Mayor Naheed Nenshi has some serious competition for his job, as Jeremy Farkas has announced his intention to run for mayor of Calgary in the upcoming election. Will he beat out the current mayor, who has been in office since 2010, by challenging him for a second term?
00:00:00.000Welcome to the pipeline. This is the Western Standard's weekly live show where we read out and cover some of the biggest news stories of the week and do some analysis.
00:00:20.000My name is Corey Morgan. I'm one of the columnists and the digital editor, sitting today with Dave Naylor, our news editor, and our Vildebrand.
00:00:30.000And as usual, we've got a lot of good stuff to cover today. It's been a lively news week. I'll go in reverse order to where we want to start.
00:00:39.000Aaron O'Toole seems to have worked up the West again with some comments about Energy East we should be discussing.
00:00:45.000Jason Kenney's having a terrible time in the polls. He seems not to be winning. Alberta's love this week.
00:00:54.000He said, Mayor Nehenichie has some serious competition for his job in City Hall as Jeremy Farkas has announced that he's going to make a mayoral run.
00:01:04.000Can you tell us a little more about that?
00:01:08.000Jeremy Farkas becomes the first candidate in the running for the 2000 election, civic election. It's more than a year away. It's not going to be a year October.
00:01:20.000But Farkas threw his hat into the ring. And it will certainly stir up local politics. Now Farkas is in. The question turns to the current mayor, Nahid Nenshi, who has held the office since 2010.
00:01:36.000Nobody knows whether he's going to run or not. And the question is, will Farkas...
00:01:43.000Well, no, these guys have an intense dislike for each other, basically. So will Mayor Nehenichie want to finish and go riding off into the sunset knowing that if Farkas does get elected, he may tear down some of Nehenichie's...
00:02:03.000Dave, Dave, we have no volume from Dave.
00:02:09.000Farkas announced in a six-minute video, which you can find on our website at the Western Standard, talked about his family moving from Hungary, 1956, escaping the communists in Dover, and how he grew up as a forest lawn kid, like Mayor Nenshi.
00:02:30.060And talked about becoming elected as a councillor, and how he angered his colleagues right away by turning down what he called the Golden Pension.
00:02:44.400And he's being basically a lone voice on...
00:02:48.180He's the only one that seems to be interested in fiscal constraint and keeping tax levels as low as possible.
00:02:56.080So, Corey, it's a fun election anyway.
00:03:12.440I think this is probably the only kind of candidate that will beat Nenshi.
00:03:17.440The last time they had, I think, a guy named Bill Smith, a very traditional, button-down establishment Tory.
00:03:26.480And really, you know, Nenshi was re-elected by one of the smallest margins in quite a few decades, actually, since the 80s.
00:03:36.360Calgary, no sitting Calgary mayor has ever been defeated in an election, though, since Ralph Klein defeated the incumbent to become mayor in the earlier 80s.
00:03:48.020So, it's a big task to take out of Calgary mayor.
00:03:52.520They have a pretty good re-election chance as incumbents.
00:03:57.500Farkas, though, is in his, I think, three years so far on council, has really set himself up as essentially the leader of the opposition on the council.
00:04:07.780He's consistently challenged and been a pain in the butt for the mayor.
00:04:14.000He's led the minority conservative faction on the council and, I think, made that faction more conservative.
00:04:22.260I think splitting, taking a more consistently conservative or libertarian approach on the council, kind of exposing some of the conservative and name-only guys who are sitting on there, some of which are even retiring this year.
00:05:01.160He, I think, is considered a relatively independent individual.
00:05:07.680While he is aligned with the UCP and CPC, the establishments in those two parties have been kind of searching for their own candidate, wanting someone probably a bit more pliable.
00:05:19.780Somebody who's not going to be their own power base that can challenge them if there's a disagreement.
00:05:26.980That candidate might still emerge, but I think they've been afraid of having someone else.
00:05:32.820Because Farkas, it's been pretty clear for a while, I think, that he's going to run for mayor.
00:05:36.640And now, you know, if they put up someone else against him, they'll be accused of splitting the vote, very ironically.
00:05:42.060So I think he's got a very strong chance.
00:05:46.160You know, they need to have a candidate who is dynamic and aggressive and not just campaigning on being a different guy than Nenshi, as they did with Bill Smith last time.
00:05:55.760But, you know, Farkas, he does have a reputation for maybe not getting along with council too well.
00:06:02.200But I think that's a good thing, considering how well this council has done.
00:06:05.240Well, it does position him as the non-establishment candidate.
00:06:10.680As you're saying, the old guard is kind of looking for somebody they'd like, who they can mold or control.
00:06:18.840Mayor of California, Jeremy, over this last three years to try and knock him into line, and he's just absolutely refused to.
00:06:32.360So somebody else jumping in is going to have to justify why they're running and potentially giving the head and Nenshi another turn, because if that vote gets split, that could happen.
00:06:41.820As well, Jeremy knows, I mean, he unseated essentially Brian Pincott, who was an established councillor who'd been in Bell and Calgary.
00:06:50.480Pincott did end up not running in the end, but Jeremy had spent two years of door-knocking, nipping on his heels, and I think Brian knew he wasn't going to win it, so he just got while getting was good.
00:07:00.980And that'll be interesting to see, too, is whether Mayor Nenshi wants to take the gamble and possibly lose in an election, or just say that he's going to resign with his dignity and move on.
00:07:12.180If I was Nenshi, I would wait to see if the Tory establishment mounts its own direct candidate.
00:07:17.340They might just figure that, well, Farkas has got a pretty good chance of winning, and if they put another guy against them, that'll just split the vote and keep Nenshi.
00:07:25.860So maybe they will keep their candidate out of the race.
00:07:29.440But if I was Nenshi, before announcing a decision one way or another, I would wait to see if there's going to be an establishment Tory in the race.
00:07:38.640If so, if there's two candidates, then he's got a shot of coming up the middle and taking it.
00:07:43.840But if he's facing, essentially, a clean race with Farkas as the only major candidate to his right, I think Nenshi would be probably well-advised to call Justin Trudeau for a Senate appointment.
00:07:56.540Yeah, well, and it's going to make for, I mean, there's enough fireworks already, but the council this year now, with it being an election year, and those two jousting for position, at least from an observer point of view, it's going to be quite fun to watch it, if nothing else.
00:08:10.540So getting on to the speaking of Tory establishment, we've got Aaron O'Toole, seems to have kind of worked up the West after sitting down and chatting with the Quebec Premier.
00:08:21.300Some people are saying it's taken out of context, others are saying that's what he meant.
00:08:27.320Perhaps, if we could expand on what's been kind of making ripples out of that.
00:08:30.800Reminds me, Corey, of that Monty Python sketch where they're bringing out the dead, and one guy said something, I'm not dead yet.
00:08:39.800And that's, you know, that's the energy pipeline.
00:08:43.500TC Energy pulled the point on this back in 2017, after opposition from Quebec, and environmental groups, and the federal government putting up various roadblocks to being constructed.
00:08:58.080And Aaron O'Toole, new leader of the Tory party, met with the Quebec Premier this week, it was his first meeting with the Prime Minister Premier, and he won with the Quebec Premier, and they talked about pipelines.
00:09:16.920O'Toole talking about, you know, the economic necessity of them, and Francois Legault basically saying, not on my watch.
00:09:26.860So O'Toole came out of the meeting, basically said, pipelines are important, but Energy East is dead.
00:09:33.980That prompted Jason Kenney yesterday to basically say, no, not dead yet.
00:09:39.140I'm not willing to give it the last rights.
00:09:42.400He says he and the Alberta government are still committed to getting Alberta oil to Canadian tidewater.
00:09:50.640And in his opinion, the project could still go ahead.
00:10:01.520He received, you know, one angry email from someone just ranting, saying, oh, you've taken his comments that Energy East is off the table out of context.
00:10:14.180I asked, I just responded, I said, please explain the context for me, and he just said no.
00:10:21.740I think some people are taking this out of context.
00:10:25.360Rachel Notley is taking it out of context.
00:11:08.200It's not under real consideration right now.
00:11:11.200It's been dead for a long time because of political pressure from the Quebec premier, from the federal prime minister, and from the then premier of Alberta, who said absolutely nothing about it at the time.
00:11:22.760That being said, I think this is O'Toole's way.
00:11:26.400O'Toole has, you know, when he was running for leader, has been pretty clear.
00:11:30.460He's pro-pipeline, pro-energy, all of these things.
00:11:32.980But he's also said that he won't force pipelines through provinces.
00:11:36.980Well, that's kind of the point of having a federal government, is that there should be a federal government to do national things like infrastructure and trade across provincial boundaries and provinces to do things directly.
00:11:47.720And if the federal government can't do that, there is no point of having a federal government.
00:11:52.280There is no point of having an Ottawa if it can't enforce national economic union.
00:11:58.500That's the whole point of the damn thing.
00:12:00.660But Aaron O'Toole said he's not going to force it on provinces.
00:12:04.060And after meeting with Francois Legault, premier of Quebec, he said that Legault says no, so I guess it's off the table.
00:12:13.000Now, this isn't his way of saying this wasn't Aaron O'Toole saying that he is taking it off the table, but that if Quebec says it's off the table, then it's it's just not going to go anywhere.
00:12:23.260But those comments have been met with quite a backlash in Alberta and in Saskatchewan.
00:12:30.120A lot of people obviously not very pleased about it and saying that it pretends to the inevitability of now the Conservatives taking the West for granted and focusing on winning votes in Ontario and Quebec.
00:12:45.320Well, yeah, as in Alberta myself, that infuriates me.
00:12:51.100So they are taking us for granted and potentially throwing us under the bus in order to win Ontario and Quebec, which, well, the way Confederation works, that's the only way you are going to get a majority government.
00:13:02.400And perhaps it's not Energy East in particular, but what if there's another pipeline down the road?
00:13:06.260I mean, we really do want to get a pipeline to Tidewater in the East, or we've always wanted to.
00:13:10.240But if it turns out that that call is up to the Quebec Premier of the time at any given time, again, well, what's the point of Confederation?
00:13:16.120I'd rather negotiate as a national leader to national leader with Quebec than to have some milk toast federal tour giving us lip service and then just capitulating to Quebec whenever they get their back up and they're not.
00:15:00.920It's heavily concentrated in Edmonton.
00:15:03.400And then within Calgary, it's heavily concentrated downtown.
00:15:06.360So I'm not convinced that the NDP could necessarily pull out government from this, but it would – certainly the UCP would lose a ton of seats.
00:15:14.920You know, they're down from – they got 55 percent of the vote in the provincial election.
00:15:39.520It asked the United Conservative, NDP, Alberta Party, Alberta Independence Party, and then Other Party.
00:15:44.840Now, normally, a good pollster, when Other Party gets above 2 or 3 percent, because there's normally not – you know, those normally are for very small fringe parties.
00:15:55.220If Other gets above 2 or 3 percent, they normally ask – they try to figure out what is that Other.
00:16:27.600Is that the Wild Rose Independence Party?
00:16:29.220And normally, if you have just Other listed, and people would otherwise want Other, they still won't even press Other when they get the phone call for the poll.
00:16:40.040They'll just go with their next favorite.
00:16:41.760So if you're, say, a Wild Rose Independence Party supporter, and they don't even list the Wild Rose Independence Party, chances are you'll probably just say UCP because whatever, that's the only thing they're giving on the poll that's even vaguely in your area.
00:16:55.100Or if you're a Liberal supporter, and Liberal isn't even listed as an option, you might just hit NDP because that's the only thing that's listed there.
00:17:03.580So they don't list the Liberal Party, which – so that's probably inflating the NDP numbers a bit here.
00:17:08.980The Liberal Party normally does 6% to 8% in polls.
00:17:14.220They just don't have enough candidates to actually capture those votes in elections, but at least in polls, they're normally 6% to 8% right now.
00:17:20.160They also don't have Wild Rose Independence Party, which we had at, I believe, 10% when we polled on this a few months ago before that party was even created.
00:17:28.840I would suspect it's higher now with a leader and actually having them gotten a little bit of profile.
00:17:33.460So chances are the UCP numbers and the NDP numbers are both smaller than what this poll is showing.
00:17:40.840So I'm going to try and scrounge up – if anybody listening right now would like to see a good poll listing a lot more options,
00:17:47.340please consider going to westerncenteredonline.com, make a donation, and you can attach just a little note to it that that's supposed to go towards getting a poll done.
00:17:56.420Western Standard wants to get a good quality poll done on this with more options and get a really more accurate lay of the land on here.
00:18:04.720But either way, this does show the continuing trend that UCP support is steadily and surely eroding from where it was in the last election.
00:18:14.260But I know I've talked to people in that caucus, and they get presented with polls.
00:18:20.100And it was the same thing when I was in the Wild Rose.
00:18:21.800The leadership of the party present me with polls, and they're always far better than what is in the public
00:18:26.680because what you want to do is keep your caucus happy, make sure they're not worried, thinking about doing something crazy with the leader.
00:18:33.780And so the UCP caucus is being told – similarly, I was told in Wild Rose – everything is fine.
00:19:19.940There's a few individuals making noises on social media, and I imagine they're trying to do some ground organization.
00:19:25.160The Wilder's Independence Party now has jumped onto the scene, but they're still, of course, just getting rolling.
00:19:30.460Paul Hinman's been out pounding the pavement and doing a lot of meetings with people as much as he can.
00:19:35.620But I just would look at that and think that at least a good 10%, 12% of what's leading from the UCP is towards regionalist and independence-leading parties.
00:19:46.880You know, when Kenny's appearing to capitulate to Ottawa in his soft sell over there, Albertans are getting tired of him.
00:19:53.420Is he going to start finally digging his heels in, not just commissioning more reports, he just seemed to drag on and actually start standing up for us?
00:20:01.760Derek, do you think Rachel Notley's sitting there rubbing her, saying this is the start of vote splitting on the right wing,
00:20:09.100and we're going to get up – we're going to go through the middle and become government again next election?
00:20:15.580Possibly. I mean, she's sticking around for a reason.
00:20:19.720Either she thinks she can be premier again, or it's a pretty good job.
00:20:24.780You know, the NDP is never really expected to win outside of BC.
00:20:28.760So, you know, she can get a leader of the opposition, pretty good salary, public respectability, it's not a bad job.
00:20:37.860The numbers don't really show, though, that there is really any path to victory for the NDP.
00:20:43.160When they won in 2015, it was very much an anomaly.
00:20:47.620There were people in rural Alberta who voted for them, not because they were socialists,
00:20:50.880but because they want to get rid of the old Tories, and the Wild Roads have been too damaged from the floor crossing just a few months earlier.
00:20:58.240And Brian Jean had been on the job for about one week.
00:21:01.020So the NDP's support is highly, highly concentrated in Edmonton.
00:21:07.720With these kinds of numbers, the NDP would win back every single seat in Edmonton, including the one single Tory seat within the city proper.
00:21:17.500It would probably win some of the surrounding constituencies outside of Edmonton proper, but in the greater area.
00:21:22.920The Sherwood Parks, St. Albert's, things like that.
00:21:25.840And they would probably win, you know, a reasonable handful of seats, beginning in the centre of Calgary, where they've got three seats, and growing outwards, and in northeast Calgary.
00:21:36.840That, in a best-case scenario for the NDP, could get them to a plurality, the most seats, but not a majority.
00:21:45.300Andrew Scheer was lying to people when he said the party with the most seats gets to be the government.
00:21:49.380That's not true. He knew it was not true.
00:21:51.860Anyone who understands our system knows that's not true.
00:21:54.240The party that commends the confidence of the House is the government.
00:21:57.140And so if there was, you know, something, unless, say, the Liberals, bizarrely, held the balance of power, it's highly unlikely that any of the smaller parties in Alberta, which are primarily found on the right, it's highly, highly unlikely that any of them would ever support an NDP government.
00:22:14.980The NDP have to win a majority to be government in Alberta.
00:22:17.740I don't think they have a real possibility of ever being a minority government.
00:22:21.280And the numbers just show they've got no support in rural Alberta.
00:22:44.820There is the possibility of depriving the UCP of their majority.
00:22:47.700But leftists should be very careful about what they wish for, because if there is a minority government led by the Tories, the Tories are forced into a minority, and the balance of power is held by something like the new Wild Rose, that government would probably be an awful lot more to the right than the current Tories are right now.
00:23:07.140Just as Trudeau is more to the left in minority government relying on the federal NDP than he is as a majority.
00:23:12.960Yeah, well, and Albertans are pretty volatile, to be blunt, I think, crabby right now.
00:23:22.440So somebody better inspire them pretty soon, or we're really going to see these polls, I think, bounce around as they look for somebody who they feel is going to represent them and stand up for them.
00:23:31.560Because I don't, I can't look out there and feel really inspired with a whole bunch.
00:23:35.120I mean, I know where I'd vote today, but nobody's really got me excited, and that's trouble.
00:23:39.020So I'm usually a pretty partisan person.
00:23:41.900So what else have we got to look forward to in this week?
00:23:45.700Anything outstanding or breaking, Dave?
00:23:48.000Well, obviously next week's going to be the big one with the return to Parliament.
00:23:52.580There's going to be an economic update by the Trudeau government, followed by each.
00:23:58.500Everybody out west is focused on reports of a second carbon tax that will be announced in the throne speech.
00:24:06.620That's going to raise the cost of living for all of us, from groceries to the price of gas at the neighbourhood station.
00:24:15.420And once that is announced, there will be a vote in the House, and if it's not passed, the government will collapse.
00:24:24.540And at this point next week, we're going to have an election.
00:24:28.560It all depends on where, I guess, the NDP and the bloc are going to throw their lot in.
00:24:33.460So lots to consider in the coming days, Corey.
00:25:21.980So, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
00:25:25.400Well, I'll hand it off to you to close it off there and maybe remind people of where they can subscribe so we can keep them up to date and let them know what's in there.
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