00:00:49.420And joining us for the pleasure of our BC election coverage is our Vancouver reporter, Alex Zoltan.
00:01:01.520All right. Well, we're going to be, of course, talking about the BC election.
00:01:06.900It's looking fairly strong, perhaps not certain, but fairly strong for the BC Conservative Party roaring back to life there.
00:01:15.500We're going to be talking about, of course, the fallout of Alberta's independence referendum and the other nine questions that were held alongside it.
00:01:27.280And, of course, what is Danielle Smith's next move?
00:01:30.920She has just released a statement to UCP members that is sure to ruffle some feathers.
00:01:38.560So first, we're going to talk about the referendum itself.
00:01:41.440Alberta voted for Canada, but will Canada vote for Alberta? So we've got, you know, everyone's
00:01:53.040seen the results. About one in four Albertans voted to move towards independence. Three of
00:02:00.020four Albertans voted against it. But at the same time, Albertans, a majority of Albertans
00:02:06.980appear to have voted in favor of significant immigration reforms, certain racist policies,
00:02:15.260the policies that Nahi Nenji calls racist, like requiring voter identification, very radical stuff.
00:02:23.780And it appears that of the four constitutional questions that Albertans were asked,
00:02:28.940It's not 100% yet. It looks like three of the four are going to pass. Possibly two of four. We will see.
00:02:40.860But, Corey, what is the big takeaway here from the referendum? Albertans did not say they are ready to move towards independence, but they did indicate a certain provincialism, at least, if you will.
00:02:56.880Yeah, well, this was, as we can feel, a long discussion, a five-month campaign, really.
00:03:04.040So I think people should look at this really critically and see what appeared.
00:03:09.460Because I've seen some dismissing it, saying, well, Alberta's always had an independence level of support around 24%, 25%.
00:03:16.220No, it hasn't. I've been at this a long time.
00:03:18.880That's considerably larger than we typically have.
00:03:21.320And when it's actually in a vote in a referendum, I think it's a number that can't be casually dismissed, though it's certainly you can casually say we're nowhere close to the point of a majority of Albertans wanting to go right now.
00:03:35.520The other part was it wasn't just that Albertans weren't ready to embrace a path towards independence.
00:03:42.180I don't think the independence movement was ready to be able to campaign effectively to get that many Albertans to choose it.
00:03:47.980You know, this is something the movement has to look at.
00:03:49.920I'm seeing a lot of hurt feelings rather than introspection among the movement right now.
00:03:56.200I really think there's a solid base, and I think a lot's been accomplished for the movement right now.
00:04:00.600And if they can hold it together, this will still turn into something lasting.
00:04:03.940A lot of the discussion we're seeing right now, too, is frustrated federalists saying,
00:04:07.340when they're hearing from some of us saying, well, we're not done,
00:04:10.020saying, well, this should be put to bed. It's finished. It's gone.
00:04:16.160It's going to go into a slumber for a while, but this is a movement that's not going anywhere.
00:04:19.520it's a part of Alberta politics now. Yeah, I want to go a little further into that.
00:04:29.120When you fail at anything that you've tried to succeed in, the correct action is not necessarily
00:04:37.440to give up, obviously, but it is at least incumbent upon yourself to be introspective,
00:04:43.440to figure out why you didn't succeed. And maybe some of those things are your fault,
00:04:47.440And maybe some of those things are not your fault. You know, many things are beyond the reach of the independence movement. They had the entire establishment against it. That's not necessarily its fault. It had Elections Alberta tilting the field with campaign finance law against it, not applying it equally. That's not its fault.
00:05:07.280But some things very much are its fault. The movement, by its decentralized nature, allowed any asshole to come along and declare himself the representative of the movement.0.98
00:05:20.000And there were, you know, some figures who maybe their heart was in the right place, but they did immense damage to the independence movement with the way they conducted themselves, the way they claimed to speak for the movement.0.97
00:05:35.000And the Federalist side was only too happy to point at them and say, hey, look, there is their leaders. And because it was a decentralized, it's not even a decentralized organization, it's a decentralized movement, there really was no way for the reasonable, rational and competent people in the movement to say, no, that clown doesn't speak for us.0.89
00:06:01.280And I think that was immensely damaging.
00:06:04.420And I know when, you know, I say yesterday, but also felt like last night because I was in the news room at 4 a.m.
00:06:10.660I think you popped in at like 4.30 or 5.
00:06:13.760You know, Dave and Nigel were there, I think, before 6.
00:06:16.200We were all there at wild hours, so it's a blur.
00:06:18.660But, you know, I remember you, Corey, you had pointed to this and said that perhaps the movement needs some more centralization, maybe the hyper decentralized model of everybody's a leader and everybody's a follower.
00:06:38.120Maybe that doesn't work. If this movement is going to have any kind of future going forward, it's going to have to establish some kind of hierarchy with some kind of credibility about who speaks for it and who leads it.
00:06:53.020Absolutely. I mean, and whether that comes in the form of a party, which is I think a lot of people can know could be really dangerous in the political landscape in Alberta, or at least one kind of dominant advocacy group that had a mechanism.
00:07:06.380I mean, for example, the Alberta Prosperity Project, they've done a lot of work, and they were definitely the largest kid on the block for the first part of the whole independence movement.
00:07:15.900They, to my knowledge, never really had, as you said, a hierarchy or an elected structure.
00:07:20.480Even among them, it was just kind of people who suddenly popped up and were the spokespeople for it.
00:07:25.140They weren't necessarily selected by members.
00:07:26.800There was no accreditation or affirmation by people as to whether those were the spokespeople for the movement.
00:07:33.580And as it dispersed, it led to the problems we see, particularly coming into a campaign period.
00:07:40.060So if we get into another time like that, I think we need one organization, at least some sort of mechanism to put spokespeople.
00:07:48.740Maybe they still could be a bit decentralized, but they have to have some degree of having been selected by the larger group to speak for it.
00:07:56.220So if you do get things coming off on the fringe, you can point out, well, that's just that's over there.
00:08:00.480this is the people speaking generally for the movement here because it was really difficult
00:08:04.540to try and campaign when we get different voices uh from different directions maybe oh sorry so
00:08:10.040yeah sorry we're going to get into the potential for there being a bona fide independence party
00:08:15.660from this separate from that we're going to get into that in the next segment but yeah so dave go
00:08:19.680ahead i was just going to suggest to cory maybe a organizing convention not to not to form a party
00:08:27.320but to come up with standards and guidelines and because you had bozo eruptions for lack of a better
00:08:33.720word by some of the leaders of so-called leaders of the in this movement that as you rightly say
00:08:39.560did a lot of damage so you need to come out of it the the best thing you can do is go away for a
00:08:45.080while reflect and then organize properly get a get a centralized organization with a centralized
00:08:52.120spokesperson a centralized leader uh who he returns phone calls doesn't make bozo election
00:09:00.040bozo promises doesn't you know it's not bombastic but you know it just comes across
00:09:05.320better and if that small thing will get a get more more people on board all of which is to say
00:09:10.920to your first point corey that that 25 is actually a little on the low side there was probably a
00:09:19.880larger interest in what independence means but some people quite a few people i would venture
00:09:29.400who would have been prepared to vote for it backed off because of just the things that
00:09:35.960dave is talking about here do i really want to ride the trail with this this guy you know
00:09:42.440what percentage of those 25 percent were on the i just want to send a message
00:09:48.040and not real card-core supporters of separation. Well, it's a good question to ask, Dave,
00:09:52.680and the reason it's a good question to ask is when you look at the other nine questions,
00:09:58.920you may have only had 25% who said they were interested in separating,
00:10:03.400but you had twice that and more who wanted serious constitutional reform.
00:10:09.640Yeah, so let's get into that. I think, you know, a lot of the Federalists right now
00:10:15.320in their victory lap they're trying to denigrate the independence result as much as possible but
00:10:21.560you know which is you know whatever that's that's fair game i guess for that side um but they're
00:10:26.520trying to say and it's real support is actually less than that 24 25 percent most of them were
00:10:32.200just trying to send a message and i i think it's quite the opposite actually because you had the
00:10:36.680other nine questions where people were that was their mechanism to send a message uh i know people
00:10:43.640who, you know, I won't name names, but some of you guys would probably assume some of these people
00:10:49.560voted for independence. They did not because they were hearing what the Federalist campaign was
00:10:55.160saying, saying, hey, don't vote to send a message. And they thought, okay, yeah, you know, maybe I'm
00:11:00.100not quite ready to vote for independence to go the whole hog, but I've got four constitutional
00:11:04.900and five immigration questions where I can fire a shot. I could fire a shot there and send a0.95
00:11:09.700message on those issues. So I think by putting the nine questions in the same referendum alongside
00:11:17.560the independence question, I think it actually suppressed how well independence could do
00:11:22.440because there were nine other ways to send a message at the same time.
00:11:28.880Yeah, you know, diluting the message, it's hard to say because, and that's the sort of thing we
00:11:35.440have to think about and chew on as we go forward. I think with a question that serious, we shouldn't
00:11:39.260have be faced with 10 questions on a ballot again, just that the organizational nightmare,
00:11:43.560you know, alone, and it was impossible to campaign even people concerned about two of the questions
00:11:48.300of the 10 or something. How do you even segment those to try and make your case? So in the future,
00:11:53.660that shouldn't happen. But if it had been just question 10 all by itself, that would have turned
00:11:59.620into a de facto independence question. We can see how that debate would have gone. As you said,
00:12:03.780it did offer some outs for sending a message. And even though with the phrasing of question 10 as it
00:12:07.900was, that's where I modeled my campaign to say, well, if it's going to be phrased like that,
00:12:11.900we might as well campaign to send a message because it's non-binding. But that would have
00:12:16.060been harder to do, as you said, because there wouldn't have been those nine outs for people
00:12:22.040to get away from that send a message. It's difficult to tell how people would go on things.
00:12:26.680But some might have framed it effectively at that time, as I said, to be almost a binding vote,
00:12:31.680if that's the question all by itself. These are the things we should dwell on and see what would
00:12:35.840be more effective in the future. And the other thing to follow on that, Corey, is kind of what
00:12:40.460the message is. A reader pointed out to me this morning in private correspondence that there's
00:12:47.820a lot of people who are pro-independence, who also have guns, who also are deeply skeptical of the way
00:12:56.040things were handled during the COVID crisis. And there's this sort of overlay of distrust
00:13:02.480in the federal government and any provincial government that is going to try and play ball
00:13:09.580too seriously with the federal government like there's a sort of a group think there and it's
00:13:16.320probably larger than 25 percent so what actually is the message we're trying to send is is don't
00:13:24.740mess with Albertans. We believe in freedom. We believe in certain rights. We believe in what
00:13:34.140the Constitution allows to the provinces. So I have a feeling it's got a little bit more to do.
00:13:42.500It's not just oil pipelines and energy development. There's more to it. It's a head thing.
00:13:49.340All right. Well, let's turn this conversation towards where the movement is going next. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith put out a video statement to members of her party today.
00:14:06.900And the synopsis was, you know, to paraphrase it, you know, I'd say she said, okay, guys, it's over, and we can all be one big happy family.
00:14:21.980We're not going to purge people who supported independence, but she hasn't quite totally repudiated Jason Kenney's call for purging independent supporters.
00:14:34.880we could read this a few different ways
00:30:28.580I was going to say you've also got the new Green Party mayor of Vancouver who has come out in support of the Green Party leader.
00:30:37.780That's right. And it's really interesting the municipal elections happening right before
00:30:41.880the provincial elections. It would behoove me to try to speculate on what maps over
00:30:47.760or if voters are signaling their vote intention with the provincial election,
00:30:52.880with the decisions they made in the civic election. But I have seen some speculation
00:30:56.820that I think holds some water that Vancouver voters, because civic voters tend to be a little
00:31:03.140bit older and a little bit more politically sophisticated, that they may have been hedging
00:31:06.780their bets and voting for a more progressive Vancouver mayor in anticipation of also voting
00:31:13.360for and getting a conservative provincial government. But then in Surrey, of course,
00:31:17.720it went the other way where they picked a familiar face in Doug Callum. So it's really
00:31:21.500hard to say if people are voting strategically in both elections or if it's just a matter
00:31:28.220of coincidence. So Alex, if you're inclined to vote for a conservative candidate and you
00:31:33.660have one bc and you have the bc conservatives what are the things that are going to help you
00:31:38.760make your mind up which well i know with a lot of finley uh finley loyalists which is what i would
00:31:46.740call them and that would be individuals who are loyal to the now ex-leader of the bc conservative
00:31:51.300party they're probably going to vote for the one bc candidate regardless of who they are
00:31:55.320but most individuals who are right of center in my opinion would be wise to pick the bc
00:32:01.140conservatives because 1BC's likelihood of governing is zero and the likelihood of them winning any
00:32:07.220individual seat is also fairly low um even in Dallas Brody's seat in Vancouver Kilchenna I
00:32:13.280don't foresee her getting re-elected so how's the party been doing I mean it's interesting to see
00:32:21.040how unity can come from necessity though right like this was kind of mashed together I mean
00:32:25.260everything was in disarray there was factions bouncing all over and people and it was quite
00:32:29.840That's remarkable. I think quite a good accomplishment to manage to pull it together and into a cohesive party going into an election.
00:32:38.340But they are going in, held together with bailing twine necessity and prayers.
00:32:43.380Obviously, it looks like they'll make it to Saturday without exploding.
00:32:46.660But do you think this party is going to be able to sustain after the election?
00:32:50.900You know, I know I'm asking you to look ahead, but I mean, it also depends on whether they win or lose.
00:32:54.840but they've had an interim leader has done very, very well, but still he would have to face a
00:32:59.460leadership review or race at some point and things like that. Are they just keeping the
00:33:04.600heads down campaigning right now and not talking about such things? Yeah, I think that's the
00:33:08.260question of all questions because it really is the same caucus that was exploding only a couple
00:33:14.040of months ago and a week feels like a lifetime in BC politics right now. So it's easy to forget that.
00:33:19.520But for those of us who are paying very close attention, it's also hard to forget that.
00:33:25.060And I don't think that it is beyond the bounds of believability that this party could implode, even if it's in a position of being in government.
00:33:34.700In my opinion, it seems like if you go back looking not only to the Finley leadership, but also to the Rustad leadership before it, this party has a significant unity problem.
00:33:45.200And some individuals within the party, I won't name names, but it seems like they maybe have difficulty playing well with others.
00:33:51.080And then you also have the ideological issues, not entirely unlike the ones you just described with the UCP.
00:33:57.500Obviously, it's not over the issue of independence, but on specific social issues and political wedge issues, there's still a lack of unity amongst the BC Conservatives.
00:34:10.440And I think that that's a case with Canadian Conservatives pretty much everywhere.
00:34:14.340But it's especially pronounced with this group.
00:34:17.660Alex, is it just me or is David Eby looking glummer by the day?
00:34:37.420And he kind of reminds me, I don't know, that Simpsons meme where Sideshow Bob,
00:34:40.840every time he takes a step, a right comes up and hits him in the face.
00:34:44.340like every every decision he's made through this whole campaign has managed to backfire
00:34:52.940yeah it's it's just it's it's honestly kind of hilarious i mean the wainwright thing is
00:34:57.340obviously a horrific tragedy but um every single step that evie has taken has been
00:35:04.760a self-goal as they like to say my favorite one was the one at the beginning when he used the
00:35:09.900firebreak analogy to describe his justification for the whole election, which was we were building
00:35:14.780a firebreak against Donald Trump. And then it turned out that Lauren Dirksen actually put out0.55
00:35:20.400fires in firebreaks. And the video came out. Everybody loved him at that point. And it's0.83
00:35:27.600really quite shocking too, because the BCNDP war room had all the time in the world to prepare
00:35:31.720for this. They didn't even end up putting together a full slate, which is the strangest thing when
00:35:37.660you are the ones calling a snap election. So I think that this election has really
00:35:43.380put on display the incompetence of the BC NDP political machine generally.
00:35:49.980It kind of explains why we have this giant deficit, worsening services. I mean, it's the
00:35:55.960old saying, do not attribute malice where incompetence will suffice. And this is an
00:36:00.080incredibly incompetent group. And this election has really demonstrated that quite nicely.0.78
00:36:05.520so if you fear for the competence of the incoming conservatives because let's face it
00:36:10.080they have given us lots of news headlines in the last year you may not know what you're going to
00:36:15.760get from them but you do know what you're going to get from the ndp and you don't want it you
00:36:21.440want no more of it that's right yeah it's it's you're actually voting for the devil you don't0.96
00:36:26.640know uh over the devil you do know because the devil you do know is just so damn devilish so
00:36:33.200So, Alex, you know, campaigns, war rooms, their main goal is normally to try and frame what is the ballot box question and the different sides will try to define the ballot box question to their advantage.
00:36:52.060What is the generally agreed upon ballot box question in B.C. right now?
00:36:57.840Oh, it's the same one everywhere in the world, affordability.
00:37:00.240you know it's the same ballot box question in the u.s midterms um it is here and that that was
00:37:07.080actually reflected well in the mainstream poll that just came out i think 54 percent of respondents
00:37:11.420said affordability was the number one issue which is always strange in a provincial election because
00:37:16.700you know a premier only has so much control over the price of gas and groceries and that's another
00:37:21.560one that david evie has tried to i don't even know what you would say he's he's attacking the gas
00:37:28.240providers or the gas companies even though he promoted lng2 as one of the greatest mega projects
00:37:33.420in canadian history and he also attacked uh jimmy pattison and save on foods which is one of the
00:37:39.300very few bc based um grocery chain companies and he said he was going to introduce price caps
00:37:46.220on uh groceries so it's which which everybody knows is just a terrible price caps on groceries
00:37:52.680oh yeah he's got your mom dummy it turned into a real exactly it turned into kind of an abby lewis
00:37:59.520style far left political campaign which was a losing battle for him because emily lowen and
00:38:05.120the greens already had that real estate staked out right they had already so evie moving further
00:38:11.640to the left i think mostly pushed anybody who is a moderate to the conservative side and anybody
00:38:17.600who was a radical leftist and an ndp loyalist over to the green side because the greens are
00:38:22.100just doing it way harder. Like they're running a good, honest, Marxist-Leninist campaign.
00:38:28.960Wow. They're OG. So as you said, though, I mean, he's a dead man walking. I mean,
00:38:34.040even if he pulls off and squeaks through this and they hang on to, again, you know,
00:38:37.860a slim majority, we have a stalemate, they're back where they were. I mean, he's going to be
00:38:42.000replaced. You would imagine, I mean, the left are pretty good for hanging on to leaders no matter
00:38:46.020what, but I mean, he's got to have crossed enough lines. They understand. They need somebody new
00:38:51.180there yeah so my sources on the ndp side tell me that his days are numbered as the leader regardless
00:38:56.940of what happens in the election interestingly enough he had a presser today uh it was just a
00:39:02.040couple minutes ago really and they asked him if he intended to stay on his leader if he loses the
00:39:07.220election or walks away with the same number of seats and he did not answer directly well of
00:39:11.880course no no politician would answer that honestly uh if he loses i i think he he resigns on election
00:39:19.740night if he wins you know he'll probably try to hang on for a while and see you know if the party
00:39:24.880houses him or not but uh yeah i don't imagine him uh to stay on uh for more than five minutes if he
00:39:32.240loses on election night okay well uh one of the interesting things i should just add about this
00:39:38.340election is that he has never won a leadership race he was um made leader after the passing of
00:39:44.940john horgan um lauren dirksen has never won a leadership oh yeah they disqualified his opponent
00:39:49.940right uh no no he was um i forget what the word what he was um acclaimed acclaimed yeah yeah
00:39:56.220because they he was acclaimed because they disqualified his opponent there was a there
00:39:59.980was a like a left populist person who wanted to run and they disqualified her oh okay yeah no that
00:40:05.440was a little bit before my time i was doing other things so so i wasn't watching it that
00:40:08.540yeah so there we go we have we have both leaders of both parties have never won an honest to god
00:40:13.260leadership bc has never had a leadership race one bc has never had a leadership race
00:40:17.800yeah now in the case of the conservatives here i don't think that's really their fault in this
00:40:21.640particular circumstance but uh yeah it's a good point to make okay well we're gonna put a pin in
00:40:26.240bc there uh and turn to our our parting shots we'll give uh the first one to dave i just want
00:40:34.080to wish my fellow brit uh nigel a happy trafalgar day you're at 1805 and i just want to it's an
00:40:41.460internal thing but i want to throw our operations manager josh andrus under the bus uh he was in0.72
00:40:47.960charge of ordering breakfast from mcdonald's yesterday and he did not order hash browns0.84
00:40:54.920what kind of crap is that he had wraps breakfast wraps and he had bacon mcmuffins sausage mcmuffins
00:41:04.060but no regular egg mcmuffins the ones with the ham that's that you know i'm that's my go-to0.99
00:41:09.100And no hash browns. What the hell, Josh? Outrageous.
00:41:14.100Well, as they said on Trafalgar Day, England expects every man to do his duty, and Dave expects Josh to order egg muffins and hash browns properly when the time is appropriate.
00:41:24.100Absolutely. I was just reflecting on the fact that, you know, 30 odd years ago when we had the last go round with Quebec,
00:41:33.100there was a lot of suggestion in Western Canada that we should reach out to Quebec personally.
00:41:40.500We should, you know, schools should write to schools and people should write to people
00:41:44.460and plead with them to vote to stay in Canada.
00:41:47.880You know, and I think some people did participate in that kind of an action