00:00:57.720If they haven't already, the advanced polls are open right now.
00:01:00.480I'm intending to vote in the advanced polls on the way home from the office today.
00:01:04.160And the voting, well, it's not going to be like a regular election night.
00:01:10.200You're not getting any results before you go to bed.
00:01:13.260They're going to come in somewhere between 1 and 4 a.m. is what Elections Alberta is telling us.
00:01:19.980I know, Dave, we've worked out the logistics of this.
00:01:24.040Best as we can predict, we're going to have people literally in the newsroom here all night long.
00:01:28.580We rarely have shifts, but that would be like an old-style newsroom.
00:01:32.920We actually have people coming in, punching the clock.
00:01:35.540We'll be bringing in some Egg McMuffins and whatnot for the morning crew.
00:01:39.640So we will have the results possibly before any other media outlet.
00:01:44.740I can't speak to what they're doing, but we're going to have people at it all night long.
00:01:48.280We're not going to know the results that night, but we will know them in the extreme, likely know them in the extreme early hours of the morning.
00:01:57.980And we'll be here for that and we'll be reporting on it.
00:02:01.240So let's talk about the last week of the campaign.
00:02:06.540Corey, just yesterday, Jason Kenney was sharing the stage in Edmonton with his friend, Rachel Notley.
00:02:18.280Um, and, uh, he, he had some choice words for members and supporters of the UCP, uh,
00:02:25.840who don't agree with him on the independence issue.
00:02:43.340He knows how the game works as well or better than most people.
00:02:46.760and he knows darn well too that at least over half of the membership of the UCP is independent
00:02:53.980sympathetic. I mean they don't necessarily want to turn it into an independence party but that's
00:02:57.200where they sit and for him to counsel a purge of that party of that segment of support would be so
00:03:05.180destructive and rip that party down to its its roots. I just I gotta admit it really crossed a
00:03:11.840new line with me with Kenny. I think he's just trying to throw sand in the gears as I've said
00:03:16.360online i don't think he wants premier smith to succeed where he failed and win two elections in
00:03:21.080a row and he's seeing what he can do to to jam up the mix and it was really beyond we'll come back
00:03:26.240to you in a second let's actually just play uh a short clip it's not the entirety of it because
00:03:29.920it was a long conversation but i think we'll show a very fair uh synopsis of uh what uh the former
00:03:35.640premier jason kenney said uh with the former premier rachel notley let's stay there and turn
00:03:40.960into a separatist party so there's no doubt that those folks have uh infiltrated uh and and i think
00:03:47.040it's going to require there will be at when this is done a moment where that there has to be a
00:03:53.420reckoning either that party uh stands for its founding declaration of the commitment to canada
00:03:59.940upon which it has received a majority mandate twice and if it does these people have to be
00:04:06.500shown to the door and told they're welcome to participate in democracy but if their goal
00:04:11.600primary goal is separation then they have to do it in a separatist party you know again uh we know
00:04:17.840that uh continuing this conversation will be bad for the economy uh we know of course that uh that
00:04:25.380uh an option to vote will be particularly bad uh for the economy uh nagel you were around when
00:04:33.380And Jason Kenney bought a blue truck, put on some boots and a hat and started riding around Alberta, crusading to unite the right to bring together the Wildrose and the progressive conservatives.
00:04:49.720And he is saying very explicitly here, he's calling for the total destruction of his legacy.
00:04:56.220That's probably not how he would frame it.
00:04:58.400He'd say, well, I founded a Federalist party, not a party with a bunch of separatists who were wrecking it.
00:05:04.060But those people were there for the most part.
00:05:07.300He's right that some people joined during the COVID crusade against him.
00:05:10.820It's just him, I think, being a bit butthurt about that and that movement and the people who came from it.
00:05:15.840By and large, though, these are people who were, most of the leaders were still active in the Wild Rose, some of them in the PC party at that time.
00:05:24.140He is calling very clearly for the complete destruction of a united right in Alberta because, Corey's right, among UCP voters, most polls have independent support somewhere between 55% and 65% among UCP voters.
00:05:41.360Among members, it's a lot higher than that.
00:05:44.740It would be the complete ejection of probably three-quarters of its active membership, the grass tops of the party.
00:05:52.680People actually sit on constituency associations, that kind of thing.
00:05:55.820He's calling for the complete demolition of the party that he was the largest player in creating.
00:06:03.120Well, that certainly is how he's playing it.
00:06:05.760And whether there's bitterness, I mean, remember the things that he said about the people in the party.
00:10:21.520I mean, I think even the most rabid separatists would say, okay, the best – if we all leave the UCP, we don't have another party to go to.
00:10:30.040And if we split the vote, that means Premier Nehden-Nenshi.
00:10:33.240And they're smart enough to realize, no, we don't want that at all costs.
00:10:37.860Actually, a lot of them aren't smart enough to realize that.
00:10:39.880That's the other end of the coin, or some are trying to turn it into an expressly separatist party, which would be a different disaster.
00:10:45.140Of course, but it's, again, it's the same people that are talking about this that have sort of been the problem within the independence movement, the Jeff Raths of the world, you know, beacon off without thinking, right?
00:11:00.340I think it was probably the same thing with Jason Kenney.
00:11:04.120Daniel Smith is not going to expel these people.
00:11:06.740She may say, OK, you've had your vote, and now it goes on to the back burner, and we concentrate on working on the province and getting a better deal out of Ottawa.
00:11:16.040I would think, David, if there's anybody within cabinet who isn't explicitly on side, they may find themselves eased to the one side, but a general membership purge, unlikely.
00:11:27.400Yeah. So Kenny has gone back to saying, wow, you know, these people are against the founding principles of the UCP. Corey, you know, you were involved in that. I was deeply involved in it.
00:11:44.840I won't speak out of turn because these were conversations held in confidence.
00:11:50.680But during that time, I was a Wildrose MLA.
00:11:53.460Kenny was the leader of the PCs before he had a seat, but he was the leader of the PCs.
00:11:58.180We would have several one-on-one conversations, some of which dealt with this directly.
00:12:14.840But that merger negotiation, you know, where it said, like, you know, UCP would be committed to a strong Alberta within United Canada, something like that.
00:12:23.920But the agreement said also the founding principles will be determined officially at the founding convention of the UCP, at its first convention.
00:12:34.520And the party had that founding convention.
00:12:36.740And the membership explicitly and repeatedly rejected that.
00:12:42.580And the independence movement was not mainstream at that time, but it was in the back of enough people's minds.
00:12:48.060There was a Prime Minister Trudeau still in Ottawa, kind of an almost peak Trudeau.
00:13:03.580It was not something people were moving on, but they rejected that.
00:13:05.940So the founding convention of the UCP rejected making the UCP an unconditionally and permanently federalist party.
00:13:12.960That is not in its founding principles.
00:13:15.440And if you put it to the members, I'm pretty sure if they gave them a binary option, I am extremely confident they would vote to make it a Sovereignist party.
00:13:25.380It's a fair question that's going to be asked of UCP members in November.
00:13:29.100There's going to be an annual general meeting.
00:13:32.620Is it going to be kind of a broad brokerage, center-right and right party with Federalists and Sovereignists, where they can try to agree to disagree on it?
00:13:43.320Because if the Federalists try to push one side, Corey, and say, no, we are making this an unconditionally Federalist party, that forces the hand of the other side.
00:13:52.060And that, I think, would legitimate the Sovereignists in the party who do want to make the UCP an officially Sovereignist party.
00:13:59.340if the other side tries to force the issue,
00:14:01.540I think it would kind of legitimate them
00:14:03.300forcing the issue in the other direction.
00:14:56.240And Kenny bloody well knows it, which again, Smith knows better than to listen to him, but I just got to wonder what his motivation is. It won't even help his federal aspirations that much. He's cloaked himself as Captain Canada. I understand that. That's fine. But where does throwing a hand grenade into a party that's a cobbled coalition of cranky conservatives, how does that serve Kenny in any sort of way?
00:15:17.920Breaking the UCP and allowing the NDP to win probably actually helps serve his purposes for becoming the leader of the Federal Conservative Party, because he could say, hey, look, these guys are no one can keep them together.
00:15:29.160It wasn't just me. Smith couldn't do it. It's not just me. These are the crazies I was dealing with, and they're responsible for the NDP.
00:15:36.280So I think one of the problems he's going to face when, you know, if Paglia falls and then he runs for Conservative Party federal leader, he's going to be facing questions, not just in Alberta, but around the country, like, how did you lose Alberta? No Conservatives ever lost Alberta. How? And then he can say, ah, no one can hold it. These guys are crazy and fractious.
00:15:56.940So I think it is in his political interest to see Smith falter at this, in addition to probably a degree of hurt feelings and ego that the party that he helped birth ultimately left him.
00:16:12.340yeah you make a case you know one of the weird things about this that we've accommodated
00:16:18.800ourselves over the years to having a separatist party in quebec being the legitimate government
00:16:25.980but somehow staying within confederation but the idea that alberta should it ever develop into a
00:16:34.360separatist government that's just beyond the pale we couldn't possibly have that
00:16:38.640the weird double standard that we accept for ourselves.
00:16:42.360I think the point the Federalists are making
00:16:43.600is that the PQ ran as a Sovereignist Party.
00:16:46.500The UCP ran as a quasi-sovereignist party.
00:16:50.540I mean, there was the Sovereignty Act,
00:16:51.920even though the version of the Sovereignty Act that was passed
00:16:54.260was a significantly, significantly watered-down version
00:16:57.820of the one Smith campaigned on in the leadership race.
00:17:00.020But still, it used language of sovereignty.
00:17:02.740It would use words independence, just not total independence.
00:17:05.460And so it's fair to say I think the UCP ran in the last election as a quasi-Sovicist party.
00:17:11.060Kennedy was happy to tap into the language when he was trying to win the leadership of the PCs and then the UCP and then Alberta.
00:17:17.340You know, he would have this vote, unilateral vote on equalization, which I think all of us backed at the time.
00:17:23.380I think we see how pointless it was now.
00:17:26.220It should have at least been used symbolically to say, see, you can't change anything in Canada.
00:22:05.600But among those who haven't voted, I think it might be one of the few swayable rooms.
00:22:09.500It's going to be a conservative room with a mixture of kind of right populists with more establishment, staffer class types mixing in them.
00:22:17.140I do know a lot of people assure themselves, well, the conservative establishment are all the way for this.
00:22:22.080Among the young staffers, actually, they're saying what they need to publicly, but most of them are actually on site, I think.
00:22:29.820So anyway, I think it'll be a swayable room and an interesting event.
00:22:35.600we don't know i don't even know what time it is anyway it's on uh it's on friday the 16th
00:22:43.140coming up here we'll be live streaming and i should have mentioned also at that same conference
00:22:46.680uh pierre polyev speaking uh for canada and a big speech by uh the premier daniel smith so
00:22:53.140uh all politicians all the time and uh in calgary on thursday and friday
00:22:58.040so cory we were talking off camera before i think everyone's just exhausted because
00:23:03.820Because, I mean, we've all, we've been, you know, you've covered and the three of us have covered and been involved in actual campaigning during elections that are, you know, 40 day rip period or something.
00:23:14.880And at the end, you just, you fall down exhausted, you're dead.
00:23:19.000This has been going on for over a year.
00:23:21.400You know, we've had the petition collection phase and then the certification and then the uncertainty with courts and all that coming through until it finally spits out as this Frankenstein.
00:23:33.160I guess we're overusing the Frankenstein analogy today, but this, you know, you know, Frankenstein monster question that we got coming in early July.
00:23:42.700I think all sides, it's been going on so long that the enthusiasm now is like people are hanging on.
00:23:49.280The people showing up at events, I think on both sides are just kind of the core enthusiasts.
00:23:53.660You know, you got hardcore independence guys showing up to these events and then you got a bunch of, you know, blue haired boomers showing up.
00:24:02.120Sorry Boomers, we have a lot of Boomers watching
00:26:53.740Okay. And you actually identified the first one as the non-constitutional issues. Things like immigration. Should we expect people who've come in from outside, they're temporary workers, why are they here? Should they pay their own health care fees at least? That would be one.
00:27:14.940Should we, in fact, as a province, have control over immigration?
00:27:19.080And I'm not going to read them all, but these are the things that they are talking about.
00:27:23.680We have enough trouble handling the legitimate health care and education needs of people coming in from Ontario, Quebec, without the ones coming from other countries.
00:27:35.600So, to me, it seems common sense, these things.
00:27:40.880I don't know why we have to ask the question, but I guess the sensitivities these days among the woke and the DEI crowd are that, well, if you're going to address these issues, you want to make sure that you have...
00:27:52.560I think it was the camouflage of the independence question.
00:27:54.720Smith was taking a lot of heat for having it, so she puts all these on.
00:28:17.580I mean, some of them are kind of so self-evidently obvious that what the answer should be that, as you just said, I don't know why we're even asking them.
00:28:25.720Should provinces select judges for, you know, King's Court and the Court of Appeal?
00:28:37.360Now, the point about these other questions is that there are other provinces that also want the same thing.
00:28:44.180Now, whether they have the intestinal fortitude to go through with it, or if the idea comes from Alberta right after a separation vote, whether they would want to be associated, that's a different question.
00:28:56.400But all those kinds of constitutional questions, like the, you know, forcing the federal government out of areas which are essentially provincial jurisdiction, takes you back to where the premier started three years ago, saying we want a strong Alberta, but within a united Canada.
00:29:19.580So therefore we have, even if it's watered down, we have an act to say, Ottawa, keep out of it.
00:29:26.400So I think that's probably where this is all going to go, making the bold prediction that the separation referendum will fail,
00:29:36.360that over all these other questions that they put out there will be taken as an endorsement of defending Alberta's provincial authority.
00:29:46.380And we'll be back to where we were in 2025.
00:29:50.200That's actually not such a bad place to be.
00:29:51.680Dave, I think it was, as I said, I think the Premier Smith put all of these questions on the ballot kind of to camouflage the political heat she was getting for allowing the independence question to be on their period.
00:30:07.280Even though it came effectively from Citizens Initiative, the courts being jerks about it, and she put it on.
00:30:13.800So she was taking a lot of heat for it.
00:30:15.360I think she's trying to camouflage it.
00:30:16.560But I think she runs the serious risk of getting a much lower margin of victory on those other nine questions, or potentially even losing some of them by attaching it.
00:30:31.100Because you've got, you know, left-wing groups who are, their slogan is no to the nine, which is really a shitty slogan.
00:30:41.260Which I said, that's the first ten people you meet.
00:30:42.920Yeah, well, what nine are you talking about?
00:30:44.920But, you know, you had former premiers Notley, Redford, and Stelmack come out saying, telling everyone just today, vote against all these immigration questions.
00:30:55.880If you believe that temporary foreign workers from BooBooStan should pay for their own health care, you're a racist.
00:31:02.180You know, that's what our ancestors fought on D-Day for.
00:31:04.800So you have to pay for the welfare of someone from BooBooStan.
00:31:07.720um so but you're gonna the the left-wing federalists who come out i think there's going to
00:31:16.420be a sense among them to vote what they will perceive as the straight ticket so voting no
00:31:21.700to independence you know that's the pro-canada as they would see it i would see it as pro-otttawa
00:31:26.360they would vote as they see it pro-canada all the way down the ballot that means no to the
00:31:31.440immigration questions and no to the constitutional reform questions and no to daniel smith they would
00:31:40.380And, in fact, because independence on the question at the same time, some hardcore independent supporters might even vote against the constitutional.
00:31:48.600They might even vote against some of the constitutional reform ballot measures because they see it as a waste of time, which it is, because the Constitution is not getting reformed no matter what you do.
00:31:57.180um so i don't know do you think by having this smorgasbord of issues on about all at the same
00:32:03.740time she risks getting a lower margin of victory on the immigration to constitutional amendment
00:32:08.580questions than she would otherwise get or potentially even risk losing some as a result
00:32:12.640yeah i don't know about losing but certainly not as high as she would like i would think she would
00:32:17.160probably she was hoping for 80 on the immigration question which is as nigel says is just common
00:32:23.360sense of course alberta just wants the same thing that quebec has we want to be able to vote it on
00:32:28.140by itself you might get 80 yeah uh we you know we want to select our immigrants and we want only the
00:32:33.820people that that are working and can can pay their fair share to to come here so yeah you're right
00:32:39.260that's just a common sense question should automatically be ticked off uh yes but uh you
00:32:45.260know as you've explained there that it could it could backfire for her with a lower a lower pass
00:32:51.560Because there's a lot of leftists who, even though they would agree privately, yeah, we do need to get more control.
00:32:57.080They're not going to give her the benefit of the doubt or the satisfaction, and they'll vote against it.
00:33:02.180Well, being such large, wordy questions, they force the campaigning to kind of be a no to the nine, yes to the nine.
00:33:10.300You can't parse through all 10 of these.
00:34:16.280They want her gone. But, you know, she had a thumping endorsement at the last ESP convention, 90 percent plus.
00:34:24.000So she was extremely strong man, but she was seen as more ambiguous on the question at the time.
00:34:28.280She's going to allow the question to go forward, but she's just kind of staying out of it.
00:34:31.900Now she's seen as a partisan on the Federalist side, even if most of the Federalists see her as on the independent side.
00:34:37.560So what is she going to do? And I think a big part of that, you know, polls are showing independence is not going to win. I guess we call it Tuesday morning when we get the results.
00:34:52.300So let's just say, if the polls are correct, it gets roughly one-third support. It's on the map, but it doesn't win. But let's say the other nine do succeed. What does she do then? Does she say, okay, well, I'm going to do some crackdown on immigration. That'll be popular and obviously necessary.
00:35:14.720But now we have a mandate for constitutional reform.
00:35:18.400I mean, if there was any prospect for succeeding in that, you know, that might actually be a good way for her to channel that anger that is fueling the independence movement.
00:35:29.920People are angry at the state of Canada and people who might be upset that she wasn't with them if she could say, well, but the people of Alberta did endorse this.
00:35:38.220I know you didn't get what you want. I know you're disappointed. But hey, we got a mandate for this.
00:35:43.900Nigel, but the risk to that is that you can't deliver it, because I don't think anyone can deliver constitutional reform in Canada.
00:37:00.420I agree, and I think the other thing that will happen is she will quickly move into campaign mode towards the end of the winter, and she is going to have so much money to spend, so much money to blow around with the huge oil prices.
00:37:14.980We're going to be raking in billions and billions and billions of dollars every month, and all that's going to be promised to schools and housing and health, and she'll be throwing money at everything and glide to victory.
00:37:29.060She's a long way from being a spent force.
00:37:42.920But the constitutional amendment questions, it would at least, I think, would provide her with a temporary off-ramp to at least most and reasonable independent supporters to say,
00:37:54.560Okay, you didn't get what you want, but we've got a mandate to change the Constitution to make this country more fair and equitable for Alberta and for everyone.
00:38:03.400I think that would get her some runway, but that is a wild gamble because the chances of her actually delivering actual constitutional reform are vanishingly small.
00:38:18.180It would seem to me that's an extreme, might be a short-term advantage to her, but unless she actually, maybe she knows something I don't, and she's actually good buddies with PSPP, the new premier of Quebec, who knows?
00:38:32.660But I don't know, that seems like an option for her, but if she can't deliver on it, which seems highly unlikely that she can deliver on it, it leaves her to a dead end that would end her premiership eventually.
00:38:42.460well yeah the factional juggling i mean she's gonna have to move fast though because now we're
00:38:46.900gonna have a group within the party that's hasn't gotten where they wanted to go they're frustrated
00:38:52.360but they have seen i think in a public vote that we're going in that presumption that it was you
00:38:57.540know a third as we're talking about she has to as i said channel that energy keep them on something
00:39:03.060if you leave them uh unfocused they will turn towards her because there is a group within the
00:39:08.120independence movement that i mean let's face it they viscerally hate her and they want to rip her
00:39:12.520out at all costs and they are going to try and direct that portion of the party to do that she's
00:39:19.120going to have that battle right away and if she can communicate channel that towards something
00:39:25.420some victories they can have the constitutional ones we do know are impossible uh but if she can
00:39:31.380rag the puck long enough to get into the next election that buys her time she's of the opinion
00:39:35.880that she's got support in other provinces
00:40:04.720So that's my question to you. I think my last question to you. Is constitutional reform effectively impossible or, you know, are we in a weird constellation right now where we've got kind of a make a deal prime minister who seems to be able to work with the left and the right at the same time?
00:40:24.420He's popular in Quebec and parts of Alberta at the same time, which is very rare.
00:40:30.640You've got a sovereigntist, but not full separatist or nationalist premier in Alberta.
00:40:36.200And you've got a sovereigntist, separatist in Quebec, but who is also maybe willing to make a deal.
00:40:44.580Are we in a unique window where we can revisit Charlottetown?
00:40:47.280Well, it's interesting you should reference Charlottetown, because when you look at what the Charlottetown Accord actually consisted of, there are echoes of that from 40 years ago in what we're asking people to pay heed to now, constitutional reform about provincial powers versus Ottawa.
00:41:09.200And, you know, it's just like Ted Morton was talking about this just last week, and he was saying that the independence option, let's say it passed.
00:41:25.920Well, let's say that we went through the whole process.