they really only had about four weeks to get up and out. But,

00:55:54.780 you know, I was active on the no Olympics plebiscite vote, and I felt that that had far

00:56:02.320 more oxygen going into it than this equalization referendum has. And, you know, I think Vitor made

00:56:10.340 a lot of really important points about why Albertans appear to be voting very conservative

00:56:16.560 federally and provincially, but that we aren't seeing that reflected in mayoral campaigns.

00:56:22.920 I think one point he made, which is important, is we don't have municipal political parties, of course.

00:56:30.520 Anybody who wants to run basically can.

00:56:32.820 Calgary has 27 people running for mayor right now.

00:56:37.560 So, you know, how to stand out in a crowd of 27 people is really difficult,

00:56:43.340 which is why if you look in both Edmonton and Calgary,

00:56:46.160 the only people who are really getting any oxygen in that mayoral race are current or former city councillors.

00:56:52.660 who already have name recognition, who already have political infrastructure,

00:56:57.260 and who already have a base of support from which they can build on.

00:57:01.360 You know, the second thing I think that's interesting is, and we should talk a little

00:57:05.580 bit about, is the role of third party groups or political action committees or PACs.

00:57:10.880 Edmonton didn't see as many PACs as Calgary did.

00:57:14.700 Calgary saw a large number.

00:57:16.580 But the PAC that's being run by Alberta's public sector unions is spending upwards of $2 million to elect their preferred candidates in this race.

00:57:28.400 And given that unions and corporations are prohibited from giving money to local campaigns, that could well be more than what all of the mayoral candidates are spending combined in this election.

00:57:41.320 So, you know, I'll be interested to see exactly how much money they spent when the when the disclosure reports come out.

00:57:50.180 But there is going to be a I think a lot of money spent by public sector unions to vote for non fiscal responsibility candidates.

00:58:00.060 It's interesting that they that they find a way to sneak money into that.

00:58:04.400 What about the federal MPs or, you know, some of the more high profile politicians in Alberta, people like Michelle Rempel, have they gotten involved in the in the referendum debate at all over the discussion or they kind of left the state out of it?

00:58:17.760 I mean, a few of them have used their own networks to promote the referendum, the equalization

00:58:23.760 cause. Michelle Rempel, a prominent MP from Northern Calgary, has posted a few videos and

00:58:29.980 some other social media content about why it's important to vote yes on equalization. Stephanie

00:58:36.020 Cousy from the Southeast has also posted on that issue. But overall, not very much. You aren't

00:58:42.600 seeing a lot of activity from either provincial or federal representatives. I mean, I guess the

00:58:48.180 federal representatives, maybe you can explain it's just not their area, but you would think

00:58:53.640 that since it's a province-initiated referenda, that UCP MLAs would be campaigning door-to-door

00:59:00.900 even to try and get yes votes out for it. I think, though, that, again, the recent poll I saw

00:59:07.820 had the UCP down below 30% in popular support, they may have decided that this was the wrong time

00:59:13.740 to wrap this referendum around the UCP government. Let's unpack that a little, William. You know,

00:59:20.900 you're a conservative and you're in Alberta. What is happening? What is driving the UCP's

00:59:27.680 plummet in support? Why do people in the province feel so disappointed, dismayed with Jason Kenney

00:59:33.000 right now? Well, you know, I can't speak for every single conservative, nor would I try. But

00:59:38.960 I do think there are two groups of people in Alberta who are unhappy with Premier Kenney's

00:59:44.560 leadership. The first would be those who felt he did not do enough, that restrictions came too late,

00:59:49.980 that the Open for Summer campaign was a mistake, that we declared victory over COVID when, in fact,

00:59:57.280 we were not anywhere close to being ready for that. But that being said, I think a bigger

01:00:02.980 problem is probably the people who felt that Alberta's approach to COVID management was too

01:00:08.700 heavy handed. And the campaign it waged against religious institutions in particular, churches

01:00:15.840 and, you know, Christian churches in particular, because those are the ones we saw legal action

01:00:21.700 being taken up, pastors being arrested, police coming into holy services while they're being

01:00:28.820 performed by religious personnel. You know, the arbitrariness of some rules, why public gatherings

01:00:36.400 of some types were banned when others were allowed. A lot of this played very poorly with

01:00:42.440 conservatives who are always a little bit skeptical of big government anything. We don't

01:00:48.200 tend to think government is great at doing most things. And the bigger the task, the worse we

01:00:54.740 think government tends to do at it. So I think there was a lot of people who thought Jason

01:00:59.520 Kenney should have taken a much different approach to how COVID went. And in the same way that they

01:01:05.880 were disappointed maybe more wasn't done about Western alienation and Alberta's grievances

01:01:11.660 against the federal government, they also believe that he seemed to be showing too much aggression

01:01:16.460 in the enforcement of COVID rules in Alberta.

01:01:21.060 Well, yeah, that's certainly what I saw.

01:01:23.380 And I mean, it's one of those things

01:01:25.980 that the whole country has had that.

01:01:28.100 And we talked about it a little bit with Vitor,

01:01:29.900 how a lot of conservatives are saying,

01:01:31.920 where's the Ron DeSantis of Canada?

01:01:34.160 Why can't one of the provinces like Alberta

01:01:36.380 go the route of Texas or Florida

01:01:39.960 and just say, screw you to all the people

01:01:42.940 who are, you know, stressing unlimited forever restrictions, COVID zero, all that nonsense,

01:01:49.960 and just say, you know, let's live our lives. Let's get to herd immunity. Let's just like live.

01:01:55.940 And they wanted a conservative to do that. We didn't see that with Doug Ford in Ontario. We

01:02:00.980 certainly didn't see it with Jason Kenney in Alberta. The closest we got was that best summer

01:02:05.260 ever campaign, but then it seemed like they cowered on it right away. And to Vitor's point,

01:02:10.260 It's because we don't have the hospital capacity. It's like, you know, when you when you have a free society and you have a free country like like they do in Texas and Florida and you have, you know, private competitive hospitals, there's much more room for for people to go.

01:02:28.620 And unfortunately, the reality in Canada is that we have this very rigid government run health care system that that just doesn't we just don't have the capacity to to have people who need care in.

01:02:41.580 So I can see how you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

01:02:44.840 But boy, Jason Kenney's numbers are really looking bad.

01:02:48.260 Well, I think, you know, post this referendum, depending on what the outcome is and if the outcome go, you know, if it passes, maybe that's going to be helpful to Premier Kenney.

01:03:01.380 He'll be able to claim a victory. He'll claim a mandate to be able to negotiate with Ottawa for a better deal.

01:03:08.320 Certainly, I think Alberta premiers can find a boost in popularity by picking a big fight with a liberal prime minister in Ottawa.

01:03:16.200 It is a time-tested strategy to boost popularity if you can find a big fight.

01:03:23.060 And so that might be something.

01:03:24.760 But if he loses this equalization referendum, you know, he's already facing the prospect

01:03:30.440 of a leadership review in just a few months from now, in spring 2022.

01:03:35.380 And this may be another factor that weighs on delegates and voters' minds when they go

01:03:40.260 to decide if they want to keep him as leader or if they want to replace him before the

01:03:43.600 next election.

01:03:44.160 yeah i mean especially if it looks like he was not selling this referendum i mean if people start

01:03:52.040 to put a defeat at his feet pardon the other redundancy there the perceived redundancy i can

01:03:58.600 imagine that won't reflect too too well on him we will get back to breakdown results uh from you

01:04:03.920 william later on in the show go find some ballots though go find some ballots next time you come

01:04:08.040 back okay i'll go get my shoes and go see if i can find some on the streets all right you can

01:04:12.960 you can count these things quite easily. Candice, who do we have next?

01:04:17.080 Right. Well, we're really excited to be welcomed by our friend, Sheila Gunn-Reed,

01:04:20.520 who is the Alberta Bureau Chief for Rebel News. And Sheila, thank you so much for joining us on

01:04:25.300 our show tonight. What does your shirt say? I can't see it. Oh, my shirt says Glen Carrot for

01:04:30.800 mayor, a leader who listens. Now, Glen Carrot is a friend of mine. He's running for mayor of

01:04:36.200 Innisfail, Alberta. He's a high-profile Fight the Fines client there. He had the cops called on him

01:04:45.000 by, it sounds like another campaign, when he had the Easter Bunny at a campaign event earlier in

01:04:51.900 the spring. And he ended up in the Rebel News Fight the Fines ecosystem. But he's run completely

01:04:57.240 on an anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine passport mandate. And he was the organizer of United We Rule. So

01:05:03.640 while i generally don't like politicians and i tend not to endorse them except for

01:05:08.640 andrew you're a recovering politician um glenn is a good friend and he's one of the only candidates

01:05:14.960 out there running on an anti-lockdown platform so i am team carrot great i will just say just

01:05:21.360 for the sanity of our managing director william uh god love him we are as an organization non-partisan

01:05:27.760 we don't endorse so am i sheila sheila has done this all on her own but i do appreciate obviously

01:05:33.420 the opportunity to cover these people which is our our focus as a news organization no i i don't

01:05:38.980 want to uh put my endorsement of glenn carrot on true north at all no one can suck the oxygen out

01:05:45.680 of a uh discussion like i can with a disclaimer so take it away candace well you're gonna have

01:05:50.460 to keep us updated on uh you know the results as they come in sheila if uh you know if you have to

01:05:55.440 jump in and say breaking news you know this this this guy's one you can you can go ahead and do

01:05:59.900 that um so we were just talking a little bit about jason kenney and his sort of big uh massive

01:06:05.780 unpopularity in alberta which you know for a guy that got elected i think with what 62 percent of

01:06:10.480 the vote uh not too long ago maybe two years ago uh to see him hovering down sinking down i should

01:06:17.220 say to what 30 30 percent or less approval the lowest out of all the premiers and for for us

01:06:23.660 who aren't in alberta we're trying to sort of wrap our heads around that and try to think about how

01:06:27.800 that might impact this referendum on, on equalization. So, you know, you, you, you've

01:06:33.900 got your finger on the pulse of the province and, you know, we, we know that obviously your

01:06:38.200 fight fines campaign is, is really onto something. Same with your, your amazing coverage of some of

01:06:44.060 these Christian pastors who have had their, their services, you know, stormed by, by police

01:06:50.020 officers. It's like you're watching a different country. It's, it's, it's so mind boggling,

01:06:53.200 especially in a province run by a person who used to be one of the foremost champions of

01:06:59.440 religious freedom in the country. And I'm sure, you know, he still holds those values in Jason

01:07:05.140 Kenny, but really, you know, it's hard to watch some of the things that have happened in Alberta.

01:07:10.300 So maybe you can just help us understand what's going on in that regard. Sure. I mean, when you

01:07:17.380 look at the polling data, it doesn't look like a lot of those votes are swinging back to Rachel

01:07:21.660 Notley, about 10, 15 percent, maybe, depending on the polling that you look at. A lot of it is just

01:07:27.280 evacuating the Jason Kenney camp and it's going to other places. It's going to, you know, I'm

01:07:31.980 never voting again, sort of heading into that territory. But it's also going into some of the

01:07:37.620 breakaway parties, the sort of separatist parties, Wild Rose, some of those other fractured parties.

01:07:46.520 And I think that's one of the things about Albertans that sort of makes us unique in the political landscape is that we will burn it all down every few years or, you know, sometimes four decades with the PCs of old.

01:08:00.720 But we will burn it all down when we don't think our conservative candidates and our conservative governments and our conservative politicians, when we don't think they're conservative enough and behaving like conservatives.

01:08:11.000 We're not scared to do that.

01:08:13.000 And unfortunately, that's what's happening to Jason Kenney right now. While, you know, conservative politicians think they are owed our votes by nature of being conservative, for the voter, we really do make them earn it.

01:08:27.600 And we can't see Jason Kenney in 2021. We don't see the same guy that was elected back in 2018 or that sort of reached across the aisle and united the Wild Rose to the PCs after so much bad blood and and so much contention between those two parties.

01:08:49.460 He was able to be, for lack of a better term, politically ecumenical and unite those two parties.

01:08:55.400 We're not seeing any of that right now.

01:08:57.060 We're seeing someone who doesn't reflect his own conservative past with regard to the Office of Religious Freedom and his defense of religious liberty around the world.

01:09:06.580 We're not seeing someone who is politically ecumenical with other conservatives.

01:09:13.260 We've seen Jason Kenney say, if that's my base, I need a new base, referring to the anti-lockdown movement. So, you know, I think, you know, with some of the results tonight, I know Calgary is a very conservative place and Jeremy Farkas, I mean, he was pulling slightly ahead of his more left leaning competition there.

01:09:38.740 But in Edmonton, it's a complete and total collapse so far of the ability of conservatives to get the vote out.

01:09:46.280 And I think that has a lot to do with Jason Kenney.

01:09:49.360 Interesting. We were talking a bit before you said that the 2018 Jason Kenney is not the same guy that's leading the province now.

01:09:56.200 I think back then there was sort of this hope that, you know, Alberta was going through a really rough economic time with the price of oil falling and, you know, with Justin Trudeau in office killing all the pipelines.

01:10:08.740 And the idea was like, OK, here's this guy who was in the Harper government and he has a long history of of really proving his conservatism.

01:10:17.320 And he's sort of an outsider in regards to the provincial politics of Alberta.

01:10:23.380 He wasn't like in the sort of, you know, like you mentioned, the bad blood between the PCs and the Wild Rose.

01:10:29.040 And so he sort of came in and and really had expectations that were that were so high that no one could meet.

01:10:37.340 And so many things are just sort of outside of his control.

01:10:40.040 And so this this referendum question, to bring it back to that, you know, the idea was that there was so much anger after the 2019 election that the whole Wexit movement.

01:10:48.540 And I know you covered that really closely, Sheila, this idea that Alberta was going to separate.

01:10:53.920 I know some people in the comments are still saying Alberta should join the U.S. to be the 51st state, Alberta's succession, Alberta should go it alone.

01:11:00.380 And we did hear that a lot in 2019. I don't hear it as much. I still hear it occasionally.

01:11:05.540 But but the referendum question was sort of an alternative to that sort of angrier let's go it alone question.

01:11:13.640 And so do you think that this referendum really does capture the mood to say, like, let's let's keep Canada, let's keep Alberta in confederation.

01:11:22.120 let's keep this thing going, but let's try to negotiate a better deal? Or is there still a lot

01:11:26.180 of anger and this sort of like separatist crowd out there? You know, that's a really good question

01:11:33.180 and it's a very complex question because I do believe that the separatist sentiment is still

01:11:39.780 as high as it ever was. Although the two years out from that last election, there hasn't been

01:11:49.420 that has emerged from that movement.

01:11:52.260 There's sort of these little fractured parties

01:11:54.460 and they're having a hard time getting together.

01:11:57.300 And there's no one person

01:11:59.640 that has that sort of Ralph Klein mindset of,

01:12:06.280 you know, somebody once asked Ralph Klein,

01:12:07.980 what was his key to political success?

01:12:10.820 And he said, you know,

01:12:12.480 the ability to see where the parade is marching

01:12:16.040 and then just get out in front of it and lead it.

01:12:17.840 There's no one person that's really identified themselves as someone who can sort of take that juggernaut of separatist sentiment and take it somewhere because, you know, there, as you rightly point out, there are different ideas of what separatism means.

01:12:33.580 is it just a reflex against the unfairness of equality? Is it a rejig of our role in

01:12:42.140 confederation that we become more sovereign in the sense that Quebec is? Does it mean withdrawing

01:12:48.640 from confederation altogether? Does it mean joining the United States? There's nobody that

01:12:53.100 has really articulated what or where the separatist movement in the West should be going.

01:12:59.320 And furthermore, the fact that Quebec has already gone through this, there's a lot of resources out there that Westerners can just reach into Quebec and grab the expertise and say, what did you do to deal with this issue?

01:13:12.800 How did you figure out this issue? How did you address that criticism of what you were trying to do?

01:13:18.440 Nobody's really done that in Alberta, and I don't really understand why.

01:13:21.880 And I think Jason Kenney's referendum question is sort of appeasing some of those separatist sentiments.

01:13:28.720 And frankly, as an Albertan who pays pretty close attention to these things, it's kind of my job. I haven't really seen any passion about this referendum question. The Conservatives weren't out there selling it. They weren't campaigning on it.

01:13:48.680 it was like nobody cared um very maybe it got lost in the pandemic or maybe it was just

01:13:56.400 lip service to the anger of westerners i can't really tell because there wasn't a lot of

01:14:03.200 discussion about it at all outside of like really keen political watchers like we are

01:14:07.920 yeah you raise an important point there sheila and we were talking about that a little bit earlier

01:14:13.320 and all of us sort of wondered if actually it would make matters worse for those wanting

01:14:18.260 a yes vote on equalization if Jason Kenney and the UCP were behind it, given their fortunes

01:14:23.460 right now. But I also think at the same time, when you look at the Fair Deal panel, which was

01:14:28.500 criticized, I mean, notably by one of the members of the Fair Deal panel, Drew Barnes, who's now

01:14:33.380 been ousted from the UCP caucus for criticizing Jason Kenney. There were a lot of recommendations

01:14:38.460 in there. Obviously, some people thought it didn't go far enough. Equalization is just one of many

01:14:44.360 grievances that the Western alienation mindset people and Western independence mindset people

01:14:50.760 and outright Western separatists have. It's one issue. And one of the challenges here is that I

01:14:55.580 feel it has served as a very convenient excuse to not do anything else because it allows the UCP to

01:15:03.200 say, all right, well, let's just see how this referendum goes. There are a lot of things that

01:15:06.680 could be done right now unilaterally by the province, such as securing an Alberta police

01:15:10.740 force, moving on an Alberta pension, moving to collect income tax in Alberta like Quebec does,

01:15:16.360 downloading a couple of federal provincial programs to become predominantly provincial

01:15:21.780 in responsibility. There are a lot of things in that list. And that was just, you know,

01:15:25.340 one off the top of my head that Alberta could do without a referendum, that Alberta could do

01:15:29.780 without any federal buy-in or constitutional change. But I feel by putting all the eggs

01:15:34.300 in the referendum basket, you kind of just are able to take everything else off the table for

01:15:39.380 now politically. Yeah, it feels like they're sort of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic a little

01:15:45.100 bit. I mean, we did earlier this year get our own chief firearms officer. So that was one of the

01:15:51.820 recommendations that came out of the fair deal panel. And then this, but that the chief firearms

01:15:58.100 officer is really just a sort of symbolic thing. It doesn't really change the gun laws that are

01:16:02.960 being drafted by the federal government. And you just might feel bad when she's taking your guns

01:16:07.540 that trudeau has banned yeah yeah poor lady justin trudeau made her do these things to us but it

01:16:12.340 really doesn't change you know the the aspect of um the federal law surrounding that so i mean it

01:16:17.840 was a symbolic gesture that we you know we're going to have our own person i guess confiscate

01:16:23.500 our guns but yeah i i'm with you on this where it does feel like um like i said earlier just sort

01:16:29.880 of paying lip service to oh look at us we're standing up to justin trudeau but this comes

01:16:36.120 after three years of strongly worded letters and not much else.

01:16:41.200 And we were talking about this a little earlier.

01:16:43.240 I mean, you mentioned that there wasn't really a lot of steam.

01:16:45.300 Like we didn't hear much from federal MPs.

01:16:47.760 Like I was sort of, I know Michelle Rumpel has been pretty vocal

01:16:50.500 and she had her old Buffalo Declaration that was outlining as well,

01:16:54.300 sort of different things that Alberta could do.

01:16:55.860 And I haven't heard anything from her on this.

01:16:57.940 We didn't hear much from Jason Kenney.

01:17:00.060 And so it's almost like, I mean, I don't even know what to expect.

01:17:04.480 we had Vitor Marciano on earlier and he predicted that the people would vote yes somewhere around

01:17:10.060 55 to 60 percent, which, you know, that would be a pretty strong message. But I don't even know

01:17:15.460 where that prediction would come from. I don't know if there's been polling out there. But

01:17:18.660 what do you think is going to happen tonight, Sheila? I think it will be around 55 to 65 percent.

01:17:26.120 I'm only loosely basing that on my own estimation of just how many people are going to vote in

01:17:32.740 favor of the referendum question in calgary and then in the rural municipalities it's sort of the

01:17:38.020 same thing um to become the premier of alberta you have to win edmonton or calgary and all the

01:17:43.460 rural areas i think that's sort of what's going to happen with the referendum question of course

01:17:48.740 edmonton being the seat of government and again referring to ralph klein a place with too many

01:17:53.860 socialists and mosquitoes as he once said um that's going to be you know a lost cause when

01:17:59.380 when it comes to the referendum question and Amarjeet,

01:18:02.120 so he is likely to become the mayor there.

01:18:05.100 You know,

01:18:05.860 a proponent of Justin Trudeau's carbon tax gun grab and all those bad

01:18:11.220 things that Justin Trudeau has done to Alberta in the last six years.

01:18:15.700 That's Edmonton's going to vote for that.

01:18:17.700 I don't know if you want to talk a place that's culturally incompatible

01:18:21.680 with the rest of Alberta.

01:18:23.220 It's Edmonton.

01:18:24.200 It's Edmonton.

01:18:25.080 Well,

01:18:25.300 I lived there for four years and you know,

01:18:27.940 it's funny.

01:18:28.280 Most of my friends up there are pretty conservative, but, you know, it's probably just because you tend to attract like minded people when you're up there.

01:18:36.500 But I will say the University of Alberta was a pretty hostile place to conservatives, which for me, you know, I grew up in Vancouver and I thought, OK, I'm going to go to University of Alberta.

01:18:44.980 It's going to be super conservative, right? Because you just think Alberta is a conservative place.

01:18:49.460 University of Alberta is going to be conservative. And boy, was I wrong.

01:18:52.560 There was there was a lot of emphasis on the university, not the Alberta.

01:18:55.480 Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I didn't know that. But I learned. Well, you know, in some ways, it's kind of a sad state of affairs, Sheila. You said that there's no real leader leading the charge on sort of putting Alberta first or if there were any kind of a secession or just more independence movement.

01:19:12.980 there isn't really a leader of that, even though there are some very articulate, interesting people

01:19:18.200 that are proponents of it. I'm thinking of people like Barry Cooper, who's a professor down at the

01:19:24.740 University of Calgary, and many others. But I feel like the state of conservative politics more

01:19:30.340 broadly is that way. You know, you have a federal party led by Aaron O'Toole, who once told us that

01:19:36.980 he was a true blue conservative, he was the real deal. And then in the campaign, what we saw was

01:19:42.060 you know Justin Trudeau with a blue tie on and you know at the provincial level you have a lot

01:19:50.380 of people who are super disappointed in Jason Kenney super disappointed in Doug Ford out in

01:19:54.800 Ontario and you kind of look around the country and you wonder where where are all the strong

01:20:00.460 conservative voices where where are sort of the next generation of leaders in this movement and

01:20:06.360 And it's sort of slim pickings right now.

01:20:09.380 I mean, maybe someone like, you know, Jeremy Farkas down in Calgary might be a bright light in the province and conservative movement more broadly.

01:20:17.200 But why do you think the conservatives have become so bad at producing really, you know, interesting, impressive leaders?

01:20:25.040 And why don't we have more people filling the void and sort of being that next generation of leaders in this country?

01:20:31.940 yeah it's very strange that canadian conservatives like the official conservatives they have a real

01:20:38.840 tough time um doing the whole youth recruitment thing as much as they'd like to have the youth

01:20:44.160 wing of the party they don't do a really good job of it and when and they're not doing a really great

01:20:49.260 job of learning about what happened in the united states you know the the boldest conservatives

01:20:55.800 there are the most popular and in canada the boldest conservatives end up sort of experiencing

01:21:02.640 tall poppy syndrome where the other conservatives come along and chop them down and uh you know

01:21:08.180 they all get ousted from the parties yeah the boldest conservatives are the strongest independence

01:21:12.740 yeah they go off into the wilderness and then no one wants anything to do with them anymore because

01:21:17.040 they're splitting the right and it's like yeah well and it's for me as a conservative i think

01:21:24.300 one of our best qualities but one of our the things that makes us least electable is the fact

01:21:28.920 that we are independent we have interesting ideas and we don't always go along to get along and we

01:21:35.240 aren't always just you know interested in winning at all costs which is i it's great because it

01:21:42.260 fosters this diversity of ideas but at the same time it makes us tough to be elected because

01:21:47.720 you know there there are conservatives who just won't vote for the sake of gaining power but with

01:21:54.260 regard to young conservatives, we really don't do a good job at harvesting, I think, the young

01:22:00.420 angst of conservatives. I have a son, he's, you know, in his early 20s. And, you know,

01:22:09.660 when we're talking, when he was a little bit younger, I would say, you know, that feeling

01:22:14.120 where you don't like being told what to do all the time, you don't like me telling you what to say

01:22:17.240 and how to behave. I'm like, that's how I feel every single day as a conservative. That's how

01:22:21.960 I feel about the government and we do a really good a poor job at telling young people that you

01:22:28.600 know it's okay to be conservative it's okay to not want to be told how to talk and and and to

01:22:36.500 you know say things and young people by nature are really not um politically correct that's you know

01:22:43.700 it's one of the great things that that my son has going for him but it's really irritating as a

01:22:48.140 parent but you know like the second we have a young conservative learning how to be conservative

01:22:53.440 and they say something that's not exactly pc we just throw them out of the party and uh you know

01:22:59.520 these are our best and brightest and our leaders of tomorrow and we're just sort of throwing them

01:23:03.060 out like literally throwing the baby out with the bath water i think it's a terrible idea

01:23:06.800 and it's one thing they do much much better than us in the united states rebel news alberta bureau

01:23:12.560 chief sheila gun reed joining us live sheila always a pleasure thanks for coming on thanks

01:23:17.260 for having me on guys you are tuned into true north live alberta election night show i understand

01:23:23.140 we do have some results coming in so we will get those uh broken down and go to our correspondent

01:23:29.300 william mcbeth very shortly but first i want to bring into this discussion danielle smith who is

01:23:34.660 the president of the alberta enterprise group and no stranger to running for office in alberta and

01:23:40.720 actually holding office in alberta danielle welcome great to talk to you again

01:23:44.580 oh we are uh still waiting for danielle sorry about that we'll uh we'll get her on in just a

01:23:52.820 moment as we have some tech issues maybe we'll go to william in the interim here uh william what

01:23:58.080 results are we seeing so far so we are getting uh some results from both edmonton and calgary

01:24:04.880 in edmonton um as as was kind of expected amrajit so he is leading by about eight percent 38 to 30

01:24:13.540 over conservative Mike Nichol, but that's a very early result. Only about eight polls are reporting

01:24:19.660 so far out of about 200, so I don't think we can call that one yet. But in Calgary, it is starting

01:24:26.720 to look like we're going to be close to being able to call the mayoral race for Jody Gondek.

01:24:32.240 She is a one-term councillor. She's presently leading with 45% of the vote and about half of

01:24:39.880 the polling stations, a little over half the polling stations reporting. Next closest is

01:24:44.160 Jeremy Farkas, who's at 29%. And so given that it's a gap of 16% with more than half of the

01:24:52.240 polling stations reporting, I think we're getting pretty close to being able to say that Jody Gondek

01:24:57.760 will be the next mayor of Calgary. And then in terms of the equalization vote, not as we talked

01:25:04.820 about earlier, not every jurisdiction is reporting those results tonight, but we are getting results

01:25:08.960 from Calgary so far. About 57% so far are voting yes on the equalization referendum. That's pretty

01:25:16.260 close to what Sheila guessed would be the case. 43% voting no so far. And in the Senate race,

01:25:25.540 we're seeing the three candidates endorsed by the Conservative Party of Canada far out in front

01:25:30.660 of any of the other candidates in the election. So, and that's with about half, 161 polls reporting

01:25:38.580 in calgary so far great thank you very much for that update william we'll check back in with you

01:25:44.300 very shortly i understand now we have danielle smith standing by and just so she doesn't get

01:25:49.580 short-chained on the introduction she is the president of the alberta enterprise group danielle

01:25:54.540 always a pleasure thanks for coming on nice to see you one of the things as we just hear these

01:25:59.800 results that jody gondek it sounds like is on track to be the winner of the calgary mayoral

01:26:05.740 raise. We're not calling it officially, but she's very much in the lead with a pretty significant

01:26:09.960 number of the polls in. Similarly in Edmonton, not as many polls in yet, but Amarjeet Sohi

01:26:15.920 in the lead there. You wrote a great analysis. It was, I think, very sobering for people on the

01:26:21.720 right in your newsletter on this yesterday. And you said that there really isn't much in the way

01:26:27.740 of infrastructure for people on the right in municipal politics. And I think we're seeing

01:26:32.440 this now in the most conservative province in Canada, very poor showings in the biggest cities

01:26:37.620 in that province. We've got two problems, I think. Well, maybe more than two, but two that I have off

01:26:42.700 the top of my head. One of them is that we always split the vote among conservatives. And so in both

01:26:48.460 Edmonton and in Calgary, we ended up with three or four sort of conservative or center-right

01:26:54.660 candidates, and then one identifiably progressive or leftist candidate. And as a result, the unions

01:27:01.600 who had strong PAC support in Calgary,

01:27:06.180 political action committee support in Calgary

01:27:08.200 and a little bit up in Edmonton as well.

01:27:10.360 They're able to provide the funding for one candidate,

01:27:14.260 which allows them to get their signs

01:27:15.720 and get their message out and get volunteers

01:27:17.840 and get lit drops.

01:27:19.740 Whereas the Conservatives,

01:27:21.280 the ones that I spoke with,

01:27:22.960 had a really difficult time raising any sort of funding.

01:27:26.280 That's the other part of the problem

01:27:27.400 is that we love to have this puritanical idea

01:27:31.100 that there should be no big money in politics and so at the federal and provincial level we got rid

01:27:35.640 of union and corporate donations and so they decided to do the same thing at the municipal

01:27:40.020 level problem is there's no tax receipt to give a contribution to a municipal candidate and there's

01:27:45.440 no rebates like there is at the federal level and so if you're a brand new candidate right out of

01:27:49.860 the gate you're trying to get money from friends and neighbors and you're competing with all the

01:27:53.740 other things that they could be giving money to so we've really starved out our municipal level

01:27:59.060 of office, of money, of organizers. There seems to be a real lack of interest among conservatives

01:28:04.960 about municipal office. And I don't understand why that is, because the left has understood

01:28:09.160 that you can use municipal office as training ground for your candidates for provincial and

01:28:14.600 federal office. And we don't do that in municipal politics, and we should. Maybe this is unique to

01:28:19.720 Alberta. Maybe you have more interest, particularly in Toronto, where it's a much bigger representation

01:28:26.100 base, but I would say generally speaking, we don't do a very good job of cultivating the local level

01:28:31.320 of office and local candidates. No, and we were talking about this earlier in the show with Vitor

01:28:36.420 Marciano. He said, you know, there's a conservative instinct to say, we don't want the federal

01:28:40.680 government to spend anything. We don't want the provincial government to spend anything. And I

01:28:45.020 mean, unless you want no governments to spend anything, which I think is an entirely defensible

01:28:48.600 position and probably the one I take on a lot of issues. Conservatives, generally speaking,

01:28:53.460 are on board with local government, direct democracy.

01:28:57.240 I mean, the best thing you can do

01:28:58.340 if you're a diehard conservative activist

01:29:00.700 is get involved on a school board,

01:29:02.300 get involved at the local level in politics.

01:29:05.280 But it becomes very difficult to actually transition that

01:29:08.120 into a movement and to do it in the way that the left does it.

01:29:13.000 It's very true.

01:29:14.260 And I think part of it is that you do have this union dominance

01:29:17.920 that happens at the municipal level.

01:29:19.900 For some reason, we always get higher turnout

01:29:22.380 at the federal level for prevent for elections and then followed by the provincial level and then

01:29:27.340 municipal and so if you happen to work for the city that you're uh somebody works in transit

01:29:33.020 or you work as a city worker in permitting or in tax collection or any of the other services cities

01:29:38.700 provide then you at police fire you've got a vested interest in trying to see who gets elected

01:29:44.060 on council and so those groups do tend to organize and get their members organized and then they get

01:29:50.380 get their friends and family organized. And as a result, you do end up with a complexion,

01:29:54.600 even in Calgary and Edmonton, which should be the most business minded and entrepreneurial

01:29:58.180 cities in the country, since we're the most conservative province in the country, you would

01:30:02.540 expect that our two major cities would represent that they've got two thirds of the population

01:30:06.180 after all, but it doesn't seem to be turning out that way. So this is this is a real problem.

01:30:11.280 The other side of the other issue, though, is that COVID derailed everything for conservatives

01:30:16.180 over the last year and a half because conservatives really couldn't find a position that was

01:30:21.440 consistent with what the majority of their membership base wanted because that's so

01:30:25.100 offside with what the general public wanted. And I think in Calgary in particular, it's become a

01:30:31.180 bit of a referendum on who do you trust to get you through the fourth wave and the fifth wave

01:30:36.220 and whatever other future waves there would be. And the candidate that's in the lead right now,

01:30:41.360 Jody Gondek is the one who took the strongest and most strident and most challenging position to the

01:30:47.560 provincial government right from the get-go. And it could well be that that became the ballot

01:30:51.400 question and the other candidates weren't able to catch up. I mean, it's still early days in

01:30:56.120 the counting and it could change, but that's a pretty big lead to try to overcome. Let's turn

01:31:02.400 to the referendum here. Now, this is something that for political diehards like us who want

01:31:07.420 you know, results tonight, and we would have stayed up till 5am for them, we won't get that

01:31:11.320 privilege, because for the most part, they aren't going to be reported officially until the 26. So

01:31:16.300 all we have to go on are the municipalities that are reporting them tonight. And I think Calgary

01:31:20.780 is probably one of the only ones. But it sounds like again, even though it's a bit early,

01:31:25.440 the Calgarians are favoring the equalization vote. Do you think we can extrapolate from that beyond

01:31:32.120 Calgary? It'll be interesting to see what happens in Edmonton because with the Calgary and Edmonton

01:31:38.060 we'll make up two-thirds of the vote. Calgary had 57% I think was the last time I looked

01:31:42.200 in favor of taking equalization out of the constitution 43% opposed. If you end up with

01:31:48.560 roughly similar numbers in Edmonton and I can guarantee you that in the rural areas it'll be

01:31:53.200 even higher than that may end up pumping over over 60% support and I think that if you are

01:31:58.860 trying to do the test of do you have a clear question and a strong mandate, then that would be

01:32:04.760 yes and yes. And so the hope behind that is that it's going to prompt a national discussion,

01:32:11.900 that the federal government is going to have to take the vote seriously. They can't just shrug

01:32:15.200 and say, yeah, whatever. I know that you want to change the constitution, but we're just going to

01:32:18.660 go do other things. The opinion of constitutional experts is that now because of various Supreme

01:32:25.820 court precedents that we've had. It obligates the federal government to take it seriously and to

01:32:29.720 negotiate in good faith. And so how that plays out after this is going to be interesting to see. I

01:32:34.540 suspect from the straw poll of what we see in Calgary, the rest of the country better get ready

01:32:38.580 because the conversation's beginning. We know, and trust me, I believe you when you say that,

01:32:44.360 the constitutional precedent from the Quebec case that the Supreme Court weighed in on

01:32:49.680 is very clear. And I know we're going to be talking to Bill Buick about this later on,

01:32:53.020 who's done a lot of work on this as well. At the same time, I also am not holding my breath,

01:32:58.460 given that just earlier this year, for example, Justin Trudeau sat down with Jason Kenney.

01:33:03.080 Jason Kenney said, you know, hey, we're having these Senate elections coming up. We really would

01:33:07.240 hope you'd hold off on appointing any. And Justin Trudeau said, well, you know, I don't know. And

01:33:11.760 then a couple of weeks later, Justin Trudeau announces Alberta Senate appointment. So I don't

01:33:16.820 think the federal government, this particular federal government has shown a willingness to

01:33:21.460 play ball necessarily. And I guess I would ask you as someone who's led a provincial political

01:33:26.460 party and movement, what would your next move be? You have the referendum, you have the mandate.

01:33:31.600 How would you play that card? Well, I think that you begin the negotiations,

01:33:35.940 but then you make immediate moves to do what Quebec has done. You say, okay, Ottawa, we're

01:33:41.340 going to collect our own personal income tax. We don't need your help doing that anymore.

01:33:44.840 You give notice to the RCMP that you're going to be canceling the contract and establishing an

01:33:48.780 Alberta Provincial Police that we don't need the RCMP anymore. And you tell Ottawa that we'll be

01:33:53.660 opting out of the Alberta, out of the pension plan, and we'll be creating our own Alberta

01:33:57.440 pension plan as well. Those are things that are completely within our power and control to be

01:34:02.260 able to do. And if the Premier gets the mandate that he has on this, let's remember equalization

01:34:08.580 is a federal program. To get it out of the Constitution requires 7 out of 10 provinces

01:34:14.220 representing 50 percent of the population to agree. But I think that this would show that the

01:34:18.740 premier has enough of a mandate to move on the things that he really does have control over.

01:34:22.980 And that's what I would hope to see, because those things will those things will matter.

01:34:26.380 Those things will will will cost the federal government money and it will make the other

01:34:30.320 provinces pay attention to. But I think that that it would be easy to to ignore or put this on a

01:34:38.060 slow train to any kind of resolution without a couple of follow ups. So I think the premier is

01:34:42.720 going to have to move on a few of those things yeah and you're right it also gives premier kenny

01:34:47.960 i mean it leaves him with nowhere to hide quite frankly because all of a sudden he has this

01:34:52.800 mandate his base is going to expect him to do something with it he certainly will although

01:34:57.580 you know i suppose he could say that it's not a strong enough mandate i'm not sure why he would

01:35:02.440 do that um i am a little bit surprised i want to talk to the 43 of calgarians who still think that

01:35:08.100 we should be spending $13 billion on Quebec so that they can subsidize hydroelectric power.

01:35:13.600 I'd love to know why they think that. Who are those people?

01:35:16.880 It is a good question. Some of them must be federal liberal supporters, although we don't

01:35:21.760 have that many. Some of them, I would think, would also be those who really do believe that Alberta

01:35:27.160 should play a leadership role in helping its neighbors. I think that if you asked me, do you

01:35:31.760 want to help PEI, my answer would probably say, yeah, I kind of want to help out PEI. But if you

01:35:37.100 asked me if I want to keep on shoveling money to Quebec so they can be hostile to the development

01:35:41.000 of our energy sector? My answer is hells no. So I think that's maybe the issue is that perhaps

01:35:46.700 equalization needs to be reformed so that it can support the smallest provinces as it was intended,

01:35:53.460 but it should not be there so that it creates a slush fund to help the federal liberals win

01:35:59.340 votes in Quebec, which is I think the way the 57% who said, yes, we need to get rid of this clause.

01:36:05.660 that's probably how that group sees it. Hey, I'm jumping in right here, Danielle. Nice to have

01:36:12.240 you on here. Sorry to interrupt you. Andrew, I wonder if Nikit Nenshi, I know he has a pretty

01:36:17.020 inflated view of himself. So he probably thinks that the 43% is driven by his Twitter rant that

01:36:24.180 he went on earlier today. But Danielle, I wanted to ask you, you understand Alberta politics

01:36:29.120 better than most and better than I do, certainly. We've seen Jason Kenney sort

01:36:35.600 of have a fall from grace recently. And we were talking earlier about how his approval numbers

01:36:39.800 are just really low. And so what do you think he needs to do, Danielle, to turn things around? I

01:36:44.660 mean, he's not in any imminent danger of getting removed. It doesn't seem he's got he seems like

01:36:50.060 he's got, what, seven, eight months until the UCP convention. So, you know, what do you think he

01:36:55.580 can do to win over conservatives who might have a negative opinion of him right now?

01:37:01.520 You know, I think the thing he needed to do, but he's disinclined to do it, is he needed to

01:37:05.440 take a little more of a strategic and surgical approach to how he imposed some of the new

01:37:11.320 measures, the vaccine mandates, the vaccine passports, the restrictions on various businesses.

01:37:17.040 There's an appetite for that in Calgary and Edmonton, undeniable. There's no appetite for

01:37:21.700 that in rural Alberta. And I got the impression, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I got the impression

01:37:27.640 that the harshest measures in Ontario were not applied across the board, that there was a little

01:37:33.580 bit more of a surgical application. So I think that's been one of his mistakes. The other mistake

01:37:38.080 that he's made is just flip-flopping that he, when he makes up his mind, he's a hundred percent dug

01:37:43.280 in. And then when he changes his mind, it's 180 degrees in the wrong direction. And then he digs

01:37:48.520 in again, a hundred percent. And people just don't trust now. They don't believe that when he says

01:37:52.820 that what he's saying now is, oh, well, we'll have vaccine passports only until the first quarter of

01:37:59.300 2022. I think a lot of people are saying, yeah, I'll believe that when I see it. What I would

01:38:03.680 have liked to have seen him do is I would have liked to have seen him, if he was going to go

01:38:08.000 down the pathway of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, then he needed to do some of the things that

01:38:12.920 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did. One of the main things he did was focus protection and make sure

01:38:17.900 that our seniors in nursing homes are taken care of as the first priority. He needed to have early

01:38:23.440 treatment options. We have no early treatment protocol in any province in Canada. The treatment

01:38:29.040 protocol is, gee, go home. And if your lips turn blue, go to the hospital. He could have been a

01:38:33.520 pioneer in saying, we don't think that's good enough. We're going to make sure we have early

01:38:37.180 treatment. And he could have made sure that we had monoclonal antibody treatment, which is approved

01:38:41.360 by the WHO, so that anybody who did get hospitalized would know they were going to be taken care of.

01:38:46.580 That's where I think he went wrong, is that you can't say, okay, all the restrictions come off,

01:38:51.340 and then we're going to do precisely nothing. He had to do something. And I think that's where he

01:38:55.000 ended up with the problem. I don't know that he'll change focus now or change direction now.

01:38:59.040 but that's part of the reason is that he raised expectations pretty high that he was going to go

01:39:04.840 down the path of some of those red states, and then he didn't deliver on it. And that's why

01:39:10.120 he's got such big problems. Danielle Smith, president of the Alberta Enterprise Group.

01:39:14.580 Always a pleasure. Thanks so much for your insight and analysis, Danielle.

01:39:17.680 Yeah, thank you. We'll talk again. All right, we'll talk to you soon. And let's now go to

01:39:22.000 some breaking news to our decision desk, William Macbeth of True North, who's been following the

01:39:27.140 results very closely i understand we have a key race to call william yeah we uh true north based

01:39:33.600 on the fact that at 182 of 259 polls reporting jody gondek leading with 45 of the vote to jeremy

01:39:41.880 farkas uh we can project that jody gondek will be the next mayor of calgary and that uh what was

01:39:48.400 pulled to be a very close election race within a couple percent ended up not being actually that

01:39:53.240 close at all well obviously not the result a lot of our audience was hoping for but but what do we

01:40:01.100 take away from this i mean was this just a rebellion against jason kenney was this a rebellion

01:40:06.640 against jeremy farkas what was jody gondek actually offering something that people wanted

01:40:11.780 specifically or was she really just the natural successor to an ahead nenshi to a lot of people

01:40:16.920 i you know it's interesting i i think there's a mix of reasons for you've talked about some of them

01:40:22.520 uh nang chi did not endorse gondette formally but he did spend his final moments on social media's

01:40:30.580 mayor going after jeremy farkas and telling people not to vote for him uh the other thing

01:40:36.020 that's interesting is uh as i mentioned earlier and i think danielle mentioned too uh the political

01:40:41.360 action committee with the by far the most money in calgary was the one being backed by the public

01:40:46.020 sector unions. I just did a quick tally and their endorsed candidates or others who are on

01:40:52.220 what would be considered the left look like they're on pace to win about 11 of Calgary's 15

01:40:58.820 city council seats. So the mayor and 10 more seats, which would actually be a pretty big

01:41:05.780 ideological shift on Calgary city council. And the other thing that I think is interesting

01:41:11.320 is of the four incumbents, four or five incumbents who are running again, at least three of them are

01:41:17.680 on track to be defeated so far tonight. We're seeing some councillors who have been there

01:41:23.520 for nearly two decades actually losing to challengers, which is very unusual in a municipal

01:41:30.220 election to see an incumbent actually lose. So a lot of factors going on at once right now,

01:41:37.260 and certainly not a slow night.

01:41:39.800 And Andrew, I can also just give a quick update.

01:41:41.640 Here in Edmonton, with 93 of 228 polls reporting,

01:41:47.120 Amrajit Sohi at 44% and his nearest competitor, Mike Nickel, at 27.

01:41:52.940 I think we're pretty close to being able to call Edmonton's mayor

01:41:57.000 for Amrajit Sohi as well.

01:41:59.700 How is the referendum looking in Calgary so far?

01:42:03.860 So, actually, it's gotten a bit better for the yes side.

01:42:07.640 It's climbed up a few points.

01:42:09.280 Again, with that 182 polls reporting, 58% of people voting in Calgary

01:42:14.860 have said yes to the equalization referendum, and 42% have said no.

01:42:20.400 Now, of course, we don't know what's happening in other parts of Alberta.

01:42:24.500 Perhaps something dramatically different is happening in Edmonton

01:42:26.920 or perhaps in the smaller cities or in the north and south.

01:42:30.420 But based on the results from Calgary, it looks like Albertans are voting for change when it comes to equalization.

01:42:38.160 And as a matter of interest for anybody trying to tell the time in Alberta right now, it looks like Albertans are voting to keep standard time and they are voting 53 percent no to moving fully to daylight savings time.

01:42:51.580 So that's the other referendum issue that maybe isn't getting as much attention as the equalization one.

01:42:56.980 Well, if that fails, the time actually of this right now goes back an hour and the polls reopen, don't I?

01:43:04.480 Yeah, maybe they can wage an extra hour.

01:43:06.500 Yeah, yeah. If it fails, we go back in time.

01:43:09.500 Candace, what do you make of this?

01:43:10.600 That on one hand, you've got Calgarians that are saying, yes, we want to stop bankrolling the rest of Canada,

01:43:16.500 but at the same time, also voting for the left of centre-mayoral candidates.

01:43:20.080 Well, it just goes back to Vitor's point, which really does stand out to me, which is that, you know, just because you have a view for Canada of sort of limited government and you don't want Ottawa to have its fingers in your pocket and you don't want the legislature in Edmonton to be able to, you know, push left wing ideology through the workforce and in schools.

01:43:43.700 That doesn't mean that you don't want, you know, nice, nicely paved sidewalks and roads being cleared when there's a big snowfall.

01:43:52.120 Like, like I understand the idea that that people would want a more activist local government and that that people who are sort of of the free market conservative side need to do a better job of really framing their issues and talking about, you know, ways that they can make their communities better.

01:44:10.160 Maybe conservatives need to take a more community centric approach to municipal politics.

01:44:15.920 You know, that's all sort of ideologically as far as, you know, the individual candidates.

01:44:20.480 It seems a little odd to me that so many people run in these elections.

01:44:23.780 Like, why not just have one sort of small C conservative candidate in Edmonton and one in Calgary to sort of rally all the people of that sort of persuasion behind?

01:44:34.840 So it seems like, you know, a little bit of a mixed bag. But interestingly, I, you know, the whole daylight savings, I wanted to make a point about this because a couple of years ago, California voted in an election to get rid of daylight savings times and they voted in favor of it.

01:44:54.680 It was 60 percent voted, yes, let's get rid of it, 40 percent, let's keep it.

01:44:59.040 And they never changed it. Nothing ever happened.

01:45:02.940 So sometimes these things happen and they don't really go anywhere.

01:45:07.740 And I think that's the same case with the fluoride in the water.

01:45:10.260 It seems like Calgary has been having this debate for a really long time as to whether or not there should be fluoride in the water.

01:45:16.600 It seems like an issue that just won't go away.

01:45:18.740 I read Colby Koch had an interesting article in the National Post saying that it's been 64 years and seven plebiscites and the city is still debating the merits of putting fluoride in the water.

01:45:31.560 Now, this is interesting because before the show, before we went live, we're having a little bit of our own internal debate here at True North about what we all thought about fluoride.

01:45:39.220 As you know, I'm from British Columbia. And so according to Colby Kosh, and I think he's usually correct, he says that 98.8 percent of the population of British Columbia lives with unfluoridated public water.

01:45:54.960 So so I don't think that there's any reason to put fluoride in your water. I think that a better idea is just tell everyone to brush their teeth. Right.

01:46:01.180 and and instead of having this sort of like paternalistic nanny state measure of just like

01:46:06.020 forcing people to have fluoride by sneaking it into their drinking water and making people

01:46:10.120 ingest it which doesn't have the desired effect you know the idea is that it helps

01:46:14.820 with your teeth ingesting it might not be the best thing and it's like well maybe it's because

01:46:20.520 i grew up in a jurisdiction where nobody has fluoride in their water so maybe it's just me

01:46:25.400 well and i grew up in a city in which the water is and as long as i can remember has been

01:46:30.880 fluoridated. So I never really thought that was a controversy. I just assumed that was part of the

01:46:36.200 standard municipal water treatment. It wasn't until there was some city councillor who wanted

01:46:40.920 to get rid of it and everyone treated him like he was a kook that I realized that this wasn't

01:46:45.240 unanimous across the board. So I do think where you were born and whether you grew up on

01:46:50.140 fluoridated water does weigh heavily on your take on this. How's that referendum shaken up,

01:46:54.960 William? I realize we skipped past that with all of our excitement about daylight savings time.

01:46:58.880 We did. Well, I can tell you that the pro-fluoride forces have been victorious, with 61% of Calgarians voting to restore fluoridation to their water, 39% voting to remain unfluoridated.

01:47:15.980 So that's a pretty clear win there for Team Florida. And I can say that I just did a quick check. And I think at this point, True North is going to be able to project that Amarjeet Sohi will be the next mayor of Edmonton.

01:47:30.700 with 152 of 228 polls reporting well more than 50 percent average so he has uh garnered about

01:47:38.340 44.67 percent of the vote to mike nichols 26.58 percent of the vote so alberta has elected two

01:47:46.540 progressive mayors tonight uh in both of their big cities well quite an interesting development

01:47:53.080 just to go back to the fluoride referendum for a moment so this is a resounding victory but as i

01:47:58.120 understand it this has happened before you know candace alluded to it the history of fluoride in

01:48:05.080 calgary is very interesting we've had endless endless referendums on whether or not we want

01:48:10.180 to have fluoride in our water and the last referendum that was held uh actually calgarians

01:48:15.180 voted to have fluoride in the water and then a few years later city council all on their own

01:48:20.120 decided to remove fluoride from the water even though voters had voted to have fluoride in the

01:48:25.380 water a few years before that. So who knows what the outcome will be. Just based on who's won the

01:48:33.280 city council election tonight, I don't see a large number of principled libertarians getting elected

01:48:39.980 to Calgary City Council, which tells me that they're going to be going ahead with the fluoride

01:48:44.660 in the water. So for any of you looking to avoid that, you might want to start stocking up on your

01:48:50.740 bottled water right now. We're just filtered water. No need to bring plastic into it. But

01:48:56.280 yes, yes. Yeah, the plastic is going to be illegal soon if the federal government has its way.

01:49:02.540 Yeah, I think if you're just tuning in, Flo Rida has won the Calgary election with 61% of the vote.

01:49:07.800 So it'll be a great, oh, no, no, no, sorry. Different results that we're mixing up there.

01:49:12.700 So William, just, I mean, based on what you've seen, you and I talked about this a little bit

01:49:16.340 earlier in the show, the breakdown of what we could extrapolate from Calgary's results.

01:49:23.180 Are you still holding firm with what you said before?

01:49:27.020 Yeah, I mean, I do think that it is a pretty big win for the unions and the supporters of the left

01:49:36.000 here in Calgary. They have flipped a number of seats that were previously held by more conservative

01:49:41.880 counselors. You know, the polling from a bunch of different polling companies showed it to be a

01:49:47.960 really close race between Jody Gondek and Jeremy Parkas. The outcome, though, of the mayor's race

01:49:53.640 wasn't close at all, 15 or 16 percent difference between the first place and second place

01:49:59.100 candidate. And you have to wonder how much two million dollars of PAC money from the unions,

01:50:06.440 the public sector unions, played into the results that are happening tonight.

01:50:11.880 Very well said.

01:50:12.840 Before we go to our next and final guest for the evening,

01:50:16.080 Candice, how can people support True North?

01:50:18.300 Well, you know, we really appreciate everyone tuning in,

01:50:21.700 and it's a lot of fun to do these live shows.

01:50:24.320 We like to do them almost every opportunity we can.

01:50:26.700 We did one on election night.

01:50:30.460 You probably remember we did one on the debate night.

01:50:32.560 We did one on the night the election kicked off.

01:50:34.960 We really like doing them.

01:50:35.940 We also have, you know, full lineup of podcasts.

01:50:39.540 We put podcasts out every day.

01:50:40.920 the Candace Malcolm show, the Andrew Lawton show

01:50:43.080 we have a couple of other colleagues who

01:50:44.900 do videos and all that kind of thing

01:50:46.440 you can get news on Canadian

01:50:49.160 political, on Canadian

01:50:51.260 politics, immigration

01:50:52.840 foreign policy, we have an entire

01:50:55.300 team, a newsroom

01:50:56.580 and we really appreciate

01:50:59.380 everyone who tunes in, who supports

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01:51:03.020 the work we do, if you enjoy watching us, if you want

01:51:05.300 to keep it going, if you want to be a part of

01:51:07.440 True North and the vision that we have

01:51:09.260 for independent media in Canada

01:51:10.520 please head on over to donate.tnc.news.

01:51:14.100 We don't take any money from the government.

01:51:15.600 We're true independent journalists.

01:51:17.780 We don't think that journalists should get money from the government,

01:51:20.560 and we take a very principled stand against that.

01:51:23.180 So if you support our idea for independent journalism in Canada,

01:51:27.080 you like hearing the other side of the story,

01:51:28.700 you want to see news that, you know, we do fact-based news,

01:51:33.480 but we also have a conservative, small-c conservative editorial position,

01:51:36.860 which is really rare in the media lineup.

01:51:39.460 You see a lot of people on the left, center left, pretty much dominates the entire media spectrum in Canada.

01:51:46.100 And it really has an impact on the country, even as we see tonight with a bunch of left center candidates winning.

01:51:53.620 You know, if we want to move that needle and push more conservative culture,

01:51:58.000 party elements of that is having independent media and a small C conservative editorial position.

01:52:03.520 So, again, if you like True North, please head on over to donate.tnc.news.

01:52:07.960 consider giving us just a very small donation, whatever you can. It all helps. So thank you so

01:52:12.360 much. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. And I will say on the point of not being funded by the

01:52:17.320 government, a lot of the time people say, well, you know, yeah, the government doesn't want to

01:52:21.020 give you money. It goes both ways. We don't want to receive government money. And I think that's

01:52:25.120 what sets us apart is that we do not want to be beholden to the government and to the government

01:52:30.400 narrative. And I think over the last year and a half with COVID, that's been especially clear

01:52:33.940 how important it is for there to be truly independent voices. So whether it's covering

01:52:38.620 Alberta elections, we're here for you, or national elections, or even all the things that happen in

01:52:43.280 between. We're standing by in just a couple of moments, we're going to go to Bill Buick, who's

01:52:47.360 the executive director of Fairness Alberta. But I want to talk a little bit about the stakes of

01:52:53.380 this referendum, because I admit, I generally speaking, try to have very low expectations,

01:52:57.480 because it's very easy to get disappointed with the political culture being what it is from time

01:53:02.180 to time. But here's the challenge. This is a non-binding referendum. So a lot of what happens

01:53:08.740 next comes down to how Jason Kenney and the Alberta government play it. And let me ask you,

01:53:14.380 Candice, we've talked about this with Danielle, with Vitor, with other people that have come on

01:53:18.000 here. How strong a voice do you think Jason Kenney is going to be in Ottawa going up against Justin

01:53:23.820 Trudeau with this referendum result if things continue to develop how it sounds like they are,

01:53:28.460 at least in Calgary. Yeah, well, I think I think we can let Bill Buick kind of speak to that when

01:53:33.620 he comes on, because he'll probably have a better understanding. But from what I understand,

01:53:38.660 you know, that there's already a lot of partisan politics at play when a provincial conservative

01:53:43.880 premier meets with a federal liberal prime minister. And, you know, there's a lot of

01:53:48.600 posturing, a lot of, you know, talking points and part just partisan politics. And so when Jason

01:53:56.880 Kenny has and what Albertans are giving, you know, if the referendum goes the way that we think it

01:54:02.740 will based on the Calgary results, that this is this is an added level of leverage because it's

01:54:08.900 not just, you know, I'm a conservative, you're a liberal and we're going to we're going to duel

01:54:13.120 it out. It really is. You know, this is the will of the people in Alberta. The people in Alberta

01:54:18.900 don't want this in the Constitution. They have told us this. It's not just like a very small,

01:54:24.180 one or two percent. It looks like an overwhelming majority of Albertans have said that they don't

01:54:30.540 like the system of fiscal federalism. They don't like the idea of subsidizing to such a great

01:54:35.400 extent Quebec when Alberta has its own fiscal problems and having its own issues with the

01:54:41.920 recession and the decline in the price of oil and all the problems with pipelines. You had a

01:54:47.460 disastrous government with the NDP and Rachel Notley. You've had a disastrous federal government

01:54:52.620 with the Liberals in Justin Trudeau, and both of those components together has just been

01:54:57.680 so heartbreaking for so many in Alberta, seeing their industry go in decline, and Calgary wants

01:55:03.620 just a great, prospering city, you know, sitting with, what, a quarter of its commercial space is

01:55:10.040 vacant and unoccupied. So, you know, I think what this really does is provide a message to the

01:55:18.000 elites that are in control in ottawa to uh justin trudeau and his inner circle that it's not just

01:55:23.180 a matter of you know we're conservative you're liberals you know this is this is the will of

01:55:27.540 the people in alberta and i think that they would be um very well advised to to listen and and at

01:55:34.000 least um look into it and then vitor made a great point earlier about how um you know some of the

01:55:39.560 other provinces might want to reconsider that the whole arrangement when it comes to federal

01:55:43.880 transfers with health because so many provinces have been hit so hard by COVID, all of them,

01:55:48.920 the whole country has. So, you know, the idea that we're so limited with a rationed

01:55:53.880 government-run, rigid government-run healthcare system might be something that we finally have

01:55:59.240 the maturity as a country to look at and get past the cheap little talking points about us being

01:56:04.700 superior to our American neighbors and say, you know, let's look at the healthcare system

01:56:11.860 objectively, not just comparing ourselves to Americans, but say, what's the best system that

01:56:16.920 we can have and working on together? And I think that this is all the components of them. It's all

01:56:23.220 aligned here. So I think that that's something that's going to be interesting in the coming

01:56:26.620 years, Andrew. Yeah. And just on a related note, I mean, it doesn't have to do with the referendum,

01:56:31.740 but on the note of health care, there's actually a conference next weekend in Calgary being put on

01:56:37.280 by our friend Danny Hozak and the Economic Education Association that is dealing with

01:56:42.500 that question because we've seen how healthcare is kind of the linchpin of a lot of things that

01:56:48.040 are happening right now, whether it's the pandemic response, lockdown measures, some

01:56:52.540 of the things you were just talking about. I'm going to be speaking at that. Danielle

01:56:55.000 is going to be speaking at that. And I think that's going to be something that is very

01:56:58.560 interesting moving forward because, you know, again, this has been a climactic moment for

01:57:02.440 Alberta, for Albertans, but you have to talk about what comes next. And something Danielle

01:57:07.220 Smith mentioned earlier really stuck with me. She had talked about the idea that Albertans

01:57:11.640 oftentimes want to help their neighbors. They think, okay, you know, we've got a bit of wealth

01:57:15.900 here. We've got a bit of money. We can afford to help PEI. The problem with equalization is that

01:57:21.820 the application of it is not just to help provinces in need. It actually helps provinces

01:57:29.460 structure their entire fiscal system around the idea of dependence. And that's especially true

01:57:36.420 in alberta or in quebec rather quebec is the second largest province in canada quebec has

01:57:41.700 industry quebec has a lot there quebec could very easily be running its affairs in such a way

01:57:47.700 that it doesn't need that steady stream of money from alberta but they don't so the result is

01:57:54.000 albertans subsidizing quebec hydro subsidizing quebec infrastructure doing all of these things

01:57:59.040 so we'll delve into that now with bill buick dr bill buick i should say he is the executive

01:58:03.720 director of Fairness Alberta and joins us now. Bill, this is something that you and I talked

01:58:08.800 about in the past. I know you spoke about it on Candace's show as well. It doesn't change the

01:58:13.400 constitution if this referendum goes the way it looks like it is, but it does give a strong

01:58:18.620 mandate. Now explain for people that don't know how this non-binding referendum can actually have

01:58:24.000 some real force in Ottawa. Sure. I have a column I wrote for the National Post that I encourage

01:58:29.940 people to have a look at. And it basically says, I mean, someone asked me today, they're thinking

01:58:35.260 they had a gotcha moment. So if Quebec had a referendum to increase equalization payments,

01:58:41.420 should the federal government pay attention to that? And I said, of course. I mean, anytime a

01:58:45.540 province cares enough about a topic to have a referendum that they pass something on, clearly

01:58:52.320 that's significant. And how could a federal government just ignore any province who passed

01:58:57.580 referendum on something like that so uh of course they wouldn't though because they wouldn't want us

01:59:02.220 opening up that can of worms because as you pointed out uh it's basically uh entirely stacked

01:59:07.740 in their favor so but the the problem is that so there's a common sense uh notion that anytime

01:59:14.380 the people speak out in such a way that the federal government should pay attention

01:59:17.980 but then also in 1998 um and it's extremely frustrating because there's there's some

01:59:22.860 constitutional law scholars who, you know, who wouldn't trust the constitutional law scholars

01:59:28.080 interpretation of this, they keep insisting there's just no significance to the 1998 Quebec

01:59:33.520 secession reference to what we're talking about. But the Supreme Court was very clear in a very long

01:59:38.820 reference case that they were asked by the federal government. Yeah, there was the main focus was how

01:59:44.280 could a province trigger a separation and breaking up the country. But they also put in a few very

01:59:49.900 clear general principles that when there's a legitimate expression for a desire for change

01:59:56.960 from any province, that there's a duty for the federal government and the rest of the provinces

02:00:01.320 to consult on it. And so the wording certainly didn't help the numbers that we're going to see

02:00:07.820 tonight and then in a week when they're official. But the wording is there because it made it a

02:00:14.480 tougher threshold, so that when that passes, it triggers these duties beyond what the typical

02:00:20.420 political duties would be to address a problem when a province expresses it that clearly.

02:00:26.420 Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned political duty, because I would say irrespective of how that

02:00:31.340 Supreme Court reference case is interpreted, there is a political duty, but obviously a legal duty

02:00:37.480 has much more force. What needs to happen, I guess, politically and legally for Jason

02:00:44.440 Kenney and for his government to advance this? I mean, you have the results, you have the

02:00:48.360 numbers. What's that next step?

02:00:51.740 To me, the next step, and it's something we've been working on at Fairness Alberta for a

02:00:55.700 little while now, is getting Ontario on board. Saskatchewan's already said they're on board

02:01:01.420 with pushing for equalization reform. The other two big contributors are Ontario and

02:01:07.240 British Columbia. And politically speaking, you know, it might be the case that Alberta and

02:01:14.600 Saskatchewan tend to be a little taken for granted by one party and kind of written off by the other

02:01:19.760 parties. So nobody really wants to go out too far on a limb for us, unfortunately. And that's

02:01:25.600 something, you know, we're trying to get around through this referendum and through the advocacy

02:01:29.780 we're doing. But really, the serious reforms are going to come when it's folks in Ontario,

02:01:36.220 when the politicians in Ontario start hearing about this from people, when the politicians in

02:01:40.780 British Columbia think, or if they just take a good hard look at this and say, hey, we have a

02:01:46.260 fiscal problem here in our province. It's not that our taxpayers aren't paying enough taxes.

02:01:51.720 It's that the federal government is taking so many of those taxes and sending them to Quebec

02:01:56.160 in the maritime. And Quebec in particular is the one. So to me, the next step is to A, you know,

02:02:03.240 everybody's got a heads up now that this is coming before you go too hard on trying to demand the

02:02:09.360 changes. Let's see how much support we can get in Ontario and British Columbia. That's 70% of the

02:02:14.940 country and a whole bunch of the governments are won and lost in Ontario and British Columbia.

02:02:20.200 If we can get those folks angry about this, frankly, and pushing for these changes to happen

02:02:26.300 and realizing just how much the federal government is taking of their taxes, giving to other

02:02:31.240 provincial government, then that's the time I think we can really push for serious changes and

02:02:35.940 have success. Vitor Marciano was on the show earlier, and he made a comment that I can't

02:02:42.200 really disagree with, that the only people that have been vocally against the referendum are

02:02:46.680 political science professors. Now, I don't think they make up 43% of the population of Calgary,

02:02:52.660 which seems to be last time I checked the number that voted against this. In your experience

02:02:56.840 talking to people what are the primary objections are they people that object to the specific

02:03:02.980 question or are they just people that dislike the process dislike some of the players involved and

02:03:07.860 and aren't really engaging directly on that idea of whether they support or oppose equalization

02:03:12.640 i haven't run into or heard from or you know we get hundreds and hundreds of people commenting

02:03:20.560 on our posts because I've been very kind of active on this on this front I haven't really

02:03:26.260 seen anybody say they disagree that equalization is seriously flawed and needs to be changed

02:03:31.380 it is a combination of thinking it's just a publicity stunt by the premier or which is you

02:03:40.640 know a lot of people have said oh he's just doing this because he's unpopular right now he's like

02:03:44.060 well no this was something that was pushed in 2017 that's when I started supporting it and it

02:03:49.580 was in the platform in 2019 uh this has been a long time in the making and it's people so people

02:03:55.800 that are just cynical about the process cynical about the type of question and uh and yeah i i'm

02:04:02.420 a little surprised at how many academics have come out so full-throatedly and just you know

02:04:11.340 from all different angles it doesn't mean anything it's it's too radical and it shouldn't be phrased

02:04:18.400 this way? I mean, kind of pick a lane. Is it insignificant and unmeaningful and symbolic,

02:04:23.460 or is it something that's going to rip apart the Constitution and cause these massive quarrels that

02:04:29.380 are going to maybe leave Alberta in the short end after a while? They don't seem to be too logical.

02:04:35.000 They just seem fixated on very, very narrow looking at this and not understanding that it's

02:04:41.680 ultimately kind of symbolic, but it also has a piece in there that triggers a threshold,

02:04:47.640 which will force more meaningful discussions and negotiations yeah i think you're very right there

02:04:53.720 you know i've paid a close attention to this not as close as you as you've been in the trench on

02:04:57.960 this but i i've not come across a single person who said well you know uh by by golly i i want

02:05:03.340 to give quebec more money i i've not met that albertan they met they might be out there but i

02:05:07.520 have not met them or have not heard from them uh bill buick executive director of fairness alberta

02:05:12.220 great work on this and thanks for coming on tonight yeah my pleasure andrew and happy to come

02:05:16.840 on in the future as we start to push this cause in Ontario and British Columbia and across Canada.

02:05:23.280 And I encourage everybody to go to fairnessalberta.ca and see what they can do to help us.

02:05:28.580 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Bill. We might need to see some fairness offshoots in the days and

02:05:32.860 weeks to come. Fairness Ontario, Fairness Manitoba, Fairness Saskatchewan, and so on.

02:05:38.280 Just as we wind down our time together, I want to bring back our All-Star True North team here,

02:05:42.980 Candace Malcolm and William McBeth. William, I'm not sure, do we have any new results on the

02:05:49.200 referendum, on any of the municipal elections, or Senate as well is one that I think deserves

02:05:54.060 a little bit of attention? Sure. I can say that two more municipalities are reporting

02:06:00.780 equalization referendum results. The two southern cities of Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. Lethbridge

02:06:07.600 is voting 58.5% yes on the referendum equalization question, 41.5% no. Medicine Hat, though, voting

02:06:17.500 70% yes on an equalization referendum, 30% no. So a decisive win for the pro-equalization

02:06:25.560 reform group right there. And then in terms of the Senate elections, I mentioned before that

02:06:31.920 the three candidates endorsed by the Conservative Party of Canada are leading. Two of them are

02:06:37.120 leading by quite a lot. One of them seems to be 7 or 8 percent back, though. And not too far behind

02:06:43.240 them are a couple independent candidates, one named Doug Horner, who was a PC cabinet minister

02:06:48.840 for 150 years here in Alberta. He comes from a storied political family. And another one who has

02:06:56.540 backing from both former Mayor Nahed Nengshi and Premier Ed Stelmak. So this one, a doctor,

02:07:04.380 seems to be spanning sort of the ideological divide. The People's Party of Canada is also

02:07:09.800 running a slate of Senate candidates, three Senate candidates, and they're earning in the

02:07:15.240 four to five percent mark, which was sort of what the PPC, I think, was earning at the national level

02:07:20.380 in the last federal election. But it looks at this point like the three Conservative Party

02:07:27.020 endorsed candidates are in the lead. That's interesting. I know the PPC had in some Alberta

02:07:32.620 ridings managed to nab 13, 14, 15 percent of the vote. And I know a couple of those ridings

02:07:38.340 candidates actually are now the ones running in the Senate, one of them notably Nadine Wellwood

02:07:43.780 in Banff-Airdrie. So I guess the PBC was probably hoping it could replicate that and build off of it,

02:07:49.580 but it doesn't sound like that's happening. No, and I think it's just a function of there

02:07:54.500 isn't as much attention on this Senate election as I think there was on the federal election.

02:07:59.840 Maxime Bernier did a cross-country tour. True North, of course, reported from the ground on

02:08:04.760 his election night event. But there was no PPC campaign that Maxime Bernier spearheaded here in

02:08:11.100 Alberta during this Senate election. So I think they fell back a bit from where they were in the

02:08:16.860 federal time. Candace, we've covered a lot of ground here. What are your thoughts here as we

02:08:22.120 wrap up? Well, Andrew, you had a funny line a minute ago when you were talking to Bill. You

02:08:27.180 said by golly i don't think we should give quebec more money and reminded me of our friend uh norm

02:08:32.000 mcdonald who passed away a couple weeks ago i know he always used that funny line he'd say by golly

02:08:36.880 uh so i don't know if you if you were doing a norm mcdonald impression there or not but i wasn't

02:08:41.260 trying to be but as i was saying it i was thinking of him i realized no i like that no this is uh

02:08:46.940 i you know i like doing these live shows i've i've enjoyed it i always learn a lot i think having

02:08:51.900 a roster of Alberta and guests come on and sort of give us the perspective from different parts

02:08:57.960 of the province. And, you know, it's so important. We kind of get wrapped up in federal politics and

02:09:03.480 always focusing on Justin Trudeau and the latest shenanigans out of Ottawa. And, you know, it's

02:09:08.140 important to recognize that there's a whole other country out there that doesn't see eye to eye,

02:09:14.260 doesn't view things the same way as the people in downtown Toronto and out in Ottawa do. So

02:09:19.520 it's it's refreshing uh for me and i really i enjoyed i like reading the comments as well i

02:09:24.280 always get some good laughs um and uh you know some interesting content as well so thanks to

02:09:28.820 everyone uh who has been uh commenting thanks to everyone who has chipped in uh to help support

02:09:34.420 true north over at donate.tnc.news really appreciate it and i i guess we'll just have to

02:09:40.020 stay tuned because you know we have sort of unofficial results i think that the mayoral

02:09:43.800 races are pretty down pat. But with regards to the referendum on equalization, some of those

02:09:50.460 other questions, we'll have to do a deeper dive in the coming days and weeks. But yeah, no, I think

02:09:56.420 it's been great. Really appreciate everyone who's been watching and Andrew for hosting. You know,

02:10:01.240 we have a whole behind the scenes team that I don't want to forget. So thank you to the team

02:10:08.080 behind the scenes that are helping us out. Really appreciate it. And yeah, thank you. It's been a

02:10:13.120 great night. All right. Well, on that note, my thanks to you, Candice, for putting this all

02:10:18.080 together and everyone else and William for coming on and staying on top of the numbers to the team.

02:10:22.540 And more importantly, well, not more importantly, but as importantly to all those of you who are

02:10:27.220 tuning in, you know, this is a lot of fun. And I know all of us like talking to each other and

02:10:31.500 kicking back and breaking down what's happening in politics, but I don't think we'd be doing it

02:10:35.680 as fervently without an audience. So thanks to all of you for tuning in. Cover what's happening

02:10:41.460 in your community and let us know.

02:10:42.960 Obviously, we haven't been able to cover every town

02:10:44.920 and every county and every village.

02:10:46.380 Some of them are not posting their results online.

02:10:49.080 But if you go to tnc.news in the coming days,

02:10:52.020 we'll be reporting stories that are emerging

02:10:53.780 as we see some more of these numbers.

02:10:55.960 So thanks again to the on-air, to the off-air,

02:10:58.720 and to those of you watching wherever you are

02:11:00.820 in the country or around the world.

02:11:02.440 I'm Andrew Lawton for True North.

02:11:03.980 We are signing off.

02:11:05.120 Have a good night, everyone.

02:11:11.460 Thank you.

Juno News - October 19, 2021

True North's coverage of the Alberta Referendum and Local Elections.

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