Western Standard - BREAKING： Kenney sacks Allard, slap on the wrist for other snowbird MLAs. Will it be enough？

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Good day, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.

00:02:53.880 You're here for another special edition of The Pipeline.

00:02:57.200 I'm joined today by Western Standard News editor Dave Naylor.

00:03:02.700 How are you doing, Dave?

00:03:05.200 Dave, we can't hear you.

00:03:06.200 You've got your mic muted.

00:03:08.200 Well, that's not a good start.

00:03:10.200 I'm doing great, Derek.

00:03:11.200 Been a busy day, been a busy weekend.

00:03:13.200 Indeed.

00:03:14.200 Well, very busy weekend.

00:03:17.200 Neither of us had terribly much of holidays, not just because we're worried about cops kicking in our doors during Christmas dinner,

00:03:25.200 but because there's been so much happening in a traditionally very slow time in the news cycle.

00:03:31.440 Last night, you, for Western Standard, had the exclusive story, breaking news.

00:03:39.360 Actually, you were the only news at all that was able to confirm that today,

00:03:45.720 UCP Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard, the MLA for Hawaii Grand Prairie, would resign.

00:03:53.820 That has just happened.

00:03:55.960 Dave, why don't I just throw it over immediately to you to let people know what's happened.

00:04:00.680 Yeah, it's a crazy day, Derek.

00:04:03.900 Our sources last night confirmed that Allard was going to be resigning,

00:04:08.120 but we had no indication that it was going to be such a political bloodletting

00:04:13.320 that we've seen out of Edmonton just after the lunch hour.

00:04:17.540 By any standards, call it what you want, Night of the Long Knives,

00:04:21.720 It's unprecedented.

00:04:24.280 So I'll just give you the quick rundown, Derek, of what we know at the moment.

00:04:27.820 Tracy Allard has resigned as Municipal Affairs Minister.

00:04:32.320 She said she went to Hawaii to, quote, continue a 17-year holiday tradition.

00:04:38.820 So she was down there with her family soaking up the sun and the rays.

00:04:42.840 Jamie Huckabee, Kenny's Chief of Staff who flew to the United Kingdom, he's been fired.

00:04:48.720 Kenny asked him to resign, and he did so, so he's now out of a job.

00:04:55.560 Jeremy Nixon, Parliamentary Secretary for Civil Society, whatever the hell that means.

00:05:00.600 Derek, you may have a better idea than me, has lost that post because of traveling to Hawaii.

00:05:07.160 Red Deer MLA Jason Steffen is out as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Board

00:05:12.880 because he headed for warmer climates in Arizona.

00:05:16.540 and Tanya Furr, Pat Wren, and Tani Yao have all lost their legislature committee jobs

00:05:26.080 because of their traveling to a nice warm holiday destination.

00:05:31.580 In a statement today, Kenny wasn't made available to the press,

00:05:35.280 but in a statement he said that, quote,

00:05:37.400 these individuals demonstrated extremely poor judgment

00:05:40.960 and that he had certainly heard loud and strong

00:05:44.420 the anger that Albertans were feeling over this

00:05:47.640 that has grown since it was discovered last week

00:05:51.900 about the snowbird UCP MLAs and staffers.

00:05:57.920 Political scientist Dwayne Bratt from Mount Royal University

00:06:03.240 was quick to chime in saying,

00:06:05.380 Kenny's statement is too little too late.

00:06:08.620 He said if this had happened on Friday,

00:06:10.960 the statement in the firings it may have uh limited some political damages uh careful to

00:06:17.280 say it wouldn't have eliminated uh but it does say it would have limited so so there you have it uh

00:06:23.840 an absolute uh bloodletting in the alberta ledge this afternoon uh derek uh indeed yeah it's i can't

00:06:32.400 recall seeing something like this uh scandal involves so many uh obviously there are controversies

00:06:38.000 where leaders will sack someone for good reasons or bad whatever they are but I've rarely seen a

00:06:45.620 bloodletting that involves such a large number of the caucus and and and a large number of very

00:06:53.480 senior staffers although as far as I know only one staffer got the axe I don't think the other

00:06:58.240 staffers who were off enjoying their non lockdown lockdown got the axe as far as I could tell but

00:07:06.980 um it's uh it's quite they had to do something there was absolutely no way for them to do nothing

00:07:14.180 that that was their plan uh kenny's never had a scandal he couldn't walk away from he's walked

00:07:18.660 away from some pretty significant uh controversies before but they've always tended to be much more

00:07:24.500 complicated uh much more difficult to explain uh people can rightly or wrongly dismiss it as saying

00:07:31.380 oh this is just the leftist media uh this one they couldn't uh this one stung them it was

00:07:37.860 uh easy to explain and while people are very personally feeling pain uh while the government

00:07:44.340 says uh if you if we find you uh having too many people over for christmas dinner who are not in

00:07:49.860 your household we're gonna send cops gatineau style kick down your door and arrest you um

00:07:54.820 the same time as the government's doing something as wickedly authoritarian as that

00:07:59.700 uh to have uh i think more than 10 of their of the entire legislature so probably uh close to

00:08:05.860 15 or so of the ucp caucus and a bunch of their staffers overseas um i mean not to make too

00:08:13.460 dramatic of a comparison but uh can you just imagine in uh an east german communist official

00:08:19.220 with the ultimate lockdown of people uh from stopping people from leaving their own country

00:08:23.940 but then heading off to West Germany to buy good cheeses and meats in West Germany,

00:08:30.580 something that they would deny their own citizens. That's something they did all the time, 0.72

00:08:33.540 something that undermined the Berlin Wall. Not to compare as quite apples and apples, 0.67

00:08:38.180 I think it's matters of degrees, but I think it's that kind of wicked, wicked hypocrisy.

00:08:45.140 And Kenny was hoping that this would just blow over. Dave, I know your news, but give me your

00:08:51.140 sense do you think this is going to be enough uh to to make this all blow over now i i don't think

00:08:57.620 so derek and i think it all goes back to bumbling by kenny himself his statement that he came out

00:09:03.540 with on friday almost beggared belief uh he took the blame for all these ucp people traveling by

00:09:10.420 saying he had not made it clear enough to them that hey perhaps you might not want to jet off

00:09:14.900 to hawaii when the rest of the population is in lockdown i mean come on that's a silly silly reason

00:09:23.860 that left the question open well okay if you left it up to these individual judgments do you really 0.99

00:09:28.980 want a cabinet minister who's stupid enough uh when she's help helping roll out the uh the vaccine 1.00

00:09:36.660 province-wide that she's stupid enough to go on a holiday tradition to hawaii should these people 1.00

00:09:42.420 be in your cabinet and the answer was it was obviously no um kenny bumbled it from the 0.99

00:09:48.340 beginning he bumbled it by sitting quiet over the weekend and not saying anything and the anger grew

00:09:55.140 and the anger grew and the anger grew and you know it's to the point now we've even got songs

00:10:01.060 being written about the allard family tradition and if you want to give a listen to that just

00:10:05.780 just go on our our website westernstandardonline.com and and just listen to the song there is an anger

00:10:13.220 build up in the province derek like i've never seen before uh politically wise and you know

00:10:18.500 you can comment on your time in politics and and certainly as a close observer but uh

00:10:23.220 have you seen anger like this before uh the closest i can think of would be allison redford's 0.64

00:10:29.140 um fakes on a plane and allison redford sky palace um but those came when she was already

00:10:35.940 effectively on her way out the door um they did not happen midterm like this where it's expected

00:10:42.500 someone's going to continue on um and the it's not just a controversy it's the cover-up or lies

00:10:49.220 about it i mean uh people screw up politicians screw up i can tell you personally they screw up

00:10:54.660 The question is, do you take responsibility and fess up and show some accountability for it, or do you muddy the waters, try to politician your way out of things, blame other people, or even lie about it?

00:11:08.000 Now, you just said you were referring to Kenny's statement where he says, I did not I'm going to take responsibility for this because I didn't tell my MLA's cabinet and staff in clear enough terms that they're not supposed to travel abroad for non-essential reasons during a lockdown.

00:11:28.540 Well, let's go to a story you had yesterday.

00:11:32.140 Here is a tweet from Jason Kenny.

00:11:34.080 This was during the first lockdown.

00:11:35.720 it seems pretty clear to me day why don't you read off the tweet tell us what the context was

00:11:43.220 this was a Kenny tweet in March Derek when the when the pandemic was was first starting to take

00:11:50.300 a hole he put out a tweet saying he couldn't stress enough do not leave the province cancel

00:11:56.000 your traveling if you're outside of Canada come home and isolate if you're in Alberta and this

00:12:01.460 is key please follow the advice of health officials and that was played on cbc news nationally

00:12:08.900 at the time with the breathless announcement that alberta is expected to announce

00:12:14.420 seven new cases imagine those days again derek when we were announcing good old days of seven

00:12:21.860 so now you've got kenny urging people to listen to what the health care authorities are saying

00:12:27.940 well as you say 15 of his caucus isn't smart enough to do that and they're just going uh

00:12:33.940 golfing or uh to vegas or you know wherever they can uh work on their suntans it's uh like i said

00:12:40.260 the mind just boggles on uh on stuff like this and i you know i don't see it going away i think

00:12:45.460 kenny's uh personal leadership will plummet uh into the dangerous areas he's he's around 30

00:12:52.420 before this happened and it's going to plummet to the 20 percent uh level and derek you know what

00:12:58.100 happens uh when that happens you start to get rumblings in caucus from mlas who are worried

00:13:03.940 that if kenny stays on as leader we may lose the next election yeah uh well actually on that that's

00:13:10.340 a great segue uh we want to pull on this we are um well actually we'll get the proper link up here

00:13:16.580 in a second uh we are uh the western standard is trying to commission a poll we want to see what

00:13:22.100 Albertans think about this right now we want to see um has this uh affected Kenny's approval

00:13:28.580 ratings i think there's a pretty good bet that it has um has this affected very importantly how

00:13:33.460 people intend to vote are people just angry but gonna at the end of the day um we want to hear

00:13:38.500 from you in the comments section uh are people at the end of the day uh two years from now just gonna

00:13:44.340 uh hold their nose and uh vote ucp anyway because it's not the ndp or are they going to be looking

00:13:50.580 somewhere else the mainstream media's pollsters are notoriously bad at

00:13:56.020 actually figuring out if there is any other option in alberta

00:13:58.900 other than the ucp and ndp uh polls show consistently that the third place

00:14:03.380 party in alberta is other well we want to figure out what is the

00:14:06.660 other so we want to do polls on that uh we

00:14:09.540 want to ask about uh recall uh we're going to get into that

00:14:12.980 just a little bit here um should albertans have the right to

00:14:16.180 recall their mlas this is a long-standing promise of the ucp

00:14:19.620 which they have not kept despite it being one of the easier pieces it's just a simple piece of

00:14:23.140 legislation um we want to pull about that so we um i'm going to bring up a link here in a second

00:14:30.660 but we uh we we need you to go to westernstandardonline.com hover over the membership

00:14:36.100 section and go to donate and you can donate to um help us uh crowdsource for a poll we're

00:14:42.180 going to come back to that in a second when we've got a link um so what we saw here was um

00:14:49.620 Uh, you know, Kenny sacked his minister.

00:14:52.900 She was the only one in cabinet that we're aware of so far overseas.

00:14:56.340 Sonia Savage, the energy minister, was found in Kelowna, B.C.

00:15:00.820 I'm a bit more forgiving of that.

00:15:03.620 It does break the travel advisory, but I think by degrees going to Kelowna, it's not much

00:15:09.920 of a difference between going from, you know, Calgary to Kelowna is not much of a difference

00:15:13.180 from going from Calgary to Edmonton.

00:15:15.440 I don't see a big difference there.

00:15:16.680 so she's gotten the pass and I think that might that that's probably reasonable but you know

00:15:23.260 you've got a large number of other MLAs who are in Hawaii who were in who are in Mexico in the

00:15:31.680 American Southwest why don't you tell us about what Kenny's Kenny's rap on the wrist for them

00:15:39.560 is about well they're losing uh legislature committee jobs uh derek the uh you know being

00:15:47.880 the parliamentary secretary to this cabinet minister or or that cabinet minister and sitting

00:15:53.400 on legislature committees all of which brings in extra cash for them um derek you may know

00:16:00.280 more than i do you know what it's going to cost allard losing a cabinet minister 0.98

00:16:04.840 job, but it will be a significant haircut for her. The other ones will be less harsh. 0.75

00:16:13.720 But it's more than the loss of money, it's a loss of reputation. In Grand Prairie, Hawaii

00:16:22.940 writing now, the Tracy Allard supporters are in for a very big fight. They've got protests

00:16:28.960 in front of her office, they've got a Christmas tree adorned with suntan lotion as a decoration.

00:16:36.460 And they're expecting protests because they've already put up a sign saying,

00:16:40.540 hey, protesters, keep off our sidewalk.

00:16:42.880 So all these MLAs are going to have to deal with that at the next election,

00:16:47.820 the loss of face, and it's going to be hard for them to overcome it.

00:16:54.180 And if I was thinking about running against them in the nomination, you know, for the UCP party, I might seize on this already and get to work on it.

00:17:04.200 Well, I can tell you from experience, UCP nominations have a lot less to do with the local members than they do tend to do with who has the support of the leader.

00:17:12.320 The question will be, does Kenny want to replace some of these MLAs?

00:17:15.820 If that's the case, then you will get a nomination in that riding.

00:17:19.160 But if Kenny is still, if these MLAs are still on Kenny's good side, I can tell you, you can get all the memberships you want.

00:17:27.960 Nominations won't defeat an MLA, only a general election will.

00:17:31.240 I'm not sure how they could be on Kenny's good side.

00:17:33.920 I mean, talk about landing your boss in the muck.

00:17:37.240 You know, and where was the chief party whipping all of this?

00:17:40.180 Why didn't he know all these people were leaving the province?

00:17:43.280 He did.

00:17:43.620 I can tell you right now particularly in a government caucus at the very Kenny

00:17:52.080 it is possible Kenny didn't know where the backbenchers were it is probably not

00:17:56.940 but it is possible and I think we're gonna do some digging around Dave to

00:18:03.060 see if we could find some confirmation on this front I think that's an

00:18:05.380 important point because now we're into the cover-up part of the story what they

00:18:08.940 knew and when they knew it who done it exactly ministers cannot leave the

00:18:15.940 country they can't even leave the province without the premier knowing the

00:18:19.400 chief and especially the chief of staff to any minister especially the premier

00:18:25.660 the first minister there is a 0% chance that the premier didn't know about that

00:18:30.240 and he claims ignorance and this is where it could where the story is

00:18:35.580 definitely not done I think a lot of people are gonna say that slaps on the

00:18:39.540 wrist losing a committee job that no one really cares about anyway that you don't

00:18:44.220 get extra pay for and the committees have no power in any case they do what

00:18:48.660 they're told the two parts of this story I think that are going to continue is

00:18:53.100 is this enough is Allard's the only one Allard and the chief of staff Huckabay

00:18:57.180 are the only ones who really have blood on the floor everyone else I think got a

00:19:01.300 slap on the wrist by comparison um that's going to continue and uh what kenny knew and when he

00:19:08.960 knew it that's going to continue um well you remember the uh the the speaking of the cover

00:19:14.180 up derek what happened in ontario with their wayward finance minister rod phillips he left

00:19:19.740 for st bart's and uh premier ford when it broke he claimed he only heard about this two weeks ago

00:19:27.220 And then when reporters started digging deeper and deeper, it turns out he knew.

00:19:31.640 Yeah, sorry.

00:19:32.100 Let me rephrase that.

00:19:33.440 He only found out about it the morning that the media did when he was in St.

00:19:37.520 Port's.

00:19:38.300 But it turned out that he knew two weeks ago when it happened.

00:19:41.720 And that's causing all sorts of problems in Ontario.

00:19:45.000 Sorry for the mixing up there.

00:19:47.180 So, yeah, this story is not going away.

00:19:49.400 When Kenny found out, you know, who was traveling, who told who is going to continue, unfortunately,

00:19:55.980 for uh for the ucp indeed um well let's talk about what's happened with uh we'll bring up an image

00:20:05.220 here in a second uh recall legislation this was a marquee promise by uh jason kenny in the last

00:20:11.420 election uh he's going to give albertans the right to fire their mlas um they're two years in and this

00:20:18.540 is one of the easiest promises for them to keep they don't have to consult they don't have to do

00:20:22.080 a bunch of stuff and studies uh they already knew what they were going to do apparently um yeah can

00:20:28.080 you can he we're two years into this and they haven't done it can you tell us what's happened

00:20:32.180 on this front yeah kenny promised it both during and after the election on his ucp platform during

00:20:39.560 the election there was you know pages devoted to uh the recall legislation now everything

00:20:45.200 involving recall is being scrubbed uh from the government ucp site so if you go looking for

00:20:51.660 their platform it's not there anymore well what we understand derrick from western standard

00:20:56.460 sources is the old the old tory guard uh within the ucp is uh dead set against this and they're

00:21:04.340 trying to make any sort of legislation if it does if and when it does come through to have such a

00:21:09.380 high threshold like like you would have to get 80 of all residents or something like that and

00:21:14.260 in a writing uh to make it go forward that it wouldn't just make any sense so that seems to

00:21:20.760 the fight in caucus at the moment is uh are they going to do it and how high are they going to make

00:21:25.320 the recall uh threshold but it's come to light again after all this uh canadian taxpayers uh

00:21:32.280 federation alberta had uh franco terrazzoni put out a release saying look this if kenny doesn't

00:21:37.480 want to judge these politicians then let albertans judge them uh because they would have something to

00:21:42.120 say about uh about the you know the holiday uh holiday horrors that the ucp is facing now

00:21:48.360 Yeah, so some tweets age better than others. Jason Kenney, I think during or right before

00:21:56.920 the 2019 provincial election, put up a tweet saying that we will give Albertans the right

00:22:06.000 to fire their MLAs if they lost the confidence of their constituents. Now that was working until

00:22:13.480 pretty recently I think but all of a sudden if you click on the link in that

00:22:19.000 tweet onto the party's website where the details of that recall platform

00:22:23.680 commitment are this is what you get you got a 404 error and it's got a I think

00:22:30.160 an amusing picture of Rachel Notley says 404 error oh no that link is as

00:22:34.900 broken as the NDP's carbon tax now that's got an extra layer of irony right

00:22:41.560 now I think do we have any sense that that's all I think you've already kind

00:22:47.560 of said the Tories probably have no choice politically but to go forward

00:22:51.040 with it but it appears that they're probably going to bring in like a recall

00:22:58.660 legislation late in their term before it can be used against them and they'll

00:23:02.820 probably set the threshold extremely high we could be wrong but this is what

00:23:06.220 people in the Tory caucus are telling us right now who are not happy about the

00:23:10.480 old the pc old guard uh getting away in the way of this platform commitment and this is

00:23:16.560 this is in general part of what kenny's problem has been talking to ucp supporters they're very

00:23:22.000 very frustrated very angry that the kenny that they were promised in the election and in the

00:23:28.240 campaign is not the kenny that has acted that way when he became premier uh he hasn't been very hard

00:23:36.400 on ottawa uh all the promises of the own provincial police force and uh own tax uh

00:23:44.000 system all kenny has done is set up panel after panel after panel uh to even do more studies on it

00:23:51.120 and kenny voters voted for him specifically because they wanted some action uh they wanted

00:23:58.800 kenny the action man and they got kenny the ditherer and i think that's a lot of why his

00:24:04.400 popularity is going down the toilet at the moment well uh let's talk about uh the political

00:24:10.000 consequences of this obviously uh it's still hot now it's questionable about if this is going to go

00:24:16.320 away or not uh i mean people who are angry right now are going to say no it's not going to go away

00:24:22.000 it's going to continue but i mean anger at anything eventually does go away uh even if

00:24:27.920 it's not been addressed uh i think kenny had uh two sorry three options uh he could do nothing

00:24:37.040 which is what he did do for uh this scandal until uh well until uh we got word last night from a

00:24:43.920 source that he was going to fire allard and he he did fire her this morning uh so he had the first

00:24:48.720 option which is nothing the second option was to offer up a token head or two uh that is what he

00:24:54.480 did do he offered up the heads of allard and huckabay and gave a very small slap on the wrist

00:24:59.360 to the other uh ucb snowbird mlas although apparently nothing to the press secretaries

00:25:04.560 that were found overseas um and then the third was the nuclear option which is to fire all of

00:25:10.720 them from the caucus uh and we've seen uh you know the nova scotia pc leader today said if uh he has

00:25:18.400 any Snowbird MLAs in his caucus, they will be kicked out. You're one and done. These are kind

00:25:24.720 of the three main options I think he has, and he's gone for the middle option. I don't think it's

00:25:30.560 going to be enough for people to say, okay, he's done right. It's over. Let's move on. But it's

00:25:37.680 not nothing. I mean, the firing minister is a big deal. And I can tell you, Jason Kitty does not like

00:25:43.560 admit he's wrong or to lose a battle and he I think he is admitting now he has

00:25:49.020 lost he's trying now to mitigate the damage he's trying to essentially save

00:25:52.620 the furniture at this point Dave the political fallout I think it's gonna be

00:25:57.720 quite different on the left the right and the center maybe let's move from

00:26:02.100 left to center to right and talk about the fallout what do you think what

00:26:06.440 effect do you think this is gonna have with support for the NDP or parties on

00:26:09.600 laughed well obviously this is a a godsend for ndp leader rachel notley she couldn't have asked

00:26:16.720 for a bigger more uh you know more you know angry scandal than what she's got here so

00:26:24.640 ndp have been tweeting out daily horror stories and i'm sure this will continue and i think it'll 0.63

00:26:29.760 even be ramped up because they are probably going to go with the angle of the the soft slap on the

00:26:36.560 wrist a couple of people lost their ledge job that as you say nobody cares about or couldn't name

00:26:41.920 anyways they want uh they they're going to push for the nuclear option and uh have them expelled

00:26:47.680 from caucus um you know and i i think that that is going to help the ndp because i think that's

00:26:54.560 what a lot of people wanted uh before kenny made the announcement today they wanted him to to do

00:27:00.800 the nuclear option uh and he hasn't done so i think that's going to disappoint the the right

00:27:06.880 and the center and and the ucp supporters and i think some of them may move to the left when they

00:27:13.200 say you know what rachel notley's got the right idea she should have done that and by the way

00:27:18.080 she's come out and said there have been no ndpmla's that left the province she was very clear on that

00:27:24.640 yeah that has allowed them to throw some stones uh because they didn't do it right away because

00:27:29.920 because they wanted to make sure they were not in a glass house on this one.

00:27:32.580 They were very cautious coming out of the gates. 0.99

00:27:36.560 They're like, oh, shit, what if we've got some? 0.99

00:27:38.700 We can get caught up in it, too. 1.00

00:27:40.620 Federally, you can't see...

00:27:42.800 Well, the three major parties federally,

00:27:46.320 the Liberals, the Tories, and the NDP have all had people.

00:27:50.840 As far as I know, there's been no discipline on the Tory side,

00:27:54.520 but there has been on the Liberal side and the NDP side,

00:27:58.480 Which just made it more uncomfortable for Jason Kenney that the bar for accountability for a Trudeau Liberal or a Jagmeet Singh New Democrat Socialist is higher than for an Alberta Tory.

00:28:14.020 Derek, when you see Liberals voluntarily stepping down and UCP guys in Alberta doing nothing but trying to hide, then yeah, that's a huge problem for UCP Party.

00:28:25.760 i think one reason he may have waited so long wasn't just that he thought it would blow over

00:28:30.600 but potentially because they still just didn't know how many were out i mean uh i mean if it

00:28:36.720 was just tracy allard and they were confident it was just tracy allard maybe she would have

00:28:41.080 been fired right away but they had no idea how many it was and if you fire one you have to fire

00:28:45.620 others uh so i think they would they wanted to have discipline come down all at once rather

00:28:50.220 than piecemeal because if you fired allard and then it came out nixon or fur or one of these

00:28:58.220 others we're doing it then you have to fire each and every single one of them and eventually you

00:29:02.460 get down to a minority government caucus um last i heard they haven't even been able to find uh

00:29:08.300 uh ford mcmurray mla yow he's in mexico somewhere but they haven't even been able to contact him to

00:29:15.020 to say get your ass home so i know tany personally uh he's a likable guy but he is in for a very bad

00:29:22.700 moment when he gets back to cell reception and turns on his phone uh that is going to be uh 0.98

00:29:28.940 that'll be a rough that'll be an unfortunate day yeah he's going to be going from about plus 30

00:29:35.980 minus 15 celsius when he lands in uh in fort max so talk about a chilly reception yeah indeed um

00:29:43.820 well let's talk more about uh political fallout on the right um the uh you know broadly speaking

00:29:51.900 not to overly simplify things but i think fairly break things down um uh you know peter mccaffrey

00:29:58.300 from the alberta institute i think put it really well there's roughly 35 percent of the left tribe

00:30:03.660 in alberta which identifies with the ndp that have been angry that lockdowns aren't hard enough they

00:30:09.340 they weren't fast enough, that they want more draconian measures. You have 35% roughly of

00:30:16.540 Albertans who are from the old Wild Rose tribe who believe that the lockdown and the restrictions

00:30:23.200 have already been too draconian, too authoritarian, that the government is just caving to political

00:30:28.500 pressure, and they've already not been happy. And then you've got roughly 30% of the, let's call it

00:30:33.440 a center or progressive conservative tribe. And they kind of, more or less, they generally thought

00:30:41.180 Kenny has made the best of a bunch of bad options. All three of these tribes are very, very pissed 0.96

00:30:47.860 off right now. And the one that's very dangerous is that right Wildrose populist tribe. You know,

00:30:55.440 they're now able to say, I think very correctly, this was already too far. We don't think you even

00:31:02.400 believed it when you did it, but then you didn't even abide by it yourself, you need to end the

00:31:06.640 lockdown now. And cabinet renewal of the lockdown is coming up in just a few days. I cannot see how

00:31:15.300 the government has the political capital right now to renew the lockdown. If they renew the

00:31:20.760 lockdown, the friggin' legislature will get burned down. People are going to say, you have no moral 0.97

00:31:26.400 right to lock us down when you're doing this. You may have cut off the head of one minister,

00:31:30.680 but what about the other uh five or six mlas and the other staffers who have had just a tiny slap

00:31:36.520 on the wrist if i have uh dinner with my christmas dinner with my family i get cops at my door and i

00:31:41.960 could get arrested um so i think i think this is the end of the lockdown i cannot see how they have

00:31:48.680 the political capital to renew this now oh yeah i think the key is going to be the number of reported

00:31:53.880 cases of covet that we're having over the next couple days today should be a very very high

00:31:59.160 number because we didn't get reporting or accurate reporting over the weekend you look at ontario

00:32:05.240 three thousand plus cases today it's out of control the virus is out of control in ontario

00:32:11.400 and they're bringing in even harsher lockdowns uh scotland back in lockdown as of tonight great

00:32:17.160 britain back in lockdown as of tonight so if these numbers continue to rise in in uh in alberta and

00:32:25.160 And, you know, I tend to agree with you.

00:32:27.020 I can't see Kenny extending the lockdown.

00:32:29.860 Then is he going to lift it when the pandemic is still raging?

00:32:35.500 And I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

00:32:38.460 Well, he's going to have a hard time from either angle.

00:32:41.740 If he does end the lockdown, because he doesn't have a political capital for it,

00:32:46.640 the NDP, from their perspective, will be able to say,

00:32:49.640 you're not following the science, you're not following the advice of Henshaw.

00:32:54.180 you're ending the lockdown, which is necessary because of your political scandal. So your

00:32:59.780 political scandal is now getting in the way of public health. That's what the left is going to

00:33:03.180 say. And from their perspective, they're going to have a real argument to make about that. That's a

00:33:08.120 fair point from their perspective. But from the other perspective, much more dangerous, I think,

00:33:14.260 politically for Kenny, is he has no way of extending this lockdown further after what has

00:33:21.700 just happened. I mean, if you think, you know, a couple of hundred freedom marchers in downtown

00:33:27.300 Calgary, Edmonton, and Red Deer are a problem now, you just try extending this lockdown when

00:33:32.760 we've just come through a scandal like this, or we're still in the middle of a scandal like this.

00:33:37.260 I think he's between a real rock and a hard place here. Well, Wild Rose leader, Paul Hinman,

00:33:42.960 in an exclusive column today that's on the Western Standard website at the moment, Derek,

00:33:47.940 he calls on Kenny to immediately lift the lockdown.

00:33:52.040 And he's been opposed to it since day one.

00:33:56.580 And you're right.

00:33:57.480 If Kenny does continue it, then he's looking at leaking support

00:34:02.060 from that hardcore Wild Rose grouping that you've talked about

00:34:05.420 into the hands of the Wild Rose Independence Party.

00:34:09.900 And, yeah, it's, like I said, as you've said,

00:34:13.580 rocking a hard place for Premier Kenny, that's for sure.

00:34:16.660 Indeed.

00:34:17.220 So a reminder here, we want to know what Albertans are thinking about this. I got a pretty good idea, but it's one thing to watch the comments on this broadcast or comments on Facebook or Twitter, social media.

00:34:31.220 While we appreciate it, it is not a representative sample, a scientific sample of what people at large think. We want to get a really good idea of people who are not necessarily as engaged in current issues as all of our viewers might be right now.

00:34:44.220 as might be right now. So we're going to commission a professional independent poll on this and we

00:34:49.960 need people to donate to do it. Remember, we don't take a penny from the federal government's media

00:34:54.880 bailout. We are funded completely by, as a private business, by advertisers and by voluntary members

00:35:01.520 like you. If you want to contribute, go to Western Standard Online, click on membership and become a

00:35:06.920 member. Or if you're already a member, please go westerncenteredonline.com slash donate dash poll

00:35:13.100 slash and there you can make a donation to help us commission the poll we want

00:35:18.200 to get it out in the field tonight we want to know what people are thinking

00:35:20.780 right now do they think that there needs to be more resignations here do people

00:35:27.260 think that we need recall legislation do people think we need to end the lockdowns

00:35:31.520 does the government have the moral authority to continue lockdowns and we

00:35:35.180 want to see what the political fallout has been in terms of how people actually

00:35:38.300 intend to vote are people just angry right now but come election time gonna

00:35:42.080 say well i guess that's the we have to pick the lesser of evils or are people going to do something

00:35:48.480 different we want to know so if uh you know uh we understand a lot of people are out of work right

00:35:53.680 now but if you are able to afford it please go to the website become a member or donate to help us

00:35:59.120 get this poll done um god we just got comments pulling in here we can hardly uh stay on top of

00:36:07.200 it but we're we're seeing a hell of a lot just a reminder to folks uh we will only display your

00:36:12.560 comments if they're relatively short uh here i'll find an example of one we cannot display here see

00:36:19.680 if it looks like we're drowning in comments we don't show comments like that it's not because

00:36:24.400 of the content of what you're saying it's just because it's too big keep it nice and short and

00:36:29.360 then we can put her up on the screen uh also without swear words too would be nice yeah we've 0.98

00:36:35.760 got one the very latest comment right now sorry we can't show uh we'll allow shit shit's allowed 0.99

00:36:43.520 ass asshat um but uh we're gonna draw the line somewhere unless you're particularly funny if 0.99

00:36:51.440 you're if you've got a cuss in it and you're particularly funny and if dave and i have been 0.98

00:36:56.720 drinking maybe maybe we'll put you up but uh so just just be aware there's some ground rules uh

00:37:06.480 dave anything else before we wrap up i'd like to ask you a favor if you could derek could you turn

00:37:11.120 off the news taps for just like an hour or so this afternoon so we can all watch canada russia

00:37:16.320 in the junior year oh uh you got to take that up with the government uh god it has been exhausting

00:37:22.880 um i haven't had much of a weekend i'm not sad about it because our our readership numbers are

00:37:28.160 off the chart uh you know some of our viewers might know last month we had 1.3 million readers

00:37:36.000 on the western standard that makes us one of the biggest news websites in all canada not just the

00:37:41.280 west but on a national stage uh it's absolutely phenomenal and it's thanks to our members who

00:37:47.360 are contributing to help us do this without government bailouts and to our great journalists

00:37:51.440 and columnists uh like dave who is just an absolute machine uh you were working at midnight

00:37:57.280 last night uh i think the last one of the day was the um where you had the inside scoop on

00:38:04.180 allard resigning the western standard was the only source in canada that was able to confirm

00:38:08.900 uh that she was expected to resign today and that turned out to be true uh although between you and

00:38:13.960 me dave um even if she didn't uh even if it turned out not to be true i think it was inevitable

00:38:18.180 that our story would eventually be right so even even if our source was bad we

00:38:23.460 would the story would probably still be correct so like we could have like a

00:38:29.220 broken clock you only have to be right twice a day right indeed indeed all right

00:38:34.680 well thank you very much Dave and thank you all our viewers who have joined us

00:38:38.820 today to our members thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts for

00:38:42.660 contributing to us bailout free media and all of you who enjoy the work of the

00:38:47.380 Western Standard who enjoy having an independent Western media outlet that refuses to accept the

00:38:53.060 Trudeau government's media bailout dollars, please become a Western Standard member. We can only do

00:38:58.440 this with your support. We can continue to grow our operations, hold governments to account,

00:39:03.020 and provide important stories to Westerners. Go to westernstandardonline.com, click on membership

00:39:09.180 for just a couple bucks a month. You can ensure that you've got a Western media outlet that's

00:39:14.620 on your side. Thank you all very much for joining us today. God bless. Enjoy the end of your holidays.

00:39:44.620 You

Western Standard - January 05, 2021

BREAKING： Kenney sacks Allard, slap on the wrist for other snowbird MLAs. Will it be enough？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript