Western Standard's Derek Fildebrandt and Dave Naylor break down the latest results in the presidential election, including a potential recount in Wisconsin, and a potential tie in the House of Representatives if no candidate secures a majority of electoral votes.
00:07:45.840But there is an opportunity for a single electoral vote to be cast to the other party if they can win a certain electoral district.
00:07:53.320Trump has won Maine, picking up one point, and Biden has won one of those points in Nebraska.
00:08:01.880Now, if Trump had held all of Nebraska, even though he won it by 20 points, a very sizable lead, Biden managed to win a single electoral district.
00:08:10.760If that had not happened, they would both be tied at 69 electoral college votes, which would have each of them one vote shy of a majority of the electoral college.
00:08:24.180That would be a tie, and then it would go to the U.S. House of Representatives, which, because they vote on a state-by-state delegation basis, not as individuals, would likely favor Trump in a bizarre tie vote scenario.
00:08:35.920That's unlikely to happen, because Nebraska is going to keep its vote for Biden.
00:08:42.840Under the current math, if all current leads hold, Biden wins by an absolute nail-biter of 270 electoral college votes, and 270 is exactly what you need to win.
00:09:28.400He's now got to flip either Wisconsin, Michigan, or Nevada.
00:09:33.420Give us your thoughts on what you think the chances of that happening are, or you think Biden is going to be able to hold it and get in by the slimmest of margins here.
00:09:42.660Yeah, I don't think it's looking very good for President Trump.
00:09:47.420The only one that's kind of race that's narrowing in his favor has been Nevada.
00:09:51.780That started actually with a strong Democrat lead, and as the votes have been coming in, it's actually narrowed and come closer for Trump.
00:09:59.040But really key was Wisconsin and Michigan, which, again, last night looked nice and locked for him.
00:10:06.780And now they're very much in question.
00:10:08.760And what you've got to look at is the trending.
00:10:11.460As the votes come in, which way are the leads changing?
00:10:15.040And in those ones, the more votes that come in, the worse he's looking.
00:10:41.240They're coming in, and they definitely are being dominated by Democrat votes.
00:10:45.520As well, you're really seeing a rural-urban split.
00:10:49.520You know, you're seeing in these states, the high population centers are tending to lean Democrat, and the rural areas are strongly Republican.
00:10:58.640But it's often the cities that are the latest in their county because they got those larger districts and larger amounts of votes.
00:11:04.220So same thing as those votes keep coming in and trending when you're getting votes out of Detroit, you're getting votes out of Green Bay, areas like that.
00:11:11.380Again, it's not doing Trump any favors in picking these up.
00:11:15.220So personally, as the trend said, I mean, he might still hang on to South Carolina, Georgia, or North Carolina and Georgia.
00:11:24.280But he's really got to, I think, get Wisconsin or Michigan, and those are looking really tight.
00:11:28.560Pennsylvania, he's got, I believe that lead's going to narrow by quite a bit, but he's holding a pretty good one.
00:11:33.740He might hang on to that, and that's pretty key as well, of course.
00:11:36.800Gentlemen, I've got some breaking news.
00:11:40.520CNN has just declared Biden a winner in Wisconsin.
00:11:43.800So that's what I'm being told, and only CNN is reporting that at the moment as far as I can see.
00:11:52.040But from what I'm seeing, it's 95% of the vote in, and Biden has a very slim lead.
00:12:07.420Biden might well take that by the slimmest of margins, but 5% coming in, I'm not sure you can call that yet, unless CNN has earlier results than we have.
00:12:21.220Yeah, I've got the same figures as you, Derek, and the figures we've got, it's too early to call.
00:12:25.740But CNN has seen something that they like, and they've given it to Biden.
00:14:21.140And ironically, at the same time, Biden has launched a fundraising campaign to pay his legal bills.
00:14:27.740Obviously, there's going to be a lot of richer lawyers in the United States at the end of a couple of weeks.
00:14:36.420But those two little pieces of breaking news.
00:14:40.300Yeah, right now it looks like the only real winner are the lawyers.
00:14:43.500There's an absolute army of lawyers found out across the swing states right now.
00:14:46.980Nevada, one reason we have so little out of Nevada right now and had so little last night is that the Trump campaign sued the state to keep polls open, I think, for another hour after they were supposed to close.
00:15:02.440They claim there were irregularities stopping many of their supporters from getting to the polls and voting.
00:15:38.560But, you know, last night it looked like, you know, with Trump with pretty good leads in both Michigan and Wisconsin, it looked like he was on track for it.
00:16:20.900I thought Joe Biden was reasonable not to concede defeat, even though it looked like he was going down.
00:16:25.960There was still enough out there that he still had a potential path to victory.
00:16:29.440So how do you think the two candidates handled last night?
00:16:35.040Do you think Biden should have been more strident one way or another about defeat or victory?
00:16:40.060And do you think that Donald Trump was perhaps being too presumptuous in declaring victory and casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the election?
00:16:49.860Yeah, well, I think Biden came out and did it right.
00:16:54.600Of course, it was probably getting near his bedtime, so he couldn't talk for too long.
00:16:58.000But, I mean, he kept it brief and got to the point.
00:17:02.380We feel that there's, you know, that we're on the path to winning.
00:17:05.680But he didn't declare an outright victory.
00:17:07.420And he certainly didn't try to stir folks up.
00:17:10.580And it was unfortunate, but not unexpected out of President Trump to, I guess, not just strongly declare, virtually declare a victory, but also to cast aspersions on the entire process.
00:17:26.760And I just, I don't personally, we'll see as evidence comes out, think there's any grand conspiracy or ballot stuffing, or at least not on a level that's going to make a difference on this election.
00:17:37.100It was a strategy, it was a mechanism to vote, and it definitely is dominating votes for the Democrats at this point.
00:17:46.080But now that Trump has thrown that doubt in, and in a close race, again, I just fear for stability.
00:17:51.820I mean, the upset people, the conspiracy theorists, the others are never going to accept results, no matter how they go at this point.
00:18:00.640And it's just bad for the entire process.
00:18:03.740And it's bad for the unity of that country going ahead.
00:18:07.240So I do wish, perhaps, he'd have restrained a bit on that, leave it to his lawyers, perhaps, to pursue it rather than in his speech last night.
00:18:19.420Yeah, all the major cities with their businesses all boarded up, they're going to have, those poor businesses are probably going to have to leave the boards up for some time more.
00:18:28.860If folks start rioting, they don't know if they're going to riot yet, if they lose or not.
00:18:35.620So the United States is entering a very dangerous time right now, because both candidates could claim victory by casting aspersions on the vote.
00:18:50.160You know, Biden might say Trump supporters are trying to stop our people, or Trump is trying to stop our votes from being counted.
00:18:58.200Trump could claim that there's been funny business with all these mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
00:19:05.000We have, let me be, Dave, if you want to update us in Pennsylvania, all in Pennsylvania right now, these so-called naked ballots.
00:20:49.320You're going to probably see very serious legal challenges in Nevada, in Pennsylvania, possibly in Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia.
00:21:02.200This is going to be quite a few court battles that will be solved at the first dealt with at the state level, then probably make their way to the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:21:09.520And the courts will have to work overtime.
00:21:15.260I mean, it would be an absolute disaster for the fabric of America's political stability to not have, for the first time in their history, a president sworn in by Inauguration Day.
00:21:26.480So the courts are going to have to work overtime if they're going to have any chance of solving that and having a declared winner by then.
00:21:32.860And Derek, we all know what happened recently in the Supreme Court, so if it gets to that level, you're looking at a definite Republican edge to whatever vote comes out.
00:21:45.540That's with the swearing in of Justice Barrett just last week, I believe it was.
00:21:53.600So they obviously did the right thing in getting their nominee appointed before election date, if you're a Republican fan.
00:22:01.720And it remains to be seen, though, it is certainly a conservative Supreme Court.
00:22:07.600It leans conservative on issues of judicial philosophy and ideology.
00:22:15.620That's that's a bigger question is is the Supreme Court going to side with Republicans just because they're appointed by Republicans or or not.
00:22:26.820There is a there is a difference between conservative judicial philosophy and just backing your guy because you want him to win.
00:22:33.400And sorry, Derek, pundits are saying that even if the Chief Justice John Roberts votes on the side of the Democrats, there's still enough conservative leaning judges that they should still win the day.
00:22:48.340Yeah, although the Republicans would have to have at least some semblance of a case for that for that to happen.
00:22:53.180They're not going to rule based on nothing.
00:22:55.680I mean, as loaded as the U.S. Supreme Court is ideologically one direction or another, it it does still have to operate on the rule of law.
00:23:05.140The justices are likely to side one way or another, depending on what they like.
00:23:09.680But it's going to still have to be based on something.
00:23:12.320They're not going to they're not going to pull it out of thin air.
00:23:20.480Is there anything else on the U.S. election?
00:23:21.940Guys, I'd just like to speak a bit to the broader issues of some of the stuff that was learned last night, though, as we said right now, the only one who could clearly be declared a winner are lawyers.
00:23:31.560And they're all going to be an army of them doing just fine for the next few weeks.
00:23:35.660But those broader issues, the biggest losers were pollsters again.
00:23:40.480I mean, they were predicting for weeks a Biden landslide.
00:23:44.660They were saying this was going to be knocked out of the park and they were clearly found to be utterly wrong.
00:23:50.040The mainstream media and who were, you know, basically tied at the hip to a lot of those pollsters and silver and the rest, again, have a lot of egg in their faces.
00:24:00.000And their bias throughout this whole campaign was was quite well exposed.
00:24:04.680I watched last night on Fox and Tucker just tore a strip out of the mainstream media in general, including his own newsroom.
00:24:14.180And it was it was just something quite interesting to watch.
00:24:17.700But there's going to be some broader fallout and changes to things in general out of this election, aside from just the presidency itself.
00:24:24.940I mean, this entire campaign set a whole different tone.
00:24:28.780And I don't think it was a good one, but hopefully we've learned some things from it.
00:24:40.660I've actually got a bit of sympathy for them.
00:24:43.040I know it's not a popular thing to say, but it's very hard to measure Trump support because a lot of Trump supporters don't say they support Trump in the polls.
00:24:50.380The polls are pretty good most of the time in scientifically weighting demographics and regions, you know, balancing men and women, ages, depending on how they think people are going to.
00:25:02.240What numbers people are going to come out to vote, urban and rural and their locations.
00:25:06.320But it's hard to adjust for shy voters, people who intend to vote Trump when they get into the ballot box, but won't tell the pollster that up front.
00:25:14.780So that's why, in general, when I look at these polls, I take the polls at face value, and then I generally add 3% for Trump as a rule of thumb.
00:25:24.140Add 3% for him on top of what the polls are saying.
00:25:26.580The polls aren't completely wrong, but they do underplay Trump support because it's so hard to measure.
00:25:31.620And what we saw last night is he generally outperforms by about 3% or 4%, depending on where it is.
00:25:37.820And that was enough to move this from the blowout that the pollsters and a lot of the major networks in the United States were predicting to what we saw, which is a nail-biter election that is almost certainly going to be decided in the courts, not at the ballot box.
00:25:52.000Well, let's bring things closer to home now, in case anyone's paying attention.
00:26:00.880Monday, there was quite a blow-off in the legislature.
00:26:04.080The ADP brought forward a motion trying to get the UCP on the record about independence for Alberta,
00:26:13.560trying to essentially play a little bit of games, sticking a knife in the divisions of the Tory caucus between the Federalists, which dominate the party.
00:26:22.000And potential solverists, which are now not much of a secret, kind of within its ranks, some of them hiding, some of them not hiding.
00:26:31.080Dave, why don't you give us an update about what happened?
00:26:34.400Yeah, and we've got some breaking news on that front, too, Derek.
00:26:38.620The NDP motion was put in, as you say, to debate independence.
00:26:44.900The UCP stood up and said, that's not fair.
00:26:51.120It breaks the relationship between an MLA and his constituent.
00:26:58.320So that was basically put to the bottom of the order of papers, meaning it's never going to see the light of day, probably.
00:27:05.920But in a story I just published on westernstandardonline.com, rebel UCP MLA Drew Barnes has again broken ranks.
00:27:16.000And he has stood up and said, hang on a second, fellows, this is completely unfair to the NDP party.
00:27:23.980He says private members' bills are one of the few things that MLAs have a chance to do themselves that aren't linked to the party.
00:27:33.940He said in his time in the legislature, he's only been able to do it twice and only being able to stand up and speak for his Cypress Medicine Hat constituents twice in all those years.
00:27:46.880So, you know, Barnes keeps poking the bear.
00:27:52.000He's disagreed with the government on many, many issues, including EMS dispatch consolidation.
00:27:59.840He wrote another report on the fair deal panel saying that independence needs to be on the table if Alberta's got any chance of making a better deal in Confederation.
00:28:16.560But, yeah, Barnes is poking the wasp's nest once again.
00:28:21.880Yeah, this this is we're just seeing this come across the wire now from the story you broke, Dave.
00:28:28.880Really, while while we're discussing this here, you're a talented man doing stories while you're on the air.
00:28:34.140But Drew Barnes really poking the bear, as you said, he is now so kind of a bit of background.
00:28:43.380There is something called private members business in the Alberta legislature.
00:28:48.040There's private members motions and bills.
00:28:51.900And they're really kind of the only opportunity the vast majorities of MLAs have to have any kind of impact on the agenda of the legislature.
00:28:59.980If you're not a part of the cabinet, you don't get to propose bills unless you get one of these rare private members motions or bills.
00:29:06.480And Drew Barnes spent two terms in opposition.
00:29:11.400You know, I spent one term in opposition.
00:29:13.340I never actually I did get lucky to draw a private members motion once that was to cut MLI pay.
00:29:17.920And unfortunately, I was the only member to vote for it.
00:29:21.300The NDP and the Tories voted against it at the time.
00:29:24.880But it was an opportunity for me to put something on the agenda.
00:29:28.060Drew Barnes, having been in opposition, gets that it's very important that this is not messed with.
00:29:33.180If the governing side can vote against private members motions and bills.
00:29:37.100But it was an unprecedented step for them to outright cancel debate on it, to not allow a vote on it.
00:29:45.240Why do you think the Tories took an unprecedented step of essentially canceling private members business, killing this motion without any debate or a vote?
00:29:54.620And then secondly, why do you think Barnes did this and very publicly broke ranks with his party in the legislature?
00:30:05.720Yeah, well, I mean, it was a brilliant political play on the part of the NDP.
00:30:13.440If, you know, not even necessarily for the sake of Albertans, but just on a political partisan brinkmanship.
00:30:18.600You know that there's a lot of unrest within the UCP caucus because there is a growing number of supporters for an independence option, at least flirting with it, if not outright.
00:30:35.780You guys are going to have to talk about this.
00:30:37.840And of course, that could potentially bring about a great deal more rifts within the party.
00:30:43.160It would force them to stand and be counted.
00:30:45.420Do you consider this a viable option or not?
00:30:47.480And for every MLA, because we've seen that, you know, Notley's pretending to be supportive of Barnes who's taking his stand, but Notley was demanding that he be thrown out before because he's taken independent style stands.
00:30:57.560And if this motion had gone to the floor and five or six UCP members had voted saying that they don't support that motion, then Notley could say, well, look, we've got this nest of separatists in there.
00:31:24.580But, you know, there's been some speculation that maybe he's kind of looking to get kicked out and then take over in representing that segment of the population in an independence type movement.
00:31:37.680Though, I mean, perhaps Drew's just also using his role as an MLA because he wants to speak to that thing.
00:31:43.480Perhaps we can get him on again soon to talk about that.
00:31:46.740I think that's something we should absolutely do.
00:31:49.140We should get him on the broadcast here and hear from him directly.
00:31:55.600I can tell you that it is extremely rare for MLAs to vote against a party line, let alone do it on a semi-regular basis.
00:32:06.600And it was not the smartest career move one could take to oppose your party whip, particularly doing it on a semi-regular basis.
00:32:17.700Drew Barnes is doing it pretty regularly here, speaking out on this.
00:32:22.420I think he certainly looks like he's daring them to take him on.
00:32:25.920I think their Tory leadership is smart enough to know where the polls are at and that kicking him out would look pretty bad for keeping their coalition together.
00:32:35.100And even though the Tories are federalists, they do rely on, according to the polling we had done, half of their support, 52% of UCP voters, back independents.
00:32:46.380And those are the ones who haven't already left for one of the independence parties.
00:32:49.080So kicking him out would be extremely dangerous.
00:32:52.560But at some point, you know, the question is, is Jason Kenney going to decide that it's better to keep him inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in?
00:33:03.120And that's going to be a pretty big decision for them to make.
00:33:06.300But if they do kick him out, are they going to end up martyring him politically and giving more air to moving the independence movement outside of the Tory tent into something like the Wild Rose Independence Party?
00:33:21.620Gentlemen, if you can talk amongst yourselves for a minute.
00:33:24.860I'm just in contact with Drew Barnes right now, and I'll see if I can't get him on the show with us right now.
00:34:26.780She wanted to cause some strife and division within that caucus.
00:34:30.000She wanted to be able to paint that party as being potentially separatist.
00:34:34.060And that speculation is going now, whether the motion came to the floor or not.
00:34:38.540Perhaps, in hindsight, it would have been healthier for the motion to have hit the floor.
00:34:44.760And they can at least speak for themselves one by one as to whether they're supportive or not of those sorts of things.
00:34:49.840So it's made quite a mess for Jason Kenney.
00:34:52.040And Drew's carrying on with that mess right now.
00:34:54.900Yeah, it's Drew is really he is the only one of the original class of 2012 Wild Rosers to still be in the Wild Rose caucus.
00:35:06.020Sorry, in the UCP caucus, the vast majority, the other two who were left over, who survived the floor crossing and came back as Wild Rosers in 2015 when I was elected as a Wild Rose MLA.
00:35:20.980One of them was kind of pushed into retirement.
00:35:48.100But among the strong personalities of the Wild Rosers, there's not a lot who were who are who are really left standing.
00:35:55.880Drew Barnes really is kind of among the very last of the old Wild Rose school to still be in the Alberta legislature right now.
00:36:05.260And the Wild Rose culture is very different than the old PC culture.
00:36:08.860And, you know, a lot of folks, myself included, think that the UCP culture more reflects the PC culture or the Conservative Party of Canada's culture than it does the old Reform Party or Wild Rose culture.
00:36:25.880So that will be fascinating to see, you know, is Drew Barnes able to mash that Wild Rose chip on his shoulder that he carries with the way they're doing things right now.
00:36:39.820I do think we're about to get Drew Barnes here.
00:36:43.360Let's go to Dave as we see if we can plug Drew Barnes in.
00:36:46.820Hey, Drew's going to be here in a second or two.
00:36:53.780I think he just wants to go audio at the moment, probably up late last night, like all of us, and maybe has a case of bed hair going or something like that.
00:37:02.680But, yeah, he'll be on within moments.
00:37:05.940And we'll get to hear from the horse's mouth exactly what his strategy is moving forward.
00:37:10.940Drew Barnes, do we have you live right now?
00:37:29.400Tell us, well, what the heck is happening right now?
00:37:33.300Well, it's an interesting time for sure.
00:37:35.740You know, yesterday was, you know, another example of what, you know, I've been fighting for for almost nine years, what I've been talking about.
00:37:45.680And, you know, Derek, I just did hear your preliminary words a minute or two ago, and you're bang on.
00:37:51.540You know, I'm very grateful to have represented Cypress Medicine Hat since 2012, starting the first two times as a Wild Roser.
00:37:58.840And so much of what the Wild Rose was trying to do in 2011, 2012 was democratic reform, grassroots involvement, more opportunity for MLAs to talk in the legislature,
00:38:15.120more opportunity for Albertans to have direct access with citizen-initiated reforms, answers to questions, input into the Alberta economy and Alberta bureaucracy and rules.
00:38:28.760And, you know, so basically yesterday was a time when through a standing order technique, through a government motion that was adjourned, you know, we get so little members, private members time now, only three hours a week.
00:38:47.720And that's provided we sit on a Monday, and for some reason we haven't been sitting a lot of Mondays.
00:38:53.200So I just felt it was absolutely wrong, you know, to the 62 or 63 of us that aren't in Cabinet, that that three hours a week is sacrosanct.
00:39:05.020And, you know, too important and too limited is time to take away.
00:39:11.140So I was grateful that, you know, I'm glad that, you know, a member of Heather Sweet from the NDP put in a point of privilege.
00:39:19.740I was pleased to stand up and support her on that.
00:39:22.520And I believe the speaker is going to be ruling, I hope today, about 1.30, maybe just before orders at three o'clock.
00:39:31.460But I'll be interested in hearing what he has to say.
00:39:33.720Drew, do we, has there been any reaction from your caucus colleagues or the leadership of the party to you breaking ranks on this to essentially try to maintain the integrity of the private members business process?
00:39:55.180Has there been any, has there been any word from the leadership or your caucus colleagues yet?
00:40:01.180No, there, there, there, there's, there's been nothing, no, you know, nobody from the whip's office or, or from Premier Kenny's office has reached out to me.
00:40:23.180Some of my, you know, you know, what needed you needed to be said.
00:40:28.680A lot of said, thank you for saying it, you know, with, with passion and with meaning.
00:40:32.900And, you know, I, you know, basically I, you know, talked about the fact that we get so little opportunities to do this in nine years, Derek and Dave.
00:41:14.480I mean, this was something they kind of hoped to bury and have it forgotten.
00:41:17.540It's a busy news week, you know, outside of the country.
00:41:19.960And of course, with, with COVID and everything else going on, this was just something I don't think that Premier Kenny wanted to deal with.
00:41:27.560But, uh, Drew's making it clear that, that he speaks for his constituency and, uh, the, uh, uh, more, you know, grassroots, old school, wild rose sort of thing.
00:41:39.600And, and he's not going to back down on these things.
00:41:41.580So, uh, the, the line keeps getting drawn in the sand.
00:42:05.300Just, just to follow up what Corey was talking about.
00:42:08.640Premier Kenny had hoped this was going to be a one day news cycle event, uh, come up Monday afternoon and then be buried and forgotten, uh, for good.
00:42:17.920What, uh, Drew Barnes's move has done has made it a continuing story now that has now turned into a three or four day story.
00:42:25.600Uh, which increases the embarrassment, uh, to, uh, Premier Kenny's office.
00:42:30.380So, uh, the Premier will be less than pleased.
00:42:34.160And I think Derek, as you mentioned, it's just, you know, how many times is the Premier's office going to allow, uh, Drew Barnes to be a renegade, uh, before they finally say, okay, enough's enough.
00:42:45.940Go, uh, go, uh, go sit by yourself in the corner.
00:42:49.600Well, I've, I've sat in that corner before.
00:42:52.500And, uh, it, it could be a lonely corner, but, uh, it's a rewarding corner because you, you get to do a lot more than you do, uh, just, uh, sitting and following orders.
00:43:01.520Um, yeah, I, I, I'm not sure how much longer that will go.
00:43:05.940Uh, I think, uh, Corey, you were, you were bang on that, um, you know, shutting down the private members business of the day, which has never been done.
00:43:15.180As far as I know, in the history of Alberta, I'm not even sure it's ever been done in any province or federally, just shutting down private members business like that.
00:44:12.300Uh, my end game's always been the same, uh, for more hope, more opportunity for Alberta families and Alberta communities, of course, particularly Cypress Medicine Hat, which I'm, I'm fortunate to, to represent.
00:44:26.340Um, there's a quite a difference of opinion right now about what we should do about our relationship with Ottawa and our Canadian partners.
00:44:36.180Uh, the NDP motion, of course, was under no conditions should we ever question our, our loyalty to, to Ottawa and we're always going to be better off as, as part of Canada.
00:44:49.180Uh, of course, I don't, I don't agree with that.
00:44:50.900Um, then when the government shut down the debate on that motion and their motion was more like, we're, uh, we believe in the United, uh, being a United Canada and part of Canada, but we will work towards a fair deal.
00:45:05.000Uh, and as I consistently put out, there has to be consequences, uh, not only should we immediately start to move towards the, the items in the famous firewall letter from 20 years ago that, that, you know, now consecutive fair deal panels have talked about from collecting our own taxes, from having our own pension, uh, from our own police force, our own chief firearms officer, control of immigration.
00:45:30.860Uh, but we, there also has to be consequences, uh, Albertans need to, to have the opportunity to, to let Ottawa know, you know, in a year or two or, or whatever, if Ottawa hasn't come to the table in a fair way and the best consequences is a referendum on independence.
00:45:49.260Uh, and, uh, I, I believe that in my heart and I believe also strongly that, uh, Albertans need the opportunity to get engaged, to be involved in this discussion.
00:45:59.920Uh, one of the real joys of the fair deal panel was as, as tens and tens, hundreds of Albertans went to the mic, there were so many great unique new ideas, uh, that, uh, you know, that, uh, I, I think, you know, that and development of our own Alberta written constitution would go so, so far.
00:46:19.260Um, to, to strengthen our culture and, and solidify Alberta being the free and most prosperous jurisdiction in the world.
00:46:27.100Those, those are what I'm, I'm looking for.
00:46:31.100Uh, drew when the province announced that they were going to be studying the provincial police idea and not report back until April, you immediately issued a statement saying enough's enough.
00:47:01.680Albertans everywhere are telling me, quit studying, just do it.
00:47:05.000Particularly the things that we don't need Ottawa support or the other provinces support, like the constitutional items, whether we need seven provinces and 50% of Canadian population.
00:47:16.500The things we can do, like give notice by March 31st to run our own police force, you know, there's a whole bunch of elements there.
00:47:24.560The values being a bit different out of Ottawa have made our legal system, you know, some issues here.
00:47:32.780You know, I can't count the number of times I hear about people being arrested five times and still not locked up and the impact that has on quality, quality police work.
00:47:41.840Ottawa does subsidize our police, it's about $100 million a year now, but all the signals are that they're going to discontinue doing that.
00:47:50.560There's been some unionization and cost increases in the RCMP.
00:47:54.540There's been cost increases everywhere.
00:47:57.280So Ottawa is clearly giving the signals that they're going to discontinue this anyway.
00:48:01.220So without even counting the leverage that we can start to gain with our Canadian partners by showing that we are, you know, self-reliant, we can stand on our own, these things only make sense.
00:48:15.000I'll give you another example from yesterday.
00:48:18.480We have emergency helicopter response in the South, called HALO.
00:48:22.900We've been waiting years to get the same amount of per capita support that STARS gets for the rest of the province.
00:48:31.900The Health Minister Andrew has been saying that he's going to have a HEMS review, HEMS for helicopter emergency management system.
00:48:38.760It was supposed to be due in the summer.
00:50:16.900You know, I guess I'll let my colleagues speak for themselves, but I will say this, you know, many, many of them have reached out to me, inquired, but no more precisely, I heard the fair deal panel.
00:50:28.600And let's be clear, 80% of Albertans that went to the mic said our relationship with Ottawa is broken.
00:51:43.120A lot of them discuss, you know, their thoughts and their ideas.
00:51:47.180I am so grateful that people like the Wilder's Independence Party, you know, the old legacy parties of Wexit and Freedom Conservative come together.
00:51:57.560They care deeply about Albertans, Albertans families.
00:52:01.280They care deeply about hope and opportunity and helping each other.
00:52:14.860Well, Drew, what do you think is next here?
00:52:25.960So we're obviously going to still wait on the speaker to make a ruling on this.
00:52:31.020Remains to be seen how it's going to work.
00:52:33.120I think parliamentary precedent has it that this is highly inappropriate for the government to use its majority to effectively cancel private members' business, not allow any debate, not allow any vote on things not determined in advance by the government.
00:52:51.480So I will ask you about next steps forward.
00:52:53.440But I was quite shocked when I was watching the, I don't really watch a lot of theater legislature much anymore.
00:52:59.060But I was quite shocked when they did that.
00:53:02.780Was there any notice given to the UCP caucus that this debate would be, would be ended the way it was?
00:53:09.080Or did this just kind of get sprung on everybody out of nowhere?
00:53:17.480Derek, just a little bit hard to hear.
00:53:19.400So I think you, you know, what was a surprise?
00:53:31.920My question was, did the move by the Tory majority to cancel private members' business, you know, without any debate or vote, was notice given to the UCP caucus that this would happen?
00:53:45.760Or was this just kind of done and you found out while it was happening in the legislature?
00:53:50.300Yeah, sorry, Derek, just only here every fourth or fifth week.
00:54:00.420I believe in the election, they had no idea if private members' time was circumvented.
00:54:05.000You know, when the government tried to bring Bill 304, the private members' bill that we were on, the NDP didn't allow it, I think because, you know, they felt that they'd been slighted.
00:54:19.060You know, maybe they should have, but, you know, that would have been a huge, you know, reaction to not be upset as to what happened.
00:54:31.040So, but, you know, it's, you know, one of the things that we need to look at, and it's back to, you know, when we started in this wild movement, starting in 2000, and, you know, the last, you know, the John Murdochs and the Paul Hinmans and all these people, the Danielle Smiths, Corey Morgan, all these people that had worked so hard before.
00:54:55.840We really wanted, and we were really hearing from Albertans that deep desire for more grassroots involvement in our democratic process.
00:55:06.140Hopefully, what happened yesterday is one of those catalysts, one of those steps along where a government that cares, a government that listens, will enhance, and things will only get better.
00:55:21.620Well, this kind of brings it back to what we were saying when you joined us in this conversation originally about, you know, what kind of culture is prevailing within the UCP.
00:55:36.200You know, we both served together in the Wild Rose Caucus, and that had a particular culture.
00:55:43.420It was never popular within the Wild Rose Caucus amongst the leadership for any of us to break ranks and vote against the party whip, but we certainly did from time to time.
00:55:55.900And then, you know, we contrast that with the more PC culture or the Conservative Party of Canada culture, which is significantly more centralized.
00:56:02.640Which, do you think the Wild Rose Caucus has got enough strength right now, or is more of the older PC culture pervading in terms of the role of an MLA and that kind of question around centralization or decentralization of the ability of MLAs to do their own thing within the legislature?
00:57:08.700Yeah, very good. Yeah, Drew, we'd love to have you on for longer, but it looks like the connection at your end is just a bit not quite strong enough. Please talk to tell us or whoever is responsible for this. We'd love to have you on again. If we can get the stream working a little bit better. It's looking a bit like something coming from Prytis right now.
00:57:30.380But I think we're I think that was fascinating. Thanks again to Drew Bynes for coming on and Dave for bringing them on at such late notice. But it made for a very interesting discussion.
00:57:45.320I want to thank everyone of our viewers for watching today. If you're not currently a member of the Western Standard, please go to westerncenteredonline.com and go to membership. The Western Standard does not accept a penny of government funding.
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00:58:11.340So if you're not yet a member, please consider becoming one. And those of you watching who are members, we thank you very much for your support for what we're doing.
00:58:20.660But I'd like thank you, Dave Naylor, for joining us today, news editor of the Western Standard, Corey Morgan, podcast editor and columnist for the Western Standard.
00:58:30.220Thank you very much for joining us, everyone today. God bless.