Sean Amato has joined the Alberta NDP as the party's new communications director, which is a bit on the nose for the legacy media, especially since he was a reporter for City News and CTV before that, and was a neutral reporter who just reported the facts and allowed you to come to your own conclusions.
00:01:36.740Thousands of Albertans took to the streets Friday to fight back against separation, premiered Danielle Smith and many of her policies.
00:01:43.860As Sean Amato reports, are UCP writing it off as a stunt that will fail, like recalls and a general strike?
00:01:51.260I am sorry, but I have noticed a pattern with media in Canada as well as in Alberta.
00:01:58.500Whenever there is a protest against the UCP, it is considered a strike against the UCP's credibility.
00:02:06.260Albertans rising up to tell the UCP they do not like them.0.57
00:02:09.780But if there's a protest that goes against NDP causes, then it's a bunch of nutbars and the fringe, according to some random hacky political science professor from the U of C or Mount Royal University.0.86
00:02:23.440That is always how they frame stuff.0.84
00:02:26.020And when you go through a bunch of Sean Amato's last reports, they're all so clearly meant to try and make the UCP look bad, to try and make the UCP look like they're separatists.
00:02:37.440And it's obviously not true, but he has been writing what are effectively NDP press releases for years now.
00:02:46.540Do we really think that City News and CTV News didn't know what they were getting with Sean Amato?
00:02:53.420Here's another one of his posts from the 29th of May.
00:02:56.600Big rally rolling through downtown Edmonton.
00:02:59.180Thousands shouting UCP has got to go and Alberta election now.
00:03:03.480The government issued a statement saying this is the work of a failed NDP candidate, Gil McGowan, and this will fail like recalls and a general strike did.
00:03:13.840And it goes on, and like, if you actually follow a lot of his stuff over time, it's always been trying to make it look like the UCP is a separatist party, the UCP is a radical right-wing party,
00:03:26.580And now he is confirming that that is exactly what he was doing, because literally, less than two weeks later, his last report, May 29, and now he joined the NDP on the 9th of June. He didn't have a personality change overnight. He didn't have a, you know, road to Damascus moment, and he suddenly became a believer in Nahid Nenshi.
00:03:47.720He was always a believer in Nahid Nenshi. There's a reason why he was asking ridiculous questions to people like Minister Dan Williams about whether or not the UCP ran on getting rid of books from libraries because the UCP was rightfully getting rid of perverted books from school libraries.
00:04:06.780And Dan Williams actually had to ask him, like, are you a journalist or an activist? Because it was clearly an activist question. I'm sorry, the UCP has to run on getting lewd books out of middle schools and elementary schools and also high schools. They needed to run on that.
00:04:23.740And because they didn't run on that, that means it's illegitimate for the UCP to do it. And he's just obviously a massive hyper-progressive, and that's why he was asking the question, because he's implying it's anti-trans, it's anti-gay, to not want the book genderqueer in schools.
00:04:40.920If anything, I invite the NDP to promote Sean Amato as much as they can. The man shouldn't just be the caucus communications director, he should be the party communications director. Heck, make him the executive director of the party, because this is Nahid Nenshi and the Alberta NDP tripling down on screeching and whining.
00:05:03.300That is effectively what the party has become.
00:05:06.200They don't have any ideas, and I'm not just saying this because I like the UCP.
00:05:31.860Now, I have constructive criticism of Polyev's conservatives. I think he could be bolder on a lot of policies like cutting taxes across the board 20% rather than just aiming at getting rid of gas taxes and the industrial carbon tax. But he does actually have plans. He does propose things that he could be doing on trade, on regulations, on the resource sector and all that.
00:05:53.840The NDP is literally running petitions to try and stop coal mining in the Rockies. That's something they want to do. They may say the Alberta government for not caving in harder to the Alberta Teachers Association and giving just an absurd amount of increases in pay over a very short period of time.
00:06:14.940more teacher assistants, more teachers, and having like an 18% rise in pay over three years. It's
00:06:21.080just ridiculous. The sorts of things that the NDP will naysay the UCP for, including getting rid of0.52
00:06:27.940really lewd books from school libraries. Everything has just been naysaying, trying to imply that they
00:06:33.520are separatists when it's obviously not true. Could there be a couple UCP MLAs who are maybe
00:06:39.800a little pro-separatist? Sure, who cares? They don't really have any power in caucus. They know
00:06:44.240that the polling doesn't actually show enough support for it to happen. So it's not going
00:06:48.380anywhere. The premier, Daniel Smith, is obviously a federalist. She will repeat it a thousand times
00:06:53.820in a single interview and still have flipping David Cochran at the CBC trying to imply that0.99
00:06:58.320she wants separation. But this is all the NDP has. And something else I want to talk about in this
00:07:04.060video, because the Sean Amato issue isn't really that big of a deal in terms of it's not like
00:07:08.820there's that much meat on the bones of that issue to talk about, other than the fact that the media
00:07:12.820is obviously extremely biased. But I want to talk about this other video that came out from the
00:07:19.060mayor of Calgary, Jeremy Farkas, trying to attack the UCP and Daniel Smith in a very hypocritical0.79
00:07:26.660way. We'll watch the video in just a second here. But right here, he says, the province just imposed
00:07:31.920the biggest property tax increase in Calgary history, and it shows up on your city tax bill.
00:07:37.080Calgary increased 1.2%. Provincial increased 21% this year, nearly 60% in four years,
00:07:44.200and another big hike coming next year. It's time for the provincial government to send their own
00:07:50.260tax bill. Yes, and so what he's referring to is the education portion of property taxes
00:07:57.260in Calgary has gone up. The city side has gone up 1.2%, and the provincial side has gone up 21%.
00:08:05.500Now, the provincial education side is still much smaller than the city side.
00:08:10.500I think the city side is like two-thirds of the bill's cost, and the provincial side is one-third of the bill's cost.
00:08:16.040But as we're going to get into a second here, this is completely hypocritical for Jeremy Farkas to be having a problem with.
00:08:38.160This year, Council held Calgary's municipal property tax increase to 1.2%.
00:08:42.900That funds police, firefighters, transit, roads, parks, recreation, water services, and infrastructure for a growing city.
00:08:52.700But the provincial portion increased by 21% this year.
00:08:56.240And over the last four years, it's risen nearly 60%, with another huge increase plant next year.
00:09:01.480Our 1.2% increase, combined with the province's 21% increase, makes for the largest property tax increase in Calgary history, for about $400 per year in increased rent and property taxes.
00:09:14.460The province has priorities to fund, and I respect that.
00:09:17.780But when one government raises taxes and another collects them, taxpayers deserve transparency.
00:09:24.140Okay, fair enough. You could say fair enough.
00:09:27.120Jeremy's making a good point that he just wants to make sure people don't blame him for this.
00:09:31.480Except when you actually know what has happened, you will realize that if he was premier, the property tax increase for education would be far worse.
00:09:43.000Remember, the Alberta Teachers Association had a strike last fall for much higher teacher salaries, more teachers in classrooms, and more teacher assistance.
00:09:53.680Now, the Alberta government basically gave them a really good offer, is what I would describe it as.
00:09:59.880you know what if anything i they think they offered too much i think what they offered was
00:10:05.260like a 15 18 increase over four or five years or something like that in terms of pay a couple
00:10:11.360thousand more teachers of a couple thousand more or several thousand more teachers a few thousand
00:10:16.540more teacher assistants and the ata wanted even more and premier smith stood her ground and even
00:10:22.380used notwithstanding clause to impose the deal that she had offered them twice and they had
00:10:26.840rejected twice. They wanted like another 40% more spending on top of what already was a generous
00:10:32.300offer. Now, what did Jeremy Farkas post at the time when he was running for mayor? Here is his
00:10:39.740mayoral campaign website. It says, message from Jeremy. Statement from Jeremy Farkas on the
00:10:45.140Alberta teacher strike. I support public education. My grandparents were both teachers who taught,
00:10:50.500who together devoted more than eight decades
00:11:15.640Nearly one in six Alberta kids live in poverty,
00:11:18.160and more than 20% of Calgary households
00:11:20.500base food insecurity. To help manage the impact on working families and single-parent households,
00:11:25.280I am calling on the city to work closely with parents like Brown Begging for Calgary Kids and
00:11:30.080Big Brother Big Sister to maintain vital support using recreation centers, libraries, and other
00:11:35.060civic spaces as community hubs. I also urge both the Minister of Education and Alberta Teachers
00:11:40.000Association to return to the table in good faith and reach a fair agreement quickly.0.98
00:11:44.760So Jeremy Farkas, screw you. I'm sorry, but good on you for making sure the tax increase was only0.58
00:11:54.0801.2%, way better than what Gondek would have delivered. I wish there was a negative in front
00:12:00.000of that number because we collect far too many taxes in Calgary to fund not that many basic
00:12:05.480services. In other jurisdictions, it's actually the city who directly transfers the money to the
00:12:10.320schools in Alberta the province pays for the schools directly and so when he's acting like
00:12:16.200well I have all these basic functions to pay for too but I'm only increasing it slightly
00:12:20.080it's like well yeah the firefighters didn't strike to demand like a 20 percent 18 percent increase in
00:12:27.920their pay over time plus more firefighters plus more fire halls and by the way the Alberta
00:12:32.240government is already building more schools putting billions of dollars into that they're
00:12:36.660already hiring more teachers. They're already hiring more TAs, but it wasn't enough for the
00:12:41.120ATA. And what he's saying here is effectively the Alberta government needs to be more reasonable.
00:12:47.160They need to sit back down with the ATA, prolonging the strike longer. In fact, Jeremy Farkas is
00:12:53.720basically saying, I will aid you in your strike by trying to make up some money to help basically,
00:12:59.560you know, do some brown bagging for food for kids or whatever to reduce the stress of the strike.
00:13:05.120If anything, he should be just butting out of it because it's not his concern. It's not his role to tell the Minister of Education that he should sit back down with the ADA president, Jason Schilling, who's a complete left-wing NDP hack, who was not trying to get a better deal for teachers or parents.
00:13:23.280He's trying to make Daniel Smith look bad, which is why after the strike was ended by the Alberta government saying you must go back to work and you are going to take this very generous offer, they then pursued recalls against people like the minister of education, Demetrius Nicolaitis, that failed wildly, only getting like 16 to 18 percent of the actual signatures they needed to recall the guy.
00:13:46.400and Jeremy was effectively backing the blackmailers here
00:14:05.680Okay, well under your watch, apparently,
00:14:08.260you would have caved to a bunch of the ATA's extra demands
00:14:11.740and that could have been 28%, 30%, 25%.
00:14:15.900So what are we talking about here? If he wanted to be accurate, he would have said it was because of the ATA strike demanding so much. The Alberta government tried to at least somewhat kind of give them what they wanted. Still wasn't good enough for them. Daniel Smith held her ground on what she originally offered. She gave that to them, requiring taxes to go up. And now Jeremy's here being like, just letting you know the villain raising your taxes is actually the provincial government.
00:14:41.520well thanks for all the support in trying to keep the ata the strike from incurring more costs on
00:14:49.040Albertans if anything he should be praising Daniel Smith for the cost not being even higher and0.98
00:14:55.620before he starts trying to take shots at the provincial government cut some more of the dumb0.99
00:15:00.600stuff out of the city budget there is millions and millions of dollars of dumb garbage that1.00
00:15:06.060Jeremy could cut. So we could have negative tax increases. We could be literally lowering taxes0.98
00:15:11.780if he was doing his job better. I like him better than Gondek. I would have preferred Sonia Sharp,
00:15:17.000but maybe don't try start fragging the provincial government right now in order to help out the NDP
00:15:22.840because that's what he's doing because he's friends with Nahid Nenshi. Anyways, with all that being
00:15:28.440said, a bit of a rant there, but hopefully my Alberta followers like that every once in a while
00:15:33.660I do return and cover provincial happenings going on. Of course, I live here too, so I should
00:15:38.600probably put a little more attention into it, especially since we have a provincial election
00:15:42.420next spring. But with all that being said, thank you guys for watching. Make sure to like,
00:15:47.040share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.