The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Alberta PCs are back - Will this hurt Smith's UCP or Nenshi's NDP？

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here.

00:00:03.020 Well, it looks like Alberta's not just getting one new provincial party, it's getting two this year.

00:00:09.380 The first, of course, is the Republican Party of Alberta, which actually ran in the three by-elections that happened late in June.

00:00:16.860 They didn't do so well, I don't think they're really going to have much impact on the next election.

00:00:21.240 But the next one is freaking a lot of UCP supporters out, which is actually an old party that's becoming new again.

00:00:28.800 Two of the current independent MLAs, Peter Guthrie and Scott Sinclair, are going to be reviving the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.

00:00:38.600 I assume they didn't try and revive the Wild Rose Party because technically the Wild Rose Party is currently existing in the form of the Wild Rose Loyalty Coalition.

00:00:48.480 And so they're taking over the old PC brand because, well, we'll get into that.

00:00:54.840 Now, I want to say right off the bat here, and I want to do an analysis of who I think the new Progressive Conservative Party is going to hurt more,

00:01:02.520 either Daniel Smith's UCP or Naheed Nenshi's NDP, but I will just say, off the bat, I am not against small parties.

00:01:10.600 Heck, I work for a small party in British Columbia.

00:01:13.840 That would be 1BC.

00:01:15.800 1BC exists for a very clear reason.

00:01:18.600 The BC NDP and the BC Conservatives are both in favor of DRIPA or UNDRIP.

00:01:24.740 Both parties will not actually touch SOGI in any significant way.

00:01:29.160 Both parties do not really have any ideas for reforming the healthcare system or the economy.

00:01:34.540 Neither of them are pushing for big tax cuts.

00:01:37.040 And overall, there's just no party that represents real change in the province.

00:01:40.980 And so two out of the three independent MLAs in BC formed a new party in order to actually push those priorities forward

00:01:48.420 and have something that 80% of BC residents who don't like things like DRIPA, SOGI, and the current tax rates can vote for.

00:01:56.300 Now, in Alberta, with the PCs, based on everything I've read so far about what Peter Guthrie and Scott Sinclair are doing,

00:02:04.620 I don't get it.

00:02:05.620 I don't understand why it exists.

00:02:07.340 I understand that they may have justified personal grievances against the UCP.

00:02:12.100 They were both kicked out of caucus.

00:02:14.180 Scott Sinclair, for a more vague reason, like he was criticizing the budget even though he still voted for it,

00:02:20.780 which I would assume would be okay.

00:02:23.140 You know, you can say I don't like this or that, but I'll still vote for it because I like most of it.

00:02:27.540 Peter Guthrie got kicked out because he was pushing forward effectively an NDP line on the investigation into potential corruption in AHS.

00:02:35.780 Again, I don't want to speculate whether or not he wanted Danielle Smith gone so he could take her job.

00:02:43.820 I don't know.

00:02:44.500 I know people say that.

00:02:46.160 Oftentimes people accuse politicians that they kick out of their caucus of wanting their job.

00:02:51.600 I don't know if it's true or not.

00:02:53.420 It doesn't matter in a certain sense because if you had a personal grievance,

00:02:57.280 it doesn't then justify starting a party that doesn't have a reason to exist.

00:03:02.200 Again, not only am I someone who's not against small parties, I also help the New Blue Party in Ontario.

00:03:07.620 I'm also somebody who's not exactly a Danielle Smith fanboy.

00:03:11.980 I voted against her in the UCP leadership review in late 2024.

00:03:17.100 It's not because I hate Danielle Smith.

00:03:18.500 It's because at the time the government was sluggish or not moving on certain priorities.

00:03:23.080 I was thinking that they should have been able to at least make some progress on since they had been in government for two years by that point.

00:03:30.400 They have made progress since November of 2024.

00:03:33.820 So if there was another leadership review, I would vote yes on Smith.

00:03:37.420 So I'm somebody who's very much willing to call balls and strikes.

00:03:40.820 Now, the progressive conservatives, they're not yet a party yet.

00:03:44.980 They've reserved the name and they have to go around collecting signatures and whatnot,

00:03:48.380 jump through a few other hoops in order to become a real registered party.

00:03:51.360 And so they can sit in the legislature under that brand.

00:03:54.420 But the criticisms I see from them on the UCP feel really inside baseball and really, really just vague.

00:04:04.240 It's like the party is not fiscally responsible enough or they're not fiscally conservative enough.

00:04:09.260 Could they be cutting more spending or could they be cutting spending in general?

00:04:14.140 I'm not sure if they've been cutting spending at all.

00:04:16.040 I think they should be cutting spending.

00:04:17.500 Just slash DEI slash ESG. 0.97

00:04:19.820 When I was going after Smith before the AGM, I was specifically saying just cut all of the stupid ESG reporting you're doing. 0.98

00:04:26.260 All of the DEI grant programs you have and you could hire more cops. 0.95

00:04:30.280 You could do a lot of good stuff.

00:04:31.980 But like regardless of whether or not she's done that, overall, they have been improving things.

00:04:37.360 Wait times in hospitals have been going down.

00:04:40.300 They are finally cutting taxes.

00:04:42.040 They are finally putting forward the parental rights legislation.

00:04:45.020 And it was fairly robust based on all of the people who are policy advocates in that area have said.

00:04:50.340 So when they come out and say the conservative party is not being conservative enough,

00:04:55.060 and then in the same breath, they say they're catering too much to separatists.

00:04:58.940 Now, how do I know that Danielle Smith is not catering too much to separatists?

00:05:03.360 Well, a separatist party exists because they thought that she wasn't doing enough for them.

00:05:09.720 So yeah, she's not catering to separatists.

00:05:12.040 She is, in fact, anti-separatist.

00:05:13.700 I know some separatists are going to want me to say independent advocates.

00:05:17.600 It's easier to say separatist.

00:05:18.760 I'm not trying to insult you guys.

00:05:19.960 I understand your arguments.

00:05:21.280 I'm not trying to be rude here.

00:05:22.360 But to confront the progressive conservative argument and the NDP argument,

00:05:29.480 that's kind of the problem with PCs is that they're oftentimes just repackaging NDP arguments

00:05:34.660 as principled conservative arguments.

00:05:37.200 But the only thing they have on Danielle Smith in terms of the separatist movement

00:05:41.320 is that she lowered the petition threshold in order to get a citizen's petition on a referendum ballot. 0.87

00:05:48.120 And that is entirely okay.

00:05:49.800 Do you guys know how many signatures that you needed in order to get something on a referendum ballot in Alberta?

00:05:57.720 Like, just think about that for a second.

00:06:01.660 It was over 600,000.

00:06:03.940 I believe it was around 650,000, 630,000.

00:06:06.760 May have been even 670,000.

00:06:08.720 It's in that range to the point where in, I think it was like 90 days you had, it was impossible to do.

00:06:14.420 You're not going to be able to get the signatures in order to actually start that petition.

00:06:19.800 Now she lowered it to 170,000.

00:06:22.320 Do you think it's hard to do 170,000?

00:06:25.540 Yeah, it is.

00:06:26.300 But it's realistic.

00:06:27.780 If you're trying to make a big change, you should be able to have, you should have to gather 170,000 signatures.

00:06:33.560 The problem with the 600,000 is that that's literally impossible.

00:06:37.420 Think about going door to door collecting signatures.

00:06:39.440 How many people are just not even home at certain times of day?

00:06:43.820 And then you have to be hitting at like a more than 50%, probably, probably more like 70% hit rate in terms of who will sign your petition in order to actually get it over the finish line in time.

00:06:55.940 And that's with probably like 100 people door knocking full time.

00:07:00.540 Most, it would be hard to get 100 signatures as a really, really good door knocker in one day.

00:07:05.600 Maybe a week and you can pull off 150.

00:07:07.940 And so what Smith did was make a very reasonable change.

00:07:11.260 Now, on the angle where the Peter Guthrie's been going on about, about potential corruption in AHS, could there be, did it seem like a guy was getting a basically sweetheart contract from the UCP for AHS, like for medical supplies?

00:07:27.420 Sure.

00:07:28.160 At the same time, I don't yet see evidence that the province has somehow been defrauded of money.

00:07:33.300 It's more so it was inappropriate to give a certain guy a contract.

00:07:36.620 That's being cleaned up.

00:07:38.160 There's going to be more investigating about it.

00:07:40.000 And even the UCP is not like trying to shut down the investigation.

00:07:43.260 When they kicked out Peter Guthrie, and again, I'm not trying to rumor monger about, I hear it's because Peter Guthrie was legitimately hoping that Daniel Smith would be taken down by the scandal and was hoping to become leader himself.

00:07:55.200 I don't put that much credence into whenever someone's accused of wanting someone else's job.

00:07:59.140 It's the most, I would say, routine accusation in politics.

00:08:03.840 It even happened in BC.

00:08:05.060 The John Rustad is trying to claim that anyone who's against him and joins 1BC is doing so because secretly they wanted him ousted as leader so they could become leader or they could become president of the party or whatever. 0.91

00:08:16.820 It's silly.

00:08:17.720 It's not true.

00:08:19.160 In Peter Guthrie's case, I don't care whether it's true or not.

00:08:22.360 But the party basically said that he started going after them on this scandal when they hadn't even had an official report come out yet, like demanding people resign and, you know, demanding massive changes or whatever.

00:08:34.820 Here is their press release they put out on April 16th, the day they expelled them.

00:08:38.800 They said, today the UCP caucus made the difficult decision to expel MLA Pete Guthrie from the government caucus.

00:08:45.920 MLA Guthrie has made it clear that he does not support the government's decision to wait for the investigations of both the Auditor General and Judge Raymond Wyant to conclude prior to taking further action on the issue of AHS procurement practices and the allegations made by the former AHS CEO.

00:09:02.980 It is also clear that he wishes to continue to publicly voice his opposition to the government on that issue.

00:09:09.840 We wish him well as he continues his role as MLA for his constituency.

00:09:14.960 Now, again, I don't really like even when people are kicked out of caucus.

00:09:18.740 If you have a problem with someone in caucus, have a nomination.

00:09:22.960 The UCP actually has automatic nominations.

00:09:25.320 If you do not like somebody, you can vote them out in an automatic nomination that happens before every single election.

00:09:32.160 If you notice, there's a little cuts in this video.

00:09:36.180 It's because I have to keep pausing because the sun keeps trying to take over this room that I'm in.

00:09:40.200 I have way better lighting than yesterday, though.

00:09:42.080 But now I do want to move over into the topic of who would a progressive conservative party revival hurt the most?

00:09:50.760 Because I think off the bat, people assume I think I've said off the bat like three times.

00:09:54.720 I think at the jump, people assume that conservatives in the name, this is going to hurt UCP.

00:10:00.740 And I don't actually think that's what's going to happen here.

00:10:03.920 I actually think it's more likely that the progressive conservative party is going to take votes away from the NDP.

00:10:10.940 This is like why I was advocating during the BC election or the BC conservative party before they revealed themselves to be extremely woke.

00:10:19.200 I was advocating during the campaign, guys, stop trying to make deals with the BC United party.

00:10:25.040 Stop trying to put them into the grave.

00:10:27.360 I want BC United to be around on election day because guess where nervous, upper middle class, progressive people are going to vote who don't like a lot of the policies of the NDP, but they've been propagandized into hating conservatives.

00:10:40.680 They'll go vote for the United party.

00:10:42.500 But if the United party goes away, they'll start voting NDP again because, again, the media propaganda about conservatives being evil and scary is going to overcome the fact that the drug crisis and other things are really bad because these people live in the gated communities where they don't even see it.

00:10:57.820 They know it exists, but they can kind of ignore it.

00:11:01.300 I think the same thing is going to happen in Alberta.

00:11:03.660 Progressive conservatives may be the landing place for people who don't really like the NDP, but they hate Danielle Smith.

00:11:09.420 And so they'll go vote for Peter Guthrie's party.

00:11:11.840 So in Calgary, where I want to pull this up, in Calgary, where it was very close in 2023, although the UCP won the provincial election popular vote by like 8%, when it actually came down to the city of Calgary, I think if you added up the margins and the closest ridings in Calgary, you would only be for like what the NDP would have needed to win.

00:11:33.580 And it's only like 1,200 votes or something like that.

00:11:35.700 It was very close.

00:11:37.180 And so what you'll see is, you know, 52.63% for the UCP to 44.05% overall.

00:11:46.400 But then you look at specifically Calgary right here, and the NDP actually won about 50%, a little bit more than 50% of the ridings in Calgary.

00:11:57.620 And so right now, where is the progressive conservative party vote going to be coming from?

00:12:04.000 Probably a lot of people more in the downtown areas of Alberta, the more downtown leaning suburbs, people who usually vote, who may be back in 2012 when the NDP wasn't a thing.

00:12:16.400 They voted PC, they didn't like the Wild Rose Party, and now that the UCP captures most of the people who voted Wild Rose and progressive conservative, they're only going to be, the PC Party is going to be getting all like the anti-separatist red Tories, basically.

00:12:32.900 Red Tories who were naturally probably going to be voting for the NDP instead.

00:12:36.560 So I actually think that right now, Nenshi, who is really far down the polls and very unpopular compared to Smith, Smith is actually quite popular right now.

00:12:46.180 She's riding very high in the polls, leading the NDP by like 10 to 14 points.

00:12:52.260 I think that she is going to benefit from this because none of these people, probably a lot of the people who are going to go vote PC are the people who are bleeding off of the NDP over the last three or four months.

00:13:03.320 They don't like Naheed Nenshi, and they are maybe going to suck it up and vote UCP.

00:13:08.440 Maybe they're probably just going to stay home, but now they're just going to vote progressive conservative instead.

00:13:13.500 The progressive conservatives are going to get their 5%, maybe even 7% provincially.

00:13:17.700 They'll get a lot of it concentrated in Scott Sinclair's riding and Peter Guthrie's riding because they're the incumbents, and then nothing else is going to come of it.

00:13:24.880 Because there's no narrative for them to run on.

00:13:26.860 What narrative are they going to run on?

00:13:28.660 We'll cut taxes more?

00:13:30.800 Well, it's kind of already taken out of their hands.

00:13:32.860 The UCP is cutting taxes, so good stuff all around.

00:13:36.360 Here's something else good that the UCP did.

00:13:39.220 I'm always happy to give praise to Danielle Smith, even though I've been in the past willing to criticize her.

00:13:47.820 So I hope that makes people trust me more when I say she's doing something good, because I'm not somebody who's only trying to pretend that she's getting wins that don't exist.

00:13:56.340 She just announced the new Alberta police force.

00:13:59.080 We actually are rolling that out.

00:14:00.540 And so this is also why the separatists are doing so bad in provincial elections.

00:14:04.780 Cam Davies running as the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta in Olds, Didsbury, Three Hills got absolutely squashed because, yeah, maybe somebody is in favor of independence.

00:14:16.240 But that doesn't mean they think that Danielle Smith's doing a bad job.

00:14:19.980 People who want an independent Alberta, like Corey Morgan, are – and I'm not an independence guy, but he's being very rational.

00:14:26.500 He's saying, guys, if we vote for independence, wouldn't you want Danielle Smith leading the independent in Alberta?

00:14:31.980 There's no point in voting this way.

00:14:33.580 And so this is also what's killing off the separatists.

00:14:36.500 And then it also – the fact the Republican Party exists kills off the argument the progressive conservatives are making that she's too pro-separatist. 0.98

00:14:43.460 So having a provincial police force, is that one step towards making it more conducive for Alberta independence?

00:14:51.280 And how does that impact national collaborative projects?

00:14:55.600 Like I know that your government has discussed working with Ottawa on things like human trafficking.

00:15:01.560 So how will that look in the future?

00:15:03.380 I would say that what this is about is getting good policing for those areas that are currently being policed by the RCMP.

00:15:10.260 As we mentioned, there's 80 percent of people who already have a local police service, a municipal force.

00:15:15.860 But we have vacancies that have resulted in a delay in response time, sometimes for days, sometimes issues not getting followed up on at all.

00:15:26.640 And that's not delivering good policing.

00:15:27.940 That's what this is about, is to fill some of those gaps, which we've already done.

00:15:32.180 We have a scan force under the sheriffs, which shuts down drug houses.

00:15:36.820 We've got a surveillance team.

00:15:38.260 We've got a fugitive apprehension team.

00:15:39.800 We've got a border security team.

00:15:41.600 And many of those entities work hand in glove with alerts, with municipal forces, and even with the RCMP.

00:15:49.540 I think that I'm just mindful that the federal government issued a white paper saying that they think that the role of the RCMP should change.

00:15:56.840 And so like she's doing a really good job on this.

00:15:59.680 And also, that was just a really silly question.

00:16:02.500 Like, are you trying to make it easier for Alberta to separate?

00:16:05.200 It's like the OPP exists in Ontario.

00:16:08.400 Is Ontario going to separate now because it has the Ontario Provincial Police Force?

00:16:12.620 I think not.

00:16:13.840 I think, in fact, that it's just probably good for the provinces to run their own police.

00:16:18.100 In fact, provinces should be able to enforce their own laws, too.

00:16:21.020 It's insane that the federal government gets to have all say when it comes to criminal justice policy, because that's what sticks us in this insane bail reform situation.

00:16:30.140 Where because people in Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal want these insane bail reform policies, then Alberta has to live with it, too, even though our population wants us to enforce the law. 0.85

00:16:40.440 And in fact, a lot of people in Toronto also want the law enforced.

00:16:43.180 But it's the sliver of woke activists that keeps the liberals in favor of these insane bail reform laws and just soft on crime policies in general.

00:16:53.260 But anyways, so, yeah, Smith doing a good job.

00:16:55.920 Taxes doing well.

00:16:57.040 Like we were lowering taxes.

00:16:58.600 Adrienne Lagrange, the health minister, was doing really good on health reform.

00:17:02.360 She actually had, I think, since COVID, because the NDP will harp on, you know, that wait times are actually up still since 2019.

00:17:10.380 It's like, well, yeah, wait times are up everywhere because COVID was terrible in terms of the lockdowns giving massive backlogs to the hospitals.

00:17:18.080 But I think the UCP have reduced like things like staple surgeries, the ones that they use to track efficiency.

00:17:27.040 Things like knee replacements and hip replacements and other sorts of surgeries are down like 30, 40 percent in terms of their wait times.

00:17:32.860 It's been quite efficient and they're deep like bureaucratizing, bureaucracy, bureaucratizing.

00:17:41.200 I can't even say that right.

00:17:42.280 Basically, they're getting rid of all the administration in AHS that's making it faster.

00:17:47.140 And they're going to re-regionalize the system, which is exactly what is needed so that we stop having ambulances from Edmonton going up to pick up people in small towns two hours away.

00:17:57.440 That is how inefficient the current system is because they wanted to consolidate the entire system in Edmonton or dispatch.

00:18:05.280 But anyway, so, yeah, Progressive Conservative Party, I don't see why they exist.

00:18:10.360 I don't know why.

00:18:11.240 Again, I'm not anti-small party.

00:18:13.540 They just need a reason to exist.

00:18:15.380 And I'm not seeing the reason other than, frankly, NDP narratives.

00:18:19.140 If your new Conservative Party is being run off of narratives being generated by the left-wing opposition against the government, you're not running a proper Conservative Party.

00:18:29.000 I guess it's just called the Progressive Party.

00:18:31.560 That's really what they want to do.

00:18:33.300 When you're calling the government radical, because Peter Guthrie is also somebody who was like the first MLA to endorse Danielle Smith during her run for leadership.

00:18:40.400 The man should have conservative instincts.

00:18:42.940 But this is where, again, I'm not trying to basically say, oh, he has no legitimate reason for doing this at all.

00:18:49.540 But it does make it seem like a grievance when I feel like he's pitch shifted hard left.

00:18:56.100 Not like he's on the hard left, but he's moved from being a very right MLA to being like a center to maybe slightly center right, maybe even center left MLA in terms of his views on the government.

00:19:06.720 That makes me think it's a grievance when it feels like you've shifted your own views so that you can find more criticisms of the current government.

00:19:14.860 Illegitimate criticisms, in my mind, as somebody who's been willing to criticize them in the past.

00:19:20.360 I was criticizing them for a few years, saying, you guys keep running surpluses, but where's the tax cut?

00:19:25.780 Why are you bringing back the gas tax?

00:19:27.200 Why do we have a DEI grant program?

00:19:29.880 Just get rid of it all.

00:19:31.000 Slash it.

00:19:32.280 But yeah, like just, it's all annoying.

00:19:34.600 But anyways, that should probably be it for this video, guys.

00:19:37.980 By the way, if you live in the city of Calgary, I do want to do a quick, not actually shameless plug.

00:19:43.780 I'm very proud to do it, even though I get paid nothing to do it full, you know, for clarity.

00:19:49.120 I don't.

00:19:49.800 This is just a candidate I like.

00:19:51.660 For Calgary Mayor, guys, the only person to support right now and get a sign for is Sonia Sharp.

00:19:57.980 I have the link in the description below and linked in the bottom of the comments, pinned at the top of the comments.

00:20:04.660 Go check it or out.

00:20:05.760 She's actually a conservative.

00:20:07.800 I know people are trying to get people behind Jeremy Farkas, who's gone super progressive, or Jeff Davison, who literally has a land acknowledgement on his website and won't even commit to cutting any spending or taxes. 0.96

00:20:19.080 It's pathetic.

00:20:20.680 Sonia Sharp has actually explicitly said she will cut taxes and spending, which is the only thing I'm pretty much looking for from a Calgary mayoral candidate. 0.98

00:20:29.900 If you can't do those things, I will not support you or endorse you.

00:20:33.780 So check her out. 0.99

00:20:35.500 Go and sign up for a lawn sign if you're in Calgary.

00:20:37.940 I want to box out all these fake conservatives before we actually get into election season in October.

00:20:43.100 So, yes, if you're in Calgary, sign up for her.

00:20:46.700 Make sure that everyone knows that Jeff Davison and none of these other people are hacks.

00:20:50.640 They are absolutely one day I will be doing a candidate review for mayor.

00:20:55.080 Basically, we have the current hyper-progressive mayor, Jody Gondek.

00:20:58.620 We have this Michael Thiessen guy or something else.

00:21:02.420 I forget what his first name is.

00:21:03.800 He's running the Calgary party.

00:21:05.120 It's the Union Front Group party.

00:21:07.040 We have Jeremy Farkas, who used to be conservative, and now he is some progressive waffler.

00:21:11.260 We have Jeff Davison, who believes in nothing other than what his advisor's helm.

00:21:15.620 And then we have Sonia Sharp, who, although I've disagreed with how she's voted on certain things,

00:21:19.520 overall been consistently wanting to lower taxes, been consistently in favor of funding the police.

00:21:25.100 By the way, Jeff Davison voted to defund the police in 2020.

00:21:28.300 My goodness.

00:21:29.280 So, yeah, that's how things currently stand in Calgary.

00:21:32.180 And I will be trying to do a full video breaking down what's going on in the city well before the election.

00:21:37.560 Anyways, with that, see you guys later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - July 03, 2025

Alberta PCs are back - Will this hurt Smith's UCP or Nenshi's NDP？

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