Western Standard - The Danielle Smith Show - May 9, 2022

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 well greetings friends welcome to another edition of the danielle smith report

00:00:42.240 i'm danielle smith it gives me no pleasure to talk about this today honestly like i i know that

00:00:49.600 the this issue was discovered a couple of weeks ago but when you see a new investigation going

00:00:57.760 into potential violations of elections law, once again, on the cusp of a vote, it just makes you

00:01:05.140 wonder, how is this going to end? How is this going to have any credibility? I think that

00:01:12.280 politicians, and I wrote about this in my newsletter on Sunday, politicians have so eroded

00:01:17.420 our confidence in our voting systems, and then they get mad when we say, gosh, I don't have

00:01:23.760 confidence in the voting system anymore. So I had a couple of solutions for how we're going to solve

00:01:28.660 that problem. But if you don't know what I'm talking to or talking about, let me share some

00:01:34.300 of this background with you. I'm going to try to share my screen a little bit differently today.

00:01:38.340 I don't know if this is going to work out particularly well. I'm still working out the

00:01:42.840 technical details, my friends. I'll get this nailed pretty soon. But the person that you should be

00:01:48.420 watching, I think, is Dwayne Bratt. Because look, Dwayne Bratt, when he does his tweets,

00:01:55.320 he gets sort of right to the nub of the matter. And one of the things that he pointed out is this

00:02:02.020 story that appeared on the weekend, Elections Alberta. So let me see here where it goes.

00:02:08.020 Elections Alberta is investigating the allegation of bulk UCP membership purchases,

00:02:14.940 allegations that the Kenny team was cheating with the UCP leadership review are not new. What is new

00:02:21.560 is that the allegations are serious enough for Elections Alberta to investigate and look at as

00:02:26.340 well what Dwayne Brad has to say. He says, so the person who cheated during the 2017 UCP leadership

00:02:31.700 race passed Bill 81 in the middle of the night to make it easier to cheat in internal party politics

00:02:37.160 is now being investigated for cheating in the 2022 UCP leadership review. Let me show you the story

00:02:43.260 so that you can see where it's at. And I'll see if I can explain a little bit about what is going

00:02:48.200 on here. Because Brian Jean had a team member, Vitor Marciano. Some of you may know him. He's

00:02:54.480 been a political operative and strategist for a very long time. He was my chief of staff for a

00:02:58.840 period of time. Obviously, Brian Jean's chief of staff. He's working really closely on Brian Jean's

00:03:04.100 campaign. So what he did is he discovered that he had the ability as a member to go and audit the

00:03:11.400 list. And so sure enough, he decided to go and audit the list. He went into the party headquarters

00:03:17.680 and managed to, and he spent a number of days at this where he went through and what he was

00:03:24.000 checking, because this is how the party leadership process works or party membership process is

00:03:28.700 supposed to work. The UCP says that you are supposed to buy your own membership with your

00:03:35.040 own money. You have the ability to buy for close family members as well. So no problems, right?

00:03:40.420 everything's good now here is the problem there is um the way that gets checked is that you are

00:03:49.460 supposed to most of our membership purchases now happen online so the way it gets checked is that

00:03:53.860 the address that you sign up under is the same as the address on your credit card great so how do

00:04:00.260 you find out if somebody is buying a membership for someone not at their address very simple you

00:04:05.060 you would end up with a large number of transactions to a single credit card with multiple

00:04:10.080 addresses associated with it. And that is exactly what Vitra discovered. So over 4,000, I'm hearing

00:04:16.920 the numbers 4,200. So 4,200 memberships were processed, the CBC News story says, on six credit

00:04:25.900 cards. So just do a little bit of math on that. You'll see, that would be a pretty darn big

00:04:30.940 household. Now, the plot gets a little thicker here, and the whole situation gets a little

00:04:37.160 murkier, because as it happens, in the dead of night, at three o'clock in the morning, Bill 81

00:04:44.800 was passed in the legislature on, call it the evening of December 7th, going into the morning

00:04:51.400 of December 8th, and there were five MLAs who were in the legislature at the time, arguing against

00:04:57.080 the changes. So I know there's a bunch of people, when I tell this story, you're going to say,

00:05:03.360 well, why didn't all of the MLAs vote against that terrible piece of legislation? And here's

00:05:08.700 the problem that you have. One of the tricks that politicians like to do if they're trying to pass

00:05:15.240 a piece of legislation that is, how shall we say, unplatical, then what they would do is they would

00:05:22.160 sticking in in an omnibus bill that is designed to to revise a bunch of statutes at once it's called

00:05:27.920 it's called an omnibus piece of legislation and that's precisely what bill 81 was it it changed a

00:05:34.000 lot of statutes at once and some of the changes needed to be made and so you stick this extra

00:05:40.400 little clause in there and so then a politician has to ask the question do we hold up all of the

00:05:47.760 changes because I was not able to get an amendment on one thing. And so five MLAs made that decision.

00:05:54.400 They said that this was so important that they were prepared to vote the entire 320-page bill

00:06:00.160 down. And those MLAs were Dave Hansen, Richard Gottfried, Lila Ahir, and then our two independents,

00:06:07.120 Drew Barnes and Todd Lowen. So what was the change that was made? The change that was made

00:06:11.600 was that instead of in law, you have to buy your own membership with your own money,

00:06:17.680 They have changed the legislation to say that you can buy memberships on behalf of somebody else.

00:06:24.300 And if you do, it is considered a contribution because this particular clause was amending the Elections Contribution Act, which is a different act, Elections Contributions and Financing Act.

00:06:36.760 So now you have to go to another clause and say, OK, well, if this buying of memberships is going to be subject to the contributions limit, what is that limit?

00:06:47.680 that limit is $4,000. So just do some math on this. If you've got a $10 membership and you're

00:06:53.680 able to buy memberships on behalf of other people, up to a maximum of 4,000 memberships or $4,000,

00:07:00.520 then you can buy 400 memberships. That's what everybody was objecting to. There's a few of you

00:07:04.880 who said, whoa, why didn't I hear more about this? And that was, I think, by design. But

00:07:10.320 the fact that it got debated is the very last thing going deep into the night in December

00:07:16.300 on the last day of session shows that this is something that the party really, really wanted,

00:07:21.760 or the legislated team, the executive council putting it forward is something that they really,

00:07:28.080 really wanted. So what has happened now? So what has happened now, if you take those numbers that

00:07:34.520 I was just saying, is that if you have six credit cards that have processed 4,000 memberships,

00:07:41.500 the numbers don't quite add up do they if you had six credit cards that were processing 400 each so

00:07:47.500 they could get their maximum four thousand dollar contribution then you'd only have 2400 memberships

00:07:53.820 that's one problem so the numbers don't work so one of those credit cards was being overused

00:07:59.020 the at least one and maybe all six of them the second level problem that we have is that this

00:08:04.540 portion of the legislation didn't come into effect until march 31st so rules are broken

00:08:10.540 it looks like under the letter of the law anyway but the fact of the matter is that the rules

00:08:15.740 you weren't allowed to do this until after march the 31st and so then the third problem is

00:08:21.180 that the membership cutoff to participate in the leadership review was march the 19th so none of

00:08:27.260 this looks good my friends and i just i have to wonder at what point people say enough is enough

00:08:36.780 here i don't quite understand why we are not hearing from the executive council of the party

00:08:43.900 don't quite understand why we're not hearing from more mlas on this because the left is having a

00:08:48.700 field day on this the thing the reason i like watching duane brad is because you have to

00:08:54.540 realize he is one of the most quoted political pundits in the province and so if this is the

00:09:02.300 thing if this is the commentary that he is making this is the commentary that's going out to the

00:09:07.580 mainstream media if this is the commentary going out to the mainstream media then this is what

00:09:12.140 most people are going to read in the newspaper and this is what most people are going to to

00:09:15.500 be talking about is how fishy all of this looks none of it looks good for for the party and so

00:09:22.220 now now we're in a sort of another bind that within the next what is it two two more days

00:09:28.220 by May the 11th, 5 o'clock p.m., all of the membership votes have to be in to Deloitte.

00:09:35.620 So how is Deloitte going to be looking at this, right? So they're an independent auditing firm

00:09:42.600 whose job it is to make sure that the votes are calculated appropriately. So now we have this

00:09:50.240 Elections Alberta investigation casting some doubt on 4,000 of those votes. What do they do?

00:09:56.500 Do they set them aside? Because they'd have to do that on May 11th and afterwards, because part of

00:10:03.920 the process they're doing is they're taking the ballot out of the verification envelope. It would

00:10:09.120 be at that point that they would know whether the person bought their membership themselves or not.

00:10:13.880 And so are they supposed to put them aside? If they count them, and then the leader wins by

00:10:20.500 a tiny share of the vote, call it less than 4,000 votes, does it then cast the entire process into

00:10:29.600 doubt? How do you then claim that you've got a strong mandate if 4,000 of the ballots shouldn't

00:10:35.580 have been tallied in the first place because 4,000 of those ballots might not exist if somebody

00:10:41.180 didn't pay for them and you weren't allowed to pay for them under the legislation? It is no way

00:10:46.560 other to describe it, my friends, it is a bit of a mess. And so I was writing about this on the

00:10:51.680 weekend. And one of the things that I said was that this is not the only time that we have seen

00:10:58.840 the machinations of the political class and their operatives cast doubt about the outcome of a vote.

00:11:07.980 I went through a whole tally of things that have occurred in Alberta politics, and strangely,

00:11:13.580 a lot of them happening in Calgary, that I think has caused people to question every type of

00:11:19.200 balloting that we do. So if you remember, the first time I noticed that the voting system

00:11:24.720 was coming under some pressure was in 2005. That's when we saw that hundreds of mail-in ballots were

00:11:31.140 being ordered from two computers to a post office box where they were all filled out in the same

00:11:38.960 handwriting. Important tip, I guess, if you're going to be voting on behalf of somebody else,

00:11:43.240 at least use a different pen. And that was what alerted them that these hundreds of votes had

00:11:50.400 come in. They did an investigation, major investigation, 25 police officers involved.

00:11:55.000 Five people ended up being charged and two went to jail. Some of them ended up playing away on

00:12:01.180 fines and pleading down their penalties to lesser charges, but still people went to jail.

00:12:08.340 In 2017 in Calgary, you may recall that polling stations kept running out of ballots, some of

00:12:14.500 them more than once. And when they did an audit review afterwards, they found that more than

00:12:18.980 half of the polling stations in Calgary had run short of ballots and some stations had to wait

00:12:24.660 six hours to be resupplied. Come on, that was a pretty hotly contested race. And so people say,

00:12:30.960 Hmm. Wonder how that happened. What happened in 2021 is there was one controversial candidate.

00:12:39.120 And so they made the decision not to provide a voting list. Isn't that strange? Like you would

00:12:44.340 think what I don't understand is why can't we have Elections Canada share the voting list with each

00:12:51.500 of the provinces and then share the voting list with each of the municipalities? I mean, I don't

00:12:56.100 about you but i check off on my tax form every year do you want to be added to elections canada

00:13:02.180 list i say yes it's just simpler to do that why is it if we're doing that every year why is it so

00:13:07.700 impossible for all of that information to be shared just add an extra box just say do you agree

00:13:12.980 that you want it shared with elections canada elections alberta and your local municipal

00:13:16.980 elections office tick the box and then all of a sudden you've got a list because if you don't

00:13:20.820 have a list how are you supposed to know that people haven't double voted how are you supposed

00:13:25.300 know that a person is entitled to vote well you swear an affidavit so once again that creates

00:13:30.420 accusations that there might be people who are voting who shouldn't be voting uh then also oh

00:13:36.100 boy do i even get into the u.s situation uh let me just put put the positive spin on it

00:13:42.740 positive spin on it is that ron de santis in florida he's at least discovered the way that

00:13:48.260 you can give credibility to an advanced poll and mail-in ballot process is you count them first

00:13:54.740 You say, if you want to vote this way, it's up to you to make sure that you have them so that we can count them first so that on election night we can give a result.

00:14:04.220 So Florida had all kinds of problems in all kinds of previous elections.

00:14:08.300 And so finally they came up with the answer.

00:14:10.120 So great.

00:14:11.060 That's the way to restore some confidence.

00:14:12.780 No one else did it.

00:14:13.640 And then, oh, my goodness, in Georgia, two counties, the elections machines went offline in the middle of the night and elections officials weren't able to say why that happened.

00:14:25.660 There were they said, oh, no, these aren't these machines aren't connected to the Internet.

00:14:29.920 They can't be hacked. Turns out many of the machines were.

00:14:32.660 So now all of a sudden we've got a lack of trust in the in the voting machines as well.

00:14:38.240 Now, also, did you see this story? In the most recent Canadian federal election, we found out 205,000 mail-in ballots went uncounted. And then, of course, notwithstanding the Elections Alberta investigation I just mentioned, there is also an RCMP investigation into what happened in the previous leadership contest, where it is alleged by MLA Prabgill.

00:15:02.500 and I have all the links to these stories as well because many MLAs, ministers even, have been

00:15:08.740 interviewed on this. Brian Jean's been interviewed by the RCMP on this. The premier acknowledged he's

00:15:13.860 been interviewed by the RCMP on this, but the allegation is that there was, again, sort of a

00:15:23.120 vote harvesting process that took place where ballots went to made up email addresses allegedly

00:15:30.960 and then pins were allegedly used to vote in that race. And so that is still an ongoing

00:15:36.320 investigation. So look, if you have a lack of trust in the voting system, after watching this

00:15:44.280 series of missteps and fiascos, I don't blame you one bit. But here's the problem with if we can't

00:15:51.780 restore faith in the democratic vote and the democratic process, what have we got? I went

00:15:57.040 through and found all of the different types of political systems that various societies have

00:16:03.300 lived under over the years. There's a reason why Winston Churchill says that, what is his quote,

00:16:08.880 the democracy is the worst system we got except for all the others or something along those lines.

00:16:15.220 It's not a perfect system. But would you rather have a monarchy? I mean, that's where you end up

00:16:19.460 with your rulers chosen by bloodline. If you look at a theocracy, we've had theocratic regimes

00:16:25.080 where the ruler is chosen by the top cleric or top religious leader. We've had military

00:16:30.960 dictatorships most recently. So that's when generals end up scrapping with each other over

00:16:36.700 who should lead. You have aristocracies or colonialism. So whether you've got a wealthy

00:16:43.880 class of elites or a colonial foreign power that is ruling, none of these are better systems.

00:16:50.640 The best system that we've got is democracy, which is why it is important that we restore

00:16:56.220 some confidence and faith in our different political processes.

00:17:00.640 So one of the things that I had been trying to educate you all on, as you know, is this

00:17:07.720 idea that we can vote in a different way.

00:17:10.520 I'm going to try to do this one more time to share with you, I think, another example

00:17:15.100 of how we can use a different voting system,

00:17:18.280 hopefully to restore some of the confidence.

00:17:20.280 It says how blockchain technology can prevent voter fraud.

00:17:24.300 This is an Investopia article.

00:17:26.880 And one of the things that I've been trying to bring to the fore

00:17:31.400 is that this new type of digital technology,

00:17:33.880 I know the World Economic Forum and China 0.99

00:17:36.240 have absolutely destroyed your confidence 0.88

00:17:39.680 in any kind of digital mechanism to vote

00:17:44.100 or to have digital ID because you're worried about tracking. But here's how I think blockchain

00:17:50.620 can solve this problem that we have. Because if you look at what blockchain is, it basically is

00:17:57.580 just one big giant ledger that records peer-to-peer transactions for all the world to see.

00:18:04.400 And you cut out the middleman. That's the point. So you cut out the person who's receiving the

00:18:08.840 ballots. You cut out the person counting the ballots. You cut out the accounting firm. You

00:18:12.280 cut out the voting machine. It's essentially what it does is it gives you a private key and a

00:18:19.620 private token, and then you cast your ballot into a public ledger for all the world to see. And then

00:18:25.080 you have access to it. Yeah, you don't have a middleman that you have to worry about validating

00:18:30.500 it wrong. You get pre-validated so everybody knows that you're entitled to vote. If you want

00:18:35.080 to go and check and see that your vote was counted, you can. If you want to go and check and

00:18:38.040 it was put forward for the right person you can and so there are mechanisms that we could use and

00:18:42.840 the other part about using an electronic voting system like i described that is peer-to-peer and

00:18:49.800 that is um again an individual decentralized process as opposed to a centralized process

00:18:56.360 is that it allows for us to do way more voting on way more issues i have been so frustrated over the

00:19:03.080 last two years in particular but it's gone on longer where we see voting or we see decision

00:19:08.520 making on politicians by public opinion poll so they they send out a pollster to interview

00:19:16.360 a thousand people in an online panel and then they come back with an answer and say oh well

00:19:21.720 i guess this is what people want us to do i would rather see if we have important policy public

00:19:27.000 policy decisions being made wouldn't it be better if you could essentially just send out a

00:19:32.120 a notification. Maybe you have referendum day every week where an important question of public

00:19:38.240 policy is put to the people. And so then you can shoot out the question on this app. If you want

00:19:44.460 to participate, you can participate. It'd be a heck of a lot better than a polling system. You'd

00:19:49.120 actually be able to get more of a voting system and you'd be able to do direct democracy. We now

00:19:54.500 have the means to do it. Maybe the only reason politicians aren't talking about these types of

00:20:00.040 approaches is they kind of like the system the way it is because it works for them. That's what

00:20:05.120 I always worry about. So I'm just going to let you know that I recognize the concerns that everybody

00:20:12.100 has about a digital voting system. And I think that what I'm attempting to do is I'm attempting

00:20:19.940 to show you that there really is two different paths that we can take forward. We could take

00:20:25.580 forward a path where we have centralized control, centralized decision-making, and decisions being

00:20:32.900 moved further and further away from the people. Or we can take an approach where we have individual

00:20:38.680 sovereignty, local sovereignty, provincial sovereignty, and we bring decisions closer to

00:20:44.380 the people. That, I think, is the big battle that's going on right now. It's not, do we have

00:20:49.240 digital ID or don't we? Or do we have digital voting or don't we? Or do we have digital

00:20:53.280 currency or don't we? It's do we have centralized all those things or do we have decentralized all

00:21:01.300 of those things? And so that's where I'm trying to take the conversation to. I'm not sure that

00:21:04.900 I'm succeeding. I'm doing my best to convince you that these are actually the solutions, but

00:21:11.620 it's a bit of a hard leap, I understand. And politicians are doing a terrible job of trying

00:21:16.180 to convince you themselves. And as a result, it just makes my job that much harder. But look,

00:21:21.320 So one more thing I want to share with you, because this is sadly going to be our future if we do not solve this problem of lack of trust in the electoral process.

00:21:34.660 Let me see if I can scroll through my screens here. I'm going to talk to you about a few of these things in just a minute.

00:21:38.780 But one of the things that I did notice is this, a new Saskatchewan political party is starting up to, as they say, give a voice back to the people.

00:21:52.020 So what is going on here? A new provincial party in Saskatchewan has been announced.

00:21:58.060 The party came out of, quote, the political, economic, and social crisis taking place in Saskatchewan.

00:22:07.880 Maverick Party candidate, Ken Rutherford, former federal agriculture minister, Jerry Ritz. Now,

00:22:15.020 that's a pretty heavy hitter to be involved in this new party process. And independent MLA,

00:22:20.200 Nadine Wilson, founded the Saskatchewan United Party. Isn't that interesting? So you have the

00:22:28.180 Saskatchewan Party and the Saskatchewan United Party. So the party started building with its

00:22:33.420 first event in March in Saskatoon's Prairieland Park with 1,200 people in attendance. Guys,

00:22:41.980 I've been to a lot of political events, a lot of founding events. That's a very big number,

00:22:46.740 1,200 people in attendance, followed by an event in Regina with 300 people. And press release says

00:22:51.620 the party formed with the aim of bringing the province back together and healing the many

00:22:56.020 divides that have existed as a result of the mismanagement, incompetence, and in some cases,

00:23:01.160 perceived malfeasance of various levels of the current government of saskatchewan you know i

00:23:06.440 kind of thought that scott moe was doing pretty well in saskatchewan but here's the real problem

00:23:12.600 right so nadine got kicked out of caucus for being unvaccinated and so look what's happened is that

00:23:19.640 we've got these cleavage lines that are being formed around these various of freedom issues

00:23:26.120 and so in saskatchewan now it already looks like that has blown the uh the traditional coalition

00:23:33.160 apart saskatchewan's coalition is a little bit different than alberta's because the saskatchewan

00:23:38.920 party came together with a few mlas from the liberals and some mlas from the conservatives

00:23:44.120 deciding to come together and form a party and drop the political labeling was the interesting

00:23:49.960 move about the saskatchewan party is that it's not they didn't feel it was uh adding to the brand

00:23:56.200 to have conservative or liberal in the name now look what's also happening in british columbia

00:24:00.760 british columbia also came together conservatives and liberals but they called themselves the bc

00:24:06.200 liberal party they've got a new leader kevin falcon what does he want to do wants to change

00:24:10.680 the name of the party i don't know if it's gone through yet but i remember being on a a call with

00:24:15.000 canada strong and free and they talked about naming it to beat the bc party maybe it'll be

00:24:19.960 the bc united party so i'm just gonna put it to you that if things do not coalesce how shall i put

00:24:30.040 this delicately on may the 18th so the party can start the ucp can start a renewal process i think

00:24:38.760 that this we should be watching what's happening in saskatchewan because i suspect that's what's

00:24:44.280 going to happen here so call it a alberta united party so you've got united conservative party

00:24:52.520 alberta united party it would be in sync with what's happening in saskatchewan you take out

00:24:58.120 the labels the conservative or liberal label one of the problems wild rose has now is that they

00:25:05.560 have called themselves the wild rose independence party and while i believe in as much autonomy as

00:25:10.120 necessary. I think independence is probably a step too far for most people. So what happens

00:25:17.720 May 18th? Let's map this out a little bit. So if it is the case that the Premier wins on May 18th,

00:25:25.160 does anyone think that Brian Jean, having just filed, having been the victim of what happened

00:25:33.240 in the 2017 race and seeing this same kind of investigation now happening in the 2022 race,

00:25:41.020 do you think he's just going to say, ah, all's forgiven, no problem, just going to roll in?

00:25:44.740 I highly doubt it. Do you think Todd Lowen is? And Drew Barnes, having voted against so many

00:25:50.800 of the pieces of legislation and spoken so publicly about the misdirection they think

00:25:56.260 the UCP is going, do you think they're just going to roll in? Don't think so. Do you think Paul

00:26:00.020 him and his? Nope. What about the MLAs have spoken out? Are they going to be able to stay

00:26:04.900 in the caucus? I don't know. So I suspect based on what I've heard the premier say that he's going

00:26:11.540 to be kicking them out. So now you've got at least four and maybe more. All you need is four

00:26:18.160 to have official party status. This is important because if you have four MLAs and have official

00:26:23.940 party status in the legislature, then you are able to parlay that into running a full

00:26:30.340 slate of candidates in the next election. Normally, when you're trying to create a new

00:26:33.940 party from scratch, you have to go around and get 100 signatures from 87 ridings. I hope they

00:26:38.860 haven't changed that. That's the way it used to be. So you had to get 8,700 signatures, but

00:26:42.440 you can do a shortcut on that process if you've got a parliamentary caucus.

00:26:48.580 So if it's already happening in Saskatchewan, I suspect we're just looking at the future for Alberta, is that we're likely going to see this movement split apart again, sigh. And then what happens? Oh, gosh, there's also another political party I found out that has been on the stage.

00:27:07.760 I've been wondering what's happening with the Buffalo party. I always mention the different

00:27:12.200 permutations of what could happen post May 18th. And so I think this is what it's shaping up. So

00:27:20.320 you end up with the UCP party, maybe call it the Alberta United party. We're going to use

00:27:26.620 that language, maybe led by Brian Jean. Then you end up with Paul Hemans, Wildrose Independence,

00:27:32.520 whatever party Drew Barnes creates, whatever party Todd Lowen creates and the Buffalo party.

00:27:36.360 now we've got six parties that are all vying for the same vote and up against a united rachel

00:27:42.120 notley ndp uh party how do you think that's going to turn out this is what this is why i am no i'm

00:27:48.520 not keen to see this uh this party split apart really i think my conclusion that i've come to

00:27:54.520 and you know my timing is always off but the conclusion i have come to is that parties can be

00:27:59.800 changed from within. If you get enough MLAs with particular persuasion, they can put pressure on

00:28:07.000 the party and the leadership to go in a different direction. And so we're about to, whatever happens

00:28:11.280 May 18th, May 19th, we're about to start into a series of local candidate nominations. And there's

00:28:18.440 going to be a lot to choose from. So I just want you to be aware of the developments that are

00:28:23.760 happening in, in just to our east. And I'll probably want to interview them because I need

00:28:29.540 to understand all the factors behind that. There's no one more surprised than me that Scott Moe is

00:28:34.880 under this kind of pressure. Even though he did follow kind of in lockstep with every other

00:28:39.360 province, it does, it seemed to me that he had found a bit of a better balance. He certainly

00:28:45.240 was polling higher in public opinion polling than the premier here was. Our Alberta premier was,

00:28:51.420 was pulling at the either bottom one or two almost for almost the entire last two years.

00:28:57.980 Whereas Scott Moe was, was pulling pretty well near the top. So if anyone wants to send me some

00:29:02.800 background, cause I know many of you come from Saskatchewan and still have family in Saskatchewan

00:29:06.800 to tell me what exactly has caused the reversal of fortunes. I'd be delighted to have you tell me.

00:29:12.780 All right. I think I've got one more thing that I want to play for you because it's appearing on

00:29:17.980 my locals feed. And I think I'll probably end up doing a much longer segment on this, but I just

00:29:27.060 want to give you a few of the, maybe just a few links so that you can go and do some background

00:29:35.540 research yourself so that we are able to have a longer conversation about it. But here's what I

00:29:41.480 wanted to play for you. It's a YouTube video. Oh my goodness. It's only 22 seconds long. It was

00:29:47.540 from a public event. So who knows? YouTube is allowing me to be broadcasting again this week,

00:29:55.060 but they have these really strict rules about me, about playing other videos. It seems to me

00:30:00.860 this is public information. So I'm going to see if I can play this for you. I wonder if I,

00:30:06.960 you know what? I hope you can hear it. This is one of the things when you're sharing screen

00:30:11.980 is that I don't know if you're going to be able to hear it, but let's give it a whirl and see if

00:30:16.620 you can. Okay, if you didn't hear that, because I don't know if I did that, did that sharing screen,

00:30:42.980 right but if you uh if you did if you did hear that um or didn't hear that let me explain to

00:30:48.260 you what what he said he said that the un this is on may the fourth the un and the world economic

00:30:54.180 forum have announced a joint partner partnership to accelerate the implementation of the agenda

00:31:02.100 2030 un sustainable development goals this is what i do not understand you have everybody concerned

00:31:11.140 that the world economic forum has outsized influence on our governments and on our global

00:31:17.700 institutions and so what do they do they say oh my goodness anyone who says that is crazy

00:31:23.940 it's a conspiracy theory and then they go and have a formal announcement like that saying

00:31:29.940 how important it is for the world economic forum to be in partnership with the un on achieving

00:31:34.980 these goals like you can't have it both ways guys either they're just state why you're involved and

00:31:40.260 why the world economic forum is important and why it has the influence it does or stop doing these

00:31:46.180 kinds of announcements because it just makes people suspicious now here's the other thing

00:31:50.740 i would say and again this goes to the issue of it's a matter of what level of government

00:31:57.140 is making these decisions because i you know i i thought i better have a look at these because i

00:32:02.020 i've looked at these uh sustainable development goals before and there's nothing really on them

00:32:07.700 that freaks me out um if you look at what it is that they're aiming for i think most of us would

00:32:13.220 agree that these are good objectives so let me go through so that you can see and then i'll i'll

00:32:18.740 try to explain why i think many of you are finding it problematic so if you if you go on online and

00:32:25.140 i'll try to include the the link this is what the 2030 agenda for sustainable development is

00:32:31.940 transforming our world and there's 17 different sustainable development goals now that you've

00:32:36.740 seen this you're going to see it everywhere sustainable development goals you've got different

00:32:40.660 levels of government you've got different politicians different political parties

00:32:44.660 various large corporations who have all signed on to the sustainable development goals

00:32:48.900 and here's what those sustainable development goals are oh they've got them i know it's probably

00:32:53.620 light but let me have this up here so that you if you want to squint at the screen you can see them

00:32:57.860 so sustainable development goals and targets one and poverty in all its forms everywhere i'm behind

00:33:05.460 that. Number two, end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote

00:33:10.720 sustainable agriculture. I'd like to know more about what they think sustainable agriculture

00:33:16.600 is, but I'm all on board with that as well. Goal three, ensure healthy lives and promote

00:33:22.460 well-being for all at all ages. Number four, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education,

00:33:29.500 promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Number five, achieve gender equality and empower

00:33:34.800 all women and girls number six ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation

00:33:40.720 for all number seven ensure access to affordable reliable sustainable and modern energy for all

00:33:46.960 there again would like to know what their definition of modern energy is number eight

00:33:52.000 promote sustained inclusive sustainable economic growth full and productive employment and decent

00:33:57.360 work. Sorry, guys, I just ended up shooting ahead on that one. And decent work for all. Number nine,

00:34:06.240 build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster

00:34:10.900 innovation. Number 10, reduce inequality within and among countries. Number 11, make cities and

00:34:17.540 human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. There's that say sustainable again.

00:34:22.280 Number 12, ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. That one needs obviously a

00:34:27.020 little bit more investigation. Number 13, take urgent action to combat climate change and its

00:34:33.780 impacts. And you see there's little asterisks there. That's one that we've got to take a

00:34:37.500 closer look at. Goal 14, conserve and sustainably use the ocean, seize marine resources for

00:34:42.520 sustainable development. Goal 15, protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial

00:34:47.340 ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation

00:34:53.660 and halt biodiversity loss. There's two more. Goal 16, promote peaceful, inclusive societies

00:34:58.960 for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable,

00:35:04.280 and inclusive institutions at all levels. And number 17, strengthen the means of implementation

00:35:09.960 and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. So you see, when you

00:35:15.400 read those out, those aspirational targets, you can say, yeah, those are great aspirational targets.

00:35:21.520 The question always comes in, at what level? Because I think what we have now determined,

00:35:28.000 I'm hoping that you're seeing, I'm trying to build the case, that the further you move decision

00:35:32.840 making away from the people who are impacted, the more you end up having money eaten up in

00:35:40.300 administrative costs. I'm going to see if I can find a Canadian version of that study I shared

00:35:44.740 last week by the, I think it was by the Von Mises Institute, and it was a libertarian studies paper.

00:35:51.520 that found that 70% of the cost of a central government program goes to administration.

00:35:57.800 So you collect $3 billion worth of taxes, $2 billion goes to administration,

00:36:02.000 only $1 billion gets to the front line.

00:36:04.000 This is the problem with every single one of those goals,

00:36:07.160 is that if it's going to be managed centrally through the UN and the World Economic Forum

00:36:13.440 and the World Health Organization and World Trade Organization

00:36:18.120 and the International Monetary Fund, it's going to be a fiasco and boondoggle. Like we just know

00:36:23.700 that. That's just a given. But if it's a matter of everybody working towards these goals at the

00:36:30.560 local level, and then just reporting up so that we can share best practices, then why would we

00:36:36.240 be opposed to that? That is the big battle that is shaping up right now, is that there are

00:36:40.900 obviously those who believe that they know better than anyone else, and that they can centrally

00:36:45.600 plan their way through anything especially if they use ai and machine learning they figure that they

00:36:50.640 can come up with all of the answers centrally i'm just going to put it to you you cannot you have to

00:36:55.920 have more and more decisions locally and if that's if this is where the battle is is we shouldn't be

00:37:01.200 battling on whether or not we want to end world poverty of course we do but how do we end world

00:37:07.040 poverty do you transfer a bunch of money to the un and the world economic forum and then they say we

00:37:13.840 got this or do you in alberta partner with an impoverished country we need more agriculture

00:37:21.200 workers this is one of the things that occurred to me how would you address that target well

00:37:25.360 we need agriculture workers and we and they need to learn more sustainable agriculture practices

00:37:30.960 so why don't we enhance our temporary foreign worker program and choose two or three countries

00:37:36.320 in the world where we can do a worker exchange so that we can bring people over have them earn a

00:37:41.760 decent wage have them learn our farming practices and then they can return and take those practices

00:37:47.120 to their home country and then we can continue fostering a relationship with them that's the

00:37:51.600 difference right is that we can achieve the same goals that are there but we can achieve them

00:37:57.360 better if we take the lead on it so we will have more conversations about this my friends because

00:38:02.240 i know that there are so many of you who are very very worried about the direction that some of these

00:38:08.480 international agencies want to go. But I think that the question, if we start saying that we

00:38:14.280 don't want to achieve these targets, then we're not going to win over people who do actually want

00:38:19.000 to make sure that we all have access to the very best standard of living possible. I just think we

00:38:24.460 do it a different way. That's my two bits on it. Anyway, my friends, we're out of time for today.

00:38:28.380 We'll be back at this again on Wednesday. Thanks so much for tuning in. This has been

00:38:32.880 The Danielle Smith Show.

Western Standard - May 10, 2022

The Danielle Smith Show - May 9, 2022

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