Juno News - UCP Leadership candidates face-off

00:00:00.000 hey everyone welcome to the alberta roundup i'm your host rachel emmanuel we're going to do our

00:00:14.480 best to keep the episode super brief so let's jump into today's topics beginning with general news

00:00:19.920 the alberta court of appeals has ruled in favor of pastor arthur palowski who was arrested jailed

00:00:25.680 and fined for continuing to preach in breach of alberta's coven 19 lockdowns he has some pretty

00:00:31.120 horrific tales of how he was treated while in jail he was held in solitary confinement i suggest you

00:00:36.320 research that a little bit more so of course the ruling was a big win for civil liberties and for

00:00:41.120 religious freedoms here in alberta he will be reimbursed for the fines that he was paid ultimately

00:00:46.560 the cost of this is going to be passed down to taxpayers however so definitely a lesson learned

00:00:51.200 here in alberta and for alberta health services the trudeau government meanwhile is looking to

00:00:56.640 impose a requirement to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer by 30 percent as part

00:01:02.080 of its overall effort to reduce emissions by 40 to 45 percent by 2030 of course we've all heard lots

00:01:08.480 about prime minister justin trudeau's radical environmental agenda and how that seems to be

00:01:12.880 overshadowing any of the other much more pressing problems in our country right now i caught up with

00:01:18.080 agriculture minister nate horner who said it seems like ottawa pulled the target out of the air and

00:01:22.800 they have no idea where they found the 30 percent reduction from he also said he was very disappointed

00:01:27.600 to learn that while ottawa will be consulting with the provinces on how to move forward with their

00:01:31.920 target they have absolutely no plans of reconsidering the target to a lower and more reasonable one

00:01:37.680 this is of course absolutely more insanity from the trudeau government food prices are at an all-time

00:01:42.640 high and there's even problems with food shortages emerging especially with the conflict

00:01:46.880 going on in russia and ukraine right now this is going to turn into a big problem and of course

00:01:51.760 as minister horner said to me it's either going to result in less food being produced or higher

00:01:56.400 costs which will ultimately be passed down to the consumer which seems to be how everything works

00:02:00.960 these days let's jump into the uocp leadership debate so of course there's an ongoing united

00:02:05.760 conservative party leadership debate happening here in alberta this seems to be dominating most of the

00:02:10.720 headlines it is summer things are a little sleepy but this has been keeping things very interesting so the

00:02:15.760 deadline for candidates to apply was on july 20th that's last week wednesday uh just seven candidates

00:02:22.400 made it past the first deadline they had to submit 75 000 and a thousand signatures from the province's

00:02:29.600 five different regions um that's the first 75k in total they're going to have to pay 175k so they

00:02:36.080 still have two more deadlines of 55 50 000 each so of the candidates just calgary businessman john horseman

00:02:42.080 didn't get his signatures in on time about an hour before the 5 pm deadline he posted on social media

00:02:47.040 saying he was on track to meet it but there were so many candidates in the running and he just didn't

00:02:51.280 feel like it was worth it for him to throw his name in because of how many candidates there were

00:02:56.400 so raj sermon as well was hoping to run he's the former alberta liberal party leader he actually did

00:03:01.760 get his signatures and the money in but the party didn't accept it as he was never approved to run in

00:03:06.000 the first place he required an exemption to run because he wasn't a party member for six months prior to the

00:03:11.520 contest but the party did not grant him uh that waiver so he will not be running as well so now

00:03:17.040 we're left with seven candidates it's still quite a few to choose from interestingly they're all current

00:03:21.760 or former mlas so six of them are sitting mlas five of those are ucp mlas and that includes four who were

00:03:30.400 cabinet ministers under jason kenney so of course that's leela ahir rebecca schultz travis taves and raj

00:03:35.840 and sonny um and then of course we have danielle smith who's the only one who's not a sitting

00:03:40.560 mla currently but of course she is very well known here in alberta she is a the former opposition wild

00:03:46.880 rose party leader and she's probably best known for her 2014 floor crossing when she crossed the

00:03:51.680 floor to join jim prentice's pcs as an act of unity it did not go over that way the people did not accept

00:03:58.800 it at all and she lost her nomination the following year and left politics for six years where she was on

00:04:03.600 the radio and i would say she was you know quite successful on that show it seems albertans are ready to

00:04:08.640 forgive her and to give her another shot at government as shown in recent polls so leisure

00:04:13.360 released a poll on sunday let's just talk about the results of that for a minute uh respondents

00:04:18.160 were ucp supporters and they were asked who would make the best party leader so the poll found that

00:04:22.800 smith is in the lead at 22 this is sort of similar to the numbers that we've been seeing since the race

00:04:28.160 began she's been pulling ahead and she's followed closely by brian gene at 20 so just a two-point

00:04:33.120 difference there of course brian gene is a household name here in alberta he's been in alberta politics

00:04:38.080 for forever everyone knows who he is and he was a former conservative mp as well so he has that name

00:04:43.680 recognition going for him which is really advantageous in a leadership race and following him we have the

00:04:48.720 former finance minister travis tapes he's at 15 so those numbers are all kind of similar to what we've

00:04:53.520 been seeing for the last month not a lot of movement there uh then we have rebecca schultz she was a

00:04:58.960 former kenny minister and mla todd lowen they each got two percent todd lowen was actually removed from

00:05:05.280 the ucp caucus with drew barnes last year for calling for jason kenny's resignation due to his

00:05:10.480 covet 19 pandemic handling but also because they felt that the premier wasn't making enough progress

00:05:15.680 on getting alberta a fair deal with ottawa i mean now we have rajin sani she was the former

00:05:20.640 transportation minister who resigned to run for the usb leadership race as is custom she had zero percent

00:05:26.480 support with the poll and leela ahir who is the most progressive candidate in the running she did

00:05:30.880 not register any support in this in the poll other issues that were important to ucp supporters was a

00:05:36.880 clear plan to get alberta's economy back on track and growing 42 said that was the most important issue

00:05:42.400 for the ucp leader to deal with and a clear plan to rebuild important services like health care and

00:05:47.440 education in the province that was the 21 the second most important issue for ucp supporters not terribly

00:05:53.680 surprising albertans have been really worried about their economy for a while luckily we're seeing

00:05:57.920 you know oil prices rebound now so that's been good and we're forecasting a really high surplus

00:06:03.040 but also there's been a lot of discontentment with ahs we have a lot of problems with ambulances and

00:06:07.120 wait times and of course a lot of people were just really unhappy with how hs handled the coven 19

00:06:11.920 pandemic and want to see a rehaul there let's move into the ucp leadership debate so the first official

00:06:18.480 ucp leadership debate was on wednesday night all the way in medicine hat they held it at an airport

00:06:23.200 hangar sorry rather a emergency medic helicopter hangar um it was interesting location i guess

00:06:28.720 that's kind of a special place and they hold events there might not have been the best location to hold

00:06:33.280 a leadership race on just because we had so many issues with wi-fi and of course the party was trying

00:06:37.680 to live stream for the debate for the many people who didn't feel like making the trip down to medicine

00:06:41.920 hat but there are copies of it available online now if you hadn't had a chance to watch it um the debate

00:06:47.120 quickly turned into an everyone versus danielle smith of course as i mentioned she's the front runner

00:06:52.240 seems like the other candidates know that and they're trying to find you know ways to attack her

00:06:57.040 i'm not sure their tactic really worked because it ultimately just ended up giving danielle smith so

00:07:02.080 much air time and she did remain her calm and was very level-headed and sort of responded to their

00:07:06.960 complaints so it made her look really really strong um the way the debate format worked is there were

00:07:12.400 seven questions every candidate was given a question they were allowed to respond to that for two minutes

00:07:17.120 and then they were allowed to pick an opponent to respond to that question for a minute and a half

00:07:20.960 and then those two candidates sparred off for about four minutes and just had some back and

00:07:24.400 forth debate i really liked the debate format i heard a lot of complaints about how bad it was

00:07:29.120 but the reason that i liked it is because they actually allotted a good amount of time for back

00:07:32.800 and forth debate a lot of times we don't really see that in in leadership debates or elections anymore

00:07:36.880 it's like 30 seconds to debate back and forth so i really liked that they allowed for some genuine

00:07:41.040 back and forth but as i mentioned the candidates were you know so keen to go after danielle smith so they

00:07:46.080 often chose her as a person to spar off with which ultimately just gave her more air time i felt like

00:07:51.440 we didn't really hear from leela here very much we didn't really hear from todd lowen very much

00:07:56.160 um and raj and sonny came out as a total attack dog on danielle smith all the sort of what are

00:08:00.800 being called the establishment candidate candidates you know candidates that worked in jason kenney's

00:08:04.960 governments were definitely attacking smith the most but raj and sonny was totally the smith attack dog

00:08:10.080 even in her opening statements she made a little bit of a slight at smith she said the province

00:08:13.840 needs more than a talk show host ouch um i have to say that i actually think rajan won the debate

00:08:20.160 i know you were not expecting me to say that because people are talking about her campaign

00:08:24.400 and she's pulling at two percent and nobody's really been talking about her campaign very much

00:08:28.320 so i think that kind of put her on the map and following the debate in a media scrum she said you know

00:08:33.040 i want to be the danielle smith antidote so she's making it very clear where she stands and how she wants

00:08:38.560 to portray herself as a candidate whether that's what the party membership is looking for i'm not sure

00:08:43.840 but at this point in the race i think it's good that she's sort of generating some discussion

00:08:47.360 about what type of leader she would be and making it clear and sort of setting herself apart from

00:08:51.760 the pack of you know candidates that worked in jason kenney's government okay let's move to the

00:08:56.160 controversy of the week so i'm sure you've heard by now danielle smith's comments on cancer and

00:09:01.840 preventative treatment what had happened is she held a podcast last week thursday where she was

00:09:06.560 discussing naturopathy medication for those of you who aren't familiar with naturopaths what they do is they

00:09:11.760 take a look at your body and all the issues that they're you're having and from there they determine

00:09:16.000 what the issue might be and then they give you supplements and they might you know prescribe

00:09:21.040 you a specific diet and exercise regime to follow so that your body can fix itself whereas in contrast

00:09:26.560 western medication or mainstream medication whatever you want to call it it's a lot of times a band-aid

00:09:31.600 fix it doesn't get at the root of the issue it more just helps you with whatever pain and symptoms

00:09:36.080 you're feeling naturopaths really want to get to the root cause and to help your body learn to fix

00:09:40.880 itself now the naturopath that danielle smith had on dr christine perkins said we need both types of

00:09:46.320 medication you can't just have naturopathy there are times when i have a patient that's going to need

00:09:50.720 cancer or radiation or chemotherapy and sometimes they come to me it's too late but she said we really

00:09:56.400 need both forms of medication and then danielle smith i'll just read you exactly how she responded and you

00:10:01.600 can decide for yourself how you feel about her comments smith responds that's a perfect example

00:10:06.800 because absolutely once you've arrived and got stage four cancer and there's radiation and surgery

00:10:12.400 and chemotherapy that's an incredibly expensive intervention not just for the system but also

00:10:18.000 very expensive in the toll it takes on the body but when you think about everything that built up

00:10:22.240 before you got to stage four on that diagnosis that's completely within your control and there's

00:10:27.760 something that you can do about that that is different and i want to talk a little bit more about

00:10:32.240 so of course you know a clip of these comments kind of went around the internet and everyone piled on

00:10:37.280 ndp leader rachel notley piled on rebecca schultz travis tapes brian jeans they said her comments were

00:10:42.400 hurtful um inappropriate raj and sonny said during the debate that she diminished the experience of

00:10:47.040 cancer and that she didn't buy danielle smith's explanation and danielle smith has been very clear

00:10:51.920 about this you know i think if people listen to my comments in the full context they'll understand what i

00:10:56.320 was getting at and what she was really getting at is that we need to start looking at preventative

00:11:00.160 treatment so that people's cancer can get caught earlier on because if it gets caught earlier on

00:11:04.960 there's more options for treatment as opposed to once you're at stage four late stage cancer it's

00:11:10.080 very hard you're probably just going to be left with radiation or surgery or chemotherapy

00:11:15.200 and story to follow into next week gas gouging are alberta gas pumps gouging you at the pumps

00:11:22.400 premier jason kenney announced last week he's investigating potential price gouging he's already met with

00:11:25.040 the canadian fuels association and he's asked the competition bureau to investigate potential gasoline

00:11:32.800 price fixing here in alberta so as you know our provincial government removed the 13 cents per

00:11:38.320 liter provincial sales tax at the pump to just kind of offer some relief to alberts considering how high

00:11:43.920 gas prices are right now but interestingly on last week friday the average price of gas in toronto was

00:11:50.320 around a dollar 68 per liter while in calgary and edmonton it was a dollar 76 per liter so

00:11:57.280 historically albertans have paid much lower gas prices than in alberta and we also have the full

00:12:02.000 you know provincial sales tax being removed from our from our gas here so it's just quite interesting

00:12:07.600 that our gas prices are still so high and that's why they're going to be looking into gas gouging

00:12:11.760 already since jason kenney's made the announcement we've seen prices fall at the pumps a little bit

00:12:16.480 ucp leadership candidate brian gene has come out very strong on this he said customers are not seeing

00:12:22.240 the 13 cents per liter savings being passed on and as someone who is campaigning for the alberta

00:12:27.280 premiership he has a solution he would like legislation that would allow the government to

00:12:31.680 trigger short notice retail margin caps when their margins substantially exceed the margins charged in

00:12:38.320 other provinces so that's his solution to make sure we don't see gas gouging happen in the province

00:12:43.600 i think that's something to keep your eye on hopefully we continue to see prices fall um in

00:12:48.560 the province and just to finish off for today here the funniest moment in alberta politics i think

00:12:54.160 this is probably something you guys haven't seen because it happened in a media scrum following the

00:12:59.280 ucp leadership debate which was not televised um so lila here who is running as one of the candidates

00:13:05.360 as we mentioned she did not have any support in the recent leisure leisure poll uh she's the most

00:13:10.400 progressive candidate you know she hasn't really been on the offense about covid restrictions she

00:13:14.400 supported some of them she said the roe versus wade over turtle was devastating you know lots of

00:13:20.720 people are pro-choice but a lot of the candidates didn't say anything because a lot of conservatives

00:13:24.640 in alberta are pro-life and they probably didn't want to make a stance on that she said the decision

00:13:28.720 was devastating she also attended a calgary stampede pancake breakfast with prime minister

00:13:33.360 justin trudeau so she says that she thinks most conservatives are like her she thinks that most

00:13:37.840 conservatives are fiscally conservative and socially liberal and she actually said i represent 90 of

00:13:43.360 conservatives the candidate who did not register any support in a recent leisure poll says she

00:13:48.400 represents 90 of conservatives interesting another thing she said which was rather funny was that there

00:13:55.440 are many albertans in the province who vote federally liberal but provincially conservative so certainly

00:14:01.040 i'm sure those people do exist however we only have two federal liberal mps here in the province

00:14:07.360 so if those are the members that you're gunning for i don't think it's a huge surprise that you're

00:14:11.760 not registering any support in recent polls just something to consider maybe i'm out to lunch on

00:14:16.640 this one though well that's what i think the funniest moment in alberta politics is if you

00:14:20.720 think it's something different feel free to let me know well drop the socials below so you can find

00:14:25.120 me on twitter and facebook i'd love to hear from you guys what you think of the show what you think

00:14:29.280 are things to watch for in the coming weeks and what you think are the funniest things happening

00:14:32.560 in alberta politics thanks so much for tuning in see you next week

Juno News - August 04, 2022

UCP Leadership candidates face-off

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