Western Standard - AB REPORT： FACT CHECK - NDP’s “87B” Net zero

00:00:00.000 Today, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard. Today is May 5th,

00:00:14.800 2023, and you're watching the Alberta Report, our daily coverage of the Alberta election

00:00:21.640 campaign here. Joined as usual by Western Standard News Editor Dave Naylor and Western

00:00:27.620 Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford. Good morning. We're going to be bringing in some of

00:00:32.100 our reporters from across Alberta who are on the campaign trail following the big stories of the

00:00:37.380 day. First, we're actually going to bring in Western Standard business reporter, Sean Polzer,

00:00:43.620 who has been covering the controversy over the NDP's promise to make Alberta's electricity grid

00:00:52.980 net zero by, depending what you mean, 2035 or 2040. The UCP's candidates, Brian Jean and Rebecca

00:01:04.660 Scholz, two cabinet ministers as well, held a press conference in Calgary about two days ago,

00:01:11.220 pointing to studies that say the NDP's promise on this will cost 87 billion dollars. And there's

00:01:18.980 been some controversy around if that number is accurate or not. We've gone back and forth trying

00:01:25.860 to make heads or tails of it here at the Western Standard. It's a fairly complicated issue to dive

00:01:31.940 into, which is why we put our business reporter Sean Folzer on it. Sean, you've got a feature up

00:01:39.620 today kind of fact checking this. I guess your conclusion was, it depends on your interpretation.

00:01:47.940 Am I right in that? Yes and no. There's no doubt that it is going to cost more money,

00:01:57.780 and I guess the question is how much is ultimately going to be borne by the taxpayer,

00:02:03.460 whether or not it's appropriate to add $52 billion to $37 billion or whatever it is and come up with

00:02:10.820 $87 billion. And it depends on what is going to happen with the economy out to 2040. It depends

00:02:21.700 on the carbon tax, like there's a lot of moving parts to this. And it's taken a little bit of

00:02:26.820 effort to get my head around it, to be frank. Okay, but to be clear, these numbers are not about

00:02:33.540 taxpayers, that they're about ratepayers, people paying for electricity in Alberta,

00:02:38.580 and costs to economic growth in our in our GDP so yeah we're not talking about taxpayers here

00:02:46.260 I know most election promises are promises made with taxpayers money but there is a lot of things

00:02:51.380 governments do that aren't taxpayers money I mean if you look like say supply management and dairy

00:02:56.580 that's not a taxpayer cost but that's a consumer cost created by government here so if we're just

00:03:04.180 talking about costs created by government, taxpayer or not, ratepayer economy, etc.

00:03:11.140 Is the UCB correct in their 87 billion dollar figure from these two studies that they're pointing

00:03:16.100 towards? I think they are. And like you said, these are going to be indirect costs. They're

00:03:23.940 ultimately going to be borne by people who buy electricity and conduct business and do economic

00:03:31.860 activity but what's unclear is how much of that pie is going to be picked up by who

00:03:40.740 at the end of the day so uh if the allegation was that taxpayers are paying 87 billion dollars

00:03:46.820 i want to make sure i get this correct if the allegations that taxpayers would pay 87 billion

00:03:50.900 dollars the ucp would be incorrect but if it is that ratepayers people paying for electricity

00:03:57.540 and cost to economic growth will together make up $87 billion, then they're correct.

00:04:05.560 Am I getting that right now?

00:04:10.540 Well, yes and no.

00:04:12.840 I think it's going to be the overall economy.

00:04:16.000 So if you look at it in an overall macroeconomic context, then yeah, $87 billion.

00:04:22.520 So $52 billion is a capital cost.

00:04:26.260 30 whatever billion dollars is more like an opportunity cost so that has lowered economic

00:04:34.880 growth from what is otherwise projected in its absence correct right yeah so I spoke with Megan

00:04:41.120 over at UCP and she explained it to me she kind of walked it through and she compared it to a bridge

00:04:47.400 so you build a bridge it costs billion dollars the bridge falls down and you have to rebuild it

00:04:53.260 that cost billion dollars and then in the meantime you've lost a billion dollars while the bids

00:04:58.060 the bridge is being rebuilt so that's how they came up with the 87 billion dollar number and

00:05:03.980 and they added it all together and so it kind of has to be looked at more in a global context i

00:05:11.420 think the 30 000 foot view so dave um one way or another like we're still trying to make heads or

00:05:19.420 tales of this. I think it's fair to say at a minimum the UCP has kind of muddled its own

00:05:26.460 its messaging on this. At best it did not communicate correctly. At worst the NDP are

00:05:33.900 saying well this was dishonest this is not actually the case. What do you think the political

00:05:39.140 fallout is going to be? Is this still a win for the UCP or do they just muddle their messaging

00:05:44.220 too badly on it? Well I mean if Sean's confused I'm confused everybody's confused

00:05:49.320 you know I'm a guy who failed math 10 so you know all these figures make my head spin and I think

00:05:57.700 the big for me the big thing is to try and predict the future is a mugs game two was a two three

00:06:04.460 years ago we were all planning and excited for a 550 million dollar event center now a couple years

00:06:10.840 later, it's doubled. It's 1.2 billion. So trying to predict things out to 2040, 2035,

00:06:18.340 like I said, it is a mugs game. You know, this may be a UCP win, but I think the average voter

00:06:26.460 is over their head. I want to go to you, Nigel. How could the UCP have maybe done this differently?

00:06:35.440 At least there is something here, how big that number is disputed or what it means is disputed.

00:06:43.460 I think a lot of the confusion comes that most election promises are tax dollars.

00:06:50.380 This is not a tax dollars thing.

00:06:52.300 This is a rate payers dollars and economic opportunities cost thing.

00:06:58.640 How do you think the UCP could have maybe communicated this better so that we didn't end up kind of going back and forth about it for a few days?

00:07:05.200 trying to make heads or tails of it. Well I think I appreciate their efforts to explain the numbers

00:07:08.880 but the the key thing here is that a Notley government would introduce policy to decarbonize

00:07:18.820 Alberta by some point in the future and that those costs are going to elevate the cost the price that

00:07:27.260 the individual electricity computer consumer has to pay whether it's at the house whether it's the

00:07:34.200 factory whether it's at the charging station for the electric cars that we're all going to be

00:07:38.380 driving you will pay more for electricity because a notly government has promised that it will make

00:07:46.700 you pay more in order to decarbonize the alberto economy is that what we want answer no of course

00:07:53.560 it's not so that that would be the like you get into these the discussion we're having now was

00:08:00.100 exactly the risk that they took uh dave said just now i mean they're talking about 2035 it's now

00:08:06.260 2023 go back to 2011 and try and make any kind of a reasonable estimate as to how things are going

00:08:15.480 to unfold in the world nobody knew covid was coming nobody knew the ukraine war everything

00:08:20.500 is up for grabs there is no way that they anybody aso or the ndp can by the way the ndp says that

00:08:27.340 ASO has overestimated the cost. There's another uncertainty if you want one.

00:08:32.940 Although the one thing I am generally willing to bet on, like the Calgary Events Center slash

00:08:38.300 Arena Stadium, is that whatever your cost estimate is today, it's going to be bigger by the time it

00:08:44.460 actually gets done. I can't tell you what the number will be, but I can tell you the trend

00:08:50.380 line and it's normally more expensive. And the answer to your question is that's what the UCP

00:08:54.940 needs to point out that if the NDP is allowed to do this, you will suffer for it.

00:09:00.620 Okay. Thank you for joining us, Sean. We're going to turn now, I guess,

00:09:06.460 kind of towards more of the media arena within the campaign here. We're going to bring in the

00:09:12.700 Western Standards, one of our Calgary reporters here, Jonathan Bradley. He's got a story on the

00:09:18.700 the standard right now. Now, some of you, I guess for a few elections now, are probably familiar

00:09:27.020 with the CBC's vote compass. I can't resist it. I do it every time. It's fun because you get to,

00:09:32.300 you see where you fall graphically on the kind of the political compass, left, right,

00:09:36.860 socially and economically, and you see where the different parties fall. It's pretty imperfect,

00:09:42.220 particularly if you're a libertarian, because the CBC's vote compass asks you what your opinion on

00:09:47.340 things are not what you think the government should do about it. So it still has no way of

00:09:52.700 calculating what the heck a libertarian is. But that's neither here nor there. But where they

00:09:58.320 put the parties. And Jonathan, quite a surprise, I guess, where the CBC puts the NDP on the

00:10:07.580 political spectrum. Yes, it was interesting to do this story. For our viewers who haven't gone on

00:10:15.160 compass and filled it out yourself it shows that the alberta ndp is in the center about the center

00:10:21.400 when it comes to social issues but they're a little to the right when it comes to economic

00:10:26.440 issues and it shows that the alberta ndp is further to the right than the alberta greens

00:10:32.040 and the alberta party while it's about the same as the alberta liberals yeah so i guess the long

00:10:39.320 the short of it is, according to the CBC, the NDP is a center-right conservative party.

00:10:46.520 You know, compared to the Chinese Communist Party, yeah, the NDP is to the right of it.

00:10:55.160 But it's a bit funny. There's also a few of the other kind of curiosities and how

00:11:02.520 the CBC have kind of pegged the parties on their policy positions that are a bit strange,

00:11:09.080 like free speech and whatnot for Jonathan. Yes, so the issue that some people pointed

00:11:13.960 out on Twitter is with free speech so it ranks the Alberta United Conservative Party

00:11:20.040 as saying that there should be no limits when it comes to freedom of expression so strongly agree

00:11:25.880 and it's evidence it cites for that is Alberta Premier, the Alberta UCP's

00:11:30.360 support for freedom of expression on academic freedom in universities. You have to remember

00:11:40.020 that a few months ago, Daniel Smith wanted to do a report card about the, about universities

00:11:45.900 defending freedom of expression, but it doesn't acknowledge that Smith isn't for absolute freedom

00:11:50.620 of expression because she's suing the CDC for defamation. Another issue it identifies.

00:11:55.040 I want to make sense of that. That's still a bit muddled. Is what you're saying,

00:12:00.360 that the ucp is considered weak on free speech relative uh to being hardcore on free that it's

00:12:09.640 weaker on free speech because it's suing the cpc yes that's what i'm saying because the way that

00:12:15.160 hope compass worded it was it made it seem like it supports absolute freedom of expression similar to

00:12:19.640 gun rights it asked if there should be any limits on people owning guns and it says that the ucp

00:12:25.800 strongly disagrees with that and its evidence is a tweet from alberta justice minister and attorney

00:12:30.680 general tyler shandro saying that uh you know like gun rights are important but he doesn't say like

00:12:35.880 absolute gun rights um i did see from uh peter mccaffrey who's a friend of us that he was tweeting

00:12:42.520 about how the cbc is mistaking social conservative values for libertarian values so i mean vote compass

00:12:50.360 is fun to do like i enjoy doing it whenever an election happens but it's it can be inaccurate

00:12:55.080 on some issues. Yeah, Nigel, it's pretty funny. Yeah, I think it is mistaking libertarian for

00:13:02.680 social conservative values on some things or even lumping them together. They're sometimes the same,

00:13:08.260 sometimes not. Like I have some pretty radical libertarian views. I think we should legalize

00:13:14.700 both drugs and prostitution, things that most social conservatives would probably very much

00:13:19.260 disagree with me on. But it ranked me as an extreme social

00:13:23.720 conservative, right of the Attila the Hun. It had me in the 0.96

00:13:27.120 vert very bottom right corner couldn't get any more more

00:13:31.440 social conservative.

00:13:32.860 Well, I think we could all validate that. Yes.

00:13:37.580 Yeah, but I you know, I'm, you know, what's your point? My

00:13:42.840 point is, is this just that the CDC has no idea what different

00:13:49.240 kinds of conservatives or libertarians are? Do you think it's an honest mistake, or they just

00:13:55.640 don't know how to plot different kinds of conservatives? Well, I think, first of all,

00:14:00.060 I think it's a very honest mistake. I also think that this is kind of a part of the game, isn't it?

00:14:05.600 You get the vote compass, and you fill it out, and then you flip the page, and then there's

00:14:10.200 something else who will tell you whether you're a winter or a spring, colors, and so forth.

00:14:14.300 You know, it's kind of fun at election time.

00:14:17.240 Yeah, it's like getting your, you know, what is it, people who get their horoscope.

00:14:21.160 It's like a political horoscope.

00:14:22.240 Yeah, it's like a political horoscope.

00:14:23.180 That's right.

00:14:23.980 I mean, if you wanted to take it seriously, I could say, well, obviously, I could give you three reasons why Rachel Notley is nothing of a conservative, whether to just to the right or just to the left.

00:14:33.600 No, no, she is over here.

00:14:36.040 But the whole concept of right and left is actually a bit hard to justify anymore.

00:14:41.380 You say you're in the middle of the road.

00:14:42.640 Well, where's the road going?

00:14:43.540 Because, I mean, if the road's going over here, well, if you're in the middle of it, that's a whole lot different from where the road is.

00:14:50.440 And that's changed over the years.

00:14:51.640 Well, where the center is, is always relative.

00:14:54.720 So when someone says, I'm a centrist, I always call BS, because what the center is changes by the day.

00:15:00.960 I mean, what is center today was radical, hard left, 10 years ago on some things.

00:15:07.760 You know something, I could have voted for JFK.

00:15:11.280 Yeah.

00:15:12.700 Because he represents a lot of values that I believe in.

00:15:16.600 I couldn't vote for Joe Biden.

00:15:18.100 Yeah.

00:15:18.780 But that's how things change.

00:15:23.000 But, Dave, I would agree on the social stuff.

00:15:26.540 It's extremely hard to peg people, especially, you know,

00:15:29.840 if you just have straight social progressive and straight social conservative,

00:15:33.500 okay, then you have a kind of a left-right idea.

00:15:36.280 But as soon as you put kind of libertarians into this,

00:15:39.460 it throws the whole thing out the window.

00:15:41.720 But on economics, it's a bit more straightforward, generally. Bigger, more interventionist state versus smaller, less interventionist state. You can plot a generally relatively smooth left-right spectrum. And they peg the NDP as center-right.

00:15:59.840 Do you think just the NDP kind of manipulated their own positions to appear center-right on this, or do you think this is the CBC carrying water?

00:16:08.440 CBC getting something wrong?

00:16:10.220 I'm shocked.

00:16:11.100 I'm shocked.

00:16:13.000 Whatever the reason is, Derek, it's obviously wrong.

00:16:15.660 They're not a centrist right party by any stretch of the imagination.

00:16:19.840 They're left wing.

00:16:23.120 You know, they may want to appear more centrist to try and attract that undecided voter who may, you know, may be wavering to the UCP.

00:16:31.880 And that's exactly what Daniel Smith talked about yesterday.

00:16:35.040 She channeled her.

00:16:36.180 No, you're talking Rich Mott.

00:16:37.520 I'm sorry, Rachel Notley. She channeled her inner Peter Lougheed at the Calgary event, appealing directly to those wavering UCP voters, saying, oh, you know, come on, I'm not that bad.

00:16:49.460 But, you know, when you take a look at, dig it deep down in our policies, yeah, she is that bad.

00:16:54.220 I find it funny that she tries to channel Peter Lougheed when it was her own father who was the leader of the opposition against Peter Lougheed, although he was leader of the opposition, albeit with two seats.

00:17:05.520 As Nigel was just talking about JFK, times change.

00:17:10.920 I mean, to be fair to her, she didn't say that.

00:17:14.100 It was an academic who obviously is an NDP water carrier,

00:17:17.800 but he wrote this essay saying that they need to channel him.

00:17:21.160 But, you know, there's no doubt where the rhetoric leads you with the NDP.

00:17:25.020 It leads you to the left.

00:17:26.900 Just before we came on the show here, I ran this off their policy platform.

00:17:30.740 They're talking about if elected, an Alberta NDP government will restore municipal funding that they complain was taken away by the UCP.

00:17:39.520 Well, OK, that's a conservative position.

00:17:42.200 But darn it, half of their NDP candidates are police haters who've been involved in defund the police campaigns, not restoring funding. 0.88

00:17:50.260 So there's a duplicity, a mendacity in the whole approach that the NDP takes. 0.95

00:17:55.980 They are not a right-wing party, even a little.

00:17:58.660 I don't mind parties trying to cloak themselves to be a little mushier and closer to the center to win votes.

00:18:06.840 I mean, virtually every political party does that.

00:18:09.180 And that's not a new thing.

00:18:10.840 What gets me is the CBC buying it and saying that, you know, and it just puts them like a centimeter onto the right.

00:18:18.520 Not like right wing, but ever so slightly center right.

00:18:23.160 it's just hard to

00:18:25.660 and even if you buy that Rachel Notley is the moderate

00:18:27.980 in the party, even if you buy that

00:18:30.080 and that she is like the right 0.91

00:18:31.620 she's the right wing

00:18:33.000 no, no, well actually I think

00:18:36.020 relative to most of the NDP she probably is

00:18:38.140 not by personal conviction

00:18:40.020 but by her political

00:18:42.120 and pragmatic intelligence that says

00:18:43.920 I have to do this to win in Alberta

00:18:45.460 so I think in her heart 1.00

00:18:47.980 she's still pretty dyed in the wool

00:18:50.040 progressive leftist

00:18:52.320 But, you know, this is Alberta.

00:18:53.920 You're not going to win being yourself.

00:18:57.320 So they're going to have to go over here.

00:18:59.240 So even if you buy that for practical reasons, she is the right wing of the NDP, everyone else is to her left. 0.99

00:19:05.780 And that center of gravity is going to pull you somewhere, even if she has a lot of authority in that party to take it where it goes.

00:19:11.380 I'm already looking forward to the CBC vote compass for the federal election and where they're going to put conservatives that time.

00:19:19.020 Off the map.

00:19:19.880 Off the map.

00:19:20.400 Off the map.

00:19:20.960 kind of down by you in the bottom corner. Yeah. You know there's one thing we should mention on

00:19:25.280 this left right thing with the NDP. The Just Transition where everybody loses their jobs and

00:19:31.920 becomes truck drivers and and janitors, that is government control, that is a left-wing position,

00:19:39.840 that it was their idea before even the federal liberals got onto it. Well Just Transition did

00:19:44.800 not make the CBC Vote Compass survey asking if people support Just Transition. So there you go.

00:19:49.840 Yeah. Okay. Thank you for joining us, Jonathan. So the next one, I guess this is sort of in the semi-media realm. So we know that a few weeks ago, Rachel Notley kind of made a big show of saying, I'm going to answer all questions from all reporters and their follow-up questions too.

00:20:11.940 And then in the next breath says, and not from the Western standard, because you're hateful and you hate gay people and you're racist and things like that. 0.99

00:20:21.820 OK, whatever. That's just that's kind of fair game for the left, you know, progressive leftist politicians. 0.99

00:20:29.400 If they disagree with you, you're homophobe, racist, Islamophobe, whatever. 0.96

00:20:34.420 They throw those things out like like Halloween candy. 0.93

00:20:38.740 But Rachel Notley took it to a whole new level yesterday.

00:20:41.980 Rachel Notley was on the Chorus Radio Network 770 and 630 Ched,

00:20:48.540 in Calgary and Edmonton, with Shea Ganim.

00:20:51.740 And she, actually, let's just play, we're just going to play the clip for you right here.

00:20:55.720 I was just going through your Twitter and you tweeted out this morning, 0.99

00:20:59.100 if Danielle Smith can't handle questions, she can't handle the job. 0.75

00:21:02.120 It's that simple.

00:21:03.040 Yesterday you tweeted out,

00:21:04.240 Danielle Smith is hiding from the media on day two of the provincial election campaign,

00:21:09.000 applying for a job and failing to show up for the interview.

00:21:11.100 To me, there's a bit of hypocrisy here because there's a well-known columnist in Edmonton

00:21:16.720 who's been with the Journal forever, who publicly stated this week that he's been told

00:21:20.280 you won't be talking to him throughout the campaign.

00:21:22.580 We've all seen video where you've refused to answer questions from certain reporters.

00:21:26.840 You've had some reporters escorted out.

00:21:28.380 How can you be critical of her not speaking to the media when we have evidence you've

00:21:32.320 done the same thing?

00:21:33.940 Well, I mean, first of all, let me just say that I think it really is important that during an election campaign, a politician does make themselves available to the media, answers questions.

00:21:46.060 And of course, as I said, as you repeated, I do think that, you know, when you apply for a job, you need to show up for the interview.

00:21:53.580 Now, I don't know, honestly, about the columnist you're referring to.

00:21:58.000 There's no columnist in Edmonton that we've said we won't speak to.

00:22:02.340 and in fact we're quite open to it is true however for sure um that there is one media

00:22:09.960 um organization that uh you know very conservative one which quite frankly i've been very

00:22:15.260 to take questions from throughout my pretty much since it was established uh i think four or five

00:22:21.620 years ago um and and that's been great uh because i do think it's really important the challenge

00:22:27.600 with that one media organization however uh is that a very short time ago they uh writing a

00:22:34.320 couple columns that amount to hate speech and it was directed at one of our mlas and it was designed

00:22:40.240 to incite hate um against her on the basis of uh her sexual orientation and so because of that we

00:22:48.000 said listen that's that's too much um you're gonna have to retract it and we're happy to continue

00:22:53.840 talking to you then but that is the only um organization that we are having that conversation

00:22:58.720 with and i'm happy to have conversations with any other folks including uh anyone you might

00:23:04.880 be referring to inevitably yeah uh i'll double i'll circle back on that it was pretty well

00:23:10.160 documented earlier this week um so we'll see it so there you have it um so the western standard

00:23:17.600 writing say opinion columnists writing opinions that are not supportive of the NDP and its policies

00:23:25.120 is hate speech and designed to incite hatred now and she's using language they're taken

00:23:31.600 from the criminal code so she's trying to compare western standard columnists who argue that perhaps

00:23:40.240 Perhaps, you know, the identity politics of the hard left put into our schools around our children is not a good thing. 0.75

00:23:48.400 And comparing that to, say, Robert Keekstra printing a thing saying we should gas the Jews.

00:23:54.660 Jim, yeah.

00:23:55.380 Jim Keekstra, sorry.

00:23:56.840 So we're in the same boat now with guys calling for genocide because some of our columnists think that maybe drag queens should be a private affair and not something put into public schools.

00:24:10.240 Nigel, you were you kind of kicked off this row with Rachel

00:24:17.440 Notley and kind of exposing the hypocrisy around, I'll take

00:24:21.280 questions from all of the media, except for media that is

00:24:23.800 critical of me. She's kind of taken us to a whole new level

00:24:28.400 now, accusing us of a criminal level of hate speech.

00:24:32.240 Yeah, well, you know, I have to hand it to Arthur Green, our

00:24:35.440 Edmonton reporter, whose response was quick. He said,

00:24:38.440 Well, at least Daniel Smith gives you one question.

00:24:41.020 That is more questions than we ever have answered

00:24:43.620 from Rachel Notley. 1.00

00:24:46.480 Yeah, she's running out over the neighborhood here.

00:24:49.280 I mean, she had somebody removed, Keno Bexty.

00:24:53.880 Keith Bexty.

00:24:54.640 Keith Bexty, okay, and then a fellow

00:24:56.480 from the Rebel News was denied entry.

00:24:59.920 That was just at the first event.

00:25:01.680 Since then, some of our other reporters have shown up,

00:25:04.500 tried to ask a question, shut down.

00:25:06.560 She's gone after David Staples here.

00:25:08.960 I admit I don't know what the issue is with David Staples.

00:25:11.520 It will seem like a very main line.

00:25:13.280 Well, and she's denied it.

00:25:15.060 Well.

00:25:15.900 Yeah, she denied it on the Gannam show.

00:25:18.960 David is an Edmonton Journal columnist, for those who aren't aware.

00:25:22.860 And he was removed from the NDP mailing list just like we were.

00:25:26.000 So he has no idea when the press conferences are or whatever press releases come out.

00:25:31.860 He is, he is, but unlike us, if he finds out where a press conference happens to be and rushes over there, he is allowed to ask a question.

00:25:41.200 So his banning is at, you know, minimum level of banning.

00:25:45.020 We're at the full level of banning.

00:25:46.880 He's shadow banned.

00:25:48.180 Shadow banned.

00:25:49.100 Yes, we're banned.

00:25:49.780 So I think where this whole, like, the nasty situation where this leads me to is this.

00:25:56.720 What actually does Rachel Notley and her party believe is the appropriate relationship between politicians and the media?

00:26:08.280 Do you get to pick who you're going to answer questions to?

00:26:13.880 That invites the sycophantic relationship with media.

00:26:18.280 And it does not bode well. If there was an NDP government, whether people would actually get to know the stuff they need to know to make a judgment.

00:26:28.640 So let's talk about that. So when the NDP was in government after 2015, they banned the rebel from going.

00:26:36.140 And I know the rebel is not a conventional media organization, but they do do media.

00:26:41.600 They do. And they do very well. Yes.

00:26:43.980 Yeah. So, and they banned them. This created quite a firestorm. Eventually, they commissioned something called the Boyd Report. She's a veteran journalist from the Edmonton Journal. And it decided that, well, the press gallery should decide who's accredited at the legislature and who's not. It's highly imperfect because the press gallery can be gatekeepers. They can decide, well, no, this is our club. 0.61

00:27:08.860 But they let us in. It's important to say that we're members.

00:27:12.760 Yeah, we are accredited members of the press gallery. And I think it's probably the least terrible of options. It's still a terrible option because you have gatekeepers and the media can be very cliquey at times.

00:27:24.760 But it's certainly a lot better than the politicians, the government and power of the day getting to decide who is media, who is not.

00:27:32.160 But this is kind of raising a new question that I'd be concerned the NDP is going down saying, well, fine, the press gallery can decide who is media, but we have a veto over that if we declare them to be hate speech. 0.99

00:27:47.600 And because Rachel has used some bizarre language, she accused the Western Senate of violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:27:56.020 Now, for grade nine students learning about the charter in their grade nine law class, the charter applies to governments.

00:28:06.960 It applies to the federal government, the provincial government, municipalities, and other government organizations like crown corporations.

00:28:11.720 It does not apply to individuals.

00:28:14.700 Dave is not required to hold an election every four years.

00:28:18.400 Nigel is not required to not discriminate against himself or things like that.

00:28:26.020 It simply does not apply to individuals. It applies to governments to protect individuals from

00:28:30.420 governments. So she's accused the Western Senate of violating the charter, which is a logical

00:28:34.340 impossibility, but also of violating human rights codes, which are these bizarre things that can

00:28:39.860 apply here. And she's used language implying we have reached a criminal level of hate. So we're

00:28:46.260 out there with people calling for gassing the Jews and Rwandan machete attacks and things like this.

00:28:52.180 Dave, would you be concerned that she's trying to maybe open the door to, fine, the press gallery determines who's press, but we get an extra veto over that?

00:29:07.040 You can let them in, but we can kick them out?

00:29:08.620 Sure, it's certainly a worry. If they do win the election and Rachel Mahalo becomes premier again, day one, we're still accredited members of the press gallery. Day 30, who knows? You know, at her victory press conference in front of the, you know, in the media room at the legislature, will we be allowed in? Will we be allowed to ask questions?

00:29:32.520 um you know it's it's it certainly does open the door and it's worrying at this point

00:29:39.880 uh i'd also wonder if you know maybe they're going to open the door to further limitations

00:29:46.300 on free speech in general um limitations on free speech there are some pretty hard limitations on

00:29:53.920 free speech in canada we do not actually have free speech despite what the charter says

00:29:57.960 Some of those restrictions might be a bit more reasonable, like people actually calling for the killing or harming of other groups.

00:30:07.080 That is, I think, a reasonable limit.

00:30:10.360 But the NDP have taken this to mean saying things that on behalf of some other group we find offensive.

00:30:19.260 So, you know, a columnist of ours writes something and says, you know, drag queen story time is not appropriate in public schools.

00:30:27.140 The NDP can interpret that and say, well, you're creating hate and that's equivalent to calling for killing drag queens or something like that.

00:30:34.140 Do you think they're trying to open the door, maybe change hate speech codes, human rights codes to maybe make these things outright criminal, to criminalize this kind of speech?

00:30:47.140 Yeah, I think they would like to do that. I think they got a long way to go.

00:30:52.140 to go but this is how it works you'll get take the issue of we've meant you brought up drag queens

00:30:57.820 all right well there were people who went to public libraries and stood outside with signs

00:31:02.540 and sort of yelled at people and the mayor of the city of calgary declared that to be hateful and

00:31:10.540 passed the bylaw okay so that she's not a i don't think that yoti gondek is a danielle smith

00:31:17.500 reporter uh supporter i would place her to the left with all the majesty of the cvc you know

00:31:24.860 i mean i i think she's on the left well so she would have a strong supporter what they do they

00:31:31.420 pass the law and then you have to spend the money to challenge it and go through the process and it

00:31:36.460 takes 18 months and meanwhile they have made this uh made this stick the other thing was that i mean

00:31:42.940 there are we we think that this is self-evident that self-evidently wrong but there are a lot of

00:31:48.380 people it's different age that we live in today than i grew up in a lot of people think this is

00:31:53.020 just fine anyway and would actually and this is what i truly fear in canada generally but

00:31:58.780 we're talking about alberta you've raised rachel notley there are people who would say no we should

00:32:04.700 not have free speech that groups need to be protected from unfavorable opinions it's very

00:32:11.340 serious is very alarming and i do think that your fears are absolutely valid all right uh

00:32:18.780 before we go uh dave anything uh we're expecting on the campaign trail today coming up uh we're

00:32:24.860 hoping there's a rachel notley event no i haven't been able to find out uh daniel smith is uh holding

00:32:30.620 a press conference likely in calgary on saturday uh we'll be covering the leaders wherever they

00:32:37.100 are over the weekend and keeping people up to date on the wildfire situation, which is very

00:32:43.260 bad up north. If you have any tips about Rachel Notley's whereabouts, please email Dave news at

00:32:49.840 westernstandard.news. You know, we've got our gum shoes with a picture of Rachel Notley on the wall

00:32:57.360 beside Bigfoot and Elvis here. We're trying to figure out where she is on any given day.

00:33:03.500 Well, Dave and Nigel, thank you for joining us today

00:33:06.840 Have a good weekend

00:33:07.760 And thank all of you for coming here

00:33:10.720 I suppose the king's coronation

00:33:12.980 Is

00:33:13.500 Starts at 2.20am

00:33:17.200 Calgary time tomorrow

00:33:18.360 Set your alarms, I'm going to phone you

00:33:20.660 To make sure you're awake

00:33:21.600 You're not going to have a job by Sunday

00:33:23.920 These two Brits here

00:33:26.440 I'm sure you guys will be watching 0.99

00:33:27.640 I will settle for

00:33:29.220 The highlights the next day

00:33:32.180 God save the king

00:33:33.260 All right. Thank you all for joining us today. If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, go to westernstandard.news, click on membership. It's only $10 a month or $100 a year. Get you unlimited access to all Western Standard content. And remember, the Western Standard is the West's only government bailout free media organization. And we'd be very grateful for your support. Thank you very much for joining us. Have a good weekend. God bless.

00:34:03.260 Canadian Shooting Sports Association, without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.

00:34:11.480 These guys are on the front lines helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada.

00:34:19.480 And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.

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Western Standard - May 06, 2023

AB REPORT： FACT CHECK - NDP’s “87B” Net zero

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