Gondek’s Gone, and the BC Conservatives are losing it
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Summary
Jody Gondek is no longer the Mayor of Calgary. Lindsay Wilson and Alice Mills join us to talk about the fallout from the election, including a recall attempt against BC Tory leader John Rust, and the new mayor, Jeremy Farkas.
Transcript
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I'm Derek Fillebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.
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I'm joined by two of our regular co-hosts, Western Standard BC columnist, Alice Mills.
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And Western Standard former opinion editor, now senior columnist, Nigel Hannaford.
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And you can see, sitting between us, the rose between two thorns, filling in for Corey Morgan, who's off on Jihad right now.
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We've got Lindsay Wilson, who's, yeah, I don't even know how I introduce you.
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Formerly of Alberta Proud, worked on the Jeff Davison mayoral campaign here and joining us today, particularly as we talk about fallout of Calgary election.
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Yes. Well, thank you very much for having me today.
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And you were actually filling in for Corey Morgan on the Corey Morgan show today.
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we called Jin for that and then we sat down to do this
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and I was like, oh my god, where's Lindsay? She hasn't finished
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You know what? We're just going to do two topics
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caucus more chaos uh as the uh leadership of john rust that continues to come under fire
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how long can he last will he last uh yeah we're we're gonna get into that as the bc conservative
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party so promising uh a year ago continues to just fall apart into disarray uh but first
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Calgarians can celebrate that now former mayor Jody Gondek went down to a historic defeat Monday night.
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Oh, we found out. We found out about it Tuesday.
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But the numbers from the early reporting was clear enough on Monday night.
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We didn't necessarily know who was going to win, but we sure knew who was not going to win.
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And Jody Gondek became the first incumbent elected Calgary mayor since 1980.
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I wasn't even born since 1980 to lose re-election.
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And she became the first mayor in the history of Calgary, which is older than Alberta, to not even place second.
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I don't want to dance on the political grave
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as I said you worked on the Jeff Davison campaign
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uh there was a lot of division over who should replace jody gondek as mayor uh farkas came in
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uh a narrow first still subject to recount but likely to stand i think i think uh sharp would
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need to pick up between six and eight hundred votes net not likely to happen but it's close
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enough that a recall should be done that's enough recall a recount uh but you know uh farkas uh
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vote, but it wasn't enough left vote to split
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How hard was it then, I guess, to stand out as, you know, for the candidates to say,
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And was that the major question or was it more on policies?
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Well, this wasn't anything but Gondek vote that won this election, certainly.
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And Jeremy has won with a very, I mean, what is his mandate, right?
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26%, I think, a margin of just under 600 votes.
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He won with, this time, less votes than he lost with last time.
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so I think he has his work cut out for him I think you know and in transparency some of the
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people watching this may or may not know that I did work for Jeremy Farkas once upon a time I
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helped to run a mayoral campaign last time this time I was with Jeff Davison no regrets on either
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side of those things you know we live and we learn and we move forward and I think I do want to say
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that I am congratulating mayor-elect Jeremy Farkas and I want the best for Calgary and I want the best
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for unity for sure for uh for conservatives and i think jeremy's got a lot to prove i think people
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felt like he lost the last election he went and hiked a mountaintop and found a new version of
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himself and the term has come out a lot you know jeremy 2.0 versus jeremy 1.0 what's that going to
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look like um there was some perception that while he has some very strong conservative roots that
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something happened on that mountaintop and on that big walk that he did in the name of charity it was
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all very respectable and great and a huge accomplishment but something happened there
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and uh now that he's kind of more associates with more of the left side of the spectrum so
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i think a lot of us are really interested is he going to have more of a centrist appeal and will
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that be really good for the former rabble rouser um who you know is maybe not perceived as the most
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collaborative of the bunch when he was on council and will he be able to build those bridges and to
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get this slate of very independent dominated candidates i mean we just came off of a show
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where we were talking about the party system what that's going to look like moving forward but
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he's definitely got some work cut out for him from this independent independent advantage
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to clarify you're not speaking for jeff davison here the campaign's over so you know you're
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speaking for you knowing you know it's kind of more background that you were on the campaign
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you know not a neutral observer but uh you're not speaking for the campaigns just for yourself here
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Um, Nigel, it was, I, you were privy to some of the discussion here.
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You're not here full time anymore, but I mean, the discussion around here about who to vote
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for was, I, you know, I've never seen our newsroom so split, you know, uh, I, you know,
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when Farkas ran in 2021, uh, the newsroom was like unanimously, Jerry, he was the most
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conservative candidate and he was the most likely candidate to beat um uh to be gondack or nenshi
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um this time you know i always tease him i called it his forrest gump run when he went on this
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thing here and you know a lot of time to think and reflect as you as you're as you burn the
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cowards but uh he's a different he was a very different candidate um he's certainly not as
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strident and outspoken he tried to make the argument to me that he's learned and matured
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but you know he hasn't fundamentally changed his convictions i don't know that's to be seen uh
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he's a very at the very least less strident um and you know maybe that just means he's more
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diplomatic but he is fundamentally the same guy i don't know i don't know i i think um
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a lot of conservatives still even though he didn't run as explicitly a conservative campaign this
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time he was so known as the conservative guy last time that a lot of conservatives still voted for
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him some people in the center who probably voted for gondek last time they can i like her
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definitely won some of those switchers but he lost a lot of his core support sonya sharp
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and jeff davison jeff davison obviously had some support for last 71 but
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um do you think alberton's elected a conservative
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I honestly think that that remains to be seen for all the reasons that you've just given.
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He seems to have had some kind of an epiphany, and we'll see what he does with it.
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We'll know when we see where he tries to lead the gang when it comes to looking at the rezoning bylaw.
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Are we going to get out of that arrangement and give people their property rights back?
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even more than plastic straws that got calories not for me well okay
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classic straws above everything crime and safety though don't forget about crime and safety help
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up will he get on second to plastic straws he has 580 plastic straws in boxes in his office so
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that you know that's uh he knows where he speaks but i'm saying that um for the rest there was no
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other issue that got people out of their chairs and down to city hall like the rezoning issue
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And I, to be honest with you, I thought that this was going to be the revolution.
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I thought people were going to be marching down to the votes to register their disapproval of everything that had gone before.
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And certainly in as much as Mayor Gondek is now a retired Mayor Gondek, former Mayor Gondek,
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you know, through the five stages of grief and the time it took me to finish the sentence,
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So there is the question of how they move forward on rezoning.
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So those are two areas where there is a conservative position
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And I will answer your question about how is Mr. Farkas going to look
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when I see what he decides to actually do with both of those issues.
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Do Calgarians think they elected a Conservative?
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which is what makes the whole thing a little bit of a waiting game.
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The possibility of disappointment is out there.
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And as near as I could confirm anything, given the fact that some of these people didn't really open up who they were during the campaign, I think it's like six conservatives out of the 14, which is an improvement on last time, when on the day after the vote, I think maybe we had three conservatives, and the rest were a little on the left, and of course with a very left-leaning mayor.
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uh now you make a few basic assumptions about the parties and the individuals and you can kind of
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put it together there's just about six conservatives there and then a bunch of people who really don't
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know where they stand i think there might be some centrists in there like truly and i know say well
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is there anything such as a centrist but i think some of those people that are defined as more
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left-leaning i think they might be more community focused which is really where we need municipal
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politicians it doesn't need to be so much about left and right either i think we're going to see
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some people hopefully that are in the middle i think some of the really diverse divisive
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personalities i will just say courtney walcott courtney penner they were perceived as very
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diverse of left-leaning uh councillors last time i'm i'm hopeful those are maybe out of the picture
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this time and it's a little bit more moderate and i think um from the right i think i think what we
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were talking about earlier today that landon johnson might be the new jeremy 1.0 right so i
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think that'll be really interesting okay so we'll talk um okay okay i want to come back to council
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um we'll talk maybe just about the dynamics of the race a bit more um what one of the most
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decisive questions for a lot of people was who can beat gondek now the campaign all the different
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campaigns uh the not gone deck campaigns were putting out polls regularly saying look my
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campaign is the one to beat gone deck and you know i've been around the block enough to know that
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okay when you when a campaign puts out a poll it's obviously they're they're trying to
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uh get people to vote strategically and so i generally don't trust
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polls put out by campaigns they do internal polling and that's the stuff they don't share
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And that's the good stuff. That's actual good, hard data.
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Stuff they're not supposed to share, but some of the
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going to happen here. Municipal's harder to predict, I think,
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Yeah, so, yeah, it's just been getting worse and worse every year.
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And I think a lot of this is due to these long lineups that we saw.
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It was over 50% in 2017 and more again in 2013.
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putting this stuff out, the Janet Brown poll came out
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Davison can't win. He's running fourth. It was a respectable
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But like, I was like, come on, like, you're not going to be in position from fourth.
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They can't leapfrog the fourth in the last few days.
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I think there was just, there was a lot of resources.
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There's a lot of, there's a tremendous benefit to party politics in the sense
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And at the end of the day, I think, you know, Communities First with Sonia Sharpe
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had just had significantly more resources than the Jeff Davison campaign did.
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Because if we're talking about issues, there wasn't a lot of differentiators,
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We're all going to repeal blanket rezoning in some form or another, a little
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flip-flopping there but at the end of the day that was the commitment uh crime and safety let's get
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tough on crime and safety let's you know partner with the province to shut down the Sheldon Schumer
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um you know so there's those issues but affordability was the number one thing and you
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guys I will tell you in our last couple weeks of the campaign our messaging which I think to the
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degree it could be was effective was all around Jeff Davison's promise for a four-year tax uh tax
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freeze and that really resonated with people because affordability is the number one issue
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in the city. You know, there were so many people that I talked to who said, I actually would like
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to vote for Jeff Davidson, but he's not going to win. So I got to pick between, and that was just
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what you were up against. I know. And it was really difficult because, you know, I will maintain,
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and for everybody listening, like Jeff Davidson is a tremendous candidate and human being. And
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he was, and it was, we had a beautiful campaign filled with really, really good quality people
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and absolutely no regrets. But yeah, it was an uphill battle. He was the underdog. And in the end,
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I was surprised. I didn't think that she would get that high. I thought she appealed
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even though I don't really truly believe that she's in her. She's truly really a conservative.
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I think being painted that way and I just thought it would be more appealing to a far right crowd
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and hey I was wrong before and I'll be wrong again. I didn't think she would appeal to the
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moderate base as much as she obviously did but you know within 600 votes of Marilette Jeremy
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I don't think we're going to see a lot of change in the mayor's chair.
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manager would advise her to do that. And that is the
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respectable thing to do. I don't think that's sour grapes
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expect someone from Vancouver to have about as much insight
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something uh today which i think was pretty reasonable saying broadly speaking there's
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six center right counselors six center left counselors and i think two just unknown kind
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of more and was one of the unknown centrist people maybe we can look this up is that john
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pandasopoulos in six more six and he is he perceived as not part of the six because i
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think he will end up being part of six i don't know i think he's more conservative leaning and
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i think um you know watch the greeks yeah that's the only thing about him is he's got a difficult
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greek name that's the only thing i know about this guy yeah um you know so we've got uh i want
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to ask you about the party system yeah so i you know i i i've been saying this whole time since
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we got minnesota parties in calgary and edmonton that i think it's going to take a few cycles for
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things to come out in the wash before it kind of gets settled there was one left party uh calgary
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party and then there was community first on the on the center right and abc on the center right
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uh so yeah communities first and a better calgary all very imaginative names um sorry and that is
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the trouble there is absolutely nothing in and as per bill 20 provincial legislation you can't
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put conservative or ndp or liberal anything and that's what i think what voters are looking for
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and you got to think people have one minute a week for politics the average voter and they
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have even less than that for municipal politics it just it created confusion yeah it it didn't
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they didn't allow them to use names like conservative, liberal,
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ask Daniel Smith and Pierre Paulyev, what do you think
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uh on the there's independent left elected and then there's calgary party elected there's
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independent right elected and then there's people from two different parties elected
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on the right because most are communities first but there was one uh a better calgary party yeah
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currently has uh worked well with mike jameson and they're hanging on by 29 votes i know there's
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going to be a recount there and that's happening yeah uh and then that's close enough and then you
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And then you have the Calgary party with one seat, so you have AAC, you have Calgary party
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with one seat, and then you have Communities First technically with four, but I do want
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to, because we should be very clear that two new seats, we lost a couple, and then you
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had two very, very strong councillors in wards 10 and 13, Dan McLean and respectively André
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Chabot, and I think it's very fair that anybody would agree that they would have been elected
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regardless of the system they gave legitimacy to the community's first party uh as far as being
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perceived as conservative party yeah um so you know i i think assuming we have the one abc candidate
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and a few communities first they're going to form a natural block together i don't imagine
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that there's the kind of antagonism that existed say between wild rose and progressive conservatives
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where that went on for over a decade and we hated each other's guts until we finally faced
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socialist hordes that get across the aisle from each other um i am no because quite frankly it's
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embarrassing and it can't continue right there's a lot of bad blood i think that was took place
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in the election and i think everybody needs to just have a truce and work together so uh but
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i'm thinking in the long term you think it's likely those two parties come together it's four
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years they have to you have to turn into a third party advertiser they have to either that or they
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just dissolve them but i don't think they're going to i think this was a pilot project i think you
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know i hosted one of your shows earlier this morning and it suggests you know like okay you
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know nothing's going to be perfect the first time out of the gate i think there's some changes that
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myself with along with i had amber ready and stephen carter on that show and i think you know
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there's some things like maybe higher thresholds for creating a party um you getting access to the
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voters it's like there's some things that definitely need to change but they didn't have
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access to the voters list what the hell is the point of a party if you don't get the voters list
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i know it's a real problem so i think there's just name them correctly and you don't get a
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voters list i don't understand why we have these parties then exactly like it was just a real
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uphill battle and you know i i do want to give credit where credit is due i give credit to a
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better calgary party um i think you know they ended up and um you know i did help originally
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build that party and then i i kind of parted race with them on very good terms but to me a better
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calgary party they did try to do what i think a party should be which is you know democratically
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elect uh their their their member and they have the memberships uh vote on who they want to be
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their representatives and I think and communities first it was a slate it was never a party it was
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a slate and it was very confusing with their branding and strategically probably very smart
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for them but it was very confusing to people because you had these candidates running under
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the communities first banner but unless you saw them in a photo op together you would never know
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that they were part of a party that it wasn't displayed on signage it wasn't clear in a lot of
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their marketing and I think that's confusing to people I would like to see something like hey if
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you're going to be part of a party you got to make that you got to put that front and center the
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Calgary party executed on that ABC candidates executed on that whether you
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agree with those parties or not is beside the point they were very clear
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hey we are party this is these are our candidates and I think that we need that
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clarity moving forward or it's just going to you're gonna have more
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disenfranchised voters because they feel like they're being duped and that's what
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you think about the name communities first anyway like that has a socialist
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feel about that's the kind of woke community involvement type of person who
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would gravitate to that well i think so too i think you could almost say that about any of the
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party names i think uh better calgary party calgary party communities first i don't really
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think that any of them could note the naming is just like everybody's trying to appear to the mall
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appeal to the moderates and you know that's you know it's it's what it is and no criticism of
00:24:17.960
their individual branding but the name itself doesn't connote anything but i mean communities
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firstly they put themselves forward as a conservative party certainly they had very
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respectable conservatives. You know, the Dan McLean and Andre Chabot in 13 and 10, fronting that party.
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And they chose Sonia Sharp as their candidate, who was perceived as a conservative. Don't know
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that she really was one, but was perceived as a conservative from award one. So, you know,
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they put that, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how that's, I don't, I don't, then they had an
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award nine candidate who was like an ardent NDP, I mean, an ardent NDP activist, I think is the
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best way to put it. She attended NDP conventions as a delegate. So what are you? It's interesting.
00:24:55.880
And actually we're talking about John Pantasopoulos. His campaign manager, did he have connections to
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the NDP? Correct, he did. But I think John himself appeals as more of a moderate conservative and
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is a businessman. It comes from that perspective. So I think he might end up siding a lot with more
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the conservative. Just let them come out and say, we are the party of the overdog.
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yeah remember this anyway okay well if anyone from the alberta cabinet has watched any ucp nlas
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give them the friggin voters list and let them put reasonable names on their parties that
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what a mess okay we've kept at least on the bench long enough for putting her on the ice
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um john rostad the bc conservative leader he took that party from nothing
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You know, some of it was catch a lightning in a bottle, maybe.
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And the BC Liberal United Party did a lot of the work in collapsing themselves.
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But the guy, there's a lot of credit for what he did.
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Came with just a hair of becoming Premier a year ago.
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But, you know, the promise of them as this government-in-waiting that, you know,
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they could maybe try to topple the quasi-ish minority government.
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in terms of caucus sizes and the size of the legislature,
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this is going to be damn near as much as Stockwell Day lost
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when his leadership came under a lot of trouble
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and that was enough, ultimately, to topple him.
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But, you know, when you're having to kick people
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there comes a point where you just can't take any more damage.
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he's just lost his fifth he's lost them on kind of the left and the right of the party it seems
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um the the last one to go uh i don't recall the name you'll tell me in a second at least
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but uh she leaves the caucus and then john rustad says wow she's got mental health issues
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i don't know this person maybe she does but i mean if that was the case why was she your candidate
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why was she in the caucus um and that just seemed like a really personal attack to try and
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justify what was happening at least what the hell is happening in lotus land out there
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it i have to tell you it's a very it's a clown car and there's a lot of people in that clown car
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um just speaking on that candidate you should also know that she it's a legal issue and i would
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recommend and i have recommended that she speak to katherine marshall because katherine marshall
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this is her territory um what had happened with that mla is that she had privately gone to the
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leader and said i think there was a family matter and she was struggling with her mental health she
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needed a break she's the critic for ministry of children and families in british columbia which
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is if you believe in the devil the devil resides in the ministry of children and families it is a
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horror show in there um and i think as a woman i think it does affect you maybe differently and
00:28:38.100
that's okay for us to say that. I think that it was difficult for her. And so she went to the
00:28:45.580
leader as she should. And she said, Hey, John, I'm having a bit of a struggle. I need to take a bit
00:28:50.400
of time off. And she wasn't talking months. She wasn't even talking weeks. And then he proceeds
00:28:55.820
to tell everybody that he's supporting her. There have been some problems in caucus. Some people
00:29:02.540
thought she was too left leaning, sort of very similar to the conversation that all three of
00:29:06.780
you have just had about municipal politics in Calgary and political parties are you really a
00:29:12.340
conservative was sort of the question that goes around and there's some ardent hardcore very
00:29:18.780
right-wing conservatives in that caucus and so John backed her and then a day or two ago he jumps out
00:29:26.840
and says you know he shares this privileged information technically as her employer and
00:29:34.100
breaches all of the standards that he is he is not her employer there would there would not be
00:29:40.700
any employment relationship to like the leader of a party is effectively the boss but like legally
00:29:47.280
speaking the employer would be the legislative assembly of british columbia yes exactly oh and
00:29:52.180
i and i just want to say i wish bc conservatives when lindsey shepard was fired nobody understood
00:29:57.920
who the employer really was and that there are employment standards you can't beak off
00:30:03.240
and say whatever you want to say but the the point of this is that she had gone through the right
00:30:08.400
protocols and he steps out and not only does he break that confidence and therefore creates a huge
00:30:15.000
liability for the party and a huge liability for her he then claims that the woman he's been
00:30:21.400
protecting and supporting is a secret hamas supporter okay it's very it's very joe mccarthy
00:30:28.400
you're a communist you're a communist you know it was so we actually oh my god she was a secret
0.65
00:30:36.840
hamas supporter of some kind yeah a sympathizer and uh and so i have to tell you for me and my
00:30:43.420
jaded colleagues uh not the and i would say that there's a lot of first-time mlas in that caucus
00:30:48.620
they were horrified i had one whose voice was cracking i had another one who told me that his
00:30:54.360
entire family was calling him and his wife was telling him how disappointed she was in him and
00:31:01.880
that he was worried about this moa's mental health it was absolute chaos it was that
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00:31:06.760
shit show going on the other thing is that me and my colleagues were standing there watching us i
0.99
00:31:13.240
have to tell you we were laughing our asses off at one point because it reminded us of that show
0.99
00:31:19.320
in the thick of it with malcolm tucker it was just absolute chaos and the and it wasn't we weren't
00:31:25.640
laughing about the mental health but when he did the overreach jump the shark suggesting that she
00:31:30.440
was some sort of hamas secret agent in the or sympathizer in the caucus to us that was just
00:31:35.720
a bridge too far um but it from that point on it really speaks and it has spoken and i would say
00:31:42.600
that John what what may not be visible or obvious to the observers across the
00:31:49.020
country or who haven't had a first-hand or a front-row seat to the John Russ
00:31:54.560
dad show when he became leader and I'll be very honest with you there were a lot
00:32:00.000
of us that had worked for Gordon Campbell including myself in
00:32:03.240
communications that you know I've known John 26 years I think it is and I know
00:32:09.780
know what his strengths are and leadership definitely wasn't
00:32:12.480
one of them. But he we needed somebody that was charismatic
00:32:16.380
that was that could that could bridge the the 604 and the two
00:32:22.380
five o's together, which is you know, our resource communities
00:32:26.480
how this province works with the First Nations communities and
00:32:30.180
then with Metro Vancouver, which conservatives or right of
00:32:33.540
center have a hard time breaking through or have had a hard time
00:32:39.780
one ridiculous, and sometimes even offensive error. What goes on in that little
0.84
00:32:47.100
fiefdom in the leaders office is embarrassing. The other thing is, is he's got three prominent,
00:32:53.280
hardcore, former NDP organizers, and a federal liberal now and there. And he's gotten rid of
00:33:01.500
all of his conservative or I don't even know if there was a lot of conservative stuff. But his
00:33:05.380
inner circle is NDP and federal liberal. And you've got one of
00:33:12.220
his his new assistant director or assistant chief of staff, Ryan
00:33:17.220
Painter has a reputation for decimating female conservative
1.00
00:33:22.120
pundits like myself, I have a litany of things I could accuse
00:33:25.420
him of. And he had started an apology tour with me, I should
00:33:29.020
have known then that there was something up he was flipping
00:33:31.840
over to the conservative side. But getting back to what's
00:33:34.620
happened. As of 11 o'clock Pacific time today, the board of the party has finally written John
00:33:41.800
Rustad a letter. And they have, it's a traditional, typical, we'd like you, we don't support you,
00:33:48.140
we'd like you to leave. But what you can take away from this letter, which makes it, which
00:33:52.500
differentiates it from other letters or other situations like this that I've, that I've witnessed
00:33:57.860
or participated in, is that they don't even tell him that they want him to stay while they choose
00:34:03.420
an amateur leader or decide on what the leadership looks like. They want him gone ASAP. And by the
00:34:08.580
way, don't let the door hit you on the way out. And so that makes it very different. This is also
00:34:14.680
a very new party. And I think what John Rustad always, and your viewers and even maybe some of
00:34:22.080
you won't know, but John Rustad, when I was with the BC Liberals, took a hard run at my boss at
00:34:28.760
gordon campbell um or at least in rustland land it was a hard hard run and um he failed
00:34:36.440
he i believe he always wanted to be leader and what he really liked and what he still i think
00:34:41.320
covets is the is the 2009 to 2011 bc liberal party because we were a a machine in communications
00:34:51.640
we were getting more conservative we were probably presenting more social credit
00:34:56.200
um and we were getting a lot of attacks and with the NDP I'm very proud of that time
00:35:03.220
um and I think what he thought when he took it over because he just it was a cakewalk he just
00:35:08.280
grabbed the leadership and and took everybody out to the election basically I think what he thought
00:35:13.340
he was going to do is create that that certain period of time of the BC Liberal Party and put
00:35:18.740
it into the BC Conservative Party but he doesn't he his follow-through it has always been terrible
00:35:25.320
he's he's he he has a he has i think he has a little add i don't think he understands how to
00:35:31.460
put things together what the expertise and the team that needs to be there to have that type of
00:35:36.120
discipline and consistency because the two things that john rustad's team isn't disciplined and
00:35:41.960
consistent and there is a level of a pure meanness that is go that has um is notorious uh or infamous
00:35:52.700
So anyway, I don't suspect that he'll make it past the weekend,
00:35:58.280
but he obviously can't come out and resign right away
00:36:10.100
it doesn't look like he's going to be able to hang on.
00:37:18.720
they do not seem to have done that they have doubled down on chaos now and i don't know all
00:37:27.760
these individuals maybe i mean new parties new mlas you're gonna have it's not as established
00:37:33.260
the politicians are not gonna be as polished which is a good thing in many ways but at the
00:37:38.080
same time it means they're also more likely to be rambunctious and rebellious um so you know
00:37:44.580
maybe John Rustad is just the only adult in the room
0.89
00:38:00.440
from the left wing and the right wing of the party.
00:38:12.220
And it's not because they don't want to help the
00:38:14.280
party but they have told john and i know this for a fact they have told them the taps are turned off
00:38:19.180
and it's been going on for a long time now and the final warning the final push came just i think
00:38:25.080
36 hours ago i was speaking to somebody relatively well very well connected and is known to be a good
00:38:31.000
donor to the party and just said no because there's also questions about where some of this money has
00:38:35.840
gone it is this story is not just about a guy that said something that at best was really mean
0.93
00:38:43.880
and stupid and at worst litigious or legally um made us legally vulnerable this goes into
0.97
00:38:51.000
management um it goes into um there's is there negligence there there's a whole bunch of problems
1.00
00:38:58.280
and the bcndp is likely to call a spring election because this is good as it's going to get for eb
00:39:03.880
and he's got his own knives out in his caucus so there's a lot more to this all right so um
00:39:10.040
Um, yeah, Nigel, it's, uh, ever Liz Truss, I was very sad to see what happened with her.
00:39:16.800
I think she could have been a really great prime minister if she had more than, like, a week or two.
0.99
00:39:23.820
Like, it was so, so short-lived that, uh, her, her prime minister, her premiership.
00:39:28.040
But, uh, you know, I remember, uh, I don't know if it was Daily Mail or, but one of the major British publications had a head of lettuce and said,
00:39:34.760
which will survive longer, uh, Liz Truss's prime minister or this head of lettuce.
0.99
00:39:38.200
that it was pretty funny um if i was to put a head of lettuce in our newsroom right now nigel
00:39:45.400
which one do you think lasts longer after listening to elise i think the um i think the head of
00:39:53.320
lettuce has got it by by a long shot the one thing that i'm wondering here is is there somebody with
00:40:01.240
and i guess i should be directing this to elise is there somebody in the party who is the obvious
00:40:37.320
uh stammer starmer unfortunate last name there um but there's gentlemen like him that i believe
00:40:45.340
and i might be wrong have agreed to be the insure leader so you need somebody that's steady that the
00:40:50.580
caucus really likes but after that the leadership the leader shipping the politics of it that
00:40:57.880
already started today at the truck loggers association luncheon where all the big wigs
0.88
00:41:02.380
and all the political fixers and movers and shakers, they go to this lunch. And John Rustad
00:41:07.160
was supposed to speak there. And I don't even know if he ended up showing up. But I can tell you,
00:41:11.660
there are some people out there that are pushing certain candidates. So I know of at least three
00:41:17.020
at this particular moment, there's definitely people that can take over. The question is,
00:41:22.300
the people that are trying to push that are formerly BC liberal types like myself,
00:41:37.940
I do not want somebody that's had some position
00:41:42.360
I want somebody that's had a real job before this.
00:41:59.580
We've got to put a pin in it there and go to our parting shots starting with Nigel.
00:42:04.680
Well, you know, Mr. Gilbo, he's always good for a bad quote.
00:42:09.460
He came out yesterday and said that the CBC needs to have more money so that it can conduct unbiased local reporting.
00:42:20.200
I have to wonder whether Mr. Gilbo knows what unbiased reporting is.
00:42:26.360
and for that matter whether the cbsc itself knows what unbiased reporting is i mean it's just
00:42:33.580
the first decision is what do we even report they ignore the right all right uh elise
00:42:41.000
my parting shot is to the carny liberals who betrayed canadian manufacturers and canadians
00:42:47.860
across the country this week when they decided to support uh the un's taxes and levies uh or
00:42:54.200
global carbon tax for marine traffic. 30% of our GDP is tied to pushing our products out across
00:43:03.520
the waters. And it's an absolute betrayal. It's also one of the worst cases of doublespeak.
00:43:08.560
You oppose the carbon tax, but you won't actually get rid of it, the consumer carbon tax in Canada.
00:43:13.660
You've kept the industrial one. And now the UN, who should not even be in the business of taxes
00:43:19.200
and levies that is not their lane you've empowered them through this legislation the other side to
00:43:24.700
this very quickly is trump the trump white house for several months had warned the carney cabinet
00:43:29.960
and carney himself you support that we will retaliate this story i think if the media and
00:43:36.460
and over to nigel on this one if the biased media actually took a look at the story there's a can
00:43:42.180
of worms there all right lindsay this is your first parting shot okay well i just i think i
00:43:49.200
want to close i want to close this loop on the municipal election cycle as somebody who is
00:43:53.220
working on it i probably worked on the jeff davison campaign team we lost we have a new
00:43:57.300
mayor-elect jeremy farkas um and i think we need to we need to stop dividing we need to we need to
00:44:04.940
approach this from a place of unity we need to empower these newly elected uh councillors across
00:44:11.140
this province with the tools with the experience with the wisdom so we don't have this division
00:44:17.060
and we don't have this left versus right at the municipal level um i think you know a shout out
00:44:22.660
lindsay clark took it down in medicine hat and that's really interesting as she had lawsuits
00:44:29.060
and she had all of this stuff and it's seen as a real vindication she took out popular conservative
0.99
00:44:34.020
choice Drew Barnes, former MLA. And that's a really interesting story. And out where I live,
00:44:41.480
in Cochrane, we had another councillor who was elected, Marnie Fideko, who had also taken on
00:44:46.160
administration, incurred a lot of legal bills. So I just want to say that it's really hard to be an
00:44:50.980
elected official. And when you're having these battles with administration and being silenced
00:44:55.880
and being muzzled, we do need to help these people and stand up for them, regardless of what side of
00:45:00.080
the political spectrum that they stand on. So shout out to those two for their victories in
00:45:05.500
the municipal cycle this season. All right. Well, I want to call out the pearl-clutching
1.00
00:45:12.180
legacy media for its wild reaction to Pierre Polyev's comments about the RCMP being political.
00:45:21.960
That's the reason why Justin Trudeau has never faced criminal charges. Justin Trudeau has broken
00:45:54.840
This would be different if Pierre Polly was in power
00:46:03.400
That would be, or if Pierre Paulyev was prime minister
00:46:11.640
that's not the way the system is supposed to work.
00:46:29.580
Just like Donald Trump is using the legal system to go after his opponents,
00:46:32.820
like Donald Trump's opponents used it to go after Donald Trump, for God's sakes.
00:46:38.020
It is just myopic and mind-numbing how these people have approached it.
00:46:45.600
My hope is that Pierre Polyev stands up to the withering criticism that he's getting here.
00:47:16.480
Remember, the Western Standard relies on people
0.99
00:47:20.500
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00:47:26.900
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00:47:33.460
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00:47:38.640
Thank you very much for joining us today, and God bless.