Sheila Gunn-Reid examines Alberta’s October 24 municipal elections, where progressive wins in Edmonton (Amarjit Sohi) and Calgary (Jody Gondeck) pushed climate emergencies, bike lanes, and 30 km/h speed limits. Calgary’s equalization referendum saw 58% support, yet conservatives underperformed, with Mcbeth blaming weak local policy alternatives and UCP inaction. He warns progressive councils will hike taxes and expand government roles, while Gunn-Reid urges conservative voters to demand change before the next provincial election, where Kenney’s unpopularity risks UCP losses. Local activism is framed as the only path to reversing the trend. [Automatically generated summary]
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Tonight, my guest is William Macbeth from True North.
And we are discussing the catastrophe if you're a conservative, but the victory and good news if you're progressive that unfolded across the province in the municipal elections that took place Monday night.
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Edmonton's Progressive Surprise00:11:14
Edmonton and Calgary voted for more bike lanes, more expensive recycling programs, and probably lower speed limits.
We are unpacking the municipal election results from Monday night here in Alberta.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Calgary has a new progressive mayor after 11 years of a progressive mayor named Naheed Nenshi.
The new mayor in Calgary is named Jiodi Gondik.
And just one day after she became the mayor-elect, she says she's going to address the real problem in Calgary, the so-called climate emergency, which sounds expensive for the taxpayer.
And Edmonton just voted for a failed former cabinet minister under Justin Trudeau named Amarjit Sohi.
The new mayor was Justin Trudeau's minister of natural resources who oversaw the construction of precisely exactly zero Canadian pipelines.
How did this all happen and what does the conservative movement do next?
Well, I thought I'd call in an expert on municipal politics.
It's been a while, frankly, too long since he's been on the show and I'm very excited to welcome him back.
However, I wish it were under much happier circumstances for the residents of Alberta's two major municipalities, Edmonton, Calgary.
Joining me now from True North is my friend William Mcbeth, in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
Joining me now is my friend William Mcbeth from True North, and it has been far too long since William was on the show.
William, thanks so much for joining me.
You are the perfect guy to digest what happened in Monday night's municipal elections in Alberta.
My first question to you is, why is everything so awful and what is going to happen to us going forward?
You know, as conservatives, we're often pretty good at finding the silver lining to things because we don't tend to win elections as often as we would like.
But I have to say, in last night's municipal elections, there were very few pieces of good news.
I would say the outcome for conservatives was pretty catastrophic.
And I think we're actually in some real trouble now in both of our major cities based on who we've elected to lead us for the next four years.
Okay, let's start with where you're at in Calgary.
Tell us a little bit about the new mayor and the outcome of the elections there.
So all the way through the election, we had seen it being a pretty close race between Councillor Jeremy Farkas and Councillor Jody Gondeck.
Jeremy Farkas, as I think a lot of people know, was running as a pretty hardcore conservative.
He had a record on council, one of the few on Calgary's council with a record of voting for lower taxes, spending cuts, fiscal responsibility, and of standing up against the bullies in the establishment who, frankly, never wanted the gravy train to end.
They were having a pretty good time on the taxpayers' dime.
But when the votes were finally counted last night, the election itself wasn't even close.
Jody Gondeck won with 45% of the vote to Jeremy Farkas' 30%, much, much wider gap than any of the polling had predicted.
And I think there's a lot of reasons for that.
We can talk about it, but part of it is going to be that Jeremy was pulled down, I think, by the current unpopularity of the Alberta United Conservative government.
Yeah, you know, the polling data that I saw had Jeremy ahead by one percentage point.
But when all was said and done and it was all over but the crying, the polls were absolutely dead wrong.
And explain to me, why do you think this was a reflection of the unpopularity of the UCP?
I actually think it was more than just the mayor's race.
If you look at who was elected last night in Calgary, people who were either endorsed by the public sector unions or who are publicly affiliated with being leftists or as they would say, progressives, won 10 out of the 15 seats.
And that number may grow because, of course, Councillor Sean Chu, you know, with all the votes counted, only ended up winning by 52 votes.
He's facing a lot of challenges right now based on some late-breaking news that came out right before Election Day.
If he resigns or is recalled, I think the unions have a decent chance of picking up that seat too, which means we're down to only four, even remotely conservative votes on council.
And I think it's just because anybody who had aligned themselves in either the last provincial election with the United Conservative government or who tried to not just lambaste the United Conservative government over the last few months took a hit from the current unpopularity of that government and the premier in particular.
You know, and I think the same thing unfolded in Edmonton with Mike Nicol.
Now, Mike Nicoll has been out there for the better part of the last year campaigning and campaigning as an unashamed conservative.
And yet, Edmonton on Monday night, because it'll be Wednesday before this goes to air, Edmonton elected a former liberal cabinet minister named Amarjeet Sohi, who lost his seat to Tim Uppel a couple of years ago.
And then as liberals tend to do, they fail upwards and downwards.
And he decided that he was going to run for mayor and he won.
So Edmonton has elected a former Trudeau cabinet minister, anti-oil, anti-pipeline, anti-small business guy who, you know, he does have some experience before federal politics on city council.
But I mean, that's a Trudeau proxy mayor in Edmonton now.
To the outside, I think there's some confusion as to how a province which votes so overwhelmingly conservative, particularly at the federal level, could end up electing two quote unquote progressive or as we would call them left-wing mayors.
But the fact is, though, there's a few factors.
First of all, I think that conservatives have really ignored municipal politics in Alberta.
We have virtually no infrastructure.
We don't have a pool of activists.
We don't have the same policy generation that the left does.
You know, too often conservatives on city council think their job is saying no.
And I think a lot of the time, by the way, their job is to say no.
Sure.
But if they're saying no, then they have to be able to say what the alternative is.
So if you don't like what's being proposed by the progressives, by the leftists, by the unions, well, what's your alternative?
So what's your alternative for downtown revitalization?
What's your, you know, here in Calgary, a major issue?
What's your alternative for growing the economy if it isn't big government?
And I don't know where those ideas are or where they're going to come from, but it was a pretty, it was pretty clear during the campaign that conservatives didn't have the same level of policy as the left did.
And then there's money.
And I think money is going to become a big story coming out of this election.
As I'm sure you know, the rules governing funding for candidates changed between the last election and this one in municipal politics.
Unions and corporations were no longer allowed to give money directly to candidates, but they could give it to third-party advertisers or as they're more commonly called PACs.
And in the case of the unions in Calgary, those PACs raised millions of dollars.
And while we won't know for a few months how much they ended up spending, I wouldn't be surprised if they spent in excess of $3 million electing leftist candidates.
You know, it is, it's, it's shocking.
And, you know, in particular with Calgary, one of the things that you have been banging the drum on for so long is the pension catastrophe and public sector compensation problems in Calgary.
I think it's just going to get worse.
And I fear for everybody's tax bills in Calgary.
I wouldn't just say Calgary.
I think Edmonton is going to be in the same situation where you've elected a majority council and it's not even close.
You know, as we said, in Calgary, it's 10 votes for the left and five on the right, maybe even 11 of four when it all shakes out.
But they're going to be voting for higher salaries.
They're going to be voting for better benefits.
They're going to be voting for more generous pensions.
They always think bigger government is better.
So they're going to add people to the ranks of the civil service, to the bureaucracy.
And that puts us on the hook for even more pensions and benefits and high salaries.
So I think both of these cities are headed in a very dangerous direction.
And we don't have elected officials who recognize that it's become unsustainable for the tax base of either of those cities to keep going.
And so since they're not going to cut costs, that means they're going to have to hike taxes.
You know, as long as you've been coming on my show, you and I have said that conservatives walked off the field basically of municipal politics a long time ago.
And really, it's the one, you know, system of government that affects you first and often the most.
It's that one big tax bill that you actually have to physically write out and give it to somebody when you're paying your municipal taxes.
And then for, you know, for cultural conservatives, even SOCONS, you know, for people who are worried about fighting the culture war, they get involved in fighting the culture war after the battle is lost when they get that critical race theory piece of paper home from the school.
And you're like, what the heck are they teaching my kids at school?
Well, you should have been involved at the school board trustee level, but we just don't do it.
And this is a criticism of big conservatism too, is that they are not helping to organize.
We focus on provincial politics.
We focus on federal politics, but there's no real organization infrastructure and money going to develop those conservative leaders of tomorrow.
Priorities Over Politics00:03:19
No, you're absolutely right, Sheila.
And the fact that this isn't a bigger news story for conservatives is really appalling.
And, you know, when I went to vote, I always vote.
I think you're not allowed, you know, that's the old joke.
You're not allowed to complain if you don't vote.
I walked into my ballot booth and having done my research, there wasn't a candidate I could vote for for school board where I live because out of the five people running, none of them represented the policies and values that I had when it came to public education.
It was a very depressing moment when I was like, there isn't someone I can support.
Surely in a city of 1.5 million, we could have found a person to put their name on the ballot to stand up for getting rid of discovery learning, for supporting the great new curriculum that the government has put together, really focusing on educating children as opposed to the woke trends that seem to be affecting education.
And there's going to be real consequences for businesses and for others.
Jody Gondeck, our mayor-elect, she's been mayor-elect for 16 hours, something like that at this moment.
And she just did an interview where we asked, what is your first priority as mayor?
And she said it's going to be to declare a climate emergency for Calgary.
Her very first priority is mayor.
Not staggering unemployment in this city, not the fact that too many people can't find affordable housing.
The vacant downtown.
Third of our downtown office towers are remaining vacant.
The first priority for her as mayor is to declare a climate emergency.
This is a nightmare.
I mean, it is a nightmare.
You know what that means to me?
Bike lanes and expensive recycling programs that don't actually work.
That's what that means to me at the municipal level.
Yeah, bike lanes, maybe further speed limit reductions.
Calgary already dropped their speed limits from 50 to 40, but climate people have urged for 30, getting rid of more parking through downtown, limiting how many single family houses can be built in favor of high rises because they're less carbon intensive.
There are so many policies that just get passed in the name of things like, say, climate change, which will truly affect the quality of life for everyday Calgarians.
But they didn't get talked about because there were so few people on the right, the conservative side, making the argument about how this election was going to have an impact on how you led your day-to-day life.
And, you know, even the few people we had making that case were outgunned at every opportunity by the unions and by the progressives who spent an astronomical amount of money and poured an unbelievable amount of labor into this election.
You know, when I hear the Calgary mayor-elect say something like that, and I know it's just a matter of time before Amarjitsohi says the same thing.
It tells me the real winners in all of this are the Parkland Institute and the Pembina Institute and all those places that take municipal grants to tell us just how low flow your shower head needs to be.
New Democrats on the Rise00:02:35
Those people are going to get right back on the gravy train with biscuit wheels and leave the station.
We saw just how much money the Pembina Institute was getting from the city of Calgary through access to information.
You're completely right.
And, you know, for the people on that side of the spectrum, when they get success at the municipal level, they use it as a platform to then jump to other levels of government.
Where provincial New Democrats and federal New Democrats and liberals recruit candidates from to then try and get them elected at higher levels.
And, you know, the next question is, based on the results we've had in our two major cities, what does this mean for our next provincial election, particularly if there continues to be issues surrounding the United Conservative Party, if Premier Kenny is unable to figure out how to rebuild support, or if there continues to be underlying unpopularity as a result of COVID and other things.
I don't know what it means, but the last poll I saw had Rachel Notley in the lead by a considerable margin.
I can only imagine what that means for Alberta businesses, for Alberta families, if we have a new Democrat provincial government and two big cities led by hardcore lefties as well.
Yeah, and it just begins that same rural-urban divide that we lived through with the wild rose and the PCs of old, where, you know, you had a lot of people with the same values, but in two different parties because there was this rural-urban divide and a lot was done to mend that.
And I think going forward, people are going to go back to their respective corners.
And a lot of that has to do with just the dislike of Jason Kenney that's sort of bleeding down into UCP support.
It's definitely a tricky situation.
I don't know what his plan is or what his approach will be to try and address this.
I think the worst possible outcome for Alberta would be another vote split that leads to a new Democrat majority government.
I really hope that we can find a way around that.
But more broadly, I also think this election has to be a wake-up call for conservatives, particularly at Edmonton and Calgary at the municipal level, that they have to take this seriously.
That businesses who for 44 years had a really easy ride of it compared to other jurisdictions because they had a small city conservative government in power in Alberta.
Tricky Referendum Results00:09:48
All they had to do was work with that government and things were fine.
It's a very different world now.
So they're going to have to get used to the idea that they're going to have to write checks.
They're going to have to send their people to go out and knock on doors and distribute brochures and hold events.
The business community cannot take for granted that they're going to have governments on their side because it's entirely possible that they won't if they don't.
And the unions, because they could force their own members through union dues to fund their operations and their political activities at an incredibly high level, businesses are going to have to step up and meet that same commitment, or I really fear for the economic future of our major cities.
Well, I think you're exactly right.
In particular, with the revolving merry-go-round of lockdowns that businesses have experienced.
Edmonton has just gone with the full lockdown mayor, and likewise with Calgary.
And as a conservative resident in Alberta, this is why municipal politics is so important.
The lockdowns, those infringements on our civil liberties, they came from the municipalities first.
And that's why it's so important to have somebody who cares about civil liberties and small business at the local level.
It was the mayors who were asking Jason Kenney for the vaccine passport, not the other way around.
Absolutely.
And, you know, if you think about it, looking at who's on council now, one of the reasons we were able to get rid of some of the more offensive measures or at least annoying measures that came from the lockdown was because city councils were pressured.
They said, we've heard from our voters.
We don't want to have the mass ban anymore.
We're going to repeal it.
But this council, based on its composition, would never make that ask.
They would only be urging for more and more restrictions.
And Jody Gondak is arguably the fiercest opponent of Jason Kenney in this province, more so, I would argue, than Rachel Notley is.
And so if Premier Kenney thought he had it bad before with Nehen Nengshi and Don Iveson, I can only imagine what it's going to be like now when he's got someone who explicitly ran for mayor of Calgary opposing Jason Kenney.
Yeah.
And in Edmonton, someone from Justin Trudeau's cabinet.
I mean, we're in for a real wild ride.
I think they're just going to do some things just because they oppose Jason Kenney, not because they're the best things that they think need to be done for those cities.
Now, other things happened other than just bad, bad stuff.
Let's talk about the referendum questions that were on the ballot at the very same time.
Sounds like the equalization question one passed.
We're not going to know for sure, though, I guess, until about another week.
Yeah, it was a little bit confusing.
I think a lot of people expected that we would get the result of everything they voted on last night.
But as it turns out, because the province is more or less relying on municipal authorities to conduct these elections and ballot counts, that they're not officially releasing the results until October 26th.
But some areas did release their unofficial numbers early last night, including Calgary, where I think the final tally ended up being 58% saying yes to the equalization referendum, 42% saying no.
That's a pretty solid win.
I don't think it's likely to be overturned when the rest of the votes are counted.
I did see down south in both Medicine Hat and Lethbridge, there were majorities in favor of the equalization referendum as well.
It's probably the one spot of good news that came out of the vote that Albertans did express clearly that they're unhappy with the status quo of sending billions of dollars every year to the rest of the country, particularly to parts of the country which are hostile to our energy sector.
What Premier Kenny is able to do with that or chooses to do with that remains to be seen.
But at least it was an expression of voters that the status quo to them is unacceptable.
You know, I was talking to your colleagues, Andrew and Candace, on Monday night, and, you know, we were sort of looking at those numbers.
And I noticed that the UCP didn't do any sort of advocacy, by and large, on the referendum question.
And they sort of pointed out, well, maybe that would have been bad for the referendum question, considering so widely unliked Justin Trudeau or Justin Trudeau.
Oh, my goodness, Jason Kenney is.
Whoa, what a slip, oopsie doodle.
But what do you think about that?
No, I think that's a well-made point.
Looking at the results of who was elected to our city councils, I don't think the UCP wrapping itself in this referendum would have particularly improved the outcome they were hoping for.
I do think it was actually not quite what everybody was expecting when this referendum was first announced.
I think a lot of people thought it was going to be a galvanizing issue that was going to drive up voter turnout, particularly from conservatives who were angry about how they're being treated by the rest of Canada.
As it was, I saw barely any campaign either for or against.
Certainly here in Calgary, very few signs, very few advertisements or anything like that.
But, you know, thankfully, I think the right side of that referendum won, which is really good news.
But it wasn't a blowout.
It certainly wasn't an overwhelming vote that I think a lot of Albertans originally had hoped for.
But hopefully it's enough to be able to give Premier Kenny some leverage when he does start to talk to Ottawa about maybe making changes to how equalization is calculated.
Yeah, I mean, I thought it was weird that not even like a third party group got involved really to advocate for the yes side.
I thought it was really strange.
But thankfully, as you rightly point out, the right side of that debate won.
What about the daylight savings question?
That's a question that even fewer people were energized about.
I don't think anybody really cares.
I mean, we complain about it when it happens, but nobody cares.
Like nobody really cares in real life.
I think there's like a small group of people for whom this is hugely, hugely important.
I mean, to me, I don't, I don't mind daylight savings time that much.
I don't particularly love losing that hour in the spring.
My solution has always been don't have it happen early in the morning on a Sunday when you're losing an hour of sleep.
Thank you.
Move it to 3:30 on a Friday afternoon so that everybody gets out of work an hour earlier.
I bet you'd have universal support for it.
But my answer wasn't on the ballot.
But it turned out to be quite contentious, at least in the Calgary vote when I last checked.
It's only a couple percent separating no and yes, something like 5248 or 5149.
And so we're really going to have to wait until October 26th to find out what happens with that.
It's also unclear if even if it goes one way or another, particularly if it goes with the yes, anything will actually happen.
Other jurisdictions have voted to get rid of daylight savings time through referenda, but they haven't followed through with it yet.
So I guess we'll have to see how that happens.
That's one vote that I could not possibly care less about.
Like I just, I just don't care.
It is, like I said, sort of annoying when it happens, but then you're over it two days later.
And I just, I don't know if it's worth like resetting the system for.
William, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show today.
Again, I want to apologize because it's been far too long.
Where can people support the work that you are doing with True North?
Well, I would say this is a great chance for any independent media organization to talk about why we're so important because.
I hope you followed municipal election coverage in your local media.
I did a bit, and it was really quite dismal.
But thank goodness there's groups like yours and groups like True North, who I work for, to talk about real issues that everyday people care about, not just the fads and the wokeness that seem to be the obsession of other people.
True North, you can check us out, tnc.news, our website.
Check out our social media.
And I would encourage Canadians and Albertans to consume as much individual media as they can from all sources.
Great.
Thanks so much.
And we'll have you back on the show very, very soon.
Well, thanks, Jill.
It's nice chatting with you again.
Well, the conservative movement in Alberta should be pretty darn worried because, as you know, we're approaching a provincial election in about a year and a half.
And Conservative Premier Jason Kennedy could not be more unpopular with the right and the left.
The results at the municipal ballot box should send the United Conservatives a message.
I'm just not so sure they're going to listen to it.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next weekend.