On this episode of The Pipeline, we talk about Jason Kenney's announcement on reopening Alberta's outdoor spaces. We also hear from Wildrose's Nadine Wellwood and Corey Morgan, and hear from Western Standard News Editor Dave Naylor and Publisher Derek Fildebrandt.
00:08:27.160Outdoor gatherings can have up to 20 people.
00:08:30.640And if we get to stage three in two weeks from there, which would be early July, as long as we have 70% of Albertans having a dose, stage three has no hospital requirements, but then it's all restrictions lifted.
00:08:47.120So Jason Kenney says he's looking forward to a Calgary Stampede and Edmonton K-Days with full attendance and CFL games in the province will be allowed to have full attendance.
00:08:59.960The only thing that really stays in is the mandatory isolation requirements.
00:09:07.080You will be required to isolate for 14 days if you get tested positive.
00:09:13.940So there's lots of other facts on weddings and funerals and whatnot.
00:09:19.240Well, I'm mostly just excited for K-Days.
00:10:23.140But either way, I'll maintain some optimism.
00:10:24.820it's seeing some light at the end of what's been an agonizingly long tunnel0.97
00:10:28.440and hopefully this crap just all ends soon.0.94
00:10:32.640Nadine, you know, it's light at the end of the tunnel, as Corey said.0.99
00:10:36.260The problem is we keep seeing light at the end of the tunnel
00:10:38.220and Jason Kenney keeps on caving in again.
00:10:42.300We're on again, we're off again, we're on again, we're off again.
00:10:44.920Depending on how you slice it, we're still in the third or fourth lockdown,
00:10:49.800depending on how you're defining a lockdown here.
00:10:53.140although the cbc has said we've never had a lockdown but they like to adamantly say that
00:10:57.860we never actually welded doors shut yeah we didn't shoot people for stepping onto their front lawn
00:11:04.100well that was probably the next step i suppose um but you know it's light at the end of the tunnel
00:11:09.380uh but this has been on again off again uh over and over and over uh but i mean covid does appear
00:11:17.940to be on its way out. Make sure you meet your devices, Nadine. It does appear to be on its way
00:11:26.740out. Vaccination rates in Alberta are actually relatively high now compared to, you know, Texas
00:11:35.220and Florida, which opened long before they had anything comparable to our vaccination rates,
00:11:41.620and they're fine. But with COVID actually on the appearing to be on the way out, assuming we don't
00:11:48.020have another crazy variant that, you know, isn't affected by vaccines or anything, based on current
00:11:54.340trends, it looks like we're on our way out. Do you think this plan is believable or how concerned
00:12:00.900are you that they're going to move the goalposts again? Well, I think this is really a result of
00:12:06.500public pressure and i think the polls that we posted actually really clearly point to that
00:12:11.780there is not a lot of support right now for lockdowns and we are getting into summer season
00:12:17.220and albertans like their summer it's short and they want to be outside and they want to enjoy it
00:12:22.740so i think kenny was under a lot of pressure to do this um one of the things i really found
00:12:28.020interesting was he talked a lot about uh the positive results of say texas texas reopened
00:12:35.940back in March when they only had 14% of the population with the first dose. He has a condition
00:12:42.740of 50%, then 60%, and then 70% having a first dose. And Texas has had continual drops in numbers
00:12:52.780and astronomical great results having opened up the door. So I think the goalpost is set
00:13:01.040really high. There was a lot of what I perceived to be a lot of public pressure putting on people
00:13:07.820to get their vaccine. And yeah, I'm really curious because he says this is the reopen for summer,
00:13:15.500but he makes no mention of what happens again in flu season starts in the fall.
00:13:21.620That is a big piece missed by a lot of the media. I mean, I think we should probably do something on
00:13:27.460this is that COVID also went down this time last year because it's strongly correlated to flu
00:13:35.980season. I'm not a virologist, but we pay attention to what smart people say. And people on both sides
00:13:47.160of the general COVID debate do agree it is tied largely to flu season. When you would normally
00:13:52.060have a flu, you have a better chance of getting COVID. In fact, are we still at zero flus in
00:13:57.200two years in Alberta? As far as I know, yeah. Well, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. I think we've had one, just to clarify. Well, one? No, I think you might be right. I did hear something about one flu. Okay. Well, either way, we seem to have eradicated the flu miraculously. So, but this stuff is tied to it. I mean, COVID is not going to be gone by the fall and the winter next year. It's still going to be percolating out there. I think it will largely run its course, at least
00:14:27.180mute your systems um we've got to let it uh it's gonna run its course here but it's it's uh it will
00:14:35.020come back up when we hit flu season again uh so i i think that's something definitely worth taking
00:14:39.980a look at uh well nadine you set us up for a good segue into polls uh the western standard
00:14:48.220uh has commissioned uh main street research keto maggie to do uh some real number crunching
00:14:55.980on what Albertans are feeling right now on a lot of topics.
00:15:01.440We're going to break it up piece by piece,
00:18:40.680You know, when it came to standing up to Ottawa, it's almost universal.
00:18:43.600People realize that Kenny's been extremely weak on that, which is a very strong area, of course, for the Wildrose Independence Party to grab that support.
00:18:53.700You know, a useless recall bill and things such as that.
00:18:57.300Paul Hinman, again, don't underestimate that guy.
00:18:59.520He knows where these pockets of support, these wedge issues are, and he's harvesting them.
00:19:05.160And, you know, the UCP has got to figure out who they are and where they're going, or they're going to really just see more of this bleeding.
00:19:13.080And it's not just us predicting the wild rows will win seats.
00:19:16.960Even the pollster, Kito Maggie, said they're in a position to take several of the rural seats.
00:31:52.340So he's got to figure out where his support is. As kind of Nadine was saying, find his base
00:31:56.920and bloody well cater to it. Quit trying to win the NDP. You're never going to do it. Never.
00:32:04.580Well, okay. So this is the perfect way to move on to our next one. Is he at least trying to,
00:32:12.160I mean, Kenny is not a dummy. He understands you can't, the people on screen can't see,
00:32:20.880but some of our staff, some of our staff in the back just scratched his head and looked at me
00:32:24.320curiously when I said that. But I do not believe he's a dummy. At least he hasn't, well, at least
00:32:30.820he's always been a smart political operator until fairly recently. And it's been difficult to try
00:32:35.880and explain and rationalize what he's doing. Even if you didn't agree with it, you could at least
00:32:40.620see where he was going with things in his head. So the big thing is, you know, if you can't win
00:32:47.080over everybody, at least make sure the people you need to win over, your voters or your potential
00:32:51.600voters are on side. That's not really happening. So we're going to bring up our next poll here.
00:32:58.880We had Main Street Research ask Albertans. Actually, let me just actually back up for a
00:33:04.860second. I saw one comment say, I wasn't pulled. This isn't an election. This is not a referendum.
00:33:10.620we are not bullying every single person because that would take roughly 10 million dollars to do
00:33:15.980for a single question it's a little outside the western standards budget uh i mean if someone
00:33:22.940sends us 10 million dollar check we'll hold a referendum on whatever question you want it'll be
00:33:27.020fun uh no but this is a scientifically conducted poll this is not you know when the western standard
00:33:33.340or ctv the calgary herald puts something up and says click here those are not scientific polls
00:33:38.140those are just kind of for fun and for interest. This is you poll Albertans, you spread it out
00:33:44.020regionally, and you weight it. You weight it by sex. You weight it by age. You weight it by geography
00:33:51.100to try and get a scientific sampling of the population. They can sometimes be wrong, but
00:33:55.700more often than not, they're quite right. As long as you're asking good, fair, upfront questions,
00:34:00.720all of the methodology is on the Western Standards website right now. You can check it out for
00:34:04.600yourself, download it, see the methodology, see the actual raw data, check it out for yourself.
00:34:10.920It's pretty solid stuff. We don't always like the answers we get. I mean, 52% of Albertans still
00:34:16.100support lockdowns. I'd like to see that number a hell of a lot lower. Doesn't mean I might not
00:34:20.720agree with the number, but I think it's a credible number. So let's just jump into the next here.
00:34:26.060We asked out, well, we had the pollster, Main Street Research asked Albertans if they approved
00:34:31.200of the UCP government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. What you see in front here are the
00:34:38.700results. Actually, there is a slight error on that. That's our fault. You see 66% of Albertans
00:34:46.580disapproving. The approval actually is not 20. That segment of the soft approval of Kenny is 20%.
00:34:54.880The dark green UC, that's the hard approval. Do they strongly approve of Kenny? That's
00:35:01.180nine. So the total approval of the Kenney government's handling of COVID-19 is 29%.
00:35:07.740The total disapproval is 66%. And of course, there's some people who say other or don't have
00:35:13.540an answer. But a big part here is the intensity. Of the small number, just 29% that approve of the
00:35:22.000government's handling, just 9%, single digits, strongly approve of the government's handling.
00:35:28.100If you look at the disapprove, those who strongly disapprove, well, I don't actually have the number right here, but it is, I think, on its own about 45 to 50%.
00:35:39.480So the number of people who strongly disapprove is massively larger than the people who strongly approve of the government's handling.
00:35:50.840Dave, geez, actually, that's kind of the part where you should have given.
00:35:55.400but why don't you flesh it out a bit more what's driving that well I think it's several things
00:36:05.640Derek and I think it'll probably be the next slide that helps explain it they're not the people are
00:36:10.240opposed by very different reasons some people are opposed because it it's too harsh on the economy
00:36:17.480other people say it's not harsh enough so there's a real dichotomy and in why people are opposed
00:36:23.980there why people are for it so but it i mean it's you know we've long known that jason kenny's had
00:36:31.420the worst record of all the premiers for his handling of covet so we've known for a good
00:36:36.700long time that albertans are very unhappy with the way things have been going and this poll just
00:36:41.900hammers it home nadine i i was trying you for not meeting your computer again um dave why don't you
00:36:52.860flesh out the numbers. So this, what you see here, we asked a follow-up question that I've not seen
00:37:01.240any of the other media ask. They say, you know, they ask, do you approve of the way your premier
00:37:05.220is handling COVID-19, stuff like that? And Albertans say, no, we don't. We're angry. We're
00:37:09.720pissed off. And the CBC and the others will turn around and say, see, it's because Jason Kenney,
00:37:15.720people are disapproving of Jason Kenney because he's not locking down hard enough. He cares too
00:37:20.020much about the economy, not enough about saving people's lives. And they just kind of leave it
00:37:25.500there. And there's this very small, tiny fringe over here that are angry because they're nuts0.98
00:37:31.100and oppose lockdowns. Well, we wanted to ask people why they are upset. We had a follow-up
00:37:37.080question. So we asked people who said they approved. We asked why they approved. Most of
00:37:41.840them were just, mostly UCP voters who said they found the right balance between the economy