Western Standard - The Pipeline： Breaking down the UCP debate

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00:00:23.420 Good evening, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching

00:00:45.020 The Pipeline. Today is August 10th. As usual, I'm joined by Western Standard news editor,

00:00:50.780 Dave Naylor. How are you feeling, Dave?

00:00:52.120 I'm great. Also joined by Western Standard Opinion and Broadcast Editor, Corey Morgan.

00:00:58.340 Corey, you have a good show today? It was a good show today. Always good shows.

00:01:02.300 Always good shows. Never bad. No, some are better than others, but it's never a bad one.

00:01:06.000 Okay. Well, we've got an interesting show. We're going to be focusing

00:01:10.040 almost entirely on the fallout of the United Conservative Party frontrunners debate hosted

00:01:17.060 by the Western Standard. Last night, we had Danielle Smith, Travis Taves, and Brian Jean

00:01:23.140 duking it out on stage, the three big front runners. There was a lot of fireworks. There

00:01:28.920 was a lot of action. I really enjoyed it. And I think there were a lot of moments that

00:01:34.660 could potentially be inflection points of the campaign. So we're going to be talking about

00:01:40.420 pretty much just the debate, but we'll also might get into Twitter, banning the Western Standard for

00:01:46.620 reporting the news not even very controversial stuff not stuff that anyone even disputes the

00:01:51.640 facts of uh not not not anything uh not anything too too crazy uh but the fact that it's the

00:01:58.220 western standard about covid got us banned by twitter uh so if we have time we're going to

00:02:01.840 talk about that before we get in though i want to uh just take a moment to note one of my all-time

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00:03:12.320 Okay, so we're going to get into the debate.

00:03:14.940 We're going to have a couple of clips that we're going to get into.

00:03:16.700 But before we get into some of the individual moments, don't spoil it, guys.

00:03:21.960 Before we get into individual moments, let's talk more generally.

00:03:26.400 Who won? Who lost?

00:03:28.560 What are your thoughts, Dave?

00:03:30.020 I don't think anybody lost.

00:03:31.680 There were no big mistakes.

00:03:32.720 I think the big winner was the viewer because they were able to see each candidate clearly spell out their ideas on numerous topics.

00:03:43.140 I think you asked, what, 20 questions or something like that.

00:03:46.940 And there was a good, lively debate.

00:03:49.380 The crowd was into it.

00:03:51.440 The candidates seemed into it.

00:03:53.940 There were some testy exchanges at times.

00:03:57.720 There was some brilliant work by Corey on the time bench.

00:04:01.540 He held the yellow cards up brilliantly.

00:04:04.280 It's a lot of rehearsal.

00:04:05.460 And then when they were almost out of time, you had that German salute.

00:04:10.220 It was all practice.

00:04:11.180 I did not do that.

00:04:12.240 You did?

00:04:13.060 No, I put my hand up.

00:04:14.920 You go back and watch it.

00:04:16.280 It was not that regimented.

00:04:20.000 So, yeah, I think it was certainly the best debate so far of the UCP

00:04:26.240 and actually one of the best political debates I've seen in Canada.

00:04:29.420 Well, I agree entirely. That's because it was the Western standard. But yeah, no, I think it was

00:04:35.180 a very lively debate. It was designed that way. When we sat down and figuring out the rules,

00:04:41.960 who's invited and what are the ground rules for the debate itself? I think what really sets this

00:04:46.580 apart from all, not just UCP debates, I don't want to pick on that, all internal party leadership

00:04:52.760 debates when they're officially held by parties, the objective is to simply showcase your candidates

00:04:58.620 and make sure that the party's not embarrassed.

00:05:01.340 And that results, I think, in very dull affairs.

00:05:06.180 They're designed not to have much combat.

00:05:08.580 They're not designed to really get in

00:05:10.520 and pin candidates down on the issues.

00:05:14.500 You know, we made sure that the questions here

00:05:16.100 were very pointed.

00:05:17.580 They were tough.

00:05:18.280 I said at the beginning of the debate

00:05:19.360 that if I do my job correctly,

00:05:21.660 all three candidates should probably think

00:05:23.300 I have it out for them.

00:05:24.720 And I hope we achieve that.

00:05:26.900 We had tough questions that really did

00:05:28.540 mix it up. Your general thoughts, Corey. I'm with Dave on it in the sense, well, for one,

00:05:33.220 it was really outstanding, actually, as a debate to watch. I mean, I got the most cynical critic

00:05:36.660 of them all, and that's Jane, who's sick and tired of politics. But she watched it,

00:05:40.520 and she even said, holy cow, I didn't realize it was a two-hour debate because it was actually

00:05:43.520 that interesting. You know, it wasn't dragging out. It really engaged the viewer, like not just

00:05:47.360 patting ourselves on the back. The standard hit it out of the park there. Also, as Dave said,

00:05:52.040 I didn't see a clear loser out of the bunch. There was no knockout punch. I mean, there was

00:05:56.480 a lot of good, you know, fireworks and things going on, but nobody really stood out. They're

00:06:01.420 all solid. If I saw anything complaining, is Brian Jean, I mean, I think he was trying to

00:06:06.900 come across as passionate, but it often came across as angry. And, you know, he's known for

00:06:12.020 his temper a bit and it came out that way, even if unintentional. So that might've soured him a

00:06:16.820 bit on some people watching, but I think all of them kind of kept to their, where their stances

00:06:21.440 were on the policies. And there was some distinguishing differences between all of

00:06:24.720 them to be seen. So I think it was just good all around and nobody really won or lost. The crowd

00:06:29.540 seemed to have mostly Smith supporters in it, but that's just a matter of how the room was

00:06:34.380 comprised, not necessarily how they performed. And I think it's important to point out that I

00:06:39.540 think we were proven right into limiting it to the top three. Todd Lohan, who was fourth,

00:06:47.140 did show up and you introduced him and he was warmly welcomed by the crowd. But I could not

00:06:52.760 imagine having eight candidates across that stage and trying to get some interplay between the

00:06:59.200 candidates uh the top three the front runners that's the way to do it uh first of all yeah we

00:07:05.680 wouldn't have even fit them like it was actually pretty grand for three it's not a it's not a huge

00:07:09.840 stage especially the way it was configured uh unless we wanted them under the band canopy and

00:07:14.560 that would look ridiculous um but i yeah i i really think it had great uh by limiting it i i think it

00:07:22.600 It was just so much more meaningful.

00:07:23.660 You had much more time.

00:07:24.980 They didn't have to stick just to their talking points.

00:07:27.120 I expected the first 45 minutes to an hour

00:07:29.040 would be mostly talking points,

00:07:30.720 but then there's enough time that they would get out.

00:07:33.060 It wasn't, these weren't 15 second, 30 second spots.

00:07:35.440 Everyone had a minute on everything

00:07:36.680 and then we had time for some ad hoc rebuttals in there.

00:07:39.840 So I think it was a good cut and thrust of it.

00:07:42.820 Speaking of Todd Lowen, Todd Lowen today,

00:07:45.120 he may have already done it, I'm not sure.

00:07:47.960 He is, the campaign actually requested

00:07:51.900 all the questions that i asked during the debate and uh he's doing a youtube uh or facebook live

00:07:58.540 and he's going to answer them anyway and i i say good for todd you know uh none of us felt really

00:08:04.220 great about uh not having todd on the stage but just he wasn't measuring up by all the professional

00:08:09.580 polls and that's really all we could go by um but i i good on him and so uh you know that that's

00:08:15.340 something we're going to cover when uh when todd answers those questions even though it wasn't at

00:08:18.540 the debate. He's answering them anyway. I think it's a, I think it was actually, he was a great

00:08:23.060 sport showing up anyway. He worked the room. So yeah, we're going to cover that anyway and see,

00:08:28.980 you know, what would Todd have said if he was there? I think that'll be interesting.

00:08:33.280 Do you think anyone won or lost? No. As Corey says, no knockout blows. But like I said,

00:08:39.720 I think the viewer who, an undecided viewer got their money's worth last night. If you were a

00:08:45.860 Danielle Smith supporter, you liked what you saw. If you were a Taves supporter, you liked,

00:08:51.480 and same with Brian Jean. Lots of barbs thrown. It was a feisty debate. Standing room only crowd,

00:09:01.560 probably more than 400 people. It was a good night. Yeah, yeah, we were at fire code, maybe

00:09:07.260 even an inch above it, but don't tell the fire marshal. Okay, well, let's get into some of the

00:09:15.500 debate itself. Some of the key moments here. Nico here has got some of the kind of the key

00:09:22.340 moments, some of the clips of the highlights. One of the big clashes, as expected, right off the

00:09:28.080 top, was on the Sovereignty Act. Sovereignty Act has dominated the campaign. It's kind of become

00:09:32.620 a referendum on the Esports Sovereignty Act or not. Nico, why don't we show that clip from the

00:09:36.940 clashing over the Sovereignty Act? So all the Sovereignty Act would do is it would put them

00:09:43.160 on notice that we're drawing a line that we are not going to enforce any federal rules laws or

00:09:49.820 regulations that violate the constitution and our sovereign rights under sections 92 through 95 in

00:09:56.140 the constitution or violate the rights of our citizens under the charter of rights and freedoms

00:10:01.140 it's letting them know that we are going to stop being a junior player in confederation

00:10:05.600 and we're going to start being a senior partner we're putting them on notice

00:10:08.740 so the sovereignty act if implemented i believe would create uncertainty and a lack of predictability

00:10:18.000 it would have the potential to create chaos within this province and send billions of dollars of

00:10:24.660 capital out of alberta look yes the federal government has undermined alberta's vital

00:10:29.640 economic interests but why should we create additional chaos all that will do will send

00:10:35.200 our economy into a tailspin. All right. Well, that was Danielle Smith, obviously the candidate

00:10:44.320 most prominently supporting the Sovereignty Act. I think Todd Lohan is as well, but otherwise all

00:10:50.360 of the other candidates are opposed. Travis Tabes is running second in virtually every poll we've

00:10:56.060 seen. Him coming back at Danielle Smith. I don't know, Dave, who do you think kind of got the best

00:11:04.380 that exchange. Well, and right there, Derek, you see probably the big issue of the campaign

00:11:08.760 at the moment. Danielle Smith on one side, Sovereignty Act, as you said, everybody else

00:11:14.940 on the other side. And it's, I don't, you know, if you're a Danielle supporter, that's red meat

00:11:21.780 for you. Alberta standing up to Ottawa, we're not going to follow your regulations, your silly rules

00:11:27.100 anymore. You know, that's great stuff. And Travis Taves, on the other hand, you know, investment's

00:11:33.440 going to flee. It's going to be an economic disaster. Doesn't get two more stark summaries

00:11:40.400 of the same thing. So, you know, it's judging by just the applause in the room, Daniel won that

00:11:47.280 round. Corey, the candidates, all the other candidates, save Todd Lowen, have been just

00:11:54.840 really coming at her on the Sovereignty Act. Do you think any of them are breaking through on this?

00:12:02.160 do you think they're actually landing any blows that are going to be able to knock her off some

00:12:06.180 of the support she's got? No, because there's a problem that obviously everybody has identified.

00:12:10.540 They know that Albertans are sick and tired of Ottawa's incursions. That's been the main theme

00:12:14.460 of this whole campaign. I mean, this is the most, from an independence point of view, the most open

00:12:18.260 talk I've seen from a party in power on nudging the line of independence movements that we've ever

00:12:22.620 seen. And Smith has put something forward, whether viable or not, that's saying we're going to do

00:12:26.580 something different, and we're going to push back. And all Mr. Taves is stuck with is the status

00:12:32.480 quo saying, I'll try to negotiate some more. And, you know, to try and say that we're going to drive

00:12:36.740 out investment is a hard case to make when we've lost, what, $600 billion in equalization. We've

00:12:41.380 had oil sands projects shut down. We've had Energy East shut down. We've got them coming for our

00:12:45.660 firearms. Can we really hurt ourselves any more than Ottawa ever would? So it's a tough case. And

00:12:51.820 Brian Jean is focusing very much on autonomy, but he's talking about trying to do it through the

00:12:56.420 courts. Well, we failed over and over in the courts. So whether Smith's plan is workable or

00:13:00.660 not, she's proposing something different. And I think people are going to embrace that. And these

00:13:05.360 guys are going to have to come up with something that's going to feel more solid, and at least

00:13:09.580 with a better chance of success than just trying the tried and true and failed. Yeah, Gene, let's

00:13:15.000 come to him for a second. Gene threw out the entire debate on this section as well. But on

00:13:20.520 this section, we didn't put his clip up because he was literally just quoting a section of a Supreme

00:13:25.380 Court ruling and the Constitution. So it wasn't really a memorable moment. But throughout the

00:13:31.840 debate, he was always saying, this is why we need to change the Constitution. And he's right that

00:13:37.560 you can't really fix Canada without changing the Constitution. But I don't think it's a stretch to

00:13:42.540 say it's impossible to change the Canadian Constitution. It is locked in for all time,

00:13:47.220 and Quebec has a veto. And if Quebec didn't have a veto, it'd just be Ontario. There's just no way

00:13:51.520 to effectively change these things.

00:13:54.220 Do you think he made any headway?

00:13:56.340 He's, you know, Daniel Smith has kind of stolen

00:13:59.740 that hardline autonomy and sovereignty pull in this race.

00:14:05.740 And I think with that, a lot of that traditional

00:14:08.040 wild row support, Gene's trying to take it back.

00:14:11.260 He's talking a lot about autonomy,

00:14:12.420 but he was talking about changing the constitution.

00:14:15.540 How do you think he fared, Dave?

00:14:17.960 Do you think that had gained any traction

00:14:20.460 with those watching?

00:14:21.520 No, I don't think so, Derek.

00:14:22.900 As Corey said, Albertans want action now.

00:14:26.180 We've been to the Supreme Court on the carbon tax we lost.

00:14:30.000 We tend not to do very well in Supreme Court decisions.

00:14:33.720 And it takes a long, long time.

00:14:36.080 If Brian Jean gets elected as premier, he could be through the next election before the Supreme Court even hears a case.

00:14:43.940 So I don't think it moved the leader at all.

00:14:47.120 Okay, so Gene and Taves and the other candidates, whenever they're all there, they're all attacking Smith over the Sovereignty Act. And I mean, some people think it's bunk, that it's just crazy, it's not going to do anything. Okay, that's not what we're into right now. But at least from a pure political perspective, that's her strength.

00:15:10.600 And one of the primary rules of war in politics is you never fight on the ground of your enemy's choosing, and that is the ground of Danielle Smith's choosing. She wants to fight on that ground. UCP members and voters tend to support it in pretty large numbers.

00:15:24.960 and so it's like I feel like they're attacking the hard snout of the crocodile on this when

00:15:32.040 they should be focusing on the soft underbelly and you ask anyone what's the one big knock

00:15:38.740 against Danielle Smith it was the 24 December 2014 mass floor crossing that utterly obliterated

00:15:46.600 her political career destroyed almost destroyed the wild rose and did destroy the progressive

00:15:52.060 of Conservative Party, ultimately leading to the election of the NDP. That is where she is soft

00:15:57.640 and vulnerable. And we saw them, I think for the first time, trying to actually go for that soft

00:16:04.500 underbelly. They haven't really been doing it till now. They did it last night. Nico, why don't we

00:16:07.960 play the clip of that exchange? And I want to point to Daniel Smith right now, because the floor

00:16:13.060 crossing in 2014, I believe, led not only to the end of her immediate political career, and that

00:16:20.900 of Jim Prentice, but it led to a setback for this province and for all Albertans in decades,

00:16:28.100 in tens of billions of dollars. Look guys, no politician is perfect, but I think we all respect

00:16:34.440 politicians who recognize mistakes, who own up to them, and who apologize. In fact, I think that's

00:16:39.980 part of the reason we're in the problem that we're in right now, is that we've had precious

00:16:43.660 little apologizing for a lot of the errors that have been made in the last two years.

00:16:50.900 Now, I have humbly apologized to you for my role in splitting the conservative movement.

00:16:58.160 I'd ask Mr. Taves to apologize to you for the role he played in locking us down the last two years.

00:17:09.280 Oh, absolutely.

00:17:10.420 You know, as I travel around this province, I absolutely acknowledge that so many of the government decisions were taken in error in the last two years.

00:17:18.040 i acknowledge all the loss that albertans have experienced and i and i apologize as part of that

00:17:24.520 covet cabinet committee even though i brought a perspective of freedom i was part of that

00:17:29.880 decision making as part of that government and i'm i'm happy to own that but here's here's the

00:17:35.400 reality when danielle crossed the floor in 2014 it ultimately took this province to the left

00:17:42.760 That resulted in an NDP government for our children and grandchildren.

00:17:51.160 That set this province back decades.

00:17:54.040 That's what brought me into politics today.

00:17:56.460 That's what we have to avoid.

00:18:00.140 Well, okay, so there's kind of, well, two and a half parts of that.

00:18:03.820 We're going to deal with the floor crossing one bit, but obviously it's very tied into how she hit back

00:18:10.420 and kind of pivoted the whole thing back to Travis Taves' role in lockdown.

00:18:14.800 So we're going to try to discombobulate these two as much as we can here.

00:18:21.360 So they finally, and actually we didn't show it here,

00:18:24.860 but Brian Jean before that also took some pretty hard shots on Danielle Smith for that,

00:18:31.900 saying, you know, I got into provincial politics to pick up the mess

00:18:36.440 when you crossed the floor for a cabinet seat.

00:18:38.440 fair shots. I thought it was actually a good

00:18:42.080 stance on it to point out for himself, hey

00:18:43.940 you left the mess behind, I saved

00:18:46.160 the party. That was one of the better

00:18:48.140 shots on Gene's part in a sense of self-promoting

00:18:50.300 and kind of shooting at Daniel at the same time.

00:18:51.920 Yeah, I think it was one of Gene's stronger

00:18:54.200 moments. This is obviously an extremely

00:18:56.320 vulnerable area for Danielle

00:18:58.100 I mean, she's

00:19:00.120 spent years apologizing

00:19:01.800 but it was

00:19:04.140 pretty terrible what she did

00:19:05.520 it got me into politics at the same time

00:19:08.220 is Jean. Do you think, I guess it's kind of tied in with her comeback, but Corey, do you think

00:19:17.480 those blows landed? Obviously, with Danielle's diehard supporters, they have forgiven her.

00:19:23.320 They've moved on, but I'm not sure everyone has. So with people who are on the fence,

00:19:27.880 they're not maybe sure about her. Do you think those blows landed? I do. And I mean, those who

00:19:32.280 are willing to forgive Danielle have already, as you said, and she's shown contrition on this for

00:19:36.740 for years. And I think most people believe it's genuine. With a lot of people, though,

00:19:40.380 the next question is, can you trust her judgment, though? I mean, okay, you're sorry about it. You

00:19:45.300 realize you made a mistake, but you're asking to be put into a very strong position of power.

00:19:50.380 And if you've got a tendency for making impulsive mistakes, we can all pay some

00:19:53.440 very big prices for it. So that's where that vulnerability is, as you said, and they're

00:19:59.260 cutting hard. And that's where she is weakest. Those undecideds, those on the fence, if it

00:20:03.480 sounds like she might not make sound decisions as a leader. And that tied in a bit with even some of

00:20:08.000 her off the cuff talk, whether it's Sovereignty Act or the cancer issue, they can really, really

00:20:12.220 cut her there. So she's got to make people confident that she'll make reasoned decisions

00:20:15.860 in the future. And I think they're going to keep twisting that knife now that they've seen

00:20:18.920 where they're getting some blood out of her. Dave, they finally struck for the soft underbelly.

00:20:24.040 Do you think they hit the mark? A little bit. You know, she's been on a Alberta wide apology

00:20:30.400 tour uh ever since she announced she's been running or was going to run for the the ucp

00:20:35.680 leadership uh you know what we're talking about events of eight years ago that that you guys are

00:20:42.480 still angry about well you know when we talk about it um you know and you as the moderator last night

00:20:48.380 we're bringing up stuff that she she she wrote about in 2015 calgary sun or 2020 2020 that was

00:20:55.700 two years ago.

00:20:57.040 That's relatively recent history.

00:20:59.560 She does have a past. She's got to run on

00:21:01.540 that record.

00:21:04.380 You know, unlike

00:21:05.620 Corey, I think she is

00:21:07.540 contrite. I think she

00:21:09.380 realizes the magnitude of her

00:21:11.740 blunder.

00:21:14.260 And she vows

00:21:15.740 that now she won't make that kind of

00:21:17.520 decision because she's going to listen.

00:21:19.800 You know, listen more, listen to the

00:21:21.380 MLAs, listen to the people.

00:21:23.920 So I guess that's the question.

00:21:25.180 And if you're a UCP voter, do you believe that she's made that change?

00:21:30.400 Okay, so we're going to pivot now to her response.

00:21:34.700 As we saw in that clip, you know, she says, I have apologized.

00:21:39.840 She tried, I think, without mentioning him, she kind of tried to rob Klein a bit,

00:21:43.320 who was famous for eating crow when he needed to.

00:21:47.440 She says, you know, Albertans appreciate when their politicians apologize.

00:21:50.840 eyes. And I think you owe Wilburton's an apology for locking them down over the last three years

00:21:56.080 or something to that effect. That was an interesting turnaround. Corey, do you think

00:22:03.660 that was an effective turnaround? First of all, do you think it was an effective answer from her

00:22:09.740 on the defense over the floor crossing? And do you think it was an effective turnaround

00:22:14.300 with her attack on Tabes in particular there? Yeah, well, it's as effective as her defense

00:22:18.980 for the floor crossing Leguette, as I said, she's repeated it over and over, and those who will

00:22:22.520 accept it will accept it. Tactically, it was a fine turnaround, because it put him on the defensive,

00:22:28.060 it changed the channel a bit, and took it away from her, and dropped it back onto his own lap.

00:22:33.340 I mean, he had scored, and he came back at it yet again anyways with his response, that's the nature

00:22:38.380 of the back and forth, but at least she turned it into kind of a counter volley, rather than just

00:22:42.880 taking some abuse. So tactically, it was good, though it appeals to different crowds. I mean,

00:22:48.020 there's some people even in the conservative party UCP who thought the

00:22:50.860 lockdowns were correct. So it doesn't necessarily undercut everything Taves did.

00:22:54.280 I think it was a devastating blow, Derek.

00:22:58.380 This is the albatross that Travis Taves has to wear.

00:23:02.920 He was a member of the Cori, not the Cori, the Kenny Inner Circle.

00:23:08.420 He was a member of the Sky Party dinner scandal.

00:23:12.800 He was a close confidant of Jason Kenny and he was probably one of the top two

00:23:17.040 three people that were making decisions he was in the covet cabinet he was responsible for the

00:23:22.640 lockdowns that that came across alberta on many occasions uh he you know he was the decision

00:23:30.240 maker in all this and this is what he's going to have to wear in throughout the entire campaign

00:23:35.280 is that he was a kenny crony and he's got to try and talk himself out from under that

00:23:40.400 the way he did it last night was well you know i i fought for the rural communities

00:23:45.040 while I was in cabinet.

00:23:47.080 I tried my best.

00:23:48.840 It didn't stop the rural communities from being shut down,

00:23:51.500 just like everybody else.

00:23:52.740 So I thought it was a great, great shot by Daniel.

00:23:57.060 When I was writing these questions,

00:23:58.860 I figured out pretty quickly that on the Travis Tapes questions,

00:24:05.020 I may as well have been asking it of Jason Kenney

00:24:08.260 because I was more or less just, I felt I had no choice.

00:24:11.260 Essentially, he has to defend the government's record

00:24:13.980 Because he, first of all, he's the only one who was even an MLA for the whole time.

00:24:17.640 And he was not just an MLA, he was in a cabinet, in the cabinet, and a key inner circle of that cabinet.

00:24:25.000 And so I tried, maybe it's not entirely fair that he has to wear everything Kenny did, but he was right beside him during it.

00:24:33.220 And so the questions, I tried to leave enough that he is still an individual.

00:24:38.240 He is not Jason Kenney. But I felt in many ways he had to defend the record of the government.

00:24:44.940 And that was kind of the role he was in. You know, as you're kind of getting at, he was put in the position, particularly on this, on the COVID questions of saying, well, you never heard from me publicly because it's cabinet, cabinet, it's confidential.

00:24:59.480 but I was there secretly behind the scenes, fighting for rural Alberta, fighting for, quote,

00:25:04.340 the perspective of freedom. I don't know. Corey, you think that held much water? I mean,

00:25:13.960 maybe it could be true. You know, maybe around the cabinet table, he was on one side, but

00:25:18.900 ultimately he was there. But he tried to make the argument that you couldn't hear me because of

00:25:24.860 where I was. But trust me, pretty much saying it would have been a lot worse if I wouldn't have

00:25:29.160 been at the cabinet table. Pretty weak. I mean, he's put in an awkward position. He can't prove

00:25:34.160 it. He can't say how vocal or not vocal he was within cabinet. I mean, you know, we know that

00:25:38.480 the general caucus leaks, but, you know, cabinet tends to be pretty tight. So I guess it's just a

00:25:43.980 matter of trust whether you believe him that he was actually actively lobbying that way or not.

00:25:47.400 He's got to wear that government's record. And, you know, if we're talking about soft spots for

00:25:50.720 them, as Dave said, that's his. And Danielle, you know, poked right back at where he was weak.

00:25:55.480 And the other cabinet ministers running for the job, they have to wear the same cloak, Schultz and Rajon Swanee. It's funny, if you watch social media, and you got Schultz putting out a statement, well, I'm going to fix this, or Taves putting out a statement, well, I'm going to fix the healthcare system. The immediate response from everybody is, well, why didn't you do it in the four years you were in power? Right? I mean, that's the end of the argument, because they don't have an argument.

00:26:22.760 Well, their argument is, I wasn't that particular minister.

00:26:26.700 Because to be fair, they weren't the premier in charge of everything.

00:26:29.480 They were in charge of their ministry.

00:26:31.420 Sure, but Travis Taves was in charge of the money.

00:26:35.020 I mean, after Kenny, it's Taves.

00:26:39.640 And he's got a tough road to hoe wearing that Kenny yoke.

00:26:43.960 Yeah, now there is one other former cabinet minister running.

00:26:48.080 Was not in the inner circle, Leela, here.

00:26:51.860 But I suppose she, her criticism of the government is that it didn't lock down harder.

00:26:56.700 It didn't forcefully vaccinate harder.

00:26:59.220 It didn't mandatorily mask harder.

00:27:02.420 So I suppose she is not wearing the record of the government because she thinks that they were too soft.

00:27:08.240 Maybe that's why she's polling somewhere around zero.

00:27:12.120 Yeah, yeah.

00:27:13.940 That might have something to do with it.

00:27:15.680 It's a good campaign platform for the NDP.

00:27:18.300 Yeah.

00:27:18.600 um okay so there was obviously there's a lot of fireworks throughout the whole thing um

00:27:24.740 the last question you had to do it didn't you i just kind of felt like a kid with a molotov

00:27:32.540 cocktail when else was i going to have the opportunity to do this um you know i thought

00:27:38.160 we uh we should all end on something that's a bit more unifying a bit bit easier i thought

00:27:43.800 about asking about what they're binging on Netflix or what their favorite band is. Instead, I asked

00:27:49.340 them about abortion. A nice, easy one to finish it on. I mean, they're not going to get questions

00:27:56.460 about abortion in official party debates where, you know, as I was saying earlier, the goal is to

00:28:01.020 showcase candidates not tear it up too much and do anything that might be too controversial. So I

00:28:07.120 figured abortion would be the 10 out of 10 on the other side of that. We did not ask them if

00:28:13.780 they're going to ban abortion or not because that would be criminal code stuff that's federal

00:28:16.900 and that's we all know what they would say they're not going to touch it but we asked them

00:28:21.300 would they actually i think we've got a well we asked them if they would um uh defund abortion

00:28:26.500 with taxpayers dollars that's provincial and if they would repeal the ndp's bill that they passed

00:28:30.580 where the ucb refused to vote on it before the last election that bans people from protesting

00:28:35.140 against abortion in certain areas uh why don't we play the clip on the abortion exchange nico

00:28:38.980 my view is that we need to be focused on what was the original promise was that abortion would be

00:28:46.060 safe legal and rare and i would like to see us spend more time and effort in supporting women

00:28:53.000 to make a different choice with adoption i think that's the way that you my personal position on

00:29:00.200 on abortion my personal view would put me in the pro-life camp and i'm happy to legitimize that

00:29:05.300 position every time i'm asked but i recognize it's a complicated issue and there's passionate

00:29:09.740 positions held by really good people right across the spectrum that um i am pro-life as well i lost

00:29:15.980 this child and i tell you if you want to be pro-life that's that's the situation that will

00:29:19.500 make you pro-life and i think that we should do exactly what these two people have said i've

00:29:23.460 come forward with a concrete plan on this i think we should i've done adoptions they take two years

00:29:28.240 three years sometimes to do an adoption where everybody's in favor of it why are we doing that

00:29:31.580 Why are we not providing more supports for the people that are actually doing the adoptions?

00:29:36.680 Let's quicken them up.

00:29:38.180 Three months.

00:29:38.880 Let's have a special judge do that.

00:29:40.180 I can get that done.

00:29:42.840 Okay, so on all of the other questions, if a candidate didn't answer the questions directly,

00:29:50.600 you know, I kind of brought them back sometimes.

00:29:52.100 I was like, eh.

00:29:53.360 You know, like we asked Travis Tabes, how did you vote on kicking Todd Lohan and Drew

00:29:57.340 Barnes out of the caucus?

00:29:58.520 He didn't answer.

00:29:59.280 And, you know, I went back to him and said, you didn't answer the question.

00:30:02.360 You could decline to answer.

00:30:03.900 And then he gave another BS answer.

00:30:05.720 And so, okay, he declined to answer.

00:30:07.780 This one, I appreciate they're going to wiggle because unless you're in the more of the left side, you know, the NDP says we want to build abortion clinics on every corner like they're max.

00:30:20.720 You know, if you're more on the conservative side, maybe a bit more pro-life, it's a controversial thing to take on.

00:30:29.480 So I allowed a bit more fudging. None of them really directly answered either of the questions on ending taxpayer funding of elective abortions, repealing the NDP's ban on protesting against abortion in Alberta.

00:30:47.360 And then third was, you know, where do you stand on the NDP's call for building abortion clinics on every corner?

00:30:54.300 None of the three actually touched it.

00:30:57.300 Does that surprise you, Dave?

00:30:58.900 No, not at all. Not at all.

00:31:01.280 The only thing they were seemingly unified on was let's get more adoptions happening.

00:31:08.600 And, you know, to me, that seems like a good thing.

00:31:10.900 The system now is onerous, costly, time consuming.

00:31:15.880 And Brian Jean's right.

00:31:17.080 Why can't it be done in three months?

00:31:20.320 Corey, I want to ask about any individual candidate

00:31:24.040 because they all more or less said the same thing.

00:31:26.000 Let's have more adoption.

00:31:27.700 I noted two different things in there, actually.

00:31:29.700 One of them, and I could be wrong on which one it was,

00:31:31.780 one said they were going to keep that ban

00:31:33.260 because they said it's a heated,

00:31:34.980 I think it might have been Danielle Smith.

00:31:36.380 Oh, actually, yeah.

00:31:37.080 She said she was going to keep it

00:31:38.300 because it's a divided thing

00:31:39.500 and it's the bubble of keeping people back.

00:31:41.400 So she did actually speak directly to that one

00:31:43.500 and said she would keep it.

00:31:44.320 the other one's never addressed it. And something a little further that was surprising out of Taves

00:31:49.180 is he invoked the conscience rights term, which I saw as almost kind of stepping in it because

00:31:54.440 that's a loaded issue. It's an unfair issue, I think, because conservatives have fallen on that,

00:31:59.440 including Daniel Smith in the past. The 2012 election. Yeah. And that's something that

00:32:03.460 Kathleen Smith with her setup that she did in the past, discovering there were conscience rights in

00:32:07.780 the policy and having a tantrum over it and making it a big issue. When everybody forgets,

00:32:12.200 If you look at the associations, whether it's pharmacists or doctors or nurses, it's all built

00:32:18.240 into it. They already have conscience rights. They are allowed to decline to do procedures

00:32:23.060 or administer things that they feel conflicts with their religious or personal feelings. So

00:32:28.120 it's just, unfortunately, politicians step into it because there's some pro-life groups that are

00:32:32.860 always pushing to have that entrenched in policy, but it's a non-issue. They already have it. And

00:32:37.520 now he said it, it's on the record and I've already seen it on social media. They're using

00:32:41.420 it to attack. Oh, they're going to bring in conscience rights. And, you know, Joe such and

00:32:45.640 such up in Fort Smith isn't going to be able to get a day after pill or something. So they did

00:32:49.620 make a couple of answers. So this is why official party debates don't ask about abortion.

00:32:55.860 Okay, well, let's just get before we get on to Twitter banning the Western standard. Let's just

00:33:00.200 kind of final thoughts on on the debate. Great. Let's do another one. No, it was it was well

00:33:08.620 moderated i'm not just saying that because you're my boss it's my my mom said it was well moderated

00:33:14.940 you should give up uh this job and become a professional you're just saying that so that

00:33:19.580 you could be the boss i well i don't need the publisher anymore i just go moderate things yeah

00:33:23.580 that's fine yeah uh yeah no it was great the audience had a great time the candidates i think

00:33:28.700 enjoyed the the interplay so uh yeah uh well done to the candidates well done to us

00:33:34.060 yeah uh cory final thoughts on how the debate went well likewise yeah you and i don't like

00:33:40.180 giving you compliments but all the same no you moderated it really well and it kept it on pace

00:33:44.140 and you didn't take any crap from them and it set a good bar because debates i mean we've seen so

00:33:48.900 many usually when i hear another debate uh you know i'm political so i'll watch it but i i'm

00:33:54.200 ready for some droning and it was really fast-paced productive had a lot of content in it it set the

00:34:00.460 bar for debates i really think the western standard knocked that out of the park well i i hope that

00:34:05.640 the next official ucp debate in edmonton uh that'll be the final official debate i hope they

00:34:12.260 could you know have look at this and maybe make it a bit more interesting and again i'm not trying

00:34:18.140 to pick on uh how they did the first one that's just how parties do debates hopefully we can

00:34:24.220 maybe change how they're doing but i i i'm not optimistic i think if you if you want these

00:34:29.240 debates to be good. You have to do it as they do in, say, Republican and Democratic primaries in

00:34:33.600 the states where different networks or different other media do it. You know, Fox News will do a

00:34:37.940 Republican debate. MSNBC will do the Democrat debate. And they're just so much more lively

00:34:44.660 than our official party debates. They suck. They suck so bad. Okay. Speaking of debate, Twitter

00:34:51.440 says no debate um so just uh you know a couple hours ago um i'm just sitting in my office working

00:35:00.120 away doing my thing and uh notification pops up twitter is uh banned us they've locked our account

00:35:05.940 um i was like oh crap did someone say something stupid because you know you immediately thought

00:35:11.360 of cory i think it's me i immediately thought what the hell did cory do yes uh it wasn't it

00:35:16.480 just some straight news stories uh dave what the hell happened if i knew i'd tell you a straight

00:35:22.240 story uh the government of denmark announced this week no more vaccinations for anybody under age

00:35:28.160 age uh 18 because it's been proven that kids don't suffer the same sort of consequences

00:35:35.200 from covid that older people do and that's very controversial medical advice right no

00:35:39.520 no one uh everyone knows that young people die from covet just as much as old people

00:35:44.480 No, not true, Derek.

00:35:46.880 And we quoted the official Denmark government statement.

00:35:51.760 And I guess Twitter didn't like that and banned us for it.

00:35:56.240 And the frustrating thing to me is regular media have reported it all over the place and didn't get punished.

00:36:07.480 But for some reason, Twitter decided, I don't know whether they were thinking of making an example of us,

00:36:12.460 but it was literally within moments of when the story was published.

00:36:16.380 And before you continue, YouTube and Facebook censors.

00:36:20.220 We are not giving medical advice.

00:36:22.460 Vaccines are good. Vaccines are great.

00:36:24.140 Vaccines will give you wings.

00:36:27.740 COVID bad, everyone dies from COVID.

00:36:30.580 So just that little thing there, Facebook, YouTube censors.

00:36:33.660 We don't want to get banned from you as well, again.

00:36:37.400 Got that out of the way.

00:36:39.360 There was another story that they cited we got banned for.

00:36:41.860 Yeah, this was a really good story, a Christopher Oldcourt exclusive from Saskatchewan, where he talked to parents of foster children who the social services department, social service workers, had gone and got the kids vaccinated without even consulting them.

00:36:59.060 And we had at least two confirmed cases of that through the parents.

00:37:05.520 And Twitter didn't like that and sort of banned us on top of the Denmark story.

00:37:12.200 So Corey's really pissed somebody off in Twitter headquarters this week.

00:37:17.100 We've filed an appeal.

00:37:19.340 I think we expect to be successful.

00:37:22.580 If not, we're in Twitter jail for seven days.

00:37:25.760 But, I mean, there's been the odd thing that's snuck out.

00:37:33.680 I mean, we've got an increasingly large-ish organization here.

00:37:37.800 We've got a lot of reporters.

00:37:40.080 And there's, you know, every once in a while, I'll see something.

00:37:42.280 And, you know, I'll say, hey, I think we need to add a little more to this story.

00:37:45.060 We need to maybe add some more context.

00:37:46.980 Let's get an opposing – we get more of the opposing side on it.

00:37:51.040 This came up, and I looked through the stories, and I was scratching my head.

00:37:54.140 I just couldn't find anything.

00:37:55.760 We weren't even talking about vaccine efficacy, and we are not talking about vaccine efficacy, YouTube and Facebook censors right now.

00:38:03.580 We're not even talking about it. These stories don't talk about vaccine efficacy.

00:38:06.680 One was talking about the entirely unchallenged, incontravertible fact that COVID is not as great a risk for young people.

00:38:16.480 one okay not an issue the other one was parents who say that social services of the saskatchewan

00:38:25.420 government are taking kids away and vaccinating without the sign off that was good journalism

00:38:30.440 that was a good story that was good yeah it was very good journalism uh chris old corn our

00:38:34.920 saskatchewan reporter tip it hat to him that is the kind of thing reporters should be doing and

00:38:39.180 they're just really not in significant numbers anymore this this wasn't medical advice this

00:38:44.560 wasn't misinformation. This was just factual. He spoke to real humans who said this is happening

00:38:49.940 and he verified it's happening. He did his job. I don't know. You got something to say, Corey?

00:38:57.620 What the hell? They just want to chill the discussion. It's as simple as that. They've

00:39:00.740 taken their side of things they don't even want it questioned and they just don't want us to

00:39:03.940 talk about it. Again, if it was an opinion piece, if it was speculation, even if it was a story

00:39:09.080 interviewing somebody who's a bit of a fringe practitioner or something, but this was just

00:39:12.980 news copy. And it's ridiculous, but it shows an agenda of the social media giants. And there's

00:39:21.320 certain issues they do not want discussed, and they will chill it. I think now they've sort of

00:39:26.580 fended off Mr. Musk, they're flexing their muscles again and censorship. Yeah. Bonkers.

00:39:35.420 That's why we got to do what we got to do. Speaking of which, if you're not yet a member

00:39:40.500 western standard you need to be the western standard is one of the only western headquartered

00:39:46.980 major media in canada we refuse to take a penny of the federal government's media bailout subsidies

00:39:54.100 we don't take a penny we are funded entirely by two sources uh advertising and members our

00:40:00.980 member subscribers we rely on you if you become a member you're gonna have unlimited access to all

00:40:06.340 western standard content and we've got reporters right across the west and on parliament hill

00:40:10.980 we've got some of the best opinion writers in the business some of the best reporters in the

00:40:14.740 business uh and with your support we've been able to grow tremendously over the last year we're

00:40:19.700 we're only coming up on three years this october it's it's incredible how far we've come since uh

00:40:24.980 working in our basements uh at the very beginning here uh so yeah if you're not yet a member of the

00:40:30.100 western standard go to westernstandard.news click on membership sign up it's only ten dollars a

00:40:34.500 a month or $100 a year for unlimited content. And actually your trial amounts are like a buck

00:40:40.280 or two bucks or something crazy. Okay, Dave, Corey, thank you for joining me today on the

00:40:46.400 pipeline and thank all of you for joining us today. Have a great evening and God bless.

00:41:04.500 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - August 11, 2022

The Pipeline： Breaking down the UCP debate

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