THE PIPELINE： All Madness on the Western Front
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Summary
In this episode of the Western Standard's new podcast, the team talks about why 50% plus 1 is not a clear majority for Alberta and Quebec in a referendum on independence from Canada. Plus, a look at why a simple majority isn't enough.
Transcript
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Good day and welcome. I'm Derek Phil LeBrant, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're
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watching the pipeline today's may 27th 2026 i've got most of the usual crowd here uh we've got
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uh what should said a news editor dave naylor good day senior alberta columnist cory morgan
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and filling in haphazardly for nigel hannaford is one of our reporters here uh dave veitsch nick
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hey everybody or dent dent you got the night you got that name at the morning newsroom meeting here
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from a question from one of our reporters in Ottawa.
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rocks the canoe hey hey well you can't see cory morgan face plumbing here uh come on i'm getting
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that face palm again there hey oh it loses the authenticity yeah glob rocks the canoe come on
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terrible that's a that's a good one that's a good one i think i'm all tanned i've been working in
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sent for a few days i think i uh yeah okay um so we're gonna start um dave our uh our parliament
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hill reporter uh wally tam tam uh asked mark carney a question uh on parliament hill i think
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just yesterday um you know because there's a lot of question around uh the clarity act you know a
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clear majority to a clear question you know we've all heard that a million times before it's no
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longer a clear question and there's some debate around why that is now uh the smith government
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says well it's these silly injunctions requiring that indigenous consultation has to happen before
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you even ask the question which seems absurd and they're saying well we just don't want yet another
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injunction we want a question on the ballot people want this question answered uh no one more than
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thomas lukasik um and so we're going with this because this kind of preempts that kind of
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injunction. Others are saying that, no, that only those injunctions only applied to citizens
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initiative referended, not to government ones. It's kind of a legal argument at this point.
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You can get into that maybe a bit, but either way, it's not a clear question now.
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Traditionally, I always thought a clear majority was more than half, 50% plus one.
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It's extremely rare in Canada that a politician is, at least a provincial or federal government,
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puts the question to Mark Carney, and Mark Carney's
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separate a province, whether it be Quebec or Alberta, it would seem to me, I don't know.
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I would think for it, you would need a stronger vote to be able to move forward with independence than just 50% plus one.
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The problem is, it then becomes anything other than 50% plus one, it then becomes arbitrary.
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What then is a clear majority if it's not 50% plus 1%?
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Funny enough, he at the Liberal Party argued that that Quebec by-election was separated by a single vote.
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And in that case, it certainly was not because there was all sorts of problems with the balloting so that there was no actual margin there.
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I would agree that if the literal difference was a single vote, and, you know, there's always a little bit of discrepancy.
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You have to have some margin of error for discrepancy in elections.
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You know, some people voted who shouldn't have voted.
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Some people were sent to the wrong balloting station.
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I agree you have to have a little margin of error, so not a single vote, but more or less the principle.
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Corey, it also raises the interesting question, because this is not a simple yes-no referendum,
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It's should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should Alberta begin the consultation process
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towards a binding referendum and independence, so more or less.
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So that raises the question then, if 50% plus one is not a clear majority,
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but it's not a yes or no question what if the federalists don't get a clear majority what if
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it's 50 plus one to stay in canada what's good for the goose is good for the gander well pretty
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much i mean it's it's hard to define this whole thing i mean the bottom line is though i gotta
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admit the ones trying to change the status quo should perhaps have a bit if there's going to
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be a different bar uh erring on the side of that if it literally was an election of 50 only one
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And then maybe you're going to err towards what was there.
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But what I find interesting is how quickly they forgot.
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Because there was an exchange in the House of Commons only on May 8th with a parliamentary secretary for whatever.
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And she responded twice, outright saying 50% plus one is the bar.
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Then it was that bloc member kept pushing that to get a distinctive answer.
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And both times literally outright said 50% plus one.
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So Carney is in conflict with his own parliamentary secretary on this one.
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And that's the thing to remember is the bloc pushing all this, not Paulie because he's a federalist.
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But if you guys are saying that, you understand that you're telling Quebec that that's where the bar is going to be too.
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And they're not going to take that very well or lightly.
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So there's much more to this than just these things that Carney's putting out.
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They're not afraid of Alberta, but you can certainly inspire a province that's on the brink of electing a pretty Quebec law government to, you know, elect them with a stronger mandate.
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It just adds to the confusion of the whole thing, right?
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And then now we don't know what a victory would mean.
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Well, we'll get a little further in the muckiness of the question in a moment, but I want to talk about the bloc.
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This is one of these times where I'm really jealous of Quebecers, and we do this to ourselves.
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I mean, the Conservatives, you know, are the super dominant party in Alberta because they tend to represent, they're at least the least hostile to Western aspirations.
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Actually, Conservative MPs are obviously pro-Alberta, but they're shackled by the national organization of the party from truly representing Alberta in many ways because they're trying to win votes in Quebec, in Ontario, in the BC Lower Mainland, in the Atlantic.
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you know that's why you're you will never see a conservative MP stand up and say why
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do we have twice the population of all four Atlantic provinces but uh but half the senators
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of just uh Nova Scotia you would never see that because then you're gonna get in trouble
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and lose uh voters in Nova Scotia so that's the kind of one of the advantages the bloc has
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but there was uh I don't know her name but some bloc lady uh MP was going on about this
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again, we don't necessarily agree what is clear majority
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Again, we'll talk about that, the two-stage referendum thing.
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But then after, it's like, yeah, then you need the unanimous consent of all the other provinces and everything.
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But the Bloc MP was going on about how this is a matter for people in that province to decide.
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The government of that province decides the question, and the people decide the answer,
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and it's not for Ottawa to then decide if it was legitimate or not.
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And the Bloc has been hammering on about that hard.
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So this is making huge waves in Quebec right now.
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that's why you got the name, because we already have two Daves
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you know, um, Kearney's, uh, comments about the whole 50 plus one were out of line.
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And basically it was just saying that, um, Daniel Smith was just doing her job as premier
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But I really don't know when we talk about a clear majority or like what the question
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even is in terms of like the history of the Quebec referendums and this one, like they
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But I mean, it seems to me just odd in general, how we couldn't just put a question on Quebec
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referendum or an Alberta referendum that basically just says, would you like Alberta to stay
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part of canada yes no how difficult is that really basically well no well that question i think
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still would accomplish even less because that's just saying i'd like to break up with you that's
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not saying i'm going to break up with you or we are breaking up that's just saying i i don't i'm
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not happy with our relationship yeah so there's no point there's no point in that i think it's
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there's a point in having an a b question i like the idea of a b rather than yes no
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i guess but i mean it's kind of but yes but what you do is you'd phrase it as should alberta remain
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a part of canada province of canada or should it become an independent country not should we then
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begin the process of it yeah so uh so we'll get into this question so you know as i said
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um the smith government is arguing that hey look this will just get another injunction against it
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because we haven't done this bullshit pre-consultation stuff uh and we don't want yet
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another injunction so that's why we're going
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to Citizens Initiative they were not applying to a
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I think the judge's decision is wrong and I don't think
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consultation should apply to these questions, whether it's petitioned or set by the premier.
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But I think when you see precedent in a court saying that principle needs to be applied to
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the petitioning, I don't see how another judge would come around and say it's become any different
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because the government has put the question forth. They're going to apply the same bloody thing and
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say, now it's been set, we need some sort of bar of consultation. And until they feel satisfied,
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they've seen a process or something, they'll throw another injunction on it. So I'm inclined
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to believe the premier here i in that i think it's an undemocratic wrong decision but we're
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going to be stuck with these undemocratic wrong decisions until either it finishes a full appeal
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or some sort of who's going to take the new question to court
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well the court first nations yeah possibly probably yeah and what and what happens if they
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yeah so the another judge shuts down this question and does that kill the referendum
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entirely? Well, I guess presumably what could happen, if you go through the appeals and all
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that, either gets thrown out or part of it, and I think that's part of why Smith phrased that
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question as it is, is beginning the process then to do it within the confines of the law,
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you would start something you would call a consultation process. You'd say, look,
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we're looking to hold the question. Here's a bunch of public meetings with a bunch of chiefs. Here's
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some Tim Hortons and donuts. Let's get together, talk it all out, express what we want to do. And
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And we know it'll never be enough, but at least...
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You said on your show, it would never be enough.
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But at least you could go to a judge and say, well, look, we tried.
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We did communicate with leaders and legal scholars.
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You can always find some to stay on every side who would say, this doesn't impact treaty rights.
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That's the thing we're certainly seeing right now, for sure.
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There's no easy way to get a yes or no question on that ballot now.
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Now, for the, but if you're going to, if this bizarre consultation before you even ask the question, if that was a thing that was going to be upheld in courts, and it would be crazy.
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And for all of you conservative Federalists who are happy that this happened, this is just applying the duty to consult, which in principle isn't a bad thing.
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It's actually a good thing that, you know, Indigenous groups should be consulted if it affects their treaty rights.
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yeah it's not consent it's not a veto but duty to consult in its earlier principles this was i
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think it's a good thing it's it's it's it's their natural right but um that was been that's been
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taken from things like pipelines and whatnot and now if the duty consult is now applied before you
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even consider to do something that means you can't even literally draft a pipe theoretically it would
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mean you couldn't uh present a proposal to a government to build a pipeline or to build a
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mine or drill an oil well without first consulting like you literally have to put the wagon before
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the horse here so be careful with what you're cheering for this kind of court precedent um
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but i don't know where i stand on this issue i'm still developing my thoughts around this
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two tiers i think it is absurd to have a referendum to have a referendum but i'm gonna
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to put something forward here, which maybe strengthens the case for it. Remember, Quebec
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has had two sort of independence referendums. The second one, which, you know, we remember better,
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1995, talked about sovereignty association, and it was muddled. The 1981, put forward by the
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René Levesque PQ government, was even more muddled. Let me read this for you, if everyone could just
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bear with me for a moment the government of quebec this is a weird okay the government of
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quebec has made public its proposal to negotiate a new agreement with the rest of canada based on
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the equality of nations this agreement would enable quebec to acquire the exclusive power to
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to make its laws levy its taxes and establish relations abroad in other words sovereignty
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At the same time, to maintain with Canada an economic association including common currency,
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any change in political status resulting from these negotiations
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will only be implemented with popular approval through another referendum.
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On these terms, do you give the government of Quebec
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the mandate to negotiate the proposed agreement between Quebec and Canada?
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So Quebec had a referendum to have a referendum.
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It kind of fleshed out what they want as the end goal, which was independence, but still an economic union, sort of, but quasi-independent, sort of.
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That's what they use, the term sovereignty, not independence.
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And in all honesty, you know, there would have to be an enabling at the end.
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So say we just had a straight referendum on independence, and then we go through a Clarity Act process, and there's different ways that that could end.
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But ultimately, there would now then need to be some kind of instrument declaring independence.
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So it could even, even a straight independence referendum that was successful this October could theoretically result in another referendum anyway.
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This might just be in a weird way, a way of, it's just a softer way of maybe putting it.
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Because even Quebec had a two-stage, it was, that's a referendum to hold a referendum, and they lost that.
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I'm sorry, doesn't it seem to me that now, they've got all the things they were asking for?
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They don't have, they have caused by embassies and not, but they don't have.
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They've got immigration control, which is a huge one.
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Well you're talking about that's the knife-in-a-throats
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they want there but they don't have their own, you know, there's no
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countries that they're interested in those embassies, etc.
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Actually they get better because they get to keep all the
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they got better than what they were really asking
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practically speaking, it may have been inevitable
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trying to make excuses for what they're doing here because I
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but it actually kind of might line up with what the reality
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I mean, there's been a lot of independence talk for a year now,
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And the bar where the support for solid independence hasn't budged.
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It's been sitting around that 30-ish percent zone,
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despite all the ground organization, despite all the debate,
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The winning conditions, I mean, Quebec's always talked about that.
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They're not having another one until they get the winning conditions.
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and this question might be more winnable than a binary up and down like they were talking about
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maybe we weren't in a position anyways this could be a blessing in disguise
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campaign on this you can win a lot of people on the fence who want to use it for leverage who
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want to send a message because they know it's non-binding but you can start that process and
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mechanism and then yeah it might lead to another referendum that next referendum you're going to
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be a heck of a lot better prepared but that one would be the final one that would be the
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So the case I'm making is that constitutionally and in the reality of the politics is we probably would have two referendums anyway.
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It's kind of a dry run for the real thing then, really, in essence.
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I don't mean it as excuse making because it is all floppy and flimsy and it's weird.
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One of the weird things is unlike the Quebec independence movement, Alberta's Quebec independence movement has always been clear.
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We want a straight up or down independence or status quo.
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Whereas Quebec has always been, you know, they put a whole paragraph on a ballot, for God's sakes.
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And Canadians generally were rightfully contemptuous of these weird Quebec questions designed to try and get a better vote.
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But it's the federal courts that have said Alberta is not allowed to have a clear question.
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essentially Alberta's not allowed to comply with the
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of this debate has really come down to though is that
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we're fighting to whether or not we're even allowed to
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ask the damn question. You know that was never a question
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in Quebec. It was never questioned whether or not they could
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a lot of other things but what's happening right now
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I mean, we're even hearing now about the Indigenous guys are getting up to challenge this weird, mushy middle question we've got going on.
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Is it going to be allowed even to ever have that question asked and lose it or win it or not?
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You've got judicial activism that are now stopping the will of the people.
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I was just going to say, do you think that's just going to make more people angry and maybe get on the pro-independence side then?
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Because of the fact they won't even let you have a question?
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And I mean, it's really, there's lots of people theorizing on what happened, how we got here.
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My political theory on what Premier Smith was hoping to accomplish was building some leverage.
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I don't think she's a secessionist. I don't think she ever was.
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But you get that question out there. You get that ball rolling.
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You let them petition for it. It wasn't her. It was the process.
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so we're disrespecting that process and then she would hope that it would come in with 25 or 30
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percent support in the fall and she's got a whole heck of a lot of leverage then to start twisting
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arms for pipelines for things where she can say look if you don't want that to turn to 50 the
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next time they get a chance we need this this this and this you know i suspect that's where
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she wanted to go but all that's kind of fallen apart yeah yeah um well this raises an interesting
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point here um most countries that have declared independence did not do so through referenda uh
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they normally did throw so through some form of a vote in a legislature uh singapore 1965 no
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referendum it was the parliament kosovo here's an interesting example the united states the
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continental congress they didn't have a referendum in the 13 colonies their delegates from this from
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the colonial uh 13 colony uh legislatures in uh sent to the continental congress they declared
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independence bangladesh rhodesia uh and then most of the so the soviet uh breakaway republics so
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lithuania latvia estonia moldovia kyrgyzstan uzbekistan dijikistan turkmanistan kazakhstan
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and russia itself they didn't have uh because technically russia separated from the soviet
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union they're like the last one to do it uh uh did actually no maybe belarus never did they
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really liked the soviet i think belarus maybe stuck around a bit tied to the hip yeah but uh
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they never had referenda and so this is raising the interesting prospect then that if they will
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not allow albertans to have a clear vote on a clear question on independence do we then default
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It has, but I mean, it's the precedent's been set in Canada
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Well, no, there's another route, which is a real dangerous one.
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want or suggest anybody do it. But I think, and I've said it before, the part of the reason that
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the FLQ vanished finally after murdering people and setting bombs is because a democratic route
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opened up because Rene Levesque said, we can do this through a referendum. We can do this
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peacefully. We can get out of the federation. And the extremists settled down or at least stopped
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that aspect of it. They stopped kidnapping and killing people. Exactly. And it never resurfaced
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again but if you suddenly start telling provinces like go back and alberta you can't even entertain
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the question they're you know when you're talking about millions of people unfortunately all takes
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is a handful of the real crazed extreme somebody might do something really stupid i i think there's
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a another level of irresponsibility in trying to shut down the ability to peacefully do this
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i know what you're saying with the european thing but that was sort of a it was a little
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different too because those countries were all already defined i mean they'd had some degree of
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independence and they kind of got sucked into the soviet block most of them had not some of them
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had been given like ukraine had never been independent except for a few months at the end
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of the first world war after the treaty of brest latovsk ukraine had never existed as an independent
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country there were people there but how you define ukraine and if it was fuzzy lines i mean
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it was still in poland or uh kazakhstan i mean a lot of the things that these were a lot of these
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had not been properly defined nation states on their own ever and i mean it's only been in the
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last hundred and some years where we have better defined what nation states are too i mean those
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borders were were mushy but i just think it's it's we're getting into dangerous turf if we take away
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the mechanism that we brought about yeah this is the same a democratic way to go because if you
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don't then i guess there are two other options one is a legislature declares it so which is
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the most common in the kind of the west and the free world and you know somewhat democratic world
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And then the other one is revolutionary, which nobody wants to go down.
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But if you close off those legitimate democratic mechanisms, that leaves out as the only one.
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He wants to vote in the legislature, even though he whiffle waffles and changes his mind.
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But he would be happy with a vote in the legislature.
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The legislature could vote to declare independence.
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If it was truly landing just in the laps of the legislature, though,
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the legislature needs a very strong mandate somehow from the people who have brought it in.
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That lends towards kind of what Jeff Raff and Mitch Sylvester are talking about.
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Well, we've got to take over the government if we want this to happen.
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Hey, you're the best-selling Canadian author on this stuff, right?
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on the amazon bestseller list so um i mean we all know the history uh the alberta premier's job
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especially as a conservative is the least secure job in canada no one no alberta oh sorry in canada
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yes i was gonna say the hezbollah guys they would have a bit more but you did say in canada are you
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saying that the alberta premier is the hezbollah of canada that's not what i'm saying that's what i
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So, no Alberta Conservative Premier has finished a single term since Ralph Klein in 2004.
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Our longest serving Premier has been Rachel Notley.
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Because she at least was elected and served out a term.
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since 2004 and ralph klein to finish term uh i think the money is still pretty good that she will
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but this is the first time where there's at least some small cracks and you know people have called
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for her at her last leadership review uh you know for people to vote against her they got annihilated
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she got like 93 she spiked the ball that was a dominating dominating review um but now that we've
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right now to our leadership? Well things are so volatile
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in this last couple of years I won't say anything
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one of the things those might have shown a little slipping in a recent poll but it might not be
00:30:44.180
a difference between smith and kenny smith's sitting pretty good in the polls yeah kenny was
00:30:48.340
kenny was lined up to have re-annihilated in a general election so a lot of the party loyal
00:30:53.540
at that point would be looking at well if i want to keep my job we've got to get rid of this and
00:30:57.540
we're not seeing that so much with smith so the the organization to try and take her i think is
00:31:02.900
serious and and uh they know how to do it and they've done it before so i mean it could cause
00:31:07.220
enough disruption even just to lead to the end of her term it has to be taken seriously but i don't
00:31:12.900
know if the existing circumstances are there to make it as possible as they may think it is because
00:31:18.980
there's not as many people fearing for their jobs as mlas and so on within her caucus right now as
00:31:23.540
there was in jason kenny's circumstance yeah and also with jason kenny uh there was kind of two
00:31:28.580
big things the media focus on one of the real things that took him out which was his uh you
00:31:33.540
From our perspective, overreaction and over-authoritarianism as it involved COVID.
00:31:41.620
But also, a lot of people were kind of the same people with the overlap of the Venn diagram here.
00:31:56.200
So that was a major motivating factor against him as well.
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I don't think Danielle is perceived as weak on Ottawa.
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Although, you know, she has been seen as cozy a bit with Carney over the MOU and whatnot.
00:32:07.660
And there's a lot of very fair and realistic skepticism about, you know, are we selling the farm about that?
00:32:16.340
But she hasn't generated a mass right-wing populist revolt against her the way Kenny did with COVID lockdowns and mandates.
00:32:26.360
Like there simply aren't hundreds of thousands of people who've been fired from their jobs because of something Daniel Smith did.
00:32:33.200
People who have been arrested for going to church.
00:32:39.600
But, you know, the independence movement is big.
00:32:42.440
It's it's I hate to say it's sort of organized, but I mean, it's no, it's it's it's herds of chicken.
00:32:55.100
but there's no there isn't that big groundswell of support of people who have been personally
00:33:00.420
harmed by her uh i don't know i'll put it to you this way cory is this really to get her out or is
00:33:08.320
this maybe to scare her into changing the question uh i just to disclose i spent my last weekend in
00:33:15.600
saskatchewan with mitch sylvester the two of us on uh speaking uh engagements you know we had
00:33:21.360
separate rooms, so our discussion was still only limited. But no, I think he's genuinely furious
00:33:27.580
enough that he wants the Premier replaced. The other principal in the Alberta Prosperity Project
00:33:34.420
has probably wanted Smith replaced for years, if you look at his past rhetoric. He has a particular
00:33:40.780
beef with the Premier. So they are serious. They really want her out. I think some who would be
00:33:48.460
supportive of them would just much prefer that she just changed that question and then they would
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00:33:52.120
back off like they could see this fine just give us that darn question and then we'll lay off so
00:33:56.460
they feel that that would be a route to go but how do you put the pressure on without starting the
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00:34:00.440
gears i guess they feel of uh you know bringing about an sgm something that's been been telling
00:34:07.800
is that this question's been out for a week now groups are getting going they're getting
00:34:12.400
organized they're campaigning and the alberta prosperity project which is now the primary
00:34:17.080
group again hasn't updated their website in four months like they they whatever they're doing it's
00:34:23.000
internal right now and uh yeah i think the problem is you've got a battle at the top between two
00:34:30.600
two gentlemen who have huge egos delusions of grandeur and they're headbutting each other all
00:34:37.560
the time and they're more concerned about what's going on in the circle around them
00:34:42.760
and they are getting their message out on on independence um so they they've got to figure
00:34:50.360
it out i mean you you talked about it on your show they haven't even updated their their website
00:34:54.840
there's no doesn't appear to be a clear leader in the group um they need to figure their stuff out
00:35:00.520
well yeah and i mean i understand if they're doing a bunch of uh internal battles or whatever going
00:35:04.360
on but at least i mean you got the resources i imagine you got a large group just just pay your
00:35:08.680
webmaster and just say throw a few press releases on this thing knock the dust off it let's put out
00:35:13.320
a couple of statements so i want to talk about two front war here um i mean even if again i
00:35:20.440
don't know legally is smith and company correct here that like this is just the best question
00:35:25.880
that we can get away with without another injunction stopping it or those saying no
00:35:30.920
that doesn't apply if the government just puts the question on i don't know um but launching
00:35:37.560
a two-front war here, where you're fighting a referendum
00:35:55.720
They're attacking it from multiple angles. You've got
00:36:01.640
which isn't even really a Federalist campaign. It's just a
00:36:05.520
But then you also got another kind of center left one with Thomas Lukasik.
00:36:08.720
And then you've got Jason Kenney's group with some other kind of conservative federalists.
00:36:14.960
And then there's just kind of this hodgepodge on the Alberta nationalist side.
00:36:23.920
The best polls are 35, 38 percent is the very, very best polls we've ever seen.
00:36:31.760
So you're already on a huge uphill climb to win this thing.
00:36:35.520
the other the federalists are better funded better organized more recognizable people as spokesmen
00:36:41.580
um and then this side that already is fighting an uphill war proposes
00:36:46.920
uh a kind of schlieffen plan here and uh danielle smith is france seeing a quickly knock out danielle
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00:36:53.820
smith then run a leadership race ostensibly and try to win that it's actually making a three
00:37:00.440
front so you have to take out danielle smith you've got to win a leadership race and i don't
00:37:05.260
know who the nationalist candidate is for premier at that point you got to win that uh then somehow
00:37:10.220
unify the party all before october 19th um so you have left you probably won't even have that done
00:37:18.000
by october 19th the referendum comes and goes before that actually happens um and then but
00:37:23.880
even if it was done even if they had a no pun intended a blitz leadership race and you get that
00:37:28.940
done you've left no time and no resources for actually fighting the referendum in the meantime
00:37:34.480
you've got like three or four big organized well-funded federalist camps which are the one
00:37:39.360
one here use your analogies yeah you're giving the eastern front four free months of organization
00:37:44.640
knowing that you're going to be coming in yeah so you know what do you think is going to happen
00:37:49.840
when you start that campaign they've already built the wall you're up yeah and there's no guarantee
00:37:53.920
you defeat france in a in a few weeks right like it's smith stronger than france was a lot stronger
00:38:00.800
So it's fighting a two or more front war with no time to do it.
00:38:07.980
So even if you are really angry at Smith here and you think she's betrayed the Alberta Nationalists from having the right to have their referendum,
00:38:21.600
I think what you do is like you just you throw everything into the referendum.
00:38:25.440
You might hate it. You throw everything into it.
00:38:37.740
and then you could decide where to go with that
00:38:46.580
it seems to be emotionally driven rather than maybe a rational political move
00:38:55.700
yeah you got to be rushing we're out on cbc okay yeah see i'm on truce i'm trying to bite my tongue
00:39:02.300
and a lot of stuff that's like one shot i haven't even seen his name yet well we don't have a lot
00:39:07.540
of time we're nearing the end here but uh maybe we'll we'll get into uh the federalist camps there
00:39:14.040
there's a few i don't remember all of their names but there's uh what was the ndb one called
00:39:17.960
whatever whatever there's an nd there's an nd one yeah there's the ndp one yeah yeah uh there's
00:39:24.660
forever canada thomas just released one today yes another one our friend stephen carter okay so
00:39:29.320
they're launching a bunch of these so they can all spend up to the maximum on advertising like
00:39:33.180
this is the way it's and they're all going to work kind of injunction uh injunction together
00:39:37.180
but separately because they're trying to appeal to different crowds you got the ndp one is really
00:39:41.760
just trying to build lists and raise money for the ndp nenshi does not seem to actually be trying
00:39:46.840
to convince people to stay in canada he's trying to convince people to debt this is all daniel
00:39:50.380
smith's bad for allowing this to happen he should vote for me but it's going to allow them to spend
00:39:54.300
money and build lists and organization here and whatnot almost look at you got all of these
00:39:58.420
different groups um because there's it's not like quebec where you had the yes side and the no side
00:40:04.140
here you've got on on the federal side or no side better term uh jason kenny like nenshi cannot
00:40:13.320
appeal to a moderate conservative voter who's angry at ottawa and maybe thinking about voting
00:40:18.220
for independence because as soon as nenshi says don't do that you're gonna say f you i'm voting
00:40:23.040
against the purple man um so he he can't be the right guy same with jason kenny saying yes uh
00:40:29.440
you know ottawa may have been mean to us but this is not the way to do it a new democrat uh well
00:40:35.720
they're still going to vote to stay in canada but they're not going to be happy about kenny as their
00:40:39.160
spokesman so they've got multiple campaigns going after uh different groups whereas the independent
00:40:44.800
side it's maybe vaguely one but it's run haphazardly and it can't decide if the federalists
00:40:52.100
they're the enemy of danielle smith is but don't forget derek that danielle smith has said she's
00:40:56.440
going to spend the summer crisscrossing alberta uh to encourage people to stay to stay in canada
00:41:02.400
that infuriated the independence yeah that would be a bad move on her part i think that would not
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be smart for her leadership why uh it's essentially data it's a de facto agreement of detente she'll
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allow a vote but she'll just let the people decide she says she'll vote to stay but if she
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she is then seen as the enemy of the independent
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Yeah, but as we've discussed, there's no time for that.
00:41:33.800
I mean, there's enough of them need to realize there's not
00:41:43.800
of chips on their shoulder. They might actually make a case
00:41:47.900
A lot's going to happen, I think, in this next two or three weeks for
00:41:49.720
and figure out what they're doing yeah okay you know that was great i kind of like this pipeline
00:41:54.940
where we're not just rushing through 15 minute segments on a few different things but we're
00:41:58.700
we're getting more into it we can't do that every week because we often don't have this
00:42:01.560
much material on a essentially a single topic uh but we did this week so that works better i like
00:42:05.980
this so we're not getting to wob the canoe your great headline oh the best headline we don't get
00:42:11.320
to wob rocks the canoe well you know uh many of you saw you know he was kind of grandstanding at
00:42:17.680
the Western Premier's conference, very, very undiplomatically, but probably good politically
00:42:21.340
for the people he's trying to reach, you know, calling out Daniel Smith saying, you know,
00:42:25.760
doing his thing. But the most important thing is we wrote a great headline. That's the takeaway.
00:42:31.960
Okay, Dave, you get the first parting shot. It was a year or so ago, President Dimwit stood with
00:42:40.360
the German Chancellor and said there's not a business case to be made. Prime Minister Dimwit.
00:42:44.500
Prime Minister Dimwit, not a business case to be made for selling LNG to Germany.
00:42:50.160
Flash forward to today, they've announced a big LNG plant in B.C. that will export LNG to Germany.
00:43:01.800
The sad thing for us is now they're going to have to transport it down south, under South America and back up.
00:43:09.460
Whereas if we only had a pipeline to the East Coast.
00:43:14.520
Apparently, some of the ships are too heavy, too wide, and they have to go down.
00:43:19.260
But if only we had a pipeline and Germany could pick up their LNG on the East Coast,
00:43:25.100
sail it across the Atlantic, they'd have it a hell of a lot quicker.
00:43:32.160
I'll just be quick, just to remind folks, Mark Kearney had a hot mic moment,
00:43:35.300
and I love hot mic moments, and apparently he told Gregor Robertson after a conference,
00:43:49.480
No, he'd been cornered on the independence question.
00:43:51.720
He was clearly referring to Daniel Smith, saying
1.00
00:43:53.500
she's basically being stupid and didn't take an off-ramp.
1.00
00:43:57.700
once in a while when the mic's hot and they're not paying attention.
00:44:00.080
Hot mic, that sounds like a good name for a show.
00:44:08.280
yeah something about a starfish yeah there we go let's note that one down okay dent oh well this
00:44:16.440
is kind of a cool one there's this guy called dusty friesen and he just apparently broke a
00:44:21.000
world record driving off a local waterfall in his boat which is called dent his riverboat he set a
00:44:26.040
record of some lembrek falls i believe down in crow's nest pass apparently it was 29 feet we're
00:44:30.440
just watching the video right now on youtube or i mean on twitter it's got over a million views so
00:44:35.320
this is some pete alberta man stuff right here yeah 1.4 million and had you got your name uh this
00:44:40.920
our news meeting there today we're talking about the name of the boat he's like why is it called
00:44:43.720
dent i said i don't know because he flies off of waterfalls with it this is actually pretty cool
00:44:48.360
yeah it's it's pretty cool although look like i'm not saying this is nothing like this this
00:44:53.640
this is quite a drop 29 feet it says but i'm i'm kind of surprised that would be the world record
00:44:59.080
like i feel like there's guys dumber than that yeah well unfortunately this is the sort of thing
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00:45:03.000
thing that'll occur is more to be dumber so we'll see the next video and we'll find out why 30 feet
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00:45:07.420
we've had people go off niagara falls did we put alberta man in the headline because if not that's
00:45:12.600
yeah is the story not out no not yet no okay well okay well okay this is a great uh screw florida
00:45:19.800
move over florida man alberta man's coming through is he from albert this seems like a guy from
00:45:25.400
florida actually yeah i think he works in the oil patch here from what i've seen so no surprise
00:46:00.280
Are we doing video and written news content and analysis when the news breaks on something like Stephen Gilbeau saying he's resigning from Parliament?
00:46:17.220
Everyone knows how much Stephen Gilbeau loved Alberta oil and gas and Saskatchewan oil and gas.
00:46:27.740
we've got the Stephen Gilboe Jumpsuit Collection up.
00:46:44.320
created the Stephen Gilboe Jumpsuit Collection.
00:46:52.020
It's mostly the cost of production and shipping.
00:46:56.220
goes into supporting operations in the newsroom
00:47:16.400
Western Standard, go to westernstandard.news, click