The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - October 15, 2022


Danielle Smith triggers Rachel Notley on Day 1

Hosted by
Isaac Lamoureux
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Rachel Notley Dina Hinshaw Jason Kenney Marco Mendicino Doug Schweitzer Rachel Emanuel Justin Trudeau Marshall Smith John Horseman Travis Taves Michelle Fiore Todd Lohan Kennedy Elbow
Danielle Smith becomes the next Premier of Alberta Alberta’s APOLOGY WARS

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

201.51

Word count

2,121

Sentence count

118

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

New Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was sworn in earlier this week, and she's already making waves. In fact, so much so that the Alberta NDP are in a constant state of being triggered by her comments, they are already calling on her to apologize. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergencies Act has begun in Ottawa, and Alberta is participating, saying it was unnecessary. We re going to be talking about all that and more happening now on The Alberta Roundup.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:26.420 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup.
00:00:28.560 I'm your host, Rachel Emanuel.
00:00:29.640 It has been a very interesting week in Alberta politics, and we have a great show planned
00:00:33.160 for you today.
00:00:34.000 So, let's take a look at what we're going to be talking about.
00:00:36.880 Alberta has a new Premier, Danielle Smith was sworn in earlier this week, and she's already 0.83
00:00:41.160 making waves.
00:00:42.540 In fact, so much so that it seems like the Alberta NDP are going to live in a constant state
00:00:46.780 of being triggered by the new Premier.
00:00:48.900 In fact, they're already calling on Premier Smith to apologize for comments she made earlier
00:00:53.040 this week.
00:00:54.560 Meanwhile, the Federal Emergencies Act Inquisition has begun in Ottawa, and Alberta is participating,
00:00:58.920 saying it was unnecessary.
00:01:00.900 We're going to be talking about all that and more happening now on the Alberta Roundup.
00:01:04.680 Okay guys, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was sworn in this week on Tuesday at a ceremony
00:01:08.540 at the Government House at Edmonton following the Thanksgiving weekend.
00:01:11.920 In her remarks following the ceremony, Danielle Smith said,
00:01:14.460 Albertans' freedoms and rights have been tested over the last two years, and she's looking
00:01:19.060 to strengthen them.
00:01:20.320 Like most Albertans, Smith said she believes freedom is foundational.
00:01:24.240 The Premier also said she's going to protect Alberta's jurisdictional rights from Ottawa,
00:01:28.060 something she campaigned on, as you know.
00:01:30.240 And she spoke about the need to protect Alberta's most vulnerable, especially during the cost of
00:01:34.580 living crisis that we're currently in.
00:01:36.540 Take a listen to her comments now.
00:01:38.020 Together, we will stand up to defend Albertans' charter rights, as well as defend Alberta's
00:01:42.840 exclusive rights over our areas of provincial jurisdiction, which are enumerated clearly in
00:01:49.140 Canada's constitution.
00:01:50.960 But we will also demonstrate the compassion Albertans expect of us by ensuring the vulnerable
00:01:56.460 and our seniors can afford the necessities of life during this time of inflation.
00:02:00.740 We must ensure our children have the support they need to succeed.
00:02:05.860 We must address the mental health crisis that is stealing our young people from us. 1.00
00:02:10.320 We must give real help to those on our streets who don't know where to turn.
00:02:14.520 In her first press conference, just hours after being sworn in as Premier on Tuesday,
00:02:18.660 Danielle Smith began making waves. 0.97
00:02:21.240 Premier Smith said she will no longer be relying on public health advice from Dr. Dina Henshaw.
00:02:26.100 Now, let's get this story right.
00:02:27.320 A lot of outlets were reporting that Henshaw had been fired or was going to be fired.
00:02:31.680 Now, that might be the case, but that's not what Premier Smith said on Tuesday.
00:02:34.600 She simply said she won't be taking health advice from Henshaw anymore.
00:02:38.260 I asked the Premier's office, does this mean Henshaw has been fired or will be?
00:02:41.280 And they said no decisions have been finalized currently.
00:02:44.380 Something else noteworthy from the press conference is Premier Smith said she has not been able to
00:02:48.300 get a hold of former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.
00:02:51.320 Smith said she sent an invitation to Kenney to have a meeting and discuss an orderly transition,
00:02:55.080 but he hasn't responded.
00:02:57.320 Still, Smith was more than forgiving of the former Premier, who she said she still admires greatly.
00:03:04.000 Smith said the leadership race did not go the way Kenney would have liked and that he had a
00:03:07.220 preferred candidate, former Finance Minister Travis Taves, and she said he might need a little more
00:03:11.740 time just to adjust to things.
00:03:13.800 Let's move into the controversy of the week.
00:03:15.780 I'm sure you heard these comments by now, but we're going to go over them anyways.
00:03:19.120 Premier Smith made some more comments in her press conference, this time talking about the
00:03:22.240 discrimination the unvaccinated have faced.
00:03:24.100 She said she doesn't know of another group that faced more discrimination in her lifetime
00:03:28.720 than the unvaccinated.
00:03:30.400 Of course, Alberta, like all other Canadian provinces, implemented a vaccine passport, 0.52
00:03:35.480 barring the unvaccinated from places of work at times, as well as movie theatres and things
00:03:39.540 like restaurants.
00:03:40.960 They were treated like second-class citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic while the vaccine
00:03:45.140 passports were replaced.
00:03:46.800 And Smith acknowledged this discrimination in her first press conference as Premier on Tuesday.
00:03:50.500 The community that faced the most restrictions on their freedoms in the last year were those
00:03:56.980 who made a choice not to be vaccinated.
00:03:59.080 I don't think I've ever experienced a situation in my lifetime where a person was fired from
00:04:05.580 their job or not allowed to watch their kids play hockey or not allowed to go visit a loved
00:04:11.500 one in long-term care or hospital or not allowed to go get on a plane to either go across the
00:04:17.500 country to see family or even travel across the border.
00:04:20.720 So they have been the most discriminated against group that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime.
00:04:25.860 That's a pretty extreme level of discrimination that we have seen.
00:04:29.520 I don't take away any of the discrimination that I've seen in those other groups that you
00:04:33.700 mentioned.
00:04:34.500 But this has been an extraordinary time in the last year in particular.
00:04:39.900 And I want people to know that I find that unacceptable, that we are not going to create
00:04:44.460 a segregated society on the basis of a medical choice.
00:04:48.920 Some say the bubbles in an arrow truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.
00:04:53.680 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.
00:04:57.120 Rich, creamy, chocolatey arrow truffle.
00:05:00.180 Feel the arrow bubbles melt.
00:05:02.200 It's mind bubbling.
00:05:03.180 Now, today's victimhood culture was out in full swing following a press conference with
00:05:08.180 everyone and their mother taking to Twitter to say no, they in fact have been the most
00:05:11.680 discriminated against.
00:05:13.260 But the loudest of these voices was, of course, you guessed it, the Alberta NDP, who are demanding
00:05:17.920 that Premier Smith apologize.
00:05:19.880 In fact, NDP leader Rachel Notley hosted an entire press conference for the sole purpose
00:05:24.500 of asking the Premier to apologize for her comments.
00:05:27.620 You can't make this stuff up.
00:05:28.860 Take a listen for yourself.
00:05:29.740 Given the amount of hurt and pain that has genuinely been expressed to us over the last
00:05:35.320 two days, I call on Premier Daniel Smith to reconsider her decision to not apologize and
00:05:42.960 in fact to offer up an immediate and authentic apology to the hundreds of thousands of Albertans
00:05:54.180 whose experiences she has negated and and who she's her remarks have hurt.
00:05:59.840 The following day, Smith released a clarification statement, but did not apologize.
00:06:04.400 She said she did not mean to trivialize the discrimination that marginalized groups in
00:06:08.440 Alberta have faced.
00:06:10.120 I suspect she won't apologize.
00:06:11.540 It's already been a couple of days and we haven't heard anything from her about that
00:06:14.780 apology.
00:06:15.740 But the NDP are not stopping their calls and are demanding the Premier to apologize nonetheless.
00:06:20.040 Okay guys, let's briefly move over to discuss the Emergencies Act Inquisition which began
00:06:25.020 in Ottawa this week.
00:06:26.300 On Thursday, witnesses gave their opening remarks.
00:06:29.140 Alberta, along with the government of Saskatchewan, is participating in the process.
00:06:33.140 Now for those of you who need a little refresher, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February
00:06:36.640 invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history to grant himself special
00:06:41.300 emergency powers to deal with freedom convoy protesters who were in Ottawa to protest the
00:06:46.060 federal government's COVID-19 restrictions, including vaccine mandates.
00:06:50.000 Now I can say with some certainty that the protesters were peaceful because I was in Ottawa covering
00:06:54.340 the federal government at the time of the freedom convoy.
00:06:56.940 And we already know that the Ottawa police say they did not ask the federal government
00:07:00.440 for the Emergencies Act to be invoked, contradicting earlier claims from Public Safety Minister
00:07:04.880 Marco Mendicino.
00:07:06.180 Now the government of Alberta's and Saskatchewan are saying they also didn't need the Emergencies
00:07:10.240 Act to deal with their respective border blockades.
00:07:12.680 In Alberta, we had the Coutts border blockade.
00:07:14.440 And the Alberta government says it was able to deal with that blockade without powers needed
00:07:18.520 under the Emergencies Act.
00:07:20.140 Okay guys, what we're watching in the weeks to come.
00:07:22.640 Just after Danielle Smith was announced the new Premier in the UCP leadership race, I had
00:07:27.000 a 30-minute interview with her, and I asked her about what some of her plans are in the
00:07:30.060 weeks to come.
00:07:31.100 I also asked her about the $160 million that former Premier Jason Kenney announced in his
00:07:35.780 final week in office.
00:07:38.020 That includes $73 million to the aviation sector and with a partnership with WestJet.
00:07:42.740 And Premier Smith said she might have to take a closer look at some of those funding announcements.
00:07:47.600 She has said her chief of staff, Marshall Smith, who worked in the Kennedy government,
00:07:51.340 flagged some of the items and said the government might need to take a closer look at them.
00:07:55.000 So it'll be interesting to see if she decides to roll back any of those funding announcements.
00:07:59.440 One other thing for you guys to be aware of and to watch for in the weeks to come is
00:08:02.640 that Danielle Smith confirmed that she will be running in the Brooks Medicine Hat by-election.
00:08:06.440 As you know, UCP MLA Michaela Fry resigned on Friday morning, just after Smith won the
00:08:12.400 UCP leadership race, and encouraged Smith to run in that riding.
00:08:16.340 Smith confirmed on Saturday that she will run in the Brooks Medicine Hat by-election, and
00:08:20.820 if she's confirmed in that seat, she could be in the legislature as early as November 0.55
00:08:24.180 29.
00:08:24.820 So I think we can see the House being recalled in late November.
00:08:27.920 It is worth noting that the seat is a conservative safe seat, and it's also a rural riding, with
00:08:32.460 Smith saying that she wants to run in that region because she wants to present
00:08:35.280 rural Albertans.
00:08:37.220 Something else worth noting that I told you I'd follow up with is that UCP MLA Todd
00:08:41.020 Lohan has been confirmed back to the UCP caucus.
00:08:43.600 I told you guys last week that he was in the UCP caucus meeting on Friday morning, and
00:08:47.180 he's confirmed that he's now back in the party once again.
00:08:50.180 Okay guys, moving into the Alberta politics funniest moment of the week.
00:08:52.940 Premier Smith has announced that she will run in the Brooks Medicine Hat by-election, but
00:08:55.960 she said she's going to leave the Calgary Elbow Sea open.
00:08:59.280 You guys might remember the former MLA, Doug Schweitzer, who was also a Kenny cabinet
00:09:02.880 minister, resigned from both his cabinet post and later his month, his seat in Calgary Elbow.
00:09:08.680 That seat's been sitting open since then.
00:09:10.620 A couple of people have expressed interest in running for it, including John Horseman.
00:09:13.720 He told me he's interested in the seat.
00:09:15.160 He, of course, was a UCP leadership candidate for a brief period of time.
00:09:19.460 Daniel Smith said she's going to leave that seat open because there needs to be a race 0.51
00:09:22.020 between all the candidates who are interested in running for the UCP and winning that nomination.
00:09:25.900 And of course, the Alberta NDP just can't handle it.
00:09:28.800 They have decided to make an enormous deal about the fact that Smith is leaving this
00:09:32.300 seat open, despite the fact that seats sit open all the time ahead of a general election.
00:09:37.560 In fact, listen to Rachel Notley's comments for yourself.
00:09:40.180 For over a month, this area hasn't had an MLA.
00:09:43.020 And so we're here today to call on the UCP to call a by-election in this area before the
00:09:48.760 next election so that the people of this area can have their voice.
00:09:52.260 It's no surprise that the opposition would want to attack the government that is in fact
00:09:55.260 their role.
00:09:55.660 But you'd think that the opposition in this case would be able to find something a little
00:09:59.080 more meaningful or substantial to attack the premuron.
00:10:02.760 I guess we'll have to keep hoping.
00:10:04.500 All right, guys, that's all I have for you today.
00:10:06.600 I want to take a quick moment and thank my listeners.
00:10:08.660 This show has grown so much in the number of weeks since we started it.
00:10:11.780 We're at about 17,000 to 19,000 weekly listeners, which is so exciting.
00:10:15.280 I feel so lucky that I get to do this.
00:10:17.060 I love my job.
00:10:18.020 So thank you so much for tuning in.
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00:10:29.060 Thank you so much.
00:10:29.940 Have a great week and I'll see you next weekend.