The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - May 13, 2024


Nenshi totally nasty and empty at Alberta NDP debate (debate review)

Hosted by
Wyatt Claypool
Mentioned
Sarah Hoffman B Danielle Smith Gil McGowan Jody Callahue-Stonehouse Kathleen Gangly C. Rachel Notley Nahid Nenshi Kalahu Stonehouse Edmonton Mall Joe Tay Mohamed Oprah Lila
Justin Trudeau gaslights Canadians on the terrible economy Justin Trudeau embarrassed by reporter asking if he will resign!

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

201.5

Word count

4,140

Sentence count

270

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I give my thoughts on the recent United Conservative Party leadership debate in Calgary, and why I don't think Rachel Notley is going to win the next election. I also talk about the other candidates in the race and why they are not going to beat the UCP.

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 .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I hope you guys are all proud of me, because I actually sat through the Alberta NDP's recent debate in Calgary, and boy, was this a sinker. It was just boring. All of the candidates, pretty much all the candidates, I guess, just said absolutely nothing.
00:00:16.520 It's kind of funny, because when you actually watch UCP debates, some of them can be a little bit boring, but it's usually because they're being really technical and policy-heavy and arguing about farm bills that really only affect certain parts of the province, and that can go on for a while.
00:00:30.160 But this one, it was just like people sitting around agreeing with each other and just saying, well, you know, the United Conservative Party and Daniel Smith are very bad, eh?
00:00:39.660 And that would kind of be it, and the person would then say, yes, I agree with you, and I talked to a nurse, and that nurse said that the government sucks, and it was just full of a lot of things that were not true.
00:00:49.060 I think at one point, one of the candidates claimed that we had the most underfunded school and healthcare system in the country, even though we spend the most per capita on those services in the province of Alberta, like over top of any other province in this country.
00:01:04.280 We spend far and away the most on those type of public services. I agree, they're not very well managed. That's not exactly a UCP problem, that's just an Alberta government problem, because the problems got worse when the NDP started trying to deal with it.
00:01:17.180 But this is why the UCP is really out fundraising the NDP, and some of this could be a consequence of campaigns in the NDP leadership sucking up a lot of campaign donations that would usually go to the party.
00:01:29.460 But the party usually gets a cut of those donations, so they should be benefiting from all this fighting going on, but, you know, not really.
00:01:37.460 So I want to go from the top and just start talking about each of the candidates.
00:01:41.400 I'll eventually get to Nahed Nenshi, who, in my opinion, had a terrible debate.
00:01:46.460 I think he could easily start losing a lot of the people he signed up, because after Nahed Nenshi got into the race, the former Calgary mayor, memberships for the NDP spiked.
00:01:56.080 So he definitely sold a crazy amount of memberships. Could be, I'm not sure if it was like 50,000, 100,000.
00:02:01.860 I'm not sure what the numbers are. I just know that the party memberships doubled a month and a half after he had joined the race.
00:02:08.500 So I assume a lot of that is him, probably other candidates as well, but he's a big player in this race.
00:02:14.840 But I'll first start off with sort of the also-rans. Let's just start off with Jody Callahue-Stonehouse.
00:02:21.680 Edmonton MLA, she jumped in because I don't know why. I don't know why she's here. She's just here for a minister's position.
00:02:28.620 She said absolutely nothing in the debate. She's one of those people who just gets up and, like, recounts family stories.
00:02:34.840 Like, I remember when I was in Bowness and we were jumping off the rail lines into the Bow River and we were having fun.
00:02:42.340 Okay. Okay. Do you have anything to say? If you don't, you can move on and get off the stage.
00:02:47.380 She's not really going to win. She's maybe going to throw her support behind someone else. 0.92
00:02:50.900 But she's going to be, like, every race has one. She's going to be the Lila A here of this NDP leadership race.
00:02:57.480 Funnily enough, I'm running against Lila A here for the Calgary Signal Hill federal nomination.
00:03:01.720 So if you're a member in this riding, you better vote for me. Membership deadline passed, but vote for me number one.
00:03:06.680 But she's not going to do anything.
00:03:09.000 Next, I will talk about Kathleen Gangly.
00:03:12.020 She thought she was going to be the Nenshi of this race, the Calgary NDP MLA,
00:03:17.060 who thinks that she has the special sauce to get things done provincially in terms of being able to win enough Calgary votes
00:03:24.900 to be able to push the NDP over the top in the next provincial election.
00:03:29.040 In my opinion on the 23, provincial election is kind of controversial.
00:03:33.080 I thought the UCP ran, frankly, a terrible race.
00:03:36.220 They didn't win as much as Rachel Notley just failed to win. 0.85
00:03:40.300 Rachel Notley's corporate tax hike announcement is probably what won the UCP, the provincial election.
00:03:46.560 I was on a lot of UCP campaigns.
00:03:48.580 I was doing work that nobody else on the campaigns were doing for advertising on social media.
00:03:53.360 I was doing door knocking.
00:03:54.300 I was helping out with a lot of strategy, and it was like pulling teeth trying to get some of these campaigns to do something smart.
00:03:59.980 So the thing is that Gangly's pretending like she is the one person who can win Calgary in this next race one.
00:04:08.040 She is the most generic of the NDP MLAs in Calgary and probably one of the least marketable ones.
00:04:14.440 Very boring.
00:04:15.220 I thought Court Ellington or someone like that would have been better.
00:04:17.960 And I'm saying all this is conservative.
00:04:19.480 So even though I don't like the NDP, I hate all their policies, I still like to talk about these things from the perspective of who would be most expedient for that party to nominate.
00:04:30.340 Kathleen Gangly, I think, just does you no favors. 1.00
00:04:32.920 She's overtly very progressive.
00:04:34.980 A lot of what she said was platitudinous.
00:04:37.540 It seemed like she kind of leaned into the idea that she was going to be the only Calgary politician running in this race.
00:04:43.800 So she keeps talking about bringing people together and that we need to, you know, win next or just win a couple more ridings in Calgary and we'll be past the finish line as if she was going to be the only one saying that and that that was going to make her unique.
00:04:56.220 But she's not because then she is there.
00:04:58.000 But she looks like going back to Jody Stonehouse. 0.93
00:05:01.460 D performance shouldn't have been there.
00:05:03.440 Kathleen Gangly, I give her a C. 1.00
00:05:05.420 D, she's there.
00:05:07.980 She gives middle class corporate consultant types somebody to vote for. 1.00
00:05:13.840 That's a good way of putting it.
00:05:15.520 OK, now I'm going to move on to Gil McGowan.
00:05:18.160 Now, this is going to be a very strange thing for me to say.
00:05:21.140 I give Gil McGowan on a letter grade scale an A.
00:05:24.620 He actually did well as the, I think, the Alberta Federation of Labor president.
00:05:29.180 And he's still somehow the AFL president, despite the fact that he's running for the NDP leadership race.
00:05:34.560 That should really say something about the union relationship with the NDP.
00:05:38.460 But he actually said stuff that was substantive.
00:05:41.900 He actually talked about the weaknesses the NDP have, which was a subtle jab at some of the other candidates for basically being these hopelessly out of touch.
00:05:50.220 Hyper progressives who only care about what people who have arts bachelor degrees think.
00:05:56.280 And that's pretty much it.
00:05:57.460 He got really good shots in on Sarah Hoffman talking about oil and gas and pointing out that Hoffman was incapable of talking about oil and gas in a non-negative way.
00:06:08.380 Every time it was brought up, Sarah Hoffman would talk about how, well, we need a climate corps where we hire everyone below the age of 35 to go and do climate action. 0.82
00:06:17.500 It was it was something that somebody in a student union would say.
00:06:20.940 And Hoffman looked horribly callous towards oil and gas jobs and oil and gas industry, which built this province.
00:06:28.060 So Gil actually hit her pretty hard on that.
00:06:31.040 He hit other candidates.
00:06:32.020 I think he even he even went after an inchie for the fact that he would he was kind of doing he was like helping the UCP fight unions.
00:06:40.480 I don't think that's true, but it was a good attack because I think Gil McGowan's full of it.
00:06:45.080 At the same time, he was interesting.
00:06:47.300 He had people stand up at the start and point out the entire crowd was full of university graduates.
00:06:52.180 And there wasn't people who worked in the trades or were small business owners with high school degrees or stuff like that, that the UCP tends to do really well with.
00:07:00.240 I thought he was good, which is so weird because he's one of the most thin skin, nasty people on social media.
00:07:07.380 He even blocked me for pointing out that he's a trade unionist, a.k.a. fascist. 0.84
00:07:12.180 But whatever I give I give McGill McGowan an A relative to this NDP debate.
00:07:17.600 Now, I want to move on to Sarah Hoffman and Nenshi at the same time, because two of the moments I want to highlight here really include both of them.
00:07:26.040 And I'll give the letter grades after I talk about it a bit.
00:07:28.400 But starting off with Sarah Hoffman, you can tell this entire race is kind of coming down to Hoffman versus Nenshi.
00:07:34.840 Hoffman is the progressive almost farther left of the candidates between her and Nenshi.
00:07:41.040 She is the NDP orthodox stalwart.
00:07:43.920 She very much appeals to the more female nursing and teacher type base that the NDP has, very much pushing things like rent control, hyper progressive social policies, higher taxes, all this stuff. 1.00
00:07:58.040 She is somebody who, if you like Rachel Notley, you would generally really like Sarah Hoffman.
00:08:04.000 And she's even a little bit more left wing to try and monopolize that Janice Irwin progressive NDP pro Hamas type vote. 1.00
00:08:11.720 And then you have Nenshi, who is playing the role of the everyman.
00:08:16.400 He is the candidate for you if you just don't like Daniel Smith and the UCP and you simply want the NDP to win.
00:08:23.920 I hope they don't win.
00:08:25.460 But Nenshi in this debate basically proved that he actually might not be the safest candidate to run if you just want the UCP and Smith gone.
00:08:34.800 He actually could be one of the worst candidates.
00:08:37.180 And it's clips like this that highlight it really well. 1.00
00:08:39.940 The man is just kind of a nasty person.
00:08:42.500 He's good and slick when he debates, a little too slick, and I'll get into the rest of his performance. 0.91
00:08:47.960 But he has way too many gaffes like this, unable to not demonstrate his contempt for the people that he deals with.
00:08:56.600 I'm sure that every Albertan has a successful opportunity in the future.
00:09:00.540 You know, Jody, you've been sitting opposite these guys.
00:09:03.120 And I have been to question period a grand total of once in my life.
00:09:06.140 And I was watching you and your colleagues and watching these monkeys on the other side.
00:09:14.560 Can we influence them at all from opposition?
00:09:17.140 From what I've witnessed, Rachel and the team have been there day and day out.
00:09:22.160 Okay, and then Jody just starts into an answer that really proves why she shouldn't be there in the first place.
00:09:26.240 Just boringly talking about how great the current party leader is who you're supposed to prove that you can do better than.
00:09:32.840 Doesn't matter.
00:09:33.500 That's why I gave Jody a D.
00:09:34.680 But Nenshi, one, there's also one of his debate tactics is demonstrated very well in that clip.
00:09:40.380 But Nenshi calling the UCP MLA's monkeys is not a good move.
00:09:45.980 Like, it's always good to rib your opponents.
00:09:48.720 But he is just going down the same line that other NDP politicians have in the past. 0.89
00:09:53.920 Calling Albertan sewer rats or hillbillies or hicks and this stuff.
00:09:57.360 That ticks people off because the NDP is a horrifyingly elitist party.
00:10:01.800 It's people who have bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in the arts.
00:10:06.820 They believe they're more intelligent and sophisticated than UCP voters.
00:10:10.640 And that's why people don't like them.
00:10:12.780 They barely lost in 23 despite the fact that they were running against Danielle Smith who had had a ton of mud slung on her for over a year and a half by the media, by the NDP, activist groups, whatnot.
00:10:25.140 So, and they were also having to deal with kind of a sluggish economy coming out of COVID.
00:10:30.320 And they still lost.
00:10:31.500 So, I don't see how doubling down on the elitism and the arrogance is going to help Nenshi.
00:10:37.640 And the debate tactic he used there, he used it throughout the entire hour and a half debate.
00:10:41.580 It might have been more like two hours.
00:10:43.120 He just asks the other person questions.
00:10:45.660 He runs out the clock.
00:10:47.060 Well, what do you think of that?
00:10:48.380 Well, I'd love to hear what you think.
00:10:49.780 And then we can get back to me.
00:10:50.600 At one point, he almost revealed his own tactic when he was talking to Gangly and she was answering something.
00:10:56.020 And he says, oh, well, yeah, you know, like, I want to hear what you have to say and then I'll move on to what I was going to talk about in terms of reforming the healthcare system.
00:11:05.640 She gives like an answer where she even admits that she doesn't exactly know what the issue is with the healthcare system.
00:11:11.300 And then when it comes back to him, he's like, oh, wow, I only have 30 seconds left.
00:11:15.340 And then he starts for 15 seconds just saying, well, it was really great that you, you know, you broached that issue.
00:11:22.720 And I like hearing people's perspectives.
00:11:24.940 And then he just talked about how well in the past I've advocated for some reforms to the way we engage with our nurses and the way that we are, like, are administering healthcare.
00:11:36.860 And he said literally nothing.
00:11:38.240 And then he ran out the clock and it moved on.
00:11:40.240 The man said nothing in the entire debate.
00:11:42.520 He never took a solid position on any issue.
00:11:44.600 He never took a solid position on what reforms that he wants would look like.
00:11:48.440 He never even made a, he never even built an idea of what he'd like the party to look like.
00:11:53.120 Not even say, I think he said at one point we need to be a bigger tent party.
00:11:56.880 But this is why I give Gil McGowan an A.
00:11:58.900 At least Gil McGowan actually said that it needs, we need to be more working class and we need to be less elitist and stop only targeting women with bachelor degrees and master degrees.
00:12:09.140 So I won't, again, I'm going to hold off saying what I think of Nenshi's performance just because I want to get to this exchange he had with Sarah Hoffman because it is a slugging match between them.
00:12:18.780 And then I'll rate both of them because I thought this was a very telling interaction between the two on the attitudes and the positions that both of them are taking in this race.
00:12:28.100 I've mentioned housing is one of the biggest crises here in Calgary and there were 170 affordable housing homes in Midfield Park and I need to know from Unahead, why you closed that park, why you evicted those folks.
00:12:40.660 I've talked to many of them and they are still paying their mortgages and many of them experienced homelessness.
00:12:45.700 Sure, I'm happy to answer that off topic but happy to answer it.
00:12:49.320 I don't know if you ever went there.
00:12:51.360 I don't know if you ever saw those so-called affordable homes.
00:12:53.980 I'm sure you didn't but the decision was a hard one.
00:12:58.360 It was an incredible...
00:12:58.820 I think immediately dismissive, just immediately talking down to her and immediately always presenting himself as the only person worth listening to in the room.
00:13:08.340 Incredibly difficult one but we ensured that every single tenant who was there had the opportunity to move into a Calgary housing home with priority and every single one of them who needed to be rehoused in a better place got that better place.
00:13:22.520 Well, I talked to Callan and Callan had an affordable home.
00:13:25.720 He bought his trailer for $55,000.
00:13:27.440 He was a newlywed.
00:13:28.220 They were excited to start their family.
00:13:29.880 It was a great place for them to live and they had a great time there and he ended up having to move in with his in-laws and leaving Calgary.
00:13:35.600 He took that $55,000 mortgage with him.
00:13:38.660 Thanks for the $10,000 but he's still paying off that mortgage today six years later.
00:13:42.980 He and his family did not think that that was a good move.
00:13:45.700 They were all over the news.
00:13:46.700 They were all begging to have their homes preserved.
00:13:48.440 They were originally promised by you and council that they would be moved to another area but that never came through.
00:13:53.800 So many people experienced homelessness and I did not expect somebody to identify as an NGP man.
00:13:58.400 Did anyone experience homelessness to actually have a single example of someone who experienced homelessness or are you fear-mongering here, Sarah?
00:14:03.100 Well, I'm telling you, I had to move in with his in-laws and live in their basement so they didn't have a home.
00:14:07.080 I love this moment where he's basically saying, hey, Sarah, can you name 10 homeless people for me right now?
00:14:13.000 I bet my dad's tougher than your dad, Sarah.
00:14:16.120 He always uses these really weaselly debate tactics where he's like, name 10 homeless people on the spot right now.
00:14:22.180 As if anyone can do that, obviously people don't have a Rolodex of names of people that apply to a specific situation.
00:14:29.060 And the funny thing is both of them are wrong about this situation.
00:14:31.600 Both of them don't know what they're talking about in terms of good policies to solve the issue with housing.
00:14:36.440 Both these people are in favor of mass immigration.
00:14:38.820 They do not want to lower taxes and make it easier to build homes.
00:14:41.580 They don't care about any of that.
00:14:43.000 They're in favor of things like blank rezoning because it's a band-aid solution to just overall bad regulations and bad tax systems and rates in the province.
00:14:54.700 And so Nenshi is just basically belittling her and pretending that all of her concerns with these temporary homes that people purchase
00:15:02.920 and then they were moved out of and then still paying the mortgages for, that she's wrong because she can't name enough people to satisfy my requirements.
00:15:14.440 He's someone who acts hopelessly above you.
00:15:17.100 He is so far above you that you have to prove yourself to him before he will engage with you honestly.
00:15:21.460 I don't have any actual examples.
00:15:23.320 Well, there are many examples in the news.
00:15:25.520 I've read the stories too and I've talked to them.
00:15:27.220 Did you call them and did you talk to them?
00:15:28.660 Because I know where they ended up.
00:15:29.260 I sat in their living rooms, Sarah.
00:15:30.780 When they had one.
00:15:31.480 And I'm the minister of health, Sarah.
00:15:32.580 That's a good line from Sarah Hoffman.
00:15:34.180 You should know that sometimes the easy answers are not the easy answers.
00:15:39.040 Sometimes you've got to sit with people and find solutions for each individual.
00:15:43.260 And tear down their homes.
00:15:44.200 Like they're literally still reading about this process.
00:15:48.060 And he says nothing.
00:15:49.720 He, when, when a challenge, he barely again runs out the clock by saying that, well, we need, we need individual solutions to these problems.
00:15:57.400 He can't even prove he helped actually fix that solution because obviously the people are still suffering from him basically selling them temporary housing outside, like a little bit outside Calgary and trailer units.
00:16:08.720 And then taking them away and then saying, well, I actually sat down with them.
00:16:12.660 Like, and then just merely bulldozing her for the rest of the time.
00:16:16.160 Like I had my friend Raheem Mohamed, he posted a thread on Twitter that was interesting where he was talking about what his wife's reaction to this debate.
00:16:25.020 Because, of course, he's a conservative journalist.
00:16:26.900 So then both of them were watching the debate to see what they thought.
00:16:30.100 And she thought the entire, his entire attitude and the way he talks to other people, especially women, is a massive turnoff.
00:16:37.280 And that's terrible when you're in a party that is disproportionately female and that you come across like somebody who belittles women, that's not going to do well.
00:16:47.740 Again, if he's going to be the guy who you are going to vote for because simply he can beat Smith and the UCP, and then he starts acting like this.
00:16:57.280 He's proving that actually up against Smith, he'll actually make Smith seem like a much more sympathetic figure.
00:17:03.060 When I say seem like, not because Smith is not sympathetic.
00:17:05.680 But the whole point is that he is an awful optical contrast between someone like Daniel Smith, who can actually come off like a normal person.
00:17:13.620 And then she is so detached and elitist.
00:17:16.180 He comes across as somebody who is constantly making you prove yourself to him and that he never has to prove himself to you.
00:17:22.180 That is what the debate felt like because he said nothing and he acted like everyone is here to challenge me.
00:17:27.960 And they had to prove themselves smart enough for me to even deign to really debate them on an issue.
00:17:33.240 So I would give Hoffman a B in this debate.
00:17:38.060 She came off very, just like kind of an orthodox NDPer. 0.99
00:17:42.260 She did well at that.
00:17:43.300 I don't think she really, you know, shook the pillars of heaven in this debate and made it so that she was like the clear one to come and beat Nenshi.
00:17:51.620 But Nenshi, I think, just lost momentum in this debate.
00:17:54.820 I would give him a D, just like Jody.
00:17:58.640 Nenshi just made himself come off as unpleasant.
00:18:02.000 He was very nasty to the UCB. 0.81
00:18:03.980 That monkey comment was just an unforced error.
00:18:07.720 Him debating and belittling multiple different people and then actually being bested by Gil McGowan just demonstrated that he's a lot of flair.
00:18:15.720 He's a lot of polish.
00:18:16.900 But on the actual issues, I think he's going to turn off tons of middle class voters.
00:18:21.860 And again, I want all these people to lose.
00:18:23.440 I want somehow no candidate to win this leadership race.
00:18:27.160 But I am less freaked out about the possibility of Nenshi being able to lead the NDP into a victory simply off of brand recognition in Calgary.
00:18:36.920 I think that in a lot of ways, I don't think he could become the mayor of Calgary again simply because I think he's become an old politician.
00:18:45.640 You can even tell by the crowds he draws in a lot of older people who are just nostalgic for something from the 2010s, early 2010s, that it felt better back then.
00:18:55.160 So we like Nenshi.
00:18:56.840 But if Nenshi proves that now he is an NDP ideologue, I think a lot of the shine of him as the nonpartisan mayor completely goes away.
00:19:05.540 It's like whenever people talk about, well, Oprah could run for president of the United States and do really well.
00:19:11.480 Yes, she has good approval ratings because she's not in politics. 1.00
00:19:14.820 If she announced, all of the negatives would come falling out of her closet and she would become a very despised person.
00:19:21.220 Dr. Oz proved this in Pennsylvania.
00:19:23.260 Very well-liked person.
00:19:24.420 As soon as he starts running in Pennsylvania, all the negatives on Dr. Oz start coming out of the woodwork.
00:19:29.260 Same thing with Nenshi.
00:19:30.120 I think that this leadership, even if he wins it, is going to be far closer than a lot of people predict because people think everyone's going to shift to Nenshi because they desperately want to beat the NDP.
00:19:39.840 But as Nenshi is proving he can't put away these other also-ran NDP candidates or Sarah Hoffman, he's going to demonstrate that he can't probably beat Daniel Smith either.
00:19:49.360 I hope he doesn't.
00:19:50.160 I hope they all fail.
00:19:51.560 But anyways, that should be it for me.
00:19:53.400 So Sarah Hoffman B, Nenshi D, Joe D, Kalahu Stonehouse D, Gil McGowan A, and then I think Kathleen Gangly C.
00:20:02.320 So there's my report card for this debate.
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00:20:27.620 And that should be it for me today, guys.
00:20:29.360 I might be back later with a live stream tonight.
00:20:32.320 Have a good one.