Western Standard - SNP： UCP Election Roundtable

00:00:00.000 well welcome to the sean newman show on the western standard to the the podcast listener

00:00:04.280 that's going to be a little they're going to have to you know clean out their ears that is right it 0.99

00:00:08.360 is live on the western standard instead of the podcast which is behind my head it's the sean

00:00:12.960 newman show so welcome aboard and i gotta welcome aboard uh three guests for the inaugural round

00:00:18.480 table here on the uh on the sean newman show mike dahlke david parker and vitor marciano so

00:00:24.920 fellas first off thanks for hopping on with me thank you for having us thank you now be here

00:00:31.560 now uh to the there's there's going to be two forms of this obviously a few people are going

00:00:35.840 to watch your names are sitting there for everybody to see who they're who they're listening

00:00:39.120 to but if they are hopped onto the podcast and are only listening to your voice i want to start

00:00:43.680 with uh just a little background quick short however however you know long short you want to

00:00:48.740 go and we'll start with mike we'll go around the table and then we'll hop into uh what today is

00:00:54.120 going to be about a little bit of the UCP election here as we inch closer to October 6. So we'll start

00:01:01.260 with Mr. Mike Dahlke. Yeah, sure. So Mike Dahlke here. I've been around Conservative politics for

00:01:08.060 quite some time. Really got into it during the leadership race with Jason Kenney and his

00:01:14.740 unification of the party. From that, I kind of got myself involved in some campaigns here in

00:01:21.980 South Edmonton. Became kind of a little bit of a political strategist. Worked with Casey Madue

00:01:26.680 in South Edmonton to actually get him elected as our only MLA in Edmonton, both as his president

00:01:33.200 in Southwest, as well as his campaign manager for a little bit of time. Now I have kind of

00:01:38.760 rolled my dice at some other parts. Worked on the municipal election, trying to help

00:01:44.500 conservatives have a voice here in Edmonton. Unfortunately, it didn't go as well as we

00:01:48.080 thought it would go. Only got one candidate elected in the last election. So we were a little

00:01:54.440 disappointed by that, but still working to build a conservative bastion here in Edmonton. And so

00:02:00.520 in the meantime, I've got myself back into some candidates opportunities. So we've been working

00:02:08.380 with Castle Downs. So now the president in Castle Downs here in Edmonton, and I'm working with our

00:02:14.180 candidate, John Zadig, who used to be the city councillor here in Edmonton to hopefully get him

00:02:19.360 elected as the next UCP member of the legislature over there in Castle Downs. And then on the side,

00:02:26.820 I do a little work, obviously strategizing for a lot of teams. So a couple of teams have approached

00:02:31.440 me during the leadership race. And so right now I work quite heavily with the Todd Lowen campaign

00:02:37.260 and helping them with some strategies and moving forward with them. So that's kind of who I am and

00:02:41.880 what I do. We'll switch over to Mr. David Parker. Hey, everyone. My name is David Parker. For those

00:02:50.400 of you who don't know me, I'm the Executive Director of Take Back Alberta, co-host of the

00:02:55.240 Canadian Story, and an entrepreneur from Central Alberta who's been a political organizer since

00:03:02.260 about 18, and just very interested in teaching people about how democracy in our province works

00:03:10.020 so they can take back control of their institutions

00:03:13.560 that I think a lot of them don't think represent their views or values anymore.

00:03:18.020 And finally, Vitor Marciano.

00:03:22.060 I'm Vitor Marciano.

00:03:23.740 I've been kicking around federal and provincial politics in Alberta for, oh, 22 years.

00:03:30.140 I started off, frankly, like David, like Mr. Dalkey, as a volunteer.

00:03:35.500 year. And in the early 2000s, I became sort of one of the key organizers in the Edmonton area

00:03:42.500 for the federal party, served on that first federal national council. In 2010, Danielle Smith

00:03:49.400 asked me to stop doing federal work and professionalize the Wild Rose Party. So I

00:03:54.720 was its first professional executive director and then served as one of Danielle's senior advisors

00:04:00.140 and her press secretary um i was around when uh when brian gene came back and put wild rose back

00:04:07.500 together again in 2015 and uh i've been doing politics ever since i've been a campaign manager

00:04:13.020 i've been a strategist uh i i'm a jack of all trades i know a bunch of these different technical

00:04:17.980 things and i've also been you know a senior executive at at the federal party nationally

00:04:23.260 and the executive director of of one of the precursor parties provincially so i i know both

00:04:29.180 the the political strategic side and the administrative paperwork get stuff done side

00:04:35.080 of parties so uh i have i have some insights on some of this stuff well i appreciate you fellas

00:04:40.460 uh exploring an idea with me i'm uh was born and raised in saskatchewan the listeners of the

00:04:45.680 podcast certainly know that but anyone on the western standard side um this is my first uh

00:04:50.700 you know election in alberta essentially and so i've been monitoring it very closely shall we say

00:04:57.860 And that's why I appreciate you guys hopping on.

00:05:00.120 And from now on, I talk about it being ping pong, you know,

00:05:04.300 where I ask Mike a question, then he brings it back to me,

00:05:06.820 and then Dave and blah, blah, blah.

00:05:07.920 At any time, feel free to hop in and share some thoughts.

00:05:11.700 This is a roundtable.

00:05:12.600 It's a virtual roundtable, but a roundtable nonetheless.

00:05:16.160 I've been watching this and talking to people such as all three of you

00:05:20.560 about the 123,915 UCP members.

00:05:24.620 That's what's going to decide, give or take,

00:05:27.340 um the upcoming election which is going to be decided on October 6th um when you look at the

00:05:33.000 numbers fellas 60 plus thousand new members since May is that normal does this happen every election

00:05:40.800 that you just get a big swell of of uh members like this or is this maybe uh kind of due to

00:05:48.360 circumstances and I'll fire at Vitor to start but David and Mike please hop in as we roll along with

00:05:55.240 this um leadership races always bring out extra people so um the ucp being at 120 425 000 isn't

00:06:05.360 really a surprise in all honesty if it hadn't happened in the summer uh it would have been

00:06:09.380 bigger uh if it had um if the party hadn't restricted the sales of memberships to just

00:06:16.360 people using their own personal credit card or personal check it would have been bigger

00:06:20.520 um that they actually did things that probably stopped the party from growing as much as it

00:06:25.620 could have uh why do you say sorry sorry vitor why why do you say summer what what's big about

00:06:31.280 the summer fellas um well go and live their lives yeah they want to go on vacation like

00:06:37.200 most people can't be bothered to care about politics and if you ask them to bother to care

00:06:43.240 ask them to bother to care when they want to be at the beach or at the cottage or

00:06:46.760 you know on a their rv camping they're not interested even even with the hardest two years

00:06:56.300 behind us even with everything that's going on you're telling me this is just standard operations

00:07:01.920 for politics 60 000 plus new members doubling the size of the party uh that's standard uh the fact

00:07:08.680 that summer they probably would have been higher all these things that i'll give you i'll give you

00:07:12.400 example aaron o'toole who most people would say couldn't even have inspired you know like didn't

00:07:18.160 win let's just say he didn't win even then they doubled the membership for the leadership like

00:07:23.600 that leadership with peter mckay and aaron o'toole federally they doubled the membership now what

00:07:28.880 pierre pauliev has done has been shocking that's unprecedented you it's movement level but i don't

00:07:36.320 think you could say that um doubling of the membership is very shocking no no no i would

00:07:42.160 i would i would agree a hundred percent uh not everyone is a political junkie like the rest of

00:07:47.280 us here on this round table and we don't spend our time you know checking podcasts and and watching

00:07:54.160 all sorts of news articles i mean i watched the the the knotley news conference today i think was

00:07:58.800 the only one watching it today but i mean the fact of the matter is uh you know people like us we get

00:08:04.720 into this the average uh albertan they want to go to the lake they want to spend time with their

00:08:08.560 family um the the benefit of having seven candidates though in this uh leadership election

00:08:14.800 is that there are seven candidates selling memberships i think honestly the numbers

00:08:19.040 probably would have been much lower if we didn't have all seven candidates so um we are pretty

00:08:23.600 lucky that we do have seven candidates even though it has kind of muddied the waters so to speak

00:08:28.560 so i'm the green guy everybody says nobody's political junkies like us but fellas

00:08:32.800 look on the wall they're hockey jerseys i didn't give two about this like six months ago you're

00:08:38.640 telling me i'm sitting here and my eyes are are still shut to what actually happens in politics

00:08:43.600 like i have no clue yes and and political parties are and political people are who normal people

00:08:51.760 hire to do politics yeah and most of the time normal people don't give a damn about politics

00:08:57.200 i mean think there's an american stat that the average american thinks about federal politics

00:09:02.240 for about one and a half minutes a week and it's less for state politics and municipal politics

00:09:07.840 and that that applies to canada as well so normally they they just don't care uh and it's

00:09:14.000 not that they don't care they don't care enough to involve themselves and they trust that those of us

00:09:21.440 who are involved in politics will make enough right decisions that it won't stress them out too much

00:09:25.840 um but that's changed in the last two years a whole bunch of people who thought they didn't

00:09:30.880 care about politics discovered that politics cared about them um and all of a sudden if they

00:09:36.800 weren't paying attention they could find themselves um losing their rights losing their privileges

00:09:41.380 having to uh adjust for things uh so that created a whole series of stressors for them

00:09:47.820 but yeah this is this is going to be new um it's going to be interesting as we try to get

00:09:56.460 new uninvolved people in it's going to be important that we don't turn them into cynics 0.94

00:10:01.480 it's going to be important that we do one of the things that the david's promise promise to do with

00:10:09.220 tba which is to educate them in the civics of canadian politics i'm always amazed at how many

00:10:16.820 quasi-political people people who are just starting to get political are actually a little

00:10:22.460 bit more aware of American politics than Canadian politics. We, political parties, politicians,

00:10:30.060 the media, all do a brutal job of educating Canadians on what's possible and what's going

00:10:35.720 on out there. And so therefore, you know, most of the time they don't care. And that's why,

00:10:40.980 you know, in a general election, provincially, you know, 50% of people don't vote. It's not that

00:10:46.840 they don't care. They trust that the 50% of people who are paying more attention than them

00:10:50.680 make a good decision well vitor i want to i want to i want to hit on this a little bit like let's

00:10:54.840 just talk about a bit about how hard it is to get people involved i just want the three of us to

00:11:00.040 discuss for a moment just how hard it is to get people to spend 10 bucks to buy a membership like

00:11:05.560 i don't think people comprehend the amount of work that the people like the three of us put into

00:11:10.120 to just get a couple hundred people to go and vote like we recently had a uh a nomination

00:11:17.480 meeting in red deer north here for adrianna lagrange the education minister and there were

00:11:21.880 a lot of people that were mad at the education minister but i tell you 400 people in red deer

00:11:27.160 north could not be bothered to show up to vote her out 400 and there were 900 members and only 500

00:11:34.280 some of them voted but doesn't it take a somebody uh organized uh to to put their hat in the ring

00:11:41.240 to organize it put a lot of effort and then i feel like for a lot of people it just feels like it

00:11:45.800 it doesn't matter you you elect whoever and then they they say one thing and the next day they go

00:11:50.140 do a completely different thing and you're like okay well that that didn't work the only thing

00:11:55.320 i see changing and maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm agreeing to this too fellas you know as i sit

00:11:59.840 and i interview all the candidates and i have them on stage and i hear them say the same things

00:12:03.900 i feel like media doesn't hold them accountable right now and that is changing like very very

00:12:10.080 fast now if we go back through history there's different times it's a little bit of a cycle

00:12:14.360 where media slowly becomes complicit,

00:12:17.660 whether we go back to the paper or the radio,

00:12:20.040 or you can do the math.

00:12:21.440 Anyways, and with the internet,

00:12:23.840 the fact we're able to do shows like this,

00:12:26.340 it feels like we're hitting another point

00:12:29.220 where if politicians stand up, say one thing,

00:12:32.900 and then two months later are doing the complete opposite,

00:12:35.520 they're going to get absolutely fried.

00:12:37.500 And saying that, Justin Trudeau,

00:12:39.300 our fearless leader of this country,

00:12:40.680 gets to say whatever he wants

00:12:41.920 and just walk away for at least the time being?

00:12:46.940 I mean, the average Albertan, the average Canadian,

00:12:50.100 the average person has lost trust in their politicians.

00:12:52.700 That is across the board.

00:12:54.260 I think you can go anywhere in Canada and you can ask any person

00:13:00.340 and ask them, what do you think of your politician?

00:13:03.280 And they say, I don't trust him anymore.

00:13:05.280 And I think that's pretty damning.

00:13:07.840 And so now people are angry and governments are overthrown because of anger.

00:13:11.920 And we love governments that do very little and affect our lives at zero to none.

00:13:19.120 When we see a government that gets their hands in the wrong cookie jars, so to speak, and are frustrating us as everyday Albertans, we want to make a difference.

00:13:30.420 And I think we saw that with the leadership review with Jason Kenney.

00:13:34.200 There were a lot of angry Albertans that said, you know, I'm willing to drive down to Red Deer and vote and get rid of Jason Kenney.

00:13:41.160 And I think TBA was a big proponent of pushing that narrative on people.

00:13:45.780 But I think now that we've kind of moved out of that, now we don't have that, so to speak,

00:13:51.580 baddie that we're looking at, the person that we can blame everything on, I think people

00:13:56.300 may become apathetic to the cause.

00:13:59.880 And like Vitor said, maybe just trust that the rest of us will do our due diligence and

00:14:04.480 vote the right person in.

00:14:05.480 well i certainly hope uh i hope you're right because i feel like more people are tuning in

00:14:12.640 than ever but maybe it's just people such as myself that kind of had their their hopes that

00:14:16.820 everybody was doing right and then all of a sudden we're in what we're in and everybody's going what

00:14:20.040 on earth is happening you know fellows with 124 000 just shy of that 123 and change um people

00:14:26.980 that are registered so if for the folks listening if you registered for a membership before august

00:14:32.340 12th you can vote in uh in the upcoming election september 2nd the ballots were sent out so

00:14:36.900 you know if if you've got one in the mail you don't got one in the mail by september 14th

00:14:41.800 they're saying if you don't have one that's when you got to start to get worried regardless

00:14:44.800 um what are you expecting with mail-in ballots the fact that uh on october 6th from 8 to noon

00:14:53.320 in only five locations slave lake edmonton red deer calgary tabor um what are you expecting for

00:14:59.200 voter turnout in this this is i assume this is like unusual it's never been had a premier step

00:15:05.340 down before i mean we have but this feels pretty unusual to me but maybe what do you guys think on

00:15:12.220 voter turnout and then just overall the the locations not in person there's a lot of questions

00:15:19.000 i'll run with it and then i let everybody else run with it but here's my math and i'd love to

00:15:24.600 hear your guys's math my math is we're sitting at about 62 63 percent of the federal uh members of

00:15:34.080 will be voting in the leadership on the federal race so that's with pierre polyev roman baber

00:15:39.760 jean charay that federal race it's done now all the votes are in it's about 430 000 votes 420 430

00:15:48.400 so i don't think we're going to see a higher turnout in the provincial leadership race than

00:15:54.020 saw on the federal one and there's 123 124 as you said 123 or 124 and change or whatever it is 123

00:16:03.940 915 yeah right so if that's the case then i don't see more than 75 000 people voting in this thing

00:16:14.580 to be honest oh i i don't i think you're high honestly i think you're gonna see maybe a 50

00:16:23.140 voter turnout in the cities uh if that if you're lucky uh again we're hitting that that time of the

00:16:28.740 year where people are just getting back into the groove of things you know work is going uh they

00:16:34.020 couldn't be bothered especially if there's only one polling station in your whole city and and

00:16:38.340 let's be honest uh you know that's if you live in edmonton if you have to drive the slave lake 0.87

00:16:43.220 from fort mcmurray to vote do you think you're going to drive in and vote and how many people

00:16:47.220 really trust the mail-in ballot right now i think we could see maybe you know 60 in rural alberto

00:16:55.840 just because they're more pissed off than everyone else but i think when it comes to

00:16:59.640 the actual turnover turnout if we see 55 i'd be amazed so 55 let's just put that in perspective

00:17:06.600 at 55 percent 50 percent of 120 is 60 000 right and five more would be uh so you're looking at

00:17:17.580 he's thinking 66 67 000 is that is a max as a max and i don't think we're gonna hit that i think

00:17:25.100 that's a that's kind of a pipe dream vitor what do you think i'm at 65 000 and and and it's not

00:17:31.000 123 and change they sent us a new list the other day so it's 124 and change oh so i got a wrong

00:17:36.240 number. Perfect. That was the old number. That was the number. I think it'll be roughly 65,000

00:17:44.500 people voting. There's a couple of things that people miss on this. Oftentimes, the number is

00:17:49.940 in some ways a little padded because the husband or the wife is particularly political and they

00:17:55.500 sign up their kids and their spouse who aren't as political and therefore less likely to vote

00:18:02.520 It might be a way at the time when it comes. And then when you combine the fact that they're making it next to impossible to vote in person, that's going to drop stuff down.

00:18:13.440 The fact that the ballots sort of arrived, started arriving now right after a long weekend, it is just when people are starting to pay attention, but it's just when people are starting to pay attention.

00:18:23.440 It's not two weeks from now when people are fully paying attention. People are still coming out of the summer mode.

00:18:31.420 The fact that the membership sales ended in August was really weird. The fact that the party structured the leadership race in such a way that it demanded a ton of money from the candidates early and, in effect, left all the campaigns, every single one, including the frontrunner in the campaign, short on money because they had to give away all their money to the party early.

00:18:54.160 So there's the amount of money being spent in this leadership race is way less than the amount that was spent in 2017.

00:19:01.100 It's happening at the wrong time of year.

00:19:04.640 It doesn't have anything, you know, it's working off of a smaller base than the federal race with Pierre.

00:19:14.920 Pierre has, you know, five million dollars to spend across the country because he's been able to raise that much.

00:19:21.660 and therefore he's got tools at his disposal to lift the voter turnout so that all of these

00:19:27.920 things together lead me to believe that yeah we'll be a little bit better than 50 percent of

00:19:32.480 the people voting but not much when you say august 12th was weird what's weird about august 12th being

00:19:39.020 the the end cutoff for memberships are you saying that it should have been earlier later it should

00:19:43.900 have been later you you cut off the memberships really early and delayed the vote really late

00:19:49.460 i mean i see this i see this as a as a tactic honestly on the part of uh let's call them the

00:19:55.920 establishment we can call them jason kenny's people we can call them the old guard whatever

00:20:00.460 we want to call them the tactic is pretty simple make it as boring as possible because it's never

00:20:06.320 good for an incumbent let's say when uh when there's a lot of excitement around a race because

00:20:10.860 the incumbent is trying to maintain the status quo while any new force let's call it tba let's

00:20:17.300 call it uh brian gene let's call it any group of people that's trying to frankly take over an

00:20:25.020 organization right take over the leadership of an organization which what is what an election

00:20:29.260 leadership is is disadvantaged if people are bored not paying attention because excitement

00:20:35.260 is what gets people rolling on these kind of things i i uh you know you talk about taking

00:20:41.320 on the establishment uh with with mike here helping tra uh travis todd lowen um todd lowen's

00:20:47.840 a guy who who stood up he's an independent daniel smith comes to mind she's an outsider

00:20:52.100 they weren't they weren't in there i mean i can go on about all the candidates the candidates

00:20:55.940 are the candidates uh i'm i guess i look at it the opposite way and i keep saying this analogy

00:21:01.580 and i apologize if we got any calgary flames fans listening but with the edmonton oilers forgive me

00:21:07.480 bringing sports in this they had Jay Woodcroft he comes in as a coach you know the Oilers aren't

00:21:12.080 doing that hot he gets a short runway to uh have an opportunity to get the Oilers in the playoffs

00:21:17.040 right he does and they become a hot team and then they defeat the first round maybe not the way they

00:21:23.020 wanted to but they're through it then the second round they defeat the provincial rivals and then

00:21:27.820 of course they lose to the Colorado Avalanche but now he's got a long contract he's signed on that

00:21:32.800 and I look at the provincial election everything they're trying to do isn't working because I feel

00:21:37.240 like there's a ton of hype around the seven candidates but maybe i'm wrong on that uh maybe

00:21:42.040 that's in my own world it feels like that it feels like all the eyes are sitting on alberta right now

00:21:47.640 and they have this runway where they're they're literally campaigning and then they get to have a

00:21:52.440 few months where they're actually premier and then they campaign again and it's like a year-long

00:21:56.180 campaign i mean it's almost the right place uh you know the right perfect storm for whoever wins

00:22:01.340 Well, so it's kind of like that. I mean, there are there are sitting MLAs that will likely receive a seat. But I mean, Danielle Smith still doesn't have a seat. She's going to have to run in a by-election if she wants to even form government. And so anything that she wants to do, she's going to have to do through somebody else. And we know, and to use your analogy with Jay Woodcraft, what would it be like if Jay Woodcraft was allowed to coach the Oilers, but only from afar, and Dave Tippett got to keep the reins while they played the playoffs?

00:22:30.760 it'd be very weird. And that's what we have going on right now. We have Jason Kenney

00:22:34.420 sitting behind the scenes doing all sorts of stuff that we have no clue. I mean,

00:22:38.960 the amount of times that he opens his mouth and basically he costs us municipal elections.

00:22:44.440 I would say some of his comments that federally, when we had the federal election,

00:22:48.580 cost us votes. There's a lot of things this guy has done to blow up the conservative movement.

00:22:52.480 And the question is, why are we continuing to give him rain to continue to blow up the

00:22:58.080 conservative movement and when you have a candidate like daniel smith you know how are

00:23:02.900 you going to defend that when you have a when you have you know a leader that's going to sit there

00:23:06.900 and is likely going to be your deputy premier um and not step down because he's got the power of

00:23:12.500 all the mlans well that raises two questions one one i assume it's in some uh way that it's written

00:23:19.780 that this can happen how can danielle smith run for the premier if she's not a sitting mla 0.64

00:23:25.520 she can't here she can and there's a tradition that you go get yourself a seat really fast

00:23:31.880 but danielle there's a seat available danielle says she's not running in that seat so we've got

00:23:37.320 a complication happening there and there's a window there's a time frame that they can call

00:23:41.140 a by-election before an election i mean let's be honest do you want to be the person that has to

00:23:45.000 put a million dollars into a by-election prior to your election no you don't call it at all you just

00:23:50.320 hold it off till the, I would say you just hold it off. But on that note, let's finish this for a

00:23:56.880 second. I'm still confused. That is not the tradition in Alberta. The tradition in Alberta

00:24:01.240 is you get yourself a seat as fast as you can and get into the house so you can defend yourself.

00:24:06.520 Right. And this is extra important when your first piece of legislation is super controversial

00:24:14.080 and has everybody going, uh, and so, you know, not every, not everybody, be fair, be fair,

00:24:21.920 to be fair. It has a bunch of people that don't even represent the majority of the membership

00:24:25.440 going on. Well, we'll find out where the membership in the next little while, but

00:24:31.280 she's, she's got to designate somebody to be her defender and her spokesman for this thing

00:24:36.040 in November, uh, and December when it gets voted on. Um, so if she wins, sorry, I want you

00:24:44.000 got to paint me a clear picture some days boys i'm a little bit i'll do it sean i'll if if she

00:24:48.880 wins the premier right she becomes premier on october 6th but she's not assuming sitting mla

00:24:53.920 what happens here so i'll explain this so in the westminster system being premier actually doesn't

00:24:59.440 have anything to do with a seat in uh the legislature or or parliament what it does have to

00:25:06.240 do with is are you the leader of the party that has the most seats if you are the leader elected

00:25:12.400 by the membership which is kind of think of it as a club right so if the head of the club is elected

00:25:17.520 by the members of the club and that club has the most seats then that person is the premier of the

00:25:23.040 province they don't have there's no legislation that requires that the premier have a seat however

00:25:28.160 as vitor pointed out traditionally they try to get a seat as fast as possible after that happens

00:25:35.120 now most of the time almost all of the time they already have a seat it's very rare it doesn't

00:25:40.880 happen very often that the leader of the party doesn't have a seat but it has happened before

00:25:45.920 and as vitor pointed out they go to get a seat as fast as possible so if she wins can she interact 0.53

00:25:53.120 with all the mlas everything can she be uh like running the province or does she have to sit on 1.00

00:25:59.040 the outside yes and no yes and no because again she's not she's not allowed inside the legislature

00:26:04.640 so when bills and things are passed i'm allowed inside the legislature well yeah but she can't 1.00

00:26:09.040 she can't actually make any uh you can't vote or speak or or or defend herself from not least

00:26:18.560 attacks for the next six months i mean she's going to be sitting there taking uh and have to have 1.00

00:26:23.840 have a press conference every day to defend everything that the ndp is throwing at her and

00:26:28.800 it's going to be very difficult for her to do so uh and so as anyone who's looking at this there's

00:26:35.440 a lot of things that the ucp have done wrong um and this stems from kenny staying too long

00:26:41.200 and the fact is that he's still staying too long and he will exert his power we know that and we

00:26:46.880 are interested to see where this is going to go because ultimately uh she's not the only one i'm

00:26:52.960 not saying lila will ever win but lila could lose her her seat as well uh now she could sit there 1.00

00:26:58.400 but now she could be an elected uh official uh but not have a seat in chestermere because she's 1.00

00:27:04.800 about to lose that seat so there's a lot of weird things going on behind the scenes well yeah for

00:27:08.960 example i mean todd lowen is even a member of the ucp caucus right now and and they might just not

00:27:14.720 let him in when if he wins that could happen as well so there could definitely be that i know from

00:27:20.000 the party allowing him to run as a candidate they've already said that he is allowed to be

00:27:24.400 a part of the conservative party he's a member within good standing so he himself could have

00:27:29.920 that and he has a seat so it's just a matter of the caucus saying hey bring him in and because

00:27:34.320 here's the most likely outcome just like what happened with jason kenny who was didn't have a

00:27:38.700 seat before he uh before he became leader of the ucp immediately an mla resigned and he ran

00:27:46.400 for the nomination and the uh seat there so that that could also be a very quick fix for danielle 0.99

00:27:53.940 i think um we have to be careful on painting it as if it's going to be too much of a challenge

00:27:58.640 because it's definitely a hurdle that's been overcome many times however it is definitely

00:28:03.540 a challenge that she faces that the other candidates don't face at all and another oddity

00:28:08.220 in this weird election this weird like this i don't know what has it been guys eight months

00:28:14.460 like it just feels like it's been 10 years wouldn't you say 10 years

00:28:18.840 no an actual 10 years from the time the wild rose lost to redford till now has been a decade

00:28:27.800 of craziness in alberta politics that's right that's right yeah so nothing about what's going

00:28:33.240 on right now you're like you half the time i'm laughing because if you're listening you can't

00:28:38.760 see this but half the time someone will say something everybody's nodding their head like

00:28:41.320 yeah that's that's 100 and when we talk about this election none of you are going like oh this

00:28:46.440 is the playbook this is exactly how it's supposed to go there's a lot going on right now that makes

00:28:50.680 zero sense yes tons going on tons it makes sense let's take this for example right now the party

00:28:59.080 has said that they will close nominations for cas so we have i believe and you guys can correct

00:29:05.080 me if i'm wrong on this about 38 seats that have been confirmed of the 87 which is great uh except

00:29:11.480 if the party wants to close nominations it means that any candidate that would like to run

00:29:16.520 um let's say it's a contested nomination it might take another two months for them

00:29:20.920 so we're talking january maybe even february before we have a nominated contestant in a ca

00:29:27.160 to run against somebody who is running against an incumbent ndp let's say in edmonton because

00:29:32.440 there's 19 seats that are like that here in edmonton and we've only called uh for three

00:29:36.600 and i think we have one that's in the works and that one's not even going to be allowed to be

00:29:40.200 opened up until february at best probably and so we have some huge issues with the um the

00:29:47.960 governance of our party and the and the party's um actual board and saying why are these decisions

00:29:54.360 being made and and maybe the two of you can address some of this but i mean there's some

00:29:59.160 crazy stuff going on behind the scenes for sure i i don't have an answer for why it's happening but

00:30:06.360 I acknowledge that it's a real problem. And there are broken things structurally in the party.

00:30:14.420 Some of the party's decisions don't make sense to me other than insiders put their thumb on the

00:30:21.480 scales for certain reasons. And now the insiders are kind of, they don't even know who to take

00:30:25.840 instructions from. And there's a bunch of thumbs looking for scales to press, even though they

00:30:30.320 don't really know which scales to press so that it's a complicated mess uh and in some ways this

00:30:38.660 became this is a consequence of jason kenney uh because the party became a cult of personality

00:30:45.000 it didn't need to be shouldn't have become one it shouldn't have headed in that direction but

00:30:49.160 that's what it did um and you know and then when the members removed jason kenney by giving him a

00:30:56.440 result that was so small that he couldn't survive um frankly my guy uh fought tooth and nail to get

00:31:03.980 jason kenny to step down and create an interim um danielle announced on the same day that no

00:31:09.640 jason kenny should stay now she's dealing with the consequences of supporting jason kenny staying

00:31:14.340 because jason kenny's interfering in the race the way everybody knew he would um this is there's some

00:31:21.820 really big personalities in this um the personalities have in some ways overcome

00:31:28.400 the structures of the party that should have been around to protect the grassroots and to create a

00:31:34.060 system that's grassroots positive and that that allows normal everyday members and even normal

00:31:40.780 everyday mlas to have their influence so we've got a confused bit of mess right now and and we've got 0.79

00:31:48.220 to fix it and then even when you go into this actual leadership race think right now about

00:31:53.620 just a little bit less than half of the mlas haven't endorsed anybody because they're looking

00:31:58.000 at this and going that and uh you know and for those of you if you're on radio you didn't see

00:32:03.260 my eyes go super wide and my hands go all jazzy because that's what's happened a whole bunch of

00:32:07.300 normal people who normally understand politics and kind of make sense of it are are trying to

00:32:12.040 struggling to make sense of of the odd things that are going on and just go ahead sorry david

00:32:19.300 yeah i was gonna say just even the endorsements right like i mean uh there are some endorsements

00:32:24.560 that are coming out there that i would never have touched with a 10-foot pole if you're trying to be

00:32:28.680 the person that's standing up for freedoms and stepping away from mandates and then you you take

00:32:33.240 casey maddu and let's be honest i was his former president but you never take his his i have i'm

00:32:40.400 sorry, I'm just at a loss for words why Daniel would even accept his endorsement. It just makes

00:32:45.480 no sense to me that someone in that light who locked up pastors is now endorsing the Freedom

00:32:52.680 Central candidate. It just makes no sense to me. Yeah, I'm not going to defend any decisions by

00:33:00.000 any candidates, but I will say that Jason Kenney raped democracy in front of all of us. And the

00:33:06.560 fact that most people are unaware of that is really the problem here, right? Jason Kenney's

00:33:12.760 violation of our democratic institutions have left a party that doesn't know what principle

00:33:21.200 means anymore. And so it's just doing things to win. We've lost the sacredness of democracy in

00:33:29.020 this province. And I use the word rape very specifically here because what people don't

00:33:34.280 understand is the significance of of what it means to change the day and method of a vote

00:33:39.640 i'd like both of you to just reflect on it and uh verbally with the listeners what it means to

00:33:46.040 cancel and and change the method of a vote have you ever seen it before for anything never i mean

00:33:53.900 it was unfathomable to think that um you have a party that people have lost trust in their leader

00:34:00.100 And then right before the vote, you tell everyone, oh, don't worry, we're opening it up because we want more people to vote.

00:34:06.140 I mean, it just it made no sense why anyone would do it.

00:34:09.300 And I understand people's frustrations. And that's why I think so many Albertans are still upset and have lost trust with the status quo.

00:34:18.220 And so there are a ton of candidates that are trying to run off of Jason Kenney's record.

00:34:22.120 And I don't think that's going to help them at all.

00:34:24.240 And so the three of us that are sitting here, I mean, we all support candidates that are not in that status quo.

00:34:30.420 And there's a reason for that. And there's a reason why you see those numbers of those candidates slipping, whereas these candidates have an influx in people coming and saying, you know what?

00:34:40.480 I've been looking at it and maybe I didn't know who you were to begin with, but now you're the person that I need to vote.

00:34:45.460 and especially in a preferential ballot where people have say on multiple candidates this is

00:34:50.940 going to be very powerful because yeah maybe your first person doesn't get in but they're

00:34:55.340 going to still have to decide who the next premier is let's talk about preferential uh ballot um i

00:35:00.220 think uh for myself and a lot of the listeners um do i gotta vote for all seven guys do i vote for

00:35:07.240 one well how does it work uh let me start because because whether or not you vote for all seven of

00:35:15.260 um depends on whether you're voting for something or you're voting against something or some mix of

00:35:22.900 the two um if you're only voting for a candidate or you have a candidate and a second choice and

00:35:30.000 after that you don't care what happens if it isn't your candidate or the second choice

00:35:33.560 then maybe you can only vote one and two but if there's somebody on the list that you don't want

00:35:39.600 to win, then you owe it to yourself to vote at least one through seven or one through six

00:35:47.240 and leave that person at the back of the list. Because this process is more complicated than

00:35:55.620 everybody thinks. So you're voting your preferences. So if you don't get your first

00:36:00.620 choice, your vote moves to your second choice. And if your second choice is removed, your vote

00:36:04.300 moves to your third choice. And everybody kind of understands that. The part they miss is

00:36:09.360 if your ballot becomes what's called spent there are no longer any choices on your ballot that are

00:36:15.540 still running your ballot no longer counts and for every two people whose ballot no longer counts

00:36:24.380 the number of votes the first place person needs to win goes down by one

00:36:29.240 and this is where sometimes somebody will say i can't stand candidate x so i'm going to vote

00:36:38.380 for candidates you know w and z and i'm just not going to vote other than that and and they what

00:36:47.660 they don't understand is if candidate x that they can't stand is in first place and they only voted

00:36:54.460 for w and z and if w and z don't make that final ballot their vote no longer counts but not only

00:37:00.760 does their vote no longer count the denominator that the candidate they don't like needs has

00:37:07.480 gone down by one. So the number of votes that the candidate they don't like needs to win has

00:37:11.800 gone down by half a vote. Let me try to explain what Vitor is saying in another angle. And then

00:37:17.600 Mike, why don't you try another angle? And maybe we'll actually be able to explain this because

00:37:20.920 it is. They're all looking at me and I'm going, uh-huh. So the way that I think of ranked ballots

00:37:29.380 is if you just think of it as like a room full of people. Okay. And at the beginning,

00:37:34.960 uh everyone goes to their favorite captain so let's say we have brian gene todd lowen

00:37:42.100 travis daves danielle smith rosh and sonny all seven and they have their little camps of people

00:37:48.180 now the way that the rules work is the person with the least amount of people around them

00:37:53.580 those people have to go and join other little groups right and so only the people of the

00:37:59.580 smallest group has to do that but then after that you have to keep doing it until one group

00:38:06.180 is 51 out of 100 in the room so imagine it like each of the candidates is standing in the room

00:38:13.840 surrounded by their supporters and so let's say from the polling that take back alberta has done

00:38:18.420 i'll just pull that up for a moment here uh let's just say that raj and sani is the first one and

00:38:24.500 let's say that she has one person in the room.

00:38:26.520 So it's her and one other person.

00:38:28.900 And then Leela has 11 and Todd has 20.

00:38:32.900 And so when Rajan falls off,

00:38:34.660 her one person could go to Leela or it could go to anyone.

00:38:37.920 But nobody else's is recounted until their number one falls off.

00:38:42.300 That's the way that I like to think about it.

00:38:44.300 But let me add one other hiccup to that.

00:38:48.180 It's not just that they go to the different tables.

00:38:52.580 It's that they can leave the room.

00:38:54.040 yes yes that's perfect exactly yeah exactly and once they've left the room you don't need 51 to

00:39:00.560 win you need a smaller amount so i need 50 yeah so using using our numbers we said 65 000 so let's

00:39:07.700 say we need about 32 000 uh votes to win so after uh the first ballot drops off we're likely to think

00:39:14.960 that the first three to come off are going to be the the girls in calgary and you know i i don't

00:39:21.120 have the polling numbers in front of me, but let's just say it's 10% between them, right? That 10%

00:39:25.800 has to get spread around the other remaining candidates. So there's going to be four candidates

00:39:30.020 and not every candidate is going to get equal amount of that share. And not every candidate

00:39:34.460 is going to get all of the votes for one candidate. So what's going to happen is it might be by the

00:39:39.660 time we're on the fourth ballot, we might only need, let's say 30,000 votes to now get elected.

00:39:45.900 And then let's say a bunch of people drop off on the next one. And then all of a sudden,

00:39:49.680 maybe we only need 27 000 so it's very important that if you really don't want someone to get

00:39:55.120 elected to definitely put down uh your lists all the way and make sure you leave them at the bottom

00:40:00.240 um if you are so hell-bent on just voting for one candidate and you're only going to put one

00:40:05.200 candidate the problem is the candidate you don't want you're also voting for technically by allowing

00:40:10.160 their uh their numbers to dissipate as you leave the room that's great yeah uh geez i might be

00:40:18.880 dense folks just just so i'm clear here okay i rank one through seven if my candidate has the

00:40:27.440 lowest number of ones then that moves on to my one gets wiped off and my two becomes a one for

00:40:35.040 somebody else yes correct correct but if it's if my one stays and number seven six five etc

00:40:43.600 is the first to go it gets wiped off my ballot as well yes so so the simple uh acknowledgement is

00:40:50.160 if you're a front runner there's really no real reason to put anyone else on the bottom of your

00:40:55.520 ballot because there's not much to do i mean if you're sticking around and let's just use the two

00:41:00.080 three front runners that we're suggesting that are in there as you know smith taves and um and gene

00:41:06.640 if they're the supposed front runners and they want uh to win they think that they're going to

00:41:12.320 win so if you're one and two you're going to be going head to head it won't matter who taves or

00:41:16.560 smith's votes go to but it does matter a lot if gene is in third for him to make sure that his

00:41:22.000 votes go somewhere because he essentially is going to be the kingmaker and get to decide who gets to

00:41:26.640 be premier and by that i mean that his his voters will be and obviously the campaigns can support

00:41:33.200 their individuals to vote a certain way again we don't uh we don't tell people how to vote

00:41:38.080 but they they they generally do tend to vote in certain waves and so let's say uh brian's voters

00:41:44.800 uh unanimously say we don't like daniel smith and go on the on the tapes camp then congratulations

00:41:51.440 travis days will be your next premier and on vice versa if that doesn't happen and it goes the other

00:41:56.000 way then we've got daniel smith and so ultimately it really uh behooves any candidates that aren't

00:42:01.520 pulling in one and two to really think about who their number two should be on their list

00:42:06.080 because it's going to be very important

00:42:08.040 to deciding who the next premier is.

00:42:10.680 Well, I'd like to say one other thing.

00:42:13.200 And it's being kind of written off here.

00:42:15.980 If at the very first, when the room splits,

00:42:19.680 51 are on one side and 49 are on the other,

00:42:23.260 that person wins and there's no more votes.

00:42:25.660 Yeah.

00:42:26.240 So if somebody gets 51% of first place votes,

00:42:29.260 it's over.

00:42:30.320 It's over.

00:42:30.740 Yeah.

00:42:30.880 At any point in those seven votes.

00:42:33.100 Yeah.

00:42:33.340 if it's likely not going to majority of people in the room are with one candidate then that

00:42:39.420 candidate's one but all of that is correct the part i just want to drive home again is

00:42:46.340 that you can take a model where you know say the front runners only got 43 percent of the vote on

00:42:54.040 the first ballot and on the fourth ballot with 43 percent of the vote they win without having

00:43:01.040 added a single extra vote just because people dropped off and their voters dropped off that

00:43:07.560 43 out of out of out of 100 wasn't good enough to win but 43 out of 85 now makes you win yeah

00:43:14.640 and let's talk about the ed stalmec factor right we've seen this happen in a number of uh used to

00:43:20.740 be conservative elections in alberta where the person who wasn't in first or second ends up

00:43:26.700 winning the premier. And that's because we have to recognize that at some point, there's an

00:43:33.020 opportunity for all those bottom feeders, I'm just going to call them that, to build it all the way

00:43:37.520 up and say, you know what, we're not going to vote that. And so if everyone says, hey, Todd Lowen is

00:43:42.160 the second best guy on my ballot for everyone, and all of a sudden he collects all of those,

00:43:47.420 he might jump over Danielle, and he might jump over Gene to be against Travis at the end. And so

00:43:54.120 it does make sense that if you are in the top three not to just leave one individual on there

00:44:00.040 because you never know it is a is a messy vote but it is lots of fun for us political nerds to

00:44:05.840 watch because we can strategize all day long so true so true here's a personal question you don't

00:44:11.920 need to say who you're voting for because i don't really care will you put seven names down or do

00:44:16.560 you put down two four five what what's your strategy what do you guys do uh the political

00:44:22.160 junkies do you put seven one where do you go i always fill out my ballot and i actually always

00:44:28.960 start backwards the person i don't want to win i put them in the lowest spot and then i think about

00:44:33.920 the remaining person i don't want to win and put them in the lowest spot and usually it's pretty

00:44:37.440 easy after that like the middle ones probably don't matter to me too much then i care about

00:44:41.280 you know who i want first and who i want second but i want to make sure that somehow i'm not

00:44:46.720 accidentally voting for the person i don't want to have win and so by just putting them in the

00:44:51.120 bottom spot i know that nothing's going to happen that my vote's going to help them carry them over

00:44:56.400 the top in any way should report i would agree with that that yeah that's a good if you if you

00:45:01.760 really care about who wins then you should fill out your whole ballot yep you don't you don't

00:45:08.560 want to leave it to chance i appreciate that because uh i i've thought about i've thought

00:45:12.880 about that question a lot like what what do you do you guys are three guys who stare at this an

00:45:17.680 awful lot so i appreciate that um you know as time slowly ticks away here i want to talk about the

00:45:23.200 what's the safest way to vote uh to have a voting ballot is it mail is it uh online is it in person

00:45:32.080 what are your guys's thoughts in person but you have to have lots of polling stations

00:45:39.760 so why folks do we only have five polling stations so i have a question for you sean why did jason

00:45:47.600 can he rape democracy the the question i think sean is why do we only have five polling stations

00:45:55.040 because there are 40 000 votes coming out of calgary and there are just shy of 20 000 coming

00:46:02.240 out of edmonton so if you've got 60 000 votes in one city where it takes you 45 minutes to drive

00:46:07.440 to a polling station you can do it if they're what are we at 65 is that what the rural vote

00:46:12.560 is something like that uh if if 65 of rural albertans can decide who the next premier is

00:46:19.200 but now have to drive the slave lake or taber to go vote it's gonna be very difficult to get that

00:46:24.480 65 percent of people to stay out and vote so you're saying it's a tactic it's a suppression

00:46:30.560 tactic it is a voter suppression tactic you know i'm gonna use on this again to whoever is listening

00:46:37.040 because I go, you want to sow unity together in a population

00:46:41.280 when we already know we've got a split in rural and urban,

00:46:44.160 lots of people talking about it,

00:46:45.620 and then you don't put a polling station.

00:46:48.160 Whether right or wrong, I should point this out,

00:46:50.060 whether people are against mail-in or not.

00:46:53.340 Right now, I think we can all agree,

00:46:56.140 nobody wants to mail their vote in.

00:46:58.000 Not only is it a little bit complicated,

00:47:00.200 and it's not that complicated.

00:47:01.460 I'm not acting like it's calculus here or something.

00:47:03.620 We're sending a rocket to the moon.

00:47:04.940 but you know you got to sign a declaration you got to you got to print off your your photo id

00:47:10.440 then you got to fill it out properly and if you get any of those things wrong it's disqualified

00:47:15.320 if it doesn't show up on time it's disqualified so you can you can understand why people such as

00:47:20.520 myself want to walk it in and go here this is it there's my id boom sign it off and then you find

00:47:25.480 out you have one of five locations and oh wait only four hours to get there eight to noon on

00:47:30.700 october 6th like i'm sorry what on earth is that you're trying to get the the rural population uh

00:47:38.540 and and last time i checked i live in lloyd it's not like it's you know the boonies um we have a

00:47:45.340 constituency here we have mlas we're just as part of democracy i think as anyone else and yet boys

00:47:51.900 here we sit like to me let me ask let me ask you as as the person who lives in lloyd do you know

00:47:57.900 where you have to vote if you want to vote in person well edmonton i assume yeah it's the closest

00:48:05.340 what is it what is it going to be closest or is it based on the the the the riding

00:48:12.220 i wasn't sure if they had said that they were debating on not doing that and making you drive

00:48:15.340 to red here to go and vote which would have been lots of fun like i look forward to tearing someone 0.64

00:48:21.420 a new one here at some point because like i just don't get it though guys like i'm i'm serious you

00:48:27.420 know like to me you got a very important thing we're talking about voter turnout everyone's like

00:48:32.140 oh maybe 65 as we say that then we get to the point okay what's the safest way in person okay

00:48:38.140 let's put five polling stations because that makes sense for four hours for four hours only

00:48:42.940 in the morning on a thursday yeah so don't don't you worry about your farm or your animals don't

00:48:47.900 worry about that and oh by the way you live in oh yeah fort mcmurray and you've got to drive the

00:48:52.220 slave like how far does that drive vitor 433 kilometers so four hours break the speed limit

00:48:58.700 to get there in time to vote if you leave at 8 a.m yeah and not to mention vitor it'll be october

00:49:05.740 and i love our province and our country but who knows what type of weather we're going to be

00:49:09.820 dealing with then like and and i love canadians uh we will drive through literally anything if

00:49:16.220 we deem it important and i tell you what like i'm almost wondering if it's not going to be a wednesday

00:49:21.340 night hey guys come let's meet let's have a little fun at a hotel in edmonton and and uh you know

00:49:26.640 and then get up and go vote and go home the next day because to me this is like i don't know this

00:49:33.360 is insane well that's going to be my messaging i have uh five big take back alberta events

00:49:39.560 bonnieville edmonton red deer calgary lethbridge uh this month and my message to them is going to

00:49:44.860 be make it a camp out you guys were all going to go into red deer with a hundred dollars right

00:49:50.180 okay they're trying to stop you from voting make them feel pain for it they're trying to restrict

00:49:56.780 you show them that you can beat them with effort right and it's not going to work for everybody

00:50:00.840 well my message is always been the same if you want change if you're not happy with the status

00:50:07.220 quo all three of us here want change maybe a different candidate all four all four of us

00:50:13.820 want change there we go perfect because you know the host usually tries but yes all four of us

00:50:19.700 want change and and everyone that we've talked to says they do too so it's going to take a little

00:50:25.520 bit of extra effort because they're trying to cheat but we can still beat them well and let's

00:50:29.960 be clear you can if you have the concern about having to drive four hours to a voting station

00:50:34.960 you can still do a mail-in ballot it we're not discrediting anyone who wants to do it just make

00:50:41.440 sure you do it correctly. That's the biggest thing. So don't spoil your ballot. And if you're

00:50:46.620 concerned about spoiling that ballot, maybe talk to the candidate or the campaign that you're

00:50:51.680 working with to have them help you out to make sure that it's done correctly. Because the worst

00:50:56.640 thing would be is that you put all that effort in, you think you voted, but little do we know,

00:51:01.480 you actually didn't vote because you forgot to put your ID in it. Yeah, well, let's clear up a

00:51:11.420 voting spots and everything else. I just go back to what's the most secure in person. I like in

00:51:16.540 person in today's day and age and some of the things that have been going on. I think a lot

00:51:21.280 of the world, right or wrong, is skeptical of mailing, right? I just think they are. But here's

00:51:25.940 some dates for you. Okay. So if you, if you're listening to this and you bought a UCP membership

00:51:29.920 before August 12th or on August 12th or earlier, you're going to have a mail-in ballot coming to

00:51:34.720 you. So they were sent on September 2nd. And if you don't see one in the mail by September 14th,

00:51:40.120 that's when you've got to start being worried.

00:51:41.760 It has to be into them by October 3rd to be considered valid.

00:51:47.200 And in it, there's steps on the UCP website that basically say you have to sign a declaration,

00:51:52.300 you have to print your photo ID off, and then you have to fill it out properly.

00:51:58.220 Put it all in an envelope, sign and seal, and away it goes.

00:52:01.380 So it's not like you can't.

00:52:02.760 I agree with you.

00:52:03.700 I just look at it and go, we all feel way more comfortable if we could drive half an hour,

00:52:08.120 heck an hour in Canada and go put it in in person show your ID and away you go right I get the rest

00:52:15.660 of it one of the things that I think David brought up at the start what I'm hearing is is different

00:52:21.300 candidates are going to do a tour of Ottawa of Alberta kind of doing a you give us your vote

00:52:27.800 sign and seal it we'll make sure it gets delivered I don't know how that's going to go

00:52:30.940 but I understand the thought process behind it considering they're trying to make sure people

00:52:36.660 fill it out and get it there on time as long as we don't have a mule issue we'll be fine

00:52:41.220 yeah and that's going to be something that we should mention before we go into those details

00:52:47.420 which is there's got to be a lot of eyes on this and there's got to be so if you even can think

00:52:54.240 of a way that jason kenny and his cronies could cheat on this bring it up email the party harass

00:53:03.040 Ask them.

00:53:03.800 Say, I don't like the rules in this way.

00:53:05.520 There are lawyers in the party.

00:53:07.240 Read the rules and say, I think these are ways that could be cheated.

00:53:11.360 Like, shine light on this situation.

00:53:14.580 This is not some great, dark, nefarious group of geniuses.

00:53:18.760 Look, they're not that bright.

00:53:20.640 Like, they could be beat.

00:53:22.500 But we need strength in numbers, guys.

00:53:25.280 Strength in numbers.

00:53:26.420 With enough people paying attention to this, we can make sure it's a fair process.

00:53:30.000 If we get a fair process, we might get a little bit more trust in our leaders.

00:53:34.580 And if we get a little bit more trust, maybe we can rebuild this and stop the socialists from destroying the place we love.

00:53:41.460 Any final thoughts, fellas, from you guys?

00:53:43.540 I want to make sure we have you out on time.

00:53:47.940 But I appreciate you doing the first roundtable.

00:53:51.840 Hopefully, we don't get booted for this.

00:53:53.800 And if we do, it wouldn't be anything new from where I'm sitting.

00:53:56.200 But regardless, I appreciate you guys doing this.

00:53:58.780 um is there any final thoughts or any thoughts for any uh the members people voting do you want

00:54:04.140 to make sure they know uh as the date closes in because i mean we're under a month now and and

00:54:09.000 we're gonna we're gonna see where it goes you you're actually bringing up an important point

00:54:13.120 about one of the unfairnesses of a mail-in ballot um literally people have to mail in their ballots

00:54:21.520 and if they're in in rural parts of alberta they probably should mail them in earlier rather than

00:54:26.060 later, which means that they have to make their decisions with less information than somebody who

00:54:30.700 can go into Edmonton or Calgary on the last day and vote. And I live in terror of us getting

00:54:37.220 something like the situation that happened in Calgary with the city councilor, where, you know,

00:54:42.840 he won because of the early votes, because there were things that got announced in the last few

00:54:47.420 days that basically wiped out his ability to win the election with anybody who was voting on

00:54:52.940 election day um you know this process this very very long voting process is gonna it makes it

00:54:59.980 harder people people in outside the two big cities have to vote early and just trust that things

00:55:06.240 won't evolve and it won't change their their methods so i'm you know i'm not telling everybody

00:55:11.120 you don't have to rush and put your ballot in the very first day you still have time um your

00:55:17.280 ballot's got to get to calgary now uh but pay attention there's still going to be a fair amount

00:55:22.400 politics in the next week and a half two weeks uh unless you're absolutely rock solid on how

00:55:27.680 you're voting watch for a few more days before you cast your ballot because i think there's value in

00:55:32.800 in in trying to vote with as much information as possible i think in the long run that's probably

00:55:38.000 a good thing for the party good good thing for democracy but especially if you're ranking seven

00:55:42.480 people yeah but this wouldn't have been the process i would have chosen for doing what we did

00:55:46.560 well i appreciate i appreciate you guys coming on and uh and doing this with me uh thanks again

00:55:53.820 fellas and i got one last thing i'd like to say just um from squeezing in under the buzzer

00:55:59.480 just speaking from the perspective of take back alberta i just like encourage every single person

00:56:06.680 to please do your civic responsibility and put the extra effort in like people like mike vitor

00:56:12.260 and I, we're used to you not putting in the effort. And that's why we're like, oh, this needs

00:56:17.000 to be easier. They shouldn't have to travel. We want to make it as easy as possible. And that's

00:56:21.080 all true. But we've just shown you that they're making it hard for you to vote. I think you should

00:56:26.720 give them a big middle finger and say, I don't care that you're making it hard. I'm going to do

00:56:30.680 this. And if that means taking a day, if you can, if it means whatever you need to do, make sure

00:56:36.700 that vote gets cast well just look at it like uh uh it's a night out you know like uh take a day

00:56:43.200 off work drive up have a nice supper a couple uh sips of something and and go to bed uh early

00:56:48.260 late whatever you want wake up go cast a ballot and and carry on to me we spend uh all of us

00:56:55.180 will spend money on interesting things and uh whether that's you know a ticket going to the

00:57:01.600 game or whatever your fancy is we'll put our money where we want to go and so for this one i'm hoping

00:57:07.480 i'm hoping uh all of you are proven wrong with your 65 voter turnout i hope it's higher than

00:57:12.700 that that's that's my hope but we'll see well and i and i think there's one other thing that

00:57:17.280 we're missing here is uh after the eighth we're gonna have a new premier and we all have to get

00:57:22.020 on board because we've got nine months less than nine months now it'll be eight months that we've

00:57:27.520 got to prepare yourself for another election. And so don't take your tools or your toys and go play

00:57:34.040 with somebody else just because your candidate doesn't get in. I think there's a lot of people

00:57:38.580 that are going to be frustrated with the outcome of this election because they're going to be

00:57:42.660 voting for some person and they're not going to get in. But it doesn't mean that the conservative

00:57:46.620 movement has to be died. Not quite. One of seven can win, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right.

00:57:52.240 And at the end of the day, they have to be a team. That's what we said on the stage in Vermillion,

00:57:55.800 right you one of your wins but then you got to move on you know you're a you're a team and you

00:58:00.560 got to figure this out because then comes rachel notley and it's saying that if rachel notley is

00:58:05.480 listening to her team i would love nothing more than to hear what the ndp have to say because uh

00:58:10.420 to me one of the the problems we have in democracy right now is we don't listen to anyone

00:58:15.740 and it would be very interesting to have the premier of alberta and rachel notley sit down

00:58:22.140 and have a discussion and let the people of Alberta hear it.

00:58:24.960 Wouldn't that be something wild to do?

00:58:28.820 Well, I think you've just laid down the gauntlet,

00:58:30.860 so I'm looking forward to hearing the conversations as you're about to start.

00:58:34.400 Let's see whether Notley's actually willing to talk to Albertans.

00:58:36.360 They're only the ones that agree with her.

00:58:38.080 Well, listen, I think Rachel Notley, at some point,

00:58:42.180 if she's going to win, has to talk to people.

00:58:44.540 It's just whether she feels like she's going to get a fair shake.

00:58:47.000 And I can safely say I'm going to give anyone who comes on here a fair shake.

00:58:50.960 I believe that.

00:58:51.560 is that yeah yeah but thanks thanks for having us sean i really appreciate uh you taking the time

00:58:57.180 to have us on too yeah well i appreciate you boys hopping on and uh exploring an idea with me it's

00:59:02.420 help it's at least helped me in the hour figure out a few different things as the election comes

00:59:07.500 closer and as the mail-in ballots are are going to be getting in the mailboxes and everything else

00:59:12.240 i hope it's helped some of the the 60 000 or the 120 000 whether they knew some of these things or

00:59:18.060 not either way fellas uh appreciate you hopping on for the round table and uh we'll see you on

00:59:22.840 the other side sounds good thank you so much

Western Standard - September 09, 2022

SNP： UCP Election Roundtable

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