Western Standard - LIVE SHOW - Triggered： Can Premier Kenney salvage his leadership？

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 good morning it's april 11th 2022 and welcome to triggered happy monday or not so happy but hey

00:00:40.120 look on the bright side this is a short week for most people due to uh easter coming up this

00:00:45.080 weekend we won't be doing a show on friday just so you know but there'll be lots of coverage lots

00:00:50.240 of things happening going tomorrow night to pierre polyev's big to do at spruce meadows in calgary

00:00:55.000 actually. That should be interesting. I mean, he's been really getting giant turnouts to his

00:01:00.880 rallies across the country, and he really seems to have some momentum going on in that conservative

00:01:05.200 leadership race right now. And, well, we're starting to see the pushback. You know, the hard

00:01:09.820 left. They're trying to say, he's the new Trump. He's the new Trump. That's all they got. That's

00:01:15.500 fine. You know, if they want to stay shallow and poor and trying to stop a good solid conservative

00:01:20.740 person from having a campaign, I think it's only going to backfire on them in the long run.

00:01:25.000 So, we'll talk a little more about that later though. So, this show, just to let you all know, is live. And it comes every day, Monday to Friday, aside from this Friday, as I said, at 11.30 a.m. Mountain Standard Time.

00:01:38.260 and I see the comments are already starting

00:01:40.260 the folks from Black Falls

00:01:42.100 Scott Campbell from Fort Mac

00:01:46.520 and a number of people popping in there

00:01:47.760 I like seeing the comments

00:01:48.520 I like seeing the interaction

00:01:49.560 that's the advantage of doing a live show

00:01:51.840 you know we get some technical hiccups now and then

00:01:54.060 but we can still interact

00:01:57.020 get some things out to guests

00:01:58.200 and things like that

00:01:59.260 and sometimes you guys ask me questions

00:02:00.640 I never even would have thought of

00:02:01.720 so it brings the discussion along

00:02:03.380 so keep those comments coming guys

00:02:04.720 I really appreciate them

00:02:05.640 read them all

00:02:06.160 even if I don't necessarily respond to them all

00:02:08.580 and discuss things back and forth with each other

00:02:10.560 just make sure to keep it civil though

00:02:12.480 you know we don't need to be at each other's throats

00:02:14.500 it says I like to keep saying

00:02:15.880 take politics seriously

00:02:17.300 don't take it personally though

00:02:19.140 there's no sense attacking each other

00:02:21.080 we can differ without getting rude

00:02:23.000 it's possible

00:02:23.640 if you want to get a little more on the rude side

00:02:25.540 there's my Twitter account at the bottom

00:02:26.660 Corey B. Morgan

00:02:27.440 you can get a little more rough and tumble on there

00:02:29.600 it's a little more casual time for it

00:02:31.340 of course if you're too belligerent on there

00:02:32.660 well I'll just ignore you there too

00:02:33.860 But we have a lot of means to communicate and talk about the subjects of this show and politics in general.

00:02:40.480 And, of course, send me guest ideas, commentary, things like that.

00:02:43.520 Email them, tweet them to me. I appreciate them all.

00:02:46.200 Okay, so I've got a couple of great guests on today.

00:02:48.120 I'm going to have, first of all, Brett Wilson.

00:02:50.860 He's going to talk about Kenny's leadership review.

00:02:53.780 He's going to get more of a counterpoint to where I'm coming from with things.

00:02:56.560 He's quite supportive of Premier Kenny, and he wants Premier Kenny to pass in that review.

00:03:01.680 So I want to offer some balance in here.

00:03:03.920 We've really been beating up on Kenny quite a bit around here

00:03:07.700 and a lot of our columnists and our guests.

00:03:09.780 So Wilson's going to offer a different point of view on that.

00:03:12.900 Plus, we're going to have the Western Standards Edmonton Bureau Chief Rachel Emanuel.

00:03:16.880 She's been on here before.

00:03:18.360 She was in Ottawa for some time.

00:03:20.740 She moved all the way out west, and we have installed her in the legislature, 0.92

00:03:23.760 and she's put in her first whole week over there in that Edmonton Hornet's nest. 0.99

00:03:27.640 So we'll get a review and see what she saw and what she thinks of things up there right now.

00:03:31.920 So, to get things kicked off, a lot of provincial stuff today, as with Brett and Rachel, and

00:03:38.160 here's where I'm sitting on things.

00:03:40.480 There's a review.

00:03:41.420 It's on for what it's worth.

00:03:43.320 Premier Kenney kicked off the voting period for the latest version of the leadership review.

00:03:48.500 He's been trying so hard to defer and avoid, and in the words of Rick Bell, he still just

00:03:53.380 doesn't get it.

00:03:54.500 I don't know what sort of speech could repair the divided UCP right now, but I do know that

00:03:58.360 what Kenney delivered last weekend just wasn't it.

00:04:01.260 Kenny needed some sort of barn burner, something to light the world on fire,

00:04:04.280 turn the tide of party discontent, and he didn't deliver it.

00:04:07.660 And perhaps no such speech exists.

00:04:09.820 Maybe the party's just too far gone by now.

00:04:12.760 The clock's ticking.

00:04:14.080 And with each ballot mailed out, Kenny has less time to try and sway the opinion of his members.

00:04:18.380 And while Kenny admits to having made mistakes, he still always follows with an excuse.

00:04:23.020 There's little to be seen in the way of genuine contrition or any indication

00:04:26.700 that Kenny really actually understands what's gone wrong and that he's going to be looking to

00:04:31.560 change that. The case Premier Kenny and his dwindling number of defenders usually tends to

00:04:36.940 make in support of keeping him as leader is that he's better than the alternative. Well, being less

00:04:41.840 bad doesn't necessarily make you good. And Albertans are weary of years of bad politics.

00:04:47.740 They really want something to vote for rather than against for a change. I mean, perhaps any

00:04:53.680 Any other leader of the UCP would have acted the same way policy-wise these last three

00:04:57.220 years, even with pandemic restrictions.

00:05:00.740 I mean, while unpopular policy decisions clearly contributed to many of the UCP woes today,

00:05:05.580 the problem runs deeper than policies themselves.

00:05:08.680 The problem is a lack of confidence in the party's leadership.

00:05:12.400 Members haven't been calling for a policy review, they've been calling for a leadership

00:05:15.360 review.

00:05:16.360 With the election of the UCP, Albertans were looking forward to more than just replacing

00:05:20.460 the NDP.

00:05:21.580 wanted to see a government that reflected grassroots values and stands up for Albertans

00:05:25.860 against Ottawa. Notley won power for a number of reasons. Not the least of which, though, was

00:05:30.660 Albertans were being, they were sick and tired of the arrogant, out-of-touch progressive conservative

00:05:35.680 government, and that government took their role for granted. Now, unfortunately, in a short three

00:05:40.480 years, the Kennedy government is looking and acting strikingly like the PCs of old. Introverted,

00:05:46.140 top-down leadership is souring party members and Albertans alike. Instead of looking within and

00:05:50.980 trying to understand why members within his own party have been turning on him.

00:05:55.120 Kenny's been choosing to shoot outwards.

00:05:57.220 He's labeling his opponents as extremists and kooks, 0.84

00:06:00.320 and he even took part in labeling nomination contenders as racists.

00:06:04.840 These are the actions we expect of the federal liberal government.

00:06:07.800 Kenny sounded a lot like Trudeau did

00:06:09.520 when Trudeau was slandering the truckers' convoy participants,

00:06:12.280 rather than at least listening to them with a modicum of respect.

00:06:16.180 The internal political games and abuse of party process stink to high heaven.

00:06:20.220 Democratic nominations are blocked.

00:06:22.280 The leadership review process has been altered so much

00:06:24.760 that few people are even going to have faith in the outcome of it.

00:06:27.560 Kenney and his supporters haven't tried to win the review

00:06:30.020 through winning the hearts and minds of supporters,

00:06:32.000 as much as they've been trying to win it through rigging the process.

00:06:35.400 If Kenney just embraced an open review last fall

00:06:37.660 when the rumblings of discontent were becoming persistent,

00:06:40.580 he could perhaps have gotten to work on healing internal rifts

00:06:43.540 within his party enough to have survived such a vote.

00:06:46.320 But now this trust is really utterly broken.

00:06:49.120 I wish I could say otherwise, but I just don't see a good outcome in this leadership review.

00:06:54.120 I mean, while Kenny claims he's the only one who can bring unity to the party, I just can't see how.

00:06:58.960 Kenny claims he only needs 50% plus one in order to have a mandate.

00:07:01.920 Look, if Kenny gets anything less than 75% support, this party's going to tear itself to shreds.

00:07:07.340 And if he gets anything more than 75% support, nobody's going to believe the numbers.

00:07:11.360 Kenny's main party problems are internal.

00:07:14.280 His own MLAs and constituency associations have turned on him.

00:07:17.340 If Kenny remains as a leader, it's without question that a number of MLAs are going to be crossing the floor and taking their constituency support with them.

00:07:24.800 Our legislature will look much like it did shortly before Notley took power in Alberta, which is distressing to say the least.

00:07:32.620 One valid question Kenny supporters are asking is, if not Kenny, then who?

00:07:37.320 And while there might not be a clear contender for the throne evident right now, the party can't remain crippled for lack of one.

00:07:43.560 While members don't know yet who can lead their party successfully,

00:07:46.820 they've got a pretty good idea now who can't.

00:07:49.840 I've said it before and I'll say it again.

00:07:51.240 I wish it was otherwise.

00:07:52.280 I'd hoped that Kenny would usher in a decade of responsible conservative government in Alberta.

00:07:57.780 Reality has to be faced now, though.

00:08:00.320 All Kenny can offer is continued top-down leadership fostering division

00:08:04.140 while the UCP support levels swirl the drain.

00:08:07.140 Let's hope the members vote wisely in this review

00:08:09.100 and then vote wisely again when they choose a new leader for the UCP.

00:08:13.620 that's where i'm sitting on this whole mess right now let's check in with our news editor dave

00:08:18.580 naylor and see what else is happening out there in the news world in albert and canada hey dave

00:08:22.500 how's it going it's going good cory how was your weekend i was all right busy a lot of running

00:08:27.540 around i don't want to blow your cover as a uh grumpy old guy but i heard i heard you did a good

00:08:33.460 thing on the weekend saved the life of or helped save the life of a dog possibly i don't know if

00:08:38.580 i'd go that far but yes jane and i went out and picked up an animal uh for the rescue society

00:08:42.900 we volunteer for and it was unfortunately uh very decimated it it hadn't been fed and it was in

00:08:50.100 terrible condition and and uh uh yeah we we did pick it up and we dropped it off with a foster

00:08:54.660 home and in olds that actually are taking really good care of her and she's gonna be doing really

00:08:58.260 well but uh unfortunately yeah we got some people who just uh don't treat animals very well and and

00:09:03.940 uh that's one of the things we like to volunteer to try and uh ease that whenever we well you're

00:09:09.060 You're a big old softy, aren't you, Corey? 0.99

00:09:11.140 I don't know about that.

00:09:12.180 I just, hey, I love animals.

00:09:13.840 I just got no use for people.

00:09:15.220 Exactly.

00:09:15.840 I feel the exact same way.

00:09:17.460 So anyway, leading off the top of the news this hour,

00:09:22.120 we've got a federal adjudicator who has ruled that the Treasury Board was wrong

00:09:27.100 to force staff to use up all their sick leaves

00:09:31.680 and use up all their vacation days before they were allowed to go on COVID furlough.

00:09:36.940 It was a program that had already cost $1.3 billion, and I guess they were trying to save some money, but an adjudicator has shot them down.

00:09:47.840 One of our columnists, Barbara Kay, has written about the Arctic and how Russian nutcase Vladimir Putin may turn his eyes towards Canada's Arctic when he's done with the Ukraine.

00:10:00.880 And speaking of the Ukraine, Premier Kenney announced today that the Alberta government was terminating relationships with three regions within Russia.

00:10:11.200 I'm not even going to try and pronounce the names, but they were all sister regions.

00:10:15.720 And Kenney has terminated it, saying the Russian aggression is outrageous and cannot be tolerated.

00:10:24.700 What else we got on the go?

00:10:26.460 So we've got a report that looked into the overall well-being of the Canadian Canada tax revenue people, and it didn't come out very well.

00:10:36.880 They found some managers were drinking on company time, and the tax man is just basically not an overly healthy department.

00:10:46.040 So that was interesting.

00:10:47.700 And we've got the Saskatchewan Health Minister, Merriman.

00:10:50.800 He was sick, admittedly sick last week and wasn't around all week, but he refused to say whether or not it was COVID. 0.77

00:11:00.940 And the leader of the opposition says, well, that's silly.

00:11:04.400 He should say it if it was COVID.

00:11:06.760 It's a teaching point, an educational thing.

00:11:11.240 And we've got a survey on Canadians' attitudes on the pandemic.

00:11:16.360 And the majority of people feel the pandemic is here to stay.

00:11:20.060 and we've just sort of got to learn to live with it.

00:11:23.360 So that's some of the stuff we've got up at the moment, Corey.

00:11:27.000 We're moments away from publishing a Pierre Polyev story

00:11:30.720 where he's in Vancouver and looking at Vancouver house prices

00:11:35.320 and basically coming up with his plan

00:11:37.560 on how he would try and make housing more affordable for Canadians.

00:11:42.580 And there's a good informative video to go along with that.

00:11:46.740 So I'll be hitting the publish button on that ASAP.

00:11:50.740 Okay, well, we'll keep watching for the stories as they come out.

00:11:54.240 The Polyev one is always of interest. 1.00

00:11:55.780 Of course, for everybody watching, make sure you're finished with the show first

00:11:57.920 before clicking on these stories, but there's plenty of them out there.

00:12:00.960 Thanks for checking in, Dave.

00:12:02.380 I'll talk to you later.

00:12:03.660 Thanks, Corey.

00:12:05.500 So, yes, that was our news editor, Dave Naylor,

00:12:07.720 and he is responsible for that news content that is always going out there.

00:12:11.680 And there's a lot.

00:12:12.480 It's going up fast and hard and heavy.

00:12:14.780 Today, you know, hasn't been a crazy news day for a number of things,

00:12:17.600 but we've still got a lot of stuff to look at and into.

00:12:20.280 And I just like to remind everybody the reason we can do that,

00:12:23.720 the reason we have these reporters,

00:12:25.000 the reason Rachel's out in Edmonton now,

00:12:27.620 and we have Matthew in Ottawa and Chris out in Saskatchewan.

00:12:32.180 We got a read out in BC.

00:12:33.360 We are covering this country and expanding.

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00:12:50.460 I mean, if our content stinks, you guys will drop off. And obviously, we've been putting some stuff

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00:12:58.460 though, I got to remind you, take out a subscription, get to WesternStandardOnline.com.

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00:13:12.660 subscription and it keeps us rolling we'll get more reporters we'll get out and cover things

00:13:16.100 like i said a bunch of us are going out to pier polio's thing tomorrow night we're going to cover

00:13:20.480 that and watch it maybe meet some of you guys out there uh it sounds like it's going to be a big

00:13:24.580 thing i mean his rallies have been huge uh leslund lewis has been holding some large ones as well i

00:13:30.320 don't know about jean charay he uh came on he i again credit where due he he came on our show he

00:13:35.660 talked to us but i don't see him drawing really large crowds at rallies and things such as that

00:13:40.900 I don't know if he's really gaining the excitement of, of Canadians at this time, but the race is

00:13:46.300 ongoing and we're covering it as closely as we can and we'll continue to. Another way we can

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00:15:01.860 Okay, so let's look into a few comments before I get on to my guests. Now, as I said, I was

00:15:06.340 giving Kenny a workout

00:15:08.940 as I have often and many of our columnists

00:15:10.960 have and guests but

00:15:12.800 Brett Wilson, it was a recorded

00:15:15.240 interview. It's hard to corner some people live

00:15:17.060 every time just so you know if you're commenting and such

00:15:19.200 when I do run it. It was recently recorded

00:15:21.300 I talked with him but I do want

00:15:23.260 to get other points of view. We've got to have

00:15:25.140 the discussion. We've got to get it out there and

00:15:27.080 Mr. Wilson feels that

00:15:28.480 people should give Kenny another chance and let

00:15:31.100 him keep going through this review

00:15:33.280 and carry on as a leader. So we'll

00:15:35.080 run that and you can, uh, listen to that. Let's see from Don saying, uh, the less of two evils is

00:15:40.060 not, uh, acceptable way to vote. And that's kind of how I feel on it. You know, I mean,

00:15:44.800 Kenny's had three years to, to try and get it together. And, and unfortunately he just hasn't

00:15:49.720 won things out and they constantly keep saying, well, it's not as bad as Notley. Well, not many

00:15:54.200 would be as bad as Rachel Notley. I mean, people say, well, are you like Gene? Are you like Smith

00:15:58.600 or what? I don't know. We'll see. But right now, how, how long does it have to go? How much does

00:16:03.960 you have to keep uh spinning and twisting and changing the rules to try and hang in there

00:16:08.260 it's not adding to confidence for voters in general if we're talking about election a year

00:16:11.820 from now or in the members but we'll see he's got a month to work on it members are mailing their

00:16:16.500 votes and we'll see what happens but uh mark asking do i address his premier as his excellency

00:16:23.300 and no i don't think anybody does the worst one we have in canada when it comes to those

00:16:27.500 honorifics by the way is usually with mayors when we call them your worship uh if you ever heard me

00:16:32.740 saying your worship, it was usually with a great degree of sarcasm when I was referring to

00:16:37.180 Nahed Ninchy or his prodigy there with Gondek, her worship. I don't worship anybody, particularly 0.79

00:16:46.540 politicians, and especially the municipal ones these days. But yeah, in terms of respect,

00:16:52.920 some of them are pretty dated and pretty nasty. Paulette, coming in from Pinsure Creek,

00:16:57.440 Thanks for joining us today. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's hard to get good measures

00:17:04.640 necessarily from your own following. You know, when I run Twitter polls, I do things like that

00:17:08.840 from general interest and everything, but they often are a reflection of reality. They're just

00:17:12.000 a reflection of who follows me. It seems to be very little love for Premier Kenney in the comment

00:17:16.340 scroll here, though a lot of people watch and they don't necessarily comment. And again, I tire of

00:17:20.960 beating on him. I want some rationed discussion though. We've got to open it up, get it out there.

00:17:29.580 I wish he'd done it earlier because the problem is now I don't know if anybody can trust the

00:17:32.900 results. They've done so much twisting and maneuvering and messing around. Even if he gets

00:17:38.640 a large number, it's hard to say if anybody's going to accept it. And as I said, we'll probably

00:17:42.540 see a split caucus again. I mean, there's a number of caucus members who've crossed the line of no

00:17:46.580 return. They're not going to stay in there. Shannon's saying she's yet to receive her mail-in

00:17:51.900 ballot. There's still a few weeks to go, Shannon, so chances are you will. I like to think you will.

00:17:57.320 I talked with Danielle Smith about that on the show before when they first switched to mail-in

00:18:00.880 ballots. I've been through mail-in ballots before, and on a smaller scale. We did that with the

00:18:04.980 leadership that Danielle won with the Wildrose Party, and there were, I believe, 11,000 people

00:18:09.480 qualified. We processed 8,000 votes, something like that. It was huge. It was a horror story.

00:18:15.480 getting all the ballots out, getting all the ballots back. Some got lost in mail. Some

00:18:19.400 delayed. Some showed up weeks after the leadership race was over with. I mean, the only reason that

00:18:24.560 there was not massive mistrust in the outcome of that vote was that Danielle won it so comfortably

00:18:29.840 with those that came in that no amount of outstanding ballots would have changed the

00:18:35.200 outcome at that point. But it's an ugly, difficult system. You can't prove who actually made their

00:18:41.160 mark on that ballot on the other side. You can't. You can't prove it. You can't prove that somebody

00:18:45.220 else didn't intimidate that person to make that mark. You can't prove easily where somebody bought

00:18:49.680 their own membership. That's where a lot of questions are coming up right now with things.

00:18:53.460 And that's what's killing the UCP more than everything, I think, is a breaking of trust.

00:18:58.520 That's part of the problem. I see Vince from Alberta, so you can see who supports Kenny. And

00:19:02.040 see some others are, you know, there is some balance. Not everybody is on the ropes with

00:19:08.920 Kenny. I mean, some people feel he's the guy who can turn it around. As I said, too, I really hoped

00:19:13.680 he would have turned out much, much better.

00:19:16.040 I really did.

00:19:17.540 John saying, I thought the mail-in ballot was illegal.

00:19:19.420 I don't know.

00:19:20.620 Brian Jean is back down on his challenges towards it.

00:19:23.180 He's saying he'll accept the results

00:19:25.140 and he's comfortable with how it's being watched.

00:19:27.500 I don't know about illegal,

00:19:29.140 but I mean, the twisting and maneuvering they're doing,

00:19:31.920 it's, how do you trust these guys?

00:19:36.440 I mean, if they would do all of this

00:19:38.380 just to keep kicking that can down the road,

00:19:40.500 what would they do if the results turn out

00:19:41.820 the way they don't like?

00:19:42.860 I don't know.

00:19:43.500 we'll see. They've got a lot to make people feel more comfortable with this process to do. And I

00:19:48.320 don't think they've done it. Jennifer saying she hasn't received her ballot yet or refund for the

00:19:52.000 SGM fees. Cause yeah, initially it was a hundred bucks a person. They thought they could rig it by

00:19:55.740 making everybody pay a hundred dollars to come out and come all the way out to Red Deer. They

00:19:59.180 thought this will do it. And then it looked like it wasn't going to win. So they changed the rules.

00:20:06.700 I mean, come on. It reminds me of way back when I was a kid and I had a cousin, Craig. I don't

00:20:12.180 know if Craig ever watches this that often. I'm pretty sure it was Craig. Yeah. So he'd make up

00:20:15.780 card games. You know, he's, he's great card games and he'd make up the rules. And then when you try

00:20:21.600 to play a card, he'd say, no, you can't play that one. Why not? Well, it's on a Thursday. You can't

00:20:26.000 play that one. He would change the rules every time you tried to play a card. It doesn't matter

00:20:29.000 what you did. That card wouldn't work. It feels a little like that with what the UCP is doing.

00:20:36.240 But let's see, Vince is saying he's got a company that's doing mail-in ballots and they've done it

00:20:39.620 by the CPC. It's a professional company. And yeah, I can believe, again, they're going to

00:20:45.300 have auditors. I mean, I would hope there's not going to be a big scandal. It's just that with

00:20:52.660 so many moves to try and twist this though, it just makes it really hard to trust them. It really

00:20:57.920 does. So even if they've given as many scrutineers as possible and checked things and layered it,

00:21:03.320 I got a feeling a lot of people just aren't going to trust those results no matter what happens.

00:21:06.180 We'll see. There's a few weeks to go. Kenny gave his speech. I don't think it turned a lot of

00:21:12.240 people around. I don't think it won a lot of hearts and minds, but some people are supportive

00:21:16.120 of Wells as well. So I'm going to play an interview I had recently with Brett Wilson on this very

00:21:20.020 subject. And you can hear Brett's perspective. I mean, Brett's in Alberta, not everybody agrees

00:21:23.380 with, but he's certainly an established one. As somebody else pointed out, he's very critical of

00:21:27.080 Trudeau. He's certainly not a liberal, whatever Brett Wilson may be. And he speaks from a business

00:21:31.820 perspective. He's been a successful and very well-known businessman. People know him, of course,

00:21:37.440 from his reality TV times as well and his work in the oil field and his work in charities. He's

00:21:44.700 done a great deal throughout Alberta as a philanthropist as well. So give Brett a listen

00:21:50.320 here and get another perspective on Kenny because I've already been, you know, beaten on the process

00:21:53.680 and the party enough. We'll talk to you after that. Well, thank you very much for coming on

00:22:01.540 today, Brett. I really do appreciate it. It's as I said when I invited you, you know, we've got some

00:22:06.220 really tumultuous times provincially in the political scene and such, and a lot of strong

00:22:11.060 views and opinions, including from out of here. And, you know, a lot of people, when it comes to

00:22:15.800 the leadership review with Jason Kenney, are, well, they're beating on him pretty hard. They

00:22:19.960 have been for the last couple of years, and I wanted to see some balance. And you've come out

00:22:24.080 and been very supportive of Premier Kenney in this review, and you've come out with something

00:22:28.240 of an endorsement for him. Yeah, I'm very much aligned with him. I have business interests in

00:22:34.900 Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC. So I'm actively engaged and have been in the world of

00:22:41.080 COVID, which has been probably the highlight of the challenges that we've all been facing for the

00:22:45.960 last couple of years. And it's been the, call it the lightning rod for leadership. And I watch the

00:22:52.200 outcomes and what's been happening in Ontario a disaster Saskatchewan in line with Alberta and

00:22:58.760 you've seen both Scott Moe and Jason Kenney move very much in lockstep with mandates and passports

00:23:05.300 and vaccination protocols and all those things they've moved in line and BC has been an unmitigated

00:23:10.980 disaster and again I own a gym I own restaurants I own activities in various places and in Calgary

00:23:16.980 and pardon me alberta has stood head and shoulders above have we done things perfectly no and part

00:23:22.340 of my frustration is that the medical community is divided so if you get professionals who say

00:23:28.420 masks don't work and professionals who say you need masks for all ages at all times

00:23:33.620 then they say mandates don't work that the passports are meaningless all of these things

00:23:37.940 become interesting when the medical community who are the thought leaders that we should be

00:23:42.420 able to rely on are completely divided and they're not divided in a small range they're divided to

00:23:47.620 extremes you watch joe vipond who is obviously carrying an ndp card ranting and crapping all over

00:23:54.740 every decision that was made and yet alberta is bleeding edge in terms of the covet response for

00:24:01.540 canada so who gets the benefit of that well albertans who gets the blame kenny and this is

00:24:08.820 my frustration the extreme right and the extreme left have crapped all over our leadership in

00:24:14.500 particular kenny i don't see a viable alternative to kenny but ignore that i happen to like the man

00:24:21.700 not just on a relative basis but on an absolute basis as we pivoted and navigated through covet

00:24:28.740 i was in trouble in march of 2020 i'm a lender i'm a borrower i'm a landlord i'm a tenant

00:24:35.780 and it looked like i was screwed on every level over the next couple of months we renegotiated

00:24:41.220 with banks we renegotiated with borrowers we renegotiated with landlords and we solved our

00:24:47.300 problems but i got to tell you i was frustrated and scared at a point in time and so now we've

00:24:53.140 got people continuously dumping on kenny in particular claiming every decision he made was

00:25:00.260 wrong and yet the reality is when you look at our economic recovery which is spectacular

00:25:06.660 and highly anticipated we all knew that the price of oil would recover when covid fell behind the

00:25:12.660 impacts of covid on supply and demand were obvious and we all thought that covid would disappear in

00:25:18.740 a year it took two years but the recovery the global recovery of the oil industry is spectacular

00:25:24.580 and alberta's participation in that because we were ready is also spectacular so to blame our

00:25:30.900 leader for the challenges of covet is wrong the division within the party is goofy i see some of 0.92

00:25:37.540 the stupidest commentary you know all due respect i know you guys and certainly the news rebel news 0.95

00:25:42.980 talks about the pastor that got arrested well there's 10 000 pastors and preachers in alberta 0.99

00:25:48.500 only two couldn't accommodate working with the system and those two get all the profile not the

00:25:53.940 The other 9,998 who accommodated.

00:25:58.020 So I struggle with the extremes getting all the noise.

00:26:02.360 And the extremes with that noise have undermined the party.

00:26:06.560 And I wouldn't doubt for a moment that the NDP have signed up in spades

00:26:10.260 so they could vote at this upcoming election

00:26:12.660 because they're terrified that the reality of a recovering economy in Alberta

00:26:17.480 will solidify the UCP for the future.

00:26:20.560 There's my rant.

00:26:21.400 I can continue, but I'll let you take it wherever you want.

00:26:25.740 No problem.

00:26:26.400 No, and the economic recovery is certainly going to help.

00:26:28.860 I mean, people feel more comfortable as they're going forward.

00:26:31.640 Something you brought up, though, was Premier Moe in Saskatchewan.

00:26:34.360 As you said, he's been doing well out there as well.

00:26:36.240 His policies when it came to restrictions and such very much parallel Premier Kenny's.

00:26:41.480 But Scott Moe isn't dealing with such internal division and these kinds of problems like Jason Kenny is.

00:26:47.680 I mean, I'm certain he's got activist doctors in Saskatchewan like Vipond out here and others who have been on his case, but it doesn't seem to be stuck to Moe so strongly as it does with Jason Kenney. Why is he having such a difficulty maintaining unity here?

00:27:02.580 Well, that is an interesting parallel because they have run very much in lockstep and Saskatchewan has celebrated what they've accomplished.

00:27:12.180 They've punched down, if you will.

00:27:14.260 I think the problem is twofold.

00:27:16.000 One is our medical community was divided and I blame our medical community, the incompetence of some of the leadership in our medical community.

00:27:24.660 And that's, I mean, it's just, I'm not going to name names because it doesn't matter.

00:27:27.460 But if they can't agree, then how can the politicians who have to rely on input, I mean, it's just like economists and business people provide input to the government, and hopefully they respond in a thoughtful way with budgets that accommodate, with royalty systems, tax systems that make sense.

00:27:43.620 but here we are relying entirely upon the medical community and it can't agree and even today you

00:27:49.920 can find a wide disparity of opinions on whether masks work and whether vaccines work on whether

00:27:56.020 covid has any impact on your life or not you get a wide disparity and that's the blame that has

00:28:01.220 been dumped on and that's i think so the medical community and the ndp or the left or the woke

00:28:06.520 have captured the flag on waving a flag very inappropriately that says this is all kenny's

00:28:12.540 fault and blaming someone who's actually in the driver's seat, who's actually navigated and

00:28:17.920 steered through. I mean, one mistake Kenny made clearly was last July when he announced that

00:28:22.580 Alberta was open for business. I own restaurants here. We were spectacularly delighted and it went

00:28:28.100 well. It went extremely well. Kenny's mistake that day though was he didn't say we're open until the

00:28:33.660 next variant comes and hits us. And there we were three months later with a variant. So he opened

00:28:39.300 and thought we'd be open for good.

00:28:40.960 We all did.

00:28:41.480 We all hoped that.

00:28:42.600 But of course, the moment the variant came,

00:28:44.600 they blamed Kenny for incompetence.

00:28:46.540 Well, no, we adapted, we adjusted.

00:28:49.220 Here we are.

00:28:50.060 And by the way, the fact that Calgary today

00:28:51.860 is 30% empty in terms of downtown,

00:28:54.660 that's too bad because most of the buildings

00:28:56.540 are owned by guys in Toronto.

00:28:58.400 Too bad, so sad.

00:28:59.380 The underlying economy in this province,

00:29:02.540 in this city is absolutely walking.

00:29:04.880 And I know that as we're struggling to hire people

00:29:08.280 in all of our businesses.

00:29:09.960 Why are we struggling?

00:29:10.840 Because they're overloaded with opportunity.

00:29:13.560 And that, to me, is where a province should be celebrating, not dividing.

00:29:18.820 So, I mean, just getting into some more speculation,

00:29:21.440 I mean, I think what all Conservatives can agree on

00:29:23.380 is the most horrific outcome we could have

00:29:25.080 is having to say Premier Notley for four more years.

00:29:27.240 We just don't want to end up there again.

00:29:29.540 That'd be the end of our province.

00:29:31.180 It would truly be the end.

00:29:32.440 If the Alberta economy aligned through the NDP

00:29:35.660 with what's happening at the federal level,

00:29:37.500 it's the end of our economy this nonsense about having only evs by 2035 we can't power the evs we

00:29:46.340 don't have enough charging system infrastructure let alone the transmission lines to power them 0.92

00:29:51.840 the stupidity of what's happening right now on a national level and if it was mirrored at a 0.95

00:29:56.680 provincial level wow and that's where i am worried i mean just ranting a bit you know i don't see 0.99

00:30:02.060 either Brian Jean or Danielle Smith, providing leadership that's significantly different in terms

00:30:09.700 of taking Alberta and moving our economy forward, period. It's just, I like them both. They're good

00:30:15.360 people, but I like where Kenny's at right now. So, I mean, a big challenge Premier Kenny is

00:30:20.840 going to face after this mail-in vote now and the review, assuming he wins it, say, with a

00:30:28.160 decent number of 65 percent but that's still not going to be enough to really solidify that the

00:30:32.880 hornets underneath them uh what do you think he's going to have to do though to consolidate because

00:30:38.320 i mean you know there's going to be uh there's a lot of people across the line of no return within

00:30:42.080 this caucus there's definitely going to be a divided house and it just looks so frighteningly

00:30:47.200 similar to what we saw prior to when uh rachel notley won in the past he's going to have very

00:30:52.400 much the shame is on the ucp membership the shame is on many of the individuals who seek to divide

00:31:00.400 the party some of the stuff that's been put up publicly should be discussed privately you know

00:31:05.360 whether it's a family or a business or a political system there's a lot of this stuff that just has

00:31:10.560 no reason to be in the public domain and i think some serious mistakes have been made by some of

00:31:15.520 the members and they've reached several have reached out to me saying how can you possibly

00:31:19.920 support kenny when he says this and does this and i'm like well yeah but he said it and he did it

00:31:24.160 by the way jason kenny is still the only politician in canada that answers questions

00:31:28.800 the rest of them all have speaking notes you ask justin trudeau is today monday and he'll talk

00:31:33.200 about the stars and the clouds and the alignment with the planets he has no concept of what it

00:31:38.400 means to actually answer a question thoughtfully kenny has and does and the fact that we rake him

00:31:43.760 over the coals for being honest as a leader i'm struggling with that at all as well so the party

00:31:49.040 is divided there's a group on the in the right that has gone extreme and i'm you know people are

00:31:54.400 pressing me continuously to be more involved with the the true separatist movements i actually like

00:32:00.080 kenny's approach on equalization and therefore separation which is we need a better deal and

00:32:05.440 if we had a fair deal a better deal is what it takes to get to a fair deal but if we had a fair

00:32:10.320 deal in equalization and therefore confederation many of our problems would be ameliorated it's

00:32:16.160 it's that simple. Yeah, well, those two words, like that's one of the areas where I've been

00:32:20.520 frustrated with Premier Kenney was I was very optimistic. I was thrilled when he got elected

00:32:24.740 and with the fair deal panel and the goals that it set out, I mean, going out, as you said,

00:32:29.560 listening and talking, but they really, really dragged their feet on all the recommendations.

00:32:34.300 I'm just wondering maybe if getting out of the gate after this leadership, if we could see some

00:32:37.900 solid action on some of the items that came up with all of that consultation, with all that time

00:32:42.660 with Albertans, perhaps, you know, if we saw a premier willing to take a stronger stance with

00:32:48.060 Ottawa, not necessarily independence, but some of the people like me might be more comfortable

00:32:52.260 seeing him going forward. Well, and it's a good point you make. The equalization referendum was

00:32:58.000 somewhere between amusing and confusing. The question was crystal clear, and yet I still

00:33:03.800 have people challenge me that the question didn't make sense. Well, I had no problem with it, and I'm

00:33:08.460 not smarter than the average but I'm not dumber than the average we could read the question the

00:33:13.660 fact that only what was it 65 70 percent of Albertans said yes we would like a fair deal

00:33:19.140 in equalization is stunning and the stunning part is the 30 percent that said no we're happy with 0.98

00:33:25.620 where we're at that 30 percent doesn't think it's absolutely one of the stupidest I mean the fact 0.96

00:33:32.820 that we weren't at 90 plus percent is stunning and I just I just don't understand that at all 0.82

00:33:37.760 but going back to your point kenny has always said that he would do the equalization

00:33:42.320 referendum out at the timing that he did so when he took office he told a group of business leaders

00:33:48.160 i was there he said it publicly he said it privately he was continuously clear that he

00:33:52.880 would do the equalization referendum in due course a couple years into his mandate give

00:33:58.000 and no one expected covet nobody we know that nobody expected covet maybe except for a lab in

00:34:03.280 wuhan but the bottom line is nobody expected that so the point was that kenny moved out equalization

00:34:09.600 as a referendum for a couple years to give him time to solidify the province and set it up for

00:34:15.040 the future then the opportunity comes for him to go back to ottawa and say look i have a mandate

00:34:20.640 and 70 65 90 whatever it should have been could have been but now i truly do expect i mean there's

00:34:28.320 there's there's go back saying we don't feel like um equalizing our uh the number of people that are

00:34:34.240 in parliament we just we're special we don't care uh quebec doesn't care about pipelines doesn't

00:34:39.360 want the fossil fuel industry to exist so we need to be able to go back and slap spank and push

00:34:45.200 quebec in particular but the feds as a group in terms of canada's perspective on alberta

00:34:51.520 and saskatchewan as their as to their role in confederation if we can't get a fair deal

00:34:57.760 I then shift further to the right in terms of the separation movement that says we need a better deal

00:35:03.460 and we're not going to get it staying in confederation.

00:35:06.180 But I do believe Kenney is the right leader at the right time for this province.

00:35:10.420 That's why I stay where I am.

00:35:12.200 I understand.

00:35:13.300 And the main question, I guess, is going to be post-leadership.

00:35:16.380 You know, who is most likely to stave off the potential of an NDP government?

00:35:21.320 And that's the case that Premier Kenney would have to make to everybody, I think, to keep things from getting too divided.

00:35:27.300 I mean, I do believe a lot of people who are frustrated with him for whatever reason it may be, he opened up too early, he opened up too late, all of those things.

00:35:34.560 There's a good chance they would unify just to say, well, I'm annoyed with him, but darn it, you know, we can't have a repeat of the election back that put Notley in power.

00:35:44.660 Well, and that's where it goes back to your earlier point, which is there's subterfuge and there's subdivision occurring within the party at the grassroots level.

00:35:51.540 Once we get past this leadership review, my hope is that the economic results, what we're doing in terms of activity, employment, all of the things that personify a great Alberta will be attributed in some small way to the existing leadership.

00:36:11.460 Yeah, well, and one of our greatest, I think, gifts as conservatives and our greatest flaws is that we speak for ourselves and we're individualists.

00:36:18.900 So, I mean, it's a fantastic trait, but it makes it increasingly difficult to manage a party.

00:36:23.580 I mean, the left will close ranks even if their leader has done something to upset them and they'll deal with it inside.

00:36:28.800 Conservatives, well, we're going to pull out the pitchforks, as we saw federally twice now and we're seeing provincially, which isn't the most productive way to go.

00:36:36.660 I mean, but still at the same time, you don't want to silently take something if you don't see it.

00:36:40.060 So I'm just hoping, I think a lot of Premier Kenney's challenges, too, though, have come with internal management and dealing with his own caucus.

00:36:47.740 And that's going to be up to him to try and soothe those things, assuming he gets past this review.

00:36:53.940 I guess time will tell.

00:36:55.900 Oh, there's been people issues.

00:36:57.180 We all know that in terms of moving his cabinet around.

00:36:59.800 But none of those are unique to Alberta.

00:37:03.000 Cabinets are shifted and rolled.

00:37:04.480 I mean, you watch what's going on in Ontario, and I just roll my eyes at how can the conservative movement in Ontario support the hypocrisy and the range of outcomes that occur within the Conservative Party?

00:37:15.460 Well, then you get the Liberal Party federally.

00:37:18.060 And again, we'll avoid that rant.

00:37:20.740 That's a separate show.

00:37:22.460 That's a separate week.

00:37:24.100 Yeah.

00:37:24.900 We've covered a lot of, you know, what I wanted to do today, and I really appreciate it.

00:37:28.740 Like I said, what I do want to see, I mean, I've got my own bias.

00:37:31.260 Well, that's why I got an opinion show.

00:37:32.360 But I like to see a balance of guests and opinions.

00:37:35.480 And to be honest, it's been hard to find people of profile speaking on behalf of Premier Kenny.

00:37:39.820 And we need to have that if people are going to make an informed choice when they make their membership vote.

00:37:44.440 So I appreciate you coming on and speaking from that perspective today.

00:37:48.360 Well, that's where I appreciated the opportunity, because certainly I watch your work.

00:37:51.700 I enjoy your work. Sometimes you're a little further right than I am in my thinking.

00:37:55.960 But again, we're in the same province.

00:37:57.700 And if we can't have a thoughtful conversation as we're doing right now,

00:38:01.620 what's the point?

00:38:03.120 Well, that's it.

00:38:03.840 We don't have to agree.

00:38:04.660 We just have to have respect.

00:38:05.800 And we've been lacking a whole lot of that lately.

00:38:08.400 I agree.

00:38:09.320 All right.

00:38:09.920 Well, thanks again, Brett.

00:38:10.920 Always good to talk to you.

00:38:12.440 And I hope we get the chance again soon.

00:38:14.460 Maybe we'll start dissecting the post-leadership thing down the road here.

00:38:18.560 Well, I'd be happy to chat about the federal parties,

00:38:21.640 the participants running for leadership of the federal party as well.

00:38:25.100 I am terrified of a couple of the members that are running. Anyway, that's another day.

00:38:30.160 Yeah, absolutely. I've been interviewing a number of them. I've interviewed five so far. And yeah,

00:38:34.820 I've got a lot of thoughts I could share on what I've concluded. I want to get some more

00:38:37.760 of those interviews in the bag before I really go into it. But yeah, we're not seeing some real

00:38:42.620 great shining lights overall out there. They'll probably have looks interesting for sure.

00:38:46.620 I'm with you.

00:38:47.980 All right. Well, thanks again. And we will talk again later.

00:38:51.560 All right. Thanks for your time.

00:38:55.100 and just to review that was of course brett wilson uh people might remember from the dragon's den on

00:39:04.960 tv and he's been a commentator he used to go on a lot of shows in the past uh you know i can't

00:39:11.100 remember what it was about but brett got canceled a while back in the sense uh it was back when

00:39:16.520 daniel smith had a radio show and he said something that that stirred everybody up and uh they said

00:39:22.360 oh, that's it. He's not coming on ever again. And just a reminder to point out that one of those

00:39:26.800 people who was screaming that Brett could never come on to his show again was Ryan Jesperson back

00:39:30.720 then, who has now managed to get himself canceled by his own viewers, though he's still trying to

00:39:35.000 recover there. Just that reminder to everybody on those lessons, don't feed the cancel mob. It will 0.95

00:39:40.080 turn around and bite you later. But again, not everybody, and I've got a lot of people who are

00:39:45.240 commenting who are not supporters of Kenny, but I want to get, it is a discussion. I mean, it's not

00:39:51.280 100% within that party. I do have a couple of questions kind of for you guys, though. And

00:39:55.520 as we've been seeing in some of the comments, you know, a lot of people aren't thrilled with

00:40:00.000 where Kenny's sitting and where things are standing. But there is that big question,

00:40:04.680 then who? So I'm throwing it out. Let's hope we'll see some comments, guys. We know that

00:40:08.400 Brian Jean and Daniel Smith have clearly expressed interest in running for the leadership of that

00:40:13.160 party. There's got to be some other names to pop up, though. Like, what are some people you would

00:40:17.980 like to see leading that i mean i know a lot of people with supportive of completely different

00:40:21.800 parties altogether but uh you know and i'm not saying i'm not in that camp of saying we have to

00:40:27.320 keep kenny just because we haven't found an alternative yet and i'm not saying that and i

00:40:31.520 shouldn't say we i don't have a membership in the party by the way i've got my biases as i said i'm

00:40:35.060 an opinion person but who is the one uh so uh sonico's saying uh saying paul himman but again

00:40:43.560 it's a different party i like paul i like paul a lot he's been on the show a number of times

00:40:47.520 I think we could do far worse, you know, than having Paul as a Premier,

00:40:51.220 but I don't know if he'd throw his name in that hat.

00:40:54.880 Something, you know, we talked a little bit about when I was on with Brett too,

00:40:58.140 but it's that conservative nature of ours, though.

00:41:02.940 It's our strength and it's our weakness.

00:41:04.640 We're outspoken.

00:41:06.380 We won't just sit and take it if we think the party's going the wrong way,

00:41:09.140 but then we can be prone to tearing ourselves to shreds

00:41:11.920 when push comes to shove from within.

00:41:14.520 i don't want to go the way of the left of just just buck up and shut up and let the leader tell

00:41:20.960 you what to do that's not a good way to go but what does it take for us to get a movement that

00:41:24.820 can hold together and move ahead i see two people saying todd lowen and yeah there's another guy

00:41:29.600 and todd you know is much like paul um i worked with todd a lot with the wild rose party back

00:41:35.740 then we had an agm that was held in a community all way out in bear's paw i know jeff likes

00:41:41.860 talking about it i think always saying it's it was the basketball one we actually had the divider

00:41:44.900 and you could hear people playing basketball in in the next room and we fed 500 people i think it

00:41:50.740 was with burgers i tell you what when you are volunteers and you got a community hall kitchen

00:41:54.900 feeding 500 people is an incredible amount of work and uh todd lowen was in there like he's a true

00:42:00.020 grassroots guy he was in there with us flipping burgers and running to costco to get more supplies

00:42:05.540 and trying to make vats of caesar salad and everything to feed the people there this is a guy

00:42:10.340 Todd is a true genuine person who came from the ground up when when Todd decided to you know cross

00:42:17.100 the floor or well he basically got kicked up but when he knew that was going to happen when he when

00:42:21.220 he spoke up against Kenny that was more striking than than even Drew Barnes and Drew I think is

00:42:26.440 principled as well but Drew has always been kind of chafing under Kenny's leadership so it wasn't

00:42:31.020 quite as surprising and Drew's very outspoken Todd has always been reserved when he speaks up he's

00:42:37.240 one of those ones, he doesn't complain until he's very upset. So when he got to the point of being

00:42:41.500 pushed that far, that said volumes, that said a lot. And that's another name, you know, and I

00:42:47.400 appreciate that. There's people putting out some names, because we've got to have that discussion.

00:42:52.580 If it's not going to be Kenny, then who? And there's other parties, but then, you know,

00:42:56.180 we've been watching that. And we're watching the infighting in the Wildrose Independence Party.

00:43:01.500 There's been people scrapping there, because that's what we do as conservatives, I'm afraid.

00:43:05.800 The Independence Party of Alberta, which used to be the Alberta Independence Party,

00:43:10.800 which did run an impressive amount of candidates in the last general election,

00:43:15.120 seems to have kind of fallen apart.

00:43:16.500 And they ran a candidate in the by-election in Fort Mac,

00:43:19.380 and I think they got less than 100 votes.

00:43:21.220 It was just a handful of votes.

00:43:22.900 So they're falling apart.

00:43:25.080 I know people keep saying Alberta Prosperity Project.

00:43:27.180 And, okay, so we said Dr. Modry, perhaps, as a leader,

00:43:30.760 he's not in a party at this point, but he's with the Alberta Prosperity Project.

00:43:34.500 The Alberta Prosperity Project isn't a party, though.

00:43:37.420 So, again, we get to that point.

00:43:40.960 If Kenny is no longer leading the UCP, which may indeed be the case in a little over a month,

00:43:46.720 who is going to be next?

00:43:47.960 And that's a big question.

00:43:48.840 And there could be names that show up that we've never heard of.

00:43:52.620 Politics is such a difficult game.

00:43:54.780 People say, we want to see someone fresh.

00:43:56.180 We want to see somebody without a political history.

00:43:57.580 Fair enough.

00:43:58.860 But then it's really hard for them to get rolling without having some profile.

00:44:04.800 Like we've got some of these Conservative Party candidates.

00:44:07.640 I've interviewed a couple of them, but they didn't come from within the ranks.

00:44:10.420 They didn't have a seat in the parliament.

00:44:11.940 And they're having a very hard time getting momentum.

00:44:14.880 I mean, you know, people aren't remembering their names.

00:44:16.460 They are having a hard time raising money.

00:44:19.420 They aren't drawing big rallies.

00:44:21.920 So it's difficult to grab somebody without profile, even if you're tired of the same old politicians.

00:44:28.780 But what are you going to do?

00:44:31.680 We've got to start the conversation now.

00:44:34.000 And Shannon Stubbs is another one named thrown out. 0.97

00:44:36.600 She's a member of Parliament up north.

00:44:38.960 Shannon used to be actually Danielle Smith's assistant way back in the day. 1.00

00:44:42.040 And her father, Bruce Stubbs, as a side note,

00:44:45.140 give you some political trivia.

00:44:47.080 Let's talk about political compromise.

00:44:50.360 Way back in the 90s when the Reform Party finally fully folded

00:44:55.140 and turned into the Canadian Alliance,

00:44:56.520 There was a group called Guard, and it was Guardians United Against Reform's Demise.

00:45:03.700 It was people who didn't want the Reform Party to go away, felt we had to stay as a Western party,

00:45:07.620 keep rolling that way, and that was led by Bruce Stubbs, who's Shannon's father.

00:45:10.920 So it's a lot of the same political players in Alberta all the time, and we're always pushing and pulling.

00:45:15.720 That's some of the things we've got to remember, too, before people stomp out of the room in politics,

00:45:18.780 which is something that happens all too much, is it does take a bit of compromise.

00:45:24.080 You'll lose some battles, you win some battles.

00:45:26.340 People ask me why you get involved in politics or why do you push it?

00:45:28.780 I'm not in parties anymore, but I'm still interested

00:45:30.520 and I'm still involved in the sense of commentary.

00:45:34.240 It's like a video game that doesn't end, though.

00:45:36.240 There's no princess to rescue at the end of the line.

00:45:39.080 There's no finish line.

00:45:40.220 It's never done.

00:45:42.080 Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but the game never stops.

00:45:45.900 And if you give up, that's the only thing you can be assured of,

00:45:48.380 is you will lose if you give up.

00:45:50.520 So you've got to keep active as frustrating and as annoying as it gets.

00:45:55.840 let's see, Smith, the vaccine passport saleswoman, Winston saying, I think Daniel Smith was very

00:46:04.160 opposed to vaccine passports, if I recall correctly. I could be wrong, though. I can't

00:46:08.220 speak for Danielle. But I mean, as far as part of what got Smith pushed off the radio was she

00:46:14.540 interviewed people on alternative medications on her radio show, and she looked into some of those

00:46:19.880 things, and she questioned some of the orthodoxy with COVID and with the pandemic, and she got a

00:46:25.360 great deal of pressure from the radio heads and from sponsors and from the cancel mob and the

00:46:32.740 rest that finally pushed her out of conventional media. So whatever, again, if she's the one or

00:46:39.020 not, Danielle's not a pushover when it comes to some of those issues and things like that. She 0.99

00:46:44.320 does stand up for herself. Speaking of pushovers, I mean, before I get to my next guest, she'll be

00:46:48.880 a little bit here yet. I want to speak to one of our sponsors again, and that's the Canadian

00:46:53.880 Shooting Sports Association. As we do have to push back, speaking of rights, speaking of staying

00:46:59.240 active, speaking of that video game that never ends. Well, one of the things we have to do is

00:47:03.480 always be on guard, always push for your rights and make sure that you maintain them. And one of

00:47:09.040 those rights is the ability to use and enjoy firearms legally, safely, of course. I mean,

00:47:14.120 you know, if you're going to get violent with people, if you're going to rob people,

00:47:17.020 you're going to shoot at people, that's wrong. And we have laws to address that. But the vast

00:47:21.580 majority of firearm owners are perfectly law-abiding people, and they aren't harming anybody. But you

00:47:26.320 wouldn't know it with the way the Liberal government treats them, because they are constantly trying to

00:47:29.920 take away their property, trying to take away their firearms. They keep making new laws, they keep

00:47:34.760 changing the categorization of firearms, and trying to take them away. Well, the Canadian Shooting 0.78

00:47:39.460 Sports Association is pushing back. They have a number of legal challenges on behalf of firearm

00:47:44.220 owners, standing up for your rights. And they can only do it, though, if you support them, right?

00:47:48.660 you're only going to protect yourself if you get up and protect yourself. So check them out. The

00:47:54.520 Canadian Shooting Sports Association is, you know, if you own firearms, you should be, it's also an

00:47:58.940 association in that you can network with other firearm owners. There's resources, whether it's

00:48:03.140 videos on safe firearm use, different sports, trade shows that are coming up, all sorts of

00:48:08.920 stuff like that. Check them out. Canadian Shooting Sports Association. It's cssa-cila.org. Take out

00:48:16.640 membership with them because, hey, your rights, if you don't stand up for them, you're going to lose

00:48:21.020 them. You're going to lose them. And again, you know, it's, let's see, you can use firearms of

00:48:29.840 equal force. Some people are saying the sounds a bit choppy. I know it was when Mr. Wilson was on.

00:48:36.660 I think he had a loose connection on his end. I think we should be coming in pretty clearly to

00:48:41.000 and now I hopefully it's not quite as a choppy at this point it was just that's one of the things

00:48:46.940 being live and having people on remote interviews is uh we can get those technical issues now and

00:48:52.740 then uh so you know here we're seeing some other interesting stories and again I know some of the

00:48:57.140 commenters weren't always uh happy with police in general and everything but demoralizing police and

00:49:01.800 getting on their case and constantly uh telling them they should be ashamed of themselves doesn't

00:49:05.960 make them any more receptive or better or respectful of our rights in general i i've been

00:49:11.320 very much annoyed and upset with the pushing of the removal of the thin blue line patches

00:49:17.720 and we've got some officers now that are standing up to and they're just saying no it's not

00:49:21.800 happening we've done it we've hit that line where you've pushed us back far enough and we're just

00:49:28.040 not taking them off it's a symbol now and the western standard uh it's a story you can find

00:49:31.480 on the Western Standard Online, spoke with two active CPS officers, Calgary, and they had to

00:49:36.560 stay anonymous because they couldn't get a, you know, they gave me fired. They got in trouble.

00:49:41.980 That's the way it's sitting. And the first officer said he's been with the CPS for less than 10

00:49:46.720 years and he wanted to serve and protect, you know, he's a person who was drawn to being a police

00:49:49.960 officer. When he was asked what the fin blue line symbols, because that's what's coming down to is

00:49:53.980 what does it mean? Somebody else, that the woke crazy left is reading into this symbol something

00:49:59.940 else that it doesn't mean at all. This gentleman said, it's supposed to be a symbol to remember

00:50:04.160 our fallen brothers and sisters. And he just wants to make sure that they always remember

00:50:09.860 it's that thin blue line between good versus evil. And it's not police versus citizens

00:50:13.440 because they're citizens as well. He says it represents brotherhood. And it hurts these

00:50:20.240 guys. And when he was asked, well, what do you think of it being racist or somehow reflective

00:50:25.140 of white supremacist values? And he said, so myself and some of my other colleagues

00:50:29.520 that are of color think it's ridiculous. He said, I'm a visible minority, and I 100% support and

00:50:34.600 back the thin blue line. When they say the symbol is racist, come on. There are police officers from

00:50:42.480 every race out there, and many of them support that symbol because it's their brothers, sisters,

00:50:49.260 compatriots who are getting injured, who do get killed occasionally, who are suffering PTSD. A lot

00:50:55.200 of the things, whether you like police or don't like police, they've got a lot of challenges.

00:50:58.680 and to take away that one gesture that they can wear and say that it's inappropriate and label

00:51:05.860 them it ridiculously. I mean, think of that non-white officers and you're calling them 1.00

00:51:09.720 white supremacists, but we've hit that point. We've hit that point where if you push against

00:51:13.480 the woke, it doesn't matter. They immediately throw that at you and it's a problem. So they're

00:51:19.260 hanging onto that symbol. And so people say, well, they shouldn't wear anything. Well, maybe if we

00:51:22.440 want to go that route, but you know what? They, they, they wear the rainbow ribbons during pride

00:51:26.820 weak. They wear all sorts of other woke symbols that the left would be pretty pissy and upset if

00:51:32.680 the police officers removed those as well. So do you allow them to make gestures as part of the

00:51:36.700 community or not? And blue line one is a benign one. It is wrongly being labeled as an extreme

00:51:43.260 symbol and it's stupid and it's got to stop and it's demoralizing. And unfortunately that actually 0.99

00:51:48.560 leads to more of the problems because when you get demoralized police, then you can get police

00:51:52.540 to act out and do things wrong. All right. Enough pissing and moaning out of me. Let's bring in the

00:51:57.780 Western Standards, Edmonton Bureau Chief, Rachel Emanuel, who's been up there for just about a

00:52:05.080 couple of weeks now, I guess. And hey, how's it going, Rachel? I'm doing well today. Good, good.

00:52:10.960 So you're in the legislative office now, are you? Yes, I am. Great. So it's been, what, about 10

00:52:18.540 days since you've settled in up there? How are you liking life in the Alberta Centre of Governance?

00:52:24.780 Sure. Yeah, it hasn't actually been quite 10 days. This is just my second week. I began in

00:52:28.520 the legislature last Monday. So I guess technically, you know, well, I've worked on

00:52:32.860 weekends. So I guess we're getting there. It's been really good. I'm enjoying myself quite a bit.

00:52:36.680 It's nice to be going into the office again every day after working from home for two years. So I'm

00:52:41.220 enjoying that. However, the legislature isn't actually sitting this week or last week. So it's

00:52:45.720 been pretty quiet, which has actually been quite nice to just have some time to get myself up to

00:52:50.660 speed on everything and kind of figure out where everything is. So I'm definitely really enjoying

00:52:54.920 it. And I'm really excited to be here as well. Great. Yeah. Well, the news doesn't stop just

00:52:58.700 because they aren't in session. One of your more recent stories for pointing out, you know,

00:53:02.660 Brian Jean was sworn in last week and he did say that the UCP approved him and he's on the mailing

00:53:08.400 list now. So they've given Gene an office there and he's a functional MLA? Yeah, he's a functional

00:53:16.840 MLA right now. I think it would be a tricky matter for them to kick him out of the caucus,

00:53:22.340 but I guess it's sort of a lose-lose situation with them. You know, you kick him out, you make

00:53:25.740 him a martyr, but you have him in and you have sort of someone who's working against the leader

00:53:29.620 within the party. So definitely a tricky situation there, but it seems like he's in for now. Doesn't

00:53:34.560 sound like he has the most direct communication with Kramer Kenny. I think he said in that press

00:53:38.480 conference the last time he had spoken to Kenny directly was about four years ago. So it'll be

00:53:42.800 interesting to see those two attempt to work together. I'm definitely excited for things to

00:53:47.040 get into full swing here at the legislature and to see how that all plays out. Yeah, well, once it

00:53:51.760 does get back in session, you're going to be in the midst of quite a bit of political intrigue,

00:53:57.120 at least to keep your reporting on. When does it come back in session? Is it after the Easter

00:54:02.340 weekend i imagine yeah so uh should be back next week uh according to the schedule so that'll be

00:54:07.860 really nice i mean right now it seems like the leadership review is dominating so much of what

00:54:12.100 the discussion is um and in terms of what we're covering for the conservatives certainly that's

00:54:16.100 quite a bit of it there's been some other stuff as well but that's really the story everyone's

00:54:19.540 watching right now and uh you'll notice in the ndp's attack lines that's a sort of common focus

00:54:24.340 point for them that the government's distracted on holding on to power and they're not doing any

00:54:28.420 real work and certainly with any peers that I've spoken to that's something that they're very

00:54:31.940 concerned about they say this government is really busy focused on just maintaining you know their

00:54:36.500 leader and everyone keeping their jobs and they're not actually pushing a lot of stuff forward so

00:54:40.260 that's a complaint that I've been hearing so I'm interested to see what will happen when the

00:54:43.540 legislature returns and we can actually see what sort of you know laws and bills are being debated

00:54:48.340 debated in the chamber. I guess there's no committee work going on this week either then?

00:54:53.620 I? No. Have you had a chance to meet the independent members kind of hanging over in

00:54:59.580 the corner there with Drew Barnes and Todd Lowen? Yeah, I've sent out some emails and I've set up

00:55:05.420 some coffees for everyone's back, but most people are actually back in their writings right now.

00:55:09.000 I've been sort of looking through MLA's Facebook pages. It seems like a lot of people have town

00:55:13.080 halls planned for the past two weeks, which makes sense. They're back in their writing. It's a good

00:55:16.760 opportunity for them to meet with constituents and hear their concerns. So like I said, there's

00:55:21.100 actually not a lot of people in the legislature currently. It's quite empty when you walk around

00:55:24.640 the hallways. It's a little bit eerie. So yeah, I'm excited to see what will happen when we're

00:55:28.680 in full swing. And when people are back in Edmonton, I'm sure I'll be meeting with people

00:55:31.320 quite a bit more frequently. Yeah. Well, and you're reporting on other things in Edmonton

00:55:35.560 on our behalf as well, of course, up there for the Western Standard. One of your stories was on a

00:55:39.780 report offering recommendations on Constable Whittle's murder in Edmonton. What was that

00:55:44.100 story? If you want to expand on it. Yeah. So I guess that was a really big story in Edmonton

00:55:48.180 when this constable was murdered when he showed up to do an arrest at someone's house with four

00:55:53.140 of his colleagues and the arrest did not go very smoothly and the person who they were planning to

00:55:59.060 arrest wouldn't come out of his house and so they had to wait to get a warrant to break in and

00:56:02.900 meanwhile they tried to pick the lock and the individual inside actually ended up shooting

00:56:07.860 through the door and the individual who was murdered constable woodall's picture was just

00:56:11.460 up there on the screen he was shot multiple times and he was unable to take cover when the rest of

00:56:15.460 of the officers sort of fled and took cover behind the their police cars and he ended up dying so

00:56:20.940 there's been that was back in I want to say 2014 or 2015 oh yeah so six years ago and so there's

00:56:26.860 been lots of reviews and reports that have come out on this story since then but this was one of

00:56:31.420 the last ones and it just offered some final recommendations on the process like I said there

00:56:35.740 had already been reports done and the judge who was doing the report agreed with many of the

00:56:40.200 recommendations and policy changes that had already been implemented to basically avoid a

00:56:44.980 situation like this ever happening again but he did have a couple other recommendations and his

00:56:48.980 main one was you know they were there for the arrest things weren't going very smoothly uh would

00:56:54.080 it have been better for them to say this isn't going to work out today maybe we should go home

00:56:57.900 and try this again on a different day and it's tough to say if that would have been the case or

00:57:01.700 not because obviously this individual was armed and now he was agitated so if they had left and

00:57:06.220 gone home that day would he have you know maybe taken his anger out on his neighbors he had

00:57:10.160 firearms in his house what could have happened so there was definitely a speculative element to it

00:57:14.240 But he was saying, I think going forward, you know, police officers need to kind of constantly re-evaluate the situation, see if tensions are escalating and just basically determine whether they think it's the best situation to continue to proceed with an arrest or if we should go home and continue for another day.

00:57:27.180 He wasn't saying they should have gone home that day. He was just saying going forward, that's something that we should consider.

00:57:31.660 So, yes, as you mentioned, I'm here also be covering some Edmonton stories as well, not just Alberta stuff.

00:57:36.560 So there's definitely lots to do. I even attended a Lesley Lewis campaign event on Saturday and Pierre Polyev is coming to town on Thursday.

00:57:43.540 day. So I will see him in Edmonton as well.

00:57:46.620 Great. How was the Lesley Lewis event? Is it well attended?

00:57:50.480 It was very well attended. She had a full gymnasium packed with people. She's pulling

00:57:55.080 really big crowds. I know out West, she's very popular. I believe a lot of her support in the

00:57:59.700 previous leadership campaign came from Alberta and Saskatchewan. She's of course a social

00:58:04.240 conservative. So she's very popular in these areas, but it was an enormous crowd. Hundreds

00:58:07.460 of people were there. Hundreds of people were there. And she's been pulling really big crowds 0.90

00:58:11.240 from what I've seen throughout her time in Alberta.

00:58:13.560 So it was an exciting event, and I'm sure, you know,

00:58:16.220 Kerr will probably pull an even bigger crowd on Thursday.

00:58:19.020 Yeah, Polyev will be going Tuesday here.

00:58:21.500 I'll be watching one, and you'll be watching the one on Thursday,

00:58:23.720 and he's really setting things up.

00:58:24.900 But it's interesting to see Lewis pulling such a large amount as well.

00:58:28.320 I mean, right now it seems to be a battle of words,

00:58:30.680 and it's getting pretty harsh between Polyev and Sherey.

00:58:33.740 But if they start fighting over the same conservative base out west,

00:58:38.140 we might see more development in the campaign with those two kind of getting a little more

00:58:41.880 direct in their campaigns with each other, I imagine. Yeah, I suppose that's always a

00:58:46.040 possibility. I mean, when you're competing, you're competing against the other candidates in the race.

00:58:49.540 However, these two seem to have just a very mutual respect. Actually, something I've observed is it

00:58:53.580 seems that all the other candidates really hold quite a bit of respect for Leslie Lewis. She is a

00:58:57.980 very good campaigner and she presents herself in a very professional manner and she's not offensive. 0.83

00:59:03.480 I think one of the things I heard commented on from the last leadership campaign is that

00:59:06.420 her and Derek Sloan, who is no longer in federal politics. Now he runs the Ontario Party.

00:59:11.540 They're both social conservatives, but she delivered her views in a more palatable way.

00:59:16.300 So people have really respected that about her, appreciated her professionalism. And also,

00:59:20.140 she's been very impressive with just how quickly she's been able to fundraise. That's sort of what

00:59:23.560 got her so much attention in the previous Conservative leadership campaign, just how

00:59:27.100 much money she was able to fundraise for being relatively unknown. So she definitely carries a

00:59:31.540 lot of weight in the Conservative Party. I don't know that I would say that I think she'll win,

00:59:35.260 but she's very well respected by her colleagues. I would expect her to have, you know, a good place

00:59:39.500 in the party. Yeah, the candidates would be poorly served to underestimate her this time. I mean,

00:59:44.620 Lewis was dismissed in the last leadership race kind of initially. Nobody really thought she was

00:59:48.660 going to go anywhere aside from representing a small constituency. And in the end, she was one

00:59:52.300 of the most competitive candidates of them all. So, I mean, this time around, she's working on

00:59:57.920 that base that she got to build last time. It would be foolish to dismiss her at this point.

01:00:01.800 Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to see what she does. I'm excited to see what kind of numbers she pulls in, how late she stays on the ballot. And of course, whatever position she'll have following the leadership race, I think it would be a, I think it would be a mistake, as you said, for any leader not to, you know, give her a high position within the Conservative Party. She's proven herself to be an excellent organizer, an excellent campaigner, and an excellent fundraiser, which is extremely important in politics, of course.

01:00:25.180 Great. And then so another story, something kind of broke last week, but we're kind of reviewing on a Monday, was the, you know, the federal government did approve the Bay de Nord project off of Newfoundland, which is great because, I mean, they could use the funding and the jobs out there in Newfoundland.

01:00:40.260 but at the same time they said a sun core expansion is unacceptable and uh did you get much

01:00:46.280 legislative response like is there an effort to defend ourselves it just seems again alberta

01:00:51.200 oil bad eastern oil good alberta oil bad russian oil good uh has there been a some discussion in

01:00:58.220 the legislature on what might be a response to that yet sure so um i did initially hear i was

01:01:03.720 going to get a response from the energy minister but they didn't end up coming with anything because

01:01:07.240 the budget broke on the same day. And I think that was their focus at that time. However,

01:01:11.220 the Suncor projects could still go ahead. Basically, at this point, they have resubmitted

01:01:16.180 saying they need a nine month extension to submit their sort of impact assessment proposal,

01:01:21.320 which will just show the impact of the project on the environment. I'm wondering if they maybe

01:01:25.360 sensed that it was going to be rejected and they thought, you know, let's just give ourselves a

01:01:28.260 little more time to work on this. So they said they're going to continue working with the

01:01:31.540 government on sort of new regulations that have come out and making sure their project is in line

01:01:35.940 with that, as well as with Indigenous groups and other stakeholders. So I think they're still

01:01:39.400 hoping to get approval on this project at some point. They have another nine months to resubmit

01:01:43.660 things. And Environment Minister Stephen Guivo said at this time, you know, their project is

01:01:48.960 unacceptable, was the exact terminology he used in his letter to Suncor, just due to the amount

01:01:54.000 of emissions that we were going to see from it. So it is possible we could see it be approved in

01:01:58.480 another, you know, nine months to a year. But currently at this time, it's not going to get

01:02:02.460 the green light. Yeah, well, and I find it, you know, I was surprised that Gilball even approved

01:02:06.460 the one in Newfoundland, to be honest, but I'm glad he was. I don't anticipate he's ever going

01:02:10.640 to willingly approve something in Alberta, though financial reality may force that to change. I

01:02:15.920 guess we'll watch as that goes. It's good to know it's not completely shelved, and even if nine

01:02:20.980 months is just, you know, we delay ourselves to death with these things. So something you've got

01:02:25.800 to look forward to, I saw in Edmonton as well, I don't think you've written on it, but it was

01:02:29.260 they've banned the spraying for mosquitoes coming up this summer. I don't know if you've done a

01:02:34.760 summer in Edmonton yet, but there's a lot of river and water bodies and spots. I imagine, well, I know

01:02:40.600 some people up there are quite upset about it. I mean, they're not feeling it yet, but you guys

01:02:44.140 are going to be, you better stock up on that repellent because in about a month or so, you're

01:02:47.540 going to be feeling it. Yeah, I haven't written about that. I did see that story. It was covered.

01:02:52.640 I also had seen that city council had apparently passed something similar. I believe it was a year

01:02:57.000 or two ago and then when they saw the weather that was coming in it was like a quite a rainy

01:03:01.540 and wet season they ended up reversing the motion and they said you know we're going to go ahead

01:03:05.080 with a mosquito spring anyways so I did put a question to the member that had actually introduced

01:03:10.140 that motion and said you know is this something that you'll consider and he kind of was just like

01:03:13.580 well I think there's other alternatives that we need to consider but I didn't get a firm no so

01:03:17.540 I'm wondering you know if we're expecting to get quite a wet season I'm sure people would be happy

01:03:21.600 for them to introduce the mosquito spring again this year so something to keep your eye out for

01:03:26.200 Of course, you know, city councillors, they're always listening to their constituents.

01:03:29.080 If people are concerned about it, their best option would be to email their constituents

01:03:32.720 or call their office directly to let them know.

01:03:34.620 I have never experienced a summer in Edmonton.

01:03:36.800 I hate mosquitoes.

01:03:37.800 Who doesn't?

01:03:38.300 So I guess we'll see how that goes.

01:03:40.280 Yeah, I imagine it's Councillor Jans, I guess you were reaching out to there.

01:03:44.720 You'll get to know all of the Edmonton City Council over the weeks and months to come.

01:03:49.000 What are you working on then through this week?

01:03:50.920 What kind of stories can we look forward to while you sit through that legislative break

01:03:54.660 for the moment to help you re-establish yourself? Sure. So one story that I have written, I think

01:03:59.660 that actually one of my most read stories since I've been covering Edmonton was a UCP MLA,

01:04:06.500 Cyril Turton had done a contest. He was going to do like an Easter coloring contest. You could

01:04:10.660 submit a drawing of something and you could win like an Easter basket. And his writing is actually,

01:04:17.080 or district, I guess it would be called here, Grace Life Church falls into that district. And

01:04:20.800 you might remember, their pastor was arrested for continuing to preach and not abiding by COVID-19

01:04:25.460 restrictions during the pandemic. So his members from his church actually showed me a picture of

01:04:31.500 a drawing they drew. It was of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney giving two thumbs up, saying, you

01:04:36.480 know, I arrested more pastors than any other Western district. And then he says, happy Easter

01:04:43.740 at the bottom of it. So the irony there was just, oh, so all of a sudden, you know, it's fine for us

01:04:47.300 celebrate our religious holidays and let's support and promote religious freedoms but you know we've

01:04:52.580 actually had pastors arrested for this in alberta so that was sort of the irony there so i believe

01:04:56.820 that that contest may have been cancelled uh the post appears to have been deleted off of facebook

01:05:01.620 so i'm trying to get an answer on that i thought that was interesting and something obviously you

01:05:05.140 know our readers are curious about um as well i'm using this week to still do some federal stories

01:05:09.620 you know come i came from ottawa i still have some interest in some federal stories there's some

01:05:12.980 interesting pieces of legislation being discussed there and since it is a break week uh here in

01:05:17.460 alberta it's a good time to do those stories and get them out of the gate while i can great yeah

01:05:22.180 that was kind of a careful what you wish for sort of story with the ucp they they asked for it and

01:05:27.300 they they received it uh perhaps mr turtin will respond soon he's usually a fairly responsive mla

01:05:32.100 but uh again they're in sensitive times right now with the whole leadership fiasco going on

01:05:37.460 but uh as you get to know them all you'll have no shortage of things to cover so there's the fun

01:05:41.780 little side stories well as you said they draw more traffic than some of the deeper policy dives

01:05:46.260 we need to lighten up a little bit now and then so that's appreciated yeah absolutely um so yeah

01:05:52.580 that was sort of just like a fun interesting story and i think it's one of those things that every

01:05:56.420 time a politician does something like there's going to be someone who wants to criticize it

01:05:59.780 you sort of are you know taking abuse from every thought every size i think it i heard it described

01:06:04.260 once as being a little bit of like a political pinata certainly not a position that i envy but

01:06:08.340 But I did think the irony of the story was rather funny.

01:06:12.000 So I thought it was, you know, noteworthy and decided to write about it anyways.

01:06:16.360 Great.

01:06:16.860 Well, thank you very much for taking some time to check in with us today.

01:06:20.580 We'll look forward to seeing you continue to write from up in Edmonton there on all

01:06:24.740 those provincial and federal issues.

01:06:25.980 And we'll talk again soon.

01:06:28.100 Yes, absolutely.

01:06:28.760 Thanks very much for having me.

01:06:30.180 Great.

01:06:30.500 Thanks.

01:06:31.720 Yes, that's our Edmonton Bureau Chief, Rachel Emanuel, and she's taken things over up in

01:06:37.360 there and there will be lots to write on. You know, it's probably good to have this break

01:06:42.320 through the legislature to help her settle in and get used to things in the office. If it was in the

01:06:46.840 midst of a session, it's kind of hard to find your feet and get to know all the players really

01:06:50.460 and the characters within it. It's great to have somebody on the ground in the legislature though

01:06:55.360 because you want to speak to all sides. We've got a number of parties. The NDP, sure they drive most

01:07:00.440 of us bananas, but they're in there. They're elected officials. They might, heaven forbid,

01:07:04.520 kid, but they might be the next government. So we need to be in communication. We need to report on

01:07:09.340 them. We need to see what they're up to. And having folks on the ground there in the legislature is, 1.00

01:07:14.360 of course, our way to do that. And Rachel is doing that job. And what's this? Stephen's saying,

01:07:20.620 when will Western Standard hire a gun from Rebel News? Well, I don't think Ezra is looking to give

01:07:26.660 up Sheila anytime soon. She's comfortable over there at Rebel. We'll expand as we go, but

01:07:33.360 So it's interesting questions coming in that direction.

01:07:37.620 Rebel covers another area, you know, getting alternative media and more stuff and getting

01:07:41.560 more direct lines, you know, original content is important.

01:07:47.140 So I'm going to speak one more time about one of our sponsors before I talk some more

01:07:49.620 about some news and that's how we do it.

01:07:51.680 And that is again, Bitcoin Well, these guys are in an Alberta company.

01:07:56.740 As I said earlier, they help lead us into the digital currency world.

01:08:02.520 That sounds a little wrong, but they help guide us.

01:08:04.400 There's a better word for it.

01:08:06.080 And because, again, it's a nebulous thing.

01:08:07.680 It's new.

01:08:08.160 It's different.

01:08:09.220 And you're not sure.

01:08:10.180 You worked hard for that money.

01:08:11.300 You know, it's bad enough that you got the government taking big bites out of it and

01:08:13.840 trying to take it.

01:08:14.520 And you've always got scam artists who worry about other ones.

01:08:16.660 Well, BitcoinWell.com is a publicly traded company.

01:08:20.240 They got ATMs throughout the West.

01:08:22.120 They're established.

01:08:22.960 They give one-on-one service.

01:08:24.140 Like they're for real.

01:08:26.420 They're not some craze ripoff or a call center on the other side of the planet or anything

01:08:29.660 like that.

01:08:30.160 You want one-on-one service.

01:08:31.440 they've got it for you with a real person face to face because it's your investments. It's

01:08:38.440 important. And this can help hedge you against inflation. This is a different way to get out of

01:08:42.160 the regular currency markets. And they've got other plans. I just like to talk about that with

01:08:46.120 the corporate plans, which I think is really cool. We're doing that at the Western Standard.

01:08:50.120 They'll set up your company with it if you want. Where we take, and it's voluntary for employees,

01:08:54.280 of course, a percentage of our income or a check every month goes into a Bitcoin wallet. And then

01:08:59.480 the Western Standard matches that. So every month, you know, a little match percentage of my income

01:09:04.560 goes into a little Bitcoin wallet and I get a side savings, a little hedge of my bets and a little

01:09:08.300 more money off the side. These guys set things up like that. They make digital currency practical.

01:09:13.020 They make it usable, make it easy to save it and easy to use it. As I said earlier, you can pay

01:09:17.600 your online bills with it, you know, your utility bills, your credit cards, use it like any other

01:09:23.320 currency. And these guys are the ones that help facilitate that sort of thing. Yeah, you know,

01:09:29.320 somebody else in Edmonton's mayor is a tyrant Frankie Boucher there yeah uh and that's so he

01:09:34.800 he's um I don't know how to describe him you know he was a former federal uh energy minister it shows

01:09:41.300 the the liberals desperation on putting people in cabinet because they put him in energy because

01:09:45.420 he's the only Alberta guy they have he didn't know a bloody thing about energy that he did a

01:09:48.840 terrible job with it and now he's the mayor of Edmonton we can't get on a high horse in Calgary

01:09:53.120 because we put Jody Gondek in as the mayor over here

01:09:56.240 and it's not exactly as if she's been doing a bang-up job

01:10:00.300 for us all to this point either.

01:10:03.000 But, you know, I'm looking forward to expanding our Edmonton coverage, though.

01:10:05.700 These city councils, we let our municipal politics in every city,

01:10:10.120 Saskatoon, Edmonton, Regina, Vancouver,

01:10:12.720 we forget about these guys and we shouldn't

01:10:15.560 because these politicians actually have a heck of a lot more impact on your life

01:10:19.740 than usually the provincial or federal ones, much more directly.

01:10:23.840 They're the ones that deal with the property, your household,

01:10:27.860 even if it sounds as minor as garbage pickup, fire departments,

01:10:32.060 police departments, and they take a lot of your taxes.

01:10:35.360 And in Calgary, in a lot of areas, they dump it into ridiculous things, 1.00

01:10:39.180 crappy public art, vanity projects, stupid green projects. 1.00

01:10:44.400 I mean, they kill business, yet we give them a pass. 1.00

01:10:48.440 Most people couldn't name their local city councillor.

01:10:51.320 The turnout in municipal elections is often like 30%.

01:10:54.700 It's embarrassingly low.

01:10:56.020 I think in Calgary we've seen it as low as 20% sometimes.

01:10:58.880 It's been a little higher recently because we've had some turnover.

01:11:01.360 But we've got to watch these guys because they will impact you.

01:11:06.220 They impact you a lot.

01:11:07.620 And they like sliding under the radar.

01:11:09.700 That's how they can get away with things.

01:11:11.760 A provincial politician, a federal one, they've got the party.

01:11:13.780 They've got the public relations machine.

01:11:16.320 They're always out in the news.

01:11:17.440 They're front and center.

01:11:18.440 but these municipal ones guys they're screwing you just as much or more and you think of if 0.98

01:11:24.300 there's cases i'm not pointing at any single one at all or saying that they're necessarily corrupt

01:11:28.320 i tell you you see some of your worst corruption cases in municipal politics this is a smaller

01:11:33.400 group of people with access to a whole lot of taxpayer money and a whole lot of authority

01:11:38.860 on things like sole source contracts for everything from road construction to crime to garbage pickup

01:11:43.980 to things like that if you look to some of montreal's municipal history to see how well

01:11:47.880 that goes so uh you know as people are saying getting uh somebody up in edmonton to cover that

01:11:53.480 aspect in alberta is great uh we've got uh chris old corn out in saskatchewan he's been writing on

01:11:59.500 the legislature out there he's been doing great i should get him on the show again soon and perhaps

01:12:03.600 he'll talk a little more about the municipal end there i know it bores you sometimes folks

01:12:07.440 and i'm not just talking about the calgary one that's why i want to talk about a lot of them

01:12:10.640 because everybody's got a municipal government no matter where you live but they're problematic

01:12:15.300 almost everywhere you go, too. I've always kind of thought that we should get a partisan system

01:12:19.720 in municipal politics. It's not a catch-all. It doesn't save everything. When we see the mess

01:12:24.280 that the UCP's in or we see some of the other battles, people say, well, do you really want

01:12:28.480 to see that municipally? I don't want to see the internal battles, but I don't know if we can get

01:12:32.120 much worse than what we got right now. I mean, what we get so often is they sneak in under the

01:12:36.080 radar. They campaign right and they govern left. Ninchy was in for 10 years. He was a very, very

01:12:41.220 left-wing person. But he campaigned as a conservative. He came in saying, I'm pro-business,

01:12:46.480 I'm pro-small government, I'm pro-efficiency. It was all baloney. And once he was in,

01:12:51.940 he just stayed in and governed as a lefty. And again, voter apathy kept him in. They wouldn't

01:12:57.600 get off their butts to kick him out of there. Gondek, well, we always kind of knew she was 0.98

01:13:02.060 from the left. I'll give her credit there. But still, I mean, the wackadoodle left she went 0.89

01:13:06.140 within her first months when she got in there. And it is showing that she's got the lowest

01:13:10.120 mayoral support in the first six months of office that we've seen in decades if not generations

01:13:14.500 but we got to watch these guys they're going to keep hitting you um here's the other story dave

01:13:20.840 talked about earlier with the there was a big poll down again we're talking hundreds of thousands

01:13:24.360 of dollars these massive polls these guys do boy pollsters have got a good gig sometimes

01:13:28.040 and that's talking about uh worry that the pandemic will never end you know a majority

01:13:32.960 of canadians worry the impact of the pandemic is never going to end and this is an in-house

01:13:36.460 research by the Department of Health, young Canadians were most upset at the prospect of

01:13:40.760 perpetual disruption in our everyday life. That's because unfortunately, a lot of the young people 0.90

01:13:45.160 are accepting that these lockdowns are normal. They're accepting that these are effective.

01:13:49.800 They're accepting that we should live with these. And this was from Matthew out in Ottawa,

01:13:54.240 our writer out there. That's unfortunate. The youth are the ones being programmed the most.

01:13:59.300 I mean, when you go around, I go shopping, I hit Superstore, I hit the other spots.

01:14:04.240 And we've seen it progressively since the mask mandates dropped.

01:14:06.760 You know, the first week after the mask mandates dropped,

01:14:08.760 30, 40% of the other shoppers had no masks.

01:14:12.120 And week by week, there were fewer and fewer.

01:14:14.040 Now I go out shopping, it's maybe 10, 15% of people are still wearing masks.

01:14:17.920 Those that you do see wearing them are usually young.

01:14:20.440 And these are the people least vulnerable.

01:14:22.020 I mean, if you read the statistics, if you look at the way COVID works,

01:14:26.380 guys, you've got very little to worry about here.

01:14:29.480 You shouldn't be sweating it, but they're the ones most frightened.

01:14:32.260 but they're also more accepting that we're always going to be dealing with this disruption.

01:14:37.860 Well, hang on. You're half right, guys. You're half right. But half right can be terribly

01:14:42.800 dangerous. COVID-19 is never going away. We've got to accept that. That's absolutely, that's

01:14:49.340 what some legislators and more people are figuring out and they've got to figure out

01:14:52.560 no matter how much we lock down, no matter how much we screw Canadians, no matter how many people

01:14:56.600 you bankrupt, no matter how many families you divide, the bug isn't going away. Not a single

01:15:02.220 country on the planet has gotten rid of it yet, no matter how hard they crack down. You can't

01:15:07.440 legislate a bug away. In China, somebody else mentioned that in the comment scroll earlier.

01:15:12.120 We're seeing those videos. It's insane what's going on over there. They are locking people

01:15:16.120 in their homes, in their apartments. People are screaming from balconies. They're imprisoned

01:15:21.020 because this thing, now into its third year, is still making the rounds. Guys, you won't stop it.

01:15:28.860 But you can sure mess with people a hell of a lot when you try. We have to accept that it's

01:15:34.900 going to be here. It's staying here. Let's mitigate it. When you see a big outbreak,

01:15:39.780 lock down the vulnerable. How about that? Quit trying to lock down the healthy. Quit trying to

01:15:44.340 shut down the low-risk people. And let's protect the vulnerable, just the way we always did with

01:15:49.360 the flu. We have to start treating it that way, or we're just running in circles and hurting

01:15:54.520 ourselves. We listen to that rotten mainstream media, and they are rotten. Oh, CTV just kills me. 0.60

01:16:00.200 I swear, and I watch those shows because I got to keep up with the news. Keep funding us, guys. I

01:16:05.020 appreciate your sponsors. Maybe we can get the Western Standard News every night, so when I have

01:16:08.040 supper, I can watch the Western Standard News and not have to deal with that to keep up with events

01:16:13.560 and everything. But it's like they're celebratory. They do not want this pandemic to go away.

01:16:20.480 They just like it. And they raise the fear. Oh, look at this. We got wastewater levels are up.

01:16:26.120 The pandemic is on the rise. We've got to lock down. And of course, they might speak to one

01:16:29.800 politician who says, you know, actually, no, it's looking pretty good. What are they going to do?

01:16:32.700 They'll go right out to some haywire doctors and we've got to lock things. They'll find another 0.99

01:16:36.860 Vipon, they'll find another expert somewhere, a biologist somewhere. They just do not want us to

01:16:43.900 feel comfortable. And it's transparent. Watch it sometime. Watch it sometime. One of their favorite

01:16:49.040 things to do, we watched that when they reopened, when we were taking down the restrictions,

01:16:55.100 when they do main streeting. So you get out, you send some poor reporter, because that's a rotten

01:16:58.660 task to do. You get on the street and ask members of the public what they think on an issue. Just

01:17:03.200 supposedly randomly get out there and ask them. That's one of the favorite areas where you can skew 1.00

01:17:08.020 news coverage. Because you interview 30 people, you pick the five to make the cut that say what

01:17:15.860 you want to hear, and you ignore the rest. So when they got rid of the vaccine passports in Alberta,

01:17:21.060 for example, finally, so you could go into a restaurant without having to show your QR code.

01:17:29.180 CTV was out there on the streets talking to, are you scared about this?

01:17:33.200 And lo and behold, you know, all five people they found were scared.

01:17:36.480 Oh, yes, I'm very scared.

01:17:37.780 I don't think I'll go to businesses if they don't have a vaccine passport.

01:17:41.500 I don't think I'm going to stop wearing my mask.

01:17:43.540 I'm very scared.

01:17:44.440 I don't think the government's going the right way.

01:17:47.120 Really.

01:17:47.840 Getting out there, that's all you could find was a few people saying that they wanted to keep the vaccine passports.

01:17:53.580 Amazing.

01:17:54.280 And then there was that one virtue signaling bar in Calgary on 17th Avenue, that hipster bar. 0.78

01:17:59.100 They followed and believed almost, you know, that rotten crap out of Calgary's Chamber of Commerce with a non-business person who runs that, saying people prefer the passports.

01:18:12.000 They feel more comfortable and they'll go out and spend their money as long as they got the passports. 1.00

01:18:15.560 Complete baloney, complete crap. 0.98

01:18:18.240 And this bar on 17th believes that we're going to virtue signal, we're going to keep this passport even if we don't have to, if the government doesn't want to. 0.99

01:18:24.180 Guess what?

01:18:24.520 Within weeks, they got rid of it because people voted with their dollars.

01:18:28.220 Don't believe the mainstreeting. Don't believe the BS out of the mainstream media saying that everybody out there is afraid, saying that everybody out there wants this crap. They don't. They don't. So, don't pay attention. But you can still watch those things. Just make sure you see through what they're up to and how they're doing that. 1.00

01:18:47.240 uh but uh yeah it's just a way to manipulate news and it the more you see them doing it

01:18:56.260 the worse it is again hey this is a majority an opinion show i never deny it i've got my bias

01:19:01.400 i'm wrong on some things don't worry you guys let me know when i am but when it comes to news

01:19:06.480 content it has to be if you got principles you're trying to give it balance guys and and you know

01:19:12.280 dave here in the newsroom makes sure he's very careful about that as our news editor he makes

01:19:16.300 sure our reporters stick to the facts on their stories. And we aren't going to Main Street and

01:19:20.180 try and build a BS basis for people's points of view on their behalf. But unfortunately,

01:19:27.580 our mainstream outlets that really just seem to like this pandemic are trying their hardest to

01:19:31.880 maintain that ongoing fear of what's going on with the pandemic. And we should be very concerned

01:19:39.360 about it. Let's see some other things. So here's some mixed blessing. We talk about business. We

01:19:46.220 talk about inflation, talk about what we got to look forward to, as if COVID wasn't bad enough

01:19:51.180 in the pandemic. And it's funny because the virus never hurt our economy a bit, by the way. Let's

01:19:55.560 break that myth, officer, too. The virus can't do a thing to your economy. It can't. It's a virus.

01:20:00.100 It can do things to you. It can't do a thing to your economy. Government responses are what

01:20:05.240 screwed the economy, guys. That's what did it. Government shutting down businesses. Government

01:20:10.180 screwing up supply chains. Government putting people out of work. Government making people

01:20:14.740 afraid of staying home. That is what hurts the economy. A virus is powerless against an economy.

01:20:20.220 It can't do anything. So we've done that. We've made a mess of the economy. We've made a mess of

01:20:24.020 our supply chains. And now we've got the mess in Ukraine and Russia. And I mean, aside from one 0.55

01:20:28.800 side or the other, what do you agree with in Russia and Ukraine, the problem that now is

01:20:31.840 coming down, though, people know how Eastern Europe, I mean, Ukraine is known as the bread

01:20:37.020 basket of Europe. It always has been. Huge farm areas and community. And they're one of the world's

01:20:42.700 top exporters of corn, sunflower oil, and wheat. Well, of course, let's see, Bloomberg thinks

01:20:49.000 there's going to be a 50% decline in crop output this year. This is going to shoot the cost of food

01:20:56.660 through the roof. We aren't even seeing it yet. I mean, costs are already going up. My parking

01:21:01.320 space was up another dollar a day, actually, when I checked in this morning to park for the day.

01:21:06.760 Everything's going up. I tell you what, food, you haven't even seen it go up yet. Now,

01:21:10.340 if you're a canadian producer that kind of could do okay because commodity prices are going to go

01:21:15.980 up and you're going to sell your wheat and your canola and your other things for a better uh rate

01:21:19.860 but uh for people and consumers in general and in europe especially areas that were served by

01:21:27.240 ukraine and that this is going to be really problematic and this is going to be a big

01:21:31.060 problem we better i don't know guys i'd just say stock up on your uh your non uh uh perishable

01:21:39.280 goods. And please stop spamming the comment area, guys. I understand you want to share information

01:21:46.360 with each other, but one person commenting 12 times with the same link is not appropriate. So

01:21:49.840 cut it out. We got to talk with each other and keep things open. I like sharing, but

01:21:54.340 let's not blast it all out that way. So we've covered quite a bit today, guys, and we've got

01:22:00.460 a bunch more coming in tomorrow. I'm going to have Lindsay Wilson from Alberta Proud coming in. 1.00

01:22:05.040 she's going to talk on some issues they've been a group with a large following online they're not a

01:22:10.480 party but they are a group and they have a good following and we're going to discuss some provincial

01:22:15.520 issues and i mean alberta proud the name kind of speaks for itself there and mike thomas is going

01:22:20.720 to come in he's a western standard columnist and he's been in a number of times talking about real

01:22:24.880 estate and a number of other issues uh because again real estate that's one of those big purchases

01:22:30.080 that affects everything you do and that seems to be what the big federal government was all about

01:22:33.600 it was all about how the feds are going to make your houses affordable which i don't really believe

01:22:38.000 and i don't think they're competent to do it but that's what they're talking about and they'll spend

01:22:42.640 a lot of your money trying to do it so i got those two great guests coming in tomorrow uh as well of

01:22:47.840 course we'll cover the news whatever issues are coming up i'll figure out what's got me triggered

01:22:51.360 ranting hey send me any uh tips ideas guest suggestions at uh cory c morgan at western

01:22:57.840 westernstandardonline.com or Twitter, Corey B. Morgan. Thank you all for joining us today,

01:23:04.280 guys, and I will see you tomorrow at 1130 a.m. sharp.

01:23:27.840 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - April 12, 2022

LIVE SHOW - Triggered： Can Premier Kenney salvage his leadership？

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