Western Standard - December 11, 2025


Western Standard News Update ｜ 11 Dec 2025

Topics
recall petitions and electoral processes
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Jean-Pierre Kingsley Jeffrey Epstein Chris Oldcorn Jeff Rath Dave Naylor Mark Carney Bill C-63 Abbotsford
Western Standard News Update ｜ 10 Dec 2025 Western Standard News Update ｜ 12 Dec 2025

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

159.27

Word count

366

Sentence count

24


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A growing number of recall petitions are being launched in Alberta, including 21 against Premier Danielle Smith. The CBC is being slammed for using an AI image of Prime Minister Mark Carney and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and opinion editor Chris Oldcorn looks at the Liberal cabinet minister who was sworn in with his hand on the Koran.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 From the Western Standard, here's your news update.
00:00:08.140 I'm your host, Western Standard Chief Editor Dave Naylor, and here's what you need to know.
00:00:14.360 Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she has nothing to worry about in the face of Independence
00:00:19.720 Leader Jeffrey Rath's comments that so many constituency associations are upset over Bill
00:00:25.680 14, they could call a special general meeting. Smith expressed frustration Wednesday at the
00:00:33.180 growing number of recall petitions in Alberta. The number now sits at 21, including Smith herself.
00:00:40.380 Well, you have to look at the ways in which the left have weaponized various democratic processes.
00:00:46.700 I think we've seen it over the last year with the longest ballot. We never saw that before either.
00:00:50.400 People putting 200 names on a ballot with the same CFO and the same signatures applying and many of
00:00:57.400 them not even getting a single vote. So they didn't even vote for themselves. That's part of the reason
00:01:02.500 why we knew that we had to make some changes because there's, I think, a new group of folks who are
00:01:10.240 trying to undermine the democratic process and are abusing the process and not just me saying so.
00:01:15.340 It was Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who was the chief electoral officer federally. So I think that
00:01:20.760 this weaponization of recall is very much along the same lines. It's very easy to take out a petition.
00:01:25.960 All you have to do is pay 500 bucks and write a paragraph and get a CFO and you can launch a campaign.
00:01:31.720 Many parts of the lower mainland are being evacuated after an atmospheric river hit,
00:01:37.220 or what I called as a kid, heavy rain. Abbotsford seems to be ground zero of all the troubles.
00:01:43.700 CBC is being slammed for using an AI image of Prime Minister Mark Carney and disgraced financier
00:01:51.100 Jeffrey Epstein. And opinion editor Chris Oldcorn looks at the Liberal cabinet minister who was sworn
00:01:58.160 in with his hand on the Koran. And that's it for now. Join us the next time for more Western Standard
00:02:05.680 news updates. You can follow us on Spotify, YouTube music, and Apple podcasts. And don't forget to visit
00:02:13.560 our website at westernstandard.news. Have a great day.