00:00:58.500um all right we're gonna be talking about uh two cases from human rights commissions one
00:01:04.900in Quebec the other in British Columbia in Quebec where some poor little hair salon was
00:01:11.320fined five hundred dollars for having a male and female uh option when booking appointments on the
00:01:18.320website and I guess a non-binary person with no hair uh was not able to select an other category
00:01:27.840And then in British Columbia, slightly more expensive, three quarters of a million, yeah, three quarters of a million dollars awarded, taken from some guy who opposes radical gender ideology and given to weird BC teachers organizations because he disagrees and expressed himself on social media.
00:01:54.300and that is so damaging uh we're going to talk about the nine very likely ten referendum
00:02:03.180questions that are going to be coming up in alberta in october question five of them on
00:02:09.020immigration four them on constitutional reforms and then the final one very likely on independence
00:02:16.060uh it's quite strange we've had referendums before not a lot i don't think any place in
00:02:23.460Canada's ever had 10 at the same time. I doubt any has even had more than two or three at a time.
00:02:29.100It's new ground. But first, we're going to talk about a series of polls the Western Standard
00:02:34.440commissioned. Western Standard hired Main Street Research to poll Albertans. We did a pretty big
00:02:41.120sample size for this, asking a variety of questions. David Veitschik, we've got in today
00:04:09.440a political project, so you're going to
00:04:11.500it's, you know, it's going to lean right. Um, one of the things, uh, I mean, Corey, this, uh,
00:04:17.420the poll was, I mean, it's not out of line with what we've seen before. Other polls will show it
00:04:21.880lower though. Uh, would they just change one word independence or separation? Uh, I I've always said
00:04:28.480that, you know, it's like, uh, you know, you, your marriage is ended and you go to the singles bar
00:04:35.540and you can introduce yourself as single or you can introduce yourself as divorced. They mean kind
00:04:39.860of the same thing in this context but they have a very different uh connotation to it so i i think
00:04:44.480that's one thing that fuels it absolutely i mean there's lots of ways we know that you can massage
00:04:49.620polls sometimes to get results that you want and that wasn't the case in this it was straightforward
00:04:53.140questions but that's where you can see some disparity between different uh people who have
00:04:57.240polled and and some of the outcomes something is as minor as the question i mean separation sounds
00:05:02.780harsh and negative and uh you know is an end yeah but it's just likewise it can also tell you where
00:05:09.720somebody stands as soon as you're talking to them, particularly in media, if they use the word
00:05:13.600separatist, chances are they're not terribly thrilled with the concept altogether. They use
00:05:17.360independence, maybe they're a little more receptive, but it's like tar sands and oil sands.
00:05:21.740If they're anti-energy, conventional energy, they're going to call it tar sands. If you're
00:05:27.920not, it's oil sands. And words count though. These campaigns are made to convince people to go one
00:05:35.700way or another and we'll see these sorts of things happening. What's interesting though,
00:05:38.920the numbers you had too that were on the undecideds have been removed. Yeah. So that's
00:05:45.680still a large chunk that we can see a lot of momentum might happen in this next eight months
00:05:50.340since we've never really had a discussion like this this long. Yeah. Nigel, it wasn't our poll,
00:05:56.000it was someone else's poll and they pulled across Canada on if Alberta should be allowed to leave
00:06:01.820And if Quebec should be allowed to leave, I guess implying that if they try to, Canada would send the army or something.
00:06:09.240I guess that's implied in that at the end of the day.
00:06:13.420Super majorities of people outside of Alberta and Quebec, super majorities across Canada say, no, they should not.
00:06:20.640But notably, it was six to eight points higher for refusing to allow Alberta to leave.
00:06:27.840i think there is a significant number of people probably in alberta who would be happy for quebec
00:06:32.700to leave um so i maybe i didn't look around uh the cross tabs for enough detail but it was funny
00:06:38.700to me that more a huge number of canadians are like no they should not be allowed to which then
00:06:44.500raises the next ideological the next logical question which is what are you prepared to do
00:06:50.040to not let someone leave well that's precisely what i thought when i read the story this morning
00:06:57.300it makes perfect sense that the rest of Canada would be very against allowing the province that
00:07:03.220pays the freight to leave Confederation. I mean, just the Canada pension plan would be the first
00:07:08.580hit. And coming right after that, the whole reason why we have such a debate about equalization
00:07:17.620in Alberta is that it doesn't work for us. We end up paying not a bit more, you know,
00:07:23.380You know, not that little bit more, which just makes you a good citizen, but basically paying the cost of confederation.
00:07:29.480So, you bet people in eastern and central Canada understand exactly what that game is.
00:07:35.680Alberta is just about the only half province.
00:07:40.360In other words, where the money comes from.
00:07:43.380If you may indulge me in a personal anecdote, some years ago I was in Quebec, in that part of Quebec on the north side of the river, which doesn't speak English.
00:08:20.320to do to keep us logically you have to be prepared to send the army if you had an army yeah yeah well
00:08:27.200i guess i guess canada is planning on having an army now staffed with non-canadians we're happy
00:08:32.960to use military force against canadians that's almost a little chilling i i had a slovakian
00:08:37.840friend who we know with this mandatory service in the 80s the way they worked it with them is
00:08:42.320you're all under the soviet umbrella but you never got stationed in slovakia you got he got stationed
00:08:47.280in east berlin and likewise polish soldiers would be in ukraine they would always make sure that
00:08:52.400that way in case they had to do something against the local population there wasn't a loyalty to it
00:08:57.600i don't think i'm not going to read in so far thinking that's the motivation to discover it
00:09:01.280i think it's one that just doesn't know how to draw people into the military and is getting
00:09:04.800desperate but there's some reasons to be concerned when you have people who aren't domestic in your
00:09:11.040military forces you know to that point corey if they want to import people from that part of the
00:09:16.560world into the canadian armed forces they're probably going to have a bit of a tampon trouble
00:09:22.240in the washrooms these guys are not that kind of true enough you know there's some slovakian guy
00:09:30.800what does this machine here for yeah but the thing is if you have people with that mindset
00:09:36.640yes you probably could deploy them against the canadian population and they wouldn't mind all
00:09:42.880All right. So we have a few poll questions. There was one that was not that surprising. We'll talk the federal and provincial vote. The results on the, you know, how people would vote in an Alberta election. Not, I mean, pretty good news for the UCP, pretty big lead over the NDP.
00:12:47.500I'm becoming a little less skeptical of it,
00:12:49.620But I saw that. I don't think there's a single person alive in Alberta who has been around with the liberals, came even anywhere close to tying the conservatives or one of the conservative pre-assessor parties like Reform Alliance, etc.
00:13:06.280This is unheard of. And so I didn't really believe it, except, you know, we asked rough 10, 12-ish questions.
00:13:12.420We asked a bunch of questions. And the answers on those, for the most part, didn't really surprise me, like the provincial vote attention.
00:13:19.620independence how people thought about pensions a number of different questions it all lined up
00:13:23.700more or less with the conventional wisdom let me think it's possible nigel that this could be
00:13:30.120correct i know um you know there were uh some other conservative media and some uh some people
00:13:37.080in you know the conservative sphere very upset with us for releasing this poll to which i said
00:13:43.080like we paid to have a good poll done and just because we didn't like the answer doesn't mean
00:13:48.800we don't release it we're you know we're not doing propaganda for you here we might be on the right
00:13:53.860but we're not working for a conservative party here that's not our job there are some people
00:13:57.420who'd rather not know from their doctor that they have cancer so i you're going to get a certain
00:14:01.300amount of that but this says there's a big big problem for the federal conservatives in alberta
00:14:06.280yeah and i and i think where it comes from just a theory but uh there's a tendency when the world
00:14:12.940looks like a dark place to gather around the flag to gather around the government of the day
00:14:18.240in an attempt to find certainty and comfort.
00:14:23.140It's like people who build their houses beside a fort.
00:14:26.520You know, they want to be, they're looking for protection.
00:14:29.560It's not the Alberta way, which makes this very surprising.
00:14:32.920But I still have to say that when people, first of all,
00:14:38.840the narrative around the Conservative Party at the moment
00:14:41.060is unfortunately not as strong as the Conservatives would wish it to be.
00:15:25.940This is searching for certain searching for certainty.
00:15:28.780Well, one thing I would say as well, Derek, if I may, that was very interesting is 38 percent of people that were polled from the rest of Alberta, which is like rural Alberta, said that they would vote for carny and the liberals.
00:15:38.140That's the weird one that I couldn't understand.
00:16:11.440I mean, even if they're proud Albertans and they're ticked with Ottawa, when you see an external threat and when you see, you know, some of the tensions and attitudes going on with that, you'll sometimes go, Poliev hasn't been able to frame himself as the person who can defend against Trump.
00:16:28.080That's been the thing hanging over his neck for a year now, and it's hitting him, I think, here as well.
00:16:32.960I think it's not so much that Albertans have turned into liberals, but when push comes to shove, they're just not feeling confidence that Poliev is going to stand up for their interests.
00:16:41.440Um, yeah, I mean, there's a rally around the flag effect whenever there's an external threat. I mean, you remember after 9-11, George W. Bush's poll numbers, it got into the 80s, pushing towards even 90 or something like North Korean levels of like, we always make fun of North Koreans. But I mean, from their perspective, they're always facing an external threat.
00:17:01.660Obviously, they're heavily propagandized, but so are we in a different, we have a much more subtle, much more maniacal kind of propaganda here.
00:17:09.500But, you know, an external threat can do that.
00:17:13.720Some I've seen speculate in the media that, you know, it's the Alberta independence threat.
00:17:19.720The other numbers don't seem to bear that out because the UCP is doing better than the federal conservatives in Alberta, which is not usual, actually.
00:17:27.400Normally, the federal conservatives outperform provincial, the United Conservative Party.
00:17:32.520So this says that there is, you know, it's not a huge number,
00:17:36.360but a significant number of people who would vote for the UCP and Danielle Smith,
00:17:40.320which is significantly more hardcore and Alberta nationalistic.
00:17:44.300And then they go and plan to vote for Mark Carney.
00:23:32.500If this is an acute issue, we want that before you vote on this,
00:23:37.240as opposed to, you know, that's one that you really could do tomorrow.
00:23:40.760Uh, I think realistically, we know that we know the political game, we know communications, uh, this allows, well, cause she's got a lot going on on the plate.
00:23:50.520She's got a budget that really, I mean, let's face it doesn't look terribly conservative, uh, fiscally.
00:23:55.480She's just made some very large spending announcements.
00:23:59.340Uh, this is something to keep the discussion for the populists going and, and things like that, but still on the sideline and not trying to eat all that soup all at the same time.
00:24:09.160So they can use the legislative session, kind of as Nigel said, you know, to chew on all the rest of this stuff.
00:24:14.340And this gets kicked down the road to deal with by referenda at the end of the year.
00:24:19.120Not saying it's necessarily the best way or most principled way, but I can understand the rationale of it.
00:24:24.040Okay, well, let's talk about some of the rationale, particularly around the constitutional questions and the likely coming independence question.
00:24:31.960So four constitutional questions, David, and independence.
00:24:39.160Um, I, I, I put it to Smith when I was interviewing her yesterday that, I mean, look, we had the equalization referendum a few years ago.
00:27:02.320I don't think she's trying to suppress the independence vote, but I think if I'm being cynical, she is perhaps trying to mix it with a bunch of things so we're not just talking, guess what? No one's going to be talking about the immigration reform. No one's going to be talking about constitutional reform. Everyone's going to talk about independence because it's so much bigger. We don't have to ask Ottawa for more permission over immigration if we're our own country. We don't have to talk to them about getting rid of the Senate if we're our own country. So all these other issues become completely moot.
00:27:29.540so the yeah the left is arguing she's trying to do this to bolster independence i don't think
00:27:34.200she's necessarily trying to stop independence but trying to mix it up and i don't think it'll work
00:27:38.740and i think she actually risks the success on her nine questions she's putting forward
00:27:43.720because everybody who's going to come out to vote against independence the federalist vote
00:27:48.280i my my i think their inclination will be to also vote pro-ottawa down the ballot
00:28:21.900who are not of one mind on many of these things.
00:28:24.660There are some members of a caucus who are very much in favor of independence, and there are others who won't have it at any price. Some just really want to know what their constituents think, and they can modify their position then.
00:28:38.560So how do you actually stop all this boiling over in 2026 when it would be highly inconvenient to have a split in the caucus out in the open, which other parties would take advantage of, and other parties would include, by the way, the federal liberals to whom it would be a tremendous advantage to have a disunited Alberta government.
00:29:04.840i agree but why would we be voting on tinkering with or getting rid of the senate and tinkering
00:29:10.760with divisions of federal powers and and uh and it's not going to work everyone's only going to
00:29:16.840talk about independence this is not going to work you derek you are a deep thinker on these things
00:29:23.800corey is a deep thinker favor is a deep writer as well as a thinker on these things so we go into
00:29:30.120there's stuff with a passionate intensity and work out little angles and so forth with all due
00:29:36.520respect to albertan voters most of them don't pay any attention to this except when they're told to
00:29:43.000and even then it's a superficial thing so i agree i have to just you know okay so on this um
00:29:52.520in uh you know when we get into an actual campaign period for these referendums yeah if you stopped
00:29:58.200an average person on the street and said how are you voting in the referendum which question are
00:30:02.920they going to assume you're asking about oh yeah and and but i mean getting to it so it's going to
00:30:07.680be essentially the campaign starts now it's an eight month campaign one of the things i didn't
00:30:11.660like looking at this too i just did it while we were you're doing your intro i just did a quick
00:30:15.460check when you add the questions together there's about 400 words among them you know sorry about
00:30:19.900word salad questions this is why the clarity act was created in the first place i mean at least
00:30:25.220The independence question actually is, bang, it's yes or no.
00:30:28.820And that's where 90% of the discussion is, but we're going to have eight months
00:30:32.180talking about some of these things, which yes, we know, they go asking if the
00:30:36.380other provinces will be willing to abolish the Senate.
00:30:38.660We know that's not going to happen in a million years.
00:30:40.520The Atlantic provinces in Quebec are never going to go for that.
00:30:42.860Well, it's actually a Supreme Court of Canada reference made and it can't be done.
00:36:14.520You don't have to talk to your parents.
00:36:16.060He calls that child abuse, you know, and he labeled gender fluidity a biologically absurd theory.
00:36:24.740And he posed medical transitions for minors, which is what we, of course, oppose here in Alberta as well, thanks to the Daniel Smith government.
00:36:33.140So all of this the tribunal deemed as an existential denial of trans identities, terms like gender ideologies seen as fostering discrimination.
00:36:44.500Now, let's just remind ourselves that whether you're a short earther or a long earther, nobody has questioned the idea of gender for about 500,000 years.
00:36:57.880In the last 20, it has become fashionable to say, well, if a person thinks he's a woman, then you must treat him as a woman.
00:37:08.340And if a woman thinks she's a man, you must give her credit for her feelings on this matter.
00:37:13.740It is somebody sticking a gun into your head and saying, you will either repeat after me something that you know to be totally inaccurate, totally wrong, something that you don't even agree with, or we're going to take your house.