Episode 531: University of Montreal Special

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Listeners of the Strategist podcast, you might be asking, where is that amazing classical music? Well, it's coming in a second. This is Zain Velji here, and I just wanted to give you a quick note. This is a special episode, episode 531. We recorded this today with the University of Montreal's Political

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Political Science Department, and some of the information off the top, the first couple of minutes, might be a little bit elementary for you if you are an avid listener of our podcast. So don't mind if you skip through the first couple of minutes, But do stay tuned because it is a good episode. We have some amazing things that we talk about. Not amazing. I may have increased expectations there. It's a good episode. So don't leave it behind.

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See you on the other side.

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is The Strategist, episode 531. With me, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. How are you doing, guys? Good, how are you? And we also have the University of Montreal Political Science Department. So, Alison,

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Alison, at the University of Montreal, do you want to kick us off, or do you want me to just get going with our quick introduction here?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Okay, perfect. So, guys, I think what we'll do today is we'll do a quick little couple of minutes each, and I'll maybe tee it off for us just to give you a little bit of context to Alberta in the wake of the leadership of Jim Prentice and what this campaign looked like. And we'll go through a few of the numbers, and I'll throw it to Corey and Carter to take it up from there. So March

SPEAKER_01 1:28

March 2014, Alison Redford, then leader of the PC party and premier of Alberta, resigns,

SPEAKER_01 1:33

resigns, and everyone calls this party dead. Everyone thinks the PC party is over and done with.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Stephen Carter, to my left right here, was the guy who brought Alison Redford to power, and maybe not to shame, but certainly was was the individual who was chief of staff to Alison Redford but also led

SPEAKER_01 1:50

led her election leadership contest in 2011 Alison

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Alison Redford is gone the PC party is all but dead but there's a messiah somewhere in the wake somewhere

SPEAKER_01 1:58

somewhere in Toronto that can save this party and

SPEAKER_01 2:00

and many people are speculating that Jim Prentice is going to run in

SPEAKER_01 2:03

in May 2014 Jim Prentice does officially declare that he's going to be running for leader of the PC party and everything goes pretty smoothly from there on in he has a leadership campaign with two under other other candidates and that goes pretty smoothly, no real issues. I don't know if you guys saw any issues on that. And he wins and it looks like the PC party is going to regain full help.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

And I guess my overall sentiment on Jim Prentice is that he was brought in as this messiah, this savior, to what was already an ailing PC party. And although he made moves during his time as premier for six months prior to when he called the election, they certainly seem to have larger ramifications than they did immediately. And I think there's a few big moves that I think to get some context behind where we are today, we should probably mention.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

The first one was right after becoming premier and the leader of the PC party, he

SPEAKER_01 2:54

he had two unappointed individuals to become his cabinet ministers that he ran in a by-election. This

SPEAKER_01 3:00

This included Stephen Mandel, a very popular mayor, former mayor of Edmonton, and Gordon Dirks, a former school board chair. They were each going to be his health and education minister, respectively.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

What you you would think was a little bit of a mild uproar, should have caused a larger uproar, actually had a consequence for Jim Prentiss that was quite positive. He won all four of those by-elections against the Wild Rose that were surging at that time, and

SPEAKER_01 3:24

and effectively silenced his opposition. But

SPEAKER_01 3:26

But the long-term consequence of that was felt during this election.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

The second thing was that he had 11 members of the Wild Rose party cross over and join the PCs, and effectively trying to unite the right.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Immediately, that had some positive connotation for him. His poll numbers increased like mad, and the poll numbers of Danielle Smith, the then leader of the opposition of the Waldros who came over, dropped like a rock.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

And it looked like it was all good, but that had consequences during this election.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

And finally, there was something that was called Bill 10, which was a bill about gay-straight alliances in this province that was initially put forward by a Liberal member

SPEAKER_01 4:05

member of the legislature that was then added multiple clauses and was a real sort of lightning rod to controversy. Prentice thought he'd kind of ailed that, brought it back in, passed it out as it was supposed to be passed in its original intention by the Liberals, but that had consequences in this election. So the real, you know, background on Jim Prentice and his moves has been he had immediate wins with some of the moves that he made, But in the long term, the narrative of him being a Machiavellian CEO really,

SPEAKER_01 4:35

really, really paid some hard realities for him. And we'll talk about that a little bit more

Corey 4:39

more going forward. So Zane spent four minutes telling you, you reap what you sow. And I think

SPEAKER_01 4:43

think we definitely saw

Corey 4:44

saw that during this election.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

election. Absolutely. Let me talk a little bit about the numbers. What we had in 2012 was the PCs with 61 seats, the Walgros with 17, the Liberals with five, and the NDP with four. Here

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Here is what happened this election. We had a 49-seat increase for the NDP. The PCs were down 60 seats. The liberals were down four, decimated to a single seat. And you have the Alberta party, an upstart party that's center, center left, pick up its first seats in an election basis. We have 70 new MLAs in the legislature. Out of 87, we have 70 new MLAs. And the NDP made gains in Edmonton, which they swept all 19 seats in Edmonton. They've gotten 13 out of the 25 seats in Calgary with a couple more to come. Voter turnout neared about 60% and that was the most amount of people that have voted in Alberta since 1993 on the provincial side. Effectively, I'm going to leave my top line comments with four sort of comments that we'll probably discuss. Number one, there

SPEAKER_01 5:43

there was an inevitable change in demographics. Corey will talk about this a little bit more that led to this win.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Number two, the NDP campaign, although although many people thought was

SPEAKER_01 5:53

was flawless, was not. It was just way, way, way better than the PC campaign, which was an absolute train wreck.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Number three, this election, as much as it was about ideologies on the left and the right, was about contrasting visions of what leadership looks like in this province. And Alberta spoke loudly about what that means. And finally, I think the biggest takeaway I want to leave here that we can discuss further is that the biggest catalyst to the PC's downfall was not this election, but was how they treated their base over the last 10 years or so. The PCs, through and through, have forgotten the base that has gotten them to the top of this pyramid. And they've left them for granted. In 2011 and 12, it was Alison Redford alienating the left that made her premier and leader. And in this iteration, it was Jim Prentiss alienating the right wing that he really wanted to appease to with a budget that appealed to no one. So I'll leave it there, and I'll throw it to Corey and Carter, who may want to have their intro remarks. But I think that sets the stage a little bit for us to make some comments.

Corey 6:52

Yeah, the contrasting styles of leadership, Zane. I haven't heard that said before, but that's totally true. Jim Prentice was running as the CEO of Alberta, and he wanted everybody to think of it.

Carter 7:02

And the tough father. Yeah,

Corey 7:04

Yeah, the tough father. But, you know, he wanted to look like dad, but he ended up looking like dad on a road trip, just losing his mind over issue after issue and overreacting to everything. everything.

Corey 7:15

Meanwhile, Rachel Notley said, no, this is not a corporation. I'm not running to be CEO, I'm running to be premier. I'm running to bring

Corey 7:23

bring people together to engage, to conciliate, and to offer a vision of government that's a little more than you are shareholders and let's try to get the best return.

Carter 7:34

It sounds like there is a campaign where people were making rational choices. And I think that one of my messages over a long time is that voters

Carter 7:44

voters aren't rational. They do not behave in a rational basis. And this election, I think, underscored that they're not rational.

Carter 7:52

They weren't looking at the NDP platform and saying, you know, I like this element of the NDP platform, therefore I'm going to vote for it. Nor

Carter 8:00

Nor were they looking at Prentice and saying, well, what he's proposing is particularly bad. What they

Carter 8:05

they were doing was reacting on emotion and saying, number one, we

Carter 8:09

we want to find a party that can beat the PCs. And when Jim Prentice turned his back to Brian Jean in the debates and said, Rachel Notley, I'm going to focus on you because I think you're the only one who can beat me. Albertans basically said, if she's the one who Jim Prentice thinks that can beat him, that's good enough for us. And then they started piling on en masse. And when they started to see that the NDP were actually going to win, that's

Carter 8:34

that's when things really took off and they really pushed their voter percentage much higher. You

SPEAKER_01 8:39

You know, Carter makes a very good point. The Wildrose and, you know, with the crossers were decimated to less than five seats and now they're the official opposition in the legislature. legislature and one of the polls that in a couple of the polls that Corey and I saw prior to this election Wildrose

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Wildrose voters if they were to make a second choice if they saw that their party was tanking which in in the urban areas of Calgary and Edmonton the Wildrose picked up zero seats so this is a party that is now official opposition based on rural areas alone and

SPEAKER_01 9:06

and when you asked Wildrose voters who was their second choice they did not vote based on ideology they voted based on change. 70% of the Wildrose voters wanted to go to the NDP.

Corey 9:16

NDP. Yeah, which is crazy when you think about it. They moved from the most far-right option. The farthest

Corey 9:21

right in Canada. The Wildrose

Corey 9:27

Yeah, to our most left-wing option, which I think would make them fascists

Corey 9:30

fascists in the Quebec sense. Certainly, they swung hard. They swung really, really hard. The

Carter 9:37

The voter was not voting on ideology. The voter was not voting on platform. The The voter was voting on, screw you, we

Carter 9:43

we want you out. And

SPEAKER_01 9:44

And we saw that manifest itself in some of the election results as well. You know, I talked about the two out of the three legs you need to win this thing. Well, they killed in Edmonton. They won all seats in Edmonton. They did well in Calgary. They won more than half.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

But you saw that that message of the,

SPEAKER_01 10:01

the, if people in the Wild Rose side saw that their party was bottoming out, you saw that they traded their votes up to the NDP. That's why you saw the NDP make amazing gains in rural Alberta. The NDP were not supposed to make any gains. This is a party that had four seats in 2012 and has now had double or quadruple that in rural Alberta alone. Four seats

Corey 10:19

seats you could walk in a day. They were right next to each other. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Absolutely. Geographically right next to each other. And now they've made gains in rural Alberta. And at the expense of certainly the PCs and certainly in the urban areas at the expense of the PCs. Well,

Carter 10:30

Well, and when we went back through the election, people were always asking, well, how is it going to end? Which is a terrible question to ask because elections change so quickly now. But

Carter 10:39

But how is it going to end? And we'd be saying, well, if we see a breakthrough in those suburban Edmonton ridings and then it was, well, maybe they can win two or three seats in Calgary. And then it became, well, it sounds like they might win some rural seats. And I talked to an MP, an MP in the Calgary region who said that she had heard that there was an unbelievable number of voters in

Carter 11:02

in the rural Alberta who

Carter 11:04

who were going to vote NDP. And I couldn't believe it. These people are supposed to be dyed

Carter 11:10

right-wing voters who never change their minds. And that's why they always vote conservative in the federal elections, because we're the quote-unquote conservative province. I don't think we're conservative at all. I

Carter 11:22

I think we were just happy, and now we're not.

Carter 11:25

And I'm not sure what that means for the federal election in October. Carter,

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Carter, can I ask you a question? Sorry, Alison, I know we're going on, but I want to talk to you about that point I brought up, about the voter base. Do you actually believe the PCs alienated the voter base each and every time last couple of elections as to people who brought them to the palace? People

Carter 11:43

People did not want to vote Conservative in 2004 when Ralph Klein was on his last election.

Carter 11:49

Ralph Klein at that stage, you have to understand the lack

Carter 11:51

lack of respect that he actually had. He was viewed as the guy who'd done something at the beginning, but the last days of the Ralph Klein era were

Carter 11:59

were not popular days. But we voted him back in because to not vote him back in would be very disrespectful.

Carter 12:05

Then in 2008, we voted for Ed Stelmack, who no one wanted to be the governor. Our voting percentage went down to 41%. Like, literally more people were like, I'd rather have no one than

Carter 12:18

But the other guy that was running was Kevin Taft, and he looked like kind of the uncle that touched you inappropriately.

Carter 12:25

Too honest? and I'm

Corey 12:29

I'm just I'm just hoping Kevin's not a listener he's totally

Carter 12:31

totally he was he's not now and then

Carter 12:33

then in 2012 we were able to convince uh wild rose voters or angry voters that if they voted for the wild rose uh the province would go to hell in a handbasket and they came back to us right

Carter 12:46

and and so that's three elections in a row where

Carter 12:49

where people didn't want to vote for the governing party yeah

SPEAKER_01 12:51

yeah and I mean to the expense of your party Corey you were leading the liberal party

SPEAKER_01 12:54

was a lot of

Corey 12:55

enjoyed the way that all of those votes fled.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Do you guys have anything more to say? Or should we throw it back to Alison? I think we should get to more questions. Throw out some questions. I mean, we're happy to discuss anything from the turnout to the dynamics. Lay it on us.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

What was the role of the GOP in the oil crisis in this election? You said Albertans were happy. They're not now. They were before. And actually, like in Alberta, you have a decent level of public services. and you don't pay much taxes because of oil prices. Life is good. Yeah, so life is good. But since oil went down, taxes went up a bit in the last budget. How do you think that played out?

Corey 13:37

It's a little interesting how

Corey 13:40

how we all reacted to that. I don't know that – I

Corey 13:43

I think the problem was oil went down and we still had nothing to show for it. We went through a whole other boom that we never got out of the deficit. And the PCs had been telling people, don't

Corey 13:53

don't worry, we've got this new savings plan. Don't worry, now we're going to squirrel a wager in the good times and that'll get us through the bad. We went through an entire good time without saving a cent. And oh, by the way, we're back in a bad time.

Corey 14:04

I think that what's

Corey 14:07

what's interesting about that is not that we were mad that taxes went up. I think that the election shows us quite the opposite because we elected the party that wanted to raise taxes even more. We were mad that they didn't raise taxes years before. Yeah.

Carter 14:19

Yeah. So let me build on that because this is actually a very simple problem.

Carter 14:22

Every time we have a little recession or a drop in oil and gas prices, we print up bumper

Carter 14:28

bumper stickers that we put on our cars and they all say, God,

Carter 14:31

God, give me another boom. I promise not to piss it all away this time.

Carter 14:35

And every time we have a boom, we piss it all away. And

Carter 14:38

so what happened is that the voters said we

Carter 14:41

we had seven years of a boom, like the biggest boom we've had for quite some time, and literally pissed it all away. And this is a throwback to Ralph Klein and Stockwell Day's flat tax debacle,

Carter 14:54

debacle, where people stopped paying for taxes for the services that we receive. Instead, we use royalty revenues to pay for health

Carter 15:02

health care, education, human services. Like the stat I love to throw out, in Alberta, if you take your personal income taxes, so

Carter 15:10

so all the personal income taxes in the province, add the business income taxes for the province, we don't pay for health care.

Carter 15:18

So our health care expenditures aren't paid for by taxes. And everything else is paid for by other

Carter 15:25

other fees and royalties and things like that. Gambling

Corey 15:28

revenue. Yeah, that's the other thing. $2

Carter 15:30

$2 billion in gambling revenue in the province of Alberta. Alberta. That's more than we get from natural gas royalties now.

Carter 15:37

So our financial house is a complete disaster. And Prentice, while he said he was fixing it in his budget, those people who actually knew the budget, so the .00001

Carter 15:48

.00001% of the population of Alberta who understand how the budget's constructed, said

Carter 15:53

said he did nothing to actually fix the underlying structural problems that exist within our budget. And that's

SPEAKER_01 15:58

that's absolutely true. you know prior to this election happening the pcs with finance minister robin campbell were throwing out test balloons that we're in the hardest time we're going to slash the budget by you know an x amount we need to make all you know these big sacrifices that did not happen and then on the other side people thought well okay we're moving to a progressive track tax structure and

SPEAKER_01 16:17

and we saw a very minor solution in that so you did not please the right you did not please the left and you ran on on what many are calling a bad news budget a political no-no and you end up with the situation situation where, you know, the oil prices are in the back, you know, in the rear view mirror, and people are like, well, what the hell is this? This does not appease me. It does not appease my neighbor,

Corey 16:35

right? So one final point, then I'll throw back. For years now, since 2012, at least, I've had on an annual basis polling on what Albertans want on revenue through various ways, when I worked for the liberals, and so on. And 65% plus consistently wanted to see income taxes go up and corporate taxes go up consistently

Corey 16:56

consistently like that I know that's not the Alberta stereotype but we're

Corey 17:00

we're not stupid people and we knew we weren't balancing our books and that something had to change he

SPEAKER_01 17:04

he didn't go far enough on the on that he opened he opened it so he gave him the lash but then people were like well you didn't go far enough on the progressive tax structure or on the corporate tax side at all I want

Carter 17:15

want to run a campaign one time in Alberta that says Albertans should be proud to pay for the services they receive we shouldn't have have to steal from future generations from our royalties?

Carter 17:27

That was a long answer to that question.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Probably the wrong answer, too. Long and wrong.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

What I found most fascinating that took

SPEAKER_04 17:36

took place in Alberta was when the

SPEAKER_04 17:38

the leader of the opposition and some

SPEAKER_04 17:40

some of the leading

SPEAKER_04 17:40

leading members of the party went over to the other party.

SPEAKER_04 17:44

It seems to me when you were saying that the Wild Rose supporters were being irrational,

SPEAKER_04 17:49

support voting first Wildrose and then NDP,

SPEAKER_04 17:54

seems to me that if

SPEAKER_04 17:56

if I was a dedicated Wildrose person and

SPEAKER_04 17:58

and the other party recruited the leaders of my party and the other top people, I would never vote for

SPEAKER_04 18:05

I mean, how could you possibly vote for the Conservatives when they basically told you your party means nothing, we're going to take the leadership of your

SPEAKER_04 18:14

party, bring them over over to us, and then we expect you to vote for us.

SPEAKER_04 18:19

Unless we assume human beings are totally ideological and have no personal

SPEAKER_04 18:25

personal connection to the parties that they support, the people that they supported in the past, I can see why lots of people would have said, no

SPEAKER_04 18:32

no matter what, I won't vote Conservative.

Carter 18:36

Well, I think there's two points there that I want to address. Number one, yeah, you're absolutely right. Right. The anger of the Wild Rose voter at their Wild Rose leadership and at Jim Prentiss was fairly, well, it was staggering. Yeah.

Carter 18:50

But you've also entered into an interesting characterization by saying the dedicated Wild Rose voter. The dedicated Wild Rose voter only existed in a few ridings. ridings. At the low point of the wild rose, there was only about four or five ridings where they really could gather enough steam.

Carter 19:13

And it wasn't until Brian Jean became the leader and started to really solidify rural north. So rural northern Alberta.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Because he'd been from Fort McMurray. From Fort

Carter 19:22

McMurray, yeah. And having a history of working with voters on the conservative side up there, he

Carter 19:26

he really solidified it, beating, well,

Carter 19:29

well, really bringing over a whole bunch of seats that were not attainable to them in

Carter 19:34

in the 2012 election. North of the Red Deer River, so basically dividing the province in half, north of the Red Deer River, the Wildrose did not have a following until Brian Jean became leader.

Carter 19:47

So the number of dedicated, quote-unquote, dedicated voters

Carter 19:53

voters for the Wildrose was fairly low.

Carter 19:55

The number of voters in flux, I mean, one of my constant themes is that the voters are completely willing to shift at this time almost anywhere I'm

Corey 20:06

I'm gonna disagree there because I think

Corey 20:09

think the lesson of the wild rose is you can't negotiate away a movement they had a situation you

Carter 20:14

you make it sound like it was so

Corey 20:19

effectively what happened is the leader and the caucus said we're

Corey 20:24

we're gonna throw in the towel this is just not working there There were internal tensions and they all walked over to the PCs and they

Corey 20:32

they thought that was done. And maybe that would have worked 20 years ago. But unfortunately for them, and cynics are disappointed everywhere, it turned out the Wild Rose was more than just a political body. And there was actually a small C, low tax, small government sense

Corey 20:49

sense of what the province should be out there. And it didn't disappear. It never fully disappeared. disappeared and

Corey 20:54

and in fact it it was maybe beaten but it was never down and um it came back really quickly and i think that you still saw in that election you

Corey 21:04

you know we i think 27 voted for that i think there is a core of albertans who believe in that but to the question of of

Corey 21:09

of the wild rose voters how they switched to ndp and maybe that makes a lot of sense because they'd be mad at it what's fascinating to me is is

Corey 21:16

is the chronology of it because yeah

Corey 21:19

the wild rose you got to keep in mind we're leading in the polls at the start of the election right up until the debate in fact and they made the decision midstream in the middle of the election oh no now it looks like the NDP or the more viable option we're switching and certainly there's a lot of but there's a really growing body of evidence of of switches in Alberta that are not about left versus right but are about what's the most viable non-government option in 2008 it was Kevin Taft's Liberals in 2012 it was Danielle Smith's Wild Rose and in 2015 15, it was Rachel Notley's MVP.

Carter 21:51

Yeah. Who can beat the PCs is exactly where people go. And even if you look at the vote compass data, the vote compass data was showing that more people were citing or finding their ideological home at the wild rose than actually voted wild rose by a significant margin. I

Carter 22:09

think it was a 6% or 7% difference between actual vote and projected vote off of vote compass in the final days. So

Carter 22:15

it would appear to me that a lot of people found their ideological home in

Carter 22:19

in the Wild Rose, but then they flipped out to

Carter 22:21

to the NDP, especially in the cities. The

SPEAKER_01 22:24

The one comment I'll kind of make, and maybe I'll throw it back to Cory and Carter about this, is around the Wild Rose's message discipline, right? There was a lot of debate after the debates around Brian Jeans standing there for an hour and a half during the televised debates and saying only one thing, I

SPEAKER_01 22:42

I will not raise your taxes. and he said it over and over and over again and in a past episode of when we did this podcast steven said that was an absolute bomb he totally you know that was a total shit show and cory said no that's message discipline and it seemed to some degree to show that you know if there's a case study to be had around message discipline and sound bites this one might be it to see if the wild rose made any gains with that very straight and simple message rachel

Carter 23:07

rachel notley also had message discipline rachel notley said what she needed to say she said you know she hit all all the points, but she actually answered the questions and appeared to be in the debate.

Carter 23:17

Brian Jean appeared to be some sort of automated robot that just simply repaired it out. When you pressed his belly button, he said, I will not increase your taxes. I will not increase your taxes. And that was seen. I mean, if the Brian Jean who'd done his, I don't know, we're calling it a victory speech or a concession speech on election

SPEAKER_01 23:35

election night. Oh, it's a victory. Opposition from the actions of the opposition. When he did his

Carter 23:39

his victory speech, if that Brian Jean, personable, witty, intelligent, had shown up at the debates, I think Jim Prentiss would have had to turn his back to Rachel Notley.

Corey 23:49

Well, I think they knew the minute they started that debate, they were going to turn their back to Brian Jean. I mean, one of the things that's really interesting about this election compared to last election is Stephen Carter here ran a campaign in 2012 for the PCs that was, let's scare the left to stop the right. and they just took that playbook held it up to a mirror and said let's scare the right to stop the left and I don't think Albertans were buying that after a certain point but yeah

Corey 24:15

yeah I think it worked for him you know as much as we knock Brian Jean for it the guy is the leader of the official opposition he

Carter 24:20

he could have been he

Corey 24:21

he could have been premier I think he always had a hard ceiling

SPEAKER_01 24:23

ceiling I'm not sure I

Carter 24:24

I think he could have been premier as

SPEAKER_01 24:25

as you see we just debate amongst each other we're self-propelling any other questions we're happy to to take more on any topic around this yeah

Corey 24:50

I mean I think this is one of those things where you could I

Corey 24:54

I would say this result doesn't mean nothing federally but it It doesn't mean everything, federally. And there

Corey 25:00

there are some changes under the surface in Alberta that have been going on for a very long time, demographic primarily. I'll give you a quick stat here. In 1991, Calgary was 13% visible minority. We're currently about a third. We're over 30% visible minority. The population of this province has increased by 1.6 million since that time. We're a very different place. and it's some i always think politics is a trailing not leading indicator politics is sort of the last thing to change and so in that sense yeah i think the days of conservative hegemony in in alberta are numbered but that said we've

Corey 25:37

we've got a conservative party facing a very different situation whereas in alberta provincially we had the pcs and the wild rose splitting and the ndp consolidating all that vote federally

Corey 25:47

federally we have the liberals and the ndp splitting and the conservatives conservatives consolidating all that vote so it's going to take a couple more elections to really see any changes i really think the best case for the opposition in alberta this time around is a

Corey 26:00

handful of seats i think the conservatives are still going to rule the roost i

Carter 26:03

i think a handful of seats is pretty big in alberta but let me let me let me disagree with you more than slightly um as usual um we

Carter 26:13

we bring in a hundred thousand people a year to alberta from essentially liberal parts of Canada. They

Carter 26:19

They move from Quebec, they move from Ontario, they move from the Atlantic Canadian region. And they move out and they immediately start voting Conservative.

Carter 26:30

And there was this theory that was espoused by the right-wing folks that said, well, obviously we're recruiting right-wing people from these places and they have to leave liberal regions. And I think that people come out here, they arrive, and they see that their neighbor's voting conservative and their other neighbor's voting conservative and they think, you know, win

Carter 26:52

And they vote conservative.

Carter 26:54

And now I think that they're going to be actually given permission

Carter 26:57

to vote for someone other than the conservative party. And this is the first time in a long time that we've had permission to vote for anything except the right way. You

SPEAKER_01 27:06

You know what? I'm going to just chime in on that. I think Stephen makes a very good point. There was this very fascinating data set that came out during this election by a group called One Alberta Vote in which they polled individuals asking them the perception of their neighbors and how conservative they think they are. And there was a delta of minus 20 based on how they said how conservative they thought their neighbors were. And

SPEAKER_01 27:28

And that is going to be a fundamental shift. Layer on that the demographics. Layer on that the multiculturalism that is becoming Alberta. And you have what is a real start to a progressive-leaning possibility, both federally and in other ways. And we've seen this. I mean, not to not to discount the fact that our mayors in our two urban centers here in Alberta, both in Calgary and Edmonton, are outward and progressive leaning quite vocally about where they stand on a lot of issues, not just municipally, but provincially and federally. Plus

Carter 27:59

Plus Bill Given and Melissa Blake. I mean, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

absolutely. We've got mayors throughout

Carter 28:02

throughout the province that are very progressive.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Most of our city councils, I'd argue, especially in Edmonton and even Calgary, have elected progressive councillors as well. Yeah,

Carter 28:10

Yeah, we have right wing freaks on our council. We do, we have a few, we

SPEAKER_01 28:13

we have a few. Oh,

Carter 28:14

Oh, look at how we've stimulated many hands. Yes,

SPEAKER_05 28:18

You didn't say much about NDP,

SPEAKER_05 28:26

the NDP to be a new 40-year dynasty?

Corey 28:32

Okay. Good questions, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is Alberta. We just switched governments. This is our fourth ever. Fourth government, fifth now. we tend to forget the united farmers fourth switch i would never forget the united farmers all right for those who don't know in alberta in the early 20s we elected the united farmers of alberta which is where you go buy potato sacks now and then like it was essentially a farm cooperative that decided to take over the government and they did for like 20 years because alberta but uh uh

Corey 29:01

uh the ndp campaign was really good and and i i think we often talk I disagree. It was horrible.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

horrible. It was where our

SPEAKER_01 29:10

campaign should have been. It was at the lowest threat. Okay, we'll disagree. Go ahead. Continue, please. Be wrong. We agree.

Corey 29:18

Because they laid a lot of groundwork over the years prior, and the Canadian

Corey 29:22

Canadian military is structured in a way that they have a

Corey 29:25

a lot of generals, knowing that if we ever were in a military emergency, we could then fill in the privates and the tanks, and we have the structures in place for victory even if we don't have the army for victory right now the NDP thought of themselves the very same way so they went out and they structured themselves to be government and as crazy as it sounds when the polls started to shift and they're like wow well we didn't know it was going to happen this time they were prepared for it they they had the structures they had the advisors and they didn't run a flawless campaign but

Corey 29:55

but they ran as close to flawless as I've seen recently and they had the best candidate for premium now

Corey 30:00

now where these These two are going to disagree with me is the quality of the candidates, which is a bit of like Monday

Corey 30:05

Monday morning quarterbacking because the quality of the candidates is something that only really became apparent in hindsight. And

SPEAKER_01 30:15

And I think that points to a larger issue of the PC campaign, which we can discuss in a sense of how that went so wrong. But I'll let Carter speak and then maybe we can talk a little bit on the PC side as well. How

Carter 30:24

How hard is it to run a good campaign when the guy on the other side is running perhaps the worst campaign? in the history of Canadian politics. So the day after the election, it

Carter 30:36

it was like Citizen Alberta immediately did an oppo research campaign and found out all about the NDP candidates. And it turns out they're not particularly good.

Carter 30:45

Where was the PC War Room doing

Carter 30:47

doing that three weeks before? This guy could be your next MLA.

Carter 30:52

They didn't do any of it. Ezra Levant did. Ezra

Carter 30:55

Ezra Levant took a swipe at everybody. buddy but no one

Corey 30:58

one listens to ezra levant though that's

Carter 31:03

no one no one it looks it's easy to look like you ran a good campaign when the other guy runs a horrible campaign and that's my view right now the of the of the notley campaign the notley campaign was

Carter 31:15

was good it was you know i mean i'm sure it paid a billion dollar error on its budget big

Carter 31:20

big deal really i

Carter 31:21

i would have run a billion dollars i would have hit on that for the better part of a week the pc warm room decided meh not

Carter 31:28

not that big a deal and they let it go you

SPEAKER_01 31:31

you know i think on that note i think one point that i will mention is what i was talking about earlier around messaging of jim prentice this was a campaign that that

SPEAKER_01 31:39

that the pcs labeled jim prentice as a ceo someone who was going to fix your errors in a very you

SPEAKER_01 31:46

you know not a very dynamic way and on the other side you had someone who had these amazing soft skills someone who's well spoken enthusiastic witty had good and i'm not saying that this is a campaign of soft skills that won it for rachel notley but it certainly helped when you had someone like jim prentice who was who was billed as his ceo and very early you know there was an article that came out where brian top who ran the war room for the ndp a name you might be familiar with said

SPEAKER_01 32:10

said as soon as they were running ads on the pc side advertising jim prentice as ceo we were giddy because that's how we wanted to define him as a robotic ceo and and that contrast and messaging really, really was a double-down victory for the

Carter 32:24

the NDP. So let's talk about the second question. Can the NDP become the next dynasty? And it's really tough to sit here at this moment and not assume that NDP is going to be in trouble in four years. The reality is that our economy is in trouble. The oil and gas economy is the economy of Alberta, and

Carter 32:45

and natural gas has been in the tank since 2009. 2009.

Carter 32:49

We've never had an oil surplus. We have natural gas surpluses, and natural gas has not recovered.

Carter 32:57

Oil, we were starting to get to the place where it was moving, and now, I mean, at 60, it's not bad, but we need $70 oil to really become the economic engine that we would like to be.

Carter 33:12

Is Rachel Notley going to be blamed for that?

Carter 33:14

Well, let's look back.

Carter 33:15

Ed Stelmack proposed the royalty review around the same time that something called fracking

Carter 33:22

for natural gas happened and we were able to increase the supply of natural gas by

Carter 33:26

by seven to nine percent and we decreased the price of natural gas by 75 percent thus proving price elasticity and

Carter 33:34

and that was turned out so the supply increase caused the price drop the

Carter 33:40

the price drop caused essentially a slowdown in natural gas in Alberta.

Carter 33:45

But the narrative is that Ed Stelmack's Royalty Review destroyed

Carter 33:49

destroyed the gas industry. That's

Carter 33:51

That's a bad narrative. It's not true.

Carter 33:56

is right now facing a downturn that she will be blamed for. Barack Obama inherits the worst economic situation in, what was it, 20 years, 30 years? And he immediately is blamed for George Bush's failures. And

Carter 34:11

And that's going to happen here here with Rachel Notley, unless she comes up with an amazing strategy and comes out of this, and blaming the PCs will work for a while, but I'm not sure it works for four years.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

So I know, Corey, you want to get in there, but I think I have another clarifying question. I think this harkens back to part of Corey's biography as well. You tried to propose a merger between the NDP and the Liberals a few years back. I sure did. And so the question, as much as it is about the NDP forming the new dynasty, I think for for the typical Albertan voter that may have voted the NDP in a close race versus the PCs in some constituencies and may have had a revolt vote against the PCs is can they pivot to the center and become the new progressive solution a little bit? So answer what you're going to, but I think addressing that point is also important to projecting forward. Well,

Corey 34:57

yeah, I think the NDP can be the government for the next 40 years if they play their cards right. And hopefully not, like hopefully Alberta has gotten past this whole dynasty. Hopefully we go to like a lot of people every 40 years. Every

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Every 40 years we can change. so but

Corey 35:10

but i'm i i think that so while i was out doing that and talking to the ndp and it didn't work but it came very close um there

Corey 35:20

there were other people talking about the liberals merging with the alberta party other people talking about the alberta party and the greens other people talking about the greens and the liberals yeah and

Corey 35:27

and all of these people were trying to cobble together these political coalitions and uh meanwhile

Corey 35:32

meanwhile the ndp went out and they made a coalition of their own with the voters i mean i hate to put it so tritely but it's exactly what happened like And

Corey 35:40

I'm as guilty as anybody of trying to do those things. And I think what we've discovered is that was a pretty big waste of energy. Part of building that coalition with the voters, though, meant the NDP moved center. If you look at the Liberal platform versus the NDP platform the past couple of times, take the labels off, you would have a really hard time telling the difference between them.

Corey 36:00

And the NDP just proved to be a much more competent political vehicle. Yeah, and

SPEAKER_01 36:04

and political realities in Alberta are still in flux. You know, yesterday, the PC party, which is now decimated to 10 seats in this province, appointed

SPEAKER_01 36:11

appointed an interim leader that leans far right, very close to where the Wild Rose stands. He comes from Calgary. The center seems to be open. The Alberta party just picked up their first seat. So I think adding on to Corey's comment, yes, possibly, but there's a lot in flux depending on what this upstart party, the Alberta party does and based on other realities of their performance and how much they get blamed for this economy. Yeah. Well,

Carter 36:30

Well, and how they heed these the following words. I mean, when when Alison Redford won in 2012, my parting words to her were you didn't win this election. The wild rose lost. My words to Rachel Notley today would be you didn't win this election. The PC's lost. How are you going to win each vote moving forward? Because all those votes that were cast for you need to be earned now from now until four years from now. That's

SPEAKER_01 36:55

That's a great point, especially with candidates in areas where they weren't expecting to win and with local representation, that's going to be pretty significantly different than people are used to in some of the urban centers.

Carter 37:06

We have another, here's another question.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

What should be the strategy for the NDP to win the next election? In fact, I

SPEAKER_03 37:13

I wonder what parts

SPEAKER_03 37:16

parts of the program you should put forward, considering the tight fiscal situation we were talking about and then do you think that the right could unite in the next election or as you said before since the wild rose rollers are not necessarily pcs it will be a difficult situation yeah

Corey 37:36

yeah i think they could unite if they unite they're both going to bleed votes the pcs will bleed moderates and the wild rose will bleed anti-pcs although i think that coalition gets smaller the further we get from a PC government. I agree.

Corey 37:48

If the NDP wants

Corey 37:49

wants to continue governing, and I think there's some truth to what Stephen says, I think we disagree on the extremity of it. I still do believe that this was a bit of a victory for progressives in some fashion too, but I will say they're

Corey 38:03

they're going to need to settle down the energy industry. They're going to need to make friends. They're going to need to act much more like a prairie New Democratic Party than a a BC New Democratic Party, Ontario New Democratic Party, Nova Scotia. And they tend to be very populist and very non-ideological. And

Corey 38:19

And I think in particular, take those as your starting point, but don't become the Manitoba NDP, become the Alberta NDP. And that's going to mean something very different than the NDP in a lot of other provinces. It's going to have to be much more friendly

Corey 38:32

friendly to the oil industry. And beyond that, it's also going to have to be much more responsive I would

Carter 38:40

would rather see them move more towards being like Manitoba NDP than Thomas

Carter 38:47

NDP. I think it was really telling when Thomas Mulcair tried to take a little bit of credit for the campaign and

Carter 38:54

and Rachel Notley shot him down. That was one of my favorite parts of the whole campaign. It was like, you haven't been out here for months. And it was like, don't even try to take this victory from us. I thought that was a really telling moment and a really strong leadership moment for Rachel Notley. If she continues to push away Thomas Mulcair, I think she has a chance of winning.

Carter 39:15

And actually, that would be my strategy. This is the new NDP. He's not the NDP in Alberta.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Yeah, and the only other thing I'd reiterate is just remember who took you to the palace and who took you to the dance, right? That voter coalition, you need to keep them and earn those votes, whether it be with policy or other overtures. Those are the people you're going to need at the end of the day. Don't make the mistakes

Corey 39:37

mistakes that Alison Redford did. And

Corey 39:38

And Jim Prentiss did

SPEAKER_01 39:39

did to some extent.

Corey 39:40

Well, Alison Redford was elected by progressives, both in her leadership and then in general by Albertans. And those progressives were pretty clear on what they wanted. They wanted to fix the tax structure. They wanted to be kind of left-leaning on the social. And she decided to trade a coalition she had for a coalition she wanted. So she went after the right, lost the left, never got the right because they never trusted her. And that was it for her. She had no friends and she was gone. The NDP goes for

SPEAKER_01 40:06

for the far left's game over. So

Carter 40:07

So how do you build the budget?

Carter 40:10

So there's going to be two major pushes in the first legislative session. One is going to be eliminating corporate

Carter 40:17

corporate and union donations, and that's going to be wildly popular.

Carter 40:21

The second problem, or the second thing that will happen in the first session, is a budget.

Carter 40:25

And we have to pass a budget. It's clearly not going to be Jim Prentice's.

Carter 40:29

So what's that budget going to look like? Well, it's probably going to look like increasing spending because

Carter 40:34

because we want increased spending on health care, increased spending on education, increased spending on post-secondary, and increased spending on human services. We even want increased spending on infrastructure. That's what people want.

Carter 40:49

But how are they going to do that when we're facing a $7 billion shortfall from oil revenues?

Carter 40:55

$7 billion hole that we're looking at for this fiscal year, and

Carter 40:58

and it's not going to get any better.

Carter 41:00

So I'm really interested to see how Rachel pulls that together because that's a very, very difficult budget. And you know what else? I don't see a finance minister in her cabinet.

Corey 41:08

I think Brian Mason, but we might be getting two inside ball. Yeah, a former leader. Okay.

Carter 41:15

see a hand right there.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

My question was about the cabinet. I think I read that four Alberta and L.A. have previous experience in politics or something like this. So what is the cabinet going to look like?

Corey 41:29

Yeah. Okay, well, it's true that only four of the NDP MLAs have been provincial legislators before. They have Joe Cici in Calgary, who's a former alderman. They have Sarah Hoffman, who's the former chair of the Edmonton School Board. Those are pretty obvious names. And they do have some other minor star power. Senior people. Shannon Phillips from Lethbridge West is a dynamo and has been working in politics in one fashion or another her whole adult life. She

Carter 41:55

She could be a cabinet minister in almost any portfolio.

Corey 41:57

Yeah, she's a pro. row. And then beyond that, there's three additional practicing lawyers besides Rachel Notley. There's a couple of school principals. There's a couple

Corey 42:06

social workers, a couple of people with MBAs. There's a guy named Bob

Corey 42:11

Bob Wenner, I think, in

Corey 42:12

in Medicine Hat, who's a professional mediator. So I put him on a short list for speaker. As much as people are going to point to the 20 inexperienced NDP MLAs, and that's a huge number out of 53, there's no doubt, there is still enough grist to to put in the middle and make a cabinet i

SPEAKER_01 42:30

doesn't easy like we were chatting about yesterday it doesn't easy

Carter 42:33

easy should be fine carter do you think the same i think that they could go 12 to 15 without even hitting anything that vaguely looks like second tier yeah um and if and if they went to an 18 person cabinet they may have a couple of rookies that are going to need to prove themselves but uh one does not look back at the tory dynasty's parade of culture ministers and tourism ministers and say wow that was really cream of the crop.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

And you know what? I think the general sentiment by Albertans, both in the media and outside, has been generally embracing of the inexperience to some degree. You know, people have been running to the defense of some of these younger MLAs that have gotten appointed. People have been running to the defense of some of the projected cabinet ministers. So it seems like, and I don't want to kind of make an overture that's too broad, but people are starting to be relatively accepting of what this could end up being, both on a cabinet and an MLA sense as well. Yeah,

Corey 43:21

Yeah, I would say my reaction just as a guy who works in those big glass towers downtown Calgary, which is pretty hostile territory for the Indian. Very, sure, yeah. They went through the stages of grief, right? They started with denial. Like, this didn't happen. Look at these guys. They're terrible. You're like, sorry, the election's over. It's done, right? It's done. You

Corey 43:39

You can't unelect these people at this point. And then they went to anger and bargaining and all of these things. And we are reaching acceptance at this point. I think people are starting to say, okay, this is our government. But

Carter 43:50

But we're all still wearing black. Is this some sort of mourning thing that we're doing here? We're mourning ourselves? This is true.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

true. We're going to a funeral. And if we were to go to a funeral, I should mention this, it would be of the Liberal Party, the provincial Liberal Party here. Cory's Fine

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Cory's Fine Party, which had five seats before as a conceptual victory, is now down to one. That was part of the coalescing of the progressive vote. I think it's fair to say that party's dead. And we can project on the future of the PC party if you want as well. But I think the Liberal Party is dead. Okay,

Carter 44:17

so but then that begs the question, what does that mean for the federal Liberal Party?

Carter 44:21

Is the natural progressive vote going to go to the federal NDP, or is it going to go to the federal Liberals, or is it going to just go back to the Conservatives?

Corey 44:31

Well, I'm very curious to see just how much of a connection there is between the vote of the Liberals federally and provincially. Because if you plot them, and we had a couple of decades where the elections lined up pretty neatly, like we were having a lot of them in the same year. They do follow the same arcs. Um,

Corey 44:48

but they broke, the arcs broke about two years ago when you start looking at the polls, maybe even three years ago, um, uh, where the federal liberals are now far more popular than the Alberta liberals, which has not been the case since the early nineties. And

Corey 45:01

And I do think that, uh, people make that distinction. I don't think to your point about Tom Mulcair being told pound sand, you had nothing to do with this. I

Corey 45:10

I don't think Albertans just say, Oh, we're new Democrats brats now solidarity forever brothers that's not that's not what happened here um this was voting for rachel

Corey 45:19

rachel notley alberta ndp against the pcs i

Carter 45:23

i think that the real message to all three primary to all three federal leaders needs to be that alberta is now a volatile electorate if

Carter 45:31

if you want them go get them uh

Carter 45:32

uh but don't turn your backs on what albertans actually care about and

Carter 45:36

and i think that um

Carter 45:37

um thomas will care if he wants it he can come in and get it but he's not going going to come in and get it by talking uh by being against pipelines or by being against the oil and gas industry and

SPEAKER_01 45:45

and and frankly i don't see rachel notley allowing him to come in and get it right i think she's oh yeah as much as this was keep thomas mulcair out during the election this is going to be keep thomas mulcair out during my governance as well and i think that will speak volumes as well so how many appearances he makes here joint appearances or or otherwise zane

Corey 46:02

zane that's a great point because her very first real sitting of the legislature is going to be during this federal election she is not going to be enthused to have the federal ndp narrative wave into that absolutely so

Carter 46:13

so i mean this could be actually i think the biggest opportunity is for team trudeau

Carter 46:18

they have the opportunity to come

Corey 46:19

come in always the contrary well

Carter 46:20

i mean it's crazy and when i say an opportunity of 42 seats i'm looking at six right like so opportunity is not to flip the whole thing 33

Carter 46:29

yeah 42 and we're moving up isn't it yeah

Carter 46:32

it's bc i was thinking of

SPEAKER_02 46:35

a couple of minutes left, so there's two more questions and maybe we can take them both and then you

SPEAKER_01 46:41

could be the lightning round.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

is our equivalent. Yeah, absolutely. Lay it on us.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

Hi. Thank you for an interesting presentation. Do you anticipate a significant purge in the senior ranks of the Advertising Service?

Corey 46:54

Yeah, I think it's already started.

Corey 46:56

I think part of it is you

Corey 46:59

you don't need to purge people who don't have jobs anymore. They just go gently into that dark night. Yeah

Corey 47:06

Yeah. Well, I mean the problem is with any party that's been in power that long is is they fuse with the bureaucracy So tightly and you have these people who are effectively party functionaries with government jobs They don't have those government jobs anymore And they're not going to be getting new jobs in the party if the party could even afford to pay them which they can't So I think that this problem is kind of self correcting for the PCs

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Yeah, the only comment I'd add is that when Jim Prentice went to go make his concession speech, there was two dozen people in that room. This is a party that one week prior

SPEAKER_01 47:41

to that sold out 1,200 seats at $500 a head at a fundraiser. I

Carter 47:48

I just got an email from someone asking me, should I go to the PC Leader dinner on Thursday night?

Carter 47:53

No one's going to go to the PC Leader dinner

SPEAKER_01 47:55

dinner on Thursday night. So the answer to your question there is, is that purge seems to be happening. of course but what will be really telling is to see how many of the quote-unquote grassroots and and frankly after 44 years i'm not sure what's grassroots about being a pc supporter because you have direct access to power but how much of the grassroots to put that in air quotes shows up to rebuild this party you know there there might be some but i i would speculate to say that for a while this party's probably going to be going away into the night i guess not well

Corey 48:21

well listen the prairies and bc we have a history of just killing off political parties right and and And we talked about the Liberals.

Corey 48:29

The Liberals don't exist in Saskatchewan. The PCs don't exist in Saskatchewan. The PCs don't exist in British Columbia.

Corey 48:36

We just will sometimes be like, we're done with you. And we'll create a new alternative and we'll move on. And

Carter 48:41

And you just kill them.

Corey 48:42

And I think that's what's happened to the PCs. Let's look back through Alberta's governments. The first government Alberta had was the Liberals. They don't exist anymore. And they really haven't except for like a little bit of the 93. UFA was our second government. They don't exist anymore. more social credit was our next government they don't exist anymore that's a that's a pretty bad uh historical precedent for the pcs to be looking at going forward and it's not like they can be assured that there's always a pc party because there aren't in either of our neighboring provinces that's true that's true what

SPEAKER_02 49:12

about bureaucracy like in the public service so

Corey 49:15

so the bureaucracy is going to be interesting because you can make those first appointments of the people right next But to filter down to the DM level even, the deputy minister level and beyond, six months, 12 months, 18 months, they're

Corey 49:28

they're going to have to work that out over a while. Well, and keep

Carter 49:32

keep in mind that when Alison Redford went in, she fired one-third of the deputy ministers. They were in turn replaced. About another third left after she won the election.

Carter 49:44

Really, the senior level of the provincial government has already turned once in the last 12 months or 14 months, 16 months. I wouldn't necessarily be recommending that they keep turning it. And it sounds like Premier Notley is going to go relatively slowly with the top levels of the civil service because, frankly, we've just been kicking the crap out of them for

Carter 50:06

for the better part of three or four years.

Corey 50:08

Yeah, they're terrified. They won't move in any direction right now.

Corey 50:11

They're going to need some hand-holding. I do think they're going to move people out. But the NDP have a very real problem in that they

Corey 50:17

they have 53 MLAs. They don't even have staff for them right now. This is a lot of jobs that they don't have a lot of qualified people for. So

SPEAKER_01 50:24

So there'll certainly be a transition time, and I'm sure that part of that is going to be replacing not only the political staff, and hopefully, and I don't want to get Carter started on this, there's a maturation in the political staff that they do appoint in this province, but also there is some sort of alignment in terms of keeping some of that institutional knowledge in place. Children

Carter 50:42

Children as chief of staffs. It was ridiculous. Chiefs of staff.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

You had one more question

SPEAKER_04 50:52

I understand that you were saying that the

SPEAKER_04 50:54

Conservative Party of Alberta may be on

SPEAKER_04 50:56

on its way out. Is

SPEAKER_04 50:57

that what you were saying? Maybe it's our Eastern view of things, but I can't just imagine Stephen

SPEAKER_04 51:03

Stephen Harper and the

SPEAKER_04 51:05

the Alberta federal Tories allowing that to happen. Will they just say, well, we don't need them, we have our base in Alberta and that's it? Does that not work? Well,

Corey 51:14

Well, the federal Conservatives have been more aligned with the Wildrose for quite some time at this point. Jim Prentiss was a cabinet minister of Harper,

Corey 51:23

Harper, of course, but Brian Jean, their leader, was in the Conservative caucus as well. And the MPs individually have essentially been given reign to support either party, and most have gone with the Wildrose. In 2012, we

Carter 51:37

we had one outgoing member of the government helping

Carter 51:40

helping us on the campaign. It was Menzies. And before that, I mean, most of the Conservatives, especially Jason Kenney, Jason Kenney was big time in the Wild Rose camp. And, you

Carter 51:57

you know, Jason Kenney, Rob Anders, the far right has moved to the Wild Rose and has no problem continuing the Wild Rose instead of the Progressive Conservatives. The one

SPEAKER_01 52:06

one unique dynamic I'll add to that that's possibly going to change is with the Wild Rose having absolutely zero seats in the urban centers of Edmonton and Calgary. What will that look like in terms of the Conservative Party federally throwing their muscle at? Who will that kind of affect? That's going to be an interesting dynamic that we're going to observe in the near future.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

we should wrap. That's it. That's a wrap. Episode 531. We will see you next time.

Transcript