Western Standard - May 20, 2023


The Little Parties in the #AlbertaElection2023 race...

Topics
Aiden Ross Independence Party turmoil
Mentioned
Nigel Danielle Smith Arthur Pawlowski Rachel Notley Paul Hinman Jason Kenney Corey Cardi
Alberta leaders debate 2023 Alberta addiction treatment

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

187.73

Word count

1,358

Sentence count

102

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Corey and Nigel discuss the upcoming Alberta election, and why the Greens are the third party in the province, and what it means for the future of the party and its chances of winning the election. They also discuss the impact of the Green Party on the current political landscape, and whether or not they should be considered a serious contender.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Nigel, the Greens.
00:00:03.560 41 candidates.
00:00:05.460 Shockingly, at least by number of candidates, the Greens are the third party in Alberta.
00:00:10.760 Now, they're likely, actually, I'd say, to come in third in the popular vote because,
00:00:16.320 say you prefer the Alberta party or Wild Rose Independence Party or the Liberals or whatever it is,
00:00:21.080 if there's no candidate you're running, you can't vote for them.
00:00:23.820 So the Greens have the most candidates available to vote for.
00:00:28.260 So I'd say bold prediction, even though the Greens don't rate any heartbeat in Alberta in the polls,
00:00:34.980 they'll probably come in third in the popular vote.
00:00:38.240 I guess the conventional wisdom, Nigel, is that the Greens being on the ballot will be favorable to the UCP
00:00:44.620 because Green votes, I think smart money says, would otherwise be more likely to go to the NDP.
00:00:50.980 I think the smart money is right on that one.
00:00:53.360 No, it's a party that owes a lot of its electoral success federally as well as provincially
00:01:03.020 to being a place to park your vote.
00:01:06.260 Can't abide these people over here.
00:01:08.660 I certainly wouldn't ever want to vote for these.
00:01:11.100 Green, they'll never get elected anyway. 0.98
00:01:13.040 I can do my civic duty.
00:01:14.900 I can put my vote there and I go home.
00:01:17.240 And that's the end of the matter.
00:01:19.340 Somebody else can make the decision.
00:01:21.320 You know, it's, again, here's a party that wants to run on a just transition.
00:01:26.840 And that's basically a way to turn good paying jobs into bad paying jobs, not a vote winner. 0.88
00:01:32.760 So, Corey, try to put yourself in the shoes of a pretty hardcore greeny voter in Alberta. 0.92
00:01:43.040 And there are some.
00:01:44.300 They exist.
00:01:47.320 What do you think you'd do?
00:01:48.520 I mean, you got, you know, Rachel Notley, as hardcore as she is on some of this stuff,
00:01:53.360 by the standards of New Democrats nationally, a lot of national New Democrats, say West Coast
00:01:59.640 New Democrats and Ontario New Democrats, consider her a sellout to big oil.
00:02:03.360 I mean, that's baffling to many here in Alberta.
00:02:05.720 But outside of Alberta, the fact that she doesn't believe in shutting down the industry
00:02:10.020 tomorrow night, that she supported the Trans Mountain expansion.
00:02:14.100 She opposed the construction of other Alberta pipelines, but there was at least one that she
00:02:17.900 supported the construction of.
00:02:21.000 What do you do?
00:02:21.860 Would you vote green, which is like, I'm sending a message that I'm really concerned about the
00:02:26.400 environment, or are you going to say, okay, Rachel Notley is a bit weak sauce for my green 1.00
00:02:32.340 credentials, but I mean, it's Alberta, for God's sakes, and she gave us a carbon tax. 1.00
00:02:38.420 You know, what do you do?
00:02:39.540 Well, if somebody's that ideologically driven, the true, absolute, you know, shut in the...
00:02:44.520 I'm not saying somebody who's like, off the, you know, living in the woods like...
00:02:48.100 Well, no, that's the irony of those people.
00:02:50.380 They're usually living in Kensington in a nice house that they inherited, but they still
00:02:53.880 somehow feel we can shut down the oil field and close those things in.
00:02:57.660 I think they would park their vote with the greens, so just on principle, and rather, knowing
00:03:01.800 that they're not going to win, but they're registering their message and their thoughts
00:03:05.380 on it.
00:03:05.800 So, as well as Nigel said, they're a safe place just to make your mark, you know, make
00:03:11.920 your protest.
00:03:12.960 So, they'll grab that bet, and as you said, they've got 41 candidates, so yeah, they'll
00:03:15.720 probably check off that rank of third.
00:03:17.600 Who knows?
00:03:18.020 That might give them the shell to start filling that void.
00:03:20.880 The liberals in the Alberta Party just can't seem to find out there.
00:03:24.060 Maybe the greens will carve a little corner, but it'll always be a little one.
00:03:27.480 You know, I can think of a lot of places where the NDP is the default choice, and I can think
00:03:31.680 of a lot of places where the UCP is the default choice.
00:03:34.800 I can't think of a single place where I say, oh, you know, the greens, that just fits that
00:03:39.460 community so well.
00:03:40.140 Outside of Salt Spring Island.
00:03:41.340 Yeah, there's nothing here in Alberta.
00:03:42.340 Okay, well, the next four parties, we're going to deal with kind of together.
00:03:47.120 It's the constellation of the, call it the dissident right, and, you know, some of us
00:03:53.700 got a soft spot for it, but it's, I think it's not too controversial to say it's not
00:03:58.720 their time.
00:04:00.720 So, in here, we've got four parties.
00:04:04.540 We've got the Wild Rose Independence Party, and boy, that has busted from, say, a year
00:04:10.720 and a half ago.
00:04:11.240 A year and a half ago, the Wild Rose Independence Party was running about 15% in the polls, with
00:04:16.200 Jason Kenney still as UCP leader.
00:04:19.220 With his resignation and Daniel Smith coming in, that support evaporated.
00:04:26.140 The party had massive internal turmoil, as small parties full of very individualist people
00:04:33.020 tend to do.
00:04:34.020 They kicked out their leader, Paul Hinman.
00:04:35.840 And then, I think, post-Sovereignty Act, I think a lot of their, speaking of a lot of
00:04:41.580 their own senior activists, they more or less said, okay, that's not our time.
00:04:46.560 Let's see how Danielle Smith does, if she can win the election, and if she follows through
00:04:50.260 on some of the Sovereignty Act stuff.
00:04:51.980 So, they're more or less sitting out the election.
00:04:53.860 Two candidates.
00:04:54.620 And I think they're running in areas where they're intentionally could have no risk of
00:04:58.700 siphoning votes that could elect the NDP.
00:05:02.200 But, Paul Hinman, he's, well, as I mentioned, he was kicked out.
00:05:07.720 Now, he was the first leader of the original Wild Rose Party, who was succeeded by Daniel
00:05:11.760 Smith, going to the 2012 election.
00:05:14.560 But he, after being kicked out of the Wild Rose Independence Party, started the Wild Rose
00:05:19.300 Loyalty Coalition.
00:05:20.500 No, that is not a points rewards card for when you buy something at Walmart.
00:05:25.780 That is the name of his new political party.
00:05:28.320 I think he promised to run 50 odd candidates or so.
00:05:30.780 He's running 16, I think, that are getting on the ballot.
00:05:34.620 There's the Independence Party.
00:05:37.600 It's changed its name a bunch of times, variations of the same thing.
00:05:40.980 It's now TIP.
00:05:41.920 I call it just, it's just a TIP.
00:05:44.800 So, TIP, the Independence Party.
00:05:46.980 And they put the in front of their name, I think, to distinguish that they are the Independence
00:05:51.280 Party, not these Wild Rose Independence Party interlopers.
00:05:54.980 Last time, they ran nearly 60 odd candidates.
00:05:59.060 A bunch of them out.
00:06:00.080 Yeah.
00:06:00.340 After the Alberta Party, they by far ran the most number of candidates.
00:06:05.380 But it was a pretty hodgepodge thing.
00:06:07.540 It very quickly blew apart.
00:06:09.120 I think they've had something between four and six leaders since the last election.
00:06:12.920 It's been quite something.
00:06:14.940 They're running just 14 candidates.
00:06:19.100 And they're an interesting bunch.
00:06:21.360 They believe in independence.
00:06:22.400 But they've been very hardcore that they are the sole legitimate voice of sovereignty, and
00:06:28.000 everyone else is an interloper and should join them.
00:06:31.540 Their most recent leader was Arthur Pawlowski.
00:06:35.400 He was kicked out as leader by that party.
00:06:38.740 Or, I don't know, depends.
00:06:40.840 Being Arthur Pawlowski.
00:06:42.080 Just depends who you believe.
00:06:44.060 And he is channeling his inner Polish anti-communist by founding the Solidarity Movement of Alberta.
00:06:52.060 And they are running 38 candidates.
00:06:57.320 All right.
00:06:58.300 Thanks, guys.
00:06:58.420 We'll get to the Araucaster Club.
00:06:58.980 We'll get back to the US però church. 1.00
00:07:02.320 And, then, see you.
00:07:02.880 We'll get back to the AP 2030.
00:07:03.600 He's a Republican Party today.
00:07:04.520 So, um, orangeCool based off the potential of the San Meltzer for�� star.
00:07:05.720 And, then, we'll get back to the Cardi ofasst.
00:07:06.460 Yeah.
00:07:06.680 We'll get back to the screen there.
00:07:07.240 So, um, as well, as well, as well as I was a nation.
00:07:08.060 We'll get back to thisление of the United Kingdom for人民 and I personally is at 1827.
00:07:09.080 We'll return with that.
00:07:09.960 So, and that's a, and that's a big intention for the success of which you are missing out.
00:07:11.780 So there's, I mean, that we can only get back to mind.
00:07:12.200 From about посмотрим whatever income.