Western Standard - The Pipeline： Big Bucks for Hinshaw

00:00:00.000 Good evening, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching

00:00:23.160 the pipeline. Today is August 3rd, and as usual, I'm joined by Western Standard news editor

00:00:29.000 Dave Naylor. Evening, Derek. Corey, how you doing? Good as ever. See you by my big smile.

00:00:38.440 Yeah. Corey, happy day. We've got a good show today. We're going to be talking about the first

00:00:45.040 UCP Alberta debate. Who won it? Who lost it? Who's up? Who's down? And of course,

00:00:51.460 the Western Standard debate that's coming up just this coming Tuesday. Big bucks for Miss Hinshaw,

00:00:58.840 Miss Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer, raking it in. Big, very controversial bonus

00:01:08.000 payments going to her approved by the UCP cabinet. And Jason Kenney's long goodbye. He forced out by

00:01:16.220 his party, leadership race taking place right now to replace him, and we'll sit around like

00:01:23.380 nothing's happened. We're going to talk about really what's he up to, because these are not

00:01:27.260 the actions of a leader of a party who's been shoved out. It's very unusual. Before we get

00:01:34.520 started, though, we need to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

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00:02:32.320 to defend your gun rights. Okay, let's jump into it. Last, actually pretty much right around the

00:02:42.100 time we did the pipeline last week. We didn't get a chance to actually comment on it because

00:02:46.120 it was technically almost at the same time. The United Conservative Party of Alberta held

00:02:51.200 a leadership debate in Medicine Hat at the, what's it called? The Halo? What's it? It's a big

00:02:58.660 airplane hangar. No, no, it's a helicopter hangar. Rescue helicopter. Yeah, what are they called?

00:03:02.640 Halo? I think the helicopter one. The helicopter got a lot of great reviews, whereas the sound

00:03:10.460 for the debate, got a lot of lousy reviews.

00:03:12.720 It was terrible.

00:03:13.980 As Todd Lohan pointed out after the debate,

00:03:16.480 the party took in more than a million dollars

00:03:18.780 from leadership fees,

00:03:19.860 but they couldn't even get an internet connection.

00:03:22.080 It was just terrible.

00:03:24.100 Was that just Madison Hatt's fault?

00:03:25.560 Or was that the UCP?

00:03:27.080 Always blame the UCP when in doubt.

00:03:28.960 Blame the government.

00:03:29.560 Blame the government, stinking government.

00:03:32.540 Not easy to really pick a winner or loser.

00:03:35.480 Certainly the most airtime.

00:03:37.120 Seemed to go to Danielle Smith

00:03:38.520 because candidates were allowed to choose who they would like to debate,

00:03:42.520 and you always want to choose the frontrunner.

00:03:44.740 So it basically seemed to come down to Brian Jean and Danielle Smith

00:03:48.860 arguing over her sovereignty act.

00:03:52.280 Well, everyone arguing with her.

00:03:53.180 Yeah, everybody arguing with her.

00:03:56.620 She did okay defending herself, I thought.

00:03:58.960 So if you're the frontrunner, which I think she is,

00:04:02.600 and you don't do anything to shoot yourself in the foot,

00:04:05.160 I think it's considered a victory.

00:04:06.260 uh cory um obviously all shots fired at uh at danielle smith uh who do you think came on top

00:04:15.900 you wrote a column about this yeah no i thought smith came on top for sure and not only just

00:04:20.400 the positions but strategically and i think the group figured it out a little later but they kind

00:04:25.200 of blew it at first it wasn't shocking to see all guns trained on the leader okay that's fine

00:04:29.300 but the way that format was set up there were seven candidates they really limited who could

00:04:33.520 speak. They would say, okay, you've got this issue and then you pick a person to debate with

00:04:38.160 and we get four more minutes with it. Well, the first two, it was Sonny and Shulls both picked

00:04:43.260 Smith. Well, Daniel's a very good communicator. And I mean, it's one thing to attack her, but

00:04:48.700 when you suddenly give her two minutes to enunciate at length about her policies and

00:04:52.280 defend her policies, you're helping her. You're giving her more time and she's very effective

00:04:57.060 with it. And so, I mean, I'd say the first half of the debate, because the other candidates

00:05:01.640 constantly picking her and giving her responses. Smith was taking up over half of the speaking

00:05:07.080 time. I think they figured it out in the later half because they weren't picking her that much

00:05:10.120 anymore. But it allowed her, she remained unruffled and just kept carrying on with her messaging.

00:05:17.480 And it just made her look solid while the others were clearly in attack mode. I think she definitely

00:05:22.120 came out on top. Campaigns normally strategize about these things, depending on what the rules

00:05:27.000 are. And you're going to operate within the rules and strategize to get maximum effect on these

00:05:31.160 things in advance. It blows my mind that none of the campaigns seem to think that, well, everyone's

00:05:37.320 going after her, and this is just going to make her look more like the leader by having everyone

00:05:41.540 go at her. The sole exception to that, at least from what I said when the video wasn't cutting out,

00:05:47.280 was Todd Lowen. He went after Travis Taves over a few missing billion dollars, as identified by

00:05:54.540 the Auditor General, went after him on a few of these fronts. How well do you think, I guess maybe

00:06:03.120 let's go through, we've been talking about Smith because all the attention was on her, but let's

00:06:06.280 talk about, actually let's talk about Todd Lowen first, and then we're going to go into the other

00:06:11.260 two front runners, if you can call them that. Todd Lowen was the only candidate, Dave, who didn't

00:06:17.000 seem fixated on Smith. No, keep in mind he's probably fixated on being kicked out of the UCP

00:06:23.380 caucus so he'd like to get back in there and uh and wreak havoc uh so to speak but he he quite

00:06:30.100 you know he picked his targets at travis taves and he wanted to focus people on the fact that

00:06:36.420 taves was a member around the inner cabinet he helped make all these decisions about lockdowns

00:06:42.100 and everything that the province has been through in the last two years and he wanted people to know

00:06:46.820 that hey taves had a big hand in it and that's pretty smart pretty smart way to go about it

00:06:53.380 Corey, there's two other candidates who were there who conceivably could win.

00:06:58.480 I mean, I think it's fair to say Smith is in the lead, but I think it's far from a lock at this point.

00:07:04.240 Brian Jean and Travis Taves.

00:07:06.220 How do you think Brian Jean first fared from this?

00:07:09.720 What was his objective going in, and do you think he met it?

00:07:13.560 I think he might have.

00:07:15.020 I mean, part of it was the way things landed.

00:07:17.580 Smith came out outstandingly, just the way they basically gave it to her, gave her that time.

00:07:21.220 But the other debate performances were fairly solid.

00:07:24.660 I mean, Gene was getting his message out.

00:07:27.140 He's in a hard place because he's giving a very – he's talking to the same crowd as Smith, and he's got a very similar message to her.

00:07:33.200 And to try and distinguish himself from that was difficult.

00:07:36.780 Though, again, he tried to speak over the moderator at one point just to fire in one quick shot about Daniel Smith's cancer statement.

00:07:45.680 And it looked kind of petty towards the end of things.

00:07:47.500 And, again, it gave Danielle an opportunity to apologize to people.

00:07:50.940 she defended and, you know, offer sympathies because of Gene's son who passed away from

00:07:55.200 him recently. So he was okay in it. Certainly better than he did in the general election

00:07:59.020 debate of some years ago when he had a, what was the term that Ian Robinson had given to

00:08:07.540 it? I just remember seeing that in his column when it said he called it a ghastly performance

00:08:12.520 by Brian Gene and that just stuck, you don't see that word used often. So he's most improved

00:08:17.880 as far as that went. Yeah. Dave, Smith was anticipating that her cancer comments were

00:08:24.160 going to come up in this because it was just, I think, a few days before this debate. She was

00:08:27.940 anticipating this. She tried to inoculate herself during her opening statements and whatnot. She

00:08:34.200 was like, can I take a moment to address this? She kind of put it up front, tried to inoculate

00:08:40.220 herself. But all of the candidates, I guess, had their kind of written down, kind of jabs at her

00:08:46.780 already ready to go and they went anyway do you think any of those jabs landed or do you think

00:08:53.180 uh maybe maybe they didn't come off so well because she had tried to inoculate herself and

00:08:57.500 they just kept on talking about the same thing over and over and over as if no one had even

00:09:00.780 spoken it kept giving her a chance to apologize again uh which she also did in the media scrum

00:09:06.500 afterwards well it seems to me to be derek that was uh because of good communication it was it's

00:09:11.900 basically being a one-day wonder scandal and uh i don't think there'll be much lasting damage

00:09:18.320 done if at all let's talk about travis tapes uh one of the front runners he's got kind of the

00:09:25.920 backing of most of the kenny establishment behind him um totally unknown though by most albertans

00:09:32.980 like unless he's i'm not even convinced the majority of ucp members really know who he is

00:09:37.160 but he's known in the inner circles, but not broadly by Albertans, and I think by many UCP members.

00:09:45.180 I got to think going into there, his strategy or his goal in this debate is to make himself known

00:09:52.640 and to stand out in some way and kind of get out of under the shadow of Smith.

00:09:58.180 Corey, do you think he, was that his goal?

00:10:01.180 And do you think he, how close did he come to meeting him?

00:10:03.780 And I think he did okay.

00:10:05.120 I mean, he came in solid.

00:10:06.040 And, you know, people did get to know him a little because they didn't know him at all before.

00:10:09.280 So I think people watching the race closely at least realize they're looking into this man, you know, who is this guy?

00:10:14.540 I've kind of heard the name now and then.

00:10:16.940 He's in a really tough spot.

00:10:18.640 He's got a campaign against his own record, in a sense, as an establishment candidate without torpedoing his own party at the same time.

00:10:24.960 And he's got a juggling act.

00:10:26.500 And he used it like so many other candidates, though, rather to avoid it was to shoot out word at Smith, which you can understand strategically why.

00:10:33.880 But I don't think that should be a priority of his.

00:10:35.820 I said, tearing down Smith, let Sonny continue as she has with that

00:10:39.500 and stick to explaining to people who you are, Mr. Taves,

00:10:42.560 because he is a solid candidate.

00:10:44.700 He's not full of flash and excitement, but he's well-spoken and intelligent,

00:10:49.140 and he can make a case for himself.

00:10:51.400 I think he did all right.

00:10:53.620 Dave, if Travis Taves' goal was to just be known,

00:10:59.460 do you think he wasted his opportunity by maybe firing shots at Smith

00:11:02.740 rather than maybe profiling himself considering it should have been well expected

00:11:07.060 that everyone was going to be taking shots at Smith.

00:11:09.460 Do you think it was a missed opportunity by him going in the offense

00:11:11.840 rather than trying to introduce himself more?

00:11:14.460 Unless he realizes his candidacy is in a bit of trouble in trailing,

00:11:18.480 and it was sort of like a desperate pitch.

00:11:20.560 But, you know, if I'm Daniel Smith, I'll just keep repeating the same three words,

00:11:26.740 Sky Palace dinner.

00:11:28.140 You were there.

00:11:29.380 You're a Kenny henchman.

00:11:32.060 You're a Kenny Crony.

00:11:34.880 You know, and he cannot, he can't get rid of that picture.

00:11:40.300 He can't erase that memory.

00:11:41.760 So, you know, I will link him forever to the adjacent Kenny government.

00:11:48.100 Okay, well, let's shift gears just a tiny bit here.

00:11:52.480 This coming Tuesday, so next week, we've got the UCP Frontrunners debate coming up,

00:11:56.840 hosted by the Western Standard here in Calgary.

00:11:59.560 You can get your tickets right on the Western Standard site.

00:12:01.840 You go to westernstandard.news.

00:12:03.360 You'll see right along the top UCP tickets or UCP debate tickets.

00:12:07.800 Click on there.

00:12:08.380 You can buy your tickets.

00:12:09.180 It's only $20 to cover the cost of the evening.

00:12:11.920 We've got a big hall there set up at Rooftop Calgary.

00:12:16.680 So let's talk about what we expect here.

00:12:19.720 We've had the first round of debates.

00:12:21.700 I don't think it was terribly useful because it was the questions when you've got that many candidates

00:12:27.760 and it's official party debate, the question's very bland.

00:12:31.700 You know, it's one question, if I can paraphrase, was after very long intros,

00:12:38.900 what is, what will you do to ensure that the world knows how clean Alberta oil is?

00:12:44.640 Like very general questions.

00:12:46.800 I mean, you've got seven candidates, you don't get a lot of good matchup.

00:12:51.200 But now we're down, this debate's going to be just the top three

00:12:54.840 who have a reasonable chance of making it to the final ballot.

00:12:59.520 What are you expecting to see on Tuesday?

00:13:01.720 Well, it'll be a much better debate, no question about it.

00:13:05.060 Seven's just too many.

00:13:05.740 Well, we're holding it, of course it's better.

00:13:06.820 Well, of course it is, you know, and I'm sure you're working on your questions already.

00:13:12.380 But, yeah, it can only be better.

00:13:15.040 Less people equals better debating, better television, for lack of a better word.

00:13:20.600 So I'm expecting good things.

00:13:22.140 It's going to be a good show.

00:13:23.060 So, Corey, it's a big, you know, when you go into these things, the campaign's strategized, depending on who's on stage, what's the format, all of these things.

00:13:32.080 This is a bit more of an open format.

00:13:33.820 It's going to have more pointed questions, but most importantly, far fewer people on stage.

00:13:39.360 What do you think, you know, give me your idea of Taves and Gene.

00:13:43.200 What's going to be their strategy in this debate coming up Tuesday?

00:13:46.680 Well, in this case, I think they might, ironically, they'll go after Smith again and even more.

00:13:51.080 because, again, it appears that they're trailing her

00:13:53.380 and they really got to try and make up ground

00:13:54.980 because the strategy is different now.

00:13:57.520 You're not one voice trying to compete among seven.

00:13:59.520 You've got more time to play with.

00:14:00.880 You're going to get a lot of minutes of talking

00:14:03.040 because you're just three voices throughout the course of this.

00:14:05.440 So you can still speak and promote yourself

00:14:07.060 and take some swipes to try and knock down Smith.

00:14:11.600 Gene, again, he's so similar to Smith,

00:14:14.840 he has to try and, I think, kind of explain

00:14:16.520 why he's more trustworthy then to get this done

00:14:19.880 or why he might be more winnable in a general election.

00:14:23.500 Like those strategies got to come that way

00:14:24.780 because their platforms aren't terribly different,

00:14:26.700 though the Sovereignty Act is quite distinct.

00:14:29.000 I mean, they're both very focused on regional autonomy.

00:14:32.360 And Taves, again, same thing.

00:14:34.480 He's got to make sure that he's saying,

00:14:37.700 I'm the establishment candidate,

00:14:38.940 but it shows that I'm experienced and I'm stable and I'm solid,

00:14:41.900 but somehow I'm not one of the ones

00:14:43.240 who was on the Sky Palace balcony.

00:14:44.860 His own non-memorable status works to his advantage there, though,

00:14:48.640 Because if you ask people to list who was out in the Sky Palace,

00:14:51.480 he was rarely a name that would come up.

00:14:52.920 He was very lucky.

00:14:55.760 I've never seen anyone so lucky about where they sat down for dinner.

00:14:59.060 Because if the camera is here, he was like facing over here.

00:15:02.320 You had to really work hard to figure out who he actually was in the picture.

00:15:05.940 Whereas you saw Kenny, you saw Nixon, you saw Shandro.

00:15:08.800 But yeah, he was off a little bit.

00:15:11.080 And it was on the next to the house plant over there.

00:15:13.080 You didn't realize he was part of it.

00:15:15.140 Well, let's talk about decisions of the Kenny government.

00:15:18.400 we're going to come to the long goodbye soon, but a lot of controversy around the bonus payments

00:15:23.620 for Dr. Gina Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer. She was obviously a critical part in

00:15:31.040 the Alberta government's decisions on lockdowns, on all sorts of restrictions, on vaccine passports,

00:15:39.260 things that ultimately had the premier overthrown by his own party. Jason Kenney

00:15:45.720 seems to disagree that she did a bad job, handed her a nice big fat bonus check, right?

00:15:50.900 He did. This was a program set up, Derek, to pay people bonuses in times of emergencies,

00:15:57.260 in times of disasters. But they thought it would be things like fires, wildfires and floods,

00:16:03.620 things that maybe, you know, take a week of 24-7 work, and then they move on. They didn't really

00:16:09.380 count on a pandemic lasting two years and two years with the bonuses. So last year alone,

00:16:16.260 Dina Henshaw makes a pretty penny. She's got an important job, $363,000 a year. Her bonus...

00:16:23.980 That's base.

00:16:24.980 That's base.

00:16:25.620 That's a good base.

00:16:26.280 That is a very good base. It's bigger than my base. Her bonus was $227,000, more than

00:16:33.900 a quarter million, bringing her total income for 2021 to $591,000. Now, she wasn't, in fairness,

00:16:42.780 she wasn't the only one who got a bonus. There were scores and scores of provincial officials

00:16:47.440 who did. The thing is, nobody knows, and Rick Bell did a very good column on this today in

00:16:54.360 the Calgary Sun, nobody knows who signed off on them. Nobody knows how they came to be so large,

00:16:59.600 And why didn't somebody say, excuse me, immediately, Canadian Taxpayers Federation attacked it, said that people who were getting, you know, base salaries of $363,000 shouldn't be getting any bonuses whatsoever.

00:17:16.120 Brian Jean attacked it.

00:17:17.860 Danielle Smith attacked it.

00:17:20.880 Travis Tays was initially silent.

00:17:23.660 He was the finance minister, right?

00:17:25.460 I mean, some documents would have surely been coming across his desk.

00:17:29.740 You know, somebody should have brought up, hey, there's a quarter million dollars to Henshaw.

00:17:34.260 Really?

00:17:34.760 What do you want to do?

00:17:37.060 About two hours ago, he came out with a tweet.

00:17:39.520 He said, if he becomes premier, no bonuses without a ministerial sign-off.

00:17:45.060 So I don't know if it's him passing the buck.

00:17:47.260 He still hasn't publicly answered questions.

00:17:49.160 Actually, an interesting way to put it, because it's way indirectly for him to say, but I didn't sign off on it as minister.

00:17:55.220 Exactly.

00:17:55.880 It's an interesting way to sidestep.

00:17:57.320 Should have been the health minister, maybe, or Tyler Shanda or Jason Copping.

00:18:02.580 So we'll see.

00:18:05.060 Jason Kenney has been silent, and Travis Davis has been silent, not taking media questions.

00:18:12.120 So, yeah, it's a lot of anger from a lot of people.

00:18:16.720 You know what?

00:18:17.220 Dina Hinshaw put in a large amount of work over two years.

00:18:20.800 So did a lot of other people who didn't get any bonuses.

00:18:23.260 Yeah.

00:18:24.860 Well, Jason Kenney's been silent on that, but he's not been silent in general.

00:18:29.540 So we're going to talk about his long goodbye now.

00:18:33.040 Back in the spring, Jason Kenney goes down.

00:18:36.580 He cheated through the wazoo by changing the rules constantly, changing the goalposts, trying to get a favorable outcome as possible.

00:18:42.780 And after changing the rules, God knows how many times he comes out with like, what was it, less than 50% or 51%?

00:18:50.660 51%.

00:18:51.020 Yeah, it was something outrageously low.

00:18:54.860 He says, I'm gone as premier.

00:18:57.020 There was a big fight in the UCP caucus.

00:19:01.460 A lot of people said, like, it's time for you to go.

00:19:03.920 The party needs to move on from you.

00:19:05.700 You're holding the party down.

00:19:07.540 We need to move forward in the future.

00:19:08.680 We need an interim premier, an interim leader of the party in the meantime.

00:19:12.240 Kenny fought through to stay as the premier in the meantime.

00:19:16.560 And as the race goes on.

00:19:19.820 Generally, when someone is an interim premier or in this kind of lame duck phase,

00:19:24.480 they keep a low profile. They try to let the leadership candidates who are running for the job

00:19:29.700 take the spotlight. That's the future of the party. It's been anything but that now.

00:19:37.580 Yeah, Jason Kenney seems to have reduced himself to the Twitter-in-chief, if that makes sense.

00:19:44.760 He'll occasionally put out a tweet saying, this is good, and he may occasionally once a week

00:19:50.940 attend a press conference. But other than that, he's kept, I think he's kept a fairly low profile.

00:19:58.620 Interestingly, John Horgan in BC announced he's not running in the next election. And he's

00:20:03.880 basically doing the same thing. Yeah, but he wasn't pushed out by his party or defeated in

00:20:08.100 an election. He's got throat cancer. It's a very different circumstance. He didn't have his own

00:20:13.020 party calling for his head. They're both leaned up premiers, basically. So I mean, Kenny, I thought

00:20:19.060 he was going to stay on just so he could

00:20:20.800 kiss the Pope's ring, being a very

00:20:22.900 devout Christian.

00:20:25.300 Obviously, he seems to be staying

00:20:26.920 on now and will stay on

00:20:28.920 until the leadership

00:20:31.120 ballots are done.

00:20:33.260 But I think he's going to spend the rest of the summer

00:20:35.100 in hiding and

00:20:36.100 try and keep out of the way.

00:20:39.000 Corey, I've got to do... Dave's got

00:20:40.960 a different take than I do on this one. I don't

00:20:43.000 think he's kept a very low profile,

00:20:44.860 especially for a lame duck premier,

00:20:46.940 a lame duck leader here.

00:20:47.720 he was out at the Pope thing

00:20:50.140 he tried to make himself front and center

00:20:52.080 at the Stampede

00:20:53.120 lots of videos, lots of pictures

00:20:55.800 showing himself out and about

00:20:57.260 this is very different than

00:20:59.920 we saw

00:21:01.500 when you have a traditional lame duck premier

00:21:03.620 you had Dave Hancock succeed

00:21:05.180 Alison Redford, she was pushed out

00:21:06.900 but there the party actually moved on

00:21:08.760 they had an interim premier in the meantime

00:21:10.900 Dave Hancock had a relatively low profile

00:21:13.620 he was just trying to steady the ship

00:21:15.940 and make sure the PCs didn't totally fly apart

00:21:18.100 while they were having their leadership race.

00:21:20.640 What's your take?

00:21:21.240 Do you think Kenny's keeping a low profile or not?

00:21:23.080 No, I guess he's kind of in the middle.

00:21:24.840 I mean, he could have gone into complete hiding

00:21:26.880 for, you know, the interim and just ride it out.

00:21:30.220 He hasn't gone forward and trying to stick in

00:21:32.160 any legacy policies or jam something through

00:21:34.220 in the last few months.

00:21:35.000 He announced an Alberta holiday.

00:21:36.760 That's a legacy if you've ever seen one.

00:21:38.480 It's not a staff holiday.

00:21:39.820 It's a token, so nobody cares.

00:21:41.260 But he's taken stuff away.

00:21:43.120 He's making announcements and stuff on a few things,

00:21:45.400 And I'm sure the new leader is probably going to want to do, put a new face on the party.

00:21:49.520 But he's, I think he's trying to stamp some legacy stuff.

00:21:52.540 I thought that was some nice high-level trolling.

00:21:54.400 I mean, it was no coincidence.

00:21:55.160 He picked the day that the NDP loves to celebrate Labor Day with their, I mean, shy of May Day.

00:22:00.280 That's one of their big ones.

00:22:01.660 And this is Alberta Day today.

00:22:03.900 You know, it doesn't cost anything.

00:22:05.140 It's not a new stat holiday.

00:22:06.500 It was just him putting a finger into the eye on there.

00:22:08.980 So that's him not being quiet.

00:22:10.780 I mean, he's inviting some critique and stirring folks up.

00:22:13.880 But again, it's not bringing in a large new policy or something that, well, you'd have to recall the legislature for.

00:22:21.500 I mean, I guess the question is, what is expected?

00:22:24.740 Because it's such a weird, unprecedented, long goodbye with a lame duck premier anyways.

00:22:29.880 We don't have a lot of examples.

00:22:30.980 As you said, with Redford left, you had Hancock in there.

00:22:35.780 Or with Horgan on the way out, he was on his own choice.

00:22:38.320 Let us know in the comments section.

00:22:39.480 Does anyone know who, what was his first name, Hancock?

00:22:43.880 Dave. Dave Hancock. Does anyone know who Dave Hancock was? Or did you know who Dave Hancock was

00:22:49.160 before I just mentioned that he was an interim premium? His portrait is hanging in the

00:22:53.440 legislature. If you're premier for a day, you get up there. Absolutely. You just have to have one

00:22:57.280 day because technically there is no such thing as an interim premium. There is one. He was one in

00:23:01.120 the fact, but that's not an official thing. But I want to know in the comment section, do any of

00:23:05.140 you know who Dave Hancock was? Made his mark and went to a few, I mean, he was education minister

00:23:11.300 for a long time in political weenies knew about that but not many people would say that's in the

00:23:15.700 list of portraits in the legislature at this point that's for sure well i don't know from

00:23:20.100 either of you um do you think him sticking around is helping or hurting the party is it stopping it

00:23:25.780 from maybe moving forward or renewing itself well without the shadow of the old leader sticking

00:23:29.780 around or do you think him sticking around provides more stability that you're not having

00:23:35.780 too much chaos and churn in the government while the leadership race takes place

00:23:39.140 that's an interesting thought i never really thought of it but you can see he can keep that

00:23:44.600 cabinet under a fair amount of control a lot more while he's in there i mean and it also kind of

00:23:49.440 keeps them from really firing their guns at him so much during the leadership race as i said you're

00:23:54.360 trying to distance yourself from the old administration while presenting yourself as

00:23:59.440 new but without torpedoing yourself if kenny wasn't in there holding on to any remnant of

00:24:03.820 power whatsoever they might be actually really shredding him a hell of a lot in this race right

00:24:08.160 now and they're going to keep it a little quiet because hey he's still he's still in the room

00:24:11.960 so and never mind just shredding kenny they may you know have a rush of blood to the head and do

00:24:17.780 something stupid bring in some you know stupid program or something yeah there's always i think

00:24:22.000 it also gives him at least a small degree of control over the leadership race it's no secret

00:24:27.980 that kenny probably doesn't want either of the two front runners who called for his resignation

00:24:32.820 uh daniel smith or bryant gene he probably doesn't want those people to succeed him he

00:24:37.460 probably is looking for his former finance minister, Travis Taves. And you saw like an

00:24:42.660 unprecedented intervention in the leadership race from Taves' interim replacement, Jason Nixon,

00:24:48.000 who is finance minister in the meantime, blasting Smith and the Sovereignty Act in pretty harsh

00:24:55.400 terms from a sitting minister in the government. I can't recall seeing that. If you have that kind

00:25:01.700 of intervention into a leadership race, normally you have to leave the cabinet to do it.

00:25:06.200 So I think Kenny sticking around gives him at least a few levers on it.

00:25:10.620 It also means that the party machinery is a bit more responsive to him as leader.

00:25:14.300 Whereas if he had left, he'd have no control over any of that.

00:25:18.060 It means, you know, it's his last few months of power and he's going to try and hang on to it as long as he can, I guess.

00:25:23.860 Yeah.

00:25:25.300 Okay, well, that's it.

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Western Standard - August 04, 2022

The Pipeline： Big Bucks for Hinshaw

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