Western Standard - Uncensored： Live from the UCP AGM 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Good afternoon and welcome to Uncensored on Western Standard.

00:01:56.840 We are live on the floor of the UCP AGM here at Gray Eagle Casino.

00:02:01.820 I'm your host, Bruce McAllister, and I'm joined, as always, by our two esteemed panelists.

00:02:06.380 First, on my immediate right, Danielle Smith, the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group,

00:02:10.580 former leader of the Wild Rose Party, and common sense conservative commentator.

00:02:14.840 Danielle, good to see you.

00:02:15.760 Good to see you, Bruce.

00:02:16.960 Rob Anderson, practicing litigator, former Airdrie MLA, and author of the Alberta Enterprise.

00:02:23.660 No, the Free Alberta Strategy.

00:02:25.900 Mix them up.

00:02:26.840 Rob thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. It's been a long day and a long night uh for those

00:02:31.320 that haven't been here uh we can tell you that the premier just finished his speech uh people

00:02:35.720 behind us you may see having lunch now why don't we start on the premier's speech uh what did you

00:02:40.360 think of it? I loved about uh 45 percent of it I think part of the problem that he has is that he

00:02:47.720 he's hitting all the right points like all of the great things he's doing with the economy

00:02:52.520 all of the business investment if that was the kind of thing that moved votes then i think he

00:02:57.160 would be doing just fine the problem is that he had to begin with the very contentious issue of

00:03:02.280 how he's managed the covet crisis and this is a very divided room and i didn't hear what he needed

00:03:08.360 to say was something that would either win votes back from where they're landing with the ndp

00:03:15.000 or win votes back from where they've drifted to the wild rose and other political parties and i

00:03:19.320 I think that that was a missed opportunity for him, quite frankly.

00:03:22.800 Maybe a reason for that.

00:03:24.600 But before I follow up, Rob, your thoughts in general on the speech.

00:03:27.380 Kind of the same feeling.

00:03:29.760 You know, the two, the Premier's doing quite well on some of the files.

00:03:34.380 If you look at his work on the education file, on the diversification file, they're doing well.

00:03:39.940 The problem is the two biggest issues in Alberta right now are, well, obviously COVID's one.

00:03:45.660 And closely behind that is Alberta sovereignty, our place, and confederation.

00:03:49.320 And he's utterly failing in those areas.

00:03:51.680 And even in the speech today, his discussion about those two issues

00:03:55.380 is extremely weak and defiant, and he just isn't getting it.

00:04:00.260 So he can do well in those other areas, and that's great.

00:04:02.360 Those are important files, but he's missing the point.

00:04:06.460 He needs to address the elephants in the room,

00:04:09.720 which are those two issues, which right now he's failing on.

00:04:11.680 Okay, what should he have done?

00:04:13.400 Well, I think there's a feeling out there that maybe it's time for a mea culpa.

00:04:17.840 you know you say look i i haven't done this you know we've been obviously distracted by the

00:04:23.420 the covid crisis and all those sorts of things but it's time to turn the page and be strong on

00:04:28.580 these issues particularly the alberta sovereignty and albert's place in confederation and and and

00:04:33.800 reese probably apologize for some of his um uh indecisions with regards to dealing with covid

00:04:41.000 back and the forth and the flipping and the flopping and the demonizing of his base and so

00:04:45.480 forth and move forward but he didn't do that daniel you've been on that stage maybe not the

00:04:49.500 one here at great eagle not as premier but certainly as leader of the official opposition

00:04:52.820 in front of hundreds of people you know what it's like to try and balance uh competing interests

00:04:58.000 and obviously he was trying to do that so playing the devil's advocate what what would you have

00:05:02.900 done differently what would you have liked you know i felt like the room was really on his side

00:05:06.520 certainly when he got past the discussion about covid i don't think i think his real problem is

00:05:11.900 we're heading into a fall respiratory virus season. And I don't think people trust that

00:05:16.300 when he says we're going to do it this way, that he's going to stick with it. I think we've seen

00:05:20.100 the flip-flopping. And I'll just give a prime example. In the past couple of days, we've seen

00:05:24.920 that vaccines have been approved for age 5 to 11. And he initially said, we're not going to

00:05:31.580 mandate that kids have to have vaccines to go to school. But you know what? Kids still have to be

00:05:35.640 vaccinated to play sports and to be in band and to play soccer and to go to arenas. And I

00:05:41.880 guess i'm thinking so what's the rules going to be are we going to start having five and six and

00:05:46.580 seven year olds banned from those kind of activities i just don't know where he's going to go because

00:05:51.500 it seems like every time he comes out strong on an issue he gets pushed back by mainstream media

00:05:57.060 he gets pushed back by docs gets pushed back by teachers then some kind of poll result comes out

00:06:02.200 and he completely flips and i think that's the problem that he's going to have is that he can't

00:06:06.620 quite get past that because it doesn't sound like he thinks he's done anything wrong okay

00:06:11.580 So I want to follow up on policy debate and all those things,

00:06:14.660 but because you raised it, COVID vaccines for kids.

00:06:18.020 My fear and the fear of a lot of parents is right now you say they're not mandatory.

00:06:21.980 What happens, Danielle, when the mainstream media, when the docs,

00:06:26.520 when the NDP come out and say, you should mandate these,

00:06:29.860 and the pressure starts to build publicly?

00:06:32.120 Will we see an about-face and a foot-flop one?

00:06:35.020 This is what I'm worried about is so much of what is happening

00:06:37.700 around the vaccine policy is social pressure.

00:06:40.540 and my own dear niece she ended up getting vaccinated because she was getting taunted by

00:06:45.560 her kids by her classmates and I just don't want to see six and seven and eight and nine-year-olds

00:06:50.420 feeling that kind of ostracism and bullying because that that lasts a lifetime and for the

00:06:55.820 comfort of adults putting that on children who don't have the maturity to be able to handle that

00:07:00.640 that uh that kind of pressure it's not fair it's not right especially since we know now that we

00:07:06.020 have had almost two years of experience with this virus it is very clear most at risk is over the

00:07:12.220 age of 70 multiple pre-existing conditions especially those who are living in congregate

00:07:16.780 care either because they're in hospital or in nursing homes there really is no reason to be

00:07:21.140 putting that kind of pressure on kids and that's what I'm worried about is that the premier has

00:07:24.860 unfortunately demonstrated one too many times that whenever Rachel Notley takes the lead on an issue 0.99

00:07:30.480 manages to rally some public opinion behind her then he ends up going the exact opposite direction

00:07:35.880 that's exactly the opposite of what his members want to see him do i'm going to guess you'd probably

00:07:39.800 say the same thing um this is one i think there'll be significant backlash in though if we do see a

00:07:45.960 flip-flop yeah no absolutely the the way that that uh he'll be quick to say the premier will

00:07:52.060 be quick to say that it's not mandatory right he'll say no no you've got you've got a choice

00:07:57.920 you've got a television folks you've got you've got a choice you're able to you're able to uh

00:08:03.400 decide whether or not to get it but you don't you either get it or you lose your job you either get

00:08:08.300 it or for your kids or you don't your kids don't play sports which i think is frankly abusive to

00:08:13.880 children like that is part of their lives and and it shouldn't matter if you're if you're living in

00:08:19.280 calgary and you can't play sports if you're a kid or you live in an air dream you can't i mean it's

00:08:22.820 just insane let me let me ask you both to park this one i think we could talk about this potential

00:08:27.640 COVID policy, and we should mention maybe for a future episode of Uncensored, let's have

00:08:33.200 this discussion more in depth, but I want to get back to the convention.

00:08:38.240 It's like there's a, I mean, it's the United Conservative Party, it feels anything but

00:08:44.020 united.

00:08:44.980 Let's talk with the policy debate and the motion that came on the floor first with you,

00:08:49.120 Danielle, to increase from 22 to 29 the amount of constituency associations that have to

00:08:55.620 vote for leadership with you.

00:08:56.540 didn't get support enough support but it didn't get 57 support it was a weird i was here last

00:09:02.220 night it was quite strange to start off with a constitutional discussion in the evening when

00:09:08.600 people were still trying to file through i gather there was a protest outside that prevented as many

00:09:13.320 as 150 delegates from coming in and so and because of just the the way policies are voted on that one

00:09:19.720 needed a particularly high bar 75 percent it ended up getting 57 and so it ended up failing just

00:09:25.900 because of that. But that gives you some sense of where the room is at. To have 43% on a vote like

00:09:32.300 that say, no, we want to be able to keep with the rules, knowing that that bar, I guess, has already

00:09:37.620 been reached. There already are 22 presidents who want to call for an early leadership. It was quite

00:09:42.260 clear that there was some pressure being put on to manipulate the membership into passing a higher

00:09:50.400 bar, and the membership was having none of it. That's what I got the sense of last night, is they

00:09:54.400 They said, don't try to change the rules on us because virtually every other policy after that failed.

00:09:59.760 I got the real impression that because of the way that was handled, the membership just said, we're not going to trust any of these rule changes.

00:10:08.520 And so they just voted them down.

00:10:09.780 Okay.

00:10:10.180 So just, again, if you're not clear, and I think you explained it very well, for the motion to pass, it needed 75% of the membership vote.

00:10:18.560 It got 57.

00:10:19.480 still 57 was if that's a vote on if that's a leadership vote for the premier it's closing in

00:10:25.700 on 60 i mean what did you think of the number well first of all it's a stacked vote right

00:10:29.660 so so the premier's his people are paying for memberships getting people out here in droves

00:10:35.640 and they still only got 50 percent seven percent that's not good isn't the other side doing the

00:10:41.040 same thing they're not the other side isn't as organized and they don't have as much money at

00:10:44.760 their disposal there's just no way but aside from that i think there's this almost denial in the

00:10:50.760 room that i'm here that i'm seeing right now i think there are some people in here the premier's

00:10:55.380 people that still think the man can win and i'm telling you i i have at this point i don't see a

00:11:02.180 way that he can win the next election i don't see a path and so it's very interesting because you

00:11:07.160 got a party here that's basically engineering its own self-destruction that's what it feels like in

00:11:11.660 the room they are not going to win they are going to lose with him at the helm and i think people

00:11:16.860 that's the conversations in the hospitality suites that's the conversations if you get people one-on-one

00:11:21.940 but when everyone comes to vote and everyone's got to stand and pay homage to the great leader

00:11:27.000 and so forth it's a really odd uh dysfunctional tone here right now you know and part of the

00:11:32.620 reason for that is that the premier gives a really good speech i was i had the teleprompter right

00:11:38.620 behind me and i was turning around to see how much he was reading off of it very little he has

00:11:43.400 a one bullet point and then he just drives it home because he's a really smart guy and he gets

00:11:49.080 right into the details and he can give a barn buster of a speech and so i think people give

00:11:54.340 the get the impression that that's going to be enough to rally support to win in the next election

00:11:58.820 problem is it's a big province 4.4 million people you can't cram all of them into a room like this

00:12:03.500 not all of them are going to see a speech like that and so they're going to make their judgment

00:12:06.700 based on different things, based on what he does.

00:12:09.660 And as Rob pointed out, especially for rural Alberta,

00:12:13.320 the free Alberta strategy,

00:12:14.840 all the things that we need to do to assert Alberta sovereignty,

00:12:17.660 it's not acted on that.

00:12:19.040 And now these very, very divisive policies

00:12:21.300 that were still not past COVID,

00:12:23.900 that's going to be a continued problem for him.

00:12:25.760 Okay.

00:12:27.080 I'm going to try and play devil's advocate with some of this.

00:12:30.840 So if you're the premier, I mean, you've got to say,

00:12:33.820 When do the headlines start focusing on all of the positives that we're doing in Alberta, jobs, jobs, jobs, the economy taking off, all of the good things we're doing, instead of this self-destructing party debate?

00:12:48.840 What I'm trying to ask, I guess, if we gave the guy a break and started to report on the news of the day and not necessarily the forces that are trying to divide the party, would he stand a chance to pull this back together? I'll start with you.

00:13:01.080 i follow his twitter feed and i love it when he's tweeting about the latest business investment or

00:13:06.440 some new job creation effort i think that that is when he's at his best that's what he loves

00:13:12.200 talking about however my observation is that people are prepared to take a risk on changing

00:13:18.120 government when the economy is going well it's sort of counterintuitive that politicians don't

00:13:23.000 necessarily get their credit when things are going well that's when people say you know what even the

00:13:27.640 the next guys couldn't screw this up because it's going so well so in some ways i think that

00:13:31.680 actually plays to rachel notley's favor i don't know that that will be a barrier to people making 0.54

00:13:36.800 that decision to go back to her in 2023 okay pick up on that but also this brian gene is here

00:13:43.140 shaking hands and meeting delegates and there's there's a guy wading into wings i'll tell you

00:13:50.480 what i'm hearing from a lot of people is that's not the answer so i mean i i don't know where

00:13:54.660 you are on that but touch on both of those questions well first of all every every failed

00:13:59.140 leader always blames the media for not getting their positive message out okay so that's not an

00:14:04.940 excuse you he's he's the premier he has to he has to generate support and he's just done a poor job

00:14:11.560 in a couple of key files and that's just the way it is so you're you can't complain oh that the

00:14:15.320 media is doing this and that it's just especially for a conservative leader that's life get used to

00:14:19.640 But with regards to the other leadership candidates in the wings and so forth, I do think that that's a bit of concern for people.

00:14:27.700 I think that they're saying, okay, if we get rid of them, who's going to be next and so forth.

00:14:35.000 But again, that will take care of itself.

00:14:38.220 There's always going to be someone that is going to step up, the right person at the right time.

00:14:42.860 That is going to happen.

00:14:43.680 So I'm curious to see if the caucus in particular, because I don't personally feel that the leadership vote is going to result in Kenny having to step down.

00:14:53.600 I think that the only way this is going to work is if MLAs, 10 to 15 of them, go sit as independents and demand that he step down.

00:15:01.440 And I think that's either going to happen in the spring or it's not.

00:15:04.800 And if it doesn't, we're going to have an NDP government in 2023.

00:15:07.400 and rob's being too modest because he would be one of the names that would that i think people

00:15:12.120 would ask to step forward to put his name into you know i i would feel like if the position was open

00:15:18.680 that i'd have to run just because i believe in unity and this is the real issue is that let's

00:15:23.320 throw some names on the table because there's some good cabinet ministers um i i believe jason

00:15:28.280 nixon has demonstrated that he's got leadership potential doug switzer has demonstrated leadership

00:15:33.400 potential. Leila here is clearly interested. Rajan Zani is clearly interested. Casey Madhu,

00:15:39.440 the justice minister, would be a good candidate. And then on the outside, those who were involved

00:15:44.160 in World Coast politics, Rob Anderson, Bruce McAllister, maybe me, Brian Jean, they're talking

00:15:49.100 about federal names, Michelle Rumpel-Garner, Ronna Ambrose. Here's the point. If you had 10

00:15:53.980 strong leadership candidates, each selling 20,000 members to win, now you have a party of 200,000

00:16:01.840 people going into the next election that is a force that can turn things around and that's the

00:16:06.500 kind of rejuvenation that happens with the party leadership but if we continue on this path i think

00:16:12.560 you're going to see struggle in not in motivation not only the fundraising numbers but the membership

00:16:19.260 numbers the willingness of people to come out do or not and that's what lends itself to the

00:16:23.840 ndp winning okay um we're going to wrap in a couple of minutes so why don't we go this way

00:16:29.260 Where do we go from here?

00:16:30.460 Where does the UCP go from here?

00:16:32.240 And what's next for the Premier?

00:16:34.200 Well, I think, again, I think we're going to know in the spring.

00:16:37.720 And I think that I'd be surprised.

00:16:40.180 There'll be a leadership.

00:16:41.240 He made that clear, at least, in his speech.

00:16:43.440 There's going to be a leadership.

00:16:44.780 My guess is he will survive it.

00:16:46.080 He's an excellent organizer, the Premier.

00:16:48.140 Excellent organizer with regards to getting delegates out.

00:16:50.660 That's his wheelhouse.

00:16:51.800 He'll make sure he gets his over 50%.

00:16:53.640 I think that'll be good enough for him.

00:16:56.280 And then it's up to the MLAs.

00:16:57.700 At the end of the day, will his caucus, will 15 to 20 of his caucus have the guts to do what's necessary and do what, frankly, happened to Stockwell Day back in the day where the 10 MPs went and sat, sit as independence and ask the Premier to do the right thing.

00:17:13.800 And if not, then I think 2023 is going to be a tough one.

00:17:16.540 The only other option would be that I think Brian Jean clearly wants to run for UCP leadership.

00:17:22.120 I mean, he's as much an architect of unity as the Premier is,

00:17:26.440 so I think that that would be his first option.

00:17:28.420 But clearly, if he doesn't get that chance,

00:17:30.380 he, I think, believes that it's his job to break the bottleneck.

00:17:33.680 And so I think you'd see him starting rebranding himself

00:17:37.620 and the party under a brand new name,

00:17:39.520 running 87 in 87 constituencies,

00:17:43.140 and I think he'd have a pretty good chance

00:17:45.060 of winning a lot of them in rural Alberta.

00:17:47.500 That isn't a winning strategy for Calgary and Edmonton.

00:17:50.000 So that road also probably leads to a Rachel Nobby victory.

00:17:54.460 Well, we expected a lot of drama at this convention.

00:17:58.900 I'm not sure that we've got all that we expected.

00:18:00.940 But what I'm hearing is expected at the next one and over the next year.

00:18:04.720 Completely.

00:18:05.320 All right, guys.

00:18:06.220 Thanks, as always, for your time.

00:18:08.100 Thank you.

00:18:08.820 Danielle Smith and Rob Anderson, Uncensored on the Western Standard,

00:18:11.720 live from the floor of the Great Eagle Casino at the UCP AGM.

00:18:16.020 We'll be back with more episodes of Uncensored on the Western Standard.

00:18:19.580 Thanks for watching

Western Standard - November 20, 2021

Uncensored： Live from the UCP AGM 2021

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