Western Standard - Smith’s leadership up for review this Saturday

00:00:00.000 good evening today is october 30th 2024 i am derek fildebrand publisher of the western

00:00:29.360 Standard and you're watching The Pipeline. I'm joined by my usual good friends, Western Standard

00:00:35.080 opinion editor Nigel Hannaford. Lots of opinions here. And Western Standard senior Alberta columnist

00:00:41.160 Corey Morgan. Always a pleasure. All right, it's one of those days where we had no trouble figuring

00:00:46.780 out what we're going to be talking about. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith faces a leadership review

00:00:52.500 at a UCP convention in Red Deer this Saturday. Members of that party will give their thumbs up

00:00:58.160 or down on if they want her to continue as the leader of that party and premier of Alberta we're going to be talking about it perhaps a slightly bigger deal this coming Tuesday Americans will vote in the general election for dog catchers local sheriffs and of course the next president of the United States we're going to break it down about what we at least what we expect and while we do have the results from Saskatchewan they came a little quicker than they did in British

00:01:28.140 columbia uh the saskatchewan the conservative saskatchewan party has defeated uh the ndp

00:01:34.780 challengers winning a fifth consecutive term very rare in canadian politics possibly the first in

00:01:40.780 saskatchewan politics uh we'd have to go back maybe chris old corn is going to come on in a bit uh he

00:01:46.460 can fact check us if that is the longest running uh continuous government in saskatchewan history

00:01:52.700 maybe it will be okay well gentlemen uh let's start uh close to home here uh this saturday

00:02:01.020 uh we're all heading up to red deer covering the alberta united conservative party's convention

00:02:05.980 they're going to be uh revising the party's bylaws and constitution they'll be voting on

00:02:10.860 policies and whatnot but the really big item on the agenda is the review of alberta premier

00:02:17.580 Danielle Smith's leadership. There's been a lot of talk about it. Some, some organizations and

00:02:27.020 individuals trying to take her down a peg. We'll start with with you, Corey. What do you think we

00:02:33.600 can expect with Danielle Smith's leadership review this weekend? Again, similar to my prediction

00:02:37.840 before, I believe she'll come in at over 85% support. I think the organization trying to give

00:02:43.380 a negative review has been overblown. It's quite different this time than, say, if we're comparing

00:02:48.640 to when Premier Kenney was in power. There were a lot more upset people. And for example,

00:02:53.360 Tayback Alberta was organizing. They had large meetings across the province. They were pulling 0.99

00:02:57.520 people together. None of that's been happening. We've got an AGM with almost 6,000 people coming

00:03:02.600 out. It's going to be amazing. But to influence that many people, you would have to have a machine

00:03:07.860 that's been operating for months and we would have seen it. And all I'm seeing is very vocal

00:03:11.900 individuals and small groups who are upset for reasons I guess that are debatable, good or bad,

00:03:18.300 but to the point where it would put her at any sort of risk, I just don't believe she's at any.

00:03:23.340 Nigel, the conventional wisdom, in elections at least, is that high turnout normally bodes

00:03:28.380 poorly for incumbents. This is different, this is an internal party leadership review,

00:03:34.300 but I mean it certainly bode, it certainly was not a good sign for Jason Kenney when there were

00:03:39.980 thousands of people signing up for his leadership review vote they they saw the numbers coming in

00:03:44.540 and then they knew they were in trouble they changed the rules a few times to try and get a

00:03:47.980 better result um but generally you know high turnout like this for convention is a bit unusual

00:03:55.660 uh there's already five and a half thousand people registered probably another thousand

00:03:59.500 register uh last minute coming in talking six thousand people plus which would make it the

00:04:05.580 largest political convention in the history of Canada for any political party, federally or

00:04:10.380 provincially. Ontario parties, you know, much bigger province have never come close to this.

00:04:14.700 National conservative liberal conventions never come close to this. Do you think the

00:04:19.740 what do you think is behind the huge turnout expected for this convention?

00:04:24.940 Actually, I think it is a measure of support for the Premier. You mentioned the earlier

00:04:31.500 conventions where Mr. Kenny was dressed down. The resentments there stemmed principally, I think,

00:04:42.600 from COVID and his government's response to it. And that was an issue about which people felt

00:04:49.140 bizarrely. And it was worth paying the money to go and just put your vote in the no column.

00:04:56.200 there is not an issue at the moment that I can think of which would make a negatively inclined

00:05:05.260 person fork out $400 plus go to Red Deer, probably incur a hotel room in order to do what?

00:05:15.260 Tell Danielle Smith that you don't like the job she's doing. They may not like it,

00:05:20.580 but I don't think they're prepared to spend $400 on it.

00:05:24.120 However, people who do want to support the Premier

00:05:27.560 and who have been alerted partly by some of the columns that Corey has written

00:05:33.340 and also some of the news articles in the Western Standard

00:05:36.560 that have been pointing out that there are people who are actively working to undermine her

00:05:41.560 make supporters defensive.

00:05:44.780 They say, right, I'm going to go to Red Deer and I'm going to vote for her.

00:05:47.420 So my expectation, rather similar to Corey's, is that it's going to be very satisfying for her at the end of the day.

00:05:54.900 She's going to get a good score.

00:05:56.980 And the people who don't like her don't like her badly enough to spend $400 to say so.

00:06:02.960 All right.

00:06:03.440 Well, let's talk about the results she needs.

00:06:06.060 I know we've discussed this before, and you said 50% plus one.

00:06:10.220 I mean, that's, you know, generally when a leader is asked, you know, what percentage do you need to stay on as leader?

00:06:16.760 And that's the answer they give, because that is within the constitution of political parties everywhere.

00:06:22.860 That's the bar that's set. But no one can maintain the confidence of a party of 50 percent plus one.

00:06:30.000 Jason Kenney do that, you know, and he's stepped down.

00:06:34.660 If you're at 50 percent plus one, the next day, the caucus nikes you and it's over.

00:06:38.720 So we know it's more than 50 percent plus one effectively, but we know it's less than 100 percent.

00:06:45.580 Rachel Nottingham used to get close to 100% within her party. 0.96

00:06:49.740 Conservatives, particularly in Alberta, are not such a sanguine bunch.

00:06:54.460 There's always going to be a chunk to vote against the leader.

00:07:00.700 I'm not sure there's a magic number, but I think, well, perhaps there is a poison number.

00:07:05.100 I think, is it 77 or is it 78?

00:07:08.860 There's a magic number to both Stelmac and Redford God.

00:07:11.980 I think it was 77 or something.

00:07:13.980 but I think the real danger zone at this point, that would be maybe 70. It's a little lower,

00:07:20.640 but then we're talking about a much larger group of people going on. That's a large plurality of

00:07:25.100 6,000 people. But if she came in at 70%, there's going to have to be some questions asked. And 0.97

00:07:31.440 this is a trend that you don't like because as a new leader, typically there's a grace period

00:07:35.160 with members and so on, and that she's obviously not enjoying it. So I think that level is where

00:07:41.760 you're really going to have to start sweating. I mean, anything above 70, you're still sitting

00:07:44.680 pretty good with a large crowd like that. Nigel, perhaps not the resignation number,

00:07:50.980 but what do you think is the trouble number that if Smith hits this number and below,

00:07:56.160 you know, she's going to be dealing with sniping within caucus and, you know, perhaps organization

00:08:01.340 against her in the future. Not gone that day, but what number is she safe? Well, certainly she'd be,

00:08:07.460 I would say she'd be safe at 70%.

00:08:09.560 You've also got to look at where that 70%.

00:08:11.640 Remember, Stelmack and Redford both got 77,

00:08:14.200 and both of them were gone within one year from there.

00:08:17.200 There could have been other reasons.

00:08:19.020 True.

00:08:21.560 You know, given the campaign that we believe has been waged against her

00:08:28.620 by people who may not necessarily be bona fide members of the party,

00:08:33.020 buying a membership for the express purpose of embarrassing the premier,

00:08:39.160 I would have to say, well, how many of the 30% that we're assuming voted against her

00:08:42.860 fall into that category and make your estimation from there?

00:08:46.700 Among bona fide, you know, long-term people who buy their subscriptions for five years at a time

00:08:52.800 and keep on going to the conventions, my sense is that her popularity is very high,

00:08:57.800 and why wouldn't it be?

00:08:59.020 Look at the things that she said she would do that she then went on to do.

00:09:03.020 If that's what you voted for, that is what you got. Why wouldn't you support her? So I would not be troubled at 70%.

00:09:10.140 Well, both sides will sign up people the last minute trying to get it. I remember, you know, with the battle over Kenny's leadership, both sides were going out and selling.

00:09:19.820 you know, and both, particularly Kenny dipped into some ethnic groups, take back Alberta,

00:09:27.880 signing up people who tended to vote conservative, but many of which hadn't been members of the

00:09:31.800 party. Both will try to sign up people, and maybe it's a wash at the end of the day. Hard to say.

00:09:39.200 All right, but, so, okay, Smith has been making some pretty big policy announcements in the lead

00:09:46.480 up to this. These are things I think she always intended to do, but they seem to be coincidentally

00:09:53.980 time to be right before the leadership vote here to kind of gin up the base. But I think

00:10:01.480 the media is really missing the area of the party that's not perhaps loved her the most.

00:10:06.980 And that's kind of the left wing of the party, red Tories, for lack of a better term. She 0.98

00:10:12.880 She was not, to put it lightly, she was not very strong with them when she won the leadership of the party.

00:10:18.240 They've never been totally enthralled with her leadership.

00:10:21.280 She came very much, obviously, from the Wildrose wing of the UCP.

00:10:26.720 But Red Tories tend to be much less revolutionary and rebellious than the right wing of the party.

00:10:34.960 They tend to go along with it.

00:10:37.600 the leader is the leader and they'll back the leader unless there's something so particularly

00:10:41.280 egregious they can't abide it any longer. Corey, we don't hear much from them, but we tend not to. 0.98

00:10:49.680 When the red Tories are angry, they tend to operate more in the back rooms and organize

00:10:53.680 quietly. Do you think she has anything to worry from kind of the left wing of the of the UCP in

00:10:58.800 this vote? I don't think so. Again, the very far the reddest of the red Tories probably already

00:11:04.080 left. They're not going to show up. They're perhaps mulling over Ninchy if he's made the

00:11:08.240 NDP pragmatic enough for them or not. The moderate ones, as you said, they tend to put their heads

00:11:12.860 down. They'll grumble behind closed doors, but they don't have that conservative habit of saying

00:11:16.080 we've got to rip out our leaders. I look at past comparisons, for example, with Ralph Klein and

00:11:20.240 Nancy Bethkowski. I'm going, you know, dating myself. This was early 90s, but that was a hard

00:11:24.960 fought race and a close race, and it was a red versus blue race. But when that ended, Klein's

00:11:30.880 initial party review type supports, again, you're getting into the 90%. Like this was very, very

00:11:35.660 high. Those red Tories just grinned and bared it, even though Ralph Klein took things on at least

00:11:41.240 very fiscally conservative front. So again, I don't think there's going to be a big threat from

00:11:46.440 them. There's going to be some people upset. I mean, the EGM is an opportunity for people to

00:11:50.700 air their concerns. And there's concerns legitimately to be had with the caucus and

00:11:53.960 Smith's direction. But there's other ways to air those concerns rather than vote to tear them out

00:11:57.680 the leadership. I think some of the people go that route, you know, rather than, again,

00:12:02.900 I mean, you got to think, what's the day after then? If you doctor down to 49%, well,

00:12:06.760 what now? I don't think that'd be the outcome anybody wants.

00:12:10.480 Nigel, you were the chief speechwriter to Stephen Harper for a long time,

00:12:14.160 long period of his prime ministership. If you were writing Danielle Smith's speech that she's

00:12:19.940 going to give before people go out and vote, the way these things work, the leader gets the last

00:12:24.140 word. The leader gets to give a speech, and they say, now, go vote. You know, they don't, the leader

00:12:28.020 doesn't speak, and then someone who doesn't like them gets up to speak. The leader speaks, then you

00:12:31.180 vote. If you were writing Smith's speech, what are the big things you'd want her to be saying

00:12:37.900 right before these people vote? Well, I'd be wanting, first of all, to remind everybody that

00:12:43.420 I said I would do these things, and I have done them, and these are some other things that I have

00:12:48.400 promised to do, and if that's the vision for Alberta that you want, and it's certainly the

00:12:52.900 vision that i am offering that i am prepared to put stake my name on to make this a better brighter

00:12:59.780 more prosperous alberta then you need to stay with proven leadership and i am at your service

00:13:07.540 the things that she promised to do she has always constrained by what is possible so you want an

00:13:16.260 alberta police force as some of the dissidents within the party very very strong on that all

00:13:21.300 All right. That's a little easier to promise than to perform, but what she has done is she has expanded the sheriff's service and moved sheriffs into police roles.

00:13:31.440 You want an Alberta pension plan? Well, when that actually got floated out, not as many people were in favor of that as she probably thought would be.

00:13:44.280 Well, then, you say you want to represent your voters, maybe it's time to throttle back

00:13:50.880 on that and build the case.

00:13:53.680 You could go through the list of the things that she's put out there.

00:13:57.100 The latest one that she introduced this week, the Alberta Bill of Rights Amendments, I mean,

00:14:01.600 there are some serious concerns on that, but at least she thinks about the Alberta Bill

00:14:08.340 of rights and what it means to how you keep the government out of your backyard so maybe there's

00:14:16.820 some fine tuning to be done on that but nevertheless it is a it shows where her heart is and i think

00:14:24.580 that where her heart is is where the heart of the voting members of the party is i don't see a

00:14:29.860 problem coming here so my speech would very much be one of hope and aspiration uh corey uh it's

00:14:37.300 not unusual to tap and increasingly in Alberta politics is not unusual to tap into different

00:14:43.060 ethnic or religious groups to kind of support you on mass and something happens in leadership

00:14:48.260 races where you're selecting the leader it happened when Kenny's leadership was up for

00:14:53.460 review happens in general elections where you kind of tap into ethnic groups because they can

00:14:58.900 more so than I'm gonna get in trouble with this old stock Canadians 1.00

00:15:02.660 people like us you mean yeah you know it they might there's a degree of homogeneity that

00:15:11.300 they're more inclined to vote in a block due to a community leader telling him to do so as opposed

00:15:16.180 to exactly and you know there's been some reports in the you know we've reported on the standard in

00:15:22.660 our newsroom that that there's some Islamic schools that that are bringing people up to

00:15:29.500 support Smith in the leadership review vote because they're back, you know, because she's

00:15:34.740 been pretty strided in her defense of independent schooling, choice and education. And, you know,

00:15:41.680 Christians benefit from that, but also other religions, including Muslims benefit from that.

00:15:47.460 But I mean, there's been some pretty serious tension, I'm overly generalizing here, but

00:15:52.600 between conservatives who tend disproportionately to support Israel and Islamic groups, which

00:15:58.780 disproportionately tend to not. And so there's tension between Muslims and non-Muslims over the

00:16:08.300 Israel-Palestine conflict right now. And there's a lot of Muslims coming in who are going to be

00:16:12.740 supporting Smith, expected to support Smith in the leadership review vote. That's certainly

00:16:20.440 rubbed some people the wrong way. What do you expect to come from here? Do you think you're

00:16:27.440 going to see, you know, is that going to raise some eyebrows at the convention when we see

00:16:32.180 large numbers of a particular group coming in to support someone? Or do you think it's

00:16:36.320 going to be like, oh, great. Tent's getting bigger, welcoming more people in. How do you

00:16:40.120 think people are going to react to that on the floor? Well, I mean, at least as far as

00:16:42.980 provincial politics goes, the Israel conflict and such isn't spilling over so much as they

00:16:47.980 don't expect the premier to step into that mess as much as federally. I mean,

00:16:53.740 members of the Ontario legislature get removed for supporting Hamas. And then they've been,

00:17:00.040 yeah, we haven't had that extent happen here to turn it into such a test. There's been Alberta

00:17:03.860 NDP MLAs who have been quite vocal in their support of Hamas. That's because the NDP is

00:17:07.540 overloaded with anti-Semites and that happens in every province, but it hasn't blown up here as

00:17:11.420 it has in other areas. So I'm just saying it's not as much in that particular aspect of a factor

00:17:15.160 in this AGM. If, I mean, it's something that'll get us in trouble in some ways, there's not so

00:17:21.380 but it's just pointing out a fact large conservative conventions have not had a big diverse

00:17:26.020 group in them it's been no older white people for the majority and it's always been a challenge to

00:17:33.220 try and bring in people from other communities and and uh whether this is viewed as changing that

00:17:38.180 thing is to move the vote on the leadership if that's what the intent of bringing large amounts

00:17:42.580 of muslim individuals in you will have to bring in a couple thousand that's what we're talking

00:17:46.580 about when we're talking about a 6,000 person AGM, that is going to stand out in the room very

00:17:51.800 dramatically. And I think such, even if the intent might be something somebody kind of agrees with,

00:17:57.700 they would see that as pretty ill-advised tactic when we're supposed to be discussing the party as

00:18:03.440 a whole and a lot of other things, and it might not be received well by others. I know others

00:18:06.480 would label this racist, but no, I just, as you're bringing in non-traditional supporters just to win 1.00

00:18:10.680 one particular vote, people would find that a bit offensive. I just would be surprised again if we

00:18:16.000 see a couple of thousand people bust in for an event at that expense to swing a vote. But we'll

00:18:23.540 see. I mean, if there's that largest segment going on in there, it's going to raise some eyebrows and

00:18:28.040 people are going to have some discussions about how the party's being managed. All right.

00:18:33.820 All right. We're going to turn now to the U.S. presidential and many other elections taking

00:18:40.520 place Tuesday. America likes its elections. They've generally got them every two years, but

00:18:45.760 actually because they're on a schedule, I think they actually end up having less elections than

00:18:49.660 we do. They just have bigger, longer ballots where you can do state and federal at the same time as

00:18:54.600 things turn over. But obviously the big one everyone's always watching is the presidential

00:19:01.260 race. The polls are in a dead heat. Most of the polls I've seen have got Kamala Harris at 49

00:19:09.500 Trump at 48, well within the margin of error. Generally the way the Electoral College works. If the two are tied in the popular vote, the Republican wins. But they're not, you know, they're within the margin of error.

00:19:23.500 It's likely to be a close race. And it's obviously been nasty. Everyone always says, well, this is the most nasty election ever. Everyone says that always in the election that they're in.

00:19:38.120 I'm inclined always to say, you know, stop clutching your pearls. Everyone always thinks things were more civil in the past. And sometimes they were. I mean, Reagan-Mondale was pretty civil and nice, I think, in comparison.

00:19:50.580 But in general, these things have always been nasty. But good God, this one is particularly nasty. You know, Kamala Harris saying Trump is a fascist, a Nazi. The most ridiculous thing I've seen to date, I think, in this campaign was Trump has a rally at Madison Square Gardens.

00:20:11.040 And they say, aha, well, the American Nazi Party also had a rally at Madison Square Gardens in the 1938 or 39 or something.

00:20:18.880 You know who else also had rallies at Madison Square Gardens? JFK.

00:20:23.080 Kamala Harris just had her big kind of end of campaign rally at the National Mall in D.C. 1.00

00:20:29.500 You know who also had a rally there in the 30s or the 20s?

00:20:33.100 The Ku Klux Klan.

00:20:33.880 I mean, it's so like because someone held something, because you have a race, because you have a, you know, because you have a race of cars at Nuremberg doesn't mean the cars are Nazis, even though it's on literally the same grounds.

00:20:51.580 It's gone pretty nuts.

00:20:54.720 Maybe we'll just start off with predictions.

00:20:57.080 We'll start with you, Nigel.

00:20:59.200 What do you think we're going to see Tuesday?

00:21:00.940 I think you're going to see a Trump victory.

00:21:03.480 I think you'll also see it challenged, but I think that Trump will win the Electoral College.

00:21:09.560 The polls which you spoke of are a measure of popular support, and he may win those too.

00:21:19.660 Or, you know, he may get a little more than Kamala Harris and that as well. 0.97

00:21:26.220 But the important thing is to win the Electoral College.

00:21:29.040 And there I think he has it in the bag.

00:21:33.700 Unfortunately for Ms. Harris, she does not present well.

00:21:38.720 She may be a wonderful person, but I'm saying that not because I believe it,

00:21:43.640 but because that would seem like the, you know,

00:21:45.660 you must acknowledge that people don't always give all of their best when they're in public.

00:21:51.140 She may be a wonderful person, great qualities,

00:21:53.760 but she has not done well in her public presentations.

00:21:58.040 presentation. She's been, the word salad phrase has been tossed around frequently in her, to

00:22:05.260 describe her reactions. They're really quite simple questions and you just can't picture this

00:22:09.780 person as the commander-in-chief. I think people just feel sufficiently uneasy about her that even

00:22:18.020 though they may not like Trump, they will say, well, it wasn't so bad in the four years that he

00:22:22.280 was president, maybe that's the

00:22:24.260 safer choice.

00:22:26.540 Corey, you know, there's

00:22:28.040 one of the big risks with name-calling

00:22:30.280 on politics or

00:22:32.280 hyperbole about your opponents

00:22:34.100 is

00:22:35.260 the story of the boy who cried wolf.

00:22:39.360 And, you know,

00:22:40.300 Hillary Clinton said that Trump

00:22:41.960 was a fascist. I'm not sure if she used

00:22:44.280 those words. She didn't use it directly. I mean, that's a level

00:22:46.120 that has escalated. They'll talk around it

00:22:48.200 before. Now they aren't even masking

00:22:50.220 it. You know, misogynist,

00:22:51.940 sexist, racist, isms, ists, did all of that. And then we had four years of him. I mean,

00:23:00.680 it's certainly turbulent, colorful. These are, I mean, it was an unconventional four years

00:23:10.860 in some negative ways and some positive ways too. No wars. Last time that happened was Herbert Hoover.

00:23:18.480 So, you know, it's been a long time since we had a president that didn't get American wars, strengthened the border, economy did pretty well.

00:23:29.820 But there was a lot of turbulence.

00:23:31.080 But I don't recall any death camps.

00:23:34.200 I don't recall Trump invading Poland at any time.

00:23:39.840 None of these things happened.

00:23:41.020 But the rhetoric now is even more extreme.

00:23:43.640 Do you think, how effective is this, you know, the rhetoric coming from Kamala Harris and her surrogates that this man is Hitler, you elect him, it's going to be the Fourth Reich.

00:24:00.780 How effective is that when he's actually had four years and none of those things, even close to passing?

00:24:05.940 I don't think it's effective, and I think it's showing some desperation on the part of that campaign, actually, because they're not fools.

00:24:11.360 they got some smart strategists in there. And I think they're not liking some of the numbers

00:24:15.000 they're seeing or how close it's going to be. I mean, I say on my show quite regularly,

00:24:18.900 and it always gets me a bunch of emails from viewers who get upset. I'm not a fan of Trump.

00:24:22.880 I'm not warm on him. But if I were an American voter, and I'd watch this particularly, as you

00:24:27.360 said, but the ludicrousness of a headline on TV showing this was where a Nazi rally was held,

00:24:33.060 you know, almost 100 years ago, thus, I mean, the effort they went to, to put the word Nazi

00:24:37.960 and Trump into the same sentence. People see through that. And that might take me from where

00:24:43.400 I was thinking, I was going to watch something interesting on TV that night, but you know what?

00:24:46.840 I'm going to get up and cast a ballot for this man because I'm just sick of this. That's above

00:24:50.600 and beyond ridiculous. As you know, yes, he's been in for four years and he didn't necessarily

00:24:55.320 impress everybody during those four years, but no, he didn't do anything crazed despite what

00:25:01.600 everybody accused him. He didn't invade any countries. Actually, ironically, of all things,

00:25:05.120 as unstable as he might seem, he's one of the least hawkish type of politicians we've seen in the United States in a long time.

00:25:10.780 He seems quite averse to putting American soldiers in danger in any circumstances, whereas Obama certainly didn't hesitate to.

00:25:22.480 Okay.

00:25:24.120 Actually, just to the point about the fascists, I wonder if people actually know today what a fascist is.

00:25:31.700 It's never been well-defined, both when fascism was a thing today and every time in between.

00:25:38.380 You know, it's hard to say.

00:25:39.520 There was a U.S. senator who put out a tweet, and unfortunately I didn't bring it in with me,

00:25:43.780 but if you actually know what a fascist is, and then you watch the Democrat campaign,

00:25:50.180 they want to jail Trump, want to get rid of the Electoral College,

00:25:54.140 they want to, what was it, pack the Supreme Court.

00:25:57.560 He went on about three months ago. That was where the fascism was in the democratic platform.

00:26:06.100 Now, you don't want a politics 101 course on the definition of fascism.

00:26:09.640 It's just funny how these things get tossed around as a slur. Nothing more.

00:26:14.200 I think where a lot of people go wrong in calling everything fascist is just a misassociation with authoritarian.

00:26:22.060 Justin Trudeau, I believe, is an authoritarian. I don't believe he's a fascist.

00:26:25.800 A fascist, I can't even say that is a very specific thing, but it is not this thing.

00:26:32.700 It's a particular brand of authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is very broad.

00:26:37.680 It includes communist regimes, fascist regimes, military juntas, and certain democratic regimes that can be perfectly democratically elected, but employ, you know, the Indian government is arguably fairly authoritarian.

00:26:52.840 they still have elections, fascism isn't merely the absence of elections. It's a lot of different.

00:27:01.220 Hitler won the 1933 election fair and square. 0.90

00:27:06.760 It's an abuse of the term and it's ruining people on proper history anyways. I mean,

00:27:11.300 if they want to look and see what the Mussolini administration was about and some of those,

00:27:15.540 and it's being lost because it's being tossed at anybody and everybody. We're seeing it in

00:27:18.760 Canadian politics being thrown around, too.

00:27:20.720 It's getting to the point where I won't vote for someone unless the left calls them a racist and a fascist and a sexist.

00:27:26.860 If you don't get called those things, it means you're probably way too vanilla for me to vote for.

00:27:31.600 It's sad.

00:27:33.100 I don't want the guys I vote for.

00:27:34.720 I don't want to say I am a fascist, racist, etc.

00:27:37.640 But if they're not getting called that, that means they're not doing a very good job.

00:27:43.220 Communications, right?

00:27:44.120 Another one.

00:27:44.580 So this is going to come down to a couple.

00:27:47.240 It's electoral college.

00:27:48.760 everybody likes to look at the big line numbers, 49 Harris, 48 Trump, that actually doesn't matter.

00:27:56.120 I mean, theoretically, you could, there's actually been, what did Abraham Lincoln win?

00:28:02.080 It was very little, but at that time, it was a very fractured party system. You had the Republicans,

00:28:06.500 you had the Whigs, you had Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. It was a very fractured

00:28:13.740 system, but you can win the, you can become president of the Electoral College, like in

00:28:18.800 Canada, Justin Trudeau is prime minister with, you know, low 30s. You don't need anywhere close

00:28:25.060 to a majority. It's going to come down to a few things. I'm putting Ohio pretty, I think if the

00:28:33.040 Republicans don't win Ohio on Tuesday, that means they're not winning, but I think they're going to

00:28:37.520 in Ohio. But if they also take Pennsylvania, you know, there's a few paths for Trump to win on

00:28:46.260 Tuesday. There's not as many paths to victory for Kamala Harris. Nigel, how do you think the math is

00:28:55.040 looking through the different routes to victory for each party? Well, that is actually the basis

00:29:01.220 of my earlier prediction that Trump was going to take it. You mentioned Pennsylvania. The media

00:29:07.420 has played down the attack on trump that clipped his ear and could easily have clipped his skull

00:29:15.420 and forgotten about it in pennsylvania nor his response to it and how he went back and greeted

00:29:21.660 the people who had survived comforted the people who had lost individuals in that in that attack

00:29:29.580 i would be quite surprised if trump does not take pennsylvania kamala the issue there is fracking

00:29:40.220 kamala harris has said she won't end fracking but on the other hand she said that she would end 0.95

00:29:46.620 fracking for about the last 10 years and certainly in the last 10 weeks that she's had a change of 0.53

00:29:51.180 heart on that people are stupid and i suspect that pennsylvania will go ohio yes um 0.80

00:29:58.620 probably Vance is helping there as well as a true son of the state. Virginia,

00:30:06.220 there was an important case this morning. Yeah, that's still probably staying blue.

00:30:12.780 Well, I mean, if the Democrats lose Virginia, it's over.

00:30:16.140 I will see what difference it makes when they take out the people who are not actually citizens 1.00

00:30:22.060 and shouldn't be voting. So it's true. I can see. But Virginia has become a blue state largely

00:30:27.260 because it's civil servants working in the federal government, people working for the

00:30:33.020 government, tend overwhelmingly to vote for leftist parties that are more favorable to

00:30:37.860 bigger governments and more employees, more benefits, etc. So I think it would take a lot

00:30:42.640 to flip Virginia. If we look, if tomorrow night, somehow, if Virginia goes red, there

00:30:50.920 is almost no path for Kamala Harris to win without Virginia, because that's been in the 0.92

00:30:55.040 solid blue column since... Did George W. Bush win Virginia?

00:30:59.540 It may have been the last time.

00:31:02.340 It's been a long time since the Republicans won Virginia.

00:31:07.220 We're going to move on to Saskatchewan election in a second, but

00:31:10.020 I actually want to talk about the assassination really quick, Corey.

00:31:15.820 That was a seminal moment in American history.

00:31:18.880 It's already probably one of the most iconic photographs in world history

00:31:23.160 ever do we just have the attention spans of goldfish like we're not even like we're not

00:31:30.680 even really thinking about it anymore that that was such a huge huge issue but I think uh was

00:31:37.040 Joe Biden still technically the democratic nobody when that happened he was yeah just things have

00:31:41.280 just changed so much since uh like why is this not you think playing a bigger role there's just

00:31:47.680 been so much it's just overload and it was quite a moment I mean it was a moment as I said as me

00:31:53.100 as a person who didn't think highly of Trump,

00:31:54.940 and I certainly wouldn't want him shot,

00:31:56.440 but that moment actually when this guy,

00:31:58.360 he gets shot, he gets up,

00:31:59.480 and he's, I probably would have been curled fetal

00:32:01.980 and screaming, and he's up and defiant and yelling,

00:32:04.940 and I had to admit, that's a strong-looking, defiant man.

00:32:08.940 That made me think, yeah, if I were a voter,

00:32:10.900 I'd be more inclined to lean that way.

00:32:12.140 How long that effect held or resonated with people,

00:32:15.480 it remains to be seen.

00:32:16.740 I worked for, again, it's so hard.

00:32:19.640 The Electoral College,

00:32:21.340 I spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania.

00:32:22.840 and it's a complicated state.

00:32:24.580 The west side, Butler is just north of Pittsburgh.

00:32:27.580 That's good blue-collar country.

00:32:30.160 That's, you know, old rust belt now, steel, and then manufacturing, and getting all the

00:32:35.860 way in.

00:32:36.000 But then you get towards Philadelphia and that.

00:32:39.280 Now you've got a high immigration population, a lot more, again, government jobs, civil

00:32:45.360 service, that sort of thing.

00:32:46.860 And the recent thing with, at least they're really trying to bring it up, is enraging

00:32:50.160 Puerto Ricans.

00:32:50.820 So if Philadelphia has hundreds of thousands of people of Puerto Rican descent, will that impact them or not?

00:32:56.500 I don't know. But I don't think any undecideds have swung in the last month.

00:33:01.240 I really don't. That polarized country is already the people who've made their camp minds up.

00:33:06.080 There's always some who poll as undecided. Those are the people who don't vote.

00:33:09.800 And the amount of movement between those two camps has been so limited.

00:33:15.020 And I just, it always astounds me, a country that big and diverse and how close their elections always are.

00:33:21.600 It's amazing.

00:33:22.520 So it's tough to make a call.

00:33:23.600 I mean, with Nigel, I think it's going to be a slim, I think, victory for Trump based more on the Electoral College than perhaps on popular vote.

00:33:30.900 But it's going to be close.

00:33:32.140 I certainly wouldn't, you know, I'm not a betting man.

00:33:34.160 I wouldn't want to put more than $10 on it.

00:33:35.880 okay all right well we're gonna turn towards uh saskatchewan now who uh just uh on our tuesday

00:33:43.160 i think it was tuesday had um was it tuesday chris uh it was decided almost early tuesday morning

00:33:49.800 but now it's monday night but uh yeah i think i call it till about 11 40 for the sass party

00:33:55.000 okay well we've got uh i kind of got ahead of myself here we've got uh the western standards

00:33:59.400 a saskatchewan reporter and uh managing editor of the saskatchewan standard chris old corn here uh

00:34:05.160 who has been doing God's work on the ground reporting on the Saskatchewan election.

00:34:10.840 Chris, it was, I mean, I really hated our segments with you for the first two weeks of the campaign.

00:34:17.560 Not because you're boring, but because what we were talking about was so boring.

00:34:20.880 The Saskatchewan election was unbearably boring,

00:34:24.600 as is often the case when you've got a government seeking its fifth term.

00:34:29.200 But, you know, the NDP became, you know, actually, let's talk about the polls.

00:34:35.160 the polls that were out there were showing the NDP was going to win. There was modeling based on it

00:34:39.640 showing the NDP winning a majority government. They won some more seats on Monday night, but they

00:34:46.020 came nowhere close to winning. Why do you think the pollsters got it so completely wrong in

00:34:51.740 Saskatchewan? Because the polls that had the NDP up are not as reputable as other pollsters who had

00:34:58.920 the SAS party leading. The other thing as well is that those polls overly represented the two

00:35:05.380 urban cities, Regina and Saskatoon, which is where the NDP won most of their votes. As a matter of

00:35:13.000 fact, those polls that showed the NDP was going to win had them in the popular vote, even as high

00:35:18.200 as 50%. Right now, we're counting the mail-in ballots, but they are sitting at about 39%,

00:35:24.520 which is much more accurate to other pollsters, such as Angus Reid,

00:35:29.240 who predicted the election with a much greater degree of accuracy.

00:35:35.020 All right. So they didn't all get it wrong then. But the ones we were seeing,

00:35:38.880 I know CTV was reporting on polls regularly. I kept on sending you these saying,

00:35:44.080 what do you think, Chris? And you're like, ah, they're BS. These are no good.

00:35:49.180 And I don't know. I'm not from Saskatchewan. We're next door here in Alberta. But I kept on seeing these thinking, it's looking tight. What do you think was, what were the defining moments of the campaign that shaped how things worked out?

00:36:08.240 I think that the Belgoni changing room story was actually where the campaign turned. And I think

00:36:14.000 that also galvanized SAS party supporters when they saw what was going on there with

00:36:22.000 biological boys in the grade seven female changing room. And then the very next day,

00:36:27.040 after we broke the story, Scott Moe is coming out saying that there's going to be a ministerial

00:36:30.800 order protecting biological boys and boys change rooms and biological girls and girls change rooms.

00:36:37.360 That then became the story basically for the rest of the election.

00:36:42.740 And up until that point, the SAS party was talking about, you know, reducing your income tax and extending the small business, you know, tax break by 1% for an extra year, like stuff that income tax is not sexy.

00:36:59.000 people very rarely pay attention to it and most don't even understand how it would even

00:37:04.000 change their financial picture other than you tell them it's going to save them 800 bucks a year

00:37:08.440 but they have to make exactly 72 000 to save the 800 bucks so things like that the average person

00:37:15.540 on the street doesn't really understand and they hear the word income tax and i think oh my goodness

00:37:20.340 is it april and then they just tune out and fortunately for the sas party there was a couple

00:37:26.000 issues that came up halfway through the campaign that they were able to galvanize their supporters

00:37:31.700 around. The NDP ran an interesting campaign, though. They had their traditional lefty,

00:37:39.260 socialist, democratic promises, more spending on X, more spending on Y. But they had a few things

00:37:45.180 that surprised me. And you get these from Prairie New Democrats sometimes, like on the gas tax,

00:37:52.240 where they tried to outflank the Saskatchewan party on the right.

00:37:57.020 Yeah, they've been actually calling for a gas tax cut for probably around two years at this point to help with affordability.

00:38:03.340 But that's the money that goes towards our roads here in Saskatchewan.

00:38:07.040 And unfortunately, we only have 1.2 million people that live here and we have a lot of space to build roads.

00:38:13.180 So it's even a hard sell for the NDP to talk about cutting the gas tax because people already know here like how crappy the roads can be in certain areas.

00:38:23.740 And if you start cutting the gas tax, you start cutting road repairs.

00:38:27.100 And that's a hard sell here because there are roads that are really bad in this province and the gas tax fixes them.

00:38:35.300 Nigel.

00:38:37.200 I think you had it.

00:38:38.440 Yeah, well, I was thinking about that gas tax promise.

00:38:43.180 These promises have to be believable, and when the NDB comes along and has what appears to be a very, you know, central casting playbook of socialist ideas, and then they turn around with a very conservative thing like saying, we will cut your gas taxes, it doesn't seem to fit somehow, and that lowers the credibility, not merely of that one promise,

00:39:09.260 but all of the entire campaign strategy.

00:39:16.820 The point that I took out of that result, though,

00:39:22.300 was that unlike Prince Edward Island, I'm sorry, New Brunswick,

00:39:27.520 where the premier came out quite strongly on the matter of parental authority

00:39:34.020 and being required for name changes when kids wanted to transition and so forth,

00:39:39.260 And he lost his election, and people said, well, anybody who took a stand on that is going to pay for it.

00:39:45.600 But in Saskatchewan, they didn't pay for it.

00:39:50.080 What do you think the difference was?

00:39:52.400 Saskatchewan is the most conservative province in Canada.

00:39:55.140 Sorry to disappoint you out in Alberta there.

00:39:57.740 But as far as you look at the federal votes, this entire province goes blue, including Regina and Saskatoon.

00:40:07.880 I think things like the gas tax that they were promising was actually an attempt to try and get some rural voters.

00:40:13.920 It just didn't work.

00:40:14.940 They were completely shut out.

00:40:16.360 Even places where they were expected to pick up a couple of rural seats, they lost them all to the SAS party.

00:40:21.480 And some of them they lost very convincingly.

00:40:23.980 Tim McLeod and Moose Jaw, it was favored that the NDP were going to win that.

00:40:28.580 He won a seat by almost 2,500 votes.

00:40:32.120 So the pollsters were really wrong on the NDP in this province.

00:40:35.660 What happened in Balguni?

00:40:38.020 That's the change room.

00:40:39.440 Yeah, no, no.

00:40:40.300 That was an NDP seat.

00:40:43.720 Is it still an NDP seat?

00:40:45.560 No, it was not an NDP seat.

00:40:46.860 It was White City, Fort Capel. 0.81

00:40:48.780 It was a redesigned seat, though.

00:40:50.860 So what happened was Christine Tell, she lost the rural part of her riding 1.00

00:40:56.160 and just had her riding inside a vagina because of the way that the redistribution happened. 1.00

00:41:02.240 And a matter of fact, there was actually a couple of ministers that basically lost their seats up in Saskatoon simply because they had the rural part of the riding cut out.

00:41:10.860 So they lost a good chunk of their conservative support.

00:41:14.900 Actually, this election was not as good for the NDP if we would have been using the old election map,

00:41:20.620 because there was there was multiple seats in both the outskirts of Saskatoon and Regina that the NDP got slaughtered in in the last election by thousands of votes.

00:41:31.440 But when you redesign where the boundaries are, they ended up actually picking up seats.

00:41:37.540 So this is not as impressive as a win for the NDP as they think it is, if you actually consider the way that some of the boundaries were redrawn, including White City for Capel, which the SAS party held on to it.

00:41:51.920 But unfortunately, they lost Minister Christine Tell.

00:41:55.080 All right, Chris. Well, thank you very much.

00:41:57.160 Thank you for all the work you did during Saskatchewan's election there.

00:42:01.440 you get to take a little break, and then we're going to get you right back to the good work you

00:42:05.120 do. Thank you very much. Have a good afternoon. All right, gentlemen, before we leave, it's time

00:42:10.880 for our parting shots. We'll start with you, Nigel. A delightful picture that Laureen Harper sent in,

00:42:16.800 showing her cat trying to stare down a cougar through the window. That is,

00:42:22.560 that was one of the best pictures I've seen this month. All right. Yeah, I think that's,

00:42:28.080 well, we won't name where it is. Some people don't, but it's in, let's say the greater Calgary area.

00:42:34.800 Corey, your parting shot. Well, I noticed that Canada Post, which lost over $700 million last

00:42:41.940 year, their union has now put out a strike mandate. Canada Post even offered them 11.5%

00:42:48.980 for these flyer delivery boys to carry on in their obsolete service, which is poorly conducted to

00:42:53.820 begin with, this should be the time when Canadians say, you know what, maybe it's time we cut that

00:42:59.300 service down to the tiny shell of what it should be for some remote areas, because they've pushed

00:43:03.760 it too far. This is absurd. I mean, for you guys to be demanding more money when you've got an

00:43:08.040 organization that's bleeding like that is, well, it's a reunion, guys. So yeah, here's my parting

00:43:13.060 shot, guys. You're shooting yourselves in the feet this time, I think, because Canadians are tired of 1.00

00:43:16.880 All right. And for me, I just want to remind everyone that Alberta NDP leader, Naheed Entry, still doesn't have a seat.

00:43:26.980 There's a by-election taking place. It hasn't been called yet.

00:43:31.620 But the Alberta NDP leader, he became leader, Entry became leader in roughly May or so, with a huge mandate from New Democrats to lead that party.

00:43:42.240 And he says he wants a Calgary seat.

00:43:44.840 The ADP have lots of Calgary seats, yet not one has seemed to open up for Nenshi.

00:43:51.400 So, I don't know.

00:43:53.480 He's either got to get someone to open up a seat for him here, or he should go around in Lothbridge.

00:43:57.700 Pick one.

00:43:59.500 All right, gentlemen.

00:44:00.720 And thank all of you for joining us today.

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Western Standard - October 31, 2024

Smith’s leadership up for review this Saturday

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