00:05:22.160What then is a clear majority if it's not 50% plus 1%?
00:05:26.620Funny enough, he at the Liberal Party argued that that Quebec by-election was separated by a single vote.
00:05:32.960They argued that that single vote was enough.
00:05:36.900And in that case, it certainly was not because there was all sorts of problems with the balloting so that there was no actual margin there.
00:05:43.780I would agree that if the literal difference was a single vote, and, you know, there's always a little bit of discrepancy.
00:05:51.020You have to have some margin of error for discrepancy in elections.
00:05:54.040You know, some people voted who shouldn't have voted.
00:05:56.520Some people were sent to the wrong balloting station.
00:05:59.360I agree you have to have a little margin of error, so not a single vote, but more or less the principle.
00:06:18.500It's should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should Alberta begin the consultation process
00:06:25.760towards a binding referendum and independence, so more or less.
00:06:29.320So that raises the question then, if 50% plus one is not a clear majority,
00:06:33.000but it's not a yes or no question what if the federalists don't get a clear majority what if
00:06:38.700it's 50 plus one to stay in canada what's good for the goose is good for the gander well pretty
00:06:45.840much i mean it's it's hard to define this whole thing i mean the bottom line is though i gotta
00:06:51.560admit the ones trying to change the status quo should perhaps have a bit if there's going to
00:06:56.240be a different bar erring on the side of that if it literally was an election of 50 and only one
00:07:01.540And then maybe you're going to err towards what was there.
00:07:04.040But what I find interesting is how quickly they forgot, because there was an exchange in the House of Commons only on May 8th with a parliamentary secretary for whatever.
00:07:12.720Carney wasn't in and the bloc kept pushing and she responded twice, outright saying 50 percent plus one is the bar.
00:07:21.660Then it was that bloc member kept pushing that to get a distinctive answer and both times literally outright said 50 percent plus one.
00:07:28.220so Carney is in conflict with his own parliamentary
00:07:54.420walking they're not afraid of Alberta but
00:07:56.160But you can certainly inspire a province that's on the brink of electing a Paris-Quebecois government to elect them with a stronger mandate.
00:08:03.980It just adds to the confusion of the whole thing.
00:08:24.240Well, we'll get into the, we'll get a little further in the muckiness of the question in a moment, but I want to talk about the Bloc. This is one of these times where I'm really jealous of Quebecers. And we do this to ourselves. I mean, the Conservatives, you know, are the super dominant party in Alberta because they tend to represent, they're at least the least hostile to Western aspirations.
00:08:47.540Actually, Conservative MPs are obviously pro-Alberta, but they're shackled by the national organization of the party from truly representing Alberta in many ways because they're trying to win votes in Quebec, in Ontario, in the BC Lower Mainland, in the Atlantic.
00:09:03.560That's why you will never see a Conservative MP stand up and say, why do we have twice the population of all four Atlantic provinces, but half the senators of just Nova Scotia?
00:24:20.520And so this is raising the interesting prospect then that if they will not allow Albertans to have a clear vote on a clear question on independence, do we then default to what is actually the historical model and the Alberta legislature simply votes itself into independence if that's its wish?
00:24:43.240Because that's the way it's pretty much always been done.
00:24:46.200It has, but I mean, it's the precedent that's been set in Canada to put it to the people.
00:24:49.760But if they don't allow it, then that's the only route.
00:24:54.040Well, no, there's another route, which is a real dangerous one.
00:24:56.920And that's something I've talked about in the past, too.
00:24:59.700If you close off the bottle and don't allow a democratic mechanism, and I don't want or suggest anybody do it.
00:25:06.960But I think, and I've said it before, the part of the reason that the FLQ vanished, finally, after murdering people and setting bombs, is because a democratic route opened up.
00:31:12.040But I don't know if the existing circumstances are there to make it as possible as they may think it is.
00:31:18.720Because there's not as many people fearing for their jobs as MLAs and so on within her caucus right now as there was in Jason Kenney's circumstance.
00:31:25.840Yeah, and also with Jason Kenney, there was kind of two big things.
00:31:29.040The media focused on one of the real things that took him out, which was his, you know, from our perspective, overreaction and over-authoritarianism as it involved COVID.
00:31:41.640But also, you know, a lot of people were kind of the same people with the overlap of the Venn diagram here, but they, it was also, he was perceived as weak on Ottawa.
00:31:50.800He came in with all this anti-Ottawa rhetoric, and then it turned out to all be meaningless bluster.
00:31:56.160So that was a major motivating factor against him as well.
00:31:59.820I don't think Danielle is perceived as weak on Ottawa,
00:32:02.540although, you know, she has been seen as cozy a bit with Carney
00:32:06.440over the MOU and whatnot, and there's a lot of very fair
00:32:09.700and realistic skepticism about, you know,
00:32:31.060because of something Daniel Smith did.
00:32:33.380People who have been arrested for going to church.
00:32:36.120That kind of groundswell simply doesn't exist.
00:32:39.640But, you know, the independence movement is big.
00:32:42.780It's, I hate to say it's not, it's sort of organized,
00:32:46.760but I mean, it's, it's herds of chicken herds.
00:32:50.280Yeah, it's never been particularly organized, but there's no, there isn't that big groundswell of support of people who have been personally harmed by her.
00:33:03.500I don't know, I'll put it to you this way, Corey. Is this really to get her out or is this maybe to scare her into changing the question?
00:33:11.700uh i just to disclose i spent my last weekend in saskatchewan with mitch sylvester the two of us on
00:33:18.240uh speaking uh uh engagements you know we had separate rooms so our discussion was still only
00:33:23.440limited but no i think he he's genuinely furious enough that he wants the premier replaced uh the
00:33:30.880other principal in the alberta prosperity project has probably wanted smith replaced for years if
00:33:37.320you look at his past yeah but rhetoric he's just he has a particular beef with the premier so
00:33:42.120they are serious they really want her out uh i think some who would be supportive of them would
00:33:49.160just much prefer that she just changed that question and then they would back off they0.96
00:33:52.880could see this fine just give us that darn question and then we'll lay off so they feel
00:33:57.160that that would be a route to go but how do you put the pressure on without starting the gears i0.88
00:34:00.900guess, they feel of bringing about an SGM. Something that's been telling is that this
00:34:09.020question's been out for a week now. Groups are getting going. They're getting organized. They're
00:34:13.960campaigning. And the Alberta Prosperity Project, which is now the primary group again, hasn't
00:34:18.560updated their website in four months. Like they, whatever they're doing, it's internal right now.
00:35:14.300So I want to talk about two front war here.
00:35:16.660um i mean even if again i don't know legally is smith and company correct here that like this is
00:35:25.120just the best question that we can get away with without another injunction stopping it
00:35:28.600or those saying no that doesn't apply if the government just puts the question on i don't know
00:35:34.380um but launching a two-front war here where you're fighting a referendum on one side
00:35:40.620The Federalists are better organized, they're better funded, they've got bigger names attached to them, and like them or not, they're viewed as credible, noteworthy people, and they're smart, they're attacking it from multiple angles.
00:35:57.200You've got the left-wing campaign with Denchie, which isn't even really a federalist campaign.
00:36:03.220It's just a pro-NDP, anti-UCP campaign at this point.
00:36:05.620But then you've also got another kind of center-left one with Thomas Lukasik.
00:36:08.720And then you've got J.C. Kenney's group with some other kind of conservative federalists.
00:36:15.340And then there's just kind of this hodgepodge on the Alberta nationalist side.
00:40:08.460uh jason kenny like nenshi cannot appeal to a moderate conservative voter who's angry at ottawa
00:40:16.220and maybe thinking about voting for independence because as soon as nenshi says
00:40:19.860don't do that you're gonna say f you i'm voting against the purple man um so he he can't be the
00:40:25.780right guy same with jason kenny saying yes uh you know ottawa may have been mean to us but this is
00:40:33.120not the way to do it a new democrat uh well they're still gonna vote to stay in canada but
00:40:37.180But they're not going to be happy about Kenny as their spokesman.
00:40:39.620So they've got multiple campaigns going after different groups.
00:40:44.080Whereas the independent side, it's maybe vaguely won, but it's run haphazardly.
00:40:50.300And it can't decide if the Federalists are the enemy or if Danielle Smith is.
00:40:53.920But don't forget, Derek, that Danielle Smith has said she's going to spend the summer crisscrossing Alberta to encourage people to stay in Canada.
00:41:02.540And that infuriated the independent side.
00:42:31.980Okay, Dave, you get the first parting shot.
00:42:33.860It was a year or so ago, President Dimwitt stood with the German Chancellor and said there's not a business case to be made for selling LNG to Germany.
00:42:50.180Flash forward to today, they've announced a big LNG plant in BC that will export LNG to Germany.
00:43:01.020The sad thing for us is now they're going to have to transport it down south, under South America, and back up.
00:43:09.500Whereas if we only had a pipeline to the East Coast.
00:43:14.520Apparently some of the ships are too heavy.
00:43:16.900They're too wide, and they have to go down south.
00:43:19.420But if only we had a pipeline, and Germany could pick up their LNG on the East Coast, sail it across the Atlantic, they'd have it a hell of a lot quicker.