Western Standard - Western Standard： Special Election Coverage

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00:03:30.000 Trans etc.

00:03:33.740 So, now I will show you what I need.

00:03:41.680 So don't forget there are many.

00:03:45.140 Definitely remember yourself to ask your questions.

00:03:53.520 At the time we see you,

00:03:57.320 Thank you.

00:04:27.320 Thanks.

00:04:57.320 .

00:05:27.320 How do we not have sound?

00:05:42.140 We do.

00:05:42.840 We have sound now?

00:05:43.700 Yeah.

00:05:44.820 Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the technical difficulties.

00:05:47.220 I'll actually start off.

00:05:48.040 You missed a great introduction.

00:05:49.820 I was really rolling.

00:05:51.920 We just ate a bunch of pizza, so I have meat sweats right now.

00:05:54.900 All of us have got the meat sweats.

00:05:56.060 It's quite a spectacle to behold.

00:05:59.840 I've got the pineapple sweats, too.

00:06:01.980 Oh, God, it's terrible.

00:06:03.540 I don't know why you do that to a good pizza.

00:06:05.180 Anyway, I'm Western Standard publisher Derek Fildebrandt.

00:06:08.100 You're watching a special election-slash-referendum-night edition here.

00:06:13.360 I'm joined in the studio by Western Standard news editor Dave Naylor.

00:06:17.780 Hello again.

00:06:18.860 Hello again, Derek.

00:06:20.160 And also joined by Western Standard Alberta political columnist

00:06:23.420 and host of The Cory Morgan Show.

00:06:24.900 Cory Morgan.

00:06:26.060 Good evening.

00:06:27.520 Okay, we've got sound.

00:06:28.680 I apologize.

00:06:29.800 We've really improved our operations here, but it's not perfect.

00:06:33.260 I want to thank all of you for joining us tonight, especially Western Standard members.

00:06:37.100 Thank you for your support.

00:06:38.280 Without you, we couldn't continue to provide Western, independent, bailout-free media to you the way we do.

00:06:45.440 We thank you very much.

00:06:46.340 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, go right now.

00:06:50.000 No, no.

00:06:50.800 I mean, right now.

00:06:52.500 Go to westernstandardonline.com.

00:06:54.580 Click on Membership.

00:06:55.660 Try it.

00:06:56.140 You can try it for free for 15 days.

00:06:58.480 It's only $10 a month or $99 for an entire year to get unlimited Western Standard Access.

00:07:04.400 You won't regret it.

00:07:05.440 I swear to God.

00:07:06.240 Promise.

00:07:07.440 Also, I want to thank tonight's sponsor, the Calgary Shooting Center.

00:07:12.540 Calgary Shooting Center is a fantastic institution in Calgary if you haven't already been.

00:07:16.740 If you haven't been, I don't know what's wrong.

00:07:18.420 But you should go to the Calgary Shooting Center.

00:07:21.160 I like to go there, especially in the winter and in the fall, to sight my rifles.

00:07:26.820 It's a great place to train up in advance of hunting season.

00:07:30.580 Work on your aim, sight your scopes.

00:07:33.000 I love the place.

00:07:34.940 Absolutely world-class indoor shooting range.

00:07:37.900 You can go there in the middle of winter when it's bone cold,

00:07:40.460 and you can still blast away some paper until your heart's content.

00:07:43.860 They've got a pistol range that's a lot of fun.

00:07:46.460 A really good pistol range there.

00:07:47.960 and then they've got the rifle range

00:07:51.460 really good place and excellent customer service

00:07:54.060 when I go in there and I've got like a broken scope or something

00:07:57.300 they've got a gunsmith in there and more often than not

00:07:59.400 they haven't even charged me, they've never charged me for fixing my stuff

00:08:02.780 so anyway, they're a great

00:08:04.860 great place, I'm not just saying that because they're a sponsor

00:08:08.940 I'm saying it because I love these guys

00:08:10.940 okay, well, we've got a great lineup tonight

00:08:13.960 we're going to be discussing municipal elections

00:08:17.880 in Alberta, primarily Calgary and Edmonton. And before you get upset, we are going to talk about

00:08:23.380 some of the smaller areas. But of course, there is God knows how many municipalities in Alberta,

00:08:28.720 many counties and villages and towns. We obviously can't get to them all. My apologies

00:08:34.680 right up front in advance. But we're going to have some focus on Calgary and Edmonton. But

00:08:38.980 we're also, we've got Western Standard correspondent Melanie Risden in studio.

00:08:44.440 She's going to be watching some of the medium-sized municipalities in Alberta.

00:08:48.520 That's Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Grand Prairie, and Fork McMurray,

00:08:53.400 which insists on calling itself Wood Buffalo.

00:08:56.220 We're going to be keeping an eye on them.

00:09:00.180 They are not going to be as much of topical coverage as Calgary and Edmonton,

00:09:05.920 but we're going to do our best to give you a well-rounded sense

00:09:08.100 of at least the medium to large municipalities in Alberta.

00:09:11.400 We're also going to be watching referendum madness.

00:09:15.040 We've got referendums, the one that everybody cares about, daylight savings time.

00:09:20.160 We're going to be talking about daylight savings time referendum.

00:09:22.760 Of course, that's not the big one.

00:09:23.900 The big one is fluoride in Calgary.

00:09:26.820 No, sorry, wrong again.

00:09:29.140 We're going to be watching that.

00:09:30.020 But the big one is going to be, of course, the equal as a should referendum.

00:09:34.240 The question, sorry, yeah, I nearly just burped.

00:09:37.020 That was a meat burp from my all-meat pizza.

00:09:39.900 I need a raise.

00:09:41.480 Not happening.

00:09:42.320 I know.

00:09:42.780 Unless more members sign up.

00:09:44.340 If we can sign up 100 members tonight, I will give Corey Morgan a raise.

00:09:47.840 You've got it here right now.

00:09:49.700 Corey, go sign up like your mom and your cousins, everything you can.

00:09:52.140 You get a raise if we sign up 100 members tonight.

00:09:54.140 You can probably sign up 200 if you give me a pay cut.

00:09:56.660 I shouldn't be throwing that out there.

00:09:58.060 Also, if we get 200 members sign up tonight, I will also cut Corey's pay.

00:10:05.340 Okay.

00:10:06.100 Because we're such a good unionized environment here, I can do whatever I want.

00:10:10.020 It's great.

00:10:11.920 Okay, so we're going to be watching the equalization referendum.

00:10:14.260 Now, preface, we're not going to have a final result tonight.

00:10:18.280 In fact, we might not even have a final result for a week.

00:10:21.440 We're going to get bits and pieces coming from all the municipalities conduct the vote.

00:10:26.400 They have a week to send their results to Elections Alberta.

00:10:29.920 But some of the municipalities are reporting unofficial numbers tonight.

00:10:34.300 And we'll bring you what we have there.

00:10:35.980 And from there, we might be able to extrapolate.

00:10:38.520 If Edmonton, which is, you know, I think in polls show...

00:10:41.520 Edmonton is not going to be releasing any referendum results tonight.

00:10:45.440 Oh, poo.

00:10:46.660 Okay.

00:10:47.100 Spoil sports.

00:10:48.320 So some municipalities will release results,

00:10:51.080 and we're going to try to extrapolate whatever we can from there.

00:10:53.920 Same with the Senate election.

00:10:56.180 We're not going to have official results tonight,

00:10:58.160 but we're going to be watching the Senate nominee election very, very closely.

00:11:02.080 We're going to be bringing you live coverage from the pockets around Alberta

00:11:06.580 that will be releasing unofficial results tonight.

00:11:09.560 We're going to give you those,

00:11:10.680 and we're going to try to extrapolate what we can.

00:11:13.860 I mean, if, say, a place like Brooks is voting a certain way,

00:11:16.280 there's a good chance a place like Strathmore or Drumheller

00:11:19.080 might also be voting that way.

00:11:21.240 So we'll be able to give you at least some insight

00:11:23.620 in how the Senate election is likely to shake up.

00:11:25.500 We've got great guests.

00:11:27.100 We've got the one and only Danielle Smith

00:11:29.260 joining us quite a few times tonight.

00:11:31.620 We've got a rotation.

00:11:32.940 Danielle Smith is on the rotation.

00:11:34.200 We have Vitor Marciano.

00:11:36.580 Insider from the Wild Rose days, one of the most knowledgeable political analysts in Alberta.

00:11:44.920 We're going to be bringing you him.

00:11:46.220 We've got Franco Teresano, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. 0.96

00:11:50.640 Used to be an Albertan, now an Eastern Bastard. 1.00

00:11:54.000 We've got Jonathan Dennis. 0.55

00:11:55.500 He is the official agent of the Jeremy Farkas for Mayor campaign in Calgary.

00:11:59.660 We're going to be bringing you him.

00:12:01.220 Nadine Wellwood is a PPC candidate for the Senate.

00:12:03.900 We're also going to bring you Erica Baruz, a Conservative Party of Canada candidate for the Senate, and a few others throughout the evening.

00:12:13.940 I've talked long enough. Why don't we put it to Dave? Why don't you tee up what we're looking at tonight?

00:12:21.800 Maybe if you have some insight about who we expect unofficial results from on, say, the Senate and equalization.

00:12:28.980 Well, 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.

00:12:39.260 So I think from that we should be able to get a good sense of...

00:12:43.700 So Calgary and who?

00:12:45.020 Calgary, Grand Prairie, Lethbridge, Red Deer, and Medicine Hat.

00:12:48.020 That's pretty well-rounded. I think we're going to be...

00:12:50.100 Unless it's razor-thin, we'll probably be able to make a rough estimate.

00:12:54.860 And they'll do it for the Senate and for the referendum.

00:12:57.940 Yep. 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.

00:13:17.100 Yeah, I mean, they won't be able to tell us necessarily how the counties, like the real rural, are actually voting.

00:13:23.780 Because I'm not sure if they'll be providing...

00:13:26.560 Their municipal governments are thankfully much smaller.

00:13:29.120 They're not going to have the capacity to pass that on tonight.

00:13:31.720 But, I mean, if Grand Prairie's voting a certain way, you could probably say, well, the area around it...

00:13:36.120 You know, say if Grand Prairie's voting 60% for the equalization referendum,

00:13:39.960 it's probably a good rule of thumb that the area around it's probably voting 70.

00:13:42.540 Add 10% on.

00:13:43.700 Yep.

00:13:44.600 That kind of thing.

00:13:45.400 Okay, 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.

00:13:57.600 Exactly.

00:13:58.240 But, so we're going to, let's go with projection.

00:14:00.140 Now, I've covered a lot of City of Calgary elections, and it always surprises me how late they get ballots in.

00:14:10.760 You 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.

00:14:19.060 To be honest, I have not covered a civic election in Edmonton.

00:14:22.680 I'm not sure how quickly they get in on their ballots, but polls close at 8 o'clock.

00:14:27.560 And hopefully the city of Calgary is trying a new way of voting.

00:14:32.880 So hopefully we get some results at a quicker pace than normal.

00:14:36.320 And just a little background here. Dave is being a little humble.

00:14:39.860 We've got no one better to cover a Calgary election than Dave Naylor.

00:14:43.780 Dave was the city desk and the city editor at different times of the Calgary Sun for 20 years.

00:14:51.940 He knows the city of Calgary beat inside and out.

00:14:55.700 So I think we're very fortunate to have someone like Dave.

00:14:59.160 But we've got great people for Edmonton.

00:15:00.860 We've got, like, Vitor Marciano and a few others.

00:15:05.140 I forget his name.

00:15:06.800 Someone will bring it to me.

00:15:07.580 We have another guest coming this evening from Common Sense Edmonton,

00:15:12.500 who knows Edmonton very well.

00:15:14.480 So we're going to have Edmonton pretty well covered.

00:15:16.780 It's just obviously not going to be the speciality of myself, Dave, and Corey.

00:15:21.680 Corey, speaking of projections, what's your projection for tonight?

00:15:25.280 Let's start municipally. Calgary and Edmonton, the mayor's chairs.

00:15:30.500 Boy, well, I haven't been watching Edmonton terribly closely, I've got to admit.

00:15:34.620 But, I mean, I'm totally brain farting on that.

00:15:37.760 The liberal gentleman, who was our former energy minister, Sohi, there we go.

00:15:45.160 Unfortunately, I've got a feeling he's going to take it.

00:15:47.300 It looks strong.

00:15:48.320 Nickel, well, we've got some interesting parallels between Calgary and Edmonton,

00:15:51.500 I mean, with the competing candidates and competing visions,

00:15:54.000 and I think the spread from what I've seen is bigger in Edmonton on that.

00:15:57.980 Calgary-wise, I think it's going to be a lot tighter.

00:16:00.460 I am going to predict Farkas by a squeaker. 1.00

00:16:04.060 I think that even though he's been polling a little bit lower, perhaps, than Gondek,

00:16:08.460 we've got to remember that the other thing they like showing in the polling is

00:16:10.520 Gondek polls well with young people, Farkas polls well with the older people.

00:16:15.280 But when you look at the demographics that actually get off their butts and vote,

00:16:18.320 The older people get out, young people are one TV special away from not bothering. 0.64

00:16:23.660 So it's really going to, I think the whole race is going to lie on a GOTV effort on the parts of those mayoral candidates.

00:16:31.100 Just some early city of Calgary statistics, excuse me.

00:16:35.520 129,500 Calgarians voted until today at 6 p.m.

00:16:40.720 Are we talking, does that include advanced polls?

00:16:42.380 No, the advanced polls were 141,000.

00:16:45.120 So, you know, that's out of 847,000 registered voters.

00:16:51.060 So the number will climb greatly during the evening.

00:16:55.420 Interestingly, 10 polling stations are saying there's going to be waits of 30 minutes or more,

00:17:01.740 which, of course, is, I guess, people getting off work and doing it on the way home.

00:17:06.640 But there is going to be lots of votes coming in late tonight in Calgary.

00:17:11.820 Indeed. Okay, so let's go back to your projection.

00:17:15.220 We're not calling these guesses.

00:17:16.600 It's media, so these are projections.

00:17:17.980 I mean, I won't go seat by seat through council,

00:17:20.360 and there's so many candidates this time around.

00:17:22.440 I mean, one of the things with Calgary that is striking is the turnover.

00:17:24.540 We've got nine open seats with five incumbents running again.

00:17:30.700 And unfortunately, I mean, we've watched a very strong union influence in this election,

00:17:35.480 spending literally millions of dollars through a pack.

00:17:39.140 And name recognition in municipal politics is everything.

00:17:42.720 These candidates who may not have been union endorsed really had a hard time getting their names out there, competing with that.

00:17:49.560 I got a feeling they're going to sweep those open writings a lot.

00:17:52.300 I'm going to bring up a comment here from Shelley Carrington.

00:17:56.040 She says Calgary Council will be union-packed, sad, but probably with the millions spent.

00:18:03.200 Maybe let's talk about that.

00:18:04.840 Union money has been a significant topic of conversation, especially at least in Calgary here.

00:18:10.440 Dave, I know you've covered this in some of your stories, but why don't you talk about

00:18:15.580 the involvement of union third party PAC money?

00:18:18.500 Various unions have put in $1.7 million into Jody Kondek's campaign, which is more than

00:18:25.640 all the other 27 candidates, 26 candidates will raise amongst themselves.

00:18:30.760 So as Corey says, it's a significant amount of money.

00:18:34.500 Farkas has accused the unions of trying to buy Gondek, the mayor's chair.

00:18:40.080 So, you know, city unions have had a pretty suite under the Nenshi regime with, you know,

00:18:46.880 while the rest of us have been taking pay cuts, they've been getting wage increases.

00:18:51.060 I didn't cut your pay.

00:18:53.600 Well, that's true.

00:18:55.120 That's true.

00:18:56.000 Maybe Cory's, but...

00:18:57.340 Yeah.

00:18:57.920 Well, the rest of us are being underpaid.

00:19:01.200 The unions are getting pay raises during the pandemic. 1.00

00:19:06.960 This is bullshit. 0.99

00:19:09.740 So, yeah, unions are a very key factor. 0.99

00:19:12.680 And, you know, to me, it's all going to get who gets the vote out.

00:19:16.660 The 140,000 people that went to the advance polls was double the amount of the last election.

00:19:23.940 Who does that favor? 0.97

00:19:25.480 I don't know.

00:19:26.260 I mean, is it Yondek supporters trying to get out en masse? 0.79

00:19:30.420 I think some of it is also you've got, I mean, how many candidates have we got in total?

00:19:34.980 There's got to be a couple hundred.

00:19:36.300 I mean, some of them are just names on ballot, but some are active campaigns.

00:19:39.380 And GOTV, as I said, is everything.

00:19:41.120 So, I mean, we've had a lot of people hounding, harassing, phoning, door knocking,

00:19:44.620 more than usual, say, when you've got a bunch of incumbents running,

00:19:48.020 making sure people get out there and vote.

00:19:49.440 I mean, you really want to push those advance votes if you're running a campaign.

00:19:52.120 I mean, every one of those is a vote in your pocket you can forget about and move on to the next ones.

00:19:55.760 Yeah, there's 300 total candidates in Calgary from school board to mayor.

00:20:00.780 Well, there's 24 to 26 in that range just for mayor alone.

00:20:06.800 I mean, yeah, it's messy, but I think it's a proper way.

00:20:09.700 It shouldn't be that hard to get onto the ballot.

00:20:11.940 It's not like the United States where we have, where the general election is really just a runoff

00:20:15.600 after you have these big open primaries between a Republican and a Democrat.

00:20:19.180 You might then just have like one or two other candidates on, maybe a big independent.

00:20:23.640 Municipal elections are messy because everyone can run.

00:20:27.040 It's really easy to get on the ballot, and I think it's better than the alternative.

00:20:31.440 So, yeah, there is a, and boy, there are some, there are some wackadoodles on the ballot.

00:20:37.880 On the left and the right, there are some real colorful characters.

00:20:42.640 And I don't just mean in the Cory Morgan sense of a colorful character.

00:20:45.680 I mean in the Charles Manson sense of it.

00:20:48.460 Maybe that's a little far, but, you know, more Charles Manson than Corey Morgan.

00:20:53.240 Well, that's mixed.

00:20:56.600 Okay, I'm not sure where to go with that.

00:20:59.600 All right.

00:21:00.420 There's some scary ones.

00:21:01.640 Hey, I've always been harmless, you know, offensive, annoying, even flatulent,

00:21:05.600 but I've never assaulted or threatened.

00:21:07.980 We're going to start this again, Corey.

00:21:10.980 You bought the pizza.

00:21:12.020 Not tonight.

00:21:12.780 Not tonight.

00:21:13.760 I just don't.

00:21:14.960 This room is not well enough ventilated in the evenings.

00:21:17.940 Okay, so let's go back to projections.

00:21:20.700 Let's talk, we'll go Senate, and then we're going to go through the different referendums.

00:21:25.620 We've got the Senate race tonight.

00:21:27.020 We've got three PPC candidates, three CPC candidates, and I think seven independents,

00:21:32.980 largely leftist aligned, some, well, kind of lefty, but are not necessarily aligned with the NDP or anything.

00:21:42.040 Corey, your projections.

00:21:44.520 I think, again, it's that name recognition in the party thing.

00:21:47.320 It's going to be one, two, three, all of the Conservative Party candidates are going to line up.

00:21:52.200 The PPC have been trying hard, and they definitely are going to grab a good chunk of it.

00:21:55.620 I mean, it'll be respectable.

00:21:56.900 But I wouldn't be surprised if one of those independents is a protest vote,

00:22:01.300 just because it's going to gather all of those people sour on the election altogether,

00:22:05.360 and that's their protest vote, might come in fourth rather than the PPC candidates.

00:22:10.480 But I think the Conservatives are going to wrap it up.

00:22:14.300 Dave, we did some polling on this.

00:22:16.900 We had Main Street Research get out there.

00:22:22.840 That's a pretty good predictor, I think.

00:22:24.680 I mean, polls aren't ironclad, but they're right more often than they're wrong.

00:22:30.220 And mainstream research is very credible.

00:22:33.240 They're more often than not.

00:22:34.540 They tend to get it pretty close, if not always right.

00:22:37.900 Why don't you run us through the results of that poll?

00:22:40.760 Derek, the mainstream poll, 66%, as mentioned, said they were going to vote in the election.

00:22:46.900 With the Conservatives' slate holding a solid lead, they were polling in the 30s, the three candidates.

00:22:55.860 The PPC, Maxime Bernier has been in Alberta campaigning for them.

00:23:00.340 They're still down in the teenage range.

00:23:02.940 So I am agreeing with Corey that it will be a full Conservative slate.

00:23:10.240 Mainstream President Kito Maggi says he wouldn't be surprised if an independent candidate slipped through the middle

00:23:17.200 and came in and it was a two to one.

00:23:20.820 So as you mentioned, we won't know the official results until October 26th.

00:23:26.080 I'm not sure why it takes Elections Alberta that long to add up the votes,

00:23:31.900 but final results won't be revealed until then.

00:23:35.120 And then the senators in waiting will start the wait.

00:23:39.360 They'll probably wait a while.

00:23:41.360 May wait a while, at least as long as the Liberals are in power anyways.

00:23:46.360 I don't know, I really am not optimistic for any of the independents, even if I like them.

00:23:52.360 I actually don't know most of them, and the ones I do know I probably wouldn't be inclined to vote for anyway.

00:23:57.360 Some are socialists kind of running as a joke, which is fair, you don't like the Senate.

00:24:01.360 It's actually kind of an interesting way to protest it, is to run as a joke.

00:24:04.360 And then we've got Doug Horner as an independent.

00:24:07.320 He was Alison Redford's Minister of Finance.

00:24:09.980 I don't know why he didn't try to run under the Tories.

00:24:12.120 Like, he's got family members in the UCP government.

00:24:15.220 But, I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean he shares their politics.

00:24:17.900 But independents do not do well in Alberta.

00:24:21.900 The last provincially elected independent in Alberta, if I'm not mistaken, was 1982.

00:24:28.400 That was Ray Speaker.

00:24:30.160 And he had been the social credit, deputy premier, and finance minister effectively for decades.

00:24:36.140 There wasn't even leaders' debates back then.

00:24:38.280 This was, you actually elected your MLA because your MLA actually still mattered a little bit, unlike today.

00:24:45.580 So Albertans just, we always say, hey, we like to elect more independent people, but we never actually do.

00:24:52.200 So, you know, and these candidates can't exactly knock on roughly a million-plus doors across Alberta

00:24:58.900 to get themselves known.

00:25:00.660 People are going to go vote based on party.

00:25:02.540 A significant number of people might vote independent

00:25:04.560 kind of randomly as a protest.

00:25:07.220 I don't think most people are going to know,

00:25:08.420 well, which one are the kind of the NDP-aligned ones,

00:25:10.360 which one's going to be those Alice and Redford Tories.

00:25:13.240 I think it's going to be kind of a crapshoot.

00:25:15.140 I think the independents will get a fair number of votes together,

00:25:17.680 but there's seven of them spread across,

00:25:19.960 and it's going to, I wouldn't be surprised

00:25:21.640 if it kind of roughly equals across them.

00:25:24.880 But you're probably right.

00:25:25.780 In one sense, the Tories are very likely

00:25:28.760 to take all top three spots, but I would imagine that the next three below them, four, five, and six,

00:25:35.120 they're probably going to be the PPC.

00:25:38.120 Okay, well, let's get your predictions for the equalization referendum.

00:25:46.840 Maybe we'll, again, go back to you, Dave.

00:25:48.680 We didn't pull the issue.

00:25:50.260 We commissioned Main Street Research to pull the issue as well.

00:25:53.100 Tell us what we found there.

00:25:54.740 That it's going to equalization, Alberta is going to demand a change, but it's not

00:26:00.900 going to be the overwhelming change that I think Jason Kenney had hoped for when he called

00:26:06.500 the referendum.

00:26:07.500 I think it was 66%, correct me if I'm wrong, that said they were fed up of equalization

00:26:14.240 and sending all of Alberta's money down east so Quebec can balance their books while we 1.00

00:26:19.880 drown in a sea of red ink.

00:26:22.480 I think when the referendum was first called,

00:26:26.600 I think Jason Kenney probably hoped it would be a slam dunk

00:26:29.260 and it would be 90-95% in his favor.

00:26:32.700 But the vitriolic hatred towards Kenney, I think, has got a protest vote

00:26:39.060 and they're going to go out and they are going to vote equalization

00:26:43.580 just to spite Kenney.

00:26:46.040 And I think it's going to be closer than Kenney thought it should be anyways.

00:26:52.280 That's my sense as well, Corey.

00:26:55.280 I think the poll is, from my experience, it kind of rings with what I think.

00:26:59.500 It's going to be a significant enough majority.

00:27:01.680 The poll, Main Street Research predicted 66%.

00:27:04.720 That's still a pretty significant majority, but it is far lower than we would expect.

00:27:11.460 I would expect normally 75% if actually there was a really,

00:27:14.900 the government was actually maybe popular and actually adding to the vote, maybe up to 80%.

00:27:18.880 I mean, who in their right mind would want to continue with equalization?

00:27:23.220 I mean, there are some fair arguments against it.

00:27:25.840 Some of them are maybe disingenuous.

00:27:27.940 Some of them are not.

00:27:29.900 One thing is nothing is going to change.

00:27:31.900 We're going to have this vote, and we could pass it 100%, and Ottawa will say, that's nice.

00:27:36.620 When does the check arrive?

00:27:37.900 Well, that actually isn't how equalization is corrected.

00:27:40.700 But, you know, you get my point.

00:27:43.720 Nothing is going to change.

00:27:45.000 And so, you know, there are a couple holes to poke in it.

00:27:47.180 One of the bigger holes is saying, and I think this is a fair hole to poke in it, is that,

00:27:52.180 well, we're being asked to vote on one question, but we're asked to take it not literally.

00:27:56.180 We actually aren't trying to actually remove equalization out of the Constitution.

00:27:59.180 We're just trying to open up a chat and have a little chit-chat about it.

00:28:02.180 That's a fair hole to poke in it. If we want to just have a chit-chat about it,

00:28:05.180 why don't we just have a vote on having a chit-chat?

00:28:10.180 So it's going to pass, but it's probably not going to pass the way it otherwise would

00:28:15.180 because of the extreme unpopularity of the Premier and the government right now.

00:28:19.160 What's your gut tell you?

00:28:20.300 Yeah, no, I'm with you guys.

00:28:21.880 I'm thinking it's going to be just over 60%.

00:28:23.420 And that'll be, you know, a majority against, but it would have been much higher typically.

00:28:27.200 I see lost opportunity, and I'm really bummed about that,

00:28:30.940 because it is an odious program. 0.99

00:28:32.740 It's a crappy program. 0.57

00:28:34.000 I mean, we saw just recently Quebec has a significant natural gas field, 0.93

00:28:39.080 and they're shutting it in.

00:28:40.100 They're saying we're not going to even allow development on it.

00:28:42.200 And part of the reason why, even though they won't say they're right,

00:28:44.460 is because they're on welfare.

00:28:46.400 And if they start making money out of natural gas,

00:28:48.540 it cuts into their equalization.

00:28:50.160 Like this program has worked as a disincentive

00:28:52.500 for other provinces to pay their own bills.

00:28:55.940 And that's not what the purpose of it

00:28:58.540 even was initially set out to be.

00:29:01.000 And these are things that should have been discussed

00:29:03.480 through the course of this campaign.

00:29:05.040 But unfortunately, again,

00:29:06.420 due to the incredible unpopularity

00:29:09.140 of Jason Kenney these days,

00:29:11.260 and I've been seeing that discussion.

00:29:12.480 I've been having it on social media

00:29:13.800 with people who are very conservative, very outspoken, saying the equalization is terrible,

00:29:18.340 but you know what? I'm so ticked off at Kenny, I'm going to give him the finger and vote against

00:29:21.960 this thing, which I think is a foolish way to do it, but that's their democratic right. So it's

00:29:26.800 just sad because you have some moral authority. If you could come in though with, I mean,

00:29:30.840 this isn't an internet poll. This isn't a Twitter poll. This isn't a commissioned newspaper poll.

00:29:35.720 This would have been across the province at a controlled setting. You could say 70% of this

00:29:41.520 province does not like this program, let's talk, let's do something about it. And it's not going

00:29:46.320 to be that strong now. Okay. Well, if she's ready, we're going to be bringing in a guest of ours

00:29:53.260 and actually now a contributor for the Western Standard, the one and only Danielle Smith,

00:29:58.060 if we can bring her into the feed now. Oh, I didn't even have my earpiece in yet. But good

00:30:04.440 evening, Danielle. How are you doing? Well, hello. It's almost like after what Corey Morgan just

00:30:08.520 said. Speaking of unpopular politicians who don't have anything to add to the equalization debate

00:30:15.120 except for to turn it the other way. I wonder if that's why you brought me on.

00:30:22.080 Give us your prediction for this evening for the Calgary mayoral race and then maybe going to

00:30:26.440 Edmonton. Tell us how you think that's going to break down. Well, first of all, let me just talk

00:30:30.300 about equalization because I do think we're going to see a strong mandate. I think it'll be

00:30:34.080 at least two-thirds, maybe a little bit higher. I think a lot of people in the end, when it comes

00:30:40.100 right down to it, it doesn't matter whether or not you like Jason Kenney. What matters is getting a

00:30:44.520 fair deal for this province. So I hope people make the right decision on that. In Edmonton and

00:30:48.560 Calgary, unfortunately, I'm expecting a bit more of the same. I'm expecting that people are going

00:30:53.240 to vote in another progressive council in both Edmonton and Calgary. I have expected that,

00:30:58.380 I 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.

00:31:15.320 And 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.

00:31:25.600 They don't give money. They don't volunteer. They don't find out who their candidate is until the

00:31:30.500 last minute. We do seem to have a lot of interest on the part of candidates. So we end up splitting

00:31:34.880 the vote seven ways from Sunday, but we can't seem to consolidate the vote in any meaningful way that

00:31:40.540 allows us to win seats. And that's what it comes down to. We have to win seats. And the reason why

00:31:44.580 I'm so frustrated that we don't have an interest in municipal politics is that's where politicians

00:31:49.620 cut their teeth. They build their profile. They learn how to do lawmaking so that if they do want

00:31:55.140 to make the leap to provincial or federal politics. They're not an unknown quantity. The left have

00:32:00.260 figured this out. We can't seem to figure it out on the conservative side of the spectrum,

00:32:04.040 and I'm fearful that we're just going to see a replay of that in both of our major cities tonight.

00:32:10.300 Danielle, forgive me if you answered this and I couldn't hear it because I was figuring out my

00:32:14.800 earpiece. How do you think it's going to, I heard your prediction for Edmonton, but did you make a

00:32:19.760 prediction for how you think the mayor's chair, and maybe you can add a bit on your prediction

00:32:23.520 for council in Calgary this evening? Yeah, sorry, I did end up going through that. But I can,

00:32:29.580 you know, I can repeat myself if you like. Why not? There are some good candidates in Calgary.

00:32:36.760 If I want to sort of zero in on some of the conservative candidates that I think are likely

00:32:42.700 to win some new faces. Dan McLean is a candidate in Ward 13. He's taking on an incumbent, an

00:32:50.140 incumbent who, incidentally, Diane Collier-Kart, said when she first got elected that she'd only

00:32:54.800 served two terms. Well, I think she's on her fourth or fifth term now, and I think it's really

00:32:58.960 hurt her in that war. You can outstate your welcome, but he's run a really strong campaign.

00:33:03.800 And the reason I want to flag him is that Calgary always seems to have that voice that is a bit

00:33:10.600 oppositional, pointing out things that may be against what the administration wants. It's

00:33:16.180 prepared to be a bit of the thorn in the side. And we need that with Farkas no longer being in 1.00

00:33:21.020 that role on a council position. And so this guy could be the Farkas to Farkas. I think he could

00:33:26.380 be. Again, though, you think, I mean, you should tell me, I didn't hear what your prediction was

00:33:30.520 earlier. If the vote consolidates, if the conservative vote consolidates around Jeremy

00:33:35.880 Farkas, he can win. But we have this habit of putting up too many conservative candidates. So

00:33:42.140 I think Jeff Davison pulls away from Farkas. I think that Bradfield pulls away from Farkas. And 0.99

00:33:49.220 if those two, if those votes are relatively strong, I think we're going to end up seeing

00:33:55.140 Jody Gondek win. I think we've got a similar dynamic happening in Edmonton, that Mike Nichols

00:34:00.200 is a very similar candidate to Jeremy Farkas. And because there's strong former council members

00:34:06.140 in Kim Kruschel and Michael Oshry, I even quite like the outsider candidate, the business

00:34:11.140 candidate, Cheryl Watson. I just think the conservative vote is split too many ways in

00:34:15.280 Edmonton. And as a result, you're likely to see Amarjeet Sohi win. I quite like John Zadek. He's

00:34:20.060 the candidate in what was formerly known as Warren 3. I apologize. I don't have the indigenous names

00:34:26.400 in front of me. I hope somebody's not offended by that. I will make sure that I have it in front of

00:34:30.580 me. But I think John Zadek is a little bit of that same kind of, just brings a conservative

00:34:37.860 of common sense sensibility so i hope he ends up winning again because i think it's good to have

00:34:42.260 that voice on council and in both the cities particularly if they do end up voting uh by and

00:34:48.100 large to to restore progressive candidates i think your predictions especially for the calgary mayoral

00:34:54.900 race uh are are bang on you've i think a lot of the dynamics and none of this is watertight these

00:35:02.740 These are very generalized because there's no parties officially in municipal politics.

00:35:07.380 But I think we saw a lot of some of these moderate center-right-ish candidates in Calgary.

00:35:14.480 Some of them are very qualified and intelligent, but probably didn't really stand out from the pack policy-wise or style-wise.

00:35:22.760 Bradfield, Jeff Davison.

00:35:26.260 And 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.

00:35:35.780 They're like, this is our guy. And the conservative movement and establishment in Calgary more or less said, okay, we'll accept him.

00:35:44.720 And 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.

00:35:56.120 And so it was a bit more of a divided field coming in here.

00:36:00.100 I think some of the business communities probably started to consolidate him late in the game,

00:36:03.440 knowing that he is the only candidate that's going to have any hope of defeating Jody Gondek.

00:36:10.180 I don't know if you would agree with that analysis or not.

00:36:13.220 Maybe give me your thoughts and tell me, is it too late, though, for that consolidation to take place?

00:36:18.980 Well, I was supporting another candidate at the municipal level, a guy by the name of Zane Novak,

00:36:24.280 who I thought had a really good resume, good business experience,

00:36:27.300 good experience in the nonprofit sector at the head of the Kirby Center.

00:36:30.640 But he just couldn't break through.

00:36:33.240 But I got approached by Preston Manning a couple of weeks ago saying,

00:36:37.300 maybe you should give Jeremy Farkas another look because he does need to have that consolidated support.

00:36:42.360 And so you're very right.

00:36:44.240 I think that Preston Manning, because Jeremy Farkas was a young protege of his,

00:36:48.380 he worked at the Manning Center, he was responsible for that vote tracker

00:36:51.940 and also the reports that found out that Calgary City Council was one that met behind closed doors

00:36:58.220 more than any other major council across the country.

00:37:00.420 So he came in with a pretty good pedigree.

00:37:03.060 And as a result, I think Preston would like to see him get elected

00:37:05.820 and wanted to gather some of the voices in the business community who had been supporting other candidates.

00:37:12.480 So I saw that begin a couple of weeks ago.

00:37:15.200 I'm not sure if it was soon enough.

00:37:18.140 I think it probably needed to happen more at the beginning of October.

00:37:21.940 I 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.

00:37:35.200 And 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.

00:37:46.720 And 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?

00:38:05.100 I think he would have won. But I think what happened is it turned into, are you still afraid

00:38:10.640 of COVID? And if you're still afraid of COVID, who are you going to vote for to stand up to

00:38:16.220 Jason Kenney, who's not doing enough to protect you? And that was the position that Jodi Gondek

00:38:22.980 ended up forging all the way back months ago. I was so surprised at how strident she was on that

00:38:29.080 issue. But it turns out that here we are at the tail end of a fourth wave. And that may be the

00:38:34.600 deciding factor is that if people are voting with that ballot question in mind, that may be why

00:38:39.980 Jeremy Farkas looks a little shakier in the last couple of weeks and why it is the consolidation

00:38:45.140 was so important. Now, I don't know that we saw the same dynamic in Edmonton. I think generally

00:38:51.580 speaking, the candidates there, the sense that I got is they were deferring to Dr. Dina Hinshaw

00:38:56.880 and the province and weren't necessarily trying to override those decisions. I think they seem to

00:39:02.040 been a bit more deferential than calgary and that's a smart position to take if you're a

00:39:06.600 political candidate i mean why wear the problems that jason kenney is wearing one way or the other

00:39:12.120 just allow that to be a provincial issue it's so polarizing and divisive and i i think unfortunately

00:39:17.880 that jeremy farkas may have had um a bit of a misstep in stepping into it the way he did

00:39:23.960 and and getting a bit of a backlash for it well uh before i throw the host share here to corey

00:39:30.280 and bring in some of our other in-studio guests.

00:39:33.220 Maybe I'll just kind of ask you a follow-up question on that.

00:39:39.480 Do you think the kind of looming elephant in the room of,

00:39:43.020 we know that Jason Kenney is having at least some impact

00:39:46.520 on the provincial referendum on equalization,

00:39:49.440 but do you think he's having any kind of measurable impact

00:39:54.420 on the big city mayoral races and potentially council races,

00:39:58.840 perhaps acting as a retardant on the vote of the more conservative aligned candidates. 0.95

00:40:05.140 You know, I did see something, I don't know how viral it went, but I did see

00:40:09.140 some Twitter exchange that was getting circulated from when Jason Kenney back in 2017 was telling

00:40:17.280 Jeremy Farkas to keep his chin up. And so I wonder if that was being highlighted as a way of trying

00:40:24.120 to suggest that Jeremy Farkas would have been too close to Jason Kenney. And for those who don't

00:40:29.640 like the premier or are angry at the premier right now to try to hive away some of his vote,

00:40:34.040 I don't feel like Jeremy Farkas has really been all that much of a premier's guy. He seems to be

00:40:41.800 kind of his own guy when it comes to how he votes on council and the kind of things that

00:40:45.880 he cares about. I really get the feeling that he cares a lot about municipal issues.

00:40:49.560 He's not one of these municipal council members who always have an eye on a higher prize.

00:40:55.160 That's not the sense that I get from him.

00:40:56.600 So it probably is a bit unfair to try to tarnish him that way.

00:41:00.540 And I watched Mike Nichols' campaign pretty closely because I was on his email list.

00:41:05.120 I didn't get the sense that he was trying to embrace the provincial party in any way either.

00:41:13.480 So it could well be that the two candidates that you would think would be most aligned

00:41:17.280 with the UCP were taking great effort to make sure that they didn't get too closely tied or

00:41:23.300 tarnished by some of the premier's problems that he's having right now in popularity.

00:41:29.020 Fortunate. I mean, COVID has just thrown a wrench into everything. I mean, all the rules are out the

00:41:34.680 window. We've got a unique crisis going on. We've got a divided population. I mean, it's not

00:41:39.240 necessarily right or left. People are afraid. They're tired. They're grouchy. I agree with what

00:41:46.320 you'd said you know jeremy kind of maybe he took a an individual liberty position in a sense but it

00:41:51.420 was a losing one when you look at the polls throughout the entire province i mean maybe

00:41:54.740 20 percent of very vociferous supporters were against vaccine passports and restrictions but

00:41:59.520 the vast majority wanted those and they fell perhaps feel a little unsafe supporting jeremy

00:42:03.440 right now oh i know cory you and i probably uh derek and dave too we're on the losing side of

00:42:10.420 that to be i shouldn't presume to speak for any of you but i've been pretty open in saying that

00:42:15.140 And I think focus protection is the right answer.

00:42:18.180 Early treatment to keep people out of hospital is the answer.

00:42:21.320 Trying to get that monoclonal antibody treatment that Ron DeSantis has brought in,

00:42:25.240 the same treatment that Donald Trump got, that is the answer.

00:42:28.640 But these continued lockdowns and that being the only answer is part of what's causing,

00:42:33.540 I think, the provincial problem is that the premier is not charting out a different course.

00:42:38.040 And so what you're seeing is people are scared.

00:42:40.060 When people are scared and the only answer is being offered is lockdown,

00:42:43.860 then they're going to be supporting the candidate who is the most strident when it comes to lockdown

00:42:50.940 or vaccine passports or vaccine mandates.

00:42:53.680 So I don't like the track that we're going down, especially since I don't see when it ends.

00:42:59.740 And this is going to be something that the next mayors are going to have to deal with in both Edmonton and Calgary,

00:43:04.500 is that we have seen around the world that it looks like in Israel it's never going to end. 0.84

00:43:09.880 it looks like they're turning on and off vaccine passports depending on what your booster status is

00:43:14.520 but then you look at the uk and denmark sweden and norway and they made a decision to end them

00:43:19.560 all together i don't know if we've made a decision in this province but there's real leadership to be

00:43:25.160 had on the part of the mayors to lead that discussion i think one of the biggest reasons

00:43:30.120 that the premier has had such a difficult difficult time in the last year and a half

00:43:34.520 He's had no major allies. He's had essentially the mayor of Calgary, Nahed Nenshi, saying,

00:43:39.960 hit us harder. Same with Don Ives in Edmonton. Hit us harder. Same with Rachel Notley. Hit us

00:43:44.120 harder. And so it would be nice to see some balance and some support for the premier to be

00:43:50.040 able to be encouraged to take a position that's more along the lines of liberty and the true

00:43:54.360 balance of lives and livelihoods. I don't think he's had an opportunity to do that because he

00:43:59.000 He doesn't really have anybody who's been pressing in favor of that, aside from a few voices in the commentariat.

00:44:07.320 Yeah, absolutely. It's just been a lot of ugly politics played with what's been a crisis.

00:44:11.240 And 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.

00:44:19.360 And he just keeps wearing it.

00:44:21.860 So thank you very much for coming in.

00:44:23.480 We're going to check in with you again a little later tonight.

00:44:25.460 Maybe we'll have some results to chew on by then.

00:44:27.940 and we'll go into that at that time.

00:44:30.580 Corey, let's just see if we can have a little wager here

00:44:32.860 because I think that the equalization vote is going to be above 70%.

00:44:36.100 Are you going to take the below 70% and we'll see who's writing in about 15 minutes or so?

00:44:39.860 I'll take the below and I really hope to lose.

00:44:42.960 Me too. We'll talk to you next hour.

00:44:45.360 Thanks. See you in a bit, Danielle.

00:44:47.880 Okay, and I'm joined with Josh Andrus here who snuck in through our movie magic

00:44:52.560 while Danielle was taking up the screen there. 0.99

00:44:55.440 How are you doing tonight?

00:44:56.240 I'm good. How are you?

00:44:57.520 Good, good.

00:44:58.580 So, yes, we may be waiting a while for some results, so we need a lot of more.

00:45:02.320 Well, polls haven't even closed yet, 15 more minutes.

00:45:05.060 Yeah.

00:45:05.440 And don't forget, if you're standing in line at 8 o'clock,

00:45:08.520 you will still be allowed to vote even though the lineup could be 100 people deep.

00:45:12.980 Yes.

00:45:13.340 As I've said, City of Calgary, please prove me wrong,

00:45:16.440 but terribly slow with results in the past.

00:45:19.200 Yeah, we've had some long nights of babbling away, but we're good at babbling.

00:45:22.960 We are the king of babble. 0.90

00:45:24.840 We're full of a lot of something.

00:45:25.880 And we get people reminding us of that all the time.

00:45:29.020 So speaking to somebody who can speak ad nauseum as well,

00:45:31.460 we've got Franco Tarzano, formerly of Alberta,

00:45:34.780 abandoned us for Central Canada, the home of the enemy in Ottawa there

00:45:39.560 as the Canadian Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:45:42.660 How are you doing, Franco?

00:45:43.600 Hey, I'm doing good.

00:45:44.640 I knew you were going to bring in a joke about me babbling.

00:45:47.120 Well, some sort of joke about you one way or another.

00:45:49.560 I can get more tasteless yet.

00:45:52.060 Well, hey, thanks, gents, for having me on today.

00:45:54.320 Oh, I appreciate it.

00:45:55.100 So 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.

00:46:06.500 I mean, we've tried and there have been people campaigning hard and Josh has been campaigning and lots of people.

00:46:10.540 But just trying to get traction on that's been difficult.

00:46:12.880 But what do you, what are you expecting to see tonight, Franco?

00:46:15.500 Well, I mean, we're hoping for a strong yes vote, of course, right?

00:46:18.460 We 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.

00:46:27.180 And one of the things that we've been doing is just trying to show the cost of equalization to Alberta taxpayers.

00:46:32.560 We put out some numbers showing that since its inception in 1957, equalization has cost Alberta taxpayers about $67 billion.

00:46:41.560 This year alone, equalization will cost an Alberta family of four, 2,600 smackers, right?

00:46:47.700 So it certainly is a ton of money that equalization has cost.

00:46:51.320 And as all you gentlemen know, I mean, equalization is just one federal program that redistributes money away from Alberta taxpayers.

00:46:58.020 If 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.

00:47:12.380 And 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?

00:47:23.980 Well, absolute hostility to the economic driver of the province.

00:47:28.800 It's been frustrating.

00:47:30.540 Josh?

00:47:31.220 That was my question.

00:47:32.220 I wanted you to comment on the hostility.

00:47:34.080 I know it's, at least from my point of view, and based on our supporters here in Alberta,

00:47:41.400 hostility is a big driving force behind the no vote.

00:47:45.420 But I guess now that you're the federal director, are you seeing that directed towards Alberta

00:47:51.720 from other parts of the country based on the fact that we're having this referendum?

00:47:56.400 Not from everyday Canadians outside of Alberta.

00:47:59.840 Definitely not from everyday Canadians.

00:48:02.220 I mean, most Canadians that I talk to about these struggles seem to be pretty sympathetic to what's been going on in Alberta.

00:48:08.640 And 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.

00:48:18.660 I think most Canadians are, first of all, quite surprised when they hear what's going on.

00:48:23.420 And they do think that Albertans have been done unjustly, if you will.

00:48:28.640 Well, and Josh and Corey and Dave, I mean, we talk about these huge contributions that Alberta

00:48:33.860 taxpayers have made for the rest of Canada. But let's get into the hostility. Let's look at some

00:48:38.380 of the specific policies, right? The federal government has imposed a no more pipelines law,

00:48:42.960 a discriminatory tanker ban on the West Coast. We saw the federal government reject the Northern

00:48:47.900 Gateway Pipeline, move the regulatory goalposts on Energy East Pipeline. And recently, we saw the

00:48:55.220 US, the Biden administration, pull the plug on the Keystone XL pipeline. And what did the Trudeau

00:49:01.200 government do? Well, barely bat in an eye. And I think that we have to understand here,

00:49:07.080 especially Alberta taxpayers, is that once this dust from the pandemic settles,

00:49:12.060 these roadblocks to Alberta's development are still going to be there if Albertans don't take

00:49:17.240 a stand, if Albertans aren't willing to fight for fairness. Yeah, well, Josh was bringing up an

00:49:23.180 interesting point like aside from the attitude or how people are receiving it over there

00:49:26.100 is anybody even really talking about this in central canada or is this you know really getting

00:49:30.740 much coverage because i mean we're kind of in our own little world over here too i mean

00:49:34.340 is it of interest over there well i think it's gonna get more coverage if there is a a clear

00:49:41.100 majority vote on the yes side right if if the clear majority of albertans show up they vote

00:49:47.300 uh that the status quo and equalization must go i think that's what really pushes the narrative

00:49:52.380 to kitchen tables from coast to coast. Now, one thing I want to talk about, too, is I'm the

00:49:58.340 federal director now here in Ottawa. Well, it's in the best interest of all Canadians to really

00:50:03.880 take a hard look at equalization and to really tackle this federal scheme for a bunch of reasons.

00:50:10.040 But let's start off with just the federal government's debt, $1 trillion in debt. Of

00:50:14.560 course, equalization is a federal program. But let's look at the numbers here. When it was first

00:50:19.600 created in 1957 equalization was about 1.3 billion dollars in today's dollars today is 21 billion

00:50:28.240 dollars so that's a 1500 percent increase to the size of equalization to the cost of equalization

00:50:34.080 and we can't even say that this program is benefiting canadians i mean first and foremost

00:50:40.240 is the reason that when you have these provinces that receive equalization dollars from the federal

00:50:45.940 government well well it lets those politicians rely on bad policies it lets those politicians

00:50:51.460 rely on tax dollars from other provinces and it lets them rely on that more and it allows them to

00:50:58.100 rely less on good solid economic policies to actually grow their provinces uh economies

00:51:07.060 yeah um actually no i don't have anything that's all right hey hey let me keep let me

00:51:12.900 keep babbling on a few on a few more reasons that canadian taxpayers even outside of alberta

00:51:19.220 saskatchewan places like that uh should really want to tackle this this equalization scheme

00:51:24.340 so first of all the whole intent of this program is to equalize services across provinces right

00:51:31.460 to make sure different provinces can offer a relatively equal level of government services

00:51:37.300 across canada now that sounds nice in theory of course in practice what we've seen is that it's

00:51:41.860 it's forced taxpayers in places like Alberta to directly subsidize politicians in places like

00:51:46.820 Quebec who seem intent on roadblocking Alberta's development. Now, that's completely unfair.

00:51:51.700 But the thing that we also have to remember here is that this is a federal program.

00:51:56.500 How is the federal government going to be able to equalize provincial government services

00:52:01.060 across Canada, right? We have to think about that for a second. But another point that we

00:52:05.940 need to remember here is that just because you throw more tax dollars at any type of problem,

00:52:11.140 it doesn't mean it's actually going to improve the problem we've seen that firsthand in alberta

00:52:15.540 right the alberta government is the last i checked was what the biggest per person provincial

00:52:20.500 government spender if it's spent like the other large provinces it would spend about 10 billion

00:52:24.900 dollars less of course on a per person basis um look at health care alberta i believe it the last

00:52:32.740 i checked was a second highest per person spending on health care but the blue ribbon panel showed

00:52:38.260 that Alberta doesn't, the Alberta government doesn't deliver the best services when it comes

00:52:42.020 to healthcare. So what makes us think that just throwing more tax dollars to some of these

00:52:46.420 provinces are actually going to make these provincial governments offer better services?

00:52:51.140 I think it's completely absurd. And one more point, gentlemen, and then I'll stop babbling.

00:52:57.060 But just think about how absurd this program is. When you have Newfoundland and Labrador,

00:53:01.860 that is a so-called half province, where their taxpayers pay into this through their federal

00:53:07.300 taxes. They don't get any of the equalization money back. But just before the last federal

00:53:12.220 election, the Trudeau government announced a $5 billion bailout to Newfoundland and Labrador.

00:53:18.040 How absurd is that? The system's not working if they're going to go to a side bailout with it.

00:53:24.100 And Teresa, one of the commenters pointed out, it's something I ranted a bit about before too,

00:53:27.960 but Quebec has a good viable natural gas field. We know in Alberta, those gas royalties, as you

00:53:33.520 said, yeah, we could piss them away quite effectively. But all the same, they are a good

00:53:37.540 government revenue. Quebec said, we're not even going to develop it. We don't need it. We want

00:53:42.080 Alberta to keep developing theirs, but not send pipelines across our province. But we want the

00:53:46.700 money. That gets really tiresome. Well, you know what? Underlying this whole assumption of

00:53:54.460 equalization is essentially that policies don't really matter, right? Essentially, that certain

00:54:02.040 provinces just stumble into extra wealth and resources and that because of that, they should

00:54:09.840 be able to pay for other provincial government services. Now, of course, we're talking about

00:54:13.680 provincial taxpayers, not provincial governments, but let's tackle that assumption because of

00:54:19.180 course we know that policies absolutely do matter, right? Not only was Alberta blessed with natural

00:54:26.080 resources, but Albertans have had pro-entrepreneurial policies in the past, right? Like that is a huge

00:54:34.440 factor in all of this, where you look at some of these have-not provinces, they haven't had

00:54:39.540 pro-resource development policies. So I feel like underlying the whole assumption of equalization

00:54:46.140 is that, well, policies don't matter, but of course they do. And I think we need to take that

00:54:51.120 into consideration as well we certainly shouldn't have a almost no strings attached program that is

00:54:56.880 just redistributing money essentially from taxpayers in one provinces uh to provincial

00:55:01.680 governments in another yeah um just on policy and and so on and the debt um most provincial

00:55:10.800 governments over the past 18 12 probably longer months um have seen their debt levels increase

00:55:18.400 dramatically given that the equalization program is designed to equalize services across each

00:55:25.920 province at reasonable tax reasonably similar tax rates do you see if changes aren't made to

00:55:32.480 equalize equalization that the program's discrepancies could grow even worse if we

00:55:38.140 don't do anything to change it uh do i think the negative incentives from equalization could get

00:55:44.820 even worse. Do you think Alberta could pay more than we do now? Yeah, I mean, that's tough. I

00:55:50.800 don't really have an answer for that question, unfortunately. But let me talk about these

00:55:56.660 provincial governments, because I think you launched me into a nice little place because

00:56:01.060 the municipal elections are also going across. Well, one thing that we've seen during the pandemic

00:56:05.300 is not just a massive increase in government debt, both federally and provincially, but we've seen

00:56:09.820 this huge divide. And Corey, you and I have talked about this at length, right? A huge divide between

00:56:13.720 Those 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.

00:56:23.000 Well, 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.

00:56:32.320 We have similar research showing thousands of Alberta government employees received at least or received a pay raise during this pandemic.

00:56:41.380 And 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.

00:56:52.180 And 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.

00:57:12.620 Now, 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.

00:57:34.460 So I'm going to throw something different out.

00:57:36.500 Since 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.

00:57:48.200 Hopefully, 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.

00:57:55.400 Is there room for other provinces to, as you said, you know, it's not serving Newfoundland very well right now.

00:57:59.740 It's not serving Saskatchewan.

00:58:01.520 You guys are a national organization.

00:58:03.020 Would you perhaps be trying to prompt other provinces to get on board?

00:58:05.580 Because there would be a lot more weight if more than one province got up and said, you know, let's re-examine this mess.

00:58:11.480 Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That is a huge priority for us here at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:58:16.580 And also, it's just a huge priority for me.

00:58:18.400 I mean, one of the things that I'm trying to sell is what I was talking to beforehand.

00:58:24.020 It's very clear that equalization is harmful for Alberta taxpayers,

00:58:28.760 especially when you have damaging policies the way the federal government has done to Alberta

00:58:34.880 throughout Alberta's downturn. But I've also been trying to, and will continue to show

00:58:40.960 the rest of Canadians why equalization is fundamentally a bad program, has these perverse

00:58:47.900 incentives that we've been talking about. And we're going to try to continue to build that

00:58:51.060 narrative over the coming months and perhaps years. But another thing that we've seen over

00:58:56.220 last little while is we've seen these premiers in even in provinces that receive equalization

00:59:02.860 starting to acknowledge the perverse incentives that come with equalization we actually heard it

00:59:08.380 loud and clear from new brunswick's premier premier higgs um and even francois legault in quebec we

00:59:15.020 we know there's been a lot of back and forth between him and albertans but even he has uh

00:59:19.820 even he's somewhat acknowledged the fact that equalization does have these perverse incentives

00:59:25.180 and that he would like Quebec to rely more on growing the province's own wealth.

00:59:32.340 All right. Well, we're coming up on the top of the hour.

00:59:35.240 So anybody who's in line to vote in Alberta right now,

00:59:38.980 they're going to draw that line on the sidewalk and say,

00:59:41.580 everybody in line at this point can vote and everybody else is done.

00:59:46.200 So I hope as many people as possible got out.

00:59:48.400 We had some interesting advanced polling numbers coming out there.

00:59:51.400 And hopefully with those shiny new voting tabulation machines,

00:59:56.120 the City of Calgary will have some results in before 1 in the morning

00:59:58.740 or something for us to start chewing on.

01:00:00.880 So thank you very much for the work you guys have been doing

01:00:03.740 on this equalization referendum and Josh and others.

01:00:06.560 Like, you know, this is such an important thing.

01:00:08.640 It's too bad a lot of events beyond our own control,

01:00:11.480 whether it was the pandemic, whether it was our domestic politics,

01:00:14.580 and a number of things have distracted from it.

01:00:17.040 But hopefully without your efforts and people talking,

01:00:19.520 they've taken it seriously and they've gotten out

01:00:21.720 and they've made their acts the right way

01:00:22.820 and we'll have a tool to work towards renegotiating

01:00:25.480 our position and things right now.

01:00:27.300 Yeah, I hope so.

01:00:28.360 Please, Albertans, go out there, vote yes.

01:00:30.180 Well, I guess hopefully you already have, vote yes.

01:00:32.480 And send us out here in Ottawa a message.

01:00:35.540 Send us a real loud message.

01:00:36.840 We need it.

01:00:37.820 Excellent.

01:00:38.200 Looking forward to it.

01:00:38.820 Thanks a lot for joining us, Franco.

01:00:40.100 And where can we find more information about you guys

01:00:41.880 and what you're up to?

01:00:42.800 Check us out at taxpayer.com.

01:00:44.260 We've got a ton of resources in the newsroom

01:00:46.360 and we've got a bunch of petitions

01:00:47.380 that you can sign there as well.

01:00:48.460 Right on. I'm certain we'll be talking again soon.

01:00:51.960 Okay, guys. Cheers.

01:00:53.200 Thanks.

01:00:55.960 Okay, so Dave, it's been a bit here.

01:00:58.460 I know you've been hammering away multitasking, writing, and reporting.

01:01:02.240 Have we got anything new been surfacing in the last half hour or so?

01:01:06.360 No.

01:01:08.120 Thanks.

01:01:08.700 No, I'm just poking around.

01:01:11.120 You know, as you just mentioned, polls are now closed.

01:01:13.900 Just the counting, I guess, will not stop until or will not start until everybody that's in line is done.

01:01:23.240 And, you know, just hopefully we get some results coming in soon.

01:01:28.600 Have you looked into this very much?

01:01:30.720 I mean, I know there's the, you know, whole Dominion counting machine thing.

01:01:35.780 And Calgary's not using those, but I believe Edmonton is.

01:01:39.100 Whether that'll impact things or not, personally, I don't think so.

01:01:42.120 but I know a lot of people are very concerned about it.

01:01:44.320 Have you seen any reports on the types of scrutineering they're going to have

01:01:48.280 or things, you know, candidates can have ways to watch these things

01:01:50.640 and make sure that things haven't been rigged?

01:01:52.160 I mean, they're keeping paper backups and things such as that, right?

01:01:54.340 Sure. Yeah, each camp will have their scrutineers in the counting rooms,

01:01:58.880 but it's just traditionally been very, very slow in Calgary.

01:02:03.360 And it frustrates the hell out of the media

01:02:06.380 because they're all sitting there just like us,

01:02:08.780 talking about, you know, just talking about babbling on and stuff like that.

01:02:14.760 You know, to me, there's no reason why votes can't be tabulated quickly.

01:02:18.600 Votes can't be tabulated every couple of hours, so you've got a running total.

01:02:23.700 You know, why can't the counters, you know, have got the number of votes ready to go within an hour?

01:02:31.280 You know, surely, you look at the federal election, they got their results out very quickly.

01:02:36.760 But, you know, sometimes it takes later and longer, and, you know, we all understand that.

01:02:43.660 But Calgary's been a constant source of frustration over the years, and we can all just hope for the best tonight.

01:02:50.940 Yeah, well, we'll be looking forward to it.

01:02:53.300 I should put that out there in a reminder.

01:02:56.320 We have a new show that's been coming on, and it's been coming out with a special.

01:02:59.800 It's been Uncensored, it's called, and we had Danielle Smith, who was on earlier, was on that.

01:03:06.040 Rob Anderson. Rob Anderson, yeah. And Gort, no.

01:03:11.780 Well, the names always escape you when you need them.

01:03:14.200 Oh, there you go. There's the graphic. Thanks, James.

01:03:17.700 Former LA Bruce McAllister and broadcaster. And you see,

01:03:21.940 that's something we noted with the last Uncensored they did when they got together and talked,

01:03:25.460 was he did a fantastic job. You can tell that professional broadcaster who knows how to slip up

01:03:29.720 and still just keep talking away without that big hang-up. I'm still trying to

01:03:33.740 master that. Bruce did a really good job and it was a fascinating program. And so we have one

01:03:41.680 coming up on that mandatory vaccination. Actually, can we pull that up one more time? What was the

01:03:45.740 date on that one you had there? Because it's well worth tuning into. There we go. Thursdays at

01:03:51.860 one o'clock or no, at seven o'clock Mountain Standard Time. So tune in. You can see that

01:03:57.220 panel and those guys, I mean, they're great and they're covering some issues. And I mean,

01:04:00.460 that's something, it's a top issue. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's divisive. It's dicey. It's

01:04:06.740 scary, but it's on everybody's mind. The vaccination mandates. And, you know, certainly

01:04:11.520 Danielle knows their stuff too and is always entertaining and controversial. Yes, that too. 0.99

01:04:18.760 But yeah, I voted this morning at the Pritis way down in the hinterland there. And our local 1.00

01:04:25.400 councilor was acclaimed. So the only ballot questions I had were the time change and the

01:04:32.780 equalization referendum and then the Senate election. But there were only three volunteers

01:04:37.360 sitting and they were not volunteers, they're paid, but they're sitting with that box. It was

01:04:40.860 actually pretty busy. So that's, it's going to be interesting. You know, we're going to be getting

01:04:43.360 late results from a lot of those rural constituencies, trying to read in on how things

01:04:49.580 work on, like I was talking a little bit earlier about demographics that are more inclined to vote

01:04:52.940 rural areas and areas with a lot of seniors in that

01:04:56.680 they're going to be coming out in those spots and because there's not a civic

01:05:01.060 election to draw others it's only going to be motivated voters popping out and

01:05:05.040 putting those ballots in so even though they're the smaller area of Alberta they might

01:05:08.740 we might see we're really going to see some clear patterns if we're going to call anything

01:05:13.100 later tonight because of all of those outlying areas

01:05:16.240 especially on equalization on the Senate

01:05:20.380 I know that Elections Alberta isn't going to be giving a final result until October the 26th.

01:05:26.380 I don't think Edmonton is even going to report tonight.

01:05:29.380 So it'll be really interesting to see what the results come in.

01:05:32.380 I'll probably be looking at the number of votes.

01:05:35.380 I assume that it'll probably be a little bit heavier on the no side for equalization in Edmonton,

01:05:41.380 whereas Calgary will probably be a little bit heavier on the yes side,

01:05:43.380 and rural should be heavy, heavy yes.

01:05:45.380 So it really depends tonight on where the results are coming in.

01:05:49.380 And I don't necessarily, I don't think we will be calling the equalization referendum tonight

01:05:53.500 just because Edmonton is such a huge section of the population

01:05:56.840 and they have a tendency to vote against the rest of the province

01:05:59.480 to the point that it's almost considered to be a lost cause for conservatives.

01:06:03.800 One of the referendum questions we haven't talked about tonight is daylight savings time.

01:06:09.600 The question is, do you want to get rid of it?

01:06:12.400 Are you fed up of springing ahead an hour and falling back an hour?

01:06:17.040 Some people don't like to lose that extra hour's sleep,

01:06:19.580 and some people love gaining the extra hour.

01:06:22.460 It's going to be interesting because if it's approved,

01:06:25.520 it's going to mean, you know, in the winter in northern Alberta,

01:06:29.480 you're not going to see sunrise until 10.30 in the morning.

01:06:33.700 Any thoughts on that one, Corey or Josh?

01:06:35.680 Well, yeah, I mean, it hasn't grabbed a lot of interest for a couple of reasons

01:06:38.340 because there is absolutely no group that's been actually kind of taking a side

01:06:41.820 or pushing or really working on that one.

01:06:44.140 I mean, we've seen camps on the Floridation.

01:06:45.860 We've certainly seen camps on the equalization, but who's going to get in on the timesheet?

01:06:49.240 Even though I think most people are tired of it, now that we've got the chance to vote on it,

01:06:53.000 I'm not seeing much consensus about people saying we want to stick to what we've got.

01:07:00.680 I'm kind of ambivalent on it. I'm tired of changing the clocks.

01:07:03.680 I'd just like to say, okay, let's stop. I don't care which one.

01:07:06.700 We can do what I do.

01:07:07.660 Let's just stop.

01:07:08.300 My clocks are wrong six months out of the year, and I know that.

01:07:11.500 So, yeah, I love the spring. We spring ahead, my clocks are right again.

01:07:14.520 Yeah, that's one way, even that broken clock being right twice.

01:07:18.720 My microwave just says 12 o'clock permanently, so.

01:07:21.460 Yeah, there you go.

01:07:23.100 But I mean, you know, some of that talk, people like using that one.

01:07:25.540 Kids are going to walk to school in the dark.

01:07:26.840 I grew up in Banff.

01:07:28.300 We have mountains to the east of us, on the west side of the province.

01:07:31.100 I always walk to school in the dark.

01:07:32.480 It's not a big deal, you guys.

01:07:33.940 It's part of being in Canada.

01:07:35.400 I mean, some parts of the province, the kids are going to be later into the day walking in the dark than others.

01:07:40.620 But then you'll have more daylight at the end.

01:07:42.140 Maybe you'll be able to do some tobogganing after school and things when it would be getting dark on you.

01:07:45.780 Because you've got to remember, in Grand Prairie, that light starts failing on you at 4 o'clock

01:07:50.380 during the later part of winter as well.

01:07:53.600 So, I mean, you're only going to get so many daylight hours.

01:07:56.600 It's just a matter of when you're going to measure them, you know?

01:07:58.720 Well, it also puts us like three hours out of sync of Eastern Time, I think, isn't it?

01:08:03.240 Or is it one hour out of sync?

01:08:05.540 That's a good question.

01:08:07.860 It hasn't been well discussed, and that's why, you know,

01:08:09.940 Well, there's not a lot of information.

01:08:12.480 I voted no, so that's...

01:08:14.060 Yeah, I mean, the only thing I can think, though,

01:08:17.000 is I hope it's definitive one way or another,

01:08:20.100 because then it will turn into a fight.

01:08:21.720 If it's 51%, say, change it,

01:08:24.340 oh, you know, we're going to hear about it.

01:08:26.380 It's going to go.

01:08:27.400 Or the other way around, too.

01:08:28.940 Then it'll turn it from something

01:08:30.240 that nobody was interested in into a battle.

01:08:32.620 I honestly hope it's like 50-50, 0.97

01:08:34.760 just so we can watch the fallout from it.

01:08:37.360 Watch the world burn a little bit.

01:08:38.660 What's going to happen to the time change, yeah.

01:08:40.540 Either way, it's not going to affect turning back the clock at the end of this month.

01:08:44.820 May next month, or next year, but not this month.

01:08:48.080 And fluoridation is the other one that we haven't talked about.

01:08:51.280 It seems to be every election a plebiscite on fluoridation, and it's in, out, in, out.

01:08:57.540 Corey, your thoughts?

01:08:58.680 Yeah, the old in, out.

01:08:59.880 Well, fluoridation, and yeah, I'm old enough for a similar vintage.

01:09:04.860 we've been through that discussion a time or two or of the vintage to remember clockwork orange

01:09:09.400 uh i'm sick of it uh i i'm of the line i mean i i think the science is there it's good for teeth 0.94

01:09:17.460 it's good for kids but is it the role of government to stick it in your bloody water if you want it

01:09:21.380 go to the pharmacy and get fluoridated toothpaste or mouthwash or drops or rinse

01:09:25.840 it's just in case it comes down to the liberty is that the role of government to worry about my

01:09:30.180 kids teeth that's my view on it but where it's going to land on the referendum i don't know

01:09:35.440 the opponents argue why should their grass get fluoridated you know when you're when you're

01:09:41.660 watering the lawn uh so yeah it's uh i think the only thing that's going to come out of this is

01:09:47.440 it's going to be on the next election as a plebiscite oh yeah we'll be voting on this every

01:09:52.220 four years it's a calgary tradition we'll put it back in then we'll take it out we'll put it back

01:09:55.900 in and then we'll take it out that's fluoride yep well it's funny because this time when they

01:09:59.200 took it out, it was actually kind of a left-wing initiative. It was Drew Farrell who was really

01:10:03.080 pushing that with the anti-fluoridation movement, who

01:10:07.320 later Drew turned into, by the way, though, we do want to make it basically a gun to your

01:10:11.260 head to get a vaccination. So Drew is a little inconsistent in her forced medication by the state

01:10:15.200 thing, but a lot of people are. Corey, let me ask

01:10:19.300 you this question. I guess tonight is Naheed Nenshi's

01:10:23.080 last day of power. They lit up the Calgary Tower

01:10:27.140 last night in purple, in his honour.

01:10:31.720 You're not a big fan.

01:10:33.400 No.

01:10:33.640 You've written, you're not a big fan.

01:10:36.520 What do you think of the 11-year reign of Nenshi

01:10:38.560 and what are his legacies going to be?

01:10:41.460 Well, I mean, you know, from the social justice standpoint,

01:10:45.460 it was a person of colour who came in

01:10:47.660 and I think at that time people saw him as a fresh voice.

01:10:51.240 I mean, he campaigned as a pro-business,

01:10:54.560 new voice to rejuvenate. His legacy though, I mean, look at it right now. I mean, you can blame

01:11:00.160 a lot of outside things, but I saw, in my view, a progressive urban planning vision clashing with

01:11:07.040 economic reality. We've got a hollow donut of a downtown with some of the most impressive empty

01:11:11.240 bike lanes on the planet. You know, we've got a tense and hostile city council like none we've

01:11:18.000 seen in a decade. We've got, plus fighting with the regional areas, the municipal plans.

01:11:23.380 He had protests from the businesses with the business tax hikes.

01:11:27.520 I know his fans are certainly going to celebrate him and think he was a fantastic mayor.

01:11:31.720 But personally, I think he was a very, very polarizing, divisive, ideological man.

01:11:36.360 And I'll be happy to see his backside on the way out.

01:11:38.460 And it's unfortunate that Ninchet is probably going to replace him.

01:11:42.820 So I'm going to throw a question back at you.

01:11:45.000 We vote on senators today, and we might not have the results for a while.

01:11:49.180 But do you think that Trudeau will appoint Nenshi to the Senate, almost to point a finger

01:11:56.300 back in Alberta, saying, ha-ha, I'm not going to do what you want?

01:12:02.520 That's speculation.

01:12:04.440 It's speculation.

01:12:07.140 I guess the question for Trudeau is, would Nenshi go and fall asleep in his Senate chair

01:12:13.980 like all the other senators seem to do? 0.99

01:12:15.860 Or would he become a pain in the butt? 0.97

01:12:17.600 and, you know, become an activist senator. 0.95

01:12:22.500 I don't think Nenshi's ego would allow him not to have some sort of impact

01:12:27.760 or, you know, try to become a force in the Senate.

01:12:33.820 So Trudeau could be asking for trouble if he does that.

01:12:37.900 Yeah, well, in the Senate's where political careers go to die, 0.99

01:12:40.320 and Nenshi's still relatively young and has ambition, and he's vain enough.

01:12:45.240 I mean, does he want to sleep in the sleepy Senate?

01:12:46.920 He wants to be front and center. He wants to cut those ribbons. He wants to lead those parades.

01:12:51.820 I don't think he's going to go there, but we will see in the near future.

01:12:56.220 I had him pegged for Governor General, but I was a bit wrong on that.

01:13:00.020 Yeah, well, there still might be time.

01:13:03.120 Okay, so now we have a plethora of guests on the panel ready to go here.

01:13:08.280 So we had a bit of a shift.

01:13:11.840 Maybe I will bring them both in and just get some talk here.

01:13:14.840 We've got Jonathan Dennis on and Vitor Marciano.

01:13:19.560 Maybe I'll start with Jonathan quickly just to get a,

01:13:22.160 thanks for joining us, Jonathan,

01:13:23.620 and get an update from where you're at there.

01:13:25.540 Thank you for having me.

01:13:26.420 You know, it's been a very long campaign.

01:13:28.480 I've been very privileged to work with someone I really saw grow

01:13:32.140 and someone I admire more every day,

01:13:33.600 and that's who I'm hoping to be our mayor, Jeremy Farkas.

01:13:37.200 Excellent. Well, thanks.

01:13:38.260 And things are just, I guess,

01:13:39.700 starting to get rolling at the headquarters now.

01:13:41.720 The voting just stopped about 15 minutes ago,

01:13:43.580 and everybody's in eager anticipation well the voting has stopped but i'm getting reports from

01:13:48.380 other parts of the of the of calgary particularly in the outskirts of calgary uh where ironically

01:13:53.500 there is a higher propensity to vote conservative uh that there are still long lineups so what the

01:13:58.300 law is on this is if you're in line at eight o'clock you still get to vote regardless of how

01:14:02.940 long that it takes and if you recall correctly there was a issue with this in 2017 i had hoped

01:14:08.300 that elections calgary would have fixed this by this time yeah we keep hoping that our election

01:14:13.340 systems will fix all sorts of things and it never seems to change year after year after year uh it

01:14:18.380 seems to be almost getting worse i mean some really late nights waiting for results but at least let's

01:14:22.780 look on the good side the weather is pretty nice for this time of year i mean it could have been

01:14:26.460 people standing outside in minus 20 and a snowstorm so we have that it has been a good day and we're

01:14:33.580 hoping for a positive result but again the votes until the last vote is counted you don't have a

01:14:37.820 a result no absolutely and we're going to be hanging around a long time waiting for them

01:14:42.140 but we're stubborn so we've got vitor marciano coming in from edmonton and we've been uh

01:14:47.260 admitting that we are terribly light on our edmonton knowledge in this in this race and 0.90

01:14:51.740 we do have a lot of edmonton viewers and and listeners and i could really use an update from

01:14:57.180 out there on how things have been going vitor well let's put it this way um the edmonton race

01:15:03.020 has not gotten a ton of attention uh the the conservative strategist in me sort of says that

01:15:09.500 that the actual media itself did that on purpose um this was it's a big race i mean you have

01:15:17.420 an open seat for mayor you have four open council seats um you have changed boundaries lots of

01:15:24.860 possibilities that the new council the new mayor are going to be significantly different than the

01:15:28.940 the last council and the last mayor. And yet somehow the Edmonton Journal, the Edmonton Sun

01:15:35.460 and CBC Edmonton, who are sort of the three dominant players in local news, spent next to

01:15:43.180 no time covering the municipal election. And to give you a sense of that, last weekend on the

01:15:49.120 Thanksgiving weekend, I made a point on Saturday of going to the, you know, to edmontonjournal.com,

01:15:54.860 edmontonsun.com cbccalgary.ca slash edmonton and none of them had any stories on the merility race

01:16:04.240 none of them were covering what should be a particularly interesting race uh when i went

01:16:10.420 to global edmonton which is sort of the next biggest news outlet uh global television news

01:16:15.300 they had two stories on it um the net effect of that is that they've made this election

01:16:21.600 into a little bit of an election about name recognition.

01:16:26.680 And frankly, that benefits two of the top candidates for mayor,

01:16:34.760 Mike Nichol, who's center-right, and Amarjeet Sohi, who's center-center-left.

01:16:40.560 And in an election where very few issues get discussed

01:16:44.280 and there's only an extended amount of coverage,

01:16:48.480 or there isn't any extended coverage,

01:16:50.840 there's minimal coverage it becomes about personalities and name recognition and in

01:16:55.640 edmonton if uh if you can roll up the liberals and the new democrats you've got a pretty good

01:17:02.280 chance of beating the center-right candidate so uh we're we're going to have an interesting

01:17:07.080 election tonight in edmonton we're going to see if mike nickel can can maybe take advantage of a

01:17:12.840 of an increase in enthusiasm amongst his supporters his supporters are probably fewer in number

01:17:18.840 than Amarjeet Sohi supporters, but they're probably more intense. And maybe they'll show

01:17:25.160 up in higher numbers and that will get Mike a win. Like Calgary, right now, there are people

01:17:30.980 still in line to vote. We expect that there'll be parts of the city of Edmonton where they'll

01:17:35.780 be voting right up until about 8.45. Then the results come in relatively quickly after that,

01:17:40.940 because we're using the scan machines. So you get announcements pretty quickly after that.

01:17:45.720 But it's going to be, it's going to be a close election in Edmonton. You know, I expect Mike

01:17:52.400 Nichol, if things go well, could beat Emerjit Sohi. If things go as expected, he'll lose,

01:17:59.000 but not by very much. And then we've got some interesting open council seats. And, you know,

01:18:08.420 It 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.

01:18:28.640 But probably that comes as a function of the factor that we pay a lot more taxes up here in Edmonton than Calgarians do.

01:18:36.160 And 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.

01:18:49.440 Yeah, well, and you brought up some interesting points.

01:18:51.920 Getting out the vote is going to be so critical in this one.

01:18:54.100 It sounds like the races on both sides are going to be quite tight.

01:18:58.420 The other thing that was pointed out was name recognition is so critical.

01:19:01.920 We see that in Calgary. We've got 27 candidates, and I know some of them are certifiably insane, 0.97

01:19:06.660 but there's some reasonable ones in the middle of the pack there too.

01:19:09.760 But the top three by far were incumbent councillors going into this race.

01:19:15.180 And in Edmonton, the top two are a former councillor and a former Liberal cabinet minister.

01:19:21.220 Jonathan, how have the GOTV efforts been going out on Farkas' campaign today?

01:19:26.200 Well, I've always postulated that Farkas' support base is much more motivated.

01:19:31.440 He's always had a core group of support, and it's been a lot of people who are tired of Nenshi's tax increases.

01:19:37.320 Our taxes have literally doubled under Nenshi's leadership, and I say that in quotation marks, over the last 10 years.

01:19:42.820 That 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.

01:19:50.640 I've often asked people, are you getting twice the level of services you were 11 years ago when Nenshi took office?

01:19:56.600 And no one has said yes to me.

01:19:57.900 So to get out the vote is very important.

01:20:00.240 We've found that there were a few irregularities.

01:20:02.640 Some of the tabulating machines went down.

01:20:05.760 It also was a challenge because this year there was no voters list.

01:20:09.720 There was a fringe candidate who had threatened to use the voters list improperly, I would say, to harass health care workers.

01:20:16.400 And as a result, one of the mayoral candidates said we should not have a voters list.

01:20:20.460 That was accepted by outgoing Mayor Nenshi.

01:20:23.160 You know, there are some issues there, but you're balancing rights, though, between people's safety and our democracy.

01:20:29.940 And 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,

01:20:39.020 while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the voters list.

01:20:42.900 Yeah, well, and from Edmonton's view, then, Vidor, I may expand quite a bit here.

01:20:46.980 uh the the the geotv uh is really critical on getting people out there and you said people

01:20:55.420 haven't been terribly interested in in this one what kind of efforts have the the candidates been

01:21:00.180 making like how do you feel they're going to be able to pull them in uh with that uh lack of

01:21:04.820 interest well it's it's one of these things where in edmonton they're all working quite hard at it

01:21:09.880 i've received uh get out the vote calls from three different campaigns uh which is interesting

01:21:14.900 because I only signed up to support one. The unions are doing their own get out the vote

01:21:21.960 activities. Some of the third party groups are doing their own. There's a deliberate effort to

01:21:28.380 email, call, text, get folks out. Now, I'll say that I expect that Edmonton's election will have

01:21:35.340 significantly lower turnouts than Calgary's. Calgary had almost twice as many people vote

01:21:42.480 the advanced polls to what edmonton did roughly 120 000 to roughly 60 some thousand and i know

01:21:49.040 that i think it was as of about 11 30 or noon today edmonton had only had about 35 000 people

01:21:54.560 vote so about halfway through the day edmonton had fewer voters than calgary had in the advanced

01:22:01.200 polls um which i think says something about the intensity of of the calgary race and i think it

01:22:10.400 it goes back to to what jonathan dennis was talking about with the the the folks who want

01:22:15.340 to get a change from the nenshi years are super keen about working hard and getting a change from

01:22:22.240 the nenshi years but at the same time an awful lot of folks on on you know the pro nenshi voters and

01:22:29.360 remember calgary has been pretty close to being 50 50 split on this pro nenshi versus anti nenshi

01:22:34.720 voters. The pro-Nenshi voters, you know, Jeremy Farkas is one of the people that motivates them.

01:22:41.100 So, you know, you've had two pretty heavyweight campaigns slugging it out for a while. You know,

01:22:48.400 you've had Davison and Field and Damery try to break into the story, but the truth of the matter

01:22:54.680 is none of them ever found an issue that really turned the race in a different way and allowed

01:23:00.260 and allowed one of them to sort of pop into the race as the clear third place candidate who could, you know,

01:23:07.880 put 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

01:23:16.320 So, 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.

01:23:25.920 I 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.

01:23:36.680 We 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.

01:23:48.860 Oshri and Kim Kershaw has just never created that level of excitement.

01:23:53.360 Frankly, they could barely, you know,

01:23:55.840 neither of them could really break ahead of the other one by a clear enough

01:23:59.380 margin to go change things.

01:24:01.960 I'm going to go to Jonathan with my next question here.

01:24:05.020 I'll let Vitor answer as well.

01:24:07.560 Obviously the equalization referendum is taking place today.

01:24:10.580 Do you think that the equalization referendum has impacted the turnout of

01:24:17.060 the municipal elections in calgary and edmonton well it's very clear to me that that was the goal

01:24:23.060 of uh of jason kenney to bring more people out because municipal elections typically have much

01:24:27.360 lower turnout than provincial or federal elections and uh in having the senate but also the the uh

01:24:32.940 the equalization question and to a lesser degree the daylight savings question he was hoping

01:24:37.240 to drive more voters to the polls and hopefully have a better result i actually don't think it's

01:24:41.760 had that much of an impact um i've seen polls about the equalization going down in edmonton

01:24:46.740 up in calgary a lot of people may actually decide to vote against it because of unhappiness with

01:24:51.840 the current premier i voted for the equalization question and i voted against the daylight savings

01:24:57.060 question for full disclosure uh vito go ahead vitor well i i was going to say similar votes

01:25:05.120 for myself on on the two questions um i think i actually think the equalization question will

01:25:11.580 will pass province-wide i think it'll pass in calgary for sure i think it'll pass in edmonton

01:25:17.700 i think in rural alberta he'll do that much better and i think we're probably going to end

01:25:20.840 up with a number somewhere from the high 50s to the low 60s which frankly is not as strong as it

01:25:26.820 could or should be uh i think there's going to be a little bit of that is going to be the effect of

01:25:31.180 people's dissatisfaction uh with the premier and and and some of the last few months of his

01:25:36.580 governance. But I think there's going to be a clear majority vote in favor of starting the

01:25:44.280 process of either repealing or reforming equalization. And I think it's a really good

01:25:48.760 thing for Canada. I agree with everything Vitor said there. Vitor, to what extent do you think

01:25:58.780 the premiers... I'll back up. We had Main Street do a poll on what we're expecting for the

01:26:06.060 equalization referendum. To my surprise, we had 66 percent saying that they're going to vote

01:26:11.740 in support. Now, in normal times, I'd say it should be probably 70, maybe 75 in all things

01:26:19.580 being equal if you had a premier that was maybe more popular than COVID. But we've got, you know,

01:26:25.600 it's at 66 now. I mean, I'll take it. It should be a lot better. But we had it winning across

01:26:31.040 all three, well, three regions.

01:26:33.220 I mean, not Calgary

01:26:35.260 and Edmonton is not a region. I hate when pollsters

01:26:37.200 call that a region. But we

01:26:39.240 had it winning in rural north,

01:26:41.340 rural south, Edmonton, and Calgary

01:26:43.340 at 66.

01:26:46.680 But we

01:26:47.320 had 40% of NDP

01:26:48.880 voters, self-identified

01:26:51.100 NDP voters, saying

01:26:53.000 that they intend to vote yes

01:26:55.220 in this. So that's a pretty significant

01:26:57.100 minority of NDP

01:26:58.960 voters. Actually, maybe it was a little less than

01:27:01.000 40, but it was a significant chunk of them. Maybe let's talk about Rachel Notley's involvement in

01:27:06.560 the referendum campaign. Ideologically, she has an issue with it, but why do you think she is 0.98

01:27:14.640 essentially stayed quiet and left it purely to her surrogates to speak? 1.00

01:27:19.180 Well, I think she left it to her surrogates and even her surrogates generally limited themselves 0.81

01:27:23.980 to saying it was a stunt and a waste of money. I don't think that I saw anybody senior in the

01:27:30.040 new democratic party tell voters to vote no part of the reason you didn't see that is because if

01:27:36.840 you go back to polling in 2018 and 2019 um and and you probably well i don't think anybody did

01:27:44.120 it in 2020 but i'm aware of polling in 2018 and 2019 that showed that a clear majority of ndp

01:27:50.040 voters thought that equalization was unfair to alberta like the the point of view that that

01:27:55.160 equalization as it exists today in canada is unfair to alberta is actually a near universal

01:28:01.540 point of view in in alberta politics the only voters who thought that equalization was fine

01:28:07.460 were federal liberal voters in alberta and there's not a lot of those there's not a lot of

01:28:13.540 they they occasionally elect a liberal federally but that's only when the center and the center 0.68

01:28:19.600 left coalesce together on them and there are significant differences of opinion between your

01:28:24.760 Democratic center-left voters and liberal, capital-L liberal voters. So I think that's

01:28:30.360 one of the reasons why Rachel wanted to be cautious in what she said. Now, the other part

01:28:35.360 of this, too, is that Rachel wants to win the next election. And if she wants to win the next 0.96

01:28:40.680 election, one of the ways that she can remain a popular premier after winning the next election 0.98

01:28:45.420 is doing a good job fighting for Alberta. And one of the obvious places that exist to have that

01:28:53.300 fight is with the rest of Canada in terms of the fairness of equalization. And, you know,

01:29:00.120 it can't be overstated enough how ridiculously unfair equalization is. The principle might

01:29:06.340 make sense, but the truth of the matter is that equalization as it exists in Canada

01:29:09.740 is a big tax on Alberta, a small tax on Ontario and British Columbia to sustain the poor provinces

01:29:17.040 and Quebec. And I say the and Quebec very distinctly. Between 2014 and COVID, you know,

01:29:25.880 you can take the 2014 through 2019 budget years, Quebec ran up $20 billion of annual surpluses

01:29:35.600 and started creating a rainy day fund that is very comparable to the Heritage Fund,

01:29:41.240 even though they didn't generate any of that money. They literally took money that the federal

01:29:45.860 government took from Alberta in federal taxes. I'm not going to lie about how it works. It's

01:29:50.080 federal taxes, moving to Ottawa, and then going to places other than Alberta. So we pay more than

01:29:56.160 we get. Quebec gets more than they pay year after year after year after year. They rig the system.

01:30:04.100 They play games with how their big industries get taxed. They play games with how they do

01:30:12.380 electricity and they end up subsidizing their own rate payers in Quebec, which subsidizes both

01:30:18.240 their industry and their consumers, reduces government intake, allows them to get that

01:30:24.580 money made up for from Alberta. The system is unfair. It needs to be fixed. There will be

01:30:30.420 tremendous pressure from Alberta to fix it. It'll be one of a handful of questions that I think are

01:30:36.320 going to lead to constitutional discussions in the next 18 to 24 months. Thank you, Vitor.

01:30:42.380 We're going to come back to you in a bit.

01:30:45.060 Thank you for sharing your time with us.

01:30:47.700 And Jonathan Dennis, thank you as well,

01:30:49.820 coming to us from the Jeremy Farkas headquarters at Heritage Park in Calgary.

01:30:55.200 Thank you both for sharing your time.

01:30:56.820 I have two others.

01:31:00.160 Well, we have Daniel Smith coming back to us from remotely in High River.

01:31:05.160 But I also have a new guest to introduce in the studio here.

01:31:09.360 We've got Rob Anders, former...

01:31:12.900 Anderson.

01:31:13.780 Bob, oh my God.

01:31:15.000 I know.

01:31:15.540 I did it.

01:31:16.280 That's like...

01:31:17.160 I did it.

01:31:17.960 I was playing with fire there.

01:31:19.460 I was taking an identity.

01:31:20.420 That's okay.

01:31:21.020 Yeah, especially today.

01:31:23.080 You know what?

01:31:24.100 We're going to have to have you two on a show at one point just to see what happens. 0.51

01:31:27.500 I think Danielle called me that the first time that we met.

01:31:29.920 I'm pretty sure.

01:31:30.880 Yeah.

01:31:31.540 Well, every once in a while someone would talk to me and be like, oh, that Rob Anderson.

01:31:36.300 But I think they're talking about the other guy.

01:31:38.220 Then they'll talk about Rob Anderson, but I think they're talking about you.

01:31:41.040 Could be either.

01:31:42.340 Okay, so we've got Rob Anderson in studio, former Alberta MLA from Airdrie,

01:31:49.180 also Executive Director of the Free Alberta Strategy.

01:31:57.160 So before we go to a question from you, Danielle, maybe, Rob,

01:32:00.980 give us kind of your impression of tonight, what you're expecting on the equalization referendum.

01:32:05.360 and if you want to navel-gaze a bit into the Senate election, what we expect there.

01:32:09.980 And then we'll go to Daniel for her thoughts.

01:32:12.060 Well, I think the Senate election won't be too much of a surprise.

01:32:15.520 I think you'll probably see a conservative sweep on that one,

01:32:18.620 although I'm sure the People's Party will have a strong showing, would be my guess.

01:32:23.540 What I'm looking for, obviously, is, obviously, the municipal elections will be interesting,

01:32:29.000 but I really want to see that equalization vote,

01:32:31.240 because here's an opportunity for Albertans to really speak very strongly and say,

01:32:37.840 look, this equalization, what's happening here federally is wrong.

01:32:43.300 We're not going to put up with it anymore.

01:32:44.940 We want it changed.

01:32:45.960 We want it scrapped or significantly changed and improved

01:32:51.420 so that Alberta gets a fairer deal in Confederation.

01:32:56.520 But that's against the backdrop, of course,

01:32:58.500 of the fact that we haven't, we've had a missing in action premier on this. He puts it on the

01:33:03.940 ballot and he's nowhere to be found. And so it's going to be very interesting to see if he's a bit

01:33:09.520 of an anchor on that question. I don't think Albertans are going to punish themselves by

01:33:16.060 voting no on that question. They sure shouldn't. I don't think we will. But it'll be interesting to

01:33:21.480 see, is this a question that in normal times would receive 80%, you know, cross-partisan

01:33:28.380 line support, or is it because the question is associated with Jason Kenney, for some

01:33:32.940 reason we end up with maybe only 60% or 65% support, and that would really be an indication

01:33:38.140 that he brought down the vote on this, because every polling, all the polling I've seen

01:33:43.800 in normal times would show that regardless of, other than federal liberals, as Vitro

01:33:48.380 Marciano was pointing out, even NDP voters are in agreement that we're getting shafted

01:33:53.820 and that it needs to change. So it'll be very interesting to see how that plays out.

01:33:59.580 Daniel, I would like to get your thoughts on the Senate race. I mean, I'm pretty sure

01:34:05.900 Western Standard has done more reporting on the Senate race than all other media in Alberta

01:34:10.380 combined, probably multiplied a few times over. It's really just not had the interest,

01:34:14.860 at least of the mainstream media, maybe not even of voters. Maybe that is why there's just been so

01:34:19.660 many other things going on. And there is a very good likelihood that these senators in waiting

01:34:24.620 will be waiting a very long time before they can remove the waiting moniker from their title.

01:34:31.500 What do you think we're going to see in the Senate election, at least when we start? We're

01:34:35.420 going to probably get some partial results tonight from a few select municipalities. But when the dust

01:34:39.700 settles, what do you think we're going to see? Well, there's a few known names on that list that

01:34:44.320 not the the conservative candidates doug horner as a for instance decided to run as a an independent

01:34:49.760 which is surprising to me i mean he's the former finance minister under the ed stelmac regime and

01:34:55.120 so perhaps he might be able to garner some of that northern votes i'll be watching for him to see

01:35:00.080 whether he does a breakthrough and duncan kinney who i think ran as a little bit of a stunt because

01:35:06.800 he's with progress alberta and i think yeah the left has been notoriously against senate elections

01:35:12.800 I think the official position of the NDP is to abolish the Senate. So if he managed to squeak

01:35:19.220 through with a number of votes, I think that's more of a protest vote. Personally, I voted for

01:35:23.760 the candidates that I met and had good conversations with. So Erika Berudes and Pam Davidson are both

01:35:29.320 great candidates for the Conservative Party of Canada. And I voted for Nadine Wellwood as well,

01:35:34.040 who's the People's Party of Canada representative. It seems to me that there should be some

01:35:39.720 representation outside the mainstream parties at the federal level. If you look at how popular

01:35:45.960 the People's Party of Canada was in Alberta in the general election, it does seem to me that

01:35:51.560 she, one of those candidates might be able to garner some support. But the problem is,

01:35:56.040 Justin Trudeau took the win out of the sails on it. There was probably a lot of enthusiasm

01:36:01.400 for voting for a Senate candidate, but when he goes and appoints his own people into those vacant

01:36:07.320 positions then you have to wonder is it one of these situations that we had back when we first

01:36:12.520 tried senate elections with ted morton and burt brown where they never ended up getting uh getting

01:36:18.840 getting nominated or getting getting the post i think you need to have a government in ottawa

01:36:24.120 who recognizes the rights of the regions and until we have that kind of government in ottawa

01:36:29.480 whether with a change in the liberal leadership or a change in in the in the party i i think

01:36:34.120 they'll be sitting there for a long time whoever gets elected uh daniel you can't see it right now

01:36:39.640 but you've uh certainly put a smile on the face of another one of our guests who's waiting in the

01:36:43.560 background uh ppc senate candidate nadine wellwood uh so she uh you can't see but i can see her in

01:36:50.120 the background here she is uh she's loving it uh enjoying your post-election endorsement um uh

01:36:59.480 well you know maybe we'll actually bring nadine into the conversation uh a little bit early right

01:37:03.640 now then let's keep it coming actually before we bring nadine in we're going to go to dave nailer

01:37:08.280 dave has got some early results on the calgary mayoral race and uh the senate election here

01:37:14.600 let's uh let's start with you dave okay uh first results in for the uh the calgary mayoral race as

01:37:20.680 you said uh derek uh jody gondek in the lead at the moment with uh 32 175 votes jeremy farkas in

01:37:29.240 second with 20,974. So 12,000 vote lead early on for Gondek. Nobody else really, really close at

01:37:42.360 the moment. Davison with just under 10,000. Okay. And you have the numbers on the equalization vote?

01:37:51.240 I haven't seen those, no. Okay. Oh, you've got them. Yeah, I think it was 58. There's 73

01:37:57.640 73 out of a possible, 73 out of 259 polls reporting just in Calgary, and it was 58 in favor of ending equalization and 42 against.

01:38:12.760 Well, I think if we get, if that kind of trend holds to the end of the evening and we get 58% in Calgary,

01:38:18.980 I mean, the lazy math says, you know, take eight off for Edmonton, so 50, and, you know, add eight or 16 for everything else.

01:38:29.800 That would probably get us then fairly close to where we were looking at for the Main Street poll that we had a few days ago on this.

01:38:37.760 I do have some early Senate votes, though, Derek.

01:38:41.420 With Pam Davidson, the conservative candidate in the lead with 26,000 votes.

01:38:47.620 Erika Barutes with 24,441 votes.

01:38:58.860 They're the top three.

01:39:01.880 Again, I know the name I'm probably going to butcher.

01:39:05.480 Mikhailio Martynik with 15,000 votes.

01:39:10.880 Karina Pillay with 9,700 votes.

01:39:14.600 Dean Wellward, your guest, about to come on with 6,500 votes.

01:39:21.000 So those are very early polling numbers out of Calgary.

01:39:25.680 Referendum, question number one, the equalization, as Rob mentioned, 58% to 42 in favor.

01:39:34.140 And nothing on fluoride yet.

01:39:39.080 Oh, nothing on fluoride.

01:39:41.320 Okay, well, let's talk a bit about Senate election, continue on the Senate election here.

01:39:47.780 Pull up those Senate numbers for me again here.

01:39:50.920 It's very interesting that I expected more people to vote straight the ticket.

01:40:00.900 That if you're voting for the conservatives, you're going to vote for all three conservatives.

01:40:04.500 If you're going to vote PPC, you're going to vote for all three PPC.

01:40:08.160 I 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.

01:40:19.000 I mean, it's very hard.

01:40:20.020 Like, 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.

01:40:25.280 It's really difficult to get your name out on this kind of thing.

01:40:29.100 But, I mean, these numbers are showing a not insignificant number, not voting the ticket.

01:40:33.780 Pam Davison is pretty much 2,000 votes ahead of Erika Barutz, and Barutz is still a fair bit ahead of, 0.92

01:40:43.360 I am never going to be able to pronounce this poor guy's name, Mikhailo, we're just going to go Mikhailo,

01:40:47.620 a 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

01:40:55.320 but he's at 15,000, so people are not voting the ticket here, Nadine I think is, if I'm not mistaken,

01:41:01.600 Is she leading the PPC ticket?

01:41:05.060 $6,500.

01:41:07.400 Well, Doug Horner has actually got a surprising $8,000 right now.

01:41:12.720 So let's go straight to Danielle, but then we're going to go to Nadine about her campaign, what we can expect.

01:41:18.800 Danielle, would you be surprised if people are not just voting the straight ticket for parties across the board here,

01:41:25.140 especially for the Conservatives, that some people would be voting for some candidates but not others?

01:41:30.140 or maybe could we just chalk this up to people not understanding that they actually have three

01:41:35.120 votes, that people are confused having three votes to use on a ballot, not one? I'm probably

01:41:41.380 the wrong person to ask since I did do a split ballot, but I voted for the people who I thought

01:41:45.260 worked the hardest. And I was out a lot over Stampede, and I kept running into Erica, I kept

01:41:50.920 running into Pam. Nadine reached out to me, and so I know that she was working hard as well. So I

01:41:55.620 think some people did just put their name on the ballot. And then because of it's pretty

01:42:00.140 overwhelming to try to run province wide, maybe just didn't put in the work. And so the easy

01:42:05.020 shorthand is to end up voting for the candidates running under a particular party banner. I thought

01:42:12.000 was sort of an interesting idea that the premier had in asking candidates to run for a federal

01:42:17.820 party, which may have influenced the outcome. I mean, imagine if Paul Hinman was able to put up

01:42:24.260 Wild Rose Independence Party candidates. That might have changed the complexion a little bit.

01:42:29.240 But what he did do by asking people to run under the federal banners is that I think he prevented

01:42:35.880 any of the kind of division that I think is currently plaguing his own party. So maybe not

01:42:41.460 so surprising that it looks like, as Robin suggested, those three conservatives are likely

01:42:46.700 to come out on top. But it's got to be really frustrating to not know, having worked as hard

01:42:53.100 as those candidates did, not knowing whether it's going to be respected,

01:42:57.240 whether the Democratic will of the people is going to be respected.

01:42:59.720 And that's a real problem.

01:43:01.100 Yeah.

01:43:02.880 It's a very interesting point, important point that Danielle mentioned,

01:43:06.540 and that's that these are under federal, they're running as federal candidates,

01:43:09.740 and it's bizarre.

01:43:10.420 And I think a lot of people are confused.

01:43:11.860 This has actually never happened before.

01:43:13.440 Even though the first ever elected senator, Stan Waters, he was Reform Party.

01:43:17.900 Little known fact, he was technically the Reform Party of Alberta

01:43:21.680 because it was Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.

01:43:25.280 And then the Reform Party of Canada

01:43:26.620 registered a provincial reform party

01:43:28.620 for the sole and dedicated purpose of Senate elections.

01:43:32.120 The party is literally only running that.

01:43:34.860 They won that.

01:43:36.880 But then, you know, 2012, you and Danielle remember

01:43:40.560 we had the Wild Rose.

01:43:42.920 Oh, Vitor Marciano was one of those Senate candidates.

01:43:45.060 I remember that.

01:43:45.900 These have always been provincial

01:43:47.560 because guess what?

01:43:48.740 These are, first of all,

01:43:50.160 you're there to represent a province, you're not there to represent a federal party.

01:43:54.440 Second of all, this is provincial legislation.

01:43:57.000 I actually think there's some pretty serious constitutional issues with this legislation.

01:44:01.760 It didn't get challenged, but I think someone could have probably made a fairly decent constitutional

01:44:05.960 challenge against this, that provincial legislation does not have a right to regulate federal

01:44:11.760 political entities.

01:44:14.960 So let's get your thought, Rob, on why do you think they decided to make this federal

01:44:19.780 parties versus provincial and what difference do you think that had on the election and then we're

01:44:23.520 going to go to then we'll go to nadine and uh for her take on of course she loves the ppc she's a

01:44:30.020 ppc candidate but you know does she think that this should have continued as a provincial

01:44:34.380 election as opposed to federal yeah well i mean i think uh whether it's constitutional or not

01:44:40.820 it's certainly a very cynical uh move by the uh by the premier to do it this way because it has

01:44:46.860 generally been provincial in the past. And I think it's, as Daniel rightly pointed out, it's because

01:44:53.180 if the Wild Rose Independence Party was able to put a name on the ballot,

01:45:00.620 I would suggest that they would probably do pretty darn well. And it would cause,

01:45:04.540 as Daniel said, a lot of those rifts that the Premier's trying to quash. So it's

01:45:09.020 certainly cynical, certainly self-serving to do it this way. I do think it's quite remarkable that

01:45:14.140 that the PPC does as well as they do in these votes.

01:45:18.620 This is not easy.

01:45:19.760 I mean, you're fighting against the establishment

01:45:22.080 with essentially no resources whatsoever,

01:45:24.520 such as in Nadine's case, almost no resources.

01:45:27.340 And it shows that there is really an undercurrent

01:45:30.500 of dissatisfaction with the current federal party as well.

01:45:36.920 But at the end of the day, the problem is,

01:45:40.020 and we know this from being a former Wild Roser

01:45:44.020 running against the PC brand.

01:45:45.940 When you have a new party running against a well-established brand,

01:45:49.700 it is so hard to get the average voter that is not informing themselves,

01:45:54.900 who's just kind of maybe pays attention for a couple days during the election

01:45:58.320 right before they're going to go vote,

01:46:00.240 trying to convince them that they should throw off all the branding

01:46:04.300 that's been indoctrinated into them over the last 30, 40 years

01:46:08.120 and vote for a new party.

01:46:09.720 That's a real difficult challenge.

01:46:11.140 So I think you're going to see, although I think you'll see the PPC party and subsequent elections, if they keep to it, do really well.

01:46:19.360 They had an uphill battle, for sure.

01:46:23.360 All right.

01:46:24.280 We're going to go to Nadine Wilwood, and then we're going to go to Dave.

01:46:27.340 Danielle, I want to thank you for your time.

01:46:28.880 We're going to come back to you in about 45 minutes with your analysis.

01:46:33.120 We're going to have some new numbers for you to take a gander at that time.

01:46:37.460 So thank you very much.

01:46:38.440 We'll see you soon.

01:46:39.340 See you soon.

01:46:40.220 Nadine, you got a certain eaten kind of grin on your face right now.

01:46:46.820 You're looking pretty happy about this evening.

01:46:49.620 Of course, you know, it's an uphill climb for a PPC candidate.

01:46:55.120 But so far, I mean, the results are still early.

01:46:58.240 And we're only seeing things from, say, Calgary.

01:47:00.100 We're not getting probably your more stronger areas in rural.

01:47:02.500 I know you're from Cochrane.

01:47:04.020 But the numbers are showing, at least in Calgary, relative to the last election,

01:47:08.940 And PPC is set to double, perhaps even better, their numbers.

01:47:12.960 And the last federal election's numbers were nothing to sneeze at.

01:47:16.460 That was a significant breakthrough for the PPC, even if it didn't result in any seats.

01:47:21.800 I mean, even if you're not, well, I'm not even sure.

01:47:25.900 Whoever gets first place gets to actually go to the Senate, so I wouldn't worry too much.

01:47:29.220 But how are you feeling about tonight?

01:47:31.160 Do you think you're going to, how much of a change do you think we're going to see for the PPC and yourself?

01:47:36.740 Well, first off, I think if more people knew that Danielle had voted for me, I think those numbers would be much higher.

01:47:45.660 You 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.

01:47:57.720 and you know it is an uphill battle we are battling against the Conservative Party of Canada

01:48:02.480 and we are very much still a little bit tied to the brand right so the fact that you know

01:48:10.420 we've already got the numbers that we're seeing I'm very pleased actually very pleased people are

01:48:16.080 you know having their their voices heard and it what more could you ask for really and and I think

01:48:23.460 our strongest numbers are yet to come in like you said in the rural ridings um so i i'm not gonna

01:48:34.540 ask you what your prediction is tonight i mean uh i'm gonna you'd be almost forced to give the

01:48:39.600 rehearsed answer well we're gonna wait till every vote is counted i i know what it's like i've given

01:48:44.480 the rehearse line rob's given the line you've probably given the line before we're not gonna

01:48:49.160 ask a question that we know we're not going to get a good answer to because you just can't.

01:48:55.600 Let's say tonight the PPC

01:48:57.020 could break 20% roughly

01:48:59.920 province-wide. That'd be a doubling again of the federal election that saw the

01:49:05.140 party roughly triple or quadruple in some cases from the

01:49:08.900 2019 election. I guess I want to

01:49:13.020 ask, I don't know if you've given much thought to this. Your mind I know

01:49:17.040 was focused on the recent federal election,

01:49:20.740 you were running in, I mispronounced this one,

01:49:23.780 I said Amph Bairdry. 0.69

01:49:26.580 It was Airdrie Banff or Banff Airdrie.

01:49:29.940 I could be a bit dyslexic in speaking here.

01:49:33.780 You were running there, and then all of a sudden,

01:49:35.760 you were just thrown straight into the deep end,

01:49:37.080 literally the next day after the provincial vote was counted.

01:49:40.500 You were thrown straight in, sorry,

01:49:41.860 the federal vote was counted,

01:49:42.560 you were thrown straight into it.

01:49:43.520 I don't know if you've given this thought

01:49:49.140 but traditionally Senate elections

01:49:51.140 have always been held in Alberta

01:49:52.640 under provincial party banners

01:49:54.300 and I kind of liked that

01:49:57.080 you got, you know, you had

01:49:58.460 well reform federally

01:50:00.060 they wanted to fight in it

01:50:01.140 so they registered a provincial party

01:50:02.780 and they ran

01:50:03.720 because there was no Wild Rose at the time

01:50:05.260 or anything

01:50:05.620 there was just the progressive conservatives

01:50:06.900 under Don Getty

01:50:07.740 but then we have Wild Rose

01:50:09.540 and progressive conservatives

01:50:10.540 and those were good matches

01:50:12.060 those were good matches

01:50:13.100 Nadine, I want your take

01:50:16.520 Do you think that, say going forward

01:50:18.540 that Senate elections in Alberta

01:50:21.420 should return to provincial parties

01:50:22.800 or do you think we should continue

01:50:23.820 with this kind of strange grafting

01:50:26.700 of federal parties

01:50:29.000 into provincial legislation

01:50:30.360 Well, I kind of like Rob's answer

01:50:33.080 actually, because I think

01:50:34.820 that's the truth of the matter

01:50:36.640 I think this was really done

01:50:38.740 to make it very easy for Jason Kenney

01:50:40.960 to prop up the Conservative Party of Canada, to be honest.

01:50:45.140 You know, as you can see already from the results,

01:50:47.480 you've got three CPC candidates that check, check, check.

01:50:52.680 So I think a lot of people, instead of doing the research

01:50:55.380 and the homework on the individuals, much like what Danielle said,

01:50:58.720 you know, she took the three top people who she felt would do the best job

01:51:03.400 and that's who she voted for.

01:51:05.660 It's taking away the accountability as a voter

01:51:10.820 to have to do your due diligence, to do your homework.

01:51:13.520 So many people are coming in now and just going,

01:51:15.200 oh, Conservative Party of Canada, tick, tick, tick.

01:51:17.680 And I think over time that will change a little bit

01:51:20.440 as you see more parties.

01:51:22.780 But, you know, if it's going to be a party system,

01:51:26.320 then we're going to get into voting based upon party lines

01:51:28.920 as opposed to maybe the best person for the job, sadly.

01:51:34.580 Well, Nadine, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

01:51:37.460 I'm sure you're having an exciting night.

01:51:39.620 win, lose, or draw. It looks like you're having a great time. So good luck this evening,

01:51:44.860 and I'm sure we'll be in touch soon. Thank you guys so much. Have a wonderful evening. I'll

01:51:50.120 continue to watch the coverage, and fingers crossed. Very good. All right, we're going to

01:51:55.300 go to Dave Naylor for an update on the results, but before that, a message from tonight's sponsor,

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01:53:01.040 So we're going to go now to Dave Naylor for an update on the Calgary election results.

01:53:06.760 Yeah, and I've got to give them credit, Derek, the results are coming fast and furious tonight,

01:53:11.180 so it looks like they've finally got their act together.

01:53:14.200 Jody Gondek is extending her lead over Jeremy Farkas, Gondek with 71,419 votes.

01:53:23.020 He's got a 25,000-vote lead over Jeremy Farkas, who sits at 45,859.

01:53:31.660 Perhaps I'll note one of the mainstream media outlets, CTV has already called it on deck

01:53:36.340 elected.

01:53:39.840 Maybe a jump of the gun, maybe not.

01:53:41.260 How many polls are reporting?

01:53:42.860 We've got 161 out of 259, so a good chunk of them.

01:53:47.960 A couple of, just before you jump in, Derek, a couple of wards I want to highlight.

01:53:54.360 Joe Magliocca, who was just charged last week with fraud, is getting crushed in Ward 2.

01:54:01.920 Jennifer Winas is at 8,500 votes.

01:54:06.600 Kim Tyers is second with 4,500 votes.

01:54:10.460 And Joy Mags, as he's known at City Hall, is trailing badly with only 1,800 votes.

01:54:15.260 So it looks like his days are numbered.

01:54:19.780 And Sean Hsu, some old allegations coming to light last week too,

01:54:27.200 is also trailing in his writing at the moment to Daniel D.J. Kelly.

01:54:35.800 He's got 4,000 votes, 600-vote lead over Sean Hsu, who's got 3,400 votes.

01:54:44.600 Some results coming in out of Edmonton, not as quickly as Calgary.

01:54:50.160 Amrit, Amrit, Amrit, Amrit, Soey, excuse me, leading with 1,257 votes.

01:54:57.700 Mike Nickel with 1,015.

01:55:01.680 Obviously early days yet, only eight polling stations out of 228 there.

01:55:08.640 So come on, Edmonton, get the finger out, let's get counting.

01:55:12.480 It's certainly a good night to start for Gondek, Dirk.

01:55:18.540 Rob, those numbers are getting tough for Farkas to overcome.

01:55:23.360 I'm not sure I would call it yet, but they're not...

01:55:26.780 I mean, it's not an insane call to call it for.

01:55:30.140 There's still, what is there, about 30-40% of polls to come in?

01:55:34.620 Yep, about that.

01:55:35.600 We're at 161 of 259.

01:55:40.500 What do you think?

01:55:41.660 I think no one should be surprised.

01:55:43.580 And the reason I say that is because even though Jeremy Farkas, I think, was a good, solid candidate

01:55:48.240 and certainly a fiscal conservative and very outspoken against Nenshi,

01:55:53.680 when you speak out and speak to power, as Jeremy did throughout his...

01:55:59.520 He screams at power.

01:56:00.360 He screams at power.

01:56:01.500 You take a hit doing that, and you make enemies.

01:56:05.320 And the fact of the matter is that everyone that supported Nahid Nenshi in the last election

01:56:10.260 look at Jeremy Farkas as the enemy.

01:56:12.860 And so my guess is, is what happened,

01:56:14.900 I think you can see it in the polling

01:56:16.220 towards the end of the campaign,

01:56:17.560 is that the anti-Farkas,

01:56:22.000 you know, the enemy of the Purple Prince,

01:56:24.940 they gathered their forces together

01:56:27.560 behind one candidate.

01:56:28.640 And, you know, in municipal politics,

01:56:31.560 I mean, Dave, you know this too,

01:56:33.900 in Calgary municipal politics,

01:56:34.900 even though generally it votes conservative,

01:56:36.540 both provincially and federally,

01:56:38.740 municipally it doesn't.

01:56:39.620 It'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.

01:56:57.040 It's just, it's sad to see that he doesn't get his due, but I thought he ran a pretty good campaign.

01:57:01.600 It is certainly a weird voting manner that the city's got.

01:57:05.960 Quick update on fluoride.

01:57:07.740 61% are saying yes, 39% saying no.

01:57:12.220 So it looks like fluoride will be going back in for at least four years.

01:57:16.640 I abstained on the question.

01:57:20.600 I believe, you know, when people say you can't complain unless you voted 0.99

01:57:24.520 and it's your civic duty to vote, I think I say bullshit. 0.98

01:57:27.400 You are doing your civic duty by not voting if you are not informed on the issue. 0.98

01:57:31.600 And I am not informed on the issue.

01:57:34.840 Ask Dave.

01:57:35.760 I think I know about everything.

01:57:37.920 I do not know about fluoride.

01:57:40.440 That made you feel uncomfortable, didn't it?

01:57:42.660 I looked at it and was like,

01:57:44.260 it does not compute here.

01:57:46.720 I didn't vote.

01:57:48.500 But I think it's...

01:57:49.540 I'm a big believer in direct democracy

01:57:51.080 for big issues.

01:57:53.620 But for little specific advanced issues,

01:57:56.400 I've got to admit,

01:57:57.640 I'm a slight elitist.

01:57:59.660 On this stuff,

01:58:00.520 I'd actually like because it's not it's not a left or right thing yeah counselors get in a room

01:58:06.100 listen to some smart people and probably do what they say yeah uh daylight savings time

01:58:12.220 I don't know that's just and that one looks like it's losing that one is losing yeah that one is

01:58:18.760 losing Calgary in Calgary that's right yeah in Calgary so and there could be very big north

01:58:23.540 south differences in this I don't know it could be uh but I mean I don't know that's one where

01:58:29.000 I honestly got, I'd like just MLAs, it's not a left or right issue, get in a room, come

01:58:34.300 to a bipartisan consensus listening to some smart people, you know what I want to vote

01:58:37.900 on? I want to vote on equalization. I'd like to vote on, you know, some balanced budget

01:58:42.940 constitutional amendments, all sorts of stuff.

01:58:45.360 And it's 58-42 in the yes camp for getting rid of equalization right now and we're getting

01:58:51.080 towards the end of Calgary's results. So that's surprisingly good. And the reason I say that

01:58:56.220 That is for, like these are, this is more of a left leaning electorate tonight.

01:59:00.680 Keep in mind, these, like if, let's say for, there's a significant possibility because

01:59:05.700 right now Gondek is massively outperforming polls, there's a good chance that Farkas 1.00

01:59:10.980 is going to come up if it starts to reflect all of the polls.

01:59:14.100 No polls were showing Gondek with this kind of lead.

01:59:16.460 So if that is the case, and this is say just the friendly Gondek polls coming in right

01:59:21.820 now, then these are Gondek people voting 58% for this.

01:59:27.380 So when the Farkas people come in, I mean, this number could go up significantly. 1.00

01:59:30.500 I mean, I'm extrapolating a bit there that I think it's a logical train of thought, but

01:59:35.600 it's not factual.

01:59:36.600 But you're right, but the other thing too that you got to think of is that if these

01:59:40.420 are Gondek voters and they're 58, 42% in favor of getting rid of equalization, it shows the

01:59:47.380 bind that Rachel Notley's a little bit in, right?

01:59:49.580 She 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.

01:59:58.540 Obviously, 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.

02:00:07.780 So it's interesting to see that reflected.

02:00:09.780 Before we go to Vitor, Dave, did you have any other numbers?

02:00:13.360 Or are you just playing around here?

02:00:14.680 No, those are the most up-to-date I've got so far.

02:00:17.280 Okay, well, I'm seeing some interesting numbers in Edmonton.

02:00:20.860 I'm seeing Sohi in the lead, but Mike Nickel still doing respectively well.

02:00:28.240 It's about 10,000 votes behind now.

02:00:30.920 Yeah, but Vitor actually knows Edmonton.

02:00:34.280 For me, I mean, anything above Airdrie is northern Alberta to me.

02:00:39.080 And you may as well be, if you're north of Edmonton, you may as well be in Fort McMurray.

02:00:44.180 so uh vitor you understand the city a lot better uh you probably have a better idea of what polls

02:00:49.940 what areas are reporting uh is mike nickel still in this fight or is it time to call it uh it's

02:00:57.220 it's starting to get a little scary because eight points is a big is a big difference uh but there's

02:01:03.000 still a very little reporting i mean uh you're at 40 percent of the polls reporting but the city

02:01:09.240 doesn't break across evenly. So I think so he's going to win. But it's, you know, it's a 10,000

02:01:22.220 vote difference right now. They look like they've counted roughly 67,000 votes. No, not even.

02:01:33.460 They've counted about 25,000 votes of probably about 120,000, 130,000 votes.

02:01:40.880 So we're missing the majority of the votes, and we're missing them from areas where nickel should do better.

02:01:47.400 But I think you're seeing something similar to Calgary, which is the centrist voter, that swing voter,

02:01:54.840 The 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.

02:02:05.740 And, 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.

02:02:18.980 And then when you go look at the council races, and again, there's still a lot of votes still to come in.

02:02:26.200 You've got incumbent Bev Esslinger is losing to the NDP's endorsed candidate, Aaron Rutherford.

02:02:33.260 You've got the NDP's endorsed Aaron Paquette is running away with his riding in Dene.

02:02:40.060 um you've got uh you've got a weird mixed bag very very early on in um i call it kokanee for

02:02:51.040 short because it's impossible to pronounce we have a series of of of first nations names that

02:02:57.980 were given to edmonton writings and some of them are very very odd and don't seem to fit

02:03:02.380 uh you know in languages that no first nations in the edmonton area speak so

02:03:07.060 it's kind of odd um you know you've got the lefty endorsed uh karen tang winning and mike

02:03:14.480 nichols old riding uh so this this looks like it's going to be a strong night for the center left

02:03:21.220 um in edmonton right now that's that's that's the way it's looking and it's uh it's looking

02:03:30.520 like edmonton you know unless things start to change pretty noticeably it's looking like

02:03:35.700 Edmonton's going to have a city council that is significantly to the left of what we had before.

02:03:46.400 Vitor, I don't think Edmonton is actually reporting on any of its equalization

02:03:52.680 referendum results tonight. Am I right? Certainly not on the City of Edmonton,

02:03:57.540 Elections Edmonton website. So I don't know what those numbers are at. But if Calgary is coming in

02:04:03.340 in the mid 50s, then I think Edmonton will be close to 50. And then I think the province as

02:04:08.400 a whole will be around 60, probably even breaking 60. That fits with private polling that I saw

02:04:13.860 that suggested that the high propensity voter was showing a clear majority for voting yes.

02:04:24.380 And it goes back to what Rob Anderson said just a few moments ago, what I talked about a little

02:04:28.360 bit earlier which is that you know rachel notley did not campaign for a no vote only the political

02:04:33.820 science professors and nenshi campaigned for a no vote um you know anybody who's involved in

02:04:39.060 politics understands that uh that a yes vote is a good bargaining chip for any premier of alberta

02:04:44.940 to have and uh and and and that's what we're finding but uh edmonton city council is leaning

02:04:51.360 left right now i don't know where the where the calgary races are at the council level yet

02:04:56.080 But it's, you know, it's one of these things where in Edmonton, like I said, the media paid no attention to this race.

02:05:06.140 And it's going to help elect a bunch of left and center-left candidates.

02:05:11.880 Well, in Calgary, I mean, if Farkas is not mayor, then we lose him on council.

02:05:17.720 Joe Megalioka, obviously in some pretty steep trouble, but he is definitely not coming back to council.

02:05:23.620 He is about 10% right now, so not do good.

02:05:27.060 And I think he actually had a fighting chance until these charges.

02:05:32.440 But I think that was it.

02:05:34.600 And it remains to be seen, was this politically...

02:05:36.660 I mean, it was pretty odd timing.

02:05:38.440 Why didn't they lay charges beforehand?

02:05:40.640 Why did it come so close to the election?

02:05:42.900 I don't know.

02:05:44.240 Time will tell.

02:05:45.600 But we're also...

02:05:46.320 Sean Chu is, well, not leading right now, but he's still got a fighting chance.

02:05:51.080 But those are the three only consistent conservatives on the entire Calgary Council.

02:05:55.040 Farkas, Chu, Magliocca.

02:05:57.240 Magliocca, scratch him.

02:05:59.240 Chu, well, he's behind right now, still got a chance.

02:06:02.700 And Farkas, well, he's got to be mayor to stay on.

02:06:06.000 We could be looking at a Calgary City Council without a single conservative on it.

02:06:10.800 And I'm not going to count like the Peter DeMong's and stuff who like show up at a Tory fundraiser 1.00

02:06:15.560 to make nice with power brokers in their area.

02:06:18.660 I'm talking about people who actually vote conservatively with any consistently on council.

02:06:23.520 There is a chance we have a Calgary City Council with zero conservatives on it.

02:06:30.260 Rob, what do you think the chances are that that happens?

02:06:32.720 I think it's high.

02:06:33.840 And I think that, you know, you get what you vote for.

02:06:38.960 You hear all the complaints from business owners in the city about how hard it is to make a go of it right now

02:06:45.540 from various issues, whether it's parking costs or the city, you know, obviously taxes.

02:06:50.760 I know from being a business owner in the city myself, property taxes are just through the roof.

02:06:57.160 It's unbelievable.

02:06:58.860 And it's hard to be competitive.

02:07:00.620 It's hard to turn a profit.

02:07:02.220 So you hear about these things.

02:07:04.120 You hear about tax revolts and all these things that happen between elections.

02:07:08.420 But then when you get to elections, then, you know, you get what you vote for.

02:07:12.420 And I hope this council won't continue that record of tax and spend.

02:07:17.200 But boy, oh boy, I have my doubts.

02:07:20.360 In Calgary, it's not as bad as you think, Derek.

02:07:23.060 So let me walk you through.

02:07:24.640 I'm on the city of Calgary's unofficial site.

02:07:27.560 So DeMong is in good shape.

02:07:30.100 Dan McLean is handily beating Diane Collier-Kart and Jay Unsworth.

02:07:35.920 Dan is a more solid, common sense, center-right candidate than Diane.

02:07:40.480 That's pretty good.

02:07:42.420 Evan Spencer is winning Ward 12, beating Craig Chandler by a good margin right now.

02:07:47.980 Evan's a centrist, but he's not the most left-wing person on this council by a long shot.

02:07:52.760 Ward 11 seems to be going left to Courtney Brannigan.

02:07:56.000 Ward 10, Andre Chabot is in the lead right now.

02:07:59.780 Decent-sized lead over Abed Harp, who is the union-backed person.

02:08:04.000 That's not too bad.

02:08:05.580 Andre's a solid center-right common-sense thinker.

02:08:10.040 Ward 9, you've got Naomi Withers beating Giancarlo Caron, which is fascinating.

02:08:16.860 Giancarlo is currently 183 votes behind Naomi Withers.

02:08:21.120 Giancarlo is the, he is the, he is the Mensheviks of the Calgary City Council.

02:08:28.740 So that is really interesting.

02:08:31.260 Right now, Gary Bovrovitz is in second place to Courtney Walcott, who's the union endorsed

02:08:36.400 candidate in Ward 8. And, you know, it's a mixed bag there. Ward 8, lots of good candidates

02:08:45.820 running. There's still lots of polls left to be counted.

02:08:50.140 Well, did you mention Terry Wong?

02:08:51.980 Terry Wong is leading. And I got to tell you, of all the people running in Ward 7,

02:08:58.400 Terry, who's a reasonable center-right person, is by far the most right-wing of all of the

02:09:04.220 candidates in Ward 7. Terry Wong comes from the Wild Rose. Now, he was not like the me and Rob

02:09:11.640 Wild Rose, but he was Wild Rose. Wow. Good for Terry. He's not a progressive. He's a solid,

02:09:21.840 really good at connecting with people. He is a little bit ahead of Aaron Waite, who's the

02:09:26.900 union-backed left-wing candidate, and a little bit of Heather McRae, who is Stephen Carter's

02:09:31.760 wife in

02:09:32.800 Ward 7. I think

02:09:35.900 Terry might pull it out.

02:09:37.740 Richard Poopman's sort of a centrist.

02:09:40.280 He's running away with Ward

02:09:41.780 6. The union-backed

02:09:43.820 candidate didn't do anything there.

02:09:46.280 Raj Dhaliwal

02:09:47.320 has got a narrow lead, about 174

02:09:49.920 votes, over

02:09:51.420 Stan Sandu in Ward 5.

02:09:54.080 And Stan is one of a

02:09:55.860 handful of...

02:09:57.080 Sorry, Vitor, can I pause you there?

02:10:00.080 Production, are we able to pull up

02:10:01.740 the Jeremy Farkas speech, or do we not have access?

02:10:07.980 Okay, we're going to see if we can get this.

02:10:10.580 But Jeremy Farkas is speaking right now, I believe,

02:10:14.280 conceding the race.

02:10:16.500 I guess that puts an end to that.

02:10:21.260 I mean, Jeremy Farkas has been a firecracker

02:10:24.720 on the Calgary City Council for the last four years.

02:10:28.500 He started his race there about two years out, officially.

02:10:33.320 I mean, even before then, he was preparing and going.

02:10:36.260 I remember my first campaign with Jeremy was, Jeremy was actually in my living room

02:10:40.120 in January 2015, licking envelopes for my Wild Rose nomination in Strathmore Brooks.

02:10:46.420 That was the first campaign I worked on him with.

02:10:49.120 But he knocked on every door in his ward, and he knocked on them a second time and a third time

02:10:54.440 until the incumbent, I forget his name, but a pretty far lefty incumbent on council,

02:10:58.980 didn't even bother, and he took off. 0.99

02:11:01.020 He has been an absolute pain in the arse of the city administration and Nenshi. 0.97

02:11:09.020 Nenshi really more or less endorsed Gondek, but more than endorsing Gondek, 0.98

02:11:13.400 just said never vote for Jeremy Farkas.

02:11:17.540 I don't know, I'll put it to either you, Vitor or Rob, about what do you think this means.

02:11:22.700 And I guess the loss of Farkas from counsel, and then I suppose Jody Gondek's victory as mayor.

02:11:31.480 Well, I was going to say with Vitor, that's the type of candidate that you would look for.

02:11:37.140 If you're a member of the, if you're in a conservative party, you'd be looking for a Jeremy Farkas.

02:11:42.840 So whether it's federally or provincially, I don't know.

02:11:46.000 But I doubt we've seen the last of Jeremy Farkas.

02:11:49.000 I'd be surprised.

02:11:49.680 He's young.

02:11:50.160 I heard there might be a leadership coming up.

02:11:52.700 Maybe, who knows, right?

02:11:55.040 But he's someone that I think has appeal with voters.

02:11:58.900 It's not like he didn't get any votes today.

02:12:00.500 I mean, he's the second place candidate.

02:12:02.420 He ran a strong campaign.

02:12:03.860 My guess is that we may see him again pretty soon.

02:12:08.500 Okay.

02:12:10.420 Vitor, your thoughts, I guess.

02:12:12.760 You actually seem to know a heck of a lot more about,

02:12:14.900 I brought you in here as the Edmonton guy,

02:12:17.160 expecting you to not know much.

02:12:18.260 I know a fair bit about Calgary.

02:12:20.500 You're coming in here.

02:12:21.220 you seem to know more about my city than, uh, than I do. So, uh, let's just listen to you since

02:12:27.300 you seem smart. Well, it's, it's, you know, I'm surprised that Jeremy is, is 33,000 votes back

02:12:34.640 on, on, on Gondek. Uh, I mean, there's still about a quarter of the polls left to come,

02:12:41.160 but if he's conceding, he knows where they're coming from and he doesn't believe he can close

02:12:44.160 the gap um you know there's a there's 30 000 votes to uh to jeff davidson that's pretty much

02:12:51.360 the margin um i think you had danielle on the show earlier on and she talked about how um center

02:12:58.340 right groups just do not figure out these elections and do not uh you know work hard at consolidating

02:13:04.480 in this election uh the left worked really hard at trying to drive out anybody who would interfere

02:13:10.820 with context when uh you know jan damry is a pretty darn good candidate is sitting at 4 000

02:13:15.740 votes she's like uh less than half of what bradfield got uh and that's because the left 0.71

02:13:21.660 understands that they need to consolidate to to win these things and they also understand the

02:13:27.100 value of winning them in the long run because it creates a um a farm team from which they can do

02:13:33.280 and move people up to other levels of politics there were things that happened in the calgary

02:13:37.520 race that were absolutely fascinating where uh in some of the in some of the council seats

02:13:44.480 good candidates dropped out because the union that endorsed somebody else found them a job

02:13:50.420 so these are these are the complications that happen inside center left politics that doesn't

02:13:56.060 happen inside center right politics center right politics where you know all free thinkers and

02:14:00.820 there's a fair amount of egos and they fight each other uh the left did an awful lot more

02:14:05.180 consolidation in lots of places, and it's going to pay off results for them tonight.

02:14:09.800 The same thing happened in Edmonton, where literally...

02:14:12.560 I am told where you do have Jeremy Farkas.

02:14:16.940 Okay, we're going to go to the concession speech from Calgary

02:14:21.080 mayoral candidate Jeremy Farkas right now.

02:14:27.000 By right now, I meant almost right now.

02:14:29.100 have to bear with us people we're not going to have the cbc's budget for a few years

02:14:36.660 there we go amy doll is watching over that let's listen in to jeremy park

02:14:42.000 it is my incredible privilege to speak with you today from heritage park and gasoline alley

02:14:49.620 this place is a tribute to calgary and alberta's grit determination and our incredible energy

02:14:55.740 industry. We also give thanks for being able to live, work, love, play, and learn on this

02:15:02.840 land in peace as treaty people. We gather today in a place where all peoples, Calgarians,

02:15:09.620 and newcomers alike connect with the history of our first pioneers, as well as the culture

02:15:15.060 of the Métis and Treaty 7 First Nations. My story, like the stories of many who call 0.89

02:15:21.560 the city home, begins elsewhere. Tonight marks almost the day, the 65th anniversary of the

02:15:29.640 Hungarian Revolution and my father's arrival to Canada as a refugee. And when my family came to

02:15:36.280 Canada, they saw our city as much more than a place to find a job. Calgary is something that

02:15:41.440 you can't find just anywhere else, the promise of a fresh start. So many doors were closed to my

02:15:47.300 parents. But as Calgarians, they worked hard to make sure that those same doors

02:15:51.180 would be made open to me. And while we may not have had a lot of money, we had a

02:15:55.040 lot of opportunity. And Calgarians, whether we were born here or not, we

02:16:00.240 gathered here on this land to build homes, businesses, lives, and futures. And

02:16:07.340 that's what we've done tonight. It may seem like a small thing, but it isn't. By

02:16:12.140 voting, you took part in building our city. And that's what you do every day

02:16:16.760 as Calgarians working hard for your families. Thank you to the many candidates who put forward

02:16:22.920 their name to run for mayor and congratulations to mayor elect Jody Gondek. Thank you Jody

02:16:28.920 for your tremendous service and your incredible vision of tremendous potential that you put

02:16:34.920 forward for a city and that platform that you earned the trust of Calgarians to execute on.

02:16:40.040 Your vision for a community of economic, social and environmental resilience

02:16:45.920 beckons us as a reminder of the city that we're so proud of and we want to

02:16:50.660 keep building. I take to heart that you as our next mayor will represent not 0.99

02:16:56.420 just those who voted for you but those of us who advocated for change. You've

02:17:01.940 earned the trust of Calgarians to lead and I hope that you lead by example. To

02:17:07.280 To Jeff, Brad, Jen, and all the other incredible candidates for mayor, I congratulate you on

02:17:12.400 campaigning during such an incredibly difficult time.

02:17:16.560 To everyone running at the ward and trustee levels, it takes so much courage to put your

02:17:21.160 name on the ballot in ordinary times, let alone in times like these.

02:17:25.700 I think looking back in the history books, we can say that this is an election unlike

02:17:30.280 any other, and I hope that this was a one-off.

02:17:35.200 So to all of those other candidates, you've put yourself out there and the sheer number

02:17:38.660 and quality of Calgarians and candidates showcases the incredible desire that Calgarians had

02:17:44.540 for change.

02:17:46.160 And to our departing councillors and Mayor Nenshi, thank you for your incredible service

02:17:51.020 and I hope that you'll continue to contribute to our city in meaningful ways, just as I

02:17:55.380 intend to.

02:17:56.700 This election is done, but the process of creating Calgary's future is just beginning.

02:18:01.960 To do that requires your continued civic engagement.

02:18:05.480 Our community needs your energy, we need your ideas, and we need your compassion in helping

02:18:10.820 our neighbors.

02:18:12.240 And based on your past service, I know that you will continue to contribute.

02:18:17.720 To my constituents, speaking as Ward 11 Councillor, serving as your representative

02:18:23.760 in City Council has been, I would say, the experience of a lifetime.

02:18:30.160 the opportunity to be able to serve as one of the youngest City Councilors ever elected,

02:18:36.320 as one of the first in my family to be able to finish high school, one of the first to

02:18:40.200 be able to finish university.

02:18:42.760 Stories like mine in a place like Calgary, they're not the rule, or rather they're not

02:18:46.640 the exception, but rather stories like mine are the rule.

02:18:49.920 And I think it speaks to the incredible community that we've built here together.

02:18:57.100 a short message to our volunteers thank you to the incredible members past and

02:19:03.280 present of our team you've shown the incredible influence and power of the

02:19:07.780 grassroots and I know that tonight is not the results that we were working

02:19:12.000 toward but I think that it is still in a results that we can be incredibly proud

02:19:16.000 of a more complete thank you will be forthcoming in the coming weeks as we

02:19:21.400 have the opportunity to reach out to our many generous volunteers and donors I

02:19:26.100 wanted to acknowledge our campaign cabinet and I would just say that you

02:19:30.460 know who you are because no ordinary person accidentally joins a daily

02:19:36.100 conference call at 7 a.m. so firstly I wanted to acknowledge Marina Mason

02:19:43.480 Marina, you've been my rock, you've been an incredible inspiration to me, and I thought

02:19:57.840 the hours were long, but having somebody around like you, I felt that the hours may have been

02:20:04.880 long but the days were short.

02:20:06.880 I saw each and every single day how you're an incredible inspiration to the people around

02:20:11.840 you.

02:20:12.840 You 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.

02:20:23.640 Thank you to Chris Carlisle, as my...

02:20:27.360 Chris, as my incredible right-hand man on Council, you've been an incredible influence to me.

02:20:38.700 I would like to say that you were instrumental in keeping me out of trouble,

02:20:42.860 but I think that the amount of trouble that I still continue to find,

02:20:46.680 I don't think anybody could have gotten me out of.

02:20:49.040 So thank you, Chris, for your incredible work and the leadership

02:20:51.320 that you've given not just to this campaign,

02:20:53.960 but as my chief of staff in our ward office.

02:20:58.060 Thank you to Lindsay Seawolf.

02:20:59.440 Lindsay, thank you.

02:21:03.120 I've still got sound from the focus.

02:21:08.700 Okay, well, I think we got the gist of where Jeremy Farkas is with his concession.

02:21:13.860 We will go over to Dave for an update on some of the numbers around the rest of the province here.

02:21:19.020 There is a lot of numbers, Corey, so bear with me.

02:21:22.280 Let's start in Medicine Hat, where Lindsay Clark looks elected to me. 0.97

02:21:27.960 She's leading by more than 5,000 votes over the nearest challenger, Ted Clugston.

02:21:33.260 In the city of Lethbridge, it's tight.

02:21:37.600 Blaine Higgins is up 6,546 votes to Bridget Mairn's 6,063 votes.

02:21:47.040 That's 44% to 40%, so that's still too close to call.

02:21:53.980 Edmonton with 189 of 228 stations reporting, so 83% of the vote.

02:22:01.120 Your new mayor will be Mayor Sohi with 84,200 votes.

02:22:08.660 Mike Nickel in second with 49,580 votes.

02:22:13.500 That's 44% to 26%.

02:22:17.400 So Sohi currently and comfortably in the lead.

02:22:22.740 Calgary's new mayor will be Jyoti Kondek.

02:22:26.560 She's closing in on 100,000 votes. 0.81

02:22:29.520 More than 33,000 votes ahead of Jeremy Farkas, who came in with 64,000, 65,000 votes now.

02:22:39.640 Jeff Davison in third place with 30,456.

02:22:46.340 Do you want to go through some fringe candidates?

02:22:48.680 Sure.

02:22:49.320 See how we're doing here.

02:22:51.400 Kevin Jay, how's he doing?

02:22:52.640 Let's start with Larry Heather, runs in every election.

02:22:55.160 He's got 281 votes.

02:22:58.160 Kevin Johnston, everybody's favorite COVID denier, less than 1,000 votes, 974.

02:23:06.680 Stan the Man Waziak, respectable 281.

02:23:11.680 Anyone I'm missing?

02:23:13.200 Nobody outstanding in the bunch, I guess.

02:23:14.980 Okay.

02:23:15.720 A couple of awards to update you on.

02:23:21.020 Joe Magniola's raid in Ward 2 is over.

02:23:24.800 He's been defeated by Jennifer Winas quite comfortably.

02:23:30.660 And Sean Hsu is in a battle for his political life.

02:23:34.000 He's leading now, but just by only 316 votes over Daniel D.J. Kelly.

02:23:40.220 And that's with only five polling stations left to go.

02:23:44.720 Of note, longtime Calgary journalist Gary Balrovich seems to have failed in his bid to capture Ward 8.

02:23:53.560 He's currently trailing Courtney Walcott now by 2,169 votes.

02:24:01.540 On to the fluoride fluoridation.

02:24:06.380 Yes, 61%, 151,000, almost 152,000 for 96,000 again.

02:24:15.780 So Calgarians will be getting fluoride in their water again.

02:24:21.240 Senate election, Pam Davidson is now in the lead with Erika Barutas in second and we'll 0.87

02:24:34.680 call him Eminem in third with 62,000 votes.

02:24:39.160 So it's a clean sweep of conservative voters.

02:24:45.120 The PPC looks to be around 5% for their three candidates.

02:24:52.680 The equalization referendum has passed with 58%, so not quite as high as pollsters or

02:25:02.960 the government would like.

02:25:05.760 And daylight savings time, do you want to eliminate the need to change the clocks?

02:25:13.240 Close. 51% say no. 49% say yes.

02:25:18.480 Keep in mind, that's just City of Calgary results.

02:25:22.200 Edmonton are not releasing their referendum poll results tonight.

02:25:26.780 So, just strictly speaking, in Calgary, Corey,

02:25:32.560 we've got a very much of a left-wing leaning mayor coming in,

02:25:37.420 Jason Kenney's probable hand-picked successor.

02:25:41.160 Sir, or you meant Mayor Ninchy's.

02:25:47.760 I don't think Premier Kenney's smiling with the selections of the municipalities tonight.

02:25:55.300 Okay.

02:25:56.620 All yours.

02:25:57.600 That's all the numbers I got at the moment.

02:25:59.980 Well, I see Vidor's still on deck.

02:26:02.200 I think we've got Danielle shortly here. 1.00

02:26:04.080 So maybe if I can come back, if he's got a moment for us.

02:26:06.320 Have there been some...

02:26:07.780 Oh, I should stop touching those buttons.

02:26:09.140 If we could bring Vidor in.

02:26:12.800 And are you watching the results what you can up there in Edmonton?

02:26:16.420 How's it looking?

02:26:17.280 I am.

02:26:18.260 And in Edmonton, we're, you know, it's going to be so he is mayor.

02:26:23.540 I'm not surprised.

02:26:25.400 This is what the news media got by virtue of not covering the race.

02:26:29.060 But there still are some surprising things.

02:26:31.180 I mean, Bev Esslinger, who was, you know, the most consistent vote for Mayor Iveson.

02:26:39.140 is going down to defeat to Aaron Rutherford, the NDP-backed, union-backed candidate.

02:26:45.040 Paquette's going to win.

02:26:48.200 Very, very strange race in Ippocokaneepahent. 0.65

02:26:54.880 I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.

02:26:56.700 I just shortened it to Kokanee, where Jennifer Rice is beating Rhiannon Doyle, 1.00

02:27:02.460 who had lots of really good endorsements, who's also beating Scott Johnson,

02:27:06.860 who was a longtime media person in Edmonton who covered City Hall for 20 years. Of all the

02:27:11.520 candidates running, probably knows the most about what's happened in City Hall over the last 20

02:27:15.480 years. He's only got 12% of the vote. And then the union-backed NDP person is in fourth place

02:27:21.420 there in that riding. But Jennifer Rice was a candidate that I wasn't paying any attention to, 0.99

02:27:26.260 is right now leading by about 200 votes. So that's an interesting race there.

02:27:33.540 Mike Nichols' riding went to the union-backed person, the ward that he used to represent.

02:27:39.200 The union-backed person, Karen Tang, will be a new councillor there.

02:27:43.080 Certainly looks like she'll be a new councillor, running about nine points ahead of the Mike Nichols-endorsed candidate in that riding. 0.99

02:27:54.000 Mayor Iveson endorsed a handful of candidates about a week ago.

02:27:58.560 They're all doing quite well.

02:27:59.720 So it looks like he's going to get Ashley Salvador to win in Ward Métis.

02:28:06.260 Looks like he's going to get Ann Stevenson to win in Ward O'Dayman. 0.96

02:28:14.040 Andy Knack, who's been a consistent sort of center-left voter, is handily winning his.

02:28:19.740 And then O'Dayman, which had former city councilor or current city councilor Tony Katerina

02:28:25.580 running in in a tiny area of what used to be his old old riding not running where he ran last time

02:28:32.160 uh he's gone down to defeat only pulling in about 10 of the vote and the candidate that

02:28:38.060 mayor ivison endorsed is is coming in at about 20 some percent of the vote so you get some

02:28:42.080 interesting things happening there um in red deer which alberta's third largest city which also had

02:28:47.800 an open race ken johnson is uh is winning that merility race handily and in fort mcmurray

02:28:54.660 where you had a long-time city councilor, Verna.

02:28:59.160 I can never remember Verna's last name.

02:29:00.960 My apologies.

02:29:02.060 And Mike Allen, former MLA,

02:29:04.280 current city councilor running for mayor.

02:29:06.020 They both look to be losing to Sandy Bowman,

02:29:09.100 who's a newcomer into municipal politics,

02:29:11.720 but a long-time business person in the community.

02:29:13.880 Looks like he's going to be the new mayor of Fort McMurray.

02:29:17.800 I guess one of the shocking things to me

02:29:19.580 is that equalization referendum or not in Edmonton,

02:29:23.780 we're looking at roughly 32.7% turnout. So when the media don't cover a race, nobody shows up to

02:29:31.720 vote. And so he is going to win it with about 84,000 votes. He'll probably end up somewhere

02:29:37.820 around 100,000 votes. That's a lot fewer votes than Gondek has gotten in Calgary. So again,

02:29:47.900 calgarians were more engaged in this election um with about an equal number of polls yet to report

02:29:54.060 gondek's already at 129 000 votes uh she's probably going to end up around 150 000 before 1.00

02:29:59.660 it's said and done jeremy farkas is probably going to cross 100 000 votes before this is said and

02:30:04.500 done that would have been enough to win in edmonton um but it's uh it's municipal elections

02:30:11.100 You 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.

02:30:25.400 I find it fascinating that the Jody Gondek is at one hundred and twenty nine thousand votes.

02:30:32.220 But then when you go to the Senate election, you know, in Calgary, Pam Davidson is at 107,000 votes, like right behind the mayor.

02:30:43.140 So there are, you know, 100,000 plus votes in Calgary that are available to center right candidates, to CPC candidates.

02:30:52.280 And it says something that, you know, with the same number of polls counted, that Pam Davidson is 20,000 votes ahead of Jeremy Farkas.

02:31:04.260 And I think that's a lesson for conservatives and the conservative movement for the business community to sort of get their act together.

02:31:11.840 They're going to keep losing these races that they should have the number of votes to win.

02:31:17.180 But we we don't organize the right discussion.

02:31:21.120 We 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.

02:31:51.120 a long time in these locations. So it's, again, it's, it's a lesson to be learned.

02:31:55.440 Yeah. Well, that's, that's the takeaway we got to take from it. If we don't change,

02:31:58.880 if we don't get a lesson out of this four years from now, we're going to be looking at the exact

02:32:02.140 same picture. So a lot of wounds to be licked tonight, but people who want to see some,

02:32:06.720 some conservative government on the civic level have got to get it together and take another

02:32:11.440 approach. Cause this is not working out. Thanks Vidor. Danielle, I'll bring you in,

02:32:17.100 You know, so everything's kind of from a conservative, small government point of view.

02:32:21.440 It's not looking very pretty tonight.

02:32:23.920 What do you see?

02:32:24.960 There's got to be some positives we could find out there.

02:32:26.920 What have you spotted?

02:32:28.460 I just texted somebody.

02:32:31.300 It's a catastrophe for conservatism tonight.

02:32:35.240 I know.

02:32:36.360 That's why I was hoping you had something hiding.

02:32:38.420 Well, I do have a couple things.

02:32:40.220 I'm just looking at a few things because I had a number of people get mad at me for my

02:32:46.700 newsletter yesterday. And I wanted to check how my predictions were going against what we actually

02:32:53.020 are seeing tonight. And it appears I've only got two wrongs so far. I think Gary Bobrovitz would

02:32:57.840 win in Ward 8. I think he's second, but the union-backed candidate, Courtney Walcott,

02:33:03.120 it looks like he's going to be taking that. And then in Ward 11, I thought it was going to be

02:33:09.680 Rob Ward. I thought that because that had been a conservative riding with Jeremy Farkas vacating

02:33:14.020 it a conservative candidate would win there and again it looks like Courtney Brannigan is going 1.00

02:33:18.460 to win there one of those is a male and one of them is a female I may have that one backwards 1.00

02:33:22.060 you're gonna have to correct me if I've got that one wrong uh but as for the other fluid now as

02:33:27.380 long as you get the name right yeah they're both Courtney's so uh I'll have to look that up just

02:33:31.560 to just to make sure I don't have them incorrect but what what I uh what I am encouraged by is that

02:33:37.600 Peter DeMong has won he's been a pretty consistent conservative common sense voice on council and my

02:33:43.540 favorite candidate dan mcclain i'm so pleased to see that he won he is such a hard-working guy he

02:33:49.380 is very conservative very common sense you business guy used to have a business selling golf carts and

02:33:55.700 so he he really i think understands what it takes to take a business mindset and again he just worked

02:34:02.340 so hard i saw him everywhere over the course of of the summer the uh other candidates it looks like

02:34:07.860 sean chu may be able to squeak out a win although he had a little bit of controversy in the final

02:34:12.580 days of the campaign and with any luck as well we might see terry wong get in in ward seven

02:34:17.700 he's a terrific candidate um he's the former head of the chinese business association so he's really

02:34:23.460 raised his profile in in recent years and in fact if i uh know the story correctly he's the one who

02:34:30.100 flagged that dairy queen story that um that was written about by alicia corbella so well do you

02:34:36.260 remember that story where the dairy queen uh burnt to the ground and then the bureaucrats wouldn't

02:34:41.460 allow it to be reconstructed it was a family friend of terry wong's and he brought the story

02:34:46.340 to light so i know that he if he manages to to squeak through tonight he'll also be a very good

02:34:50.980 business advocate as well so it does look though like the the union backing the union packs the

02:34:57.060 big money that was that was set aside very early on had its influence when i looked at the the

02:35:02.420 different pack profile there were three that were more on the progressive side of the spectrum they

02:35:07.060 And they had a lot of overlap in the candidates they were supporting.

02:35:10.860 And it made a difference.

02:35:11.840 If you've got a pack of seven or eight candidates, you need something that's going to elevate you.

02:35:16.820 And so as much as we like to talk about taking big money out of politics,

02:35:20.980 it looks like the only way to get elected is to get the big money packs on the union side to back you.

02:35:26.960 And I don't think that's the outcome we were hoping for when we changed the elections rules.

02:35:32.680 So 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.

02:35:59.420 but it doesn't look like it's turning out that way,

02:36:01.300 either in Calgary or in Edmonton.

02:36:04.300 Yeah, well, and I mean, I guess the shining ladies, 1.00

02:36:06.560 Terry Wong, I've known him for a long time too.

02:36:08.220 He's a fantastic guy and he'll do a really good job.

02:36:11.040 And to be honest, I had Terry on my show a long time ago.

02:36:13.940 I thought it's Ward 7.

02:36:15.700 That was Drew Farrell's stronghold.

02:36:17.980 You know, Terry's swimming upstream.

02:36:19.380 I wish you the best, but I don't.

02:36:21.320 But it's looking pretty good for him right now.

02:36:23.700 There's 27 polls reporting.

02:36:25.040 He's got a lead of 850 votes.

02:36:26.960 uh so there's one light and and word seven maybe something to be learned from that too is he was

02:36:32.560 up against a number of progressive candidates they saw that progressive stronghold they all

02:36:37.100 pounced on it and that's one spot where they split themselves rather than the conservatives

02:36:41.560 all over the place so that's got to be karma cory because you've watched that in previous years as

02:36:45.980 well it was always the case that drew farrell i think she used to win it with the lowest percentage

02:36:50.260 of the vote because there'd be 10 or 12 conservatives taking her on i'm exaggerating

02:36:55.040 a bit, but not really. And so they'd split the vote every which way and that she'd come up the

02:36:58.980 other way. But I think you've probably identified it is that they thought with Drew Farrell retiring

02:37:03.480 after so many years that progressives figured it'd be a shoe in for them. And it turns out the other

02:37:09.060 way. Looks like Terry's been able to consolidate the conservative vote. You don't want to jinx it

02:37:13.020 because the final votes come in, but it looks to me like he's been leading all night.

02:37:18.600 Yeah. And Karra got into a surprising catfight in Ward nine. I figured he was pretty well

02:37:23.220 entrenched and he looks like he's pulled back in the lead. There's only one poll left, but he's

02:37:27.400 leading by 500 votes right now. But it's been back and forth between him and Naomi Withers, which

02:37:31.740 was kind of surprising. Yeah, I heard she had a really good ground game that anyone I know who

02:37:35.960 drove through that riding said that she did have a lot of signs up. And I think, you know,

02:37:40.320 some of these candidates, maybe this is the other way we should be looking at it. Some of these

02:37:44.600 candidates would be better described as being centrist. Like I think that Evan Spencer, he's

02:37:51.620 probably going to be a pretty centrist candidate. He's the one who ended up winning in Ward 12. He

02:37:56.740 was the constituency assistant for Shane Keating, who was a pretty sort of sensible guy.

02:38:02.080 Richard Pootmans is back as well. I think he's a bit of a known quantity. I get the impression

02:38:07.820 from Richard Pootmans, again, that he'll take a considered approach on issues and is more of a

02:38:13.640 centrist. And so we may end up with a council, especially since there's so many new faces,

02:38:20.660 hopefully a council that has a bit more cordiality with each other maybe a bit more willingness to

02:38:26.180 try to find some of that compromise but i i think that this is probably a mandate really to continue

02:38:33.620 on the track that the that the city has been on for the the last 10 years which would be continuing

02:38:39.860 to spend continuing to grow continuing to increase taxes this isn't really a repudiation of the the

02:38:45.460 10 years of Nahed Nanshi's time in the mayor's chairs. I think that with the election of Jodi

02:38:50.820 Gondek and so many progressive candidates, that really actually is an endorsement that Calgarians

02:38:56.260 want to keep going in that direction. That's how I see it anyway. Yeah, I just had a question.

02:39:02.580 We've talked a little bit about the unions and their impact on this election, but the one thing

02:39:07.620 that hasn't really been mentioned tonight is the specter of Jason Kenney. How much do you think his

02:39:13.380 unpopularity has affected the results of the small c conservative candidates in well across

02:39:19.900 the province it's it's tough to tell I mean I don't think that it's a question of people who

02:39:27.780 are conservative coming out and saying darn it I'm going to show Jason Kenney I'm going to vote for

02:39:31.620 the most left-wing person on the ballot but I think that there is always a stay-at-home factor 0.71

02:39:36.140 that when conservatives are demoralized when conservatives are not feeling enthusiastic about

02:39:41.240 their prospects when they're angry they just say pox on all your houses take care of it yourself

02:39:45.920 and so that i mean in some ways it's sort of surprising that the referendum results on on

02:39:53.260 the the question of equalization is as strong as it is considering how the the bent on on the

02:40:00.420 council has gone the other way maybe the way they were taking out their frustration is by voting 0.97

02:40:05.440 down the daylight savings referendum it looks to me like that one's gonna fail a darn jason kenny

02:40:12.000 i'm gonna show you i want to keep with the time change so maybe that's what we'll see manifesting

02:40:18.080 is people needed some way of showing their frustration and unhappiness and maybe that's

02:40:22.800 the way it's going to manifest but it would have been so much better if we'd had a strong jason

02:40:28.880 kenny with the full backing of his party out there talking about why we needed to vote yes

02:40:34.240 to start the conversation about equalization it would have been nice if the premier had been able

02:40:39.040 to campaign on behalf of the conservative candidates either for mayor or for council

02:40:44.160 member in both calgary and edmonton and then it would have been an asset rather than a liability

02:40:49.440 but that's the way it goes um he's uh he's got his own problems that he has to deal with and so

02:40:54.320 uh there could be a bit of a dynamic i often i often wonder if rachel notley had won again if

02:41:00.960 that would have changed the dynamic of of this race because sometimes you see that people like

02:41:05.680 to be represented at one level by a different group of people than represent them at the other

02:41:12.160 level you see it play out normally in in ontario with how they would elect a conservative at the

02:41:18.000 provincial level liberal at the federal level it seems perplexing but maybe we do that same thing

02:41:22.800 at the municipal level here maybe because we vote so overwhelmingly conservative at the federal

02:41:28.800 level and have historically at the provincial level. Maybe the way that we try to bring some

02:41:35.820 balance to politics is we just keep returning more progressive candidates and leaders at the

02:41:42.260 civic level. That just may be one of the strange dynamics that we have in our province because it's

02:41:47.520 now played out for multiple election cycles. So there's got to be something there.

02:41:52.060 Yeah, well, so we're getting the numbers and we still got the rest of the province to come in and

02:41:56.120 Edmonton on that referendum, but it looks like for equalization, there's definitely going to be a yes

02:42:01.700 win, but it'll be in that 60% range probably. Is that enough of a ball for Kenny to try and pick

02:42:06.980 it up and go with it? I mean, it's not quite a slam dunk. It's not a loss, but it wasn't a really

02:42:12.380 strong showing. It's like he needs a cause besides fighting on his COVID flank. Maybe he can use this?

02:42:18.440 You're just rubbing it in that I was saying that it would be over 70% and you won our bet.

02:42:23.240 I wanted to lose. I really did.

02:42:27.180 But 60% is still an important and meaningful mandate.

02:42:32.000 It's decisive.

02:42:32.980 I think it is decisive. It's 60 to 40. 0.99

02:42:36.040 And so I'd love to know why those 40% said that they want to still keep on sending money to Quebec

02:42:42.620 and subsidizing their hydroelectric power and subsidizing them for not producing their own natural gas and getting royalties off it.

02:42:49.540 I'd love to have that conversation, but I suspect it has something to do with, like, remember,

02:42:54.280 the question's a bit confusing. I had a couple people tell me, well, you have to vote yes to

02:42:58.940 mean no. So it's written as a negative. That's number one. So that may have caused some confusion.

02:43:04.120 And the other thing is, too, I think Albertans like to think of themselves as generous. And when

02:43:07.720 we're doing well, we want to share the wealth. We want our friends in Atlantic Canada and some

02:43:11.580 of the smaller provinces to be taken care of. And so it could be that there's a bit of ambivalence

02:43:16.200 that it's not that we want that that group wants to keep things the way they are, but there wasn't

02:43:22.120 really an option to open up the conversation for renegotiations. So I think the next best thing is

02:43:28.340 to look at that 60% as a strong mandate to do one or the other. If we can't get it taken out of the

02:43:33.720 constitution, which would be a pretty difficult bar to pass, at least we can have a very robust

02:43:38.980 national conversation about how it needs to change. And so I think the rest of the country

02:43:43.180 has been on standby now it's up to the premier to do something with it because if he doesn't act on

02:43:49.700 this given such a clear mandate that's when he's going to end up with real problems i think that

02:43:55.640 the uh he's got to follow this up with a couple of meaningful actions if um if he's going to try

02:44:00.740 to win back that disgruntled base that he that he that has become disaffected over the last 18

02:44:06.220 months or so all right um the next step obviously is that the provincial government needs to pass

02:44:14.500 a resolution on the floor of the legislature do you think that's uh day one um when they get back

02:44:21.040 from the legislature next week i'm looking forward to that i'll be up in edmonton so that i can take

02:44:25.520 in the opening days of the of the legislature i'm not sure how quickly they could probably

02:44:30.160 issue it as an emerging motion based on on the election results and that would be smart that

02:44:35.920 be really smart for them to to come in off that success as well it looks like i haven't seen the

02:44:42.640 earlier the latest update i think they also got a strong mandate for their three uh conservative

02:44:48.880 senate nominees as well and we'll have to see whether the daylight savings one i don't know

02:44:53.920 why the daylight savings one is not more strongly supported what am i missing i don't want to have

02:44:59.760 a time change maybe it's that maybe it's people want standard time year round rather than daylight

02:45:04.080 savings year round. I've got to really scratch my head on that one. But even still, I think that the

02:45:07.620 premier, even if there isn't conservative victories in the municipal level in Calgary and Edmonton,

02:45:13.840 I think that he can look at these results and take some measure of victory out of it. So he

02:45:18.980 really should capitalize on that, put forward a motion to get the ball rolling, get the discussion

02:45:23.800 going. But I'd like to also see him look at that as a mandate that people want more. They do want

02:45:29.800 him to take some additional steps, whether the ones described by Rob Anderson in his Free Alberta

02:45:36.500 strategy or the ones that Drew Barnes and Preston Manning and the others who traveled the province

02:45:41.200 looking for a fair deal. He needs to accept that this is, I think that this is a mandate to move

02:45:47.620 on some of those things too. Great. Well, thanks. We'll see as things come in. It looks like Mike

02:45:52.260 Nichols about to come out with his speech there and we'll appreciate that. We'll check in with

02:45:57.040 again in a little while here. Yeah, talk soon. Great, thanks Danielle.

02:46:06.160 So it looks like in Edmonton things have pretty much settled. Mike Nichol is at the microphone.

02:46:13.440 On town where you can see Mike Nichol is about to concede here to Amarjit Sohi. Let's listen in.

02:46:18.960 So I want to first of all I always give thanks at the beginning of a speech not after the speech

02:46:23.840 because seldom do you pay attention to the end of a speech.

02:46:27.140 You always pay attention at the front of the speech.

02:46:29.620 So first of all, I want to thank my family and friends,

02:46:34.020 particularly my family.

02:46:35.520 I want to thank Leanne, my son Reagan and Duncan

02:46:38.100 who have endured quite the year, quite the year on this campaign.

02:46:43.880 And to all my staff and campaign team,

02:46:46.780 I couldn't have asked for a better team.

02:46:49.040 I'm so proud of you.

02:46:50.280 I want to say thank you so much for believing in this campaign

02:46:53.800 and believing in Edmonton.

02:46:55.440 And we fought.

02:46:56.900 We fought the good fight.

02:47:05.980 To all the volunteers and donors,

02:47:08.680 let's be clear.

02:47:10.020 This has not been a waste.

02:47:12.260 You have given voice to thousands upon

02:47:14.560 thousands of Edmontonians

02:47:16.560 who wanted real change.

02:47:18.260 Who wanted real change in this city.

02:47:20.660 This campaign was about freedom

02:47:22.160 This campaign was about freedom and opportunity

02:47:24.700 for the ordinary Edmontonians.

02:47:27.200 And this campaign gave voice to change.

02:47:30.040 As you are aware,

02:47:32.940 Edmonton has many, many problems.

02:47:35.680 And this campaign has brought those problems to

02:47:38.680 light.

02:47:40.020 And the voice of thousands who have

02:47:42.640 spoken to return to the status quo,

02:47:45.220 I've got to be honest,

02:47:47.220 you are in for some tough times ahead.

02:47:49.720 Some very tough times ahead.

02:47:52.160 And that we got to understand

02:47:54.660 this campaign was about a voice

02:47:56.740 of saying that we can fight back.

02:47:59.760 A voice that was saying

02:48:00.940 that we want to change.

02:48:02.900 I want to thank the thousands and thousands

02:48:04.620 of people who supported this campaign.

02:48:06.520 I want to say thanks to Malik.

02:48:09.300 I want to give him a round of applause.

02:48:13.700 I want to say thanks to Rick Comrie.

02:48:19.380 And a special thanks to Bill Smith.

02:48:22.160 Now for the issue at hand.

02:48:29.900 Ladies and gentlemen, our campaign has fallen short.

02:48:33.880 I bear the loss.

02:48:35.980 I bear the responsibility and no one else.

02:48:38.520 This campaign I am proud of.

02:48:40.940 I am proud of all of you who stood by me.

02:48:44.380 The clear choice again was the status quo or do

02:48:47.020 something different.

02:48:48.380 or do something different.

02:48:50.720 All right, unfortunately, we just have to cut out of Mike Nichols' speech here

02:48:53.940 as the new mayor-elect has entered the room and is being greeted by supporters.

02:48:59.960 That's right, that's Amarjeet Sohi, and immigrated to Canada from India in 1981.

02:49:05.060 He went to Bonny Doon High School.

02:49:06.860 He's got strong Edmonton roots here, then worked as a taxi driver in Edmonton,

02:49:10.880 former Edmonton bus driver, city council.

02:49:12.800 He was first elected to Ward 6 on 2007 and then Ward 12 in 2010 and 2013.

02:49:19.640 But really what brings a lot, he brings a lot to the table here with his federal experiences as a former cabinet minister.

02:49:26.360 He's proven that he's able to bring dollars into Edmonton for city projects.

02:49:30.440 He's thanking his supporters and making his way to the podium.

02:49:33.440 Oh, doing a little dance.

02:49:35.120 Yeah, he was first elected in 2007.

02:49:37.700 He served two and a half terms.

02:49:39.980 And it was in 2016 that he decided to leave to run for the federal Liberals.

02:49:44.960 And that's when he was replaced by Mobanga in the by-election.

02:49:48.180 So he has just such an incredible career.

02:49:52.580 And as Sarah Ryan mentioned, just came from such humble beginnings.

02:49:56.860 And so this must feel surreal.

02:49:58.060 Guys, I'm just going to interrupt too.

02:49:59.520 Oh, sorry.

02:50:00.500 Oh, no, I'm just going to let you know,

02:50:01.560 Don Eveson also put out a statement congratulating his old friend, Amarjeet Sohi.

02:50:05.640 We know that they're very, very close.

02:50:07.700 Let me read you some of it.

02:50:08.640 He says, on behalf of the city of Edmonton, I want to congratulate Amarjeet Sohi on his election as Edmonton's 36th mayor.

02:50:14.560 I've had the pleasure of working with Mayor Alex Sohi during this time as city councillor.

02:50:18.720 I'd always appreciated and have been inspired by how hard he's worked for our community.

02:50:22.780 I have no doubt Edmonton will thrive under his leadership.

02:50:25.600 These two have been extremely, extremely close all throughout their time together on city council.

02:50:31.560 We saw them work together on things like transit.

02:50:34.460 They agree on several different projects.

02:50:36.220 So, you know, we've talked about whether, you know, Vinesh asked whether this was a referendum on Mayor Don Iverson's tenure as mayor.

02:50:43.140 But if so, you know, then the selection was we like what Mayor Iverson was doing and we want that to continue with Amarjeet.

02:50:51.200 So he's got a lot of the same viewpoints.

02:50:54.660 You know, he supported the LRT West, the Valley Line out west.

02:50:59.560 He 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.

02:51:07.320 So even when Amarjitso, he went and became MP, those two continued to have a good relationship.

02:51:14.380 So James is hammering.

02:51:16.080 Okay, go, go, go.

02:51:19.540 We're just going to go to Dave Naylor now for an update on the live numbers.

02:51:24.280 Thanks, Derek.

02:51:24.980 I'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.

02:51:40.740 Sorry, Rob, we're not normally this unprofessional. Normally, we're a lot worse.

02:51:45.120 Anyways, we'll start in Calgary this time because that's the page I've got up.

02:51:49.100 Jody Gondek, the new mayor, the first female mayor of Calgary, now sitting at 160,000 votes.

02:51:56.340 Jeremy Farkas in second, 108,000.

02:52:00.140 So Gondek has a 51,000 vote lead.

02:52:04.700 Why don't we quickly run through the districts in Calgary in Ward 1.

02:52:11.580 Sonia Sharp leading with 11,600 votes.

02:52:16.000 She's got a 7,400-vote lead over her current nearest rival. 1.00

02:52:21.740 In Ward 2, Joy Maggs, a long-time City Hall incumbent,

02:52:27.040 has gone down to defeat the bias-crushing margin.

02:52:31.280 Jennifer Winnes has got more than 12,000 votes.

02:52:34.520 Joy Maggs, only 2,500.

02:52:36.320 So those RCMP charges last week looks to have done him in.

02:52:42.380 In Ward 3, Jasmine Mayen is leading.

02:52:47.460 In Ward 4, Sean Chu is now ahead.

02:52:50.820 He had been trailing, but is now ahead by more than 1,100 votes.

02:52:55.460 Ward 5, Raj Dhaliwal in the lead, but only by 382 votes over Stan Sandhu.

02:53:05.160 Ward 6, Richard Poopmans, the incumbent, ahead by 6,800 votes.

02:53:12.380 Ward 7, Terry Wong, our producer, James' guy, is ahead by 850 votes.

02:53:20.680 In Ward 8, it's Courtney Walcock, comfortably by 2,300 votes.

02:53:26.020 In Ward 9, incumbent Giancarlo Cara is up only by 158, but that's with all polls reporting, so there may be a recount in the offing there.

02:53:39.760 In Ward 10, it's the former alderman, André Chabot, looks to be going back to City Hall again.

02:53:47.180 He's ahead by 830.

02:53:50.560 André known famously for doing his handstands around City Hall, walking on his hands.

02:53:55.700 But I'm sure he did other stuff other than that.

02:53:58.080 Ward 11, Courtney Brannigan is headed to City Hall.

02:54:01.900 She's currently leaded by 746 votes with one poll left to come.

02:54:07.420 Ward 12, Evan Spencer comfortably ahead by 4,500 votes.

02:54:14.940 Ward 13, whoa, this is a bit of a shock.

02:54:18.860 Diane Colley-Urquart looks like she's going down to the feet. 1.00

02:54:22.580 Crushed.

02:54:23.500 Dan McClain has got a 4,400-vote lead on her.

02:54:27.060 We're going to ask Vitor if that's the union candidate or not.

02:54:31.500 No, Dan McClain is definitely a public concern.

02:54:33.220 That's a shocker.

02:54:34.620 Incumbents rarely lose in civic politics and not that bad, not that bad.

02:54:41.800 Ward 14, Peter DeMong, the incumbent, currently well ahead by more than 13,000 votes.

02:54:49.580 Fluoride is coming back in in Calgary with a 61% in favor.

02:54:56.540 The Senate election, the slate of conservative candidates comfortably in front.

02:55:03.720 The PPC candidates, around four to five percent.

02:55:08.000 The referendum, 59 percent yes, 41 percent no.

02:55:13.480 Keep in mind that is just Calgary.

02:55:16.860 The question number two on daylight savings time, very close, 51 to 49 percent.

02:55:24.400 In Edmonton, your new mayor will be Mayor Sohi, with 90,000 votes compared to closest

02:55:32.580 challenger Mike Nickel with 5,200. Looking around the province in Lethbridge, still fairly

02:55:43.260 tight. Blaine Higman currently ahead of Bridget Mearns, 12,000 votes to 11,500. In Medicine

02:55:54.500 Hat, Lindsay Clark running away with it. She's 9,000 votes ahead of Ted Clungston.

02:56:00.900 That's knocking out the incumbent, right?

02:56:02.900 That's knocking out the incumbent, yes.

02:56:04.900 We've got a hatter in the studio here, and he is nodding.

02:56:07.900 That was the incumbent mayor getting crushed.

02:56:10.900 What was that mark? Was it 3 to 1 or something?

02:56:13.900 3 to 1, yeah.

02:56:14.900 That is rare. Small town mayors have the easiest job in Alberta.

02:56:17.900 13,000 votes to 4,600 votes.

02:56:22.900 Finally, we'll do Grand Prairie Mayor, extremely tight.

02:56:27.900 Jackie Clayton with $31.77, Eunice Friesen nipping at her heels with $31.62. 0.58

02:56:36.420 And Airdrie, did you go through, did you get Airdrie?

02:56:38.500 No, I haven't, I figured you'd be able to.

02:56:40.180 Mayor Brown is back in.

02:56:40.900 We said we're only doing the important cities.

02:56:43.620 Hey, Airdrie is the center of the, you know, it's like the gravity center of politics in Alberta.

02:56:49.680 It actually is the center of a lot of mischief.

02:56:51.920 It is the center of a lot of mischief.

02:56:53.240 Anyway, Peter Brown re-elected as mayor tonight with a sizable, I think he was close to 65%, 70%.

02:56:59.600 So congratulations, Peter.

02:57:01.760 Very interesting.

02:57:02.640 I know Dave was going through it, but extremely interesting.

02:57:05.300 I'd like to maybe get Vitor's take on it.

02:57:07.340 I think we'll get his take on kind of these municipal election results overall.

02:57:11.640 We'll get to the referendums in Senate in a bit.

02:57:14.000 But the one that really is standing out right now is Sean Chu, the Chu train, enduring,

02:57:20.900 holding on by a small margin. Looks like he is likely to be re-elected tonight.

02:57:27.900 Vitor, I know that that campaign had a huge emphasis on advanced polls.

02:57:33.900 That was probably a wise decision in this case.

02:57:38.900 I imagine that they're going to underperform in the election day polls.

02:57:43.900 What do you think has saved the day for Chu?

02:57:46.900 Chu. And is he going to be able to survive when he takes his seat on council?

02:57:53.300 Yeah, I think he's going to survive. The story, I mean, unless more details come out that really

02:57:58.280 change the perception of the story, you're left with the impression that it's a very

02:58:02.220 odd thing from 1997 that's been sort of hidden until now for it to come out on the Friday before

02:58:10.720 the election with with stuff that looked and felt like leaks felt there there was an oddness to it

02:58:16.960 but i agree with you i think sean chu got saved by the fact that he did a good job in the advanced

02:58:21.440 polls and it's probably the lead that he had in the advanced polls that that turned around and

02:58:24.960 saved him um you know you're in in calgary when you look at it uh you've got at least one high

02:58:32.000 profile, incumbent going down to defeat in Edmonton, it looks like we have three. So this is

02:58:40.580 a day where the voters were not necessarily very positive on people who they think have let them

02:58:52.620 down. So, I mean, Diana Collier-Kart not only lost, but she's in third place. She lost to a strong,

02:58:58.240 a really credible conservative candidate, more conservative center-right common-sense candidate

02:59:03.800 in Dan McLean, but she's also 2,000 votes behind Jay Unsworth, who was the union-backed candidate

02:59:09.580 in her riding. And Diane has, for election after election after election, pretended to be a 1.00

02:59:15.240 conservative at election time and then voted with the left throughout the four years or the three

02:59:19.700 years back in the days when it used to be three-year terms. That's come to an end. I think

02:59:23.920 the voters have seen through it. So you've got Dan McClain and Peter DeMong, two strong center

02:59:29.880 right common sense candidates there. Ward 12, you know, Evan Spencer is, you know, a candidate in

02:59:38.260 the frame of his boss, whose name is escaping me at the moment. He's the chief of staff to the

02:59:43.240 outgoing incumbent in that writing. He'll come to me in a second. It's a shame in Ward 11. Rob Ward,

02:59:49.280 really good candidate, just losing by about 700 votes to Courtney Brannigan. There's one poll

02:59:55.460 left. It can still swing possibly that much, but probably not. André Chabot is back on council.

03:00:03.540 And so, you know, that's another center-right voter. So you have at least, right there, you

03:00:08.540 have at least the three that you had before. Giancarlo is just squeaking it out, but they're

03:00:13.000 probably done there. Ward 8, you know, Gary Bovrovitz was going to be a centrist center-left

03:00:19.780 candidate, lost to the union-backed left candidate in Courtney Walcott. Terry Wong is holding out,

03:00:26.440 so that's a fourth center-right counselor. You add Chu to that, that's a fifth center-right

03:00:33.020 counselor. You know, we're going to see what Raj Dhaliwal turns out to be like, probably more of

03:00:38.880 a centrist. You know, you've got the basis of a group of city councillors that are going to do

03:00:47.340 okay holding sort of the majority of council's feet to the fire. But in all honesty, you know,

03:00:53.580 Jodi Gondek has, you know, she's sitting at 160,000 votes with essentially she's winning 0.60

03:01:02.660 with 45 percent of the vote because 52 percent of the vote that represents center right and center

03:01:09.680 candidates uh right and center right candidates are divided about four different ways uh if you

03:01:15.940 add farkas davison field you get more votes than gondick and damery but the left has always been

03:01:22.680 better at consolidating their votes that's why they win these things that's what you got in calgary

03:01:27.400 In Edmonton, you know, you got Andy Knack, who's returned, but he's pretty much a center-left

03:01:34.780 counselor. Bev Esslinger, who was a centrist counselor who always followed the lead of Don

03:01:40.640 Iverson, is losing to left-wing candidate Aaron Rutherford. John Zadig, who's a right-wing

03:01:46.760 counselor, is getting beaten handily by Karen Principe, whose husband is a broadcaster on the

03:01:52.260 Oilers games in Edmonton. Karen's actually a pretty good center-right candidate herself, 1.00

03:01:56.280 So that's not too, too bad in terms of the overall impact.

03:02:00.160 But we lose an experienced center-right counselor in Zadek.

03:02:04.800 Principe will be okay.

03:02:06.540 Paquette, who's by far the most left-wing city counselor in Edmonton, won handily in his ward.

03:02:11.720 In 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.

03:02:21.420 And 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.

03:02:31.700 You got Ashley Salvador beating out Carolyn Matthews in Métis, which is the northeast end of the city.

03:02:38.420 So 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

03:02:46.300 Most 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

03:02:54.500 Papas Chu went to Michael Janz, who's a hardcore NDP candidate.

03:02:58.620 His signs were all orange.

03:03:00.080 There's truth in advertising on that.

03:03:01.800 He won handily.

03:03:03.180 My own home ward of Pehoasin, Tim Cartmel, run handily.

03:03:09.280 He only had one opponent.

03:03:10.760 He won with 81% of the vote.

03:03:12.680 He's been a really good city councilor.

03:03:16.300 kokanee which is ipecocanee perhaps oh uh i'm sorry we're gonna have to cut to jody gondek

03:03:23.980 mayor elect she is coming to the podium to speak now uh oh we're gonna have her in just a minute 0.95

03:03:31.580 here uh maybe uh vitor before we have uh jody uh come in here for her speech really quickly why 1.00

03:03:39.900 don't you tell us uh what do you think this means for calgary uh do you think she's gonna be a

03:03:44.540 shift further left from Nenshi or a continuation? She's an odd mix. There are lots of things that 0.78

03:03:50.780 her and Nenshi didn't completely get along with. She's a little bit, she's equally cerebral,

03:03:56.580 but she does have her differences with Nenshi. I do think she's still the candidate of the 0.53

03:04:02.080 bureaucracy in Calgary. So I don't expect great big changes, but at the very least you might get

03:04:07.740 a change in tone in she can be hard nosed but sometimes mary nenshi's petulance and ego really 1.00

03:04:16.060 got him going i think she'll be a little bit more restrained personality wise than nenshi but i 0.83

03:04:21.880 think overall in politics it's going to be roughly the same all right we're going to go to jody gondek

03:04:26.440 right now.

03:04:55.440 Well, 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.

03:05:19.180 thank you calgary with all of my heart thank you for engaging in democracy and sending a clear

03:05:28.280 signal about what our future looks like thank you for embracing a vision of promise and opportunity

03:05:35.940 the selection is about all of you and the many things that you believe we can accomplish together

03:05:43.020 it's also about the hard work of so many candidates and their campaign teams who

03:05:49.700 ran because they all believed in our city this election is about my own

03:05:54.600 campaign team it's about 1200 volunteers strong volunteers who gave their time

03:06:02.220 and energy to a common purpose to ensuring that we gave people a reason to

03:06:08.760 vote my heart is full at the thought of how much love and support i have received not only from

03:06:15.640 the day i announced but all the way up to today this election is also about my family justice

03:06:24.600 todd and my mom please know that all of your sacrifices did not go unnoticed thank you for

03:06:32.040 taking this journey with me for caring about me and believing in me this election is also about

03:06:38.440 my dad who left us far too early it was actually his unfinished community service that i picked up

03:06:46.200 in 2003 that has brought me to this point in my life my attention to seva to service that's all

03:06:54.520 his legacy and so now we turn to that focus on the mission of service to build a stronger city

03:07:02.760 I 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.

03:07:18.580 I 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.

03:07:28.340 I'm looking forward to also maintaining many of the relationships that started on this

03:07:34.400 campaign trail.

03:07:35.400 I'd like to hear more from Jan Damery and Zane Novak about their ideas for our social

03:07:41.380 service organizations.

03:07:42.480 I'd like to hear more from Grace Yon and Brad Field about how we can strengthen our

03:07:47.960 business community.

03:07:49.820 And I trust that both Jeff Davison and Jeremy Farkas will stay engaged with our new council

03:07:55.880 to offer their insights and experiences from their time in service.

03:08:01.240 I'm very excited about this prospect of creating a new team, one that prioritizes the wellbeing

03:08:07.000 of Calgarians through ensuring that we understand our collective strength.

03:08:13.040 Your new council will pull together around a common vision that makes us more resilient

03:08:19.020 as a city.

03:08:20.380 We will set the bar high to deliver on your expectations and we will remain accountable

03:08:25.740 to all of you. Having listened to you over the last four years on Council as well as

03:08:31.500 the last nine months on the campaign trail, you have asked me to lead with a steady hand

03:08:37.820 as we emerge from economic turmoil and a pandemic. I will ensure that we stay focused on a recovery

03:08:45.680 that is rooted in economic, social and environmental resiliency. Together with the business community

03:08:52.900 and our creative sector your city council will deliver on the vision of a revitalized downtown

03:08:59.540 that brings about spaces and places that are welcoming and alive we'll work with our economic

03:09:06.180 development partners and real estate experts to ensure that our vacancies become a thing of the

03:09:11.380 past because we will have evolved our buildings into active hubs at all hours of the day in

03:09:18.500 In partnership with our nonprofit leaders, we will lift up people in positions of vulnerability

03:09:24.680 because we choose to rebuild our city from a place of compassion.

03:09:29.520 We will address harm reduction, poverty, safety, and we will ensure that every Calgarian is

03:09:36.920 able to live in a home with dignity and respect.

03:09:40.840 Our commitments and actions related to reconciliation and anti-racism will further create a city

03:09:47.720 that is welcoming and inclusive your new city council will advance the labor force participation

03:09:54.600 of women by ensuring that we attract capital to calgary for female entrepreneurs who are rising

03:10:01.160 stars with ideas that are capturing the attention of global business leaders we will be steadfast

03:10:08.680 in providing access to safe and affordable opportunities for children's early education

03:10:14.760 and care and your new city council will make a commitment to climate action because we can and

03:10:21.800 we must our ability to compete on the global stage depends on taking on the position of being a leader

03:10:29.560 in the transitioning economy committed to creating more sustainable greener and cleaner solutions

03:10:35.800 to be used across businesses and industries the city of calgary will progress our mission to

03:10:42.040 electrifying our corporate fleets and we will work with regional partners on flood mitigation

03:10:48.120 and food security we will accomplish these goals as a council in service of all calgarians

03:10:56.840 as your mayor i will lead with courage with conviction and with humility i will be with you

03:11:05.400 every step of the way as we encounter the unknown and we make our way through unforeseen challenges

03:11:12.040 You can take comfort in having elected a mayor who is able to rise to any occasion and answer every call.

03:11:20.860 It has been an absolute privilege to run in this election and highlight all of the things that are important to you.

03:11:27.620 It will now be an honor to serve as your mayor.

03:11:31.820 Wow.

03:11:32.860 And support you.

03:11:37.480 And support you into a future that is ours to shape.

03:11:40.900 Thank you, Calgary.

03:11:50.460 Mayor-elect of Calgary, Jody Gondek.

03:12:07.000 I mean, this is...

03:12:09.000 Vitor, 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.

03:12:20.580 I mean, Mike Nickel ran a pretty unapologetically conservative campaign for a guy running for Edmonton mayor.

03:12:27.980 I mean, he ran a campaign that might get you elected in Brooks.

03:12:34.140 I mean, not that Brooks elects conservative mayors either,

03:12:37.020 but I mean, he ran an unapologetically conservative campaign in Edmonton

03:12:43.000 taking positions that are unpopular,

03:12:45.040 opposing things like vaccine mandates and stuff like that

03:12:47.400 that are popular in Edmonton.

03:12:50.340 Jody Gondek, obviously, in Calgary here.

03:12:53.820 Council looks, of the conservative incumbents,

03:12:56.980 incumbents, like, you know, those who, there was really only three core conservative incumbents

03:13:01.800 on the Calgary City Council, Jeremy Farkas, Joe Magliocca, and Sean Chu, Magliocca blown

03:13:09.380 out, and Jeremy Farkas coming up short on mayor, and obviously you don't get to sit

03:13:15.100 on council as second place here, because I'll leave Chu as the only re-elected conservative

03:13:19.660 incumbent in Calgary, but a few pickups.

03:13:22.180 um uh i guess you got cut off there when we went to jody gondack maybe complete your thought about

03:13:28.120 what it looks like for calgary city council well for calgary i mean there's some good pickups i

03:13:32.920 mean you know dan mcclain over dan collier cart that's a pickup uh you know peter demong might

03:13:39.540 not be as right wing as some people would like but he's a solid common sense center right candidate

03:13:46.440 And André Chabot is the same.

03:13:48.100 So in effect, and Terry Wong is a big pickup in seven.

03:13:51.800 So in effect, you're going to have...

03:13:53.580 Well, that's from Drew Farrell.

03:13:55.200 Yes.

03:13:56.040 I mean, that's, I mean, if you're talking to scale, that's an inverse flip.

03:14:00.820 That's not like a Diane Cully Urquhart who's like, run center right, govern center left. 1.00

03:14:06.540 This is arguably the most far left city councillor up there with Karra flipped to a wild roser.

03:14:15.320 Yep.

03:14:15.460 And 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.

03:14:30.820 In 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.

03:14:47.520 And in Edmonton, Mike Nichol was the leader of the opposition.

03:14:50.700 And in Calgary, Jeremy Farkas was the leader of the opposition.

03:14:54.000 We just have not elected those people mayors, even in open races.

03:14:58.360 Voters tend to look for somebody who's more optimistic, more positive, more saying yes to things at the municipal level.

03:15:06.120 And as conservatives, we shouldn't be shocked by that.

03:15:08.760 We always talk about the fact that we want government spending to move down to the level closest to the people.

03:15:14.560 Well, that is municipal politics.

03:15:16.900 Lots of conservatives still want money spent on roads and on transit and on some types of services at the municipal level.

03:15:23.840 And I think sometimes when we run really hard conservatives at the municipal level, we don't perform as well as we should.

03:15:31.840 In many ways, Calgary has now gone from having three or four to having five center-right people.

03:15:41.260 They're all persuasive.

03:15:43.420 They all have good relationships with the media.

03:15:45.860 The media will like them and will be unable to characterize, you know, Chabot or Wong or McHugh.

03:15:52.960 Well, I think they're coming for two for a while.

03:15:56.220 They are probably.

03:15:56.820 That remains to be seen.

03:15:58.080 I think, as you said, if what's out is out.

03:16:02.100 I mean, it's 1997.

03:16:04.000 It's not good, but it's not a shootable offense.

03:16:07.600 If more comes out, he could be in for a rockier ride.

03:16:11.340 He could be.

03:16:11.860 But I will note that CBC is the only one who really covered the story.

03:16:17.660 Everybody else looked at it and said something's a little fishy here with the timing of what's coming out

03:16:21.780 And with the lack of clarity, and they just decided to stay away from the story until they knew more.

03:16:27.280 So there's either going to be more in a positive way for Chu or more in a negative way for Chu.

03:16:33.000 And we'll find out when that happens.

03:16:35.680 But if I could just interrupt, Vitor, there has been some additional reporting out today that is very bad towards Sean Chu.

03:16:45.900 CTV reported that he in fact had visited the underage girl at her house and engaged in sexual

03:16:53.520 foreplay with her and at one point took his gun out inside her residence so it wasn't just a brush

03:17:01.660 of the leg it's it's gotten significantly worse for Sean Chu the last 24 hours. Well and we'll see

03:17:09.560 they're all reporting off of the same paper so we'll see what comes of that. Ultimately we did

03:17:13.860 you know, that's what you're facing in Calgary. In Edmonton, the shocking thing in Edmonton that I

03:17:21.520 think I haven't heard anybody comment on and I've been following social media is we went from having

03:17:26.580 one female city councillor to having eight. The boys are now in a decided minority on Edmonton

03:17:34.220 city council um essentially um you have uh i think three male counselors getting re-elected

03:17:44.540 knack cartmel and paquette uh and they're joined by michael jans but every other seat has been won

03:17:52.300 by a woman in edmonton so we now have you know eight of the 13 people on edmonton city council

03:17:58.780 will be female when we only had one female before that's kind of surprising and interesting you had 0.97

03:18:04.060 councillors, Mo Banga, John Zadek, and the only female councillor, Bev Aslinger, go down a defeat

03:18:11.880 in Edmonton. That's interesting and fascinating and sort of a function of a very, very low voter

03:18:21.160 turnout, like 35% in Edmonton. So a lot of the strategies that were talked about and how they

03:18:29.840 would get extra conservatives up to vote.

03:18:32.200 Those did not pan out.

03:18:35.240 You know, you have Amarjeet Sohi winning with a little bit right around,

03:18:39.780 I think it's 44%, yeah, 44% of the vote total.

03:18:46.000 You know, Edmonton is...

03:18:47.220 Oh, I have really breaking news from the Congrean mayoral race.

03:18:52.580 Larry Heather has 436 votes.

03:18:56.780 Doubled his total from last update.

03:18:58.640 Yeah, 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.

03:19:10.200 If we elected dog catchers, runs in absolutely everything. He has managed 436 votes. 0.97

03:19:18.940 Do you think he could beat Jason Kenney for a dog catcher now?

03:19:22.220 You know, I'd like to see a runoff between Larry Heather and Jason Kenney right now.

03:19:28.640 It'd be close. It would be very close.

03:19:32.080 Yeah, and I think a big takeaway here is it's odd.

03:19:35.060 I mean, the most among conservatives, the ones who say, don't split the vote, unify, get behind our guy,

03:19:42.600 tend to be the more centrist Tories, red Tories.

03:19:47.040 And in Calgary's mayoral race, you saw them not exactly do that.

03:19:51.400 You saw, so you had, you know, a pretty impressive showing from Jeff Davison at 15%.

03:20:01.800 That's nothing to sneeze at.

03:20:03.020 That's a pretty good also, it's a good also ran for mayoral candidate.

03:20:08.080 Bradfield, I think I saw somewhere 5%.

03:20:12.180 5%.

03:20:12.400 5%.

03:20:13.040 And then there's a few other moderate center rights.

03:20:16.920 It's, they just, I don't think anyone has an obligation to drop out and support anyone else.

03:20:23.580 And I think people should vote for the candidate that matches their values.

03:20:30.200 But, I mean, at the same time, you know, pragmatism doesn't play no role whatsoever.

03:20:36.640 And that kind of school of thought, you know, coming, that kind of Tory unified, don't split the votes.

03:20:42.800 I 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.

03:20:56.840 Derek, 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.

03:21:21.680 and that would have a dramatic impact on lots of these races like essentially um I think if you go

03:21:32.460 look at Gondek's percentage it's probably pretty close to where Nenshi's percentage was

03:21:37.320 in in 2010 now Nenshi was a surprise and there was a big upturn in support for him but there's

03:21:45.440 something to be said for doing consolidation and runoff I mean I feel bad for the voters of Calgary

03:21:50.660 What 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.

03:22:12.240 Well, 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.

03:22:25.400 It'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.

03:22:37.620 You saw Kent Hare, a very credible candidate, had no choice but to drop out.

03:22:41.440 The pressure was there.

03:22:42.540 The money was going to clearly be there.

03:22:44.700 Farkas did not have the big business money behind him.

03:22:47.900 That generally went to the more centrist sort of conservative candidates

03:22:52.660 because these are free donations made by individual people or business owners.

03:22:59.420 The left gets a de facto political party because it just comes a couple of big public sector unions.

03:23:04.980 Boom, they pick their candidate.

03:23:06.180 Oh, sorry, so we're just going to go to Josh Andrus for a second.

03:23:09.620 Yeah, and the other thing was over the last four, five, six, seven, eight years,

03:23:14.320 it's been the left that's crying and screaming about dark money in politics,

03:23:18.220 and we're the ones sitting here watching the unions dominate that dark money conversation.

03:23:24.920 It's really frustrating to watch, and I don't have a solution for it,

03:23:30.780 but we need to figure out a way to deal with the unions and how much,

03:23:35.400 especially the public sector unions and how much they impact our elections two things really fast

03:23:42.440 one sorry go ahead vitor one is not only that is it just money but in this case there was actual

03:23:49.960 sort of chicanery behind the scenes to get council candidates to drop out and get hired onto union 0.75

03:23:55.640 jobs or onto jobs with other think tanks so that there would only be one left candidate that's one

03:24:02.280 And two, we do have an answer to this. Jason Kenney passed a law that would have fixed this.

03:24:07.860 He just never proclaimed it. So there is a law on the books that says unions can't spend money

03:24:12.740 on politics without getting the individual sign off of union members to spend their money on

03:24:17.380 politics. But that law passed the legislature, the lieutenant governor signed it, but it hasn't

03:24:22.080 been put into effect yet. And, you know, the power that be to the unions in Calgary and Edmonton,

03:24:29.540 they said, well, if they're not putting it into effect yet, we're going to take advantage of it

03:24:33.460 at the very least for this one last time. Well, I know Drew Barnes and Todd Lowen made some hay

03:24:38.840 going after Jason Kenney over this. Why in God's name wouldn't Jason Kenney proclaim this? It's

03:24:45.640 past the legislature. It's done. He's just got to make a phone call to the lieutenant governor and

03:24:50.320 say, sign a piece of paper. It becomes a law. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what proclamation

03:24:54.980 means the lieutenant governor has signed it already cabinet gets to declare it into effect

03:25:00.760 it's even easier yes so it's okay so why didn't he do that makes no sense you're gonna ask me

03:25:07.680 this is a space for my own very intense personal biases um we write let's go there we write very

03:25:14.480 horrible laws in alberta and we have a tradition of putting in proclamation clauses in our laws

03:25:20.520 It'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.

03:25:32.300 And it's a tradition left over from the PCs. It sucks. It's a horrible thing. 0.95

03:25:38.440 Forty percent of the laws that Jason Kenney has passed as premier have either not been proclaimed in whole or in part.

03:25:45.400 That's another crazy thing that we do in Alberta.

03:25:47.600 We 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. 0.99

03:25:55.240 And it's garbage. 0.56

03:25:57.000 The excuse that they make is, well, it gives the bureaucracy time to get ready for the law. 0.99

03:26:01.380 Well, no, that's not right.

03:26:02.720 The 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.

03:26:13.340 and there shouldn't be these cabinet artificial creation of a law gets three readings passes all

03:26:21.280 three readings gets signed by the lieutenant governor it should be a law not it comes back

03:26:25.900 to cabinet at some point for them to declare that it really is a law um this is a problem and it's

03:26:31.240 something that got done um and you know had had that union money law been put into place for this

03:26:39.520 election, it would have had a dramatic impact in the Calgary race and in the Edmonton race,

03:26:45.120 but it didn't get. So we get what we deserve, I guess.

03:26:50.120 I have personally heard this Vitor speech several times over. It's a good speech. Not enough of you

03:26:57.580 at home have heard it before. So I felt you all deserved to hear that in full. Danielle,

03:27:04.240 Now we're talking about union money, dark money in this.

03:27:08.700 Josh brought up the point that, I mean it's more often than not the left that's talked

03:27:13.340 about dark money in politics, big powerful financial interest trying to control things.

03:27:19.160 But it was very clearly the unions supporting leftist candidates here.

03:27:25.900 uh what do you think of course it had some impact but uh do you think it was the decisive factor

03:27:33.980 in gondex victory tonight i think it was the decisive factor in getting all of the brand

03:27:40.320 new candidates the name recognition i mean if you look a lot of these at a lot of these wards i mean

03:27:45.280 if you've got 10 12 candidates how are you supposed to make any kind of headway how are you supposed

03:27:50.680 to get your your name out there above the rest you need a little bit of help and so that's the

03:27:55.760 thing that that the unions are able to provide when you when you think about a couple of the

03:27:59.920 ways and a lot of it happens below the radar because even though they did do the public

03:28:05.980 endorsement they all have their email list that they can send out to and so if you are a union

03:28:12.000 member you'll get that union endorsement and then you can tell two friends and send it along and so

03:28:16.780 that is incredibly powerful there really isn't the equivalent on the business side i think that's the

03:28:21.980 the interesting thing is the left has managed to convince the general public

03:28:26.380 that it's the big corporations that are the ones that have the most influence and power and money

03:28:32.060 it's not the way it works i mean the business as you know i'm president of a business group

03:28:35.900 my experience with business owners is that they really just want the opportunity to have a fair

03:28:41.340 hearing if they've got a regulatory issue or permitting issue or development they just want

03:28:45.980 to make sure that they can have access and that the politician is going to return their calls

03:28:50.780 and listen to their their point of view in fact what often happens in previous elections is that

03:28:56.060 the business community would spread their money around that they would support multiple candidates

03:29:00.140 from all different sides because they wanted to establish a relationship so they could have an

03:29:04.860 entry if they ever needed something at council that doesn't happen with unions unions are very

03:29:09.740 ideological and there's no consequences if a union candidate doesn't get elected there's big

03:29:14.700 consequences if you're a business backer and your candidate loses someone can bear a grudge on that

03:29:20.460 so i think businesses are very very cautious when they're supporting candidates in the first place

03:29:26.460 and doubly cautious when it comes to supporting packs there just really wasn't a lot of corporate

03:29:32.060 money that was invested in this election either in calgary or in edmonton i mean i think in edmonton

03:29:36.860 there wasn't even a conservative pack or an organized conservative effort to try to raise

03:29:41.980 the profile of some of those candidates so that is something that we've got to to be aware of

03:29:47.340 is that why have we created election rules that stack the deck on one side i would far rather see

03:29:54.540 some kind of approach where individual grassroots dollars can be

03:29:58.860 contributed to candidates and you can get a tax receipt of some sort

03:30:06.700 sorry uh sorry danielle we're just having uh trouble here um i'm gonna keep talking i can

03:30:12.220 keep my things i can monologue about here we will have ourselves fixed in a jiffy here but you may

03:30:17.660 as well continue because we are deep something well one of the things that that i've been looking

03:30:22.540 at i've proposed this before because part of what happens is remember how political tax credits work

03:30:27.900 is that they're so generous if you give a hundred dollars to a candidate you get a tax write-off

03:30:34.780 that allows you to get 75 back in taxes at tax time and if you give to the federal uh federal

03:30:40.220 party it comes off your federal taxes if you give to a provincial party it comes off your

03:30:43.420 provincial taxes there's there's no equivalent for our municipal candidates i suppose you could

03:30:48.940 develop a system where you could reduce your property tax bill by a certain percentage of a

03:30:53.340 of a contribution you make to a municipal campaign but i've never seen that and so the fact of the

03:30:58.300 matter is people don't like this reality but the reality is that campaigns cost money you have to

03:31:03.500 to be able to print brochures and print signs and do mailers and do town halls and have

03:31:10.500 the volunteers come out and be able to support them. And so if you don't have the money for

03:31:16.220 those things, you're just not going to be able to run a credible campaign. And so what

03:31:20.360 we've seen tonight is that name recognition wins out. There were two candidates who got

03:31:25.720 elected just because people remember their name from when they were on council before

03:31:28.540 in Calgary was Andre Chabot and Richard Pootmans. And the three contenders for the mayor's chair

03:31:33.760 were all people who had recently been on council. So I think that that's telling. And it also should

03:31:39.040 tell conservatives too, that if they ever want to have a success at being able to have a conservative

03:31:45.360 mayor in Calgary or in Edmonton, they got to get started by running some decent candidates for

03:31:51.080 school board and for city councils and to stop being so snobby and think that provincial and

03:31:56.620 federal politics is the only place that's worth the effort. I think these two campaigns have

03:32:01.560 demonstrated that. And so now the premier is going to face the same tough challenge that he has

03:32:05.860 over the past 10 years, or the past two years, I guess, that he's been there,

03:32:10.100 is having an antagonist to both Calgary and Edmonton, who are going to be constantly

03:32:14.680 critiquing his every move. And he's got an election himself in another year and a half's

03:32:18.400 time. So it's not going to be any easier for him.

03:32:26.620 I'm not sure if I'm still on or not.

03:32:30.620 Okay.

03:32:31.620 You're still on, Dan.

03:32:33.620 Keep talking.

03:32:34.620 I'm done monologuing.

03:32:36.620 Like, hey, look, I was leader of the official opposition.

03:32:38.620 I used to be able to get up to 90 minutes, I think, to make a speech, so.

03:32:41.620 I was telling Rob about you could learn to speak a long time at a late night sitting in the legislature filibustering a bill.

03:32:49.620 Isn't the truth?

03:32:50.620 Rob was one of the best filibusterers I've ever seen. 0.99

03:32:53.620 They call me the filibuster.

03:32:55.620 for hours. All right. Well, we're having serious, we're just having a video issue. We're going to

03:33:05.100 have that fixed soon. But we've got some results back from the Senate for, at least in Calgary,

03:33:12.500 we've got the Conservatives leading, Doug Horner with a semi-decent result, PPC candidates making

03:33:19.940 up the rest, but obviously no rural, no badminton coming in. What's your expectation there?

03:33:25.620 i would anticipate that the the three conservative candidates would win it's i i don't know how far

03:33:30.340 behind doug horner is but again with name recognition especially with some of the rural

03:33:34.340 and northern vote there's a potential i guess he could squeak out one of those seats but the um

03:33:40.740 we don't it's not it's not really a serious race until we have some serious reform and who knows

03:33:45.780 i mean maybe if we can get a constitutional discussion going maybe we can bring back the

03:33:51.220 issue of of an elected senate the the real problem though with the senate as you know is that there's

03:33:56.900 no balance to it the the fact that in uh atlantic canada we have grandfathered in nova scotia and

03:34:03.700 new brunswick with 10 seats and alberta only has six uh that doesn't make any sense that's just

03:34:08.740 sort of an historical anomaly so until you can can fix the distribution problem and create something

03:34:15.060 closer to parity you're not really going to solve the problem with just an election you need that

03:34:21.940 effectiveness and you need some kind of equality there needs to be some consequences if the federal

03:34:27.700 government tries to come through with a piece of legislation that hammers a particular region that

03:34:32.740 they've demonstrated that they have no problem doing that when you look at the bill 69 bill

03:34:39.620 which was to redraft the pipeline approval project dubbed the no more pipelines bill

03:34:44.820 or bill c48 which was a tanker ban off the off the northern uh coast of british columbia but

03:34:51.860 only applies to bitumen i mean these are the reasons why you want to have an equal and

03:34:56.980 effective senate is so that these are the kinds of policies that you can get the regions together

03:35:02.820 saying that's just not fair and we don't have that right now so we don't we don't really have

03:35:07.060 the equality or effectiveness in the Senate. One E, Senate is just elected, is not going to make

03:35:13.420 the difference, especially if you elect your senators, and then that will of the people

03:35:19.080 gets ignored by the prime minister. So that's the other big problem that we have here. I don't mean

03:35:22.520 to sound so gloomy and down on the Senate election, because I think it's always great

03:35:26.700 when somebody's willing to put their name forward. And we had so many people put their name forward,

03:35:30.980 as I guess the biggest disgrace that the prime minister didn't wait to take that seriously,

03:35:36.160 because that that could have changed the the national discussion it could have led to a

03:35:40.640 discussion that would have fostered greater unity and instead i think it's just created more division

03:35:46.160 so we've got a lot of these tough conversations to have over the coming years

03:36:01.760 how's it going there guys

03:36:06.160 oh danielle can you hear me i can now okay well this is an absolutely atrocious uh view

03:36:22.160 oh you know what i am told we're back i am told we're back here we go oh look at that

03:36:30.320 camera mates that was scary i okay i had said we're pulling the plug uh technical difficulties

03:36:37.600 had become technical inabilities and uh our hatter was screaming at me in the back hold on

03:36:46.000 hold on okay so we're we are back uh we're not going to go too much longer because we've got

03:36:52.000 the results of the of the big races in calgary and edmonton but i think um maybe what we're

03:36:56.880 we're going to do is let's go through the uh referendum results as we have it and as we're

03:37:01.200 doing that um we're going to get melody maybe to uh melody risen uh well she's at least going to

03:37:07.680 send us some numbers we're going to wrap up with some results of the medium municipalities that

03:37:12.200 do not include airdrie uh if rob is still watching i mean the most important race for me tonight is

03:37:17.540 in high river my husband's running for council members so i don't know if i'm a political spouse

03:37:21.460 yet or not. Oh, geez. Now it's your turn to deal with it. Exactly. You'd think after the trauma of

03:37:28.620 being a political spouse, he would know not to put you through it. I can't imagine if my wife

03:37:33.180 ran for something. All of our joint friends think he's lost his mind, so we'll find out whether or

03:37:39.920 not he was successful. All right, well, we're going to go to Dave Naylor now, get an update on

03:37:45.100 the equalization referendum, or the series of referendums, at least with the results in Calgary.

03:37:50.380 I mean, this is very Calgary-centric of us, but that's only because we have Calgary results and really not much else here.

03:37:56.660 Let's take it away, Dave.

03:37:57.800 Yeah, we're not holding it against you, Edmonton, but you're not releasing your numbers, so you don't get any coverage.

03:38:03.620 Florides coming back into Calgary, 62% say yes, 38% say no.

03:38:10.120 What do we got next?

03:38:11.160 senate elections it is a clean sweep for the conservative uh uh slate of candidates led by

03:38:17.480 pam davidson erica baroutes and we'll call them m ms uh clean sweep there for them and uh ppc 0.99

03:38:26.360 polling it around sorry go up a bit five and uh okay so so i'll pause there there's something

03:38:33.400 very interesting taking place in these senate numbers the tories have topped it but i don't

03:38:38.680 think a lot of people understood that they actually have three votes i think canadians are

03:38:43.320 used to having one vote and that's the guy who gets it and if they get the most they win that's

03:38:47.080 not how the senate one works the top three win in order of who got the most uh so everybody gets

03:38:54.200 three votes but erica brutes 127 000 uh conservative pam davidson leading erica brutes 137 000 and

03:39:02.280 Eminem, I am apologizing for

03:39:04.360 your name. Also the conservative

03:39:06.340 candidate, 79,000.

03:39:09.160 Now, like that

03:39:10.380 is a significant, significant

03:39:12.700 drop. I'm not sure

03:39:14.360 if it's just because no one could read the name.

03:39:16.100 I don't mean to make fun of it. I'd like to point out

03:39:18.460 that Jet Thunders is

03:39:20.420 trailing Nadine Wellwood

03:39:22.340 by under 2,000

03:39:24.280 votes. Wow, close race there.

03:39:26.720 Big fan of Jet Thunders.

03:39:28.120 Danielle, do you think people are

03:39:30.260 not just understanding they have three votes that they're just confused by this because

03:39:34.860 I know like you you said you're not voting a straight ticket but I think most people do

03:39:39.260 it's just you city folk that don't get that in high river we have our candidates run at large

03:39:44.120 and so I I had to cast six ballots for all six of my council members and that's a common way of

03:39:51.200 voting in rural Alberta so maybe Calgary and Edmonton didn't get it sorry you wanted to use

03:39:57.220 the word sitiates and you didn't. Okay let's go on to more referendums. Moving on the question

03:40:05.200 of equalization 58% of Calgarians say to get rid of it 42% say no and referendum question two on

03:40:14.660 daylight savings time very very close dead basically almost a dead heat 51% to 49% but

03:40:23.120 Again, these are just Calgary numbers, not Edmonton, not the rural.

03:40:27.860 Some of the smaller cities in Alberta, starting with Lethbridge,

03:40:34.480 looks like Blaine Higgen is a little bit ahead with about 12,000 votes,

03:40:41.480 about 600 more than Bridget and Mearn.

03:40:46.360 He's been declared.

03:40:48.320 He's been declared.

03:40:49.220 He's been declared.

03:40:49.840 Okay, 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.

03:41:18.260 Give us the equalization numbers in Calgary again.

03:41:21.460 The equalization numbers were 58% to 42%, 209,000 to 147,000.

03:41:34.080 So, Danielle, we've got 58, 42 on equalization, 58 on the yes side, that is to get rid of equalization.

03:41:43.400 The main street poll we commissioned had 66% province-wide.

03:41:47.480 I mean, if we're getting 58% yes in Calgary, Calgary kind of being the tiebreaker in Alberta,

03:41:55.860 if Edmonton's at one side and rural central south Alberta, and to an extent northern Alberta,

03:42:03.480 are on the other, Calgary being the tiebreaker.

03:42:06.060 If Calgary's at 58%, I don't know, do you think we can look at probably at least still a majority

03:42:14.080 coming out of Edmonton for the yes side, probably just smaller?

03:42:17.480 Edmonton 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.

03:42:33.720 But I would say that I would expect that Edmonton would probably be in favor of the majority.

03:42:40.760 Because remember, it was Joe Sisi as finance minister who fought the battle on the fiscal

03:42:45.660 stabilization fund.

03:42:47.100 The NDP were not happy with the fact that as our resource revenues plummeted, that we

03:42:53.600 had an unfair formula that didn't allow for a top up to come back.

03:42:56.840 And so I think that may also explain a bit about why the NDP were pretty well absent

03:43:01.620 in this discussion is they kind of got the ball rolling in talking about how unfair those transfers

03:43:06.660 were. So if people remember that discussion, it's a difficult topic. There's about three

03:43:13.340 people in the country who understand how the equalization formula works. I'm not sure I would

03:43:17.680 go so far as, say, get the ball rolling. I remember it. It was my job to spank them every day 1.00

03:43:23.960 about this stuff. And they reluctantly came around in time. That's what a good opposition can do.

03:43:31.180 They did come around, though. So I do remember them taking that position when they went to the federal government for negotiations.

03:43:40.780 So 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.

03:43:50.560 Scrapping it may have been a harder pill for some to swallow, which may explain some of the higher no vote than I was expecting.

03:43:58.040 But if you would ask, do you think you need to change this and get a better deal for Alberta,

03:44:01.660 you probably would have got more like 80 or 90% support.

03:44:06.000 Well, speaking of a yes vote, we've got a guy who loves voting yes for equalization reform so much,

03:44:12.920 he decorates the wall of his house for it.

03:44:16.480 And many streets in Alberta, actually, Derek.

03:44:19.460 Pardon?

03:44:20.200 And many streets in Alberta.

03:44:22.460 And many streets in Alberta.

03:44:24.080 Kevin's actually a former colleague of mine when I was at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

03:44:28.780 He was representing a different region at the time, but he actually has a very strong, long background in Alberta.

03:44:34.260 He is, like myself, a former Eastern bastard, but he's here fighting the good fight

03:44:40.120 as Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and, I believe, leader of fightequalization.ca. 0.88

03:44:47.380 Kevin, we only really have the results out of Calgary and maybe a few smaller municipalities today,

03:44:52.360 But it looks like we're on track for a pretty clear win, not as big as I think many would expect it should be.

03:44:59.020 There's a lot of partisan political factors, I think, impacting things.

03:45:03.340 But how are you taking tonight with Calgary's, Calgary is probably the bellwether jurisdiction in Alberta.

03:45:10.840 How are you feeling about the vote?

03:45:12.420 We're feeling really good.

03:45:13.720 Look, 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.

03:45:23.360 And even a lot of people to understand, I think a lot of people don't spend a lot of time examining the equalization formula.

03:45:30.100 You know, I served in the government in Nova Scotia when we had to look at how much money we were getting from equalization.

03:45:36.040 Often we had to get seven or eight bureaucrats in auto to try to figure out what it all meant.

03:45:40.460 And so it was a big task for voters to understand fully what the impacts would be of equalization.

03:45:46.620 But 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,

03:45:55.660 you look at the growth of opponents, but mostly from the academic ranks to the equalization question.

03:46:03.040 And, 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.

03:46:12.960 So I think tonight's a good win for the province.

03:46:16.580 I think no matter who's in the premier's chair or which party's in office, I think this is a really good step.

03:46:23.000 I 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.

03:46:31.980 I 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.

03:46:41.140 I 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.

03:47:00.320 And 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.

03:47:15.480 I 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.

03:47:26.560 The question, as it's written, paraphrased is, do you agree with removing the equalization principle from the Constitution?

03:47:34.500 But then we're told by the Premier, well, that's not actually what we're trying to do.

03:47:40.020 I agree 100%.

03:47:42.160 I think, you know, if we had to do this all over again.

03:47:46.700 Sorry, one second here.

03:47:55.160 Frozen. Am I frozen?

03:47:56.560 okay kevin can you hear me now yeah i can yeah yeah okay uh we're being told we're not even voting

03:48:02.480 on this uh this is just to give the premier leverage to get change not in the constitution

03:48:07.520 even but just to change yeah i i agree with you a hundred percent i ever i don't didn't really like

03:48:16.640 the question from the beginning either i think a lot of us who have been involved in this debate

03:48:21.200 for a long time have had good reason not to i think what would have been a more fair question

03:48:26.720 is ask people whether or not they believe we're getting a fair deal from ottawa i think the

03:48:30.800 overwhelming answer to that um is no and i think especially given that the premier and the

03:48:36.720 government is clearly stated and i think we all know that it's going to would require 50

03:48:41.600 of the population from seven provinces to amend the constitution it's unrealistic to believe that

03:48:46.800 this is going to alter um the constitution um but having said that i mean we are where we are

03:48:53.760 and i think given that uh the results from calgary and i'm looking at other jurisdictions like red

03:48:58.720 deer you know close to 68 of the vote um came in for the s side medicine hat 70 of the vote

03:49:06.160 for the s side i think given all of these other things um look i think that uh i think that this

03:49:12.240 is an endorsement of the government's position i think that it also speaks to albertans anger about

03:49:19.200 with a deal that we're currently getting from the federal government um and then i think that

03:49:23.760 uh what we need to do is to use this now as a lever um to get the changes that we actually need

03:49:30.400 to get all right kevin well uh we've been enduring uh our tech has held up pretty well but i think

03:49:38.400 we've reached the end of our abilities for the evening. We don't have video, but we were still

03:49:42.800 able to talk to you. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. I appreciate your insight

03:49:47.920 on this and the work you've done with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, fightequalization.ca.

03:49:53.760 Again, we don't have the final results in tonight, but if we're looking at 58% in Calgary,

03:49:57.920 I think it's fair to project. It's probably going to come out probably with a result above that

03:50:04.880 across the province at the end of the day. Thank you very much for joining us, Kevin,

03:50:08.560 and thank you all of you who have joined us tonight. We appreciate sharing your time with us

03:50:14.560 on election and referendum night. God bless and thank you.

03:50:34.880 You

Western Standard - October 19, 2021

Western Standard： Special Election Coverage

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