Western Standard - The Pipeline： Alberta

00:00:00.000 good evening today is august 16th 2023 i'm derek phildebrandt publisher of the western standard

00:00:18.640 and you're watching the pipeline i'm joined as always by western standard opinion editor

00:00:23.840 nigel henneford how are you nigel good to be here well scott western standard senior alberta

00:00:29.600 columnist cory morgan you had a good show earlier today i did i did dan mcteague on there he's always

00:00:35.440 a good conversation to have he is he is uh all right well today we're going to be talking about

00:00:42.960 i think it's not a new thing but it's flaring up to new levels the ottawa the war between ottawa and

00:00:49.360 the west over energy and electricity ottawa trying to uh force its way into provincial control over

00:00:56.800 the electricity grid in a very aggressive way and alberta premier danielle smith and saskatchewan

00:01:01.840 premier scott moe hitting back hard also uh kind of a sort of an exclusive scoop from the western

00:01:09.280 standard rachel not a senior source in the ndp and alberta says rachel notley will be retiring this fall

00:01:16.080 as leader of her party making way for an interim leader to oversee the leadership election so we're

00:01:22.320 gonna we're gonna talk about rachel notley's pending maybe retirement and uh ottawa's ban on usable

00:01:30.720 compostful bags those of you outside of alberta might not know what i'm talking about you know

00:01:35.040 ottawa's banning uh single-use plastic bags coming this december uh in alberta uh safeway and some other

00:01:43.760 places uh we get these nice plastic they feel like plastic they're almost as good as plastic but

00:01:51.600 they're completely compostable nine says environment minister stephen gilbo he says uh there shall not be

00:02:01.520 uh compostable bags that are usable that are enjoyable to use at the grocery store we're gonna

00:02:09.040 ban them verboten uh so we're going to talk about that before we get into it though as usual got to

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00:02:27.360 making sure standing up for firearms owners in canada that you can still buy safely and responsibly use

00:02:34.960 firearms in canada without the cssa the federal government would have taken the last of they'd be

00:02:39.680 leaving us with nothing but bb guns and kids bows and arrows by uh by this point without the cssa

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00:02:49.920 the cssa go to cssa-cila.org or do what i do just google them and become a member today actually while

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00:03:26.480 support uh the west's leading independent uh media organization all right let's get into it so uh it's

00:03:35.680 been coming for some time it actually kind of popped up during the alberta election in may

00:03:40.560 rachel notley saying she is going to make uh she's going to green the electricity grid by 2035

00:03:47.840 net zero no more carbon etc etc there was a big blow up over that because it was so expensive and that

00:03:54.160 was a fairly big moment uh that turned up many albertans at least against the ndp albertans looked

00:04:00.640 at the price tag on that and said nope no we're not doing that that's pretty crazy for alberta

00:04:06.640 uh but ottawa which is has very little albert has very little impact on the decisions of ottawa says

00:04:14.480 we're going 2035 and uh the provinces uh you have to come along with it well enter danielle smith and

00:04:21.840 scott mohan they said they hold up this little document called the constitution says wow energy

00:04:27.840 is under exclusive provincial jurisdiction now we've heard that before and it hasn't stopped

00:04:32.160 ottawa from butting its way in and the liberal pact supreme court generally uh does its duty lays back

00:04:39.440 and think of england and does what uh the federal government says um but we've got a big war now brewing

00:04:46.640 over this uh danielle smith saying she um intimating that she might even invoke the emergencies act

00:04:55.600 the sovereignty act over this um that uh alberta will just if it has to will go completely alone

00:05:03.040 pull out of any federal uh regime regulatory regime around uh the electricity grid um but it's blowing up

00:05:11.120 pretty big uh naturally i know you had a column on this i think just yesterday yeah um and uh i don't

00:05:20.000 know uh how strong is alberta's hand in this because at the end of the day the supreme court's probably

00:05:24.000 just going to do ottawa's bidding well first of all you're correct that the supreme court won't certainly

00:05:31.200 do or do the government's bidding not because they will be told to but because they just

00:05:37.360 know what the right thing to do is all these people have been appointed by the federal government and

00:05:43.760 they're not going to upset the apple cart i asked daniel smith at her press conference

00:05:50.000 what legally could be done this was yesterday her answer was we will see it is uncharted territory

00:05:58.960 strictly speaking when she produced section 92 of the constitution she clearly anticipated the

00:06:05.360 question and it's right i'll just happen to have it right here and it says because it's it's uh it's

00:06:11.520 a provincial responsibility in fact it says a development conservation i'm gonna i'm gonna read

00:06:19.840 the constitution to you bear with us folks for the generation and production of electrical energy that is

00:06:27.040 a provincial thing how will the um how will the uh courts get around it they will probably buy the

00:06:33.280 gilbo argument but because carbon dioxide is pollution and the federal government has appropriated

00:06:40.800 pollution to itself as an area of interest well then that overrides the constitution now obviously

00:06:48.880 arguing that carbon dioxide is pollution is just a trick it is plant food we would die without carbon

00:06:57.600 dioxide plants would die plants produce oxygen anybody who's done grade 10 biology knows that carbon

00:07:06.320 dioxide is not pollution but watch the supreme court convince themselves that it is because the federal

00:07:13.360 government says so uh corey i think this i think will go as as natural was hinting there to the carbon tax

00:07:22.160 decision where it says uh yes well uh the energy and whatnot is provincial but the federal government

00:07:30.000 has a right to regulate for pollution as it would go across provincial boundaries and global warming is

00:07:36.720 a global issue um and at the time we we all saw that that was a well that was a hole blown through the

00:07:44.640 constitution you could drive a truck through trojan hearts use use your metaphor as you see fit

00:07:49.280 um but i i would expect that is what ottawa is banking on uh that supreme court decision completely

00:07:55.920 upending uh decades of constitutional precedent allowing the federal government directly into energy

00:08:02.800 i mean would you expect that's probably where the federal government's going to go now but because

00:08:07.760 it's global warming anything you could possibly connect to global warming is therefore under federal

00:08:13.840 control and i can't think of very much now that the federal government doesn't say is global warming

00:08:18.480 yeah i i don't see any other way they would rule on this so it's an exercise in futility at best it's

00:08:24.720 you know foot dragging to go through the court system but you got to go through the motions you

00:08:28.560 got to use the legal tools at your disposal so i mean as i said earlier it's like a slow motion battle

00:08:33.760 though it's going to be heated because it's going to take a while to get to that point though of a

00:08:38.160 supreme court ruling we might not have the same government in power by the time that happens

00:08:43.040 so i mean some of the tactic on the part of premier smith could be if we can drag this out

00:08:48.880 you know we'll have somebody more receptive in power by the time the courts ever actually rule

00:08:54.240 on this but there's not going to be any legal recourse for the province within the existing

00:08:59.600 structures to to counter this this is a standoff and i you know you know where i'd want to go with it

00:09:05.520 but uh i don't anticipate premier smith going that way well premier smith has pretty much said she will

00:09:10.640 refuse to go along uh she even said gilbo can pound sand which i'm not sure if that was a play on words

00:09:17.760 with oil sands but if so i mean all the better um but refuse let's talk about what would refusing

00:09:23.920 look like because even if the federal government i say if the supreme court were to rule that ottawa has

00:09:29.840 the power to regulate alberta's provincial energy grid which is just bizarre saying out loud but i

00:09:36.800 have very little faith the supreme court would uh rule in anything other than further centralized federal

00:09:41.840 power um they can't physically make alberta i suppose maybe that it could force alberta to shut down its

00:09:52.480 energy production natural gas oil things like that but they can't force us to start building solar panels

00:10:02.240 and windmills over or wind generator turbines over farmers fields they can't really force us to do it

00:10:09.120 they might agree that ottawa has a right to tell us what to do but they can't really make us do anything

00:10:16.480 natural no they can't force us to do that but they can force the closure of the natural gas plants that

00:10:23.520 we have and then we're stuck with the problem of what do we do now we don't want the lights to go off

00:10:29.440 we don't want the heat to fail uh we need power and that opens it's a question of timing as much as

00:10:36.880 anything else by 2035 can you imagine that anybody even if they made the decision today to get a nuclear

00:10:43.440 plant built in in 12 years the permits the environmental impact studies the deliberately

00:10:51.760 intense considerations it really isn't possible so this is the real danger here that we could find

00:11:01.680 ourselves after decades of energy security facing life with brownouts even blackouts very dangerous in a

00:11:11.520 in a prairie province where temperatures fall and we have more hours of darkness than daylight this

00:11:18.720 is what smith is so very very adamant about is that we have energy security is actually the most important

00:11:27.440 thing of course it's bizarre that alberta the most energy rich jurisdiction in all of the western

00:11:35.520 hemisphere except for possibly venezuela which doesn't manage to do very well with it okay actually yeah

00:11:40.640 let's say the two most energy rich jurisdictions in north and south america will become possibly the

00:11:47.280 two biggest energy basket cases that alberta with third largest proven oil reserves on the planet

00:11:55.360 we could be facing brownouts and blackouts by 2035 if this happens there's just no way we could do it and

00:12:02.480 even if we wanted to we tried really aggressively to do it we were willing to spend hundreds of billions of

00:12:08.640 dollars that are projected to be required to do this in that time still probably wouldn't be able to

00:12:13.120 do it uh we'd be just bizarre that we're exporting oil for energy but we just wouldn't even be able to

00:12:20.880 keep the lights on right here the office towers headquartering energy companies wouldn't have energy

00:12:27.360 well we have a bizarre ideological and unreasonable environment minister i mean he is probably the most

00:12:33.840 you know extreme leaning person we've ever seen in that position i think he's very well aware that

00:12:38.560 we can't do it i mean the numbers are very easy to find when you start looking alberta has

00:12:42.240 80 of its generation is based on fossil fuels right now even if wholeheartedly premier smith

00:12:49.680 wanted to pursue that transition that he's demanding i it would be impossible it's nice as

00:12:55.840 nigel said we couldn't get the nuke plants fast enough we couldn't get the other sources of energy

00:13:00.800 and when the political play comes into it this isn't a big burden for ontario and quebec they've

00:13:05.440 got all sorts of hydroelectric and nuclear power so this is the usual east versus west and we'll get

00:13:10.560 painted as the intransigent boogeymen who have messed up canada's environmental policy i don't think

00:13:17.120 they care that we're going to have brownouts and blackouts so what's really ironic here derek

00:13:22.160 is that you said earlier and you were correct that when it becomes a matter of pollution well this

00:13:31.440 suddenly borders don't matter we've got to look after it because it's all one they don't use that

00:13:39.360 logic when they say oh no no no you can't if you export natural gas to a country that it will then

00:13:47.600 retire or not build coal generated general coal electrical generation well it's it's it's not

00:13:55.120 it's not a global issue then oh no we've got we've got to do it right here in this country get our own

00:13:59.760 down so much of this could be solved if by exporting natural gas alberta was able to build up the carbon

00:14:08.000 credits to satisfy the demands of a net zero carbon surely you're not suggesting that the eco fanatics might

00:14:14.640 be a bit hypocritical i am suggesting that uh there may be more going on here than just uh

00:14:22.400 so there's a interesting bright side here um there's not much of a carrot offered to alberta

00:14:29.040 but now they're trying stick gilbo has threatened that if alberta doesn't fall in line and do what we

00:14:35.920 say we're going to withdraw the green subsidies from alberta we're going to stop federal subsidies to

00:14:44.800 wind turbine generators and uh solar panels building on building stuff like that to which alberta should

00:14:51.840 say okay we don't want them for the most part like the the voters in alberta who generally really want

00:15:00.080 this stuff they live in downtown cores and they don't have to live with wind turbines on top of the

00:15:06.960 roofs of their high rises they don't have to have look out and uh see their previously pristine country

00:15:13.280 landscape polluted by solar panels for mile after mile after mile uh alberta just put a moratorium on

00:15:22.080 this stuff for six months and ottawa's response is to say we'll just give you less money to build things

00:15:28.880 that you don't really want anyway it it's bizarre uh corey is that supposed to be a carrot or a stick or

00:15:36.400 like what's what's the reasoning i'm not seeing how that's a threat that we care about uh well it would

00:15:41.680 put pressure on because i mean you know the opposition here will say look at the jobs lost

00:15:45.440 because the intransigent look at the money being thrown away i mean they love doing that when ottawa

00:15:49.200 dangles our own money at us if a provincial or even municipal government turns their back on it

00:15:54.160 people act as if well that means the money's been thrown into a pot burned or something you know it's

00:15:58.000 just not been used so it doesn't exist so that will put pressure on the government as you said it's

00:16:02.080 city people who don't realize the impact of that but they will still be speaking up but it starts the

00:16:07.920 stage i mean if it gets really bad if this battle really starts happening if the premier is really

00:16:12.560 saying she's not going to comply that's when i can see the government starting to reduce other

00:16:16.960 transfers they've always used that as a mean to punish means punish alberta when they don't like

00:16:21.280 our health care policies they cut our health care transfers we have this system where we you know

00:16:26.400 our money is taxed it goes to ottawa and they pick and choose how much we're going to get back for

00:16:30.720 specific programs they have a lot of leverage on us and i think that transfer for the green energy could

00:16:35.920 just be the first one if they really want to start putting the screws to us and it could get pretty

00:16:39.520 ugly i don't know i'm not sure if they touch like they are clawing back health uh transfers already a

00:16:46.400 little bit because uh a few dozen people in alberta dare pay out of their own pocket for health care but

00:16:52.720 they can't really tie the two together that would the canada health act says like under what

00:16:57.680 circumstances they can claw back and they're as stupid that that exists to begin with but i don't think

00:17:03.120 they can really go after the health and social transfers on this but they can withdraw the green

00:17:07.200 subsidies if we don't comply okay is that a serious threat like why should albertans care if albert if

00:17:14.720 the ottawa stops giving us back some of our money to build solar panels if you're going to put a

00:17:19.840 moratorium on development for these things probably not at least not for the six months but this is if

00:17:26.160 there was any appetite to actually settle as opposed to just grind alberta then this business of allowing

00:17:35.200 carbon credits for natural gas that's exported to be credited against alberta's

00:17:44.160 carbon dioxide emissions that is the door that could be opened

00:17:49.200 so corey you talked about smith trying thinking maybe she can just wait out

00:17:54.640 trudeau and gilbo uh poly of government i think would be highly unlikely to first of all want to

00:18:01.520 impose this to begin with and also second to so nakedly intrude into what is at least according

00:18:07.840 to the constitution crystal clear provincial jurisdiction regardless of how trudeau supreme court might rule

00:18:14.160 um what's the danger of waiting out because a lot of times you know bureaucrats will try to wait

00:18:20.320 out a minister they don't like or uh provinces without feds they don't like um i mean it's the

00:18:27.040 investment chill who's going to build a gas-fired plant alberta's got the only deregulated industry

00:18:32.480 in canada actually with private operators building that infrastructure and putting into the grid and

00:18:37.840 those have lives we need to keep building new ones and turning them over but when it's in the air

00:18:42.400 i mean part of gilbo's policy talked about what we will allow the plant eventually to

00:18:46.480 generate uh as like a backup for 420 hours a year or something like nobody nobody's going to invest

00:18:53.760 in that and when everything's in limbo if it's in limbo for two years those companies aren't going to

00:18:58.720 be committing those dollars to that sort of generation infrastructure so not only would the solar and

00:19:03.840 wind not be getting built i suspect uh gas-fired plants and and other conventional energy products

00:19:09.120 projects are all kind of being on hold as well and that could leave us with a real bad energy deficit

00:19:13.920 uh let's maybe let's talk about the political danger of trying to wait out trudeau and gilbo

00:19:22.240 there's no guarantee that pier polio is going to be prime minister in two years

00:19:26.640 uh we've had several you know jason kenney tried to wait out justin trudeau justin trudeau waited out

00:19:33.200 him uh although i think he got something more difficult even than kenny but the idea of waiting out the

00:19:40.480 federal government sometimes it works out but yeah it hasn't worked hasn't worked for quite a while

00:19:47.040 so far uh what would be the political danger and smith just trying to wait trudeau out on this that

00:19:53.360 you know we just get further behind the eight ball if trudeau manages to hang on the power well it would

00:19:57.760 be the political risk is exactly what you just said if uh if he manages to win the next election there

00:20:04.800 goes that strategy but there's actually a further political risk even if uh one of our wins and that

00:20:11.840 is uh this policy is very popular in alberta but it's not very popular back in eastern canada

00:20:18.880 uh they don't particularly care about our uh our energy needs and they don't particularly

00:20:24.400 like oil it would seem they'll drive cars but they don't particularly like the uh like oil and they've

00:20:29.920 got nuclear so they can afford to be very they can afford to be very uh holier than thou about it so

00:20:35.280 true but what will pierre have to give away in quebec to get elected perhaps but trudeau has nothing to

00:20:45.280 lose by angering albertans like it's also true there's virtually nothing to lose he's got like what two

00:20:52.080 two seats none in saskatchewan yeah two seats in alberta zero in saskatchewan and the two seats they have

00:20:58.160 are very urban you know not even very center in alberta they're on the left side um trudeau has

00:21:05.920 nothing to lose politically in alberta poliev does now not that conservatives federally have a very

00:21:11.120 good record of helping alberta out but the expectation of conservatives of their federal

00:21:16.960 representatives from alberta tends to be i think screw us less bad than the other guys you don't

00:21:22.800 necessarily need to help us out but you need to leave us alone don't make anything worse than it is so

00:21:28.400 i don't know i yeah poliev is going to have a lot of pressure to try and buy off votes in the east

00:21:33.600 but on something this direct to alberta i have a feeling that he he probably comes down on the side

00:21:42.080 of i don't know no blackouts and brownouts i think he probably would and some of the atlantic

00:21:48.080 let's let's not forget some of the atlantic provinces uh two of the atlantic problems i think

00:21:52.000 the brans are going to have a scholarship yeah they're they're both fighting this as well

00:21:56.800 okay um speaking of waiting out rachel notley um so rachel notley uh obviously lost the last election

00:22:09.760 i think she's done five terms now as an mla so she's uh she's the dean of the of the alberta legislature

00:22:15.840 which is the longest serving mla uh led the party now through three elections as leader first time

00:22:22.640 winning as premier losing in 2019 then to jason kenney losing in 2023 to danielle smith um speculation

00:22:30.400 on her retirement began the minute the election was called in uh the end of may there it's unusual

00:22:38.880 for a leader who's been defeated in an election to contest another um she's now contested two losing

00:22:48.080 elections um so the fact that she stuck around for 2023 was surprising to a lot but she has

00:22:54.480 the very solid respect of her party um but i uh you know i started hearing some little whispers and i

00:23:02.800 decided i'm gonna i've got one pretty good source a very high-ranking source in the ndp and so i i call

00:23:08.560 the source up there and say here's what i'm hearing i hear rachel notley is going to retire this fall

00:23:14.480 what can you tell me so let's call this source roger so i i put out a column on this uh yesterday uh

00:23:22.320 so this person is not saying this is a hundred percent what's happening but this is kind of the

00:23:26.320 plan around the office so after the uh the election at the nma the contracts for most of notley's staff

00:23:35.280 were set to expire in october and november so that they would expire when she retires the idea is that

00:23:42.160 rachel notley will retire at that time uh as the leader of the party not as an mla but retire as leader

00:23:48.480 of the party to allow an interim leader to take over and that interim leader will see the party

00:23:52.720 through the leadership race that's um i know this is not set in stone but it is a senior sourcing that

00:24:00.160 is that's the way things are going she wants to do that largely so that she can avoid even the appearance

00:24:05.440 of favoritism or interference in the leadership race um but nigel it's a bit unusual though for

00:24:14.880 a leader who's not being kicked out the door um immediately after losing power uh no rachel

00:24:22.000 steve harper wasn't kicked out the door the party still liked him he could have stayed on

00:24:26.080 as they selected his uh successor but he just wanted to be done he had just lost the election

00:24:30.480 he was leaving rachel notley though stuck around for a full four years after losing an election

00:24:35.120 this is a bit of an odd way to do it though for a leader who's not being chased out with their tail

00:24:39.120 between their legs by their own party to the point about rachel notley staying on for four years

00:24:46.000 even after she lost she was still the best they had i would say that's probably the case today and

00:24:54.240 there aren't plenty of precedents if you go back a a few decades for people just staying mackenzie king

00:25:02.800 laurier johnny you're going back over a century for this you're dating yourself if you say that's a few

00:25:10.160 decades mackenzie king was not not a hundred years mackenzie he's closer to a hundred years than a few

00:25:16.560 decades never mind the fact is there is there is precedence for people staying on if you want a more

00:25:23.120 current one another one who stayed on a little too long joe clark but you know it's uh there's not

00:25:28.240 many modern examples now you generally you get one election yeah if you don't win you get kicked out

00:25:33.680 actually in alberta if you win and you're conservative you still get kicked out she but

00:25:38.080 she but she anyway broke that trend and could continue to break it if she wanted yeah there's

00:25:43.920 a great deal of affection within that party this place does it might be and wrong in the head as

00:25:49.840 they most certainly are to a single person nevertheless they like rachel motley and she

00:25:55.840 was by no means the the worst that they could have offered to the voters and if you are correct and if

00:26:03.200 your sources uh is uh informed you accurately we shall see within a few months just what the ndp

00:26:11.840 can produce in the absence of rachel motley there's nothing that it's it's only going to improve

00:26:19.200 danielle smith's chances the next time around uh cory this is on it's not unprecedented but generally um

00:26:28.000 even leaders being shown the door by their party sometimes manage to stick around jason kenney

00:26:34.560 turfed by his own you know they rigged in a rigged leadership race he got 51 clearly couldn't stay had to

00:26:40.240 step down but he didn't step down for an interim leader they had quite a fight in the caucus over

00:26:44.800 that many wanted him gone have an interim leader and interim premier uh but allison redford they had

00:26:50.800 an interim premier uh dave hancock but interim leaders are even more common in opposition because

00:26:56.800 you don't have to turn over the whole machinery of government it's just really the party caucus and

00:27:01.120 some party apparatus a little bit uh so opposition parties that have lost an election and the leader is

00:27:06.880 going all the vast majority of the time at least in modern canadian political history you get an

00:27:14.080 interim leader uh but popular ones she did lose an election but i mean for the ndp she did pretty damn

00:27:20.720 good for the ndp uh is this surprising to you that uh at least according to the source in the ndp that

00:27:27.920 she is likely to outright step down as a leader and have uh have an interim leader come in uh as her

00:27:34.080 replacements elected i can believe it it makes a lot of sense i mean rachel notley's really done

00:27:39.280 her time as you said she's been in the legislature for a great deal of time it was a very small rump

00:27:44.560 of a party when she got on board but she was actually it was uh two ml she was one of two mla's

00:27:49.600 and rash panu or yeah no her and uh brian mason brian mason yes with the pam barrett yeah so

00:27:56.240 i mean a two-party caucus up to forming government uh putting a you know a term in as such and then

00:28:02.320 another term as leader of the opposition nobody can say she didn't put in everything she could

00:28:07.840 and didn't make a mark on the province uh she had you know a career to be celebrated as far as those

00:28:13.760 who like the ndp go uh anything longer at this point is sort of dragging it out i mean the only hope she

00:28:20.880 could have of winning the next election if she stayed would be which is possible i guess if the

00:28:26.880 the ucp implodes if the circumstances are the same after four more years the outcome is going to be the

00:28:31.600 same and does she really want to put in now four more years as an opposition leader she just she's

00:28:36.240 tired uh but she loves her party a lot of people love her as she said she's not going out with a

00:28:40.800 strong foot on her butt though i suspect there's some ambitious folks in the party must be sort of

00:28:44.640 starting to say you know it's time for us to get a a kick at the cat at the top job there uh it would

00:28:49.760 be just a well-timed spot to to step aside with grace and and uh let somebody new take over the reigns so i

00:28:57.200 i think it's a very believable scenario that she's going out this fall yeah uh well let's kind of

00:29:03.200 talk about what life in the ndp might look like after her um so my source here uh you know most of

00:29:11.120 this part here is less juicy because a lot of it is obvious although some may say something is less

00:29:16.320 obvious the the would-be pretenders to the crown are that are kind of quietly organizing very gently no

00:29:23.440 one wants to organize too aggressively openly because the leader is within any peace circles

00:29:28.720 rachel not only's beloved no one wants to be seen as bum rushing her out the door that's not that's

00:29:33.600 not what's happening uh but names that are kind of quietly getting ready at least kathleen ganley

00:29:40.720 from calgary uh infant severe calgary uh shannon phillips lethbridge and then um ryan hoyle

00:29:51.200 uh and sarah hoffman from uh from edmonton and court ellingson who i think is calgary um so some of

00:30:00.320 those names are new newly elected people that are supposed to be kind of bigger names in the ndp

00:30:05.040 maybe we'll learn more about them over the next little bit but they're they're pretty quiet now

00:30:10.800 they're just sitting on the opposition benches and haven't they haven't even had a question period

00:30:13.920 to try and make a mark yet these poor poor people just elected they've like gone into the legislature for

00:30:18.560 a day to elect a speaker and uh be sworn in and didn't even get to have a single day of combat on

00:30:26.160 on the floor of the legislature um uh i bet if i'm betting for the ndp i mean there's gonna be different

00:30:33.680 factions there's gonna be a more ideological faction there's gonna hard left and then there'll be a more

00:30:38.240 pragmatic one that says like what we really want to be government and it's alberta so you can't go full

00:30:42.400 ndp and then they'll be the party is no longer edmonton it's definitely edmonton dominant but

00:30:50.240 it would be unfair to say it's just an edmonton party now they've got half the seats in calgary

00:30:54.880 um how much emphasis uh if you're an ndp strategist cory cory's an ndp strategist and uh

00:31:03.280 and they're they're uh they're coming to you for advice how much emphasis do you think they should put

00:31:08.240 i'm getting a leader who's not from edmonton quite a bit if they want to win i mean it's not a big

00:31:14.080 pickup but they've got edmonton in the bag it's it's the same circumstances i said you know with

00:31:19.360 with the last election they need to grab a handful more calgary seats they're not going to make rural

00:31:24.640 inroads but if they get a moderate leader from calgary it is is critical to their chances if they

00:31:31.360 really do want to form government to end the next election cycle i mean it's not impossible with

00:31:36.080 somebody from edmonton but they would greatly reduce their odds they need somebody to really

00:31:39.840 build the party here i think that um but the split that we need to worry about is between what you

00:31:50.320 referred to as the ideological which i would actually call the nut house part of the ndp the og ndp and the

00:31:59.920 the blue collar ndp which talks the talk but actually is all about what's in the in the salary packet bc has

00:32:09.920 the same split in its ndp between the industrial sector for which mr horgan was a was a spokesman

00:32:20.960 and for the other ones who are just crazy on the environment crazy on the woke stuff

00:32:28.320 uh crazy from our perspective i guess i should say uh and and have quite unrealistic view of how

00:32:36.400 money is made bills are paid and those are the people who can drive a province into the

00:32:43.440 into recession and into unemployment quicker than anybody we have both factions in the alberta ndp

00:32:52.160 and well i quite agree with you there's that if they were smart they would be looking for somebody

00:32:57.600 outside edmonton i wouldn't put a person to find a doctrinaire socialist unconnected to reality and let

00:33:06.320 them lead the party and it wouldn't matter whether they came from edmonton or kilbury i think there's a

00:33:10.480 few ways we could split the party i mean obviously there's always geographic differences yep the

00:33:14.720 conservatives have the same um but splitting up the ndp i i think i'd try to put them maybe into more of

00:33:20.720 rough thirds there's the union activist core which is the old ndp um even though a lot of unionized

00:33:29.920 non-government unionized workers do not vote ndp jill mcgowan for premier yeah yeah exactly uh for

00:33:37.920 transport manager um uh if they take that clip and play it out of context i'll just say

00:33:47.360 yeah uh but you've got the kind of the union faction um the organized union faction not

00:33:53.680 necessarily union workers but union organized organizers and whatnot you've got the kind of

00:33:58.960 eco green faction and then uh and this becoming increasingly this last bit i think is an increasingly

00:34:06.400 huge part of the left it's always been but more importantly in the ndp i think made a lot of progress

00:34:11.920 on it the last election particularly calgary which is urban professionals people who have higher incomes

00:34:19.520 higher levels of formal education um that uh you know having come through the university worlds

00:34:27.920 dealing with kind of higher more polite society feel obliged to be a bit maybe a bit more woke but then

00:34:35.120 kind of wokeness runs at least runs very strongly through both kind of the eco green side and that

00:34:40.400 urban professional side less so through the union side the union actual unionized workers tend to be

00:34:45.600 among the less least woke people i've ever met short of farmers um but yeah i think you've kind of got

00:34:51.840 those those are kind of the broad factions i'd draw but there's also a bunch of smaller ones in between

00:34:56.800 there's a bunch to mix i mean yeah the champagne socialists are kind of what you're describing in that

00:35:01.040 sense and uh uh but those are also the ones more inclined to be pragmatists so if you get two of

00:35:07.600 those three acting together that'll form the flavor of the party if they can get the trade unions in

00:35:12.720 that uh you know pragmatic uh but left-leaning group of professionals you can get a type of party get

00:35:19.440 elected as nigel said though if the the looney core at the base gets somebody in there as leader and

00:35:25.520 that moves in that direction though that's fine but they're going to be in opposition for quite some time

00:35:29.840 yeah i think shannon phillips is someone to watch because uh you know the ndp

00:35:36.000 like all parties but the ndp especially in alberta they're very suspicious of newcomers

00:35:42.400 um you know have you paid your dues are you just here because the ndp is a big deal because you know

00:35:47.440 after 2015 there was a bunch of liberals who came in and a lot of the pragmatists in the ndp were like

00:35:52.400 ah great we're absorbing the liberals come on in to the big left aggressive tent but some of the

00:35:58.880 new democrats were like we were enemies yesterday we the ndp and liberals were blood enemies for a

00:36:05.440 long time you screwed us in 93 uh blah blah blah blah blah blah um how welcoming are they going to be to

00:36:13.200 an outsider let's say like say nenshi we view nenshi as this lefty moderate lefty not totally loony but

00:36:22.720 kind of out there and blah blah blah a lot of new democrats i talk to they don't view him as the dream

00:36:29.680 candidate that we might think they think ah well he hasn't been a party member he hasn't paid his dues

00:36:35.520 he has not sold the socialist worker on the street corner copy by copy to passers-by exactly but

00:36:42.400 someone who does have that stuff and is not from edmonton is shannon phillips she's a true believer

00:36:48.720 she used to work with uh was it mike hudema oh the crazy green yeah crazy greenpeace extremist um

00:36:57.600 and while she's really tough on him she's actually fairly pleasant and personable believe it or not

00:37:02.720 just in person she's actually fairly nice um but she's got you know the base the base of the ndp

00:37:10.480 likes her she's hardcore left green but she's not from edmonton she's from lethbridge and lethbridge

00:37:18.000 on paper i mean that's more country than calgary well and that's it and they've got a lot of questions

00:37:24.240 to answer and that's why the scenario you're talking about it's going to be an important leadership

00:37:28.240 race if and when it happens and if it doesn't have the former leader in there stirring with it or

00:37:33.600 meddling with it because the party's going to have to find itself they have a few paths to take and

00:37:38.560 then a few roots and not lee is a smart pragmatist so if she cares for the party yeah she'll step aside

00:37:44.800 and let them i think our next office pool is going to be for the ndp leadership i'm going to put my early

00:37:50.080 bet right now without knowing who the candidates are my early bet so like i should get the best odds

00:37:56.080 for it because i don't even know who's going to be playing on the field but i'm putting shannon

00:38:00.320 phillips as next leader of the ndp you heard it here first speaking of crazy green eco nut stuff

00:38:10.320 uh actually i'm coming right back to gil uh gilbo gilbo whatever we call him um ottawa's ban on usable

00:38:17.680 compostable bags uh so i was saying at the top of the show those of you outside of alberta might not

00:38:23.920 even know what we're talking about it's an alberta company calgary based company that did this

00:38:27.840 ottawa says you know we're gonna ban single use plastics including plastic bags at the grocery

00:38:31.760 store that we love and uh this calgary company comes up with compostable bags that feel like like

00:38:40.640 they're almost like they tear a little easier than the plastic bags but they're they're decent even me

00:38:47.520 i was like yeah i'm okay with these this is fine but they must be too good because ottawa is banning

00:38:55.280 them with plastic bags i haven't known what to call these i finally came up with a name for them today

00:39:01.440 because compostable plastic bags well they're not plastic they just they're just almost as good as

00:39:06.480 plastic we call them just compostable bags well there's a lot of compostable bags including the

00:39:11.120 crappy paper bags that we used to be told to stop using because we're killing trees

00:39:15.040 these um so i'm just calling them usable plastic bay uh usable compostable bags or maybe we'll call

00:39:22.800 them non-crap compostable bags either way ottawa is banning them and they haven't really given much

00:39:31.120 of a reason why saying no exceptions to plastic-like products and stop with you corey we were saying

00:39:41.520 before we were talking uh off the air um ottawa could have claimed this is a great victory actually

00:39:48.560 because they could have claimed and i would have had to grit my teeth and grudgingly admit they were

00:39:53.680 right that by saying we're banning plastic bags at the grocery store they forced and spurred innovation

00:40:00.560 that created this incredible new product that has the potential to be a global leader in reducing single

00:40:07.360 use plastics whole new canadian product yeah ottawa could have said we did that because because our

00:40:12.560 plastic bags ban we forced the innovation that created this product instead they've taken the

00:40:18.320 opposite approach and said no stop your damned innovation those plastic bags are too convenient

00:40:24.560 and enjoyable for a shopper's experience we're banning them too what i legitimately i'm not just

00:40:33.200 playing flummoxed i'm not just playing mr magoo i don't understand why they're banning it can you

00:40:41.600 part of it you gotta do your best mind meld you gotta go back to why they're banning plastic bags in

00:40:45.840 the first place as a percentage of landfill use or actual pollution those thin microplastic bags next to

00:40:52.720 nothing they were not a large part of the problem the problem with them is they're visible when they

00:40:58.160 get loose they get stuck on the fence they go tumbling across the highway they look ugly you see

00:41:03.760 them that's what's this is virtue signaling this isn't about fixing the environment this is a control

00:41:09.120 we all hate seeing them when they get stuck on fence or a tree it is ugly even the compostable ones

00:41:14.400 will stick on the tree and get stuck on the fence so the next year they'll have degraded and be gone

00:41:18.960 yeah but they'll have been seen so i think that's part of it the damage they've done as you said

00:41:23.200 this could have been such a win i mean it was great they spurred innovation now they've done the

00:41:26.480 opposite they've said don't even try we'll just keep moving the goal posts just ban whatever we're

00:41:32.400 banning and and there's no substitute it's it's ridiculous and it's really exposed them for the

00:41:37.120 intractable ideologues they are you can't reason with them um nigel i

00:41:45.920 i'm just i lost words i don't know why they're doing this i don't get it is it ideology or is it just

00:41:53.440 they i try to assume the best of motives and people even if they're bad motives i try to assume

00:42:00.000 be the most charitable i can but i've had a hard time empathizing in this case about what they're

00:42:05.120 thinking the best i can come up with and i'm probably wrong the best i can come up with is that

00:42:12.240 kind of like covet even when we knew the masks did nothing the government thought it was important that we

00:42:17.280 wear masks because it was a sign of social solidarity that you're demonstrating that we're

00:42:22.960 in this together it's now a social activity and that banning plastic bags even compostable bags that

00:42:30.240 just have the convenience and feel of plastic it'll make us feel better about ourselves because it's such

00:42:36.480 a pain in the ass to carry the groceries to and from the truck anymore from the grocery store into the

00:42:40.880 house that this is an exercise in social solidarity that's the best i can come up with but even that

00:42:47.840 doesn't make a lot of sense well you know it's not really an exercise in social solidarity when you don't

00:42:54.240 have the the product in your hand um i have to ask i wonder whether these things would be banned if

00:43:04.560 they were being made in stephen gilbo's writing that is the question they happen to be made in calgary

00:43:11.280 which is an issue i noticed that but i will also say that for once this is an aspect of politics that

00:43:18.080 i can afford to ignore my wife takes bags with her she takes the you know these plastic ones that they've

00:43:26.640 been giving away they've used them three dozen times you take a shopping bag i don't really care whether

00:43:33.760 whether they offer me paper bags or or plastic bags she's got a bag with her and a problem maybe

00:43:43.200 it's not such a big deal i can't do it you can't do it no i can't do it for two reasons one i'm way

00:43:49.280 too forgetful and disorganized two because audible wants me to do it i can't do it so another intractable

00:43:57.200 idea so like even even if did you hear him say he was organized yeah i have managed to by sheer force

00:44:06.800 of will i've made myself organized to run this company but it takes me to my breaking point every

00:44:12.960 day i've only got so many bits of ram in my computer and taking cloth reusable bags to the grocery store

00:44:20.960 is just it's beyond my capacity can't do it uh well we're gonna have to wrap up there we're out of

00:44:26.320 time but i want to leave all of you listeners viewers a little idea for a little little micro

00:44:35.360 anarchy a little sliver of civil disobedience i believe in recycling although i know there's a bunch

00:44:41.840 of issues mostly just gets packaged and sits in a warehouse somewhere until we can ship it overseas to get

00:44:46.800 recycled in a decade or two but in general i believe in recycling i believe in common i've been

00:44:52.800 composting long before some damn city politicians made me pay a bunch of money for a green cart in

00:44:58.160 front of my house i've been recycling for generations like i just grew up sorry i've been

00:45:02.960 composting for generations free dirt who doesn't like free dirt for your garden i believe in these

00:45:08.640 things but i'm more or less stopping now take until ottawa reverses its ban on good compostable grocery

00:45:20.000 bags i encourage you on garbage day take some compost put it in the garbage take some recycle

00:45:29.120 put it in the garbage put a little garbage over top so the garbage man and the garbage bureaucrats can't

00:45:34.320 see it because they're not going to rifle through it to the bottom start putting your compost and your

00:45:38.240 recycle in the garbage can temporarily hopefully until ottawa reverses this madness uh i still

00:45:49.840 take paper straws and then i put them straight no but i put them in the garbage when i go to a restaurant

00:45:54.800 i bring my plastic straw with me and uh yeah i know i sell them insane i probably am a little crazy

00:46:00.480 but i bring a plastic straw with me but i still accept the paper straw so i can put it in the garbage

00:46:05.120 little little micro acts of anarchy flag of revolution is hoisted aloft yes don't tread on

00:46:11.280 me a bold act of revolution here come and get it my garbage come and take it

00:46:19.440 okay well uh that's enough for now uh before we let you go though if you're not yet a member of the

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00:47:00.560 today and god bless

00:47:19.040 you

Western Standard - August 22, 2023

The Pipeline： Alberta - West Energy War

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