The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - June 26, 2025


Nenshi is the WORST - claims fake “victory” and smears Danielle Smith


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

179.59659

Word count

2,876

Sentence count

170

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Wyatt Claypool breaks down the results of the by-elections in Alberta and gives his thoughts on why the Alberta NDP is in serious trouble. Also, the UCP wins a riding that the NDP has not held since 1992.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. You can tell the Alberta NDP is in really bad shape right now
00:00:06.960 based on what they choose to declare victory over. Alberta NDP leader Nahid Nenshi has degraded that
00:00:14.340 party's support so badly that he had to pretend it was a big victory the other day that the Alberta
00:00:20.280 NDP was able to win two out of three by-elections that were held. The two that they won were both
00:00:26.820 in Edmonton, a city that the NDP has won every single seat in for the past three elections straight.
00:00:33.720 It is just a union and government worker town. That is why the NDP wins. And even in one of the
00:00:40.440 ridings, Edmonton Ellerslie, they dropped 11 points of support since the 2023 election and the UCP went
00:00:47.700 up a bit despite having to compete with other right-wing parties running against them. I need
00:00:53.120 to show you this clip because it's absolutely hilarious. So Nenshi, who ran in the riding of
00:00:58.280 Edmonton Strathcona, the safest seat for the NDP in the entire province. He got up on on that his
00:01:05.660 victory night to say that Albertans across the province had basically sent a message to Danielle
00:01:11.960 Smith. Check this out. He said tonight's by-elections show that Albertans do not want to separate from
00:01:18.400 Canada. We get one message from today. That message should be that Albertans have across
00:01:26.240 this province resoundedly rejected the UCP's plans for taking Alberta out of Canada. Now that's patently
00:01:35.340 insane and I'm about to get to it. I just want you to also hear this next part because there is a bit
00:01:40.560 of it I want to comment on. Nenshi also said his party will be working to improve affordability,
00:01:45.440 health care, and public education, target organized crime, and prevent coal mining in the Rocky
00:01:50.640 Mountains. Who could guess why this party's not popular in Alberta right now? We only want to shut
00:01:56.480 down coal mining in the province. Oh, but coal mining's bad. Oh, but coal mining's bad for the
00:02:02.020 environment. Okay, that's people's jobs. And no, it's not. I think that people are allowed to use
00:02:06.760 whatever energy they please. And in fact, they phased out coal when they were in government back in
00:02:11.480 2015 to 2019, which ended up leading to near power outages in the frigid winter. But you know,
00:02:19.400 keep doing this, guys. Keep doing this. I guarantee you will get a lot of support from the union members
00:02:24.260 you rely on when you start trying to take their jobs away. But now let's talk about the former part
00:02:29.900 of that clip where he says that this is Albertans across the province sending a message to Daniel Smith
00:02:35.860 and the UCP that they don't want Alberta taken out of Canada. The UCP aren't doing that. It is a pro-federalist
00:02:43.820 party. They want to stay in Canada. The line Daniel Smith keeps saying is she wants a sovereign Alberta
00:02:50.140 within a united Canada. She wants a strong Alberta within a united Canada. So there's a few variations of it.
00:02:55.140 How is this a refutation of what the UCP is supposedly doing? Even if we were to pretend
00:03:03.220 that they were even doing that, you won a riding that the NDP hasn't lost since 1992, Edmonton-Stratkona.
00:03:11.540 And in 92, they lost it to the Alberta liberals who don't even exist anymore. And the last time they
00:03:16.700 lost it to a conservative party was in 1982, back when Alberta politics was effectively just
00:03:23.540 the progressive conservatives versus the social credit party. Yeah. And then Ellerslie, it's been
00:03:30.980 an NDP riding for quite a while now, since 2015. Last time the PCs won it was back in 2012. They did
00:03:38.420 run the guy who used to be the MLA in this election, but it's a by-election. The NDP put a lot of resources
00:03:44.020 into holding on to it, but even their vote share there fell down. The UCP, by the way, won the riding
00:03:49.300 of Olde's Didsbury Three Hills, which is a UCP stronghold. But by the way, they defeated a
00:03:55.380 separatist party in that election. So the UCP are the separatist party, yet their big victory in
00:04:02.500 election night was clobbering the Republican party of Alberta in that riding. And the NDP did not do
00:04:08.500 very well in that riding. I think they gained like 1% of the vote from what they had gotten last time
00:04:13.140 in the general election. No, this is not Albertans across the province telling Daniel Smith they don't
00:04:19.380 want to leave. This is voters in Edmonton, Strathcona, and Edmonton Ellerslie. So voters
00:04:26.100 all the way from Edmonton, the center of Edmonton to the southeast of Edmonton saying they will still
00:04:31.860 vote for the NDP like they voted for last time. I guess you just get to declare that your victory
00:04:37.620 means anything when you win. I guess to the victor goes the spoils. If I ever win an election one day,
00:04:43.460 guys, I'm going to say that it's because that this is demonstrating that Canadians all over the
00:04:49.940 multiverse really like jello because I won a riding in the middle of Calgary or I won a riding in
00:04:56.820 wherever I choose to run. I'm going to run in Yukon and say that this proves that voters across Canada
00:05:03.540 want New Brunswick to not sink into the ocean. I need to bring up some other stuff regarding this.
00:05:09.940 So Danielle Smith has recently posted a video about her Alberta Next program that she's launching,
00:05:17.380 the Alberta Next panel, which is an explicitly anti-separatist program. It is basically
00:05:24.900 a new, it's kind of like the, I forget what it was called, but we had a similar panel that was kind
00:05:30.980 of exploring other ways for Alberta to basically be treated more fairly within Canada. And this is
00:05:36.820 kind of a follow on to that. The Alberta Next panel is people being able to basically try and give policy
00:05:42.900 proposals to the Alberta government. They're going to have a series of town halls, all that stuff.
00:05:48.580 And yeah, it's not a separatist thing, but because Mr. Nenshi has absolutely nothing to run on,
00:05:56.900 he is having to pretend that this is a new separatist move. So, and he is, it's so tiring.
00:06:05.220 No wonder nobody likes this guy. He used to be popular as the mayor of Calgary, but people have
00:06:11.620 to remember, he kind of acted more like a center left moderate for his first two terms. Was he good?
00:06:17.780 No. But at the same time, he kind of, you know, kind of tamped down his more radical side. Towards the
00:06:25.460 end, he became a defund the police, hyper-progressive, you know, that climate change is a now a municipal
00:06:32.100 issue, bike lanes everywhere, you know, like just like anti-oil and gas guy towards the end. And he even
00:06:40.420 like, so, and he's never gotten off that. He is just a snarky jerk. And this is why people don't like
00:06:46.820 him anymore. It's because he's just, he only cares about his own opinion. And unless you're
00:06:51.940 going to parrot his opinion back to him, he doesn't care about what you think. And so he says here,
00:06:57.060 Albertans should ask the premier why she is wasting public dollars on this separatist pet project where 0.97
00:07:03.220 there are so many pressing issues that need to be dealt with. Read my full statement regarding Alberta
00:07:07.620 and the ex panel survey below. Yes, we have, there's pressing issues that need to be dealt with,
00:07:12.980 like the Alberta NDP wanting to shut down the coal industry. They also want to nationalize DMVs. I
00:07:21.140 don't know why. They tried that during Notley's time as premier, and it was a complete disaster.
00:07:27.060 And she goes on in his statement to say the UCP government surveys aren't about creating new jobs,
00:07:32.260 bringing back investment, lowering the cost of utilities and car insurance, making our streets
00:07:36.180 safer, reducing wait times in our overcrowded yards, or getting the teachers we need, or stop coal mining in the 0.53
00:07:42.660 Rockies. They really do keep bringing that up. Instead, they're they've rolled out a separatist
00:07:47.380 do nothing panel that will cause serious damage to our economy and Alberta's reputation as a place to
00:07:52.580 invest. It is literally the opposite of that. The whole point of the Alberta next panel is to basically
00:07:59.060 put pressure on Mark Carney to take some reasonable suggestions from Alberta on how to fix the relationship
00:08:05.940 between Alberta and the Canadian government in order to stave off the separatist movement.
00:08:11.940 Because although the Republican Party of Alberta proved itself to not be very popular,
00:08:16.660 the actual separatist movement is probably more popular than the Republican Party is. Because
00:08:21.620 people may not want to vote for a separatist party, but they may vote for separatism itself if it is a
00:08:27.060 referendum question. And so the Alberta next panel is basically trying to put things up for a referendum
00:08:33.060 to basically push forward specific policies. Come up with some policy ideas, put it on for a referendum,
00:08:38.820 and then use that vote to put pressure on Carney to approve pipelines. And Carney's been playing a lot
00:08:44.180 of games saying that he wants to get big projects done. That's what Bill C-5 is all about. But then
00:08:49.940 attaching so many strings to projects saying it needs to be private investment, which is what David Eby in
00:08:55.300 British Columbia is also demanding if there's a Western pipeline. It's saying that they still have to go
00:09:01.220 through all the environmental inspections and we need indigenous consultation and indigenous buy-in on
00:09:06.180 this thing. And also we're not going to get rid of Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, but we can find a way of
00:09:11.460 getting it done, which is kind of deliberately meant to scare away private investment. So Daniel Smith is
00:09:17.060 playing her cards very well right now. She has all the momentum and then she has none of it. And also all he has
00:09:24.260 is just this separatist boogeyman that he keeps going on about. Apparently the separatist boogeyman
00:09:29.940 and wanting coal miners to lose their jobs. That is what is going to rocket the NDP back into office.
00:09:36.900 Peter McCaffrey pointed out, Alberta polls since NG joined the NDP. March 2024, UCP 46, NDP 44.
00:09:46.020 August 2024, UCP 48, NDP 40. May 2025, UCP 52, NDP 38. June 2025, UCP 58, NDP 32. UCP is up 12, the NDP is down 12.
00:10:01.940 And yeah, and he was responding to this CTV Edmonton article saying people are really angry. NDP
00:10:08.740 Leard and Nahid Nenshi says separatism talk turn voters off conservatives. Turn voters off conservatives.
00:10:15.140 Oh, you mean the conservatives didn't win Strathcona? Who could have guessed they wouldn't have won
00:10:19.780 Strathcona? What a mystery as to why they didn't win Edmonton Strathcona. Again, this is all he does
00:10:28.500 now. It is just this. Obviously, you've been sitting on the sidelines in that time while Christina Gray
00:10:36.900 has been handily running the ship. One year wait though, how much of an actual turning point does this
00:10:43.300 by-election win represent for you? It's more symbolic than anything else and it's sort of
00:10:48.660 under the hood more than anything else because I have been working more than full-time this entire
00:10:53.460 time. The only thing is for the 12 or 13 weeks of the year that the legislature was sitting,
00:10:58.340 I think it might have been 16 this year, I wasn't literally in the house. I was sitting in the gallery
00:11:03.700 for those minutes. So a lot will change under the hood in terms of making my life a bit easier,
00:11:09.140 in terms of what I can access, what I can do and so on. Certainly Christina's life will be a bunch
00:11:13.860 easier, but I'm not sure people will see much of a difference in terms of us being in their lives
00:11:18.980 and talking about what's important to Albertans. Okay, well now much was made going into these
00:11:23.700 by-elections of how you and your party have been struggling in the polls against the UCP that maybe more
00:11:29.620 was expected to come with your arrival a year ago. Now that you do have a seat,
00:11:34.420 when do you put a significant Nahid Nenshi stamp on the party? Well, I think we've done that.
00:11:40.820 Okay, I got to stop it right there. Sorry, I let this clip play a lot already, but he's already,
00:11:46.420 the interviewer is actively, so when are you going to put your stamp on the party? He has been for a
00:11:51.300 year and people hate him. That's the problem. The media is trying to get, would they ever treat
00:11:57.140 a conservative leader like this if their party had started slipping in the polls? They could have slipped
00:12:02.660 half as much as Nahid Nenshi's NDP have, and they'd be like, so people don't like you very much.
00:12:07.940 They wouldn't be like, oh, well, you haven't been in the legislature very long. They'd just be like,
00:12:11.860 you suck. Why are you Hitler? And with like Nenshi, it's just like, you know, you've fallen 12 points 0.61
00:12:17.220 in the polls. You're struggling. But when are people going to start loving you?
00:12:21.540 Not already. You know, 89.5% in the leadership review is nothing to scoff at.
00:12:27.300 But, you know, nobody voted in the leadership review or the leadership race.
00:12:32.260 We'll say that the polls have been all over the place. There have been some that have shown that
00:12:37.140 we're really doing well. Some have shown we're doing poorly. At the end of the day.
00:12:41.860 He's also the type of man who will compare Daniel Smith to Donald Trump. And if there is one thing
00:12:47.220 that Nenshi and Donald Trump share in common heavily, and I like Trump, but the one thing that
00:12:51.860 Nenshi shares in common with him is pretending that there are polls out there showing him up when there
00:12:56.420 might not be polls. And Trump way outperformed the polls, but the whole point is that there
00:13:00.660 usually wasn't a lot of good polls out when he was like, we're leading massively. There is not
00:13:04.820 one poll showing Nenshi's NDP doing even remotely well, not even in a spitting distance. And while,
00:13:11.460 yes, the UCP beat the NDP by 8% in this last election, but it was technically close on seats
00:13:17.860 because of the vote margins in Calgary ridings, still the NDP is way below 8%.
00:13:24.420 I think one poll had the UCP leading by like 20 or something like that. And one had them leading by
00:13:31.140 14. We are well past the point that the Conservatives are at risk of losing the election. They are firmed
00:13:37.860 up in Calgary since they're finally cutting taxes, which is something I was critical of them for not
00:13:41.940 doing. They've actually gotten off the net zero stuff and they are just ignoring that. That was
00:13:46.180 something I was happy with Daniel Smith for announcing. Late times are getting better in
00:13:49.700 hospitals. We actually are having the economy in Alberta improving at the same time economies
00:13:55.460 like the in BC and Ontario are doing really badly. He, the idea that like, oh no, we're doing really
00:14:01.540 well. People want us is patently insane. The joke that politicians always use is polls
00:14:07.540 are for dogs and firefighters. What really matters is on election day. And last night we had an amazing
00:14:13.940 night for the Alberta New Democrats. We actually matched the highest voter turnout, our highest
00:14:18.820 voter percentage we've ever had in Edmonton Strathcona. We matched 2015, which was our high
00:14:25.460 point there. And in fact, even in Old Stittsbury Three Hills, we got more of a vote percentage than
00:14:30.740 the Alberta New Democrats have ever had in that riding. It was 1% better than last time. And again,
00:14:37.140 celebrating having a really big win in the safest of safe Edmonton seats for the NDP is stupid. Do you
00:14:45.540 think if, do you think Pierre Polyev, after he gets into office in Battle River Crowfoot, that,
00:14:52.740 that by-election is probably happening federally in like August. Do you think he's going to get up and
00:14:57.300 say, you know, this is the biggest win we've ever had in Battle River Crowfoot in the entire time the
00:15:04.420 pro- the riding has existed? No, because that's loser energy. The fact that the NDP is trying to
00:15:10.740 celebrate this as a big victory proves that they do not have any victories. They are trying to turn
00:15:15.380 something that's not even a victory into a victory. But anyways, that should be it for me today, guys. I'm
00:15:22.340 going to be back with more Alberta news at some point. By the way, if you live in the city of Calgary,
00:15:27.060 make sure to sign up for a Sonia Sharp for mayor sign. She is the only conservative who actually can win. 0.92
00:15:31.540 I'm going to start doing a review of all the candidates because the other guys pretending
00:15:34.980 to be conservative like Jeff Davison and Jeremy Farkas are absolutely insane. Jeff Davison literally
00:15:41.300 has a land acknowledgement on his own website and won't even commit to cutting taxes. But that should
00:15:46.340 be it for me today, guys. Again, Sonia Sharp link description below in the top comments,
00:15:50.580 like, share, subscribe. See you guys later.