Western Standard - August 16, 2022


CORY： It's time to stop playing defensively & play offense when it comes to dealing with Ottawa

Topics
Sovereignty Act leadership race
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Kenny Trudeau
Kenney poking his nose into the UCP leadership race The denialism has to end with the addiction epidemic

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

195.6

Word count

798

Sentence count

82

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Danielle Smith is running for the United Conservative Party leadership of Alberta. In this episode, I talk about her rise in popularity, her leadership campaign, and why it's time to play offense. I also talk about the dangers of playing defence, and how to move forward in the leadership race.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I mean, Danielle Smith's return to politics and rise in popularity
00:00:02.700 caught many people flat-footed, including myself.
00:00:06.400 If somebody had said two years ago that Smith was going to make a successful return
00:00:10.280 into the political sphere, I would have laughed in their faces.
00:00:12.900 While she established herself well as a popular talk radio host,
00:00:15.640 there was no way she could overcome that breach of trust with party members
00:00:19.500 in her infamous floor crossing of 2014. 0.89
00:00:21.700 At least I would have said that, and clearly I would have been wrong.
00:00:24.900 I mean, Smith's floor crossing is her weakest link.
00:00:27.320 It makes people question her judgment and loyalty to party members
00:00:30.080 when push comes to shove.
00:00:31.800 One would expect her leadership opponents to be focused on this when shooting outward,
00:00:35.580 and while they have addressed it a bit,
00:00:37.100 they're still mostly too hung up on attacking Smith's sovereignty act.
00:00:41.320 Now, Smith came out of the gates hard in the leadership race with the proposed act
00:00:44.320 and an aggressive campaign.
00:00:46.140 She took the presumptive lead of the race while other candidates appeared stunned.
00:00:49.780 They were left kind of figuring out how to, you know, try and deflate her campaign
00:00:54.180 rather than pumping up their own, and that's where they're making a mistake.
00:00:57.320 Smith has taken the tactic of playing offense,
00:00:59.140 and it's led to her dominating the discussions. 1.00
00:01:01.640 Opposing campaigns have found themselves in constant reactionary mode
00:01:04.540 in response to Smith's proposals, and it's made them look weak and defensive.
00:01:08.800 Smith is proposing taking a similar approach with Ottawa
00:01:11.160 if she should become premier, and it clearly appeals to a large number of Albertans.
00:01:16.100 She's signaling that she doesn't plan on waiting for the next federal incursion
00:01:19.320 into provincial rights, and she'll be drawing a line in the sand 0.99
00:01:22.100 before it actually happens.
00:01:23.420 And the campaigns have been flailing and trying to poke holes in Smith's proposed sovereignty act
00:01:27.580 and saying it just won't work.
00:01:29.000 Kenny called it nuts as he jumped into the mix.
00:01:32.860 Kenny spent three and a half years in the premier's office,
00:01:35.000 losing battle after battle with Ottawa.
00:01:37.400 Flaccid court challenges, unkept promises for things like a provincial pension plan.
00:01:41.440 Where is it, Kenny?
00:01:42.560 Provincial police force.
00:01:43.600 Don't see one, Kenny.
00:01:45.660 Property rights legislation.
00:01:46.980 Seemed to have forgotten that one, too.
00:01:48.440 And all of it's been ineffectual in hindering federal aggression towards the West.
00:01:54.480 I mean, Trudeau's surely got a corner of his office wallpapered
00:01:58.220 with the angry letters sent from Premier Kenny during his time in office.
00:02:02.300 So, Smith's approach to dealing with Ottawa may or may not succeed,
00:02:06.240 but at least it is questionable.
00:02:08.180 We already know for sure and with certainty that Kenny's approach isn't going to work.
00:02:13.400 What's it gotten us?
00:02:14.460 Lost court challenges, new firearm bans, increasing carbon taxes,
00:02:18.600 investment chill, and now a possible fertilizer ban attacking Western farmers.
00:02:23.040 Trudeau, he knows that Kenny's a toothless tiger
00:02:25.360 and he has nothing to fear in assaulting the West.
00:02:27.740 It's time for not just Alberta, but all the Western provinces
00:02:30.000 to start making autonomous changes and saying to Ottawa,
00:02:32.340 what are you going to do about it?
00:02:34.620 Citizens are tired of talk.
00:02:36.260 They're spoiling for a fight.
00:02:37.240 Constantly waiting for Ottawa to throw the first punch
00:02:39.260 and then weekly trying to counter it has failed.
00:02:41.440 Now, Smith's offering a way to bring the battle to Ottawa on Alberta's terms.
00:02:46.280 Make the feds respond to the province's actions rather than the other way around.
00:02:49.900 The approach might fail, but citizens are prepared to go down fighting at this point
00:02:53.380 and are embracing the Sovereignty Act on that basis.
00:02:56.340 Now, candidates for the UCP leadership would be well served
00:02:58.520 to cut back on attacking Smith and look at their own policies.
00:03:01.640 There's a void being filled with Smith's Sovereignty Act
00:03:03.980 and it's going to win the leadership race for her 0.88
00:03:05.860 if the opponents can't propose a better way to deal with Ottawa.
00:03:08.780 Every time they attack Smith, they just give her more airtime to promote her plan 0.94
00:03:12.500 while her opponents just don't have a plan right now.
00:03:15.560 It's not enough to just keep saying over and over her plan won't work.
00:03:18.060 The candidates need to propose a plan then that will.
00:03:20.500 And so far, none of them have.
00:03:21.980 Sitting on her heels and waiting for the next assault from Ottawa
00:03:24.720 isn't an option in the eye of UCP members.
00:03:27.940 They want an action plan.
00:03:29.280 No more playing defense.
00:03:30.520 It's time to play offense.
00:03:32.320 It's competitors in this race.
00:03:33.660 It better figure that out and soon.
00:03:34.800 See you in a while.
00:03:36.700 See you.
00:03:37.520 Bye.
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