Rebel News Podcast - A new day in Alberta： Election analysis with guest Keean Bexte, plus William McBeath of Save Calgary

00:00:00.420 You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.

00:00:03.860 We're here live in Calgary at UCB headquarters on Tuesday night.

00:00:08.780 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gun Show.

00:00:11.080 We're here at UCB headquarters on Tuesday night.

00:00:31.220 Jason Kenney has just announced, he just did his big speech, part of which was in French,

00:00:37.500 which I actually thought was a pretty nice touch.

00:00:39.300 Um, he's the new premier-designate.

00:00:42.680 Um, you at home, you're going to be watching this on Wednesday night, um, because I have

00:00:48.600 to make my way back to Edmonton and Kian is going to put in a bit of a long night here,

00:00:53.060 I think.

00:00:54.220 Anyway, with me tonight, of course, my Rebel colleague, Kian Bexty, resident muckraker,

00:01:00.480 commie hunter extraordinaire, and our friend, Willie McBeth from Save Calgary, a man with

00:01:07.340 the best hair in all of politics, and also a man I like to call the Olympics killer.

00:01:13.260 Oh.

00:01:13.760 Yes.

00:01:14.460 Now, I wanted to ask Kian about, um...

00:01:18.860 The truck.

00:01:19.480 The truck.

00:01:20.160 And McGrath.

00:01:21.460 Yeah.

00:01:21.600 She just might have lost her seat tonight, and I think you might have done it.

00:01:25.440 I, so throughout this whole broadcast here, I'm going to keep saying the advance poll

00:01:30.740 votes will be counted later, so we're not sure that she's lost yet, but right now it

00:01:36.240 looks like the people who voted on election day decisively, well, maybe not so decisively,

00:01:41.240 that's my rhetoric kicking in, 400 votes kept Anne McGrath from a seat in Edmonton.

00:01:48.440 She lost the election today, and unless advanced polls say otherwise, she will not be going

00:01:53.640 to Edmonton, and I think that the truck that we ran through her riding did its job.

00:02:00.760 We educated voters, and that's the job of the media, and it's the job that the mainstream

00:02:05.160 media has neglected for the past five or six years, I think, is when the mainstream media

00:02:11.380 really started to stop doing their job.

00:02:15.200 So, we educated voters.

00:02:17.540 Every voter I talked to that wasn't an obvious NDP partisan hack said, once they realized Anne

00:02:24.680 was a commie, that they wouldn't vote for her.

00:02:27.320 There's at least three or four folks that we have on camera saying, oh my God, I can't

00:02:33.340 believe it.

00:02:33.760 Once people know that Anne McGrath is a communist, they don't want to vote for her.

00:02:37.800 Surprise, surprise, who would have thought?

00:02:39.500 Yeah.

00:02:40.300 But it was a successful campaign, probably the most successful campaign I've mounted at

00:02:45.220 the Rebel, because the message was so obvious.

00:02:48.460 The CBC declined to report on Anne McGrath's red record.

00:02:53.940 They explicitly neglected to mention her past candidacy with the Communist Party of Canada,

00:02:59.600 Canada, and they did a disservice to the residents of Calgary Varsity and to Greater Albertans

00:03:04.700 when they did that.

00:03:06.520 I'm glad we had the opportunity to educate voters in this respect.

00:03:10.560 Yeah, I think it was a complete and total abdication of their journalistic responsibility.

00:03:14.160 And I think that, I mean, as long as they keep doing that, you and I are going to have all

00:03:19.740 the job security that we can handle, because we exist in this vacuum because they fail to

00:03:24.500 do their job.

00:03:25.860 I mean, I wrote a book, The Destroyers, because the media failed to properly vet the NDP candidates

00:03:32.220 so that we ended up with people like Deb Drever and Thomas Dang and, you know, a whole host

00:03:39.420 of others who are severely unqualified for their job.

00:03:44.380 William, let's talk about some of the other surprise or maybe not so surprising elections

00:03:53.520 results.

00:03:54.420 Um, I was checking just before we came on air, it looks like, um, Derek Fildebrandt finished

00:04:01.000 third in his own riding.

00:04:03.160 He may have even finished fourth.

00:04:04.960 Uh, I think what's so interesting is the NDP have been spinning this narrative that this

00:04:09.440 was going to be a nail-biter campaign, particularly in Calgary.

00:04:13.620 And the reality is they were obliterated across the province and everywhere except their core,

00:04:19.740 and not even everywhere in Edmonton, but in the downtown urban core of Edmonton.

00:04:23.040 And I think it's, I think anybody with any sense knows why that was.

00:04:27.620 This was an election about three things.

00:04:29.820 It was about jobs, it was about the economy, it was about getting pipelines built.

00:04:33.620 And for Rachel Notley, it is a 0 for 3 record in her four years in office.

00:04:39.080 Alberta has 170,000 unemployed people and no prospect of job creation under the NDP.

00:04:45.580 Investment has fled.

00:04:46.920 People don't want to put their money here because Alberta is closed for business under

00:04:50.140 the NDP.

00:04:50.600 And when it comes to pipelines, we were told, we were promised, we were assured that if

00:04:55.620 we had a carbon tax, other provinces would fall all over themselves to let us build pipelines

00:05:01.420 through their backyards.

00:05:02.420 And the reality was we didn't get a single pipeline built.

00:05:05.700 And when people looked at Rachel Notley's record and said, do we really want four more

00:05:09.540 years of failure?

00:05:10.660 They said, no, we're going to vote for someone new.

00:05:12.400 And they didn't just vote for someone new in drips and drabs. 0.94

00:05:16.340 They threw the NDP out and ushered in a blue wave of conservatism under Jason Kenney.

00:05:22.720 I wanted to ask you, now, nearly 700,000, is that accurate?

00:05:28.300 700,000 people voted in the advance polls.

00:05:31.660 Which way do you think they're going to break?

00:05:33.880 I mean, we've now probably got roughly two thirds of those people counted.

00:05:37.900 They were in-riding votes.

00:05:40.900 And those people, well, I can tell you I know one riding, Calgary West quite well.

00:05:45.920 And it was a three to one margin for the United Conservative Party there with the advance polls.

00:05:50.800 It was hefty.

00:05:52.140 And I cannot imagine a scenario where those out-of-riding polls are going to break substantially

00:05:59.060 differently than the rest of the advance polls.

00:06:02.040 I think Albertans were chomping at the bit for change.

00:06:06.640 Chomping at the bit for a new government, clamoring to throw the bums out. 1.00

00:06:11.260 And that's what they got tonight.

00:06:12.200 They got a solid United Conservative government and they sent the NDP packing.

00:06:16.860 A lot of the NDP MLAs and ministers who are now looking for work are about to discover

00:06:21.040 just how tough the job situation really is in Alberta.

00:06:24.300 Yeah, I've been tweeting them Arby's applications because...

00:06:27.680 Do you think they're qualified, Sheila?

00:06:28.960 They're going to spit in my beef and cheddar.

00:06:30.740 That's all I know.

00:06:31.400 You know, you may have to wear a mask.

00:06:33.780 Yeah.

00:06:34.660 You know, and let's talk about the failure of press progress.

00:06:39.140 We were on air with Ezra for quite some time today because, as you know, Ezra can sure

00:06:43.600 talk.

00:06:44.900 He's got the gift of gab.

00:06:46.020 So we were like three and a half hours we were on air for.

00:06:49.180 But it seems to me that every candidate that press progress attacked that remained, it was

00:06:56.820 like the golden touch.

00:06:58.140 If you were targeted by press progress, you, you know, you slid home with 60 to 80 percent

00:07:03.680 of the vote.

00:07:04.360 And I guess, you know, Rachel Notley's foreign funded proxies weren't as successful as the

00:07:10.960 mainstream media made them seem.

00:07:13.940 But every candidate that press progress attacked won, except for Kaylin Ford and Eva, who resigned.

00:07:21.500 Yeah, the ones that didn't remain.

00:07:22.740 But if Eva remained, she would have won.

00:07:25.920 I think so.

00:07:26.420 The riding went UCP by a three to one ratio.

00:07:30.200 And Kaylin Ford, I think she was such a stellar candidate.

00:07:33.740 If she stayed, maybe she would have edged out in Mountain View.

00:07:37.240 The NDP did end up winning there.

00:07:38.820 But every other candidate they attacked, Grant Hunter, Jason Nixon, Casey Maddow, Devin Driesen.

00:07:47.940 They won by margin, seven to one, some of these.

00:07:51.060 Yeah.

00:07:51.600 It's, I mean, I can't think of, I wouldn't want to be in their position to know that the

00:07:57.860 work that they do is so futile.

00:08:00.920 I know you're watching this.

00:08:02.280 They do.

00:08:02.940 They hate watch.

00:08:03.680 It's okay.

00:08:04.060 I mean, they're having a bit of a rough night, I would say.

00:08:08.320 They worked extremely hard to re-elect Rachel Notley, and Albertans just frankly disagree.

00:08:14.420 But I think there's some interesting things we have to ask ourselves about third-party

00:08:17.320 involvement in this election.

00:08:19.400 You know, we've looked at Press Progress, who has run an unrelenting campaign against

00:08:23.340 Alberta's energy sector.

00:08:24.760 We look at the big unions, who have run an unrelenting campaign against Alberta's energy

00:08:29.880 sector.

00:08:30.240 And yet, somehow, they supported the NDP, which makes me think, did they really believe

00:08:35.900 the NDP was going to stand up for Alberta's energy sector, or did they say, what we're

00:08:39.620 seeing from the NDP is the dog and pony show, the smoke and mirrors of, well, we're not going

00:08:45.040 to win Alberta if we don't pretend to support Alberta's energy sector.

00:08:49.500 So let's all play along.

00:08:50.820 Let's all play ball.

00:08:52.240 Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

00:08:53.620 But then, you know, I don't think third-party groups who are so opposed to our energy sector

00:09:00.880 would campaign for politicians who are actually in favor of it.

00:09:04.180 I think what we saw was that foreign-funded anti-alberta oil campaign and the NDP being

00:09:11.560 called to task by saying, look, we don't really believe you.

00:09:13.920 I don't think Albertans believe them either, which is why so many of them have been sent

00:09:16.940 packing tonight.

00:09:17.560 Well, I don't believe them when they appoint people like Ed Whittingham to the AER and

00:09:21.540 Sipporah Berman to the OSAG and Karen Mahone to the OSAG and Tim Gray to the OSAG, all foreign-funded

00:09:28.660 radicals deciding the fate and future of our oil and gas development.

00:09:33.700 And, you know, I mean, there's a whole other level in this, though, and it's the oil field

00:09:40.800 CEOs who are cutting deals with Rachel Notley's government to support the carbon tax that I

00:09:47.380 have to pay, and they really don't.

00:09:50.100 And working with people like Sipporah Berman, you know, Suncor worked with Sipporah Berman

00:09:54.440 to get in that emissions cap, and then guess who gets in under the emissions cap?

00:09:58.360 Yeah, I bet you their tone is going to be changing.

00:10:01.100 Darn right it is.

00:10:01.880 Now that they're dealing with Jason Kenney.

00:10:03.520 He's a new sheriff.

00:10:04.500 Yeah, there's a new sheriff in town.

00:10:05.920 That's a good way to put it.

00:10:07.080 And Jason Kenney is known as being a stickler.

00:10:10.700 Throughout his whole time being Minister of Immigration with Stephen Harper, he was known as

00:10:16.220 a pretty hard-ass minister, and he's not going to put up with these hobnobbing CEOs who are

00:10:22.080 rich in their own right, just kind of coming up to him to brown-nose.

00:10:26.260 We know that's what they were doing with Rachel Notley this whole time.

00:10:28.800 Yeah.

00:10:29.060 They never had any...

00:10:29.940 Sweetheart deals. 0.97

00:10:30.280 Yep.

00:10:30.840 Yep.

00:10:33.300 Now, let's talk about what happens next.

00:10:38.880 So...

00:10:39.440 Like the first hundred days.

00:10:41.020 Yeah.

00:10:41.160 William, what are your first hundred days fantasy football, Jason Kenney, things that

00:10:45.120 he's going to do?

00:10:46.260 Wait, I'll tell you mine.

00:10:47.520 Oh.

00:10:47.900 I want him to send Stephen Harper as a special envoy to Donald Trump to get Keystone XL approved.

00:10:55.020 I do believe the U.S. president is in favor of Keystone XL.

00:10:59.160 Yes, but he needs to really push it through.

00:11:02.260 Jason Kenney has promised what is being called the summer of repeal.

00:11:05.500 So, the line-by-line review of the bad legislation that this NDP government brought in over its

00:11:13.000 four years with...

00:11:15.060 I mean, I don't think the NDP sent a clearer message to the world than if you want to invest,

00:11:20.920 don't invest in Alberta.

00:11:22.560 It was a key reason, I think, why so many Albertans decided we needed change.

00:11:27.720 Alberta used to be the place where if you had an idea, if you had a product, if you had

00:11:31.640 a business, you brought it to Alberta, because we were the province saying yes to entrepreneurship,

00:11:36.420 yes to opportunity, yes to prosperity.

00:11:38.700 And that really took a big hit under the NDP.

00:11:41.080 So, I'm hoping that we start cutting the red tape, that we proceed aggressively with

00:11:46.960 the corporate, with the business tax cut, that we have Jason on a plane, something, by

00:11:52.020 the way, you know, Jason Kenney is uniquely suited to, flying around and talking with groups

00:11:56.640 of people.

00:11:57.300 He did it for five years as immigration minister.

00:11:59.080 I want Jason on a plane visiting New York and London and all of the financial capital

00:12:04.080 saying, forget the last four years of government in Alberta.

00:12:07.840 Alberta is now once again open for business.

00:12:10.180 Please, come here and help us kickstart our economy.

00:12:13.760 I really think that is why Jason needs to send that message, not just to Canada, but globally.

00:12:18.840 Well, and I'm also eager to see him circumvent the federal government.

00:12:21.960 You know, deploy somebody, deploy somebody like Stephen Harper.

00:12:28.340 Again, I mean, I would just send Stephen Harper everywhere to solve the world.

00:12:30.740 You are setting a very high bar for who you're going to send.

00:12:33.120 I want him to go everywhere and solve all the world's problems.

00:12:35.420 Maybe Kim Campbell's available. 1.00

00:12:36.720 Maybe we can get her instead.

00:12:38.000 And Sheila Cops.

00:12:39.200 Sheila Cocktails.

00:12:40.160 I understand she has a lot of free time right now.

00:12:42.160 I would like to see him circumvent the federal government and deal with issues like canola

00:12:48.960 without the federal government.

00:12:51.640 Let's send our own people, our own experienced people, former agriculture ministers from Saskatchewan

00:12:57.800 who aren't doing much these days.

00:12:59.420 Jerry Ritz.

00:13:00.180 Jerry Ritz.

00:13:01.060 Gorgeous Jerry Ritz.

00:13:01.980 Best MP that Canada has ever seen.

00:13:04.360 You know what?

00:13:05.960 Him and his mustache could talk me into just about anything.

00:13:08.860 So I think we should deploy him to China to solve the canola problems.

00:13:13.120 He's got a mustache like a curling broom.

00:13:15.300 It's beautiful.

00:13:16.980 I think he'd be really thrilled to hear that.

00:13:19.220 I think Jerry Ritz is an outstanding minister.

00:13:21.900 But here's the problem with Justin Trudeau.

00:13:23.620 He is a naive wife when it comes to foreign policy. 1.00

00:13:27.400 He showed up in China with incredible lack of understanding about Canada's priorities

00:13:33.140 when it came to foreign relations and international trade.

00:13:35.820 He lectured, you know, the second largest economy in the world and said,

00:13:40.320 how dare you not hold our standards?

00:13:42.020 Standards, by the way, which I have no idea what they are anymore,

00:13:43.980 since apparently rule of law is no longer what our government believes in.

00:13:48.080 But we export billions of dollars of canola to China.

00:13:52.000 And yet, you know, Prime Minister Trudeau seems to think that 9,000 theoretical Bombardier,

00:13:58.080 sorry, I used to say Bombardier because we've propped them up so much.

00:14:00.980 Corrupt company.

00:14:01.580 SNC laveling jobs are worth more than a multi-billion dollar trade contract

00:14:07.740 for Alberta and Western Canadian canola.

00:14:11.160 I would hope, you know, it's interesting, Jason Kenney talks about this.

00:14:15.540 Justin Trudeau was his critic when he was a federal cabinet minister.

00:14:19.920 And he's noted he's had a lot of critics over the years.

00:14:22.340 He's had NDP critics and block critics and whatnot.

00:14:25.120 And he's always found them to be, you know, well-read, up on the files, focused on the interests,

00:14:31.200 except one.

00:14:32.020 And that one was Justin Trudeau, who he, frankly, just didn't think was smart enough

00:14:36.500 to understand the issues that were being taught.

00:14:38.920 I know.

00:14:39.420 It becomes a shock to many people that Justin Trudeau just wasn't ready when he came to be a critic.

00:14:44.980 You know, I remember somebody trying to tell me something about that.

00:14:46.900 I mean, nice hair, though.

00:14:48.040 Yes.

00:14:48.660 Kian, what's your first 100 days fantasy football?

00:14:51.080 Well, voluntary student unionism is by far my most, what I'm most interested in.

00:14:59.180 Yeah.

00:14:59.420 And I know it's a niche thing.

00:15:01.280 That's a thing.

00:15:01.620 But I hate student unions with a burning passion.

00:15:05.500 I sincerely hope that students are freed from their, from a system that violates their human

00:15:12.920 rights guaranteed to them by the United Nations, of all people.

00:15:16.920 Article 20, look it up.

00:15:17.920 It is, it is a violation of students' human rights to be forced to be a member of student

00:15:23.420 unions that tried desperately to keep the NDP in office, by the way.

00:15:27.380 They're forced to pay dues to them.

00:15:29.100 I hope that that is put on the table, just like Doug Ford did Ontario.

00:15:33.020 Carbon tax gone, of course.

00:15:34.900 I hope there's some municipal reform.

00:15:37.240 William, you know more than anything about that.

00:15:39.280 I hope that Rachel Notley's government throughout her term toyed with the idea of giving municipal

00:15:46.580 governments more taxing power.

00:15:48.460 And I hope that that is just totally taken off the table with Jason Kenney.

00:15:56.180 The canola is a good point, what you were saying earlier.

00:15:59.040 I think Jason Kenney, he's obsessed with federal ministries.

00:16:03.160 He's been talking about immigration in almost every speech that he's given, which frustrates

00:16:07.860 me to one point.

00:16:10.480 But also, it opens up some doors.

00:16:12.780 He has some federal experience.

00:16:14.760 And he can actually have a minister for trade, who's not Darren Billis, doing real work.

00:16:22.900 Devin Dreschen would do an excellent job.

00:16:25.220 He joined Jason Kenney on the trip to India.

00:16:30.320 It was a trade mission that the opposition hosted.

00:16:33.040 It was something that was unheard of.

00:16:35.220 Someone's got to do it.

00:16:37.040 Yeah.

00:16:37.880 No, he did more work in that trip, I'm sure, than Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau did

00:16:41.560 in, well, Justin Trudeau's trip.

00:16:44.360 And Rachel Notley never even bothered.

00:16:46.180 So, in one of Asia's, in Asia's, most emerging markets.

00:16:51.120 So, that's what I'm hoping for in the first 100 days.

00:16:53.900 Um, let's talk about some of the more fun stuff.

00:16:57.580 Um, I see the Alberta party finished with about 9.3% of the vote.

00:17:02.800 Do you think that their, um, Jesse Smollett-style, uh, hoax with the robocall complaint to the

00:17:12.180 RCMP helped or hurt them?

00:17:14.500 I don't think it changed anything.

00:17:15.800 Yeah, because nobody knows who they are.

00:17:17.680 Nobody cares.

00:17:18.700 The only people who care about the Alberta party are out-of-touch academics and elites.

00:17:22.760 It's, and, and red Tories who left the PC party hoping that they could find a home in

00:17:27.980 a party, uh, that would, that would welcome them.

00:17:30.920 And, and the Alberta party was the perfect candidate for that because they were desperate

00:17:34.280 for anyone.

00:17:34.940 Because, turns out, you can't elect a government with academic elites.

00:17:39.060 So, uh, red Tories fled the old PC party after he joined with the Wild Rose, uh, you know,

00:17:44.700 the Allison Redford types.

00:17:46.320 Yeah.

00:17:46.500 Uh, and Steven Mandela's a great example. 0.59

00:17:48.620 He was a former PC cabinet minister.

00:17:50.840 Dave Quest, too.

00:17:52.360 I love the vision.

00:17:53.660 Dave Quest.

00:17:55.040 Really?

00:17:55.680 Yeah.

00:17:56.000 He was in that press conference where they talked about the auto phone call.

00:17:59.140 He was running in Sherwood Park.

00:18:00.700 I enjoyed, I enjoyed that visual of Dave Quest standing behind Steven Mandela as he nuked 0.98

00:18:08.800 his own career on the steps outside.

00:18:11.860 I think of a city hall as he's like, oh no, they press conferences of this.

00:18:15.580 Oh God.

00:18:16.080 I enjoyed it to no end.

00:18:17.360 I watched it five times.

00:18:18.580 I did have to laugh because I thought, how, how bad does it have to be for your party

00:18:22.580 when, when people think, you know, they say I'm being impersonated and the answer is

00:18:29.580 actually just nobody knew who you were.

00:18:31.580 And so they assumed it was a different person.

00:18:34.300 That is not an endorsement for a major political party.

00:18:38.440 You know, if you're going to snatch votes from someone, don't pretend to be Steven Mandela.

00:18:42.940 He's got none.

00:18:44.000 I just saw it.

00:18:44.880 No.

00:18:45.080 90%.

00:18:45.440 Nine?

00:18:46.500 Nine.

00:18:47.060 Well, that's actually higher than I thought it would be.

00:18:48.520 But 0.0% of seats though, I think if we, if we, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, no, and it was

00:18:54.260 so funny because I mean, then they're not even participating in the investigation because

00:18:59.900 I saw that Matt Solberg offered to check to see if the phone number for this fake robocall

00:19:05.280 pretending to be Steven Mandela endorsing, um, Jason Kenney matched the robocall that they

00:19:10.660 used for the Steven Harper one and they've not taken them up on the offer.

00:19:13.540 So I think they know, especially when the lady came out and said, oh yeah, I checked my voicemail

00:19:18.360 and it was actually, you know, I actually suspect the Alberta party has larger problems now that

00:19:23.420 they're now concerned about, including the fact that after they, they stabbed their first

00:19:28.340 leader in the back, you know, the leader who had actually won a seat and started to build

00:19:32.180 a brand that decided he wasn't good enough.

00:19:33.780 So they, they stabbed him in the back.

00:19:35.880 They put Steven Mandela in and he led them to losing their only seat.

00:19:39.880 I think the Alberta party has to have a serious sit down about, should we still be a thing?

00:19:44.160 A lot.

00:19:44.360 They should have a joint conference with the liberal party about, should we still be a

00:19:48.320 thing anymore?

00:19:48.960 Considering we no longer have anything.

00:19:51.000 Well, they could be a non thing together.

00:19:53.720 We'll give them ideas.

00:19:54.600 Well, no, but like, can they get, well, because the other option is you join the NDP or you

00:19:58.420 infiltrate the UCP.

00:19:59.880 I think that's going to be what's happening.

00:20:01.400 Yeah.

00:20:01.720 Oh yeah.

00:20:02.220 Well, I don't know.

00:20:03.120 Thomas Lukasik, he endorsed, um, the NDP too much success, but I want to know what shampoo

00:20:09.500 It really made a huge difference.

00:20:10.200 Yeah.

00:20:10.860 Indeed.

00:20:11.280 It's very, my hair's better, but yeah.

00:20:12.980 It is.

00:20:13.360 It is.

00:20:13.660 It's fine.

00:20:13.980 I'm very envious of the people watching this tomorrow because I want to know what you know right

00:20:19.180 now, which is what is happened in Calgary varsity, what's happened in all those really

00:20:23.800 close ridings.

00:20:24.700 Yeah.

00:20:25.140 Uh, those advanced poll votes are really, it's crazy.

00:20:29.280 Well, it's so close in quite a few ridings.

00:20:31.340 Uh, if, uh, and I don't know how many are within like a couple dozen, because if you remember

00:20:36.760 in 2015, uh, there were about five ridings that were within 200 votes.

00:20:42.960 One of them was within six votes.

00:20:45.140 That was Cardston Siksika's old riding, uh, little bow when Ian Donovan ran against Doug,

00:20:50.560 uh, Schneider.

00:20:52.660 Yes.

00:20:52.940 Doug Schneider.

00:20:53.860 Let's look at Drayton Valley, Devon.

00:20:57.060 I read a hundred articles written by people who had never visited Drayton Valley, Devon

00:21:02.200 or had spoken to somebody who had ever been to Drayton Valley, Devon about Mark Smith and

00:21:07.120 things that he said in his church that are really inconsequential to a town that's burning,

00:21:11.720 that's turning into a ghost town because of Rachel Notley's, um, policies. 1.00

00:21:16.580 Clearly they didn't care.

00:21:17.600 What were, what were the results?

00:21:18.620 Can you pull them up there?

00:21:19.500 Yeah.

00:21:19.520 Let's have a peek at Drayton Valley, Devon, um, Drayton Valley, Devon with nine, as we're

00:21:24.720 recording this 99 of 107 polls returning, we've got, uh, 3,621 votes for the NDP candidate

00:21:34.340 here that Kieran Quirky, Quirk, Kieran Quirky.

00:21:39.360 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:40.260 You don't know who it is.

00:21:40.920 I'm sorry, I don't know.

00:21:41.620 That, that's my point.

00:21:43.380 Um, and, uh, to, to Mark Smith, 12,091 votes.

00:21:51.040 Really, really very close.

00:21:52.440 That's the press progress touch right there, isn't it?

00:21:55.040 Yeah.

00:21:55.280 I, you know, I mean, I think, I think if you looked at, uh, when this issue first came

00:22:00.460 out, Mark had, uh, Smith had posted on his Facebook page and, uh, if you, a simple sampling

00:22:06.700 of the comments in there was that the voters of Drayton Valley, Devon, we're still, we're

00:22:11.000 scanning very solidly behind, uh, behind Mark Smith.

00:22:13.920 I think, you know, uh, conservative candidates are obviously held to a significantly higher

00:22:19.300 standard than others.

00:22:20.460 So are conservative journalists.

00:22:21.600 Uh, as, well, I, I, I would accept that point.

00:22:24.220 Yes.

00:22:24.660 Um, you know, it's interesting.

00:22:26.160 We've pointed out how, why wasn't the fact that Amagrath, uh, who ran for the

00:22:30.180 actual communist party?

00:22:31.380 Why wasn't that as covered nearly as much as some of these other, as some of these

00:22:34.760 other issues.

00:22:35.240 And I think it's a legitimate point to say that there is a double standard for, for

00:22:38.880 conservatives, but despite the hysteria from various quarters of, of, of, of the

00:22:45.600 NDP and of press progress and others of that regard, uh, Mark Smith easily reelected

00:22:50.980 because I think people saw that that wasn't why the UCP were running a foreign government.

00:22:56.180 UCP were running to fix Alberta's economy.

00:22:58.280 And that was the message that Jason Kenney delivered.

00:23:00.180 Goodness knows how many times over the last two years, they did not believe that the

00:23:04.060 UCP was running to implement some sort of agenda that was against, uh, what a majority

00:23:08.520 of Albertans believe.

00:23:09.580 So for the NDP and others to suggest, you know, I actually think it was to their real

00:23:13.200 detriment in the end, because as you attack your opponent, you may be able to scare a

00:23:19.260 handful of voters into moving into another camp, but you harden the basis of support for

00:23:25.380 a party.

00:23:26.640 And I think as a result, their ability to move the undecideds or the, the leanings decreased

00:23:33.560 the more they fired attacks.

00:23:35.600 And at the end, I think they're going to, the NDP are going to have to have a serious

00:23:37.900 conversation about, you know, was this really the best strategy for winning reelection?

00:23:42.260 I mean, it didn't work.

00:23:43.480 And now they've got an energized, you know, base of conservatives who said, we're sick

00:23:48.880 and tired of all being painted as homophobes and as bigots and as racist.

00:23:52.900 And there's every other label that they'd be thrown against us.

00:23:55.300 So, uh, I hope, I hope there's a lot of soul searching on the part of the left and their

00:23:59.200 allies and supporters about whether or not this really was a good strategy or if it is

00:24:02.820 now alienated a majority of Albertans for a generation against them.

00:24:07.120 Yeah, they took, uh, an election campaign that should have been about jobs in the economy

00:24:11.900 and each party's different plan for jobs in the economy and made it personal about the

00:24:17.000 voters.

00:24:17.600 It wasn't even just personal about the politicians, but it was really personal about the voters.

00:24:21.420 I think for Drayton Valley Devon, they had already elected Mark Smith once.

00:24:26.400 They know he worked hard for him.

00:24:28.900 They, or for them, they, they know Mark.

00:24:31.660 And so when, you know, NDP proxies are attacking Mark, I think your point holds true that they

00:24:38.160 really just hardened their support around him.

00:24:40.700 And the suggestion that what one of 87 candidates must reflect what an entire diverse candidate

00:24:48.480 team, I think that section, you know, people complain that, that they don't hear real answers

00:24:54.620 in politics, that all they get are focus group tests and talking points.

00:24:58.360 Well, one of the reasons that is, is because if you ascribe to an entire candidate team

00:25:04.260 and their leader, the views and comments of a single candidate in a single writing, that's

00:25:09.480 all you're going to get then is bromides and platitudes because it's an unfair standard

00:25:15.820 to hold people to.

00:25:16.660 And it is a double standard.

00:25:17.640 Conservatives are held to that standard far more than people in life.

00:25:20.480 I don't think anybody asked Rachel Notley about her abiding love of communism just because,

00:25:24.440 you know, Anne McGrath happened to run for the communist party. 1.00

00:25:26.940 Is there anything to say, Kian?

00:25:30.220 Bring it home.

00:25:31.380 Well, I will bring it home.

00:25:32.660 I hope to God that the polls tomorrow show Anne McGrath losing.

00:25:37.580 There's no way in hell I think that she should be representing Albertans.

00:25:41.860 But I do think there's someone standing right there, right off camera, waiting to kick us

00:25:46.360 out of here.

00:25:46.920 So I think outside of that, I'm pleased with the results.

00:25:52.280 Yeah.

00:25:52.560 I think that it was a win for Alberta.

00:25:54.280 I think that a new day is dawning in Alberta, as Doug Ford would put it if he was here.

00:26:00.480 So I'm pleased.

00:26:02.260 And that's about it.

00:26:04.080 Yeah.

00:26:04.440 I think we have to wrap it up because I think this guy's literally going to unplug my camera.

00:26:09.440 I think he's going to unplug the camera.

00:26:12.280 Anyway, you know, my prediction for NDPC counts was 23.

00:26:19.000 I think, what are we at?

00:26:19.760 25?

00:26:20.400 24.

00:26:20.960 24, 25.

00:26:22.200 Plus or minus.

00:26:22.940 Seems pretty good, Sheila.

00:26:23.960 Yeah.

00:26:24.400 You know what?

00:26:25.540 They don't hire me for my looks.

00:26:27.380 I should do journalism.

00:26:28.620 I should try that out sometime.

00:26:29.780 I think that's enough NDP left to prosecute when we open up the books and see all the

00:26:35.320 things that they've done.

00:26:36.300 You know, you can hang a lot of bad things around the yoke of 24, 25 or whatever it is,

00:26:43.080 people.

00:26:43.660 So that's enough people left to answer some very ugly, very hard questions once they crack

00:26:48.400 out the things, like whatever's been going on in the environment ministry and in energy.

00:26:52.800 So I think that's going to be very interesting.

00:26:54.180 I want to thank both of you guys for staying late.

00:26:57.000 It is 10 minutes to 12 here at UCB headquarters.

00:27:01.840 But a very long night.

00:27:03.580 Thanks, everybody at home for watching.

00:27:05.260 I'll see everybody back, well, not here at home, probably in my home studio in the same

00:27:11.020 time, in the same place next week.

00:27:12.260 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

Rebel News Podcast - April 18, 2019

A new day in Alberta： Election analysis with guest Keean Bexte, plus William McBeath of Save Calgary

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