Episode 8.10 - March 1st, 2026 Alberta Politics Roundup!

0:00I think everybody, welcome to another live episode of The Breakdown. It's the first in a little while. I'm starting to learn that February actually just means you'll be sick for a month because blah, that was zero fun, didn't enjoy that one bit, and there's been a lot that's been happening. We've been trying to keep up on our socials on our sub-stacks. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but we have a lot to talk about tonight. You know, here's what I'm going to say. This is one of those shows. I don't know if it's going to go the full two hours, three hours, four hours that we normally

1:00do, a little hyperbole there, but it's one that I think I suspect just based on the pent-up that I've got going on right now. You're going to want to stick around for the end because I have some thoughts that I'll be sharing. We've got a little bit of housekeeping we've got to do before we get to that, and in true Alberta fashion, let's start with Book Bands. I'm a premier there are rumors swirling online and granted not all rumors are true, so I wanted to ask you if this is true or not. People are saying that your school book band or school book restrictions that you put in place for library, school libraries will soon be extended to public libraries as well. Is that happening and if so why? No, there won't be any books removed from school library spots, but we have to understand that there are some libraries that are co-located with elementary schools, even though they're

2:02a public library, and so I think that you'll see some guidelines around how to make those books accessible to the older students and make sure that these graphic images, sexual images are not available to younger people. So I'll let the minister talk a little bit more about when he releases it. It's actually a different minister as part of the reason Dan Williams is our minister municipal affairs, and so he's going to be able to detail that. There's a lot to unpack there, and I think the thing that jumps out at everybody when they first hear that clip is just how much the bot is doing the heavy lifting there, because the question was, and there have been a lot of rumors, we've been receiving a lot of DMs about this as well. The question was, the books that you banned from school libraries, will you be banning those from public libraries? And her answer was complicated, because on one hand she says, well, they're public libraries, but they're co-located with elementary schools, so we want to make sure that we're not going

3:03to remove any books, they'll still be available to the older students. But we're going to make some changes as to how that availability works, but it really does beg the question. If these are co-located with elementary schools, nobody has ever made, to my knowledge, the argument that books should be put in front of kids for whom they're not age appropriate for, but the argument has been made that the age appropriate, and this should be determined by people who actually know how to do that, not just politicians and people angry that their kids turned out gay. Those people should not be making those decisions. That's the argument right there. But it's interesting because she says, oh, you know, these libraries co-located with elementary schools, that's why we're having the Minister of Municipal Affairs. He's going to be the one, Dan Williams, the picture of decorum himself, check me here in

4:03the legislature for the audio listeners, is the picture that's currently on the screen. Dan Williams is going to be the person who's going to be making the edict as to how these books, maybe they're not going to be removed. We have to wait and see. There's so many questions, elementary schools, but older kids, this is one of the problems. This is one of the problems with the social engineering policies that the UCP have tried to implement. They don't know what A, they don't know what they're doing. That's probably the biggest problem. But the second problem from there is that because they try to sneak these things under the wire and use some crafty language to get away with what are bookbats, they put things in an uncomfortable position for themselves because they're not able to execute on these things well. They're not able to articulate what are the reasons why we're doing this. How are we going to be doing this? Anybody who remembers the last batch of bookbans will remember. They rolled out their policy and everybody went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

5:06whoa. A, banning books, not a good sign, historically, not a great precedent. But also, your policies are train wreck and you're going to catch up a lot of books that aren't the ones that you used as examples in your very bad press conference. And then they caught up a lot of books that were in addition to the ones that they listed off in their very bad press conference and it'd be clear again, I just want to make my personal position on this very clear, as I said earlier, nobody's made the argument that these books should be in front of kids for whom they're not appropriate for. But if these books are age appropriate and they provide support for youth who are navigating some complex things, pulling them out just because they make grandpa feel icky is not a good enough reason. And now the den, Williams is the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, there's very good reason to believe that there's going to be some more edX, we're going to hear the turn of phrase, municipalities, products, creatures of the provincial government is the

6:08way that they like to say it in order to enforce making these books unavailable to age appropriate kids. Moving on from there, this is going to be a weird episode because normally we do like five or six little things and then we do the one big thing and we have two and a half really big things that we got to talk about tonight and we got to talk about them because they are just so big. So the next thing that we need to talk about is the justice system and judges in particular. And the reason why we got to talk about this and I know in December we did a whole thing on this but it's gotten worse so we have to revisit and in order to revisit properly we want to make sure that we set the stage appropriately. So in order to do that we got to go back to the beginning of December when Daniel Smith

7:09decided to have her year end with the bestie Bruce, we're going to be talking about Bruce a bit tonight we are and they shared their thoughts on judges and the courts. The recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in a five-four decision that there should be no minimum sentence for anybody possessing child pornography is case in point. It is and the thing that is so yeah really underscores in that case is that it was a five-four decision so when people say oh well the court has decided well the court is often all five judges appointed by Justin Trudeau precisely one more reason why we may have to start looking at how we can have more role in appointing judges particularly in our courts here. Now there's some language that's really important to highlight there because Danny was showing her hand a bit she talks about all five judges those five judges whose opinions I don't agree with they were all appointed by Justin Trudeau which to the casual listener

8:10it would sound like Justin Trudeau hand picked these people he pulled them out of obscurity and threw them into the Supreme Court because of his political leanings there's there's very clearly a subtext of these judges are biased because Justin Trudeau picks them there can be no other explanation and actually there can and it's a really really important one but that was just the the start of the demonizing of impartial judges and it ramped up fairly quickly later on in January. Can we please write some provincial rules to tune these judges in and JPs that they can't be releasing people who are at risk to public safety. I wish I could direct the judges honestly and Chris the judges get very very prickly when you criticize them but boy the example that you just raised they deserve the criticism we have been pushing at the federal level to change that the rules got changed by Justin Trudeau on on on sentencing in bail and part of what the rules were

9:16was you had to take into account whether somebody had a bad childhood and had some mitigating factors for why they became a criminal and release them on that basis and that doesn't make sense to me it should be based on the seriousness of the crime you can work on whatever issues they had in their childhood while they're incarcerated rather than releasing them to go and cause this kind of havoc so every single premier has put pressure on the federal government they did one round of changes it didn't work the the carning government did another round of changes in the fall so I hope that this one does work. I I'm not a lawyer and so I don't know whether we would be able to develop our own bail guidelines the problem that we have is we only choose our judges at the lower court level court of appeal and King's bench are chosen by the federal government and so we in fact I just wrote a letter to Mark Carney saying maybe we should look at a way now that we've got some openings on King's bench for us to have a joint process to choose those judges so that we start choosing judges in Alberta that reflect the values of how we want to them to operate here so

10:21I'll let you know how that goes but that that is a very complicated area of law mostly in the federal realm we have the power of administration of justice and policing and we do work to exercise that to the full extent but I I don't think we have the authority to federal bail conditions. Now there's a lot going on in that clip there too because Danny talks about there's I don't know how you interpret the way that she says you know people have a bad childhood as being anything other than profoundly dismissive because it is profoundly dismissive when we're talking about the kind of complex trauma that can be a contributing factor to people making very bad choices that's relevant and it shouldn't be diminished it it should be factored in. The biggest question that I think any reasonable person wants to have answered when it comes to whether or not a person should be released on bail because again at that point they haven't been found guilty of a crime they've been charged with one 100% but they haven't been found guilty

11:24and there's lots of people who were found not guilty take for example I don't know publisher of the western standard direct filter brand he was he was charged with uttering threats towards a group of kids and was found not guilty should he be have been in jail that entire time he has an extensive record of doing not great things should he have been in jail there's a lot of people who make the reasonable argument that no he shouldn't be held in jail while that court process is ongoing the biggest question should be is this person a reasonable risk based on the evidence based on the history to reoffend and harm someone and if the answer to that question is yes then most of the time they don't get released so it's a bit of obviously they're going to be flaws in every system obviously they're going to be tragic outcomes where somebody is able to slip through the cracks and cause harm that is a real thing and I mean absolutely no way diminishing that

12:25but does that mean that we say in order to keep that one two three I don't care what the number is guilty person in we have to make sure or that person who's going to reoffend in we're going to keep in as many people as we possibly possibly can even if they're ultimately to be found innocent it's not how a reasonable system is supposed to work so that's the bad childhood piece out of the way but again she's continuing with the demonizing of the court she's continuing with the demonizing of the justices and again she goes into that line they're chosen by the feds she's making it sound like again in that clip that it's the federal government that has all of the control over the appointment of justices to the court of appeal in the Supreme Court and that's all there is the province has no say she says in there I wish we could have a joint process the implication of saying I wish I could have an ice cream cone is that I do not currently have an ice cream cone and I

13:28would very much like to have one in the immediate future that's the implication if somebody was holding an ice cream cone in their hand and they said I would like an ice cream cone people would say but you have one what's your problem the implication in that clip as well is that Albertans don't have a say in who is chosen to sit on the court of appeal or the Supreme Court and so Danny wrote a letter and in that letter among other things she made a bunch of of claims but the one thing that really caught people's attention was the threat that she would not despite the fact that it's a provincial area of responsibility and Danny does love her provincial areas of responsibility she says there that she would not pay for the funding of judges unless they get direct say the direct quote Albertans government will not agree to provide the necessary funding to support

14:31any new judicial positions in the province until such engagement and collaboration are provided so again if you read that letter in the whole thing if you're inclined to go back and pause it if you read that letter it sounds very much like oh Albertans just doesn't get any say we don't get to choose these judges and these judges are parachuted out of the sky onto us and it's so very very unfair and justice in this province is so important to Daniel Smith and her cabinet that they'll defund the courts the same people who lost their minds over people using the terminology defund the police which was largely an imported US phrasing that didn't really apply to Canada in the same way that it applies to the US that's a whole other show that's the that's the subtext there we're going to defund the courts the same party that said these people are so bad they want to defund the police and that letter got a big reaction that letter and that clip where Danny said I wish I could direct the courts it got a big reaction

15:35the Alberta courts all three levels of uh justices so the acting chief justice of Alberta the court the chief justice for the court of kings bench of Alberta uh and the chief justice for the Alberta court of justice so much justice so little time uh they all issued a statement which was basically a remedial lesson in here's how these things are supposed to work we are supposed to have a reasonable division of uh executive legislative and judiciary because they're guardrails those are the functions of those different branches to keep all of the other different branches in check and the reality is the executive pretty much gets control over the legislative 99 times out of 10 because the executive is the premier and in order for them to be the premier they have to have a majority in the legislature and so they've got those two things pretty much wrapped up most of the time um there's probably an example that I can't think of so that's why I'm saying most of the time I'm not aware of any examples where the opposite has uh has been true um but that

16:39only underscores the important of the judiciary or the judges having their independence and not being directed by the premier or her cabinet or her caucus it's critically critically important and that was articulated as well by the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association in Alberta where they called out quite clearly that uh hey that's not that's not cool but there's another part in the letter from the Bar Association that's really important and that's this part right here Alberta already has a strong voice in this process with representatives on the seven member committee appointed by uh the cva count with the Canadian Bar Association Alberta the chief justice of Alberta the law society of Alberta and the provinces minister of justice all committee members are required to abide by strict code of ethics the prohibits consideration of a candidate's political viewpoints this composition ensures meaningful provincial input while preserving the

17:39judicial independence that is critical to the rule of law now that wasn't the only letter that got there was also an open letter from over 180 attorneys who raised their concerns the Daniel Smith was overstepping her bounds all of the people who do all of the things in the justice system took it's safe to say they took notice and it appears most of the good ones if you take a look at that list it's on our socials um you'll see there's people that you can identify on both ends of the political spectrum so people who know about the things people who have respect for process and rule of law and guardrails on both sides of the political spectrum went whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa that's not okay it should be pretty simple but um unfortunately we live in danyland uh and so she she continued to push on the things that she she wanted to push on fortunately the federal

18:46government had some pretty pretty clear response i think more broadly first uh ensuring that we have an independent judiciary is a hallmark of democracy and and uh a key part of the rule law uh at risk of stating the obvious uh it's essential that we have a judiciary who's able to make decisions without fear or favor amongst their uh those who have the power to a point or and theory remove uh judge from the bench uh when you uh start to look at how you can protect that independence uh certainly ensuring that there's not political threats about the resources that are going to be made available to them to do their jobs as part of it but another part is actually have integrity in the appointment process to begin with so to be clear and we're going to go back to that uh that uh that uh that uh that little letter in just a second because it's really important to highlight given what we're gonna we're gonna talk about next because dany had her own response um to that and it included some pretty ludicrous pretty shocking claims uh premier smith uh

19:53you said uh threatening you've been threatening to withhold provincial funding for newly appointed judges uh and saying it's a negotiating negotiating negotiating position but minister uh shanphrase at the federal minister has been clear the feds won't back stop this funding could you please explain why you think it's a good negotiating position to threaten the prospect of decreasing access to courts and adjust this why threaten Albertans including the victims of crime with less access to courts and and uh justice well it's a matter of reprioritizing resources that we we have an opportunity to appoint judges as well as uh uh masters uh that can do a lot of the work of King's bench and so we just want the same kind of respect that Quebec has Quebec has a joint committee with equal members that support that uh point to the supreme court we've been in talks with them about whether they would also like to see that same approach applied to the um the higher court levels and i can tell you that there are a lot of premieres who think that that's a good idea i i don't know why anyone would think that especially since eighty percent of the

20:56judges are so have been demonstrated to have liberal party donations i don't know why anyone would think that the process that we have right now is free of politics i think it would actually be more free of politics if you ended up with having two representatives from the federal government two from the province in each jurisdiction so that you can make sure that there aren't any partisan considerations in those appointments whoa that's a big thing to say that's a big accusation to make i sure hope there's evidence for it spoiler alert there's not we're gonna show you all of that in just a couple minutes here um there's two big parts of of this conversation that we're gonna try to to navigate through and just so it's clear the Danny wasn't mispeaking um Mickey Amory showed up just uh just a week later uh and he reiterated that same talking point that eighty percent of federal judges have donated to the liberal party well i mean if we we asked uh for a collaborative approach uh that was quickly shot down i think as province is uh

22:00especially in my role and in the role of executive council as well we have a really good line of saying we have a really good process in place currently for selecting provincial court judges the Alberta Court of Justice and uh what we've asked is that uh we have a more prominent role in doing that at the federal level as well premier has touched on some of the real problems that we have with respect to the federal process there is very little if any input whatsoever on court of king spends justices that serve here in Alberta and i think it's important that we have a more prominent role but the second thing is we know that it's not a uh nonpartisan process we know from the statistics that came out in recent years and the reporting that it came out in recent years that a vast majority of those uh federal appointees did have political contributions we try to avoid that here in this province i'm just gonna let that hang for a second there if you follow our social media you know it's coming next but we're gonna do this in two chunks because there's two major accusations that are being levied by Daniel Smith and Mickey Amory here one of them is 80% of federally

23:05appointed judges uh they're all donating money to the liberal party or they have donated money to the liberal party and that means that they're profoundly biased because you can't donate money to a political party and have objective opinions about issues or or rulings i guess is the implication i'm not sure that it's it's true i'd certainly don't agree with it because as i can put my paramedic here i had on say just speaking for myself nobody else or any other organizations that i'm affiliated with although i hope what i'm about to say would certainly be true for medical practitioners across the board and that is regardless of my personal politics when i encounter somebody who is in distress or who requires medical aid i don't treat them any differently than anybody else should or would i just don't and i don't think that most people in most fields somehow lack the ability to set aside their political opinions to do the thing

24:10that they have been tasked to do i would make the argument that if they are they shouldn't be in those positions but there's no evidence to suggest other than Danny and uh spanky uh having laughs at their year end fireside chat oak filled room there's no evidence to to support the assertion that that's actually happening um so do with that which will but that's the first piece it's the eighty percent of judges we're gonna have to get into that the second piece is this notion that Alberta has no representation we have no voices at the table we just we're at the mercy of the federal government always uh when it comes to the selection for justices for the court of appeal or justices for uh the supreme court of Alberta let's go back to that letter from the Canadian Bar Association uh where they said in no uncertain terms and it's worth noting

25:11that was on february 5th um and uh denimator comments on february 12th and mickey rated meetings comments on february 20th the law association published this this letter as an open letter on february 5th 2026 it was sent to deniel smith one would assume if she had taken the time to read the letter from the Canadian bar association she would have gotten past this remedial lesson but let's go through it one more time Alberta already has a strong voice in this process with representatives on the seven member committee appointed by the Canadian bar association alberta the chief justice of alberta the law society of alberta and the provincial provinces minister of justice all committee members are required to abide by strict code of ethics the prohibits consideration of the candidates political viewpoints the composition ensures meaningful provincial input while preserving the just judicial independence uh that is essential to the rule of law now i'm no uh math wizard but if it's seven member panel um and the the nominees to the the panel

26:19the committee there's four of them that are uh appointed by albertans inside of alberta that sounds like a majority vote pretty much regardless of who the federal government decides to appoint but generally speaking the federal government appoints people from that province how do we know we looked at the panel you can see the federal judicial advisory committee for alberta this is the federal one so this is the the quarter king's bench uh this is the uh the appeals this is the one that they're complaining alberta doesn't have a say in we have uh the honorable a Joanne streakaf nominee of the chief justice of alberta sherryland nagina king's council nominee of the law society of alberta nazarina h umaji nominee of the canadian bar association in alberta

27:22center el hawks kc again king's council nominee of the minister of justice and attorney general of alberta so let's be real clear there's three other positions that the federal government can appoint as well but again they're all subject to that strict code of conduct and there's still a majority vote of voices from alberta so i suppose a reasonable person could interpret the concerns that that mickey and his very big boy suit is articulating aren't that albertans don't get a voice that doesn't seem to be the math here because by a majority vote albertans do i wonder what the the grievance could possibly could possibly be it's uh it's a mystery if we're going to look at an answer we might have to see what that robust alberta process looks like why don't we just take a quick quick look here uh according to the

28:25terms of reference the committee shall consist of a chair appointed by the the minister of justice the chief judge of the provincial court president of the law society the president of the alberta section of the canadian bar association or any of their designates as well as up to seven additional members appointed by the min the minister wait wait a second here so the minister gets to a point eight people out of uh out of out of ten huh that that seems like it might be weighted differently maintaining a balance of lawyers and public members is ideal the ratios of six lawyers and four public members is the desired complement so it's not unreasonable to look at the differences between the provincial uh waiting of the things and the federal waiting of the things and go maybe this isn't about um albertans not being represented maybe this is more about the minister of justice

29:27not being represented because there's no question the math just ain't math in um four out of seven on the federal courts four out of seven people from alberta choosing the appointees that are going to get sent up to the feds that the feds then choose from four out of seven of those are alberton so the concern can't possibly be that alberta isn't being represented the concern appears to be or could be interpreted as being that the minister of justice's personal choices aren't being represented he does not have the same perceivable influence over the federal appointments that he perceivably could at the provincial level we're going to come back to a little bit of that in a minute but we got to talk about this eighty percent business because this is something that we've heard from Danny and uh Mickey so this is again i want to keep this in context here this is the premier of alberta and the minister of justice of alberta the two

30:35highest ranking people on these subjects claiming that eighty percent of federal judges have donated to the liberal party let's take a minute to unpack that shall we because it was pretty easy to figure out where that statistic came from it came from a joint investigative report that was done by the investigative journalism foundation and the national post a couple of years ago but what did did it actually find eighty percent that seems like almost eighty percent that seems like such a big number let's let's take a look at what they actually found so what they found of judges donating to each political party as a percentage of unique donors and it's worth noting the totals exceed a hundred percent due to a small full handful of judges who donated to more than one party so uh oh we've got judges donating to more than one party except here's the thing and before we fully break down this graph here's the thing all of these donations were before

31:39the judges were appointed judges are not supposed to make political donations once they've been appointed to the bench that's a really important little nugget of nuance that we got to throw in there because the way that it's been presented so far by again the premier of alberta at the minister of justice is that all these judges are just donating willy nilly to uh the the liberals it's out of control well let's go back to that graph where we have the from the story this is from that story where it appears mckie Amy and Danielle Smith got their information from of the judges who donated before they were appointed to the bench seventeen point nine percent point donated to the ndp five percent donated to the green twenty two point nine percent donated to conservative oh my gosh seventy six point three percent seventy six point three percent of judges who would go on to be appointed to the bench donated to a political party before they were appointed to the bench

32:44seventy six that's a lot like eighty percent that's a shocking shocking number there couldn't possibly be some context that would reset the whole conversation would there a look there is because when we take a look at the number of appointees who were appointed between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty three and this is again from that same story that Danielle Smith and Mickey Amory are citing that they apparently didn't take the time to read past the headline one thousand and sixty eight of those one thousand three hundred and eight appointees did not donate at all only two hundred and forty were found to have donated so let's put that into just a little bit of context because context it all thinks is king if we go with of all of the appointees only eighteen point

33:44three percent of those people had ever donated to a political party before and then we go well seventy six point whatever it was percent of those two hundred and forty donors donated to the liberals before they were appointed thirteen point nine percent thirteen point nine percent of people who went on to be appointed donated to the the liberals thirteen point nine percent of that total number that's it that's the ballgame now the only way that this could possibly get anymore awkward is if I don't know somebody like maybe cbc did an analysis of how many of the the justices that have been appointed in Alberta donated to the the the ucp pc's wild rose and that number was in context almost double because the cbc article found that twenty one point

34:51three percent of judges have before there's like two but we're not going to talk about them tonight but twenty one point three percent of judges who were found to have made donations to political parties donated to the ucp the PCs of the wild rose ucp being the the big united party that's not in any way fractured twenty one point three percent in Alberta using Alberta's robust process thirteen point nine percent at the federal level and this is where uh yep I'm going to let make you speak for self again well I mean we we asked for a collaborative approach that was quickly shot down I think as province is uh especially in my role and in the role of executive council as well we have a really good line of sight and we have a really good process in place currently for selecting provincial court judges the Alberta court of justice and uh what we've asked is that uh we have a more prominent role in doing that at the federal level as well premier has touched on some of the real problems that we have with respect to the federal process

35:55there is very little if any input whatsoever on court of king spends justices that serve here in Alberta and I think it's important that we have a more prominent role but the second thing is we know that it's not a nonpartisan process we know from the statistics that came out in recent years and the reporting that it came out in recent years that a vast majority of those uh federal appointees did have political contributions we try to avoid that here in this province we try to avoid that here in this province now the news story that I'm not going to get too deep tonight is there are currently investigations going into two judges who apparently donated after they were nominated to the bench or appointed to the bench by the provincial minister of justice who did make donations to provincial parties after they were or appointed which is a bad thing that's under investigation though so we'll see how that plays out I guess but for Mickey Amory the minister of justice and for Danielle Smith to completely misrepresent the statistics that we're

37:02talking about here in regards to how many judges are donating before they get appointed to the bench is pretty bonkers it's irresponsible it's misleading and uh got there are some people who could interpret it as being potentially deliver it especially given right before Mickey said that piece Danielle kind of walked back her her position um but the demonization of judges doesn't stop there well the Quebec is able to have um a a joint process for supreme court but my understanding is they don't have the ability to do this at the at the lower court levels and it's just as frustrating I mean um when you've got this revolving door of justice that we're receiving right now we're really bad actors really bad dudes are getting back onto the street again and again and again and committing crimes you have to wonder if we drew from a pool in Alberta that was more consistent with Alberta values would we end up with that kind of outcome I don't know the

38:03answer to that but I would hope that uh that there would be some kind of of of of recognition that did the woke policies that have led to this revolving door of justice that has created incredible uh crime and and disturbance in our communities is is no longer serving the interests of Canadians I mean the federal government finally is bringing through bill 14 with the support of the opposition to try one more time to rein the judges in and so that's the other um the other aspect is maybe the uh the the judges would be a little bit more accountable if the if they were were drawn uh with the the values based on the province that they represent once again for the cheap seats Alberta has uh control over the overwhelming majority of people who choose the justice the the candidates that are then recommended to the the minister of justice in Alberta the minister of justice appoints the overwhelming majority of people to that so Alberta's doing okay when it comes

39:04to the minister of justice getting to choose who chooses who they're going to recommend to him that was worthy um at the federal level it's a seven person panel in Alberta and of that seven four come from for sure appointments inside of Alberta and then there's three that the federal government the the minister of justice appoints for that minority vote um and usually those are people from Alberta too so again the notion the Daniel Smith is standing up there and saying well you know gosh huh we just don't have a voice it's a lie she's lying she's lying about how justice is administered in the province she's lying about how judges are chosen and she's lying about Quebec because all of the provinces have the same basic process where the lower court judges are chosen

40:05by a group of people and then that is recommended to the minister of justice at the the provincial level and then at the federal level it's the same thing how do we know I don't know maybe we asked Quebec because when we take a look at how the the Quebec process is works I'm not going to read this because I'm way too angry phone and I will screw up the pronunciation but uh it's the same thing it's the exact same thing um there's no difference but what Danny's trying to do there is misrepresent how the judges are chosen and this is bonkers on a long list of reasons first of all she decided to write a letter to the federal government apparently demonstrating with her full conviction that she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about and then publish that letter publicly in the hopes that all of the people who read it all of her her base would go oh my gosh this is so unfair deliberately

41:13misrepresenting the reality of the situation and I don't know any other way to interpret what they're saying in there they don't care about Alberta's representation they care about making sure that they have as the minister of justice who takes his orders from the premier of Alberta they care that they get to choose who's who in the zoo they care that they get to choose who the appointees are it's not about Alberta it's about them further consolidating the power that they've been consolidating since Daniel Smith became premier of this province and I don't have to justify the many many different ways tonight how they're doing that because we've built an entire show based on the reality the Daniel Smith and the UCP have removed guardrails in order to assert more and more of their will

42:15and they will lie to people they will misrepresent the truth Mickey Amory stood up there with his full chest and completely lied to Albertans about house federal court judges are chosen Mickey Amory who is a member of the bar he's a lawyer oh right he gave himself immunity for anything he does as minister of justice one would think that if any other lawyer stood up and straight up lied that they would be subject to some kind of a complaint if that lawyer was using their background as a lawyer and they were using their authority as the minister of justice one would think that they would be subject to some kind of complaint but Mickey Amory has given himself immunity for anything he says or does as he's justice minister which is always a good sign when the people who are pulling the levers of power say yeah I'm gonna pull these levers however I want to I will lie I will mislead

43:19I will misrepresent and there's nothing you can do to hold me to account you just have to wait for an election that should be something that gives every person pause and just so you know I'm still just getting started because we also have to talk about the budget fortunately we have a file photo here of Danielle Smith and her reaction to to being told that she is accountable in any way for any of the things that she and her staff does that might not be what the reaction was but that's what I'm telling myself because it certainly seems appropriate to start with the the communications strategy that we've seen from the premier's office in the run up to the budget well we saw the we saw the the judges the judges are just the worst we're going to spend all of our time lying about the judges what else did we have going on

44:22here well Bruce McAllister premier's director of her southern office and advocates of corporal punishment Bruce banking McAllister on just a couple of days before the budget dropped almost as if he was softening the ground a little bit he dropped this banger of a tweet where he said the people orchestrating in regards to immigration into Canada the people orchestrating this reckless unsustainable mass immigration into Canada filled me with profound disgust to deliberately engineer and champion such explosive unmanageable population growth in your own nation that's the height of civic responsibility was it fueled by greed question marks see how he did it as a question there so he can't get in any trouble did they align their pockets while irrevocably straining our health care education and social safety nets another question work oh we're just taking so much accountability here or does their contempt for Canada's core values and traditions drive them to flood our borders with millions from societies not built on the same foundations that have made us thrive oh look it's another question mark why import from nations with

45:26failed systems when our Judeo Christian heritage and principles have worked so well here it almost feels like these elites are ashamed of what has built this great country this is a stark reminder of wild burdens and indeed countless Canadians harbor deep mistrust towards the Laurentian elite in Ottawa at not the continual turning of the phrasal and Laurentian elite I'm sure they seem all too eager to prioritize their agendas over the well-being of the true north strong and free wow that's a lot of bigotry and one whole paragraph it's a good thing he paid for the the X subscription because otherwise he'd have they would have had to do that like four or five different little tweets and break them all up but he was able to just type all of that rage and hate out in one place lucky him that's a bigoted tweet it's a bigoted tweet there's no question to say why import from nations with failed systems when our Judeo Christian heritage and principles have worked so well here I mean in context it's worth remembering that the Judeo Christian heritage

46:36that has worked so well also wrought a genocide on the first nation's people who were here first so I'm not sure that that's the victory lab to take I feel like I know it's not and to boil down the values and the importance of the good old stock Judeo Christian Canadians boy there's something that that sounds an awful lot like I feel like the term I might be looking for might be white nationalism but I'm not sure if Bruce is a white nationalist question mark I don't know if Bruce is a closeted white supremacist question mark I don't know the answers to those questions period Danny was asked about that Bruce McAllister tweeted this morning also about immigration saying the people orchestrating this he's talking about the high levels the people

47:39orchestrating this reckless unsustainable mass immigration into Canada filming with profound disgust to deliberately engineer and champion such explosive unmanageable population growth in your own nation question mark that's the height of civic irresponsibility then he went on later to say does their contempt for Canada's core values and traditions drive them to flood our borders with millions from societies not built on the same foundations that have made us thrive why import from nations with failed systems when our Judeo Christian heritage and principles have worked so well here I called Mr. McAllister this morning to ask for clarification he hung up on me so I'm asking you my question is do those views of Mr. McAllister about countries of origin and Judeo Christian values represent the views of you the premier's office and the united conservative party well I can tell you that western society is based on the socratic Judeo Christian tradition if you go back and look about why it is we have the society we do there's no question that there are some foundational

48:42influences to that however Alberta was also created since 1905 based on the immense diaspora communities that come here and one of the reasons why Alberta works so well historically is because when people arrive I have a good paying job have time to determine whether this is one where they want to put down roots and have a family there that is the pace that I think works not only for the newcomer to understand the new society they're moving to but also to ensure that we've got the supports so that they have access to this the healthcare and education and other social support they need that system broke in the last four years there's no question about it and I think that the graph that they were responding to was one that showed I think it was six million people that came to Alberta or came to the country in the post-COVID era it's not just me saying it's unsustainable it's the federal government saying it's unsustainable they've completely changed their international student program they've completely changed their temporary foreign worker program and we're working with them to get refocused on economic migrants so things need to change

49:46there's no question about it it was the number one issue that we heard in the Alberta next panel is that it was putting too much pressure on our social services on our job market on our housing market on food prices and so we need to get back to the kind of more rational policy that we had under Stephen Harper where we had a reasonable amount of newcomers that were able to integrate easily into the society that they chose especially because they came with a good paying job that's what we've got to get back to. Thanks Kevin we're going to go to our next question and I want to answer the question. I know Kevin we got a few people in line behind you'd like to get to the next question thank you. Allow me if you will to to summarize that tweet not that tweet that statement could have been a tweet I don't know. Allow me if you will to summarize that statement. Hey can it is based on the Socratic Judeo-Credition values see how we lumped in Socratic and Judeo-Christian as if there wasn't a 500 year difference between those two figures I don't know

50:53do with that what you will blah blah blah words words blah blah reporter but you didn't answer the question press secretary I know but we're moving on. It's the last four seconds that kills me because they know they know they're not answering the question Daniel Smith bent herself into a pretzel for two minutes to avoid having to address the plainly bigoted comment that her executive director of her southern office had made. There's words and other there's words and all use some smart sounding words she did all of that to avoid answering the question and the reporter when the reporter was like yeah but you didn't answer the question the press secretary stepped in and said I know and now I'll laugh about it and give it to the next reporter even the press secretary knew she wasn't take responsibility she was dodging the answer and he seemed to think it was pretty awesome because he's laughing about it this is the dignity

51:58with which they are they're composing themselves but that was the day after Bruce's tweet and that brought us to February 19th because on February 19th we got the good news the Danny was going to be doing another sorry the day before we got the good news we got the good news the Danny was going to be doing an address to the province she likes doing these they're like states of the unions but they're not she's going to do an address to the province and she's going to talk all of the really great things that she's doing and one could cynically perhaps look at the layout of Bruce's soft peddling softening the ground as is used in comms terms that he was doing maybe a little bit of foreshadowing that he was maybe like hey it's okay to be a bigoted question mark

53:01that's one possible interpretation but Daniel Smith we're in two minutes of the speech here sorry everybody but it is we got to bring the receipts so bear with us Daniel Smith had absolutely no issues laying all of the provinces problems almost entirely on well the oil prices were low but also the immigrants are the worst to put it bluntly people across the country and around the world continue to want to move to our province in very large numbers to pursue job opportunities and prosperity in the past Canada's responsible immigration policies such as those under prime ministers Stephen Harper constrained international immigration to manageable levels in Alberta so that our province could keep up with the growth of our economy and population it also ensure that new immigrants primarily arrived here with highly valuable skills a good job and started contributing income taxes the moment they arrived that is the story of the vast majority of our amazing new Canadians who arrived here during that time and are now citizens these Albertans were

54:06and are a huge strength to our economy and provincial culture and then came Justin Trudeau's disastrous open border immigration policies which have caused an unprecedented strain on our healthcare education and other social programs in just the last five years of Trudeau's tenure Alberta grew by almost 600,000 people to more than five million all well Ottawa throttled our most important job creating industries and prioritized immigration away from economic migrants and instead focused on international students temporary workers and asylum seekers adding 600,000 people in five years is like adding half the city of Calgary or Edmonton in five years although sustainable immigration has always been an important part of our provincial growth model throwing the doors wide open to anyone and everyone across the globe has flooded our classrooms emergency rooms and social support systems with far too many people far too quickly as just one example our student population has skyrocketed by more than 80,000 students in just

55:09the last four years and more than 140,000 students now having English as their additional language is it any wonder that our teachers and students are struggling so much with classroom complexity the changes we need to make to immigration are a significant departure from the status quo and therefore i am seeking a referendum mandate from Albert and to implement them on October 19th 2026 we will hold a provincial referendum primarily focused on how Albertans want our government to deal with the issue of immigration as well as steps we can take as a province to strengthen our constitutional and fiscal position within a united canada the fact is Alberta taxpayers can no longer be asked to continue to subsidize the entire country through equalization and federal transfers permit the federal government to flood our borders with new arrivals and then give free access to our most generous in the country's social programs to anyone who moves here this is not only grossly unfair to Alberta taxpayers but also financially crippling and undercuts the quality of our health care education and other social services

56:10god this is the immigrants are just the cause of all of the problems i guess because we're going to have a referendum where we talk about the the immigration the immigration issues that are so so so bad there's five questions there's just also the constitutional provincial ones which includes one of the judge ones even though we've already established that that's built on a foundation of nothing but hot bullshit let's waste some some money having a referendum on the judge thing too the they want more control over Alberta immigration they want benefits for legal residents only now again well that implies that we're we're giving up benefits for for people who are here illegally because it's not just what they say it's what they don't say it's how they say what they say that provides all of the subtext that provides all of the wait what when your residency before social supports so you can be here legally but you have to wait a year before you get any any sort of social supports is it wonder how that works now um user fees for temporary residents

57:15and proof of citizenship to vote which on its face a lot of people go well yeah that should make sense but the reality is there's a lot of people who are going to be shut out of the voting process for a lot of different reasons who otherwise would be uh taking care of through vouching and we have seen no case whatsoever that there is any kind of voter fraud going on in the province of Alberta so all of these referendum questions are deeply deeply xenophobic but they're also not necessarily based on what's the word that i'm looking for oh right the truth let's take a look because when we take a look at what's required for eligibility for permanent residents you have to have come to Canada before you were 19 years of old or you have to have continuously resided in Canada for at least three years before you apply i don't know what that 12 months is about you have to continuously resided in Canada since you were 19 years old if you're now over 19 you have to have been the legal

58:15responsibility of a child and family services provider and a provincial territory government's designated ministry for child protection for at least one year be physically present in in Canada when you submit your application and when we grant you permanent residents not be a person against whom there are serious reasons for considering that you have committed a crime against peace a war crime or serious non-political crime outside of Canada you have been found guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations you have to have a valid passport travel document identity document or statutory declaration and not be inadmissible to Canada so in order to get to the permanent residency peace there's some things you got to do it's not just open door for for anybody but it's the social programs it's the cost for all of the things that we we have to we have to pay for what about Alberta health care well if we take a look at Alberta health care you're eligible for Alberta health care if you legally are legally entitled to be in remaining Canada and make your permanent home in Alberta you're committed to being physically

59:17present in Alberta for at least 183 days in any 12 month period so that's just you have to be an Alberta you know you can't be in other parts of Canada for longer than you're in Alberta not claiming your residency your obtaining benefits of a claim of residency under another province territory of country be any person other than any other person deemed by the regulations to be a resident or temporary resident not including a tourist transient or visitor to Alberta so out of the gates here you don't get Alberta health care coverage if you're a tourist a transient or a visitor well I thought that was the the people that Daniel Smith was saying cost health care so much money but they're not eligible for that that particular social program that seems so so weird um what what about what about this this this it says temporary residents are eligible what

1:00:19if what happens when take a look at that so temporary residents are residents from another country you have to establish residency in Alberta so buy or rent a home you have to intend to live in Alberta for a minimum of 12 consecutive months you have an acceptable Canada entry document issued by immigration refugees and Canadian citizenship or Canadian border services agency this document must have a minimum six months remaining until the expiry date and then there's the acceptable Canada entry documents you can have a work permit for an Alberta employer and the location must be in Alberta so you have to demonstrate that you have a job in Alberta a study permit for Alberta and a letter from an Alberta education institute confirming full-time attendance visitor record you must indicate clergy or the holder who is the spouse or a dependent partner or dependent of an eligible resident designation as a convention refugee with accompanying documentation with the notice of decision letter and here's the really important part because we're talking about the Alberta health care coverage up until this point you will not be denied emergency medical care in Alberta even if

1:01:20you do not have medical insurance while emergency services will not be refused you may be billed for them and are expected to pay later unless you qualify for reimbursement or financial support so unless you've got a job you're approved to be here if you try to access health care you pay it for it if you don't have private insurance and in fact that page says we recommend that you have you have private private insurance what about education eligibility as of September 1st of each school year every child meets the following criteria is allowed access to education six years or older and younger than the 19 years of age one of the following a Canadian citizen has been admitted to Canada for a permanent residence has a parent who is a Canadian citizen has a parent who has been admitted to Canada for permanent or temporary residence so even just looking at that you have to meet those criteria in order to access the social program that is

1:02:23education what about all age security you must be 65 years or older you must be a Canadian citizen or a legal resident at the time that we approve your OAS secure pension application and you have to have resided in Canada for at least 10 years since the age of 18 so old age security you can't get that unless you're a Canadian citizen or a legal resident and have already lived in Canada contributing for 10 years what about a CPP way have to be at least 60 years old you have to at least one valid contribution to the CPP and it's worth noting that your CPP is dependent on your contributions. Val contributions can be either from work you did in Canada or from credits received from a spouse common law partner after a divorce or separation. What about Alberta seniors benefit what's all these social programs that all of these people are accessing you have to be 65 years of older lived in Canada or lived in Alberta for at least three months immediately before applying be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident receive the old age security pension from the

1:03:26government of Canada meet financial eligibility criteria so you can't get access to the Alberta seniors benefit unless you're a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and that permanent resident process as I outlined at the very beginning of all of this boring lecture with Nate. You can't get it's not an easy process to become a permanent resident what about what about the childcare subsidy same thing applies you have to be working looking for work attending school have special needs you have to be an Alberta resident you have to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada temporary residents with a valid work permit refugee claimants or protected persons claimants we can do this thing all day long because the the childcare is income tested as well so if you're making big money you can't you can't get it what about age eligibility you like

1:04:26to hear the UCP talk about all of the ways that oh there's so many people who are coming to the province of Alberta and they're here to take advantage of our generous social programs like age what is age eligibility you have medical conditions that substantially limits your ability to earn a living ending this is again age is toast soon so your medical condition is likely to remain permanent there's no medical treatment therapy rehabilitation or training up available that will help you improve your ability to earn a living you are at least 18 years old and not eligible to receive an old age security pension you live in Alberta and are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident which means you have to have gone through the permanent resident process you can't get access to any of these social programs in the way the Daniel Smith and the UCP are are talking about you just can't do it but that didn't stop Danny from just a couple of days ago

1:05:29throwing this amusing out on her taxpayer funded Alberta update somebody who's here just on a temporary contract that should they really be entitled to all of the same programs child care health care education social services and other social supports is somebody who who is a citizen or a permanent resident that's the question that we're going to be putting to Albertans in the fall because just to put it into context we had 600,000 people come into our province in the last five years and if you look at the average amount that we pay in program services it's about 15,600 dollars per capita we're at the lower end of the range we're a little bit above Ontario but we're at the lower end of the range when it comes to other provinces and we've done some hard work to get it down to that level but even just doing the math on that that's about a nine billion dollar additional cost associated with that many people coming in that quickly and we haven't seen a concurrent increase in the amount of revenue and it puts us in the position that we're in

1:06:33there's so much bullshit there oh my god I don't even know where to start in order for that math just do the math in order to just do the math in order to just do the math I'm not even I'm not even at max fired up yet I'm getting there but I'm not there yet trust me this is going to get so much space you're in about 10 minutes um in order for that math to work every single one of those 600,000 people who have come to the province of Alberta would not only have to be eligible for those programs and I think I just articulated in a great many ways there's a lot of people who wouldn't be you want to talk about your your students your international students they wouldn't be available eligible for most of those programs sorry um anybody's not a permanent resident or Canadian citizen wouldn't be eligible for most of those programs so in order for that to be accurate we would have to assume that those 600,000 people

1:07:34were all Canadian citizens or permanent residents that came to Alberta from Canada and we would also have to assume that every single one of them of those 600,000 people who came to Alberta did not have jobs did not pay taxes and we're all availing themselves of the social programs which is for so many reasons obviously that shit crazy there's just no other way to say it but here's the premiere of Alberta on the program that taxpayers pay for her to be able to stand up and spout this bullshit uh just oh you know I did this math on the back of an napkin and without any context or attachment to reality oh there's my there's my deficit oh look at that that's all the immigrants it's gross and it's dangerous there's no other way to say it

1:08:41it's a lie it's dangerous lie that emboldens the worst of people now I realize as I say that I'm standing over here with the same amount of privilege that I have every time I do this show but that's Danny trying to justify her way around her mismanagement of the financial situation in the province of Alberta by saying it's the immigrants fault 600,000 new people yes no way that we could have kept up to it with a record royalties up until the last year there's no way that we could have possibly seen this coming using basic modeling of population growth and aging there's no way that we could have seen the demand for all of these services it's not like health care and education have been clamoring for a need for more resources for literally fucking decades there's no way we could have known it's the immigrants one of the things that I was asked in the the run up to this show is I was like

1:09:51I don't want to talk about the budget there's big ideas that we need to talk about here I don't want to talk about the budget and as I'm as we're broadcasting this it's looking very much like the tragic destabilization of the Middle East is going to cause a significant bump in oil prices and there's going to be a whole lot of people who go hooray our budget is better because people are dying and I don't know that that's that's the win so who knows what the financial futures for the province of Alberta are going to look like one thing is abundantly clear to anybody who is a lesson of who who's a student of history is that when you go into other countries and you try to destabilize them and do regime change externally it always makes things worse it has to come internally and there's ways to support that and all of that nonsense that I'm not going to get into

1:10:56tonight but I'm not looking at what's happening I'm looking at the lessons of Iraq I'm looking at the lessons of Afghanistan and I'm going I'm not sure this is the good thing that everybody thinks it's going to be because there's always consequences to this sort of action and a lot of people end up dying but assuming the oil prices don't skyrocket I think they already have I haven't really looked but assuming the oil prices don't skyrocket I was told that people are going to want to hear my thoughts on the budget I don't know why I'm not an economist but that's what I was told so I spent the last couple of days trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts on the budget before we get to the next piece and it's really simple what Danny has done with all of the areas of responsibility in government is she's taken the her car to the mechanic and she said I don't like this car I don't like it so what I would like you to do is is take it apart

1:12:03and rebuild it using only the same parts I expect different results when you're done you may not use any new parts and I'm going to redirect some of the money to my friends who who maybe are going to make some money so there might be not quite as much money to make the car work but that's what I would like you to do and now it's a shock that with the disintegration of healthcare and the the rebuilding and duplication that's been required to get services back to where they were before Danny went in like a ball in a china shop things cost more now because we broke everything that's my there's my erudite analysis but getting back to the horror show Danny's comments about immigrants didn't go unnoticed there were a lot of people who said whoa whoa whoa whoa hold on that's really unacceptable and one of them was deputy leader of the

1:13:04NDP Rocky Pincholi what is she inflaming here hatred racism what what is that to extrema a speculation like I think I'm a public figure who has been in this role for about seven years now and I can tell you that the level of racism and hate that has been expressed has risen undoubtedly in this province and it is aligned with this government and this premier is attempt to pin all of her failings on newcomers to this province and we know that it's not just newcomers to this province who are experiencing this we heard a story of a man in Calgary who 16-year-old daughter was working at a drive-through and you know somebody came through the drive-through and said to her you're stealing our jobs go back where you came from this young girl was born in Calgary she is a Calgary and she's now burned just as much as a person who just moved to her last week there is no doubt in my mind that underlying all of this is an attempt to be divisive

1:14:10to pit people against each other and it is emboldening some very dark and disturbing behavior and the premier can try to pretend with her wordy questions that that's not what this is about but she hasn't provided any facts to support that there is a big financial income or hit coming from allegedly paying support services to people who in her view don't have entitlement to them she hasn't delivered on any of that all she's delivered on is the innuendo and the and suggestion that people who are new here are somehow taking things away from people who lived here before and that is designed to single out people and direct and encourage racism we know that we don't need to be it's it's not coded language anybody who's a person of color has experienced some of this in the last few months in the last year they know what's happening here and it's very clear what it is and the premier wouldn't even distance herself from some very despicable comments from her you know executive director or deputy chief of staff I can't remember what his title is anymore but you know she won't distance herself from that language and again true leadership

1:15:12is not taking a situation and making it worse and making it hotter and inflaming people and making them more angry true leadership is is actually coming together and saying bringing down the temperature being calm being responsible being thoughtful that's what people should expect from their premier that is what I expect and I know that if we had the opportunity to be government that's the kind of leadership that we would deliver so raggedy really bull any punches there she made her her her feelings very well known and she talked a lot about the the dangers of using this kind of language and Smith responded now I got to be clear before we run this clip the date on the bottom the clip is wrong the the clip is from February 20th it's just our our editor got into the silly sauce a little bit early apparently and so the clip that you're about to hear is I assure you from February 20th 2026 this morning the deputy opposition leader called this approach on

1:16:13immigration and the referendum and attempt to be divisive to pit people against each other and it in involving some dark and disturbing behavior could you comment on that well I'm accustomed to seeing the NDP try to scare people they do that all the time they make hysterical claims that are not true and they're the ones who I think feed polarization and division all the NDP either the worst thermos as bad as the immigrants they are hysterical division that we're why they're just the enemy they are the NDP with their hysterical division she did not like rock eventually comments one bit but Rocky wasn't the only person who who who shared some comments and it's also important to realize that Rocky's comments about the rise and hate are not without merit this is a Facebook post that was just from a couple weeks ago where a group of people who were dressed all in black wearing white masks who were later identified as a white supremacist

1:17:16group stuck themselves between Calgary and Edmonton they're slog with a slogan remigration now suggesting sending all immigrants back to their countries of origin so this is this is real this is Alberta this is this is it should be easy for anybody to say wow something dangerous is happening here we should maybe pay attention to it and some people did former premier of Alberta and former leader of the NDP Rachel Nottley put up a Facebook post that started with a riff on a poem and we're going to talk about it in a minute here but the the riff on the poem is first they came for the trans people and they came for the unionized workers next it was the judges now it's immigrants if you think that you or someone you love won't be next you're sorely mistaken to be clear that is riffing on a poem by a pastor named Martin

1:18:21Nymolar who was a Nazi he realized after the error of his ways and he penned the poem that's called first they came it's one that you've probably all heard but just in case first they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist then they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. It's a very powerful poem and it's a cautionary tale that has so many lessons in it.

1:19:23It just does. For me, that poem is about the choice of apathy, the choice to choose apathy, to look away. Not only does it cause harm to everybody that you're looking away from, but it ultimately guarantees your own end. Because as a society, we are only functional when we stick up for each other, when we speak out for each other, when we try to raise the bar for everybody. That's what that poem is about and the fact that it is written by a former Nazi should give everybody pause to consider the weight of the words and the meaning behind the words.

1:20:26And the fact that this poem is tragically relevant to the state of Alberta politics is something that everybody should be paying attention to because the UCP has come for trans people. They did use the notwithstanding clause to take away the rights of trans people. They did use the notwithstanding clause to take away the rights of unionized workers hundreds of thousands of teachers. Now they're coming for the judges. Now they're coming for the immigrants. Thomas LeCasic, who we've had on the show and who speaks quite candidly about his experiences with authoritarianism, tweeted out on the same day, immigrants are not Alberta's problem. They're here legally. They're the ones serving you coffee at Timmy's. Populous governments need a scapegoat, an out group. For Hitler, it was the Jews, for Trump, it's Latinos, it's an uncanadian and deplorable

1:21:31political strategy. Now, after Daniel Smith responded, he followed up with a second tweet, no, fascism didn't start with concentration camps in 1939. It started with xenophobic government policies in 1932. Two few spoke out then, scapegoating problems on vulnerable minorities is disgusting. And we're going to play now the clip where Smith responded to the question, and I want you to really listen to the front end of the question, because it is critically, critically important. Today, Rachel Notley and Thomas LeCasic have thrown out accusations of Nazi tactics, when referring to this immigration approach, could you comment on that as well, please? That's gross. It's just disgusting. Any mention to, if you're going to call somebody a Nazi, you better be referring to

1:22:34the Holocaust, and the devastation that caused to the Jewish people, it is disgusting language and it should never be used. If they want to have a serious conversation about immigration levels, let's have it. That's what a referendum is all about. And quite frankly, as I've mentioned, this is the same kind of policy that was affirmed last week by the federal government when it came to saying that temporary foreign workers should have private insurance when they arrive, it's the same policy that already exists in Ontario. And we are asking Albertans if they want to have a system that puts Albertans, citizens as well as permanent residents, first when it comes to taxpayer funded programs, and then have reasonable premiums and the ability of those who are temporary to access the programs with their own resources. But that kind of language has no place in this debate. It's gross. It's not wrong. It's just want to have a serious conversation. Okay. We've obtained some calm strategies that I'd like to share with you now, because they are,

1:23:42unfortunately, to me, and it's up to every person to make their own judgment, a little insightful in regards to what the province of Alberta is doing with their communications and the way they're handling their communications around the budget. There's two different sets of comms, rules that we've obtained. I'd like to share them with you now. The first set of rules, avoid abstract ideas, appeal to emotions. Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases. Give only one side of the argument. Continuously criticize your opponents. Pick out one special enemy. For special vilification. Second one's a bit longer. Communicators must have access to information, came through asserting events and public opinions that they want access to polling. To be perceived, messaging must evoke interest, the interest of the audience, and must be transmitted through an attention-getting medium, credibility alone.

1:24:44So not the truth, but credibility alone must determine whether the message output should be true or false. Messaging must be carefully timed. Messaging must label events in people with distinctive phrases or slogans. Messaging to voters must create an optimum anxiety level. Messaging must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. Messaging cannot immediately affect strong counter-tenancies. Instead, it must offer some form of action or diversion or both. Like a referendum. If you think the UCP is utilizing any of those comm strategies, if you think any of them apply, then you're fucking right it's time for a serious conversation. Because the first set of comm strategies is straight from Adolf Hitler, and the second set is from his propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

1:25:44I am so done. I am so done with this notion that for whatever reason, the Holocaust belongs only to a certain set of people and should only be talked about within a narrow set of confines. Up down with it, I have no more time for it. If you pick up the tools of a Nazi, that does not make you a Nazi, but it makes you somebody who is choosing to pick up and use the tools that survivors of the Holocaust have identified as being the things that ultimately led to it, and that is a choice. That is a choice that every person who picks up those tools should be responsible for. If you are doing things that were done, not just by Nazis.

1:26:47If you're doing those things, and your response to somebody saying, because again, if you remember I said, listen to the beginning of the question, Thomas Locasic and Rachel Nottley did not accuse Daniel Smith of being a Nazi, and to be perfectly clear for the record, I'm not accusing Daniel Smith of being a Nazi. But Thomas Locasic and Rachel Nottley, and I'm happy to add my name to the list, are raising the concerns that Daniel Smith is choosing to use the same tools that Nazis used. And Daniel Smith's response is to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we should never talk about Nazi tactics or the Holocaust in any context other than this very, very narrow set of confines that seems to be very convenient for me, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be fucking lectured on history by a woman who seems to only embrace history when it is, is expedient for her. I'm not. This is a premier who has, when it is adventitious, said, oh, yeah, I'm AT.

1:27:52This is a premier who has, when it is a value, said, oh, did I say, I'm in Cherokee. Her relationship with the history is so fraught that she does not, in my opinion, get to lecture anyone on when we get to talk about things that historically have a very real precedent. I'm not going to listen to anyone who says we shouldn't be talking about these things. I'm not going to listen to anyone who says we shouldn't be expressing concern. The Danielle Smith is using many of the same tactics that were used by the Nazis because instead, I choose to listen to these people. We are all human beings, all created by the same creation. And there's no reason to hate somebody because they are different. We are all equal.

1:28:54So, and that is why most of the survivors have written books, and gift talks, and tell the people if your prejudice against somebody else what can happen. And it can happen to anybody. This is what Holocaust survivors' messages, don't get prejudice, help each other be a good human being. That is the purpose of value and life that I thought Britain was different. I was taken with Alexander Preston as the railway station with a view to be put on a train to Auschwitz. The road to the station boarded along the Big Forest as we were walking along this road being fought as horse march with thousands of other prisoners. To make much of my amazement, I suddenly found my arms, dashed out of the forest, grabbing

1:29:58me, running back to the forest with me. The whole incident must have taken one or two minutes. We have to stand up against prejudice and hatred, we've seen now where that leads to extreme hatred, leads eventually to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Holocaust survivor Iba Sapasi has a warning for the world, don't let history repeat itself. Asked about how she views rising anti-Semitism and right-wing populism, she said, it is terrifying, it is definitely terrifying that it is like this, and that is why we have to do something about it in the very beginning. This the show I did not begin with Auschwitz, but with words, silence, and society looking away, and every single person should do something to ensure that something like this never happens again. The 92-year-old survived Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp liberated 80 years ago by Soviet

1:31:03troops. She's among a group of survivors voicing concerns about the current political climate. 96-year-old Theresa Regula was also brought to Auschwitz. It's difficult to make out the numbers, the Nazis tattooed on Regula's arm, but they're fresh in her mind. 22-0-11, she said. Speaking at her home in Krakow, Poland, she says terrible things are happening in the world. People didn't draw any conclusions, she said. She chose not to have children, so they wouldn't have to go through anything like what she suffered. Janina Ivanska, a Polish Catholic woman, sent to Auschwitz at almost the same time as Regula in 1944, also remained childless. She's worried about the generations of children to come. What will their future be like because I see it as bleak, bleak, because I remember

1:32:06before 1939, hatred was created between people, pitting some people against others, treating others as a slightly lower, worse race. And what came of it? But what is now is still on a much, much larger scale. Oscar Kanobla is a Holocaust survivor. The 97-year-old has devoted his life to educating people, young and old, about what happened, so it never happens again. But the Holocaust didn't start with bullets or the gas chamber. Unfortunately, it started with words, with lies that created hate, and hate is the creator of a Holocaust. It's not just a Jewish thing, the Holocaust. Anybody could be a victim of something like this, regardless of their race, their religion, their gender, anything, their culture. And the thing that you have to understand is something like the Holocaust, the genocide,

1:33:08a mass murder of innocent people can happen anywhere. Just a little bit communicate. Part of the Holocaust exhibit includes a virtual reality experience where anyone can ask Kanobla about his life and what he went through. The Holocaust survivor also discusses, concerns he has today, with hate crimes on the rise, and an increase in lies and propaganda across the country. His mission is to get people to speak up when they see anyone being bullied or harassed. Because if we do nothing, if we let it grow, anti-Semitism and hatred will grow, where we will not be able to control it anymore, that's how it happened with the Nazis. So that's who I'm going to take my history lessons. That's who I'm going to take my history lessons from. And I'm not going to let anybody tell me or anybody that I'm near that we're not allowed

1:34:19to say and honor the wishes of those people. We can't talk about when people start using the same tools as the Nazis did. I'm not going to hear it. I'm not going to do it and it crushes me that we have failed to learn those lessons. Those who failed to learn from history bound to repeat it, we have a premier of Alberta that is happily picking up all of the weapons that the Nazis used that started that fire. And she's trying to say that we can't talk about it. Daniel Smith has started book bans. She's going to be expanding them. Daniel Smith has targeted vulnerable populations. She's gone after, gone after the low hanging fruit of humanity.

1:35:23She's done so using arguments that aren't supported by science or medicine or data. She's taken away people's rights. She's union busted using the notwithstanding clause to take away their charter rights. That's where we are. I'm not saying that Daniel Smith is a Nazi. I'm not saying that and anybody wants to accuse me of whatever, go fuck yourself because I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that she's playing with the same tools that the people in that clip said don't ever let anyone play with these again. And I'll listen to them. I'll just listen to them. If you pick up the tools of a Nazi, it doesn't make you a Nazi.

1:36:29But it does mean you're choosing to use the tools that's vivers of the Holocaust identified as leading to the Holocaust. The people in that video clip were not saying only speak about the Holocaust within this narrow confine. They were saying, my God, please learn from this and don't ever let it happen again. They were very clear and there's no shortage. There's all kinds of online resources that you can go to. To hear the survivors of the thing, say, learn from this. Don't let this happen to anyone anywhere ever again. And it is, I do not have the words to articulate the shock and horror that I have for the

1:37:30fact that the premiere of Alberta and the people who stand behind her and beside her seem to have failed to learn that most basic lesson. And that's what I got on that. I'm going to try to not leave things on too much of a downer though. I'm going to try to try to have a little bit of fun, a little bit of maybe a, it's going to be two hours tonight. What am I doing? I'm going to try to have a little bit of fun here because speaking up can be, as it turns out, a lot of fun. And to set the stage for the next segment to allow a little bit of room to breathe, I'm going to throw it over to the minister of hospitals to do this very clumsy gear shift. Instead of working to clear the backlogs and emergency rooms, the UCP waste money over

1:38:34and over and over again cleaning up the premier's bad decisions. We learned last week that the UCP spent over $1.2 million for get this story and then destroying the useless Turkish tile and all this premier chose against advice to import. Will the premier finally admit it was a shockingly expensive mistake when she directed her government to make that purchase? The Honourable Minister of Hospitals. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We've already discussed how the procurement in this case was not properly executed, which unfortunately resulted in products that had to be destroyed earlier this week. Mr. Speaker, we have completely reformed the procurement and contracting process. It has been removed from AHS to move to the health services organization. We've brought in industry-leading experts to align our contracting and procurement practices with the best jurisdictions around the world, Mr. Speaker, and we are embarking on transparent public and fair procurement processes.

1:39:39So let's just start with the, I feel like I owe a thank you of sorts to the minister of hospitals for stating on the record in the legislature that the procurement was not properly executed. Thank you. I appreciate that kind of honesty, but that sets the stage for the next little bit. There's this radio program, if you will. It's called your province, your premier, it runs Saturday morning, it's at 10 a.m. And there's been a lot of speculation as to how aggressively the calls are screened. I suspect it could potentially change, but right now, I'm going to put a little clip and then we're going to talk about it. Last phone call for the show and it is Nate and Calgary. Go ahead, Nate. Nate.

1:40:40Thank you for taking my question. A news broke this week that the remaining stock of the children's medication that was purchased at your direction by a ministerial order was destroyed at the, quote, hazardous waste, after combined costs of almost $1.5 million for just storage and for that destruction. That purchase was paid for upfront for a partially shipped order and there's roughly $50 million of taxpayers money that has been handed over in that deal that is outstanding and taxpayers are out of pocket on. You've said that you wanted H.S. to look at using that money to get high dose and see the benefit for IB use, but I see you docks have said it's not necessary and many positions have said it can't replace opioids. In any way, as the maximum dose of acetaminophen or a person can have is the same regardless of whether it's by V or by mouth, heading into a major budget shortfall. I just want to know, what are you doing to get that $50 million back? Well, it isn't a AHS sign contract and we, I was on the job for about a month when I started watching online as parents were trying to get acetaminophen from anywhere they

1:41:40could. They were taking adult doses and crushing them up and giving them to kids. Some were going to Mexico and bringing some back. There was a real danger there and we asked, we were asked by the Pharmacy Association to do something about it and so we did and we trusted that H.S. because they've been procuring products and billions of dollars worth for years and years that they would do it correctly and they didn't. We ended up with the shortfall resolved faster than anyone expected and then because of bad management, they didn't use the product, they didn't look at ways in which it could be repurposed when we got new management in there. They did. Half of it was donated to countries like Ukraine and Africa and others and the other half was set to expire in the coming months so it has been destroyed but I can tell you that H.S. is now working on getting their $50 million back and I'll watch with interest but it taught us a lot about making sure that there is more rigor in the contracting process and so we've moved that contracting procurement process out of the hands of H.S. and into

1:42:44the hands of the department and there will be a second set of ice on every contract that assigned which didn't happen in that case and it's unfortunate. Are you ready to have some fun? Okay, so let's unpack that before we get to the really really fun thing. First of all, yeah, it's that Nate from Calgary to answer the questions for anyone who that question is still lingering and that speaks to the importance of engaging with that process because here's the thing. I called in and they asked for my name, first name only, which is fine. I don't know, I don't know what happened next time, if there's next time, they asked for my name and then they asked for what my question was, what my question was about and I said it was about the IVAC, the minifin being used to replace opioids which to be perfectly clear it can't. It just can't, so there's that.

1:43:45It's really really easy to get through is the moral of the story unless they change everything after the tonight's episode which next week maybe they do, I don't know, but as of last weekend it was really really easy to get through which is to say you should try. If you have a question for Danny, keep it respectful. My feelings are very clear on the premier especially after tonight, but I kept it respectful, I was not being rude, I did not use any profanity, that was what tonight was for, but it's a very easy thing to do. If you hear, if you listen close to the clip, you can hear the papers being shuffled at a couple of points because it was very clear that some of the normal talking points might have been taken away in the way that question was structured, I don't know, I'm just hypothesizing. But her answer, fascinating answer, because first of all, it's H.S. fault. As if it wasn't mandated by ministerial order, it was, and as if the changes to that ministerial

1:44:49order weren't approved by Dr. John Kalala as per the Wyatt report, which could have only done with Danny's approval. So let's pretend all of none of that's real because again, we're retconning history and other reason why I don't consider a valuable history source, but let's explore some of the other fun pieces of that answer because she talks about, she was watching online. And so apparently if you want to find a way to get the premium of Alberta to flush just under $100 million down the toilet, all you have to do is point some Facebook comments, that's not at all alarming or chilling. It was only one month on the job. It's not like she had multiple people telling her, hey, you shouldn't do this. And this is like the worst of the available options. And yet that's the worst available option, excuse me. The worst available option is the one that the government went for. So that's fine. But the real money, all the real gem, the pharmacist's association, which was a new variable,

1:45:51but no point in the narrative have we, not to say it hasn't happened, but at no point in the narrative have we heard Danny come out and say, oh, the pharmacist's association, they asked us to do it so we did. That was, that was news. And this is where the fun part starts, by the way. It didn't take very long after until we were forwarded an email thread that we were able to confirm the authenticity of from the pharmacist's association. And I'd like to take a minute to read that email to you now. It begins. That's too much fun. It's just too much fun. On November 14th, 2022, at the request of Premier of Alberta, the Alberta Pharmacist Association, the Alberta College of Pharmacy, met to discuss the shortage of pediatric acetaminophen and ibuprofen in the retail market. As the virtual social media photo indicates, the meeting was attended by Premier Smith,

1:46:55then health minister Jason Copping, virtually Greg Abraham, register of ACP, myself as CEO of RXA and ministry of staff not shown. So let's go to the photo, shall we? Because it is, it is somewhat relevant. And this is what we were wondering about immediately after the, the call in, because we found the series of tweets from Danny where she talked about a meeting with the pharmacists. And it was, it was a little dissonant because what she said in November of 2022 was health minister Jason Copping. And I met with the AB pharmacists and the AB pharmacy. We discussed both short-term and long-term solutions to alleviate drug shortages, including working with precursor suppliers and compounding pharmacies to produce medication like a acetaminophen on site. Over the past few weeks, I've been hearing from Alberta families about the extreme hardship caused by the shortage in children's pain medication and the harmful impacts on their

1:47:56children's health. Parents want to see their government taking meaningful steps to ensure their children's health issues are addressed. While I am pleased to see that the federal government has secured a foreign supply of acetaminophen that will be arriving in the coming weeks, our government will ensure that we are working with our own stakeholders to find solutions here in Alberta. So let's be crystal clear. What Danny says in that tweet is, we met with them. They would like to do more compounding for anybody who is unfamiliar, compounding pharmacies or pharmacies that are able to mix up the equivalent medication right there and stop if they have all of the appropriate ingredients. And they were like, hey, we would like to do more of that. You don't produce acetaminophen on site. You produce a deliverable acetaminophen, the acetaminophen is the precursor, it gets all very chemically, very quickly and I don't want to get all breaking bad tonight. She acknowledges on November 14th, 2022 that she knew that the federal government had

1:49:00secured a foreign supply of acetaminophen that would be arriving in weeks. That would be the Australian acetaminophen that the federal government said, hey, we are more than happy to share it with you. And after the big deal for the private purchase went down, they said, no, we don't want your brand name ads. We've got this other stuff, she knew that the brand name stuff was coming in. But let's go back, let's go back to the email. So going back to the email, at that time, there's brought awareness of the significant shortage of manufacturer produced pediatric acetaminophen and ibuprofen retail products. Community compounding pharmacies, however, were largely able to meet the public demand, although it was recognized that compounding products were more expensive and had significantly shorter expiry dates. Prior to the meeting, we contacted several community compounding pharmacies to assess their capacity to continue supporting this demand. Some compounders expressed concern about their ability to secure sufficient API, which is

1:50:03the active pharmaceutical ingredient, which is the raw chemical acetaminophen, given the uncertainty around the broader supply, when the broader supply chain would stabilize during the November 2022 meeting, we, the pharmacist of Alberta, inquired whether Alberta health services had either manufactured product or API that could be made available to retail pharmacies or community compounding pharmacies to help meet with public demand. Within a few days, we informed that AHS did not have product or API available to share with community pharmacies. It's the last paragraph. We were advised of the government's decision to procure foreign sourced pediatric acetaminophen only shortly before the public announcement in December 2022. We understand how comments made on public forums could sometimes raise questions. However, decisions related to procurement and contracting were made independently by government and were not discussed with the association.

1:51:03So the email that we've confirmed the authenticity of very clearly states that the pharmacist, the Danielle Smith, blamed the whole thing on last week or tried to. The pharmacists, all they did was they were like, hey, you got any spare acetaminophen kicking around that we can direct to some of these pharmacies. We're doing okay right now. But if this goes on for like a really, really, really, really, really long time, we might have some problems. What do you think? Coming out of that meeting, Danielle Smith acknowledged that the feds had secured the medication. All the pharmacists were active asking for was additional API or the raw chemical acetaminophen that you mixed with the grape flavor or the cherry flavor. That was nice too. So that they could continue to compound to meet the demand. But again, they set in their email at that time, there was broad awareness of the significant

1:52:03shortage of manufacturer produced pediatric acetaminophen and ibuprofen or retail products, community compounding pharmacies. However, we're largely able to meet public demand. I guess Danny lied again. Because again, we have Danny tried to do like the, oh, but the pharmacist asked us to do this. What are you going to do? And the pharmacists did not. They did not, which brings us back to the fundamental question. Danielle Smith has said one of the very first things that you opened up with. I don't have the clip cute up tonight. So you look for it if you want to or we'll post it on Twitter later. And one of the things that Danielle Smith has said from the very beginning is that when she makes a mistake in the spirit of our, our dearly departed friend Ralph Klein, you take responsibility for that mistake, you learn from it and you do better. Still waiting.

1:53:07And that's what we've got for tonight. I did not think it was going to go two hours, but here we are. I apologize to everybody. Take. I take full responsibility that the show has gone this long and I, I'm not going to pretend that it's never going to go this long again or that I'm going to do better. It's probably going to just be two hours for the live shows. With all of that being said, I got one other little thing. I got to throw into the mix here before we go to all of the plugs because it's a little bit more fun to be had. If you head over to the breakdowns, sub stack, we were going to do this as a part of bit tonight, but like I was, I was like, no, I want to keep it like an hour and a half. If we do try to do this in the show, maybe we'll do it next week. It's going to go for like 14 hours and it will be bad. So if you're looking for some fun reading material, you can head over to our sub stack where we have a new story based on the court finding that ended up in our email box that we were

1:54:14also able to confirm the accuracy of and the validity of with the fun court website canley. And it details how separatist leader, founder of the Alberta prosperity project and guy who's been going down to the United States to try to negotiate Alberta's getting a line of credit backed with our natural resources from the United States. It details how he was found by a judge to have misappropriated over $1.2 million from family members who were suffering from dementia. So it's a fun read and it comes with all the receipts as we are prone to doing here. So if you want to go check that out, you definitely should. It's a good read. If you want to sign up to be one of our subscribers, you get up. We try to keep the sub stack stuff a little bit more tighter, a little bit less ascorbic commentary. Jokey. It's where the real journalism happens now.

1:55:18So go over there and check that out. And before I get to all of the plug plug plugs, I want to talk about this for a second because the water not cold petition has started up, I'm not being paid to do this. This is just something that I believe is very important. This is the citizens' petition to ban coal mining in Iraqis permanently. They have now started collecting signatures. They are also looking for signature collectorers. So if you have a little bit of spare time and you believe that drinking water is important, then strongly encourage you to pop over to their website at coalpetition.ca and sign up to be a collector or a signature or I always do so well once I get close to the two hour mark. That being said, I was going to wear my long sleeve shirt, but it dried funny. And it would look like I had little bumps everywhere.

1:56:21So it's a whole big thing. But I'm going to wear it next week. And in the meantime, in between time, if you want to get your hands on some breakdown merch, then you can do that by going to www.thebreakdownabmerch.ca where we've partnered with the good folks at oddities to offer up a variety of different merch things that I have honestly only heard good things about. I haven't had anybody be like, that thing sucked, which is cool. They're all reasonably priced. We don't make hardly any profit on them at all because that's not the point. And so you can wander over there and do that if you'd like to. If you value the kind of content that we're trying to produce here at the breakdown, whether or not it's calling into Danny Shale and making a ranger, and then catching here at another lie, or the type of work that we're doing with the Dr. Dennis Mowdry of the absconded

1:57:21with 1.2 misappropriated, I want to make sure I use the terms right so I don't get in any sort of legal troubles. He misappropriated over $1.2 million from family members suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's. If you want to see more of that kind of stuff, you can sign up to be one of our Patreon supporters at www.patreon.com slash the breakdown ab where for a pretty much such a price. But all of the money that goes there helps to keep the lights on, helps us to do all the things that we do here. So that's a choice. You can also, if you're not into regular monthly commitments, we are able to accept you transfers at info at the breakdown ab.ca. All support is appreciated. And with all of that being said, you have to know what's coming next. How's your BS today to revolve over time? I tend to be pretty trusting. I'm so glad. I'm so glad that I could do a show like tonight and still get a giggle out of that clip.

1:58:32When I stop losing that ability, that's when I think I will be concerned for myself. Thank you all so much for everybody who turned in live tonight or if you've managed to slog all the way through the recorded version of this thing. Thank you so much for doing that. Thank you to our chat who I see have been very active tonight. I'm looking forward to going through all of that. Thank you to everybody who listens to the podcast. Like and subscribe, as they say, share it with your, if you appreciated tonight's show, share it with your friends who you both like and do not like. It's rewarding, either way. I've found. It really does. If you share it with somebody that you like, they're like, oh, that was good. And if you share it with somebody that you don't like, then you get to aggravate them. And that's worth some satisfaction too, especially on a day like today. So thank you all so much. And thank you for the positivity in the chat group tonight.

1:59:35Hopefully we're going to be able to do another call in thing or soon. There's just so much, there's so much in this fucking province that requires attention. So there's what we go, we are. Oh, there's an announcement. We've started putting together live shows. And we're going to do hopefully, we're going to have live shows in a couple of places in the province this summer. And we will also work on a couple of joint efforts that are going to be fun. Hopefully. So do with that, which will keep your eyes open for that. And that's it. Thanks, everybody. As always, we have some great interviews coming up. I hope, by the way, so keep your eyes open for those. They'll be on our Patreon page first. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Thank you, everybody, for watching. As always, take care of yourselves, take care of each other. And keep the conversation going.