Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Could it be true？ Are the Liberals really ahead federally in Alberta polls？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. I find it hard to believe, but when six different polling companies in a row say

00:00:04.300 it, maybe I should put my disbelief aside. They say that the federal liberals are now competitive

00:00:10.380 in Alberta. I don't want to believe it. I don't even know if I do believe it, but we'll have a

00:00:15.160 hearty talk about that and provincial polls with my friend, Lauren Gunter, the Edmonton Journal.

00:00:20.060 That's ahead on a feature interview on Rebel News. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber

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00:01:13.000 today.

00:01:27.720 Tonight, could it be true? Are the liberals really ahead in the polls? Federally? In Alberta? It's March 16th

00:01:35.400 and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:36.680 You're fighting for freedom!

00:01:39.920 Shame on you, you censorious bug! 0.60

00:01:52.040 Well, I'm certainly not an expert in oil and gas, but about a decade ago, I really did a deep dive as

00:01:57.840 an amateur into the oil sands. You might recall I wrote a book called Ethical Oil, The Case for Canada's

00:02:03.820 Oil Sands. In fact, a copy of it is over my shoulder here in our studio. And I tried to learn as much as I

00:02:09.960 could. What is the difference between a resource and a reserve? What is production like? How do you make

00:02:16.120 oil? So I was really starting as an amateur, even though I was born and raised in the

00:02:20.440 province of Alberta, I had no connection to the oil patch. One of the things I learned very early on is the

00:02:25.360 difference, if I may, between an oil reserve and an oil resource in place. What does that even

00:02:30.540 mean if a country or a company says they have a million barrels of oil in their reserves? It

00:02:38.780 doesn't mean they have it like in a gas tank. That means they can see it, they can detect it,

00:02:44.340 they can measure it, it's in the ground, and at today's oil prices, with today's technology

00:02:50.260 and today's regulation, it could be produced. That's called an oil reserve. And you actually

00:02:55.640 have to be pretty stringent to prove you have it. Because remember, you're often selling your

00:02:59.940 company stock to investors, and you have to be able to prove you have certain reserves. Otherwise,

00:03:06.320 you could be, you know, misleading your investors. Resources in place is a little bit different.

00:03:13.860 That could be oil that you know is there, but at current prices, it's not affordable and economic

00:03:19.360 to produce it. Just last point on this, and you'll see why I'm emphasizing it in a moment.

00:03:23.880 So Alberta's oil sands have about 170 billion barrels of oil reserves. They're there, we can

00:03:33.520 see it, we can measure it, we can prove it. And at today's prices and technology, you can produce it.

00:03:38.860 But there's another, get this, 2 trillion, with a T, barrels of oil that we can see are there.

00:03:47.560 They're just not affordable yet with today's technology. There's a lot of oil. Now you know

00:03:51.400 the difference between resources and reserves. That little lesson I just gave is a lesson I think

00:03:56.440 we need to teach the energy minister of Canada, the liberal named Tim Hodgson, because he said the

00:04:01.600 strangest thing the other day. As you know, the war in Iran is causing the price of oil to rise.

00:04:07.540 There's questions on whether the Straits of Hormuz, this narrow passageway by which an enormous chunk

00:04:12.360 of the world's oil sails from the Persian Gulf to the world, if Iran were to block ships,

00:04:17.840 blow them up, deploy mines in the water. So different countries in the world are doing

00:04:23.940 something about this. They're producing more oil. And the United States has a massive strategic

00:04:30.020 petroleum reserve, which is just what it sounds like. It's huge underground caverns actually,

00:04:36.880 where oil is quickly produced and released into the public to moderate the price of oil every day.

00:04:44.620 Canada does not have a strategic oil reserve. We don't have a huge tank of it. At any given moment,

00:04:53.420 there may be a hundred thousand barrels that is being held in tanks that's waiting to be put in

00:04:58.320 the pipeline. The reason I say all this is that Tim Hodgson, trying to chime in with the world's

00:05:04.900 oil producing power, says Canada and our company should release our reserves. Brother, what reserves?

00:05:14.280 Do you mean produce the reserves that are in the ground, the 170 billion barrels that we know are

00:05:19.520 there but haven't produced it? You are the reason, Tim Hodgson. You and the liberal government are the

00:05:26.300 reason we have not produced an extra billion barrels because you blocked all the pipelines. It's a little

00:05:32.200 bit of chutzpah. And I see a column by my friend, Lauren Gunter, in the Edmonton Journal just today,

00:05:39.500 Canada energy exports still crippled by liberal, lost liberal decade. Quoting Tim Hodgson saying

00:05:48.500 that we could become one of the largest suppliers of liquidified natural gas in the world. How bizarre.

00:05:56.400 Joining us now to talk about this and the energy minister's international puffery is our friend,

00:06:03.900 Lauren Gunter himself. Lauren, great to see you again.

00:06:06.000 Good to see you.

00:06:07.160 What do you make of the fact that Tim Hodgson is sort of strutting around as if Canada is going to be a

00:06:11.740 major player here? And yeah, we are an important producer and export of oil and gas, but he's sort of

00:06:19.080 saying things he can't quite follow through on. And it's his party that's locked in the oil and gas for a decade.

00:06:26.840 Yes. And say we did have 50 million barrels sitting under the ground in some giant cavern somewhere similar to

00:06:38.520 the way the Americans do. It's always fascinating to me the way the Americans pump oil out of the ground and then

00:06:44.600 pump it back into the ground for their strategic reserve. But say we had a strategic reserve like that, how are we

00:06:51.600 going to get it to market? That's one of our big problems now. We don't have pipelines. We can use rail cars and we do,

00:06:58.880 but we're almost at maximum capacity all the time on rail cars. So it's one thing to say, hey, yes, we're prepared to jump in.

00:07:08.720 But as you said, we can't just dip into some giant reserve we have. We have to pump more. That's lesson

00:07:18.620 number one. And then we have to have some way of getting that stuff we're pumping out of the ground

00:07:24.520 to market. And we don't. Our pipelines now are at near capacity. And there's talk now in the last week

00:07:33.700 or so about reviving the Keystone XL pipeline. That would be lovely, but it doesn't solve our

00:07:39.880 biggest problem, which is we cannot get our oil from Canadian oil sands and Canadian oil fields

00:07:46.180 directly to export terminals where we can send it to Asia or Europe without first having to sell it at a

00:07:56.840 discount to the United States. Right. You know, I only learned the fancy word monopsony,

00:08:03.160 not monopoly. Monopoly is when there's one place you have to buy everything from. A monopsony is one

00:08:09.720 customer. And the trouble with a monopoly is you're paying more than you should. The trouble with a

00:08:15.220 monopsony is you're paying less than you should. You're getting paid less because it's only America 0.83

00:08:21.280 who could buy it. So every barrel of oil you can sell on the open market, suddenly America has to

00:08:27.440 pay us world oil prices to compete. So it's so healthy. Not only are we diversifying the market,

00:08:32.560 but we're getting more for our money from the Yanks. And it was the liberals who killed those

00:08:37.760 dreams. It's a bit of chutzpah. Do you think Tim Hodgson is well aware that he doesn't, he's not

00:08:45.260 accurately describing reserves and well aware that it was Justin Trudeau who said there's no business

00:08:50.340 case for LNG. Surely he's got to know if you and I know that I would imagine the energy minister

00:08:55.040 knows that too. Well, yes, except, you know, the federal bureaucracy and the liberal caucus is full

00:09:03.840 of people who will tell the ministers what they want to hear. And they may even themselves be blinkered

00:09:13.320 by what is truly happening. You know, they may have, as you said, they might have confused a

00:09:19.840 strategic reserve with a resource. They might have confused where this stuff is all the time, how easy

00:09:27.460 it is to get out. And, you know, sure, theoretically, we have a lot of oil. We are the third or fourth

00:09:35.500 largest producer of oil, or could be the third or fourth largest producer of oil in the world,

00:09:41.500 behind only Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and maybe Iran. And we have a ton of it. But we can't get at it

00:09:53.340 because, as you said, the liberals killed every pipeline that came along during their 10 years

00:09:58.980 under Trudeau. And so let's say we do want to chip in our part. Maybe, and as Hudson says, maybe we do

00:10:08.060 want to become one of the biggest players in the world in LNG. We're six to 12 years away from that.

00:10:17.180 You don't, you can't phone out pipelines or us and say, hey, can you deliver one of those pipelines to us

00:10:23.720 and we'll start pumping stuff through it tomorrow? You know, they haven't changed the regulatory

00:10:30.120 and approval processes. They haven't gotten rid of the Impact Assessment Act, which, which we have

00:10:37.580 called many times the No More Pipelines Act. They haven't done any of that. They haven't got their

00:10:43.220 major, the major projects office, which we have not heard of one iota since Carney brought it in last

00:10:51.120 year. The major projects office does not have a pipeline in any of its major projects. So do I,

00:11:00.000 that's the whole point of the column this morning, is it? I don't think these guys are really serious.

00:11:05.780 They talk about all this stuff, but they're not doing anything concrete to try and get our oil there.

00:11:12.780 You know, I was, I was looking at some stats today. Again, when I wrote my book, Ethical Oil,

00:11:17.080 the US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia were each producing about 10 million barrels of oil a day.

00:11:24.460 That that's like 10, 15 years ago. Now American domestic production is 14 million. And if you

00:11:31.760 include other petroleum liquids, it's actually 20 million. Like under Trump, they've gone nuts 0.60

00:11:38.520 with production. It actually was even growing under Biden. I have to give him some credit.

00:11:42.300 Here's what scares me, Lord. When the United States basically took over Venezuela,

00:11:50.780 you know, in two hours, they, one of Trump's first things he said is we're going to, we're here for

00:11:57.300 the oil. Like it was almost like a Noam Chomsky horror movie come true. Trump said, yes, we are here

00:12:04.280 for the oil. And he's welcomed American companies. And he's, I don't know exactly where that oil is being

00:12:10.040 sold, but America's running it now. And a lot of the Venezuelan oil in the past was destined for

00:12:16.520 those same refineries in Texas, because it's a really heavy oil that Alberta oil was going to go

00:12:22.500 to. So you got Venezuela in literally as a province of the United States. I don't know what you even

00:12:29.600 call it. It's being run by, I don't know, the State Department of the United States. And I don't

00:12:34.400 know what's going to happen to Iran. But theoretically, it could be that that Iranian oil

00:12:42.380 is going to come back on the legitimate market. So you could see oil being filled by Venezuela and

00:12:49.520 Iran. It's on a legitimate market now. Iranian oil accounts for about 40% of the oil that China

00:12:57.500 consumes. They buy that legitimately. There's nothing impeding them from, from buying it. And the

00:13:03.200 Iranians are quite happy to ship it all to them. And, you know, there's India buys an awful lot of

00:13:09.980 Iranian oil. It buys Russian oil too. We have a tendency to get quite focused on what's happening

00:13:16.260 in the West, Western Europe and North America. But we shouldn't always worry about that. We should be

00:13:26.580 looking for markets other than Louisiana and Texas. But what happens is there are 26 oil refineries in

00:13:36.120 the American Midwest. 25 of them are hooked up to do heavy oil like we have. So we pump all this oil

00:13:45.440 down there. Most of it goes to the American Midwest. They refine it for domestic use, but they take their

00:13:51.900 lighter, sweeter West Texas intermediate. And they sell that to the world at a premium. So, you know,

00:13:58.180 this is something that Stephen Harper said within the last month, is that we are not, we're not being

00:14:07.160 mean to the Americans, like Trump keeps saying. We're not ripping off the Americans. We are selling

00:14:12.540 them a commodity at a discounted price, which then allows them to make even more money from their own

00:14:19.240 economy. And so, you know, all of this is extremely complicated. I mean, getting oil out of the ground

00:14:26.200 and pumping it to market is incredibly complicated. I went one time to a tank farm in Northern Alberta,

00:14:35.800 where there were within these three giant tanks, there were 12 different products that had come out

00:14:43.120 of the oil patch. And each of those went down a pipeline, one after another, with machinery that

00:14:51.140 goes between the two products and cleans the pipeline. As product number one goes down, cleans out the

00:14:58.000 pipeline, product number two comes in, then product number three comes in. I had no idea it was that

00:15:03.360 complicated. Right. But there are all sorts of people who understand how all this works. And they think

00:15:09.220 that Canada is just absolutely foolish. The Truro era green regulations cost Canada about $400 billion 0.94

00:15:20.420 in investment in the oil and gas infrastructure and resource extraction. It's hard even to conceive

00:15:31.380 of how much damage they did. Yeah. You know, I was in Calgary when the Prime Minister Mark Carney met with

00:15:38.820 Alberta Premier Daniel Smith to talk about the so-called MOU, Memorandum of Understanding.

00:15:44.260 And it was so vague. And the final deadline for the possible construction was 2040.

00:15:51.380 It was in there. Whereas Alberta's obligations to the Fed started immediately.

00:15:55.860 I was skeptical then. I don't know how many months have passed. I'd have to look it up. But the only news

00:16:01.940 I've seen come out from the pipeline industry is Enbridge, big pipeline backer that had the northern

00:16:08.820 gateway that Trudeau killed. They're saying there's just too much risk here. We're not proceeding.

00:16:13.460 So I don't, I mean, maybe there's people behind the scenes. I mean, I don't know people. I don't know

00:16:19.300 the CEOs in those companies, but there's no public emanations on this other than Enbridge saying,

00:16:25.460 no, thanks. I don't think that MOU is going to do anything. I think it was just a fake, a deke.

00:16:32.420 Unfortunately, I think you're right. I sat down one time and tried to figure out how much money

00:16:38.020 Canadian pipeline companies had put into the pipelines that were canceled by the Trudeau

00:16:45.300 government. So you can say Energy East was canceled by the Trudeau government. It was done in a clever

00:16:52.900 way so that they didn't have to take direct responsibility for getting rid of it, but they

00:16:56.660 did it in Northern gateway. They, they just did it in. Like they said, no, you're not going to be

00:17:02.660 able to do this. And then Keystone XL, which they kept saying that they were in favor of,

00:17:08.340 they didn't lift the finger to try and convince them. Because you remember it started under Obama.

00:17:14.100 Obama wasn't going to give the export permit to allow the oil to come across the line. Trump,

00:17:20.500 I have no idea why in the first term, Trump didn't do more. And then Biden, of course,

00:17:25.300 just said, no, you're never, ever going to be able to do this. So I tried to figure out,

00:17:30.500 and I think it came to about $7 billion that Canadian oil companies had spent trying to get

00:17:37.780 pipelines built. Wow. And so of course they have a nasty taste in their mouth. Of course they don't

00:17:42.740 want to try for another pipeline. And especially because this federal government doesn't say things

00:17:49.620 like, Hey, bring us a proposal. We're looking to get pipelines built. Let's get going. Let's,

00:17:55.300 you know, and all they're talking about too, and I made this point in the column this morning,

00:17:59.940 all they're talking about too is another pipeline to the west coast. There's an enormous market

00:18:06.580 off of the east coast, both for liquefied natural gas and for our oil, but they're not talking about

00:18:12.900 a pipeline over there because who does that upset? It upsets Quebec. And so if you have 44 seats that

00:18:21.140 the liberals do in Quebec, and you're afraid you're going to lose some of them, if you build

00:18:25.460 a pipeline across Quebec, you don't even talk about it. They don't even mention.

00:18:31.060 One of the things I learned when I wrote Ethical Oil was that the largest refinery in Canada is not

00:18:35.300 in Alberta. It's in New Brunswick. It's the Irving refinery. And it takes oil, not only from the

00:18:41.940 States, which was unusual, I didn't know, but from OPEC. In fact, the oil that comes up from the

00:18:47.140 States is often dropped off in Maine and pumped up to Montreal. I'm not sure the path it takes now.

00:18:54.260 I might be a little bit out of date, but that Canadian refinery that serves Atlantic Canada

00:18:59.860 and New England has foreign oil in it, the largest refinery in Canada. And that's what Energy East

00:19:06.420 was supposed to fill. You had this beautiful pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick, which

00:19:11.300 would have cheaper than OPEC oil. It just breaks my heart. And I don't know.

00:19:20.100 Here you have these smug Quebec politicians who say, no, no, no, no, we will never take

00:19:24.820 Alberta oil. It's dirty oil. We must never take Alberta oil. Well, they take about 700,000 barrels

00:19:31.620 a day of Saudi and Venezuelan oil. It comes in tankers up the St. Lawrence Sea, up the St. Lawrence

00:19:39.140 River. Tankers, yeah. Yeah. Tankers are safe, but pipelines are safer. Yes, of course.

00:19:44.580 They prefer the Saudi. I remember a few years ago, we put up a banner outside the mayor of Montreal's

00:19:51.860 office. And we said, Denny Coderre prefers conflict oil from OPEC to ethical oil from Canada. Oh,

00:20:00.500 they hated that. By the way, they put a lot of pressure on the billboard company

00:20:04.180 to have it taken down. It was quite a fun little thing we did. Well, you remember too that they

00:20:09.380 released over a billion, is it liters or gallons, I can't remember which, of raw sewage into the St.

00:20:18.100 Lawrence. But no, no, no, no, no, no. We mustn't, we mustn't upset the pristine waters of the St.

00:20:24.740 Lawrence. Or what was it? Is it, is it Norwals that they have that they were worried about?

00:20:29.700 Right. That's, I'm glad you reminded me about that. That's right. They,

00:20:33.700 they pollute, it's shocking what they did. And this was approved by the liberals. Hey,

00:20:37.860 I want to ask you a question about polling. I want to, you wrote an article a couple days ago about

00:20:43.700 the United Conservative Party being in the lead in the polls. I want to talk about that.

00:20:47.940 But I want to ask you about a phenomenon that I don't understand. And it's not just one polling

00:20:53.060 company, which you could write off as a rogue poll or maybe a methodology, but a number of pollsters,

00:20:59.220 including some that I pretty much trust, have suggested, strangely to me, that the federal

00:21:06.020 liberals are doing fairly well in Alberta these days. And when I saw the first poll, I scoffed.

00:21:13.060 But after five or six polls, I, I mean, I can't dispute the science. I mean, maybe all the polls

00:21:19.300 are wrong, I guess. Have you seen those polls and what are you making them?

00:21:22.660 Yes. And you know what? You have to accept that the only people right now who are doing anything

00:21:30.500 concrete in dealing with Trump and dealing with any of the other trade issues are the liberal.

00:21:39.220 Pierre Polyev sat for an entire year and said nothing about Trump, not a thing about Trump.

00:21:49.140 And so he's allowed the liberals to fill all of that empty space.

00:21:53.940 They look like, I mean, if you and I start to examine things they're doing, like they're talking

00:21:59.060 a good game about pipelines, but they're not building any. They're talking a good game about

00:22:04.820 housing affordability, but they're not building any. We can go through all of the issues that are

00:22:10.660 important to Canadians and show that the liberals aren't doing anything, but they are the only ones

00:22:15.300 who are talking about these things. And I think that that's having an impact.

00:22:19.220 Yeah. It's a pickle for a conservative because, um, especially if, if, if you in any way

00:22:28.340 have used the style of Trump, you're lumped in with Trump and it's tough for a conservative to

00:22:34.660 push back against America. You don't even have to use the style of Trump.

00:22:36.820 The most of the legacy media will brand you as a Trumpist, even if you, uh, don't stand up for

00:22:45.300 lefty. That's right. Yeah. It's a purity test. I mean, look what they're doing to Wayne Gretzky

00:22:49.060 and other sports, you know, hockey players. If you're not actively denouncing Trump while playing

00:22:55.700 a sport in the United States, you're like Wayne Gretzky is a Canadian hero, almost on par with Terry

00:23:02.340 Fox. And yet he has been denormalized because he's not bashing Trump because he dared to have

00:23:07.620 a photo taken with Trump. It's, it's sort of incredible. This, um, two minutes of hate

00:23:13.380 directed at Trump or anyone Trump adjacent. I think that's what happened to Jamil Giovanni,

00:23:18.020 the conservative MP who went down there. Uh, how dare you? I mean, he may.

00:23:22.420 Okay. But if, if I was Polly Evan, I knew what the pitfalls were. I'd have told him not to go.

00:23:27.380 Yeah. Like whether or not he, he had things to say and he has people, his contacts, for instance,

00:23:35.620 with JD Vance, the vice president, I don't care if I am Pierre Polyev and I know we're being slammed

00:23:42.340 on this and I haven't said anything on my own. Uh, I'm going to say to Giovanni, do not go. This is

00:23:49.220 just too hard to explain away. Yeah. Hey, I want to talk about Alberta polls because there's quite a

00:23:55.220 difference if the liberals are doing well in Alberta. And I don't even want to say that the

00:23:59.460 liberals are ahead in Alberta because I don't want those words to come out of my mouth. I don't want

00:24:02.900 to speak them into existence. I don't, I don't think that's true, but they're doing better than

00:24:08.420 they have. And I think an election, if there actually was one would clarify the mind pretty

00:24:13.220 quick, but provincially, I mean, Danielle Smith, I think is doing some very interesting things.

00:24:18.500 She's walking some fine lines pretty well in my view. Now, look, look, I'm out here in Toronto. So

00:24:24.980 what I get is I'm out in Alberta a fair bit, but I think she's handling, uh, sovereignty and

00:24:31.220 independence fairly well. She's enabling the democratic system, but she's not championing 1.00

00:24:37.220 it, but she's not denouncing it. She's bringing in lots of small, but thoughtful things like bringing

00:24:44.260 in the new, I think they're calling it Jordan Peterson's law, the rule that you can be a

00:24:48.420 professional lawyer, doctor, engineer, psychologist, and not be fired for having incorrect politics.

00:24:56.660 Like that's what happened to Jordan Peterson at the Ontario College of Psychologists or whatever.

00:25:02.180 So she's bringing in niche things like that, that I think are pretty great. I think pumping up the

00:25:07.460 Alberta sheriffs is pretty great. So she's doing lots of little things that make people feel good.

00:25:11.940 Yeah. Right on. You get them. And, and she's often saying, well, what Quebec wants, we want.

00:25:17.220 That's my theory. Now, am I just being manipulated by the social media I consume? What's the truth?

00:25:23.380 I think that's exactly what she's doing. And she has to walk a fine line because she has an awful 1.00

00:25:28.500 lot of people in her core, uh, who would lean towards independence. Uh, and so she cannot disparage

00:25:39.460 that. I mean, I have had those feelings myself over the years. I, I, you know, I'm so tired of being

00:25:46.020 dumped on by liberals from a great height from central Canada. I've entertained the idea that

00:25:52.580 it would be nice to just leave. So she has an awful lot of that in her base that she has to deal with.

00:25:59.140 And I think she's doing it very smartly. Like she came out a month ago, a month and a half ago now with

00:26:05.380 all of these referenda we're going to have this fall in Alberta. Uh, and the, the one that's gotten

00:26:12.660 the most attention is denying social benefits to people who are neither permanent residents nor

00:26:21.140 legal immigrants nor Canadian citizens. It's a, it's a reasonably small number of people,

00:26:28.100 but I think it's very important to say, look, if you're here illegally, you know, the federal

00:26:34.180 government puts out ads in foreign language newspapers around the world all the time saying

00:26:39.620 Canada has free healthcare and free social service.

00:26:44.020 Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. It's like they're, they're inviting more people to cross over 1.00

00:26:48.500 Roxham road. You know, and by the way, there's other, we've talked a little bit about Quebec today.

00:26:54.100 And I think part of the Quebec political brand is not just being progressive, but being holier than

00:26:59.700 now to some of the other, uh, provinces, including those cowboys in Alberta. So I don't know if they

00:27:05.380 would call themselves a sanctuary, you know, not like the sanctuary cities, sanctuary province,

00:27:10.900 because Quebec is actually getting a little bit irascible on immigration too. In fact,

00:27:15.140 of all the provinces, they're the least afraid to be politically correct. But it wouldn't surprise me

00:27:19.060 if there's other provinces that would mock Alberta for this, to which Danielle Smith could say,

00:27:24.340 Hey, we'll buy you a train ticket. Go down there. They'll pay for you.

00:27:27.620 Yeah. There is the inequity of it. Quebec is as restrictive as any other problem on who it will

00:27:37.460 accept as immigrants. And it has been given the power to say by Ottawa. So what Smith said in her

00:27:46.180 speech about six weeks ago was that she wanted the same power for Alberta that Quebec has. Well,

00:27:52.020 suddenly, oh my goodness, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star. Oh, she's a racist. Look 0.99

00:27:58.100 at that. She's just like Trump. She's doing only what Quebec has been allowed to do by the federal 0.59

00:28:06.820 government. And they have matched Quebec initiative for initiative for initiative. And it has just driven

00:28:14.420 Ottawa and the central, the Laurentian elites nuts. But I love it. And I think that it's starting to be

00:28:22.820 seen in Alberta as something that she's done. So the UCP is ahead of the NDP province-wide 49 to 36%.

00:28:31.380 They're ahead by 13 points. That's a big gap. But when you look at where they're ahead of them on issues,

00:28:39.220 there are very, very few issues where the NDP even come close to the UCP. So that means when you

00:28:44.260 start running an election and you're talking about issues, you're already starting from a real big

00:28:49.540 head start. And the one for me that I loved the most was Abacus Data did some very significant polling

00:28:58.420 on Alberta. A thousand person sample, which for a provincial-wide poll is a lot of people. In rural

00:29:07.460 Alberta, the UCP gets 70% and the NDP get 15%.

00:29:12.740 Yeah. Well, that's how the whole province used to tilt almost, maybe not Edmonton. Back in the day

00:29:17.940 of Ralph Klein, that's where the NDP were.

00:29:21.620 But the NDP are only as ahead of the UCP in Edmonton, by the same margin that the UCP are

00:29:29.700 ahead of the NDP in Calgary. So they don't wipe out the UCP.

00:29:34.580 Right, right, right. You know, let me just say one quick thing about Quebec before I want to ask

00:29:39.140 you more about polls. I noticed that when Alberta talks about independence, it's treated with a

00:29:47.540 derision and a condescension by the central Canadian elites, Laurentian elites, in a completely

00:29:53.140 different way than when Quebec does it. Here's a stat I shared with our viewers before. About two

00:29:58.980 weeks ago, there was a by-election in Quebec, Chicoutimi, I think, and the Parti Quebecois,

00:30:04.260 the Separatist Party, won it. And that's, I think, the fourth in a row. So you have four

00:30:09.940 separatists in a row, and I could find only one story on the CBC website, and it was just a straight

00:30:14.980 up. Here's what happened. No commentary piece. Whereas you have this apoplexy about the same

00:30:20.580 vibes in Alberta. For Quebec, they get the Clarity Act. They get the rules on the referendum.

00:30:26.260 Everything's fine. They're exercising the democracy. But if you even talk about this in the West,

00:30:31.940 you're called a traitor. They use the word traitor. There was the word Nazi that was used the other day.

00:30:37.780 And I think that reaction to Alberta independence, I think Danielle Smith is very wise to avoid it.

00:30:44.980 How about Naheed Nanshi? And by the way, I just should disclose that 30 years ago,

00:30:49.620 he and I were debate partners in university, which is pretty funny. You had this right-wing Jew 1.00

00:30:54.420 and this left-wing Muslim as debating partners. We got along pretty well, but we knew we didn't agree

00:31:01.780 on a single thing. And Naheed Nanshi, he's the NDP leader. And funny enough, Danielle Smith was in

00:31:06.740 school at the same time with us too. Naheed Nanshi is trying to work on this independence angle,

00:31:12.340 and that's probably a good idea for him. How's it working out for him though?

00:31:15.540 You know, he's solidifying his base. That's pretty much all he's doing. You're not picking

00:31:19.860 up any support that I can see from beyond the NDP base. The NDP base in Alberta now is somewhere in

00:31:25.940 about a third to 40% of the vote. And that's public sector workers, it's teachers, it's activists.

00:31:38.820 Together they now form about 35% of the vote in the province. And they're strong behind the NDP.

00:31:46.500 Yeah. But, uh, so Nanshi is playing to that base and he is, he's keeping them in the fold. But, uh,

00:31:55.460 but even this latest abacus poll showed that 25% of people who voted NDP in the last election

00:32:05.700 could be convinced to switch parties. 25%. That's a pretty good sized number. It's not huge,

00:32:11.700 but it's a pretty good sized number. Whereas among people who voted for UCP in the last election,

00:32:17.300 it's under 17%. Yeah. So Danielle has done a very good job of, uh, of getting the base together, 0.60

00:32:26.340 keeping it together, despite the fact that there are disparate elements in that UCP base that don't

00:32:32.260 always see eye to eye. You know, it's sort of funny. I know both of these characters from back in the day,

00:32:37.860 I haven't kept in touch with Nanshi, but I have with Danielle Smith. And I would say this, um,

00:32:42.500 policy is part of it, but personality is part of it too. And I think Danielle Smith,

00:32:49.300 partly I think because she spent so much time on talk radio, I think she's, she comes across as, uh,

00:32:55.140 someone you could talk with, even if you disagree. This is how it looks to me. And Nahid Nanshi,

00:32:58.980 who's very clever, very bright, I think he can slip into sort of a condescension. And even the tone

00:33:05.700 comes across as smarmy. And I don't think I'm saying that because I oppose him on issues.

00:33:09.860 I think he just sort of lapses into a kind of sneer, um, and his mannerisms. Whereas I think Smith,

00:33:17.060 so if it comes down to personality in a campaign, it often does. I don't know. I, I'm, I think these

00:33:22.260 are pretty good polls. Am I wrong in my assessment? No, I think that's right. I think when Nanshi was

00:33:26.900 mayor of Calgary until 2021, uh, nearly his whole last term, he was convinced he was the smartest

00:33:34.660 person in any room he entered. Yeah. And that showed and people couldn't stand it. Yeah. Uh,

00:33:42.900 Notley, uh, used to have a higher rating in Calgary than Nanshi does. Well, she was, 0.57

00:33:49.620 Rachel Notley was never the mayor of Calgary. So being mayor of Calgary is supposed to be a big thing

00:33:55.380 for Nanshi with the NDP. And I think it's, I think generally it's, it's either, uh, it's either even,

00:34:02.820 or it's actually been a detriment to the NDP. And he, he does not play well at all outside of

00:34:11.380 Edmonton and Calgary, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I remember, I think he's the same man he

00:34:18.500 was in, I mean, we've all grown and changed a bit, but I think his core, his core personality

00:34:24.260 remains what it was when he was a student activist. Lauren, it's great to catch up with you. Thanks for

00:34:30.100 the Alberta briefing. It's sort of heartbreaking to me that the whole world gets to sell its oil,

00:34:34.500 including Venezuela, but Alberta is, uh, corked up for a decade or more. Great to catch up with

00:34:40.180 you. Thank you, my friend. Likewise. There he is, Lauren Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton

00:34:45.380 Journal. Well, that's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel

00:34:51.060 World Headquarters, see you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - March 16, 2026

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Could it be true？ Are the Liberals really ahead federally in Alberta polls？

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