Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ An in-depth look at Alberta ahead of the UCP vote to decide the next premier

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today, a special extended episode on Alberta.

00:00:04.680 The province has not been big in the news for the past two years.

00:00:09.040 Politically, other things have been. The lockdowns, of course.

00:00:12.920 Ontario had an election. Quebec had an election yesterday.

00:00:16.840 The Federal Conservative Party chose a new leader.

00:00:19.160 Lots of stuff going on in the, quote, important parts of the world.

00:00:22.240 But what's cooking in Alberta?

00:00:24.600 Well, I think things are about to heat up in a couple of days

00:00:26.580 when the province chooses its next de facto premier as Jason Kenney steps down.

00:00:30.920 We'll talk about that. I'll give you my thoughts.

00:00:33.120 And we'll talk with Lauren Gunter. That's ahead.

00:00:35.140 But first, let me invite you to subscribe to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:38.180 That's the video version of this podcast.

00:00:40.420 Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Eight bucks a month.

00:00:43.820 What a bargain. You get 20 episodes a month from me every weeknight.

00:00:48.900 And then we have four other shows that are weekly.

00:00:51.360 That's a grand total of 36 episodes every month just for eight bucks.

00:00:55.620 I can't even believe it. I think, frankly, we should raise our rates.

00:00:59.220 Please go to rebelnewsplus.com. You know why?

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00:01:09.460 All right, here's today's show.

00:01:15.400 You're listening to a Rebel News Podcast.

00:01:25.620 Tonight, Quebec's election is the worst of all worlds, and Alberta gets ready to choose a new premier.

00:01:32.560 It's October 4th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:35.000 You're fighting for freedom!

00:01:37.940 Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:41.080 Well, last night, you may have been one of the thousands of people who tuned into our live stream covering the Quebec provincial election. 0.73

00:01:57.960 I'm very glad we did.

00:01:58.820 It wasn't particularly long, and it wasn't particularly intricate.

00:02:02.040 I was here in our Rebel World headquarters, and our main lady in Quebec, Alexa Lavoie, was at the headquarters of the Quebec Conservative Party, led by Eric Duhem.

00:02:13.220 And we were on the air for a few nights, but it was very quick that we saw the results were going to be a majority, a re-elected majority for the incumbent party, the Coalition Avenir Quebec, led by Francois Legault, and our little beloved Quebec Conservative Party, which was only revived a couple of years ago by Eric Duhem.

00:02:33.040 Although it did well in the polls, it managed to punch through nowhere.

00:02:37.740 It actually got no seats.

00:02:40.160 It was shut out, a function of our first-past-the-post system.

00:02:44.780 Here's a little chart, courtesy of the Montreal Gazette, that I think shows the story very well.

00:02:50.540 Francois Legault's CAC party, as it's called, got 41% of the vote.

00:02:55.820 And no doubt about it, that's a win when there are five parties afoot.

00:03:00.000 But with 41% of the vote, they actually got 72% of the seats.

00:03:05.560 And the Quebec Liberal Party, very similar, 14.4% of the vote, and got 16.8% of the seats.

00:03:13.340 Not too far off the same proportion.

00:03:15.680 But look at how the other opposition's parties fared.

00:03:19.360 The hard left-wing Quebec Solidaire got 15% of the vote, but only 9% of the seats.

00:03:25.920 The Parti Québécois, once a dominant force there, the separatist party of René Lévesque, it got almost the same, 14.6% of the vote, but only 2.4% of the seats.

00:03:37.880 And the party that I had high hopes for, the Parti Conservateur de Québec, they had 13% of the vote and no seats.

00:03:47.520 Eric Duhem, in a series of tweets today, saying he was not despondent.

00:03:51.620 He was pleased with the work they had accomplished, and he would get right back at it.

00:03:55.900 Obviously, he's disappointed he had no seats.

00:03:59.140 I was proud that we had our live stream last night, and Alexa was there on location.

00:04:03.160 It's been a busy political season.

00:04:06.100 Pierre Polyev, of course, took up a lot of the media attention.

00:04:09.420 He's well-known in Ottawa, and he plans to take on Justin Trudeau.

00:04:14.360 Now, even the fact that he's the new leader was interesting, and that it happened because of the trucker convoy.

00:04:19.800 Aaron O'Toole, his predecessor, refused to meet with the truckers and tried to ban his MPs from doing so. 0.99

00:04:25.620 Well, they decided to replace the leader, not their principals.

00:04:29.240 And so, Pierre Polyev, not only is he a strong conservative communicator who's going to shake things up,

00:04:35.620 but the very fact that he was leader itself was the subject of some conflict.

00:04:39.840 Before that, I think a lot of the oxygen in the political room was that of the lockdowns.

00:04:49.040 If you think about it, for two years, this country has been in a terrible crisis,

00:04:53.060 an economic crisis, a civil liberties crisis, a judicial crisis, a medical crisis,

00:04:58.400 so many crises that we're only now emerging from and seeing the true damage done.

00:05:03.140 The damage was not done by the virus.

00:05:05.140 It was done by politicians using the virus as an excuse.

00:05:07.760 So, between the Quebec election, Doug Ford's re-election, Pierre Polyev's election, and the lockdowns,

00:05:13.880 there's been a lot of focus other than on the province of Alberta, which is not normal.

00:05:20.300 Alberta really has an oversized place in the national discussion because it's economically so strong.

00:05:27.060 It's oil and gas and prairie freedom.

00:05:30.260 It's always been at odds with the Ottawa mentality.

00:05:33.920 Even the Constitution is tilted against it.

00:05:37.780 There was Western separatism afoot until Preston Manning tried to harness it and turn it into the Reform Party.

00:05:43.480 Stephen Harper tamped down both Western separatism and Quebec separatism and gave the country nine years of peace.

00:05:50.820 Trudeau has ripped that up and is dividing us not only on geographic and ethnic and racial and gender lines,

00:05:57.640 but also on vaxxed and unvaxxed, it's terrible.

00:06:01.260 But I think that in two days from now, when the Alberta United Conservative Party, the UCP as it's called,

00:06:07.680 chooses its next leader, Alberta, which has been in the background for two years, I think will again come to the foreground.

00:06:14.140 I mean, Doug Ford, everyone knows him.

00:06:16.240 Francois Legault, everyone knows him.

00:06:18.100 And really, we've been stuck in the status quo for two years.

00:06:21.380 But Danielle Smith, who is looking likely to win the UCP leadership, I believe that she will make Alberta the lightning rod of confederation yet again.

00:06:32.460 She has proposed a sovereignty act.

00:06:34.980 The details are not yet written, but it would allow Alberta to opt out of federal decisions.

00:06:40.640 It simply doesn't like that.

00:06:41.740 Sounds chaotic or outrageous.

00:06:43.900 But of course, provinces do that all the time.

00:06:45.580 And even Justin Trudeau does it.

00:06:49.360 For many years, for example, police simply would not enforce laws against the possession of marijuana.

00:06:54.760 It's just a simple example of politicians choosing not to enforce certain laws.

00:07:02.040 What Danielle Smith proposes, and we've talked about this before, is that Alberta behave a little bit more like Quebec, 0.97

00:07:07.040 taking up its full sovereign jurisdiction under Section 92 of the Constitution.

00:07:12.320 It's Section 92 of the Constitution, Section 91 being the federal powers and 92 being the provincial powers.

00:07:18.940 For example, having its own provincial police force, like Quebec does, its own pension plan, like Quebec does, etc.

00:07:25.020 Maybe its own immigration policy.

00:07:27.300 I think that Danielle Smith has been under the radar of the national media for the reasons I said.

00:07:34.400 There were other things going on in more important parts of the country, like Ontario and Quebec.

00:07:39.420 But now that those matters are all settled, and now that the choice of the federal conservatives is chosen to take on Justin Trudeau,

00:07:46.900 I think the Ottawa Press Gallery is going to be bored and satisfied enough that they will turn their attention to Danielle Smith.

00:07:55.400 And I think they're about to declare war on Alberta.

00:08:00.140 Alberta oil and gas and farms and guns and pipelines, these are all the things that Ottawa politicians like to pick on to the delight of Eastern Canadian voters.

00:08:10.800 But if Danielle Smith does indeed become the leader of the party and the de facto premier, she won't have a seat in the legislature just yet.

00:08:17.660 But I think that Justin Trudeau and the other liberals will pick on her to the delight of their base.

00:08:24.120 They like nothing more than going to war against a populist Alberta right winger. 0.96

00:08:28.820 They'll call her a cowboy or a cowgirl. 1.00

00:08:31.820 I'm not sure how they'll handle fighting against a younger woman. 0.97

00:08:35.520 Justin Trudeau doesn't do well when he quarrels with women.

00:08:38.200 He seems to wind up either groping them or firing them.

00:08:41.540 But I think interesting times are ahead, and we're going to cover it from out there in Alberta.

00:08:46.760 I'm going out there for the announcement of the leadership results.

00:08:49.200 I mean, it's not a sure thing, but she seems to be leading.

00:08:52.780 So today we're going to have an extended interview with my friend Lauren Gunter, who is based in Alberta, and he has been observing this race very carefully.

00:09:01.520 So for the rest of the show, I present to you Lauren Gunter and I talking about this leadership race and what it means.

00:09:16.760 Well, just two days to go until the leadership contest of the United Conservative Party in Alberta is resolved.

00:09:30.160 I have been following this along with many of our Alberta-based team.

00:09:34.500 In fact, I had the pleasure of hosting, co-hosting, a mini-debate featuring three of the contenders, Brian, Gene, Todd Lowe, and Daniel Smith.

00:09:42.700 But I really enjoyed it.

00:09:44.200 These guys have been to so many debates and panels.

00:09:47.580 I can't remember a leadership that had this many forums where the candidates duked it out.

00:09:53.860 But it seems that the conventional wisdom is that Danielle Smith will win. 0.88

00:09:59.520 Now, it's always dangerous to assume that that will come true.

00:10:02.180 There's no real way of knowing.

00:10:04.460 But joining us now to figure things out and our last thoughts before the result is revealed is our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Sun.

00:10:13.340 Lauren, great to see you again.

00:10:15.060 Good to see you.

00:10:16.040 Do you think the conventional wisdom is correct that Danielle Smith will win?

00:10:20.460 It's sort of tough to know.

00:10:22.220 She seemed to do well in fundraising.

00:10:24.380 She seems to get the media buzz.

00:10:26.740 But that doesn't necessarily mean she's going to get party members' votes.

00:10:30.180 No, it doesn't.

00:10:32.600 But she's within striking distance, I think.

00:10:38.200 I have one little caveat that I want to add to that.

00:10:41.240 But for the most part, I think the conventional wisdom is right.

00:10:44.580 I think she will win on October the 6th, although it may take several ballots.

00:10:51.920 And the more ballots it takes, the greater chance someone else will beat her, because I think she has the least growth potential among the candidates. 1.00

00:11:02.240 So after the first ballot, she comes in at 40%.

00:11:05.960 It's iffy whether she can get another 10% to push herself over the top. 1.00

00:11:11.520 If she comes in at 45%, then I don't see that you can stop her.

00:11:16.680 There are two other candidates further down the ballot whose support is most likely to go to her.

00:11:26.020 And they may not on their own be very big in the totals, but they would be enough to give her the extra 5%.

00:11:33.340 So with that one caveat, that if she's not at 45 on the first ballot, she may have some trouble, I think she's there.

00:11:44.680 I think no matter whether she gets 40, 42, 45 on the first ballot, she will eventually squeak out a win. 0.95

00:11:50.420 But it's not going to be, for instance, as overwhelming as Pierre Polyev's win, which cleared the party for him.

00:11:58.400 He has total control of his party.

00:12:01.780 You can't have too many splinter groups or dissidents, disaffected people in his party because he won so big.

00:12:10.980 Smith will probably win, but she will inherit a party that's unsure of where it wants to go with her as the leader. 0.90

00:12:17.920 Yeah. I think it's a great analogy with Pierre Polyev at the federal level.

00:12:22.420 Not only did he win more than two-thirds of the points in their obscure point system, but in terms of each district, each riding, as they used to be called, he won almost every single one.

00:12:34.680 I think there was maybe six or eight, and the whole country didn't win.

00:12:37.600 He won 330 out of 338. That's how many he won.

00:12:41.240 And you could see the effect of that immediately because the media were hoping that Jean Charest or others would say,

00:12:46.500 aha, the party is fractured. The real red Tories come with me.

00:12:50.340 But there was no room for that. It was overwhelming.

00:12:53.900 And I think some of the other candidates sort of felt that was coming.

00:12:57.180 In Alberta, it's different. A lot of the other candidates are sort of doing the opposite.

00:13:03.500 Federally, they all were sort of, other than Jean Charest, they were sort of sucking up to Pierre Polyev.

00:13:08.740 But in Alberta, they're sort of ganging up on Danielle Smith. 1.00

00:13:12.920 They had a press conference to denounce her signature policy item, the Sovereignty Act.

00:13:18.360 I think you're right. A lot of the other candidates, their second or third-ranked support will go to each other.

00:13:26.880 I think maybe Todd Lowens, second chance, second choices will go to her.

00:13:31.740 Maybe some of Brian Jean's. I don't know. She really is a dissident figure.

00:13:36.200 She doesn't have ties to the party. She's not been in MLA in almost a decade.

00:13:40.640 She's not part of the club. And Jason Kenney couldn't be clearer about denouncing her.

00:13:44.820 Yeah. No, and that sets up some interesting scenarios if she wins, which, as I said before, I think she will. 0.98

00:13:56.840 And that is she will have to be careful about putting together a team in such a way that she brings some of those disparate groups together.

00:14:09.100 But, you know, there's already talk. There were some talk yesterday among the punditry in Alberta that, well, of course, she might win, but she can't govern as she campaigned.

00:14:19.820 Well, please, you campaign the way you campaign.

00:14:23.200 And she has to find a way to do a lot of the things that she wanted to do during the campaign, largely to bash Ottawa and to ignore Ottawa when it's possible to do so. 0.85

00:14:37.640 But at the same time, to bring in particularly Travis Tave's people.

00:14:42.680 Travis Tave is where was the finance minister in Alberta.

00:14:46.720 He's the establishment candidate. A lot of the people who still supported Jason Kenney went to Travis Tave.

00:14:54.620 And he's a very smart guy. He's not just a rancher. He's an accountant as well.

00:14:59.980 He was, by all accounts, a good finance minister.

00:15:03.520 But he has the personality of a paved road.

00:15:06.620 You know, he's bland. He's flat.

00:15:09.480 He didn't stand out at all during the campaign.

00:15:13.980 I think he will come second.

00:15:15.960 So how do you then appease what is largely your Calgary and establishment group, represented by Tave, and still appease the Gene people, the Lohan people, and all the other candidates?

00:15:33.940 It's going to be a tricky operation for Smith.

00:15:37.220 She is smart enough to do it.

00:15:39.140 But you remember, too, that one – I mean, I think you and I talked about this a few months ago.

00:15:45.720 She comes with this black mark, and that is that in 2014, she broke up her party by bolting over to the Tories who were in the process, in the throes of self-destruction at that.

00:16:00.840 And that, more than anything else, surprises me, that she's a frontrunner, because that was such an awful black mark against her.

00:16:11.040 I never thought she could recover from it, but she certainly seems to have recovered from it.

00:16:15.140 So how does she then, instead of breaking apart Wildrose, which is what she did in 2014, how does she bring together UCP?

00:16:22.200 That's a great point, and I thought it would have been a bigger black mark, too.

00:16:26.240 I mean, she basically not only destroyed the Wildrose party, but destroyed the deeper and more important concept of an official opposition.

00:16:34.600 You can't just cut a secret deal to say we're not going to have an opposition anymore.

00:16:38.600 It's an essential part of our entire system, and I think that is what paved the way for Rachel Notley.

00:16:43.160 And she did all that, and she did all that without getting any cabinet positions for the people in her party. 0.99

00:16:48.960 Like, how do you take your party, meld it with someone else, when they say, yeah, but we're not going to give you anything for it?

00:16:55.600 Yeah, I think that was a terrifying moment.

00:16:58.160 One of the people that surprised me was behind that deal was Preston Manning.

00:17:01.960 He later revealed he advised Danielle Smith to do it, and I want to mention Preston for one reason.

00:17:06.520 I remember, because I was a young man working for Preston at the time, when he wanted to evolve the Reform Party, make it more palatable for Eastern Canada, so he created the Canadian Alliance, but not a lot of Tories.

00:17:23.000 It wasn't until Stephen Harper did the formal merger that that dream happened, but Preston Manning tried a few times, and he even said, well, this is really going to be a really, really, really new party, and to prove it, we're going to have a leadership race.

00:17:34.620 And he was so certain he was going to win again that he didn't mind when Stockwell Day, his friend, they were actually friends, came and challenged him, but wouldn't you know it, Stockwell Day won, and that shocked Preston Manning, he felt betrayed, and his loyalists, Deborah Gay, Chuck Straw, Monty Solberg, Jay Hill, they sort of did not accept, they never accepted Stockwell Day as the new leader, and they undermined him, and they broke apart.

00:18:04.200 And this is a bit of an obscure piece of history, and this is a bit of an obscure piece of history and trivia, they created something called the Democratic Representative Caucus.

00:18:12.140 They created like a mini party in Ottawa, but they didn't do it all at once, it was like drip, drip, drip, Deborah Gray quit, Chuck Straw quit, Monty Solberg quit, maybe one a week.

00:18:22.900 To constantly disable and stumble and step on the news coverage of Stockwell Day, and he never really recovered from that, and he was turfed, and Stephen Harper took over the rest of his history.

00:18:35.520 And here's the reason I give you that little vignette from 20-odd years ago.

00:18:40.980 Jason Kenney has showed no compunction about trying to mess things up for Danielle Smith.

00:18:45.440 And I think that some people, maybe Kenny himself, maybe others who feel like they were deposed along with him, certainly some of the other candidates, Lila Ahir has been very vocal towards Danielle Smith.

00:19:02.480 I wonder if they're going to have the drip, drip, drip, dissident strategy towards her that Jean Chirin never had a chance to do against Pierre Paglia, but that Preston Manning and his acolytes did to Stock Day.

00:19:14.420 Do you think you're going to have a splittist counter-revolution by Jason Kenney's faction?

00:19:23.720 Yes, again, with some qualification.

00:19:31.380 I think there will be people who cannot see themselves serving under Danielle Smith.

00:19:39.080 But you and I both know Smith.

00:19:42.920 She's very intelligent.

00:19:44.680 She's very articulate.

00:19:45.780 And as long as she understands that she's not going to get her way 100% on the Sovereignty Act, I think she's going to be able to find a lot of common ground.

00:19:57.080 One of the other things she said is we're not ever going to bring back lockdowns and vaccine passports and mask mandates if there's another outbreak of the pandemic.

00:20:10.000 I think she can find an awful lot of common ground with all of the different candidates' groups in this election.

00:20:18.820 So she has to find the issues on which there is a lot of common ground.

00:20:24.060 I mean, I think cutting billions out of health care and education, she's probably not going to get away with that. 1.00

00:20:29.500 But she could easily find ways to make the other candidates' followers supportive of her by saying, look, we have 125,000 people working for Alberta Health Service.

00:20:44.620 22,000 to 23,000 of them are middle managers, not upper managers, not frontline workers.

00:20:50.620 There has got to be a lot of fat that you can trim out of that.

00:20:53.800 You know, you talk to any nurse, for instance, in Alberta, and they will tell you that their paperwork has increased in the last 10 years by probably 50% to 60%.

00:21:03.440 And that's because you have all these middle managers who want some sort of report every shift about this or that or the other thing that has very little to do with patient care.

00:21:14.160 Get rid of those people.

00:21:15.560 And so then you don't have to say, look, we're cutting the health budget by $5 billion, and then allow bureaucrats to decide where to do that, because the bureaucrats will cut nurses first and other healthcare workers, other frontline workers. 0.57

00:21:31.740 Say, look, here are the numbers.

00:21:34.200 These are all the people in the middle of this staff who contribute very little of apparent value.

00:21:41.200 Let's try and get rid of a lot of those people and get more into patient care.

00:21:47.140 Then you could save money and at the same time expand patient care.

00:21:50.540 So she has to find ways like that, that she can get to her agenda without alienating the supporters for Taves and Rebecca Schultz and Brian Jean and the others.

00:22:04.960 It's going to require some cleverness, but I think she's clever enough to do that. 0.86

00:22:09.920 Now, Rachel Notley is waiting in the background.

00:22:13.640 I never thought she would become premier other than for the great cataclysm you and I discussed five minutes ago.

00:22:19.420 And then when she was finally turfed by Jason Kenney, I thought we would never see her again.

00:22:23.980 But I think Rachel Notley actually believes, and I think there's some basis to her belief, that she has a chance of becoming premier again.

00:22:30.980 I would never have thought it.

00:22:32.340 I mean, Kenney united the two nominally conservative parties, and he really was Canada's strongest conservative politician.

00:22:38.640 And here we are, he didn't even finish the term, and now Notley is licking her chops. 0.92

00:22:43.540 Yeah.

00:22:44.480 Yes, she is.

00:22:45.180 You know, it's too early to say, but I think that, I think it is a possibility she could win again.

00:22:52.520 I think it was unthinkable for her to be premier the first time, but she did it.

00:22:58.920 And so it's no longer unthinkable.

00:23:00.420 It's very thinkable.

00:23:01.400 And she was a socialist, and she destroyed a lot of things, but she didn't have the same sort of gong show that the UCP has been the last six months. 0.92

00:23:10.800 I think there's a real risk Rachel Notley could win again.

00:23:13.860 I'm not saying I predict she will, but it's not a crazy scenario to have her restored as the premier again, Rachel Notley.

00:23:20.920 No, I think if the UCP remains together, and there isn't the drip, drip, drip dissension that you and I talked about a couple minutes ago, I think if there's a united UCP, she cannot win.

00:23:33.720 I think if there is one party of the centre-right in Alberta, the NDP cannot win.

00:23:41.620 But the last poll that I reported on, which was a couple of weeks ago, I've ignored most of the polls that have come out during this leadership race because they're very small sample sizes, and they aren't always just people who are members of the party or voting members of the party.

00:23:54.520 But one that I did report on showed that 97% of people who voted NDP in the last election intend to vote NDP again.

00:24:03.900 I have never seen that kind of intense loyalty anywhere, anywhere in Poland.

00:24:11.020 And so she's going to get her 40%, 38% to 40% of the vote. 0.59

00:24:16.680 That's a given.

00:24:18.520 So if there's a split on the right, and there's somebody hives off 8% to 10%, then yes, she could win again the way she did in 2015. 0.99

00:24:28.600 In 2015, they won a majority, but they didn't have a majority of the vote.

00:24:32.800 They had about 41%.

00:24:34.080 And that was enough to win in marginal ridings where Wild Rose and the PCs split the vote, and the NDP came up the middle.

00:24:43.460 If you look at any of those ridings where the margin of victory was not a majority of the vote, any of the constituents, once the two right-of-center parties amalgamated, the NDP lost all of those, all of those rides.

00:25:01.820 So that's the power of splitting the vote on the right.

00:25:07.560 And so long as Smith can find a way to keep the party together, then I think she gets to win.

00:25:16.260 I am here in Toronto, and I've become a Torontonian over time.

00:25:22.220 But my heart is still in the West, and I still love the West.

00:25:26.400 And I know one of the things – I mean, I lived in the West for the first two-thirds of my life, really.

00:25:31.240 And there's a feeling that Ottawa doesn't understand the West, Toronto doesn't understand the West.

00:25:39.220 And a lot of the idea, the intellectual capital, is in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.

00:25:44.360 And so they either don't understand or don't like ideas in the West.

00:25:47.920 I don't think I'm saying anything new or unusual.

00:25:49.720 But I believe this, Lauren.

00:25:50.900 I think that if Danielle Smith wins on Thursday, she will come to the attention of the Central Canadian intellectual elite all of a sudden. 0.96

00:26:01.260 They've been watching her out of the corner of their eye, but they've been too busy talking about Justin Trudeau, Pierre Polyev, the Quebec election last night.

00:26:08.380 Like, they're too busy talking about their own stuff.

00:26:10.280 But on Thursday, if Danielle Smith becomes a new leader, they're going to read the left-wing synopsis of the Toronto Star summary of the crazy stuff.

00:26:21.940 And they're going to say she's a new incarnation of Bible Bill Aberhart.

00:26:26.600 She's a wild woman in the prairies who is radical and extreme. 1.00

00:26:31.500 And I think you're going to see a piling on, such as you have not seen since, well, I suppose since Stockwell Day became leader of the Canadian Alliance and the media decided to assassinate him.

00:26:43.220 I think that when they look at her Sovereignty Act, when they look at her stances about separating Alberta intellectually and emotionally from the rest of the country, normalizing talk of separation.

00:26:55.700 I don't think Danielle Smith is a separatist, but she will normalize discussions about that. 0.91

00:27:01.500 I think you are going to see a Category 5 hurricane heading from Toronto to Calgary to wipe her out through the media party.

00:27:10.440 What do you think?

00:27:11.680 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:27:12.480 And, you know, the wacky Bennett, the father who was the first Bennett premier in B.C., once said that he never enjoyed more electoral success than when he was running against the lower mainland press.

00:27:31.500 And so he would go to the interior ridings, he'd go onto the island, he'd say, look, those people from Vancouver, they want you to live under a socialist regime.

00:27:41.540 And if you don't want that for yourself and your children, then you vote for me.

00:27:45.280 And if Smith's smart, she'll use that.

00:27:47.700 And she will rally people in Alberta for her who would not otherwise be for her.

00:27:55.480 I mean, there are an awful lot of people in Alberta who would consider themselves centrists, maybe a few who are even progressives, who deeply resent the way that central Canadian media portrays the province.

00:28:07.720 And if she plays it correctly, and I think she can, I think she probably will, she's a very effective communicator, then she could use that hurricane that's coming her way to her advantage.

00:28:20.840 But you're absolutely right that it's coming.

00:28:22.920 I think it is, and I think one of the reasons Jason Kenney will not be premier in a few days is precisely because he wouldn't battle Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal hard enough.

00:28:35.720 In my mind, he was always thinking, well, in five years I might go and lead the federal conservatives and I want to make sure the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the CBC don't look askance at what I'm doing here.

00:28:45.820 So I'm never going to say anything now that might be interpreted as being separatist or sovereigntist or anti-federalist later.

00:28:53.780 I think Jason Kenney pulled all his punches.

00:28:56.940 I think what we've seen in this leadership race for the UCP is that he is not out as premier because of his pandemic stamp.

00:29:06.980 He's out as premier because he didn't fight Ottawa and Toronto and Montreal as hard as he could, as hard as the people in the province wanted.

00:29:15.280 Here you have a federal government that has done everything it possibly can to shut down the number one industry in Alberta.

00:29:22.080 In fact, probably the biggest export industry in the country and the largest revenue generator for governments all across the country.

00:29:30.940 They've done everything they possibly can.

00:29:34.560 I don't think we got the fight that we needed out of Jason Kenney.

00:29:39.160 I say that as a friend of his.

00:29:40.840 It's like I had advised in print many times that he had to get tougher with Ottawa and he never did.

00:29:46.960 And we've seen with the Sovereignty Act, with the launch of three of the candidates, the number one item that they mentioned when they launched their campaigns and throughout this whole race was standing up to Ottawa.

00:30:01.380 I think had Jason Kenney done everything he did on the pandemic, vaccine passports, mask mandates, the lockdowns, he could have done everything that he did as long as he was saying that Justin Trudeau is an SOB and we have to fight him.

00:30:20.020 He'd still be premier today.

00:30:21.580 I think you could be right.

00:30:22.380 I think the lockdowns was part of it and, and the flourish of jailing pastors and.

00:30:29.440 Yeah, but you can get away with stuff like that.

00:30:32.340 If that, to me, that was a secondary, it was an accelerator.

00:30:38.240 You had this large core problem, which was dealing with Ottawa.

00:30:42.580 And had he dealt with Ottawa properly, the accelerant wouldn't have caught the way it did.

00:30:48.500 You know, you've been very generous with your time.

00:30:50.400 I have one last question.

00:30:51.600 You mentioned Justin Trudeau and, and he is very easy to campaign against it.

00:30:57.340 He, he resonates historically with many Albertans who remember his father's antipathy towards the West and his war on oil.

00:31:04.080 Well, it's my personal opinion that Justin Trudeau does not do well with women he can't control. 0.99

00:31:10.640 I think of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister, Celine Cesar Chavannes, Jane Philpott.

00:31:18.160 And Philpott was, by many measures, his most competent cabinet minister, by the way.

00:31:24.660 Yes.

00:31:25.380 He just doesn't do well with women who he can't control. 1.00

00:31:29.020 And I think Justin Trudeau is going to have a rough time even talking about Danielle Smith because she doesn't bend the knee.

00:31:38.940 And I think that she will pose a particular problem for Mr. Feminist Von Gropehans. 0.96

00:31:45.860 I think he's not going to know what to do with her.

00:31:48.360 And I think he's going to be his tone.

00:31:50.540 I think he's going to get it wrong.

00:31:51.800 He has a good EQ, as they say, emotional intelligence.

00:31:55.300 I don't believe it.

00:31:56.060 I think he's going to have trouble with her.

00:31:57.340 Yeah, I think he will, too.

00:31:59.540 But I think he will, the trouble he has with her, will play well in downtown Toronto and in Montreal.

00:32:07.540 And, you know, as we've seen in the last two elections, he really only needs downtown Toronto, Montreal, probably Vancouver and Ottawa.

00:32:16.220 And he can get a minority go.

00:32:17.960 So will he be able to use her as his foil the way she uses him as her foil?

00:32:25.280 Yes, I think he will.

00:32:26.560 But I think in the rest of the country where he's already teetering, this will help push him over the edge because he will be seen as not very good at dealing with a woman, as you say, that he can't control. 0.90

00:32:39.720 I think that's absolutely true.

00:32:42.380 Well, it's great to catch up with you.

00:32:44.060 And I'll be out there in Calgary for the results reveal.

00:32:47.960 And I think we are in for some very interesting times in Alberta.

00:32:53.040 Who would have imagined a year ago that Jason Kenney would not even finish his first term?

00:32:57.700 Well, I hope to keep in touch with you in the months ahead, my friend.

00:33:03.240 Likewise.

00:33:03.840 Right.

00:33:04.080 There you have it.

00:33:04.640 Lauren Gunter, senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun.

00:33:07.760 Stay with us.

00:33:08.220 Hey, welcome back.

00:33:21.240 Your letters to me.

00:33:22.000 Joe Bush says, we will continue to be your single source of truth are the scariest words you'll ever hear.

00:33:27.320 Now, that's Jacinda Ardern. 0.98

00:33:28.600 Yeah, that's just crazy talk.

00:33:29.780 Imagine being such a, having a God complex that you are the source of truth.

00:33:36.720 Those are words, source of truth.

00:33:40.320 How can any human think that about themselves?

00:33:44.520 Someone named Interested Party said she's a failure. 0.93

00:33:47.280 She failed the people she represents.

00:33:49.000 She didn't keep people safe due to her policy. 1.00

00:33:51.460 She allowed her police to abuse citizens and condescendingly talked down to whomever questioned her. 1.00

00:33:56.200 People should stop rewarding these failures and vote them out.

00:33:58.660 Well, you're talking about Jacinda Ardern, but you could be talking about Justin Trudeau as well, or Emmanuel Macron.

00:34:05.280 PDS says, not sure why this woman gets so much attention. 1.00

00:34:08.840 New Zealand has a population of greater Vancouver.

00:34:11.340 There's mayors with more constituents than the buck-toothed kiwi. 1.00

00:34:16.260 You know, I take your point.

00:34:17.860 And I don't know if New Zealand gets paid attention to too much.

00:34:21.000 I don't think they do, actually.

00:34:22.380 It's just that she's such a globalist and she's such a busybody. 0.82

00:34:25.800 She wants to censor the world and silence the world. 1.00

00:34:28.720 And I agree with you.

00:34:29.640 I think normally she would be ignored.

00:34:31.260 But in Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, she's found two globalist World Economic Forum allies.

00:34:36.820 So she seeks to use them to propagate her messages.

00:34:40.180 I mean, she piggybacks off them in many ways. 0.98

00:34:43.320 She hitched a free ride courtesy of Canadian taxpayers on our jet.

00:34:46.980 So, yeah, I mean, in the one sense, who cares what New Zealand says, although, you know, they're part of the Commonwealth and we have a history together and they're an English-speaking democracy with the queen as their sovereign, but to the king, rather.

00:35:01.280 But, you know, it's a shame what's being done in New Zealand.

00:35:04.680 And if you want to see what Trudeau's future is for Canada, look at what Ardern has done to New Zealand.

00:35:09.740 Well, that's our show for today.

00:35:12.060 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.

00:35:15.800 Good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:35:18.080 New charges have been laid in relation to the Coutts blockade, a peaceful protest against vaccination mandates that took place between January 29th and February 15th this year.

00:35:29.100 It saw restrictions ease and acted as a catalyst for Premier Jason Kenney's stepping down as UCP leader.

00:35:36.200 On September 16th, the RCMP put out an update on the blockade.

00:35:41.240 This release came with three new charges of mischief over $5,000.

00:35:45.600 Sydney Vizard with Rebel News, and today we're going to share with you our interviews with Alex, Marco, and George.

00:35:50.840 RCMP say these new charges stem from the three individuals allegedly being key participants in the blockade.

00:35:57.820 All three will appear at the Lethbridge Courthouse on October 4th, at which point we will find out more about the case made against them.

00:36:04.640 Previously, Alex was held at a Fort McLeod RCMP detachment, where he informed us that the Crown sought a no-communication condition with Marco, another of the individuals now charged with mischief over $5,000.

00:36:18.600 We spoke with their legal counsel, Williamson Law, who have been assisting with bail considerations and will be assisting them further in court.

00:36:25.500 Crowdfunded donations through TruckerLawyer.ca are financing their legal defense.

00:36:31.640 For now, here's what Alex, Marco, and George had to say about these new charges of mischief.

00:36:37.500 My name is George Jansen.

00:36:39.380 I'm a realtor.

00:36:40.620 I have eight kids and a wife, obviously.

00:36:44.080 I'm Marco Ben-Yungabas.

00:36:45.120 I'm a small-town councillor, town of Fort McLeod.

00:36:51.080 I'm married, four kids, small business owner.

00:36:55.400 Alex Van Herc, farmer south of Fort McLeod, father of seven, grandfather of six.

00:37:04.340 Just a humble farmer here in southern Alberta.

00:37:07.340 I've been living here for Fort McLeod since I was 14.

00:37:12.400 Love the area, love Alberta, love southern Alberta.

00:37:15.600 And, yeah, I wouldn't want to live in any other place except for our freedoms.

00:37:21.620 It would be nice to have them back.

00:37:23.240 Recently, you received some new charges or a new charge in relation to the Coutts blockade.

00:37:28.100 Could you just tell us what that charge was and what happened the day of receiving this?

00:37:32.460 Yeah, so we were told beforehand that the RCMP would want us to come in and receive the summons

00:37:39.900 to go to court for mischief over 5,000.

00:37:44.480 The charges were blocking the highway, so that's as far as I know up until this point.

00:37:50.320 So other than some minor traffic violations regarding the Traffic Safety Act earlier this year,

00:37:57.040 right after the blockade, I have now been charged with mischief over 5,000.

00:38:02.460 Being proactive in regards to everything legal, I reached out to the RCMP and was in communication

00:38:12.900 with them for a week or two prior on these charges coming down, how we'd like to do this,

00:38:19.640 not being arrested, but being summoned and signed on a promise to appear in court on October 4th.

00:38:28.580 What happens on October 4th?

00:38:30.540 October 4th, we're supposed to go to court in Lethbridge at 10 a.m., I guess,

00:38:36.500 to just basically see what the charges are all about.

00:38:39.120 It's very new to me as well.

00:38:41.080 I've never done anything like this before, so this is my first time being charged for something.

00:38:45.960 So October 4th, I believe it's just the first appearance and our legal, we've got our legal.

00:38:56.220 Williamson Law has been taken on for our legal.

00:38:59.020 We have three different lawyers assisting us, each with our own individual lawyer.

00:39:04.400 We hope to attend the courthouse, even though it's maybe not necessary, but we feel it needs to be done

00:39:12.660 to show Albertans that we're not afraid of this.

00:39:16.420 I mean, we're good citizens, non-violent, and we hope that we get the support from all Albertans on October 4th

00:39:24.140 to show the Crown and the judge and the media that, yes, we are good citizens.

00:39:30.020 I feel as Albertans, as citizens, while we still can, we need to take our time and get involved,

00:39:36.280 get involved in politics, get involved in all levels of whether it's school board, municipal levels, town councils,

00:39:43.780 get involved, show your support, and stand up.

00:39:46.080 Speaking of town council, one of the individuals, Marco, is in fact a Fort McLeod town councillor.

00:39:52.740 Here's what he had to say about the political arena and the circumstances he now finds himself in.

00:39:58.840 At this time, I've decided that I will retain my role as councillor,

00:40:04.160 as I believe this does not affect my ability to execute that role.

00:40:09.180 But a change in circumstances might re-evaluate that decision.

00:40:20.040 I can't speak to individual decisions of politicians,

00:40:23.860 but the political class as a whole has failed to stand up against,

00:40:30.440 or has failed to stand up as a body.

00:40:33.040 They have implemented emergency measures and given tremendous powers

00:40:38.620 to health authorities to take away freedoms and restrict the general public.

00:40:48.200 The unfortunate part, the missed opportunity I see is that politicians have now come out

00:40:55.260 and said it was a huge overreach on, that essentially it was about power and control

00:41:05.540 and not about health to the degree that we were informed it was.

00:41:15.400 Unfortunately, most elected officials were mute on the issue.

00:41:20.940 I do believe that our health services have an obligation to maintain the health of the public.

00:41:31.140 But the balance of power wasn't shared.

00:41:37.560 Our elected officials were absent, and our health authorities had the power to detain,

00:41:46.300 to restrict, and impose draconian measures on the general public.

00:41:53.440 October 4th, Alex, George, and Marco will attend Lethbridge Courthouse to begin dealing with these new charges.

00:42:00.460 Williamson Law has informed me that their legal counsel will be entering pleas of not guilty,

00:42:06.080 making disclosure requests, and setting for the court dates.

00:42:09.140 Their legal counsel also gave us a reminder that these three individuals are presumed innocent

00:42:14.560 in this important constitutional case.

00:42:17.120 Very soon, we'll find out more, and if you want to stay up to date with our latest coverage of the Coutts blockade,

00:42:22.820 go to truckerlawyer.ca.

00:42:25.640 I want to thank you all for tuning in.

00:42:26.960 For Rebel News, I'm Sidney Vizart.

Rebel News Podcast - October 05, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ An in-depth look at Alberta ahead of the UCP vote to decide the next premier

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