A special election-slash-referendum-night edition of Western Standard's special election night edition. This week, Western Standard is joined in the studio by news editor Dave Naylor, editor-in-chief Derek Fildebrandt, and political columnist and host of The Cory Morgan Show, Corey Morgan.
00:12:01.220Nadine Wellwood is a PPC candidate for the Senate.
00:12:03.900We're also going to bring you Erica Baruz, a Conservative Party of Canada candidate for the Senate, and a few others throughout the evening.
00:12:13.940I've talked long enough. Why don't we put it to Dave? Why don't you tee up what we're looking at tonight?
00:12:21.800Maybe if you have some insight about who we expect unofficial results from on, say, the Senate and equalization.
00:12:28.980Well, Edmonton's not playing along, but it appears Calgary, Grand Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, and Red Deer will be releasing results of referendum and Senate.
00:12:39.260So I think from that we should be able to get a good sense of...
00:12:45.020Calgary, Grand Prairie, Lethbridge, Red Deer, and Medicine Hat.
00:12:48.020That's pretty well-rounded. I think we're going to be...
00:12:50.100Unless it's razor-thin, we'll probably be able to make a rough estimate.
00:12:54.860And they'll do it for the Senate and for the referendum.
00:12:57.940Yep. Now, Western Standard Poll from the weekend, Derek, as you know, said 66% of Albertans were going to vote in it, so, you know, it's a good number, and once we start getting results from those, you know, those five major centres, we should be able to make a good guess at it.
00:13:17.100Yeah, I mean, they won't be able to tell us necessarily how the counties, like the real rural, are actually voting.
00:13:23.780Because I'm not sure if they'll be providing...
00:13:26.560Their municipal governments are thankfully much smaller.
00:13:29.120They're not going to have the capacity to pass that on tonight.
00:13:31.720But, I mean, if Grand Prairie's voting a certain way, you could probably say, well, the area around it...
00:13:36.120You know, say if Grand Prairie's voting 60% for the equalization referendum,
00:13:39.960it's probably a good rule of thumb that the area around it's probably voting 70.
00:13:45.400Okay, so we're going to be able to make a fairly, probably a reasonably educated guess tonight, or projection on, see, projection is what we call it in media, if you want to sound like you're actually more sure than you are.
00:13:58.240But, so we're going to, let's go with projection.
00:14:00.140Now, I've covered a lot of City of Calgary elections, and it always surprises me how late they get ballots in.
00:14:10.760You know, sometimes not until they're not getting results out until 11 p.m. at night, which, of course, does us no good because we're all tired by then.
00:14:19.060To be honest, I have not covered a civic election in Edmonton.
00:14:22.680I'm not sure how quickly they get in on their ballots, but polls close at 8 o'clock.
00:14:27.560And hopefully the city of Calgary is trying a new way of voting.
00:14:32.880So hopefully we get some results at a quicker pace than normal.
00:14:36.320And just a little background here. Dave is being a little humble.
00:14:39.860We've got no one better to cover a Calgary election than Dave Naylor.
00:14:43.780Dave was the city desk and the city editor at different times of the Calgary Sun for 20 years.
00:14:51.940He knows the city of Calgary beat inside and out.
00:14:55.700So I think we're very fortunate to have someone like Dave.
00:14:59.160But we've got great people for Edmonton.
00:15:00.860We've got, like, Vitor Marciano and a few others.
00:29:13.800with people who are very conservative, very outspoken, saying the equalization is terrible,
00:29:18.340but you know what? I'm so ticked off at Kenny, I'm going to give him the finger and vote against
00:29:21.960this thing, which I think is a foolish way to do it, but that's their democratic right. So it's
00:29:26.800just sad because you have some moral authority. If you could come in though with, I mean,
00:29:30.840this isn't an internet poll. This isn't a Twitter poll. This isn't a commissioned newspaper poll.
00:29:35.720This would have been across the province at a controlled setting. You could say 70% of this
00:29:41.520province does not like this program, let's talk, let's do something about it. And it's not going
00:29:46.320to be that strong now. Okay. Well, if she's ready, we're going to be bringing in a guest of ours
00:29:53.260and actually now a contributor for the Western Standard, the one and only Danielle Smith,
00:29:58.060if we can bring her into the feed now. Oh, I didn't even have my earpiece in yet. But good
00:30:04.440evening, Danielle. How are you doing? Well, hello. It's almost like after what Corey Morgan just
00:30:08.520said. Speaking of unpopular politicians who don't have anything to add to the equalization debate
00:30:15.120except for to turn it the other way. I wonder if that's why you brought me on.
00:30:22.080Give us your prediction for this evening for the Calgary mayoral race and then maybe going to
00:30:26.440Edmonton. Tell us how you think that's going to break down. Well, first of all, let me just talk
00:30:30.300about equalization because I do think we're going to see a strong mandate. I think it'll be
00:30:34.080at least two-thirds, maybe a little bit higher. I think a lot of people in the end, when it comes
00:30:40.100right down to it, it doesn't matter whether or not you like Jason Kenney. What matters is getting a
00:30:44.520fair deal for this province. So I hope people make the right decision on that. In Edmonton and
00:30:48.560Calgary, unfortunately, I'm expecting a bit more of the same. I'm expecting that people are going
00:30:53.240to vote in another progressive council in both Edmonton and Calgary. I have expected that,
00:30:58.380I wrote my newsletter yesterday expecting that both Amarji Soki would become mayor in Edmonton with largely the union-backed candidates winning and then Calgary, same story, Jodi Gondek winning with largely the more progressive or union-backed candidates winning.
00:31:15.320And I think part of it is, and I wish maybe we can talk a little bit about it, I wonder why it is that conservatives have such a disinterest in municipal politics.
00:31:25.600They don't give money. They don't volunteer. They don't find out who their candidate is until the
00:31:30.500last minute. We do seem to have a lot of interest on the part of candidates. So we end up splitting
00:31:34.880the vote seven ways from Sunday, but we can't seem to consolidate the vote in any meaningful way that
00:31:40.540allows us to win seats. And that's what it comes down to. We have to win seats. And the reason why
00:31:44.580I'm so frustrated that we don't have an interest in municipal politics is that's where politicians
00:31:49.620cut their teeth. They build their profile. They learn how to do lawmaking so that if they do want
00:31:55.140to make the leap to provincial or federal politics. They're not an unknown quantity. The left have
00:32:00.260figured this out. We can't seem to figure it out on the conservative side of the spectrum,
00:32:04.040and I'm fearful that we're just going to see a replay of that in both of our major cities tonight.
00:32:10.300Danielle, forgive me if you answered this and I couldn't hear it because I was figuring out my
00:32:14.800earpiece. How do you think it's going to, I heard your prediction for Edmonton, but did you make a
00:32:19.760prediction for how you think the mayor's chair, and maybe you can add a bit on your prediction
00:32:23.520for council in Calgary this evening? Yeah, sorry, I did end up going through that. But I can,
00:32:29.580you know, I can repeat myself if you like. Why not? There are some good candidates in Calgary.
00:32:36.760If I want to sort of zero in on some of the conservative candidates that I think are likely
00:32:42.700to win some new faces. Dan McLean is a candidate in Ward 13. He's taking on an incumbent, an
00:32:50.140incumbent who, incidentally, Diane Collier-Kart, said when she first got elected that she'd only
00:32:54.800served two terms. Well, I think she's on her fourth or fifth term now, and I think it's really
00:32:58.960hurt her in that war. You can outstate your welcome, but he's run a really strong campaign.
00:33:03.800And the reason I want to flag him is that Calgary always seems to have that voice that is a bit
00:33:10.600oppositional, pointing out things that may be against what the administration wants. It's
00:33:16.180prepared to be a bit of the thorn in the side. And we need that with Farkas no longer being in1.00
00:33:21.020that role on a council position. And so this guy could be the Farkas to Farkas. I think he could
00:33:26.380be. Again, though, you think, I mean, you should tell me, I didn't hear what your prediction was
00:33:30.520earlier. If the vote consolidates, if the conservative vote consolidates around Jeremy
00:33:35.880Farkas, he can win. But we have this habit of putting up too many conservative candidates. So
00:33:42.140I think Jeff Davison pulls away from Farkas. I think that Bradfield pulls away from Farkas. And0.99
00:33:49.220if those two, if those votes are relatively strong, I think we're going to end up seeing
00:33:55.140Jody Gondek win. I think we've got a similar dynamic happening in Edmonton, that Mike Nichols
00:34:00.200is a very similar candidate to Jeremy Farkas. And because there's strong former council members
00:34:06.140in Kim Kruschel and Michael Oshry, I even quite like the outsider candidate, the business
00:34:11.140candidate, Cheryl Watson. I just think the conservative vote is split too many ways in
00:34:15.280Edmonton. And as a result, you're likely to see Amarjeet Sohi win. I quite like John Zadek. He's
00:34:20.060the candidate in what was formerly known as Warren 3. I apologize. I don't have the indigenous names
00:34:26.400in front of me. I hope somebody's not offended by that. I will make sure that I have it in front of
00:34:30.580me. But I think John Zadek is a little bit of that same kind of, just brings a conservative
00:34:37.860of common sense sensibility so i hope he ends up winning again because i think it's good to have
00:34:42.260that voice on council and in both the cities particularly if they do end up voting uh by and
00:34:48.100large to to restore progressive candidates i think your predictions especially for the calgary mayoral
00:34:54.900race uh are are bang on you've i think a lot of the dynamics and none of this is watertight these
00:35:02.740These are very generalized because there's no parties officially in municipal politics.
00:35:07.380But I think we saw a lot of some of these moderate center-right-ish candidates in Calgary.
00:35:14.480Some of them are very qualified and intelligent, but probably didn't really stand out from the pack policy-wise or style-wise.
00:35:26.260And I think there may have been an assumption that like, you know, in the last mayoral campaign, the Calgary business community kind of got to put up Bill Smith.
00:35:35.780They're like, this is our guy. And the conservative movement and establishment in Calgary more or less said, okay, we'll accept him.
00:35:44.720And he became the conservative standard bearer. This time, Farkas didn't really go and seek the conservative establishment and business community, big business community's blessing.
00:35:56.120And so it was a bit more of a divided field coming in here.
00:36:00.100I think some of the business communities probably started to consolidate him late in the game,
00:36:03.440knowing that he is the only candidate that's going to have any hope of defeating Jody Gondek.
00:36:10.180I don't know if you would agree with that analysis or not.
00:36:13.220Maybe give me your thoughts and tell me, is it too late, though, for that consolidation to take place?
00:36:18.980Well, I was supporting another candidate at the municipal level, a guy by the name of Zane Novak,
00:36:24.280who I thought had a really good resume, good business experience,
00:36:27.300good experience in the nonprofit sector at the head of the Kirby Center.
00:37:18.140I think it probably needed to happen more at the beginning of October.
00:37:21.940I get the sense something happened, though, on the Farkas campaign, because at a meeting that I went to, he did talk about one of the votes that took place on council that, again, he lost 14 to one.
00:37:35.200And he does lose a lot of votes that way. And this was the one on taking a stronger turn on the issue of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports requiring all businesses to have them rather than have the outdoor dining.
00:37:46.720And he essentially backtracked on that vote or tried to explain it a bit. And so I think what has happened is that if this election in Calgary was about, are you tired of City Hall? Are you tired of the administration running the show? Do you want to have lower taxes? Do you want to have better spending?
00:38:05.100I think he would have won. But I think what happened is it turned into, are you still afraid
00:38:10.640of COVID? And if you're still afraid of COVID, who are you going to vote for to stand up to
00:38:16.220Jason Kenney, who's not doing enough to protect you? And that was the position that Jodi Gondek
00:38:22.980ended up forging all the way back months ago. I was so surprised at how strident she was on that
00:38:29.080issue. But it turns out that here we are at the tail end of a fourth wave. And that may be the
00:38:34.600deciding factor is that if people are voting with that ballot question in mind, that may be why
00:38:39.980Jeremy Farkas looks a little shakier in the last couple of weeks and why it is the consolidation
00:38:45.140was so important. Now, I don't know that we saw the same dynamic in Edmonton. I think generally
00:38:51.580speaking, the candidates there, the sense that I got is they were deferring to Dr. Dina Hinshaw
00:38:56.880and the province and weren't necessarily trying to override those decisions. I think they seem to
00:39:02.040been a bit more deferential than calgary and that's a smart position to take if you're a
00:39:06.600political candidate i mean why wear the problems that jason kenney is wearing one way or the other
00:39:12.120just allow that to be a provincial issue it's so polarizing and divisive and i i think unfortunately
00:39:17.880that jeremy farkas may have had um a bit of a misstep in stepping into it the way he did
00:39:23.960and and getting a bit of a backlash for it well uh before i throw the host share here to corey
00:39:30.280and bring in some of our other in-studio guests.
00:39:33.220Maybe I'll just kind of ask you a follow-up question on that.
00:39:39.480Do you think the kind of looming elephant in the room of,
00:39:43.020we know that Jason Kenney is having at least some impact
00:39:46.520on the provincial referendum on equalization,
00:39:49.440but do you think he's having any kind of measurable impact
00:39:54.420on the big city mayoral races and potentially council races,
00:39:58.840perhaps acting as a retardant on the vote of the more conservative aligned candidates.0.95
00:40:05.140You know, I did see something, I don't know how viral it went, but I did see
00:40:09.140some Twitter exchange that was getting circulated from when Jason Kenney back in 2017 was telling
00:40:17.280Jeremy Farkas to keep his chin up. And so I wonder if that was being highlighted as a way of trying
00:40:24.120to suggest that Jeremy Farkas would have been too close to Jason Kenney. And for those who don't
00:40:29.640like the premier or are angry at the premier right now to try to hive away some of his vote,
00:40:34.040I don't feel like Jeremy Farkas has really been all that much of a premier's guy. He seems to be
00:40:41.800kind of his own guy when it comes to how he votes on council and the kind of things that
00:40:45.880he cares about. I really get the feeling that he cares a lot about municipal issues.
00:40:49.560He's not one of these municipal council members who always have an eye on a higher prize.
00:40:55.160That's not the sense that I get from him.
00:40:56.600So it probably is a bit unfair to try to tarnish him that way.
00:41:00.540And I watched Mike Nichols' campaign pretty closely because I was on his email list.
00:41:05.120I didn't get the sense that he was trying to embrace the provincial party in any way either.
00:41:13.480So it could well be that the two candidates that you would think would be most aligned
00:41:17.280with the UCP were taking great effort to make sure that they didn't get too closely tied or
00:41:23.300tarnished by some of the premier's problems that he's having right now in popularity.
00:41:29.020Fortunate. I mean, COVID has just thrown a wrench into everything. I mean, all the rules are out the
00:41:34.680window. We've got a unique crisis going on. We've got a divided population. I mean, it's not
00:41:39.240necessarily right or left. People are afraid. They're tired. They're grouchy. I agree with what
00:41:46.320you'd said you know jeremy kind of maybe he took a an individual liberty position in a sense but it
00:41:51.420was a losing one when you look at the polls throughout the entire province i mean maybe
00:41:54.74020 percent of very vociferous supporters were against vaccine passports and restrictions but
00:41:59.520the vast majority wanted those and they fell perhaps feel a little unsafe supporting jeremy
00:42:03.440right now oh i know cory you and i probably uh derek and dave too we're on the losing side of
00:42:10.420that to be i shouldn't presume to speak for any of you but i've been pretty open in saying that
00:42:15.140And I think focus protection is the right answer.
00:42:18.180Early treatment to keep people out of hospital is the answer.
00:42:21.320Trying to get that monoclonal antibody treatment that Ron DeSantis has brought in,
00:42:25.240the same treatment that Donald Trump got, that is the answer.
00:42:28.640But these continued lockdowns and that being the only answer is part of what's causing,
00:42:33.540I think, the provincial problem is that the premier is not charting out a different course.
00:42:38.040And so what you're seeing is people are scared.
00:42:40.060When people are scared and the only answer is being offered is lockdown,
00:42:43.860then they're going to be supporting the candidate who is the most strident when it comes to lockdown
00:42:50.940or vaccine passports or vaccine mandates.
00:42:53.680So I don't like the track that we're going down, especially since I don't see when it ends.
00:42:59.740And this is going to be something that the next mayors are going to have to deal with in both Edmonton and Calgary,
00:43:04.500is that we have seen around the world that it looks like in Israel it's never going to end.0.84
00:43:09.880it looks like they're turning on and off vaccine passports depending on what your booster status is
00:43:14.520but then you look at the uk and denmark sweden and norway and they made a decision to end them
00:43:19.560all together i don't know if we've made a decision in this province but there's real leadership to be
00:43:25.160had on the part of the mayors to lead that discussion i think one of the biggest reasons
00:43:30.120that the premier has had such a difficult difficult time in the last year and a half
00:43:34.520He's had no major allies. He's had essentially the mayor of Calgary, Nahed Nenshi, saying,
00:43:39.960hit us harder. Same with Don Ives in Edmonton. Hit us harder. Same with Rachel Notley. Hit us
00:43:44.120harder. And so it would be nice to see some balance and some support for the premier to be
00:43:50.040able to be encouraged to take a position that's more along the lines of liberty and the true
00:43:54.360balance of lives and livelihoods. I don't think he's had an opportunity to do that because he
00:43:59.000He doesn't really have anybody who's been pressing in favor of that, aside from a few voices in the commentariat.
00:44:07.320Yeah, absolutely. It's just been a lot of ugly politics played with what's been a crisis.
00:44:11.240And it puts somebody in an untenable position because with every surge in the pandemic or every death, opportunistic politicians are going to lay it on Jason Kenney's feet.
00:45:55.100So you guys have really been trying to get interest and, you know, you've been kind of the, as Danielle was talking before, there hasn't been a good campaign for the equalization referendum.
00:46:06.500I mean, we've tried and there have been people campaigning hard and Josh has been campaigning and lots of people.
00:46:10.540But just trying to get traction on that's been difficult.
00:46:12.880But what do you, what are you expecting to see tonight, Franco?
00:46:15.500Well, I mean, we're hoping for a strong yes vote, of course, right?
00:46:18.460We think that this is Albertans' chance to really send Trudeau and the rest of Canada, a strong message that this equalization status quo must go.
00:46:27.180And one of the things that we've been doing is just trying to show the cost of equalization to Alberta taxpayers.
00:46:32.560We put out some numbers showing that since its inception in 1957, equalization has cost Alberta taxpayers about $67 billion.
00:46:41.560This year alone, equalization will cost an Alberta family of four, 2,600 smackers, right?
00:46:47.700So it certainly is a ton of money that equalization has cost.
00:46:51.320And as all you gentlemen know, I mean, equalization is just one federal program that redistributes money away from Alberta taxpayers.
00:46:58.020If you look at all of the money that the federal government taxes and spends, well, Albertans have paid about $600 billion more to the rest of Canada, to the feds than we've received back or than Alberta taxpayers have received back in federal spending.
00:47:12.380And gentlemen, with that huge contribution that Alberta taxpayers have made to the rest of Canada, what have Albertans gotten from the federal government and from some other provincial politicians in recent years?
00:47:23.980Well, absolute hostility to the economic driver of the province.
00:47:32.220I wanted you to comment on the hostility.
00:47:34.080I know it's, at least from my point of view, and based on our supporters here in Alberta,
00:47:41.400hostility is a big driving force behind the no vote.
00:47:45.420But I guess now that you're the federal director, are you seeing that directed towards Alberta
00:47:51.720from other parts of the country based on the fact that we're having this referendum?
00:47:56.400Not from everyday Canadians outside of Alberta.
00:47:59.840Definitely not from everyday Canadians.
00:48:02.220I mean, most Canadians that I talk to about these struggles seem to be pretty sympathetic to what's been going on in Alberta.
00:48:08.640And I think when you actually lay down what has happened to Alberta's energy industry and the fact that many Albertans may have been looking for a hand up, but the federal government gave Alberta a boot to the neck.
00:48:18.660I think most Canadians are, first of all, quite surprised when they hear what's going on.
00:48:23.420And they do think that Albertans have been done unjustly, if you will.
00:48:28.640Well, and Josh and Corey and Dave, I mean, we talk about these huge contributions that Alberta
00:48:33.860taxpayers have made for the rest of Canada. But let's get into the hostility. Let's look at some
00:48:38.380of the specific policies, right? The federal government has imposed a no more pipelines law,
00:48:42.960a discriminatory tanker ban on the West Coast. We saw the federal government reject the Northern
00:48:47.900Gateway Pipeline, move the regulatory goalposts on Energy East Pipeline. And recently, we saw the
00:48:55.220US, the Biden administration, pull the plug on the Keystone XL pipeline. And what did the Trudeau
00:49:01.200government do? Well, barely bat in an eye. And I think that we have to understand here,
00:49:07.080especially Alberta taxpayers, is that once this dust from the pandemic settles,
00:49:12.060these roadblocks to Alberta's development are still going to be there if Albertans don't take
00:49:17.240a stand, if Albertans aren't willing to fight for fairness. Yeah, well, Josh was bringing up an
00:49:23.180interesting point like aside from the attitude or how people are receiving it over there
00:49:26.100is anybody even really talking about this in central canada or is this you know really getting
00:49:30.740much coverage because i mean we're kind of in our own little world over here too i mean
00:49:34.340is it of interest over there well i think it's gonna get more coverage if there is a a clear
00:49:41.100majority vote on the yes side right if if the clear majority of albertans show up they vote
00:49:47.300uh that the status quo and equalization must go i think that's what really pushes the narrative
00:49:52.380to kitchen tables from coast to coast. Now, one thing I want to talk about, too, is I'm the
00:49:58.340federal director now here in Ottawa. Well, it's in the best interest of all Canadians to really
00:50:03.880take a hard look at equalization and to really tackle this federal scheme for a bunch of reasons.
00:50:10.040But let's start off with just the federal government's debt, $1 trillion in debt. Of
00:50:14.560course, equalization is a federal program. But let's look at the numbers here. When it was first
00:50:19.600created in 1957 equalization was about 1.3 billion dollars in today's dollars today is 21 billion
00:50:28.240dollars so that's a 1500 percent increase to the size of equalization to the cost of equalization
00:50:34.080and we can't even say that this program is benefiting canadians i mean first and foremost
00:50:40.240is the reason that when you have these provinces that receive equalization dollars from the federal
00:50:45.940government well well it lets those politicians rely on bad policies it lets those politicians
00:50:51.460rely on tax dollars from other provinces and it lets them rely on that more and it allows them to
00:50:58.100rely less on good solid economic policies to actually grow their provinces uh economies
00:51:07.060yeah um actually no i don't have anything that's all right hey hey let me keep let me
00:51:12.900keep babbling on a few on a few more reasons that canadian taxpayers even outside of alberta
00:51:19.220saskatchewan places like that uh should really want to tackle this this equalization scheme
00:51:24.340so first of all the whole intent of this program is to equalize services across provinces right
00:51:31.460to make sure different provinces can offer a relatively equal level of government services
00:51:37.300across canada now that sounds nice in theory of course in practice what we've seen is that it's
00:51:41.860it's forced taxpayers in places like Alberta to directly subsidize politicians in places like
00:51:46.820Quebec who seem intent on roadblocking Alberta's development. Now, that's completely unfair.
00:51:51.700But the thing that we also have to remember here is that this is a federal program.
00:51:56.500How is the federal government going to be able to equalize provincial government services
00:52:01.060across Canada, right? We have to think about that for a second. But another point that we
00:52:05.940need to remember here is that just because you throw more tax dollars at any type of problem,
00:52:11.140it doesn't mean it's actually going to improve the problem we've seen that firsthand in alberta
00:52:15.540right the alberta government is the last i checked was what the biggest per person provincial
00:52:20.500government spender if it's spent like the other large provinces it would spend about 10 billion
00:52:24.900dollars less of course on a per person basis um look at health care alberta i believe it the last
00:52:32.740i checked was a second highest per person spending on health care but the blue ribbon panel showed
00:52:38.260that Alberta doesn't, the Alberta government doesn't deliver the best services when it comes
00:52:42.020to healthcare. So what makes us think that just throwing more tax dollars to some of these
00:52:46.420provinces are actually going to make these provincial governments offer better services?
00:52:51.140I think it's completely absurd. And one more point, gentlemen, and then I'll stop babbling.
00:52:57.060But just think about how absurd this program is. When you have Newfoundland and Labrador,
00:53:01.860that is a so-called half province, where their taxpayers pay into this through their federal
00:53:07.300taxes. They don't get any of the equalization money back. But just before the last federal
00:53:12.220election, the Trudeau government announced a $5 billion bailout to Newfoundland and Labrador.
00:53:18.040How absurd is that? The system's not working if they're going to go to a side bailout with it.
00:53:24.100And Teresa, one of the commenters pointed out, it's something I ranted a bit about before too,
00:53:27.960but Quebec has a good viable natural gas field. We know in Alberta, those gas royalties, as you
00:53:33.520said, yeah, we could piss them away quite effectively. But all the same, they are a good
00:53:37.540government revenue. Quebec said, we're not even going to develop it. We don't need it. We want
00:53:42.080Alberta to keep developing theirs, but not send pipelines across our province. But we want the
00:53:46.700money. That gets really tiresome. Well, you know what? Underlying this whole assumption of
00:53:54.460equalization is essentially that policies don't really matter, right? Essentially, that certain
00:54:02.040provinces just stumble into extra wealth and resources and that because of that, they should
00:54:09.840be able to pay for other provincial government services. Now, of course, we're talking about
00:54:13.680provincial taxpayers, not provincial governments, but let's tackle that assumption because of
00:54:19.180course we know that policies absolutely do matter, right? Not only was Alberta blessed with natural
00:54:26.080resources, but Albertans have had pro-entrepreneurial policies in the past, right? Like that is a huge
00:54:34.440factor in all of this, where you look at some of these have-not provinces, they haven't had
00:54:39.540pro-resource development policies. So I feel like underlying the whole assumption of equalization
00:54:46.140is that, well, policies don't matter, but of course they do. And I think we need to take that
00:54:51.120into consideration as well we certainly shouldn't have a almost no strings attached program that is
00:54:56.880just redistributing money essentially from taxpayers in one provinces uh to provincial
00:55:01.680governments in another yeah um just on policy and and so on and the debt um most provincial
00:55:10.800governments over the past 18 12 probably longer months um have seen their debt levels increase
00:55:18.400dramatically given that the equalization program is designed to equalize services across each
00:55:25.920province at reasonable tax reasonably similar tax rates do you see if changes aren't made to
00:55:32.480equalize equalization that the program's discrepancies could grow even worse if we
00:55:38.140don't do anything to change it uh do i think the negative incentives from equalization could get
00:55:44.820even worse. Do you think Alberta could pay more than we do now? Yeah, I mean, that's tough. I
00:55:50.800don't really have an answer for that question, unfortunately. But let me talk about these
00:55:56.660provincial governments, because I think you launched me into a nice little place because
00:56:01.060the municipal elections are also going across. Well, one thing that we've seen during the pandemic
00:56:05.300is not just a massive increase in government debt, both federally and provincially, but we've seen
00:56:09.820this huge divide. And Corey, you and I have talked about this at length, right? A huge divide between
00:56:13.720Those shielded behind the golden government gates and those in the private sector that have taken an absolute beating over the last year and a half during COVID-19.
00:56:23.000Well, of course, the CTF, we dug up some research that showed more than 312,000 federal government employees received at least a pay raise during this pandemic.
00:56:32.320We have similar research showing thousands of Alberta government employees received at least or received a pay raise during this pandemic.
00:56:41.380And we also have research showing that municipal employees across Alberta have received pay raises during this pandemic, many of them, thousands just in the city of Calgary alone.
00:56:52.180And I think no matter who this next, whoever forms the whole council in Calgary or the other places in Alberta municipalities, they're going to have to tackle this divide unless they want this discrepancy to grow larger between the private sector and public sector.
00:57:12.620Now, one thing that we've done a lot of research on is that there is many City of Calgary employees who will receive either two or three pensions when they retire, which is an absolute slap in the face to so many Alberta taxpayers, especially when you consider the fact that the vast majority of Albertans working outside of government don't receive a workplace pension at all.
00:57:34.460So I'm going to throw something different out.
00:57:36.500Since you're a national director these days, the big wig with Canadian taxpayers, if this comes out well, though, we get a strong mandate against equalization from Alberta.
00:57:48.200Hopefully, you know, Premier Kenney has his things together that he can take that and start negotiating or pushing at least and saying, you know, we've had enough.
00:57:55.400Is there room for other provinces to, as you said, you know, it's not serving Newfoundland very well right now.
01:16:50.840there's minimal coverage it becomes about personalities and name recognition and in
01:16:55.640edmonton if uh if you can roll up the liberals and the new democrats you've got a pretty good
01:17:02.280chance of beating the center-right candidate so uh we're we're going to have an interesting
01:17:07.080election tonight in edmonton we're going to see if mike nickel can can maybe take advantage of a
01:17:12.840of an increase in enthusiasm amongst his supporters his supporters are probably fewer in number
01:17:18.840than Amarjeet Sohi supporters, but they're probably more intense. And maybe they'll show
01:17:25.160up in higher numbers and that will get Mike a win. Like Calgary, right now, there are people
01:17:30.980still in line to vote. We expect that there'll be parts of the city of Edmonton where they'll
01:17:35.780be voting right up until about 8.45. Then the results come in relatively quickly after that,
01:17:40.940because we're using the scan machines. So you get announcements pretty quickly after that.
01:17:45.720But it's going to be, it's going to be a close election in Edmonton. You know, I expect Mike
01:17:52.400Nichol, if things go well, could beat Emerjit Sohi. If things go as expected, he'll lose,
01:17:59.000but not by very much. And then we've got some interesting open council seats. And, you know,
01:18:08.420It could change the nature of Edmonton City Council, which is, strangely enough, more centrist and more fiscally responsible and less woke and odd than Calgary City Council.
01:18:28.640But probably that comes as a function of the factor that we pay a lot more taxes up here in Edmonton than Calgarians do.
01:18:36.160And when you get an extra, say, $1,000 to $2,000 per home and property taxes, it removes some of the pressure on the bureaucrats and on the civic workers and on the municipal councillors.
01:18:49.440Yeah, well, and you brought up some interesting points.
01:18:51.920Getting out the vote is going to be so critical in this one.
01:18:54.100It sounds like the races on both sides are going to be quite tight.
01:18:58.420The other thing that was pointed out was name recognition is so critical.
01:19:01.920We see that in Calgary. We've got 27 candidates, and I know some of them are certifiably insane,
01:19:06.660but there's some reasonable ones in the middle of the pack there too.
01:19:09.760But the top three by far were incumbent councillors going into this race.
01:19:15.180And in Edmonton, the top two are a former councillor and a former Liberal cabinet minister.
01:19:21.220Jonathan, how have the GOTV efforts been going out on Farkas' campaign today?
01:19:26.200Well, I've always postulated that Farkas' support base is much more motivated.
01:19:31.440He's always had a core group of support, and it's been a lot of people who are tired of Nenshi's tax increases.
01:19:37.320Our taxes have literally doubled under Nenshi's leadership, and I say that in quotation marks, over the last 10 years.
01:19:42.820That has been the number one issue we hear at the doors, the number one issue in the poll tracking, and a lot of people are motivated for change.
01:19:50.640I've often asked people, are you getting twice the level of services you were 11 years ago when Nenshi took office?
01:19:57.900So to get out the vote is very important.
01:20:00.240We've found that there were a few irregularities.
01:20:02.640Some of the tabulating machines went down.
01:20:05.760It also was a challenge because this year there was no voters list.
01:20:09.720There was a fringe candidate who had threatened to use the voters list improperly, I would say, to harass health care workers.
01:20:16.400And as a result, one of the mayoral candidates said we should not have a voters list.
01:20:20.460That was accepted by outgoing Mayor Nenshi.
01:20:23.160You know, there are some issues there, but you're balancing rights, though, between people's safety and our democracy.
01:20:29.940And I think that there were other ways to go and deal with the security issues that this French candidate had put out that we haven't seen before,
01:20:39.020while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the voters list.
01:20:42.900Yeah, well, and from Edmonton's view, then, Vidor, I may expand quite a bit here.
01:20:46.980uh the the the geotv uh is really critical on getting people out there and you said people
01:20:55.420haven't been terribly interested in in this one what kind of efforts have the the candidates been
01:21:00.180making like how do you feel they're going to be able to pull them in uh with that uh lack of
01:21:04.820interest well it's it's one of these things where in edmonton they're all working quite hard at it
01:21:09.880i've received uh get out the vote calls from three different campaigns uh which is interesting
01:21:14.900because I only signed up to support one. The unions are doing their own get out the vote
01:21:21.960activities. Some of the third party groups are doing their own. There's a deliberate effort to
01:21:28.380email, call, text, get folks out. Now, I'll say that I expect that Edmonton's election will have
01:21:35.340significantly lower turnouts than Calgary's. Calgary had almost twice as many people vote
01:21:42.480the advanced polls to what edmonton did roughly 120 000 to roughly 60 some thousand and i know
01:21:49.040that i think it was as of about 11 30 or noon today edmonton had only had about 35 000 people
01:21:54.560vote so about halfway through the day edmonton had fewer voters than calgary had in the advanced
01:22:01.200polls um which i think says something about the intensity of of the calgary race and i think it
01:22:10.400it goes back to to what jonathan dennis was talking about with the the the folks who want
01:22:15.340to get a change from the nenshi years are super keen about working hard and getting a change from
01:22:22.240the nenshi years but at the same time an awful lot of folks on on you know the pro nenshi voters and
01:22:29.360remember calgary has been pretty close to being 50 50 split on this pro nenshi versus anti nenshi
01:22:34.720voters. The pro-Nenshi voters, you know, Jeremy Farkas is one of the people that motivates them.
01:22:41.100So, you know, you've had two pretty heavyweight campaigns slugging it out for a while. You know,
01:22:48.400you've had Davison and Field and Damery try to break into the story, but the truth of the matter
01:22:54.680is none of them ever found an issue that really turned the race in a different way and allowed
01:23:00.260and allowed one of them to sort of pop into the race as the clear third place candidate who could, you know,
01:23:07.880put a hand on Farkas's shoulder and a hand on Gondek's shoulder, push down and try to elevate themselves into the race.0.72
01:23:16.320So, you know, I think we're going to have a Farkas-Gondek horse race in Calgary because of the strength of the two characters and the two competing visions.
01:23:25.920I think we're going to have a Nickel-Sohi horse race in Edmonton because hardly anybody covered the election, and Nickel and Sohi have by far the highest name recognition.
01:23:36.680We have two other former councillors running, but they've never established themselves as central figures in the same way that Mike Nickel and Amarjeet Sohi has.
01:23:48.860Oshri and Kim Kershaw has just never created that level of excitement.
01:39:41.320Okay, well, let's talk a bit about Senate election, continue on the Senate election here.
01:39:47.780Pull up those Senate numbers for me again here.
01:39:50.920It's very interesting that I expected more people to vote straight the ticket.
01:40:00.900That if you're voting for the conservatives, you're going to vote for all three conservatives.
01:40:04.500If you're going to vote PPC, you're going to vote for all three PPC.
01:40:08.160I mean, no offense to any of the Senate candidates, you know, Nadine included, but all the others, even the high-profile ones, not everyone here is necessarily a household name.
01:40:20.020Like, most people don't even know who their own MLA is, let alone someone running for senator who might be in the other end of the province.
01:40:25.280It's really difficult to get your name out on this kind of thing.
01:40:29.100But, I mean, these numbers are showing a not insignificant number, not voting the ticket.
01:40:33.780Pam Davison is pretty much 2,000 votes ahead of Erika Barutz, and Barutz is still a fair bit ahead of,0.92
01:40:43.360I am never going to be able to pronounce this poor guy's name, Mikhailo, we're just going to go Mikhailo,
01:40:47.620a very difficult Ukrainian name, that is a lot of Y's and K's, I'm just not going to be able to do it,1.00
01:40:55.320but he's at 15,000, so people are not voting the ticket here, Nadine I think is, if I'm not mistaken,
01:47:04.020But the numbers are showing, at least in Calgary, relative to the last election,
01:47:08.940And PPC is set to double, perhaps even better, their numbers.
01:47:12.960And the last federal election's numbers were nothing to sneeze at.
01:47:16.460That was a significant breakthrough for the PPC, even if it didn't result in any seats.
01:47:21.800I mean, even if you're not, well, I'm not even sure.
01:47:25.900Whoever gets first place gets to actually go to the Senate, so I wouldn't worry too much.
01:47:29.220But how are you feeling about tonight?
01:47:31.160Do you think you're going to, how much of a change do you think we're going to see for the PPC and yourself?
01:47:36.740Well, first off, I think if more people knew that Danielle had voted for me, I think those numbers would be much higher.
01:47:45.660You know, and so for me, I think the numbers so far, especially considering, like you said, they're coming out of Calgary, the more urban areas, to have such a strong showing already.
01:47:57.720and you know it is an uphill battle we are battling against the Conservative Party of Canada
01:48:02.480and we are very much still a little bit tied to the brand right so the fact that you know
01:48:10.420we've already got the numbers that we're seeing I'm very pleased actually very pleased people are
01:48:16.080you know having their their voices heard and it what more could you ask for really and and I think
01:48:23.460our strongest numbers are yet to come in like you said in the rural ridings um so i i'm not gonna
01:48:34.540ask you what your prediction is tonight i mean uh i'm gonna you'd be almost forced to give the
01:48:39.600rehearsed answer well we're gonna wait till every vote is counted i i know what it's like i've given
01:48:44.480the rehearse line rob's given the line you've probably given the line before we're not gonna
01:48:49.160ask a question that we know we're not going to get a good answer to because you just can't.
01:56:39.620It's always voted more left of centre, and so it's not a surprising result, but it is a little disappointing from a conservative's perspective just because Jeremy was a good, he spoke against some pretty radical policies that Naheed Nenshi and others were bringing into City Hall.
01:56:57.040It's just, it's sad to see that he doesn't get his due, but I thought he ran a pretty good campaign.
01:57:01.600It is certainly a weird voting manner that the city's got.
01:59:36.600But you're right, but the other thing too that you got to think of is that if these
01:59:40.420are Gondek voters and they're 58, 42% in favor of getting rid of equalization, it shows the
01:59:47.380bind that Rachel Notley's a little bit in, right?
01:59:49.580She can't come out against, she can't be pro-equalization in its current form anyway, for the same reason, because this is actually a cross-partisan issue.
01:59:58.540Obviously, conservatives feel the most strongly about it, but even just your average NDP voter looks at this issue and says, yeah, we're getting hosed.
02:00:07.780So it's interesting to see that reflected.
02:00:09.780Before we go to Vitor, Dave, did you have any other numbers?
02:00:30.920Yeah, but Vitor actually knows Edmonton.
02:00:34.280For me, I mean, anything above Airdrie is northern Alberta to me.
02:00:39.080And you may as well be, if you're north of Edmonton, you may as well be in Fort McMurray.
02:00:44.180so uh vitor you understand the city a lot better uh you probably have a better idea of what polls
02:00:49.940what areas are reporting uh is mike nickel still in this fight or is it time to call it uh it's
02:00:57.220it's starting to get a little scary because eight points is a big is a big difference uh but there's
02:01:03.000still a very little reporting i mean uh you're at 40 percent of the polls reporting but the city
02:01:09.240doesn't break across evenly. So I think so he's going to win. But it's, you know, it's a 10,000
02:01:22.220vote difference right now. They look like they've counted roughly 67,000 votes. No, not even.
02:01:33.460They've counted about 25,000 votes of probably about 120,000, 130,000 votes.
02:01:40.880So we're missing the majority of the votes, and we're missing them from areas where nickel should do better.
02:01:47.400But I think you're seeing something similar to Calgary, which is the centrist voter, that swing voter,
02:01:54.840The person who's center center right and can be is available to a more conservative candidate doesn't seem to have gone over to nickel in Edmonton.
02:02:05.740And, you know, without knowing exactly where the votes are coming from in Calgary, it looks like the same thing may have happened, you know, may have happened in Calgary.
02:02:18.980And then when you go look at the council races, and again, there's still a lot of votes still to come in.
02:02:26.200You've got incumbent Bev Esslinger is losing to the NDP's endorsed candidate, Aaron Rutherford.
02:02:33.260You've got the NDP's endorsed Aaron Paquette is running away with his riding in Dene.
02:02:40.060um you've got uh you've got a weird mixed bag very very early on in um i call it kokanee for
02:02:51.040short because it's impossible to pronounce we have a series of of of first nations names that
02:02:57.980were given to edmonton writings and some of them are very very odd and don't seem to fit
02:03:02.380uh you know in languages that no first nations in the edmonton area speak so
02:03:07.060it's kind of odd um you know you've got the lefty endorsed uh karen tang winning and mike
02:03:14.480nichols old riding uh so this this looks like it's going to be a strong night for the center left
02:03:21.220um in edmonton right now that's that's that's the way it's looking and it's uh it's looking
02:03:30.520like edmonton you know unless things start to change pretty noticeably it's looking like
02:03:35.700Edmonton's going to have a city council that is significantly to the left of what we had before.
02:03:46.400Vitor, I don't think Edmonton is actually reporting on any of its equalization
02:03:52.680referendum results tonight. Am I right? Certainly not on the City of Edmonton,
02:03:57.540Elections Edmonton website. So I don't know what those numbers are at. But if Calgary is coming in
02:04:03.340in the mid 50s, then I think Edmonton will be close to 50. And then I think the province as
02:04:08.400a whole will be around 60, probably even breaking 60. That fits with private polling that I saw
02:04:13.860that suggested that the high propensity voter was showing a clear majority for voting yes.
02:04:24.380And it goes back to what Rob Anderson said just a few moments ago, what I talked about a little
02:04:28.360bit earlier which is that you know rachel notley did not campaign for a no vote only the political
02:04:33.820science professors and nenshi campaigned for a no vote um you know anybody who's involved in
02:04:39.060politics understands that uh that a yes vote is a good bargaining chip for any premier of alberta
02:04:44.940to have and uh and and and that's what we're finding but uh edmonton city council is leaning
02:04:51.360left right now i don't know where the where the calgary races are at the council level yet
02:04:56.080But it's, you know, it's one of these things where in Edmonton, like I said, the media paid no attention to this race.
02:05:06.140And it's going to help elect a bunch of left and center-left candidates.
02:05:11.880Well, in Calgary, I mean, if Farkas is not mayor, then we lose him on council.
02:05:17.720Joe Megalioka, obviously in some pretty steep trouble, but he is definitely not coming back to council.
02:05:23.620He is about 10% right now, so not do good.
02:05:27.060And I think he actually had a fighting chance until these charges.
02:20:12.840You had high expectations, but I think those expectations were met by the team that you were able to build by scratch, or from scratch, all incredible unpaid volunteers.
02:26:56.700I just shortened it to Kokanee, where Jennifer Rice is beating Rhiannon Doyle,1.00
02:27:02.460who had lots of really good endorsements, who's also beating Scott Johnson,
02:27:06.860who was a longtime media person in Edmonton who covered City Hall for 20 years. Of all the
02:27:11.520candidates running, probably knows the most about what's happened in City Hall over the last 20
02:27:15.480years. He's only got 12% of the vote. And then the union-backed NDP person is in fourth place
02:27:21.420there in that riding. But Jennifer Rice was a candidate that I wasn't paying any attention to,0.99
02:27:26.260is right now leading by about 200 votes. So that's an interesting race there.
02:27:33.540Mike Nichols' riding went to the union-backed person, the ward that he used to represent.
02:27:39.200The union-backed person, Karen Tang, will be a new councillor there.
02:27:43.080Certainly looks like she'll be a new councillor, running about nine points ahead of the Mike Nichols-endorsed candidate in that riding.0.99
02:27:54.000Mayor Iveson endorsed a handful of candidates about a week ago.
02:29:04.280current city councilor running for mayor.
02:29:06.020They both look to be losing to Sandy Bowman,
02:29:09.100who's a newcomer into municipal politics,
02:29:11.720but a long-time business person in the community.
02:29:13.880Looks like he's going to be the new mayor of Fort McMurray.
02:29:17.800I guess one of the shocking things to me
02:29:19.580is that equalization referendum or not in Edmonton,
02:29:23.780we're looking at roughly 32.7% turnout. So when the media don't cover a race, nobody shows up to
02:29:31.720vote. And so he is going to win it with about 84,000 votes. He'll probably end up somewhere
02:29:37.820around 100,000 votes. That's a lot fewer votes than Gondek has gotten in Calgary. So again,
02:29:47.900calgarians were more engaged in this election um with about an equal number of polls yet to report
02:29:54.060gondek's already at 129 000 votes uh she's probably going to end up around 150 000 before1.00
02:29:59.660it's said and done jeremy farkas is probably going to cross 100 000 votes before this is said and
02:30:04.500done that would have been enough to win in edmonton um but it's uh it's municipal elections
02:30:11.100You know, it's a lesson for for business people and the business community and the center right community to figure this out, because otherwise they're just going to keep losing over and over and over again.
02:30:25.400I find it fascinating that the Jody Gondek is at one hundred and twenty nine thousand votes.
02:30:32.220But then when you go to the Senate election, you know, in Calgary, Pam Davidson is at 107,000 votes, like right behind the mayor.
02:30:43.140So there are, you know, 100,000 plus votes in Calgary that are available to center right candidates, to CPC candidates.
02:30:52.280And it says something that, you know, with the same number of polls counted, that Pam Davidson is 20,000 votes ahead of Jeremy Farkas.
02:31:04.260And I think that's a lesson for conservatives and the conservative movement for the business community to sort of get their act together.
02:31:11.840They're going to keep losing these races that they should have the number of votes to win.
02:31:17.180But we we don't organize the right discussion.
02:31:21.120We don't activate on it the right way, and we're losing control of the level of politics that's actually closest to the voter, and we're helping the center-left in this province build a good farm team that shows up to run against us 10, 12 years later at the provincial and at the federal level and occasionally wins elections that they have no business winning because they've built up the reputation of service overall.
02:31:51.120a long time in these locations. So it's, again, it's, it's a lesson to be learned.
02:31:55.440Yeah. Well, that's, that's the takeaway we got to take from it. If we don't change,
02:31:58.880if we don't get a lesson out of this four years from now, we're going to be looking at the exact
02:32:02.140same picture. So a lot of wounds to be licked tonight, but people who want to see some,
02:32:06.720some conservative government on the civic level have got to get it together and take another
02:32:11.440approach. Cause this is not working out. Thanks Vidor. Danielle, I'll bring you in,
02:32:17.100You know, so everything's kind of from a conservative, small government point of view.
02:35:11.840If you've got a pack of seven or eight candidates, you need something that's going to elevate you.
02:35:16.820And so as much as we like to talk about taking big money out of politics,
02:35:20.980it looks like the only way to get elected is to get the big money packs on the union side to back you.
02:35:26.960And I don't think that's the outcome we were hoping for when we changed the elections rules.
02:35:32.680So it seems to me we might have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a better way to support our candidates. I would have thought, I think this is a point Vitor had made, I would have thought that because we had people coming out to vote for conservatives, by and large, at the Senate election, and as well in the referendum on equalization, I would have thought that would have translated into a few more conservatives getting elected in these council seats.
02:35:59.420but it doesn't look like it's turning out that way,
02:50:08.640He says, on behalf of the city of Edmonton, I want to congratulate Amarjeet Sohi on his election as Edmonton's 36th mayor.
02:50:14.560I've had the pleasure of working with Mayor Alex Sohi during this time as city councillor.
02:50:18.720I'd always appreciated and have been inspired by how hard he's worked for our community.
02:50:22.780I have no doubt Edmonton will thrive under his leadership.
02:50:25.600These two have been extremely, extremely close all throughout their time together on city council.
02:50:31.560We saw them work together on things like transit.
02:50:34.460They agree on several different projects.
02:50:36.220So, you know, we've talked about whether, you know, Vinesh asked whether this was a referendum on Mayor Don Iverson's tenure as mayor.
02:50:43.140But if so, you know, then the selection was we like what Mayor Iverson was doing and we want that to continue with Amarjeet.
02:50:51.200So he's got a lot of the same viewpoints.
02:50:54.660You know, he supported the LRT West, the Valley Line out west.
02:50:59.560He said that that's a project that he wants to continue, something that Mayor Don Iveson said he wants to continue as well after his tenure.
02:51:07.320So even when Amarjitso, he went and became MP, those two continued to have a good relationship.
02:51:24.980I'm going to have to try and keep a straight face as I run through these numbers as our newsroom degenerates into chaos with magical rising desks and all sorts of jocularity.
02:51:40.740Sorry, Rob, we're not normally this unprofessional. Normally, we're a lot worse.
02:51:45.120Anyways, we'll start in Calgary this time because that's the page I've got up.
02:51:49.100Jody Gondek, the new mayor, the first female mayor of Calgary, now sitting at 160,000 votes.
03:02:06.540Paquette, who's by far the most left-wing city counselor in Edmonton, won handily in his ward.
03:02:11.720In the downtown ward where Tony Cattarino, who was a center-right counselor, was running, that went to Ann Stevenson, who is an urban planner endorsed by Mayor Iverson.
03:02:21.420And so we're going to get, you know, the downtown city council is going to be much more pro city council and the city council's vision of planning for the city.
03:02:31.700You got Ashley Salvador beating out Carolyn Matthews in Métis, which is the northeast end of the city.
03:02:38.420So another center left councillor is one. Sarah Hamilton, who's a center center right councillor, she would tell you she's center right.0.98
03:02:46.300Most people who look at politics would say she's firmly centered, but she's held onto her seat in the, essentially, the west side of the city.1.00
03:02:54.500Papas Chu went to Michael Janz, who's a hardcore NDP candidate.
03:04:55.440Well, hello, Calgary. Let's begin by acknowledging that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Siksika, the Kainai, the Pekani, the Soutena, and the Stony Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation, Region 3, and all the people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of southern Alberta.
03:05:19.180thank you calgary with all of my heart thank you for engaging in democracy and sending a clear
03:05:28.280signal about what our future looks like thank you for embracing a vision of promise and opportunity
03:05:35.940the selection is about all of you and the many things that you believe we can accomplish together
03:05:43.020it's also about the hard work of so many candidates and their campaign teams who
03:05:49.700ran because they all believed in our city this election is about my own
03:05:54.600campaign team it's about 1200 volunteers strong volunteers who gave their time
03:06:02.220and energy to a common purpose to ensuring that we gave people a reason to
03:06:08.760vote my heart is full at the thought of how much love and support i have received not only from
03:06:15.640the day i announced but all the way up to today this election is also about my family justice
03:06:24.600todd and my mom please know that all of your sacrifices did not go unnoticed thank you for
03:06:32.040taking this journey with me for caring about me and believing in me this election is also about
03:06:38.440my dad who left us far too early it was actually his unfinished community service that i picked up
03:06:46.200in 2003 that has brought me to this point in my life my attention to seva to service that's all
03:06:54.520his legacy and so now we turn to that focus on the mission of service to build a stronger city
03:07:02.760I look forward to meetings with my newly elected council colleagues, I look forward to meetings with my fellow mayors in this province, and I look forward to meeting with Premier Kenney's government to set a path forward for our future.
03:07:18.580I am also optimistic that we will continue to forge strong relationships with our federal government in a manner that opens up opportunity for our city.
03:07:28.340I'm looking forward to also maintaining many of the relationships that started on this
03:12:09.000Vitor, you pointed out there are some pickups on the Calgary City Council, so it's not a total, it's a bad night for conservatives across Alberta, at least in the municipal elections.
03:12:20.580I mean, Mike Nickel ran a pretty unapologetically conservative campaign for a guy running for Edmonton mayor.
03:12:27.980I mean, he ran a campaign that might get you elected in Brooks.
03:12:34.140I mean, not that Brooks elects conservative mayors either,
03:12:37.020but I mean, he ran an unapologetically conservative campaign in Edmonton
03:14:15.460And so the net effect of it is you're going to have five intelligent, reasonable, persuasive center-right candidates who have the capacity to sort of win the debate.
03:14:30.820In all honesty, one of the things that I've told all of my friends who wanted to run for City Hall over and over again is that when you look at the history of Edmonton and Calgary, the leader of the opposition never gets elected mayor.
03:14:47.520And in Edmonton, Mike Nichol was the leader of the opposition.
03:14:50.700And in Calgary, Jeremy Farkas was the leader of the opposition.
03:14:54.000We just have not elected those people mayors, even in open races.
03:14:58.360Voters tend to look for somebody who's more optimistic, more positive, more saying yes to things at the municipal level.
03:15:06.120And as conservatives, we shouldn't be shocked by that.
03:15:08.760We always talk about the fact that we want government spending to move down to the level closest to the people.
03:18:58.640Yeah, Larry Heather, for those who don't know, is a perennial candidate, not just for Calgary Mayor, but for MLA, for MP, for any by-election or general election.
03:19:10.200If we elected dog catchers, runs in absolutely everything. He has managed 436 votes.0.97
03:19:18.940Do you think he could beat Jason Kenney for a dog catcher now?
03:19:22.220You know, I'd like to see a runoff between Larry Heather and Jason Kenney right now.
03:19:28.640It'd be close. It would be very close.
03:19:32.080Yeah, and I think a big takeaway here is it's odd.
03:19:35.060I mean, the most among conservatives, the ones who say, don't split the vote, unify, get behind our guy,
03:19:42.600tend to be the more centrist Tories, red Tories.
03:19:47.040And in Calgary's mayoral race, you saw them not exactly do that.
03:19:51.400You saw, so you had, you know, a pretty impressive showing from Jeff Davison at 15%.
03:20:13.040And then there's a few other moderate center rights.
03:20:16.920It's, they just, I don't think anyone has an obligation to drop out and support anyone else.
03:20:23.580And I think people should vote for the candidate that matches their values.
03:20:30.200But, I mean, at the same time, you know, pragmatism doesn't play no role whatsoever.
03:20:36.640And that kind of school of thought, you know, coming, that kind of Tory unified, don't split the votes.
03:20:42.800I mean, I would not be shocked if these were the kind of people who said, don't vote for the PPC, you've got to get behind the Conservative Party of Canada, and these guys did not drop out or do anything to throw their support behind Farkas, which could have stopped the election of a union mayor.
03:20:56.840Derek, I think one of the things that probably conservatives should start a discussion on, especially at the municipal level, is, you know, should we go to something like a model that gets used in all sorts of American states, the model that gets used all over Europe, which is that if you don't get 50% of the vote in a multiple candidate, nonpartisan structure, there's a runoff between the top two.
03:21:21.680and that would have a dramatic impact on lots of these races like essentially um I think if you go
03:21:32.460look at Gondek's percentage it's probably pretty close to where Nenshi's percentage was
03:21:37.320in in 2010 now Nenshi was a surprise and there was a big upturn in support for him but there's
03:21:45.440something to be said for doing consolidation and runoff I mean I feel bad for the voters of Calgary
03:21:50.660What were there? 23, 24 people on the mayoralty ballot? I know we want to be all for democracy, but democracy where you can't really learn anything about the candidates isn't really democracy. And especially in an environment where you don't allow political parties so that the voters don't benefit from having the shorthand.
03:22:12.240Well, you get the way election finance is set up here, and it's set by the province, the left, because of the way unions can fund campaigns, they de facto have a political party.
03:22:25.400It's just decided there's no leadership vote, there's no nomination vote, it's just the union bosses decide this is the candidate, and that candidate gets so overwhelmingly funded that everyone has to drop out.
03:22:37.620You saw Kent Hare, a very credible candidate, had no choice but to drop out.
03:23:06.180Oh, sorry, so we're just going to go to Josh Andrus for a second.
03:23:09.620Yeah, and the other thing was over the last four, five, six, seven, eight years,
03:23:14.320it's been the left that's crying and screaming about dark money in politics,
03:23:18.220and we're the ones sitting here watching the unions dominate that dark money conversation.
03:23:24.920It's really frustrating to watch, and I don't have a solution for it,
03:23:30.780but we need to figure out a way to deal with the unions and how much,
03:23:35.400especially the public sector unions and how much they impact our elections two things really fast
03:23:42.440one sorry go ahead vitor one is not only that is it just money but in this case there was actual
03:23:49.960sort of chicanery behind the scenes to get council candidates to drop out and get hired onto union0.75
03:23:55.640jobs or onto jobs with other think tanks so that there would only be one left candidate that's one
03:24:02.280And two, we do have an answer to this. Jason Kenney passed a law that would have fixed this.
03:24:07.860He just never proclaimed it. So there is a law on the books that says unions can't spend money
03:24:12.740on politics without getting the individual sign off of union members to spend their money on
03:24:17.380politics. But that law passed the legislature, the lieutenant governor signed it, but it hasn't
03:24:22.080been put into effect yet. And, you know, the power that be to the unions in Calgary and Edmonton,
03:24:29.540they said, well, if they're not putting it into effect yet, we're going to take advantage of it
03:24:33.460at the very least for this one last time. Well, I know Drew Barnes and Todd Lowen made some hay
03:24:38.840going after Jason Kenney over this. Why in God's name wouldn't Jason Kenney proclaim this? It's
03:24:45.640past the legislature. It's done. He's just got to make a phone call to the lieutenant governor and
03:24:50.320say, sign a piece of paper. It becomes a law. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what proclamation
03:24:54.980means the lieutenant governor has signed it already cabinet gets to declare it into effect
03:25:00.760it's even easier yes so it's okay so why didn't he do that makes no sense you're gonna ask me
03:25:07.680this is a space for my own very intense personal biases um we write let's go there we write very
03:25:14.480horrible laws in alberta and we have a tradition of putting in proclamation clauses in our laws
03:25:20.520It's it's almost unique to Alberta where we pass law after law after law and everybody thinks they pass, but they haven't really passed because they only really pass when cabinet decides they've passed.
03:25:32.300And it's a tradition left over from the PCs. It sucks. It's a horrible thing.
03:25:38.440Forty percent of the laws that Jason Kenney has passed as premier have either not been proclaimed in whole or in part.
03:25:45.400That's another crazy thing that we do in Alberta.
03:25:47.600We give the cabinet the ability to say, this part of the law is the law, but this part of the law isn't the law yet.
03:26:02.720The way it should work is that the bureaucracy, you know, when you write the law, you tell the bureaucracy you've got six months, you've got eight months, you've got a year and a half to get ready for it, and then the law goes into effect.
03:26:13.340and there shouldn't be these cabinet artificial creation of a law gets three readings passes all
03:26:21.280three readings gets signed by the lieutenant governor it should be a law not it comes back
03:26:25.900to cabinet at some point for them to declare that it really is a law um this is a problem and it's
03:26:31.240something that got done um and you know had had that union money law been put into place for this
03:26:39.520election, it would have had a dramatic impact in the Calgary race and in the Edmonton race,
03:26:45.120but it didn't get. So we get what we deserve, I guess.
03:26:50.120I have personally heard this Vitor speech several times over. It's a good speech. Not enough of you
03:26:57.580at home have heard it before. So I felt you all deserved to hear that in full. Danielle,
03:27:04.240Now we're talking about union money, dark money in this.
03:27:08.700Josh brought up the point that, I mean it's more often than not the left that's talked
03:27:13.340about dark money in politics, big powerful financial interest trying to control things.
03:27:19.160But it was very clearly the unions supporting leftist candidates here.
03:27:25.900uh what do you think of course it had some impact but uh do you think it was the decisive factor
03:27:33.980in gondex victory tonight i think it was the decisive factor in getting all of the brand
03:27:40.320new candidates the name recognition i mean if you look a lot of these at a lot of these wards i mean
03:27:45.280if you've got 10 12 candidates how are you supposed to make any kind of headway how are you supposed
03:27:50.680to get your your name out there above the rest you need a little bit of help and so that's the
03:27:55.760thing that that the unions are able to provide when you when you think about a couple of the
03:27:59.920ways and a lot of it happens below the radar because even though they did do the public
03:28:05.980endorsement they all have their email list that they can send out to and so if you are a union
03:28:12.000member you'll get that union endorsement and then you can tell two friends and send it along and so
03:28:16.780that is incredibly powerful there really isn't the equivalent on the business side i think that's the
03:28:21.980the interesting thing is the left has managed to convince the general public
03:28:26.380that it's the big corporations that are the ones that have the most influence and power and money
03:28:32.060it's not the way it works i mean the business as you know i'm president of a business group
03:28:35.900my experience with business owners is that they really just want the opportunity to have a fair
03:28:41.340hearing if they've got a regulatory issue or permitting issue or development they just want
03:28:45.980to make sure that they can have access and that the politician is going to return their calls
03:28:50.780and listen to their their point of view in fact what often happens in previous elections is that
03:28:56.060the business community would spread their money around that they would support multiple candidates
03:29:00.140from all different sides because they wanted to establish a relationship so they could have an
03:29:04.860entry if they ever needed something at council that doesn't happen with unions unions are very
03:29:09.740ideological and there's no consequences if a union candidate doesn't get elected there's big
03:29:14.700consequences if you're a business backer and your candidate loses someone can bear a grudge on that
03:29:20.460so i think businesses are very very cautious when they're supporting candidates in the first place
03:29:26.460and doubly cautious when it comes to supporting packs there just really wasn't a lot of corporate
03:29:32.060money that was invested in this election either in calgary or in edmonton i mean i think in edmonton
03:29:36.860there wasn't even a conservative pack or an organized conservative effort to try to raise
03:29:41.980the profile of some of those candidates so that is something that we've got to to be aware of
03:29:47.340is that why have we created election rules that stack the deck on one side i would far rather see
03:29:54.540some kind of approach where individual grassroots dollars can be
03:29:58.860contributed to candidates and you can get a tax receipt of some sort
03:30:06.700sorry uh sorry danielle we're just having uh trouble here um i'm gonna keep talking i can
03:30:12.220keep my things i can monologue about here we will have ourselves fixed in a jiffy here but you may
03:30:17.660as well continue because we are deep something well one of the things that that i've been looking
03:30:22.540at i've proposed this before because part of what happens is remember how political tax credits work
03:30:27.900is that they're so generous if you give a hundred dollars to a candidate you get a tax write-off
03:30:34.780that allows you to get 75 back in taxes at tax time and if you give to the federal uh federal
03:30:40.220party it comes off your federal taxes if you give to a provincial party it comes off your
03:30:43.420provincial taxes there's there's no equivalent for our municipal candidates i suppose you could
03:30:48.940develop a system where you could reduce your property tax bill by a certain percentage of a
03:30:53.340of a contribution you make to a municipal campaign but i've never seen that and so the fact of the
03:30:58.300matter is people don't like this reality but the reality is that campaigns cost money you have to
03:31:03.500to be able to print brochures and print signs and do mailers and do town halls and have
03:31:10.500the volunteers come out and be able to support them. And so if you don't have the money for
03:31:16.220those things, you're just not going to be able to run a credible campaign. And so what
03:31:20.360we've seen tonight is that name recognition wins out. There were two candidates who got
03:31:25.720elected just because people remember their name from when they were on council before
03:31:28.540in Calgary was Andre Chabot and Richard Pootmans. And the three contenders for the mayor's chair
03:31:33.760were all people who had recently been on council. So I think that that's telling. And it also should
03:31:39.040tell conservatives too, that if they ever want to have a success at being able to have a conservative
03:31:45.360mayor in Calgary or in Edmonton, they got to get started by running some decent candidates for
03:31:51.080school board and for city councils and to stop being so snobby and think that provincial and
03:31:56.620federal politics is the only place that's worth the effort. I think these two campaigns have
03:32:01.560demonstrated that. And so now the premier is going to face the same tough challenge that he has
03:32:05.860over the past 10 years, or the past two years, I guess, that he's been there,
03:32:10.100is having an antagonist to both Calgary and Edmonton, who are going to be constantly
03:32:14.680critiquing his every move. And he's got an election himself in another year and a half's
03:32:18.400time. So it's not going to be any easier for him.
03:40:49.840Okay, we've got Lindsey Clark in Medicine Hat, a clear victory over Ted Klungsten, 13,000 votes to 4,600. And in, where the heck are we here? In Grand Prairie. That's not the mayor's result, we don't want that. So yeah, lots of change down in Medicine Hat for sure.
03:41:18.260Give us the equalization numbers in Calgary again.
03:41:21.460The equalization numbers were 58% to 42%, 209,000 to 147,000.
03:41:34.080So, Danielle, we've got 58, 42 on equalization, 58 on the yes side, that is to get rid of equalization.
03:41:43.400The main street poll we commissioned had 66% province-wide.
03:41:47.480I mean, if we're getting 58% yes in Calgary, Calgary kind of being the tiebreaker in Alberta,
03:41:55.860if Edmonton's at one side and rural central south Alberta, and to an extent northern Alberta,
03:42:03.480are on the other, Calgary being the tiebreaker.
03:42:06.060If Calgary's at 58%, I don't know, do you think we can look at probably at least still a majority
03:42:14.080coming out of Edmonton for the yes side, probably just smaller?
03:42:17.480Edmonton is surprisingly conservative. I've often found that. It's just a sort of a different type of conservatism. There's a blue collar conservatism. And so they may have more NDP support, concentrated so they get more seats.
03:42:33.720But I would say that I would expect that Edmonton would probably be in favor of the majority.
03:42:40.760Because remember, it was Joe Sisi as finance minister who fought the battle on the fiscal
03:42:47.100The NDP were not happy with the fact that as our resource revenues plummeted, that we
03:42:53.600had an unfair formula that didn't allow for a top up to come back.
03:42:56.840And so I think that may also explain a bit about why the NDP were pretty well absent
03:43:01.620in this discussion is they kind of got the ball rolling in talking about how unfair those transfers
03:43:06.660were. So if people remember that discussion, it's a difficult topic. There's about three
03:43:13.340people in the country who understand how the equalization formula works. I'm not sure I would
03:43:17.680go so far as, say, get the ball rolling. I remember it. It was my job to spank them every day1.00
03:43:23.960about this stuff. And they reluctantly came around in time. That's what a good opposition can do.
03:43:31.180They did come around, though. So I do remember them taking that position when they went to the federal government for negotiations.
03:43:40.780So I think that that is part of the reason why you'll end up with a lot more uniformity across the province and saying, yeah, we've got to change this thing.
03:43:50.560Scrapping it may have been a harder pill for some to swallow, which may explain some of the higher no vote than I was expecting.
03:43:58.040But if you would ask, do you think you need to change this and get a better deal for Alberta,
03:44:01.660you probably would have got more like 80 or 90% support.
03:44:06.000Well, speaking of a yes vote, we've got a guy who loves voting yes for equalization reform so much,
03:44:12.920he decorates the wall of his house for it.
03:44:16.480And many streets in Alberta, actually, Derek.
03:45:13.720Look, I think one of the things in this referendum was, to Danielle's point, that the question was hard for a lot of people to swallow.
03:45:23.360And even a lot of people to understand, I think a lot of people don't spend a lot of time examining the equalization formula.
03:45:30.100You know, I served in the government in Nova Scotia when we had to look at how much money we were getting from equalization.
03:45:36.040Often we had to get seven or eight bureaucrats in auto to try to figure out what it all meant.
03:45:40.460And so it was a big task for voters to understand fully what the impacts would be of equalization.
03:45:46.620But I think one of the things, Derek, that makes me feel so good about the results tonight is because if you look at the popularity of the provincial government,
03:45:55.660you look at the growth of opponents, but mostly from the academic ranks to the equalization question.
03:46:03.040And, you know, in the end of this last week, it was actually a tough slog to try to convince people and tell more about the story of Alberta when it comes to equalization.
03:46:12.960So I think tonight's a good win for the province.
03:46:16.580I think no matter who's in the premier's chair or which party's in office, I think this is a really good step.
03:46:23.000I mean, we know that equalization has only changed in Canada when premiers have put their foot down and the public have put their foot down and demanded more.
03:46:31.980I mean, the last major change came with the Atlantic Accords, and that happened only because Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland at the time flew the Canadian flag upside down.
03:46:41.140I mean, in this, you know, given everything that Alberta has gone through and to be able to have a referendum like this and send a message to Ottawa without all of that, you know, negativity, I think is a real, you know, tip feather in the cap of the government.
03:47:00.320And then I think as we go into 2024, which is when this current equalization formula is up and has to get renegotiated, you've given the government a big pack to go to the negotiating table with.
03:47:15.480I mean, I think one of the fair criticisms here of our side in this is people are being asked to vote not on the actual question as it's written.
03:47:26.560The question, as it's written, paraphrased is, do you agree with removing the equalization principle from the Constitution?
03:47:34.500But then we're told by the Premier, well, that's not actually what we're trying to do.