The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 19, 2025


Danielle Smith crushes the NDP on issue of defending girls sports!

Topics
coal mining in Alberta
Hosted by
Wyatt Claypool
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Nicole Gearing Adam Van Coverden Demetrius Nicolaitis Christopher Wells Pierre Poilievre Wang Winyai Wong Kananaskis
Media is attacking Polievre after polls show he is popular! Liberals FALL in latest polls - Conservatives win on key issues!

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

177.27

Word count

3,596

Sentence count

229

Harmful content

Misogyny

24

sentences flagged

Toxicity

19

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Skate Canada and the Canadian Figure Skating Association are teaming up to shame Alberta's premier, Danielle Smith, for her anti-Transgender policies and her opposition to a bill that would have allowed trans women to compete in girls' sports.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. 0.99
00:00:02.780 I am continuously mesmerized by the really stupid fights the Alberta NDP and Nahid Nenshi 0.95
00:00:09.400 keep attempting to pick with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. 0.99
00:00:14.000 They are the best marketing department Danielle Smith has ever had.
00:00:18.320 The NDP, the brain trusts over there, seem to think that Danielle Smith, 0.98
00:00:22.880 not being a progressive leftist like they are, means she is bad. 0.54
00:00:26.920 And they are trying to convince Albertans this is why you have to vote NDP in 2027,
00:00:32.880 but the Alberta NDP has forgotten they are a provincial party in the province of Alberta,
00:00:38.840 and Albertans are not progressives.
00:00:41.540 There are some progressives, definitely a decent amount of them in Edmonton,
00:00:45.980 but the NDP is destroying itself by basically telling every single blue-collar guy who used to vote for them
00:00:52.440 to PACS and This is a Party for College Students and Government Employees.
00:00:57.780 Last week, they were obviously the ones pushing all these recall petitions
00:01:02.340 against a bunch of UCP MLAs for the great sin of not giving the Alberta Teachers Association
00:01:08.300 every single thing that they want.
00:01:10.280 And this week, they are pairing up with Skate Canada, apparently,
00:01:14.340 to try and shame Danielle Smith and her UCP government for protecting girls' sports. 0.93
00:01:19.900 Yes, I feel an election win coming on for the NDP in 2027,
00:01:25.520 because we all know in Alberta, we hate female sports. 1.00
00:01:29.040 We don't like young girls having their own sports, 1.00
00:01:31.980 safe from biological men and males, from being able to destroy all the competition.
00:01:39.040 I don't know what they're trying to do, but it's hilarious to watch.
00:01:42.400 The NDP has also made a big thing of opposing coal mining.
00:01:45.740 Yeah, that's going to win back all the blue-collar guys.
00:01:48.940 Oppose their jobs.
00:01:50.560 Yes, just try and take these people's jobs away from them, 0.98
00:01:53.480 and then they'll definitely vote for you.
00:01:55.820 It's all quite maddening.
00:01:57.800 But let's talk about the issue in front of us today,
00:02:01.500 which is the thing about Skate Canada.
00:02:03.620 And then I actually do want to wheel it back later
00:02:05.720 and tell you a small story of how Danielle Smith is winning.
00:02:09.520 It's just a story of a normal person who is not political at all
00:02:12.260 being in favor of Danielle Smith.
00:02:13.900 But let's start off this subject with a clip from the CBC
00:02:18.860 explaining why we should all be very upset with Danielle Smith right now.
00:02:23.460 We're following breaking news from the world of figure skating.
00:02:26.480 Skate Canada, the governing body for Canadian figure skaters,
00:02:30.400 says it will no longer hold national and international events in Alberta.
00:02:35.060 The move is in response to that province's legislation
00:02:38.160 that bans transgender girls from female sports.
00:02:41.260 Biological men, biological boys from girls' sports. 0.65
00:02:45.520 That is what this is about.
00:02:46.900 Why is this even breaking news?
00:02:48.860 It should have been a press release that people pointed and laughed at
00:02:51.720 and nothing else.
00:02:52.440 The CBC, this guy has a serious face on
00:02:54.780 to show you how serious what Danielle Smith just did is.
00:02:58.720 Oh, and Skate Canada's coming after her. 1.00
00:03:00.540 It's like, who cares?
00:03:01.500 A policy that was controversially passed using the notwithstanding clause.
00:03:06.720 The CBC's Julia Wong joins me now live from Edmonton.
00:03:10.040 And so, Julia, tell us more about what Skate Canada is saying.
00:03:14.180 So, as you mentioned, Skate Canada says that it will no longer be hosting
00:03:18.140 certain events in this province,
00:03:20.240 saying that they carefully consider a variety of criteria
00:03:23.940 when selecting host cities for their events to take place in.
00:03:27.760 And they say that they reviewed Alberta's Fairness and Safety in Sport Act
00:03:31.780 with the organization now...
00:03:33.420 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:03:34.400 Okay.
00:03:34.980 So, sports are no longer safe in Alberta
00:03:38.120 because biological boys are not out unfairly competing against girls.
00:03:43.240 You know, in fact, it's actually dangerous to let boys play in girls' sports,
00:03:48.160 especially where there could be contact.
00:03:51.000 It's just basic common sense.
00:03:53.500 But Skate Canada is actually going to use safety
00:03:56.120 as the reason why they can't do their events in Alberta anymore
00:03:59.620 because they won't let boys compete in girls' sports.
00:04:03.440 I was saying that it's unable to host events in this province
00:04:06.360 while maintaining its national standards for safe and inclusive sport.
00:04:10.900 So, this decision...
00:04:11.860 Oh, it's inclusive, guys.
00:04:13.300 It's inclusive to destroy girls' sports. 1.00
00:04:15.800 That's inclusive.
00:04:16.720 I have talked to people who are NDP Green voters in British Columbia,
00:04:21.900 and they agree what Daniel Smith is doing.
00:04:24.500 Yeah, they are still progressives who still have to kind of virtue signal about,
00:04:28.740 no, no, no, I'm still very supportive of trans people.
00:04:31.020 But they'll, like, tell you quietly,
00:04:32.860 yeah, you know, you can't have them in girls' sports, obviously. 1.00
00:04:36.680 Again, only affecting certain events, those national and international events.
00:04:40.540 And the organization is also saying that this doesn't affect Alberta skaters
00:04:44.820 from participating in Skate Canada programming and competitions.
00:04:48.280 But obviously, this is a very big development.
00:04:50.560 Is it a big development?
00:04:52.840 Is it?
00:04:53.540 The bigger development should be that Skate Canada gets its funding pull.
00:04:57.100 They have $5 million they are given by the federal government every year,
00:05:01.100 and now they are no longer going to host international and national events in Alberta.
00:05:06.140 They are given money by the Canadian government,
00:05:08.040 and they are discriminating against one of the provinces for having a common-sense policy.
00:05:12.840 A story that has been a very big story in this province
00:05:16.640 when it comes to who can and can't participate in sports in Alberta.
00:05:21.120 Yes, girls' sports should be for girls. 1.00
00:05:22.880 I think that that's implied by it being girls' sports. 0.99
00:05:25.480 Julia, remind us of that.
00:05:27.200 What is Alberta's Fairness and Safety in Sport Act?
00:05:31.060 Yeah, so effectively, what this law means, and it was only recently passed,
00:05:35.380 but it bans transgender athletes from competing in female amateur sports.
00:05:40.120 And what this has looked like in this province is that at schools,
00:05:43.780 parents have had to sign forms saying that their child is eligible to participate
00:05:48.220 in a female-only sports team, and very specifically confirming that their child was born female at birth.
00:05:55.920 Now, these four...
00:05:57.120 Yes, how is this bad?
00:05:59.060 ...forms and this law as a whole have been quite controversial.
00:06:02.820 No, they have not been controversial.
00:06:04.580 ...here in this province with a lot of backlash on the official opposition,
00:06:09.040 expressing a lot of disappointment in this particular law.
00:06:12.120 What the province has said is that this is a way to make sports safe,
00:06:16.400 to make sports fair, and to make it accessible.
00:06:19.780 And then very recently, just within the last few weeks,
00:06:22.860 because of all the controversy that not only this law,
00:06:25.500 but the other suite of transgender laws that have been passed in this province,
00:06:29.360 because of all the controversy that that has generated,
00:06:32.040 the province invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to shield it from charter challenges to...
00:06:36.900 No, no, it's not because of the controversy.
00:06:39.220 It's not because, oh my goodness, there's so much pushback,
00:06:41.780 we're going to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause.
00:06:43.640 Public pushback has nothing to do with the Notwithstanding Clause.
00:06:47.960 It has to do with whether or not a leftist activist on a court will strike down the law
00:06:53.760 simply because they say it's somehow violating the charter because they say so.
00:06:58.380 It's obviously not violating the charter to say that girls' sports are for actual biological girls.
00:07:03.560 That is not discriminatory in any way,
00:07:05.780 other than saying that 1 plus 1 equals 2 is discriminatory to the other numbers not involved in that equation.
00:07:14.200 It's just how it works, and I cannot help you if you do not understand that.
00:07:18.360 But let's move on to Danielle Smith's response to all this,
00:07:22.020 because it has been quite good.
00:07:23.780 She has not actually backed down at all, and in fact, she's going on the offensive.
00:07:28.720 I've seen sometimes where conservatives will just hold their ground, and you know, that's good. 0.99
00:07:32.340 What's better is to actually fight back, because these people are the fools. 1.00
00:07:38.180 They're the ones who look terrible in front of the public. 1.00
00:07:41.080 Danielle Smith, upon passing the law and defending it, said,
00:07:44.540 Women and girls have the right to play competitive sports in a safe and fair environment against other biological females. 0.87
00:07:51.440 This view is held by a vast majority of Albertans and Canadians.
00:07:54.780 It is also common sense and common decency.
00:07:57.300 Skate Canada's refusal to hold events in Alberta because we choose to protect women and girls in sports is disgraceful.
00:08:03.020 We expect they will apologize and adjust their policies once they realize they are not only compromising the fairness and safety of their athletes,
00:08:09.880 but are also offside with the international community, including the International Olympic Committee,
00:08:15.440 which is moving in the same direction as Alberta.
00:08:18.740 Absolutely.
00:08:19.800 And then she followed this up with another very good point, or not a really good point.
00:08:24.620 It's more so just a really good tactic, is that she gave a big shout-out to Boxing Canada for backing her up on this.
00:08:32.720 Boxing being a sport where you definitely do not want males and females mixed together.
00:08:37.080 And Danielle Smith here says,
00:08:39.100 Happy to hear that Boxing Canada has become part of a growing list of sporting organizations who, like the vast majority of Albertans,
00:08:46.400 recognize that women and girls have the right to play competitive sports in safe and fair environments against other biological females.
00:08:53.300 We are calling on Skate Canada to reverse their disgraceful anti-woman boycott, and that is what they should be calling it.
00:08:58.920 It is anti-woman. 0.75
00:09:00.160 It is effectively disregarding the needs and wants of women. 1.00
00:09:03.840 They cannot have their own spaces, they cannot have their own sports, because this very tiny minority of people want to be involved in it.
00:09:11.860 It's like, that doesn't mean anything.
00:09:14.060 Okay, that's violating the competitive nature and safety of women's sports, so no, we're not going to do that. 0.97
00:09:20.060 Well, that's rude.
00:09:21.020 No, it isn't.
00:09:21.920 I'm sorry, no, it isn't.
00:09:23.120 That's just basic reality.
00:09:24.780 I know trans people that absolutely back this policy, because even though I may disagree with them on other things, they can actually say, like, yeah, obviously, this is just normal.
00:09:35.760 This is just how female sports should be. 1.00
00:09:38.480 And we have morons like our newly minted Alberta sender, Dr. Christopher Wells, coming out and saying, fully agree. 0.97
00:09:45.360 I hope more sporting organizations and businesses follow Skate Canada's leadership. 0.98
00:09:50.240 We must all stand up and speak out against discrimination.
00:09:54.240 And then we see this disgusting post by Adam Van Koverden, who used to be an Olympic athlete, by the way, a male Olympic athlete, basically saying that female sports don't matter to him at all, which is actually one of the most chauvinistic things you could possibly say.
00:10:08.680 He, in this statement, says, our government believes in a sports system that provides opportunities for all Canadians to participate and excel without discrimination, including the transgender community, which is disproportionately vulnerable, excluded, and marginalized.
00:10:24.640 National sports organizations like Skate Canada operate independently from the government and make decisions with respect to individual rights of athletes based on science and evidence specific to their sport.
00:10:34.500 There must be a path forward for sport in Canada, where the integrity and fairness of sport categories are preserved, while at the same time, opportunities promoted and human rights are respected.
00:10:44.680 But obviously, this statement is designed to basically back Skate Canada.
00:10:49.080 And sorry, they cannot claim, you cannot claim they are independent when you give them $5 million a year.
00:10:54.500 If they want to be truly independent, they want to resist the Alberta government's common sense policy, they can have their taxpayer money taken away.
00:11:02.300 They can go about it alone if they don't actually want the taxpayer money that, in part, comes from Albertans, disproportionately comes from Albertans, in terms of how much Albertans pay in taxes.
00:11:14.500 But let's just move on to, actually, I want to actually highlight Pierre Polyev, who did a good thing in fully backing Premier Smith.
00:11:23.240 He came out and said,
00:11:24.460 But what we are going to move on to now is the Alberta NDP's response.
00:11:36.800 Because, of course, they had to come and step in it as hard as humanly possible here.
00:11:41.660 We have a statement from Nicole Gearing, who is the education critic, I believe, of the NDP.
00:11:49.280 Is she?
00:11:50.080 Shadow Minister of Tourism and Sports.
00:11:51.460 Okay, so there we go.
00:11:54.180 It says right here,
00:11:55.860 Nicole Gearing, Alberta's new Democratic Shadow Minister of Tourism and Sports, responded to the news today that Skate Canada has decided it will no longer hold national and international events in Alberta.
00:12:06.500 Skate Canada's decision to not hold national and international events in Alberta is sadly an expected outcome of a bad policy by this UCP government.
00:12:14.720 This is what happens when the UCP chooses to move ahead with no consultation and ignore advice, forcing organizations like Skate Canada to take action in order to maintain their standards of safety and inclusivity for athletes.
00:12:28.080 The UCP's unconstitutional and intolerable policies are putting young Albertans' lives at risk.
00:12:33.320 Young Albertans' lives at risk?
00:12:34.800 This is like the most, this is like parody levels.
00:12:37.720 People will die.
00:12:38.920 If you do what you do, Danielle, people will die.
00:12:41.860 People are going to suffer because girls' sports are for girls. 1.00
00:12:46.460 But it's putting young Albertans' lives at risk.
00:12:48.800 Today's announcement by Skate Canada also shows these policies will not only harm sports and athletes, but also tourism, hospitality, and local economies.
00:12:56.400 It will unfortunately not be surprising if other organizations take similar actions in the future.
00:13:01.380 Alberta's New Democrats believe in government.
00:13:03.400 Governments have a responsibility to maintain and ensure human rights, not take them away.
00:13:07.540 We believe in fairness for all athletes.
00:13:09.520 Albertans should compete against the very best in the world right here in Alberta.
00:13:13.500 Yeah, but they won't actually back girls up here. 1.00
00:13:15.220 They do not care if the integrity of girls' sports is going to be damaged by, or would be damaged by, like, trans women athletes competing, like, with normal girls. 0.83
00:13:27.400 Obviously, this is just common sense.
00:13:30.320 I don't even know how else to say it.
00:13:31.920 Daniel Smith has been doing a great job firing back organizations like LifeSite News and other conservative outlets have been covering the kind of back and forth here. 0.99
00:13:39.840 But the stupidity of the Alberta NDP to take on this fight is beyond reason. 0.98
00:13:47.680 They realize that Alberta families, you know, have a 50% chance of having a boy or a girl, and many of them have girls. 1.00
00:13:56.820 You know, if you have two kids, three kids in your family, you know, one or two of them are all three could-be girls.
00:14:02.620 And do you think you're going to tick off those parents because your party won't even stand up for female sports? 0.99
00:14:08.740 The Alberta NDP is just an activist party.
00:14:11.300 If they have LGBTQIA plus something, something, something activists telling them to do something, they'll do it. 1.00
00:14:17.980 Anti-coal mining activists tell them to do something, they'll do it.
00:14:21.300 They do things without any actual sort of recognition of what the average Albertan thinks.
00:14:26.720 They backed the disastrous Alberta Teachers Association strikes that the Alberta government had to pass their first bill in the session, Bill 1, in order to send them back to work for.
00:14:38.140 They were striking because they weren't given a more generous offer than what Daniel Smith's government already gave, which was perfectly generous.
00:14:45.640 12% wage increases or salary increases, including 17% for some people.
00:14:51.520 That's not average.
00:14:52.380 At the minimum, people were getting 12% more, 3,000 more teachers, 1,500 more teacher assistants, $11 billion going into school infrastructure.
00:15:01.740 And then the ATA stood up and said, $2 billion more, a little more than $2 billion more for us, please.
00:15:08.060 Like, no.
00:15:09.140 And so the Smith government used the notwithstanding clause for the first time to send them back to work.
00:15:14.580 And the Alberta NDP decided that this was their moment to launch a series of recall petitions against 17-plus different UCP MLAs.
00:15:25.740 Now, yes, they are not directly involved in the petitions going forward.
00:15:30.660 The petitioning must be done by grassroots individuals inside the riding, and you can't even have outside individuals collect signatures, which makes sense.
00:15:38.620 But obviously, the ATA and the NDP effectively wanted these things.
00:15:43.460 If you trace back whoever's participating in it, riding by riding, I would bet you that they significantly overlap with NDP memberships and ATA memberships.
00:15:56.000 All these people are clearly involved in those organizations, which is why the first person they took on was Education Minister Dimitrios Nicolaitis.
00:16:04.060 And I've heard the entire thing is going up like a lead balloon.
00:16:06.840 They are well over one-third of the way through their petitioning initiative against Dimitrios Nicolaitis, and they only have over 3,000 signatures.
00:16:16.260 And they need, like, more than four times that many.
00:16:18.740 It's not an impossible feat to pull off if somebody was a genuine bad MLA, like they committed crimes or they were stealing money or they had done some other disastrous thing.
00:16:27.720 Yeah, you could probably recall them.
00:16:29.020 There would be a big groundswell of people who are going around petitioning to get rid of an actual bad MLA.
00:16:35.720 But they're not actually doing a bad job.
00:16:38.460 People don't think that the government in Alberta is somehow bad, especially compared to any other government in the country.
00:16:44.280 In fact, it's probably the best government right now in the country.
00:16:47.400 And this leads me to my story of a normal person's perspective on Danielle Smith.
00:16:53.000 So I was just talking to somebody the other day going to their business and, you know, getting a service or whatever.
00:16:58.340 I just don't want to, like, dox anyone in case they were trying to, like, figure out my movements and who I was talking to.
00:17:03.000 But this person was just asking me because they know I'm in politics.
00:17:06.860 They're not political at all.
00:17:08.280 They were asking me about the recalls.
00:17:10.160 Well, are the recalls going to go anywhere?
00:17:11.920 I have no clue what this person thinks about politics.
00:17:15.020 If I was to bet who they vote for on a federal level, I would say they probably don't vote or they switch between liberal and conservative depending on the election.
00:17:23.840 Very much not a super engaged voter.
00:17:26.280 Like, they'll follow it a bit, but it's just not their thing.
00:17:28.460 After I kind of explained that, like, yeah, the recalls are silly and the ATA was triggering this just because they didn't get even more money than any reasonable person would actually expect to get, then the person just leaned in and they're like, you know what?
00:17:42.860 I think Danielle Smith's doing a good job.
00:17:44.320 I have no clue why people keep attacking her.
00:17:46.920 And it's because that's really the average person's thought.
00:17:49.960 I always find that when you bump into somebody who is apolitical, you don't, like, tell them what their perspective should be.
00:17:56.920 You just kind of talk more mildly around the subject, not being too hyper-partisan about it.
00:18:02.600 And they basically just be like, I think they're doing a good job.
00:18:05.540 That's when you know that the silent majority of people are behind Danielle Smith.
00:18:09.480 Does anyone actually think that Danielle Smith is a bigot or intolerant? 0.98
00:18:14.360 Does anyone think that she's somehow screwing the teachers over? 0.99
00:18:17.960 No.
00:18:18.780 And again, the Alberta NDP trying to make, like, fighting back against coal mining in the Rockies a big part of their platform.
00:18:24.640 Like, good luck with that.
00:18:25.900 Good luck with that.
00:18:26.540 Let's see how many people vote for you in Banff, Kananaskis in the next election.
00:18:30.740 Yeah, there's the tourism towns with probably a lot of lefty voters. 0.95
00:18:33.740 But there's also a lot of people out in the rural areas or the smaller towns who are invested in coal mining.
00:18:39.680 And in fact, hey, it's good for the province.
00:18:42.220 It's great for the economy.
00:18:43.620 Oh, but coal's dirty. 1.00
00:18:45.280 Shut up. 1.00
00:18:46.120 What are you talking about? 1.00
00:18:47.180 Like, no, coal is actually not dirty.
00:18:50.400 Yeah, relative to other forms of fuel, does it slightly more or worse in terms of emissions?
00:18:57.340 Sure.
00:18:58.040 At the same time, we're actually pretty good at using coal while being very efficient with it.
00:19:02.280 Like, natural gas is, like, 95% plus efficient.
00:19:05.240 Coal these days, with, like, their clean coal standards and being able to actually be able to keep recycling coal rather than putting black smoke in the air.
00:19:12.820 You'll never see black smoke coming out of a plant that uses coal with all that, like, and we're going to, but we're going to ban it from being used because it's not absolutely hyper-efficient compared to other forms of fuel.
00:19:24.480 Whatever.
00:19:24.980 This is not even something I want to go on about.
00:19:26.620 I'm just going down a rabbit hole.
00:19:27.620 But my goodness, who could wonder why the Alberta NDP has been underwater ever since Danielle Smith won the last election? 0.80
00:19:35.760 It's because nobody wants whiners in government, and all they have become is far-left, progressive whiners.
00:19:43.840 And I am very happy that Danielle Smith stood her ground on the Skate Canada issue and even fought back against them and is shaming them. 0.57
00:19:51.520 They should be shamed. 0.94
00:19:52.760 The government should defund them, and they should basically be replaced by a different skating organization, one that actually doesn't give a crap about politics. 0.97
00:20:02.020 I don't want conservative sports organizations.
00:20:05.320 I want sports organizations.
00:20:07.040 I don't want leftist sports organizations.
00:20:08.860 I want normal sports organizations.
00:20:11.720 Anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for watching, and I'll see you all next time.