The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Danielle Smith AGM leadership review (Report Card)

00:00:00.200 Hello everyone, Wyatt Claypool here. Tomorrow I'm going to be heading out to Red Deer to attend the United Conservative Party of Alberta's annual general meeting.

00:00:10.160 I'm doing this as a member, not as a media person, although I also always apply for the media passes. I enjoy having both.

00:00:17.700 And while I'm there, like everyone else, I'll be voting on policy, I will be electing new members of the executive board,

00:00:24.400 but I will also be voting in the leadership review of UCP leader and Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith.

00:00:31.880 And I want this video to basically be my report card on Danielle Smith.

00:00:36.540 I know a lot of people are going to be upset with me because people have the idea that Danielle Smith is like the pillar of conservatism in Canada.

00:00:44.520 And I think that's really just because Alberta is a fantastic province and Alberta makes premiers look good.

00:00:50.180 Even Rachel Notley probably would have seemed like one of the more fiscally conservative premiers when she was the premier of Alberta between 2015 and 2019.

00:01:00.360 And it's just because the oil and gas industry is great. We have a great service industry. We have a great mining sector.

00:01:06.400 So even the NDP can't quite screw that up. Yeah, they ran some deficits, but compared to even Doug Ford in Ontario right now and other premiers around the country,

00:01:15.940 even Rachel Notley looked pretty good. And so Danielle Smith has a lot of shine on her because she's the premier of Alberta. 0.99

00:01:22.840 If you made Justin Trudeau the premier of Alberta, he would look suddenly more fiscally responsible than he really is just because there's way more money to play with because of oil and gas royalties.

00:01:33.360 But what I want to get down to is an actual relative evaluation of how Daniel Smith has been doing based on how easy it in certain sense should be to be the premier of Alberta.

00:01:44.220 Again, government revenues are very easy to raise in Alberta because of oil and gas revenues.

00:01:49.240 We don't actually need to have very high taxes in order to have a big budget. We have pretty low taxes compared to the rest of the country.

00:01:56.640 But even then, there's just been a lot of things that have been fumbled, have just not been done, that Daniel Smith promised either in her 22 leadership race or in the 2023 provincial election campaign.

00:02:08.760 And I'm just going to start off with this basic one. Where was the income tax cut?

00:02:12.820 We're supposed to have an income tax cut. It keeps getting promised.

00:02:16.180 But every few months that go by, we have more economic news come out showing that the barrel of oil is falling in price and that we have to triple our infrastructure spending to increase the amount of schools.

00:02:27.280 Because for some reason, Daniel Smith was asking Trudeau to import even more immigrants into Alberta before she backed off of it and said, actually, this is all Justin Trudeau's fault, even though I was asking for more people and I was wanting to get us to the next, maybe the next province to 10 million residents.

00:02:42.800 That's all nonsense, but it was crazy that that even occurred.

00:02:47.280 But every single time we get into the range where we could cut taxes, whether that be the industrial carbon tax, which I think is basically just effectively another version of the consumer carbon tax, there is no such thing as a tax that everybody doesn't pay, at least in part.

00:03:02.960 And the industrial carbon tax still gets added on to your, into the prices at the pump.

00:03:08.480 And so I'd like either that lowered, the gas tax lowered, because we've brought back the gas tax in full force, or income taxes lowered back to maybe the flat tax that we used to have.

00:03:18.540 I know the flat tax used to be 10%, and currently some people in Alberta only pay 8%, or they're planning on only making people below $50,000 pay 8%.

00:03:29.620 That's fine, but at least have a plateau that once you start making more than $75,000, you only pay 10%.

00:03:36.240 I believe our upper income bracket is currently paying about 15%, 16%.

00:03:41.120 And when you actually add that up onto federal taxes, your taxes are still very high off your upper income brackets.

00:03:49.220 And some people can say, well, that's just rich people.

00:03:51.480 So who cares about rich people?

00:03:52.900 That's the economy, though.

00:03:54.700 That is what allows people to create jobs, allows people to pay people more, allows prices to go down.

00:03:59.620 So I would really like to see movement on that.

00:04:02.340 And everything I've seen over time just indicates to me that Daniel Smith's not going to lower taxes.

00:04:06.380 There's just no way she's going to.

00:04:08.300 She could have done it before.

00:04:09.380 She didn't do it before the election.

00:04:11.380 She hasn't done it after the election.

00:04:13.160 And part of why she hasn't done it is because wasteful spending is out of control.

00:04:17.780 Our budget is way higher than it used to be when Jason Kenney was the premier.

00:04:23.220 And Jason Kenney raised spending during COVID because of people staying home from work and injecting a bunch of money into the economy.

00:04:31.000 Mostly that was done by the federal government.

00:04:32.680 But Jason Kenney still rapidly increased the budget with the excuse of COVID.

00:04:37.180 I don't think it was a particularly amazing excuse.

00:04:39.340 But whatever, that happened.

00:04:40.340 But we're out of COVID and Daniel Smith has raised spending more.

00:04:44.960 And it's not like our lives have gotten proportionally better for the spending that has increased.

00:04:49.200 It hasn't.

00:04:50.400 And in fact, we're spending on even more nonsense than ever.

00:04:53.700 I'm just going to quickly cover the two new trains that are either going to go to Banff or going from Calgary to Red Deer to Edmonton.

00:05:00.560 They're not happening.

00:05:02.040 They're just not happening.

00:05:03.180 And do you know what those types of projects end up causing?

00:05:06.680 Just like the Green Line that Daniel Smith rightfully doesn't like, the Green Line's nonsense.

00:05:10.800 It's just a bloated boondoggle project.

00:05:12.700 These boondoggle projects allow you to pay millions and millions and millions of dollars to people to, you know, do polls on the project, allows people to survey it, do think tanks, do like, you know, focus groups, you know, surveying the land.

00:05:28.820 And nothing ever gets done, but people that are being paid tens of millions of dollars to do nothing.

00:05:33.520 And I don't think anyone is seriously actually trying to get these projects underway.

00:05:37.260 But you could pay your favorite consultants in order to just keep twiddling their thumbs and sharpening pencils rather than doing real work because, oh, we got a train line to plan.

00:05:46.860 Oh, my goodness.

00:05:47.940 But we have stuff like anti-racism grant programs.

00:05:51.180 That is an actual thing that we are dumping money into, taking action against racism, the Racism Anti-Grant Program.

00:05:57.820 And I know that Minister Mohamed Yassin has tried to justify this by saying, actually, it was just one program that we split into two.

00:06:06.640 So now there's this one diversity and anti-racism program has become a diversity and multiculturalism program and an anti-racism grant program.

00:06:15.820 And what drives me up the wall is when people then counter and say, well, it's only $7 million going into the anti-racism grant program.

00:06:23.360 How many police officers can we hire for that?

00:06:25.260 How many nurses could we hire for that? 1.00

00:06:26.560 How much could we just increase the wage of nurses by just putting that into their salary pool? 1.00

00:06:32.920 How we could get rid of both of these programs because both these programs are DEI nonsense.

00:06:38.180 But for some reason, we still just do it.

00:06:40.260 We even have on the website and these are being updated as time goes on.

00:06:44.420 Our diversity and inclusion policy, promoting a diverse, inclusive Alberta public service.

00:06:49.800 All this needs to go.

00:06:52.080 You can't just say, well, I've managed the government more efficiently than the NDP have.

00:06:57.020 That's not a good argument. 1.00

00:06:58.540 And right now, the Alberta UCP's perspective and attack line on Nenshi is stupid. 0.99

00:07:04.320 I think Nenshi is a terrible potential premium. 1.00

00:07:07.280 He was a horrible mayor of Calgary.

00:07:09.360 Calling him a tax and spend liberal is not going to be enough.

00:07:12.080 That doesn't actually scare people.

00:07:14.140 What you have to do, especially when you're a tax and spend conservative, you cannot keep

00:07:19.460 taxes high and keep ramping up spending off the back of good oil and gas revenues and

00:07:25.880 then just say that, well, but this Nenshi guy, he's going to spend even more than us. 0.93

00:07:29.560 Well, we look like hypocrites then. 0.99

00:07:31.120 Let's stop being hypocritical. 0.99

00:07:33.220 Can we? 0.98

00:07:33.720 That would be great.

00:07:34.560 We have a lot of ESG and environmental spending, real savings, real change, the municipal climate

00:07:42.040 change action center.

00:07:43.620 And this is an Alberta run organization.

00:07:45.860 We have a lot of spending like this.

00:07:47.820 I'm trying to find this stuff.

00:07:49.160 Why did we phase out oil and gas?

00:07:50.900 Daniel Smith became the premier before the oil and gas, sorry, the coal phase out happened.

00:07:55.000 And when you're being congratulated by the Pembina Institute, which is an anti-oil and gas

00:07:59.860 front group, you're doing it wrong.

00:08:02.140 We should have brought back coal.

00:08:03.240 We should have just said, nope, we're no longer banning it because we need it to survive.

00:08:07.980 When it's super cold outside and it's negative 40 with the wind chill and we almost have our

00:08:12.020 grid fail.

00:08:13.220 Yes, it's good that we're getting rid of unreliable green energy tech.

00:08:17.400 That's not even, it's not an industry.

00:08:19.220 I hate when people say, oh, it's a great industry, the green energy industry.

00:08:22.740 It's not an industry if you have to pay massive subsidies for it to exist.

00:08:26.760 But that's another thing.

00:08:27.920 Why is environment minister Rebecca Schultz adding massive subsidy programs for small

00:08:33.120 businesses if they include green tech?

00:08:35.140 Stop giving handouts based on things that people don't need.

00:08:39.680 Small businesses need a tax cut.

00:08:41.780 Small businesses need a regulatory cut.

00:08:44.660 Our industries need a regulatory cut, need a tax cut.

00:08:47.920 Why are we fooling around by doing this Doug Ford, Justin Trudeau nonsense where we just

00:08:53.040 give out targeted subsidies to areas that we're maybe trying to win votes from?

00:08:56.640 It's obnoxious to me.

00:08:59.000 But here's that thing on the emissions goal stuff on the overview part of the government's

00:09:06.260 website.

00:09:07.080 In 2015, the government of Alberta announced the elimination of emissions from coal power

00:09:11.840 generation by 2030.

00:09:13.200 That was obviously by the Alberta NDP and Rachel Notley.

00:09:16.640 Alberta is rapidly reducing emissions and targeting a carbon neutral grid by 2050.

00:09:21.320 Electricity emissions have declined by 53% since 2005, and the province will have phased

00:09:27.580 out all coal generation by 2024.

00:09:30.680 Notice there that it shows that our emissions were already going down before any of these

00:09:35.620 regulations were in place.

00:09:37.240 The fantastic thing about capitalism and why I'm a capitalist is capitalism incentivizes

00:09:43.580 you to do the best thing for yourself, but that often is actually the best thing for

00:09:47.760 society and in the environment too.

00:09:49.980 Notice how trucks had actually reduced their emission output since the 1970s till now.

00:09:55.800 The definition of what a gas guzzler is, is way different than it used to be.

00:10:00.120 Because guess what?

00:10:01.080 People are greedy in a good way, and they want their tank of gas to take their truck as far

00:10:06.340 as humanly possible.

00:10:07.760 So our actual fuel efficiency has gone through the roof.

00:10:10.760 Same thing in the oil and gas industry.

00:10:12.880 Same thing in the coal industry, the mining industry.

00:10:15.160 Emissions, high emissions represent inefficient use of energy.

00:10:20.620 And so if you actually just cut taxes, a lot of these oil and gas companies will make

00:10:25.280 themselves more efficient because it saves them money.

00:10:28.140 But yeah, oh my goodness, all this stuff is just so annoying to me.

00:10:31.240 Here's another one.

00:10:32.380 The Emissions Reductions Alberta, another Alberta-based corporation by the government.

00:10:37.000 The ERA has two funding streams to help Alberta prosper while reducing emissions.

00:10:41.000 We fund innovative technology projects, as well as infrastructure upgrades for our businesses.

00:10:46.920 Learn more about the streams that suits your project below.

00:10:49.840 And it's just grants to select companies to do a bunch of green energy upgrades or whatever

00:10:55.360 that don't go apply to everybody, that taxpayers get to pay for.

00:11:00.180 And the companies could have done it themselves if you just lowered their taxes.

00:11:04.040 I hate stuff like this.

00:11:05.700 And all of this is in line with Alberta still pursuing ESG goals.

00:11:11.160 Sorry, I just need a drink of coffee for a second here.

00:11:15.300 And you're probably thinking, why, you're hyper enough.

00:11:17.460 No, I'm not.

00:11:18.920 This is actually all in line with ESG goals.

00:11:21.020 And I'm not just saying that because it's a buzzword to say, oh, Alberta is using ESG 0.97

00:11:25.340 or we're caring about ESG too much.

00:11:27.300 And then I'm not trying to make them like a WEF comparison.

00:11:30.900 Oh, Daniel Smith is in with Klaus Schwab in the WEF.

00:11:34.420 I don't really care about stuff like that.

00:11:35.980 I just care if the policy is good or bad.

00:11:38.260 And Alberta, and this was updated in 2023.

00:11:41.800 I can show you right here, Alberta's ESG approach.

00:11:44.100 It was updated April 6, 2023, when Daniel Smith was around.

00:11:48.620 This should have just been archived as soon as she came in.

00:11:51.320 And they should have just gotten rid of all the ESG stuff.

00:11:53.820 Just get rid of it.

00:11:54.960 It's not real economics.

00:11:56.700 It is leftism in disguise as being like, you're trying to make Alberta a better investment

00:12:02.160 destination.

00:12:03.380 Stop playing the ESG game.

00:12:05.440 It's dying anyways.

00:12:06.800 Even BlackRock is moving away from ESG.

00:12:09.360 And they were the biggest promoters of it because I guess they're big social activists.

00:12:13.420 And the truth is with a lot of ESG stuff is it's being pushed by, frankly, insecure,

00:12:19.420 like insecure, wealthy people who are trying to make themselves seem like very good people

00:12:24.280 because they've already made their money.

00:12:25.400 And so they don't actually care if they're going to hammer everyone else down because

00:12:28.500 I'm an activist now.

00:12:29.740 And now Greta Thunberg is going to give me an award or whatever. 1.00

00:12:33.660 Anyways.

00:12:34.380 But here's the actual website for Alberta's ESG report.

00:12:37.600 This was, again, updated in 2023.

00:12:40.340 And it's concerning because it contradicts a lot of what Daniel Smith's been saying,

00:12:44.980 especially on mass immigration and her new attack on Justin Trudeau for being the one

00:12:50.440 responsible for mass immigration.

00:12:52.180 Is the federal government responsible for immigration?

00:12:54.460 Yes.

00:12:55.260 But Daniel Smith, for an entire year, was demanding more immigration at the time when Canada had

00:13:00.420 the biggest spike in immigration ever, 1.3 million people.

00:13:04.520 There's a reason why Alberta brought around a quarter million into the province in that

00:13:08.460 year alone.

00:13:08.980 It's because Daniel Smith was actively saying, we want more people and we are trying to get

00:13:13.340 to 10 million by 2050.

00:13:16.020 So let's just go down here.

00:13:17.840 What is ESG?

00:13:19.200 Environmental and social governance, ESG criteria, are a non-financial performance measure that

00:13:25.020 helps stakeholders. 0.99

00:13:26.260 And stakeholders is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. 0.99

00:13:28.740 It means that people who have no actual stake, but they just, you know, I live in Alberta, 0.99

00:13:33.260 ergo, I'm a stakeholder, to help stakeholders understand how an organization is managing

00:13:38.880 risks and opportunities related to environmental, social, and governance issues.

00:13:42.820 They can influence the decision of investors, financial institutions, and talent on where

00:13:47.860 they direct their resources.

00:13:49.180 It doesn't.

00:13:50.120 It actually doesn't.

00:13:51.120 This is a classic go woke, go broke scenario.

00:13:55.280 ESG is actually meant to kind of prop up woke companies that are not profitable, but telling

00:13:59.640 investors, why don't you give money to them?

00:14:01.200 Because they have these very good non-financial metrics going for them.

00:14:05.080 If it's a non-financial metric, in my mind, it's useless.

00:14:08.380 And that's why ESG is so awful.

00:14:10.740 So Alberta's ESG approach, judicial ESG framework, the government of Alberta established an ESG

00:14:18.200 secretariat in May of 2021, the first of its kind by any province to serve as a strategic

00:14:24.180 coordinating body for all ESG related activities across government.

00:14:27.800 I just want to get to the progress part, because this is really weird to me.

00:14:32.300 Here's social.

00:14:33.320 23% of Albertans are immigrants or permanent residents up to 2% from 2016.

00:14:37.960 That's really weird.

00:14:39.720 Why is that a metric of success that we are more immigrants now?

00:14:44.620 And this was done halfway through the year of record-breaking immigration.

00:14:47.660 I guarantee that's more like 4% or 5% at this point.

00:14:50.080 I don't care where people came from, but the problem with ESG is it basically makes you

00:14:55.300 value metrics that don't matter.

00:14:58.100 Metrics that don't actually make your province or economy stronger.

00:15:01.480 And this is something that the Alberta government made under Daniel Smith.

00:15:05.440 This needs to be fixed.

00:15:06.960 And the thing is, I have an on-ramp for liking Daniel Smith.

00:15:10.080 But right now, just cut to it.

00:15:12.980 In a leadership review, I can't vote for Daniel Smith, because a leadership review is me saying,

00:15:18.880 do I like what's happening and do I have confidence in you moving forward?

00:15:21.960 Or do I think there are serious problems and I don't have confidence you're going to do

00:15:25.200 the right thing in the future?

00:15:26.420 That doesn't mean you're not better than Nenshi.

00:15:28.580 If we're basing that off of how we vote for people, we're going to lose in the long run.

00:15:33.440 By the way, the polling is actually not very good in Alberta.

00:15:35.680 Yes, we have polls putting us up 5%, 6%, 7% on the NDP.

00:15:40.940 We won by 8.6% in 2023, and we barely won on seats in Calgary by 1,200 votes.

00:15:46.860 So let's not pretend that we're way ahead, especially because a lot of people in polls

00:15:50.680 between elections just say, yeah, I totally voted for the current incumbent government.

00:15:55.020 It's kind of like a response bias that people who like the current government or maybe even

00:15:59.740 didn't vote, they just said, oh, yeah, I'm voting for the UCP.

00:16:01.780 But as we get closer to an election, it's going to start receding a little bit.

00:16:06.100 Anyways, like even Jason Kenney had really good ratings for the first while of his government.

00:16:10.400 But let's read some more of these.

00:16:12.820 Environmental, first in North America to put a price on industrial carbon.

00:16:17.700 Why are we celebrating that?

00:16:19.200 Why are we celebrating an attack on our institutions?

00:16:22.300 Look, 95% of our oil sands production on path to net zero by 2015.

00:16:27.320 Stop using this as a metric.

00:16:28.800 They're on track to eliminate coal generation electricity by the end of 2023.

00:16:32.740 So the Alberta government under Daniel Smith endorsed that it was going to keep eliminating

00:16:37.640 coal.

00:16:38.560 Why?

00:16:39.200 Because of ESG nonsense?

00:16:40.520 I hope not.

00:16:41.800 I hope it was just that they forgot that we were, for some reason, eliminating coal for

00:16:46.340 no reason.

00:16:47.000 And then they just let it go, like, let it phase out.

00:16:50.840 We shouldn't be doing this. 0.99

00:16:52.060 It's foolish. 0.97

00:16:53.440 We shouldn't be doing any of this. 0.97

00:16:54.760 Again, our budget has been going up under Daniel Smith.

00:17:00.440 We have not cut wasteful HR.

00:17:02.660 We have not cut ESG.

00:17:03.740 We have not cut DEI.

00:17:05.400 We have not moved money in a substantial enough way yet from AHS management and administration,

00:17:13.540 which is super bloated, to the front lines.

00:17:16.180 I actually will give a compliment to Health Minister Adrienne Lagrange.

00:17:19.640 She did a good job so far as Health Minister, and she was doing a good job as Environment

00:17:23.960 Minister.

00:17:24.760 There are fantastic MLAs right now in the Alberta caucus and government.

00:17:30.240 There's tons of people I think are great conservatives in that government.

00:17:34.240 But I hope that they are not being hamstrung in how effective they could be if, because there's

00:17:39.700 just different priorities at the top in the Premier's office.

00:17:42.640 There are people in the Premier's office I know who are just not conservatives at all.

00:17:45.800 There's tons of non-conservatives on Daniel Smith's 22 leadership campaign.

00:17:50.380 There were people who were BC NDP organizers on her 22 provincial election campaign.

00:17:57.460 One guy was literally, even though he says, I converted to being a conservative the year

00:18:01.240 before, like a couple months before the leadership election started, he was doing organizing work

00:18:05.460 for a BC NDP Vancouver Island MLA.

00:18:08.840 Nuts.

00:18:09.860 And I'm not saying that, oh, she hung out with this person, ergo she's bad.

00:18:13.280 I never like when stuff turns into that.

00:18:14.860 But I can't be swayed over the Alberta Bill of Rights.

00:18:19.220 It's still weaker than the Charter.

00:18:21.500 And as some people have pointed out, it actually is worse than the previous Alberta Bill of

00:18:25.940 Rights because it actually starts explicitly laying out where the government can violate

00:18:29.980 your rights.

00:18:31.000 And it doesn't actually, it wouldn't have changed anything at all during COVID.

00:18:34.300 And a lot of people like Daniel Smith because she's not Jason Kenney.

00:18:37.840 Jason Kenney, I will tell you, had the medal when he got into office.

00:18:41.580 And it wasn't enough for me yet, but it was at least something where I approved of what

00:18:44.960 he was doing.

00:18:45.340 He actually started trying to cut wasteful spending when he got in in 2019.

00:18:49.440 COVID kind of sidetracked that and he did not perform well during COVID, which was why

00:18:53.700 I was ripping him during it.

00:18:55.300 I actually was one of the couple of people, me and David Dixon, who helped get the AHS CEO,

00:19:00.980 Dr. Verna, you fired for mishandling ICU beds and using the justification that, oh, our

00:19:07.600 ICUs are being overwhelmed in order to then implement harsher lockdowns and keep people 0.99

00:19:13.140 locked down at home and all the stupid social distancing rules. 0.97

00:19:16.320 So I'm not somebody sitting here and saying, I'm just here to criticize from the sidelines. 0.99

00:19:20.540 I've done stuff in the foreground.

00:19:22.520 I have helped get stuff done myself.

00:19:24.680 And I'm not that convinced that Daniel Smith, if she was the premier during COVID, would have

00:19:28.400 been that much different than Jason Kenney, but everyone gets the plausible deniability

00:19:32.100 that if they weren't in office, that I would have been 10,000 times better.

00:19:36.440 Daniel, again, Kenney cut spending.

00:19:39.000 Kenney actually started forcing the universities to actually get their spending under control.

00:19:45.560 Daniel Smith hasn't.

00:19:47.240 And so on many of these fronts, I'm just not very convinced that she's been doing a great

00:19:51.260 job.

00:19:52.300 Now, again, wasteful spending cuts.

00:19:53.960 I guess the taxes haven't been lowered.

00:19:56.120 There's a bloat in administration.

00:19:57.780 We haven't really started fixing AHS enough at all yet.

00:20:02.400 A lot of other issues.

00:20:03.620 There's just way too many patronage appointments in the UCP government.

00:20:07.460 People getting contracts to do nothing.

00:20:09.480 People getting contracts to survey ideas that will never come to fruition.

00:20:13.660 We heavily overspent on the arena deal in Alberta.

00:20:16.440 And yeah, well, that was an election tactic.

00:20:18.680 Everyone knew it was.

00:20:20.080 But like, again, over and over again, there's just not very good things being done.

00:20:25.200 We just need some more principle here.

00:20:27.340 And again, I'm voting no.

00:20:29.380 Probably she'll survive.

00:20:31.000 But you have to vote no if you're not impressed right now, because that's the best indicator

00:20:35.260 that she has to pick it up.

00:20:36.740 If you say yes, if you vote yes at the Alberta AGM, you are saying keep being disappointing.

00:20:42.340 And I think so far it has been disappointing.

00:20:45.000 I don't care about the fights with Justin Trudeau and Stephen Gilboa of her saying you guys should

00:20:49.880 cut the carbon tax on a federal level, then cut the industrial carbon tax yourself, then

00:20:55.640 cut your own taxes. 0.97

00:20:56.720 It makes us look like hypocrites when we're going after Stephen Gilboa, who's a nutcase 0.96

00:21:00.860 when we haven't been doing well enough. 0.83

00:21:02.880 This is what I want to see happen, is we get better.

00:21:06.800 Stop invoking Ralph Klein's name if you're not going to be like Ralph Klein.

00:21:11.260 The government's actually very Redford-like right now, Alison Redford-like.

00:21:14.540 And we put ourselves in a terrible position right now when it comes to spending.

00:21:19.700 Because I'm going to actually have to give Alison Redford a compliment for pointing this 1.00

00:21:23.400 out.

00:21:23.600 The problem with relying so much in Alberta on oil and gas revenues or not being responsible

00:21:29.340 enough around oil and gas royalties that the government collects is that every time the

00:21:33.900 oil and gas prices go up, the government sees all this extra spending and we fill it with 0.73

00:21:38.760 garbage.

00:21:39.680 And then when the oil and gas prices go down, then we create massive deficits. 0.97

00:21:43.900 That's actually why the NDP had big deficits.

00:21:46.660 They're very fiscally irresponsible people and they don't like private property or small

00:21:50.480 business.

00:21:50.780 They literally tried to nationalize all of the basically DMVs in Alberta, but they really

00:21:57.180 only had big deficits because the price of the barrel of oil was very low.

00:22:01.260 We're riding high on high oil and gas prices.

00:22:04.200 And now because we brought way too many people into the province, we're having to triple 1.00

00:22:07.860 infrastructure spending by from like 2 billion or 2.6 billion to 8 billion to build more schools

00:22:13.800 because Daniel Smith, frankly, was in favor of mass immigration until five seconds ago.

00:22:18.120 It would be a lie to say otherwise.

00:22:21.100 She specifically stumped for mass immigration, said, let's get like Alberta to 10 million

00:22:26.120 people and let's get Red Deer to be the next city with a million. 0.88

00:22:30.700 And now suddenly, because it became unpopular, she's saying that it was all Justin Trudeau.

00:22:35.220 You were sitting in the jacuzzi with him, in the political jacuzzi with the guy, with a

00:22:39.580 lot of other premiers saying we want more people because it spurs economic growth.

00:22:42.940 And that's very much what the EST report says, is that we're bringing in more people into

00:22:48.380 the province, ergo, the economy is very good and it's more diverse and whatnot.

00:22:52.420 And the Jennifer Johnston situation, I think actually should be brought up more.

00:22:56.000 Jennifer Johnston, in context, was not actually trying to run down trans kids and make fun

00:23:02.480 of people and compare them to like, you know, waste or whatever.

00:23:05.980 She was talking about if people are in distress in her class and have mental health issues or have

00:23:12.060 just mental distress issues that she doesn't consider that good enough just because it's

00:23:16.180 5% of the class.

00:23:17.420 She was actually describing herself as a socially responsible human being.

00:23:21.840 And then, because Daniel Smith didn't let her sit in the UCB caucus, she then had to

00:23:26.580 go through all these struggle sessions that eventually got leaked, ironically enough, by

00:23:30.460 a leftist who thought it made Jennifer Johnston look bad.

00:23:33.260 She was in a struggle session with a drag queen named Carla Marx, which is a little bit of a

00:23:38.640 tell, demanding that she say that trans women are women, or she's not going to sign off on 0.60

00:23:43.680 that she has done proper outreach to the LGBTQ community. 0.91

00:23:48.060 Nonsense.

00:23:48.860 And it took a lot of pressure after that was leaked out, showing Jennifer Johnston basically 0.99

00:23:52.880 being socially tortured through struggle sessions for there to be a vote and caucus to bring

00:23:57.680 her back.

00:23:58.060 It didn't sound like even, because Daniel Smith, I believe, actually can just automatically

00:24:01.740 bring people back.

00:24:02.960 It had to be a vote and caucus to bring Jennifer Johnston back. 1.00

00:24:05.560 She should have been never kicked out.

00:24:06.880 We shouldn't be executing our own people based off of the dishonest framing of issues

00:24:12.320 that the leftist media does.

00:24:14.940 So yeah, I'm voting against Daniel Smith in it.

00:24:17.700 I hope she does better.

00:24:18.820 And if she starts doing better, I will praise her to the stars.

00:24:22.000 The parental rights stuff looks pretty good.

00:24:24.460 I'm super skeptical that it's being only tabled after the AGM that lets you water it down past

00:24:30.620 the point where people could have voted you out.

00:24:32.920 And, you know, there's other things that are good.

00:24:34.680 I like that they start cracking down on new green energy contracts.

00:24:38.600 I think they should have just ripped up the old ones because right now oil and gas costs,

00:24:43.600 let's say on the grid per kilowatt hour, about seven cents a kilowatt hour, maybe eight cents

00:24:48.280 if the barrel of oil is a bit higher in price, eight or nine cents.

00:24:51.560 Do you know how much green energy costs per kilowatt hour on the grid?

00:24:55.260 It's like 43 cents.

00:24:57.200 And that's why we had our power bills spiking in Alberta, because we phased out coal power,

00:25:02.380 which was very cheap.

00:25:03.520 And we replaced it with green energy power, which if you just stuck basically a pinwheel

00:25:08.880 in the ground and hooked up a cord to the power grid, you were making massive amounts

00:25:12.840 of money.

00:25:13.240 And taxpayers had to subsidize your very inefficient power.

00:25:16.120 So I'm very happy to see, I believe it was Matt Jones and Chantal DeYoung, who are the

00:25:21.240 MLAs who pursued basically ending new contracts.

00:25:24.320 I hope we can end the previous ones as well.

00:25:27.440 But that was good.

00:25:28.640 But I would like to see more.

00:25:30.240 And right now, I'm actually doing this because I don't want Jananenchi to become the premier

00:25:35.380 of this province. 0.92

00:25:36.300 He's awful. 0.99

00:25:37.440 He is the most snooty, condescending liberal I've ever seen in my life. 0.99

00:25:42.040 Actually, that's a good attack line that they should say he is sanctimonious and high-handed. 0.55

00:25:46.820 He thinks he's the smartest person in the room at all times, even with a record of failure.

00:25:52.080 He's somebody he thinks he knows better than you without having ever worked a real job.

00:25:56.300 That's how you go after a man like Nahanenchi. 1.00

00:25:58.840 And I don't want him to become premier.

00:26:00.380 And that means we need better results.

00:26:02.880 Ralph Klein was unbeatable at the ballot box, despite all the media attacks on him, despite

00:26:07.300 all the spears, despite all the scandals even, because everyone looked at him.

00:26:11.700 And they're like, man, that guy did what he said.

00:26:13.360 He lowered taxes.

00:26:14.420 He cut wasteful spending.

00:26:15.560 He made the province better.

00:26:17.020 Not that he made the government slightly more efficient and still increased spending.

00:26:22.500 If the barrel of oil falls, we will be in massive deficit territory.

00:26:26.720 It will be horrible what's going to happen in Alberta if the price of oil and gas falls.

00:26:31.220 If we have a big surplus because of oil and gas, like the price of the barrel of oil

00:26:36.780 being high, you know what we should do with that?

00:26:38.720 Pay down the debt, invest in an investment fund, the heritage fund for Alberta, and we

00:26:45.040 should even cut wasteful spending still and then transfer part of that money back to taxpayers

00:26:49.600 and tax cuts, as well as moving it to incentivize people to work in like frontline nursing or

00:26:54.560 to be police officers.

00:26:56.300 I actually don't mind increasing pay for those who actually do good work.

00:27:00.520 But in AHS right now, I think the statistic I saw or the figure I saw was like 350 people

00:27:05.420 are managers of nobody underneath them.

00:27:07.780 They don't answer to anyone above them or below them.

00:27:10.240 But I'm the manager of mental health for Southern Alberta.

00:27:13.280 I'm the manager of efficiency or whatever.

00:27:16.400 And they get paid manager salaries for not doing any work.

00:27:20.180 This is stuff where, yes, are you going to have a bad headline if you start cutting this

00:27:23.820 stuff?

00:27:24.100 Because of course the media is going to attack you for cutting anything.

00:27:27.120 You should still do it.

00:27:28.400 I hear this excuse all the time inside political parties.

00:27:31.680 Well, if we do that, we're going to get attacked.

00:27:33.200 Do you know what I heard in the 23 election?

00:27:35.920 The UCP's campaign wouldn't go after all the openly communist candidates the Alberta

00:27:40.500 NDP were running.

00:27:41.660 And when I say that, it's not a smear.

00:27:43.440 These people are posting things about how they think that property rights are cute and

00:27:47.460 that, you know, we have like it was some comment about like property rights being overrated,

00:27:52.180 people posting pictures of Mao on their Facebook timelines, all this stuff.

00:27:56.120 People who are just openly saying that they like the ideas of communism.

00:27:59.580 The campaign said we didn't want to attack them because they might attack our candidates. 0.99

00:28:04.560 Stop being losers. 0.82

00:28:05.820 Stop having this loser mentality that if you fight hard and you push for a win, that that's 0.97

00:28:10.640 bad.

00:28:11.700 Be bold.

00:28:12.620 Do something audacious.

00:28:13.780 That's what I'm asking for here.

00:28:15.020 Don't do symbolic policies like the Bill of Rights, which is not really much of anything

00:28:19.740 and other sort of commitments on COVID and COVID reports on like the lockdowns and whatnot.

00:28:25.380 Who cares?

00:28:26.220 It doesn't actually make anyone's lives better.

00:28:27.720 Let's be just responsible governors.

00:28:30.700 Honestly, Bill of Rights and the Charter don't matter from the sense that without better people

00:28:35.220 in government to enforce them to or to basically respect people's rights, it's never going

00:28:39.160 to get better.

00:28:39.920 That's what we really just need.

00:28:41.200 Better people in government from all levels in all parties.

00:28:45.140 Okay, this is a very long rant.

00:28:47.420 I hope you guys got something out of it.

00:28:48.760 This is just a brief overview of stuff that I've seen.

00:28:51.920 There's a lot more problems I've had with a lot of different spending programs, a lot

00:28:57.980 of different taxes that have even gone up or not been removed.

00:29:01.900 Other people can add in their thoughts.

00:29:03.660 You can openly disagree with me, obviously.

00:29:06.160 But I've just been kind of frustrated with the lack of progress.

00:29:09.340 It's a lot of style and little substance.

00:29:12.320 People are like, but she went on stage with Tucker.

00:29:14.500 I don't care.

00:29:15.980 Who cares?

00:29:16.600 I actually don't even really like Tucker Carlson that much.

00:29:18.860 That's for very long, complicated reasons.

00:29:20.520 I think that he's very left on certain economic issues.

00:29:23.480 That's quite annoying to me.

00:29:24.840 And then when people are like, oh, that guy's a conservative here.

00:29:27.000 I'm like, not really, actually, on a bunch of issues.

00:29:30.160 But I encourage you guys all to, especially if you agree with me and you want ever my

00:29:35.040 recommendations and other leadership matters in either Alberta, other provinces, nominations,

00:29:40.940 whatnot, sign up on my website, wyattclaypool.com.

00:29:44.400 And I will basically give you recommendations for good nomination candidates, provincially

00:29:48.680 and federally in different ridings, leadership candidates.

00:29:51.260 There's going to be leadership races in Manitoba and New Brunswick probably coming up soon,

00:29:55.740 as well as just which parties I think are good and bad.

00:29:59.120 I'll always tell you, I would never vote for, you know, Doug Ford's PC party in Ontario

00:30:03.460 right now.

00:30:04.080 It's far too liberal.

00:30:05.220 So I'd be voting new blue party in that province.

00:30:08.260 I'm not a fringe party guy where if I see a platform and, oh, this is better than what

00:30:12.340 whoever else's platform, then I vote for them.

00:30:14.680 You also have to have a point to running.

00:30:17.480 So in Saskatchewan, I would have never voted for the Saskatchewan United Party.

00:30:20.260 The Saskatchewan party has a lot of problems, but there was nothing, no alternative.

00:30:25.360 There was nothing that would make me think, okay, now United's earned my vote.

00:30:29.480 Saskatchewan party even has massive corruption issues.

00:30:32.000 It wasn't worth giving the government over to the NDP at the time.

00:30:35.460 You can't just make up a good sounding platform on a website and then run and expect people

00:30:39.720 to vote for you with no work done.

00:30:41.940 New blue party works hard and Doug Ford especially is just no different than the Ontario liberals at

00:30:47.240 the moment, way too high spending, subsidies everywhere, very socially liberal, not helping

00:30:51.240 parental rights at all.

00:30:52.600 A lot of terrible stuff there.

00:30:53.900 Jamil Giovanni, the MP for Durham who replaced O'Toole, won my undying respect by, as soon

00:31:00.840 as he won his by-election in Durham, stood up and said Doug Ford and Stephen Lecce are

00:31:04.480 complete hacks on the education issue.

00:31:06.920 They have not done anything that they promised back in 2018 to get the, you know, just over

00:31:11.640 the top sex ed curriculum out of schools, to enforce parental rights, to get SOGI 1, 2,

00:31:16.140 3 type policies out of the schools.

00:31:18.840 That was a very good, I think Jamil Giovanni is very much a dog with a bone on the issues

00:31:23.080 he cares about.

00:31:23.960 And I hope more politicians are like that in the future.

00:31:26.960 Anyways, so that's it for me today, guys.

00:31:28.880 If you want to support the show, you can donate to the Give, Send, Go campaign for the legal

00:31:32.720 fund in the description below, or as well in the comments at the pin to the top.

00:31:37.560 That's also where my website link's going to be, wyattclaypool.com, pinned at the top

00:31:41.360 of the comments.

00:31:42.240 See you guys later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - October 31, 2024

Danielle Smith AGM leadership review (Report Card)

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