Vitor Marciano is a strategist who's been involved in a lot of federal and provincial campaigns over the years, particularly in conservative circles. He talks about the Alberta election, David Johnston's appointment of a special rapporteur to investigate the ongoing Chinese Communist Party interference scandal, and much, much more.
00:00:30.000Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show. I am Corey Morgan. This is my weekly playground to get out there to rant, rave, talk about federal issues, provincial issues, mostly political stuff, though I bounce around and kind of cover whatever's on my mind at any given time or any given week.
00:00:47.300Lots to cover this week as usual. For those who are joining us live today, be sure to use that comment scroll. I like it. I like seeing the interaction. I like seeing you guys chat with each other, throw questions my way, my guests' way.
00:01:00.000uh i see them all i don't necessarily read them all out or put them to the guests but
00:01:04.420i really like seeing it used used but again keep things civil and folks if you're watching us on
00:01:10.340the cowboy network or rfd tv and some of those things i'm afraid uh yeah the comments won't
00:01:16.440work there but i will reference them when they come up so yes today i'm gonna have a guest on
00:01:20.780a little later vitor marciano he's a strategist he's been involved in a lot of federal and
00:01:26.240provincial campaigns over the years, particularly in conservative circles. We're going to get a bit
00:01:31.420of a rundown on everything that's gone on on the Alberta election this time around. Boy, it's been
00:01:35.080a long three and a half weeks so far. Only a few days left, and Alberta's going to have,
00:01:41.040well, either a UCP government again or an NDP government again. There's no third party,
00:01:45.580really, to speak of in this one. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about that as well.
00:01:49.240On the federal front, boy, you know, we kind of expected it, but still, it's just maddening when
00:01:53.880we see it. So, I mean, let's talk about that with this special
00:01:57.860rapporteur. Some people were kind of surprised with the appointment
00:02:01.980of David Johnston as the special rapporteur to investigate the ongoing
00:02:06.140and its ongoing Chinese Communist Party interference scandal.
00:02:09.920I mean, the boldness of Trudeau in appointing somebody who's clearly
00:02:13.480personally compromised as Johnson to the position caught even the most cynical
00:02:17.700of people off guard. It wasn't surprising, I guess, that Trudeau would appoint a close friend to the
00:02:21.860position, but still it was unexpected to see a statesman as experienced as Johnston jumping
00:02:27.940into such a clear conflict of interest. I mean, Johnston's been more of an uncle-type figure for
00:02:33.300Trudeau than a political colleague, and he's indicated as much in multiple interviews where
00:02:37.140he waxes on about his fond family ski trips with their Trudeau family and other gatherings. And
00:02:43.680of course, most damning of all, Johnston was a board member with the Trudeau Foundation,
00:02:47.680which has been embroiled in this whole mess, it seems, every time something comes up with
00:02:51.460the CCP interference. Look at this, like former Trudeau Foundation head Morris Rosenberg. He was
00:02:57.500tasked with checking for election interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, and unsurprisingly,
00:03:03.320Rosenberg found no issues. Though we know CSIS had been raising flags about Chinese Communist
00:03:09.100Party interference in those elections, somehow Rosenberg didn't see it. Of course, Rosenberg
00:03:12.860was also the head of the Trudeau Foundation when it was happily receiving donations from Beijing.
00:03:17.960I guess perhaps signing checks can cause selective hearing or seeing.
00:03:23.720Still, one would have hoped that Johnson could retain a sense of principle.
00:03:27.420Perhaps he'd keep his name in the clear and call for an independent public inquiry into the CCP election interference scandals.
00:03:32.920Maybe he would have said, well, that's just my job, whether I'm a tight buddy with the Trudeau family or not.
00:03:38.140I mean, come on. We've seen sitting MPs with their family in Hong Kong being threatened by the CCP.
00:03:43.700We have Chinese police stations set up in Canada.
00:03:47.260You know, Communist Party police stations
00:03:48.820intimidating Canadian citizens over here.0.51
00:03:50.820Who could possibly look at all that evidence
00:06:02.120How much longer can he keep propping up this corrupted mess?
00:06:05.460Does he really think Trudeau would go to the polls rather than face an independent inquiry on the issue?
00:06:10.480I mean, if he pushed it, if Singh pushed it, and Trudeau made it a confidence vote, I just doubt it.
00:06:14.940I mean, if Trudeau went to the polls on that, it would be political suicide.
00:06:17.080I can't think of a worse political campaign platform than, I feel so strongly that the interference should not be investigated that I've decided to call an early election.
00:06:25.460That would be the end of Trudeau, finally.
00:06:27.920Singh's NDP-based, they must be tired of his constant capitulation to Trudeau.
00:06:31.380I mean, cooperative agreements are one thing, but propping up a government with strong whiffs of corruption emanating from it is another.
00:06:37.520This sort of cover-up is an issue so serious it never should have happened with a majority government, never mind a minority one.
00:06:44.460If Singh doesn't step up to do his job and force an independent inquiry, his character is clearly as corrupted as Trudeau's is.
00:06:50.440Enough is enough, Jagmeet. Get off your butt, quit being the yappy, toothless chihuahua, and actually do your job.1.00
00:06:58.160Well, that's what's got me going on that today, guys.
00:07:26.000good to see you with an election haircut getting ready for the big day i'm good for another few
00:07:30.720months now hey so i need to know am i going to get some fresh honey this year or what we'll see
00:07:36.100that's up to that bloody bear but i tell you these are really good bees i inspected them last weekend
00:07:40.060and they're settling in really well i'm really happy with them so uh and i put a lot of electric
00:07:44.340fencing up so i'll give it good odds that you're going to get some honey this year awesome be
00:07:48.400looking forward to it uh yeah we've had to have a busy morning already election wise uh ucp leader
00:07:54.840Danielle Smith, just wrapped up a press conference about 15 minutes ago where she said, basically, read my lips, no new taxes.
00:08:03.520She said her first job, if she gets elected, is to put in Bill 1, the Taxpayer Protection Act, which would prevent future tax increases without a referendum.
00:08:15.900Interesting story on the NDP candidate in Airdrie.
00:08:20.520It turns out he actually argued in front of the Supreme Court of Canada against the, or for, excuse me, for, in support of the No More Pipelines Act.
00:08:31.500So that probably isn't sitting well to many of his potential constituents.
00:08:39.520The big fireworks controversy in Calgary, Corey, which I think you basically broke the story with a column.
00:08:49.080People are very angry. More than 10,000 people have now signed a petition demanding that the fireworks be returned.
00:08:57.740They were cancelled as part of Truth and Reconciliation.
00:09:01.980And Toronto has cancelled their fireworks in front of Nathan Phillips Square.
00:09:06.680So that seems to be the thing to do for Canada Day across the country this year.
00:09:11.120And we've got two men way up in northern Alberta charged with burning down a historic Catholic church this week, a church built in 1901 near high level, I believe it is, burnt to the ground, and they've been charged.
00:09:29.560And we've got our real estate expert, Mike Thomas, with a column on the Bank of Canada.
00:09:35.780You know, the story being, is it going to increase rates again in its next June update or keep them the same?
00:09:42.700So a really busy morning, Corey, and I'm sure it's going to keep going because the news never stops.
00:09:48.960It certainly doesn't, especially during election times.
00:09:51.300Well, I'll let you get back at it, Dave, and thanks for the update.
00:14:17.440predominantly in conservative circles.
00:14:19.120And we just want to get a rundown of this whole provincial campaign now that we're in week three.
00:14:23.440So hi there, Vitor. Thanks for joining us today.
00:14:27.080Thank you for having me, Corey. It's my pleasure to be here.
00:14:30.000Yeah. So, I mean, I know at least it's probably for you and definitely for me.
00:14:33.980I'm really looking forward to a few days from now because this campaign has already just been so exhausting.
00:14:41.280These things are long. I mean, it's, you know, at least it's a provincial one.
00:14:44.780it's only 28 days, not the federal 35 day one. I have to admit, I've been going hard at it since
00:14:50.080a little bit before day one. And I'm a little fatigued, but also a little excited about the
00:14:56.000opportunities. Well, that's true. I mean, that's kind of what, you know, politicals live for.
00:14:59.660This is like the Super Bowl when you're getting to it. You've been prepping and prepping for a
00:15:02.460long time. And this is the big culmination. So there's a lot of excitement going in at this
00:15:06.460point. So something that's been, is it a perception thing or not? I guess you could say a lot of
00:15:11.760people, and including myself, kind of got a feel that this one was more vitriolic than usual,
00:15:16.900a little more personal than usual. But I mean, we always say that every election. Is it a perception
00:15:20.960or is it really getting worse every time? Oh, no, it's pretty intense. The partisans on both
00:15:28.660sides are pretty ramped up. They view the stakes as pretty high. And so there's, you know, if you're
00:15:35.540a left-wing activist, it's something you've been working on for four years and they're really lit
00:15:40.120up and ready to go um there's an awful lot of people sort of who are new to politics uh uh who
00:15:46.500are voting ucp who are kind of new to the entire process and they got lit up and worked up uh by
00:15:52.160the pandemic so they're really keen to go um there's been you know there's been fewer voices
00:15:58.800in the middle the other thing that's happened in alberta is that literally you know we've become
00:16:02.900a two-party state so there isn't a middle party that's sitting in the middle shooting at both
00:16:07.700sides so the uh the edges become a little bit more frayed yeah and i wanted to get to that you know
00:16:14.080this is the first time in a long long time we've really actually had a a two-party election there's
00:16:19.500always been a third party maybe never a you know rarely a contender for winning the election but
00:16:23.600definitely a contender for a number of seats and and possibly determining uh the outcome if only
00:16:28.180as a spoiler and this time there's just two so i mean people talk about the polarity but when you
00:16:32.740only have two large options uh polarity is inevitable almost it really is and frankly the
00:16:38.400the liberal party of alberta has ceased to exist as a meaningful entity the alberta party remains
00:16:43.240some sort of weird debating society that can't find candidates um you know uh the the the fringe
00:16:50.560parties have become fringier and fringier and fringier and now you know fight each other out
00:16:55.280for weird things like there's uh uh there's so many of them and it's like they can't they can't
00:17:03.220assemble enough people to to to get along with each other let alone be a legitimate force in
00:17:08.700the election so basically it is the center right party and the center left party and uh as these
00:17:17.080things play out uh you know the activists are always on the left and the right rather than the
00:17:22.000center part of those two parties so it's been it's been a pretty intense campaign yeah so something
00:17:27.420i kind of worry about i guess is a consequence and there's nothing that parties connectives can
00:17:31.680kind of do about it but what i see growing when i talked to non-political people and it's something
00:17:35.840i really hate to hear from apathy i don't like hearing from people in general but what i'm
00:17:39.780hearing now is cynicism and boy that's a dangerous attitude to to see growing it's not good for any
00:17:44.740of us when when people become sour on the entire process like this i hope we don't cause more
00:17:49.500damage than good in this election? Listen, I mean, this election is going to be what it's going to
00:17:53.620be. There is some value to after the election, you know, the side that wins. And I honestly
00:18:02.520believe it's going to be our side. We have to do a little bit of reaching out. You know, there are
00:18:07.040people on the center left who aren't too far from the people who are on the center part of the
00:18:10.840center right. And we have to be a government for all Albertans. You know, in the long run,
00:18:17.920There's no value in antagonizing your opponents to the level that that they'll walk across broken glass to fight you.
00:18:26.080And so these are the things that that, you know, that will be part of what Premier Daniel Smith will have to do starting, you know, May 31st or May 30th.
00:18:35.920Yeah, and the days are approaching quickly. So I imagine as far as the campaign goes, we saw another press conference today with a vow from Premier Smith to not raise any taxes with anything shy of a referendum. But I don't anticipate there's going to be a lot of big promises or developments in the campaign at this point. I mean, it's kind of into a maintenance mode, hoping there's no any explosions or things blowing up until voting day and focusing on the get out the vote campaigns.
00:19:02.860Well, there's a lot of get out the boat activity happening already. There'll be lots of reinforcing of messages talking about things that matter. You know, I know that we're going to keep talking about the fact that the massive NDP tax hike is an investment killer. It's investment that has turned the Alberta economy around, money coming in from other parts of the world, global companies choosing to expand in Alberta. We can't lose that.
00:19:29.400So we'll be talking about those things.
00:19:31.940There'll be lots of sort of reinforcement of message, a lot of get out the vote effort.
00:19:36.220I mean, we saw it yesterday, literally, you know, an all time record for the first day
00:19:59.080And I mean, it's been kind of slowly building and developing, but the advanced voting is getting bigger and bigger as a factor in elections.
00:20:06.180I mean, now it's more of an election week rather than election day with an exception prior to it.
00:20:10.440I think it's really aiding with turnout, though.
00:20:12.580I mean, if it's impractical on one day for a person to vote, they could vote on another.
00:20:16.560You know, turnouts have always been sort of slowly dropping over the years.
00:20:19.080But now this advanced sort of thing has really turned that over.
00:20:23.740I think it's it's an interesting way to get people to pay more attention, to be more respectful of their time and their attention.
00:20:32.620It also has the effect of changing the nature of the campaign.
00:20:36.100You don't get late election surprises anymore because, frankly, by this weekend, a significant proportion of the ballots will already be in the box.
00:20:45.600Yeah. So one of the things that we see it, you hear it on social media.
00:20:49.680Unfortunately, I mean, it can be a breeding ground for misinformation.
00:20:52.860We're well aware of that. I've participated in a lot of elections. I like our system, the ability to have scrutineers, things like that. There's no evidence that anything is going to be untoward in this so far. I mean, people can trust the results.
00:21:07.040It's going to be fine. The number one thing that people need to understand that we don't have the American problem. All of our votes are happening on paper. There's an actual physical paper trail that you can check. And we're just not going to have that problem.
00:21:22.420Uh, we've, we've got a reasonably good system. We haven't had a long tradition of voter fraud.
00:21:30.880I mean, in the States, there are literally places in the United States where everybody
00:21:35.060knows that voter fraud happens. It's expected, you know, lots of the major cities, uh, some of
00:21:40.100them that have been run by one party for 80, a hundred years, uh, that that's not how we do
00:21:45.960elections. We have an independent agency. We use paper, we have scrutineers. Um, you can have a
00:21:52.120high degree of confidence that the vast vast majority of the election fights will be completely
00:21:57.640legit is there always somebody trying to cheat a little bit yeah you know maybe one vote out of
00:22:04.400every 10 000 on average is dubious but it's a rare election where one vote out of 10 000 matters
00:22:10.140yeah that's it i just want to reassure like i said my fear is cynicism and and i just like to
00:22:14.820let people know if they haven't participated in these things haven't dealt with elections
00:22:17.680alberta i mean of all bureaucracies ones i've always found to be pretty good and impartial
00:22:21.200actually is elections. Alberta, they take it very seriously and they're very careful with it.
00:22:25.660We've seen people try to meddle with the system, but it's a very difficult system to
00:22:29.440mess with. Even if you tried, there's so many checks and balances. I mean,
00:22:34.080to make a significant dent would be very tough. Totally. And it's one system. It's not like the
00:22:38.700U.S. where it's, you know, thousands of county systems. This is one ballot. Everybody gets to
00:22:44.180see, you know, everybody in every riding gets a ballot that looks just like everybody else's
00:22:47.900ballot. It's a very straightforward process. Honestly, people should not have worries about
00:22:52.340that. My biggest worry is that people are, like, taking the election for granted. Get out and vote.
00:22:57.500Make your voice count. If you didn't vote, you don't get to bitch for the next four years.1.00
00:23:03.260That's the part that I worry about, is just making sure that, you know, everybody who's
00:23:07.000interested in voting votes, and we're working really hard to make sure that anybody who's
00:23:11.060told us they're a conservative supporter gets out and votes. Yeah, and so you spoke of whoever
00:23:15.720gets in and you're pretty confident, you know, that it'll be the Conservative Party or the UCP.
00:23:20.760We do have a very regional divided province more so than we've ever seen before, too, though. I mean,
00:23:26.720Edmonton, if things go the way they look, may be completely shut out from government seats,
00:23:32.200or at least we'll have very few, whereas the rural areas will dominate that. It's a bad
00:23:38.240position for Edmonton citizens to be in. So, I mean, the government really is going to have to
00:23:42.580do some outreach to make sure that citizens up there feel confident they're represented.
00:23:45.720You know, it's one of these things where, you know, I haven't given up hope on winning lots of seats in Edmonton and the area.
00:23:53.280There's four or five, six seats in the Edmonton area where we're competitive enough to keep the NDP at home working hard on their seats.
00:24:02.840We're feeling quite good about the seats in what's called the donut, the writings that surround Edmonton.
00:24:07.960But yeah, I mean, ultimately, one of the things that we need to, as a government, you know, starting at the end of May after the election is work on rebuilding our approach and our conversations with Edmonton.
00:24:22.060I mean, in many ways, this government's been very fair to Edmonton, but we haven't been particularly good at selling that. And, you know, Edmonton's gotten their fair share of capital financing. Edmonton's gotten their fair share of activities.
00:24:37.260is in all honesty we've treated public better than the NDP yeah it's just that perception if
00:24:45.740you don't have those UCP government than before so there's all of these things that we need to
00:24:50.120do a better job of selling stuff a lot of this is just attitude and messaging and you know there's
00:24:56.280room for improvement on that side yeah there's going to be I guess a lot of correcting the
00:25:01.540record I mean the amount of of just stuff has just been thrown out thrown out thrown out
00:25:06.860the first period for the new government is just going to have to be clarifying. I mean, all of
00:25:13.040this, this mud that's been thrown in this last month, I mean, citizens aren't going to really
00:25:16.560know what they're in for until they've seen it in action. I mean, ultimately, I think citizens need
00:25:21.300to understand that most elections result in most things staying the same. On about 94, 95% of the
00:25:32.040activities of government, there isn't much difference between the parties. On the remaining
00:25:36.080four or five percent, six percent. Yeah, there's a difference, but usually it's a difference in
00:25:40.500style and approach rather than a significant difference in substance. You know, do these
00:25:46.380things matter over 20 years, 30 years? You know, having a pro-development, pro-business,
00:25:52.680pro-economic growth, conservative party win, election after election changes Alberta in the
00:25:57.600long run. But one election changing things dramatically overnight, that just never happens.
00:26:04.180And and so much of what the NDP is out there selling is just this crazy scaremongering.
00:26:09.200It's like, no, you're not going to have to pay for health care.
00:26:26.940All of these things are are are things that, you know, this election's been sort of weird.
00:26:31.500You know, the NDP tells big lies and they don't get fact checked. And the UCP puts out a number and there's 47 people fact checking whether or not the exact nuances of the number are correct when, you know, even directionally the number is accurate.
00:26:47.900Symbolically the number is accurate. As how people felt things, the number is accurate. So it's one of those things that we'll have to keep working on.
00:26:54.560it's been a frustration like the hospital sales thing for example i mean it was a short video clip
00:26:59.380i watched it and i i listened to it at worst and it was very clear when she said in it we're
00:27:05.140talking about possibly privatizing the management at most if that's what she was even talking about
00:27:09.800and that's not in the campaign platform anyway nobody was talking about selling hospitals yet
00:27:13.940the press repeated that as if that was a i mean it's kind of an embarrassment on the part of the
00:27:19.320media it's uh you know one of the things that started to happen and i'm kind of a rare
00:27:25.220conservative on this front i'm really worried about the fact that we have less and less and
00:27:28.840less media because when we have less and less and less media uh there's less competition between
00:27:35.440the media and therefore um reporters editors publishers get to feel like they can play games
00:27:44.800and you know there's been a little bit of that happening in this election we've seen
00:27:48.040national players put their thumb on the scale and, you know, offer up opportunities for criticism of
00:27:54.400our government that have never been offered up before. You know, I've never seen an opponent
00:27:59.120getting, you know, get to write a column on ctv.ca nationally about the Alberta election.
00:28:06.080That's a brand new one that happened this time. There's a couple of places where things have been
00:28:10.160a little odd and we'll have to keep working on it. You know, we need to return to an environment
00:28:15.640where there's lots of media, successful media, competing with each other
00:28:20.760so that voters get a chance to actually hear the truth
00:28:23.820because they get to see the competition between the different people
00:37:47.680In fact, it didn't even go through council.
00:37:49.120But she took it upon herself, though, to say, because it is in the hands of council,
00:37:52.380they can overturn these sorts of things, to say that, no, this is important.
00:37:57.720And again, to reverse, it would be upholding colonialism and racism.
00:38:02.280And you've got to remember the reason Calgary City Council is so woke, the reason it's so dysfunctional, the reason they're so crappy, not just council, but administration, is 12 years of woke city councils and mayors.
00:44:00.680well, here's a grand example of it. And now they're actually, their distributors are having
00:44:05.760trouble selling the beer. That's how fast the sales have dropped, how severely the sales have
00:44:10.120dropped. It's not an organized boycott. You know what? Organized boycotts almost always fail. No,
00:44:15.180what they've done is poisoned their own brand. They've made their brand so toxic, so embarrassing
00:44:22.200to the target market they had that people just aren't buying it. They've moved on when you get
00:44:26.680that many competitors in that many years. So they've actually got to the point where
00:44:30.240distributors, their beer stocks are expiring. Yeah, they're expiring. So they're having to
00:44:36.260take it off the shelves. So at least the head office is saying, well, we'll buy back that
00:44:40.400expired beer because, you know, we're sorry about that. God, guys, what an awful, awful
00:44:47.840marketing decision, whatever they made. I'll leave you all with one final thing. Check out
00:44:52.840cbc.news if you really want to be galled because there's a headline there says can the great reset
00:44:57.840really create a gentler more equitable capitalism and guess what they think it will the great reset
00:45:03.600the conspiracy theory the thing that doesn't exist well our state broadcaster is talking
00:45:07.740about how it'd be a fantastic thing for us and it'll make a better capitalism right all right
00:45:12.980i think that's kind of filled it up this week guys lots of ranting raving be sure to go to
00:45:16.820westernstandard.news take out a membership support us the pipeline will be on a little later guys
00:45:22.140As well, of course, there's going to be a lot of election specials when I see you next week.
00:45:25.920We will have a whole brand spanking new government here in Alberta, whether UCP or NDP.
00:45:31.020And of course, I will rant, rage, piss and moan about that, however it may be when the time comes.
00:45:35.900Thanks for tuning in today, you guys, and I'll see you then.
00:45:39.180Here's an update on commodity prices in Lethbridge for today.
00:45:42.440Cash barley is steady at $4.05, feed wheat remains at $4.04, and corn increased $2 at $3.92 per metric ton.
00:45:49.700In the milling wheat markets, July Minneapolis futures dropped 21.5 cents at $7.99.25 per bushel, with local hard red spring bid for May movement at $10.48.
00:46:00.880Looking at canola, nearby futures slipped $3 at $6.98.60 per ton, with delivered values for June movement at $10.50 per bushel.
00:46:10.240In the pulse markets, nearby red lentil prices are higher 0.5 cent at $0.33.5 cents per pound, and yellow peas are holding at $11.25 per bushel.
00:46:18.780And in the cattle markets, June live cattle climbed $1.95 to $1.66.22.5 per 100 weight.
00:46:26.680For more information on pricing or picked up options, give me a call at 403-394-1711.
00:46:33.620I'm Matt Musicum at Marketplace Commodities.
00:46:36.160Accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.