The Pipeline： Jean machine wins by-election.
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Summary
Western Standard Weekly Panel News Roundup with Melanie Rizdinning in for Derek Fildebrand, who is out of town with his family. We discuss the by-election results in Fort McMurray-Lack Labish, Jason Kenney's victory in the Alberta election, and much more!
Transcript
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Good evening and welcome to the pipeline. This is the Western
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Standards Weekly Panel News Roundup Show. I'm Cory Morgan in place of Derek Fildebrand,
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who's usually here in this role our publisher he was indisposed today so uh rather than having
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Derek's presence you're stuck with me hosting and we do have our senior reporter Melanie Rizdin
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sitting in for Derek today in a sense yes hello welcome to the pipeline again thank you and as
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always our news editor Dave Naylor how's it going good good don't put me through this it's been a
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lot of interviews one of those one word answer pulling out the words and come on we're a bunch
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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
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not this time uh i am good at getting in trouble with that either way we do have a good packed
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show it's a great political week uh particularly in this last few days and we'll go into some of
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that i guess we'll start by getting some of the housekeeping out of the way though this show's
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been doing great for wow this is the flagship show it's been over a year we've been doing this one
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weekly and we are in our studio so people have watched this regularly might have noticed we've
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always been scrunched in quite close knee to knee on those things we've got room now to spread out
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you guys don't have to smell the whatever I ate for lunch and things like that we're
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much more comfortable and we can focus on the issues so we are expanding and things are doing
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great and that is thanks to our sponsors and our subscribers just reminding everybody if you haven't
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find it worth it. Almost everybody does. So maybe let's get into the news now and remind people of
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that news we write and why you can get those exclusive access to stories such as that. The
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big item today is the Gene Machine winning the by-election. Last night, Fort McMurray-Lack
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Labish, maybe I'll get you to frame all that up, Dave. Sure, the Gene Machine was in full power
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last night. By election up there, Gene ran on a platform opposing Jason Kenney. He said he would
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do his best to get rid of him while working from within caucus. Obviously, that resonated with some
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of the voters in Fort McMurray, Lackabish, and he won with 64%, I think, of the ballots. NDP
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candidate was well back, just about 19%. And Paul Hinman, the leader of the Wild Rose,
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distant, distant third, just about 11%. So there's, Brian Jean is now a UCP, or when he's sworn in,
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he'll be a UCP MLA, and he's going to be letting the games begin then, if not beforehand,
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then we'll talk about those developments. Yeah, well, and it'll be giving our newsroom
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some interesting copy to cover. So Melanie, I mean, you can look forward to a new caucus member
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coming into the ucp yet at the same time opposing his own party i mean what a you know crazed
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dynamic i mean something unique we got going on here yeah i think uh what i found interesting was
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a tweet last night from kenny welcoming him and congratulating him uh so uh you know i i guess
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one would have to look at that and say is kenny sort of trying to say that uh that the opposition
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that's going to be coming at him is not something he's concerned of or is he you know trying to save
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face don't know or is he just trying to not seem ungracious that's true that's right yeah
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he is technically on the team i see those great thing tweets that come out and i'll go into one
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of my own favorite stories anyways of one of my high and low points on twitter when i got blocked
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by president trump uh that was back when uh senator mccain had been diagnosed with terminal
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brain cancer and everybody they knew that donald and mccain didn't have a good relationship you
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figure well he's going to say something he's got to say something it was well into the evening
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and he still had said nothing has been dominating the news and suddenly get this little terse tweet
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that just says uh sorry to hear about your illness mr senator mccain melania and i have
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you in our thoughts get well soon wow i was in shock and i just retweeted quickly i responded
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to it and said get well soon so he doesn't have the flu man and i said well better late than never
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and then all of a sudden i got blocked like i was like well through the through the entire campaign
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quite don't forget that uh kenny never mentioned gene gene once by name no even the day of the
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election for the by-election he just referred to it as the ucp candidate didn't mention him at all
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and he says well i hope the ucp candidate wins so i mean he probably had less sleep than anybody
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in alberta last night tossing and turning about what he's going to do well that's it and that's
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what i mean about those grudging you know you got to go through the forms you get we're supposedly
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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
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the wall in the first caucus meeting when brian gene is there is going to be uh interesting yeah
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well and especially when he's uh his hashtag in the tweet is renew the ucp it's sort of telling
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which direction he's going right in his victory speech he would made it very clear kenny must go
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all right so he's not being conciliatory no anyway it's just what an awkward situation that's got to
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be in i mean like us going to a staff meeting and there's one member has been demanding your
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resignation all the way through and you still have to try and work cooperatively throughout it
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uh boy it's going to be other people have problems too corey what about what do you think the
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ndp result will mean for them well that's another one and that was a disappointment i mean the ndp
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18.5 they were 30 in 2015 up in there and about 24 so this was a decline i mean a by-election
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should be an opportunity even if it wasn't winnable to show we're gaining ground we're
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the government waiting we're coming up there and yeah melanie like that that didn't develop at all
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yeah i was i was actually quite surprised with um the low votership for the ndp as well considering
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what you would have mentioned about what they were pulling out before um and uh you know even
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just the support rurally in some of the uh the more rural areas northern alberta uh you would
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you would have thought that they would have performed a little bit better in this election
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but you know maybe it's uh a foreshadow of where things are going who knows the ndp is pulling very
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well in the big cities calgary and edmonton they're they're dominating uh yeah no they're
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not dead in the water by any means but this would have been an indication to be able to show some
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momentum some forward momentum even if they weren't winning you know if you've gained a
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little on the last time it's showing you're moving ahead they're moving back that's not
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never a good sign maybe we'll get on to the other person who had a hard time in that by-election
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as well but first i'll talk about one of our sponsors one of the other reasons we maintain
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maintaining firearms so after that yes the next person in the race was paul hinman uh
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what do you think dave absolutely disastrous for uh for paul uh he had spent months up in the
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writing, months and months and months, door knocking, putting up signs. I mean, in fairness,
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he put his all into it. But disastrous results, 11%. I talked to him before, earlier last week,
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he said he thought might get around 35%. And if he got that number, he was hoping a vote split
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between the NDP and the UCP may enable him to, you know, just sort of slip up the middle. But he
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But he fell far short and it didn't take long for party brass to get involved.
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The president of WIP put out a statement announcing an immediate investigation into Hinman's leadership
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Rick Northey, the president, noted that Hinman inserted himself basically into the race.
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says i'm the leader i'm going to take it excuse me uh and uh northy said you know perhaps a local
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candidate uh would have done better so there's going to be some dissensions in the ranks uh
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certainly for the ucp well for the walrus independence yeah so i mean uh again comes
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to that unity melanie like there's something with the conservatives that keeps you writing
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you must almost get tired of writing infighting stories about conservative leaning parties but
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it just is an ongoing issue well i was what i was quite surprised with is seeing uh you know over
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the last few weeks there's been a lot of talk of the growing support for the notion of independence
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out west and so you know there's been polls that have been done that showed that that interest is
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growing and i would have thought you would have seen that in this election personally other polls
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have given the whip, you know, 15 to 20%, 18%. And their headman fell far below that. So I think
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he's in big trouble, Corey. He could be. I mean, it was a difficult gamble politically. As you said
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before too, I don't know how many resources they had up there to begin with. Or I mean, a local
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candidate will do better if you've got a strong local candidate, but I don't know who they might
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have had. And one thing I do know with Paul is he's a tireless campaigner. I mean, he just hammered
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on it. If it had been a weak Wildrose Independence Party candidate, they might have been down in that
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5%, 4% level like the Liberals as well. I mean, it's always interpretation after, and that's what
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the party's going to be studying, though, whether they could have done better. And that was the
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gamble Paul took. I mean, if you're a leader and you don't run in it, you can kind of keep some
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distance. And if it does poorly, sort of slough it off and make excuses. But he put his own name
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on the line on this. And there were a few other parties that may want to consider just folding
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up their tents entirely yeah well the alberta party uh i i do love poking at them uh because
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they you know as this is actually derek said earlier today they've always been alberta's
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biggest paper tagger you know they make so much news they there's always so much attention given
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to them and there's so much rah rah and then when election time comes they invariably fall on their
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faces and this was no exception where they came in at a 1.7 support number i don't know mel what
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what do you think? Is there much of a future with a party that can draw that 1.7?
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Well, I mean, clearly that's indicative of perhaps even an awareness issue, perhaps.
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You know, I think too, with Wild Rose, you have to sort of wonder, and perhaps there's been enough
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time separating the Wild Rose Independence Party from the original Wild Rose, clearly. But for a
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of people you got to wonder if there is still sort of a lingering idea perhaps not realizing
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the difference the you know um and and again that falls under the awareness are people really paying
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attention are they really hearing are they really understanding what these parties are all about
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you know are they hearing enough about the alberta party to to know whether they identify with their
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policies. Um, you know, I think that's part of the problem. And especially when you're talking
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about media and media coverage, uh, it tends to sort of be much louder and obviously more robust
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for the bigger, well-known parties. Yeah. Well, in the Alberta party,
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part of their problem is they never really have had solid policies. They've always wrapped
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themselves around this notion. We're the middle, we're the middle, we're the center. And they
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don't take a strong stance on anything because they, there's always that rhetoric from people
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saying, well, there's far left and there's far right, but most people are in the middle. Well,
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when you come up with a mushy, no stance policy, as these guys keep doing election after election,
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sorry, guys, you don't have to go to the far end of a spectrum, but you got to stand somewhere.
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But I guess strategically, they didn't, they've got a new leader, Barry Morishida, and he was the
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mayor of Brooks, and he's been involved. He didn't put his name on the line running for the Alberta
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party up there, or he'd be probably facing the same fate as Paul. This probably won't land on
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him, but the Alberta party didn't make any inroads at all in this. This was kind of embarrassing.
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So difficult. The Liberal party, they actually did three and a half percent.
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Well, yeah, and that speaks to a party that really collapsed, though. I mean, in the 90s,
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they came actually close to forming government in Alberta at one point, though they were
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campaigning from the right, and it was Klein who stole their thunder. But progressively,
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they've just kept declining and declining and declining. They're a total non-entity in this
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province now. It's an interesting evolution to watch. Okay. Well, I'm going to speak to our next
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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
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things started to deteriorate even further last week when the ucp perhaps ucp brass
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disqualified two very qualified candidates uh from uh nomination uh attempts uh in writings
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that were controlled by Kenny loyalists. Then they took it a step further this week when an
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email was sent out to all of Kenny's staffers and all ministerial staffers that, hey, they need to
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give up a couple days of their week this week and go on unpaid leave and do some phoning, phoning
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around. That just shows you the level of desperation they're at now when we're only three
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weeks away from the April 9th Leadership Review in Red Deer. I had a good story this afternoon,
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an exclusive one. I spoke with a senior UCP staffer. I've been there for being with the
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party forever. He says it's, you know, morale is lower than a snake's belly in a wagon run.
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They've been asked to take a 7% wage rollback. And then they're told this week they have to
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give up three days' pay. He says it was a slap in the face, quote, unquote. He says the party was
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looking for 100 of these staff to show up on the weekends for 12 hours on the weekend,
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working the phones. They expected to get 100 people signed up. Right now, they've only got 30.
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So he says that bureaucrats will call them. They just have no faith in the Kennedy government
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winning. He also added that he had no faith in Brian Jean's winning. So, but the source did say
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there's many qualified candidates that are cabinet ministers. But yeah, he doesn't give away. He said
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right now it's a coin toss, 50-50. He expects the panic station action of Kenny, who's also a master
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organizer to get to work in the next three weeks and he expects Kenny to squeak by with a 55 percent,
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60 percent. And if Kenny decides to stay, the source predicts exodus of floor crossing. People
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will sit with as independent party members and I'm sure, you know, Brian Jean will be in caucus
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encouraging everybody to uh to uh to do that me it may end up being the shortest serving ucp mla
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ever if he decides to cross the floor well yeah that's an interesting aspect like you know kenny
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has been on the record of saying 50 plus one would be in that form but we know realistically that
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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
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you would want to see probably higher than 60 you know 60 65 percent you know where you can sort of
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expect that the majority of the people in the room are with you uh but you know i don't know i i think
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from from the ucp agm back in november to now he seemed very confident he seemed very uh sure of
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this of the options that he had or the chance that he had to win and you know looking at his
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sort of reaction now with you know coming out with all of these policy changes and all of these you
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know like it almost seems like he's really working extra hard right now to appease different sectors
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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
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And the precedent has been set. Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmack, they
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Like with a functional party at a leadership review, usually it's
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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
00:20:45.460
And, you know, to get to what Mel's talking about,
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Keddie has benefited from the Russian invasion of the Ukraine
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He's got so much cash coming into the Treasury now,
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That's why he's holding daily press conferences,
00:21:01.900
And he's trying to say, look, okay, we went through a tough two years with COVID,
00:21:14.160
So, I mean, that's, I think, his strategy for the next three weeks.
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I mean, we've talked to a number of some pretty discontented MLAs who've already kind of drawn their lines in the sand.
00:21:34.380
They're still only there because this race is looming.
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00:21:36.420
But once it's passed, no matter what happens, there's going to be some reckoning.
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.
00:22:36.600
Again, we just can't count Kenny out of anything.
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,
00:23:04.480
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.
00:23:23.580
They can quickly join the independents and bang.
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
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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