Western Standard - November 04, 2023


Alberta’s senator elect says Smith knocked it out of the park

Topics
parental rights in education
Mentioned
Eric Martinez Danielle Smith Cheryl Oates Andy Peer Discourse Trudeau Pierre Nigel
UCP 2023 AGM Update UCP AGM Day 2

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

156.05

Word count

629

Sentence count

53

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we chat with former UCP Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Danielle Smith, Erica Marutz, who now works for Macamie College. We talk about her time in politics, her time as the party's principal secretary to Danielle Smith and why she left to pursue a career in education. She also talks about why she decided to leave politics and what she's up to now.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So good evening we have here with us Erica Marutz, very familiar name to a lot of people in this party.
00:00:07.980 But you actually, Erica, you severed your connection, your direct connection, your principal secretary to Danielle Smith up until July.
00:00:15.900 You're now doing something else. Have you actually left politics?
00:00:20.340 I don't think that will ever be the case for me, especially leaving the UCP.
00:00:24.080 I was the founding president, and so it holds a special place in my heart.
00:00:28.080 Yes, I'm not necessarily getting paid to be associated with the party or calling it my main career or main job for right now.
00:00:36.860 And it is kind of nice to be here and not have to have an official role, just be part of the membership and listen to what's going on.
00:00:46.380 Maybe we can find out where the coffee is because that's something that everybody here is desperate for.
00:00:52.680 Perhaps you can relay that back to the channels.
00:00:54.760 Look, what are you doing now?
00:00:56.640 So I actually moved over to work for Macamie College.
00:01:00.420 I'm helping them transfer from a private to a public institution.
00:01:03.620 So lots of behind the curtains of how our post-secondary institutions work.
00:01:07.560 And just launched a podcast called The Discourse alongside Andy Peer.
00:01:12.900 So Cheryl Oates. 1.00
00:01:14.540 Well, that sounds like something to watch.
00:01:16.920 Can I just ask you this?
00:01:18.220 What did the premier do today?
00:01:19.580 I think she, frankly, nailed it.
00:01:22.500 I mean, she was speaking to this room on the issues that matter to them, as well as sending a message right before she heads out to the Council of the Federation with all the premiers on the dumpster fire in which we're seeing from the federal liberal government right now.
00:01:37.740 And to rally and talk about unity and of being treated fairly and equally as provinces.
00:01:46.480 And that message is?
00:01:48.640 There needs to be, as all the shirts here say, more Alberta, less Ottawa.
00:01:54.160 So, Erica, she had a huge standing ovation for one critical piece of policy, and that was on the matter of parental rights.
00:02:08.520 How do you think that's going to play out for us on the net basis?
00:02:14.060 Is that going to be a plus for her?
00:02:15.580 I think so.
00:02:17.900 I think that there's a lot of people.
00:02:19.560 There's a very loud minority, from what I understand, that are wanting to push the government away from this.
00:02:26.040 We've seen it successfully go through in Saskatchewan on parental rights.
00:02:30.720 There's a policy coming to the floor that I'm pretty sure I'm confident in how it's going to go based on the standing ovation of parental rights.
00:02:37.840 And, I mean, we are a party.
00:02:39.340 Conservatives very much value the family unit, right?
00:02:42.600 So, parental rights in education, where you send your children, and what's happening.
00:02:47.460 I think it's kind of a no-brainer when you really break it down to what parental rights are.
00:02:51.840 You brought these children into the world.
00:02:53.560 You should be able to know everything about what's going on in their lives.
00:02:57.360 And I think that's more or less what the previous said.
00:02:59.440 One last thing.
00:03:00.420 Erica, you are still, are you not, our senator-elect for Alberta?
00:03:04.760 I am one of three, yes.
00:03:06.180 So, all we've got to do, the steps for that, is get rid of Mr. Trudeau, have Pierre come into place.
00:03:13.120 And he has committed that he will respect our elected senators here in Alberta.
00:03:18.220 So, are you first on the list?
00:03:19.900 I am the first loser, as I like to call it, in second place.
00:03:24.320 Well, I think a lot of people consider you a huge winner in this province.
00:03:27.500 Erica, thanks for stopping by.
00:03:28.980 It's been a pleasure.
00:03:30.020 Thank you so much, Nigel.
00:03:31.500 God bless.
00:03:31.860 Thank you so much.