00:05:33.340And then all of a sudden, I remember, I think it was March.
00:05:35.740I read a story out of China about six people, started with six people, at least that first story anyways, about six people getting ill with this, this strain of mystery flu type virus called COVID-19.
00:05:52.200And I'd certainly never heard of it before. And in the next ensuing 24 hours, the story just emanated. And within a week, the first cases were appearing all over the world.
00:06:03.560And it soon became the biggest story in the world. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody
00:06:10.680was worried about it. And it was in Iran first, and we didn't really believe the numbers coming
00:06:19.040out of Iran because you can't really believe anything that comes out of Iran. And then it
00:06:24.040hit Italy. And I think we were all stunned by the ferociousness that it swept through
00:06:30.180poor little Italy and the number of cases and the number of deaths multiplying day after day after
00:06:37.900day you know 20,000 new cases a day a thousand deaths doctors in emergency rooms deciding who
00:06:46.240to give a ventilator and who not to give a ventilator and you could see it spread through
00:06:50.680the rest of Europe and and Great Britain became hard hit and we all knew it was coming then and
00:06:58.560And, you know, I don't think Canada battened down the hatches quickly enough.
00:07:02.840And soon enough, it was sweeping across eastern Canada and then into the west.
00:07:08.760And, you know, and now it's, you know, just an everyday fact of life.
00:07:14.720And it doesn't seem to be disappearing anytime quickly.
00:07:23.160Germany is now talking about going into a third lockdown.
00:07:25.820Yeah. So, you know, we went out on a limb, Derek, and called it the biggest story of 2020.
00:07:32.720And I may go out on a limb right now and maybe say it may be the same in 2021. It may be the
00:07:38.420biggest news story of 2021. Well, that's a bolder caller, but I think you very well might be right
00:07:44.460about that. Corey, I think it's without a doubt the biggest story of 2021, but it turned out very
00:07:52.180quick within within i think about two or three months it turned out not just to be a uh story
00:07:57.380about a virus but it became uh stories about the chinese communist government's uh cover-ups uh
00:08:04.740you know we just saw a reporter out of china who was one of the very first reporters to blow the
00:08:08.980whistle on uh on covid she was sentenced i think to six years in prison or something mad like that
00:08:16.740it became about the cover-up, it became about the World Health Organization seemingly doing the bid
00:08:24.260of the Chinese regime, and then about some of the mishandling by governments across the world,
00:08:30.580including in Canada and in the West here, and the increasing resistance to clampdowns on civil
00:08:39.060liberties. How do you think this? This story has obviously changed outside of just, you know,
00:08:46.420virus is spread or virus is mutated. This story went from, I think, almost a purely medical
00:08:53.860story in most respects to a very polarizing political issue, which I found strange at first.
00:09:02.420But now we've seen the virus and the reaction to it break down almost long ideological lines.
00:09:12.120Corey, how do you think that that happened?
00:09:14.780How did this transform from a medical story into a political story?
00:09:19.740Yeah, well, just because it became so huge and overwhelming, I mean, it's impacted every aspect of our lives.
00:09:26.420There's going to be decades of study on how we responded to this, why we responded the way we did.
00:09:33.280But part of it was we've seen the entire world imposing control on the rights of individuals in a way that's never been seen in human history, like in a whole worldwide sort of way.
00:09:45.400And that's, I believe, what makes the ideological divide.
00:09:50.360I mean, conservative libertarian minded people want the state out of their face.
00:09:54.840They don't want to be controlled. They don't want to be told what to do. They may willingly do those things if asked, but they don't want the state taking care for them. Versus a person who tends to be progressive minded, they feel it's the role of the government to take care of everything. And they want the state to crack down and they want the state to run their lives and they want the state to hold their hand.
00:10:14.640So that division is getting deeper and deeper as the year goes on because people are getting
00:10:19.680crabbier and crabbier with the lockdowns, whether you're on a progressive or a conservative
00:10:55.220There has been conspiracy in the non-kooky sense of the word from the very beginning.
00:11:01.800The Chinese government clearly cracking down on information about the virus coming out.
00:11:06.920uh you know as i just mentioned sending one journalist to prison for six years
00:11:11.080for reporting on this without the government's authorization so uh and then some pretty funny
00:11:15.800business from the world health organization genuine conspiratorial actions that we've we've
00:11:22.680got a pretty good sense of now but that's you know where you see a few points on a map and you can
00:11:30.120pin together reasonably you might then start to see a lot of other points on a map that uh maybe
00:11:34.760don't make so much sense uh and so we've seen a lot of conspiracy theories uh spawn beyond i think
00:11:42.760the reasonable into the increasingly kooky um we would go to dave but uh he appears to have fallen
00:11:49.960into a green tub of liquid um let me would okay there he is uh back in sunny vancouver uh dave
00:11:59.240Why don't you maybe tell us a bit about where some of these conspiracy theories have gone,
00:12:07.080without getting into too much detail, what really the gist of the main conspiracy theories are that
00:12:12.840we've seen arise from this. Dave, you're muted.
00:12:18.280have i mentioned i really hate 2020 um the conspiracy theories run the gamut as you know
00:12:30.840derek i think part of the problem was that it started in china and nobody trusts anything
00:12:36.280that comes out of uh of communist china and probably with good reason and you know all
00:12:42.520boiling down to a lot of people just don't believe the pandemic is real they don't believe in
00:12:47.160vaccinations they don't believe in in uh in government control uh you see it to this day
00:12:54.440with weekly marches in major cities in western canada with uh people that are protesting the
00:13:01.000restrictions uh people that are protesting the anti uh or the the mask mandatory mask bylaws
00:13:08.360you know it goes out all the way out onto the wacky end of the scale too with people worried
00:13:13.080about, you know, it's the 5G network coming in, and if you get a vaccination needle, you're going
00:13:20.880to get, you know, some sort of listening device or something implanted in your brain. And I think
00:13:29.020another part of the problem is just the backtracking that our supposed experts have given
00:13:35.720us at the very beginning of this pandemic. Wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. No,
00:13:42.580wear a mask of three you know three layers you know lockdowns are good no
00:13:46.600known lockdowns are bad no you know lockdowns don't cure a thing so people
00:13:51.340are confused I think they're still confused to this day really just what
00:13:56.020some governments are aiming for and and and what some government's actual
00:14:01.460pathway is to to a normalcy returning to our lives
00:14:07.920Corey just wrap up the COVID I'm so sick of talking about COVID but just can't
00:14:14.820stop it drives me nuts we'll wrap it up maybe with comment from you on this as
00:14:21.740involves conspiracy theories you know I you've written a bit on it you know when
00:14:28.520we see you know these freedom marches against lockdowns against mandatory
00:14:32.880masks because you know I think it'd be very unfair to say most of those people
00:14:39.120are conspiracy theorists I think probably most just don't want the
00:14:43.140government telling them what you can do in the privacy your own home and things
00:14:45.640like that pretty you don't have to be a radical anarcho-libertarian to think
00:14:50.460that but certainly the conspiracy theorists will come out in front of
00:14:54.900attach themselves to it how damaging do you think to the anti lockdown movement
00:15:00.400the attachment of these conspiracy groups have been to it they've been
00:15:06.960terrible to it I did attend two of the marches and again as you said most of
00:15:11.680the people are just concerned and they're rational they're definitely in
00:15:14.260the majority that the ones who go to these things but the the more out there
00:15:18.620a person is the more vocal they always are we know that from political
00:15:22.200organizations in the past as well and a lot of people came down to these these
00:15:27.020protests and marches they were curiosity seekers they were interested they walked around the
00:15:31.420periphery and then they would have somebody approach them and talk about lizard people
00:15:34.780or uh you know bill gates implanting microchips into them with vaccines and then they walk away
00:15:39.420and they just don't come back so it has harmed that but and i've also you know saw the the
00:15:45.260turnout declining at these i think that's going to turn around this year though and it's going to
00:15:50.140change because i i do believe and hope that the vaccine is going to help start turning this around
00:15:56.460We're going to see this thing starting to move into our rear view mirror, but we aren't going
00:16:00.400to see the state easily easing on restrictions. And that's when your average person is going to
00:16:04.820get up and say, you know what, I've had enough. You know, back off, get out of my life. I'm coming
00:16:09.920out and I'm going to speak up for it. But we'll see more of that, I think, later in 2021.
00:16:15.600Just following up a bit on what Corey said, Derek, I think people are now, they're fed up.
00:16:21.360They've reached the end of their patients.
00:16:23.720And you look at what's happening just in Calgary in the last couple of weeks where you've got, you know, police and bylaw officers descending on neighborhood community rinks because young adults and kids are skating and a neighborhood Karen has snitched on them.
00:16:40.480That type of thing, unless we start seeing some reductions pretty quickly in government control,
00:16:48.480those sort of things are going to grow and grow and grow and get more problematic for the authorities.
00:17:50.280They had a couple of semi-okay commitments in their platform, like ending the ICBC's monopoly on car insurance.
00:17:59.080It was news to me. I don't know how the hell people in B.C. live with a government monopoly on auto insurance.
00:18:11.360Seems pretty strange to me, but different strokes for different folks, I guess.
00:18:15.840Dave, why don't you tell us, really, what was the defining issue of the B.C. election campaign in your mind, sitting from where you are in Red Vancouver?
00:18:34.720Well, I spent a lot of time out in Vancouver, an area during the campaign.
00:18:40.540And to be honest, Derek, there were no issues.
00:18:44.600there were no, you know, screaming platforms. I guess it was mainly because nobody, you know,
00:18:52.600you couldn't attend any meetings, you couldn't go knocking door to door. But the populace as a whole
00:18:58.600seemed fairly happy with what Premier Horgan's been doing. Wilkinson was the name of the liberal
00:19:06.040leader whose name escaped you at the moment. But, you know, he certainly didn't light the world on
00:19:11.160fire and he's now resigned to the ash pit of history. I think it's very much like on the
00:19:22.040federal front with Prime Minister Trudeau. People are happy because they're getting free money.
00:19:29.800My parents each got 500 bucks this week from the Horgan government for doing nothing other
00:19:34.760than being BC residents. My son studying in Vancouver, he got the same $500, and all he
00:19:42.600was was just a BC resident. So, you know, as any political party gives money away, they
00:19:50.780seem to keep the electorate on their side, that's for sure. No doubt he took a gamble
00:19:55.540by calling the election during a pandemic, but it paid off in spades for him.
00:20:01.520Yeah, Corey, do you think there was any path to victory for the BC Liberals here?
00:22:59.880They certainly did better for themselves than the NDP did, who under their leader, Mealy,
00:23:06.620or Mealy, we always get it wrong, don't we?
00:23:08.620But they've put themselves on the political map in Saskatchewan now, and moving forward, they've got their election that they can point to as this was the turning point.
00:23:21.600Well, the Saskatchewan NDP can claim for the first time in, I'm not sure if it's three or four elections, that their leader didn't lose their seat in the general election.
00:30:17.480And if Trudeau maintains the support that he's got now and becomes a majority, that'll even do more for his party's fortunes in the future.
00:30:28.180Yeah, I think it's—I have noticed this in the polls. It's quite strange. We—and I think
00:30:39.380some point in June, we commissioned an independent poll. We hired Northwest Research.
00:30:44.340Wild Rose Independence Party wasn't even a real thing yet. They hadn't concluded the merger to
00:30:48.980create the new party, but we put out a poll saying, you know, that, well, these guys are
00:30:53.780holding a referendum. If they do merge, who are you going to vote for? And we gave essentially
00:30:57.540all of the options in Alberta of any significance whatsoever, even down to the Green Party.
00:31:05.060We didn't put the Pro-Life Association in there, we didn't put the Animal Rights Alliance in there,
00:31:12.500but we did put in virtually anyone of any consequence. And in that, WIP was third place
00:31:21.140with uh i think 10 or 11 support uh the tories were still in the lead the ndp uh were where they
00:31:28.180were uh at the point of the last election but the tories had bled about 10 all of it to the wip
00:31:34.260um but since then it's funny i i've seen not a single poll out there um that asks people about
00:31:42.500them they're just lumped in with other and that actually brings down the other side because if
00:31:45.780you're the option you want to vote for isn't on there well you there's a good chance if you're
00:31:50.020asked by a pollster you're just going to pick your second choice so you know if you're a new if you're
00:31:55.460an alberta liberal supporter and it's not an option well you might not say other you might
00:31:59.460just say well fine ndp that's the next closest so i'm going to go ndp or as i said if you're wip
00:32:05.060and it's not an option you might just say ucp but uh you know i i saw the university of alberta put
00:32:10.580out a study uh about a week or two ago uh saying the tories have shed a tremendous amount of support
00:32:18.340all of it going to almost all of it going to WIP, but then they showed their poll and it had just
00:32:24.100other. And other in all the polls in Alberta is the number of third party in Alberta. So you have
00:32:30.180UCP mostly at the top or almost tied with the NDP depending on the polls, but you see UCP, NDP,
00:32:36.900and then a huge other, and then Alberta party, Liberals, etc. You can't account for every
00:32:46.180single party in every poll which is why you have another option but when other is about five percent
00:32:52.580in canadian politics when other is the third party it kind of behooves a pollster to ask
00:32:59.060who the hell is this other uh cory why do you think it is the pollsters and uh the government
00:33:06.580subsidized media outlets are not picking up on this at all well there's a couple of reasons
00:33:14.020They can't avoid it forever though. Part of it is with Paul Hidman now on board, once they get an
00:33:20.820actual leader, I mean we know too if you want to report on something, it'd be nice to get a quote
00:33:24.180from a known name, you don't have a face there. It's a movement still and so it doesn't encourage
00:33:30.900them to dig a little deeper on this. The thing that they're in danger of doing though with Paul,
00:33:35.780and I know from working with him, is he's a tireless ground worker. You could find somebody
00:33:40.980more experienced in the province in building parties from the ground up than Paul and, you
00:33:47.100know, hardworking and door knocking and speaking to people. I mean, people say he lacks charisma
00:33:52.000and, you know, lighting the world on fire. But, you know, right now, that's not what they need.
00:33:55.200They need solid organizational leadership. And he's the person. In looking ahead, as David said,
00:34:01.960too, we're probably, I feel, going to have a federal election this year. And it is probably
00:34:08.360going to put the liberals back in. And if you think last year's flare up of independent support
00:34:13.720was strong, just wait until the liberals get in yet again, because people, we got hard economic
00:34:19.440times coming. Alberta, after decades of paying in and paying in, we're seeing that we're really not
00:34:25.540getting a hell of a lot back and we're not going to. There's going to be a strong surgence and
00:34:31.940they can, the media can't avoid that party any longer. Yeah, sorry, we're having a hard time
00:34:37.660with your camera. Corey's actually out of Pritis, Alberta today, just south of Calgary, and his
00:34:43.960internet connection there is not the best. So you might have a little problem with him
00:34:49.800freezing from time to time. But we did hear you the whole time, Corey. You know, the pollsters
00:34:56.420right now should be taking lessons from Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan, where the independence movement
00:35:00.160is significantly less developed, where it tends to have a lot, you know, while there's certainly
00:35:06.240is support. There is less support for it than in Alberta, and it is less organized than it is in
00:35:12.280Alberta. The party came in third, and it was just a few months old, and you've got stuff like the WIP
00:35:18.580or the Maverick party. Again, no one's ever pulled Wexit federally. Wexit slash Maverick, whatever the
00:35:24.540hell we're calling it now. No one's ever pulled that, but the main independence party in Saskatchewan
00:35:30.700came in third place with just a few months.
00:35:34.560Federally, Maverick is going to be over a year old
00:35:37.020when it goes into its first federal election, likely.
00:35:39.620The WIP will be probably three years, roughly,
00:35:43.500old when it goes into its first federal provincial election.
00:35:47.600These are going to be much more well-organized
00:35:51.920Yet no one polled the Buffalo Party in Saskatchewan.
00:35:54.620Everyone ignored it in the media, except for us, essentially.
00:35:57.340And the media are making the same mistake here in Alberta, where that movement is significantly more advanced and organized.
00:36:05.060Not that it's particularly well organized, but it certainly is further along down that road.
00:36:10.540Dave, why do you think the media is ignoring this?
00:36:14.800They know that there is a movement there, but why are they ignoring these parties in polls and in media coverage largely?
00:36:22.500I think, Derek, it's because they don't like to be wrong.
00:36:26.660they don't you know they're producing their media for mainly the left the the you know most of the
00:36:34.820the media organizations the cbc the post media toronto star they're producing their content for
00:36:41.700left-wing readers and for them to start taking note of the independence parties going out west
00:36:47.940would have to you know admit that their fearless leaders in in trudeau and and uh and whatnot are
00:36:56.020are wrong and they're hey you know there's a huge part of the percentage or a huge percentage of the
00:37:01.780population and it's growing but trudeau and for the media to to do that i just i just don't think
00:37:08.900they will um you know especially the the toronto stars of the world it's uh you know i think um
00:37:15.700Corey hit the nail on the head about Paul Hinman. In this day and age, you don't want a fiery speaker
00:37:23.200because you can't hold mass rallies. You can't hold a saddle don't full of people.
00:37:28.280What you need is somebody on the ground building it up, building it up, building it up,
00:37:31.600slowly but surely, constituency by constituency, so that perhaps not this next election when I
00:37:39.280agree with Corey that Trudeau is going to get back in with the majority, but the next election.
00:37:43.540And holy cow, they'll have four full years of hopefully mostly COVID-free time to, you know, to become a force and then become a force that the media cannot ignore anymore.
00:38:00.260Well, let's talk about, we're going to keep with this topic, but we'll like, we'll maybe parlay it into 2021.
00:38:06.860one. Corey, what do you think is going to happen with this movement and the various parties around
00:38:12.200it in the new year? Federally, we'll probably have a federal election. We can see how the
00:38:19.100Maverick Party slash Wexit fares there. I'd be less hopeful about them than maybe provincially
00:38:26.920with WIP, but they do have a credible interim leader in Jay Hill, although he said repeatedly
00:38:32.700he's not going to seek the top job, but they still haven't had a leadership convention. They
00:38:36.600haven't had a policy convention yet. All that stuff is extraordinarily difficult when it's
00:38:40.800illegal, but there are ways to do it online. What do you think, both for the WIP in Alberta
00:38:47.960and Maverick federally, what do you think 2021 pretends for them?
00:38:53.580Well, I mean, again, I do believe there's going to be a federal election coming, so that'll give
00:38:58.400the Maverick party a chance to show what they've got, if they've got anything behind them and to
00:39:04.040them. I see they recently announced, it might sound familiar, they're only going to run in
00:39:08.480very strongly conservative ridings in the West, where it was overwhelmingly won by a conservative,
00:39:13.840so people don't fear putting a liberal or a dipper into their seat by casting a ballot for them.
00:39:19.020I don't know, though, if they have it together enough to really make a splash or an impact,
00:39:24.000which wouldn't be detrimental to the Wildrose Independence Party, because it's just, it'll be
00:39:28.880another bellwether to look at, and it won't even necessarily be a fair comparison of the provincial
00:39:33.780movement. So, I mean, it'll impact the provincial movement a bit, but again, if Trudeau, the best
00:39:39.500friend for the independence movement is another Trudeau government. Indeed. Okay, well, let's,
00:39:47.640again, these are easy segues to make. I think we planned it very well today. This brings us to,
00:39:55.120I think, one of the biggest stories in Alberta and out of the West is the complete nose diving in
00:40:00.700the polls of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party. They went from one of
00:40:07.420the biggest electoral triumphs in Alberta's history, and there's been some pretty big ones,
00:40:13.020but it was certainly up there, I think roughly 55%, 54, 55% of the vote in 2019, massive majority
00:40:20.800government. They squeezed out all the small parties, my own included, set up a nice clean
00:40:27.200two-party system with the NDP. Since then, their polls have continued to drop and drop and drop.
00:40:35.440The poll we did in June had them down to roughly 44%, so down 10, 11% from the election,
00:40:43.600but still in pretty comfortable majority territory, but bleeding 10% to the Wild Rose
00:40:48.400Independence Party. The NDP was essentially where it was at the last election, hadn't moved.
00:40:54.480But since then, we've seen some other polls.
00:40:56.980I have a hard time putting much in these polls, though, on the party horse races, as we've discussed.
00:41:03.940When third place is other, they should probably ask who the hell the other is.
00:41:10.120So I think the other actually is probably much larger than it's showing up in most polls produced into the mainstream media.
00:41:18.080But nonetheless, we've seen the approval ratings of the UCP come crashing down.
00:41:23.600uh close to levels with the ndp and we've seen the personal approval ratings of jason kenney
00:41:27.760come down significantly uh dave what what do you think is really driving this in alberta
00:41:34.640uh to make kenny uh almost alone among the premiers in canada see his approval ratings go down
00:41:41.520while uh the other premiers have seen theirs go up well if you remember when rachel notley came
00:41:47.280to power she was handed the uh the pleasure of record low oil prices and that hampered her
00:41:52.720government from day one kenny's got the same problem but it's with the covet 19 pandemic
00:41:59.120and the the theory on the average alberton is that he hasn't handled it very well
00:42:05.040the new this week showed that only 30 percent of albert is approved of the job he's doing 30
00:42:10.960he was tied dead last with brian pallister of manitoba and he's part of the problem was
00:42:19.280before the pandemic he was battling with doctors and he was battling with nurses and he was
00:42:24.560battling with teachers and then the the pandemic came and the request hey come on guys we all have
00:42:30.400to work together we're all in this together i don't think people have been happy with his
00:42:36.400pandemic performance um the friends that i've got many many friends who are ucp supporters and
00:42:44.240and voted for kenny to a man have said they've been disappointed they they thought they would
00:42:51.040they had voted for a man of action and uh and we certainly haven't seen that at the moment
00:42:57.360um perhaps now is not the time that he could have taken on the big unions and
00:43:02.080and tried to bring them to their knees so very very difficult to do when uh when a pandemic is
00:43:06.960going on and you need all the nurses and and doctors that you can he's quietly been working
00:43:12.560behind the scenes uh to get a doctor's deal done uh when that happens that would hopefully take a
00:43:19.120lot of the pressure off but the average ucp supporter is just not happy with the performance
00:43:24.880of the man that they elected yeah when you have 30 approval rating and you got 55 of the vote
00:43:31.840that means nearly one nearly one in two people who voted for you don't approve of the job you're
00:43:37.440doing and normally approval ratings are higher than the normal the number of people who would
00:43:41.600vote for you generally if you have 40% people saying they'll vote for you
00:43:45.560there's a good chance you've got 50 or 60% saying they approve of you but they
00:43:49.820still prefer someone else so when you've got half of the approval of the number
00:43:54.140of votes you got that is that that is that's red alert that is a terrible
00:44:00.200situation for a government to be in 30% approval that is it's not quite
00:44:06.060Alison Redford but Alison Redford was not we're gonna have to pull up some
00:44:10.600numbers here but I think I'm not sure how low she got but it was somewhere I
00:44:14.680think into the lower 20s some of this might be just a temporary though I mean
00:44:19.220Kenny's got another two years and change ahead of them that's a lot of time to
00:44:23.620change the channel I mean anger goes away and the channel might change but you
00:44:32.440know a lot of the media I think are assuming that anyone who's upset with
00:44:35.740Kenny is upset from their point of view so you know most reporters in the media
00:44:40.980are gonna be to the left of Kenny they don't think there is anything to the
00:44:44.700right of Kenny anything after that is here be dragons but they think that if
00:44:49.560people are disapproving of Kenny it must be because they agree with something to
00:44:53.680the leftward spectrum of where Kenny is and I think yeah certainly there are a
00:44:58.060lot of those people but I think the real danger has been his own core base
00:45:02.620completely collapsing on it's it's been people who voted for him who are displeased with how
00:45:10.540he's handling the pandemic but not because he didn't bring in lockdowns harder and faster
00:45:14.980but because he brought them in and caved to pressure to do it things like that people who
00:45:19.880aren't upset that he's going to hold a referendum on equalization they're upset that he hasn't held
00:45:24.400it yet they're upset that he hasn't moved on a lot of these fair deal or firewall items
00:45:29.240you know I'm astounded by the number of people who voted for him thinking he was a closet
00:45:34.460sovereignist you know people project what they want onto a leader but this is the difference
00:45:39.860between being an opposition being in government in government you actually have to deliver on
00:45:44.020these things and it's often a lot more difficult to execute than to promise be it on sovereignty
00:45:51.400be it on liberties around COVID, be it around balancing the budget.
00:45:57.600Corey, what do you think has been really driving the nosedive in the polls for Kenny and the UCP?
00:46:05.420Yeah, well, he can't seem to find his feet and win.
00:46:08.600I believe he's surprising out of Kenny because he's a very experienced politician,
00:46:13.560but he's trying to be everything to everybody, and he's just pissing off everybody.
00:46:18.300The NDP aren't gaining anything out of this.
00:46:20.780They've been sitting at a flat line, I think, 38 percent level or so since the election.
00:46:26.460Kenny's bleeding to the right. And as you said, a lot of it's coming. I mean, he campaigned on
00:46:30.980the Alberta agenda and, you know, getting those things going. And it seemed like pulling teeth
00:46:35.760to get the outcome of that, that those hearings around the province and what they concluded. And
00:46:41.380then, you know, it was conclusively decided that we Albertans wanted to see a provincial police
00:46:46.740force. So when you say, well, we're going to strike another study and have a look at it yet
00:46:49.720But again, well, at some point, you've got to pull the double-edged trigger.
00:46:53.160And I think a lot of members do, again, see Ottawa as a big threat.
00:47:53.340I mean, like, there's nothing wrong with bringing an outside expertise and some level of panels to inform your really big decisions, especially if you don't have an electoral mandate for these things.
00:48:06.380But it has gotten to a farcical level now.
00:48:08.800So, I mean, every recommendation from the Fair Deal panel now has essentially its own individual panels looking at, most of which are doing nothing.
00:48:16.780They're just, they're a nice announcement for the government to make, give the appearance of doing something.
00:48:22.180But I think people are genuinely frustrated by it now.
00:48:26.740Well, let's turn now, and we'd like, you know, we'll solicit ideas in the comments section from those watching.
00:48:35.420What are the most underreported, what's the most underreported story of the year?