Western Standard - The Pipeline： Cannibalistic Conservatives & The People's Senate

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00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Hi, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:03:19.360 Today is September 22nd.

00:03:22.280 I'm joined today by news editor Dave Naylor, as usual.

00:03:27.220 Hey, Dave.

00:03:27.400 Derek, how you doing?

00:03:28.640 Pretty good.

00:03:29.220 And the always sunny and bright Corey Morgan, Alberta political columnist and host of The

00:03:34.980 Corey Morgan Show.

00:03:35.980 Good afternoon.

00:03:37.980 It's just noon.

00:03:38.980 It's afternoon.

00:03:39.980 I suppose you're technically correct.

00:03:42.980 Alright, we've got an interesting show, I mean we had really no shortage of ideas at

00:03:49.360 our planning meeting before today's show, but today we're going to be discussing can

00:03:54.040 can he survive the day? Today is potentially a pivotal day in Alberta politics as the UCP

00:04:01.020 caucus meet as we speak, potentially bringing a potential vote of no confidence against their

00:04:08.920 leader from UCP MLAs. Believe it or not, it's also a completely separate topic. Can he survive

00:04:16.760 the week or the month? Because even if he makes it through today, this is going to be like an

00:04:21.900 episode of American Gladiator, he's going to have a very difficult time. We're going to get into it

00:04:26.540 and the exclusive, some of the exclusive news we've been bringing to you in the last 24 hours.

00:04:32.960 The knives, speaking of conservative leaders in trouble, Aaron O'Toole, the signs are appearing

00:04:37.880 quickly that the knives are out for him. His sharp shift left having failed in the federal

00:04:45.620 election. More right-leaning members of that party demanding an end to the O'Toole experiment.

00:04:51.900 the People's Party of Canada. We're going to go through some analysis on how they did, but

00:04:57.140 can they really keep their momentum going into the next election, roughly expected two years

00:05:03.820 from now? If COVID's gone, can that party keep the level of support it's already gained,

00:05:09.320 perhaps concentrate it to elect MPs? As well, People's Party have announced their candidates

00:05:16.220 for in the Alberta Senate election, a very interesting development. We're going to get

00:05:21.420 into that. Before we get started, though, we want to thank all of our Western Standard members for

00:05:25.600 your continued generous support. Without you, we couldn't be providing bailout-free Western media

00:05:30.720 for you on a daily basis. Right now, our newsroom is turning out more stories than something like

00:05:35.720 the Calgary Herald does on a daily basis, and we do it without a penny of government support.

00:05:39.660 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, please go to westernstandardonline.com,

00:05:43.920 click on Membership. You could try it free for 15 days and cancel at any time if you don't like

00:05:48.640 what you're getting. It's just $10 a month or $99 for the entire year. And we think you'll be happy

00:05:54.740 with what you get. So let's start up now. Can Kenny survive the day? So before we get into

00:06:00.080 trying to answer that question, Dave, why don't you set the table? Where to begin, Derek? What a

00:06:05.580 week and it's only a Wednesday. Since Jason Kenny brought in his fourth wave of COVID lockdown

00:06:14.420 restrictions last week there's been grumblings within the within the uc party everywhere from

00:06:20.180 the grassroots right up to right up to cabinet so as you mentioned kenny and his caucus are

00:06:26.420 meeting today and his leadership is expected to be the key the key topic of the discussion

00:06:34.260 mla sources tell us that the shuffle yesterday involving health minister tyler shandro was

00:06:42.980 It was just an attempt for Kenney to save his leadership, and Chandra became the fall guy for that.

00:06:51.440 Pretty easy landing, though.

00:06:52.780 Pretty easy landing. He's still in the cabinet, gets to go to the Labor Administration.

00:06:58.500 And don't forget, he wasn't fired. He handed in his resignation.

00:07:02.540 Believe that if you will.

00:07:05.980 So the meeting's going on as we speak.

00:07:08.680 can kenny survive will there be will these mlas have the guts to to bring it up kenny was asked 0.65

00:07:14.920 about it yesterday and he seems quite nonplussed by it he's not not concerned says a leadership

00:07:21.280 review at this time would be grossly negligent considering the provinces in a in a covid

00:07:28.880 pandemic he says he's focused entirely on leading leading the province through the pandemic

00:07:35.500 is not interested in politics at all. Believe that again, if you wish. Everything he does is

00:07:43.380 politically related. So there you go. We're expecting to have some of our normal leaks out

00:07:49.980 of the caucus coming up shortly. So we'll find out what's going on and whether or not he can't

00:07:55.380 survive the day. Well, that's the question. We know now, MLAs have told us, we'll see if they

00:08:02.700 follow through. They might not try if they don't think they have the numbers, but certainly

00:08:08.080 many reports that members of the UCP caucus are bringing forward a motion of non-confidence

00:08:15.140 at Kenny's leadership at that caucus meeting today. Corey, can he survive today?

00:08:22.640 I think he'll survive today, but I don't think he's got much shelf life left. He's got no

00:08:27.500 base of support anywhere. He's alienated them all. I mean, the left side is, well, they've

00:08:33.860 always despised him. The right side now, you know, with the restrictions and the lack of

00:08:39.280 communication. I mean, it's not even his actions, but the way he's presented them. I mean, it's

00:08:44.720 often when things got tough, it became a game of hide and seek, or we'll put Hinshaw out and

00:08:49.620 Kenny will go into hiding, or Kenny will come out like, it's just been run terribly, and he's lost

00:08:55.040 confidence from people to say that you know we're in the midst of a crisis we can't reveal well we

00:09:00.560 just went through a general election in the midst of a pandemic so dealing with one premier's

00:09:04.720 leadership is something i think we can we can deal with at this point but he is in in dire

00:09:09.280 dire trouble and i don't see how he's going to get out of this um that's my expectation i'd be

00:09:16.960 surprised if he steps down today although they might well get the votes but keeping in mind

00:09:21.600 even within a caucus vote, the cabinet is whipped. The cabinet must support the

00:09:25.920 premier, they must step down from the cabinet if they're not supporting the

00:09:28.840 premier, even in an internal caucus vote. At least that's my understanding and

00:09:32.580 speaking to members of the caucus. What's different this time from the

00:09:38.680 rebellion he faced from caucus in the late spring, early summer, was that that

00:09:46.740 time he was facing just kind of the more right-leaning Wildrose faction of that

00:09:51.420 caucus. Now he's facing the left side of his caucus, the more progressive conservatives

00:09:58.000 at the same time. So he doesn't have just the, well, I guess Drew Barnes is no longer

00:10:04.100 in the caucus, but he's not just facing that kind of more a Wildrose right-leaning and

00:10:10.360 some libertarian-ish side. He's now facing progressive conservatives like Richard Godfrey,

00:10:17.240 Lila here, very publicly ripped Jason Kenney 1.00

00:10:22.880 in comments given to Dodd Braid,

00:10:24.360 published at the Calgary Herald last night.

00:10:27.160 Devastating comments, calling for Kenney to resign.

00:10:30.240 And Kenney's got to respond to that now.

00:10:32.100 Like, is he going to kick her out

00:10:33.540 like he did past caucus members?

00:10:35.460 Or is he going to let that fester and say,

00:10:36.960 you can start calling for my resignation with impunity.

00:10:39.620 That's, I mean, these cards are falling.

00:10:42.400 Yeah, so it's you,

00:10:46.940 If a leader, I mean, how much tolerance you have for dissent is one thing,

00:10:50.940 but, again, he doesn't actually have that much tolerance for dissent on issues publicly.

00:10:54.940 Maybe internally, maybe he does internally.

00:10:56.940 But, you know, when Todd Lowen challenged the leadership of Jason Kenney,

00:11:00.940 Kenney has had no choice but to try and remove him.

00:11:03.940 I think Todd Lowen was certainly right in his call.

00:11:07.940 But, I mean, if you're going to remain the leader of the party,

00:11:09.940 you can't have members of your caucus calling for your head publicly.

00:11:11.940 That's at least in Canada's silly party discipline system, that's essentially the rules.

00:11:19.260 He's now had Lila here on the record calling for his head.

00:11:25.100 Can he remove her?

00:11:26.100 I don't think he has the votes.

00:11:28.020 And if he goes after her, I mean, I think there's minimum 10 or 15 would probably say

00:11:33.540 we're going to, even though they're on very different sides of the caucus with very different

00:11:37.740 critiques of how Keny has handled COVID, they're on both sides. I think at the very least, it'll

00:11:43.940 be clear today that he's probably lost total control of caucus at an absolute minimum.

00:11:49.680 Yeah, it's a mess. As Corey says, he's burned his bridges on both sides. You can't go to one

00:11:55.560 side anymore because he's got no support on either side. Yeah, so Keny is largely left within caucus

00:12:03.300 with the middle of caucus, which are largely going to be rallying around the premier on

00:12:08.480 just a matter of support of him, either personal loyalty or he's buttering their bread or whatever

00:12:15.960 reason. They're supporting Kenny himself and they're kind of in the middle of the caucus.

00:12:22.440 The views in caucus, at least, you know, if COVID is a left-right thing, which it

00:12:26.280 has largely become, I suppose, you know, the progressive left end and the conservative

00:12:32.060 of Libertarian right-hand, they're both at him, and he's left with a very narrow strip

00:12:37.700 in the middle. And if that's enough to hold, we're probably going to know fairly soon.

00:12:44.120 I imagine this caucus is not going to be quick, but it is entirely possible Kenny will be

00:12:50.820 announcing the end of his premiership today. Probably not the smart money, although I put

00:12:56.440 five bucks on it. I don't think that's the smart money. Not likely, but it is entirely within the

00:13:02.680 realm of possibility it happens today. But if it doesn't happen today, at this point, I'm calling

00:13:10.060 it. He is gone one way or another. I cannot see any road back. There is a virtual certainty that

00:13:16.360 if he remains premier, they will not just get defeated by the NDP, but they will get annihilated

00:13:20.600 by the NDP, and to an extent, the Wild Rose as well, and once MLAs, I mean, some MLAs

00:13:30.220 are doing this out of principle, other MLAs are just a matter of, I don't want to lose

00:13:33.360 my seat, and they're going to lose a lot of seats right now if he remains Premier.

00:13:37.920 And once you hit that point, and they don't think that there's time for the Premier to

00:13:41.220 turn around, and I certainly do not think there is time for Kenny to turn it around

00:13:44.100 at this point, because he has to heal things on the left and on the right, and you can't

00:13:49.360 generally do both at the same time.

00:13:51.400 So he's going to face more challenges.

00:13:55.480 Let's say he survives today.

00:13:56.820 He comes out and he's like the knight in Monty Python.

00:13:59.940 He's missing his arms and legs, but he is still alive and he wants to bite their ankles

00:14:03.920 off.

00:14:04.920 Can he, let's say Kenny is still alive at the end of today.

00:14:10.580 What's he facing?

00:14:11.580 Well, he's facing basically open revolt from the grassroots in a Western Standard

00:14:17.680 exclusive this week. We had a story on 32, I think it was, separate writing associations,

00:14:26.360 constituency writing associations that have pledged to go for an early leadership review of

00:14:33.160 Kenny. The party has one scheduled for late 2022, but that would leave it only six months before

00:14:40.180 the next election. Really not enough time to hold a leadership campaign and get a new premier in

00:14:46.580 there if, in fact, Kenny should lose that ballot.

00:14:50.280 Kenny said yesterday at his press conference he welcomes, you know, reviews of his leadership

00:14:55.460 and it's no problem, but again, it's not, it's not the right time to do it.

00:15:01.260 And it's not only the...

00:15:02.260 The right time to do it is right before the provincial election, clearly.

00:15:05.000 Exactly.

00:15:06.000 And it's not only the grassroots now, it's people in his, high up in his party.

00:15:11.980 Another Western Standard exclusive was an open letter penned by a gentleman called Joel

00:15:18.400 Mullin.

00:15:19.400 He is a vice president of the UCP, vice president of policy.

00:15:24.100 He initially called for a leadership review, but now he says the time has come that Kenny

00:15:28.640 has to go now.

00:15:31.500 When you've got people that high up in the party calling for you to go, you are a dead

00:15:36.160 man walking.

00:15:39.240 We've had a lot of exclusives.

00:15:41.840 Number one, late last night, I mean, if you, I think someone tweeted, Siri, show me the

00:15:48.980 most Alberta thing.

00:15:50.760 And then they posted a screenshot of the headline we broke last night, George Canyon, country

00:15:56.140 star George Canyon and the Man Who Sings O'Canada at the Calgary Flames will be announcing that

00:16:02.540 he is running for the presidency of the UCP at their coming November convention on a platform

00:16:08.220 with a single mandate. Leadership review of Kenny. Corey, can this guy get a break?

00:16:15.900 No. Well, he set his own stage. You know, his fate, Kenny's fate was sealed when the pandemic

00:16:21.540 resurged in Alberta. That was it. I mean, he made it clear, we are open forever. We are open for

00:16:27.000 good. People took that to the bank. They felt confident about it. They looked forward to

00:16:31.420 getting back to normal. Now, I know it wasn't probably within Kenny's control to stop that

00:16:36.500 resurgence or perhaps he could have mitigated it. But the bottom line was, this is where he

00:16:41.520 infuriated both sides. People who feel that government intervention could have stopped this

00:16:45.980 resurgence are livid with him. I mean, you know, you listen to NDP Joe Vipond. He's on there just

00:16:51.740 to howl and he's saying every deficit. Kenny has killed people. That's how he did that rhetoric is

00:16:57.640 coming from that side. On the other side, people said, hey, you told me we're open. You told me

00:17:02.680 this is going to work. And it blew up. We're back into restrictions. We got

00:17:06.920 Ninchy holding an emergency meeting now, undercutting in the city of Calgary might bring in

00:17:12.220 city restrictions. If Kenny doesn't, it's just a catastrophe. He cannot recover from this.

00:17:17.760 We're getting alarming death tolls on a daily basis now. 29 dead just yesterday. It's incredible.

00:17:25.120 And just back to Canyon for a moment. He is an experienced politician.

00:17:29.120 he's not a raw rookie. He's put his foot in the water. He's put his foot in the water. He ran in

00:17:36.100 the 2019 federal election. He was Nova Scotia born. So he ran in the riding of Central Nova

00:17:44.460 down in Nova Scotia and then came second to the liberal candidates. So he has a little practice

00:17:51.760 in the art of campaigning. And as Derek said, if he wins, he will push for the immediate removal of

00:17:58.580 Well, it's, and if he wins, actually, literally the election of him as the president of the

00:18:06.920 party would just be essentially taken as a vote of non-confidence by the members.

00:18:10.920 Like, you don't even need to get to the leadership review at that point a couple months later,

00:18:14.100 because if the members have elected the man really just on a one-issue mandate to more

00:18:22.160 or less recall Kenny, then the members have already voted to do it.

00:18:25.400 You almost don't need to go through the formality of it at that point.

00:18:28.700 The members have given a mandate that they want Kenney's leadership gone at that point.

00:18:34.420 You've got the constituency associations coming at them.

00:18:37.440 Caucus is going right now today.

00:18:39.300 If they can't do the job today, they're certainly going to make it continually messy.

00:18:43.940 I would expect if they don't get the votes to get rid of them today,

00:18:46.660 I'd be fairly surprised if we don't have MLAs on the record speaking with their names.

00:18:50.900 Not just as anonymous, not for attribution MLAs, but on the record.

00:18:54.820 calling for Kenney's resignation.

00:18:57.600 I'd be quite surprised if we don't see that today at a minimum.

00:19:01.360 You've got the CAs coming at them.

00:19:03.220 You've got Canyon and the Convention coming now,

00:19:05.780 which is going to be a de facto leadership review.

00:19:10.460 We're going to get a split caucus. 0.98

00:19:11.940 I mean, I'm getting rummaged.

00:19:12.720 It reminds me almost of Stockwell Day when his end was coming, too.

00:19:15.920 You know, if they can't get satisfaction within the caucus meetings,

00:19:19.120 I can see members breaking aside and starting a new caucus within

00:19:23.540 And the legislature, I think it is, if you've got four seats, you get immediate party status.

00:19:29.600 Yeah, they had the democratic, so, you know, a bit of a history lesson here.

00:19:33.380 After the 2000 federal election, Stockwell Day's leadership fell apart.

00:19:37.280 He refused to step down as the leader of the Canadian Alliance.

00:19:40.880 They couldn't get it done internally.

00:19:42.340 And so, you know, about a third, up to a third of the federal Canadian Alliance caucus left that.

00:19:49.540 They didn't start a new party, but they started, essentially, an independent Canadian Alliance caucus.

00:19:53.540 and it was essentially in protest of Day's leadership and that eventually brought enough

00:19:57.040 leadership pressure to bear that Day was forced to step down and that's when Stephen Harper won

00:20:01.720 the leadership of the party. That is within, that is in the cards right now. I'm not saying that's

00:20:07.020 going to happen but that is very much in the cards as one of the options being very actively

00:20:11.140 discussed by, for lack of a better term, I just call them the underground or kind of a general

00:20:16.140 catch all term because it's the left and the right of their caucus as we've been discussing.

00:20:20.680 It's not like it'd necessarily be a Wild Rose Caucus.

00:20:24.140 I think it might be predominantly more on the right side of the party, but it'll have

00:20:28.240 a lot of those progressives, Lila Heer, Richard Gottfried, these types who also want him gone.

00:20:37.100 The idea is that he would step down, there'll be an interim premier selected by the caucus.

00:20:42.420 Leading name is Rick McIver.

00:20:44.380 He's kind of quiet, keeps his head down, doesn't really piss off one side or the other.

00:20:48.360 He's like a moderate progressive conservative.

00:20:50.960 He's not like Allison Redford left kind of thing, but he's not a Wild Roser either.

00:20:57.280 One way or another, I think he's done.

00:20:59.740 As we know, Kenny hates to apologize.

00:21:02.200 Even when he apologized for the fourth set of COVID lockdowns in the press conference,

00:21:06.460 he walked back on the apology.

00:21:07.960 Sorry, not sorry.

00:21:09.000 Sorry, not sorry.

00:21:10.000 So does he have the advisors around him and does he have the political sense to know when

00:21:16.500 it's time to go?

00:21:17.500 No.

00:21:18.500 No, I think he might be that bleeding torso with no arms and no legs by the point that

00:21:23.680 they finally drag him off that stage.

00:21:26.000 Not dead yet.

00:21:27.540 One MLA who spoke to us, of course we couldn't use their name, said that Kenny would rather

00:21:32.660 blow the whole thing up than leave gracefully. 0.60

00:21:36.380 You know, I can appreciate you don't give up without a fight.

00:21:39.320 He thinks he, I genuinely believe that he thinks he's the only guy who can lead Alberta,

00:21:44.080 the only guy who can lead the United Conservative Party, that he is the party.

00:21:48.640 So in his mind, this is not necessarily selfish.

00:21:51.500 If he thinks he's the only one who can do it, well then that's not necessarily a selfish

00:21:55.220 thing in his mind.

00:21:58.620 But yeah, when MLA spoke to us and many others echoing the same sentiment, saying he would

00:22:03.980 rather blow the whole thing up, he'll take the ship down in a flaming wreck before he

00:22:08.440 goes.

00:22:09.440 And let's not forget that just last spring, right around the time of the Bowdoin Rodeo,

00:22:13.700 rogue rodeo in Bowdoin, Kenny threatened the caucus with an early election. If they didn't

00:22:18.680 fall into line, we had many MLAs confirm that to us, saying, you guys fall into line or

00:22:25.440 I'll call an early election. And I think that's increasingly a small possibility because Kenny

00:22:30.440 is, his premier is in such tatters. He would have a virtually a 0% chance of winning that

00:22:36.420 election. He'd get annihilated by the NDP and bitten off a bit on the right by Wild Rose

00:22:40.720 as well, but he's, it is a possibility. I don't think he'd go that way, but he could

00:22:48.460 do it because if he gives into caucus and he steps down, well, he has a 0% chance of

00:22:53.280 winning. He's just out. He's out of the game and it's over. He goes to, if he calls a snap

00:22:57.280 election, well, he'll, he'll very likely lose, but it's a bigger, it's a better chance than

00:23:04.240 zero. One percent is better than zero percent. So whatever that chance, because he might just say,

00:23:11.680 well, you know, people are angry at me. But at the end of the day, I'm a great campaigner.

00:23:15.120 I've never lost a campaign in my life. And Albertans are not naturally NDP. So maybe

00:23:20.720 I can fight my way out of it. And he's got enough realism and political experience,

00:23:25.360 too. That's something that's not been coming up. You know, it's not just this pandemic,

00:23:28.000 it's not recent decisions. They don't have any money. They're fundraising. They've been

00:23:31.200 walloped by the NDP quarter after quarter after quarter, he's going to...

00:23:36.960 But never underestimate the ability of Alberta Tories to borrow money. Remember,

00:23:40.960 Jim Prentice did this. He borrowed a ton of money on the eve and into the first days of the 2015

00:23:48.240 campaign that ended the Tory dynasty after about 43, 44 years. He borrowed a ton of money,

00:23:54.480 and what does it matter if you lose? It's not your money to pay back, it's the party's problem.

00:23:58.320 So, I mean, he might be counting on there being a couple of folks around this area in

00:24:05.420 downtown Calgary with some deep pockets who could finance that kind of thing because their

00:24:10.420 members are not giving them money.

00:24:12.240 Let's remember, days before they introduced the vaccine passport, the Tories had sent

00:24:16.760 out an email to their members saying, donate money to us because we're against the vaccine

00:24:21.040 passport.

00:24:22.040 As far as I know, we need to make notice, we need to do a follow-up story.

00:24:25.080 I want to know if they refunded a single penny of that money that they took from Conservative

00:24:29.000 Party members for their campaign to fight against vaccine passports, and then a few

00:24:33.760 days later impose a draconian vaccine passport.

00:24:37.940 I'd like to know.

00:24:38.940 I have a sneaking suspicion what the answer is.

00:24:40.840 Yeah, I do too.

00:24:42.900 Let's talk about one name that we haven't mentioned yet, Brian Jean.

00:24:46.180 He's sitting up there in Fort McMurray, rubbing his hands, and he puts a post on Facebook

00:24:51.400 yesterday saying that, hey, we're going to have a by-election up here.

00:24:54.960 I run for my old seat. And of course, that got political tongues wagging in Alberta. He's a

00:25:01.840 former leader of the Wild Rose. He would be probably the instant favorite, I would think,

00:25:06.560 to maybe take over from Kenny if a leadership race was held. What do you think is going through his

00:25:13.520 mind right now? I don't think that as long as Kenny is there, he's not going to be approved to

00:25:18.320 be a UCP candidate. They don't have real nominations. They have a vote, but these are going to be,

00:25:23.520 These are heavily screened candidates and not just screening to make sure they're not like

00:25:27.520 rapists and murderers. It's does the leader like you as well. And there is zero percent chance

00:25:33.440 Jason Kenney would ever sign off on Brian Jean running under the used to be banner. So at present

00:25:38.080 he'd have to run as an independent or theoretically under another party's banner, although I don't

00:25:42.640 think that's likely to happen. But I mean that they don't seem in a great hurry to call that

00:25:48.160 by-election. And if Kenny is gone today, within the week, within the month, well then that riding

00:25:54.720 is still open for Brian Jean to claim. But if Kenny is gone, there is a 100% chance that Brian

00:26:01.120 Jean is running for that seat and for the UCP leadership. Yeah, well the only reason Brian,

00:26:05.840 well he seems to like just kind of lobbing stones from the sidelines anyway, so who knows. But he

00:26:12.240 will not run just to be an MLA. There's only one reason he'd want to enter the political realm

00:26:16.960 again. He wants that top job, so he's not going to go in for anything less.

00:26:21.680 Yeah. Okay. Well, let's...

00:26:26.560 Our production guy says maybe Danielle Smith will take a run at it. 1.00

00:26:32.560 Who knows? I mean, George Canyon, Corey Morgan. I mean, like, Alberta politics...

00:26:39.440 Derek Fildebrand.

00:26:40.240 Well, that's one we can say no.

00:26:43.480 Alberta politics is on an exponential craziness train right now.

00:26:50.060 It gets exponentially insane every day.

00:26:53.360 I said on election night, I'm going to bet you 20 bucks that election night was not the

00:26:59.000 most interesting day in politics this week.

00:27:02.640 And I still, I think today could be and the next few days after will be.

00:27:07.500 It's going to get crazier and crazier.

00:27:09.360 But, buckle up, absolute latest, I cannot see Kenny just surviving the long term.

00:27:16.100 Maybe he even stumbles to Christmas, probably not, but I think his goose is cooked.

00:27:20.300 Speaking of cooked gooses, let's turn to Aaron O'Toole.

00:27:25.160 I don't think his goose is cooked yet, but the knives are coming out.

00:27:31.760 Dave, obviously, he made this big shift pretty hard to the left.

00:27:40.080 Snake Eyes didn't get any, the Conservatives, I think, did they get one extra seat?

00:27:44.300 I think they got one extra seat in the whole country, right?

00:27:46.920 Well, they're still counting as of today.

00:27:49.380 I thought they may have even actually lost a seat.

00:27:52.360 They might because these mail-in ballots are likely to favor NDP and Liberal voters.

00:27:57.100 So some of those marginal seats the Conservatives actually might end up losing.

00:28:03.100 Certainly O'Toole needed to do better, and he didn't, he held a press conference yesterday

00:28:08.440 in Ottawa, he says the review of the campaign is already underway, and you know, he took

00:28:14.340 a shot at Maxime Bernier, said he was just using the pandemic as an excuse to build up

00:28:21.160 his PPC party who campaigned against a mandatory vaccine policy, he slammed Trudeau for even

00:28:30.660 calling the election in the first place and using the COVID pandemic as a wedge issue.

00:28:36.660 But as you mentioned, the knives are already out.

00:28:39.540 A member of the Tory National Council is on the record.

00:28:46.880 We're interviewing him in about half an hour.

00:28:51.060 Who says he's going to start the process to have O'Toole removed.

00:28:58.120 When they get all the counting voted, I guess MPs will also gather to see whether the leadership should be looked at.

00:29:07.700 But it was obvious that a move to the left did not work.

00:29:10.700 They did not capture a single seat in Toronto.

00:29:15.880 They lost a couple seats in British Columbia.

00:29:18.920 So, I guess, and Alberta, right, they lost three in Alberta.

00:29:24.260 So the switch didn't work, so I guess the internal question now for Tories is, where

00:29:29.740 do you go from here?

00:29:30.740 Do you go back to the right, do you go back to the center?

00:29:34.940 So Corey, I mean, I think if Aaron O'Toole would have won today, as I say, victory has

00:29:46.320 many fathers, but defeat is an orphan. And, you know, if O'Toole would have won, most

00:29:52.320 people in the Federal Conservative Party, on the right and the left of the party would

00:29:56.600 have said, this is the right strategy, we got it done, good. But they didn't, they lost.

00:30:03.200 O'Toole implied on election night that they need to go even further left. And I think

00:30:06.820 if they do that, they almost risk out lefting the, maybe not the NDP, but the Liberals at

00:30:12.700 least. And I don't know really how, where he goes from here. Can they moderate any more?

00:30:22.060 There's always room to slide further left. I suppose, but I mean, they already lost a

00:30:26.940 significant portion of the vote to the PPC. If you believe, if you buy the theory that

00:30:32.860 PPC votes are the property of the Conservative Party and that they were stolen away,

00:30:37.660 then, by that math, it cost the Conservatives 25 seats.

00:30:41.300 That is a not insignificant number.

00:30:43.760 That would have given them a bare plurality by like three to five seats or something.

00:30:47.880 Not necessarily would have put them in government, but very close.

00:30:53.760 Does O'Toole have a reasonable argument for hanging on as leader and getting another kick

00:30:59.060 at the can?

00:31:00.060 You know, maybe reasonable.

00:31:01.600 His crisis isn't nearly as immediate as what's going on with Jason Kenney.

00:31:05.360 This is, you know, people are still waiting for the dust to settle.

00:31:07.980 I mean, we still have mail-in ballots coming.

00:31:09.380 Not that it's going to change the outcome dramatically.

00:31:11.820 But, you know, there's more of a slow boil can be starting with him.

00:31:15.800 He does have to make his case.

00:31:17.900 He has to expand on it beyond an election night speech.

00:31:21.280 I mean, he didn't lose a whole bunch of ground either.

00:31:23.400 That was the striking thing with that election is just nothing changed.

00:31:27.180 So I think there's a degree of support for people to say, well, we can still work with this.

00:31:32.280 We can build this up and we'll get them next time.

00:31:34.660 And there are others who are saying, that's it. We compromised. It failed. We blew it.

00:31:39.660 Let's get back to where our base is again. He's got a battle. He's got trouble on his hands.

00:31:45.660 The knives are out. But I think it's survivable, you know, versus Kenny.

00:31:48.660 I mean, all we're doing is trying to figure out which date it's going to happen.

00:31:51.660 I think O'Toole may be able to pull himself through this. It depends on how he presents himself in the next couple of weeks.

00:31:56.660 Okay. Well, let's turn towards where things are going with the People's Party.

00:32:00.660 Party, the People's Party actually getting some attention in even the legacy mainstream

00:32:05.880 media now because it was just impossible to ignore.

00:32:09.300 I think they got just a little 5% to 6% of the vote.

00:32:15.240 They underperformed some polls.

00:32:16.340 I would guesstimate that some of that was people heeding O'Toole's call to hold their

00:32:21.460 nose and still vote Tory to stop Trudeau. 0.95

00:32:24.580 I would expect it.

00:32:25.580 You know, the NDP normally underperform polls because some of them do that, go to the Liberal

00:32:29.140 party to stop the Conservatives. But an impressive showing nonetheless, but no seats. I mean,

00:32:37.960 Bernie ran a national campaign as if he was running for prime minister, but seemed to

00:32:41.340 pay remarkably little attention to actually winning his own seat in Boas. On election

00:32:45.580 night, he wasn't even in Boas. He was somewhere in Saskatchewan. I mean, if he was going to

00:32:53.140 spend it outside of Boas, I would have thought it would be Calgary or something. But it was

00:32:57.220 an odd strategy. I remember when the Greens were coming up, they kind of did something

00:33:02.040 similar. Elizabeth May in her first election campaigned across the country like she was 0.99

00:33:05.600 running for prime minister. They got a bunch of votes, snake eyes on seats. And then her 1.00

00:33:10.660 second election, she really, she just looked around the country and found the greenest

00:33:14.880 right to find, I think called North Central Gulf Islands or something. So it's just pretty

00:33:21.020 much part of Victoria, not technically. And focused there, won her seat. And then she

00:33:26.540 built a beachhead, she got up to three seats, they're now down to two. Where does PPC, I 0.88

00:33:33.660 guess first with his leadership, I mean one of the I think fair criticisms of the PPC

00:33:38.020 is they've actually never had a leadership race, which is founded by the leader and they

00:33:41.920 had a leader. They never bothered going through it. He said he's probably going to put it up

00:33:45.900 for a leadership review now, which is I suppose something, but where do you think things are,

00:33:50.940 where are things going here for Maxime Bernier and the PPC?

00:33:53.720 Well, I think Bernier is very popular within the PPC as their leader.

00:33:59.220 If there was a leadership review, I think he would pass quite handily.

00:34:04.040 They took 8% of the vote in Alberta, which is not an insignificant amount.

00:34:09.240 Jason Kenney yesterday said those are probably people who voted for him in the last provincial election.

00:34:15.540 So there's no doubt that they did take seats away from the Tories in Alberta.

00:34:22.140 They may have cost them one seat, Edmonton-Greisbach, where the NDP barely got by incumbent Cary

00:34:32.820 Deyotte and the PPC candidate there got a large number of votes too.

00:34:37.380 They might have also been Edmonton Center, I'm not sure.

00:34:42.300 I don't have the numbers in front of me.

00:34:44.740 But the campaign is going to continue, Derek, in Alberta, because we've got our Senate election.

00:34:53.580 And today, or late last night, the PPC announced their three candidates for the Senate election.

00:35:01.580 You've got Nadine Wellwood, who ran in Banff Airdrie for the party in the election.

00:35:09.400 Didn't do so well, came fourth, I think.

00:35:11.700 But you've got Anne McCormick up north of Vermilion.

00:35:16.860 She came second in her writing.

00:35:19.640 She has a very popular local MP, but still managed to come second.

00:35:25.700 She got 12% of the vote, which is good going.

00:35:30.420 She's the second candidate.

00:35:32.680 And Kelly Lorenz, I'll probably mispronounce his last name, Lorenz in Red Deer Mountain View.

00:35:39.120 He's their third candidate.

00:35:40.760 Sounds like they're going to be traveling the province together and Mad Max is going

00:35:45.760 to come and join them on a couple of stops.

00:35:48.240 So I talked to all three, there's a story up on our website, WesternStandardOnline.com.

00:35:55.100 All three of them, they say they're happy, they get more weeks of getting out the PPC

00:36:01.440 policy and they get to campaign with Max.

00:36:05.320 These people must be suckers for punishment because you've just gone through a federal

00:36:09.580 campaign. And if you're being realistic, I've run a suicide campaign before. It's hard to keep

00:36:15.100 motivated when you know you're probably not going to win. So they just went through that. Now they're

00:36:18.220 running for the Senate. Corey, the Senate's a very different beast though, this kind of race.

00:36:23.340 There is no, the conservatives can't say, well, don't split the vote because there is no liberal.

00:36:28.780 There is no new Democrats. There's a couple of independent lefties, but independents don't get

00:36:33.260 elected in Alberta period, especially provincially. And this is technically a provincial election,

00:36:38.220 but it's also province-wide, and you get three votes. It's almost like a ranked ballot in a

00:36:43.660 in a sense. It's a quasi-form of ranked ballot. There's going to be no argument about splitting

00:36:49.900 the vote. This person is never going to see the light of day in the Senate, probably, because

00:36:54.860 the Liberals aren't going to appoint them. This is very much just a moral exercise in Alberta,

00:36:59.980 saying we want to elect our senators, not have Trudeau appoint them. There's an extraordinarily

00:37:05.020 small chance Justin Trudeau would respect the election. I think he's going to appoint one

00:37:08.540 midway through the campaign. We've got openings right now. Yeah, there's two right now. He might

00:37:12.700 do it just to be a dick. Just to prove the point. Quit wasting your energy. Well, look what he did

00:37:17.500 the last time. When the election kicked off, Jason Kenney met with Trudeau and said, look,

00:37:24.860 we've got a Senate opening while we're holding a Senate election in a couple months.

00:37:28.860 Can you hold off on making that appointment? Kenney, Trudeau turned around and appointed

00:37:33.740 the mayor of Banff. So, you know, it was a big, you know, den in the net to Alberta. And yeah,

00:37:40.380 he'll do it again. So, I mean, no, these senators, these people are not going to go to the Senate

00:37:46.380 unless, I mean, they'll get on the waiting list and maybe in two years, the federal government

00:37:50.700 changes. But that aside, do you think we actually have a race or is this still essentially a race

00:37:57.020 just between which conservative candidate gets ranked the highest? Well, we got a race on point

00:38:01.340 of principle and it's interesting it'll be interesting to watch like this is where you

00:38:05.020 can remove that that vote splitting argument as you said and i mean i've been watching a lot of

00:38:10.300 that you know and i'm getting annoyed with the conservative presumption that every ppc vote was

00:38:15.100 a vote that they owned somehow like we've demonstrated and seen that earlier i would

00:38:19.100 say predominantly the votes that went ppc were probably conservative types of voters but not all

00:38:23.980 of them they engaged brand new voters they cut into the green voters they cut into the liberal

00:38:28.620 voters, a lot of CPC voters just bloody well stayed home because they didn't like what they

00:38:32.780 saw. So there's no doubt the PPC impacted the election, but you can't sit there and use that

00:38:37.600 as an excuse for having lost it. Sorry, you lost it. They didn't steal it from you. So let's stop

00:38:42.500 that narrative because you're going to lose the next one if you stick to it. But this gives at

00:38:46.280 least that opportunity now for Albertans to say, well, is there something to this party? Is there

00:38:50.120 something more? The PPC is going to have to expand a bit more in depth. I mean, they've cornered a

00:38:55.680 a market of people who are concerned with restrictions,

00:38:58.280 vaccination passports, and those sorts of things.

00:39:00.680 But they haven't really broadened beyond that.

00:39:02.840 I know they have a larger policy set,

00:39:04.300 but nobody's talking about that.

00:39:05.600 So we're gonna see in this campaign

00:39:07.320 if they're gonna be able to talk in a bigger sense,

00:39:09.640 because I think it's a hard ceiling

00:39:11.900 with just that anti-restriction sort of platform.

00:39:15.600 You've gotta bring more people in

00:39:17.800 and we're gonna test that ability in this next month.

00:39:20.060 I actually have been very interested

00:39:21.260 in the way the Conservative Party of Canada candidate,

00:39:23.420 Because remember, these are, provincial parties are outlawed from running candidates.

00:39:27.140 These are federal parties, even though the province is holding an election.

00:39:29.420 It's a bizarre, terribly designed system.

00:39:33.660 But the Conservative Party of Canada candidates, who were also sort of affiliated with the

00:39:40.180 UCP, sort of, in this weird, complicated system.

00:39:44.380 It's a Byzantine system they've built up.

00:39:45.840 It's not just mixed circles.

00:39:46.840 There is, they're listed as a federal candidate, but they also have official endorsement from

00:39:51.740 provincial parties if they want, but not necessarily, and it doesn't show up on the ballot.

00:39:56.060 It's really screwy. But these Senate candidates, they are running technically for the Conservative

00:40:02.700 Party of Canada. The Conservative Party of Canada is officially supporting a carbon tax.

00:40:07.900 The Conservative Party of Canada officially opposes any change to equalization.

00:40:13.180 So, I don't know those candidates too well, but are they going to break ranks with Aaron

00:40:23.100 O'Toole and his official party policy?

00:40:25.600 Remember, that's not the member pass policy.

00:40:28.360 Member pass policy opposes a carbon tax.

00:40:30.340 The member pass policy, well, doesn't mention equalization really, but are they going to

00:40:34.940 break ranks and run as more of an Alberta UCP candidate, or are they going to run as

00:40:39.660 federal conservative candidates?

00:40:41.520 And if they go to Alberta, is Aaron O'Toole going to do anything about it?

00:40:45.500 It'll be interesting because if they're running as Aaron O'Toole Conservatives, I think it's

00:40:49.880 going to cost them a lot of votes.

00:40:51.620 And I'm not sure PPC can get over that threshold to actually get some of those top spots and

00:40:56.060 win, but it would be a humiliation for the Conservatives not to triumph in what should

00:41:00.860 be essentially a one-party state.

00:41:02.560 Yeah, well, it gives an opportunity.

00:41:03.880 I think if I'm a CPC Senate candidate, you know, everybody should be thankful I'm not.

00:41:08.340 What I would be framing it as is I want to make the Senate functional again for what it was supposed to be, a house of sober second thought, which means I don't necessarily toe the line of the parliamentary group.

00:41:19.260 I'm there to look at it again and from more of a regional lens and may reevaluate policy based on my interest in Alberta as opposed to the national ones of the federal party.

00:41:28.960 You can make that campaign or that case that way where you're still conservative, you're still at the party, but you're distancing yourself and saying, I'm going to look out for you rather than the party.

00:41:38.060 how believable that is, is again up to the candidates and so on.

00:41:42.140 It sounds like what every candidate says.

00:41:43.740 It is a different house of government, so you can kind of, you know, frame a campaign that way.

00:41:48.060 Well, the good thing about the Senate is once you're there, you're there forever.

00:41:52.780 So it's not like they can like take your nomination away or something.

00:41:56.140 You're in the Senate. If you actually get there, you're good.

00:41:58.540 And also, it's not that they're also not going to be there for life

00:42:01.660 because they're just not going to go to the Senate.

00:42:03.660 I still think we should elect senators,

00:42:05.340 Although, I think that the new Senate legislation we have for this process really de-legitimizes

00:42:10.900 the process that they're outlawing the provincial parties from going.

00:42:13.660 Jason Kenney is probably very glad he has made this not provincial parties right now.

00:42:17.840 He'd be in a pretty sore position.

00:42:19.980 I don't want to be in the middle of that.

00:42:21.300 No.

00:42:22.300 Well, all right, we're going to wrap it up there.

00:42:24.680 Thank you very much all for joining us today.

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Western Standard - September 23, 2021

The Pipeline： Cannibalistic Conservatives & The People's Senate

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