Western Standard - March 23, 2022


BREAKING： UCP changes Kenney’s leadership vote.


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Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

185.38261

Word count

3,327

Sentence count

223

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

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Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss the UCP's decision to switch to a mail-in ballot voting system for their SGM. What does this mean for the future of the SGM and what will happen to the $99 registration fee?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So it looks like they have switched. They have switched now. They're going to be moving to a
00:00:04.840 mail-in ballot system. So SGM is actually going to change now. It's not going to be an in-person
00:00:10.400 system or an in-person meeting anymore. It's going to be a virtual meeting at this point.
00:00:16.640 And it looks like the UCP board president basically put out a letter saying that to all
00:00:23.160 members and registrants for the special general meeting that the board has made the decision
00:00:28.360 to make this switch because thousands were requesting to do so, to make it easier for
00:00:36.640 grassroots members to sort of eliminate the need for paying that registration fee, eliminate the
00:00:43.700 need for people to travel and have to be in-person in Red Deer because membership has grown. Actually,
00:00:50.020 it's more than doubled heading up to this SGM. They have 15,000 registered to participate in the
00:00:58.180 leadership review and vote. And so by the sounds of it, it was just going to be easier.
00:01:06.820 And that's the basis behind the decision to switch to this mail-in ballot.
00:01:12.860 So I saw something that, as you said, with the registration fees, I saw it's been breaking so
00:01:18.160 fast. It was hard to confirm, but they were going to offer to refund the $99 that everybody else had
00:01:24.380 paid already to date for a registration to get on to the, the, uh, the review.
00:01:30.740 Uh, well, I would have to assume by seeing some of the statements that I'm seeing that that will be
00:01:36.800 the case, uh, especially considering sort of the verbiage around this decision is to eliminate people
00:01:43.340 having to pay that registration fee. So my guess is that anyone who has paid it is going to be refunded.
00:01:49.460 Uh, I, I don't have that specific statement in front of me, but, um, but, uh, with the wording
00:01:56.000 of the reasoning behind this, that would make sense that that is what the plan to do is, especially
00:02:00.500 considering the meeting is now not going to be held, uh, in the form that it was going to be with
00:02:05.480 people traveling and, and needing to, to, you know, reserve that space. Uh, and I was understanding
00:02:12.520 that, uh, and that was the explanation for the registration fee was to handle some of the hard costs.
00:02:18.200 So I think moving this to, uh, an online SGM, uh, and then of course, moving it to a mail-in ballot
00:02:26.980 system that would likely do away with the majority of those hard costs.
00:02:32.140 Yeah. Well, and as I was saying just before, uh, when the show started, I've dealt with a mail-in
00:02:37.460 ballot sort of, uh, a system before for a leadership race, and there's going to be a massive amount of
00:02:43.880 hard costs coming with that. Anyways, the logistics of it huge, especially with only now a couple of
00:02:49.400 weeks to pull it off. Is there been any discussion of changing the timeline then? Uh, I haven't seen
00:02:55.540 anything yet. Uh, wait a minute. It looks, yeah, it looks like they have updated the current membership
00:03:00.700 deadline to, uh, no, let's see here. Sorry. No, I don't have information to answer that quite yet.
00:03:07.620 Um, uh, one of the things I will mention though, is that, uh, quite a few members were insistent,
00:03:15.780 uh, and in fact demanding that it remain this in-person, um, uh, gathering to, to do the vote
00:03:23.900 and hold the vote. So, so it sounds like the UCP board has sort of ignored many of those requests
00:03:31.400 and demands by, uh, by members to do this. So, um, um, they've decided to go to this, uh, voting system
00:03:39.380 so that, uh, it says here so that all current members, uh, can participate. Uh, they don't have
00:03:45.400 to do the travel. Um, and, you know, it also says here that they are going to hire, uh, a national
00:03:53.700 auditing firm that's going to be brought in and retained to oversee the mail-in vote. So,
00:04:00.960 uh, don't know anything about that firm or whether that's going to be an issue for many of these,
00:04:07.180 uh, members, uh, you know, I, uh, like you said, it is still sort of this ongoing information coming in.
00:04:14.840 All right. Well, thank you for the update as this breaks and unfolds because it's really,
00:04:19.780 this is a big, big deal. And I don't think enough people quite realize what's going on.
00:04:25.300 Debacle is the best word I can give it. And I just, wow, this is something else.
00:04:29.780 Well, and I think too, uh, when I was reading some of the information on the website for the,
00:04:36.640 uh, special general meeting, they were talking about how, uh, looked like, um, you know, um,
00:04:42.420 constituency members were going to be overseeing the counting of ballots, uh, you know, members,
00:04:48.580 uh, presidents of, of the, uh, members associations and whatnot. So, so now it being sort of handed off
00:04:55.700 again to this, uh, this separate auditing firm, again, I think is going to raise concern, uh, for,
00:05:04.060 uh, you know, the, the people that really wanted to, uh, oversee and, and have, uh, an invested
00:05:10.340 interest in, in participating in that, uh, in that process of, of counting the votes. So,
00:05:15.400 uh, we'll see what, uh, how they maybe look to, to, uh, line up that, uh, that auditing firm and allow
00:05:26.240 for others to, to participate and oversee. Uh, so we'll have to, um, you know, obviously have some
00:05:31.840 updates coming once we get more information. Great. Well, thanks for the updates, Melanie. And,
00:05:37.380 uh, I know you'll, you'll keep on it and we'll post anything new on the, the Western Standard
00:05:41.140 online, of course, as soon as it comes up. You bet. All right. I'll see you after the show.
00:05:47.440 So, yeah, this is still breaking, unfolding questions. You know, I mean, you can tell
00:05:51.300 it's scrambled. Like this is a government, this is a party, I should say. It's not even so much
00:05:56.260 the government. That's in complete disarray. They, they, they, they are in disarray. This release
00:06:02.720 came out suddenly this morning. We've been waiting on results from this, this board meeting for two days
00:06:07.560 already. Uh, it's not terribly detailed. There's a lot of questions in the air about it. And let's
00:06:13.080 not beat around the bush. The bottom line is they're trying to save Kenny's ass. I, I, I, I mean,
00:06:18.740 I've been trying to be, to be somewhat balanced with this thing. And I, I've been trying to get
00:06:24.280 pro Kenny ML MPs to come on or MLAs, I should say. And I've had difficulty getting them to come on the
00:06:28.820 show because I want to show some things, but there's no other reason for this manipulation and pissing 0.68
00:06:33.740 around. You know, ironically, originally when the constituency associations who were demanding this
00:06:39.520 review, the ones who signed on, I believe it was 23 or 24 of them, um, they wanted to have some sort
00:06:46.480 of mail-in so everybody could participate. And it was through the wrangling of the party executive on
00:06:52.320 behalf of the premier that they said, no, we're going to hold it at a special meeting in Red Deer where
00:06:57.260 people have to pay a big fee and go in person because they figured the reason they did that was
00:07:02.120 because they figured that we'll keep the numbers low enough that we can manage to make sure we can
00:07:06.820 stack a good enough turnout and win this thing decisively. They didn't count on 15,000 people
00:07:12.220 registering. No, absolutely not. But now to turn around and change it at this point to a mail-in system
00:07:19.800 is a recipe for catastrophe. As I said earlier, Hey, they raised one and a half million bucks. Then
00:07:28.520 that means they got one and a half million bucks in the bank from those registrations.
00:07:32.940 You can book hotels all over the province to get people to come out and vote in person. Cause I can
00:07:39.180 understand. Yeah. You can't get 15,000 people in and out of a Red Deer location in six hours,
00:07:45.520 not an hotel like that, but you've got the money now and the resources and the time to set it up in a
00:07:51.840 number of places. So those members who registered can come out and cast their ballot in those multiple
00:07:55.660 locations. The problem they have is that they know they do internals. Governments pull, pull, 0.70
00:08:01.040 pull parties, pull, pull, pull. They've checked and they know that if it's those 15,000, Kenny's
00:08:07.220 going to lose. They've got to change the numbers. They've got to bring a new pool of available voters
00:08:12.560 to be able to come in and vote in this race. And by doing that, by getting anybody who now just has a
00:08:18.020 $10 membership, able to vote totally changes the entire dynamic on who is going to come out and vote in this
00:08:26.380 race. Now the cutoff, I saw Don mentioning that earlier. I believe the cutoff is still going to be
00:08:34.060 the same membership cutoff that it was. So like last weekend at the end of the week. So you won't be able
00:08:40.480 to spend 10 bucks next week or even today and vote in this thing. You already have to have a membership,
00:08:44.360 but who knows? They're changing the rules as they go at this point. So it wouldn't shock me if they
00:08:49.100 change that there. But this is a real problem. As Melanie was saying, there's going to be an
00:08:53.100 independent firm auditing it. When I was talking before, when we did this with the Wildrose Party,
00:08:59.300 with the leadership race, we used Myers-Norris Penny, I believe. You get an outside firm,
00:09:04.560 and they were very diligent. Some people say we'd have to audit them as well. With these large firms,
00:09:09.220 they have a reputation to protect. They will make sure it's okay. As Melanie was talking about too,
00:09:15.760 you know, the old system would have had scrutineers there in person to watch the vote counting. And
00:09:19.260 you'll still have to. And I don't know how they're going to do this in two weeks. I don't. The
00:09:24.660 logistics, when we did it with, as I said, I think it was 13,000 votes. And it was bins and bins and
00:09:30.200 bins of sealed envelopes that were coming in that we had to keep in a secure location. They all had to
00:09:35.300 have individual numbering on, of course, each ballot so we could track and make sure.
00:09:40.080 And we still had issues. One of the campaigns had bought a bunch of memberships on behalf of other
00:09:45.260 people and were trying to vote on their behalf and things like that. Because when you have mail-in,
00:09:49.840 you can't assure the person on the other end of that envelope really is the person who's supposed
00:09:53.180 to vote. It's difficult to say the least. And nobody trusts anybody. It's not like you can demand
00:09:59.360 identification. Look what happened in the leadership race when they went through all that crap before too
00:10:03.600 with the UCP. This is a mess. This is a real mess and it's only going to get worse. So now not only
00:10:12.420 we're looking at 15,000 people were ready to commit $100 to vote into this thing. I don't know how many
00:10:17.540 members the party has with that $10 a head rate now, but you've got a much larger number now.
00:10:24.120 So what are we going to look at? 20,000 ballots getting mailed in and nobody's going to trust it.
00:10:30.080 Let's face it. Nobody is going to trust it. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If Kenny comes
00:10:38.160 in with 90% support, people won't believe it. If he comes in with 51% support, he better bloody resign
00:10:44.360 because the party is going to rip in half. And I think it's going to anyway now. If Kenny maintains
00:10:49.480 the leadership of this party, UCP, after this mess, there's going to be a mass floor crossing.
00:10:56.480 There's my big prediction right now. I'm not going to try and make predictions on what number it's
00:11:02.200 going to be, whether it's going to be 55% or 51% or 80%. What I am going to say is a number of MLAs
00:11:10.620 are going to leave that party. They're going to cross the floor. They are going to say,
00:11:14.900 we cannot take part in this any longer. And you know what? You only need four members to be sitting
00:11:19.300 in that legislature and you have a registered party. And we will now have, again, as we saw some years ago,
00:11:26.040 two conservative parties with sizable caucuses sitting within the legislature. And guess
00:11:31.280 what happened the last time that happened? We got four years of Notley, Premier Notley for our
00:11:36.480 troubles. This political game playing at the expense of Albertans has to stop. It sounds like Melanie
00:11:45.600 might have another update or just came in for a message there just to say, confirm the members are
00:11:49.980 going to get a refund where they can opt to make their registration fee a donation. Okay. Thanks for
00:11:55.080 that update, Melanie. And so yes, you got to think of the logistics of that. Cause I think
00:12:00.840 especially the people who bought the, put the a hundred dollars in to be delegates in this thing
00:12:05.360 don't want to donate to the party right now. They aren't bloody happy. So they're going to be asking
00:12:10.980 for a refund. And that's a whole other nightmare for the party to deal with. Now, think of the
00:12:17.540 accounting, you got to find the money in, you've got to get it back to people. Was it online transfers?
00:12:21.640 Was it checks? Was it credit cards? What a frigging mess. And again, it's, you want transparency?
00:12:30.080 You can see right through what they're doing. They're trying to save Kenny's hide. You know,
00:12:37.800 I'm just tired of the political game playing. I mean, this is why I'm actually as grumpy as I am,
00:12:44.820 and I'm triggered all the time and everything. I'm happy at the Western standard because I can write
00:12:48.440 on these things. I can look into these things. I can discuss these things. I'm an opinion person.
00:12:53.260 I can put my opinion out on it. I'm not inside the parties anymore. And I don't want to be,
00:12:58.220 I can't stand. I mean, most of the people in political parties, I'll say with decades of
00:13:02.760 experience and working within them are good principled people. They really are trying to
00:13:07.820 make things better. They want to, that's their goal, but there's always a pack of weasels within them
00:13:13.540 always. And there's always, they feel that every rule needs to be bent and they feel that it doesn't
00:13:18.520 matter. Winning is everything. Principle doesn't matter. Public support doesn't matter. Just as
00:13:25.200 long as you win, win, win at all costs. And we're seeing that kind of play going on right now.
00:13:30.980 We're seeing it with a stacked party executive. We're seeing it with a review that was forced
00:13:35.800 like pulling teeth. And they still managed to make their own rules to benefit their own butts with the 0.98
00:13:39.880 review. And when it looked like the review was going to turn against them, they changed the bloody
00:13:43.400 rules. It stinks. And it's an embarrassment. It really is. You know, I was so optimistic when
00:13:50.320 Jason Kenney came in. I was supportive and I was happy to see the merger of the UCP, you know,
00:13:57.100 or the creation of the UCP, because I was terrified of four more years in Notley. And I had enjoyed,
00:14:03.460 I thought Kenney was a fantastic member of parliament. I thought his organization was incredible as he
00:14:08.000 brought those parties together. And all the way up until they won the election. You know, it wasn't,
00:14:13.320 I was pretty supportive and happy until about a year after they got in and realized that nothing's
00:14:18.760 getting done. You know, realizing that the fair deal panel was a bait and switch plan. And realizing
00:14:25.720 that regional MLAs really weren't taken seriously because you had a strong central core of leadership
00:14:31.460 leadership that wasn't listening to them. And all we'd ended up with was a government less bad
00:14:38.160 than the NDP, but it wasn't a good one. And my optimism was, it was fading. And now I'm watching
00:14:44.640 these shenanigans going on, these death throes of a small group of people with a lot of control
00:14:53.020 trying to maintain power in a party. And I'm sorry, I do not see how this party is going to stay
00:15:00.980 together after this review, unless the leader is gone. I just don't see it. Maybe I, you know,
00:15:06.740 I've been wrong before I can be proven wrong, but this is, is just a travesty. You can't change the
00:15:13.240 rules on something like this, this close. I mean, we're not talking months in advance, guys. This is
00:15:16.940 just a couple of weeks away. It's desperation. I don't know if this will save them. I mean, one of
00:15:24.440 Premier Kennedy's stronger areas. And again, it was because of his good, hard work. As an immigration
00:15:29.180 minister, he was very popular with new Canadian communities. He did great outreach. He was on the
00:15:34.360 ground with them. He spoke to their concerns. And that means he's got very strong support in high
00:15:39.340 immigration communities, such as Northeast Calgary and areas like that. And I know some of the talk
00:15:44.560 was that they want to even set up a balloting center to allow people up there to vote. And you
00:15:49.940 knew that was just, of course, them wanting to make sure to have it as convenient as possible for the
00:15:54.320 more likely Kennedy supporters to get out and vote. Now, though, with mail-in ballots, boy, who are they
00:16:01.700 going to be reaching out to? How are they going to be targeting it? How do we believe every person
00:16:05.420 who's mailing in that ballot really is the right person on the other end of the ballot? I've talked
00:16:10.420 about this before, too, when people talk about having like online voting and, you know, all these
00:16:16.760 different ways. Mail-in, again, I'm very sour on just having endured it once with the Wildrose
00:16:20.800 party leadership in the past. You can't. You can't beat on an important election, whether it's a
00:16:27.580 general election, whether it's a leadership vote or a review like this. You can't beat making a person
00:16:32.080 come in person, show a piece of identification, and cast a paper ballot, which would be a record
00:16:38.380 of how they voted. Old-fashioned, but it's the way it works best. It's foolproof. You have
00:16:45.660 scrutineers. You count those ballots. It takes a while. That's the way it goes. It could be a bit
00:16:50.520 expensive, but that's the safest way. Online voting? Absolutely not. There's just no way to trust that
00:16:56.460 crap anymore. There is not. We know bloody well there's not. And mail-in ballots, even if, you know,
00:17:03.060 and again, I trust these auditors. I trust the count. I think the count will be fine. But boy,
00:17:07.940 you better watch those boxes and make sure none disappear or anything like that. We'll see how they
00:17:11.700 set all that up. But they can't tell who was on the other end of that letter. And again, how are you
00:17:18.400 going to get those ballots in? This is two weeks away. Have you guys even got time to print these
00:17:23.180 and get them out to the members who qualify to vote? So you've got to get all these ballots out
00:17:29.000 to people, and they've got to get them all back in by April 9th? Right. Right. That isn't going to
00:17:38.980 happen. And I think also, though, maybe they're hoping they'll catch people flat-footed who were
00:17:43.200 organizing on the side to try and replace the premier. I'm just, I can't help but show that
00:17:50.800 I'm very, very concerned and upset with this. I think that's pretty clear at this point.