In this episode of the Western Standard, host Corey Morgan talks about the 1993 election, and why Premier Danielle Smith's victory over Ralph Klein is so similar to the one Ralph Klein had in the early 90s. He was a man of many talents, but his political career was marred by scandals, infighting, and infighting.
00:00:30.200Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show. I am Corey Morgan. This is my weekly show with the Western Standard going out to a number of channels out there. Get my opinion on things, run through some news items, maybe a little ranting and raving. And of course, I always have some fantastic guests coming on. So yeah, I've got a good guest coming on today as usual. Her name is Gabrielle Bauer and she's from Toronto.
00:00:57.920She's a health and medical writer and she put out a book that was published by the Brownstone Institute called Blind Sight is 2020. So she's been looking back on the pandemic policies, social aspects to it. And wow, what worked, if anything, and what failed. And there's plenty of that.
00:01:16.020So I mean, you know, we can't let that go too far in the rearview mirror. We got to examine what happened and why there. So let's get on to other things, local things. Of course, the election finally ended in Alberta. What a long, ugly, nasty campaign that was.
00:01:30.260In the end, we do have a UCP government. Daniel Smith pulled it off. But I got stuck with an NDP MLA. Shamefully, in my rural riding, I have an NDP MLA. I'm quite boned about it. But whatever, I guess it could have been worse. We could have had a whole whack more of them.
00:01:45.820Good to see y'all checking in on the comment scroll, guys. Stuart, Shirley, Jason, all the rest. I appreciate it. Use the comment scroll if you're watching this live. Send questions my way, the guests way.
00:01:56.400And, you know, converse with each other. Just keep things civil. We can fight on Twitter if we want. Don't need to do it in this comment scroll.
00:02:02.500All right, I'm going to talk a little bit about that election. Offer my advice, and I'm sure she's getting it from all directions.
00:02:08.220My advice, though, to Premier Danielle Smith. So, Danielle Smith, I mean, she's gone against all conventional wisdom and political advice.
00:02:15.960She's defied and ignored polls, pundits, and academics that all predicted her political demise.
00:02:22.240And in dismissing those naysayers, she's found herself elected as Alberta's premier of the majority government at her disposal, albeit a reduced one.
00:02:29.760Now, the night of the election, Danielle Smith invoked the late Ralph Klein in referencing what was called his miracle on the prairie.
00:02:38.480And she wasn't drawing an unfair parallel. The similarities between the 1993 general election won by Klein and the 2023 election in Alberta are remarkable when you look at them.
00:02:49.020When Klein took the reins of the Progressive Conservative Party in the early 1990s, their party was in serious trouble.
00:02:55.180It was polling down at sometimes as low as 20% against Lawrence Decor's liberals, and many were declaring the PCs as electorally dead in the water.
00:03:04.180The elites, of course, and the chattering classes dismissed Klein as an uneducated bumpkin who stumbled his way into the premiership and would become a little more than a footnote in political history.
00:03:14.000Voters, though, they felt otherwise and gave Ralph Klein a reduced majority government on June 15th, 1993.
00:03:19.820The Alberta establishment, of course, they were aghast, but at least somewhat humbled.
00:03:24.700Now we come all the way up to 2022, and we've got the governing UCP, and they were polling as low as 22% under the leadership of Jason Kenney.
00:03:32.900That led to the end of Kenney, and among a number of things.
00:03:35.480And when Kenney was replaced by Danielle Smith, the usual establishment suspects were all but confident this would be the beginning of the end of the UCP's reign in government.
00:03:43.820There's no way a leader with such a controversial history as Smith could turn around the fortunes of a party in such trouble, right?
00:03:50.560Well, Smith proved her detractors wrong and pulled a reduced majority win from what was the most personal and negative provincial campaign in living memory.
00:03:59.960And while she may have fewer seats than the 1993 PCs did under Klein, she actually has a larger segment of popular support.
00:04:07.140I mean, Ralph Klein won 44.5% support in 1993.
00:04:11.440Smith's UCP took 52.6% of the electorate.
00:04:14.960Her opponents can no longer claim she doesn't have a mandate from Albertans.
00:04:19.820Now, if Premier Smith wants to continue down a Klein-like path, she needs to take another one of his favorite sayings to heart.
00:12:28.000And, you know, I'm not celebrating, you know, there's a lot of good jobs being lost.
00:12:34.080We've got a lot of challenges to local coverage going on, actually.
00:12:37.220We've got, you know, who is going to cover these things.
00:12:40.340The news is important, but they've got to change how they're doing things rather than trying to keep asking for more and more money to shore up what's a broken, obsolete system.
00:12:51.900You can't carry the weight of an old traditional style media outlet any longer.
00:12:56.800I mean, that's why the standard's expanding as well as it is in other independent outlets because we started from scratch and we didn't have to try and carry all that weight and reinvent the wheel.
00:13:05.840We're working with modern types of technology and layouts and ways to source stories, you know, edit stories and get them out there.
00:13:12.660And that's why we put on a lot of them and we can put them out fast and they're quality, they're quality.
00:13:17.700But there was a council, some meeting of, let's see, this is a crisis of local news is a really harsh reality.
00:13:23.200This was to Canadian media directors at a conference recently that was held.
00:13:44.500I mean, for those of us old enough to remember pre-internet days, you know, if you were living in a small town or a large city, even the local little baseball team, where else could you find out if they won or lost if you weren't at the game yourself?
00:13:56.040And opening the local paper or what was it with that house fire down the street or any number of these smaller news items.
00:14:14.140I mean, part of the problem, though, and I've said that before, too, we've got more access to quick, ready information than we've ever had in our lives.
00:14:22.680But at the same time, we've got more access to BS as well.
00:14:25.840So, that's where we've got to be really, really careful.
00:16:16.520And so, in order to make my case, I don't just talk about my own views, but I enlist the expertise of people, 46 people from various disciplines, not just science.
00:16:28.140And that's really important because I think, you know, novelists and artists and lawyers and philosophers, they all have really important things to say about a pandemic.
00:16:37.160So, I bring together all these people, including scientists, and through them, you know, I make the case for some of what happened and why it did.
00:16:47.260Yeah, and I mean, it was at 46 dissenting thinkers, I believe is what you've got listed in that book, who have come out.
00:16:52.940And we can't dismiss the people on the grounds, the musicians, the novelists.
00:16:57.060I mean, they've traditionally been part of our social fabric.
00:16:59.800They've put out social trends from their, you know, periods of observation historically.
00:17:05.900And it's very important to hear what they say, not just the fellow in the lab coat in the back of a room somewhere.
00:17:11.600And, I mean, as you said, it was almost a temporary madness the world went into.
00:17:16.520I mean, we'll be studying this for a long, long time.
00:17:19.860But, I mean, now at least we're allowing some of the voices to come out and even talk about it.
00:17:55.460In the first few weeks, I tried to sort of understand this and start some conversations online.
00:18:00.360And the degree of outrage and vitriol I received, I've never seen anything like it.
00:18:06.440I mean, no one had called me a sociopath before, you know, or a mouth-breathing Trump tart or, you know, people telling me to go lick the virus.
00:18:14.220I mean, it was unbelievably toxic, you know.
00:18:20.380And, I mean, I think everybody's sort of seen it.
00:18:22.960I hope some are looking back shamefully, but some rifts haven't been healed.
00:18:26.180I've seen that within some aspects of my extended family, a couple of siblings who couldn't talk with each other over the period of this because they were on different sides of the vaccination and masking issue.
00:18:37.540Like, we shouldn't have a political issue ripping apart tight family units.
00:18:44.280And that's something that's interesting, too, was the left-right divide.
00:18:47.760I mean, you'd think this was all just based on health and data.
00:18:50.280But there was a very distinct split between people who were traditionally, I guess, leaned towards conservative views and people who weren't.
00:19:00.180But I do want to address one thing you said.
00:19:01.640You'd think it would all be about the science and data.
00:19:03.840One of the points that has always been important to me and that I make in the book is that managing a pandemic is never just about science and data.
00:19:12.000No matter which side of the divide you're on, there's always values that go into it.
00:19:17.520You know, and in a chapter on kids and schools, I talk about that.
00:19:21.560How important is it to the society for children to go to school?
00:19:25.560You know, there are no formulas to tell us when to close schools and when not to.
00:19:29.900It's always going to be a value judgment.
00:19:32.000I mean, data can inform that value judgment, but it's never just a question of the science, so to speak, no matter how good the science is.
00:19:38.880So, and yes, as far as the political divide, and that's another issue that I address in the book, you know, about this ridiculous left-right thing,
00:19:47.960because traditionally the left has really paid attention to the working class and the struggles and the need to earn a living and a dignified living and all that stuff.
00:19:58.400And that completely went out the window.
00:20:00.100And there are so many people like myself that I've met through all this that came from perhaps a more left-leaning background
00:20:11.960and just got thoroughly disillusioned with the left over the past three years and now find ourselves politically homeless.
00:20:22.720You know, I mean, we've come to appreciate some things from the right, but we still are kind of in this no-man's land.
00:20:28.720And we disrupted, socially disrupted an entire generation at some of their most formative periods.
00:20:35.260I mean, the fear and the division and some of the things imprinted upon children when the schools were shut down and so much fear was being spread around.
00:20:43.820And even when the numbers were coming in, I can understand some panic in the early part of a crisis.
00:20:48.500Okay, we don't know how this is going to move.
00:22:32.660Who cares if you're going to give them an infection of COVID when they're going to die of cancer in a week?
00:22:37.380They just walk in somebody's hand one more time.
00:22:40.060And exactly that it just amazed me that people lost sight of that.
00:22:45.160You know, and that is a theme that I return to a lot in the book.
00:22:47.720You know, what is what are we here for?
00:22:50.040You know, and what is what do we want in the last moments of our lives?
00:22:54.100Do we want to be, you know, protected from humanity?
00:22:58.720Or do we want to reach out and sort of look over our lives and think and connect and make memories?
00:23:05.260You know, it just it was such a monolithic response.
00:23:10.080You know, there's these epidemiologists with their hammer is just looking for this one nail.
00:23:14.660And that is, you know, probably the central theme in the book is that this is not just an epidemiological problem.
00:23:23.000It's a human problem that has mental health dimensions, social dimensions, spiritual, philosophical dimensions.
00:23:29.360And the response just swept all that aside, which really went against all previous pandemic guidance.
00:23:36.640You know, and that's why I enlist even the the sort of the thoughts of a comedian, some musicians, several novelists.
00:23:45.240I found that novelists often had the deepest insights about the pandemic.
00:23:49.840You know, obviously, they can't advise us on virology or transmission patterns, but they can tell us a lot about sort of the philosophy of managing a pandemic and what needs to be done and what shouldn't be done.
00:24:02.340Well, and these things matter. I mean, the distrust in the entire system and authority in general.
00:24:10.040I mean, we were ill used or a lot of us certainly feel we were.
00:24:14.160And if an emergency comes down the road, I imagine there's always another one coming.
00:24:18.860There's going to be a lot of people resisting, possibly perhaps resisting on the wrong side.
00:24:22.340But they've just lost so much trust in the authorities and the establishment that they won't listen to them when the time comes that they probably should.
00:25:06.560So it wasn't an issue for me personally.
00:25:08.340But as the months went on in 2021, 2022, and I just saw how insane the vax wars became, a lot of us remember that cover spread on the Toronto Star with quotes from the people who wanted, you know, the anti-vaxxers to die and go to hell and wanted their children to die.
00:25:27.820That just seemed far, far more harmful to me than any virus.
00:25:31.520You know, and one thing that I guess I take pride in is that, you know, although I got vaccinated myself, I resolved very early on that I was never going to question or shame anyone for their decision.
00:25:44.440Because I trust that my friends who decided not to get vaxxed have good reasons for it.
00:25:52.080I never made socializing contingent on it.
00:25:54.680And it became also clear very soon that the vaccine was not stopping transmission, which really removed any ethical justification for the mandates.
00:26:04.240So I just didn't get into any of that.
00:26:07.900You know, so many of my friends, are you vaccinated?
00:26:22.000And she just said she was so afraid of meeting me because she thought maybe that I wouldn't want to hang out with her once I found out she wasn't vaxxed.
00:26:31.240Yeah, and then another aspect that turned into almost a bizarre measure of, I think, two degrees virtue signaling maybe began with some medical rationale, but was masking.
00:26:42.900I think part of it's because you wear a mask, you're showing your visible effort that you're trying to stop this, despite the fact that it was showing that it wasn't doing a heck of a lot to stop anything.
00:26:53.420But it was annoying the heck out of people.
00:27:36.600And both sides just fling data at each other and stats and studies and all that.
00:27:40.880But underlying all this, I firmly believe and have from the start, is really a difference in world view.
00:27:47.880You know, and the side that just believes that protection from a certain threat, from a biological threat, trumps everything else in life, that side is going to justify masking.
00:28:03.100They're going to interpret a 5% reduction as, well, it's worth it, even if it's a 1% reduction, whatever it takes.
00:28:08.880The side that sees humanity in what I call a more holistic way and sees safety from a biological hazard is only one dimension and who also appreciates human connection and in that holistic way is going to resist the idea of a perma-masked society.
00:28:31.840And so that's why I've always believed that there are what I call data-agnostic arguments behind all this.
00:28:39.980You know, there's just two sides that see the world a little differently and that want a different kind of world.
00:28:45.860And my book sort of argues for side B.
00:28:48.420You know, this is the kind of world we want, and this is why.
00:28:51.240Yeah, and the battles, unfortunately, are still going on.
00:28:55.420But, I mean, part of what we can hope for, the most we can hope for, is that we learn from it and correct some of our past actions the next time we hit a challenge.
00:29:02.280So, I mean, that's part of, I guess, what you kind of go through and come towards in the book.
00:29:06.320We've kind of run out of time, but where then, I see the Brownstone Institute, you have plenty of columns there.
00:29:11.120Where can people find copies of Blindsight is 2020 along with your other books?
00:29:15.380Well, you can always go on my website, gabriellebauer.com, and all the information is there.
00:30:42.320What I've hated the most, what I've despised seeing was the social division, the people who got so upset and fought and haven't talked with each other since.
00:30:51.000Well, it doesn't matter if the other person wanted you to mask or vaccinate.
00:30:57.900If you can get over it and start talking again, it's worth it.
00:31:12.720And that's part of what was important with this book, with talking to artists, comedians, people, though, who look, observe the social aspects of us.
00:31:20.680Because you can't clinically measure social damage.
00:38:02.460Part of the problem, and I do believe to a degree in decriminalizing, going after the ground-level consumers of drugs, even the hard ones,
00:38:09.940what point, what point in arresting and fining a heroin or a fentanyl junkie that has no money, that are really at bottom already, and going after them?