Sheila Gunn-Reid critiques Calgary’s 2021 climate emergency declaration—unanimously approved but acknowledged as symbolic—while mayor Gioti Gondek ignores local crises like 30% downtown vacancy and oil-dependent funding. Alberta’s Conservative Party fractures: Aaron O’Toole’s leadership lacks conviction, alienating voters with flip-flops on carbon pricing and oil defense, while Brian Gene and Denise Batters expose internal divisions over vaccine mandates and Western values. Without principled leaders like Pierre Poilievre or Candace Bergen, Alberta risks electing the NDP, proving empty posturing over substance—whether climate or governance—costs credibility and economic stability. [Automatically generated summary]
The city of Calgary, Alberta has a brand new mayor, and she's got an emergency to fight already.
Yes, friends, it's a climate emergency.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
You know, as I'm filming this right now, my kids are on a snow day.
I'm filming this on the 16th of November, 2021.
I wouldn't say it's a climate emergency, but it's a bit of a climate inconvenience for me.
And yet, the brand new mayor in Calgary has decided that the most pressing issue facing her city is not the 30% vacancy rate in Calgary's downtown core or outward migration of oil field head offices or the crippling crunch of public sector salaries and benefits.
No, friends, for her, it's global warming, climate change.
She's barely been in office but a few weeks.
However, this focus should send a message to Calgarians about where their city government is going and they should be very worried about what this all means for their tax bill.
But don't take my word for it, because my friend and colleague Adam Sos actually lives in Calgary.
He's going to have to deal with this.
And he's got a brand new petition at noclimate emergency.com where you can sign his petition calling on the city of Calgary to focus their energy somewhere less frivolous and more meaningful.
And at that website, you can actually send the mayor's office a message via email directly.
Now, here's Adam in an interview we recorded yesterday morning to discuss his new petition, but also the Conservative Party leadership chaos and whatever else two Albertans felt like talking about when they don't like, I guess, any government.
Here's Adam from his home studio in Calgary is my friend and colleague Adam Sos.
And we are doing a bit of a wrap-up about all things in the conservative sphere, not just in Alberta, but I guess all across the country.
Adam, the first thing I wanted to talk to you about is an initiative that you've taken on yourself as a resident of Calgary.
You've suffered for, you know, many, many years under former mayor Nahid Nenshi and his bad ideas.
And you know what?
I think your new mayor is going to give him a run for his money.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think I certainly agree.
And the sort of sad thing is you always knew what to expect from Nenshi.
Since becoming a mayoral candidate, we've known what to expect from mayoral newcomer Geoti Gondek.
But there was a time where she was a loud and proud energy sector endorser.
There's pictures of her with the Isle of Alberta and Isle of Canada oil stuff.
She wore the sweaters.
She did the whole spiel.
We put out a video this week and it's part of our noclimate emergency.com campaign.
And you can see the full clip of Geoti endorsing all the environmental and economic perks of Canadian energy compared to other oil and energy providers around the world.
So she was once very much on side and very much an ally.
She and the rest of city council now, unfortunately, just last week unanimously endorsed at least the notion of debating whether we should declare a climate emergency.
So not even one person in all of city council in Calgary, the conservative hub of oil country, not one person was like, this is silly.
All of them were like, yeah, we should probably have a chat about this.
One counselor, I believe, said, well, the emergency is a bit sort of dire, but let's talk about it anyways.
Was not one person who said no, this is ridiculous.
They unanimously voted again.
They didn't unanimously vote to declare the emergency, but they voted that it it should be given light of day in city UH Council.
Even counselor Peter Demong and you'll see this in the video as well acknowledged that this was merely a symbolic gesture.
Um, to which I replied that there's no such thing as a symbolic emergency.
This is yet another in the never-ending sort of political progressive opportunities to pat themselves on the back that does nothing to help people on a practical level, does nothing to alleviate the environment.
It's an opportunity for more friends to get contracts, more taxes, more pains and sufferings for the average joes, but nothing actually being done for the actual environment to help the environment out.
So yeah, no climate emergency, not in this province anyways, and certainly not in the city.
Now, what changed?
I guess what changed between being like hey, we're poor oil sands, I acknowledge the human rights abuses of the other oil producers of the world to yeah, oil's bad in the you know oil capital of Canada.
What happened?
And that is the great question, it's, who knows?
Who knows what happened?
I mean, very likely she did become the favored incumbent of Nahid Nenshi and was sort of pushed on this trajectory towards, towards mayoralhood um, and one of the other things that's extremely troubling about this is is she didn't hide this.
She talked about this when she was campaigning.
So, practically speaking, while she didn't certainly get a majority of the vote or an overwhelming win by every any metric um the, the challenger who probably would have been more reasonable and opposed to this stuff, Jeremy Farkas um, she beat him quite sort of decidedly.
So uh she, as much as any mayor, has had a clear mandate to sort of endorse this, so you can't even just necessarily point the finger at her.
Problematically, people have also married into this ideology and when you have all the media, all these international sort of lobby groups, everyone just heralding that this is the point we have to push.
If you want to be popular and progressive, you have to marry this ideology, even if it's something that doesn't make sense, even if it's something that counselors um are saying is simply symbolic.
The, the person who actually put this motion forward um was counselor Raj Dolliwal.
It wasn't uh, Gioti Gande.
She said she was going to.
So obviously there's some, some conversations have been had and they did this.
When interviewed, he said that some of his constituents.
Uh, this is reported.
Some of his constituents were very upset about like, hail damage in a recent storm.
That's why he's passionate about climate change.
You can't make this stuff up.
It is just absolutely because heaven forbid there was ever another climate.
Uh, non-climate change related hail storm.
Like hail comes from climate change, so it is laughable.
Um, it's a mixed bag of ideological nonsense and bogus excuses, acknowledgements that it's simply symbolic.
Um listen, you can.
I have a practical solution for like, let's not pollute in our rivers, let's not do this, let's not do that.
I, I think everyone, and particularly if it's hunter, hunters or outdoor activists, people are active people, not activists, rather, but people who spend time outdoors are for protecting nature in practical terms.
That doesn't mean me sending tax dollars to the European Union or the Clinton Foundation or Tites Foundation.
It should be practical, practical either restrictions or sort of tax breaks for companies that are doing the right thing.
Not necessarily eco credits for people buying $140,000 Teslas or taxes that go into think tanks that don't actually produce anything or reduce pollution.
So yeah, big mess, yet another in the never ending of eco schemes that are out there.
Ultimately, I'm hoping that it is mere virtue signaling and it doesn't amount to anything.
Or maybe it could be attempting to fill the core.
They're going to have grants to lure, and this is hopeful.
I'm hoping GOT's listening, hopeful and wishful thinking.
Hopefully they lure new business in and innovations by giving credits to eco, whatever, I don't care, but something good that helps the city.
Because if it's just less, like taking our garbage even less and more pain in the butt stuff and limitations on vehicles that are further going to hinder a city that's already struggling and is already at a third capacity, I'm not interested in any of it.
Well, and that's the thing.
They say these declarations are purely symbolic.
However, there are very tangible things that flow from these declarations in the same way that, oh, you know, like the Paris Agreement targets, those are purely aspirational.
And so the conservatives at the time under Andrew Scheer whipped the vote to support the Paris Accord targets.
And then, well, then we get all these like the gender-based analysis on energy projects.
They all sort of get spawned from that.
You end up seeing the carbon tax tick up and up and up because, oh, well, even the conservatives agreed with this sort of stuff.
And so I think at the municipal level, yep, this means fewer garbage pickup days, more expensive recycling, more bike lanes that nobody uses for sure.
And I didn't realize that this was the case.
I thought it was a safety issue, but William Macbeth from True North, who is a municipal watcher in Calgary, he explained it to me that the reason they want to reduce this speed limit in residential areas is not really for safety issues.
It's to combat climate change.
They think slow your car down, get there slower, fewer emissions in your residential cul-de-sac.
I mean, it's just crazy.
Like, do these people have chauffeurs?
When you're driving a really long distance on the highway at high speeds, you cover more distance and use less gas.
Like, and it also, they're so, it's so funny.
I mean, we were just talking about this, but they're so anti-scientific.
Like, that varies so dramatically.
For example, like a light car with a four-cylinder engine will be more efficient at like inner city stop and go traffic.
A big engine is more efficient on the highway.
So it's like this nonsense blanket sentiment in the name of the environment, but it isn't actually based in any sort of tangible evidence.
It's, it's, it's an idea.
It's like a kooky idea that someone had.
And now somehow, Somehow, without any vetting or common sense procedures, it's become a law that we're all for a bylaw at the very least that we're all forced to live by.
Beyond that, there is always the hope, as we said, that like, oh, they're already working on a green transit line.
They'll include this.
Like, it could just be, not that this is necessary, but they're just patting themselves on the back and they're going to start saying, all these things we're doing are part of our effort to be green.
And maybe that attracts investors from tech companies, whatever.
Kooky Climate Law00:03:06
That's the best case, most hopeful scenario.
But the other negative outlook to this is like oil companies who view Calgary and have been moving to Calgary, they may get the impression, depending on how it's handled and how it's declared, that the mayor of the city, who's like I said, the core is one-third vacant, there's businesses, and these landowners would clearly like renters or leasers in those buildings.
You think as the mayor of a city, you'd be like, we want big tech, we want eco-tech, we want oil and gas.
Come on, this is the place to do business.
You can have it all.
You don't need to bash your old friend because you have a new group of friends.
This isn't high school.
You can encourage the most ethical oil on earth and encourage new green investments.
And then you can win in both worlds.
You can keep your eco-buddies happy and you can actually contribute to economic well-being.
The other thing that really gets me going about this is the declaration of an emergency, a climate emergency.
And I say this in our video.
So for those who've seen it, I do apologize because it will have been out already.
But the sort of psychological impact, jumping from crises to crises, the environment, everyone was going to die.
Then it's COVID.
Everybody's going to die.
Now we're back to a climate emergency.
These environmental activists are so keen on producing a safe future in a world for tomorrow that they've created an environment that's so inhospitable to healthy growth.
Kids are afraid to live their day-to-day lives.
They're in a perpetual state of anxiety over all this.
We need some normalcy.
And saying that we're going to lure in new business and we're going to move towards the future, that can help people.
But declaring a climate emergency, kids are panicking.
You're the mayor.
You're the city councilors.
They're looking to you for leadership.
Symbolically declaring an emergency, that's like, it's like calling 911 when you're not supposed to.
Emergency is a very important term that you learn, that kids learn at a very young age.
And it means that something needs to be done.
There's a panic right now.
We need to act.
Kids shouldn't be looking up at the sky like chicken little, panicking that the sky's falling because every mayoral candidate and their partner and their dog and everyone under the sun, Trudeau down, is so obsessed with generating fear over this.
It's absolutely despicable.
It isn't just the energy thing.
It isn't just the economic thing, but it's also the impact that it's having on the psyche of people across the province and around the world.
Greta Tunberg being the poster child of all of this, really.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean, we just think what we've done to children.
And I mean, we as society and the people in charge of it, not you and I, who want our kids to be normal.
What's happened in the last 20 months with kids being constantly injected with fear from the TV, from school, from all the rules that say you can't hug your little friends and you can't smile, you have to wear a mask and you have to stay apart.
And then you overlay climate hysteria on top of that.
And you've got a recipe for an anxiety-riddled adult created in this time from what should be perfectly healthy little kids.
Vaccine Passports and Principles00:13:50
And moreover, to your point about the migration of head offices outside of Calgary, that's a very real thing.
For example, Chief Billy Morin from Enoch First Nation, just outside of Edmonton, one of his main economic goals is to attract oil and gas head offices there.
In fact, I think Mikasoo Has an office there.
So the supply side of the Miccasu First Nation, they have one of their head offices there, even though Miccasoo is in Fort McMurray.
And speaking of Fort McMurray, they have a brand new mayor who's pro-oil and gas and pro-small business, Sandy Bowman.
And he wants to make Fort McMurray, which makes a lot of sense actually, the oil field head office hub.
And he's willing to create economic incentives for companies to do that.
So, I mean, Calgary's loss could be these other places gain.
And she's really sending a message to those companies with this climate emergency baloney.
And the impact in the community, like we talk about the mental health illness, but like parents losing their jobs and the economic instability within a community is also devastating.
For years and years, McLean's magazine would often have Calgary as one of the cultural hubs of Canada, sometimes putting it above Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver.
Sorry to break it to the progressive left who love all the arts and culture, but the ballet, the museums, all that lovely stuff, the private art shows, the galleries, it was all oil money funding all of it.
So all your pretty museum openings and all those ballet things, which I happen to like too.
I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but that goes away when you kick away the oil companies who are paying for all of it.
So they're going to notice that, oh, these eco-investors who are relying on government grants and aren't making billions of dollars for the economy, they don't quite have the assets.
They aren't all Elon Musk to fund a massive cultural scene in a community.
So you're not only kicking them out, but you're kicking so much of the culture out with it.
Not to mention that the oil industry in itself is a culture, a rich and unique culture.
You can go to Heritage Park or some of these other places if they would let you in if you were unvaccinated.
They won't.
So I'm not going to endorse them.
But they do have, whenever they get back to normal and sensibility, rich cultural displays of the oil heritage, like what went on, how hard people worked to make this place the great place it is.
And frankly, the only reason that Mayor Nensi and Gondeck are the mayors of world-class cities is because of the oil industries that built Calgary.
You know, it's a really great point.
Now, moving on from how awful the so-called climate emergency is, although I could talk about that for hours and hours and hours.
And I do think it's funny because you're like, I like going to the ballet.
And you and I are from a little bit two different worlds because I'm like, you know, my brother used to say he was going to the ballet, but he was going to watch the ladies dance at the airways.
It's a little different.
My wife took me, but it was good.
It was fun.
Now, I wanted to talk to you about somebody stepping his foot back into Alberta politics.
Brian Gene, former Wild Rose leader, finished as first runner-up, which unfortunately is also first loser to Jason Kenney in the leadership of the United Conservative Party after the two parties joined.
But he's ready to come back.
I do think the party needs a change in leadership.
This is not an endorsement of Brian Gene, but Jason Kenney is out of runway to fix his popularity problems.
And Brian Gene is saying all the right things.
I've seen some polling the other day that said up to 41% of people across the political spectrum say these vaccine mandates are a bridge too far.
And that's like, that's not a conservative thing.
That's like an everybody thing.
And he is saying he opposes these vaccine mandates.
He's not anti-vaccine.
He thinks vaccines work, but he doesn't think you should lose your job if you've made the decision not to get one and you shouldn't be carved out of society.
And yet we're seeing Kenny proxies out there in the media saying Jason County is appealing to the rural anti-vaxxer crowd.
Wow, that's a bold strategy, crapping on rural issues.
Let's see if that pays off for you.
But what do you think?
You know, it's really interesting because, and this is just, I had something else pretty much in mind to say, but this is just dawning on me now.
Jason Kenny has gone out of his way to appeal to everybody and has, in fact, appealed to nobody by attempting to like the restriction exemption program is the pinnacle of tiptoeing on the fence, where in practice you're implementing the worst type of segregation and exclusion in Canadian history next to potentially Japanese internment.
That is functionally what you're doing, but you're pretending that it's kind of open and airy fairy.
So there's like maybe a hint of a suggestion that you respect freedom, but ultimately you're not doing anything at all.
Everything he's done has been middle of the fence, utterly void of principle.
Just trying to say, trying, he's got his think tank people trying to massage the situation and fit something into a mold that doesn't fit, that's inherently divided.
It's interesting.
One of my concerns with Brian Gene, honestly, was one that we just keep having the same political voices coming back.
And Brian Gene was very beloved, but he didn't win.
And there was some questionable stuff, stepped away from politics, came back.
Obviously, he had some stuff in his personal life, and we don't need to go through all that.
But I completely understand why he took a step away from politics.
But what's next?
Like Danielle Smith coming back.
It's the same voices over and over.
So my big concern with Brian Gene was like he was looking at involvement in an alternative centrist party.
And I'm like, do we really need someone more centrist than Jason Kenney?
He's utterly void of.
So I was like, oh, well, what's Brian Gene really going to bring?
Even back then, Brian Gene was sort of the more centrist voice.
He didn't do a lot for me.
He was fine.
I liked him as a guy.
What's interesting now, though, and this is what just sort of dawned on me, is Brian Gene, if he has an ounce of principle in him, for example, as he said, saying that fundamentally undermining people's medical privacy or right to freedom with vaccine passports is wrong.
By having that principled stance that Jason Kenney seems to have completely lost track of, he is actually going to win over the reasonable people by instead of acting like quicksand and trying to fill in every gap and then sinking into nothingness, becoming a shadow of the man we once knew as Jason Kenney.
If Brian Gene has some points that he can fix onto and lock onto and say, you know what, we as a society do not exclude people based on their vaccine status.
If he comes out and says that plain and simple, well, the conservatives who are sick of Jason Kenney but are still going to vote conservative, they're going to vote for him.
But I think he'll actually succeed in what Jason Kenney's been trying to do.
Jason Kenney and Aaron O'Toole and we'll get to that, I'm sure, have been trying to win over some of the left, assuming they can treat the right like dirt and get away with it.
Brian Gene is going to win over those people on the left who are principal.
And we've seen people who aren't traditional conservatives, some of our lawyers, some of the business owners we've talked to, who are coming on side with rebel news and the alleged conservatives saying, you know what, this has nothing to do with right or left anymore.
This has to do with respecting human beings.
And I think Brian Gene is going to do pretty damn well for himself if he can say, no, enough is enough.
I don't care what Justin Trudeau says.
I don't care what Rachel Notley says.
I don't care about what Dr. Joe Vipon says.
We do not discriminate against people because we're Canadian and Canadians simply don't do that.
He will win people over and he's probably going to be the next premier of this province if he manages to stick to that line and has some good, reasonable, sensible economic policies.
But I think we are at a value test crux for Alberta.
And if someone doesn't come forward and have that strong position and win over Alberta, at least enough to form a government, we're in trouble.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Brian Gene is the only one saying the right things, particularly in that riding.
There are some, you know, UCP backbenchers at this point who are saying, you know, I'm against the vaccine mandate.
Okay, well, what do you, what are you doing about it, though?
What do you think?
Well, why am I just hearing from you now?
Yeah.
After it's implemented.
Even with those people, they're still clearly like they, I've no doubt they said, I'm doing this, I'm letting you know.
And Jason said, Well, as long as you don't talk to Rabble about this, don't go on there.
None of these people are doing interviews or talking.
They're putting out a letter that expresses their opinion that's probably been okayed by the party to some extent.
And then they're not talking about it after the fact.
So it's almost a washing of the hands.
I support Matt Jones and some of these other people for these strong letters that they have put out.
But these people should be stepping up and being the next leaders, not just someone who issues one letter and then goes back into the back benches.
So they're all in line really, really quick.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I feel like they've allowed a bit of purging by allowing these letters out.
But when fundamental human rights violations and freedom violations are taking place, one letter doesn't cut it.
So hopefully Brian Gene, Drew Barnes, some of these other folks who are out there politicians will continue to fight for freedom for Albertans.
Well, the other person running in Gene's riding, Joshua Gogo, he is, I think it sounds like he's a Kenny loyalist.
He refuses to give his opinion on vaccine mandates, which is refusing to give your opinion on fundamental human rights at the end of the day.
And Jason Kenney seems to be writing all this off.
And I don't think that's a good idea.
He's, according to this Edmonton Journal article, he's characterized Brian Gene as a nuisance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not great.
No.
And I mean, the fact that he did a press conference and he said, and frankly, he said some of the points that I've raised as points of concern, and they were valid and fair.
But they asked him a question.
And unlike the stumbling, unsure of himself, Jason Kenny we've seen, he clearly had a scripted response.
And you don't have scripted responses for people that are just a nuisance that you don't care about.
He's clearly threatened by him.
And that is further evidenced not only in his basically borderline personal attacks on Brian Gene, not altogether out of off base, but they're clearly personal attacks.
But other UCP loyalists, think tank people, advisors, all that, they've taken every opportunity to jump on Brian Gene in the last few weeks.
I, for one, think that if Jason Kenney spent less time, him and his group of little advisors spent less time on attacking Brian Gene, they could spend a little more time on bringing in some much needed things, like let's say natural immunity testing for Albertans.
But he's too busy for that because he's already campaigning for the leadership.
I don't think, I don't know if it's he has his own little bubble and he's isolated from the world, but he's lost everyone who loved Jason Kenny does not anymore.
He's lost it.
He's lost the plot completely.
And he needs to really turn things around, but it's probably too late.
And I think there is a massive opening for Brian Gene to jump into.
But again, he has to resist that sort of centrist try and keep everyone happy thing that Aaron O'Toole has fallen victim to as well.
He has to have a couple stakes in the ground that are not shifting because Albertans need a politician.
Canadians need a politician.
Aaron O'Toole would have won if he was anybody else with any fixed principles who they know what they're getting.
Well, and that's the thing.
I think Jason Kenny doesn't realize that the same buyer's remorse that he benefited from, people who voted for the NDP who were like, yikes, Brian Gene's about to benefit from that too.
And I think Jason Kenney would do well to take that seriously instead of writing it off as a nuisance.
His popularity or lack thereof, that's not a nuisance.
That's a catastrophe waiting to happen.
And Jason Kenney might have to decide that he cares more about Alberta than he does about being in charge of the party he helped unite.
Because if he stays on and he doesn't permit a leadership review, because I think he's the guy with the final say, it spells an NDP government going forward.
And we will 100%.
For those folks who don't know, we will be at the UCP AGM this weekend.
We're going to be talking to people, getting a vibe, hopefully putting out videos as the day goes along, getting a vibe for what the sentiment is.
We know people aren't happy.
There are the little lackeys and tag-alongs and inner circle who are Team Kenny first and foremost.
There are some politicians who probably would not have won their nomination and were put in by Kenny.
Those people are likely to remain loyal to Kenny regardless of what he does.
And they'll probably work with him wherever he goes afterwards.
But yeah, for the rest of us, there's a stark reality dawning for Jason Kenny.
And hopefully the rest of the party, I know lots of people, but hopefully we hear from a lot of people who are willing to voice their concern, if not on camera, at least off camera.
Now, speaking of conservatives not as advertised, I know I've kept you a little late, so we'll just tear through this kind of briefly.
We're recording this on Monday because of how schedules permit, but our viewers will be watching it on Wednesday.
And about an hour ago, conservative senator launches a petition to oust Aaron O'Toole as leader.
And this shocks me because she's not much of a wavemaker.
I like her.
I like her.
I like Denise Batters.
She, every time I see her, she reminds me of there being some benefit to the Senate because usually I'm like, just abolish it.
Pierre's Principled Stand00:09:11
It's awful.
Just abolish it.
But I see her and she's very good on conservative issues.
And she was an Andrew Scheer absolute loyalist, absolute loyalist.
And for the longest time, she was an Aaron O'Toole loyalist too.
But right now, she's launched a petition to oust Aaron O'Toole as party leader.
And she's the highest profile one to be saying this yet.
There was Burt Chen, I mean, but he's been purged from the party altogether.
She said that O'Toole's, on O'Toole's watch, the party flip-flopped on major issues such as carbon pricing, firearms, and conscience rights, and has once again lost conservative seats in urban and suburban ridings in Alberta, BC, and the greater Toronto area.
And she said, while he campaigned as a true blue conservative in the leadership race, he ran a federal election campaign that was nearly indistinguishable from Trudeau's liberals.
Thank you, Denise.
Thank you.
It is, it's again, I told you so, but it is nice to see that the conservatives are actually saying this now.
And because she's a high-profile senator from the West, the conservative hotbed, this is going to get taken seriously.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, the wild thing with all this one, I'm going to thank her for not only saying what we're all thinking, but saying what Aaron O'Toole is doing.
At least Andrew Scheer, despite sort of being floppy on this stuff as well, he had like a personality and he was kind of funny.
Aaron O'Toole, if you had a shot every time that guy just said our plan, our plan, our plan, instead of saying anything like he believed it, you'd be in trouble.
You'd be in rehab.
It's an absolute boar fest.
And it's not only that.
It isn't a bore fest, but like the principles are in line and they have everything right.
Harper.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Harper was so boring, but like nothing was a disaster.
I mean, don't be wrong, some social issues.
I'm not going to get into that now, but Harper, boring, but everything was sort of like we had a decent plan and the economy was online.
This is absolutely boring and yet still a categorical disaster and still wish washing on everything.
I think one of the problems with Aaron O'Toole as well, I mean, they have to get rid of everyone in the war room.
It's absolutely embarrassing how they run that campaign.
And if they don't get over themselves and fire everyone involved, frankly, including the leader, he has no business leading anything beyond, I don't know, what's something really boring, leading the most boring thing possible.
Yeah, yeah, you could be a CBC host.
Sorry.
Yeah, perfect.
But it's so like milquetoast and vapid and empty.
And there's no adherence to principles.
It's the same thing we talked about with Kenny.
Where it's.
It's a win sog, but it's not a win sock among the conservative movement or a wind sock about where the tides are going.
It's like what is Justin Trudeau saying?
And how do we not get in trouble with his base because we want to win people over?
That's the entirety of the campaign strategy.
How do we like Submit to not allow him to create?
Try to win like the best defense is a good offense.
Stop trying to like they're like.
We want to not lose.
There's a word for that.
It's called winning, and the conservative movement has been trying to not lose the assumption that Justin Trudeau is so bad, which is true, that Canadians won't vote for him.
Well, Canadians aren't necessarily good voters.
They don't have a good track record of it.
Don't.
Get me wrong.
The majority of more Canadians voted for conservatives than Justin Trudeau.
But to lose to that guy.
The reason they lost isn't necessarily where they stood on anything, it's because they didn't stand for anything.
They lost votes to the PPC because you knew where the PPC stood and as much as you can uh, dislike Justin Trudeau um, barring a few things, you know he's a radical activist who's going to do.
You know what you're getting with him, with Aaron O'toole, you literally never know what you're going to get and more often than not, and to the credit of the, the senator, you got whatever Trudeau was saying and he would swap from week to week on this.
Um, I think one of the biggest issues with people within the party um being loyalists to Aaron O'toole is I think lots of their policy writing was sort of suave and tongue-in-cheek and uh, so there'd be like a little like it'd sound like it was all super pro eco um, and then there'd be like a little paragraph at the end that would say like, and we support our oil industries blah blah, blah.
So anyone you'd rate and I talked to good principles, principled conservatives um who, when you'd raise oppositions, they'd say, well, actually in the policy platform it does say this.
I'm like yeah, but there's several paragraphs about all this eco nonsense.
And then there's one little line about this.
It clearly reflects the sentiments.
Aaron O'toole was unwilling to answer questions and wouldn't talk in favor of Alberta oil in the Quebec debates.
Furthermore, I mean, if you're going to profess to be a party that tends to represent western values um, that entire debate process where people were excluded, the PPC was excluded, the debates effectively all took place in Quebec.
Two out of three were French language.
Aaron O'too, the first thing he should have done is, you're excluding journalists and you've completely alienated the English-speaking West.
I'm not taking part in your joke debates.
Maxim Bernier and I are going to have a real debate in uh, somewhere in the middle, let's say Calgary, and anyone who wants to come, anyone who's the leader of a party.
Have some thresholds.
You don't have everyone showing up, But that would have been the move, and he would have been the prime minister of this country right now.
If he would have done anything to indicate he had an ounce of principle, that's what people are looking for.
One of the problems with Justin Trudeau, successes rather, is that he believes some of the stuff he says as much as he stumbles through it.
And he says it with conviction.
So people are like, well, you know, at least that guy seems to care.
I mean, he may be wrong about everything, but he really seems passionate.
It's the same thing with the appeal with Jagmeet Singh.
Like everything he says is ridiculous, but he says it like he really means it.
Aaron O'Toole, I don't know if he said anything that he really meant the entire campaign.
It was so just absolutely soulless.
So people are looking for someone that they can gravitate towards.
They thought it was Jason Kenny in Alberta.
It's not.
Now they're looking.
Hopefully, Brian Gene, in that case, is the person who does it.
They're looking within the Conservative Party for someone who they're like, I know what I'm getting, and this person believes this.
Yeah, they want someone who wants to win, not someone who's just trying to not lose.
So, last question: fantasy football: who's your leader of the federal conservatives?
Yeah, it's, and unfortunately, lots of the people that you want have said that they're not running.
I think everyone wants Pierre Polyevra.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everyone wants Pierre Polyvra.
I would take Dr. Lesland Lewis.
I voted for her as my priority pick.
There's a lot of people who are exceptionally strong.
Dr. Leslie Lewis would be incredible because all of the sort of race-baiting, gender politics stuff that Justin Trudeau somehow manages to pull off as a privileged, rich white male would be completely shot in the face.
Yeah, who wore blackface.
We could hopefully actually just talk about ideas.
But on a principled idea level basis, I would have said garnet Janice not that long ago.
I can't anymore.
That climate video just did me.
And I know he's still a good guy, but that the whole Paris thing, I know he didn't believe that.
I know Tom doesn't want to, but Tom Kimyech is a good guy who believes in principles.
So there are people out there.
There's no lack of decent principled politicians.
But the thing is, often it's the same boat.
Pierre's been more outspoken, but they put out one letter or they'll say one good thing and then they're kind of they move back to the backlines.
So yeah, fantasy draft.
Pierre is the person who's come out time and time again and actually said things.
And I don't doubt he's incredibly popular and he's probably gotten in trouble with the party for putting out some of these videos that are sharing popular ideas.
And frankly, we did the do you know who this is, Aaron O'Toole thing?
No one recognized the dude.
We went to downtown Calgary, showed people a picture of Aaron O'Toole.
People didn't know who he was.
Pierre Polyevra's team could have done a better job with the campaign than the entire conservative war room did.
Sure.
And they honestly should have deployed him to some of the more at-risk ridings.
But I think there's a problem in the Aaron O'Toole party in that the sun can only shine on one.
And that's sort of why he Polyev was initially shuffled out of finance because he was actually probably too effective there.
But I think my picks are the same as yours.
Pierre Polyev, Leslie Lewis.
And some of that for me is for spite because O'Toole didn't give her a critic position, which is basically just relegating her to inconsequential backbencher within the critics role instead of a potential party unifier with new ideas.
And of course, perennial favorite Candace Bergen.
She's so strong on oil and gas and so strong on firearms rights and always consistent.
And so I don't think she should be overlooked.
Nope.
Thanks Much For Coming00:01:10
Well, you know what?
I kept you 15 minutes later than I said I would.
And you and I have very busy days, very busy weeks covering all the news.
Adam, thanks so much for coming on the show.
You always do such great work for us and is such a great advocate for your community, but also for the people, just the normals of Calgary, the non-victims of climate change in Calgary.
So, you know, keep up the great work out there.
Thanks very much.
Really appreciate it.
You too, Sheila.
Thanks.
Again, friends, if you'd like to sign Adam's petition to the city of Calgary and the mayor, it's at noclimateemergency.com and at that special website.
He's got a special link there where you can click on it and send a message directly to the mayor's office telling her that Calgary has more pressing issues than the weather, unless she wants to do something about snow removal.
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 week.