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 tunnel
00:10:28.440and hopefully this crap just all ends soon.
00:10:32.640Nadine, you know, it's light at the end of the tunnel, as Corey said.
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 nuts
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