Western Standard - The Pipeline： March 17, 2021

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00:03:00.000 Hey there, welcome to The Pipeline.

00:03:24.240 This is the Western Standards weekly show.

00:03:26.640 we do live where we'll cover the top stories and analyze them among the

00:03:32.320 top folks working here at the western standard it's one of those rare times when we're all

00:03:35.920 actually together in the same room for one of these so i'm corey morgan by the way a podcast

00:03:41.600 editor and columnist and i'm flanked by our publisher derek phildebrand nice to social

00:03:46.160 distance with you yes it's nice to get cozy and dave nailer our news editor who just puts out that

00:03:52.080 content. Nice to have Derek back with us, isn't it? Yeah, kind of. Hey, hey. As its moments, it's nice to collect like this. I don't pay you enough to make you say nice things. We'll get there. If I suddenly start being nice, you know, I got a raise. So then we've got a number of things to cover today. So Pastor Coates has finally been set free and a number of charges against him have been dropped. The UCP is suddenly

00:04:22.060 moving into their direct democracy promises well suddenly after two years so we're looking at

00:04:28.460 citizens initiative referenda and the recall legislation and jason kenney has uh dealt with

00:04:35.940 the push for his leadership review perhaps we'll see it's uh quite a bit to unpack there it's quite

00:04:42.220 a lively week in the province so uh as well i mean we can't do this just got to put that out there

00:04:48.580 without our members. Be sure if you haven't signed up already, get online and sign up. As I said,

00:04:53.660 Dave puts out those fantastic stories. He's right on top of the news. We get exclusives, we get

00:04:58.500 interviews, we get columns where I'll rant and rip a strip off people when they deserve it. Derek

00:05:02.920 even gets a chance to write now and then still. Not much anymore. Well, it's important to keep

00:05:08.380 independent news going. I mean, the mainstream is just what it is these days and we're filling

00:05:13.380 that void and we really appreciate that from the members. So get on in there and subscribe if you

00:05:18.260 haven't already. And if you already have, thank you very much. We really do appreciate it.

00:05:22.080 Another area that's helping us, of course, is direct sponsorship and advertisers from local

00:05:26.560 businesses. And our sponsor for these digital shows has been Penny with Kyren's Way. And you

00:05:32.640 can see the link down there, kyrensway.com. She's a local Calgary business. She's been sponsoring us

00:05:37.000 for some time. If you've got stress, if you've got anxiety, and I think pretty much everybody does

00:05:40.940 these days. Penny deals with it through counseling, dietary changes, just overall holistic health

00:05:49.020 because sometimes the prescription pad ends up getting used a lot too quickly for these sorts

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00:05:58.920 So be sure to click through. These sponsors are important. These are local businesses to support

00:06:02.360 people. She might be offering just what you need or a family member needs in these crazy times.

00:06:08.300 So, let's get to crazy times.

00:06:10.760 Somebody who's been pretty stressed lately has been, of course, Pastor Coates, his wife, his family.

00:06:16.880 He's been incarcerated.

00:06:19.040 Dave, it just came out today.

00:06:21.720 Pastor Coates has finally been released or he's about to be?

00:06:24.220 Well, about to be.

00:06:25.620 Corey, breaking news this morning.

00:06:27.840 The Crown has dropped all charges against Pastor Coates except for one charge under the Public Health Act.

00:06:34.480 His lawyers from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms say they expect to get him out very, very soon, possibly by Friday.

00:06:45.380 As we all know, he's been in solitary confinement at the Edmonton Remand Centre since he was arrested back on February 16th.

00:06:53.480 In two bail appearances, he refused to abide by bail conditions that would have forbidden him to preach.

00:07:01.280 that those decisions were sent to Court of Queen's Bench

00:07:07.000 and were upheld.

00:07:10.140 So pastors being in jail all this time, solitary confinement.

00:07:14.620 Daniel Smith did a great show with his wife a week or so ago

00:07:20.240 that I encourage everybody to go and look at.

00:07:23.400 And she talks about the stress that her husband's under.

00:07:26.400 He's lost weight, suffering health problems and neck problems.

00:07:31.280 uh even without his absence so corey uh the church has continued to operate grace life church

00:07:37.200 packed to the rafters every weekend every weekend the rcmp is outside and every weekend the rcmp

00:07:43.920 put out a release saying uh they were bad and they broke the law again and that seems to be the end

00:07:49.600 of it uh uh i'll just just quickly mention it seems to be a developing pattern with the alberta crown

00:07:57.680 we recently dropped charges against four separate people who were charged with you know under not

00:08:05.360 wearing the mask by law so almost sort of seems to me like there may be a decision come down from

00:08:11.440 above that you know we're not we're not going to waste the courts time with this yeah or the

00:08:16.320 internals came in but uh derek so do you think the government is you know starting to get into

00:08:21.760 a retreat mode with these restrictions like trying to extricate themselves from this these

00:08:26.240 charges and mess that they've gotten into or what's the strategy? Well, one of our viewers

00:08:29.800 has a really interesting point. The release of Pastor Coates from prison or jail here is coming

00:08:36.480 very soon before his wife, Erin Coates, who they've mentioned was interviewed by Danielle Smith on the

00:08:42.620 Western Standard. She is set to appear on Tucker Carlson on Fox News in the States. Tucker, for

00:08:48.080 those who don't know, that is one of the most watched shows in America. This has been an

00:08:53.240 International story. This isn't just Alberta. This isn't just Canada. This is becoming an international story

00:08:57.700 The Canada's jailing pastors who refused to stop preaching

00:09:01.680 There's different perspectives on that but she is now

00:09:05.000 She is about to go on an international show and bring a really unflattering spotlight

00:09:12.000 To the Alberta government for doing this

00:09:14.900 They you know government authority only government authority is kind of like government fiat paper money

00:09:21.360 It only exists if people believe it is worth something.

00:09:24.920 And we saw with the restaurant rebellion in January when restauranters were a small business, restauranters were just opening up saying, look, I'm either going to lose my business by not being open or I'm going to lose my business by being fine to death.

00:09:39.000 I prefer to go down fighting. The government had no choice but to bring in its phased reopening plan,

00:09:44.740 which they tried to back out of and then were forced by a caucus revolt and party revolt

00:09:50.480 to actually follow through with. But the government is being dragged here towards reopening or not

00:09:58.000 jailing people, kicking and screaming. They don't want to do it. This is a very interesting place

00:10:07.840 for a government to be in. Normally, government is obeyed without

00:10:12.300 questioning Canada. The only people not obeying government are generally

00:10:15.460 outright criminals who are doing bad things for bad reasons. Most people don't

00:10:20.020 openly defy the authority of the state and what we've seen with the restaurant

00:10:24.800 rebellion, with Pastor Coates, the Grace Life Church, they're not giving up. So

00:10:29.560 they would arrest Pastor Coates and he'd say, well, he didn't

00:10:35.560 say what i would like to say here because he's a pastor he used cleaner language than someone like

00:10:40.900 cory he gave a holy middle finger he gave a holy middle finger to the state um and they they

00:10:47.340 eventually uh i guess the government figured they had no choice but to actually hold them without

00:10:51.380 bail in prison uh in a maximum security prison in uh solitary confinement the ultimate in social

00:10:59.040 distancing is solitary confinement um which is only slightly worse than what the government's

00:11:03.780 up and force us to do over the last year. But he's not giving in. And when people refuse to give in

00:11:08.980 to the power of the state on something like that, the government loses its power because then you

00:11:13.060 realize that the power of the government is really just as far as people believe it has the power.

00:11:18.740 So the government is in full retreat on this. It's happening across the country, but it's

00:11:23.380 particularly in Alberta where I think there's a larger libertarian streak in people, where people

00:11:27.380 have less respect for the unquestioned authority of the state. And so this has politically been

00:11:34.260 very bad for Jason Kenney in that he is not able to say I fought to get us reopened. He won't be

00:11:40.900 able to say that because he's being dragged there kicking and screaming the whole way

00:11:44.580 where the public is clearly ahead of the government in reopening without the government's

00:11:48.500 consent every step of the way. And Pastor Coates I think has become a huge symbol of that.

00:11:52.820 Well, that's it. The symbolism is important. I mean, the symbol of a religious person being

00:11:57.540 locked up for preaching. I mean, I understand that the rationale is infection control, but I mean,

00:12:03.940 this is things we've only ever imagined would happen in dictatorships and third world countries,

00:12:08.580 and we do see it happen in those places. I mean, free religion is such an important and entrenched

00:12:13.220 thing. I mean, some of our worst wars and oppression on people has been based on religious 0.84

00:12:17.540 basis. So to see Alberta jailing, I mean, that's why it's caught the attention of one of the top

00:12:22.420 shows in north america it's just unimaginable and now the government's backing off but i i find it

00:12:28.820 heartening in some ways i appreciate the pastor uh not backing down he dug his heels in he's a man

00:12:34.500 of faith i mean the bail conditions he could have been out two weeks ago all he had to do is say i

00:12:38.260 refuse to preach but i mean it brings i i don't want to invoke too i think it was like the

00:12:43.060 inquisition as long as you promise not to do your your actual faith will let you free well a person

00:12:47.860 of true faith i mean they certainly weren't you know hanging him by his thumbs or anything but

00:12:52.020 they're not going to say no so they were gonna they had to back off you know i it's not a planned

00:12:57.540 segment but we got a really good question from uh cheryl dawn she asked what our comments are in uh

00:13:02.740 jason kenny's letter to dr modry uh many of all might remember dr modry is a very famous and

00:13:08.900 well-known doctor in alberta performed i think the first open heart surgery or something

00:13:13.140 um and he had been writing kenny for months and months months without getting any reply

00:13:17.220 sent his letters to the mainstream media they were they ignored him they refused

00:13:21.220 to publish it he brought it to us he's a credible person so we published his

00:13:25.800 open letter it was one of our most read articles of all time so we you know Dave

00:13:31.160 you've interviewed dr. Dennis Modery quite a few times just just I think

00:13:36.740 maybe yesterday or the night right before yesterday Kenny finally actually

00:13:40.960 really released a response to this it's a it's quite a quite a bit late but I

00:13:45.880 I don't know, maybe why don't you elaborate on what that response was?

00:13:48.760 Sure, Derek.

00:13:49.500 The doctor wrote an in-depth letter back in December to Premier Kenny,

00:13:57.300 who he thought was a personal friend.

00:14:00.340 The story went viral, got coverage around the world.

00:14:04.920 Kenny remained silent until earlier this week

00:14:07.780 where he wrote a two-page letter back to the doctor,

00:14:11.100 basically saying, you know, thank you for your concerns, but you're wrong.

00:14:15.880 uh he said that dr modry's findings were based on incomplete factual data he again pointed out the

00:14:25.960 how close alberta icus came to being overrun before the province was put down and into lockdown

00:14:34.120 but again i'll just bring up a story we did a couple weeks ago derek showing

00:14:38.280 icu hospitalizations actually dropped in 2020 compared to 2019 uh so yeah kenny finally replied

00:14:48.360 he was dismissive of the doctor's arguments said he's going to continue to work uh work hard to

00:14:53.560 protect albertans uh so what do they say about statistics you can turn them any which way you

00:14:59.240 want yeah well and it's shown that again this is a government and jason is getting reactive i mean

00:15:05.240 he's really suddenly being out there he's being visible he was kind of keeping a low profile and

00:15:09.800 leaving it to dr. Hinshaw and the health minister for quite a bit and suddenly we're seeing Jason

00:15:14.840 Kenny popping up everywhere live videos press conferences uh they're changing tactic which

00:15:19.400 again tells us well that they know that their last tactics have been blowing up in their faces so

00:15:24.520 uh that that letter is obviously he felt undercut a lot of their initiatives and he felt he had to

00:15:29.720 personally respond to it. Yeah. So moving on then, you know, to this government that is just having

00:15:37.800 a terrible time it seems with just about everything they try to do. One of the key planks and promises

00:15:42.920 during the mergers, it's one of the things that when I was the VP policy with the Wildrose party

00:15:47.240 was direct democracy, citizens initiated referenda, recall legislation. I mean, those were key points

00:15:53.880 for us. Those were big with us. And we've assumed that was going to be what was coming in going

00:15:59.400 forward. We were certainly told that in the last election, it was promised unequivocally that we

00:16:04.360 were going to be getting these legislations and somehow took two years to get there,

00:16:08.360 but they finally have come somewhat. Dave, can you expand on that?

00:16:13.160 Yeah. The premier likes to say promises made promises kept. Well, this promise was made a long,

00:16:18.200 long time ago, Corey, as you've said. So the government has introduced legislation where

00:16:24.440 dissatisfied voters will be able to perhaps hold a recall vote on their representative and it's not

00:16:32.360 just provincial representatives Corey it's a school board it's civic officials it runs the

00:16:38.740 gamut but I think as you wrote Corey the the standards that they've set are just seemingly

00:16:45.060 incredibly incredibly high obviously you don't want you know one guy who's upset about something

00:16:51.900 to be able to have the power to recall a candidate, but they've set it at 40% of voters in that

00:16:59.940 lighting. How are you supposed to do that? It seems like an almost impossible task to

00:17:07.860 me. They've introduced the legislation, but whether it can be realistically achieved in

00:17:14.340 the real world but it remains up for debate. What do you think Derek was it just a token thing to

00:17:22.660 throw to the small c conservatives libertarian direct democracy people or do they genuinely

00:17:27.780 think this is good legislation? Well big surprise I largely agree with your column that we just had

00:17:34.100 up on the screen there they promised they would do this they had to they came under renewed pressure

00:17:40.660 to do it after the big snowbird scandal uh right around new year's um a lot of people wanted the

00:17:46.820 right to recall the representatives and for some reason they didn't have the right to even though

00:17:51.060 they didn't promise they could this is this should have been one of the very first promises they kept

00:17:56.420 this should have been one of their first pieces of legislation this isn't some you know very

00:18:01.620 difficult to construct crown corporation like the indigenous opportunities agency or whatever that's

00:18:06.820 called or all these other sorts of things that require a huge bureaucracy we already had the

00:18:12.180 model they've already gone with the model of bc with a few important exceptions that we can talk

00:18:17.140 about there are examples in other jurisdictions right across the world but most prominently

00:18:22.580 british columbia which is what they said in their platform that they were going to follow

00:18:26.100 but they didn't do it uh so now um let's assume this passes within a month or two that might be

00:18:33.620 regular a reasonable amount of time to expect a piece of legislation like this to wind its way

00:18:38.180 through the pipeline the pun intended of the legislative process um so 40 percent what people

00:18:46.260 got to understand it's not 40 percent of the number of people who voted in the last election

00:18:50.020 it's 40 percent of all eligible voters which and because you're in a provincial election you've

00:18:56.020 normally got a between 50 and 60 percent of people voting that means you need on this petition in

00:19:01.700 almost all cases more people signing the recall petition than actually voted in the entire

00:19:07.460 constituency in the last election for all candidates and all parties combined um which

00:19:13.380 is a pretty high bar to set i think uh a better bar to set would be make it 50 but of the people

00:19:19.700 of the number of people who actually voted in the constituency in the last election so

00:19:23.140 if 8 000 people voted in the last election in the constituency you need 4001

00:19:27.460 that gets you your recall so majority of those who actually took the time to vote

00:19:31.180 and it's very difficult a lot of people don't understand how difficult it's

00:19:35.260 gonna be this is not an online petition if I put up an online petition tomorrow

00:19:39.340 to rename Cory Morgan Dora's Day I could probably get 10,000 signatures you know

00:19:45.640 what we should do that I'm gonna get no subscribers I'm willing to yeah well

00:19:50.080 will you change your name if we can raise 10,000 bucks for the standard 10,000

00:19:54.520 bucks. We'll negotiate this a little later. We'll set the bar a little higher, but online

00:20:00.160 petitions are real easy. They're a dime a dozen. They're mostly data collection exercises,

00:20:04.500 spoiler, but these actual fiscal petitions, they are damn near impossible to do. You've

00:20:13.920 got to go house to house, especially for rural Albertans. What are the chances that someone's

00:20:17.780 going to go canvassing farm to farm when it's a 10 minute, you know, you have to hop their

00:20:22.180 fence and walk five minutes down a big lane to get to their house. It's not happening.

00:20:28.100 So rural people who live outside of the towns, they're never even going to get a chance to recall

00:20:32.900 somebody effectively. And interestingly, they added a whole new step on top of what DC has.

00:20:39.460 So even after you get the signatures for a recall petition, there's then a vote,

00:20:45.380 essentially like a mini referendum in the constituency, to decide if they want a recall.

00:20:49.300 um and chances are there'll be uh less people voting in that than actually sign the petition

00:20:55.380 because of voter turnout and then after so after you get 40 of uh the poll of the signatures the

00:21:02.320 recall to politician 40 which you're probably not going to get it's much more difficult than people

00:21:06.660 think then you have a vote and if you win that vote then you have a by-election and uh dave's

00:21:13.120 right you're right we should not have low bars for recalls you know it shouldn't be about rehashing

00:21:18.140 the last election your candidate didn't win or your candidate was controversial it should be for

00:21:23.020 very exceptional cases um and so it should be a high bar but they've said it ridiculously high so

00:21:28.780 now the ucp can turn to kind of its old wild rose base and say hey we gave you recall promise made

00:21:34.780 promise kept uh but dollars to donuts uh an mla could be found guilty of first degree murder and

00:21:41.980 they're not going to get recalled well that's it and we know that like those of us who are 0.61

00:21:47.340 insane enough to run for office had to actually go out and you have to get like a formal petition

00:21:52.300 because i've seen a lot of online discussion people don't understand and fair enough they

00:21:55.420 haven't gone out and actually petitioned before you have to have it on their form it has to have

00:22:00.780 their name their address their phone number because the electoral officer is going to be

00:22:04.620 confirming a bunch of these so you can look at 10 percent of them might even get wiped out

00:22:08.140 so you're going to get more than what the bar is and and you have 60 days to do it with him now

00:22:13.420 Now, again, we do want the bar high, but let's say it was at where you said at 50% plus one

00:22:18.780 of those who came out to vote.

00:22:21.540 And that turned out to be 4,000 official signatures in a writing that's had that low a turnout.

00:22:28.100 That's a good big bar.

00:22:30.200 I mean, I'm sure somebody might go out and set out and start pounding the pavement thinking

00:22:33.300 they can frivolously do it.

00:22:34.540 Well, they can knock themselves out.

00:22:36.100 After two months, they'll be lucky to get 500.

00:22:38.240 It is really hard.

00:22:39.680 Somebody has to really cross the line before even that bar would be achieved.

00:22:44.720 It's a reasonable one.

00:22:45.980 Registering a party is one that you need the signatures of a certain percentage.

00:22:49.920 And that one is a certain percentage of the people who came out in the last election.

00:22:54.180 And importantly on that, like, so I know people who've tried to get signatures to register their own party.

00:22:59.180 That is the worst way in Alberta to register a party.

00:23:01.860 You just don't do it.

00:23:03.180 It's very difficult because you need a huge number of signatures.

00:23:05.840 And then you actually need about 20% more than is actually required because elections

00:23:10.100 Alberta will say, well, we can't verify that this name matches this address, et cetera,

00:23:14.520 et cetera, or we couldn't make out the signature and verify it.

00:23:17.800 There's a huge verification process.

00:23:19.480 So about 20% are going to get thrown out.

00:23:21.500 In reality, you're going to need the signatures of probably 50, 55 or 60% of the eligible

00:23:29.080 voters in a constituency to actually get it done.

00:23:31.260 And it should say something that in British Columbia, where they have similar legislation

00:23:34.620 with an actually slightly lower bar than us

00:23:37.340 because we've now got these extra steps in place.

00:23:40.600 Officially in BC, which has had this legislation

00:23:42.700 for 20 odd years,

00:23:45.000 not a single MLA has ever been officially recalled.

00:23:49.000 There was one particular case

00:23:50.420 where an MLA was found to be writing nasty letters

00:23:54.140 against his political opponents

00:23:55.200 in the local newspapers under a pseudonym

00:23:57.080 and he got busted.

00:23:58.620 Apparently, he wasn't very smart.

00:23:59.700 He used the same pseudonym

00:24:00.380 for every one of his fake letters.

00:24:01.800 So it was easy to match up

00:24:03.000 all the nasty things he was saying.

00:24:04.120 Didn't need Sherlock Holmes.

00:24:05.400 Yeah, and there, the recall petition campaign did get enough,

00:24:11.160 and the MLA resigned halfway through the middle of the actual certification of the petition.

00:24:18.400 So he did get recalled.

00:24:21.160 That is a recall.

00:24:21.980 It would have happened.

00:24:22.780 Yeah, it was inevitable. 0.99

00:24:24.120 They had like 70% there.

00:24:25.600 It was something nuts.

00:24:27.180 But officially, he wasn't recalled.

00:24:28.760 So effectively, in British Columbia's 20-odd years, only one MLA has been effectively recalled.

00:24:36.120 And we have an even more difficult barrier to hit.

00:24:39.280 Yeah, well, you might not remember to be before your time with Dave Wood was the saga of Dar Hetherington.

00:24:44.600 I brought her up.

00:24:45.660 She's one of those exceptional cases, and they're rare, but they do come up.

00:24:49.820 And you really had to, it was the craziest of drama for those, I'll just quickly recap it.

00:24:54.240 She was a city councillor in Leftbridge.

00:24:55.920 she had suddenly surfaced and I could be messing up the details it's been a while but in Las Vegas

00:25:01.160 she claimed that she'd been abducted and sexually assaulted it turned out that she'd run off

00:25:06.660 actually to join a gentleman that wasn't her husband it was just very bizarre and strange

00:25:12.640 but the problem was they could not get her off city council and she wasn't willing to leave

00:25:17.480 they had to keep her as their representative for a long time after this when it was clear

00:25:22.260 this one she needed help I mean this was a person that seriously had some 0.78

00:25:25.760 problems but it did not belong on on City Council and they couldn't do

00:25:29.640 anything about it that would be one of the situations where Rico would be a

00:25:33.240 consideration and a benefit to democracy well speaking of a benefit to democracy

00:25:38.180 John Winslow says he paid the $10,000 change your name to Dora today so thank

00:25:43.440 you John Winslow is the check in the mail he's not to me or is that to the

00:25:48.120 standard uh well that's a good question uh you know if you change your name i'll forego the

00:25:53.160 ten thousand of the standards we'll go straight to you we owe you money anyway so not that well

00:25:57.720 uh we'll consider that back let's work on this thanks john uh might have to run it by jane as

00:26:03.080 well i think we should also um touch on the uh citizens initiative side uh that's gotten a lot

00:26:09.560 less attention uh but you know maybe dave give us some rhyme around what that's going on with that

00:26:15.240 yeah i think you know we've talked about this uh this previously it's it's jason kenney realizes

00:26:22.760 that he's in big trouble at the moment and wants to be seen doing things like like the recall

00:26:27.640 legislation and the citizens uh initiative and stuff like that um whether it'll work and help

00:26:36.280 turn their their fortunes around i'll leave that to you guys uh to argue about but again it may be

00:26:42.760 too little too late well i mean just quickly on my own i mean i believe if again if the bar is

00:26:49.400 achievable within reason uh again it's got a tight window for petitioning so that's debatable but

00:26:54.200 there's room to amend on these things too this stuff isn't set yet so that's part of why it's

00:26:57.160 good to make noise because governments are well known for allowing amendments to their bills

00:27:01.800 well this government is getting pretty good at backtracking a lot of stuff so and they've got

00:27:05.880 some angry backbenchers who might like their own backbenchers could attempt to amend this yeah so

00:27:10.920 if they feel pressure the right way i could see them conceivably changing some stuff to make it

00:27:15.400 more palatable one of the things that referenda does is takes the separation question out of his

00:27:19.720 hands because he could say that's up to the citizens now if they wanted to move towards

00:27:24.440 an independence referendum it's not the part of government but we've given you the mechanism

00:27:28.520 if there really was broad support well he's going to be able to claim that but again i think it's

00:27:32.840 not reality because it's token so there was there's kind of two big pieces to this first

00:27:37.080 Yeah, it's a very narrow window. You're never going to get the signatures for initiative referendum in Alberta. It's not happening. You need 10% of all eligible voters in Alberta. And there's like certain geographic requirements, too, that you can't just like canvas the hell out of one area. It's got to be represented through a certain number of constituencies.

00:27:57.800 But you need 10% of the eligible voters in Alberta for a civil legislative or kind of motion non-binding referendum.

00:28:07.220 So that's 10%.

00:28:08.400 You're not going to get that.

00:28:10.180 But here's the real kicker.

00:28:11.720 If you want to have a referendum on an issue of constitutional nature, i.e. something like independence or firewall, at least a lot of the firewall issues, you need 20%.

00:28:22.340 Now, maybe a reader who's handy with Wikipedia can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know a single jurisdiction on the planet that has Citizens Initiative legislation with a bar of 20% for any issue. You will never, ever get 20% of every single eligible voter in Alberta signing a petition in such a short period of time.

00:28:47.440 if the window was a year maybe maybe but this is a very short window of time uh so but this is this

00:28:55.280 is designed to allow jason originally they were going to bar any constitutional issues in the

00:28:59.760 citizens initiative because they didn't want something like independence getting brought up

00:29:03.520 i think this is a smart political move i don't think this is good policy but i think it's a

00:29:07.280 smart political move that kenny has put yes you can have a referendum on an issue of constitutional

00:29:13.360 nature like independence uh but here's the bar i'm going to set good luck going out go spend all

00:29:19.200 your effort collecting petitions rather than starting a political party to challenge power

00:29:23.040 for it so if the independence movement wanted to go with this they would spend all of their effort

00:29:29.520 getting signatures which they're not going to get enough of in the time period uh and it keeps them

00:29:34.960 from spending their efforts on building a political party the equipment i've heard equivalent of say

00:29:38.720 the PQ to force a referendum. So I think it's a smart political move, but anyone who's hoping

00:29:45.560 that Citizens Initiative is going to be your ticket to a referendum on independence, I'd

00:29:50.260 encourage you to cool your enthusiasm. Well, whether or not it's a smart political move

00:29:54.200 depends on how voters respond to this. I mean, they see through this. The Albertans aren't as

00:29:59.040 stupid as sometimes, I think, as our parties seem to think they are. That's how parties end up

00:30:02.240 getting fired. They didn't need to reinvent the wheel with this. Switzerland's been doing this

00:30:07.040 for over a hundred years and they do it very well, effectively.

00:30:10.220 It's not frivolous referendums.

00:30:12.680 They govern a lot of things based on it.

00:30:15.000 We can have easily looked at them, looked at their model and implemented it here.

00:30:18.200 So for them to set those bars that are above and beyond that does, does tell us

00:30:21.720 they don't ever actually want them achieved, which is kind of insulting.

00:30:26.260 So moving on into the, you know, still on that democratic theme,

00:30:29.360 another thing is holding your leaders accountable, especially if you're a

00:30:32.060 party member or things like that.

00:30:33.980 The old Wildrose Constitution, again, getting back to them, used to have some pretty distinct mechanisms built into where collected members could speak at certain intervals about whether or not they're satisfied with the leadership of the party at conventions and things like that.

00:30:49.600 It looked like there was a move towards getting enough constituency associations together to have just such a thing like that happen this fall.

00:30:57.320 And it appears Premier Kenney's headed that off.

00:31:00.160 What happened there, Dave?

00:31:01.080 Well, the woes of Premier Kenney in the last six months have been well-documented, from

00:31:06.780 the Snowbird fiasco to the coal mining reversal to the Keystone pipeline, billion bucks down

00:31:16.040 the drain, things have not been going well for Kenney.

00:31:18.940 The last straw seems to have been the continuation of the lockdowns where that caused a caucus

00:31:25.620 revolt. Six of his UCP MLAs actually went public and said, no, we've had enough. It's

00:31:35.520 time to reopen. And ironically, they did that just a week later. The other thing, as you

00:31:45.460 talked about, was the building, the pressure within constituencies to hold a leadership

00:31:51.200 review so the ucp finally relented on the weekend and sent out an email saying okay we're going to

00:31:57.440 have a leadership review of premier kenny hey but guess what it's only going to be six months

00:32:02.480 before the next election i mean could you imagine that okay we're going to turf kenny and we got six

00:32:07.280 months to the next election we have to hold a leadership convention and then maybe you know

00:32:12.000 we can get onto the campaign trail as uh as uh university monroe university uh political science

00:32:20.400 professor duane bratt noted it's just gamesmanship you know nobody is going to replace a leader with

00:32:26.480 only only six months to go i think you just hit the nail on the head uh corey albert was

00:32:32.960 a seat with us i think and they're they're smart enough to say well yeah you're offering it but

00:32:38.640 it's an older branch that would never be taken. What do you think? You don't want to know what I

00:32:44.400 think. I got an idea. Look, if I was advising Jason Kenney, if he wanted my advice and paid

00:32:52.480 me to sit around him, I would advise them to do exactly this. The mechanism in the party's

00:32:59.040 constitution to force a leadership review unscheduled through constituency associations,

00:33:05.200 um the fact having them trigger it has the public appearance of recall it means kenny's being

00:33:13.400 recalled as leader essentially he's his leadership review would not be a leadership review it would

00:33:17.120 be a recall election i was like are we recalling the leader and simply having a recall election is

00:33:21.840 a very bad look it completely destroys their uh the moral authority of their leadership in the

00:33:27.020 party it would be open season um if he goes to that kind of leadership review where the

00:33:32.860 constituency associations have demanded it, I think he would lose it. If it's a traditionally

00:33:38.420 scheduled leadership review, the way most democratic parties, or even less democratic

00:33:43.900 parties, operate, which is like, okay, every two conventions, we're going to have a leadership

00:33:48.160 review. That's what the Wildrose had. Win, lose, or draw. Every two conventions, there's a

00:33:53.440 leadership review. They're scheduled, so it doesn't seem out of the ordinary.

00:33:56.860 Right. So I think it was not that I think it's a good thing what he did or ethical or whatever,

00:34:05.120 but I think it was very smart politics. It's, I think, from a purely political play perspective,

00:34:11.080 it was the right play, takes it out of their hands. Kenny's belief is that he has never lost

00:34:17.580 an election. I don't believe he thinks he can lose an election. So all he has to do is make

00:34:22.920 it to the next election, and he will win. It doesn't matter that the UCP is way down in the

00:34:27.240 polls. They're trailing the NDP. They've had a significant erosion of support on their right

00:34:32.380 flank with Wild Rose. But he believes if you can make it to the next election, he'll get through.

00:34:38.960 So what this essentially says is, okay, everybody, you're going to get your vote. In the meantime,

00:34:43.660 shut up. Get behind the leader. You're just going to have to deal with it. But if anybody believes, 0.90

00:34:50.680 like nobody believes that the party is going to turf him unless he is in allison redford uh

00:34:56.220 popularity uh territory and popularity there's just no way they're going to turf him uh and it

00:35:01.580 also allows him to get you know it's generally uh accepted wisdom that you need to get a bare

00:35:08.140 minimum of 66 to 68 percent in a leadership review to still have the authority to lead a political

00:35:14.240 party into the next election um if he gets below that he will be able to say well you know i would

00:35:19.460 elect more but we're so close to an election we can't afford to change the

00:35:22.060 leader and he could continue on with a bare majority of 50% plus one so no no

00:35:30.340 he said he needed 75 or 55 or something it was pretty low a leader cannot like

00:35:38.240 Ralph Klein could not stay on with a level of support that he had everybody

00:35:41.540 was shocked about it but most leaders resign if they are lower than the mid

00:35:46.280 60s uh it just you clearly don't have the authority to do it it's i think there's only been two

00:35:52.420 leaders that i'm aware of at least in canadian history who have actually lost the leadership

00:35:57.000 review like outright lost who got less than 50 that was john dieffenbaker for who the leadership

00:36:02.720 review process was literally created for because the party wanted to get rid of him uh he was just

00:36:07.060 not going away and the other one was thomas mulcair who outright lost those are the only two

00:36:12.180 again, I'm sure there's a nerd somewhere who can poke a hole in my argument, but those are the only

00:36:16.440 two I'm aware who have outright lost, but a lot of leaders will get in the mid-60s or below, but

00:36:21.760 still get a majority, but they know that you don't have the authority to lead a party. If you can't

00:36:25.440 command virtually everybody in the party to back you, you can't be the leader. So it's a smart move.

00:36:33.780 I'm telling you right now, he is probably going to make it to the election. There's a chance that

00:36:37.860 there'll be a caucus revolt, but I don't think it's happening. Anybody who's holding on hopes

00:36:41.880 that you can get rid of them. I don't think it's going to work. I'll put 20 bucks right down now

00:36:48.400 to anyone else on the panel, two to one odds. Jason Kenney is going to lead the UCP into the

00:36:52.820 next election. I will not bet, I will not give you good odds on if he wins that election or not.

00:36:59.240 Yeah, well, I wasn't eager. I mean, I've been very critical of the UCP and Premier Kenney lately,

00:37:05.120 but I wasn't eager to see it tear itself apart this fall or possibly have a leadership review,

00:37:09.240 ripping out its leader you know halfway through a mandate i mean what i want to see is them to find

00:37:15.080 their bloody feet and start leading like as a party as a premier so that you don't face these

00:37:19.720 threats you know um now though to see it put off just due to political brinksmanship rather than

00:37:25.960 changing their path or policy tells me they might not have learned from this yet so there could be

00:37:30.840 a lot of trouble coming yet i think so um and before we go i should also mention we should

00:37:39.000 have uh alexander on one day a lot of the stories we're talking about today were from our uh a

00:37:44.120 reporter in edmonton alexander dolly wall uh he's been doing a lot of great work uh he reports to

00:37:50.040 you dave uh maybe we'll get him on the pipeline now since he's uh working well and i know he's

00:37:55.480 watching because he comment he's responding to some people they're asking questions and he's

00:37:59.000 providing links to stories so we know we know you're watching a nerd you were talking about

00:38:02.920 He is the nerd.

00:38:06.040 Sorry, Alex.

00:38:06.640 We know you're not.

00:38:08.860 Well, in closing, that's that reminder.

00:38:10.420 You know, Alexander's putting some great content on the site.

00:38:13.240 You want to see the details of what we're talking about.

00:38:15.220 Get out there, get that subscription, subscribe to the YouTube channel.

00:38:18.420 That way you see those live specials because Daniel Smith's coming on again

00:38:21.360 tomorrow night with the legal team.

00:38:23.680 They've been working with, you know, Pastor Coates to get him free.

00:38:26.920 And they've also been doing a lot of work with people charged under things with

00:38:30.680 the restrictions.

00:38:31.300 A bunch of the lawyers who are working with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:38:36.740 The president of that is John Carpe.

00:38:38.240 We've already had him on the show before with Danielle Smith.

00:38:41.920 Dave's probably done two dozen interviews or more with him in the last few months.

00:38:47.120 But, yeah, we're having a bunch of the lawyers from the JCCF on.

00:38:49.900 These are the lawyers who are fighting the lockdown.

00:38:51.880 Danielle Smith will be interviewing them.

00:38:53.800 It's going to be a great show.

00:38:54.980 Yeah, and I know it makes some people cringe.

00:38:56.720 They can listen to a bunch of lawyers for a long time. 1.00

00:38:58.380 but with Danielle in there to make sure that they're talking about things for a long time yeah

00:39:03.660 I know I can't believe they're hanging in there so I'll let people go I thank you very much for

00:39:07.920 viewing I'm Cory Morgan soon to possibly be Doris day with Derek and Dave we'll see what my name is

00:39:15.660 next week John John Winslow we have your name we actually know where you live so we will come to

00:39:21.720 collect. Thanks. We'll see you all next week. Cheers.

Western Standard - March 18, 2021

The Pipeline： March 17, 2021

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