The Saskatchewan Party just wrapped up and Scott Moe got 80% or above in his leadership review. We re talking about it today with The Saskatoon Soapbox with Sheila Gunn-Reed ( ) and Michael Koros ( )!
00:02:02.740The night before were a number of hospitality rooms.
00:02:06.460And the actual convention took place on Saturday and it was big.
00:02:10.840It was a gathering of people that had not seen each other for a while.
00:02:15.620And the mood was surprisingly optimistic after being in power.
00:02:21.960The day before, the day before, actually the day of the receptions was the anniversary, the 18th anniversary of the first Saskatchewan party election back all the way back to November 7th of 2007 when Bradwell became the first Stats party premier.
00:02:38.580So the Saskatchewan party has been in power for 18 years now.
00:02:42.740So I thought it might have been a little tired and a little worn out, but the delegates were surprisingly upbeat in this convention.
00:03:43.180Yes, so there was two tables of media, a humongous long table with all of the lamestream, you know, the CTV, the CJME, the CBC, the Canadian Press and Sask Today, all with federal funding.
00:03:55.260And then there was a media table just behind them with all of us rebels, all of us independent media people.
00:04:01.940And we were stationed right beside the staircase, the glass staircase, coming into the venue.
00:04:07.540So if you were walking in or out of the venue, you were going to see our faces.
00:04:11.620And the number of people, I would say, I would say it was probably in the hundreds that greeted us so warmly, unabashedly loving Rebel News for being there.
00:04:23.600Rebel News, thanks so much for being, oh, we love you girls.
00:04:48.680Thanks so much for being such warm, hospitable hosts to us, for being open to us.
00:04:54.640And like Michael said, the mood of the delegates was effusive.
00:05:01.360People were excited to be there, excited to see their friends, excited to talk about the direction of the Saskatchewan party and the way that they're going to go.
00:05:10.940And there were some notable changes in the party, which I'm sure we're going to talk about later.
00:05:15.220But all in all, it was an absolutely fantastic weekend.
00:05:18.880And I'm so happy to have seen everybody there.
00:05:21.220Yeah, that was kind of fun to have the people walk past, say, oh, my goodness.
00:05:40.360If we ever question the impact that rebel media is actually having in the political realm in Canada,
00:05:49.260I got a chance to have a little bit of a one-on-one with Premier Moe.
00:05:54.280And one of the first remarks he made to me was, so you're doing a little bit of work with rebel media, eh?
00:06:00.120That was one of the first remarks that he had seen.
00:06:02.860And I have been on this program a couple of times.
00:06:05.920I've been on your program a couple of times.
00:06:07.440And so it hasn't been, I don't have a lengthy body of work with rebel media, but the Premier.
00:06:12.980So at the highest level of the government of Saskatchewan, they're very well aware of what rebel media is doing in the province and in the country.
00:06:21.820So this is not just some sort of, you know, small sort of startup.
00:06:28.200This is something that's having a major impact, I believe, on the political players in this country.
00:06:34.100You know, despite the fact that there's many that don't want it to be having an impact.
00:06:39.180But that's one of the first things that Premier Moe said to me.
00:06:42.000Like, I've known Scott since before he was a Premier, but it was an interesting comment.
00:07:46.840And I think the Saskatchewan party really worked hard, at least the Scott Moe faction of the conservative party, really worked hard to get the vote out for him.
00:07:57.860I received a call of someone who knew that I was going to be there.
00:08:02.620And he asked me a question, would I be supporting Scott?
00:08:05.220And so basically the friends and the associates were basically out working the phones.
00:08:13.980The reason being is basically they thought that if Scott would have gotten lower than 80%, it would have given some momentum to the NDP.
00:08:21.640Now, in my opinion, quite frankly, when you're three years away from an election, momentum to the NDP at this particular point is a non-starter.
00:08:31.740By the way, the NDP just had a convention probably about two weeks ago, and they only had 600 delegates, whereas this last party had 900.
00:08:41.140So basically we're, you know, a third better than them.
00:08:43.880There is some talk basically about whether or not Scott Moe can pull it off basically because a lot of people blame him for the reduction in seats.
00:08:52.780You know, he doesn't have the stylings that we're used to, like with Brad Wall.
00:09:02.520Unfortunately, in politics, basically, either you define your brand or somebody else defines your brand.
00:09:08.580And if Scott could talk to every person in Saskatchewan, which of course is physically impossible, they would realize how nice and decent of a guy this guy is.
00:09:17.360Oh, he's lovely and extraordinarily personable when you get him one-on-one.
00:09:25.440I wish the people of Saskatchewan would see the Scott Moe that we get to see.
00:10:12.560But people basically are used to him speaking in a way that I wouldn't call stilted, but it's very stiff.
00:10:21.640And they're not used to it because everybody compares him naturally to the first premier of the Saskatchewan party, Brad Wall, who basically was very warm and could really do it.
00:10:30.900But these are two totally different men when it comes to speaking styles, maybe not in terms of opinions, but when it comes to speaking styles and the way they handle themselves.
00:10:42.240So I'm just going to go back to next year, or excuse me, last year before the election.
00:10:47.220And it was my advice that Scott Moe took an opportunity to really humanize himself for the Saskatchewan electorate.
00:10:57.320I think it would have gone out a real long way ahead of the last election.
00:11:01.560But if we could continue, like if the people of Saskatchewan got to know the Scott Moe that we get to know, they would have a completely different opinion of him.
00:11:10.580He's extraordinarily charismatic in person.
00:11:24.320Seriously, he's a really, really good guy.
00:11:27.020So, you know, there are a faction of Saskatchewan supporters.
00:11:31.040What I found interesting was the fact that when the results of the leadership review came by, they announced them at north of 80%, but they didn't give the actual number.
00:11:43.560So, we don't know if that was 79.5%, 89%.
00:11:52.200There's a mile wide difference between those things.
00:11:53.540I'm suspecting it probably was on the lower end of 80%, right?
00:11:56.960Because you both heard sort of the rumblings of what I would refer to as very strong conservatives in the party that don't believe that Saskatchewan party is conservative enough.
00:12:12.220And there is a concern that social and fiscal conservatives in Saskatchewan don't really have a place to put their vote as it pertains to the Saskatchewan party, which is a problem that the Saskatchewan party is going to have to deal with.
00:12:28.860I mean, they want to take back the cities, and that was a big, big campaign that they had sort of launched at convention, was earn back Regina and earn back Saskatoon.
00:12:42.680But they must not do that at the expense of their conservative rural base.
00:12:48.500As a matter of fact, I think that it would be a good idea if the Saskatchewan party attempted to import the good sense of rural Saskies into the urban areas.
00:13:00.780Rural Saskies are full of amazing, great conservative ideas, and that's who Sask party should prioritize in their way forward.
00:13:08.900I don't see them doing that right now, and I'd like to see more of it.
00:13:13.860Now, just as an outsider looking in, I noticed a very prominent absence of members of the federal conservative party at the convention.
00:13:27.540And for me, that's odd, because, you know, I cover UCP conventions here in Alberta, and the federal party at least makes their presence known as sort of a united front against the NDP or the liberals or whatever, against the left.
00:13:45.000And I only heard a rumor that federal conservative Brad Redekop had been at one of the hospitality seats, but I never laid eyes on a federal conservative the whole time.
00:14:26.940I'm not sure if this is the conservatives not wanting to be at the SAS Party convention or the SAS Party organizers not wanting to have the conservative MPs at their convention.
00:14:49.020Well, and that could very well be because we can say truthfully and honestly on this program that getting media accreditation for Rebel News to attend that event was a weeks-long process that was much more complicated than it should have been.
00:15:18.860To a nearly 1,000-person event, I think just scaling up, you know, a couple hundred percent could be challenging for party organizers, given the benefit of it.
00:15:29.880But it could also be, I mean, it could also be explained by just having a chilly relationship between the SAS.
00:15:42.060The Conservative Party of Canada has their way of doing things.
00:15:44.700The SAS party has their way of doing things.
00:15:46.540And they may have just lost touch with each other.
00:15:50.020But to say that it's important for the SAS party to link arms with the conservatives at this time is a gross understatement.
00:15:59.440They should absolutely be sort of brothers in arms in all of this.
00:16:02.860Yeah, and so one of the things that changed recently in the Saskatchewan party is the longtime executive director, Patrick Bundrock, who'd been there for 15 years, just recently stepped down.
00:16:13.900And I think he's working in exec council now.
00:16:16.560So his acting, the interim executive director, fairly new with the job, basically, may not have had as much knowledge about the media accreditation because it would have been his first convention.
00:16:30.800So the new guy, I won't mention his name because I don't want people to think that he did this deliberately.
00:16:37.900It was hard to get the information from him.
00:16:40.300But the thing is, when he found out, and I was the one who finally got him to get you guys to call, to get him to call you guys, when he finally found out that basically he kind of, I think, inadvertently didn't send the email that needed to go out to you or you were missed on the list or whatever.
00:16:58.640But the moment I got off the phone with him, you got the email within five minutes.
00:17:03.900So, but another event happened within the convention itself that really sort of perked up my ears.
00:17:11.800And it was when the comms person from the Sask party approached the media booth to tell the media what was going to happen, where we were supposed to be, where the premier would be standing, what the process was going to be.
00:17:25.420The Sask party person talked to one member of the mainstream media, okay, walked up, whispered something to one member of the mainstream media and left.
00:17:35.860And we, we were like, what, what just happened here?
00:17:38.980Were they, like, what, the, the, the communication was lacking.
00:17:43.320I will say that they can do better in that regard.
00:17:45.320And especially where they have friends in the media, in the room, they can do a much, much better job.
00:17:51.040So just all of this constructive criticism, listen, we're here.
00:19:30.780So we were stuffing 20s in the poppy bin at our hotel all weekend.
00:19:35.160And then we were coming down because we were headed across the street to the convention.
00:19:39.380Lease stops, stuffs a 20 and grabs between 13 and 15 poppies, which would get us through the day.
00:19:46.360But then she sits down, puts a spread of them across the table.
00:19:52.220And then Auntie Lease grabs them, walks up to our colleagues, I suppose, in the media booth, in the mainstream media, and starts giving them poppies.
00:20:06.020And then she starts offering them poppies.
00:20:08.020I didn't even ask how you were received, but you came in so hot and so Auntie Lease that I don't think they had a choice than to take it and stick it on.
00:20:16.820You just knew that they wouldn't have poppies.
00:20:44.380I go into every social situation like a golden retriever, just bound in every room, start licking people's faces and saying, hey, guys, I'm Lease Rowe from Rebel News.
00:21:15.920But what I didn't know, what I didn't know was as I was offering the media their poppies that I had thought ahead and brought for them, Sheila Gunn-Reed was getting it all on video.
00:21:26.240Like, I didn't know that this was happening, so then I got to watch it later.
00:21:40.180Because those poor media, those poor lamestream media kids, they had to listen to compliments being absolutely shouted at us for the entirety of the entire.
00:21:52.720I'm glad you recognized that these were basically, you know, when you're in Saskatoon and Regina, outside of the major media markets like Calgary or Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, that sort of thing, you are just cutting your teeth here.
00:22:08.300You're not probably somebody who has had a lot of experience.
00:22:10.660So you just kind of take the company line as to what they should be doing or they think what they should be doing.
00:22:18.060So the thing is, you know, you're right.
00:22:20.400I think when they come out of J School, they have this idea that they're going to change the world.
00:22:26.780Unfortunately, that's something you should be coming out of J School.
00:22:29.300You should be coming to find out how to be a reporter.
00:22:31.260But the reality is they're coming out there.
00:22:33.700And I really appreciate the fact that you recognize the fact that these young people are just young people and maybe haven't experienced sort of the inner goings of the political world with a small people, with a small, small P.
00:23:13.720I try to avoid being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:23:16.860You know, these kids are probably hearing in their newsrooms what a bunch of lunatics we are and how disruptive we are at events and whatever.
00:23:24.660And again, their first experience with us is that we were super nice and trying to save them from embarrassment of appearing on camera without a poppy just days before Remembrance Day.
00:23:36.020Now, before we go, because we've been at this for 22 minutes already, before, I know, flew right by.
00:23:42.060I want to talk about what I would describe as the hand-dong adjustment to the Saskatchewan Party's constitution.
00:23:49.940So they have changed their constitution so that the only people who can vote in nomination races are Canadian citizens.
00:24:01.720And I think this is a wonderful thing, which aligns with election Saskatchewan rules.
00:24:07.360But it prevents people from stacking the nominations to get, you know, who get themselves nominated, but then turning around and failing on election day because all the people who nominated you can't vote for you.
00:24:28.080And the people who would have voted in the nomination would not have voted for you.
00:24:35.200And it's exactly how Handong got nominated in Don Valley North was bussing in a bunch of foreign nationals from a local Chinese language school where expats send their kids.
00:24:49.400And they were like 14-year-old Chinese nationals voting for Handong in the nomination.
00:24:55.260So that's how he got to be CCP's man in Don Valley North.
00:25:20.420Actually, one of the comments that was made was, if we limit our nominations to Canadian citizens, it's going to compel people that aren't Canadian citizens who want to be involved to become Canadian citizens.
00:27:57.080The people who do want to vote for the SASC party MLA in that riding see that guy and then they dig down and they're like, I actually don't like that guy.
00:28:24.180Let the NDP throw their nominations open to any Tom, Dick, and Harry from whatever country they want and let them suffer the consequences of their bad decisions.
00:28:33.820Imagine letting non-citizens choose the MLA.
00:29:14.000It was really quite interesting because Brittany Sanger did a little video outside of the SAS party, outside of TCU place recently saying, and she's like, we want diversity.
00:29:36.440There was a finance minister in the 1990s in the NDP caucus that was openly gay.
00:29:42.120And this guy still appears on CBC to this day.
00:29:45.360So it's like, you don't even know the history of your own party.
00:29:48.720I'm proud to be a member of a caucus that's made up of nearly 50% women, that has a woman leader, that has diversity, that has the first openly gay MLA in Saskatchewan's history.
00:30:02.140And besides, what does that have to do with permanent citizenship?
00:30:06.680They just want to do, take any opportunity to, you know, the NDP have followers just like everybody else, but the hardcore left-wing radicals are such simple-minded people that ultimately they just jump on this.
00:30:25.120You know, if they saw Scott Moe buying vanilla ice cream at the co-op, right, why won't you get chocolate?
00:46:42.260Takes me like a day and a half, almost two days to get there and over two days to get back in an attempt to keep costs low.
00:46:49.640If you'd like to support my journalism there, I'm headed there with a videographer to expose the hypocrisy of the United Nations.
00:46:56.040Please, please help me consider making a donation at rebelinvestigates.com.
00:47:02.580This is an insanely expensive trip, but I just think it's important to show you what the world's global elites are doing in the name of climate change.
00:47:15.300And to show you firsthand from on the ground, the hypocrisy, including their little highway that they built through the rainforest for their climate change conference.
00:47:27.680Rebelun.com to help us out to cover our costs.
00:47:30.480We don't take any money from the government to do the work that we do.