AB REPORT： Conflicting Polls： Who’s in the lead？
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Summary
A third Alberta NDP candidate has been exposed with explicit communist or communist party links. What does this mean for the rest of the race? And what does it say about the direction of the entire campaign? Western Standard reporter Jonathan Bradley and reporter Sean Polzer investigate.
Transcript
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G'day, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching
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the Alberta Report, our daily updates on the Alberta election campaign trail. I'm joined
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today by Western Standard News Editor Dave Naylor. How are you, Dave?
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We've also got one of the Western Standard's Calgary reporters in here today, Jonathan
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I didn't ask that. We will be joined in a moment as well, though, by Western Standard business
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reporter out of our Calgary office, Sean Polzer. We're going to be talking about a third NDP
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candidate in the election here who's now been exposed with explicit communist or communist
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party links. We're going to talk about the latest polls. They're finally starting to conflict
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with another. They've all been kind of grouped up, saying more or less the same thing. Now
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they're starting to show slightly different things. As well as an NDP candidate in the
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Calgary area compared Alberta's oil to slavery and said that Albertans are a bunch of oil
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entitled rednecks. I actually agree. I didn't know that it was a pejorative thing.
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All right. So, yeah, sure. Of course. Of course we are.
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Yeah. I didn't know that was an insult. Before we get going, though, I just want to thank
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rights to possess firearms in Canada. Okay. We're to start with you, Jonathan. This was actually
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your exclusive story. We've had two NDP candidates so far that you've managed to find evidence,
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photographic and otherwise, of links to communism or communist parties. Rod Loyola and another
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candidate so far. But you have a third one that you came up with just this weekend.
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Yes. So this candidate is Gurinder Brar. He's running in Calgary Northeast. And the evidence
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I was provided to show that he had connections to communism was some of his Facebook posts that he
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made. So he made one Facebook post in 2016 sharing a post honoring former Chinese President Mao Zedong,
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who was involved with the Cultural Revolution. And Mao was involved with it, led it, led the Cultural
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Revolution, led the Cultural Revolution, some involvement, which we should mention, had a death
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poll that in the minimum, minimum estimates has several tens of millions of murdered people,
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murdered Chinese people. So the first post was a quote from Mao talking about armed revolution.
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And Gurinder Brar shared it with the caption, for those who say armed wars and dissolution,
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read carefully. The second post that he shared about was pro-communism was he shared a meme
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juxtaposing Santa Claus and Karl Marx and was joking about Santa Marx and how Santa Marx is going to take
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all of the children's toys and redistribute them equally. And then the third post was another quote from
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Mao talking about who are people's friends, who are people's enemies. This is the first question that you
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need to think about before you engage in a revolution. This is another Mao quote. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not
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sure. I think a lot of people don't know really what the Cultural Revolution was. But yes, yeah, under
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by even the most conservative estimates, Mao Zedong, communist dictator of China, has at least quite a few
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holocausts to his name of murdered people under under his rule. And he has the NDP issued any kind of
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statement, retraction, apology for one of their candidates promoting things from the individual
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who probably has killed more people than anyone else in human history. Yeah. Easily outdoing Hitler and
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probably easily outdoing even Stalin and Genghis Khan. Nothing. I haven't seen anything from the
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NDP. Haven't seen anything from the candidate. When I contacted the candidate, actually, I decided to
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phone the campaign office and all that I got was one of his campaign volunteers saying, okay, I'll send
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him a text right now and we'll see if he gets back to you. And that's that's it. Has the NDP issued any
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kind of statement distancing themselves from Mao? Absolutely nothing. Dave, I feel like we have this
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conversation every day on Alberta report. It's like a pattern is developing, isn't it? You know, when
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you find one red under the bed, and there's two reds under the bed and three reds under the bed.
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I can only just wonder if there might be more. I mean, we've discovered three who knows how many
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are underneath there. Dave, have you seen a peep anywhere in the government funded and legacy media
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about now the third communist candidate? No, it continues radio silence and I wouldn't expect them
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to touch it at all. I feel like we're having this conversation almost every day for the last few days.
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I'm kind of running out of ways to phrase this to you, but why the hell is this not news? I mean, if a UCP
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candidate was discovered with even the vaguest, most tangential sympathy towards Nazism, this would
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be front page news, probably national news. He'd be fired as a candidate and the party probably doomed
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on election day. But here we can't get so much as a footnote from a single one of the government funded
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media in Alberta. And I feel like that wouldn't have happened even four years ago. They were bad four
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years ago. But I feel like I feel like something's changed. Why the hell is it just zero? Like this is
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clearly relevant news. Well, you've got to consider the source, Derek. It's us. And the mainstream media
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does not like us. They don't like us in any way, shape or form, because we're coming in and we're
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mowing their lawn. And we're getting all the good election exclusives that they're not. So if they were
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to follow one of our stories, it would mean they'd have to acknowledge our existence. And they don't
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want to do that. Plus, the fact that the legacy, main legacy media is, is mainly a supporter of
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Rachel Notley and the NDP. And that's the main reason you're not seeing anything in it.
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So Jonathan, this is now the third communist or communist linked NDP candidate running in this
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election that you found. Tell us quickly about the other two that you've unearthed.
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So the first one was Rod Loyola, who's running in Edmonton, Ellerslie. And he was discovered to have
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marched with the Communist Party of Canada Edmonton Club in a parade. I was provided with a photo
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indicating it was him. He's clearly at the front of the pack. He's wearing a black hat, black jacket,
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and black track pants. And what's interesting is Rod Loyola... Track pants. That means he's Russian.
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Everyone knows Russians love wearing track pants.
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And what's interesting, though, is that there's no timestamp when the photo was. I was unable to find
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out when it was. But based on some of Rod Loyola's actions, it is credible. And in the photo, you can
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clearly see that it is him walking in the parade. And the other... Well, he... We had... There had previously
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been video of him praising Hugo... Having kind of a weird secular seance and prayer for Hugo Chavez after he
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had passed away, the communist dictator of Venezuela. So we already knew he was kind of in there.
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And he had performed as a pro-communism rapper in 2007, with songs honoring communist leaders
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such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. That was a new... That was a new thing that you dug about
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as well, right? No, no. That was from the last election, 2019. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. All right.
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And then, so... And who is behind communist door number two? Communist door number two is Diana
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Badden, who's the NDP candidate in Calgary, Acadia. And she shared a... She retweeted a post from a
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pro-communism account, which was called Vote Communism May 4th. And next to the name, there
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were hammer and sickle symbols. So with that, she retweeted a pro-communism post honoring American
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hacker Aaron Swartz, who had broke into MIT's information system to attempt to steal articles
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from JSTOR, which is a scholarly database. And the post was basically honoring him and his work.
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You know, normally we'd have a big long conversation about this, but it's just kind of the third
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communist in as many, at least business days as we've had here. And to just absolutely zero
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pickup from legacy media. Nothing. I mean, there have been times when we've done stories where
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the mainstream media does end up picking it up. But like over the old college, like, oh, Western Standard
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broke this or a Western Standard reporter, you know, asked this question and it led to this.
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But radio silence on this. I mean, I haven't seen that many oppo stories done on candidates,
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really, except for Kevin Mentigam, who we're going to talk about later.
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All right. Well, we've had a fair number of polls come out so far. And until extremely recently,
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they've all been more or less saying the same thing. They've been off by a few points, but
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they've always showed a narrow UCP lead. So, you know, losing seats, but still retaining
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majority government, probably a fairly narrow one. But now we've got some conflicting ones.
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So we've had we had Abacus Data come out. That's most of these polling firms are Eastern base,
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but that doesn't mean they're not necessarily good. Abacus Data came out and it was the first
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during the campaign so far that showed an NDP lead. Not a big one, but an NDP lead.
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It's eight percent. They've got the NDP up seven points to 43 and the UCP down one to 35.
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Okay. Okay. I stand corrected. And so that's a huge.
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That's almost a 10 point swing, because if they're seven ahead and they were behind before,
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that's somewhat a 10 point swing. Entirely possible. It's correct. The Smith and UCP's
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campaign have taken some battering as of late. Old quotes from Smith being resurfaced,
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fairly or unfairly, having her say she's going to sell all the hospitals and that the unvaccinated
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are so the vaccinated people are Nazis, which curious, just kind of the reverse of what Justin Trudeau
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said of unvaccinated. And that apparently wasn't a big deal. But then we've got Main Street also out
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very recently showing UCP still has a slight lead, a very slight lead and within the margin of error.
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Let's take a look at the Abacus poll first, Dave. Big takeaways, obviously NDP in the lead,
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but also leading in Calgary. Yes. To me, it's, it is such a swing, it defies credibility.
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Especially when you've had all the other polls so close, you know, since the start of the election,
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even before the election, they've always been one or two points apart or dead heats. And for all of a
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sudden to gain seven points, where really, you know, you talked about some Daniel Smith stumbles,
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I don't think there's seven point stumbles. Certainly, the there's been a lot of criticism
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of the poll and social media by other experts who say it's not, it's not believable also. But
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as you say, you never know. It's just a snapshot in time. It was a fairly small sample size. Generally,
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for an Alberta poll, if it's less than 1000 people, less than 1000 completed surveys.
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That's pretty small. I think this one was in the 800. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so that's that's pretty
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small. Abacus is more in the business of doing national polls. And, you know, so your provincial
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sample sizes are a bit smaller. 800 is pretty small for it 1000 is where I think you start to get
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relatively credible. And do we know how much what the sample size of the Main Street poll was?
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To be honest, I don't. I thought it was about 1500. Yeah, that rings a bell.
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So yeah, the Main Street still has UCP in a slight lead. Sean, the polls with,
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you know, it's entirely possible the NDP does have a big lead as or reasonably bigish lead,
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as Abacus is saying. But generally, there's a trend to get there. It doesn't flip overnight,
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even if you have a big debate where one side crushes the other, you'll see some overnight
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quick movement. But to get all the way from, you know, being behind to a seven point lead,
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it takes a few days to get there. And we just hadn't seen this. I don't know, your take on the
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Abacus poll. One of the questions that came up to me was the methodology. And because we've got a bit
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of a demographic divide in this province as well. The UCP voters tend to be maybe a little older and
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more established. Younger ones, you know, they don't have landlines, they're going off cell phones,
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they're filling out web survey forms. So I was, I didn't have a chance to have a look at how they
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actually conducted the poll. But it seemed to me that maybe they were using a slightly different
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method than maybe some of the other ones. What struck me was that all of the, you know,
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all of the demographic information is obviously going to have to be obtained by the pollster,
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because you don't know if someone is white, Asian, black, or what age they are when you call them.
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Right. But we generally know, at least for the landlines, where they're located. And none of their
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geographic breakdowns were based on that. It was all just, they asked them where they live. So
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that's a bit odd. Now, you kind of have to do that for cell phones. But for landlines, we do know,
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we can say, okay, if we're calling this number, this, you know, 9937 is in Strathmore. We know
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that's a Strathmore number, right? They didn't do any of that. It was all just kind of self reported.
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So you, I don't know. It was a funny poll. But you know, I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.
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It's entirely possible. It's correct. But we're gonna have to wait and see a few others. I like
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to take an aggregate of this. That's why I like websites like 338.com. They're not doing their own
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polling for the most part, but they're, they're taking aggregates of everyone's polls, kind of averaging
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them out, maybe waiting them a little differently based on how credible and established polling firm is.
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And then trying to apply it as best as possible to the riding level to see the way it's,
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it's going to turn out. There's still a good chunk of undecided too, which we haven't talked about.
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I think the main street poll had it at 11%. So still, that's coming down, coming down.
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It was, I think, up around 18 or 19% at one point, but still, still a good chunk out there.
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11% is not, not huge though. And the default, it's not always the case, but the default among pollsters
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is they're going to break the undecided on election day, are going to break disproportionately
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among how parties are currently polling. So they'll, you know, if, if it's two to one for party
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A over party B, the undecideds will probably break two to one for party A, then for party B as well.
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That's, and that's a generally correct rule of thumb. Not, it's not always the case, but it's
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generally rule of thumb. I should also note, uh, tomorrow, the Westridge Center is going to have
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some exclusive polling of our own. We have contracted, um, a, uh, a fairly new polling firm,
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but it's, uh, I know some of the people behind it. It's, uh, made up of some very good experienced
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pollsters, particularly pollsters in Alberta. And so we're going to have some great, uh, exclusive data
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with huge sample sizes, um, three times the size of the, uh, abacus poll. So, uh, 2,500 completed
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surveys, including some, uh, some polls that break down some of the key swing ratings, those bellwether
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constituencies that'll tell you, you know, if, if the UCP wins this one or the NDP wins that one,
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that's a good indicator of who's gonna win government. So we're gonna have some really great
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stuff coming up there. Looking forward to that. So, uh, Sean, we're gonna switch gears here. Um,
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yesterday you, uh, you went to a brass conference, uh, helped by the UCP down in Okotoks,
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and, um, they, uh, I suppose had unearthed, uh, some sections of a book that, uh, the NDP candidate
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around there had written, uh, that was, uh, not, not even just anti-oil, I'd say, I'd say it was
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particularly spicy about Alberta oil in particular and Albertans relationship with oil. Yeah. Um,
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comparing it to, uh, slavery and energy workers are slaves because they're working for the big oil
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companies that are taking off their values, uh, while their value, their economic value sounds
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like a fairly, uh, consistent Karl Marx, uh, that is Marxist theory of labor, uh, the Marxist theory
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of alienation of labor. Yeah. Yeah. So not just that, uh, oil and gas promotes slavery around the world,
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but, uh, in fact, uh, Alberta oil workers are slaves. Yeah. The, uh, 18 year old guy I know with an F-350,
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a sled and a quad might disagree. Kind of both. Yeah. Guys with more disposable income than
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any one of us. Yeah. Um, and also, uh, said something along the eye, along the lines that
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Albertans are, uh, energy entitled rednecks. Did I get that right? Yeah. Socks seem to be the word that,
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we're socks, we're oil socks, which is, uh, Well, then where did the, uh, energy entitled rednecks part
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come from? Um, it was all kind of mashed together. Which I refuse to take as pejorative. Stream of
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consciousness. I'm like, that's a bad thing. Energy entitled rednecks. That sounds awesome.
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Yeah. I'm not taking that as an insult. Mine looks a little red this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
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so did, was this the same candidate who said that or was another candidate who said that? Well,
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there's been a few candidates actually, uh, it depends on which one you talk about. Uh, Shannon
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Phillips was, uh, apparently she wrote a preamble to a book with, uh, Mike Odeema. I don't, I don't know.
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I don't know if you know Mike Odeema. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's crazy. He's infamous.
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Yeah. But, uh, that, that one's been fairly well known for some time. That's not a new one. No,
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I don't think it's a new one. No, but the UCP brought them all out on Friday and just sort of
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listed them. This candidate, this candidate, this candidate, they're all anti oil. Yeah. Well, and it's
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funny because, um, not Lee, uh, during her press conferences, every time the question comes up, like,
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are you anti oil? She always falls back on while we're the ones that got the pipeline built to
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tidewater, the TMX expansion. And, uh, we were talking this morning about the royalty review that
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they did when they were elected and just caused a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety, and then really
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amounted to not very much. So there's a, it seems to me that the mainstream in the party, uh, probably
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is kind of anti oil pro environment, uh, reduce emissions and, uh, not Lee government would
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definitely have a focus on emissions reduction, but at the same time, it's unclear how anti oil
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that it would actually be. Well, they have a complicated relationship, I'd say. I think it's
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fair to say a lot of their, you know, their candidates and certainly kind of their, the activist
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membership, uh, grassroots level, uh, it's pretty broadly anti, anti oil and whatnot, and kind of
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the greening movement. But, you know, Rachel not Lee, I think is smart enough. Uh, you know,
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she needs those people voting for her, but it's kind of a Nixon going to China thing. They understand
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that she's the best they can get. Uh, you know, when she won government in 2015, it was a surprise to
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everyone, including herself. And they're like, holy crap. We, you know, we made some of these promises
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here, which like eight seats in 2015 would have been a victory for them. They ended up with 50
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something or something with a majority government. Uh, and they realized, well, we kind of need the
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revenue from oil for this big expansion of social programs that we want to undergo. So
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they have a complicated relationship with it, Dave. And, and, and Rachel not Lee has been going to
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pain. So at least try not to scare off moderate voters who, uh, you know, might be sympathetic to
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some, some moderate greenie initiatives, but are certainly not anti oil and wanting to shut it down.
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No. And I keep in mind, uh, uh, when she, she first became a premier, first thing they did
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slapped in a carbon tax, which she didn't, uh, campaign on. But look, if you're going out and
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you're promising on the campaign trail, a hundred million here, a few hundred million here, 600 million
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here, 1.2 billion for Calgary, you need the oil money to pay for it. And if the oil of money is
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not there, then it's, it's catastrophic for the, uh, for the government books. And they're going to
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be struggling even right now at $70 a barrel with all this, all this money. Well, she has promised
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also increased taxes on businesses. Yes, that is true. That'll only make so much, if anything.
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She's also made the point too, that, uh, when, uh, they were in power, the oil revenues amounted to
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about $3 billion a year. So about 12 billion. And then in the last budget, they were about 27.
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Which is a, it's a fair point. I mean, oil revenue is much higher now than it was when
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she was in government, but she's still one of those revenues. So I think, you know, while she
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has, uh, I put it this way, her relationship to the oil industry is probably like Danielle Smith's
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relationship to government monopoly healthcare. They don't probably like either, but they understand
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politically there's a necessity of maybe not acting on your hardest instincts with these things that
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voters are just not there. And in not least case, even if voters were there, you'd be killing the
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golden goose and couldn't do any of the other stuff that she wants to do. And so she's trying to balance
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it, but, uh, it's probably not helpful, Sean, that she's got these candidates that just keep popping up
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with these hardline kind of extreme anti-oil comments, uh, that are not like flippant Facebook
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posts. Like, uh, this particular guy, uh, you wrote this in a book that has presumably been edited and
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published and probably proofread by the author at least once before being published. Hopefully.
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Hopefully you think about what you say before you say. This was not rage posting on Twitter.
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This was, this was a book. Yeah. It was kind of a articulated theory. It didn't seem to me, like you
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said, it had, uh, some pretty basic Marxist principles that you learn in political philosophy and
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university. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we won't consider that communist number four, but definitely borrowing
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on- You do see the link though. It is clearly using Marxist theory of alienation of labor. And for the
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kids at home who don't know what that is, don't read it. It'll make you dumber. Okay. Oh,
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gentlemen, thank you very much for joining and thank all of you for joining the Alberta report
00:23:22.220
today. We're going to be back again tomorrow with updates and as promised with exclusive polling done
00:23:26.540
for the Western standard. We'll see you tomorrow. Uh, thank you very much for joining us and God bless.
00:23:32.780
The current Lethbridge feed grain prices are as follows. Cash barley is up $2 at $4.07,
00:23:38.380
feed wheat is up $4 at $4.08 and corn is up $4 at $394 per ton. In the milling wheat markets,
00:23:46.700
July Minneapolis futures gained $0.25 and a half cents at $8.71 with local harder and spring bit
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for main movement at $10.30 per bushel. In the oil seeds, nearby canola futures jumped $16 at $729
00:24:02.700
per ton, with delivered values for main movement at $16.36 per bushel. In the pulse markets,
00:24:09.660
nearby red lentil prices are trading at $0.34 per pound and yellow peas remain at $11.50 per bushel.
00:24:17.660
In the cattle markets, June live cattle slipped $0.50 at $163.90 per hundredweight.
00:24:24.620
I'm David Lee at Marketplace Commodities, accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.
00:24:30.860
Canadian Shooting Sports Association, without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long,
00:24:36.780
long ago. These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms,
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regulations and legislation in Canada. And more importantly, educating the public about how we
00:24:48.300
keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. To become a member, it's absolutely worth every penny.
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You can become a Western Standard member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.