Western Standard - The Pipeline： Jean machine wins by-election.

00:00:00.000 Good evening and welcome to the pipeline. This is the Western

00:00:22.880 Standards Weekly Panel News Roundup Show. I'm Cory Morgan in place of Derek Fildebrand,

00:00:29.440 who's usually here in this role our publisher he was indisposed today so uh rather than having

00:00:35.440 Derek's presence you're stuck with me hosting and we do have our senior reporter Melanie Rizdin

00:00:41.120 sitting in for Derek today in a sense yes hello welcome to the pipeline again thank you and as

00:00:47.440 always our news editor Dave Naylor how's it going good good don't put me through this it's been a

00:00:54.880 lot of interviews one of those one word answer pulling out the words and come on we're a bunch

00:00:59.280 you're doing better than your wife i am i don't want to go into that no no we won't go into that

00:01:06.320 not this time uh i am good at getting in trouble with that either way we do have a good packed

00:01:11.840 show it's a great political week uh particularly in this last few days and we'll go into some of

00:01:17.120 that i guess we'll start by getting some of the housekeeping out of the way though this show's

00:01:20.080 been doing great for wow this is the flagship show it's been over a year we've been doing this one

00:01:24.640 weekly and we are in our studio so people have watched this regularly might have noticed we've

00:01:31.440 always been scrunched in quite close knee to knee on those things we've got room now to spread out

00:01:36.080 you guys don't have to smell the whatever I ate for lunch and things like that we're

00:01:39.680 much more comfortable and we can focus on the issues so we are expanding and things are doing

00:01:44.480 great and that is thanks to our sponsors and our subscribers just reminding everybody if you haven't

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00:02:15.340 find it worth it. Almost everybody does. So maybe let's get into the news now and remind people of

00:02:22.600 that news we write and why you can get those exclusive access to stories such as that. The

00:02:27.080 big item today is the Gene Machine winning the by-election. Last night, Fort McMurray-Lack

00:02:32.340 Labish, maybe I'll get you to frame all that up, Dave. Sure, the Gene Machine was in full power

00:02:38.300 last night. By election up there, Gene ran on a platform opposing Jason Kenney. He said he would

00:02:45.440 do his best to get rid of him while working from within caucus. Obviously, that resonated with some

00:02:50.580 of the voters in Fort McMurray, Lackabish, and he won with 64%, I think, of the ballots. NDP

00:02:59.200 candidate was well back, just about 19%. And Paul Hinman, the leader of the Wild Rose,

00:03:06.760 distant, distant third, just about 11%. So there's, Brian Jean is now a UCP, or when he's sworn in,

00:03:20.960 he'll be a UCP MLA, and he's going to be letting the games begin then, if not beforehand,

00:03:27.340 then we'll talk about those developments. Yeah, well, and it'll be giving our newsroom

00:03:31.120 some interesting copy to cover. So Melanie, I mean, you can look forward to a new caucus member

00:03:36.020 coming into the ucp yet at the same time opposing his own party i mean what a you know crazed

00:03:42.420 dynamic i mean something unique we got going on here yeah i think uh what i found interesting was

00:03:48.100 a tweet last night from kenny welcoming him and congratulating him uh so uh you know i i guess

00:03:57.380 one would have to look at that and say is kenny sort of trying to say that uh that the opposition

00:04:04.260 that's going to be coming at him is not something he's concerned of or is he you know trying to save

00:04:09.940 face don't know or is he just trying to not seem ungracious that's true that's right yeah

00:04:16.820 he is technically on the team i see those great thing tweets that come out and i'll go into one

00:04:20.500 of my own favorite stories anyways of one of my high and low points on twitter when i got blocked

00:04:24.660 by president trump uh that was back when uh senator mccain had been diagnosed with terminal

00:04:30.980 brain cancer and everybody they knew that donald and mccain didn't have a good relationship you

00:04:37.140 figure well he's going to say something he's got to say something it was well into the evening

00:04:40.580 and he still had said nothing has been dominating the news and suddenly get this little terse tweet

00:04:44.660 that just says uh sorry to hear about your illness mr senator mccain melania and i have

00:04:51.140 you in our thoughts get well soon wow i was in shock and i just retweeted quickly i responded

00:04:56.580 to it and said get well soon so he doesn't have the flu man and i said well better late than never

00:05:01.460 and then all of a sudden i got blocked like i was like well through the through the entire campaign

00:05:05.140 quite don't forget that uh kenny never mentioned gene gene once by name no even the day of the

00:05:11.380 election for the by-election he just referred to it as the ucp candidate didn't mention him at all

00:05:17.300 and he says well i hope the ucp candidate wins so i mean he probably had less sleep than anybody

00:05:24.420 in alberta last night tossing and turning about what he's going to do well that's it and that's

00:05:29.540 what i mean about those grudging you know you got to go through the forms you get we're supposedly

00:05:32.900 on the same team now we're working together but it's forced i mean it's it's not to be a fly on

00:05:38.660 the wall in the first caucus meeting when brian gene is there is going to be uh interesting yeah

00:05:43.940 well and especially when he's uh his hashtag in the tweet is renew the ucp it's sort of telling

00:05:50.340 which direction he's going right in his victory speech he would made it very clear kenny must go

00:05:57.140 all right so he's not being conciliatory no anyway it's just what an awkward situation that's got to

00:06:03.380 be in i mean like us going to a staff meeting and there's one member has been demanding your

00:06:06.900 resignation all the way through and you still have to try and work cooperatively throughout it

00:06:11.780 uh boy it's going to be other people have problems too corey what about what do you think the

00:06:17.220 ndp result will mean for them well that's another one and that was a disappointment i mean the ndp

00:06:23.460 18.5 they were 30 in 2015 up in there and about 24 so this was a decline i mean a by-election

00:06:30.820 should be an opportunity even if it wasn't winnable to show we're gaining ground we're

00:06:35.380 the government waiting we're coming up there and yeah melanie like that that didn't develop at all

00:06:39.940 yeah i was i was actually quite surprised with um the low votership for the ndp as well considering

00:06:47.220 what you would have mentioned about what they were pulling out before um and uh you know even

00:06:53.220 just the support rurally in some of the uh the more rural areas northern alberta uh you would

00:07:00.820 you would have thought that they would have performed a little bit better in this election

00:07:05.700 but you know maybe it's uh a foreshadow of where things are going who knows the ndp is pulling very

00:07:12.180 well in the big cities calgary and edmonton they're they're dominating uh yeah no they're

00:07:18.740 not dead in the water by any means but this would have been an indication to be able to show some

00:07:22.340 momentum some forward momentum even if they weren't winning you know if you've gained a

00:07:25.220 little on the last time it's showing you're moving ahead they're moving back that's not

00:07:29.060 never a good sign maybe we'll get on to the other person who had a hard time in that by-election

00:07:33.300 as well but first i'll talk about one of our sponsors one of the other reasons we maintain

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00:08:46.500 maintaining firearms so after that yes the next person in the race was paul hinman uh

00:08:54.260 what do you think dave absolutely disastrous for uh for paul uh he had spent months up in the

00:09:00.020 writing, months and months and months, door knocking, putting up signs. I mean, in fairness,

00:09:04.900 he put his all into it. But disastrous results, 11%. I talked to him before, earlier last week,

00:09:14.500 he said he thought might get around 35%. And if he got that number, he was hoping a vote split

00:09:20.340 between the NDP and the UCP may enable him to, you know, just sort of slip up the middle. But he

00:09:26.820 But he fell far short and it didn't take long for party brass to get involved.

00:09:33.800 The president of WIP put out a statement announcing an immediate investigation into Hinman's leadership

00:09:42.940 and his actions in the election.

00:09:48.880 Rick Northey, the president, noted that Hinman inserted himself basically into the race.

00:09:55.700 says i'm the leader i'm going to take it excuse me uh and uh northy said you know perhaps a local

00:10:02.660 candidate uh would have done better so there's going to be some dissensions in the ranks uh

00:10:08.500 certainly for the ucp well for the walrus independence yeah so i mean uh again comes

00:10:15.380 to that unity melanie like there's something with the conservatives that keeps you writing

00:10:18.580 you must almost get tired of writing infighting stories about conservative leaning parties but

00:10:22.500 it just is an ongoing issue well i was what i was quite surprised with is seeing uh you know over

00:10:28.900 the last few weeks there's been a lot of talk of the growing support for the notion of independence

00:10:37.300 out west and so you know there's been polls that have been done that showed that that interest is

00:10:45.140 growing and i would have thought you would have seen that in this election personally other polls

00:10:51.220 have given the whip, you know, 15 to 20%, 18%. And their headman fell far below that. So I think

00:10:59.780 he's in big trouble, Corey. He could be. I mean, it was a difficult gamble politically. As you said

00:11:04.400 before too, I don't know how many resources they had up there to begin with. Or I mean, a local

00:11:08.040 candidate will do better if you've got a strong local candidate, but I don't know who they might

00:11:12.300 have had. And one thing I do know with Paul is he's a tireless campaigner. I mean, he just hammered

00:11:17.180 on it. If it had been a weak Wildrose Independence Party candidate, they might have been down in that

00:11:22.040 5%, 4% level like the Liberals as well. I mean, it's always interpretation after, and that's what

00:11:26.560 the party's going to be studying, though, whether they could have done better. And that was the

00:11:29.620 gamble Paul took. I mean, if you're a leader and you don't run in it, you can kind of keep some

00:11:33.060 distance. And if it does poorly, sort of slough it off and make excuses. But he put his own name

00:11:37.980 on the line on this. And there were a few other parties that may want to consider just folding

00:11:41.460 up their tents entirely yeah well the alberta party uh i i do love poking at them uh because

00:11:48.580 they you know as this is actually derek said earlier today they've always been alberta's

00:11:52.020 biggest paper tagger you know they make so much news they there's always so much attention given

00:11:57.300 to them and there's so much rah rah and then when election time comes they invariably fall on their

00:12:01.620 faces and this was no exception where they came in at a 1.7 support number i don't know mel what

00:12:08.340 what do you think? Is there much of a future with a party that can draw that 1.7?

00:12:12.700 Well, I mean, clearly that's indicative of perhaps even an awareness issue, perhaps.

00:12:20.220 You know, I think too, with Wild Rose, you have to sort of wonder, and perhaps there's been enough

00:12:30.240 time separating the Wild Rose Independence Party from the original Wild Rose, clearly. But for a

00:12:35.820 of people you got to wonder if there is still sort of a lingering idea perhaps not realizing

00:12:42.300 the difference the you know um and and again that falls under the awareness are people really paying

00:12:49.580 attention are they really hearing are they really understanding what these parties are all about

00:12:54.460 you know are they hearing enough about the alberta party to to know whether they identify with their

00:13:00.380 policies. Um, you know, I think that's part of the problem. And especially when you're talking

00:13:05.340 about media and media coverage, uh, it tends to sort of be much louder and obviously more robust

00:13:13.100 for the bigger, well-known parties. Yeah. Well, in the Alberta party,

00:13:17.500 part of their problem is they never really have had solid policies. They've always wrapped

00:13:21.580 themselves around this notion. We're the middle, we're the middle, we're the center. And they

00:13:24.940 don't take a strong stance on anything because they, there's always that rhetoric from people

00:13:29.020 saying, well, there's far left and there's far right, but most people are in the middle. Well,

00:13:33.040 when you come up with a mushy, no stance policy, as these guys keep doing election after election,

00:13:38.940 sorry, guys, you don't have to go to the far end of a spectrum, but you got to stand somewhere.

00:13:43.060 But I guess strategically, they didn't, they've got a new leader, Barry Morishida, and he was the

00:13:47.420 mayor of Brooks, and he's been involved. He didn't put his name on the line running for the Alberta

00:13:51.260 party up there, or he'd be probably facing the same fate as Paul. This probably won't land on

00:13:56.540 him, but the Alberta party didn't make any inroads at all in this. This was kind of embarrassing.

00:14:02.240 So difficult. The Liberal party, they actually did three and a half percent.

00:14:07.140 That's a bit high for me. Surprisingly, huh?

00:14:10.100 Well, yeah, and that speaks to a party that really collapsed, though. I mean, in the 90s,

00:14:14.720 they came actually close to forming government in Alberta at one point, though they were

00:14:19.760 campaigning from the right, and it was Klein who stole their thunder. But progressively,

00:14:25.680 they've just kept declining and declining and declining. They're a total non-entity in this

00:14:29.340 province now. It's an interesting evolution to watch. Okay. Well, I'm going to speak to our next

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00:16:09.780 now the loser from last night though i don't think there was any scenario where he could win

00:16:16.320 uh what do you think dave what do we got i think it's uh panic stations uh for jason kenney

00:16:24.260 things started to deteriorate even further last week when the ucp perhaps ucp brass

00:16:31.380 disqualified two very qualified candidates uh from uh nomination uh attempts uh in writings

00:16:38.540 that were controlled by Kenny loyalists. Then they took it a step further this week when an

00:16:45.140 email was sent out to all of Kenny's staffers and all ministerial staffers that, hey, they need to

00:16:52.020 give up a couple days of their week this week and go on unpaid leave and do some phoning, phoning

00:17:00.140 around. That just shows you the level of desperation they're at now when we're only three

00:17:06.980 weeks away from the April 9th Leadership Review in Red Deer. I had a good story this afternoon,

00:17:16.460 an exclusive one. I spoke with a senior UCP staffer. I've been there for being with the

00:17:22.660 party forever. He says it's, you know, morale is lower than a snake's belly in a wagon run.

00:17:30.840 They've been asked to take a 7% wage rollback. And then they're told this week they have to

00:17:36.500 give up three days' pay. He says it was a slap in the face, quote, unquote. He says the party was

00:17:44.160 looking for 100 of these staff to show up on the weekends for 12 hours on the weekend,

00:17:51.120 working the phones. They expected to get 100 people signed up. Right now, they've only got 30.

00:17:57.040 So he says that bureaucrats will call them. They just have no faith in the Kennedy government

00:18:04.220 winning. He also added that he had no faith in Brian Jean's winning. So, but the source did say

00:18:14.680 there's many qualified candidates that are cabinet ministers. But yeah, he doesn't give away. He said

00:18:22.220 right now it's a coin toss, 50-50. He expects the panic station action of Kenny, who's also a master

00:18:31.100 organizer to get to work in the next three weeks and he expects Kenny to squeak by with a 55 percent,

00:18:39.340 60 percent. And if Kenny decides to stay, the source predicts exodus of floor crossing. People

00:18:48.620 will sit with as independent party members and I'm sure, you know, Brian Jean will be in caucus

00:18:54.940 encouraging everybody to uh to uh to do that me it may end up being the shortest serving ucp mla

00:19:03.100 ever if he decides to cross the floor well yeah that's an interesting aspect like you know kenny

00:19:08.300 has been on the record of saying 50 plus one would be in that form but we know realistically that

00:19:12.540 wouldn't maybe mel what number do you think would be high enough that jason kenny could comfortably

00:19:17.740 stay on as the leader well i i think 50 plus one doesn't give you effective leadership i think

00:19:23.740 you would want to see probably higher than 60 you know 60 65 percent you know where you can sort of

00:19:32.140 expect that the majority of the people in the room are with you uh but you know i don't know i i think

00:19:40.540 from from the ucp agm back in november to now he seemed very confident he seemed very uh sure of

00:19:49.180 this of the options that he had or the chance that he had to win and you know looking at his

00:19:56.700 sort of reaction now with you know coming out with all of these policy changes and all of these you

00:20:02.780 know like it almost seems like he's really working extra hard right now to appease different sectors

00:20:09.100 and and whatnot so i think you can really tell that he certainly is not as confident as he was

00:20:16.620 then. But I don't think 50 plus one is at all going to be an

00:20:22.100 effective way to move forward for the UCP.

00:20:25.820 And the precedent has been set. Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmack, they

00:20:30.900 went with the mid 70s.

00:20:34.080 Like with a functional party at a leadership review, usually it's

00:20:37.120 like 90%. Like you're just going through the motions in the room

00:20:39.780 says, yeah, we love our leader. Goodbye. And we'll move on to

00:20:41.980 the next subject.

00:20:42.860 Bernie again, like 98%.

00:20:44.160 Yeah, something like that.

00:20:45.460 And, you know, to get to what Mel's talking about,

00:20:47.900 Keddie has benefited from the Russian invasion of the Ukraine

00:20:51.760 and skyrocketing oil prices.

00:20:53.580 He's got so much cash coming into the Treasury now,

00:20:56.420 he doesn't know what to do with it.

00:20:57.780 That's why he's holding daily press conferences,

00:21:00.100 giving away millions of dollars.

00:21:01.900 And he's trying to say, look, okay, we went through a tough two years with COVID,

00:21:07.420 but we're back, Alberta's back, we're booming.

00:21:10.020 Here's some money, things are going great.

00:21:12.200 Do you really want to go back to the NDP?

00:21:14.160 So, I mean, that's, I think, his strategy for the next three weeks.

00:21:18.960 Well, that gets on to the question, though.

00:21:20.500 Let's say he pulls it off.

00:21:21.480 Let's say he gets 60%.

00:21:23.540 What happens then, though?

00:21:25.720 As you said, a mass exodus.

00:21:27.280 What do you think, Melanie?

00:21:28.220 I mean, we've talked to a number of some pretty discontented MLAs who've already kind of drawn their lines in the sand.

00:21:32.860 I think they're already there.

00:21:34.380 They're still only there because this race is looming. 0.99

00:21:36.420 But once it's passed, no matter what happens, there's going to be some reckoning.

00:21:39.580 Yeah, that I would agree with.

00:21:41.280 I think you're right.

00:21:43.320 Like when it comes, like there are hardliners, I think, that have really come out and shown so much disapproval.

00:21:50.600 But I think really the only thing that stopped a lot of people from making decisions right now is the fact that there is this leadership review coming up.

00:21:59.880 So, again, they're just holding on to see what comes.

00:22:03.840 But then I think if he does hold on to leadership, I think we're going to see a massive shift.

00:22:08.240 I think talking to Brian Jean at the AGM last year, he thinks once he gets into caucus, he can be the, you know, the unplugging of the corkscrew, so to speak, where all it'll take is a little bit.

00:22:23.940 MLAs will see that there's no way Kenny can let them keep their jobs, which obviously is very important to them.

00:22:30.320 And then all of a sudden, the water in the bottle will overflow.

00:22:35.080 That's what Jean's hoping.

00:22:36.600 Again, we just can't count Kenny out of anything.

00:22:39.980 He's a master politician.

00:22:41.760 He is, but he's really been failing in this role, hasn't he?

00:22:44.760 At the AGM, I mean, he lost a pretty critical vote there

00:22:47.540 that would have avoided even a leadership election in the first place.

00:22:53.560 He might be a little overestimated on some of these things.

00:22:56.460 And the other thing to keep in mind after that and say he survives

00:22:59.400 and Brian Jean is in there and some of these discontented MLAs,

00:23:02.360 to form official party status in Alberta,

00:23:04.480 All you need, I believe, is it's three or four sitting MLAs to get together.

00:23:08.880 And now you've officially got official status if 15 of them, which I think is well within possibility, say we're out and we're forming our own side party and caucus.

00:23:18.860 Well, they only really need two.

00:23:20.540 There's already two independents.

00:23:22.460 Two others get fed up.

00:23:23.580 They can quickly join the independents and bang.

00:23:26.180 Official party status.

00:23:27.300 They get all the research money.

00:23:28.920 And then others may, you know, it takes one.

00:23:30.800 Sort of the one goes, others may, if they feel the same way, you know, get the courage and do it.

00:23:36.040 Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of kind of behind closed doors conversations that are happening in the next three weeks as to people's...

00:23:44.140 Oh yeah, and as said, we're going to see some political machinations and we're seeing some panic.

00:23:48.080 I mean, to tap your staffers like that, to say, come on in and arm twist.

00:23:52.560 And I talked a little bit about that on the show.

00:23:54.000 That's very dicey, dangerous territory to get to.

00:23:58.520 These are a government of Alberta employees, and it seems like you're strong arming them

00:24:03.200 into political activity. I mean, he's already got enough issues with past legal challenges with a

00:24:10.580 number of actions in the past. They could really get in the soup if they do not very carefully

00:24:15.460 cross their T's and dot their I's on utilizing those guys on a partisan endeavor. You know what?

00:24:20.980 It's going to be a great time to be alive the next three weeks for us. Hey, they are our best friend.

00:24:27.140 they're not boring politics whatever they might be and i mean nobody's gonna yeah the news never

00:24:31.580 ends these days no and it's only gonna get more hysteric i think as we get closer to that race 0.97

00:24:36.100 well i think we've covered what's up for this week thank you guys all for tuning in thank you

00:24:41.660 melanie and dave for putting up with this substitute host today and you do kind of better

00:24:49.080 than derek he's ah you know he probably won't watch anyway so if he if he's not on he doesn't

00:24:54.880 much yeah so thank you all for tuning in and uh we will see you all next week on the pipeline or

00:25:02.120 if you're uh triggered with cory morgan watcher i'll see you guys tomorrow morning at 11 30

Western Standard - March 17, 2022

The Pipeline： Jean machine wins by-election.

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